Kuan Yin's Prayer for the Abuser

We just listened to a Scottish Zen buddhist Minister Jana Drakka giving a talk at the San Francisco Zen Center.

She spent some time being homeless with PTSD after a bad relationship and spoke from her experience and from her practice about how to practice loving kindness even with difficult people. 

This seemed an appropriate poem, a kind of meditation to start the fire breathing dragon year. 

Kuan Yin's Prayer for the Abuser

To those who withhold refuge,

I cradle you in safety at the core of my Being.

To those that cause a child to cry out,

I grant you the freedom to express your own choked agony.

To those that inflict terror,

I remind you that you shine with the purity of a thousand suns.

To those who would confine, suppress, or deny,

I offer the limitless expanse of the sky.

To those who need to cut, slash, or burn,

I remind you of the invincibility of Spring.

To those who cling and grasp,

I promise more abundance than you could ever hold onto.

To those who vent their rage on small children,

I return to you your deepest innocence.

To those who must frighten into submission,

I hold you in the bosom of your original mother.

To those who cause agony to others,

I give the gift of free flowing tears.

To those that deny another's right to be,

I remind you that the angels sang in celebration of you on the day of your birth.

To those who see only division and separateness,

I remind you that a part is born only by bisecting a whole.

For those who have forgotten the tender mercy of a mother's embrace,

I send a gentle breeze to caress your brow.

To those who still feel somehow incomplete,

I offer the perfect sanctity of this very moment.