Meditation on Mercy Queen of Heaven (the Enmei Juku Kannon Gyo) for Tara

Ten-phrase life prolonging chant for Mercy Goddess, prosody celebrating new classes and relationships.

For originals and expert translations, see one or more of the following:

http://www.berkeleyzencenter.org/Texts/kannongyo.shtml

http://www.bamboointhewind.org/chant_kanzeon.html

http://www.purelandnotes.com/lantern/enmei_1.htm

Mercy Queen of Heaven, make your appearance here!

Your essence is enlightening being.

Breathing in, we feel your life breath; breathing out, we offer you the golden orb of our loving kindness. Noticing your pulse in our veins, we send the wish for freedom from suffering to our adorable ones, receive it ourselves, and reflect it again to the difficult ones.

Light and your Cohorts of Color, teach our substance your faith in the Way Seeking Mind, one with gentle teachings of True Nature, as we become part of the rainbow school--in ease and sweet nothing, existence melting into eternity, no-self marked by own passing, by relieving endless suffering, and by intertwined causal skeins, endless joy beaming.

At such entreaties, the Goddess of Mercy might make her appearance in physical form and human attention every morning and evening. Even when the physical manifestation of this life form is present, practice is needed to unveil her unconditioned emptiness beneath conditioned form. 

Unrealized beings of light may not be able to catch sight of her traces until some beautiful numinous experience connects them to innate brain patterns associated with states of bliss. These tracks are not easy to find. Even students attuned to her appearance or who practice emptying the mind might not catch the fragrance of liberation emitted from her pores every single time she passes. 

Like samadhi, there is a word for coming conscious in the morning, as there is for preparing for the night. And the experiences of waking up, of deep meditation, and of surrendering to sleep recapitulate the meeting with the Goddess, or her appointed agent, innumerable times each day.

So focus your attention on the likeness of Mercy. Surrender to thinking of her action. For she listens to those of your thoughts that you witness, and she hears all the cries of the suffering world through the ears of her attendant ones.  Never recoiling, she embraces anguish just as well as mere dissatisfaction by perfect reception. She pours her soothing balm on honored ones and beings in the six realms equally, though only those who open themselves can follow its course into its resting place deep in their marrow.

Mind gives thought after thought to consciousness. Leading the tamed wild mind step by step toward home. Perfect incense rising to make a sacred cloud of attention around Mercy's grace.