A Buddhist Seventh Step Prayer

Here is the Seventh Step Prayer as it comes out of "the Big Book."

My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, the good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen.

I rewrote it to have a more Buddhist feel:

Buddhas, bodhisattvas, enlightened beings in the ten directions,
I ask for help, willingness and strength
To remove those defects of character whose extinction
Will be of maximum benefit to all sentient beings.
I take refuge in enlightened dharma teachings.
Objects of refuge, please abide with stability in my heart.

TAYATA GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA

The last line is the mantra of the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajnaparamita) and records the path to enlightenment. Loosely it means: beyond, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, gone utterly beyond, enlightenment, hooray!

Speaking of character defects, I realized last night, although it's not a huge surprise, that one of the biggies for me right now is judgmentalism. I really have a tendency to search for the flaws in people, and when I've finally found them, illusory or not,
I use them to justify a dismissive attitude. Of course, now that I'm a practicing Buddhist, I'm the sort of person I would have been highly dismissive of at an earlier, angrier stage of my life. Hee hee.