He was once the Jade Dragon Prince,

Third son of Aojun, Dragon King of the Western Sea.

Beautiful was his royal glory, his dominion spanning sea and sky,

And thus he basked in the auspices of Heaven for all his youthful days,

Reckless as any child.

His careless vigor the true Elixir of Immortality,

He made of the reefs and rocky cliff-faces a veritable playground.

Blessed was his Eternal self,

His juvenile mind developed in comparable span to the rise and fall of nations.

(Relativity was not first observed in the West.)

A thousand winters passed, but dragon-child he remained.

The equitability of Karma is restricted, one might say.

Oh, the grand scale of cosmic rights and wrongs balances itself eventually.

Eventually.

The word lies heavy upon the tongue and intellect.

Eventually.

The syllables themselves are tantric, dragging Time herself with them.

Thus one realizes that Eventually can be long in coming,

(Even the Cosmos will agree that tardiness is the fashion)

How this temporal limit of karmic fairness wreaks havoc on the burdened mind:

For the greatest power of this mantra is this,

Its drawing of the Saha-stranded to confusion,

Its birthing of that expectant bastard child, “When?”

That burning question that tortures souls—inextinguishable.

Hence a slow ascension is so often followed by a rapid fall,

And in an instant the Jade Dragon Prince found his world in shambles.

In that reckless moment, the Luminous Pearls were engulfed in flames,

These gifts from the Jade Emperor, true ruler of Heaven, suddenly gone.

Enraged, the Dragon King Aojun ordered the execution of his own child,

Life no comparison to the Jade Emperor’s precious gifts.

The prince awaited his fate with head hung low, hopeless—

The pearls were not the only extinguished light of the South Sea.

Boddhisattva Guan Shih Yin, merciful perceiver of the world’s ailments,

Intervened on behalf of the ill-fortuned dragon-child.

To those who perceive all, a child well-adorned is still but a child,

And what better adornments than a dragon’s golden scales?

Before Aojun and the Jade Emperor himself she pleaded for mercy.

His trangression unintentional, such was the unthinking mistake of a youth

Powerful was her plea, made until an agreement was reached

That satisfied Heaven’s hard justice.

Unchained from immediate punishment

The Jade Dragon Prince was not yet free.

His new home was a secluded river in the countryside.

Who knew even dragon princes could be turned to paupers?

There, the Boddhisattva asked him to wait,

For someday, the reborn Golden Cicada would make his journey,

Filled with perils and paths only to be navigated by a dragon horse.

‘Til then, there was merely existence—expectancy.

How agonizing must be his karmic burden,

Not to be alleviated until a time unknown.

Neither stepping forward nor falling back,

One surely cannot live like that,

Waiting for purpose rather than living it.

Limbo. A year passes. Then another. No end in sight.

The Golden Cicada is still but an honest boy monk.

The rebellious simian, shoulders heavy, is years from redemption.

“Eventually, the day will come,” the Dragon Prince comforts himself.

Eventually.