Just Another Day

Today 10-10-2010 is my birthday. After weeks of activity—giving programs and poetry readings, traveling, teaching workshops—I decided that today I would do as much of nothing as possible. In my readings, I learned that the number ten signifies that the cycle is complete and that everything is in its proper order. Whatever thoughts and feelings are put out on this day will manifest or multiply three times.

At 10:10 a.m. I sat on my meditation cushion, took out a new stick of incense, lit a candle in the shape of a chrysanthemum, and tapped my Japanese meditation bowl three times with a padded stick. As I chanted the Heart Sutra

ma ka han nya ha ra mi ta sin gyo

kan ji zai bo satsu .......

I began to feel that I was inside a cocoon of peace—memories of walking in  the cedar forests of Ohara, monks chanting at Sanzen-in, their breaths visible in the cold morning air, fields of pink cosmos swaying in the wind, the sound of an invisible stream. And I wondered why all my memories of tranquility were set in the past and in another country?

Returning to my body sitting on the cushion, I came to the realization that this moment 10-10-10-10-10 would never come again. What if we lived our lives this way? Cherishing each moment or even each day?

After chanting and meditation, I opened Daniel Skach-Mills’ book The Tao of Now to a random page. Here’s the poem that came to me today.

Twenty-Five

Can you tend a garden

without turning deer and insects

into enemies?

Can you drive a vehicle in winter

without making a menace

of snow?

Can you plan a gathering

without planning on others

to execute and follow your plans?

Practice what’s easy first.

Then, when illness comes,

and finally death,

you’ll be ready

to let go of plans;

drive straight ahead;

attend to what’s being eaten away

without bitterness.

When life moving in

and out of itself

is all you can see,

then you are at peace

with everything.

Copyright Daniel Skach-Mills




The Dao of Now is available at Amazon.com and at the Lan Su Chinese Garden gift shop in Portland.