Thursday, April 11, 2013

Have The Day You Are Going To Have

I have a friend named Christy who is helping with the editing of my book. Yesterday she was dropping her son Jack off at school and said to him, “Have a great day”! Her son replied, “That’s a lot of pressure, Mom. Why don’t you just say, ‘Have the day you’re going to have”. I believe my friend’s son is a Zen Master in the making. One definition of Zen could be to “have the day you’re going to have”. Whenever people ask me to explain Zen I say that it’s being where you are and doing what you’re doing. The heart of this definition is about being present to the moment and your experience of the moment. If you are present to the moment and the experience of the moment you will have the day you were meant to have. Young Jack is deeper than he probably realizes that he is. I think his mother probably senses this because I have been teaching her about Zen since we met and she has a more enlightened view of life now. I hope she doesn’t mind my evaluation of her progress. I have long believed that children can be our greatest teachers. I am much more enlightened because of my granddaughter. I think she is a Zen Master too. This view of life comes naturally to children. Unfortunately we often lose it as adults and then we must struggle to regain it. I struggle to be in the moment and to “have the day I am going to have” while such presence is effortless for my friend’s son and my granddaughter. We are born with much that we lose along the journey of life. When we realize this we must spend the rest of our lives trying to get it back.








1 comment:

Diane Hughes said...

I recently discovered your blog while in search of some Taoist philosophy. I've enjoyed perusing your posts. Nice style and interesting topics. :-)