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Day 87
Let the water clear.
In Legge's 1891 translation, the parentheses mark words he supplied, so even making the water clear has had a little help getting into English.
Taoism
Day 86
While the wound waits.
An old Buddhist text has a monk threaten to give up training unless the Buddha answers his big questions: whether the world is eternal, whether the soul and the body are the same thing, what follows death.
Buddhism
Day 85
Because it was yours.
You dismiss an idea because it's yours, the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson says in an 1841 essay, then admire it when somebody else says it.
Secular
Day 84
As she said it.
In one of the oldest Hindu scriptures, a boy named Satyakama wants to study with a teacher.
Advaita
Day 83
A banquet for a bird.
An old Taoist book, the Zhuangzi (say "jwahng-dzuh"), tells of a ruler of Lu who puts on a banquet for a sea bird.
Taoism
Day 82
Through the village.
The bee gets its nectar, so this isn't a lesson in going without.
Buddhism
Day 81
The exception.
A story in 101 Zen Stories has the boy who grew up to be the Zen master Ikkyu break his teacher's precious antique cup.
Zen
Day 80
Meanwhile, tea.
These are the last lines of his first chapter, and the word doing the work is "Meanwhile." Okakura has just described the modern world shattered in a struggle for wealth and power, waiting for someone to repair the devastation.
Secular
Day 79
What would it do.
Yajnavalkya (say "yahj-nyuh-vulk-yuh"), in one of the oldest Upanishads, is leaving home for the forest and tells his wife Maitreyi he'd like to make a settlement between her and his other wife.
Advaita
Day 78
A gift for the thief.
Ryokan was a real hermit monk and poet, and in a story in 101 Zen Stories he lives in a little hut at the foot of a mountain.
Zen
Day 77
On tiptoe.
The chapter starts with the body, so start there.
Taoism
Day 76
Fetch the water.
There's a story in the old monastic rulebook about a monk lying sick with a stomach illness, in his own filth.
Buddhism
Day 75
Somebody's victory.
William James, in an 1899 essay, tells of being driven through the mountains of North Carolina past newly cleared coves, the local word for the heads of small valleys between the hills.
Secular
Day 74
Not for the fruit.
Two armies are drawn up for battle at the start of the Bhagavad Gita (say "bug-uh-vud gee-tah"), and the warrior Arjuna has his chariot placed between them.
Advaita
Day 73
The fourth trade.
A fletcher is an arrow maker, so the verse lists three trades and then a fourth, and the fourth is the odd one because the worker and the material are the same person.
Buddhism
Day 72
Three in the morning.
In the Zhuangzi (say "jwahng-dzuh"), a keeper of monkeys, handing out their acorns, tells them: "In the morning I will give you three (measures) and in the evening four." They're all angry, so he says: "Very well.
Taoism
Day 71
A cast of masks.
In The Gateless Gate, a collection of Zen stories from 1228, a monk calls out to himself every day: "Master." Then he answers himself: "Yes, sir." He tells himself to come to his senses, and answers "Yes, sir" again, then warns himself not to be fooled by other people, and gets back "Yes, sir; yes, sir." That's the whole story.
Zen
Day 70
The greatest of conquerors.
A thousand times a thousand is a million men, which is a lot of battles to set beside one person getting a grip on himself.
Buddhism
Day 69
The rule at the gate.
Ashtavakra (say "ahsh-tah-vah-krah") was still a boy when he turned up at King Janaka's gate, in the Mahabharata, hoping to get into the king's great ceremony.
Advaita
Day 68
Any season.
A monk named Joshu asked his teacher Nansen what the path was, the thing all his training was for, and Nansen said: "Everyday life is the path." Joshu asked whether it could be studied.
Zen
Day 67
Deliberately.
Henry David Thoreau spent two years, two months and two days in a cabin by Walden Pond, and kept a ledger of what the experiment cost, down to three quarters of a cent.
Secular
Day 66
The fish are happy.
Zhuangzi (say "jwahng-dzuh") and his friend Huizi (say "hway-dzuh") were walking on a dam over the Hao river when Zhuangzi said the little fish below were out enjoying themselves.
Taoism
Day 65
The middle pitch.
Sona was one of the Buddha's most energetic students and still getting nowhere, so he started thinking he'd do more good going home to his family's money.
Buddhism
Day 64
Rise, awake.
In an old text called the Katha (say "kuh-tuh") Upanishad, a boy's father, in a temper, says he'll give the boy to Death.
Advaita
Day 63
Careful at the end.
A few lines earlier, the same chapter has the famous line about a journey of a thousand li starting with a single step, and since a li is only about a third of a mile, that journey is shorter than it sounds.
Taoism
Day 62
Live it and see.
The Kalamas lived in a town that teachers kept passing through, and each one praised his own teaching and ran down everyone else's.
Buddhism
Day 61
Bring me that mind.
In a case from The Gateless Gate, Bodhidharma sits facing a wall while a man stands behind him in the snow.
Zen
Day 60
This time counts.
"I won't count this time!" is the excuse of the drunken Rip Van Winkle of the stage in William James's chapter on habit.
Secular
Day 59
Drop by drop.
Nobody thinks the one small decent thing counts, which is how the pot stays empty.
Buddhism
Day 58
Is that so?.
A story told about the Zen master Hakuin (say "hah-koo-een") begins with his neighbors praising his pure life.
Zen
Day 57
Praise and blame.
The Ashtavakra (say "ahsh-tah-vah-krah") Gita puts being feted and being tormented in one sentence, which isn't how either one feels when it arrives.
Advaita
Day 56
Every house.
A story from the old commentaries tells of Kisa Gotami (say "kee-sah goh-tuh-mee"), whose small son dies.
Buddhism
Day 55
The useful part is missing.
Legge's nave is the hub, useful because it leaves room for the axle.
Taoism
Day 54
Salt all the way down.
In an old Upanishad (say "oo-pah-nih-shahd"), a father asks his son to put a lump of salt in water and return in the morning.
Advaita
Day 53
Look at the wood.
In the Zhuangzi (say "jwahng-dzuh"), Qing (say "ching") carves a bell-stand so fine that everyone who sees it thinks spirits made it.
Taoism
Day 52
One hand on the elephant.
An old Buddhist text has the Buddha tell of a king who gathers every man blind from birth and brings them to an elephant.
Buddhism
Day 51
Back at the crossing.
Two monks, Tanzan and Ekido, are walking a muddy road in heavy rain, in an old Zen story.
Zen
Day 50
Your side first.
Other people's mistakes arrive with excellent lighting.
Buddhism
Day 49
Hold the reins.
One of the old Upanishads (say "oo-pah-nih-shahd") compares the body to a chariot.
Advaita
Day 48
The moving flag.
Two monks were arguing about a flag.
Zen
Day 47
Without a receipt.
Most things get heavier the moment they start auditioning for witnesses.
Taoism
Day 46
Before you say it.
A prince came to the Buddha with a trap dressed up as a question: would an awakened person ever say something other people didn't want to hear? A yes would make him no different from anyone else.
Buddhism
Day 45
What you leave dark.
William James, writing in 1890, described attention as the mind taking possession of one thing out of several it could have picked, and he added that this means withdrawing from some things in order to deal with others effectively.
Secular
Day 44
The watching bird.
One Upanishad (say "oo-pah-nih-shahd") pictures two birds, inseparable friends, perched on the same tree.
Advaita
Day 43
Nobody else's job.
At a Chinese monastery in the 1220s, Dogen (say "doh-gen") found an old cook drying mushrooms in the midday heat, no hat, sweat running down his bent back.
Zen
Day 42
A little uselessness.
In the Zhuangzi (say "jwahng-dzuh"), a carpenter walks past an enormous oak that serves as the local altar and doesn't even slow down.
Taoism
Day 41
A useful handful.
Standing in a forest, the Buddha picked up a few leaves and asked the monks which was greater, the leaves in his hand or the leaves overhead.
Buddhism
Day 40
An old rule.
Notice the Buddha isn't claiming he discovered anything here, he calls it an old rule, the kind everyone already knows and nobody quite manages to use the next time someone cuts them off in traffic or fires back a sharp reply.
Buddhism
Day 39
The tenth man.
Ten friends waded across a stream together, and on the far bank one of them counted heads.
Advaita
Day 38
Water and firewood.
Layman Pang inherited a fortune, decided it was a problem rather than a prize, and sank it in a lake sooner than hand the problem to anyone else.
Zen
Day 37
Dreaming or awake.
Zhuangzi (say "jwahng-dzuh") wakes up certain he is himself again, and then cannot say which of the two was the dream.
Taoism
Day 36
Leave the raft.
One traveler in an old Buddhist story reaches a stretch of water too wide to wade and too deep to ford, with no ferry and no bridge in sight.
Buddhism
Day 35
Nobody wrote this line.
You've probably seen the line about the space between stimulus and response, the one that ends with your power to choose sitting right there in that gap.
Secular
Day 34
Wash your bowl.
A monk turns up at the monastery and asks to be taught.
Zen
Day 33
What survives the jar.
Break a jar and the sky it seemed to hold is unbothered.
Advaita
Day 32
Self-so.
Watch a tree grow this morning, if a tree happens to be nearby: no one is coaching it.
Taoism
Day 31
One person, not everyone.
Somewhere out there, someone you have never met is also just waking up.
Buddhism
Day 30
Every moment is profound.
The cosmos, in Harris's phrase, doesn't care about your plans: vast, indifferent, entirely unmoved by whatever you had scheduled for today.
Secular
Day 29
Waves and water.
Two modern teachers, working in entirely different traditions, both reached for the same picture: a wave on the ocean.
Advaita
Day 28
Not this, not this.
Long before the Buddha, a sage named Yajnavalkya (say "yahj-nyuh-vulk-yuh") in the Brihadaranyaka (say "bri-huh-dah-run-yuh-kuh") Upanishad taught a method of finding the self by subtraction, answering every question about it with the same two words: not this, not this.
Advaita
Day 27
Five remembrances.
An old Buddhist text, the Upajjhatthana Sutta, lists five facts worth reflecting on often: I am subject to aging, subject to illness, subject to death, I will grow separate from everyone and everything dear to me, and I am the owner of my own actions, inheriting their results.
Buddhism
Day 26
The uncarved block.
Pu (say "poo") is the old Taoist image of the uncarved block: wood before anyone has cut it into a bowl, a chair, or a chess piece.
Taoism
Day 25
What mindfulness is.
Sam Harris defines mindfulness plainly, with none of the incense: clear, nonjudgmental, undistracted attention to whatever is actually in consciousness right now, pleasant or not.
Secular
Day 24
Not always so.
Shunryu Suzuki (say "shoon-ryoo soo-zoo-kee") once told a group of students that the whole secret of Soto Zen fits into two words in Japanese, three in English: not always so.
Zen
Day 23
Unshakable balance.
Upekkha (say "oo-peck-kah") gets translated equanimity, and one Buddhist teacher described it as a perfect, unshakable balance of mind rooted in insight, which is a much higher bar than just staying calm.
Buddhism
Day 22
Stay supple.
Softness, in this chapter, is the sign of being alive; the stiff and hard are what death leaves behind, in a body or in a tree branch equally.
Taoism
Day 21
The spaces between.
In the Zhuangzi (say "jwahng-dzuh"), a ruler watches his cook butcher an ox with a knife that has lasted nineteen years and thousands of carcasses, still sharp as new.
Taoism
Day 20
The rope and the snake.
Picture walking into a dim room and seeing a coiled snake on the floor, heart racing, until someone turns on the light and it's just a rope.
Advaita
Day 19
The finger, not the moon.
A well-known Zen teaching device compares words to a finger pointing at the moon.
Zen
Day 18
The second arrow.
The Buddha's image for this teaching: being struck by an arrow, then striking yourself with a second one.
Buddhism
Day 17
What you are not.
Anatta (say "uh-nut-tah") is usually translated not-self, and it is worth being exact about what the teaching actually claims.
Buddhism
Day 16
The empty boat.
There's a parable, passed down among Zhuangzi's (say "jwahng-dzuh") later followers, about a man crossing a river whose boat is bumped by another, empty boat.
Taoism
Day 15
When the ground gives way.
Pema Chödrön (say "pay-muh chur-dren") names the exact moment her second marriage ended as the one where every shield she'd built finally gave out at once, not gradually, all together.
Buddhism
Day 14
Ask who is asking.
Ramana Maharshi (say "ruh-muh-nuh muh-hahr-shee") taught a method called self-enquiry, first given as answers to a devotee's questions around 1902, later gathered into the short text Who Am I? The method isn't to repeat the phrase "who am I" like a chant.
Advaita
Day 13
Just sit.
Shikantaza (say "shee-kahn-tah-zah") is the Soto Zen school's name for just sitting: not sitting in order to get somewhere else, but sitting as the complete act itself.
Zen
Day 12
A bag of skin.
Skin doesn't mark where you actually stop, Watts argues: the tidy little self you call "me" is a picture worth questioning, not a settled fact.
Secular
Day 11
The thirst.
Tanha (say "tahn-hah") is the Pali word usually translated craving, and the Buddhist teaching that names it as the engine of suffering is precise about what it does and doesn't mean.
Buddhism
Day 10
Maybe.
There's an old Chinese story, first written down in the Huainanzi over two thousand years ago, about a farmer near the frontier whose horse runs off.
Taoism
Day 9
Desire is memory.
Desire, on this account, isn't really about the future: it's a memory of some past pleasure, projected forward and mistaken for a promise.
Advaita
Day 8
Beginner's mind.
Shoshin (say "show-shin") is what Shunryu Suzuki (say "shoon-ryoo soo-zoo-kee") called beginner's mind: the openness you have before you've decided you already know a thing.
Zen
Day 7
Try softer.
Wu wei (say "woo-way") gets mistranslated as doing nothing, but the old texts say the opposite: the sage does nothing for its own sake, and so there is nothing left undone.
Taoism
Day 6
Only the seen.
Bahiya asked the Buddha for the whole teaching in a few words, on the street, in a hurry.
Buddhism
Day 5
Nothing holds still.
Anicca (say "uh-nik-uh") is the Buddhist term for the plain fact that conditioned things do not hold still: the coffee cools, the light shifts, the mood that felt unbearable an hour ago has already changed shape.
Buddhism
Day 4
The backwards law.
Alan Watts opens The Wisdom of Insecurity, in its Preface, with what he calls the backwards law: reach for something too hard and it slips away, ease off and it arrives on its own.
Secular
Day 3
Side by side.
Misery and happiness, in Laozi's (say "laow-dzuh") line, sit close enough to touch, so close that no one can say for certain where one truly ends and the other begins.
Taoism
Day 2
The mind multiplies.
Papanca is the mind's habit of turning one plain perception into a pile of commentary.
Buddhism
Day 1
Empty your cup.
There is an old Zen story, the first in the collection 101 Zen Stories, about a university professor who visits the master Nan-in to ask about Zen.
Zen
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