Whatever comes to mind. Sometimes a story I read, sometimes something that came to me while holding my mala beads.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son in the Lotus Sutra tells of a lost child who wandered for fifty years, not knowing his father had been waiting all along. Reading this story, I realized that poor son was me.
Zen Master Hakuin was falsely accused of fathering a child. He didn't defend himself. He just said "Is that so?" — and these three words changed how I see blame and misunderstanding.
On a windy day in Guangzhou, a flag flapped outside my window. I stood there watching it and remembered a story from thirteen hundred years ago — two monks arguing about whether it was the wind or the flag that was moving. Huineng said: it's neither. It's your mind that moves. I used to think this was idealism. Now I think it's about something simpler — what makes you suffer isn't what happens outside, but how your mind responds.
