Whatever comes to mind. Sometimes a story I read, sometimes something that came to me while holding my mala beads.
My friend watched me pour tea and dump the first steep. He looked horrified. Then an old man in a signless tea house in Chaozhou said one sentence that changed everything.
Thirty-seven degrees. I grabbed an iced cola. My mom called and said don't. I didn't believe her until a Chinese medicine doctor said two words: "stomach cold." After 30 days of warm water, I found out my mom was right all along.
A foreign vlogger held up a Chinese dragon lantern and said it breathes fire. I paused the video. That golden dragon with deer antlers and fish scales didn't look like anything that would breathe fire. It looked more like a cloud.
Asanga meditated in a cave for twelve years and saw nothing. Until one day, he met a wounded dog on the road. In that moment, he did something without thinking of the consequences.
Someone asked Zhaozhou: Does a dog have Buddha-nature? Zhaozhou said: Mu. Just one word that countless people have failed to penetrate for a thousand years. Maybe it's not an answer but a wall — making you crash into it and find all your prepared responses useless.
Dogen Zenji returned from China to Japan with a single teaching: Just sit. No seeking enlightenment, no seeking Buddhahood. Just sitting. This is the entirety of practice.