Whatever comes to mind. Sometimes a story I read, sometimes something that came to me while holding my mala beads.
Before I could sign my lease, my mom called and told me to check the almanac first. I laughed—what year is this? But later I actually opened one, and found a whole way of seeing time. Not superstition. Just how seriously Chinese people take the word timing.
The desert looks bone-dry on the surface, yet water lies hidden beneath. We are the same — anxious and busy above, quiet and clear below. You don't need to travel far to find it. Just stop, and dig down. For one second.
On a lost path behind Mount Qingcheng, I met a Daoist who had not eaten lunch in seven years. Bigu is not dieting, nor fasting — it is another kind of relationship between a person and food.
Three years of insomnia. Melatonin, white noise, counting sheep — nothing worked. Then I met a Daoist monk on Mount Qingcheng who taught me three breathing techniques. A month later, I was asleep in fifteen minutes.
At eleven at night, my brain was full of work. My mom said: go make millet porridge. When your stomach is warm, you settle down. Those twenty minutes at the stove worked better than any meditation app.
A friend moved into a new place and started having nightmares every night. Her wardrobe mirror was facing the bed. After covering it, she slept through the night. This is what I discovered about mirrors and sleep.
A friend gave me agarwood incense. The night I couldnt sleep, I lit one, and everything stopped. Agarwood is the scent of a tree slowly healing its wounds—and that thought stayed with me.
Blisters in my mouth, can't sleep at night, irritable all day. My mom said it's "heart fire." An ordinary person tries living by the seasons for a few days and discovers the ancient wisdom isn't mysticism at all.
Where your bed faces, which way the mirror points, what's above your head — these little things you thought didn't matter might be quietly stealing your sleep. It's not superstition. It's your body being honest.
Pang was a lay practitioner in the Tang Dynasty who sank his fortune into the river and lived by weaving bamboo baskets. His daughter Lingzhao said: When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep. That is practice.
Last night I couldn't sleep. Tossed and turned, then got up and flipped through the Shurangama Sutra. There's a passage that stopped me cold — the Buddha said when someone points at the moon, you should look at the moon, not stare at the finger. It felt like a mirror showing me a habit I repeat every single day.