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Waking / Sleeping
Waking Up
Waking up this morning, I smile.
Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.
I vow to live fully in each moment
and to look at beings with the eyes of Compassion1.
When I entered the temple as a very young monk , I was taught to recite these lines the first moment I woke up. At the time I didn’t realize this poem was deep and meaningful; I didn’t understand. Why do I have to smile in the morning when I wake up? Later on, I learned that this smile is already a smile of enlightenment. As soon as you wake up, you realize that you have a life; life is in you, life is around you, and you smile to life. You greet life with a smile so that you really feel alive and feel the energy of being alive in you. You are generating the energy of mindfulness, and that makes you spiritual right away.
As you recite the second line, your smile gets deeper as you realize that you have twenty-four brand-new hours to live, twenty-four hours delivered to your door, to your heart. So, you smile a smile of awakening and joy; you cherish life and resolve to make good use of the hours you have to live.
Awakening
Waking from forgetfulness, I smile:
There are twenty-four brand new hours before me.
What will I do with each one?
Inviting mindfulness, practicing concentration,
I embrace the insight that all beings are one (Interbeing).2
Day is Ending
The day is ending, and our life is one day shorter.
Let us look carefully at what we have done.
Let us practice diligently, putting our whole heart into the path of meditation.
Let us live deeply, each moment and in freedom, so the time doesn’t slip away meaninglessly.
Going to Sleep
Another day has ended
and my life is getting shorter.
Lying3 here, I bring to rest
my body and my mind.
No coming and no going;
no after and no before.
A half-smile of understanding
upon my lips is born.
End of the Day
Another day has ended.
All we have seen and heard, smelled and tasted, touched and thought is part of us;
all that we have said, and everything we have done, is part of the world.
With no distinction between what is within and what is without,
we step mindfully into Noble Silence.
1
When practicing this
gāthā each morning, you might look at beings through the eyes of each of the Four Immeasurable Minds, in turn (click the highlighted text to cycle through them). For example, the first week, your eyes would be the eyes of Compassion; the next week, see with the eyes of Love, then Joy, then Equanimity. When we cultivate Compassion, compassion will be there. When we cultivate Love, Joy or Equanimity, love and joy and equanimity appear.
2
Practicing this
gāthā after the start of the day, you may wish invite one of the Three Gates of Liberation: Emptiness, where no thing and no being has a permanent identity; Signlessness, where we accept the nature of things without attaching notions or judgments; and Aimlessness, recognizing that what we wish to become already exists within us.
You might also invite one of the Three Dharma Seals: Impermanence, where every thing and every being is in a constant process of becoming, there is no birth and no death; Lack of a Separate Self, where we inter-are with all that exists; and Nirvāṇa, where diligent practice frees us from all anxiety and sorrow.
3
When practicing this
gāthā near the end of the day, you might substitute another of the four aspects of the body, related to your activity: Lying in bed, preparing for sleep; Sitting in evening meditation; Standing with awareness of the turning of the wheel of our Mother Earth; or Walking mindfully to your rest.