Gathas are short practice poems. They can help us bring mindfulness, concentration, and insight to daily activities.
Practicing with Gathas
The basic form of practice is to: pause before you undertake some action, come back to your breathing, recite the gatha in your mind or out loud, and then initiate the action with mindfulness. Another method is to keep the gatha flowing through your mind while you perform the action, tying one line to an in breath and the next to an out breath.
I find that gathas, especially when practiced regularly, can wake you up to things you take for granted, expose habit energy, and steadily retrain your inner voice. I also find that my days are more beautiful when filled with poetic reminders of the practice and the wonders of life.
My Gathas
Writing your own gathas is a longstanding Zen tradition. I take great inspiration from my teacher in this, using gatha-crafting as a way to personalize and deepen my practice. Writing gathas makes the practices meaningful to me, and it helps me to reclaim areas of my life that I am less present to (for me, flossing is a great example of a rich area of practice.)
Here are some of mine:
References
Articles about gatha practice:
- Deepen Your Practice: Gathas from Deer Park Monastery
Breathing, sitting, and walking meditation are wonderful, but in our daily life we can be so busy that we forget our intention to breathe or walk mindfully. One way to help us dwell in the present moment is to practice with gathas. Gathas are short verses that help us practice mindfulness in our daily activities. A gatha can open and deepen our experience of simple acts that we often take for granted. Focusing our mind on a gatha, we return to ourselves and become more aware of each action. When the gatha ends, we continue our activity with heightened awareness.
- The Wonderful World of Gathas — the Mindfulness Bell
- How to Do Gatha Practice – Lion’s Roar
- Sangha Stories / Creating Gathas – Mindfulness at Play | Plum Village
Sources of gathas from Thich Nhat Hanh:
- Present Moment, Wonderful Moment
- A gatha-focused book, containing 49 gathas and Thay’s commentary
- The Energy of Prayer – How to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice: See Appendix 2, “Buddhist Prayers and Gathas,” pp.145-155.
- Stepping into Freedom – An Introduction to Buddhist Monastic Training: This book is not just for monastics but is for everyone. It begins in Part One with 68 gathas.
Other sources of gathas:
- Sangha Stories / Creating Gathas – Mindfulness at Play | Plum Village
- Gathas – Mount Adams Buddhist Temple – some of these are from Thay, but modified, and some I haven’t seen before
- Manual of Zen Buddhism: I. Gathas and Prayers
- Zen Vows for Daily Life