May you find something to help you on your journey.
Gathas are short practice poems that we can use to bring mindfulness into daily activity. I wrote this for clipping my nails, but really, this could be used for any form of body care. Including trimming my nose hairs and ear hairs, two new activities I find myself having to undertake in middle age.
Clipping my nails,
I am aware that this body
is always changing
Impermanence is the way of the world
For many years, I recited several poems immediately upon waking:
I tried to combine the essence of these three into a single practice poem.
Waking up this morning,
I smile.
I am alive,
I have a precious human life,
and I am not going to waste it.
I will use my energies
to heal myself,
deepen my connection with others,
and build a beautiful continuation.
I will offer peace to others.
I will not lash out or attack others.
I will benefit other life as much as I can.
I have been increasingly practicing being in touch with my ancestors. Whenever I cook – especially when I work with dough – I think about all of my ancestors who have done the same mixing and kneading and baking and nourishing for their own families.
With the hands of my ancestors,
I add the ingredient of love.
May our practice
nourish all beings.
Gathas are short practice poems that we can use to bring mindfulness into daily activity.
As I condition my hair,
I feel my heart soften
Through loving myself
I learn to love others
Sometimes I adjust it for a slightly different focus:
As I condition my hair,
I feel my heart soften
The more I care for myself
The more I am can do for others
Flossing is a difficult habit for me. My parents didn’t model good tooth care (my father died with no teeth), and it’s always been a slog for me. Which is why I have developed several different practice poems!
This is the first one I came up with and taught to my young children.
Flossing my teeth
and strengthening my gums
I improve my overall health
I know that even the smallest detail matters
Between each tooth,
space for patience.
By caring for this body,
I care for the Earth.
I deeply want to care for the Earth, and my body is not separate from the Earth, and so it deserves my patient care too.
Gathas are short practice poems. They can help us bring mindfulness, concentration, and insight to daily activities.
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.
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:
Articles about gatha practice:
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.
Sources of gathas from Thich Nhat Hanh:
Other sources of gathas: