Gathas are small verses or poems which we use to help us in our mindfulness practice. Usually we learn them and recite them silently to ourselves whilst we engage in a certain activity … A great practice is to use gathas that we find inspiring, and to compose our own gathas to help ourselves and others to develop mindfulness in our daily life.
—Website for Luminous Ground, Buddhist organization
Driving the Car
Getting into my car,
I vow that I will drive with
Mindful care and caution
If in fact this is my vehicle
For I often step into
Someone else’s car
By accident
If I have done so now, here in the parking lot of Stop & Shop,
May I smile with self-compassion,
And not curse my cluelessness,
For the cars where I live are all Subarus,
And all the same model, and all the same “Jasmine Green”
A vast forest of Foresters
Going to the Movies
Taking my seat in the movie theater,
I am excited to be here, and
Offer my heartfelt hope that it is not
A movie like Carol,
Beautiful but so boring
I loved the period costumes, but
Wearied of the endless shots of the movie stars gazing soulfully
At each other, or
Staring into space
Like mute people
“I love talking to you,” one of the women said to the other in one scene,
Which was strange, because
They hardly talked at all
May this be a movie with more dialogue,
And fewer close-ups
And way better sex scenes
Using the Phone
Breathing in, I call the operator to report
A suspicious voice mail from a person claiming to represent
My credit card company
Then I remember that there are no operators anymore, as there is
No “phone company”
Breathing out, I turn this moment of agitation into a reflection on how everything changes
And remind myself of other bygone things I used to complain about but now sort of miss:
Rockefeller Republicans, airplane meals, Sonny Bono, Tom Carvel,
Times Square when it was
Nasty
And men who leered at me on the street
On second thought,
Maybe not Sonny
Washing My Face
Washing my face, I thank my skin for being there, for each and every pore of it
What a wonderment it is!
I note the long red scar down my left cheek, the result of a recent Mohs surgery
To remove a tiny skin cancer
I note how the scar looks like I have
Slept funny, leaving a crease on my face
Except that this crease seems to be permanent
I tell myself that permanence is an illusion, and that
The scar will disappear with my corporeal self
Meanwhile,
One day, perhaps, I will get used to it,
And not want to weep whenever I see myself
In a mirror
Brushing My Teeth
Brushing my teeth, I consider the
Turkish Taffy, Sugar Daddys, and
Bazooka bubble gum
Of my youth,
And marvel that I have any teeth left at all
Even if they require a lot of time in the dentist’s chair
Although the crown covering my new root canal is merely temporary,
Because I never went back to get
The real one
I give thanks to my crown for hanging in there
Swiffering
Swiffering my floors, I offer gratitude to the Procter & Gamble company
For a marvelous cleaning product, although I know that
There is some thought that P&G stole the idea of electrostatic cleaning cloths from a Japanese firm
And that the Swiffer Sweeper is based on the “razors and blades” model—that is, I must keep buying expensive new replacement cloths endlessly
Nevertheless!
I love its silence, so unlike the infernal noise of the vacuum cleaner
This silence has changed my life
Allowing me to clean my house,
A chore I do not enjoy,
While talking to my friends on the phone
A win-win for me
Doing the Dishes
Breathing in, I wash the dishes,
Aware of their usefulness in holding
Nourishing meals that have sustained my family for many years
I wonder why it is always, always me doing the dishes
By myself
And whether, interconnected as all human beings are,
This may be the one exception
Breathing out, I release my feelings into the universe, ever hopeful that someone somewhere
Will sense my need
And offer to help
I open my heart to the possibility of this miracle
At the Workplace
Today I vow to regard my coworkers serenely, with
Loving-kindness and without judgment
This one, who appears not to bathe and has a pungent odor,
That one, who leads the e-mail clique trash-talking the rest of us,
Are merely creatures caught in dukkha, or suffering
May they one day be made whole and not so messed up
Or at least transferred to another department
As for my boss,
Who fits exactly the description of the people in
The Sociopath Next Door,
I reflect on the fact that “What goes around comes around”
Is most often not true, and that
Karmic comeuppance is rarely meted out in this life
Yet patience is all
May she spend her next life as a
Howler monkey, her screeches heard only by the other creatures
In some sweltering rain forest
Far, far away