I am not planning on posting about Daily Practice everyday. Don't worry! However, the journey of a thousand miles begins with that first step, and if that first step is a bit halting, if we do not address that 'mis-step,' the whole journey can be set off the rails!
SO, today was the first day, and you may have found that you either crawled or bounced out of bed, completely forgetting to glance over at your "Gatha Card" this morning! No problem! Use this 'forgetting' to impress upon yourself just what the Buddha meant when he said that the practice of awakening goes against the stream.
Our habitual reactions -- in this case how we get up from bed -- are deeply rooted. The stream of our conditioning leads us to wake up each new day as we did the day(s) before until we remember to stop and go against that stream of conditioning!
It's helpful too, to remember that the word we translate as 'mindfulness' is the Pali word sati (in Sanskrit, smriti) which comes from the word meaning "to remember." Mindfulness is the practice of consciously remembering to be present, to remember to notice when we lose presence, and to come back to presence when we see we've forgotten.
SO, make that internal commitment to remember to read the Gatha of Impermanence this evening before bed. Impermanence means that you can indeed stop and change your habitual reactivity. So that's the good news of impermanence: tomorrow is a new day. And you can begin anew!
metta
poep sa
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