Every day is a good day

"Every day is a good day" is a quote from a Zen koan, spoken by Zen Master Yun Men, who lived and taught in 10th century China. (Jeff Brooks: 2008)

What he meant by these words is:

To have the conviction that every day is a good day means that we are really living our own lives. If we discriminate based on our own feelings of happiness or unhappiness and say: "I wonder if today will be good," or "Today I am happy so it is a good day," or "Today I am unhappy so today is a bad day," or "If something nice happens to me today I will have the opinion that today is a good day," then we lose our lives. That kind of attitude means we are living passively, as if life is just something that happens to us. If we live this way we have given up the direction of our own lives and we will inevitably decline. (Jeff Brooks: 2008)

To understand that every day is a good day takes courage. Because on some days we will suffer. Then, when that is necessary, when that is the reality of our lives, it is our day to suffer. That reality shifts, as we all have experienced, from day to day, even from moment to moment. It shifts as a result of our intention, as a result of our karma. Some days we will be happy. Then it will be a good day to be happy. Some days we will have to struggle. Then it will be a good day to struggle. Some day we will need to fight. Then it will be a good day to fight. Some day it will be our day to die. (Jeff Brooks: 2008)

There is a lot of truth in these words. We have control of whether we are going to have a good day or not. If you are alive and healthy, then it is a good day regardless of what is going on around us. We are too quick to base our days on what has happened to us, and not on the notion of living another day.

If you wake up in the morning, you are having a good day. We cannot judge a day by our attitudes. If we continue to do this, we are not really living. We are choosing to allow the negativity to affect how we live.

Every day you have been blessed with is a good day, SO LIVE IT!