Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.

Today, I'm going to talk about how

everything can become your teacher.

So there's a story from a meditation

teacher, Larry Rosenberg, about

his experience of meditating

in the forests of Thailand.

So after many years,

There's a Zen monk in Korea.

He goes on this journey to Thailand

to study in this particular

tradition, the Thai forest tradition.

And so what he didn't realize is that he

also, on this journey to Thailand, took

a whole bunch of expectations about what

his experience was going to be like there.

So he arrived.

He was assigned his lodging there.

And he was going to be in this

small hut each day with an

attendant bringing him food.

He was just going to be in

isolation, just meditating.

So there he was at this retreat,

this place where he came to cultivate

inner peace in a serene forest.

And it turned out that this

particular forest was overrun by loud,

screeching, scratching, wild chickens.

This was not what he was expecting.

So as he started to meditate, he

started to think to himself, you

know, how am I supposed to be at peace

with all of this noise around me?

My retreat is ruined.

I came all this way just for this.

So he started to feel really distressed

and defeated and disappointed.

But after enduring his own annoyance,

frustration, and dismay day after day,

he finally realized he had a choice.

He cannot control all of those

wild chickens, but he could

control his response to them.

He could choose to keep resisting

the fact that the wild chickens

were there or he could accept them.

Now, as he chose to accept the presence

of these chickens, all the negativity

and annoyance in him melted away and

he found peace in the middle of it all.

As the story shows, our teachers

can appear in our lives at any

time in the most unexpected ways.

And if we're curious, open and

willing, we can receive gave teachings

from the most surprising sources.

Stranger on the street, curious

child, an illness, a loud

neighbor, even from chickens.

To recognize these teachers, all we need

to do is stay receptive to being taught.

When you do that, life itself and

everything that unfolds within it

becomes an opportunity to shape your

ongoing development in awakening.

As Bruce Lee once said, "Life is

your teacher and you can be in

a constant state of learning."

So that's the invitation

for practice today is to let

everything become your teacher.

And as always, thank you for your

practice and your presence here.

And let's settle in

for today's meditation.