What if Every Day Was the Most Ordinary Day of Your Life?

What does it mean to approach each moment, each day, as if it’s the most ordinary day? How would it feel to do that? 

And what if it’s not an ordinary day? What if it’s the day of a big trial, or your birthday, or the 500th Wake Up Call? 

I’m learning that to practice mindfulness – to really practice, moment by moment, day after day – is to pretty much say: no matter what’s happening, practice with it. No matter how momentous, no matter how terrible, be there, and be kind. Be kind, be compassionate, be patient and generous – practice these, in each moment. Let wisdom float to the surface before saying or doing anything, any time. 

I’m learning that the best day of life and the worst are ordinary and not different, with practice. And I’m learning how reassuring and comforting that is.

Transcript

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call #500. A lot of friends asked me what I was going to say on the 500th Call. I started looking to see whether today was falling at a particularly auspicious time or during something momentous, and it’s not. I could have engineered it to fall on my birthday week but I didn’t. I wondered if we’d have our MLTT 2026 cohort by now and be celebrating that, but we still have a few open spots. None of our kids is doing anything especially important this week. And the world seems to be the same, precarious and fraught but nothing unusual there.

So all of my investigation, rather than pointing towards anything extraordinary, was pointing at nothing special…which feels like a good point.

Because in my experience, that’s also the case with practice. I was with a wonderful group of teachers on Tuesday, the Teachers Collaborative of the Mindfulness in Law Society (we meet every month – join us if you’re teaching mindfulness in the law – it’s a very sweet group). We were talking about what practices are supporting us right now, since we’re all both impacted and trying to help by teaching, and also to help by modelling what we’re teaching, which is, for the most part, resilience, equanimity, and compassionate action. 

Everyone was in their own place and at their own pace. When it was my turn, I realized, and shared, that these days equanimity is often a default for me. Which made me feel glad, because equanimity is such a good vantage point from which to observe the moment, whether the political moment or a moment at the office or home. And which also made me feel humble, because equanimity, like everything conditioned, is impermanent: it’s not always present. It’s a default, meaning it arises after the news upsets me or after I get triggered, as a state of mind, state of heart, but it’s not a perpetual state because nothing is. 

Maybe your default is metta: lovingkindness or unconditional friendliness. Or maybe it’s patience – maybe you default back into patience or generosity after a moment of activation. Or compassion: compassion might be so durable for you that it feels available most of the time; reliable. Or maybe it’s another skillful state – maybe it’s mindfulness. All of which is wonderful. 

But there’s an old Zen proverb, “after enlightenment, the laundry,” which Jack Kornfield used for the title of a book. It means, according to Henry Shukman, the former guiding teacher of Mountain Cloud Zen Center in New Mexico, “…whatever may happen in our practice, no matter what revelations may or may not befall us, we always trust our daily life to be our endless primary teacher.”

I’m not saying equanimity or metta or compassion equal enlightenment, especially since I have no idea what enlightenment is. But what I am saying is, there’s noticing that equanimity or compassion or patience or generosity are happening and being glad for that; there’s 500 weeks of the Wake Up Call and being glad for that; there’s however many notches you have on your trial or deal belt, however many truly remarkable things you’ve done as a lawyer and as a human and being glad for all of that, for all of the big things, for all of the positive development in our practice and the accomplishments in our lives; and then there’s the laundry. Then there’s daily life – and specifically, ordinary daily life – as our endless primary teacher.

Meaning, for me anyway, this: yay for equanimity being a default but only if it translates into being the one on the boat who remains calm when everyone else starts to panic, so that no one panics and everyone survives, which is what Thich Nhat Hanh taught. Yay for compassion being a default but only if it means that at a dinner party, when everyone else start to disparage the other side or ICE or the administration, we have the wisdom and courage to have, and express, compassion for all sides. Yay for 500 Wake Up Calls, but only if that translates into love in ordinary life: love in the uncomfortable moments, the shocking moments, the disgusting or discouraging or disastrous moments. Suzuki Roshi, founder of San Francisco Zen Center, wrote – and I’m using this as my email tagline right now, “When my master and I were walking in the rain, he would say, ‘Do not walk so fast, the rain is everywhere.’” Yay for everything that happens on the cushion or the screen, but only if we remember to be in the rain instead of hurrying to get out of it; only if we remember to feel the slipperiness of the soap, listen to the water slopping against the metal, smell the clean clothes, and fold them with love, over and over and over.

When I first started practicing, I had energetic rushes that began in my core and surged up through the top of my head. Once on retreat I was getting tea and suddenly couldn’t issue the commands to my body to make that happen. I tried walking up to the meditation hall and had to sit down on the ground – I couldn’t get there. Once I was walking on the hillside when everything went still: there was no difference between my body, the other beings, the earth, and the sky. Once, for a while, all that was present was a steady orange light, without movement or sound.

I brought the early experiences to James, my teacher, and he said, “That’s interesting. Keep practicing.” At first I thought he was saying, “You’re getting somewhere. Keep going.” But later I realized he was saying, “There’s nowhere to get. After you see something, there’s just practice.” After enlightenment, the laundry.

I find it reassuring, that there’s nothing to do but practice, and then lovingly fold the laundry, and then go back and sit more. It’s just like the Wake Up Call: there’s nothing to do but hop on Zoom with all of you, practice and study and reflect, and hop on Zoom with you again. It means that unlike in the law, or in the classroom, or in life in general, our practice isn’t about getting ahead or beyond anything or anyone. It’s just about practice on the cushion and practice in ordinary life. It’s about letting our ordinary life be our primary teacher, reminding us to be here with, and for, whatever’s here now, with all of the qualities we talk about and practice on the cushion: love, compassion, wisdom. 

“Do not walk so fast. The rain is everywhere.”