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Home from a night shift. Genmaicha, the kind with toasted rice. Nothing magical about it except that I'm actually tasting it.

Zazen with a supervisor

5:40am. Bell, bow, sit. Facing the wall, eyes half open, breath going wherever breath goes. At 5:43 Miso, my cat, sits directly between me and the wall, fully in my field of vision, and stares. Not cute staring. Supervisor staring. Old me would have counted that as a ruined sit. These days I think Miso is the sit. Here is a thing appearing. Here is my mind wanting it to be different. Here is breath, still going. By 5:50 she was asleep against my knee. By 6:00 so was my foot. Both counted.

First properly cold morning, so the trà gừng is back. My mother's way: a thumb of fresh ginger sliced thin, simmered ten minutes, then honey and a squeeze of lemon once it's off the stove. It goes into the big thermos for the school pickup line, where I wait with both hands wrapped around the cup. While it simmers I recite Nam mô A Di Đà Phật on my mala, ten recitations for every slice of ginger. By the time the tea is ready, so is the busy part of my head. The twins say the car smells like Bà Ngoại's house. That's the highest praise they have.

The twins had a fight this morning over which of them 'owns' the blue cup. We have two blue cups. In the car I did what I've started doing on hard mornings: the loving-kindness phrases. May you be safe. May you be at peace. First for me (hardest). Then for each twin (easier, they were finally quiet). Then for the dad in the silver SUV who honked at me in the drop-off loop (hardest again, round three). By the end I was laughing a little. He was probably late too. His kids probably also own the same cup. Nam mô A Di Đà Phật, and may we all make it through this week.

Amitabha in the pickup line

The school pickup line is twenty-two minutes of idling, so that's where I chant now. Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật, quietly, prayer beads looped over the gearshift. Yesterday the twins climbed in mid-chant and my son asked if I was talking to the car. My daughter, very seriously: 'No, she's calling the Buddha of Infinite Light so he knows where we are.' I couldn't have explained Pure Land practice better myself. She's seven.

The patient who wanted to hear the rain

Details changed, as always, for someone who can't speak for himself anymore. A few weeks ago I cared for a retired fisherman in his last days. He wasn't talking much by then. Mostly he slept, and when he woke he'd look toward the window. His daughter told me he'd spent his whole life listening to weather, reading it from the deck, and now the room was sealed and quiet and climate controlled. So we opened the window. Just a crack. It was raining, the soft kind that barely makes a sound, and the sound filled the room anyway. His breathing changed. His hand, which had been clenched on the blanket for two days, opened. I've been a hospice nurse for nine years and a Zen student for longer, and I still catch myself wanting to fix things. Adjust the pillow, check the line, find one more task. That afternoon there was nothing to fix. There was only rain, an old man, his daughter and me, sitting together while the weather did what it had always done. He died that night, with the window still open. Dogen says to study the self is to forget the self. I think I understood it a little better in that room than in years on the cushion. Nobody needed me to be anything. I just needed to be there, and to let the rain in.

What I chant when someone asks

As a hospice nurse I don't bring my practice into patients' rooms. That's a firm line for me. Their faith, their dying, their way. But last week a woman I'll call June asked me, around two in the morning, whether I prayed. She'd been raised Methodist, hadn't been inside a church in fifty years, and didn't want the chaplain because 'he'll want me to say things.' She wanted something with no strings attached. So I asked if I could offer her the words I say for myself every morning, and she said yes. I sat down, rested my hand near hers on the blanket (not on it; she didn't like to be touched), and said the metta phrases very slowly: May you be filled with loving-kindness. May you be safe from inner and outer dangers. May you be well in body and mind. May you be at ease and happy. She closed her eyes. After the third round she said, 'Do it for my son,' and gave me his name. Then her sister. Then the night nurse who'd been 'a bit sharp' with her. Then, quietly, 'And for you.' We went around like that for maybe twenty minutes, adding people. I have sat thousands of hours on a cushion and I'm not sure I've ever practiced so well. She died two days later, on a Thursday afternoon, with her son beside her. I wasn't on shift. When I heard, I washed the mugs in the break room slowly, the way my teacher taught me, and said the phrases one more time with her name at the front of the line.

One breath at the door before every patient's room. In: I'm here. Out: you're not alone. Twelve rooms today, twelve breaths. Some days that's my whole practice, and it's enough.

The twins have decided they're in charge of the home altar now. This morning each of them offered an orange to Amitabha, rang the little bell much harder than necessary, and bowed. Minh bowed so enthusiastically he bonked his forehead on the shelf, then looked up at the Buddha very seriously and said, 'That was a really big bow.' We chanted Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật ten times, then had the oranges for breakfast. Some days practice looks like a candlelit temple. Most days it looks like this, and I wouldn't trade it.