The hen who simply sat
Today, do the sitting and let the wishing go; results come in their own time.
- Read · about 2 minutes
Suppose there was a chicken with eight or ten or twelve eggs.And she properly sat on them to keep them warm and incubated.That chicken might not wish:‘If only my chicks could break out of the eggshell with their claws and beak and hatch safely!’But still they can break out and hatch safely.Why is that?Because that chicken with eight or ten or twelve eggsproperly sat on them to keep them warm and incubated.SN 22.101 · “The Adze” · tr. Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0)
From the text
The passage describes a chicken with eight, ten, or twelve eggs who properly sits on them to keep them warm. She might not wish for her chicks to hatch safely, yet they can, because she has sat on the eggs properly.
In everyday life
The chicken does the one thing in her power. She sits, keeps the eggs warm, and keeps sitting. The hatching is not something she does; it comes from the sitting. The discourse offers this as a picture of practice, and the useful detail is what she does not do: she does not wish. One way to take this is that she also does not keep lifting each egg to check for cracks, and that the checking is not part of the work. It is easy to practice the other way round: a few minutes of sitting, then a lot of checking whether it is working. Today's sit is about arriving, which is as close to 'just sitting on the eggs' as a beginner's practice gets. Give it its minutes and skip the review. The same goes for anything slow you are tending, a plant, a skill, a friendship. Do today's small care, and let the ripening keep its own schedule.
- Sit · 3, 5 or 10 minutes
Arriving and Settling
Sit upright on a chair or cushion, hands resting in your lap. Read each cue as it appears; between cues you may close your eyes or lower your gaze.
- Live · during your day
Choose one slow thing you are tending, a plant, a skill, a habit, a friendship. Today, give it its ordinary few minutes of care and deliberately skip checking for progress.
- Reflect · this evening
What did it feel like to tend something today without checking whether it was working?
Answer on paper, or in the app’s journal, which stays on your iPhone.