Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. So today I'm going to tell you a story about wild chickens. So this story comes from the meditation teacher, Larry Rosenberg and his experience of meditating in the forest of Thailand. So here's the story. So after many years he spent as a Zen monk in Korea, he goes on this journey to Thailand and to go on these extended retreat.

But what he didn't realize is that he also took with him on his journey to Thailand, a whole bunch of expectations about what his experience was going to be like there. So he arrived at his assigned lodging and he was going to be in this small meditation hut in the forest each day with an attendant bringing him food. So there he was at this retreat where he came to cultivate inner peace in a serene forest. And it turns out that the whole forest was overrun by screeching, scratching, wild chickens. Not what he was expecting for a meditation retreat.

Distressed and disappointed, he was confronted by his own mind. How am I supposed to be at peace with all of this noise around me? My retreat is ruined. I came all the way for this? But after enduring his own annoyance and frustration and dismayed day after day, he finally realized that he had a choice. He may not be able to control all those wild chickens, but he could control his response to them. He could keep resisting the chickens or he could accept them.

And as he chose to accept the wild chickens and just let them be, all the negativity and annoyance in him melted away and he found peace in the middle of it all. Now like Larry, we're all going to have times when the reality of our lives contains wild chickens of one kind or another. Things are going to arise that are painful, annoying, unpleasant. Things we can't control. And as they arise, it's wise to remember that we do have a choice in how we handle the situation.

We can resist, or we can accept. We can wage war with life, or we can wage peace. We you make ourselves miserable and agitated about what's happening, or we can find peace and even joy amongst the wild chickens of our lives. So if we can set aside our ideas of how we think life should or shouldn't be, relax our agendas and just accept life as it is, we're going to find greater degrees of peace and equanimity in the middle of it all. So as always thank you for your practice and foryour presence here.

And let's just take a moment now to settle in for today's meditation.