Welcome to episode 3,195 of the Daily Meditation Podcast. I'm Mary Meckley and I'm here for you.

Once again, I love sharing my own meditation ritual with you.

And I welcome you to day seven of this week's series.

This has been a week where you're exploring the ancient arts that is uniquely

Japanese of Wabi-Sabi, this is where you embrace imperfection and impermanence and that is the title of

this week's journey, Embracing Impermanence, and in the philosophy of Wabi, it is considered that, for example,

if you have a pot or a tea bowl the kind that you would drink from

when you sip the powdered green macha as in a tea ceremony. You would hold the bowl in your hands and

many of these tea bowls were made from ancient kilns, pottery kilns, and many of these kilns have belonged to the same family

for generations, 500, 600 years, the same family passing

on this tradition of making this pottery. And lot of pottery is used in the Japanese tea ceremony and also in

Ikebana which is also a major part of the Japanese tea ceremony, that's the art of Japanese

flower arranging.

Many of these flower arrangements that are very simple are arranged in a pottery vase. So there is a saying in Japan that has to do with appreciating the cracks in a pot or in this tea bowl or tea cup, whatever it might be,

and the cracks are often filled with gold

and sometimes the cracks are filled with gold

because the most valuable part of a life, which is represented by this T- Bowl, for example, is the cracks. It's been well used, well loved.

Lessons, it's learned. That's like your life.

And so the cracks are filled with gold.

And they celebrate this kind of a pot with cracks,

not in spite of the cracks but rather because of the cracks. So think about your life

this way where you think about the challenges and your perceived imperfection or flaw that

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