Hey, welcome back. This is Practicing Human, the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life. I am your host, Corey Muscarra.

And in today's episode, I'm going to talk about the magic of ordinary moments.

More to come on that in a moment, but first let's settle in with the sound of the bells. To begin today's episode I'm going to share a haiku by the famous Zen poet, Japanese Zen poet,

Matsuobasho. It goes like this. The old pond a frog jumps in plop. The old pond a frog jumps in plop. The old

pond a frog jumps in The Old Pond, A Frog Jumps In Plop.

Now it's not technically a haiku when translated into English, at least this translation.

But I'll refer to it as a haiku, henceforth.

And this haiku is one of my favorites.

I reference it a lot in my teachings. I talk about it quite a bit in

my book so it might sound familiar to some of you. And the reason I bring it so much into my teachings is because I

think it's packed with wisdom, wisdom that can continue to permeate our understanding of ourselves and how to be in relationship

to our lives.

But that can be hard to glean from hearing at least for the first time, right?

Because all we have here is the old pond, a frog jumps in plop where's the wisdom in that it's so simple well that's

exactly it the wisdom is in the simplicity. The haiku is pointing to the most fundamental

undecorated experience of the present moment.

There's a pond, a frog jumps in it, and there's a plop.

No exaggeration, no hyperbole, wonderful backstory about the frog and how scared it was looking

at the old bog and all the fish in the water and the frog with trepidation

leaped over the rock and the sun was glimmering and then it landed into the

water with this perfect

ten Olympic dive and all the swans clapped and their heroic admiration.

...