I don’t quite recall the exact time when I discovered Daily Zen, but it was probably in the mid-2000s. Long before screenshots and cellphones were such high resolution, I remember going to dailyzen.com at the end of my workday, printing the teaching of the day, cutting it into an index card, and laminating it.

These rip-resistant, waterproofed Daily Zen cards started making their way as bookmarks, coasters, and things you pin to the wall as reminders of what’s important. They started appearing everywhere.

They got lost and then found as I was moving from one house to another. They made their way to other people’s apartments in New York and ended up in other states and countries, storage units, boxes of memorabilia, basements, and attics (even boats 🙂 )

The magic really happened when I found them unexpectedly in any of these places. I would stop whatever I was doing and read carefully what I had already read at some distant point in my life, but now under completely new circumstances, context, and mindset.

Most times, I remembered the time I had read it for the first time on the screen. However, the next time around, the physical manifestation of the same teaching, as atoms and molecules, created a different appreciation.

The fact that I could hold the teaching without any electronic interface was beautiful and literally tangible in more than one way. This, by the way, keeps happening even years after I stopped printing and laminating the cards.

I now take screenshots, copy and paste the electronic text inside apps, text messages, and translation tools. However, even after decades, the cards keep appearing inside books, boxes, and places where one keeps precious things.

Enrique H