日々是好日 nichinichi kore kōjitsu Every day is a good day

日々是好日 is a household phrase in Japan for a good and peaceful life. It also carries a quiet resolve: to live each day with care. In Zen it is sharper. It is an answer about the days still to come, and the commentators say it gathers in all of past and future at once. Both senses are real, and which one you take is yours. Each half has two readings, nichinichi or hibi, and kōjitsu or kōnichi, and Zen books of the last century mark 好日 both ways.

The answer the Chinese Chan master Yunmen 雲門文偃 (died 949) gave in his monks' place, when he asked them for one phrase about the days after the fifteenth and none of them spoke; it is in his own record, and it became the sixth case of the 碧巌録 of 1125, the book the Japanese dictionaries cite for it.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 日々是好日.

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