If you took the same seed, planted it in fertile soil and gave it water and sunlight, in two months you would have a beautiful plant.  The difference is the conditions.  We have no control over our birth or death but we can set the conditions of our life.  That is where we have a choice.
 
With this in mind, O’Sensei would suggest that each day we have the choice to live in what he called, “Plus One,” or “Minus One.”  When we wake up in the morning we should make a choice to live our day in plus one.  As O’Sensei would say, each moment, this moment, right now, is the most important moment of our life.  So we should strive to live each moment of life to its fullest.   To follow the idea of living in plus one we need to become a good “seer.”  That is to “see” the beauty around us.   If we choose to look for ugliness we will be certain to find it and our mind set in turn will most likely be negative.  But if we choose to see the beauty we will find that we are certainly surrounded by beauty in each and every day of our life.  When once asked about this I remember O’Sensei saying, “If you want to see beauty, even miracles, you don’t have to look far.  Look at the trees, the flowers, or look at a newborn baby.”  We are surrounded by the miracles and beauty of life, all we have to do is look.
 
Once there were two monks standing beside a river waiting for the ferry that would carry them to the other side.  As they waited they talked excitedly about the wonderful miracles that their master could perform.  About this time an old man walked up.  By his appearance the two monks could see that he must be a master.  The two were quick to tell the old man that they trained under a master who could perform fantastic miracles.  For example, they told him, their master could stand on this side of the river with brush and ink while one of the students stood on the far side of the river with a piece of paper held high.  As their master wrote in the air the words he wrote would miraculously appear on the paper across the river.  “And so old man,”  They asked,  “What miracles can you perform?”  The old master replied, “When I eat, I eat.  And when I sleep, I sleep.”
 
Beauty and miracles surround us in our everyday life.  We just need to stop and pay attention.  Maybe this is why O’Sensei used to say, “The Tao is the everyday mind.”   Living in “Plus One” is an incredibly powerful concept that can literally change our life!   We have the power to set the conditions of our own life.  As one student so aptly put it, “We can’t change the wind, but we can set the sails."

I hope that all of O’Sensei’s past students are making every effort to follow this simple lesson and to pass it on. ‘Take the time to stop and smell the flowers.... to replenish physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy.  I see martial artists playing close attention to replenishing physical energy.  Sleep, proper diet, water, exercise. But what about emotional, mental and spiritual energy?

~ Submitted by Louis Jemison