On 'Every Day, A Good Day'

Nichinichi kore kōnichi — every day, a good day.

A saying of the Chan monk Yunmen Wenyan (864–949), who lived from the late Tang into the Five Dynasties and is counted as the founder of the Yunmen school.

On the origin

The primary source is Yunmen’s own recorded sayings, the Record of Yunmen (Yunmen Guanglu). The phrase is widely known through Case 6 of the Blue Cliff Record (Biyan Lu), where it is set as a koan.

The Blue Cliff Record rests on the Hundred Cases with Verses of Xuedou Chongxian (980–1052), who chose a hundred old cases and added a verse to each. Yuanwu Keqin (1063–1135) then added his pointers, marginal words, and commentary, and the work took its present form in 1125. It was not composed by one hand, but came down through two.

The case is short. Yunmen turns to the assembly: “Of the days before the fifteenth, I do not ask you. Of the days after the fifteenth, give me a single phrase.” No one answers. In their place, Yunmen speaks it himself: Every day, a good day.

On the fifteenth day

The fifteenth is the half-moon, the turning point of the lunar month. In the old monastic orders it was also the day of uposatha — the gathering, twice a month, to confess and to confirm the precepts together.

The commentary in the Blue Cliff Record does not dwell on that observance. It dismisses, rather, the reading that answers “after the fifteenth comes the sixteenth” — the orderly reply of the calendar — as one that misses the point. What is asked is not a division of time, before and after.

On the reading

Sunny days. Rainy days. Days of joy. Days of grief. No two days are alike.

A “good day” is good in the bare fact of meeting that day — before judgment, before liking or disliking.

A good day does not arrive. It is recognised.

It is sometimes read as encouragement: make each day a good one. The phrase of the case is set earlier than that — before good and ill are weighed.

On the garment

The first hosen edition carries this phrase as a seal hand-carved in Tokyo by the artist Satake Hōsen. The front carries the phrase’s seal; the back and inside label carry the Hōsen seal (寳千), printed in vermilion.

The garment is Bella + Canvas 3001 (short sleeve) or Gildan 2400 (long sleeve). A plain canvas chosen on purpose. A vessel for the word, not the subject itself.

― hosen, tokyo