Archimedes leapt out the bath and ran naked in the street. St Paul was temporarily blinded.

Not all 'Aha Moments' are as dramatic as these but they can trigger significant shifts in head, heart and soul...

 

The Fifteenth Day 

by D L Esguerra 

It was my birthday. I was having a drink with a friend in Notting Hill when ‘Mr Porsche’ asked if he could join us. Later that evening he drove me to a Chelsea nightclub. After filling me up with champagne he showed me his brand new software company and then his elegant Mews house in Kensington. Great, I thought, my luck has finally changed. It had been a gruesome year. My second marriage of only six months had ended as disastrously as my first. I’d almost got killed twice in my ridiculously dangerous work as a performance artist. To cap it all I was broke and a lucrative tour of Europe had just been cancelled. I wanted to make a safer living as a writer but I wasn’t getting anywhere. 

When Mr Porsche didn’t call I was devastated. In desperation I thought I’d try the chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo that a friend who practised Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism had given me. I decided to chant for fourteen days for him to call. When the fourteen days were up and he still hadn’t called I stopped, even though I’d started feeling more positive.

On the fifteenth day he called me from the Porsche on his way to rugby. When he said, 'We must have din-dins sometime' a light went on in my head.  Din-dins??? Din- dins!!!  The truth was we had nothing in common. All my life I’d escaped difficult situations by moving, blindly, into a new relationship. All I was really interested in was his money – because I doubted my own ability to make it. I made my excuses and hung up.

My Buddhist practice really took off and so did my writing.