Finally, to help me live gracefully with the truth of uncertainty and unpredictability, I follow what I call “broken-glass practice.” This practice was inspired by a passage in Food for the Heart, a collection of the teachings of the Thai Buddhist monk Ajahn Chah. He trained many Westerners at his remote forest monastery and has had a strong influence on the shape that Buddhism of south Asia has taken in the West.
Here is Ajahn Chah talking about a glass: You say, “Don’t break my glass!” Can you prevent something that’s breakable from breaking? It will break sooner or later. If you don’t break it, someone else will. If someone else doesn’t break it, one of the chickens will! . . . Penetrating the truth of these things, [we see] that this glass is already broken. . . . He saw the broken glass within the unbroken one. Whenever you use this glass, you should reflect that it’s already broken. Whenever its time is up, it will break. Use the glass, look after it, until the day when it slips out of your hand and shatters. No problem. Why not? Because you saw its brokenness before it broke!
via How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill