At first glance, I thought this sign below said: “PLEASE WAKE YOUR MIND.” Then, I got it. For I had just pulled into a coffeeshop parking lot earlier today across from Deep Creek Lake in Garrett County, Maryland’s largest inland body of water. Boats peppered its surface its entire length with criss-cross wakes.

Yet the correct reading of the sign — ‘PLEASE MIND YOUR WAKE‘ — is a boating sort of mindfulness, is it not? Or — ha! — ‘wake-fulness.‘ Since by being mindful of the wake you’re leaving behind, you’re being mindful of your boat’s impact on other people’s boating lives. And the wake you are cutting through other people’s actual lives. And if you are rocking THEIR boat.

That right there, is Buddhist boatfulness (if not Chris-Craft karma), I tell ya.’

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