Mai pen rai — final definition

Thich Nhat Hanh writes about washing dishes as if washing dishes — meaning: fully present in the act, not washing them in order to have clean dishes, not tolerating the washing as a delay before something better. The whole argument is in that phrase.

Mai pen rai is the same teaching wearing different clothes. It is not indifference. It is not resignation. It is the art of receiving everything in your open hands.

The hands are open not because nothing matters but because that is the only position in which you can actually hold something.