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An Auspicious Day

Today I would like to focus a talk around a particular poem that the Buddha taught. It was a poem that he seemed to have been eager to have his students memorize because there are accounts in the ancient texts of him helping people memorize the text he had recited so they'd learn it. It was an oral tradition back then in the ancient world, so there was no library you could go to. If you wanted to have access to teachings in the texts, you had to have memorized them.

And so all the suttas^[1], all these discourses, were eventually memorized, but many of them were put to memory after he died. During his lifetime, there are only particular ones that we have record of that he was actively teaching people to memorize. So I take that to mean that it was really important for the Buddha. And he gave an explanation or an analysis of the poem as well.

Whether the poem is a poem or whether it's a song is a little bit of an interpretive exercise. There was a time when some of the early Western scholars, especially from Sri Lanka who spoke English, would call these kinds of poems ballads. Sometimes the way they're chanted can sound very much like something that we may associate more with a song or a ballad, and that helps the memorization of it.

This one has an interesting title. I call it An Auspicious Day. The word for auspicious, bhadde^[2], means something that is fortunate, wondrous, a blessing. The word ratta^[3] can mean night. It seems in the ancient world it also meant the day, just like in English the word "day" means both daytime and the whole 24 hours. They would count the days by how many nights it had been. So if you said "an auspicious night," people understood in the context it would be a day. So I translate it as An Auspicious Day.

But it's interesting because the word ratta is a particular grammatical formulation of the word rāga^[4], which can mean a kind of passionate attachment. So one translation that Bhikkhu Bodhi^[5] had in his early translation was "an auspicious attachment"^[6]. And so it's a kind of wordplay going on here. Is it okay to be attached? Well, if you're attached to this, maybe it isn't too bad. If you're attached to healthy things, then as long as it's helping you, it's okay to be attached. But when you realize it's not, it's hindering you, that's when we let go of it. This is a very nice way of understanding attachments. There's a tendency in Buddhism to think it's all or nothing, like if you're attached, let go; you're not supposed to be that way. But rather, recognize there's often a reason to be attached. It's a strategy for something, and maybe sometimes it's not a bad strategy.

For example, being attached to your health might be good up to a point, especially if you're sick. But if you're really healthy and you're excessively attached to your health, at some point you might find that it's actually making you unhealthy because you're so preoccupied, worried, and stressing about it. So, an auspicious attachment—if you're going to have an attachment in the Dharma, this would be a good one. As long as it's good, and then you let go.

I also call this poem the Vipassana^[7] Anthem. For the insight movement, for us all, this has such a wonderful, special place. There are four verses.

An auspicious day: Don't chase the past Or long for the future. The past is left behind, The future not yet reached. Clearly see phenomena Anywhere they appear, Not faltering and not agitated. Knowing this, develop the mind ardently. Do what should be done today; Who knows, death may come tomorrow. There is no bargaining with mortality And death's great army. Whoever lives thus, ardent, Active day and night, Is, says the peaceful sage, One who has an auspicious day.

I think part of the power of this poem is the third stanza: Ardently do what should be done today; Who knows, death may come tomorrow. There is no bargaining with mortality and death's great army. Here, the lesson of this death contemplation—taking it seriously—is not morbid. It's not to live in such a way that you have a better rebirth. Rather, it's to take this moment seriously as the place for practice, as a place to be mindful and attentive. More than that, this is the place to have insight.

If you can have insight here, if you're able to live really centered here as life is being lived in a lived moment, and have insight as you go along, then this is an auspicious day, says the peaceful sage. "Peaceful sage" is a title for the Buddha, but the word "peaceful" is important because this is the purpose of this path. This is the purpose of this auspicious practice: so we can discover for ourselves a deep, abiding sense of peace.

One of the great gifts that we can give the world is to die peacefully. If it's possible that we do the truth, it helps people not be afraid of life. Lots of studies have pointed out that there's a tendency for people who are afraid of death to be afraid to live their life fully, and the people who are not afraid of death tend to live a fuller, more engaged life. Exactly how to explain that, I don't know, but it's an interesting correlation.

So it starts with these instructions: Don't chase the past or long for the future. The past is left behind, and the future not yet reached. One of the lessons that I learned slowly over the years was when I thought about the future, imagined the future, planned around the future, and had wishes and fears about the future, I had plenty of it for all kinds of situations. It turned out I had an amazingly poor prediction rate. I would predict based on some idea of what was going to happen in the future, and so many times it didn't work out that way. It happened differently than I had planned or how I thought or was afraid. Slowly it dawned on me that I had a very bad record, and even then, it took a long time for that to sink in deeply. Eventually, I realized, "Oh, I don't know the future." And so I'm not going to be so attached to it or so caught in my prediction. I might take it into account and do some modicum of preparation—at least bring an umbrella or something just in case—but it loosened up the way I was attached to the future, caught up in the future, concerned about the future.

I discovered as I learned to let go of that pre-concern, the preoccupation with my future, that generally, once I'm there in the moment, I know how to find my way with it. And that helped me relax even more. The result of that relaxation was a greater appreciation and willingness just to be here with what's going on, to be present. So the future is not yet reached, the past is left behind.

I've held on to the past, not wanting to let go. When I hold on to the memories, hold on to the people, hold on to whoever I was back then, sometimes it's held me back. Sometimes my self-image was based on who I was in the past, and I'm still trying to prove that or be that, and it's going to interfere with my ability to be present here in a full way. Don't chase the past or long for the future.

When the Buddha gave this poem in one of the suttas where it appears, he then gives an explanation of what it means. I want to explain that to you if I can, but I would like to do it first with an analogy.

Many years ago, I read of a study where some psychologists took an actor to give a talk at some significant conference. After the actor gave this talk, they would interview the people coming out into the lobby. "How was that? What did you think of that talk?" People would say, "That was really great, it was wonderful. The best thing happening at the conference." The thing was that the script the actor had been given to present to the conference was nonsense. It didn't make any sense. There was something about the actor's delivery, something about the actor that led people to believe that there was something significant being told.

The article I read about it didn't say too much about the actor, but I wouldn't be surprised if the actor was a tall, white, middle-aged man—a certain kind of person that tends to be given a lot of authority automatically when they show up. Unfortunately, people like me, maybe sometimes. Perhaps the person had a great, melodious voice, was really enjoyable to listen to, and could speak with great confidence as an actor, like they really knew what they were talking about. I could imagine, for example, that maybe certain words got repeated. Maybe the word "peace" got repeated, but the sentence didn't make any sense. People hear the word "peace" and so they think, "Oh yeah, peace. Oh yeah, peace," and they'd be reminded. When they left, they thought that's what they were left with: "This guy talked about peace, I'm so glad people did it, there's so much conflict."

In this scenario, the audience is making certain things up. First, they're making things up based on the appearance of who the person is, based on their voice and their sound, and that's just what's being approached. They're making something up. Maybe the researchers wanted people to make it up, I don't know. But still, the audience was actively involved, by their own background and predispositions, making up some idea of who this person was: "This is an authoritative person speaking authoritatively." They were also making up that it was pleasant and enjoyable. Maybe because of the style of delivery, maybe the person was animated in a wonderful way, maybe the voice was really pleasant to listen to. And so they were making up this idea: "This is a really pleasant event to be here, I really enjoy being here." Was the enjoyment really there, or how much were we responsible for the creation of it?

They had made-up concepts: "This person knows what he's talking about, this is a great talk." They were making up these concepts that they were then living in. They also were making up all kinds of reactions and inner things in their mind. They were constructing universes of, "I'm so wonderful, I came out on time to the conference. I paid lots of money for it. This is a great thing." We make up a whole story, a little universe of what it means to be there and how wonderful it is. And then probably the knowing of all this also felt really good: "Wow, I'm in the know now."

My first Zen teacher had this way of talking about where Zen fit into the world of current events. He was friends with the governor and different people in Washington and famous people. We were given this feeling as he spoke that our practicing Zen was on the forefront of our culture. It was so good to know this, to be part of this. It was actually not so helpful for our Zen students to be caught in the grip of this kind of thing being created.

So the audience was creating something. I hope you appreciate that our minds are creative. Our minds have an amazing capacity to make things up, and in fact, it needs to; it's doing it all the time. Generally, its predictive ability to create images and ideas is relatively good, otherwise, you wouldn't have made it here today. You do just enough to find your way here. But sometimes how we create things gets in the way and causes us problems.

This is how the Buddha explained it. He didn't know the study, but what he said in explaining this is that chasing the past—what some translators call "reviving the past"—means making up ideas of who we were in the past, making up the appearances that we had. I've reviewed my life in my old age now, and I'll make up new ideas of what I was like in the past. Sometimes I tell myself, "Well, now I know better. Now I recognize who I was a long time ago." But do I really? It's still kind of an appearance, making up an appearance somehow.

And then making up sensations. Things in the past that were unpleasant at the time, now I go back, look back, I'm grateful for them, and I see them as a pleasant event. Or the opposite happens; something that was pleasant is now seen as unpleasant. So this idea of how we construct the past, the concepts we have about the past change, and we make up new concepts of it. The fish gets bigger by the telling, they say. And then our reactions and the story-making mind that we live in changes over time about the past. And then our sense of knowing, the quality of knowing that happens as we know the past. The Buddha specified these five different areas that people make things up. Not chasing the past means: don't make things up about yourself in the past this way.

And longing for the future, it's the same thing about the future. Don't make things up about yourself about the future, because you'll get in trouble for it. That's how we get a lot of suffering—it comes from some fixed idea: "This is who I am. I'm this way. I'm supposed to be this way. I should be this way. This is happening to me. I'm a victim to all this." Or, "I'm asserting myself, I deserve things." There's a complicated world of self that we create. Part of the function of mindfulness is to take a good look and see, to discover, to really understand how it's working.

And then here in the text, it goes on and says, Clearly see phenomena anywhere they appear. What this means is to stay in the present moment enough that you see what's happening as it's occurring, the constant flow and change. Oftentimes we live retrospectively. Something happens, and then we spend a little while thinking about it. There have been times I've noticed that someone is talking, and I begin thinking about something, and I realize I didn't hear what they were saying for a while. It happens the most for me—occasionally, I hope—when I'm on Zoom, especially with a group of people. Somehow I think about something, I've gotten distracted, or something has happened, and I'm in my world of thinking. And so I'm not there as it's occurring. Maybe someone said something, and I found myself reflecting on it, and now I'm lingering in the past. But this ability to really stay here in the present moment is where we see insight. That's the key thing about this Vipassana practice we do: to not just see what's happening, not just see what's here, but to see it as it's happening.

You can't see it as it's happening if we're living in the constructs the mind makes, the concepts it lives in. If you see a river going by and you just think, "That's a river," and you live in the concept of the river, you might not notice that the river is constantly flowing. You can kind of get into your head: "Oh, that's a river. Maybe I should go swimming in it. I didn't bring a bathing suit. Where am I going to get a bathing suit? It'd be great to go in the river. I bet it's nice and comfortable. I love swimming. I'm such a great swimmer." And we're living in a world of thought that we're making up, and we lose touch with the actual experience of the river. We're relating to it, but now relating through the conceptual mind, the story-making mind. To really be in the experience of the river, what you'll see is the river is constantly flowing. And that's a very different way of experiencing a river than all the stories we're making up around it. When we're doing Vipassana, that's where we want to try to rest, especially in meditation: in things as they occur, as they are happening. This is where we have insight.

Then the Buddha goes on and he says in the poem, Not faltering and not agitated. Knowing this, develop the mind. This is not just simply to be in the present moment for the present moment's sake, but we're actually learning to develop ourselves, to become a stronger mind, a clear mind, a more centered mind, a more receptive mind. There are all kinds of ways the mind gets developed, and as it does so, the qualitative way in which we can live our life now, be attentive, and be present changes. As the quality of the mind increases, then we're able to move closer and closer to a time when we know what to let go of so we can be at peace in this world, in the moment as it's occurring. Even if it's our last day and last minutes of life, we know how to be peaceful. We know this is what's possible.

In his explanation of this text, the Buddha explains what he means by not faltering. To not falter is, as things are occurring in the present moment, we don't make a self in relationship to it. As things appear, sensations are there, our thoughts are there. I saw that in my mind as I was meditating today. I sat down to meditate, and for the first few minutes, I could see that I was teetering back and forth between being my thoughts and knowing that I was thinking. I could easily slip back into just being my thoughts. In a sense, I am my thinking, because that was where I was living. And then as I was settling, I could know that my mind was thinking. It was kind of like I was looking up into my mind saying, "The mind is thinking a lot," and that was a much better place to be. That was interesting: "Oh, I might just look at that." It's like the radio is on, as opposed to getting swept into the radio and believing I'm the thoughts.

You can believe you're your thinking: "I am my thoughts." You can believe the thoughts are part of you, thoughts are in you. There are all these ideas, senses of self we create in relationship to our thoughts, to our feelings, to our perceptions, to our conscious ideas. And again, it's a made-up mind. It's the constructive, creative mind. For the Buddha, this idea that we create a self, an identity around it, is different than just having an identity.

Some of us have identities which are obvious to ourselves, and we kind of need to have them. In certain parts of the world, we need to behave according to our identity. Some are role identities, some are gender identities. It used to be they had male and female bathrooms, and once upon a time, by mistake, I went into the women's bathroom. This was not a good thing, and no one saw me, but I realized when I walked out that, "Uh oh, I could have gotten in big trouble for this." You're supposed to behave and know certain things about the identity. Some of them we're born with in all kinds of ways, but some of it is made up.

An identity I have, especially sitting here giving a Dharma talk, is "I'm a Buddhist teacher." So it's okay. I think you're going along with it, so it's okay for now. It has a purpose. But when I go home to my wife and my kids, guess what? That identity is no longer relevant. Once upon a time, maybe 25 years ago when I started teaching, I came home to my wife. We were talking, and she stopped me and said, "Gil, you're using that voice." I was using the teacher voice with her. That's not the place to be a teacher, right? So sometimes we get in trouble. We have these identities, but we use them inappropriately, we hold on to them, we get attached to them.

Some identities are value judgments: "I'm a lousy person. I'm a bad person. I'm a right, good person. I'm the best person. I'm this kind of person." We live in these values of ourselves, and for some people, the weight of the negative identities they're holding is tremendously heavy. For me, some of you have heard this before, when I was in my 20s, I thought that "Gil" was short for guilt. Because I didn't have to do anything to be guilty, I just was. And if I did something, then I was guilty. I remember seeing it really clearly—this is where I saw it so clearly by doing meditation practice—I was walking across a meditation hall floor while people were meditating, and just walking across the floor, I was guilty. I mean, what am I guilty for? I'm just walking. But it was such a strong tendency of mine. The identity of being the guilty one was strong for me. I had taken on that burden, that kind of identity.

For the Buddha, not faltering is not to make up and live in these made-up identities and be attached to them. The attachment itself is a problem. Being in the present moment, seeing things as they occur, seeing how attachments occur, to see the arising of a story, the arising of a made-up idea—"Oh, I hear it's occurring." This is one of the values of really being present as things are occurring: you have a better chance to notice when we start making up stories, making up identities, making up these things that we're living in. And then we can put a question mark next to it: "Is this really useful? Is this true? Maybe I don't need to do this." You're just trading one attachment for another—a painful one that's painful for you and sometimes for others, for an attachment which is beneficial and develops the mind. Not faltering, not getting hung up, not agitated.

Identities that we make up trip people up. It makes people agitated. You can see it a little bit if people either praise you or condemn you. I bet you either falter or get agitated. If you get praise, the agitation is kind of a good agitation. It feels good: "Wow." If they criticize you, it's like a bad agitation, or you're faltering: "Now that I have this, now that I'm so great, I have to keep it up." And then we get tripped up.

So the power of this mindfulness practice is that of cutting through the ways we get caught in identity and concepts in this made-up world that's actually a much bigger part of our life than most people realize. To develop the mind is to have this clear capacity for insight, this clear ability to name and see and see through it. For what purpose? So we can relax deeply, deep enough to experience a deep, abiding sense of peace.

Ardently do what should be done today; who knows, death may come tomorrow. There's no bargaining with mortality and death's great army. Since there's no bargaining, no escaping death from the Buddhist point of view, this is what's worth doing. This moment, this minute, this time, this day is when we have our lived life. Live it fully, but not greedily. Live it fully by waking up, being really present for the lived moment. The lived moment is more exciting than Disneyland. Whoever lives thus, ardent, active day and night, is, says the peaceful sage, one who has an auspicious day.

So this is the Vipassana Anthem. If we know that the Buddha encouraged people to memorize it, maybe you'll memorize it.

Those are my thoughts for today. Do you have any comments you'd like to make or any questions about this or anything else?

Q&A

Speaker 2: Good morning. This is a somewhat minor piece of what you were talking about, but you mentioned sometimes, especially on Zoom, somebody's talking and then you're thinking about or reflecting on something else that they said, getting distracted by some thoughts. I just wonder in those situations, is it skillful to just try to slow the conversation down? I notice sometimes for me it's hard because maybe that reflection needed some time. Maybe it was an important reflection, and then the conversation is just moving on. Does that make sense?

Gil Fronsdal: It makes a lot of sense. For you to be tracking yourself well enough to know what you need in order to participate in that conversation is a really important skill to have. Whether it's appropriate to ask for things to slow down or not depends. If it's one-on-one and you're talking about something really important interpersonally, that's completely good. I've been involved in conversations where someone is moving on very quickly, and we have to make an important decision, and I've explicitly asked, "Can we slow down? I need to track this much better. Can we go over this again? Can you repeat what you said?" I think that's a really useful skill—knowing when to do it and when not to do it.

If it's a big conference with a thousand people there, and to ask the person presenting—say it's not nonsense—to slow down for your sake, when you're one out of a thousand people, might be a disservice to everyone else. It makes the whole thing more difficult for everyone else. So you have to understand the context and situation, but I love that you're asking this. There are times when that's really healthy.

And hopefully, the people you're with appreciate that. If that person doesn't have the ability for that, or takes it too personally like they've done something wrong, it just makes the whole situation more difficult than it had to be. So understanding context is such an important part of living a wise life.

Speaker 2: I think maybe one more piece that I'm reflecting on is maybe sometimes I need to take care of it in some way, like write down a quick note about an insight that I had, so that I can not keep churning on it and then be able to return to what's happening now because it's not the appropriate time.

Gil Fronsdal: Yeah, I've done a few things to help me be present. Sometimes I have taken notes as I listen to a long presentation. I don't really need to take notes, but by taking notes I stay present more actively and I'm less likely to wander off. The other thing I do is I make sure I sit straight on Zoom, because if I relax and sit back, my mind's more likely not to be present fully for the experience to track it.

Speaker 3: Hi, thank you for the talk. Somehow I find it, though, a little bit remote from realities. If we're living in this paradise where everybody is peaceful and there are no problems, no protests, no nothing like this... it feels a little bit theoretical perhaps. It makes me wonder, have you ever participated in any sort of protest? Like protesting against something. How would that go? I guess I would like to hear some sort of example of how to do a peaceful protest. The world is full of problems and we do not live in a paradise, so to speak. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Gil Fronsdal: Yeah, very much so. But I think that what it's inspired to do is to put it back on you. If you think we live in paradise here in Silicon Valley, you're not looking. That's not what I'm saying; I'm saying the opposite, actually, listening to this poem.

Speaker 3: It feels to me that it would be great to follow this poem if we were living in paradise, but unfortunately, we're not living in paradise. And thus, prioritizing this peaceful being just seems to be like some sort of fairy tale. Do you see what I'm saying?

Gil Fronsdal: I understand what you're saying, but I don't see the logic of it. In my logic, if you can do this, if you can really be present enough to watch how you construct your reality and your life, then you can be peaceful in the middle of conflict. Then you're much better positioned to be able to do things wisely when things are really difficult and challenging. It's the people who don't know themselves well and can't track their internal reactions who, when there's conflict and difficulty—even if they go to a protest—they're peaceful for a while, but then someone yells, "You're crazy protesting!" and before they know it, they're punching the person out. They're reactive.

I think that this is a recipe for responsible engagement in the world and its challenges. I'm staking my life not on making people go into some kind of retired enlightenment where they just sit and stay home and do Wordle. [Laughter] I want this practice to be one that makes people change agents for a peaceful world. Right here in Silicon Valley, there's like a fifth of the people who are hungry. That's a very high percentage. Go visit Second Harvest; they're one of the premiere non-profit organizations here trying to bring food to the hungry, and there's a huge population of people they're feeding. So it's right here close by. Thank you.

Speaker 4: Do you have time for one more thought? I get what you were saying. I thought that was an astute observation about the practicality of this very wise poem. It just dawned on me, there's a real-world example that's been unfolding globally for the past nine months. I appreciate what you were saying, Gil, about us being creative beings. We are talking a recession into existence. Why, right? Maybe we should be talking something else into existence, but it's becoming—well, I don't believe it, but others believe it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. "A recession is coming, a recession is coming." Why don't we all collectively try to think of the opposite, or maybe think of nothing and then see what happens? So I just found this to be a very timely poem that you've shared.

Gil Fronsdal: Yeah, there are so many things that we actually think into existence, much more than people realize. Some things are self-fulfilling prophecies. If we believe certain things, then everything organizes around that and it becomes true. I've known people who are aversive and very angry, and they have this idea that everyone else is out to get them, everyone else is mean. So they get more angry, and then when they go someplace, they have this atmosphere of anger around them, and then people are treating them unkindly, so it's fulfilling the very things they're afraid of. The power of this creative mind is quite something.

So this practice to clearly see phenomena anywhere they appear—present phenomena means as your experiences are happening, as your inner life gets born. To really see it clearly is such a relief. It's so needed for our society. I put a tremendous amount of hope in having people become healthy in this way.

Great, so may you have an auspicious day. [Laughter] Thank you very much. If you want to stay around a little bit and say hello to each other, maybe you can say hello to the person next to you and then say goodbye, but it's nice to have a little bit of community.