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An Auspicious Day

Welcome to our Monday night dharma talk. What I had in mind today is to unpack this poem a little bit together, and just reflect upon this poem that I just read.

Sometimes the title of this poem is translated as "A Single Excellent Night" or "An Auspicious Day." The first time I read this poem, I was very touched. Without knowing anything about the context or significance of it, I took this poem with me to various locations. I read this poem to a dharma sister who was in a hospital bed, and I took this poem and read it at a memorial service. I took this poem to my heart, I memorized it, and reflected upon it.

Maybe I'll read the poem one more time, and then we'll unpack it together, one stanza at a time.

An Auspicious Day The Buddha said: Don't chase the past or long for the future. The past is left behind; the future is not yet reached. Right where it is, have insight into whatever phenomenon is present. Not faltering and not agitated, by knowing it one develops the mind. Ardently do what should be done today. Who knows, death may come tomorrow. There is no bargaining with mortality and his great army. Whoever dwells thus ardent, active day and night, is, says the peaceful sage, one who has an auspicious day.

What does this mean, to not chase the past or long for the future? "The past is left behind; the future is not yet reached." We all probably have experiences of where we might be chasing the past or longing for the future. For me right away, what becomes vivid is that for most of us, as we get older, we chase the youth that we used to have, and we long for the youth we had before. In this pandemic, it's probably not hard to feel this longing for the past or the future—the vacations that you used to have, where you could travel to different places. We can be chasing the past in this way, whatever accomplishments that we may have had in our earlier careers, work, family, or maybe even if you were the dance champion in high school.

In the sutta^[1]—this is the Majjhima Nikaya^[2] 131, where this poem shows up—the Buddha explained this. How does one chase after the past? He said one gets carried away with delight: "In the past I had such a form," or such a body. "In the past I had such a feeling. In the past I had such a perception. In the past I had such a thought fabrication, or mental formation. In the past I had such a consciousness." This is called chasing after the past.

I don't know if everyone is familiar with this particular formula. In it, the Buddha is pointing out how one gets stuck in the past and gets carried away by endless ways related to ourselves, through this list called the five aggregates^[3]. These are the things that we often identify as ourselves: "This is me."

I'm struck by the key word used here by the Buddha, which defines how one chases the past: that one would "take delight" in the past. This form of taking delight could be really getting consumed by the pleasant experiences we had before, and who we were in the past. This taking delight could also happen even with unpleasant experiences and unpleasant history. We can be defined by them, and when we are defined by them, we get hooked by the past even when we do not like those experiences. Sometimes I can see, and have a certain recognition, that I used to be a certain way. I really didn't like it, but somehow, being really annoyed by it, I actually got hooked by how I identified myself with it. This is taking delight in the past, this way or that way.

And how does one not chase after the past? The Buddha continued by saying, if one does not get carried away with delight in the past—"In the past I had this kind of form, or feeling, or perception, or mental formation, or consciousness"—this is called not chasing after the past. The formula is quite simple. If we stop being consumed, stop taking delight in the past, we no longer have that force in us to chase the past anymore. There is a recognition that there is a possibility, a choice, not to get swept away in the past.

How do we really do that in our meditation practice, in our mindfulness practice? When I begin to notice that I am being hooked by a memory, by history, by the stories that were lived in the past, that's when I begin to have a choice. We see, "Wow, here I am, but I'm hooked by this story," and we recognize this is happening. When we begin to recognize that this is happening, we detach from taking delight in them, or detach from being attracted by the story of the past. We can begin to loosen the hook.

Often what happens is when we are being mindful, we can, for example, rest our attention in the body, shifting from the stories of the past to what's happening in our body. Then the memories and images that came from the past can simply become a kind of ripple that flows through our awareness. There's no need for the story of the memory and the past to take root in us. It's possible that our mind may have thoughts of the past or stories, but they don't have to be a problem. It's when we begin to take delight in them, and really get consumed by them, that we get swept away. But when we are aware, we can see the memories as simply memories. They flow through like clouds in the wide open sky.

Similarly, how does one long for the future? The Buddha used similar language: one gets carried away with delight in the future. "I might become this way, I might become that way." This is what the sutta calls placing expectations on the future. We all have this kind of experience in our own lived experience. There are lots of examples we can take. When we are not comfortable with what is happening here and now, sometimes we construct a future in our head, and then we hook onto this constructed experience and really go after that to pull us out of what is happening in the present experience. So there's a form of expectation in the future. It is a form of mental construction, and we can believe in them so strongly that they become almost real for us.

Similarly, the Buddha explained how not to place expectations in the future, and the same formula was prescribed: do not get carried away with delight in the future. It's easier said than done, we all know that. It's very easy to fall into this form of taking delight. But what it takes is to recognize that this is happening—that expectation or projection is happening—and allow ourselves to rest into the field of awareness, to simply notice projection being projection, planning being planning, and expectations being expectations. Sometimes they are really momentary, just one or two thoughts that come and go like a snap of the fingers. But if we feed onto them, continue to plan and tell our stories, this can become something really big and take us away. But when we begin to see expectations simply as expectations, and thoughts simply as thoughts, there is a real sense of lightness in all these experiences.

The next stanza brings us back to where it is, here and now: "Right where it is, have insight into whatever phenomenon is present. Not faltering and not agitated, by knowing it one develops the mind." And it's pointing out that this moment is where we live. The present moment, the present experience, the present phenomenon is where we live, and this is where insight can happen. This is where we practice; this is the field of our practice.

But it's very interesting that in the sutta it says even in practicing with the present experience, there can be two ways: one way is skillful, and one way is unskillful. When I first read this, I was kind of puzzled. I thought being present would be all good and fine, but there can be a way of being present where there is still unskillfulness. So how is that possible?

Let's take a look at this. With respect to present experiences and present qualities, an unskillful person can take whatever is arising as "I," "me," or "mine." Whatever is happening, an unskillful way is that we take it as "This is me." For example, if right now there is a little moment of sadness in the field of emotion, one way to relate to this momentary sadness is, "I'm a sad person. I've always been sad. There is so much sorrow in me." Now what happens? We begin to construct a self out of this simple moment of sadness or grief. "Oh my God, I am really miserable. I've always been very miserable. I don't know how to get out of this." This is what the Buddha is pointing at. We can make a self out of the momentary experience that's happening. When we do this, we get hardened into these experiences, and they become more permanent than what they are.

Most of the time, our emotions flow up and down throughout the day, but we can oftentimes hook onto certain forms of emotion and make them ourselves. I remember Gil Fronsdal^[4] sometimes would teach that it is more skillful to be situation-centric rather than self-centric. Or, in the words of this particular sutta, maybe we can say it's phenomenon-centric rather than self-centric. Whatever phenomenon or situation comes about in our present lived experience, we simply see it as the situation or the phenomenon. This is the skillful way of being with our experiences. The self-centric approach would be turning everything that is happening into something related to "I," "me," and "mine."

For example, if you drop a plate on the floor, maybe the immediate reaction would be, "I am so sloppy." But is it really all about you? It's just a situation that just happened. When I get identified with the situation, there can be a lot of dukkha^[5], a lot of stress that comes along with it. Our experiences become stuck and no longer flow like clouds in the sky. The opposite is that if we're not taking phenomena and situations as "I," "me," and "mine," they can be simple, transient, changing experiences arising and passing. When this happens, there can be a quality of not being wavered or shaken by agitation or faltering. Agitation happens when there is a center, like the center of the self. When there is no center of self, agitation cannot shake anything; there is nothing to shake. When one develops the mind in this way, the mind will no longer be shaky or restless.

The poem goes on to encourage this. The next stanza says: "Ardently do what should be done today. Who knows, death may come tomorrow. There's no bargaining with mortality and his great army." I don't know what more is to be said about this particular line because it is true. We don't know. We don't know when death may come. It may not even be tomorrow; maybe the next moment. I know this can sound untrue or unreal, but we really don't know.

Oftentimes our intellectual mind understands that when everyone is born, death will be part of it. I think one of my teachers, Phillip Moffitt^[6], sometimes likes to quote his teacher Ajahn Sumedho^[7]: "Birth is a death sentence."^[8] It is true, and yet we often live our lives in complete denial that this might happen to us, that it might happen anytime. The Buddha knows this, and knows the preciousness of practicing in this moment, here and now. So, "Ardently do what should be done today." Ardently do what should be done right now, because we don't know.

The poem ends with this line: "Whoever dwells thus ardent, active day and night, is, says the peaceful sage, one who has an auspicious day." I love this definition because oftentimes we associate an auspicious day with some special days. Like yesterday, I know, was a full moon day, and in the Buddhist tradition—and maybe many different spiritual traditions—a full moon day is considered to be an auspicious day. But the Buddha had a different definition for this. "Whoever dwells thus ardent, active day and night"—practicing ardently day and night—this, says the peaceful sage, is the one who has an auspicious day.

I love it because this makes the practice very accessible. We don't have to wait for some special day in order to practice. This day, if we practice here and now, is an auspicious day. The other translation is "a single excellent night" or "an excellent day." We just need to become fully present, become aware of what is happening, cultivating our mind skillfully, and seeing what's true right in front of us. This is where peace lies, and this is where freedom is found.

I'm going to close tonight by reading this poem one more time. Maybe by now the lines have sunk in for you in some way.

Don't chase the past or long for the future. The past is left behind; the future is not yet reached. Right where it is, have insight into whatever phenomenon is present. Not faltering and not agitated, by knowing it one develops the mind. Ardently do what should be done today. Who knows, death may come tomorrow. There is no bargaining with mortality and his great army. Whoever dwells thus ardent, active day and night, is, says the peaceful sage, one who has an auspicious day.

May you all have an excellent night. Take good care.