Guided Meditation: Reading of An "Auspicious Day"; Dharmette: The Dharma, pt 2 (1 of 5) In This Very Life

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Meditation: Reading of "An Auspicious Day; The Dharma, pt 2 (1 of 5) In This Very Life. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 05, 2022. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Reading of An "Auspicious Day"

Hello everyone, and welcome.

I hope all of you who are living in heat waves will take good care of yourselves today and be sure to drink, and do all the basic things. It's nice to be able to meditate.

This week, I'm going to continue a little bit with the theme from last week of the Dharma. What I'd like to do, instead of a guided meditation, is to read the teachings of the Buddha. There is a verse or poem that comes from him that was apparently quite popular during his time because it was recited often. The monastic followers of the Buddha were expected to memorize this, have commentary about it, and talk about it. It points, I think, to a kind of essence—some way of understanding the essence of what the Dharma is. This particular verse, I kind of think of it as the anthem for the Insight Meditation^[1] movement.

So, I'll read it, and then we'll just sit in silence today. We've done a lot of guided meditations over this time, and I know some of you really value them a lot. It's also very valuable to sit in silence and have more of that. So, I'll read the poem, and then we'll sit.

This poem is called "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 here where it is, have insight into whatever phenomena that has arisen. 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.

Don't chase the past or long for the future. The past is left behind; the future is not yet reached. Right here, have insight.

So with that, we'll sit quietly for these minutes.

(Silent Meditation)

Don't chase the past or long for the future. The past is left behind; the future is not yet reached. Right here where it is, have insight into whatever phenomena has arisen. 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.

Thank you. As you know, I value a lot doing a dedication of merit^[2] at the end of each sitting. There's a way in which reading the poem of the Buddha's is equivalent. As we do our own practice, I'm confident that we'll be people who will benefit the world.

Dharmette: The Dharma, pt 2 (1 of 5) In This Very Life

Hello everyone, and here we begin the next five-day series.

For this week, I'd like to do something a little unusual, and that is to repeat the theme from last week. I think there's value in it; the topic itself, we can go further with it. It's so central and important to the practice that we're doing. Also, sometimes when we keep moving to new themes every week, the heart, the mind, the body has less opportunity to let each week's theme sink deeper.

That's the plan. The plan is to once again go through the characteristics of the Dharma^[3]. The Dharma of the Buddha is well-spoken; it is visible here; it is now, immediate; it invites inspection ("come and see"); it is onward-leading; and it is to be personally known by the wise.

So, this Dhamma in Pali (Dharma in Sanskrit, and in English now) means something more than just the Buddha's teachings—it is what his teachings were pointing at. The idea is that the Buddha was pointing to something for us to experience for ourselves, that we become a wise person who experiences it directly, immediately, here. In another place, the Buddha describes the teaching he gives—the Dharma—as being laid open, clear, and evident.

So again, this immediacy: it's right here to be seen, it's evident, it's open, nothing hidden. We can enter into this present moment more deeply to discover the Dharma for ourselves. That's where it is. We could also step back a little bit and see more clearly what the Buddha was teaching, and have more confidence that what he was pointing to is what was in that poem I read, which is: now, here, what's evident, what's open, what is inviting inspection here.

The contrast to this, in terms of religions—and even some ways that people relate to Buddhism—is belief. Looking for a belief to believe, a doctrine to believe. I know some people have come to Buddhism and have the idea that if they're going to be "good Buddhists," they have to believe whatever the Buddha said. Or they're inclined to believe, and some people have this beautiful thing they say: "Whatever I've experienced for myself, it verifies what the Buddha teaches. So I'm inclined to believe everything he says now, even what I haven't experienced myself."

So, this orientation around Buddhism being a belief, and that we have to believe in the ancient teachings of the Buddha—he was actually not interested in belief, and was quite discouraging of people to believe. He said that he teaches the Dharma to eradicate belief, or speculative views, opinions, dogma, attachments to the teachings, and speculation.

His teaching was something very different. A very interesting story is of a man who was a famous debater at the time of the Buddha. Religious debates were a really big deal in ancient India. He wanted to debate the Buddha and kind of undermine him. He came somewhat assertively to the Buddha and said, "What is it that you teach?" It was clearly going to be a debate.

The Buddha answered, "I teach that with which one would have no quarrels with anybody in the world."

The guy didn't know what to do with himself, and then he left in a huff. He realized there was no way in. For the Buddha, that was his attitude.

This Dharma we have doesn't lead us to quarrel with anyone in the world; it's not based on beliefs or opinions. It's a very interesting exercise to go through the teachings of Buddhism—the many volumes of what survives—and ask the question: when the Buddha was going to teach the Dharma in brief, what did he teach? When he told others, "When you go out to teach and you want to teach what I teach, this is what you teach," what was it? When he talked about what Right View is, what the right understanding is to have; when he talked about vijjā^[4] (translated as true knowledge, gnosis), what did he point to as this true understanding or true knowledge?

The Buddha talked about the goal of practice—what did he talk about? And when he taught the people who were maybe closest to him—I think of his son^[5], who became a monastic in time. The story is that he joined the order when he was seven years old. We have records of what the Buddha taught his own son. You would think that that's where he wants to emphasize what is most important. What was it he taught his son?

If you take all these questions together and look at the Buddha's answers to all of them, phenomenally, what you find is he's talking about something that is evident here and now. The first of these characteristics—last week I said this—is that the Dhamma is sandiṭṭhiko^[6]. The Dhamma is here and now. The word means "visible here and now."

Some people translate this as "in this very life." The idea here is that it doesn't concern a future life or a past life; it's in this very life that we can realize what the Dharma is about. You don't have to postpone it. You don't have to hope for it in the future. It is here and now, in the immediacy of now.

So, "in this very life" is a powerful statement, because it places the domain, the locus, the nexus, the center of what the Buddha was teaching as something independent of past and future lives. Some people often associate past and future lives as a huge part of Buddhism. It's certainly an important part of forms of Buddhism, how Buddhism developed, and maybe even had a place in the teachings of the Buddha. But the concern with past and future lives was not something the Buddha talked about when he went through "this is what the Dharma is, this is what you should teach."

This poem I'll read again—that I just read—is a remarkable poem because it's in a group of texts, many of them poems, which in the most ancient layer of Buddhism, there's indication that this is what people were chanting back then. We have all these volumes of the teachings of the Buddha. It's not completely clear what actually belongs to him, what his words were, and how much was attributed to him later. But at this earliest historical layer, we find that the monastics of the time, and the laypeople as well, were memorizing, and talked about memorizing, particular verses and texts. This is what they felt was important to remember and to repeat over again.

All of these things together can be summarized in this verse that I read before, which I will now read. What the Buddha taught, what the goal is, what he would teach his son, what he emphasized that people should memorize and remember—this is the context for what's really considered one expression of what's central in the Dharma.

Don't chase the past or long for the future. The past is left behind; the future is not yet reached. Right here where it is, have insight into whatever phenomena has arisen. 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.

The text's translated title is "An Auspicious Day." It's in the Middle Length Discourses, number 131^[7]. So when the Buddha says, in the descriptions of the Dhamma, that it is "visible"—last week I said "visible here and now," and thinking about it, it seems like we should just say "visible here," because the next one is about time, "immediate."

So it's visible here, now. It's in this very life. This is a very important principle, a very important idea. What it means is you don't have to go and read a lot of books and hope for something far in the future. What is it that you can find here, in this very life, in this very time? Here. Here in this poem, it says, "Right where it is." Right here where things occur, where things arise, have insight. Have understanding.

This is a common theme in all the ways that you get to what the Buddha's central message is: here, in the present moment, see things arise and pass. See things arise and appear—the impermanence, the inconstancy^[8]. Be in the flow of time. See things appear and go away, come and go.

In particular, begin seeing the coming and going of greed, hatred, and delusion^[9]—that they're not always there. Who are you when there is no greed, hate, and delusion? Or, to say it more Buddhistically, in those moments and times when there's no greed, hatred, delusion, or fear... what is left? If you answer that question with no greed, no hatred, no delusion, no fear, no conceit... what is it that's here?

To offer you an assignment that you can do for this day, something that I do frequently that I find great value in, is just saying the word "here." "Here," as a reminder to just be here fully. To not race ahead with your thoughts, not linger in the past with your thoughts, but to say the word "here" as if you're opening a door into a new room. Here, in this place that you are, right here: have insight. See clearly. See what's visible here and now.

Not so much what you see in the room or in the space you're in, but what do you see in your own mind? In that mind and heart of yours, might there be something that is free of greed, hatred, and delusion? Free of fear, free of conceit? Here. Saying the word "here" to yourself, and opening a door to here.

Thank you. The Dharma is visible here. Thank you.