An Auspicious Day

Try to get your mind in shape. Getting the mind in shape is not like getting the body in shape. When you’re getting the body in shape, you have to move around a lot. To get the mind in shape, you have to make it still, here with one object. Stay with the breath all the way in, all the way out.

But getting the mind and body in shape are similar in the fact that it’s something you have to do repeatedly. So you stick with each breath coming in, each breath going out. If you stay with one or two breaths and wander off, it’s not much different from your ordinary states of mind. You want to create a state of mind that’s solid and secure, that stays with one thing.

As the Buddha said, “There is no happiness other than peace.” When we think of happiness, in some ways it’s very exciting and not very peaceful. But what he means is you need something that the mind can stay with in order to be happy inside. And here’s something you can stay with for long periods of time because there’s nothing to push you off the breath.

The pleasures that come from the world outside keep pushing you off. But the breath comes in, goes out, and then it comes in and goes out again. You’re with it; it keeps coming in, going out. You’re not with it; it comes in, goes out. It’s very forgiving. But still, even though it’s forgiving, you want to be strict with yourself and say, “This is something I really have to do. Otherwise the mind doesn’t get trained. The mind doesn’t get strengthened.”

This is what makes your day, makes your year, auspicious. You think of the stars being good or the numbers being good, but that doesn’t make an auspicious day. The fact that the day is a holiday or not a holiday that doesn’t make it auspicious. What makes it auspicious is what you do. Particularly, the Buddha says, you let go of the past, you let go of the future, and you focus here on being really clearly aware of what you’re doing in the present moment, so that you can see when it’s skillful, when it’s not.

You have duties in the present moment: the duty to comprehend suffering; the duty to abandon its cause; to realize its cessation; and to develop the path to its cessation. These are duties that nobody is imposing on you. The Buddha didn’t make them up. They’re duties that, if you want to be happy, this is what you’ve got to do.

So basically you’re creating the causes for true happiness, and that’s auspicious. Whether those causes will give the results right away or distribute the results further into the future, that’s not the issue. You want to make sure that the causes are good, and the results will have to be good when they come.

When you stick with your duty all day long, that’s said to be an auspicious day. So here at the monastery, you can spend your time—you have very few other responsibilities—whatever free time you have, even time that’s not free—you can still stay with the breath. Make sure you’re doing your duty all day long, developing good qualities in the mind and abandoning ones that are not good all day long. That makes this an auspicious day.

In other words, it’s up to you whether the day is auspicious or not. So you might as well make this as auspicious as you can.