MAKING THE MOST OF EACH DAY


Now the time has come to go home from this retreat. In order to take 
as much benefit as possible with us, we need to be aware how to 
organize our daily lives. If we go back and do exactly as we've always 
done, within a week everything well be forgotten. Coming to another 
meditation course in the future, we would have to start all over 
again.

Who knows whether there is much time in this life. This is the only 
life the we can take responsibility for. Here we have some control 
over how we spend our day. The future is non-existent. "I'm going to 
meditate 'tomorrow'" is foolish. There is no tomorrow, there is only 
now. When the next life comes, it's this life; actually this is our 
next life. Finding lots of reasons not to practice today is always 
possible: the children, the weather, the husband, the wife, the 
business, the economy, the food, anything will do. What kind of 
priorities we have is strictly of our own making.

If the future does not exist and the past is completely gone, what 
do we have left? A very fleeting moment indeed, namely this one. It 
passes quicker than we can say it. But by using each moment 
skillfully, we can eventually have moment-to-moment awareness, which 
results in deep insight.

When getting up in the morning, the first thing would be a 
determination to be mindful. Becoming aware of opening our eyes, is 
the beginning of the day, and the beginning of mindfulness. If we have 
opened our eyes before becoming aware of that, we can close them and 
start all over again. And from that small incident we will gain an 
understanding of mindfulness and what it means, then we can let the 
mind be flooded with gratitude that we have another whole day at our 
disposal, for one purpose only. Not to cook a better meal, not to buy 
new things, but to draw nearer to Nibbana. One needs enough wisdom to 
know how this can be accomplished. The Buddha told us again and again 
but we are hard of hearing and not totally open to all the 
instructions. So we need to hear it many times.

Being grateful brings the mind to a state of receptivity and joyful 
expectation of "what am I going to do with this day?" The first thing 
would be to sit down to meditate, maybe having to get up a little 
earlier. Most people die in bed, it's a perfect place for dying, and 
not such a perfect place for spending an unnecessarily long time. If 
one has passed the first flush of youth, one doesn't need so much 
sleep any more.

In most homes, starting at 6 o'clock, there is noise. If that is so, 
we need to get up early enough to avoid that. That alone gives a 
feeling of satisfaction, of doing something special to get nearer to 
Nibbana. If we have a whole hour available for meditation, that's 
fine; at least let us not practice under half an hour, because the 
mind needs time to become calm and collected. The morning hour is 
often the best for many people, because during the night the mind is 
not bombarded with as many conscious impressions as it is during the 
day, and is therefore comparatively calm. If we start meditating for 
half an hour and slowly increase it until we reach a whole hour, 
that's a good program. Each week we could add ten minutes to the daily 
practice.

After the meditation we can contemplate the five daily 
recollections. Now the mind is calm and collected and has more ability 
to reach an inner depth.

I am of the nature to decay
I have not gone beyond decay

I am of the nature to be diseased
I have not gone beyond disease

I am of the nature to die
I have not gone beyond death

All that is mine, dear, and delightful, will change and vanish

I am the owner of my kamma
I am born of my kamma
I am related to my kamma
I live supported by my kamma Any kamma
I will do, good or evil, that I will inherit.

The exact words do not matter that much. Words are concepts, only 
the meaning counts; the impermanence of our bodies, of what we think 
we own, such as people and belongings, and being responsible for our 
own kamma. Another recollection is about having a loving and kind 
attitude towards oneself and others and to protect one's own 
happiness, and wishing to same for all beings:

May I be free from enmity
May I be free from hurtfulness
May I be free from troubles of mind and body
May I be able to protect my own happiness.

Whatever beings there are,
May they be free from enmity

Whatever beings there are,
May they be free from hurtfulness

Whatever beings there are,
May they be free from troubles of mind and body

Whatever beings there are,
May they be able to protect their own happiness.


Having reflected on these two aspects in a meaningful way, we can 
keep three things in mind. First comes mindfulness, bare attention to 
the prevailing mode of being. That can be a physical activity without 
the mind going astray, or it may be a feeling or a thought which has 
arisen. Paying full attention, not trying to bury it under discursive 
debris, but knowing exactly what is happening in one's life.

When physical activity does not demand our attention, we can again 
direct thoughts to the fleeting aspects of our own lives and everyone 
else's, and reflect what to do in the short time available. When we 
consider this correctly, kindness, lovingness, and helpfulness arise 
as priorities. We need not help a lot of people all at once. Even 
helping one person, maybe someone who lives in the same house, is 
beneficial. It is the attitude and motivation that count, not the 
results.

Many people want to do some good, but expect gratitude. That's 
spiritual materialism, because they are aiming for a form of repayment 
for their goodness, at least a very nice future life. That too, is 
equivalent to getting pain, not in the coin of the realm, but through 
results. Both attitudes could be dropped and the realization 
re-established that "this is the only day I have, let me use it to 
best advantage." "What is most important, if I only have such a short 
time in this life?" Then we can act out of the understanding that in 
order to drew nearer to Nibbana, we have to let go of self-concern, 
egocentricity, self affirmation, personal likes and dislikes, because 
otherwise the ego will grow instead of diminish. As we affirm and 
confirm it more and more throughout this life, it gets bigger and 
fatter, instead of reducing itself. The more we think about our own 
importance, our own cares and concerns, the further away we get from 
Nibbana, and the less chance for peace and happiness arises in our 
lives.

If someone has a very fat body, and tries to go through a narrow 
gate, he might knock his/her body against either side and get hurt. If 
someone has an extremely fat ego, s/he might knock against other 
people constantly and feel hurt, other people's egos being the gate 
posts against which one knocks. If we have this kind of experience 
repeatedly, we get to realize that it has nothing to do with other 
people, but only concerns ourselves.

If we start each day with these considerations and contemplations, 
we will tend towards not being overly concerned with ourselves, but 
trying to think of others. Naturally, there is always the possibility 
of accidents. Accidents of non-mindfulness, of not being attentive to 
what we are doing, accidents of impetuous, instinctive replies, or in 
feeling sorry for ourselves. These occasions have to be seen for what 
they are, namely accidents, a lack of awareness. There's no blame to 
be attached to other people or to oneself. We can just see that at 
that particular moment we were not mindful, and try to remedy it in 
the next moment. There's only the Arahant, who is fully enlightened, 
who does not have accidents of that sort.

The Buddha did not teach expression or suppression. But instead he 
taught that the only emotions which are worthwhile are the four 
supreme emotions (//brahma viharas//) and that everything else needs 
to be noticed and allowed to subside again. If anger arises, it 
doesn't help to suppress or to express it. We have to know that the 
anger has arisen, otherwise we'll never be able to change our 
reactions. We can watch it arising and ceasing. However this is 
difficult for most people; anger doesn't subside fast enough. Instead 
we can immediately remember that to express anger means that 
particular day, which really constitutes our whole life, contains a 
very unfortunate occurrence, and therefore we can try to substitute. 
It is much easier to substitute one emotion for another than to drop 
one altogether. Dropping means a deliberate action of letting go. As 
we have learned in meditation, we can substitute discursive thinking 
with attention on the breath; in daily living we substitute the 
unwholesome with the wholesome.

Usually our anger arises towards other people. It's not so important 
to us what animals do, nor what people do whom we don't know. usually 
we are concerned with those whom we know and who are near to us. But 
since that is so we must also be familiar with some very good 
qualities of these people. Instead of dwelling upon any negative 
action of that person, we can put our attention on something pleasant 
about them. Even though they may have just used words which we didn't 
like, at other times they have said things which were fine. They have 
done good deeds, and have shown love and compassion. It is a matter of 
changing one's focus of attention, just as we learn to do in 
meditation. Until this becomes very habitual in meditation, it will be 
difficult in daily life, but diligent practice makes it happen. We 
practice in spite of any difficulty. If we remove our attention from 
one thing and put it somewhere else, that's all we need to work with. 
We will be protecting ourselves from making bad kamma and spoiling our 
whole day. We may not have another day.

The immediate resultants of all our thoughts, speech and action are 
quite apparent. If we keep our attention focused, we will know that 
wholesome emotions and thoughts bring peace and happiness, whereas 
unwholesome ones bring the opposite. Only a fool makes him/herself 
deliberately unhappy. Since we're not fools, we'll try to eliminate 
all unwholesomeness in our thinking and emotions and try to substitute 
with the wholesome. All of us are looking for just one thing, and that 
is happiness. Unhappiness can arise only through our own ideas and 
reactions.

We are the makers of our own happiness and unhappiness and we can 
learn to have control over that. The better the meditation becomes, 
the easier it will be, because the mind needs muscle power to do this. 
A distracted mind has no strength, no power. We cannot expect perfect 
results overnight, but we can keep practicing. If we look back after 
having practiced for some time we will see a change. If we look back 
after only one or two days, we may not find anything new within. It is 
like growing vegetables. If we put seeds in the ground and dig them up 
the next day, all we will find is a seed. But if we tend the seeds and 
wait some time we will find a sprout or a plant. It's no use checking 
from moment to moment, but it is helpful to check the past and see the 
changes taking place.

At the end of each day it can be a good practice to make a 
balance-sheet, possibly even in writing. Any good shop-keeper will 
check out his merchandise at the end of the day and see which one was 
well accepted by the customers and which stayed on the shelves. He 
will not re-order the shelf items but only the merchandise that sold 
well. We can check our actions and reactions during the day, and can 
see which ones were conductive to happiness for ourselves and others 
and which ones were rejected. We do not re-order the latter for the 
next day, but just let them perish on the shelf. If we do that night 
after night, we will always find the same actions accepted or 
rejected. Kindness, warmth, interest in others, helpfulness, concern 
and care are always accepted. Self-interest, dislike, rejection, 
arguments, jealousy are always rejected. Just for one single day, we 
can write down all our actions on the credit or debit side, whether 
happiness-producing or not. As we do that, we will find the same 
reactions to the same stimuli over and over again. This balance sheet 
will give a strong impetus to stop the pre-programmed unwholesome 
reactions. We have used them for years and lifetimes on end, and they 
have always produced unhappiness. If we can check them out in writing 
or see them clearly in our minds, we will surely try to change.

Starting the day with the determination to be mindful, contemplating 
the daily recollections, realizing that this is the only day we have 
and using it most skillfully, and then checking it out in the evening 
on the balance sheet, will give us a whole lifetime in one day. If 
this is done carefully and habitually, the next day, which is our next 
life, has the advantageous results. If we've had a day of arguments, 
dislikes, worries, fears and anxiety, the next day will be similar. 
But if we have had a day of loving-kindness, helpfulness and concern 
for others, we'll wake up with those same modes of being. Our last 
thought at night will become the first one in the morning. The kamma 
we inherit shows up the next day, we don't need to wait for another 
lifetime. That's too nebulous. We do it now, and see results the next 
day.

Before going to sleep it's useful to practice loving-kindness 
meditation. Having done that as the very last thing at night, it will 
be in one's mind first thing in the morning. The Buddha's words about 
loving-kindness were: "One goes to sleep happily, one dreams no evil 
dreams, and one wakes happily." What more can one ask? Applying the 
same principles day after day, there is no reason why our lives should 
not be harmonious. That way we're making the most of each day of our 
lives. If we don't do it, nobody else will. No other person is 
interested in making the most of each day of our lives. Everyone is 
interested in making the most of their own lives. We cannot rely on 
anyone else for our own happiness.

As far as our meditation practice is concerned, we must not allow it 
to slide. Whenever that happens one has to start all over again. If 
one keeps doing it every day, one can at least keep the standard 
attained in the retreat, possibly improve on it. Just like an athlete, 
who stops training has to start all over again, in the same way the 
mind needs discipline and attention, because it is the master of the 
inner household.

There is nothing that can give us any direction except our own mind. 
We need to give it the possibility to relax, to stop thinking for a 
little while, to have a moment of peace and quiet, so that it can 
renew itself. Without that renewal of energy, it decays just the same 
as everything else does. If the mind is taken care of, it will take 
care of us.

This is a sketch of how to use one's day to day activity and 
practice. We must never think that Dhamma is for meditation courses or 
special days: it is rather a way of life, where we do not forget the 
impermanence and unsatisfactoriness of the world. We realize these 
truths within our own heart, just thinking about them is useless. If 
we practice every day in this way, we will find relief and release 
from our cares and worries because these are always connected with the 
world. The Dhamma transcends the world.

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