“Your life is now,” Eckhart Tolle wrote while contemplating the art of living in the present moment.
When you live in the moment, you’re free of psychological time – past and future. You no longer regret what happened in the past and not afraid of what might happen in the future. All your attention is focused on the one thing you can do now.
This is one of the themes Gil Fronsdal, meditation teacher and Buddhist scholar, explores in his book titled The Buddha Before Buddhism: Wisdom From Early Teachings. In particular, he highlights an ancient Buddhist poem that cultivates inner peace and “emphasizes attaining insight into the immediacy of one’s present experience, an activity that gives one an ‘auspicious day'”
AN AUSPICIOUS DAY
A Buddhist PoemDon’t chase the past
Or long for the future.
The past is left behind;
The future is not yet reached.Have insight into whatever phenomenon are present,
Right where it is;
Not faltering and agitated,
By knowing whatever is present
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.
Gil Fronsdal concludes by saying that because “An Auspicious Day” is a single, short poem, we shouldn’t use it alone to come to conclusions about early Buddhist teachings. However, when paired with the ancient text called Book of Eights – the main subject of his book The Buddha Before Buddhism – the poem begins to reveal a pattern in the kind of teachings the early Buddhists memorized, recited, and taught one another.
About the book’s author: Gil Fronsdal, Ph.D. has practiced Zen and Vipassana since 1975. He earned a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Stanford. He has trained in both the Japanese Soto Zen tradition and the Insight Meditation lineage of Theravada Buddhism of Southeast Asia. He was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 he received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He has authored several books on Buddhist practice, including The Issue at Hand: Essays on Buddhist Mindfulness Practice and The Buddha Before Buddhism.
Complement with the power of now: a guided meditation for calm and relaxation.
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