Get the Most Out of Today

Settle your mind on the breath. Watch it all the way in. Watch it all the way out. And then again—in, out. You might want to start with some long, deep, in-and-out breaths. Then notice how long breathing feels. If it feels good, keep it up. If not, you can change. You can make it shorter, more shallow. Heavier, lighter. Faster, slower. Pay attention to what the breathing feels like right now and what would feel good.

The breath is free medicine. It can relax you when you’re tense. It can give you energy when you’re tired. But for the most part, we just let it go and don’t take advantage of it. It comes in and goes out, and it keeps us from dying, but we don’t get much more use out of it than that.

Yet if you pay attention to it, then you find that you get more use out of it. We have lots of potentials in ourselves, around us, that we just let pass. We don’t get the most out of them because we’re interested in other things. But as the Buddha pointed out, there are potentials in the body, potentials in the mind that, when you take advantage of them, can bring you true happiness that doesn’t have to depend on anything outside.

These potentials come from being generous, virtuous, and from meditating. This is how you develop those potentials. And when you do that, you do it right now because you know you have today. You don’t know about tomorrow or the next day. But you do know you’ve got right now.

So. Take advantage of right now. Squeeze as much goodness as you can right now. After all, right now is not going to come back. It goes, goes, goes. If you just let it go like that, there go those potentials. But if you pay attention to the good potentials you have inside and try to develop them, then you can squeeze some goodness out of you that stays longer.

Ultimately it can take you to a place that’s not subject to time at all. Anything subject to time is going to pass away. But the Buddha said there is something you can contact inside the mind that’s not subject to time. Still, you’re not going to find it unless you make the most out of the time you’ve got. So make the most of what you’ve got right here, right now.

The Thais have a phrase that “Time eats up the beings of the world as it eats up itself.” In other words, the past is gone. We have memories of it. We have records that the past was here. But otherwise, it’s gone. You can’t bring it back. And right now is going, going, going, too. So try to squeeze as much goodness as you can out of each moment, even just through the way you think.

You can choose to think skillful things or unskillful things. The choice to think something skillful is a way of getting something good out of the moment. When you act on those skillful intentions, that creates more goodness. If you keep at it, the goodness builds up and provides you with more opportunities for more goodness in the future, until you develop the qualities of the mind and the body to a point that you don’t need them anymore because you’ve found something that’s really good inside that doesn’t have to be developed. It’s just there, outside of space, outside of time. That is a possibility. That’s when your happiness is secure. Up until then, it can always slip away, be torn away.

So build the qualities that will lead you in the right direction. And do it right now. As the Buddha said, an auspicious day is not a day that depends on the stars or on other omens. It depends on the goodness you do, right here, right now, each moment of the day. That’s what makes a day auspicious.