Days & Nights Fly Past

The Buddha has you ask every day, “Days and nights fly past, fly past. What have I become?”

What kind of person have you become? Sometimes this passage is translated, “Days and nights fly past. What am I doing right now?” The two things, of course, are connected. You act based on your desires, and the desires you act on determine who you are, what kind of person you’re becoming. So are you heading up or heading down?

The Buddha said there are four kinds of people in the world: those who come in darkness and go in darkness; those who come in darkness and go in light; those who come in light but go in darkness; and those who come in light and go in light.

Those who come in darkness are the ones who are born into families where they’re poor, with not much opportunity for education. Their parents don’t observe the precepts. It’s hard to listen to the Dhamma.

The persons who are born in light are the ones who are born in relative wealth, who have an opportunity for good education, have virtuous parents, and can hear the Dhamma.

But the Buddha said how you come is not nearly as important as how you go. If you go in darkness, that means that you don’t observe the precepts. You don’t train your mind. But if you go in light, you do observe the precepts, and you do train your mind. In other words, you head in the right direction.

So you want to be heading in that direction. You want to go in light rather than in darkness. Don’t make a big deal about how you’ve come, just make sure you’re headed in the right direction. That means you have to look at your actions. Look at the desires that you act on. Those are defining you, who you are. So define yourself well. Think about the opportunity you have: You’re born here as a human being. There are many, many opportunities for you, both going up in light and going down into darkness. And it’s your choice.

There will be people, of course, who will try to pull you in different directions. But you’re the one who has to decide. If going in light requires certain sacrifices, remind yourself that they’re worth the sacrifice. After all, when you leave this life, what do you have? You have to leave your body behind. No matter how good care you’ve taken of your body, it’s got to go. It’s going to have to die at some point. And then what do you have? You have the goodness and not-goodness that you’ve been doing. So you want to be headed to light.

So right now, do whatever you can, because we don’t know how much more time we have. We can count the days and the years since we were born. But the days and years to the point where we leave this life and move on—we don’t know how to count those. So be prepared all the time.

As the Buddha said, if you want to be counted as heedful, each time you breathe in, breathe out, remind yourself, “May I live to complete this breath so that I can do a lot of good.” And then do that good. The more minutes you can do that, the more breaths you can do that, the more you’ll be headed in the right direction. That’s how you keep yourself safe. That’s how you develop yourself. You don’t want to just stay on whatever level you’re on. You want to keep on moving higher and higher.

The tendency of the world is like those cinder cones where, when you stand on the side of the mountain, and you just slide down because the little pieces of lava are so slippery. You have to make the effort to keep on going up. That’s how you provide a good answer to the Buddha’s question: “I’m heading upward; I’m heading to the light.”

Remind yourself: What if the Buddha were to ask you that question? What would you say? Try to come up with a good answer based on the good things you choose to do.