Go in Light
December 31, 2023

Close your eyes and center your attention on the breath. Watch it as it comes in. Watch it as it goes out. See if it’s comfortable. If it’s not comfortable, you can change it. Make it longer, shorter, faster, slower, heavier, lighter. See what kind of breathing feels good right now.

As they say in Thai, “Make the breath your path.”

This is where the mind stays. But it doesn’t just stay put. It keeps moving from one breath to the next, to the next, in the same way that our lives go from one year to the next year to the next year. Try to get the most out of each breath. Try to get the most out of each year.

You want to think about the year that’s passed. What’s this idea that this is the end of one year and the beginning of a new year? It’s a convention. When the sun comes up tomorrow morning it’s not going to say 2024 or 2,567. It’s just going to come up as it always has every day. But we make these conventions to remind ourselves that time does pass.

It passes in cycles, but our lives go forward. And where are they going? You want to make sure that you give yourself an auspicious year by pointing your mind in the right direction—pointing yourself in the right direction.

There are beliefs that a day or year is auspicious because of the stars or because of other things. But as the Buddha pointed out, it’s auspicious because of our actions: the good things we do minus the bad things we do. So what is your account for the past year? You still have a couple of hours left to top off the account to make sure it’s good—and to look at your life as a whole.

With each year, as it comes, we say it’s a new year, but the body is getting older. It’s getting closer and closer to death. So what do you do to make the most of the time you have right now?

Think about where you’re going.

The Buddha says there are four paths. There’s the path that starts in darkness and ends in darkness; the path that starts in darkness and ends in light; the path that starts in light and ends in darkness; and the path that starts in light and ends in light.

Starting in darkness means that you come into this world with a lot of disadvantages. Your family is poor; you don’t have much opportunity for education. You, yourself, may not be good looking. When you come in light, it’s the opposite of those things. Your family is well off; you have opportunities for education, opportunities for gaining wealth. You may be good looking, powerful—have lots of pleasures.

This is how the world tends to measure us, by how we come. But the Buddha says how we go is more important.

If you go in darkness, it means you don’t observe the precepts; you don’t develop your mind. You come here, and you create trouble for yourself, create trouble for others—afflict yourself, afflict others.

If you go in light, you observe the precepts; you develop the mind in concentration and discernment. You live a life in which you find your happiness in a way that causes affliction to no one.

This is how the Buddha would measure you: not by how you come, but by how you go. So it doesn’t matter how you come. The world may say it matters a lot, but for the sake of the Dhamma, it’s what you make out of your life that counts. We all have the opportunity to practice, to develop the mind—to find ways of finding happiness that are responsible and cause no harm to anybody. We can all go in light. This opportunity is there for all of us, no matter what our background.

So think of what you can do in the remainder of this year and on into the next year to make sure you’re headed in the right direction, that you’re going toward the light, not toward darkness. Because it is your choice.

Other people may try to force things on you, but you have the choice to say “No” to them. They may punish you for making the right choice. It happens a lot in the world, as we see all around us. But you have to decide what they do to punish you is nothing compared to the punishment you create for yourself if you choose the wrong path.

So think about the path that you’re going on. Make sure you’re headed toward the light. That way you make the most of the fact that you’ve got this year and the years to come. The time will come when time stops for this particular lifetime, and you move on to the next one. And as you move on, you want to be headed in the right direction—heading up and not down.

Remember it all depends on the choices you make. Nobody forces you to do unskillful things. They may try to influence you, but you can resist the influence. They may cause you to make sacrifices because you’re doing the right thing, but you know inside that the choice that you make—the right thing—is your possession. What you do is your possession. What other people do to you is the result of past karma. But what you choose to do now is the important thing.

Make sure each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out, that whatever you’re choosing to do, you stay grounded in the breath and you choose the right thing: You choose the path that heads toward the light.