For Your Future’s Sake

The Buddha said that the question that lies at the beginning of discernment is, “What, when I do, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What, when I do, will lead to my long-term harm and suffering?”

It’s a question that’s aimed at the future. In other words, you focus on what you’re doing right now, but you’re thinking about what the long-term consequences are going to be.

There are some people who think that we should focus on the present moment so much that we forget about the future, not even think about it. Some say that if you say you’re doing something now for the sake of the future, you’re getting in the way of the awakening that could happen right now.

At some point in the future, that will be true—but it’s not true yet.

When the Buddha talks about focusing on the present moment, it’s not for the sake of the present moment itself. It’s because there’s work to be done here, because there are dangers lying down the road. As in the verse where he says, “Put aside thoughts of the past, concerns of the future, and focus on what you can experience right here, right now”: The reason he says to do that is because there are duties to be done right now, because death could come at any time, and you have to prepare.

That’s aimed at the future. You provide for the future by being focused on doing wise things in the present moment.

As when you’re generous: You give away something, and that means you have to deprive yourself right now of the pleasure you could get from consuming whatever that was. But you see that there’s a greater pleasure that comes when you’re able to give. There’s a feeling of wealth. You have enough to share. That’s a benefit right in the present moment, but it also develops good qualities in the mind that will serve you well down the line.

You learn to appreciate your freedom of choice. You easily could have not given the item, but you choose to give it. In fact, that’s probably one of your first experiences of freedom of choice, when as a child you were able to give something to somebody else, not because you were told to give it, but simply because you wanted to. You could say No to your greed, No to whatever selfish ideas you might have. This gives you a sense of power. You know you’re doing something good for other people, and it’ll serve you well down the line. You learn that over time.

The same with the precepts: There are lots of things you may like to do right now that would break the precepts, but when you can say No, there’s a sense of honor that goes with that. You realize that you can live in this world without harming others. You can say No to your less-than-honorable desires.

And the fact that you’re able to maintain a precept develops good qualities in the mind.

You have to keep the precept in mind. That’s mindfulness.

You have to be alert to watch over your actions to make sure they stay in line with the precept.

And finally, you have to be ardent in doing this. In other words, there will come times when it’s very tempting to break a precept, and sometimes it’s not through obviously bad motives. You want to lie to somebody out of what you think is compassion, because you feel they may not be ready to take the truth. But then you realize that if you do that, after a while they’ll catch on to the fact that you’ve misinformed them, misled them, and they’re not going to trust you. So, it’s better for the long term that you develop trust.

So again, you learn how to see the times when you need to sacrifice what you would like to do in the present moment for long-term goals.

As we’re meditating, it’s the same sort of thing. You focus on the present moment, which you can do in terms of getting the mind to settle down with the breath. You’re going to be giving up other things you could have been doing right now.

Sometimes you find yourself sitting here in pain, and you wonder, “Why am I putting up with this pain?” But then you realize: Here’s your opportunity to study it. Why would you want to study pain? Because pain is going to get worse as life goes on. The body will suddenly stop doing things it used to be able to do. Or when it does certain things, it gives you a pain it didn’t give before. If you can prepare yourself by understanding your relationship to pain right here, right now, you won’t have to suffer so much then.

The Buddha states this in one of his suttas about the dangers of the future. Sometime in the future you’re going to get sick. Sometime in the future you’re going to get old. Sometime in the future you’re going to die. Those are givens. But if you train the mind now, you’ll develop qualities inside that will ensure that you don’t have to suffer when those times come.

So, you’re focusing on the present moment for the sake of the future. That’s when you’re wise. If you focus on the present moment just for its own sake, you end up doing not much of anything.

There’s always an effort you have to put into the present moment. That’s a given. The Buddha tells how to direct those efforts wisely for the sake of the future. He tells you of duties you have to do in the present moment if you want to put an end to suffering. They’re not forced on you by anybody, but they are forced on you by the fact of suffering. Some people complain, “Why does the Buddha focus on the negative side of life so much? Doesn’t he see that there are positive pleasures to be gained simply by enjoying the nice things of life?”

Well, he does admit that there are pleasures. With the five aggregates, he said, if they were exclusively stressful, exclusively painful, we wouldn’t be attached to them. So, they do offer their pleasures.

But then, if we just stay with their pleasures, we become attached. Some people say, “Well, you can be wisely attached. Hold on for the duration of however long something is going to be there, knowing that it’s going to go, and then be ready to let go hold on to the next thing and the next, as if it were a kind of dance.”

It’s not a dance. It’s desperation: trying to squeeze as much pleasure as you can out of the present moment, knowing you have to let it go, and then finding something else to grab hold of. But who knows what you’re going to be grabbing hold of next?

Especially when you die: The body’s not going to be offering any pleasure at that point. You think about the future, and the future’s a big blank wall. At that point, the mind is going to grab at anything. So, as it’s forced out of the body, if it hasn’t been trained, it’s going to grab hold of whatever.

Again, there’s a need to train the mind so that it can control its urges, so that it’s not pushed around by pleasure or pain. This is why we focus on the painful side of these things: so that we can prepare. It’s because there is an unpleasant side to the aggregates that we realize that we can’t hold on. We’ve got to find something better.

And there is something better. It’s not past, present, or future. There’s an awareness that lies outside of space, outside of time, which can be found when you let go of your passion and desire for the things of the senses. That’s going to be in the future when you find it. When you get to it, it will be an experience that comes out of the present moment, but at this present moment right now, it’s not happening.

So, you focus on what you can do right now to prepare for that. What are your duties right now? In terms of the four noble truths, they are: to comprehend suffering or stress, to abandon the cause, to realize cessation through developing the path.

Dogen, the Zen master, makes the point that the duties of the last two truths actually come together, that by focusing on developing, in the midst of the developing you’re going to find the realization of the cessation. That doesn’t mean that they’re the same thing, just that you should give all your attention to what you have to do right now, and don’t try to second guess what’s going to come down the line, how far away it may be.

The Buddha makes that point again and again: You have no idea in advance when the moment of awakening will come. But you just keep on doing the path, making sure you do it right as much as you can. Focus on your duties right now, right now, and they’ll lead to a bright future.

After all, those four noble truths are not totally pessimistic at all. They teach that it is possible through your own efforts to find an end to suffering. That’s saying an awful lot about the power that you gain if you learn how to tame the power of the mind. It can do an awful lot. And you have to learn how to tame it right here, because there’s nowhere else you can do it.

Right here is the path, and the path will bear fruit. But again, it’s not going to be right here when the fruit comes. The last moments of the path will be right in a present moment, but then they’ll take you outside the present moment.

So, focus here. This is where the work can be done. And it’s good work, both in the doing and in the results that will come down the line.