This Moment Could Be Your Last
In his treatise on Zen Buddhism, Shunryu Suzuki wrote, “Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.” [1]
On the surface, his meaning seems simple. Make each moment count. Live not for a dream or hope of some future goal, but for what life brings you in the here and now. Life is not a series of goals. It is a journey, and mindfulness is the tool we use to fully experience that journey. This is especially important because we never know when our journey will end. We can die at any time.
When I was three, I announced to my family that I didn’t want to die. My mother couldn’t explain what put that into my head, but I suspect it was the death of my grandmother who had a fatal stroke around that time. I suspect I didn’t like the idea of never moving or seeing or thinking or feeling again. Few of us do.
To ease my mind, my mother assured me I wouldn’t die for a long time yet. That seems like a risky thing to promise, for we know even babies can die. One of her great-uncles, in fact, succumbed to typhoid fever before he turned two.
Still, the odds were with her, and, as it turned out, she was right. I have lived long enough that now I have fewer years ahead of me than behind. Suzuki’s words seem more significant than they would have years ago. If we’re lucky, we can avoid thinking of death for a very long time.
Part of the Journey
Often, we do. Death can be hard to face. I recall the 92-year-old patient who asked me to pray that she live a few years yet, for she wanted to see how her great-grandchildren would turn out. Then there was the woman who, at 96, said she needed to stay alive for her children, both of whom had cancer. When we can measure our life expectancy in days rather than decades, we often end up longing for more. We want to see the end of the story, and we don’t want to let go of our families, even if our children have grandchildren of their own. Few of us complete our hopes and dreams and goals. We rarely feel finished with life.
I wonder if that’s part of what Suzuki is addressing when he speaks of each moment as existing simply for itself. He seems to be suggesting that we do what we do, whether that’s to run ad campaigns or bake cakes or plow fields and snow-covered streets, not because some product can then be made and sold, nor because food will be eaten or cars driven, but because everything we do is part of the journey. Its value lies in the experience, not the end result.
Still, I am not confident I fully understand what it means to accept that there is no thing to prepare for. Is it that the future doesn’t exist? Life is a series of present moments. Or is it that the cup is already broken, our hearts already torn, our bodies already gone?
Though I write these words, I do not feel them. I do not truly understand what they mean.
Watching the Birds
As I stand at my desk in front of the window, pondering this essay, I remove my reading glasses and look out. Birds scratch in the dirt. They peck at the forsythia, at the broccoli plants, at the kiwi. I see golden ones and black-striped ones. Some have red chests. Tiny olive ones flit around in flocks.
If I name them, do I stop seeing them?
So I look, trying not to frame them in words, and I see, and the birds do as they choose. I have no control. I can only witness.
Then, although for a moment, I am fully there, my mind starts wandering. I think about being old, whatever that means these days, and having no projects to work on, and I must silence the snide voice that questions whether that will ever happen in my life, and I imagine sitting on a porch for hours observing birds and clouds and the shifting rays of the sun. In my imagination, I don’t do this so I can return to work refreshed, nor because it’s healthy or enhances my spirituality.
No. I watch now, and would watch then, because the beauty of form and color strikes me and bids me witness its nature. I do this, not in preparation for some future task or event, but because it is what it is, a part of the experience of life. Nothing more.
Is that what Suzuki’s talking about, the stolen moments when we forget our tasks and almost forget ourselves?
So How Do We Eat?
I don’t know, for even if I had the leisure to sit for hours and observe, still there would come a time when I would feel hunger or thirst. Then what? Well, then I would wander into the kitchen and make a meal or pour myself some water.
Yet without preparation, how could I do that? How did the refrigerator get there, the pipes that allow water to flow from the city or the well? Who bought or cooked the food, made the cups, mined the steel for silverware?
Clearly, Suzuki isn’t saying we should plan nothing, build nothing, or prepare nothing.
I think of what my first Buddhist teacher told me, that it’s not that we don’t make plans, but that we do so mindfully. We are aware that we are here, planning. The pencil feels solid in our fingers, the ideas open in our minds like flowers, and the list grows. We look toward some future but stand solidly in the present moment.
Gone for Naught
That makes sense, but I don’t think it’s enough. Suzuki is inviting us to recognize that this could be our last moment alive. This moment, and then this one, and then everything is gone. We must let go, let the universe itself slip through our fingers, the list go unfinished, the fence not mended, the book not written, the love not expressed. That is life. To do and then not to do, knowing that even if we strive for something—a degree, a marriage, a child—we only exist in this place and time. It’s amazing how our bodies hold their shape though they evolve as the years carry us, collecting wrinkles and fat if we live long enough. Eventually, they can do it no longer, and they disintegrate along with our dreams. All our preparation goes for naught.
A squirrel has entered the garden. It seems to be searching, perhaps trying to find that nut it buried a few months ago. I watched it then, too, or one very much like it. The squirrels prepare for a winter so harsh they will need their food stores, apparently not realizing how mild our Northwest winters have grown. Is their preparation also for naught?
I think of archaeological digs, of pottery and stone and the bones of ancient peoples gone for so long their names have turned to dust. Years ago, I read about a group of perhaps eight or ten who died together, buried in what appeared to be a natural disaster. They were in the middle of eating a meal. They had hunted and gathered and cooked, preparing food they never finished. Was that for naught, as well? Or is it enough that they lived and breathed and held hands and told stories and made love?
Because We Are Here
I suspect I’m thinking too hard about this. Live in the moment, Suzuki tells us. Know that death is as close as the next blink of your eye. All we do and all we think will fade. This instant of breathing and noticing and sharing is important all by itself. No matter if we are mesmerized by the birds, building a cathedral, or running a meeting of Parliament, this moment has meaning not because it leads to something else, but because it is the moment in which we live.
The trick, it seems, is to move forth in constant mindfulness, if indeed we unenlightened ones can figure out how to do that. Mindfulness matters not because it will lower our blood pressure or help us know the mind of God, but because only by living in this moment, do we truly live.
That we have bodies and breath is an incredible gift. Let’s use this gift to live a life, a full, vibrant, and mindful life. Suzuki offers insight about how to enjoy the journey for its own sake, not because it prepares us for something else, like heaven or reincarnation, but simply because we are here.
In faith and fondness,
Barbara
Credits
- Suzuki, Shunryu, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice, New York: Weatherhill, 1973.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao
Copyright © 2023 Barbara E. Stevens. All Rights Reserved.