I will abandon laziness for which life has no time,

enter, undistracted, the path of listening and hearing,

reflection and contemplation, and meditation,

making perceptions and mind the path,

and realize the “three kayas”: the enlightened mind.

Now that l have once attained a human body,

there is no time on the path for the mind to wander.

Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava

i. What does this mean to me?

I’m on a mission this year. My goal is to knit 75 hats and scarves by winter time to be donated. Before this my knitting was different. I’d have two or three projects going at the same time. I guess you could say I wasn’t focused. I would just knit whatever I felt like working on whenever I sat down to knit. But it’s different now. Somewhere out there are seventy-five people that I could make the winter more comfortable for. With this in mind, I only have one project going at a time – the hats and scarves. Even though it’s only July, I feel a sense of urgency about this project. You could say I’m more focused.

In these last two lines the writer lets us know that “. . . there is no time on the path for the mind to wander”. Why is that? Because the writer has “…attained a human body.” What does this mean? Is the writer a werewolf who turns into a wolf at full moons? I think it’s far simpler than that. We have this expression in our daily speech, “In my former life, I was . . .”. For me it would be “In my former life I lived in South Florida, land of hurricanes and tropical depressions.”

For better or worse, we are always changing. Was I more human when I lived in Florida? I would say I was a different human because that was a kind of Hell realm for me. The suffering was so intense that all I could think about was self-preservation.

Whether or not you believe that your karmic stream continues after the death of the physical body, we can understand what the writer is saying here. He is at a point in his life where simply surviving is not his whole concern. Now he can turn to the concerns of being human. What is our responsibility as human beings in samsara? It is nothing less than the liberation and enlightenment of every sentient being in samsara. Is this possible in the span of one’s lifetime? Probably not. But it is a sufficient goal to bring our minds into focus. As the writer tells us, “There is no time on the path for the mind to wander.” Not when liberation and enlightenment of every being is the whole of the path.

ii. How would I explain this to someone else?

I’d start by saying that the mind is very easy to distract when there is nothing to focus on. What if you wanted to become a race car driver? You’d be all over the internet researching. Google would be your best friend. You’d visit racetracks just to see what goes on there. You would have no end of questions.

In these lines the writer reminds us that the mind works best when focused. For most of us, we go through life focused on things that are mere distractions to the mind. Having encountered the Dharma in this life, and having had the chance to study the Dharma, there is no time to waste.

Once we realize this, our best option is to walk the path without distraction. Wherever we encounter a being suffering in samsara, this is our chance to put the Dharma to work. When we have this kind of focus in our lives, the path becomes our life, and our life becomes the path. The path is a process that proceeds gradually, with our every act a step on the way to liberation and enlightenment.

iii. How do I bring this into my life?

No matter what we believe about our lifetime, we are always beginning anew in every brand new moment. These moments taken together make what we call a ‘life’. In my former life, I had absolutely no time to study anything or even think of anything except my own survival from moment to moment. The uncertainty and fear in my life crowded out all other concerns.

But now, I have had the amazing good fortune of studying the Dharma. I’d like to say that in this new life I take every possible moment to learn and study the Dharma. This isn’t the case. Like most, my mind is distracted by samsara. But as I move through this life and live the path, I make a deliberate effort to remember that we are all suffering in samsara.

I bring this into my life by deliberately bringing to mind that there is no time to waste now that I have the Dharma in my life. I follow this strong intention by making the most of each encounter with a sentient being. I treat them with empathy and respect and most importantly I remind myself over and over that there is no time to waste. Even in the smallest quickest encounter with a sentient being we have a chance to make a difference.