In his book, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching , the well known Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh points to the Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Live Alone as a wonderful example of important teachings central to mindfulness practice, even suggesting that it should be read once per week. At a glance, the metaphor of the way to “live alone” appears to suggest that it is best to live a solitary life, but this is not at all what it is teaching.

Here is the poem in the Sutra, as translated by Thich Nhat Hanh:

Do not pursue the past.

Do not lose yourself in the future.

The past no longer is.

The future has not yet come.

Looking deeply at life as it is

in the very here and now,

the practitioner dwells

in stability and freedom.

We must be diligent today.

To wait until tomorrow is too late.

Death comes unexpectedly.

How can we bargain with it?

The sage calls a person who

dwells in mindfulness

night and day

“the one who knows

the better way to live alone.”

If we divide it into sections, each can be seen to present a different idea.

Do not pursue the past.

Do not lose yourself in the future.

The past no longer is.

The future has not yet come.

The first section reminds us that the present moment is all that truly exists. The past is just the present that was, and it is no longer. It is just a memory in the present. The future is just a field of potential – it does not exist beyond our mental simulations of it. When it becomes real it is no longer the future, it is the present. The past and future matter only insofar as they are related to the present. By focusing on the present, how it evolved from the past and how it continues to change into the future at every moment, we can actually be more tuned-in to both the past and the future than we can by losing ourselves in ruminations about them.

Looking deeply at life as it is

in the very here and now,

the practitioner dwells

in stability and freedom.

The second section reminds us of what happens when we are attentive to the present. Remaining lost in the replaying of past experiences, or worry about futures that may never come, means we aren’t seeing reality. We are indulging in fantasies. The more we indulge without squaring them with the reality of the present, the further from reality they stray and the more difficult it becomes to deal intelligently with the world. By remaining firmly planted in the present, we keep a stable sense of reality and we aren’t taken by surprise when challenges arise. Without the baggage of being stuck on the past or the anxieties of needless worry about the future, we are allowed to exercise a much wider breadth of choice and we are more free because if it. Both the words “stability” and “freedom” here demonstrate two distinct key benefits of present moment awareness.

We must be diligent today.

To wait until tomorrow is too late.

Death comes unexpectedly.

How can we bargain with it?

The third section reminds us that putting off attending to the present moment is a contradiction because tomorrow itself is a fiction. By the time tomorrow actually becomes a reality, it is the present. So if we are putting off being mindful in the present, we are going to have the same urge in the present moment of “tomorrow”. It’s also possible that the future opportunity may never materialize for us at all. We are going to die at some point, but we don’t know when. How can we know if that day is tomorrow? We have a tendency to extrapolate our fortune of being alive in the present moment into the future precisely because the present moment is all we can experience. It is impossible for us to imagine what it feels like to not exist so our minds default to feeling like we will always be here. But life does halt for each of us at some point. Our present moment will not continue forever – we can’t bargain with that fact – so the time to experience life deeply is always right now.

The sage calls a person who

dwells in mindfulness

night and day

“the one who knows

the better way to live alone.”

The last section suggests a metaphor (and title) for the Sutra, by which we can remember the significant points it makes. Finding a better way to live alone is not meant to say we should dwell physically or socially alone. It is significant that the metaphor suggests a “better way” because it is meant be distinguished from the more conventional interpretation of living “alone”. At the time of the Buddha, it was common for spiritual seekers to become ascetic or hermetic, and renounce the world of people and things. The metaphor draws upon the familiarity people had with these hermetic practices, highlighting the contrast between the strategy of social isolation and the truly useful practice of mindful awareness the Sutra is encouraging. The metaphor is that our ruminations about the past and future are living with us night and day, accompanying us everywhere we go and inserting themselves into our lives. And they are not serving us well. It is better to dwell in mindfulness without these unwelcome roommates. It is only in this sense that the Sutra is suggesting it is better to live alone than with company.

While the traditional teachings of Buddhism emphasized the importance of cultivating a healthy social world, that emphasis is sometimes lost when the teachings are adapted for secular practices of mindfulness. I see this as a problem not because it cherry picks from the wisdom of the tradition, but because it contradicts what we already know about the importance of maintaining and strengthening healthy social bonds. This is something that the emerging western culture of mindfulness would do well to put a stronger emphasis on, and it’s something I would like to explore further in this blog.