I was thinking about how much our Dharma practice gives us in terms of discerning what really is an opportunity for us. First, holding precepts helps to clarify where we want to go. Somebody says, “I want you to come run my bar.” or “I want you to come to be the lead singer in this rock and roll band.” Those decisions are clearly made. That is the first level of trying to discern what is an opportunity.

The more we spend our time thinking about the meditation on death and impermanence, the more it makes us think about what is important, what we value, and what we want to have done. There is an interesting exercise someone proposed once. If I knew I were going to die 1,000 days from today, what do I want to accomplish in those 1,000 days? That makes things get way narrower. Then if an opportunity comes that fulfils one of those things, with no hesitation, you will do it. Doing that meditation, amongst its many other benefits, makes us clear about what is important and how to take the opportunities when they come.

Look at the meditations on developing bodhicitta. We get very clear that we want to develop equanimity, and we want to develop love and compassion for every single being. We want to do what is beneficial for larger groups than “me” or “me and my best friend” or “me and my little group”. As we begin to expand our awareness and then our commitment to being of benefit to a wider and wider range of people, it also gets clearer what opportunities are going to benefit whom. We can better assess how great the benefit of any particular opportunity would be. The Buddha could look at a wonderful opportunity to co-lead a meditation community and say very clearly, “Well, it’s good for these guys but it doesn’t really help all sentient beings. I think I’ll keep going.”

Our decisions and our opportunities may not be that big right this minute, but they will be someday. It is important to use the Dharma as a way of assessing what we do and how we make our choices. When we have thought about it, when that window opens, we do not waste time going, “Well, should I or shouldn’t I do that?” If the window is only open this long, and we spend a lot of time procrastinating that is an opportunity we have lost for this life.

It is a practical application of Dharma. How we use this thinking to guide ourselves moment by moment and to see the opportunities as they arise. Because they come all the time. They come every day. Which ones do we take? Which ones are for the benefit of ourselves and all beings? And which ones can we just say, “Well, I must have been a rock singer sometime, but not in this life.”

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