Zen Bucket List

As the new year begins, many people reevaluate their lives and then set new goals for themselves. For some, it takes the form of a bucket list of things you want to do or accomplish before you die. For some, the list is short and to the point; for others, the list could be very long.

Is it possible to live your life in a way so that there is no need for a bucket list, because you are already doing everything you want, right now? Moment by moment?

To answer this question, we need to determine what exactly it is that you want to do.

In Zen Buddhism, we train to let go of desires, to let go of attachments. The second of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths teaches that suffering come from craving, from wanting.[i] But, because nothing is permanent and everything is constantly changing, there is nothing to which to attach.

Does this include what you might otherwise include on your bucket list? Like going on that long-planned trip to the Nordic Countries, learning to play the piano or becoming a parent? In a word: yes.

Let’s consider one example: taking a trip to Norway, Sweden and Finland. You put together a wonderful itinerary for the trip, which includes every historic site you want to visit, every restaurant you want to try, every museum you hope to see. Before you can depart, however, a deadly pandemic forces you to cancel the whole trip.

If you remain attached to the desire to go on this trip, your disappointment will be great. If instead you let go of that desire to go there, now the change in plans is just something to which you adapt.

In this example, it means do not attach to wanting to go there and at the same time, do not attach to not-wanting to go to there. Go to Norway? All right. Not go to Norway? Also, all right.

To not want and to not not-want. There is no duality of want and not-want, of yes and no,

To live like this, we must approach each moment as the only moment. Only is not the same as last. To live like this does not mean living as if you are going to die in the next moment. There is no next moment; there is only just this moment. Just now, just here.

What matters is what we say, do and think right now; and then that moment is gone. Now embrace the next here-now and let it go; then embrace the next here-now and let it go. What is hard to intellectually envision is that there is actually no next here-now. There is just here, just now.

By living moment by moment, then what is there that is left undone? Yes, we can make a bucket list with the thought that we may be able to check off items before we die. Yet, the future does not exist; it is just an idea. A bucket list represents a hope of things that may or may not come. By living just here-now, everything you want to do equals everything you are now doing.  

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[i] *The Four Noble Truths are: 1. The Truth of Suffering; 2. The Truth of the Cause of Suffering; 3. The Truth of the End of Suffering; 4. The Truth of the Path to Ending Suffering. (Just to be clear, in fact, going even deeper, we should ask, “Who is that wants? Who is it that suffers?” – but that’s an article for another time.)