One way to celebrate a birthday is as if you have just been in a place where there’s great danger. You might not have survived, but you have. That’s a miracle. It’s amazing that since the last birthday, over this past year, you did not die. It is miraculous, a surprise that you have survived since birth, and that is something to celebrate. One can think like that.
Then, you can think that you have done many good things, created the cause of enlightenment, and did not die. You created many causes for liberation from samsara, many causes to achieve a good rebirth in your next life, and have done many things to benefit other sentient beings. These things are worth celebrating. These are the real reasons to celebrate a birthday.
If your life has been spent on meaningless or non-virtuous activities, just to achieve your own happiness for this life, then there’s nothing in which to rejoice. If you are going to live that way, there is no point in celebrating the future. There is nothing to celebrate if your life has been like that in the past, either. But realizing that, and determining that from now on, you will purify past negative actions and change your actions, then you can celebrate. So, on your birthday, you decide to develop compassion and more loving kindness to other living beings—that means all sentient beings, including enemies, not just having love and compassion toward those you like or those who like you.
Imitate the Buddha’s holy deeds, and the life stories of others—not only Buddhists— who tamed their own minds, subdued their egos, and only thought of cherishing others. Aspire to become like those with compassion and loving kindness, renunciation, without anger, who practice tolerance and contentment and have brought so much peace and happiness to many sentient beings, and benefit many people.
If you generate that sort of wish, then you can become like those great holy beings, who are the leaders, the givers of peace and happiness to numberless sentient beings. Then a birthday really becomes something to celebrate.
