The New Year Is
Now
Sister Ocean
Buddhistdoor Global | 2016-12-30 |
The
turning of the year is a natural time to pause and reflect on our
lives, be it for the lunar or the Gregorian calendar. Many people
prepare by cleaning or making resolutions. Some are excited about a
new job or a new child, while others are living without food or
shelter. But one thing holds true for everyone: none of us knows
what the New Year will actually bring. The Buddha’s teaching on
impermanence may seem redundant here, but I think this is the
perfect time to examine it it more closely.
No matter how many times I think I’ve understood
the truth of impermanence, I find another corner of my mind that
has attached to some sort of permanence, be it a certainty about
someone’s character that I dislike, an opinion about politics, or a
hidden belief about my own powerlessness. I know that the weather
is always changing and I might remember that I, too, am always
changing, but when it comes to what (and who) I like and dislike,
it’s so easy to forget the impermanent nature of all phenomena. I
also find myself caught in expectation-laden notions of
impermanence, such as: “This headache is bound to change, I wish it
would change now!” or “I know that this person standing before me
is capable of change and has the same Buddha Nature as all beings,
why doesn't he start acting like it?” Wherever there is a confused
notion of impermanence, suffering is bound to ensue.
Long live impermanence!
Teachings on impermanence bring us face to face
with the mental habit of trying to control and shape our
environment to match our preferences, and our assumption that these
strategies will bring about a lasting happiness. If you’ve ever
raised a child, faced a serious illness, or been with someone as
they died, it becomes painfully clear that controlling other people
or even our own lives is not actually possible. As my teacher, the
Venerable Master Thich Nhat Hanh, has written in his commentary on
the Heart Sutra:
If we use our intelligence and insight, we can
see how crucial impermanence is to life. If things weren’t
impermanent, your situation couldn’t change, a child couldn’t grow
up, a grain of corn would never become an ear of corn to eat. It’s
not a negative note of music, it’s rather positive, because thanks
to impermanence, everything is possible. Your disease can be cured,
a regime characterized by dictatorship can change, we can do
something to reverse the course of global warming—otherwise global
warming would be there forever. Because of impermanence, there is
hope.
So instead of complaining about impermanence, we
must say: “long live impermanence!” The insight of impermanence can
liberate us from much of our fear, sorrow, anger, and our feelings
of separation. Knowing that everything is impermanent, we’re less
attached to it. Flowers are beautiful, but when a flower dies, we
don’t cry a lot. We know that flowers are impermanent. When we
practice that awareness, we suffer much less. And we enjoy being
alive much more. Knowing that things are impermanent, we will
cherish them in the present moment. (Nhat Hanh 2012,
299)
Try it now
Knowing that 2017 is impermanent, can we cherish
each moment? Can we at least cherish more moments? Mindfulness
practices are a direct and accessible way to cherish each moment
more fully. There’s nothing to wait for. Try it now. Take a deep
breath. Notice the sensation of breathing in the body. Relax your
shoulders. When thoughts arise, notice them and then bring
awareness back to the breath, with kindness.
Bring something to mind that you are naturally
grateful for. Let this grow into a deeper joy and let that joy feed
you. Then bring awareness back to the breath, with
kindness.
Feel the parts that are in pain and allow them
to be as they are. Make space for the emotional and physical pain
that is part of life. I like to say a silent “okay” to myself. Do
it now. And again. Then bring awareness back to the breath, with
kindness. A mindful year is simply one that is lived
fully.
Mindfulness is not an individual
matter
While mindfulness can bring more joy into our
lives, maintaining a practice does not prevent us from suffering.
We don’t know what will happen in 2017, but there will be suffering
and there will be joy. Wars will begin, and continue, and end. Some
refugees will find safe shelter and others will not. Children will
be born and some will die. People will get sick and some will be
cured. People will marry and some will get divorced. People will
commit suicide and some will help prevent suicide. The world is
endlessly filled with joy and sorrow and more.
We cannot control it all and if this realization
does not bring up fear at some point, you are either completely
enlightened or else you are still fighting the fear. It is easy to
avoid. Our minds are great masters at distraction and denial. The
people who say they have no fear are most likely the ones who have
been able to avoid it, whereas the most courageous people I know
face fear all the time and are not controlled by it. This is a very
big difference.
As David Loy writes in Money, Sex, War, Karma,
“Believing that mindfulness means attentiveness only to my
immediate surrounding, and placing such limits on our awareness, is
really another version of the basic problem: our sense of
separation from each other and the world we are “in.” (Loy 2008,
81) Avoid trying to draw lines between “your practice” and “the
world.” There is no choice to make between caring for the world and
caring for yourself—you are part of the world; the world is part of
you. The challenge is learning to live and practice in a way that
allows you to care for all beings at once. When you do this, the
lines between “inside” and “outside” will become blurred and
finally removed, dissolving all fear.
Are you sure?
One way to carry the contemplation of
impermanence and uncertainty into daily life is to ask ourselves
from time to time, “Are you sure?” This is especially important
when we are suffering. This is not a question of negation but a
tool to bring us into the present moment and out of endless
thoughts of sorrow, anxiety, and doubt.
Looking to the New Year, what are you hoping
for? Then ask yourself, “Are you sure?” Are you really sure that
the thing you want will make you happy? It might, yet it might not.
Both possibilities are okay. It is the asking that’s
important.
Likewise, what are you dreading in 2017? And ask
again, “Are you sure?” Are you sure the thing you really do not
want to happen will prevent you from experiencing peace, joy, and
true love in the next year? In seeing things as they are, much
anxiety vanishes because our fears are usually worse than any
possible reality. And when reality is worse than our fears, we need
all the courage and compassion available to survive, to heal, and
to thrive.
In the brilliant Radical Dharma, Reverend angel
Kyoto williams asks, “What places are you not feeling? What part of
you are you rejecting? What aspect of you are you not loving? What
truth are you not willing to accept?” (williams, Owens, and
Syedullah 2016, 96) Rather than looking at how to make our lives
more comfortable or our paycheck bigger in 2017, we practitioners
on the Buddhist path can take these questions to guide ourselves
into moments of aliveness that eventually string together to become
a year well-lived, present to enjoy what there is to be enjoyed,
ready to respond to tragedy and suffering with the strength to be
vulnerable and the courage to heal, remembering that all is subject
to change.
Each moment is new and yet connected to every
other moment, past and future. They cannot exist without each
other. We cannot exist without each other. It is always a New Year,
and we, too, are always new. Don’t wait for a specific day to begin
living deeply, living fully. The New Year is our very life, always
changing. The New Year is NOW.