‘Returning is the motion of Tao’-Tao Te Ching

 

Out with the old, in with the new…

 

The seasons have come full circle once again, and the New Year comes kicking and screaming from the proverbial womb, fresh and supple; ready to bend to our wills in any way we see fit to bend it.

 

The New Year celebration is one of death and rebirth; the acknowledgement that the never ending cycle spins and spins, constantly in rotation.

 

Out with the old, in with the new…

 

But, is it really ‘new’? Does the cycle represent an actual ‘newness’, or just the recycling of the old? Ecclesiastical wisdom tells us that there really is nothing new under the sun, but yet, we still celebrate this freshness and newness every year with a fervor and joviality that often surpasses even our independence celebrations. Perhaps, unconsciously, this fervor for the New Year is symbolic of our desire to beat death. Perhaps, when the new lunar cycle comes rising from the ashes of the old like a phoenix, it lights in our imaginations the possibilities of rebirth and drives us to celebrate this ‘cheating of death’. Maybe it is just all a charade, and we are attempting to trick ourselves into believing that death can be cheated.

 

In Taoist thought, time is thought of as cyclical, not linear as in most western conceptualizations. In a cyclical time frame, there can be no end, physically, because time just revolves around and comes back on itself; an endless circle. In Chinese society, the New Year is one of the most celebrated holidays because it is rich in symbolic meaning. The New Year is at once the end and the beginning of the cycle. So, in essence, it is not really a ‘New Year’ at all, but merely another revolution on the wheel of time. The New Year, in a purely Taoist outlook, could be seen as the completion of the Yin/Yang cycle.

 

I have discussed the significance of the Yin/Yang as it relates to the change of seasons at length on this blog before, but for clarity, here is a simplified explanation. Yin represents the black side of the circle; it is passive, dark, night, death. Yang is the white side; active, light, day, life. The proper view of the Yin/Yang is with Yang on the left and rising, while Yin is on the right and always descending. This symbolizes the idea that energy flows in a clockwise motion, and also that light, or heat, rises, while darkness, or coolness, settles. Now, if you can visualize this in your mind, it should be easy for you to conceptualize the change of seasons as they relate to the Yin/Yang. There are four stages of the cycle: full Yin, Yin into Yang, full Yang, and Yang into Yin. The correlating seasons for those stages are, respectively, Winter, Spring, Summer, & Fall. Each season, each phase of the cycle is merely a stage of the previous season as well as the following season; no one phase, or season, stands independently on its own in the cycle, as each contains seeds of the one before it and the one after it (these ‘seeds’ are the ‘eyes’ seen in each half of the symbol). Looked at in this light, it should be easy to discern the feasibility of seeing every day as New Year’s day, and, hence, a day for celebration.

 

The Zen Buddhist monk and author Thich Nhat Hanh once wrote: ‘Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.’ As we sit poised on the threshold of the year 2007, we have so many ‘brand new’ moments before us; it is my sincerest hope that we can find it within us to make the vow that Thich Nhat Han set out for us, and look upon the entire world with eyes of compassion. It is, I believe, in doing this that we will find the true reason to celebrate. Not ‘celebration’ in the sense that we usually think of it, but the type of celebration that Thomas Merton spoke of in his essay ‘The Street is for Celebration*’, where he said:

 

‘But celebration is not for the alone.

 

To pull down the blind and empty the bottle and lie on the floor in a stupor: this may help you forget the street for awhile, but it is surrender. It is the crowning submission, the acceptance of powerlessness, willingness to admit you are a nothing. The alienated city isolates men from one another in despair, lovelessness, defeat. It is crowded with people who are not present to each other: it is like a desert, although it is full of people.

 

Celebration is not noise. It is not a spinning head. It is not just individual kicks.

 

It is the creation of a common identity, a common consciousness.

 

Celebration is everybody making joy.

 

Not as duty (you can’t manufacture joy out of the duty to have fun.)

 

Celebration is when we let joy make itself out of our love.

 

We like to be together. We like to dance together. We like to make pretty and amusing things. We like to laugh at what we have made. We like to put bright colors on the walls—more bright colors on ourselves. We like our pictures, they are crazy. Celebration is crazy: the craziness of our not submitting even though “they”, “the others”, the ones who make life impossible, seem to have all the power. Celebration is the beginning of confidence, therefore of power.

 

When we laugh at them, when we celebrate, when we make our lives beautiful, when we give one another joy by loving, by sharing, then we manifest a power they cannot touch. We can be the artisans of a joy they never imagined.

 

We can build a fire of happiness in this city that will put them to shame.

 

They with their gold have turned our lives into rubble. But we with love will set our lives on fire and turn the rubble back into gold. This time the gold will have real worth. It will not be just crap that came out of the earth. It will be the infinite value of human identity flaming up in a heart that is confident in loving. That is the beginning of power. That is the beginning of the transformation. One day, you’ll see!’

 

So, as we see in the New Year, I will not make the usual un-kept resolutions, but a solemn vow. I will vow to view each day, indeed each moment, as at once a victory and  a defeat, as a birth and a death, an opportunity gained and an opportunity missed. I vow to be fully aware in each moment of the rise and fall of the Yin and Yang, and to see all beings through new eyes of compassion. I vow to be a vehicle for peace, compassion, and love, and to celebrate life. I will strive to be a constant reminder to all that their value is more than that of ‘worldly’ goods, for their value is life which is born of love.  I will celebrate you and your value. I will strive for that day when we can all come together and adorn the walls and ourselves with bright colors, laughing crazily in pure joy and love. I will strive to be a constant reminder to you, my friends, my family, that we must not submit to those who would render us powerless and that our power lays in our capacity to love. And finally, I vow to do my best to imbue you with a new reason to celebrate the New Year.

 

Not as a celebration of cheating death, but as a celebration of living fully.

 

And I will carry with me always the hope that Merton was right when he said: ‘One day, you’ll see!’ because I dearly want to.

 

peace, wayf

 

* ‘The Street is for Celebration’ appears in the posthumously published book ‘Love and Living’, © 1979 by the Trustees of the Merton Legacy Trust

 

Happy New Year, one and all!

Dec., 31, 2006

It never ceases to amaze me how smart this little Pug is.

I know there are people who do not understand how someone could dote over their pets, but I don't really consider him as a 'pet'.

He's my little buddy!

Happy fourth birthday, Jesse!

peace, wayf

 

Long ago, there was a place I hiked frequently. It was a trail in a Texas State Park that wound along a creek bed and weaved in and out of Live and Red Oaks, Cedars, and Cotton Woods, up slight embankments and down steep ravines. At points, it crossed over the creek—sometimes there were makeshift bridges made from the trunks of fallen oaks and sand bags, where the water ran deep, and other places the trail just ran right through the creek itself. At one point, the trail ran down to the creek bed and turned sharply right along the course of the stream for a few feet before careening back and heading up a steep embankment, leaving the creek to go ‘round the hill and come back up to run alongside the trail again. Just as you thought you could go no further, you were faced with the tallest hill on the trail, straight up for at least ten or twelve feet. At the top of the hill, there was a small clearing cut out in a stand of tall Cedars with a little bench you could sit on and enjoy the view. Across from the bench, the hill sloped off gradually and was covered with white rocks and cacti. Further down the side of the hill, the Cedars were thick, and reached out in all directions, as Cedars do, with their eternally green appendages, while their heads attempted to touch the clear blue Texas sky. The trail continued on to the left, as you sat on the bench, and meandered its way down the hill, and out of sight…

 

I remember the very first time I hiked that trail. I saw a scraggly, brownish colored coyote dashing through the underbrush as my friends and I made our way along the creek bed and two gigantic wild turkeys crossed the trail directly in front of us at one point. It was November, and the air was brisk but not cold. Sitting on that hilltop surrounded on all sides by tall Cedars, it was easy to forget that you were just a stone’s throw from civilization. And the trail’s disappearing act down the hill was, on my first visit, a source of almost ecstatic joy. The excitement of not knowing what lay over that ridge (how much further ‘til the end? what’s at the end? does it ever end?) compelled me to keep going, though by that time my legs were like rubber bands and dusk was burgeoning.

 

There was an almost primal need to know.

 

There’s something to be said for not knowing, for not having the answers to every question, for “flying blind” in most situations. In the first place, it is the absence of knowledge that drives us to seek knowledge. One can not be learned without first being ignorant. It is only by admitting to ourselves that we are, in fact, ignorant that we can ever hope to gain new knowledge. One of my mentors in the Blues once told me “if you ever feel like you ain’t got no more learnin’ to do, you might as well put the guitar down and go find something else”. The true artist, the true student, the true seeker of wisdom never stops learning, never stops looking for that next spot on the trail where it disappears over the ridge line. If you ever feel like you have reached the end of the trail, that there are no more bluffs to climb, you might as well find another trail.

 

Up and over the ridge, the trail went down the side of the hill and immediately went back into a steep climb after crossing the stream for the last time as it disappeared into the Cedars and Oaks. Up and up, the trail wound up the next hill and leveled out at the top, Cedars to the left and a steep embankment to the right. Here, we could see that we were almost level with the tree line, and that the trail was, ever so slowly, still climbing. Up ahead, a hair pin curve that jutted out toward the embankment and slipped around a large outcropping of rocks to the left of the trail filled us with yet more eager anticipation as we wondered what was around that corner. As we made the turn, we could see that the trail made an “s” in front of us and led into a thick stand of Cedars. On the other side of that stand of trees, we hit pay dirt.

 

Standing atop a sheer cliff that stood well above the trees, and looking out over a crystalline lake to our right, a spillway in front of us, and a frisky, bubbling creek that ran off into the woods to our left. For a brief moment, we were at peace with the trail, for it had indeed ended with a sight worth seeing. Above our heads, Red-Tailed Hawks and buzzards performed aerial ballets of sheer grace and beauty. Over the trees, out to the east, thick, white clouds of smoke rose up where the rock quarry was, and the ribbon of the old two-lane highway was just barely visible. On the lake, a group of ducks were floating languidly, occasionally going tails up into the water and coming back up. The cool air hitting the water made a thin, white filament of fog that seemed from that vantage point to separate us from the ground, and gave the impression of walking in clouds. A quick look to the left revealed, however, that we had not found the trail’s end after all, for it meandered its way down the rocky slope and trailed off into the distance side by side with the stream.

 

“I wonder what that leads to…” I mused out loud.

 

Knowledge is important. With knowledge of how the world works, we acquire the means needed to survive. Every turn we come to, every ridge that stands before us, offers the opportunity to us to learn more survival skills. Sometimes, though, we display a tendency to raise ourselves a bit too high after acquiring only a small bit of knowledge. “Ignorant” has become a pejorative term in our society. We look at ignorance as being stupid, dumb, or lazy. The people I am concerned for, however, are not those who can freely admit ignorance, but those who refuse to accept their ignorance, for they are the truly dangerous ones. Ignorance is not laziness, but, just as Webster’s defines it, “a lack of knowledge or experience.” If we look at that definition in the broadest sense possible, doesn’t it lead us to the realization that all of us are ignorant to some degree?

 

We all looked at the trail as it descended down the hill and ran off through the woods hand in hand with the gleefully dancing creek. For a brief moment, we all silently contemplated following the trail to its next destination. The coming of night changed our minds though, and we turned with flashlights in hand and made our way back the way we came. Walking over those same hills and bluffs, crossing the creek in the same places we had just been hours before, trekking slowly back to our campsite, I noticed how everything looked slightly different. The very things I had looked at on the way to the overlook had a new appearance to me. The different lighting, the new angle—those were definitely factors—but, there was also something inexplicable about the difference. In all the years that have passed since, I can still look back on that day and recall that sense of wonder I felt. There was still a ridge to climb, still something that lay beyond my field of knowledge on that trail, and one day I would be able to come back there and look at it all with new eyes.

 

There is definitely something to be said for not knowing.

It was one of those days.

 

You know the kind—a sky so blue it almost hurts to look at, just a few cirrus clouds like tattered strands of white tissue paper floating languidly through the firmament, and a cool, crisp breeze that soothes the skin as it whispers passed.

 

Yeah, one of those days.

 

I stood, small in comparison, gazing at the perfection of the imperfectly random cloud formations as they meandered listlessly through the azure heavens, and wondered—perhaps wandered—at the marvel that was earth. Pensive and unsure, like an ant must feel as it gazes upon our skyscrapers and roadways—but strangely I was calm; as if I had come home.

 

‘Coming home’: what images that phrase conjures in our minds! Warm hearths, warmer hugs—seeing those we are close to and assuring ourselves that all is well ‘at home’.

 

As I stared upward the clear sky looked like a lake turned in on itself. I felt invited, as if the whole of the earth had reached its loving arms around me in a fond embrace, whispering ‘welcome home’ on the soothing breeze.

 

Back in the apartment, seated in front of a computer screen writing a description of a blue sky and feeling the futility of attempting such a description in my gut.

 

Behind me and to my left, the television chatters away, heard but not listened to.

 

An oscillating fan whirs silently back and forth, bringing with it welcome blasts of moving air as it turns my way; fleeting, but comfortable.

 

At my feet a softly snoring Pug and another hidden across the room. The sounds of their breath rising and falling, coupled with the breath of my napping wife, sometimes in unison but more often in complete discord, calls to mind the randomly perfect wisps of clouds as they floated along on the unseen breath of the Universe.

 

The profundity of the mundane—the complexity of silence—comes crashing in around me in welcome blasts of moving air from a softly whirring dollar store fan and the sound of three beautiful beings as they sleep.

 

I feel invited.

 

I hear the whispers on their breath saying ‘welcome home’.

 

peace, wayf

 

P/S:

 

Here's hoping that all of you found your way safely home this Holiday Season, from Mrs. w, myself, & the Pugs.

 

P/P/S:

 

To all of my Christian friends, a Very Merry Christmas.

 

To all of those who are not Christian, Happy Holidays.

 

And a heartfelt thank you to all who dropped Holiday Greetings in my inbox.

 

I've been very busy for the last couple of weeks, but I am back now!

 

“He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.  There is nothing more tragic in the modern world than the misuse of power and action to which men are driven by their own Faustian misunderstandings and misapprehensions. We have more power at our disposal today than we have ever had, and yet we are more alienated and estranged from the inner ground of meaning and of love than we have ever been.”

 

-Thomas Merton

 

peace, wayf