Great Round of Life
Everything we do takes place within the Great Round of Life. Each day we turn with the earth as it revolves on its axis, lighten with the day and darken into the night. Each time it rains or the wind begins to blow we are changed. Moods and the weather come and go; the seasons of our lives pass one into the next. We carry the ocean in our blood, and the stars in our hands.
All around us, the wheel turns. The arc of the sun flattens across the sky. The moon thins and swells. The skies fill with the migrations of geese and the waters with the journeys of whale and salmon. Elk and their cousins flow over the land. Orchards flower, fruit, and go quiet again.
Each time we meditate, each time we come together in retreat, it is another chance to take our place in the great round of life. How is it now? What is this season like? Over and over again, there is the possibility of coming home, just by noticing, and caring about what we find.
All around us, the wheel turns. The arc of the sun flattens across the sky. The moon thins and swells. The skies fill with the migrations of geese and the waters with the journeys of whale and salmon. Elk and their cousins flow over the land. Orchards flower, fruit, and go quiet again.
Each time we meditate, each time we come together in retreat, it is another chance to take our place in the great round of life. How is it now? What is this season like? Over and over again, there is the possibility of coming home, just by noticing, and caring about what we find.
Spring
It's spring. The air is warm and full of the vanilla scent of ponderosa pine. Wildflowers emerge from the still-bare ground. Life persists, and rain and cold winds are woven into treebark warm to the touch, and the sun a little longer in the sky each day. Let that tender persistence of life carry you--because it does, so you might as well enjoy it.
In this season we celebrate Easter and Passover and the return of Persephone from the underworld, and in our tradition, the birth of the Buddha. Which reminds us that every moment, if we let it, is the potential rebirth of the world. Whatever else is going on, every year the world knits itself together again--silence and frost become the electric green tips on the redwood branches and tiny birds in their nests. The sheer exuberance of it all, the crazy joy life takes in itself--that is spring mood itself, as the old koan says.
It's spring. The air is warm and full of the vanilla scent of ponderosa pine. Wildflowers emerge from the still-bare ground. Life persists, and rain and cold winds are woven into treebark warm to the touch, and the sun a little longer in the sky each day. Let that tender persistence of life carry you--because it does, so you might as well enjoy it.
In this season we celebrate Easter and Passover and the return of Persephone from the underworld, and in our tradition, the birth of the Buddha. Which reminds us that every moment, if we let it, is the potential rebirth of the world. Whatever else is going on, every year the world knits itself together again--silence and frost become the electric green tips on the redwood branches and tiny birds in their nests. The sheer exuberance of it all, the crazy joy life takes in itself--that is spring mood itself, as the old koan says.
Summer
Summer has always been a time to mark the wheel of life's turning : the earth revolving on its axis, the changing arc of the sun across the sky, the swelling and thinning of the moon, orchards flowering, fruiting, and going quiet again.
We once believed that we had a place in this great turning, that part of our human job was to do the proper ceremonies to help spin the wheel. We asked for visions, each of us, to discover our own true place in this net of life that stretches from the microbes in our guts to the fountain of anti-matter at the center of the galaxy.
What, after all, is our practice but an extended ceremony to discover our true place in the world? It's a ceremony because we acknowledge that there's something to learn that we cannot figure out in the usual ways, that there is a wisdom underneath what our habitual opinions and daily compromises with our own lives can give us. We accompany each other as we go deeply and with courage into the wilderness of our own hearts and minds and bodies, to open to the world's own heart mind body and really listen to what it has to say. This is how we save all beings--by finding our right place, our true work in the whole. There is no more powerful ceremony than this, no greater devotion than this.
A happy turn into the sunny extraversion of summer to you. May you have dew on green leaves, soft evenings, no wildfires, and time to stretch into the good warmth of summer life on this Earth. Don't forget to feed the hungy ghosts on the 15th day of the 7th lunar month.
Summer has always been a time to mark the wheel of life's turning : the earth revolving on its axis, the changing arc of the sun across the sky, the swelling and thinning of the moon, orchards flowering, fruiting, and going quiet again.
We once believed that we had a place in this great turning, that part of our human job was to do the proper ceremonies to help spin the wheel. We asked for visions, each of us, to discover our own true place in this net of life that stretches from the microbes in our guts to the fountain of anti-matter at the center of the galaxy.What, after all, is our practice but an extended ceremony to discover our true place in the world? It's a ceremony because we acknowledge that there's something to learn that we cannot figure out in the usual ways, that there is a wisdom underneath what our habitual opinions and daily compromises with our own lives can give us. We accompany each other as we go deeply and with courage into the wilderness of our own hearts and minds and bodies, to open to the world's own heart mind body and really listen to what it has to say. This is how we save all beings--by finding our right place, our true work in the whole. There is no more powerful ceremony than this, no greater devotion than this.
A happy turn into the sunny extraversion of summer to you. May you have dew on green leaves, soft evenings, no wildfires, and time to stretch into the good warmth of summer life on this Earth. Don't forget to feed the hungy ghosts on the 15th day of the 7th lunar month.
Autumn
In many ways we could see autumn as the pivot point of the year: We gather what has ripened, preserving some of it for the cold days ahead and feasting on the rest. We prune back what has finished, and we place underground those things we hope will bloom in the spring.
The autumn is a liminal time, between the sun-drenched landscape of summer and winter's inward turning. Many people have said that the veil between the worlds grows thin in the autumn, and so we celebrate Hallowe'en and Dîa de los Muertos and All Soul's Day. The ancestors seem near; memories rise; dreams become vivid.
When all the worlds are close, it's a chance to listen for the unexpected voices that come from beyond what we already know. It's a chance to acknowledge once again that there's much more going on than we usually notice, and that that much-more-going-on has its own life and its own momentums. In some parts of Europe they used to say that when the harvest was in, it was time for the Wild Ride; on late autumn nights, the spirit people would ride through the villages and fields, scooping up everything that is extra, no longer has a place, isn't being attended to. That, too, is part of the great round of life, and part of this season.
In the spirit of this time, here are some questions you might want to consider:
-- HARVEST QUESTIONS --
Each year asks something of us and each year gives us something
This year's harvest
At what altars did you worship this year?
What are you harvesting?
What have you sacrificed?
What did you give up willingly, and what do you mourn?
What prayers were answered?
What grace fell unexpectedly into your life?
Between the harvest and the winter solstice is a time of taking stock & settling things before the end of the year
What is left undone...
... that needs completing
When you look into your heart, what is left undone?
What can you set right before the end of the year?
... that needs holding a while longer
Are there questions to which the truest answer is I don't know?
Can you accept the unsettledness and allow the questions to resolve in their own time?
... that needs releasing
What is it time to let go of, to return it to the Tao?
Can you open your hands & let something fall away, so that all of life can take care of it?
In many ways we could see autumn as the pivot point of the year: We gather what has ripened, preserving some of it for the cold days ahead and feasting on the rest. We prune back what has finished, and we place underground those things we hope will bloom in the spring.
The autumn is a liminal time, between the sun-drenched landscape of summer and winter's inward turning. Many people have said that the veil between the worlds grows thin in the autumn, and so we celebrate Hallowe'en and Dîa de los Muertos and All Soul's Day. The ancestors seem near; memories rise; dreams become vivid.
When all the worlds are close, it's a chance to listen for the unexpected voices that come from beyond what we already know. It's a chance to acknowledge once again that there's much more going on than we usually notice, and that that much-more-going-on has its own life and its own momentums. In some parts of Europe they used to say that when the harvest was in, it was time for the Wild Ride; on late autumn nights, the spirit people would ride through the villages and fields, scooping up everything that is extra, no longer has a place, isn't being attended to. That, too, is part of the great round of life, and part of this season.
In the spirit of this time, here are some questions you might want to consider:
Each year asks something of us and each year gives us something
This year's harvest
At what altars did you worship this year?
What are you harvesting?
What have you sacrificed?
What did you give up willingly, and what do you mourn?
What prayers were answered?
What grace fell unexpectedly into your life?
Between the harvest and the winter solstice is a time of taking stock & settling things before the end of the year
What is left undone...
... that needs completing
When you look into your heart, what is left undone?
What can you set right before the end of the year?
... that needs holding a while longer
Are there questions to which the truest answer is I don't know?
Can you accept the unsettledness and allow the questions to resolve in their own time?
... that needs releasing
What is it time to let go of, to return it to the Tao?
Can you open your hands & let something fall away, so that all of life can take care of it?
Winter
In winter we are as far away from the sun as we ever get. The nights are at their longest. We hunch our shoulders against whatever falls from the sky and, if we have one, keep a fire burning most of the time. It's interesting that at just this time when the whole world seems ready to pull up the blankets and doze awhile, many of us are caught up in the swirl of the holidays. There's something touching about the things we mark this time of year: the small light that wouldn't go out in the temple, the birth of the shining child, the morning star rising and igniting the star in Shakyamuni's eye as he sat unmoving under his tree. We mark these things at the beginning of the dark season, as if to affirm our faith in the persistence of the light through the freezes and the storms about to descend.
Having marked them, perhaps we can turn our attention to what it is like to spend a season in the dark. The word solstice means `the sun standing still.' Winter is from a Germanic word meaning `time of water', referring to the rain and snow. So the winter solstice is the sun standing still in the time of water. Even the bright sun must stop in its course when the very air spreads like the sea around it.
The whole earth is stopping, hunkering down, lying fallow. After autumn feasts and end of the year celebrations, we enter a time of fasting. As people move indoors and snow blankets the land or rain drops a curtain around us, things get quieter. It's a time we can really listen, listen for the small voices often drowned out in the wonderful cacophony of sunnier times.
These movements into fasting and concentrated listening are known to us in meditation. The muffled, stripped down world conspires to help us. Like the sun, we sit still and notice the waters stretching in all directions. The old zen texts use another image to speak of this vast expanse that's always there but often hidden: the bare ground, upon which each thing stands in its vividness. The winter field, a seamless expanse of white, and the dark tree silhouetted against it.
This is the season of moving down and in. Of turning our gaze toward what is usually out of sight. Of listening and noticing and sitting still long enough for the things of the depths to begin to swim toward us. Of settling back into the dark and letting it carry us, as though on an underground river. Of tasting the salt tears and the sweetness like chocolate of which that river is made. Of doing all this with no intention, no plan, no big idea of what it might mean or how it might be of use. Winter is the season of the gloriously useless. The dead tree. The frozen stream. The eyeless bulbs under the soil. It is the season of what comes alive when all our ideas of usefulness fall away.
And so I wish you nothing bright or shiny, nothing thrilling or important. Just the small things, the oldest things, the long slow movements and the standing absolutely still of winter. Not flowers but their roots. The light--the light will take care of itself. Attend to the darkness, to the quiet. And perhaps you will hear the earth turn, once again, into the new year, and you along with it.
In winter we are as far away from the sun as we ever get. The nights are at their longest. We hunch our shoulders against whatever falls from the sky and, if we have one, keep a fire burning most of the time. It's interesting that at just this time when the whole world seems ready to pull up the blankets and doze awhile, many of us are caught up in the swirl of the holidays. There's something touching about the things we mark this time of year: the small light that wouldn't go out in the temple, the birth of the shining child, the morning star rising and igniting the star in Shakyamuni's eye as he sat unmoving under his tree. We mark these things at the beginning of the dark season, as if to affirm our faith in the persistence of the light through the freezes and the storms about to descend.
Having marked them, perhaps we can turn our attention to what it is like to spend a season in the dark. The word solstice means `the sun standing still.' Winter is from a Germanic word meaning `time of water', referring to the rain and snow. So the winter solstice is the sun standing still in the time of water. Even the bright sun must stop in its course when the very air spreads like the sea around it.The whole earth is stopping, hunkering down, lying fallow. After autumn feasts and end of the year celebrations, we enter a time of fasting. As people move indoors and snow blankets the land or rain drops a curtain around us, things get quieter. It's a time we can really listen, listen for the small voices often drowned out in the wonderful cacophony of sunnier times.
These movements into fasting and concentrated listening are known to us in meditation. The muffled, stripped down world conspires to help us. Like the sun, we sit still and notice the waters stretching in all directions. The old zen texts use another image to speak of this vast expanse that's always there but often hidden: the bare ground, upon which each thing stands in its vividness. The winter field, a seamless expanse of white, and the dark tree silhouetted against it.
This is the season of moving down and in. Of turning our gaze toward what is usually out of sight. Of listening and noticing and sitting still long enough for the things of the depths to begin to swim toward us. Of settling back into the dark and letting it carry us, as though on an underground river. Of tasting the salt tears and the sweetness like chocolate of which that river is made. Of doing all this with no intention, no plan, no big idea of what it might mean or how it might be of use. Winter is the season of the gloriously useless. The dead tree. The frozen stream. The eyeless bulbs under the soil. It is the season of what comes alive when all our ideas of usefulness fall away.
And so I wish you nothing bright or shiny, nothing thrilling or important. Just the small things, the oldest things, the long slow movements and the standing absolutely still of winter. Not flowers but their roots. The light--the light will take care of itself. Attend to the darkness, to the quiet. And perhaps you will hear the earth turn, once again, into the new year, and you along with it.
