New Year thoughts

January 7, 2013... a new year. Reprieve from all of the doomsayers and their frenzy of darkness and demise. The End didn't come for the world as so many thought, but it did come for a few on their own appointed day. Death, so much a part of life, yet so feared and lamented over.

I've been reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh called The Miracle of Mindfulness. In it there is a place where he discusses his early days as a young monk in Vietnam. One of the assignments he was given was to watch and meditate over a corpse. Initially the squeamish reality was a distraction, but with time the young monks saw death as simply an event in the cycle of living. Too often we want to cling to life and run from death.

No one can say that the pain of losing a loved one is not going to hurt... it will and it does. Loss is suppose to hurt. It is in our attachment to living that the pain arises. The great Buddha said that we can quell the pain of life only by learning to free ourselves from such attachments. So how does one free one's self form the attachment to living? And does this free us from the sting of death and loss?

I believe the answer for me (at this moment in my life's journey) is that the concept of tragic loss is a resident of my conscious mind. It is a fear of something future, bathed in something past.  But is it really here and now? No. It is the act of thinking "death" that the conscious mind pursues something intangible and out of reach. But the key is not to run and hide from the thought, or, in time, the reality. I believe the answer is in simply accepting and submitting to the concept in the three time periods... past present and future. Realizing that reality is only now. I was sad, I am sad, and I will be sad... and I acknowledge and honor its significance in my life NOW. Knowing that, the pains of life become a part of life, and we can strive to release attachment to them. We can see that these hurts are egocentric in their origin, and by nature seek to pull us away from the essence of good that we are created for. By offering sadness and loss up to creation we are fully human. By crying we are real.

Every new moment, like every new year, offers the hope of moments to come. In those moments to come are opportunities to love and create. It is this thought, this conscious effort, that will best honor fear, sadness and loss.

As the new moments arise, I wish for my Three Friends Sitting the most numinous and prosperous thoughts and blessings. In return I will reap the joys of your heart in ways yet unseen.

For the world out there I bequeath light and prayers in the face of darkness and demise. And from that I shall reap hope... and there too, joys yet spoken.