Happy NEW Year. This NEW thing is like all new things. It's saying, I am happy to have the opportunity. If the NEW thing is a car, rather than a time frame, I might invoke a caveat, I just got the new car I've always wanted.
Here, I am explaining the importance and my perseverance. I could say may this new year be the best so far. Yet I have had years and cars before and they have become less new as I use them less.
If we use something it maintains familiarity if we don't it is an aside. It is not so much the thing but how it is used.
In Buddhism very thing is simultaneously afoot. Each moment is complete as a dynamic field of energy. Here we say everything is new, old, existent, and non-existent at the same time. We then try to put context into our awareness to show history and future. So rather than getting into the ups and downs of 2019, we jump into 2020 resolutions and all. We leap clear of the particulars into a positive filed of possibility. This is called hope.
In Zen hope is the moment. Once it arises we face choice which determines variables and conditions which arise in the unfolding moment. But, the one before and the one after do not exist rather the moment is all full of potential while empty of form. When energy becomes form we say it is actualized. Here, Shakyamuni said moments are our stumbling over something already existent.
So from me to you may your Happy New Year evolve through moments of joy, compassion, love, kindness, and equanimity keeping you present in all matters of the great mystery of life.
Please join us this Tuesday at 7PM as we we start out tenth year (2010-2020) as the Falmouth Soto Zen Sangha.
108bows
Sensei