On Love, Light, and Kindness - New Year 2022
I go to bed at 11pm on New Year’s Eve and set the alarm for 12:30am to attend a 1am Zoom gathering of The Abrahamic Reunion. I am a supporter from afar to this noble interfaith organization working for Peace in the Middle East and beyond. One my spiritual guides and a favorite teacher is the directing force behind this group and I am happy to follow along.
The hour-long session with speakers from various traditions emphasized our oneness, and the importance of the number one thing that we can do ourselves to promote peace. Love. Be love. Spread love. Sounds easy or idealistic but it really is the essence of a Unifying Peace, the cream at the top of all we can do. How can you hate someone you love?
Another message was the idea and importance of kindness emphasized young Druze Sheikh Yazan Farhat. And the opening message from Director Shahabuddin David Less that “we have work to do," but “peace is possible”. Two speakers in their early 20’s symbolized the hope, but also the time it may take to bring all this to fruition. At 2:30am I go back to sleep, more restful than usual.
With love and kindness the keywords from this midnight prayer session, I awaken at first morning light and these watchwords come to mind again.
I say to myself: “Be kind, be love (loving)”, and “be calm” (something I need to work on!)
The New Year’s first sunrise on Solo Hill is around 7:50am this season; my spot under the cherry looked warmer than usual, even though the water in all the clay rainwater pots and buckets in the garden were frozen. The North wind that seems to be blowing a lot these days was silent as was the sounds from town as it usually is on New Year’s morning.
“My” cherry tree with its 1.5 meter (5 feet) circumference trunk planted by us 20 years ago has many forks about at my chest height. And now the just risen sun was shining through one major fork and connecting with me, me with it. One solid trunk, a strong foothold in the clay soil, hanging on the edge of a slope. Many forks — one trunk — rooted in one earth — one me connected to oneness of nature, of spirits and friends, to the One Prayer, feeling that we can, will, and do make the world a better place. Even if we are often embroiled in our own petty stuff, in reality we need to deal with all that efficiently and fairly.
How difficult or how easy is it to maintain that peaceful loving attunement in everyday life. How many moments in the day are necessary for us to be aware of it to make it a reality? Or can it be a built-in part of our being, something that is so easy that we don’t need to think about it or even know that we are doing it. Perhaps like the now cliche “meditation in action” or the more profound “mastery through accomplishment” as Hazrat Inayat Khan called it.
So enthralled was I by the cold morning with warm sun and no wind, a fairly decent night’s sleep - I had gone out without my winter hat and scarf, just a my thin Japanese tenugui cotton utility scarf wrapped around my crown. Not wanting to break my mood and go back up the stone steps to the house, I improvised adding one more layer with the crumpled red American bandana from my back pocket. Red for the New Year, balance of East and West?
With humor and a smile I greeted the New Year with the constancy of my daily meditation/prayer practices, finding the comforting repetitiveness of doing it everyday (as much as possible!), balanced by the new energy and new insights it brings me.
Later the same day, about an hour before sunset, by the sea at one of my favorite sunset spots I greet the Sun again. To my side is a tiny shrine about 90 cm tall, undecorated for the New Year even though its the look-out and one of the guardians of the small fishing port. There is only enough space for one or two people to stand after climbing the 10 uneven steps to get there. I face the Sun - thinking nothing - saying no prayer - but the body actually becoming the prayer, filling with light. With a minuscule shrine by my side as a partner I soaked up some Light… or did it soak me up?
Back in the warm car circling the port, five minutes later now on the shadow side, processing what happened, I have to pull over and jot down some notes, afraid the moment may pass. “Pray without ceasing”, “the body becoming a vessel”, “Remembrance”, “the whole body [meaning: my being] radiating a prayer, consciously or subconsciously”, “always attuned”.
The next day, I go for a first New Year’s walk with a friend in the woods behind a mountain shrine. Around one bend in the path is a stately backlit tree. Adjust your vision or position and the late afternoon Sun overwhelms. I smile and say to myself and to my friend,“ Bombed with Light”. Again and again…
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***Note: A recording of the session mentioned in essay is on YouTube
"Prayer of New Beginnings" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaLKKi1715Y
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Spring Sunsets
These days the sun is always finding me. Or is it the other way around? It really hard to say sometimes. Walking on a path in the woods I have to constantly put the brakes on to my purposeful striding - stop, look, take a photo, ( physically and mentally), then smile and march on. “March” seems like a hard word to use, but paired with Soldier of Light it sounds appropriate. It is not just looking at and enjoying the light, but being able to convey it to others. Sometimes when I am watching the movement of the sun crossing the forest or raking across the metallic buildings in the city, I look around and it seems as if most people don’t notice it. Even when I am in a hurry I HAVE TO stop. I WANT TO stop. Who sees who? Who sees what?
In the fall, the setting of the sun is short and sweet, to the point of being made into a well-know Japanese metaphor:
Aki no yuu hi, tsurebe otoshi
“The fall sun sets as a bucket falling into a well”
Makes me wonder if there is an opposite version for a spring season, long-lasting sunset. The other day I was driving east towards home down the two-lane highway known as Nagasa Kaido (translated loosely as “The Long and Winding Road”). A red sunset ball in my rearview mirror seemed to hang there forever, like one of those red laser-pointer dots, following my actions, appearing as red catch lights on unsuspecting house windows and shimmering across water filled spring paddies. So here is my metaphor in the form of a haiku.
spring sunset
floats freely
balloon on fire
春夕日
燃える風船
ゆるり浮かぶ
Haru yuu hi, moeru fusen, yururi ukabu
For two days in a row I found myself in the forest, facing the setting sun as it moved in slow motion towards the end of its day, filling me with the coincidental wonder of being in the right place at the right time.
"Spring Sunset" 1996 (photo from my book "Timescapes Japan" p 19
写真は「タ イ ムスケープス・ジャパン」p19より