As we enter into this ‘new year’… as we open to the morning of a ‘new day’… as we bring mindful attention to each ‘new moment’… through our practice, we learn to receive & be aware of each ‘new arising’ with what Suzuki Roshi called ‘beginners mind’. The GREAT GIFT of mindfulness is to learn to meet the year, the day, the moment with paying a kind of extra-ordinary attention: a non-judging, non-manipulative, non-grasping, non-rejecting orientation to our present moment’s experience.
This GIFT that we can give ourselves is an orientation to the present moment that creates an openness, a receptivity & a presence within our heart-mind & body that makes room for a spacious, clear & calm presence of being.
A truly mindful relationship to our present moment’s experience is what allows clarity & true understanding – insight/wisdom – to arise… to just simply & naturally arise, which it inevitably does. We don’t need to do anything to make it happen. The truth is actually not far away. It’s ever present, right here, right now.
Each & all of us want a happy new year. What is this… what is happiness? The Buddha spoke about happiness beyond our ordinary experience of pleasure. He said that true happiness arises when we are mindful. Our meditation practice cultivates mindfulness. Mindfulness happens when we bring our full attention without judgment or manipulation, with no grasping or rejection, to the present moment. This is not such an easy relationship to our body & heart/mind experience… and so we practice this over & over again… year by year, day by day, moment by moment.
A good question we might ask ourselves is, ‘What’s the importance of this? ‘ When we aren’t bringing a full mindful attention to the present moment, we are actually living at a distance from experience, living at a distance from life itself… which keeps the cycle of our conditioned habits, patterns & reactions going round & round… feeding & strengthening themselves. Like it is with our computers… you push a button & out comes what’s in there. Without a clear mindful presence, when our ‘buttons are pushed’, our old conditioned patterns & reactions pop out… automatically… and we’re not having a ‘happy new year, a happy new day, a happy new moment’.
Our meditation practice is about bringing everything into clear, sharp focus…. to see things as they truly are…. as though for the first time….”moving from innocence to innocence” as Krishnamurti said. When my grandson was 2 ½ years old he saw a pine cone for the first time, with a mind & heart that was fresh. He turned it round & round several times, looking at it very carefully. He smelled it. He licked it. He put it up to his ear. His mother & I said,” It’s a pine cone.” He dutifully repeated ‘pine cone’.… and then went on mindfully investigating this new object.
This is a state of mind that we can learn or re-learn to bring into our life. Our meditation practice is the perfect vehicle for this… and it’s transformative. It transforms the entire context of our life. We learn to touch the ‘radical acceptance’ & ease of simply being present in the moment. We have stopped trying to manipulate, shape or change our inner experience. For the moment, we’ve renounced the habit of restlessness, which is amazingly refreshing. It’s a moment of stillness… a resting place… a refuge.
As we begin to learn & allow ourselves to rest in this stillness more often, a great healing begins to take place… an unbinding, an unwinding of all the conditioning we’ve taken on as ‘me & mine’, as who I think I am. A great dismantling begins to happen as we begin to allow ourselves to rest in this silence & spaciousness… simply within the clarity & lucidity of present moment mindful awareness.
MAY YOU HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR.
With love, Marcia
From Wu Men – Ancient Chinese Chan Master:
“Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
A cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things.
This is the best season of your life.”

I used to be a big music fan & listened to it all the time. Now that I don’t deliberately listen to it, I find that when I do happen to hear music, it’s as if I’m hearing it for the first time. Music used to be such a constant presence in my life that it had lost its power. If I hear it now, it has an astonishing quality of freshness. I am with every note, every phrase.
feel that we must own & accumulate things in order to be complete, and not just material objects but people & relationships as well. It is hard for us to understand that letting go is not a loss, not a bereavement. Of course, when we lose something that is beautiful or dear to us, there is a shadow that crosses the heart. But we enlighten that shadow with the understanding that the feeling of loss is just the karmic result of assuming that we owned anything in the first place. The renunciate life is based on the realization that we can never really possess anything.
The Buddha lived in a deeply troubled world. Kings ruled through violence, armies decimated villages, and slavery threaded daily life. Even those close to the Buddha suffered: his supporter
hostile to one another
The blessings of Autumn are unfolding here in northern New Mexico as is currently happening in many places around the planet. This time of year, the natural world all around us offers abundant Dharma practice opportunities in ordinary & profound ways.
animal and plant, are rooted in the processes of Anicca/change/impermanence. Our bodies, our ideas, likes & dislikes, our emotions… our very life is basically grounded in these same processes that underlie how the natural world shows up & expresses itself. Can you even imagine what it would be like if there were no change? In truth, without Anicca/change/impermanence there would be no life.
We have received an inestimable gift. To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe—to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it—is a wonder beyond words. It is an extraordinary privilege to be accorded a human life, with self-reflexive consciousness that brings awareness of our own actions & the ability to make choices. It lets us choose to take part in the healing of our world.
choose to turn to the breath, the body, the senses—for they help us to relax & open to wider currents of knowing & feeling.
Some time before the Buddha was about to die, he gave his disciples a word of encouragement and advice. He said this – and I’m putting it into my own words: “Freedom from suffering is available to you if you practice by the proper means of mindfulness, but not without having the aspiration to learn, and
with the dharma or that we “should” be doing something else to realize our aspiration. Right here we can remind ourselves that our job is to do what the teachings require of us, working with mindfulness in this moment. Anything more than sincerely doing the practice is a hindrance to it’s unfolding. The wondering when, if, how soon and what else we can do to speed up the process – this is all worry and agitation.
In a world facing deep unrest, the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths offer both clarity and compassion. As taught in the discourse on “
How can we move out of what might be our usual way of doing things & into new territory? Not to escape what may seem or feel like a catastrophe looming around us… looming around the world… but to more fully & clearly meet what is occurring.
metta, begin to connect with a ‘true’ sense of
When fifth-century monk-scholars shaped a list of the heart-mind characteristics of the Bodhisattva’s path to buddhahood, these Paramis, or “Perfections,” began with generosity. The sequence was a reflection of the way the Buddha offered his teachings: the Buddha’s first talk in a new community was usually about generosity. Probably the Buddha began with generosity partly because he recognized that it is and has been so widely accepted as one of the most basic human virtues by so many cultures. But there was a more important reason: Generosity is a foundational building block of spiritual development and his most important teachings.
clinging, an end to attachment, to stinginess, to greed to material things — even to our most cherished ideas and sense of self. 
different way. More like a field scientist gathering data. You start to see more clearly: When this happens, it leads to that. For example, when my kid starts screaming and throws herself on the floor then tightness arises in my chest, there is anxiety, and helplessness and frustration. Out of that, the urge to raise my voice, to do something to get this to stop is increasing. How interesting! If I am able to actually be aware of this process mindfully and with curiosity then the miracle of choice opens up. I can choose the response that is the most in alignment with my values, for example to not yell at my kids. Victor Frankl is quoted to have said that between the stimulus and the response there is a space. And in that space lies our freedom to choose. It can free us from the habit loop, from reacting on autopilot.