Spring Equinox: Happy First Day of the Year!

Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly  VERNAL EQUINOX 2014

Flowers and fruits are possible thanks to bees (Teacher Julia/tx.english-ch.com)

The fragrant jasmine wafted all over the meditator (mostbeautifulflower.com)

 

In Bangalore (BBclix/flickr)

Happy "New Year"! (In Buddhist Asia, as in most of the ancient world, spring marked the New Year not an arbitrary Gregorian designation ruining a calendar once in perfect sync with Luna/Chandra our Moon, who gives us our seasons, and Sol/Surya our Sun, who floods us in cosmic rays). 

Happy Nowuz from Tehrangeles and Feliz Primavera from Olvera St., formerly Mexico (both well rooted in bustling Los Angeles)!

A new beginning

Meditating on a mandarava flower

With the renewal of Gaia/Bhūmi our Earth we, too, can make a renewed resolve to meditate or at least to be more "mindful" and present as our day unfolds. Today is the first day of the rest of your life, the adage goes, and whether we've heard it before or find it new and insightful, isn't it? If today is, can't we choose to do things differently from now on right at this moment? When else are we EVER able to choose, or do, or accrue karma/merit other than right NOW? So some say, "Now is all there is." Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Ram Dass, the Beatles in India, even the Panchen Lama and his elder would agree. We hear as savakas. We see it. We live it.

Meditation

Reclining meditation (pinterest)

Here is a fascinating meditation to breakthrough to serenity, insight, and self-knowledge. O, what I wouldn't give to be calm! (It helps to begin with a blessing to pre-direct the mind/heart, honoring the Three Jewels of the Enlightened One, the Enlightened Teaching, and the Enlightened listeners/practitioners. This will help if fear arises that one will be unprotected, "open" and susceptible to inimical-influences like spirits, as so many fundamental Christians, Catholics, and Muslims warn).

INSTRUCTIONS: Sit comfortably. Breathe deeply. Let go. Let go of thinking, breathing, sitting, doing, and let it happen. Let what happen? Serenity will happen. Accept the suffering and let it pass right through without holding on. (Resisting is a form of holding on).

When there is serenity, it becomes possible to gain absorption and develop successful insight (east coast) for liberation.