Autumnal Equinox: summer ends, fall begins

Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly

I like to bring the candles out to focus power.

What is the meaning of "autumn" after a long, strange summer full of rain, springlike conditions, cold snaps, and scorching heat with just a few raging wildfires?

It's time to turn inward because the seasons have psychology (or mimic) psychological states:

"Don't just do something, sit there."

Summer is so extroverted, winter utterly introverted. Spring is a showoff, but what to say of autumn? It's the shy cousin of depressed winter or can be. Indian summer begins soon, with yesterday being "Native American Day" and Indigenous Peoples' Day (Oct. 11th) coming.

There's candy on Halloween and thoughts of mortality for Obon, Samhain, Dia de Los Muertos, Islamic Thursday of the Dead, and the All Saints' Day tagalong holy-day.

The Addams Family cast 1964, featuring the uber coo' kid "Wednesday"

You're no Lily. - You're no Herman.

Maybe Buddhism's greatest claim to American Halloween is the Buddhist American who was the head of The Addams Family (The Munsters knockoff show built around "Wednesday"), husband of "Morticia," the dad "Gomez" (John Astin), real-life vegetarian and Nichiren Buddhist.

It's easy to meditate in the winter. What else is there to do but keep warm and watch the stillness? Spring is a riot, full of sensual triggers. And the way the human world dresses for summer, essentially naked and alluring, has too many distractions.

Let us be mindful of death, hungry ghosts, the departed ones who still cling to this realm.

Just as the departed were, so am I of a nature to fade and pass away. Mindful of this, I strive.

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But for autumn we begin to bake again, keep the hearth, remember traditions, have forethoughts of the death to come, which is winter's chill. It will get so bad that we will need a festival of lights, whether we get it from Irish paganism, Hinduism, Jainism, Judaism,  or Christism, it's all astrotheology, those grand themes that guide religion to align their dates and details of the return of a savior figure (a sun god like Surya or Sol) born of a virgin, a Maitreya/Messiah, a Future-Teacher.

Like Quetzalcoatl, a returning savior-figure may not be coming back any time soon, so it is up to us to "save" ourselves. It's the only person who can, really, whether with help or relying on the Dharma still existing in the world.

• Autumnal equinox 2023 brings fall to the Northern Hemisphere today (Sept. 23) | Space
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