New Year, New Perspective

Jim Tarran

Having had some sort of change to routine is common over the solstice/Christmas, winter festival period. A break of routine can mean a break of habits, too. Use this to shift perspective…

Although some feel that the thirteen-month lunar year (29.53 days a month, 384 a year) is a more logical point (although very hard to get right) at which to place the New Year and all that is associated with it, this time of year definitely lends itself to a feeling of new opportunity, and for starting with a clean slate.

A clean slate may be desirable; it is not, however, strictly speaking, possible. We are continuums and not fixed units that either can remain the same or be exchanged wholesale for a new. Although the extreme view of ‘clean slates’ may not be possible, there is, sufficient space made for re-channeling the energies that are already flowing.

We may feel an internal confirmation of the things that we feel are valuable to us; so that we may redirect distracted energies towards the things that we find lead us into more wholesome states of mind. We may, for instance, finally clear that space at home for yoga and meditation practice, or give up things that have been dragging us down or wasting our time in ways that do not support lightness clarity and liberty of heart and mind.

The point is that occasional changes from routines provide an essential opportunity for awareness and awareness provides the core element for intuitive change. The best holiday from normal routines is to step outside yourself and to try considering someone else’s needs above your own, to step into their shoes. Not in a dutiful, semi-resentful state but from a genuine investigation and subsequent realisation that there are other micro universes just like your own, each with their own centre, and the binding compulsions and apparently definite needs that that demands.

This practice is clearly pointed to in the east in traditional yogic forms such as Bhakti (devotional) and Karma (action) Yoga’s, where the self is subordinated, and in Buddhist texts like the Wheel of Sharp Weapons. This gives the practitioner a unique opportunity to break out of one’s own compulsions and limitations through seeing another’s needs. In this way, we realise that we are freer than we thought, and there is a whole plethora of different galaxies spinning in their own way, each with their own centres, and that therefore the scope for one’s own views can be so much broader (even infinitely so) and freedom from compulsion/craving can be felt.

The whole principle of stepping outside of oneself to transcend suffering by phoenix-like purification in the fire of here and now is the central theme of the Buddha Dharma. This has long since had a powerful dialogue with the yoga tradition which continues today through teachers like Rodney Yee, Erich Schiffman and many, many others. This emphasis is clearly expounded in the Buddhist sutta One Fortunate Attachment from the Majjima Nikaya of the Pali cannon.

In this way, it is possible to view each moment as a new beginning, like the new year, as an opportunity. That is, to transcend the ever-decreasing circles of self-view (understand this is not a threat to any thing real but to a viewpoint only). Everything one needs for this expansion one has, by taking small steps to reach out from one’s own samskaras (conditioned mental formations) we can be cleansed and renewed each day (shuddhi) and thereby feel our natural connection, empathy and union in the larger scheme.

In other words we can return to a sense of wholeness (yoga) and loneliness, isolation and a bordered segregated self disappears into obsolescence and the greed and hatred that this sense of ‘me and the rest of the universe’ ignites is subordinated.

Quotes

Spiritual seekers look for self-realization or enlightenment in the future. To be a seeker implies that you need the future. If this is what you believe, it becomes true for you: you will need time until you realize that you don't need time to be who you are.

— Eckhart Tolle