As the New Year approaches, many of us turn our thoughts to new beginnings, to watershed moments, and to perhaps ridding our lives of unskillful habits, situations, and behaviors. We are also aware of the passing of a calendar year, of birthdays, of anniversaries. Often, when we choose a particular auspicious date, we decide that perhaps, starting on that date, we would like to be less reactive, eat better, exercise more often, express love more openly, or be kinder. These are all worthwhile pursuits.
When the New Year arrives, we often feel that this might be a suitable time to begin this process of change. We may tend to place increased emphasis on change. On renewal. An interesting phenomenon is that many of us fail to recognize or accept change independently of these arbitrarily created calendar dates. We are all in a constant state of change in each moment of existence whether we are aware of it or not. Often, the change is subtle and insidious, other times overt and abrupt.
I am referring to the arising and passing away of all phenomena. We are already surrounded by change. Things arise, they sustain for some period of time, and then they pass away, they vanish. The universe is expanding and is in constant motion. Mountains rise from the sea, grow into craggy peaks, and later erode into rolling hills. We come to be, we age and change, and we too pass away. All conditioned things are subject to change and are impermanent.
The Buddha taught the importance of noticing this impermanence in all conditioned phenomena. Of being keenly aware of impermanence as one of the three marks of existence.
The opportunity to create different karma exists at every moment, not just on January 1st. The opportunity to see impermanence in all conditioned things is available right now and this clear seeing helps get us one step closer to liberation on this path of gradual training.
However, and perhaps due to our traditional propensity for viewing the New Year as an opportunity for change, we at Insight Meditation Fort Wayne offer the Precepts and Refuges Ceremony annually around the beginning of each year. It is a meaningful and delightful tradition which offers the opportunity to commit to our practice and a life of non-harming.
I invite you to attend this peaceful tradition with us at Sangha House on January 14th, 2025 at 6:00 pm.
But you certainly don’t have to wait until January 1st or for our Precepts and Refuges Ceremony on the 14th to enact beneficial change - changes which may lead to peace, to concord, to the generation of merit, and the creation of bright (or neither bright nor dark) karma. That opportunity exists right now.
May all beings be well and happy.
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