This weekend it’s the solstice, the longest day of the year, the most light. It should be the happiest day of the year; we have the maximum of sunshine. Of course, when the light reaches its maximum, its apogee, the dark, initially imperceptibly, begins to return. As the days go on, I shall gradually notice that the long light evenings that I have been enjoying, will gradually start to shorten. My daughter, who lives in New Zealand, will have the opposite. Today in the Antipodes is the shortest day, the longest night. So there, the days will gradually get longer.
This is like the principle in Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang. When the Yang reaches its maximum, the Yin starts to re-appear. When the Yin reaches its maximum, Yang starts to re-appear. One displaces the other. It’s a process of alternation.
In the Chinese culture, they have the book of changes, the I Ching. It could be called The book of Alternation. Now, we tend to think, that the light is wonderful and the dark is terrible. But we should reflect on this. In the Chinese philosophy it is the Yin, the dark, that is often the most productive, the most valuable in a certain sort of way.
Recently we’ve had the experience of the pandemic. Now we think that the pandemic has passed its peak. Things are starting to open up. We’re returning to a kind of normal. When the pandemic was at its worst, we made many resolutions. Many people were saying: “Things will never go back to how they were before, there were many problems before.” During the height of the lockdown, the ecological problem diminished. The skies were blue. There were no airplane traces across the blue sky. There was no pollution. You could see the Himalayas from Kathmandu. This was a wonderful thing and people thought: “When the pandemic is finished, we shall not go back to our old ways.” But now, everything is opening up and we can travel again, and we can shop again, and we can do our busy things again. Those resolutions we made in the dark time will be very easily forgotten.
When the times are dark in that way, we’re closer to The Way. We are closer to the spiritual path. Our minds are opened to the possibility of a better world, to a better life. When times become easy again, we tend to forget. We go back to our old ways. We settle into a comfortable compromise of some sort.
We should remember that the light is bright, but the light is blind. When you’re in the light, you tend not to see the shadows, you tend not to see the dark. But when you’re in the dark, even the smallest light stands out. From the Yin position, you can easily see the Yang, but from the Yang position, the Yin disappears. So, when we are in the height of great activity and business, we become complacent. But when we are in the period of retreat, then we see new ways.
We tend to think of the dark and we think of the dark night of the soul. (This phrase come from St. John of the Cross.) We think of it as being a terrible time, travail, difficulty, yet in the actual poem of St. John of the Cross it is during the dark night that the soul goes forth to find God.
When we are in the midst of dukkha, the path is accessible. When the dukkha has gone, the path is harder to find. The spiritual life is the attempt to go on finding the path, whether there is light or whether there is dark. Whatever comes, we welcome it but we don’t let it deflect us from our deep intuition, from our fundamental faith. This is Namo Amida Bu.
Namo Amida Bu
Thank you very much
Dharmavidya
David
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