Solstice Soliloquy

Brrr…eight degrees. Not so bad with the right layers of wool. My heart goes to those in Ukraine who have no layers, no power, no reliable heat source—people watching their homes being destroyed by a winter storm of bombs. War with no apparent reason other than in the tormented mind of a dictator—the unhappiness of a single being thinking he can become happy if only ‘they’ would acquiesce to his delusion. 

And this is the war our media in the west chooses to focus on. There are more than 30 or so current wars including Ethiopia, Yemen, Mexican drug war, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sudan, Nigeria, and on and on—forgotten in our media but not on the ground. Merry Christmas? 

I think of Avalokiteshvara gazing out on the world of suffering. His heart breaks and he weeps two tears out of which Green and White Tara are born. May our tears bring life to Tara’s activity in the world. May her compassionate gaze melt the most hardened of hearts. May our minds settle into the light of awareness in which love is the only consideration. 

In this time of the season turning and light returning, I pray for light to grace the face of conflict and enlighten the mind that creates war. When the sun dawns on the solstice, a harbinger of longer days, I pray that humans will wake up to the light in our own hearts, unobscured by the idea of a separate self—the light that offers poems and prayers like this: 

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children… 

                                Rainier Maria Rilke