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As the new year dawns I'm thinking, as I often do at points of turning, about the challenging and wonderful practice of "holding opposites." This is a deep practice that Zen's teachings of the non-dual and emptiness point to.
"Holding opposites" is feeling more deeply how things aren't this way or that way. They are actually both (and in some ways, neither as the very categories of our thinking have some real limitations to them).
Feeling into the co-arising of opposites can really help us make space in our heart-mind. Help us release from fear, and release from certainty.
In that space there is just so much more room. Room to breathe, room to be, room for curiosity, room for patience, room for wondering if we really do know what this-or-that is happening. Space to remember the impermanence and unknowable nature of the future.
To me the feeling of the practice of holding opposites has much in common with Suzuki Roshi's beginner's mind.
At the personal level: I am who I am and so often new year's resolutions come to nothing! And yet I'm also ever changing and full of potential. So why not set intentions and underline the choices I want to make in the new year? Even as I know I won't "succeed" in all of them? At that's okay.
At the societal level: I am quite uncomfortable about the incoming administration and the underlying forces that seem to have brought this about.
And I also have a lot of faith in people. That the vast majority of us on this crowded planet are kind, are generous, are ready to lend a hand.
That there will be problems, there will be suffering for sure. And there will also be much joy and progress (even if it doesn't make the headlines). And that our fellow citizens are beings just like me who want to be happy and don't want to suffer - that it will work out.
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