Piercing Through the Veil of Calendar

Reflections On the first day of 2022

Post Meditation at the park.

The grass looked greener than usual as its blades seemed washed clean by the snow that had melted away.

It is the first day of the new year and the fog has not yet disappeared.

The sound of the GO train passing on the track beside the park is no more than reverberations in the air, striking on the drums of my ears. A thought appears: The same reverberations would impact differently if I was crossing the tracks and heard the sound. Perceptions are so related to the context.

This ordinary foggy morning is not much different than any other foggy morning. Nature does not see this day as a new year’s first day and therefore would make it bright with a special sunshine. Nature is indifferent. The dense and heavy fog of this morning to me is a symbol of the way in which the veils are created by the web of thoughts.

It's not that I discount the value of rituals and culture and the festivities of the society, and yet at the same time, I want to remain aware of the constructs of the mind, so I may be able to see the webs created by proliferation of the thinking brain.

The term Vipassana meditation is commonly translated as ‘Insight’ or ‘clear seeing’ meditation. It took me a long time working through Shamata or attention stabilizing practice to touch the realm of Vipassana or Insight meditation (Also, termed as ‘choice less awareness’ by some - that is awareness of whatever is happening from moment to moment).

This is where the mind begins to see through the fog, and begins to pierce through the veils of constructs of its own making and experience the insights about the true nature of reality.

Once I got a knack of the Vipassana meditation it's not that anything in my external life drastically changed. I still do the laundry, sweep the floors, do the dishes and I still work for my living and "suffer the slings and arrows'' of life and “bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely ..." as Shakespeare's Hamlet said.

However, my relationship with all slings and the whips and the things seems to have shifted. I can still enjoy the festivities of the new year, but with a knowing of the reality and with the knowing of the webs of the constructs of the mind; like the vaporous fog that hides what is out there.

O' the fog and the beyond.

O’ I still can enjoy the chocolate drink but I can have the choice to refrain from it. I can even have OCD or ADHD but I can see it as an OCD or an ADHD and look at it with compassion. Not holding a sledgehammer of judgment and wanting to crush it but to hold it in my loving arms, soothe it and let it rest in my lap, like a baby who needs to be understood, heard, seen and loved and held with compassion.

Then that part in me is no longer a neglected, maladaptive, ill-responding self, but one that can respond in reciprocity.

The sun is still in hiding but it is always there beyond the fog and behind the clouds, and still sending warmth and light to the earth, our home, on this first day of 2022.