✨🌟 Solstice Great Conjunction: Blessings of Enough Love ✨💛✨ (enough clarity, enough space, enough insight) 🌙✨

[Tathālokā Bhikkhunī]

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Dear Dhamma friends,

Warm greetings on this dark Winter Solstice night of the Great Conjunction.

This morning in the dark stillness, my heart turned to these Dhamma contemplations, and turns to them again now as the sun sets, dusk falls and the dark deepens ~ 

What rises to mind and heart is a reflection on the need for Enough Love. 

Enough love and greatness of heart to be able to bear all that we are going through, individually and together. Enough love to be able to hold all that is, all the pain, joy, grief, desires, views, wishes, doubts, ideas, opinions, reactions.

It is so important, among friends, among families, in communities, that there be those among our human associates who are able to remain calm, clear, steady and caring. Who have the presence, the space, to be able to see, and know, and hold all that is. Without fracturing. 

We know the value of there being even one such person, with us and our associates. 

And we know that in the Buddha's teaching, in this path of practice, it is possible to train ourselves, to practice, to grow, nurture and develop such greatness of heart. To develop our calm, clarity and spaciousness, and steadiness. 

And in all sorts of circumstances, to develop not only the clarity, but also the insight. Which, as it becomes a realization, transforms our understanding of everything in such great ways. Ways that are such a relief. Almost as if we had been bound up, and we are being unbound and freed. Or we were suffocating, and now we can breathe pure, fresh, life-giving air. 

Fortunately, it is possible to train ourselves in clearing our minds and hearts; we can learn how to do so, what to do that supports this. And it is possible to direct our seeing and knowing faculties, amidst all kinds of circumstances, towards seeing and knowing. With the heart to see and know more deeply, clearly and truly, for the sake of understanding. With the wish to understand. Whether our minds are turned internally towards our own bodies and feelings, or the mind itself. Or externally towards bodies, feelings and minds in the world, or the patterns of things in the world. We simply apply our wish to see, to know, to understand.

We apply the wish and intention to develop both understanding and the great heart of kindness and compassion, such that the combination of these two becomes a mind and heart applied and directed towards kind understanding.

The Buddha strongly emphasized social and communal harmony in his teachings. Describing his own intentional training of himself as a bodhisatta, one of his own primary intentions and personal commitments in training himself was to bring people together in concord, not to break them apart. Not to be divisive.[1] 

Even while recognizing that people (and all living beings) have differing views and perspectives, different motivations, wants, desires, opinions, aims...etc. In a way that develops and supports one's own personal integrity, that respects and awakens one's own personal integrity, not to sacrifice it. 

Even if one were to be attacked by dacoits and severely beaten, or cut limb to limb with knives or saws, the Buddha recommends developing one's determination that one will not sacrifice one's own integrity, one will not demean oneself, but remain with such an attitude of kindness and compassion[2] for those people under the sway of such extreme ignorance. Even knowing and understanding that at one time, they could have been us, we could have been them.

We make a commitment, even then and there, to non-divisiveness. 

We take this idea and work with it, develop it, make much of it. We work with the circumstances that the world is always perpetually offering to train ourselves; develop our minds and hearts, and make them great. 

If it is not easy for us to do this, we develop our compassion and appreciation for how hard it is for anyone, even so well intentioned, to do this. We develop our real appreciation for those who amazingly are able to show up so beautifully, so admirably, even one time, not to mention again and again. Through doing so, our hearts become tender, expansive, flexible. And much more healthy and strong. 

Sometimes i see people, even those who i think of as among my circle of friends, engaging in disparaging others, othering, and divisiveness. 

Sometimes i realize, to my shame, that i am doing so too. I have done so.

It is so much a part of our culture to try to find a stand in ourselves, standing with those we agree with against those who we think (or "really know") are other, bad and wrong. We feel empowered by doing so. Righteous. Meanwhile the others (meaning those "bad" other people) feel likewise, and act likewise! 

How important it is to raise our awareness about this tendency.✨🌟

As the Buddha said, "hatred never ends through hatred. It ends through not hating," period. 

This does not mean that we cannot clearly recognize what is unwise, unskilful, not helpful, and harmful, in our own views and actions, as well as in others'. It does mean to be clear about actions. To gain insight with regards to causation and the relationship between actions and effects, whether desirable effects or undesirable. This insight develops Right View. And leads to wisdom. 

This wisdom then really supports our moral integrity and wise actions: using our minds and hearts well, using our words well, applying our efforts and actions well. All of which leads to further integrity, clarity, wisdom...and the cycle goes from there. The Dhamma wheel gets rolling.

How can we clarify and share our views without putting others down?

We take interest in this question, and initiative to explore it. We look out for good examples. Modelling. Making a conscious choice about what kind of presence we feel is most valuable, most needed. Can we offer that? It is an offering to ourselves, number one. Do we have the heart to make this our offering to our world?

I would like to very clearly acknowledge here, for myself, how much this is a work in progress. How valuable such work has been, and is. How much more wonderful, peaceful, excellent, even sublime, potential there is, that i see and feel as bright, healthy and hopeful. 

When we catch a view of this ourselves it is so clarifying of our values, of what is of meaning, of value, of worth. Profoundly reorienting. If we have had such moments, it is good to remember them.

And, as the Buddha said, to reflect regularly upon how much we are already free. How much we are already liberated.[3][4] Not to be arrogant. But to be humble, gracious and appreciative. And to be empowered. To be nurtured, blessed and supported by the goodness and blessings we have experienced, and are experiencing. To be strengthened in this way. And then to use this strength and these blessings for whatever work remains.

In one sutta, the Buddha calls this the tanhā to end all tanhā.[5] That is, the desire, the craving, the hunger, the thirst, that is really able to ease, reduce, attenuate, satisfy and to completely bring to peace all of that. 

Then we can say, "I've had enough!"  I have enough love. Enough clarity, enough space, enough insight. I have what is needed. I have what it takes. I am doing -or- I have done my work. My life's path. My aim, my heart's wish is fulfilled. 

It's the great story of "Siddartha" and of the arahant path, "arahant" meaning "successful," "accomplished in their aim," "fulfilled," done. 

When hearts are aligned and in tune with Dhamma, attentive to the Path, this is what is possible.

May we live our purpose well. May we never forget what is most important. Or if we forget for a moment, may we come back quickly. Quickly, progressively, awakening. ✨🌟

Offering these Dhamma thoughts from this time of deepest darkness, as our worlds align, 

I look forward to seeing you this Saturday for Sanghamitta Day, in appreciative commemoration of our awakened foremother arahantī Sanghamittā, for our last Sangha eGathering of the year with our wonderful bhikkhunī teachers and community together, before we enter our three months winter retreat.

The brightness of great and noble examples shining in the heart,

wishing all well, happy, peaceful and safe,

Ayya Tathālokā, with mettā

Images 
(beginning) The Great Conjunction at Space.com

(end) Sanghamitta and Bhikkhunis with Bodhi tree sapling met by king Devanampiyatissa in Sri Lanka shared by Ven Karawita Pannadassi Thero from Mirror Arts

Dhamma References

1. Sāmaññaphāla Sutta, 2nd sutta of the Long Discourses, at SC 44.3

2. The Greater Discourse on the Elephant's Footprint, 28th sutta of the Middle Length Discourses, at BD 10

3. Temporarily Free, 5th book of the Numerical Discourses of the Buddha, sutta 149, at SC 2.3 (also at AN 5:89, 5:95-98)

4. Spiritual, 36th chapter of the Connected Discourses of the Buddha, sutta 31, at SC 7

5. Bhikkhunī Sutta, 4th book of the Numerical Discourses of the Buddha, sutta 159, at SC 6.9