January 1, 2011. I wake as the sun begins to rise. The day is unseasonably warm. I wrap a shawl around my bare arms and white night gown, put on my boots, empty the compost in the pile below the garden and then walk to the top of the hill as the sun lifts her golden heart into the sky.
I turn to face her. Mist is in the valley. The soft hills holding open silence. A woodpecker drills in the tree behind me. Water drips off our neighbors roof.
The great eastern sun. The day is before us. All possibilities are present.
Buddhist meditation master Chogyam Trungpa writes in the book, Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala (Shambhala Dragon Editions):
“When there is daring, you dare to do something: you put forth your vision fearlessly. People have doubts about big vision because they don’t have a sense of gentleness in themselves first. So gentleness brings daring and a sense of fearlessness. Daring is appreciation of letting go in the fundamental sense. First you develop gentleness towards yourself; then you begin to develop daring which is connected with how to express your gentleness to the world outside, how to proclaim your sanity. You are not going crazy because you have seen The Great Eastern Sun, which is the symbol of expansive vision in the Shambhala world. Rather, because you have seen The Great Eastern Sun, you are very daring and at the same time very gentle and soft. The softer you become, the greater the message to the world becomes.”
Photo of sunrise over Puget Sound on January 1, 2011 by my favorite member of the exclusive Horizontal Club.
