On March 20 at 11:44 a.m. (GMT), the sun was directly over the equator on its annual journey northward.

Here’s a question. This equinox is properly:

a. the spring equinox
b. the autumn equinox
c. the first day of spring
d. the first day of autumn
e. the midpoint of spring
f. the midpoint of autumn
g. both a and c
h. both a and e
i. both b and d
j. both b and f
k. all of the above

Before I give the answer, let’s talk about the two conflicts here: spring vs. autumn, and “first day” vs. “midpoint.”

For those of us in the northern hemisphere (Europeans, North Americans, most Asians) the sun is coming toward us, making this spring. So we might go for a, c, e, or some combination of those.

But Australians, and most Africans and Latin Americans, are watching the sun move away. For them, this is autumn.

That much is easy to picture.

But what about “the first day”? We in the northern hemisphere are used to hearing that the March equinox is “the first day of spring.” But the ancient people (and I agree) held that spring began around the start of February.

Let’s back up to winter. Somewhere around December 21 is the shortest day of the year (in the northern hemisphere), as the sun is at its furthest point south. So the days just before and after that date are the second shortest days; the next day before and after are the third shortest; and so on. (This would be easier with a whiteboard!)

So it makes sense to say that the 12 or 13 weeks’ worth of “shortest days” is winter.

This, not surprisingly, starts around Oct. 31. Yes, Halloween was in ancient times the first day of winter, the season of the dead.

What would have been the first day of summer? May Day, with its dancing around the Maypole and other fertility rites. And spring began around February 1, celebrated on the 2nd in America as “Groundhog’s Day.”

So, the answer to my quiz is “k: all of the above.”

It’s both spring and autumn, depending on where you’re standing (as the sage Paul Simon sang, “One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor”).

And this is the first day of the season, according to modern sources like Wikipedia, which says the season of spring runs from the equinox to the solstice.

But even Wikipedia notes that “According to the Celtic tradition … spring [in the northern hemisphere] begins in early February … and continues until early May...” Those are the traditional dates.

So happy equinox. And I hope you’ve been enjoying the past six weeks of spring. Or autumn. Or not.

I don't think anyone realized just how impressed the Disney people were by Lila when we visited the Anaheim park in January of this year...

If you are looking to:
--share what we've learned about happiness
--engage in substantive conversations
--explore the boundaries of spirituality
--talk about life, the universe, and everything
then by all means follow me.

If you're just looking to:
--build your list
--sell me something
--pick a fight
then no, thank you.

I'd rather have one follower who either benefits my life or benefits from mine, than 100 who fill my life with (even more) noise.

peace,
James

When you're an expat in China, you find that the "New Year season" is exceptionally long.

Anywhere from three to seven weeks after the "real" New Year's Day on Jan. 1 comes Chinese New Year. This year it was on Jan. 26, so from late December until well into February, I was saying "Happy New Year!" In fact, even this week, having just returned to school after a six-week break, I was wishing HNY to people that I hadn't seen since "last year" (Jan. 9).

And today is, apparently, the start of Losar, the Tibetan New Year. So to all my Zang friends, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

It's also Ash Wednesday in the western church, start of the Lenten season. For the few Eastern Orthodox who celebrate it, Ash Wednesday will be a week later, because Easter is a week later on the Eastern Orthodox calendar.

And that brings me to my point: Aside from astronomical and meteorological considerations (solstices, say, or blizzards) what day is what is just a matter of convention. Every day is the first day of the next year of your life.

When I send birthday greetings to friends on Facebook, I usually say, "May you be well and happy for the coming year of your life." (Oddly, many Asian cultures consider people one year older on new Year's, not on the day of their birth, so they might find this strange.)

But we need a celebration of birth (or rebirth). New Year dates are arbitrary, some in spring, some in summer, some in autumn, some in the dead of winter.

As stated on Wikipedia, Mircea Eliade in The Myth of the Eternal Return said that "by the logic of the eternal return, each New Year ceremony was the beginning of the world for [archaic] peoples. According to Eliade, these peoples felt a need to return to the Beginning at regular intervals, turning time into a circle." It's when chaos becomes cosmos. (More on this thought here)

So EVERY day is New Year. EVERY day is Ash Wednesday for some, Easter for others.

Tomorrow morning, after the "little death" of sleep, wake up and tell yourself, "Happy New Year! Happy birthday! Today is my day!"

I'm nearing the end of The Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho (more on that later), and he's just told the story of King Midas. It's a cautionary tale: Midas was given one wish by the god Dionysus, and in his greed he asked that everything he touch turn to gold. The end is well-known: even his food and drink are turned to gold and, in Coelho's version, he dies of hunger and thirst in a week. (In some versions he learns his lesson and Dionysus restores him to normalcy).

From this story, we get the expression "the Midas touch," which is commonly considered a good thing. One of my favorite resources, The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (at Amazon), says that, "A person who is very successful or easily acquires riches is sometimes said to have a "Midas touch.'"

Now isn't that odd? Greed is one of Christianity's "Seven Deadly Sins," and the first of Buddhism's "Three Poisons." And yet we speak admiringly of someone with a "Midas touch."

Slow learners?

Questions:
1. How did a fatal condition (greed-induced death through "The Midas Touch") become a praiseworthy skill?
2. It's often said "Money can't buy happiness." Do you believe that? Why or why not?
3. Does Midas's "sin" lie in becoming rich? Or in taking shortcuts? Or in valuing gold above everything? Or in something else?

+ + + + + + + +

Use the above questions for personal reflection, for group discussion, or for "jump starting" a comment (click "Comments" above to begin).

Over on eduFire a member asked: "If you were giving your last lecture, what would you say?"

Here's the answer I posted:

PAY ATTENTION! Mindful participation in your own life is the key to everything.
PLAY NICE! Compassionate involvement with others is the key to everything.
WISE UP! Developing wisdom in any way possible is the key to everything.

Yes, I know: I said they were ALL the key to everything, but only because...THEY ARE!

It’s OSCARS time. It seems this year’s nominees are heavy on "meaning." Best Picture nominees are:

--The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
--Frost/Nixon
--Milk
--The Reader
--Slumdog Millionaire

Lila and I will do a moviethon this weekend and try to catch up on most of the nominees. We've seen The Reader, and she couldn't find Milk when she went to the DVD town this week. But we'll try to slog through the other three.

Meanwhile, a few questions for those of you who have seen them all (or at least most of them):
1. Which of these films had the most meaning for you? Why?
2. What other films of 2008 (not on this list) were particularly significant for you? Why?
3. If you were to establish an award for "Most Meaningful Picture of 2008," whether on this list or not, what would it be? Why?
4. If you were to establish an award for "Most Meaningful Picture of All Time," from this or any year, what would it be? Why?
———--
Please limit your answers to films you have actually seen!

peace,
James

At long last, I'm posting the third and last part of my series on A Virtue List: Honesty, Veracity, and--now--Equanimity.

There is a famous story in the Upanishads (Svetasvatara Upanishad 4:6-7 and Mundaka Upanishad 3:1-2 tell the identical story):

"Two birds, inseparable friends, cling to the same tree. One of them eats the sweet fruit, the other looks on without eating."

Sri Sri Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswathi commented:

"The Upanisadic story speaks of two birds perched on the branch of a pippala tree. One eats the fruit of tree while the [other] merely watches its companion without eating. The pippala tree stands for the body. The first bird represents a being that regards himself as the jivatman or individual self and the fruit it eats signifies sensual pleasure. In the same body (symbolized by the tree) the second bird is to be understood as the Paramatman [or Brahman]. He is the support of all beings but he does not know sensual pleasure. Since he does not eat the fruit he naturally does not have the same experience as the jivatman (the first). The Upanisad speaks with poetic beauty of the two birds. He who eats the fruit is the individual self, jiva, and he who does not eat is the Supreme Reality, the one who knows himself to be the Atman."

Here's a quote from Joseph Campbell (in The Power of Myth):

"There is a plane of consciousness where you can identify yourself with that which transcends pairs of opposites."

"Pairs of opposites," like good vs evil, joy vs suffering, success vs failure.

What happens, we ask, if we turn our attention from the affairs of This World to those of That? What happens when we identify ourselves, not with the bird who eats, but with the bird who watches?

Henry David Thoreau, the transcendentalist, put it like this:

"I am conscious of the presence of a part of me, which, (as it were), is not part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it..."

The cultivation of this "spectator" leads to Equanimity.

One cannot think of the story of The Two Birds without thinking of Lord Krishna's instructions to Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita.  In fact, many have drawn this parallel: The first bird is Arjuna, who participates in the struggles of the world.  The second, then, is Krishna, who observes.

To act, and act fully and without reservation, and yet to be free of concern about the results: This is the lesson of The Two Birds.

Veracity

If you check your dictionary, you may find yourself thinking, "Veracity and Honesty mean the same thing."  But I'm using a special definition for this one.

On January 25, 1997, it was my great pleasure to see Dr. Huston Smith give a lecture at The Learning Annex in Los Angeles. Dr. Smith is one of the great teachers of the Perennial Philosophy, a term that describes what I have adopted as my personal "religion." In that lecture, Dr. Smith used "Veracity" to mean, "Seeing things as they are," which is one of the great virtues of Buddhism.

According to Dr. Smith, a Zen monk once explained it thus:

The mind is a mirror in which we view the world.  But with every experience or thought we have, we scrawl pictures on the mirror. Thus, when we look into it, we see not the world as it is, but the pictures we have drawn on the mirror of our mind.  Veracity means to erase the images we have scrawled, and to see things as they are.

This cleansing of the mirror is the job of "true religion," says Dr. Smith, suspending judgment and observing closely, without preconception or prejudice.  As Hamlet said, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

This idea "synced" so much with me that I made it one of my three virtues.

* * * * * * * *

In fact, in that lecture, Dr. Smith gave his own "Virtue List." His list also had three items, and he defined them this way:

--Humility:  "to see oneself as one and fully one, but not more than one"
--Charity:  "to look upon one's neighbors as one, and as much of one as oneself, putting their concerns on par with one's own"
--Veracity:  "the cultivation of a sublime objectivity which enables one to see everything exactly as it is, not skewed by one's own private interests and purposes"

Dr. Smith has chosen to express these virtues in positive terms. However, he points out in a sort of a punchline to his lecture, they are in fact the counterparts to Buddhism's "Three Poisons," thus:

Humility <--> Desire
Charity <--> Hatred
Veracity <--> Delusion

My list isn't so "neat." Still, I find it a powerful motivator.

Next post we'll look at the final virtue, Equanimity.

All my life I have been fascinated by what I call "Virtue Lists."
   
These are lists that transcend the "dos and don'ts" of things like the Ten Commandments, or Buddhism's Five Precepts; instead of talking about what we should do, a Virtue List outlines what we should be.

So Christianity has The (Eight) Beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-12, where we are encouraged to be poor in spirit, to mourn, to be meek, to hunger and thirst after righteousness, to be merciful, to be pure of heart, to be peacemakers, and to be persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

Buddhism has a much shorter list: To be compassionate and wise. (There are longer lists too, of course, which we may visit later.)

Anyway, when I was on a 10-week pilgrimage back in the autumn of 2001, I developed a list that was, at least at that time, extremely important to me. It has three aspects, which will constitute this week's three posts. Within each statement, I'll also tell you why that virtue was important to me at the time.

First up: Honesty.

As the sage Billy Joel said, it's hardly ever heard, but mostly what I need from you.

Jesus said it's not what goes into a man that makes him dirty, it's what comes out of him.  What we do and say tells a lot about what we are.

Although honesty is incredibly important,  I think it often needs to be tempered by other virtues--kindness, for example--but in the final analysis it can't be sacrificed to anything.

While on my pilgrimage, I took 10 traditional Buddhist pilgrim's vows, a list of "dos and don'ts" for the pilgrim.  They were:
1.  Do not kill.
2.  Do not steal.
3.  Do not engage in inappropriate sex.
4.  Do not tell lies.
5.  Do not flatter others untruthfully.
6.  Do not speak badly of others.
7.  Do not be deceitful.
8.  Do not be greedy.
9.  Do not get angry.
10.  Do not cause wrongful thinking by others.

It's interesting to note that three of these (numbers 4, 5, and 7) are directly about honest speech; number 2 is about honest action; and number 3 is about honest dealings with the opposite sex.  Number 10 is also about encouraging honesty in others.

So six of the ten vows that I was under at the time were centered on honesty.

This is interesting, because in many ways Japan is a big country for--how can I say it?--un-honesty.  I don't mean it's a nation of liars.  I mean that wa (harmony) is often more important than directness.

It's an often-told story: The American insists on a two-week delivery date.  The Japanese side knows that this is impossible.  But instead of a direct "No way, Jose," the Japanese say something like, "Delivery on time is very important" meaning "We can't do it, so we aren't going to promise."  The American hears this as "Can do."  Later, then, he says he's been lied to.  But all the Japanese did is avoid confrontation and maintain wa.

Another important idea is the difference between tatemae and honne.  The first is the "public face"; the second is the true idea or feeling.  Wearing your tatemae in public promotes wa; going around telling your true feelings would destroy it.  So group unity is more important than telling your true opinion.

We do this, too.  If you ask a near-stranger, "How are you?" and he begins reciting a list of troubles, you'll be horror-stricken.  You usually want to hear, "Fine, thanks" and move on.

But the kind of honesty I'm talking about goes beyond such ideas of social custom.  I'm talking about authenticity, about finding the life you want to lead, and then living it.  As Polonius says, if we are true to ourselves, we can't be false to others. I hope that when I die people will say, "He was true to himself.  He followed his bliss."  For better or for worse.

Next time, Veracity; and finally, Equanimity.