Long, long ago a prince was raised inside a beautiful palace. His family loved him so, and because they didn’t want him to suffer, they shielded him from all of the harsh and unpleasant things in life. He grew up unfamiliar with illness, death, and poverty until one day he left his gilded cage and went out into his kingdom. There, he encountered the poor, the sick, the suffering for the first time.
He was so shocked by the reality of life and the world that he left his royal life and went in search of some way to make meaning of it all, some way to find peace in the midst of such a troubled world. For years he studied with one teacher after another, and almost starved himself to death hoping asceticism would help him reach enlightenment. Finally, he basically gave up, plopped himself under a tree, and vowed to sit there until he’d figured things out.
The timeframe he sat under that tree ranges from seven days to 49 years depending on the story. However long it took, on the morning of the 8th day of the 12th moon of the year, Siddhartha Gautama emerged from meditation staring at the Morning Star, and he was Enlightened. In other words, his mind was clear, empty, free of the many things he’d clung to, obsessed over, assumed were just part of his inner landscape. He was simply there, fully present and aware of the current moment. And it was in that moment that he became the Buddha, the Teacher.
Many people celebrated the anniversary of Buddha’s enlightenment, known as Bodhi Day, last month. But according to the traditional lunar calendar, the holiday is in two days, on January 7th. I’ve long loved the story of the Buddha, how his path to greatness came only after he had emptied himself of all power, wealth, privilege and desires. Today is also the day many Christian churches will be celebrating the Epiphany, that part of the Christmas pageant when the three Wise People find the baby Jesus and then the Holy Family has to flee to Egypt to keep Jesus safe.
Whether it’s Buddha leaving his cushy royal life behind or Jesus being born in a stable and needing to flee to avoid being murdered by King Herod, ancient storytellers loved them a story about opposites, reversal of fortunes, power and might issuing forth from anything but. There is some connection between the emptying of the self and finding our right path or the course to which we are called.
Lao-Tse, considered the founder of Taoism, writes:
Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes that make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.
So what if we begin the new year ahead of us in this way? What if instead of ambitious resolutions and lofty intentions we begin by letting go, we begin by emptying our minds and desires, we begin by making room within ourselves to engage the new, whatever it may bring?
Every new year is different than the one that came before it. All years bring things we could never have predicted. But after all that’s happened in the last decade it’s no wonder 2025 carries a certain ominous quality. Will there be another pandemic? Another recession? Will the poor take their justice against the rich like in the French Revolution? Will the challenges before us draw us together in ways never seen before? Will we look back on 2025 as the year more justice was born?
It’s important to pay attention to parallels between current and past events. And yet, so many things have changed so profoundly in such a short time that yesterday’s solutions will not always be fitted for today’s challenges. Many of the strategies we used to push for change, for justice fifty years ago will likely not work now. And before we can figure out what will, we must empty ourselves of our desires, our expectations, our assumptions about how everything is going to pan out.
The truth is, nobody knows how this year will end, or all that will happen in the middle. But I do know that our ability as individuals and as a community to empty ourselves, the ability to let go of all that’s keeping us from paying full attention to the here and now is the most important as we move ahead. The funny thing about the path forward is that it unfolds before us when