In the Heart of Winter

By Sunya-roshi

At this time of year, the world seems almost to hold its breath. The sun still pauses to rest in the cold quiet – the Solstice is playing itself out.

On these long, frosty nights in the mountains of North Carolina, stars scatter across the sky, spraying brilliant patterns of light. You have to brave the frozen darkness of these nights to walk out and drink in all that beauty – what Rumi called “a turning night of stars.”

When we, like the sun, pause our busyness and stop to do zazen in this season, we tune our bodies and minds to the rich stillness and silence – the natural samadhi power — of Winter. And when we mark the invisible border between the Old Year and the New, taking time to reflect with open hearts on those patterns we wish to let go of, and those we’d like to invite into our lives, we are also harmonizing with the deeply contemplative spirit of this time. We are opening ourselves to the possibility of renewal and rebirth – for ourselves and the world.

Soon at Windhorse we will come together to formally honor this Great Turning of one year into the next. We’ll hold various ceremonies, including Sangha Circle and Jukai/Receiving the Precepts. In the meantime each of us, through our zazen, can make the most of this special season to deepen the connection with our own Original Nature – and to the ways it so vibrantly expresses itself in the cycles of sun, moon, and stars, and the living Earth. When this connection is strong and deep, we are bound to have a very different (and indeed much happier!) New Year.


It is Our Quiet Time, by Nancy Wood

It is our quiet time.

We do not speak, because the voices are within us.

It is our quiet time.

We do not walk, because the earth is all within us.

It is our quiet time.

We do not dance, because the music has lifted us

to a place where the spirit is.

It is our quiet time.

We rest with all of nature. We wake when the Seven Sisters wake.

We greet them in the sky over the opening of the kiva.

(from Earth Prayers: 365 Prayers, Poems, and Invocations from Around the World, compiled by Elizabeth Roberts)

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