the dharma blog

…Even now as I feel so strange about sitting alone and writing I think back on one of my fondest memories of solitude. As a child I sat in the bottom of the upturned Christmas tree box with my pen and wrote in my journal. Who knows what I wrote. It could have been the same thing I’m writing right now, more or less. So there’s something that hasn’t changed. There’s something - it’s not even solid - that I can grab onto. My mind is wrestling with warm memories, just hours old, that I want to hold onto and savor. But somehow the more I hold them the more they turn against me and the strings of the mind pull toward sadness that the moments have ended and the emptiness just echoes in my head. (Tell me you find that hard to believe, “emptiness…in my head”).

Finally, something familiar. Something unchanged, unmolested by these travels through space and time, has emerged to tell us that it’s okay. We’re going to be alright. If you feel sad it’s only because you’ve been so happy. You’ve smiled at your loved ones and gave them presents. You ate and drank with your family, and you were merry. It has been a good day. Happiness. Sadness. Joy. Emptiness. And in the end it so often feels like just another day.

So, this is Christmas.