Starting the year with a Little Bang

Thanks for all the New Year wishes.

One Thai message from DTAC (phone company) reads a little quirky in translation:

May you have good life
Good love
Good health
A good face
and happy all year long.

Late US columnist Bill Vaughan quips:

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves

and :

Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to.

As to making resolutions – this is one of the 10 parami (perfections) and is called Adhitthana, resolution, or firm resolve. We might also equate this term with ‘affirmations’ which is the primary practise of New Age luminary Louise Hay. Don’t make a resolution that is too vain. Keep it in line with Dhamma, so that the New Year is not just a fresh start on old habits. More meditation practise this year is a good start, as all good things come from this.

A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other

The beautiful thing with Dhamma though, is that it can pervade everything. While you are keeping your resolution, you can observe. While you are breaking your resolution, you can observe. While blaming yourself, while resurrecting your resolution, while changing it, you can observe. Real change does not come from making determinations to be different, but by observation. Observing the mind at all junctures sparks wisdom. Making big shifts through determination and resolution is generally born from the ego mind – the grasping, clinging, wanting. Resolutions are good, for sure, but the observing process goes on throughout no matter if you are observing your resolutions (or precepts) or breaking them. The mind that is willing to watch and learn the whole time, will change in time, and in an easy and graceful manner.