New Year’s Contemplation

I offer the following year-end contemplation and exercise to the students I work with personally at the start of December each year. If you'd like to take it on as either a formal meditation or more informal questions as we start the new year, you are welcome.

Sit on your meditation seat for this.

You may start with a brief period of mindfulness of body—say, 5-10 minutes—before turning to these questions as a formal contemplation for 10 or so minutes. It is helpful in contemplative meditation to resist the impulse to write anything down during the contemplation, but you may want to journal or take notes right after the contemplation period is complete. Then to seal the aspiration, you might want to email or share your final aspirations in writing with a friend or mentor (as brief or in-depth a response as you would like) by, or around, New Year's. Any other ceremony for sealing your aspirations is also helpful.

Contemplation Question: What is my aspiration for 2021 on the outer and inner levels?
-as you contemplate, keep returning your mind to this question for the chosen time period. When an insight arises, you don’t have to act on it immediately, but can just let it arise and settle in your being. Insights that last will still be with you when the contemplation concludes.

Outer: What is your plan for outer practice, study, courses, retreats (when safe), body practice, service work, political, artistic or cultural engagements, or other forms of dharma practice in 2021? What would you like to aspire towards informally, or formally commit to taking on this year?

Inner: After the upheavals of 2020, What are you working with right now internally, in terms of kleshas (ie karmic hangups or destructive tendencies), and what are you working with in terms of insights and positive tendencies you have cultivated thus far in your practice which you would like to take farther this year?

-When you conclude, you can close with a bow or an offering of merit and then journal anything you’d like to write down at the end of the session.