All is Quiet on New Year’s Day

Volume 35. January 22, 2023

After the hoopla of Times Square, after the ball drop, champagne, and fireworks, there is the silence. The clean slate. The New Year.

Seminal Irish rock band U2 sing about this season in their aptly named song “New Year’s Day.”

All is quiet on New Year’s Day. A world in white gets underway. I want to be with you,
Be with you, night and day.

The song continues:

It’s true, it’s true. We can break through. Though torn in two, We can be one.

About whom is Bono, lead singer of U2, singing?

Obviously, his beloved.

In a Buddhist sense, however, he is alluding to our true self.

Our hearts yearn for unity. We long for oneness.

But the sullen waves of samsara care not. They toss us to and fro. We whimper in the ocean of duality, wallowing like whales between gain and loss, joy and grief, until we’re seasick.

Where can we find safe harbor? An island paradise perhaps?

Turn to the quiet mind, the mind unattached to form.

Meditation returns us to harmony. To our simple, original, uncomplicated, natural state. Meditation restores our primal unity.

The ground of our being is a mysterious peaceful joy.

Tranquility is our natural home.

Meditation brings us home.

The New Year is a time of prajna — what something is in itself, unpolluted by judgements or agendas. Declutter the calendar. Now is the time to behold the beauty of a new born world.

When the mind is at rest, the world is at rest.

Wandering waves, joyless and gloomy, beneath brown bridges in Brooklyn, sulk like sad men at crowds in Times Square.

Buddhas return to the dazzling blankness of a mind free of thoughts.

U2 end their song, with a plea: “I will be with you again.”

Bono sings the words over and over until fade out.

“I will be with you again … I will be with you again …”

Who will you be with this new year?

Time is limited. Your true self is infinite.