Happy new year!

 Happy new year! I hope you had a good celebration (if you celebrate) with loved ones. Now the new year has started and it's time for action. Yesterday I talked about setting intentions. Today--in my discussion of the next Lojong slogan, number 54, which says "train wholeheartedly"--we will move into action. The "Eenvoudig Leven agenda" (Simple Living calendar) that I mentioned previously starts the year with an intriguing question: what is your mission? I think it is having a clear mission that can allow you to train wholeheartedly, because you can work to ensure that what you do and how you are is consistent with your mission. 

Ladies on a mission at Morlaix Ballet Camp
Picture by Michel Le

In the last few days I spent some time thinking about it, but I found it quite hard, because somehow your mission sounds like it has to be something grand like solving world peace or world hunger, and that is not something I can commit to. Today, during my morning run, I found that a better way for me to think about this is to come up with prayers, inspired by Roshi Joan Halifax's recent Facebook posts, such as "May I be able to inspire people with my combination of dancing and science", "May I be able to help my students reach their goals", or "May I be able to find some peace in myself." For the latter one, I find it very helpful to remind myself of this recent video by Mingyur Rinpoche, in which he says that in order to be of more help for people he decides to disappear for retreat for a while. I too have to think about how sometimes taking time away can actually allow you to be there more for others--it is not necessarily selfish. Coming back to your main mission can be really helpful to zoom out and make those decisions.

Finally, I want to leave you with a thought I have been playing with in the last days. Often it is easy to keep focusing on things that have to change, but interestingly this unrest is exactly what characterizes our vicious cycle of suffering. The hopeful message of the Buddhist teachings is that we all have a buddha nature right inside us, if we can only let it manifest. So here is an encouragement to trust this buddha nature and give it the space to blossom.