I have never waited

For someone to bring the Spring that only stirs up more sadness.

For me, everything is meaningless,

Everything is subject to suffering.

Have you ever greeted the New Year with this kind of feeling in your life? Now it is springtime, the trees and flowers are so fresh; why is someone happy but someone else sad? Why others are radiant and smiling but I am withering and irritated? Looking back at many years that have passed, I had greeted the New Year full of happiness, but where has that happiness gone?

When we are young, we have the capacity to find enjoyment, to find happiness. Then we gradually grow up in a family, we get smarter in school, we get wiser in the school of life, we have more knowledge, more wisdom. We are more refined in our ability to succeed, wishing for the maximum enjoyment and to be overflowing with happiness; but it seems like we are still not satisfied.

There is a story about a strong and wealthy kingdom a long time ago. The king organized a competition to see how far a person could run and pass how many acres of land, and then the king would give all that land as a reward. Among the group of contestants, there was one young man who was very healthy and strong because he always exercised daily. He eagerly ran his best, utterly dedicated and absorbed in his task, from early morning until late evening.  He passed many miles of land, more than 100, and he still continued to run until the last bit of sunlight at dusk. His energy had drained out, but he still continued, dragging himself forward. For him, the more land, the more pleased he felt. When the last light was gone, that young man’s energy was also gone. He dropped to his knees, fell forward, and died, on the vast, cold land…

That young man died because of what?

How about for us; why does anger, sadness, or depression destroy our mind and body? Is the joy or happiness that we have based on conditions, borrowed or traded from the outside? We live with many conditions: to have people care for us, to get what we want, to have obedient children, good health, successful image, material things…  these satisfactions make us happy. When these satisfactions start to fade, we feel lost, restless, sad, angry, and full of blame. Furthermore, we are:

Addicted to others satisfying us and satisfying ourselves,

We get what we want and want more.

We don’t know we are just continuing to feed

Ignorance, holding, and suffering.

For a long time, we didn’t know that we already have True Happiness, that it was never lost. This True Happiness is not given by others, not borrowed, and not traded. There is no need to go up and down, struggling back and forth, unsuccessfully looking outside for True Happiness. We read the second Spring poem from a Vietnamese Zen Master:

Spring goes, flowers wither,

Spring comes, flowers bloom.

Life is continuous,

Old age comes.

Don’t say Spring fades, all flowers fall;

Last night, front yard, one flowering branch.*

Spring comes and goes, flowers blossom and fall. Time doesn’t stop, life continues to flow, things happen non-stop. We were young, full of energy, and now we are old with grey hair. But in the continuation of life, the system of birth and death of body, mind, and the universe in operation, we are naively holding the conditioned happiness, clinging to the bartered happiness that comes and goes, so we are always writhing in the suffering of being in the cycle of birth and death without knowing where the starting point is.

The Zen Patriarchs often teach: Inside suffering is True Happiness; within birth and death there is no birth and no death. We only need to look back and realize holdings that bring suffering for ourselves; realizing this system brings us True Happiness. That is the Forever Spring mentioned in the poem above. The Zen Master used the metaphor of one flowering branch that still shows off its color in the fading Springtime.

Don’t say Spring fades, all flowers fall;

Last night, front yard, one flowering branch.

Today is the first day of New Year, and one more time, I wish that all of you are diligent in practice so you soon realize the Forever Spring inside each of you.

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