What a year for a new year
We need it like we needed life I guess
Last one left us lying in a mess
What a year for a new year~ Dan Wilson
At a New Year’s Eve party almost twenty years ago, my friend Kate Bennis gave me a song written by her friend, Dan Wilson. She thought it might be something I could use for my New Year’s Day class the next morning.
The song is What A Year For A New Year. And not only did I use it the next day, I use it in my New Year’s classes every. single. year.
And every single year, when I hear the line,
“Last one left us lying in a mess”
I always think, “Yeah this was a tough year, it’s just as well to be leaving it behind. Next year will surely be better.”
But when the next New Year’s classes roll around and that line comes up, once again I think, “Yep. This was a remarkably difficult one. Next year won’t go like this.”
After nearly two decades of listening to this song and thinking these same thoughts, this year I’m taking a different approach. This year, instead of dropping 2021 on the stinking garbage heap and running hopefully to 2022, I’m going to practice tonglen with it.
Tonglen is a Buddhist practice that Pema Chödrön describes as "...a method for connecting with suffering—ours and that which is all around us.... a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart."
(You can read a helpful article about tonglen by Ani Pema here.)
Simply stated, tonglen is the practice of breathing in suffering and breathing out ease for that suffering. (You can do a short tonglen practice with her here. )
The trend is clear – every year leaves us “lying in a mess” of one sort or another. So what would happen if I didn’t reject it and expect something different to happen next year? Instead of turning away from the suffering of 2021 – and sweet mother of mystery there was plenty of it to go around – what if I breathe it in and transform it? What would happen if we turned toward 2021’s suffering, processed it, metabolized it, dissolved our tightness around it?
My favorite description of tonglen comes from the book How Yoga Works by Geshe Michael Roach.* In it, we imagine suffering as inky black tar around the heart. As we breathe in, we draw the sticky black suffering out and pull it into the flame of the heart which explodes the blackness into white light.
Right now, think of the most difficult part of the past year for you. See it as black sticky tar around your heart. Take a deep breath in and draw it in even closer. Then exhale big and strong and burn that blackness into white light.
Think of someone you love who is suffering. See their suffering as sticky blackness. Take a deep breath in and pull it into the compassionate fire of your heart. Exhale and burn it away.
Think of some kind of suffering in the world. See that suffering as black tar of pain, despair, hopelessness. Breathe in and let it come deep into the heat of your heart. Exhale and explode it, transform it. As Dan Wilson sings, “Let it go without a trace / Wipe the teardrops from our faces / Oh! What a year for a new year!”
As 2021 ends, instead of turning away from suffering, let’s bravely turn toward it and use the alchemy of our compassion to transform it. Each year may leave us in a mess but we don’t have to be afraid of it.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
What a year for a new year.
* I've included the complete passage from How Yoga Works by Geshe Michael Roach here as it is visceral and powerful. May it be of benefit.
“’Inside your heart is a tiny red flame, like the flame at the top of a candle. This flame is the power of our selfishness – the habit we have of taking care of ourselves first, and neglecting what others need or want….Look into the Sergeant’s heart. Right there in the middle is a dark, rotten little pool of blackness. It is his sadness, it is his pain; it is the reason why he drinks, and it is his drinking….You want to take this pain away from him, forever. It’s the compassion we spoke about before; it is the real reason why you are doing yoga. And you decide that you want to take his black pain away so badly that you would even take it into yourself, if it meant you could save him from it….And so you begin to take say seven long, slow breaths. The first time you breathe in, that little evil pool of darkness in the center of the Sergeant’s heart stirs and moves; it starts to rise up out of his body, like an ugly cloud of blackness. And as you take more breaths it is sucked up out of his chest, up his throat, and then out of his nostrils. And knowing you would take it on yourself to save him from it, you take all his drunken misery in that little cloud of darkness and you keep breathing it in, and in again, drawing it towards your own face. And then hold it there, just outside your own nostrils….And now something will happen; it will happen a little quickly and so you have to concentrate well upon this part. In one breath you will suck the blackness in through your own nose; you will take it upon yourself. The blackness will come down your throat, into your chest and then slowly – very slowly – it will approach the little red flame of your selfishness: the part of you that would never even imagine taking away someone else’s pain, if it meant having it yourself instead. And the blackness floats slowly towards the edge of the flame, and then suddenly the black makes contact with the red, and there is a burst of beautiful golden light, like a bolt of lightning shining in the purest gold. And in that moment, because you are willing, in that moment, to swallow all the Sergeant’s pain into yourself, the crimson fire of your own selfishness is extinguished, forever. It is gone. And in this explosion too the blackness of the Sergeant’s pain is destroyed: destroyed for him, destroyed for you, destroyed forever. For this is the power, the power of the grace of selfless compassion for others.” (How Yoga Works by Geshe Michael Roach pp 93-95)