(Dharma talk given to Napa Valley Insight Meditation)

The Autumn foliage is so beautiful this time of year. And it’s such a reminder of the nature of impermanence, anicca. The changing of the seasons. The coming of the dark season, whatever that brings up for us. For some of us, we look forward to being bundled up all cozy with a cup of hot chocolate. Others may have some dread.

Here’s a poem I wrote thirty years ago about darkness that is read around the world around the Winter Solstice. But I think it’s even more fitting as we change our clocks and face the coming of darker days and whatever that may bring up for us.

Do not be afraid of the darkness.
Dark is the rich fertile earth
that cradles the seed, nourishing growth.
Dark is the soft night that cradles us to rest.
Only in darkness
can stars shine across the vastness of space.
Only in darkness
is the moon's dance so clear.
There is mystery woven in the dark quiet hours,
There is magic in the darkness. 
 
Do not be afraid.
We are born of this magic.
It fills our dreams
that root, unravel and reweave themselves
in the shelter of the deep dark night.
The dark has its own hue,
its own resonance, its own breath.
It fills our soul,
not with despair, but with promise.
Dark is the gestation of our deep and knowing self.
Dark is the cave where we rest and renew our soul.
We are born of the darkness,
and each night we return
to the deep moist womb of our beginnings.
 
Do not be afraid of the darkness,
for in the depth of that very darkness
comes a first glimpse of our own light,
the pure inner light of love and knowing.
As it glows and grows, the darkness recedes.
As we shed our light, we shed our fear,
and revel in the wonder of all that is revealed.
 
So, do not rush the coming of the sun.
Do not crave the lengthening of the day.
Celebrate the darkness.
Here and now. A time of richness. A time of joy.
 
- Stephanie Noble
        	

I like to think of this stage of my life as the autumn season. My younger self would have been surprised at how much I enjoy being this age. She would be surprised to know I would live this long, as she was hiding under her desk in air raid drills, expecting nuclear disaster. My generation didn’t trust anyone over thirty and the lyrics we lived by included words like “Hope I die before I get old”. But back then I had no idea how beautiful being alive at this age can be! To experience it as a glorious autumn display of colors.

Of course, every season has its beauty that calls to be noticed and recognized. The spring of youth is all new buds, fresh growth, and dewy beauty. The summer of adulthood is a time of laboring in the fields. The days may be long, the work may be hard, and there might be difficult conditions. But there’s also freedom to grow in new directions, to be independent, even in our interdependence. 

Autumn is a time of letting go. Just as deciduous trees lose their leaves, we lose abilities, friends, and family, and ultimately, like the leaves, we are released on the winds of time. 

The cooling temperatures are like the mellowing of our hormones, the quieting down of the inner clamoring, and the easing of any sense of striving toward some urgent goal or ‘making something of ourselves’.

This autumn season may bring more clarity, ease, and openness. We might notice that it’s easier to just be ourselves without worrying so much about how others perceive us. We’re not chasing after recognition or approval. 

Of course, that’s not universally true, but for those of us walking the Eightfold Path together, regardless of our age, meeting in Sangha, practicing meditation, and studying the Dharma, it is more likely to be true. The Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha—the Triple Gem—support us.

We can readily notice when we’ve fallen out of wise View and succumbed to old habituated patterns of fear-based thinking. When that happens, we know how to take the time to sit, allow ourselves to settle, and come into this moment, releasing any need for it to be different than it is. Then we feel ready to be in the world. And to show our true colors.

For those of us in the autumn of our lives, our future is certain, just the timing and conditions are unclear, but with every funeral, memorial, and life celebration we attend, we are befriending impermanence. Just as if we were monks sent by the Buddha to sit in the charnal grounds full of human remains to understand the nature of impermanence anicca. 

We get it. And this face-to-face familiarity with anicca — literally the face we see in the mirror every morning screams impermanence! — makes us better equipped to handle difficulties. Health challenges? Don’t get us started on our organ recitals! And death? Most of us have lost the majority of our ancestors, as well as friends, acquaintances, and other family members of our generation or even younger. Some of us have lost our life partners or our children. Each loss is different. Each grief is unique. But all teach us about the nature of impermanence.

The stability of our practice helps us to be in touch with our feelings and to skillfully take care of ourselves.

And when it comes to bad news, it’s not news to us. 

But getting old doesn’t guarantee wisdom, does it? Bad news can compound and give way to despair.

So, I want to bring in the Dharma to address how we may relate to the news or anything else that might be happening in our lives. Let’s begin by expanding our perspective. The best place I know to do that is to walk among the redwoods. When we wander among them, we feel awed. 

In the parks, there’s often a display of an upended stump whose thicker and thinner rings show over a thousand years of change. Each ring is a wet or dry season, a few inches might be a human lifetime.

Their bark may show the scars from fires. Just as we each have scars from past pain as well as the life marks of joy in the wrinkles gained from smiles and laughter. 

My husband and I just celebrated our 55th wedding anniversary, which is indeed a long time. On that day we took a walk in Armstrong Redwoods, and being in a thousand-year-old forest helps to put things in perspective. We’d look up into those towering trees and we felt so small and so fleeting. Not to make light of our experience, but to see it in the greater context lightened our hearts. 

We may be small and our lives brief in comparison, but we too have been through harsh winters and scorching summers. We’ve faced firestorms, floods, and earthquakes, as well as personal losses and challenging illnesses.

The redwoods grow in groves, their roots intertwined and supportive of each other in deep communication. We might think of them as sanghas, connected to support and help each other in times of need.

Each of us has ridden the Eight Worldly winds of Gain and Loss, Success and Failure, Praise and Blame, and Pleasure and Pain. And thanks to our dedicated practice and supportive sangha, we may see more clearly and be less tossed about, less blinded by the one, and less devastated by the other than we used to be. We may feel more present for all that arises in our lives, more able to greet it all with awareness and lovingkindness. 

Can we look more deeply at the essential nature of matter, how at a subatomic level, there’s a continual exchange of photons and electrons, matter and energy, so that all life is an inseparable web of relationships? Not just with those we agree with, but all life. All beings.

We, as a species, have been so clever and industrious that we’ve put all species at risk. But we are working to correct that, and the good works continue worldwide regardless of who’s in the White House. You may be familiar with Christiana Figueres, a practicing Buddhist, author, podcaster, and Costa Rican diplomat, who was Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and continues to lead the world around environmental awareness. She said with or without the US political leadership on board, the environmental movement will go ahead. So many leaders around the world are committed, and even more importantly the citizenry of those countries are committed, coming together in all kinds of creative ways.

Global organizations are working even harder and making great strides. Earth Justice, whose motto is “Because the Earth needs a good Lawyer” has added more lawyers to their already impressive staff who continue to fight in the courts. I’m sure you know of other environmental organizations that will continue and even double down. And if this is important to us, we can double down on our support and our volunteering. We can express our Wise Intention of lovingkindness to all beings through Wise Effort.

On the Thursday morning following the election Tricycle Magazine hosted a Zoom meeting and over 500 Buddhists of all traditions showed up and expressed their feelings, concerns, grief, and hopes. It was an amazing rich spontaneous sangha that showed the importance of community, especially at times like these.

One comment that lingers for me was from a woman who said, “I can only do so much. But I can do so much!” And that’s true for each of us. First, acknowledge how important it is to check in with ourselves, our values, our abilities, our gifts, our time, our intentions, and then recognize that we can only do so much. But not stopping there, not giving up. Stepping up and recognizing that even as one person there is so much we can do.

As practicing meditators, we have insights and breakthroughs in more deeply understanding the nature of lovingkindness, how infinite and radiant it is, like the sun that shines on all beings without judging whether they are worthy to receive it. 

And that lovingkindness, Metta, carves more space in our hearts for compassion, Karuna, for ourselves and others, so that we are not turning away but able to engage.

And then we discover that from the cultivation of true compassion comes the ability to experience Mudita, joy for the happiness of others.

This may be challenging when it feels like that happiness is gained at our expense. Whether someone is living the life we wanted to live, or celebrating a victory we had hoped would be ours.

But remembering that Mudita arises out of compassion, we might ask what belief systems and what fears were at the heart of the choices made in the voting booth. And then we can cultivate compassion for them, send lovingkindness to them. 

We can also feel compassion because we may have learned from our years of experience, that even a victory celebrated in the moment becomes a bit hollow in time.

But all of us who practice have this moment! Not a moment of the imagination, but the joy of being fully present for the felt sense of being alive in this moment, just as it is. And that is a gift beyond measure. Beyond triumph in any form. 

Being able to access this level of understanding allows us to experience equanimity, Upekkha. There’s a quality of spacious expansive understanding of the ever-changing fleeting phenomena of life. The release of grasping and clinging, of entangling with greed, hatred, aversion, being lost in the delusion of being anything other than a fleeting expression of life loving itself into being, elements in their infinite variety, coming together in this form and that. We are a dance of life!

All this understanding begins with practice and a willingness to send Metta to ourselves and to all beings. No bypasses. Because Metta is not a reward, it’s an infinite radiance we open to and become conduits for. We receive it and multiply it. But when we hold back, when we pick and choose, we suffer.

When we fall out of the ability to send Metta to all beings, it’s because we’ve fallen out of that deep understanding of Anatta, the inseparable nature of all life, how there is no solid separate self, just this brief every-changing collection of the elements coming together, in a dance we call me and I. 

When we fall out of that joyful understanding, we feel isolated, worried, anxious, alone, defensive, angry, and maybe hopeless. And that leads to a sense of helplessness. 

But we are intrinsically interwoven with all life, and everything we do has an impact. It ripples out. Even if it hasn’t moved the world to think like we do, we still live our truth. We do what we do with wise intention and wise effort.

When we do this, we show our true colors. Those colors might be different for each of us of course. Just as in the autumn foliage, there will be a gorgeous variety of leaves — Red, orange, yellow, and purple in all shapes and sizes — dancing in the wind. There’s no one right color, size, or shape. It’s the beauty of them all together. And the same is true with us. Let’s accept and honor our own expression of how life lives through us. Let’s tune in and notice where we are drawn to put our energy, what’s our main concern? Perhaps all our energy goes towards caregiving, supporting family, or doing a job that contributes to the greater good. And, of course, as responsible citizens of this finite delicately balanced planet, we live as lightly on the earth as we can, all the small actions of each of us inspiring others and making a difference, and we offer whatever support we can to organizations doing heavy lifting on a global scale. And we acknowledge that it’s making a difference.

I know many of us question that. Is it enough? Is it too little? Is it too late? Well, we don’t know. And the don’t know mind allows us to live with that uncertainty.

But another advantage of this autumnal season of life is seeing firsthand the changes that have already occurred. When I was a newlywed visiting my inlaws in San Jose, I was so horrified by how the smog was so thick you could never see Mount Hamilton, and now every time we visit the sky is clear. Recycling is the norm. Solar, wind, and other forms of energy. Electric vehicles and hybrids.

If I could have seen 2024 from the vantage point of 1969, the year of the first Earth Day, I might have found more to delight in than expected. Can we look back and appreciate the work of all who got toxic chemicals banned, pesticides regulated, cleaner rivers and lakes, marine sanctuaries created, lead out of gasoline, addressing industrial pollution, and passing the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and so much more. Of course, there’s always more to be done! But let’s acknowledge the concerted efforts of countries around the world working to clean up plastics on beaches, and colleges educating environmental champions who continue to do amazing things. Positive things are happening in all aspects of the environment, and have been happening for the past 55 years. While an anti-environmental administration can enact some changes, powerful forces are working to mitigate them.

Of course, like many in this autumnal stage, I want to make things better for our children and grandchildren. I can’t help feeling guilty that we are handing down such challenges. And we need to do all we can. But we can also recognize that this is the world they inhabit and that they are now co-creating, making their way, and putting their creative collaborative energy into it for the benefit of all beings. Will it be enough? We don’t know. But we humans are an adaptable species, sometimes too much for our own good. And we live in an age of miracles and wonders our ancestors could never have imagined.

Nothing will ever be perfect. But each generation is uniquely equipped to deal with whatever arises. Can we let go of our measure of how things should be? Can we let go of forecasting and dreading the future? Can we let go of those persistent patterns of judging, finding fault, and comparing? Can we notice reactivity and ease into responsiveness? Can we soften our remorse and allow it to grow into healthy resolve?

Can we do what we believe is beneficial, informed by Wise View? Can we be generous with our time and resources? Can we be collaborative, take responsibility, and cultivate resilience? 

Can we dance with life as the breeze dances with the Autumn leaves? Finding beauty in this moment, just as it is.