The New Year

This will be the last blog of 2025 as I will be at Dhanakosa next week for the Women’s Winter retreat, something I absolutely love doing. I can’t remember exactly when I started to lead this but it was in the late 90s. I remember the millennium one and I had been doing it for a few years before that. The millennium one was fantastic. I remember Jyotipaksini brought fabulous fireworks and we welcomed in the year 2000 with a great fire and

fireworks on the banks of the loch. Since then I have been there every year except, if I remember correctly, two years when I was in the southern hemisphere over New Year. New year has always been important to me - much more than Christmas. When I became Buddhist and moved to live in a community in London, I spent the worst new year of my life! Everyone went to bed and I was on my own to meet the new year. I swore then that I would never do that again. Ever since I have been on retreat.

For many years I was on the team for the LBC winter retreat and then, once I had moved to Spain I came back for retreats in the UK, finally settling on the Women’s Winter at Dhanakosa. It was like coming home. It was - and is - the perfect way for me to see in the new year. We have a wee ceilidh on hogmanay which satisfies my need for something social and collective then we do a puja with confessions which we burn at midnight. This satisfies my need for a spiritual recognition of letting go and of bringing to mind aspirations for the next year. I think it satisfies a lot of people because, so far, it has always been popular. It is such a magical wonderful place anyway and, add the magic of a new year and it’s a winner. This year the theme is (yes, you guessed it) Padmasambhava’s Advice to the Three Fortunate Women. It has been a year of Padmasambhava so it seems fitting to end the year calling the Precious Guru of Transformation to mind. I am really looking forward to it - and some of you reading this will be there I know.

Last Sunday was the solstice and we had a very enjoyable afternoon to welcome back the light. After a meditation and ritual where we lit candles and turned on the fairy lights at 3.00 (the actual time of the solstice), we moved through to the library and had a session of sharing poems and the occasional song - and a wee story. We even had a pre Bollywood Indian song which was very moving and a Butoh dance in the shrine room which was beautiful. I had the same sensation during the sharing that I had during the open mic session I wrote about last week. I just felt such an upsurge of love. That is something I often feel on retreat but it is rather wonderful to feel it in a room full of people reading poems, singing or sharing their experience - especially since some of them I had never met before.

I love the fact that people could really be themselves and share very openly. That, for me, is sangha as much as sitting in meditation or hearing the Dharma. It also seems very Glaswegian in a good way.

So, my friends, we say goodbye to 2025. I hope it has overall been a good year. I know there have been ups and downs for folk. There has been pain and joy, dark and light. I wish us all well for 2026 when it comes. I hope it is a rich year and spiritually meaningful.

For now, as always,

May all beings be well, may all beings find true happiness and its causes and may all beings be free from suffering.

Where the Bodhichitta has not yet arisen

May it arise

Where it has arisen

May it flourish

Where it flourishes

May it never die