SANTA

                                                                                    Commentary by Gendo
 
In my growing up, December was the month of Christmas and the practice of generosity, of sharing gifts.  At the same time, it was said that, utlimately, the gifts came not from a person, a parent, a sibling, but from Santa Claus, who was both overwieght and somehow capable of squeezing down, of all things, the chimney, leaving a sleigh and eight reindeer parked on the roof!  Not to mention the mystery of the  “all-mighty” Jesus born homeless in a feed trough for cows.
 
Why employ such mystery?  I want to explore the mystery that is  generosity, that is this time of the year, that is life.   
 
Mystery is paradox.  Paradox, stands in contrast to the everyday assumptions we make about material reality.  Buddhism, and countless other traditions, stand in the face of such “reasonable” assumptions and, instead,  point to the evident fact that rationality and materialism, sooner or later, are insufficient to explain and resolve the suffering we encounter, the mystery that both our life and our death are who we are.
 
It’s hard to face the paradox that what “I know” and what is “true” are  two different things.  Right now the nights are getting longer, the days are dwindling.  It is getting cold and snow and ice accumulate on driveways.  To know that can be a rather depressing reality (quite apart from other events in the world).  Yet it is a time of year that many cultures celebrate.
 
I suggest, celebration is not simply a device to distract us from a depressing reality.  It is a truth about depression itself.   Inherent in Winter’s depressing reality is the paradox that cold and darkness exist due to the pleasures of summer sun. 
 
Depression is, after all, fixation, a fixation on the reality outside my window, what I know.  But that “knowing” is ignorant of what makes knowing possible in the first place.  What we take to be a solitary event, is, instead, a paradox, opposites functioning in dynamic relationship.  
 
Dark and cold stand in relationship to sun and warmth.  Like breath.   In breath and out breath function opposite to each other.  At the same time, you can’t have one without the other.  Together they are one whole.
 
And who is it that is discriminating one from the other?  It is, of course, the self.  To fixate on a particular form, is also to fixate the self who discriminates.  The joy of generosity is the truth that who we are is greater than our preoccupation with form or result, greater than “what’s in it for me.”   Who we are is greater than our notions of self and other;  a greatness people personify as God.
 
And sometimes Santa Claus,  who delivers the reminder that to “give away” something is more than the material object involved.  Ultimately, to “give away” is to give away the identity of the one who gives.  To leave the matter in hands of some chimney climbing elf, leaves it to mystery, the paradox of a pleasure beyond identity. 
 
God is mystery.  To make an object of God is a mistake, hiding a truth beyond distinctions of self and other, a truth that is selfless, all embracing connection (love); a truth beyond all distinction, including time and space.
 
Everyone is capable of such experience, and will, at some moment, have such an experience.  It is not found elsewhere, but inherent, who we are, present in every moment!   

​At the same time (paradox), we have an individual self that wakes up each day and does its business.   To hold both truths, I suggest, is to act, mindful that our individuality is also connection, called responsibility,  called morality,  called true love.