Snow Globe Buddha Offers Greetings

Okay here's a Christmas Koan. What kind of holiday card do you send to your Buddhist friends? Is that like the joke, what did the Buddhist find when he opened his Christmas present? Emptiness. I know this is okay because you've come to expect complete foolishness from me if you pop by here now and then. I don't bill myself as a Zen fool for no reason at all!

I did this little mixed media piece last year (it's sold) and decided it would make a nice little holiday card. I've been searching around for the perfect quote. This morning on Tricycle's Daily Dharma there it was waiting courtesy of Sylvia Boorstein: "(I often think about the snow globes with lovely scenes at their center, scenes hidden from view as long as the “snow” is shaken up. Once the globe is left alone on a steady surface, the snow settles, and what is meant to be seen is revealed.)" I have simply used the last part of the quote "the snow settles and what is meant to be seen is revealed." And a little shameless shilling - they are for sale on Etsy if the fancy overtakes you!

It's a great thought actually because it is so habitual for us to be stirring things up. I have heard Dharma talks with the same message based on a glass of water and sand or a lake, but the stirring of silt and mud all have the same effect. These liquids and their swirling bits are offered to us as reminders that running here and there, with our incessant chatter and pouring over things simply muddy the water. If you are engaged in a regular sitting practice you will know how helpful it is to just sit; how sometimes the answers or solutions to problems just arrive as you sit. Or the problems loosen their grip on you. But we also know how difficult this is when life puts a little squeeze on us. It's hard to stop shaking that globe. We just grasp it as hard as we can and shake and shake.

Our wanting to make things happen, to have things go our way, our sense that we are in control; these are the things that cause us to grab that lovely clear snow globe and shake the dickens out of it. We think all the shaking will make the snow land in just the loveliest little drifts that will please us, but in reality life doesn't work this way. Yes our actions have consequences, but we are not privy to all the things that go into creating the results. So here is the Buddha in all his lovely hot pinkness offering up holiday greetings and Dharma from within his little enso of a snow globe.

What are you shaking up in your world today?