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Super Blue Moon: Lessons in Acceptance
Ms. Butterfly
On the day of the Super Blue Moonthis year, I received two very important messages.
Ifound myself at Blue Cliff Monastery, a tranquil space created by the latereverent Buddhist teacher Thich Naht Han. I was inside the Great Hall, behind aserene lotus pond, grassy fields dotted with fruit trees and a frolicking deernamed Bamboo who was a good friend of the people. It had smooth clean wooden floorboardsthat felt so good under my socks, a high ceiling and teacher Thich Naht Han’sdistinctive calligraphy, “you are here.” This was where I received my firstmessage.
As I prayed in front of the Buddhastatue I heard: It’s time to Accept.
Laterthat night I received a second message from the large orange blue moon. She wasthe most beautiful sight, veiled in thin clouds that dissipated her glow evenwider. A Super Blue Moon is a very rare sighting, the next one is in around 30years. She said: Stop putting up a fight.
Tobe honest at the time, I did not quite understand the messages entirely. Myemotions were still in a jumble, tears would burst out easily, and my sense ofself felt rocky. I can’t claim I understand them fully now, but I have spentsome time digesting and these are some things that I see now.
There is Passive and Active Acceptance
Sometimes we neglect a corner in our house. Perhaps it is disorganized papers and mail we just keep letting it pileup. Perhaps it is dust behind a piece of furniture that was hard to get to.Perhaps you believe that you have accepted it, because it is not something thatweighs on your chest or your mind consciously. You do not blame yourself for the state of things. Passive acceptance is like this, you are able to say, okay this is messy and this is dirty, c’est la vie.
Years can go by in this state.
It is the nature of dust to increase without making a fuss. It is the nature of junk mail and messy papers to stay silently disorganized. They will not call your attention. Now imagine that these are corners not in your house, but in your inner house. Indeed we live in a world that propagates and values the external and material world so much more, that the great teachers on tending the inner house have not been greatly available. So the truth is, most of us have lots of gunk inside of our inner homes. Active Acceptance, is what the kind that Buddha told me that night. It is walking up to the junk and grime and giving it attention.
Of course accepting and doing something about it are two different things. Before doing we must find true acceptance. It is a process guided by curiosity.Perhaps you poke the dust, and you nod at the thickness. Perhaps you stick your hand inside the pile of papers and read something from 10 years ago. Indeed there is gunk, indeed there is neglect, indeed there is dirt and there is a reason. Acceptance is non-judgmental. Oftentimes in the beginning of this practice the voice of that condones will come “how can you be so disgusting?” but that voice is mean and you must face the bully inside of you. They are not partof active acceptance.
Rather, active acceptance is something like ah, there is something here that needs my attention, because of how long it has been neglected. It will take some time to clean.
For most of us it is not necessarily just grime and dirt inside of us, but wounds and sores and bruises. Everyone deserves care and tenderness. Active self-acceptance is meeting the person in yourself who has allowed everything to fester due to ignorance, letting those papers pile high, letting that dust keep accumulating, letting the wounds to fester and giving them unconditional kindness and love. You may try saying this.
“Hello, it is so nice to meet you. I see you have left some things untended. It happens to us all! It is so difficult to see things that are unpleasant. I am here now to face it with you.”
Accepting WhoYou Are Begins with Accepting Who You Are Not
On the journey of self-acceptance adifficult thing has been accepting who I am not. Jinan from EK Foundation madean interesting video about how literacy has made our eyes not see what’s infront of us but think. It makes a lot of sense, and as someone who hashad access to high quality education all my life growing up I have definitelynoticed this phenomenon. There was a time in my life when it was hard toappreciate other people because instead of seeing them and appreciating them, Isaw what I could be doing or what I wanted to be doing. Constantly whensomething beautiful struck me I wanted to be a part of it rather thanappreciate it. Once I wrote a poem about some of this feeling you can see here.
In some ways this desperate grasping with the eyes is related to age. We are told when we are young to look for whowe want to be like, inspiration or heroes. We see something beautiful and saywe want to be that. However, this feeling of seeing and wanting to be doing thething that someone else is doing, is related to not knowing who it is you are.I remember before when I saw dance performances I would so want to be a dancer.When I saw singers I would wish I was them. It is not because I am withouttalent, but because I did not appreciate myself enough and so I could not fullyappreciate another.
I used to watch something and inside there would be an internal dialogue that goes something like if only youstuck with these lessons as a child! You could be like that! Or whydidn’t you ever try doing this when you were younger? Or I can’t believe you never practice or explored this when you were playing piano, why did youchoose to do that? Indeed the voices in my head made a lovely experience into a terrible experience!
For me, there was a gradual processout of this feeling. I was conscious of it happening, when I was younger Icouldn’t bear watching talent shows of my peers or professional performanceswithout feeling that. There’s always going to be so many lives you are notliving. And sometimes we can feel homesick for them.
Forme, the feeling most notably ended once and for all when I saw FKJ perform livei n 2022, I wrote about it here. Finally I saw that I can watch something so beautiful, and know that I will never be like that, but that is not the point. I am not goingto be a great musician! And so what? There is a part of me that maybe wished I was a great musician before, there is a part of me that wished I was a great dancer, but letting go of that desire and that need is crucial to accepting whoI really am and seeing what I really have. And now, I can happily appreciate friends and people who are better at those things than me, how lucky that thereare other people who can do those things!
Accept thatThere is a Battle Within
In the show Avatar the LastAirbender there is an episode when Zuko, the banished prince from the FireNation, goes through a metamorphosis because he is in the process of letting goof his old identity. He has a dream where two dragons one red and one blue givehim conflicting information. It seems that he has turned a new leaf. Yet acouple of episodes after, he goes back to the other side and betrays his uncle.
Change is not a linear journey, and acceptance is being able to hold the battle within. Hegel’s dialectic sunderstands that growth must come from opposing ideals. Zuko could never have known what was true for him without going back and forth both sides, without going through the battle. The truth is the wavering is part of the process.
Most notably within myself I have identified a battle between values that I have inherited and the values I have on my own. Perhaps some people are lucky and feel that those values are aligned. We all have parents and societies that shape our understanding of what we need to be doing in the world and how we need to be in the world. It is hardto break out of it because many of us spend most of our life trying to appease them. If you have inherited values that algin with your own truth, then this battle is perhaps less drastic.
In my case my parents and I do not have very similar views on how to live and what is important in life. It is really difficult to navigate because some of their views are present in my body and in my mind. I realize that in the process of letting go of those values they come back stronger. For example, in the process of letting go of my desire to have better skin (something that is greatly emphasized by my parents) I suddenly was researching and bookmarking all these products and procedures that could help. It was like an addiction. Then one day I booked an appointment with a dermatologist just to ask her about it, and it was $120!Just to consult about a procedure that seems terrifying honestly. I was so embarrassed! Yet, I did it because for some reason as I was letting go of that desire I was still unable to accept my actual flawed skin and so the desire to change it came back stronger.
This may seem trite, but within they are the great battles. To accept myself is toaccept that this is what I am going through. That there is this battle and itis not over yet, it must always be an even fight, which means each side has toactively be participating. As long as one is able to be aware and accept thisbattle, then there can be an actual conclusion to the battle. If we passivelyaccept and simply ignore it, then we are simply drawing the battle on longer.
Accept ImperfectionOutside and Perfection Inside
There was a time when I pursued power and perfection insteadof pleasure and happiness. As this mindset was the one that reigned I was alsoparalyzed to do anything that didn’t have quick validation. It was hard to dosomething that wasn’t for a grade, or a job application, or a program or anaudience. I was gripped by fear.
As someone with a vast imagination, a family history that has trauma that feels alittle surreal, and not too much that ties me to anyone or anywhere, accepting an imperfect reality was not too necessary. But now I see that when the moon said “stop putting up a fight” she meant the fight for perfection. The fight for not doing something if it wasn’t going to be perfect. The fight of hating something because it isn’t perfect. For hating me because I’m not perfect.
I’m fighting with my own reality by not allowing myself to see it for what it is.
In my college I started a student group called Sync Up for Zero Waste (iykyk!).The symbol was like this.
The idea is thatthere is no such thing as zero. I had a very strong philosophical sense of theterm “zero waste” and was curious about the two words that meant nothing.Inside, the secret world there can be a perfect and compete world. But outsidein the game world (reality) there is never going to be a closed loop. ZeroWaste is an impossible goal on the onset, but it is still worth trying.
I knew this intellectually, and forthe world, but accepting this for the self is a different journey. A slower andharder journey. We are all just more alive in the scenes of our dreams. Morebeautiful. More interesting. More charming.
I finally see that to accept imperfection is know the perfection inside is there, and it doesn’t need to be seen by anyone to be true.
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