Nurturing the good this Lunar New Year
Resetting for the Year of the Dragon 🐉🧧🥳
Contemplations
How will you try to nurture the good this coming Lunar New Year?
Which of the Four Nutriments are you called to look more deeply at?
What traditions do you love and are vital for you to keep?
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Lunar New Year is this Saturday, February 10, 2024.
Lunar New Year (or Tết in Vietnamese) is incredibly special to me and my family. It’s a tradition that has been important for me to uphold over the years as a way to not only stay connected with my family, but my heritage, my lineage. Over the years, commemorating it has been incredibly healing, me reconnecting with the ancestry that lives inside of me and my bones. (More on that in the coming weeks.) And it has in recent years also become an anti-racist act for me — a way for me to celebrate my existence.
To get a sense of how Lunar New Year was for me growing up, here’s a little itty bitty excerpt from the book I’m writing, KNOW YOUR POWER:
Our Tết meals varied over the years, but my mother always prepared seven to 10 dishes. Always by herself. My mother is naturally self-reliant, but there was always something about how she prepared for Lunar New Year that stood out to me. I didn’t realize for many years why it was so important for her to uphold this tradition — for us, for me.
She cooked tofu and veggie stir fry, prepared with much lovingkindness and mindfulness as if in a monastery; pork and mung-bean filled rice dumplings wrapped in forest green rice paper — a brick-shaped delicacy that could also be flattened out into a pancake and eaten fried; lap-xuong, a Chinese pork sausage filled with so much pig fat that you didn’t even need oil when you cooked it; and of course, huge baskets of fruit and red aluminum tin boxes filled with moon cakes, red bean treats, pandan jelly, sweet rice, and tapioca pudding.
Every year, I’d quietly climb on top of a white plastic footstool to sneak a bite, my short arm reaching just enough to—
“Don’t eat that! That’s for your ancestors!” my mother would yell at me.
I would skulk into the living room, tortured by the smell of freshly fried handmade egg rolls, longingly watching my mother bop around the kitchen until the wee hours of the night, eventually dozing off to the sound of her cooking.
Click, clank. Sizzle, burble. Chop, chop, chop.
Not To Be All Buddhist About It But…
There are so many traditions, superstitions that come with Lunar New Year:
Wear Red
Eat lucky foods (peanuts/legumes, sweet treats)
This day will dictate how the rest of the year will be, so make it a good one!
Get your fortune read (via oracle or zodiac sign). I’m a water tiger 🌊 🐯
The last one is to make sure you have a clean house. In the past, I would clean my apartment from top to bottom, like deep clean vibes. And even though I am doing that this year, I’m also thinking about what it means to clean my house internally.
And though we often talk about letting go of the bad, I’ve recently been inspired to focus and nurture the good, thanks to my teacher Dr. Marisela Gomez’ sharing of the dharma. (Looking at how positive psychology affects and rewires our brains is also another great lens to look at this through.)
I’ve been practicing this at looking at the deeper teaching of the Four Nutriments, four categories of what we consume as humans. What’s posited here is that if we look at these four categories and start investing more of our energy into what’s making us more joyful and peaceful, our experience of the world will shift. Where can I water the seeds I want to grow? Where can I nurture the parts of myself that need more care and love? It is this idea that we are able to transform our mental formations i.e. bad habits, by feeding certain aspects of our body, mind and soul.
“The soil of our mind contains many seeds, positive and negative. We are the gardeners who identify, water, and cultivate the best seeds.”
― Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh, No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering
The Four Nutriments are: edible food, sense-impressions, volitions, and consciousness.
Edible Food: We all know this. Thinking not just what you’re eating, but where did it come from? Is the food I’m eating creating a more peaceful world or a more violent one?
Sense-Impressions: This is literally what comes through your five senses: taste, smell, sight, sound, touch. Think about how much your senses experience every minute of every day. Are you adding to the pollution of your senses or clearing it out? Are you overwhelming the senses? Where do you have the power to change and shift what’s being input?
Volition: Intention. Ah, intention is everything. Do you think about the intentions of every action, word, thought? How much are you conscious or unconscious of?
Consciousness: This is collective consciousness. How we bring in the feelings of others, what’s happening us, both in the immediate and the abstract. It’s the environment, the vibe, the world we move in everyday. Think about those global moments when we have felt heartbreak and anger or joy. That kind of consciousness.
So this Lunar New Year, I’m making a commitment to myself to:
Edible foods: Ask myself more how something will make me feel before I eat it.
Sense-Impressions: Are there ways to reduce how many sense impressions I’m getting and is there a way to make the ones I do consume be more nourishing for my body?
Volition: Think more about who is benefiting when I am making a purchase and be willing to sacrifice convenience if it means harm is reduced.
Consciousness: Keep surrounding myself with community who make me feel supported and nourished and think about ways I can shift the collective consciousness with my mindful energy.
So this year, I’m wishing you and yours much love, joy, good fortune, luck and MON-AY. Chúc Mừng Năm Mới all! And I want to know in the comments:
Contemplations
How will you try to nurture the good this coming Lunar New Year?
Which of the Four Nutriments are you called to look more deeply at?
What traditions do you love and are vital for you to keep?