Korean Zen Buddhist teacher Haemin Sunim said,

"Earth is a great school for the growth of our spirit, not a courtroom where we are judged and later punished. Our purpose here is to break free from self-imposed restraints -- often shaped by the stories we tell ourselves -- and to rediscover our innate true nature of love.

We don't need to live at the level of the ego, which feeds on the illusion of separation and the struggle for survival. Instead, we can rise to the level of spirit, embracing the truth that all life events, even the painful ones, serve our growth and evolution."

To consider, even for a moment, that life could be a school versus a courtroom, a curriculum versus a punishment, is an invitation to explore something broader than instinctual survival and deeper than transient pleasure.

Words inspired by Confucius as quoted from The Analects

"[A good man] does not worry about not being known by others but rather worries about not knowing them." - Confucius

I think many of us raised in the Western tradition has heard the quote attributed to Socrates, "Know thyself" as the first step to wisdom. By the same token, to know oneself seems to me to be a foundational exercise to knowing someone else. When I know who I am, how I came to be, how and why I act, react, and behave in certain ways with both honesty and kindness, I become more equipped to lend the same curiosity, study, and awareness toward those around me. Most importantly, I become better at listening.

So often, I find myself wanting to be heard, to be understood and not misinterpreted that all that matters is to hear my own voice, to project my own perspective, to clarify my own intention. George Orwell once said that "Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood." Well, what happens when everybody prioritizes this for himself over love? Is there a chance for mutual awareness? Is there ultimately more understanding? My guess is that people end up even more dissatisfied with their relationships.

And so I want to begin by knowing myself. When I know myself, maybe it won't matter so much if someone doesn't understand me. It's not always in my control, but what I can choose to do is try to understand them. Broadening my understanding of anyone I come into contact with can be only more food for wonder, for compassion, for connection and love. So, why not?

I've always loved these two quotes and wanted to combine them somehow:

"I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being." - Daniel Ladinsky

and

"Do not allow your anxiety about the world fill your heart. If your heart is filled with anxiety, you will get sick, and then you will not be able to help." - Thich Nhat Hanh

Inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh's words, "Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart."

Words inspired by Charles Bukowski, art inspired by Le Keran's "Flying a kite in Yangliuqing"

"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing." - Charles Bukowski

Any given day, I could be driving along on the highway feeling perfectly fine, and then suddenly someone cuts me off, and I'm no longer loving towards anyone. I'm impatient with my son talking loudly from the backseat about seeming trivialities. I rush to grab the last shopping basket at the grocery store, leaving another shopper empty-handed. My conscience could be pricked by feelings of guilt and remorse, but the voices are easy enough to silence when you've had as much practice as I have over the years.

• It's every man for himself out here.
• He needs to respect my boundaries.
• If I don't stand up for myself, I'll just become someone else's doormat.

Do these thoughts sound familiar to you? Why is it so easy to forget to love, or maybe not necessarily forget it, but why is it easy demote it to a position of lesser value?

From a beautiful and tender picture book about death, Glenn Ringtved shares these words of comfort:

"Cry, heart, but never break. Let your tears of grief and sadness help begin new life. Some people say Death's heart is as dead and black as a piece of coal, but that is not true. Beneath his inky cloak, Death's heart is as red as the most beautiful sunset and beats with a great love of life."

Inspired by one of Sadhguru's most well-known speeches, this eye-opening chat reminds us that seeing the world with a beginner's mindset can be invaluable especially when engaging with a child.

Modern society teaches us that anything worthwhile doesn't come easily. We are always told that the good things in life take hard work. We have to work hard, study hard, play hard, and if we fail or fall short, we must try harder, practice harder, become harder. Everything hard, hard, hard... because life is hard.

As a result, I found that I got in the habit of approaching nearly everything in life as a confrontation, as something to conquer or overcome. Moreover, I assumed that if I didn't apply much effort at something, then there was something wrong, there was some kind of catch.

This was a pattern I fell into in my romantic relationships for many years. I had heard the narrative of couples working hard to stay together against all odds. The stories I heard as a child like "The Little Mermaid" and "Romeo and Juliet," all seemed to convey the same thing. If you really love someone, you fight to stay together. As I grew older, I seemed to pay attention to those narratives that upheld that belief. I was surrounded by stories of how difficult it was to maintain a relationship or marriage for decades. I received advice on working hard to communicate and of the necessity to sacrifice for each other. As a result, I felt that I couldn't leave a relationship when I felt it wasn't a good fit, because I was under the impression that I could just work on it until it did.

I was compelled to put huge effort into my relationships from the beginning in a way that set them perpetually off balance. This had become such a pattern for me, that when I started getting to know my now husband, it felt so weird and wrong at how easy and effortless it was to just be with him. It made it difficult to trust him and the relationship, because I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I often found myself pulling away, because I felt like I wasn't in control.

And I think that's one pitfall of the narrative of "working hard" can play out in our lives. We've set the expectation that life is hard, and so if we're not working hard at life, then we're somehow doing it wrong. Of course, relationships can hit rough patches, especially when under external stress factors. I am not blind to those truths, and my marriage is not immune to them either. There are many aspects of life that are extremely difficult. Moreover, life in general is unfair, and some of us have harder lives than others. But at the same time, let us ask ourselves: Is there still space for joy? Is there still space for grace? Or mercy? Or softness? Can we not make things more difficult than they have to be?

For most of us in most situations, the answer will always be yes. No matter how difficult, boring, sad, or painful something is, there is always room to introduce a little space for joy in our hearts. I'm not talking about blind optimism; I'm referring to making a little crack in the rigidity of our hard mindset, a crack that may seem to make us weaker, but ultimately is, as Leonard Cohen says, what lets the light in. The Dalai Lama also taught something similar, that no matter how difficult a situation, there is always room to be kind. And even the Seven Dwarves in Disney's "Snow White" showed a whole generation how to whistle while we work.

Here, in this week's comic, I've drawn the oxherd boy, weighed down by responsibility of looking after a young friend, while defending his lunch from far-too-interested chickens. Yet he still maintains a heart that doesn't crackle with toxic positivity, but reflects an imperturbable ease that I hope to bring forth in my daily life and that of my son, especially now that he's in school. The academic environment and tradition in Taiwan is very competitive, and while I recognize the value of applied discipline, at the same time, I try to remind my son: where is the joy in studying? If he can find it, then studying may not become as hard as we fear.

What do you think about the idea of working hard versus working cheerfully? Do you do one more often than the other, and if so, when?

Inspired by Wendell Berry's poem, "Our Real Work":

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

This poem brings to mind another observation made by film-maker David Lynch who said that as we get older, it's not that that life becomes easier to navigate, but rather it's a limiting of imagination. When I think I know exactly what to do, do I necessarily check if it's the right thing to do, or am I just on auto-pilot?

Children struggle with the real work of living constantly as they learn to navigate the rules set forth by whatever culture and society they happen to be growing through. And maybe that's a gift, to be in a place of not knowing still even in old age -- which begs the question, "How can I continue to baffle my mind?"

There are many ways for strength to manifest itself. The one that is helping me most right now is strength through resilience.⁠⁠

"One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is the feeling that the present moment is not good enough." - Pema Chodron

My son swings between being completely in the moment and desperately wanting to be outside of it. I suppose we all fall somewhere on this spectrum, and maybe this feels especially pronounced as a young person in the modern world with minimal agency over what happens to us.

This perspective has made me empathize with my son's frustration and also served as a reminder to myself to not be in a rush to mentally check out of the moment. It only comes once. There is only now.

Inspired by Antonio Machado's "Traveller, there is no path"

Traveller, the path is your tracks⁠
And nothing more.⁠
Traveller, there is no path⁠
The path is made by walking.⁠
By walking you make a path⁠
And turning, you look back⁠
At a way you will never tread again⁠
Traveller, there is no road⁠
Only wakes in the sea.⁠

Flying a kite is an exercise in life: a balance in command and release, to give into the direction of the wind, to maintain enough tension to stay above the earth while being flexible enough to respond to sudden changes that can send you crashing down. The one who flies the kite is not an enemy, a conqueror of the wind, but rather its partner. Working in tandem with forces beyond our control is how our lives stay afloat.

One of my favorite lines from the Tao Te Ching highlights the comparison between Nature or the Tao and the human experience. How often do I rush about trying to accomplish everything I set out for myself only to feel disappointment, frustration, and even anger when I don't? What do I feel is so necessary to achieve -- only myself, in this lifetime -- when I am a part of a continuous oneness that accomplishes all things within an infinite and unknowable arc of time?

I've noticed in the many ways in which I try to encourage the spirit of generosity in my son as an antidote to the way his ego naturally expresses itself by indulging in selfishness. I thank him when he buses the family's dishes to the sink after a meal. I beam at him and point out how kind and thoughtful he was for noticing that someone had dropped their glove and returning it to them.

In a functioning society, the act of giving is placed higher than that of receiving. To receive something to one's advantage may be considered natural or instinctual; and because of that, is considered "lower" in executive function than to give. But with that perspective, it can feel like a tricky line to walk, because the ego -- learning that generosity and service is valuable currency for social acceptance -- can just as easily use these to further its own gain, couldn't it?

I think about what Ram Dass had said of his work with people who are dying: "I must tell you that it’s a very seductive power to be doing good for other people."

And I think he's right. I've fallen into the "white savior" trope myself for the volunteer work I did as a young adult in the Global South. I felt embarrassed for it afterwards and have spent the better part of the last fifteen years over-analyzing every act of service, activism, or giving that I engaged in with questions like:

• "Is this really kindness?"
• "What is my real motivation behind getting involved?"
• "Am I the right person to be performing it?"
• "Should I just do nothing so they don't mistake my intention?"

As annoyingly time-consuming and energy-draining these mental cartwheels have been, they have been absolutely necessary for me to get a better feel for when generosity comes from a place of innocence, "from the soul" so to speak, and when it comes from a place of obligation or ego.

I might still engage in both, but those that come from innocence is where there is the most powerful potential for connection. On service, Ram Dass continues to say that in performing an act of good for others, "If you are awake to what your predicament is, all the good you are doing to other people is nothing other than work on yourself. It is not an ‘either/or’ position."

A single act becomes not just good for someone else, it is -- in fact -- good for me, too. In this act of generosity borne of my self-awareness and the awareness of another, there is no distinction between the giver and the receiver. I think that's how selflessness manifests in the world. To be selfless in this sense isn't really thinking only of another person, or not thinking of oneself. It's to completely do away with the definition of a distinct self at all. It's to remove any perception of separation between two beings. There is no one helping an other. There is only the act that is both giving and receiving.

Our experience with suffering is also one of our greatest gifts, the ability to empathize with the suffering of others.

You may be familiar with Thich Nhat Hanh's words, as they have appeared in my work. Having died in 2022, Thich Nhat Hanh (or Thay) was an influential figure not only in the dissemination of Western Zen ideas, but also in his lifelong mission of building community that is essential for peace to thrive. It's with this in mind that I also think of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- a contemporary of Thay -- and what he might have brought to pass in an equally long lifetime, had he not been assassinated 55 years ago.

The two met a few times in the 1960s, each considering the other a brother in their message of compassion and understanding, and a fellow partner in the difficult work of love in action. There are many powerful words to choose from Dr. King's speeches and writing, and today this single line rings more true as a challenge to myself than ever before: "Let no man pull you so low as to hate him."

They say that love doesn't come from you, it goes through you. As much as I like to be the agent of my actions, it feels so much more natural to me to consider myself a conduit of Love (with a capital L) that exists beyond myself. It feels right to listen to Love, to allow it to move through me, in the many different ways of expression that it needs to reach any individual in any situation.

How do you say "I love you," -- the answer is found not by learning how to speak, but in learning how to listen.

Inspired by text from "The Analects" attributed to Confucius, of the scholar who in his eagerness to pursue wisdom forgets his food, in his joy forgets his sorrows, and who grows old without noticing the passage of time" (Analects 7.19)

A small reminder that to be here, now, is a miraculous thing. And for all the pain and suffering that the brain may be most attuned to, for all the disappointments and despair to make you wonder, "Why? What's the point? What for?"... I hope you ease them for a moment with the weightier wonder of just being here at all and being here for it all.

You are miraculous.

There's no shortage of opinions about what we should do with your lives. In nearly every moment of our lives from the second we're born into a society, we are met with expectations from family, friends, teachers, employers, colleagues, and random strangers. Of course the vast majority of transactional expectations are necessary for any functioning society. For example, pedestrians expect cars to stop at a red light so they may cross safely with confidence.

Recently, however, I was confronted with a very real question by someone who was struggling to find common ground with her spouse on how to live more fully. Whether she was simply venting to a compassionate listener, seeking perspective or advice on how to move forward, I found myself concluding that such a personal crisis wouldn't be best addressed by consulting others, but by meditating clearly on oneself. What does that mean?

I think about this quote by Martha Graham, a dancer and choreographer who revolutionized modern dance as an art form:

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open."

While she may have been addressing artistry, creativity, and personal expression, I re-read the words "life force," and know that the same ideas apply to all actions we take in life.

We often think of what we want to do with life, as though life were a medium to mold under our will. Or maybe life is a tool, a means through which our desired ends might be accomplished. And maybe both are true in a certain light, but when we feel lost and don't know what to do, the perspective that life is instead a force moving through us can be a remarkably freeing and awe-inspiring exercise in surrender. To pay attention to what kind of life that is, to give it permission to express itself through us -- even against what others might expect of us -- can be an even more powerful invitation.

As the first illustration of 2024, I hope you find chances to answer this invitation. May you listen to your heart, may you trust your gut, and may you act with a clear mind. 💛

Ever since reading this quote by Baal Tem Shov, I've felt a sense of comfort (although small, ever so small) in moments of great uncertainty in my life. I hope you recognize each moment of your transformation, that no matter what happens, whoever you become will be there always in place of what you have been.