New Year's Celebration 

Remembering Those Who Have Shown Us Compassion

With the year nearly all behind us, we can practice simply remembering and calling to mind those beings in our life who have shown us compassion this past year – or throughout our life.

Sometimes we actually skip over this only looking ahead at the future or at the negativities of the past. When we're receiving compassion, receiving kindness, in that moment we may have skipped over it. Maybe we think “it's not really a big deal.” But this is a practice that actually helps us to recognize and sit with an act of kindness, sit with someone who's offered us something that we really need, someone who maybe let us skip in line in front of them, someone who offered us a kind word when we most needed it, someone who let us cry on their shoulders, the kindness of our families, the kindness of our partners, the kindness of our fellow classmates, our professors.

Kindness is always happening, and the practices of the bodhisattvas help us to actually embrace those acts of kindness that are always happening. The world is always trying to love us. But part of our discomfort actually arises when we block actually receiving that kindness because maybe we don't like the person. Maybe the person isn't wearing, saying, or doing the “right things.” Or maybe they didn't go to the right school, the right career, the right lifestyle, all kinds of things. Or maybe we're afraid of them.

So just to begin with, I want you just to notice your feet on the floor, just noticing your feet. So the ground is so important in our initial practices. So noticing our feet on the floor, noticing our bodies in the seats. And allowing yourself to trust that the seats will hold you.

And taking a few moments to reflect on the acts of kindness that you've been a recipient of just today. And as you reflect, noticing how these acts of kindness as you reflect on them have an impact in your mind and your body.

You can think about and reflect on any other act of kindness that you've ever experienced this past month, past year, or even in your whole life. And just notice how that makes you feel.

To end, as we move out of this session of practice, begin to say to yourself, may I experience the deepest well-being, happiness, and joy; may I be free from suffering; may I have everything that I need to be okay; and may my acts of kindness begin to deepen for others around me.

And so you may slowly begin to open your eyes if they're closed and returning your attention to the floor, the seat. Coming back into the space.

Beginning Anew

Having remembered those who have been kind and loving to us, reflecting upon our own karmic debt that has accumulated in this life and past, having made offerings and offered them to all beings, we can recite the Beginning Anew prayer.

With great respect, we turn towards the conqueror of afflictions,

offering heartfelt words of repentance. We have lived in forgetfulness for a long time.

As we have not had the opportunity to encounter the Dharma,

our habit energies have led us into suffering. We have made many mistakes out of unskillfulness.

We have been blinded by our wrong perceptions for a very long time.

Our heart’s garden is sown with attachment, hatred, and pride.

In us are seeds of killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, and lies.

Our everyday deeds and words do damage. All these wrong actions are obstacles to our peace and joy.

Let us begin anew.

We see that we have been thoughtless, straying from the path of mindfulness.

We have stored up afflictions and ignorance, which have brought about so much aversion and sorrow.

There are times we have been weary of life because we are so full of anxiety.

Because we do not understand others, we are angry and resentful.

First we try to reason with each other, then we blame.

Every day the suffering increases, making the rift greater.

There are days when we are unwilling to speak to each other,

unwilling to look each other in the face. And we create internal formations, which last for a long time.

Now we turn to the Three Jewels.

Sincerely recognizing our errors, we bow our heads.

We know so well that in our consciousness are buried all the wholesome seeds —

seeds of love and understanding and seeds of peace and joy.

But because we do not know how to water them,

the wholesome seeds do not sprout fresh and green.

We continue to allow sorrow to overwhelm us

until there is no light in our lives.

When we chase after a distant happiness, life becomes but a shadow of the reality. Our mind is occupied by the past,

or worrying about this or that in the future. We cannot let go of our anger,

and we consider of no value the precious gifts of life which are already in our hands,

thereby trampling on real happiness.

As month follows month, we are sunk in sorrow.

So now in the precious presence of the Buddha,

fragrant with sandalwood incense,

we recognize our errors and begin anew.

With all our heart we go for refuge, turning to the Buddhas in the Ten Directions

and all the Bodhisattvas, noble disciples, and self achieved Buddhas.

Very sincerely we recognize our errors and the mistakes of our wrong judgments. Please bring the balm of clear water

to pour on the roots of our afflictions. Please bring the raft of the true teachings to carry us over the ocean of sorrows.

We vow to live an awakened life,

to practice smiling and conscious breathing, and to study the teachings, authentically transmitted.

Diligently, we shall live in mindfulness.

We come back to live in the wonderful present,

to plant our heart’s garden with good seeds, and to make strong foundations of understanding and love.

We vow to train ourselves in mindfulness and concentration,

practicing to look and understand deeply

to be able to see the nature of all that is,

and so to be free of the bonds of birth and death.

We learn to speak lovingly, to be affectionate,

to care for others whether it is early morn or late afternoon,

to bring the roots of joy to many places, helping people to abandon sorrow,

to respond with deep gratitude

to the kindness of parents, teachers, and friends.

With deep faith we light up the incense of our heart.

We ask the Lord of Compassion to be our protector

on the wonderful path of practice.

We vow to practice diligently,

cultivating the fruits of this path.

New Year Prayer To Our Ancestors

Dear Beloved Ancestors, both Spiritual and Genetic,

We present ourselves before you at this solemn moment of the New Year to express our gratitude and deep aspiration as a spiritual family.

Though we are a young and imperfect community, we have all come with a heart to embody the practice, to generate compassion, and to serve.

Dear Ancestors, you have taught us not to forget ourselves, no matter how noble our goals, to come home to ourselves in each mindful breath and each mindful step, taking the time to enjoy the wonders of life – the moonrise, the stars, the murmurations of starlings surging and  flowing across winter skies – to get the nourishment and relaxation we need for healing to take place in our body and mind. For this we are so grateful. Now we have a path, there is nothing more to fear.

Looking back at the year and all that we have gone through together as a planet, we see that our unhealed traumas, our fears and deep rooted belief in our separateness continue to cause much personal and planetary harm. We vow to transform the roots of war, hatred and violence, by every day generating the energy of non-violence and non-discrimination in our thinking, speaking and acting. We shall continue to challenge the boundaries of our hearts by asking ourselves: Do we have enough wisdom and courage to forgive those who have hurt us? Knowing that only by releasing the grievances of the past can we move forward as a species. 

Dear Ancestors, you have taught us that no amount of wealth and power can guarantee our happiness, security and peace. True security and agency lies in our power to love and to be happy, here and now, and no one can take that away from us. We vow to actively cultivate generosity and cooperation as a way to help build a new vulture of simply living, sharing and mutual trust.

In the face of despair and division, we vow to always stick together, to be a refuge for each other, and to strengthen our spiritual family as a community of nonviolence, offering each other courage to turn the tide of collective consciousness toward a more peaceful and compassionate world.

Dear Ancestors, please accept our offerings of fruits, flowers, and the incense of our heart, as a sign of our deep aspiration, respect, and love.

In the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha

I take refuge until complete enlightenment.

Until all beings are free from the cyclic continuum of suffering

May I cultivate the heart and mind of compassionate beings.

May all sentient beings throughout space have complete happiness

May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causal seeds of suffering

May all sentient beings never be separate from the happiness that is free from suffering.

Being free from the duality of happiness and suffering, may we realize the immeasurable

mind of equanimity..

First-Footing: Xông đất

First-Footing is a beloved Vietnamese (called Xông đất) & Scottish Hogmanay tradition in which the first person to cross a home’s threshold after midnight on New Year’s sets the tone for the year ahead. The “first-foot” traditionally brings small symbolic gifts—such as coal for warmth, shortbread for nourishment, salt for protection, a coin for prosperity, or whisky for good cheer. In Vietnam, the first guest typically arrives with New Year blessings and small symbolic gifts such as lì xì (lucky money in a red envelope), fruits, sweets, or well-wishes for health and abundance. 

In older folklore, a dark-haired man was considered the luckiest first visitor, a remnant of times when a fair-haired stranger might have signaled danger. Today, anyone arriving with kindness and a small offering can serve as a bearer of good fortune. Because of this, families often choose their “first visitor” carefully—someone with a compatible zodiac sign, a bright and generous personality, or simply a person who carries good energy and success in life.

The first guest typically arrives with New Year blessings and small symbolic gifts such as lì xì (lucky money in a red envelope), fruits, sweets, or well-wishes for health and abundance. The hosts welcome them warmly, creating a moment of shared joy before the year fully begins. While the symbolism is rooted in ancient folk beliefs, the heart of the custom remains timeless: starting the year with good relationships, good intentions, and good energy entering the home.  It’s a simple way to begin the New Year with connection, generosity, and the feeling that good fortune is something we create together.

May the day be well and the night be well.

May the midday hour bring happiness, too.

In every minute and every second,

may the day and night be well.

By the blessing of the Triple Gem, may all things be protected and safe.

May all beings born in each of the four ways live in a land of purity.

May all in the Three Realms be born upon Lotus Thrones.

May countless wandering souls

realize the three virtuous positions of the Bodhisattva Path.

May all living beings, with grace and ease, fulfill the Bodhisattva Stages.

The countenance of the World-Honored One,

like the full moon, or like the orb of the sun,

shines with the light of clarity.

A halo of wisdom spreads in every direction, enveloping all with love and compassion, joy, and equanimity.

Namo Shakyamunaye Buddhaya 

Namo Shakyamunaye Buddhaya 

Namo Shakyamunaye Buddhaya

Reciting the Repentance Gatha

In a moment, we are going to recite together. It is called the repentance gatha. For those of you who have difficulty with that word, just do your best. It is not the word that matters, but the meaning and what it points to for you.

What is important is that we are going through an internal process where we can openly acknowledge our wrongdoing, our unskillfulness, and our harmful actions from the past, without guilt, shame, or negative emotionality. We have all done these things. Even sitting here and acknowledging that means, at the very least, we know right from wrong. We know skillful from unskillful and harmful from beneficial actions. That is important.

All we are doing is acknowledging that in the past we acted unskillfully. The key question is why. Because we did not know better. If you are sitting here thinking, “But I knew better,” I would say, no, you did not know better. If you had truly known better, you would have done better. You may have had it in your head, but not in your heart. It is important that we acknowledge the full extent of our humanity and can honestly say, “Even though I knew better, I still did what I wanted.” That is simply the truth.

We need to be able to objectively look at our lives and assess what is wholesome and unwholesome, skillful and unskillful, harmful and nonharmful. Our lives become a process of correct, mistake, recorrect, mistake, recorrect. Over time, there are fewer mistakes, less need to recorrect, and more moments of hitting the right note. That is transformation. That is how change happens.

The gatha we will recite is not the traditional one, it goes like this:

From beginningless time, I have acted unskillfully
with greed, anger, and delusion
in actions of my body, speech, and mind.
Determined now to begin anew,
with deep remorse, I repent these past actions.

That is all. No guilt and no shame, just acknowledgement. The most important line is “determined now to begin anew.” That is what matters. Whatever we have done in the past is in the past. If we want to change, the only place that change can occur is now, in how we show up in this moment and in the future.

We go through this process of repentance because what we carry from the past weighs us down and contaminates our spiritual life. We want to put most of our energy into transformation. If we are still carrying the past with us, it makes that very difficult. This is a process we can do every day. If we make mistakes, we acknowledge them and vow to do better, starting now.

We will recite the gatha three times. In Buddhism, we like to do things three times, for body, speech, and mind. I will say a line, and then you will repeat it.

Setting an Aspiration

Now we come to part two. The first part was working with our past. That is a very important part of practice, learning how to skillfully relate to the past so it can be transformed. From the past we develop intelligence, wisdom, and an ethical foundation, but it is not something we live in. Once we learn, we move forward. That is very important. We do not hold on to the past.

Now we are in this space, this pause, this present moment. We have openly acknowledged and taken a deep look at the past, and hopefully we understand it more clearly. We have let go. We have repented, so to speak. We understand that everybody makes mistakes, including us and including others. That is very important to acknowledge.

This is really what a spiritual life is about. It is about many things, but at its core it is about learning to live a conscious life. A conscious life means living from intention. The other way we have lived is from the past, from our conditioning, familial, societal, and relational. That is our default.

There is only one thing more powerful than our conditioning, and that is a strong, conscious aspiration to live another way. That is the only thing that can offset our conditioning. The stronger and clearer our aspiration is, the less power our conditioning has. It is actually quite simple. Are we going to do this perfectly? No. That is why we have repentance. That is why we have acknowledgment. That is why we practice beginning anew.

We are familiar with this culturally at New Year’s when we make resolutions, often the same ones year after year. This year, let us see if we can do it a little differently.

A big part of spiritual practice is learning how to transform the past. Thich Nhat Hanh says we need to compost our past, not let it stink like garbage. When we compost it, it becomes something that can nourish new growth. So we compost our past and then ask, what do I want to grow in the garden of my heart and mind?

You should still have paper, and we have extra if you need it. Please take your time with this. Aspirations tend to be big. We say things like, I want to wake up. I want to be good hearted. I want to be kinder, more generous, more mindful, more compassionate. These are beautiful aspirations, but we often never achieve them because they are too big and too vague. They have no personal content.

Aspirations are important because they point us in a direction. They show us the mountaintop we want to climb. But we are here, not there. The question is, how do we get there? We often forget that we only get there step by step. Aspirations show us where we want to go, but intentions are how we actually get there.

In clinical terms, we used to call this operationalizing. What is this going to look like in my real life? If you say, I want to be more generous, who do you want to be more generous with? How will you express generosity so you know you are actually doing it? If you say, I want to be kinder, to whom? Maybe kinder to yourself. How will you know you are doing that?

If you say, I want to be more patient, look at your life and ask, with whom do I want to be more patient, and how will I practice that? Less irritation, less impatience. This takes more work, but it is essential. If we consciously understand what we are actually going to do in the reality of our lives and relationships, then change becomes possible.

Take the aspiration, then make it doable. You may not be there yet, but you can learn how to be this way. There is no better place to learn than in the reality of life, in relationships and situations. You know yourself best.

So set your aspirations and intentions, then make them concrete. What will you actually do? Who will you do it with? Please take time now to write. This is an ongoing process, not something you finish today. Write what feels meaningful. We will give you as much paper as you need, and if your pencil wears down, just raise your hand and someone will bring you another.

You can survey your whole life: family, work, acquaintances, and the world at large. There are many ways to begin living more consciously.

Remember, this morning we have created an opening, a space between past and future, where we can reflect on our lives and how we want to show up going forward. We know how we have shown up in the past. We can learn from that and set our aspirations and intentions for the future. Once we reenter the energy and activity of our lives, we will be swept along, often by our default, if we are not careful.

This can remain an ongoing practice. It is a powerful way to begin each day, perhaps with just a few minutes of reflection. Some people end each day by reviewing their actions of body, speech, and mind, noticing what was in alignment with their intentions and what was not. They make a quick assessment, wake up the next day, review their conscious intentions, and begin again.

Reciting the Five Mindfulness Trainings

The quickest and easiest way to change our karma is to live ethically. An ethical life means engaging in skillful actions that benefit ourselves and others and refraining from actions that cause harm. This is the simplest way to clean up our karma and ensure that we are not continuing negative patterns into the future.

That is why we are reciting the five mindfulness trainings today. Thich Nhat Hanh says they are called trainings because they are something we practice. He also says they are like a mirror. Just as we look in a mirror to see how we look, we use the trainings to reflect on how we are living. That reflection itself is very helpful.