Rabbit Tales for A Thriving 2023
Hop into The Rabbit Year to Unpack your “Awakening”
THE WATER RABBIT YEAR — OVERVIEW
Today (22 January 2023) marks the beginning of a new Chinese Lunar Year symbolised by the Water Rabbit. The Rabbit possesses peaceful and patient energy, and represents longevity, prosperity, luck, and peace. 2023 is therefore predicted to be a year of Hope.
Generally, the Rabbit Year brings hope and prosperity, but 2023 has some surprises due to the zodiac element of Water. This is the first Water Rabbit in 60 years, which last appeared in 1963.
The fluidity of Water therefore brings unpredictability, surprises, and tremendous learning opportunities for the curious. For many, the expansion of life choices in careers and relationships will demand decisions and decisiveness.
The dynamism of Water also implies travel, mobility, and visits to new unknown places. In essence, expect significant movements and transformative changes in all aspects of your life. During the year 2023, many would find themselves standing, often precariously, at the edge between now and their many futures. Indecision may be a great temptation, but one should be vigilant, ready and emboldened to embrace, engage, and manage the expected uncertainty and volatility in the world and in your lives.
Going places and meeting people will cultivate grace and diplomacy for more effective interaction with others. Creativity, and appreciation for diversity will encourage and sharpen social gracefulness for constructive dialogue and decision options.
Like a Rabbit burrow’s many exits, they suggest the importance of strategic craftiness, positivism, and foresight in having several ready alternatives or plans, and not get too dogmatic or attached to any legacy practices or specific decisions.
BE AWAKEN IN THE WATER RABBIT YEAR
The emergent Water Rabbit in 2023 brings a universal gift of “Awakening” for everyone after 3 years of darkness in the Covid19 pandemic. In the post-Covid19 era, the Water Rabbit is ever-ready to detect the changed surroundings with its hypersensitive long ears and sharp eyes. It had stayed relatively still during the Covid19 pandemic, “when the wind blows and grass bends low”; and is now ready to run swiftly as fast as a flash of lightning when perceived some ways out of real danger. “Business Unusual” is “Business as Usual” to the Rabbit.
The Rabbit is described variously as “elegant”, “refined”, and “eminent” for its qualities of cautiousness, vigilance, deftness, craftiness, wittiness, and self-protection. These are survival qualities for agility, adaptiveness and thriving.
The Zen narrative of a White Rabbit describes the reflections of 2 Zen Masters, Dongshan and Sengmi, in their encounter with a rabbit that suddenly crossed their path. Master Sengmi remarked “how swift (迅速)”.
Zen Masters Dongshan and Sengmi reflected on how the Rabbit is considered “eminent”, resulting from being “elegant” and “refined”.
For Master Sengmi, he elaborated that the swifty Rabbit was “just like a commoner becoming a high minister.” A commoner is usually appointed by the Emperor or Prime Minister directly to high office. In other words, the Rabbit appears to have a natural “eminence” that did not require long period of strenuous self-improvement in order to become “elegant” or “eminent”. For Master Dongshan, the past 3-year period of pandemic darkness is akin to “temporarily falling into poverty” from a Zen perspective.
In the current Recovery into the post-Covid19 years, this Zen Rabbit story explains our newfound “Awakening” as an inalienable “birth right” already present, and not as a status or life stage or phase to be cultivated as self-improvements after a long and arduous struggle.
This “Awakening” fruit of the Water Rabbit is available to one and all in 2023.
Using Master Dongshan’s analogy, the recent 3-year Covid19 pandemic was a situation where “generations of nobility, temporarily fallen into poverty” happened to mankind. While many Buddhist sutras and teachings of man-made religions would prescribe various legacy systems of traditions and guides for spiritual growth and self-improvement, the 2023 Water Rabbit heralds the outpouring of an inherent internal “Awakening”.
Another Zen story describes 2 friends drinking late into the night. As the guest fell asleep, the host was called away but not before he first sews a priceless jewel into the guest’s clothing as a gift. The guest awakens in the late morning to continue his travels where he encounters several hardships and financial challenges. They happen to meet again after some years. When the former host informed his friend about the jewel sewn into his clothes, the friend realised that he had only suffered want due to ignorance of the precious gift. Thereafter, he retrieved the jewel and began to live more comfortably. Zen thinking regards the host as the great divine provider, Buddha. “Awakening” emboldens our self-aware consciousness of having the inborn capacity and capability for effective and successful living.
Accordingly, the “Awakening” moment of the Water Rabbit Year refers to an omnipresent capacity now available to anyone, any “commoner”, who believes and embraces your “appointment to be a minister”. Christians may regard this cosmic capacity to be equivalent to the “Grace of God”. The promise of hope and prosperity in 2023 does not require stages of accomplishments or lifetimes of arduous practice. It is not earned through merits or works.
The reflections of Masters Dongshan and Sengmi are about embracing “enlightened awareness”, as triggered by their fleeting glimpse of a rabbit. They illuminate the futility of expending great efforts in pursuit of the elusive goal of any elevated “enlightened” status to achieve “eminence”.
This 2023 Year of the Water Rabbit cautions against the self-deluding path of cultivation that may lead to self-inflation and pride from the false humility of one’s self-centredness.
Your “Awakening” shall empower you to recognise the awakened qualities of kindness and compassion already present within you. Embracing the reality of “Awakening” provides the energy for you to practise the inner uprightness, dignity, and nobility of intrinsic “Awakening”. Optionally, you may continue to practise the habits of self-cultivation, while seeking advanced concentration through meditation, seeing through and purifying negative karmic qualities but only from the perspective of your enlightened “Awakening”.
Please enjoy my recent Articles.
You can also subscribe to my stories and social media posts via your email. Enjoy more interesting Articles by signing up to Medium here: