The Super Harvest Moon

At 11:09 p.m. EST, the autumn equinox will be taking place. This means that the sun is in line with the equator, that great imaginary line around the girth of our planet earth. In fact, according to NASA, this year we are having a "super harvest moon." This has to do with the full moon (harvest moon) taking place within hours of the fall equinox. The sun goes down just as the full moon comes up on the horizon.
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/22sep_harvestmoon/

As a grandmother with a spreading belly, I used to be offended by my own expanding middle. Some of it I tried to write-off as the cost I paid for bearing children. I tried to steer clear of cultural messages about age, youth and beauty. But they seem to be as pervasive as the air I breath. My partner really doesn't seem to mind. It is my own hang-up that weights me down the most.

Healing around this is a continuing practice. By finding a character who is happy and chunky, I am making peace with my body. I have begun to take great joy in meditating with a small tubby little monk.

People often confuse the little chubby figure thinking it is a Buddha. But the skinny dude is considered a representation of the more traditional form of Buddha - Siddhartha Gautama, the guy we tend to think of as the Enlightened Buddha who sat under the Bodhi tree two thousand years ago.

I find the fat, happy little guy much more appealing and one who speaks to my condition. He is often associated with joy, abundance, and wisdom even though he is thought to have needed very little for himself. He seems more suited to my extroverted nature. His big smile just disarms me. Like Thich Nhat Hanh, a smile is part of the meditation.

It just happens that the image of the monk evokes something more earthy and robust in my imagination. I have a whole side of the family with bodies like his from whom I inherited their genetics. It was the happy elderly aunts with the soft arms, portly middle, tiny thick fingers, and gentle hearts who reverberate in my memory. Not all of them were so terrific. Some of them were senile, and in their senility could go either way - pleasant or mean. Please let me soften, ripen into old age as sweetly as Helen and not like Maude.

Dr. Bill Thomas, a geriatric physician and social change leader in eldercare, points out that the word senile actually has roots in sen and the word senescence which means to ripen, like produce in the autumn. Our culture misses reaping the harvest of our elders because we have segregated people in all kinds of ways.

This rotund monk has a Saint Nicholas-type aura about him. There are Chinese stories about how children flocked to him as he would hide or gave out candy.

This worn-out mother would like to be the one with no responsibilities for family, but cares deeply about the village, the children, and the elderly where ever she is at.

In the fullness of autumn, I find the vines dying off and the fruit coming into maturity. How can I joyfully live my life so that it benefits others? The statue of the monk inspire me to move beyond myself and let that inward work of meditation express itself in happiness - just as the harvest moon playfully chases the sun across the sky no matter how ancient they are.