Dekila Chungyalpa: Wisdom of Winter: Rest, Regeneration, and Rebirth

“Does your breathing change when you imagine it’s the landscape breathing?” Dekila Chungyalpa invites us to explore different ways of looking at time (as nature and different species view time, time as seasonal) that exist outside of our human tendency to see time as a zero sum game that we win or lose. She reminds us of the perception of winter as a time to rest, to increase our reserves of things like joy to help our human resilience. She says, “it’s almost like we need that layer of fat that squirrels have!” Sitting with “deep time,” with a perception of time bigger than our individual human life, can help us orient towards the climate crisis and the pain it causes in a more sustainable way, reminding us that we are a “tiny knot” in the bigger tapestry of life and that our aspiration is to aid the whole tapestry’s thriving.