December, Time of Stillness and Quiet Awakening.

In the Zen tradition, this is the time of the Rohatsu Sesshin. From the 1st to the 8th of December, thousands of practitioners around the world are sitting right now. It is the most vigorous retreat of the year. 

This retreat remembers Shakyamuni, who is said to have sat for eight days and eight nights under the Bodhi tree until he woke up on the last morning, seeing the morning star. That moment of seeing clearly gave him the name Buddha, “the awakened one.”

In the Christian tradition, this time of year is Advent. Advent means “arrival,” “coming.” It is the time of waiting, of slowing down and waiting. For what?

Not only for Christmas, not only for a historic story. At its heart, Advent is an invitation into stillness. Into listening. Into a different kind of birth.

Rohatsu and Advent meet each other here: in the darkness, in the quiet, in a season that looks empty on the surface, but is actually full of possibility.

We are moving toward the longest night of the year. In the darkness is where we see the light most clearly. This is what we mean when we say “enlightenment,” or when we speak of “Christmas” as the birth of light into the world. It is the awakening to who we truly are.

We are not waiting for the Buddha to come back and fix our lives. We are not waiting for Jesus to appear and make everything easy. It is about our own birth! To become who we actually are, underneath all the doing, the effort, the performance. Who am I?

This time invites us into stillness.

And yet… look at our modern culture in December.

Many people are stressed. Running from store to store, clicking from page to page, buying presents, planning events, rushing from one obligation to the next. Fighting their tiredness to still keep up with the demands, all while nature herself is slowing down, going quiet, withdrawing into the roots and the seeds.

Nature is not confused about what season this is. The trees let go of their leaves. The animals sleep more, move less. The light pulls inward.

We are part of this same cycle.

Our bodies know it: the urge to sleep more, to rest more, to be quieter. The sense that the outward push is unnatural right now. The need for warmth, for softness, for less. But our conditioning says, “Keep going. Don’t stop. You’ll fall behind. You are only as valuable as what you produce.”

So there is a conflict: life invites us to go within, and our habits push us to speed up.

In both traditions, this season is not about becoming more productive; it is about becoming more available to what is already here.

The Buddha didn’t get enlightened by doing more. He stopped running. He sat down under a tree and didn’t move away from his own experience. He let everything arise and pass in the great darkness of his own mind and heart. He was committed not to get up, until he knew the truth of existence.

In the Christian story, Mary doesn’t “do” enlightenment either. She says one simple, radical sentence: “Let it be done unto me.” Let it be. Let this happen through me. A deep yes to something mysterious and not in her control.

This time invites us to letting go of control, trusting a deeper intelligence that is already here.

Less action on the outside, more tuning inward. Less producing, more listening. Less managing, more allowing.

Who am I, when I’m not busy? Who am I, when I stop proving myself? Who is it that wants to be born now?

These are not questions to solve with the thinking mind. They are questions to live with, quietly, in the dark.

Silence is not empty. Darkness is not dead.

Think of a seed in the soil. From the outside, it looks like nothing is happening. But in the dark, unseen, the shell is softening, cracking open. The first tiny root begins to reach down, the first tender shoot begins to reach up. All of this happens in darkness, in silence, without any schedule, without any hurry.

If you pull the seed up every day to check on it, you kill it. If you demand that it grow faster, you damage it.

We do this to ourselves all the time.

We demand visible progress. We pull our inner life up by the roots to see if it's “working.” We ask after every meditation: “Am I calmer now? Am I more spiritual now?” We turn even silence into a productivity project.

But the deepest transformation often happens when we stop watching, stop measuring, and simply let ourselves rest in being.

Look at your own life. Your body is healing all the time in ways you don’t control. A cut closes. A broken bone knits. You don’t sit there and tell each cell what to do.

This same intelligence holds your emotional and spiritual life as well. But it needs space. It needs your non-interference.

This season is a chance to practice non-interference.

 Silence can feel threatening at first, because in the silence we start to feel our exhaustion, our grief, our confusion. We start to notice the thoughts and emotions we’ve been outrunning.

During this time, you might experiment very simply:

When you feel the urge to push through one more task, just pause for a moment. Feel your breath. Notice your tiredness. Notice your body asking for a different rhythm. Maybe you still need to do the task, but maybe you can do it from a softer place, or you can simply not do the extra, unnecessary one.

You might give yourself five minutes in the dark each evening: no phone, no book, no planning. Just sitting or lying down, feeling the weight of your body and the quiet of the room. 

This is how we cooperate with the season instead of fighting it.

This season is an invitation to consciously do less, and trust more.

When the mind whispers, “You’re falling behind,” you can answer gently: “Right now, I am honoring a deeper rhythm.” When the inner critic says, “You should be more productive,” you can respond: “I am resting so that something real can grow.”

Let the darkness be your ally. Let silence be your teacher. Let doing less be your brave experiment in trust. 🙏