The Year of the Dragon

Thoughts on Zen and astrology, and an appeal to not eat the menu in 2024

Chinese dragon illustration (Source: Wikimedia)

In a few days' time, the back of Kalihi Valley on the island of Oʻahu will be inundated with fireworks. Those small poppers, the kind that you wouldn't think much of giving a child but which are still loud enough to cause a start, will sound like soft pitter-patter compared to the huge (illegal) aerials that rock our night sky every new year. 

It's really a magical experience—red, white, and green stars exploding all around our little Zen temple. Against their backdrop, a small assembly of Dojo members, neighbors, and friends take turns ringing our Peace Bell, a gift from the city of Kyoto in 1966 and a symbol of universal brotherhood. We ring the bell every day, twice a day to send the vibration of peace out into the world. And on New Year's Eve, we ring it extra, the 108th and final ring falling right at midnight.

As that last ring fades and the fireworks crescendo, the Dojo starts up our own cacophony. A taiko drum announces the entrance of a line of priests into the martial arts hall and, once seated, we launch into a particularly vigorous brand of okyo, or sutra chanting. Rhythm is kept on a large, red, wooden drum called a mokugyo, carved into the shape of a fish. 

Following the chanting, Chozen-ji's abbot says a few words. Then comes an annual prediction for the coming year according to the Chinese zodiac. Several different Zen teachers have been in charge of the Chinese horoscope reading over the years and, judging by the amount of time it's given on the schedule, you'd think it might be the main attraction. For many Dojo members, it is a beloved New Year's tradition. But, it's also kind of a head scratcher.

Those more familiar with Zen Buddhism know that Zen is an incredibly practical religion. I've been re-reading D. T. Suzuki's Zen and Japanese Culture recently, and I was taken by this short but sweet example of the straightforward and proletariat Zen mindset:

"When a Zen master was asked what his future life would be, he unhesitatingly answered, 'Let me be a donkey or a horse and work for the villagers.'"

Those more familiar with Zen Buddhism know that Zen is an incredibly practical religion: "When a Zen master was asked what his future life would be, he unhesitatingly answered, 'Let me be a donkey or a horse and work for the villagers.'"

Suzuki elaborates that when Buddhism was transmitted to China and then found its own identity there as Zen, the influences it pulled from were profoundly un-mystical. The Chinese and later Japanese Zen monks' concerns as well as actions addressed the realities of everyday life, including the kinds of affairs that other Buddhists eschewed, like economics and politics. 

"They are attached to the earth," Suzuki writes of the Chinese people and the founders of Zen in China, "they are not stargazers."

Funny, then, that this same culture he describes is the one that gave rise to a highly refined and complicated system of reading the stars 2,000 years ago, a twelve-year cycle assigning a different animal to each year in the cycle, and elements and colors, too. Funnier still that, at this Zen dojo that is so aggressive about the physical and the practical that we approach Zen training not through lectures but through moving rocks and the fighting arts, we would spend even a moment on something like astrology.

This year coming up, 2024, is described in the Chinese zodiac as the Year of the Green Wood Dragon. Do a quick Google search and you'll find that this designation can be endlessly analyzed—for what it means for us collectively and also individually, down to a level of uncanny detail regarding our professional and romantic lives, and our health and finances.

In this way, the Chinese zodiac can take on a life of its own just like Western astrology does. People make personal and professional decisions based on it. They make assumptions about people's personalities and proclivities based on the sign they were born under. Some people even make sure to wear a red garment every day to ward off bad luck if their birth year had the same animal as the current year. 

This year coming up, 2024, is described in the Chinese zodiac as the Year of the Green Wood Dragon. Do a quick Google search and you'll find that this designation can be endlessly analyzed… In this way, the Chinese zodiac can take on a life of its own just like Western astrology does.

Suzuki was writing about Zen's healthy suspicion of language in general when he wrote the following, but it's equally applicable to astrology: "Zen is not necessarily against words, but it is well aware of the fact that they are liable to detach themselves from realities and turn into conceptions."

So why, again, are we having a Chinese zodiac reading at a Zen temple on New Year's?

Over a several hundred year period some 2,000 years ago, some very smart people in China were doing what they could to make sense of the world they observed around them. Like others around the world, they found correlations between the events they witnessed and the positions of the stars, planets, and moons. Rather than putting emphasis on the detailed mythological backstories of these celestial bodies, Chinese scholars tried to explain the trends they saw in terms that even an illiterate, medieval farmer could understand. Thus, the twelve animals, the five elements, and the twelve colors of the Chinese zodiac. Almost anyone at that time could understand the general characteristics of a ram, sheep, or related class of bovid. Same with the qualities of metal (hard and exacting) as opposed to fire (dynamic and sometimes unpredictable) and with the deep mystery and fecundity of the color black versus the bold optimism of the color red.

I chalk part of why we have a Chinese horoscope reading at New Year's at Chozen-ji up to culture and tradition. In Hawaii's multi-ethnic, East Asian-influenced society, paying attention to the Chinese zodiac is just something people do. But I suspect there's also a Zen pedagogical purpose in presenting the zodiac each year to a group of people who are also told not to be superstitious and who spend their time training to transcend their defaults and habits, aiming to live life as more than just victims of our biology or our circumstances.

It's best summed up, I think, in a pithy teaching that I've only ever heard at Chozen-ji, and which I love: Don't eat the menu.

When we go to a restaurant, an informative and accurate menu is an indispensable thing. It tells us what kind of cuisine the restaurant specializes in, where the ingredients come from, what the philosophy of the chef is, and perhaps most importantly, how much our meal is going to cost us. But there is one thing that the menu is not, which is food. 

Astrology, like Zen, is just the menu. It aims to describe something both earthly and celestial, but most importantly, real. We can experience this reality. In the case of food, we can taste it and eat it. In others, we can touch, see, hear, and live them. We know from our living that the menu isn't what we seek, it's not the real thing. So that's why we shouldn't eat the menu, but use it for the guide it is.

When we go to a restaurant, an informative and accurate menu is an indispensable thing. But there is one thing that the menu is not, which is food. Astrology, like Zen, is just the menu.

What is certain is that 2024 holds a lot of potential and a lot of uncertainty. In the US, we have a presidential election coming up mired in conflicting ideologies and laden with the baggage of political violence and an attempted insurrection at the Capitol. There is a war claiming tens of thousands of lives in the Middle East and a war for the balance of power in Europe (perhaps the world) being waged in Ukraine. I'm probably not the only one who feels financially cautious right now, despite record holiday spending. We're just not that far out from the last few year's rising costs and the regional banking crisis. 

In light of all this, perhaps you'd like to know that the Chinese zodiac says that 2024 is the Year of the Green Wood Dragon, green wood having a more proactive, yang quality, reminiscent of tall pines. A dragon is generally seen as lucky, a protector that is fun and loyal if a bit head-in-the-clouds. As we round out the Year of the Black Water Rabbit, I think it's fair to say that many people are finding themselves both invigorated and exhausted by such an eventful and social COVID-is-finally-over! year. Looking farther back, we know that monumental actions with far ranging reverberations have been taken in past dragon years, including the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the incorporation of both Apple and Microsoft in 1976, the beginning of the fall of the Soviet Union in 1988, the contested outcome of the US presidential election in 2000, and the rise to power of China's Xi Jinping in 2012. 

Knowing what you know now about the intent of the Chinese zodiac and what Zen's opinion of such words and concepts are, take from that what you want. Many others most certainly will. 

For myself, I know that in my more indulgent moments this year, I will fall back on my image of an imaginary dragon, flitting between tall trees in a verdant, grand forest. As someone born in the Year of the Dog, I will think myself happiest if I'm playing and working industriously in the wood, close to my comrades, and I might even allow myself to feel snug in the certainty that astrology offers. 

But then I'll remind myself that I'm not a dog, but a human being. And that the point of all my Zen training is to learn to be the mistress of all circumstances, transcending all of my self-imposed limitations. The patterns and habits imbued in me by the alignment of the stars and the planets on the day I was born may be what's described on the menu, but how I live my life is up to me.

The patterns and habits imbued in me by the alignment of the stars and the planets on the day I was born may be what's described on the menu, but how I live my life is up to me.