Dön season
January 31, 2005
According to the Tibetan calendar, the last two weeks of the year (ending Feb 8) are the season of the döns. Döns are harmful forces that bring sickness, conflict, and various flavors of unpleasantness.
You don't have to be Tibetan to know what dön season feels like: those times where we feel out of sorts, when situations around us seem to turn dysfunctional, and everything somehow goes a bit off. That might be happening this week, or it might be the third week in October. The point is that we all go through negative phases.
So this is surely just a coincidence, but I've been sick with the flu for the last week. Not coincidentally, being sick has also meant feeling mentally muddled and a bit persnickety. That might just be the flu, or - from a Buddhist perspective - I might be churning up some old negative karma to round out the year. Dorje Loppön Lodrö Dorje explains the Buddhist view of the dön season this way:
Now, this takes some explaining. In the Buddhist tradition, working with negative energy does not necessarily involve wishing it away or trying to "fix" it (which might just generate more negativity), but rather engaging directly with the experience. "Whatever arises is fresh, the essence of realization," says one verse. So when you get sick, when something goes wrong, or when you find yourself caught up in a bad situation, the idea is not to turn tail, but to cultivate some kind of gratitude for whatever's happening. Chogyam Trungpa imagines addressing the döns this way:
File under: Dharma
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