“There’s something comforting in the patterns of ou lives. That is the one great advantages of the lunar calendar’s festivals, observations and even it’s foods. Each detail is easy to follow, and the accumulation of those details forms a pattern that is comforting to return to each year. When all is change, the regularity of cycles can be reassuring.

We live in times marked by self consciousness, self analysis, and worship of the ironic. We are afraid to be seen as mere repetitions of what has comee before. We want to be new! Revolutionary! Unprecedented!

Yet we ask what to do when it’s time to marry. We search for the right action whenever a family member dies. We may have turned away from the last generations rites, but we need rites nonetheless.

The lunar calendar’s current state reflects many revisions over the years. The turnover of dynasties alone have tested it. What emerges millenia later is a pattern born of consensus. The practices have changed but the have changed slowly enough that each generation can take comfort in them. And our generation will continue to modify the calendar, and that is how it should be.

Even so, we don’t need to reinvent everything. In observing the changing of the seasons, the divisions between cold and warm weather, the shifting of the sun, and the need to strengthen family ties, there is a reassuring ease. In organizing our spiritual inquiries and efforts into the lunar calendar’s time and space, there is a freedom to give our full energy, knowing that our efforts fit into a greater whole… “

Deng Ming-Dao