As said in the first post related to Wesak, some people will celebrate it this week and hold April 25 as the Taurus full moon. Others, mostly of Asian tradition, will celebrate Wesak next month and will state that May 25 is the Taurus full moon. The April date is tropical astrology, the May date is sidereal astrology, and then there is astronomology: star based astrology which has 13 signs and includes Ophiuchus. In that system, the full moon of The Bull is next month. TMI, you say. Yeh, I’m not sure what to do with this either.

I have found myself personally directed to hold emptiness as my meditations for this full moon cycle, hours of emptiness. I figure the vibrations will attend to themselves and instruct anyone meditating accordingly. My allegiance to the tropical wheel is eroding and has been for a couple of years. I look up to my thangka of Manjushri, bringer of philosophy and the sword of Emptiness and its Wisdom; not that he has the answer. He directs me back to emptiness and the nature of Mind. And that’s the point.

Buddha had a question, and he sought an answer. What he discovered is that an answer doesn’t really answer. The mind will have another question and another and another. And that was the moment when he was nourished by the cowherd girl with her bowl of rice milk. (I’m making this up as I go but it feels completely true and real and right. Understanding does that and I trust it completely.)

In being met by her in his most precious moment of vulnerability, he realized that a question births its own response. In other words, when we are empty of ego, empty of agenda, empty of preference, empty …. then …. the response is recognized. It was always there. It was conjoined with the question. In fact, the response IS the question stated as a statement instead of a question.

When the cowherd girl met Siddharta’s moment of starvation and almost death with rice milk, tenderness, and kindness she was the response to the question about suffering because she was responding. For the next forty-nine days he sat with that, sat with his attempt to cognize, cajole, or starve an answer out of himself and others. But now he knew. There is no answer, there is only right response.