A Great Good

On New Year’s Eve, many of us are ruled by trying customs, such as listening to fortune-tellers, or shooting in the air, getting drunk and dancing… As different as these customs are and their different contexts and meanings, I bring them together as a reminder that the mature among you know the illusion of them all. We have experienced the power in shooting, the anticipation of prosperity in listening to the fortune-tellers and evoking joy in drunkenness, singing and dancing…, and found out that we have been depending on an illusion. New Year’s Eve rules only itself. It is incapable of anticipating any good. What its customs are capable of leaving behind is supplying the coming days with calamities. How much sadness and brokenness have they left among us? I am not telling you to repent, in your new year, of faults you know are in you; If you want, you can say this to yourselves, but rather, prevent yourselves and others from every possibility of committing injustice. This is a great good.