This description of Autumn was written by Peter Firebrace and first published in Eastern Currents magazine in Canada.

Qiu 秋 the fall, the autumn, shows an ear of grain filled with fire 火. Summer’s passing, fall’s approaching, inner time coming, metal time to cut the ties that bind. Autumn is two edged, on the one hand the harvest season with its mellow abundance and on the other the shortening days, the nip of death in the keen cool air. A time of evening, of rebalancing, the scales tipping in favour of the dark, the cold, the yin, the in. Central to it is the Mid-Autumn Festival zhong qiu jie 中 秋 節, held on the full moon, the 15th day of the 8th month (September 8th in 2014), to celebrate the growth and power of yin, of the abundant harvest, of woman and the moon. Then the heat turns to cold, the dew to frost and we stand at the gate of winter, time of buried endings and invisible beginnings, of water’s regenerative renewal.

The organ of autumn is the White Tiger of the lung, metal master of clear-cut boundaries, as fierce and fearless in our defence as Tigress in Kung Fu Panda. Traditionally the lung has 24 holes, kong 空, indicating its adaptability and sensitivity to the jie qi 節 氣, the 24 fortnightly periods that make up the year. The lung deals is able to adapt to each in turn, the cold, the windy, the hot, the wet, the dry, because it is empty, not the emptiness of lung qi deficiency, not a lack, but the emptiness of clarity and purity, unobstructed. Practitioners of the nei dan inner alchemy tradition call the lung Hao Hua, the Flowering of Purity and Xu Cheng, Accomplishment of Emptiness. In the silent breathing of health, there is no wheezing, no coughing, no tightness of the chest, no aching, just qi flowing in and out as easy and as natural as the tides. Through our breathing the lung is the bridge between the conscious and the unconscious, governing as it does the seven po 魄, the automatic pre-set life-preserving default software that keeps us alive without a thought. But are we poed or do we po? Are we regulated or do we regulate? Metal is the director, the controller, the precision regulator par excellence and the conscious breath, the balanced and the deepened breath, releases us from the habitual and opens the door to the new, the aware. Relegate unconscious robotic response to the past and you open the conscious door to the future. The practice of nei guan, inner observation, gives the ability to observe, to watch and to see, the reflective power of the mirrored moon, the calm of the meditative mind that stills the heart and brings forth the authentic perception of reality. This ability to see and feel even the bitter harvest of cutting sadness and deep grief with its consequent isolation and oppression, and not drown in it, but accept its reality, means we can move on, just as the tides turn and move on, without a backward glance.

Autumn is so rich in its beginning and so stark in its ending, the perfect metaphor for celebrating ease and abundance and not shying away from the hard and the grim. Through facing and understanding disconnection, we are reconnected and reconnection is healing.