The Lost Island, 31st Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): T.S. Eliot is full of shit. Give me April any day - it's January that's the cruelest month. The throat of winter is upon us, and the barren barley fields are swaying like mad in the gusty, 35-mph winds. 

It snowed in Atlanta this morning (Atlanta!) although it didn't stick and only came down for less than an hour. But still, it's cold outside: 25° F with a wind-chilled feels-like temperature of 8°. It's supposed to drop down to 17° overnight, and I can only guess what the wind will make that feel like.

It's colder than the furnace in this drafty old house can keep up with. I turned the thermostat up to 75, but after running non-stop all day, it's only up to 73° in here, and away from the thermostat and the airducts it feels a lot cooler.  No telling how far down the inside temps will drop tonight. I'm dripping water from all my faucets to reduce the chances of pipes freezing. 

Worse, it's not forecast to warm up anytime soon. It will remain frigid all next week, and we won't see seasonal temperatures until at least next weekend. And I saw a not-at-all encouraging long-term prediction that it will stay colder than normal until well into the spring. 

I don't like the cold. Sure, hot, humid weather can be uncomfortable, but the cold is downright painful. And while heat stroke can be a risk if you don't know how to manage yourself in the Georgia sun, hypothermia and the cold carry a greater risk of death. 

I'll get through it. I'll find my Zen space that's neither hot nor cold, and I'll take solace in the fact that today is the last day of January and we're almost halfway through Childwinter.   

Tozan said, “When it is cold, let it be so cold that it kills you.” However, that doesn't mean you should just go ahead, accept your fate and die. The "you" that the cold should kill is the ego-self with its preferences and biases and desires. Tozan is reminding us that what we call "cold" is just the world as it is - the climate doesn't experience "cold," it's us who suffer the cold. Today feels cold, this summer it will feel hot, one day it will rain, and another it won't. Flowers, while cherished, fade, and weeds, although despised, thrive. This is the way the universe works, whether we like it or not.

There's no escaping the cold or the heat, but we can let go of our preferences and accept that this is the way things are. Ditto sickness, old age, and death. Tomorrow when you're old and your mouth is paved with gold you begin to feel the cold inside. 

But we don't need to give up. Go ahead and build a fire or crank up the thermostat when you're cold, take your medicine and get some exercise when you're old and sick. But we don't need to increase our own suffering by adding on our personal preferences as to the way we want things to be.

This is the meeting of two arrows in midair ("hitting a bullet with a bullet"), where Zen and Stoicism come together. In the cold. In January. Right here, right now.