It rained all day yesterday, and it was cold. Autumn cold. Temperatures barely made it to 60F (15C) and at night it goes down to upper 40s (9C). Today the sun is slowly emerging from behind the nefarious clouds and it’ll be warmer, but fall has begun, no doubt about it, beating its official debut date by a couple of days.

“Did you put any heat on?” I asked a friend last night.

“Oh no,” she said, “much too early.”

She’s Latina, not a native New Englander, and neither am I. Of course, we want to save money (we use oil to heat this house and this winter’s bills will be astronomical, thank you to Donald Trump and the Iranian regime), but we are also imbibing some of that old Puritan spirit of hard work, asceticism, and self-denial common to this part of the country. So what if temperatures go down so much, making it hard to get up in the morning? It’s still September!

Ah, the tyranny of calendar labels, the tyranny of schedules. Life—and climate change—couldn’t give a hill of beans about those things. Last night I took the above photo of the apple tree in our front yard at night. The apples began to fall in late August, well before ripening and turning green. Some are almost ripe now, not quite; others may not fully ripen this season at all.

Which reminds me of the koan written by Robin, a student, long ago for our Book of Householder Koans: “Why does the fruit fall from the tree before it has ripened?” Why do the apples fall before they’re edible by humans (deer, squirrels, chipmunks, robins, and of course, worms have no problem)? Why do people die before they—what? Come to some kind of understanding? Become wise? Become enlightened?

Today is the Jewish Day of Atonement, and while I don’t celebrate it in my family’s religious fashion, it has loomed in my consciousness since the Jewish New Year began ten days ago. I like how the Jewish tradition calls for atonement almost right from the start of the new year (in fact, there are ongoing midnight atonement services during the entire month that precedes the New Year). It reminds me of how, in the zendo, we start the morning with the Verse of Atonement:

All harmful karma ever caused by me since of old

On account of my beginningless greed, anger and ignorance

Born of my body, mouth, and thought,

Now I atone for it all.

This is done in many Zen centers as part of certain ceremonies, but Bernie wanted us to begin every day with it—and I continued the practice—as a way of starting every day fresh and new. Which raises the question: How does a recounting of all the harm committed by me through beginningless and endless causes and conditions, going back to and beyond parents and ancestors, enable me to start the day fresh and new?

Like most people, I bump into my sense of self again and again. I don’t just see my universe, I’m sure I see the universe; I don’t just see the things that happen, I see them through the lens of personal judgment and opinion, through the self-centered prism that distinguishes me from the rest of the world. I think of artwork or science fiction book covers showing the individual standing, isolated, against a vast, often unfriendly landscape, and that’s often how we experience life. That phenomenon is embedded deep in our psyches, and while it has evolutionary roots, is not just a misreading of life as it is, but can also lead to narrow views and to doing harm.

What the verse reminds me is that how I meet the day is more about what comes and goes through me, a beginningless and endless energy. Will the ensuing actions result in harm? It’s not all up to me, not by a long shot, but there is an opening. What will I do with all the ingredients of my life today?

I have one issue with Bernie’s emphasis on the Verse of Atonement, and perhaps with the Day of Atonement as so many celebrate it. It may lend itself to the superficial sense that all I have to do here is chant that verse, which is an acknowledgment of sorts, and then go on my way. Similarly, the Day of Atonement in the orthodox synagogues I went to as a girl had people beating their breast, praying endlessly, fasting all day, even making prostrations (highly uncommon in Judaism), and then, after sunset, going home, happy, breaking their fast, and—and then what? As a child, I used to wonder: What’s changed here?

Because if you really get what the Verse of Atonement says, if you really understand how limited, even delusional, that personal sense of self is, there should be a massive change of consciousness, starting with the realization that none of this is about you. Not the Verse, not the Day, they’re not about you at all, so to end the recitation or the fast with the feeling that you’ve atoned and now everything is ok, is missing something very important.

The Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich wrote: “There is an ultimate unity of all beings, rooted in the divine life from which they emerge and to which they return. All beings, non-human as well as human, participate in it. And therefore they all participate in each other.  … When we become aware of this unity of all beings, something happens to us. … In every death we encounter, something of us dies, and in every disease, something of us tends towards disintegration. Can we live with this answer? We can to the degree to which we are liberated from seclusion in ourselves.”

What is that change of consciousness? If it’s not about me, what or who is it about? That inquiry and exploration make up the very heart of my day-to-day practice.

Let me focus on just one aspect, which is self-image. One practice in the Day of Atonement that I’ve sustained over several years is fulfilling the injunction to make apologies and amends for any harm that I’ve done. In the early years when I did this, it was a simple thing. I’d call up someone I felt I’d hurt, relate what I did, say I was sorry, they would say that it’s okay, they appreciate the apology and the call, and that would be the end of it.

Only recently have I begun to understand how deep this needs to go. Because when I’m really engaging with the other person, the foundations of my self-image start to wobble. Did my words really have such an impact? Did that action hurt that person so deeply? How does a fine person like me create such a mess, such harm?

I’m not talking about guilt here because that, too, is self-centered: Look what I did! This is not about me. I must be ready to continue to listen, not be defensive and certainly not argue, and really hear things. Sometimes it takes a long back-and-forth to finally get to the essence, and I must be present for that, not issue an apology and end the conversation.

This is very uncomfortable, and what it really means is that I don’t come out of it with the same self-image I had before: the woman who is kind, generous, and caring, who only occasionally has some slip-ups because, well, she’s only human, she has her own suffering after all, but deep down she’s the person she’s always known herself to be.

No, if you really atone, if you really bear witness, your sense of who you are can change massively. Am I ready for that?

A change in self-image is just the tip of the iceberg. When you look at things deeply, you can see that self-image is just one of many prisms we use to protect ourselves, and any change in self-image, even a small one, can be very painful: I thought I was doing okay, I thought I was kind and good, and now I see other things.

None of this is easy. Talking to other people rather than just to yourself will bring you into new territory, especially if you train yourself to listen. The acknowledgment and apology are the smallest piece of this, what’s bigger is the inquiry, the opening up of gates to a landscape that you thought was outside but that is also inside, and you know what? It ain’t always pretty.

So, I do this practice with some gentleness towards myself, and also a sense of adventure: Wow, I’m discovering and acknowledging the existence of a whole other human being I didn’t know existed, and a life that is so much bigger. And, in Paul Tillich’s words, I want to participate.