Highlights

the word "metaphor" -- in its etymological sense --means, "to carry over" or "to transfer."

most modern liberal people with an interest in religion are minded to interpret the Easter story as being a metaphor for spring

all the great spiritual traditions have understood that darkness and suffering are indissolubly tied together with light and joy, and that this must be acknowledged, understood, addressed and incorporated before any true and lasting joy, and light, can spring forth.

_"Don't throw away your suffering. Touch your suffering. Face it directly, and your joy will become deeper. You know that suffering and joy are both impermanent. Learn the art of cultivating joy. Practice like this, and you come to the third turning of the Third Noble Truth, the "Realization" that suffering and happiness are not two. When you reach this stage, your joy is no longer fragile. It is true joy" _(Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Heart of the Buddha_'_s Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation, Rider, 1999, p. 43).

what we might be tempted to call a Buddhist insight is, in truth, simply a perennially appearing insight into the human condition that belongs to all religious and spiritual traditions, and it can, in principle, be found everywhere. It is a truth that was also seen by those pre-Christian pagans who honoured -- and still honour in new ways -- Eostre and Brigid, it was seen by those who have honoured -- and still honour -- the risen Christ, it was seen by the creative, free spirit, William Blake, and it was, has, is and will be seen by many other people and traditions besides.

truth, or the eternal seed/fruit of the really real (what the Japanese call "shinjitsu" (shin 真 meaning "true" or "reality" + jitsu 実 meaning "fruit" or "seed") is always metaphorical in its activity, i.e. truth is always-already being infinitely carried-over/transferred from person to person, myth to myth, culture to culture, generation to generation, religion to religion, which, in turn, ensures that truth can appear to us, sprout from that seed, under an almost infinite number of forms and in an almost infinite number of people, places and times.

But it's never easy always to be living by the universal truth that joy woe are woven fine because the daily joys and woes of life can all too easily alternately cancel each other out and threaten to split them apart. We simply find ourselves in joy or woe and we forget those connections that exist between them. And this is why there is the deepest spiritual value in returning, year after year throughout our lives, to the story of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday -- or to some analogous practice, such as Hoza within the Rissho Kosei-kai community (see below) -- because over the course of these three days we can take time reverently to touch again, and be deeply mindful of, the finely woven, seamless cloth of joy & woe, the only material out of which can be made the universal robe of true, unfragile Joy spoken of by Thích Nhất Hạnh and William Blake, and expressed, of course, in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth and Shakyamuni Buddha.

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References

Brown, Andrew James. “To Touch Again the Finely Woven, Seamless Cloth of Joy & Woe — an Easter Sunday Meditation.” Caute, 31 Mar. 2024, https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2024/03/to-touch-again-finely-woven-seamless.html.