Buddhas Over Worcester 2020
- At May 03, 2020
- By drynick
- In Reflections
0
One of my projects in March and April was to create a piece for Boundless Way Temple’s annual Buddhas Over Worcester sculpture show. Every year we invite local artists and non-artists to create a sculpture for the Temple garden that expresses their understanding of what it means to be awake—to be a Buddha. Each artist is also invited to title their sculpture and to write a short haiku-like poem to express some intention or understanding behind their creation.
And for the past eight years, every year around the first Sunday in May, we have our grand opening. Scores of people wander through the garden examining the twenty-some sculptures, reading the titles and poems, wondering about awakening, eating sweet treats and enjoying the company. It’s one of the highlights of the year for our community.
Not this year.
Though the garden remains open with the six-foot social distancing rule in place, in mid-March we decided that the safest course of action was to cancel the show for this year. But several artists, including myself have gone ahead and created pieces anyway. Over the next few weeks some sculptures will be installed in the garden.
The official theme for the exhibit that is not going to happen this year, Waking up to wonder in the midst of the joys and sorrows of being human, still seems like a worthwhile enterprise.
The first two sculptures are in place and a third was being constructed yesterday afternoon. Below are the first two artist’s descriptions.
Title- The Three Refuges, 2020
Artist- Christine Croteau
Medium- Wood, rocks, marble
Dimensions- 12”x12”x12”
Haiku Artist Statement-
Through Awakening
Embraced By Arms of Sangha
We Find Our Path Home
(located on a square of marble to the left of the brick path just you can see the pond after you pass through the torii gates)
Title- Waking Up to Life-and-Death
Artist- David Dae An Rynick
Medium- Tibetan Prayer Flags, fallen branches, composted leaves, dirt, plants from around the garden
Dimensions- 9’ x 9’ x 4’
Haiku Artist Statement-
Falling completely apart
We give ourselves back
To nourish what comes next.
(located by the red shed in the very back of the garden)
Come visit! Spring does not care about quarantine, delights in the cold rainy weather we’ve been having and is fully blossoming in the Temple garden. Come visit! Boundless Way Temple Gardens, 1030 Pleasant Street, Worcester, MA 01602
All are welcome. We ask that you bring a mask for the protection of all beings and that you maintain our continuing social distance from other humans while you get close to the flowers.
Making the Right Choice
- At May 02, 2020
- By drynick
- In Reflections
- 0
All these reflections on the transformational power of choosing can veer into an apology for an inflated sense of self-importance and control. We can slip into a sense of entitlement where we begin to think that if we’re clear enough and choose wisely, our lives will be smooth and pleasant. Or we take the good fortune of our current circumstances to be something that we have earned through our enlightened choices and hard work.
Here’s a true story that illustrates that our choices may not be as important as we think.
Many years ago, a friend introduced me to a new mountain bike trail loop. It was a lovely ride—five or six miles of winding trails through woods and pastures, over hills and through valleys. I rode the route with him two Saturdays in a row. The next week I decided to try it on my own.
Everything began fine—I remembered the familiar landmarks and enjoyed being my own company on the narrow forest paths. Then I reached a fork in the trail that I didn’t remember. Did we go left or right here? I couldn’t remember.
I was just a little nervous. But I paused, took a couple deep breaths and tuned in to my deeper intuition. Left felt like it was the right direction to go, so I took the left fork and rode on. Things soon looked familiar and I was at ease again. Until it happened again a second time. An unfamiliar fork in the trail. Again I was a little nervous, but found my inner equilibrium, trusted my intuition and rode on.
I was delighted and just a little proud of myself when I completed the loop back where my car was patiently waiting. Instead of panicking when I didn’t remember, I had paused, trusted, and found my way to some deeper kind of knowing. A good life lesson, I thought.
A week later, I rode the same trail again by myself. This time I decided to be adventurous. At the first fork, instead of going left, I went right. And to my surprise, after a short while, I was back on the same trail. At the next fork in the trail I did the same thing. Again, to my surprise and delight, this other fork also led back to the main trail.
I arrived back at my car that day with a revised sense of my own self-importance. It was not my deep powers of intuition that had served me, but rather the path itself that had taken care of me. The correct answer was both right and left. I realized that the only way I could have failed would have been not to choose.
I’m reminded of the wonderful adage ‘You can’t steer a parked car.’ When the car is motionless, playing with the steering wheel has no impact on the direction of the car. Sometimes, the most important thing is simply to get the car moving. Even if you are headed in the exact wrong direction, when the car is moving, you can eventually turn it in the direction you want.
Perhaps the choices we agonize over are not what they appear to be. Sometimes there is a clear choice, one option that ‘makes sense.’ But other times we have to make decisions without enough information, we can’t know how things will turn out. What if all our choices lead us back to the main trail? What if many choices are not a matter of right or wrong, but rather simply moving into the future? What if our lives are not just a matter of ‘getting it right?’
My teacher’s teacher, Zen Master Seung Sahn, once had a student come to him who was trying to decide whether to stay in the monastery or go back to graduate school. Seung Sahn listened patiently to his troubled listing of all the reasons to stay and all the reasons to go. Then Seung Sahn said in his pigeon English: ‘You got coin? Flip coin and do what coin says.’
Daily Practice: As you move through your day, be aware of some of the choices you are making. Notice when you feel the pressure to make the ‘right’ decision. What if all your choices led to your one true life? What if there is more freedom to choose than you think? Once or twice today, see what happens if you take the ‘other’ trail and choose to do something you don’t usually do. Notice what happens.
Choosing Ourselves
- At May 01, 2020
- By drynick
- In Reflections
- 0
This choosing is a subtle thing. We certainly don’t have the freedom to choose to do or be whatever we want. The liberation we talk about in Zen is not about being masters of the universe. We humans are fragile and limited creatures. And when we begin to pay attention, we can see that most of the important things that have happened to us in our lives have been partially or wholly caused by factors and synchronicities beyond our control.
A psychologist friend of mine once told me that the goal of therapy is to choose to be who you already are.
You might wish you were taller or shorter—wiser or less anxious. You might wish your parents had been different or that someone else had won the last presidential election. You might wish that you didn’t have to wear a mask and gloves when you went to the grocery store. Most of the universe is beyond our control. Everything that has happened in your life and in the universe has already happened. You cannot go back and change it. In this exact moment, you simply are who you are. No amount of wishing you were different or ‘things’ were different will change what is already here.
Byron Katie once wrote “When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100 percent of the time.” So perhaps the path to freedom and ease lies acceptance—in giving up our ancient argument with reality.
Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way: “There is a time in every man’s [or woman’s] education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide, that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe if full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. (Self-Reliance)
Emerson speaks of self-acceptance–to take ourselves ‘for better, for worse’ as we are. Our ‘nourishment’, our freedom, comes from cultivating the ‘plot of ground’ which has been given to us. The plot of ground is you, exactly as you are, and the circumstances of your life, exactly as they are. In Zen sometimes we say that the precise situation of your life right now is just what you need to wake up. No need to wait for more favorable conditions or some other time. Right here. Right now. Everything you need is already present.
This is perhaps one of the most incomprehensible perspectives on life, that we, as we are, are enough and that this moment, whatever it is, contains everything we need. Most of us are firmly believers in the inadequacy ourselves and our circumstances. The billion dollar self-help industry is powered by this sense that we could and should be better than we are. The deeper truth of the self-help movement is that cultivation is required, but the real work required can only start from this basic ground of acceptance of what is already here. (This acceptance, of course, includes the acceptance of realizing that sometimes I just really wish things were different than they are.)
Ursula K. LeGuin had this to say about choice: “You thought, as a boy [or girl], that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought once. So did we all. And the truth is at as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do.” (The Wizard of Earthsea)
Our essential choice is whether or not we align with what is already true. This truth is subtle and ever changing. It’s the truth of what is deepest in our hearts. It’s the truth of the current circumstances of the world around us, whether we ‘approve’ or not. As we slowly give up our ancient addiction to objection, we can begin to see what is really here and to work in skillful ways with ourselves and everything we encounter.
Daily Practice: Can you notice the objections as they arise within you today? Notice when you wish it were different or when things seem ‘wrong’ or when you don’t get your way. Can you just observe what it is like to object? No need to change or even analyze. The practice is not objecting to objection. Just observe and observe. Be curious about what is really going on.
Owning Our Choices
- At April 30, 2020
- By drynick
- In Reflections
- 0
Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of the Center Nonviolent Communication, has been an important teacher in my life. I have never met him, but many years ago I listened to a set of his CD’s that changed my view of the world. It is such a blessing when the words we hear or read find their way into our hearts. In these moments, we step into new possibilities for ourselves and for the world in which we live. Sometimes we don’t even know it until years later when a teacher’s words or the tone of their voice appear as guides in moments of need.
I’ll never forget hearing Rosenberg’s reassuring voice saying that he reached a turning point in his life when he decided not to do anything he didn’t want to do. This is a rather shocking and seemingly narcissistic thing to say and really caught my attention.
Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is based on the assumption that all human beings have needs, that we are hard-wired to respond to each other’s needs and that our main problem is that we don’t listen deeply enough to ourselves and to each other to clarify these needs. Rosenberg is also great believer in the freedom of human beings—that we are, at each moment, choosing what we do and what we don’t do.
In yesterday’s reflection I touched on the impact when we use the internal language of coercion—‘I have to do this.’—to describe our actions. We so easily give away our power and live in a world of imagined helplessness. Now there are certainly many things we are powerless over, but at the core of human experience, there is this choosing, even in the most constrained and limited circumstances.
Rosenberg’s instruction to not do what you don’t want to do goes like this: Look at all the activities that you do in your life. (Perhaps quite limited for many of us right now.) Sort them into a list of things you want to do and things you don’t want to do. Next: look at the list of things you don’t want to do, and either find a reason you want to do them, or stop doing them.
He used the example of driving his children to school every day. Rosenberg noticed that he approached this task with little enthusiasm and often found himself grumbling about all the time it took away from his work. When he thought about it, he realized that he really cared about the school his children went to and that his daily driving was part of what made it possible for his children to get the kind of education he wanted for them. Therefore, he realized that he wanted to drive them to school every day. This shift in perspective changed his language and changed his experience of this activity.
Rosenberg did go on to say that he couldn’t find a good reason to do some things on the ‘Don’t Want To Do’ list. He found other people to do some of these items and some simply did not get done.
Examining our deeper wants and needs is another way to work with the sense of resistance and pressure many of us feel when we look at our calendars for the day ahead. Whenever you hear yourself say ‘I don’t want to do this’, stop for a moment and ask yourself if that is really true. When you look deeper, can you find reasons why you are actually choosing to do this?
It’s not that everything is easy and comfortable. Some things we choose to do because of practical necessity—we might choose to go to work we don’t like because we want the money that allows us to pay our rent. Or we choose difficult actions because of who we want to be in the world or because we choose to live out values that are important to us.
This practice of not pretending we are helpless can be surprisingly powerful. You might want to try it today. Notice the next time you feel less than happy in what you are doing or what you are about to do. Then stop and ask yourself what is underneath this; what deeper value or intention does this action serve? Now make your choice.
In this way, we align our actions with our hearts and realize our natural freedom at each moment in our lives.
On Choosing
- At April 29, 2020
- By drynick
- In Reflections
- 0
As our collective staying-at-home practice has dragged on, most of us have gone through many different mind-states. At first, perhaps, our new lives of sheltering-in-place were exciting and unusual. Then many of us began to find our way into new rhythms and patterns of living, our new normal. Now the news is reporting on ‘isolation fatigue’ and we are wondering how long we will be able to go on without having the freedom to move around, buy things in person and hug each other again.
One of my friends spoke recently of the freedom of time she felt during the first weeks at home. Most everything on her calendar had been cancelled and she felt a sense of openness and ease. Each day felt spacious. Moment after moment she got to choose what to do next. Now she’s back to a familiar sense of being busy – scheduled zoom meetings and new versions of commitments have re-filled her schedule and her mind.
I’ve been feeling this as well. Last week, I wrote about my relationship with my past self, the one who creates the schedule that I have to deal with when I wake up each morning. Sometimes, I can’t imagine what he was thinking as he scheduled multiple conversations back to back to back—or when he imagined this old body could go on one long walk with a friend in the morning, then another with another friend in the afternoon. I mean, really!
The shifts in perspective we have all been living through are actually a wonderful opportunity to look more deeply at some of the patterns and beliefs that keep us stuck in less than fulfilling lives. Looking more closely at our sense of ‘busyness’ can be a doorway to a life of greater freedom and ease.
Busyness is the addiction of our culture. We are obsessed with how much we do and how much we produce. Being busy is a signal to ourselves and to the world around us that we are a person of importance. We are doing as much as we can so we’re not really responsible for the things we can’t get to. We complain and commiserate but we can’t find our way out of the maze. We have forgotten our basic power and responsibility.
We are always choosing. Yes, there are consequences to our choices, but we are always the one who is choosing. We can blame our past selves or our boss or the circumstances of our lives, but in the end, we are each free to choose and we are responsible for our choices.
As humans, we often fall into a sense of ‘obligation.’ ‘I don’t want to do the dishes, but I have.’ ‘I don’t want to make that phone call, but I have to because I said I would.’ Through these internal conversations, we live large parts of our lives as if we were not free. We (and I include myself in this) waste our energy in resentment and we lose ourselves in the dark tangle of wishing things were otherwise.
How do we find our freedom in the middle of complicated lives and multiple responsibilities? One way is to notice when you are feeling constricted, obligated and unfree. When are you thinking ‘I wish I didn’t have to do this’? When does the complaint arise ‘I don’t want to be doing this’? Without noticing when we are feeling caught, we can’t find our way to some other way of living.
So today, is it possible to notice how you move between feeling of ease and pressure? Feelings of lightness and heaviness? Feelings of freedom and of obligation? Don’t try to make it different, just notice what it’s like right where you are. What does it feel like? What story are you telling yourself about what you’re doing in the moment? (More on freedom tomorrow.)
Follow David!