Wriggling to Consciousness

Four months now
he has squirmed and wriggled.
Arms flailing spasmodically—
legs kicking randomly—
torso twisting this way and that.

From the beginning
he has been devoted—
determined to expend
vast amounts of energy
in this essential commotion.

Now his wild investment
is beginning to pay off.
Unrelenting mistakes are
surely leading toward
creeping mastery.
When the fuzzy bear
dangles in front of him,
one small chubby hand
or two wavers its
way in the desired direction
and tiny fingers clutch
acrylic fuzz bringing it
at last to the mouth
for satisfying inspection.

With no conscious plan,
he surely weaves himself
into worldly consciousness.

Perhaps we are all
like this—flailing away
with pretense of purpose,
but fundamentally ignorant
of final destinations.

How providential that
our ongoing wriggling failures
occasionally lead the chubby hands
of our soul to find their way
to some fuzzy love
that surrounds us—
and that we may
even innocently receive
it into our hearts
and, for a moment,
be satisfied.

Zen Dharma Transmission to Michael Shoryu Fieleke

David Dae An Rynick, Roshi and Michael Shoryu Fieleke, Sensei January, 2019

On the night of January 5, 2019, in the presence of teachers, family and friends, I gave full Dharma transmission in both the Soto and Rinzai lineages to Rev. Michael Shoryu Fieleke.  Mike Sensei is the Guiding Teacher of the Morning Star Zen Sangha in Newton, MA (http://www.morningstarzensangha.org/). He has a PhD in education and is a beloved English teacher at Newton North High School where he has been teaching since 1994.  He lives in East Waltham with his wife Sandra Raponi and is the father of two adult children.

Mike Sensei will continue his teaching at Morning Star, at the Boundless Way Temple in Worcester, MA, and wherever his feet will lead him.  I am so happy to recognize Mike’s profound gifts of compassion, wisdom and presence.  May all beings benefit from his teachings!

She Holds Him When He Cries

She holds him when he cries
and gently coos ‘Oh Sweetie, what’s wrong?’

He sometimes seems to listen,
but being so newly arrived
in this world of sensation and light
he mostly wriggles and cries.

My daughter is the mother
and little Isa is the infant,
yet witnessing their ancient
dance of comfort and love,
I find myself in all the parts.

Isa will not remember these hours
of cuddling and cooing except,
perhaps, in his deepest heart
where some possibility of living
at ease in this surprising world
may always be with him.

Snowdrops

As the snow retreats

they surprise me every year

in the same place.

Two Guys on the Sofa

Two guys on the sofa
in the late afternoon—
the small one sleeping
contentedly in the arms
of the big one, both
embraced in the silent
wonderment of it all.

The sleeper is my new
grandson, Isaiah Leo, six
days old this morning.
His Mom and Dad are
collapsed in their bedroom
while his grandmother rests
in the guest room. Everyone
has worn each other out.

I’m the lone (and delighted)
sentinel, here in the quiet
living room, safeguarding this
precious bundle of fleshy vitality.

If he fusses, I’ve been
instructed to deploy first
the old finger-as-pacifier trick,
then fall back to
the change-the-diaper tactic
and, as a last resort,
to wake my daughter
to enact the ancient
and essential way:
baby-roots-and-eats-
at-his-mother’s-breast.

But for now, he sleeps
quietly playing his part
to oblivious perfection.

Isaiah Leo – welcome
to this world. I am
amazed that you are here—
that you have come
from some unimaginable
place and are now
alive and wriggling in
your sleep in my lap.

Who formed your limbs? Who
taught your heart to beat
and your lungs to breathe?
I ponder these unanswerable
questions which are perfectly
answered by the undeniable
weight and warmth of your
small body in my lap—by
the very particular aliveness of you!

Your passing expressions
are endlessly fascinating.
You open your mouth
and stick out your tongue—
I laugh in amazement.
Your perfectly articulate
sleeping hands are a supple
miracle beyond comprehension.

What shall I do with
my joy and astonishment?

For now, you and I will simply
stay here on the couch
as this quiet room darkens
and everyone else sleeps.

Poem For My Grandson (1)

The little cosmonaut is waiting patiently in position –
head down and ready to descend on a moment’s notice –
awaiting further instructions he practices breathing
without really breathing and wriggles and pokes
for exercise as the small and vital space allows.

Already his shape is sure and his modest heart
has been commanded to pump.
He even contrived to send us a photo,
or his people sent us a PR shot of him,
waving out from his aqueous capsule –
we squint and marvel at his already aliveness.

Is he eager to join us? Did he ask for this
assignment? To come to life at this moment
in the history of this blue-green speck of dust?
Maybe he is ready and eager. Maybe
he has no clue. Maybe he knows now
but will forget when the bright lights
invade his fulsome eyes and
the familiar roar of his mother’s blood
is exchanged for the excited babble of voices.

Little person in the dark – we are eager for you.
None of us know what we have agreed to,
but we are willing for your presence and promise
that, together, we’ll learn whatever we need to know
and that we’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. We can hardly wait.

Appreciation of my Mom on her Birthday

It’s my Mom’s birthday today.

How can I ever express my appreciation to this woman who gave birth to me? Who took care of me and my brother and sisters when we were utterly, then mostly, then just a little helpless? Who has taken endless delight in being regaled by both my minor and major achievements? Who has been a compassionate ear and firm supporter through my many difficulties and failures?

Though I can vouch for her fullness of humanity and personal struggle, her love and appreciation have been the central fact of my life. She trusted me enough when I was five years old to let me hold and bottle feed my little sisters. She supported me when I was twelve years old and decided I wanted the winter jacket of synthetic fur that looked like a shaggy dog. She hugged me and tried to hide her tears when I was sixteen years old and boarding a plane to spend a year in Japan. She welcomed every achievement and comforted me in every loss – and there have been many of both.

Of course there is no re-payment – no possibility of ‘evening the score.’ Nor would she want that or need that. Instead, my obligation and my desire is to pass on to others what she has given to me—to continue to support my daughter and son-in-law, my wife, my family—and the people around me (both the ones I know and the ones I don’t know)—and extending this gift of appreciation and support to everyone.

I have a long way to go. But on this anniversary of her birth, I just wanted to state my intention to emulate her and to let her know how much she has meant to me.

Thank you Mom.

Your son,

Dave

Report From Paradise

Finally in Paradise,
Montana he stops
to assess the situation.
‘Truly beautiful—
but the cell service
is terrible,’ he tells
me on the crackling line.
He won’t stay long.

Explore Our Culture of Anger and Resentment

The anger and resentment so ruthlessly promoted by Donald Trump has seeped into my soul. These past few weeks I notice I am more prone to self-righteous and self-justifying states of mind. I often wake in the darkness of the wee hours and am overwhelmed by thoughts of how I have been wronged and find myself obsessively planning conversations and actions that might ‘even the score.’

Of course I have good reasons. I am in a complex situation where some of the organizational forms of my life that have worked quite well are no longer functioning smoothly. Relationships that seemed settled have turned out to be more complicated than I was aware. Things that were working for me, it turns out, weren’t working for other people. I’m in a time of transition – old forms dissolving and new forms emerging.

This time of personal transition seems to eerily mirror the turmoil and change happening on the national and international level. Whether my individual situation is merely infected with the turmoil of the greater world or whether both are the manifestation of a deeper human time of breakdown, change and emergence, I have no way of knowing.

But whatever the cause, I am most susceptible in the early hours of the morning. When I naturally drift into a lighter sleep, instead of rolling over and mercifully returning to rest, my mind turns toward particular people and events and I am jolted out of sleepiness into a visceral sense of injustice and urge to action. Like drinking several cups of strong coffee in a millisecond, I get a rush of heat and energy. I enter into a state of high alert, as if I am in imminent danger from mortal enemies.

I suppose this is how some dogs feel when the postman comes, or when a stranger makes an unexpected move. The house must be defended! Something must be done immediately! Woof! Woof!

This must be how Donald Trump feels in the early morning when he sends his profligate tweets of condemnation and blame. In the middle of this visceral urgency, the mind is convinced of its righteous victimhood and demands some kind of action. I feel unjustly accused and persecuted. My mind filled with fear and urgency.

Since it has happened so often over the past few months, I have had a wonderful (?) opportunity to study this particularly pernicious human phenomena. The cycle often begins when I am tired and unfocused. One thought leads to the visceral response which leads to more thoughts which in turn increase the visceral response – a perfect self-reinforcing cycle – a dark momentum of self-righteous impotence. In this self-enclosed world, I generate a ‘clear’ picture of the world that is utterly convinced of its own objectivity.

This morning, like many others, I found myself half-awake in the early morning darkness. Remembering this pattern, I vow to not let my mind go to those places that I know will take me down the road of anger and resentment. This is harder than it sounds—like trying to keep your tongue from exploring one more time that tooth that is so sore. I feel the a seduction of these places of blame and resentment. Though painful, these places are very solid and, in their own way, quite thrilling. They are places of enormous energy – though the cost of living and acting from these places is a bargain with the devil. The darkness seems to have the power to use us. We enter a dark trance and loose touch with the mutuality of all life. From here we are at risk to act out our worst selves—all the while feeling great pride at ‘taking a stand’ for what is true and right. We fall into the delusive certainty of ignorance and can cause great harm while feeling perfectly self-righteous.

But this morning, I have some success in choosing something else. Instead of focusing on the inflammatory people and events of the past, I stay with my breath. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Staying with the sensations of this body lying between these sheets in the space of floating awareness, I slowly notice that the urges to go to those places of pain lessened. I come into an awareness of a small but pervasive disquiet. I’m not in terrible discomfort or agitation, but aware of a subtle vibration of unease feels like the ground of my experience.

The Buddha’s first teaching was that discomfort and dis-ease are unavoidable. I often imagine this a great suffering. But Zen teacher Ezra Bayda writes about this as the ‘anxious quiver of being.’ This feels like a pretty accurate description for where I am this morning.

           I don’t go back to sleep, but lie in bed rather peacefully amidst this low level agitation. I notice that the summer birds, on solstice morning, begin to sing in the Temple garden at 3:30 a.m. I wonder what sentences I might use to begin writing about this. I imagine a zig-zag scar running down the inside of my thigh and try to imagine what that might mean. I remember the great blue heron I saw yesterday morning and try to remember the symbolic meaning of heron – those great and ancient birds that stand so still and upright in the shallow water – waiting and waiting with a grand and patient urgency.

It’s not that there aren’t things I need to address in my personal situation. I need to acknowledge my power and speak my truths. I can be clear with others about my intentions. And I can steps to stop and/or resolve points of conflict. But the wild cycle of anger and resentment must be experienced and seen through if there is any hope of moving forward, not simply creating more suffering.

Finally, at 4:00 I sit up, stretch and begin the rest of my day.

Wherever I Go, Here I Am

Back at the Temple after a four-week trip to Europe. What a life! Just to say ‘four-week trip to Europe’ sounds so glamorous. It was a wonderful trip, but not in the way it sounds to me when I say ‘four-week trip to Europe.’

The sights and people were fascinating and I was aware of not being where I usually am, but our trip was fundamentally just another version of ordinary life. Everywhere we went, I found myself looking out of my own eyes, thinking my own thoughts and living my own life.

I find this ubiquitousness of my self deeply puzzling and slightly disappointing. Of course, mostly I don’t think about it, but when I look closely, I often notice a familiar vague longing to be somewhere else, even when I am somewhere else.

            While in Belgium leading a retreat, a friend loaned me her bicycle and I rode every day through the rolling landscape and old towns southeast of Brussels. Fields of wheat, potatoes and spinach alternating with cobble stoned villages and large white cows that nodded approvingly when I practiced my French (Bonjour!) on them. Bright red poppies appearing by the roadside and church spires in the distance completed the bucolic setting as if they had been planted by the local chamber of commerce.

On my first outing, I saw a lovely line of trees on the horizon – evenly spaced little green lollipop trees in the distance that could have been drawn by a six-year-old. Their orderly and serene line up reminded me of impressionist paintings of the French countryside. The scenic rhythm of the intentional trees amidst the lush green fields looked so inviting.

So having no destination except where I was coming from, I headed off for that tree-lined boulevard in the distance across the green fields. But when I got there, it wasn’t there anymore. I mean, it was there but it wasn’t what I thought it was. The visual rhythm, so alluring from a distance, was nowhere to be found. All that was there was a road with a few trees on either side.

            We went to Portugal and had lunch at an amazing restaurant right on the beach, toured the medieval city of Porto, listened to Fado in a cellar while sipping port wine and bought our ticket and got into the bookstore where JK Rowling worked while she was in Porto writing parts of the Harry Potter epic.

After the retreat we led in Belgium, we traveled to the picturesque city of Bruges – complete with canals, Belgium waffles, chocolate stores on every corner, cobbled streets, a thousand varieties of amazing beer, and a vial of dried blood that was brought back from the Crusades and is revered as Christ’s blood. Real or not the place was thronged with tourists among which we happily took our place.

It was all wonderful and beautiful AND surprisingly ordinary in the being there.

Traveling is tricky business. One never knows what one is getting into. But the tired afternoon faces of the wandering couples and tour groups tramping onto the next point of interest belie the glamour of it all. No one looks very happy. But, knowing their job and commitment to the future, every one seems willing to put on their happy face as they pose for themselves or others in front of the camera.

This traveling ritual of creating false memories of happiness seems quite depressing. I don’t mean to knock travel – I feel so lucky to be able to see other parts of the world. I love seeing new landscapes – the way a river curves and the patterns of cultivation and contained wildness. I like meeting people who see the world in ways I can barely imagine. (Of course, I could invite my neighbor over for a beer if I actually really wanted this.)

Bottom line, I’m happy to be home and sitting out on the Temple porch this morning. In the peacefulness of the birds sounds and cars passing by, I wonder why I am so often in such a hurry to tear off on the next adventure. The June mountain laurel is in full bloom – clusters of pink popcorn that have magically appeared amidst the lush green that is everywhere. The sweet old fashioned violas wave their purple and orange faces, trembling happily on their fragile stems.

The sunlight streams sideways from the occluded horizon into the hearts of the trees in the Temple gardens – these warm and inviting trees that I see and appreciate anew having been where they are not. This too is the gift of travel – to see the unique shape of the place you already are.

Sitting here this morning, I can see that at some point I will have exhausted my run—like the frisky puppy that runs and runs with utter delight only to collapse, exhausted and satisfied on the living room rug. Perhaps I too will learn to be content to stare out into whatever space I find myself – sights and sounds continually presenting their wondrous demonstration of this particular place.