painting of Avalokiteśvara, bodhisattva of compassion, from the Ajanta Caves

 

THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

August 27, 2020

 

Meditation & Mindfulness

 

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:

Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

 

—Luke 17: 20-21, King James Version

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The Open Road is inaugurating a Meditation & Mindfulness Project for people who live in prison and for those who don’t. We aren’t promoting any religious tradition, we just want to support and encourage each other to be more peaceful, loving, happy and free. It seems to me that whatever one’s religious beliefs, and for atheists and agnostics as well, meditation and mindfulness are a doorway to the Golden World—a feeling of perfect well-being. Everyone experiences these perfect moments. Meditation and mindfulness are ways to nurture and strengthen the feeling that our life on earth is a blessing and a miracle. Meditation and mindfulness can be enjoyed by anyone.

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“…Our blessedness, like His, is infinite.

His glory endless is and doth surround

And fill all worlds without or end or bound.

What hinders then but we in Heaven may be

Even here on Earth did we but rightly see?”

 

—Thomas Traherne (1636-1674), from “Thoughts—IV”

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To people in our society, where working hard, making money, high achievement and getting things done are considered so important, to sit still and do nothing seems like a big waste of time.

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Going nowhere, as Leonard Cohen would later emphasize for me, isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.

 

—Pico Iyer, from The Art of Stillness

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Walt Whitman spoke to his friend Ellen O’Connor of his ability to stop thinking at will, and to make his brain “negative”:

 

There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me….

I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid,

It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.

 

—Walt Whitman, from “Song of Myself”

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I began practicing meditation at the age of nineteen. That was fifty years ago! I can’t imagine my life without it. I’m certain I would have suffered a LOT more.  Ninety-nine per cent of our suffering is self-inflicted. Here’s a little poem I wrote:

 

when you see how simple it is to be happy

you’ll kick yourself

for spending so much time being miserable

 

—Johnny Stallings, from everything I touch

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Nautilus Hall Press has just published three chapbooks by Deborah Buchanan: “Layers of Sediment,” “The World A Well,” and “Moment Before.” The covers are beautifully illustrated by Andrew Larkin. They are grouped as a set, “Like Fluttering Silk,” and can be ordered from Deborah by emailing her at dlbadger@gmail.com. The cost of the set is $25, plus $5 for shipping and handling. Here’s a poem from “Layers of Sediment”:

 

Early Morning Hours

 

From the house silence flows

to the ebony lawn

glittering like a river.

A small candle flickers,

mirroring the moon

sliding down night’s curve.

Fir branches stand against the sky,

the hours’ tall sentinels,

and the hum inside silence

fills each shadowed crevice,

the world inundated.

 

—Deborah Buchanan

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The word “meditation” can mean a lot of different things. It can mean sitting still with your back straight. Other things that give us a feeling of inner peace can also be ways of meditating: going for a walk, listening to music, or playing music, drinking that first cup of coffee in the morning, reading. Even thinking and talking can be done in a meditative way.

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Ask the world to reveal its quietude—

not the silence of machines when they are still,

but the true quiet by which birdsongs,

trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms

become what they are, and are nothing else.

 

—Wendell Berry from Given

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Why meditate? One reason is: “to stay sane.” The noise inside our heads can actually drive us completely mad. Here’s what Aldous Huxley says about it:

 

Unrestrained and indiscriminate talk is morally evil and spiritually dangerous….If we pass in review the words we have given vent to in the course of the average day, we shall find that the greater number of them may be classified under three main heads: words inspired by malice and uncharitableness towards our neighbours; words inspired by greed, sensuality and self-love; words inspired by pure imbecility and uttered without rhyme or reason, but merely for the sake of making a distracting noise.  These are idle words; and we shall find, if we look into the matter, that they tend to outnumber the words that are dictated by reason, charity or necessity.  And if the unspoken words of our mind’s endless, idiot monologue are counted, the majority for idleness becomes, for most of us, overwhelmingly large.

 

—Aldous Huxley, from The Perennial Philosophy

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What is mindfulness? Thich Nhat Hanh says:

 

Mindfulness is when you are truly there, mind and body together. You breathe in and out mindfully, you bring your mind back to your body, and you are there. When your mind is there with your body, you are established in the present moment. Then you can recognize the many conditions of happiness that are in you and around you, and happiness just comes naturally.

 

—Thich Nhat Hanh, from Your True Home, #218

 

He’s fond of saying: “The present moment is a wonderful moment.”

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Kim Stafford sent this:

 

Finding Deep Calm

 

I have a Palestinian friend named Gheed living in Gaza City, where life is hard and much of each day is spent trying to be safe. Most days, power is only on for four hours, and then darkness. Food is hard to come by. There is often danger in the streets.

I know how in prison, some are put in “segregation,” in solitary. But in Gaza, the whole country is in segregation, surrounded by walls, razor wire, under frequent attack.

But my friend Gheed seeks beauty, anyway. She takes photographs of her cup of coffee…of a flower…of light at the window. And she sent this message to the world, in Arabic:

 

عظيمٌ هذا الهدوء العميق الذي أحيا فيه وأنمو ضدّ هذا العالم، هدوءٌ أحصدُ فيهِ ما ليس في استطاعةِ أحدٍ أنْ ينتزعه مني، ولو بقوة الحديد والنار ..”

— غوتة

 

I was able to find a translation, and it turns out she has been reading Goethe, a writer in Germany in the early 19^th century. This is what she has translated into Arabic from Goethe:

 

Great is this deep calm in which I live and grow against this world, a calm in which I reap what no one can take away from me, even by the power of iron and fire.

– Goethe

 

I love to think of my friend in the danger and difficulty of Gaza finding deep calm. And I love to think that this calm can be sought by anyone anywhere. It is our right to feel this. And it is possible.

 

—Kim Stafford

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People who live in prison who want to participate in the Open Road Meditation and Mindfulness Project can write to me at this address:

 

Johnny Stallings

The Open Road

PMB 268

4110 SE Hawthorne Blvd.

Portland, OR  97214

 

People who don’t live in prison, who want to be part of our merry band of mindful meditators can email me at stallingsjohnny@gmail.com, or contact me through the Open Road website (openroadpdx.org).

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Meditation and mindfulness can be very simple. Hafiz says:

 

And at times, when we really need to know

something about perfection

 

the movement of your breath might do, or the

beating of our hearts.

 

—Hafiz  (1320-1389), version by Daniel Ladinsky

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Seng Ts’an says:

 

when the mind is still

all views disappear

 

and

 

empty, clear, your light shines

without mental effort

 

–Sent Ts’an (529-606 A.d.)