Drawing by Charles Erickson

 

Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

 

November 15, 2020

 

Welcome to our third meditation and mindfulness dialogue! The numbers below refer to passages from the book Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh. (JS)

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M & M Dialogue Group,

 

I regret that I have not opened my copy of Your True Home to start reading the wisdom within, nor that I have not written sooner in response to and for the M & M newsletter. As we all know, things seem to get in the way and/or we make excuses, but something happened yesterday that moved me to embark on something. I reached my one year mark, 365 days until I get released, and so I will read one wisdom each day, completing the 365 pages of the wisdom within, realizing “My True Home.”

 

In the book, I believe I will find that, as #1 says—“Your True Home is in the here and the now. It is not limited by time, space, nationality, or race”—although I have 365 days until I go home physically, my true home is not limited by time or space, those 365 days. My true home is here and now within me. It is also like that saying, “The home is where the heart is,” and my heart, and love, is within me. As long as I keep love within me, my home will be in the here and now.

 

My 365 days until release started yesterday, October 14th, so I also today read #2, One Hundred Percent. Although I look forward to reading #365—notice I did not write the heading name, as I have not looked forward in the book to that final day—I also have thoughts of my life after these 365 days are over, but I am still in the here and now. “Be there truly. Be there with 100 percent of yourself.” I can only take one day at a time, it’s all any of us can do.

 

I look forward each day to reading a new wisdom from the book, growing and finding a deeper meaning in life and within myself. With the added benefit of seeing the bookmark move closer to the end of the book, signifying my physical release home. To all of you reading M & M Dialogue newsletter, may peace, love and happiness be with you and within you.

 

—Josh Underhill

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Responding to a couple of comments from the October newsletter: Johnny posits two seemingly dichotomous versions of “nirvana.” Either it can be accessed by a few rare souls who practice for many lifetimes; or it is an omnipresent perfect moment that is accessible to anyone who takes a moment to look for it. I wish to endorse a middle ground. Using one of the Buddha’s many definitions of Nirvana (and exercising a certain amount of editing):

 

“The practitioner may attain such a concentration…that the practitioner has realized the complete cessation of greed, hate, and delusion…Nirvana is realizable even during this lifetime.”

 

Historically, hundreds of thousands of people achieved Nirvana during the same generation, and maybe they number in the millions across the generations. So, not so rare.

 

But to Josh Barnes’ point, this state of mind seems very elusive. Omnipresent perfect moment though it may be, we have trained ourselves to see only imperfection. We can thank popular media, our parents, their parents for countless generations, society at large, and most especially our own selves for our preoccupation with imperfection. But there you have the problem, we have to untrain some old habits before we can “awaken” to the perfection around us. Venerable Thay describes this at #1, the namesake passage for YTH.

 

—Shad Alexander

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I’m happy that Shad responded to what I wrote about nirvana in the October dialogue. I was hoping that this meditation and mindfulness dialogue would evolve into more of a dialogue as it goes along. Unsurprisingly, his perspective is a little different than mine. I don’t know. I imagine that the word “nirvana,” like words tend to do, means different things to different people. For me, one of the lovely things about meditation, is that when we sit in silence, we leave words aside for a while. When there is inner stillness, when thought and language fall away, we have no disagreements—not even friendly ones. For a time that has nothing to do with time, we have no problems, no explanations, no wrong views or right ones. No greed, hate or delusions. Whatever you call this, it’s quite a pleasant state of affairs. When we begin the day this way, the whole day somehow goes better. I think of “mindfulness” as the practice of living in meditation—to the extent we can do this, which changes over time and even from day to day. This dialogue is a way for us to share our experience and understanding with each other, and to use words to point to that for which there are no words.

 

—Johnny Stallings

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I decided to change the way I am reading my copy of Your True Home. Instead of reading normally, front to back, I am going back to front, because the numbers are a countdown to me being released. Looking at the book, I will instantly know how many days I have left.

 

On 10/21 I read #358 “So Many Reasons to Be Happy”

 

I found it refreshing. I so desire to be one with nature, to be in the woods, smell the fresh air and hear only nature. To touch Mother Earth and for her to touch me, feeling her embrace. It has been way too long for me feeling pure nature, and reading #358 at first made me feel sad for what I have been missing, but then I read it again, seeing that “Whenever she sees us suffering, she will protect us.” In this moment I am in now, she is protecting me with the knowledge that soon I will have the chance to feel the woods and her embrace once again. I cannot wait for that day.

 

Reading #355 “Your Suffering Needs You,” on 10/24, reminds me that every aspect of ourselves, whether good or bad, needs our attention. All the good or bad within us are the things that make us, and they all require attention. But then #350 “Goodness Is Always in You” shows us all that, no matter the bad things we’ve done, there is goodness within each of us. Then, on 11/2, I read #346 “What Separates  Us” and labels are something that hurts every one of us. Society uses labels to dehumanize and to separate us into groups, and if we can eliminate labels there can be peace in the world.

 

—Josh Underhill

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October 7, 2020  THE SUFFERING OF THOSE WE LOVE

 

HOLDING AN EMOTIONAL STATE WITH MINDFULNESS—WOW! That’s a lot to “ask.” Having just finished reading For Your Own Good, I am, also, able to see others’ suffering more easily (than my own). Seeing, holding, even accepting my own suffering (a response to stimulus) and my own causes of suffering is not “easy,” especially to do with compassion….

 

Maybe I can…have some compassion for an other, and for this other (who is the same in suffering as all others)…holding with mindfulness (of the human “condition” we all share), a feeling or sensation, tied to an emotional state, and allow space to experience the “feelings.”

 

October 8, 2020  A LOVE LETTER

 

My first thought: “How wonderful! I’d love to receive one.” In this message he speaks of transformation: first within, then in another. That real love is required to accomplish such a task is awesome. To mend a broken relationship could take a whole life of time…. Is it so hard? No. I am often just so scared of being rejected, turned away, not even seen for my effort….

 

October 15, 2020  SELECTIVE WATERING

 

….I find that, in spite of doubts, if I maintain certain spiritual practices then I like the person I seem to be and this experience rarely seems fraught with insurmountable challenges. But, if I let these practices all fall away completely, even for a few weeks, then I descend to a dark place where I don’t like “me,” and everything is a challenge I can barely face, let alone master; life gets really hard and suffering ensues….

 

Maybe if each of us finds our path to travel on, and focuses more on the journey—making the most of each moment, and enjoying each moment (as best as we know and are able in that moment)—instead of any destination, then, maybe, we will end (personal) suffering and enjoy the experience of life more. 

 

October 16,  SOVEREIGN OF THE FIVE ELEMENTS

 

….I already have all the skills and capacity to live any life I want. I only need to live that life fully, here, now….I am sovereign of my existence. No one else on Earth directs this life I live in any way. My thoughts, feelings, words, actions are all “mine”…. Getting still enough to experience my “true self” at the core is my goal for mindfulness practice—to get behind those ego-stories, to see beyond those limits to reality.

 

October 19, 2020  CENTURY OF SPIRITUALITY

 

….I am thankful that a spiritual life is no longer the domain of religious elites—selected, born, or bought into such a life. Not everyone sees this, or desires to do so. I feel a gratitude that my life experiences have afforded me opportunity to learn this lesson and apply it in my lifetime…. 

 

October 21, 2020   THE SEEDS OF HAPPINESS

 

The first paragraph is a personal reminder that I am the one (and only one) responsible for the story I tell “myself” about the experience “I” have of reality as it exists….

 

I like the metaphor of life as a garden where I plant and water seeds, pull weeds and even work to “transform” my landscaping to be whatever I choose for it to be. I have a level of control over “my” life. How I choose to exercise my control will impact my results (life experiences)….

 

October 22, 2020  THE ART OF MINDFUL LIVING

 

….I can practice being mindful at any time, anywhere, while doing anything. This is powerful! It is a blessing to be able to do this mindfulness thing….

 

I like the idea of stopping, from my daily hustle and bustle, to enjoy breathing. Breathing helps me connect or remember that I am alive….

 

October 25, 2020  THE ENERGY OF LIBERATION from Be Free Where You Are by Thich Nhat Hanh

 

What first caught me in this talk was that anyone and everyone, including me, has the “seed” for mindfulness and concentration…. I don’t need a monastery, or a special rite, or a fancy religion. All I need to do is focus on whatever I am doing in this moment, enjoy the breath I am blessed with, and let the rest of the whatever drop away….

 

I think that’s awesome! I have always thought it was “easy,” but never found a way to explain it. Thây does so eloquently—probably all the years of practicing.

 

October 28, 2020  NO BEGINNING, NO END  #30

 

Once again, Thây emphasizes that now is all that is and everything I need is already present, here in and/or with me now. When I go looking out there (outside myself)—to others, to the past, to any possible future, to things to places—I can never find peace, whatever I am seeking. When I begin to turn inward, embracing what is within me already, I find peace, freedom, happiness: nirvana. It’s all right there, just waiting for me to find it, as it always was.

 

November 3, 2020  THOUGHTS FROM 10/15 MINDFULNESS NEWSLETTER

 

I agree, or find personal resonance, with your thoughts on #247 NIRVANA IS NOW. Since everything I’ve learned from Buddhism is about learning to focus on and live in the “now,” why should Nirvana be anywhere or anytime other than now? My biggest challenge in life is tied to now presence; paying full attention to the “now” I experience, well…now. I find it very easy to get lost in past “realities” or future dreams.

 

I also resonate with Brandon G’s thoughts about cookie cutter life: seems deeply connected to challenge of now-presence. Before prison, even inside, too, it gets easy to develop a routine (cookie cutter life) and stay in this “rut.” “It’s comfortable,” I’ll say to self. I once had a counselor point out that a “rut” is only a grave with the ends knocked out. Cookie cutter life, comfortable life—it’s just happy in a rut!

 

Michel Deforge

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The Secret behind Our Strife 

 

I, so sure of myself, so ready

to explain why I am right—

I live in a body that will die, and all

my brave words be gone to the sky. 

 

And you, with your shouted reasons

I am wrong, you live in a body

that will fall, be still, be mourned

for the peace you might have found. 

 

Shall you and I, knowing this now,

set our strife aside, pause our proclamations

into curiosity, listening to see what we

might learn, one from another?

 

—Kim Stafford

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What to say about meditation?

 

Thanks for all the beautiful writing in the last edition!

 

Every month or two I teach beginning meditation for my Zen temple. I love doing it, but after many years I have a bit of a routine, so last time I taught, I thought I would go back to Dogen, the 13th Century founder of Soto Zen Buddhism in Japan, and see what he had to say to beginners. In vintage Dogen style, he starts off by saying that everything is perfect and complete as it is, so what is the point of doing some kind of practice? The Way is right here and now, so what is the use of study, meditation, and other efforts to “improve”? And yet, we know that we become distracted, angry, confused, and have the feeling we have lost our way; in a word, we suffer. We want to be free of our suffering. And we have the example of wise people we admire who practice meditation. Dogen concludes: You should therefore cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest. If you want to attain suchness, you should practice suchness without delay. 

 

I recently came across a talk by Krishnamurti that was in a similar vein. He was asking his audience, “Why do you meditate? Why do you do this thing that various teachers from the East have said you should do? Do you have an idea you will have some extraordinary experience? Are you trying to imitate another person? Ask yourself, why am I meditating? What is my motive?” And then he says, “When you look deeply into your life, when you investigate a question you really care about, you become very quiet and completely still without any effort. Meditation arises spontaneously when you look deeply, without fear, without knowing what you will find.”

 

Meditation is not self-calming. One idea about meditation is that it came out of hunting culture. When a hunter is waiting for their prey, they must be awake, alert, sensitive, ready; the mind has to be free of distraction and the body has to be relaxed, able to move in any direction. I mentioned this to a friend the other day and he started to imitate his cat waiting for a mouse to come out of its hole. His body became graceful, energetic, ready to pounce but without any tension. His eyes became focussed on the imaginary mouse-hole. The room vibrated with concentration, energy, and stillness. Vegetarians like myself don’t always like this idea, but there might be something to it.

 

—Howard Thoresen

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Dear Johnny,

 

….What I have been thinking of a lot lately is birth and death, rather well known topics. Anyway here are some poems that seem to fit that thinking. 

 

love, Deb

 

Insight

 

After we die we hover for a while

at treetop level with the mourners

beneath us, but we are not separate

from them nor they from us.

They are singing but the words

don’t mean anything in our new language

 

—Jim Harrison

 

The Old People

 

Pantcuffs rolled, and in old shoes,

they stumble over the rocks and wade out

into a cold river of shadows

far from the fire, so far that its warmth

no longer reaches them. And its light

(but for the sparks in their eyes

when they chance to look back)

scarcely brushes their faces. Their ears

are full of night: rustle of black leaves

against a starless sky. Sometimes

they hear us calling, and sometimes

they don’t. They are not searching

for anything much, nor are they much

in need of finding something new.

They are feeling their way out into the night,

letting their eyes adjust to the future.

 

—Ted Kooser

 

In Memory of Joseph Brodsky

 

It could be said, even here, that what remains of the self

Unwinds into a vanishing light, and thins like dust, and heads

To a place where knowing and nothing pass into each other, and through;

That it moves, unwinding still, beyond the vault of brightness ended,

And continues to a place which may never be found, where the unsayable,

Finally, once more is uttered, but lightly, quickly, like random rain

That passes in sleep, that one imagines passes in sleep.

What remains of the self unwinds and unwinds, for none

Of the boundaries holds — neither the shapeless one between us,

Nor the one that falls between your body and your voice. Joseph,

Dear Joseph, those sudden reminders of your having been — the places

And times whose greatest life was the one you gave them — now appear

Like ghosts in your wake. What remains of the self unwinds

Beyond us, for whom time is only a measure of meanwhile

And the future no more than et cetera et cetera …but fast and forever.

 

—Mark Strand

 

The Hammock

 

When I lay my head in my mother’s lap

I think how day hides the stars,

the way I lay hidden once, waiting

inside my mother’s singing to herself. And I remember 

how she carried me on her back

between home and the kindergarten,

once each morning and once each afternoon.

 

I don’t know what my mother’s thinking.

 

When my son lays his head in my lap, I wonder:

Do his father’s kisses keep his father’s worries

from becoming his? I think, Dear God, and remember

there are stars we haven’t heard from yet:

They have so far to arrive. Amen,

I think, and I feel almost comforted.

 

I’ve no idea what my child is thinking.

 

Between two unknowns, I live my life.

Between my mother’s hopes, older than I am

by coming before me, and my child’s wishes, older than I am

by outliving me. And what’s it like?

Is it a door, and good-bye on either side?

A window, and eternity on either side?

Yes, and a little singing between two great rests.

 

—Li-Young Lee

 

The Archaic Maker

 

          The archaic maker is of course naive. If a man he listens. If a

woman she listens. A child is listening. A train passes like an underground river. It enters a story.

          The river cannot come back. the story goes on. It uses some form

of representation. It does not really need much by way of gadgets, apart

from words, singing, dancing, making pictures and objects that resemble

living shapes. Things of its own devising.

          The deafening river carries parents, children, entire families waking

and sleeping homeward.

          The story passes stone farms on green hillsides at the mouths of valleys

running up into forests full of summer and unheard water.

           In the story it is already tomorrow. A time of memories incorrect

but powerful. Outside the windows is the next of everything.

          One of each.

          But here is ancient today

          itself

          the air the living air

          the still water

 

—W. S. Merwin

 

Opus From Space

 

Almost everything I know is glad

to be born—not only the desert orangetip,

on the twist of tansy; shaking

birth moisture from its wings, but also the naked

warbler nesting, head wavering toward the sky,

and the honey possum, the pygmy possum,

blind, hairless thimbles of forward,

press and part.

 

Almost everything I’ve seen pushes

toward the place of that state as if there were

no knowing any other—the violent crack

and seed-propelling shot of each witch hazel pod,

the philosophy implicit in the inside out

seed-thrust of the wood sorrel. All hairy

saltcedar seeds are single-minded

in their grasping of wind and spinning

for luck toward birth by water.

 

And I’m fairly shocked to consider

all the bludgeonings and batterings going on

coninually, the head-rammings, wing furors,

and beak-crackings, fighting for release

inside gelatinous shells, leather shells,

calcium shells or rough, horny shells. Legs

and shoulder, knees and elbows flail likewise

against their womb walls everywhere, in pine

forest niches, seepage banks and boggy

prairies, among savannah grasses, on woven

mats and perfumed linen sheets.

 

Mad zealots, every one, even before

beginning they are dark dust-congealings

or pure frenzy to come into light.

 

Almost everything I know rages to be born,

the obsession founding itself explicitly

in the coming bone harps and ladders,

the heart-thrusts, vessels and voices

of all those speeding with clear and total

fury toward this singular honor.

 

—Pattiann Rogers

 

—Deborah Buchanan

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November 12, 2020

Meditation and Mindfulness

 

#9  I Have Arrived

#44  We Already Have Enough

#130  Appreciating Simple Joys

 

These three principles express what my heart has followed for most of my life. I have been unaware of ‘wanting more,’ or ‘needing more,’ even though there were many lean years when I could have felt that. But here they are! All expressed far more lucidly than I have ever been able to explain them, or defend them to others, so I am grateful to Thich Nhat Hanh for that.

 

A few examples: When I married my first husband, we didn’t have a ring, so I used a friendship ring that a high school girlfriend had given me. She got it in Mexico and it cost about $1.00. I liked it. Bill kept asking when we were going to get a ‘real’ ring. I told him I was fine, that I liked this ring just fine. He said, “Boy, you are low maintenance!” And from then on his nickname for me was, “LM.”

 

Example #2: I had a large piece of art in a gallery exhibit in Portland. The title was, “Affordable Pleasures.” At the gallery opening, a man of considerable means was admiring it, and he chuckled and said, “Ah, I get it. You have to have a lot of money to afford this, right?” In consternation I said, “Well, no. It refers to the subject matter; the broken reflection of the moon on the water. Looking at the moon on the water is an affordable pleasure for everyone.” He said, dismissively, “Oh well, whatever. I’ll buy it!” I said, “No. You won’t.”

 

Example #3: My dad assiduously pruned and raked and composted everything. He had half a dozen magnificent compost piles. Fluffy, friable, fragrant piles, each was about 6-8 cu. yds. He named them after composers (not composters). My all-time favorite Christmas present was the W. A. Mozart Memorial Compost Pile.

 

My second favorite Christmas present was from my daughter’s boyfriend; about two dozen cleaned, washed, dried, smoothed out sheets of aluminum foil that he had saved for me from his noontime deli sandwiches. He knew that I used and reused aluminum foil for years, and this was his very thoughtful gift to me.

 

I have never been very big on ‘goals,’ or ‘progress,’ or ‘consumption.’ I have simple, but innumerable pleasures: Raisins on my cereal, stars in an inkwell black sky, nuzzling my dog’s fur, singing, planting, smell of fir needles in the sun, deer munching on my dahlias, cooking, Goodwill, art, hiking, the seasons…all of them.

 

To me there is a distinction between pleasures and joy. Pleasure is the ripples of water on the surface. Joy is the deeper down, abiding current. Pleasure is the hot, bright, snappy flame of a fire. Joy is the quiet, calm but intense, slowly glowing embers below.

 

So again, my thanks to Mr. T. N. Hanh (if I may call him that) for helping me express these thoughts. I don’t know if I could have done it without his guidance with these three principles.

 

—Jude Russell 

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[See drawing of elephant and sphere at the top.]

 

Abstract idea/concrete image. Both at once between sleep and waking.

 

I woke and found this present in mind and made a drawing quickly before it faded away.

 

The sphere was, simply, everything. The elephant was God.

 

When I was drinking coffee later, I added fancy titles from out of my memory:

“All and Everything,” title of a favorite book, for the sphere;

 

and “That which is Other than All that Is,” for the elephant; a memory from  my time at college fifty years ago, when I read what a theologian had written about God as “radically other.”

 

—Charles Erickson

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Thank you, everyone!

 

That’s a wrap for our third Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue. If you enjoyed it, please send me something for the December 15th issue. You can use Your True Home or anything else for inspiration. Feel free to respond to something that someone wrote in any of our dialogues, including this one.  Share a poem you wrote, or a poem that someone else wrote that you like. Or whatever thoughts might be wandering through your mind.

 

(If you go to the EVENTS page on this website and click on “Previous Events,” you can find our September and October dialogues.)

 

May all people be happy.

May we live in peace & love.

 

—Johnny Stallings