The Great Piece of Turf by Albrecht Dürer (1503)

 

 

Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

 

May 15, 2022

 

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;

How could I answer the child?  I do not know what it is any more than he….

 

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death….

 

All truths wait in all things….

 

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars…

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

 

—from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

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Albrecht Dürer’s painting reminds me of Walt Whitman’s poem. Both were born in May—Dürer on May 21st, 1471, Walt on May 31st, 1819. At the end of May, I like to get together with friends and read Song of Myself.

 

Meditation and mindfulness are important to me on my life journey. They help me to see and appreciate the miraculous nature of our human life on Earth. Walt’s poem has also been a great help to me. I’ve carried it with me since I was 18. It reminds me that my self is as big as the world, without beginning or end. It is the wisest and most exuberant utterance to come out of America. Maybe the world.

 

—Johnny Stallings

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Timely Thoughts

 

People talk of time,

Speak of time with wonder—

But what is time,

Why all the thunder?

 

Where’s the lightning

The brilliant flash of proof?

Tangible time,

Intangible truth!

 

This talk creates storms,

And brings nightmares to life;

Nightmares I say,

And terrible strife.

 

We do not need time,

It is time that needs us.

Wait, what is time—

And why all the fuss?

 

—Joshua Barnes © 2022

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Jude and Michel both wrote in response to Thich Nhat Hanh’s meditation “Long Live Impermanence.” (JS)

 

#273 Long Live Impermanence!

 

“If you suffer, it’s not because things are impermanent. It’s because you believe things are permanent. When a flower dies, you don’t suffer much, because you understand that flowers are impermanent. But you cannot accept the impermanence of your beloved one, and you suffer deeply when she passes away. If you look deeply into impermanence, you will do your best to make her happy right now. Aware of impermanence, you become positive, loving, and wise.

 

Impermanence is good news. Without impermanence, nothing would be possible. With impermanence, every door is open for change. Instead of complaining, we should say, ‘Long live impermanence!’ Impermanence is an instrument for our liberation.” 

 

—from Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh

 

My dad had a conflicted relationship with impermanence/permanence. Here are two stories that show that conflict:

 

He was a doctor and had witnessed many deaths in his medical career. His many patients loved him, and he always showed care and great concern for them. When it came to his own life and death, he was very clear—adamant, even: “If found unconscious, do not resuscitate!” To people visiting him in his late 80s, he had a small plate with slips of paper with the note printed on it. He would offer the plate to friends as if offering a plate of Oreos. “Here, take one,” he’d say, as they walked in the door. 

 

He wrote his own obituary, professing no big deal that he’d died. Closing statement: “He’s dead. There’s no more Ed!”  You get the picture.

 

We three daughters knew his wishes, so when his health was failing and he’d experienced a few hospital stays, we were in accord as to what to do. On his return from one hospital bout, in his very weakened condition, my sisters assigned me to talk to him about his choices. I knelt beside him, tears streaming down my cheeks, held his hand and explained, “Dad, we know your wishes, and we’ll honor that. You can choose to refuse to eat, if you believe it’s time. We can’t withhold food from you, but you can choose not to eat. Or you can choose not to drink water, but we’ve been told that that is a very painful way to do this. So you can do this, refuse to eat, if you want to—we won’t force you, you know that.” He looked at me a little sweetly puzzled and bewildered, and said, “But I like to eat.”  At which we all burst out laughing, and I said, “Well, then let’s make you a bacon sandwich!”

 

The second story is more in keeping with his credo of impermanence.

 

A couple years after our mom died, Dad reignited a long-lost love story with a high school sweetie, Ginnie. Ginnie’s husband had died also, and she and Dad started exchanging flurries of letters between Vancouver, Wa. and Loudonville, Ohio. He told us he wanted Ginnie to come to Washington so they could get married. All he could talk about was Ginnie and her sweet brown eyes and soft brown hair. (We reminded him that she might look a little different at 90 yrs old than at 17.)  To test the waters, we all made a trip to Ohio and reunited the two of them for a sweet, five day visit. We returned to the Pacific Northwest and they kept up the flurry of lovey letter writing. 

 

We noticed at some point that Ginnie hadn’t been writing anymore. No letters for several months, so I called her caregiver in Loudonville, and she told me, chagrined that she’d forgotten to let us know, that Ginnie had died! Oh no! How are we going to break the news to Dad?!?! So again, I knelt down beside his reading chair and said, “Dad, I have some very sad news to tell you. I’m so sorry…but we just learned that Ginnie—your Ginnie has died.” Dad let the news sink in, then cocked his head and said, “Well… she was old.”

 

Impermanence acknowledged.

 

—Jude Russell

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April 26, 2022

 

Wisdom rests here. How we face, accept and adapt to impermanence will play out in our suffering. Allow me to explain. (Read Thây’s writing first!) When I set up an ideal (not reality, but an interpretation of how I expect reality to be) and reality doesn’t fulfill my “ideal,” then I suffer—get upset or anxious, etc. When I can just exist in this moment as it is with no expectations, then I can be present, loving, compassionate and open to all the opportunities the now presents. I have freedom to flow with the reality as it is, instead of fighting with it for what I want it to be, but can’t have. Doing this I become a petulant selfish child demanding my way, attempting to force reality to fit in my box.

 

Sadly, it never works like this. We’ve all tried. I have never gotten this to resolve positively; only as more suffering in now, and later on too! Impermanence is the hero of my story of suffering. All I need to do for the thing I dislike, or wish were different, is wait. I don’t have to attach, judge, work to change anything; all I need is to accept what is. Shortly all will shift, and over time things will change. It may not always be my idea of better, but it will be different. If I accept, I avoid suffering. (Acceptance does not include grasping or holding on tightly—hold with open hands.) If I attempt to control, grasp, hold, define, judge, change—then I get suffering. Long live impermanence!

 

Here’s another passage from Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh, and Michel’s meditation on it. (JS)

 

#267  How Strange

 

“At the moment of his awakening at the foot of the Bodhi tree, the Buddha declared, ‘How strange! All beings possess the capacity to be awakened, to understand, to love, to be free, yet they allow themselves to be carried away on the ocean of suffering.’ He saw that, day and night, we’re seeking what is already there within us.”

 

April 14, 2022

 

How strange, indeed! That we should spend (waste even) an entire lifetime in search of that which is already within us. We have only to awaken to what already is. Somehow that is the challenge/trial of our individual quests; to come to an end of self and a realization that what we seek is and has always been within us all along. Instead, many run around aimlessly for years and decades and lifetimes (multiples for some), looking to find our relief in something/someone external. Some seek money, fame, beauty, youth, knowledge, possessions, status, mates (trophies?), glory, progeny, legacy, food, alcohol, drugs, sex, anything to excess.

 

Can I (you-we) stop this endless running for just a moment, please? Look at the man/woman in the mirror. Is anything external satisfying the “itch” for which we quest to resolve? No?! Face the man/woman in the mirror; get to know him/her; learn to love, accept, and express compassion for him/her. And if I’m wrong (I doubt it on this one occasion) what has been lost? Nothing! You’ve only spent some time learning to come home to your true home—your true self. And if I’m right (since I’m only restating wisdom of wiser folks) you’ve started to heal and come home. Welcome home!

 

—Michel Deforge

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     Desert Song School

 

In this tattered paradise we left them—these

acres of muddy reed where the maze of ditch

and dike lets every wing and cry be sovereign—

when dawn starts the chant by sweet cacophony

of bittern, heron, crane and teal through mist

in harmony oblique, a mozart fledgling nested

in thistledown must mutter her first yearning

proclamation, her aria profundo, shrill or secret

to split silence be she egret, avocet, stilt or tern,

ibis, shoveler, shearling, pelican or snipe

to dwell inside a symphony, to try her tune

before she learns to fly or feed or seek a mate,

her one and only way with song, brief life cry

where waters glitter for the rising sun.

 

—Kim Stafford

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Small Kindnesses

 

Last week I thought about my mother on Mother’s Day and on her birthday, Friday, May 13. Sometimes these anniversaries fall on the same day. I have always liked the pause of remembering my mother and being mindful of how much of her very cells I carry with me. She died from kidney failure when I was in my early 20’s, so this year I realized I have had 50 years of looking back on my mother’s kindness and my short time with her. I hope you all enjoyed thinking of your mom and loving-kindness. 

 

Mother’s Day began as a holiday to mark and value peace and kindness toward all persons. Julia Ward Howe made a plea for no more sending our sons to wars. Mother’s Day had a lot of that meaning for us this year.   

 

Kindness is something we all value. But sometimes we take it for granted. Especially small kindnesses. A couple of weeks ago, I was taking care of my grandsons. Sylvan, who is nine years old, is homeschooling. He had a zoom class on African history and culture that he attended that day. There was a story about the most wealthy King in Africa, pre-colonization. The King was especially known and loved for his generosity and kindness. The class teacher asked the kids if they could tell about someone who had been generous and kind to them recently. Or could they tell about something they had done for someone else out of kindness? The children, who had had all kinds of things to say earlier in class, made no comments. None of the kids had a response! The teacher even told of some small kindness done for her to prompt them, but nooo. I talked with Sylvan afterward and I realized as a youngster he takes things for granted that adults do for him, when he’s hungry he gets fed or helps fix the food, or if he needs a ride his parents take him. And when he is nice to someone there’s always a good reason for working things out. It made me realize that kindness is a concept. Children are naturally living in the moment. And it’s our consciousness that helps us be kind in our actions and aware of kindness done toward us. This consciousness helps open our hearts with mindfulness.

 

My friend Jennifer, referring to the bumper sticker “Practice random acts of kindness,” said that it’s a gift when we intentionally do something for a person to make life easier. 

 

Here is a poem to prompt us to be aware of kindness and how it makes us feel:   

 

Small Kindnesses

 

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.” 

 

—Danusha Lameris, from Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection

 

Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection is an anthology that includes poems by Ross Gay, Marie Howe, Naomi Shihab Nye and many others. The poems urge us in these polarized times to “move past the negativity that often fills the airwaves, and to embrace the ordinary moments of kindness and connection that fill our days.”    

 

Wishing you and the world, Peace and Kindness    

 

—Katie Radditz