photograph taken in Iceland by Kim Stafford

 

 

Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

 

  July 15, 2022

 

Remember?

 

Remember that day

when the war ended

and you climbed

from your trenches

and we oozed

from our bunkers

leaving

grenades, guns

bullets and bayonets

behind?

Remember how we

all sang in the streets

danced in the fountains

crazy with joy?

Remember how

clouds lifted

hearts rose

hatred, vengeance

bitterness and rage

fell away like

grave clothes?

Remember how

we stood

tall and happy

in the morning

light

eyeing the world

and one another

with new eyes?

Remember how

in that ecstasy

we forgot

if ours was

a red state

or blue

liberal cause or

conservative stand?

 

Remember

how easily

we remembered

who we were

from whence we had come

where we were going

why we were here

and what we should do?

 

I will never forget

that day

when the war ended

and trust sprouted

and spread like

a green

sea of grass

across every divide

over every division

uniting all

into one state

of grace

indivisible

at peace

under heaven.

 

 —Will Hornyak   July 10, 2022

*

#223  Benefit From The Positive Elements 

 

“If the presence of the other is refreshing and healing to you, keep hold of this presence and nourish yourself with it. If there are negative things around you, you can always find something that is healthy, refreshing and healing, and with your mindfulness you can recognize its presence in your life.

 

You need to recognize that these kinds of positive elements exist and that you can benefit from their refreshing and helpful presence. If you are facing a sunset, a marvelous spectacle, give yourself a chance to be in touch with it. Give yourself five minutes, breathing deeply, and you will be truly there. Touch the beauty of nature in a deep way. That will do your body and mind a great deal of good.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

 

Wendell Berry’s poem, “The Peace of Wild Things” is the embodiment of this page from Your True Home, and I speak it silently to myself each day on entering my time of meditation.

 

I can’t deny that I am often agitated and fearful about the world, particularly about our country, when I sit down to meditate. And I quietly breathe in, and out, and remind myself:

 

The Peace of Wild Things

 

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 

—Wendell Berry

 

I am so fortunate to be surrounded by beauty. I look to the north and see snow-clad Mt. Adams, and to the south, fleecy Mt. Hood —my two sentinels. To the east the sun rises over Surveyor’s Ridge and to the west it sets over Mt. Defiance. And above me either the “day-blind stars, waiting with their light,” or the visible blaze of stars in the deep and silent night sky.

 

Wendell Berry and Thich That Hanh know the score.

 

—Jude Russell

*

 

I read Thomas Traherne’s poem “Silence” this morning. It begins:

 

A quiet silent person may possess

All that is great or high in Blessedness.

The inward work is the supreme…

A man who seemeth idle to the view

Of others, may the greatest business do.

 

Later in the poem, he describes Adam, in the Garden, before the Fall:

 

The first and only work he had to do,

Was in himself to feel his bliss, to view

His sacred treasures, to admire, rejoice,

Sing praises with a sweet and heavenly voice,

See, prize, give hourly thanks within, and love,

Which is the high and only work above

Them all.

 

Traherne felt that, as a child, he lived in that same Paradise:

 

A world of innocence as then was mine,

In which the joys of Paradise did shine:

And while I was not here I was in Heaven,

Not resting one, but every, day in seven,

For ever minding with a lively sense,

The universe in all its excellence.

No other thoughts did intervene, to cloy,

Divert, extinguish, or eclipse my joy,

No other customs, new-found wants, or dreams

Invented here polluted my pure streams…

 

As an adult, by writing poems in which he gives thanks and praises to God, who created “the universe in all its excellence,” he could again enter the Garden of Paradise which he knew as a child:

 

He was an ocean of delights from Whom

The living springs and golden streams did come:

My bosom was an ocean into which

They all did run. And me they did enrich.

A vast and infinite capacity,

Did make my bosom like the Deity,

In whose mysterious and celestial mind

All ages and all worlds together shin’d,

Who tho’ He nothing said did always reign,

And in Himself Eternity contain.

The world was more in me, than I in it.

The King of Glory in my soul did sit,

And to Himself in me he always gave

All that He takes delight to see me have,

For so my spirit was an endless Sphere,

Like God Himself, and Heaven, and Earth was there.

 

—Thomas Traherne  (1636-1674)

 

A quiet silent person may possess this Blessedness. It’s our birthright.

 

—Johnny

*

 

Poems from Kim are always welcome:

 

          Pain & Grace

 

Far from here, pain abounds—

war, storm, crime, cruelty.

News freights that here to us.

Close to home, grace abounds—

rain, leaf, birdsong, touch.

Poetry sends this there to them.

This disjunction puzzles everyone.

Unknown beauties must be there.

And here, we have hurts in plenty.

So what is worth the telling? Let me

be the journalist of old affections.

In the tyrant’s prison, may there be

    a song.

 

                A Right to Rest

 

When you’re well, it’s Up and at ’em! 

Rise and shine! Daylight in the swamp! 

And there you stride into the storm of all 

that calls you to be the hero of action and 

accomplishment. You’ll earn rest when 

spent at dusk, stumbling for home.

But when you’re under the weather, it’s 

Take it easy…Kick back…Doze. At last,

your puritan self will let you be a slacker, 

shiftless, a lazy bum. Now’s the time

for frailty, for faltering, when sickness 

takes pity on your weary soul.

 

                 Covid Guest

 

For years you traveled in my country. 

People told stories of your wanderings, 

counted how many you met when they 

could take off the mask of reticence. 

Some shut their doors, shunned your 

touch, but others took you in, hosted

your companionship, even grew intimate. 

How their breath came fast as you dazzled

and left them utterly amazed.

Now you come to my house, and at last 

we meet. “Don’t be a stranger,” you say, 

offering your hand. And I take you in.

 

—Kim Stafford

*

 

Congratulations to Michel Deforge, who has now written more than 300 meditations in his journal, inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh’s meditations in Your True Home. In our Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue what we have shared of Michel’s writings is only the tip of the iceberg. Here are some things from his June journal:

 

June 6, 2022  #299 Definition of Hell

 

I love Thây’s solution—compassion. Any place I go, I will meet men and women who have created their own hell on earth. All I can do, and need to do, to ease their suffering is bring my compassion (from love and understanding) into his or her life—mine too! I don’t have to be the “best” or be all-compassionate.  I merely need to breathe (consciously), share some compassion cultivated from understanding the person before me in that moment—no history past, or future yet to be formed: simply he and me, in the now. Johnny is our example, here at TRCI; it’s repeatable.

 

June 23, 2022  #309  How to Listen to the Dharma

 

This could apply to any time I (and you) are listening to a talk, a lecture, a debate, a sermon, maybe even a discussion on wise and salient topics. I imagine, even if it’s silly, foolish, wastrel chatter I (and you) can allow the noise to wash over and pass on through. Engaging with intellect risks trapping all sorts of ideas, notions—pond scum, if you will. Wholesome talk/listening can also be reviewed later and maybe bear fruit. Listen to wisdom by letting it just soak in, without any interference or additives. Your life seeds will be better for it in the long run.

 

June 26, 2022  #310  Here to Love

 

This is a simple one. Breathe, smile, be aware, and love. I wonder how often and easily any of us can get into a mental mess by giving too much thought to Love: What it is/is not, how it “works.” Maybe, and I don’t really know from my own experience, we simply need to breathe, smile, be present to the reality of now—including the object of love (self, other, or object not self), and then choose to contemplate loving thoughts toward our object of love. I think an appropriate love will arise. (Provided the contemplation was appropriate.) Of course, another option comes to mind: Breathe, smile and just be. Just breathe and be, simply, as if in mindful meditative practice. Allow life to continue, just to observe, without judgement, what happens.

 

June 29, 2022  #312  None Other Than Enlightenment

 

All these skills and practice come together, as I continue practicing on my own, to reveal a freedom from suffering and a life of “nirvana.” It’s no special secret. If I (we) do this work, we will reap the rewards of enlightenment in all of our efforts and interactions with reality. And it all starts with deliberate breathing.

 

On June 30th, Michel wrote this:

 

Johnny and friends,

 

I don’t know precisely when, but I am given to believe that I will go to my first hip replacement surgery in July. I’m hoping the week following the 4th, but I have to wait and see. At the same time, TRCI is locking back down as infections of Covid rise. (Big sigh!) If I go “dark” you’ll know I went to the infirmary and didn’t have my writing tools to keep journalling. We’ll see.

 

I hope everyone is well and I will be back “on track” as soon as I am able.

 

Take care, with much love and gratitude,

 

Michel

*

 

Katie says: 

 

While I was typing this up I was doing meditation with the Shambhala sanghas in New York and Ukraine, and one person read Thay’s poem “Please Call Me by My True Names.”

 

So magical this life.

 

Ada Limón – born 1976 – has just been named the new Poet Laureate of the United States. We need her poems today; so glad to share them.  

 

“Right now, so often we are going numb to grief and numb to tragedy and numb to crisis,” Limón said. “Poetry is a way back in, to recognizing that we are feeling human beings. And feeling grief and feeling trauma can actually allow us to feel joy again.”

 

Here are a few of my favorites of her poems – 

 

A New National Anthem

 

The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National

Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good

song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets

red glare” and then there are the bombs.

(Always, always, there is war and bombs.)

Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw

even the tenacious high school band off key.

But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call

to the field, something to get through before

the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas

we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge

could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps,

the truth is, every song of this country

has an unsung third stanza, something brutal

snaking underneath us as we blindly sing

the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands

hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do

like the flag, how it undulates in the wind

like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled,

brought to its knees, clung to by someone who

has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon,

when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly

you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can

love it again, until the song in your mouth feels

like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung

by even the ageless woods, the short-grass plains,

the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left

unpoisoned, that song that’s our birthright,

that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on,

that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving

into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit

in an endless cave, the song that says my bones

are your bones, and your bones are my bones,

and isn’t that enough?

 

The Raincoat

 

When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
another spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.

 

Burying Beetle

 

I like to imagine even the plants
want attention, so I weed for four
hours straight, assuring the tomatoes
feel July’s hot breath on the neck,
the Japanese maple can stretch,
the sweet potatoes, spider plants,
the Asiatic lilies can flourish in this
place we’ve dared to say we “own.”
Each nicked spindle of morning glory
or kudzu or purslane or yellow rocket
(Barbarea vulgaris, for Christ’s sake),
and I find myself missing everyone I know.
I don’t know why. First come the piles
of nutsedge and creeper and then an
ache that fills the skin like the Cercospora
blight that’s killing the blue skyrocket juniper
slowly from the inside out. Sure, I know
what it is to be lonely, but today’s special
is a physical need to be touched by someone
decent, a pulsing palm to the back. My man
is in South Africa still, and people just keep
dying even when I try to pretend they’re
not. The crown vetch and the curly dock
are almost eliminated as I survey the neatness
of my work. I don’t feel I deserve this time,
or the small plot of earth I get to mold into
someplace livable. I lost God awhile ago.
And I don’t want to pray, but I can picture
the plants deepening right now into the soil,
wanting to live, so I lie down among them,
in my ripped pink tank top, filthy and covered
in sweat, among red burying beetles and dirt
that’s been turned and turned like a problem
in the mind.

—Ada Limón

 

Carrying Thay Into the Future 

 

Thay founded Plum Village Monastery in the French countryside in 1982. His first monastery in the West and his home for many years, Plum Village has been a refuge and mindfulness center for those displaced and suffering from war, to those searching for the ease of feeling at home in a peaceful community. Over the next four decades, Plum Village drew more and more practitioners while Thay went on to found 10 more monasteries and practice centers around the world.

 

“I can see very clearly that wherever you are, you are my continuation, and in one way or another, you are carrying me into the future,” Thay has said of those who follow the Plum Village path of mindfulness. “We, teacher and student, will continue to climb the hill of the century, offering our love, understanding, freedom, and solidity to the world.”

 

—Katie Radditz