photo of Will Hornyak (and surroundings) by Michael Wetter

 

Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

 

June 15, 2024

 

Every day, priests minutely examine the Dharma

And endlessly chant complicated sutras.

Before doing that, though, they should learn

How to read the love letters sent by the wind and rain, the snow and moon.

 

—Ikkyū (1394-1481), translated by John Stevens

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“Sometimes a conversation can be the greatest adventure of your life.”

 

—Lyn Slater (sent by Jill Littlewood)

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How

 

small birds      flit

from bough

to bough to bough

 

to bough to bough to bough

 

—Gary Snyder, from danger on peaks

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The Owyhee River

 

Ushers us

 Through canyons

A thousand feet deep

Two million years old

 Past sheer, towering

 Basalt walls, chalk hills

Alive with the songs of

 Canyon wrens, chukar partridge, quail.

 

Eons of weathering

Ice, floods and wind

Yield cracks and crevices

Ledges and knolls

Perfect perches

For eagles, hawks

Ravens and falcons.

Niches hold soil and seed

Birth flowering shrubs.

White phlox, yellow arrowroot

Erupt from unlikely fissures 

In drab stone walls.  

 

 Just below Montgomery Rapids

The river slows, deepens

 We are engulfed 

In clouds of industrious cliff swallows

Darting wildly around us

Daubing mud, sculpting nests 

 The ancient stone face

 Cradling new dwellings and 

Delicate feathered life.  

  

The days are long and generous

Hot springs, cold plunges

Coyote songs at dusk

Just one rattlesnake!

We navigate rapids named

 “Read-it-and-Weep”

“Upset,” “Nuisance” and “Squeeze”

 And dozens more

Scouting those

Where disaster is a possibility

Terror and joy flowing together.  

 

The stars seems so close here

The night silence complete

Save for the swirl of current

The occasional slap of a beaver tail.

A touch of whiskey 

Loosens the tongue

For conversation, laughter

The medicine of friendship

Like the rising moon

Renews, restores, heals.

   

 We drink morning coffee 

And welcome first light

To sage-covered hills

 Sandstone cliffs and water.

Soon we’ll begin the ritual

Of gathering, packing up

Strapping down the gear

Casting off and feeling 

The first tug of current

The river drawing us 

To itself once again

 An old friend

Shouldering our load

Showing us the way.

 

 

—Will Hornyak,     June 2024

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I was thinking about meditation the other day, and wrote this letter to Rocky:

 

June 5, 2024

 

Dear Rocky

 

This morning I want to write to you about meditation and mindfulness. I know you are very busy these days. I hope you are able to find some time each day—even if it’s just five minutes—to just sit.

Words like “meditation” and “mindfulness” can be misleading. Maybe just think of it as “quiet time.” A time when you don’t have to do anything, or be anyone. Awake and alert. That’s all. No past, no future.

No thought.

No thought?

If a thought arises, look at it as if it is a cloud passing through the sky of your mind. All thoughts are just thoughts. They come and go.

With thought and language we label everything. We name every thing. We take something which is very big—life!—and confine it in words.

We confine ourselves. We imagine that we are a “man,” that we are “in prison,” that we are happy or sad. That we are separate from other people and from “the world.” These are all just ideas.

In silence, all these little ideas just fall away. Something is still happening, but it has no name.

After five minutes or an hour of silence, we have to rejoin other people in the activities of life. We have to pretend to be “Rocky” or “Johnny,” and do the things that Rocky and Johnny have agreed to do—the things that other people rely on us to do.

Writing in a journal during “quiet time” can be helpful—reflecting on our life, reminding ourselves of the things that are most important. Remembering to be grateful. Remembering that every thing is miraculous. Nurturing feelings of peace, love & happiness.

Certain texts are good for “quiet time,” to bring us to “the peace which passeth understanding.” Your True Home is good. So is “Song of Myself.” Also, Tao Te Ching and Hsin Hsin Ming. The poems of Han Shan and Hafiz. The Only Revolution by Krishnamurti. Poems and meditations of Thomas Traherne. My theater pieces “Silence” and “The Golden World.” (The latter is in my book The Nonstop Love-In, which I hope has some things in it that people find inspirational.)

Silence puts us in touch with the reality that is larger than our descriptions and explanations of reality—which are small and partial. This feeling of boundless being is truer than our ideas about the world and truer than our ideas about who we are.

 

peace & love

Johnny

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One Trick Pony

 

I’ll be the first to say it: Oh yes, I can be

predictable—rise, write a little song, then

putter the day away. And my verses, they

lament, or praise, in small compass. Nothing

too fancy, nothing too long or elaborate.

As for ambitious reach, let it pass me by.

Doesn’t every tree have all summer,

every singing bird the whole sky to fill?

Meanwhile, the sun, born in the big bang,

remains content to roil and smolder, now

and then to flare, before settling back

to seethe. So I seethe and suffer, need

and wonder, try scratching syllables

of joy, or sorrow, hope, or warning.

What more can I do than this—

a slow burn, singing and singing.

 

—Kim Stafford

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#19 Flowers and Garbage

“Flowers and garbage are both organic in nature.So looking deeply into the nature of a flower, you can see the presence of the compost and the garbage. The flower is also going to turn into garbage, but don’t be afraid! You are a gardener and you have in your hands the power to transform garbage into flowers, into fruit, into vegetables. You don’t throw anything away, because you are not afraid of garbage. Your hands are capable or transforming it into flowers, or lettuce or cucumbers.

The same thing is true of your happiness and your sorrow. Sorrow, fear, and depression are all a kind of garbage. These bits of garbage are part of real life, and we must look deeply into their nature. You can practice in order to turn these bits of garbage into flowers. It is not only your love that is organic; your hate is, too So you should not throw anything out. All you have to do is learn how to transform your garbage into flowers.”

—from Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh

 

Ugh. Garbage. I don’t even want to write about this, because it just dredges up ugly, old memories—memories of my first marriage and all of its ugliness, fear, chaos… But on reading Thich Nhat Hanh, I realized that it was living through that ‘garbage’ is precisely what led me to my determination and devotion to loving and working on behalf of others who are considered ‘garbage’ by much of the world. Prison inmates, rough teenagers, Hispanic adults (documented or undocumented), the homeless, the poor. I am called to be with these people and to instill in them the belief, the understanding, that they, one and all, have value and true worthiness and beauty in this world.

 

My first husband let me know countless times (always in an alcoholic stupor) that I was a ‘piece of garbage.’ It is said, and it is true, that when you say something enough times, the listener will come to believe it. And I did. Who was I to believe otherwise when the person closest to me told me over and over that I was useless, stupid, and…garbage. Nowadays it’s called gaslighting, I think. Of course I was too ashamed to mention any of this to my dear, concerned family or friends, so it all just settled itself in my being and festered.

 

I escaped that marriage—and I flourished. (Latin—flor=flower). From the ‘garbage’ came the flower. I blossomed. I grew stronger and eventually I branched out and realized that that piece of  garbage could be valuable to others. Now I cultivate relationships with the ‘lost ones,’ those denigrated and scorned and dismissed as worthless. I instill in them a sense of their value through love and attention and presence. I want to transform them all from garbage into flowers.

 

—Jude Russell

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Michel Deforge asked me to let everyone know that he has transferred to Oregon State Correctional Institution (OSCI) in Salem. He likes it much better there. Here are some excerpts from his journal:

 

May 6, 2024

 

….Some things are not good for me, and at the same time I don’t benefit from obsessive focus (aversion). I simply don’t need to give any more energy than is polite to acknowledge existence. For example: my cellie of late opines loudly—whines even. If (when) I give this energy by having my own opinion, and then sharing it, I see something odious develop in the opinion each holds, and aversion arises. If, instead, I let him rave but do not form my own opinion, or at least don’t share my thoughts, aversion is less powerful in me. I may still find his ideas odious, they vanish quickly enough; unfed they wither.

 

May 7, 2024

 

Abraham rushed to Sarah’s tent and said, “Hurry! Three measures of the finest flour! Knead it and make cakes.” Abraham ran to the cattle and chose a tender, choice calf. He gave it to a young man who rushed to prepare it. [While recovering from circumcision!]  —Genesis 18:6-7

 

Indolence is easy. The only requirement is do little-to-nothing, and think less of it. To follow Abraham’s example, hosting unexpected travelers, during the most painful day of convalescence from a minor surgery, is to fight the siren song of self and indolence. He didn’t just follow pro forma for these guests, he ran out to meet them—away from the comfort of shade and recuperation—and then back again to prepare not just a light snack, but a full banquet in honor of his guests. In his great discomfort, Abraham sets himself the task of providing for others’ comfort instead of his own. Many, if not all of us, would not do half as much. We’ll tell ourselves we would. But we know, in the end, pain and our own discomfort will win out, driving us back to our cozy convalescence. I don’t blame us! What Abraham did was extra-ordinary. That’s what ENTHUSIASM does to one, shifting focus and priorities toward where one is aiming his intent. Someday, maybe I could be ENTHUSIASTIC as was Abraham. “If not now, when?”

 

—Michel Deforge

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Katie Radditz sent this poem by Rilke:

 

Dear darkening ground,

you’ve endured so patiently the walls we’ve built,

perhaps you’ll give the cities one more hour

before you become forest again, and water, and widening wilderness

in that hour of inconceivable terror

when you take back your name from all things.

Just give me a little more time!

I want to love the things

As no one has thought to love them,

Until they’re worthy of you and real.

 

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875 – 1926

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Elizabeth Domike sent this poem by Stanley Moss:

 

Bright Day

 

I sing this morning: Hello, hello.

I proclaim the bright day of the soul.

The sun is a good fellow,

the devil is a good guy, no deaths today I know.

I live because I live. I do not die because I cannot die.

In Tuscan sunlight Masaccio  

painted his belief that St. Peter’s shadow

cured a cripple, gave him back his sight.

I’ve come through eighty-five summers. I walk in sunlight.

In my garden, death questions every root, flowers reply.

I know the dark night of the soul

does not need God’s eye,

as a beggar does not need a hand or a bowl.

 

—Stanley Moss

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Our Lady of the Mangoes

 

Señora Mango

Doña Mango

holds court behind the counter 

of her shop,

a five minute walk

from our casita.

 

Morning till past dark

she waits, taciturn,

does not look up.

 

Her buyers approach her

for pronouncements of cost:

two tomatoes

or one potato, a handful

of eggs secured 

in a produce bag.

 

Most days I find her 

sipping Cup of Noodles,

glued to the soaps

on a tiny TV 

beside the withering lettuce.

Her husband watches 

from a produce crate

out of view.

 

I am there for mangoes

zucchini, avocados, tomatoes

onions, bananas

garlic, limes

papaya and pineapple

a profusion of necessities

some too extravagant to buy 

at home.

 

She frowns at my use of

her plastic bags.

I learn to bring my own.

 

There’s no space on her counter

for all I want to buy. Over time

recognizing me, she

motions me to hand her my

shopping bags. She jots down 

my total and picks

the right coins from my hand.

 

I greet her always and thank her

when I leave. One day

as I turn to go I hear her call

after me “Qué la vaya bien.”

I call out to her in return.

 

Did I catch just a hint of a smile

in her eyes? We have made progress.

I walk my mangoes home.

 

 

—Gail Lester, Guanajuato, March, 2024