photo by Abe Green

 

 

Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

 

August 15, 2021

 

The purpose of life is to know yourself, love yourself, trust yourself, and be yourself.

—tag on a Yogi Tea bag

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7/15/21

#222 A Very Naive Idea

 

“Many people aspire to go to a place where pain and suffering do not exist, a place where there is only happiness. This is a rather dangerous idea, for compassion is not possible without pain and suffering.” (from Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh)

 

We don’t want to invite suffering, but ideally we learn to welcome suffering when it enters our lives. If we live our lives fearfully avoiding suffering and pain, we live a very limited existence. Living too carefully, never risking pain, failure, unhappiness or loss cannot result in a full and fulfilling life. It results in a careful life; that is not enough for me.

 

Suffering bonds you to others in a deep, rich, long-lasting way. My first marriage of thirteen years was frightening, abusive and dehumanizing, and that is how I emerged. I still have scars, but resilience and determination (and the specter of poverty) were more powerful motivators than continuing in a fearful, cautious life.

 

The gift of suffering was that I deeply, instinctively care for others, all others who suffer, in any way, not just in situations similar to mine. I have the three gifts that come from suffering: compassion, understanding, and love. That is the richness that comes from suffering. My heart is full.

 

—Jude Russell

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(Ronni Lacroute sent this poem by Mary Oliver:)

 

Mindful

 

Every day

I see or hear

something

that more or less

 

kills me

with delight,

that leaves me

like a needle

 

in the haystack

of light.

It was what I was born for—

to look, to listen,

 

to lose myself

inside this soft world—

to instruct myself

over and over

 

in joy,

and acclamation.

Nor am I talking 

about the exceptional,

 

the fearful, the dreadful,

the very extravagant—

but of the ordinary,

the common, the very drab,

 

the daily presentations.

Oh, good scholar,

I say to myself,

how can you help

 

but grow wise

with such teachings

as these—

the untrimmable light

 

of the world,

the ocean’s shine,

the prayers that are made

out of grass?

 

—Mary Oliver

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(These are some excerpts from Michel’s meditation journal. The numbers refer to Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Your True Home.)

 

July 4, 2021  Independence Day

 

….Today is a day to celebrate freedom. Yet, how many of us are truly FREE? I really wonder: Must one be trapped in a concrete cage, behind locked doors, shut away from the rest of the world and forgotten to become un-free? No. Freedom can be lost, taken away, and given away from and by anyone outside of prison or within the box. In fact, I’m not thinking of a prison for the body, but one created within a mind, and a tyranny not from others, or perpetuated by “others,” but of one from a tyrant within…

 

Many are prisoners of the mind. Some are as of yet unaware of the plight they face. Some have lost their focus—mistaking a tyranny from within for an external enmity. Each of us has a mind. Do we feed it? Exercise it wisely? Take it out to play? to learn? to exercise, face challenges as it grows?….

 

July 8, 2021   #159 A Healing Mantra

 

If we share compassion through a positive gesture/action, to express being fully present (mindful) we can uplift another from his or her pit of despair to find a stable footing from which to move forward. We may also need to say such things to our own self. When I’m down or struggling, there isn’t always a bodhisattva nearby to offer compassionate words. I can be that supporter of myself simply through positive self-talk….

 

July 15, 2021  #166 A Real Friendship

 

May I offer that in learning to love self and/or other, the key is to see the line of separation vanish. I’ve heard, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and struggled due to lack (I thought) of ability to love myself. Lately a thought is percolating that if I stop seeing you as separate and apart from me, but begin to see our inter-connectedness, or our inter-dependency, then I can learn to demonstrate love to both (in different ways).

 

—Michel Deforge

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Happy early 70th birthday! As my present to you, I’ve written a poem in your honor:

 

AFTER

 

And you may find that you have nothing

to say, and that’s okay. The bird

 

you pictured now because that’s the way

the brain works

 

and the concentric circles of its song—

they are always there. Jung defined

 

the unconscious as everything

you have forgotten, everything

 

you’re not currently thinking about,

and everything you do not know.

 

That narrows it down.

So the conscious mind is really

 

only very little of what goes on—

like a lightbulb compared to the dawn.

 

—Alex Tretbar

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August 11, 2021

 

I’m turning 70 next Tuesday, August 17th. It doesn’t seem possible! How did I get so old? It seems like just last week I was 19. What happened?

 

Maybe the reason getting older is bewildering is that our body ages, but something inside us doesn’t. Whoever it is, or whatever it is that looks out through my eyes—and even observes my thoughts!—hasn’t aged a bit!

 

I’m enjoying my human life on Earth! I didn’t make a plan. I’ve been meandering along like the half-wit third son in the fairy tales who somehow ends up with the princess, thanks to help he got from a magic toad. (My dad once said to me: “John, if anyone says you’re a wit, they’d be half right.”)

 

I’ve been (and still am) very fortunate. (On another occasion, my dad said: “John, if you fell into a ditch, you’d come up with the deed to the town.”) I suppose the greatest good fortune was that I got hefty amounts of love and encouragement when I was a little boy. 

 

When I got a little older, instead of going to Vietnam to kill people, I went to India to study meditation and mindfulness from wise yogis. That was lucky.

 

It was my good fortune to come of age in the Hippie Era. Had I been born ten years earlier, I might have become a beatnik! Hippies were into Peace & Love. That sounded good to me. Still does. Flower power!

 

Finding Nancy Scharbach was unexpected. More Good Fortune! 

 

About the same time we got together, I wandered into a prison. I met a lot of lovely people there. We had long talks. We put on plays. We had great times together! I still have lots of friends in prison. We write to each other. I have friends who have graduated from prison, who I can see on the outside.

 

I have lots of friends! If you’re reading this, you are probably one of them.

 

I have much much more to be grateful for. Too much to try to describe here. And fresh blessings arrive every day, without fail. I’m grateful that I feel grateful. I’m happy that I’m happy. I love loving and being loved.

 

—Johnny Stallings

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                          Your Walden

 

For some, only sleep is the hut by moonlight, 

sleep the pond pure and still, sleep the essential 

refuge for solitary rumination, the secret escape

from quiet desperations that each day crowd your breath, 

dim your vision, narrow your hope. Others find a porch

and sit, composed, or a tree to muse in shade, or a hilltop, 

higher than wires and roads, to look far, kindling the power 

to simplify, to transcend, if only for a moment.

 

You learned the hard way your soul is green and withers, 

starving without some touch to wood, earth, and silence. You

took the crash course in complexity for years and years. So now

you find a place separate from screen and machine, a place 

beyond getting and spending, a space to let the buried eden 

of the wild self bud and blossom. You take your Walden—call it 

ringer-off, screen asleep, brass keys all banished to the drawer—

so at last you may dawn into yourself, deliberate, and awake.

 

—Kim Stafford

*

 

I love where I now live (North Central Montana), it’s where I grew up. I understand it in ways that elude those not from here, and though the land and its people can be difficult, it is also magnificently beautiful and allows me access to a natural world I’ve not found elsewhere.

 

What is often missing here though is my ability to engage in the kind of conversations that challenge me, expand me, and support me as I journey away from a spiritually vacuous “self” toward enlightenment.

 

That’s why “The Open Road” is such a precious gift—I feel I belong to this wonderful community of thinkers and explorers. I continue to have struggles and setbacks, but with each letter I breathe in a freshness that renews my desire to be a better human, to care and to really see myself in others and they in me.

 

And it is getting easier!

 

I savor all the writings, but especially by those I personally know. An excellent example is String Clements “Learning to Smile.” I shared the incentive yard at TRCI with String and many a day we practiced mindfulness as we walked the track. (Remember General Sherman, Tim?)

 

These days I practice my mindfulness most often out in nature where I’ve come to realize all things carry the same spark I carry in my own heart and each thing I observe becomes “the best part.” There are no saints…or sinners, no self-righteous…no condemned, everything is on equal terms. I’ve concluded not only do I belong to the human tribe, I also belong to the life tribe, and strive to conduct myself accordingly. I’d like to add that mindfulness can be practiced anywhere (as Mr. Clements and I proved at TRCI). Most difficult for me is just getting my mind to “shut up” and listen.

 

Here are a few thoughts:

 

* Life will always challenge you. The trick is to polish all  the moments to make them shine. That’s both sides of the coin, not just the pretty or easy ones. Each moment, each day is precious and should never be wasted or cast aside.

—Anne Burke quote from Salt of the Earth by Ethan Hubbard

 

* Walk in good direction, come to good place.

 

*Only for a time have we borrowed our life from the sum of things.

 

* Let go of expectations and accept whatever shows up for you.

—Katie Radditz

 

I thank all who have touched my life in such a positive, kind, and loving way—you now live in me!

 

And I will not forget you.

 

Peace and love

 

Abe Green  2021

 

(Abe added this:)

 

Paul Enso Hillman spoke these words:

 

I say “Namaste” because I like what it means, not because I’m a Hindu.

 

A lot of people think I’m a Christian because they think I talk about Christian values, but the truth is I’m really talking about Human values.

 

I’ve been asked if I’m a Buddhist just because I’ve discovered inner Peace.

 

A lot of my friends are Pagans and they think I’m one also because I say that being in nature is my idea of going to church.

 

Do you want to know what I really am?

 

It’s very simple, I don’t need a label to define me.

 

I am a piece of the universe, sentient and manifested and…

 

I am awake!

 

—Abe Green

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August 15, 2021

Meditation and Mindfulness

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOHNNY!!!

 

Last month I sent in a topic on Suffering, but I forgot to include the attachment in the email to Johnny. He said, “No worries, I’ll just put it in the August edition.” But then I thought, how lame to offer a writing on Suffering for Johnny’s very special birthday edition. It really should be something more in keeping with Johnny’s true raison d’être: LOVE!

 

So # 326 – Equanimity  – fills the bill to perfection.

 

“True love does not choose one person. When true love is there, you shine like a lamp. You don’t just shine on one person in the room. That light you emit is for everyone in the room. If you really have love in you, everyone around you will benefit—not only humans, but animals, plants, and minerals. Love, true love, is that.True love is equanimity.”

 

This is Johnny. This is what Johnny emits. His love just spreads out, sometimes to the bewilderment (how can he be so patient with that guy???), the embarrassment (uh oh, here come the tears again!), the frustration (can’t he see that that guy really doesn’t deserve love?) of others. That is Johnny: He just loves with equanimity and abandon.

 

Jude Russell

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Every moment offers a myriad of wonders, opportunities and insights – it is just a matter of how and what we focus our attention on, and how we perceive it.  – John Kabat Zinn 

 

My friend Sarah has been feeling disheartened lately – about the state of our Earth’s health, the continuing pandemic, and her small role in life. She is a generous and engaged person. Her daughter has moved nearby and Sarah loves being with her new grandchild. Her wishes have been fulfilled. But after such high expectations, the question of what is her purpose in life set in. She remembers what her mother once told her, “Remember it’s not the big things that count, it’s the small things.” There will always be the big issues looming. It is a challenge to be engaged in helping to change the world for the better. Meditation can help by training us to focus on our personal small moments of happiness, compassion, and healing.  

 

If we choose to rush or force meditation, we might not experience much or have many great moments. 

 

But by allowing ourselves to be curious, inquisitive, attentive and have an open mind, we can make those small moments wonderful. 

 

I have been reading a classic Sufi book called The Conference of the Birds. It is full of parables about taking a spiritual journey. My friend was listening to a CD of chanting and birds flew to his deck to listen. As soon as the music ended the birds flew off. Another friend had two birds come sit on her balcony when she moved into a new apartment. It helped to ease her loneliness and to help her make a transition. These moments that are particular to us can help move us in a direction of paying attention, of being engaged inwardly as well as outwardly, and of loving the beauty of the world. It can make us grateful for being alive.   

 

I have been enjoying reading and studying The Conference of the Birds along with my friends who had the birds magically visit them. I have also been paying attention to the gifts of feathers that my neighbors—blue jays, wild turkeys, crows, wrens, even the chickens—have left in my yard and along the paths that I walk. I find one almost every day and have a collection now in my garden flower bed. These are small moments and small tokens that make me joyous to feel the “interbeing” that Thay instructs us to realize. It makes me happy to be alive here and now, and to share this with whoever comes my way. Gratitude is a strong mindfulness practice for beginning and ending the day.  

 

This morning Sarah sent me a text saying she is paying attention to the birds too! She wrote, “I’m enjoying migrations!” 

 

What can be a small moment for some, can be the single most important moment in another person’s life. 

 

How about you? Do you sometimes see big things in small moments? 

 

May you be aware and happy in some small moments today.  Thank you for being a part of  our mindfulness group and sharing your own experiences here. Below is a poem by Kim’s dad, William Stafford.  

 

Be well and know peace,  Katie 

 

Things I Learned Last Week

 

Ants, when they meet each other,

usually pass on the right.

 

Sometimes you can open a sticky

door with your elbow.

 

A man in Boston has dedicated himself

to telling about injustice.

For three thousand dollars he will

come to your town and tell you about it.

 

Schopenhauer was a pessimist but

he played the flute.

 

Yeats, Pound, and Eliot saw art as

growing from other art. They studied that.

 

If I ever die, I’d like it to be

in the evening. That way, I’ll have

all the dark to go with me, and no one

will see how I begin to hobble along.

 

In the Pentagon one person’s job is to

take pins out of towns, hills, and fields,

and then save the pins for later.

 

—William Stafford

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8-10-21

 

Got your letter today: “The Golden World!” I needed to hear that more than you know, Johnny. I need to come home and it’s nice to know & remember that I can come home & how good home is. I was so focused on what was lost that I lost track of what I have & what I have is pretty damn good. In fact, what I lost I loved very much, but what I have now is very much here & not lost & that right now is life & life must be lived, now, loved and grown. Sometimes I wish that you would have been my father, Johnny, & in many ways you have been.

 

The Golden World is real. I forgot about it. It should be shared with the world. It will make all the world a better place. I’m done being in misery….I’m on my way home.

 

—Rocky Hutchinson