THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love & happiness newsletter

June 4, 2020

Most of the writing I’ve done in my life has been in journals and letters. I found this letter that I wrote in 2010 to a man serving time in a Texas prison. He was suffering from depression, so I wrote this letter to him. (I have edited it slightly.)

July 29, 2010

Dear E

Some thoughts on depression.

I think a  lot of suffering comes from “bad mental habits.” I would estimate that 99% of our suffering is self-inflicted.

In my own life, I find three practices very helpful.

Meditation

Dialogue

Study

Meditation

You don’t need a meditation teacher or tradition. All you need to do is spend some time every day sitting quietly. Doing nothing. Paying attention. Watching your thoughts. Being still. Being calm. Breathing in and out. Forget about the past, forget about the future. Forget about The Autobiography of E.

Thought and language give rise to concepts like “self” and “other.” “Inside” and “outside.” “Body” and “mind.” “Life” and “death.” In silence, there are no such categories. In silence, there are no problems. In silence, there are no boundaries.

Do not waste another minute of your precious human life in self-pity or regret. Go forward.

Count your blessings.

Everything you see is utterly miraculous. Your body is miraculous: your hands, your eyes, your brain, your lungs, your stomach, your heart.

You are perfect. There is nothing wrong with you. You are basically good. Love, happiness and freedom are your birthrights.

Everyone you see around you is beautiful inside. Look for that beauty.

Water the seeds inside you of peace, love, happiness and understanding.

Do not water the seeds of fear, anger, regret, sorrow, self-pity.

Prison is a great place to find the peace which passeth understanding.

Prison is a great place to learn to love yourself and everyone else, without exception.

Prison is a great place to learn how to stop making yourself miserable and be happy.

Prison is a great place to be free.

Dialogue

We need each other more than we know.

Dialogue is a way of breaking out of our isolation, getting out of our rut, connecting with others.

You said that there is one person who you can have a really good conversation with, and that he has helped you to see things in a better perspective.

Take good care of that relationship. Honor it. Spend time with him.

There are other guys in prison whom you can have meaningful dialogue with if you are patient and make an effort.

The trick is to get below the superficial level where most conversation takes place and down to stuff that is more meaningful.

My prison dialogue group has taught me that everyone hungers for meaningful dialogue, even if they don’t know it.

We all need to learn the art of giving expression to who we are below the surface, and to eliciting that from others.

I know that in prison especially people tend to “do their own time,” and obviously you don’t want to naïvely open yourself up to someone who would take advantage of your openness in some way, but the cost of not communicating authentically with others is loneliness and isolation. So, it’s worth the effort.

It’s important to speak and to be heard, to see and be seen, and ultimately to love and be loved.

If we talk about the weather or about sports, neither of us will learn anything that we don’t already know, but if you ask “What is your story?” and really listen you will find that this other person is just as interesting as you are. You will learn things you didn’t know.

Not just “Where did you go to high school?,” but “Have you ever loved a woman?” Not “What are you in for?,” but “What is your heart’s desire?”

So, now I will ask you that question, as par of our ongoing dialogue.

What is your heart’s desire?

Study

I hated school. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that school felt like a prison to me. I spent the whole time looking out the window, dreaming of escape.

I feel like precious years of my life were stolen from me. I’m still angry at the world of adults that locked me up like that.

What was my crime?

My parents expected me to go to college after high school, but I dropped out after half a year.

At that point my education began. I started reading things I wanted to read, following my curiosity. I never stopped doing that.

I think that if I was in prison, I would do my best to pretend that it was my monastery, my university.

Part of my approach to reading is that I mostly read things that I expect will change me, open my heart or my mind, or both. Of course sometimes I read for pure entertainment. Books that are funny lighten our mood. Stories feed our imagination.

Mostly, I read to gain a better understanding of us human beings and the world in which we live. For me, this kind of reading can be tremendously exciting and make my life more meaningful. It enlarges my world.

Here are some of the books I have discovered on my lifelong reading journey:

First of all, there are foundational books. These are the classics—the books that have been most important to humanity—that people have read and re-read. Millions of people have used the spiritual classics as a guide to their lives. The spiritual classics include the Bible, the Qur’an, Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, I Ching, Dhammapada, and Buddhist sutras.

In addition to those basic spiritual texts, there are the classics of literature, from the Odyssey of Homer to Ulysses by James Joyce. The literary critic Harold Bloom puts William Shakespeare at the center of what he calls the Western Canon.

I find I am especially nourished by the writings and sayings of various saints, yogis, prophets, mystics, poets, and spiritual geniuses, ancient and modern. What they all have in common is something that might be called “depth.” It’s a long list but here are some of my favorites:

Lao Tzu, Seng Ts’an, Han Shan, Hafiz, Shakespeare, Traherne, Blake, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dostoevsky, Narayana Guru, Ramana Maharshi, R.H. Blyth, J. Krishnamurti, Shunryu Suzuki, Martin Luther King, Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, Susan Griffin, Wendell Berry and Thich Nhat Hanh.

These people—along with my close personal friends—profoundly affected the way I see, experience and understand my life, the world, and their inseparability.

I have more I want to write about books, but I have to do some stuff right now, so I think I’ll save it for another letter and get this in the mail to you.

peace & love

Johnny