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SUMMARY:Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue  4/15/23
DESCRIPTION:  \n  \nOpen Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue \n  \nApril 15\, 2023 \n  \nDear Mindful Meditators \n  \nOur Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue began on September 15\, 2020. Recipients include people inside and outside prison walls. It is currently mailed to 10 men in prison and emailed to about 60 people who aren’t—including 9 men who were in prison in September of 2020 who are now out of prison! Hallelujah! \n  \nWe are going to have our first get-together on Saturday\, May 13th\, from 2 to 4 p.m.\, at Taborspace in Portland: 5441 SE Belmont. \n  \nThis will be an opportunity for people to get to know each other\, and to have a dialogue about our life journey—what it means\, what we love\, what we do to nurture peace\, happiness\, goodness and understanding in our own life and in the lives of others. \n  \nI hope you can come! Bring a friend\, if you like. \n  \nMy friend Rocky Hutchinson\, who is a member of our meditation & mindfulness community\, called me the other day\, and was excited to tell me about an author he had just discovered—Kahlil Gibran! Back in the day\, The Prophet was an essential book in every hippie’s library. Rocky’s enthusiasm inspired me to re-read it (after 50 years). This quote from The Prophet relates to our upcoming gathering: \n  \nYour friend is your needs answered. \nHe is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving…. \nAnd let your best be for your friend. \nIf he must know the ebb of your tide\, let him know its flood also. \nFor what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? \nSeek him always with hours to live. \nFor it is his to fill your need\, but not your emptiness. \nAnd in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughing\, and sharing of pleasures. \nFor in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed. \n  \n—Kahlil Gibran \n  \npeace & love\, y’all \nJohnny \n* \n  \n            Dreaming in Detail \n  \nThe casting director for my dreaming \nI can understand—bringing in my parents \nfrom gone\, grown children as infants again\, \nand a parade of strangers\, each with a bit part \nfraught with obscure purpose. The location scout  \nfound familiar places\, made them mythic\, then \nadded an abundance of tunnels\, caves\, cities  \nin ruin\, and a foggy coast. My costume director \nsurrenders to seasonal change—blues in spring \nyielding to summer gray\, and autumn black. But  \nwhy is the director of photography so obsessed  \nwith effects of light both atmospheric and exact?  \nIn one scene we see fine hairs on my father’s arm  \nglitter in low sun\, then a heap of medieval coins\, \nthen that lost button shining on a stone. \n  \n—Kim Stafford \n* \n  \nA Fish Describes Water \n  \nThere are prayers best said \nonly at night\, in depths\, water steps \nrubies in the mouth. \n  \nWind ripples across moon grass \nlonging to be released by washed \nstones. The rowboat \n  \nis empty. What remains \nis a song\, a solitary gold-winged \nwarbler\, the pattern of rain. \n  \n—Elizabeth Domike \n* \n  \nWhat do you do to nurture  peace\, love and happiness in your life? \n  \nRecently I had a chance to sit in on a phone call with Johnny and Rocky Hutchinson. Rocky is one of our inmates in the dialogue group\, and he is one of the dearest human beings I’ve ever known. He has been in prison for a long time\, and has had quite a—well—rocky experience. \n  \nI asked him how he was doing\, and what he was doing\, and he told me he had just finished the Master Gardener program\, and he was also training dogs for use with people with disabilities. He loves it\, both the gardening and the dogs.  \n  \nI said\, “Rocky\, you couldn’t have picked two more valuable activities for the soul than gardens and dogs!” And I realized that that is just how I feel: Gardens and dogs fill my heart and soul like nothing else. \n  \nYou all might have heard that digging in dirt\, the smell of dirt\, of the soil\, stimulates endorphins in the brain\, the happiness endorphins. True!  Of course\, I don’t head to the garden thinking\, uh oh\, I think I need some of them endorphins about now! No\, it’s just an instinct\, a drive\, that takes me there. And planting carrots\, chard\, beans; digging watery moats around the tomato plants (the smell of those tomato leaves!); cutting bouquets of coral colored peonies and lavender irises (the smell of irises!); picking green beans with glints of sunlight beaming through the vines—all of this settles in me and brings focus\, joy\, and  quiet peace to my soul. Gardens\, yes!!! \n  \nAnd dogs! Lolo! My love! Some friends took care of Lolo while we were gone and when I asked how she’d been\, they said\, “She had us with one look into her soulful eyes.” So true. She looks into your heart and understands when you’re sad\, she rejoices when you’re happy\, and every emotion is acknowledged with a loving and energetic lick on the face. Ick! you might say. Not at all—it’s the lick of love. Don’t you remember that Dusty Springfield song\, “The Lick of Love..(is in your eyes…?”)  Oh wait—maybe it was “The Look of Love.” Whatever.  \n  \nAnyway\, she’s a soft and fuzzy and uncharacteristically sweet-smelling dog! What more can you ask for? \n  \nSO: gardens and dogs. Rocky\, you’re so right. But I must add that it’s you\, Rocky\, you and all the other men in our dialogue and theater group who bring peace\, love and sheer happiness into my life\, and I am forever grateful. \n  \nAddendum: But how could I have forgotten hiking??? Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams\, my two sentinels. How could I have omitted family\, and dear friends? Music!!!  Riding my bike! Art! Books and reading!!!  \n  \nWhat a topic! \n  \n—Jude Russell \n* \n  \nTo nurture peace\, love and happiness I simply do nothing.   \n  \nEach morning I take my coffee out on the porch and watch the daybreak.  I say my little peace prayer.  Then I do Nothing.  I don’t analyze or plan or meditate or cogitate.  I find myself surrounded by the sky.  Maybe the moon is out\, or the sun comes up.  It’s a moment of peace and harmony\, and I did nothing to get here.  I merely stopped distracting myself.   \n  \nI can’t spend the whole day sitting here.  There’s still clutter in my life or my mind or my house that needs some tending to.  But when the morning starts out this peacefully the rest of the day usually follows suit.  Our natural state is peace and love\, unless we sully it up.  How can this not nurture some happiness?   \n  \nThanks\, and love\,   \n  \n—Bill Faricy \n* \n  \nIn the chalice of the heart\, \n Lies love’s sweet essence: \nBorn of the seed of truth; \n Watered by the tears of devotion; \nWarmed by the sun of faith\, \n Through the fruit of days\, \nOn the vine of humankind– \n  One and another\, \nAll One Together… \n  \n—sam muller 14 April ’23 \n* \n  \nMichel is currenlty using a book by Pema Chödrön as the inspiration for his meditation journal. (I’m not sure which one\, but it appears to be inspired by Chögyam Trungpa’s Training the Mind.) \n  \nMarch 9\, 2023  #14  Seeing Confusion as the Four Kayas is Unsurpassable Shunyata Protection \n  \nThrough meditation practice you begin to realize: \n\nThoughts just pop up out of nowhere—dharmakaya\nThoughts are never ceasing—sambhogakaya\nThey appear but are not solid—sambhogakaya\nAll together: no birth\, no cessation\, no dwelling—svabhavikakaya\n\nThis understanding gives unsurpassable protection of \nrealizing called shunyata—“complete openness.” \nNothing solid to react to. \nYou’ve made much ado about nothing! \n  \nI can relate to this one. The fancy names mean little\, but the effort of meditation practice for complete openness is valuable—learning to not react to mental formations. Thoughts of mind are like mists or fog; the warm light of reality will dissipate all obstacles to reveal reality as it is. I’ve driven in misty\, snowy\, fog late at night and my vision played tricks on me\, so I had to drive extra cautiously. During a clear day\, the same road was easy to see and navigate. Mind plays the same tricks on me with reality; I need to slow down and pay careful attention—nothing changed except perception. Or did it? Surprises appear faster through foggy delusions. I can’t see them coming. Definitely: foggy\, misty\, delusions require proceeding cautiously until clearer. \n  \nMarch 13\, 2023  #17  Practice the Four Strengths\, the Condensed Heart Instrucions \n  \n\nStrong determination to train in opening heart and mind\nFamiliarization with practices helping you do this\nPositive seed within\, experienced as yearning to practice and wake up\nReproach\, tricky for Western students\, realizing ego-clinging causes suffering\, delight in self-reflection\, honesty\, seeing where you get stuck\nAspiration to help alleviate suffering in this world\, expressing that intention to yourself\n\n  \nI value each of these principles and judge they can be of benefit to any religious practice. I find\, and imagine it is similar for many\, that working with ego issues can be the most challenging of all\, since our culture is all about cultivating a powerful ego. My experience reveals Western egoism is the central source of all our sufferings. It’s from here that we develop attractions (grasping) and aversions (pushing away)\, and this ego makes us blind to our faults and challenges which\, once corrected\, would release—at least diminish—suffering. Yet\, we focus on and build up ego\, wondering at our suffering. The “escape” is to practice breathing. \n  \n—Michel Deforge \n 
URL:https://openroadpdx.com/event/meditation-mindfulness-dialogue-4-15-23/
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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20230504
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20230601
DTSTAMP:20260426T051636
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SUMMARY:peace\, love\, happiness & understanding  5/4/23
DESCRIPTION:  \n  \nTHE OPEN ROAD \npeace\, love\, happiness & understanding \n  \nBOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WAY YOU SEE THE WORLD \n  \nMay 4\, 2023 \n  \nWhen I first read Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children\, I realized that literature could be even more powerful than I had known. Powerful enough in this novel to make me feel acute embarrassment\, shame\, and humiliation–unsavory\, and unforgettable emotions. It was\, in that sense\, one of the most unpleasant books that I have ever read–but I suffered those ugly emotions because I was in empathic thrall to the characters\, which was thrilling. Christina Stead had such power over me that she could compel me to keep reading even against my own will. Sixty years later\, the book stays with me. \n  \n—Ken Margolis \n* \n  \nThe Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison \n  \nAs the first book in the Inspector Shan series this book gave me a glimpse into the history and current status of the relationship between Tibet and China. It also gave a different perspective on Tibetan Buddhism\, a more human practical one\, and it opened me to a world of beliefs deeply different from those I had learned about in the West. \n  \nThere are ten books in this series. \n  \nWhen I first met Andrew\, he had an “Endlessly Connected” bumper stick on his car that was flanked by two Meander Knots. A simple design\, the endless knot iconography symbolizes samsara—the endless cycle of suffering of birth\, death\, and rebirth within Tibetan Buddhism. The intertwining of wisdom and compassion. Also\, the Interplay and interaction of the opposing forces in the dualistic world of manifestation\, leading to their union\, and ultimately to harmony in the universe. \n  \nThe books have a starkness to them. As mysteries they are dark and sometimes brutal\, but the characters\, particularly the lamas have stuck around in my head since encountering them. Andrew and I read them at approximately the same time\, sharing tidbits and references and when it came time to name our poetry press\, little magazine and open mic\, Meander Knot was the obvious choice. \n  \nWe even got identical tattoos as both a branding exercise but also an expression of perhaps a deeper connection between us and the possible connection over more than one lifetime. \n  \nAnd then\, when I started teaching yoga\, I called the business “Meander Yoga”. The endless knot is not featured specifically in the books\, (although I suspect it is mentioned. I am planning on re-reading them this year and will find out) it symbolizes to me the deep cultural richness in the books and how that richness has enhanced both my spiritual\, but also my artistic life.   \n  \n—Elizabeth Domike \n* \n  \nHi Johnny! \n  \nThere are so many books that have changed me and/or inspired me but the one that comes to the top of my mind is Hope for the Flowers. I’ve read this book so many times and have shared it with so many people. It’s such a sweet and simple illustration of transformation but also of embracing who you are right now.  \n  \nOn a totally different note\, I remember reading Johnny Got His Gun for the first time and being in awe. It was the first time I really sat and pondered what it means to be human and what makes life worth living.  \n  \nOh\, and of course\, Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth! \n  \nI’ll stop before I start listing 100 books.  \n  \n—Nicole Rush \n* \n  \nThe Mahabharata retold by William Buck \n  \nI first thought Peter Brooke read this. \nI found it falling apart in a free box or a yard sale. \nI found I couldn’t read it. \nIt sat on the bookshelf for a couple of years. I kept an eye on it. \n  \nOne morning in Parkrose neighborhood\, on a north deck\, watching the planes glide in over the trees and rooftops\, following the river west to PDX\, I saw the sun was shining after endless rain. \nA cup of coffee was there\, and the time had come to open the book of wonder. \n  \n—Charles Erickson \n* \n  \nbeautiful morning\, Johnny. good question! \n  \nI immediately thought about how I felt after reading Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson. I had never had an English teacher in High School assign anything like it to read. I think I was the only one in the class who liked it or even read it. So for one thing it forged a bond with my fascinating lovely teacher. \n  \nMainly it opened up a world of wonder about the wild\, where savage had the meaning of wild/wyld people in a forest wilderness unmitigated by modern civilization. It is about true freedom compared to that of the birds.   \n  \nHudson writes with a clear style that matches his view of beauty and wonder being the essence of life. It is a love story as well as a tragedy of what would come of nature.  \n  \nNow I’ve pulled it out to read once again. I had forgotten the main character’s name is Abel—my first son’s name! I think this story has stayed with me in my deep consciousness.  \n  \nIn the forward\, John Galsworthy wrote in 1918 that Hudson was the most valuable author of his Age. He says of  Hudson\, who was a naturalist as well as an author: “his nomadic records of communing with men (women)\, birds\, beasts\, and Nature\, has a supreme gift of disclosing not only the thing he sees but the spirit of his vision. Without apparent effort he takes you with him into a rare\, free\, natural world\, and always you are refreshed\, stimulated\, enlarged\, by going there.”  \n  \n—Katie Radditz \n* \n  \nAbout ten years ago a good friend of mine urged me to read Nicholas and Alexandra\, by Robert Massie. I was reluctant\, because\, as I told her\, “I don’t do history.” She said\, “Well\, do!” I said that because up until then the only history I’d read had been high school and college textbooks. I’d read\, study\, take a test and then forget everything (hopefully in that order). I read hundreds and hundreds of novels from junior high school on—Stendhal\, Balzac\, Dickens\, Dostoevsky\, etc.—so it wasn’t for a lack of love of reading\, just no desire or aptitude for history. \n  \nBut I read Nicholas and Alexandra and loved it! It’s the story of the last czarist Romanov dynasty and its fall. I’d never known much about Rasputin\, but he figures in powerfully\, with the strange spell he held over Alexandra and her hemophiliac son\, Alexi. It was probably more biography than accounting of events. It led me to Peter the Great and Catherine the Great\, both of which were also biographical\, with dominion\, control\, conquest\, acquisition and rule over dozens of countries in that region threaded into their stories. \n  \nSo perhaps it’s biography rather than history that has opened up a new world of reading for me.  \n  \nIn that vein\, I also read American Prometheus\, the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer\, “father of the atomic bomb.” Strange reading material\, eh? But he was such a brilliant polymath and was forever conflicted about how his genius was put to use.  \n  \nRight now\, it’s The Orientalist\, by Tom Reiss\, the life of Lev Nussimbaum\, a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince and became a best selling author in Nazi Germany. It looks at the early 20th century and the origins of our ideas of race and religious self-definition\, and the beginning of modern fanaticism and terrorism.  \n  \nSo now it’s geography in addition to biography and history\, and I’m sitting with the big World Atlas and a magnifying glass\, scrutinizing Baku\, the capital of Azerbaijan\, the Caspian Sea\, the Caucasus\, Georgia\, Turkey… \n  \nTo wrap this up\, explorations in readings of geography\, biography\, and history have expanded my vision\, experience\, and understanding of the world in these last ten years\, thanks to my friend\, Nikki! (But I still love novels.) \n  \n—Jude Russell \n* \n  \nAlice Miller’s book For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Childhood and the Roots of Violence changed the way I look at individual acts of violence and collective acts of violence—war. The basic thesis is simple: abusing children—physically\, psychologically\, emotionally\, sexually—wounds them. She says that when we grow up\, we unconsciously and compulsively re-enact the violence that was done to us. Randy Newman’s song “I want you to hurt like I do” sums it up. The violence can also be directed against ourselves. There’s more to the story than the idea that we are\, by our nature\, violent apes. We certainly have the potential for violence\, and we also have the potential to be loving and kind. It depends which seeds we water.  \n  \nIt follows from this that to the extent that we can be loving and kind to our children—instead of mean and cruel—the world will be transformed in positive ways. Conscious awareness of what we suffered and how it has affected us can help us to not act out the same things that were done to us. Her book helped me to better understand how “hurt people hurt people.” Instead of judging people for the suffering they’ve caused\, I want to know about the pain they’ve suffered. \n  \nSusan Griffin’s book Woman and Nature brought home to me the relentless way in which men have defined\, dominated and oppressed women over the centuries. Her book is also a visionary call for women’s (and men’s) emancipation from this tyranny. \n  \nAntler’s poem “Factory” changed the way I see the world around me. Having read the poem many years ago\, it still manages to regularly remind me that the paint on the walls\, the windows in the walls\, the lightbulbs\, the refrigerator\, the glasses on my nose\, the computer that I’m typing on—almost everything that surrounds me—was made by men and women working in (ugly\, noisy) factories (which pollute the air\, the water and the soil). \n  \nWalt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself” inspires me to see beauty everywhere\, to love everyone\, to be astonished by the miraculousness of everything I touch\, taste\, see\, or imagine. \n  \n—Johnny Stallings \n* \n  \nFOR YOUR OWN GOOD \nThanks for the reminder\, Johnny\, \nYou introduced me to that book ages ago\, and I carried it around with me for a long time. \nIt says lots about childhood and being treated as a child by adults who are very busy in their own sphere. \nIt has left a lasting impression on me. \nI’ll see if I can come up with another that has been useful as a life reference. \n  \n—Todd Oleson \n* \n  \nIn the recent Open Road letter you asked about life-changing books—or at least life-influencing ones. Many of the titles you sent me fall in this group. However\, due to space limits\, I’ve sent the most helpful ones home and forgotten the titles. Some others include: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl\, Writing My Wrongs: Life\, Death\, and Redemption in an American Prison by Shaka Senghor\, The Master Plan: My Journey from Life in Prison to a Life of Purpose by Chris Wilson. I’m working through My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem—a bit “woke\,” but still has relevance. Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child by John Bradshaw. Mmm…I’ll have to come back to this. \n  \nThere’s a small-ish list of books I hope to read this next year—after ordering\, of course. Some may trigger comments and feedback for others I’ll need/want to read\, or even avoid: 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene\, How to Talk to Anyone by Leil Lowndes\, something by W.E.B. Du Bois [his two most well-known books are The Souls of Black Folk and Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois—ed.]\, Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance\, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates\, Ordinary Magic: Resilience in Development by Ann S. Masten\, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker\, Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication by Oren Jay Sofer\, and Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. \n  \nOh\, The Body Keeps Score by Bessel van der Kolk\, on trauma—this was helpful. So many helpful books\, and all the best are at home. This is great for when I get out (15+ years)\, not great for now. Oh\, and I have crossed the halfway on April 9th: 50% done\, 15¾ years left. \n  \n—Michel Deforge \n* \n  \nDear Reader \n  \nNext month (June 1st)\, our theme is Peace. \nSend me something. \n  \npeace & love \nJohnny \n  \n 
URL:https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-understanding-5-4-23/
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230507T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230507T170000
DTSTAMP:20260426T051636
CREATED:20230503T210001Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230517T154403Z
UID:3843-1683471600-1683478800@openroadpdx.com
SUMMARY:Bibliophiles Unanimous!  5/7/23
DESCRIPTION:from Liber Novus (The Red Book) by Carl Jung \n  \n  \nBeloved Bibliophiles!\n \nThe theme for our next Bibliophiles Unanimous! Zoom dialogue is Psychology. Read any books on this subject? Got any insights? Please join us at 3 p.m. (PDT)\, Sunday\, May 7th. \n \n\nHere’s the Zoom link:  \n  \nhttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058 \n  \n\n\n\n\n\npeace\, love & psychology\n\n\n \n\n\nJohnny
URL:https://openroadpdx.com/event/bibliophiles-unanimous-5-7-23/
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