From Mandy "No-Mind" Kahn: Friends, I hope everyone's summer was as replenishing as mine. Weekly Peace Class resumes tonight (Wednesday, Sept. 30, 6:00 pm, PT) on ZOOM. Share it with friends.
Participants may attend silently, even anonymously, because only my face is visible. Student interactions, though encouraged, are entirely optional.
Anyone who is curious about class can quietly slip in to get a feel for it.
There are many who do not attend class, but who participate in the community via weekly emails or reading many edited Peace Class talks at Wisdom Quarterly. Everyone is invited to join that way.
Here's what to expect in class. This Wednesday evening, enlivened and renewed, let's begin this vital work together.
ABOUT: Presented by the Philosophical Research Society (prs.org) in Hollywood, Los Angeles. Peace Class is now entering its seventh year.
Each class meeting presents participants with a short talk that elucidates one aspect of the true nature of peace.
Each hour-long class includes a collective "peace meditation," teachings about pioneer peacebuilders like Peace Pilgrim, and the opportunity for participants to share personal peace-building discoveries with the group.
Peace Class is FREE and is open to all with no signup required. Each session is a stand-alone lesson, and participants can feel free to drop in for single meetings or attend the full series.
Brought to you by Mandy Kahn with the help of PRS and Wisdom Quarterly. There may be a live in-person class again in the future. Until then, drop by for monthly Deep Dive Poetry in PRS's Library of World Religions in Hollywood.
Join FREE online gathering to build inner peace as well as world peace with Mandy Kahn, now in its sixth year.
Peace Class is led by activist and poet Mandy Kahn. It is a free weekly gathering for participants around the world to come together to build peace in themselves and therefore world peace as a community.
To attend, simply join this Zoom link at the West Coast start time every Wednesday at 6:00 pm (PT). us02web.zoom.us/j/82150472713
Peace Class is presented by the Philosophical Research Society (prs.org) in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California.
Peace Class is now in its sixth seventh year. Each class meeting presents a short talk that elucidates some aspect of the true nature of peace. The talk is followed by a journaling-based practice to give each participant the opportunity to develop a set of peace-building tools to use at any time.
Nature is a remedy that brings peace as plants soothe and heal us, communicating via mycelia
Mandy cross under Kahn billboard, LA
Each hour-long session also includes a collective peace meditation (such as metta bhavana or the cultivation of "universal Buddhist loving-kindness," agape or boundless friendliness to all).
Teachings about pioneer peacebuilders like Peace Pilgrim and the opportunity to share participants’ personal peace-building discoveries with the group.
Each Peace Class meeting presents a stand-alone lesson; participants are invited to drop in for any single class or the full class series.
Mandy Kahn and PRS are grateful to be joined by peace advocates and would-be activists from around the world in this supportive online space.
Instructions
Talk, guided meditation, sharing, inspiration
Zoom link at its local start time: every Wednesday night 6:00 pm (Pacific Time). This class is FREE and is open to ALL.
ABOUT: Mandy Kahn is a California poet and peace teacher raised in Los Angeles and educated at UC Berkeley. She’s the author of three collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Holy Doors (2023). Her poems have been included in the Best American Poetry anthology series, have been featured on BBC Radio, and are seen in the nationwide newspaper column American Life in Poetry. She presented a program of her peace-building immersive poems at the Getty Museum in 2019.
She is a frequent feature of Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal with fellow UC Berkeley graduate Editor Dhr. Seven, presenting the text of past Peace Class presentations.
She was also the subject of Courtney Sell’s feature-length documentary Peace Piece: The Immersive Poems of Mandy Kahn, which is available from IndiePix. In 2021, Kahn presented a two-day peace concert at Meditation Mount in Ojai in conjunction with Dot Maver, director of the National Peace Academy, Fumi Johns Stewart, executive director of May Peace Prevail On Earth International, and Michael Lindfield, Meditation Mount’s board president. Mandy Kahn has been a featured speaker at many peace events, including at Peace Week, World Unity Week, and One Planet Peace Forum. Mandy Kahn serves as the Philosophical Research Society’s contributing writer and previously served two years as PRS' artist-in-residence.
Questions? Please email events@prs.org or phone (323) 663-2167
Every year, Peace Class goes on hiatus from July through September. There is this meeting tonight and again next week (June 24th), then summer hiatus begins. Join me for final two classes of this cycle. This is the text of the peace talk delivered last week:
When all beings can clearly see everything-that-is, all beings will choose to live in peace, in harmonious coexistence with one another.
Harmony (akin to kshanti) happens effortlessly when everyone has access to all-that-is. Harmony is what happens when everyone is engaging their full intuitive powers, seeing with clarity, gazing at the world through their higher consciousness, through their Peace Minds.
Harmony happens effortlessly when all is known by all. But we aren't there yet.
We are at the end of the age that precedes all beings knowing all. We are at the beginning of the time of revelation that bridges two ages. We are at the beginning of the revelation that gets us from not-knowing to knowing.
What does this transition period look like? What does it feel like? Imagine that all-that-is-true were shown to us as a huge sweeping picture, a massive wall-sized image, one enormous scene.
Then imagine that wall-sized picture sliced up into 10,000 pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Yes, one would be able to reassemble the full picture, if one had all of the puzzle pieces.
What's happening during this time of revelation is that some people are receiving some of the pieces of what-really-is, whereas most people hold just a handful of the pieces. And rarely do two people hold the same pieces.
That means we might hold a few puzzle pieces of what-really-is, and our neighbor might hold a few pieces, and those pieces could be from different quadrants of the picture. Those assembled pieces could show entirely different things.
Our neighbor might hold three pieces that seem to be part of a barn and might say, "I've seen what is, and we're in the countryside."
We might hold a few pieces that seem to make a skyscraper and might say, "I've seen what is, and we're in downtown."
A third neighbor might be holding pieces that show part of a cloud and might say, "We're in the clouds—not touching ground at all!"
All three of these neighbors might have glimpsed some aspect of what-really-is yet not understand how those things fit together. So they might be tempted to turn to each other and say, "You're wrong!"
They might even be in despair wondering, "How can so many people think that this is an image of clouds we're in when I know it's a picture of a barn?"
This is what the Time of Revelation feels like, especially in the beginning. It feels to many like deep confusion. And such confusion can lead to despair.
But when we realize what's really going on, which is that all-that-is is being revealed, slowly, we can cross this bridge and transit this period with grace.
We can hold compassion for ourselves, knowing we are all undergoing a process that takes time. We can hold compassion for our neighbors, benighted as they seem. We can hold compassion for ALL beings.
Kill Iran so we can build up Israel. - OK, Bibi.
These are not easy times to transit. Our politics are polarized. Many of us look at our neighbors and say, "How can you believe that? How can you possibly see things that way?!"
What's happening is a literal difference of seeing, not a figurative one. This is not just a duel of differing opinions. Some have seen what's-really-happening by way of direct exposure or spiritual revelation, and others have not. Some have seen one slice of what's-really-happening, and others have seen a slice of a different portion.
We are stepping into knowing-what-really-is at vastly different rates. And this is exactly as things are meant to happen. What-really-is is that we're a group of beings evolving towards discovery and an expression of our own peaceful and loving truest nature. That's what's really happening!
We are evolving forwards. And eventually, we will know who we are. We are beings of peace. And eventually, we will feel as we are. We will feel the urge to choose to live peacefully, to express compassion-for-all.
We will choose to fully express our unique selves and selfhood, while creating space for others to express themselves fully. We will choose compassionate coexistence.
The trees have been waiting patiently in peace.
We will choose harmony with others, harmony with the waters and the forests and the soil and the air, harmony with the animals of this planet.
We will choose selfhood, and we will choose harmony. But we have a ways yet before arriving there. We are departing from one shore, sailing towards another.
We are departing the shore of believing our community is dog-eat-dog, that the rules are an-eye-for-an-eye. That's the shore we're leaving.
I like it better when we ALL get along in peace.
We'll arrive at the shore of dog-celebrate-dog, dog-help-dog. That's where we'll land.
Revelation is the time to discover who we truly are as a species. This is the time to learn, not later in peace. Right now, we can learn that dog-eat-dog was never our true nature. We were living through a dog-eat-dog phase, just as people, while they're babies, are living through growing pains in a diaper phase. A child grows out of using a diaper: A child becomes a grownup. We are now growing into dog-celebrate-dog.
Higher we rise, easier to see the big picture
We get from one shore to another by learning the truth about who we are. Now, there's a lot to know. The full picture of who we are as beings is a lot to take in. The full picture of what our planet is, how it fits into the greater universe, is a lot to take in.
The full picture of what's been happening in our societies, what's been happening of which we have been unaware, is a lot to take in. A lot.
Revelation arrives in pieces. It arrives as different pieces that are in the hands of different people fall into place at different rates. Eventually, all will know all. As for now, some know some.
So when we look at our neighbor and think, "How can that [bleep] think that way?" we must understand that our confusion is natural and know that our neighbor will eventually see everything. And so will we.
All will eventually see all.
In the beginning
The light slowly began to dawn.
What does revelation look like at its beginning? It can look like deep differences between how we see the world and how our family members, partners, children, and those pesky neighbors see the world.
If we choose to walk with compassion, we will understand that the children of earth are doing the work of waking up and becoming enlightened in perfect pace, with appropriate timing for everyone, at the right rate for each individual.
Everyone has the right to choose how quickly to evolve. Some will choose to cling to the dog-eat-dog way-of-being, and some will let go of such thinking, feeling, and being.
What happens when a person sees the completed puzzle, the full image of all-that-is? That person knows and chooses peacefulness, one's own peaceful way of being in peace. And what one feels for others at that moment is compassion-without-end.
Once we understand that all who can see the full puzzle will carry peacefulness, and once we understand that the puzzle pieces are arriving into the hands and lives of most people we know, at varying rates, this era of revelation begins to make sense.
I never saw it that way! It makes sense now.
This is what revelation looks like: It looks like a few more puzzle pieces arriving into the hands of a few more individuals.
Revelation happens in stages, dependent on an individual's desire to know more. And individual who really wants to know more creates space within oneself.
If we create openness in mind, if we cultivate compassion in heart, with non-judgment and non-attachment (letting go), more puzzle pieces will begin to fall into our hands.
I'm starting to see, but my eyes are blurry.
It may take five or 10 or 20 years to have enough puzzle pieces to get a full sense of what's really going on, but we are so loved. Every human alive is so loved through this process, so loved by the divine, so loved by our ancestors, so loved in all phases of self-discovery and self-actualization. All who walk this process do it perfectly.
This summer, we might spend time with family members whose puzzle pieces imply a completely different picture than ours, and if we allow the lower mind to run the show, we are very likely experience, at best, frustration being around them, at worst, anger and hate, at very worst, expulsion of others from own compassionate heart because they're holding different pieces of the puzzle and they imagine that the shape of the puzzle is different than what we imagine it to be!
We get to choose how we walk this moment of revelation. We can do it with compassion, we can do it with grace, or... Walk in the way that builds the world you want. When you see all, you will know your own peace, and you will choose your own peacefulness.
If we choose peace now, even before we see all, we will walk through challenging times with the most possible ease. And our presence here, among those of earth, will be a living slice of grace.
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