Friday, May 31, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: A Place of Belonging

My suffering does not set me apart: it makes me belong. I now know that my being with whatever arises is a purification, a lens polished—often with tears from the past—with which I must stand firm against the waves of segregating myself from the world.

—Sarah Conover, “Lost At Sea

Thursday, May 30, 2019

Via The Guardian: In a Heartbeat: the story behind the animated gay love short that's gone viral

The makers of the four-minute film, with 12m views in under a week, discuss the shock of their success and the importance of depicting same-sex romance.

It’s not every day that a wordless, four-minute animated short about two young boys falling in love goes viral. But on Monday, when recent college graduates Esteban Bravo and Beth David posted their senior thesis film on YouTube, that’s exactly what happened.

make the jump here to read the whole story and more

in a heartbeat 2


in a heartbeat - animated short film


Via Daily Dharma: The Mind Reflected

In meditation, we are invited to still the waters of our lives. We quiet the mind, releasing conjured stories and fantasies. When the waters are still long enough, we see our reflection.

—Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, “The Terror Within

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Via Lions Roar: For the Children We’ve Lost


Bays made this memorial, which is in the Jizo garden at Great Vow Zen Monastery.
It’s dedicated to children who’ve died in war.


Zen Community of Oregon Statement of Inclusivity

The Zen Community of Oregon welcomes everyone. We study dharma together and practice for the benefit of all beings and this living earth. We recognize the suffering caused by biases, prejudices, systems of power, privilege and oppression based on race, sex, class, age, ethnicity, religion, national origin, ability, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression. We aspire to do no harm and to dismantle barriers that cause separation and suffering, recognizing that our liberation is interconnected with the liberation of all.

Via Daily Dharma: Our Closest Teacher

When the body calls us back, we begin to find that we have a partner on the spiritual path that we didn’t know about—the body itself. In our meditation and in our surrounding lives, the body becomes a teacher.

—Reggie Ray, “Touching Enlightenment

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 29, 2019 💌



I think that the assignment for us is very clear in terms of the game on Earth. I think it is to be instruments that allow the whole process to move and change in a way that ends up celebrating life rather than ultimately destroying it. And it has to come out of non-attachment.

- Ram Dass -

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Universal Support

Nothing exists separate from all the other things in the universe. Every person lives only by relying on the support of others.

—Jeff Wilson, “Born Together With All Beings

Monday, May 27, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Taking Our Place in History

Venerating the ancestors of all life forms returns us to the river that flows from the past into the present.

—Joan Halifax, “Giving Birth to Ancestors

Sunday, May 26, 2019

Via Lion's Roar / The Path of Being Human

05.24.2019
THE PATH OF BEING HUMAN
This week I stood at the freshly-dug gravesite of my mother-in-law, Annie, and recited the Lord’s Prayer. I was raised Catholic in my early childhood, so the verses come back to me easily at times like this. A few years ago, I might have struggled with such prayers and rituals, fearing that I was being disingenuous, telling myself, I’m a Buddhist after all! But somehow that doesn’t hold sway any more.

People often ask, “How do you become a Buddhist?” The simple answer is that you take refuge in the Buddha, dharma, and sangha. But, as you go forth, you still need to work out what it means to be a Buddhist for you.

When I began practicing and studying Buddhism more than twenty years ago, my peers and I were intent on receiving dharma transmissions (abhishekas) and accomplishing the levels of the path laid out for us. Now, that path seems small and constricted to me. Perhaps it’s because I’ve grown increasingly aware that the world is in desperate need of our help and Buddhism doesn’t directly answer many of the pressing questions of the day, like “What do we do about the climate crisis?” or “How do we respond to attacks on women’s reproductive freedom?”

In her article, “Your Liberation Is on the Line,” Rev. angel Kyodo williams makes a compelling case for the power of dharma to challenge the status quo and undo systems of oppression, namely racism and patriarchy. She’s able to do so because she holds a big view of what dharma can and must be: “So when dharma teachers try to tell me that this work is not the dharma, I say they’re confusing the true dharma with the dharma they’ve made small.”

Rev. williams goes on to clarify that she’s talking about the path of liberation, which extends beyond our limited ideas of a Buddhist path.

So what does it mean to be a Buddhist? That’s something you may still need to figure out. But for me, that question has been replaced by a new one: What does it mean to be fully human?

Showing up in your life, being fully human, and engaging with the suffering around you (and in you) can take myriad forms: protesting against building a pipeline on Indigenous peoples’ lands; taking the time to say hello to a stranger and give them a hand; and, maybe, saying the Lord’s Prayer and making the sign of the cross alongside your grieving Catholic relatives.

Whatever it looks like, the path of being fully human is, at its core, a path of genuine connection, care, and love. And to me, that’s one worth choosing.


—Tynette Deveaux, editor, Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 26, 2019 💌


The left hand is caught and the right hand pulls it out. The left hand turns to the right and says ‘thank you.’ It doesn’t work because they are both part of the same body. Who are you thanking? You’re thanking yourself. So on that plane you realize it’s not her suffering, his suffering, or their suffering.
You go up one level, it’s our suffering. You go up another level, it’s my suffering. Then as it gets de-personalized, it’s the suffering. Out of the identity with the suffering comes the compassion. It arises in relationship to the suffering. It’s part and parcel of the whole package. There is nothing personal in this at all.

In that sense, you have become compassion instead of doing compassionate acts. Instead of being compassionate, you are compassion.

-  Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Enlightenment Here and Now

Awakening the enlightened mind may not be a question of self-improvement, which is never-ending; it may be a question of faith, which is always available right now.

—Hannah Tennant-Moore, “Buddhism’s Higher Power

Via Daily Dharma: Liberating Unconditional Happiness

Skillful and meritorious practices work on the deep, unconscious level of the mind, reorienting the psyche toward the boundless lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity that characterizes your buddhanature. And that’s what liberates us and makes us happy in everyday life, regardless of the external circumstances we may find ourselves in.

—Interview with Shinso Ito by James Shaheen and Philip Ryan, “Unconditional Service

Friday, May 24, 2019

Via BBC: Majority in Brazil's top court to make homophobia and transphobia crimes


A majority in Brazil's Supreme Court has voted in favour of making homophobia and transphobia crimes.

Six out of 11 judges voted to consider discrimination against gays and transgender people equivalent to racism.

The decision will give the community, which suffers constant attacks, real protection, activists say.

At least 141 LGBT people have been killed in Brazil this year, according to rights group Grupo Gay da Bahia.

The Catholic Church and the evangelical movement are frequently critical of gay rights and far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, elected last year with strong support of conservative voters, is a self-described homophobe.
"Homophobic crimes are as alarming as physical violence," Supreme Court Vice-President Luiz Fux said on his vote, citing "epidemic levels of homophobic violence".

Via THE BLOG: Wake Up, Grow Up and Show Up


To successfully live your Unique Self, you need to Wake Up, Grow Up and Show Up. Success 3.0 offers a new operating system to do just this. It is the critical calling of our time.

This week we want to share about the meaning of the terms Wake Up, Grow Up and Show Up.

Wake Up
To wake up means to move beyond the narcissistic self-involvement with your own contracted story. Most people live lives limited by their contracted self, consumed by the petty details of their story. But when you wake up, you awaken to the deeper truth: You are not merely a skin-encapsulated ego — your True Self is an inextricable, indivisible part of the love-intelligence, of the All-That-Is flowing through you. So to wake up is to wake up to the true nature of reality, to blow your mind as a separate, alienated self, and to know your True Self, which presages a new and revolutionary Unique Self enlightenment.


Grow Up
To grow up means to up-level your consciousness. Your level of consciousness is the set of implicit organizing principles forming your worldview. These ascending levels or structures of consciousness have been mapped by extensive cross-cultural research by leading ego-developmental scientists over the past fifty years. For example, it has been shown that human beings in healthy development evolve from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric to cosmocentric consciousness. Each level expands your felt sense of love and empathy to wider and wider circles of caring.


At first, your caring and concern is limited to you and your immediate circle. At the second level — ethnocentric — your identity expands to a felt-sense of empathy and connections with your larger communal context. At the third level — worldcentric — your identity shifts to a felt empathy with all living humanity. 

At the fourth level — cosmocentric — you move beyond mere humanity and experience a felt sense of responsibility and empathy for all sentient beings throughout all of time, backwards and forwards.

This last move has also been described in Clare Graves’ developmental theory as the evolution from first-tier to second-tier consciousness. One of the key findings of developmental research is that as you up-level to ever-higher stages of second-tier consciousness, your unique perspective becomes readily available. Said simply, according to leading developmental theorists, the more you Grow Up, the more your Unique Self comes online. Indeed, having ready access to your unique perspective and your unique quality of intimacy is the way to unfold the highest levels of consciousness.

Show Up
To be successful means to live the unique life that is yours to live, and to give the unique gifts that are yours to give. Your success, therefore, looks different then anyone else’s success (so you might as well be successful in your own life because you cannot be successful in anyone else’s).


To live your unique life and give your unique gifts is what it means to be the hero of your life. This practice is called, in the terminology of Success 3.0, Showing Up. To show up as your Unique Self and give your unique gifts and live your unique taste is to awaken as evolution — as the personal face of the evolutionary process.

World Spirituality is based on the realization that every human being is both part of the whole and at the same time a high priest or priestess in their religion of one. The core obligation, joy, and responsibility of each Unique Self is to answer the call and give its unique gift, which fills a unique need in the cosmos.

Success 3.0
To be successful means to wake up to who you really are.


To be successful means to grow up to higher and higher levels of consciousness. When you grow up to your highest level of consciousness, you emerge as a fully conscious Unique Self, living in the largest evolutionary context, giving your gifts with devotion to heal and transform not only your personal sphere but, ultimately, the whole world.

Success 3.0 is to fully embody the unique life that is yours to live and fully give the gifts that are yours to give from a place of the most expanded state and the highest structure-stage of enlightened consciousness.

When you fully wake up, grow up and show up, the evolutionary impulse incarnates as you. You become an expression of radical personal intimacy and evolutionary creativity. You embody a purpose-driven and values-driven life, overflowing with aliveness, love and energy.


—————-
HuffPost’s GPS for the Soul app is based on two truths about human beings. First: We all have a centered place of wisdom, harmony and balance within us. Second: We’re all going to veer away from that place, again and again and again. What we need is a great course-correcting mechanism — a GPS for the Soul — to help us find our way back to that centered place, from which everything is possible.
Because no one knows better than you what helps you de-stress and tap into that place of peace inside yourself, it’s important for you to create your very own GPS guide — a personalized collection of whatever helps you course-correct. Email us at GPS@huffingtonpost.com and we’ll set you up with your very own HuffPost blogger account to share your guide on the site. If you’re already a blogger, we encourage you to upload your personal guide today. We can’t wait to see what you have to share.

Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up Series with Lisa Engles & Marc Gafni: Who Are You?


Via Daily Dharma: The Simple Secret to Practice

Attention or awareness is the secret of life and the heart of practice.

—Charlotte Joko Beck, “Attention Means Attention

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Rebalance and Reconnect

Mindfulness can be a way for us to restore balance—to help us recalibrate in a way that enables us to connect with our deepest, most heartfelt values and to act in accordance with them more often.

—Interview with Ed Halliwell, “The Mindful Manifesto

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Via Depression Quotes / FB:


Via Humanity's Team / FB:


Via Daily Dharma: Confronting Our Challenges

We cannot eliminate all of the challenges or obstacles in life—our own or anyone else’s. We can only learn to rise to the occasion and face them.

—Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, “Old Relationships, New Responsibilities

Via Words of Wisdom - May 22, 2019 💌 Inbox x

 
To bring to our daily life a quality of awareness, an open-heartedness, a consciousness that understands the interrelationship of all things, means that you can begin to hear the way in which you can live on Earth in harmony with all things.

-  Ram Dass -

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Via Utne: Grandfather Says Native Americans parables and other lessons from reservation life.

There is much that I don’t understand about the ways of my people on the reservation, but much more that I don’t understand about the people of town.
 Photo by Flicker/Janusz Sobolewski
Grandfather knows many things that I haven’t learned yet. There is much that I don’t understand about the ways of my people on the reservation, but much more that I don’t understand about the people of town. “What’s bothering you, Grandchild?” asked Grandfather when I arrived home from school. “You seem troubled about something.”
“I tried out for the track team because I like to run. Several of us ran around the track while coach timed us. The others trying out told me that I was the last one to sign up, so I was the ‘low man on the totem pole’ and would be the first to go when people were cut from the list.”
“Why were you so late signing up?” asked Grandfather.
“I didn’t know about the tryouts until today,” I explained. “I don’t think that the others on the team really want me because I am from the reservation.”
Grandfather was quiet and waited for my question.
“What does ‘low man on the totem pole’ mean, Grandfather?” I asked. “The other team members made it sound bad.”
“The lowest position on the totem pole, Grandchild, is the most important,” said Grandfather.
“Then why did they say I might be kicked off the team first, if the lowest spot is the most important?” I was confused.
Grandfather thought about it and said, “‘Low man on the totem pole’ has been used as a bad thing by people who don’t understand about totem poles,” explained Grandfather. “The bottom totem is the strongest and holds all the others up. It is the support for powers the other totems represent. All totems together have great power to keep people safe and to guide them during life journeys. Only the strongest can connect the totems above it with Mother Earth below it. Being in the lowest place on a totem pole is an honor.”
I felt better after Grandfather told me all of this, and when I went back to school the next day, I enjoyed practice more than ever.
The coaches decided who would be on the track team, and cuts were made. Those whose names were called to be on the team stood with the coaches, and when my name was called I ran to stand with the team.
Later I told the coach that I was happy to be on the team, but I was surprised to be chosen.
“You are the fastest runner we have, and you will be our anchor during relays,” said the coach. “Here is your running jersey.”
I ran all the way home that day after practice. Grandfather was right again.

Being Quiet

Grandfather stays active in tribal events and decisions. He says that since we live here, we should take responsibility for helping the tribe’s livelihood. Grandfather says that I am old enough to start learning how the laws are made, and he took me to one of the meetings.
“How long do you think it will take?” I asked, and Grandfather’s reply was a surprise.
“It will take long enough for us to figure something out,” Grandfather said, and that made sense to me.
We went to the Grand Hall. We walked in, shook hands with the others, and sat on the floor in the circle. A circle is always so that everyone can hear everyone else.
The meeting was started by the chief, who asked if anyone had anything to say. A person from town was there, stood, and started talking loudly about something for a very long time, but I did not understand what was being talked about. When the person from town stopped talking, all of us reservation people looked at each other and did not say anything. We waited for the town speaker to sit.
The chief turned to the speaker and said, “You talked for a long time, and we listened. From what I can figure out, you want us to let you bring a school class to look at the buffalo. Did I understand correctly?”
The person from town answered for another long while.
The chief then said, “I don’t think we have enough time for you to answer any more questions. Just send me a letter with the day and time the school will come, and that will be fine. We are almost out of time for this meeting.”
I turned to Grandfather for a cue as to what I should do, and I saw Grandfather’s eyes laughing.
The chief then asked if anyone else had anything to say, and one of the elders asked to have permission to graze his herd of cattle in an area of reservation that was not in use. The chief asked if anyone objected; no one objected, so the meeting was done.
As we walked away I asked, “Why were your eyes laughing after the chief told the person from town that we didn’t have more time for him to answer more questions?”
“You listened to the long talk. Then you heard the chief ask a question that could have been answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ but instead, we heard another long talk. The chief didn’t want to hear hundreds of words when just a few would answer the question. That is why the chief asked a letter to be sent, so we would not have to hear more talk that meant nothing.
“Did you learn anything, Grandchild?” asked Grandfather.
My reply was, “Yes.”

Small Plant

Hard times fell on Grandfather and Grandmother during one hot summer. The crops did not grow well. The ground was hard, and Grandfather could not do enough to the soil to make it so that the seeds would sprout and grow into strong plants.
“The ground is too hard for the seedlings to break through easily, “Grandfather said with a sad voice. “Without rain to wet the ground and give the plants moisture to use, we may have a small harvest this year.”
“What will we do, Grandfather?” I asked. “Will we be hungry?”
“No, Grandchild. We will not be hungry. We will just not have as much as we had in past years. We will be fine, though,” was his reply.
We walked from the field to the house, and along the path we saw that ground was hard and dry, too. Dust danced around our feet when we stepped.
“Grandfather,” I asked, “how do you know we will be fine?” I was worried, but Grandfather knew that. Before he answered, he saw something not far away, and he smiled with his eyes.
Grandfather began, “See this path we are walking?”
“Yes.”
“We must look ahead of our own feet. Look ahead on the path … just up the way a bit.”
I looked ahead, along the hard and dry path, just as Grandfather instructed.
“What do you see ahead? It’s in the middle of the solid ground where we walk.”
I looked again, and in the middle of the path was a very small plant growing. It was different from the dry grass that was on both sides of the pathway. It was green and standing straight up.
“What is it? Why is it there?” I asked.
“That little plant is a sunflower. It shows us that even when the ground is hard and the rains have not visited for a while, we can still find a way to live, just like it has done. We may have to look for new ways to get by, like the plant sprouting from the path instead of from under a shade tree, so it can get the sunlight it needs.”
Grandfather did not look so sad after that, and we walked on home to order sunflower seeds so that we could start a different crop that would grow in the hard field.
We had a good crop after all. I am glad that we saw the little plant growing in our path, telling us to look ahead, instead of looking at the dust at our feet.

Heartbeat

Grandmother and Grandfather never made me go inside early at night unless the next day was a school day. We sat outside under the shade tree and watched Sun set behind the distant hills. In the fall when Sun sank low in the sky, I often saw Grandmother go inside for a minute, but she returned with her dance shawl.
“Are you cold, Grandmother?” I asked one night.
Grandmother smiled and said, “No, I’m not cold. I am getting ready.”
“Ready for what?” I asked.
“Listen, Grandchild. You will hear the invitation soon,” she said.
Grandfather went inside and returned with his hand drum. He leaned against the tree and started to drum softly.
Grandmother smiled and wrapped her shawl over her shoulders. She stood up and started to dance. “Do you hear them?” she asked me.
“Close your eyes and listen,” Grandfather said.
“All I hear is your drum and the cicadas chirping,” I said.
“The cicadas are dancing, too. What you hear is their jingles as they dance,” Grandfather said. “They keep in rhythm with the drum, just like Grandmother is doing.”
I listened while I watched Grandfather step with each drum beat. The cicadas, too, chirped with each beat. It was like they danced together.
“Earth has a heartbeat that all animals can hear. The drum is a symbol of the heartbeat. Grandmother celebrates the life of Earth with her dance.
Grandmother stepped, turned, and made her shawl sail when she spun. The cicadas must have liked the dance, too, because they became louder the more Grandmother danced.
I went in the house and came back out with my dancing moccasins on, and I joined in. We celebrated until the cicadas grew silent. Then Grandmother, Grandfather, and I sat and watched shadows in the moonlight.
“Each season and each time has a way of celebrating life,” Grandfather said. “Together we can always dance.” 

BC Culbertson has been a lifelong resident of northeast Kansas, but has traveled the country, giving presentations on Native American star lore. Grandfather Says: Native American Parables and Other Lessons from Reservation Life is a short book of fictional stories set in parable form. Culbertson plans to have a short novel published by the end of summer 2018 tentatively titled The Excavator. Look for both books on Amazon.

Via Daily Dharma: Multiplying Our Joy

Most of life is a positive-sum game in which we can all be better off if we play nicely together. Sympathetic joy is a way in which we can share the joys of others and thereby give ourselves a lift.

—Rick Heller, “Sympathetic Joy

Via Daily Dharma: The One Includes All

When we know that to take care of one life we have to take care of all life—and that life includes what we say, how we act, what we do, and what we honor—that is the beginning of the sacred embodiment that leads to true civilization.

—Interview with Paul Hawken by Clark Strand, “The Movement with No Name

Sunday, May 19, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: One Moment At A Time

Zen is really just a reminder to stay alive and be awake. We tend to daydream all the time, speculating and dwelling on the past. Zen practice is about appreciating your life in this moment.

—Zenkei Blanche Hartman, “Zen Practice Each Moment

Via Daily Dharma: Our Final Destination

The lives of each of us, the Buddha was saying on his path, are a journey toward recognizing where we’ve been all along.

—Pico Iyer, “The Long Road to Sitting Still


Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 19, 2019 💌





If you’re involved with relationship with parents or children, instead of saying I can’t do spiritual practices because I have children, you say my children are my spiritual practice. If you’re traveling a lot, your traveling becomes your yoga.
You start to use your life as your curriculum for coming to God. You use the things that are on your plate, that are presented to you. So that relationships, economics, psychodynamics—all of these become grist for the mill of awakening. They all are part of your curriculum.

- Ram Dass -

Friday, May 17, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Appreciating Others and Ourselves

We all need to see that happiness, joy, and bliss come from having an appreciation of other people’s work and at the same time being content with what we have and what we are.

—Phakchok Rinpoche, “Dealing With Your Jealous and Competitive Mind

Thursday, May 16, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Ordinary Awakening

Each day, every one of us will undertake ordinary tasks such as brushing our teeth, washing dishes, getting dressed, and walking the dog. Can we bring a fresh and awake mind to these activities? This is the true challenge of beginner’s mind.

—Sensei Deirdre Eisho Peterson and Alex Tzelnic, “(Meta)Physical Education: A Bucking Brontosaurus

Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 15, 2019 💌


The interesting question is, "How do you put yourself in a position so that you can allow ‘what is’ to be?" The enemy turns out to be the creation of mind, because when you are just in the moment, doing what you are doing, there is no fear. The fear is when you stand back to think about it. The fear is not in the actions. The fear is in the thought about the actions.


- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Pure Power of Mindfulness

The Buddha’s mindfulness has one purpose—the end of suffering. It encompasses all of life in order to purify the mind and bring wisdom, love, and equanimity to the center of our lives.

—Phillip Moffitt, “The Mindfulness of the Buddha

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Center for Global Nonkilling


Via Daily Dharma: Embracing Our Mistakes

Turning toward our mistakes with forgiveness rather than judgment or blame contributes significantly toward feeling peace in our heart. It is like bringing a soothing balm to painful parts of ourselves that we have long rejected.

—Mark Coleman, “Why Are We So Hard On Ourselves?

Monday, May 13, 2019

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 12, 2019 💌


To live consciously you must have the courage to go inside yourself to find out who you really are, to understand that behind all of the masks of individual differences you are a being of beauty, of love, of awareness.

When Christ said, “The kingdom of heaven is within” he wasn’t just putting you on. When Buddha said, “Each person is the Buddha” he was saying the same thing. Until you can allow your own beauty, your own dignity, your own being, you cannot free another. So if I were giving people one instruction, I would say work on yourself. Have compassion for yourself. Allow yourself to be beautiful and all the rest will follow.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Breaking the Distraction Habit

One of the insidious things about the distraction habit is that we often don’t even realize it’s happening. It sneaks up on us, like old age, and before we know it we’re addicted and powerless. But we’re not really. The power we have is our awareness, and you can develop it right now.

—Leo Babauta, “Dropping Distraction

Sunday, May 12, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Embrace the Mess

This is the gift of mothering as practice—a kind of inclusiveness that embraces chaos and grit and imperfection. It’s not based on control or keeping things tidy.

—Anne Cushman, “Mothering as Meditation Practice

Saturday, May 11, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Finding Our Place

Right livelihood involves mindfulness of our place in the whole, and thus becomes the foundation for intelligent social activism and ecological responsibility.

—Krishnan Venkatesh, “Why Right Livelihood Isn’t Just About Your Day Job

Friday, May 10, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Everything As Practice

Failing to see everything as an opportunity for practice is a setup for frustration and disappointment, keeping us stuck where we are and limiting our possibilities for inner growth. The more we include in our practice, the more satisfying our life can be.

—Ezra Bayda, “Breaking Through

Thursday, May 9, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Our Life’s Purpose

Life is not about discovering some hidden raison d’être but about creating one.

—Josh Korda, “Now What?

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Via Lion's Roar: Endless Moments of Insight by Mahasi Sayadaw

In this translated teaching, the late meditation master Mahasi Sayadaw
presents his step-by-step instructions for the practice of insight meditation. 
Buddha statue
Seated Buddha. Courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery



Mahasi Sayadaw was one of the most learned and respected Burmese Buddhist monks of the last century, and his practice, writings, and teachings have had immense influence on Western practitioners of insight meditation.

For seven months in 1945, during the daily bombardment of the neighboring town of Shwebo, Mahasi Sayadaw wrote his great work, the Manual of Insight Meditation. In Theravada Buddhism, vipassana, or insight meditation, involves the ever-deepening intuitive understanding of the three universal characteristics of all experience: impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), and an impersonal, evanescent quality (anatta). In his Manual of Insight Meditation, Mahasi Sayadaw expounds in detail the doctrinal and practical aspects of the development of insight meditation.



Via LionsRoar: “Real but Not True”: How These Four Words Can Help With Strong Emotions

Sometimes we think irrational things while the truth is right in front of us. When that happens, says Jeremy Mohler, four simple words can help bring us back to earth.

 

 Make the jump here

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 8, 2019 💌


We take birth as humans, because we have karma which is our clingings of mind. As the Tao says, ‘the truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing.’ So that we don’t hear the truth fully, we only hear the projections of our own desires. So again and again we make decisions that end up not being in the deepest harmony with the way of things. The art of growth has to do with how quickly you admit error and start making decisions that are arising out of the fullness of the wisdom of things.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Unconditional Awareness

Awareness is like a crystal or mirror that reflects different colors and angles: forms, sounds, and feelings are different aspects of awareness and exist within awareness. Or you might view awareness as a guesthouse. Every type of traveler passes through—sensations, emotions, everything. Every type is welcome. No exceptions.

—Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche with Helen Tworkov, “Leaving Everything Behind

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Monday, May 6, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: The Path to Success

Do not fear failure. Whatever happened in the past is past; do not worry about it happening again. Before you meet with success, failure is natural and necessary.

—Master Sheng-Yen, “Being Natural

Sunday, May 5, 2019

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.


~Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry was born in Henry County, Kentucky, in 1934. The author of more than 40 works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, Wendell Berry has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1962), the Vachel Lindsay Prize from Poetry (1962), a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (1965), a National Institute of Arts and Letters award for writing (1971), the Emily Clark Balch Prize from The Virginia Quarterly Review (1974), the American Academy of Arts and Letters Jean Stein Award (1987), a Lannan Foundation Award for Non-Fiction (1989), Membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers (1991), the Ingersoll Foundation’s T. S. Eliot Award (1994), the John Hay Award (1997), the Lyndhurst Prize (1997), and the Aitken-Taylor Award for Poetry from The Sewanee Review (1998). His books include the novel Hannah Coulter (2004), the essay collections Citizenship Papers (2005) and The Way of Ignorance (2006), and Given: Poems (2005), all available from Counterpoint. Berry’s latest works include The Mad Farmer Poems (2008) and Whitefoot (2009), which features illustrations by Davis Te Selle.
(“Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” from The Country of Marriage, copyright © 1973 by Wendell Berry)

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 5, 2019 💌


If you follow your heart there is nothing to fear. As long as your actions are based on your pure seeking for God, you are safe. And any time you are unsure or frightened about your situation, there’s a beautiful and very powerful mantra: “The power of God is within me. The grace of God surrounds me,” which you can repeat to yourself. It will protect you.
Experience the power of it, it’s like a solid steel shaft that goes from above the top of your head down to the base of your being. Grace will surround you like a force field. Through an open heart one hears the universe.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Standing Up for Truth

Complacency is countered by integrity, which is an unswerving love of the truth and a willingness to live it.

—Interview with Jack Kornfield, “The Sure Heart’s Release

Via Sojourners: Prayer of the Day: Thomas Merton's Prayer of Abandonment

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and that I think I am following your will does not mean I am actually doing so.

But I believe the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all I am doing. I hope I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Saturday, May 4, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Ultimate Acceptance

Buddhist practice is not an effort to confirm or validate a sense of what we are. It is about seeing and experiencing what is.

—Ken McLeod, “Taking Fear Apart

Friday, May 3, 2019

Guided Mindfulness Meditation with Miles Kessler Sensei


Guided Mindfulness Meditation with Miles Kessler Sensei from Eagle de Botton on Vimeo.

A simple, very powerful, 20 minutes guided Mindfulness Meditation with Dharma teacher and Aikido Sensei Miles Kessler. After a 90 second description you will be guided by Miles into a 20 minutes, easy to follow, Mindfulness Meditation session.

Note that this guided meditation was recorded outdoor, by the lake side of Zurich, Switzerland. You are going to hear the sound of the nature, including sounds made by human...:) Let it be!
Meditation make it possible to experience the deepest part of ourselves. Only then we are able to engage in life beyond the narcissistic self, and be fully functional human beings, creating a better future for us all. (As add-on "side effects", meditation is also know, and proved scientifically, to improve our mental and physical health, and make us feel a lot happier...:).

So, find yourself a quit place, sit in a comfortable position, and... follow the instructions.

This video clip is an Eagle de Botton - Good Reality Conscious Service for awakenedTV and TAC.fm (The Awakened Campaign). awakenedTV.com is a free video channel, sponsored by IntegralAffiliate.com

Via Daily Dharma: The Greatest Pursuit

When you pursue awakening, it’s not going to lead to disappointment. Quite the contrary, it goes wildly beyond your expectations, wildly beyond your hopes.

—Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “Power of Conviction

OM Chanting + Tibetan Singing Bowls Meditation @ 432Hz | 1 Hour Version


AUM CHANTING ~ OM at 396 Hz | Universal Mantra ➤ Dissolves Negativity, Removes Fear




Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 1, 2019 💌


When you are in the presence of unconditional love, that is the optimum environment for your heart to open, because you feel safe, because you realize nobody wants anything from you. The minute that heart opens, you are once again letting in the flow. And that flow is where you experience God. 

- Ram Dass -

Via New Yorker: