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A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
Generosity
trusts the emptiness that runs through things, even ungenerous or
ungainly things—it links to the clarity that underlies all our madness.
Whenever my thoughts turn toward greed, acquisitiveness, or stinginess,
my shoulders tense up, and it feels as if I’m holding my breath. To find
a remedy, I don’t have to improve my thoughts, though—just be generous
with them. Then freedom seems to appear automatically.
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Anxiety,
heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. It's the kind of
place we usually want to avoid. The challenge is to stay in the middle
rather than buy into struggle and complaint. The challenge is to let it
soften us rather than make us more rigid and afraid. Becoming intimate
with the queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere only makes our
hearts more tender. When we are brave enough to stay in the middle,
compassion arises spontaneously. By not knowing, not hoping to know, and
not acting like we know what's happening, we begin to access our inner
strength.
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When
we really see, in our mind’s eye, a person we think we don’t like, and
instead of solidifying our reasons for hatred we honestly wish them
happiness, good health, safety, and an easeful life, we start to forget
what we thought we hated and why we felt that way in the first place. A
sense of equanimity toward everyone arises as we do this practice—we
feel compassion for those who were once invisible to us, and our
disregard and apathy morph into concern for their well-being and safety.
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When
we take words to be statements of ultimate truth, then differences of
opinion will inevitably result in conflict. This is where ideological
wars come from, and we see in the history of the world an endless amount
of suffering because of it. But if we see the words and the teachings
as different skillful means for liberating the mind, then they all
become part of a great dharma feast.
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If
we can begin to consider hatred as the enemy, as your and my enemy,
then we can begin to transform our anger into compassion. That will be
how we can take advantage of an unfortunate and tragic situation.
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Truth
has no action. Truth is weak. Truth is not utilitarian, truth cannot be
organized. It is like the wind: You cannot catch it, you cannot take
hold of it in your fist and say, ‘I have caught it.’ Therefore it is
tremendously vulnerable, impotent like the blade of grass on the
roadside—you can kill it, you can destroy it. But we want it as a thing
to be used for a better structure of society. And I am afraid you cannot
use it, you cannot—it is like love, love is never potent. It is there
for you, take it or leave it.
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