Via LATimes

Ram Dass on Being Love

Excerpt from an 8/2 webcast on Meditation and Mindfulness. Please click the following link for additional teachings on Love:

Via Ram Dass / Om Namah Shivaya

“One of Shiva’s consorts is Kali. She is that aspect of the mother that dances over death, and she consumes impurities into herself. Tonight, we are going to consecrate a fire to Kali and offer her our impurities. And we’re going to chant to Shiva. The whole process is one of incredible purification. It deepens, quiets, straightens all of our beings. It takes the emotional qualities of the devotion that we have touched here and turns it into the strength of steel. So that our love, which is Shiva’s love, is quiet, clear, and strong. So that we go into the marketplace with the strength of Shiva, and the tenderness of Krishna. That is what the balance is about.” 

– Ram Dass –

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - October 27, 2019 💌

"When you say, 'I am,' followed by any other words, you are already trying to stand somewhere. There’s nowhere to stand in this whole dance. You can’t stand somewhere when you say, 'I am good.' There is stuff in you that isn’t so good. You say, 'I am young,' yet get old. 'I am alive,' you will be dead. Every definition of yourself is a prison you put yourself in, seemingly to protect yourself. But it ends up creating anxiety and fear. Most of the behavior that our society performs is motivated by fear. And it is the fear of what is. "

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Trust Your Compassionate Intentions

When a compassionate intention arises, don’t evaluate it. Trust it. Just do it.

—Colin Beavan, “Intuitive Action”

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Via Daily Dharma: How to Benefit from Unavoidable Suffering

Suffering can be our greatest source of transformation. The dharma teachings show us how to use all the stuff of life—particularly those unavoidable experiences of pain, loss, and suffering—as fodder for awakening.

—Carolyn Gregoire, “Buddhist Thank-You Cards”

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Via Daily Dharma: The Dharma of Our Hearts

There’s a level where this dharma is just human dharma—it doesn’t have any special language. It’s just about our hearts—whether they’re suffering or not, and how they can bind or how they can open.

—Interview with Ayya Tathaaloka and Thubten Chodron, “The Whole of the Spiritual Life”

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Via Daily Dharma: Choosing the Present Moment

The present moment is not defined solely by letting go of past and future, nor by accepting and appreciating what arises right now, but by choosing in this very moment how we make sense of the world.

—Jack Petranker, “The Present Moment”

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Via Daily Dharma: Expressing Your Needs without Clinging

Expressing my needs, without making them into demands, can be as much a path to growth as letting them go. Needs aren’t the problem; it is rigidly clinging to a particular strategy to meet them that produces suffering.

—Katy Butler, “Say It Right”

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Aditya Hridayam Punyam Sarva Shatru Vinashanam

“Loosely translated, it means, ‘As for the being who keeps the sun in the heart, all evil vanishes for life.’ That is, when you remember the Atman, the Buddha, the place in your heart, the being, the inner guru, the light that comes from your own heart, then you no longer live with that which takes people from God, because all you see is God and that which brings you to it. When you do this mantra sometimes, you sit in front of the sun, and you let the sun come into your heart until the warmth in your heart becomes like a thousand suns and the light pours out from you.” 

– Ram Dass 

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Via Daily Dharma: Learning Buddhism

When we become fundamentally aware of the mind’s incessant need to reify experience into fixed categories that are convenient to the self, then we are learning Buddhism.

—Victor Hori, “Sweet and Sour Buddhism”

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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - October 23, 2019 💌

"Open and stay centered. If you remain centered, your calm presence helps to free all those around you. Go inside yourself to that quiet place where you are wisdom. Wisdom has in it compassion. Compassion understands about life and death. The answer to dying is to be present in the moment."

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Resting Comfortably with Emotions

Instead of either controlling or sequestering our feelings, we can learn to both contain and feel them fully. That containment allows us to feel vulnerable or hurt without immediately erupting into anger; it allows us to feel neediness without clinging to the other person. We acknowledge our dependency.

—Barry Magid, “No Gain”

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'Compassion, Truth and Adversity' with Ram Dass and Sharon Salzberg

There’s no doubt that we all have adversity, and these days it’s even more obvious in our very difficult world. In this new film, Compassion, Truth and Adversity, Ram Dass and Sharon Salzberg pinpoint the ways in which we can transform our adversity, by being honest with ourselves, and compassionate and truthful with others. This film and all other offerings on RamDass.org are only possible with the support of friends like you. Please consider a donation of any amount before, during or after the event, which will allow Ram Dass' Love Serve Foundation to continue to present more projects like this and to help him share these transformational teachings with current and future generations. 

Donate Here: http://goo.gl/d3a8JT

Via Ram Dass / Metta Meditation... from the Heart

First thing is to acknowledge what you’re feeling: “My heart is closed.”

I’ll tell you there are numerous practices for this, and you have to find one that’s comfortable for you. For example, I work a lot with my breath, and I breathe in and out of my heart, and when I’m breathing out in my heart, I allowed whatever love I can muster for anything to be offered to people, to beings around me, and when I’m breathing in, I’m taking the existence of the universe into myself, and I keep feeling this breath going back and forth, and the breathing out is, “May all beings be free of suffering, may all beings be peaceful, may all beings be happy,” and I say:

“Hard-hearted though I am, and closed hearted though I am, I am going to use my energies to the extent that my mind and my heart can do it for the benefit of others. I’m gonna wish them well.

 - Ram Dass

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Via Daily Dharma: An Interconnected Experience

Our experience is not primarily that of a separate consciousness trapped in its head; rather, when we look out at a sunset, we experience ourselves out-there, at the sunset.

—Matthew Abrahams, “A More Human Nature”

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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - October 20, 2019 💌

"Wherever you are, be it at the beginning of the journey, well on your way, or resting comfortably at some height, you must acknowledge where you are. That is the key to further growth. You should keep some perspective about the entire journey, so that you will not sink into complacency – feeling you have finished the journey when you have not even begun to approach liberation."

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Every Moment Is Significant

Life is mostly about mundane experiences. When you start thinking that only your most thrilling experiences are significant, you have already lost the most precious thing in life, the ability to fully immerse yourself in every experience.

—Brad Warner, “It’s the Journey, Not the Trip”

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Via This Day in Gay History : Divine

1945 -

DIVINE, American actor born (ne Glenn Milstead) (d. 1988); best known for his drag persona, Divine. In the 1970s, Milstead starred as Divine in a number of New York City theater pieces, including Tom Eyen’s classic camp women's prison drama, Women Behind Bars, which was a major off-Broadway hit in 1976, playing the lead role of the evil matron, Pauline. Divine returned to the stage in another Tom Eyen off-Broadway play, The Neon Woman, where he played the role of Flash Storm, the owner of a sleazy strip club plagued by a series of murders.

Eyen's play was loosely based on famed burlesque entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee's book, "The G-String Murders". He appeared with the Cockettes in San Francisco. After their New York bomb, the Cockettes came back to San Francisco and performed their final show in the summer of 1972, "Journey to the Center of Uranus." Divine, joined the group, in her San Francisco debut, performing her song "The Crab at the Center of Uranus" dressed as a lobster.

Milstead starred in a number of films and was part of the regular cast known as the Dreamlanders. The Dreamlanders appeared in many of John Waters' earlier works such as Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Polyester, and Hairspray.

In 1985 Milstead appeared opposite Tab Hunter in their hit Lust in the Dust, repeating their successful pairing in Polyester. He is also remembered as a major character in the documentary homage Divine Trash by Steve Yeager, covering the life and work of John Waters.

In 1988, the British film The Fruit Machine, also known as Wonderland in the United States, used Milstead's songs in a nightclub disco dance sequence that showcased an early Robbie Coltrane in drag as "Annabelle", the club's owner (a cross between Divine and Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz).

Late in his career, Milstead also played in non-drag roles in his last three films: Trouble in Mind, Hairspray, and Out of the Dark. In Hairspray he played two roles, one male and one female (which he had first done in the earlier Female Trouble).

Here’s what Divine had to say about his “Edna Turnblad” (and honey...he ain’t no John Travolta!):

“For all those people who always thought I was nothing more than a drag queen, wait until they see what I agreed to look like in Hairspray! Drag queens are supposed to be hung up on glamooouur. Meanwhile, on my first day on location, I came out as Edna Turnblad--in my flip-flops and hideous housedress, with varicose veins drawn on my nubble-shaved legs and everything that is wrong with me accentuated, schlepping along in these pin curls and barely any makeup--and I walked right by the crew. Just kept going. Not one person on the set recognized me or even noticed me, because I looked like half the women in Baltimore. I had to go up to John and stand face-front for him to realize who I was. He was thrilled. I was crushed.”

Divine was the inspiration for the design of Ursula the Sea-Witch in the Disney classic The Little Mermaid.