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Via White Crane Institute \\\ TODAYS GAY WISDOM From Edward Carpenter's Ioläus

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989   This Day in Gay History May 29 Today's Gay Wisdom 2018 - TODAYS GAY WISDOM From Edward Carpenter's Ioläus I CONCLUDE this collection with a few quotations from Whitman, for whom "the love of comrades "perhaps stands as the most intimate part of his message to the world — "Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting." Whitman, by his great power, originality and initiative, as well as by his deep insight and wide vision, is in many ways the inaugurator of a new era to mankind; and it is especially interesting to find that this idea of comradeship, and of its establishment as a social institution, plays so important a part with him. We have seen that in the Greek age, and more or less generally in the ancient and pagan world, comradeship was an institution; we have seen that in Christian and modern times, though existent, it was socially denied and ignored, and indeed to a great extent fell under a kind of ban; and now Whitman's attitude towards it suggests to us that it really is destined to pass into its third stage, to arise again, and become a recognized factor of modern life, and even in a more extended and perfect form than at first. [As Whitman in this connection (like Tennyson in connection with In Memoriam) is sure to be accused of morbidity, it may he worthwhile to insert the following note from In re Walt Whitman, p. 115," Dr. Drinkard in 1870, when Whitman broke down from rupture of a small blood-vessel in the brain, wrote to a Philadelphia doctor detailing Whitman's case, and stating that he was a man ' with the most natural habits, bases, and organization he had ever seen.]' "It is to the development, identification, and general prevalence of that fervid comradeship (the adhesive love, at least rivaling the amative love hitherto possessing imaginative literature, if not going beyond it), that I look for the counterbalance and offset of our materialistic and vulgar American Democracy, and for the spiritualization thereof. Many will say it is a dream, and will not follow my inferences; but I confidently expect a time when there will be seen, running like a half-hid warp through all the myriad audible and visible worldly interests of America, threads of manly friendship, fond and loving, pure and sweet, strong and lifelong, carried to degrees hitherto unknown-not only giving tone to individual character, and making it unprecedentedly emotional, muscular, heroic, and refined, but having deepest relations to general politics. I say Democracy infers such loving comradeship, as its most inevitable twin or counterpart, without which it will be incomplete, in vain, and incapable of perpetuating itself." Democratic Vistas note: The three following poems are taken from Leaves of Grass: "Recorders ages hence, Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, I will tell you what to say of me, Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover, The friend the lover's portrait, of whom his friend his lover was fondest, Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love within him, and freely pour'd it forth, Who often walk'd lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his lovers, Who pensive away from one he lov'd often lay sleepless and dissatisfied at night, Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov'd might secretly be indifferent to him, Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on hills, he and another wan dering hand in hand, they twain apart from other men, Who oft as he saunter'd the streets curv'd with his arm the shoulder of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon him also." Leaves of Grass, 1891 " When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv'd with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow'd, And else when I carous'd, or when my plans were accomplish'd, still I was not happy, But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh'd, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn, When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light, When I wander'd alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise, And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy, O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish'd me more, and the beautiful day pass'd well, And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend, and that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continuously up the shores, I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me whispering to congratulate me, For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night, In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me, And his arm lay lightly around my breast-and that night I was happy." "I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions, But really I am neither for nor against institutions, (What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the destruction of them?) Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these States inland and seaboard, And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large that dents the water, Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument, The institution of the dear love of comrades."

|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8| Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute "With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989! www.whitecraneinstitute.org |8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|

Via White Crane Institute \\\ JOSHUA FRY SPEED

 

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989
This Day in Gay History
May 29 Born 1882 - JOSHUA FRY SPEED, who passed on this date (b: 11/14/1882) was an American planter and businessman. He was a close friend, and likely a lover, of future President Abraham Lincoln from his days in Springfield, Illinois, where Speed was a partner in a general store. He first met Lincoln in 1837. Later, Speed was a farmer and a real estate investor in Kentucky, and also served one term in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1848. Despite having had little formal education himself, Speed's father wanted his children to have that advantage. Joshua was tutored by his maternal grandfather, Joshua Fry, and attended St. Joseph's College near Bardstown. Before completing college, however, he fell ill. He returned home and, despite his father's opposition, argued that he was ready to begin a career. He spent two to three years as a clerk in the largest wholesale establishment in Louisville. He then moved to Springfield, Illinois. Speed had heard young Abraham Lincoln deliver a speech on a stump when Lincoln was running for election to the Illinois legislature. In April 1837, Lincoln arrived at Springfield, the new state capital, to seek his fortune as a young lawyer, whereupon he met Joshua Speed. Lincoln sublet Joshua's apartment above Speed's store, becoming his roommate, sharing a bed with him for four years, and becoming his lifelong best friend. Although bed-sharing between same sexes was a reasonably common practice in this period, this has led to speculation, including by Professor Thomas Balcerski, regarding Lincoln's sexuality. And even the "customary sharing of beds" doesn't really explain FOUR YEARS in the same bed. In March 1840, Judge John Speed died and Joshua announced plans to sell his store and return to his parents' large plantation house, Farmington, near Louisville, Kentucky. Lincoln, though notoriously awkward and shy around women, was then engaged to Mary Todd, a vivacious society young woman also from Kentucky. As the dates approached for both Speed's departure and Lincoln's marriage, Lincoln broke the engagement on the planned day of the wedding, January 1, 1841. Speed departed as planned, leaving Lincoln mired in depression and guilt. Seven months later, in July 1841, Lincoln, still depressed, decided to visit Speed in Kentucky. Speed welcomed Lincoln to his paternal house, where the latter spent a month regaining his mental health. During his stay at Farmington, Lincoln rode into Louisville almost daily to discuss legal matters of the day with Attorney James Speed, Joshua's older brother. James Speed lent Lincoln books from his law library. Historians such as David Herbert Donald point out that it was not unusual at that time for two men to share a bed due to myriad circumstances, without anything sexual being implied, for a night or two when nothing else was available. Yadda yadda yadda. Lincoln, who had just moved to a new town when he met Speed, was also at least initially unable to afford his own bed and bedding; however, even after he could have easily afforded a bed of his own, Lincoln continued sleeping in a bed with Speed for several years.  A tabulation of historical sources shows that Lincoln slept in the same bed with at least 11 boys and men during his youth and adulthood. Abe got around! There are no known instances in which Lincoln tried to suppress knowledge or discussion of such arrangements, and in some conversations, raised the subject himself. Tripp discusses three men at length and possible sustained relationships: in addition to Joshua Speed, William Greene, and Charles Derickson. However, as heterosexual historians trip all over themselves to explain, in 19th-century America, it was not necessarily uncommon for men to bunk-up with other men, briefly, if no other arrangement were available.  Whatever. For example, when other lawyers and judges traveled "the circuit" with Lincoln, the lawyers often slept "two in a bed and eight in a room". William H. Herndon recalled for example, "I have slept with 20 men in the same room". And really, who of us haven't? In the nineteenth century, most men were probably not conscious of any erotic possibility of bed-sharing, since it was in public. Speed's immediate, casual offer, and his later report of it, suggests that men's public bed-sharing was not then often explicitly understood as conducive to forbidden sexual experiments. In such public arrangements, they would not be alone. Nevertheless, gay historian Jonathan Ned Katz says that such sleeping arrangements "did provide an important site (probably the major site) of erotic opportunity" if they could keep others from noticing. Katz states that referring to present-day concepts of "homo, hetero, and bi distorts our present understanding of Lincoln and Speed's experiences." He states that, rather than there being "an unchanging essence of homosexuality and heterosexuality," people throughout history "continually reconfigure their affectionate and erotic feelings and acts".  He suggests that the Lincoln-Speed relationship fell within a 19th-century category of intense, even romantic man-to-man friendships with erotic overtones that may have been "a world apart in that era's consciousness from the sensual universe of mutual masturbation and the legal universe of 'sodomy,' 'buggery,' and 'the crime against nature'". Some correspondence of the period, such as that between Thomas Jefferson Withers and James Henry Hammond, may provide evidence of a sexual dimension to some secret same-sex bed-sharing. The fact that Lincoln was open about sharing a bed with Speed is seen by some historians as an indication that their relationship was not romantic. None of Lincoln's enemies hinted at any homosexual implication. Joshua Speed and Lincoln corresponded about their impending marriages, and Gore Vidal regarded their letters to each other as having evinced a degree of anxiety about being able to perform sexually on their wedding nights that indicated a homosexual relationship had once existed between them. Despite having some political differences over slavery, they remained in touch until Lincoln died, and Lincoln appointed Joshua's brother, James Speed, to his cabinet as Attorney General. 8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8| Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute "With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989! www.whitecraneinstitute.org |8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|

Via Daily Dharma: The Importance of Joy

 

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The Importance of Joy

Joy is very important in your practice. It’s a marker to a signpost that says awakening.   Bhante Buddharakkhita, “The Joy of Dharma”   CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Living: Abstaining from Misbehaving Among Sensual Pleasures

 

Via Rest of World \\\ Pope’s encyclical raises questions over who shapes AI

 

The Global Dispatch

Getty Images Rina Chandran Deputy Editor On Monday, Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, titled Magnifica Humanitas, or magnificent humanity. The 83-page letter is about “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence,” and warns that AI power shouldn’t be concentrated in the hands of a few private companies, that jobs should be protected, and that there should be greater oversight and regulation. Christopher Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, was present at the briefing, and got a shoutout from the pope. That’s not surprising, since the company recently hosted more than a dozen Christian leaders for talks at its office in San Francisco. Officials from Meta, Google, and Amazon have also held meetings in the Vatican.  Why are big tech companies courting the pope? Technology has changed how we worship and seek spiritual guidance, with religious leaders and commoners alike embracing social media platforms and AI chatbots. In the absence of international regulations and standards on AI, perhaps it is natural that companies and organizations are turning to religion for answers. But who decides which religions have a say, and who lays down the rules? For the 1.4 billion Catholics in the world, guidance from the pope is critical. Many live in South America, and the fastest growing pockets are in Asia — largely in India and the Philippines — and Africa. It is in these regions that most of the workers doing the essential, low-paid data annotation and labeling work for AI are also located. It’s here that the critical minerals needed to make chips are being mined, and data centers that suck up water and electricity are being built, as opposition to them grows in the Western world. While Christianity is the world’s most dominant religion, Islam is the fastest-growing one, according to Pew Research. Hinduism is the biggest religion in the world’s most populous country, India, while only about a fourth of Chinese people practice a religion.  Many popular AI models show bias toward Catholicism and against a number of other religious traditions when asked about converting, according to new research. Earlier this year, Egypt banned the use of AI to interpret the Quran because of concerns that chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude were moving Muslim users toward Western values, and away from their communities. Religion is a deeply divisive issue, and as an agnostic Hindu, I don’t have the answers, so I asked an expert. Brian Patrick Green, director of technology ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, has been involved in the talks at Anthropic. I asked him: Should religion have a role in shaping AI? And what is the risk of one religion dominating others? “Regardless of whether religion should have a role in shaping AI, it already does,” Green told me. Data scraped from the internet to train large language models includes religious scriptures, sermons, homilies, speeches, and other texts, he said. “AI should be able to serve everyone, and that means it needs to know about the religions of the world,” Green said. But cultures can also act like religions, and the cultures of the U.S. and China are shaping AI systems now, he said.  “It is likely that over time AI systems will become customized for the cultures that have enough power and wealth to enforce or pay for that customization,” said Green. “So there will be conflicts over AIs that are aligned with certain moral values.” Is there an alternative? The Geneva-based Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities last year hosted leaders from various religious groups, and companies including Anthropic and OpenAI, in New York to discuss how to infuse morality and ethics into AI. More such discussions are planned in Beijing, Nairobi, and Abu Dhabi.  Perhaps they can be the “plurality of voices and visions” that the Pope’s encyclical mentions, which can contribute equally to shaping AI.

Via Tricycle: The Buddhist Review \\\ On Being Nobody Special

 

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We’re moving Three Teachings to Substack! On June 18, this newsletter will start publishing via Substack. You’ll still receive it in your inbox. Nothing changes there. (And the rest of Tricycle's newsletters remain the same.) But, as so many of you have requested over the years, you will now be able to connect with fellow readers, discuss these teachings, and access them in one central library if you choose to click through to Substack. We look forward to seeing you there!

May 28, 2026   What Is a Person of No Rank? “A person of no rank” is a Zen saying attributed to 9th-century Chinese monk Linji Yixuan, who was known for his provocative statements and teachings, which eventually developed in the Rinzai school of Zen in Japan. It represents someone unattached to ego—someone who embodies the principle of not-self, which points to the emptiness and interconnectedness of all of us.    While the concept of being a person of no rank, or nobody special, is emphasized in Zen practice, surrender of ego to the dharma resonates throughout traditions.    Of course, the notion of being nobody special couldn’t be more at odds with the cultural obsession with celebrity, exceptionalism, and individualism. “Our reaching out for singularity these days is not unexpected, given that social media bombards us with opportunities to acquire the latest product or the swiftest device to put us out in front of the crowd. Our jobs are sometimes less about intrinsic value or usefulness than position and status and salary. To be special is to be safe—from criticism, from dismissal,” writer and Buddhist teacher Sandy Boucher points out.   And as the teachers in this week’s Three Teachings readily concede, even if one is able to temporarily realize the concept of no-self, staying continuously unattached to the self, immune to criticism or praise, is difficult. Being nobody special is an ongoing practice, but one that yields great fruit if we trust it.

We Are in Training to Be Nobody Special By Sandy Boucher   Pointing out that celebrating our singularity protects us and reflecting on her own struggle with this, writer and Buddhist teacher Sandy Boucher shares what she’s learned about letting go of her specialness.

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On Wanting to Sound Good By Satya Robyn    Writer, psychotherapist, and environmental activist Satya Robyn explains how the Pure Land tradition’s concept of bombu, or “foolish beings of wayward passion,” reminds us of our fallibility, which, in turn, opens us to accepting unlimited love.

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On Not Being Special By Ken McLeod   Author, translator, and teacher Ken Mcleod explains that the practice of detaching from the self is ongoing and not something to achieve. “All our ideas about who we are or would be are revealed to be just that—ideas. The reality is quite different and we have to meet it, even if it means the end of everything we have known or understood. This may be one of the conditions for the seed to germinate, but this change is more like something that happens to us than something we decide to do. I doubt that the caterpillar decides to transform into a butterfly, but it happens.”

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Via White Crane Institute \\ More From Oscar Wilde’s DE PROFUNDIS

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989
This Day in Gay History
May 28

 

Today's Gay Wisdom 2018 - TODAY'S GAY WISDOM More From Oscar Wilde’s DE PROFUNDIS The poor are wise, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive than we are. In their eyes prison is a tragedy in a man's life, a misfortune, a casuality, something that calls for sympathy in others. They speak of one who is in prison as of one who is 'in trouble' simply. It is the phrase they always use, and the expression has the perfect wisdom of love in it. With people of our own rank it is different. With us, prison makes a man a pariah. I, and such as I am, have hardly any right to air and sun. Our presence taints the pleasures of others. We are unwelcome when we reappear. To revisit the glimpses of the moon is not for us. Our very children are taken away. Those lovely links with humanity are broken. We are doomed to be solitary, while our sons still live. We are denied the one thing that might heal us and keep us, that might bring balm to the bruised heart, and peace to the soul in pain. . . . I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. I am trying to say so, though they may not think it at the present moment. This pitiless indictment I bring without pity against myself. Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still. I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. I had realised this for myself at the very dawn of my manhood, and had forced my age to realise it afterwards. Few men hold such a position in their own lifetime, and have it so acknowledged. It is usually discerned, if discerned at all, by the historian, or the critic, long after both the man and his age have passed away. With me it was different. I felt it myself, and made others feel it. Byron was a symbolic figure, but his relations were to the passion of his age and its weariness of passion. Mine were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital issue, of larger scope. The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a FLANEUR, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility. I have lain in prison for nearly two years. Out of my nature has come wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed through every possible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he said – 'Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark And has the nature of infinity.'

|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8| Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute "With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989! www.whitecraneinstitute.org |8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|

Via Daily Dharma: Our Training Ground

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Our Training Ground

The cushion is the training ground; daily life is where the practice becomes real.   Reverend Amitha Khema, “Visiting Teacher: Reverend Amitha Khema”   CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE