Sunday, November 24, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Learning to Be Human

Fact is, we practice being human in every waking moment. And the more mindfully we practice, the more often our conflicts dissolve, the more easily we create new possibilities for relationship and community.

—Philip Simmons, “Learning to Fall”


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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - November 24, 2019 💌





"The witness is your leverage in the game. The witness 'me' isn't trying to change any of the other 'me's'. It's not an evaluator or a judge; it's not the superego. It doesn't care about anything. It just observes. 'Hmmm, there she or he is doing that again.' That witness place inside you is your centering device, your rudder.

The witness is part of your soul. It's witnessing your incarnation, this lifetime, from the heart-mind. It's the beginning of discrimination between your soul and your ego, your real Self and your self in the incarnation.

Once you begin to live in this witness place, you begin to shift your identification from the roles and thought forms. As you witness yourself, the process becomes more like watching a movie than being the central character in one."

- Ram Dass -

Vis White Crane: This Day in Gay History November 24

 

1632 - BARUCH SPINOZADutch philosopher was born (d.1677); One of the great rationalists of 17th century philosophy, he laid the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism.
By virtue of his magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, Spinoza is also considered one of Western philosophy's definitive ethicists. He was raised and educated in the Orthodox Jewish fashion, also studying Latin and was thoroughly familiar with European humanism. What exactly is it that caused him to be excommunicated from the synagogue when he was only twenty-four years old?
Many scholars have speculated that the horror Spinoza inspired in the Jewish community may have come not only from his espousal of advanced economic theories, but from his espousal, as well, of "Greek love" among impressionable students in the liberal circle where he taught. A Dutch physician, J. Roderpoort, wrote at The Hague in 1897: “Spinoza excites the youth to respect women not at all and to give themselves to debauchery.” 
Was Spinoza merely teaching the Greek and Roman classics, with their inevitable passages on pederasty? What were Roderpoort’s motives for discrediting the Jewish philosopher? Was Spinoza, in fact a pederast? It’s all open to speculation.

Via Daily Dharma: Our Enduring Buddha Nature

We are still in the ocean of samsara; we have not yet gotten our heads fully out of the water. We have roamed about in one confused state of experience after the other, endlessly. At the same time, we haven’t lost our buddha nature.

—Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, “Taking Your Future Into Your Own Hands”


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