Dharma instructor Lama Rod Owens joins Francesca Maximé for a conversation around the importance of showing up to difficult experiences and holding our love and trauma in balance.

Considered one of the leaders of the next generation of Dharma teachers, Lama Rod Owens has a blend of formal Buddhist training in the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism and life experience that gives him a unique ability to understand, relate and engage in a way that’s spacious and sincere. He invites you into the cross-sections of his life as a Black, queer male, born and raised in the South and heavily influenced by the church and its community. Learn more about Lama Rod’s offerings and upcoming teaching events at lamarod.com.

The Dharma of Homecoming

Lama Rod shares the work he has been doing sharing contemplative practices of healing that focus on the wounds caused by racism, marginalization, and patriarchy. He offers insight around how the act of creating a home can be a radically healing act.

“I think it is a radical act – a revolutionary act – to make a home in the world; particularly if you have felt that the world has not ever been home for you. I love offering these teachings for people of color and for people who experience marginalization.” –  Lama Rod Owens

Make the jump here to listen to the podcast

Via FB: I don’t care how spiritual you are

"I don’t care how spiritual you are. How long you can melt in the sweat lodge. How many peyote journeys that have blown your mind, or how well you can hold crow pose. Honestly. I don’t. I don’t care what planets fall in what houses on your birth chart, how many crystals you have or how vegan your diet is.

I want to know how human you are. Can you sit at the feet of the dying despite the discomfort? Can you be with your grief, or mine, without trying to advise, fix or maintain it?  I want to know that you can show up at the table no matter how shiny, chakra- aligned or complete you are or not. Can you hold loving space for your beloved in the depths of your own healing without trying to be big? 

It doesn’t flatter me how many online healing trainings you have, that you live in the desert or in a log cabin, or that you’ve mastered the art of tantra.

What turns me on is busy hands. Planting roots. That despite how tired you are, you make that phone call, you board that plane, you love your children, you feed your family.

I have no interest in how well you can ascend to 5D, astral travel or have out of body sex. I want to see how beautifully you integrate into ordinary reality with your unique magic, how you find beauty and gratitude in what’s surrounding you, and how present you can be in your relationships.

I want to know that you can show up and do the hard and holy things on this gorgeously messy Earth. I want to see that you can be sincere, grounded and compassionate as equally as you are empowered, fiery and magnetic. I want to know that even during your achievements, you can step back and be humble enough to still be a student. 

What’s beautiful and sexy and authentic is how well you can continue to celebrate others no matter how advanced you’ve become. What’s truly flattering is how much you can give despite how full you’ve made yourself. What’s honestly valuable is how fucking better of a human you can be, in a world that is high off of spiritual materialism and jumping the next scapegoat for “freedom.”

 

At the end of the day I don’t care how brave you are. How productive, how popular, how enlightened you are. At the end of the day, I want to know that you were kind. That you were real. I want to know that you can step down from the pedestal from time to time to kiss the earth and let your hair get dirty and your feet get muddy and join the dance with us all."

-A modern day call to shifting from spiritual consumerism to returning to human kind... heart inspired by Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s, The Invitation."

by Taylor Rose Godfrey

Thanks to Anna Mae Swigert

Via Daily Dharma: Converting Anger for a Positive Result

Through chanting we’re able to elevate the condition of Buddha in our lives, … so that even if we are in the world of anger, we have the ability, through our practice, to access Buddha rather than anger and even to turn the anger from something negative into something that can be used for a positive result.

—Myokei Caine-Barrett, “Living the Lotus Sutra”

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation / Words of Wisdom - February 2, 2020 💌

People ask me if I believe there is continuity after death. I say that I don't believe it - it just is. This offends my scientific friends to no end. But belief is something you hold with your intellect, and for me, this goes way beyond my intellect.
The Bhagavad Gita also tells us, "As the Spirit of our mortal body wanders on in childhood and youth and old age, the Spirit wanders on to a new body: of this, the sage has no doubts." As Krishna says, "Because we all have been for all time... And we all shall be for all time, forever and ever.

- Ram Dass -