Tuesday, November 30, 2021

27000@25 - When We Were Boys (Short Film) [World AIDS Day 2021]

 

 

https://www.queerty.com/andy-bell-27000-music-video-hiv-stigma-25-years-later-20211130?utm_source=Queerty+Subscribers&utm_campaign=f7a3c7aff3-20211130_Queerty_Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_221c27272a-f7a3c7aff3-431297161

Via Dhamma Wheel // Cultivating Lovingkindness

 

RIGHT INTENTION
Cultivating Lovingkindness
Whatever you intend, whatever you plan, and whatever you have a tendency toward, that will become the basis on which your mind is established. (SN 12.40) Develop meditation on lovingkindness, for when you develop meditation on lovingkindness, all ill will will be abandoned. (MN 62)

Suppose there were a pond with lovely smooth banks, filled with pure water that was clear and cool. A person scorched and exhausted by hot weather, weary, parched, and thirsty would come upon the pond and quench their thirst and their hot-weather fever. In just the same way a person encounters the teachings of the Buddha and develops lovingkindness, and thereby gains internal peace. (MN 40)
Reflection
Intention has to do with the volitional and emotional states of mind that condition experience and influence the quality of action. Some mental states are helpful and healthy, others are harmful and unhealthy. One of the most beneficial is lovingkindness, which can be developed by generating friendliness and care toward living beings. Compared with the harshness of so many of our other experiences, the practice of lovingkindness feels refreshing and leads to peace. 

Daily Practice
Friendliness and lovingkindness can be practiced at any time. Simply direct the mind to the thought of a particular person or group of people and allow the emotional tone of caring for their well-being to arise in your heart or mind. By thinking of the person steadily, with the help of supporting phrases and images, you can sustain this kindly quality of mind over time. It feels refreshing, like a cool pond on a hot day. Try it.

Tomorrow: Refraining from False Speech
One week from today: Cultivating Compassion

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
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Questions?
Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Daily Dharma: Apply Your Knowledge

 

It’s not enough just to know the definition of bodhisattva. What’s much more important is to study the actions of a bodhisattva and then to behave like one yourself.

—Kosho Uchiyama, “What Is a Bodhisattva?”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via White Crane Institute // OSCAR WILDE

 

Died
Oscar Wilde having lunch with Lord Alfred Douglas near Dieppe in 1898, after his release from Reading Gaol
1900 -

OSCAR WILDE, Irish writer, wit and raconteur died (b. 1854); Prison was unkind to Wilde's health and after he was released on May 19, 1897 he spent his last three years penniless, in self-imposed exile from society and artistic circles. He went under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth, after the famously "penetrated" Saint Sebastian and the devilish central character of Wilde's great-uncle Charles Robert Maturin's gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer.

Nevertheless, Wilde lost no time in returning to his previous pleasures. According to Douglas, Ross "dragged [him] back to homosexual practices" during the summer of 1897, which they spent together in Berneval.

After his release, he also wrote the famous poem The Ballad of Readying Gaol. Wilde spent his last years in the Hôtel d'Alsace, now known as L’Hôtel, in Paris, where he was notorious and uninhibited about enjoying the pleasures he had been denied in England. Again according to Douglas, "he was hand in glove with all the little boys on the Boulevard. He never attempted to conceal it." In a letter to Ross, Wilde laments, "Today I bade good-bye, with tears and one kiss, to the beautiful Greek boy. . . he is the nicest boy you ever introduced to me." Just a month before his death he is quoted as saying, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go."

His moods fluctuated; Max Beerbohm relates how, a few days before Wilde's death, their mutual friend Reginald 'Reggie' Turner had found Wilde very depressed after a nightmare. "I dreamt that I had died, and was supping with the dead!" "I am sure," Turner replied, "that you must have been the life and soul of the party." Reggie Turner was one of the very few of the old circle who remained with Wilde right to the end, and was at his bedside when he died. On his deathbed he was received into the Roman Catholic church for some odd reason. Perhaps he really had lost his mind. Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900.

Wilde was buried in the Cimitiere de Bagneaux outside Paris but was later moved to Père Lachaise in Paris. His tomb in Père Lachaise was designed by sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein, at the request of Robert Ross, who also asked for a small compartment to be made for his own ashes. Ross's ashes were transferred to the tomb in 1950. The numerous spots on it are lipstick traces from admirers.

The modernist angel depicted as a relief on the tomb was originally complete with male genitals. They were broken off as obscene and kept as a paperweight by a succession of Père Lachaise cemetery keepers. Their current whereabouts are unknown. In the summer of 2000, intermedia artist Leon Johnson performed a forty minute ceremony entitled Re-membering Wilde in which a commissioned silver prosthesis was installed to replace the vandalized genitals.


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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

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Sunday, November 28, 2021

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects and the Fourth Jhāna

 

RIGHT MINDFULNESS
Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects
A person goes to the forest or to the root of a tree or to an empty place and sits down. Having crossed the legs, one sets the body erect. One establishes the presence of mindfulness. (MN 10) One is aware: “Ardent, fully aware, mindful, I am content.” (SN 47.10)
Reflection
The fourth foundation of mindfulness involves looking at various aspects of our experience as episodes of phenomena arising and passing away in the stream of consciousness. Unhelpful habits of mind, acting as hindrances to inner clarity, come and go along with helpful mental factors, such as those guiding us to awakening. We learn to observe these changing states with calm and focused equanimity, without grasping.

Daily Practice
Sit quietly on a regular basis and take an interest in watching what goes on in your mind. The challenge is to observe it all without latching on to the content of your thoughts but simply noting them as events arising and passing away. Become mindful of mental objects rather than becoming entangled in them. If you can do this with ardent energy, fully aware and mindful, you will likely find yourself very content.


RIGHT CONCENTRATION
Approaching and Abiding in the Fourth Phase of Absorption (4th Jhāna)
With the abandoning of pleasure and pain, and with the previous disappearance of joy and grief, one enters upon and abides in the fourth phase of absorption, which has neither-pain-nor-pleasure and purity of mindfulness as a result of equanimity. The concentrated mind is thus purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to imperturbability. (MN 4)
Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of Suffering
One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Body and Abiding in the First Jhāna


Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions?
Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Tricycle // Finding Spirit in the Ordinary


Finding Spirit in the Ordinary
By Rev. Dr. Kenji Akahoshi
The Shin Buddhist practice of gratitude starts with shifting our everyday mindset from “please” to “thank you.”
Read more »

 

Via Daily Dharma: Understanding Sufferin

 Most of our suffering comes from habitual thinking. If we try to stop it out of aversion to thinking, we can’t; we just go on and on and on. So the important thing is not to get rid of thought, but to understand it.


—Ajahn Sumedho, “Noticing Space”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via LGBTQ Nation // Here are 8 examples of the best elderly LGBTQ representation in TV & film

 


Via Gay Cities // 20 gay-owned shops that will end your addiction to ‘big’ online retail

 


Via FB // Jesus at the Gay Bar


 

Handy Buddhist Cheat Sheet via FB

 


9 foreign gay movies must watch

Festival Cinema e Transcendência


 

Chegou mais uma edição do Festival Cinema e Transcendência!
Mais uma vez online para todo o Brasil, exibimos filmes que refletem a busca da transcendência, através da arte, da cultura, da vida...
Nesta edição, estamos lançando vários títulos no Brasil e teremos a participação de diretores e convidados incríveis em nossas Lives!
Dia 01/12 às 20h teremos a ABERTURA do Festival com show musical do grupo GHARANA ELETROACÚSTICA e exibição do filme SAMADHI ROAD.

📍Acesse www.festivalcinemaetranscendencia.com e fique por dentro de todos os detalhes da nossa programação.

Nosso Insta:
@cinema.transcendencia

 

Via FB // I'm Walking into 2022

 


Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - November 28, 2021 💌


 

When I perform a wedding ceremony, the image I invoke is of a triangle formed by the two partners and this third force, which is the shared love that unites and surrounds them both. In the yoga of relationship, two people come together to find that shared love but continue to dance as two. In that union, both people are separate and yet not separate. Their relationship feeds both their unique individuality and their unity of consciousness.    

Love can open the way to surrendering into oneness. It gets extraordinarily beautiful when there’s no more “me” and “you,” and it becomes just “us.” Taken to a deeper level, when compassion is fully developed, you are not looking at others as “them.” You’re listening and experiencing and letting that intuitive part of you merge with the other person, and you’re feeling their pain or joy or hope or fear in yourself. Then it’s no longer “us” and “them”; it’s just “us.” Practice this in your relationships with others. 

- Ram Dass

Via White Crane Institute \\ RITA MAE BROWN

 This Day in Gay History

November 28

Born
Rita Mae Brown
1944 -

RITA MAE BROWN American writer, born; Best known for her mysteries and other novels (Rubyfruit Jungle), she is also an Emmy-nominated screenwriter. In the 1960s, Brown attended the University of Florida but was expelled; she states that it was for her participation in a civil rights rally. She moved to New York and attended New York University, where she received a degree in classics and English. Later she received another degree in cinematography from the New York School of Visial Arts. She also holds a doctorate in political science from the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C.

In the late 1960s, Brown turned her attention to politics. She became active in the American Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, the Gay Liberation movement and the feminist movement. She cofounded the Student Homophile League and participated in the Stonewall Uprising (pg 243 of the 1997 edition of "Rita Will": "There stood Martha Shelley and I in a sea of rioting Gay men...'Martha, we'd better get the hell out of here.'") in New York City. She took an administrative position with the fledgling National Organization for Women, but angrily resigned in February 1970 over Betty Friedan’s anti-Gay remarks and NOW's attempts to distance itself from Lesbian organizations. She played a leading role in the "Lavender Menace" zap of the Second Congress to Unite Women on May 1, 1970, which protested Friedan's remarks and the exclusion of Lesbians from the women's movement.

In the early 1970s, she became a founding member of The Furies Collective, a Lesbian feminist newspaper collective which held that heterosexuality was the root of all oppression. She is the former girlfriend of tennis player Martina Navratilova, actress and writer Fannie Flagg, socialite Judy Nelson and politician Elaine Noble. Brown enjoys American fox hunting and is master of her Fox Hunt Club. She has also played polo and started the woman-only Blue Ridge Polo Club.

The woman is funny, she’s deadly serious, and you’d better damn well listen up. She’s just like Molly Bolt, the heroine of her semi-autobiographical Rubyfruit Jungle who locks her adoptive mother in the root cellar. She’s a born fighter and doesn’t take any nonsense from anyone. She’d be awfully hard to take if it weren’t for the fact that she’s right in what she says almost all the time. And she says exactly what most people don’t want to hear. Like, for example, “I don’t think there is a ‘Gay lifestyle.’ I think that’s superficial crap all that talk about Gay culture. A couple of restaurants on Castro Street and a couple of magazines do not constitute culture. Michelangelo is culture. Virginia Woolf is culture. So let’s don’t confuse our terms. Wearing earrings is not culture, that’s a fad and it passes. I think we’ve blown superficial characteristics out of proportion…”


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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

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Friday, November 26, 2021

Hollywood's (Gay) China Problem

Via FB

 


Via Daily Dharma: Enlivening Patience

 

Patience can demand the most determined effort, especially when the habits of irritation and anger have built up over a lifetime or more, yet it is enlivened by the sweetest of qualities, such as humor, lightness, and perspective.

—Sarah Kanowski, “Raging Buddha”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via Dhamma Wheel // Undertaking the Commitment to Abstain from Intoxication

 


RIGHT LIVING
Undertaking the Commitment to Abstain from Intoxication
Intoxication is unhealthy. Refraining from intoxication is healthy. (MN 9) What are the imperfections that defile the mind? Negligence is an imperfection that defiles the mind. Knowing that negligence is an imperfection that defiles the mind, a person abandons it. (MN 7) One practices thus: “Others may become negligent through intoxication, but I will abstain from the negligence of intoxication.” (MN 8)
Reflection
An intoxicated mind is a negligent mind, no matter what toxin it is under the influence of. Whether alcohol, drugs, misinformation, bigotry, conceit, illusion, or some other harmful influence, all act to distort the functioning of the mind and obscure its capacity to see clearly, thus contributing directly to suffering. Right living requires an honest assessment of and strong commitment to abstaining from negligence in all its many forms.

Daily Practice
Deliberately undertake the practice of non-intoxication by noticing when you are free of anything that causes negligence. This may not be sustainable for long, given the many things that can diminish our alertness and clarity. But at least be aware of the moments when your mind is alert and clear. Perhaps you can gradually extend those moments, and the skill of right living can grow.

Tomorrow: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
One week from today: Abstaining from Harming Living Beings

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions?
Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Wednesday, November 24, 2021

When Harry met Santa ENG SUB

Via Lion’s Roar \\ Learn the “BASICS” of Insight Meditation

 


Learn the “BASICS” of Insight Meditation
Larry Yang teaches the basics of a simple practice you can do right now: insight meditation.

 

Via Daily Dharma: Meditating Without Goals

 

While it is necessary to be attracted to our practice if we are to develop a strong motivation to do it, it is entirely destructive if that attraction is based on achieving, during the practice, a desired state of mind while excluding others.

—Nigel Wellings, “Are You Practicing Stupid Meditation?”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via Dhamma Wheel \\ Refraining from Frivolous Speech

 

RIGHT SPEECH
Refraining from Frivolous Speech
Frivolous speech is unhealthy. Refraining from frivolous speech is healthy. (MN 9) Abandoning frivolous speech, one refrains from frivolous speech. One speaks at the right time, speaks only what is fact, and speaks about what is good. One speaks what is worthy of being overheard, words that are reasonable, moderate, and beneficial. (DN 1) One practices thus: “Others may speak frivolously, but I shall abstain from frivolous speech.” (MN 8)
Reflection
This guideline for speech can sound more oppressive than it is. We are not all teaching Buddhas, and much of what we say may not be directly contributing to the edification of the world. The call is for us to use speech that is "reasonable, moderate, and beneficial. " This is practical advice to laypeople who will naturally speak of daily affairs but are encouraged to do so in a way that is healthy.

Daily Practice
When you speak, see that your words are weighty and worthwhile. Speak up when people are listening, and refrain from interrupting others. Always speak the truth, and try your best to emphasize what is positive and helpful rather than being overly critical and saying things that would hurt people. You have to be mindful to speak carefully. The practice of mindful speech is worthwhile in its own right and conducive to well-being.

Tomorrow: Reflecting upon Social Action
One week from today: Refraining from False Speech

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions?
Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation \\ Words of Wisdom - November 24, 2021 💌

 
 

From the soul’s point of view, you come to appreciate that each one of us is living out his or her own karma. We interact together, and those interactions are the grist for each other’s mill of awakening. From a personality point of view, you develop judgment, but from the soul’s point of view, you develop appreciation.    

This shift from judging to appreciating — to appreciating yourself and what your karmic predicament is, and who other beings are with their own karma — brings everything into a simple loving awareness. To be free means to open your heart and your being to the fullness of who you are because only when you are resting in the place of unity can you truly honor and appreciate others and the incredible diversity of the universe. 

- Ram Dass -