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Via White Crane Institute // Today's Gay Wisdom

 

Peter Nardi

2018 -

TODAY’S GAY WISDOM

Facebook has redefined and re-contextualized the meaning of the word “friend”.

In issue #73 of White Crane: FRIENDS, we spoke with author Peter M. Nardi.

Nardi is the author of a number of books including Gay Men’s Friendships: Invincible Communities. He is a professor of sociology at Pitzer College/The Claremont Colleges and is the special features coeditor of the journal Sexualities and a member of the editorial board of five other academic journals. We spoke to him about friendships and gay men.

Bo: what first brought you to study friends and friendships?

Peter Nardi: My interest in studying friendship began both personally and academically. In my own life, I noticed how much time I spent with friends instead of family, how important my friendships were (especially compared to many heterosexual men I knew), and how my friendship circle often spoke of us as a family of support. Everyone would talk about how important friends are to gays and lesbians.

But my academic side, as a sociologist, wanted some evidence of this, some data, to show what the role of friendship is in gay men's and lesbians' lives. Also, a colleague of mine was writing an article on men's friendships, and he asked me if I knew of any research on gay men and their friendships. I looked and could find little but anecdotal material, personal testimonials, fiction or poetry, etc., but little empirical research. It seemed to me that while gays spoke of the importance of friendship in their lives, little was done to document this systematically.

Yet, finding this information out would possibly provide many interesting insights into understanding gay communities, gay political movements, and gay identity.

So, with this colleague's help, we developed a survey and gave it out to hundreds of gay men and lesbians. Although we published one article on the entire sample, I took over the survey and expanded it to include interviews with a smaller set of just the gay men. The results of that study were published as a book.

Bo: Well, I'm sure if you asked almost anyone they would tell you their friends were important to them. Were gay people different? And if so how?

Peter: All people tell you that friends are important to them, and they are. Friends provide support and contribute to all people's identity. Just look at how popular the cyber-communities have become (My Space, Friendster, etc.). But for gay people, friendship provides something even more — an identity and a community that often cannot be found in everyday life.

For many heterosexual people, their identity and sense of community come from the media, the neighborhood, their family of origin. For many gay people, a sense of self can only be achieved through their friendship networks, or in a gay neighborhood and community, and only peripherally through the media, family of origin, workplace, etc. We need to construct "families of choice" and create our own support in what sometimes is for many, a non-supportive environment. Think of the young people in school, those rejected by their families, those in workplaces where coming out is not possible, etc.

Forming friendships at work, in the neighborhood, and school is often more difficult for gay people, so the need to find a network of friends becomes mandatory for achieving a healthy identity (and maybe a strong political movement), not optional as it is for many people who can depend on their fellow workers/students, relatives, and spouses for identity support.

Bo: Gay people have been credited (or blamed, depending on your perspective, I suppose) for reinventing relationships and, despite the current campaign for marriage equality, have broadened the definition of what constitutes an "intimate" or "primary relationship." Can they be said to have done the same with "friendships"?

Peter: Yes and No. Phrases like "partner" and "significant other" and the legal changes that have occurred around those phrases — some states recognizing health benefits for non-married partners, registering civil unions, benefits on car insurance, or whatever — can partly be attributed to gay people's work on reinventing romantic relationships. These changes have even in many cases helped heterosexual non-married couples.

But since there are virtually no ceremonies, legal issues, public commemorations related to friendships, etc., there does not appear to be such dramatic equivalent changes in the meaning of friendship. Yet, how heterosexual men publicly and privately express their same-sex friendships may have had some shifts over time. Whether it's due to how gay people do friendship cannot be easily determined. We have seen dramatic shifts in what we allow heterosexual men to do with their friends.

Consider the "metrosexual" idea of straight men being more open with their friends. And look at other shifts in what is now allowable for men, like hugging each other in public as Clinton and Gore did when they were elected, sports figures crying over some event, Tony Soprano revealing his vulnerabilities to a female therapist! Something has shifted in the range of behaviors we now allow under the label "masculine" that just weren't there before the visibility of gay people in popular culture and public spaces. I'd like to think this is partly due to gay men pushing the boundaries of what it means to be masculine and how this is played out in families of friends.

Dan: Many gay men retain deep friendships with former lovers. What did your research uncover about this unique dynamic to gay friendships? And in a related note, did you explore the possible sexual dynamics of friendships among gay men, what some call, “friends with privileges?”

Peter: One of our earlier surveys asked who gay men's and lesbians' best friend were — as opposed to close friends or casual ones. Pick one best friend and tell us about him or her. Interestingly, twice as many lesbians (34%) said their best friend was an ex-lover compared to gay men (17%). But we also asked how many had sex with their close or casual friends. Gay men were much more likely to say they did. As people's networks of friends expand, they are less likely to report having sex with the majority of their friends, but in the earliest years of coming out and becoming part of a community, many reported that sex or dating situations were how they established a set of friends.

Some reported that they continued to have sex with friends, but many said that once they became good friends, the sex stopped. However, others reported "fuck buddies" — people they had sex with regularly but were not considered part of their friendship circle, while others occasionally reported having sex with some of their friends — what today may be termed "friends with privileges." In fact, I heard so many different variations of this while interviewing the gay men in my book that I needed to diagram it for myself. This visual aid was so helpful, I put it in the book in an entire chapter about sex and friendship, and this flowchart of sex and friendship has proven to be a fun and helpful discussion item among gay men when talking about sex and friendship.

The conclusion is that it is very difficult to make an overall statement about all gay men when it comes to sex and friends — some continue to have sex with friends, others don't; some say sex was the main introduction to most of their friends; others say it was for only a few of their friends; many say there is an incest taboo of sorts — sex would ruin their friendship, so hands off once they invoke that dreaded phrase "let's just be friends."

Dan: This research calls to mind that lovely Whitman poem in which he speaks of building the "city of friends" which speaks of a new democratic form of camaraderie and egalitarianism. Do you think the way gay men "do friendship" points to an ideal way of relating? Would you say there are insights gay men have to offer to the culture around friendship?

Peter: I always was moved by Whitman's Calamus poems from Leaves of Grass and so subtitled my book with a Whitman-based phrase of "invincible communities." He talks about a city of friends "invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the world." To me this period in late 19th century U.S., before Freudian complexes were released, before the psycho-pathologizing of homosexuality took root, men were allowed to embrace in a "city of friends" and form an invincible community against attacks — what a wonderful metaphor for gays and lesbians when the dominant cultures attack us.

This poem is so wonderful I end my book with it. We were forced to create our own invincible communities and we did so with political movements, gay neighborhoods and infrastructures, clubs and associations, etc. This is when our friendships differ from others — ours are a necessity in order to survive the attacks. Perhaps all attacked and marginalized groups need friendships, so we are not unique with this. But we created them, especially when AIDS became an issue. Imagine the response to this virus if we didn't have communities of friends, organizations, etc.

Look at how difficult it has been for people of color to organize against AIDS without strong communities. We need them, they're not optional. We can't have community without friendship. The person really becomes the political through friendship. I'd like to think, in a somewhat romantic way, that others can learn from us and what we have done with our friendships. And as I said earlier, I'd like to think we have had some impact on the media, on culture, on neighborhoods, on politics, in the way "masculinity" is now defined and how it has changed for heterosexual men as well.

Bo: Well, I think it's been difficult for Black Gay communities to organize around HIV because they have necessarily turned to the Black church, that historically has an entirely different function in the African-American community than it does in White America and is the response is then necessarily freighted with the Judeo-Christian morality. But you say "the person becomes political through friendships"...can you elaborate?

Peter: The personal becomes the political is an old statement from the 1970s feminist movements but its roots can probably be traced back to the great philosopher Aristotle, who wrote some important work on friendship, and said that friendship consists in community and seems to hold political states together. In developing a network of friends, gay people learn about our collective history, achieve an intimacy with others who share many of our experiences related to our identity, and thus develop a positive gay identity and a strong sense of community.

The history of the gay social movement is the history of people getting their friends to attend meetings, participate in marches, organize for social change. These are the sources of our friends as well. When this community is attacked — symbolically, legally, maybe even physically — many of us rally our friends and communities to take action. I'm not saying that everyone is politicized through friendship — in fact, I wonder how many really are today. Why aren't our friends rallying us now to fight the continued discrimination, or to do something about problematic drug abuse with crystal meth, or making noise about inequality?

But certainly, just the act of being friends with gays and lesbians, achieving a gay identity through them, and forming a sense of a gay community of shared consciousness are the necessary building blocks needed for successful social movements in the fight against inequality. Our personal identities and lives have become politicized by politicians, but our issues are about changing the dominant political structures as we change our private consciousness to a more positive and accepting gay identity.

Bo: I think it's one thing to say "the personal is political" and friends are 'personal' ergo political. It's another thing to say "a person becomes political through their friends." Are you saying that it's the same thing? It almost seems to be a chicken and egg issue....

Peter: It's difficult to know which comes first, but just being open, coming out, and developing a social network of gay friends is a political act in itself, especially in certain parts of the country. But translating those friendships networks into political action is not always a guaranteed outcome. Many may just end up partying on the circuit or settling into quiet relationships in some rural area, far from the political scene.

Whether we see these as political actions in and of themselves can be debated, but certainly as a result of these contacts, many learn about social movements, protest marches, gay organizations, and start to contribute financially or in other ways to these groups. I can't tell you how many become politicized in this sense. But certainly the potential is there and only there as a result of gay friendship networks.

Bo: And it sort of leads to another question...do gay and lesbian people have more kinds of friendships than heterosexuals? It seems clear that gay men, for example, are more able to cross social barriers and become friends across those social and economic barriers through sex.

Peter: In general, people's friends tend to look like one another, in terms of gender, social class, age, religion, education, ethnicity/race, etc. And my own research seemed to reinforce this. However, certain gay spaces — neighborhoods, organizations, bars, baths, etc. — can attract a wider range of people in terms of those social characteristics and the potential for people meeting others different from themselves is greatly increased for gay people. Yet so many of these gay spaces are themselves often differentiated by these social barriers. Some bars are more middle class, attending gay benefits costs money and attracts more upper middle class gays, joining gay organizations may be more suited to some educational levels than to others (gay lawyers, dentists, or whatever).

Historically, many bars discriminated against people of color, resulting in, say, Latino bars or a more working class ones. Crossing social barriers might occur in anonymous sexual encounters or public sex spaces, but when it comes to friends and relationships, gay people tend to hang out with others like themselves. This is a pattern, so it's not to be taken as applying to everyone of course.

Bo: I wonder if that is perhaps one of the, if not unintended, at least unexpected consequences of being freer as gay people, more "out"? I think back in the day when people had to meet more secretly, and there were fewer places to meet, perhaps that idea of friendships crossing social barriers might have been more true. What is the most surprising or unexpected thing you've found in your work on friends and friendships?

Peter: Given all that I heard about how gay friends are like families, or families of choice, I was surprised at how few people actually used family terminology when describing their friends. Part of this may be due to a greater openness among gay people and their integrating their gay lives with their heterosexual friends and family. In earlier times, gay people had to create surrogate families of friends to spend time with during holidays or in everyday life, often because they were ostracized from their families of origin.

While this is still true for many young gay people, I was surprised at how many said they would bring gay friends or partners to their blood families' homes, or combine straight and gay friends in their activities. Some of this may be due to my more middle class, urban, educated sample. I did not have many rural or small town gay people completing the survey, or people rejected by their families and relatives. But I really do think it is reflective of a changing world for newer post-Stonewall generations. Gay people's friends are "like" family, but maybe not truly replacements for their actual families of origin and kin.

The other surprising finding was how varied gay men were in telling stories about sexuality and friendships. I think I talked about this earlier, but many would refuse to have sex with friends, while others would continue to, all raising issues of the complexity of the meanings about sex and friendship. I didn't quite expect the diversity and range of stories among a relatively similar group of men responding to my survey. The variations resulted in a flowchart I created to make sense of all this.

Bo: Harry Hay suggested that gay men had an inherently different form of relating that he called "subject-Subject" in which he suggested, briefly, that Gay men had a different capacity in our relationships because we were relating to one another as "like beings" or equals as opposed to an "other." Are you familiar with these ideas and would you comment with respect to friendships?

Peter: I met Harry a few times and heard his ideas about how gay men relate to each other, although I couldn't specifically describe his 'subject-Subject' of 'like beings.' I suppose in some ways he is saying what I have suggested about the invincible community of gay men, who share the coming out process, perhaps experiencing what it means to pass or to be assumed to be straight and the impact that has on us. We share oppression, identity-confusion, and being different or 'other.' But I'm not so sure it would be much different from what any racial or class minority might experience, the bonding black men may feel for example — after all they refer to each other as "brothers to brother" to use the phrase from Tongues Untied and the great work of Essex Hemphill and Marlon Riggs.

And there are many differences among gay men that make me question whether all gay men really share a 'like being' that has any real world effect — do upper class, white Log Cabin gay Republicans really relate as "like beings" to a poor, rural, gay Latino man, for example? I'm usually leery of essentialist statements that suggest shared similarities that really don't have visible impact on how daily lives are lived.

Bo: You speak of a "range of stories" about the complexity of meanings about sex and friendship. Can you elaborate? ?)

Peter: I think I talked earlier about the different stories gay men talked about sex and friendships. Many reported that sex or dating situations were how they established a set of friends. They meet someone, are attracted, and try to establish a dating or sexual relationship.

A few of these continue on to become romantic partners, some end the sexual relationship and the friendship continues, while for others, the friendship ends when the sex does. A few said that they continued to have sex with friends, but this is not a typical response I got. However, others reported "fuck buddies" — people they had sex with regularly but who were not considered part of their inner friendship circle.

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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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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Action: Reflecting upon Mental Action

 

RIGHT ACTION
Reflecting Upon Mental Action

However the seed is planted, in that way the fruit is gathered. Good things come from doing good deeds, bad things come from doing bad deeds. (SN 11.10) What is the purpose of a mirror? For the purpose of reflection. So too mental action is to be done with repeated reflection. (MN 61) When you are doing an action with the mind, reflect upon that same mental action thus: “Does this action I am doing with the mind lead to both my own affliction and the affliction of another?” If, upon reflection, you know that it does, then stop doing it; if you know that it does not, then continue. (MN 61)

Reflection

Just as you can train yourself to be aware of the inbreath and outbreath moment by moment as you breathe, so also you can learn to be aware of your mind both taking in information and responding outwardly to events. It is more difficult, because the mind is subtle, but the principle is the same. Here we are being asked to take some responsibility for what unfolds in our mind, steering it toward what is healthy.

Daily Practice

Notice the texture of thoughts as they arise and pass away in the mind. Be aware of them as events occurring and fading, rather than focusing on the content of the thought. The mind is a process and can be carefully observed. Notice also the quality of this activity, whether it is laced with ill will or aversion or selfishness, or if it is accompanied by good will, kindness, and concern for others. Gently guide your mind toward the good.

Tomorrow: Abstaining from Misbehaving Among Sensual Pleasures
One week from today: Reflecting upon Social Action

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

Via Daily Dharma: A Clean Relationship with Karma

 When we talk about “cleansing karma,” we sometimes have this illusion that we’re going to wash it all off and it’s going to go away. But what we really do is cleanse our relationship with it... We drop our old ways of responding and our old traps of habit energy. 

A talk by Kyogen Carlson, edited by Sallie Jiko Tisdale, “When Ghosts Come Back to Haunt Us”

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - June 29, 2022 💌

 
 

When you stand back far enough, all of your life experiences, independent of what they are, are all learning experiences. From a human point of view, you do your best to optimize pleasure, happiness, all the nice things in life. From your soul’s point of view you take what comes down the pike. So from the soul’s perspective, you work to get what you want and then if you don’t ‘ah, so, I’ll work with what I’ve got.’

- Ram Dass -

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Speech: Refraining from Harsh Speech

 

RIGHT SPEECH
Refraining from Harsh Speech

Harsh speech is unhealthy. Refraining from harsh speech is healthy. (MN 9) Abandoning harsh speech, one refrains from harsh speech. One speaks words that are gentle, pleasing to the ear, and affectionate, words that go to the heart, are courteous, and are agreeable to many. (DN 1) One practices thus: “Others may speak harshly, but I shall abstain from harsh speech.” (MN 8) How does there come to be insistence on local language and overriding of normal usage? In different localities they call the same thing by different words. So whatever they call it in such and such a locality, one speaks accordingly, firmly adhering to that word and insisting: “Only this is correct; anything else is wrong.” (MN 139)

Reflection

One way of refraining from harsh speech is to be adaptable to different modes of speech and not insist on your own particular way of stating things. In ancient India the Buddha moved from one region to another and encountered local variations of dialect. Today also we often move in different circles and encounter different populations, and it would help facilitate effective communication if we remained flexible in our speech.

Daily Practice

Try as a practice reframing your own thoughts and words in the vernacular of another. Today this seems especially important. Each person and each community has their own particular way of perceiving and expressing things, and we can only learn from each other if we are open to different modes of speech. Notice when you restate something said by another, perhaps diminishing their voice, and learn not to do this.

Tomorrow: Reflecting upon Mental Action
One week from today: Refraining from Frivolous Speech

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Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Daily Dharma: Living Happiness

 Because living our real best life is tethered to our intention to be happy and free and to help everyone else be happy and free, we don’t have to feel ashamed, regretful, or guilty, even when we make mistakes or forget our blessings. We can learn from our actions and start again and again. 

Kimberly Brown, “Living Your Real Best Life”

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Genuine friends

 

Via Tumblr // The Four Noble Truths for a 4 yr Old

 

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Intention: Cultivating Appreciative Joy

RIGHT INTENTION
Cultivating Appreciative Joy

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 appreciative joy, for when you develop meditation on appreciative joy, any discontent will be abandoned. (MN 62)  The purpose of appreciative joy is to ward off discontent. (Vm 9.97)

Reflection

It is so easy to feel discontent. There are lots of things, both within and around us, with which we can find fault. But the mind does not have to go there. It may do so on its own, but we can intervene and change the focus of our mind. Choose to turn your attention to all the things within and around you about which you can feel good. Seek out goodness and you will find it. This is a practice in itself.

Daily Practice

The next time you experience discontent, deliberately cultivate appreciative joy—gladness at the good fortune of others—as an antidote. Everything need not always be about us. Other people deserve to feel happy and have good fortune, and even if we ourselves are in the doldrums for some reason we can vicariously experience the well-being of others. Appreciative joy is always accessible; we merely need to reach for it.

Tomorrow: Refraining from Harsh Speech
One week from today: Cultivating Equanimity

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#DhammaWheel

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

 

Via Daily Dharma: Eyes as Mirrors

 While sitting zazen, but also when we go back out into the world, our eyes can be mirrors, as we see all the world’s struggle and chaos. The endless separate things and scenes of this world are all, always, the mirror.

Jundo Cohen, “Mind as Mirror”

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Via White Crane Institute // Edward Carpenter

 

Died

Edward Carpenter and George Merrill

1929 -

EDWARD CARPENTER, English poet and Gay pioneer, died (b: 1844); Edward Carpenter was a pioneering socialist and radical prophet of a new age of fellowship in which social relations would be transformed by a new spiritual consciousness. The way he lived his life, perhaps even more than his extensive writings, was the essence of his message.

It is perhaps not surprising that his reputation faded quickly after his death, as he lived much of his life modestly spreading his message by personal contact and example rather than by major literary works or through a national political career. He has been described as having that unusual combination of qualities: charisma with modesty.

His ideas became immensely influential during the early years of the Socialist movement in Britain: perhaps Carpenter's most widely remembered legacy to the Socialist and Co-operative movements was his anthem England Arise!

A leading figure in late 19th and early 20th century Britain, he was instrumental in the foundation of the Fabian Society and the Labor Party. A poet and writer, he was a close friend of Walt Whitman and Rabindranath Tagore, corresponding with many famous figures such as Isadora Duncan, Havelock Ellis, Mahatma Ganghi, Jack London.William Morris and John Ruskin among many others.

But it is his writings on the subject of homosexuality and his open espousal of this identity that makes him unique. If you are unfamiliar with Carpenter, find him…read him. He is unquestionably one of the formative, foundational Gay philosophers in the late 19th and early 20th century. His influence was widespread at the time, and is no less innovative and profound, today.

His important writings include:

• • Towards Democracy (1883)
  • England's Ideal (1887)
  • Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure (1889; reissued 1920)
  • Homogenic love and its place in a free society (1894)
  • Love's Coming of Age (1896)
  • Days with Walt Whitman (1906)
  • Iolaus — anthology of friendship (editor, 1908)
  • The Intermediate Sex: a Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women (1908)
  • The Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folk (1914)
  • My Days and Dreams (autobiography, 1916)
  • Pagan & Christian Creeds: their origin and meaning (1920)

A strong advocate of sexual freedom, living in a Gay community near Sheffield, he had a profound influence on both D.H. Lawrence and E.M. Forster. On his return from India in 1891, he met George Merrill, a working class man also from Sheffield, and the two men struck up a relationship, eventually moving in together in 1898. Merrill had been raised in the slums of Sheffield and had no formal education.

Two men of different classes living together as a couple was almost unheard of in England in the 1890s, a fact made all the more extraordinary by the hysteria about alternative sexualities generated by the Oscar Wilde trial of 1895 and the Criminal Law Amendment Bill passed a decade earlier "outlawing all forms of male homosexual contact". But their relationship endured and they remained partners for the rest of their lives. Their relationship not only defied Victorian sexual mores but also the highly stratified British class system. Their partnership, in many ways, reflected Carpenter's cherished conviction that same-sex love had the power to subvert class boundaries.

It was his belief that at sometime in the future, Gay people would be the cause of radical social change in the social conditions of man. Carpenter remarks in his work "The Intermediate Sex":

"Eros is a great leveler. Perhaps the true Democracy rests, more firmly than anywhere else, on a sentiment which easily passes the bounds of class and caste, and unites in the closest affection the most estranged ranks of society. It is noticeable how often Uranians of good position and breeding are drawn to rougher types, as of manual workers, and frequently very permanent alliances grow up in this way, which although not publicly acknowledged have a decided influence on social institutions, customs and political tendencies". p.114-115

(Note: The term “uranian", referring to a passage from Plato's Symposium, was often used at the time to describe someone who would be termed "Gay" nowadays. Carpenter is counted among the Uranians himself.)

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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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Why Is Homophobia on the Rise?

 

Via Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation // Support for our LGBTQIA+ Friends and Allies

Practitioner Resources

Support for our
LGBTQIA+ Friends and Allies

 

To support our LBTQIA+ community and our aspiration to deepen our understanding of interbeing, particularly around questions of sexual orientation and gender identity, here are several helpful resources:

• Dharma talk by Sister Boi Nghiem at a Wake Up Earth Retreat last year about the importance of supporting the LGBTQIA+ community. In a section of the talk on gender inclusivity (around minute 41), she says: “Our society has hurt you enough. You seek to come to the Plum Village tradition to find peace, love, and refuge.”

• Sister The Nghiem (Sister True Vow) Dharma talk: Given at Blue Cliff Monastery in 2018 during the LGBTQIA+Wake Up retreat, “For a future to be possible.”

• In this article from the Plum Village Newsletter, Brother Chan Troi Bao Tang (Brother Treasure) explains the value and benefit of the Rainbow Family: communities of LGBTQIA+ people within the Plum Village tradition.

• Plum Village App-Rainbow Family, a special section within the mobile app, includes a collection of Dharma talks and guided meditations from and in support of the LGBTQIA+ community, allies, and friends.

Via Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation // The Raft: Be a Beautiful Lotus Flower

“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. When you are born a lotus flower, be a beautiful lotus flower, don't try to be a magnolia flower.” 

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power

Via Daily Dharma: The Constellation of Mind

 Right understanding (and right functioning) of the mind does not come from thinking, but from actively and attentively observing the complex constellation of energies and activities of mind.

Stuart Smithers, “Minding the Storehouse”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right View: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering

RIGHT VIEW
Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering

What is the cessation of suffering? It is the remainderless fading away and ceasing, the giving up, relinquishing, letting go, and rejecting of craving. (MN 9) When one knows and sees feeling tone as it actually is, then one is not attached to feeling tone. When one abides unattached, one is not infatuated, and one’s craving is abandoned. One’s bodily and mental troubles are abandoned, and one experiences bodily and mental well being. (MN 149)

Reflection

Feeling tones, the raw sensations of pleasure and pain, are not in themselves a problem. The problem comes from attachment to them—the craving for good feelings to persist and bad feelings to stop that naturally arises in response to those feelings. Craving is the cause of suffering, not feeling. The key challenge is how to separate the two: How can we experience both positive and negative feelings without giving rise to craving?

Daily Practice

The short answer to that question is mindfulness. Mindfulness allows us to know and see feeling tone as it actually is, in which case, the texts tell us, we will not be attached to it. Clear awareness is one thing, and attachment is something else. They cannot occur simultaneously. Practice knowing and seeing feeling as it actually is by regarding it with equanimity. This is what is happening now, and this is how it actually feels.

Tomorrow: Cultivating Appreciative Joy
One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering

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

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.