Via Daily Dharma: Transform Life Through Attention

 The universe doesn’t need to feel like a cold place, indifferent to our presence. As Dogen puts it in the Shobogenzo, “mountains belong to the people who love them.”

Mike Gillis, “The Kindness of Joe Pera”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via Ram Dass, Love Serve Remember // Ram Dass, Love Serve Remember

 

Ram Dass on Bearing the Unbearable

If you don’t use the part of the mind that is the intuitive heart-mind, if you don’t cultivate it and use it, you’re just left in a reactive kind of puppetry.

It’s only when the mind, the awareness, draws back that you have a sense of the gestalt – you see the whole thing, and then there is nothing in you pushing it away or grabbing at it.

In order to be able to cultivate that level of awareness, you have to finally come to terms with denial, because otherwise the closing of the heart to protect from despair is too much. To that extent you are not able to work with what is, and there is a part of you that is locked in, closed off from the universe, and so you’re saying, “I wanna be everything. We are all one except for this or that. But that’s too horrible. I can’t bear that.”

What the game is about is bearing the unbearable. - Ram Dass

Read more: https://www.ramdass.org/bearing-the-unbearable/

Via Academe Today

 

THE REVIEW | OPINION

Our Students Don’t Need Identitarian Paternalism

By Blake Smith

Colleges have co-opted queer mentorship.

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Living: Abstaining from Taking What is Not Given

 

RIGHT LIVING
Undertaking the Commitment to Abstain from Taking What is Not Given

Taking what is not given is unhealthy. Refraining from taking what is not given is healthy. (MN 9) Abandoning the taking of what is not given, one abstains from taking what is not given; one does not take by way of theft the wealth and property of others. (MN 41) One practices thus: “Others may take what is not given, but I will abstain from taking what is not given.” (MN 8) On tasting a flavor with the tongue, one does not grasp at its signs and features. Since if one left the tongue faculty unguarded, unwholesome states of covetousness and grief might intrude, one practices the way of its restraint, one guards the tongue faculty, one undertakes the restraint of the tongue faculty. (MN 51)

Reflection

The precept against stealing, phrased here as taking what is not given, protects us from ethical misconduct and from unhealthy mind states such as greed and covetousness. On a more subtle level, every time we go beyond the given data of sense experience we are in a sense taking more than is given, which can be seen as a form of stealing. It can be challenging to be with what is without mental proliferation, but it is worthwhile.

Daily Practice

See if you can train yourself to be aware of the raw texture of sensory input without looking beyond what is given in experience and trying to take more. The Buddha often urged his followers, “Train yourself thus: In the tasting there will only be what is tasted,” nothing added or taken away. This injunction is also in the mindfulness instruction: “Be just aware, just mindful, that there is flavor, without clinging to anything in the world.”

Tomorrow: Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States
One week from today: Abstaining from Misbehaving Among Sensual Pleasures

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

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via White Crane Institute // Archetype of the Double By Mark Thompson

Today's Gay Wisdom

2017 -

TODAY'S GAY WISDOM

From issue #48 of White Crane, The Shadow

Archetype of the Double

By Mark Thompson

Queer eros holds multiple purposes in our lives — pedagogic, religious, creative, even altruistic — beyond the near-meaningless context it’s been assigned. No matter how it’s dealt with, being Gay must certainly encompass more than whom we choose to have sex with. We’re not different because of what we do in bed. The difference comes from what’s happening under our skins, not the sheets. A psyche-based paradigm of Gay nature puts homosexuality in a new light. To be Gay, as currently defined, gives us a limited place to stand in the world and a lever with which to somewhat move it. But an understanding of our lives stemming from psychological mindfulness permits a much better view of society’s queer men as potential healers, soul guides, and culture makers for all people.

There is a wealth of archetypal forces residing within us; as many, one might say, as there are gods in the heavens. Some archetypes can be literally imagined, such as the Questing Hero or the Wise Old Man. (In Western culture, major archetypes are seen in the personae of ancient deities, on tarot cards, or in the image of certain pop icons.) But others are representational of more abstract images and ideas, like Self or Individuation, which are known as archetypes of transformation.

Some archetypes are widely experienced in Western culture (the Senex, or Judging Father, is one). But other archetypes are more acutely felt, for reasons of biological or social inheritance, within individual minds. Archetypes of the Same or Double, the Wounded Healer, Divine Chi ld, Lunar Phallos, and Trickster are especially ascendant and at work in the psyches of Gay men today. I believe the fundamental basis of being queer is an archetypal matrix, or inner constellation, characteristic of those who have been so labeled. This biologically determined psychic structure is further organized according to the vicissitudes of one’s personal and collective upbringing.

Because these archetypes contain energetic forces vital to challenge and change — necessary to the discovery of new ideas and modes of being, but revolutionary in that they upset the established order — individuals acting out the contents of these archetypes are shunned and suppressed. Recognizing this helps us to see how certain capacities of the soul could be assigned as “Gay” throughout time; their value, adaptation, and even survival contingent on the specific cultural milieu in which they’re perceived. Seen from this vantage, being Gay is more about what we do — our social role and function—than about what and how we’ve been sexually labeled. It is a subjective, multidimensional view of same-sex love, not a further justification. After al l the damage that’s been done, what recourse do we have but sublimity?

In way s both covert and blatant, a large percentage of us are soul-wounded early in life. We know this hurt better than any lover. And so we wonder: Are we damaged due to too much love from one parent and not enough from the other? Despite the rhetoric of Gay pride, may be there really is something “abnormal” about being homosexual. Then again, perhaps there’s nothing wrong at all except for society’s prejudice. Whatever the reason for rejection, is our wounding a curse or a spiritual occasion? Maybe it’s an opportunity to take the road less traveled. Because a false self and its sensibility of shame has been implanted in our souls, not many have been able to see clear enough to answer these questions. That is why striving to create an autonomous awareness is crucial. As someone who assiduously tended to the wounds of his own soul, some of Jung’s insights about same-sex love hold value for us today. For it was he who finally grasped the one truth essential to any Gay person: Our homosexuality has a meaning peculiar to us, and us alone. Taking the downward tumble into our own depths demands that we become conscious of that meaning.

Archetype of the Sames

The archetype of queer love itself is the Double. What inquisitive Gay boys seek is an unfailing mirror in which to see themselves. But what sensitive Gay men desire is the ideal companion with whom they may share that reflection. So we search for someone just like us, a twin or double self. As an archetype of sames, the Double is the source of democracy, justice, and equality in the world, transcending boundaries of age, class, and nationality. This is what Walt Whitman implied when he talked about “adhesive” love, one celebrating “the need of comrades.”

The Double is one of the most important and ascendant elements within a Gay male psyche. We feel its presence erotically, and project it — in ways both direct and subliminal — on the men we encounter and the work we do in the  world.

It is the wellspring of our creativity and endurance; it is the very root, in fact, of our modern Gay identity. Men who do not regard themselves as homosexual experience this archetype, too. For them the Double is not as prominently situated in the anatomy of the soul, or else its libidinal charge has been devalued and contained in hollow ritual, or even made taboo. For these reasons, the Double is one of the most thwarted archetypes in modern Western society, having been perverted from the enabling of loving comradeship to purposes of competition, envy , and war.

Mark Thompson was author of many books that have influenced the Gay cultural wisdom movement. Among these are Gay Body: A Journey through Shadow to Self, from which this is excerpted and Gay Spirit: Myth & Meaning (White Crane Books). He was a regular contributor to White Crane and served on the White Crane Board. He is deeply missed.

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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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