Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Via GBF // "Practicing with Suffering" – JD Doyle
Another dharma talk has been added to the GBF website and podcast:
Rather than constantly trying to escape discomfort, can we engage with suffering as a gateway to insight and connection?
In this talk, JD Doyle helps us turn directly toward the ever-present reality of suffering in our lives. Drawing from Joy Harjo’s poetry and personal anecdotes, JD invites us to reflect on how we orient ourselves in a world that often feels destabilizing. They compare the cycle of samsara to bumper cars at an amusement park, where we continually crash into each other through our reactive habits. JD explains that instead of merely surviving these crashes, we can choose to investigate them with compassion and wisdom.
JD skillfully unpacks the Buddhist concept of dukkha—commonly translated as suffering—by outlining its three types:
Dukkha-dukkha – Direct physical or emotional pain (e.g., illness, heartbreak, mental anguish).
Viparinama-dukkha – Suffering from impermanence (e.g., things changing against our will).
Sankhara-dukkha – The suffering embedded in conditioned existence, shaped by past actions and systems (like societal structures or inherited trauma).
They emphasize that wise reflection helps us meet these forms of suffering not with blame or avoidance, but with inquiry and compassion. JD also highlights the importance of community—how even crises, like a scary moment on a flight, can bring strangers together as a spontaneous sangha. Ultimately, they call us to meet suffering not with fear but with courage—a word rooted in the heart—and to help others find their way through the dark.
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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Speech: Refraining from Harsh Speech
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Via Daily Dharma: Luminous Openness
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Via White Crane Institute \\ ALFRED EDWARD HOUSMAN
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| This Day in Gay History | |||
April 30 | |||
 1936 - ALFRED EDWARD HOUSMAN, English poet died (b. 1859); A. E. Housman's poetry is inextricably rooted in homosexual experience and consciousness and is also a significant reflector of gay history. In 1942 A.E. Houseman’s brother, Laurence Housman, deposited an essay entitled "A. E. Housman's 'De Amicitia'" in the British Library, with the proviso that it was not to be published for 25 years. The essay discussed A. E. Housman's homosexuality and his love for Moses Jackson. Given the conservative nature of the times it is not surprising that there was no unambiguous autobiographical statement about Housman's sexuality during his life. It is certainly present in A Shropshire Lad, for instance #30 Others, I am not the first / have willed more mischief than they durst', in which 'Fear contended with desire', and in #44, in which he commends the suicide, where 'Yours was not an ill for mending'... for 'Men may come to worse than dust', their 'Souls undone, undoing others': he has died 'Undishonoured, clear of danger, / Clean of guilt..'. More Poems was more explicit, as in no. 31 about Jackson 'Because I liked you better / Than suits a man to say', in which his feelings of love break his friendship, and must be carried silently to the grave. His poem 'Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?', written after the trial of Oscar Wilde, addressed more general societal injustice towards homosexuality. In the poem the prisoner is suffering 'for the colour of his hair', a natural, given attribute which - in a clearly coded reference to homosexuality - is reviled as 'nameless and abominable' (recalling the legal phrase 'peccatum horribile, inter christianos non nominandum', 'the horrible sin, not to be named amongst Christians'). | ||
|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8 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! |8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8 |
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Via Daily Dharma: Succeeding Together
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