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Sunday, July 5, 2026
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation \\\ Words of Wisdom - July 5, 2026 🌞
Via White Crane Institute \\\ JEAN COCTEAU.
1889 -
JEAN COCTEAU, French writer (d. 1963); At ten minutes to four in the morning, just outside Paris, Jean Cocteau was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Eighteen years later, according to Harold Acton, this innovator of the arts took the pulse of each of the nine Muses and prescribed the exact regimen she had to follow. Fifty-four years later, Cocteau died in 1963 at the age of 74, after 58 years of kaleidoscopic activity in the arts.
The astounding variety of his works, as poet, novelist, playwright, and filmmaker; and the contradictions and paradoxes of his private life, the charm and the nastiness, the generosity and the egotism, the poise and the anguish of an opium-addicted homosexual who was equally welcome in the aristocratic drawing rooms of Paris and the raffish waterfront bars of Toulon, and who climaxed an avant-garde life by entering the ultra-conservative precincts of the Academie Française—all this makes him impossible to summarize in a short space. [Fortunately Cocteau has been well-served in a brilliant biography by Francis Steegmuller, which should be read not only for a wonderful retelling of Cocteau’s extraordinary life, but for its introduction to the arts and culture of the modern age, Cocteau’s age.)
Still, some anecdote should be told here that at least, in part, gives some sense of the spirit of the man. Here is one that does not appear in the Steegmuller biography: In the days before the puritanical Yvonne De Gaulle moved the legendary Paris pissoirs, one of the many customs that sprang up regarding polite pissoir manners was known as the “privilège du cape.” This custom allowed a Frenchman who could not find a convenient pissoir to approach a gendarme and ask him to extend his cape so that he could take a leak behind it. One of Cocteau’s favorite amusements was to choose a handsome young cop and pretend he was drunk. With luck he could get his trouser buttons undone by the helpful gendarme—and possibly more. Uncooperative victims wound up with wet shoes.
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
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Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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Via Daily Dharma: Understanding Cause and Effect
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Via FB \\ Buddhism, Zen, Tao & Meditation
Dhammapada | Chapter 10
Verse 129
All beings fear punishment. All beings fear death.
Seeing others as you see yourself, do not kill and do not cause others to kill.
Verse 130
All beings fear punishment. Life is dear to all beings.
Seeing others as you see yourself, do not harm and do not cause others to harm.
Verse 131
One who seeks happiness for oneself by causing suffering to other beings, who also seek happiness, will not find happiness after death.
Verse 132
One who seeks happiness for oneself without causing suffering to other beings, who also seek happiness, will find happiness after death.
Verse 133
Do not speak harshly to anyone. Those who are spoken to harshly may answer in the same way.
Angry words bring pain, and retaliation may come back to you.
Verse 134
If you remain silent (calm and peaceful) like a broken bell that no longer rings, then you have reached peace and no conflict remains within you.
Verse 135
As a cowherd drives cattle to pasture with a stick, so old age and death drive forward the lives of all beings.
Verse 136
When a fool does evil, he does not understand its consequences.
Later, his own actions burn him like fire burns the one who touches it.
Verse 137
Whoever harms innocent, harmless, and peaceful people will quickly meet one of these ten results:
Verse 138
Severe pain, loss, injury to the body, or serious illness;
Verse 139
Mental suffering, trouble from rulers, or serious accusations;
Verse 140
Loss of relatives, destruction of wealth, or fire destroying one's home. And when the body dies, such a person may be reborn in a state of suffering.
Verse 141
Neither going naked, nor matted hair, nor dirt on the body, nor fasting, nor sleeping on the ground, nor dust on the body, nor sitting motionless can purify a person who has not overcome doubt.
Verse 142
Even if someone wears fine clothes, if they are peaceful, disciplined, self-controlled, truthful, pure in conduct, and do not harm living beings, that person is truly noble and spiritual.
Verse 143
Rare in this world is the person who is restrained by conscience and humility, and who avoids blame as a well-trained horse avoids the whip.
Verse 144
Like a well-trained horse touched by the whip, be energetic and alert. Through faith, virtue, effort, concentration, and wisdom, you can overcome suffering.
Verse 145
Irrigators guide water where they want it to flow.
Arrow makers shape arrows.
Carpenters shape wood.
The wise shape themselves.
Dhammapada | Chapter 10
Danda Vagga
Punishment
17 Verses, 129-145
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