President Trump greets talk show host Sean Hannity at a 2018 rally in Cape Girardeau, Mo.
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
Via Daily Dharma: Connection Between Mind and Body
If
proper attention is not given to sensations, then we are not going to
the deepest levels of the mind. The deepest level of the mind, according
to Buddha, is constantly in contact with body sensations.
—Interview with S. N. Goenka by Helen Tworkov, “Superscience”
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Monday, August 24, 2020
Via White Crane Institute // This Day in Gay History: STEPHEN JOHN FRY
August 24Born  Stephen Fry
1957 -
STEPHEN JOHN FRY is an English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist born on this date. With Hugh Laurie, he is half of the comic double act Fry and Laurie, who starred in Jeeves and Wooster. Fry's acting roles include a Golden Globe–nominated lead performance in the film Wilde, portraying Oscar Wilde, Melchett in the BBC series Blackadder, the title character in the television series Kingdom, a recurring guest role as Dr Gordon Wyatt on the crime series Bones, and as Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V for Vendetta. He has also written and presented several documentary series, including the Emmy Award–winning Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, which saw him explore his bipolar disorder, and the travel series Stephen Fry in America. He was also the long-time host of the BBC television quiz show OI, with his tenure lasting from 2003 to 2016. Besides working in television, Fry has contributed columns and articles for newspapers and magazines and written four novels and three volumes of autobiography, Moab is My Washpot, The Fry Chronicles and More Fool Me. He also appears frequently on BBC Radio4, starring in the comedy series Absolute Power, being a frequent guest on panel games such as Just A Minute, and acting as chairman during one series of I'm Sorry I haven't A Clue, where he was one of a trio of possible hosts who were tried out to succeed the late Humphrey Lyttelton, Jack Dee getting the post permanently. Fry is also known for his voice-overs, reading all seven of the Harry Potter novels for the UK audiobook recordings, narrating the LittleBigPlanet and Birds of Steel series of video games, as well as an animated series of explanations of the laws of cricket, of which he is a particular fan, and a series of animations about Humanism for Humanists UK. Fry married comedian Elliott Spencer in January 2015. Fry is on cordial terms with Prince Charles, through his work with the Prince's Trust. He attended the Prince's wedding to Camilla Parker-Bowles in 2005. Fry is a friend of comedian and actor (and Blackadder co-star) Rowan Atkinson and was best man at Atkinson's wedding to Sunetra Sastry at the Russian Tea Room in New York City. Fry struggled to keep his homosexuality secret during his teenage years at public school, and by his own account did not engage in sexual activity for 16 years from 1979 until 1995. When asked when he first acknowledged his sexuality, Fry quipped: "I suppose it all began when I came out of the womb. I looked back up at my mother and thought to myself, 'That's the last time I'm going up one of those'." Fry was in a 15-year relationship with Daniel Cohen, which ended in 2010. Fry was listed #2 in 2016 and #12 in 2017 on the World Pride Power list. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3ZBeX9uC8s
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Via Daily Dharma // Overcoming Difficult Emotions in a Chaotic World With Bhante Buddharakkhita
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Via Daily Dharma: Accepting the Limits of Faith
True
faith in one’s religious practice means accepting the
possibility—perhaps even the inevitability—of being wrong. It means to
accept our limits in a radical way. That is what true faith is.
—Clark Strand, “Nothing to Regret”
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Sunday, August 23, 2020
Via Lion's Roar // How to Practice Zazen
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| Jules Shuzen Harris teaches the meditation practice at the heart of Zen Buddhism. | ||
There
has been a lot of attention recently on the many practical benefits of
meditation. It reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, and is effective
in working with depression, anxiety, and anger. These are all good
reasons to meditate, but ultimately Buddhists practice zazen and other
meditations to realize what Buddhism calls our true nature, which is
beyond self-identity with its self-imposed limitations. From a Buddhist
perspective, our main problem is attachment to our deluded idea of who
we are, and what we need to do to maintain this delusion.
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Via Lion's Roar // How to Practice Shamatha Meditation
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| Shamatha meditation — mindfulness or concentration — is the foundation of Buddhist practice. Lama Rod Owens teaches us a version from the Vajrayana tradition. | ||
Shamatha
meditation allows us to experience our mind as it is. When we practice
shamatha, we are able to see that our mind is full of thoughts, some
conducive to our happiness and further realization, and others not. It
is not extraordinary that our minds are full of thoughts, and it is
important to understand that it is natural to have so much happening in
the mind.
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Via Lion's Roar: How to Practice Walking Meditation
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| Step-by-step — pun-intended — instruction from Leslie Booker. | ||
Walking meditation is often described as a meditation in motion.
In this practice, you place your full attention on the process of walking — from the shifting of the weight in your body to the mechanics of placing your foot. Walking meditation is an integral part of retreat life in many traditions and is used to offset and shift the energy of sitting practice. It is a bridge to integrate practice into daily life and can be more accessible than a sitting practice for many people. |
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Via Daily Dharma: Weaken the Power of Anger
Patience
is the only thing that defeats anger. Don’t be disappointed if you
can’t do it right away. Even after years of practice you may find that
you’re still losing your temper. It’s all right. But you will also
notice that the power of anger has weakened.
—Nawang Gehlek Rimpoche, “Anger and Patience”
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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - August 23, 2020 💌
Cosmic humor, especially about your own predicament, is an important part of your journey.
- Ram Dass -
Saturday, August 22, 2020
Via Daily Dharma: How to Deal with Pain
We
can bring empathy to ourselves by meeting pain with embodied awareness,
curious about the sensations. It’s not that we long for the pain to
continue. We can aspire for a release from pain, but we bring kindness
and compassion to whatever is happening.
— Sebene Selassie, “Belonging in the Body”
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Friday, August 21, 2020
Via Daily Dharma: Moving Out of Isolation
The
Buddha’s teaching moves us from a contracted, isolated entity called
“me” to the freedom and interdependence of our empty and selfless
nature, free of suffering.
—Rodney Smith, “From Thought to Stillness”
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Thursday, August 20, 2020
Via Daily Dharma: Keep a Peaceful Mind
When
your mind is trained in self-discipline, even if you are surrounded by
hostile forces, your peace of mind will hardly be disturbed.
—H. H. the Dalai Lama, “The Enemy Within”
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Wednesday, August 19, 2020
Via Lion's Roar // Ask the Teachers: What is the Buddhist view of hope?
Oren Jay Sofer, Sister Clear Grace, and Ayya Yeshe look at the meaning of hope in Buddhism and what it means in today’s world.
From left to right: Oren Jay Sofer, Sister Clear Grace, and Ayya Yeshe. Photos by Lauren Rudser, Thay Yasha, and Ayya Yeshe.
Question: What is the Buddhist view of hope? Is it just another delusion that pulls us out of the present moment and causes suffering, or can it also motivate us to work in a way that creates a better future?
Oren Jay Sofer: The Buddha’s teaching is fundamentally hopeful. It affirms that there is a reliable way to release ourselves from suffering, to protect other beings, mitigate harm, and build a better world.
I suffered from chronic illness for a few years in my thirties. For the first few months, with each new doctor, my mind soared with hopeful expectation for promising treatments, then crashed in fearful despair when it failed to deliver. Those years taught me a lot about the difference between hope based on craving and the steady energy of wise aspiration.
This practical hope is the foundation of the path.
What we might call “ordinary hope” directs our longing for happiness in an unskillful way. It places our well-being on an uncertain, imagined future beyond our control, thereby feeding craving and fixation. When the wished-for outcome isn’t realized, we are crushed.
Dhamma practice channels our longing for happiness, harmony, and equity in a skillful way. This begins with saddha, most frequently translated as “faith” or “conviction.” Saddha refers to one’s aspiration and confidence in the path. It is the intuitive sense that there is something worthwhile about being alive, that inner freedom is available for each of us.
To avoid being co-opted by craving, aspiration is supported by refuge and guided by wisdom. Refuge connects us with a tangible sense of emotional, psychological, and spiritual safety here and now. Refuge protects the heart, helping us to engage with the world from a place of love and acceptance rather than fear, anger, or reactivity. Those years of illness demanded I learn to touch this place of refuge amidst pain and uncertainty.
From there, it takes wisdom to meet life and respond to challenges without betting on fantasy, burning out, or sinking in despair. The wisdom of equanimity understands that we choose neither the circumstances of our life, nor the results of our actions. Both are beyond our control. What we can choose is how we relate, and how we respond.
Right View understands that actions have results. What we say and do right now, how we respond with our mind and body, matters. We can affect change—both internally and externally.
All of these factors work together to form what we might call realistic or practical hope. It’s a stable outlook that starts from where we are, acknowledges the reality of what’s happening, and assesses our own internal resources to respond.
This practical hope is the foundation of the path. When our actions are guided by wisdom and compassion, we can grow in resilience and in our capacity to serve. And we can steer toward inner freedom, clarity, and well-being.
Sister Clear Grace: In the Anguttara Nikaya 3:13, the Buddha teaches us that there are three kinds of people in the world: “The hopeful, the hopeless, and the one who has done away with hope.”
My very existence stands on the back of hope, a hope dependent upon a complicated reality of causes, conditions, and context. I am here today partially because of the seeds of hope for emancipation. Those before me tell of great songs sung to acquire hope, songs like “We Shall Overcome” and “A Change is Gonna Come.” They tell of political slogans, like King’s “I Have a Dream” and Obama’s “Yes We Can.” They tell of poetry, like Langston’s “I, Too” or Maya’s “Caged Bird.” They tell of Biblical passages once used to oppress, turning instead into paths of freedom, giving enslaved Africans a profound sense of hope of overcoming in the midst of suffering. This sort of transcendent hope can be a way of relating to suffering amidst continuity and change. In this way, hope sustains life or becoming, and offers a belief in the possibility of positive outcomes that help us develop intention in the face of obstacles.
Hope acquired through direct experience gives us insight into change.
In the wake of Covid-19 there is much to feel hopeless about: the senseless murders of Black bodies, xenophobia, classism, and racism. These realities are not to be denied and did not just arrive with the pandemic. For many, the virus has only re-exposed a divide or a type of social distancing that has been amongst us all along. The racial, economic, gender, citizenship status, and class disparities have exacerbated the very inequalities that Black, Indigenous, People of Color, elders, migrant workers, incarcerated, and detained people have always actively opposed in the hope of creating a better or more equitable future. As people rush to return to “normal,” many of us are concerned that our imperfect past will evolve into an imperfect new normal. We must take care that our hopes for a different now or a better future don’t lead us to fall into despair.
Hope acquired through direct experience gives us insight into change, rather than just the wanting of change. This wise hope can allow us to see things as they are—that nothing is inherently permanent or fixed. The Buddha directs us to a path that is wishless or without expectation. It is from this very space that we are then able to create and be the very hope that we wish to see.
Ayya Yeshe: Hope may seem like a very Christian concept, and a dualistic one at that. Hope is often tied into desire and craving, which Buddhists regard as a form of suffering. Hope (for happiness) and fear (of suffering), fame and infamy, praise and blame, gain and loss are the eight worldly dharmas—states of mental grasping that keep us locked into deluded ways of being.
But what if we look at hope as something different from desire? What if we acknowledge that we are not enlightened yet, and that hope as resilience—a long-term commitment to practice and social justice and compassion, equanimity, and watering the seeds of joy and happiness in ourselves—is a necessary part of the courage, strength, and endurance needed to become bodhisattvas, to become enlightened, and to create a more just world? Equanimity does not mean apathy, it means a balanced mind that can see the bigger picture, a calm and objective mind open to different points of view.
We must keep alive hope.
For someone deeply involved in meditation and concentrative states who has gone far on the path of dharma, hope probably is not that important. When we see that wisdom and joy are our natural state, the clarity beneath our projections, and our rich fundamental nature, there is no need to grasp for something good coming in the future, because we are already complete. However, we are not always connected to that big awakened mind. So in the meantime, we need a bit of happiness, self-care, humor, and kindness as well as a long-term vision. Hope could be compared to relative bodhicitta (the compassionate wish to liberate all beings including yourself from suffering and rebirth)—the mind that has not yet realized emptiness or perfect compassion but has a glimmer that such joyful natural goodness is possible. It’s like the great sun on the horizon, even as our heart is moved by the mess and suffering of the world. We hold both realities in our heart, the mess and the potential to awaken. Moving into ultimate bodhicitta (the realization of emptiness and true interconnectedness of all that is), one can leave behind smaller pleasures and the need for hope; one is complete, joyous, and free of duality. The gap between these two bodhicittas could be months, years, or lifetimes. We practice the six perfections (generosity, morality, patience, energy, concentration, wisdom), and we keep going. Because we have tasted peace and compassion and we know a better world, our better natures are possible—within and without.
In his final speech, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. took a long-term view of hope: “I’ve been to the mountaintop …Like anybody, I would like to live a long life … I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.” We must keep alive hope, not because we need illusions to comfort us in this cruel world, but because separation and cruelty are the illusion—and we need to wake up. More than that, we need to act for justice.
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