A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
Good and bad. Right and wrong. Love and hate. Success and failure. Nirvana and samsara.
We experience the world through the lens of duality. The mind divides
everything it perceives into good and bad, like and dislike—generating
attachments to what we like and aversion towards what we dislike. These
attachments and aversions become the source of our suffering.
The Buddhist teachings remind us that opposites can’t exist without each
other. Rather than being diametric polarities, they exist on a
spectrum. One only has meaning in the context of the other.
In Buddhism, we practice cultivating a nondual awareness that sees
beyond apparent opposites to the essential unity that lies beneath.
Beyond the confines of the thinking mind, dualities collapse into a
state of oneness—the true nature of ourselves and all of life. Or as Zen
Master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi writes, “Everything is Buddha himself.”
“When you become one with Buddha, one with everything that exists, you find the true meaning of being,” writes Suzuki Roshi. “When you forget all your dualistic ideas, everything becomes your teacher, and everything can be the object of worship.”
This week’s Three Teachings explore nonduality as a gateway to the true nature of reality.
In the Vimalakirti Nirdesha Sutra,
one of the classic texts of Mahayana Buddhism, Vimalakirti, considered
to be an enlightened layman, debates with the Buddha’s disciples about
the nature of nonduality—and the entrance into a state of non-dual
consciousness.
As
much as we might like to, we can’t separate good from evil. Each of us
has both qualities within ourselves. Dharma teacher David Loy explores
our cultural story of “good versus evil” and takes a Buddhist
perspective on the interdependence of this basic opposition.
Malicious speech is
unhealthy. Refraining from malicious speech is healthy. (MN 9)
Abandoning malicious speech, one refrains from malicious speech. One
does not repeat there what one has heard here to the detriment of these,
or repeat here what he has heard there to the detriment of those. One
unites those who are divided, is a promoter of friendships, and speaks
words that promote concord. (DN 1) One practices thus: “Others may speak
maliciously, but I shall abstain from malicious speech.” (MN 8)
Disputes occur when a person is angry and revengeful. Such a person
dwells disrespectful and undeferential towards others, causing harm and
unhappiness for many. If you see any such root of a dispute either in
yourself or externally, you should strive to abandon it. And if you do
not see any such root of dispute either in yourself or externally, you
should practice in such a way that it does not erupt in the future. (MN
104)
Reflection
Anger is
considered in Buddhist thought to be an unhealthy emotion. It may be
justified, and it may even be effective, but indulging anger always
comes at a cost. It harms you as much as or more than the person to whom
it is directed. One famous Buddhist image is of a person who tries to
hurt someone with a burning torch while facing into the wind and ends up
burning himself even more. Something similar happens when we exact
revenge, another unhealthy state.
Daily Practice
Learn to
recognize anger when it arises in your mind and to discern the many ways
it can damage yourself and others. Is anger really necessary in this
situation, and is it helpful? It is hard to see how destructive anger is
as we get caught up in it in the moment and swept away. But if we can
manage to pause and examine carefully what is going on, the danger and
harmfulness of anger can become apparent.
Tomorrow: Reflecting upon Verbal Action One week from today: Refraining from Harsh Speech
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel
Having
plenty of stimuli makes it easy for us to distract ourselves from what
we’re feeling. But when there is silence, all these things present
themselves clearly.
JUNETEENTH, also known as Juneteenth Independence Day or Freedom Day becomes a Federal holiday; Winston Churchill famously quipped that “America always does the right thing...after it tries everything else. Juneteenth
is an American holiday that celebrates our finally getting this part
right. It commemorates the June 19, 1865, announcement of the abolition
of slavery in the state of Texas, and more generally the emancipation of
enslaved African-Americans throughout the former Confederacy of the
southern United States. Its name is a portmanteau of "June" and
"nineteenth", the date of its celebration.
Juneteenth is only recognized as a state holiday or special
day of observance in forty-five states, and primarily in local
celebrations. Traditions include public readings of the Emancipation
Proclamation, singing traditional songs such as "Swing Low Sweet
Chariot" and "Lift Every Voice and Sing", and reading of works by noted
African-American writers such as Ralph Ellison and Maya Angelou.
Celebrations may include rodeos, street fairs, cookouts, family
reunions, park parties, historical reenactments, and Miss Juneteenth
contests. The Macogos descendants of Black Seminoles of Coahulla, Mexico
also celebrate the Juneteenth.
In 1996 the first legislation to recognize "Juneteenth
Independence Day" was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives,
H.J. Res. 195, sponsored by Barbara Rose Collins (D-MI). In 1997
Congress recognized the day through Senate Joint Resolution 11 and House
Joint Resolution 56. In 2013 the U.S. Senate passed Senate Resolution
175, acknowledging Lula Briggs Galloway (late president of the National
Association of Juneteenth Lineage) who "successfully worked to bring
national recognition to Juneteenth Independence Day", and the continued
leadership of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation. In 2018
Apple added Juneteenth to its calendars in iOS under official US
holidays.
On June 15, 2021, the Senate unanimously passed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, establishing
Juneteenth as a federal holiday; it subsequently passed through
the House of Representatives by a 415–14 vote on June 16. President Joe Biden signed the bill on
June 17, 2021, making Juneteenth the eleventh American federal holiday
and the first to obtain legal observance as a federal holiday
since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was designated in 1983.
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