All the traditions in Buddhism have their own unique aspects. But in essence, we are all students of the same teacher.
—The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, “Ethics for a Secular Millennium”
—The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, “Ethics for a Secular Millennium”
Friday, July 14, 2017
Thursday, July 13, 2017
Via Daily Dharma: What We’re Made Of
All that we are is a result of what we have thought; it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts.
—The Buddha, in Scott Darnell’s “Dharma in a Broom Closet”
—The Buddha, in Scott Darnell’s “Dharma in a Broom Closet”
Via churchtimes: Steve Chalke unearths ancient erotica to combat a conservative reading of scripture on sexuality
WOLFGANG RIEFER/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Explicit: a fresco of a couple in bed painted onto the wall of a house in Pompeii
EROTIC Roman art recovered from the ruins of Pompeii supports the
view that the New Testament passages about homosexuality do not condemn
modern same-sex relationships, the Revd Steve Chalke has argued.
The leading Evangelical Baptist pastor has released a video in which he suggests that archaeological study of the ancient world gives the proper context to interpret verses which appear to prohibit gay sex.
In the 37-minute talk, Mr Chalke states that the preponderance of carved penises and other explicit imagery found in homes and on the streets from Pompeii underlines how the Greco-Roman world Paul was writing into was utterly saturated with sex.
Mr Chalke’s video talk begins with a “parental advisory — explicit content” warning because it contains images of ancient pornographic material from Pompeii and its sister town of Herculaneum.
“I have not released this out of any desire to provoke or shock for the sake of it,” Mr Chalke said.
“Because of widespread ignorance of the ancient world and Greco-Roman culture in churches across the West, we throw Bible verses around without understanding their context.”
Mr Chalke first spoke openly in support of same-sex relationships in 2013 (News, 18 January 2013).
As a result, his charity Oasis was thrown out of the Evangelical Alliance (News, 2 May 2014). In the new video, he argues that New Testament verses which are used routinely to label same-sex activity as sinful were, in fact, condemning the abusive and exploitative sexual activity common in the world that Paul’s recipients lived in.
OASISScathing: the Revd Steve Chalke, who has criticised his fellow Evangelicals for using New Testament passages to “destroy” LGBT people“Eighty per cent of the artwork recovered from Pompeii and Herculaneum is sexually explicit, and also reveals a fascination with the image of the stiff, erect penis — a symbol of power and pleasure,” Mr Chalke said.
“If you were a man in Roman culture, so long as someone was your social inferior — a slave, a gladiator, a woman etc — it was considered socially acceptable and respectable to penetrate them.
“So engrained was this way of thinking and behaving that it became incorporated into religion. Drug- and alcohol-fuelled orgies featuring men sleeping with women, men sleeping with men, and women sleeping with women and men were even classed as acts of worship.”
In this context, Paul’s warnings in the New Testament against having sex with someone of your own gender do not mean that faithful gay relationships are forbidden for Christians, Mr Chalke suggests.
“Every Christian believes God to be a God of love. It is no wonder that these abusive practises are condemned by inspired scripture. But, it is a disingenuous misreading of the text to conclude that what Paul describes in Romans 1 can be used to prevent people forming loving, faithful and nurturing relationships with people of the same-sex.”
Mr Chalke is scathing about the traditional, conservative reading of the key verses on sexuality, saying that some scholarship is driven more by “prejudice” than by any real “grappling with the New Testament passages”.
“In Evangelical circles there has been a lack of intellectualism which has meant that we’ve not dealt with these Biblical passages as we should,” he said. “Some Biblical scholarship just has not kept up with archaeological discovery, it’s not kept up with wider cultural research and understanding.”
Instead, the contentious passages have become “weaponised” and used to “destroy LGBT people and their lives and their credibility and their sense of peace”, he claims.
Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried by a sudden volcanic eruption in AD 79. Archaeologists have gained a vivid insight into ancient Roman culture by digging through layers of ash which blanketed the town in hours and protected the city from decay for 1700 years before it was rediscovered.
The leading Evangelical Baptist pastor has released a video in which he suggests that archaeological study of the ancient world gives the proper context to interpret verses which appear to prohibit gay sex.
In the 37-minute talk, Mr Chalke states that the preponderance of carved penises and other explicit imagery found in homes and on the streets from Pompeii underlines how the Greco-Roman world Paul was writing into was utterly saturated with sex.
Mr Chalke’s video talk begins with a “parental advisory — explicit content” warning because it contains images of ancient pornographic material from Pompeii and its sister town of Herculaneum.
“I have not released this out of any desire to provoke or shock for the sake of it,” Mr Chalke said.
“Because of widespread ignorance of the ancient world and Greco-Roman culture in churches across the West, we throw Bible verses around without understanding their context.”
Mr Chalke first spoke openly in support of same-sex relationships in 2013 (News, 18 January 2013).
As a result, his charity Oasis was thrown out of the Evangelical Alliance (News, 2 May 2014). In the new video, he argues that New Testament verses which are used routinely to label same-sex activity as sinful were, in fact, condemning the abusive and exploitative sexual activity common in the world that Paul’s recipients lived in.
OASISScathing: the Revd Steve Chalke, who has criticised his fellow Evangelicals for using New Testament passages to “destroy” LGBT people“Eighty per cent of the artwork recovered from Pompeii and Herculaneum is sexually explicit, and also reveals a fascination with the image of the stiff, erect penis — a symbol of power and pleasure,” Mr Chalke said.
“If you were a man in Roman culture, so long as someone was your social inferior — a slave, a gladiator, a woman etc — it was considered socially acceptable and respectable to penetrate them.
“So engrained was this way of thinking and behaving that it became incorporated into religion. Drug- and alcohol-fuelled orgies featuring men sleeping with women, men sleeping with men, and women sleeping with women and men were even classed as acts of worship.”
In this context, Paul’s warnings in the New Testament against having sex with someone of your own gender do not mean that faithful gay relationships are forbidden for Christians, Mr Chalke suggests.
“Every Christian believes God to be a God of love. It is no wonder that these abusive practises are condemned by inspired scripture. But, it is a disingenuous misreading of the text to conclude that what Paul describes in Romans 1 can be used to prevent people forming loving, faithful and nurturing relationships with people of the same-sex.”
Mr Chalke is scathing about the traditional, conservative reading of the key verses on sexuality, saying that some scholarship is driven more by “prejudice” than by any real “grappling with the New Testament passages”.
“In Evangelical circles there has been a lack of intellectualism which has meant that we’ve not dealt with these Biblical passages as we should,” he said. “Some Biblical scholarship just has not kept up with archaeological discovery, it’s not kept up with wider cultural research and understanding.”
Instead, the contentious passages have become “weaponised” and used to “destroy LGBT people and their lives and their credibility and their sense of peace”, he claims.
Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried by a sudden volcanic eruption in AD 79. Archaeologists have gained a vivid insight into ancient Roman culture by digging through layers of ash which blanketed the town in hours and protected the city from decay for 1700 years before it was rediscovered.
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - July 12, 2017
When we're identified with awareness, we're no longer living in a world of polarities. Everything is present at the same time.
- Ram Dass -
Via Daily Dharma: All You Need To Do
Just
understand your mind: how it works, how attachment and desire arise,
how ignorance arises, where emotions come from. It is sufficient to know
the nature of all that; just that gives so much happiness and peace.
—Lama Thubten Yeshe, “Chocolate Cake”
—Lama Thubten Yeshe, “Chocolate Cake”
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Via 5 of 45 Daily Dharma: Living Love
Although we may not always live in a steady state of loving feeling, through practice we can learn to touch it many times a day.
—Joseph Goldstein, “Triumph of the Heart”
—Joseph Goldstein, “Triumph of the Heart”
Monday, July 10, 2017
Via Daily Dharma: When Your Mind Changes, The World Changes
When your mind changes, the world changes. And when we respond differently to the world, the world responds differently to us.
—David Loy, “Rethinking Karma”
—David Loy, “Rethinking Karma”
Sunday, July 9, 2017
Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - July 9, 2017
In
this culture, we are rewarded for knowing we know. It’s only when we
come to the despair of seeing that the rational mind just isn’t going to
be enough – it’s only when you see the assumptions you’ve been working
with are not valid that there is the possibility of change.
Albert Einstein said, “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move towards higher levels.” And again, “Man must be able to develop a higher form of thought if he’s ever going to be able to use his energy with wisdom.”
Albert Einstein said, “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move towards higher levels.” And again, “Man must be able to develop a higher form of thought if he’s ever going to be able to use his energy with wisdom.”
-- Ram Dass --
Via 5 of 11 Daily Dharma: Joy in the Process of Awakening
Patience
gives you joy in the process of awakening. Without patience, you may
find yourself at war with your own forgetfulness or reactivity.
—Tara Brach, “Finding True Refuge”
—Tara Brach, “Finding True Refuge”
Saturday, July 8, 2017
Via Daily Dharma: The Sea Within You
Each
of us may be nothing more than a moving wave of change, but we are
waves able to know this fact. We rise and fall in an infinitely deep and
timeless sea, upright and undisturbed.
—Sallie Tisdale, “On Dignity”
—Sallie Tisdale, “On Dignity”
Friday, July 7, 2017
Via Daily Dharma: Alternative Facts, for Buddhists
All things exist. All things do not exist. All things both exist and do not exist. All things neither exist nor do not exist.
—Kenneth Kraft, “Buddhist Political Glossary”
—Kenneth Kraft, “Buddhist Political Glossary”
Thursday, July 6, 2017
Via Daily Dharma: Freedom from Thoughts and Words
Learning
to let thinking come and go, we can eventually understand a thought as a
thought and a word as a word, and with this understanding we can find a
measure of freedom from thoughts and words.
—Norman Fischer, “Beyond Language”
—Norman Fischer, “Beyond Language”
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Via Ram Dass
I would say that most of us stay locked in our separateness and we are very frightened of coming out of it, we feel very vulnerable. In truth you’re not vulnerable at all. Who you think you are is vulnerable. Who you are is not vulnerable. This is the truth of it.
- Ram Dass -
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
Via Ram Dass:
In mystical traditions, it is one's own readiness that makes experiences
exoteric or esoteric. The secret isn't that you're not being told. The
secret is that you're not able to hear.
- Ram Dass -
Via Utne/Mind and Body: Six Habits of Highly Grateful People
Bad at gratitude? Six practices of people who know how to say "Thanks!"
This article originally appeared at Greater Good, the online magazine of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center.
How bad am I? I’m so bad at gratitude that most days, I don’t notice the sunlight on the leaves of the Berkeley oaks as I ride my bike down the street. I forget to be thankful for the guy who hand-brews that delicious cup of coffee I drink mid-way through every weekday morning. I don’t even know the dude’s name!
I usually take for granted that I have legs to walk on, eyes to see with, arms I can use to hug my son. I forget my son! Well, I don’t actually forget about him, at least as a physical presence; I generally remember to pick him up from school and feed him dinner. But as I face the quotidian slings and arrows of parenthood, I forget all the time how much he’s changed my life for the better.
Gratitude (and its sibling, appreciation) is the mental tool we use to remind ourselves of the good stuff. It’s a lens that helps us to see the things that don’t make it onto our lists of problems to be solved.
It’s a spotlight that we shine on the people who give us the good things in life. It’s a bright red paintbrush we apply to otherwise-invisible blessings, like clean streets or health or enough food to eat.
Gratitude doesn’t make problems and threats disappear. We can lose jobs, we can be attacked on the street, we can get sick. I’ve experienced all of those things. I remember those harrowing times at unexpected moments: My heart beats faster, my throat constricts.
My body wants to hit something or run away, one or the other. But there’s nothing to hit, nowhere to run. The threats are indeed real, but at that moment, they exist only in memory or imagination. I am the threat; it is me who is wearing myself out with worry.
That’s when I need to turn on the gratitude. If I do that enough, suggests the psychological research, gratitude might just become a habit. What will that mean for me? It means, says the research, that I increase my chances of psychologically surviving hard times, that I stand a chance to be happier in the good times. I’m not ignoring the threats; I’m appreciating the resources and people that might help me face those threats.
If you’re already one of those highly grateful people, stop reading this essay—you don’t need it. Instead you should read Amie Gordon’s “Five Ways Giving Thanks Can Backfire.” But if you’re more like me, then here are some tips for how you and I can become one of those fantastically grateful people.
1. Once in a while, they think about death and loss
Didn’t see that one coming, did you? I’m not just being perverse—contemplating endings really does make you more grateful for the life you currently have, according to several studies.
For example, when Araceli Friasa and colleagues asked people to visualize their own deaths, their gratitude measurably increased.
Similarly, when Minkyung Koo and colleagues asked people to envision the sudden disappearance of their romantic partners from their lives, they became more grateful to their partners. The same goes for imagining that some positive event, like a job promotion, never happened.
This isn’t just theoretical: When you find yourself taking a good thing for granted, try giving it up for a little while. Researchers Jordi Quoidbach and Elizabeth Dunn had 55 people eat a piece of chocolate—and then the researchers told some of those people to resist chocolate for a week and others to binge on chocolate if they wanted. They left a third group to their own devices.
Guess who ended up happiest, according to self-reports? The people who abstained from chocolate. And who were the least happy? The people who binged. That’s the power of gratitude!
2. They take the time to smell the roses
And they also smell the coffee, the bread baking in the oven, the aroma of a new car—whatever gives them pleasure.
Loyola University psychologist Fred Bryant finds that savoring positive experiences makes them stickier in your brain, and increases their benefits to your psyche—and the key, he argues, is expressing gratitude for the experience. That’s one of the ways appreciation and gratitude go hand in hand.
You might also consider adding some little ritual to how you experience the pleasures of the body: A study published this year in Psychological Science finds that rituals like prayer or even just shaking a sugar packet “make people pay more attention to food, and paying attention makes food taste better,” as Emily Nauman reports in her Greater Good article about the research.
This brand of mindfulness makes intuitive sense—but how does it work with the first habit above?
Well, we humans are astoundingly adaptive creatures, and we will adapt even to the good things. When we do, their subjective value starts to drop; we start to take them for granted. That’s the point at which we might give them up for a while—be it chocolate, sex, or even something like sunlight—and then take the time to really savor them when we allow them back into our lives.
That goes for people, too, and that goes back to the first habit: If you’re taking someone for granted, take a step back—and imagine your life without them. Then try savoring their presence, just like you would a rose. Or a new car. Whatever! The point is, absence may just make the heart grow grateful.
3. They take the good things as gifts, not birthrights
What’s the opposite of gratitude? Entitlement—the attitude that people owe you something just because you’re so very special.
“In all its manifestations, a preoccupation with the self can cause us to forget our benefits and our benefactors or to feel that we are owed things from others and therefore have no reason to feel thankful,”writes Robert Emmons, co-director of the GGSC’s Gratitude project. “Counting blessings will be ineffective because grievances will always outnumber gifts.”
The antidote to entitlement, argues Emmons, is to see that we did not create ourselves—we were created, if not by evolution, then by God; or if not by God, then by our parents. Likewise, we are never truly self-sufficient. Humans need other people to grow our food and heal our injuries; we need love, and for that we need family, partners, friends, and pets.
“Seeing with grateful eyes requires that we see the web of interconnection in which we alternate between being givers and receivers,” writes Emmons. “The humble person says that life is a gift to be grateful for, not a right to be claimed.”
4. They’re grateful to people, not just things
At the start of this piece, I mentioned gratitude for sunlight and trees. That’s great for me—and it may have good effects, like leading me to think about my impact on the environment—but the trees just don’t care. Likewise, the sun doesn’t know I exist; that big ball of flaming gas isn’t even aware of its own existence, as far as we know. My gratitude doesn’t make it burn any brighter.
That’s not true of people—people will glow in gratitude. Saying thanks to my son might make him happier and it can strengthen our emotional bond. Thanking the guy who makes my coffee can strengthen social bonds—in part by deepening our understanding of how we’re interconnected with other people.
My colleague Emiliana Simon-Thomas, the GGSC’s science director and another co-director of our Expanding Gratitude project, puts it this way:
Experiences that heighten meaningful connections with others—like noticing how another person has helped you, acknowledging the effort it took, and savoring how you benefitted from it—engage biological systems for trust and affection, alongside circuits for pleasure and reward. This provides a synergistic and enduring boost to the positive experience. Saying ‘thank you’ to a person, your brain registers that something good has happened and that you are more richly enmeshed in a meaningful social community.
5. They mention the pancakes
Grateful people are habitually specific. They don’t say, “I love you because you’re just so wonderfully wonderful, you!” Instead, the really skilled grateful person will say: “I love you for the pancakes you make when you see I’m hungry and the way you massage my feet after work even when you’re really tired and how you give me hugs when I’m sad so that I’ll feel better!”
The reason for this is pretty simple: It makes the expression of gratitude feel more authentic, for it reveals that the thanker was genuinely paying attention and isn’t just going through the motions.
The richest thank you’s will acknowledge intentions (“the pancakes you make when you see I’m hungry”) and costs (“you massage my feet after work even when you’re really tired”), and they’ll describe the value of benefits received (“you give me hugs when I’m sad so that I’ll feel better”).
When Amie Gordon and colleagues studied gratitude in couples, they found that spouses signal grateful feelings through more caring and attentive behavior. They ask clarifying questions; they respond to trouble with hugs and to good news with smiles. “These gestures,” Gordon writes, “can have profound effects: Participants who were better listeners during those conversations in the lab had partners who reported feeling more appreciated by them.”
Remember: Gratitude thrives on specificity!
6. They thank outside the box
But let’s get real: Pancakes, massages, hugs? Boring! Most of my examples so far are easy and clichéd. But here’s who the really tough-minded grateful person thanks: the boyfriend who dumped her, the homeless person who asked for change, the boss who laid him off.
We’re graduating from Basic to Advanced Gratitude, so pay attention. And since I myself am still working on Basic, I’ll turn once again to Dr. Emmons for guidance: “It’s easy to feel grateful for the good things. No one ‘feels’ grateful that he or she has lost a job or a home or good health or has taken a devastating hit on his or her retirement portfolio.”
In such moments, he says, gratitude becomes a critical cognitive process—a way of thinking about the world that can help us turn disaster into a stepping stone. If we’re willing and able to look, he argues, we can find a reason to feel grateful even to people who have harmed us. We can thank that boyfriend for being brave enough to end a relationship that wasn’t working; the homeless person for reminding us of our advantages and vulnerability; the boss, for forcing us to face new challenges.
“Life is suffering. No amount of positive thinking exercises will change this truth,” writes Emmons in his Greater Good article “How Gratitude Can Help You Through Hard Times.” He continues:
So telling people simply to buck up, count their blessings, and remember how much they still have to be grateful for can certainly do much harm. Processing a life experience through a grateful lens does not mean denying negativity. It is not a form of superficial happiology. Instead, it means realizing the power you have to transform an obstacle into an opportunity. It means reframing a loss into a potential gain, recasting negativity into positive channels for gratitude.
That’s what truly, fantastically grateful people do. Can you?
Jeremy Adam Smith is Producer and Editor of the Greater Good Science Center ‘s website and a 2013 fellow with the Institute for Justice and Journalism. He is also the author or coeditor of four books, including The Daddy Shift, Rad Dad, and The Compassionate Instinct. Before joining the GGSC, he was a 2010-11 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. You can follow him on Twitter.
The GGSC's coverage of gratitude is sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation as part of the Expanding Gratitude project.
Image by Nick Saltmarsh, licensed under Creative Commons.
Via Daily Dharma: Zen Independence
When
we become truly ourselves, we just become a swinging door, and we are
purely independent of, and at the same time, dependent upon everything.
Without air, we cannot breathe. Each one of us is in the midst of
myriads of worlds.
—Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, “Practicing Zazen Meditation”
—Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, “Practicing Zazen Meditation”
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