Monday, March 25, 2024

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Via Gay Buddhist Fellowship - San Francisco


 

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right View: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering

 


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RIGHT VIEW
Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering
What is the origin of suffering? It is craving, which brings renewal of being, is accompanied by delight and lust, and delights in this and that; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for being, and craving for non-being. (MN 9)

When one does not know and see bodily sensations as they actually are, then one is attached to bodily sensations. When one is attached, one becomes infatuated, and one’s craving increases. One’s bodily and mental troubles increase, and one experiences bodily and mental suffering. (MN 149)
Reflection
The fifth of the six sense modalities is the range of bodily sensations that are discernable through the body as a sense organ. Like all the other sense organs, the body is an instrument for both the arising of suffering and the cessation of suffering. When craving is present, either for a pleasant sensation or for the cessation of a painful sensation, a micro-moment of suffering is produced. You can experience this happening in your body again and again.

Daily Practice
Whether sitting or walking or engaging in any of your other normal activities, pay close attention to the sensations of the body as they naturally arise and pass away. Notice how some are favored (the ones that feel good) and some are resented and resisted (the ones that feel bad). Notice how that subtle attachment or aversion, called infatuation in this text, is the starting point for all kinds of discontent and suffering.

Tomorrow: Cultivating Compassion
One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering

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Questions?
Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.



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Via Daily Dharma: Giving Up Is Just the Beginning

 

Support Tricycle with a donation »
Giving Up Is Just the Beginning 

If something is not working out, do not hold on to it for too long just because you have already invested a lot of time and effort. Knowing the right time to give up is a form of wisdom. Giving up does not mean the end but the beginning of a new path. 

Haemin Sunim, “The Courage to Say I Can’t”


CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Making Friends with the Night
By Noelle Oxenhandler
A Zen Buddhist explores what would happen if she approached her insomnia as a possible gateway to something deeper.
Read now »

Sunday, March 24, 2024

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation \ Words of Wisdom - March 24, 2024 💌

 

Why do we keep listening to spiritual lectures and reading spiritual books? It seems we need to keep saying it to ourselves, over and over again, until we finally hear.

- Ram Dass -

Via White Crane Institute \\ NDREW ELIAS RAMER is a Maggid (Jewish sacred storyteller)

 


Andrew Ramer [portrait by Janet Sheard]
1951 -

ANDREW ELIAS RAMER is a Maggid (Jewish sacred storyteller) living in San Francisco, California. Born on this date in Queens, New York, Elias (as he prefers now) believes that the prophetic tradition and storytelling are one and the same. The job of a storyteller is to create a narrative that holds a group together, forms the fabric of thought that a community or village of people inhabit.

Andrew grew into being a maggid through many moments and teachers. As a five-year-old he lay under an enormous honeysuckle vine with his best friend. Sprawled on the ground that warm day with the sun streaming in long shafts of light, she showed him how to pluck the honeysuckle from the vine and suck the nectar from the flower. The bees were swarming in and out of the blossoms. Something in his consciousness opened up and he understood that just as the bees were going back to the blossoms, that everything comes from and goes back to something, to a primal Source. It did not occur to him then that the ‘something’, is God or that this was a spiritual experience. Now he reflects that that experience changed his life, as it was his first encounter with God of and in nature and the world.

As an adult he was spiritually formed through many communities including the Gay Spirit Visions Conference in North Carolina, and the New York Healing Circle, which flourished during the early AIDS years. His mentors, collaborators and guides have included Charles Lawrence, Donna Cunningham, Harry Hay, Raven Wolfdancer, Rabbi Benay Lappe, and Rabbi Dev Noily. He is a member and one of many lay leaders at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in San Francisco. After years of spiritual wandering, it was in Torah study with Dev Noily at Sha’ar Zahav that he found wisdom, comfort and a rich new way to live as a Queer Jewish man.

He believes that leadership is best when it is collective, like a flock of birds with each member of the flock taking a turn leading at the front. In that spirit, Andrew was one of 141 members of Sha’ar Zahav who worked together to create a new Siddur (prayer book) which was published in 2009. His contributions include art, the blessings he wrote, and editorial assistance.  He also facilitated six writing workshops in which community members created new liturgy to reflect the beautifully complicated realities of LGBT Jewish lives.

His writings are a form of Midrash, an interpretation of biblical tales where he tells the stories of queer and transgender people that were left out or written out of our scriptures. This practice of “queering the text” is both joyously traditional and transgressive. As a child attending a traditional religious Jewish school he first learned the craft of Midrash through his teachers, who would tell stories about the Torah before they read it. When he learned to read Hebrew he learned that most of his favorite stories were not in the written Torah at all, because they were Midrash, Oral Torah. That discovery was one of the doorways for him into this tradition and practice.  

In his role as a storyteller Andrew likes to create origin tales, to seduce people into the narrative, and to fulfill the understanding that without storytelling we cannot function as a people. When he thinks about the stories that don’t get told he feels more empowered to write and speak them. He believes that whatever your faith tradition you can and must own all the stories and re-tell them any way you want--for the sake of us all, for the sake of a viable planet, and so that people may find themselves and love themselves. He invites us to question everything, question every story no matter what our elders tell us, so that we can retell everything quietly until we’re in a safe place where we can tell all of our stories out loud to the world.

Andrews’s stories can be found in the books: Queering the TextBiblical, Medieval, and Modern Jewish StoriesSiddur Sha’ar ZahavTwo Flutes PlayingRevelations for New MillenniumAngel AnswersAsk Your Angels; and The Spiritual Dimensions of Healing Addictions. He was interviewed in Gay Soul by Mark Thompson and is a long time friend of White Crane for which he wrote the column Praxis. Ramer has recently release a new book, Two Hearts Dancing, a companion read for Two Flutes Playing.

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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute

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Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
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