Via Truebook.org / FB

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 19, 2013

The Reward of Practice

As you bring alignment, relaxation, and resilience into your daily life, your breath automatically becomes fuller and starts moving through your entire body, just as the Buddha suggested in his description of meditation. Without forcing a thing, let your breath breathe you: breathe into your entire body, and breathe out just as effortlessly. This condition, nothing more, nothing less, is really the reward and benefit of the practice.

- Will Johnson, “Full Body, Empty Mind”

Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through January 20th, 2013
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Via Gay Politics Report:

• European court rules faith doesn't trump LGBT laws
   
• The European Court of Human Rights, ruling in several cases testing the rights of people of faith, said religious objections are not sufficient to absolve certain individuals from complying with LGBT non-discrimination laws. "The court showed conclusively that the principle of equality and equal treatment cannot be circumvented with a simple reference to religion," said Sophie in ‘t Veld, vice-president of the European Parliament’s LGBT Intergroup. GlobalPost.com (1/15), Washington Blade (Washington, D.C.) (1/16)     

Via JMG: Dear Abby Dies At 94

Dear Abby advice columnist Pauline Phillips has died at the age of 94. Phillips was known for being one of earliest and most widely-read supporters of gay people.

Phillips’ column competed for decades with the advice column of Ann Landers, written by her twin sister, Esther Friedman Lederer. Their relationship was stormy in their early adult years, but later they regained the close relationship they had growing up in Sioux City, Iowa. The two columns differed in style. Ann Landers responded to questioners with homey, detailed advice. Abby’s replies were often flippant one-liners. She willingly expressed views that she realized would bring protests. In a 1998 interview she remarked: “Whenever I say a kind word about gays, I hear from people, and some of them are damn mad. People throw Leviticus, Deuteronomy and other parts of the Bible to me. It doesn’t bother me. I’ve always been compassionate toward gay people.”

Ann Landers died in 2002. Dear Abby is written today Phillips' daughter, Jeanne.

Labels: newspapers, obituary, writers

Reposted from Joe

Via Gray Queers shared The LGBT Project / FB

Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:

	Daily Buddhist Wisdom
	A mind unshaken when touched by the worldly states, sorrowless, stainless, and secure, this is the blessing supreme. Those who have fulfilled all these are everywhere invincible; they find well-being everywhere, theirs is the blessing supreme. - (adapted from) Mangala Sutta More Buddhism Quotes >>

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 18, 2013

Body in Practice

In a sense, all of Buddhist practice takes place here, in this most intimate realm: here, in the family, shoulder to shoulder with fellow workers, beside each other on the cushion. Even alone in a cave, there is no way out of the sense object we call the body. We meet each other face to face, and so have all our teachers and ancestors met each other. In this way have all the Buddhas taught. Hand to sweating hand.

- Sallie Tisdale, "Washing Out Emptiness"

Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through January 19th, 2013
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Via Give a Damn Campaign / FB:

Via 2012 Healing the Planet 2012 / FB:

2012 Healing the Planet 2012 shared a photo:

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"To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself."  ~ Thich Nhat Hanh ~

With Bows of Gratefulness to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States:

Once again on Facebook and other venues, there have been a number of interesting discussions about GLBT people and their incorporation in the Bahá’í Faith. 

Unfortunately nothing is new – the conservatives continue to point out to those of us who already know that the writings say this or that, and appear to have free reign to spew their nonsense (essentially reminding us that we are not welcome). Though they will never really say so, because hiding their disgraceful homophobia behind a wall of the Sacred Writings, appears to give them power and weight. Instead they increasingly engage readers in the same tired discourse related to why the Faith cannot change (which I interpret why they do not want it to change). Meanwhile most of us GLBT folks, friends and family try to engage in other possibilities, trying to show that many other religious communities have found a way to ignore the very same teachings, and are welcoming GLBT people. But alas…

All of this has allowed me to recognize the “wisdom” of the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States in removing my rights as a Bahá’í. In some unintended way, they have given me the opportunity to speak out fearlessly (what do I have to loose now?); investigate alternative truths and embrace Buddhism; to really come to question the need for organized religion at all; and even for the first time in my life question the actual existence of god him/herself…

This officially sanctioned homophobia by the Bahá’í leadership and majority of the Bahá’ís themselves, was for me, the final nail in the coffin  --no women on the UHJ was a major one, birth control, length of your hair, and some other weird and funky rules the Aqdas appears to be ready to implement -- that until then I was willing to forgo, and I like others accepted the official answer for etc… but now seeing that the shunning of science, reason and any sense of compassion for GLBT people is official, my concerns for all sorts of other oddities in the Faith opened up.  And the Faith looks like a cult or at best, silly, irrelevant and terribly sad…

To be honest, before having been defrocked, I was probably headed this way anyway… I had pretty much had it with the Bahá’ís in my community. I had made a couple of visits to the Shrines in Israel to pray and reflect and was treated coldly. Their officially sanctioned homophobia accelerated a process that I rather think was underway within anyway. So ian a funny way, their disgraceful act of showing me the door only allowed me to escape their cage.  A Fulbright research trip to Nepal and encounter with the Sacramento Buddhist Mediation Group confirmed what I was looking for -- a home, a refuge a sangha, that no Bahá’í Community has ever offered me. 

Removing my status as a member of the Bahá’í community unless I undergo some sort of treatment and divorce my husband, I think was intended to be a form of punishment for being a happy, open, and honest gay man.  But I rather think it has had the opposite effect, it has liberated me, made hundreds of people I know and love turn away from a religion that once held such promise, that once was held up to be progressive, loving and tolerant, and has shown the world that the Faith actually is no better than many of the other homophobic religions or cults it seeks to compete with.

So it is I offer bows of gratefulness to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States; may they liberate more and more people as time goes on!

Namaste!