Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma December 20, 2012

Living in a Cosmic Democracy

Living in harmony with all beings is flexibility. It is a kind of cosmic democracy. Each of us has a role in the situation and gets one vote. You cast your vote by being here like a great unmoving mountain. Please cast your vote completely: that is your job. Then listen to all other beings, especially foreigners, especially strangers, and especially enemies.

- Reb Anderson, “In It Together”

Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 22nd, 2012
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Cheyenne Jackson - DONT WANNA KNOW [Official Music Video]

Via JMG: New Gallup Poll On LGBT Issues

Gallup reports:

While 53% of Americans support legalizing same-sex marriage, significantly higher percentages support the idea of equal rights for partners or spouses of gays or lesbians when it comes to inheritance rights and employee benefits, and making it legal for gays and lesbians to adopt children. Support for all three issues is up at least slightly from three years ago.
Less than half of Americans, however, support the idea of openly gay adults serving as Boy Scout leaders. Given the lack of a trend on this question, it is not clear whether support is higher than in the past, or the degree to which the lack of support may reflect respondents' reluctance to say how a private organization should decide who holds its positions of leadership.

Labels: Boy Scouts, Gallup, gay adoption, insurance, LGBT rights, marriage equality, polls

posted by Joe

Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:

	Daily Buddhist Wisdom
	If those who are like wanton children Are by nature prone to injure others, What point is there in being angry-- Like resenting fire for its heat? - Bodhicaryavatara More Buddhism Quotes >>

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma December 19, 2012

An Honest Look

Simply doing good deeds, or even being a devoted meditator, doesn’t mean anything without the painful honesty that’s required to look at what we’re doing. We must take our heads out of the ground and look at all of the ways we get in our own way—fooling ourselves and obstructing the possibility of living a more open and genuine life.

- Ezra Bayda, “The ‘Helper’ Syndrome”

Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 21st, 2012
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Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:

	Daily Buddhist Wisdom
	The one whose mind knows the clarity of perfect wisdom is never afraid or even anxious. Why? Because when being at one with the living power of wisdom, the mother of all the buddhas, that person has the strength to remain in a state of undivided contemplation even while ceaselessly and skillfully engaging in compassionate action. The wise one is enabled to act because of concentration on a single prayer: "May all beings never leave the path of enlightenment, which is their own true nature and is empty of separate self-existence." - Prajnaparamita More Buddhism Quotes >>

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma December 18, 2012

Letting the Heart Speak

If any preoccupation comes in to bother the mind, just say in your heart, ‘Leave me alone. Don’t bother me. You’re no affair of mine.’ If any critical thoughts come up—fear for your life, fear that you’ll die, thinking of this person, thinking of that person—just say in your heart, ‘Don’t bother me. You’re no affair of mine.’

- Ajahn Chah, “The Last Gift”

Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 20th, 2012
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JMG HomoQuotable - Andrew Sullivan

"Many evangelicals loathe my use of the word Christianism, rather than Christianity, to describe the fusion of political power and religion to police the moral lives of others. They recoil at the echo of Islamism - although we know many Islamist parties, as in Turkey or Indonesia, that do not engage in terrorism, but merely believe in the fusion of church and state as emphatically as older American evangelicals do.

"That's why it's revealing to see a major figure in the American Christianist movement, Pastor David Dykes, - he opened the 2008 Congress with a prayer - openly advocate the execution of gays, and criminal penalties for exercise of free speech in defense of gays, in Uganda. If these people could, they would do the same here. The constitution protects us - especially our right to speech. But what these theocrats want is as undeniable as it is repellent in a free or humane society.

"More to the point, here is an alleged Christian demanding that those on the margins of society not be embraced, as Jesus practised, but be executed, as Jesus' Roman executioners did. It doesn't get more anti-Christian than that. To even associate the word Christianity with these sentiments is an attack on Jesus Christ." - Andrew Sullivan, reacting to this Box Turtle Bulletin story.

Labels: Africa, Andrew Sullivan, Christian Love, Christianists, David Dykes, gay death penalty, HomoQuotable, religion, Scott Lively, Uganda

posted by Joe

Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:

	Daily Buddhist Wisdom
	Hostilities aren't stilled through hostility, regardless. Hostilities are stilled through non-hostility: this, an unending truth. - Dhammapada, 1, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. More Buddhism Quotes >>

Via Being Liberal / FB:

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma December 17, 2012

Pure Freedom

The practice of generosity is the practice of freedom, and it carries with it all the joy and pleasure that are associated with liberation. Indeed, there may be no greater sense of fulfillment in life than the simultaneous feelings of human interconnection and pure freedom that arise from an authentic act of selfless generosity.

- Dale S. Wright, “The Bodhisattva’s Gift”

Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 19th, 2012
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Via Real Truth Now / FB:

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma December 16, 2012

Surviving Destruction

The source of forgiveness lies in the realization that we are not solely products of what was done to us, the realization that there is something essential within us that is not necessarily tarnished by calamitous experience.

- Mark Epstein, “Beyond Blame”

Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 18th, 2012
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Via Path To Peace & Happiness / FB:

“May the blind see the forms, May the deaf hear sounds. May the naked find clothing, The hungry find food; May the thirsty find water And delicious drinks. May the poor find wealth, Those weak with sorrow find joy; May the forlorn find new hope, Constant happiness and prosperity. May the frightened cease to be afraid And those bound be freed; May the powerless find power, And may the people think of benefiting one another”

― Śāntideva

Via JMG: Gay Marriage Comes To The Caribbean

The tiny Caribbean island of Saba has legalized same-sex marriage.

Two men were recently married in Saba, marking the first ceremony of its kind in the region and setting off a frenzy of calls from gay couples in other Dutch Caribbean islands seeking to marry, said Julietta Woods with Saba’s Civil Registry office.”People keep calling me every second,” she said by telephone this week. As part of the Netherlands Kingdom, the islands of Saba, Bonaire and St. Eustatius have to recognize same-sex marriages. While Bonaire and St. Eustatius have balked at the idea of legalizing such unions, the idea has been embraced in Saba, long considered a gay-friendly destination. “We’ve seen it as a human rights issue,” said Saba council member Carl Buncamper, who is openly gay. “It is important to give the partners equal rights when it comes to inheritance and other benefits.”

The Netherlands became the first nation in the world to legalize same-sex marriage in 2001.

Labels: Caribbean, marriage equality, Netherlands

Reposted from Joe

Via JMG: Petition Of The Day

The text reads:

The goal of this petition is to force the Obama Administration to produce legislation that limits access to guns. While a national dialogue is critical, laws are the only means in which we can reduce the number of people murdered in gun related deaths. Powerful lobbying groups allow the ownership of guns to reach beyond the Constitution's intended purpose of the right to bear arms. Therefore, Congress must act on what is stated law, and face the reality that access to firearms reaches beyond what the Second Amendment intends to achieve. The signatures on this petition represent a collective demand for a bipartisan discussion resulting in a set of laws that regulates how a citizen obtains a gun.

Sign the petition.

Labels: Connecticut, gun control, petitions, White House

Reposted from Joe

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma December 15, 2012

Removing Hindrances

With proper motivation, prayer becomes an important component of our practice because it helps to remove obstacles—counterproductive circumstances, imbalances of the subtle energies in the body, confusion and ignorance in the mind. Even in listening to the teachings, we may mentally edit what we hear, adding more to them than is being said or ignoring certain aspects. Prayer offsets these hindrances.

- Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, “Prayer”

Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 17th, 2012
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JMG Quote Of The Day - Ezra Klein

"If roads were collapsing all across the United States, killing dozens of drivers, we would surely see that as a moment to talk about what we could do to keep roads from collapsing. If terrorists were detonating bombs in port after port, you can be sure Congress would be working to upgrade the nation’s security measures. If a plague was ripping through communities, public-health officials would be working feverishly to contain it.

"Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. But that’s unacceptable. As others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t 'too soon.' It’s much too late." - Ezra Klein, writing for the Washington Post.

Labels: Connecticut, gun control, tragedy

Reposted from Joe

Via Karmic Blessings / FB:

 Being happy is a mindset. It's a choice that we have. Every obstacle is opportunity in disguise. It stops being an obstacle when you stop seeing it as a problem and see the opportunity.