Daily Buddhist Wisdom | |||
|
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.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Viva São Paulo!
BRAZIL: São Paulo State Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage
Brazilian Law Blog reports:
Reposted from Joe
Brazil is about to see something that we only heard about from the United States: a massive movement of people going to one specific State, in order to get married there. This is because São Paulo State (where São Paulo city is located) has updated its registration rules in order to allow the automatic registration of same sex marriages, without the need of a previous court order. This change has followed, with some delay, a decision from the Brazilian Supreme Court regarding same sex marriage.The state of Sao Paulo has 41 million residents! The city of Sao Paulo is the largest in the southern hemisphere!
Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:
Daily Buddhist Wisdom | |||
|
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”
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
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
Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:
Daily Buddhist Wisdom | |||
|
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”
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:
Daily Buddhist Wisdom | |||
|
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”
Monday, December 17, 2012
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
Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:
Daily Buddhist Wisdom | |||
|
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”
Sunday, December 16, 2012
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”
Saturday, December 15, 2012
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
― 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
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)