Alan Watts - How We Define Ourselves

Via Path To Peace & Happiness / FB:

Path To Peace & Happiness

‎"I prefer Buddhism because it gives three principles in combination, which no other religion does. Buddhism teaches prajna (understanding as against superstition and supernaturalism), karuna (loving-kindness), and samata (equality). This is what man wants for a good and happy life. Neither god nor soul can save society."

- Dr B. R. Ambedkar

2012: What Brought Us Together

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma December 22, 2012

With a Little Help from my Friends

If you really want to become skillful in your thoughts, words, and deeds, you need a trustworthy friend to point out your blind spots. And because those spots are blindest around your unskillful habits, the primary duty of a trustworthy friend is to point out your faults—for only when you see your faults can you correct them; only when you correct them are you benefiting from your friend’s compassion in pointing them out.

- Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “The Power of Judgment”

Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 24th, 2012
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Via JMG: Photo Of The Year?

 

Labels: 2012 In Review, DADT, military, photography

Reposted from Joe

JMG Quote Of The Day - Henry Rollins

"Hats off to Washington state where, recently, hundreds of same-sex couples were legally married. I am elated as much as I am frustrated by why this country refuses to wake up and smell the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. I feel for everyone who wanted to get married for so long and were made to feel so bad about who they are. I feel worse for all the Americans in the large number of remaining states still waiting for their turn to enjoy the freedoms and protections bestowed upon them by their very citizenship.

"There is still a long way to go. Marriage equality is a term so ridiculous on its face that when you hear it mentioned, you would think you were in Riyadh. Years from now, perhaps we can lose the equality part, the same-sex part and call it what it is -- marriage. As much as the homophobes, an ever-thinning herd, whines and screeches, the earth is shifting underneath their feet and things are getting better all the time. This is going to be an incredible century. Didn't get off to a very good start but we are making some bold and exciting strides forward." - Henry Rollins, writing for LA Weekly.

Labels: Henry Rollins, hotness, marriage equality, straight allies

Reposted from Joe

Via JMG: Where Atheism Is Punishable By Death

Source.

Labels: atheism, death penalty, religion, theocracy

Reposted from Joe

Via JMG: Ill Papa Slams Gay Marriage (AGAIN)

 

"People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given to them by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves. The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man's fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. When freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God" - Emperor Palpatine, in his annual Christmas speech to Vatican bureaucrats.

Labels: bigotry, Catholic Church, marriage equality, organized crime, pope, religion, Vatican

Reposted from Joe

Via JMG: Vatican: Gay Marriage Is Like Communism

The official Vatican newspaper yesterday compared gay marriage supporters with people who had been "deceived" by communism and socialism.

Faced with recent setbacks in the United States and Europe, the Roman Catholic Church has intensified its increasingly uphill battle against gay marriage. The latest salvo came this week, with a front-page article in the Vatican’s semiofficial newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. Historian Lucetta Scaraffia compared proponents of gay marriage, with their championing of "marriage equality," to 20th-century communists who wooed millions with their promise of perfect social and economical equality. Scaraffia, a 64-year-old former feminist activist who later became a fervent Catholic, has often written in the Vatican newspaper on the issue. For her, the idea of gay marriage is a product of the same "egalitarian utopia that did so much damage during the 20th century ... deceiving humanity as socialism did in the past."

Labels: bigotry, Catholic Church, LGBT rights, marriage equality, organized crime, religion, Vatican

Reposted from Joe

Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:

	Daily Buddhist Wisdom
	Sitting peacefully on a cushion day and night seeking to attain Buddhahood, rejecting life and death in hopes of realizing enlightenment, is all like a monkey grasping at the moon reflected in the water. - Shoitsu More Buddhism Quotes >>

Viva São Paulo!

BRAZIL: São Paulo State Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage

 

Brazilian Law Blog reports:

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! 

 

Labels: Brazil, marriage equality, Sao Paulo

Reposted from Joe

Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:

Daily Buddhist Wisdom
	A hundred thousand worlds are flowers in the sky, a single mind and body is moonlight in the water; once the cunning ends and information stops, at that moment there is no place for thought. - Han-Shan Te-Ch'ing in The Clouds Should Know Me By Now More Buddhism Quotes >>

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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