You
can spend a lot of energy being upset, or you can get with the
program—it’s that right effort thing—get the beauty of the way it is.
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There’s
no greater foolishness than to spend one’s lifetime acknowledging that
one is deluded and yet doing nothing whatsoever about it.
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It
is not easy to refrain from repressing or indulging our anger. Our
challenge is to embrace it with mindfulness and genuine caring.
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There
is no need for science to be fundamentalist any more than there is a
need for religions to be fundamentalist. Fundamentalism springs from a
desire for certainty, but many religious people and many scientists know
that this cannot be achieved by beings with limited minds and
experience such as ourselves.
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The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein points us to the ever-growing scandal that will echo through the ages:When future generations look back on the scandals of our age, it’ll be the unchecked rise in global temperatures, not the Benghazi talking points, that infuriate them.Yes, unchecked warming is likely to prove the greatest scandal in U.S. history.
Scandalous: Projected warming this century (in red, via recent literature) if humanity allows current carbon pollution trends to continue compared to the temperature change over past 11,300 years (in blue, via Science, 2013).I know it’s not one of the scandals the major media are now obsessed with 24/7, but that is business as usual for the MSM, as Klein notes:
Things go wrong in government. Sometimes it’s just bad luck. Sometimes it’s rank incompetence. Sometimes it’s criminal wrongdoing. Most of the time you never hear about it. Or, if you do hear about it, the media eventually gets bored talking about it (see warming, global).It was Watergate and the fame it brought Woodward and Bernstein that inspired so many journalists to enter the field. But now that post-modern cynicism reigns supreme –which is to say, much of the media acts as if their really is no objective truth or over-arching public interest — fame alone seems to drives the media.
Nirvana
manifests as ease, as love, as connectedness, as generosity, as
clarity, as unshakable freedom. This isn’t watering down nirvana. This
is the reality of liberation that we can experience, sometimes in a
moment and sometimes in transformative ways that change our entire life.
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The bills were supported by the ruling center-right Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the progressive Socialist Party (PS). The Portuguese parliament had approved the right to same-sex marriages in 2010, but without adoption rights. The law allowed gay couples the same rights as married heterosexual couples, including taxes, inheritance and housing, but didn’t offer the right to adopt children. Portugal is among the first 10 counties in the world to allow same-sex marriage. As recently as 1982, homosexuality was a crime in Portugal. Today, Portugal has wide-ranging anti-discrimination laws and is one of the few countries in the world to contain a ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation in its Constitution.(Tipped by JMG reader Pedro)
The
best way to deal with excessive thinking is to just listen to it, to
listen to the mind. Listening is much more effective than trying to stop
thought or cut it off.
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Among the EU member states causing major concern are Hungary and Greece. The report notes that the economic crisis in Greece has given a platform to extremist groups, such as the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, who target minority groups including LGBT activists.The co-chair of ILGA-Europe notes: "The Annual Review 2013 uncovers the real situation of LGBTI people beyond laws and gives us the whole picture of what it is like to be an LGBTI person in Europe today. The picture is far from satisfactory." Ratings and graphs for individual nations can be downloaded here.
North Cyprus continues to be the only place on the continent of Europe where homosexuality is a criminal act, while expressions of “overt homophobia and transphobia” by government, religious leaders and extremist groups were “common” in Bulgaria.
Italy is not taking any legislative initiatives despite having a “relatively high level” of violent homophobia and transphobia. Meanwhile in France, despite the recent passing of the country’s same-sex marriage bill, 1,397 cases of hate crime, hate speech and discrimination incidents against sexual minorities were documented last year.
The
process of finding the truth may not be a process by which we feel
increasingly better and better. It may be a process by which we look at
things honestly, sincerely, truthfully, and that may or may not be an
easy thing to do.
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The move by the National Council of Justice, a 15-member panel led by Joaquim Barbosa, the chief justice of the nation’s high court, effectively legalizes gay marriage throughout Brazil, legal scholars here said. The decision follows legislation in two neighboring countries, Argentina and Uruguay, where lawmakers have managed to pass bills authorizing same-sex marriage nationwide in recent years.Same-sex marriage is already legal in 13 Brazilian states and in the capital federal district.
Still, there is some room for judicial appeals of the Brazilian decision, potentially within the high court, the Supreme Federal Tribunal, and resistance may emerge in Congress, where gay-marriage legislation has faced opposition from an influential bloc of evangelical Christian lawmakers. Even so, supporters of same-sex marriage described the council’s decision as pioneering.
We
are not called upon as Buddhists to deny the world, and certainly not
to escape from it. We are called to live with it, and to make our peace
with all that is. The world of worries we wish to escape from in the
beginning of Buddhist practice is found to be enlightenment itself in
the end.
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Fifty-three percent of Americans say the law should recognize same-sex marriages, the third consecutive reading of 50% or above in Gallup polling over the past year. The 53% in favor ties the high to this point, also measured last November and in May 2011. Gallup's May 2-7 poll suggests Americans' support for gay marriage is solidifying above the majority level.
