Via Daily Dharma

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About the Present Moment | October 4, 2014

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Some important questions to ask are why people want to believe that mindfulness is good in every circumstance, that there are no negative side effects, and that it’s derived in a pure way from a 2500­-year-old practice. Why do contemplative practices, especially Asian contemplative practices, seem to elicit this type of positive response? Those are the really interesting cultural questions about the present moment. 

 

- Catherine Kerr, "Don’t Believe the Hype" 

 

Via Paulo Coelho / FB:

Flower of the Day: 10/03/14

"The vast majority of people are taught to deny the shadow. Most religions and even culture itself evoke the original goodness, but they do not teach us about what to do with evil. In order to reach the experience of oneness, we need to integrate all parts within us. We can only bring the kingdom of God to earth through unity, and unity includes everything."

Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma

Too Busy Talking to Ourselves | October 3, 2014 Most of us are too busy talking to ourselves to even contemplate what might be vivid and apparent should we ever learn to shut up.   - Bonnie Myotai Treace, Sensei, "The Sword Disappears in the Water"

Until We Could - Richard Blanco

Flower of the Day: 10/02/14

"The first glimpse of God is a deep darkness. This darkness is the unknown that inhabits you, and this encounter with God is a portal to this same unknown part of you. What is unknown makes you fragile and vulnerable. A profound meeting between a more superficial center and a much deeper center of consciousness acts as a mirror that reflects the reality of who you are on all levels. So if you are not mature enough for this encounter with yourself, then you tend to run away from it."

Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma

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A Fathomless Foundation | October 2, 2014

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Buddhism is fundamentally a path of inquiry, a practice of looking at the mind’s tendency to cling, to adhere to opinions, beliefs, memories, emotions, moods. This is a remarkable foundation, because it’s fathomless. For as every moment gives way to the next, we come face to face with an infinite freshness of experience—a freshness that, if we have truly surrendered to the practice, cannot be solidified into a doctrine. 

 

- Noelle Oxenhandler, "Glass of Water, Bare Feet" 

 

Via Daily Dharma

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Body as Illusion | October 1, 2014

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There is no 'body' in the limbs,
But from illusion does the idea spring,
To be affixed to a specific shape—
Just as when a scarecrow is mistaken for a man. 

- Shantideva, "What Body?" 

Flower of the Day: 10/01/14

“For a while now I have been speaking about the cycle of time we are currently in. There are many people wanting to commit suicide, many unknown diseases appearing, and our whole system is entering collapse, from economics and politics to the environment. What is actually happening is that the ego is entering collapse. This crisis is most visible and intense within larger urban centers, where one’s patience is constantly tested. This is why it is important that you dedicate at least a few minutes of the day to sadhana, spiritual practice, because this is what makes it possible to keep the flame of connection ignited.”

Sri Prem Baba

Via JMG: New Report On LGBT Poverty

Via the Movement Advancement Project:

A landmark report released today paints a stark picture of the added financial burdens faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans because of anti-LGBT laws at the national, state and local levels. According to the report, these laws contribute to significantly higher rates of poverty among LGBT Americans and create unfair financial penalties in the form of higher taxes, reduced wages and Social Security income, increased healthcare costs, and more. The momentum of recent court rulings overturning marriage bans across the country has created the impression that LGBT Americans are on the cusp of achieving full equality from coast-to-coast. But the new report, Paying an Unfair Price: The Financial Penalty for Being LGBT in America, documents how inequitable laws harm the economic well-being of LGBT people in three key ways: by enabling legal discrimination in jobs, housing, credit and other areas; by failing to recognize LGBT families, both in general and across a range of programs and laws designed to help American families; and by creating barriers to safe and affordable education for LGBT students and the children of LGBT parents.

The report documents the often-devastating consequences when the law fails LGBT families. For example, children raised by same-sex parents are almost twice as likely to be poor as children raised by married opposite-sex parents. Additionally, 15 percent of transgender workers have incomes of less than $10,000 per year; among the population as a whole, the comparable figure is just four percent. To demonstrate the connection between anti-LGBT laws and the finances of LGBT Americans and their families, the report outlines how LGBT people living in states with low levels of equality are more likely to be poor, both compared to their non-LGBT neighbors, and compared to their LGBT counterparts in state with high levels of equality. For example, the denial of marriage costs gay and lesbian families money; same-sex couples with children had just $689 less in household income than married opposite-sex couples in states with marriage and relationship recognition for same-sex couples, but had an astounding $8,912 less in household income in states lacking such protections.

Read the full report (PDF).

UPDATE: NBC News reports on the study.

Shortly after her wife died in March, Arlene Goldberg had to give up the beloved South Florida home that the couple shared. Because Goldberg’s 2011 marriage to her partner of 47 years wasn’t recognized as legal in Florida, she was denied her wife’s social security benefits. Without that income, Goldberg, 67, couldn’t pay her mortgage. “I’m trying to figure out how I am going to get through this time,” she said from Fort Myers, Florida. “I really can’t even pay my bills.”

Goldberg is among an untold number of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people nationwide who suffer economic distress and in some cases, poverty, as a result of anti-gay laws such as same-sex marriage bans, or from a lack of legal protections, like non-discrimination ordinances, according to a new report by two think tanks, the progressive Center for American Progress and the pro-LGBT Movement Advancement Project.

Census data and other research over the last decade have shown higher rates of financial hardship and poverty among gays. But the report’s authors make the connection between those difficulties and specific laws and policies by analyzing current incomes and poverty rates for LGBT people and their heterosexual counterparts in states that have protections and those that don’t.

Labels: gay families, gay parenting, LGBT rights, poverty

Reposted from  Joe Jervis

Flower of the Day: 09/30/14

“Some people are focused on educating their children, and others are focused on redefining education. Some people are working to minimize conflict between the world's religions, while others are working to create technology to make life more comfortable and sustainable. Regardless of what your role may be in the divine game, on the deepest level, your work is to anchor loving awareness on the planet.”

Sri Prem Baba

 

Read the complete text>

Via Daily Dharma

Nothing Else to Do | September 30, 2014

The practice is to make the non-arising of grasping and clinging absolute, final, and eternally void, so that no grasping and clinging can ever return. Just that is enough. There is nothing else to do.

- Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, "A Single Handful"

Via JMG: British Survey: 16% Have Had Gay Sex

 

A dwindling number of Brits believe that homosexuality should be made illegal again.

Attitudes to homosexuality are clearly becoming more liberal but there are still pockets of resistance. In total, 16% of Britons continue to believe that homosexuality should be outlawed. Men (19%) are more likely than women (13%) to advocate the banning of gay sex, and rejection of homosexuality peaks in London and the south-east, where more than one in five (21%) feel it should be illegal. However, at a total level, the proportion of Britons who believe gay sex should be illegal has reduced by eight percentage points, from 24%, since 2008.

According to the same survey, same-sex marriage support stands at 63%.

 

Labels: Britain, LGBT rights, sexuality, surveys

Reposted from  Joe Jervis

Flower of the Day: 09/29/14

“Sometimes it’s good to be alone in order to redirect the focus of our willpower, especially when we are very addicted to codependency. Being alone helps us to get an objective perception of reality, and this perception will help us become free from the game of lust. At some point, we will be truly ready to surrender ourselves to a spiritual life, not as an escape from relationships, but because we have learnt what we had to learn through them.”

Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma

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Lifting the Veil | September 29, 2014

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With study and practice, we can move beyond our reductive thinking, lifting the veil to reveal the true nature of reality. 

- Wendy Hasenkamp, "Brain Karma" 

Via Daily Dharma

Internal Revolution | September 28, 2014

There are so many levels to this anti-greed, anti-hatred, anti-delusion teaching that says, in this world that’s filled with confusion, let’s be unconfused. In a world filled with hatred and greed, let’s be generous and loving and forgiving. The teachings are revolutionary on a societal level, but there’s also an internal revolution, because craving that creates addiction comes from inside, from the human survival instinct that craves pleasure and hates pain, and that left to its own devices will turn us into addicts.

- Noah Levine, "The Suffering of Addiction"

Flower of the Day: 09/28/14

“Relationships are crucial for growth, and doing group work helps tremendously. Beyond that, the sangha, or spiritual community, is a sacred jewel, because each person gives strength to the other. Still, the crossing takes place individually, and it’s natural at some point for you to start withdrawing yourself. There comes a moment when some people need this solitude, precisely because the journey is internal. This universe is sustained by lust and attachment, and we spend much of our time on relationships; but even so, at some point it will become necessary to turn within.”

- Sri Prem Baba

"BAD ASS GAYS" film trailer. Premieres on Logo TV/Fall 2014

Flower of the Day: 09/27/14

“This is my prayer: ‘Oh Lord! Come and inhabit my body, inhabit my mind and intellect, inhabit my heart, so that no one may tell us apart. May I be one with you. May every word that comes out of my mouth be an expression of your holy word. May every act that I practice be an expression of your holy will.’ Our prayers should be made towards this direction, because we know there is no other request to be made. Intellectually, we have already understood that we are here to move from a state of separation and isolation to a state of oneness. We are moving from selfishness to altruism, from fear to trust, and from hatred to love.” - Sri Prem Baba