October 12, 2016
When meditation works as it should, it will be a natural part of your being. There will no longer be anything apart from you to have faith in. Hope starts the journey, faith sustains it, but it ends beyond both hope and faith.
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Via Ram Dass
When meditation works as it should, it will be a natural part of your being. There will no longer be anything apart from you to have faith in. Hope starts the journey, faith sustains it, but it ends beyond both hope and faith.
Via Daily Dharma / October 12, 2016: Beyond the Status Quo
We
come to the Buddha-dharma precisely because the suffering we have
experienced in the world of relativity forces us to question
“conventional” truth and the status quo.
—Charles Johnson, "The Dharma of Social Transformation"
—Charles Johnson, "The Dharma of Social Transformation"
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Via Towleroad: NATIONAL COMING OUT DAY
National Coming Out Day, Galaxy Note 7, Billy Bush, Austin, Depeche Mode, Tyler Oakley: HOT LINKS
It’s that day again: “28 years ago, on the anniversary of the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, we first observed National Coming Out Day as a reminder that one of our most basic tools is the power of coming out. One out of every two Americans has someone close to them who is gay or lesbian.
For transgender people, that number is only one in 10. Coming out – whether it is as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or allied – STILL MATTERS. When people know someone who is LGBTQ, they are far more likely to support equality under the law. Beyond that, our stories can be powerful to each other.”
Make the jump here to read the original and more at Towleroad
Via JMG: Democrats Applaud National Coming Out Day
Via press release:
Today, on National Coming Out Day, we celebrate one of the most powerful forces in the fight for LGBT equality. When someone decides to come out as member of the LGBT community, it gives their friends, family, loved ones and neighbors a personal reason to support LGBT rights, and it inspires more members and allies of the LGBT community to stand up for what is right, even in the face of discrimination, bigotry and violence.
Despite the great strides we’ve made in recent years – marriage equality, the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and more – the sad fact remains that coming out is still a risky, even dangerous thing to do for too many Americans, young and old. But that’s why it’s so important. Together, we can end the discrimination and build a brighter, safer future for all.
“The Democratic Party is proud to stand with the LGBT community, and proud to support candidates for elected office who are fighting for the promise of full equality. If we hope to continue building on the progress of the last eight years, we must elect Hillary Clinton and Democrats up and down the ballot across the country.”Make the jump here to read the original and more on JMG
Via JMG: Tim Kaine Denounces Bullying On National Coming Out Day: Adults Need To Promote Acceptance [VIDEO]
October 11, 2016 2016 Election, Activism, LGBT News
Via press release from the Clinton campaign:In honor of National Coming Out Day, Vice Presidential nominee Tim Kaine sat down with ATTN: Editor-In-Chief Matthew Segal, telling him that it is incumbent upon adults in leadership positions to promote the message of acceptance.
Amid clips of LGBT kids describing the bullying and hate-speech directed at them, Senator Kaine says that National Coming Out Day is important because we need to let kids know that they should “be proud of who you are. You’re made the way you’re made for a reason…celebrate that and accept it.”
Senator Kaine also said that school districts receiving school safety funding should work to reduce the rate of bullying in their schools. As someone who has been standing up to bullies her whole life, Hillary Clinton, together with Tim Kaine, will continue fighting for the the LGBT community and celebrates National Coming Out Day.Make the jump here to read the original and see the video on JMG
Via Wasington Post: How one man’s idea for the AIDS quilt made the country pay attention
Twenty-nine years ago, the AIDS Memorial
Quilt was unfolded on the Mall for the first time, with 1,920 panels.
Today, it has grown to more than 49,000. The project was the idea of Cleve Jones, a San Francisco gay rights activist. This article is adapted from Jones’s book “When We Rise: My Life in the Movement,” which is being published Nov. 29 by Hachette Books.
Cleve Jones, founder of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, sits on the floor in front of a quilt panel in San Francisco on Mar. 29, 2001. (Eric Risberg/AP)
Even the word had power for me. Quilts. It made me think of my grandmothers and great-grandmothers. It evoked images of pioneer women making camp by the Conestoga wagons. Or enslaved Africans in the South, hoarding scraps of fabric from the master’s house. It spoke of castoffs, discarded remnants, different colors and textures, sewn together to create something beautiful and useful and warm. Comforters.
I imagined families sharing stories of their loved ones as they cut and sewed the fabric. It could be therapy, I hoped, for a community that was increasingly paralyzed by grief and rage and powerlessness. It could be a tool for the media, to reveal the humanity behind the statistics. And a weapon to deploy against the government; to shame them with stark visual evidence of their utter failure to respond to the suffering and death that spread and increased with every passing day.
I couldn’t shake the idea of a quilt.
My friend Joseph and I started making quilt panels. We made a list of 40 men whom we felt we had known well enough to memorialize, and we began painting their names on blocks of fabric. We talked about how much land would be covered if the bodies of our dead were laid out head to toe, each panel the approximate size of a grave.
For more than a year, activists had been working to organize a mass march for lesbian and gay rights to be held in October 1987 in Washington. I was determined to unfold the quilt on the Mall at the march.
As the annual Gay Freedom Day celebration approached in San Francisco, we asked Mayor Dianne Feinstein for permission to hang the first five squares from the mayor’s balcony at City Hall, overlooking the main stage and Civic Center Plaza. To our surprise, she readily agreed.
We had a name now: The Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.
Make the jump here to read the full article and more
Via Daily Dharma / October 11, 2016: Finding Happiness
Happiness
is not happiness unless it is shared. For happiness is the one thing in
all the world that comes to us only at the moment we give it, and is
likewise increased by being given away.
—Clark Strand, "The Wisdom of Frogs"
—Clark Strand, "The Wisdom of Frogs"
Monday, October 10, 2016
Via Daily Dharma / October 10, 2016: Unfamiliar Territory
Using
meditation or therapy to try to shut down parts of our experience is
ultimately counterproductive. We do not have to be afraid of entering
unfamiliar territory once we have learned how to hold experience within
the gentleness of our own minds.
—Mark Epstein, "Stopping the Wind"
—Mark Epstein, "Stopping the Wind"
Sunday, October 9, 2016
Via Ram Dass / October 9, 2016:
Getting straight not only applies to people but to things as well, such as favorite music, disliked foods, special treats, avoided places, all your toys, etc. Everything must be rerun through your compassion machine.
Via Daily Dharma / October 9, 2016: On Wishful Thinking
It isn’t the loved ones and gain,
per se, that need to be renounced; it’s the unrealistic hopes we place
in these things. Wishful thinking can easily become more compelling than
the longing of the bodhi heart.
—Pema Chödrön, "Cutting Ties: The Fruits of Solitude"
—Pema Chödrön, "Cutting Ties: The Fruits of Solitude"
Friday, October 7, 2016
Via Lions Roar: Life is Tough. Here Are Six Ways to Deal With It
An ancient set of Buddhist slogans offers us six powerful techniques to transform life’s difficulties into awakening and benefit. Zen teacher Norman Fischer guides us through them. Illustrations by Keith Abbott.
There’s an old Zen saying: the whole world’s upside down. In other words, the way the world looks from the ordinary or conventional point of view is pretty much the opposite of the way the world actually is. There’s a story that illustrates this.Once there was a Zen master who was called Bird’s Nest Roshi because he meditated in an eagle’s nest at the top of a tree. He became quite famous for this precarious practice. The Song Dynasty poet Su Shih (who was also a government official) once came to visit him and, standing on the ground far below the meditating master, asked what possessed him to live in such a dangerous manner. The roshi answered, “You call this dangerous? What you are doing is far more dangerous!” Living normally in the world, ignoring death, impermanence, and loss and suffering, as we all routinely do, as if this were a normal and a safe way to live, is actually much more dangerous than going out on a limb to meditate.
While trying to avoid difficulty may be natural and understandable, it actually doesn’t work. We think it makes sense to protect ourselves from pain, but our self-protection ends up causing us deeper pain. We think we have to hold on to what we have, but our very holding on causes us to lose what we have. We’re attached to what we like and try to avoid what we don’t like, but we can’t keep the attractive object and we can’t avoid the unwanted object. So, counterintuitive though it may be, avoiding life’s difficulties is actually not the path of least resistance; it is a dangerous way to live. If you want to have a full and happy life, in good times and bad, you have to get used to the idea that facing misfortune squarely is better than trying to escape from it.
This is not a matter of grimly focusing on life’s difficulties. It is simply the smoothest possible approach to happiness. Of course, when we can prevent difficulty, we do it. The world may be upside down, but we still have to live in this upside-down world, and we have to be practical on its terms. The teaching on transforming bad circumstances into the path doesn’t deny that. What it addresses is the underlying attitude of anxiety, fear, and narrow-mindedness that makes our lives unhappy, fearful, and small.
Transforming bad circumstances into the path is associated with the practice of patience. There are six mind-training (lojong) slogans connected with this:
- Turn all mishaps into the path.
- Drive all blames into one.
- Be grateful to everyone.
- See confusion as buddha and practice emptiness.
- Do good, avoid evil, appreciate your lunacy, pray for help.
- Whatever you meet is the path.
Read the complete article and more here
Via JMG: BREAKING: Obama Administration Formally Accuses Russia Of Attempting To Interfere With 2016 Elections
The Washington Post reports:
The Obama administration on Friday officially accused Russia of carrying out a wide-ranging campaign to interfere with the 2016 elections, including by hacking the computers of the Democratic National Committee and other political officials.
The denunciation, made by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security, came as pressure was growing from within the administration and some lawmakers to hold Moscow accountable for a set of actions apparently aimed at sowing discord around the election.
The DNC publicly disclosed the intrusions in June, saying their investigation determined Russian government hackers were behind it. That was followed shortly afterwards by a major leak of DNC emails, some so embarrassing that they forced the resignation of the DNC chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, on the eve of the Democratic national convention.
The administration also blamed Moscow for the hack of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the subsequent leak of private email addresses and cell phone numbers of Democratic lawmakers. A series of other leaks of hacked material followed, all of which are suspected of being conducted by Russia-sponsored hackers.More from NBC News:
“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in an extraordinary gloves-off statement.
“Such activity is not new to Moscow — the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there.”And from CNBC:
U.S. intelligence officials are “confident” that Russian government directed these attacks on American political organizations, the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security said in a joint statement.
“The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts,” the agencies said in a Friday statement.
While this activity is “not new to Moscow,” the U.S. intelligence community and Department of Homeland Security said it would be “extremely difficult” for hackers to actually “alter ballot counts or election results,” because of the “decentralized nature” of the U.S. election system and the “number of protections state and local election officials have in place.”Make the jump here to read the original and more on JMG
Via lgbtqnation: Donald Trump: ‘I’ll overturn the shocking gay marriage decision – trust me’
Donald Trump
In a recent interview with Pat Robertson’s television network, Donald Trump blathered that antigay conservatives the world over can rest easy knowing that he’s committed to overturning the Supreme Court’s landmark decision that struck down state bans on same-sex marriage nationwide.
The Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody asked the GOP presidential frontrunner what he thought of the Log Cabin Republicans calling him “one of the best, if not the best, pro-gay Republican candidates to ever run for the presidency.”
Told that Evangelicals want to trust his stance on traditional marriage, Trump responded:
“I think they can trust me on traditional marriage… and frankly, I was very much in favor of having the court rule that it goes to states, and let the states decide. And that was a shocking decision for you and for me and for a lot of other people, but I was very much in favor of letting the states decide and that’s the way it looked it was going and then all of a sudden out of nowhere came this very massive decision and they took it away. But I was always in favor of state’s rights; states deciding.”
Read the original and more here
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