Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / Why Wisdom?

Dignity without wisdom can be easily corrupted by pride. Generosity without wisdom can be corrupted by self-flattery. Without wisdom, you cannot be a perfect person—meaning that you cannot be free from complicated mind. Without this freedom, your good qualities always risk being corrupted.

—Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche, "Keys to Happiness"

I would say you and I are using words; we are using speaking and listening as a vehicle for us to meet, and through which we are meeting. Where we are capable of meeting is in the intuitive heart/mind - a way of knowing one another that isn’t through our immediate, analytic, intellectual process. But yet, these are word concepts that are spinning out, and you’re picking them up, and you’re taking the concepts, and fitting them with your concepts, and deciding they work.

You’re judging and you’re using your intellect to decide whether I’m off the wall, or I’m here, or am I like us or am I them, or what am I? Whatever happened to Ram Dass? And when I say I share truth with the Beloved, it’s a place where we know how limited the words are, so we dance with the words with our minds, while also sinking into a place of just shared presence.

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / Preventing Moral Atrophy

This is the moment to return to whichever practice reinforces our moral clarity, so that we do not wake up one day to find it eroded beyond recognition.

—Sofia Ali-Khan, "A Time for Discernment"

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / Two Ways:

One can cross the mountains on foot, as did Siddhartha, or you can hop a ride on the great dharma vehicle that he subsequently launched. Trusting in ourselves, we are headed for the mountains and probable failure. Trusting in Buddha, we just might find ourselves gliding effortlessly into the field of merit that he has so graciously spread out to receive us.

—David Brazier, "The ‘Inner Logic’ of Other Power"

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / In Honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day...

There’s nothing about birth or social status that makes a person good or bad. People are good or bad solely in terms of their actions, and so that’s how they should be judged—not by the color of their skin.

—Thanissaro Bhikkhu, "What the Buddha Taught Us About Race"

NYCGMC Tonewall meets The Golden Girls

Via Eckhart Tolle

✣...A New Species is arising on the Planet. It is arising now, and You are it...... ✣ 

Eckhart Tolle

Via Ram Dass

Truth is one of the vehicles for deepening spiritual awareness through another human being, and if there is a license for that in the relationship, in any relationship – with guru, with friend, with lover, with whatever it is – it is an absolutely optimum way of coming into a liquid spiritual relationship with another person.

But it’s very, very delicate because people feel very vulnerable. They have parts of their mind that are cut off, that the idea that’s been socialized is, “If I show this part of me, I would not be acceptable.” And the ability to risk that, finally you learn how to have your truth available.

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / The Only Answer:

To the degree and extent a person practices dharma, to that degree and extent that person gets protection from the dharma. We can never get protection from anything else, no matter how much security, or insurance, or how many secure locks we have—never.

—Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, "Going Upstream"

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / There’s Work to Be Done

Focus on the present because you know that there’s work to be done in training the mind in developing skillful present intentions, and you don’t know how much more time you have to accomplish that training.

—Thanissaro Bhikkhu, "The Buddha’s Baggage"

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / Empty Views

What makes us miserable, what causes us to be in conflict with one another, is our insistence on our particular view of things: our view of what we deserve or want, our view of right and wrong, our view of self, our view of other, our view of life, our view of death. But views are just views. They are not ultimate truth.

—Norman Fischer, "Beyond Language"

Via Quora / Why is it so hard for educated liberals to empathize with Trump supporters?

The autistic author Sparrow R. Jones said it well:

I am not mad at you that Clinton lost. I am unconcerned that we have different politics. And I don’t think less of you because you vote one way and I vote another. No… I think less of you because you watched an adult mock a disabled person in front of a crowd and still supported him. I think less of you because you saw a man spouting clear racism and backed him. I think less of you because you listened to him advocate for war crimes, and still thought he should run this country. I think less of you because you watched him equate a woman’s worth to her appearance and got on board. It isn’t your politics that I find repulsive. It is your personal willingness to support racism, sexism, and cruelty. You sided with a bully when it mattered and that is something I will never forget. So, no… you and I won’t be “coming together” to move forward or whatever. Trump disgusts me, but it is the fact that he doesn’t disgust you that will stick with me long after this election.