Via TED: Megan Phelps-Roper: I grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/03/07/watch-former-god-hates-fags-protester-explains-what-finally-broke-her-indoctrination/?utm_source=ET&utm_medium=ETFB&utm_campaign=portal&utm_content=inf_17_60_2&tse_id=INF_7730a9d0037e11e78c985b6a21c9be24

Via Daily Dharma / Buddha Wisdom

When a distraught mother asked [the Buddha] to heal the dead child she carried in her arms, he did not perform a miracle, but instead instructed her to bring him a mustard seed from a house where no one had ever died. She returned from her search without the seed, but with the knowledge that death is universal.

—The Buddha, "Who is the Buddha?"

Via Ram Dass

Just play with the silence for a moment. Instead of using it as expectancy, waiting for something to happen, flip it just slightly and just be in it. Are you really here or are you just waiting for the next thing? It’s interesting to see where we are in relation to times; whether we’re always just between what just happened and what happened next, or whether we can just be here now.

So, let’s just find our way here to be together. If you’re feeling agitated, just notice the agitation. If you’re warm, be warm. If you’re cold, be cold. If you’re overly full, be overly full. Be it, whatever it is, but put it all in the context of a quiet space, because there’s a secret in that, and it’s worth playing with it.

That there’s a place that we can be inside of ourselves, inside of the universe, in which and from which we can appreciate the delight in life. Where we can still have equanimity, and quality of presence, and the quietness of peace.

Via Daily Dharma / Embodying the Universe:

If cosmologists themselves are a manifestation of the same universe that they study, then with them the universe is comprehending itself. When we come to see the universe in a new way, the universe is itself coming to see itself in a new way.

—David Loy, "In Search of the Sacred"

Via Daily Dharma / Mindful Training

If we train ourselves to reach for a snack or pick up the phone to text-message whenever we feel frightened or bored, this is definitely training. The next time we feel uncomfortable we will also tend to reach for some comfort outside ourselves, eventually establishing a deeply ingrained habit, another brick in the wall of our mental prison.

—Gaylon Ferguson, "Fruitless Labor"

Dalai Lama: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Via Daily Dharma / True Nature

Accept your concrete individuality, and having done that, then you may also realize you are blessed just as you are.

—Ruben L. F. Habito, "Be Still & Know"

Via Daily Dharma / Emptiness Is Not What You Expect

Emptiness refers to the absence of something that, for some reason, one expects to find—as when we say a glass, normally used to hold liquids, is empty even though it is full of air. The point is not that there is nothing there at all, but rather that what is there differs from your expectations.

— William S. Cobb, "The Game of Go"

Via Ram Dass

 

You are listening as well as you can to the universe, and often you will see that when things start to happen a certain way, your mind will focus in on that because you’re looking for patterns, which we call ‘synchronicity’.

Often you will just get caught in your desire to find a pattern that will give you an external validation for what you’re doing. You just end up using the universe again to do it to yourself.

So stay with your truth from moment to moment, and get the clues wherever you can. I mean, I’ll open up the Chuang-tzu and read something when I have a question, and if it doesn’t feel good, I say, “Well, that was interesting,” and I close it. If it feels like what I wanted to do anyway, I say, “Ohhh, wow, synchronicity!” And I do it, so I’ve learned that I’m a complete phony anyway, so I might as well just honor it and get on with it.

Via Daily Dharma / Accepting What Is

A deeper equanimity comes when we learn how to be with our life as it is, not as we would like it to be.

—Eliot Fintushel, "Something to Offer"

Via Daily Dharma / Nature’s Spirit

Walls and fences cannot instruct the grasses and trees to actualize spring, yet they reveal the spiritual without intention, just by being what they are. So too with mountains, rivers, sun, moon, and stars.

—Dogen, "Everything is Holy"

Via Daily Dharma / The Terrain of a Moment

Every moment is a unique view of a unique territory, both of which unfold in perpetual motion. Because of the continual flux of it all, holding on to anything that has happened is futile, while being open to what happens next is crucial.

—Andrew Olendzki, "This Moment is Unique"

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.

So truth is one of the exciting vehicles to work with in a relationship. And what I’ve learned is to use my lecturer role to make my truth as available as I possibly could, and what I find is people say to me, “Thank you for being so truthful. It makes it easier for me to be truthful about myself, because you’ve done that.” And I think well, it’s a cheap price to offer yourself up for that purpose, if that in itself starts to help other people.

Via Daily Dharma / Elaborating On the “Now”

We know not to get caught in the past or the future, but in order to be in the Now, we also have to let go of the present. The Now is not confined by relative clock time, yet it is also not pure timelessness.

—Loch Kelly, "When Am I?"

Via Daily Dharma / Storm Dharma

If suffering and awakening form a single weather-system, as many a wise person has come to know, then when storms come, perhaps we can accept them with less dread and aversion, and more trust, and even hope.

— Henry Shukman, "Beautiful Storm"

Via Daily Dharma / All Things Can Be Treasured

I will learn to cherish beings of bad nature
And those pressed by strong sins and sufferings
As if I had found a precious
Treasure very difficult to find.

—Geshe Langri Thangpa, "Breaking the Habit of Selfishness"

Via Daily Dharma / The Foundation of Compassion

When practicing and studying, it’s important to have a motivation that is free from affliction. Among the various pure motivations, the most important is the wish to help ourselves and others, the vast motivation of the Mahayana, which means acting for the sake of all sentient beings, who are as limitless as space.

—Kenchen Thrangu, "On What Is Most Important"

Via Daily Dharma / You’re Depending on You

Nobody can get into the heart of your experience and fix anything for you. If you want to make your own internal experience more hospitable, only you can do that work.

—Ethan Nichtern, "Awake with Others"

Via Daily Dharma / What It Is “To Know”

The idea that all human reason must be empirical is a story that is told to us by our masters.

—Curtis White, "The Science Delusion"