You
start with freedom from thirst, hunger, disease, the basic freedoms
that the state has to help its citizens achieve. Then you go beyond that
to social freedom, from discrimination, inequality, from crime, and
lawlessness, and insecurity, which the state also has to provide. Then
ultimately you find further up the ladder political freedom, the freedom
from authority and tyranny. And then Buddhism brings you even past
that, to seek freedom from internal bondage.
—Matthieu Ricard, "Bhutan on the Brink"
The New York Times reports:
The National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park here
is a somber glen of plants, trees, walks, grass and cairn, with
thousands of names etched in stones and pavement. Visitors’ emotions run
high, but the details of exactly how AIDS devastated and transformed
the world are not found here. “The story of AIDS is more than a
disease,” said John Cunningham, executive director of the grove. “The
real underpinnings of that story are about humanity, social justice,
human rights and what it means to be a citizen of the world. Somehow
there needs to be a keeper of the story.”
Now there is a move to create just that: a place to chronicle the
AIDS tragedy more comprehensively, to explore the pandemic’s many facets
in a permanent national exhibition and repository. It would be similar
to institutions commemorating other cataclysmic events: the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the National September
11 Memorial & Museum in Manhattan and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Museum in Japan.
The effort is in its nascent stages, being discreetly explored by the
staff and board of the grove, which Congress designated a National
Memorial in 1996. (It is the only AIDS-related monument to receive such
status.) So far, the grove has engaged consultants, some with a history
of fund-raising for museums, to begin gauging the interest of wealthy
donors, especially those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
Hit the link for much more about the planning. Wilton Manors is already home to the World AIDS Museum. (Tipped by JMG reader Lisa)
Now when most of us think of yogis, we think of somebody sitting, like Milarepa, up in a cave in the mountains, cross-legged and naked. There was snow, and ants were eating him, and the only food he took was nettle soup, and he ate it for so long he developed a green nettle fur all over him. But he was busy freeing himself from the dharma in order to come into union. Now that kind of moratorium is pretty unrealistic for most Westerners, so what role does yoga play in the West for us at the moment?
Well, along the way it will teach you how to control your consciousness, calm your own mind down, find a center, and get your body into harmony with your thoughts. It will get you back far enough inside yourself so that you can start to see how it all is, and start to experience compassion for yourself and for others around you.
Everything preaches the dharma—nuclear waste, skunks, flowers, grass—and does so fully and completely.
—Roshi Nancy Mujo Baker, "On Not Being Stingy"
No
matter what situation we find ourselves in, we can always set our
compass to our highest intentions in the present moment. Perhaps it is
nothing more than being in a heated conversation with another person and
stopping to take a breath and ask yourself, “What is my highest
intention in this moment?”
—Jack Kornfield, "Set the Compass of Your Heart"
If
we are to close the gap between ideal and actuality—between the
envisaged aim of striving and the lived experience of our everyday
lives—it is necessary for us to pay greater heed to the task of
repetition.
—Bhikkhu Bodhi, "Vision and Routine"
Altruism, Assertiveness,
Beauty, Bravery, Brevity, Charity, Cheerfulness, Clarity, Cleanliness,
Compassion, Commitment, Confidence, Concentration, Consideration,
Contentment, Cooperation, Courage, Courtesy, Creativity, Curiosity,
Detachment, Determination, Devotion, Discretion, Education, Empathy,
Endurance, Energy, Enthusiasm, Faith, Flexibility, Focus, Forgiveness,
Freedom, Friendliness, Generosity, Gentleness, Grace, Gratitude, Happiness,
Helpfulness, Honesty, Honor, Hope, Hospitality, Humility, Idealism,
Imagination, Immaculacy, Independence, Industry, Initiative, Integrity,
Joy, Justice, Kindness, Knowledge, Love, Loyalty, Meekness, Mercy,
Moderation, Modesty, Nobility, Non-Violence, Obedience, Optimism,
Patience, Peace, Perseverance, Prayerfulness, Prudence, Purity,
Radiance, Reliability, Remembrance, Resilience, Resourcefulness,
Respect, Responsibility, Reverence, Sacrifice, Self-Control,
Self-Discipline, Selflessness, Serenity, Servitude, Silence, Sincerity,
Steadfastness, Strength, Tolerance, Thoughtfulness, Thrift, Tranquility,
Trustworthiness, Truthfulness, Understanding, Unity, Will-Power,
Wisdom, Wonder, Zeal
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?"
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.
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"
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"
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"
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"
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.
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"
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"
