Via NPR: Pride Events Honor Memory Of Gilbert Baker And His Rainbow Flag

http://www.npr.org/2017/06/21/533844029/pride-events-honor-memory-of-gilbert-baker-and-his-rainbow-flag

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - June 21, 2017

Miracles and gatherings of Satsang, reading or hanging out with holy books, chemicals, they’re all traps, but they are useful because they keep strengthening your faith. Faith can touch that place inside, which is called the Atman. It’s naive to think that any one route will bring you faster than any other route, other than what is supposed to be your route. In Zen, they say, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.”

Your work on yourself starts exactly where you are at this moment. Like, at this moment, if you’re thinking about the future or the past, if you’re planning, if you’re collecting this for later, what about right here? Now. This is what it’s all about. Everything you’ve ever done in your life and all your incarnations are for this moment. This isn’t for that, this is it – this is what it’s about.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: You Need Both Wisdom and Compassion

Both wisdom and compassion shift our sense of identity away from ourselves toward the wider human, biotic, and cosmic community to which we belong. But where wisdom involves a cognitive grasp of this fact, compassion operates viscerally.

—Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi, “The Need of the Hour”

Via Outsports: Former Patriots and Chiefs tackle Ryan O’Callaghan comes out as gay

Ryan O’Callaghan’s plan was always to play football and then, when his career was over, kill himself.

Growing up in Redding, Calif., he didn’t see any other option. From a deep red corner of a blue state, the conflicted young man had decided in high school that he would never — could never — live as a gay man. While the 6-foot-7, 330-pound offensive tackle didn’t fit any of the gay stereotypes, he decided shortly after coming out to himself in junior high school that he could never let anyone else in on his darkest secret.

Over the years he had heard general comments from friends and family members about gay people. Every utterance of a gay slur or a joke about gay men — and he heard them plenty when he was young — was like a knife to the gut.

"If you’re a gay kid and you hear someone you love say ‘fag,’ it makes you think that in their eyes you’re just a fag too," O’Callaghan told Outsports on a recent visit to Los Angeles for his first-ever Pride celebration. "That got to me a lot."

Growing up in a conservative area light years away from nearby San Francisco, his own views of gay people had been shaped by those off-color comments and the rare image on television showing a gay man he couldn’t relate to. He knew that the people in his world would never accept him being gay, and he could never truly accept it either.

O’Callaghan decided early on that he would hide behind football. The sport would be his "beard," and the jersey on his back would throw off the scent and keep his secret hidden for over a dozen years on a journey that saw him playing college ball at the University of California and in the NFL with the New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs.

He spent his time in football preparing for his suicide, yet thanks to a small group of people within the Chiefs organization he ultimately found the will to live as the real Ryan O’Callaghan.

Make the jump here to read the full article and more

Via Daily Dharma: The Ordinary is Sacred

No longer leaning toward one form of life (attachment) and away from another (aversion) allows psychic energy to flow from our imagination into reality and transforms our ordinary existence into the sacred.

—Rodney Smith, “From Thought to Stillness”

God's Own Country trailer - in cinemas 1 September

Via Unicornbooty: Google Gives $1 Million Donation to Preserve LGBT History of Stonewall Inn

Google is donating $1 million to preserve an oral history of the 1969 Stonewall riots that were the groundbreaking moment for the LGBT rights movement.

Sen. Chuck Schumer made the announcement on Sunday that Google.org, the company’s philanthropy branch, is donating the grant to the LGBT Community Center in New York City to start the project. Schumer says the purpose of the project is to spread the word and educate future generations about the Stonewall riots.

“The purpose is to spread the word about the Stonewall uprising and the progress we have made as well as the distance we have to go,” Schumer said. “This announcement sends an unmistakable message to Washington: that the America we know celebrates and cherishes its diversity; it doesn’t hide from it or fear it.”

Schumer continued: “With this money, they will translate the legacy of Stonewall from a physical landmark into a digital experience, so that the lessons of its history can reach tens of millions of people across the nation, and across the globe.”

The idea for the project came from William Floyd, Google’s out head of external affairs in New York. He believes that unlike some other national monuments, Stonewall commemorates a struggle that continues to evolve.

“This is a living, breathing, active thing,” he said. “It’s not like Mount Rushmore or a physical natural thing of beauty, it’s civil rights. We thought it was really important that we could provide money and technology to capture those voices and help amplify them.”

The project is slated to be completed for the 50th anniversary of the historic riots in 2019.

During his remarks, Schumer also called out President Trump, who has yet to say anything about LGBT Pride Month.

Schumer said, “This sends an unmistakable message to President Trump and Washington that we’re gonna fight to defend Stonewall because at it’s core what happened here at Stonewall was deeply patriotic.”

Make the jump here to read the original and more

Via Daily Dharma: We All Depend on Others

We depend through the whole of life on the support of others . . . .Our dependency is not a cause for despair but rather leads to a sense of wonderment and gratitude, which is the moving force of true spirituality.

—David Brazier, “Living Buddhism”

Via Daily Dharma: The Meaning of Dharma

First, one must get to know oneself. Then, having become familiar with oneself, one can live one’s life more deeply. Living one’s life more deeply is the meaning of dharma.

—Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje, “Intelligence & Investigation”

Via Ram Dass

I’m for the long, long view. Every time things like this happened, Maharajji would say, “It’s perfect. It’s perfect.” Now I know that many of you are feeling repulsed or apoplectic about that statement, but we’ve got to keep our quietness inside. We’ve got to keep our love. Our compassion. We’ve got to keep our wisdom during this time.

In this political scene, I don’t think we all should sit back and say, “It’s just perfect.” But I want to say you should not do social action with frustration and anger, but with love. The fear, the anger, and all those things, that’s the work. Is that inside you? Love it. Those things are thoughts, and those thoughts are not productive. If you identify with your soul, you love those thoughts. And I think it’s hard to do that. The hardness is the work.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The Mind's Clouds

The light of the sun is always naturally present. Clouds are just temporary . . . . In the same way, the nature of the mind is naturally present, and the obscurations and the afflictions are just adventitious.

—Kenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, “On What Is Most Important”

Via Enough Passivity / FB:

Via Daily Dharma: What We Project

We will attract the same kinds of people we really are. If we have a mind full of defilements, we will attract that to us. Therefore we have to purify our mental state, because whatever is within we will project out.

—Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, “No Excuses”

Via Ram Dass

“Christ was lost in love.”

– Neem Karoli Baba

Via Daily Dharma: Understanding Difference Will Deepen Practice

A spiritual tradition is neither generic nor universal. To see what makes one’s own tradition uniquely itself is to be disabused of the notion that it is what all sensible, thinking people would arrive at if only they would get enlightened.

—Rita Gross, “Buddhist to Buddhist”

Via Daily Dharma: First Comes Hope, Then Action

Hope opens the door to possibility and allows us to envision change, particularly change that we desire. But hope alone will not affect change—that requires movement.

—Andrew Mellen, “UnStuff Your Life”

Via Pinter...

Via Daily Dharma: Practicing Meditation as an Art

If we take up meditation as we would any other artistic pursuit, it is unlikely we will have any regrets. Quite the contrary, the practice’s significance will grow and unfold throughout our lives.

—Ken McLeod, “The Progress Question”

Via Daily Dharma: Going Against the Stream

The Buddha described his teaching as “going against the stream.” The unflinching light of mindful awareness reveals the extent to which we are tossed along in the stream of past conditioning and habit.

—Stephen Batchelor, “Foundations of Mindfulness”