Via Daily Dharma: Appreciation Is Key

I think for every human being, appreciation in daily life is key. Through having appreciation for everything, you're able to expand so much as a human being, with your heart and your spirit and your mind.

—Ifé Sanchez Mora, “Interview with Nichiren Buddhist Singer Ifé Sanchez Mora”

Via Daily Dharma: Defining a Hero

A hero, a person who is courageous, has the courage to admit one’s mistakes, one’s faults.

—Sayadaw U Pandita, “The Best Remedy”

Via Daily Dharma: The Art of Listening

To know what a person says, we must hear what remains unsaid. If we cannot hear silence, we do not know how to listen.

—Mark C. Taylor, “Hearing Silence”

Via Daily Dharma: Stepping into the Unknown

We’re always stepping into the unknown. And to trust that and be present with the moment without going into the stories is a lifesaver.

—Carol Wilson, “If We Watch, Wisdom Comes”

Via Daily Dharma: Buddhist Exercise

Right intention is like muscle—you develop it over time by exercising it. When you lose it, you just start over again. There’s no need to judge yourself or quit when you fail to live by your intentions.

—Phillip Moffitt, “Brief Teachings”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - July 23, 2017

Compassionate action gives us an opportunity to wake up to some of our motives and to act with more freedom. It gives us the chance to put ourselves out on the edge, and if we are willing to take a clean look at what we see there, we can come to know ourselves better. We can’t, of course, change what is arising in us at any moment, because we can’t change our pasts and our childhoods. But when we listen to our own minds and stop being strangers to ourselves, we increase the number of ways we can respond to what arises. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Happiness Within Doubt

We can be quite happy with a question mark. It’s not a problem at all, actually, as long as we don’t solidify it or base our whole life on feeling threatened by it.

—Ani Palmo, “Necessary Doubt”

Via Daily Dharma: The Way to Happiness

Pay attention. Stay open. Note discomfort and go back to your breathing. Use your curiosity. Be patient.

—Pamela Gayle White, “The Pursuit of Happiness”

Via More 4 of 12 Daily Dharma: Every Moment is Useful

To me, then, the way to not waste time is to find something useful in every moment, no matter what is happening.

—Brad Warner, “How to Not Waste Time”

Via Daily Dharma: Do You Know What You’re Doing?

If we don’t know what we are doing, how can we be our self? If our mind is somewhere else, it means we are trying to be someone else, not who we are in the present moment.

—Les Kaye, “The Time Is Now”

‘Ancient porn’ sheds new light on Bible verses

Gay sex is a sin.  The New Testament makes that abundantly clear.
Or does it?

According to one of the UK’s most prominent evangelicals, if Christian scholarship engages with archaeological evidence from the rediscovered ancient city of Pompeii, much of St Paul’s teaching on sexuality must be radically reinterpreted.

In a new online video for the Open Church Network, Revd. Canon Steve Chalke argues that by studying the remains of Pompeii, and understanding the ancient Roman world’s highly sexualised culture, we can find new meaning in chapters such as Romans 1, which have traditionally been misinterpreted to condemn same-sex relations.



Make the jump here to  read the original and more here

Via Ram Dass: Words of Wisdom - July 19, 2017

It's very hard to grow, because it's difficult to let go of the models of ourselves in which we've invested so heavily.  

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Allowing Space Into Your Practice

When we allow space into our practice we begin to see the impermanent nature of the thoughts and feelings that arise within our experience—as well as of the conditions, over many of which we have no control.

—Tsoknyi Rinpoche, “Allow for Space”

Via Daily Dharma: Investigating Within

To know the real situation within yourself, you have to know your own territory, including the elements within you that are at war with each other.

—Thich Nhat Hanh, “Cultivating Compassion”

Via Daily Dharma: What Love Is and Is Not

Love is not about getting what we want. Love is about how we live with what we are given.

—C. W. Huntington Jr., “Seeing Things As They Are”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - July 16, 2017

In mystical traditions, it is one's own readiness that makes experiences exoteric or esoteric. The secret isn't that you're not being told. The secret is that you're not able to hear.  

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Freedom in One Breath

Each day presents a new confrontation with reality. I want to run; instead, I breathe. One breath—the freedom to choose my response in that moment.

—Marilyn Buck, “The Freedom to Breathe”

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Via Daily Dharma: The Importance of Surrender

In order to practice, we have to surrender, we have to take a risk. Otherwise what we’re doing is standing back in order to judge, in order to feel superior.

—Sharon Salzberg, “Sitting on the Fence”