Via Daily Dharma: How Meditation Helps You Let Go

By creating a sense of background support through the calming and stilling of the mind, meditation makes possible the compassionate conditions that allow clinging to be released.

—Mark Epstein, “What Changes?”

Time for a Metta // Tempo para um Metta

I’d like you to be safe

I’d like you to be healthy

I’d like you to be happy

I’d like you to be at ease in the world

Eu gostaria que você estivesse seguro

Eu gostaria que você estivesse saudável

Eu gostaria que você estivesse feliz

Eu gostaria que você estivesse à vontade no mundo

Via Rick Heller / Secular Meditation

Via FB

Via Daily Dharma: On the Impermanence of Desire

As a simple experiment, the next time you have some wanting or desire in the mind, investigate what the wanting feels like and then notice how it feels when the wanting passes away. Given the great law of impermanence, it always will.

—Joseph Goldstein, “The End of Suffering”

Via Daily Dharma: Karma: The Best Investment

Don’t worry so much about social security. Finance your karmic security instead.

—Andrew Holecek, “The Supreme Contemplation”

Via Patheos/ Queers: Our Worth is Independent of Theology

This week a conservative evangelical Christian group released the “Nashville Statement,” a transparently homophobic and transphobic screed designed to give theological cover to those who wish to discriminate and hate in the name of God. Its 14 Articles are a sustained assault on the dignity of LGBTQIA+ people, each one an ethical monstrosity elevating some people’s interpretation of scripture over other people’s right to live as they wish.

The articles include the following:

WE DENY that God has designed marriage to be a homosexual, polygamous, or polyamorous relationship.

WE AFFIRM that divinely ordained differences between male and female reflect God’s original creation design and are meant for human good and human flourishing.

WE DENY that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.

WE DENY that sexual attraction for the same sex is part of the natural goodness of God’s original creation, or that it puts a person outside the hope of the gospel.

WE AFFIRM that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness.

And it continues.

In response, various more liberal Christian groups and individuals have released counter statements. I enjoyed the one by fellow Patheos blogger Nadia Bolz-Weber (the Denver Statement) which, while offering a more affirming view of LGBTQIA+ persons, also questions whether God has arms.

I am, of course, heartened that some Christians have the heart to see through the Nashville Statement’s hateful nonsense. Honestly, though, these Christian counter-statements miss the most important point: we must never ground human dignity in any text or teaching, any scripture or sacrament. We must not look to the Bible, or the teachings of Jesus, or any other external source in order to “justify” the worth and dignity of human beings. Doing so will always jeopardize the most marginalized people, because we human beings cannot help but interpret texts and teachings in ways inflected by the prejudices of our current culture. Once we locate the source of people’s dignity outside people – LGBTQIA+ people are worthy of respect because it says so here in my book – it is only a matter of time before someone finds a way to reinterpret that source in such a way that it does not grant some people dignity.

This is a fundamental and inescapable problem with moral systems which look to privileged texts to tell us what is right or wrong: they are only as secure as a given interpretation of the text. And when you’re dealing with the Bible – a text with an inescapable homophobic history and, at best, defensible homophobic interpretations – it’s crystal clear that there is no secure basis for the dignity of LGBTQIA+ people to be found there.

We need to take a Humanistic turn, as a culture. We need to state, quite simply, that respect for the dignity of persons is a bedrock ethical principle, grounded in the very nature of people themselves, requiring no external justification. In response to abominations like the Nashville Statement we must not say “We have a better interpretation of scripture than yours,” or “We understand God better than you do” (responses which make human dignity a matter of interpretation), but “No God or scripture can undermine the inherent dignity of a human person.”

The Nashville Statement is not only wicked, but it is irrelevant: that is the most important point.
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Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/templeofthefuture/2017/09/queers-worth-independent-theology/#j6JWmPWrxuggHP3i.01

 

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - September 3, 2017

The transformative process is our job, so that we are not ruled by fear but by love.  

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: You Are Your Own Best Proof

For practicing Buddhists, why would you need third-person proof to show that your own practice is helping you? In the end, when it comes to spiritual practice, you are your own best proof.

—Thupten Jinpa Langri, “Under One Umbrella”

Via FB

Via Daily Dharma: Planting Seeds for the Future

Life is a series of mind moments, each one a new creation. Every moment we inherit something from our past, transform it in our present experience, and thereby seed the consequences of our future.

—Andrew Olendzki, “A Tough But Not Impossible Act to Follow”

A friend posted this on her FB page, and I just had to mess with it. Not to diminish the evils of racism... it just got me to thinking

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The problem is that many heterosexuals see homophobia as conscious hate, when homophobia is bigger than that. Homophobia is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on behalf of heterosexuals at the other people’s expense, whether heterosexuals know/like it or not. Homophobia is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a heterosexual person who likes LGBTq people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t act like you do. Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another. And so on. So, while I agree with people who say no one is born homophobic, it remains a powerful system that we’re immediately born into. It’s like born into air; you take it in as soon as you breathe. It’s not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-homophobia certification class. It’s a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat if your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it’s hard work, but it’s the price you pay for owning everything.”

Via FB

Via FB

Via Daily Dharma: Nurture Your Spiritual Confidence

You should feel confident: Yes, I can attain enlightenment, I can benefit beings. Here in samsara I can help my family, I can support the sangha and benefit sentient beings. I can do it. I can achieve things, and I can live a joyful, meaningful life.

—Kyabgon Phakchok Rinpoche, “Four Simple Tips for Living a Buddhist Life”

Dissolving the Fear, Finding Your Own Beauty - Ram Dass

Via Daily Dharma: Karmic Gardening

Learn to selectively water the positive seeds and flowers in you by attending to them. There are enough weeds. You don’t have to encourage them.

—Thomas Bien, “Water the Flowers, Not the Weeds”

Via JMG and CBS / West Virginia County To Pay Settlement And Apologize After Deputy Clerk Called Gay Couple An “Abomination”

GILMER COUNTY, W.Va. (WDTV) -- A settlement has been announced in a federal lawsuit against Gilmer County.

The case Brookover v. Gilmer County was a result of alleged harassment received by a same-sex couple when going to get their marriage license. 

According to a news release by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Gilmer County Deputy Clerk Debbie Allen called Amanda Abramovich and Samantha Brookover an “abomination” to God and stated their marriage shouldn’t be legal. 

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the women by Mayer Brown LLP, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and Fairness West Virginia, naming Allen, Gilmer County Clerk Jean Butcher and Gilmer County as the defendants. Americans United stated the defendants violated the U.S. Constitution by “treating same-sex couple differently from others in the name of religion.”

The settlement includes Gilmer County apologizing to Abramovich and Brookover and paying damages to them. It also includes the county issuing a public statement regarding the wrongdoing of the County Clerk’s office. The county has also promised to take steps to ensure their employees do not discriminate against anyone again. 

In a statement, Abramovich and Brookover said, ““When we went to get our marriage license, this was the last thing we expected. We were presented with two options: accept this treatment and leave the possibility that other couples would have to endure this as well, or speak up for ourselves and hopefully stop it from continuing.”

“Consenting adults should never be made to feel embarrassed or ashamed when marrying the person they love,” they added. “It will be a comfort to know that this behavior will no longer be allowed in the Gilmer County Courthouse.”

“Religious freedom is a fundamental American value, and finding someone to love and to marry is a fundamental part of the American dream for many. One should not come at the expense of the other,” said Richard B. Katskee, legal director of Americans United “Religious freedom gives us all the right to believe, or not, as we see fit, but it does not give anyone the right to harm others.”

Make the jum here to read the original on JMG and the link to this article

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - August 30, 2017

My work around the issue of aging is to quiet the mind — it’s standing back enough so that I am not so caught in the culture and the set of attitudes I developed from my childhood, and so on—that I can see what is and respond in a way that is in harmony with that, to become a part of it. Which is the way a bird sings or a river flows or a baby cries.

-  Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Practicing Prayer

Your prayers are answered without your having to think about them. They are answered through the practice of prayer itself.

—Ken McLeod, “Prayer Without Blind Faith”