Via Daily Dharma: Do You Know Where to Look for Spiritual Awareness?

There is always a need for experience and knowledge rooted in traditions, but it is not a spiritual given that these are the places where peace, union, and spiritual awareness are found.

—bell hooks, “Waking Up to Racism”

Via Lionsroar / Buddhist author George Saunders wins Man Booker Prize for “Lincoln in the Bardo”

George Saunders has won the Man Booker Prize — awarded for the best original novel published in the UK — for his novel Lincoln in the Bardo. Saunders is a Buddhist, and his novel is based on the idea of bardo, the Tibetan Buddhist concept of a state between death and life.

The book tells the story of Abraham Lincoln visiting the crypt of his son, William, who died at age 11. In an interview, Saunders told Lion’s Roar editor-in-chief Melvin McLeod:

“I’d been reading some Buddhist texts and was aware of the bardo as a sort of transitional state between the moment when you die and the moment you’re reincarnated. That struck me as an interesting way to destabilize the usual ghost story.”

On announcing the award, Baroness Lola Young, chair of the Man Booker Prize, said, “The form and style of this utterly original novel reveals a witty, intelligent, and deeply moving narrative.”
Young said that Lincoln in the Bardo stood out from the other books shortlisted for the prize, “because of its innovation – its very different styling and the way in which it paradoxically brought to life these not-quite-dead souls in this other world.”


In 2014, Saunders gave a convocation speech at Syracuse University that went viral and was adapted into a book. Shortly afterward, he spoke with McLeod, and explained how Buddhism comes into his writing:

“In my writing work, I’ve noticed that if you do anything with real intensity, and with a real interest in the truth of the matter, then it ends up being dharmic somehow. If you’re really, really interested in the truth, then you’ll end up with something that looks and feels very much like dharma.”

The Man Booker is widely regarded as one of the top prizes in fiction, assuring success and renown for its winners.


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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - October 18, 2017

When you look back at the suffering in your own life, each time you would have avoided it if you possibly could. And yet, when you look at the depth of your character now, isn’t part of that a product of those experiences? Weren’t those experiences part of what created the depth of your inner being?

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Don't Mix Rigidity with Meditation

Global rules, where you have to do the same thing in all instances, are not as helpful as rules that have specific contexts in which they are used.

—Jason Siff, “The Problem with Meditation Instructions”

Via Daily Dharma: Mind the Gap (between Object and Mind)

Nonself only begins to be clear when the illusion of seamlessness disappears and we experience the gaps in the continuity, when we actually see the mind and its object arising and dying together from instant to instant.

—Cynthia Thatcher, “Disconnected the Dots”

Via Daily Dharma: Struggle Can Lead to Future Courage

For anyone working to become more courageous, suffering can become an ideal source of growth. An indolent life without hardship of any kind is just like an empty ship, easily overturned by a storm.

—Khenpo Sodargye, “Working through Suffering”

Via LA Times

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=ce876b05-e3b0-4bb1-af97-6da6ef599f0e

Via Daily Dharma: Learn When to Quit

Strange as it may seem, stopping is as much an important aspect of practice as starting.

—Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, “The Aim of Attention”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - October 15, 2017

To see through the veil of what our senses and thinking minds make real, to the true self, feels often like the highest aspiration of humanity. When we do this, it’s as if we find our rightful place in the order of things. We begin to recognize a harmony that’s been waiting for us to feel and once we do this, it’s not only for the life hereafter or some abstract thing for later, it’s for now, and for the way in which we live our lives day by day.

-  Ram Dass -

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - October 11, 2017

Being peacefully in relationship to everything made me realize that my happiness isn’t based on the situation being 'this way' or 'that way' – my happiness is one which embraces my sadness, and my love is one which embraces my own hate…

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Meditation Off the Cushion

When I put so much stock in formal meditation, I forget that it’s only one way of helping me see the magic that surrounds me and that is me.

—Barry Evans, “I Like It ...but Is It Meditation?”

Via Daily Dharma: Attention Reveals Connection

Paying attention provides the gift of noticing and the gift of connecting. It provides the gift of seeing a little bit of ourselves in others, and of realizing that we’re not so awfully alone.

—Sharon Salzberg, “A More Complete Attention”

Via Daily Dharma: Everyone Has a Purpose

Each of us has something to do in this lifetime; we have to find out what it is and do it.

—Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, “No Excuses”

Via Daily Dharma: Forgiving Yourself Be Done

One of the most difficult people to forgive can be yourself. Yet with patience and gentle determination, it can be done.

—Allan Lokos, “Lighten Your Load”

Via Daily Dharma: Resist the Mental Clock

Meditation teaches us to be wary of allowing ideas of time to interfere with our activity. Through experience, we discover how not to lose our self, but instead to be fully engaged in the “doing” of whatever it is we decided that we must do.

—Les Kaye, “The Time Is Now”

Via Daily Dharma: Let Go Strategically

The key is not to grasp, or swim against the tide, but to go along and allow the elements to balance. By skillfully and strategically letting go, I can safely reach the shore.

—Kim Larrabee, “Drowning on My Cushion”

Via Daily Dharma: Inner Simplicity

Our lives may be complicated on the outside, but we remain simple, easy, and open on the inside.

—Tsoknyi Rinpoche, “Allow for Space”

Via 3 of 7 Daily Dharma: Maintain Clarity by Being Present

Confusion proliferates when we can’t stay present with whatever we encounter.

—Elizabeth Mattis, “Open Stillness”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - October 4, 2017

If you want to be in a peaceful world, you damn well better be peaceful, because if you are full of anger you are not going to bring about much peace.

The qualities in yourself determine what qualities are in the world.

- Ram Dass -