Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day!

The environment is not merely the place where we live and act, for the biosphere is the ground from which and within which we arise. The earth is not only our home, it is our mother.

—David Loy, “Healing Ecology”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - April 22, 2018

Surrender who you think you are and what you think you are doing into what is. It is mind boggling to think that spirituality is dying into yourself.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Mother of All Beings

The environment is not merely the place where we live and act, for the biosphere is the ground from which and within which we arise. The earth is not only our home, it is our mother.

—David Loy, “Healing Ecology”

Via Daily Dharma: We Are Temporary Too

Know that your precious, infinitely beloved, and irreplaceable self will dissolve like a sand castle, grain by grain—and what a relief it is to know. You exist in a great space of knowing, filled with the shared ephemerality of all things.

—Sallie Tisdale, “Self-Care for Future Corpses”

Via Daily Dharma: How to Truly Relax

When we understand that nothing exists independently, everything that does arise seems more dreamlike and less threatening. This brings a deep sense of relaxation, and we feel less need to control our mind and circumstances.

—Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, “The Theater of Reflection”

Via Daily Dharma: How to Speak with Care

When we speak with greater skill, our true self—our compassionate, loving self—emerges with gentle ease. So before you speak, stop, breathe, and consider if what you are about to say will improve upon the silence.

—Allan Lokos, “Skillful Speech”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - April 18, 2018

Ramana Maharshi said that God, guru, and the Self are the same. The guru, the true guide, awakens our own deeper being, or ātman, which is God itself. Ramana Maharshi realized that Self directly. His view from the Arunachala mountain, his darshan, his teaching, pointed directly at the ātman, at Self-realization. That unity of God, guru, and Self is the higher truth, and if your veil of attachment is very thin, you may be able, like Ramana, to penetrate directly to that essence in the heart.

But most of us, to get through our busy human incarnation and the profusion of forms we find in our lives, need guidance and help. Seeing the guru as separate from oneself is a way to approach it in steps of lesser truths. It’s a first step toward becoming the One. The reality of the guru or guide as separate from oneself is a method or vehicle for coming to God. It’s using a relationship with a separate entity, dualism, to get to the One, to the reality that the guru is identical with your inmost being.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The Joy of Giving

At its most basic level, dana [generosity] in the Buddhist tradition means giving freely without expecting anything in return.

—Gil Fronsdal, “The Joy of Giving”

Via Daily Dharma: The Self Will Surprise You

The realization of no self is not at all nihilistic. It simply means that the self is something different from what we habitually assume it to be.

—Guo Jun, “The Calligrapher’s Apprentice”

Via Daily Dharma: Let the World Be Your Teacher

When you forget all your dualistic ideas, everything becomes your teacher, and everything can be the object of worship.

—Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, “Bowing”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - April 15, 2018

How would I like to enter my own death? With a feeling of, I don't know, but wow! It's going to be interesting.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Be a Lamp Unto Yourself

A teacher, out of compassion and love, seeing that somebody is suffering, gives a path. But each individual has to walk on the path.

—Interview with S. N. Goenka by Helen Tworkov, “Superscience”

Via Daily Dharma: Are You Truly Alive?

To acknowledge that you are dying is to recognize that you are alive.

—Dean Rolston, “Memento Mori”

Via Daily Dharma: Happiness Is Right Here

When we believe that happiness should take a particular form, we fail to see the opportunities for joy that are right in front of us.

—Thich Nhat Hanh, “Cultivating Compassion”

Via Our Lady of Lust and Grace / FB:

Via Daily Dharma: No Matter What Happens

It doesn’t matter what is happening. What matters is how we are relating to our experience.

—Tara Brach, “Making Room for Desire”

Via Daily Dharma: Transforming Hatred

Hatred brings more hatred, and violence only brings more violence. What we must do is stop this cycle here and now by transforming anger and hatred into compassion.

—Nawang Gehlek Rimpoche, “The Real Enemy”

Via Ram Dass/ Words of Wisdom - April 11, 2018

 

What I used to do is wait in line and I’d do mantra or breathing. I’d go into my Vipassana meditation. But now I’m interested in whether waiting in line at the bank can itself be the thing. I notice my impatience, notice the feeling in my feet as I am standing there, notice the different levels of reality of the people I’m looking at. Am I seeing a bank teller or am I seeing the Divine Mother as a bank teller? I allow myself to play with the moment more, still dealing with the stuff of the moment rather than going away.

-Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The Pleasure Paradox

The odd thing about pleasure is that instead of fully enjoying what is here, being able to be fully present with it, we are busy looking for more. We miss the true depth of pleasure by being intoxicated with the possibility of more.

—Roshi Nancy Mujo Baker, “The Non-use of Intoxicants”