Via Daily Dharma: Kindness Is Common Sense

Through kindness, through affection, through honesty, through truth and justice toward all others we ensure our own benefit. This is not a matter for complicated theorizing. It is a matter of common sense.

—The Dalai Lama, “Consider Yourself a Tourist”

One thing I miss

One thing I miss here in Brasil, besides a big organized LGBTq community, is the uncles we had in Sacramento, who guided us, helped us out - babysat Spencer, sometimes showed me how to fix a sink, or cook a roast.... family

Our lives—the people living right now—are built on the foundation of the lives given by previous generations. We are at the front line of the chain of lives going back to infinite time in the past.

—Interview with Shinso Ito by Rachel Hiles, “Fire + Water”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 27, 2018

The more I center myself and meditate, the more I hear how it all is. Even if I don't hear how it all is, the more I am how it all is. If there's an uneven place in me, all I have to do is work on myself. As I give up attachment to knowing how it all works, then the actions come into harmony with the Dao. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Embrace Your Emotional Experience

Only when emotions are truly attended to can they be endured and transformed into useful energies that express our needs and help guide us through life.

—Josh Korda, “A Safe Container for Fear”

Via Daily Dharma: Investigate the Present

Our mind wanders incessantly, but our body and senses are always in the present. To investigate our embodied experience is to investigate the living present.

—Anne C. Klein, “Revisiting Ritual”

Via Daily Dharma: Release the Need to Be Right

Sometimes kindness takes the form of stepping aside, letting go of our need to be right, and just being happy for someone.

—Sharon Salzberg, “A More Complete Attention”

Via Daily Dharma: Open to Your Experience

Every time we’re up against the wall, we’re also standing at a threshold. The invitation to open to our experience—whatever it is from moment to moment—is always there, no matter how many times we need to rediscover it.

—Aura Glaser, “Into the Demon’s Mouth”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 23, 2018

In religious study, while there is the opening for healthy skepticism, there is another way which is to open Pandora’s box and let it all in. Figure that whatever is supposed to be useful to you, you will hold, and whatever else will fall away.

You don’t have to keep it all away at arms length for fear you will lose your virginity or something. You don’t have to protect your purity against the holy books. You just open up and let it come in, no matter how weird it all seems.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The “Middle Way” of Eating

Taking just the right amount of food, as the Buddha discovered, is essential to practicing the middle way of Buddhism.

—John Kain, “Eating Just the Right Amount”

Via Daily Dharma: Start Thinking Long-term

We must consider not only our short-term personal advantage but also the long-range impact our choices have on others we will never know or see: on people living in remote lands, on generations as yet unborn, and on the other species that share our planet.

—Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, “The Need of the Hour”

Happy Harvey Milk Day! // Feliz Dia de Harvey Milk!

Via Daily Dharma: Listen Without Judgement

Call on your natural curiosity as you focus inward. Try to let go of any preconceived ideas and instead listen in a kind, receptive way to your body and heart.

—Tara Brach, “Finding True Refuge”

Via Daily Dharma: Don’t Be Stingy with Your Life

To not be stingy with my life, with myself, is to fully express myself at every moment—fully express everything that I am.

—Roshi Nancy Mujo Baker, “On Not Being Stingy”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 20, 2018

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

- Ram  Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: From Sightseeing to Insight

It’s the perspective we choose—not the places we visit—that ultimately tells us where we stand. Every time I take a trip, the experience acquires meaning and grows deeper only after I get back home and, sitting still, begin to convert the sights I’ve seen into lasting insights.

—Pico Iyer, “Adventures in Going Nowhere”

Via Daily Dharma: Confront Suffering

Suffering and its unwholesome causes are not to be escaped but to be confronted—and eventually transformed into wisdom and compassion.

—Reverend Patti Nakai, “Someone Is Jealous of You”

The Heart of Fear

The Heart of Fear

‘The point of fear is to frighten you. If you become part of the fear completely, right in it, then fear has no one to frighten. So it’s a question of absolutely getting into the heart of the matter.’

- Chogyam Trungpa, Mindfulness in Action.

Via Daily Dharma: Love Is Beyond Dualism

To commit to love is fundamentally to commit to a life beyond dualism.

—Interview with bell hooks by Helen Tworkov, “Agent of Change: An Interview with bell hooks”