Via Daily Dharma: The Basic Fuel for Practice

Awareness of the truth of suffering and impermanence always provides fertile ground for spiritual practice.

—Pamela Gayle White, “Who Are We Without Our Memories?”

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

As I have explored my own and others’ journeys toward love, I’ve encountered different types of happiness. There’s pleasure, there’s happiness, and then there’s joy. Addiction, even in the broad sense of just always wanting more of something, gives only pleasure. Pleasure is very earthbound when you’re getting it from sensual interaction, and it always has its opposite; also, the need for satisfaction is never ending.

Happiness is emotional, and emotions come and go. It may play into the complex of other emotional stuff that we all carry. But there is also spiritual happiness, which gets very close to joy. As it becomes less personal, spiritual happiness becomes joy. Joy is being part of the One. It’s spiritual, the joy-full universe, like trees are joyful. It’s bliss, or ananda. It’s all those things. The difference is that it comes from the soul.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Creating Our Karma

The law of karma is one of the fundamental natural laws through which we create vastly different realities. It is as though we are all artists, but instead of canvas and paint, or marble or music, as our medium, our very bodies, minds, and life experience are the materials of our creative expression.

—Joseph Goldstein, “Cause and Effect”

Via Daily Dharma: Come Back To Who You Really Are

Zazen [Zen meditation] practice continually reminds us to unhook from our projects, which always reflect in some way a desire to be elsewhere. We are continually invited to come back to “just this,” to come back to who we really are.

—Julie Nelson, “Sick and Useless Zen”

Via Human Reform Politics

Via Daily Dharma: Life’s Common Thread

What is it that stamps all of experience? What feature does all experience have in common? All experience is groundless, open, empty.

—Ken McLeod, “The Way of Freedom”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - June 24, 2018

When you begin to awaken, you are not coming from such a needy place when you enter into a relationship, not looking to 'lock in' so quickly. Your need is still there as a human incarnation – but you are not so identified with that need because you are already resting in a place of love...

- Ram Dass -

Via Lion’s Roar / Surviving a toxic workplace

06.22.2018

SURVIVING A TOXIC WORKPLACE

I’ve found myself working on a project with a toxic manager. (Don’t worry, it’s not here at Lion’s Roar!) This person is aggressive and adversarial, constantly questioning the professionalism of everyone on the team. Every time I get an email from her, I get a tension headache. When I walk in the building, my limbs feel heavy with dread. Her inner circle is cold and aloof to me. It makes my belly hurt. I sure wish I was one of those people who could just slough it off, saying to myself, It’s her problem. Not mine. I am a pro, doing my work well, and treating people with respect and kindness. But, you know, I can’t just shrug it off. Instead, I am the kind of person who takes it on myself when others don’t like me, thinking I must deserve it. I obviously can’t change her, and I can’t abandon the project. So what can I do? So far, all I’ve come up with is drawing pictures of her as a monster and eating numerous tubs of Haagen-Dazs. Luckily, there are people in the world who can go beyond ice-cream and think a little more spaciously. First, Lama Tsultrim Allione offers a practice for working with demons — inner ones and outer ones (like this manager). In doing this practice, I realize that I have to be there for myself in the situation, working with everything that is arising. Once I have taken care of myself, I can look for ways to be helpful to others on my team. Michael Carroll offers some wisdom for creating a healthy work environment. And, last, using Lodro Rinzler’s Buddhist slogans for the office, maybe I can help create a space where the poison doesn’t take root so strongly in the first place. It’s a lofty goal, but if we pesky humans are trying to change the world for the better, we might as well dream big. Reading these articles helped my shoulders relax. And it made me grateful, once again, that my day job in the dharma can show me ways to work with other areas of my life, so I don’t end up spending my whole paycheck on macadamia nut brittle ice cream. Although, I can’t lie, ice-cream does help a little bit. —Lindsay Kyte, associate editor, Lion's Roar magazine

How to Feed Your Demons

Lama Tsultrim Allione teaches you an innovative technique to turn your inner demons into friends.

In today’s world, we suffer from record levels of inner and outer struggle. We find ourselves ever more polarized, inwardly and outwardly. We need a new paradigm, a fresh approach to conflict. This strategy of nurturing rather than battling our inner and outer enemies offers a revolutionary path to resolve conflict and leads to psychological integration and inner peace.

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Via Tricycle: A Big Gay History of Same-sex Marriage in the Sangha

Buddhists were marrying members of the LGBTQ community long before the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in 2015 (and not making a big deal about it).

Budddhist same-sex marriage was born in the USA. That’s a little known but significant fact to reflect on now, just after the Supreme Court has declared legal marriage equality throughout the country. Appropriately enough, it all started in San Francisco, and was conceived as an act of love, not activism. 

The first known Buddhist same-sex marriages took place in the early 1970s, at the Buddhist Church of San Francisco. Founded in 1899, it’s the oldest surviving temple in the mainland United States.

It’s also part of the oldest Buddhist organization outside Hawaii: the Buddhist Churches of America (BCA), part of the Shin tradition of Pure Land Buddhism.

During the Nixon years, the LGBTQ rights movement was picking up, and San Francisco was one of the primary centers of both activism and community building. Located not far from the famously gay Castro District, the Buddhist Church of San Francisco (BCSF) was attended by singles and couples, gay and straight. As consciousness rose, people began to seek the same services that heterosexuals already enjoyed in American society.

A male couple in the congregation eventually asked Rev. Koshin Ogui, then assigned to BCSF, to perform their marriage. He readily agreed, and the ceremony was held in the main hall—identical to other marriages at the temple, except for the dropping of gender-based pronouns in the service. Without fanfare, history was made.

Soon other BCA temples were also conducting same-sex marriages, and by the time of my research into the subject in the early 2010s, I couldn’t find a single minister in the scores of BCA temples who was unwilling to preside over same-sex weddings. Indeed, BCA ministers had already performed marriages for gay and lesbian couples, bisexuals, transgender people, and polyamorous groups. 

Many of these were interracial marriages, or carried out for non-Buddhists who had nowhere else to go, though most were for members of local BCA temples.

The BCA and its sister organization in Hawaii had gone on record years earlier in support of marriage equality, and even lobbied the government to change the law. This support for LGBTQ rights has been recognized by the Smithsonian, which collected a rainbow-patterned robe worn by the BCSF’s current minister for the museum’s permanent collection.

Related: Becoming Jivaka 

I’m ordained in the Shin tradition, so I was already aware of Shin inclusivity. (Indeed, though I’m not gay myself, I would not have joined any organization that failed to support LGBTQ rights.) But the historian in me itched to explain this phenomenon more comprehensively. Why was the BCA the first Buddhist organization to move toward marriage equality, and why hadn’t this movement provoked rancor and conservative resistance, as we’ve seen in so many other American religious denominations?

In searching for answers, I came to several interrelated conclusions. First, the history of racial and religious discrimination that the originally Japanese-American BCA faced (everything from mob violence to WWII internment camps) instilled revulsion for discrimination in Shin circles. Second, since Shin ministers are not celibate (the tradition was founded by a married monk in 13th-century Japan), they share lifestyles similar to their parishioners, and thus readily empathize with them on matters of sexuality and social relationships, which may be more abstract to celibate monks and nuns.

But most importantly, what minister after minister told me was that the fundamental point of Shin Buddhism is that Amida Buddha embraces all beings without any exceptions, without any judgments, without any discrimination. Amida opens the way to the Pure Land (and thus liberation) to the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the good and the bad, the black and the white. 

Therefore, Amida Buddha also embraces the gay and the straight, the gender-conforming and everyone else, without any hesitation. It is this spirit that led Shin ministers to open their doors to same-sex couples, led Shin temples to march in Pride parades across the country, to pass proclamations affirming same-sex rights and marriage in particular, and to carry out education programs in their own communities.

The Shin community hasn’t been alone in supporting LGBTQ communities in American Buddhist circles. Though not as quickly or comprehensively, many other Buddhist groups have also moved toward performing same-sex marriages and affirming the value of their LGBTQ members. In the 1980s, a handful of same-sex marriages were performed by non-BCA teachers, including Sarika Dharma of the International Buddhist Meditation Center in Los Angeles. By the end of the 1990s, American Tibetan, Theravada, and Zen teachers had all performed the first same-sex marriages in those respective traditions as well, and Soka Gakkai had gone from seeing homosexuality as a condition to be cured through Buddhist practice to performing large numbers of same-sex marriages for its members.

All of this was taking place in a country without legal recognition for married same-sex couples. They performed those ceremonies even though they knew the state would not recognize them, because it was the right thing to do.

Today those marriages are equal to everyone else’s, and there are signs that marriage equality is gaining acceptance in parts of Buddhist Asia. Taiwan held its first Buddhist same-sex marriage in 2012, with two brides in white dresses and veils presided over by a traditional shaven-headed nun. In Kyoto, Japan, Rev. Kawakami Taka of Shunkoin temple not only performs same-sex marriages at his historic Rinzai Zen temple, but has also partnered with local hotel, flower, and similar vendors to provide wedding packages for same-sex couples arriving from around the world. Step by step, the movement continues.

Related: Working Through the Strong Emotions of Sexual Identity 

On Saturday morning, June 27, I gave keynote address for a seminar at the New York Buddhist Church, “Embraced by the Heart of Amida Buddha: The LGBTQ Community and Shin Buddhism.” It’s part of an educational campaign that the BCA’s Center for Buddhist Education carries out every year in late June. Speakers talked about their experiences as gay, lesbian, and transgender Buddhists, and on Sunday we’ll walk in the New York Pride parade with members of the temple. We had no idea that our event would occur at such a historic moment, but now we know that we’ll be marching as an act of pure celebration, rather than hope and defiance.

Despite the positive record of many sanghas and individuals, discrimination and ignorance remain widespread in American Buddhism. That isn’t something that will change overnight with a single Supreme Court decision, no matter how momentous. But we can genuinely take heart that American Buddhists have been working for marriage equality for more than 40 years, and that Buddhists of many traditions spoke out for equality and contributed to the movement that led to today’s ruling.

[This story was first published in 2015]

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Via Daily Dharma: The Joy of Concentration

Unlike sensory pleasure that leads only to an instant of temporary happiness, the joy we feel when we achieve deep concentration brings peace and tranquillity.

—Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “Desire and Craving”

Ilumina - Deva Premal

"Ó, grandioso sol, sol central Ilumina, ilumina, ilumina, ilumina 

Ó, grandiosa lua no céu Ilumina, ilumina, ilumina, ilumina 

Ó, grandiosa estrela no céu Ilumina, ilumina, ilumina, ilumina 

Ó, grandiosa rainha da floresta Ilumina, ilumina, ilumina, ilumina"

Via Daily Dharma: The Mind’s Shimmering Reflection

Mind is thus neither the source of light, like a shining sun, nor the reflected light of something greater, like the moon, but a shimmering pool of contingent potential, capable of reflecting sun, moon, and any other object that happens to dance upon its surface.

—Andrew Olendzki, “Mind Like A Mirror”

NANCI GRIFFITH - Live! 'From A Distance' The LATE SHOW Irish TV gaye byrne

Via Daily Dharma: Why Less Is More

Doing less helps us savor what we do accomplish. We learn to do less of what is extraneous and engage in fewer self-defeating behaviors, so we craft a productive life that we truly feel good about.

—Marc Lesser, “Do Less, Accomplish More”

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

I’m in traffic - somebody has just cut me off. I feel something, a thought form is arising. Then I just start to follow my breath. I can feel that at first I’m busy with my anger and busy with my driving. Then after a little while, I start to really hear the breath. As I hear the breath, I come back. As I hear the breath, I note the hand on the steering wheel. Then I note the emotions. I just keep coming back into the thicker and thicker richness of this moment...  

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Undisturbed Awareness

Mindful of a thought, like the momentary glimpse of a colorful sunbird flashing through the light, the heart remains undisturbed, serene in its sky-like presence. Whatever the circumstance, bodily movement or stillness, feeling well or distressed, with good concentration or scattered attention, everything can be brought back to awareness.

—Kittisaro, “Tangled in Thought”

Via Purple Buddha Project / 11 Quotes of the Day | Motivational & Inspirational Quotes

Life Quotes of the Day

I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now. - John Green Do not tell everyone your story. You will only end up feeling more rejected. People cannot give you what you long for in your heart. The more you expect from people’s response to your experience of abandonment, the more you will feel exposed to ridicule. - Henri J.M. Nouwen If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies; succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway. - Kent M. Keith Someone once told me that human beings have three dimensions: how you see yourself, how others see you, and how you want others to see you. The closer the distance between the three dimensions, the more at peace you are and the more stable you become. - Marwa Rakha If you want to succeed in your life, remember this phrase: The past does not equal the future. Because you failed yesterday; or all day today; or a moment ago; or for the last six months; the last sixteen years; or the last fifty years of life, doesn’t mean anything… All that matters is: What are you going to do, right now? - Anthony Robbins Name ten things you wanna do before you die and then go do them. Name ten places you really wanna be before you die and then go to them. Name ten books you wanna read before you die and then go read them. Name ten songs you wanna hear again before you die, get all of your friends together and scream them, because right now all you have is time but someday that time will run out. That’s the only thing you can be absolutely certain about. Think of all the things that are wrong with your life and then fix them, think of all the things that you love about your life be thankful you are blessed with them, think of all the things that hold you back and realize that you don’t need them, think of all the mistakes you have made in your life, make sure that you never repeat them because right now all you have is time but someday that time will run out. That’s the only thing you can be absolutely certain about. Name ten thousand reasons why you never wanna die, go and tell someone who might’ve forgotten try to list the endless reasons why it’s good to be alive and then just smile for awhile about them, soon the sun will rise and another day will come, soon enough the sun will set, another day will be gone and right now all you have is time, but someday that time will run out. - Paul Baribeau Promise yourself, to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. To make all your friends feel that there is something in them. To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true. To think only the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best. To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile. To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble. To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words but great deeds. To live in faith that the whole world is on your side so long as you are true to the best that is in you. - Christian D. Larson Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal. - Cheryl Strayed If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person. - Fred Rogers Instead of saying “I don’t have time” try saying “it’s not a priority,” and see how that feels. Often, that’s a perfectly adequate explanation. I have time to iron my sheets, I just don’t want to. But other things are harder. Try it: “I’m not going to edit your résumé, sweetie, because it’s not a priority.” “I don’t go to the doctor because my health is not a priority.” If these phrases don’t sit well, that’s the point. Changing our language reminds us that time is a choice. If we don’t like how we’re spending an hour, we can choose differently. - Wall Street Journal Peace can exist only in the present moment. It is ridiculous to say “Wait until I finish this, then I will be free to live in peace.” What is “this”? A di­ploma, a job, a house, the payment of a debt? If you think that way, peace will never come. There is always another “this” that will follow the present one. If you are not living in peace at this moment, you will never be able to. If you truly want to be at peace, you must be at peace right now. Otherwise, there is only “the hope of peace some day. - Thích Nhất Hạnh

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Via Daily Dharma: The Moment of Inspiration

Once we see that nothing happens in a vacuum, that’s the exact moment when we are properly inspired to become accountable for our own mind.

—Ethan Nichtern, “Awake With Others”

Via Daily Dharma: Befriend Your Current Self

Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already.

—Pema Chödrön, “We Can Still Be Crazy”