Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - August 5, 2018

If you’re involved with relationship with parents or children, instead of saying, "I can’t do spiritual practices because I have children," you say, "My children are my spiritual practice." If you’re traveling a lot, your traveling becomes your yoga.

You start to use your life as your curriculum for coming to God. You use the things that are on your plate, that are presented to you. So that relationships, economics, psychodynamics—all of these become grist for the mill of awakening. They all are part of your curriculum.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Where Compassion Comes Naturally

When you have a deep, deep friendship with someone, you don’t only care, “Is this good for me?” You care for them naturally . . . [This] is vital to developing the deep heart of lovingkindness in the context of dedication to dharma.

—Interview with Ayya Tathaaloka and Thubten Chodron, “The Whole of the Spiritual Life”

Via Daily Dharma: Practice Is Simple

You only have one shot at this moment—don’t miss it.

—Andrew Olendzki, “This Moment Is Unique”

Via Daily Dharma: Consider the Consequences

The efficacy of our actions will be determined by the quality of the contemplation that precedes them.

—Lama Surya Das, “Why Sit?”

Via Daily Dharma: A Love That Sees Clearly

Real love comes with a powerful recognition that we are fully alive and whole despite our wounds or our fears or our loneliness. It is a state where we allow ourselves to be seen clearly by ourselves and by others, and in turn, we offer clear seeing to the world around us. It is a love that heals.

—Sharon Salzberg, “Real Love”

Via Daily Dharma: Take a Fresh Look

When we trust with our open heart, whatever occurs, at that very moment that it occurs, can be perceived as fresh and unstained by the clouds of hope and fear.

—Dr. Jeremy Hayward, “First Thought”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - August 1, 2018

The interesting question is, how do you put yourself in a position so that you can allow ‘what is’ to be? The enemy turns out to be the creation of mind. Because when you are just in the moment, doing what you are doing, there is no fear. The fear is when you stand back to think about it. The fear is not in the actions. The fear is in the thought about the actions.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Don’t Be Afraid to Reach Out

When we smile and welcome the newbie or allow ourselves to be welcomed, we act out of our recognition that belonging is a common human need, one that is not an obstacle to, but in service of, waking up.

—Kate Johnson, “Making the First Move”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - July 29, 2018

The truth is everywhere. Wherever you are, it’s right where you are, when you can see it. And you can see it through whatever vehicle you are working with, you can free yourself from certain attachments that keep you from seeing it.

The scientist doesn’t stop being a scientist, nor does anybody stop being anything. You find how to do the things to yourself which allow you to find truth where you are at the moment. I’d say we never find out anything new; we just remember it.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Explore Your Resistance

Rather than resist our resistance, we can allow ourselves to explore it in intimate detail, like a bug traveling across a flower, petal by petal. Examined at close range and without judgment, each form of resistance reveals its own rich texture.

—Noelle Oxenhandler, “Twirling a Flower”

Via Daily Dharma: How to Approach Pain

When pain arises, instead of immediately thinking, “How can I get rid of this?” we can say “Hello” to it, and ask, “What can I learn from this?” It’s not always easy to do this, but when possible, it turns the whole experience upside down.

—Ezra Bayda, “More than This Body”

Via Daily Dharma: The Key to Awakening

Although there are many different descriptions of the enlightened mind, there is one reference point of understanding that illuminates them all: the final uprooting of greed, hatred, and ignorance.

—Joseph Goldstein, “The End of Suffering”

Via Daily Dharma: A Fearless Journey

As we individuate, we learn to remain open to the nature of uncertainty in the journey, allowing ourselves to fearlessly unfold.

—Rob Preece, “The Solace of Surrender”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - July 25, 2018

   

A lot of people try to counteract the ‘I am not good enough’ with ‘I am good enough.’ In other words, they take the opposite and they try to invest it. That still keeps the world at the level of polarities. The art is to go behind the polarities. So the act is to go not to the world of ‘I am good’ to counteract ‘I am bad,’ or ‘I am lovable’ as opposed to ‘I am unlovable.’ But go behind it to ‘I am.’ I am. I am.

And 'I am' includes the fact that I do crappy things and I do beautiful things and I am. That includes everything and I am.

- Ram Dass -

The Bahaí Faith is Homophobic and Unwelcoming to LGBTQ People

THE UNIVERSAL HOUSE OF JUSTICE
DEPARTMENT OF THE SECRETARIAT
Baha’i World Centre

5 June 2018

Dear Baha’i Friend,

The Universal House of Justice has received your email letter of 3 January 2018 concerning the enrollment of individuals who are in a same-sex relationship. We have been asked to convey the following.

Although you seem to have presented information about a particular couple, the questions you raise are hypothetical in nature. Specific cases often include factors that can affect the application of general principles, and therefore it is best to refer such questions to the relevant Local Spiritual Assembly or to the National Spiritual Assembly.

As you are surely aware, the doors are open for all of humanity to enter the Baha’i community, irrespective of their present circumstances. In a letter dated 13 July 1964 and addressed to all National Spiritual Assemblies, the House of Justice explained, “Those who declare themselves as Baha’is should become enchanted with the beauty of the Teachings; and touched by the love of Baha’u’llah. The declarants need not know all the proofs, history, laws, and principles of the Faith, but in the process of declaring themselves they must, in addition to catching the spark of faith, become basically informed about the Central Figures of the Faith, as well as the existence of laws they must follow and an administration they must obey.” It is evident that an individual will grow in his or her understanding of and adherence to the Teachings over time. Yet in becoming a Baha’i, an individual freely and consciously embraces the twin duties set forth by Baha’u’llah in the Kitab-i-Aqdas: the “recognition of Him Who is the Dayspring of His Revelation and the Fountain of His laws” and the commitment to “observe every ordinance of Him Who is the Desire of the world.”

Those who come to recognize Baha’u’llah as “the representative and mouthpiece of God” in this day will naturally strive to obey, out of love for His Beauty, the laws and exhortations He has brought. It would be a profound contradiction, however, for someone to profess the intention to be a Baha’i yet consciously reject, disregard, or contend with aspects of belief or practice ordained by Him. It would only be reasonable in such instances for a person to resolve any fundamental contradiction for himself or herself before deciding whether to make the commitment to join the Baha’i community. An example of this would be someone who holds a political post and shows interest in the Cause. 

Another would be someone whose professional life is prominently associated with the manufacture or distribution of alcohol. The same principle would also apply to the example you give of an individual involved in a same sex marriage. It is clear from the Baha’i laws and principles concerning marriage and sexual conduct that marriage is a union between a man and a woman, and therefore it is not possible to recognize a same-sex union within the Baha’i community.

The House of Justice is deeply sympathetic to those who may find themselves facing such a dilemma. 

No pressure should be brought to bear by the Baha’i community on any person in this position, who must prayerfully determine the path to take. Recognition of Baha’u’llah is a matter between the individual and God. While it may not be possible for some individuals to enroll as Baha’is, they can, if they choose, continue their study of the Teachings and strive to put them into practice in their lives.

May your endeavors in the path of service to the Cause of God be bountifully blessed and confirmed.

With loving Baha’i greetings,

Department of the Secretariat

bc:International Teaching Centre Counsellors Farah Guchani-Rosenberg, Sonlla Heern, Nwandi Ngozi Lawson, and Mark Sisson
National Assembly of the United States

Via Daily Dharma: Learning from Nature

At night, alone in the moonlit fields, with the grasses and crickets to keep you company, it is possible to reclaim the vision you had when you originally set out on that path . . . Nature is the great teacher and always has been.

—Clark Strand, “Turn Out the Lights”

Via Daily Dharma: Conscious Love

When we use our attention to touch and open the deeper truth in a person, we not only catalyze the experience of love, we become love. The source of love is revealed to be within us; we no longer have to go looking for it somewhere outside.

—Nicole Daedone, “Love Becomes Her”

Via Tricycle: Ha Ha Zen

Ha Ha Zen

Finding parallels between modern-day stand-up comedians and Zen masters of the past

By Pamela D. Winfield  Summer 2018

Recently, I spent a lot of time binge-watching Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Seinfeld’s formulaic interviews with his fellow comedians on Netflix are as banal—and compelling—as his old network show. After watching a couple of seasons and for the first time seriously reflecting on comedy as a profession, I realized that many Zen masters would probably be stand-up comics today.

I am not saying that comedians are enlightened Zen masters (though who knows?—there may be some incognito bodhisattvas among us). Nor do I want to belittle the great Zen tradition by reducing it to an alternative series about the contemporary comedy circuit. But Americans treat Zen with such obsequious reverence that they often fail to realize that many of these guys were really funny characters, and that much of Zen discourse is based on their witty repartee and blistering one-upmanship.

I use the words “guys” and “one-upmanship” deliberately here, since funny Zen nuns and laywomen in Buddhist history are not well represented in the literature. There are some exceptional examples, such as the nameless woman selling rice cakes by the roadside who cleverly bests the proud Diamond Sutra scholar Deshan Xuanjian, but her gender is part of the joke. The moral of the story is that if even a simple woman can outsmart you, then you really need to up your game. Likewise today, Jerry’s guests are overwhelmingly male, as well as positively pumped to be driven around the streets of New York or Los Angeles in classic sports cars to go eat hot dogs or smoke cigars.

Besides male dominance, the traditions share other characteristics as well. Like Zen monks, stand-up comics have their own professional periods of itinerancy, their own mentoring networks, inside jokes, and a kind of certifying transmission based on their first appearance on a late-night talk show or Saturday Night Live season. For comedians and monks alike, the process of studying human nature, gathering material, and perfecting their lines is a lifelong practice and way of being in the world. They both also learn from the masters and then overturn that received knowledge, subverting expectations and articulating their own idiosyncratic take on reality. And monks drank a lot of tea back then, which is kind of equivalent to today’s consumption of coffee.

Read the rest and more here

Via Daily Dharma: Radiant Qualities of Our Being

We are, by nature, endowed with qualities of absolute goodness—purest love, compassion, wisdom, and tranquility.

—Lama John Makransky, “Love Is All Around”