Via Daily Dharma: The True Value of Waking Up

Every moment of heightened consciousness is precious beyond price, for awareness is the primary currency of the human condition.

—Lama Surya Das, “Buddha Standard Time: Awakening to the Infinite Possibilities of Now”

The Bahá'í Faith is Homophobic

A few months ago I wrote this letter to the National Spiritual Assembly of Brasil:

A Assembléia Espiritual Nacional dos Bahá'ís do Brasil

Sede Nacional

SHIS QL 08 Conjunto 2
casa 15 - Lago Sul
CEP 71625-220 Brasília/DF

Dear Bahá’í Friends,

My name is Daniel Orey. I live in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais. Both my husband and I have been professors here at the Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto since 2011.

In 2009, when we were still living in Sacramento, California my voting rights were removed because of my marriage (08.08.08) to Milton, my non-Bahá’í Brazilian husband.  I later resigned from the Faith because I was hurt by feeling treated as a 2^nd class citizen by the Bahá´ís, and our deep disappointment with the Bahá’í Administration in regard to its inability to welcome and protect all people from prejudice.

 

I am still happily married and living with my husband here in Ouro Preto, in fact, this year we are celebrating our 20^th anniversary together, and our 10^th as a legally married couple. The Brazilian government has allowed me a permanent visa because of our marriage and I have applied for dual citizenship. The Consulate General of Brazil in San Francisco and the Federal Police have always been encouraging, inclusive and welcoming to us, I spoke about this in 2013 in a TEDx talk, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anZNPNEgmUs

My husband and I are both tenured professors. Together we have spoken at numerous international congresses, and participate in research groups in Costa Rica, Peru, Chile, Nepal, Ohio and California. No one, but the Bahá’ís, seem to have a problem with our status as a legally married couple.

Recently, when discussing this dilemma with a gay Bahá’í, he informed me that now, there is more tolerance within the Bahá’í community for gays and lesbians. He said he was discussing this with other LGBTq Brazilian Bahá’ís and that there is no problem anymore with LGBTq Bahá’ís and that we would be welcome and will not face any prejudice.

I am somewhat surprised by this.

My point in writing is this, I am curious if the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Brasil is able to respect my marriage to my non-Bahá’í husband and therefore accept me and other LGBTq people in similar circumstances, that is as full members of the community. In so doing, would I be required to divorce my husband?

Thank you so very much for your time.

THEIR RESPONSE IS BELOW

 
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Via Daily Dharma: Reaping the Rewards

Whoever you are, if you have a true and sincere mind, if you are not careless in the least, if you do not go along with what worldly people do, but do the contrary, then you will be able to attain the benefit of Buddhism.

—Master Hsuan Hua, “After the Monastery”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - December 5, 2018 🍁

 

I would say that most of us stay locked in our separateness and we are very frightened of coming out of it, we feel very vulnerable. In truth you’re not vulnerable at all. Who you think you are is vulnerable. Who you are is not vulnerable. This is the truth of it.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Complete in Connectedness

Pervading all is a groundless awareness, delicate and strong at the same time. Everything becomes we, a beating heart with a transparent, radiant smile. And we are awake.

—Judith Simmer-Brown, “Insomnia”

Via Daily Dharma: The Subtlety of Effort

There’s no switch that turns on enlightenment. You move toward it with your effort. It’s an effort that might be unrecognizable to those who think “effort” means trying hard. You have to try soft—to be curious and open to whatever it is that results.

—Nancy Thompson, “Being Held by the Dharma”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - December 2, 2018 🍁

Part of your curriculum with aging is to shift your game in order to honor the systems of which you're a part so that you finish your work on earth. In other words, you get free. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The Middle Path

Anyone who enjoys inner peace is no more broken by failure than he is inflated by success. He is able to fully live his experiences in the context of a vast and profound serenity, since he understands that experiences are ephemeral and that it is useless to cling to them.

—Matthieu Ricard, “A Way of Being”

Via Daily Dharma: Find the Middle Way

Without spiritual discipline we are never going to wake up or advance on our journey through this life. But our discipline must be wedded to joy, and we must find pleasure in the myriad wonders that this life offers.

—Joan Gattuso, “The Balancing Buddha”

Via Daily Dharma: Why Genuine Transformation Is Possible

No matter how high the mountains of the great dharma are, no matter how deep the sea of ignorance is, they will be as nothing before a boundless spirit of determination.

—Koun Yamada, “Great Faith, Great Doubt, Great Determination”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - November 28, 2018 🍁

Reflection will give you a chance to stand back in your soul, witness consciousness, look at your life, and see how much of the systems of which you're a part you are still attractive or aversive. Because ultimately the art form is to be, as Christ said, 'In the world, but not of the world.'

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Turning Dreams into Reality

Daydreaming is very seductive; when the thoughts “If I were… If I had… ” come up, they pull you in… When we ask the question “What is this?” it will bring us back to the moment. What is happening now? What is right here to enjoy and to appreciate?

—Martine Batchelor, “What Is This?”

Via Daily Dharma: A Step on the Path

The entire process of sitting down to eat, reflecting on food and its preparation, and then the eating of it should be a method—one among many—to take us further on the path to enlightenment.

—Venerable Yifa, “Thought for Food”

Via Daily Dharma: The Root of Forgiveness

The practice of forgiveness happens when we are able to realize the underlying cause of our anger and impatience, and this allows us to distinguish between someone’s unskillful behavior and essential goodness. Serenity and calm develop as we learn to accept imperfection in others and ourselves.

—Michele McDonald, “Finding Patience”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - November 25, 2018 🍁

The romantic quality of love which is between separate entities is a doorway into the deeper love ... a lot of people experience a quality they call love but they’re doing it with their mind, they’re not really opening their hearts fully, they are loving, meaning I am attracted to … or I am attached to… when we talk about love versus fear for example, we are talking about ‘being’ versus ‘fear’, or ‘unity’ versus ‘separateness’, would be the other way of saying it.

So I would say that when the fear dissipates you are feeling at home in the universe. Meaning your identity with your separateness isn’t overriding your feeling of connection with everything to the point that you’re feeling cut off and vulnerable - which is where the root of the fear is. So as you cultivate that unitive quality the fear dissipates, so the relation is one between love and fear, but it’s not the love in the sense of ‘I love you’, its the sense that we are together in the space of love.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Don’t Miss a Moment

In dharma practice, we both prepare for the long haul and remain open to immediate insight and change… The perspectives of both gradual and sudden transformation may remind us that, as the Buddha taught, every moment of mindfulness matters!

—Donald Rothberg, “Present Moment, Urgent Moment”

Via Daily Dharma: The Greatest Gift

Let’s find a way to share our gifts of spontaneous love and compassion moment by sacred moment, seeing all the while the Great Gift of interconnectedness and heart… Let us be reminded of that and rejoice in the light of the season and the many opportunities to heal the gap between us and others.

—Lama Surya Das, “Resacralizing the Holidays: Holy Day Mindfulness”

Via Daily Dharma: The Best Things Are Free

Life, it turns out, is unsatisfactory, as long as we allow our hopes and fears to be the authors of our expectations… Thankfully there’s a practice that helps us recognize the source of this disappointment and opens us to this richness. And it’s free.

—Alex Tzelnic, “Coming to Terms with the First Noble Truth (and My Shopping Addiction)”

Via Daily Dharma: The Free Flowing Mind

If the mind congeals in one place and remains with one thing, it is like frozen water and is unable to be used freely: ice that can wash neither hands nor feet. When the mind is melted and is used like water, extending throughout the body, it can be sent wherever one wants to send it.

—Takuan Soho, “The Right Mind and the Confused Mind”