Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - February 24, 2019 💌

I've often been struck by the poignancy of meeting old people of great wealth and power, and seeing how frightened they are of losing what they have. The greater their clinging, the greater their pain, realizing how little use the accoutrements of power and worldly position are in helping them age with wisdom and peace. In truth, the Ego's attachment to power of any kind is linked inextricably to the fear of losing that power, and thus becomes a source of suffering.

There is a kind of power that does not give rise to fear, however. It is spiritual power, the power of the enlightened mind. As we begin to emphasize Soul power over worldly power, our perception of the alterations brought on by aging changes proportionately.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The Virtuous Circle of Patience

The wonderful thing about patience, unlike commodities, is the more we use it, the more we offer it, the more we have.

—Allan Lokos, “Allan Lokos: Patience With Self”

Via Daily Dharma: Finding Freedom

Learning to let thinking come and go, we can eventually understand a thought as a thought and a word as a word, and with this understanding we can find a measure of freedom from thoughts and words.

—Norman Fischer, “Beyond Language”

Soulfood feat. Billy McLaughlin - Guitar Meditations Series Vol.1-3 (2001-2010)

Via Daily Dharma: Bridging the Divide

The reason that remarkable stories of forgiveness take our breath away is that we instantly feel the liberation in the lifting of boundaries, the end of separation, of “inside” and “outside.”

— Roshi Nancy Mujo Baker, “The Seventh Zen Precept”

Via Daily Dharma: Going Deeper with Mindfulness

As your mindfulness develops, your resentment for the change, your dislike for the unpleasant experiences, your greed for the pleasant experiences, and the notion of selfhood will be replaced by the deeper awareness of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness.

—Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “Sitting Still”

Via Reddit: R/Baha'i - I hate but love the Bahai Faith

Grew up a bahai, felt immense love from the community and loved the teachings. Started having homosexual thoughts at 12 and now 10 years later the still haven’t left me. I have prayed so much that I don’t even know if I want to live anymore. I am clinically depressed and the thought of my family or the community finding out I’m gay would make me want to commit suicide.

 

This is all as a result of the Bahai Faith which is supposed to be a ‘progressive’ and ‘accepting’ religion which teaches about the unity of mankind. I feel isolated and repressing this part of myself is truly AWFUL for gay bahais. I have no one to talk to about this except for my therapist and even telling her has caused me so much pain because I hate associating the Faith with the reason for my depression. It should be a solace and a source of comfort in my life but the past few years has made me doubt everything I truly believed in before. I wonder why I am ‘spiritually diseased’ as Shoghi Effendi wrote. I think about how Bahaullah taught about the harmony between science and religion yet Bahais do not see homosexuality as a natural thing. I just feel like this is too much for me to handle and I am gradually drifting away. I don’t pray anymore, I just go to activities to support my family and friends and for the social interactions because otherwise I would be a disappointment to people. 

I’ve turned to bad coping mechanisms to help escape the reality of who I am. I am so ashamed and feel horrible guilt over the person I am that I wonder how I’d ever be able to overcome this ‘spiritual disease’. Conversion therapy? No thanks. It’s detrimental to anyone who engages with it. I’m so heart broken that I believe in Bahaullah and everything he taught except for this ONE thing which is a part of who I am. I’m sure there are may gay bahais out there like me who also feel the same. We can’t just be expected to stay in the closet and not get married or stay celibate our whole lives. I’d rather die.

Sorry for the rant I’m just super upset and feeling a lot of mixed emotions around the faith.

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Via Lion's Roar: Tina Turner: What’s Love Got to Do With It?

She’s the Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll. An unwanted child. A believer in the power of love. A longtime Buddhist. Andrea Miller talks to Tina Turner.

 

Tina Turner. Photo by Alberto Venzago.

Tina Turner—I’ll never forget my first glimpse of her. It was when I was ten years old and watched Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. She had killer legs, impressively large shoulder pads (even by eighties standards), and the most incredible raspy, sexy voice I’d ever heard. What happened to me is what, at that point, had been happening to audiences for more than two decades, and now has been happening for more than half a century: I was awed.

The Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll is not just a powerhouse on stage. She is also a longtime Buddhist, having begun her practice in the 1970s while struggling to end an abusive relationship with musician Ike Turner. Soka Gakkai, the tradition to which Tina Turner adheres, is like other schools and subschools of Nichiren Buddhism; it focuses on the Lotus Sutra and teaches that chanting its title in Japanese—Nam-myoho-renge-kyo—ultimately enables chanters to embrace the entirety of the text and uncover their buddhanature.

Turner chanting the Lotus Sutra is featured on Beyond, an album that weaves together Buddhist and Christian prayers, and also features the singers Dechen Shak-Dagsay and Regula Curti. “Bringing together corresponding pieces from Christian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions as has been done here,” wrote the Dalai Lama in the liner notes, “will allow listeners to share in these prayers, stirring thoughts of deeper respect and peace in their lives.” All revenue from the CD goes to foundations dedicated to spiritual education or helping children and mothers in need.

In this interview, Turner speaks about the power of song and practice, and the meaning of love.

All religions speak about love, and it sounds easy to be loving. But people so frequently fail to love. Why is loving so difficult?

Some people are born into a loving family. For example, everyone in the family greets everyone else in the morning, they sit at breakfast together, they give each other a kiss when they leave. There is harmony and love in the house. When you are born with that, you take it with you.

But some people are born into situations where they’re exposed to everything but love. The world is full of people that are born into such situations, and they are traveling through life in the dark. No one has ever explained to them that they need to find love, and they have no education for love except for falling in love with another person, for sexual love. I believe that the problem with the world today is that we have too many people who are not in touch with true love.

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Via Tina Turner Blog / Tina Turner - Lotus Sutra / Purity of Mind (2H Meditation)

http://tinaturnerblog.com  

http://beyondsinging.com 

Get 'Beyond' Featuring Tina Turner chanting the mantra chanting 'Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo' here: http://amzn.to/2ejZ08u

The meaning of the Lotus Sutra is 'I devote my life to the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra'. It is the royal sutra of Nichiren Buddhism in Japan (1253). Coming from India to China and then to Japan, the prayer was translated from the Sanskrit word ‘Saddharma-pundarikasutra » first into classical Chinese as ‘Miao-fa Lien-hua Ching’ and then into an ancient form of Japanese as ‘Myoho Renge Kyo’. 

The word 'Nam' derives from the Sanskrit ‘names’ and means ‘devotion’. It is placed before the name of all deities when worshipping them. ‘Myo’ is the name given to the mystic nature of life and ‘Ho’ to its manifestation. ‘Renge’ means lotus flower. The beautiful and undefiled Lotus blooms in a muddy swamp with all the obstacles against it. It symbolizes the emergence of our Buddha nature from the everyday problems and desires of ordinary life. ‘Renge’ stands also for the simultaneity of cause and effect, because the lotus puts forth its flower and seedpod at the same time. ‘Kyo’ literally means sutra, the voice and teaching of the Buddha. It also means sound rhythm or vibration and therefore it might be interpreted to indicate the practice of chanting. Since everything in the universe is connected through sound waves, ‘Kyo » refer to the life activity of universal phenomena and indicates that everything is a manifestation of the Mystic Law. ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’ is the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra. 

An explanation can help you understand, but the Sutra can only be fully appreciated through chanting it. TINA: ‘However you must do it, to truly understand. 

When you say ‘Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo’ it will slowly remove all of the bad decisions you have ever made. 

The more you repeat the words the more you make your life clearer. The more you chant it the closer you get to your true nature. Your true nature is the right way of thinking and the right way of acting. The longer you go on this path, the more you avoid making wrong decisions. The Lotus Sutra helps me in my daily life. It is indeed mystical! And my life has proven this!’ 

GET 'BEYOND' (2009): http://goo.gl/uYccFZ GET 'CHILDREN BEYOND' (2011): http://goo.gl/vfrDek GET "BEYOND 'LOVE WITHIN' (2014): http://goo.gl/hiuNOG Video: Xaver Walser Music: Regula Curti & Roland Frey (NJP Studio Zurich) Album Producers: Erwin Bach & Beat Curti Video Editing & Upload: Ben (TinaTurnerBlog.com) ALL RIGHT RESERVED BEYOND FOUNDATION ‪#TinaTurnerBlog #TinaTurnerMantras

Via Tina Turner - Nam Myoho Renge Kyo (2H Buddhist Mantra)

Via Daily Dharma: What to Give Up

We need to give up something. We can’t have it all. We can’t try to layer wisdom on top of confusion. The spiritual path is about what we give up, not what we get.

—Interview with Tim Olmsted by Helen Tworkov, “The Great Experiment”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - February 20, 2019 💌

If you keep examining your mind, you'll come to see that thoughts of who you are and how it all is are creating the reality you're experiencing.

 - Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The Middle Way

Just as meditation requires an understanding of the practice as well as determination to carry it out, likewise it requires a sense of balance to determine when to push ourselves harder and when to step back and relax where we are, without falling into either of two extremes.

—Lama Dudjom Dorjee, “Heartfelt Advice”

Daily Dharma: Emptiness in the Everyday

Experiencing emptiness is also experiencing peace, and the potential of peace is its unfolding as harmony among all people, animals, plants, and things.

—Robert Aitken, “The Nature of the Precepts”

Daimoku - Nam myoho renge kyo - 15 minutes

Via Where True Love Is / FB:

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - February 17, 2019 💌

The way we regard death is critical to the way we experience life. When your fear of death changes, the way you live your life changes.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Letting it Settle

Learning to drop what we’re doing, however momentarily, and to genuinely pay attention in the present moment, without attachment or bias, helps us become clear, just as a snow globe becomes clear when we stop shaking it and its flakes settle.

—Lama Surya Das, “The Heart-Essence of Buddhist Meditation”

What are the views of a SGI member on homosexuality?

The focus of Nichiren Buddhism is to transform hardships and sufferings and enjoy a meaningful happy life. There are no commandments in Soka Buddhism on personal matters of the individual.

Source: Courageous Freedom: SGI-USA’s LGBTQ Community –

President of SGI, Daisaku Ikeda addressed the LGTBQ community within SGI at their cultural meetings and celebrations: “Daisaku Ikeda, recently circulated a message to LGBT members, Robert proudly recites it off by heart, “Nature is diverse, human Beings are diverse, that is the natural way of things.”

Daisaku Ikeda also regularly sends messages to annual meetings of SGI’s gay groups, his most recent said: “Buddhism makes it possible for us to bring forth our innate, brilliant humanity to the fullest, enabling us to manifest it through our unpretentious, natural behavior as genuinely human beings”.