Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - April 21, 2019 💌

It’s important to respect the intellect, not to demean it by any means, but to realize that it has taken control, when it should be a resource that’s available for you to use when you want to.
What has happened to me over the past several decades, I’m sure partly through psychedelics, partly through meditation, and through grace, and through evolution, is that when I don’t need to think about something my mind is empty. I’m not thinking. I’m just empty. I’m just here.
So that when you ask me a question, I stop for a moment. I go empty. I’m not thinking about the answer. I’m going empty because in the emptiness is the answer—a better answer than I can come up with when I use my analytic mind to figure out what I should say to you.

-Ram Dass -

CHOIR sings OM SO HUM Mantra (Must Listen)

Very, very beautiful! 'Soham' means I am That'. 'That' means the very source of creation. If you bring some awareness into to your breath, become conscious of it, every inhalation makes the sound 'SO' and exhalation has the sound 'HAM'. Try it and see. Our breath itself reminds us that we are part of something much bigger, we are THAT. We aren't individuals but life, there's just life all around. And fundamentally we are all ONE. But we are too caught up in our psychological drama. If only we look beyond that and see, the very way we live life will change. It'll be all inclusive. Which is the most beautiful way to be. :)

Via Daily Dharma: Taking the First Step

Even very basic beginning practice, like mindfulness of the breath or sound, begins to relieve suffering, reduce our stress levels, and motivate us to practice more.

—Interview with Mirabai Bush by Alex Caring-Lobel and Emma Varvaloucas, “Working with Mindfulness”

Via Daily Dharma: Inner Awakening

The taste of freedom that pervades the Buddha’s teaching is the taste of spiritual freedom, which from the Buddhist perspective means freedom from suffering. In the process leading to deliverance from suffering, meditation is the means of generating the inner awakening required for liberation.

—Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “The Path of Serenity and Insight”

Race and Religion in American Buddhism: White Supremacy and Immigrant Adaptation

Joseph CheahOctober 28, 2011

Oxford University Press

 

While academic and popular studies of Buddhism have often neglected race as a factor of analysis, the issues concerning race and racialization have remained not far below the surface of the wider discussion among ethnic Buddhists, converts, and sympathizers regarding representations of American Buddhism and adaptations of Buddhist practices to the American context. In Race and Religion in American Buddhism, Joseph Cheah provides a much-needed contribution to the field of religious studies by addressing the under-theorization of race in the study of American Buddhism. Through the lens of racial formation, Cheah demonstrates how adaptations of Buddhist practices by immigrants, converts and sympathizers have taken place within an environment already permeated with the logic and ideology of whiteness and white supremacy. In other words, race and religion (Buddhism) are so intimately bounded together in the United States that the ideology of white supremacy informs the differing ways in which convert Buddhists and sympathizers and Burmese ethnic Buddhists have adapted Buddhist religious practices to an American context. Cheah offers a complex view of how the Burmese American community must negotiate not only the religious and racial terrains of the United States but also the transnational reach of the Burmese junta. Race and Religion in American Buddhism marks an important contribution to the study of American Buddhism as well as to the larger fields of U.S. religions and Asian American studies.

About the author

Joseph Cheah is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies and Theology at Saint Joseph College in West Hartford, Connecticut.

 

 

 

Via Daily Dharma: Touching Freedom

When the tug of sense desire and aversion has been quieted, when restlessness and sluggishness have been balanced out, and when doubts are put aside for a time, the mind is able to attend to experience more openly and with much greater freedom.

—Andrew Olendzki, “The Ties that Unbind”

Via Daily Dharma: Quality Time

Free time is of a different order than freedom. Freedom, at least in the dharmic sense, depends on the quality of attention that we bring to our interactions. Only to the extent that we can be fully present in our relationships with ourselves, with our children, and with each other, are we free.

—Soren Gordhamer, “Finding What’s Right in Front of Us”

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

As you progress with your sadhana you may find it necessary to change your occupation. Or you may find that it is only necessary to change the way in which you perform your current occupation in order to bring it into line with your new understanding of how it all is. The more conscious that a being becomes, the more he can use any occupation as a vehicle for spreading light.

The next true being of Buddha-nature that you meet may appear as a bus driver, a doctor, a weaver, an insurance salesman, a musician, a chef, a teacher, or any of the thousands of roles that are required in a complex society—the many parts of Christ’s body. You will know him because the simple dance that may transpire between you—such as handing him change as you board the bus—will strengthen in you the faith in the divinity of man. It’s as simple as that.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Greeting Pain with an Open Heart

We can’t always transform pain from meaningless suffering into a sense of spaciousness, but at least we can practice seeing into the layers of beliefs and resistance that hold our suffering in place, thereby coming closer to gently opening to what is.

—Ezra Bayda, “When It Happens to Us”

Via Daily Dharma: Interconnectedness in Action

Everything is contingent upon everything else… People, animals, and other plants flourish, and give themselves in turn. The Buddha suggested that human beings can get along best by following this natural way of things. Giving creates happiness; greed creates misery.

—Robert Aitken Roshi, “Giving Full Circle”

Via Daily Dharma: Freedom Is Here

The two things that you are always free to do—despite your circumstances—are to be present and to be willing to love.

—Jack Kornfield, “Set the Compass of Your Heart”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - April 14, 2019 💌

Whether you are a parent or a teacher, anything; whatever your gig is, the only thing you can offer to another being is your consciousness. You are an environment for everyone you meet, in which they can become as conscious as they are ready to become. Offer your most conscious being to others. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The Best Time Is Now

The best time to meditate, the best place, the best length of practice is the one that you actually do. Showing up for the practice today, however long or short, is enough.

—Kate Johnson, “Calming the Not Now Mind”

Via Daily Dharma: Creating Real Change

When meaningful change happens, it doesn’t mean a change in position but a change in how we live together and how we treat each other.

—An interview with Krista Tippett by James Shaheen, “Talking with the Other Side”

Via Daily Dharma: The Beauty Within Us

Our practice exposes us to the underlying reality of the universe. And that underlying reality is not just dead matter interacting at random. There is order and beauty and truth. And our universe is fully alive. We ourselves are expressions of that life, order, beauty, and truth.

—Brad Warner, “How to Practice with God”

The Youngbloods - Get Together

Lyrics

 

Love is but a song we sing
Fear's the way we die
You can make the mountains ring
Or make the angels cry
Though the bird is on the wing
And you may not know why

Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

Some may come and some may go
He will surely pass
When the one that left us here
Returns for us at last
We are but a moment's sunlight
Fading in the grass

Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

If you hear the song I sing
You will understand, listen
You hold the key to love and fear
All in your trembling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
It's there at your command

Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

I said come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now
Right now
Right now

 

Songwriters: Jesse Colin Young

Get Together lyrics © Sony/ATV Tunes LLC, Bernard'S Other Music, Pigfoot Music, IRVING MUSIC, INC., IRVING MUSIC INC.

Via LionsRoar/ 10 Great Buddhist Books, Recommended by 10 Buddhist Teachers

Photo by John-Mark Smith.

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunyru Suzuki (Weatherhill 1970) 
Recommended by Sharon Salzberg: “I read this book soon after it came out in 1973, during my time of dedicated practice in India. It was the book I continually returned to for years to help me remember that we practice not to attain buddhanature, but rather to express it. The book changed my motivation for practice and my entire sense of right effort.”

Peaks and Lamas by Marco Pallis (Readers Union 1939)
Recommended by Gary Snyder: “I started reading it for the mountaineering section, at seventeen, and got drawn into the Tibetan Buddhism section as well. I found my spiritual home there, even before discovering Zen.”

Life of the Buddha by Bhikkhu Nanamoli (Pariyatti Publishing 2003)
Recommended by Ajahn Amaro: “Through his expert translations and flawless feel for the wisdom and wit of the ancient texts, Bhikkhu Nanamoli succeeds in drawing the reader into the dusty paths of India and into the presence of the Buddha himself.”

Moon in Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen edited by Kaz Tanahashi (North Point Press 1995)
Recommended by Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara: “This translation of essential writings of Dogen has been a vital book for me. Kaz Tanahashi’s insightful and transparent renderings of Dogen’s texts changed my experience of Zen from a supportive practice to a transformational one. I am so grateful to have the opportunity, as an English speaker, to study and practice with these profound teachings.”

Mind in Comfort and Ease by His Holiness the Dalai Lama (Wisdom Publications, 2007)
Recommended by B. Alan Wallace: “This is an outstanding introduction to the Great Perfection tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, and it includes His Holiness’s oral commentary on a major text by Longchen Rabjam. His Holiness places the Great Perfection within the broader context of Buddhism as a whole and also elucidates areas of inquiry that are relevant to science and Buddhism.”

Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Awakening by Analayo (Wind Horse Publications 2004)
Recommended by Joseph Goldstein: “This is an engaging and thorough presentation of the Buddha’s teachings on the four foundations of mindfulness. Ven. Analayo offers an in-depth analysis of this essential text, including a range of interpretations on different points of controversy. His work inspired my own more careful investigation of the depth and breadth of this extraordinary discourse.”

Meditation on Emptiness by Jeffrey Hopkins (Wisdom Publications 1983)
Recommended by Georges Dreyfus: “It brought for the first time a sophisticated account of Tibetan interpretations of Madhyamaka, which was an enormous resource for those interested in Buddhist philosophy.”

Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Master Hongzhi translated by Taigen Dan Leighton and Yi Wu (Tuttle Publishing, 2000) 
Recommended by Sojun Mel Weitsman: “This is a work of outstanding inspiration. I never get tired of reading it.”

Words of My Perfect Teacher by Patrul Rinpoche, translated by the Padmakara Translation Group (Shambhala 1991)
Recommended by Anne Carolyn Klein: “Almost every teacher I’ve studied with has taught or cited this text, finding within it places of rest and wisdom. Its many famous stories are mini-movies that frame and support the practice of sutra, tantra, and Dzogchen. Straight from the expansive heart of Heart Essence traditions.”

Lankavatara Sutra by D. T. Suzuki (Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers  1978)
Recommended by Jeffrey Hopkins: “It presents in grand detail the horizons of Mind-only and Middle Way thought.”

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Via Daily Dharma: Our Perfect Nature

According to the Buddhist teachings, buddhanature is present in every living being. The natural state of one’s mind, when it is not misconstrued by the power of negative thoughts, is perfection.

—Matthieu Ricard, “Beauty Beyond Beauty”