Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 1, 2019 💌

When you are in the presence of unconditional love, that is the optimum environment for your heart to open, because you feel safe, because you realize nobody wants anything from you. The minute that heart opens, you are once again letting in the flow. And that flow is where you experience God. 

- Ram Dass -

Via New Yorker:

Via Daily Dharma: Just Listen

The best way to deal with excessive thinking is to just listen to it, to listen to the mind. Listening is much more effective than trying to stop thought or cut it off.

—Ajahn Amaro, “Thoughts Like Dreams”

Click here

Protesting Methodist LGBTQ policy, confirmation class takes a pass

 

and here...

Entire Methodist confirmation class declines to become members over anti-LGBTQ policies

Via FB:

Via Daily Dharma: Balancing Our Lives

There has to be breathing in as well as breathing out. We need to have both the active and the contemplative. We need time to just be with ourselves, and to become genuinely centered, when the mind can just be quiet.

—Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, “Three Kinds of Laziness”

Via NYT: How Gay Are You? A new film explores the many shades of human sexuality.

On a scale of one to 10, with one being “completely straight” and 10 being “completely gay,” what number are you?

Make the jump here to read the full article

Via Daily Dharma: Joyful Optimism

Buddhism is optimistic, joyful with the possibility of our liberation. We can find harmful tendencies in ourselves, begin to free ourselves from our conditioned responses, guilt, and grief. Individuals do this; communities do this; religions and nations can do this.

—Sallie Tisdale, “Lost Stories”

God loves all the people - April 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Knowing Our Mind

Don’t feel disturbed by the thinking mind. You are not practicing to prevent thinking, but rather to recognize and acknowledge thinking whenever it arises.

—Sayadaw U Tejaniya, “Observing Minds Want to Know”

Via Daily Dharma: Freshness in Every Moment

One of the hardest things to remember about practice is that we’ve truly never experienced this moment before.

—Alex Tzelnic, “How to Resist the Comfort of Repetition”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - April 28, 2019 💌

Don’t get caught in righteousness, don’t get caught in helping somebody. It doesn’t mean don’t help them, just don’t get caught in it… If you really want to help somebody, instead of just ripping off the experience of helping them for yourself, give up helping anybody. And then just be with them and see what happens.

- Ram Dass -

Via JustaBahai: R.I.P. My Friend

Sonja wrote:

April 26, 2019

My friend Lucas Lucas (17 years) started communicating with me in 2014 because of our common interest in Esperanto. He was living and studying in Brazil and had declared as a Bahai 3 months earlier through one of his professors who is a

Bahai. Upon learning that my main concern in the Bahai community was for the wellbeing of gay and lesbian Bahais, his response was: 

“Really?? This is new to me.”

 

To read the full article and more, make the jump here

Via Daily Dharma: Wise Emotion

We find the antidotes to our most painful states of mind by leaning directly into the emotion itself. Our emotions are full of wisdom. They are the keys for deepening our practice and our relationships with our world.

—Judith Simmer-Brown, “Transforming the Green-Ey’d Monster”

Via Daily Dharma: Justifying Ends and Means

In the Buddha’s teachings, the end and the means must share a similar voice; there has to be constructive engagement from the beginning. Finding ways to engage in direct communication and bring people together is both the process and the resolution.

—Christopher Titmuss, “Rising to the Challenge: A Step Toward Peace”

Via Betty Bowers / FB:

Via Daily Dharma: Return Again

Train to return to attention whenever you become aware that you are lost. And then just do it. Place attention and rest. Return and rest. Again and again.

—Ken McLeod, “Forget About Consistency”

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

The Chinese philosopher, Chung Tsu, said, “Know the clear, but remain in the tarnished.” Stay in the marketplace, but keep God there too. Remember—serve, love, remember. You’ve got to be in the marketplace and remember.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: A Joyful Mind

When our mind is undisturbed by any concept that might arise, the natural joy and clarity of the mind will dawn.

—Ogyen Trinley Dorje, “Calm Abiding”