Thursday, May 30, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: The Mind Reflected
In
meditation, we are invited to still the waters of our lives. We quiet
the mind, releasing conjured stories and fantasies. When the waters are
still long enough, we see our reflection.
—Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, “The Terror Within”
—Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, “The Terror Within”
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Via Lions Roar: For the Children We’ve Lost
Bays made this memorial, which is in the Jizo garden at Great Vow Zen Monastery.
It’s dedicated to children who’ve died in war.
It’s dedicated to children who’ve died in war.
Zen Community of Oregon Statement of Inclusivity
The Zen Community of Oregon welcomes everyone. We study dharma together and practice for the benefit of all beings and this living earth. We recognize the suffering caused by biases, prejudices, systems of power, privilege and oppression based on race, sex, class, age, ethnicity, religion, national origin, ability, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression. We aspire to do no harm and to dismantle barriers that cause separation and suffering, recognizing that our liberation is interconnected with the liberation of all.
Via Daily Dharma: Our Closest Teacher
When
the body calls us back, we begin to find that we have a partner on the
spiritual path that we didn’t know about—the body itself. In our
meditation and in our surrounding lives, the body becomes a teacher.
—Reggie Ray, “Touching Enlightenment”
—Reggie Ray, “Touching Enlightenment”
Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 29, 2019 💌
I think that the assignment for us is very clear in terms of the game on Earth. I think it is to be instruments that allow the whole process to move and change in a way that ends up celebrating life rather than ultimately destroying it. And it has to come out of non-attachment.
- Ram Dass -
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: Universal Support
Nothing exists separate from all the other things in the universe. Every person lives only by relying on the support of others.
—Jeff Wilson, “Born Together With All Beings”
—Jeff Wilson, “Born Together With All Beings”
Monday, May 27, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: Taking Our Place in History
Venerating the ancestors of all life forms returns us to the river that flows from the past into the present.
—Joan Halifax, “Giving Birth to Ancestors”
—Joan Halifax, “Giving Birth to Ancestors”
Sunday, May 26, 2019
Via Lion's Roar / The Path of Being Human
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| THE PATH OF BEING HUMAN | |||
| This week I stood at the freshly-dug gravesite of my mother-in-law, Annie, and recited the Lord’s Prayer. I was raised Catholic in my early childhood, so the verses come back to me easily at times like this. A few years ago, I might have struggled with such prayers and rituals, fearing that I was being disingenuous, telling myself, I’m a Buddhist after all! But somehow that doesn’t hold sway any more. People often ask, “How do you become a Buddhist?” The simple answer is that you take refuge in the Buddha, dharma, and sangha. But, as you go forth, you still need to work out what it means to be a Buddhist for you. When I began practicing and studying Buddhism more than twenty years ago, my peers and I were intent on receiving dharma transmissions (abhishekas) and accomplishing the levels of the path laid out for us. Now, that path seems small and constricted to me. Perhaps it’s because I’ve grown increasingly aware that the world is in desperate need of our help and Buddhism doesn’t directly answer many of the pressing questions of the day, like “What do we do about the climate crisis?” or “How do we respond to attacks on women’s reproductive freedom?” In her article, “Your Liberation Is on the Line,” Rev. angel Kyodo williams makes a compelling case for the power of dharma to challenge the status quo and undo systems of oppression, namely racism and patriarchy. She’s able to do so because she holds a big view of what dharma can and must be: “So when dharma teachers try to tell me that this work is not the dharma, I say they’re confusing the true dharma with the dharma they’ve made small.” Rev. williams goes on to clarify that she’s talking about the path of liberation, which extends beyond our limited ideas of a Buddhist path. So what does it mean to be a Buddhist? That’s something you may still need to figure out. But for me, that question has been replaced by a new one: What does it mean to be fully human? Showing up in your life, being fully human, and engaging with the suffering around you (and in you) can take myriad forms: protesting against building a pipeline on Indigenous peoples’ lands; taking the time to say hello to a stranger and give them a hand; and, maybe, saying the Lord’s Prayer and making the sign of the cross alongside your grieving Catholic relatives. Whatever it looks like, the path of being fully human is, at its core, a path of genuine connection, care, and love. And to me, that’s one worth choosing. —Tynette Deveaux, editor, Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly |
Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 26, 2019 💌
The left hand is caught and the right hand pulls it out. The left hand turns to the right and says ‘thank you.’ It doesn’t work because they are both part of the same body. Who are you thanking? You’re thanking yourself. So on that plane you realize it’s not her suffering, his suffering, or their suffering.
You go up one level, it’s our suffering. You go up another level, it’s my suffering. Then as it gets de-personalized, it’s the suffering. Out of the identity with the suffering comes the compassion. It arises in relationship to the suffering. It’s part and parcel of the whole package. There is nothing personal in this at all.
In that sense, you have become compassion instead of doing compassionate acts. Instead of being compassionate, you are compassion.
You go up one level, it’s our suffering. You go up another level, it’s my suffering. Then as it gets de-personalized, it’s the suffering. Out of the identity with the suffering comes the compassion. It arises in relationship to the suffering. It’s part and parcel of the whole package. There is nothing personal in this at all.
In that sense, you have become compassion instead of doing compassionate acts. Instead of being compassionate, you are compassion.
- Ram Dass -
Via Daily Dharma: Enlightenment Here and Now
Awakening
the enlightened mind may not be a question of self-improvement, which
is never-ending; it may be a question of faith, which is always
available right now.
—Hannah Tennant-Moore, “Buddhism’s Higher Power”
—Hannah Tennant-Moore, “Buddhism’s Higher Power”
Via Daily Dharma: Liberating Unconditional Happiness
Skillful and meritorious practices work on the deep, unconscious level of the mind, reorienting the psyche toward the boundless lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity that characterizes your buddhanature. And that’s what liberates us and makes us happy in everyday life, regardless of the external circumstances we may find ourselves in.
—Interview with Shinso Ito by James Shaheen and Philip Ryan, “Unconditional Service”
—Interview with Shinso Ito by James Shaheen and Philip Ryan, “Unconditional Service”
Friday, May 24, 2019
Via BBC: Majority in Brazil's top court to make homophobia and transphobia crimes
A majority in Brazil's Supreme Court has voted in favour of making homophobia and transphobia crimes.
The decision will give the community, which suffers constant attacks, real protection, activists say.
At least 141 LGBT people have been killed in Brazil this year, according to rights group Grupo Gay da Bahia.
The Catholic Church and the evangelical movement are frequently critical of gay rights and far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, elected last year with strong support of conservative voters, is a self-described homophobe.
"Homophobic crimes are as alarming as physical violence," Supreme Court Vice-President Luiz Fux said on his vote, citing "epidemic levels of homophobic violence".
Via THE BLOG: Wake Up, Grow Up and Show Up
To successfully live your Unique Self, you need to Wake Up, Grow Up and Show Up. Success 3.0 offers a new operating system to do just this. It is the critical calling of our time.
This week we want to share about the meaning of the terms Wake Up, Grow Up and Show Up.
Wake Up
To wake up means to move beyond the narcissistic self-involvement with your own contracted story. Most people live lives limited by their contracted self, consumed by the petty details of their story. But when you wake up, you awaken to the deeper truth: You are not merely a skin-encapsulated ego — your True Self is an inextricable, indivisible part of the love-intelligence, of the All-That-Is flowing through you. So to wake up is to wake up to the true nature of reality, to blow your mind as a separate, alienated self, and to know your True Self, which presages a new and revolutionary Unique Self enlightenment.
Grow Up
To grow up means to up-level your consciousness. Your level of consciousness is the set of implicit organizing principles forming your worldview. These ascending levels or structures of consciousness have been mapped by extensive cross-cultural research by leading ego-developmental scientists over the past fifty years. For example, it has been shown that human beings in healthy development evolve from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric to cosmocentric consciousness. Each level expands your felt sense of love and empathy to wider and wider circles of caring.
At first, your caring and concern is limited to you and your immediate circle. At the second level — ethnocentric — your identity expands to a felt-sense of empathy and connections with your larger communal context. At the third level — worldcentric — your identity shifts to a felt empathy with all living humanity.
At the fourth level — cosmocentric — you move beyond mere humanity and experience a felt sense of responsibility and empathy for all sentient beings throughout all of time, backwards and forwards.
This last move has also been described in Clare Graves’ developmental theory as the evolution from first-tier to second-tier consciousness. One of the key findings of developmental research is that as you up-level to ever-higher stages of second-tier consciousness, your unique perspective becomes readily available. Said simply, according to leading developmental theorists, the more you Grow Up, the more your Unique Self comes online. Indeed, having ready access to your unique perspective and your unique quality of intimacy is the way to unfold the highest levels of consciousness.
Show Up
To be successful means to live the unique life that is yours to live, and to give the unique gifts that are yours to give. Your success, therefore, looks different then anyone else’s success (so you might as well be successful in your own life because you cannot be successful in anyone else’s).
To live your unique life and give your unique gifts is what it means to be the hero of your life. This practice is called, in the terminology of Success 3.0, Showing Up. To show up as your Unique Self and give your unique gifts and live your unique taste is to awaken as evolution — as the personal face of the evolutionary process.
World Spirituality is based on the realization that every human being is both part of the whole and at the same time a high priest or priestess in their religion of one. The core obligation, joy, and responsibility of each Unique Self is to answer the call and give its unique gift, which fills a unique need in the cosmos.
Success 3.0
To be successful means to wake up to who you really are.
To be successful means to grow up to higher and higher levels of consciousness. When you grow up to your highest level of consciousness, you emerge as a fully conscious Unique Self, living in the largest evolutionary context, giving your gifts with devotion to heal and transform not only your personal sphere but, ultimately, the whole world.
Success 3.0 is to fully embody the unique life that is yours to live and fully give the gifts that are yours to give from a place of the most expanded state and the highest structure-stage of enlightened consciousness.
When you fully wake up, grow up and show up, the evolutionary impulse incarnates as you. You become an expression of radical personal intimacy and evolutionary creativity. You embody a purpose-driven and values-driven life, overflowing with aliveness, love and energy.
—————-
HuffPost’s GPS for the Soul app is based on two truths about human beings. First: We all have a centered place of wisdom, harmony and balance within us. Second: We’re all going to veer away from that place, again and again and again. What we need is a great course-correcting mechanism — a GPS for the Soul — to help us find our way back to that centered place, from which everything is possible.
Because no one knows better than you what helps you de-stress and tap into that place of peace inside yourself, it’s important for you to create your very own GPS guide — a personalized collection of whatever helps you course-correct. Email us at GPS@huffingtonpost.com and we’ll set you up with your very own HuffPost blogger account to share your guide on the site. If you’re already a blogger, we encourage you to upload your personal guide today. We can’t wait to see what you have to share.
This week we want to share about the meaning of the terms Wake Up, Grow Up and Show Up.
Wake Up
To wake up means to move beyond the narcissistic self-involvement with your own contracted story. Most people live lives limited by their contracted self, consumed by the petty details of their story. But when you wake up, you awaken to the deeper truth: You are not merely a skin-encapsulated ego — your True Self is an inextricable, indivisible part of the love-intelligence, of the All-That-Is flowing through you. So to wake up is to wake up to the true nature of reality, to blow your mind as a separate, alienated self, and to know your True Self, which presages a new and revolutionary Unique Self enlightenment.
Grow Up
To grow up means to up-level your consciousness. Your level of consciousness is the set of implicit organizing principles forming your worldview. These ascending levels or structures of consciousness have been mapped by extensive cross-cultural research by leading ego-developmental scientists over the past fifty years. For example, it has been shown that human beings in healthy development evolve from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric to cosmocentric consciousness. Each level expands your felt sense of love and empathy to wider and wider circles of caring.
At first, your caring and concern is limited to you and your immediate circle. At the second level — ethnocentric — your identity expands to a felt-sense of empathy and connections with your larger communal context. At the third level — worldcentric — your identity shifts to a felt empathy with all living humanity.
At the fourth level — cosmocentric — you move beyond mere humanity and experience a felt sense of responsibility and empathy for all sentient beings throughout all of time, backwards and forwards.
This last move has also been described in Clare Graves’ developmental theory as the evolution from first-tier to second-tier consciousness. One of the key findings of developmental research is that as you up-level to ever-higher stages of second-tier consciousness, your unique perspective becomes readily available. Said simply, according to leading developmental theorists, the more you Grow Up, the more your Unique Self comes online. Indeed, having ready access to your unique perspective and your unique quality of intimacy is the way to unfold the highest levels of consciousness.
Show Up
To be successful means to live the unique life that is yours to live, and to give the unique gifts that are yours to give. Your success, therefore, looks different then anyone else’s success (so you might as well be successful in your own life because you cannot be successful in anyone else’s).
To live your unique life and give your unique gifts is what it means to be the hero of your life. This practice is called, in the terminology of Success 3.0, Showing Up. To show up as your Unique Self and give your unique gifts and live your unique taste is to awaken as evolution — as the personal face of the evolutionary process.
World Spirituality is based on the realization that every human being is both part of the whole and at the same time a high priest or priestess in their religion of one. The core obligation, joy, and responsibility of each Unique Self is to answer the call and give its unique gift, which fills a unique need in the cosmos.
Success 3.0
To be successful means to wake up to who you really are.
To be successful means to grow up to higher and higher levels of consciousness. When you grow up to your highest level of consciousness, you emerge as a fully conscious Unique Self, living in the largest evolutionary context, giving your gifts with devotion to heal and transform not only your personal sphere but, ultimately, the whole world.
Success 3.0 is to fully embody the unique life that is yours to live and fully give the gifts that are yours to give from a place of the most expanded state and the highest structure-stage of enlightened consciousness.
When you fully wake up, grow up and show up, the evolutionary impulse incarnates as you. You become an expression of radical personal intimacy and evolutionary creativity. You embody a purpose-driven and values-driven life, overflowing with aliveness, love and energy.
—————-
Because no one knows better than you what helps you de-stress and tap into that place of peace inside yourself, it’s important for you to create your very own GPS guide — a personalized collection of whatever helps you course-correct. Email us at GPS@huffingtonpost.com and we’ll set you up with your very own HuffPost blogger account to share your guide on the site. If you’re already a blogger, we encourage you to upload your personal guide today. We can’t wait to see what you have to share.
Via Daily Dharma: The Simple Secret to Practice
Attention or awareness is the secret of life and the heart of practice.
—Charlotte Joko Beck, “Attention Means Attention”
—Charlotte Joko Beck, “Attention Means Attention”
Thursday, May 23, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: Rebalance and Reconnect
Mindfulness
can be a way for us to restore balance—to help us recalibrate in a way
that enables us to connect with our deepest, most heartfelt values and
to act in accordance with them more often.
—Interview with Ed Halliwell, “The Mindful Manifesto”
—Interview with Ed Halliwell, “The Mindful Manifesto”
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
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