Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - June 2, 2019 💌

If you meditate regularly, even when you don’t feel like it, you will make great gains, for it will allow you to see how your thoughts impose limits on you. Your resistances to meditation are your mental prisons in miniature. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Our Neighbors’ Happiness Is Our Happiness

Pain and joy, love of life, and fear of death know no boundaries of us and them. We can all wake up to realize that our happiness depends on the happiness of our neighbors and vice versa, and our real safety is in togetherness, not intractable conflict.

—Stephen Fulder, “Do We Really ‘Have No Choice’?”

Via Lion´s Roar: Leslie Booker offers step-by-step instruction./ How to Practice Walking Meditation

In the four foundations of mindfulness, as laid out in the famed Satiphatthana Sutta, the Buddha offers four postures for practicing meditation: A monk knows, when he is walking, “I am walking”; he knows, when he is standing, “I am standing”; he knows, when he is sitting, “I am sitting”; he knows, when he is lying down, “I am lying down”; or just as his body is disposed so he knows it. Walking meditation is often described as a meditation in motion.   Read the rest of the article and more here

Via Daily Dharma: Embarking on a Path toward Self-Acceptance

Some thoughts feel deep, some shallow—but those are just sensations, nothing more. The feeling-tones are not reliable judges of value. For me, this was a radical rejection of a view of the self that seemed, to me at least, to be everywhere.

—Dr. Jay Michaelson, “Working Through the Strong Emotions of Sexual Identity”

Via Daily Dharma: A Place of Belonging

My suffering does not set me apart: it makes me belong. I now know that my being with whatever arises is a purification, a lens polished—often with tears from the past—with which I must stand firm against the waves of segregating myself from the world.

—Sarah Conover, “Lost At Sea”

Via The Guardian: In a Heartbeat: the story behind the animated gay love short that's gone viral

The makers of the four-minute film, with 12m views in under a week, discuss the shock of their success and the importance of depicting same-sex romance.

It’s not every day that a wordless, four-minute animated short about two young boys falling in love goes viral. But on Monday, when recent college graduates Esteban Bravo and Beth David posted their senior thesis film on YouTube, that’s exactly what happened.

make the jump here to read the whole story and more

in a heartbeat 2

in a heartbeat - animated short film

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”

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.

Make the jump here to read the full article

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”

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 -

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”

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”

Via Lion's Roar / The Path of Being Human

05.24.2019

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.

-  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”

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”

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.

Six out of 11 judges voted to consider discrimination against gays and transgender people equivalent to racism.

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.

• Is the honeymoon period over for Bolsonaro?
• How Brazil's culture wars are being waged in classrooms

"Homophobic crimes are as alarming as physical violence," Supreme Court Vice-President Luiz Fux said on his vote, citing "epidemic levels of homophobic violence".

Read the full article and more here