A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
We
get quiet for a moment in meditation. We sink down to a relaxedness, a
calmness, abruptly free from all the crazy dreams we confuse with
reality. And in that instant, by mistake maybe, or because we aren’t
thinking to stop it from happening—we experience, in a flash, things as
they really are.
Nothing is merely a means to an end, nothing is merely a step on the path to somewhere else. Every moment, everything, is absolutely foundational in its own right.
All men -- whether they go by the name of Americans or Russians or Chinese or British or Malayans or Indians or Africans -- have obligations to one another that transcend their obligations to their sovereign societies.
-Norman Cousins, author, editor, journalist and professor (24 Jun 1915-1990)
From her 2013 album, SongVersation, India.Arie shares the song that took her a lifetime to write. "One" says everything that India once afraid to say but love for humanity and her courage for truth gave her the words and music to express the powerful and universal truth in this masterful song. This song is dedicated with love to all. #worthy
One
Billions live their lives Now
Muhammad, Krisha, or the Buddha are the way.
Still some believe it's right to say
In the name of Jesus when you pray.
[Chorus:]
We are a human kind of 7 billion
So many different races and religions
And it all comes down to one
Some say God's a him
Still many believe that He is a Her
Does God Live in our hearts?
Or is She somewhere out there in the universe.
[Chorus]
How far will have to go before we learn the lesson?
Gandhi, was a Hindu
Martin Luther King, a Christian
Regardless of religion, they knew love was the mission
And it all comes down to one.
Is there no God at all?
Or a pantheon of gods up in the sky
We can heal our broken hearts
If we give up the desire to be right.
[Chorus]
How far will have to go before we learn the lesson?
Gandhi, was a Hindu Martin Luther King, a Christian
Regardless of religion, they knew love was the mission
And it all comes down to one.
We are a human kind of seven billion
So many different races and religions
And we all want the same things
Health, Love, Prosperity and Peace Tolerance is the seed
And the gift of pure acceptance is the tree
[Chorus]
Whether you are red, brown, yellow, black, or white
Man with a husband, or a woman with a wife
We can debate until the end of time who is wrong or right
All that you seek is already within you. In Hinduism it is called the Atman, in Buddhism the pure Buddha-Mind. Christ said, 'the kingdom of heaven is within you.' Quakers call it the 'still small voice within.’ This is the space of full awareness that is in harmony with all the universe, and thus is wisdom itself.
One
of the essential elements of life is the understanding that everything
we encounter—fear, resentment, jealousy, embarrassment—is actually an
invitation to see clearly where we are shutting down and holding back.
There
is something special and precious about meditating outside and
rediscovering our deep connection with the natural world. When we do, it
becomes more evident to us that the world is not a collection of
separate things but a confluence of natural processes that include us.
We do not have to be afraid of entering unfamiliar territory once we have learned how to hold experience within the gentleness of our own minds. Learning to transform obstacles into objects of meditation provides a much needed bridge between the stillness of the concentrated mind and the movement of real life.
Even
though we cannot see clearly how it’s going to turn out, we are still
called to let the future into our imagination. We will never be able to
build what we have not first cherished in our hearts.
Asking
“Who is the villain?” is the prologue to asking who should be punished.
But asking “What are the conditions that led to this?” leads us to
consider how to change those conditions so that the situation is less
likely to happen again.
One doesn’t have to beat down one’s ego for God. That isn’t the way it
works. The ego isn’t in the way. It’s how we are holding the ego. It is
much better to just do the spiritual practices and open to God and love
God and trust your intuitive heart. As the transformation changes, the
ego then becomes this beautiful instrument that’s available to you to
deal with the world. It’s not in the way anymore.
The
quick fixes and immediate gratification I think will make me happy
never do in the long run, leaving me empty-hearted. Mindfulness digs the
truth out from under the excuses and confusion, lighting the way to
true satisfaction.
Fear is not the enemy—it is nature’s protector; it only becomes troublesome when it oversteps its bounds. In order to deal with fear we must take a fundamentally noncontentious attitude toward it, so it’s not held as “My big fear problem” but rather “Here is fear that has come to visit.” Once we take this attitude, we can begin to work with fear.
For my spiritual work I had to hear what Alan Watts used to say to me: “Ram Dass, God is these forms. God isn’t just formless. You’re too addicted to formlessness.” I had to learn that. I had to honor my incarnation. I’ve got to honor what it means to be a man, a Jew, an American, a member of the world, a member of the ecological community, all of it. I have to figure out how to do that—how to be in my family, how to honor my father. All of that is part of it. That is the way I come to God, acknowledging my uniqueness, if you will. That’s an interesting turn-about in a way. That brings spiritual people back into the world.
All
meditation practices require that one relax self-preoccupation. Just
like being too tense to ride a bike, when people are too concerned with
themselves it can be very difficult for the mind to be soft enough to
settle into meditation.
