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.
Jack Kornfield on the importance of contributing to activism with Buddhist practice and wisdom.
How
can you do this service work in the spirit of practice? As dharma
practitioners, the first task is to make your own heart a zone of peace.
Instead of becoming entangled in the pain or cynicism that exists
externally, you need to face your own fear, your own sufferings, and
transform them into compassion. Only then can you offer genuine help to
the outside world.
Anger
is considered a poison when it’s self-motivated and self-centered. But
take that attachment to the self out of anger and the same emotion
becomes the fierce energy of determination, which is a very positive
force … Drop the self-orientation from ignorance, and it becomes a state
of unknowing that allows new things to rise.
When
we meditate, we relate to that unsettling, ineffable commodity: the
present. We train in letting go of thoughts and feelings as they arise,
and settle back into the present: that gap between two concepts—past and
future—that don’t actually exist.
We
humans have a way of touching each other’s lives deeply even despite
ourselves. In finding our way to each other, we find what is, after all,
already there, waiting to be found, wanting to be found.
Most of the beings that we call gurus are really teachers. The likelihood of finding somebody that’s a cooked goose is reasonably slim. Since they are not cooked geese, they have their own karma, they have their own stuff. So they become somebody through whom a teaching comes, but them themselves are not truth… If there is a purity in your heart in the way you see truth, you separate this purity of their message from the stuff of their karma. You take the truth and you work with it.
There’s one event this June that may win the award for smallest Pride parade of the year.
But don’t let its size fool you: the parade at the LEGOLAND Discovery Center in Westchester, New York, is more than its size.
Taking place in MINILAND, the amusement park’s recreation of parts of
New York City, the parade features two floats with “Pride” and “Love Is
Love” themes, an oversized “Stonewall 50” billboard, and a great number
of bedazzled mini people dancing in a LEGO recreation of Times Square.
The miniature event celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion and the birth of LGBTQ Pride.
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
