Via Ram Dass // Words of Wisdom - November 27, 2019 💌

"Ours is a journey toward simplicity, toward quietness, toward a kind of joy that is not in time. In this journey out of time to 'NowHere', we are leaving behind every model we have had of who we thought we were.

This journey involves a transformation of our being so that our thinking mind becomes our servant rather than our master. It's a journey that takes us from primary identification with our psyche to identification with our souls, then to identification with God, and ultimately beyond any identification at all.

Life is an incredible curriculum in which we live richly and passionately as a way of awakening to the deepest truths of our being. As a soul, I have only one motive: to merge with God. As a soul, I live in the moment, in each rich and precious moment, and I am filled with contentment."

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Developing Tolerance of Differing Views

The key to developing tolerance is to separate the validity of an idea from the validity of the person holding the idea. Behind every idea is a motivation that is shaped by hopes and fears. If we are able to identify this underlying motivation, we will see the wish to find happiness and to be free from suffering.

—Khentrul Rinpoche, “Unity in Difference”

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Via Lion's Roar: Buddhism’s Next 40 Years: Right Activism

I believe modern thought’s greatest contribution to Buddhism is to our understanding of the second noble truth—the causes of suffering.

According to Buddhism, the root cause of suffering is ego, our mistaken belief in a solid, separate, and continuous self, and the three poisons we use to protect it—aggression, attachment, and ignorance. We act selfishly in service to a non-existent self.

This is Buddhism’s essential, life-changing insight. By understanding and acting on it, we can reduce, and maybe even end, the suffering of beings. The second noble truth is the diagnosis that leads to the cure, and today our diagnosis is more accurate than ever.

Buddhism traditionally said that the cause of suffering was personal and individual. Now to the personal causes of suffering we have added the psychological and the political.

We understand how suffering and trauma are passed down within families, generation to generation. We work to break the cycle.

We see how ego and the three poisons operate on a vast scale in our political, social, and economic systems. We take action against injustice and work for a more caring society to fulfil our basic vow as Buddhists—to reduce suffering. Buddhists are political because suffering is political.

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Via Daily Dharma: Uncover Your Great Determination

When the great root of faith and the great ball of doubt are present, great determination will arise. Great determination is a strong resolve that wells up from the bottom of our gut and spurs us on. We already believe that we ourselves are intrinsically awake; we only need discover what is within us.

—Koun Yamada, “Great Faith, Great Doubt, Great Determination”

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Via Daily Dharma: The Power of Small Transformations

We are constantly being transformed when we travel on the path. While we may be the same individual on one level, on another level we are different. There is always continuity, and yet at each major turning point on the journey we have become transformed because certain habits have dropped away.

—Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche, “Letting Go of Spiritual Experience”

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Via Daily Dharma: Learning to Be Human

Fact is, we practice being human in every waking moment. And the more mindfully we practice, the more often our conflicts dissolve, the more easily we create new possibilities for relationship and community.

—Philip Simmons, “Learning to Fall”

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

"The witness is your leverage in the game. The witness 'me' isn't trying to change any of the other 'me's'. It's not an evaluator or a judge; it's not the superego. It doesn't care about anything. It just observes. 'Hmmm, there she or he is doing that again.' That witness place inside you is your centering device, your rudder.

The witness is part of your soul. It's witnessing your incarnation, this lifetime, from the heart-mind. It's the beginning of discrimination between your soul and your ego, your real Self and your self in the incarnation.

Once you begin to live in this witness place, you begin to shift your identification from the roles and thought forms. As you witness yourself, the process becomes more like watching a movie than being the central character in one."

- Ram Dass -

Vis White Crane: This Day in Gay History November 24

 

1632 - BARUCH SPINOZA, Dutch philosopher was born (d.1677); One of the great rationalists of 17th century philosophy, he laid the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism.

By virtue of his magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, Spinoza is also considered one of Western philosophy's definitive ethicists. He was raised and educated in the Orthodox Jewish fashion, also studying Latin and was thoroughly familiar with European humanism. What exactly is it that caused him to be excommunicated from the synagogue when he was only twenty-four years old?

Many scholars have speculated that the horror Spinoza inspired in the Jewish community may have come not only from his espousal of advanced economic theories, but from his espousal, as well, of "Greek love" among impressionable students in the liberal circle where he taught. A Dutch physician, J. Roderpoort, wrote at The Hague in 1897: “Spinoza excites the youth to respect women not at all and to give themselves to debauchery.” 

Was Spinoza merely teaching the Greek and Roman classics, with their inevitable passages on pederasty? What were Roderpoort’s motives for discrediting the Jewish philosopher? Was Spinoza, in fact a pederast? It’s all open to speculation.

Via Daily Dharma: Our Enduring Buddha Nature

We are still in the ocean of samsara; we have not yet gotten our heads fully out of the water. We have roamed about in one confused state of experience after the other, endlessly. At the same time, we haven’t lost our buddha nature.

—Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, “Taking Your Future Into Your Own Hands”

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Via Daily Dharma: Make Peace with the Present

Letting things be, without obsessing to change or improve them, could be seen as a highly developed form of compassion, one of the most central of all Buddhist virtues.

—Rita M. Gross, “Buddhist History for Buddhist Practitioners”

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Buddhism and Science: lecture by Prof. C. K. Raju

Via Daily Dharma: How to Live Without Regret

The Buddha’s teachings are about cultivating the beautiful and the good, the seeds of possibility that live in every human heart: generosity, kindness, and compassion. These qualities ennoble our hearts and leave no residue of regret in our minds.

—Christina Feldman, “Doing, Being, and the Great In-Between”

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Via Gay Wisdom: This Day in Gay History November 21 - VOLTAIRE

1694 -

VOLTAIRE, French philosopher, born (d: 1778); born François-Marie Arouet, better known by the nom de plume Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, deist and philosopher known for his wit, philosophical sport, and defense of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and the right to a fair trial. He was an outspoken supporter of social reform despite strict censorship laws and harsh penalties for those who broke them. A satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize Christian dogma and the French institutions of his day. The name "Voltaire," which he adopted in 1718 not only as a pen name but also in daily use, is an anagram of the Latinized spelling of his surname "Arouet" and the letters of the sobriquet "le jeune" ("the younger"): AROVET Le Ieune. The name also echoes in reversed order the syllables of a familial château in the Poitou region: "Airvault".

In terms of religious texts, Voltaire was largely of the opinion that the Bible was 1) an outdated legal and/or moral reference, 2) by and large a metaphor, but one that perhaps taught some good lessons, and 3) a work of Man, not a divine gift. These beliefs did not hinder his religious practice (It is a line from one of his poems that translates "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.") though it did gain him somewhat of a bad reputation in the Catholic Church. He is best known today for his novel, Candide.

Voltaire blew hot and cold on the subject of homosexuality. Although he is known to have sampled the delights of same-sex love on one occasion, he nonetheless admonished a friend who wanted to try it a second time, “Once, a philosopher,” he proclaimed, “twice, a sodomite!” He was locked in a love-hate relationship with Frederick the Great, with whom he spent agonizing, ecstatic years. In her biography of Voltaire, Nancy Mitford writes that “nobody who studies the life of Voltaire can doubt that he had homosexual tendencies, and one wonders whether his feelings for the king were not exacerbated by unrequited passion.” Whatever his personal reservations about homosexuality, the famous French writer was forthright in declaring that sodomy, “when not accompanied by violence, should not fall under the sway of criminal law, for it does not violate the rights of any man.” We will never know why Voltaire once signed a letter to a male friend, “E vi baccio il catzo,” which, politely translated means, “I kiss your rod.”

Social Action - Ram Dass Full Lecture 1980

From the 'Ashram Without Walls' series, Ram Dass discusses how we can align our aspirations with our actions. We learn to listen in order to discover our dharmic role, as we honor our incarnation in every unfolding step. "Don't get lost in the many and forget the one, don't get lost in the one and forget the many". (San Francisco, CA - 4/15/1980) Please click the following link for additional teachings on service: https://www.ramdass.org/service-is-a-... 

Photos: David Lenfest, Rameshwar Das

The Plane of Pure Love - Ram Dass

Via Lion's Roar: The Path of Gratitude

The Path of Gratitude

The goal of Shin Buddhism’s central practice, nembutsu, is not to attain buddhahood for ourselves, says Jeff Wilson, but to express gratitude for all we have received.

Shinran understood Amida as buddhanature. As he puts it, “Buddhanature is none other than Tathagata [Buddha]. This Tathagata pervades the countless worlds; it fills the hearts and minds of the ocean of all beings. Thus, plants, trees, and land all attain buddhahood.” Liberation is therefore always naturally avail­able and needn’t be chased after endlessly. Shinran taught that we must give up attachment to our ego-laden efforts to become enlightened and relax back into the embrace of inconceivable wisdom and never-abandoning compassion. In this way, we are freed from our anxieties and pettiness. Our practice, then, stops being about attaining buddhahood for ourselves and instead becomes about expressing gratitude for all that we have received. This is a way of life that deep­ens as the years pass; as Shinran put it, “My joy grows even fuller, my gratitude and indebted­ness ever more compelling.”    Make the jump here to read the full article and more

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - November 20, 2019 💌

"Of course it's embarrassing not to always be infinitely wise, but I feel that what we can offer each other is our truth of the process of growing, and that means we fall on our face again and again.

Sri Aurobindo says, 'You get up, you take a step, you fall on your face, you get up, you look sheepishly at God, you brush yourself off, you take another step, you fall on your face, you get up, you look sheepishly at God, you brush yourself off, you take another step,' and that's the journey of awakening.

If you were awakened already, you wouldn't do that, so my suggestion is that you relax and don't expect that you will always make the wisest decisions, and just realize that sometimes you make a decision, and it wasn't the right one, and then you change it."

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Embark on the Path of Enlightenment

Supreme enlightenment encompasses a path that we can comprehend, a way by which we can understand the universe as it exists and by which we can live in harmony with all things in the universe.

—Nikkyo Niwano, “The Austerities of the Bodhisattva”

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USA for UNHCR: "Somewhere" performed by Portland, Maine's Pihcintu Chorus.

 

"Somewhere" performed by Portland, Maine's Pihcintu Chorus. Pihcintu is comprised of refugee and immigrant girls from 22 countries who have made Portland, Maine their new home. They come from countries like Burkina Faso, Iraq, Vietnam and El Salvador. Many fled war, violence and persecution, but have found safety in the Pine Tree State’s vibrant refugee community. 

 

Learn more at www.unrefugees.org