Tibetan Buddhist Library at Sakya Monastery in Tibet

Via White Crane Institute / oday's Gay Wisdom

2017 -

The Wisdom of George Santayana

• Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
•  
• To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
• Never build your emotional life on the weaknesses of others.
• History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.
• Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in the conclusions; their reasons are always different.
• Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them.
• The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.
• Prayer, among sane people, has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end.

Via Daily Dharma: Examine Your Intention

The Buddha’s focus was volition, intentional motivation. Everything hangs on motivation and understanding as clearly as possible the individual’s own motivation underlying all action.

—Interview with John Peacock by James Shaheen, “Investigating the Buddha’s World”

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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - December 15, 2019 💌

"If you were to take your consciousness and bring it out of your senses and out of your thinking mind and bring it down into awareness, what then? Who would you be? Well, what you would be at that point is awareness. Just awareness or consciousness.

There are ways of subjectively being in the universe so that things are available to you, or in you, that would otherwise only be knowable to you by collecting them through your senses and through your thinking mind."

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Opening to All Things Equally

Equanimity contains the complete willingness to behold the pleasant and the painful events of life equally. It points to a deep balance in which you are not pushed and pulled between the coercive energies of desire and aversion.

—Shaila Catherine, “Equanimity in Every Bite”

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Via Daily Dharma: Examining Our Actions and Intentions

In trying to cultivate lucidity regarding our own actions, we gradually become smarter about ourselves, more sensitive to other people, and more nuanced in our actions.

—Krishnan Venkatesh, “How to Practice Right Speech Anywhere, Anytime, and With Anyone”

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Via Kaiser-Permenent / Thrive: 52 positive affirmations to brighten your day

The old saying, “You are what you think” may be true. For example, negative thoughts may lead to a more negative outlook on life, which then can lead to more negative thoughts. This cycle of negativity may result in stress, anxiety, and depression, which can damage your physical health.

To break the cycle, it’s important to introduce more positive thoughts into your life as often as possible.

What is an affirmation? 

The word “affirm” means to validate or confirm. In the mental health world, affirmations are short, encouraging statements that you can use to create a more positive frame of mind.

You can repeat an affirmation to yourself as often as you’d like — while brushing your teeth, driving to work, or before you fall asleep. The more often you use an affirmation, the more it can help reinforce your value and self-worth and it may even positively affect your behavior.

And with the New Year on the horizon there’s no better time to turn positivity into a year-long habit. Try using one of the following 52 affirmations each week in 2020 to help you tackle your goals.

1. I am ready.

2. My efforts help me succeed.

3. All is well.

4. I can make a real difference.

5. My hard work will pay off.

6. I am strong.

7. I choose happiness.

8. I have the power to make the right choices for me.

9. I have faith in my abilities.

10. I got this.

11. I am grateful for what I can do.

12. I am happy to be me.

13. My goals are achievable.

14. I am confident.

15. I will practice self-kindness.

16. I am on the right path for me.

17. I am thankful for the love in my life.

18. I will take action and accomplish my goals.

19. I am healthy.

20. Success is mine.

21. I will find the good in all things.

22. I am always learning.

23. I trust myself.

24. I will try new things.

25. I will turn negative thoughts into positive ones.

26. I can do this.

27. Anything is possible.

28. I am safe.

29. I love myself.

30. Life is beautiful.

31. I am powerful.

32. There’s no limit to what I can do.

33. Life brings me joy.

34. Good things are coming my way.

35. I believe in myself.

36. I release my fears.

37. Every day, I am getting better, stronger, healthier.

38. It’s OK for me to have fun.

39. My possibilities are endless.

40. I am well-rested and full of energy.

41. I am thriving.

42. I am relaxed and at peace.

43. I am strong in mind, body, and spirit.

44. My life is a gift.

45. I deserve love and happiness.

46. I care for myself.

47. New opportunities come easily to me.

48. Healthy food fuels my body.

49. Today, I will succeed.

50. I give myself room to grow.

51. Each day is filled with joy.

52. I embrace my power.

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Via Daily Dharma: How to Let Go

We can’t simply “let go.” It doesn’t work like that. It’s certainly not what the Buddha teaches. Letting go, the Buddha tells us, will come when we “develop” wisdom.

—Peter Doobinin, “Sutta Study: The Ship”

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Via Daily Dharma: Uncovering Enlightenment

Enlightenment is not a matter of adding anything but rather of peeling away the false, fabricated sense of self to allow the innate Buddha being to emerge.

—Judith Hooper, “Prozac & Enlightened Mind”

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Via Daily Dharma: The Beauty of Impermanence

When we can accept that people and things are always shifting and changing, our hearts can open.

—Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, “The Hunger for Home”

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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - December 11, 2019 💌

"Having empathy for another means your heart is breaking, because you understand the intensity of their experience, and at the same moment, you are absolutely, equanimously present. You are not clinging to anything, just watching the phenomena of the universe change.

It’s then that your acts can be compassionate. That is where the root of compassion is. The root of compassion is not empathy; that’s along the lines of kindness, and that’s good, but it’s not compassion. The ultimate compassion is the act itself, which has the potential to relieve every level of suffering, not just the food in the belly, or the mattress to safely sleep on at night. The suffering that comes from separateness is only relieved when you are present with another person."

- Ram Dass -

Via White Crane Institute: This Day in Gay History December 10 / Emily Dickinson

EMILY DICKINSON, American poet born (d. 1886); Dickinson is another of those pale, frail, Victorian ladies whose psyches are encased in concrete, generally by their families and later by academicians. To tamper with the official versions of their lives is tantamount to spitting on the flag, with the same dire consequences. Just look at what happened to Rebecca Patterson when she dared to suggest in a biography some years back that Dickinson was a Lesbian in love with her girlhood friend Kate Scott Anthon. She was fried. “What do you mean?” was the cry in the land. “How can Emily Dickinson be a Lesbian? She’s an American.” Although there are some who think that the great poet was, in fact, a Lesbian, the official story remains the same as that innocently told about our Lesbian grammar school teachers: their boyfriends died in World War I so they remained old maids.

 

 

 

LXIV.
A BOOK.
1.

He ate and drank the precious words, His spirit grew robust,
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!

Dickinson, E. (1993). The Collected Works of Emily Dickinson.  New York: Chatham River Press.

 

Via Daily Dharma: Work with What You Have

Until enlightenment, our practice is vulnerable, our meditation and conduct both prone to wobble. Nonetheless, until we do confirm our innate wisdom, we need to work at it as best we can.

—Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede, “Don’t Just Sit There”

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Via Daily Dharma: Appreciate the Precious Present Moment

All things already have their endings within them. If we become attuned to this, then we can appreciate the moment. We can appreciate the extraordinary fact of our unique and precious lives.

—Thanissara, “The Grit That Becomes a Pearl”

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Via FB: Ram Dass

Via CBS: World of Weddings: Same-sex couples in Israel find legal loophole to recognize marriages

Via Meanwhile in Canada / FB

Via Daily Dharma: Noticing What We Can Change Inbox x

When we succumb with grace to the fact that we are, basically, hopeless cases, we have an extraordinary opportunity to discover in what sense we are not hopeless.

—Henry Shukman, “The Art of Being Wrong”

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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - December 8, 2019 💌

"It's interesting that as long as you identify with your personality, the things that get you uptight are your enemies. The minute you identify with your awareness, then the things that gets you uptight show you where your awareness has still sticky fingers. Most of us with the mind, because your mind deals with polarities, you feel that if you're happy, you're not sad, and you want to be happy. So you push away that which makes you sad.

But if you are going to be free, there's nothing you can turn away from or turn off. Like if you live fully in this moment, does this moment include that baby that's taking its last breath from starvation? Yeah. So are you sad? Yes. Does it include the baby taking its first breath as it comes out of its mother’s womb, and the joy of the beginning? Yes. So you're happy. If you are the fullness of the moment, all of it, these are all your voices. If you and I are to be free, there is nothing we can push away."

-  Ram Dass -