Via Daily Dharma: How to Respond Thoughtfully

By witnessing how we are, in our body, heart, and mind, we become armed with the necessary information needed to respond thoughtfully and with care.

—Jill Satterfield, “Meditation in Motion”

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation : Words of Wisdom - January 26, 2020 💌

If we can imagine a wheel whose rim is the cycle of births and deaths, all of the “stuff” of life, conditioned reality, and whose center is perfect flow, formless no-mind, the source, we’ve got one foot with most of our weight on the circumference of the wheel, and one foot tentatively on the center. That’s the beginning of awakening. And we come in, and we sit down and meditate, and suddenly there’s a moment when we feel the perfection of our being and our connection. Then our weight goes back on the outside of the wheel. Over and over and over, this happens.

Slowly, slowly the weight shifts. Then the weight shifts just enough so that there is a slight predominance on the center of the wheel, and we find that we naturally just want to sit down and be quiet, that we don’t have to say, “I’ve got to meditate now,” or “I’ve got to read a holy book,” or “I’ve got to turn off the television set,” or “I’ve got to do…” anything. It doesn’t become that kind of a discipline anymore. The balance has shifted. And we keep allowing our lives to become more and more simple, more and more harmonious. And less and less are we grabbing at this and pushing that away...

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Reforming Your Life

Envisioning death and rebirth serves to rehearse how the mind shapes embodiment and environment, awakening us to our ability to recreate our lives.

—Joseph Loizzo, “The Science of Enlightenment: The Buddha’s Answer to Darwin and God”

Via Daily Dharma: Attaining Lasting Happiness

One could spend years alone in a cave without really letting go of anything. The question is how best to attain the inner solitude that will bring lasting happiness.

—Pema Chödrön, “Cutting Ties: The Fruits of Solitude”

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Via Daily Dharma: What Is Absolute Truth?

Absolute truth is what is eternally true, now and forever, beyond any particular viewpoint or time frame. When we tap into absolute truth, we can recognize the divine beauty or larger perfection operating in the whole of reality.

—John Welwood, “The Psychology of Awakening”

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#lovingramdass Honoring Ram Dass – A Moment to Be Here Now

#lovingramdass

Via LionsRoar / Ram Dass lives on in collaborative album with East Forest

Musician East Forest’s collaborative album with the late spiritual teacher Ram Dass encompasses his lifetime of wisdom in 14 tracks, bringing his teachings to life after death.

In 2018, musician East Forest found himself in Maui, Hawaii, sitting in the upstairs study of spiritual teacher Ram Dass’s home — just the two of them sat in the room with microphones set to record.

“I realized that I’d made my way into what felt like the spiritual White House, and that it was no small feat,” he says.

As East Forest hit record, Ram Dass stared at him, awaiting a question. East Forest asked him about nature, and how we might use it to connect to ourselves in the high speed, the hyper-digitized world we live in.

Ram Dass paused, and thought for a while, staring out to the ocean and thumbing through his mala beads.

Nature embraces us, and we embrace nature
We are nature
We are the trees and the clouds and the waters
When you hug a tree, you’re hugging yourself

The responses became “Nature,” the first track of the East Forest’s album, Ram Dass.

Make the jump here to hear the  interview and more

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation / Words of Wisdom - January 22, 2020 💌

The key is that God, Guru and self are one.
The quickest way to get through your stuff is to learn how to listen inside. The inner guru is always there for you once you recognize it. You must honor your own path. You must be able to trust that there is a place in you that knows what is best. There is a tendency to look to others for guidance. Only you know what is suitable for you.
Trust your intuitive heart. The Quakers call it, "The still small voice within." When it speaks, listen. If it feels "right on" do it.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: How Delight Can Heal Us

Gladness and delight do not merely balance out negative tendencies, they actually heal the aversive mind.

—James Baraz, “Lighten Up!”

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Via Daily Dharma: Grounding Yourself with Breath

The circus of rage, superiority, and judgment is just another invitation to come back home and breathe.

—Tina Lear, “I Wanted to Watch Bill Cosby Suffer”

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Via Tricycle Dharma Talks: Digital Detox

Digital Detox: Reclaim Your Mind From Social Media Addiction

Bodhipaksa

 

The Social Media Sutra

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—these sites and other social media platforms can be emotional minefields, and they eat up far more time than many of us are OK with. Although the Buddha didn’t offer guidance on how to act mindfully on Facebook, he did outline five practices that can help us disengage from the compelling trains of thought that often dominate our use of social media. In this video, Bodhipaksa shows how these practices can help us to take control of our online impulses.

Bodhipaksa is a Buddhist author and teacher who was born in Scotland but now lives in New Hampshire. He is a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order and the author of This Difficult Thing of Being Human: The Art of Self-Compassion and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Buddha!: What Fake Buddha Quotes Can Teach Us About Buddhism. When not debunking Fake Buddha Quotes, he runs Wildmind (www.wildmind.org), a leading online meditation resource.

Make the jump here to listen to the Dharma Talk and more...



Daily Dharma: Freeing Ourselves from Ignorance

he buddhadharma is optimistic, because it says we all eventually will free ourselves from ignorance. And that liberation is very much within our creative control every minute of every day—your life is a work in progress.

—Interview with Charles Johnson by E. Ethelbert Miller, “Black Coffee Buddhism”

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Via FB:

Ram Dass Loving Awareness Meditation (20 Minutes)

Via Love Serve Remember Foundation / RamDass.org

Join us LIVE on Wednesday, January 22nd, at 8 pm EST for an online Moment to Be Here Now in honor of Ram Dass.

Following his death on December 22nd, the Love Serve Remember Foundation is honoring Ram Dass with a worldwide Moment to Be Here Now.

This will not only be a celebration of Ram Dass’s enormous heart and vast teachings but also an opportunity to gather together as a global community. The live online gathering will include:

• Opening comments and a reading from Mirabai Bush
• Silent reflection and a brief “loving awareness” meditation
• Chanting from Ram Dass’s long-time friend Krishna Das

Though Ram Dass has left his physical form, his legacy reverberates louder and brighter than ever before.

We hope everyone who has been touched by Ram Dass will join us to remember together and to help cultivate loving awareness for 2020 and beyond.

P.s. - We will send out a reminder on Wednesday a few hours before the event goes live at 8 pm EST. Or you can bookmark the link below. Click here to find your local time for the event.

Via Love Serve Remember Foundation / Words of Wisdom - January 19, 2020 💌

Mantra is a repeated phrase designed to keep your consciousness centered. It’s a perspective giving device. It’s adding a third component to every relationship you have with objects in the universe. This could be OM, this could be the sun, this could be Buddha consciousness, this could be called the witness. It’s a technique of adding a third component in order to get free of the identification with either of the other two.
You can use the mantra to find a center in yourself and to keep that third component going. Which allows you to watch your own drama all day long. It’s all a vehicle, and it’s going to have to go. But mantra is a useful vehicle...

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: What Is Boundless Joy?

Boundless joy, not to be mistaken for frenzied exultation, is delight in others’ happiness. It banishes jealousy and stabilizes our capacity for engagement.

—Anne C. Klein, “The Four Immeasurables”

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Via Daily Dharma: Spreading Support

Because you recognize that people need support in order to practice the dharma, you can aspire to provide for others the same kind of support system that you yourself have benefited from.

—Judy Lief, “Train Your Mind: Take on the Three Principle Causes”

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Via Daily Dharma: Train Your Brain

With dedication, we can slowly build healthy mental tendencies, for awareness and wisdom, for kindness and compassion. That’s why we practice.

—Wendy Hasenkamp, “Brain Karma”

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