Lama Surya Das – Awakening Now – Ep. 87 – Emaho and Advanced Dzogchen

On this episode of Awakening Now, Lama Surya Das explores the fun practice of Emaho and other advanced Dzogchen teachings, including integrated dharma into daily life.

 

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Via White Crane Institute / Parinirvana Day, or Nirvana Day

Parinirvana Day or Nirvana Day is a Mahayana Buddhist holiday celebrated in East Asia. By some, it is celebrated on 8^th of February but by most on 15^th of February. It celebrates the day when the Buddha achieved Parinirvana, or complete Nirvana, upon the death of his physical body.

Via Daily Dharma: Welcome Spaciousness into Your Mind

What cultivating attention to detail introduces is spaciousness, space around thoughts and activities, that allows us to live a rich and satisfying life.

—Darlene Cohen, “The Practice of Nonpreference”

Namaste Chillout ॐ) Indian Yoga Music

Via Meditative Mind - 11 Mins of Om So Hum Mantra Meditation ❯ Reduces Stress ❯ Brings Spontaneous Joy & Happiness

 

OM SO HUM - Is a very simple but profound Mantra and is so effective that it can bring complete transformation to oneself - Spiritually, Emotionally and Physically. Its not only a mantra but the sounds itself are so calming to human brain that just chanting this mantra with reduce stress and when you will open your eyes after the meditation, watch that smile you have... It brings that spontaneous joy and happiness. Om So Hum Meditation is known to transform an individual to a being with higher state of consciousness and can connect with that divine consciousness, that universal energy. If you are looking for Om So Hum Mantra sung by Choir, here is the link :  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA4XX15xatk

Tibetan Monks Chantiing Om for Deep Meditation and Spiritual Awakening

OM SO HUM Mantra Meditation (New)

Via Daily Dharma: Work with Whatever Arises

When we sit in meditation, we sit in the midst of our own opposites: our strengths and weaknesses, our desires and dislikes. In doing so, we express a willingness to work with everything that arises in the field of our own mind.

—Noelle Oxenhandler, “The Buddha’s Robe”

Via Daily Dharma: We Are Already Liberated

Liberation is already in effect. All we must do as practitioners is allow ourselves to see, and to acknowledge, that fact.

—Jan Nattier, “A Greater Awakening”

Via White Crane Institute / Today's Gay Wisdom

Today's Gay Wisdom

Gay Sunshine

An excerpt from William Burroughs on Sexual Morality in the Western World from Gay Sunshine Interviews, Volume One, 1978

Sexual morality in the Western world is based on the Bible and especially on the teachings of St. Paul. Which presume to impose one arbitrary and dogmatic standard of sexual behavior on all people everywhere and forever. The teachings of St. Paul are now dead and unworkable. Dead since a pill has separated sexual pleasure from reproduction. Dead since overpopulation has made reproductive sex something to be curtailed rather than encouraged. Dead since experiments have shown that sexual desire is a matter of stimulating certain brain areas and that such stimulation is purely arbitrary. Admittedly homosexuals can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo- and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to a boot — to an old boot. You can save a lot of money that way.

In the same way heterosexual males can be conditioned to react sexually to other men. Who is to say that one is more desirable than the other? The latter day apologists for St. Paul who call themselves psychiatrists have little to recommend them but their bad statistics. Psychiatrists say they need more money and personnel to deal with the ever-growing problem of mental illness, and the more money and personnel channeled into this bottomless pit, the higher the statistics on mental illness climb. It is indeed an ever-growing problem at this rate. Personally I think that mental illness is largely a psychiatric invention.

On December 3, 1973, the American Psychiatric Association decided that homosexuality would no longer be considered a mental deviation. Well, if they have more mental patients now than they can handle, it would seem to be a step in the right direction to remove homosexuals from this category. But the decision has caused a storm of protest. One psychiatrist compared the decision to “a psychiatric Watergate which we hope won’t be our Waterloo…” They just don’t like to see any prospective patients escaping: it could start a mass walkout! Doctor Charles Socarides, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein Clinic, staunchly opposes the new APA approach: “The APA has done what all civilizations have trembled to do…tamper with the biological role between the sexes.” Fancy that! And in a letter to Playboy in June of 1970 Dr. Socarides says, “Five hundred million years of evolution have established the male/female standard as the functionally healthy pattern of human sexual fulfillment.”

Just a minute here, Doctor — the human species is not more than one million years old, according to the earliest human remains so far discovered. Other species have had a long run. Three hundred million years have established a big mouth that can bite almost anything off and a gut that can digest it as a functionally healthy pattern for sharks. One hundred thirty million years more or less established large size as functionally healthy for dinosaurs. What may be functionally healthy at one time is not necessarily so under altered conditions, as the bones of discontinued models bear silent witness. But sharks, dinosaurs and psychiatrists don’t want to change.

The sexual revolution is moving into the electronic stage. Recent experiments in electric brain stimulation indicate that sexual excitement and orgasm can be produced at push-button control or push button choice, depending on who is pushing the button’s control. Buttons to the people. None of these bits of technology are in the future. The knowledge and most of the hardware exist today. In terms of human sexuality what could it mean? It could mean you can plug in anything you want.

Experiments in autonomic shaping have demonstrated that subjects can learn where the neural buttons are located. Just decide what you want and your local sexual adjustment center will match your brain waves and provide a suitable mate of whatever sex, real, or imaginary, while you wait. It is now possible to provide every man and woman with the best sex kicks he or she can tolerate without blowing a fuse.

Any candidate running on that ticket should poll a lot of votes and bring a lot of issues right out into the open.

Make the jump here to read this and much,, much more!

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation / Words of Wisdom - February 5, 2020 💌

As you get more conscious, every act you perform increases the amount of consciousness in the universe, because the act itself conveys the consciousness. In other words, I could tell you the greatest truths of the world but if I don’t understand them inside, forget it, because all I’m doing is taking it from there and giving it to there and I’m not giving you the key that allows you to use it, which is the “faith” in it, which I can only convey through my own success in whatever I’m doing.

- Ram Dass -

Via Tricycle / The Karma of Now Why the present moment isn’t the goal

We’re taught that the purpose of mindfulness is to be more present—but what if the present moment isn’t really the goal? Thanissaro Bhikkhu makes a case for changing our perspective.

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Via Daily Dharma: Sustaining Patience

[The Buddha’s] patience is not the patience of a water buffalo who simply endures the work and punishments imposed on it. Instead, it’s the patience of a warrior who, despite wounds and setbacks, never abandons the desire to come out victorious.

—Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “The Karma of Now”

Via Daily Dharma: Return to Kindness

We can use our “little deaths”—those moments when we see that we’re being petty, unkind, or unforgiving—to remind us that the most important thing is to live from the gratitude and kindness of the awakening heart.

—Ezra Bayda, “The Sweet Pain of Remorse”

Matthew Cooke / A Message to Republicans

 

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Via Daily Dharma: Every Moment Deserves Fascination

You don’t need to go bird-watching or visit a rose garden to find reality absorbing. Every moment deserves our full attention and with practice, every moment can command it.

—Dan Zigmond, “Resisting the Attention Economy”

Dharma instructor Lama Rod Owens joins Francesca Maximé for a conversation around the importance of showing up to difficult experiences and holding our love and trauma in balance.

Considered one of the leaders of the next generation of Dharma teachers, Lama Rod Owens has a blend of formal Buddhist training in the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism and life experience that gives him a unique ability to understand, relate and engage in a way that’s spacious and sincere. He invites you into the cross-sections of his life as a Black, queer male, born and raised in the South and heavily influenced by the church and its community. Learn more about Lama Rod’s offerings and upcoming teaching events at lamarod.com.

The Dharma of Homecoming

Lama Rod shares the work he has been doing sharing contemplative practices of healing that focus on the wounds caused by racism, marginalization, and patriarchy. He offers insight around how the act of creating a home can be a radically healing act.

“I think it is a radical act – a revolutionary act – to make a home in the world; particularly if you have felt that the world has not ever been home for you. I love offering these teachings for people of color and for people who experience marginalization.” –  Lama Rod Owens

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Via FB: I don’t care how spiritual you are

"I don’t care how spiritual you are. How long you can melt in the sweat lodge. How many peyote journeys that have blown your mind, or how well you can hold crow pose. Honestly. I don’t. I don’t care what planets fall in what houses on your birth chart, how many crystals you have or how vegan your diet is.

I want to know how human you are. Can you sit at the feet of the dying despite the discomfort? Can you be with your grief, or mine, without trying to advise, fix or maintain it?  I want to know that you can show up at the table no matter how shiny, chakra- aligned or complete you are or not. Can you hold loving space for your beloved in the depths of your own healing without trying to be big? 

It doesn’t flatter me how many online healing trainings you have, that you live in the desert or in a log cabin, or that you’ve mastered the art of tantra.

What turns me on is busy hands. Planting roots. That despite how tired you are, you make that phone call, you board that plane, you love your children, you feed your family.

I have no interest in how well you can ascend to 5D, astral travel or have out of body sex. I want to see how beautifully you integrate into ordinary reality with your unique magic, how you find beauty and gratitude in what’s surrounding you, and how present you can be in your relationships.

I want to know that you can show up and do the hard and holy things on this gorgeously messy Earth. I want to see that you can be sincere, grounded and compassionate as equally as you are empowered, fiery and magnetic. I want to know that even during your achievements, you can step back and be humble enough to still be a student. 

What’s beautiful and sexy and authentic is how well you can continue to celebrate others no matter how advanced you’ve become. What’s truly flattering is how much you can give despite how full you’ve made yourself. What’s honestly valuable is how fucking better of a human you can be, in a world that is high off of spiritual materialism and jumping the next scapegoat for “freedom.”

 

At the end of the day I don’t care how brave you are. How productive, how popular, how enlightened you are. At the end of the day, I want to know that you were kind. That you were real. I want to know that you can step down from the pedestal from time to time to kiss the earth and let your hair get dirty and your feet get muddy and join the dance with us all."

-A modern day call to shifting from spiritual consumerism to returning to human kind... heart inspired by Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s, The Invitation."

by Taylor Rose Godfrey

Thanks to Anna Mae Swigert

Via Daily Dharma: Converting Anger for a Positive Result

Through chanting we’re able to elevate the condition of Buddha in our lives, … so that even if we are in the world of anger, we have the ability, through our practice, to access Buddha rather than anger and even to turn the anger from something negative into something that can be used for a positive result.

—Myokei Caine-Barrett, “Living the Lotus Sutra”