Saturday, February 8, 2020
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.
Make the jump here to listen and more
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 8th of February but by most on 15th
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”
—Darlene Cohen, “The Practice of Nonpreference”
Friday, February 7, 2020
Via Meditative Mind - 11 Mins of Om So Hum Mantra Meditation ❯ Reduces Stress ❯ Brings Spontaneous Joy & Happiness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA4XX15xatk
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”
—Noelle Oxenhandler, “The Buddha’s Robe”
Thursday, February 6, 2020
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”
—Jan Nattier, “A Greater Awakening”
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Via White Crane Institute / Today's Gay Wisdom
Today's Gay Wisdom
Gay Sunshine
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.
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.
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”
—Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “The Karma of Now”
Tuesday, February 4, 2020
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”
—Ezra Bayda, “The Sweet Pain of Remorse”
Monday, February 3, 2020
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”
—Dan Zigmond, “Resisting the Attention Economy”
Sunday, February 2, 2020
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
Make the jump here to listen to the podcast
Via FB: I don’t care how spiritual you are
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"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
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