Via Daily Dharma: Feeling Close with Every Creature

For compassion to develop toward a wide range of persons, mere knowledge of how beings suffer is not sufficient; there has to be a sense of closeness with regard to every being.

—Jeffrey Hopkins, “Everyone as a Friend”

Via Daily Dharma: Change Can Be a Gift

It is only because of change that suffering can end.

—Sallie Tisdale, “Washing Out Emptiness”

Via Daily Dharma: How to Be a Bodhisattva in Everyday Life

[The] wish to be more kind and helpful is the beginning of the bodhisattva path itself, and the treading of this path … will mainly consist of small acts of kindness and concern, brief moments of putting others before ourselves.

—Manjusura, “An Everyday Aspiration”

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation / Words of Wisdom - February 9, 2020 💌

It is the continuing work of life: of learning to trust that the universe is unfolding exactly as it should, no matter how it looks to us; learning to appreciate that each of us has a part in nurturing this interconnectedness and healing it where it is torn; discovering what our individual contribution can be, then giving ourselves fully to it.
Demanding as that sounds, it is what, in the spiritual sense, we are all here for, and compassionate action gives us yet one more opportunity to live it. It is an opportunity to cooperate with the universe, to be part of what the Chinese call, "the great river of the Tao."
It is not a coincidence that Hanuman, who in the Hindu cosmology is called the “embodiment of selfless service,” is the son of the wind god; when we give ourselves into becoming fully who we are by doing fully what we do, we experience lightness, we are like kites in wind, we are on the side of the angels, we are entering lightly.

- Ram Dass -

Via FB

Lama Surya Das – Ep. 59 – Perfection As It Is

Mindrolling – Raghu Markus – Ep. 327 – Uncovering Afflictive Emotions with Joseph Goldstein and Noah Markus

Joseph Goldstein drops by Mindrolling for a conversation around investigating and uncovering afflictive emotions such as grief, loss, and anxiety, and how we can turn up the dial of intentionality.

 

Make the jump here to listen and more

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.

Make the jump here to read the full article