Via Daily Dharma: Neutralize Your Ups and Downs

Until we get rid of that “I,” that “self” who desires and dislikes, we will keep experiencing the up-and-down states of the wheel of change.

—Robin Hart, “Color-Blind Fury”

Via Daily Dharma: Begin with Your Mind

If our mind becomes wholesome, then our vocal and physical activities will become sources of peace and benefit for ourselves and others.

—Tulku Thondup, “Don’t Get Stuck in Neutral”

Ram Dass – Here and Now – Ep. 158 – A Pledge to Social Responsibility

In this dharma talk from 1978, Ram Dass looks to the example set by The Shakertown Pledge as a model for committing ourselves to inner and outer social action.

Links From This Episode: Becoming Nobody | Maui Retreat | Ojai Retreat

Tuning Into the Small Voice Within

What does quieting our mind have to do with social action? Ram Dass reflects on the traditions and teachings of the Quakers, the 17th-century protestant movement also known as the Friends Church, looking at how we can use their pledge to live in balance with the world as a guide for our own life’s journey.

” I declare myself a world citizen. I commit myself to lead an ecologically sound life. I commit myself to lead a life of creative simplicity and to share my personal wealth with the world’s poor. I commit myself to join with others in the reshaping of institutions in order to bring about a more just global society in which all people have full access to the needed resources for their physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual growth.
I commit myself to occupational accountability, and so doing I will seek to avoid the creation of products which cause harm to others. I affirm the gift of my body and commit myself to its proper nourishment and physical wellbeing. I commit myself to examine continually my relations with others and to attempt to relate honestly, morally, and lovingly to those around me. I commit myself to personal renewal through prayer, meditation, and study. I commit myself to responsible participation in a community of faith.” – The Shakertown Pledge

Our Relationship with Truth (28:45)

How can we work with the double-edged sword of truth? Ram Dass speaks about the importance and difficulty of holding ourselves the standard of untarnished honesty. He asks us to examine whether our motivations for spiritual practice and inner work come from the place of truth or our ego.

“Truth is a funny thing, the truth gets you free. The truth gets you high and it gets you free. Its risky business, but it changes the whole name of the game.” – Ram Dass  

What is the importance of inner social action? Explore this question with Ram Dass and friends on Ep.137 of the Here and Now Podcast

Make the jump here to listen

Joseph Goldstein – Insight Hour – Ep. 83 – The Nuances of Right Effort

On this episode of Insight Hour, Joseph Goldstein examines the many nuances of Right Effort, and how that effort can help us build real momentum in our spiritual practice.

The Nuances of Right Effort

Joseph begins this dharma talk with an exploration of why effort is so important in breaking the habitual patterns of our conditioning. He covers the nuances of Right Effort, including engaging with our breath, awareness of how much effort we’re exerting, and paying attention to our attitude about what is being experienced.

“It’s only if we arouse the energy to play at the edge, and have interest in discovering what can be learned there, that’s what’s going to take us out, basically, of the dream of our lives. We’re just living the dream of our thought, emotional, physical patterns. We’re just going on with the momentum of that. So to awaken from that and to see other possibilities, it takes some effort, it takes some energy.” – Joseph Goldstein

Joseph Goldstein explores more about effort and energy on Insight Hour Ep. 68

Steadiness of Mind, Fullness of Attention (28:00)

Joseph talks about setting the dial of intentionality in order to steady the mind and help it settle into a fuller awareness. He explores dropping into the continuity and immediacy of experience, and how all these nuances of effort build momentum in our practice.

“You turn the dial of intentionality just a little bit. This is the art; it doesn’t take much, it takes the slightest turning up of that intention. And it’s been amazing to me how responsive the mind can be to the setting of that intention.” – Joseph Goldstein

Building From Below, Swooping From Above (51:00)

Joseph examines two ways of applying effort to overcoming the obstacles of hindrances in the mind. He talks about different methods of approaching practice and effort – building from above, and swooping from below – using Greek mythology to illustrate their strengths and weaknesses.

“Building from below really connects us with the reality of our present experience. We’re not denying it, we’re not trying to cover it, we’re not bypassing it, we’re really there and we’re looking carefully at the nature of the suffering.” – Joseph Goldstein

Via Daily Dharma: Letting Go of Emotional Patterns

All mental and emotional patterns eventually fall apart and dissolve in the light of awareness.

—Hanuman Goleman, “Checking My Inner World”

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation / Words of Wisdom - February 16, 2020 💌

If you think you're free, there's no escape possible.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Compassion and Boundaries Can Co-exist

It is possible to genuinely want to help all beings, to bring one’s insights and skillful means to every encounter, and to let this aspiration become a state of mind that infuses each moment, while simultaneously having limits and needed boundaries.

—Pilar Jennings, “Boundaries Make Good Bodhisattvas”

Via White Crane Institute / This Day in Gay History February 14

Noteworthy

The reliquary of St. Valentine in the Vatican

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ST. VALENTINE. No no-no…Don’t jump to any conclusions. St. Valentine was not Gay, but neither did he have anything to do with the holiday for lovers that bears his name. That St. Valentine, one of the more boring Christian martyrs, is the patron saint of lovers is a mere fluke. You see, the Norman word galatin, meaning a lover, was often mispronounced valentin, and through a natural confusion of names, St. Valentine became associated with love.

Officially recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, St. Valentine is known to be a real person who died around A.D. 270. However, his true identity was questioned as early as A.D. 496 by Pope Gelasius I, who referred to the martyr and his acts as “being known only to God.”

One account from the 1400s describes Valentine as a temple priest who was beheaded near Rome by the emperor Claudius II for helping Christian couples wed. A different account claims Valentine was the Bishop of Terni, also martyred by Claudius II on the outskirts of Rome. Because of the similarities of these accounts, it’s thought they may refer to the same person. Enough confusion surrounds the true identity of St. Valentine that the Catholic Church discontinued liturgical veneration of him in 1969, though his name remains on its list of officially recognized saints.

There is lore that says he was sent to the prison as he was involved in the act of soldiers' weddings who were not allowed to marry or mistreated in the Roman empire. 

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Via Daily Dharma: Reaching Our Greatest Capacity for Love

As people become more whole and are freed from certain basic fears (of abandonment, of unworthiness, of engulfment), new possibilities may open up for the expression of embodied love.

—Jorge Ferrer, “What’s the Opposite of Jealousy?”

#LGBTfilms #Guatemala #LoveIsLove "Jose" trailer from Outsider Pictures

Via Daily Dharma: How Awareness Leads Us

Awareness shows us the questions, the problems we might be able to solve and the questions that can’t be answered at all, and awareness makes the hand-holds and toe-holds appear as we traverse the cliff of our lives.

—Interview with Jane Hirshfield by Mark Matousek, “Felt in Its Fullness”

Via Lions Roar / Growing Together Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh shows us how we can use loving relationships to cultivate the seeds of buddhahood inside us.

Read the orginal and more here

Via Whaite Crane Institute / This Day in Gay History February 12

 






Abraham Lincoln's bed-mate Captain David Derickson

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 16^th President of the United States, born (d: 1865); Only in a world that thinks that being Gay is an abnormal condition does the suggestion that a revered president might have been primarily Gay become an issue. C.A. Tripp went farther than any earlier study to present the greatest amount of evidence and the strongest argument currently available that Lincoln’s primary erotic response was that of a homosexual man in his posthumously published book, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln.

Over the years, a number of other writers and scholars had argued that Lincoln was homosexual, but Tripp objected to the evidence, finding it unconvincing. He then set out to collect as much information as he could on Lincoln and explore the 16^th president’s sexuality in all its dimensions and complexity. What he created was neither a work of sexual or biological reductionism, but a full-fledged character study and a significant effort to understand a complicated man, that placed Lincoln’s sexuality into a larger, more significant framework.

There are, as usual, the dismissals of his evidence as “misreadings” of the customs of another time. And yet the evidence of the relationship Lincoln had with his wife Mary is as obscure and subject to interpretation as are his relationships with the important men in his life and there is no problem accepting those vagueries. As any modern Gay man will attest, Lincoln may have functioned as a heterosexual, but his marriage does not preclude an intense homosexual drive.

From 1862 to 1863, President Lincoln was accompanied by a bodyguard from the Pennsylvania Bucktail Brigade named Captain David Derickson. Unlike Lincoln’s earlier male friend, Joshua Speed, Derickson was a prodigious father, marrying twice and siring ten children. Like Speed, however, Derickson became a close friend of the president and also shared his bed while Mary Todd was away from Washington. According to an 1895 regimental history written by one of Derickson’s fellow officers:

“Captain Derickson, in particular, advanced so far in the President’s confidence and esteem that, in Mrs. Lincoln’s absence, he frequently spent the night at his cottage, sleeping in the same bed with him, and — it is said — making use of His Excellency’s night-shirt!”

Another source, the well-connected wife of Lincoln’s naval adjundant, wrote in her diary: “Tish says, ‘there is a Bucktail Soldier here devoted to the President, drives with him, & when Mrs L. is not home, sleeps with him.’ What stuff!” Derickson’s association with Lincoln ended with his promotion and transfer in 1863.

Sadly, Tripp died in May 2003, and we will never know how he would have defended his study of the sexual orientation of Abraham Lincoln. But any Gay man reading of Lincoln’s seduction of a 44-year old captain of the Pennsylvania Bucktails in the fall of 1862, will have little trouble with the remaining arguments. But it does give a whole new meaning to the term “rail-splitter” doncha think?

Via :Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation / Words of Wisdom - February 12, 2020 💌

Of course it’s embarrassing not to always be infinitely wise, but I feel that what we can offer each other is our truth of the process of growing, and that means we fall on our face again and again.
Sri Aurobindo says, “You get up, you take a step, you fall on your face, you get up, you look sheepishly at God, you brush yourself off, you take another step, you fall on your face, you get up, you look sheepishly at God, you brush yourself off, you take another step…” and that’s the journey of awakening.
If you were awakened already, you wouldn’t do that, so my suggestion is you relax and don’t expect that you will always make the wisest decisions, and just realize that sometimes you make a decision, and it wasn’t the right one, and then you change it.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: How to Ripen Wisdom

Wisdom, which includes skillful action, arises when we can hold our views lightly and continue to question the basic assumptions that underlie our truths.

—Brandon Dean Lamson, “Meeting Violence with Kindness”

Via Queerty / Farmer's diary from 1810 shows he was more woke about homosexuality than many Americans today

 

 A page of Tomlinson’s diary. Credit: The University of Oxford

An English farmer who lived 200 years ago was more woke about homosexuality than many people today, according to an entry from his newly unearthed diary.

Matthew Tomlinson was a farmer in West Yorkshire in Northern England. In January 1810, he heard about a naval surgeon who had been executed for sodomy and took to his journal to express why he thought criminalizing homosexuality was wrong.

In England and Wales, homosexuality was punishable by death until 1861, when it was replaced with a prison sentence. Homosexual acts remained illegal until 1967 when it was finally decriminalized.

Make the jump here to read the full article and more

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