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Via Daily Dharma: Act on Awakening

It is said that the Buddha, after emerging from his awakening under the Bodhi tree, distinguished himself from other enlightened beings by not dwelling in quiescence, but demonstrated his unsurpassed and complete awakening by speaking up.

—Duncan Ryuken Williams, “At Fort Sill, a Prayer That History Would Not Repeat Itself”

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Via Lion´s Roar / How to Practice Metta for a Troubled Time

How to Practice Metta for a Troubled Time

Mushim Patricia Ikeda teaches us how to generate loving-kindness and good will as an antidote to hatred and fear.

Via Lion´s Roar / Race, Reclamation, and the Resilience Revolution

Race, Reclamation, and the Resilience Revolution

In the wake of the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by police in Minneapolis, dharma teacher Larry Ward says we have to “create communities of resilience,” and offers his mantras for this time.

Via Daily Dharma: Keeping Steady with Emotions

The intention when meditating with emotion is to stay steady with every sensation, just as we might do with sound meditation. Just listening. No commentary.

—Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche with Helen Tworkov,“Leaving Everything Behind”

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation / Words of Wisdom - June 3, 2020 💌

"Tall order: We’re asked to enter into this volatile environment of division and separateness, but with as much consciousness of unity as possible. So King sets out for Selma. Gandhi begins the Salt March, or any number of us join movements for peace and justice. Seeking to recruit others, experiencing divisions among ourselves, confronting opposing power, wrestling with fear and anger, trying to keep a clear sense of our goals… there are plenty of places to get lost in the struggle.
We need all the clarity and inspiration we can get in order not to violate, in our own behavior, the very principles and ideals we’re fighting for." 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: What Is Genuine Happiness?

Genuine happiness doesn’t require that you take anything away from anyone—which means that it in no way conflicts with the genuine happiness of others.

—Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “Hang on to Your Ego”

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Via Daily Dharma: Get to Know Yourself

The more comfortable we are with ourselves, the more comfortable we are with others. We need to know ourselves fully and authentically, which requires work, before we can start to understand the absolute truth of non-self. 

—Interview with Kevin Manders by Emily DeMaioNewton,“A Gender-Diverse Sangha”

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Mt. Whitney, 1990 - It ain´t the same, but I get it...

I climbed Mt. Whitney (14,505 feet 4,421 m) a number of years ago with four colleagues, all gay men, all Ph.D´d. 

That normally would be a fun fact and irrelevant, but there was a hitch. Besides the fact that we thought we were prepared, and we should have over nighted at a higher elevation, we all made it to the top in a day - I with a great case of altitude sickness. After we finished, we decided instead to go down to Lone Pine, a small town at the base, and get a motel instead of camping. So, we checked in, took turns showering, and went to a restaurant for dinner. As soon as we ordered, I decided to run (Lower elevation = more air) 2 blocks down to an ATM. 

Upon returning, Kim asked me where the ATM was… and ran there too… dinner was served, Kim didn´t show up… we got worried, about an hour later, he showed up and this is what had happened. He was jogging to the ATM, a sheriff stopped asked him where he thought he was going, made him get in the car, and took him to the motel (on the edge of town) where, luckily, he had made the reservation and the desk folks remembered who he was. The sheriff then let him free, but Kim had to walk back. (1990, no cell phones). He was annoyed, we were outraged and wanted to file a complaint or whatever… he begged us to forget about it. But being the psychologist in the group,  explained to the well-meaning white guys, took the opportunity, went on to share how this was something most all black men were used to… I am all this time later, still shaking and enraged. 

The thing about owning a Ph.D. in multicultural education is that you only know enough to remind you that you only know enough… which is never enough. This came screaming home to me that evening and still haunts me, every time there is a shooting or  a family member says something uninformed about people of color.

Now that cities in both my countries are upside down in relation to social justice, racism, homophobia, and creeping fascism… I remembered that amazing weekend, with great guys on top of the world. And like many of the events that have taken this entire planet to the edge, a great day turned ugly in a moment because of the stupidity of people I had thought were there to protect us all. Since coming out, I have learned that if I keep my mouth shut in difficult situations I can pass, other friends, colleagues, family members do not have that luxury, especially in regards to racism. I am grateful, yet I also feel some responsibility. 

So, if my beautiful brothers and sisters of color will allow me, and forgive me when I step into it, I stand by us all. Check me when I do it wrong, but know you have an ally here!

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - May 31, 2020 💌

"There is no best or right kind of experience in meditation; each session is as different and unique as each day of your life. If you have ideas of what should happen, you can become needlessly disappointed if your meditation doesn’t conform to these expectations.

At first meditation is likely to be novel, and it’s easy to feel you are changing. After a while, there may be fewer dramatically novel experiences. You may be making the most progress when you don’t feel anything particularly significant is going on—the changes you undergo in meditation are often too subtle to detect accurately. Suspend judgment and let whatever comes come and go. "

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Flowing Between Inner and Outer Worlds

When we meditate, we develop a creative awareness that enables us to see that we are a flow of inner conditions meeting outer conditions. 

—Martine Batchelor, “The Woman in the Photograph”

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I am almost 65 and...

Via Lion´s Roar // Thich Nhat Hanh

This Is the Buddha’s Love: An Interview with Thich Nhat Hanh

In this interview from 2006, the great Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh talks about non-self, interdependence, and the love that expands until it has no limit.

Thich Nhat Hanh: We say, “I take refuge in sangha,” but sangha is made of individual practitioners. So you have to take care of yourself. Otherwise, you don’t have much to contribute to the community because you do not have enough calm, peace, solidity, and freedom in your heart. That is why in order to build a community, you have to build yourself at the same time. The community is in you and you are in the community. You interpenetrate each other. That is why I emphasize sangha-building. That doesn’t mean that you neglect your own practice. It is by taking good care of your breath, of your body, of your feelings, that you can build a good community, you see.   Make the jump here to read the full article and more

Via White Crane Institute

1903 -

Psychoanalyst DR. A.A. BRILL presented a paper at a joint meeting of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychoanalytic Association in Boston on homosexuality and paranoia. He stressed that homosexuality was part of the normal sexual instinct and plays a useful part in social relationships and that homosexuality was only pathological when combined with adjustment difficulties. However, he also equated homosexuality with paranoia by saying homosexuals experienced delusions of persecution. (Now why would that be?

Via Daily Dharma: The Accomplishment of Slowing Down

Choosing to slow down and not accomplish anything is a revolution in itself.

—Hai An (Sister Ocean),“The Joy of Letting Go: Spring Cleaning Inside and Out”

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Ram Dass on Polarization, Awareness and Social Responsibility

 

 

[New Article] Ram Dass on Polarization, Awareness and Social Responsibility

I recently met with a police chief who had been going around to colleges getting college students to become policemen for New York City. I complimented him on what he’s doing, on trying to create another kind of psychic space in the police department, and so on.

At the same time, I said, “The program will be as successful as you are conscious because as long as you are stuck in a polarity you’re just going to enroll more people into that polarity. If you aren’t stuck in the polarity, you may be able to free people by the model that new policemen will adopt about what it is that they think they’re doing every day when they go out and be policemen...”

Via White Crane Institute // Today's Gay Wisdom:

Today's Gay Wisdom

2018 -

TODAYS GAY WISDOM

From Edward Carpenter's Ioläus

I CONCLUDE this collection with a few quotations from Whitman, for whom "the love of comrades "perhaps stands as the most intimate part of his message to the world — "Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting." Whitman, by his great power, originality and initiative, as well as by his deep insight and wide vision, is in many ways the inaugurator of a new era to mankind; and it is especially interesting to find that this idea of comradeship, and of its establishment as a social institution, plays so important a part with him.

We have seen that in the Greek age, and more or less generally in the ancient and pagan world, comradeship was an institution; we have seen that in Christian and modern times, though existent, it was socially denied and ignored, and indeed to a great extent fell under a kind of ban; and now Whitman's attitude towards it suggests to us that it really is destined to pass into its third stage, to arise again, and become a recognized factor of modern life, and even in a more extended and perfect form than at first. [As Whitman in this connection (like Tennyson in connection with In Memoriam) is sure to be accused of morbidity, it may he worthwhile to insert the following note from In re Walt Whitman, p. 115," Dr. Drinkard in 1870, when Whitman broke down from rupture of a small blood-vessel in the brain, wrote to a Philadelphia doctor detailing Whitman's case, and stating that he was a man ' with the most natural habits, bases, and organization he had ever seen.]'

"It is to the development, identification, and general prevalence of that fervid comradeship (the adhesive love, at least rivaling the amative love hitherto possessing imaginative literature, if not going beyond it), that I look for the counterbalance and offset of our materialistic and vulgar American Democracy, and for the spiritualization thereof. Many will say it is a dream, and will not follow my inferences; but I confidently expect a time when there will be seen, running like a half-hid warp through all the myriad audible and visible worldly interests of America, threads of manly friendship, fond and loving, pure and sweet, strong and lifelong, carried to degrees hitherto unknown-not only giving tone to individual character, and making it unprecedentedly emotional, muscular, heroic, and refined, but having deepest relations to general politics. I say Democracy infers such loving comradeship, as its most inevitable twin or counterpart, without which it will be incomplete, in vain, and incapable of perpetuating itself."

Democratic Vistas note:

The three following poems are taken from Leaves of Grass:

"Recorders ages hence, Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, I will tell you what to say of me,
Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover,
The friend the lover's portrait, of whom his friend his lover was fondest,
Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love within him, and freely pour'd it forth,
Who often walk'd lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his lovers,
Who pensive away from one he lov'd often lay sleepless and
dissatisfied at night,
Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov'd might secretly be indifferent to him,
Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on hills, he and another wan dering hand in hand, they twain apart from other men,
Who oft as he saunter'd the streets curv'd with his arm the
shoulder of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon him also."

Leaves of Grass, 1891

"When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv'd with plaudits in the capitol, still, it was not a happy night for me that follow'd,
And else when I carous'd, or when my plans were accomplish'd, still I was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health,
refresh'd, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light,
When I wander'd alone over the beach, and undressing bathed,
laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food
nourish'd me more, and the beautiful day pass'd well,
And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend, and that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continuously up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me whispering to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast-and that night I was happy."

"I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions,
But really I am neither for nor against institutions, (What indeed
have I in common with them? or what with the destruction of them?)
Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these
States inland and seaboard,
And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large
that dents the water,
Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,
The institution of the dear love of comrades."

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!

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Via Daily Dharma: Be Conscious of Your Intentions

When we understand that karma is based on volition, we can see the enormous responsibility we have to become conscious of the intentions that precede our actions.

—Joseph Goldstein,“Cause and Effect”

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Hand Mudra Lessons