Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Via Daily Dharma: Develop a Balance
Just
as meditation requires ... determination to carry it out, likewise it
requires a sense of balance to determine when to push ourselves harder
and when to step back and relax where we are.
—Lama Dudjom Dorjee, “Heartfelt Advice”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Monday, November 9, 2020
Via Daily Dharma: Recognizing Our Dependence
There is no self-grounding inner core of the individual. Our lives are entirely dependent processes.
—William S. Cobb, “The Game of Go”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Sunday, November 8, 2020
Via Tricycle // The Third Harmony
The Third Harmony
Directed by Michael Nagler
Directed by Michael Nagler
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Via Daily Dharma: Guard Your Mind’s Door
Mindfulness
is said to protect the mind from the intrusion of unwanted
elements—whether they be from the senses or from thoughts—like a guard
at the door.
—Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., “Which Mindfulness?”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Mushim Patricia Ikeda Responds to the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election
Today, November 6, 2020, the United States, my home, is a nation divided against itself, with all sides striving to win. This is the karma of white supremacy and colonization manifesting in the midst of a global pandemic and climate crisis. I live in California, a state that is, literally, on fire.
The Buddha said this:
Winning gives birth to hostility.
Losing, one lies down in pain.
The calmed lie down with ease,
having set
winning & losing
aside.
“Winning gives birth to hostility.” Another translator more colloquially put it this way: “The winner sows hatred because the loser suffers.”
I believe in strategic political action and liberatory movement-building. I have cast my vote. And these are my Bodhisattva vows as I move with you into the coming months and years: What actions can I take to lessen hostility and extreme reactivity, and to encourage civil discourse and respectful democratic process?
May we all complete the great journey of awakening together.
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - November 8, 2020 💌
You took birth here because you had certain work to do. This is your curriculum. It's not an error. Where you are now with all your neuroses and your problems, you're sitting in just the right place.
- Ram Dass -
Via Mushim Patricia Ikeda EBMC Sangha
From #EBMCOakland teacher Sean Feit-Oakes:
Like the Gospels, the teachings of the Buddha turn on a luminous moral vision: that dedicating our lives to wise action and reducing harm in the world is the path to liberation. Greed, which destroys beings in its insatiable hunger, is to be transformed into generosity. Hatred, that most bitter drink, abandoned for the cool water of kindness. And delusion, the failure to see how our actions create the world, polished into clarity.
The most inspiring moments this week have been the moral ones. Authorities on both sides committing to fairness and transparency instead of lies and deception. Regular people demanding that the process unfold in a nonviolent, ordered way, and celebrating the fundamental virtues of democracy, as flawed as ours may be. This is the real victory.
Saturday, November 7, 2020
Via Tricycle // Buddhism for Beginners: The Many Buddhist Traditions
Buddhism for Beginners: The Many Buddhist Traditions
New Decks Now Available!
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Via Daily Dharma: Transforming Through Spiritual Practice
Through
spiritual practice, you can come to see yourself and your life clearly.
And when you can see clearly, you can transform any situation.
—Interview with Tina Turner by Clark Strand, “Absolutely, Indestructibly Happy”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
7º Festival Cinema e Transcendência: 7 a 27 de novembro
Friday, November 6, 2020
Via Daily Dharma: The Foundation of Generosity
Gratitude, the simple and profound feeling of being thankful, is the foundation of all generosity.
—Sallie Tisdale, “As If There Is Nothing to Lose”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Via FB // Frodo & Sam
Found this in someone´s comments today:
“Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.
Sam:
I know.
It’s all wrong.
By rights we shouldn’t even be here.
But we are.
It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo,
The ones that really mattered.
Full of darkness and danger they were,
and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end.
Because how could the end be happy?
How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened?
But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow.
Even darkness must pass.
A new day will come.
And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer.
Those were the stories that stayed with you.
That meant something.
Even if you were too small to understand why.
But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand.
I know now.
Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t.
Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo:
What are we holding on to, Sam?
Sam:
That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, And it’s worth fighting for.”
Via Spotlight on David Hinton | Author of China Root from Shambhala Publications
Experience the Wild Beauty of Hunger Mountain
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Thursday, November 5, 2020
Today's Gay Wisdom via White Crane Institute: 2017 - Equinox/Return
An excerpt from Mark Thompson’s Gay Spirit: Myth & Meaning
What Edward Carpenter, Gerald Heard and Harry Hay recognized was the “new city of Friends” described by Walt Whitman over a hundred years ago—a sustaining place where “robust love” might thrive, a deep source of empowerment. It has been a dream asserted by a few and glimpsed by others at crucial points in our development. The early 1950s and 1970s were times when our movement howled at the moon, briefly acknowledging that this dream could be a reality. That this rude awakening represented something instinctual, wildly alive, posed problems for our leaders. Here was nature, woolly and cloven-hoofed, taking on unexpected form. Here were luminous faces peering out on the edges of accepted reality. How strangely familiar, too, for others to suppress what they do not comprehend, to fear what they’ve been taught to distrust.
Power, status, the hierarchy of who’s on top is the real currency of American culture, and so many of our leaders have been seduced by it all. These are the tactics of assimilation and they smell of panic. Thinking we have gained so much, we have been led to settle for less than we can be.
There is a tyranny implicit in any label, and certainly the label of Gay has now been revealed as much for its limitations as for its liberations. Why not consider difference, whatever its reason, in terms of function? The concept of a faerie shaman is just one idea that indicates a purposeful role, beyond that of just political or sexual identity. In times past and in many cultures, we often assumed the tasks of the shamans—wise and creative ones—and were duly honored as such. If we can but take gay beyond society’s definition—which we have internalized—and see ourselves as part of this function, our secret will be out.
I failed in my father’s eyes, and he in mind, as, I suppose, it had been fated. More to the point, few gay men ever seem to find complete acceptance from their fathers. (And even tolerance, however honorable, cannot account for true knowing.) Gay men have even less hope of being accepted by the greater father, the world of our daily existence, which, despite tolerant inroads, remains disapproving to its core. But neither can an opposite reality—that is, the matriarchy—hold any more honest place for us. Perhaps at one time, and according to the current feminist myth, the dominant Great Mother societies of agrarian, pre-Judeo-Christian times accepted gay men as welcomed sons. But I suspect, more likely, as subservient sons, in contrast to the outlawed sons of our contemporary age.
So gay men remain suspended in a horrible dilemma. Both the matriarchy and the patriarchy have, in effect, played themselves out; and the future, symbolized through an historic union of the two—has yet to fully emerge. Gay male consciousness remains stymied, unable to come of age. This is why so much of recent gay-identified culture appears to lack deeper meaning; however fresh and guileless its messages, empowered as it is by ritual dance and sex and defiance against corrupt authority.
At what point do gay boys stop finding favor in their father’s eyes? What stories are withheld, what rites of manhood lost in that uncomprehending gaze? Now, as gay men, we must begin by finding forgiveness in each other’s eyes, seek favor in stories of our own telling — our own fairy tales, the instructional fables we need to assume a mature and ever evolving gay adulthood. And for this we need to reinvest in wonder.
By learning more fully to evoke and to balance the powers of (what were once known as) the Earth Mother and Father Sky, we can set into motion our own whiling evolution as gay men beyond definition. We will no longer suffer from the constraints of living on a fraction of a life. We will evidence harmony as men who see clearly within and thus act cleanly without. We can learn to revel in our perspective, as much as our preference, and we don’t need a name. Our freedom is our responsibility. We simply need to do our work.
But first we must take the dark fantasies of our suppressed spirits out of their closets into the powerful light of reality. We can have a vision, and, thus, a culture to affirm, until one day perhaps our fathers will knowingly proclaim: “I have one of those.”
Gay Spirit: Myth & Meaning is now available at www.gaywisdom.org www.whitecranebooks.org
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