Via Daily Dharma: Noticing the Power of Vows

 When you begin to look at life through the lens of vows, you are touched not only by the dedication of human beings to form an aspiration to grow, change, and overcome obstacles but also by their unselfish efforts to dedicate themselves to a larger beneficial purpose.

—Jan Chozen Bays, “Brief Teachings”

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Via White Crane Institute // Today's Gay Wisdom

 

The Wisdom of George Santayana

• Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
• To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
• Never build your emotional life on the weaknesses of others.
• History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.
• Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in the conclusions; their reasons are always different.
• Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them.
• The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.
• Prayer, among sane people, has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end.
  

Via Daily Dharma: Observe Feeling with Full Awareness

 The mind has to be fully aware of itself—all around, at all times—in its focused contemplation, to see feeling as empty of self.

—Upasika Kee Nanayon, “A Glob of Tar”

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Via Morning Star Zendo // Liberation from all Obstructions

 

Liberation from all Obstructions

In the presence of Sangha, in the light of Dharma, in oneness with Buddha

– may my path to complete enlightenment benefit everyone!

In this passing moment karma ripens and all things come to be.

I vow to affirm what is:

If there’s cost, I choose to pay. If there’s need, I choose to give.

If there’s pain, I choose to feel. If there’s sorrow, I choose to grieve.

When burning, I choose heat. When calm, I choose peace.

When starving, I choose hunger. When happy, I choose joy.

Whom I encounter, I choose to meet. What I shoulder, I choose to bear.

When it’s my birth, I choose to live. When it’s my death, I choose to die.

Where this takes me, I choose to go. Being with what is, I respond to what is.

This life is as real as a dream; the one who knows it cannot be found;

and truth is not a thing, therefore I vow to choose THIS Dharma entrance gate!

May all Buddhas and Wise Ones help me live this vow.

 

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Via Daily Dharma: Radiate Peace to Whomever You Meet

 We can radiate peacefulness to the people we meet. We’re all part of an invisible emotional economy, a give-and-take of feelings.

—Interview with Daniel Goleman by Sharon Salzberg, “I Feel Your Brain”

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - December 13, 2020 💌

 

Every event in your life is incredibly significant on level upon level upon level. Were you to attempt to think of each of these levels at the moment someone says something, you would be swamped by an overwhelming number of thoughts. Meditative awareness is not one of intellectual analysis nor one of labeling different "takes" of reality. It allows all ways of seeing to exist in the space surrounding an event.

Meditative awareness has a clarity that lays bare both the workings of your mind and the other forces at work in a situation. This clarity allows you to see the factors that determine your choices from moment to moment... In this inner stillness and clarity you are fully aware of the entire gestalt, the whole picture. With no effort your response is optimal on all levels, not just mechanically reactive on one. The response is in tune, harmonious, in the flow.

- Ram Dass -

Via The Tricycle Community // Guidelines for an Ethical Life

 Guidelines for an Ethical Life
With Leslie Booker

Ethical action begins with the recognition that we are all connected, says meditation teacher and activist Leslie Booker, whose new Dharma Talk series investigates the foundations of a moral life.

Watch now »

Via Daily Dharma: Let Liberation Carry You Along

 To get over yourself, appreciate what is other than you and get on with living, being liberated, free of the karma that we create. Trust the universe and let it carry you along.

—Roshi Robert Althouse, “After Awakening”

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Via Daily Dharma: Notice Discomfort Disappear

 Experiencing the disappearance of discomfort soothes the mind, makes it confident, and allows for the insight of impermanence: Everything passes.

—Sylvia Boorstein, “The Wisdom of Discomfort”

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Peace Through Music: A Global Event for Social Justice | 200+ Musicians ...

Via White Crane Institute // TOMMY KIRK

 

Tommy Kirk and Old Yeller

1941 -

TOMMY KIRK, American actor, born; If you are of a certain age, and watched early kid-TV and Disney movies, there is little need to say who Tommy Kirk is. Or more accurately, was. Kirk is an object lesson in the dangers of not concealing one's Gayness in the early 1960s. Kirk was a child star in such blockbuster Disney films as The Absent Minded Professor, Old Yeller, and The Shaggy Dog.

But in his late teens, despondent over the exploitation of his cute all-American adolescent image, Kirk took a step that most of his Gay predecessors in Hollywood never dared. He came out to Disney. Immediately fired, Kirk briefly received national press coverage but soon passed into obscurity.

He joined church organizations working with Gay and lesbian youth. He remained furious, and, at times, vocal, about Disney's propaganda mill and discriminatory practices. Unfortunately, Kirk's heroic act has all but disappeared from Gay history.

Tommy Kirk was inducted as a Disney Legend in 2006, alongside his old co-stars Tim Considine and Kevin Corcoran.

His other repeat co-stars, Annette Funicello and Fred MacMurray, had already been inducted (in 1992 and 1987, respectively). Also in 2006, the first of Kirk's Hardy Boys serials was issued on DVD in the fifth "wave" of the Walt Disney Treasures series.

Via Daily Dharma: Coming to Terms with Reality

 We’re all prisoners of life and death. The question is: What kind of prisoners do we want to be? 

—Bonnie Myotai Treace, “Rising to the Challenge: Filling the Well with Snow”

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Via Daily Dharma: Take Care of Your Body

The body, however evanescent in its character, must be considered holy even as the holy tree, and all the necessary care should be taken to keep it the worthy vessel in which the spirit is lodged.

—Soyen Shaku, “The Middle Way”

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

 

Every moment of your life, once you understand it’s purpose, is your vehicle for awakening. This moment is your vehicle for awakening. If you’re uncomfortable, allow it. If you’re fascinated, be fascinated, allow it. Give it space.

- Ram Dass -

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Via White Crane Institute // White Crane Institute

 

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The Reverend James Lewis Stoll

1994 -

REV. JAMES LEWIS STOLL, M.Div.a Unitarian Universalist minister, died (b: 1936). Stoll was the first ordained minister of any religion in the United States or Canada to come out as gay. He did so at the annual Continental Conference of Student Religious Liberals on September 5, 1969 in La Foret, Colorado.

Born in 1936 in Connecticut, he was educated at San Francisco State University and the Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, CA. In the words of his friend, Leland Bond-Upson, Mr. Stoll took a flat in the Eureka Valley neighborhood in San Francisco with three other friends. In September 1969, Mr. Stoll went to the La Foret Conference Center in Colorado Springs to attend a convention of about 100 college-age Unitarians. On the second or third night of the conference, Stoll got up to speak. He told the assembly that he’d been doing a lot of hard thinking that summer and that he could no longer live a lie.

He had been hiding his true nature—from everyone except his closest friends. “If the revolution we are in means anything, it means we have the right to be ourselves, without shame or fear.” And then he told the group he was gay, and it wasn’t a choice, and he wasn’t ashamed anymore and he wasn’t going to hide it anymore. From now on he was going to be himself in public.

He led the effort that convinced the Unitarian Universalist Association to pass the first-ever gay rights resolution in 1970. He founded the first counseling center for gays and lesbians in San Francisco. In the 1970s he established the first hospice on Maui. He was president of the San Francisco chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in the 1990's. He died at the age of 58 from complications of heart and lung disease, exacerbated by obesity and a life-long smoking habit.

Via Daily Dharma: Treasuring Gratitude and Thanks

 During this time of giving, we should not place too much importance on material gifts; it’s our thoughts, words, and deeds that count. Sincere expressions of appreciation, praise, thanks, and an unexpected helping hand can be the most treasured gifts of all.

—Reverend Earl Ikeda, “O Bodhi Tree, O Bodhi Tree”

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