Beginning Anew |
Thich Nhat Hanh on how to make the meaningful ceremony of “Beginning Anew” part of your life. |
A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Via Lion's Roar // Beginning Anew
Via Daily Dharma: The Wisdom of Generosity
The
practice of generosity is a wisdom practice, because it’s aligning you
with the real truth of things: what you think of as yours, as part of
your identity, is only temporary.
—Subhadramati, “Cutting the Threads”
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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - December 30, 2020 💌
When you stop living by other people’s judgments or expectations, you start doing what you need to do. In trying to decide what you want to do with your life, listen to your heart. The program is much farther out than you ever thought it was. I never thought I’d be a yogi. Each of us has our unique karmic predicament, our individual work to do. Always choose that which you feel is most in harmony with the way of things.
- Ram Dass -
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Via Daily Dharma: Calm Your Breath
If
we examine the body and mind carefully, we notice a connection between
the breath and how we feel. When the breath is calm and relaxed, we
notice that the body’s energy is also calm.
—Anyen Rinpoche and Allison Choying Zangmo, “Tibetan Yoga Techniques for Better Breathing”
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Monday, December 28, 2020
Via Daily Dharma: Staying on the Path
Once
you recognize that everyday reality is merely a reflection of some
deeper truth that’s close at hand but hidden from view, you’ve embarked
on a search that you can never really abandon, no matter how far you
seem to stray.
—Stephan Bodian, “Encountering the Gateless Gate”
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Sunday, December 27, 2020
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - December 27, 2020 💌
Of course, it’s embarrassing not to be infinitely wise, but I feel that what we can offer each other is our truth of the growing process, which means we fall on our faces 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…” 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. Realize that sometimes you make a decision and, if it wasn’t the right one, you change it.
- Ram Dass -
Via Daily Dharma: Acknowledge Your Thoughts
Don’t
feel disturbed by the thinking mind. You are not practicing to prevent
thinking, but rather to recognize and acknowledge thinking whenever it
arises.
—Sayadaw U Tejaniya, “Observing Minds Want to Know”
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Saturday, December 26, 2020
Via Tricycle // Forgiveness
Forgiveness Is Not Buddhist
Buddhist teachings do not advise asking others to absolve us from our misdeeds. Instead, they outline a path to purification that will change our relationship to reactive patterns.
In contemporary Buddhist settings, forgiveness is interpreted in several ways. One is as a way of letting go of our expectations and disappointments in others—in other words, letting go of our attachment to a different past. Another interpretation is as an extension of lovingkindness. In the Tibetan tradition, it is sometimes presented as an extension of patience or of compassion. These are all key practices, and they appear in virtually every Buddhist tradition, but to call them forgiveness? Well, that may be unforgivable. As Idries Shah writes in Knowing How to Know: A Practical Philosophy in the Sufi Tradition, when you adopt the methods developed in another culture, those methods and the ways of thinking associated with them eventually take over, and you lose touch with your own understanding and training. In the same way, by importing the foreign (to Buddhism) notion of forgiveness, contemporary Buddhists are unwittingly importing a very different system of thought and practice and undermining the powerful mystical practices in Buddhism that may have inspired them in the first place.
Via Daily Dharma: Lead Yourself Toward Peace
The
content of life, the what, is always what it is at any given moment,
just the fact, but it’s how we relate to that moment that will either
lead us toward or away from more suffering.
—Mark Van Buren, “Relating to Life”
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Friday, December 25, 2020
Via Daily Dharma: The Gifts Beyond Gifts
When
someone gives you something precious it means that, beyond the
usefulness of the gift, you are precious. The gift marks a moment when
you are welcomed into the other person’s heart.
—John Tarrant, “The Erotic Life of Emptiness”
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Thursday, December 24, 2020
Lamp in the darkness ~ 17th Karmapa
Lamp in the darkness ~ 17th Karmapa https://justdharma.com/s/mdcw7
However much fighting there is in the world, however much darkness there is, we must be able to serve as small lamps in that darkness. – 17th Karmapa source: https://bit.ly/2JznYwH
17th Karmapa on the web: http://kagyuoffice.org http://kagyu.org http://kagyumonlam.org http://rumtek.org http://karmapa.justdharma.com
17th Karmapa biography: http://kagyuoffice.org/
Via Tricycle // Wholeness Is No Trifling Matter
By Ruth King
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Via Daily Dharma: Remember You’re Always Connected
If
I ever find myself alone and feel a pang of fear that I have been cast
aside and removed from the world, I can remember that it is not even
possible for me to be completely alone. I am inextricably woven into an
ever-changing web of connections.
—Lauren Krauze, “Not Alone During the Holidays”
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