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Via White Crane Insitute // This Day in Gay History

 

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989
December 31 Born Simon Wiesenthal 1908 - SIMON WIESENTHAL was born on this date in the small Ukrainian town of Buczacz. Trained as an architectural engineer, Wiesenthal survived the Nazi concentration camps losing over eighty members of his extended family and dedicated the rest of his life to seeking justice for all those who died by bringing Nazi war criminals to justice. He was later celebrated as a "Nazi-hunter" and portrayed by Laurence Olivier in "The Boys from Brazil," but for many years, as Cold War governments had forgotten about Nazi atrocities, Wiesenthal was a veritable prophet in the wilderness, tirelessly working in the memory of all those who had died.  He wrote a number of bestselling books including "Murders Among Us," "Justice, Not Vengeance," and "The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness." Through his efforts countless Nazi criminals stood trial.  Without Wiesenthal's activity and vision, there would not have been war crimes hearings about Rwanda, Bosnia, or a permanent War Crimes tribunal in the Hague. For the sake of this Gay Wisdom listserve, we would point out that Wiesenthal spoke for all those who had lost their lives and was an early outspoken activist for the thousands of homosexuals who died in the holocaust, pointing out that they had all been buried together in mass graves and should all be acknowledged. Wiesenthal died of natural causes in 2005 at the age 96. Recent events remind us that we are still not out of the woods with respect to facsist politics and that we must all remain as vigilant as Wiesenthal.

Via Daily Dharma: What Connects Us All

What really matters is gratitude. That’s the heart of spirituality. And gratitude connects us: it lets us see that we are all connected.

—Kurt Spellmeyer, “Dialogue Across Difference”

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Via One Earth Sangha

 

Dedication of Merit

A prayer that any goodness generated here be extended out into the world:

May all places be held sacred.
May all beings be cherished.

May all injustices of oppression and devaluation
     be fully righted, remedied and healed.
May all wounds to forests, rivers, deserts, oceans,
     all wounds to Mother Earth be lovingly restored to bountiful health.

May all beings everywhere delight in whale song, birdsong and blue sky.
May all beings abide in peace and well-being, awaken and be free.

A little twist ~ Pema Chödron

 

 A little twist ~ Pema Chödron https://justdharma.com/s/wezj2  

All of life is interconnected. If something lives, it has life force, the quality of which is energy, a sense of spiritedness. Without that, we can’t lift our arms or open our mouths or open and shut our eyes. If you have ever been with someone who is dying, you know that at one moment, even though it might be quite weak, there’s life force there, and then the next moment there is none. It’s said that when we die, the four elements—earth, air, fire, water—dissolve one by one, each into the other, and finally just dissolve into space. But while we’re living, we share the energy that makes everything, from a blade of grass to an elephant, grow and live and then inevitably wear out and die. This energy, this life force, creates the whole world. It’s very curious that because we as human beings have consciousness, we are also subject to a little twist where we resist life’s energies.  – 

Pema Chödron  from the book "The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving Kindness" ISBN: 978-1570628726  -  https://amzn.to/1eGdDZy  Pema Chödron on the web: http://pemachodronfoundation.org/ https://www.shambhala.com/pema-chodron http://www.shambhala.com/heartadvice/  Pema Chödron biography: http://www.gampoabbey.org/pema-bio.php

Via Lion's Roar // Beginning Anew

 

Beginning Anew

Thich Nhat Hanh on how to make the meaningful ceremony of “Beginning Anew” part of your life.

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 -

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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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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CIRCUS OF BOOKS Trailer (2020) Netflix

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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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.

 

Make the jump here to read the full article and more

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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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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