Listening with Empathy
With Cuong Lu |
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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.
Listening with Empathy
With Cuong Lu |
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Any time we are abruptly thrown off course, it is an opportunity to reexamine our lives, our values, and where we are headed.
—Judy Lief, “Welcome to the Real World”
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Regardless
of our circumstances, if we are Buddhist practitioners, we can have
control over how we react to our thoughts and feelings.
—Interview with Charles Johnson by E. Ethelbert Miller, “Black Coffee Buddhism”
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Joy can be restorative. It can be akin to a good meal: nourishing and necessary.
—Daisy Hernández, “The Joy of Joy”
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When
life presents us with challenges, we can get stuck in the mud—in our
habitual reactions and patterns—or we can be present to the suffering
and find compassion and strength within the discomfort, blossoming like
the lotus.
—Carolyn Gregoire, “Buddhist Thank-You Cards”
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How to Work with Anxiety on the Path of Liberation | ||
Anxiety
is actually a necessary part of our path. Psychotherapist Bruce Tift
gives an instruction in how to relate to it constructively. |
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NATHAN LANE, (nee Joseph Lane) American actor, born; a Tony Award- and Emmy Award-winning actor of the stage and screen. When he was 21 and told his mother he was gay, her reply was: "I'd rather you were dead." Lane shot back: "I knew you'd understand". His professional association with his close friend the playwright Terrence McNally includes roles in Lips Together, Teeth Apart, The Lisbon Traviata [Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Awards], Bad Habits, Love! Valor! Compassion! [Obie, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards ], and Dedication.
Lane, who came out publicly after the death of Matthew Shepard, jokingly describes himself as "one of those old-fashioned homosexuals, not one of the newfangled ones who are born joining parades." When he was asked once by a reporter whether he was Gay, rather than providing a blunt yes-or-no answer, he famously declared, "I'm 40, single and I work a lot in the musical theatre. You do the math."
He has been a long-time board member of and fundraiser for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids, and he has been honored by The Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, and The Trevor Project for his work in the gay community. Lane lives in New York, and on November 17, 2015, married his long-time partner, theater producer and writer Devlin Elliott.
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Meditation
is not necessarily about generating intense concentration. It can be
about the exact opposite: a slow, steady gentleness that adds no
intensity to what already exists.
—M. Sophia Newman, "Straight Outta Kapilavastu"
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"When somebody provokes your anger, the only reason you get angry is because you’re holding on to how you think something is supposed to be. You’re denying how it is. Then you see it’s the expectations of your own mind that are creating your own hell. When you get frustrated because something isn’t the way you thought it would be, examine the way you thought, not just the thing that frustrates you. You’ll see that a lot of your emotional suffering is created by your models of how you think the universe should be and your inability to allow it to be as it is."
- Ram Dass -
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Meaningful
acts of the individual—our practice included—can take place only in the
context and with the support of a strong community.
—James Shaheen, “Finding Community”
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