Tuesday, February 23, 2021
The Obligatory Prayers
Bahá’u’lláh invested a few prayers with special power. These include three obligatory prayers revealed by Him. Bahá’ís recite one of these each day: either a short prayer of a few brief lines, which is said between noon and sunset; a medium obligatory prayer of several verses, which is recited in the morning, at noon, and in the evening; or a long prayer, which is recited once in twenty-four hours.
Via Daily Dharma: Bearing Witness
When you bear witness you open to the uniqueness of whatever is arising and meet it just as it is.
—Wendy Egyoku Nakao Roshi, “Hold to the Center!”
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Monday, February 22, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Strengthen Your Concentration
Bringing
our full attention to focus on our breath in meditation strengthens our
ability to concentrate in daily life, in the same way that lifting
weights in the gym strengthens our muscles and allows us to lift heavy
things elsewhere.
—Dan Zigmond, “Learning How to Concentrate”
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Via Lion's Roar // Loving-Kindness: May All Beings Be Happy
Melvin Escobar teaches metta, a concentration practice to cultivate unconditional goodwill for all. In precarious times like these, it’s a way to listen to our hearts.
Illustration by Carole Hénaff.
Precarious times like these call for us to be quiet and listen to our hearts. According to its etymology, the word “precarious” derives from the Latin prefix prec, which means “prayer.”
An especially potent form of prayer for times of crisis like these is metta. Metta is a Pali word that has been translated as loving-kindness, universal goodwill, or loving-friendliness. My favorite translation, which I learned from Vipassana teacher Anushka Fernandopulle, is “unstoppable friendliness.”
Tradition tells us that, like the sun, metta is always present and doesn’t discriminate. Metta is the heart of what are known as the four divine abodes, which include compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity. As a prayer, metta offers an authentic experience of our interconnectedness.
Metta is a concentration practice to cultivate unconditional goodwill for all. It is practiced by reciting and contemplating a series of aspirations or prayers that express your goodwill and unstoppable friendliness toward yourself and others. With each recitation, you expand the scope of your loving-kindness—from yourself, to those close to you, to those for whom you feel antipathy, and finally to all sentient beings.
For guidance on metta practice, let’s look at some quotes from the Karaniya Metta Sutta, known in English as The Discourse on Loving-Kindness, in which the Buddha teaches metta as a simple and direct way to meet the moment as it is.
Wishing: In gladness and in safety,
May all beings be at ease.
phrase such as, “May I/you/all be free from inner and outer harm,” when repeated with genuine goodwill, cultivates a sense of calm acceptance of things as they are. When the mind is determined to reject what it cannot change, it can become caught up in forms of inner harm such as shaming, blaming, complaining, and explaining. In wishing for safety and ease for ourselves or others, we are more able to hold the reality of impermanence, and the first noble truth that there is no place where one can entirely escape suffering or harm.
Whatever living beings there may be… omitting none….
A common question that arises is: how do I practice with the most difficult person I can think of? Consider an analogy to weight lifting. It’s obvious that it would be unwise and possibly unsafe to start out lifting the heaviest weights. We must practice with lighter ones first. Likewise, we can harm ourselves by trying to practice metta with a very difficult person, if we haven’t developed the capacity to work with the aversion and despair that may arise. We must build capacity incrementally, starting with ourselves, a dear mentor, or any beloved being (a pet, a tree, a deity).
Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Most people agree that we should not lie to others or hate them. Metta practice can help us see how we lie to and feel hatred toward ourselves. Sharon Salzberg, meditation teacher and author of the seminal book, Lovingkindness, asked the Dalai Lama, “What do you think about self-hatred?” Confounded by her question, he replied, “Self-hatred? What is that?”
The self-hatred experienced by many in the West is actually a product of internalized oppression. The systems of oppression that bell hooks has called “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” teach us that we are never enough, that we must constantly strive to be worthy of happiness. Phrases like, “May I love myself as I am” and “May I be happy and know the true causes of happiness” help us see through the deception.
Let none through anger or ill will
wish harm upon another.
The Dhammapada teaches us: “Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world; by nonhatred alone is hatred appeased. This is an eternal law.” Although anger can indicate that there is injustice or harm happening, it’s easy to slip into ill will toward the targets of our anger. It can be momentarily satisfying to wish harm on another, but the harm rebounds on ourselves. It’s the proverbial drinking of the poison and hoping the other person gets sick. A phrase like “May you be happy and healthy,” directed to the source of our anger, can help purify us of this poison.
Meditation
Here is a typical series of metta contemplations you can practice, reciting them three times as you change the subject of your prayer from “I” to “you” to “all.” But feel free to create your own or adapt these to resonate with your own experience.
May (I/you/all beings) be safe and
protected, free from inner and
outer harm.
May (I/you/all) be happy.
May (my/your/everyone’s) body support the practice of loving awareness.
May (I/you/all) be free from ill-will, affliction, and anxiety.
May (I/you/everyone) love (myself/yourself/themselves) as (I am/you are/they are).
May (I/you/all) be happy and free
from suffering.
May (I/you/all) find peace in an
uncertain world.
May (I/you/all) find ease on the
middle path between attachment and apathy.
When you lose concentration, simply and kindly return to your phrases. Try not to judge the judgments that inevitably arise. Meet each moment with unstoppable friendliness. May you be inspired by the transformative potential of this practice.
Happy Birthday -- 'Peace Sign'
Sunday, February 21, 2021
Via White Crane Institute // GEORGE BIRIMISA
GEORGE BIRIMISA born (d: 2012) an American playwright, actor and director who contributed to the explosion of gay theater in the mid-1960s during the early years of Off-Off-Broadway. His works feature sexually explicit, emotionally charged depictions of working class Gay men, often closeted, in the years before the Stonewall uprising (1969) triggered a national and international Gay Rights movement. Contemporary Authors said that "Birmisa's plays feature themes of human isolation, frustrated idealism, and rage against needless suffering, usually centered around homosexual characters.“ According to critic and playwright Michael Smith, Birimisa's writing “links the pain of human isolation to economic and social roots.”
Birimisa’s first produced play, Degrees (February 1966),[1] a portrait of a Gay relationship, premiered at Theater Genesis in the East Village, Manhattan. At the time, gay plays usually received no serious artistic or critical attention. “For years,” the playwright recalls, “even gay people would ask me, ‘When are you going to write your first real play?’” Degrees included autobiographical elements, which became stronger and more explicit in Birimisa's later works. Above all, he writes out of a need to tell the truth about his own life. "I don't agree that there are ‘shades of truth,’” he says. “We all know the truth, deep inside ourselves. As artists, we have a responsibility to reveal who we truly are, not to work in shades of gray. This truth includes our sexual beings.”
Birimisa directed and acted in his best-known Off-Off-Broadway play, Daddy Violet[12] (1967), a semi-improvised indictment of the Vietnam War. Daddy Violet opened at the Troupe Theatre Club, premiered in June 1967 at the Caffe Cino, Joe Cino’s's famous coffeehouse in Greenwich Village that is generally acknowledged as the birthplace of Off-Off-Broadway. The play subsequently toured colleges in the United States and Canada and appeared at the 1968 International Theater Festival in Vancouver. Today, the playwright acknowledges that he wrote Daddy Violet as a parody of the abstract,improvisational theater then in vogue Off-Off-Broadway, an attempt to “out avant-garde everyone else.” For a revival at the Boston Conservatory in 2006, Birimisa revised the script to refer to the war in Iraq.
In 1969, Birimisa became the first out gay playwright to receive a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. This enabled him to attend rehearsals for the London production of his first two-act play, Mr. Jello (April 1968), an arrangement of realistic vignettes that intersect to form a surrealistic social statement, with characters that include a female impersonator, a Gay married man, and a hustler.
In 1976, Birimisa moved to Los Angeles, California. He dismisses the three plays he wrote there, A Dress Made of Diamonds (1976), Pogey Bait (1976), and A Rainbow in the Night (1978) as inferior to his earlier works. However, A Rainbow in the Night, an autobiographical portrait of two Gay men living in New York City’s Bowery in 1953, won a 1978 Drama-Logue Award, and Pogey Bait, a comedy based on Birimisa’s wartime experiences as a gay apprentice seaman, received subsequent productions in Minneapolis, San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.
Birimisa moved to San Francisco in 1980 and did not write another play for almost 10 years. Then he began a revised version of A Rainbow in the Night titled The Man With Straight Hair (1994), which premiered at the Studio at Theater Rhinocerous. A one-man play, Looking for Mr. America (1995), debuted at Josie’s Cabaret and Juice Joint and subsequently played in New York at the La MamaExperimental Theater Club. Birimisa himself performed the show at age 71, in the role of a man recounting his lifelong sexual addiction. Dean Goodman's review noted that the play offers “an eloquent and touching portrait of a particular gay man’s journey through the last half of the 20th century.” Viagra Falls (2005) received a concert performance at La MaMa E.T.C. on September 17, 2007, under the direction of Daniel Haben Clark. The play chronicles a young gay man's long-term sado-masochistic relationship with a closeted opthamologist.
With Steve Susoyev, Birimisa edited Return to Caffe Cino (2007), an anthology of essays and plays by writers associated with the Cino. The book won a 2007bda Literary Award for theater and drama.
Birimisa: Portraits, Plays, Perversions (2009), an anthology of collected works and essays about Birimisa's personal life and career, includes an un-produced screenplay, The Kewpie-Doll Kiss, which chronicles Birimisa's childhood loss of his father, abandonment by his mother, and discovery of his sexuality, subjects explored earlier onstage in A Dress Made of Diamonds.
George Birmisa taught Creative Writing since 1983, sponsored by New Leaf Services. He received the 2004 Harry Hay Award in recognition of his writing and community service. He was writing an autobiography titled Wildflowers. His unpublished manuscripts are in the Joe Cino Memorial Library at Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts in New York.
Via What Crane Institute // This Day in Gay History February 21 - BARUCH SPINOZA
BARUCH SPINOZA, Dutch philosopher born (b. 1632); One of the great rationalists of 17th century philosophy, he laid the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism. By virtue of his magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, Spinoza is also considered one of Western philosophy's definitive ethicists. He was raised and educated in the Orthodox Jewish fashion, also studying Latin and was thoroughly familiar with European humanism. What exactly is it that caused him to be excommunicated from the synagogue when he was only 24 years old?
Many scholars have speculated that the horror Spinoza inspired in the Jewish community may have come not only from his espousal of advanced economic theories, but from his espousal, as well, of Greek love among impressionable students in the liberal circle where he taught. A Dutch physician, J. Roderpoort, wrote at The Hague in 1897: “Spinoza excites the youth to respect women not at all and to give themselves to debauchery.” Was Spinoza merely teaching the Greek and Roman classics, with their inevitable passages on pederasty? What were Roderpoort’s motives for discrediting the Jewish philosopher? Was Spinoza, in fact a pederast? It’s all open to speculation.
Via NPR // 500,000
by Jill Hudson |
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Win McNamee/Getty Images |
The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 is on track to pass a number next week that once seemed unthinkable: Half a million people in this country dead from the coronavirus. Losing half a million lives to this disease was unimaginable when the first few people died of COVID-19 in the U.S last February.
After nearly a year, it's easy to forget how suddenly the pandemic upended our lives. NPR would love to see your photos. Click here to send your images and tell us your story.
What will it take to finally halt the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S.? Here's a look at how herd immunity works.