Humanity as a whole flourishes best when we all flourish together.
—Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, “An Act of Conscience”
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We
do have the potential to awaken, but we must do the hard work of
distinguishing when we are motivated by greed, hatred, and delusion, and
when we are motivated by their opposites—generosity, kindness, and
wisdom.
—Lynn Kelly, “First Thought, Worst Thought”
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Call
something an obstacle, it is an obstacle. Call it an opportunity, it is
an opportunity. Nothing is extraneous to the spiritual life.
—Interview with Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo by Lucy Powell, “No Excuses”
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Mindfulness
is about understanding. You have to use wise thinking to decide how to
handle things; you cannot limit your practice to continuously being
aware.
—Sayadaw U Tejaniya, “The Art of Investigation”
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KATHARINE LEE BATES, American poet (b. 1859) died on this date; The author of the words to the anthem "America the Beautiful," Bates was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts. The daughter of a Congregational pastor, she graduated from Wellesley College in 1880 and for many years was a professor of English literature at Wellesley. While teaching there, she was elected a member of the newly formed Pi Gamma Mu honor society for the social sciences because of her interest in history and politics for which she also studied.
Bates lived at Wellesley with Katharine Coman, who herself was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley College Economics department. The pair lived together for twenty-five years until Coman's death in 1915. These arrangements were sometimes called "Boston marriages" or "Wellesley marriages". The 1999 play Boston Marriage by David Mamet depicts such a marriage as having an explicitly sexual component. In 2004, Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to allow legal same-sex marriages, which made Boston the only major city in the U.S. at the time where a "Boston marriage" could also be a legal marriage, if the couple wished it to be. Now, of course, that’s all history. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Bearing the unbearable is the deepest root of compassion in the world. When you bear what you think you cannot bear, who you think you are dies. You become compassion. You don't have compassion - you are compassion. True compassion goes beyond empathy to being with the experience of another. You become an instrument of compassion.
- Ram Dass -
It’s
simple to say that violence is wrong or that vengeance only begets more
vengeance. It’s far harder to break the chains of cause and effect in
our own lives that have conditioned so many cycles of oppression and
hate.
—Mike Gillis, “Press X to Awaken”
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A
meditation practice deepened in silence yields an intimacy with
oneself, and over time, a greater intimacy with others and with all of
life.
—Beth Roth, “Family Dharma: The Fragility of Silence”
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- Ram Dass -
Everyone wants love and care, but, more than these, human beings want respect for who they are.
—Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, “Old Relationships, New Possibilities”
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The
point of dharma practice is to pay attention to where there is
suffering, see the clinging and identification, and release it to find a
freedom of heart.
—Interview with Jack Kornfield by Helen Tworkov, “The Sure Heart’s Release”
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Without
spiritual discipline we are never going to wake up or advance on our
journey through this life. But our discipline must be wedded to joy, and
we must find pleasure in the myriad wonders that this life offers.
—Joan Gattuso, “The Balancing Buddha”
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