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.
Monday, May 24, 2021
Sunday, May 23, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Developing Compassionate Boundaries
In
the process of developing compassion, we need to become skillful at
knowing when to apply boundaries and when to relax or release them.
—Lorne Ladner, “Taking a Stand”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - May 23, 2021 💌
Love can open the way to surrendering into oneness. It gets extraordinarily beautiful when there’s no more “me” and “you,” and it becomes just “us.” Taken to a deeper level, when compassion is fully developed, you are not looking at others as “them.” You’re listening and experiencing and letting that intuitive part of you merge with the other person, and you’re feeling their pain or joy or hope or fear in yourself. Then it’s no longer “us” and “them”; it’s just “us.” Practice this in your relationships with others.
At a certain point, you realize that you see only the projections of your own mind. The play of phenomena is a projection of the spirit. The projections are your karma, your curriculum for this incarnation. Everything that’s happening to you is a teaching designed to burn out your stuff, your attachments. Your humanity and all your desires are not some kind of error. They’re integral parts of the journey.
Saturday, May 22, 2021
Via White Crane Institute / HARVEY MILK
Gay rights pioneer, martyr and San Francisco city supervisor HARVEY MILK was born on this date. Milk was an American politician and Gay Rights activist and the first openly Gay city supervisor of San Francisco, California. He was often called, "the first openly Gay man elected to any substantial political office in the history of the planet," though this slights others who were elected before him in cities not so associated with Gay life.
What is not as well-remembered was his amazing ability to bring communities and neighborhoods together for progressive ends.
The U.S. Postal Service officially revealed the Harvey Milk Forever Stamp in 2015. The stamp’s official first-day-of-issue ceremony took place at the White House. The public was invited to attend the May 28 Harvey Milk Forever Stamp special dedication ceremony in San Francisco. Customers may order the Harvey Milk stamp now through this link for delivery following the May 22 stamp issuance.
The stamp image is based on a circa 1977 black and white photograph of Milk in front of his Castro Street Camera store in San Francisco taken by Danny Nicoletta of Grants Pass, OR. Antonio Alcalá of Alexandria, VA, was art director for the stamp.
Via Lion's Roar //
Mindfulness and the Buddha’s Eightfold Path
by Gaylon Ferguson|
To understand how to practice mindfulness in daily life, says Gaylon Ferguson, we have to look at all eight steps of the Buddha’s noble eightfold path.
Via Tricycle // Chanting in the Time of COVID-19
Chanting in the Time of COVID-19
Interview with Kanho Yakushiji by Koshin Paley Ellison |
|
Via Daily Dharma: Cultivating a Generous Spirit
Through generosity, we cultivate a generous spirit. Generosity of spirit will usually lead to generosity of action.
—Gil Fronsdal,“The Joy of Giving”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Friday, May 21, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Being Present for Our Own Pain
After
recognizing our suffering, we must respond to it with love. This takes
courage and commitment. It means not looking away, not seeking
distractions when offered the opportunity to be present for our own
pain.
—Beth Roth, “Family Dharma: Leaning into Suffering”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Thursday, May 20, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Just Being Here
Meditation is just to be here. Not over there. Not longing for something else.
—Steve Hagen, “Looking For Meaning”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Wednesday, May 19, 2021
Via White Crane Institute // Today's Gay Wisdom
TODAY'S GAY WISDOM
From Lorraine Hansberry:
"The oppressed are by their nature ... forever in ferment and agitation against their condition and what they understand to be their oppressors. If not by overt rebellion or revolution, then in the thousand and one ways they will devise with and without consciousness to alter their condition." Lorraine Hansberry
"I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and—I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations."
"We only revert back to mystical ideas - which includes most contemporary orthodox religious views, in my opinion - because we simply are confronted with some things we don't yet understand."
"There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him; what he's been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning -- because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is. [from Raisin in the Sun]"
Via GBF // René Rivera - HEARTS
HEARTS –
· Here (present and connected)
· Expressed delight
· Attunement
· Rituals and routines
· Turning towards after conflict
· Secure attachment with self
Via Daily Dharma: Sensations that Arise and Pass Away
If
the mind labels a pain, saying, “I hurt,” you have to examine the label
carefully, contemplate it until you see that it’s wrong: the pain isn’t
really yours. It’s simply a sensation that arises and passes away,
that’s all.
—Upasika Kee Nanayon, “Tough Teachings to Ease the Mind”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - May 19, 2021 💌
From the soul’s point of view, you come to appreciate that each one of
us is living out his or her own karma. We interact together, and those
interactions are the grist for each other’s mill of awakening. From a
personality point of view, you develop judgment, but from the soul’s
point of view, you develop appreciation.
This shift from judging to appreciating — to appreciating yourself and
what your karmic predicament is, and who other beings are with their own
karma — brings everything into a simple loving awareness. To be free
means to open your heart and your being to the fullness of who you are
because only when you are resting in the place of unity can you truly
honor and appreciate others and the incredible diversity of the
universe.
- Ram Dass -
Excerpt from Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart
Tuesday, May 18, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Seeing the Truth of Each Moment
Mindfulness
practice enables us to go beneath the surface level of our
moment-to-moment life experiences, which are clouded with emotions and
habitual thinking, and allows us to see the truth of what is happening.
—Phillip Moffitt, “The Mindfulness of the Buddha”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE