Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Via White Crane : This Day in Gay History // RALPH WALDO EMERSON
This Day in Gay History
May 25
Born
1803 -
On this date RALPH WALDO EMERSON the poet & essayist was born. Emerson had a wild crush on a classmate at Harvard. Martin Gay, the subject of Emerson's growing infatuation, was the subject of numerous entries in Emerson's journals which modern editors have been able to reconstruct. As the scholar Martin Greif has written, "they provide a rare view of the future philosopher in the thrall of same-sex love." With an unembarrassed frankness he wrote in his journal about the disturbing power of the glances he and Gay exchanged.
Emerson wrote of Martin Gay in his notebook, “Why do you look after me? I cannot help looking out as you pass.” Emerson heavily crossed out the Martin Gay journal notes at some later time. He would later tell Walt Whitman to cross out the homoerotic portions of the Calamus cluster of poems in Leaves of Grass. Fortunately for us and for posterity Whitman did not take the "advice." In Emerson's mature life "his craving for friendship and love seldom found adequate satisfaction," as his biographer Stephen Whicher put it.
To experience emptiness is not a descent into an abyss of nothingness but a recovery of freedom.
—Stephen Batchelor, “Nagarjuna’s Verses from the Center”
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Monday, May 24, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Practice Seeing a Broader Perspective
It
is very important to see your life not only from the narrow view of
your egoistic telescope but also from the broad view of the universal
telescope called egolessness. This is why we have to practice.
—Dainin Katagiri Roshi, “Time Revisited”
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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”
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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - May 23, 2021 💌
When I perform a wedding ceremony, the image I invoke is of a triangle
formed by the two partners and this third force, which is the shared
love that unites and surrounds them both. In the yoga of relationship,
two people come together to find that shared love but continue to dance
as two. In that union, both people are separate and yet not separate.
Their relationship feeds both their unique individuality and their unity
of consciousness.
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.
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.
- Ram Dass -
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