To be fully awake is the normal
human condition. It expresses the deepest truth of our nature, our
oneness with the energy of the universe. We meditate and study and
practice to penetrate into, or relax into, this awareness.
Friday, September 17, 2021
Thursday, September 16, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Finding Direction
Even our worst failures and misdeeds point us in the right direction.
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
Via Studies in Comparative Religion
The Mystery of the Great Labyrinth, Chartres Cathedral
by
John James
Source: Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 11, No. 2. (Spring, 1977). © World Wisdom, Inc.
www.studiesincomparativereligion.com
Found here:
Via Facebook // When IGNORANCE SCREAMS, intelligence moves on.
The donkey told the tiger, "The grass is blue."
The tiger replied, "No, the grass is green ."
The discussion became heated, and the two decided to submit the issue to arbitration, so they approached the lion.
As they approached the lion on his throne, the donkey started screaming: ′′Your Highness, isn't it true that the grass is blue?"
The lion replied: "If you believe it is true, the grass is blue."
The donkey rushed forward and continued: ′′The tiger disagrees with me, contradicts me and annoys me. Please punish him."
The king then declared: ′′The tiger will be punished with 3 days of silence."
The donkey jumped with joy and went on his way, content and repeating ′′The grass is blue, the grass is blue..."
The tiger asked the lion, "Your Majesty, why have you punished me, after all, the grass is green?"
The lion replied, ′′You've known and seen the grass is green."
The tiger asked, ′′So why do you punish me?"
The lion replied, "That has nothing to do with the question of whether the grass is blue or green. The punishment is because it is degrading for a brave, intelligent creature like you to waste time arguing with an ass, and on top of that, you came and bothered me with that question just to validate something you already knew was true!"
The biggest waste of time is arguing with the fool and fanatic who doesn't care about truth or reality, but only the victory of his beliefs and illusions. Never waste time on discussions that make no sense.
There are people who, for all the evidence presented to them, do not have the ability to understand. Others who are blinded by ego, hatred and resentment, and the only thing that they want is to be right even if they aren’t.
When IGNORANCE SCREAMS, intelligence moves on.
Via Lion´s Roar // Resilience: Self-Care for Tough Times
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| Shauna Shapiro explains how to face difficult emotions, re-center, and find calm. |
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Via LION´S ROAR // Wherever You Are, Enlightenment Is There
“Even in our imperfect practice enlightenment is there,” says Suzuki Roshi. “We just don’t know it.”
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Via White Crane Institute // PERRY BRASS
1947 -
American author, poet and activist, PERRY BRASS was born today Brass grew up in Savannah, Georgia grew up in the 1950s and 60s in equal parts Southern, Jewish, economically impoverished, and very much gay. To escape the South’s violent homophobia, he hitchhiked at age 17 from Savannah to San Francisco — an adventure, he recalls, that was “like Mark Twain with drag queens.” He has published fourteen books and been a finalist six times in three categories (poetry; gay science fiction and fantasy; spirituality and religion) for national Lambda Literary Awards.
One of the main themes in his writing has been the integration of sexuality and the religious or spiritual impulse, as exemplified in his novels Albert: or, The Book of Man, Angel Lust, and Substance of God. His writings have attempted to answer questions such as: Why are so many gay men religious and political conservatives? Why is the need for God so important to us? What is our own place in nature and the world?
Among the early anthologies that included Brass's work were The Male Muse, the first anthology of openly gay poetry ever published, edited by Ian Young; The Gay Liberation Book from Rolling Stone Press, including work by John Lennon; The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse; and Gay Roots from Gay Sunshine Press. His work can be found in over 20 anthologies of poetry, short stories, essays, memoirs, and other writings. A poetry cycle called "Five Gay Jewish Prayers" was used as part of the high holiday service at New York's Beth Simchat Torah congregation. The text of this poem was accepted (in 1985) as one of the first gay Jewish documents in the YIVO Archives of Jewish history. This poem was set to choral music by Chris De Blasio, as "Five Prayers," which has been sung by several gay choruses.
In 1984, his play Night Chills, an early play dealing with the AIDS crisis, won a Jane Chambers International Gay Playwriting Award. Brass’s collaborations with composers include the words for "All the Way Through Evening," a five-song cycle set by DeBlasio, which was featured on the AIDS Quilt Songbook CD from Harmonia Mundi, France, and Heartbeats from Minnesota Public Radio; "The Angel Voices of Men" set by Ricky Ian Gordon and commissioned by the Dick Cable Musical Trust for the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, which has featured it on its CD Gay Century Songbook; "Three Brass Songs" with Grammy-nominated composer Fred Hersch; and "Waltzes for Men" also commissioned by the DCMT for the NYC Gay Men’s Chorus and set by Craig Carnahan.
Brass's non-fiction book, How to Survive Your Own Gay Life (Belhue Press, 1999) deals with the psychic and physical survival of gay men, with their spiritual and psychological growth, and with achieving happiness and maturity. It was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in religion and spirituality, and has been the basis for many LGBT discussion and support groups, classes, and workshops.
Via White Crane Insitute // Ann Weldy,
1932 -
Ann Weldy, better known by her pen name ANN BANNON, born on this date, is an American author who, from 1957 to 1962, wrote six lesbian pulp fiction novels known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. The books' enduring popularity and impact on lesbian identity has earned her the title "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction". Bannon was a young housewife trying to address her own issues of sexuality when she was inspired to write her first novel. Her subsequent books featured four characters who reappeared throughout the series, including her eponymous heroine, Beebo Brinker, who came to embody the archetype of a butch lesbian. The majority of her characters mirrored people she knew, but their stories reflected a life she did not feel she was able to live. Despite her traditional upbringing and role in married life, her novels defied conventions for romance stories and depictions of lesbians by addressing complex homosexual relationships.
Her books shaped lesbian identity for lesbians and heterosexuals alike, but Bannon was mostly unaware of their impact. She stopped writing in 1962. Later, she earned a doctorate in linguistics and became an academic. She endured a difficult marriage for 27 years and, as she separated from her husband in the 1980s, her books were republished; she was stunned to learn of their influence on society. They were released again between 2001 and 2003 and were adapted as an award-winning Off-Broadway production at the New York Theater Workshop. They are taught in Women's and LGBT studies courses, and Bannon has received numerous awards for pioneering lesbian and gay literature. She has been described as "the premier fictional representation of US lesbian life in the fifties and sixties", and it has been said that her books "rest on the bookshelf of nearly every even faintly literate Lesbian"
Ann Bannon retired from teaching and college administration at California State University, Sacramento, in 1997, but tours the country visiting paperback-collecting conventions and speaking at colleges and universities about her writings and experiences. She was a guest of National Public Radio's Peabody Award-winning talk show "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, and has also been featured in Gross's book, All I Did Was Ask, a collection of transcripts from the show. Bannon also speaks at gay-themed events around the country and is working on her memoirs.
In a recent editorial written by Bannon in Curve, she discussed how her books survived despite criticisms by censors, Victorian moralists, and purveyors of literary "snobbery" in writing, "To the persistent surprise of many of us, and of the critics who found us such an easy target years ago, the books by, of and for women found a life of their own. They—and we—may still not be regarded as conventionally acceptable 'nice' literature, as it were—but I have come to value that historical judgment. We wrote the stories no one else could tell. And in so doing, we captured a slice of life in a particular time and place that still resonates for members of our community.
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - September 15, 2021 💌
There is a larger frame to the painting than the one that bounds our life’s events.
- Ram Dass -
Via Daily Dharma: Courageous Compassion
It's
said that equanimity endows compassion with courage because it's not
easy to come face to face with suffering without looking the other way,
without trying to repackage it or call it something else.
—Sharon Salzberg, "Understanding Equanimity: The Secret Ingredient in Mindfulness"
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Tuesday, September 14, 2021
Via Thich Nhat Hanh Quote Collective / FB
Stop thinking and just be with your breathing. Breathing mindfully brings your mind home to your body. Bring your awareness to your body, relax your body and release any tension that is there. Your body is a miracle.
When you can touch the wonder of your body, you have the opportunity to touch Mother Earth within you as a wonder, too, and healing begins straight away - we don’t need to wait ten years for healing to take place. Many of us have become sick because we’re alienated from our body and from the body of the Earth.
So the practice is to go home to Mother Earth to get the healing and nourishment we so desperately need. Mother Earth is always ready to embrace us and help nourish and heal us. And as we heal, we’re helping the Earth to heal at the same time. — Thich Nhat Hanh.
Via FB // ~from Karen Armstrong's The Spiral Staircase, pp 293-297
...the religious traditions were in unanimous agreement. The one and only test of a valid religious idea, doctrinal statement, spiritual experience, or devotional practice was that it must lead to practical compassion.
If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express this sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology.
Compassion was the litmus test for the prophets of Israel, for the rabbis of the Talmud, for Jesus, for Paul, and for Muhammad, not to mention Confucius, Lao-Tsu, the Buddha, or the sages of the Upanishads.
In killing Muslims and Jews in the name of God, the Crusaders had simply projected their own fear and loathing onto a deity which they had created in their own image and likeness, thereby giving this hatred a seal of absolute approval.
A personalized God can easily lead to this type of idolatry, which is why the more thoughtful Jews, Christians and Muslims insisted that while you could begin by thinking of God as a person, God transcended personality as "he" went beyond all other human categories...
But my work continued to revolve around the same issues, particularly around the centrality of compassion... I found that the struggle to achieve harmonious relations with our fellows brings human beings into God's presence; that when Abraham entertained three strangers, making room for them in his home and giving them all the refreshment he could on their journey, this act of practical compassion led directly to a divine encounter.
In my history of Jerusalem, I learned that the practice of compassion and social justice had been central to the cult of the holy city from the earliest times, and was especially evident in Judaism and Islam. I discovered that in all three of the religions of Abraham, fundamentalist movements distort the tradition they are trying to defend by emphasizing the belligerent elements in their tradition and overlooking the insistent and crucial demand for compassion. The theme of compassion kept surfacing in my work, because it is pivotal to all the great religious traditions --at their best...
Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment. It dethrones the ego from the center of our lives and puts others there, breaking down the carapace of selfishness that holds us back from an experience of the sacred. And it gives us ecstasy, broadening our perspectives and giving us a larger, enhanced vision...
I have noticed, however, that compassion is not always a popular virtue. In my lectures I have sometimes seen members of the audience glaring at me mutinously: where is the fun of religion, if you can't disapprove of other people! There are some people, I suspect, who would be outraged if, when they finally arrived in heaven, they found everybody else there as well. Heaven would not be heaven unless you could peer over the celestial parapets and watch the unfortunates roasting below.
But I have myself found that compassion is a habit of mind that is transforming. The science of compassion which guides my studies has changed the way I experience the world. This has been a pattern in my life... You have to be prepared to extend your compassionate interest where there is no hope of a return.
Via The Tricycle Community // Daily Dharma: Meditating on Difficult Emotions
Helpless, Not Hopeless
By Kurt Spellmeyer
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Via Daily Dharma: Meditating on Difficult Emotions
If
you have feelings of grief or self-criticism that arise during
meditation, rather than treat them as an obstacle, welcome them in and
make them the object of your meditation until they naturally melt away.
Via White Crane Institute // JOHN LYON BURNSIDE III
2008 -
JOHN LYON BURNSIDE III died on this date (b: 1916) He was the inventor of the teleidoscope, the Darkfield Kaleidoscope and the Symmetricon and, because he rediscovered the math behind kaleidoscope optics, for decades, every maker of optically correct kaleidoscopes sold in the U.S. paid him royalties. He was the life partner of Harry Hay for 40 years, from 1962 until Hay's death in 2002. John lived in San Francisco, California until his death from complications of brain cancer, aged 91.
Burnside and Hay formed a group in the early 1960s called the Circle of Loving Companions that promoted gay rights and gay love. In 1966 they were major planners of one of the first gay rights march, a protest against exclusion of homosexuals from the military, held in Los Angeles. In 1967, they appeared as a couple on the Joe Pyne television show. In the late 1970s, they imagined the Radical Faeries along with Don Kilhefner.
He and Harry were seen as such a singular unit that he became known in some circles as “n’John” as in “Harry ‘n John”” A sweeter man I have never met.
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