Wednesday, September 22, 2021
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - September 22, 2021 💌
I invite you not to cling. I invite you to open to the next moment and
allow it to have its own richness. Nothing will kill the glow faster
than clinging.
I was with Aldous Huxley years ago, and I didn’t know him well, but when
we were together there were just a few words he kept using:
“Extraordinary,” “How curious,” and “How odd.” I realized that
everything in life is extraordinary if I just want to look. It’s true
there’s nothing new under the sun, and yet it’s all fresh. - Ram Dass
Via Daily Dharma: Discover an Ancient Secret Inbox
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Happiness,
joy, and bliss come from having an appreciation of other people’s work
and at the same time being content with what we have and what we are.
—Phakchok Rinpoche, “Dealing With Your Jealous and Competitive Mind”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Tuesday, September 21, 2021
Via White Crane Institute // Toward A Gay Ecological Perspective: the Gay Experience and Ecology
Today's Gay Wisdom
2017 -
In 1992 White Crane #15 looked at The Wild Man, Robert Bly and Gays, and included a spirited debate among Harry Hay, Mark Thompson, and Arthur Evans on the origins of the Faeries. J. Michael Clark issued a call to ecological reflection:
Toward A Gay Ecological Perspective: the Gay Experience and Ecology
One important theme in Gay liberation is the realization that we cannot wait for others to sanction our efforts in theology or spirituality. We must instead find our own prophetic voice and assume our own authority to speak in theology and spirituality. Ultimately, neither Gay men and Lesbians, nor Native Americans, nor the poor, nor any other oppressed people can afford to wait for an external conferral of authority to speak. Moreover, the shared nature of oppression means that as we create our own liberation, so also are we obliged to seek the liberation of other people, and of the Earth itself, from objectification, disvaluation and exploitation.
Gay spirituality and theology, borne out of our experience of oppression, can contribute something unique to ecological reflection. While we would not expect the so called deep ecologists and other straight male writers to include our particular perspective, it is surprising that the majority of feminist writers also do not include Gay/Lesbian oppression as part of their analysis of human and ecological oppression and exploitation. Even when women, African Americans, Native Americans and Third World [sic] peoples and their environments are acknowledged and examined, Gay men and Lesbians are consistently absent and invisible. The extension of rights to Blacks, to women, and in a limited extent to some endangered species and the environment, conveniently passes over certain groups which, therefore, remain disenfranchised — most Native Americans, the poor, the homeless, and Gay men and Lesbians. These groups of people are all too much of the biosphere as well as invisible, even to so-called liberals, and treated as disvalued and disposable.
According to deep ecology, human self-centeredness has led to environmental problems. According to feminism, masculine privilege and social structures have devalued and exploited both women and nature. A Gay perspective would insist that not only are women, nature and the Earth devalued, but our society, with its fear of diversity, disvalues anyone (Gays, Lesbians, Native Americans, the poor and homeless, etc.) and anything (the environment, the Earth) designated as “other.” What we see is not just a devaluing which leads to domination and exploitation, but a disvaluing which strips away all value leading to exclusion, to being disposable, to being acceptable for extinction. This insight is one unique contribution to ecology which Gay people can offer, Gay thinking must move beyond the issues of domination and exploitation to those of disvaluation, exclusion and expendability to radically celebrate diversity and the intrinsic value of all that is, the human, the biospheric, the geospheric. Gay people must work against the disvaluation and exclusion of self and world as disposable, worthless commodities in a society that disdains diversity and eliminates the unnecessary — that which has no utilitarian value.
As Gay men and Lesbians look out on our disposable society of planned obsolescence and throw-away consumerism, we cannot help but be aware of the growing trash heap, the over-burdened landfills, the industrially polluted water and the wastelands of deforestation. We are able to see out society throwing away our Earth, our home, because we are also aware of how often human beings themselves have been treated as disposable and expendable. Historically, African-Americans, Native Americans, the poor and the homeless, the physically and mentally challenged and virtually all Third World [sic] peoples have been treated as either expendable after use (in slavery or minimum wage work) or as totally useless.
In the history of our own community, never has our expendability been so evident as in the rising incidence of anti-Gay violence and in the AIDS health crisis. Our government continues to spend money in the pursuit of protocols and vaccines, while ouor politico-medical system drags its feet in regard to approving treatment protocols or to finding a cure. Gay men, IV-drug users, people of color, and Third World [sic] communities where AIDS rages heterosexually are still devalued and/or disvalued. Our expendability becomes an example of our society’s attitudes toward all the Eart. Hence, our Gay ecological perspective must adamantly oppose any disvaluation and exclusion that leads to dispensing with diversity and disposing of life. Neither Gay men and Lesbians, nor the biosphere, nor the geosphere, nor any of the great diversity which god/dess creates and delights in is expendable.
An ecological perspective will also address our own lives as Gay men and Lesbians. We must be held accountable whenever we accede to or cooperate with the forces of oppression, exploitation and expendability. We must challenge any Gay/Lesbian assimilation which mitigates our diversity. Gor Gay men in particular, we must also examine our socialization as men. We must discern how we as men have been conditioned to accept exploitation, disvaluation and expendability — worthlessness — in our lives. If the typical masculine socialization process of our society works against a compassionate, caring, empathy for nature, spiritual Gay men who escaped that socialization may be able to demonstrate, for all men, a male-embodied love and care for nature.
As we (re)confront the abuses that imperil the environment, we can begin to create a Gay ecology that discloses that our Gay and Lesbian existence is not only a mode of being-in-the-world, but also a way of being-with-the-world, as co-partners in the process of healing and liberation throughout the Earth. Granted, in some respects Gay men and Lesbians, as a larger community, may lag behind other groups in wrestling with ecological issues and environmental causes because our energies are so consumed with dealing with AIDS, homophobia and other forms of oppression. Even with our considerable in-house agenda, which absolutely must not be forsaken, groups such as the various faerie circles and Gays United Against Nuclear Arms have pursued ecological concerns, while individuals have worked within local neighborhood groups on similar issues. Developing a broader, ecological perspective can help us see the connection among all forms of oppression, exploitation and disvaluataion and can facilitate liaisons to confront all of these. Not through co-option, but through cooperation, working together to achieve liberation for all peoples and the Earth itself, will we find out own liberation achieved as well.
Michael Clark is the author of Beyond the Ghetto: Gay Theology in Ecological Perspective, Pilgrim Press 1993
Via Tricycle // Helpless, Not Hopeless
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Via Daily Dharma: Discover an Ancient Secret
When
we are able to fully appreciate the basic activities of eating and
drinking, we discover an ancient secret, the secret of how to become
content and at ease.
Monday, September 20, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Bountiful Space
When
we can step back and see everything, that’s when we start experiencing
realization and enlightenment. We see the nature of everything because
we have the flexibility and the adaptability; we can spread out.
—Interview with Lama Rod Owens by Nina Herzog, “A Love Song to My Anger”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Sunday, September 19, 2021
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - September 19, 2021 💌
Just because you are seeing divine light, experiencing waves of bliss, or conversing with Gods and Goddesses is no reason to not know your zip code.
- Ram Dass -
Via Daily Dharma: Awaken To Joy
Awakening
to your own joy can be as simple as taking delight in a gorgeous
blooming flower, hearing the sound of your beloved’s voice, or noticing
the way your favorite song soothes your heart.
Saturday, September 18, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Make Practice Your Own
Enlightenment
and mastery are great goals, but not required to reap the benefits of
Buddhism. The main thing is to have a practice, and to keep it alive,
personally relevant, and engaged. Make it your own, and bring it with
you everywhere.
Via Tricycle // White House Hosts Its First Vesak
White House Hosts Its First Vesak
By Alison Spiegel
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Via Tricycle // Meditation Month 2021: Silent Illumination: Guo Gu
Meditation Month 2021: Silent Illumination
Guo Gu
Relax and Connect
Meditation Month is back! Join us for our annual challenge to commit to a daily meditation practice throughout the month of March. This year, our Meditation Month teacher Guo Gu will guide us through the Chan (Zen) practice of silent illumination, which reveals our innate capacity for awakening. A new video will be released each week introducing an approach to meditation and building on the previous weeks’ teachings. These instructions and tips from Guo Gu are designed to help you develop a regular practice and connect to your experience at each moment. Guo Gu will introduce fundamental relaxation and awareness practices then progressing to silent illumination.
Guo Gu (Dr. Jimmy Yu) is the founder of the Tallahassee Chan Center and Dharma Relief, a socially engaged intra-denominational Buddhist organization. He is a professor of Buddhism and East Asian religions at Florida State University. Guo Gu was a monk for nine years and one of the late Master Sheng Yen’s senior and closest disciples. He is the author of Silent Illumination (2021), The Essence of Chan (2020), and Passing Through the Gateless Barrier (2016). To connect with Guo Gu, visit GuoGuLaoshi.com.
Friday, September 17, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Relax Into Awareness
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.
Thursday, September 16, 2021
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