Parting Words: journey to emptiness
By Tran Le Khanh
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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.
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FRANK OCEAN, born on this date, is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, rapper, photographer, and visual artist. He is recognized for his idiosyncratic musical style, introspective and elliptical songwriting, and wide vocal range. Music critics have credited him with revitalizing jazz and funk influenced R&B, as well as advancing the genre through his experimental approach.He is considered a representative artist of alternative R&B.
Ocean began his
musical career as a ghostwriter, prior to joining the hip
hop collective Odd Future in 2010. In 2011, Ocean released his
critically successful debut mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra and subsequently secured a recording contract with Def Jam Recordings. Drawing on electro-funk, pop-soul,
Ocean wrote an open letter, initially intended for the liner notes on Channel Orange, that preemptively addressed speculation about his attraction in the past to another man.
Instead, on July 4, 2012, he published the open letter on his Tumblr
blog recounting unrequited feelings he had for another young man when he
was 19 years old, citing it as his first true love. He
used the blog to thank the man for his influence, and also thanked his
mother and other friends, saying, "I don't know what happens now, and
that's alright. I don't have any secrets I need kept anymore... I feel
like a free man." Numerous celebrities publicly voiced their support for Ocean following his announcement, including Beyoncé and Jay-Z.
In June 2016, following the Orlando nightclub shooting that killed 49 people, Ocean published an essay expressing his sadness and frustration. He mentioned that his first experience with homophobia and transphobia was with his father when he was six years old, and related how many people pass on their hateful ideals to the next generation and send thousands of people down suicidal paths. In 2017, Ocean's father subsequently sued him for defamation and requested $14.5 million. In October 2017, after a hearing that saw Ocean and both of his parents taking the stand, the presiding judge ruled in favor of Ocean, stating that his father had not provided sufficient evidence of defamation.
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See spiritual practice as one of relinquishing definitions of one’s self in order to come into the present. See the spiritual journey as one of coming into the space of love. Look at the people you don’t love and see them as an exercise for you to open your heart.
- Ram Dass -
Clearing – Martha Postlewaite
Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world
so worth of rescue.
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My own strategy is to keep cultivating the witness, that part of me that notices how I’m doing it — to cultivate the quiet place in me that watches the process of needing approval, of the smile on the face, of the false humility, of all the horrible creepy little psychological things that are just my humanity. And watching them occur again and again and again.
- Ram Dass -
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Drawing on his 40 years of wisdom and experience, Dr. Svoboda offers some advice for students of Ayurveda. He talks about taking on the attitude of always being a student of Ayurveda, the difference between modern knowledge and ancient knowledge, and the importance of integrating one’s own experience into the Ayurvedic energy of healing.
“The way of modern knowledge is to accumulate various facts and pray that somehow they will cohere together in one’s conscious mind, so that they can be employed when required. This is a process of accumulation. Ayurveda is, in many ways, the opposite.” – Dr. Robert Svoboda