Prayer means accepting that I don’t know what’s good for me or for the world, but I trust that goodness exists anyway.
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
Monday, November 15, 2021
Via The Elders
LONDON, 15 November 2021
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Elders deplore dereliction of leadership, as COP26 gives leaders twelve months to take more decisive action on climate crisis
Following the conclusion of COP26 in Glasgow, The Elders express their deep disappointment that world leaders have not yet had the courage to head off the worst impacts of the climate crisis.
The Elders call on the UN Secretary-General to take a direct lead in maintaining relentless pressure on the worst-performing states, until they do their part to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. Such leadership should draw on his admirable new initiative to scrutinise net zero commitments made by businesses.
The Elders reiterate their determination to work with younger generations, and to keep fighting for climate justice alongside the nations and communities most vulnerable to climate change. This means wealthy countries keeping their promises on climate financing, and compensating those worst affected.
Some progress was made in the negotiations, including a commitment to double adaptation finance, and a requirement for countries with weak climate targets to improve them over the next twelve months.
Important voluntary side-deals were made to gradually stop using methane and coal, reverse deforestation and decarbonise the financial sector, while some countries showed leadership in pledging to end oil and gas production.
But the refusal to act at the scale and speed required means we are on course for a 2.4°C world. Such a temperature rise would mean hundreds hundreds of millions of people living today would face ruined livelihoods, displacement and loss of life.
This represents a failure of leadership and a failure of diplomacy. World leaders must be held accountable for the climate disaster playing out on their watch.
It is time to call out those who have obstructed the negotiations in Glasgow, and those who continue to downplay the climate emergency. This includes G20 countries that have not significantly increased their 2030 emission reduction targets, such as Australia, Brazil, China, Mexico and Russia, as well as those who insisted on watering down language on fossil fuels, including Saudi Arabia, India and others.
The United States and China, who delivered an encouraging joint statement on future co-operation, still have not shown the leadership required from the world’s two biggest carbon emitters. The European Union and US were lacking in high ambition at key points in the negotiations, notably on loss and damage. As the COP26 Presidency, the United Kingdom fell short on the leader-to-leader diplomacy needed to seal a better deal.
A pathway to 1.5°C is still just within reach, but only if major emitters take more decisive action in the next few years. The Elders implore all world leaders to bring their influence to bear on those holding back more urgent progress, and lead humanity away from existential disaster.
Mary Robinson, Chair of the Elders, and former President of Ireland said:
“COP26 has made some progress, but nowhere near enough to avoid climate disaster. While millions around the world are already in crisis, not enough leaders were in crisis mode. People will see this as a historically shameful dereliction of duty.
Leaders have extended by a year this window of opportunity to avert the worst of the climate crisis. The world urgently needs them to step up more decisively next year."
Via Daily Dharma: Heal Yourself and Others
We overcome deep-rooted self-centered habits by working compassionately for the healing of our societies and the healing of the earth. This is what’s required for the Buddhist path to become truly liberative in the modern world.
Sunday, November 14, 2021
Via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy // Nāgārjuna
Nāgārjuna
First published Wed Feb 10, 2010; substantive revision Fri Jun 8, 2018
There is unanimous agreement that Nāgārjuna (ca 150–250 CE) is the most important Buddhist philosopher after the historical Buddha himself and one of the most original and influential thinkers in the history of Indian philosophy. His philosophy of the “middle way” (madhyamaka) based around the central notion of “emptiness” (śūnyatā) influenced the Indian philosophical debate for a thousand years after his death; with the spread of Buddhism to Tibet, China, Japan and other Asian countries the writings of Nāgārjuna became an indispensable point of reference for their own philosophical inquiries. A specific reading of Nāgārjuna’s thought, called Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka, became the official philosophical position of Tibetan Buddhism which regards it as the pinnacle of philosophical sophistication up to the present day.
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - November 14, 2021 💌
To live consciously you must have the courage to go inside yourself to
find out who you really are, to understand that behind all of the masks
of individual differences you are a being of beauty, of love, of
awareness.
When Christ said, “The kingdom of heaven is within” he wasn’t just
putting you on. When Buddha said, “Each person is the Buddha,” he was
saying the same thing. Until you can allow your own beauty, your own
dignity, your own being, you cannot free another.
So if I were giving people one instruction, I would say work on
yourself. Have compassion for yourself. Allow yourself to be beautiful
and all the rest will follow.
- Ram Dass -
Via Tricycle // Dhamma Wheel
Dhamma Wheel
A 365-day program of dhamma study
A 365-day program of dhamma study
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Via Daily Dharma: You Are in Your Body
You’re not trying to be disembodied when you’re sitting [in meditation]. You are in your body, in your breath.
—Interview with Sarah Ruhl by Ronn Smith, “Facing the Four Noble Truths”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Via White Crane Institute // This Day in Gay History: AARON COPLAND,
This Day in Gay History
November 14
Born
1900 -
AARON COPLAND, American composer (d. 1990); an American composer of concert and film music, as well as an accomplished pianist. Instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, he was widely known as “the dean of American composers.” Copland's music achieved a difficult balance between modern music and American folk styles, and the open, slowly changing harmonies of many of his works are said to evoke the vast American landscape. He incorporated percussive orchestration, changing meter, polyrhythms, polychords and tone rows. Aside from composing, Copland taught, presented music-related lectures, wrote books and articles, and served as a conductor (generally, but not always, of his own works).
Copland was born in Brooklyn, NY, of Lithuanian Jewish descent. Throughout his childhood Copland and his family lived above his parents' Brooklyn shop. Although his parents never encouraged or directly exposed him to music, at the age of fifteen he had already taken an interest in the subject and aspired to be a composer. His musical education included time with Leonard Wolfsohn, Rubin Goldmark (who also taught George Gershwin), and Nadia Boulanger at the Fontanbleu School of Music in Paris from 1921 to 1924. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1925 and again in 1926.
Copland defended the Communist Party USA during the 1936 presidential election. As a result he was later investigated by the FBI during the Red scare of the 1950s, and found himself blacklisted. Because of the political climate of that era, A Lincoln Portrait was withdrawn from the 1953 inaugural concert for President Eisenhower. That same year, Copland was called before Congress where he testified that he was never a communist. Outraged by the accusations, many members of the musical community held up Copland's music as a banner of his patriotism. The investigations ceased in 1955, and were closed in 1975. Copland was never shown to have been a member of the Communist Party. Despite this insult, only a decade later, in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Copland the Medal of Freedom for his contributions to American culture.
Copland exerted a major influence on the compositional style of his friend and protege Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein was considered the finest conductor of Copland's works. British progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer recorded two pieces based on Copland works: Fanfare for the Common Man and Hoe-Down. Several of their live recordings of Fanfare for the Common Man incorporated the closing of the second movement of Copland's Symphony no. 3 as well.
Copland was a frequent guest conductor of orchestras in the U.S. and the U.K. He made a series of recordings of his music, especially during the 1970s, primarily for Columbia Records. In 1960, RCA Victor released Copland's recordings with the Boston Symphony Orchestra of the orchestral suites from Appalachian Spring andThe Tender Land; these recordings were later reissued on CD, as were most of Copland's Columbia recordings (by Sony).
Copland's sexuality was documented in Howard Pollack's biography, Aaron Copeland: The Life and Work of An Uncommon Man. Unlike many gay men of his age, Copland was neither ashamed of nor tortured by his sexuality. He apparently understood and accepted it from an early age, and throughout his life was involved in relationships with other men. In later years, his affairs were mostly with younger men, usually musicians or artists, whom he mentored, including composer Leonard Bernstein, dancer and artist Erik Johns (who wrote the libretto for The Tender Land), photographer Victor Kraft, and music critic Paul Moor.
Given the social prejudices of the times in which he lived, Copland was relatively open about his sexuality, yet this seems not to have interfered with the acceptance of his music or with his status as a cultural figure. The likely explanation is that Copland conducted his personal life with the characteristic modesty, tactfulness, and serenity that marked his professional life as well. Copland died of Alzheimer’s and respiratory failure in North Tarrytown, NY (now Sleepy Hollow), on December 2, 1990.
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Saturday, November 13, 2021
Via FB // Alan Watts Wisdom
..."You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself. Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence." 
AlanWatts.org
AlanWatts.orgArt by Eyeignite
FB / Gladwire
This 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud lady, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair fashionably coiffed and makeup perfectly applied, even though she is legally blind, moved to a nursing home yesterday. Her husband of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary.
After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiled sweetly when told her room was ready. As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of her tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on her window. “I love it,” she stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.
“Mrs. Jones, you haven’t seen the room …. just wait.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she replied. “Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged, it’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it. It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice;
I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do. Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open I’ll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I’ve stored away, just for this time in my life.”
She went on to explain, “Old age is like a bank account, you withdraw from what you’ve put in. So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories Thank you for your part in filling my Memory bank. I am still depositing.”
And with a smile, she said: “Remember the five simple rules to be happy:
1. Free your heart from hatred.
2. Free your mind from worries.
3. Live simply.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less, & enjoy every moment.
Photograph by Karsten Thormaehlen
Via Be Here Now Network: David Nichtern
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Thank you for listening to our podcasts every week! We truly appreciate your support. Here are the episodes that went out this week.
David Nichtern – Creativity, Spirituality & Making a Buck – Ep. 27 – Music Is My Dharma with Robben Ford
November 12, 2021
Guitar legend, Robben Ford, joins David for a discussion spanning high-caliber music, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Buddhism, meditation, artistry, and creativity. Robben Ford is one...
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