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.
In this culture, we are rewarded for knowing we know. It’s only when we
come to the despair of seeing that the rational mind just isn’t going to
be enough – it’s only when you see the assumptions you’ve been working
with are not valid that there is the possibility of change. Albert
Einstein said, “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to
survive and move towards higher levels.” And again, “Man must be able to
develop a higher form of thought if he’s ever going to be able to use
his energy with wisdom."
Whatever you intend,
whatever you plan, and whatever you have a tendency toward, that will
become the basis on which your mind is established. (SN 12.40) Develop
meditation on lovingkindness, for when you develop meditation on
lovingkindness, all ill will will be abandoned. (MN 62)
Suppose there were a pond with lovely smooth banks, filled with pure
water that was clear and cool. A person scorched and exhausted by hot
weather, weary, parched, and thirsty would come upon the pond and quench
their thirst and their hot-weather fever. In just the same way a person
encounters the teachings of the Buddha and develops lovingkindness, and
thereby gains internal peace. (MN 40)
Reflection
Intention has
to do with the volitional and emotional states of mind that condition
experience and influence the quality of action. Some mental states are
helpful and healthy, others are harmful and unhealthy. One of the most
beneficial is lovingkindness, which can be developed by generating
friendliness and care toward living beings. Compared with the harshness
of so many of our other experiences, the practice of lovingkindness
feels refreshing and leads to peace.
Daily Practice
Friendliness
and lovingkindness can be practiced at any time. Simply direct the mind
to the thought of a particular person or group of people and allow the
emotional tone of caring for their well-being to arise in your heart or
mind. By thinking of the person steadily, with the help of supporting
phrases and images, you can sustain this kindly quality of mind over
time. It feels refreshing, like a cool pond on a hot day. Try it.
Tomorrow: Refraining from False Speech One week from today: Cultivating Compassion
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel
It’s
not enough just to know the definition of bodhisattva. What’s much more
important is to study the actions of a bodhisattva and then to behave
like one yourself.
Oscar Wilde having lunch with Lord Alfred Douglas near Dieppe in 1898, after his release from Reading Gaol
1900 -
OSCAR WILDE,
Irish writer, wit and raconteur died (b. 1854); Prison was unkind to
Wilde's health and after he was released on May 19, 1897 he spent his
last three years penniless, in self-imposed exile from society and
artistic circles. He went under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth,
after the famously "penetrated" Saint Sebastian and the devilish central
character of Wilde's great-uncle Charles Robert Maturin's gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer.
Nevertheless,
Wilde lost no time in returning to his previous pleasures. According to
Douglas, Ross "dragged [him] back to homosexual practices" during the
summer of 1897, which they spent together in Berneval.
After his release, he also wrote the famous poem The Ballad of Readying Gaol.
Wilde spent his last years in the Hôtel d'Alsace, now known as L’Hôtel,
in Paris, where he was notorious and uninhibited about enjoying the
pleasures he had been denied in England. Again according to Douglas, "he
was hand in glove with all the little boys on the Boulevard. He never
attempted to conceal it." In a letter to Ross, Wilde laments, "Today I
bade good-bye, with tears and one kiss, to the beautiful Greek boy. . .
he is the nicest boy you ever introduced to me." Just a month before his
death he is quoted as saying, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel
to the death. One or other of us has got to go."
His moods
fluctuated; Max Beerbohm relates how, a few days before Wilde's death,
their mutual friend Reginald 'Reggie' Turner had found Wilde very
depressed after a nightmare. "I dreamt that I had died, and was supping
with the dead!" "I am sure," Turner replied, "that you must have been
the life and soul of the party." Reggie Turner was one of the very few
of the old circle who remained with Wilde right to the end, and was at
his bedside when he died. On his deathbed he was received into the Roman
Catholic church for some odd reason. Perhaps he really had lost his
mind. Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900.
Wilde was buried
in the Cimitiere de Bagneaux outside Paris but was later moved to Père
Lachaise in Paris. His tomb in Père Lachaise was designed by sculptor
Sir Jacob Epstein, at the request of Robert Ross, who also asked for a
small compartment to be made for his own ashes. Ross's ashes were
transferred to the tomb in 1950. The numerous spots on it are lipstick
traces from admirers.
The modernist
angel depicted as a relief on the tomb was originally complete with male
genitals. They were broken off as obscene and kept as a paperweight by a
succession of Père Lachaise cemetery keepers. Their current whereabouts
are unknown. In the summer of 2000, intermedia artist Leon Johnson
performed a forty minute ceremony entitled Re-membering Wilde in which a commissioned silver prosthesis was installed to replace the vandalized genitals.
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
"With the
increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful
corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community
is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave
standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming
mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
RIGHT MINDFULNESS Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects
A person goes to the forest
or to the root of a tree or to an empty place and sits down. Having
crossed the legs, one sets the body erect. One establishes the presence
of mindfulness. (MN 10) One is aware: “Ardent, fully aware, mindful, I
am content.” (SN 47.10)
Reflection
The fourth
foundation of mindfulness involves looking at various aspects of our
experience as episodes of phenomena arising and passing away in the
stream of consciousness. Unhelpful habits of mind, acting as hindrances
to inner clarity, come and go along with helpful mental factors, such as
those guiding us to awakening. We learn to observe these changing
states with calm and focused equanimity, without grasping.
Daily Practice
Sit quietly on a
regular basis and take an interest in watching what goes on in your
mind. The challenge is to observe it all without latching on to the
content of your thoughts but simply noting them as events arising and
passing away. Become mindful of mental objects rather than becoming
entangled in them. If you can do this with ardent energy, fully aware
and mindful, you will likely find yourself very content.
RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the Fourth Phase of Absorption (4th Jhāna)
With the abandoning of pleasure
and pain, and with the previous disappearance of joy and grief, one
enters upon and abides in the fourth phase of absorption, which has
neither-pain-nor-pleasure and purity of mindfulness as a result of
equanimity. The concentrated mind is thus purified, bright, unblemished,
rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to
imperturbability. (MN 4)
Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of Suffering One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Body and Abiding in the First Jhāna
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel
Most
of our suffering comes from habitual thinking. If we try to stop it out
of aversion to thinking, we can’t; we just go on and on and on. So the
important thing is not to get rid of thought, but to understand it.
