Via Tumblr

 

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Action: Reflecting upon Social Action

 

RIGHT ACTION Reflecting Upon Social Action

However the seed is planted, in that way the fruit is gathered. Good things come from doing good deeds; bad things come from doing bad deeds. (SN 11.10) What is the purpose of a mirror? For the purpose of reflection. So too social action is to be done with repeated reflection. (MN 61) One reflects thus: "A person who speaks in hurtful ways is displeasing and disagreeable to me. If I were to speak in hurtful ways, I would be displeasing and disagreeable to others. Therefore, I will undertake a commitment to not speak in hurtful ways." (MN 15)

Reflection

Social action is not one of the formal categories of action outlined by the Buddha, but today it represents a large part of our activity. The image of reflecting on social interactions as carefully as you would those of body, speech, and mind is a useful one, allowing you to check on the effects of your actions on the world around you. Is what you are doing socially leading to beneficial or to harmful consequences?

Daily Practice

When people speak to us in hurtful ways, our first reflex is often to respond in kind or to recoil, feeling angry, hurt, or resentful. This teaching is pointing us in an entirely different direction. Instead of trying to get back at or reform the other person, we learn from them what not to do. If you know what it feels like to be hurt, why would you want to hurt anyone else? Try this way of looking at things and see what happens.

Tomorrow: Abstaining from Intoxication
One week from today: Reflecting upon Bodily Action

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Daily Dharma: Let Wisdom Arise

 We have to remember to be patient, not to have expectations. Then one day we will find ourselves understanding suffering, knowing its origins, observing it, and watching it end.

Ayya Medhanandi Bhikkhuni, “The Dharma of Snow”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via White Crane Institute // Alexander Woollcott

 

Today's Gay Wisdom

Alexander Woollcott

2018 -

"I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it." - Alexander Woollcott

---

|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|

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

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org

|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|

Via GBF

 

A new talk has been added to the audio archive at the GBF website:

2022.01.16 Sean Feit Oakes (Difference & Interdependence).mp3

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - January 19, 2022 💌

If you cannot find that place in you that is free of fear, even though you acknowledge that there might also be a part of you that is frightened, you are not going to be able to contribute to a universe that is free of fear. So, as far as I am concerned, social action must have at its very foundation a spiritual focus. But even though we find ourselves afraid, and not feeling peaceful, and less than fully loving and compassionate, we must act. There is no way you can be in an incarnation without acting. We cannot wait until we are enlightened to act. We all hear the way in which our silence is itself an act of acquiescence to a system. That is as much an action as walking. Since we must act, we do the best we can to act consciously and compassionately. But in addition, we can make every action an exercise designed to help us become free. Because the truth that comes from freedom, and the power that comes from freedom, and the love and compassion that come from freedom are the jewels we can cultivate to offer to our fellow sentient beings for the relief of their suffering.

- Ram Dass

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Speech: Refraining from Frivolous Speech

 

RIGHT SPEECH Refraining from Frivolous Speech

Frivolous speech is unhealthy. Refraining from frivolous speech is healthy. (MN 9) Abandoning frivolous speech, one refrains from frivolous speech. One speaks at the right time, speaks only what is fact, and speaks about what is good. One speaks what is worthy of being overheard, words that are reasonable, moderate, and beneficial. (DN 1) One practices thus: "Others may speak frivolously, but I shall abstain from frivolous speech." (MN 8) When a person commits an offense of some kind, one should not hurry to reprove them but rather should consider whether or not to speak. If you will be troubled, the other person will not be hurt, and you can help them emerge from what is unhealthy and establish them in what is healthy, then it is proper to speak. It is a trifle that you will be troubled compared with the value of helping establish them in what is healthy. (MN 103)

Reflection

The guideline to refrain from frivolous speech is a recommendation that we take seriously what we say and say what is meaningful with a sense of purpose and care. It does not mean everything we say has to be profound, just carefully considered. Here we also have guidance for when to speak up and when not to. If we can help someone and make a difference by speaking out, then the fact that it is troublesome is a trifle.

Daily Practice

As you practice considering carefully the way you speak, the suggestion to "not hurry to reprove" someone who does or says something offensive but rather to "consider whether or not to speak" is an important suggestion. This moment of pause and reflection is itself a powerful practice in daily life and should be followed at every opportunity. Try speaking up only when you really can help a person or situation and not simply from habit or reflex.

Tomorrow: Reflecting upon Social Action
One week from today: Refraining from False Speech

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Tricycle // The Power of Mindful Journaling

 

 

The Power of Mindful Journaling
By Rev. Grace Song

Getting thoughts out of our heads and onto a piece of paper can help us to create space around the situations in our lives that provoke reactivity.

Read more »

Via Daily Dharma: Nothing to Add

 We talk about giving up and developing, renouncing and cultivating. But when the fruit of practice is realized, there is nothing to add and nothing to remove.

Ajahn Chah, “Meeting the Dharma Alone”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via Daily Dharma: An Unbroken Sequence

 A stable, solid body is a mental image superimposed onto a stream of events in the same way that a spinning propeller is seen as a circle. The constant succession of discrete acts of cognition or feeling appears as a monolithic event, just as the rapid change of frames in a film appears as a smooth continuum.

The Dalai Lama and Thubten Chodron, “An Unbroken Sequence”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via LGBTQ Nation

His grandparents found out he's gay from a news article. So they sent him an email about it.

No one told grandma and grandpa when he came out and now their adorable response has lit up the internet.

 

via khenposodargye // FB

 

https://www.khenposodargye.org/

Via Meditation RamDass // Aditya Hridayam Punyam Sarva Shatru Vinashanam

 

 

 

Ram Dass leads a meditation using the Heart of Aditya (the sun god) mantra: 

Aditya Hridayam Punyam Sarva Shatru Vinashanam

 

Via Dhamma Wheel // Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering

 

RIGHT VIEW Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering

And what is the way leading to the cessation of suffering? It is just this noble eightfold path: that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. (MN 9) It happens that a fully awakened Buddha arises in the world, endowed with wisdom and impeccable behavior. Having realized awakening himself, he teaches the Dhamma, lovely in the beginning, middle, and end, and demonstrates a purified spiritual life. The Dhamma taught by the Buddha is heard by people, who gain trust in the Buddha and his teaching. (DN 2)

Reflection

After the first three noble truths have pointed out the existence of suffering, identified its cause as craving, and attested that craving can be ended, the fourth noble truth focuses on the treatment plan to follow in order to cure suffering. The eightfold path is an integrated path of gradually purifying behavior in the world, developing the mind through meditation, and understanding the nature of things more clearly.

Daily Practice

This path is a call to adventure, an invitation to undertake the process of gradual transformation that will carry anyone from a condition of affliction, moderate or grave, to one of greater happiness and well-being. It starts with hearing the teachings and having just enough trust to take your first steps and begin putting those teachings into practice. The path calls for many small steps taken carefully and mindfully.

Tomorrow: Cultivating Equanimity
One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of Suffering

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Daily Dharma: The Power of Ritual

 The primary benefit of ritual is that it slows us down in a world that is moving at warp speed. Rituals invite us to be quiet and still. And they teach us that we are connected through time and place.

Barbara Becker, “Honoring the Water Children”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via White Crane Institute // Allen Ginsberg's AMERICA

 

Today's Gay Wisdom

2018 -

Allen Ginsberg's

AMERICA

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing. 
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956. 
I can't stand my own mind. 
America when will we end the human war? 
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb 
I don't feel good don't bother me. 
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind. 
America when will you be angelic? 
When will you take off your clothes? 
When will you look at yourself through the grave? 
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites? 
America why are your libraries full of tears? 
America when will you send your eggs to India? 
I'm sick of your insane demands. 
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks? 
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world. 
Your machinery is too much for me. 
You made me want to be a saint. 
There must be some other way to settle this argument. 
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister. 
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke? 
I'm trying to come to the point. 
I refuse to give up my obsession. 
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing. 
America the plum blossoms are falling. 
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for 
murder. 
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies. 
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry. 
I smoke marijuana every chance I get. 
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet. 
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid. 
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble. 
You should have seen me reading Marx. 
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right. 
I won't say the Lord's Prayer. 
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. 
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over 
from Russia.

I'm addressing you. 
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine? 
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine. 
I read it every week. 
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore. 
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. 
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie 
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me. 
It occurs to me that I am America. 
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me. 
I haven't got a chinaman's chance. 
I'd better consider my national resources. 
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals 
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and 
twentyfivethousand mental institutions. 
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in 
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns. 
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go. 
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood? 
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his 
automobiles more so they're all different sexes 
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe 
America free Tom Mooney 
America save the Spanish Loyalists 
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die 
America I am the Scottsboro  boys. 
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they 
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the 
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the 
workers

it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835

Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have 
been a spy. 
America you don're really want to go to war. 
America it's them bad Russians. 
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians. 
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take 
our cars from out our garages. 
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our 
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations. 
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. 
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help. 
America this is quite serious. 
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set. 
America is this correct? 
I'd better get right down to the job. 
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts 
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway. 
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

---

|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|

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

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org

|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|

Via LGBTQ Nation // BYU threatens to arrest students who protest the Mormon school's anti-LGBTQ policies

 

BYU threatens to arrest students who protest the Mormon school's anti-LGBTQ policies

The new school rules also say that student protests may not “deliberately attack or deride” the church or its leaders.

Via White Crane Institute // GEORGE MERRILL

 

L to R: George Merrill and Edward Carpenter

1928 -

GEORGE MERRILL, who died on this date (b: 1867) was the life partner of Edward Carpenter, an English utopian socialist, poet, philosopher and early activist for gay rights.

Merrill was a working-class man who was born and grew up in the slums of Sheffield; he had no formal education. He met Edward Carpenter on a train in 1891, and moved into Carpenter's home, a small holding at Millthorpe, Derbyshire, in February 1898, when Carpenter's previous domestic help, George Adams and his family, moved out when Adams retired. Merrill arrived at Millthorpe in a blizzard, "trundling with the help of two boys all his worldly goods in a handcart over the hills, and through a disheartening blizzard of snow." His arrival was commemorated by Carpenter in the poem "Hafiz to the Cupbearer", part of Carpenter's Towards Democracy which was published in stages between 1882 and 1902.

Merrill had previously worked in a newspaper office, a hotel, and in an ironworks. He was always officially Carpenter's servant, and he undertook the cooking and cleaning in the home, decorating and placing flowers in every room. Carpenter noted that "George in fact was accepted and one may say beloved by both my manual worker friends and my more aristocratic friends." He had a fine baritone voice and liked to sing comical songs.

The two lived openly as a couple for almost forty years, until Merrill's death in 1928. Carpenter died the following year and was buried beside Merrill at the Mount Cemetery in Guildford, Surrey.

The relationship between Carpenter and Merrill was the inspiration for E. M. Forster's novel Maurice, and the character of the gamekeeper Alec Scudder was in part modelled after George Merrill. The novelist D. H. Lawrence read the manuscript of Maurice, which was not published until after Forster's death. The manuscript and Carpenter and Merrill's rural lifestyle influenced Lawrence's 1928 novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, which also involves a gamekeeper becoming the lover of a member of the upper classes. Merrill and Carpenter are featured in William di Canzio's homage to Maurice, Alec when Alec and Maurice elope to the countryside.

---

|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|

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

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org

|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|

 

Via Daily Dharma: Help Yourself Help Others

 To help others is to help oneself. It may also be said that to help oneself is to help others, since real, effective help is not possible as long as we ourselves are deluded and filled with greed and hatred.

Francis Dojun Cook, “Bodhicitta’s Ripple Effect”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE