Monday, March 21, 2022
Via Dhamma Wheel | Right View: Understanding the Noble Truth of Suffering
Understanding the Noble Truth of Suffering
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One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering
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Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.
Via Daily Dharma: Meditate Without Ambition
We
may come to our meditation with the hope of reducing our stress or
perfecting our technique or maybe even attaining enlightenment. But we
very soon discover that the practice requires that we drop such ambition
and sit still on the cushion, letting go of our internal dialogue,
opening to our world—very simply, very directly.
Michael Carroll, “Bringing Spiritual Confidence in the Workplace”
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Saturday, March 19, 2022
Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
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One week from today: Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States
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Via Daily Dharma: The Root of Wisdom
The
body isn’t just a vehicle for realization, or for getting things done.
It’s the root of wisdom—its very source. Sometimes we need to be nudged
to remember this. Sometimes the reminder is a bit more blunt. But at the
end of the day, the body will have the last word.
Vanessa Zuisei Goddard, “Stuck in Slow Motion”
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Via Tricycle // Living the Dharma in a Time of Crisis
Living the Dharma in a Time of Crisis
The ecological crisis isn’t a future threat. It is our present reality.
The Buddhist teachings have always offered guidance for living with uncertainty and difficulty. How can the dharma help us to better understand the predicament we currently find ourselves in? What do Buddhist teachings and practices have to offer for helping us to live harmoniously—and be effective agents of change—in the face of catastrophe?
In honor of Earth Day 2022, Tricycle is hosting The Buddhism and Ecology Summit: Living the Dharma in a Time of Crisis. We’re bringing together leading Buddhist teachers, writers, and environmentalists—including Joanna Macy, Roshi Joan Halifax, Tara Brach, Paul Hawken, and Terry Tempest Williams—for a donation-based weeklong virtual event series exploring what the dharma has to offer in a time of environmental crisis.
Registration is now open. We hope you’ll join the conversation!
Via White Crane Institute // RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON & Sir Arthur C. Clarke
RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON, legendary British explorer, diplomat and author was born (d. 1890); an English explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, linguist, poet, hypnotist, fencer and diplomat. If we left anything out it’s hard to imagine what it might be.
Burton was "the most interesting man alive" before there was such a thing. He was known for his far-flung and exotic travels and explorations within Asia and Africa as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke 29 European, Asian, and African languages.
His best-known achievements include traveling in disguise to Mecca, making an unexpurgated translation of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (the collection is more commonly called The Arabian Nights in English because of Andrew Lang's abridgment) and the Kama Sutra and journeying with John Henning Speke as the first white men guided by the redoubtable Sidi Mubarek Bombay to discover the Great Lakes of Africa in search of the source of the Nile.
Allegations of homosexuality followed Burton throughout most of his life, at a time when it was a criminal offense in the United Kingdom. Biographers disagree on whether or not Burton ever experienced Gay sex (he never directly acknowledges it in his writing). But then, they usually don't. I suspect we know better, don't we?
These allegations began in his army days when General Sir Charles James Napier requested that Burton go undercover to investigate a male brothel reputed to be frequented by British soldiers. It has been suggested that Burton's detailed report on the workings of the brothel may have led some to believe he had been a customer.
Burton was, indisputably, a party boy and a heavy drinker at various times in his life and also admitted to taking both hemp and opium. Friends of the poet Algernon Swinburne blamed Burton for leading him astray, holding Burton responsible for Swinburne's alcoholism and interest in the works of the Marquis de Sade.
On this date the British science fiction writer (and -- we note proudly -- longtime subscriber to White Crane) SIR ARTHUR C. CLARKE died on this date (b. 1917). British writer, born in Minehead, Somerset, as Arthur Charles Clarke. He studied Maths and Physics at King's College in London.
His book "2001, A Space Odyssey" was made into a film in 1968 by Stanley Kubrick. Clarke lived in Colombo, Sri Lanka since 1956. His books include: Childhood's End (1953), The Deep Range (1957), A Fall of Moondust (1961), Profiles of the Future (1962), 2001, A Space Odyssey (1968), 2010: Odyssey Two (1985), The Ghost from the Grand Banks (1990), The Hammer of God (1993), The Light Of Other Days.
These accomplishments are all well-known and well-celebrated among Clarke aficionados and critics. Less discussed are the ways Clarke’s works challenged heteronormative sexual mores, particularly those surrounding men who went for men. But reviewing some of Clarke’s most notable works, one sees the author surveying the changing sexual landscape of a post-Stonewall society. Taken together, they provide a panoramic view of a gay man questioning the world in which he lived.
Clarke was a gay man, or, at the very least, queer. Though he married a woman in 1953, they separated six months later, and it’s well established that Clarke’s romantic existence was spent mostly with other men. Obsessed with the Kinsey Scale when it first came out, Clarke never believed people had strict straight or gay tendencies, a belief made clear in a number of his books.
Author Michael Moorcock wrote in a 2008 Guardian essay that “everyone knew [Clarke] was gay,” even in the ’50s, well after Clarke moved to Sri Lanka, where he found the lack of sexual policing refreshing after living in uptight England. Clarke also spent 1964-1965 at New York’s famously libertine Chelsea Hotel, romping around town with Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, two of the most male-loving men of the era.
And insiders also know that Clarke and a man named Leslie Ekanayake were in love; Clarke described Leslie as “the only perfect friend of a lifetime,” and the author was buried alongside him when he died in 2008.
But Clarke would never admit his love of men. Not on the record, at least. Asked by a reporter about his bedroom activities, Clarke campily laughed, “Why, what have you heard?” He only admitted his yen for men a few times: sheepishly in his semi-autobiographical 1963 novel Glide Path, in which the sexually inexperienced protagonist makes a passing reference to “a highly refined encounter with the clergyman who had (very briefly) run the local scout troop;” and off-handedly in 1986, when Playboy journalist Ken Kelley asked Clarke whether he’d had bisexual experiences. Clarke replied with a resounding yes: “Of course. Who hasn’t? Good God! If anyone had ever told me that he hadn’t, I’d have told him he was lying. But then, of course, people tend to ‘forget’ their encounters.”
He went on, “I don’t want to go into detail about my own life, but I just want it to be noted that I have a rather relaxed, sympathetic attitude about it.” Such reticence is only natural for a man born in 1917 and who came of age during the height of the Pink Scare, when western governments branded gay people as criminal scourges, as sexual criminals. And it’s equally logical that Clarke would use fiction to explore societies that had evolved past such sexual judgment.
The author’s personal feelings on—or hopes for—human sexuality are perhaps most clear in his 1986 novel The Songs of Distant Earth. His sexiest work—almost every character is bed-hopping with another, or hoping to—Songs lays this society’s feeling out in the open with this exchange between two men at a hospital: Lieutenant Horton explains to his roommate, Loren Lorenson, that he was injured during a surfing expedition with a group of “hairy hunks” known for their homo-social ways. Loren is surprised by the revelation: “I’d have sworn you were ninety percent hetero.” Horton replies, “Ninety-two, according to my profile, but I like to check my calibration from time to time.” This prompts Loren to recall that “he had heard that hundred percenters were so rare that they were classed as pathological.” Clarke’s old interest in Kinsey’s work remained unabated. His only hope was the rest of humanity would see things as he did.
Clarke died in 2008, the same year conservatives used Proposition 8 to beat back marriage equality in California. He never lived to see the Supreme Court rule in favor of love. Nor did he see the same wave of progress sweep England, Australia, Brazil, France, and so many other lands. Today, more than a decade after Clarke’s death, millions of people live in a world in which marriage equality is a reality, in which transgender people are increasingly accepted and in which heteronormative notions of love and sexuality are steadily eroding, even though this brave new world of acceptance remains tenuous, at best.
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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
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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Friday, March 18, 2022
Via White Crane Institute // WILFRED OWEN
On this date the soldier and iconic war poet WILFRED OWEN was born (died 1918). Regarded by many as the leading poet of the First World War, his shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trench and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and sat in stark contrast to both the public perception of war at the time, and to the confidently patriotic verse written earlier by war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Some of his best-known works—most of which were published posthumously—include "Dulce Et Decorum Est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility" and "Strange Meeting". His preface intended for a book of poems to be published in 1919 contains numerous well-known phrases, especially 'War, and the pity of War', and 'the Poetry is in the pity'. He is perhaps just as well-known for having been killed in action at the Battle of the Sambre just a week before the war ended, causing news of his death to reach home as the town's church bells declared peace.
Robert Graves and Sacheverell Sitwell (who also personally knew him) have stated Owen was homosexual, and homo-eroticism is a central element in much of Owen's poetry. Through Sassoon, Owen was introduced to a sophisticated homosexual literary circle which included Oscar Wilde's friend Robbie Ross, writer and poet Osbert Sitwell, and C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, the translator of Proust. This contact broadened Owen's outlook, and increased his confidence in incorporating homoerotic elements into his work.
The account of Owen's sexual development has been somewhat obscured because his brother, Harold Owen, removed what he considered discreditable passages in Owen's letters and diaries after the death of their mother. Owen also requested that his mother burn a sack of his personal papers in the event of his death, which she faithfully did.
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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
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Living: Abstaining from Intoxication
Undertaking the Commitment to Abstain from Intoxication
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One week from today: Abstaining from Harming Living Beings
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Via Daily Dharma: Seeking Nirvana
Birth-and-death
is itself nirvana. There is nothing such as birth and death to be
avoided; there is nothing such as nirvana to be sought. Only when you
realize this are you free from birth and death.
Eihei Dogen Zenji, “Birth and Death”
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Thursday, March 17, 2022
Via FB
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Via The Raaft / Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation
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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Action: Reflecting upon Social Action
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RIGHT ACTION
Reflecting Upon Social Action |
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One week from today: Reflecting upon Bodily Action
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Via Daily Dharma: No Mud, No Lotus
If
you know how to make good use of the mud, you can grow beautiful
lotuses. If you know how to make good use of suffering, you can produce
happiness. We need some suffering to make happiness possible.
Thich Nhat Hanh, “Thich Nhat Hanh on Transforming Suffering”
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Wednesday, March 16, 2022
Via Tricycle
By Gavin Milne
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Via Daily Dharma: Settling the Snow Globe Mind
Learning
to drop what we’re doing, however momentarily, and to genuinely pay
attention in the present moment, without attachment or bias, helps us
become clear, just as a snow globe becomes clear when we stop shaking it
and its flakes settle.
Lama Surya Das, “The Heart-Essence of Buddhist Meditation”
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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Speech: Refraining from Frivolous Speech
Refraining from Frivolous Speech
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One week from today: Refraining from False Speech
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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - March 16, 2022 💌
The technique of the witness is to merely sit with the fear and be aware
of it before it becomes so consuming that there’s no space left. The
image I usually use is that of a picture frame and a painting of a gray
cloud against a blue sky. But the picture frame is a little too small.
So you bend the canvas around to frame it. But in doing so you lost all
the blue sky. So you end up with just a framed gray cloud. It fills the
entire frame.
So when you say 'I'm afraid' or 'I'm depressed', if you enlarged the
frame so that just a little blue space shows, you would say ‘ah, a
cloud.’ That is what the witness is. The witness is that tiny little
blue over in the corner that leads you to say, ‘ah, fear.’
- Ram Dass