Via White Crane Institute // DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE (DOMA)

 

1996 - President Bill Clinton announced his signing of a bill outlawing homosexual marriages, DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE (DOMA) but said it should not be used as an excuse for discrimination, violence or intimidation against Gays and Lesbians.  No…of course not. Who would do such a thing? Thanks for nothing, Bill. Guess you had your fingers crossed for that “equal protection” part? In 2013 the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to strike down DOMA. The Obama administration, which had declined to defend the law, took steps to insure the Federal government, including the Internal Revenue Service, recognized marriages from states where LGBT marriage is legal. Under the Full Faith and Credit section of the Constitution. We shall overcome!

|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 The Upworthiest

 

3 Why are people 'unhappy' even when their material needs are met? Here are some thoughtful answers. What truly makes us happy? Psychologists, social scientists, artists, religious authorities and philosophers have grappled with this question for centuries and it doesn’t seem that anyone has completely cracked the code. It’s an important question a lot of people are asking in America where happiness seems to be on the decline. A U.N. report from 2019 found that when Americans rated their level of happiness on a scale of 1 to 3, the average person gave themselves a 2.18. That’s down from a high of 2.28 in the 1980s. What’s interesting is that this decline comes during a period in which Americans have become richer. Obviously, money doesn’t buy happiness, but it does provide the security necessary to find contentment. Spencer Greenberg, a mathematician and entrepreneur in the field of social science, asked his followers on Twitter: “Why do you think that many people are unhappy even when they have all their material needs met?” and the answers were thoughtful and varied.

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Intention: Cultivating Appreciative Joy

 

RIGHT INTENTION
Cultivating Appreciative Joy

Whatever you intend, whatever you plan, and whatever you have a tendency towards, that will become the basis upon which your mind is established. (SN 12.40) Develop meditation on appreciative joy, for when you develop meditation on appreciative joy, any discontent will be abandoned. (MN 62)  Appreciative joy is the way to purity for one who has much discontent. (Vm 9.108)

Reflection

Entangled as we are in a consumer economy that depends on the cultivation of desire and discontent, it can be hard to simply take joy in what we already have and feel joy in the good circumstances of others. Yet this can be practiced as an antidote to always feeling desire for one thing or another. Cultivate appreciative joy, or gladness for the happiness of others, at every opportunity and feel its cleansing and shielding effects.

Daily Practice

Discontent can be subtle and insidious. It can poison us slowly in small but steady doses, or erupt in episodes of jealously and resentment. By paying careful attention to the details of your experience, notice the next time you feel bad in some way about what others have or get. Now recognize that as a form of discontent and counter it with appreciative joy, deliberately taking pleasure in the good fortune of another person.

Tomorrow: Refraining from Harsh Speech
One week from today: Cultivating Equanimity

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

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Daily Dharma: Reframing Body Image

 In contrast to an unhealthy positive body image, a healthy one focuses not on how good the body can look but on the good it can do.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “Under Your Skin”

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Via Tinybuddha // FB

 

Via Daily Dharma: Seeing the Ordinary as a Miracle

 The miracle of the ordinary is as close as the cedar tree in our backyard . . . if only we can learn to let go, even for a moment, of our obsession with doing, with making things happen, controlling, explaining, manipulating, thinking.

C. W. Huntington Jr., “The Miracle of the Ordinary”

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right View: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering

 

RIGHT VIEW
Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering

What is the cessation of suffering? It is the remainderless fading away and ceasing, the giving up, relinquishing, letting go, and rejecting of craving. (MN 9) When one knows and sees formations as they actually are, then one is not attached to formations. When one abides unattached, one is not infatuated, and one’s craving is abandoned. One’s bodily and mental troubles are abandoned, and one experiences bodily and mental well-being. (MN 149)

Reflection

The aggregate of formations includes all our habitual volitional and emotional responses to whatever information the senses are presenting to consciousness. This is where we love or hate what is happening, where we yearn for something different or accept peacefully what occurs. This is where suffering either is born or dies, depending on whether we respond in the moment with craving or with mindful equanimity.

Daily Practice

Suffering is not built into any given situation but is optional. Stress is not caused by external stressors but is an internal reaction to circumstances. See if you can bring the profound wisdom of this insight into your lived experience by bringing the cessation of suffering to every moment. Find what it is that you are yearning for, turn that craving into mindful observation, and watch the suffering attached to that moment disappear.

Tomorrow: Cultivating Appreciative Joy
One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering

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

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

New Ken Burns documentary 'The U.S. and the Holocaust' examines America'...

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and Abiding in the Second Jhāna

 

RIGHT MINDFULNESS
Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling

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)   When feeling a common painful feeling, one is aware: “Feeling a common painful feeling.” When feeling an uncommon painful feeling, one is aware: “Feeling an uncommon painful feeling”. . . One is just aware, just mindful: “There is feeling.” And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)

Reflection

Common feelings are those that come with ordinary experience, while uncommon feelings are connected with more subtle psychological and meditative experience. Remember, feelings in this context are not what we commonly think of as emotions; rather feelings refer to physical and mental sensations of pleasure and pain. Here we are directed to take note of the painful sensations with the equanimity of mindfulness.

Daily Practice

Pay close attention to what it feels like when something is painful, both physically and mentally, as a way of practicing the second foundation of mindfulness. This means you are not resenting or resisting the pain but merely taking an interest in it and investigating its nuances with a balanced mind. Pain need not be seen as “bad,” but rather can be explored as a different texture on the continuum of lived experience.

RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the Second Phase of Absorption (2nd Jhāna)

With the stilling of applied and sustained thought, one enters upon and abides in the second phase of absorption, which has inner clarity and singleness of mind, without applied thought and sustained thought but with joy and the pleasure born of concentration. (MN 4)

Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering
One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Mind and Abiding in the Third Jhāna

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#DhammaWheel

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Daily Dharma: Renunciation to Reveal Wisdom

 We need to give up what obscures the abiding wisdom and the abiding reality that is already here.

Tim Olmsted, “The Great Experiment”

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Via Emergence Magazine // Behold the Land

 

GALLERY Behold the Land by Sheila Pree Bright  “I feel it in the air, a new start, a new foundation  The beauty of Mother Earth” Deepening our relationship to a place can sometimes be painful, especially in landscapes that have witnessed human brutality and violence. But engaging the earth in this way can open spaces of receptivity, where reclamation and healing become possible. As we continue our exploration of Roots, we follow photographer Sheila Pree Bright through her home state of Georgia. Inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois’s speech “Behold the Land,” Sheila focuses her portrait lens on the Southern landscape where she encounters personhood and spirit in the presence of the land. As her camera reveals layers of darkness and light, she is guided through the past, across the present, and into the future. VIEW GALLERY

"Hino" ao Inominável

Via White Crane Institute // THE NEW YORK TIMES

 

Noteworthy

1857 Edition of the new York Times

1851 -

The first edition of THE NEW YORK TIMES was published on this date. Since 1918, at last count, the Gray Lady has won 133 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other news organization. 

The New York Times resisted the word gay until 1987, preferring homosexual (now, it prefers the word gay in most contexts). In the early 2000s, when same-sex marriage was a brand-new concept, gays were routinely described in mainstream media as homosexuals. Today, use of the word is less and less frequent. A Google Books scan shows a sharp decline in its use in recent years after peaking around 1995.

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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

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

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - September 18, 2022 💌

 

"You couldn’t possibly be lonely, because where could you go? Do you think if I go in my bathroom and lock the door I can be lonely? I can’t be. It’s always one thought away: The living spirit, the community of our consciousness, that guru inside, is always one thought away."

- Ram Dass -

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States

 

RIGHT EFFORT
Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States

Whatever a person frequently thinks about and ponders, that will become the inclination of their mind. If one frequently thinks about and ponders unhealthy states, one has abandoned healthy states to cultivate unhealthy states, and then one’s mind inclines to unhealthy states. (MN 19) Abandoning doubt, one abides having gone beyond doubt; unperplexed about healthy states, one purifies the mind of doubt. (MN 51) Just as a person, laden with goods and wealth, who undertakes a long journey across a dangerous wilderness, would make it safely through with their goods to safety, so would one rejoice and be glad about the abandoning of doubt. (DN 2)

Reflection

Our text likens doubt to the insecurities felt while undertaking a dangerous journey, something that would have been commonplace to the merchants of ancient India. It is a sense of uneasiness around vague but real threats, and the image describes very well what today we might call anxiety. Might anxieties be regarded as unhealthy states, and might it be possible to simply abandon them, as described here?

Daily Practice

Notice when you feel anxious about or wary of little things in your daily experience, and see if you can just abandon them. I'm not referring to a diagnosed anxiety disorder here but to the many small worries we have that might respond to this sort of approach. Ask yourself if these doubts are helpful, and when you realize they are not, see if you can let go of them simply by deciding "not to go there” just now.

Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and Abiding in the Second Jhāna
One week from today: Developing Unarisen Healthy States

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

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Daily Dharma: Imperfection Doesn’t Limit Us

 Imperfect, limited, and vulnerable as I am, the sun still shines upon me, things do work out, food appears, rain falls, wonderful conversations take place, and the grass grows without any help from me.

Dharmavidya David Brazier, “Unconditional Love”

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Via Tricycle // 5 Meditation Tips for Beginners

 

5 Meditation Tips for Beginners
By The Editors

Establishing a meditation practice isn’t always easy. Take some advice from the experts with these tips, resources, and guided meditations for beginners.

Read more »

Via Tricycle // Living Well in Difficult Times: Perspectives on Buddhism and Human Flourishing

 

Living Well in Difficult Times: Perspectives on Buddhism and Human Flourishing
With Kaira Jewel Lingo, Stephen Batchelor, Sylvia Boorstein, David Nichtern, Dr. Nida Chenagtsang, and others

How can Buddhist teachings help us to thrive during times of crisis? Join us for a weeklong virtual summit featuring conversations on dharma and human flourishing.

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