"Truth is one of the vehicles for deepening spiritual awareness through another human being. And if there is a license for that in any relationship: with guru, with friend, with lover, with whatever it is, it is an absolutely optimum way of coming into a liquid spiritual relationship with another person. "
- Ram Dass -
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Spiritual
realization is relatively easy compared with the much greater
difficulty of actualizing it, integrating it fully into the fabric of
one’s daily life.
John Welwood, “The Psychology of Awakening”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Joseph Goldstein – Insight Hour – Ep. 164 – Dependent Origination
May 17, 2023
“In
every moment of noticing, in every moment of being mindful, when there
is no ignorance, when there is no delusion, when we are...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE's Sonnets were first published on this date in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe who was known to steal manuscripts. Even so, if it weren’t for him we would not have this priceless work by the master. Among the greatest and well known and loved poems in the English language, most people do not realize that Shakespeare wrote these sonnets to "a fair youth." The 'Fair Youth' is an unnamed young man to whom sonnets 1-126 are addressed. Shakespeare clearly writes of the young man in romantic and loving language, a fact which serves to confirm a homosexual relationship between them.
The more prudish and near-sighted prefer to call it "platonic." But it is quite clear that he addresses a man and once read, "platonic" seems a ridiculous attempt at denying the obvious. Do you remember Shakespeare's famous Sonnet 18? ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"). That poem, taught to us as a poem of heterosexual love, is in fact written between men, and is from Shakespeare to another man in a tone of clear romantic intimacy. While Sonnet 20 explicitly laments that the young man is not a woman.
Through the years there have been many attempts to identify “the Fair Youth.” Shakespeare's one-time patron, the Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton is the most commonly suggested candidate, although Shakespeare's later patron, William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, has recently become a popular candidate. Both claims have much to do with the dedication of the sonnets to 'Mr. W.H.', "the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets": the initials could apply to either Earl. However, while Shakespeare's language often seems to imply that the 'friend' is of higher social status than himself, this may not be the case.
The apparent references to the poet's inferiority may simply be part of the rhetoric of romantic submission. An alternative theory, most famously espoused by Oscar Wilde's short story "The Portrait of Mr. W.H." notes a series of puns that may suggest the sonnets are written to a boy actor called William Hughes; however, Wilde's story acknowledges that there is no evidence for such a person's existence. Samuel Butler believed that the friend was a seaman, and recently Joseph Pequigney in "Such Is My love" argued for the idea that "Mr. W.H." was an unknown commoner.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (Sonnet 18)
William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
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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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SALLY FLOYD (d: 2019) A computer scientist whose work on the early 1990s on controlling congestion on the internet that continues to play a vital role in its stability was born on this date.
Dr. Floyd was best known as one of the inventors of Random Early Detection (RED), an algorithm widely used in the internet. Although it is not readily visible to the average internet user, it helps traffic on the internet to flow smoothly during periods of overload.
The internet consists of a series of linked routers. When computers communicate with one another through the internet, they divide the information into packets of data, which are sent out to the routers in sequence/ A router examines each packet and sends it to its intended destination. But when routers receive more that they can handle immediately, they queue those packets in a holding area called a buffer, which can increase the delay in transmitting data.
We've all been there, right?
The buffer has a limited capacity, so if the router continues to receive traffic at a higher rate than it can forward, it will discard incoming traffic. For all the ingenuity of the internet its creators did not anticipate some of the difficulties that arose as it grew.
Well into the 1980s the internet frequently experienced a period of huge degradation in performance known as "congestion collapse". The network's capacity was consumed by computers repeatedly transmitting packets which routers were forced to discard due to overload.
Dr. Floyd's Random Early Detection was an enhancement of the work done by Van Jacobson who was credited with saving the internet from collapse. He and Dr. Floyd developed RED together.
With RED, a router would generate a signal saying "I've got enough backlog that I'm going to tell senders I'm backed up." This meant that by occasionally discarding the occasional data packet earlier, routers could avoid getting completely clogged. The work required a great deal of careful mathematics and the development of simulations.
One of the by-products of Dr. Floyd's work, reflected her passion for keeping things fair to all intenet users. The work on congestion control was about keeping the internet working for everyone.
Dr. Floyd was born in Charlottesville, Virginia and attended the University of Michigan. One of her first professional positions was working for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in San Francisco. She went on to study computer science at UC Berkeley for her M.A. and PhD. In addition to her seminal work in applied computer science, Dr. Floyd was well known for her mentoring of graduate students.
Dr. Floyd died in August, 2019 of gall bladder cancer and is survived by her wife, Carole Leita.
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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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If
you have no spirit of reverence, you will make no progress. Why?
Because when your practice improves, you will reflect: ‘I did better in
my meditation just now,’ and by so thinking fall back to the lowest
level of ignorance owing to the consequent inflation of your devilish
‘I’!
John Blofeld, “A Spirit of Reverence”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
TODAY'S GAY WISDOM
From Lorraine Hansberry:
"The oppressed are by their nature ... forever in ferment and agitation against their condition and what they understand to be their oppressors. If not by overt rebellion or revolution, then in the thousand and one ways they will devise with and without consciousness to alter their condition." Lorraine Hansberry
"I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and—I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations."
"We only revert back to mystical ideas - which includes most contemporary orthodox religious views, in my opinion - because we simply are confronted with some things we don't yet understand."
"There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him; what he's been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning -- because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is. [from Raisin in the Sun]"
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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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THINLEY NORBU RINPOCHE
I have spent the greater part of my life in the East and so have always been involved in Eastern social customs, which are very rigid and restrictive. I have also been involved in the tradition of Dharma, which is also in its own way quite rigorous.
Some of the people I met in the West were involved in Dharma and some were not. I found that a lot of the people not involved in Dharma are simple people with very good minds. I also found that some Westerners practicing Dharma are actually being harmed by it — their minds are deteriorating.
A lot of people I met who are not involved in Dharma are very direct and straightforward, without many thoughts, doubts, or worries.
Many people involved in Dharma, on the other hand, have a lot of doubts and worries and are not exactly straightforward. This made me think that perhaps in some ways it’s better not to practice Dharma.
Buddha Shakyamuni said that the source of all Dharma is directness, and in my experience people who know nothing of Dharma often tend to be very direct. Having learned a great deal about Dharma, people tend to become involved in the artificiality of mental fiction and so become much less direct. The teachings of Dharma have in fact taken them away from Dharma.
*** ECHOES - The Boudhanath Teachings THINLEY NORBU - Translated by William Koblensky - SHAMBHALA Publications Boulder · 2016
**I read this in the 80s but it kept coming up in my mind. Thanks to Lizeta Lozuraityte for bringing this up again.
