Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Intention: Cultivating Appreciative Joy

 


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RIGHT INTENTION
Cultivating Appreciative Joy
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 appreciative joy, for when you develop meditation on appreciative joy, any discontent will be abandoned. (MN 62) 

The purpose of appreciative joy is to ward off discontent. (Vm 9.97)
Reflection
It is so easy to feel discontent. There are lots of things, both within and around us, with which we can find fault. But the mind does not have to go there. It may do so on its own, but we can intervene and change the focus of our mind. Choose to turn your attention to all the things within and around you about which you can feel good. Seek out goodness and you will find it. This is a practice in itself.

Daily Practice
The next time you experience discontent, deliberately cultivate appreciative joy—gladness at the good fortune of others—as an antidote. Everything need not always be about us. Other people deserve to feel happy and have good fortune, and even if we ourselves are in the doldrums for some reason we can vicariously experience the well-being of others. Appreciative joy is always accessible; we merely need to reach for it.    

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

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Via Daily Dharma: No Mine, No Me

 

No Mine, No Me

If there is no regarding of phenomena as “mine,” then the self who suffers is not constructed.

Andrew Olendzki, “A Universal Formula”


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Via White Crane Institute // EMMA GOLDMAN

 This Day in Gay History

June 27

Born
Emma Goldman
1869 -

EMMA GOLDMAN, anarchist and feminist (d. 1940); An anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches. She was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and derided as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution by her critics. Although she was hostile to first-wave feminism and its suffragist goals, Goldman advocated passionately for the rights of women, and is today heralded as a founder of anarcha-feminism, which challenges patriarchy (Harry Hay preferred the term “androarchy” as the rule was by men, not fathers necessarily) as a hierarchy to be resisted alongside state power and class divisions. In 1897 she wrote: "I demand the independence of woman, her right to support herself; to live for herself; to love whomever she pleases, or as many as she pleases. I demand freedom for both sexes, freedom of action, freedom in love and freedom in motherhood."

A nurse by training, she was an early advocate for educating women concerning contraception. Like many contemporary feminists, she saw abortion as a tragic consequence of social conditions, and birth control as a positive alternative. Goldman was also an advocate of free-love, and a strong critic of marriage. She saw early feminists as confined in their scope and bounded by social forces of Puritanism and capitalism. She wrote: "We are in need of unhampered growth out of old traditions and habits. The movement for women's emancipation has so far made but the first step in that direction."

Goldman was an outspoken critic of prejudice against homosexuals. Her belief that social liberation should extend to Gays and Lesbians was virtually unheard of at the time, even among anarchists. As Magnus Hirschfeld wrote, "she was the first and only woman, indeed the first and only American, to take up the defense of homosexual love before the general public."

In numerous speeches and letters she defended the rights of Gays and Lesbians to love as they pleased and condemned the fear and stigma associated with homosexuality. As Goldman wrote in a letter to Hirschfeld,

"It is a tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are caught in a world which shows so little understanding for homosexuals and is so crassly indifferent to the various gradations and variations of gender and their great significance in life."


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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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Monday, June 26, 2023

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Part 1: Stop Sensationalizing the Dalai Lama's Innocent Interactions | A...

Part 2: Stop Sensationalizing the Dalai Lama's Innocent Interactions | A...

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

 


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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 feeling tone as it actually is, then one is not attached to feeling tone. 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
Feeling tones, the raw sensations of pleasure and pain, are not in themselves a problem. The problem comes from attachment to them—the craving for good feelings to persist and bad feelings to stop that naturally arises in response to those feelings. Craving is the cause of suffering, not feeling. The key challenge is how to separate the two: How can we experience both positive and negative feelings without giving rise to craving?

Daily Practice
The short answer to that question is mindfulness. Mindfulness allows us to know and see feeling tone as it actually is, in which case, the texts tell us, we will not be attached to it. Clear awareness is one thing, and attachment is something else. They cannot occur simultaneously. Practice knowing and seeing feeling as it actually is by regarding it with equanimity. This is what is happening now, and this is how it actually feels.

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

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Via Daily Dharma: Like Produces Like

 

Like Produces Like

All results come from causes that have the ability to create them. If we plant apple seeds, an apple tree will grow, not chili. If chili seeds are planted, chili will grow, not apples.

Venerable Thubten Chodron, “What Is Karma?”


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A 3 fer from White Crane Institute


Jim Obergefell
2015 -

The Supreme Court of the United States, in a landmark 5-4 decision, Obergefell v Hodges, rule that the Constitution of the United States assures the right to MARRIAGE EQUALITY FOR LGBT PEOPLE and that every state in the union must recognize and respect same-sex marriages. Heterosexual marriages begin crumbling…oh wait…that didn’t happen. Nevermind.


Saints John and Paul
2018 -

It is the Feast Day of SAINTS JOHN AND PAUL, martyred lovers According to their Acts, which are of a legendary character and without recorded historical foundation, the martyrs were eunuchs (Galli) of Constantina daughter of Constantine the Great, and became acquainted with a certain Gallicanus, who built a church in Ostia. At the command of Julian the Apostate, they were beheaded secretly by Terentianus in their house on the Cælian, where their church was subsequently erected, and where they themselves were buried. Galli (singular Gallus) was the Roman name for castrated followers of the Phrygian goddess Cybele, which were regarded as a third gender by contemporary Roman scholars, and are in some ways like transgendered people in the modern world. The chief of these priests was referred to as a battakes, and later as the archigallus.


2022 -

PRIDE Early on the morning of Saturday, June 28, 1969, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons rioted following a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar at 43 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City. This riot and further protests and rioting over the following nights were the watershed moment in the modern LGBT rights movement and the impetus for organizing LGBT pride marches on a much larger public scale.


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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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Sunday, June 25, 2023

Via The New Yorker // One of America’s Funniest, Gayest Writers Is Finally Becoming Famous

 


Gay Buddhist Fellowship - San Francisco

 

As practicing Buddhists, we cherish the unique potential of each individual, and each individual’s unique mission in the world that only they can accomplish. We believe that each person has the ability to contribute positive value to society in their own unique way.  

GBF welcomes people of all races, backgrounds, and gender and sexual identities…

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

 


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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 mental painful feeling, one is aware: “Feeling a mental painful feeling”. . . One is just aware, just mindful: “There is feeling.” And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)
Reflection
Just as physical pleasure and pain are inevitable, so too are mental pleasure and pain. There is no use in trying to avoid mental pain, since it is an integral part of our experience, but it need not inevitably lead to suffering. Just as you might be aware of the pain of a stubbed toe and yet retain your mental and emotional balance, you can also turn toward and experience mental pain and hold it with healthy equanimity.

Daily Practice
Mental pain includes such things as sorrow and unhappiness. When we think about the loss of someone we care about, it hurts. When we open to the suffering of others, it hurts. Such pain is an intrinsic part of the human condition and is not to be avoided. Allow yourself to feel sorrow or even unhappiness and notice that it need not evoke unhealthy emotions such as despair or anguish. This too can just be held in awareness.  


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, with joy and the pleasure born of concentration. (MN 4)

One practices: “I shall breathe in experiencing pleasure"; one practices: “I shall breathe out experiencing pleasure.” This is how concentration by mindfulness of breathing is developed and cultivated so that it is of great fruit and great benefit. (SN 54.8)

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

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
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Questions?
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© 2023 Tricycle Foundation
89 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003