Saturday, August 3, 2024

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States

 

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RIGHT EFFORT
Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
Whatever a person frequently thinks about and ponders, that will become the inclination of their mind. If one frequently thinks about and ponders healthy states, one has abandoned unhealthy states to cultivate healthy states, and then one’s mind inclines to healthy states. (MN 19)

Here a person rouses the will, makes an effort, stirs up energy, exerts the mind, and strives to maintain arisen healthy mental states. One maintains the arisen energy-awakening factor. (MN 141)
Reflection
It is one thing to arouse energy when it is needed in order to persevere in some healthy practice, for example. It is something else to be able to sustain that extra energy long enough to see the endeavor through. Sporadic effort has some value, but it is sustained effort that is really effective in helping us develop healthy mental and emotional states. It is valuable to be able to maintain the awakening factor of energy. 
Daily Practice
Let’s take a specific example. Say you are in an annoying discussion with an annoying person, and you want to respond with kindness rather than annoyance. Remember that each moment is a new beginning and that each moment you have to renew your intention and your resolve. If you find kindness once, you need to reapply it in every ensuing moment. Maintaining kindness involves reapplying it again and again.
Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects and the Fourth Jhāna
One week from today: Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States

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Friday, August 2, 2024

Via White Crane Institute // JAMES BALDWIN


 
White Crane Institute Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989
 

This Day in Gay History

August 02

Born
James Baldwin
1924 -

JAMES BALDWIN, American author, born (d. 1987); One of the most important social commentators in the United States, most of Baldwin's work deals with racial and sexual issues in the mid-20th century in the U.S.. This year marks the centenary of his birth.

His novels are notable for the personal way in which they explore questions of identity as well as the way in which they mine complex social and psychological pressures related to being black and gay well before the social, cultural or political equality of these groups was improved.

One source of support came from an admired older writer Richard Wright, whom he called "the greatest black writer in the world." Wright and Baldwin became friends for a short time and Wright helped him to secure the Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Award. Baldwin titled a collection of essays Notes Of A Native Son, in clear reference to Wright's novel Native Son.

However, Baldwin's 1949 essay "Everybody's Protest Novel" ended the two authors' friendship because Baldwin asserted that Wright's novel Native Son, like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin lacked credible characters and psychological complexity. However, during an interview with Julius Lester. Baldwin explained that his adoration for Wright remained: "I knew Richard and I loved him. I was not attacking him; I was trying to clarify something for myself."

This was also the year he met and fell in love with Lucien Happersberger. The boy was a seventeen-year-old runaway, and the two became very close, until Happersberger's marriage three years later, an event that left Baldwin devastated.

James Baldwin is one of the most celebrated American writers of the 20th century. He wrote novels, essays, short stories, poetry, and even a screenplay. He's best known for his affecting prose, his depth of thought, and his clear moral vision for the country.

He was also a bit of a character. In interviews he's often smoking a cigarette with his legs crossed, casually calling the interviewer "baby" with a big toothy grin.

Baldwin is perhaps best known for his philosophies on race. And as an openly gay man, Baldwin also spoke about sexuality in a time when it was unheard of for many Black men to do so.

Now, some 40 years after his death, much of what he had to say about America continues to resonate. 

Baldwin's writings of the 1970s and 1980s were largely overlooked by critics, although they have received increasing attention in recent years. Several of his essays and interviews of the 1980s discuss homosexuality and homophobia with fervor and forthrightness. Eldridge Cleaver's harsh criticism of Baldwin in Soul on Ice and elsewhere and Baldwin's return to southern France contributed to the perception by critics that he was not in touch with his readership. As he had been the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, he became an inspirational figure for the emerging gay rights movement. His two novels written in the 1970s, If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) and Just Above My Head (1979), stressed the importance of Black American families. He concluded his career by publishing a volume of poetry, Jimmy's Blues (1983), as well as another book-length essay, The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985), an extended reflection on race inspired by the Atlanta murders of 1979–1981.

At the time of Baldwin's death, he was working on an unfinished manuscript called Remember This House, a memoir of his personal recollections of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Following his death, publishing company McGraw-Hill took the unprecedented step of suing his estate to recover the $200,000 advance they had paid him for the book, although the lawsuit was dropped by 1990. The manuscript forms the basis for Raoul Peck's 2016 documentary film I Am Not Your Negro.


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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 Daily Dharma: Formlessness Is a Gift

 

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Formlessness Is a Gift 

The gift of embracing formlessness and impermanence is a profound sense of freedom and the potential to meet each day afresh and roll with the changes. 

Gregory Seizan Clark, “The Bardo of Cancer”


CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE


Remaining Steadfast and Equanimous in the Parable of the Pearl in the Topknot
By Mark Herrick
In Chapter Nine of the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha extols the paramount importance of courage and tenacity.
Read more »


Becoming a Child of Illusion
With Andrew Holecek
A brand new Dharma Talk is available now! Andrew Holecek, an author and spiritual teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, discusses how to bring appearance in harmony with reality. 
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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Living: Abstaining from Intoxication

 


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RIGHT LIVING
Undertaking the Commitment to Abstain from Intoxication
Intoxication is unhealthy. Refraining from intoxication is healthy. (MN 9) What are the imperfections that defile the mind? Negligence is an imperfection that defiles the mind. Knowing that negligence is an imperfection that defiles the mind, a person abandons it. (MN 7) One practices thus: “Others may become negligent by intoxication, but I will abstain from the negligence of intoxication.” (MN 8)

There are these two worldly conditions: praise and blame. These are conditions that people meet—impermanent, transient, and subject to change. A mindful, wise person knows them and sees that they are subject to change. Desirable conditions do not excite one’s mind nor is one resentful of undesirable conditions. (AN 8.6)
Reflection
The “worldly winds,” you will recall, are those conditions that are inevitably found in the world, things it is useless to object to or resist, and the best course is to learn how to adapt and live with them. Praise and blame are among these inevitable worldly conditions. No matter what you do, there are times you will be praised, justifiably or not, and there are times you will be blamed, justifiably or not. It is best to accept this.

Daily Practice
One thing that helps in dealing with praise and blame is not to take things personally. Having yourself be the focus of everything can be seen as a kind of intoxication, distorting your perception of things as they actually are. Remind yourself that conditions are transient, that peoples’ opinions are subject to change, and that they may not praise or blame you with any real understanding of who you are or what you had in mind.

Tomorrow: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
One week from today: Abstaining from Harming Living Beings

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

Questions?
Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.



Tricycle is a nonprofit and relies on your support to keep its wheels turning.

© 2024 Tricycle Foundation
89 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003

Thursday, August 1, 2024

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Via White Crane Institute // LAMMAS DAY

 



Lammas crafts
2017 -

LAMMAS DAY ‒ In English-speaking countries, August 1 is Lammas Day ("loaf-mass day"), the festival of the first wheat harvest of the year. In Wiccan traditions, the name Lammas is used for one of the sabbats, The festival is also known as Lughnasadh, a feast to commemorate the funeral games (Tailtean Games) of Tailtiu, foster-mother of the Irish sun-god Lugh. Lammas is a cross-quarter occurring ¼ of a year after Beltane. Lughnasadh was one of the four main festivals of the medieval Irish calendar: Imbolc at the beginning of February, Beltane on the first of May, Lughnasadh in August and Samhain in November.

The early Celtic calendar was based on the lunar, solar, and vegetative cycles, so the actual calendar date in ancient times may have varied. Lughnasadh marked the beginning of the harvest season, the ripening of first fruits, and was traditionally a time of community gatherings, market festivals, horse races and reunions with distant family and friends. Among the Irish it was a favored time for handfastings ‒ trial marriages that would generally last a year and a day, with the option of ending the contract before the new year, or later formalizing it as a more permanent marriage.

In Christian tradition on this day it was customary to bring to church a loaf made from the new crop. In many parts of England, tenants were bound to present freshly harvested wheat to their landlords on or before the first day of August. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where it is referred to regularly, it is called "the feast of first fruits".

Now is a great time of year to work on honing your own talents. Learn a new craft, or get better at an old one. Put on a play, write a story or poem, take up a musical instrument, start getting crafty, or sing a song. Whatever you choose to do, this is the right season for rebirth and renewal, so set August 1 as the day to share your new skill with your friends and family.


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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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