Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - March 26, 2025 💠

 


"For my spiritual work I had to hear what Alan Watts used to say to me. Ram Dass, God is these forms. God isn’t just formless. You’re too addicted to formlessness. I had to learn that - I had to honor my incarnation. I’ve got to honor what it means to be a man, a Jew, an American, a member of the world, a member of the ecological community, all of it.

I have to figure out how to do that - how to be in my family, how to honor my father. All of that is part of it. That is the way I come to God, acknowledging my uniqueness, if you will. That’s an interesting turn-about in a way. That brings spiritual people back into the world."
 
- Ram Dass


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Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Intention: Cultivating Compassion

 

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RIGHT INTENTION
Cultivating Compassion
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 compassion, for when you develop meditation on compassion, any cruelty will be abandoned. (MN 62)

The proximate cause of compassion is seeing helplessness in those overwhelmed by suffering. (Vm 9.94)
Reflection
While lovingkindness is an emotional attitude that flows indiscriminately to all beings in all directions, compassion is the form it takes when it encounters the awareness of suffering. When someone who cares sees another being suffering, “the heart trembles” and the wish for the suffering to end arises. Compassion is an expression of caring for others and as such is an inherently healthy state of mind that should be cultivated.
Daily Practice
Take some time to look at suffering rather than avoid it by looking elsewhere. There are opportunities for doing this all around you, as both small and large examples of suffering abound. Pay close attention to the quality of mind that occurs when you are giving sustained attention to the suffering of another. It is not about getting lost in pity or sorrow but about allowing the mind to feel the pain with an attitude of caring.
Tomorrow: Refraining from Malicious Speech
One week from today: Cultivating Appreciative Joy

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 Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.
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© 2025 Tricycle Foundation
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Via Daily Dharma: Opening Up to Grief

 

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Opening Up to Grief

Healing isn’t about closure. It is about openness. It is about a profound vulnerability that releases us from the need to hide from anything, and that ultimately leads us to freedom. 

Bonnie O’Brien Jonsson, “Opening Up to Grief ”


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What We’re Reading, Rereading
By the Editors
See the latest books Tricycle's editors are enjoying including the Dalai Lama's commentary on awakening and ninety-nine practical tips for easing attachment.
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The Five Daily Reflections of Buddha


Gently breathing, I lovingly remember this body is aging.

Gently breathing, I lovingly remember this body is vulnerable to illness.

Gently breathing, I lovingly remember, this body will die.

Gently breathing, I lovingly remember that I will be separated from all who I love.  That is the nature of change.

Gently breathing, I lovingly remember to live each moment with love, compassion, shared joy, and equanimity.

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Monday, March 24, 2025

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

 

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RIGHT VIEW
Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering
What is the origin of suffering? It is craving, which brings renewal of being, is accompanied by delight and lust, and delights in this and that; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for being, and craving for non-being. (MN 9)

When one does not know and see bodily sensations as they actually are, then one is attached to bodily sensations. When one is attached, one becomes infatuated, and one’s craving increases. One’s bodily and mental troubles increase, and one experiences bodily and mental suffering. (MN 149)
Reflection
The fifth of the six sense modalities is the range of bodily sensations that are discernable through the body as a sense organ. Like all the other sense organs, the body is an instrument for both the arising of suffering and the cessation of suffering. When craving is present, either for a pleasant sensation or for the cessation of a painful sensation, a micro-moment of suffering is produced. You can experience this happening in your body again and again.
Daily Practice
Whether sitting or walking or engaging in any of your other normal activities, pay close attention to the sensations of the body as they naturally arise and pass away. Notice how some are favored (the ones that feel good) and some are resented and resisted (the ones that feel bad). Notice how that subtle attachment or aversion, called infatuation in this text, is the starting point for all kinds of discontent and suffering.
Tomorrow: Cultivating Compassion
One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering

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Questions?
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Tricycle is a nonprofit and relies on your support to keep its wheels turning.
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Via Daily Dharma: Antidote to Nihilism

 

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Antidote to Nihilism

I have repeatedly heard from my teachers of Madhyamaka philosophy that emptiness does not mean nothing matters. Since everything is empty, everything matters.

Michael Lobsang Tenpa, “Sealing Our Queer Life”


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Into a Haunted World
Interview with Vajra Chandrasekera by James Shaheen
Explore the Buddhist mythos behind a Sri Lankan author’s new book. 
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Via White Crane Institute //

 

Today's Gay Wisdom
2017 -

TODAY'S GAY WISDOM

An excerpt from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
19 . I Sing the Body Electric
1
I SING the Body electric;

The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;

5

And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?

And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?

And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?

2
The love of the Body of man or woman balks account—the body itself balks account;

That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

10

The expression of the face balks account;

But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face;

It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists;

It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees—dress does not hide him;

The strong, sweet, supple quality he has, strikes through the cotton and flannel;

15

To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more;

You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards,

The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up, and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the water,

The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats—the horseman in his saddle,

20

Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performance,

The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,

The female soothing a child—the farmer’s daughter in the garden or cow-yard,

The young fellow hoeing corn—the sleigh-driver guiding his six horses through the crowd,

The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown, after work,

25

The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,

The upper-hold and the under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;

The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,

The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,

The natural, perfect, varied attitudes—the bent head, the curv’d neck, and the counting;

30

Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s breast with the little child,

Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, and pause, listen, and count.

3
I know a man, a common farmer—the father of five sons;

And in them were the fathers of sons—and in them were the fathers of sons.

This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person;

35

The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, and the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes—the richness and breadth of his manners,

These I used to go and visit him to see—he was wise also;

He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old—his sons were massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome;

They and his daughters loved him—all who saw him loved him;

They did not love him by allowance—they loved him with personal love;

40

He drank water only—the blood show’d like scarlet through the clear-brown skin of his face;

He was a frequent gunner and fisher—he sail’d his boat himself—he had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner—he had fowling-pieces, presented to him by men that loved him;

When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish, you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang.

You would wish long and long to be with him—you would wish to sit by him in the boat, that you and he might touch each other.


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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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