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Sunday, April 6, 2025
Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Mind and the Third Jhāna
Via Daily Dharma: Winter Always Turns to Spring
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| This Day in Gay History | |||
April 06 | |||
1931 -
RAM DASS (ne Richard Alpert), born on this date (d: 2019); also known as Baba Ram Dass, Ram Dass was an American spiritual teacher, guru of modern yoga, psychologist, and writer. His best-selling 1971 book Be Here Now, which has been described by multiple reviewers as "seminal", helped popularize Eastern spirituality and yoga in the West. He authored or co-authored twelve more books on spirituality over the next four decades, including Grist for the Mill (1977), How Can I Help? (1985), and Polishing the Mirror (2013).
Ram Dass was personally and professionally associated with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 1960s. Then known as Richard Alpert, he conducted research with Leary on the therapeutic effects of psychedelic drugs. In addition, Alpert assisted Harvard Divinity School graduate student Walter Pahnke in his 1962 "Good Friday Experiment" with theology students, the first controlled, double-blind study of drugs and the mystical experience. While not illegal at the time, their research was controversial and led to Leary's and Alpert's dismissal from Harvard in 1963.
In 1967, Alpert traveled to India and became a disciple of Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba who gave him the name Ram Dass, meaning "Servant of Ram," but usually rendered as simply "Servant of God" for western audiences. In the coming years, he founded the charitable organizations Seva Foundation and Hanuman Foundation. He traveled extensively giving talks and retreats and holding fundraisers for charitable causes in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. In 1997, he had a stroke which left him with paralysis and expressive aphasia. He eventually grew to interpret this event as an act of grace, learning to speak again and continuing to teach and write books. After becoming seriously ill during a trip to India in 2004, he gave up traveling and moved to Maui, Hawaii, where he hosted annual retreats with other spiritual teachers until his death in 2019.
The Hanuman Foundation strives to improve the spiritual well-being of society through education, media and community service programs. He co-founded the Seva Foundation by joining with health-care workers to treat the blind in India, Nepal, and developing countries. Co-founded in 1978 with public health leader Larry Brilliant and humanitarian activist Wavy Gravy, it has become an international health organization.
In the early 1970s, Ram Dass taught workshops on conscious aging and dying around the United States. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was one of his students. Ram Dass helped create the Dying Project with its Executive Director Dale Borglum, whom he had met in India. At the time, Borglum was also executive director of the Hanuman Foundation. The Living/Dying Project, based in Marin, California, starting in 1986, was initially named the Dying Center and located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Dying Center was the first residential facility in the U.S. where people came to die "consciously".
The Love Serve Remember Foundation was organized to preserve and continue the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba and Ram Dass. Ram Dass also served on the faculty of the Metta Institute where he provided training on mindful and compassionate care of the dying.
Over the course of his life since the inception of his Hanuman Foundation, Ram Dass gave all of his book royalties and profits from teaching to his foundation and other charitable causes. The estimated amount of earnings he gave away annually ranges from $100,000 to $800,000.
In the 1990s, Ram Dass discussed his bisexuality. He stated, "I've started to talk more about being bisexual, being involved with men as well as women," and added his opinion that who gay people are "isn't gay, and it's not not-gay, and it's not anything—it's just awareness."
At 78, Ram Dass learned that he had fathered a son as a 24-year-old at Stanford during a brief relationship with history major Karen Saum, and that he was now a grandfather. The fact came to light when his son, Peter Reichard, a 53-year-old banker in North Carolina, took a DNA test after learning about his mother's doubt concerning his parentage.
In 2013, Ram Dass released a memoir and summary of his teaching, Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart. In an interview about the book, at age 82, he said that his earlier reflections about facing old age and death now seem naive to him. He said, in part: "Now, I'm in my 80s ... Now, I am aging. I am approaching death. I'm getting closer to the end. ... Now, I really am ready to face the music all around me."
He died on December 22, 2019, at the age of 88.
|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! |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 - April 6, 2025 💠
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Saturday, April 5, 2025
Via Bodhipaksa @ Wildmind // Eight Benefits of Consciously Connecting With Others
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Click here to join Wildmind's Meditation Community 
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Noteworthy 
2000 -
CAKES DA KILLA (aka Rashard Bradshaw) is an American rap artist who fuses genres of hip hop, house, and electronic dance music. He came to prominence in the "queer explosion" of hip hop music stemming from New York in 2012 and is among the credited performers for the current trend of acceptance of LGBT people in the rap community. Bradshaw is currently based in Atlanta and his first full-length studio album Svengali was released in October 2022. We are unable to ascertain a precise date of birth, so he is included here. Rashard Bradshaw started rapping in high school for fun before considering it as a career. He first began writing tracks to instrumentals he found on the internet and posting them to Facebook. In 2011, his homemade demos came to the attention of an executive producer named Stixx, who invited Bradshaw to appear on the mixtape Downtown Mayhem Vol. 1 alongside Rip The Ruler. Bradshaw then went on to release his own debut mixtape Easy Bake Oven, Vol. 1 through Stixx' Downtown Mayhem label. As an emerging artist in the hip hop genre—along with fellow LGBT artists such as Le1f, Mykki Blanco, and House of Ladosha—Bradshaw gained popularity through media interest in LGBT figures and themes in hip hop and rap, having been written about in a Pitchfork article about said "movement". 'I came outin the third grade. This is just me being me. People make it sound like it's controversial and revolutionary, and that's weird to me, because in hip-hop you have people glorifying negativity, like killing people and not taking care of your kids -- that should be scandalous. That should be what we talk about. And openly gay rapper shouldn't be breaking news. -- Bradshaw on being gay in hip hop. | ||
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|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! |8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8 |
Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Developing Unarisen Healthy States
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