A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
One of the beautiful reminders of Buddhism is that we are among a group of people coming together to practice the 2,500-year-old teachings of the Buddha.
You must not hurt people, you must not hurt yourself, and the most obvious way to avoid suffering for yourself and others is to be careful of your reactions to form and sound.
Guo Gu, “The Sound of a Bell, the Seven-Piece Robe”
When you’re at home and everything is familiar, it’s hard to remember how miraculous everything is. When you go to a new place, everything freshens up.
"Most of us primarily have to get our psychological and life games in order before we are ready for the higher spiritual practices. Often we want more than we are ready to have. We take on practices that could bring you to God, or to enlightenment. But because we are so caught in psychological stuff, in ego trips, we merely take them and convert them to things around our ego.
Really, there are very few people who have their psychological scene so cooled out, who are no longer needing to prove themselves, who have eaten their own unworthiness. They can begin to hear these higher motives for spiritual work."