Via Daily Dharma: Where Can We Find Happiness?

Happiness is right here within us. It is not something on the outside for which we need to search and strive.

—Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, “Opening the Injured Heart”

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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - January 8, 2020 💌

"You want to get to the place where, when there is depression, instead of running and hiding from the depression by trying to grab at the next high, you turn around and look at the depression as though you were looking the devil in the eye. You say to the depression, 'Come on depression, do your trip, because you’re just a depression, and here I am.'"

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Test the Dharma through Action

Don’t give final authority to your own ideas. You have to test the teachings, and your ideas, in the laboratory of your actions.

—Larry Rosenberg, “The Right to Ask Questions”

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Via Daily Dharma: Discover Your True Nature

We can’t control [insight]; we can just create conditions in which insight is more likely to happen. We can be curious and open. We can inquire. And eventually, if we are lucky, the mind will wake up to itself and know its true nature.

—Teah Strozer, “RAIN”

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Via Daily Dharma: Developing Compassion for Our Feelings

As we become mindful of a feeling that’s driving us, we realize that we don’t have to react to it and be driven by it. Instead, we can simply observe it, recognize that it represents a part of us that is suffering, and have compassion for that part of us.

—Bodhipaksa, “Digital Detox: Reclaim Your Mind From Social Media Addiction”

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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - January 5, 2020 🌈

"When you realize you want to relieve suffering, you realize that you have to become an instrument for the removal of suffering, and that means you have to be free of suffering. Then there is the choice, to deny suffering or to change yourself inside. "

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Opportunities for Renewal

Wherever there is the death of one state of mind there is the birth of another.

—Francesca Fremantle, “The Luminous Gap in Bardo”

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Via Daily Dharma: Look Toward What Is Good

A powerful light can illuminate a cave that had always been dark, and there are beacons of pure goodness whose luster can sustain us and give us the strength to carry on.

—Pamela Gayle White, “A New Year’s Wish for Light”

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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - January 1, 2020 🌈

"We are on an inevitable course of awakening.

If you understand that message deeply, it allows you to enter into your spiritual practices from a different perspective, one of patience and timelessness. You do your practices not out of a sense of duty or because you think you should, but because you know in your soul there really is nothing else you would rather do.

In Sanskrit, this is called vairagya, a state of weariness with worldly desire where only the desire for spiritual fulfillment is left. The spiritual pull is the last desire, one that really grabs you, but that dissolves on its own because you dissolve in the process. The Tao says, "In the end, you will be like the valley which is the favorite resort of the Way." You become receptive, become soft, become open, become attuned, become quiet. You become the ocean of love."

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The First Step of Transformation

The Buddha saw: our thoughts, emotions, and actions are the primary sources of our suffering. Equally, our thoughts, emotions, and actions can be the source of our joy and freedom. Living, as much as possible, with conscious intention is the first step of this transformation.

—Thupten Jinpa, “Two Exercises for Turning Intention into Motivation”

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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - December 27, 2019 💌

"My route is through the heart, of devotion. That is a path. There are many pathways through here. One is the path of wisdom, one is the path of calming the mind, one is the path of opening the heart. My path is the path of love."

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Move Through Transitions with Care

Do not think of doors as obstacles to whatever is on the other side. Practice opening them magnanimously and closing them with care.

—Gary Thorp, “Crossing the Threshold”

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Via Daily Dharma: How Morals Arise

Morality is an outcome or consequence of a well-ordered mind, and such a mind is well-ordered because there is correct understanding of the true situation.

—Dharmavidya David Brazier, “Other-Power”

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Via Daily Dharma: How Insight Can Transform You

Insight is the beginning of transformation, not the end.

—Oren Jay Sofer, “Turning a Ship”

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Via Daily Dharma: Toward Our Buddha Nature

For the entrusting heart, you don’t work toward Buddha; you make yourself available to let Buddha work toward you.

—Andrew Cooper, “Regret: A Love Story”

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Via Daily Dharma: Opening to What Is Truly Here

The insights that arise in the course of meditating are often surprises. The awakening mind lets go of the old fictions we invent and opens to what is really here: simply this.

—Sylvia Forges Ryan, “Bare Branches, Bare Attention”

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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - December 29, 2019 💌 🎆

 

"Old age is rife with change. Old age is training you in change: change in your body, of relationships, change of your energy, change in your role. The last part of your life is sensational; yum, yum, yum. Ego things calm down and wisdom comes forth. And compassion comes forth—compassion for yourself, compassion for others, compassion for the world."

 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Building Strength in Trying Times

In times of trial, one must learn to endure whatever may come and thereby strengthen and improve oneself. After all, it is only the person who has experienced the cold of winter who can savor and enjoy fully the warm sunshine of spring.

—Daisaku Ikeda, “On Hardship & Hope”

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Ram Dass Via Querty: Rest in peace / The LGBTQ figures we lost in 2019

Spiritual philosopher Ram Dass died December 22 in Hawaii. He was 88. Born Richard Alpert, he was a clinical psychologist but a trip to India, and experimentation with LSD in the late 60s, set his life on a different path. He published several motivational and inspiring books, including The Only Dance There Is, and How Can I Help? Compassion in Action. A stroke in 1997 left him disabled, but he continued his work, saying his health challenges only led him to look even further inward into the spiritual heart of life.

Actress Helen Hunt was among those to mourn his passing. She posted a photo of herself to Instagram with one of his quotes on the subject of death.

 “Dying is the most important thing you do in your life. It’s the great frontier for every one of us. And loving is the art of living as a preparation for dying. Allowing ourselves to dissolve into the ocean of love is not just about leaving this body; it is also the route to Oneness and unity with our own inner being, the souls, while we are still here. If you know how to live and to love, you know how to die.”

Make the jump here to see who else we lost this past year and more