Monday, September 6, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: The Cause of Merriment
There
is nothing to reject and nothing to accept. Things just happen—beyond
every scheme for improvement, beyond yearning and hope for betterment.
When experienced like this, all occasions are delightful, the cause of
merriment and laughter.
Online: Sunday meditation and dharma talk, “Chan and Socially Engaged Practice”, with Guo Gu (Chan)
Guo Gu’s dharma talk will explore Chan and Social Engaged Practice.
Guo Gu (Dr. Jimmy Yu) is the founder of the Tallahassee Chan Center, the founder of the socially engaged inter-denominational Buddhist organization, Dharma Relief, and a professor of Buddhism and East Asian religions at Florida State University. He was a monk for nine years and one of the late Master Sheng Yen’s senior and closest disciples. He is the author of Silent Illumination (2021), The Essence of Chan (2020), and Passing Through the Gateless Barrier (2016). To connect with Guo Gu, visit his personal website at https://www.guogulaoshi.org.
Sunday Night Sit Online Schedule:
6:15 Zoom opens
6:30 Welcome and announcements
6:45 Meditation, including mindful movement led by our teacher
7:20 Break
7:30 Dharma talk
8:30 Closing bell
Meeting ID: 940 933 642
Passcode: 765183
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Meeting ID: 940 933 642
Passcode: 765183
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Teacher Dana: Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/guogu101
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Sunday, September 5, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Hold Fast
As we observe sensations without reacting to them, the impurities in our minds lose their strength and cannot overpower us.
Via Daily Dharma: Nothing Special
Our
lives, just as they are, plain and simple, are filled with miracles.
Nothing special, nothing holy; or rather, everything special, everything
holy.
Via Tricycle // A New Paradigm for Science and Religion
September 4, 2021
Opening Our Minds to Save Our World
Opening Our Minds to Save Our World
For
centuries, science and religion have been at odds with one another. Now
the future may depend on our ability to bring these two perspectives
together to meet the challenges we face as a species and a planet.
In September’s Dharma Talk series, "A New Paradigm for Science and Religion," Tibetan Buddhist teacher, scholar, and translator B. Alan Wallace presents a bold vision of science and religion joining in a spirit of radical empiricism and open-minded inquiry. Together, he suggests, these two knowledge systems can help us to adopt a more expansive view of the nature of reality—and to reduce suffering and find true happiness in a time of global uncertainty.
Wallace has studied Buddhist philosophy and practice for the past 50 years, seeking to marry the wisdom of the dharma with the insights of modern science. He is the founder and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies and author of books including Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground Up and The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind.
In September’s Dharma Talk series, "A New Paradigm for Science and Religion," Tibetan Buddhist teacher, scholar, and translator B. Alan Wallace presents a bold vision of science and religion joining in a spirit of radical empiricism and open-minded inquiry. Together, he suggests, these two knowledge systems can help us to adopt a more expansive view of the nature of reality—and to reduce suffering and find true happiness in a time of global uncertainty.
Wallace has studied Buddhist philosophy and practice for the past 50 years, seeking to marry the wisdom of the dharma with the insights of modern science. He is the founder and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies and author of books including Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground Up and The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind.
Via The Tricycle Community // Just Love Them
Just Love Them
By Vanessa Zuisei Goddard
|
Via Daily Dharma: Finding Gratitude
When we awaken to our togetherness with others, our experiences give rise to gratitude.
Via White Crane Institute // "TREATMENT ACTIVIST GUERRILLAS" (TAG)
Noteworthy
1991 -
On this date a group of AIDS activists called "TREATMENT ACTIVIST GUERRILLAS" (TAG) accomplished one of the funniest and most outrageous bits of public activism when they literally put an enormous condom over the home of rabid homophobe and AIDS death accomplice Senator Jesse Helms in Arlington, Virginia. The activists knew they only had seven minutes before the police showed up. You can see the action in the 2012 documentary How To Survive and Plague. Here: https://youtu.be/Nrr0eA34CSM
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - September 5, 2021 💌
Inspiration is God making contact with itself. - Ram Dass
Thursday, September 2, 2021
Via White Crane Institute // This Day in Gay History - JOHN M. MCNEILL
This Day in Gay History
September 02
Born
1925 -
JOHN M. MCNEILL, Jesuit scholar, psychotherapist, born (d: 2015); For more than twenty-five years John J. McNeill, an ordained priest and psychotherapist, devoted his life to spreading the good news of God's love for Lesbian and Gay Christians. One year after the publication of The Church and the Homosexual (1976), McNeill received an order from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican ordering him to silence in the public media. He observed the silence for nine years while continuing a private ministry to Gays and Lesbians which included psychotherapy, workshops, lectures and retreats.
In 1988, he received a further order from Cardinal Ratzinger (soon to become Pope Benedict XVI, the first Pope to resign in a millennium) directing him to give up all ministry to Gay persons which he refused to do in conscience. As a result, he was expelled by the Vatican from the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) for challenging the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on the issue of homosexuality, and for refusing to give up his ministry and psychotherapy practice to Gay men and Lesbians. McNeill had been a Jesuit for nearly 40 years.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II at the age of seventeen, McNeill served in combat in the Third Army under General Patton and was captured in Germany in 1944. McNeill spent six months as a POW (Prisoner of War) until he was liberated in May of 1945. John enrolled in Canisius College in Buffalo after his discharge from the army and, upon graduating, entered the Society of Jesus in 1948. He was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1959.
In 1964, McNeill earned a Doctorate in Philosophy, with highest honors (Plus Grande Distinction), at Louvain University in Belgium. His doctoral thesis on the philosophical and religious thought of Maurice Blondel was published in 1966 as the first volume of the series Studies in the History of Christian Thought edited by Heiko Oberman and published by Brill Press in Leyden, Holland.
During his professional career, McNeill taught philosophy at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, NY, and in the doctorate program at Fordham University in NYC. In 1972, he joined the combined Woodstock Jesuit Seminary and Union Theological Seminary faculty as professor of Christian Ethics, specializing in Sexual Ethics.
In 1974, McNeill was co-founder of the New York City chapter of Dignity, a group for Catholic Gays and Lesbians. For over twenty-five years, he has been active in a ministry to Gay Christians through retreats, workshops, lectures, publications, etc. For twenty years John was a leader of semiannual retreats at the Kirkridge Retreat Center in Pennsylvania.
Via Daily Dharma: Patience Helps the Heart
Patience
helps the heart to mature into nonreactivity, and it comes into its
full maturity through being animated by the wish to alleviate suffering
and to uproot greed, aversion, and delusion.
Wednesday, September 1, 2021
Via White Crane Instiitute // SIR ROGER CASEMENT
1864 -
SIR ROGER CASEMENT is born in Kingston, Ireland (d: 1916). A former British diplomat he was knighted for his services to the crown after exposing the horrible working conditions of worker in British colonies in the Congo and in South America. This made him a hero to workers suffering from colonial hardship throughout the British empire.
However, the Ulster Protestant became an ardent Irish nationalist and was captured and tried for treason after returning from a trip to secure Germany's aid for the Irish Revolution of 1916. What sealed his doom was the admission into evidence of Casement's diaries where he meticulously detailed the names and descriptions of his numerous sexual partners. That he was on trial for treason and not for buggery did not matter.
When he was found guilty, protest was world-wide. Among the voices William Butler Yeats and George Bernard Shaw spoke out in his defense. But then the British government leaked word of the contents of Casement's "black diaries," all protest suddenly stopped. Typically, the diaries were examined and re-examined looking for "proof" of the man's sexuality. The case against him was shaky – as his alleged treason had taken place in Germany and not the UK – and in the end, his guilt was determined by the placement of a comma in the Treason Act of 1351, which was written in Norman French. Casement famously wrote later that he was to be ‘hanged on a comma’.
Putting aside how difficult it is to prove the negative, the historical presumption that someone is, of course and by default, heterosexual unless proof certain is obtained otherwise, assumes that to come to that decision is a de facto smear on the man. In this era, it was, of course. And it proved critical in the undermining of his wide public support.
No less a supporter than Mario Vargas Llosa presented a mixed account of Casement's sexuality in his 2010 novel, The Dream of the Celt, suggesting that Casement wrote partially fictional diaries of what he wished had taken place in homosexual encounters. Dudgeon suggested in a 2013 article that Casement needed to be "sexless" to fit his role as a Catholic martyr in the nationalist movement of the time. Dudgeon writes, "The evidence that Casement was a busy homosexual is in his own words and handwriting in the diaries, and is colossally convincing because of its detail and extent."
Research published in 2016 again casts doubt on the Black Diaries. In The Casement Secret, it is argued there is no evidence of the existence of the diaries during Casement's lifetime since only typescript pages – allegedly copies – were circulated; no-one was shown the diaries now in the National Archives. An official memorandum by the British Secretary of State dated March 6, 1959 states: "There is no record on the Home Office papers of the diaries or the copies having been shown to anyone outside the Government service before Casement's trial".
This argument reflects the question raised in 1955 by Bertrand Russell concerning their existence at the time of Casement's trial. The argument proposes a paradigm shift – the diaries were fabricated after Casement's execution as forged versions of the original typescripts. Anatomy of a Lie, another research essay, purports that the homosexual dimension was largely the invention of British Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary Mansfeldt Findlay in Christiania, Norway (now Oslo) in a false memorandum on October 29, 1914. The rarely-seen document containing the first innuendo has never been analyzed before and is unmentioned by all Casement authors save one. It is posited that, in the following months Findlay amplified his allegations because he feared exposure of his written bribe through a threatened lawsuit against him by Casement; a subsequent diplomatic scandal which might have destroyed his career.
Such a lot of bother. Roger Casement was hanged on August 6, 1916. A good man who'd been knighted for his service to humanity had become a martyr to men who love men everywhere.
Esteemed historian Martin Duberman has a "biographical novel" about Casement Luminous Traitor: The Just and Daring Life of Roger Casement being released on October 1 of this year. It promises to be a real pleasure read.
Via Daily Dharma: Don’t Fear Yourself
When
we bury a feeling, we hold it inside and it festers, but if we develop
our ability and courage to feel, we can come to a recognition that our
inner feeling-world is not something we have to fear and run from.
—Scott Tusa, “How to Be in the Body (Without Jumping Out of Your Skin)”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - September 1, 2021 💌
I think in relationships, you create an environment with your own work on yourself, which you offer to another human being to use to grow in the way they need to grow.
-Ram Dass -
Tuesday, August 31, 2021
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