In
comparison to emotions, which come and go and sometimes mistakenly lead
us into thinking there is danger, values provide a steady hand that
reminds us about the kind of person we want to be.
Yael Schonbrun, “How to Make a Decision When There Are No Good Choices”
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The
techniques we learn on the meditation cushion are not meant just for
the cushion. After all, we’re not creating suffering for ourselves only
on the cushion. We go through life. So we’re going to take those
techniques and use them on a day-to-day basis.
Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “The Buddha’s Alternative to Acting Out in Anger”
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TODAY'S GAY WISDOM
More From Oscar Wilde’s DE PROFUNDIS
The poor are wise, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive than we are. In their eyes prison is a tragedy in a man's life, a misfortune, a casuality, something that calls for sympathy in others. They speak of one who is in prison as of one who is 'in trouble' simply. It is the phrase they always use, and the expression has the perfect wisdom of love in it. With people of our own rank it is different.
With us, prison makes a man a pariah. I, and such as I am, have hardly any right to air and sun. Our presence taints the pleasures of others. We are unwelcome when we reappear. To revisit the glimpses of the moon is not for us. Our very children are taken away. Those lovely links with humanity are broken. We are doomed to be solitary, while our sons still live. We are denied the one thing that might heal us and keep us, that might bring balm to the bruised heart, and peace to the soul in pain. . . .
I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. I am trying to say so, though they may not think it at the present moment. This pitiless indictment I bring without pity against myself. Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still.
I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. I had realised this for myself at the very dawn of my manhood, and had forced my age to realise it afterwards. Few men hold such a position in their own lifetime, and have it so acknowledged. It is usually discerned, if discerned at all, by the historian, or the critic, long after both the man and his age have passed away. With me it was different. I felt it myself, and made others feel it. Byron was a symbolic figure, but his relations were to the passion of his age and its weariness of passion. Mine were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital issue, of larger scope.
The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a FLANEUR, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility.
I have lain in prison for nearly two years. Out of my nature has come wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed through every possible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he said –
'Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark And has the nature of infinity.'
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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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"My path is the path of Guru Kripa, which means ‘grace of the guru’. It
seems like a sort of strange path in the West, but my path involves my
relationship to Maharajji, Neem Karoli Baba. The way I do that is that I
just hang out with him all the time. I have an imaginary playmate in a
way, I mean, he’s dead. He dropped his body, yet he seems so alive to
me, because I have invested that form in my mind as an emotional
connection to that deeper truth.
Because for me, Maharajji is the cosmic giggle. He is the wisdom that
transcends time and space. He is the unconditional lover. He is the
total immediate presence."
- Ram Dass -
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