Friday, September 27, 2024

Via White Crane Institute \\ The inimitable Robert Patrick…on life

 


 

 

Today's Gay Wisdom
Playwright Robert Patrick
2017 -

The inimitable Robert Patrick…on life: 

 I don't like life much. I prefer art. I am interested to discuss it. My favorite artists are Plato, Bach, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Shaw, D.W. Griffith, Noel Coward, Vermeer, S.J. Perelman, Cole Porter, Euripides, Auden,Jean Kerr, Federico Fellini, Dorothy Parker, Chekov, Marilyn Monroe, Vladimir Nabokov, Walt Disney, Brancusi, Wilde, Pollock, Tennesse Williams, Hitchcock, Dali, Ayn Rand, Alfred Bester, Gwen Verdon & Bob Fosse, Gore Vidal, Picasso, Emily Dickinson, Barbra Streisand, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Georgia O'Keeffe, Christopher Fry, Doric Wilson, Lanford Wilson, Billy Wilder, Johnny Mathis, Tchelitchew, Mary Renault, Eartha Kitt, Paul Cadmus, A.E. Housman, Al Capp, Sappho, Catullus, and Billie Holiday. 

I am a 70-year old, single, Gay Libran writer and ghostwriter living in Los Angeles strictly for the sunshine. I abide in good-natured despair about the failure of the ideals of the 60's revolution.

I see the western world at present in terms of the theories of Christopher Lasch ("The Culture of Narcissus") and Alice Miller ("The Drama of the Gifted Child"). I'm not sure anything can be done about the mess our wasteland is in, but I do regard the collapse of our civilization as a fascinating opportunity for a writer to discern the structure of the culture crumbling around him. I regard myself as a refugee from the apocalypse, striving to keep alight a small campfire of human humor in an increasingly dreary darkness.

I am not committed to any particular cause, nor am I apt to be convertible to yours. In the interminable struggles for status and identity which pass for "parties" in our culture, I haven't yet found a side I'd care to take. The password to my fireside is, "I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me."

http://hometown.aol.com/rbrtptrck/myhomepage


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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute

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Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Living: Abstaining from Intoxication

 


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RIGHT LIVING
Undertaking the Commitment to Abstain from Intoxication
Intoxication is unhealthy. Refraining from intoxication is healthy. (MN 9) What are the imperfections that defile the mind? Negligence is an imperfection that defiles the mind. Knowing that negligence is an imperfection that defiles the mind, a person abandons it. (MN 7) One practices thus: “Others may become negligent by intoxication, but I will abstain from the negligence of intoxication.” (MN 8)

When I strive with determination, some particular sources of suffering fade away in me because of that determined striving; in this way suffering is exhausted. (MN 101)
Reflection
Any source of gratification, if indulged to an extreme, will transform into something that causes harm to you or others or both.  Some of these impulses can be managed gently and naturally, but others may require determined effort. Striving with diligence can be seen as a defense mechanism, a way of keeping yourself safe from overindulgence. Sometimes you just have to tell yourself to stop.

Daily Practice
Identify the behaviors in your life that have the potential to escalate to a point of intoxication and negligence, in the broadest sense of these terms. Make a commitment to avoid allowing this to happen; sometimes that takes determination and making a deliberate effort. If the application of energy is grounded in the wise understanding of cause and effect, self-control can be seen as a gift to yourself.

Tomorrow: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
One week from today: Abstaining from Harming Living Beings

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Questions?
Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.



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Via Daily Dharma: Where Are You?

 


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Where Are You?

Look at every part of the body in detail. Or look at its elementary properties. Exactly where are you in any of those things? There’s no you in there at all.

Phra Ajaan Suwat Suvaco, “A Home for the Mind”


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Living with Intention
By Lama Aria Drolma
Dharma teacher Lama Aria Drolma on reorienting our perpetual decision-making tendencies to cultivate a more purposeful life. 
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Thursday, September 26, 2024

Via GBF:20 New Videos of Dharma Talks

This month we added 20 more VIDEOS to our growing library of dharma talks. Between now and the end of the year, we will post 20 more videos each month. 

Where to Find the Videos
  1. On the GBF YouTube channel, in our Dharma Talks - VIDEO playlist
    Be sure to subscribe to the channel to be notified immediately when each new video is posted. 
  2.  
  3. On the GBF website. Each talk has its own page where the audio and video are posted along with a summary. Here are links directly to those most recently added:
Enjoy!

Love & Light,
Tom Bruein

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Enjoy 850+ free recorded dharma talks at https://gaybuddhist.org/podcast/
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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Action: Reflecting upon Social Action

 


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RIGHT ACTION
Reflecting Upon Social Action
However the seed is planted, in that way the fruit is gathered. Good things come from doing good deeds; bad things come from doing bad deeds. (SN 11.10) What is the purpose of a mirror? For the purpose of reflection. So too social action is to be done with repeated reflection. (MN 61)

A person is content with any clothing they may get, speaks in praise of such contentment, and does not try to obtain these things in improper or unsuitable ways. Not getting these things, one does not worry, and getting them one makes use of them without being greedy, obsessed, or infatuated, observing such potential dangers and wisely aware of how to escape them. (AN 4.28)
Reflection
Just as we practiced cultivating contentment in regard to food last month, today we are invited to work with our relationship to clothing. Discontent is a persistent cause of social discord, and contentment contributes to people getting along with one another. If we envy what other people have or yearn for something we don’t have, the seeds of unhappiness are sown and watered. Such suffering is unnecessary.

Daily Practice
We are not being asked here to have disdain for fashion, or taste, and it is not suggested that what we wear does not matter at all. As with so many other aspects of our lives, we are being invited here to examine the relationship we have with ordinary things such as the clothing we wear. It is healthy and helpful to focus more on what we have than on what we want and to avoid the pitfalls of becoming greedy, obsessed, or infatuated.

Tomorrow: Abstaining from Intoxication
One week from today: Reflecting upon Bodily Action

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions?
Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.



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© 2024 Tricycle Foundation
89 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003

Via Daily Dharma: Universal and Innate Potential

 


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Please make a tax-deductible gift here »
Universal and Innate Potential

The Buddha, in his radiant enlightenment and benevolence, not only welcomed everyone onto the path but also proclaimed that each of us—irrespective of gender, class, or background—holds the innate potential for enlightenment.

Nhi Yến Đỗ Trần, “‘Is There a Woman Buddha?’”


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Four Buddhist Teachings on Emptiness
By Simeon Mihaylov
Tracing the history and evolution of the concept of sunyata.
Read more »