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Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:
Tricycle Daily Dharma December 25, 2012
Merry Christmas
Many
people are extending love, the simple wish for us to be happy—and have
been since the day we were born. What is remarkable to me is what
happens when we are willing to notice it. And even more remarkable is
what happens when we are willing to receive it.
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- John Makransky, “Love Is All Around”
Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 27th, 2012
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Monday, December 24, 2012
Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:
Tricycle Daily Dharma December 24, 2012
Joy in Giving
Because
generosity is characterized by the inner quality of letting go or
relinquishing, it reverses the forces that create suffering. It is a
profound antidote to the strong habits of clinging, grasping, guarding,
and attachment that lead to so much pain and suffering. Generosity
brings happiness at every stage of its expression: we experience joy in
forming the intention to give, we experience joy in the action of
giving, and we experience joy in remembering that we have given.
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- Beth Roth, “Family Dharma: The Joy of Generosity”
Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 26th, 2012
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Sunday, December 23, 2012
Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:
Tricycle Daily Dharma December 23, 2012
The Purpose of Precepts
The
Buddhist precepts are not intended to force us into a particular way of
behaving but to encourage us to reflect on our motivations and actions.
Since the aim of a Buddhist life is to diminish suffering, Buddhist
ethics are rooted in compassion and wisdom. We attend to our own
suffering and the suffering of others, and we understand that our
intentions and actions have consequences.
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- Martine Batchelor, “The Buddhist Precepts: An Introduction”
Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 25th, 2012
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Saturday, December 22, 2012
Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:
Tricycle Daily Dharma December 22, 2012
With a Little Help from my Friends
If
you really want to become skillful in your thoughts, words, and deeds,
you need a trustworthy friend to point out your blind spots. And because
those spots are blindest around your unskillful habits, the primary
duty of a trustworthy friend is to point out your faults—for only when
you see your faults can you correct them; only when you correct them are
you benefiting from your friend’s compassion in pointing them out.
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- Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “The Power of Judgment”
Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 24th, 2012
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Friday, December 21, 2012
JMG Quote Of The Day - Henry Rollins
"There is still a long way to go. Marriage equality is a term so ridiculous on its face that when you hear it mentioned, you would think you were in Riyadh. Years from now, perhaps we can lose the equality part, the same-sex part and call it what it is -- marriage. As much as the homophobes, an ever-thinning herd, whines and screeches, the earth is shifting underneath their feet and things are getting better all the time. This is going to be an incredible century. Didn't get off to a very good start but we are making some bold and exciting strides forward." - Henry Rollins, writing for LA Weekly.
Via JMG: Ill Papa Slams Gay Marriage (AGAIN)
"People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given to them by their
bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being.
They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously
given to them, but that they make it for themselves. The manipulation of
nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now
becomes man's fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. When freedom to be creative becomes the
freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied
and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God" - Emperor Palpatine, in his annual Christmas speech to Vatican bureaucrats.
Reposted from Joe
Via JMG: Vatican: Gay Marriage Is Like Communism
The official Vatican newspaper yesterday compared gay marriage supporters with people who had been "deceived" by communism and socialism.
Faced with recent setbacks in the United States and Europe, the Roman Catholic Church has intensified its increasingly uphill battle against gay marriage. The latest salvo came this week, with a front-page article in the Vatican’s semiofficial newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. Historian Lucetta Scaraffia compared proponents of gay marriage, with their championing of "marriage equality," to 20th-century communists who wooed millions with their promise of perfect social and economical equality. Scaraffia, a 64-year-old former feminist activist who later became a fervent Catholic, has often written in the Vatican newspaper on the issue. For her, the idea of gay marriage is a product of the same "egalitarian utopia that did so much damage during the 20th century ... deceiving humanity as socialism did in the past."
Labels: bigotry, Catholic Church, LGBT rights, marriage equality, organized crime, religion, Vatican
Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:
| Daily Buddhist Wisdom | |||
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Thursday, December 20, 2012
Viva São Paulo!
BRAZIL: São Paulo State Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage
Brazilian Law Blog reports:
Reposted from Joe
The state of Sao Paulo has 41 million residents! The city of Sao Paulo is the largest in the southern hemisphere!Brazil is about to see something that we only heard about from the United States: a massive movement of people going to one specific State, in order to get married there. This is because São Paulo State (where São Paulo city is located) has updated its registration rules in order to allow the automatic registration of same sex marriages, without the need of a previous court order. This change has followed, with some delay, a decision from the Brazilian Supreme Court regarding same sex marriage.
Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:
| Daily Buddhist Wisdom | |||
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Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:
Tricycle Daily Dharma December 20, 2012
Living in a Cosmic Democracy
Living
in harmony with all beings is flexibility. It is a kind of cosmic
democracy. Each of us has a role in the situation and gets one vote. You
cast your vote by being here like a great unmoving mountain. Please
cast your vote completely: that is your job. Then listen to all other
beings, especially foreigners, especially strangers, and especially
enemies.
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- Reb Anderson, “In It Together”
Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 22nd, 2012
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Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Via JMG: New Gallup Poll On LGBT Issues
While 53% of Americans support legalizing same-sex marriage, significantly higher percentages support the idea of equal rights for partners or spouses of gays or lesbians when it comes to inheritance rights and employee benefits, and making it legal for gays and lesbians to adopt children. Support for all three issues is up at least slightly from three years ago.
Less than half of Americans, however, support the idea of openly gay adults serving as Boy Scout leaders. Given the lack of a trend on this question, it is not clear whether support is higher than in the past, or the degree to which the lack of support may reflect respondents' reluctance to say how a private organization should decide who holds its positions of leadership.
Labels: Boy Scouts, Gallup, gay adoption, insurance, LGBT rights, marriage equality, polls
Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:
| Daily Buddhist Wisdom | |||
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Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:
Tricycle Daily Dharma December 19, 2012
An Honest Look
Simply
doing good deeds, or even being a devoted meditator, doesn’t mean
anything without the painful honesty that’s required to look at what
we’re doing. We must take our heads out of the ground and look at all of
the ways we get in our own way—fooling ourselves and obstructing the
possibility of living a more open and genuine life.
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- Ezra Bayda, “The ‘Helper’ Syndrome”
Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 21st, 2012
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Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:
| Daily Buddhist Wisdom | |||
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Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:
Tricycle Daily Dharma December 18, 2012
Letting the Heart Speak
If
any preoccupation comes in to bother the mind, just say in your heart,
‘Leave me alone. Don’t bother me. You’re no affair of mine.’ If any
critical thoughts come up—fear for your life, fear that you’ll die,
thinking of this person, thinking of that person—just say in your heart,
‘Don’t bother me. You’re no affair of mine.’
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- Ajahn Chah, “The Last Gift”
Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 20th, 2012
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Monday, December 17, 2012
JMG HomoQuotable - Andrew Sullivan
"That's why it's revealing to see a major figure in the American Christianist movement, Pastor David Dykes, - he opened the 2008 Congress with a prayer - openly advocate the execution of gays, and criminal penalties for exercise of free speech in defense of gays, in Uganda. If these people could, they would do the same here. The constitution protects us - especially our right to speech. But what these theocrats want is as undeniable as it is repellent in a free or humane society.
"More to the point, here is an alleged Christian demanding that those on the margins of society not be embraced, as Jesus practised, but be executed, as Jesus' Roman executioners did. It doesn't get more anti-Christian than that. To even associate the word Christianity with these sentiments is an attack on Jesus Christ." - Andrew Sullivan, reacting to this Box Turtle Bulletin story.
Labels: Africa, Andrew Sullivan, Christian Love, Christianists, David Dykes, gay death penalty, HomoQuotable, religion, Scott Lively, Uganda
Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:
| Daily Buddhist Wisdom | |||
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Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:
Tricycle Daily Dharma December 17, 2012
Pure Freedom
The
practice of generosity is the practice of freedom, and it carries with
it all the joy and pleasure that are associated with liberation. Indeed,
there may be no greater sense of fulfillment in life than the
simultaneous feelings of human interconnection and pure freedom that
arise from an authentic act of selfless generosity.
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- Dale S. Wright, “The Bodhisattva’s Gift”
Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 19th, 2012
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Sunday, December 16, 2012
Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:
Tricycle Daily Dharma December 16, 2012
Surviving Destruction
The
source of forgiveness lies in the realization that we are not solely
products of what was done to us, the realization that there is something
essential within us that is not necessarily tarnished by calamitous
experience.
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- Mark Epstein, “Beyond Blame”
Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 18th, 2012
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Saturday, December 15, 2012
Via JMG: Gay Marriage Comes To The Caribbean
Two men were recently married in Saba, marking the first ceremony of its kind in the region and setting off a frenzy of calls from gay couples in other Dutch Caribbean islands seeking to marry, said Julietta Woods with Saba’s Civil Registry office.”People keep calling me every second,” she said by telephone this week. As part of the Netherlands Kingdom, the islands of Saba, Bonaire and St. Eustatius have to recognize same-sex marriages. While Bonaire and St. Eustatius have balked at the idea of legalizing such unions, the idea has been embraced in Saba, long considered a gay-friendly destination. “We’ve seen it as a human rights issue,” said Saba council member Carl Buncamper, who is openly gay. “It is important to give the partners equal rights when it comes to inheritance and other benefits.”The Netherlands became the first nation in the world to legalize same-sex marriage in 2001.
Labels: Caribbean, marriage equality, Netherlands
Via JMG: Petition Of The Day
The goal of this petition is to force the Obama Administration to produce legislation that limits access to guns. While a national dialogue is critical, laws are the only means in which we can reduce the number of people murdered in gun related deaths. Powerful lobbying groups allow the ownership of guns to reach beyond the Constitution's intended purpose of the right to bear arms. Therefore, Congress must act on what is stated law, and face the reality that access to firearms reaches beyond what the Second Amendment intends to achieve. The signatures on this petition represent a collective demand for a bipartisan discussion resulting in a set of laws that regulates how a citizen obtains a gun.Sign the petition.
Labels: Connecticut, gun control, petitions, White House
Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:
Tricycle Daily Dharma December 15, 2012
Removing Hindrances
With
proper motivation, prayer becomes an important component of our
practice because it helps to remove obstacles—counterproductive
circumstances, imbalances of the subtle energies in the body, confusion
and ignorance in the mind. Even in listening to the teachings, we may
mentally edit what we hear, adding more to them than is being said or
ignoring certain aspects. Prayer offsets these hindrances.
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- Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, “Prayer”
Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through December 17th, 2012
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JMG Quote Of The Day - Ezra Klein
"If roads were collapsing all
across the United States, killing dozens of drivers, we would surely see
that as a moment to talk about what we could do to keep roads from
collapsing. If terrorists were detonating bombs in port after port, you
can be sure Congress would be working to upgrade the nation’s security
measures. If a plague was ripping through communities, public-health
officials would be working feverishly to contain it.
"Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. But that’s unacceptable. As others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t 'too soon.' It’s much too late." - Ezra Klein, writing for the Washington Post.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Via Karmic Blessings / FB:
Being
happy is a mindset. It's a choice that we have. Every obstacle is
opportunity in disguise. It stops being an obstacle when you stop seeing
it as a problem and see the opportunity.
Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:
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