Via Daily Dharma: Appreciating Others and Ourselves

We all need to see that happiness, joy, and bliss come from having an appreciation of other people’s work and at the same time being content with what we have and what we are.

—Phakchok Rinpoche, “Dealing With Your Jealous and Competitive Mind”

Via Daily Dharma: Ordinary Awakening

Each day, every one of us will undertake ordinary tasks such as brushing our teeth, washing dishes, getting dressed, and walking the dog. Can we bring a fresh and awake mind to these activities? This is the true challenge of beginner’s mind.

—Sensei Deirdre Eisho Peterson and Alex Tzelnic, “(Meta)Physical Education: A Bucking Brontosaurus”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 15, 2019 💌

The interesting question is, "How do you put yourself in a position so that you can allow ‘what is’ to be?" The enemy turns out to be the creation of mind, because when you are just in the moment, doing what you are doing, there is no fear. The fear is when you stand back to think about it. The fear is not in the actions. The fear is in the thought about the actions.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Pure Power of Mindfulness

The Buddha’s mindfulness has one purpose—the end of suffering. It encompasses all of life in order to purify the mind and bring wisdom, love, and equanimity to the center of our lives.

—Phillip Moffitt, “The Mindfulness of the Buddha”

Center for Global Nonkilling

https://nonkilling.org/center/

Via Daily Dharma: Embracing Our Mistakes

Turning toward our mistakes with forgiveness rather than judgment or blame contributes significantly toward feeling peace in our heart. It is like bringing a soothing balm to painful parts of ourselves that we have long rejected.

—Mark Coleman, “Why Are We So Hard On Ourselves?”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 12, 2019 💌

To live consciously you must have the courage to go inside yourself to find out who you really are, to understand that behind all of the masks of individual differences you are a being of beauty, of love, of awareness.

When Christ said, “The kingdom of heaven is within” he wasn’t just putting you on. When Buddha said, “Each person is the Buddha” he was saying the same thing. Until you can allow your own beauty, your own dignity, your own being, you cannot free another. So if I were giving people one instruction, I would say work on yourself. Have compassion for yourself. Allow yourself to be beautiful and all the rest will follow.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Breaking the Distraction Habit

One of the insidious things about the distraction habit is that we often don’t even realize it’s happening. It sneaks up on us, like old age, and before we know it we’re addicted and powerless. But we’re not really. The power we have is our awareness, and you can develop it right now.

—Leo Babauta, “Dropping Distraction”

Via Daily Dharma: Embrace the Mess

This is the gift of mothering as practice—a kind of inclusiveness that embraces chaos and grit and imperfection. It’s not based on control or keeping things tidy.

—Anne Cushman, “Mothering as Meditation Practice”

Via Daily Dharma: Finding Our Place

Right livelihood involves mindfulness of our place in the whole, and thus becomes the foundation for intelligent social activism and ecological responsibility.

—Krishnan Venkatesh, “Why Right Livelihood Isn’t Just About Your Day Job”

Via Daily Dharma: Everything As Practice

Failing to see everything as an opportunity for practice is a setup for frustration and disappointment, keeping us stuck where we are and limiting our possibilities for inner growth. The more we include in our practice, the more satisfying our life can be.

—Ezra Bayda, “Breaking Through”

Via Daily Dharma: Our Life’s Purpose

Life is not about discovering some hidden raison d’être but about creating one.

—Josh Korda, “Now What?”

Via Lion's Roar: Endless Moments of Insight by Mahasi Sayadaw

In this translated teaching, the late meditation master Mahasi Sayadaw
presents his step-by-step instructions for the practice of insight meditation. 

Seated Buddha. Courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery

Mahasi Sayadaw was one of the most learned and respected Burmese Buddhist monks of the last century, and his practice, writings, and teachings have had immense influence on Western practitioners of insight meditation.

For seven months in 1945, during the daily bombardment of the neighboring town of Shwebo, Mahasi Sayadaw wrote his great work, the Manual of Insight Meditation. In Theravada Buddhism, vipassana, or insight meditation, involves the ever-deepening intuitive understanding of the three universal characteristics of all experience: impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), and an impersonal, evanescent quality (anatta). In his Manual of Insight Meditation, Mahasi Sayadaw expounds in detail the doctrinal and practical aspects of the development of insight meditation.

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Via LionsRoar: “Real but Not True”: How These Four Words Can Help With Strong Emotions

Sometimes we think irrational things while the truth is right in front of us. When that happens, says Jeremy Mohler, four simple words can help bring us back to earth.

 

 Make the jump here

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 8, 2019 💌

We take birth as humans, because we have karma which is our clingings of mind. As the Tao says, ‘the truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing.’ So that we don’t hear the truth fully, we only hear the projections of our own desires. So again and again we make decisions that end up not being in the deepest harmony with the way of things. The art of growth has to do with how quickly you admit error and start making decisions that are arising out of the fullness of the wisdom of things.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Unconditional Awareness

Awareness is like a crystal or mirror that reflects different colors and angles: forms, sounds, and feelings are different aspects of awareness and exist within awareness. Or you might view awareness as a guesthouse. Every type of traveler passes through—sensations, emotions, everything. Every type is welcome. No exceptions.

—Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche with Helen Tworkov, “Leaving Everything Behind”

Via At The Vault Community and Support / FB

 

Via Daily Dharma: Breathing Into the Present

When we place our full attention on the breath, we pull ourselves out of the past, away from the future, and directly into the present moment.

—Lauren Krauze, “Breathe Easy”

Via Daily Dharma: The Path to Success

Do not fear failure. Whatever happened in the past is past; do not worry about it happening again. Before you meet with success, failure is natural and necessary.

—Master Sheng-Yen, “Being Natural”

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

~Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry was born in Henry County, Kentucky, in 1934. The author of more than 40 works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, Wendell Berry has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1962), the Vachel Lindsay Prize from Poetry (1962), a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (1965), a National Institute of Arts and Letters award for writing (1971), the Emily Clark Balch Prize from The Virginia Quarterly Review (1974), the American Academy of Arts and Letters Jean Stein Award (1987), a Lannan Foundation Award for Non-Fiction (1989), Membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers (1991), the Ingersoll Foundation’s T. S. Eliot Award (1994), the John Hay Award (1997), the Lyndhurst Prize (1997), and the Aitken-Taylor Award for Poetry from The Sewanee Review (1998). His books include the novel Hannah Coulter (2004), the essay collections Citizenship Papers (2005) and The Way of Ignorance (2006), and Given: Poems (2005), all available from Counterpoint. Berry’s latest works include The Mad Farmer Poems (2008) and Whitefoot (2009), which features illustrations by Davis Te Selle.
(“Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” from The Country of Marriage, copyright © 1973 by Wendell Berry)

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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 5, 2019 💌

If you follow your heart there is nothing to fear. As long as your actions are based on your pure seeking for God, you are safe. And any time you are unsure or frightened about your situation, there’s a beautiful and very powerful mantra: “The power of God is within me. The grace of God surrounds me,” which you can repeat to yourself. It will protect you.
Experience the power of it, it’s like a solid steel shaft that goes from above the top of your head down to the base of your being. Grace will surround you like a force field. Through an open heart one hears the universe.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Standing Up for Truth

Complacency is countered by integrity, which is an unswerving love of the truth and a willingness to live it.

—Interview with Jack Kornfield, “The Sure Heart’s Release”

Via Sojourners: Prayer of the Day: Thomas Merton's Prayer of Abandonment

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and that I think I am following your will does not mean I am actually doing so.

But I believe the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all I am doing. I hope I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Via Daily Dharma: Ultimate Acceptance

Buddhist practice is not an effort to confirm or validate a sense of what we are. It is about seeing and experiencing what is.

—Ken McLeod, “Taking Fear Apart”

Guided Mindfulness Meditation with Miles Kessler Sensei

Guided Mindfulness Meditation with Miles Kessler Sensei from Eagle de Botton on Vimeo.

A simple, very powerful, 20 minutes guided Mindfulness Meditation with Dharma teacher and Aikido Sensei Miles Kessler. After a 90 second description you will be guided by Miles into a 20 minutes, easy to follow, Mindfulness Meditation session.

Note that this guided meditation was recorded outdoor, by the lake side of Zurich, Switzerland. You are going to hear the sound of the nature, including sounds made by human...:) Let it be!

Meditation make it possible to experience the deepest part of ourselves. Only then we are able to engage in life beyond the narcissistic self, and be fully functional human beings, creating a better future for us all. (As add-on "side effects", meditation is also know, and proved scientifically, to improve our mental and physical health, and make us feel a lot happier...:).

So, find yourself a quit place, sit in a comfortable position, and... follow the instructions.

This video clip is an Eagle de Botton - Good Reality Conscious Service for awakenedTV and TAC.fm (The Awakened Campaign). awakenedTV.com is a free video channel, sponsored by IntegralAffiliate.com

Via Daily Dharma: The Greatest Pursuit

When you pursue awakening, it’s not going to lead to disappointment. Quite the contrary, it goes wildly beyond your expectations, wildly beyond your hopes.

—Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “Power of Conviction”

OM Chanting + Tibetan Singing Bowls Meditation @ 432Hz | 1 Hour Version

AUM CHANTING ~ OM at 396 Hz | Universal Mantra ➤ Dissolves Negativity, Removes Fear

Via Tricycle: RAIN - Getting started on a spiritual path takes guts.

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REPEAT - Via Buddhist Cheat Sheet 2.0 (minimal edition)

Via Daily Dharma: Understanding with Mind and Body

To really understand the meaning of life, we have to go beyond thinking and experience the vast scale of life directly, with our own body and mind.

—Dainin Katagiri Roshi, “You Are Already Here”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 1, 2019 💌

When you are in the presence of unconditional love, that is the optimum environment for your heart to open, because you feel safe, because you realize nobody wants anything from you. The minute that heart opens, you are once again letting in the flow. And that flow is where you experience God. 

- Ram Dass -

Via New Yorker:

Via Daily Dharma: Just Listen

The best way to deal with excessive thinking is to just listen to it, to listen to the mind. Listening is much more effective than trying to stop thought or cut it off.

—Ajahn Amaro, “Thoughts Like Dreams”

Click here

Protesting Methodist LGBTQ policy, confirmation class takes a pass

 

and here...

Entire Methodist confirmation class declines to become members over anti-LGBTQ policies

Via FB:

Via Daily Dharma: Balancing Our Lives

There has to be breathing in as well as breathing out. We need to have both the active and the contemplative. We need time to just be with ourselves, and to become genuinely centered, when the mind can just be quiet.

—Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, “Three Kinds of Laziness”

Via NYT: How Gay Are You? A new film explores the many shades of human sexuality.

On a scale of one to 10, with one being “completely straight” and 10 being “completely gay,” what number are you?

Make the jump here to read the full article

Via Daily Dharma: Joyful Optimism

Buddhism is optimistic, joyful with the possibility of our liberation. We can find harmful tendencies in ourselves, begin to free ourselves from our conditioned responses, guilt, and grief. Individuals do this; communities do this; religions and nations can do this.

—Sallie Tisdale, “Lost Stories”

God loves all the people - April 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Knowing Our Mind

Don’t feel disturbed by the thinking mind. You are not practicing to prevent thinking, but rather to recognize and acknowledge thinking whenever it arises.

—Sayadaw U Tejaniya, “Observing Minds Want to Know”

Via Daily Dharma: Freshness in Every Moment

One of the hardest things to remember about practice is that we’ve truly never experienced this moment before.

—Alex Tzelnic, “How to Resist the Comfort of Repetition”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - April 28, 2019 💌

Don’t get caught in righteousness, don’t get caught in helping somebody. It doesn’t mean don’t help them, just don’t get caught in it… If you really want to help somebody, instead of just ripping off the experience of helping them for yourself, give up helping anybody. And then just be with them and see what happens.

- Ram Dass -

Via JustaBahai: R.I.P. My Friend

Sonja wrote:

April 26, 2019

My friend Lucas Lucas (17 years) started communicating with me in 2014 because of our common interest in Esperanto. He was living and studying in Brazil and had declared as a Bahai 3 months earlier through one of his professors who is a

Bahai. Upon learning that my main concern in the Bahai community was for the wellbeing of gay and lesbian Bahais, his response was: 

“Really?? This is new to me.”

 

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Via Daily Dharma: Wise Emotion

We find the antidotes to our most painful states of mind by leaning directly into the emotion itself. Our emotions are full of wisdom. They are the keys for deepening our practice and our relationships with our world.

—Judith Simmer-Brown, “Transforming the Green-Ey’d Monster”

Via Daily Dharma: Justifying Ends and Means

In the Buddha’s teachings, the end and the means must share a similar voice; there has to be constructive engagement from the beginning. Finding ways to engage in direct communication and bring people together is both the process and the resolution.

—Christopher Titmuss, “Rising to the Challenge: A Step Toward Peace”

Via Betty Bowers / FB:

Via Daily Dharma: Return Again

Train to return to attention whenever you become aware that you are lost. And then just do it. Place attention and rest. Return and rest. Again and again.

—Ken McLeod, “Forget About Consistency”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - April 24, 2019 💌

The Chinese philosopher, Chung Tsu, said, “Know the clear, but remain in the tarnished.” Stay in the marketplace, but keep God there too. Remember—serve, love, remember. You’ve got to be in the marketplace and remember.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: A Joyful Mind

When our mind is undisturbed by any concept that might arise, the natural joy and clarity of the mind will dawn.

—Ogyen Trinley Dorje, “Calm Abiding”