Via Daily Dharma: How Nature Grounds Us

When you are lost or caught up in an emotional storm or contracted in self-centeredness or plagued by obsessive thoughts, notice what happens when you step outside or go for a walk and pay attention to the sky, the air, the light, the movement of wind, the feel of grass under your feet.

—Mark Coleman, “A Breath of Fresh Air”

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Various Buddha pics

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Via Daily Dharma: The Magic of Opening Up

When we can open to all parts of ourselves and to others in the world, something quite extraordinary happens. We begin to connect with one another.

—Joseph Goldstein, “Heart Touching Heart”

Via Daily Dharma: How Can the Buddha Inspire Us?

The Buddha vowed to discover the end of suffering, and by his own efforts achieved enlightenment. He then spent the rest of his life sharing his realizations with others. We can draw inspiration from this person, a human being like ourselves.

—Beth Roth, “Family Dharma: Taking Refuge (On the Wings of Angels)”

Via Daily Dharma: Dusting off the Glass

This is what our Zen practice is about—being honest about our prejudices, taking note of our internal stickiness, confronting our conditioning, and uncovering an original and basic goodness that, when dusted off, enables us to actually see ourselves in another.

—Cassandra Moore, “Dinner at Pete’s”

Via LionsRoar / The Life-Changing Words of Mary Oliver

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
this grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

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Via LionsRoar: How to Practice Hugging Meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh

In my hermitage I have planted beautiful trees. When I do walking meditation, I often stop and hug one of the trees, breathing in and out. It’s very nourishing. The tree gives me strength, and it always seems to me that the tree responds to my hugging and breathing.

A tree is always available, but I’m not so sure about a person! Often, we’re not really there with the people we love. We get caught up in other things, like our work or the news on TV. Hugging meditation is a practice of awareness. If we’re not available, how can we hug someone? We return to ourselves to become totally present and available for the other person. If hugging isn’t done in this spirit, it’s only a ritual without content. When we’re mindful and present, hugging has a deep power to heal, transform, and bring reconciliation.

When we hug, our hearts connect and we know that we are not separate beings.

We may practice hugging meditation with a friend, our child, a parent, our partner, or a tree. The hugging can be very deep. Life is there. Happiness is there. 

Sometimes the hugging is not very deep and the hugger only pretends to be there, perhaps by patting you on the back—I have some experience of this! When someone hugs you with all their heart and presence, you feel it. When someone takes your hands in mindfulness, with their presence, their concern, you feel it. So hug like that—make life real and deep. It will heal both of you.

Hugging meditation is something I invented. In 1966, a friend drove me to the Atlanta airport, and when we were saying goodbye, she asked, “Is it all right to hug a Buddhist monk?” In my country, we are not used to expressing ourselves this way in public. But I thought, “I am a Zen teacher. It shouldn’t be a problem for me to do this.” So, I said, “Why not?” and she hugged me, but I was rather stiff. Later, on the plane, I decided that if I wanted to work with friends in the West, I would have to learn the culture of the West. That is why I invented hugging meditation.

Hugging in public is a Western practice. Meditation, conscious breathing, is an Eastern practice. The two come together in hugging meditation. I think it’s a good combination. For Buddhist practice to be rooted in the West, new dharma doors should be opened. I think hugging meditation can be considered one of these doors. The practice of mindful hugging has helped so many people to reconcile with each other. When we hug, our hearts connect and we know that we are not separate beings.

It’s a pleasure to hug someone we love. But don’t think it’s something easy. 

Maybe we want to hug the other person, but they aren’t available—they’re caught in their anger, worries, or projects. Hugging is a deep practice and both people need to be completely present to do it correctly. That’s why it’s not always easy. So, we have to learn how.

Read the rest of the article and more here

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - August 14, 2019 💌

In yoga, one of the methods is called 'contentment'. That’s not a goal, that’s a method.
I can be content this moment, and the next moment I’m moving toward something else. When I am here I am content, when I am here I am content, when I am here I am content. So even though you are going to change something the next minute, that doesn’t mean you change it out of discontent. It changes because it changes.
That is the basis that you do everything in yoga.

-  Ram Dass  -

Via Daily Dharma: How We Arrive at Our Views

Once we perceive, we habitually jump to thoughts and feelings about what is being perceived. These thoughts and feelings, rooted in past experiences and conditioning, then influence the mood of our mind. When perception, thoughts, and feelings are repeated or imprinted through experiences, they solidify into view or belief.

—Ruth King, “Mindful of Race”

Via AHHO 333 / FB:

Si te molesta el calor, planta un árbol.
Si te molesta el agua, planta un árbol.
Si te gustan las frutas, planta un árbol.
Si te gustan las aves, planta un árbol.
Y si te gusta la vida, planta muchos árboles.

Via Daily Dharma: Face What’s to Come

We should not be passive about death. We should not just procrastinate or assume that we have time. That will not help. It’s unavoidable, so bring it in front of us and think about it. Doing so can improve our life.

—Trungram Gyalwa Rinpoche, “Every Day Is a Bonus”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - August 11, 2019 💌

The three levels of compassionate action that I see are: You do compassionate action as best you can as an exercise on yourself to come closer to God, to spirit, to awareness, to One.
Next is you start to appreciate that you’re a part of something larger than yourself and you are an instrument of God. No longer are you doing it to get there, you’re now doing it as an instrument. 

And third is where you lose self-consciousness and you are God manifest. You’re part of the hand of God. Then you’re not doing anything. It’s just God manifest.
How do you get to that third one? By honoring others and being patient.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Discovering True Clarity

In consistent practice you begin to see that your initial ideas about it were just that: ideas. It can be hard to let go of the dream, of the seductive promise of ease and clarity. But in dropping those ideas, you might find yourself opening to the ease of the breath rising and falling, a clarity felt, not imagined.

—Alex Tzelnic, “Dreaming Up, And Revising, Our Buddhist Practice”

Via Lionsroar: How should Buddhists respond to the gun violence epidemic?

After December, 2015’s mass-shooting in San Bernadino, Zen teacher Lewis Richmond had to wonder: What is an appropriate or effective response as a Buddhist?

 

Since such events evoke strong visceral emotions, including fear, I thought it might be helpful to report some facts about gun violence in America I have gleaned from my recent readings. Some of these are rather counterintuitive. 

For example, in the last 30 years the overall incidence of gun violence has dropped rather dramatically. Yes, it’s true. In fact, serious crime of all types dropped in that period too, perhaps due to the decline in drug related violence. Another fact: since 9/11, there have been about 100 deaths in America from terrorist violence; during that same period, overall deaths from guns (which include many incidents of suicides and domestic violence) exceeds deaths from the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars combined. Every day, every week, large numbers of Americans are killed by guns, a situation that is unique in the developed world.

Since the subject of gun control has been much in the air and in the news, here is another counterintuitive fact: the ratio of gun-owning households has declined significantly in the last 20 years, while the overall number of guns in America (around 300 million now) has gone up markedly in the same period. This means that people who own guns do not own just one; they own 5, 10, 20, 100—or in one recent case, 5000. There are also differences of geography and ethnicity. Per capita household ownership of guns is highest in the South, lowest in the Pacific seaboard and the Northeast.  Whites own substantially more guns per capita than people of color such as Latinos, Asians and African-Americans. Even if strict gun control laws were passed tomorrow, unless we were actually willing to confiscate most guns (as Australia did after a mass shooting there), those 300 million guns would still be out there. This near-infinite supply of firearms is like a dangerous horse who left the barn a long time ago.  Good luck trying to get the horse back in the barn.

I don’t think this means we should just meditate, say the loving-kindness prayer, and so on. I think our response needs to be more muscular and practical than that. When someone is firing randomly into a crowd with a semi-automatic rifle, the loving-kindness prayer is not going to help.

I regret that I cannot offer citations for all these facts; I did not realize I was going to be writing a piece like this at the time I read them. I know my sources were all reputable news sites, and that their data came largely from the FBI database of crime statistics. I report all of this because, among other things, Buddhism is based on the observation of how things actually are.

So I feel our response as Buddhists should also be based on facts rather than emotion. The first and foremost precept of Buddhism is ahimsa—non-violence, non-harm, no unnecessary harm. This is true of all sects and traditions of Buddhism past and present. I feel strongly that as Buddhists we should represent our non-harm precept in any way we can, and be prepared to stand up for it. I don’t think this means we should just meditate, say the loving-kindness prayer, and so on. I think our response needs to be more muscular and practical than that. When someone is firing randomly into a crowd with a semi-automatic rifle, the loving-kindness prayer is not going to help. We should also remember the first noble truth of Buddhism,  that human existence is marked by suffering. This doesn’t just mean that people suffer now and then, it means that because of our human tendency to yield to the three “poisons” of greed, anger, and confusion, human beings are constantly creating wars, injustice, exploitation, cruelty, and many forms of unimaginable suffering. We always have and to some extent always will. Wars are so terrible that we easily arrange to forget them. But they are horrible—always.  

My teacher Suzuki Roshi lived through the worst of World War II in Japan (he was not drafted into the Army and lived out the war in his home temple, probably performing a lot of funerals for young men). When asked about the war, he just said, “My whole country went crazy.”

It may seem as though we are living in a particularly violent historical time, but the psychologist and best-selling author Steven Pinker has researched this point exhaustively, and his conclusion is that the incidence of war, violence, and cruelty has been steadily decreasing over the last 1000 years.  Yes, from his point of view we are actually making progress, snail-like though it may seem. That seems to me to be a useful and little-remarked-upon perspective.

Mak the jump here to read the full article or more

Via Daily Dharma: Self-Care Helps You Help Others

Thinking of yourself first, when your goal is to help others, might seem counterintuitive, but in fact it is the only way it can work. In the end, the notion of putting oneself last is really an inside-out form of self-cherishing. That’s why during pre-flight instructions the flight attendant says to put on your own oxygen mask first.

—Cyndi Lee, “May I Be Happy”

Via Daily Dharma: Mindfully Open Your Heart

With regular mindfulness practice… we witness how we close our hearts to other human beings. Once we see this clearly, we can practice opening our hearts to everyone, including ourselves.

—Ronya Fakhoury Banks, “How Buddhism Helped Me Embrace My Palestinian Heritage”

Via Kick the Ick / FB

"Some words of wisdom for those of us that may be looking at the moment, or even those who have 'given up', 'giving up' doesn't make much sense, the universe is love, go find it rather than hoping it finds you!"

Via Daily Dharma: Permission to Move Forward

May we know we’ve been abandoned by the past, that the past has left us and moved on. So too have previous versions of our bodies left us, so too have previous iterations of the earth and its ecology left us.

—Leora Fridman, “Notes on Abandon”

Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal, Jesse Paris Smith - "Lotus Born, No Need to Fear"

Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal, Jesse Paris Smith perform "Lotus Born, No Need to Fear" off 'Songs from the Bardo', available 9/27/2019 and available for pre-order: https://orcd.co/songsfromthebardo

Via LGBTQ Nation: Anti-gay pastor quits Christianity, leaves wife & marches in Pride parade as atonement

Anti-gay pastor quits Christianity, leaves wife & marches in Pride parade as atonement

"I regret standing against marriage equality, for not affirming you and your place in the church. I hope you can forgive me."

Make the jump here to read the original and more

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Via Via / Words of Wisdom - August 7, 2019 💌

Wisdom and knowledge are two entirely different matters. Knowledge is very finite. The collection of objective knowledge is like a drop in the bucket compared to what it is to be wise.

Being wise is when you get out of the time-space locus that says, ‘I am me who knows.’ And then you merge with that which is around you. You become wisdom.

When you become wisdom, you don’t know you know. You gave that one up. But you are wise. Then whatever response comes out of you is the optimum response. At the same time nothing is happening inside you at all.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The Benefits of the Unfamiliar

A sense of defamiliarization is a recurring feature of spiritual life, and it can come to us in many ways—in art, in travel, in practice. However it comes, it offers an opportunity for openness and intimacy, both, if one can allow oneself to fall into them.

—Henry Shukman, “Far from Home”

Via Daily Dharma: The Circle of Attention

What gets our attention in the present is colored by our impulses and innate disposition—our habits of thought developed in the past.

—Sandra Weinberg, “Eating and the Wheel of Life”

Via Daily Dharma: When Transformation Comes

Transformation is not something you do but something that happens when the conditions are right.

—Ken McLeod, “Anger”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - August 4, 2019 💌

The technique of the witness is to merely sit with the fear and be aware of it before it becomes so consuming that there’s no space left. The image I usually use is that of a picture frame and a painting of a gray cloud against a blue sky. But the picture frame is a little too small. So you bend the canvas around to frame it. But in doing so you lost all the blue sky. So you end up with just a framed gray cloud. It fills the entire frame.
So when you say, 'I’m afraid,' or, 'I’m depressed,' if you enlarged the frame so that just a little blue space shows, you would say, ‘ah, a cloud.’ That is what the witness is. The witness is that tiny little blue over in the corner that leads you to say, ‘ah, fear.’

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Expanding Your Net of Compassion

Not favoring any one thing over another allows you to center yourself within a boundless net of interconnection and to expand your circle of caring.

—Wendy Egyoku Nakao Roshi, “Hold to the Center!”

Via tricycle // Anger How to recognize it, work with it, and even find wisdom in it.

Anger is one of the densest forms of communication. It conveys more information, more quickly, than almost any other type of emotion.” This is how Charles Duhigg sums up a conversation he had with James Averill, professor emeritus of psychology at UMass, Amherst. Averill also noted that a bit of anger can quickly clear up unspoken resentments, unacknowledged boundary violations, and unaddressed imbalances. On the other hand, in Buddhism anger is often regarded as taboo, an emotional reaction to be avoided as much as possible. The 8th-century monk-scholar Shantideva, in The Way of the Bodhisattva, writes that a single moment of anger destroys the good karma built up over a thousand eons. These are two very different views, but both agree that anger is very powerful.

Is there a way to direct the energy, clarity, and power of anger to spiritual or mystical ends? Is it possible to find the peace and clarity of awareness in the experience of anger? Is it possible to use anger to put ourselves in other people’s shoes and so undermine the tendency to treat ourselves as special? Is it possible to step out of the world of conflict and opposition that anger projects? And is it possible to discover the groundlessness of experience in an emotional reaction as intense and potentially destructive as anger? Although I cannot speak for other Buddhist traditions, in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the answer to all these questions is an unambiguous “yes.”

For instance, Jan Willis, professor emeritus at Wesleyan, described an occasion when she was furiously angry while at Lama Yeshe’s center in Nepal. She remembers standing outside the temple fuming at something or other. Lama Yeshe crept up beside her and whispered in her ear, “Buddha mind very angry today.” Her mind stopped. The mind that is angry is the same as the mind of buddha? She had never considered that possibility. It changed everything. 

Anger was no longer a force or demon that took you over. It became, instead, a movement in mind, a mind as clear and empty as the sky.

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Via Daily Dharma: Detaching from Attachment

Emptiness doesn’t mean that the mind is annihilated. All that’s annihilated is clinging and attachment. What you have to do is to see what emptiness is like as it actually appears and then not latch onto it.

—Upasika Kee Nanayon, “A Glob of Tar”

Via a FB chat: Bahais talk about inclusion, even though they tend to practise varying levels of exclusion...

Back in 1985, Joseph Campbell said:

"Now brotherhood, in most of the myths I know of, is confined to a bounded community. In bounded communities, aggression is projected outward. For example, the ten commandments say, “Thou shalt not kill.” Then the next chapter says, “Go into Canaan and kill everybody in it.” That is a bounded field. The myths of participation and love pertain only to the in-group, and the out-group is totally other."

https://www.academia.edu/8513271/The_power_of_myth_-_joseph_campbell

In following up the concept of bounded communities, I discovered a journal article that looks at the extent to which  Bahais are a bounded community, and how that plays out -- given the challenge to boundedness that the Internet poses.

"...there are some aspects that the American Bahá’ís must reject withregard to blogging, as outlined by the Bahá’í Internet Agency. One of the aspects discouraged for practising Bahá’ís is the use of confrontational and negative discussion threads on the Internet. This includes any blog post that is seen to undermine or challenge Bahá’í policies or beliefs, which is to be ignored/deleted. If the blogger who makes negative claims happens to be a practising Bahá’í, he/she can be labelled as a covenant-breaker and shunned by the community."

http://bahai-library.com/campbell_fulton_bahai_internet

Via Daily Dharma: How to Be Your Brightest Self

What is the light? You are the light, with your ability to be conscious and mindful, and to act with wisdom and foresight. To serve the light means to show up—by which I mean, to be present—for yourself, as your best and highest self, and to show up for others in your life as well.

—Dawa Tarchin Phillips, “What to Do When You Don’t Know What’s Next”

Via Daily Dharma: Plant Yourself in Your Surroundings

Taking refuge is not some kind of evasion or escape, but is the planting of our “selves” deeply in the nature of what surrounds us. We lodge ourselves in the deep waves and in the shallow pools, in the crests and depressions of our lives. Sometimes, even wreckage can make a temporary resting place.

—Gary Thorp, “Shelter from the Storm”

Queer Eye's Fab Five's Most Embarrassing Hair and Fashion Mistakes

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - July 31, 2019 💌

The final awakening is the embracing of the darkness into the light. That means embracing our humanity as well as our divinity. We go from being born into our humanity, to sleep walking for a long time, until we finally awaken and begin to taste our divinity. And then want to finally get free.

We see that as long as we grab at our divinity and push away our humanity we aren’t free. If you want to be free, you can’t push away anything. You have to embrace it all. It’s all God.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Delight in Unexpected Joys

Joy seems to come unbidden, just erupting at the oddest times. It isn’t possible to plan for joy, yet when it comes, it is an unmistakable overflowing of feelings of delight in the world and its mysteries.

—Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara, “Simple Joy”

Wipe Out All the Negative Energy(417Hz)┇Erase Subconscious Negative Patterns Music

From my Journal: Bombshell...

Via MyGWork: How LGBT+ Employees Can Prepare for Overseas Work Assignments

In more than half the world LGBT+ people are not protected from discrimination by workplace laws. 70 countries still criminalise homosexuality – 10 with the death penalty – while only 28 recognise same-sex marriage. If you work for a multinational corporation and are given the opportunity for an overseas assignment or relocation these are unfortunately some of the considerations you will have to have if you are LGBT+. Will this new country be safe for me? Will my partner be able to obtain a spousal visa? Will I be protected from discrimination? Will I be lonely or ostracised because of my LGBT+ identity? 

Some of the most common regions large companies send their employees to are less than favourable to LGBT+ people. In Hong Kong 75 percent of gay people are closeted at work, in Singapore it’s 72 percent, in Russia that number jumps to 80 percent.

International assignments are only becoming more common in the corporate world. They have increased by more than 25 percent since the year 2000 and are expected to increase to 50 percent by next year. It is now commonplace that as part of your career you will be sent overseas. Moving between countries with vastly different legal and social systems is part of our increasingly globalised world. It can promote fantastic new business and personal opportunities, and LGBT+ people should not be left behind.

Make the jump here to read the full article and more

Via Daily Dharma: Choose Your Response

One of the finest results of meditation is the increased gap between stimulus and response. That gap before I react gives me time to notice my habitual patterns and sometimes even decide whether to stay a slave to them or break loose.

—Brent R. Oliver, “I Take Refuge in the Humor”

Via Daily Dharma: A World of Compassion

Instead of looking at others, telling yourself your usual story about who people are, visualize every person you see as the Bodhisattva of Compassion, the very embodiment of compassion. Deeply doing this, there’s no way you can feel negative toward them.

—Lama Yeshe, “Visualizations”

Via Tricycle: Happiness is Found Within

Happiness is Found Within

Download Transcript It has been edited for clarity.

 

Today’s divisive political culture can bring out our worst impulses, but with Tibetan Buddhist methods of fostering compassion, we can clear the mind of negativity and connect with our intrinsic qualities of clarity and warmth. Dungse Jampal Norbu, a teacher in the Mangala Shri Bhuti sangha and the son of Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche and Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel, guides us through practices to cool off anger and take a walk in other’s shoes. 

Make the jump here to listen

Via Daily Dharma: Planting Seeds for the Future

In each moment our experience is determined to a great extent by seeds from the past that are bearing fruit right now. In each moment, too, we can plant a seed intentionally that will create fruit in the future.

—Ben Connelly, “Cleaning Out the Storehouse”

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

Sometimes you experience a quality of dying or emptiness about life. It’s scary because you built your whole game up — you saved all your money to buy a Mercedes-Benz. Then you buy a Mercedes-Benz and after about a week it’s just another car. How can it be just another car when you spent years buying a Mercedes-Benz? There's a real horror when meaningful stuff becoming meaningless — and you are awakening.

-Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: What Happens When We Stay Present During Terrible Times?

The hard truth is, terrible things happen in life that we can’t control, and somehow we do bear them. We bear witness to them. When we do so with the fullness of our bodies, minds, and hearts, often a loving action emerges.

—Frank Ostaseski, “Washing My Boy’s Body”