Via Daily Dharma: Return to Kindness

We can use our “little deaths”—those moments when we see that we’re being petty, unkind, or unforgiving—to remind us that the most important thing is to live from the gratitude and kindness of the awakening heart.

—Ezra Bayda, “The Sweet Pain of Remorse”

Matthew Cooke / A Message to Republicans

 

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Via Daily Dharma: Every Moment Deserves Fascination

You don’t need to go bird-watching or visit a rose garden to find reality absorbing. Every moment deserves our full attention and with practice, every moment can command it.

—Dan Zigmond, “Resisting the Attention Economy”

Dharma instructor Lama Rod Owens joins Francesca Maximé for a conversation around the importance of showing up to difficult experiences and holding our love and trauma in balance.

Considered one of the leaders of the next generation of Dharma teachers, Lama Rod Owens has a blend of formal Buddhist training in the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism and life experience that gives him a unique ability to understand, relate and engage in a way that’s spacious and sincere. He invites you into the cross-sections of his life as a Black, queer male, born and raised in the South and heavily influenced by the church and its community. Learn more about Lama Rod’s offerings and upcoming teaching events at lamarod.com.

The Dharma of Homecoming

Lama Rod shares the work he has been doing sharing contemplative practices of healing that focus on the wounds caused by racism, marginalization, and patriarchy. He offers insight around how the act of creating a home can be a radically healing act.

“I think it is a radical act – a revolutionary act – to make a home in the world; particularly if you have felt that the world has not ever been home for you. I love offering these teachings for people of color and for people who experience marginalization.” –  Lama Rod Owens

Make the jump here to listen to the podcast

Via FB: I don’t care how spiritual you are

"I don’t care how spiritual you are. How long you can melt in the sweat lodge. How many peyote journeys that have blown your mind, or how well you can hold crow pose. Honestly. I don’t. I don’t care what planets fall in what houses on your birth chart, how many crystals you have or how vegan your diet is.

I want to know how human you are. Can you sit at the feet of the dying despite the discomfort? Can you be with your grief, or mine, without trying to advise, fix or maintain it?  I want to know that you can show up at the table no matter how shiny, chakra- aligned or complete you are or not. Can you hold loving space for your beloved in the depths of your own healing without trying to be big? 

It doesn’t flatter me how many online healing trainings you have, that you live in the desert or in a log cabin, or that you’ve mastered the art of tantra.

What turns me on is busy hands. Planting roots. That despite how tired you are, you make that phone call, you board that plane, you love your children, you feed your family.

I have no interest in how well you can ascend to 5D, astral travel or have out of body sex. I want to see how beautifully you integrate into ordinary reality with your unique magic, how you find beauty and gratitude in what’s surrounding you, and how present you can be in your relationships.

I want to know that you can show up and do the hard and holy things on this gorgeously messy Earth. I want to see that you can be sincere, grounded and compassionate as equally as you are empowered, fiery and magnetic. I want to know that even during your achievements, you can step back and be humble enough to still be a student. 

What’s beautiful and sexy and authentic is how well you can continue to celebrate others no matter how advanced you’ve become. What’s truly flattering is how much you can give despite how full you’ve made yourself. What’s honestly valuable is how fucking better of a human you can be, in a world that is high off of spiritual materialism and jumping the next scapegoat for “freedom.”

 

At the end of the day I don’t care how brave you are. How productive, how popular, how enlightened you are. At the end of the day, I want to know that you were kind. That you were real. I want to know that you can step down from the pedestal from time to time to kiss the earth and let your hair get dirty and your feet get muddy and join the dance with us all."

-A modern day call to shifting from spiritual consumerism to returning to human kind... heart inspired by Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s, The Invitation."

by Taylor Rose Godfrey

Thanks to Anna Mae Swigert

Via Daily Dharma: Converting Anger for a Positive Result

Through chanting we’re able to elevate the condition of Buddha in our lives, … so that even if we are in the world of anger, we have the ability, through our practice, to access Buddha rather than anger and even to turn the anger from something negative into something that can be used for a positive result.

—Myokei Caine-Barrett, “Living the Lotus Sutra”

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation / Words of Wisdom - February 2, 2020 💌

People ask me if I believe there is continuity after death. I say that I don't believe it - it just is. This offends my scientific friends to no end. But belief is something you hold with your intellect, and for me, this goes way beyond my intellect.
The Bhagavad Gita also tells us, "As the Spirit of our mortal body wanders on in childhood and youth and old age, the Spirit wanders on to a new body: of this, the sage has no doubts." As Krishna says, "Because we all have been for all time... And we all shall be for all time, forever and ever.

- Ram Dass -

Via Tmblr

Via Daily Dharma: How Buddhism Transforms Us

Buddhism aims at nothing less than the complete transformation of our ordinary and limited perception of who we are as human beings.

—Jan Willis, “A Vision of What Could Be”

Carole King - One (2018)

Carole King comes out of retirement to release anti-Trump song

 

One - Words and Music by Carole King

Poetic phrases come to mind

Whenever I find injustice being done

And I wonder, what am I gonna do

What am I gonna do

What can one do except be one

Talking to two, touching three, growing to four million

Each of us is one

All of us are one

Open your heart and let the love come shining through

And you will do what you need to do

To know just where the other you is coming from

We are one It just amazes me that I can be

Part of the energy it takes to serve each other

And I wonder, what am I gonna do

What am I gonna do

What will we do

We’re gonna run

Reach for the sun

Come together as one

Show ‘em how it’s done

At the end of the day we’ll be able to say Love won.

© 1977 Elorac Music (ASCAP) New lyrics © 2018

Via Daily Dharma: When Your Mind Changes, the World Changes

To become a different kind of person is to experience the world in a different way. When your mind changes, the world changes. And when we respond differently to the world, the world responds differently to us.

—David Loy, “Rethinking Karma”

Ricky Martin - Tiburones (Official Video)

Use riches in a constructive way ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Use riches in a constructive way ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche https://justdharma.com/s/tjsd1  

 It is said that, "the richer people get, the more miserly they are," and this saying is often true. Avarice makes you unhappy. It exposes you to rebirth in the florin of tortured spirits. Rather than store useless riches, use them in a constructive way. Be generous toward those in need, build stupas, and make offerings to the Three Jewels. The more generous you are, the more you will prosper. Generosity should always be exercised impartially toward all - the poor, the sick, the aged, the traveler from afar - without discrimination between friend and stranger, between those on whom we count and those from whom we can expect nothing. In giving, be free of ostentation, of favoritism, and of any expectation of reward  – Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche  from the book "The Hundred Verses of Advice: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on What Matters Most" ISBN: 978-1590303412  -  https://amzn.to/14ZcUzl  Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche on the web: http://shechen.org  Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche biography: http://shechen.org/spiritual-development/teachers/dilgo-khyentse-rinpoche/

Via Daily Dharma: The Source of Forgiveness

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.

—Mark Epstein, “Beyond Blame”

Via TRICYCLE TALKS: The Problems With ‘Buddhist Exceptionalism

 

Each month, the Tricycle Talks podcast features leading voices and important conversations from across the contemporary Buddhist world.

This month, Tricycle editor and publisher James Shaheen sits down with philosopher Evan Thompson to discuss his critique of what he calls “Buddhist exceptionalism”: The idea, widespread among modern practitioners, that Buddhism holds a unique place above other religions.

That shows up in statements like “Buddhism is the most scientific of all religions” and “Buddhism isn’t a religion, it’s a ‘science of the mind.’” In his new book Why I’m Not A Buddhist, Thompson challenges the popular belief that science and Buddhism are uniquely compatible—and that Buddhism’s relationship with science gives it a kind of superior status. Instead, Thompson argues that Buddhism is fundamentally a religion, and in order to understand it properly, we have to think of it that way.

You can listen to new and past episodes of Tricycle Talks on the Tricycle website, iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and iHeartRadio.

Via Daily Dharma: The Power of Simple Acts

Simply by turning on the light, you can instantly destroy the darkness. Likewise, even a rather simple analysis of ego-clinging and afflictive emotions can make them collapse.

—Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, “An Investigation of the Mind”

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation / Words of Wisdom - January 29, 2020 💌

You and I are the force for transformation in the world. We are the the consciousness that will define the nature of the reality we are moving into. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Be Grateful for Nothing

Here’s our challenge: to allow our hearts and minds to be touched by gratitude without the presence of a hurricane. To appreciate life and the grace by which we wake up each day and go to sleep in safety.

—Gregg Krech, “Grateful for Nothing”

Now there is a term for it!

Now there is a term for it! When they removed my rights when I married the love of my Life I Meghan Markled myself the hell outa there...

Noteworthy via Gay Wisdom / White Crane Institute

2018 -

Today is INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY

Why today? Well on this date in 1945 the Soviet Red Army arrived at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland and liberated the survivors.

This is the day we remember the genocide of approximately 11 to 17 million people by the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi) regime in Germany led by Adolf Hitler during World War II. This figure includes the deliberate extermination of six million European Jews, and the Nazi's systematic murder of Roma; Soviet civilians, Soviet prisoners of war; ethnic Poles; the disabled; Homosexual men; and political and religious opponents. Millions of lives taken by hatred and intolerance.

The term “holocaust” comes from the Greek holókaustos: hólos, "whole" and kaustós, "burnt".  It is also known as The Shoah.

The treatment and killings of the over 15,000 homosexual men is less known but we observe and remember them today. Between 1933-45, more than 100,000 men were arrested and registered by police as homosexuals ("Rosa Listen" or "Pink Lists"), and of these, some 50,000 were officially sentenced. Most of these men spent time in regular prisons, and an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 of the total sentenced were incarcerated in concentration camps. It is unclear how many of these 5,000 to 15,000 eventually perished in the concentration camps.

The leading scholar Ruediger Lautman however believes that the death rate in concentration camps of imprisoned homosexuals may have been as high as 60%. Homosexuals in camps were treated in an unusually cruel manner by their captors and were also persecuted by their fellow inmates. This was a factor in the relatively high death rate for homosexuals, compared to other "anti-social groups".

James D. Steakley writes that what mattered in Germany was criminal intent or character, rather than criminal acts, and the "gesundes Volksempfinden" ("healthy sensibility of the people") became the leading normative legal principle. In 1936, Himmler created the "Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion". Homosexuality was declared contrary to "wholesome popular sentiment," and homosexuals were consequently regarded as "defilers of German blood." The Gestapo raided gay bars, tracked individuals using the address books of those they arrested, used the subscription lists of gay magazines to find others. They encouraged people to report suspected homosexual behavior and to scrutinize the behavior of their neighbors.

Tens of thousands were convicted between 1933 and 1944 and sent to camps for "rehabilitation" where they were identified by yellow armbands and later pink triangles worn on the left side of the jacket and the right trouser leg, which singled them out for sexual abuse. Hundreds were castrated by court order. They were humiliated, tortured, used in hormone experiments conducted by SS doctors, and killed. Steakley writes that the full extent of Gay suffering was slow to emerge after the war. Many victims kept their stories to themselves because homosexuality remained criminalized in postwar Germany. Around two percent of German homosexuals were persecuted by Nazis.

More recently however German state television channel Deutsche Welle updated this figure to "almost 55,000" deaths following the study of documents from archives in East Germany that had been inaccessible to researchers for decades after the war.

After the war, the treatment of homosexuals in concentration camps went unacknowledged by most countries. Some that did escape were even re-arrested and imprisoned based on evidence found during the Nazi years. It was not until the 1980s that governments acknowledged this episode, and not until 2002 that the German government apologized to the Gay community.

---

Concentration camp prisoners with pink triangle marks

2018 -

THE PINK TRIANGLE: One of the oldest symbols of the modern Gay rights movement is the PINK TRIANGLE, which originated from the Nazi concentration camp badges that Homosexuals were required to wear on their clothing. It is estimated that as many as 220,000 gays and Lesbians perished alongside the 6,000,000 Jews whom the Nazis exterminated in their death camps during World War II as part of Hitler's so-called final solution. For this reason, the Pink Triangle is used both as an identification symbol and as a memento to remind both its wearers and the general public of the atrocities that Gays suffered under Nazi persecutors. ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) also adopted the inverted pink triangle to symbolize the "active fight back" against the disease "rather than a passive resignation to fate."

Via Daily Dharma: The Opportunities that Karma Presents

It is common to think of karma as a sort of fate to which we are subjected, but it is more central to the Buddha’s message that karma is the opportunity we have each moment to choose what sort of person we are to become next.

—Andrew Olendzki, “The Search for Meaning”

Via Daily Dharma: How to Respond Thoughtfully

By witnessing how we are, in our body, heart, and mind, we become armed with the necessary information needed to respond thoughtfully and with care.

—Jill Satterfield, “Meditation in Motion”

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation : Words of Wisdom - January 26, 2020 💌

If we can imagine a wheel whose rim is the cycle of births and deaths, all of the “stuff” of life, conditioned reality, and whose center is perfect flow, formless no-mind, the source, we’ve got one foot with most of our weight on the circumference of the wheel, and one foot tentatively on the center. That’s the beginning of awakening. And we come in, and we sit down and meditate, and suddenly there’s a moment when we feel the perfection of our being and our connection. Then our weight goes back on the outside of the wheel. Over and over and over, this happens.

Slowly, slowly the weight shifts. Then the weight shifts just enough so that there is a slight predominance on the center of the wheel, and we find that we naturally just want to sit down and be quiet, that we don’t have to say, “I’ve got to meditate now,” or “I’ve got to read a holy book,” or “I’ve got to turn off the television set,” or “I’ve got to do…” anything. It doesn’t become that kind of a discipline anymore. The balance has shifted. And we keep allowing our lives to become more and more simple, more and more harmonious. And less and less are we grabbing at this and pushing that away...

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Reforming Your Life

Envisioning death and rebirth serves to rehearse how the mind shapes embodiment and environment, awakening us to our ability to recreate our lives.

—Joseph Loizzo, “The Science of Enlightenment: The Buddha’s Answer to Darwin and God”

Via Daily Dharma: Attaining Lasting Happiness

One could spend years alone in a cave without really letting go of anything. The question is how best to attain the inner solitude that will bring lasting happiness.

—Pema Chödrön, “Cutting Ties: The Fruits of Solitude”

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Via Daily Dharma: What Is Absolute Truth?

Absolute truth is what is eternally true, now and forever, beyond any particular viewpoint or time frame. When we tap into absolute truth, we can recognize the divine beauty or larger perfection operating in the whole of reality.

—John Welwood, “The Psychology of Awakening”

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#lovingramdass Honoring Ram Dass – A Moment to Be Here Now

#lovingramdass

Via LionsRoar / Ram Dass lives on in collaborative album with East Forest

Musician East Forest’s collaborative album with the late spiritual teacher Ram Dass encompasses his lifetime of wisdom in 14 tracks, bringing his teachings to life after death.

In 2018, musician East Forest found himself in Maui, Hawaii, sitting in the upstairs study of spiritual teacher Ram Dass’s home — just the two of them sat in the room with microphones set to record.

“I realized that I’d made my way into what felt like the spiritual White House, and that it was no small feat,” he says.

As East Forest hit record, Ram Dass stared at him, awaiting a question. East Forest asked him about nature, and how we might use it to connect to ourselves in the high speed, the hyper-digitized world we live in.

Ram Dass paused, and thought for a while, staring out to the ocean and thumbing through his mala beads.

Nature embraces us, and we embrace nature
We are nature
We are the trees and the clouds and the waters
When you hug a tree, you’re hugging yourself

The responses became “Nature,” the first track of the East Forest’s album, Ram Dass.

Make the jump here to hear the  interview and more

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation / Words of Wisdom - January 22, 2020 💌

The key is that God, Guru and self are one.
The quickest way to get through your stuff is to learn how to listen inside. The inner guru is always there for you once you recognize it. You must honor your own path. You must be able to trust that there is a place in you that knows what is best. There is a tendency to look to others for guidance. Only you know what is suitable for you.
Trust your intuitive heart. The Quakers call it, "The still small voice within." When it speaks, listen. If it feels "right on" do it.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: How Delight Can Heal Us

Gladness and delight do not merely balance out negative tendencies, they actually heal the aversive mind.

—James Baraz, “Lighten Up!”

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Via Daily Dharma: Grounding Yourself with Breath

The circus of rage, superiority, and judgment is just another invitation to come back home and breathe.

—Tina Lear, “I Wanted to Watch Bill Cosby Suffer”

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Via Tricycle Dharma Talks: Digital Detox

Digital Detox: Reclaim Your Mind From Social Media Addiction

Bodhipaksa

 

The Social Media Sutra

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—these sites and other social media platforms can be emotional minefields, and they eat up far more time than many of us are OK with. Although the Buddha didn’t offer guidance on how to act mindfully on Facebook, he did outline five practices that can help us disengage from the compelling trains of thought that often dominate our use of social media. In this video, Bodhipaksa shows how these practices can help us to take control of our online impulses.

Bodhipaksa is a Buddhist author and teacher who was born in Scotland but now lives in New Hampshire. He is a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order and the author of This Difficult Thing of Being Human: The Art of Self-Compassion and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Buddha!: What Fake Buddha Quotes Can Teach Us About Buddhism. When not debunking Fake Buddha Quotes, he runs Wildmind (www.wildmind.org), a leading online meditation resource.

Make the jump here to listen to the Dharma Talk and more...



Daily Dharma: Freeing Ourselves from Ignorance

he buddhadharma is optimistic, because it says we all eventually will free ourselves from ignorance. And that liberation is very much within our creative control every minute of every day—your life is a work in progress.

—Interview with Charles Johnson by E. Ethelbert Miller, “Black Coffee Buddhism”

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Ram Dass Loving Awareness Meditation (20 Minutes)

Via Love Serve Remember Foundation / RamDass.org

Join us LIVE on Wednesday, January 22nd, at 8 pm EST for an online Moment to Be Here Now in honor of Ram Dass.

Following his death on December 22nd, the Love Serve Remember Foundation is honoring Ram Dass with a worldwide Moment to Be Here Now.

This will not only be a celebration of Ram Dass’s enormous heart and vast teachings but also an opportunity to gather together as a global community. The live online gathering will include:

• Opening comments and a reading from Mirabai Bush
• Silent reflection and a brief “loving awareness” meditation
• Chanting from Ram Dass’s long-time friend Krishna Das

Though Ram Dass has left his physical form, his legacy reverberates louder and brighter than ever before.

We hope everyone who has been touched by Ram Dass will join us to remember together and to help cultivate loving awareness for 2020 and beyond.

P.s. - We will send out a reminder on Wednesday a few hours before the event goes live at 8 pm EST. Or you can bookmark the link below. Click here to find your local time for the event.

Via Love Serve Remember Foundation / Words of Wisdom - January 19, 2020 💌

Mantra is a repeated phrase designed to keep your consciousness centered. It’s a perspective giving device. It’s adding a third component to every relationship you have with objects in the universe. This could be OM, this could be the sun, this could be Buddha consciousness, this could be called the witness. It’s a technique of adding a third component in order to get free of the identification with either of the other two.
You can use the mantra to find a center in yourself and to keep that third component going. Which allows you to watch your own drama all day long. It’s all a vehicle, and it’s going to have to go. But mantra is a useful vehicle...

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: What Is Boundless Joy?

Boundless joy, not to be mistaken for frenzied exultation, is delight in others’ happiness. It banishes jealousy and stabilizes our capacity for engagement.

—Anne C. Klein, “The Four Immeasurables”

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Via Daily Dharma: Spreading Support

Because you recognize that people need support in order to practice the dharma, you can aspire to provide for others the same kind of support system that you yourself have benefited from.

—Judy Lief, “Train Your Mind: Take on the Three Principle Causes”

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Via Daily Dharma: Train Your Brain

With dedication, we can slowly build healthy mental tendencies, for awareness and wisdom, for kindness and compassion. That’s why we practice.

—Wendy Hasenkamp, “Brain Karma”

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Via FB: The Gay Agenda

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Via Tricycle / What’s in a Word? Dharma

Understanding the word dharma can be challenging, as it means different things in different contexts. Buddhist scholar Andrew Olendzki breaks down what you need to know.

Make the jump here to read the full article and more

Via Daily Dharma: Opportunities for a Fresh Start

In a way, Buddhism is a profound study in time and time management, because the better you manage your mind and spirit, the less hold time has on you. Every moment can be lived fully, free and unconditioned, and every moment holds infinite possibilities and opportunities for a fresh start.

—Lama Surya Das, “Buddha Standard Time: Awakening to the Infinite Possibilities of Now”

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Via Daily Dharma: What Is Nonviolence?

Buddhist practice and the work of nonviolence can never be separated. They are fused together with spiritual insight and dedicated action.

—Wendy Johnson, “An Alchemy for Regeneration”

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Via Daily Dharma: Learning to Rest in Unease

Chaos is distressing and the tendency is to bring about order as fast as possible, by whatever means necessary. The trick, of course, is to be at ease with unease.

—Alex Tzelnic, “(Meta)Physical Education”

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Via Daily Dharma: How Faith Leads to Action

Faith reminds us that there is a transcendent force for good at work behind the scenes, and it also tells us that the task of creating a better world begins with the effort to change ourselves.

—Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, “On Hope and Hype”

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"Nasty Man" by Joan Baez

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