Sunday, April 18, 2021
Saturday, April 17, 2021
Via Lion's Roar // Detox Your Mind: 5 Practices to Purify the 3 Poisons
|
|
||
| Detox Your Mind: 5 Practices to Purify the 3 Poisons | ||
| Five Buddhist teachers share practices to clear away the poisons that cause suffering and obscure your natural enlightenment. Introduction by Lion’s Roar’s editor-in-chief Melvin Mcleod. | ||
I
think what makes Buddhism unique — what makes it Buddhism — is its
diagnosis of what causes suffering, which is called the second noble
truth.
Looking at the other noble truths, most religions acknowledge the pervasive reality of suffering, that it can end (if not in this life, then after), and that wisdom, compassion, and ethical living are a path to less suffering. But why do we suffer at all? This is where Buddhism stands alone, offering a real-world explanation that is simple, testable, and, to my mind, irrefutable. |
||
|
Via Daily Dharma: Choose Your Response
Our emotions aren’t up to us. What we do with them, however, is absolutely up to us.
—Ralph De La Rosa, “What Is Up to Us”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Via White Crane Institute // CHAVELA VARGAS
1919 -
ISABEL VARGAS LIZANO (d: 2012), better known as CHAVELA VARGAS, was a Costa Rican-born Mexican singer. She was especially known for her rendition of Mexican rancheras, but she is also recognized for her contribution to other genres of popular Latin American music. She has been an influential interpreter in the Americas and Europe, muse to figures such as Pedro Almodovar, hailed for her haunting performances, and called "la voz áspera de la ternura", the rough voice of tenderness.
She is featured in many Almodóvar's films, including La Flor de mi Secreto in both song and video. She has said, however, that acting is not her ambition, although she had previously participated in films such as 1967's La Soldadera. Vargas recently appeared in the 2002 Julie Taymor film Frida, singing "La Llorona" (The Weeping Woman). Her classic "Paloma Negra" (Black Dove) was also included in the soundtrack of the film.
Vargas herself, as a young woman, was alleged to have had an affair with Frida Kahlo, during Kahlo's marriage to muralist Diego Rivera. She also appeared in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel, singing "Tú me acostumbraste" (You Got Me Used To), a bolero of Frank Dominguez. Joaquin Sabina’s song "Por el Boulevar de los Sueños Rotos" ("Down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams") is dedicated to Vargas.
Her heavy drinking and raucous life took their toll, and she vanished from public life in the 1970s. Submerged in an alcoholic haze, she said, she was taken in by an Indian family who nursed her back to health without knowing who she was. In 2003, she told The New York Times that she had not had a drink in twenty-five years.
In the early 1990s she began singing again at El Habito, the bohemian Mexico City nightclub. From there her career took off again, with performances in Latin America, Europe and the United States. At 81, she announced that she was a lesbian.
“Nobody taught me to be like this,” she told the Spanish newspaper El País in 2000. “I was born this way. Since I opened my eyes to the world, I have never slept with a man. Never. Just imagine what purity. I have nothing to be ashamed of.”
On the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut in 2003, she looked back on how her singing had changed over her career. “The years take you to a different feeling than when you were 30,” she said in an interview with The Times. “I feel differently, I interpret differently, more toward the mystical.”
On the evening of her death in 2012, instead of holding a traditional Mexican wake, friends, fans and musicians gathered in the evening for a musical tribute at Plaza Garibaldi in Mexico City, where Ms. Vargas had spent many a night drinking with Mr. Jiménez. She would have loved it.
Friday, April 16, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Learn to Listen Fully
In
your daily life, notice the positive and negative habits you might have
in your approach to listening. What helps you to listen fully and
spaciously?
—Martine Batchelor, “Instructions for Listening Meditation”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Thursday, April 15, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Developing Wisdom
Wisdom has to do with seeing clearly, seeing things as they are, that is, coming to terms with the way things are.
—Larry Rosenberg, “Death Awareness”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Find Your Buddhanature Every Day
We
are indeed connected to all things, but we should feel free to move
about, free to join others, free to examine preconceptions and
misinterpretations, and free to find our buddhanature as we engage in
the day’s most common actions and events.
—Gary Thorp, “The Dust Beyond the Cushion”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Via Lion’s Roar newsletter // Pema Chödrön offers a method for generating love and compassion for all human beings.
|
|
| Be Free of Suffering |
Pema Chödrön offers a method for generating love and compassion for all human beings. |
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - April 14, 2021 💌
When you can learn to accept love, you can give love. You can give love
to all you perceive, all the time. I am loving awareness. You can be
aware of your eyes seeing, your ears hearing, your skin feeling, and
your mind producing thoughts, thought after thought after thought.
Thoughts are seductive, but you don’t have to identify with them. You
identify not with the thoughts, but with the awareness of the thoughts.
To bring loving awareness to everything you turn your awareness to is to
be love.
This moment is love.
- Ram Dass -
Via Daily Dharma: Create with Your Attention
Through
the direction and nature of our attention, we prove ourselves to be
partners in creation, both of the world and of ourselves.
—Iain McGilchrist, “Examining Attention”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Tuesday, April 13, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Embrace the Groundlessness
When
we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let
go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness
of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called
enlightenment.
—Pema Chödrön, “The Fundamental Ambiguity of Being Human”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Sunday, April 11, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Cut Through Your Mind’s Clinging
To
cut through the mind’s clinging, it is important to understand that all
appearances are void, like the appearance of water in a mirage.
Beautiful forms are of no benefit to the mind, nor can ugly forms harm
it in any way.
—Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, “Teachings on the Nature of Mind and Practice”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - April 11, 2021 💌
“It’s an overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless and creative … the love of God operating in the human heart.”
When you can accept that kind of love, you can give that love.
- Ram Dass -
Saturday, April 10, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Start with a Clean Slate
Unlike a painting, our minds are not fixed. It is like the image is wiped clean
and a new one is created every moment. While the next image will often
be very similar to the previous one, it is never exactly the same.
—Khentrul Rinpoche, “A New Mind Each Moment”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Via Tricycle // Engaging with the Truths of Suffering
|
April 10, 2021
Engaging with the Truths of Suffering
Engaging with the Truths of Suffering
The four noble truths
are the very essence of the Buddha’s teachings. Beginning with the
radical declaration of the first truth—that everything in our lives is
qualified by suffering—they lay out the existence of suffering, its
causes, the possibility of its cessation, and the means of its cessation
(the eightfold path).
At a time of widespread global suffering, these truths matter more than ever. But their value goes beyond their ability to help us to understand the nature of suffering. They also provide us with a practical set of principles for actively engaging with the reality of suffering in our world.
Soto Zen priest Rev. Keiryu Liên Shutt, a former social worker who spent 10 years working with homeless seniors, has devoted her life to putting the four truths into action. She reminds us that these are truths to be lived by, not just learned or memorized. We can apply and embody them in our everyday lives to actively engage with hardship and injustice.
Watch this new four-part Dharma Talk series to discover Shutt’s reframing of the four noble truths as the four engaged noble truths and to learn how they can enliven us, reconnect us with a sense of wholeness, and inspire real-world engagement.
At a time of widespread global suffering, these truths matter more than ever. But their value goes beyond their ability to help us to understand the nature of suffering. They also provide us with a practical set of principles for actively engaging with the reality of suffering in our world.
Soto Zen priest Rev. Keiryu Liên Shutt, a former social worker who spent 10 years working with homeless seniors, has devoted her life to putting the four truths into action. She reminds us that these are truths to be lived by, not just learned or memorized. We can apply and embody them in our everyday lives to actively engage with hardship and injustice.
Watch this new four-part Dharma Talk series to discover Shutt’s reframing of the four noble truths as the four engaged noble truths and to learn how they can enliven us, reconnect us with a sense of wholeness, and inspire real-world engagement.
|
|
Via Lion's Roar // Ram Dass: To Love & Serve
|
|
|
||
| Ram Dass: To Love & Serve | ||
Sara Davidson remembers the American spiritual icon Ram Dass, born 90 years ago today. |
||
|
Via Lion's Roar // The Sunlight of Awareness
The Sunlight of Awareness
Shine the warm light of awareness on your thoughts and feelings, says Thich Nhat Hanh.
Observe the changes that take place in your mind under the light of awareness. Even your breathing has changed and become “not-two” (I don’t want to say “one”) with your observing self. This is true of all your thoughts, feelings and habits, which, together with their effects, are suddenly transformed.
From time to time you may become restless, and the restlessness will not go away. At such times, just sit quietly, follow your breathing, smile a half-smile, and shine your awareness on the restlessness. Don’t judge it or try to destroy it, because this restlessness is you yourself. It is born, has some period of existence, and fades away, quite naturally. Don’t be in too big a hurry to find its source. Don’t try too hard to make it disappear. Just illuminate it. You will see that little by little it will change, merge, become connected with you, the observer. Any psychological state that you subject to this illumination will eventually soften and acquire the same nature as the observing mind.
Throughout your meditation, keep the sun of your awareness shining. Like the physical sun, which lights every leaf and every blade of grass, our awareness lights our every thought and feeling, allowing us to recognize them, be aware of their birth, duration, and dissolution, without judging or evaluating, welcoming or banishing them.
It is important that you do not consider awareness to be your “ally,” called on to suppress the “enemies” that are your unruly thoughts. Do not turn your mind into a battlefield. Opposition between good and bad is often compared to light and dark, but if we look at it in a different way, we will see that when light shines, darkness does not disappear. It doesn’t leave; it merges with the light. It becomes the light.
To meditate does not mean to fight with a problem. To meditate means to observe. Your smile proves it. It proves that you are being gentle with yourself, that the sun of awareness is shining in you, that you have control of your situation. You are yourself, and you have acquired some peace. It is this peace that makes a child love to be near you.
Adapted from “The Sun, My Heart: Reflections on Mindfulness, Concentration and Insight,” published by Parallax Press.
Make the jump here to read the original and more
Friday, April 9, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Walk in Mindfulness
When
the Buddha walked, he walked without effort. He just enjoyed walking.
He didn’t have to strain, because when you walk in mindfulness, you are
in touch with all the wonders of life within you and around you.
—Thich Nhat Hanh, “Walk Like a Buddha”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Thursday, April 8, 2021
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Examine What Disrupts Your Mind
How
can we remove resentment if we are unaware of the extent to which it
controls us? We need to look into what makes us provokable.
—Judy Lief, “Train Your Mind: Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment.”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Via White Crane Institute // From White Crane Issue #47 “The Word” Who Are The Gay People?
Today's Gay Wisdom
2017 -
TODAY'S GAY WISDOM
From White Crane Issue #47 “The Word”
Who Are The Gay People?
By John Burnside
Part II
What are they like, these Gay people?
Well, the ones I know best are at ease with themselves and with others. They are merry and loving, gentle and open. They are not dogmatic, judgmental, domineering, argumentative nor manipulating, nor do they respond to others who may try to engage them at such levels. They are laughing people, and equally ready with tears. They are very bright and witty, and they love good talk. In talk they place no restrictions on the range of their voices, love to giggle, will scream with astonishment and pretend dismay or swoon with mock embarrassment, and they are constantly acting out and giving wicked impersonations. I have never heard small talk among them, and they are always ready for intensely serious discourse. They love digression and are masters at it, almost never failing to return to the main concern. They love theater, and they are marvelously responsive audiences. They find delight in being alive and have a tremendous capacity for enjoyment.
They are great creators of fantasy, yet they strive always to be rooted thoroughly in reality. Life to them is for love and for play. They love non-possessively, with full regard for the whole being of another. They are ruled by their hearts as by their minds, and their first response to those they encounter is compassionate. Play means in Gay consciousness living every moment at its highest potential. For them the play of feeling and imagination is primary in all things, but a main thrust of their gift for creativity is expressed in what they call their projects. A project is something that one has dreamed up and has launched on its way to being realized. Most Gay people have several projects, with some on the back burner and one or more at any given time getting close attention.
These traits and qualities that Gay people show may well be those qualities of human nature that all people have if they are not deeply identified with and constrained in roles. Roles channel the energy of impulse into rigid preformed pathways. People are drawn into roles to gain power, possessions, and predominance, where they spend their lives in struggling over these with one another. As outcasts, Gays have the opportunity to learn that beyond basic necessities possessions are burdensome and dominance is only a puffing of ego. If a Faerie values money it is because money is useful to pay rent and fund projects. Power to control others is odious to him, and showing off would be a tedious waste of time. He dislikes and avoids rivalry and competition and is as disdainful of authority and rank in others as he is to letting himself be blindly followed. Renouncing these "rewards" means that the Gays have no hidden intent in relating to others; they can be trusted. As they decline to compete, they are no threat. Yet their many gifts make them valued counselors to the powerful. This is why Gay people so often walk where angels fear to tread!
A Faerie likes best to be among other Faeries, but every Faerie I know has a group of people who are not Gay with whom he shares an unbreakable bond. These are people of integrity and spirit whom he values and supports as they do him. A Faerie relates to others subject to subject so far as the others will meet him there. With children, animals, trees, and living things generally Faeries feel a close affinity. Faeries are most at home in a natural setting and they draw strength from nature.
The spirit of the Gay people is very evident in these times when, because of AIDS, death walks among us with terrible insistence and asks his awful question, asks who you really are. If I am he who built up a pile of power, ego, wealth, and status, I know death will take it all, but if I have made myself of things eternal like beauty and love, truth and laughter, the best part of me will never die. The famous AIDS quilt is surely one of the most moving and spontaneous creations of a people ever seen. Each cell of the quilt emits a light deriving from the singular beauty and indomitable spirit of one person, and the conjoining of seemingly infinitely many of these creates a field of surpassing beauty that glows of the tough yet tender love that makes of all Gay people one. The quilt celebrates the bursting through vast sadness of a light that death has been unable to smother. It affirms the great purpose that informed those individual lives and that will always be carried through, no matter what the pain, by Gay people: to be real, to be loving, and to reach for the best. the most joyous, and the deepest levels of experience that life can offer.
|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - April 7, 2021 💌
"When meditation works as it should, it will be a natural part of your being. There will no longer be anything apart from you to have faith in. Hope starts the journey, faith sustains it, but it ends beyond both hope and faith."
- Ram Dass -
Tuesday, April 6, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Good Anger
Anger
that is motivated by compassion or a desire to correct social
injustice, and does not seek to harm the other person, is a good anger
that is worth having.
—Interview with H. H. the Dalai Lama by Noriyuki Ueda, “The (Justifiably) Angry Marxist”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Monday, April 5, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Managing Your Suffering
The
Buddha taught that there are two kinds of suffering: that which comes
from the outside world, and that which comes from within you. With the
latter, only you can do anything about it.
—Interview with Ittetsu Nemoto by Winifred Bird, “The Counselor”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Sunday, April 4, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Your Enduring Buddhanature
The
nature of a room is not affected by its level of cleanliness.
Similarly, our buddhanature is not defined by the presence or absence of
our emotional afflictions.
—Guo Gu, “The Empty Room”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Via Daily Dharma: Let Go of Your Projections Inbox
We
have all kinds of conditioning that prevent us from getting closer to
what’s actually happening. With mindfulness, we have the ability to
gently let go of those projections so that they don’t intrude on our
full experience.
—Sharon Salzberg, “Defining Mindfulness”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Via White Crane Institute // MLK
1968 -
MARTIN LUTHER KING was assassinated by a white Christian terrorist at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee on this date 53 years ago.
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - April 4, 2021 💌
This love is actually part of you; it is always flowing through you. It’s like the subatomic texture of the universe, the dark matter that connects everything. When you tune into that flow, you will feel it in your own heart—not your physical heart or your emotional heart, but your spiritual heart, the place you point to in your chest when you say, "I am."
- Ram Dass -
Saturday, April 3, 2021
Friday, April 2, 2021
Daily Dharma: More Fully Embed in the World
I
don’t believe meditation exists to help me escape or retreat from the
world. I practice meditation because it can more fully embed me in the
world and prepare me to act more intentionally within it.
—Lauren Krauze, “The Negative Space of Meditation”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Via White Crane Institute // This Day in Gay History: HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
This Day in Gay History
April 02
Born
1805 -
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, born, (d: 1875); Forget the silly Danny Gay, um...er...Kaye movie of yesteryear in which Hans sings to inchworms and measures all the marigolds. Anderson was an odd duck, all right, but odd in ways not even hinted at in that Technicolor monstrosity.
The real story, on the contrary, might actually make a good film. One can already see the scene between his poor parents as they realize something is a little strange about the lad. When the other kids are out doing masculine things, like circle jerks and pulling wings off flies, all he wants to do is sew clothes for his dolls.
Then we can have the scene where he decides to leave his place as an apprentice to a tailor to try to make it as an opera singer. He’s really torn about leaving, because he just loves being surrounded by all those clothes to sew. Then there’s his time of starvation on the road until he’s taken in by two Gay musicians who see to it that the hunky young man is plenty stuffed.
Passed on to a middle-aged poet, and getting a little wiser, he decides it’s much more fun being kept than taking dancing lessons, as he had originally wanted, in return for services rendered. Eventually he makes it big as the greatest fairy tale writer in Europe, and the entire cast joins in the great production number, “It Takes One to Write One.”
Thursday, April 1, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Notice the Emptiness
Zen invites us to empty our minds in order to gain insight into the emptiness of self, and through this emptiness into the nature of the world.
—John Kain, “The Beautiful Trap”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)