June LGBTQ+ Satsang PRIDE: A SPIRITUAL CELEBRATION

 

 

June LGBTQ+ Satsang

PRIDE: A SPIRITUAL CELEBRATION

June 12 @ 5 pm PDT | 8 pm EDT

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"Whatever I am, I just am, and from inside that allows me to be at home in the universe." ~ Ram Dass 

Join us for a spirited gathering to honor our queer fellowship community. This event will include meditation, social discussion time, and kirtan. We welcome you to decorate yourself and/or your Zoom background to reflect your own personal Pride style. Please feel free to bring a story, excerpt, or teaching to share with the satsang, that connects you to or reflects your queer spiritual experience.

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terça-feira, 31 de maio de 2022

 

Today´s practice, involved a bit of metta-ing about as it were. And just letting the mind go for a bit… nonjudgment,  enjoying the path we went down…  I accessed my  InsightTimer app, and it sounded the bell, and I was off to what I call the races… mind races… that is.

Breathe in, breathe out…

 

I began, during my sit, by counting breaths, 1-10, start over... and then for some reason wandered to the Bahá’í Prayer: The Remover of Difficulties. Which I hadn’t thought of for years… 

 

 

 

Hey old friend, long time no see... 

 Breathe in, breathe out…

 

The Remover of Difficulties sustained me during what I call the “the troubles”… coming out, divorce, a baby son, grad school, Ph.D. research and defense… I used to just walk about, repeating it over and over… vacillating from crazy to OK  to survival. I couldn’t deal with much, it felt like I was just hanging on by my fingernails, until I found a good bunch of Gay Zen Buddhists and a professor who mentored me through the bottoming out (pardon the metaphor). Zen guys became mentors, not unlike uncles, and really helped me steer out of the darkness and confusion I felt myself in.

 

Many Bahá’ís might use it as a sort of mantra… sometimes repeating it hundreds of times… Helen Bishop taught me to mantra it, using my knuckles… 45 times up, 45 times back. She knew she was dealing with a young man with a touch of ADD.

 

Breathe in, breathe out…

 

And then I said to myself "Self, how about, one more Remover of Difficulties just for old times sake?" And suddenly I was reminded of Melvin´s practice, that I archived on my virtual altar site:

 

 

Melvin takes his version of metta and moves through the pronouns… I have adapted to do a “I, you, “that person”, “them” all beings… sort of wheel of concentration.

 

Breathe in, breathe out…

 

So I said to myself, “Self, try it with our old friend, the Remover of Difficulties…" I mean what could happen, no one is watching... 

 

So, I began...

 

Is there any remover of difficulties save God? Say praised be God! He is God! All are his servants, and all abide by His bidding.

 

I did a second pass, this time:

 

Is there any remover of difficulties save God? Say praised be God! SHE is God! All are HER servants, and all abide by HER bidding.

 

Hmmm… that was fun… the gender thing about  English and monotheism has bothered me for a while. So, I wondered, h’bout this, and I tried:

 

Is there any remover of difficulties save God? Say praised be God! YOU are God! All are YOUR servants, and all abide by Your bidding.

 

Then…

 

Is there any remover of difficulties save God? Say praised be God! All Beings are God! All are THEIR servants, and all abide by THEIR bidding.

 

Breathe in, breathe out…

 

Then the bell rang, and I dropped back to chair. And it was over. 

 

As I write the music I am playing here, talked about a Franciscan prayer, I believe it goes something like this:

 

Oh my god

You are here

Oh my god

I am here

Oh my god

 we are here

And always, always, always, you love us!

 

 

 Be well, be safe…now, here.

Lida Rose/Will I Ever Tell You? (A YouTube Exclusive)

Via Daily Dharma: Learning Balance Prevents Burnout

 Knowing and feeling the suffering of others requires balance lest suffering overwhelm the sharer. Grief the same. It cannot be avoided. The trick is to navigate the bivalent nature of each of these states, building good from bad.

William deBuys, “Good Grief”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Intention: Cultivating Appreciative Joy

 

RIGHT INTENTION
Cultivating Appreciative Joy

Whatever you intend, whatever you plan, and whatever you have a tendency toward, that will become the basis upon which your mind is established. (SN 12.40) Develop meditation on appreciative joy, for when you develop meditation on appreciative joy, any discontent will be abandoned. (MN 62)  Appreciative joy fails when it produces amusement. (Vm 9.95)

Reflection

The emotion indicated by the term appreciative joy is a deep one and is to be distinguished from mere amusement. Noticing the success of others is not a momentary lift; you are allowing yourself to be profoundly moved by the beneficial aspects of life that do not center on yourself. Once we open to all the ways others have good things happen to them, this becomes a boundless source of our own good feelings.

Daily Practice

Cultivate appreciative joy at every opportunity. Get in the habit of noticing the good things that happen around you, not as they relate to your own gain but as they affect and benefit others. Being happy about other people being happy is a practice in itself. It is good to loosen the habit of always relating what you see to yourself and to develop an appreciation for the perspective of others. Feel the joy you experience from this.

Tomorrow: Refraining from Harsh Speech
One week from today: Cultivating Equanimity

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right View: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering

 

RIGHT VIEW
Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering

What is the cessation of suffering? It is the remainderless fading away and ceasing, the giving up, relinquishing, letting go, and rejecting of craving. (MN 9) When one knows and sees material form as it actually is, then one is not attached to material form. When one abides unattached, one is not infatuated, and one’s craving is abandoned. One’s bodily and mental troubles are abandoned, and one experiences bodily and mental well-being. (MN 149)

Reflection

We live in a material world, and contact with material things makes up a great deal of our experience. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The issue is whether we allow ourselves to become infatuated with these things, or if instead we are able to “abide unattached” as we make use of them. Knowing ultimately that material objects are impermanent and will change frees us from the suffering attachment to them can bring.

Daily Practice

Notice that you suffer in direct proportion to the amount of attachment you have to a material object. If something you care little about gets damaged, it is no big deal, right? But if something precious to you breaks, it can be the cause of great distress. Practice reminding yourself of everything you touch, This is fragile; it cannot last; it will pass away eventually. That sounds depressing, but it can be liberating.

Tomorrow: Cultivating Appreciative Joy
One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Daily Dharma: Considering the Suffering of Others

 Buddhism teaches us that everyone suffers, though we would do well to remember that we all suffer differently.

Olivia Q. Pintair, “A Raft Amid Rising Waters”

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - May 29, 2022 💌

 

If I can’t stop thinking, maybe I can just let my thoughts go by without getting all caught up in them. Feel the breeze on your face or your neck? See how it’s going by? You’re not all hung up with it. You don’t have to see where each breeze goes. You don’t have to look quickly to see if it hit those trees over there. It’s breezes, and they’re just going by. Make your thoughts like those breezes, those little breezes...just going by.

- Ram Dass -

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and the Second Jhāna

RIGHT MINDFULNESS
Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling

A person goes to the forest or to the root of a tree or to an empty place and sits down. Having crossed the legs, one sets the body erect. One establishes the presence of mindfulness. (MN 10) One is aware: “Ardent, fully aware, mindful, I am content.” (SN 47.10)   When feeling a mental pleasant feeling, one is aware: “Feeling a mental pleasant feeling”… one is just aware, just mindful: “There is feeling.” And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)

Reflection

We forget sometimes that it is okay to feel joy. In fact, it is encouraged. It is attachment to joy that is a problem, not the good feeling that comes with mental pleasure. The aggregate of feeling, which includes both physical pleasure and pain and mental pleasure and pain, is an inevitable and natural aspect of all experience. The challenge is to experience pleasure with equanimity, rather than with desire.

Daily Practice

Just as you can find both pleasure and pain when you review bodily sensations, the same is true of mental life. Take a few moments to inventory the contents of your mind. Certain things you think of are accompanied by happiness, while others arise with mental pain. Allow yourself to experience mental pleasure when it arises, and carefully observe the inevitable tipping point when the mind becomes attached to that pleasure.

RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the Second Phase of Absorption (2nd Jhāna)

With the stilling of applied and sustained thought, one enters upon and abides in the second phase of absorption, which has inner clarity and singleness of mind, without applied thought and sustained thought, with joy and the pleasure born of concentration. (MN 4) Breathing in short, one is aware: ‘I breathe in short’; or breathing out short, one is aware: ‘I breathe out short. This is how concentration by mindfulness of breathing is developed and cultivated,  so that it is of great fruit and great benefit. (SN 54.8)

Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering
One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Mind and Abiding in the Third Jhāna

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

 

Via Daily Dharma: Coming and Going

 When we really get a feeling for the coming and going of moments, it helps us break the illusion of a solid, separate self, which gives us relief from suffering.
    
Loch Kelly, “When Am I?”

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9 foreign gay movies must watch

50 New Gay Movies of 2020

Via Facebook

 

BHNN Guest Podcast – Ep. 104 – Ram Dass Fellowship: Hungry Ghosts w/ John Lockley

 In this BHNN Guest Podcast, get ready for some spiritual nourishment from John Lockley as he guides us in healing our hungry ghosts. After,...

Listen Now

Via L.A. Times

 

How Ellen DeGeneres won, and then lost, a generation of viewers

DeGeneres would, in short, become perhaps the most famous LGBTQ person in America, Oscar host and rival to Oprah, icon, omnipresence, eminence — and in so doing carry the banner of queer representation that she held aloft on “Ellen” into a new and more hopeful century.
Read more

The Lion’s Roar Podcast: Anxiety and What to Do About It with Bruce Tift

 

The Lion’s Roar Podcast: Anxiety and What to Do About It with Bruce Tift

This episode of The Lion’s Roar Podcast features psychotherapist and author Bruce Tift.

Anxiety can be a pretty reasonable response to times of wide spread disease, environmental disaster, social unrest and polarization. Associate editor Chris Pacheco talks to Bruce Tift, psychotherapist and author of Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation, about attempting to control feelings of anxiety, why that only makes it worse, and what to do instead.

Via Lion´s Roar

 

Smile at Fear: Pema Chodron on Bravery, Open Heart & Basic Goodness

If you want to pitch in and help solve the world’s problems, says Pema Chödrön, you’ve got to start with yourself. Here’s her advice for making friends with the fear that can hold us back.

If we come to the understanding that we are needed and commit ourselves to doing something about our own pain and the pain around us, we will find that we are on a journey. A warrior is always on a journey, and a main feature of that journey is fear. This fear is not simply something to be lamented, avoided, or vanquished. It is something to be examined, something to make a relationship with.

Via Daily Dharma: Practice Without Goal

 A goalless practice is about being right here in each moment without any conceptual objective in mind. It means putting the brakes on constantly doing, and starting to just be in the world as you are.

Anthony Tshering, “How the Concept of Impermanence Can Help Anxiety-Ridden Millennials”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States

RIGHT EFFORT
Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States

Whatever a person frequently thinks about and ponders, that will become the inclination of their mind. If one frequently thinks about and ponders unhealthy states, one has abandoned healthy states to cultivate unhealthy states, and then one’s mind inclines to unhealthy states. (MN 19) Abandoning worldly sense desire, one abides with a mind free from sense desire, one purifies the mind of sense desire. (MN 51) Just as a person who had taken a loan would pay off their debts and have money left over, so would one rejoice and be glad about the abandoning of sense desire. (DN 2)

Reflection

When an unhealthy state arises, what do you do? First, acknowledge it rather than try to ignore or suppress it, and then understand that it is unhealthy and likely to bring harm to yourself and/or others. Finally, let it go. Letting it go is simply aligning yourself with the law of impermanence. All mental and emotional states will pass away naturally; the trick is not to encourage the unhealthy ones by getting caught by them.

Daily Practice

Practice experiencing a stream of sensory inputs—sights, sounds, and the rest—without being entangled in them. When you abide in your experience with equanimity rather than desire or aversion, you are free. Even if these moments are brief, they are compared in this text to the freedom of being liberated from debt. The mind is unencumbered, without anxiety, and feels light and at ease. This feels good.

Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and Abiding in the Second Jhāna
One week from today: Developing Unarisen Healthy States

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

 

Via The Tricycle Community

Past Lives, Present Issues bell hooks Interviewed by Helen Tworkov

In a 1992 interview with Tricycle’s founder, Helen Tworkov, the writer and social critic bell hooks offered a rare glimpse into her relationship with Buddhism.

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