Tricycle Daily Dharma September 15, 2012
Letting Go of Getting
The first thing to let go of is trying to "get" love, and instead to give it. That's the secret of the spiritual path.
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- Ayya Khema, "What Love Is"
A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
The first thing to let go of is trying to "get" love, and instead to give it. That's the secret of the spiritual path.
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All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.The Dalai Lama’s advice sounds startling familiar — one that echos the sentiment put forth by outspoken…
Religion
should not be giving you explanations or quick answers, which is what
we kind of expect—we type something into Google and up comes the answer.
Instead, religion should help you to live with questions for which
there are no answers, like cruelty and pain and suffering and death,
capitalism and injustice. It should teach us to live with these
questions so that whatever horror or sorrow or dukkha is going on out
there, you can live with it creatively, not turn your back to it.
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