Via Daily Dharma / Internal Enemy

Usually we define our enemy as a person, an external agent, whom we believe is causing harm to us or to someone we hold dear. But such an enemy is relative and impermanent. One moment, the person may act as an enemy; at yet another moment, he or she may become your best friend. This is a truth that we often experience in our own lives. But negative thoughts and emotions, the inner enemy, will always remain the enemy.

—Dalai Lama, "The Enemy Within"

2CELLOS - Now We Are Free - Gladiator [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

Via Daily Dharma / Learning from the Birds

I stand in the middle of perfection. There is no one else around me. The cries of the geese are beautiful. They hold only joy, not a trace of fear.

—Rick Bass, "A Great Migration"

Via Daily Dharma / Receiving Love

That’s exactly what happens in sitting in stillness in Zen. You’re simply soaked in that divine love that is beyond words, and you allow it to fill you, inundate you, and move you so that you can live a life grounded on that, offering yourself to others.

—Jane Lancaster Patterson, "Other Fingers Pointing to the Moon"

Via Ram Dass

 

You can’t say, “I’m not going to have anything to do with politics.” You can say it, but you’ve got to watch where you’re saying it from. You may say, “I’m not going to get involved with politics because I am so busy with something else, and I’ll vote, but I’m not going to put my time into campaigning for candidates and things like that, or issues, because my energies are best used here.” That’s fine. If you’ve thought it through and felt that way and can look somebody in the eye and say, “This is the way it is.” If you’re saying, “I’m not having anything to do with politics because it’s too dirty and because I don’t approve of it,” forget it – you are abdicating your responsibility to society. It’s as simple as that.

We’re at an interesting moment within the shift of collective consciousness, specifically around the way in which we’re integrating the changes in power structures. Now business holds sway over government, over religion, in terms of social power. And business is like pirates on the high seas – the question is, do you control it from the outside, or does it control itself? Does the whole process have a meta-game that’s controlling itself, and can you stand back far enough to see how it’s playing out? How is the shift in collective consciousness going to evolve and what part do you play?

Part of the curriculum is looking at the systems that you are a part of and being able to say, “That system needs work.” It’s important to be able to shift your game so that you’re not simply pushing the system away and saying “I don’t think about that stuff, because it’s too complicated. Let somebody else worry about it.” Because as long as you get really frustrated with the system, you may be standing in the way of everybody’s survival.

- Ram Dass

Via Dialy Dharma / Your Inner Buddha

Any Buddha or Bodhisattva is merely a symbol of the best of our own inner processes, and we are all universal beings in touch with the universal flow.

—Glenn Mullin, "Prayer: Glenn Mullin"

Via Daily Dharma: Total Freedom

You start with freedom from thirst, hunger, disease, the basic freedoms that the state has to help its citizens achieve. Then you go beyond that to social freedom, from discrimination, inequality, from crime, and lawlessness, and insecurity, which the state also has to provide. Then ultimately you find further up the ladder political freedom, the freedom from authority and tyranny. And then Buddhism brings you even past that, to seek freedom from internal bondage.

—Matthieu Ricard, "Bhutan on the Brink"

Via JMG: AIDS Memorial Museum Planned For San Francisco

March 13, 2017 LGBT History, LGBT News

The New York Times reports:

The National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park here is a somber glen of plants, trees, walks, grass and cairn, with thousands of names etched in stones and pavement. Visitors’ emotions run high, but the details of exactly how AIDS devastated and transformed the world are not found here. “The story of AIDS is more than a disease,” said John Cunningham, executive director of the grove. “The real underpinnings of that story are about humanity, social justice, human rights and what it means to be a citizen of the world. Somehow there needs to be a keeper of the story.”

Now there is a move to create just that: a place to chronicle the AIDS tragedy more comprehensively, to explore the pandemic’s many facets in a permanent national exhibition and repository. It would be similar to institutions commemorating other cataclysmic events: the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in Manhattan and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Japan.

The effort is in its nascent stages, being discreetly explored by the staff and board of the grove, which Congress designated a National Memorial in 1996. (It is the only AIDS-related monument to receive such status.) So far, the grove has engaged consultants, some with a history of fund-raising for museums, to begin gauging the interest of wealthy donors, especially those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

Hit the link for much more about the planning. Wilton Manors is already home to the World AIDS Museum. (Tipped by JMG reader Lisa)

Make the jump here to read the original and more at JMG

Via Daily Dharma / Holy Action

In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.

—Dag Hammarskjöld, "Freedom in the Midst of Action"

Via Ram Dass

 

Now when most of us think of yogis, we think of somebody sitting, like Milarepa, up in a cave in the mountains, cross-legged and naked. There was snow, and ants were eating him, and the only food he took was nettle soup, and he ate it for so long he developed a green nettle fur all over him. But he was busy freeing himself from the dharma in order to come into union. Now that kind of moratorium is pretty unrealistic for most Westerners, so what role does yoga play in the West for us at the moment?

Well, along the way it will teach you how to control your consciousness, calm your own mind down, find a center, and get your body into harmony with your thoughts. It will get you back far enough inside yourself so that you can start to see how it all is, and start to experience compassion for yourself and for others around you.

https://www.ramdass.org/?mc_cid=b02dbb4ce6&mc_eid=472da7a04f

Via Daily Dharma / Unlikely Dharma

Everything preaches the dharma—nuclear waste, skunks, flowers, grass—and does so fully and completely.

—Roshi Nancy Mujo Baker, "On Not Being Stingy"

Via Daily Dharma / Steering the Heart

No matter what situation we find ourselves in, we can always set our compass to our highest intentions in the present moment. Perhaps it is nothing more than being in a heated conversation with another person and stopping to take a breath and ask yourself, “What is my highest intention in this moment?”

—Jack Kornfield, "Set the Compass of Your Heart"

Via Daily Dharma / The Value of Routine

If we are to close the gap between ideal and actuality—between the envisaged aim of striving and the lived experience of our everyday lives—it is necessary for us to pay greater heed to the task of repetition.

—Bhikkhu Bodhi, "Vision and Routine"

Via FB: WEAPONS IN THE SPIRITUAL WAR AGAINST EVIL

Altruism, Assertiveness, Beauty, Bravery, Brevity, Charity, Cheerfulness, Clarity, Cleanliness, Compassion, Commitment, Confidence, Concentration, Consideration, Contentment, Cooperation, Courage, Courtesy, Creativity, Curiosity, Detachment, Determination, Devotion, Discretion, Education, Empathy, Endurance, Energy, Enthusiasm, Faith, Flexibility, Focus, Forgiveness, Freedom, Friendliness, Generosity, Gentleness, Grace, Gratitude, Happiness, Helpfulness, Honesty, Honor, Hope, Hospitality, Humility, Idealism, Imagination, Immaculacy, Independence, Industry, Initiative, Integrity, Joy, Justice, Kindness, Knowledge, Love, Loyalty, Meekness, Mercy, Moderation, Modesty, Nobility, Non-Violence, Obedience, Optimism, Patience, Peace, Perseverance, Prayerfulness, Prudence, Purity, Radiance, Reliability, Remembrance, Resilience, Resourcefulness, Respect, Responsibility, Reverence, Sacrifice, Self-Control, Self-Discipline, Selflessness, Serenity, Servitude, Silence, Sincerity, Steadfastness, Strength, Tolerance, Thoughtfulness, Thrift, Tranquility, Trustworthiness, Truthfulness, Understanding, Unity, Will-Power, Wisdom, Wonder, Zeal

Via TED: Megan Phelps-Roper: I grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/03/07/watch-former-god-hates-fags-protester-explains-what-finally-broke-her-indoctrination/?utm_source=ET&utm_medium=ETFB&utm_campaign=portal&utm_content=inf_17_60_2&tse_id=INF_7730a9d0037e11e78c985b6a21c9be24

Via Daily Dharma / Buddha Wisdom

When a distraught mother asked [the Buddha] to heal the dead child she carried in her arms, he did not perform a miracle, but instead instructed her to bring him a mustard seed from a house where no one had ever died. She returned from her search without the seed, but with the knowledge that death is universal.

—The Buddha, "Who is the Buddha?"

Via Ram Dass

Just play with the silence for a moment. Instead of using it as expectancy, waiting for something to happen, flip it just slightly and just be in it. Are you really here or are you just waiting for the next thing? It’s interesting to see where we are in relation to times; whether we’re always just between what just happened and what happened next, or whether we can just be here now.

So, let’s just find our way here to be together. If you’re feeling agitated, just notice the agitation. If you’re warm, be warm. If you’re cold, be cold. If you’re overly full, be overly full. Be it, whatever it is, but put it all in the context of a quiet space, because there’s a secret in that, and it’s worth playing with it.

That there’s a place that we can be inside of ourselves, inside of the universe, in which and from which we can appreciate the delight in life. Where we can still have equanimity, and quality of presence, and the quietness of peace.

Via Daily Dharma / Embodying the Universe:

If cosmologists themselves are a manifestation of the same universe that they study, then with them the universe is comprehending itself. When we come to see the universe in a new way, the universe is itself coming to see itself in a new way.

—David Loy, "In Search of the Sacred"

Via Daily Dharma / Mindful Training

If we train ourselves to reach for a snack or pick up the phone to text-message whenever we feel frightened or bored, this is definitely training. The next time we feel uncomfortable we will also tend to reach for some comfort outside ourselves, eventually establishing a deeply ingrained habit, another brick in the wall of our mental prison.

—Gaylon Ferguson, "Fruitless Labor"

Dalai Lama: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Via Daily Dharma / True Nature

Accept your concrete individuality, and having done that, then you may also realize you are blessed just as you are.

—Ruben L. F. Habito, "Be Still & Know"

Via Daily Dharma / Emptiness Is Not What You Expect

Emptiness refers to the absence of something that, for some reason, one expects to find—as when we say a glass, normally used to hold liquids, is empty even though it is full of air. The point is not that there is nothing there at all, but rather that what is there differs from your expectations.

— William S. Cobb, "The Game of Go"

Via Ram Dass

 

You are listening as well as you can to the universe, and often you will see that when things start to happen a certain way, your mind will focus in on that because you’re looking for patterns, which we call ‘synchronicity’.

Often you will just get caught in your desire to find a pattern that will give you an external validation for what you’re doing. You just end up using the universe again to do it to yourself.

So stay with your truth from moment to moment, and get the clues wherever you can. I mean, I’ll open up the Chuang-tzu and read something when I have a question, and if it doesn’t feel good, I say, “Well, that was interesting,” and I close it. If it feels like what I wanted to do anyway, I say, “Ohhh, wow, synchronicity!” And I do it, so I’ve learned that I’m a complete phony anyway, so I might as well just honor it and get on with it.

Via Daily Dharma / Accepting What Is

A deeper equanimity comes when we learn how to be with our life as it is, not as we would like it to be.

—Eliot Fintushel, "Something to Offer"

Via Daily Dharma / Nature’s Spirit

Walls and fences cannot instruct the grasses and trees to actualize spring, yet they reveal the spiritual without intention, just by being what they are. So too with mountains, rivers, sun, moon, and stars.

—Dogen, "Everything is Holy"

Via Daily Dharma / The Terrain of a Moment

Every moment is a unique view of a unique territory, both of which unfold in perpetual motion. Because of the continual flux of it all, holding on to anything that has happened is futile, while being open to what happens next is crucial.

—Andrew Olendzki, "This Moment is Unique"

Via Ram Dass

Truth is one of the vehicles for deepening spiritual awareness through another human being, and if there is a license for that in the relationship, in any relationship – with guru, with friend, with lover, with whatever it is – it is an absolutely optimum way of coming into a liquid spiritual relationship with another person. But it’s very, very delicate because people feel very vulnerable. They have parts of their mind that are cut off, that the idea that’s been socialized is, “If I show this part of me, I would not be acceptable.” And the ability to risk that, finally you learn how to have your truth available.

So truth is one of the exciting vehicles to work with in a relationship. And what I’ve learned is to use my lecturer role to make my truth as available as I possibly could, and what I find is people say to me, “Thank you for being so truthful. It makes it easier for me to be truthful about myself, because you’ve done that.” And I think well, it’s a cheap price to offer yourself up for that purpose, if that in itself starts to help other people.

Via Daily Dharma / Elaborating On the “Now”

We know not to get caught in the past or the future, but in order to be in the Now, we also have to let go of the present. The Now is not confined by relative clock time, yet it is also not pure timelessness.

—Loch Kelly, "When Am I?"

Via Daily Dharma / Storm Dharma

If suffering and awakening form a single weather-system, as many a wise person has come to know, then when storms come, perhaps we can accept them with less dread and aversion, and more trust, and even hope.

— Henry Shukman, "Beautiful Storm"

Via Daily Dharma / All Things Can Be Treasured

I will learn to cherish beings of bad nature
And those pressed by strong sins and sufferings
As if I had found a precious
Treasure very difficult to find.

—Geshe Langri Thangpa, "Breaking the Habit of Selfishness"

Via Daily Dharma / The Foundation of Compassion

When practicing and studying, it’s important to have a motivation that is free from affliction. Among the various pure motivations, the most important is the wish to help ourselves and others, the vast motivation of the Mahayana, which means acting for the sake of all sentient beings, who are as limitless as space.

—Kenchen Thrangu, "On What Is Most Important"

Via Daily Dharma / You’re Depending on You

Nobody can get into the heart of your experience and fix anything for you. If you want to make your own internal experience more hospitable, only you can do that work.

—Ethan Nichtern, "Awake with Others"

Via Daily Dharma / What It Is “To Know”

The idea that all human reason must be empirical is a story that is told to us by our masters.

—Curtis White, "The Science Delusion"

Faced with outsized stresses, these Baltimore students learn to take a deep breath

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - February 22, 2017

Serve to relieve human suffering wherever you find it, in any way you can. Whatever your skills or karmic predicament is, there’s always an opportunity to relieve human suffering. The major way you are relieving human suffering is by becoming a conscious being, and then all the rest of your stuff should also be involved in relieving human suffering in other beings. You should have enough money and right livelihood in order to keep your body healthy, in order to allow you to do your sadhana, in order to fulfill your social responsibilities that are existing, your karmic responsibility, and all the rest of the money should be distributed. Simple as that.

The enlightened being, or the person that’s awakened, realizes that the game is to walk through the path and leave no footprint. Leave no footprint because whatever footprint you leave is just more karmic stuff.

Via Daily Dharma / What Is Expression?

In painting, as in any art, we can escape the prison of our minds and connect with what transcends ordinary perceptions. And just as a body of water stays still while a wave-form moves through it, consciousness remains stable despite the constant motion and flow of our thoughts.

—Fredericka Foster, "Spotlight On: Fredericka Foster"

September 7 is Brazilian Independence day...

Soooo... this Trump thing has caused me to rethink my status here as a permanent resident. Brasil has been much more progressive re: GLBTq immigration than WTFistan has been (see my TEDx talk). 

And now that things are schlepping to the evangelical right here as well, it is now or never… So my hubby and I had a long talk and decided it is best for me to be able to vote – since I pay taxes and enjoy all the other rights and responsibilities. And if things really go south (pardon the pun) up in WTFistan, I can sponsor my family down here in Neverland.
 
So I reacted by the Trump coup, by applying for the Brazilian half of what will be dual citizenship. 

Kinda complicated, but soooooooo much easier for me to become a Brazilian, than the crap my husband has to put up with (again a plug for my TEDx talk way back when). Went on line to the Brazilian Immigration (I am a permanent resident - like a green card), got a list of jobs/things I have to do to organize a file to get a Brazilian passport, etc. I talked to my lawyer bud here in Ouro Preto. 

The worst is the FBI report, I asked around and I met folks who were stranded like I was 6 years ago up there for a month... no can do! So I contacted the US Consul in Rio and we talked/bantered back and forth for a while and he offered to write me a letter to get my fingerprints done here in Brasil, then mail the prints/forms to the FBI.

That letter.

So yesterday I took the letter to the Polícia Federal (PF) in Belo Horizonte (BH), which is a cross between the FBI and the “migra” in the States. I got in the “foreigner line” strangely short, which faces the Brazilian (abandon the countryside of the waiting area – very full). Showed my letter, and the delegada (officer) was so apologetic, I know it says for you to come here, but you need to go to the office in… (The HEAD office for the PF – of course all the way across town on the top of a hill – think a very 1970’s collection of ugly buildings (Minas Gerais has a talent for building really ugly buildings – my campus is just one example) which forms a fortress/military/ Star Feet base complex next to a hospital… got there, went to the even more imposing gate, and went thru security (picture, badge, chatting up the security folks), all the time the Brazilians are looking at me like a strange flower, or lost puppy “why would you do this, I want to move to Miami” kind of look. I was directed to follow a blue line around a building (Which I did) just “follow the blue brick road” across a green space, a couple of “soldiers” greeted me and I felt even more like I was in Star Fleet, albeit a very “brega” one. I followed the blue line thru another lobby, and then upstairs in another building got lost, more Star Fleet delegados helped me, smiling… found the place, and the guy helping me was so surprised. The rest of the office was so happy to see me, and have something happy to do, just a dumb gringo who isn’t in a crisis. After a minor problem downloading the FBI form to BH Star Feet, I was inked and on my way in no time…

I left base and headed down the hill to a taxi stand, and called a dear friend from UFOP who is off for the semester while she finishes her doctoral thesis. She directed me to go to her house (across town) and we walked to lunch, and everywhere we went she just had to tell everyone, restaurant, museum, and her family… “Daniel is becoming a Brazilian!” Oi such a shunder…

When I got home (Neverland is a good 2 hour bus ride from BH over impossibly green mountains)I put all the docs together, and this morning on my way to campus SEDEX’d (we have our own DHL/UPS/FEDEX here in Neverland) them to West Virginia where you send stuff that allows you to get a criminal report. I walked back to campus all verklempt… and REALLY happy! It helped that a gentle breeze was blowing, the sun was out, the mountains are as green as green can be, and birds were singing… “Vem ti vi! Vem ti vi!”

So step one (of about 20) done… check!

Next step: The report I sent to FBI HQ needs to be “autenticado” in the Brazilian Consulate in San Francisco – a dear amiga in the California State Senate Int’l office will do that for me – she earns extra dharma points. Then it has to be translated and collected with the rest of the documents. This will take a few months at best. Which gives me time to do all sorts of other tasks… copies of the house contract, proof of my work as a federal employee, copies of the marriage certificate, etc. all authenticated and stamped and registered in “cartorios”.

So you can see why I get snarky at folks in WTFistan, who think “I’ll just move to Canada or France”, yeah good luck. I had to tell one guy, start with grad school and marriage… moving abroad ain’t like moving across WTFistan cowboy.

So to make this very long story short, keep me in your prayers and send lotsa love and light to all who I need to facilitate this… I am just so really fortunate and blessed – a great job, in a great little college town, in a funky state, in a more than dysfunctional but wonderful country. Despite all the problems here in Brasil, there are so many really, really fine people here and it will be great to be Brazilian in a few months!

September 7 is Brazilian Independence day... hoping to have it all done by then! Dedos cruzados!

Putin: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Via Daily Dharma / Standing Up

Judgmental criticism is one thing; judicious criticism is actually a gift. That’s why the Buddha never formulated a precept against talking about other people’s faults or errors, because there are times when you have to speak up against harmful behavior.

—Thanissaro Bhikkhu, "Gossip"

Via Daily Dharma / Gratitude and Generosity

Gratitude, the simple and profound feeling of being thankful, is the foundation of all generosity. I am generous when I believe that right now, right here, in this form and this place, I am myself being given what I need.

—Sallie Tisdale, "As If There Is Nothing to Lose"

This is where I stand. Period.

DO NOT JUST FORWARD THIS, PLEASE!
If you're in, Share or Copy & paste...make sure to sign, then post to your page.

This is where I stand. Period.

I make no apologies to any or all of my FB friends for this. I know some are tired of political postings and rants. But apart from posts of recipes, grandchildren, meals, flowers, dogs, travel pictures,and drama, and even beautiful expressions of spiritual beliefs, FB is (until it gets taken away) a vehicle to express our outrage at how far our country has currently fallen on the humanitarian scale.

To me, FB is a useful vehicle for my passion and activism. The fevered Ego currently occupying our White House, his power hungry cronies taking positions of authority in his Cabinet and administration, and the majority of Republicans in Congress are a real and active threat to me, my way of life, and all the people I love.

And unless you are worth billions of dollars, they are a threat to you and your life, too.
So I will resist and I will be part of the resistance, and proud of it. If you can join in or hang with it, fine. But if not, then you probably need to unfriend me now. I refuse to "play nice" in the face of what these people are doing. Our country's well-being demands that we stand and resist.

Some people are saying that we should give #45 a chance, that we should "work together" with him because he won the election and he is "everyone's president." This is my response:

•I will not say #45's name.
•I will not forget how badly he and so many others treated former President Barack Obama for 8 years...
•I will not "work together" to privatize Medicare, cut Social Security and Medicaid or repeal the ACA.
•I will not "work together" to build a wall.
•I will not "work together" to persecute Muslims.
•I will not "work together" to shut out refugees from countries where we destabilized their governments, no matter how bad they might have been, so that we could have something more agreeable to our oligarchy.
•I will not "work together" to lower taxes on the 1%.
•I will not "work together" to increase taxes on the middle class and poor.
•I will not "work together" to help #45 use the Presidency to line his pockets and those of his cronies.
•I will not "work together" to weaken and demolish environmental protection.
•I will not "work together" to sell American lands, especially National Parks, to companies which then despoil those lands.
•I will not "work together" to enable the killing in any way of whole species of animals just because they are predators, or inconvenient for a few, or because some people want to get their thrills killing them.
•I will not "work together" to remove civil rights from anyone.
•I will not "work together" to waste trillions more on our military when we already have the strongest in the world.
•I will not "work together" to alienate countries that have been our allies for as long as I have been alive.
•I will not "work together" to slash funding for education.
•I will not "work together" to take basic assistance from people who are at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
•I will not "work together" to allow torture and "black op" prison sites.
•I will not "work together" to "take their oil."
•I will not "work together" to get rid of common sense regulations on guns.
•I will not "work together" to eliminate the minimum wage.
•I will not "work together" to support so-called "Right To Work" laws, or undermine, weaken or destroy Unions in any way.
•I will not "work together" to suppress scientific research, be it on climate change, fracking, or any other issue where a majority of scientists agree that #45 and his supporters are wrong on the facts.
•I will not "work together" to criminalize abortion or restrict health care for women.
•I will not "work together" to increase the number of nations that have nuclear weapons.
•I will not "work together" to put even more "big money" into politics.
•I will not "work together" to violate the Geneva Convention.
•I will not "work together" to give the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazi Party and white supremacists a seat at the table, or to normalize their hatred.
•I will not "work together" to deny health care to people who need it.
•I will not "work together" to increase the profits of the insurance companies.
•I will not "work together" to deny medical coverage to people on the basis of an alleged or actual "pre-existing condition."
•I will not "work together" to increase voter suppression.
•I will not "work together" to normalize tyranny.
•Iwill not “work together” to eliminate or reduce ethical oversite at any level of government.
•I will not "work together" with anyone who is, or admires, tyrants and dictators.
•I will not "work together" with #45 or anyone who supports him, because I will not allow one man to feed upon the fears of the populace, blaming minorities for their condition or their inability to thrive.
This is the line, and I am drawing it.
•I will stand for honesty, love, respect for all living beings, and for the beating heart that is the center of Life itself.
•I will use my voice and my hands, to reach out to the uninformed, and to anyone who will LISTEN for what's really so dangerous about #45, his friends and the Big Lie they spin to the world:
That "winning", "being great again", "rich" or even "beautiful" is anything more than nothing... When others are sacrificed to glorify its existence.
PS: If you agree, please copy and re-post (we understand this results in larger numbers of people seeing a post), and if you can, sign your name below ours. Also, if we have left anything out, feel free to add it to this list.
Consider this an opportunity to make a declaration of commitment, in becoming part of The Resistance.

Signed:

Patricia Rollins Trosclair
Andrea Dora Zysk
George Georgakis
John Christopher
John Bowles
Patrick St.Louis
Carla Patrick
Darnell Bender
Vickie Davis
JMichael Carter
Janice Frazier-Scott
Rev. ELaura James Reid
Jeanette Bouknight
Rev. Dollie Howell Pankey
Gerald Butler
Carolyn McDougle
Vaughn Chatman
Adrienne Brown
Gary Trousdale
Steven E Gordon
Isis Nocturne
Debi Murray
Maureen O. Betita
Mona Enderli
Fernie James Tamblin
Myrna Dodgion
Alan Locklear
Tom Wilmore
Jackie Evans
Donna Endres
Lora Fountain
Roberta Gregory
Heather A Mayhew
Stevo Wehr
Nathan Stivers
Jen RaLee
Joan Holden
Leigh Lutz
Deborah Kirkpatrick
Linda Levy
Tom Rue
Nancy Hoffmann-Allison
Beejay McCabe
Michael James Myers
Edward T. Spire
Rupert Chapman
Dawn R. Dunbar
Robin Wilson
Monique Boutot
Laura Brown 💪🏼
Susan Aptaker
Steve Katz
Bonnie Wolk
Risa Guttman-Kornwitz
Angela Gora
Butch Norman
Sharon Tolman
Sue Zislis
Maurice Hirsch
Satch Dobrey
Jim Krapf
Don Starwalt
Deb Johansen
Daniel Anderson
Tim Roda
Helen o Leary
Kyle Staver
Sharon Clabo
Mary Proenza
Jamie Trachtenberg
Sherry Jo Williams
Julie Chase
Alexa Grace
Dreama Kattenbraker
Deborah G Rogers
Sharon Pierce McCullough
Laura Phillips Dollieslager
Lynnette Fitch Brash ✊
Robin van Tine
Richard Hill
John Paul Jones
Sharon Van Schaik Kale
Anita Jagt
Gail Kent
Suzanne Hershey Ford
Erin Gall
Ezilda Samoville
Daniel Clark Orey

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Via Ram Dass

You gotta remember that the ego is built on fear. It’s not built on love; it’s built on fear. It’s built on the fear of non-survival, and so you build a structure in order to make you safe. And it’s beautiful instrument, but if you’re identified with it, you’re fearful all the time. And because you’re fearful you’re always going to overcompensate and make ego decisions that are a little inappropriate, because they’ll be colored by your looking from inside this place.

When you’re outside of it you see that you use your ego as you need to to make decisions. You come back into sombody-ness. You and I are meeting back here behind this dance that we’re doing which is charming and fascinating. And that’s really the beauty of playing with the ego and the higher consciousness. And it’s only when those two planes work that the ego becomes really functional, okay?

Via Daily Dharma / Graceful Suffering:

There is grace in suffering. Suffering is part of the training program for wisdom.

—Ram Dass, "America’s Guru"

Via Daily Dharma / Creating Our Own Suffering:

In short, it’s our reactivity that generates dukkha, keeping us agitated and therefore unable to contemplate the actual, direct, here and now experience of it.

—Thanissara, "The Grit That Becomes a Pearl"

Via Daily Dharma / Making Space

Like a forest fire, anger tends to burn up its own support. If we jump down into the middle of such a fire, we will have little chance of putting it out, but if we create a clearing around the edges, the fire can burn itself out. This is the role of meditation: creating a clearing around the margins of anger.

—Mark Epstein, "I’ve Been Meditating for Ten Years, and I’m Still Angry. What’s the Matter with Me?"

Via Daily Dharma / The Achievement of Altruism:

According to the scriptures, the mere inclination to generate bodhicitta thus shows a certain degree of spiritual evolution and maturity.

—Karma Trinlay Rinpoche, "What We’ve Been All Along"

Via Ram Dass

 

We don't need to wait until we are enlightened before we act in the world, and we don't need to withdraw from the world to become enlightened. Conscious social action can be our own work on ourselves that becomes the vehicle for our awakening.

Via Daily Dharma / For All Sentient Beings

Without bodhicitta, there can be no enlightenment. And all of us—no matter who we are and what we have done—hold this seed of bodhicitta within ourselves.

—The 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, "No Easy Answers"

Via Daily Dharma: Seeing Another

When you’re not entrapped by another person’s appearance or behavior, you can see behind all that to a deeper level of their being because your mind has tuned itself; you’ve shifted your focus just that little bit to see their soul. That soul quality is love.

—Ram Dass, "Tuning the Mind"

Via Tricycle/ Rama Dass: Tuning the Mind

When I look at relationships, my own and others, I see a whole range of reasons we get together and ways we interact. Some are transactional, but the deeper impulse of every human relationship is to evoke the love and oneness that unites us. But what actually happens is that many relationships reinforce our separateness because of our misperception of ourselves as separate beings, and because of our desire systems, which are based in separateness or ego. Relationships only work in a spiritual sense when you and I really see that we are one.  

 

Relationships and emotions can reinforce our separateness, or they can be grist for the mill of awakening. When it comes to love relationships, we are like bees looking for a flower. The predicament is that the emotional power of loving somebody can get you so caught in the interpersonal melodrama that you can’t get beyond the emotion. The problem with interpersonal love is that you are dependent on the other person to reflect love back to you. That’s part of the illusion of separateness. The reality is that love is a state of being that comes from within. 

The only thing you really ever have to offer another person is your own state of being. When you’re not entrapped by another person’s appearance or behavior, you can see behind all that to a deeper level of their being because your mind has tuned itself; you’ve shifted your focus just that little bit to see their soul. That soul quality is love.

♦

From Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart by Ram Dass. © 2913 Love Serve Remember Foundation. Reprinted with permission of Sounds True. www.soundstrue.com. 

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