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.
Monday, April 29, 2019
Sunday, April 28, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: Knowing Our Mind
Don’t
feel disturbed by the thinking mind. You are not practicing to prevent
thinking, but rather to recognize and acknowledge thinking whenever it
arises.
—Sayadaw U Tejaniya, “Observing Minds Want to Know”
—Sayadaw U Tejaniya, “Observing Minds Want to Know”
Via Daily Dharma: Freshness in Every Moment
One of the hardest things to remember about practice is that we’ve truly never experienced this moment before.
—Alex Tzelnic, “How to Resist the Comfort of Repetition”
—Alex Tzelnic, “How to Resist the Comfort of Repetition”
Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - April 28, 2019 💌
Don’t get caught in righteousness, don’t get caught in helping somebody.
It doesn’t mean don’t help them, just don’t get caught in it… If you
really want to help somebody, instead of just ripping off the experience
of helping them for yourself, give up helping anybody. And then just be
with them and see what happens.
- Ram Dass -
Friday, April 26, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: Wise Emotion
We find the antidotes to our most painful states of mind by leaning directly into the emotion itself. Our emotions are full of wisdom. They are the keys for deepening our practice and our relationships with our world.
—Judith Simmer-Brown, “Transforming the Green-Ey’d Monster”
—Judith Simmer-Brown, “Transforming the Green-Ey’d Monster”
Thursday, April 25, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: Justifying Ends and Means
In
the Buddha’s teachings, the end and the means must share a similar
voice; there has to be constructive engagement from the beginning.
Finding ways to engage in direct communication and bring people together
is both the process and the resolution.
—Christopher Titmuss, “Rising to the Challenge: A Step Toward Peace”
—Christopher Titmuss, “Rising to the Challenge: A Step Toward Peace”
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: Return Again
Train
to return to attention whenever you become aware that you are lost. And
then just do it. Place attention and rest. Return and rest. Again and
again.
—Ken McLeod, “Forget About Consistency”
—Ken McLeod, “Forget About Consistency”
Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - April 24, 2019 💌
The Chinese philosopher, Chung Tsu, said, “Know the clear, but remain in the tarnished.” Stay in the marketplace, but keep God there too. Remember—serve, love, remember. You’ve got to be in the marketplace and remember.
- Ram Dass -
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: A Joyful Mind
When our mind is undisturbed by any concept that might arise, the natural joy and clarity of the mind will dawn.
—Ogyen Trinley Dorje, “Calm Abiding”
—Ogyen Trinley Dorje, “Calm Abiding”
Monday, April 22, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: You Are Worthy of Love
To
see ourselves as just another person deserving love is a valuable
exercise. Here we start to disidentify with ourselves, see ourselves in
more objective terms. When we can see ourselves as just another
imperfect human, equally deserving of love as anyone else, it becomes
easier to offer love to ourselves.
—Kevin Griffin, “May All Beings Be Happy”
—Kevin Griffin, “May All Beings Be Happy”
Sunday, April 21, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: Giving Our All
There
may be no greater sense of fulfillment in life than the simultaneous
feelings of human interconnection and pure freedom that arise from an
authentic act of selfless generosity.
—Dale S. Wright, “The Bodhisattva’s Gift”
—Dale S. Wright, “The Bodhisattva’s Gift”
Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - April 21, 2019 💌
It’s important to respect the intellect, not to demean it by any means, but to realize that it has taken control, when it should be a resource that’s available for you to use when you want to.
What has happened to me over the past several decades, I’m sure partly through psychedelics, partly through meditation, and through grace, and through evolution, is that when I don’t need to think about something my mind is empty. I’m not thinking. I’m just empty. I’m just here.
So that when you ask me a question, I stop for a moment. I go empty. I’m not thinking about the answer. I’m going empty because in the emptiness is the answer—a better answer than I can come up with when I use my analytic mind to figure out what I should say to you.
What has happened to me over the past several decades, I’m sure partly through psychedelics, partly through meditation, and through grace, and through evolution, is that when I don’t need to think about something my mind is empty. I’m not thinking. I’m just empty. I’m just here.
So that when you ask me a question, I stop for a moment. I go empty. I’m not thinking about the answer. I’m going empty because in the emptiness is the answer—a better answer than I can come up with when I use my analytic mind to figure out what I should say to you.
-Ram Dass -
Saturday, April 20, 2019
CHOIR sings OM SO HUM Mantra (Must Listen)
Very, very beautiful! 'Soham' means I am That'. 'That' means the very source of creation. If you bring some awareness into to your breath, become conscious of it, every inhalation makes the sound 'SO' and exhalation has the sound 'HAM'. Try it and see. Our breath itself reminds us that we are part of something much bigger, we are THAT. We aren't individuals but life, there's just life all around. And fundamentally we are all ONE. But we are too caught up in our psychological drama. If only we look beyond that and see, the very way we live life will change. It'll be all inclusive. Which is the most beautiful way to be. :)
Via Daily Dharma: Taking the First Step
Even
very basic beginning practice, like mindfulness of the breath or sound,
begins to relieve suffering, reduce our stress levels, and motivate us
to practice more.
—Interview with Mirabai Bush by Alex Caring-Lobel and Emma Varvaloucas, “Working with Mindfulness”
—Interview with Mirabai Bush by Alex Caring-Lobel and Emma Varvaloucas, “Working with Mindfulness”
Via Daily Dharma: Inner Awakening
The
taste of freedom that pervades the Buddha’s teaching is the taste of
spiritual freedom, which from the Buddhist perspective means freedom
from suffering. In the process leading to deliverance from suffering,
meditation is the means of generating the inner awakening required for
liberation.
—Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “The Path of Serenity and Insight”
—Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “The Path of Serenity and Insight”
Race and Religion in American Buddhism: White Supremacy and Immigrant Adaptation
Race and Religion in American Buddhism: White Supremacy and Immigrant Adaptation
Joseph CheahOctober 28, 2011
Oxford University Press
While academic and popular studies of Buddhism have often neglected race
as a factor of analysis, the issues concerning race and racialization
have remained not far below the surface of the wider discussion among
ethnic Buddhists, converts, and sympathizers regarding representations
of American Buddhism and adaptations of Buddhist practices to the
American context. In Race and Religion in American Buddhism, Joseph
Cheah provides a much-needed contribution to the field of religious
studies by addressing the under-theorization of race in the study of
American Buddhism. Through the lens of racial formation, Cheah
demonstrates how adaptations of Buddhist practices by immigrants,
converts and sympathizers have taken place within an environment already
permeated with the logic and ideology of whiteness and white supremacy.
In other words, race and religion (Buddhism) are so intimately bounded
together in the United States that the ideology of white supremacy
informs the differing ways in which convert Buddhists and sympathizers
and Burmese ethnic Buddhists have adapted Buddhist religious practices
to an American context. Cheah offers a complex view of how the Burmese
American community must negotiate not only the religious and racial
terrains of the United States but also the transnational reach of the
Burmese junta. Race and Religion in American Buddhism marks an important
contribution to the study of American Buddhism as well as to the larger
fields of U.S. religions and Asian American studies.
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