Monday, August 3, 2020

Via White Crane Institute // RUDOLF BRAZDA

Rudolf Brazda
2011 -

RUDOLF BRAZDA, (b: 1913) believed to be the last surviving man to wear the pink triangle — the emblem sewn onto the striped uniforms of the thousands of homosexuals sent to Nazi concentration camps, most of them to their deaths — died  on this date.

Mr. Brazda, who was born in Germany, had lived in France since the Buchenwald camp, near Weimar, Germany, was liberated by American forces in April 1945. He had been imprisoned there for three years.

It was only after May 27, 2008, when the German National Monument to the Victims of the Nazi Regime was unveiled in Berlin’s Tiergarten park — opposite the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe — that Mr. Brazda became known as probably the last gay survivor of the camps. Until he notified German officials after the unveiling, the Lesbian and Gay Federation believed there were no other pink-triangle survivors.

Mémorial de la Déportation Homosexuelle, a French organization that commemorates the Nazi persecution of gay people, said that Mr. Brazda “was very likely the last victim and the last witness” to the persecution.

“It will now be the task of historians to keep this memory alive,” the statement said, “a task that they are just beginning to undertake.”

One of those historians is Gerard Koskovich, curator of the  Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender History Museum in San Francisco and an author with Roberto Malini and Steed Gamero of A Different Holocaust (2006).

Pointing out that only men were interned, Mr. Koskovich said, “The Nazi persecution represented the apogee of anti-gay persecution, the most extreme instance of state-sponsored homophobia in the 20th century.” During the 12-year Nazi regime, he said, up to 100,000 men were identified in police records as homosexuals, with about 50,000 convicted of violating Paragraph 175, a section of the German criminal code that outlawed male homosexual acts. There was no law outlawing female homosexual acts, he said. Citing research by Rüdiger Lautmann, a German sociologist, Mr. Koskovich said that 5,000 to 15,000 gay men were interned in the camps and that about 60 percent of them died there, most within a year.

“The experience of homosexual men under the Nazi regime was one of extreme persecution, but not genocide,” Mr. Koskovich said, when compared with the “relentless effort to identify all Jewish people and ultimately exterminate them.”

Still, the conditions in the camps were murderous, said Edward J. Phillips, the director of exhibitions at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Men sent to the camps under Section 175 were usually put to forced labor under the cruelest conditions — underfed, long hours, exposure to the elements and brutal treatment by labor brigade leaders,” Mr. Phillips said. “We know of instances where gay prisoners and their pink triangles were used for guards’ target practices.”

Two books have been written about Mr. Brazda. In one, “Itinerary of a Pink Triangle” (2010), by Jean-Luc Schwab, Mr. Brazda recalled how dehumanizing the incarceration was. “Seeing people die became such an everyday thing, it left you feeling practically indifferent,” he is quoted as saying. “Now, every time I think back on those terrible times, I cry. But back then, just like everyone in the camps, I had hardened myself so I could survive.”

Rudolf Brazda was born on June 26, 1913, in the eastern German town of Meuselwitz to a family of Czech origin. His parents, Emil and Anna Erneker Brazda, both worked in thecoal mining industry. Rudolf became a roofer. Before he was sent to the camp, he was arrested twice for violations of Paragraph 175.

After the war, Mr. Brazda moved to Alsace. There he met Edouard Mayer, his partner until Mr. Mayer’s death in 2003. He has no immediate survivors.

“Having emerged from anonymity,” the book “Itinerary of a Pink Triangle” says of Mr. Brazda, “he looks at the social evolution for homosexuals over his nearly 100 years of life: ‘I have known it all, from the basest repression to the grand emancipation of today.’ ”

He died on August 3, 2011 in Bantzenheim, in Alsace, France. He was 98.

Via Daily Dharma: Using Your Head and Your Heart

If your head can give priority to finding the causes for true happiness, and your heart can learn to embrace those causes—then the training of the mind can go far.

—Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “Head & Heart Together”

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Sunday, August 2, 2020

Soka Gakkai International - Buddhism in Action for Peace English // The Meaning of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo



The essence of Buddhism is the conviction that we have within us at each moment the ability to overcome any problem or difficulty that we may encounter in life; a capacity to transform any suffering. Our lives possess this power because they are inseparable from the fundamental law that underlies the workings of all life and the universe.

SBMG Affirmation of Welcome:

Sacramento Buddhist Meditation Group Affirmation of Welcome:

Walking the path of liberation together, we express our intimate connection with all beings. Sacramento Buddhist Meditation Group embraces inclusion and commits to a dharma practice that is available to persons of every color, ethnicity, nationality, religion, political affiliation, socio-economic status, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, and mental and physical ability. We also welcome those who differ in ways we have yet to name. May all beings realize their true nature.


Sacramento Buddhist Meditation Group website

Via Tricycle: Living the Lotus - Sutra Myokei Caine-Barrett


Via Tricycle: Embracing Extinction Will Buddhism change to face humanity’s impending peril?


Everything,” declaraed Gotama at the opening of the Fire Sermon in the 5th century BCE, “is burning.” On reading these words today I cannot but think of the steady warming of the delicate atmosphere that envelops this planet. Disquietingly prophetic, Gotama understood how the forces that drive most human endeavor are like consuming fires. “Burning with what?” he asked. “With the fire of greed, the fire of dislike, the fire of stupidity.” And he understood a world ablaze with these fires to be barren, arid, a wasteland where nothing grows or flourishes.


Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - August 2, 2020 💌



It’s about doing the daily actions in life to come to a clearer state of consciousness, deeper peace or enlightenment, whatever metaphor you wish to use. The work you’re doing becomes your practice rather that taking you away from your daily life.

If you just start from where you are, not where you wish you were, then the game is to find the path to enlightenment as a method of working on yourself.


- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Share Your Light

When we share our light with others, we do not diminish our own light. Rather, we increase the amount of light available to all.

—Master Sheng-Yen, “Rich Generosity”

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Via FB


Puerto Rico


Sou Gay


Krishnamurti


Saturday, August 1, 2020

Ecostava Vows:



2001 A Space Odyssey







Bewilderment - Rumi


Via Daily Dharma: Discovering the Best Way to Live

To think in a more contemplative way means to slow down and recover our rootedness on Earth, which allows us to ponder and question what kind of beings we are and how best to live in this world.

—Stephen Batchelor, “Embracing Extinction”

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Via White Crane Institute // LAMMAS DAY


Lammas crafts
2017 -

LAMMAS DAY ‒ In English-speaking countries, August 1 is Lammas Day ("loaf-mass day"), the festival of the first wheat harvest of the year. In Wiccan traditions, the name Lammas is used for one of the sabbats, The festival is also known as Lughnasadh, a feast to commemorate the funeral games (Tailtean Games) of Tailtiu, foster-mother of the Irish sun-god Lugh. Lammas is a cross-quarter occurring ¼ of a year after Beltane. Lughnasadh was one of the four main festivals of the medieval Irish calendar: Imbolc at the beginning of February, Beltane on the first of May, Lughnasadh in August and Samhain in November.

The early Celtic calendar was based on the lunar, solar, and vegetative cycles, so the actual calendar date in ancient times may have varied. Lughnasadh marked the beginning of the harvest season, the ripening of first fruits, and was traditionally a time of community gatherings, market festivals, horse races and reunions with distant family and friends. Among the Irish it was a favored time for handfastings ‒ trial marriages that would generally last a year and a day, with the option of ending the contract before the new year, or later formalizing it as a more permanent marriage.

In Christian tradition on this day it was customary to bring to church a loaf made from the new crop. In many parts of England, tenants were bound to present freshly harvested wheat to their landlords on or before the first day of August. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where it is referred to regularly, it is called "the feast of first fruits".

Now is a great time of year to work on honing your own talents. Learn a new craft, or get better at an old one. Put on a play, write a story or poem, take up a musical instrument, start getting crafty, or sing a song. Whatever you choose to do, this is the right season for rebirth and renewal, so set August 1 as the day to share your new skill with your friends and family.

Via White Crane Institute // Noteworthy --- And Now for soemthing completely different...

Noteworthy
The Icelandic Phallological Museum
1997 -

The ICELANDIC PHALLOLOGICAL MUSEUM opened in Iceland; Located in Reykjavik, Iceland, the Phallological Museum houses the world's largest display of penises and penile parts. The collection of 280 specimens from 93 species of animals includes 55 penises taken from whales, 36 from seals and 118 from land mammals, allegedly including Huldufolk (Icelandic elves) and trolls. In July 2011, the museum obtained its first human penis, one of four promised by would-be donors. Its detachment from the donor's body did not go according to plan and it was reduced to a greyish-brown shrivelled mass pickled in a jar of formalin. The museum continues to search for "a younger and a bigger and better one."

Founded in 1997 by retired teacher Sigurour Hjartarson and now run by his son Hjörtur Gísli Sigurosson, the museum grew out of an interest in penises that began during Sigurður's childhood when he was given a cattle whip made from a bull’s penis. He obtained the organs of Icelandic animals from sources around the country, with acquisitions ranging from the 170 cm (67”) front tip of a blue whale’s penis to the 2 mm (0.08”) penis bone of a hamster, which can only be seen with a magnifying glass. The museum claims that its collection includes the penises of elves and trolls, though, as Icelandic folklore portrays such creatures as being invisible, they cannot be seen. The collection also features phallic art and crafts such as lampshades made from the scrotums of bulls.

The museum has become a popular tourist attraction with thousands of visitors a year — 60% of them women — and has received international media attention, including a Canadian documentary film called The Final Member, which covers the museum's quest to obtain a human penis. According to its mission statement, the museum aims to enable "individuals to undertake serious study into the field of phallology in an organized, scientific fashion." The museum's guest book includes comments such as, "I've never seen so many penises–and I went to boarding school!" (from a New Zealand visitor), "They're bigger in the USA," (from someone from Wisconsin) and "Is there a vagina museum?"(On this point, Sigurður has said, "I'm only collecting the male organ. Somebody else has to do the other job. I'd be interested in how they would preserve it. I think vaginas are better alive.")

Friday, July 31, 2020

Via Daily Dharma: Make Space for Others’ Growth

Rather than assuming you will know how people will act, take a deep breath and open yourself to the possibility that today is a new day.

—Yael Shy, “Five Practices for Your Daily Commute”

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