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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - September 16, 2020 💌

Who dwell in the heart cave has no limit. Who dwells in the heart cave is beyond time, beyond space.   

Each time you experience yourself as something or somebody, just notice that it's another thought or sensation drifting across the walls of the cave, and return to the spacious, formless, timeless essence. 

 

Image from Be Here Now

-Ram Dass -

Via Tricycle // Online Meditation Calendar

Online Meditation Calendar

By The Editors

We’re continuing to update our calendar of virtual meditations and dharma events for those practicing at home during the COVID pandemic. Find our list of free resources here.

Find out more »

Via Daily Dharma: Improve Your Mind

 Merit created through skillful means and wisdom is for more than physical comfort; it is to improve the conditions for your mind.

—Tsoknyi Rinpoche, “Noble Wishes” 

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Via FB // Home is not a place

Home is not a place. Home is an architecture of bones and a steadily thumping heart. Home is where dreams are born, and monsters are put to rest. It is where the soul can unfurl like the petals of a flower and find succor in the golden blush of each new day.

Sarah Chorn, Of Honey and Wildfires (via yabookquote)

The most important point of Buddha's teachings ~ Gyaltsab Rinpoche

 

The most important point of Buddha's teachings ~ Gyaltsab Rinpoche https://justdharma.com/s/5v6dq  When you suffer, if you take that not just as your own suffering but rather as the nature of samsara, then you are understanding the most important point of Buddha's teachings.  – Gyaltsab Rinpoche  source: https://bit.ly/1jJWC9e

Via Daily Dharma: Go Beyond Good and Bad

 Fortune and misfortune, good and bad—not everything is how it looks to your eyes. It’s not how you think it is either. We’ve got to go beyond fortune and misfortune, good and bad.

—Kodo Sawaki Roshi, “To You”

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Music as a Language: Victor Wooten at TEDxGabriolaIsland

Via Daily Dharma: Change the Direction of Your Thoughts

Mindfulness allows us to watch our thoughts, see how one thought leads to the next, decide if we’re heading toward an unhealthy path, and if so, let go and change directions.

—Sharon Salzberg, “Mindfulness and Difficult Emotions”

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Tom Lehrer Full Copenhagen Performance

Via White Crane Institute // ALAIN LOCKE

 This Day in Gay History

September 13

Born

Alain Locke

1886 -

ALAIN LOCKE (d: 1954) An American writer, editor, philosopher, educator and patron of the arts was born on this date. He is best known for his writings on and about the Harlem Renaissance. He is unofficially called the "Father of the Harlem Renaissance." His philosophy served as a strong motivating force in keeping the energy and passion of the Movement at the forefront.

In classic same-sex “culture carrier” mode, Locke promoted African American artists, writers, and musicians, encouraging them to look to Africa as an inspiration for their works. He encouraged them to depict African and African American subjects, and to draw on their history for subject material. Locke edited the March 1925 issue of the periodical Survey Graphic, a special on Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance, which helped educate white readers about the flourishing culture there.

Later that year, he expanded the issue into The New Negro, a collection of writings by African Americans, which would become one of his best known and seminal works.

His philosophy of the New Negro was grounded in the concept of race-building. Its most important component is overall awareness of the potential black equality; No longer would blacks allow themselves to adjust themselves or comply with unreasonable white requests. This idea was based on self-confidence and political awareness. Although in the past the laws regarding equality had been ignored without consequence, Locke's philosophical idea of The New Negro allowed for real fair treatment. Because this was just an idea and not an actual bylaw, its power was held in the people. If they wanted this idea to flourish, they were the ones who would need to "enforce" it through their actions and overall points of view. Locke has been said to have greatly influenced and encouraged Zora Neale Hurston.

 

He was also a Bahá'í  

Unity Through Diversity: A Bahá’í Principle

Alain Locke: Baha'i Philosopher

 

Via Daily Dharma: Inner and Outer Practice

 Genuine spiritual practice offers a way to face both our inner and outer worlds and to bring these two related realms into living, loving dialogue.

—Gaylon Ferguson, “Natural Bravery”

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - September 13, 2020 💌

 

The Living Spirit, the Beloved, is always right here. It is merely your mind that prevents you from acknowledging its existence. When you quiet your mind or open your heart out so that it draws your mind along with it, only then do you rend the veil to see that the Beloved is right here.

- Ram Dass -

One of the best posts I've read to describe "white privilege".

 Don’t really get all the BLM stuff?

 400 years ago white people enslaved black people.

 And sold them.

 And treated them as less than human.

 

 For 250 years.

 While white men built the country and created its laws and its systems of government.

 While 10, 15 generations of white families got to grow and flourish and make choices that could make their lives better.

 150 years ago white people "freed" black people from slavery.

 But then angry white people created laws that made it impossible for them to vote.

 Or to own land.

 Or to have the same rights as white people. And even erected monuments glorifying people who actively had fought to keep them enslaved.

 All while another 5, 10 generations of white families got to grow and accumulate wealth and gain land and get an education.

 

 60 years ago we made it "legal" for black people to vote, and to be "free" from discrimination.

 But angry white people still fought to keep schools segregated.

 And closed off neighborhoods to white people only.

 

 And made it harder for black people to get bank loans, or get quality education or health care, or to (gasp) marry a white person.

 All while another 2-3 generations of white families got to grow and pass their wealth down to their children and their children's children.

 

 Present day-

 And then we entered an age where we had the technology to make PUBLIC the things that were already happening in private-- the beatings, the stop and frisk laws, the unequal distribution of justice, the police brutality (in the south, police began as slave patrols designed to catch runaway slaves).

 And only now, after 400+ years and 20+ generations of a white head start, are we STARTING to truly have a dialogue about what it means to be black.

 

 White privilege doesn't mean you haven't suffered or fought or worked hard.

 It doesn't mean white people are responsible for the sins of our ancestors.

 It doesn’t mean you can’t be proud of who you are.

 It DOES mean that we need to acknowledge that the system our ancestors created is built FOR white people.

 It DOES mean that Black people are treated at a disadvantage because of the color of their skin

 It DOES mean that we owe it to our neighbors-- of all colors-- to acknowledge that and work to make our world more equitable.

 Because Black Lives Matter.

 Understanding why we have to say this matters.

 Your voice in this movement matters. Recognizing privilege, power and history matters.

 

 This has been copied and pasted - PLEASE DO THE SAME

Via Daily Dharma: Receiving What Is Here

 The gate of liberation is always open … if only you could actually recognize and receive what is here in front of you, rather than what you wish were here instead.

—Koshin Paley Ellison, “Being Content with What We Have”

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Via Daily Dharma: Beginning Meditation

 If we wait until we are saints, if we put off meditation until our [ethics are] perfect, then we will never meditate! Whatever our moral situation, we must begin.

—Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “The Seal of Sila”

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Via White Crane Institute // 3 Heros

 

Died

9-11 hero Mark Bingham

2001 -

MARK BINGHAM, passenger on United Airlines Flight 93, died (b. 1970) Bingham is believed to have been among the passengers who attempted to storm the cockpit to try to prevent the hijackers from using the plane to kill hundreds or thousands of additional victims on September 11, 2001. He made a brief cell phone call to his mother, Alice Hoagland, shortly before the plane went down. Hoagland, a former flight attendant with United Airlines, later left a voice mail message on his cell phone, instructing Bingham to reclaim the aircraft after it became apparent that Flight 93 was to be used in a suicide mission.

Bingham was survived by his former boyfriend of six years, Paul Holm, who says this was not the first time Bingham risked his life to protect the lives of others. In fact, he had twice successfully protected Holm from attempted muggings, one of which was at gunpoint. Holm describes Bingham as a brave, competitive man, saying, "He hated to lose — at anything." He was even known to proudly display a scar he received after being gored at the running of the bulls in Pamplona.

A large athlete at 6 ft 4 in and 225 pounds, he also played for the San Francisco Fog, a rugby union team. The biennial Gay Rugby tournament is named in his honor (the Bingham Cup).

---

2001 -

 FATHER MYCHAL F. JUDGE, Chaplain, FDNY died (b 1933) a Roman Catholic priest of the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor, Chaplain of the Fire Department of New York and first officially recorded victim of the September 11, 2001 attacks. 

Following his death, a few of his friends and associates revealed that Father Judge was Gay — as a matter of orientation rather than practice, as he was a celibate priest. According to fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen: "I actually knew about his sexuality when I was in the Uniformed Firefighters Association. I kept the secret, but then he told me when I became commissioner five years ago. He and I often laughed about it, because we knew how difficult it would have been for the other firefighters to accept it as easily as I had. I just thought he was a phenomenal, warm, sincere man, and the fact that he was Gay just had nothing to do with anything." Judge was a long-term member of Dignity, a Catholic GLBT activist organization that advocates for change in the Catholic Church's teaching on homosexuality.

Since October 1, 1986, when the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine for the Faith issued an encyclical, On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, which declared homosexuality to be a "strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil", many bishops, including Cardinal O’Connor of New York, banned Dignity from Catholic properties. At that time, Judge welcomed Dignity's AIDS ministry to the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi. At Judge's memorial service, Malachy McCourt said that he had heard "if Mike got any money from the right wing, he'd give it to the Gay organizations. I don't know if that's true, but that's his humor, for sure."

Ironically, Judge's firefighter helmet was presented to Pope John Paul II in memory of his death. Although there has been call within the Roman Catholic Church to have Mychal Judge canonized, there is no indication that this process is being seriously considered by the Church hierarchy. Several independent Catholic and Orthodox denominations, most notably The Orthodox-Catholic Church of America, have already declared him a saint. A film, The Saint of 9/11 portrays Mychal's life as a spiritual adventure and an honest embrace of life, where alcoholism and sexuality were acknowledged. Inspired by his life, the documentary embraces Mychal's full humanity.

---

Arthur Evans

2011 -

ARTHUR EVANS, gay theorist, philosopher, activist died on this date (b: 1942). Evans was one of the founders of the Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) that coalesced after Gay people and supporters protested a 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village Gay bar. He and others founded the organization when they became frustrated with the tactics of the Gay Liberation Front, which he felt were not assertive enough. Based in New York, the alliance became a model for Gay Rights organizations nationwide, pushing in New York for legislation to ban discrimination against Gay men and Lesbians in employment, housing and other areas.

Mr. Evans wrote its statement of purpose and much of its constitution, which began, “We as liberated homosexual activists demand the freedom for expression of our dignity and value as human beings.”

To attract attention the alliance staged what its members called “zaps,” confrontations with people or institutions that they believed discriminated against gay people. Among other incidents, they confronted Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York, went to television studios to protest shows perceived as anti-Gay, demanded Gay marriage equality rights at the city’s marriage license bureau, and demonstrated at the taxi commission against a regulation, since abolished, requiring Gay people to get a psychiatrist’s approval before they could be allowed to drive a taxi.

In the fall of 1970, Mr. Evans and others showed up at the offices of Harper’s Magazine in Manhattan to protest an article it had published sharply criticizing Gay people and their lifestyle. It was Mr. Evans’s idea to bring a coffee pot, doughnuts, a folding table and chairs for a civilized “tea party.” When the editor, Midge Decter, refused to print a rebuttal as the group demanded, Mr. Evans erupted.

“You knew that this article would contribute to the oppression of homosexuals!” he yelled, according to the 1999 book “Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America” by Dudley Clendinen, a former reporter for The New York Times, and Adam Nagourney, a current Times reporter. “You are a bigot, and you are to be held responsible for that moral and political act.”

While living in Washington, Mr. Evans had spent his winters in Seattle researching the historical origins of the counterculture. After settling in San Francisco, he wrote “Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture,” a 1978 book tracing homophobic attitudes to the Middle Ages, when people accused of witchcraft, the book contended, were being persecuted in part for their sexuality, often their homosexuality.

He was among the first -- if not the first -- people to coin and use the term "Radical Faerie" beginning in a regularly circle that met in San Francisco. 

He went on to write The God of Ecstasy, a reinterpretation of the Dionysus myth and Critique of Patriarchal Reason (1997), a dense treatise arguing that misogyny and homophobia have influenced supposedly objective fields like logic and physics.

Via White Crane Institute // This Day in Gay History: D.H. LAWRENCE

 

September 11 Born D. H. Lawrence 1885 - D.H. LAWRENCE, English novelist, born (d. 1930) A very important and controversial English writer of the 20th century, whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism, and personal letters. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, sexuality, and instinctive behavior. Lawrence's unsettling opinions earned him many enemies and he endured hardships, official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E.M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Despite his long marriage to Frieda Weekley, it was during the years in which Women in Love was being written that Lawrence developed a sexual relationship, in the town of Tregerthen, with a Cornish farmer by the name of William Henry Hocking. The affair, brief though it was, seems to indicate that Lawrence's fascination with themes of homosexuality, which he would explore further in Women in Love and Aaron's Rod especially, related to his own, personal sexuality. Indeed, in a letter written during 1913, he writes, "I should like to know why nearly every man that approaches greatness tends to homosexuality, whether he admits it or not…" He is also quoted as saying, "I believe the nearest I've come to perfect love was with a young coal miner when I was about sixteen." Lawrence is perhaps best known for his novels Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women In Love (adapted for film by AIDS activist and playwright Larry Kramer) and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Within these Lawrence explores the possibilities for life and living within an Industrial setting. In particular Lawrence is concerned with the nature of relationships that can be had within such settings. Though often classed as a realist, Lawrence's use of his characters can be better understood with reference to his philosophy. His use of sexual activity, though shocking at the time, has its roots in this highly personal way of thinking and being. It is worth noting that Lawrence was very interested in human touch behavior [the science of haptics] and that his interest in physical intimacy has its roots in a desire to restore our emphasis on the body, and re-balance it with what he perceived to be western civilization's slow process of over-emphasis on the mind.

Thich Nhat Hanh

 

“We have a tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being. We think that when we are not doing anything, we are wasting our time. But that is not true. Our time is first of all for us to be. To be what? To be alive, to be peaceful, to be joyful, to be loving. And that is what the world needs most.”

• Thich Nhat Hanh