Thursday, January 7, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Locating Emotions in Your Body
Emotions
circulate in the body. … Noting that stirring, that circulating, can
help us find settledness even within difficult emotions.
—Grace Schireson, “Humility and Humiliation”
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Via Gay Wisdom // White Crane Institute
ROBERT DUNCAN, American poet, born (d: 1988); An American poet and a student of H.D. and the Western esoteric tradition who spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Though associated with any number of literary traditions and schools, Duncan is often identified with the New American Poetry and Black Mountain Poets.
Duncan's mature work emerged in the 1950s from within the literary context of Beat culture and today he is also identified as a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance. Duncan’s name figures prominently in the history of pre-Stonewall Gay culture, particularly with the publication of The Homosexual in Society. While in Philadelphia, Duncan had a relationship with a male instructor he had first met in Berkeley. In 1941 he was drafted and declared his homosexuality to get discharged.
In 1943, he had his first heterosexual relationship. This ended in a short, disastrous marriage. In 1944, he published The Homosexual in Society, an essay in which he compared the plight of homosexuals with that of African Americans and Jews. The immediate consequence of this brave essay was that John Crowe Ransom refused to publish a previously accepted poem of Duncan's in Kenyon Review, thus initiating Duncan's exclusion from the mainstream of American poetry.
From 1951 until his death, he lived with the artist Jess Collins. Before then, Duncan began a relationship with Robert De Niro Sr., the father of famed actor Robert De Niro, Jr., shortly before DeNiro Sr. broke up with his wife, artist Virginia Admiral.
Duncan was the first poet to use the word “cocksucker” in print, and the first to strip to the buff during a reading. Nevertheless, he is in spirit, if not in fact, a modern romantic whose best work is instantly engaging by the standards of the purest lyrical traditions.
Wednesday, January 6, 2021
Via The Upworthiest
|
Jerry Seinfeld said daily meditation and lifting weights have completely changed his life
Jerry Seinfeld has been one of the keenest observers of the human
condition for over five decades. Albeit most of his observations have
been brilliant dissections of the mundane, most famously socks, chips 'n
dip, and sports jerseys.
However, earlier this month the comedian got serious on Tim Ferriss'
podcast, revealing the two routines that help him stay sane and creative
in the mentally and physically draining world of comedy.
Read the Story
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - January 6, 2021 💌
That doorway is through the heart. The heart opens a doorway into the unitive nature of the universe, and love flows through it. Love doesn’t know boundaries. The mind creates the barrier of separation between you and me. The heart keeps embracing and opening out so that when you open your heart, you open into the universe to experience the preciousness, the grace, the sweetness, and the thick interconnectedness of it all.
It’s beyond interconnected. It’s all one thing, it just keeps changing its flow and patterns, and you’re a part of it.
-Ram Dass -
Via SBMG // I am no longer waiting - Mary Anne Perrone
Via Daily Dharma: Radiate Happiness
When
it is warm with tenderness and affection toward others, our own heart
can give us the most pure and profound happiness that exists and enable
us to radiate that happiness to others.
—Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, “Opening the Injured Heart”
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Tuesday, January 5, 2021
Via Tricycle // Beyond Question
Beyond Question
By Ken McLeod
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Via Daily Dharma: Empower Your Wisdom
The force needed to empower wisdom is compassion.
—Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, “The Need of the Hour”
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Monday, January 4, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Reside in Balance
We
should avoid thinking, “Daily life is more important,” or, “Spiritual
life is more important.” We live in both realms simultaneously, and if
we don’t notice this, we will be off balance.
—Les Kaye and Teresa Bouza, “Brief Teachings”
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Upajjhatthana Sutta // Thich Nhat Hanh
These Remembrances are found in a sermon of the Buddha called the Upajjhatthana Sutta, which is in the Pali Sutta-pitaka (Anguttara Nikaya 5:57). The Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh also has spoken of them often. A version of the Remembrances is part of the Plum Village chanting liturgy.
The Five Remembrances
- I am subject to aging. There is no way to avoid aging.
- I am subject to ill health. There is no way to avoid illness.
- I am going to die. There is no way to avoid death.
- Everyone and everything that I love will change, and I will be separated from them.
- My only true possessions are my actions, and I cannot escape their consequences.
https://www.learnreligions.com/the-five-remembrances-449551
Sunday, January 3, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Challenge Yourself to Stay Open
Something
changes when I genuinely let go and ask for help. The challenge is
maintaining this openness, rather than grasping at solid forms or quick
solutions to feel safe.
—Rob Preece, “The Solace of Surrender”
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Via White Crane Institute // Today's Gay Wisdom
After researching and writing this collection now for more than a decade, it is a pleasant surprise to discover some new bit of Gay history. Listening to All Things Considered on a drive home to upstate New York from Connecticut on New Year’s Day, we listened to author and biographer Mosette Broderick discussing her book, Triumvirate: McKim, Mead & White: Art, Architecture, Scandal, and Class in America's Gilded Age (Knopf ISBN-10: 0394536622), a multiple biography of the three architects who shaped the American architectural scene well into the 20th century (the firm still exists, though under a different name, now).
I nearly drove off the road when she dropped this little tidbit into the conversation. “It’s quite clear from their letters that something happened between them while they traveled in Italy.” The “them” she refers to is no less than architect Stanford White and his longtime collaborator – and now it would seem lover – August Saint-Gaudens. Yes, Stanford White was eventually (and now one might suggest “ironically”) shot by the irate cuckolded husband of actress Evelyn Nesbitt, Philadelphia plutocrat Harry K. Thaw. And yes, August Saint-Gaudens was a married man.
As the French say chacun à son goût!
And as we say: Whatever.
In the book Broderick goes into great detail about the relationship, but some particular things jump off the page to the careful reader. Though Saint-Gaudens was, indeed, married, it seems that this was a classic marriage of convenience, particularly for Saint-Gaudens for whom the marriage meant financial security found in the wealth of his wife and her family. When she attempted to make “an arrangement” for White with her own sister, White wrote to friends protesting,
“’I am sure that she – or any other girl – is not for me.” Broderick goes on, “White’s remarks about women and marriage seem to indicate a lack of interest in any serious relationship. Indeed, beyond a generic reference to “pooty” girls, there is little other indication of ending his bachelor status.”
Oh those bachelors! “Pooty” girls. Indeed.
But perhaps the most telling…and dare we say romantic...story Broderick relates is of the two men’s sojourn together in Italy.
“While in Italy alone with Gus [August Saint-Gaudens] who had been in Italy twice before and could act as a guide, something happened between the two of them that cannot be fully ascertained. White’s letters, which were carefully edited by his son in the Depression years, contain references to an incident that almost cost the men their friendship. With an ocean between them in the following months each writes the other admitting blame and urging the other not to be too serious about what happened. Gus seems to do the bulk of the apologizing for his behavior. The language used by the two—who address each other as “beloved” and even “doubly beloved” and sign their missives as “ever lovingly thine”—indicates a possible pass made at White by Saint-Gaudens. Although probably the act was rejected, an ambiguity toward homosexual moments appears in their letters from this point forward; both words and drawings seem to indicate a shared experience, and their old motto Kiss My Ass, used as an ending for letters, becomes more serious when signed with graphic cartoon drawings.”
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - January 3, 2021 💌
It’s only when caterpillarness is done that you become a butterfly. That is part of this paradox. You cannot rip away caterpillarness. The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process over which you have no control.
- Ram Dass -