Wednesday, June 2, 2021

Via Daily Dharma: Living Harmoniously With Others

For spiritual practitioners,

relationships are the final test.
Even if you have awakened to your enlightened nature,
there is still further to go in your spiritual journey
if you’re not living harmoniously with others.

—Haemin Sunim, “The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down”

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - June 2, 2021 💌





Our whole spiritual transformation brings us to the point where we realize that in our own being, we are enough. - Ram Dass



Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Tricotar está virando moda entre os homens. Confira

Via Daily Dharma: Returning the Gift of Life

 Life is given to us for free. How can we repay such a gift except with the fullness of our own life? What could be better than to return life entirely to itself?

—Caitriona Reed, “Coming Out Whole”

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Monday, May 31, 2021

Via Daily Dharma: The Essence of Spiritual Practice

The essence of spiritual practice is remembrance, whether it’s remembering to come back to the present moment or recalling the truth of impermanence. 

—Andrew Holecek, “The Supreme Contemplation”

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Sunday, May 30, 2021

Via Daily Dharma: Transforming the World

By transforming ourselves, we transform the world, making it a saner, more compassionate place.

—Pema Düddul, “Practicing in Hell”

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - May 30, 2021 💌

 


You end up living by the Tao; that is, you end up being in harmony with the universe. The Way of Harmony is: the more conscious you become, the less you are capable of creating conditions which increase the illusion for you or your fellow man.  - Ram Dass


From a 1969 lecture, listen to the expanded talk on the Here & Now Podcast, Episode 180: The Way of Harmony

Saturday, May 29, 2021

Listen to the vintage 1969 Ram Dass talk 'The Way of Harmony' 🌊

 



In this vintage 1969 dharma talk, a ‘fresh from India’ Ram Dass relays how to live our ‘karmic trip’ in the Tao – the Way of Harmony – before sharing stories of the spiritual scene at his father’s farm...

“You end up living by the Tao; that is, you end up being in harmony with the universe. The Way of Harmony is: the more conscious you become, the less you are capable of creating conditions which increase the illusion for you or your fellow man.” – Ram Dass
 

Listen Here

Via Daily Dharma: The Dynamics of Life

Every moment is a moment of birth. Every moment is a moment of death. Birth and death are the two dynamics of life. Life itself is still. 

—Sojun Mel Weitsman Roshi, “A Matter of Life and Death”

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Friday, May 28, 2021



Planetary
Directed by Guy Reid
Buddhist masters, philosophers, indigenous elders, and astronauts share their own visions of the universal truth that everything is connected. 
Watch now »

Via Daily Dharma: Recognize Your Motives

When we recognize, without any doubt, that if we act from unwholesome thoughts or motives we will experience suffering, it really helps us to live a life more beneficial not only to ourselves but to everybody around us.

—Zenkei Blanche Hartman, “Brief Teachings”

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Via White Crane Institute // Today's Gay Wisdom

 

2018 -

TODAY'S GAY WISDOM

More From Oscar Wilde’s DE PROFUNDIS

The poor are wise, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive than we are. In their eyes prison is a tragedy in a man's life, a misfortune, a casuality, something that calls for sympathy in others. They speak of one who is in prison as of one who is 'in trouble' simply. It is the phrase they always use, and the expression has the perfect wisdom of love in it. With people of our own rank it is different.

With us, prison makes a man a pariah. I, and such as I am, have hardly any right to air and sun. Our presence taints the pleasures of others. We are unwelcome when we reappear. To revisit the glimpses of the moon is not for us. Our very children are taken away. Those lovely links with humanity are broken. We are doomed to be solitary, while our sons still live. We are denied the one thing that might heal us and keep us, that might bring balm to the bruised heart, and peace to the soul in pain. . . .

I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. I am trying to say so, though they may not think it at the present moment. This pitiless indictment I bring without pity against myself. Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still.

I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. I had realised this for myself at the very dawn of my manhood, and had forced my age to realise it afterwards. Few men hold such a position in their own lifetime, and have it so acknowledged. It is usually discerned, if discerned at all, by the historian, or the critic, long after both the man and his age have passed away. With me it was different. I felt it myself, and made others feel it. Byron was a symbolic figure, but his relations were to the passion of his age and its weariness of passion. Mine were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital issue, of larger scope.

The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a FLANEUR, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility.

I have lain in prison for nearly two years. Out of my nature has come wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed through every possible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he said –

'Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark And has the nature of infinity.'

Thursday, May 27, 2021

Via Lion's Roar:


5 Things to Do When Life Gets Tough

Find wisdom for navigating difficult times in these featured teachings:
   

 

Smile At Fear
If you can smile at your fear, says Pema Chödrön, the things that make you feel anxious and inadequate lose their power over you.


Discover the Joy of Doing Nothing
Zen teacher Pat Enkyo O’hara teaches us the practice of Shikantaza. Doing nothing but sitting and breathing, we rest in flowing awareness beyond the ups and downs of life.


Heal in Community
Come together with others, says Ariska Razak, to grieve, heal, and fight for a better world.

Rest in Your Buddhanature
Your true nature is like the sky, says Mingyur Rinpoche, its love and wisdom unaffected by the clouds of life. You can access it with this awareness meditation.


Practice Self Caring
Caring for yourself isn’t a one-shot deal, says Cyndi Lee. Here’s how you can make it a lifelong practice.

Via Daily Dharma: Allowing Relationships to Change

The role of the enemy isn’t a permanent one. The person hurting you now might be a best friend later... By contemplating again and again in this way, we learn to respond to aggression with compassion and answer anger with kindness.

—Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, “Putting Down the Arrow”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via White Crane Institute // WILD BILL HICKOK

 This Day in Gay History

May 27

Born
James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok
1837 -

WILD BILL HICKOK is born in Troy Grove, Illinois. His real name was James Butler Hickok. Like many men in the wild west, Wild Bill really was wild with the men on the frontier and used his Lesbian buddy, Calamity Jane as a blind.

Few people ever knew the pair's secret, and in the movies about their lives, not a mention was made by either Doris Day or Howard Keel. The American West of the nineteenth century was a world of freedom and adventure for men of every stripe—not least also those who admired and desired other men.

Among these sojourners was William Drummond Stewart, a flamboyant Scottish nobleman who found in American culture of the 1830s and 1840s a cultural milieu of openness in which men could pursue same-sex relationships.

William Benemann’s recent book, Men In Eden traces Stewart’s travels from his arrival in America in 1832 to his return to Murthly Castle in Perthshire, Scotland, with his French Canadian–Cree Indian companion, Antoine Clement, one of the most skilled hunters in the Rockies. Benemann chronicles Stewart’s friendships with such notables as Kit Carson, William Sublette, Marcus Whitman, and Jim Bridger. He describes the wild Renaissance-costume party held by Stewart and Clement upon their return to America—a journey that ended in scandal.

Through Stewart’s letters and novels, Benemann shows that Stewart was one of many men drawn to the sexual freedom offered by the West. His book provides a tantalizing new perspective on the Rocky Mountain fur trade and the role of homosexuality in shaping the American West. For more: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13594189-men-in-eden

Via White Crane Institute // RACHEL CARSON

 

L to R: Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman
1907 -

Marine biologist RACHEL CARSON was born on this date. She was born in Springdale, Pennsylvania and spent the majority of her life outside of Washington, DC with summers in Maine. She is best known as the author of Silent Spring, which is considered one of the foundational documents for the modern environmental movement.

Silent Spring, published in 1962, awakened society to its responsibility to other forms of life. Carson had long been aware of the dangers of chemical pesticides and also the controversy within the agricultural community. She had long hoped someone else would publish an expose' on DDT but eventually realized that only she had the background as well as the economic freedom to do it.

Silent Spring provoked a firestorm of controversy as well as attacks on Carson's professional integrity. The pesticide industry mounted a massive campaign to discredit Carson even though she did not urge the complete banning of pesticides but called for research to ensure pesticides were used safely and to find alternatives to dangerous chemicals such as DDT.

The federal government, however, ordered a complete review of pesticide policy and Carson was asked to testify before a Congressional committee. As a direct result of that review, DDT was banned. With the publication of Silent Spring, Carson is credited with launching the contemporary environmental movement and awakening concern by Americans about the environment.

She died from cancer in 1964 at the age of 57. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service named one of its refuges near Carson's summer home on the coast of Maine as "the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge" in 1969 to honor the memory of this extraordinary woman.

In the early 1950s Carson moved with her mother to Southport Island, Maine and subsequently began a extremely close relationship with a neighbor Dorothy Freeman. The relationship would last the rest of Carson's life. The two women had a number of common interests, nature chief among them, and began exchanging letters regularly while apart. They would continue to share every summer for the remainder of Carson's life, and meet whenever else their schedules permitted. Carson and Freeman knew that their letters could be interpreted as lesbian.

Freeman shared parts of Carson's letters with her husband to help him understand the relationship, but much of their correspondence was carefully guarded. Shortly before Carson's death, she and Freeman destroyed hundreds of letters. The surviving correspondence was published in 1995 as Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, 1952–1964: An Intimate Portrait of a Remarkable Friendship, edited by Freeman's granddaughter.