Sunday, June 6, 2021

Via White Crane Institute // This Day in Gay History: THOMAS MANN

 

White Crane Institute Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989
 

This Day in Gay History

June 06

Born
Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann
1875 -
THOMAS MANN, German writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1955); a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and mid-length stories, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and intellectual.
His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.
 
Mann's diaries, unsealed in 1975, tell of his struggles with his sexuality, which found reflection in his works, most prominently through the obsession of the elderly Aschenbach for the 14-year-old Polish boy Tadzio in the novella Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig, 1912).
 
Anthony Heilbut's biography Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature (1997) was widely acclaimed for uncovering the centrality of Mann's sexuality to his oeuvre. Gilbert Adair's work The Real Tadzio describes how, in the summer of 1911, Mann had been staying at the Grand Hôtel des Bains in Venice with his wife and brother when he became enraptured by the angelic figure of Władysław Moes, an 11-year-old Polish boy. Considered a classic of homoerotic passion (if unconsummated) Death in Venice has been made into a film and an opera. Blamed sarcastically by Mann’s old enemy, Alfred Kerr, to have ‘made pederasty acceptable to the cultivated middle classes’, it has been pivotal to introducing the discourse of same-sex desire to the common culture.
 
Mann himself described his feelings for young violinist and painter Paul Ehrenberg as the "central experience of my heart." Despite the homoerotic overtones in his writing, Mann chose to marry and have children; two of his children, Klaus, also a writer, who committed suicide in 1949, and Erika, an actress and writer who died in 1969 and who was married to W.H. Auden for 34 years, were also Gay. His works also present other sexual themes, such as incest in The Blood of the Walsungs (Wälsungenblut) and The Holy Sinner (Der Erwählte).

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - June 6, 2021 💌

 

Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It’s not “I love you” for this or that reason, not “I love you if you love me.” It’s love for no reason, love without an object. It’s just sitting in love, a love that incorporates the chair and the room and permeates everything around. The thinking mind is extinguished in love.

If I go into the place in myself that is love and you go into the place in yourself that is love, we are together in love. Then you and I are truly in love, the state of being love. That’s the entrance to Oneness. That’s the space I entered when I met my guru.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Being Nobly Human

We do not become less human by purging toxins from our emotional life but rather more nobly human. Abandoning greed, hatred, and delusion at every opportunity, we are still left with a rich, nuanced, and healthier emotional life.


—Andrew Olendzki, “The Buddha’s Smile”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Saturday, June 5, 2021

Via Lion's Roar // Loving-Kindness: Healing Your Inner Child

 

Loving-Kindness: Healing Your Inner Child

Peggy Rowe Ward and Larry Ward on how to give yourself the love and compassion you deserve. And send some of that love to the wounded child inside you. They need it.

Thich Nhat Hanh, our teacher, described love as an extremely powerful energy that has the capacity to transform ourselves and others. But many of us find it difficult to direct love toward ourselves. We quickly become aware of negative feelings like shame, guilt, and self-criticism that make it hard to love and care for ourselves. Unfortunately, this is all too common.

Luckily for us, the seeds of love, compassion, joy, and equanimity are in our store consciousness, ready and waiting to grow. 
 

Via FB // The Pink Triangle

 


In Nazi concentration camps, each prisoner was required to wear a downward-pointing, equilateral triangular cloth badge on their chest, the color of which identified the reason for their imprisonment; A pink triangle was established for prisoners identified as homosexual men, which also included bisexual men and transgender women. The pink triangles were slightly larger than the other colored triangles so that guards could identify them from a distance. It is said that those who wore the pink triangles were singled out by the guards, and when the guards were finished with them, some of the other inmates would harm them as well. At the end of the war, when the concentration camps were finally liberated, virtually all of the prisoners were released except those who wore the pink triangle. Those with a pink triangle on their pocket were put back in prison and their nightmare continued. Prisoners imprisoned for homosexuality were re-incarcerated by the Allied-established Federal Republic of Germany. The Nazi amendments to Paragraph 175, which turned homosexuality from a minor offense into a felony, remained intact in East Germany until 1968 and in West Germany until 1969, though West Germany continued to imprison those identified as homosexual until 1994. 1994, only 26 years ago. The holocaust did not end for everyone in 1945.
 

Via Daily Dharma: Make Friends With Your Mind

Meditation teachers often use the analogy of meditation as making friends with your mind, and for good reason. If our practice feels like hanging out with a hopeless case we are charged with fixing but fear we cannot, sitting is no fun at all. 

—Kate Johnson, “Calming the Not Now Mind”

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Friday, June 4, 2021

Via Tumblr / So Your Ancestor is a Racist...









 

Via Daily Dharma: Liberate Your Breath

Breath wants to liberate itself, to free itself from its encasing in the body’s frozen stillness. The whole of the body wants to keep moving—not even a single little part left out, everything in motion, just like the universe.

—Will Johnson, “Breath Moves Body”

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Thursday, June 3, 2021

Via FB

 


Via FB

 


Via Daily Dharma: Tasting Freedom

The Buddha says that just as in the great ocean there is but one taste, the taste of salt, so in his doctrine and discipline there is but one taste, the taste of freedom.

—Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “The Path of Serenity and Insight”

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Não vamos voltar ao normal.

 

Não vamos voltar ao normal. Normal nunca foi. Nossa existência pré-corona não era normal, a não ser que normalizamos a ganância, a injustiça, a exaustão, o esgotamento, a extração... Não devemos voltar por muito tempo, meus amigos. Estamos tendo a oportunidade de costurar uma nova roupa. Aquela que se adapta a toda a humanidade e a natureza.
 

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”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

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”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

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