Via Tumblr \\ Chris Emerson: When Causes and conditions come together

 

Via Tumblr \\ Dakotsu Lida

 

Via Tumblr \\ Geshe Langri Thangpa

 

Via Daily Dharma: Finding the Still Point

 

Do not cling to or demand pleasure, calm, bliss, silence, or peace, for they may come and go. Realizing such is true peace shining at the heart of all the world’s noise and calamity—the still point at the center of all coming and going.

—Jundo Cohen, “Four Steps You May Be Overlooking in Your Zazen Practice”

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - December 19, 2021 💌

 

Water, when it flows downstream, doesn’t have a model of what it’s doing. It’s just being water, and water floats downstream, because that’s how water works. The thing that is extraordinarily hard for any of us to truly realize and to have sufficient faith to accept, is that if you stop having views, having models, planning, desiring, organizing, and structuring, it’s all right.

You don’t stop your desires as long as you stay in a human body. You break the identification with them. Thats all thats required.

It isn’t necessary to give up a thing. It’s necessary to give up attachment to the thing. That’s all that’s required.

- Ram Dass

Via Dhamma Wheel // Establishing Mindfulness of Mind

 Establishing Mindfulness of Mind

A person goes to the forest or to the root of a tree or to an empty place and sits down. Having crossed the legs, one sets the body erect. One establishes the presence of mindfulness. (MN 10) One is aware: "Ardent, fully aware, mindful, I am content." (SN 47.10)   When the mind is beset by desire, one is aware that "the mind is beset by desire." One is just aware, just mindful: "There is mind." And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)

Reflection

The third establishment of mindfulness is mindfulness of the quality of mind manifesting in any given moment. It is awareness of awareness itself, in particular of whether or not awareness is influenced by the influx of greed, hatred, or delusion. We start here with desire, a common state that can in many cases be quite subtle and hard to see. Here we are practicing becoming conscious of something that is normally unconscious.

Daily Practice

Sometimes the presence of desire can be detected in our experience. This is not bad or wrong—just something to be noticed. For example, seeing an object is one thing, while seeing it with a tinge of desire, of wanting it, is another. Notice that wanting is simply a quality of mind that is sometimes present and sometimes not. We are not trying to change anything here, just to learn to see what is really happening.

RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the Third Phase of Absorption (3rd Jhāna)

With the fading away of joy, one abides in equanimity; mindful and fully aware, still feeling pleasure with the body, one enters into and abides in the third phase of absorption, on account of which noble ones announce: "One has a pleasant abiding who has equanimity and is mindful." (MN 4)

Reflection

Some people move easily and naturally through the stages of absorption, but many people do not. This is not something to be forced if it does not come on its own, and we should never judge our progress against the schema of four jhānas. As we can see, mindfulness and concentration each involve the other, so at a certain point it becomes unnecessary and unhelpful to compare the two and distinguish two different practices.

Daily Practice

As you settle into the pleasant feeling tones of the second level of absorption, the pleasure gradually subsides and resolves into a state of equanimity or even-mindedness. The body still feels tranquil and at ease, but the mind becomes more balanced as it becomes more mindful and fully aware. Simply rest at ease, doing nothing and striving for nothing, and let the mind settle naturally.

Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering
One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects and the Fourth Jhāna

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Special Edition: The Week in Good News - December 18, 2021

 

11 ways LGBTQ rights improved around the world in 2021

Though 2021 presented many challenges for the LGBTQ community, it was also a year of hope and progress.

By Emily Bashforth Thursday, December 16, 2021    

Photo: Shutterstock

Though 2021 presented many challenges for the LGBTQ community, it was also a year of hope and progress. In several countries, new legislation was introduced while, in others, regressive laws were scrapped. New policies decriminalized homosexuality, provided protection for trans people against discrimination, and made it easier for the community to access healthcare.

Let’s take a look at eleven ways LGBTQ rights improved around the world this year. Here’s to more positive changes and safer spaces for LGBTQ people to exist in 2022.

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Betty White: 100 Years Young - a Birthday Celebration | January 17 Only

Via Love Serve Remember Foundation \\ Ever wonder how "Be Here Now" came to BE? Dive in! 📘

Coined the 'Counter-Culture Bible' for generations of free-thinkers, yogis, hippies, meditators, spiritualists, bhaktas, psychonauts, somebodies, and nobodies, Be Here Now continues to inspire individuals to awaken their minds and open their hearts now 50 years since its first publication. We welcome you to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Ram Dass' culture-transforming book by taking a historical dive into how Be Here Now came to be... To 'be here now,' first we have to go back there a little. It was a snowy Boston night in 1961 when Tim Leary invited Dr. Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) and Allen Ginsberg over to try psychedelic mushrooms. Dr. Alpert, a successful Harvard Professor, walked off into a dark room to quiet his mind, only to find himself in an escalating hypnagogic vision where he was asked to give up his roles as a professor, a son, an ego personality, and a body – leaving only pure awareness 'minding the store.' This timeless peak would spark cascading trips, experiments, research papers, news articles, lectures, light shows, contemplations, and difficult politics birthing from the Harvard psychedelic scene – with Leary & Alpert at the proverbial root. Diving full bore into consciousness expansion, these trips unearthed otherworldly experiences and transcendental wisdom. But Alpert noted: No matter how many psychedelics he took, what the dosage was, who guided him, and with what holy book—he still came down. Hitting wall after wall, Alpert began a quest to find "somebody who knew..."   Dive into the story of Be Here Now... Listen to Ram Dass tell his story in a new audio download: Journey, the Transformation Celebrating 50 years of Be Here Now, Ram Dass’ spiritual opus, we are ecstatic to share the Original 1968-1969 audio which created the ‘Our-Story’ section of his culture-defining classic. Unearthed by happenstance when our LSRF curator, Nathan, recognized and connected the fresh-from-India talks from which Be Here Now was extracted, this audio talk outlines Ram Dass’ courageous shift from Harvard professor to psychedelic explorer, and his transformational journey East to the feet of his Guru, Maharaj-ji, the inspiration behind Be Here Now... Download the New Audio

Via Lion´s Roar \\ Breathe

 

All You Need Is Breath

The Buddha taught mindfulness of breathing as a complete approach to awakening. Buddhist teacher Shaila Catherine outlines his 16-step breath practice that guides us to liberation.

The Buddha’s practice of mindfulness of the breath does not require extraordinary zeal or physical strength, nor does one need advanced education or ritual blessing. It is recommended for both beginners and accomplished meditators. By skillfully utilizing the natural breath, any person, monastic or lay, can realize the fruit of awakening. The broad appeal and availability of this practice is breathtaking!

Via Dhamma Wheel \\ Developing Unarisen Healthy States

 

RIGHT EFFORT Developing Unarisen Healthy States

Whatever a person frequently thinks about and ponders, that will become the inclination of their mind. If one frequently thinks about and ponders healthy states, one has abandoned unhealthy states to cultivate healthy states, and then one’s mind inclines to healthy states. (MN 19) Here a person rouses the will, makes an effort, stirs up energy, exerts the mind, and strives to develop the arising of unarisen healthy mental states. One develops the unarisen awakening factor of mindfulness. (MN 141)

Reflection

Effort is the tool we have to shape what we think, say, and do. Using it in healthy ways, we will become healthier. Just as we learn to guard against the arising of unhealthy states, we are also encouraged to develop healthy mental and emotional states. The text will take us through the seven healthy factors of awakening, beginning here with mindfulness. It is always beneficial to be aware, and we should practice doing so.

Daily Practice

Here you are invited to develop healthy mental states, which starts with creating the conditions that encourage them to arise. The first basic condition for healthy states to arise is mindfulness, for by being consciously aware of your experience you are not just reacting unconsciously to whatever comes up. Simply be attentive in every moment you can and notice what is happening. By doing so you participate in your life.

Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Mind and Abiding in the Third Jhāna
One week from today: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Daily Dharma: Change Requires Action

 

Simply wishing for things to happen won’t make them happen. Simply talking about the dharma or listening to dharma talks online won’t bring about an end to the effluents. It’s a path of action.

—Peter Doobinin, “Sutta Study: The Ship”

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Via FB \\ Bell Brooks

 

Via White Crane Institute // Today's Gay Wisdom: The Wisdom of Saki (H.H. Munro)

 Today's Gay Wisdom

2017 -

The Wisdom of Saki (H.H. Munro)

• A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation.
• I always say beauty is only sin deep.
• Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me; they remind me of one's childhood that one goes through wondering what the next course is going to be like - and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'oeuvres.
• Great Socialist statesmen aren't made, they're still-born.
• He spends his life explaining from his pulpit that the glory of Christianity consists in the fact that though it is not true it has been found necessary to invent it.
• You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
• It's no use growing older if you only learn new ways of misbehaving yourself.

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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute

"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org

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Via Be Here Now Network // Ram Dass – Here and Now – Ep. 190 – The Hollow Bamboo Game

 

Ram Dass – Here and Now – Ep. 190 – The Hollow Bamboo Game
December 16, 2021

  In this dharma talk from 1969, Ram Dass plays the hollow bamboo game, which is an exercise to help us enter into a place...

Listen Now

Via Tricycle // Tara Brach on Overcoming Divisions

Tara Brach on Overcoming Divisions
Interview by Alison Spiegel

In a time of fear and “bad othering,” reconnecting with humanity’s basic goodness is a radical act.

Read more »

Santos Dumont | Trailer Oficial (HBO)

Via White Crane Institute // What I Believe - Camus

 

What I Believe - Camus

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Paul Cadmus'

1904 -

PAUL CADMUS, American artist, born (d. 1999); Best known for his paintings and drawings of nude male figures, Cadmus’s works combined elements of eroticism and social critique to produce a style often called magic realism. He painted with egg tempera, a medium which had been associated with Greek icons. If there ever was a painter who could render the male ass more erotic than Paul Cadmus, this writer has never seen it. His unique blending of realism and sexual playfulness shocked viewers in the 1930s, and The Fleet’s In, Cadmus’s suggestion of naval sexuality, caused a scandal when the U.S. Navy order the painting seized. All he had done to cause such a ruckus was to paint well-developed men in tight-fitting Navy uniforms and to suggest they might be interested in a couple of young women. That sailors were in pursuit of sex put the Navy in a snit. But the scandal — written up in every newspaper and magazine — made Cadmus’s career. The Navy should have seen the many other works in which the sailors obviously wanted each other!

He worked in commercial illustration as well, but Jared French, another tempera artist who befriended him and became his lover, convinced him to devote himself completely to fine art. Other early works of particular interest for their homoeroticism are YMCA Locker Room (1933), Shore Leave (1933), and Greenwich Village Cafeteria (1934). Like The Fleet's In!, these works also document homosexual cruising and seduction.

In Cadmus's paintings, significant exchanges of glances signal sexual longing and availability, often in the very midst of mundane activities. His work documents the surreptitious cruising rituals of an urban, gay male subculture in the 1930s.

Cadmus's painting What I Believe (1947-1948) was inspired by E.M. Forster's essay of the same name, in which the novelist expresses his faith in personal relations and his concept of a spiritual aristocracy "of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human condition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos."

He lived with his companion of 35 years, Jon Anderson, who was a subject of many of his works.

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Today's Gay Wisdom

Hercules

2018 -

 

TODAY'S GAY WISDOM

 

Apropos of Cadmus’s mythopoetic painting and since this is the time of year of major Western European myths (based largely on Middle Eastern myths, over-layed on Pagan celebrations) we thought it would be fun to continue this week with some of the classic love affairs among the gods.

Hercules and His Lovers

Hercules was not only the strongest of the heroes (even as a baby he killed two great serpents with his bare hands) but he was also the craziest (he murdered his first three sons in a fit of madness) and the smartest (what he could not accomplish by brute strength he achieved through guile). What is less well known these days is that he was as heroic in bed as he was standing up.

One time he was invited by king Thespios to help him rid the land of a huge lion that was terrorizing the countryside. When the king set eyes on Hercules he had a better idea: "Come and stay the night at my palace, and rest yourself before the hunt," said the king to Hercules, "and meet my family." As Hercules was soon to find out, the king's family was made up mostly of his fifty virgin daughters, for whom he had not found fitting husbands until then. That night Hercules met them all, and made love to forty nine of them (the fiftieth was too shy). The next morning, he and the king went off to hunt the lion, and nine months later all forty-nine daughters gave birth to sons.

In the time-honored manner of his culture, much as he loved women, Hercules loved young men no less. Plutarch said that the number of his lovers was beyond counting. What we know for sure is that he had more than even the god Apollo (who was no slouch when it came to male love). Most stories about the beloved boys of Hercules have been lost or destroyed, but among his lovers were said to be the young heroes Admetos, Iphitos, and Euphemos, all of them Argonauts, Elacatas, honored by the yearly Elacatia games in Sparta, and Abderus, an Opian boy and son of Hermes, whose love for Hercules cost him his life, and who was honored with his own festival in the city that bore his name.

He was the young man to whom Hercules entrusted the man-eating mares of king Diomedes. Not strong enough to keep them in check, they tore him to shreds and devoured him. Heartbroken, Hercules built the city of Abdera in his memory. There was also a myth, now lost, that claimed that Eurystheus, the king for whom Hercules performs his labors, was one of his lovers, and that Hercules undertook the labors in order to please him. If so, then male love becomes the central motive force of the Hercules cycle, just as the love between Achilles and Patroclos is the fire that drives the story of the Iliad.

Also among his lovers, and not so unlucky, were Philoctetes who inherited Hercules's bow and arrows, and who was called upon to use them in the Trojan war, and Nestor, the youngest son of king Neleus, whom he grew to love more than any other lad. Nireus, Adonis, Jason, Corythus, Stychius, and Phrynx were reputed to have been amongst his lovers as well. But these stories have been lost.

Of all his boyfriends however, the ones he loved the best (besides Nestor) were Iolaos of Thebes, and Hylas of Argos. Iolaos, was also his nephew and, though only sixteen, his helper in many of his labors. It was said that their love was such that Hercules found those labors easier when Iolaos watched him. He was Hercules' charioteer and beloved, just like Patroclos was for Achilles.

As Plutarch tells us: "And as to the [male] loves of Hercules, it is difficult to record them because of their number; but those who think that Iolaos was one of them do to this day worship and honor him, and make their loved ones swear fidelity at his tomb." And also, "It is a tradition likewise that Iolaos, who assisted Hercules in his labors and fought at his side, was beloved of him; and Aristotle observes that even in his time lovers pledged their faith at Iolaos' tomb." The Thebans thought so highly of Iolaos that they worshiped him together with Hercules, named their gymnasium after him, and in his honor held yearly contests, the Iolaeia. 

As for the love between Hercules and Hylas, the poet Theocritus, who wrote 300 years before our era, had this to say: "We are not the first mortals to see beauty in what is beautiful. No, even Amphitryon's bronze-hearted son, who defeated the savage Nemean lion, loved a boy-charming Hylas, whose hair hung down in curls. And like a father with a dear son he taught him all the things which had made him a mighty man, and famous. 

And they were inseparable, being together both day and night. That way the boy might grow the way he wanted him to, and being by his side attain the true measure of a man. When Jason sailed after the golden fleece, and all the nobles went with him invited from every city, to rich Iolkos he came too, the man of many labors, son of noble Alcmena.

And brave Hylas in the flower of youth went with him aboard the Argo, the strong-thwarted ship, to bear his arrows and to guard his bow." 

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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute

"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org

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