A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
Sunday, March 27, 2022
Saturday, March 26, 2022
Via Daily Dharma: Oneness and Multiplicity
Oneness
and multiplicity live together... This is one of the essential
points of dharma practice. How can we perceive and express the oneness
of everything within the myriad things we encounter?
Shohaku Okumura, “Dogen’s Freeing Verse”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Via Tricycle // 5 Timeless Teachings on Extending Forgiveness to Ourselves and Others
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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States
Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States
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One week from today: Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel
Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.
Via Walk With Me // The Art of Grieving Inbox
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"I have gone to Deer Park every two years that Thay was visiting and during my last visit I asked one of the monks if I could get a personal message from Thay. They asked me what it would be. I said I wanted it to say, 'You Are Enough' in English and Chinese characters as I have an adopted daughter from China and want her to have this one day. He was so kind and said he would ask Thay. I was so hoping to have this piece for my home altar, where I meditate daily. Two days later the monk approached me and said that Thay would get it done by the end of the retreat. We spoke a bit, sharing our background and love for Engaged Buddhism - my heart sang.
"The day before the retreat concluded the monk said he had my piece, that it was packaged for travel, and I could open it safely once I got home. I was so delighted and excited to see this piece of art and spirit from my teacher of decades. Well, when I got home it was the first thing I attended.
"I remember feeling overwhelmed by the sounds around me; adjusting to the lack of silence and calm from the retreat. Even the paper that protected the artwork crinkled in a way that was different, speaking to me in a way I'd not recognized before. When I opened the package I saw Chinese characters and English words. Thay had written, 'You Have Enough' instead of 'You Are Enough'. In my mind's eye, I saw Thay with his impish grin, reminding me of my gifts."
- Lisa Klein
Via White Crane Institute // A.E. HOUSMAN
This Day in Gay History
March 26
A.E. HOUSMAN English scholar/poet, born, (d: 1936); Alfred Edward Housman was a classical scholar and poet of note. He was once viewed as a "great grey presence," divorced from the flesh and married to the mind. Young men read A Shropshire Lad and wondered. Was he or wasn’t he? There was no way to find out.
Later, he was painted as a sad recluse, sighing quiet sighs over a straight friend, Moses Jackson, and jerking off the Muse in unrequited love. In this view, Houseman was “in the grip of the ‘cursed trouble’ that soured the wells of his life, produced his poetry, and urged him to the topmost heights of scholarly renown.
Now we learn that the scholarly Cambridge don, far from being “cursed” used to make merry with a string of Venetian gondoliers supplied by his friend Horatio Brown, and was as well a regular patron of the male brothels in Paris. Can it be that the myth of the scholar virgin is just that, a myth?
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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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Friday, March 25, 2022
Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Living: Abstaining from Harming Living Beings
Undertaking the Commitment to Abstain from Harming Living Beings
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One week from today: Abstaining from Taking What is Not Given
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel
Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.
Via Daily Dharma: Life Is a Highway
Think
about the wheel of your car moving down the highway. The wheel touches
the road only a tiny little fraction of a moment, and then the next
moment, the next moment, and the next moment after that. Life is like
that.
Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “Crossing the Ocean”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Thursday, March 24, 2022
Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Action: Reflecting upon Bodily Action
Reflecting Upon Bodily Action
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One week from today: Reflecting upon Verbal Action
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel
Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.
Via White Crane Institute // Today's Gay Wisdom
TODAY'S GAY WISDOM
An excerpt from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
19 . I Sing the Body Electric
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I SING the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;
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And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?
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The love of the Body of man or woman balks account—the body itself balks account;
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.
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The expression of the face balks account;
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face;
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists;
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees—dress does not hide him;
The strong, sweet, supple quality he has, strikes through the cotton and flannel;
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To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more;
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.
The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up, and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the water,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats—the horseman in his saddle,
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Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performance,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child—the farmer’s daughter in the garden or cow-yard,
The young fellow hoeing corn—the sleigh-driver guiding his six horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown, after work,
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The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
The upper-hold and the under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes—the bent head, the curv’d neck, and the counting;
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Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s breast with the little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, and pause, listen, and count.
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I know a man, a common farmer—the father of five sons;
And in them were the fathers of sons—and in them were the fathers of sons.
This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person;
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The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, and the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes—the richness and breadth of his manners,
These I used to go and visit him to see—he was wise also;
He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old—his sons were massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome;
They and his daughters loved him—all who saw him loved him;
They did not love him by allowance—they loved him with personal love;
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He drank water only—the blood show’d like scarlet through the clear-brown skin of his face;
He was a frequent gunner and fisher—he sail’d his boat himself—he had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner—he had fowling-pieces, presented to him by men that loved him;
When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish, you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang.
You would wish long and long to be with him—you would wish to sit by him in the boat, that you and he might touch each other.
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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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