When you stand back far enough, all of your life experiences, independent of what they are, are all learning experiences. From a human point of view, you do your best to optimize pleasure, happiness, all the nice things in life. From your soul’s point of view you take what comes down the pike. So from the soul’s perspective, you work to get what you want and then if you don’t ‘ah, so, I’ll work with what I’ve got.’
- Ram Dass -
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Because
living our real best life is tethered to our intention to be happy and
free and to help everyone else be happy and free, we don’t have to feel
ashamed, regretful, or guilty, even when we make mistakes or forget our
blessings. We can learn from our actions and start again and again.
Kimberly Brown, “Living Your Real Best Life”
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While
sitting zazen, but also when we go back out into the world, our eyes
can be mirrors, as we see all the world’s struggle and chaos. The
endless separate things and scenes of this world are all, always, the
mirror.
Jundo Cohen, “Mind as Mirror”
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EDWARD CARPENTER, English poet and Gay pioneer, died (b: 1844); Edward Carpenter was a pioneering socialist and radical prophet of a new age of fellowship in which social relations would be transformed by a new spiritual consciousness. The way he lived his life, perhaps even more than his extensive writings, was the essence of his message.
It is perhaps not surprising that his reputation faded quickly after his death, as he lived much of his life modestly spreading his message by personal contact and example rather than by major literary works or through a national political career. He has been described as having that unusual combination of qualities: charisma with modesty.
His ideas became immensely influential during the early years of the Socialist movement in Britain: perhaps Carpenter's most widely remembered legacy to the Socialist and Co-operative movements was his anthem England Arise!
A leading figure in late 19th and early 20th century Britain, he was instrumental in the foundation of the Fabian Society and the Labor Party. A poet and writer, he was a close friend of Walt Whitman and Rabindranath Tagore, corresponding with many famous figures such as Isadora Duncan, Havelock Ellis, Mahatma Ganghi, Jack London.William Morris and John Ruskin among many others.
But it is his writings on the subject of homosexuality and his open espousal of this identity that makes him unique. If you are unfamiliar with Carpenter, find him…read him. He is unquestionably one of the formative, foundational Gay philosophers in the late 19th and early 20th century. His influence was widespread at the time, and is no less innovative and profound, today.
His important writings include:
A strong advocate of sexual freedom, living in a Gay community near Sheffield, he had a profound influence on both D.H. Lawrence and E.M. Forster. On his return from India in 1891, he met George Merrill, a working class man also from Sheffield, and the two men struck up a relationship, eventually moving in together in 1898. Merrill had been raised in the slums of Sheffield and had no formal education.
Two men of different classes living together as a couple was almost unheard of in England in the 1890s, a fact made all the more extraordinary by the hysteria about alternative sexualities generated by the Oscar Wilde trial of 1895 and the Criminal Law Amendment Bill passed a decade earlier "outlawing all forms of male homosexual contact". But their relationship endured and they remained partners for the rest of their lives. Their relationship not only defied Victorian sexual mores but also the highly stratified British class system. Their partnership, in many ways, reflected Carpenter's cherished conviction that same-sex love had the power to subvert class boundaries.
It was his belief that at sometime in the future, Gay people would be the cause of radical social change in the social conditions of man. Carpenter remarks in his work "The Intermediate Sex":
"Eros is a great leveler. Perhaps the true Democracy rests, more firmly than anywhere else, on a sentiment which easily passes the bounds of class and caste, and unites in the closest affection the most estranged ranks of society. It is noticeable how often Uranians of good position and breeding are drawn to rougher types, as of manual workers, and frequently very permanent alliances grow up in this way, which although not publicly acknowledged have a decided influence on social institutions, customs and political tendencies". p.114-115
(Note: The term “uranian", referring to a passage from Plato's Symposium, was often used at the time to describe someone who would be termed "Gay" nowadays. Carpenter is counted among the Uranians himself.)
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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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Practitioner Resources
To support our LBTQIA+ community and our aspiration to deepen our understanding of interbeing, particularly around questions of sexual orientation and gender identity, here are several helpful resources:
Dharma talk by Sister Boi Nghiem at a Wake Up Earth Retreat last year about the importance of supporting the LGBTQIA+ community. In a section of the talk on gender inclusivity (around minute 41), she says: “Our society has hurt you enough. You seek to come to the Plum Village tradition to find peace, love, and refuge.”
Sister The Nghiem (Sister True Vow) Dharma talk: Given at Blue Cliff Monastery in 2018 during the LGBTQIA+Wake Up retreat, “For a future to be possible.”
In this article from the Plum Village Newsletter, Brother Chan Troi Bao Tang (Brother Treasure) explains the value and benefit of the Rainbow Family: communities of LGBTQIA+ people within the Plum Village tradition.
Plum Village App-Rainbow Family, a special section within the mobile app, includes a collection of Dharma talks and guided meditations from and in support of the LGBTQIA+ community, allies, and friends.
“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. When you are born a lotus flower, be a beautiful lotus flower, don't try to be a magnolia flower.”
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power
Right
understanding (and right functioning) of the mind does not come from
thinking, but from actively and attentively observing the complex
constellation of energies and activities of mind.
Stuart Smithers, “Minding the Storehouse”
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It is the Feast Day of SAINTS JOHN AND PAUL, martyred lovers According to their Acts, which are of a legendary character and without recorded historical foundation, the martyrs were eunuchs (Galli) of Constantina daughter of Constantine the Great, and became acquainted with a certain Gallicanus, who built a church in Ostia. At the command of Julian the Apostate, they were beheaded secretly by Terentianus in their house on the Cælian, where their church was subsequently erected, and where they themselves were buried. Galli (singular Gallus) was the Roman name for castrated followers of the Phrygian goddess Cybele, which were regarded as a third gender by contemporary Roman scholars, and are in some ways like transgendered people in the modern world. The chief of these priests was referred to as a battakes, and later as the archigallus.
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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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The Supreme Court of the United States, in a landmark 5-4 decision, Obergefell v Hodges, rule that the Constitution of the United States assures the right to MARRIAGE EQUALITY FOR LGBT PEOPLE and that every state in the union must recognize and respect same-sex marriages. Heterosexual marriages begin crumbling…oh wait…that didn’t happen. Nevermind.
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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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"A couple of years ago I stopped lecturing and I just hung out at my
house in Boston, taking care of my father. I wasn't full-time doing
that. I was just part-time. But I was sort of helping do that. And there
were many days each week when I would wake him up, take him to the
bathroom, bathe him, toilet him, dress him, feed him, hang out with him.
These were extraordinary periods for me, because in my mind somewhere
was the idea of, how is this an Upaya, or a spiritual method? I went
through so many. I went through so many...
What I did was I kept a diary of what it felt like to do this each day.
To see if I could see through the veils that were created. First of all,
the relationship between my father and I has changed so much over the
years. We never touched each other when we were young. Now I hold him, I
massage him, I dress him. When I'm putting on his socks, he pats me on
the back and my heart just opens. It's so beautiful..."
Explore a new teaching article + video from Ram Dass: Caring for Family as a Spiritual Practice from a 1985 lecture at the SEVA Foundation Benefit.
Mindrolling – Raghu Markus – Ep. 445 – Transcendental Meditation with David Lynch
June 23, 2022
