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.
Ultimately, Buddhist “morality” is a no-morality. It represents a shifting mental structure that we understand only to the degree that we grasp its essential formlessness.
Bodhin Kjolhede, “Pain, Passion, and the Precepts”
PEDRO SEGUNDO MARDONES LEMEBEL was an out Gay Chilean essayist, chronicler, novelist, and LGBT activist born on this date (d: 2015); He was known for his cutting critique of authoritarianism and for his humorous depiction of Chilean popular culture, from a queer perspective. Imagine a cross-pollination between RuPaul, Larry Kramer and Antonin Artaud. He was nominated for Chile's National Literature Prize in 2014, and was a 1999 Guggenheim Fellow.
Lemebel attended writing workshops to hone his skills and network with other writers, his first writing recognition was in 1982, when he won an award for his short story, Porque el tiempo está cerca ("Because time is short"). In 1986, he published as his first major work, the book Incontables, a compilation of short stories under the feminist publication label, Ergo Sum. A year later, he co-founded a performance collective that used the tactics of intervention and disruption of events to raise public consciousness about the struggles of minorities in Chile. The disruption and performances of the collective brought Lemebel into public awareness in Chile. In 1986, he disrupted a meeting of Chile's left wing groups opposed to Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, entering the meeting in high heels and in facial makeup depicting an hammer and sickle extending from his mouth to his left eyebrow. At the event, he spoke about his manifesto, ‘Manifest: I Speak for my Difference’ criticizing homophobia in left wing politics. Though widely known to be a communist, he was estranged from the party because of his homosexuality (not unlike Harry Hay.)
Lemebel is beloved for his influence in the fight for homosexual rights, his work as a writer, and his strong political side. Lemebel was much more than a writer; he was a free man, an artist, a political and popular icon, but more than anything a rebel and a voice for the LGBTcommunity.
Lemebel was born Pedro Mardones Lemebel, but he too k the last name of his mother, as the first big political decision that reaffirmed his commitment towards his Gay side, a side that was extensively incorporated into his literary works. Lemebel was able to envisage a hidden reality of Gay people; he was able to unmask the violence of which Gay people were victims in Chile. The importance of Pedro Lemebel is not only value for his talent as a writer, but also as a person of defiance in a conservative and machista country. Journalist Óscar Contardo described Lemebel as a “popular figure: a figure that is suppose to be disgusted in our society, which is the "loca" (queen), he managed to make that figure as the center, and then transform it into a popular icon."
Some of his works include: La esquina es mi corazón, Loco afán: Crónicas del sidario (chronicles). Santiago: LOM, (1996); De perlas y cicatrices ("Of Pearls and Scars"). Santiago: LOM, (1998); La esquina es mi corazón, Santiago: Seix Barral, (2001.) Tengo miedo torero (novel). Santiago: Grupo Editorial Planeta, (2001) (translated as My Tender Matador, published by Grove)
Lemebel died in 2015 of laryngeal cancer.
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
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RIGHT MINDFULNESS Establishing Mindfulness of Body
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)
Reflection
The third
foundation on which mindfulness is established, mindfulness of mind,
involves noticing the impact of various emotions and attitudes on the
mind. Consciousness simply reflects whatever object comes before it, but
then we respond to the object with love or hate, wanting or not
wanting, and all kinds of judgments favoring or opposing it. With
mindfulness we are content with watching this as it occurs.
Daily Practice
After you gain
skill in observing the bodily sensations that accompany breathing in and
out and then bringing mindfulness to bear on pleasant and unpleasant
feeling tones, next focus on the influence craving and aversion may or
may not have on your mind in any given moment. When you like something,
be aware of that. When you dislike something, be aware of that. This is
the starting point of mindfulness of mind.
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 upon 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)
Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects and Abiding in the Fourth Jhāna
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel
Spiritual practices, compared to having sex or compared to taking coke
or something, is more like delayed gratification versus immediate
gratification. So when you start to stand back and see your predicament
and see what you’re doing, there’s a way, from a spiritual perspective,
in which you begin with that slight bit of awareness to extricate
yourself from the chain of reactivity that we’re talking about.
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)
Reflection
What do you do
when you are in the grip of an unhealthy mood, filled with a steady
stream of unhealthy mental and emotional states? Sometimes you just have
to take the initiative and change the channel, so to speak. Just as you
might decide to prepare and eat a meal if you are hungry or take a walk
if you are restless, so too you can decide to develop healthy states
and, by various means, invite them to arise in your mind.
Daily Practice
You might adopt
the practice of each day choosing a healthy state to develop and then
working to deliberately bring it to mind. Maybe generosity one day,
kindness another, or compassion all week. It is just a matter of making a
decision to call to mind that particular positive quality. Choose to
think kind thoughts about someone or decide to do a kind act, and you
will find that the emotional state of kindness will naturally arise.
Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Mind and the Third Jhāna One week from today: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
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Our
minds, not our hearing organs, make the distinction between sound and
silence. But if you practice listening until you no longer make
distinctions, you develop a power that is liberating.
RIGHT LIVING Undertaking the Commitment to Abstain from Misbehaving Among Sensual Pleasures
Sensual misconduct is
unhealthy. Refraining from sensual misconduct is healthy. (MN 9)
Abandoning sensual misconduct, one abstains from misbehaving among
sensual pleasures. (MN 41) One practices thus: “Others may engage in
sensual misconduct, but I will abstain from sensual misconduct.” (MN 8)
Reflection
There are so
many ways it is possible to misbehave among sensual pleasures. Anything
that feels good has the power to seduce us, and it does not take much
for us to want more and more of almost anything. It is not that such
pleasures are bad or evil, just that the pursuit of them can expand out
of proportion and distort our behavior. It is empowering to understand
this and temper our relationship to pleasure accordingly.
Daily Practice
Notice when
something feels pleasurable and examine the texture of that sensation
closely. Then let it go, as all transitory episodes of experience will
inevitably cease. It is okay to welcome pleasure into your house as a
guest, so to speak, as long as you also escort it to the door and wave
goodbye when the time comes. It is when we chase after pleasure or
try to hold on to it that we are in danger of misbehaving.
Tomorrow: Developing Unarisen Healthy States One week from today: Abstaining from Intoxication
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel