Dear Anonymous...

 

Case in point… over on [Revoked] a new comment was just posted on one of the original posts from 2009: “Lets start with consulting about a letter”. The author is Anonymous, and I am left to wonder… is it the same Anonymous, or another one, but I digress…

 

Here is his/her comment dated December 1, 2023:

“A beautiful letter which is most fair and explaining that the decision to join the Faith must be made with the knowledge that there are certain laws which must be upheld in both word and deed. But also making it clear that one cannot be in a same sex relationship or marriage and be a member of the Baha’i Community. But that the choice is up to the individuals, and it can only be to obey the Baha’i laws or not to obey and thus not to join the Faith.”

The beautiful letter thing… it comes around frequently, and creeps me out to no end. Especially with the Anonymous need to school us LGBTQI folk, as if we have never read any Baha’i law, but thanks to them they will teach me, again. At any rate we can ignore the arrogance and cruelty, seems like state sanctioned, homophobia. Let me try and explain.

Anonymous’ opinion reminds me of stories Helen Bishop used to talk about when she shared stories of her years in the League of Nations during WWII and her encounter with Nazis. She used to share truly blood curdling tales of how polite and civil the officers who met with her (she had diplomatic immunity). Anonymous comments like this, sort of remind me of this civil cruel, cold. A beautiful letter.

So, I am curious, why don’t Anonymous Baha’i law-abiding homophobes ever begin with, well equally beautiful responses like:

“I am truly sorry, I know you have reviewed the laws, but please allow me to school you once again, because as a homosexual you obviously find it hard to understand that we do not want you here. I truly wish we could welcome you, but we don’t want to. Unlike other regions who might welcome you, and your partner/husband/wife, we don’t. Unfortunately, for you, but good for us, the law allows us to exclude you from our community. In fact, you aren’t even allowed to speak openly in any forum, meeting, or community consultation about this. Baha’i laws encourage heterosexual Baha’is that only law-abiding heterosexuals are allowed to talk about your homosexuality. Again, we are so very sorry, you seem like a nice person, but the Baha’i community doesn’t want you. Nor do I”

There fixed it.  

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Via Daily Dharma: Being Honest About Our Mistakes

If you hide your faults, you not only lose the trust of your friends but also close the way to making progress on the path.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “Why Shame Gets a Bad Rap”

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right View: The Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering

 

RIGHT VIEW Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering What is the origin of suffering? It is craving, which brings renewal of being, is accompanied by delight and lust, and delights in this and that: that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for being, and craving for non-being. (MN 9) When one does not know and see visual forms as they actually are, then one is attached to visual forms. When one is attached, one becomes infatuated, and one’s craving increases. One’s bodily and mental troubles increase, and one experiences bodily and mental suffering. (MN 149)

Reflection Once you have recognized an aspect of suffering in your own lived experience, the next step is to come to understand that it has a specific origin. All suffering is rooted in some form of craving or attachment, some wanting for things to be different than they are. The senses are not entirely passive, but "reach out" in some way to pursue the objects (in this case sights) that it favors and avoid those with which it is not comfortable. Daily Practice The Buddhist approach to suffering is not theoretical or conceptual but profoundly experiential. We will explore the origin of suffering by reviewing each of the senses in turn, looking for a particular cause of a particular instance of suffering. We easily become attached to and infatuated with visual forms and yearn to see some things and not others. Look in your own experience for the tendency to favor some sights over others.  Tomorrow: Cultivating Compassion One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

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Via White Crane Institute // TODAY'S GAY WISDOM: Adam and Steve--Together at Last

 

Today's Gay Wisdom

Katha Pollit

2018 -

TODAY'S GAY WISDOM

Adam and Steve--Together at Last

Kate Pollit

Will someone please explain to me how permitting Gays and Lesbians to marry threatens the institution of marriage? Now that the Massachusetts Supreme Court has declared Gay marriage a Constitutional right, opponents really have to get their arguments in line. The most popular theory, advanced by David Blankenhorn, Jean Bethke Elshtain and other social conservatives is that under the tulle and orange blossom, marriage is all about procreation. There's some truth to this as a practical matter — couples often live together and tie the knot only when baby's on the way. But whether or not marriage is the best framework for child-rearing, having children isn't a marital requirement. As many have pointed out, the law permits marriage to the infertile, the elderly, the impotent and those with no wish to procreate; it allows married couples to use birth control, to get sterilized, to be celibate. There's something creepily authoritarian and insulting about reducing marriage to procreation, as if intimacy mattered less than biological fitness. It's not a view that anyone outside a right-wing think tank, a Catholic marriage tribunal or an ultra-Orthodox rabbi's court is likely to find persuasive. 

So scratch procreation. How about: Marriage is the way women domesticate men. This theory, a favorite of right-wing writer George Gilder, has some statistical support — married men are much less likely than singles to kill people, crash the car, take drugs, commit suicide — although it overlooks such husbandly failings as domestic violence, child abuse, infidelity and abandonment. If a man rapes his wife instead of his date, it probably won't show up on a police blotter, but has civilization moved forward? Of course, this view of marriage as a barbarian-adoption program doesn't explain why women should undertake it — as is obvious from the state of the world, they haven't been too successful at it, anyway. (Maybe men should civilize men — bring on the Fab Five!) Nor does it explain why marriage should be restricted to heterosexual couples. The Gay men and Lesbians who want to marry don't impinge on the male-improvement project one way or the other. Surely not even Gilder believes that a heterosexual pothead with plans for murder and suicide would be reformed by marrying a Lesbian? 

What about the argument from history? According to this, marriage has been around forever and has stood the test of time. Actually, though, marriage as we understand it — voluntary, monogamous, legally egalitarian, based on love, involving adults only — is a pretty recent phenomenon. For much of human history, polygyny was the rule--read your Old Testament — and in much of Africa and the Muslim world, it still is. Arranged marriages, forced marriages, child marriages, marriages predicated on the subjugation of women — Gay marriage is like a fairy tale romance compared with most chapters of the history of wedlock. 

The trouble with these and other arguments against Gay marriage is that they overlook how loose, flexible, individualized and easily dissolved the bonds of marriage already are. Virtually any man and woman can marry, no matter how ill assorted or little acquainted. An 80-year-old can marry an 18-year-old; a john can marry a prostitute; two terminally ill patients can marry each other from their hospital beds. You can get married by proxy, like medieval royalty, and not see each other in the flesh for years. Whatever may have been the case in the past, what undergirds marriage in most people's minds today is not some socio-biological theory about reproduction or male socialization. Nor is it the enormous bundle of privileges society awards to married people. It's love, commitment, stability. Speaking just for myself, I don't like marriage. I prefer the old-fashioned ideal of monogamous free love, not that it worked out particularly well in my case. As a social mechanism, moreover, marriage seems to me a deeply unfair way of distributing social goods like health insurance and retirement checks, things everyone needs. Why should one's marital status determine how much you pay the doctor, or whether you eat cat food in old age, or whether a child gets a government check if a parent dies? It's outrageous that, for example, a working wife who pays Social Security all her life gets no more back from the system than if she had married a male worker earning the same amount and stayed home. Still, as long as marriage is here, how can it be right to deny it to those who want it? In fact, you would think that, given how many heterosexuals are happy to live in sin, social conservatives would welcome maritally minded Gays with open arms. Gays already have the baby — they can adopt in many states, and Lesbians can give birth in all of them — so why deprive them of the marital bathwater?

At bottom, the objections to Gay marriage are based on religious prejudice: The marriage of man and woman is "sacred" and opening it to same-sexers violates its sacral nature. That is why so many people can live with civil unions but draw the line at marriage--spiritual union. In fact, polls show a striking correlation of religiosity, especially evangelical Protestantism, with opposition to Gay marriage and with belief in homosexuality as a choice, the famous "Gay lifestyle." For these people Gay marriage is wrong because it lets Gays and Lesbians avoid turning themselves into the straights God wants them to be. As a matter of law, however, marriage is not about Adam and Eve versus Adam and Steve. It's not about what God blesses, it's about what the government permits. People may think "marriage" is a word wholly owned by religion, but actually it's wholly owned by the state. No matter how big your church wedding, you still have to get a marriage license from City Hall. And just as divorced people can marry even if the Catholic Church considers it bigamy, and Muslim and Mormon men can only marry one woman even if their holy books tell them they can wed all the girls in Apartment 3G, two men or two women should be able to marry, even if religions oppose it and it makes some heterosexuals, raised in those religions, uncomfortable.

Gay marriage —  it's not about sex, it's about separation of church and state.

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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 Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Body and the First Jhāna

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)   Mindful, one breathes in; mindful, one breathes out. . . . One is just aware, just mindful: "There is body." And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)

Reflection The path factor of right mindfulness will be explored by going carefully through the meditation instructions found in the classic text Satipatthāna Sutta, or Establishment of Mindfulness Discourse. The first thing we notice about it in this introductory section is how deliberate and intentional the practice is: one goes to a quiet place, sits down, and engages deliberately in the establishment of mindfulness. Daily Practice Mindfulness of the body begins with breathing. Take some time to sit quietly and just breathe in and out. Breathing mindfully simply means bringing full awareness to the various micro-sensations that accompany every in-breath and out-breath. As the refrain prompts us, see if you can attend to these sensations directly, without thinking about them and without clinging in any way by favoring or opposing any sensation.  RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the First Phase of Absorption (1st Jhāna) Having abandoned the five hindrances, imperfections of the mind that weaken wisdom, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, one enters and abides in the first phase of absorption, which is accompanied by applied thought and sustained thought, with joy and the pleasure born of seclusion. (MN 4) Reflection Since there are seven days in the week and eight path factors, we dedicate Sundays to practicing both kinds of meditation: mindfulness and concentration. Concentration practice involves focusing the mind on a single object, such as the breath, and returning attention to this focal point whenever it wanders off, which it will do often. All forms of meditation involve some level of concentration, so it is a good thing to practice. Daily Practice Formal concentration practice, involving absorption (Pali: jhāna) in four defined stages, requires more time and sustained effort than occasional practice generally allows and would benefit from careful instruction by a qualified teacher. You may begin on your own, however, simply by practicing to abandon the five hindrances, since jhāna practice only really begins when they temporarily cease to arise.  Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and Abiding in the Second Jhāna Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

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Via Daily Dharma: Recognizing Your Self-Worth

 You have not been put here to be judged or to prove your self-worth. Your self-worth is that you exist. 

Yoshin David Radin, “Left Foot, Right Foot”

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Via White Crane Institute // ARNOLD LOBEL

 

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1987 -

ARNOLD LOBEL was an American author of children's books who died on this date (b: 1933); He is best known for his  Frog and Toad series and Mouse Soup. He wrote and illustrated these picture books as well as Fables, a 1981 Caldecott Medal winner for best-illustrated U.S. picture book. Lobel also illustrated books by other writers, including Sam the Minuteman by Nathaniel Benchley published in 1969.

Lobel was born in Los Angeles, California, but was raised in Schenectady, New York, the hometown of his parents. Lobel's childhood was not a happy one, as he was frequently bullied, but he did love reading picture books at his local library. He attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. In 1955, after he graduated, he married Anita Kempler, also a children's writer and illustrator whom he'd met while in art school. The two worked in the same studio and collaborated on several books together. They had two children: daughter Adrianne and son Adam Lobel, and three grandchildren.

Following college, Lobel was unable to support himself as a children's book author or illustrator and so he worked in advertising and trade magazines, which he did not like.

But he loved his writing and illustration work, saying "I cannot think of any work that could be more agreeable and fun than making books for children" and described his job as a daydreamer. He began drawing during a period of extended illness as a second grader. On the October 25, 1950 episode of "Kukla, Fran and Ollie", Oliver J. Dragon presented "poems by Thomas Smith and drawings by Arnold Lobel from Schenectady." 

His professional career began during the 1960s, writing and illustrating "conventional" easy readers and fables. His style could be described as minimalist and frequently had animals as the subject matter. Lobel used animals as characters because he felt it helped with the suspension of disbelief. 

His second book, A Holiday for Mister Muster, and perhaps others were inspired by the Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn, which the Lobels lived across the street from. Cartoons his children watched were also an inspiration, as were popular television shows like Bewitched and The Carol Burnett Show.

Lobel's writing and illustrations went through several phases in his career. His early works had a broad humor often in verse, a style that he would return to at other points in his career. In 1977 interview for The Lion and the Unicorn, Lobel explained that he wrote these books by imagining what children would want to read. However, as he continued to write, he realized the books he was writing didn't have the "weight" to them he wished and that he was going to have to use tap into himself in order to create better writing. 

Following that epiphany, he began taking inspiration from his own experiences and emotions, and acknowledged that he was writing "... adult stories, slightly disguised as children's stories." In the 1970s Lobel's illustrations shifted from primary colors to a broader spectrum of pastel colors. The solitary individual, whether played seriously or for comic relief, was common in Lobel's work, as were two people who were complementary. 

Lobel's illustrations served to visualize the rhythm and emotions of the text in a way that could be "cinematic." His chosen vocabulary, subject matter, and writing style helped to re-conceive what an easy reader book could be. Lobel identified the exploration of his own feelings as a reason that he improved as a writer.

In his 1977 The Lion and the Unicorn interview, Lobel discussed the ways he would work through his emotions while still maintaining his children's audience. This was part of Lobel's belief that adult and children emotions were more similar than different. His work was described as "sunny, warm, even cosy." Despite this, the process of writing was "painful" for Lobel, who was far more inclined to want to illustrate than write and only started writing because of the increased royalties. As late as 1983, Lobel felt he was beginning to trust his instincts as a writer. In fact, he never felt comfortable enough with his technical writing skill to consider writing a novel for adults, or a longer book for children.

Lobel illustrated close to 100 books during his career which were translated into dozens of languages. Despite the awards he won, Lobel wasn't always recognized during his lifetime.

In 1974, he told his family that he was gay. In the early 1980s, he and Anita separated, and he moved to Greenwich Village. He died of cardiac arrest  at Doctors Hospital in New York, after suffering from AIDS for some time.

The musical A Year with Frog and Toad (workshopped 2000, premiered 2002), by Adrianne Lobel and others, played on Broadway in 2003 and has toured nationally since.

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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 Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - December 4, 2022 💌

There is no dishonor in working with personality stuff. The only thing is that it is like the garden of infinite delight. It is very seductive. You have to balance it with very deep spiritual practice in order not to get sucked in.    - Ram Dass - From Here & Now Podcast - Ep. 141 – Practice Makes Perfect

 

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States

 

RIGHT EFFORT Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States Whatever a person frequently thinks about and ponders, that will become the inclination of their mind. If one frequently thinks about and ponders unhealthy states, one has abandoned healthy states to cultivate unhealthy states, and then one’s mind inclines toward unhealthy states. (MN 19) Here a person rouses the will, makes an effort, stirs up energy, exerts the mind, and strives to restrain the arising of unarisen unhealthy mental states. One restrains the arising of the unarisen hindrance of sense desire. (MN 141)

Reflection One of the most fundamental ideas of early Buddhism is the distinction between healthy and unhealthy states. These terms are not meant to suggest that these states are good and bad or right and wrong: sometimes they are translated as wholesome and unwholesome or skillful and unskillful. The issue is whether or not the state leads away from suffering, and whether or not it leads toward wisdom. Seeing this distinction clearly is important. Daily Practice A simple list of unhealthy states includes the five hindrances, which we will walk through one at a time. These are mental and emotional states that are unhelpful to the process of seeing things clearly; they may be either "arisen"—in present experience—or "unarisen," meaning latent. Here the practice is to prevent the conditions for the arising of the unhealthy state of sense desire by taking care not to indulge in sensual objects. Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Body and Abiding in the First Jhāna 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.

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