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.
What I used to do is wait in line and I’d do mantra or breathing. I’d go
into my vipassana meditation. But now I’m interested in whether waiting
in line at the bank can itself be the thing. I notice my impatience,
notice the feeling in my feet as I am standing there, notice the
different levels of reality of the people I’m looking at. Am I seeing a
bank teller or am I seeing the Divine Mother as a bank teller? I allow
myself to play with the moment more, still dealing with the stuff of the
moment rather than going away.
To
cling to hope is also to be shadowed by its opposite, fear, which is
ready to pounce whenever we let go of that hope. Bodhisattvas are moved
to act by something deeper: a compassionate generosity of spirit that
wants to express itself and, although it seeks results, does not require
them.
David Loy, “Don’t-Know Mind and the Election of Our Lives”
RIGHT MINDFULNESS 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 aversion, one is aware "the mind is beset
by aversion". . . One is just aware, just mindful: "There is mind." And
one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)
Reflection
As mental
factors flow into consciousness, they color and distort the clarity with
which we see what is actually going on, either in the world or in our
own minds. Sometimes the mind is "beset by aversion" —that is, we feel
annoyance at or distaste for some object of experience. Resenting this,
or wishing it were not so, does no good and can even make aversion
worse. With mindfulness practice, one simply abides without clinging and
lets the experience come and go.
Daily Practice
The practice of
mindfulness is simply to be aware of what is happening in the moment.
This includes being aware of both healthy and unhealthy states of mind,
and here we are being encouraged to know when the mind has been impacted
by the emotional state of aversion, the not liking and not wanting of
something. The practice here is to simply note the aversion without
clinging to it. Aversion to the aversion is a form of clinging.
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)
Reflection
In some
contexts the words "joy" and "equanimity" can seem to exclude one
another: it is either one or the other. Here they are combined in the
third phase of absorption, where the strong sensory pleasure of the
previous two jhānas fades away, to be replaced by equanimity. Then this
equanimity itself is subtly pleasurable but not in the same sense as
before. The absence of pleasure is itself pleasurable, so to speak.
Daily Practice
Again, never
mind the formal levels of jhāna practice. That is something you can get
into if you take up formal jhāna practice under proper conditions. But
sitting in silence and solitude on a Sunday morning or afternoon, you
can allow the mind and body to formlessly unwind and relax to such an
extent that you taste the quality of equanimity, of being fully aware of
all experience without wanting anything to be different than it is.
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
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From Harry Hay's Radically Gay, edited by Will Roscoe:
Harry Hay's Gay
politics represent an alternative to postmodernist, queer theory and
dogmatic Constructionism. Indeed, Hay is the only contemporary Gay
thinker who could be said to offer a unified theory of Gayness
-- one that begins by defining its subject in multidimensional terms and
then accounts for its individual and historical origins, its diverse
forms and their history, the psycho-social development of Gay
individuals, and the nature and sources of Gay oppression. Postmodernism
offers at best a politics of resignation, one that rejects the
possibility of an "outside" to power, of a subject-SUBJECT alternative
to subject-OBJECT social relations, and the means of getting there is
through a politics that affirms Queer identities and cultures.
Hay is not
bothered if his ideas are called Essentialist or if his activism is
deemed "identity politics" — he is happy to emphasize his differences
with Social Constructionism and Queer theory — provided that the word radical precede
these labels. The original meaning of this word, "to the root," serves
well to convey the underlying theme of his philosophy and politics. The
key principles of Harry's radical Essentialism can be summed up as
follows:
It is, first and foremost, Gay-centered — a
"situated knowledge" (to borrow Donna Haraway's terminology) reflecting
the social standpoint of contemporary sexual minorities. It is not
neutral on the question of Queer well-being; it seeks to create
knowledge that contributes to that end.
It posits Gay presence rather than absence in the usual state of human society.
It conceives of its subject in
multidimensional terms — not merely as sexual preference but as a
difference manifest in gender roles, social identity, economic roles and
sometimes religious roles, as well.
It seeks to tell history from the bottom
up, using those documents, records and artifacts that reveal the common
experience of the largest number of Queer folk and not only the
discourse of elite heterosexuals and social institutions.
It recognizes various levels of meaning —
individual, social, trans-cultural, and spiritual. It does not assume
that the way an individual describes herself will be identical to the
institutional definition of labels that have been applied to her.
It is multicultural and comparative.
Rather than a unitary instance — "the modern homosexual" — it employs
the notion of a family tree (like Wittgenstein's concept of "family
resemblance") to conceptualize the relationship between the Queer
identities and roles of different cultures and historical periods.
It views history as a process of
continuity-within-change rather than as a series of sharply defined
periods of ruptures. Concept/labels like "Sodomite" and "Urning,"
"homosexual," and "Gay," have overlapped in their usage. Neither can be
defined without reference to the other.
It focuses on praxis. It seeks to analyze
the interaction between individuals and their societies and cultures. It
looks for instances of symbols and ideas in action as well as in
discourse.
The mass
coming-out that transformed the quiescent homophile movement of the
1960s into the dynamic Lesbian/Gay liberation and civil rights movements
of the 1970s and 1980s was in large measure a function of joining a
community where a negative label could be replaced with an affirmative
identity. Hay's writings show that this was no accident. The cultural
minority model was a carefully thought out political analysis and
strategy on the part of the Mattachine founders.
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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
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 the healthy state, 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 energy awakening factor. (MN 141)
Reflection
The mental and
emotional states that are healthy, leading away from suffering and
toward greater clarity of understanding, do not always arise on their
own and sometimes need a little help. In the sequence of awakening
factors, investigation of states naturally gives rise to energy, because
everything becomes so interesting, but the development of energy can
also be instigated and encouraged as a deliberate practice.
Daily Practice
Interesting how
it is put in the text: that we need to stir up energy to develop
energy. What this is pointing to is that sometimes we just have to reach
down and decide that we will bring more energy to bear on a given
situation. Perhaps it is blinking the eyes to overcome drowsiness or
gritting the teeth boost our willpower to avoid a temptation. Energy is a
factor that can be weak or strong. Here we practice strengthening it.
Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Mind and the Third Jhāna One week from today: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
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Listen
with your body, your heart, your eyes, your energy, your total
presence. Listen in silence, without interrupting. Fill any spaces of
silence between you with love.
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)
Sensual conduct is of two kinds: to be cultivated and not to be
cultivated. Such sensual conduct as causes, in one who cultivates it,
unhealthy states to increase and healthy states to diminish, such
sensual conduct is not to be cultivated. But such sensual conduct as
causes, in one who cultivates it, unhealthy states to diminish and
healthy states to increase, such sensual conduct is to be cultivated.
(MN 114)
Reflection
Misbehaving
among sensual pleasures can include various forms of harmful sexuality,
such as exploitation, causing humiliation, or sexual predation. It can
also include all sorts of activities that are not sexual but involve
sensual gratification. Our ability to inhabit a sensory and sensual
world is not in itself a problem. The problem is that our senses can so
easily lead us into attachments and aversions that cause difficulties.
Daily Practice
This practice
is about the skillful use of the sense apparatus. Notice when sensory
stimulation leads to craving and thus to grasping behavior. This is the
path to suffering, as our senses lead us to wanting things we cannot
have or hating things that are unpleasant. Notice also that there are
ways to engage the senses that do not automatically lead to craving and
grasping, and thus do not lead to suffering. Explore this.
Tomorrow: Developing Unarisen Healthy States One week from today: Abstaining from Intoxication
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