Deep
sorrow comes with realizing that everything we previously took to be
lasting and real is actually just about to disappear—and it never even
existed in the first place. Such sadness and disillusionment have a
wonderful effect. Sorrow makes us let go.
Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, “The Secret Strength of Sadness”
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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, April 30, 2023
Via Daily Dharma: The Strength of Sorrow
Via White Crane Institute // ALFRED EDWARD HOUSMAN
ALFRED EDWARD HOUSMAN, English poet died (b. 1859); A. E. Housman's poetry is inextricably rooted in homosexual experience and consciousness and is also a significant reflector of gay history. In 1942 A.E. Houseman’s brother, Laurence Housman, deposited an essay entitled "A. E. Housman's 'De Amicitia'" in the British Library, with the proviso that it was not to be published for 25 years. The essay discussed A. E. Housman's homosexuality and his love for Moses Jackson. Given the conservative nature of the times it is not surprising that there was no unambiguous autobiographical statement about Housman's sexuality during his life.
It is certainly present in A Shropshire Lad, for instance #30 Others, I am not the first / have willed more mischief than they durst', in which 'Fear contended with desire', and in #44, in which he commends the suicide, where 'Yours was not an ill for mending'... for 'Men may come to worse than dust', their 'Souls undone, undoing others': he has died 'Undishonoured, clear of danger, / Clean of guilt..'.
More Poems was more explicit, as in no. 31 about Jackson 'Because I liked you better / Than suits a man to say', in which his feelings of love break his friendship, and must be carried silently to the grave. His poem 'Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?', written after the trial of Oscar Wilde, addressed more general societal injustice towards homosexuality. In the poem the prisoner is suffering 'for the colour of his hair', a natural, given attribute which - in a clearly coded reference to homosexuality - is reviled as 'nameless and abominable' (recalling the legal phrase 'peccatum horribile, inter christianos non nominandum', 'the horrible sin, not to be named amongst Christians').
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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 - April 30, 2023 💌
"Listening is an art that comes from a quiet mind and an open heart. Listening uses all of your senses and it is a very subtle skill. Listening, just listening - not only with the ear, with your being. Your being becomes the instrument of listening. Your sensing mechanism in life is not just your ears, eyes, skin sensitivity and analytic mind. It's something deeper in you. It's some intuitive quality of knowing. With all of your being you become an antenna to the nature of another person. Then for the relationship to remain as living Spirit one of the best ingredients to put into the stew is truth."
- Ram Dass -
Saturday, April 29, 2023
Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States
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Via Daily Dharma: Good Listening
Inseparable from right speech is good listening.
Mudita Nisker, “Right Speech”
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Friday, April 28, 2023
Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Living: Abstaining from Taking What is Not Given
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Via Daily Dharma: The Paradox of Impatience
The paradox of impatience is that, in trying to hurry toward enjoyment, we hurry past it.
Dean Sluyter, “Macbeth Flunks the Marshmallow Test”
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Thursday, April 27, 2023
Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Action: Reflecting upon Verbal Action
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Via Daily Dharma: Anything Can Happen
Anything
is possible, which could seem overwhelming in some way. But the only
relationship we can have—and which we can develop through a meditative
practice—is we actually get more awake, more clear, more cognizant of
the fact that anything can happen at any moment.
Martin Aylward, “The Power of Not Knowing”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Via White Crane Institute // MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
This Day in Gay History | ||
April 27Born
1759 -
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (d: 1797) was a proto-feminist English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. During a brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason. Both of Wollstonecraft's novels criticize what she viewed as the patriarchal institution of marriage and its deleterious effects on women. In her first novel, Mary: A Fiction (1788), the eponymous heroine is forced into a loveless marriage for economic reasons; she fulfils her desire for love and affection outside of marriage with two passionate romantic friendships, one with a woman and one with a man. Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman (1798), an unfinished novel published posthumously and often considered Wollstonecraft's most radical feminist work, revolves around the story of a woman imprisoned in an insane asylum by her husband; like Mary, Maria also finds fulfillment outside of marriage, in an affair with a fellow inmate and a friendship with one of her keepers. Neither of Wollstonecraft's novels depict successful marriages, although she posits such relationships in the Rights of Woman. At the end of Mary, the heroine believes she is going "to that world where there is neither marrying, nor giving in marriage". |8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8 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! |8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8
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