Thursday, June 8, 2023

More Pridefulness

 




Making It Big: The History of Gay Adult Film (Documentary)

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Action: Reflecting upon Social Action

 


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RIGHT ACTION
Reflecting Upon Social Action
However the seed is planted, in that way the fruit is gathered. Good things come from doing good deeds, bad things come from doing bad deeds. (SN 11.10) What is the purpose of a mirror? For the purpose of reflection. So too social action is to be done with repeated reflection. (MN 61)

One reflects thus: “I shall initiate and sustain bodily acts of kindness towards my companions, both publicly and privately.” One lives with companions in concord, with mutual appreciation, without disputing, blending like milk and water, viewing each other with kindly eyes. One practices thus: “I set aside what I wish to do and do what my companions wish to do.” (MN 31)
Reflection
In classical Buddhist tradition there are three kinds of action—bodily, verbal, and mental—but we are adding a fourth one here, social action. This is to acknowledge that a big part of how we act in the world has to do with our role in larger social and cultural systems. Our society is made up of individuals, and ultimately the quality of the whole group is going to be shaped at the individual level. Acting with conscious awareness is healthy.

Daily Practice
Cultivate the practice of being demonstrably kind to people as carefully as you would practice meditation. Kindness is a practice in itself, and just as with the breath, when your awareness wanders off the focus point of being kind, remind yourself to gently bring it back to the practice. Let’s practice “blending like milk and water” and “viewing each other with kindly eyes” over and over until we are really good at it.

Tomorrow: Abstaining from Intoxication
One week from today: Reflecting upon Bodily Action

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Via Daily Dharma: The Freedom of Embodied Presence

Embodied presence is an invitation, again and again, to soften, to settle, to relax, to open up to what’s here. When we’re driven along by our habitual thinking patterns, we’re holding those tensions. A free body is a relaxed body, an open body.

Martin Aylward, “The Power of Not Knowing”


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Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Via Rachael - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Ram Dass on Accepting the Paradox of our Humanity [with video] 💔

 


Featured RamDass.org Teaching

 

Ram Dass on Accepting the Paradox of Our Humanity [Article & Video]


Recorded in Minnesota in May of 1982

Ram Dass: Every experience is a vehicle for awakening or a vehicle for going to sleep. This is the bizarre thing that you're dealing with. The paradox, [outlined in] the Bhagavad Gita, which is a very good Hindu text, cautions about two things that keep catching you: One is the identification with being the actor, with being the doer, and the other is the identification with the fruits or the attachment to the fruits of the action. Like at this moment there is talking going on, and if I identify with being the speaker that forces you into being the listener.

People say to me, “Should I get psychotherapy?”

And I say, “As long as the therapist doesn't think they are only a therapist, because if they think they're a therapist, then you've got to be the patient.”

I mean, I remember when I was a therapist, when my patients got better, I used to punish them because I needed them [so I could] be a therapist. I needed them for me to be a therapist.

I'll be the therapist, you be the patient, you'll be a therapist, whichever doesn't matter. We'll play whatever parts we have to play, but we won't get lost in the drama of the action. We won't get lost in the actor.

Like, if I go outside and just walk down the street ahead of you all and then hide in the bushes and listen to what you say, what you think you heard me say, I'll absolutely climb the walls because I'll hear people saying that I said exactly the opposite things of what I thought I said, because each person is receiving what I'm saying through a set of filters based on their own needs and desires and perceptions.

This is an old story of psychology, that motivation affects perception. Like if three of us are driving through a town and you are hungry, but you don't want to admit it because none of us wants to eat. At the other end of town, if I say, “What was in that town, what was it? What do you remember about that town?”

You say, “Well, there was a McDonald's and there was a health food store I saw down the street.” And now I'm an old car buff, you see, and so I'm driving my car and I'm listening for the squeaks and I'm figuring where it's going to have to be towed to next. So, if you ask me what was in the town, I'll say, “Well, it was a Shell station and there was a foreign car service.”

And if the third member is horny, what they will remember is who was standing under the clock. That's what they'll remember of the town. Each of us went through a different town...

 
 

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Speech: Refraining from Frivolous Speech

 



RIGHT SPEECH
Refraining from Frivolous Speech
Frivolous speech is unhealthy. Refraining from frivolous speech is healthy. (MN 9) Abandoning frivolous speech, one refrains from frivolous speech. One speaks at the right time, speaks only what is fact, and speaks about what is good. One speaks what is worthy of being overheard, words that are reasonable, moderate, and beneficial. (DN 1) One practices thus: “Others may speak frivolously, but I shall abstain from frivolous speech.”  (MN 8)

An authentic person is one who even unasked reveals what is praiseworthy in others—how much more so when asked. When asked, however, and obliged to reply to questions, one speaks of what is praiseworthy in others, fully and in detail. (AN 4.73)
Reflection
It is not necessary to point out people’s flaws on a regular basis. Sometimes things need to be called out, and right speech does not mean covering up what is difficult. But it does point to the inherent harmfulness of being unnecessarily critical, which can damage the speaker as well as the target of such speech. You should focus on saying what is beneficial, and much of the time critical speech is rooted in an aggressive mental stance.

Daily Practice
Get in the habit of saying good things about people. Practice random acts of praise, even when not asked to do so. And when you do have an opportunity, don’t hold back on pointing out what is praiseworthy in others. We know this is important when raising children, so why not extend it to everyone? It turns out this is a healthy thing to do, because it both benefits others and brings out healthy states in you.

Tomorrow: Reflecting upon Social Action
One week from today: Refraining from False Speech

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions?
Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.



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© 2023 Tricycle Foundation
89 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003

Daily Dharma: Widening the Self

We can place the self between our ears and have it looking out from our eyes, or we can widen it to include the air we breathe, or at other moments we can cast its boundaries farther to include the oxygen-giving trees and plankton, our external lungs, and beyond them the web of life in which they are sustained.

Joanna Macy, “Positive Disintegration”


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Via White Crane Institute // ALAN TURING

 

Died
Alan Turing
1954 -
ALAN TURING, British mathematician and computer scientist died (b. 1912) from cyanide poisoning, eighteen months after being given libido-reducing hormone treatment for a year as a punishment for homosexuality. Turing is generally considered to be the Father of Modern Computer Science. He provided an influential formalization of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine.
 
In 'the Turing Test" Turing proposed that a human evaluator would judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine designed to generate human-like responses. The evaluator would be aware that one of the two partners in conversation is a machine, and all participants would be separated from one another. The conversation would be limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen so the result would not depend on the machine's ability to render words as speech. If the evaluator cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. The test does not check the ability to give correct answers to questions, only how closely answers resemble those a human would give.
 
With the Turing test, he made a significant and characteristically provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence: whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is conscious and can think. He later worked at the National Physical Laboratory, creating one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, although it was never actually built.
 
In 1948 he moved to the University of Manchester to work on the Manchester Mark I, then emerging as one of the world's earliest true computers. During WWII Turing worked at Bletchley Park, Britain's code breaking center, and was for a time head of Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis.
 
He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the bombe, an electro-mechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine. Turing was Gay in a period when homosexual acts were illegal in Britain and homosexuality was regarded as a mental illness and subject to criminal sanctions.
 
In 1952, Arnold Murray, a 19-year-old recent acquaintance of Turing’s, helped an accomplice to break into Turing's house, and Turing went to the police to report the crime. As a result of the police investigation, Turing acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray, and a crime having been identified and settled, they were charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. Turing was unrepentant and was convicted of the same crime Oscar Wilde had been convicted of more than fifty years before. He was given the choice between imprisonment and probation, conditional on his undergoing hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido.
 
To avoid going to jail, he accepted the estrogen hormone injections, which lasted for a year, with side effects including gynecomastia (breast enlargement). His lean runner's body took on fat. His conviction led to a removal of his security clearance and prevented him from continuing consultancy for GCHQ on cryptographic matters. At this time, there was acute public anxiety about spies and homosexual entrapment by Soviet agents. In America, Robert Oppenheimer had just been deemed a security risk.
 
On June 8, 1954, his housekeeper found him dead; the previous day, he had died of cyanide poisoning, apparently from a cyanide-laced apple he left half-eaten beside his bed. The apple itself was never tested for contamination with cyanide, and cyanide poisoning as a cause of death was established by a post-mortem.
 
Most believe that his death was intentional, and the death was ruled a suicide. His mother, however, strenuously argued that the ingestion was accidental due to his careless storage of laboratory chemicals. Biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed himself in this ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability. Others suggest that Turing was reenacting a scene from "Snow White", reportedly his favorite fairy tale. Because Turing's sexuality would have been perceived as a security risk, the possibility of assassination has also been suggested. His remains were cremated at Woking crematorium on June 12, 1954.
 
There is an urban legend that the Apple Computer “bite out of an apple” logo is a tribute to Turing. It is exactly that: an urban legend. But that’s not to say that the idea of paying homage to Turing is something the creators of Apple were against. When actor Stephen Fry once asked his good friend Steve Jobs if the famous logo was based on Turing, Jobs replied, “God, we wish it were.” Hodges biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma is the basis of the film The Imitation Game (a reference to “the Turing Test” which is also referenced in the film Ex Machina.
 

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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute

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Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - June 7, 2023 💌

  


 

"Meditation helps other parts of your life become more simple. As you enter quieter spaces you will see how clinging to desires has made your life complicated. Your clinging drags you from desire to desire, whim to whim, creating more and more complex entanglements. Meditation helps you cut through this clinging.

If, for example, you run around filling your mind with this and that, you will discover that your entire meditation is spent letting go of the stuff you just finished collecting in the past few hours. You also notice that your meditations are clearer when you come into them from a simpler space. This encourages you to simplify your life."

- Ram Dass -

 

 

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