Thursday, September 21, 2023

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Action: Reflecting upon Mental Action

 


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RIGHT ACTION
Reflecting Upon Mental 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 mental action is to be done with repeated reflection. (MN 61)

When you are doing an action with the mind, reflect on that same mental action thus: “Is this action I am doing with the mind an unhealthy bodily action with painful consequences and painful results?” If, on reflection, you know that it is, then stop doing it; if you know that it is not, then continue. (MN 61)
Reflection
The mind is always in motion, either taking in information from the senses and processing it, or conjuring up thoughts and images, memories and plans, from its own interior reaches. It is valuable to learn how to watch what your mind is doing, for in this way you gain the ability to discern whether your mental actions are healthy or unhealthy and helpful or unhelpful to the agenda of well-being and happiness.

Daily Practice
Practice and develop the skill of metacognition: that is, being aware of what you are thinking as you are thinking it. The same goes for being aware of the entire range of mental activity, including remembering, imagining, and associating one mental object with another. In addition, measure your mental activity in terms of how harmful or beneficial the consequences of your actions are, and adjust your actions as appropriate.

Tomorrow: Abstaining from Misbehaving Among Sensual Pleasures
One week from today: Reflecting upon Social Action

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Wednesday, September 20, 2023

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Speech: Refraining from Harsh Speech

 



RIGHT SPEECH
Refraining from Harsh Speech
Harsh speech is unhealthy. Refraining from harsh speech is healthy. (MN 9) Abandoning harsh speech, one refrains from harsh speech. One speaks words that are gentle, pleasing to the ear, and affectionate, words that go to the heart, are courteous, and are agreeable to many. (DN 1) One practices thus: “Others may speak harshly, but I shall abstain from harsh speech.” (MN 8)

Just see how many people fight! I’ll tell you about the dreadful fear that caused me to shake all over: seeing creatures flopping around, like fish in shallow water, so hostile to one another! Seeing people locked in conflict, I became completely distraught. But then I discerned here a thorn, hard to see, lodged deep in the heart. It’s only when pierced by this thorn that one runs in all directions. So if that thorn is taken out, one does not run and settles down. (Sn 935-939)
Reflection
This poignant passage attributed to the Buddha strikingly depicts the human situation under the effects of craving—like fish desperate to breathe in water that is becoming ever shallower—and the conflict to which that gives rise. It is not that we are evil, only wounded by the thorn of desire and driven to hostility by the pain. If the thorn were removed from our hearts we would all become well and live together in harmony.      

Daily Practice
Look for the thorn in your own heart and pluck it out every time it pierces you. It is not a hard object lodged there since birth that can be removed once and for all. Rather it is a reflex triggered again and again when attachment or aversion or confusion is present. As such, it is a response you can unlearn and remove. Practice replacing craving with equanimity in small ways, gradually gaining the skill of removing the thorn.

Tomorrow: Reflecting upon Mental Action
One week from today: Refraining from Frivolous Speech

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
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Questions?
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© 2023 Tricycle Foundation
89 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003

Via Daily Dharma: Gratitude

 

Gratitude

A life without gratitude is a joyless life. 

Ajahn Sumedho, “The Gift of Gratitude”


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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation \\ Words of Wisdom - September 20, 2023 💌

 



 

“In a way, I’m finding it much more interesting to remain spiritually conscious in the 80s… Like we’re much closer to facing in the daily news the issue of our potential death. And that is a major cultural vehicle for awakening. The confrontation with death is – as Castaneda says, keeping death on your left shoulder – it is the vehicle that helps you awaken the most. And that’s what we’re confronted with much more now. So it seems like the optimum time for spiritual growth to me.”

- Ram Dass -



From the recent Here & Now Podcast episode recorded in 1985, "The Optimal Time for Spiritual Growth"

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Via White Crane Institute // The first gay rights demonstration in the United States

 

Noteworthy
Draft Center demonstration lead by Wicker
1964 -

Organized by activist RANDY WICKER, a small group picketed New York City's Whitehall Street Induction Center after the confidentiality of gay men's draft records was violated. This action has been identified as the first gay rights demonstration in the United States.


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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 White Crane Institute \\ RANDY P. CONNER, Ph.D.

 


1952 -

RANDY P. CONNER, Ph.D., born on this date (d: 2022), was a gay spiritual seeker, activist, author, artist, and teacher.

Conner received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in English literature/composition from the University of Texas at Austin. In the 1970s he taught the first gay and lesbian workshop at the Student Union there. His studies concentrated on the intersections of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and pursuit of the sacred.   Conner received his doctorate in humanities and religion in 2007 from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He taught at several colleges including Florida State University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the California Institute of Integral Studies. He was most recently Associate Professor of World Humanities at Moraine Valley Community College near Chicago where he created a successful state- and college-approved LGBTQ+ humanities course.

Conner’s spiritual path was focused on LGBTQ+ spirit in history and culture, especially as related to European Neo-Pagan, Indigenous Native American and African Diasporic traditions.  He was an initiate and practitioner of both Haitian Vodou and Reglade Ocho (Santeria), studying primarily with Mama Lola, a well-known practitioner of these African Diasporic traditions. He received his “Elekes” (spiritual beads for the orishas/deities) as a Santero in Cuba, later earning the title of Oungan.

Also a practitioner of Neopaganism and Wicca, he studied metaphysics and psychic arts with Tama Diaghilev, and Wicca/Witchcraft with ecofeminist leader Starhawk. Conner also studied Tarot and mystical symbology with spiritual teacher and scholar Angeles Arrien.  He became a Radical Faery in the 1980s and attended many gatherings over the years.

As an activist for LGBTQ+ rights, Conner testified in the mid-1970s at the Texas State Legislature for inclusion of gay and lesbian student organizations on campuses for which he was fired from his graduate teaching position. After moving to the Bay Area in 1978, he became a member of Bay Area Gay Liberation, campaigned against the Proposition 6 Briggs initiative, and for social/political justice for the queer and people of color communities. He also co-curated with his husband, David Hatfield Sparks, the El Mundo Surdo poetry series at Small Press Traffic in Noe Valley, created by Gloria Anzaldúa, his "hermana espiritual," and participated in Mainstream Exiles organized by San Francisco trans-activist Tede Mathews.

Conner was a contributor to several LGBTQ+ publications including the Advocate, the old San Francisco Sentinel and White Crane Journal. He also served as fiction editor for RFD magazine and taught a course in gay spirit at the Harvey Milk Institute in the mid-1990s. Among his many essays, articles, books, speeches, presentations, and other publications, several were nominated for Lambda Literary Awards, including the seminal  Blossom of Bone: Reclaiming Connections between Homoeroticism and the Sacred (Harper San Francisco 1993); the Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol and Spirit (Cassell 1997) and Queering Creole Spiritual Traditions: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Participation in African-Inspired Traditions in the Americas (Routledge 2004).  In 2019, Conner published his five-volume study, The Pagan Heart of the West: Embodying Ancient Beliefs and Practices from Antiquity to Present (Oxford).  An expanded, revised edition of the Encyclopedia, re-titled The LGBTQ+ Companion to Symbol, Mythology, Folklore, and Spirituality, is forthcoming from Equinox Publications (London).

These many interests and projects he shared with his long-time companion/husband of forty-three years, David Hatfield Sparks. Conner went to ride with Charon to the Otherworld on May 5, 2022.  He is also survived by their daughter Mariah.


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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 - September 17, 2023 💌



"Whether you are a parent or a teacher, whatever your gig is, the only thing you can offer to another human being is your consciousness. You are an environment for everyone you meet, in which they can become as conscious as they are ready to become. Offer your most conscious being to others."

 - Ram Dass -

Via White Crane Institute \\ The first edition of THE NEW YORK TIMES

 

Noteworthy
1857 Edition of the new York Times
1851 -

The first edition of THE NEW YORK TIMES was published on this date. Since 1918, at last count, the Gray Lady has won 133 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other news organization. 

The New York Times resisted the word gay until 1987, preferring homosexual (now, it prefers the word gay in most contexts). In the early 2000s, when same-sex marriage was a brand-new concept, gays were routinely described in mainstream media as homosexuals. Today, use of the word is less and less frequent. A Google Books scan shows a sharp decline in its use in recent years after peaking around 1995.


|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!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Intention: Cultivating Appreciative Joy

 


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RIGHT INTENTION
Cultivating Appreciative Joy
Whatever you intend, whatever you plan, and whatever you have a tendency towards, that will become the basis upon which your mind is established. (SN 12.40) Develop meditation on appreciative joy, for when you develop meditation on appreciative joy, any discontent will be abandoned. (MN 62) 

Appreciative joy is the way to purity for one who has much discontent. (Vm 9.108)
Reflection
Entangled as we are in a consumer economy that depends on the cultivation of desire and discontent, it can be hard to simply take joy in what we already have and feel joy in the good circumstances of others. Yet this can be practiced as an antidote to always feeling desire for one thing or another. Cultivate appreciative joy, or gladness for the happiness of others, at every opportunity and feel its cleansing and shielding effects.

Daily Practice
Discontent can be subtle and insidious. It can poison us slowly in small but steady doses, or erupt in episodes of jealously and resentment. By paying careful attention to the details of your experience, notice the next time you feel bad in some way about what others have or get. Now recognize that as a form of discontent and counter it with appreciative joy, deliberately taking pleasure in the good fortune of another person.

Tomorrow: Refraining from Harsh Speech
One week from today: Cultivating Equanimity

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

Via Daily Dharma: The Body Is Essential

The Body Is Essential

There is no other way to touch enlightenment other than in and through our bodies. 

Reggie Ray, “Touching Enlightenment”


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