Tuesday, November 7, 2023

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Intention: Cultivating Compassion

 


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RIGHT INTENTION
Cultivating Compassion
Whatever you intend, whatever you plan, and whatever you have a tendency toward, that will become the basis on which your mind is established. (SN 12.40) Develop meditation on compassion, for when you develop meditation on compassion, any cruelty will be abandoned. (MN 62)
Reflection
Compassion is a mental factor that can be developed, much as you might develop a muscle in the gym. It takes time, constant repetition, and working with successively heavier weights. The more time you spend caring for those who are in pain, and the more challenging the objects of your compassion (even people you don’t like!), the stronger and more compelling your inclination toward compassion will become. 

Daily Practice
Practice cultivating the intention to care for those who are suffering. Plan ways of helping others and develop a tendency toward compassion. When you do this, compassion will become the basis on which your mind is established. That is to say, it will become easier and more natural for you to feel compassion as you train your mind in that direction. Eventually it will be difficult to have a thought of ill will toward anyone.

Tomorrow: Refraining from Malicious Speech
One week from today: Cultivating Appreciative Joy

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Questions?
Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.



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Monday, November 6, 2023

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How Gay Men Show Affection Differently Than Straight Couples

 


New Sustainable Housing Solution Based on Lakota Tipi | Native America |...

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

 

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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)
Reflection
These are the three flavors of craving: strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate. Craving can take the form of 1) wanting more of the physical sensations and other sensory inputs that feel good and wanting to avoid those that feel bad. It can also take the form of 2) aching for things that are not happening to happen or 3) yearning for things that are happening to stop. All three forms of craving inevitably give rise to suffering.
Daily Practice
Look for the truth of this in your own experience. Any time you are suffering, even slightly, look into the causes of it. There will be something that you want to hold on to because it feels good and you are afraid of it slipping away. Or there will be something that you want to have happen or come into being. Or something you wish would just disappear. Suffering is created anew each moment from these forms of craving.
Tomorrow: Cultivating Compassion
One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering

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#DhammaWheel

Questions?
 Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.
Tricycle is a nonprofit and relies on your support to keep its wheels turning.
© 2023 Tricycle Foundation
89 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003

Via Daily Dharma: How to Tell the Future

How to Tell the Future

If you want to know your past, look at your present circumstances. If you want to know your future, look at what is in your mind.

Matthieu Riccard, “Karma Crossroads”


CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Sunday, November 5, 2023

Poem: Please Call Me By My True Names By Thich Nhat Hanh

 

Poem: Please Call Me By My True Names

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow—
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am also the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
could be left open,
the door of compassion.


Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - November 5, 2023 💌


 

“We can harness the awareness of death to appreciate the fact that we are alive, to encourage self-exploration, to clarify our values, to find meaning, and to generate positive action. It is the impermanence of life that gives us perspective. As we come in contact with life’s precarious nature, we also come to appreciate its preciousness. Then we don’t want to waste a minute. We want to enter our lives fully and use them in a responsible way. Death is a good companion on the road to living well and dying without regret.”

- Frank Ostaseski, from his book The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

>> Join Frank TOMORROW, Monday, 11/6 at 5pm PT / 8pm ET for a special livestream on Inviting the Wisdom of Death into Life

Via LGBTQ Nation //Africa’s rich LGBTQ+ history has long been suppressed & activists are taking a stand

 


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

 

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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)
Reflection
We often forget that the practice of mindfulness meditation is the practice of contentment. We are ardent because we are interested in what is happening, fully aware because we are looking openly at it, and mindful because we are examining our experience with equanimity rather than under the influence of desire. When we no longer desire what is happening to be any different than it is, we are content.
Daily Practice
Practice mindfulness as an exercise in contentment. Mindfulness begins with bringing deliberate attention to the objects of experience and thereby bringing heightened awareness to the moment. Mindfulness proceeds by disengaging the habit of favoring some things and opposing others, and then regarding all phenomena equally. When desire is replaced by an attitude of equanimity, contentment settles in the mind.
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)
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.
Tricycle is a nonprofit and relies on your support to keep its wheels turning.
© 2023 Tricycle Foundation
89 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003

Via Daily Dharma: Choose Compassion

 

Choose Compassion

The choices we make daily make us who we are. As today opens in front of you, choose compassion.

Hersch Wilson, “Choosing Compassion”


CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via White Crane Institute // Equinox/Return

 

Today's Gay Wisdom
The First (modern) Faerie Gathering
2017 -

Equinox/Return

An excerpt from Mark Thompson’s Gay Spirit: Myth & Meaning

What Edward Carpenter, Gerald Heard and Harry Hay recognized was the “new city of Friends” described by Walt Whitman over a hundred years ago—a sustaining place where “robust love” might thrive, a deep source of empowerment. It has been a dream asserted by a few and glimpsed by others at crucial points in our development. The early 1950s and 1970s were times when our movement howled at the moon, briefly acknowledging that this dream could be a reality. That this rude awakening represented something instinctual, wildly alive, posed problems for our leaders. Here was nature, woolly and cloven-hoofed, taking on unexpected form. Here were luminous faces peering out on the edges of accepted reality. How strangely familiar, too, for others to suppress what they do not comprehend, to fear what they’ve been taught to distrust.

Power, status, the hierarchy of who’s on top is the real currency of American culture, and so many of our leaders have been seduced by it all. These are the tactics of assimilation and they smell of panic. Thinking we have gained so much, we have been led to settle for less than we can be.

There is a tyranny implicit in any label, and certainly the label of Gay has now been revealed as much for its limitations as for its liberations. Why not consider difference, whatever its reason, in terms of function? The concept of a faerie shaman is just one idea that indicates a purposeful role, beyond that of just political or sexual identity. In times past and in many cultures, we often assumed the tasks of the shamans—wise and creative ones—and were duly honored as such. If we can but take gay beyond society’s definition—which we have internalized—and see ourselves as part of this function, our secret will be out.

I failed in my father’s eyes, and he in mind, as, I suppose, it had been fated. More to the point, few gay men ever seem to find complete acceptance from their fathers. (And even tolerance, however honorable, cannot account for true knowing.) Gay men have even less hope of being accepted by the greater father, the world of our daily existence, which, despite tolerant inroads, remains disapproving to its core. But neither can an opposite reality—that is, the matriarchy—hold any more honest place for us. Perhaps at one time, and according to the current feminist myth, the dominant Great Mother societies of agrarian, pre-Judeo-Christian times accepted gay men as welcomed sons. But I suspect, more likely, as subservient sons, in contrast to the outlawed sons of our contemporary age.

So gay men remain suspended in a horrible dilemma. Both the matriarchy and the patriarchy have, in effect, played themselves out; and the future, symbolized through an historic union of the two—has yet to fully emerge. Gay male consciousness remains stymied, unable to come of age. This is why so much of recent gay-identified culture appears to lack deeper meaning; however fresh and guileless its messages, empowered as it is by ritual dance and sex and defiance against corrupt authority.

At what point do gay boys stop finding favor in their father’s eyes? What stories are withheld, what rites of manhood lost in that uncomprehending gaze? Now, as gay men, we must begin by finding forgiveness in each other’s eyes, seek favor in stories of our own telling — our own fairy tales, the instructional fables we need to assume a mature and ever evolving gay adulthood. And for this we need to reinvest in wonder.

By learning more fully to evoke and to balance the powers of (what were once known as) the Earth Mother and Father Sky, we can set into motion our own whiling evolution as gay men beyond definition. We will no longer suffer from the constraints of living on a fraction of a life. We will evidence harmony as men who see clearly within and thus act cleanly without. We can learn to revel in our perspective, as much as our preference, and we don’t need a name. Our freedom is our responsibility. We simply need to do our work.

But first we must take the dark fantasies of our suppressed spirits out of their closets into the powerful light of reality. We can have a vision, and, thus, a culture to affirm, until one day perhaps our fathers will knowingly proclaim: “I have one of those.”

Gay Spirit: Myth & Meaning is now available at www.gaywisdom.org www.whitecranebooks.org


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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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Thanks Susan!




 

Saturday, November 4, 2023

[GBF] New Talk: Returning Home to Our Refuge - David Lewis

 [GBF] New Talk: Returning Home to Our Refuge - David Lewis

"Returning Home to Our Refuge" with David Lewis

In this stressful world, there are many things we can do to alleviate our suffering and the world's, but there's only so much we can change. That's when it becomes important to realize the ways in which we are powerless, and to take refuge from the resulting stress.

In this talk, David Lewis shares that true refuge is not a place or a person, it is within us. We can find peace and serenity regardless of what is happening outside of us.

David likens mindfulness practice to the 'Home' button on an iPad tablet. When we get confused or anxious, we can use it to return again to a familiar starting point. Just as in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy discovered that her red shoes were the key to returning home, when we pause for a moment, we will realize that we are always at home if we can only appreciate it.
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Listen to the full talk here: