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.
As you quiet your mind just a little bit, you get so that you’re not
automatically reacting to everything. You become what’s called
responsive rather than reactive. In other words, something happens and
there’s a moment when it’s just happening, you’re just with it. As your
awareness expands to include more than your separate self, it’s as if
you’re part of the gestalt of it all, and you experience the totality of
it. And then, out of that quietness comes an act that is appropriate to
that moment.
On this date Germany's PARAGRAPH 175was
finally revoked. Originally adopted in 1871, Paragraph 175 was a
provision of the German Criminal Code that made homosexual acts between
males a crime. The statute was amended several times. The Nazis
broadened the law in 1935 and increased §175 StGB prosecutions by an
order of magnitude; thousands died in concentration camps, regardless of
guilt or innocence. East Germany reverted to the old version of the law
in 1950, limited its scope to sex with youths under 18 in 1968, and
abolished it entirely in 1988. West Germany retained the Nazi-era
statute until 1969, when it was limited to "qualified cases"; it was
further attenuated in 1973 and finally revoked entirely in 1994 after
German reunification.
2023 -
THE GERMAN SYNODAL ASSEMBLY ON THE REFORM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
voted on this date in Frankfurt, Germany, to bless same-sex couples,
with 176 of the 202 assembly members voting for the proposal, including
two-thirds of the bishops in attendance.
According to a report from the newspaper Donaukurier,
same-sex blessings have already been going on in the German church —
but were in a canonical grey area and took place in private, rather than
openly in churches.
The move stands in direct contradiction to the Vatican, which has explicitly declared that “the Church does not have, and cannot have, the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex.”
The Vatican
argued that while God and the Church can bless individuals, including
homosexuals, it cannot bless sin, including sexual activity that takes
place outside of a valid marriage.
The issue of
same-sex couple blessings is one of the main demands from the German
Synodal Path, a series of conferences of the Catholic Church in Germany
since 2019 that have been looking to greatly transform the Church.
The Synodal Way
has proposed radical reforms, such as ordaining priestesses, declaring
homosexual acts not to be sinful, and allowing all priests to be
married.
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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
How can our practice inform encounters with dark times, when we feel loss or face a turning point with trepidation?
Laura
Burges shares that we can find "fountains of joy" even in going to the
places that scare us. Our practice is not separate from the dark places -
we can turn towards the darkness and examine it clearly and experience
the "soft heart of sadness" in being alive.
She draws
a parallel with the Greek myth of Persephone whose time spent annually
in Hades results in the joy reflected in the return of Spring each year.
In fact, those times that challenge us most can be a garden for
developing empathy and compassion for others in the world when they
suffer.
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Listen to the full talk on your favorite podcast player or our website:
Buddhist Film Festival Presented by Tricycle March 15-24, 2024
We
invite you to join us for our first-ever Buddhist Film Festival from
March 15-24, offering five feature-length films, five short films, and a
live screening and Q&A with filmmaker Lana Wilson!
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 healthy states, 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 joy-awakening factor. (MN 141)
Reflection
Happiness is a
skill that can be learned, and it can be practiced again and again as a
living presence. We are all capable of experiencing happy and healthy
states of mind, but sometimes we need to remember to experience them as a
conscious and deliberate act. At any point, we can in principle draw
out of a pool of latent tendencies the active manifestation of a
positive state such as joy, thus waking it up and bringing it to life.
Daily Practice
Try the
exercise of deliberately cultivating joy as an active and present state
of mind. This does not mean pretending to be joyful as a kind of false
overlay to feelings that are not joyful. It means consciously developing
actual joy and allowing it to replace whatever other feeling might be
in the mind at the moment. Joy is accessible; it is just a matter of
remembering to get in touch with it as a living emotion.
Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Mind and Abiding in the Third Jhāna One week from today: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel
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)
Relationships are of two kinds: to be cultivated and not to be
cultivated. Such relationships as cause, in one who cultivates them,
unhealthy states to increase and healthy states to diminish, such
relationships are not to be cultivated. But such relationships as cause,
in one who cultivates them, unhealthy states to diminish and healthy
states to increase, such relationships are to be cultivated. (MN 114)
Reflection
As with so many
other aspects of our lives, the relationships we foster and the company
we keep can be considered healthy or unhealthy, based on whether or not
they help us see more clearly and whether they bring about more or less
suffering. Since we influence one another so significantly, it is
important for our own well-being to nurture healthy relationships and
steer away from those that are unhealthy.
Daily Practice
See for
yourself whether any particular relationship in your life is
predominantly healthy or unhealthy. Do this not by some sort of
conceptual analysis but by noticing whether states of yearning,
resentment, and confusion increase or decrease when you are engaged with
this person. Also note whether states of sharing, caring, and
understanding increase or decrease. This is the actual measure of health
or unhealth in relationships.
Tomorrow: Developing Unarisen Healthy States One week from today: Abstaining from Intoxication
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel
