Thursday, April 4, 2024

Via Daily Dharma: Suffer Less, Find Clarity

 

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Suffer Less, Find Clarity

When we suffer less, we are less prone to cause harm to others. We are less consumed by our suffering. When we are not as consumed by suffering, we can connect with our natural capacity for empathy, and compassion. This compassion is founded on clarity and realization of our interconnectedness.

Rebecca Li, “Remembering as an Act of Cultivating Clear Awareness”


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How Buddhism First Carried Sugar from India to China (and Back Again)
By Meher Mirza
Before the story of its violent colonial legacy began, the sweetener had its earliest origins in the dharma. 
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Not One and Not Two
Directed by SEO BoHyung
In this film, Young-mok desperately searches for enlightenment before his death through intense Zen practice. Meanwhile, his girlfriend searches for artistic inspiration. Subscribers can stream the film on Tricycle’s Film Club all month long.
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Wednesday, April 3, 2024

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Via Joe My God // Pope: Benedict Backed Me On Civil Unions For Gays

 


Via White Crane Institute // KATHY KOZACHENKO

 

Noteworthy
1974 -

On this date KATHY KOZACHENKO'S successful bid for a seat on the Ann Arbor, Michigan city council made her the first openly Gay or Lesbian American to win public office in the United States. Although Harvey Milk is many times mistaken for this historic first, Kozachenko's election predates his win by a few years. But you know, she's a woman, soooooo...

Kozachenko joined the Human Rights Party in the early 1970s. The differences between the platforms of the HRP and local Democrats dwindled, yet "Kozachenko's run as an out Lesbian ... provided her with a distinction to set her apart". She would go on to comment that "'the Democratic Party started to look and sound like us, so the students found no need to vote for us if they were saying the same thing, so we found something different to say'".

As an out student at the University of Michigan, Kozachenko rallied student radicals. They supported her progressive agenda, which included a fine of no more than five dollars for possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Another part of her platform included "a ceiling on the amount of profit a landlord could make from rents on a building". Running solely against a liberal Democrat, Kozachenko was elected to the Ann Arbor City Council on April 2nd, 1974. She won the seat "representing the city's second ward by fifty-two votes".

Kozachenko's HRP predecessors on the city council, Nancy Wechsler and Jerry DeGrieck, had come out as a Lesbian and a Gay man during their first and only terms on city council, thus becoming the first openly LGBT public-office holders in the United States. However, Wechsler and DeGrieck did not run for office as an open LGBTQ individual.

Kozachenko is overlooked as the first openly Gay elected official in the United States. On the day after the election in 1974, The New York Times ran an article that ignored the election of Kozachenko, and instead focused on the marijuana tax referendum. When listing the winning candidates, the Times depicted her as "a student at University of Michigan who described herself as a Lesbian". 

In 2008, a reporter at the Washington Post misguidedly commended Gus Van Sant's Milk for "its poignancy in telling the story of the first openly Gay elected official in the United States, Harvey Milk". It was three days before LGBTQ historian Ron Schlittler set the record straight. (You’ll pardon the expression.)

Kozachenko served one two-year term before leaving politics. She continued to work as an activist in Brooklyn and then Pittsburgh. She would later meet her long-time partner, MaryAnn Geiger (who died in 2010), and have one son.


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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

 

 
To the extent that we are egos, we are somebodies. We come down and we become a somebody. As that awareness starts to identify as a soul, it immediately feels separate from our mother and everything else. Then we begin to experience another separation, now as ego.
 
So it’s a separation within a separation, if you will. That’s the descent into more and more dense form, and that form is what we live out as an incarnation. Somewhere along the line in that story, we awaken. We begin to realize we are not only the incarnation, that there is more to us than meets the eyes, and we begin to realize that the more that we think we are, we are. That leads us to re-look at our experiences and to open to new experiences that allow us to enter into other planes of consciousness, other perspectives, other ways of looking at it.
 
That awakening starts and at first, because you have been in such a thick substance, you’ve been so very entrapped in your story, in your body, in your suffering, that when you awaken there is a joy, a breath… it’s like coming above smog when you fly. But there is also a kind of fear of getting trapped again, and a tendency to push against the stuff you were trapped in. You can use that like a rocket booster to get you out there.
 
Ultimately though, as you get established more as a soul, more established as just awareness, which isn’t even you anymore, as those become more real, and you become more comfortable in them, you look and you see that the incarnation that you have taken wasn’t an error and it wasn’t failure, and you’re not making mistakes. It is just an unfolding process.
 
And it’s nothing so personal about it all. Your personality isn’t that interesting. At that point you start to, from a soul’s point of view, inhabit your incarnation, at first resignedly, and then ultimately joyfully, because it’s just God at play. It’s just form, it’s just form.
 
- Ram Dass

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)

When one says, “All those disengaged from the pursuit of self-mortification have entered upon the right way,” one thus extols some. But when one says instead, “The disengagement from the pursuit of self-mortification is a state without suffering, and it is the right way,” then one is not extolling anyone but simply stating the truth. (MN 139)
Reflection
The principle we reviewed earlier about criticizing the negative actions of people rather than criticizing them as people also applies in the positive direction. It is better to extol, to praise, positive words and deeds than to extol the person. While the negative comments lead to protective defensive behaviors, the positive comments could result in an increase of pride and conceit.

Daily Practice
Praising someone for being a great person boosts their sense of self, and while this may be a good thing in the case of the developing egos of youngsters, it is not something encouraged for Buddhist practitioners. By all means extol the value and benefit of benevolent words and deeds, for example, but practice the habit of not feeding people’s view of self, lest you contribute to their self-aggrandizement. Help people be humble.

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?
Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.



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Via Daily Dharma: It’s All Good

 

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It’s All Good

When you encounter a difficulty in your life, an impasse, solve it. If you can solve it, it’s good. If you can’t solve it, it’s still good, as it’s no longer your problem if you can’t solve it.

Guo Gu, “The Sound of a Bell, the Seven-Piece Robe”


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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Phone
By Dylan Tuccillo
A Lisbon-based writer explores the artificial nature of digital memories.
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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - April 3, 2024 💌

 

I've found that each meditation technique I've ever pursued has helped me by touching another space in my being. Somehow I've danced through them without getting caught in a value system that would say that a single meditative technique is the only way. You cannot, however, keep collecting methods all the way to enlightenment. Sooner or later, you will be drawn to one path or another, which is for you the eye of the needle, the doorway to the inner temple.

- Ram Dass

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Via Daily Dharma: For Every Front There Is a Back

 


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For Every Front There Is a Back

On the opposite side of every front, there is a back; on the opposite side of every back, there is a front. One cannot exist without the other. Yet human beings invariably tend to see only the front and to assume that this is all that exists.

Masahiro Mori, “Back Up and Take Another Look”


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Just Walking, Just Eating
By Mike Gillis
A retrospective on Jiro Taniguchi’s masterful comic The Walking Man to contemplate taking in the small wonders of life.
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