Via Being Liberal / FB: Hope

 

 

“Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”

~Early Christian philosopher St Augustine

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / Speaking Truth

Truth telling is a rigorous spiritual practice.

—Lama Surya Das, "Surya Says"

Via Lion's Roar / How to Do Metta

Kuan Yin, bodhisattva of compassion. Photo by Liza Matthews.

Jack Kornfield on beginning this time-honored, heart-opening practice.

In our culture, people find it difficult to direct loving-kindness to themselves. We may feel that we are unworthy, or that it’s egotistical, or that we shouldn’t be happy when other people are suffering. So rather than start loving-kindness practice with ourselves, which is traditional, I find it more helpful to start with those we most naturally love and care about. One of the beautiful principles of compassion and loving-kindness practices is that we start where it works, where it’s easiest. We open our heart in the most natural way, then direct our loving-kindness little by little to the areas where it’s more difficult.

First, sit comfortably and at ease, with your eyes closed. Sense yourself seated here in this mystery of human life. Take your seat halfway between heaven and Earth, as the Buddha did, then bring a kind attention to yourself. Feel your body seated and your breath breathing naturally.

Think of someone you care about and love a lot. Then let natural phrases of good wishes for them come into your mind and heart. Some of the traditional ones are, “May you be safe and protected,” “May you be healthy and strong,” and “May you be truly happy.”

Then picture a second person you care about and express the same good wishes and intentions toward them.

Next, imagine that these two people whom you love are offering you their loving-kindness. Picture how they look at you with concern and love as they say, “May you too be safe and protected. May you be healthy and strong. May you be truly happy.”

Take in their good wishes. Now turn them toward yourself. Sometimes people place their hand on their heart or their body as they repeat the phrases: “May I be safe and protected. May I be healthy and strong. May I be truly happy.”

With the same care let your eyes open, look around the room, and offer your loving-kindness to everyone around you. Feel how great it is to spread the field of loving-kindness.

Now think of yourself as a beacon, spreading the light of loving-kindness like a lighthouse around your city, around the country, around the world, even to distant planets. Think, “May all beings far and near, all beings young and old, beings in every direction, be held in great loving-kindness. May they be safe and protected. May they be healthy and strong. May they be truly happy.”

The Buddha said that the awakened heart of loving-kindness and freedom is our birthright as human beings. “If these things were not possible,” he said, “I would not teach them. But because they are possible for you, I offer these teachings of the dharma of awakening.”

About Jack Kornfield

Jack Kornfield is a founding teacher of the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Center and one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. He is a former Buddhist monk, a clinical psychologist, and a husband and father.

Make the jump here to read the original and more

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / Why Wisdom?

Dignity without wisdom can be easily corrupted by pride. Generosity without wisdom can be corrupted by self-flattery. Without wisdom, you cannot be a perfect person—meaning that you cannot be free from complicated mind. Without this freedom, your good qualities always risk being corrupted.

—Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche, "Keys to Happiness"

I would say you and I are using words; we are using speaking and listening as a vehicle for us to meet, and through which we are meeting. Where we are capable of meeting is in the intuitive heart/mind - a way of knowing one another that isn’t through our immediate, analytic, intellectual process. But yet, these are word concepts that are spinning out, and you’re picking them up, and you’re taking the concepts, and fitting them with your concepts, and deciding they work.

You’re judging and you’re using your intellect to decide whether I’m off the wall, or I’m here, or am I like us or am I them, or what am I? Whatever happened to Ram Dass? And when I say I share truth with the Beloved, it’s a place where we know how limited the words are, so we dance with the words with our minds, while also sinking into a place of just shared presence.

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / Preventing Moral Atrophy

This is the moment to return to whichever practice reinforces our moral clarity, so that we do not wake up one day to find it eroded beyond recognition.

—Sofia Ali-Khan, "A Time for Discernment"

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / Two Ways:

One can cross the mountains on foot, as did Siddhartha, or you can hop a ride on the great dharma vehicle that he subsequently launched. Trusting in ourselves, we are headed for the mountains and probable failure. Trusting in Buddha, we just might find ourselves gliding effortlessly into the field of merit that he has so graciously spread out to receive us.

—David Brazier, "The ‘Inner Logic’ of Other Power"

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / In Honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day...

There’s nothing about birth or social status that makes a person good or bad. People are good or bad solely in terms of their actions, and so that’s how they should be judged—not by the color of their skin.

—Thanissaro Bhikkhu, "What the Buddha Taught Us About Race"

NYCGMC Tonewall meets The Golden Girls

Via Eckhart Tolle

✣...A New Species is arising on the Planet. It is arising now, and You are it...... ✣ 

Eckhart Tolle

Via Ram Dass

Truth is one of the vehicles for deepening spiritual awareness through another human being, and if there is a license for that in the relationship, in any relationship – with guru, with friend, with lover, with whatever it is – it is an absolutely optimum way of coming into a liquid spiritual relationship with another person.

But it’s very, very delicate because people feel very vulnerable. They have parts of their mind that are cut off, that the idea that’s been socialized is, “If I show this part of me, I would not be acceptable.” And the ability to risk that, finally you learn how to have your truth available.

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / The Only Answer:

To the degree and extent a person practices dharma, to that degree and extent that person gets protection from the dharma. We can never get protection from anything else, no matter how much security, or insurance, or how many secure locks we have—never.

—Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, "Going Upstream"

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / There’s Work to Be Done

Focus on the present because you know that there’s work to be done in training the mind in developing skillful present intentions, and you don’t know how much more time you have to accomplish that training.

—Thanissaro Bhikkhu, "The Buddha’s Baggage"

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / Empty Views

What makes us miserable, what causes us to be in conflict with one another, is our insistence on our particular view of things: our view of what we deserve or want, our view of right and wrong, our view of self, our view of other, our view of life, our view of death. But views are just views. They are not ultimate truth.

—Norman Fischer, "Beyond Language"

Via Quora / Why is it so hard for educated liberals to empathize with Trump supporters?

The autistic author Sparrow R. Jones said it well:

I am not mad at you that Clinton lost. I am unconcerned that we have different politics. And I don’t think less of you because you vote one way and I vote another. No… I think less of you because you watched an adult mock a disabled person in front of a crowd and still supported him. I think less of you because you saw a man spouting clear racism and backed him. I think less of you because you listened to him advocate for war crimes, and still thought he should run this country. I think less of you because you watched him equate a woman’s worth to her appearance and got on board. It isn’t your politics that I find repulsive. It is your personal willingness to support racism, sexism, and cruelty. You sided with a bully when it mattered and that is something I will never forget. So, no… you and I won’t be “coming together” to move forward or whatever. Trump disgusts me, but it is the fact that he doesn’t disgust you that will stick with me long after this election.

Via Ram Dass: Be Here Now!

I’ve begun to expand my awareness to be able to look at the universe as it is, and see what is called the horrible beauty of it. I mean, there’s horror and beauty in all of it, because there is also decay and death in all of it. I mean, we’re all decaying – I look at my hand and it’s decaying. It’s beautiful and horrible at the same time; and I just live with that. I see and live with the beauty of it.

So we’re talking about appreciating what is.

Via Sri Prem Baba:

Via Daily Dharma / A Wider Identity:

The force needed to empower wisdom is compassion. Both wisdom and compassion shift our sense of identity away from ourselves toward the wider human, biotic, and cosmic community to which we belong.

—Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, "The Need of the Hour"

VIa FB: I am not in favor of violence... but the message hit home base

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / Staying Grounded:

If we want to overcome our anxiety and feel good about ourselves, it’s not enough to invest in outer things. We have to make investments in our inner life as well. . . . It’s about keeping grounded and having perspective. It’s never too late to open that door.

—Lawrence Levy, "Why Former Pixar CFO Lawrence Levy Walked Away from It All"

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / Tasting Peace

When we explore directly, in our experience, the meaning of the Buddha’s declaration, we can see for ourselves how craving obscures the natural ease and openness of mind, and how in moments free of desire, wanting, and clinging, we can recognize the taste of happiness and peace.

—Joseph Goldstein, "The End of Suffering"

Via Ram Dass

For each of us, you’ve got to be very quiet to hear your unique dharma, your unique way of expression.

Somebody comes along and their major thing in life is to regain the rights of indigenous peoples.

Someone else comes along and their major thing is to awaken people to environmental degradation.

Someone else comes along and their major thing is to clean up the incredible oppression of women.

It isn’t a question of which thing is worse, or which is more worthwhile. Each person has to hear what is their part in the whole process of how their compassion expresses itself.

I am doing this gig. This is my part. It’s no better than your part, it’s just my part. I’m not under some illusion that I have a different part and I honor everybody else’s part, I just have to constantly keep listening to hear what my part is anew. 

-Ram Dass

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / Who Are You?

If I were really asked to define myself, I wouldn’t start with race; I wouldn’t start with blackness; I wouldn’t start with gender; I wouldn’t start with feminism. I would start with stripping down to what fundamentally informs my life, which is that I’m a seeker on the path.

—bell hooks, "Agent of Change: An Interview with bell hooks"
 

Via Daily Dharma / The Heart Holds Two Truths

Take refuge in the dharma when you’re hurting; gain perspective; expand your capacity for empathy; uncover the biases you carry within yourself; and also see all arisings as empty. And then, see with complexity, and hold both conventional and ultimate truths in your heart.

—Jay Michaelson, "Retreat or Fight? Both are Right."

Via Daily Dharma / Not-blaming

When you check your own mind properly, you stop blaming others for your problems. You recognize that your mistaken actions come from your own defiled, deluded mind.

—Lama Thubten Yeshe, "Your Mind is Your Religion"

Via Daily Dharma / Embrace Each Error

Anyone has the right to be a Buddhist, no matter. There is no need to be afraid of having faults, because knowing we have them can help us to improve.

—Master Sheng-Yen, "How to Be Faultless"

Via Ram Dass

There is no drama any manifestation can present that denies the truth of the fact that behind the drama, here we are; no matter how poignant, captivating, dramatic, bittersweet it may be. Our work is to not get snared in anybody else’s or our own drama; be it police, or the person who’s suffering.

Can you accept total suffering, take on the karma of another human being, and yet not be attached to the melodrama of suffering? If a person is suffering, the only thing you can do for them is to find the place in them which is behind suffering. It’s all you can do. It’s all that’s available.

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / Everyone Is Welcome

Anyone has the right to be a Buddhist, no matter what they believe.

—Robert Thurman, "Reincarnation: A Debate"

Via Sri Preem Baba

Via Daily Dharma - 02/02/16

The Buddha taught that freedom is going beyond conditions. For me, the people who have been through the harshest conditions—and survived—have the greatest potential to transform the madness of their lives.

—Vinny Ferraro, "The Heartful Dodger"

Via Daily Dharma / December 31, 2016: Cherishing Existence

This is who and what we are: constellations of matter, vulnerable, impermanent, and—for moments? for lifetimes?—illumined by the miracle of awareness. Whether fleeting or eternal, it’s a miracle that we must never take for granted.

—Noelle Oxenhandler, "Awake and Demented"

Via FB

"Trump courted evangelicals and promised to appoint judges to overturn the historic Obergefell ruling on marriage equality (and he has publicly opposed marriage equality since 2000). Even if you believe he wouldn’t do that, why would you give even conditional support to a man who has given hope to the people who detest you and wish you harm?"

- Michelangelo Signorile

Via Ram Dass

At a certain point, you realize that you see only the projections of your own mind. The play of phenomena is a projection of the spirit. The projections are your karma, your curriculum for this incarnation. Everything that’s happening to you is a teaching designed to burn out your stuff, your attachments. Your humanity and all your desires are not some kind of error. They’re integral parts of the journey.

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / January 1, 2017: A New Year’s Resolution

I intend to cultivate equanimity and balance—not to panic when things appear to be off track, and not to relax when everything seems to be going smoothly. I intend to cultivate awareness and presence and not focus too hard on the outcome—paying more attention to the process and developing understanding and sympathy for myself and others.

—David Nichtern, "A New Year's Resolution to Consider"