Wednesday, March 22, 2023
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
Saturday, March 18, 2023
Friday, March 17, 2023
Thursday, March 16, 2023
Emptiness...
” Confused by thoughts,
we experience duality in life.
Unencumbered by ideas,
the enlightened see the one Reality.”
Self...
If a person holds oneself dear,
let one watch oneself carefully.
The wise should be watchful
during at least one of the three watches.
Let each person first direct oneself to what is right;
then let one teach others; thus the wise will not suffer.
If a person makes oneself as one teaches others to be,
then being well-controlled, that one might guide others,
since self-control is difficult.
Self is the master of self;
who else could be the master?
With self well-controlled
a person finds a master such as few can find.
The wrong done by oneself, born of oneself,
produced by oneself, crushes the fool,
just as a diamond breaks even a precious stone.
The one whose vice is great brings oneself down
to that condition where one’s enemy wishes one to be,
just as a creeper overpowers the entangled sala tree.
Bad actions and actions harmful to ourselves are easy to do;
what is beneficial and good, that is very difficult to do.
The fool who scorns the teaching of the saintly,
the noble, and the virtuous, and follows wrong ideas,
bears fruit to one’s own destruction,
like the fruits of the katthaka reed.
By oneself is wrong done; by oneself one suffers;
by oneself is wrong left undone; by oneself is one purified.
Purity and impurity come from oneself;
no one can purify another.
Let no one neglect one’s own duty
for the sake of another’s, however great;
let a person after one has discerned one’s own duty,
be always attentive to this duty.
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
The Profound Definitive Meaning...
For the mind that masters view the emptiness dawns
In the content seen not even an atom exists
A seer and seen refined until they're gone
This way of realizing view, it works quite well
When meditation is clear light river flow
There is no need to confine it to sessions and breaks
Meditator and object refined until they're gone
This heart bone of meditation, it beats quite well
When you're sure that conducts work is luminous light
And you're sure that interdependence is emptiness
A doer and deed refined until they're gone
This way of working with conduct, it works quite well
When biased thinking has vanished into space
No phony facades, eight dharmas, nor hopes and fears,
A keeper and kept refined until they're gone
This way of keeping samaya, it works quite well
When you've finally discovered your mind is dharmakaya
And you're really doing yourself and others good
A winner and won refined until they're gone
This way of winning results, it works quite well.
by Milarepa
Tuesday, March 14, 2023
The Song of View, Practice, and Action...
Oh, my Guru! The Exemplar of the View, Practice, and Action,
Pray vouchsafe me your grace, and enable me
To be absorbed in the realm of Self-nature!
For the View, Practice, Action, and Accomplishment
There are three Key-points you should know:
All the manifestation, the Universe itself, is contained in the mind;
The nature of Mind is the realm of illumination
Which can neither be conceived nor touched.
These are the Key-points of the View.
Errant thoughts are liberated in the Dharmakaya;
The awareness, the illumination, is always blissful;
Meditate in a manner of non-doing and non-effort.
These are the Key-points of Practice.
In the action of naturalness
The Ten Virtues spontaneously grow;
All the Ten Vices are thus purified.
By corrections or remedies
The Illuminating Void is ne'er disturbed.
These are the Key-points of Action.
There is no Nirvana to attain beyond;
There is no Samsara here to renounce;
Truly to know the Self-mind
It is to be the Buddha Himself.
These are the Key-points of Accomplishment.
Reduce inwardly the Three Key-points to One.
This One is the Void Nature of Being,
Which only a wondrous Guru
Can clearly illustrate.
Much activity is of no avail;
If one sees the Simultaneously Born Wisdom,
He reaches the goal.
For all practitioners of Dharma
This preaching is a precious gem;
It is my direct experience from yogic meditation.
Think carefully and bear it in your minds,
Oh, my children and disciples.
 | -- from The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa: The Life-Story and Teachings of the Greatest Poet-Saint Ever to Appear in the History of Buddhism, Translated by Garma C. C. Chang |
The Day We Dropped the A-bomb...
The video begins with chanting. For those wishing to skip the chanting the meat of the talk begins just shy of the ten minute mark.
Monday, March 13, 2023
The Enlightenment Sutra...
I who would follow the Teachings of Buddha
Should concentrate earnestly morning and night
With resolve in my heart, on these Teachings the Buddha
Has given to free us from suffering's grasp.
This is the first of the things to remember:
Throughout all the world there is nothing that's permanent.
Even the Earth has the nature of transience.
Bodies are centers of sorrow and emptiness.
All of my parts are devoid of self,
Are dependent on causes and therefore impermanent,
Changing, decaying and out of control.
Expectations of permanence cause disappointment,
Forming attachments that lead to wrongdoing.
Observing the world in this light, may I daily
progress toward freedom from birth and from death.
This is the second thing I should remember:
Excessive desire only brings me to suffering.
Birth and death, sorrow and weariness all are from
Greedy attachment to things of this world.
But controlling desire cuts the root of unhappiness,
Leaving the body and mind to relax.
This is the third of the things to remember:
Insatiable cravings for things of this world
Only cause me to pile up more useless possessions,
Increasing my motives for sin and wrongdoing.
A seeker of freedom should let go of craving
And, seeing it's uselessness, grow in contentment.
Rejecting life's baubles and seeking the Way
I'll concern myself only with gaining release.
This is the fourth of the things to remember:
My laziness leads to my own degradation.
I always should work just as hard as I can
Because only by this can I solve all my problems
And so be released from the things that bedevil me,
Finally escaping to Infinite Light.
This is the fifth of the things to remember:
The roots of unhappiness spring from my ignorance.
I who would follow the Buddha, remember to
Listen and read to develop my knowledge,
So as to aid other sufferers, hoping to
Bring sentient beings Nirvana's release
And awaken them all to Enlightenment's bliss.
This is the sixth of the things to remember:
Ill feeling is often occasioned by poverty
Leading to discord and further unhappiness.
Following Buddha's example, I always should
Treat every being with love and respect.
Having malice toward none, I should dwell in contentment
And aid and encourage all beings to Peace.
This is the seventh thing I should remember:
The passions would lead me to sin and to sorrow,
But students of Dharma won't drag themselves down
By relying on pleasure to bring themselves happiness.
Better to think of the monks in their robes,
Who are happy and free from the causes of misery.
Seeing the benefits brought by the Teachings,
I firmly resolve to attain to Enlightenment,
Being a better example to others,
In hopes that they also will gain this release.
This is the eighth of the things to remember:
The flames of existence are hard to escape from.
They bring us to pain and to sorrow unlimited.
Thus I resolve to awake from my slumber
And, feeling concern for all sentient beings,
Arouse in myself an intense dedication
Which lets me withstand all my pain with forbearance,
Avoiding taking it out on my neighbors
But helping them, too, to attain Perfect Peace.
These are the precepts that lead to enlightenment,
This is the path that was trod by the Buddhas,
The great Bodhisattvas and Buddha's disciples.
The truths they remembered which brought them release.
I will follow them carefully, constantly try to
Develop compassion and wisdom together
To help me escape to the opposite shore
Whereupon, freed from suffering, I can return
To the realm of Samsara in comfort and joy,
Bringing freedom and peace to all sentient beings.
These statements are tools that will help me remember.
In order to follow the Teachings, I'll always
Remember these eight ways of looking at life,
Gaining the wisdom and peace of Nirvana
For only by this will I always be free
From the wheel of rebirth with its pain and its sorrow,
At last and forever to finally find rest.
Thursday, March 9, 2023
Republican Working Against the Middle Class and the Poor...
House GOP Prepares to Slash Federal Programs in Coming Budget ShowdownAs usual the republicans will take care of their billionaire friends and corporations and screw the middle class and poor. The height of ignorance and greed. |
Wednesday, March 8, 2023
Projection By Conservatives/Republicans...
The above screed was found on a conservative white supremacist weblog. A weblog that daily attracts the caliber of people whose focus is actually on hating all that do not support its white supremacist views and the twice impeached and failed insurrectionist president, DJT.
The screed is but a projection of the hate and ignorance of many who populate the conservative/republican party and its hateful agenda.
This folks is perhaps the greatest threat to our nation, its stability, and its integrity.
Rot In the American Republican/Conservative Movement...
FOX news, Tucker Caslon, and the trumpublican party are once again attempting to rewrite history and mold it into the image the lying conservative/republican agenda wants. It WILL NOT happen because honest people with integrity will not allow it.
CNN —
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy once spoke about the violence at the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, in starkly different terms than the narrative Fox News host Tucker Carlson is presenting with footage McCarthy provided to him, which has been selectively used to downplay the violence.
In the days following the riot, McCarthy said rioters “overtook” the Capitol, speculating the rioters who he said broke a window in his office could have kidnapped or even hung members of Congress, and called the mob attacking the Capitol “un-American.”
In other comments made a week later on KERN, a local radio station that airs in his Bakersfield, California-based congressional district, McCarthy said anyone who participated should go to jail and spoke in stark terms of the violence unleashed on Capitol Police officers.
“These men and women in the uniform, they got overrun,” McCarthy said. “One officer got killed…they got broken arms. You don’t understand what was transpiring at that moment and that time. People hanging. People brought ropes. When I got back into my building, I found the straps that they had. I don’t know if they come and try to kidnap somebody or whatever. But they, they were well planned for it.”
“They scaled walls,” he added. “They brought ropes. A couple of protesters died because they scaled. And when you have the inaugural there was scaffolding. They were scaling the scaffolding. They, they overtook the place.”
McCarthy’s office did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
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More HERE
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
Thursday, February 23, 2023
The FOX MAGAt's Knew It All Along...
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Humanities Two Egregiously Bad Problems...
Here’s How Much Each Member Of The Royal Family Is Worth
MONEYPOP - The British royal family has power, prestige, and tons and tons of money. Contrary to popular belief, the Royals aren’t fully funded by taxpayers. They’re independently wealthy with inheritances, crown estates, and allowances. Alone, the crown jewels have an estimated worth of between £3 and £5 billion ($4 – $6.6 billion). Their combined wealth is thought to be around $88 billion.
So, how much are the British family members actually worth? Spoiler: even the poorest royals are still wealthier than most of us could ever imagine.
Just imagine what existence would be like if greed were not a part opf the equation. Spreading a more equitable and more pleasant existence for millions if not billions across the globe.
Ignorance and Greed represent humanities two very biggest problems.
The Unconscionable Florida HB 5 Abortion Law...
Buddhadharma - In July 2022, seven clergy of various faiths in Miami-Dade County filed lawsuits against the State of Florida seeking to invalidate House Bill 5 (HB 5), the Reducing Fetal and Infant Mortality Act. HB 5 prevents women and girls from having autonomy over their own bodies; has no exceptions for rape, incest, or the age of the victim; no exceptions for life-threatening medical emergencies; and no exceptions for incurable fetal abnormalities.
I was one of the seven.
Can our lawsuit be considered bodhisattva activity? If motivation counts, then yes. Can we as Buddhists dispassionately examine this issue, asking ourselves and our teachers difficult questions? Can we dialogue with those who disagree with us? And whatever perspective we adopt regarding abortion, can we offer spiritual support and understanding to women and girls who choose it?
This situation cries out for compassion, for empathy, and for protection of women and girls.
Laws like HB 5 are enacted when abortion is perceived to be inherently and morally wrong. But this law does more than restrict women’s right to choose. As it stands, and as the aiding and abetting law in Florida stands, it also infringes on freedom of speech and freedom to practice the religion of one’s choice in the State of Florida.
Under HB 5, for clergy, according to their faith tradition, to counsel “women, girls, and families to obtain an abortion beyond the narrow bounds of HB 5…aids and abets the crime. Under Florida’s aiding and abetting law, they (clergy) commit the crime itself by counseling in favor of it.”
Therefore, if a woman or girl who is in danger of losing her life due to an existing pregnancy requests spiritual guidance, I cannot say to her, for example, that abortion (as explained by my teachers) will not net her overwhelming negative karma. We cannot explore that question. I can only recite the law with no consideration for her psychological or physical state, her financial situation, or her family—in other words, the present manifestations of her karma. While societal laws are necessary for a relatively peaceful existence, an individual’s karma cannot be legislated, nor does one want to make profound life decisions without guidance.
In my forty years of practicing Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism, I’ve tried to benefit beings solely through meditation, prayer, teaching, and building stupas. While that continues to be my preferred approach, protesting laws that have historically caused irreparable harm to others—whether by discriminating due to gender, race, age, or sexual orientation—is an additional skillful means to benefit beings.
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Year of the Water Rabbit...
Lions Roar - For Tibetan Buddhists, this week marks Losar, the new year—a time to clean house, cherish family, make offerings, contemplate the past year and welcome the new.
Losar is one of the most important days in the Tibetan Lunar calendar, a day of community practice and celebration, and a chance to express appreciation for the teachers, teachings, and the basic goodness that binds all beings together.
Generally falling around the second new moon after the winter solstice, the tradition originated thousands of years ago in the pre-Buddhist Bon period and is now celebrated around the world, including in many Buddhist centers in North America.
2023 is designated as the year of the Water Rabbit, traditionally characterized by a peaceful and patient energy.
Happy Losar!
Saturday, February 18, 2023
Friday, February 17, 2023
Thursday, February 16, 2023
Understanding Critical Race Theory (CRT)...
Scholars of CRT view race as a social construct with no biological basis. One tenet of CRT is that racism and disparate racial outcomes are the result of complex, changing, and often subtle social and institutional dynamics, rather than explicit and intentional prejudices of individuals.
CRT, or Critical Race Theory seems to have many Republicans and conservatives knickers in a knot. Either they have not read anything in depth about CRT and essentially prefer to remain ignorant, or, they have read the material and simply choose not to give it any credibility.
Unfortunately many people, reified in their lifelong conditioned beliefs, simply want no part of recognizing what has driven, and continues to drive, racial unrest and race relations in general in America. Very sad, because CRT has absolutely nothing to do with indoctrination of school children. That, and until we, as a nation, honestly and openly confront our history on race and honestly educate people on the nature of race relations in the country we cannot expect much to change from where race relations are presently. It is with this in mind this in the following expert is posted.
AMERICANBARASSOCIATION - In September 2020, President Trump issued an executive order excluding from federal contracts any diversity and inclusion training interpreted as containing “Divisive Concepts,” “Race or Sex Stereotyping,” and “Race or Sex Scapegoating.” Among the content considered “divisive” is Critical Race Theory (CRT). In response, the African American Policy Forum, led by legal scholar Kimberlรฉ Crenshaw, launched the #TruthBeTold campaign to expose the harm that the order poses. Reports indicate that over 300 diversity and inclusion trainings have been canceled as a result of the order. And over 120 civil rights organizations and allies signed a letter condemning the executive order. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), the National Urban League (NUL), and the National Fair Housing Alliance filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the executive order violates the guarantees of free speech, equal protection, and due process. So, exactly what is CRT, why is it under attack, and what does it mean for the civil rights lawyer?
CRT is not a diversity and inclusion “training” but a practice of interrogating the role of race and racism in society that emerged in the legal academy and spread to other fields of scholarship. Crenshaw—who coined the term “CRT”—notes that CRT is not a noun, but a verb. It cannot be confined to a static and narrow definition but is considered to be an evolving and malleable practice. It critiques how the social construction of race and institutionalized racism perpetuate a racial caste system that relegates people of color to the bottom tiers. CRT also recognizes that race intersects with other identities, including sexuality, gender identity, and others. CRT recognizes that racism is not a bygone relic of the past. Instead, it acknowledges that the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the imposition of second-class citizenship on Black Americans and other people of color continue to permeate the social fabric of this nation.
Principles of the CRT Practice
While recognizing the evolving and malleable nature of CRT, scholar Khiara Bridges outlines a few key tenets of CRT, including:
A) Recognition that race is not biologically real but is socially constructed and socially significant. It recognizes that science (as demonstrated in the Human Genome Project) refutes the idea of biological racial differences. According to scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, race is the product of social thought and is not connected to biological reality.
B) Acknowledgement that racism is a normal feature of society and is embedded within systems and institutions, like the legal system, that replicate racial inequality. This dismisses the idea that racist incidents are aberrations but instead are manifestations of structural and systemic racism.
C) Rejection of popular understandings about racism, such as arguments that confine racism to a few “bad apples.” CRT recognizes that racism is codified in law, embedded in structures, and woven into public policy. CRT rejects claims of meritocracy or “colorblindness.” CRT recognizes that it is the systemic nature of racism that bears primary responsibility for reproducing racial inequality.
D) Recognition of the relevance of people’s everyday lives to scholarship. This includes embracing the lived experiences of people of color, including those preserved through storytelling, and rejecting deficit-informed research that excludes the epistemologies of people of color.
CRT does not define racism in the traditional manner as solely the consequence of discrete irrational bad acts perpetrated by individuals but is usually the unintended (but often foreseeable) consequence of choices. It exposes the ways that racism is often cloaked in terminology regarding “mainstream,” “normal,” or “traditional” values or “neutral” policies, principles, or practices. And, as scholar Tara Yosso asserts, CRT can be an approach used to theorize, examine, and challenge the ways which race and racism implicitly and explicitly impact social structures, practices, and discourses. CRT observes that scholarship that ignores race is not demonstrating “neutrality” but adherence to the existing racial hierarchy. For the civil rights lawyer, this can be a particularly powerful approach for examining race in society. Particularly because CRT has recently come under fire, understanding CRT and some of its primary tenets is vital for the civil rights lawyer who seeks to eradicate racial inequality in this country.
The originators of CRT include Derrick Bell, Kimberlรฉ Crenshaw, Cheryl Harris, Richard Delgado, Patricia Williams, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Tara Yosso, among others. CRT transcends a Black/white racial binary and recognizes that racism has impacted the experiences of various people of color, including Latinx, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. As a result, different branches, including LatCrit, TribalCrit, and AsianCRT have emerged from CRT. These different branches seek to examine specific experiences of oppression. CRT challenges white privilege and exposes deficit-informed research that ignores, and often omits, the scholarship of people of color. CRT began in the legal academy in the 1970s and grew in the 1980s and 1990s. It persists as a field of inquiry in the legal field and in other areas of scholarship. Mari Matsudi described CRT as the work of progressive legal scholars seeking to address the role of racism in the law and the work to eliminate it and other configurations of subordination.
CRT grew from Critical Legal Studies (CLS), which argued that the law was not objective or apolitical. CLS was a significant departure from earlier conceptions of the law (and other fields of scholarship) as objective, neutral, principled, and dissociated from social or political considerations. Like proponents of CLS, critical race theorists recognized that the law could be complicit in maintaining an unjust social order. Where critical race theorists departed from CLS was in the recognition of how race and racial inequality were reproduced through the law. Further, CRT scholars did not share the approach of destabilizing social injustice by destabilizing the law. Many CRT scholars had witnessed how the law could be used to help secure and protect civil rights. Therefore, critical race theorists recognized that, while the law could be used to deepen racial inequality, it also held potential as a tool for emancipation and for securing racial equality.
Foundational questions that underlie CRT and the law include: How does the law construct race?; How has the law protected racism and upheld racial hierarchies?; How does the law reproduce racial inequality?; and How can the law be used to dismantle race, racism, and racial inequality?
In the field of education, Daniel Solรณrzano has identified tenets of CRT that, in addition to the impact of race and racism and the challenge to the dominant ideology of the objectivity of scholarship, include a commitment to social justice; centering the experiential knowledge of people of color; and using multiple approaches from a variety of disciplines to analyze racism within both historical and contemporary contexts, such as women’s studies, sociology, history, law, psychology, film, theater, and other fields.
Some of the most compelling demonstrations of how racism has been replicated through systems is within the education system. Many can recall images of troops escorting nine Black students to integrate Little Rock Central High School. Or Ruby Bridges being escorted into a New Orleans Elementary School by armed guards six years after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated racially segregated education in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Those moments are just snapshots of the intersection of racism, the law, and the education system. This article provides just a snapshot of CRT, and the following explanation is a glimpse of the application of CRT in education. But the explanation below seeks to capture how CRT applies to the education system, particularly in addressing how racial inequality persists in the post–civil rights era.
Education and CRT
Segregated schooling is a particularly profound and timely demonstration of the persistence of systemic racism in education. For example, Brown is often couched in terms of American exceptionalism. But Gloria Ladson-Billings and other CRT originators in the field of education recognize that Brown was the culmination of over a century of legal challenges to segregated schooling and second-class citizenship and far from a natural occurrence or inevitable result of racial progress. The late Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell, in Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma, noted that the Fourteenth Amendment alone could not effectively promote racial equality for Black people where such a remedy threatened the superior social status of wealthy white people. Further, Bell noted that Brown was decided the way it was because of what he termed “interest convergence,” which is the recognition that the interests of Black people in achieving racial equality will be accommodated only when it converges with the interests of white people.
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