Save Me (Shawn Colvin)

This is one of the songs from the sound track for the movie Save Me that I really liked. Enjoy! (There is just a blank screen, but turn the volume up as this is the best guitar version)

Save Me (Films Worth Watching)

This film examines the issue of conversion therapy which has lately been in the news. Can you really "pray the gay away?". Watch the film and decide for yourself. The acting is superb and the characters are believable. There is not much gloss here, and if you watch the film you will have a much better understanding of the issues experienced by men who love other men. Highly recommended viewing.

Cool Heorism

This article is featured in Tricycle Teachings: Anger. Sustaining and supporting members can download the e-book for free here.

To deal with feelings of anger and fear and frustration, we can start by finding relationality. As the Lakota Indians say, Mitakuye oyasin: "All beings are my relatives." When I'm particularly mad at George Bush and company for warmongering, I remember that in another lifetime he was my mother, and that even the most evil people were at some point my errant siblings. That immediately takes a certain edge off the anger.

The second step is to realize that we, too, have the potential to be demonic. Given certain conditions and confusions and insecurities and fears, any of us could do bad things. It might start with an imperceptible change; we wouldn't think we were being bad—just a little naughty here and there. Pretty soon we would take it too far and be really bad. People can become deluded like that.

Third, we develop real sympathy for the people who are doing harm, because if they bomb people, if they pollute, if they poison the food chain, they will have the bad karma of having harmed so many people.

By taking these three steps—finding one's relation to all beings, acknowledging the evil potential in oneself, feeling sympathy for the evil person—one gets the strength and energy to be an activist and to try, by voting and organizing, to stop harm caused by others. This is cool heroism: developing a tolerant, deliberate, and wise energy.

People are afraid that if they let go of their anger and righteousness and wrath, and look at their own feelings—and even see the good in a bad person—they're going to lose the energy they need to do something about the problem. But actually you get more strength and energy by operating from a place of love and concern. You can be just as tough, but more effectively tough. It's like a martial art.

My wife once met Morihei Ueshiba, the man who founded aikido. After he did a demonstration where he left about seventeen big bruisers on the ground, she asked what his secret was for disarming his attackers without harming them. He giggled and told her, "A long time ago, I realized that every person was just my sister, my brother, my cousin. All those guys lying on the floor are my brothers; you are my little sister! Everybody is just one family." That's cool heroism.

To conquer hate, you have to find unshakeable tolerance. The seventh-century Buddhist saint Shantideva was the great master of that. The sixth chapter of his Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life (Bodhicharyavatara) is considered to be a special magical precept from Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, for replacing anger with tolerance. The essence is: Why get upset if you can do something about something? And if you can't do anything about it, then why get upset? Anger, the text says, comes from feeling uncomfortable because something you don't want to happen is happening, or something you want to happen is not happening. Then you lose your good cheer—your joyousness in just being—and start operating from a place of misery and anger.

When you understand interconnectedness, it makes you more afraid of hating than of dying. But people will not be more afraid of hating than dying as long as they hold the worldview that death is the final conclusion of the self, of all chains of causation and consequence that they could be connected to. That's the problem for spiritual nihilists, or materialists. You don't have to believe in future lives to be a Buddhist since Buddhism isn't merely a belief system. But in the mind—reform practice, if you're going to deal with your own explosive and obsessive impulses at a really deep level, then the sense of being locked into a potentially endless continuity of consequence—what I call "infinite consequentiality"gives you the power in the moment to find a deeper resource to use against those seemingly uncontrollable impulses. If you take the view that you're an infinite prisoner of those forces—that if you don't deal with them now, you'll have to in future lifetimes—then you will not make the excuse "I can't do it." You're going to have to do it. It's what Milarepa said: He was grateful he had the awareness of hell—of infinite negativity. He had killed many people with black magic in his youth, before he turned to the dharma, but understanding the dangers of hell gave him the power to become a buddha and escape those consequences.

For the second page follow the link:

http://www.tricycle.com/-practice/rising-challenge-cool-heroism?page=0,1

Forbearance is a Courageous Act

This article is featured in Tricycle Teachings: Anger

“To bear disgrace and insult” is the most important virtue a person can possibly cultivate, because the ability to forbear is enormously powerful, since a moment of anger can destroy an entire lifetime of merits.

In today’s society, people often mistake forbearance for cowardice. Therefore, the inability or unwillingness to forbear anger has become a source of social and family violence. Spousal abuse, child abuse, and drive-by shootings result from the inability of people to control their emotions. If we want to have peace and order in our lives, reason must prevail over negative emotions.

What does it mean to forbear? It is not very difficult for most of us to endure a moment of hunger or thirst. It is not very hard for most of us to bear the heat of summer or the cold of winter. However, it is very difficult for most of us to forbear anger. Even great men and women of history have succumbed to such a fate. By losing control of their emotions, many lost their ability to perceive things clearly and made irreversible mistakes that changed the course of history and profoundly impacted the lives of many generations. Therefore, the decision to forbear or not to forbear is a determining factor in one’s ultimate success or failure. If we wish to be successful in our undertakings, we must learn to hold back our emotions and be as thoughtful as possible in our actions and reactions.

To forbear is indeed an act of courage and not a symbol of cowardice. It takes great effort and resolution to endure pain and hardship. It requires tremendous confidence to bear insult and disgrace without a hint of retaliation or self-doubt.

In order for us to practice the virtue of forbearance, we must have strength, wisdom, and compassion. We must be willing to settle differences or disputes by means of reason and kindness. We must believe in tolerance and restraint as signs of goodness and bravery. Therefore, if we want to succeed in life and bring about a more peaceful world, we must learn to control our emotions and not to be affected by a moment of anger. 

Homosexuality and the Bible by Matthew Vines

Mathew Vines is a 21 year old Harvard student who makes an exceptionally well researched examination of scripture to see how well condemnation of homosexuality holds up. The video lasts for 1 hour and 7 minutes.
Not to be missed.

The Trickle-Down Theory of Happiness

By Philip Appleman b. 1926 Philip Appleman

Out of heaven, to bless the high places,   

it falls on the penthouses, drizzling   

at first, then a pelting allegro,

and Dick and Jane skip to the terrace   

and go boogieing through the azaleas,   

while mommy and daddy come running   

with pots and pans, glasses, and basins   

and try to hold all of it up there,

but no use, it’s too much, it keeps coming,   

and pours off the edges, down limestone

to the pitchers and pails on the ground, where   

delirious residents catch it,

and bucket brigades get it moving   

inside, until bathtubs are brimful,   

but still it keeps coming, that shower   

of silver in alleys and gutters,

all pouring downhill to the sleazy   

red brick, and the barefoot people   

who romp in it, laughing, but never   

take thought for tomorrow, all spinning   

in a pleasure they catch for a moment;   

so when Providence turns off the spigot   

and the sky goes as dry as a prairie,

then daddy looks down from the penthouse,   

down to the streets, to the gutters,   

and his heart goes out to his neighbors,   

to the little folk thirsty for laughter,   

and he prays in his boundless compassion:   

on behalf of the world and its people   

he demands of his God, give me more.

Philip Appleman, “The Trickle-Down Theory of Happiness” from New and Selected Poems, 1956-1996. Copyright © 1996 by Phillip Appleman. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Arkansas Press, www.uapress.com.

Source: Poetry (August 1983). 

Finding Your Place

A fish swims in the ocean, and no matter how far it swims there is no end to the water. A bird flies in the sky, and no matter how far it flies there is no end to the sky. However, the fish and the bird have never left their elements. When their activity is large their field is large. When their need is small their field is small. Thus, each of them totally covers its full range, and each of them totally experiences its realm. If the bird leaves the air, it will die at once. If the fish leaves the water, it will die at once.

Know that water is life and air is life. The bird is life and the fish is life. Life must be the bird and life must be the fish.

Besides this, further steps can be taken. Thus there are practice and enlightenment, which encompass both eternal life and limited life.

Now if a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element before moving in it, this bird or this fish will not find its way or its place. When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point; for the place, the way, is neither large nor small, neither yours nor others’. The place, the way, has not carried over from the past, and it is not merely arising now.

Accordingly, in the practice-enlightenment of the buddha way, to attain one dharma is to penetrate one dharma, to meet one practice is to sustain one practice.

Here is the place; here the way unfolds. The boundary of realization is not distinct, for the realization comes forth simultaneously with the mastery of buddhadharma.

From Dogen’s Genjo Koan: Three Commentaries with commentary by Mel Weitsman, Michael Wenger, and Shohaku Okamura © 2011. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint.

Image: Illustration by Mike Taylor