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June 20 yesterday!June 19, 2008 THE WISDOM OF FEAR The crazy wisdom approach to fear is not regarding it as a hangup alone, but realizing it is intelligent. It has a message of its own. Fear is worth respecting. If we dismiss fear as an obstacle and ignore it, then we might end up with accidents. In other words, fear is a very wise message....The point is, you can't con fear or frighten fear. You have to respect fear. You might try to tell yourself that it's not real, that it's just false, but that kind of approach is very questionable. It is better to develop some kind of respect, realizing that neurosis also is a message, rather than garbage that you should just throw away. That's the whole starting point -- the idea of samsara and nirvana, confusion and enlightenment, being one. Samsara is not regarded as a nuisance alone, but it has its own potent message that is worthy of respect. From "Fearlessness" in CRAZY WISDOM, pages 124 to 125. All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used by permission. Solstice!!!!!!Today, June 20, 2008 23:59 UT (universal time) 7:59pm local to EDT (eastern daylight)
2008 Equinox, Solstice & Cross-Quarter Moments
June 19 newnessCONSTANT REJUVENATION The main focus of crazy wisdom is the youthfulness of the enlightened state of being. This youthfulness is the immediacy of experience, the exploratory quality of it. "But wouldn't exploring age us, make us old?" we might ask. We have to put so much energy into exploring. Do we not become like a traveler who grows old through traveling? From the point of view of crazy wisdom, this is not the case. Exploring is no strain. You might have to do the same thing again and again, but each time you discover new facets of it, which makes you younger. Discovery is related with energy that feeds you constantly. It brings your life to a very full, healthy state. So each time you explore, you gain new health. You constantly come back to a sense of being up to date in your experience of the world, of your life. So the whole thing becomes constant rejuvenation. From "Fearlessness" in CRAZY WISDOM, pages 118 to 119. All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used by permission. May 30 Sailors tale????
May 28 Daily Wisdom!!!Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week May 28, 2008 LARGER SCALE THINKING Compassion is the ultimate attitude of wealth: an anti-poverty attitude, a war on want. It contains all sorts of heroic, juicy, positive, visionary, expansive qualities. And it implies larger scale thinking, a freer and more expansive way of relating to oneself and the world. This is precisely why the second part of the Buddhist path, or yana, is called the "Mahayana," the Great Vehicle." It is the attitude that one has been born fundamentally rich rather than that one must become rich. Without this kind of confidence, meditation cannot be transferred into action at all. From "The Open Way," in CUTTING THROUGH SPIRITUAL MATERIALISM, page 99. For photos, stories about the 16th Karmapa and reports on the visit of the 17th: http://www.chronicleproject.com/stories_99.html or http://www.karmapavisit.org All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used by permission. OCEAN OF DHARMA QUOTES OF THE WEEK now has 5,786 subscribers. Please send comments on and contributions to OCEAN OF DHARMA QUOTES OF THE WEEK to the list moderator, Carolyn Gimian at: carolyn@shambhala.com. May 26 More Wisdom![Ogyen Trinley Dorje, His Holiness the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, arrives in Boulder, Colorado today, where he will give teachings to several thousand students. In honor of his first visit to America, this is offered: ] May 24, 2008 THE BRILLIANT SUNSHINE OF KINDNESS I am thankful for the splendor and magnificence of His Holiness the Sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa. His manifestation and existence are so fortunate and powerful for us in this dark age. The propagation of the Kagyu dharma, the lineage to which I belong, is always within his empire. The brilliant sunshine of His Holiness's kindness, as well as that of Khyentse Rinpoche and Dudjom Rinpoche, [two other lineage holders with whom Chogyam Trungpa had a strong connection], has encouraged me in continuing my teaching in the Western world. Through their kindness they have acknowledged my transformation from a pebble to gold, and they have given me further responsibility as a lineage holder, vajracarya and vidyadhara, in the modern world, so that I can teach continuously and further the dharma of the Practice Lineages....With the blessings of the lineage, and because of my unyielding vow, there is obviously no choice. From "Foreword" in THE RAIN OF WISDOM: The Essence of the Ocean of True Meaning, page xii. For photos, stories about the 16th Karmapa and reports on the visit of the 17th: http://www.chronicleproject.com/stories_99.html or go to http://karmapavisit.org May 23 Quotes From Ven. Chogyam Trungpa RinpocheOcean of Dharma Quotes of the Week May 22, 2008 ENVIRONMENTAL GENEROSITY Compassion has nothing to do with achievement at all. It is spacious and very generous. When a person develops real compassion, he or she is uncertain whether he is being generous to others or to himself, because compassion is environmental generosity, without direction, without "for me" and without "for them." It is filled with joy, spontaneously existing joy, constant joy in the sense of trust, in the sense that joy contains tremendous wealth, richness. From "The Open Way," in CUTTING THROUGH SPIRITUAL MATERIALISM, page 99. For photos, stories about the 16th Karmapa and reports on the visit of the 17th: http://www.chronicleproject.com/stories_99.html All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used by permission. May 21 Om Mani Padme HumGenuine heart of sadnessMay 19, 2008 SURRENDERING IN SADNESS In devotion firm as an unchanging mountain Truly seeing you alone, [my teacher,] as the Buddha, Free from conventions of young or old, In foreign lands, in sadness, with reverence, I survive by the amrita, [the nectar,] of your blessings. .... You, my only father guru, have gone far away. My vajra brothers and sisters have wandered to the ends of the earth. Only I, Chogyam, the little child, am left. Still, for the teachings of the profound and brilliant Practice Lineage, I am willing to surrender my life in sadness. Excerpt from "The Doha of Sadness," from "The Songs of Chogyam Trungpa" in THE RAIN OF WISDOM: The Essence of the Ocean of True Meaning, page 288. Translated by the Nalanda Translation Committee. [Ed note: Vajra brothers and sisters refers to fellow vajrayana students with whom one has a strong link through practice or through having the same teacher.] For photos, stories about the 16th Karmapa and reports on the visit of the 17th: http://www.chronicleproject.com/stories_99.html May 15 HymnLet me a pure white lotus he Unfolding in Samsara's stream. Let all the gloom of misery Be gathered in my lotus dream; Let each dew drop that studded lie On each white radiant fold, Reflect the mercy of the law That turns death's bliss to gold. Let every wave that tumbles down, Their curdled slime of wrath, repair To lotus roots of dusky hrown. In my compassion's bounty share; Let every spark of vengeance rowed Round lotus stalks entwine. And greed and lies transformed by love In lotus heart enshrine. When each life drop has sped away Across my pure white lily door. When I have drained all sorrow may I speed to deck that lustless floor. Let every petal softly fold. In summer's golden shine, Retreat to claim the splendid prize Nirvana's joy last Mine. TripitakaThe non-doing of any evil, the performance of what's skillful, the cleansing of one's own mind: this is the teaching of the Awakened. — Dhp 183 May 13 Chandikayai34-37. O Son! Let Ambikâ Devî protect your front; Padmalochanâ protect your back; Pârvatî, your two sides; S’ivâ Devî, all around you; Vârâhî, in dreadful paths; Durgâ, in royal forts, Kâlikâ, in terrible fights; Parames'varî, in the platform hall; Mâtamgî, in the Svayamvara hall; Bhavanî, the Avertress of world, amidst the kings; Girijâ, in mountain passes; Chamundâ, in the sacrificial ground, and let the eternal Kâmagâ, protect you in the forests. May 07 Namesakes?Gregory the IlluminatorBorn 257?; died 337?, surnamed the Illuminator (Lusavorich). Gregory the Illuminator is the apostle, national saint, and patron of Armenia. He was not the first who introduced Christianity into that country. The Armenians maintain that the faith was preached there by the Apostles Bartholomew and Thaddaeus. Thaddaeus especially (the hero of the story of King Abgar of Edessa and the portrait of Christ) has been taken over by the Armenians, with the whole story. Abgar in their version becomes a King of Armenia; thus their land is the first of all to turn Christian. It is certain that there were Christians, even bishops, in Armenia before St. Gregory. The south Edessa and Nisibis especially, which accounts for the Armenian adoption of the Edessene story. A certain Dionysius of Alexandria (248-265) wrote them a letter "about penitence" (Eusebius, "Hist. Eccl.", VI, xlvi). This earliest Church was then destroyed by the Persians. Ardashir I, the founder of the Sassanid dynasty (226), restored, even extended, the old power of Persia. Armenia, always the exposed frontier state between Rome and Persia, was overrun by Ardashir's army (Khosrov I of Armenia had taken the side of the old Arsacid dynasty); and the principle of uniformity in the Mazdean religion, that the Sassanids made a chief feature of their policy, was also applied to the subject kingdom. A Parthian named Anak murdered Khosrov by Ardashir's orders, who then tried to exterminate the whole Armenian royal family. But a son of Khosrov, Trdat (Tiridates), escaped, was trained in the Roman army, and eventually came back to drive out the Persians and restore the Armenian kingdom. In this restoration St. Gregory played an important part. He had been brought up as a Christian at Caesarea in Cappadocia. He seems to have belonged to an illustrious Armenian family. He was married and had two sons (called Aristakes and Bardanes in the Greek text of Moses of Khorni; see below). Gregory, after being himself persecuted by King Trdat, who at first defended the old Armenian religion, eventually converted him, and with him spread the Christian faith throughout the country. Trdat became so much a Christian that he made Christianity the national faith; the nobility seem to have followed his example easily, then the people followed -- or were induced to follow -- too. This happened while Diocletian was emperor (284-305), so that Armenia has a right to her claim of being the first Christian State. The temples were made into churches and the people baptized in thousands. So completely were the remains of the old heathendom effaced that we know practically nothing about the original Armenian religion (as distinct from Mazdeism), except the names of some gods whose temples were destroyed or converted (the chief temple at Ashtishat was dedicated to Vahagn, Anahit and Astlik; Vanatur was worshipped in the North round Mount Ararat, etc.). Meanwhile Gregory had gone back to Caessarea to be ordained. Leontius of Caesarea made him bishop of the Armenians; from this time till the Monophysite schism the Church of Armenia depended on Casearea, and the Armenian primates (called Catholicoi, only much later patriarchs) went there to be ordained. Gregory set up other bishops throughout the land and fixed his residence at Ashtishat (in the province of Taron), where the temple had been made into the church of Christ, "mother of all Armenian churches". He preached in the national language and used it for the liturgy. This, too, helped to give the Armenian Church the markedly national character that it still has, more, perhaps, than any other in Christendom. Towards the end of his life he retired and was succeeded as Catholicos by his son Aristakes. Aristakes was present at the First General Council, in 325. Gregory died and was buried at Thortan. A monastery was built near his grave. His relics were afterwards taken to Constantinople, but apparently brough back again to Armenia. Part of these relics are said to have been taken to Naples during the Iconoclast troubles. This is what can be said with some certainty about the Apostle of Armenia; but a famous life of him by Aganthangelos (see below) embellishes the narrative with wonderful stories that need not be taken very seriously. According to this life, he was the son of the Parthian Anak who had murdered King Khosrov I. Anak in trying to escape was drowned in the Araxes with all his family except two sons, of whom one went to Persia, the other (the subject of this article) was taken by his Christian nurse to Caesarea and there baptized Gregory, in accordance with what she had been told in vision. Soon after his marriage, Gregory parted from his wife (who became a nun) and came back to Armenia. Here he refused to take part in a great sacrifice to the national gods ordered by King Trdat, and declared himself a Christian. He was then tortured in various horrible ways, all the more when the king discovered that he was the son of his father's murderer. After being subjected to a variety of tortures (they scourged him, and put his head in a bag of ashes, poured molten lead over him, etc.) he was thrown into a pit full of dead bodies, poisonous filth, and serpents. He spent fifteen years in this pit, being fed by bread that a pious widow brought him daily. Meanwhile Trdat goes from bad to worse. A holy virgin named Rhipsime, who resists the king's advances and is martyred, here plays a great part in the story. Eventually, as a punishment for his wickedness, the king is turned into a boar and possessed by a devil. A vision now reveals to the monarch's sisters that nothing can save him but the prayers of Gregory. At first no one will attend to this revelation, since they all think Gregory dead long ago. Eventually they seek and find him in the pit. He comes out, exorcizes the evil spirit and restores the king, and then begins preaching. Here a long discourse is put into the saint's mouth -- so long that it takes up more than half his life. It is simply a compendium of what the Armenian Church believed at the time that it was written (fifth century). It begins with an account of Bible history and goes on to dogmatic theology. Arianism, Nestorianism and all the other heresies up to Monophysite times are refuted. The discourse bears the stamp of the latter half of the fifth century so plainly that, even without the fact that earlier writers who quote Agathangelos (Moses of Khorni, etc.) do not know it, no one could doubt that it is the composition of an Armenian theologian of that time, inserted into the life that was already full enough of wonders. Nevertheles this "Confession of Gregory the Illuminator" was accepted as authentic and used as a kind of official creed by the Armenian Church during all the centuries that followed. Even now it is only the more liberal theologians among them who dispute its genuiness. The life goes on to tell us of Gregory's fast of seventy days that followed his rescue from the pit, of the conversion, and of their journeys throughout the land with the army to put down paganism. The false gods fight against the army like men or devils, but are always defeated by Trdat's arms and Gregory's prayers and are eventually driven into the Caucasus. The story of the saint's ordination and of the establishment of the hierarchy is told with the same adornment. He baptized four million persons in seven days. He ordained and sent out twelve apostolic bishops, and sons of heathen priests. Eventually he ruled a church of four hundred bishops and priests too numerous to count. He and Trdat hear of Constantine's conversion; they set out with an army of 70,000 men to congratulate him. Constantine, who had just been baptized at Rome by Pope Silvester, forms an alliance with Trdat; the pope warmly welcomes Gregory (there are a number of forged letters between Silvester and Gregory, see below) -- and so on. It would not be difficult to find the models for all these stories. Gregory in the pit acts like Daniel in the lion's den. Trdat as a boar is Nabuchodonosor; the battles of the king's army against the heathen and their gods have obvious precedents in the Old Testament. Gregory is now Elias, now Isaias, now John the Baptist, till his sending out his twelve apostles suggests a still greater model. The writer of the life calls himself Agathangelos, chamberlain or secretary of King Trdat. It was composed from various sources after the year 456 (see Gutschmid, below) in Armenian, though sources may have been partly Greek or Syriac (cf. Lagarde). The life was soon translated into Greek used by Symeon Metaphrastes, and further rendered into Latin in the tenth century. During the Middle Ages this life was the invariable source for the saint's history. The Armenians (Monophysites and Uniates) keep the feast of their apostle on 30 September, when his relics were deposed at Thortan. They have many other feasts to commemorate his birth (August 5), sufferings (February 4), going into the pit ( February 28), coming out of the pit (October 19), etc. (Niles "Kalendarium Manuale", 2nd ed., Innsbruck 1897, II, 577). The Byzantine Church keeps his feast (Gregorios ho phoster) on 30 September, as do also the Syrians (Nilles, I, 290-292). Pope Gregory XVI, in September, 1837, admitted his namesake to the Reman Calendar; and appointed 1 October as his feast (among the festa pro aliquibus locis). Funny Movie Without the grace which is demonstrated by the truth of what has come before us we would hardly know the past or the future. It is only through Grace that we arrive at the humble position of the true devotee.
Steadfast faith is the vehicle of deliverance. Grace is the skill of the charioteer. Liberation is the Goal! AWAKE and Live! May 06 Poe(try) Edgar Allen Poe!
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow-- You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream: Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision or in none, Is it therefore the less _gone_? _All_ that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar
May 05 Truth and LoveQuestion: What merit and benefit do we acquire in the present life by calling the Name of Amida Buddha and worshiping and contemplating him? Answer: One utterance of the Name of Amida Buddha can remove the heavy evil karma that will cause one to transmigrate in Samsara for eight billion kalpas. Worshiping and focusing our thoughts upon Amida - along with other acts - have the same effect. The Sutra on the Ten Ways of Attaining Birth states: May 01 BELTANE Today is Beltane (May 1) ---Traditional fire fesival Day~ Ancient Lustral Rite~
Since the Celtic year was based on both lunar and solar cycles, it is most likely that the holiday would be celebrated on the full moon nearest the midpoint between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice (near may 5th). the beginning of the pastoral summer season when the herds of livestock were driven out to summer pastures and mountain grazing lands.....
Blessings upon all of the sacred Mother's children!!!!!
Peace and Love to all!
Hello ! and Hugs to all my new friends!!!! April 14 Greatest story ever told For the poets of all time and the undisturbed authorities have continually reminded us the fragile nature to our feeble existence,the gross indescretions of our histories and the absolute impermanence of our very lives. Wake up! Make peace now! There is no time to lose! |
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