this moment in history is calling to us. our ancestors are calling to us. future generations are calling to us. those who are marginalized, targeted, and oppressed are calling to us. may we answer the call.
#participate #engage #vote
~j ⭕️♥️🙏🏻
Posted @withrepost • @mindourdemocracy When your grandchildren ask you, “how did you mind our democracy?” what will you say? @jack_kornfield offers his guidance for how to respond.
“We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice….”
~ Pema Chödrön
we can choose to keep an open heart.
we can choose to allow vulnerability, softness, and tenderness to be our strength, our super power.
as Mother Teresa once said, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
there are many that promote division and an every person for themselves ideology. but such a severe individuality approach to life, doesn’t reflect reality as it really is, and can bring harm. it forgets that we belong to each other.
interdependence says that we belong to each other, that our words and actions and the thoughts that give rise to them, have an effect on others for good or for ill. “Am I part of the cure, or am I a part of the disease?” as the Coldplay lyric asks.
we can go about our lives on autopilot and reacting to life, or we can practice allowing space to see clearly, learning what our triggers are, and responding mindfully with lovingkindness and compassion to ourselves and others.
interdependence calls on us to embody empathy and compassion – to engage our world and participate in life for each other. one way to do this is to exercise our right, our privilege, our responsibility to VOTE.
go to vote.gov to register and check our info on your state if you haven’t already.
today would have been Thich Nhat Hanh’s 96th birthday/continuation day.
a dear teacher to so many, Thay’s presence is missed yet still here in the community of monastics and lay practitioners who continue to embody his accessible, simple, profound Zen Buddhist teachings on mindfulness, open-heartedness, and being compassion in the world through words and actions.
this teaching on Engaged Buddhism continues to bring benefit. as he says in this quote, “Compassion is a verb.” we must step off the cushion and take our mindfulness, our loving kindness to a world in need, in practical, beneficial ways.
are you registered? how about your family, your friends?
please #participate, #engage, and #vote as of #democracy depends on it – BECAUSE IT DOES.
Tuesday, November 8th, demonstrate your support for our representative democracy and VOTE!
~j ⭕️♥️🙏🏻
Posted @withrepost • @ethannichtern 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻 28 days until November 8: an election that will determine whether this version of American democracy can live, or dies over the next few years. Believe me, I don’t like hyperbole, and I wish this was merely paranoia. It’s very clearly not, though. So many races will be decided by just a few percentage points, and any small change in turnout will mean everything. Please vote as early as you can where you are, and volunteer a few hours to helping get others to vote. Thanks to everyone who is showing up! Voting is as much a practice as meditation. Bows to all.
Indigenous people lived on this land for 15,000 to well over 20,000 years before Columbus arrived, with a population estimated at 60-112 million people. it is erroneous and harmful to consider a land “discovered” when sovereign Native nations with vibrant traditions, cultures, art, and spiritual practices filled with wisdom had been working in harmony with nature on this land long before Europeans arrived and colonized.the Earth calls for a return to harmony, a return to a recognition of interdependence and balance.may we listen to the wisdom of Indigenous voices, guardians of the Earth.
~j
⭕️♥️🙏🏻
#IndigenousPeoplesDay
*🎨 the gorgeous art pictured: “Turtle Island” by, 2Spirit Ojibway Woodland artist, Patrick Hunter.
being part of the solution. being part of the healing.
we can do this by first taking care of our own mind and own heart. practicing mindfulness awareness, practicing lovingkindness, practicing being balanced and open hearted, embodying sanity and love.
this doesn’t mean we close ourselves off to the world. in fact, the practice is being with the world in its need. building up a capacity to keep our heart open. this begins with being able to be with ourselves. this is a path of brave warriorship, not fear. how many can sit with their darkness and offer it love and healing? how many of us are used to running away, pushing away, or simply ignoring. ignorance is not bliss. what we don’t transform within ourselves, we transmit to the world.
so, we can be aware of the troubles and suffering in the world, and out of the concern that arises, we can do the work needed to heal, even while those stuck in delusion and fear – who haven’t reconciled their own demons – through their words and actions bring destruction. moving from a place of fear, rather than love, brings destruction and suffering.
let us move from a place of love. this is our path, this is our practice.
The Metta Garden 