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…or our family, friends, loved ones, coworkers, neighbors.
and who is our neighbor?
everyone.
path and practice.
may hearts open, may awareness, empathy, compassion, and wisdom arise.
~j
⭕️♥️🙏🏼
#GoldenRule #OpenHeart #awareness #empathy #compassion #wisdom #path #practice #JinpaLhaga #AndreaKladarQuotes
#InternationalWomensDay
bows of gratitude to and for all of the women in my life.
in every aspect, from my family to my friends, from childhood education to my spiritual exploration and practice in Christian mysticism and now Buddhism, and my professional life in theatre and entertainment, my life has been so thoroughly and beneficially influenced by the women present. their authenticity, their intuition, wisdom, open-heartedness, resilience, courage, tenderness and compassion have guided and given light.
thank you for Being.
~j
⭕️♥️🙏🏼
*pictured is some art i was commissioned to create for a Catholic women’s retreat in 2004, titled Winds of Change. and at this great and challenging time of change, couldn’t our world greatly benefit from more women in leadership guiding the path forward? i believe so, may it be so.
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the saying goes, “practice makes perfect.”
but as Franciscan Priest, contemplative, and Christian mystic, Richard Rohr, says, “Perfection is not the elimination of imperfection, as we think. Divine perfection is, in fact, the ability to recognize, forgive, and include imperfection.”
so what imperfection in ourselves and others are we willing to love today?
what imperfect fellow human being are we willing to extend our love to today?
how can we practice love in a way that promotes healing, justice, peace, and benefits ourselves and others today?
practice makes a path, path makes a life. may we make them love.
~j
⭕️♥️🙏🏼
#love #OpenHeart #practice #path #life #RichardRohrQuotes #NeemKaroliBabaQuotes #JinpaLhaga
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“Hate is as virulent as poison and so I will not indulge it.”
~ Maya Angelou
hate does not spontaneously manifest. it grows from seeds of thoughts and feelings of fear and anger that have not been tended to, that have not been cared for, or transformed. we are not our thoughts and feelings of fear, or anger, or hate. underneath these are a tenderness, an openness, a resilience that is love, that is us. meditation can give us a way to practice changing our relationship to thought, to feelings, to our fear and anger. we can practice a path of alchemy, of healing, of love, and not of hate.
~j
⭕️♥️🙏🏼
#hate #poison #anger #fear #OpenHeart #healing #alchemy #meditation #path #practice #EngagedBuddhism #JinpaLhaga #JMWart #MayaAngelouQuotes
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we are bearing witness to unbearable suffering.
pain, sadness, anger, grief unattended to, can set in motion continued suffering. what we don’t transform, we transmit.
are we committed to healing or are we committed to war?
~j
⭕️♥️🙏🏼
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Our power is love.
Inexhaustible.
Found in our open hearts.
Vulnerable, tender, brave,
and strong beyond measure.
No one can take this away.
It is the weapon of
the oppressed,
that eventually defeats
the oppressor,
who in ignorance
underestimates love’s power,
and reach.
It is the long arc.
~j
⭕️♥️🙏🏼
#LoveWins #TheLongArc #inexhaustible #OpenHeart #PlantingSeeds #TheResistance #MeditateAndResist #MindfulResistance #EngagedBuddhism #EngagedArt #JMWart #art #JinpaLhaga
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“aware of the pain
and suffering of all things
aware of the delicate
impermanence of all things
aware of the inherent beauty
and interdependence of all things
let us bow to all things
opening our hearts in love.”
a lot of exceptions are made for whose pain and suffering we hold, whose plight calls upon our empathy and compassion.
but love does not discriminate.
we think we have forever to get it right, when getting it right is right in front of us.
we can spin for eons with our mental gymnastics justifying cruelty, but it is a fool’s game, with little time left on the clock.
we are but one flesh, diverse, beautiful, wounded and in need of healing.
love carries us across.
~j
⭕️♥️🙏🏼
#nondiscrimination #love #OpenHeart #impermanence #interdependence #suffering #empathy #compassion #path #practice #JinpaLhaga
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So many ideas of what is
right and wrong, good and bad,
and we love to make sure
we are in the right camp.
Perhaps the better questions are
what is kind? What is generous?
What is compassionate?
What adds benefit to the world
and does not add suffering?
This is the path we can offer our lives to in the short time we are here.
~j
⭕️♥️🙏🏼
#kindness #generosity #compassion #OpenHeart #life #love #offering #JinpaLhaga
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e v e r y
t h i n g .
~j
⭕️♥️🙏🏼
#love #OpenHeart #path #practice #JinpaLhaga #JMWart #haiku
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yesterday, 2/25, marked 6 months since my dad’s passing on 8/25. 6 months where at times life has rolled along at what seems an exponential rate with many changes in flux, new chapters to be written. and then at other times life appears to stand still and stuck.
more than ever, i realize that time is – or at least our experience of time is – a product of our own perception. subject to both our inner and outer world, and where the mystery of presence and non-presence flickers and dances about.
but if i’m learning one thing, it is this: love is the only thing able to hold it all and it is love that continues to connect it all. love is the music that life and death dance to together.
the experience of death in relation to a parent – likely one of the few people we’ve known since our first breath – is weird, as many of you have known and some just recently. very real at times and surreal a lot of the time. they could walk into the room at any moment, but if we go looking, they aren’t there.
holding it all with love and gratitude across this dancefloor.
~j
⭕️♥️🙏🏼
#death #life #time #presence #love #RumiQuotes #OpenHeart #path #practice #JinpaLhaga
The Metta Garden 