Daily Words of the Buddha for August 03, 2020

Pāli Word a Day for August 03, 2020
anāsava — free from the 4 intoxications

Appampi ce saṃhita bhāsamāno,
dhammassa hoti anudhammacārī,
rāgañca, dosañca, pahāya mohaṃ,
sammappajāno suvimuttacitto,
anupādiyāno idha vā huraṃ vā,
sa bhāgavā sāmaññassa hoti.

Little though one recites the sacred texts,
but puts the Teaching into practice,
forsaking lust, hatred, and delusion,
with true wisdom and emancipated mind,
clinging to nothing of this or any other world —
one indeed partakes of the blessings of a holy life.

Dhammapada 1.20
The Dhammapada: The Buddha’s Path of Wisdom, translated from Pāli by Acharya Buddharakkhita

Daily Words of the Buddha for August 02, 2020

Pāli Word a Day for August 02, 2020
anuṇṇata —  not raised, not elated, not haughty, humble

Sukhā virāgatā loke,
Kāmānaṃ samatikkamo;
Asmimānassa yo vinayo —
etaṃ ve paramaṃ sukhaṃ.

Blissful is passionlessness in the world,
The overcoming of sensual desires;
But the abolition of the conceit I am —
That is truly the supreme bliss.

Udāna 2.11
The Udāna and the Itivuttaka, trans. John D. Ireland

Happy Lammas Pagan Harvest Fest

Tara Greene www.taratarot.com's avatarTara Greene,Tarot,Astrology,Psychic

Lammas cross-quarter day Pagan Witch Harvest Festival August 1

August 1 is celebrated as one of the 8 spokes of the Turning of the year in the ancient nature calendar. Lammas is a pagan Harvest festival based on the Sun transiting its annual orbit. It marks halfway to the Autumn Equinox usually on September 21st as the Sun sits on the Equator for the second time in the year. 

George Cole (1810-1883) / Public domain George Cole (1810-1883) / Public domain

George Cole (1810-1883) [Public domain] Harvest rest

This is the original Burning Man Festival where John Barleycorn the original wheat/corn man was burned as an effigy. It’s traditionally a time of celebration of the harvest. John Barleycorn or a corn man figure symbolizing the sacred grain and most especially a sacred loaf was baked and offered to the four directions and to the earth Mother Ceres/Virgo in gratitude. 

The Goddess CERES/ Demeter is honoured as…

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Happy Summer Thermstice/Lammas!

NaturalisticPaganism's avatarNaturalistic Paganism

Celebrations

Heat! Productivity! Success! Growing Darkness!  These and many other themes join with the baking of bread and early harvest celebrations of Lunasa.  What could better exemplify heat and productivity than the casting of molten metal into Atheopagan medallions?  Check it out!

The growing darkness has already given us wonderful views of Comet Neowise.  Though the comet is effectively gone, the Perseid meteor shower is right around the corner, August 11-14.

As a special Lunasa treat, check out this Lammas music from Bart Everson.  It could be part of a ritual, solitary observation, or just having around now.

Some of the ways many of us are celebrating were recently published.   For my family, celebrations with our annual Lunasa blueberry harvest and evening ritual will be today!  We are also going on a wilderness quest for the glowing stones of awe – Yooperlites!

For some of us…

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Astrology | 2020 Aquarius Full Moon in Sheep Month

Susan Levitt's avatarSusan Levitt

August 3 2020 is a full Moon in Aquarius. Air sign Aquarius rules the 11th house of friends, networks, and social values. Aquarian individuals are unique thinkers who tend not to follow convention, making this full Moon the time for innovative viewpoints, methods, and unanticipated experiences.

If challenged to apply new methods, the full Moon and Sun in Leo square Uranus in Taurus, creating a fixed T-square. There could be relationship difficulties due to conflicting opinions, lack of patience concerning responsibilities, or it’s just hard to stay on your chosen life path. But a sudden Uranus difficulty can help to discover what is bothering you to start eliminating it from your life.

Fortunately, the Leo Sun trines Mars in Aries, Mars’ powerful rulership sign. This Fire trine is favorable for new projects, there’s increased vigor and enthusiasm about motivation and goals, and physical activity of all kinds is very rewarding. 

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Energy Update | August 1, 2020

How would you feel right now if you got the good news you’ve been waiting on? Make that your predominant feeling and thinking for yourself. Sudden breakthroughs and out of the blue blessings can easily happen for you. The universe supports you. Believe that a miracle can happen for you. Trust yourself. Feel that high energy of change and accept it. You’re about to manifest in a major way. You’ve been patient long enough. You’ve remained strong through many trails and challenges. Nothing broke you. You still here standing strong. Now it’s your turn to start receiving blessings and it is about to happen for you. Never worry, stress, or overthink how everything you’re trying to manifest or waiting to receive will happen for you. Just believe that it will. Believe in it. There’s great power in believing what you can envision in your mind, not really in what’s happening in front of you. Everything that can happen for you, starts with a single thought. You have to believe in it till it shows up. The more you believe in that thought, the more you will feel it. The more you feel it, the quicker it will manifest it into your reality. You should trust in the greater power that’s constantly aligning everything for you through your visions and inner state of being. Choose to connect with your higher power to guide you through this process of change and receiving. You will grow stronger everyday, because you trust the energy that sustains you. How can you not trust the source that powers all of life so precisely without a single error? Don’t let fear, negativity, and lower vibrational energy steal your shine. Noticing blessings is just a matter of perspective. See the light in every situation. See what’s moving everything and what’s giving it so much life. Connect with it. Connect with your spirit. The answers you need are arriving. The universe is getting ready to make a delivery in your life. In the meantime, celebrate and smile like you’ve already received everything you have been asking for. Everything is about to make sense.

Daily Words of the Buddha for August 01, 2020

Pāli Word a Day for August 01, 2020
ābhāsa — light, radiance; appearance

Bahumpi ce saṃhita bhāsamāno,
na takkaro hoti naro pamatto,
gopova gāvo gaṇayaṃ paresaṃ,
na bhāgavā sāmaññassa hoti.

Much though one recites the sacred texts,
but acts not accordingly,
that heedless one is like a cowherd
who only counts the cows of others —
one does not partake of the blessings of the holy life.

Dhammapada 1.19
The Dhammapada: The Buddha’s Path of Wisdom, translated from Pāli by Acharya Buddharakkhita

Daily Words of the Buddha for July 30, 2020

Pāli Word a Day for July 30, 2020
jita — conquered, subdued, mastered

Tato adinnaṃ parivajjayeyya
kiñci kvaci sāvako bujjhamāno.
Na hāraye harataṃ nānujaññā.
Sabbaṃ adinnaṃ parivajjayeyya.

A disciple should avoid taking
anything from anywhere knowing it (to belong to another).
One should not steal nor incite another to steal.
One should completely avoid theft.

Sutta Nipāta 2.397
The Discourse Collection: Selected Texts from the Sutta Nipāta, translated by John D. Ireland

Daily Words of the Buddha for July 29, 2020

Pāli Word a Day for July 29, 2020
nirodha — the cessation

Pāṇaṃ na hane na ca ghātayeyya,
na cānujaññā hanataṃ paresaṃ,
sabbesu bhūtesu nidhāya daṇḍaṃ.
Ye thāvarā ye ca tasā santi loke.

One should not kill a living being,
nor cause it to be killed,
nor should one incite another to kill.
Do not injure any being, either strong or weak, in the world.

Sutta Nipāta 2.396
The Discourse Collection: Selected Texts from the Sutta Nipāta, translated by John D. Ireland

Daily Words of the Buddha for July 28, 2020

Pāli Word a Day for July 28, 2020
sacca — the truth

Idha socati pecca socati;
pāpakārī ubhayattha socati.
So socati so vihaññati,
disvā kammakiliṭṭhamattano.

The evil-doer grieves here and hereafter;
one grieves in both the worlds.
One laments and is afflicted,
recollecting one’s own impure deeds.

Dhammapada 1.15
The Dhammapada: The Buddha’s Path of Wisdom, translated from Pāli by Acharya Buddharakkhita

Daily Words of the Buddha for July 27, 2020

Pāli Word a Day for July 27, 2020
taraṇa — going across, passing over, traversing

Yadā have pātubhavanti dhammā
Ātāpino jhāyato brāhmaṇassa,
Athassa kaṅkhā vapayanti sabbā
Yato pajānāti sahetudhammaṃ.

When things become manifest
To the ardent meditating brahmin,
All one’s doubts then vanish since one understands
Each thing along with its cause.

Udāna 1.1
The Udāna and the Itivuttaka, trans. John D. Ireland

A Pedagogy of Gaia: “How Lammas Changed My Life” by Bart Everson

NaturalisticPaganism's avatarNaturalistic Paganism

What can we learn, and how can we teach, from the cycles of the Earth — both the cycles within us, and the cycles in which we find ourselves?

A Subtropical “Fern Dolly”

The Dog Days of Summer

Do you know that time in late summer, when the air seems heavy and full, and the heat gets hotter, and everything seems to slide from ripe to overripe? It’s that sultry, sticky time sometimes called the Dog Days, after Sirius the Dog Star.

It’s my favorite time of year. Most of the people here in New Orleans think I’m crazy. Maybe I am. Then again, I work in an office which is maintained at such a bone-chilling temperature that some of my co-workers resort to using space heaters in August.

After the summer solstice, our hemisphere’s axial tilt to the sun diminishes each day. Slowly the days are growing shorter, the…

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Energy Update | Matt Kahn, for Week of July 26-August 2, 2020

Although many can view the current state of the planet as apocalyptic signs, it’s important to know that an apocalypse is actually the process of ascension merely viewed through the lens of an unraveling ego structure. To help you through this process, let’s explore the gifts and opportunities the Universe is ushering in, on all of our behalf, to move awareness beyond the surreal intensity of a rapidly-changing world. At this time, the Universe is expanding the collective consciousness by helping evolving beings such as yourself to become aware of and to continue the process of unraveling core limiting beliefs out of your cellular memory.

This means, in spite of the things you intend to manifest, the Universe is helping you acknowledge your most core limiting beliefs by putting you in circumstances and guiding you through a series of outcomes to help you notice the most limiting ideas you conclude about yourself, life, or your place in the cosmos. To help you move through this process with utmost grace, you can ask yourself the following questions:

  • When something uncomfortable, inconvenient, or unexpected happens, what reason do you give for why it occurs?
  • Is your knee-jerk reaction wondering what you did wrong to bring this about?
  • Do you hope to find the lesson as quickly as possible, so to move beyond the perception of punishment?
  • Do you do inner work so intensely, as a way of trying to get into a better standing with a Source that only loves and adores you exactly as you are?
  • Do you overly-spiritualize the perfection of divine timing by assigning blame to your ego’s behavior, a belief that your vibration must be low as a result of such outcomes, or merely holding the notion that you must not be worthy of all you wish to have?

These can be some rather bold questions, but it remains imperative to ask them in order to help you see through the veil of concepts you may be unknowingly and so innocently using to stay asleep in a dream of reward and punishment. As you continue to wake up, you begin to explore a Universe that is all reward with no punishments outside of the limiting and often heart-breaking conclusions we tend to draw in response to the unfolding journey of time. As part of the human condition, human beings often draw conclusions in response to outcomes as a way of maintaining some semblance of control. The belief tends to be: if I can understand why something is happening, I will be able to know what I can do to move through it or even transform it into greater circumstances for myself and others. As always, there is always a kernel of truth hidden within the beliefs of our deepest distortions of reality. It is true, if you could understand why something is happening, you will be able to know what you can do to move through it or even transform it into greater circumstances for yourself and others. And yet, you don’t have to be blamed as the negative cause of any particular outcome, as if you must be guilty of some form of wrong-doing just because things aren’t going the way you had hoped or envisioned.

As the Universe helps you address your most limiting beliefs you have about yourself, others, the world, and reality as a whole– mainly focusing on the limiting beliefs you have about you– it assists in the further expansion of your awakening consciousness by being able to honor the often illusive and mysterious process of transmutation.

Transmutation acts as a sacred fire burning up all that no longer serves you each and every time you are emotionally triggered or turned against yourself in response to an outcome or anyone else’s behavior.

The more you know that life will become whatever series of circumstances is needed to help you examine the limiting beliefs you hold to be true about yourself, the easier it is to let go of needing things to be any particular way in order to discover the happiness, wholeness, inspiration, and joy that you seek. It also helps you uplevel your understanding of co-creation beyond the limits of the ego’s understanding. Co-creation is real, but you are not solely in charge of what comes or goes. Since co-creation references a collaboration, it helps you understand that your partnership with the Universe allows any degree of circumstance to manifest, not because of the insistence of personal will, but through the grace of divine timing that is doing everything in its infinite power to help you become the heart-centered, embodied, and fully integrated consciously divine human you were born to be. As more space is cleared to allow such an embodied and integrated presence of your soul to move deeper into your physical body, you come to realize the true fulfillment you have been searching for comes from being aligned with spirit more often than not, and not necessarily dependent upon what you have, don’t have, want, or resent others for having.

This is why the Universe creates personal and collective head-scratching scenarios, where specific versions of you, along with other characters, show up to behave in ways that allow you to watch the limiting beliefs that may arise in response. Because the addressing of core limiting beliefs is so front and center for so many right now, the key at this time is being more compassionate with yourself than ever before. Let yourself off the hook by allowing yourself to enter a reality where things don’t happen because of anything you do or don’t do.

Because the unraveling of limiting core beliefs is escorting you beyond the confines of psychological imprisonment, it is very common right now to have a rebellious nature when it comes to self-imposed rules and rigidity. For example, if you are on a cleanse, don’t be surprised by the desire or likelihood of cheating, just to know you have the right to do as you wish and be as you may. The unraveling of limiting core beliefs also amplifies the tendency of emotional eating, in attempt to seek surrogate forms of comfort, as the beliefs that once offered comfort are seen to have overstayed their welcome. There is no doubt that as all the pieces of self are put back together throughout your journey of awakening, there will be a remarkable difference in your alignment of choices, but this process is not something your ego can micro-manage or control.

At this critical time of inner alchemical transmutation, the essential spiritual practices are those rooted in self-love and self-discovery.

It is a time where you are truly needed as the one who can deliver the light of Source energy into your being by how authentically and more often you dare to love yourself, while accepting that everything happens to usher in a new version of you and a newly-transformed reality and not because of anything you did ‘wrong’ in any way.

During this phase of transmutation, it is natural to have rampant cravings, feel stir-crazy, confused, mesmerized, or dismayed by life’s growing list of uncertainties, an increase in physical or emotional pain– including pain in your head, as well as electrical surges and shocks along major meridian points. Such symptoms, while representing evidence of transmutation in progress, also act as reminders to be gentle with yourself as you move beyond the threshold of this evolutionary process.

As the pace of life slows to give you a more direct view into the inner-workings of a conditioned past, you are able to cut the cords to each and every anchor and set sail along our most miraculous voyage into new seas of discovery.

With less pressure and rigidity overwhelming an already overwhelming time in Earth’s history, the signs of a newly-awakening world begin to surface in the beauty of your everyday life.

From my heart to yours, thank you for being here, staying the course, and being such an instrumental catalyst in ensuring that the vibration of love is channeled into your heart and reality, no matter how shameful, unworthy, or disconnected any belief suggests you to be. On behalf of the Universe, thank you for being you exactly as you are.

May the Universe show you exactly how, no matter the circumstances in view, love always has the final word. Love always wins.

 

Energy Update | July 24, 2020

Be consistent right now. Keep the visualizations going. Keep the affirmations going. Keep being positive about everything. Every moment counts. Don’t judge yourself or even judge the timing of everything. Enter a state of gratitude, celebration, and completion of your manifestations. Everything is already yours. What you think about belongs to you. What you feel is making its way towards you. What you want wants you. What you give your energy to grows and amplifies in your awareness. Stay focused on purpose. Let what goes, go. Let what comes, enter. Just keep speaking, thinking, and feeling power over your life. Nothing is complicated when you learn to just breathe, believe, and trust that everything is already happening for you. You just need to keep shinning from within and being patient with yourself. Be loving to yourself. You are very special and you being here right now shows that your life means so much more than what you can understand sometimes. Start noticing the beauty about existence. The small things like your aliveness and your energy. Your mind. Your abilities. The billion things happening every second for you that doesn’t require your conscious attention. You are being supported so feel light today. Feel warmth and love. Feel energized to be your greatest through recognizing it and allowing it now. Keep going.

Daily Words of the Buddha for July 24, 2020

Pāli Word a Day for July 24, 2020
anāghāta — freedom from anger or ill-will

Atītaṃ nānusocanti,
nappajappanti nāgataṃ,
paccuppannena yāpenti,
tena vaṇṇo pasīdati.

They do not lament over the past,
they yearn not for what is to come,
they maintain themselves in the present,
thus their complexion is serene.

Saṃyutta Nikāya 1.10
Gemstones of the Good Dhamma, compiled and translated by Ven. S. Dhammika

Bodies, Sexuality, Strength, and Badass Sorcery

Isidora's avatarIsiopolis

I rarely post anything political on this blog. That’s not what it’s for. But sometimes—like when your city has been invaded by goon squads kidnapping citizens—it’s hard to write about anything else. And so, for a lead-in to today’s post about ancient Egyptian sexuality and Isis, I am proud to introduce you to “Naked Athena.”

THIS. This is why I love this city. This is the power of a vulnerable, naked human body. This is the power of Art.

Portland protestor calls out police in a stunning display of what one Twitter poster called “badass sorcery.” Damn right, it was. In confusion, the cops actually backed off after this. See more here.

Now, here’s another photo of the same kind of vulnerable power:

This is Ieshia Evans. Learn more about Evans and that protest here. (Photo info: A demonstrator protesting the shooting death of Alton Sterling is detained…

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Astrology | Comet Neowise closest to Earth July 23

Tara Greene www.taratarot.com's avatarTara Greene,Tarot,Astrology,Psychic

Tonight July 23 comet Neowise makes its closest approach to the earth at 01:14 UT/GMT, at a distance of 0.69 AU (103 million km; 64 million mi) while located in the constellation of Ursa Major the Big Dipper or Bear.

For the next few days with the naked eye Comet, Neowise will be visible then fading as it appears closer to the sun. It will still be visible with binoculars but then it’s by bye for another 6,000+ years until it returns again. 

The Birth chart of the closest approach on July 23 

What stands out as Comet Neowise at 20 degrees LEO conjunct Fixed Star MERAK in the Side of the Great Bear, the second-largest star of this constellation.

“Fixed star Merak is like Mars (violent death, ultimate ruin by folly or pride. If rising, wealth, power, courage, generosity, ingenuity, rise to authority, martial success, subject to cuts, wounds…

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Daily Words of the Buddha for July 23, 2020

Pāli Word a Day for July 23, 2020
sukhuma — that which is delicate, or that which is fine, subtle, minute

Yo ca mettaṃ bhāvayati
Appamāṇaṃ paṭissato
Tanū saṃyojanā honti,
Passato upadhikkhayaṃ.

For one who mindfully develops
Boundless loving-kindness
Seeing the destruction of clinging,
The fetters are worn away.

Itivuttaka 1.27
The Udāna and the Itivuttaka, trans. John D. Ireland

Daily Words of the Buddha for July 22, 2020

Kāyena saṃvaro sādhu; sādhu vācāya saṃvaro;
manasā saṃvaro sādhu. Sādhu sabbattha saṃvaro.
Sabbattha saṃvuto bhikkhu
sabbadukkhā pamuccati.

Good is restraint in the body; good is restraint in speech;
good is restraint in thought. Restraint everywhere is good.
The monk restrained in every way
is freed from all suffering.

Dhammapada 25.361
The Dhammapada: The Buddha’s Path of Wisdom, translated from Pāli by Acharya Buddharakkhita