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hardie karges
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hardie karges
Buddhism: Open Heart, Open Mind, Karma and Magic
Pick up that piece of trash, not because you dropped it, but because someone did, and we’re all in this together, so if you don’t pick it up, then who will? And this goes straight to karma, because that depends on everybody’s cooperation to make the sacred proverb work, not some magic trick by goblins that only work on Sunday. Most religion works like that, accomplishing with mass messaging what no one can accomplish with a simple bag of tricks. The magic is in your belief system, not anyone’s superpowers.
Exploring new worlds is good. Creating them is better. Adapting an old one is maybe best. But isn’t that an act of magic in its own right? Nothing possesses a soul by natural birthright but only by the actions that it performs and the results that accrue to it. This is karma at its best, assuming a form and acting as if it is a free actor on an empty stage, though nothing could be further from the truth. We are all lab rats in one great experiment, and the mind is the master of it all, capable of creating new worlds where none previously existed.
An open mind accepts new ideas. An open heart accepts new people. They’re really the same thing, of course, both simulations of an idea given its place in our bodies and awareness by virtue of its emotional gravity and psychological primacy. Thai language formalizes that idea with the compounding of both organs and concepts into a new compound word jitjai to formalize the marriage and immortalize the union. We can count breaths and even heartbeats to meditate, but we’ll never be able to count brainwaves, I don’t think…
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hardie karges
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hardie karges
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hardie karges
Buddhism 499: Many roads lead to God. All paths lead back to Nature…
And there you have the transition from Brahministic Hinduism to a more evolved Buddhism. Because most Hindus don’t care about which God you believe in, as long as you believe in at least one. They have many. And they try to make a God of the Buddha, too, forever calling him ‘Lord Buddha’, as if he created the heaven and earth, while no other ‘real’ Buddhists in other countries would ever call him that. Maybe that’s why Buddhism ultimately failed in India. India is fundamentally nationalistic. So is Hinduism. Buddhism is not.
But, for people who want Buddhism, but also want a God for their religion, Nature can serve as a convenient substitute, and for good reason. Because dharma is often translated as ‘law’ and that’s every bit as good as a God with wings and fiery breath. And this can be proven with language, as I’ve speculated before. The Thai word for Nature, thammashart, is comprised of the two Sanskrit words dharma and jati, the one that we’re calling ‘law’ and the other which is maybe best translated as ‘life’ or something similar, so something like ‘the law of life’, sounds like Nature to me.
Still, many non-Indians want to make of the Buddha something LIKE a God, a manifestation or something such, so you can’t please everybody with flowers and trees when want they really want is a Superman, or Sky Father, like the Vedic dyaus pitra. You can try your best with prithvi mata, Mother Nature, but don’t hedge count your money just yet. People are stubborn about that Alpha Male cowboy on horseback in the sky, with hair flying and women crying. Nature works for me, a universal principle, details to be revealed eventually, as is the rule with Lord Science, wait a minute…
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hardie karges
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hardie karges
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hardie karges
The Buddhist Middle Path Between Bliss and Industry
The most difficult attachments are to (our) selves and (our) lives, which almost goes without saying, because what could be more logical and apparently natural? But it’s probably worth the effort to say it, because it may not be natural at all, maybe just the opposite, in fact. Because the only thing connecting it all is consciousness, and that hardly implies attachment, only awareness. This is a core principle of Buddhism, and nothing is more important.
Because once you’ve become attached to yourself, then you will certainly become attached to your wife and your children and your job, as if nothing could be more natural. But there is something almost more natural, and that’s non-attachment. Imagine the bliss that becomes possible by simply being alive without transacting, becoming blissfully wet when it rains and playfully engaged when it dries? So, why don’t animals do that, then, as we imagine they do?
But they don’t, or not totally. Jesus has already been busted for claiming that birds don’t build barns, when in fact they clearly do. In the English language we call them nests. In fact, these birds are a full step ahead of those imaginary ‘present moment’ Buddhists, as they are more like Middle Path Buddhists, splitting the difference between bliss and industry, very much in the moment, but with an eye to the future, too. We humans were once like that, planting seeds but also practicing crafts. Cities should be unnecessary with the advent of high tech. Maybe we should try that.
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hardie karges
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hardie karges
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Dr B
Bought the book, really enjoying it 🙏🕉️
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hardie karges
Thank you! I appreciate the feedback…
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hardie karges and 
streaming consciousness... 
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