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  hardie karges 4:02 am on April 5, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 457 ), Hardie Karges ( 269 ), language ( 164 ), meditation ( 217 ), mindfulness ( 36 ), present moment ( 6 ), sati ( 18 )   

  Buddhism and the Present Moment 

  

  Present moment or eternal now, Einstein gave time only one dimension. If that is enough for him, then it is enough for me. And this a very popular notion in Buddhism these days, present moment, though I don’t know that the Buddha ever actually used the term, either term, nor even how exactly that would be translated into Sanskrit or his own Magadhi prakrit. It’s a good term, regardless, though, I think, and dovetails nicely into the concept of mindfulness, which is a bit boring as simple awareness, the actual translation, a bit oversimplified as simply ‘no multi-tasking, but just right as the embrace of some magical present moment, whether that does indeed or does not actually exist.  

  Frankly I doubt that it’s accurate with the current state-of-the-art physics, but that’s not absolutely necessary. As stated before, if time is only one dimension, then that’s close enough for me. But that’s a matter of perspective, of course, and physics mathematical necessity. I’m not sure that space is not indeed just one dimension, for that matter, nor why time couldn’t be seen as three: past, present, and future. These are all words and limited by that, which is much the problem.  

  If some people think that we are now slaves to our smartphones, that’s nothing compared to our slavery to language, for at least 50-60k years, AT LEAST. And that’s the true meaning of mindfulness for me, if only accomplished by circuitous logic, i.e. thought without language. Because thought has gotten a bad rap at the same time that mindfulness and the present moment’s stock has soared. At that’s not really fair, since I know that the Buddha never dissed thought, but only bad thought(s). So here we can kill two birds with one stone, revive our notions of thought, and polish our concept of mindfulness. So, if you just gotta think, then make a good one. Otherwise, silent reflection just might be better. 

   

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  hardie karges 4:57 pm on April 2, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 457 ), language ( 164 ), Thailand ( 76 ), Hardie Karges ( 269 ), kilesha ( 12 )   

  Buddhism: Cooling the fires of Kilesha… 

   
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  hardie karges 4:56 pm on March 30, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 457 ), Hardie Karges ( 269 ), language ( 164 ), meditation ( 217 ), philosophy ( 113 ), Science ( 26 ), silence ( 14 )   

  Buddha Talk: the Science of Silence… 

   
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  hardie karges 2:27 am on March 29, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: arahant ( 2 ), bodhisattva ( 10 ), Hardie Karges ( 269 ), language ( 164 ), Mahayana ( 48 ), meditation ( 217 ), Pali ( 21 ), prakrit, Sanskrit ( 23 ), Theravada ( 53 )   

  The Buddha’s Parting Words Revisited: Lamp or Island? 

  

  You can be an island or a lamp, on a bicycle or a ship, and the path to fruition is the same, if you plant seeds along the way. The reference is to the Buddha’s parting words in which he urges followers to be a ‘lamp’ or to be an ‘island’, or either, or both, or neither, in catuhskoti logic, subsequent narrators, translators, and explainers suggesting that the word dipa can somehow mean both, when the reality is that it can only mean either, unless you’re making a play on words in Magadhi prakrit, aka ‘Pali’. 

  Because big brother Sanskrit shows that the original word(s) are clearly distinct, modern transliterations being closer to dvipa than dipa for the word that means ‘island’, for which the prakrit speakers presumably simply slurred down the more complex sorta-three-syllable word into only two distinct syllables, while explainers suggest that the original meaning is essentially the same. The only problem is that they’re not the same. So, this is more than linguistic fun, notwithstanding that Buddha might have simply made a pun, which I’m sure that he was capable of, being the human that he was. 

  Or maybe he was simply being prescient, since being an island refuge for yourself and/or a lamp for yourself and your path (and others’, since lamps tend to radiate outward), is very similar to the difference between the Theravada approach to Buddhist practice and the most obvious approaches to a Mahayana practice, that outward radiation being obviously more diverse by design and definition, more Bodhisattva than arahant. There are many Mahayanas. There is only one Theravada. Or in my Buddhist dialectic, it can allow for two-in-one, all in good time. As I said before, save yourself then save the world.  

   
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  hardie karges 4:24 pm on March 27, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 457 ), Hardie Karges ( 269 ), language ( 164 ), meditation ( 217 ), philosophy ( 113 ), religion ( 167 )   

  Buddha Talk: Save Yourself, then Save the World… 

   
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  hardie karges 3:53 pm on March 24, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 457 ), empathy ( 6 ), Hardie Karges ( 269 ), meditation ( 217 ), sympathy ( 3 )   

  Buddhism in the End Days, Empathy and Sympathy 

   
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  hardie karges 3:12 am on March 22, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 457 ), Hardie Karges ( 269 ), justice ( 4 ), kindness ( 17 ), language ( 164 ), meditation ( 217 ), philosophy ( 113 ), religion ( 167 ), transactional   

  Buddhism 499: Taming the Mind…  

  

  Treat perfect strangers with the same kindness you give your pets and the world will be a better place. And pets deserve that special treatment, of course, but don’t we all? Because all too often, kindness is transactional, tit for tat, is it not? Yes, it is, whether we even realize it or not, we’re so accustomed to that sort of reciprocity, as long as the dog is loveable, of course, and silently obedient. And many Buddhists do that, also, which is not a bad thing in itself, unless it rewards evil at the same time. 

  Because justice and fairness is a real thing, too, of course, and that is the flipside to the equation. Pets are a special circumstance in the hierarchy of the world, and I love them greatly, no vestigial nostalgia for the savage wilderness here, no thank you. I wish that every animal in the world could be tamed and therefore survive, rather than live a precarious existence in a world where it is commonly thought that returning an animal to the wilderness is somehow standard logical procedure. 

  As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Conscientious taming seems perfectly acceptable to me, in lieu of wilderness, but dancing bears would seem to be going too far. But the point is that the kindness so often typically displayed toward our pets de rigueur is often totally lacking in our relationships to our human equals, even when they’ve done much to deserve it. No matter that there are Buddhist websites called Wildmind and so forth, the founding principle of Buddhism is to tame the mind, and that is a very good thing… 

   
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  hardie karges 4:30 pm on March 19, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: anicca ( 11 ), Buddhism ( 457 ), change ( 6 ), Hardie Karges ( 269 ), philosophy ( 113 )   

  Buddha Talk: Buddhism and the Conundrum of Change 

   
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  hardie karges 4:09 pm on March 16, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 457 ), Hardie Karges ( 269 ), meditation ( 217 ), suffering ( 31 )   

  Buddhism and the Saving Grace of Suffering 

  Suffering is the raw material for a further and higher evolution of consciousness. The world is neither happy nor sad. It just is. Adjectives come later. I’ve often wondered how such horrendous situations could have existed in the past, in which wholesale slaughters not only occurred, but were commonplace. How could people have possibly been so heartless as to commit such horrible acts of genocide, and gendercide, in which the defeated men were executed point blank while the women and children were enslaved and entrained for further engagement, all so that one group of men could claim superiority over another?

  Because hunger has no heart, and so they had no heart(s), not as we know the concept. The evidence would suggest that such feelings of empathy and sympathy did not even exist at that point in the development of mammalian psychology. Mammalian psychology? WTF?! But think about it, and see if you don’t agree. Because, for millennia, not only humans, but all animals, merely and simply grew, expanded, and multiplied, with probably limited contact except in situations of the hunt, for food.

  Now we can easily see gorillas and chimpanzees performing acts that can only be described as ‘almost human’. Consider the DNA. But extend the concept to include the dogs, the cats, and even the elephants (!) that we consider to be our pets, and the likeness not only continues but expands exponentially. DNA can’t explain all that, certainly not beyond the mammalian similarity and symmetry. So, what could explain all that?

  One possible explanation is that the exponential population expansions which had occurred for millennia (with at least one, probably more, prehistoric bottlenecks), suddenly came to an end as we approached Year 0, and populations struggled to maintain those levels for at least a millennium. So, is evolution self-correcting? Does that evolutionary need for constant population increase mean that people might start to be nice to each other if it means higher populations? Christianity might favor that explanation. Or Jesus might take full credit entirely, from his teaching.

  But I have another idea. We really know very little about what we really want and even less about how to attain it. But we do know what we don’t want, since the only true certainty is negation: not this, not that, not the other. How much death and destruction must be endured before someone gets the idea to try a little tenderness, i.e. kindness and compassion? Ah, that feels good, as long as we’re all one family. Let’s do that. Be kind.

  This life and this world require nothing but kindness and compassion…

   
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  hardie karges 2:18 am on March 15, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: balance, Buddhism ( 457 ), DEMOCRACY ( 11 ), Hardie Karges ( 269 ), language ( 164 ), meditation ( 217 ), Middle Path ( 56 ), salvation ( 2 )   

  Buddhism 101: It is all a question of balance…   

  

  This is one of the not-so-secret secrets of Buddhism and much the meaning of the sometimes meandering Middle Path. If not that, then what would the Middle Path mean? A shortcut to salvation? There may or may not be something like salvation, but there is definitely no shortcut. If anything, Buddhism is hard work. Yes, that’s right. Because that Middle Path may not always be straight and narrow, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy. 

  Which is the usual connotation of the phrase ‘straight and narrow; that it’s goddawful boring and devoid of all sensory pleasure. And there’s some truth to that.  After all, who drinks lukewarm coffee? No one that I know. We drink it hot, or we drink it cold, ginger-laced decaf or double express, unapologetic and often judging it by those very extremities of flavor. No one gets excited by Folgers or Maxwell House, but macchiato always gets a grin and even chicory gets good mentions, even if the caffeine content is not significant. 

  But there is more than a matter of taste and tastes at stake here. This is a matter of discipline, and other issues such as kindness and compassion are directly affected. Because , isn’t it sometimes hard to be nice to people with extreme positions? I’m asking this in the year 2026. The answer is yes, of course. So, it sometimes comes as a surprise that the words ‘polite’ and ‘politics’ have more than some distant connection in ancient Rome. No, they’re intimately connected. And both connotations support the concept of a Middle path. We’ll get there eventually. So, let’s get there politely. This is also the key to democracy.