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  hardie karges 2:18 am on March 15, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: balance, Buddhism ( 449 ), DEMOCRACY ( 11 ), Hardie Karges ( 260 ), language ( 158 ), meditation ( 210 ), 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.  

   

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  hardie karges 4:43 pm on March 12, 2026 Permalink | Reply  

  Buddhism and the Stockholm Syndrome 

   
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  hardie karges 7:23 pm on March 10, 2026 Permalink | Reply  

  Buddha Talk: The Discipline of the Discipline 

   
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  hardie karges 4:38 pm on March 9, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 449 ), Dalai Lama ( 13 ), dana ( 8 ), Hardie Karges ( 260 ), meditation ( 210 ), philosophy ( 109 ), Vajrayana ( 23 )   

  Buddha Talk: Buddhism on the Curriculum, Learning to Give… 

   
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  hardie karges 1:05 am on March 8, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 449 ), Hardie Karges ( 260 ), Jung Freud, karma ( 52 ), language ( 158 ), meditation ( 210 ), samma kammanta ( 4 )   

  Buddhism and Karma Lite  

  

  Good karma is more than a healthy bank balance. It involves a healthy dose of kindness and compassion, too. Because karma is not transactional. Karma is relational. It is about the way that things are related more than any scorecard or final reckoning. It is like the special sauce that makes anything taste good that has the good fortune to lie beneath it in a pile of randomly ordered circumstances that happen to occur in succession in a well-ordered life. 

  But nothing is random, not really. And I don’t mean past-life karma coming back to enact revenge on the present. No, I just mean that there are always Freudian slips and Jungian archetypes that hover slightly in the background of consciousness that betray all efforts of anonymity and even-handedness when confronted with the necessities of justice and equanimity. ‘Karma’ is our work and our efforts, and so ‘good karma’ the best of these in a world of obscure causes and consequences.   

  But so much or our work never escapes the confines of our own consciousness and consequences, and therein lies the depth charge that keeps giving, for better or worse, modern reactions to previous interactions. It is all a question of balance. If extremes are avoided and conciliation invested, then results will likely be salutary, if not today, then tomorrow. In short: do good things and you will have a good life. Do bad things and you will have a bad life, most likely. Keeping score is not necessary. You will know it by how it feels.   

   
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  hardie karges 6:37 pm on March 6, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 449 ), Hardie Karges ( 260 ), language ( 158 ), meditation ( 210 ), religion ( 165 )   

  Buddha Talk: Buddhism and the True Cost of Freedom 

   
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  hardie karges 7:49 pm on March 5, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 449 ), Hardie Karges ( 260 ), language ( 158 ), meditation ( 210 )   

  Buddha Talk: Buddhism and Non-Duality 

   
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  hardie karges 5:27 pm on March 3, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: artificial intelligence ( 2 ), Buddhism ( 449 ), DNA ( 46 ), enlightenment ( 15 ), EVOLUTION ( 21 ), Hardie Karges ( 260 ), meditation ( 210 ), protons   

  Buddha Talk: A Buddhist Theory of Knowledge 

  You can learn from the Buddha or you can learn from a virus. The message is largely the same: Do no harm. The virus IS normal. That is the realization. Dealing with it has the opportunity for enlightenment. This is the hand we were dealt: old age, sickness and death. That is the stuff of enlightenment, for those fortunate enough to get that close to the underlying truth of the simulation of reality in forms that our bodies (and minds) are equipped to process. Nothing can change that underlying nature of reality, nor our only partial ability to understand it.  

  And that is a fundamental truth in itself, our inability to ever truly understand it, totally and completely. It’s a shame that they don’t tell you that at the beginning of every beginning science class: this is only a partial understanding of what there is to know. Does that mean that the laws of science are wrong? No, only that they are incomplete. And they may be incomplete, not only in our knowledge of them, but in their own characteristics and capabilities.  Like AI, the laws of science may be learning, not only in what they are, but in what they are capable of being. 

  Evolution is one of my favorite subjects, and natural selection is key to that, the somewhat mechanical need to reproduce that every DNA cell seems to have at its heart. But we only know a world that is constantly growing, thanks largely to that same urge. But that’s a world largely empty until recently. But I believe that evolution is self-correcting, also, the same instincts that can save human population decline can also correct over-population, details to be worked out later. That’s the future. But it’s still only a simulation, as Buddhism heavily implies, if never states outright. We don’t perceive protons and electrons, tachyons and quarks. We perceive houses and trees, light and sound.

   
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  hardie karges 6:17 pm on March 2, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 449 ), CHRISTIANITY ( 162 ), emptiness ( 31 ), Hardie Karges ( 260 ), language ( 158 ), meditation ( 210 ), shunya ( 12 ), shunyata ( 24 )   

  Buddha Talk #0: Emptiness 

  You can have infinity, i.e. endlessness, with no boundaries, but it’s empty. Or you can have things, but only a limited number of them. You can’t have both. Infinite stuff is a fool’s dream. But that’s exactly what many Christians believe, or buy into, I should say. Because it ties directly into the capitalism that accompanies so much Christianity, especially the Protestant sort, which by no accident came into existence at almost exactly the same time as capitalism, maybe even preceding it by a bit, thereby giving the lie to any idea of mutual causation, in fact maybe a direct cause. 

  And many of those Christian values get carried into Buddhism by the same Christians who gave up their worldly ambitions in the process, at the same time that they cast piercing glances at the senior monks over the status of women in the ranks of the ordained. The meaning of the hallowed Buddhist concept of ‘Emptiness’, i.e. ‘shunyata’, is also up for grabs. Because, while shunya is the Sanskrit word for ‘zero’ and dates from right around the same time as the invention of the zero (yes), and may very well have originally been a philosophical concept long before becoming a mathematical one, that doesn’t stop certain westerners from frowning upon the concept. 

  Because ‘Emptiness’ has a very negative, and strong, Western psychological connotation as the cause of depression and unhappiness, this in a culture that rewards engagement above all else. I see it every day as a digital creator on social media, with no seeming recognition that such engagement is exactly what drives many people away from such media. Apparently driving sales is more important. So, I let many comments go unanswered, not because I agree or disagree with the viewpoint expressed, but simply because that uncertainty is fine, and often not worth fanning the flames of dispute, since the only certainty is negation. Then there’s spiritual bypassing, but that’s for another day. Be kind.

   
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  hardie karges 1:28 am on March 1, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 449 ), Cessation of Suffering ( 2 ), dukkha ( 17 ), enlightenment ( 15 ), Hardie Karges ( 260 ), Hinayana ( 7 ), language ( 158 ), meditation ( 210 ), Nichiren, nirvana ( 14 ), suffering ( 30 )   

  Buddhism and Suffering, More or Less… 

  

  I find it mildly humorous how western Buddhists, many of them famous, constantly try to redefine the Sanskrit term ‘dukkha’ as something less than full-fledge ‘suffering’, as if the Buddha would bother creating a new philosophy or religion just to say “Sometimes there is a spot of bother,” haha. No, he pretty much articulated that the four prime instances of suffering are none other than birth, old age, sickness, and death, in no certain order, but generally agreed upon by all sects and schools of Buddhism. 

  All of which would generate nothing much more than a tired ‘duh’, if it weren’t for the birth inclusion, which might raise some eyebrows from Western Christian-like disciples, for whom birth is truly a miracle. And I might agree with that, but maybe for a slightly different reason. Because, I don’t merely believe that birth is a miracle, but that all life is indeed a miracle, especially intelligent (!?) life, and to which I would add any and all ‘stuff’, too, except that the only clue that stuff indeed exists is by the perceptions of those self-same humans, i.e. intelligent life, and their invention of language with which to define it.  

  From there the ruminations on suffering diversify according to the source, including causes such as change as articulated by the Buddha himself (to which I sometimes disagree, to allow for good changes), and others such as “suffering due to separation from loved ones, suffering from being with those we hate, the suffering of not getting what we desire, and lastly, the suffering which arises from the five components which constitute our bodies and minds.”  

  Those last are articulated by the Singapore Nichiren disciples that I confess to knowing little about, and whose conclusions are questionable to me, such as the equation of Enlightenment with Nirvana, and whose inclusion of hellish realms with ‘Hinayana’ seems just incorrect. Yes, I have an MA in Buddhist Studies. But the equation of the ancient Sanskrit word ‘dukkha’ with suffering is certain with the Thai, Lao, and Khmer languages, and in Hindi and Nepalese it’s ‘dukkhee’ or ‘dukkhad’ and means something more like ‘sad’ or ‘unhappy’, so still definitely more than simple dissatisfaction. Birth notwithstanding, old age, sickness, and death, with no recourse, certainly qualify as suffering, so we must deal with that. That is our mission, the cessation of suffering, or at least a healthy reduction.