streaming consciousness…

Updates from May, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

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  hardie karges 12:11 pm on May 31, 2020 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 457 ), Castaneda ( 6 ), consciousness ( 29 ), Descartes ( 7 ), dhyana ( 5 ), Don Juan ( 4 ), meditation ( 217 )   

  Because, that’s why: Buddhism, Descartes, Castaneda and the urge to merge in meditation… 

  

  Words can cut like knives or heal like bandages, so be careful what you think, and even more careful of what you say.

  The fact that we think in languages is the starting point for many a fine thesis and many a sleepless night, because in one sense Descartes was right when he said ‘cogito ergo sum,’ i.e. I think therefore I am.

  And if that is usually taken as a badge of pride for the West, and a flag of caution for the East, in fact I think it is neither. It is simply a status update for the human condition.

  Because we can debate endlessly over whether human beings are indeed the homo sapiens, wise men, that we claim, but we can certainly agree that they do think, whether or not they are some arrogant s-o-b’s to label themselves as ‘wise’, at the expense of all others, which at that point in history was largely limited to the white ‘race.’

  And so it is with thinking, which we assume as our birthright, and limited to us, and only us. But all animals think. They just don’t all do it with language.

  And that is why we meditate, many of us, whether you categorize it into one of the two original Buddhist classifications or one of the four now in vogue, complete with the obligatory ‘mindfulness,’ as guided by your local ‘dharma teacher,’ namaste.

  When really all you need to do is sit down and STFU, and don’t move a muscle, or scratch an itch, or swat a fly for at least a good quarter hour for starters, and quadruple that for peer professionalism, without moving a muscle, I repeat.

  Because I don’t know what’s going on in your head inside, but I know it’s directly related to what’s going on with your body outside, and this is easily measured by perturbations in the visual field.

  If you’re twitching, I think we can assume that you have yet to achieve any of the four dhyana states, or was it five? I lost count.

  Because all that really matters is to stop the internal dialogue, if only for a moment, and that’s almost the only thing I took away from Carlos Castaneda and his avatar Don Juan and all his tales of Ya(n)qui power in the deserts of our own mind-fields, as they leapt off cliffs with intent and little else.

  And that is what the brain researchers who wanted to scan my brain in and out of meditation alluded to, also, and asked if I understood what they’re talking about. Huh? Doesn’t everyone?

  Now I don’t know if they read Castaneda, but of course I understood. I just don’t know why Buddhists don’t say it that way, or at least not in so many words.

  Because that is why meditation exists, for me, to return to basics, proto-consciousness, or paleo-consciousness, if you will, i.e. thought without language, just like the old days, just like the animals do, before all the new frontiers, and all the limits of language.

  Curiously many Buddhists think that is an injunction to not think, but I don’t think that is correct. Once we have language, then the choice is ours what to do with it. Because the Buddha never said not to think. He said to think rightly, and quite rightly…

   

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  hardie karges 11:28 am on May 24, 2020 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhist ( 3 ), dharma ( 35 ), MONEY ( 7 ), sin ( 4 ), society ( 5 )   

  Money and other Buddhist Sins of Commission… 

  

  Attachment to money is the worst form of craving, because, as a medium of exchange, it is something totally false, mere paper, typically folded and mutilated, if not spindled, simply because no one knows what that means.

  And if I launch into a sermon on the use of punch cards, you still might not know much more unless you voted in the US twenty years ago, and still remember it. But what we really love are the numbers, anything more than zero considered a plus, by definition, and anything less subject to penalties, typically the sins of omission more than the sins of commission, because you really don’t have to do anything to suffer, or cause others to suffer, given the time dimension, and the fact that results and effects are often delayed far from the source of the original action, or karma, if you prefer.

  Conversely, the less you do, than the fewer sins you commit, but if you do too little, then you may indeed starve, and if you fail to help another in need, then you may indeed be a direct cause of their suffering, even if you weren’t a direct cause of their pain.

  So life has always been a search for sustenance, from the semi-tropical Garden of Eden, where fruit hung ripe from the trees, to the far northern steppes, where the big game ran wild and the satisfaction ran deep as the snowbank you could use to keep that slab of meat cool for a while.

  So how did the big game get transformed into roulette wheels and lotteries and one-armed bandits, slot machines with no feelings nor dogs in the hunt? That is the history of the world, my friends, the transfer of feeling from fields to factories, by hook or crook, since it wasn’t always voluntary, least of all in the place of its origins, as the British Enclosure Acts claimed common grounds for capitalists, and sent crofters to the Commonwealth countries or factories, often with no other choice, as is typical in a class system based on caste, even where much of the deep ancestry is similar or even the same.

  But cities are the same regardless of their location or countries of origin, and money is their common denominator, 0’s and 1’s in the ledger book of life. And dharma is the same, also, the truth of human circumstances and interactions and their repercussions across time and space. The medium used for commercial transactions is not the medium of human interaction, though the Middle Path may sound similar. It is not.

  Money is superfluous, and best kept hidden. To flaunt it is to worship it, and a cardinal sin of commission, an insult to polite society. There is a reason that Buddhist monks in Thailand are forbidden to touch it. We’re playing for keeps here, not possession, but forever, always changing…

  hardie karges, Dave Kingsbury, and Alexis Adder are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Alexis Adder 3:44 pm on May 26, 2020 Permalink | Reply

    They turned money into a cult and forced everyone into needing it all thr time.

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      hardie karges 3:50 pm on May 26, 2020 Permalink | Reply

      Yes, it’s quite the conundrum: can’t live with it, and can’t live without it. I think the main thing is not to be obsessed with it, so neither broke nor gambler, so as to think of it as little as possible…

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    Dave Kingsbury 4:19 pm on May 30, 2020 Permalink | Reply

    I like to count mine every day. It doesn’t take long … 🙂

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      hardie karges 4:22 pm on May 30, 2020 Permalink | Reply

      I know the feeling…

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  hardie karges 11:33 am on May 17, 2020 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Ahmaud Arbery, America ( 59 ), Asia ( 17 ), Buddha ( 49 ), Democrat ( 2 ), Homer, Iliad, karma ( 52 ), Republican ( 6 )   

  Karma, Buddhism, Newton, Homer, and Ahmaud… 

  

  Law of Karma (action) = Newton’s Third Law of Motion: Every action is followed by an equal but opposite reaction, which is pretty easy to understand, and even if it can’t foresee the further ramifications of quantum theory, it still applies in most cases.

  But the religionists couldn’t leave well enough alone, so rather than being content to foresee what Newton would take credit for some 2500 years in the future, they had to go and ‘religio-fy’ it with fear and loathing and generation-jumping superpowers such that a theory of mind that foresaw a theory of physics ends up not even with some valid psychology, but instead a religion of vengeance.

  For many people in this round-ish world of almost 8B truly believe that if they do something wrong, as defined by tradition, then they will be hunted down and threatened with retribution like Ahmaud Arbery in Redneck County, Georgia, and forced to either submit to summary non-justice on suburban streets or fight for their lives like a fox in the hunt.

  But Karma doesn’t usually take such an active role, truth be told, and generally comes only into play as retrofit logic, i.e. if your life has difficulties, then it must be from something you did several generations back, passive voice past subjunctive, and then you just keep filling holes trying to back-fill the logic, rather than take a more active role in trying to subdue your oppressors and thereby prevent further abuses to improve your life.

  Because if a young girl is raped, then she is certainly not the cause, in this life or previous, but the victim, though I have heard a Buddhist monk accuse her exactly of that. But this is a perversion of Buddhism, a dive into superstitions and perverted logic, all for the sake of laziness and fear, to deal with a situation almost too difficult to bear. But bear it we must, if our lives are to have meaning, and the world is to serve our purposes rather than we serve its.

  As always I choose the middle path. My potential Asian Buddhist PhD professor insists that I use passive voice almost exclusively while my potential American literary agent insists that I never do that. But is it not the same language and is it not the same life in the same world? It is, and the call to action—or not—resides within the halls of this hollowed if not hallowed brain, defined equally by emptiness and thing-ness.

  Because Homer proved this point also 2500 years ago with his Iliad in which the protagonists and the antagonists resided only a short 300km/200mi apart, but divided by the Aegean Sea and 1000 years, since they both left the Aryan steppes in search of greener pastures and more fertile valleys, but by different routes, such that this minor sea defines the major gulf that separates Indo from Euro in each of our bicameral minds.

  So House fights Senate and Dems fight Repugs, but really we are all fighting ourselves inside, if not outside, as our random tendencies fight for supremacy, and good struggles against evil. But this is no time for fighting, as worlds lie dying and hospitals are full to overflowing. Now would be a good time to practice some kindness and compassion, and that is the true meaning of Buddhism…

   
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  hardie karges 11:21 am on May 10, 2020 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 457 ), CHRISTIANITY ( 162 ), Descartes ( 7 ), Jainism ( 13 ), nature ( 17 ), Theravada ( 53 )   

  Buddhism, Nature, and the Middle Path between Religions… 

  

  Nature is not something to be conquered. It is something to be revered. This is the basis for most feminine religions, without sword and without a book, just the smooth rounded edges of nature’s leaves and branches, hardened by brute experience with that same Nature’s lightning and thunder.

  Eventually that religion typically may evolve into a form of devotion, ‘bhakti’ for Hinduism, or one of the later sects for Buddhism, because few of us are really made for the rigors of metaphysics, when it’s easier just to bow the head and utter some formulas, or simply swear allegiance to mother Maria.

  And many Buddhists would gladly turn Descartes on his head and proclaim ‘non cogito ergo sum’, ‘I don’t think, therefore I am’, as many a devoted Theravadin truly believes, but which I take exception to. I’m just not that kind of Buddhist, I guess, for better or worse, confused or whatever, and I don’t for one minute think that Buddhism is better than all the others, simply that Buddhism is what is right for these times.

  That’s because I don’t see Buddhism as something established by some transcendental Buddha to which the earthly blokes are mere manifestations, any more than I see Jesus as a Christian version of the same thing, the Platonic ideal of love and forgiveness, Buddha that of compassion and forbearance. Because they were both just blokes, however enlightened, but with differences that have defined East and West at least since Homer’s recall, and likely before.

  So I see Christianity as the active aggressive alternative, dominated mostly by men of Aryan provenance, and despite their brutality, to see what could be accomplished in the state of Nature was a Noble (hint hint) quest, free enterprise, laissez-faire and all that rap, late nights with bright lights a reasonable relax.

  The Jains were, and are, just the opposite, of course, in which the less you do the better, to the point that death by self-starvation (ever heard of inanition?) seems only logical in the quest to do no harm. Just do nothing at all. The Buddhists have tried to walk the middle path to relative success, but still there are those who lapse into the do-it-all or do-nothing extremes.

  Bottom line: the Christian Capitalists have definitively gone too far, to the extent that we are killing ourselves knowing and willingly, grinning like Cheshire cats while going over the cliff, just like the Jains in spirit, if not letter, blindly proceeding with disaster. I revert to the demands of Nature. There is always a path to (re)conciliation, and that is THE path, I would say…

   
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  hardie karges 3:59 pm on May 7, 2020 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Coronavirus ( 5 ), DNA ( 46 ), Donald Trump ( 29 ), Pandemic ( 9 ), politics ( 32 )   

  Pandemics, Politics, Global Warming, DNA and DJT… 

  

  

  I don’t often write about politics nor pandemics, not because I don’t care, or that I have no interest, but because I have other greater interests, and politics have no easy solutions—and many commentators. But there are meta-theses to this pandemic that are not being discusses by anyone, and so that’s why I feel compelled to comment. The first issue is easy, the treachery of the US government in dealing with this natural disaster, not to be confused with incompetence, which is the normal modus operandi of the Trump administration. But to send people to their probable deaths in uncertain circumstances, when such deaths could be easily prevented, is not just murder. It is genocide, of the genus poverty, thus the annihilation of one class by another higher one. This could be easily prevented by the economic support of those people, from the taxes that they have paid, the same as is done for the corporate entities which are sacred to the US capitalist system, and which all Western European countries are doing for their people.

  (More …)
   
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  hardie karges 11:59 am on May 3, 2020 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 457 ), CHRISTIANITY ( 162 ), female, male, philosophy ( 113 ), religion ( 167 )   

  Religion and Philosophy, Male and Female, Christianity and Buddhism… 

  

  Most people don’t want the truth. They want false hopes and fantasy, pie in the sky, with whipped cream and a cherry on top. And this is the basis for much, if not most, religion, the deferred gratification, since the rewards on this flat earth were so few and far between, and best found in something hard and sharp like the point of a knife or gun than in something round and soft like you-know-what.

  And that passed for cultural evolution at the time, that big men could lord it all over the rest of us, especially women, with their long pointy things and their never-ending greed for things they shouldn’t have, like gold and guns, while the rest of us made do with gardens and guilds, the society of friends and the abundance of greens, ripe for the taking in manicured rows, fruits to come later with buttons and bows.

  The goddesses ruled for such a short time, only long enough to populate this earth, before the seeds rebelled against the mother and the pistols attacked the pistils, stamens with limited stamina jealous of the good-natured receptionist who is open to all comers, irrespective of race or religion, and no need of too-flowery introductions, just a future of forgiveness with the calling card of compassion.

  But that’s not good enough for weekend warriors and wicked messengers, looking to spread their hatred with their seed and steed, incubating hatred with each thrust of a sword and each word of a book, forcing the forlorn to bow to such rude entreaties, when a simple request might easily suffice.

  But most men instinctively know that they are not needed, though they’d never admit it, just one or two for breeding purposes should be plenty, and the rest are best kept as mute slaves or blind poets, philosophers and freedmen by application and approval only. Religion goes bad in the hands of warriors, like milk goes bad when allowed too long outside.

  There have been countless wars of religion, therefore, and no wars of philosophy ever, not even one, but who’s counting? Because the world is round now, not flat or square, like stupas, not steeples, Buddhist not Vedic, or God forbid Christian.

  That religion is male, the sword and the book, but philosophy is female, the reconciliation of opposites, with words stroked not stoked. Philosophy is based on freedom, within limits, of biology and psychology. Religion is based on fear.

  Yetzer Hara and hardie karges are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Yetzer Hara 1:15 pm on May 3, 2020 Permalink | Reply

    I’ll say that Judaism and Islam are Torah Observant, Hebraic religions. Christianity however is an effeminate religion that emasculates the Godhead and is Hellenic in nature and origin. In fact the Roman Church elevates the Virgin above the Godhead making the Goddess superior.

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      hardie karges 1:20 pm on May 3, 2020 Permalink | Reply

      Christianity is also Hebraic, same God, same history, even if Roman Catholicism may indeed have its feminine side with the Virgin Mary. Protestantism definitely goes back to the original masculine orientation…

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        Yetzer Hara 1:26 pm on May 3, 2020 Permalink

        Rome after conquering a nation incorporated the religion of that nation into the Imperial Roman cult. The invention of Paul of Tarsus, the bastardization of the Torah with the Septuagint, formed Christianity, a Greek/Hellenic religion, not a Hebraic religion. There is no confusion between the two modes of thought!