streaming consciousness…

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  hardie karges 6:07 am on December 26, 2021 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: anger ( 6 ), Buddhism ( 456 ), craving ( 15 ), dispassion ( 3 ), lust ( 4 ), passion ( 9 ), spiritual bypassing ( 6 ), Three Poisons ( 3 )   

  Buddhism Unmoved: in Support of ‘Spiritual Bypassing’ 

  

  

  Anger is an object lesson, not just about hatred, which seems obvious, but lust, craving, passion, and all the rest. It feeds on itself until it destroys something, if not everything. This is one of the Three Poisons of Buddhism, along with greed and ignorance, and it would be hard to decide which is worse. Because they all destroy whatever is in their path, like fires burning endlessly and mindlessly, when the obvious solution would be to simply let them go, to burn themselves out. If any three words could sum up the message of Buddhism, it would likely be, ‘let it go.’

  But it’s not always so easy, of course, given the nature of the beast, its very nature being its difficulty to let go. So, in a sense, they are all one, that fire burning, which we Westerners like to immortalize as something romantic called ‘passion,’ while conveniently forgetting that word’s roots in suffering, as in the ‘passion of Christ,’ nothing romantic about that. But so we fantasize, that our greed is our glory and our lust is our love, when nothing could be further from the truth, from any metaphysical viewpoint—at least, not in Buddhism.

  Because Buddhism is a religion and philosophy of dispassion, in both the traditional meaning of ending suffering and the modern meaning of avoiding strong emotion. This drives many Western psychologists crazy, of course, because they sense any emptiness as a cause of alarm. The first thing they teach in photography class is to ‘go for peak emotion.’ And the psychologists want all potential conflicts to be met head-on. To not do so is something they call ‘spiritual bypassing,’ with obvious derision. Well, if avoiding anger is ‘bypassing,’ then I heartily recommend it. For nothing good can come from anger. One man’s religion is another man’s aversion, I suppose.

   

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  hardie karges 8:07 am on December 19, 2021 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddha-nature, Five Precepts ( 4 ), Hardie Karges ( 268 ), koan ( 7 ), Lin Chi, meditation ( 216 )   

  First Precept of Buddhism: Thou Shalt not Kill… 

  

  

  If you meet the Buddha on the road, feed him. Now isn’t that better than the traditional Zen koan: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him”? And I know, I know, there are approximately 1000 explanations and clarifications about what Lin Chi really meant, most of them veering toward the ever-popular non-dualistic trend, in the sense that the Buddha-nature (bodhicitta) is within us all, so that if you meet a Buddha that is separate from yourself, then it is likely an imposter—or not.

  After all, who really knows what Lin Chi meant, more than 1000 years ago, or all the other hundreds of koans that are supposed to lead to enlightenment, simply by twisting the mind, or thought, or language, so that there is no other option? Out of the confusion, enlightenment will come, when the limits of language are laid bare—or not. Because who really knows what any of the hundreds of Buddhist philosophers really meant? And who really understands ‘non-dualism’? And why is it important?

  Because what the Buddha himself taught was really quite simple, and I don’t remember non-dualism being part of it. That was Hinduism. What the Buddha taught was compassion, in response to great suffering, and the same commandments and precepts that they all teach. So, language is part of the deal, but so is silence, meditation. Language can’t always solve the problems that language creates, but silence often can, if you just give it a chance.
   
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  hardie karges 7:10 am on December 12, 2021 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 456 ), Hardie Karges ( 268 )   

  Buddhism: Salvation Nirvana Love Magic… 

  

  

  Revenge is never sweet. Find a way to accept your enemy as your brother, and the world will be a better place. This is the social and societal side of Buddhism, which is seldom talked about, but which is fundamental to its value, with accent on the fun. Because, while much of Buddhism has to do with personal satisfaction and peace of mind, there is a tendency to overlook the underlying social function which makes it indispensable to cultures and countries the world over. This is its ‘First do no harm’ function of ahimsa, non-violence, that makes it so attractive across the broad board, beyond the mostly petty distinctions that divide Buddhism, and all religions, for that matter.

  So, when the Buddha on his death bed told his disciple to ‘be a light unto yourself,’ and Saint Paul said to be a light unto the world, the essential message is the same: do the right thing. But Buddha was playing a clever little word game in his message, since the Pali word dipa can mean both ‘light’ and ‘island,’ as in Dipavali, the festival of lights, and Lankadeepa, the island of Sri Lanka. And the light that the Buddha wants is one that is self-contained, like an island, while the light that Saint Paul wants to be shined upon the world is the word of God, received and transmitted.

  But this distinction, which is really and truly only a small distinction, also defines the difference between Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism, with its Buddha-nature, Bodhisattvas, and shunyata, or Emptiness. This is the message to forego Nirvana until all of us are ready, and so project that Buddha-nature on to the world. Is that nature not a light to be shined? And that zero that defines emptiness also defines a center. Is that not the same distinction between us and the world, and so really a non-distinction? Of course it is, and it isn’t, so the only thing left to do is save yourself, and then save the world, simple if not easy.

   
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  hardie karges 6:59 am on December 5, 2021 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: belief ( 4 ), Bible ( 4 ), Brahmanism ( 9 ), Buddhism ( 456 ), CHRISTIANITY ( 162 ), dialectic ( 14 ), Forest Temple ( 4 ), Jainism ( 13 ), New Age ( 8 ), philosophy ( 113 ), religion ( 167 ), Right Speech ( 5 ), samma vaca ( 8 ), Science ( 26 ), secular Buddhism ( 3 ), Theravada ( 53 )   

  The Ways and (Skillful) Means of Buddhism… 

  

  ‘Skillful means’ is not about telling people what they want to hear. It’s telling them what they need to hear, in a way that’s acceptable to them. And if this sounds obvious, it can be more complicated than it seems. It can even contradict one of the main precepts in the Eightfold Path, in fact, if it fails to acknowledge the importance of Right Speech. One of the Buddha’s later commentators, in fact, even bragged about how the Buddha could preach about cosmic Self to the Brahmanists, while preaching non-self to the already-committed Buddhists. Fast-forward to the future and a prominent senior Buddhist monk today claims that Buddha, in fact, was never committed to a doctrine of non-self, but was undecided about it (so that we can now accept rebirth with no issue of what it is that gets reborn). But this is not ‘skillful means.’ And this is not Right Speech.

  As the New Testament of the Christian Bible is often paraphrased: “Let your yes be yes; and let your no be no.” Bingo. That Buddhism is an open doctrine is fine, and to be commended. That it sometimes gets twisted almost beyond recognition is not always so good. But that’s exactly what happened when Mahayana went in two almost opposite directions from its shunyata (emptiness) starting point, one leading to the Vajrayana of Tibet, the other leading to the Zen of Japan. And for a long time, that’s where Buddhism stood, and stalled, and those are the two extremes that made the biggest impact in the New World—until now. Because now there is a new dialectic to that interplay of magic and trance, and it should be no surprise that the only realistic synthesis would be a return to the primal roots of early Buddhism. So, Theravada now finds its best messaging in its simplest Forest Temples, and the debates in the background resume.

  Only this time it is not the background of Brahmanism and Jainism, but dozens of so-called ‘New Age’ ideas and the general air of conspiracy. But for me Secular Buddhism is the rightful heir to the debate with religiosity, something which original Buddhism had not the luxury, because Science as we know it did not exist. But Reason and rationality did, embedded in the nature of cause and effect, the words for which define ‘reason’ in more than one Asian language. And that’s how Buddhism won the original debate, for me, at least, because it was the rational option. And it still can be, if it can find its peace with Science, because that is the air we breathe in this day and age, logic and testing. We only need a belief system to make sense of it all. If not, then ‘belief’ becomes a bad word, synonymous with ‘faith,’ and we are left to our own devices to find succor and solace. I find no contradiction between my Buddhism and the best science we know. If forced to choose, then I will refuse, and let the chips fall where they may.