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  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 6:30 am on March 10, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , madhyamaka, , Tao   

    Buddhism and the Middle Way… 

    Follow the Tao, not the Dow, prophets not profits, any path with heart, any feeling of freedom. For a Buddhist, of course, this is the Middle Path, madhya maka, that winding circuitous sweet spot between the extremes of existence and non-existence, illusions or emptiness, the conditioned or the unconditioned. Or if you’re new to the game, then you’re trying to negotiate your way between the gross illusions of everyday life, the dichotomies of poverty and wealth, sickness and health, cruelty and kindness, life and death. But that only applies if you care to open your eyes and acknowledge the truth of it. Because you can follow many narratives, just like you can follow any path. And where it leads you is largely of your own design, because there is no destination, only a path…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 5:55 am on March 6, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,   

    Taming the Wild Heart 

    Sometimes silence is the best response to futile debates and inappropriate questions, and not a bad way of life in general. And that is the hardest thing to accept for many of us, Americans especially, loud of mouth and loose of tongue, where confrontation is currency and apologies are afterthoughts. This is the zeitgeist of the modern world, wild and chaotic, long after such activities are truly justified, and the cause of many, if not most, of the problems in this world today, in their various forms of greed, hate, and anger, all of which can cause wars, climate catastrophe, and poverty, simply because we are out of control, with our often-misplaced love of freedom/chaos, at whatever cost. Tame your heart, tame your mind, tame yourself, and you will tame the world…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 5:07 am on March 1, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , ,   

    Making Do in Trumplandia: Religion and Politics… 

    Build bridges not walls, trust not fear, paths without obstacles, hope not despair. And that’s usually seen as the job of politics, economics and policy decisions, creating a more just and better world, usually by creating more money, by creating constant growth, assuming that there are no limits, and planning accordingly, as if oil flows from the ground without end, as if resources are infinite, as if populations can multiply indefinitely with no repercussions. But it doesn’t always work out that way. The obstacles are many and the heroes are few. Sometimes there is simply nothing that you can do; or at least it seems that way. Then philosophy takes over from politics, and religion grows wings. We count our blessings, not our money, and expect nothing from others. Because when the world seems like a cruel place, sometimes the only thing we can do is to change our relation to it; expect less and appreciate more. My neo-Buddhist attitude is pretty simple: If you can’t change the world, then change the narrative…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 7:56 am on February 25, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , noise   

    The True Cost of Freedom: Eternal Noise and a Death Wish… 

    Noise should be illegal, or at least expensive, charged by the decibel at ever-increasing rates. And this is the true crime of the 21st century, in the latter days of capitalism and consumerism, that not only is there no place to hide, but there is no peace and quiet, either. We go inside and turn on the a/c just to escape the noise at night. How else can you get any sleep on one of the frontage-road motels that line the highways of modern America, that line the stress-filled moments of our minds? Still many people thrive on noise like music to their souls, the more the better, like cheap wine, just to get a buzz, when a buzz is really the last thing we need, since we are far too buzzed already. But the sky is the limit, and people want to get even higher, at the risk of crashing headlong into oblivion. Truly free people know their limits; silly fools think there are none…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 8:02 am on February 20, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,   

    Life on the Credit Card of Kindness… 

    To help someone else is the greatest pleasure, to give not receive the greatest gift, to share credit the truest ego, accepting blame the sign of saintliness. But saints are hard to come by in the age of advanced capitalism and consumerism, the slide-rule of sustained value reduced to begging for coins on street corners and the algebra of need elevated to common currency. Cities are evil places now and leaders are not to be trusted. Pavements are polluted and skies are sad with grief. There is no clear path forward and the only reliable signpost is a smile. Follow the Tao, not the Dow, prophets not profits, generosity devotion introspection and wisdom, any path with heart, any feeling of freedom…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 7:37 am on February 17, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , Edward Conze, impeachment, , , SDNY,   

    DJ Trump and the Sarvāstivādin Theory of Momentariness… 

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    Reflections in the back seat

    For those of you who are not in the process of pursuing a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies, let me explain that the Sarvāstivādins were a large Abhidharma-era group that split off from the mainstream Theravādins after Asoka’s third Buddhist Council at Pataliputra c. 250 BCE, over their insistence that ‘everything exists’, i.e. ‘sarvam asti‘ (or something like that, my Sanskrit sucks), while the Theravādins preferred a bit more ‘discrimination’…

    And part of that theory of everything was an atomistic conception of time: atoms, of both time and matter, and classifiable as either: (1) states of consciousness (citta); (2) mental ‘concomitants’ (cetasika); (3) corporeality (rūpa); plus (4) nirvāna. According to the Sarvāstivādin conception of time, these could exist equally well in the past, present or future. For their part the Theravādins only acknowledged the present, albeit in successive moments… (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 5:45 am on February 12, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: action, , , negation   

    Buddhism: Leading from the Middle… 

    I don’t mind so much to be the object of your anger, as long as I am not the cause of it. I can always walk away. And that is the crucial to good Buddhism, not just doing the right thing, but being able to walk away from bad actions, also. After all, how do I know what to do? I don’t, but I know wrong actions when I see them. That’s Buddhist logic, the ‘none of the the above’ option. Negation is the only certainty, and certainty is what we’re looking for in life. No action is required, literally. That is: inaction is required. You don’t have to correct some other person’s questionable actions. So do nothing–quickly. That’s the first thing I learned in kung fu class: leave a bad situation. Violence, even self-defense, is a last resort. Aggression is forbidden. You don’t have to win the argument. Leave. Go buy a homeless person a meal. That will feel better…

     
    • tiramit's avatar

      tiramit 5:53 pm on February 13, 2019 Permalink | Reply

      upekha

      • hardie karges's avatar

        hardie karges 11:38 pm on February 13, 2019 Permalink | Reply

        Exactly. That’s the goal, equanimity…

    • Dave Kingsbury's avatar

      Dave Kingsbury 5:05 pm on February 16, 2019 Permalink | Reply

      I feel karma already – oof! If in doubt, don’t! Just made that up, as a variant of Don’t just do something, sit there …

      • hardie karges's avatar

        hardie karges 9:38 pm on February 16, 2019 Permalink | Reply

        Sounds about right to me…

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 8:08 am on February 8, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Allen Ginsberg, , ,   

    Humor Is That Special Sauce… 

    Can I get a side-order of humor with my reality sandwiches? Thanks, Allen. Make that ‘to go’, please, also, and don’t forget the pickle, haha. But all kidding aside, laughter is the best medicine, now, is it not, to cure what ails you? And IMHO that’s true in some kind of direct proportion to the severity of the ailment, whether spiritual, psychological, or existential, i.e. the worse you got it, the more you need it; laughter, that is. But even on a normal day, humor is a good palliative for what ails you, just a spoonful of sugar to help reality go down. Because suffering is the bottom line, now, isn’t it? In Buddhism it is. But that doesn’t mean that we have to be miserable. We just need to keep the suffering to a minimum. That’s more important than having the latest fashions…

     
    • Dave Kingsbury's avatar

      Dave Kingsbury 6:01 pm on February 8, 2019 Permalink | Reply

      Nice one, Hardie, totally agree that laughter is the best medicine. My dictionary gives two meanings of ‘suffer’ – one is about pain and the other, archaic, is tolerate. That needs perspective I’d say, all things being relative, and nothing beats humour for perspective.

      • hardie karges's avatar

        hardie karges 8:46 pm on February 8, 2019 Permalink | Reply

        Thanx, Dave. Yes, good point about the dual nature of the word ‘suffer’ as transitive or intransitive, but not sure it’s so archaic. After all, I still don’t suffer fools gladly, haha. I might have to use that somewhere…

        • Dave Kingsbury's avatar

          Dave Kingsbury 4:56 am on February 9, 2019 Permalink

          Me neither, though I probably expect others to suffer my folly occasionally. The second meaning comes closer to ‘experience’, I think, which makes it something we can all share – even the more fortunate. Then of course there’s empathy and compassion …

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 7:23 am on February 3, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , liberation,   

    The one who can control himself can control the world–his world. And that’s the essence of Buddhism, in a nutshell, the power of inaction, like the title of the meditation book a decade or two ago: “Don’t just do something, sit there!” That says a lot. But sometimes you can say even more with silence. Words don’t always have happy endings. The good news is that you really shouldn’t need it, not if you’ve done your Buddhist homework. Because Buddhism is not an emotional religion, not like Christianity, where rapture is the holy grail. In Buddhism liberation is the holy grail, release from the sufferings of the world, on your own terms. The first step is to control your body, your mind, and your emotions…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 7:40 am on January 31, 2019 Permalink | Reply  

    Before you speak, click, scribble or tweet, pls consider: Who will it help? Who will it hurt? And the world will be a better place…

     
    • Dave Kingsbury's avatar

      Dave Kingsbury 4:39 pm on February 1, 2019 Permalink | Reply

      Indeed, very true, how else to conduct oneself in cyberspace?

      • hardie karges's avatar

        hardie karges 11:43 pm on February 1, 2019 Permalink | Reply

        Politeness, the age-old cure to modern anti-social media…

        • Dave Kingsbury's avatar

          Dave Kingsbury 7:47 am on February 3, 2019 Permalink

          Yes, oils the wheels at least! Rudeness is just a race to the bottom.

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