Updates from hardie karges Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 2:19 pm on December 20, 2015 Permalink | Reply  

    Buddhism 101: Happiness is not the goal; non-sadness is… 

    IMG_1183

    Statue of Buddha in Kandy, Sri Lanka

    Anybody who thinks he’s getting the hang of Buddhism by ‘following his bliss’ is probably seriously deluded. For one thing, Joseph Campbell, the author of that statement, came to regret the hedonistic message with which it was taken. Secondly, he died almost twenty years ago, and if the concept wasn’t dated by then, it certainly is now. This ain’t the Sixties. Letting your freak flag fly should not necessarily be at the top of everyone’s ‘to do’ list in 2015.

    And Campbell wasn’t Buddhist, anyway. That’s his buddy Alan Watts, who’s quoted with similar statements, but whom I also admire as a rigorous intellectual, not some purveyor of New Age-y no-brainer psycho-fluff. Most importantly: Buddhism has nothing to do with bliss, much less the ‘ecstasy’ that many people refuse to stop short of—Hinduism maybe, but that’s different. (More …)

     
    • Dave Kingsbury's avatar

      davekingsbury 8:21 am on December 21, 2015 Permalink | Reply

      You chart a nimble course through the clutter of ideologies, embodying the middle way principle perfectly. I’d say enlightening if the word wasn’t already appropriated by zen. I’ll settle for stimulating … thanks for writing it.

      • hardie karges's avatar

        hardie karges 9:13 am on December 21, 2015 Permalink | Reply

        Concepts like these are a challenge for me almost every day, Thank you for allowing me to think out loud…

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 1:22 pm on December 16, 2015 Permalink | Reply  

    Clock Ticking: Bottom Line on Climate 

    What irony—that a significant contributor to climate change is our desire to control climate! Bottom line: we can live a climate-controlled, push-button convenienced, air-conditioned nightmare of a life only at the expense of environmental destruction and global warming. In all fairness to our forefathers, that fact was not obvious even a hundred years ago.

    Even less obvious is that maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be anyway, separating us from the forces of nature. When’s the last time you swam in a lake or even walked to the store? If you’re an American like me, it’s probably been a while. Such activities are usually relegated to recreation or exercise, not ordinary life. That’s a shame. (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 10:31 am on December 13, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , ,   

    The Perfect Religion: 10 Commandments, 8-fold Path, 5 Pillars, 4 Noble Truths, 1 Creator 

    036

    Christian church in Ethiopia

    Okay, so back to the grind: creating, or let’s say ‘distilling’, the perfect religion. After all, we’re not trying to create something from scratch, quite the opposite, in fact, we’re trying to reconcile religions—all religions—and science, too. Contradictions, in my view, are only apparent, not real.

    If we all love our kids, then we all love God, however that’s defined. All religions have central tenets, and articles of faith, of course, and so does my hypothetically perfect one, as previously noted, and most of them gleaned from the major religions.

    The Five Pillars of Islam are: faith, prayer, alms-giving, fasting, and pilgrimage, all pretty basic, of which pilgrimage to Mecca might be discarded for our general use as too cult-specific, non-general, and non-attainable. Visas to Saudi Arabia are hard to come by, even for Muslims. (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 11:54 am on December 11, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Angie's List, home repairs   

    Dear Angie: 

    I really like your list. It helps me when I need a plumber or a HVAC specialist. I don’t feel like I can always trust Craig, you know, what with all the scammers over there? Now could you please tell me WTF a ‘roof tune-up’ is? Thank you…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 2:16 pm on December 8, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ash Carter, , , , ,   

    The Enemy Within: A Few Things to Like About ISIL… 

    “Losers with keyboards?” Did Ash Carter really say that? Wow, such depth of understanding! Is that really his official ‘take’ on the ‘enemy’? Sounds like Trump.  And I suppose he prefers his losers with tanks and aircraft carriers and AK-47’s? He doesn’t have a clue. The American position is worse than I thought. We’re in denial. America doesn’t have a chance in a war with ISIL. And that may be just fine, because…

    1) Gun Control: now that ‘terrorism’ has officially come home to the American nest, there is obviously a silver lining to the clouds on the horizon, i.e. the ease with which a terrorist in America can just walk in a store to buy weapons might just mean a tightening of gun-control measures. How’s that for some cosmic symmetry? (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 10:03 am on December 6, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , ,   

    The New Religion: Science (and the speed of light as the threshold to heaven) 

    LGBTQA’s like to talk about how they often feel ‘trapped in this body’, generally referring to a male in a female body or vice versa, but aren’t we all ‘trapped in this body’? Isn’t it almost an axiom of Christianity that our souls are trying to be free? Isn’t that why we’re all here, looking for something more, something different, something ‘spiritual’ if not holy religious, some philosophical succor on an otherwise average Sunday, which could be used for the counting of our monies were it not for some lingering Judeo-Christian-Islamic notion of a Sabbath to be kept sacred, not scared and not working?

    I mean: there’s nothing wrong with this world of five or so senses, nothing except for the fears, hatred, frustrations and cruelty, that is, but full of undeniable beauty, also, e.g. nature in all its splendor and grandeur. But still: isn’t there something more, just behind our reach, right behind the projection screen, almost touchable almost ‘feel-able’ if not quite audible visible or smell-able—okay, so maybe smell-able… (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 3:15 pm on December 3, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , satire, ,   

    Kerry to ISIL Leaders: “Get Lives. Get Wives. Get Laid ASAP”… 

    Funny how all the suicidal bombers and blow-up artists in the world have never been accused of being suicidal—okay, not so funny. But it certainly runs counter to the common narrative that depression is the cause of suicide—period. Narratives are not to be confused with truth, though, of course. People commit suicide for many reasons, including poverty, heartbreak, frustration, and old age, none of which are depression, strictly speaking.

    Then there are so-called ‘suicide bombers’ in the service of various intifadahs and jihads, who give their lives so that others may have better lives, and to serve Allah, so to speak. So they aren’t truly suicidal; or are they? I’d like to offer another theory: now we all know the extents and depths to which sexual frustration can lead, but can it make you violent? Can it make you suicidal? (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 11:05 am on November 29, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: carpe diem, , , , turkey   

    Holiday Dilemma: Giving Thanks, Fielding Tanks, Gorging on Techno and Turkey 

    I don’t know about you, but I’m finding it harder and harder to get all smiley for the Holidays when people are being slaughtered in the street, sometimes by the very people we pay to protect us. And the fact that I’m white makes me feel no better about it, that theoretically I can legally ‘stand my ground’ to protect myself from the raging mobs, each one with a knife ready to stab me, a gun ready to shoot me, BUT… I don’t buy it, and I don’t want it. I’d rather walk down the street naked with a bulls-eye on my buttocks than crouch in the shadows with an Uzi and a pocket full of tissues…

    We Americans have lost our way badly, what with our hatreds and our fears and our once good manners now long gone and our bad habits apparently here to stay. There was a time not so long ago when you didn’t even have to lock your doors. I wouldn’t advise trying that now. Anger is the new normal. Fear is the order of the day, and anxiety is the glue that holds it all together…

    We Americans talk about ‘freedom’ as if it were a commodity for sale on the supermarket shelf, but is it really something so simple to define and distribute, for sale to the highest bidder? Freedom is a feeling, a good one, and without it life is wretched. Freedom is that patch of blue in the upper corner of your prison-cell wall, the hole that will never be big enough to crawl out of, but it doesn’t really matter as long as it lets light in… (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 4:53 pm on November 27, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , shares   

    Welcome to Social Media; Welcome to Ego-Enhancement… 

    like

    Like Me, Baby…

    Social media is the hippest coolest thing since hot bread, of course, leading many of us to wish and hope that this is the signal and symbol of our entry into a new economy of sharing and creativity. This is our generation, right? Nothing could be more welcome, right? There’s only one problem: it’s all b*llsh*t. This round of capitalism may be even worse than what came before, if that’s possible, the postures of Amazon, Air BnB and others well-known at this point.

    What isn’t so often discussed is the individual’s role in all of this. Anybody who’s ever played the game called ‘FaceBook’, of course, should be familiar with the grade-school level of bullying and boasting that goes on there, under the guise of social media, but it’s even worse elsewhere. On FB, at least, you can always ‘unfriend’ someone or at least ‘block’ them from cluttering up your time-line and news-feed with their incessant insipid nonsense. (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 8:54 am on November 25, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , ,   

    Vive La France: Liberte', Fraternite', Hypocrisie…. 

    It’s almost funny—almost—watching everybody get all excited and up in arms about the crimes of Paris, as if 129 dead were the World Trade Towers all over again, when it’s just another slow day in the Mideast where the real war is a typical day in the life. I mean: this is nothing compared to the carnage in Gaza, Palestine, last year, when Israel “mowed the lawn” (Netanyahu’s words) with more than 2000 Palestinian bodies, stacked like cord wood or kindling, take your pick, it’s ‘ashes to ashes dust to dust’ every day of the week for the average Palestinian who’s committed no other crime than being born… (More …)

     

← Older posts

Newer posts →

c
Compose new post
j
Next post/Next comment
k
Previous post/Previous comment
r
Reply
e
Edit
o
Show/Hide comments
t
Go to top
l
Go to login
h
Show/Hide help
shift + esc
Cancel