streaming consciousness…

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  hardie karges 7:11 am on September 10, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: anatta, Buddhism ( 432 ), ego ( 33 ), FRENCH ( 2 ), Noble Truths, personality ( 3 ), self ( 20 ), skandhas ( 10 ), soul ( 9 )   

  Buddhism’s Noble Truths: La Vie Est Magnifique, Sois Toi-Meme–NOT… 

  “Life is magnificent; be yourself.” These words are taken straight from a T-shirt, so hardly authoritative, but I don’t think any phrase could better demonstrate the differences between East and West, the West being something of a personality cult of ones own self, while the East—Buddhism, at least—denies the existence of a self entirely…

  That doctrine of ‘no self’, anatta, translates to us most easily as ‘no ego’, something we are very familiar with, but in fact also refers to the idea of a transmigrating soul, or any permanent self, one that in Asian religious traditions is usually envisioned as forever returning, though a similarly permanent soul is envisioned in Western traditions on a one-way trip up there or down there… (More …)

  davekingsbury and hardie karges are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    davekingsbury 2:57 pm on September 11, 2017 Permalink | Reply

    As always you tread a distinctive personal path through the subject, bringing it sharply to life. A great contribution to the great and, as you say, urgent debate!

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      hardie karges 5:29 pm on September 11, 2017 Permalink | Reply

      Remember the old Chambers Brothers’ song ‘Time Has Come Today’ (don’t know if that one made it to the UK or not)? Tick tock tick tock…

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        davekingsbury 12:25 am on September 12, 2017 Permalink

        Know it well … Now the time has come / There are things to realize … it behoves us all to go on thinking rather than just turning off and going with the flow – which is not to decry the meditative path!

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        hardie karges 6:35 pm on September 12, 2017 Permalink

        🙂 No, thinking is not a ‘defilement’ in my Buddhism…

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        davekingsbury 1:08 am on September 13, 2017 Permalink

        It is very evident through all your writings. 🙂

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  hardie karges 8:01 am on August 27, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: anatta, anicca ( 10 ), Buddhism ( 432 ), consciousness ( 29 ), consumerism ( 5 ), dukkha ( 15 ), EVOLUTION ( 20 ), mindfulness ( 35 ), paradigm ( 2 )   

  Buddhism 101: Going with the flow… 

  There are two kinds of people in this world. How many times have you heard that? That the world can be divided between optimist or pessimists. LA people or San Fran people. Cubs fan or a White Sox fan, chick-flicks or action movies, Beatles or the Stones (yawn), or maybe even white meat or dark (we’re talking about chicken, unless you’re new to Thailand and the locals are looking for you a GF)…

  But I’m thinking of something more substantial, that goes to the heart of personality, or lack thereof, that determines an individual’s entire approach to the world around him (or her) and underlies all human interaction, it seems to me. And that is whether an individual interacts with the environment, giving and taking, advancing and retreating, responding to changes proportionately, or whether the individual’s approach is to dominate the environment, and Nature, by acts of will and brute force, where necessary…

  I certainly have a distinct preference for the former alternative, and its kinship to Buddhism, while the latter alternative would seem to be more the typical American beat-em-up approach, ‘forcing Nature to reveal her secrets’ and harvesting the bounty therein with little thought to the future… (More …)