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  hardie karges 2:04 am on September 20, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Abhidharma ( 7 ), Aristotle, Buddhism ( 529 ), CHRISTIANITY ( 172 ), Harappa ( 2 ), Hardie Karges ( 342 ), Indo-European ( 6 ), language ( 232 ), meditation ( 288 ), philosophy ( 133 ), Plato ( 18 )   

  Buddha’s Sheltered Childhood and Plato’s Myth of the Cave  

  

  As a philosophy student in university, I was immediately impressed by Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, after which I not only got my BA in philosophy, but I wrote a science fiction novel, both with that story as the prime inspiration. If you don’t know, it goes something like this: a group of people are born and live inside a cave, chained in place and with no knowledge of the outside. A single fire behind them illuminates a puppet-like show being played out in shadows in front of them, which becomes their reality… 

  UNTIL one brave soul ventures out and discovers a bright beautiful world like he’d never imagined, after his eyes become adjusted to the light. Upon re-entry he would be temporarily blinded again, and no one would believe his hysterical claims of enlightenment, preferring the darkness, instead. Now compare this to the Buddha’s sheltered childhood, supposedly a true story, in which his early life had not the slightest discomfort and his every wish and slightest whim was fulfilled… 

  UNTIL one day he ventures out and discovers the pain of old age, disease, and death. Apparently, he was so shocked that he felt compelled to start a new religion to describe and ameliorate a life so full of suffering. It became known as Buddhism. Similarly inspired, someone might also start a new religion based on Plato’s teachings and call it Christianity. In fact, Neo-Platonism did define much of early Christianity beyond the old and new testaments, until the medieval scholastic era inspired by Aristotle and defined by Saint Thomas Aquinas, and featuring angels dancing on the head of a pin, in addition to many other speculations, until Protestantism kicked in and launched a new era. 

  Similarly, the Buddhist scholastic era was defined by the later Abhidharma Pitaka and featured dry dissertations and massive lists called matrices, until the Mahayanist sutras kicked in at the beginning of the Common Era extolling Emptiness, Bodhisattvas, and Buddha-mind. The parallels—and perpendiculars—are endless. For one thing, Plato’s adventurer left a shadow world to find enlightenment outside, while the Buddha left a perfect world to find a shadow world outside—of pure misery, so a different kind of enlightenment, or awakening. If you’re thinking that this looks like two sides of the same coin, then I tend to agree.  

  The kicker comes with the generalization—or realization—that, in general, Buddhism tends to be pessimistic, while Christianity tends to be optimistic. And I can’t verify the veracity of that view, but, as generalizations and realizations go, it is probably valid, if not necessarily true. So, is that good or bad? Well, it may be a 51-49 decision, certainly not all or none, but I consider myself a Buddhist, after much deep contemplation, so I can live with that, if for no other reason than that we should all be humble. But that doesn’t mean that we should all be passive, no. So, there’s that, also.  

  Then, there is also the fact that, disregarding the Semitic origins of Christianity and any Harappan mitochondrial and matrilineal contribution to what would later be considered Indian thought, the fact remains that northern Indian and Europe are intrinsically related genetically, even if more Eastern Europe than West. It’s all Greek to me. So, it’s not hard to imagine 4000 BCE steppes cowboys meeting for annual fairs and festivals and sitting around big campfires and talking Proto Indo-Euro pidgin until late in the night, the westerners soon to be Europeans and the Easterners later to be Iranians and Indians. This is the world that we inherited.  

   

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  hardie karges 2:33 am on December 10, 2023 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Age of Reason, Aristotle, Dependent Origination ( 7 ), ego ( 33 ), Hardie Karges ( 342 ), meditation ( 288 ), rationality, reason   

  Buddhism: Rational if not Scientific  

  

  There is nothing mystical about Buddhism in its essence. The Middle Path is all about rationality, ratio, ratiocination, and rations. All of which is to say that Buddhism is a rational philosophy, surprise surprise. All the fancy metaphysics came later, as did the elaborate superstitions and multiple realms of heaven and hell. So, if that’s what gives your life meaning, then that is convenient. But it’s not for me, metaphysics maybe, but not superstitions. Don’t forget that the Buddha and Aristotle came from similar genetic stock, and sometimes they came to similar conclusions. 

  Rationality was quite novel in its day, if not downright radical, culminating in the European Age of Reason in the 17^th century. So, it was something of a revelation in 500BCE that causes preceded effects—almost all the time, haha. But monks double down on the concept to this day, as if it were the latest thing since quantum physics. That’s how seriously the concept is taken. And, from that simple beginning, the more elaborate concept of Dependent Origination is spun like the finest weaving from the finest silk, even though the concept is very simple.  

  Everything is linked in a causal chain of dependence that spares nothing and no one, nor would you want it to. The real beauty of it is that no fancy quantum leaps of faith or judgment are needed to see how and why things happen. There is no jealous war god. There is no green-eyed monster. All that is necessary is the simple practice of kindness and goodness toward the world and the practice of meditation for oneself, i.e. non-self. Ego and selfish considerations are for the birds in their search for immediate gratification. You and I, we’ve been through that. 
   
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  hardie karges 12:05 pm on October 30, 2022 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Aristotle, Buddhism ( 529 ), Hardie Karges ( 342 ), neuroscience ( 2 ), non-dualism ( 11 ), Plato ( 18 ), religion ( 188 ), Right Thought ( 2 ), Samma sankapppa   

  The Role of Thought in Buddhism… 

  

  

  The Buddha never taught or recommended No Thought, an idea popular in some Buddhist and all ‘non-dualistic’ groups, which should be labeled ‘non-pluralistic,’ btw, just saying. The Buddha taught Right Thought, samma samkappa. But don’t thoughts sometimes just pop up? Yes, they do. the issue here is not one of ownership, though, but the true nature of thoughts and feelings. For some reason, we tend to trust our feelings, but reserve much suspicion toward our thoughts. But are they any different, really?

  So, maybe they are as different as heart and head, but is that any different, either, really? Because those bodily locations have only been known since recently, but the concept of Mind, as citta, has been known since almost forever, and certainly since the time of Buddha. Indeed, during the Buddha’s time, and even later, there was considerable debate in Greece, and possibly India, over the location of the origin of thought, such that Plato placed it at or in the brain, while his student Aristotle placed it firmly in the heart.

  And if it seems obvious that the source of all sensations originating in the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth could only logically be mixed and matched somewhere nearby such as the gray matter that constitutes a brain, then it is equally plausible that the center could be where the pathways of the blood start and finish, itself perhaps the mechanism for mixing and matching those sensations into more complex feelings and thoughts. Modern neuroscience has come a long way since then, of course, but still we ‘listen to our hearts,’ even if we prefer to ‘use our brains’ for the heavy lifting, intellect being generally considered superior to intuition.  

  That distinction is sometimes used to differentiate men and women, to generally ill effect, but the fact remains that the two activities are intertwined. But to imagine that thoughts have no proper human origin nor intention, per the ‘non-dualist’ screed, is absurd and counterproductive, and for what purpose it is not clear. Even if Buddhism is technically non-dualist, in the sense that ‘we are one with everything’ like the joke about the monk ordering hot dogs, the modern ‘non-dualists’ go much too far in asserting that we are therefore nothing. That may pay well in the online debates, but it’s not what the Buddha said, and that is my only concern. Think good thoughts.

   
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  hardie karges 10:25 am on July 24, 2022 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Aristotle, Brahmanists, Brahmin ( 5 ), Buddhism ( 529 ), catuhskoti ( 3 ), Hardie Karges ( 342 ), logic ( 15 ), religion ( 188 ), social media ( 13 ), tetralemma ( 9 )   

  Buddhism is a World of Feeling, Thoughts Optional 

  

  

  Be kind to humans and other sentient beings, even when they are obnoxious, egotistic, pompous, and overbearing. And this is a tough row to hoe in the age of social media, I know, but that makes it even more important, doesn’t it? I think so. Because the pressure in this social media age for anyone who wants to be an ‘influencer,’ is to crack wise first, and smooth hard feelings later, if ever. But that’s not the correct order of things, I don’t think, not these days or ever.

  Because we are all ‘influencers,’ to some extent or other, but if we’re all sticking our egos in everyone’s faces all the time, then who is left to bear witness? So, we all have a stake in this game, regardless of whether we’re professional or not, because those lines are becoming blurred—at best. This is nothing if not a world of feeling, and I think that’s how Buddhism best makes sense. Because there was no world of reason back then, much less science, even if the Buddha was aware of the power of reason and tried to incorporate it into his practice.

  But reason at its best requires inscrutable logic, and the Indian tetralemma, in Greek, or catuhskoti, in Sanskrit, was far from perfect, and violated the Law of the Excluded Middle of Aristotelian logic, more familiar to our Western thought. But the Indian choices of ‘This,’ ‘That,’ ‘All of the above’ or ‘None of the above’ might ironically have led to the Buddha’s famous Middle Path, which Greek logic only approached with a roundabout dialectical synthesis that came much later.

  There’s more to life than logic, though, of course, and a close examination shows a classical Indian world-view heavily based on feeling and introspection, the deeper the better for the really big questions. That’s the world that the Buddha was raised in, and that was his method by trade, as prophet to the ages. When in doubt, think it out. Though many modern non-dualists may deny that the Buddha ever really intended anything, much less own his thoughts, I think it’s safe to say that he certainly did.

  If the Buddha’s thoughts had had no thinker, then I doubt we’d have Four Noble Truths and twice that number of folds and twists to our middle path of salvation, as defined by the cessation of suffering, at least partially, if never quite total. In every case, too, it’s a world of feeling and perception that is described, defined by name and form, and articulated by consciousness. The Brahmins and Brahmanists saw a world of Cosmic self in union with Brahma. The Buddha begged to differ. That’s the world he lived in, and that’s the world that he bequeathed to us.