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  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 9:15 am on August 30, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Buddhism,   

    Buddhism 101: Life is about Suffering, and Its Cessation (NOT the Pursuit of Happiness)… 

    Statue of Buddha in Kandy, Sri Lanka

    Statue of Buddha in Kandy, Sri Lanka

    First Noble (Aryan, Civilized, Precious) Truth (Reality, Faith, Fact, etc.): “Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.”

    In other words: Life is suffering.  If you don’t understand that, then you’ll never really understand Buddhism.  Many modern proselytizing Buddhist priests from foreign ports, and their local converts and adherents, try to downplay this fact for their shiny happy American audiences, ultimately doing a disservice to both: weakening the philosophy and misleading the Homies.  No, there is no mistranslation, nor any misunderstanding.  That’s what he said and that’s what he meant.  Our lives as Americans are a lie, shiny and happy with mouth wide open.  There’s a word for that: Christian; not Buddhist.

    Second Truth: “Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: it is this craving which leads to re-becoming, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for becoming, craving for dis-becoming.”

    In other words: There is a cause for this suffering—desire.  Sorry, Homies, but Buddhism is not about ‘following your passion.’  ‘Following your passion’ is verrrry Christian.  This is Buddhism.  Get over it. (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 9:13 am on July 12, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Buddhism, , end days, eschatology,   

    Eschatology 101: The End Days, a Primer 

    I’ve been accused of Christian paranoia, what with my evolving interest in ‘end times’. That’s not good, not that I’m concerned about any slight to myself, which WOULD be paranoia, only that by dismissing it as Christian nonsense, chances increase that nothing will be done to prevent it. There are at least two problems with the characterization: I’m not very Christian and not very paranoid, either; pretty freakin’ rational, in fact. Fear of persecution? Not me. My doors are wide open, and I rarely meet a person that I don’t feel I could be friends with. (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 9:03 am on June 14, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Buddhism, , ,   

    Religion: Founded on Fear, Fueled by Fire, Fed on Fulfillment 

    E Pluribus Unum…

    The nice guys over at ISIL have got it backwards. Fear may indeed be the starting point of religion, but not the end, and certainly not the means. That original fear is something like existential dread, whether in our ‘primitive’ ancestors’ realization of their own mortality, the danger from enemies or the self-conscious knowledge of our human predicament, struggling for survival.

    Regardless, that is something to be mitigated, not exploited. Organizing fighting forces on the principle of ‘kill or be killed’ with a God or a flag riding ‘shotgun’ to provide symbolic leadership and moral justification is a practice best relegated to the annals of history and the back pages of the Old Testament. (More …)

     
    • whitemagickvibes's avatar

      whitemvibes 1:44 am on June 15, 2015 Permalink | Reply

      Religion was founded on love. Love for God and love for people around you. Religious people are not all filled with images of hell or worried 24/7 about Sins.

      Religion is here to stay.

      • hardie karges's avatar

        hardie karges 6:11 am on June 15, 2015 Permalink | Reply

        Old Testament could use a bit more love for my tastes, but I agree with your conclusion.

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 10:02 am on June 6, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Buddhism, ,   

    Religio-Politics 101: The Final Stage of Life—Buddhism 

    Statue of Buddha in Kandy, Sri Lanka

    Statue of Buddha in Kandy, Sri Lanka

    I figure if you’re not getting more religious as you’re getting older, then you’re doing something wrong. I thought I’d be a Buddhist monk by now, ensconced in some little corner of the globe hanging with the brotherhood and speaking Tibetan or Pali or even just Thai would be okay, doing the business of no-business, begging for alms in return for my purity and compassion, just trying to provide the world some moral compass, without desire or desiderata, without percussion or repercussions, ni meringue ni compas, life as lived in the latter days of ambition, no ambition just breath in breath out occasional fuel and oxygen fanning the flames of non-consumption…

    I suppose that those plans are on hold by now, as long as my 1954 libido has a first gear, a clutch, a power train and a love of transmission, not something you take for granted in the fourth semester of life, the will to power and all that rap, or even the will to succeed and all that jazz… (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 9:54 am on May 31, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Buddhism, , , ,   

    Religio-Politics 101: Enlightenment of Religion, Endarkenment of War 

    ISIL wages war in the Mideast

    ISIL wages war in the Mideast

    Surely this must be the end of days, when religious fanatics overrun entire sections of the globe—with martyrs, books and fear; opposed by corrupt governments—with lawyers, guns and money; overseen by Empires and umpires—with commentary, updates, and buzzfeed; with the fossils of forgotten ancestors funding it all, sowing seeds of hate where no flowers have grown for years, decades, or centuries; in deserts laid waste by millennia of neglect and eons of misuse. For any religion to use fear as a weapon is to do a grave disservice to all parties concerned. Fear is a weapon of war, not religion… (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 9:33 am on May 24, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Buddhism, , ,   

    Religio-Politics 101: The Eluctible Modality of the Invisible 

    “Everything happens for a reason.” How many times have you heard that? Is it accurate? Is it true? Is it even valid? Meh; that probably depends, on who or what is sentence subject and who or what is object in a life sentence with no parole. Fortunately our language structure allows for a multitude of possibilities, with its general vagueness, allowing plausible deniability. But is that what you want—plausible deniability? No, you want certainty. That’s the beauty of religion, and that’s the slice of thought that statements like this come from.

    The answer is probably ‘no’, of course, that ‘everything happens for a reason’, given no reason to think that it is true, and that is, after all, the bottom line: truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth… But that is the basis of life, not religion, which relies on the power of positive thinking and retrofit of spurious logic. That’s not a bad thing, and can offer more than silly smiles on sullen Sundays, reasons to push on another day. But life is more than the agreement of subject and object, isn’t it, after all? Life is neither happy nor sad, in and of itself. Any serious Buddhist knows that… (More …)

     
    • Esther Fabbricante's avatar

      Esther Fabbricante 5:39 pm on May 24, 2015 Permalink | Reply

      I wanted to see you smile.

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 10:04 am on March 29, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: body, Buddhism, , Death Cab for Cutie, , She and Him, , Zooey Deschanel   

    Religion Meets Politics; Body Meets Soul: Capitalism is the Past; Buddhism is the Future… 

    Huh? What? Is this guy illiterate? Why is he comparing apples and oranges while alluding to bananas under the influence of ananas (pineapples), knowing all the while that the only fruit that can cure his disease are cherries and sometimes cranberries? (Orange you glad I didn’t venture into tropical fruits whose names are only known through vague inference and oblique reference and bad translations like jack-fruits and custard apples and the alligator pears of a previous era?)

    Surely this is the greatest travesty of language competence since half-decent actress Zooey Deschanel and that other guy with a letter for a first name decided to call their musical duo ‘She and Him’, knowing all the while that one pronoun was nominative and the other accusative, without even considering the political implications of a feminine subject getting all on-top transitive and doing it to a masculine object, sure payback’s a b*tch, a batch of contradictions, but really his guitar-playing’s not half-bad and her only musical background is the title role in a season of ‘Death Cab for Cutie’ and the best line she ever had in a movie was “Penis!” in that flick with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But I digress.

    I mean, you can’t just inter-mix religion and politics for Sunday entertainment, now, can you, despite or because of the fact that it’s prohibited? Can you? “Never talk religion and politics” is an adage as old as America itself and the mixing of the two is an affront to the separation of Church and State that lies at the heart of our dysfunctional system of government, isn’t it? Why, yes; dysfunctional, that is…

    Everything’s different now. Everything is a caricature of itself, and nothing is sacred anymore. Our Western and American values are up for grabs and subject to reinterpretation. Our freedoms have degenerated into licentiousness, and our liberties have lost their licenses. Our paradigms have shifted and our grounds have been re-sifted. Religion has nothing to do with church anymore and politics has nothing to do with government. Work is not all about money anymore and life is all about quality and not quantity. The merger of politics and religion does not signal theocracy. It signals maturity.

    Capitalism must die, pool sharks notwithstanding. Its continuation threatens the planet and society. It doesn’t have to end overnight, but the sooner the better: no more booms and crashes, no more zooms and clashes. I’m not talking about free enterprise, mind you. That’s different. That’s sacred. Capitalism is a perversion of it, most likely originated in the extension of credit, and the various packaging and re-packing that comes and goes with that.

    If that makes me a Communist, then so be it. I prefer ‘Buddhist’; yes, that’s no typo. It’s no accident that some of the most successful Communist countries had a prior history of Buddhism. Even today the line is blurred—in China, Vietnam, Laos, Burma and elsewhere. But I’m not talking about totalitarian dictatorships. I’m talking about shared spaces and shared societies, not shares of common stock. The only common stock I care about is DNA handed down in re-stacked decks, hands shuffled and re-shuffled for hybrid vigor and species survival.

    If religions must go through the phases of Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism (in no certain order) as lives must go through the phases of youth, middle age and ‘seniority’ = discipline, love and wisdom, then so, too, must societies go through the political phases of dictatorship, democracy and socialism both in their political and economic applications (‘apps’ for short). But the order is not ordered and the ‘roll-out’ is confusing. Silly phases must be gone through (passive voice intentional) and ch-ch-changes must occur in fields and screens of red, blue and green. Stay tuned…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 8:48 am on March 15, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Buddhism, , , ,   

    Religion 101: DNA as a Crown of Thorns—God Genes, Gay Genes, Devils in Blue Jeans 

    crown of thorns

    crown of thorns

    There has long been scuttlebutt about some so-called ‘God Gene’… but none has ever been found. And there has long been scuttlebutt about some so-called ‘Gay Gene’… but none has ever been found. Now there is even talk of a ‘travel gene’ predisposing us travelers to lengthy peregrinations and various unnamed (unmentionable?) and unrequited desires. So what? Why does it matter? Why bother even asking the question? Thus the debate rages, long after Calvin, long after Hobbes (no, not the cartoon characters; where do you think they came from BTW?).

    Free will vs. determinism is one of the major debates of the post-classical pre-modern Christian religio-philosophic phase, long after St. Augustine incorporated Plato into the mix, and St. Thomas added Aristotle. This is closely contemporaneous with the Western philosophical tradition’s division into two opposing camps: the British Empiricists and the Continental Rationalists. For those of you unschooled in that history, that was a preference for either experience or rationality as the basis of knowledge.

    And it was no passive intellectual preference, the roots of it likely going back to Gothic pragmatic feudalism in the decentralized European countryside after the downfall of Roman hierarchical imperial cities, and continuing in the sprawling US/UK suburban piecemeal planning vs. centralized European cities to this day. (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 8:50 am on March 8, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Buddhism, , , ,   

    Religion 101: God as Superhero, & a Case of Species Exceptionalism to go, please… 

    American Exceptionalism? Meh, I’ll pass on that, sounds like a weak concept from the get-go, the definition of ‘American’ subject to the shifting southwestern sands of borders and politics and vaguely articulated definitions… to say nothing of the continents from which we ALL came: Asia, Europe, and Africa. But ‘species exceptionalism’? I’ll buy that. We are certainly exceptional, for better or worse, all contradictions considered…

    We are the love monkeys, we are the hate monkeys, we are the smart monkeys, we are the stupid monkeys, we are the happy monkeys, we are the sad monkeys, we are the f*ck monkeys, we are the abstinence monkeys, we are the drunk monkeys, we are the abstinence monkeys, we are the drug monkeys, we are the sober monkeys, we are the music monkeys, we are the sober monkeys, etc…

    Cut the DNA deck, re-shuffle, and the results would likely never be the same—humanity. Re-arrange the continents and it would’ve all been different. Out of nowhere comes a butterfly to flutter by and there goes the neighborhood—pure chaos. Cue Mandelbrot. This is something routinely overlooked in almost all discussions of extra-terrestrial life: the odds of intelligent life on THIS planet are infinitesimally small, yet—here we are. Cue Darwin. (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 10:20 am on February 22, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Buddhism, ,   

    Vaccinated by Religion, Innoculated by Love… 

    vaccination : Nurse holding syringe isolated on white backgroundAtheists are lucky. They get all the benefits of religion with none of the sacrifice: no long dark nights of the soul, no wrestling with questions of good and evil, or right and wrong, no giving to unnamed charities and the nameless homeless simply because ‘there, but for the grace of God, go I.’ No God = no grace; or not much, anyway. True, some secular humanists have adapted the same play-list without the figure-head, but still: more later on that….

    Many an atheist will proudly proclaim the stupidity, ignorance or ‘religulousness’ of religion, while preparing to fly 3000 miles to go hear some half-assed R&R band play some half-assed three-chord comfort-food ‘classic rock’ as perpetrated by some sketchy characters of questionable habits and likely moral turpitude, simply because forty years ago, all that felt good: ‘the Cuervo Gold, the fine Colombian’, etc; yeah, right. Life is more than sensation, I reckon, thank God… 🙂

    Vaccinations have been big news lately, and with the latest deadly measles outbreaks, the concept is worth analyzing. The deal is: as long as ninety percent or so of the populace is vaccinated, then everyone is vaccinated, by default. This is not just idle theory or abstract speculation, but can and has been proven many times over graphically and mathematically and in society itself. (More …)

     
    • Kc's avatar

      Kc 2:15 pm on February 22, 2015 Permalink | Reply

      lou reed said music was his religion. yes, babs and her church family prayed for me at a time i was scheduled to have a tetrotoma cyst removed from left ovary. when i went in for the surgery, the cyst cd not be seen. those type (tet) have hair and teeth and such in them so yeah, you cd say i have some religion, it may be believing that other people have religion and i latch on. still believe nothing from nothing leaves nothing, hence, once you’re gone you’re gone. as for now i will continue to register voters.

      you tube lou reed’s entire album, MAGIC AND LOSS, if you can and if you do, plz let me know what you think. bye for now.

    • hardie karges's avatar

      hardie karges 11:33 am on February 23, 2015 Permalink | Reply

      good album… ever heard the Daniel Lanois song ‘the Maker’ or his first album ‘Acadie’, out about the same time as ‘Magic and Loss”? Check it out…

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