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  hardie karges 4:48 am on December 22, 2024 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 428 ), capitalism, craving ( 15 ), Hardie Karges ( 239 ), language ( 144 ), Middle Path ( 53 )   

  Buddhism and the Middle Path of Least Resistance… 

  

  The Middle Path can be tricky, it seems, to avoid being sucked into the seductions of the sideline. Streams flow smoothest at the center. But the edges are where the fun occurs, apparently, giving rise to the word ‘edgy’ and the pleasures therein, pushing envelopes and sealing deals, and leaving nothing to the imagination but fantasy. Why do we love hot coffee or iced coffee but detest the tepid middle temps? We love extremes, even at the risk of self-harm. So, in a very important way, the Middle Path is not something tricky and difficult and a test to one’s patience, at all, but is really the easiest and most convenient path.

  We often make life hard in our quest for abundance and diversions, stacking up stuff in piles all the while with no real plan to utilize them, much less to ever dispose of them. But this is often unnecessary. I know it’s almost cliché by now, but how much do you really need? We often assume ‘the more the better’, but that puts all other clichés to shame, and nothing indeed could be further from the truth. For this I speak from personal experience, while passing no judgment against the predominant capitalist economies of the West and their wannabes.

  But it can be a trap and largely defines the Buddhist concept of ‘craving’, which is generally to be avoided. But that’s not just stuff in the closet but stock in trade. The first thought I had when starting to do business, was my exit plan. And, not surprisingly, that’s the part that I did best, defining the timeline as a function of the overall business plan, and therefore leaving with few regrets, and even less stock in trade, while being largely successful, for what I wanted to accomplish. The Buddhist Middle Path is not so different, really. To say that it is the path of least resistance would not say nearly enough, but neither would it be totally wrong. To go with the flow can be good sometimes.

   

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  hardie karges 3:40 am on October 7, 2023 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: abundance ( 7 ), Buddhism ( 428 ), capitalism, CHRISTIANITY ( 160 ), global warming ( 16 ), Hardie Karges ( 239 ), myth, Protestant ( 2 ), religion ( 158 ), Thailand ( 75 ), zero-sum   

  Buddhist Self-Sufficiency Trumps Christian Abundance  

  

  Overflowing abundance is a myth, but there is always enough, just enough. And that’s probably an act of faith, also, but preferable to the call for gluttony. Because that’s what abundance signifies: more than enough, all you can eat, sky is the limit, all that Christian mythology that spurs capitalism, Protestant individualism, global warming and war, as if winner takes all in a zero-sum game. But why would that be the case, since it clearly is contradictory?  

  If there are unlimited resources, then there should be plenty to go around for everybody, but that’s not the way it works, apparently. It seems that it doesn’t really count until counted. Until then it’s just religion, myth and ritual, designed to encourage the gods as much as to propitiate them, since they are the gatekeepers of these mythical resources. So, Christianity shoots itself in the foot by trying to claim more than it can realistically access. Abundance, i.e. unlimited resources, are useless if not freely available. 

  Buddhism makes no such outrageous claims, but ‘just enough’ can be easily surmised if not statistically proven, with much better results than the Christian hubristic assertion. And that’s what the previous king of Thailand did with his theory of self-sufficiency, พอเพียง, ‘just enough,’ which, from a Buddhist standpoint, is a self-adjusting mechanism as much as a statistical reality. Whatever there is, it’s ‘just enough,’ as long as you can adjust your desires accordingly. This is classic Buddhism at its best, and a win-win situation for all. Don’t be greedy. 
   
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  hardie karges 3:49 am on July 29, 2023 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 428 ), capitalism, CHRISTIANITY ( 160 ), commerce, Earth ( 3 ), Hardie Karges ( 239 ), meditation ( 189 ), philosophy ( 101 ), planet, religion ( 158 )   

  Buddhism and the Decline of Planet Earth  

  

  I don’t think that Buddhism is superior to Christianity. But I think that it is the right idea in the right time and in the right place: Here and Now. Because they’re both dealing with situations in progress and in process that are constantly changing and needing updates, but which are both necessary and good and fulfilling a function and that must be fulfilled. It’s the timing that is most crucial. 

  As if the Buddha could almost see that Asia would be an overcrowded and possessive morass of humanity within a couple thousand years and that renunciation might be a really good way of dealing with that—in advance. As if Jesus could almost see that in his neck of the woods violence would take on new meaning as a way of life, unless people could somehow be convinced that that would be unnecessary and highly undesirable, if we could all somehow see that we are brothers and sisters capable of our own strong bonds of love and connection. 

  It’s all aspirational, of course, but if that’s the best we can do, then so be it. So, if the Buddha’s best-laid plans failed to produce a meditative non-possessive Asia, and Christianity could only sublimate the urge for violence into the urge for commerce, then so be it. At least East and West could agree on the commerce. But now the needs are different, since we are largely the victims of our own success and are on the verge of destroying our home planet Earth, rather than finding the proper ways of living with it and in it. And that is the precipice upon which we stand, overlooking the abyss of our own making, with vastly reduced options for a successful outcome.  

  If we could have only somehow frozen world population and consumption at 1954 levels, the year of my birth, then the outcome might have been easy. But income levels were not equal and many people were still in a state of colonial servitude. I see Buddhism as the best chance for a successful outcome, given 2023 circumstances, renunciation and dispassion and all that goes with Buddhism. If nothing else, it can be a way of dealing with a situation that nobody can effectively change. But we must try. Buddhism can at least help deal with that sinking feeling that comes with reduced expectations. That is one of its specialties. Believe me.

   
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  hardie karges 9:17 am on April 15, 2023 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: awareness ( 5 ), capitalism, CHRISTIANITY ( 160 ), dukkha ( 15 ), eternal life ( 3 ), global warming ( 16 ), mindfulness ( 34 ), patriarchy ( 3 ), sati ( 17 ), suffering ( 28 ), Virtual Reality ( 9 )   

  Buddhist Mindfulness: No Shortcuts to Salvation  

  

  

  Mindfulness, sati, requires some awareness of the unpleasant details, also, unfortunately or fortunately, for this is the nature of existence, the existence of suffering and the ways to ameliorate it, on a path to cessation, if not the twenty-five-dollar cure that we’ve grown so accustomed to expect, in some binary fashion, now you see it and now you don’t, as if there were indeed magic bullets that can hit every target, with never a miss—at least in theory. 

  But, until someone can bio-engineer us with eternal life or create us a Virtual Reality so perfect that we can’t tell the difference, then the (not-so?) harsh reality is that each and every one of us will die, later if not sooner, peaceably if not in agony. And this is the truth of Buddhism, that suffering is ubiquitous, and implacable, if not the all-embracing disastrophe that it so recently was. But that was likely due to the dubious emboldenment of patriarchy, in distinct contrast to the previous matriarchal survivalists that sustained us for so many millennia. 

  But the point is that Buddhism is not pessimistic, but realistic, and the obvious corollary would be that the silly-eyed optimism of capitalistic Christianity is itself the cause of many of our problems, especially global warming, for which it is singularly unprepared to offer a credible solution, given the demands of economic growth. But Buddhism can offer that solution: conscious mindful existence that accentuates self-sufficiency, not the excesses of abundance and infinity that capitalism and Christianity demand.  

  In other words: less can indeed be more, in quality if not quantity, and that is the important consideration, now, isn’t it? Yes, I think that it is. And that is also the cautionary tale with so-called ‘mindfulness.’ Be careful which way you turn your gaze of awareness, because you will have to deal with the circumstances in your field of vision. And that is good. Buddhism in its origins never pretended to transcendence. This is the real world we find ourselves in, and that is the challenge… 

   
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  hardie karges 6:54 am on April 10, 2022 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 428 ), capitalism, craving ( 15 ), Dawn of Everything, gluttony ( 2 ), Hardie Karges ( 239 ), judgment, lust ( 4 ), Middle Path ( 53 ), philosophy ( 101 ), tanha ( 4 ), upadana ( 3 )   

  Buddhism 101: The Difference Between Cravings and Needs–and Karma… 

  

  

  Be careful with judgments. The craving for food of a wealthy person is different from the craving for food of a poor person. If that means that there are good cravings and bad cravings, then we are simply getting bogged down in words, because the craving to be avoided is for something beyond what is necessary. Thus, the craving for food of a starving person is not a craving in the sense that Buddhism abhors. That is a need, not a craving. The craving that Buddhism abhors is the incessant call for more, more, and more far beyond what is needed to sustain the life of someone and his significant others.

  This is implicit, of course, in the Middle Path between luxury and lack, which is at the heart of original Buddhism, before the re-birthers decided that it was always all about that: rebirth, past lives, and the generation-jumping karma of retribution. And that original impetus is definitely what we need now, in our economic stage of advanced capitalism, to be reminded that craving is at the heart of our problem. There is even some scientific evidence coming out now in the best-selling book ‘The Dawn of Everything’ that gluttony and craving are at the heart of certain violent and slave-trading cultures.

  Suddenly it all starts to make sense, doesn’t it? The lifestyles that reward gluttony and craving demand violence and other defilements to sustain them. The one feeds the other in a never-ending cycle of degradation, and our lives suffer as a result. Life is not so difficult, after all, certainly not as difficult as the ‘multiple feedback loops of karma’ invoked by some high priests of reincarnation might make you think. Just be kind, and gentle, and respectful to the rights and dignity of others. The rites and rituals can come and go, but what you don’t do is sometimes more important than what you do.

   
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  hardie karges 5:39 am on March 20, 2022 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 428 ), capitalism, CHRISTIANITY ( 160 ), craving ( 15 ), demmocracy, desire ( 4 ), Hardie Karges ( 239 ), triple religion   

  Caveat Emptor: Buddhism’s Fine Print… 

  

  

  You can spend your life pursuing objects of craving, or you can reduce your need for them. Christianity or Buddhism? Your choice. And yes, it’s really that simple, almost. The Buddhist Precepts and the Christian Ten Commandments are almost exactly the same, after all. And other differences purported if not actually reported are a little bit harder to define, like the bit about passion and dispassion. Now I fully trust my sense of that, but it is a harder point to sharpen, and anyway doesn’t make so much difference for the average individual living his daily life.

  Then there’s the question of a creator God, which is probably as much a thorn in the side of many Christians as the question of rebirth is for many Buddhists, which is the role of belief and superstition in the practice of either. And so, once again, the similarities abound. But the opposites are palpable. To crave or not? That’s a real difference, and lies at the heart of Buddhism, the disavowal of that. And the desire for that lies at the heart of the Triple Religion that we might call Christianity-Democracy-Capitalism, my term, not to be confused with the Triple Religion of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, which is often invoked for China and sometimes Vietnam, at least before Communism.

  But few choices are truly binary in real life, even if the issues involved often are. To desire or not desire? I think that I might be able to divide my time appropriately between the two. After all Buddhism is built on a Middle Path between extremes, the worst of either to be avoided, while the best of both are to be imbibed of judiciously, with neither lack nor excess. And if this ultimately involves the mixing of religions, then so be it, as long as it’s articulated, so that we’re not pretending that grace, forgiveness, and passion are at the heart of Buddhism. They aren’t. That’s Christianity. So mix in equal portions, like salt and pepper. And there might even be a new Triple Religion possible, Buddhism-Democracy-Socialism, sounds good to me.

   
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  hardie karges 10:02 am on October 17, 2021 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: capitalism, CHRISTIANITY ( 160 ), communism ( 21 ), Hardie Karges ( 239 ), Industrial Revolution ( 6 ), religion ( 158 ), socialism ( 4 ), Taoism ( 3 )   

  The Meeting of West and East, Christianity and Buddhism, Passion and Passivity… 

  

  If you can’t change the world, then change your thoughts toward it. But try to change the world first. And this simple dichotomy describes the philosophical difference between East and West in a nutshell, in the traditional sense, in which Asia is more passive and the West is more aggressive. Much of that has changed as the two worlds have collided and combined over the last centuries, but much of it hasn’t, either. And that is probably best represented by the West’s predominant Christian religion and the East’s predominant Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoist philosophy. Because if Christianity doesn’t explicitly promote aggressiveness, it certainly allows it, especially with the transition from its original Rome-centered Catholicism to its later Westward-bound Protestantism.

  So, it’s no accident that this occurred exactly at the same time as the rise of Science, Capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution. Meanwhile the East mixed its Buddhism and Taoism with heavy doses of Socialism and Communism, until it realized that it was losing a lot of wars that way (and Japan proved that a country didn’t have to be Western to be Capitalist). Note also that Eastern Orthodox Christianity largely avoided the sectarian splintering that plagued the far West (except for some largely geographical distinctions). But there was another aspect to this dichotomy that doesn’t get much mention and that is the emulation also of the traditional roles of men and women.

  Thus, Western churches are defined by long sharp-pointed steeples, while Buddhism is traditionally symbolized by round bulbous stupas. I don’t think that anyone could miss the stupa’s resemblance to female breasts rising in supine submission. Contrast that with the more macho Hinduism’s steeple-like symbolism. And the virgin Mary’s preeminence in early Christianity is long gone in Protestantism. But Buddhism encapsulates the ethos of submission and adaptation perfectly. And while I don’t necessarily think that this is prima facie evidence of Buddhism’s superiority to Christianity, I do think that Buddhism is more appropriate for these times of crowds, confusion, and chaos. Buddhism is all about teaching men to be more like women: kinder and gentler, less violent…

   
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  hardie karges 11:27 am on January 3, 2021 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 428 ), capitalism, CHRISTIANITY ( 160 ), DEMOCRACY ( 10 ), paradigm ( 2 ), social   

  Buddhism is a Social Paradigm, too… 

  

  And it’s a vision of a better world, and that is much the reason I have sworn allegiance to it, for without that social component, the reasons are not nearly so compelling. Because if personal ‘salvation’ is the only desired result, then the methods are many, and the results are uncertain. Who’s to really say if the Buddhist methods of renunciation and meditation are truly better than the Christian methods of passion and forgiveness?

  One advocates a certain withdrawal from the affairs of the world, while the other advocates an ever-increasing involvement, to the point that I’m in yo’ mutha’ f*ckin’ face whether you like it or not, got it? So we disparage one as ‘life-denying’ while praising the other’s adherents as ‘full of life,’ without even the slightest acknowledgement that those ‘full-of-lifers’ are indeed usually the ones destroying the planet.

  The fact that that is not what they intend is superfluous. Intent is only the obsession of those same Christian courts that value remorse and contrition while selling those same guns that make all the forgiveness necessary. A simpler solution might simply be to get our gun jollies and joneses in video games and leave the acts of nature to Nature herself.

  And what’s right for a world of three billion people is not necessarily right for a world of eight billion, and that’s just the changes that have occurred in my lifetime. Should we simply wait with bated breath for each individual to make his peace with his Maker, so that the World can survive, or should responsible governments take it upon themselves to limit activities that threaten to aggravate pressures of over-population and global over-heating?

  Then the freedom-loving rabble will raise hackles at all the supposed shackles that they must endure, without even questioning whether these are freedoms FROM of freedoms TO, as though it’s all the same and freedoms of all sorts and types must by definition be unlimited. But this myth of no limits is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated. Buddhism can help with that.

  America teaches eternal life, endless resources, and unlimited freedoms, i.e. Christianity, Capitalism, and Democracy, all packaged and gift-wrapped in bright colorful ribbons and bows, as if nothing could be more natural or necessary, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Still the package played an important role in the development of human civilization.

  Does anyone really wish that we were stuck in year 1492 with no knowledge of the spectacles that were to come in the ensuing centuries? But how now do we rein in our wildest impulses for the good of the many for the good of the future? Thus the Western mind is better to create civilization, and the eastern mind is better to control it. If the current pandemic taught us nothing it taught us that.

  And the lesson can carry into other areas of social concern, beyond pandemics first, and global warming second, into the trickier and thornier issues of war and violence, and the existential abstractions of personal peace, love and understanding. First we extinguish the fires inside, and then we extinguish the fires outside…

  hardie karges and Dave Kingsbury are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Dave Kingsbury 4:32 pm on January 6, 2021 Permalink | Reply

    Your final paragraph is a great summation of the problems we face which a Buddhist mindset would help solve. Happy New Year and may it be a beneficial one!

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      hardie karges 6:12 pm on January 6, 2021 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks, Dave, and a Happy New Year to you, too!

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  hardie karges 1:03 pm on December 20, 2020 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: bet, Buddhism ( 428 ), capitalism, CHRISTIANITY ( 160 ), DEMOCRACY ( 10 ), epistemology, gambling, metaphysics ( 5 ), Middle Path ( 53 ), trifecta, Trinity ( 2 )   

  Buddhism 201: There are no Winners and Losers… 

  

  In the best negotiations and most serious debates, everybody should walk away happy. This is the secret to all good dealings, of course, but all too often forgotten, in the rush to seal deals, and replace stocks, and return to life as normal, on the battlefields of commerce and contentment, where the fruits of life are often commodities, and the rewards are consumption, a vaguely full sensation, quickly desiring something more or better, as if there is no balance.

  But balance there must be if happiness is truly our goal, and that is the open secret of the Middle Path, something so simple, and something so sublime, that it is easily overlooked in the rush to judgment and the customary division of spoils among victors. But did the losers really lose, and if so, then what exactly did they lose? And did the winners really win, and if so, then what exactly did they win?

  The short answer is that no one really knows, and so any bettor worth his chips knows that to cover your assets, you hedge your bets, and hopefully cover the spread in the process. Because not only do we never know whether we truly win or lose, but by even less will we know by how much.

  And that balancing act is more than smart business; it is an epistemological reality, if not necessarily a metaphysical one, which it may indeed very well be. And this is the beauty of agnosticism, which is often reduced in value by vague insinuations that it is avoiding a decision by refusing to take sides. But that is one of the fundamental facts of life and the world: absolute knowledge is simply unknowable.

  This becomes a tautology, of course, in the sense that we are claiming to know that unknowability, but that does not diminish its value, no, or at least not by much. We simply cut the conversation short to avoid endless reductions and descensions into a void. Don’t you wish everybody did?

  So Buddhism as a philosophy is fundamentally an open doctrine, even if Buddhism as a religion is saddled with karma, rebirth, and past lives as customary baggage, just as Christianity comes pre-packaged with democracy and capitalism, the trifecta of hedged bets within the trinity of no limits. And that is as much a myth as reincarnation and past lives, though it doesn’t catch so much flack for it by the simple trick of perception bias: we can’t see the forest we live in for all the trees that stand in the way.

  So we assume by instinct that there is an underlying fundamental reality, even if we are hard pressed to say exactly what it is. Somehow some way it simply is, as Nature is, sublime in its silence, commanding in its occasional outbursts. After all, if the lion and the lamb are raised together in the same crib, then any future violence is unlikely. Thus the dharma is simply an admonition to be like that, like nature. You’ll know it when you see it. Mindful silence is better than mindless chatter almost any day.

   
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  hardie karges 6:42 am on September 23, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: capitalism, CHRISTIANITY ( 160 ), ego ( 33 ), optimism ( 2 ), pessimism ( 2 ), philosophy ( 101 ), PSYCHOLOGY ( 12 ), religion ( 158 )   

  Why is Buddhism so pessimistic? Because… 

  I don’t know: so maybe you’ll forego your pride, like a good Christian? I notice that the prouder one is, the more ‘optimistic’ that person also is, most likely assured that whatever good fortune has come to him as a result of superior skill and talent will surely repeat itself infinitely and indefinitely, since the world is a vast abundant field of untold and uncalculated riches, the sky is truly the limit, and YOU are the master of this world, right front and center—uh huh, yeah right…

  Doesn’t that make you feel good? I mean: doesn’t that just make you want to jump out of bed, slam down some breakfast, slide into your suit, cruise downtown, zoom up to the 52^nd floor, then order your secretary around, just a little bit, not enough to cause her any lasting damage, much less any drop in office efficiency, just enough to let her know who’s boss, let her know who pays the bills, let her know who wears the pants, or not… (More …)

  The godlike Robert and hardie karges are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    The godlike Robert 5:43 pm on September 23, 2018 Permalink | Reply

    I think Buddhism promotes an alternative understanding of reality. The West sees man as separate and distinct from his environment. In fact the creation story depicts the event occurring instantaneously and conjured by God. And as a spontaneous invention man has no history of relationship to anything outside his skin; not the plants, animals or the earth.
    In this story man is an ego created by a supreme ego and both are aliens to this world. Buddhism demonstrates that the ego is an illusion. What is inside the skin is no different than what’s outside the skin because neither are in your control; do you beat your own heart or can you shine the sun? The conclusion to Buddhism is that the universe is a non linear organic totality and you are only a subset of it, and not even capable any independence from it and more than that you emerged from it and belong in it! There is no other place where you could be…you see?

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      hardie karges 9:35 pm on September 23, 2018 Permalink | Reply

      Yes, I certainly think that Buddhism offers an alternative to the Western paradigm, but that can–and does–go several different directions, operating on a level that can be used as religion, philosophy, psychology or simply technique, depending on the needs of the participant. I think Buddhism is best as an ongoing dialectic, without conclusions, something like a psycho-philosophical method, analogous to scientific method and the dialog between Theravada and Mahayana, hopefully achieving a higher synthesis. The hard part is moving past old narratives that no longer apply. Thanks for your comments!

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        The godlike Robert 12:43 am on September 24, 2018 Permalink

        As science, Taoism and Confuscanism are ongoing dialectics with no conclusions and are not religions!