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  hardie karges 3:11 am on June 9, 2023 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: anatta ( 22 ), atman ( 5 ), Buddhism ( 429 ), caste, CHRISTIANITY ( 160 ), emptiness ( 29 ), Hardie Karges ( 240 ), language ( 145 ), meditation ( 190 ), shunyata ( 22 )   

  The Difference Between Buddhism and Hinduism  

  

  The difference between Hinduism and Buddhism might best be seen in the Buddhist monk’s hairstyle: Emptiness! Haha. And while that may seem like the ultimate in silliness, there’s more than a little bit of truth there. But first, let me clarify that Buddhist monks are typically, i.e. almost always, shaved bald, ditto for nuns, while Hindu pandits, acharyas, and especially rishis, are known for their wild locks and their elaborate rituals, yagyas. Buddhists typically chant, the same words that their predecessors chanted, some 2500 years ago.  

  That’s how the sutras were composed and recorded, long before the advent of written text in the Indian subcontinent. And Emptiness, shunyata, was always at the heart of the doctrine, even if its full articulation followed the previous anatta ‘no self’ doctrine, which was one of the early prime tenets of Buddhism, and which was in direct opposition to the Hindu belief in Atman, something of a cosmic self, which transmigrates eternally, on a good day, unless it is lucky enough to obtain release from this pit of samsara. Note that to this day, eastern religions want to escape the world, while western religions typically want eternal life in this world. 

  But the difference between Hinduism and Buddhism is in the details. While Hinduism is about celebration and ecstasy, Buddhism is typically about austerity and discipline. And, at the risk of losing converts to Hinduism, I’d have to agree. To be a full-fledge Hindu, you really have to be born there with a caste affiliation. They’ve tried constantly to subvert Buddhism that way, also, but with varying success. Mostly they succeeded in killing it, in India, at least, while the more nationalistic Hinduism was left to take up its cause with an ascendant Islam. Buddhism is universal. Hinduism is not. Buddhism is the Middle Path between Hinduism and Jainism. But that’s another story.

  hardie karges and Balance Thy Life are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Balance Thy Life 3:14 am on June 9, 2023 Permalink | Reply

    Interesting article highlighting the differences between Hinduism and Buddhism. The comparison between the hair of Buddhist monks and Hindu pandits was amusing yet insightful.
    founder of balance thy life https://balancethylife.com

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      hardie karges 11:08 pm on June 9, 2023 Permalink | Reply

      thank you

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  hardie karges 3:01 pm on May 6, 2023 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 429 ), caste, feedback, Hardie Karges ( 240 ), karma ( 50 ), past lives ( 8 )   

  Buddhism, Karma, and the Vicissitudes of Fate…  

  

  

  Karma is not fate. Karma is action. But the term is often used similarly, even by those who should know better, and so we are left to deal with it as such. So, when someone says, “that’s your karma,” then what they really mean is that you must have done some really bad things, in this life or a previous one, and now the law of karmic justice is giving you a taste of your own medicine. So, you must suffer some consequences, for your current circumstances otherwise would be unexplainable. And to a limited extent I agree with that assessment, but only to that limited extent.  

  But that’s not fate, which is blind, by definition, and which is variously described as ‘beyond control, ‘governed by supernatural powers’, and/or ‘destiny’ depending on whether the word is used a verb or a noun. But karma implies feedback, to something which occurred previously, and to which many would ascribe ‘multiple feedback loops,’ including, but not limited to, previous lives, the contents of which can only be imagined, or at best surmised by reference to what is now occurring, the two often assumed to have similar, if not the exact same, causal connections. 

  And this is where it often leaves me standing there scratching my head, still wondering how any or all of this could ever be proven. Hint: it can’t, none of it. It’s an attempt to ascribe justice to that which would otherwise have no recourse to justice, the courts too busy with their own peccadilloes and busy work schedules to worry about previous lives, which are at best wild speculation, and at worst total BS. So, I limit my karma to this life and this world, since I surely know that, if I know anything. Another take on the subject would be to assume that it’s all an elaborate hoax to assure that the highest castes and classes of society continue in their dominance of the lower ones, but I’ll leave that speculation to another write…  
   
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  hardie karges 2:00 pm on February 21, 2021 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: caste, Eckhart Tolle ( 13 ), karma ( 50 ), meditation ( 190 ), past lives ( 8 ), predestination ( 5 ), racism ( 10 ), rebirth ( 37 ), Right Speech ( 5 ), samma vaca ( 8 )   

  The Two Major Schools of Buddhism: Past Life or Present Moment… 

  

  You can’t be a ‘present moment’ Buddhist and a ‘past life’ Buddhist at the same time, since the two concepts are contradictory. And this is probably more important than any modern distinction between Theravada and Mahayana, Tibetan or Zen, simply whether you believe in past lives or not, karma and rebirth supposedly the causes and effects of that process.

  So the present moment is mostly a convenient escape, with ET extending the landing chute, because no present moment really exists, any more than a past life, but the latter is more onerous than the former, which can vanish with the flick of a whisker, while the past lives will never go away, as long as it is believed in.

  Because past lives are all about predestination, and the submission to a supposedly higher will, when one is more than enough. And if this all likely began with the best of intentions, it soon became a stage prop to the caste system, i.e. racism, the idea that some are born with latent superiorities, while others are born with obvious deficiencies.

  Thus your station in life is pre-determined by the events of a previous life, and there is little you can do to change it. None of that has any basis in science, of course, the racism nor the past lives. But still we have to deal with it, day by day, the racism of Aryan superiority not only in India, but in Europe and Amerika and in the latter-day colonies Down Under.

  Predestination is the philosophical side to the same phenomena of past lives, the idea that ‘it is all written,’ notwithstanding the fact that nothing at all was written until a few thousand years ago, still the image is powerful, script on paper, replicating itself into countless lifetimes and universal ages.

  Calvin the Presbyter made great gains with a similar theory in the Western world, details left to the deacons of stupas and steeples, the main takeaway that we are not in control, PERIOD. And that might not be such a bad thing, if the ulterior motives of religion are to be taken at face value.

  After all, aren’t all religions most similar in their insistence that we subject ourselves to a higher will? For all Christianity’s eternity and infinity, the need to obey God is paramount, the only question now or later, prodigal or prescient. And so it is with Islamic submission and Hindu embrace, we Buddhists left to fill in blanks that the others have all left unfilled.

  But the ‘present moment’ is something else entirely, and at its best in countering the pernicious superstitions of karma, especially the kind that jumps generations to bounce back and bite you when you least expect it, in the next life. Belief in the present moment provides a convenient counterpart to challenge all that. I would go not nearly so far as ET in extolling its virtues, since its virtues to me are simply those of meditation, whether with single focus or field focus, the result is the same.

  To shut off the internal dialogue, even for a moment, is to return to proto-consciousness, paleo-consciousness, before language took over and came to own it. Now languages conquer peoples and acquire new lands, our hapless selves but tools of the medium, neither rare nor well done. Samma vaca is right speech. Right speech is good speech. Silence is preferable to bad speech. Words matter…

  hardie karges and Five are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Five 7:46 am on February 22, 2021 Permalink | Reply

    What tradition of Buddhism were you trained in, Hardie? And is this “present moment Buddhism” something that people teach?

    You say “You can’t be a ‘present moment’ Buddhist and a ‘past life’ Buddhist at the same time” – but you can, and that is the whole point. Because the present moment never had a beginning (you recall one?) and has no end – it cannot have because it has no duration – that tells us that the “present moment”, i.e. conscious awareness, does not end at death. That’s all you need to know, you don’t need to remember past lives, or believe anything other than your experience (which is only ever of the ‘present moment’, as above, that IS your experience).

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    hardie karges 7:54 am on February 22, 2021 Permalink | Reply

    I have an MA in Buddhist Studies, so I am ‘trained’ in all of them. No, ‘present moment’ Buddhism is not taught, to my knowledge, unless you want to credit Eckhart Tolle with it. I use poetic license to conduct my thought experiments, in hopes of reaching a higher truth, or at least a different one. Interesting that you begin by disagreeing with me, and end by more-or-less agreeing with me. You are obviously a present moment Buddhist, if you are a Buddhist at all, good choice (even if you don’t believe in death, which is a bit of a dicey proposition)…

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  hardie karges 4:11 am on November 11, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Aryan ( 13 ), Brahmanization, caste, dharma ( 35 ), Donald Trump ( 29 ), holy war, India ( 15 ), karma ( 50 ), renunciation ( 15 ), USA ( 18 )   

  Buddhist Holy War, Part II: Tune in, turn on, drop out… 

  (continued from previous)

  The Buddhist situation 2500 years ago may indeed have been not so different from our own, with a rapidly expanding population soon to go into a stall, and the Brahmanization of India underway, i.e. the caste system, threatening to lock people into a form of submission to which they’d never previously been subjected. And it’s no accident that so many religions sprouted within a half millennium or so of the beginning of the common era, with any self-respecting guru prophesying the End of Days…

  All of a sudden renunciation doesn’t look like such a bad option. And so it is today, because what can they do if you simply refuse to cooperate, simply renounce all ties to the current oligarchs, slave-owners and warmongers? They can’t force you to work. They can beat you; they can even kill you. But they can’t force you to work. They can threaten your loved ones, though… (More …)

   
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  hardie karges 6:54 am on November 19, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Aryan ( 13 ), Brahmin ( 5 ), Buddhism ( 429 ), caste, Celtic ( 2 ), Dravidian ( 2 ), genome ( 5 ), Germanic, haplogroup ( 4 ), Harappa, Indus Valley Civilization, karma ( 50 ), meditation ( 190 ), Mohenjo-Daro, rebirth ( 37 ), reincarnation ( 14 ), Slavic ( 2 ), yoga ( 6 )   

  Did Russians Hack Buddhism in the 5th Century BCE? Here’s the deal… 

  NO, this is not click-bait; this is Buddhism, and I’m dead serious. OKAY, so maybe they weren’t Russians exactly, and MAYBE I have a lively imagination, and am an excitable boy from way back, AND you can’t just talk casually about the ‘Aryan invasion’ of India way back when, ever since Hitler crapped on us all with his inimitable armies, half-empty promises and his half-baked theories, BUT there is an element of truth to his Aryan (c)rap…

  Hitler just never did his homework really, all bark and no wood, jumping to conclusions and tilting at windmills, and absolutely no desire to make amends with his lessers of men. But now we have genomic research, which lends a strong measure of empirical (not imperial) truth to what used to be wild speculation, whether it be eye-witness testimony clouded by memory, or no-witness history clouded by time…  (More …)