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  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 6:08 pm on December 18, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , CHRISTIANITY, ,   

    Religion Imitates Art: Christian Self-Love and Buddhist Non-Self… 

    img_0953“Man is the measure of all things”…and there began our downfall, this from the Greek Sophist Protagoras and his very sophisticated argument that we human beings are the only thing that matters in this world, our silly views and opinions superior to all others, of course, by virtue of our virtue, and in spite of our spite, the pathological needs of humanity, a sort of radical solipsistic relativism…

    This argument only works with a strong belief and need for self, arguably the origin of consciousness, i.e. self-consciousness, and any further extrapolations indicative of the direction our culture has taken since then, hence our pathological need for democracy, free enterprise, a TV in every room and a car in every garage, every aspect an extension of, and ultimate belief in ourselves, each one of us totally different, supposedly, with or without the bar-code, identified by fingerprints and the DNA from random salivations and assorted misgivings… (More …)

     
    • Dave Kingsbury's avatar

      davekingsbury 3:05 pm on December 19, 2016 Permalink | Reply

      It doesn’t take a genius to realize that there is a higher consciousness than self-consciousness, or that there are higher needs than selfish ones…absolutely, the opposite is a horror story!

    • The Night Wytch's avatar

      Alexia Adder 12:37 am on January 26, 2020 Permalink | Reply

      It’s true scientifically speaking that all life on this planet is interdependent. Western philosophy tends to emphasize independence and the self in human society, but in reality this is an illusion. We’re part of the animal kingdom. We’re not above it. We’re subject to it.

      • hardie karges's avatar

        hardie karges 7:53 am on January 26, 2020 Permalink | Reply

        Yes. I’ve been studying genomics. It’s only logical that if we all have a common human ancestor, then we also have prior animal ones, a path back in time…

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 12:20 am on October 16, 2016 Permalink | Reply
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    Religion 221: Less is More, Time for New Paradigms… 

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    Christian church in Ethiopia

    If the Renaissance man was our hero of the 1500’s and the scientist our hero of the 1600’s, then Enlightened Man was the paradigm for the West in the 1700’s and the entrepreneur was the paradigm in the 1800’s. But then the paradigm in the later 1900’s took a dive and our new culture hero was the wild man, the playboy, the gangster, the rogue, the drug addict, the bad boy, the bad girl, the streetwalker, you get the idea: so what is the paradigm of the 2000’s? The hacker, maybe, or a terrorist? Sounds grim…

    Or maybe it’ll be a ‘gender-fluid’ ‘metro-sexual’, born and bred to do the exact opposite: never bear nor breed. Such dirty work is better left to specialized breeders and the truly old-fashioned who know how to do little else. LGBTQA’s have better things to do with their specialized hardware, especially now that non-traditional marriage has largely withstood court challenges. Now nothing is prohibited. That might help ease population pressures… (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 5:37 am on October 2, 2016 Permalink | Reply
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    Religion 102: She’s Gotta’ Have It—Christianity, that is… 

    IMG_0379…stuff, that is, the more the better, piles and piles of it highly derived and thoroughly contrived, mostly useless adornments and bows of worship to the gods and goddesses of fashion, reflecting the finely manicured thumbnail status of our culture, whatever is trending; that’s most important, much more so than whatever came before and whatever will come after, pesky details best left to historians and our paid apologists…

    Yes, apparently Jesus died on the cross so that we could go shopping, among other things. Some of my favorite ‘other things’, by way of example, are the daredevil stunts that we Westerners have become famous for. How many people risk their lives each year climbing mountains that there are no reasons to climb, or reaching speeds that there are no reason to reach, or performing stunts just for the big screen, just for the sake of celebrity?

    (More …)

     
    • jodie's avatar

      jodie 10:32 pm on October 31, 2016 Permalink | Reply

      It would seem that the path you are on is as experientially biased as all religious, philosophical, or psychological endeavors ultimately are. If it suits you then ….. sit well…..

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 5:43 am on September 11, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY, , , ,   

    Religion’s Final Quarter, Tie Score: Monotheism 1, Zero-theism 0… 

    IMG_1183

    Statue of Buddha in Kandy, Sri Lanka

    Christians and Muslims will always be at each other’s throats, because they’re both playing offense, which I find rather offensive. We Buddhists prefer to play defense. Don’t you wish the DOD did? It used to be called the Department of War, you know. Nothing’s changed. The best defense is a good offense in American football, but life is no silly game…

    In real life the best offense is a good defense, all kung fu’s and eastern martial arts based on the idea of letting the enemy’s own aggression destroy him–just facilitate the matter. China was for a long time, and is arguably still today, a Buddhist country. It certainly isn’t Communist, far from what Marx or Mao envisioned, with its state-sponsored capitalism, and keeping up with the Joneses… (More …)

     
    • quantumpreceptor's avatar

      quantumpreceptor 1:46 pm on September 11, 2016 Permalink | Reply

      Great read, thank you. I like how the Tibetans describe emptiness with the word DETONG, it has two parts, the first is empty of. And it might seem that I did not finish my sentence but I did 🙂 The second part is Joy. One might say that emptiness is the union of that which is empty of and joy. It is so simple but really a loaded statment. I might explain it this way that when one realises the empty nature of things composite that joy is the natural result.

      I have always been so disapointed of all the catholic missionaries that went to India and falsly translated the vedas and other scripts with the intention to paint Buddhism and Hinduism as a buch of nhilists wanting to disapear in to nothingness. How boring would that be? They demonised these two ways of life and purposly misrepresented them. Your entry is here to help clean this up, and we will all be better off when eastern philosophy is properly represented and understood.

      The idea of zero I find totally interesting. Zero is less dependent on one that one is of two or three. There is a logic here that a mathmatician might love. Anything that helps us get past the dependant origination of things is helpful. Does that make sense to you?

    • hardie karges's avatar

      hardie karges 3:41 pm on September 11, 2016 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks, yes, but it’s a huge subject, so could take days, years. My goal is to try to determine what Buddha himself meant, and the more I researched the concept of Zero, the more I became convinced that the coincidence with Buddhism was no accident…

    • Dave Kingsbury's avatar

      davekingsbury 2:26 pm on September 12, 2016 Permalink | Reply

      Fascinating account of the paradoxical power of non-assertion, not too far from what I was trying to say in my post – don’t know if you saw it – https://davekingsbury.wordpress.com/2016/09/04/me-ander/

      • hardie karges's avatar

        hardie karges 4:04 pm on September 12, 2016 Permalink | Reply

        No, I didn’t, and yes, it IS a very similar treatment of a role for ego, just enough to get by, I’d say…

    • Christadelphians's avatar

      Christadelphians 8:38 am on March 2, 2017 Permalink | Reply

      Instead of accusing all Christians and all Muslims you would better say ” Certain Christians and Muslims will always be at each other’s throats”. For real Christians would never go at any body’s throat, accepting all beings to be creatures to be created in the image of God,

      We too should like every body come at ease with ourself and find the emptiness but also the fullness in ourselves. We should try “to be one” with the universe and with our and the “being”.

      Real Christians should not aim to win against other people, they should win the race of them selves to the self (that is also what Jesus and his apostles are talking about).

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 7:38 am on July 10, 2016 Permalink | Reply
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    Religion 111: God, Money, and the Paradigm Sh**t… 

    IMG_0379Is there an inverse proportion between spirituality and material wealth? Duh. How do you spell t-a-u-t-o-l-o-g-y? Let me repeat that again for you, one more time (ha!): “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”—Jesus H. Christ

    Truer words have ne’er been spoke, neither by the righteous, wannabes nor the wicked. It is simply an existential fact. Modern Christians with their consumerist fetishes and bulging waistlines try to explain it away, but trying to keep the weight off is another story. First they try to evade the issue, arguing over whether JC meant that you need humility or divine intervention (sound of throat clearing rhetorically), then give up, bragging about “My congregation’s experiment in using market values to grow our mission.” Rubbish.

    “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”–Luke 16:13. Is that clear enough for you yet? The two concepts, spirituality and money, are not only at odds with each other, but are in fact exact opposites. (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 9:35 am on June 12, 2016 Permalink | Reply
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    Religion 232: Eckhart Tolle, Now-ness, Spirituality, and Identity… 

    As you probably already know, thanks to the patronage of Oprah Winfrey and others, Eckhart Tolle has been called “the most spiritually influential person in the world.”  So I was all ready to diss and dismiss him as a charlatan and pop-schlock marketeer, just because he had the temerity to title his obra maestra “The Power of Now”, such now-ness easily classified as ‘cliché’ even, or especially, within high Buddhist circles, if not just by the wannabes, academics and literary hacks like myself…

    Then I decided to actually read his stuff, albeit en espanol, El Poder de Ahora, the work in translation, though he apparently speaks Spanish himself (the English-language e-version is back-ordered for streaming at my library).  Now I haven’t thoroughly absorbed the book yet, but Eckhart Tolle just may be on to something here, something very important, the basis of our identity—or lack thereof…

    Cut to the chase, if you haven’t already: Tolle sees our identifying with our own thought processes as the source of all of our problems.  Wow!  Now I’m not exactly sure yet what he would have us identify with instead, but the effect is palpable, nonetheless. Apparently Tolle would have us identify with ‘consciousness’, albeit one without thought…  (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 11:12 am on June 5, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY, , ,   

    Religion 201: Lessons in Humility, Messages for Humanity… 

    Christian God

    Christian God

    “Man is the measure of all things.”  Protagoras (c.490-420 BCE) is the author of that statement, and—with all due respect—I’d say that’s the beginning of the end of us humans as spiritual animals, and the mark of our ascension to the status of corrupt malignant city-dwellers, masters of our own private little domains and little else.  On the one hand, it is a statement of the relativity of all perceptions—okay.  On the other hand, it is a statement of our ignorance and arrogance—ouch!

    We imagine that we are masters of the universe, creators of the cosmos, and lords of the lower two hundred—countries in the world, that is. This is nothing but human hubris, of course, and nothing could be further from the truth.  We live at the mercy of our machines, possessed by our possessions, in the thrall of our inventions and our inventiveness, in love with ourselves and our selfishness, enraptured by our images and our imaginations.  We wallow in our memories and our comforts and our conveniences.

    We Westerners admire ourselves, our successes, our ambitions, our madness, without even questioning the whys and wherefores of it.  We climb naked rock faces, while smiling all the time, oblivious to the danger, addicted to the climb, always looking for a faster computer and a more easily programmable car, pushing envelopes and shuffling papers, rejecting our traditions and annoying our neighbors.  Ego rules! Nobody wants to be the follower, everybody wants to be the Alpha male, while ending up the Alpha a$$hole. (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 7:35 am on May 8, 2016 Permalink | Reply
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    Getting Religion, Losing Depression—Motivational Mix and Match… 

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    Buddhist Temple in Laos

    Depression is very over-rated, in my opinion, which means that I don’t much believe in it, and not for lack of trying—and crying.  It’s too easy.  It’s a cop-out, unless you ARE truly depressed, of course, in some clinically measurable way, i.e. most likely chemical (but that’s never been proven).  Unhappiness, while not simple, is simply not depression, even when one is ‘minor’ and the other ‘major’.  There’s a qualitative difference IMHO.

    ‘Unhappiness’ means you need to make some changes in your life, not in your prescription—motivational therapy optional.  That is not always easy, of course, and may involve some compromises you never imagined making.  Fortunately, in this transient age, impermanence is currency, and you can always go back to from where you came.  Keep that bizniz card in your pocket and an open door to your back.  (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 11:14 am on May 1, 2016 Permalink | Reply
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    Losing Religion, Learning Language: Contagion of Kindness Needed ASAP, pls… 

    IMG_0387We become so inured to modern violence that we assume it’s natural, the general air of belligerence and the general lack of politeness.  And that’s right I reckon—it IS natural, or WAS, anyway—in the beginning.  Imagine what it would be like it we hadn’t been inoculated by religion at birth, that vaccination by cultural collusion and linguistic license, immigrant immersion and religious righteousness.

    We need a booster shot now, more than ever, we so far from God, and so close to Mexico, conveniently close to sacrificial lambs, artificial limbs and easy scapegoats for our worst trespasses and most hideous transgressions, things we should’ve said and things we should’ve done, too late now to start over, so must settle for walls and bridges, duct-tape solutions and anti-retroviral cocktails…

    If you’re American, then the degree to which you’re awash in violence is a serious impediment to (y)our spiritual well-being. I don’t mean that you yourself have done anything necessarily wrong, except maybe being born in the wrong place.  Jesus Christ once said that a camel could go through the eye of a needle easier than a rich man could find his way to Heaven. And he was right, I’d say, though modern-era capitalists try to quickly change the narrative, something about ‘trespasses’… (More …)

     
    • k's avatar

      k 11:27 am on May 1, 2016 Permalink | Reply

      interesting. my ideas may be simpler, may be more difficult, to get back to the garden. until then i will not let the city discourage me or anyone else from a community garden and am starting work on the third guerrilla garden, that’s all i know to do that is right, grow peace, grow flowers, grow herbs, maybe give someone besides myself happiness. enjoy the temple.

      • hardie karges's avatar

        hardie karges 12:30 pm on May 1, 2016 Permalink | Reply

        I strongly believe in community gardens, hope to see one hanging off every skyscraper within my lifetime…

    • Dave Kingsbury's avatar

      davekingsbury 1:22 pm on May 2, 2016 Permalink | Reply

      Terrific, Hardie, spot on with the language analysis – we’re much deeper enmeshed than we like to think in our free societies. Stephen Pinker reckons humanity is less violent than it was but I suspect the violence is still there though mutated into political and economic aggression. Your antidotes drawn from Buddhist philosophy are perfect and shot through with nice touches of self-deprecation. I’m going to reblog this because I’d like it to be read. Only ever done that once before and that was yours too!

      • hardie karges's avatar

        hardie karges 1:52 pm on May 2, 2016 Permalink | Reply

        Thank you thank you thank you, I’ve read ‘Language Instinct’ by Pinker, liked it, even if I don’t always agree with it…

    • Dave Kingsbury's avatar

      davekingsbury 1:33 pm on May 2, 2016 Permalink | Reply

      Reblogged this on a nomad in cyberspace and commented:
      This is the second post by this guy I’ve reblogged and I’ve only ever reblogged two posts! I love his directness and honesty and, well, I’m jealous because I didn’t write it. I couldn’t, of course, because I’m not American. What he says has resonance in the UK too. And as they say, what happens in the USA today happens here tomorrow!

    • hardie karges's avatar

      hardie karges 7:52 pm on May 2, 2016 Permalink | Reply

      🙂

    • Dave Kingsbury's avatar

      davekingsbury 3:25 am on May 5, 2016 Permalink | Reply

      Hardie, the link on my reblog of this post leads to the title but not the full post. Wondered why this was. Regards, Dave.

    • hardie karges's avatar

      hardie karges 6:31 am on May 5, 2016 Permalink | Reply

      Had a problem yesterday, still don’t know why, especially since it’s both my blogs, but not on others, i.e. yours. Seems okay now. THX!

    • peaceof8's avatar

      peaceof8 8:34 am on May 8, 2016 Permalink | Reply

      Wow. I really like this. I will be coming back to this one…there are some phrases you use “another day and in another way, with cooler heads and makeshift beds” that are fantastic and filled with visuals. Really meaty. Thank you! I also like that you make a valid point without making it feel preachy. Following you!

    • Mercedes Holmes's avatar

      RemedialEthics 11:02 pm on June 21, 2018 Permalink | Reply

      I am late to the party here, but I couldn’t have found this place you’ve created here at any better time. I was looking for an address in Sasabe, AZ but Google in its infinite wisdom led me to an older blog post of yours that brought tears to my eyes. I live off Sasabe Rd about 30 miles north of the town of Sasabe and we have all been feeling a tad well…hated is really the only word that works so… hated by the current ruling majority.
      This post in particular hit home with me. I am a freelance writer by trade. That is a good thing and I am thankful everyday that I insisted on signing up for every writing and literature course I could in college, despite the fact that I was earning my Veterinary medicine degree. The dubious innovation of AI or Bot writing critiques rather than peer reviewed submissions has been the fly in the ointment for me lately. The younger set is convinced that artificial intelligence is the only fair way to handle any sort of hard decision that could possibly offend someone or cause hurt feelings. I couldn’t disagree more. You see, I have a problem (that I was blissfully unaware was a problem til the blessing of AI) that AI and Bots can’t stand and that is the “passive voice”. I am admonished for my passive voice on nearly every submission now. I went 43 years thinking I was a confident, independent, woman and now thanks to the politically correct, non-offensive AI Bot, I am a meek, passive-aggressive weakling and I think I’m a little offended. All jokes aside though, I loved and share your sentiment on Sasabe and the Mexican people in general. I am even more pleased to find a real workable defense of the “passive voice”, I’m ready to go have a few (very polite) words with a certain critique bot.. Thank you for the much needed mental reset.

      • hardie karges's avatar

        hardie karges 12:05 am on June 22, 2018 Permalink | Reply

        Thanks for your substantive comment. I’ve noticed that there’s a bias against passive voice, also, though I didn’t learn that in a course, just noticed that it was edited out, and totally skewed the meaning that I intended–interested that bots and AI are now involved. On the other hand Spanish seems to favor it, e.g. ‘si se puede’. I’d argue that Buddhism favors it also, with the emphasis on ‘non-self’, ‘anatta’. BTW I loved crossing the border the border at Sasabe, one of the few borders in AZ that didn’t detain me, presumably because I had an Afghanistan visa (San Luis is the worst). Thanks again for your comments…

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 9:09 am on March 27, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY,   

    Passion of Christ = Suffering of Buddha 

    IMG_1660

    Buddhist Temple in Laos

    “All Life is Suffering” is the First Noble Truth of Buddhism. Unfortunately that’s as far as some people ever get, the more adventurous maybe even deciding that they’ll choose ‘the way of Zen’ instead, as though they could somehow avoid those pesky Noble Truths and all that suffering. Sorry. But wait: what if the First Noble Truth were to be phrased as, “All Life is Passion?” Then would you feel any different about the outlook? Sounds Christian, doesn’t it? The original meaning is the same. The Passion of Christ is all about suffering.

    Shiny happy people are a relatively new phenomenon, and arguably predicated upon the suffering of others, but… Regardless, there’s good news. Within certain limits you can live and move and have your being, but those limits are what defines our dimension—the speed of light, the speed of sound, the average life expectancy, etc… So: that desn’t mean that you have to be miserable; no, quite the contrary. You just need to know your limits and then you can proceed accordingly. (More …)

     

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