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  • Unknown's avatar

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

    Passion of Christ = Suffering of Buddha 

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    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 …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 11:27 am on March 6, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , CHRISTIANITY,   

    Religion, Atheism, Buddhism, Christianity and fear… 

    Atheists are adamant about denying the existence of God, without making it clear exactly ofIMG_0387 what they are denying the existence. I get the feeling that denial is the important act. They seem to not be able to get past the fact that our God and gods are created by us ourselves, first person plural possessive reflexive. Does that make them any less real or efficacious? I mean: I don’t think anyone really believes that there is a Superman sitting up there on a cloud somewhere sipping espresso, do they? Okay, so never mind, the important thing is how you live your life…

    …and definitions of God have long been shifting, subject to a sliding scale of current events, and ultimately are secondary to their utility in our lives. My own suspicion—totally unprovable—is that gods have their origin aboriginally in the deaths of powerful leaders and family members. Where did they go? What just happened? So where did we come from, anyway? Just like early Texan settlers felt the need to “Remember the Alamo!” others must have long felt the need, or desire, to remember their ancestors. Ancestor worship seems to confirm this. From there it’s a short hop to postulated deities… (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 8:29 am on February 21, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , CHRISTIANITY, , , , secular humanism   

    Secular Humanism? Yeah, right: Gimme Religion, and ASAP… 

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    Buddhist shrine in Sri Lanka

    For better or worse, Bernie, “We’re-All-In-This-Together” is not a religion. Spirituality? Maybe, but I doubt it. Nice try, though. It’s okay to be Jewish, you know. It doesn’t mean anything bad, as long as you’re not a tool of the modern state of Israel. So feel free to clarify that, ASAP, but obscuring your ethnic origins by muddying up religious waters is not helpful…

    So Bernie sounds like a ‘secular humanist’ to me, and not a ‘practicing Jew’. But I’m not interested in politics right now. I’m interested in religion. So is ‘secular humanism’ a religion? Naah, not really. Why not? They’re all just belief systems, aren’t they, ‘secular humanism’ and every religion? So what’s the difference? Does a religion have to have a God? Buddhism doesn’t really have a God, and Islam allows no images of one. Hinduism has loads.  So what’s the difference?

    Short answer: plenty. In fact, secular humanism DOES have a God, and its name is mostly ME. That’s the difference, and that’s the opposite of what religion is all about. Religion is all about being a part of something bigger than you, and secular humanism is all about individuality, and individualism, specifically this individual, and all too often (drum roll here, please): ego.  God help us. (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 9:41 am on February 14, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY,   

    Buddhism: the Path to Compassion… and Conciliation 

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    Buddhist shrine in Sri Lanka

    Buddhism is well-known for its compassion, but actually: shouldn’t they all be? In fact, yes all religions are pretty equal in that regard, to their own adherents, at least. Christians who rejoice in their style of communion might be surprised at the joy of two Muslims meeting at the unexpected random encounter in some disparate (and not necessarily desperate) country.

    So that’s the challenge, really, then, isn’t it—to expand the umbrella of inclusion, so that people can feel that feeling of brotherhood whenever and wherever and with whomever? Unfortunately it doesn’t always work out that way, as cultural baggage weighs heavily and racial and facial considerations rear their ugly heads in calculated derision… (More …)

     
    • Dave Kingsbury's avatar

      davekingsbury 1:53 pm on February 15, 2016 Permalink | Reply

      An insightful blend of philosophy and personal experience which hits the nail on the head … I shall remember your phrase ‘umbrella of inclusion’!

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 9:37 am on January 24, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY, , ,   

    Religion 101: Christianity is all about Passion; Buddhism is all about… 

    …’getting over it’, of course, as if you didn’t know that already, you who’ve probably fallen in love more times than you care to admit and probably never ‘got it right’, or maybe just once or twice, depending on how you count and who you ask, not that you let that stop you for one moment, reaping maximum rewards from a face, or a glance, or an imagined encounter while waiting in line for coffee, just waiting for something—anything—to ‘kick in’, and not just caffeine…

    Or maybe you followed his/her activities closely enough to know where he/she might be at any given time of day on any given day of the week, and you just happened to be there, too, with an enigmatic smile and a pithy salute, full of vim and vigor and whatever comes later, counting the babies by the look in his/her eyes, or at least the efforts to be made if not dying then at least trying, lucky if you don’t end up at the keyhole on your knees…

    We’ve all been there and we all understand, of course, unless you’re lucky enough to have been born so rich or so pretty that they all come to you and you can pick and choose from the daily queues—yeah, right. This is the likely origin of ego, even, that mustering of personality and passion that makes brakes squeal and hearts break. Ah, passion! That’s the word, embodied in Christ and emboldened by religion, enshrined by the centuries and embedded with our remains… (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 9:29 am on January 10, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY, , ,   

    Love is Religion, Love is a Drug… 

    To love or help family is an obligation, to love or help friends is a pleasure, to love or help your partner is reproduction, but to love and help complete and total strangers is religion. Accepting a certain risk for no uncertain reward is the fruit of forgiveness and the essence of religion, participating in the universality of truth, beauty and goodness and propagating its continued existence and florescence. The only reward is itself. Everything else is business, politics. Everything else is trivial.

    Love is not the only worthwhile activity to engage in here in this world, but almost. Doesn’t almost every other worthwhile activity ultimately come down (up) to love, e.g. faith, hope and charity? Trust is another matter. Trust is an act of possession disguised as love, involving a transaction ultimately reducible to numbers. Trust is a contract; love is not. I try to love everyone, but I’m not sure I trust anyone. There’s no reason to. (More …)

     
    • Dave Kingsbury's avatar

      davekingsbury 1:54 pm on January 11, 2016 Permalink | Reply

      Didn’t Plato say you move through attraction to one towards love for all? Not a fan normally, but reckon he (or was it Socrates?) got that right. You could call it personal evolution, I suppose, though age-related testosterone die-back helps! Thanks for the thought-provoking post …

      • hardie karges's avatar

        hardie karges 2:10 pm on January 11, 2016 Permalink | Reply

        Plato definitely said that you love what you don’t have, re: from attraction to love, I’m not sure. Thank you!

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 10:31 am on December 13, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY,   

    The Perfect Religion: 10 Commandments, 8-fold Path, 5 Pillars, 4 Noble Truths, 1 Creator 

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    Christian church in Ethiopia

    Okay, so back to the grind: creating, or let’s say ‘distilling’, the perfect religion. After all, we’re not trying to create something from scratch, quite the opposite, in fact, we’re trying to reconcile religions—all religions—and science, too. Contradictions, in my view, are only apparent, not real.

    If we all love our kids, then we all love God, however that’s defined. All religions have central tenets, and articles of faith, of course, and so does my hypothetically perfect one, as previously noted, and most of them gleaned from the major religions.

    The Five Pillars of Islam are: faith, prayer, alms-giving, fasting, and pilgrimage, all pretty basic, of which pilgrimage to Mecca might be discarded for our general use as too cult-specific, non-general, and non-attainable. Visas to Saudi Arabia are hard to come by, even for Muslims. (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 10:03 am on December 6, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY, , , , , ,   

    The New Religion: Science (and the speed of light as the threshold to heaven) 

    LGBTQA’s like to talk about how they often feel ‘trapped in this body’, generally referring to a male in a female body or vice versa, but aren’t we all ‘trapped in this body’? Isn’t it almost an axiom of Christianity that our souls are trying to be free? Isn’t that why we’re all here, looking for something more, something different, something ‘spiritual’ if not holy religious, some philosophical succor on an otherwise average Sunday, which could be used for the counting of our monies were it not for some lingering Judeo-Christian-Islamic notion of a Sabbath to be kept sacred, not scared and not working?

    I mean: there’s nothing wrong with this world of five or so senses, nothing except for the fears, hatred, frustrations and cruelty, that is, but full of undeniable beauty, also, e.g. nature in all its splendor and grandeur. But still: isn’t there something more, just behind our reach, right behind the projection screen, almost touchable almost ‘feel-able’ if not quite audible visible or smell-able—okay, so maybe smell-able… (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 8:32 am on November 22, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY, , , Paris   

    In Memoriam: We Are All One, Like it or Not… 

     

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    Spires In Thailand

    “If you love your life, you will lose it…If you give it up in this world, you will be given eternal life.”

    –John 12:25

    For some reason, that sentiment resonates with me, and many others, I think, that the rewards of this earthly existence are transient and ephemeral, and that there are bigger and better things to do here than getting and spending and counting our money. This is but a brief interlude, by any measure, and it’s a real shame to waste it in mindless murder—or even mindless multiplication. But we’re only human; that’s what we do. We possess. We accumulate. We go forth and multiply… all of which is fine, as long as we don’t get too attached to it, or even worse: ‘fall in love’ with it.

    The events of Paris last week are a good example. Now that the dust has settled and some scores have been settled over the ownership of the land that was settled by our progenitors, it’s not hard to see the vicious circuitry to it all, the battle for one-up-man-ship that pervades all human interactions from the seminal act of sex to the terminal act of death, the jockeying for position and the positioning of jockeys for maximum exposure and maximum penetration. Pounds of flesh have been demanded as retribution and paid in kind over centuries, but nothing has really changed, has it? (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 8:03 am on November 8, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: alcohol, , CHRISTIANITY, ,   

    Building the Perfect Religion: Humility, Moderation and Sobriety? Ouch… 

    Well, I guess sex is no big deal, after all, in my perfect hypothetical religion, basically just: cover your genitals, please. And don’t do it in public. And hide it from the kids. Dress moderately. Homosexuality is okay, as long as you don’t demand the right to march down Market Street in only your jockstrap. Abortion is a horrible thing, but ultimately a woman’s right to choose, for lack of better options. I would only say to women who see this issue as only an issue of women’s health: we’re talking about a human life here, okay? At some point it becomes murder, which is not okay… what else?

    Like sex, most religions don’t deal with issues of sobriety directly, but many do, being prohibited outright in some. Once again I see no clear path either way, but it has certainly been an object of contention over the years. To this day, many counties and cities in the USA are ‘dry’, not allowing any sales of alcohol; and many others are so restrictive that they accomplish much the same purpose, allowing mixed drinks only in eating establishments, for instance, the only stand-alone bars limited to beer.

    But mention Christianity or the West to much of the world, and the first image that comes to many foreigners’ minds is alcohol—and drunkenness. It’s pretty accurate, really. Historical scuttlebutt is that the Celts invaded the Roman Empire looking for wine, long after they themselves had had a reputation for beer, from which the Spanish word for it—cerveza—comes, apparently. They likely invented wheels and pivoting axles, too, so the buzz is not necessarily bad, just disgusting for a lot of people, it seems. I concur. It’s messy. There are cleaner highs, if you just gotta… (More …)

     

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