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  hardie karges 4:55 am on February 23, 2025 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 429 ), defilements ( 4 ), Dependent Origination, Four Noble Truths ( 18 ), greed ( 3 ), Hardie Karges ( 240 ), jealousy ( 2 ), language ( 145 ), lust ( 4 ), meditation ( 190 ), Pali ( 20 ), religion ( 158 ), Sanskrit ( 22 ), suffering ( 28 )   

  Buddhism 102: Craving is the Curse… 

  

  Don’t test positive for COVET disease, because jealousy is a hard habit to break, as many a fine pop song has elucidated quite well. But it rings true, especially in the Buddhist attitude toward the world, fully established in Noble Truth number two as the cause of suffering. That’s craving, of course, also known in its manifestations as jealousy, which is only slightly different, or even lust, with its own category of trsna or tanha, Sanskrit or Pali, a thirst gone too far, beyond the simple satisfactions of life, and into unrequited desire. And then there’s greed, one of the three poisons, all closely related on the scale of Dependent Origination.

   But such is the nature of desire, or craving, that it can never be satisfied, by the very nature of its existence, the unsatisfactory nature, i.e. suffering. The best that we can do is ameliorate it, that is, acknowledge its presence, and its call, and give it something, but don’t give it all, of your time or your money, just enough to keep it at bay, far far away, out of your life and out of your mind. Because that is the greatest curse of all, to let nefarious emotions and influences occupy all of your precious thoughts.

  This is why thinking sometimes gets a bad rap and a bad rep, simply because, if left to fester uncontrolled, thoughts can run wild and waste all your time, leading to what we often call ‘monkey mind’, in reference to the constant chatter and mindlessness that defiles us and denies the reason we’re here. And so, we seek more mindfulness, and a decrease in suffering, caused by craving, firstly, and impermanence, secondly, the phenomena of existence that must be dealt with, but not succumbed to, similar to wild dogs prowling Main Street late at night, howling at the moon for lack of something better to do. But we have something better—meditation. When danger threatens, do nothing—quickly.

  Hardie Karges and jmoran66 are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    jmoran66 5:00 am on February 23, 2025 Permalink | Reply

    “When danger threatens, do nothing—quickly”. That’s a keeper.

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    Hardie Karges 6:06 am on February 23, 2025 Permalink | Reply

    Haha, thanks

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  hardie karges 2:33 am on December 10, 2023 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Age of Reason, Aristotle ( 3 ), Dependent Origination, ego ( 33 ), Hardie Karges ( 240 ), meditation ( 190 ), rationality, reason   

  Buddhism: Rational if not Scientific  

  

  There is nothing mystical about Buddhism in its essence. The Middle Path is all about rationality, ratio, ratiocination, and rations. All of which is to say that Buddhism is a rational philosophy, surprise surprise. All the fancy metaphysics came later, as did the elaborate superstitions and multiple realms of heaven and hell. So, if that’s what gives your life meaning, then that is convenient. But it’s not for me, metaphysics maybe, but not superstitions. Don’t forget that the Buddha and Aristotle came from similar genetic stock, and sometimes they came to similar conclusions. 

  Rationality was quite novel in its day, if not downright radical, culminating in the European Age of Reason in the 17^th century. So, it was something of a revelation in 500BCE that causes preceded effects—almost all the time, haha. But monks double down on the concept to this day, as if it were the latest thing since quantum physics. That’s how seriously the concept is taken. And, from that simple beginning, the more elaborate concept of Dependent Origination is spun like the finest weaving from the finest silk, even though the concept is very simple.  

  Everything is linked in a causal chain of dependence that spares nothing and no one, nor would you want it to. The real beauty of it is that no fancy quantum leaps of faith or judgment are needed to see how and why things happen. There is no jealous war god. There is no green-eyed monster. All that is necessary is the simple practice of kindness and goodness toward the world and the practice of meditation for oneself, i.e. non-self. Ego and selfish considerations are for the birds in their search for immediate gratification. You and I, we’ve been through that. 
   
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  hardie karges 12:03 pm on February 10, 2023 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Dependent Origination, empathy ( 5 ), Hardie Karges ( 240 ), individualism, Marx ( 4 ), religion ( 158 ), society ( 5 ), sympathy ( 2 )   

  Buddhism, the Individual and Society 

  

  

  You see that other person over there? They’re flesh and blood, just like you. You don’t know what they’re going through, so please be kind; manifest your mind. This is one of the side benefits, one of the depth charges, if you will, of Buddhism, maybe not the most obvious, but just possibly the most powerful. That we are not in this world alone, that if we are created from the same causes and conditions, then we are essentially the same person, one person, indivisible, God optional, with liberty and justice for all.

  The simplest word to describe it is empathy, a shot better than sympathy, which implies that you are observing that one there and judging him, her, or it to be worth your while, or your pity, whereas empathy implies that you are literally putting yourself in that one’s shoes and therefore have a very clear feeling of what that feels like. The difference is murky, but I think that pretty well describes it, and while both may be valuable, empathy is more to the point that Buddhism takes care to make in the law of Dependent Origination: there is a process of which we are all part.

  I’m only taking that a step further: if we’re all a part of the same process, then we are all essentially One. So, what? What’s the big deal? Well, it IS a big deal when you realize that Western philosophy has done much the opposite, elevating individualism to primacy, while relegating society to secondary status, as if the family were the only true society and everyone else were simply actors on a stage or consumers in the marketplace. And this is the unspoken assumption of Marx, also, whose theories might actually work if society were one big family. But we’re not, not yet. Buddhism is a start in the right direction.  

   
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  hardie karges 10:48 am on January 15, 2023 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Brahmin caste, Buddhism ( 429 ), CHRISTIANITY ( 160 ), Dependent Origination, Four Noble Truths ( 18 ), Franz Ferdinand ( 2 ), Hardie Karges ( 240 ), Hittite, Mahayana ( 46 ), meditation ( 190 ), Mittani, rebirth ( 37 ), religion ( 158 ), Ten Commandments ( 6 ), Vajrayana ( 22 )   

  Buddhism 101: Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Actions 

  

  

  Think good thoughts, speak good words, perform good acts. It’s contagious. It’s catching. It can make the difference between life and death. And that’s the bedrock of Buddhism, regardless of what the ‘rebirther’ Buddhists or the meditator Buddhists think, they tending to Vajrayana and Mahayanist persuasions, respectively, whether they know it or not, haha. Because the Buddha didn’t call his initial sermon the Four Noble Truths for nothing, and that’s Number One: Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Actions…

  And if that sounds a lot like a song by Franz Ferdinand, then so be it. And if that sounds a lot like the Ten Commandments, then so be it. It’s simple. It’s basic. It’s universal, as it should be. Now I won’t go into the fact that Four Noble Truths can also be translated Four Aryan Truths, but there may be a clue to its universality there. Hittites of Mideast fame were also Indo-Europeans and may have accomplished much more than merely be a thorn in the side of the Semites. The nearby Mittani culture also had close connections with Sanskrit speakers…

  But that’s neither here nor there, and only serves to agitate modern India’s Brahmin caste. What’s important is not nationalism, but rationalism, the kind that thinks before it speaks and looks before it leaps. That was implicit in the earliest Buddhism, also, with its insistence upon the acknowledgement of causes and conditions for all the phenomena of the world, not superstition or divine intervention. And that’s Dependent Origination in a nutshell, a theory that not only defines us, but combines us. We’re all in this together, literally. Be kind.

   
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  hardie karges 11:51 am on September 20, 2020 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Abhidharma ( 5 ), Buddhist ( 3 ), Dependent Origination, karma ( 50 ), nidanas ( 2 ), past lives ( 8 ), rebirth ( 37 )   

  The Buddhist doctrine of Dependent Arising reconsidered… 

  Everything is a cause. Everything is an effect. We are in the middle. Find happiness there. And I think that this is very close to the original intention of the Buddhist doctrine of Dependent Arising, that there are strict causal connections between events and their aftermaths, even if the connections are maybe not as precise as some may imagine.

  Formally known in Sanskrit as प्रतीत्यसमुत्पाद pratītyasamutpāda or in Pali (the related Theravada canonical language as पटिच्चसमुप्पाद paṭiccasamuppāda, it simply means: “if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist”. Which is all well and good, as far as it goes, whether you take the doctrine as an ontological principle, on the subject of being, or as an epistemological principle, on the subject of knowledge.

  The problem arises (pun intended) when we get down to the twelve links (nidanas), which supposedly articulate this process, basically: 1) ignorance (tabula rasa?), 2) mental formations (first mental activity?), 3) consciousness (of baby-self?), 4) name-and-form (language?), 5) six senses (as distinguished from each other and mind?), 6) contact (look, listen, touch?), 7) sensation (see, hear, feel?), 8) craving, 9) clinging, 10) becoming (ch-ch-changes?), 11) birth (of a higher consciousness?), and 12) aging and death (all question marks indicate my tentative interpretations).

  The problem is that the ‘rebirthers’ (my term and slightly riffing on Trump), have long since appropriated the whole concept as justification for the predetermination and ‘multiple feedback loops’ of karma, that they find necessary to lock one into a system that rewards and punishes with future retribution and prevents the possibility of suicide as a convenient ‘one way out.’

  This notwithstanding the fact that the whole concept apparently predates Buddhism and manifested in various forms before its final version which has become the standard. But ancient terms are always subject to re-interpretation, a current fashion among pseudo-sorta-Buddhas, and of course—shazam and voila! That changes everything. Or does it?

  So I’ve always enthusiastically accepted the general concept, while remaining agnostic on the particulars as if the excessive list-making of wannabe Abhidharmists and johnny-come-lately bloggers, and left it right there unfinished, since modern physics could hardly support a version of empirical reality so obviously simplistic. But a science of mind might. And since psychology is not a science of mind, now, but a science of behavior, then the filed is wide open for speculation.

  The main problem is the first half, the interpretations of which vary widely, as evidenced from the Wikipedia source material. But I see this as a child opening his eyes for the first time and discovering the world, ‘giving names to all the animals,’ (thanks, Bob) etc., and then finally realizing that he is not only an actor on a new stage, but also a toucher, feeler, craver, clinger, thinker, and hopeful bodhisattva—all before he or she has even had his or her first romance (when it really kicks in)!

  Everything else comes after and comprises the final item in the list of mutual dependences. And only in this way do the twelve links make sense to me, though I doubt that the ‘rebirthers’ will buy it. What do you think? Birth is a product of Nature. Rebirth is a product of imagination. I try to do re-invent myself every day…

  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratityasamutpada

   
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  hardie karges 7:48 am on January 28, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 429 ), Dalai Lama ( 12 ), Dependent Origination, dialectic ( 13 ), EckfardtbTolle, Hinduism ( 28 ), Jainism ( 13 ), koan ( 7 ), linguistics ( 13 ), Nagarjuna ( 2 ), Plato ( 17 ), reification ( 4 ), skandhas ( 10 ), Thai Forest Tradition ( 6 ), Thich Nhat Hanh ( 8 ), Tibetan ( 3 ), Vajrayana ( 22 ), Zen ( 31 )   

  Buddhist Back-Story: Dialectics and Linguistics… 

  Theravada Buddhism has it easy, when it comes to dhamma (dharma) talks, just pull out the old mind-kilesa-breath-nose-navel-‘Buddho Buddho Buddho’ playbook, rinse and repeat, hard to screw up unless you want to get into the murky afterbirth of past lives and kamma (karma), doing Yogic headstands and plotting Ptolemaic cosmic epicycles, trying to explain how anatta (non-self) somehow gets reborn, when there really is nothing there to begin with. But still they do. It’s embarrassing, especially when some of the same ones…

  …get all goo-goo-eyed at the mention of ‘this present moment’, which I agree with, if not to the extent that some would take it. So how can you have both, not only within the same school of Buddhism, but within the same person, e.g. the Dalai (not Theravada) Lama? I can find you quotes of him advocating ‘nowness’ while Eckhart Tolle was still sleeping on sofas, and at the same time opining that if someone’s life hasn’t quite worked out right, then it’s because of something they did in a past life—ouch! What gives? (More …)

  Dave Kingsbury and hardie karges are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Dave Kingsbury 4:00 pm on January 29, 2018 Permalink | Reply

    Like any long-lived belief system, I suppose, as complex as people and societies are themselves. The Science connection seems an interesting extension …

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      hardie karges 10:54 pm on January 29, 2018 Permalink | Reply

      Yes, It’s amazing to me that the original Buddhist debate, basically liberal vs. conservative, is still alive today, after countless twists and turns, and analogous to something similar in politics, which is all well and good, I think, as long as everyone can be polite and civilized about it…

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        Dave Kingsbury 2:34 am on January 30, 2018 Permalink

        Indeed. The questions arising from reincarnation are the ones I struggle with. My best shot is to view it as metaphor and therefore helpful for perspective and even humour.

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  hardie karges 7:24 am on September 17, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: anicca ( 10 ), Buddhism ( 429 ), Dependent Origination, Four Noble Truths ( 18 ), Hinduism ( 28 ), meditation ( 190 )   

  ME 6103: So You Wanna’ Be a Buddhist? Eat this… 

  

  Buddhist shrine in Sri Lanka

  So you’ve just finished “Buddhism for Dummies” and think that you might want to take the big plunge, into Buddhism, that is, and now you’re wondering what to do next? Well, I’ve got good news and bad news: there is no Big Plunge, not really, so you can just start calling yourself a Buddhist when ever and wherever you want, limited only by time and circumstance…

  And if you need more than that, then you can go to a Buddhist meditation retreat for a more intense introduction, BUT: unless it’s coordinated with a Buddhist temple, then it’s probably not really Buddhist. Most American meditation events are yoga-affiliated, and while that’s fine, and highly recommended—it ain’t Buddhism. Yoga is a Hindu discipline. Meditation is both, Hindu and Buddhist, too, plus the almost-forgotten-by-now Jains, and others… (More …)