streaming consciousness…

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  hardie karges 4:47 am on March 16, 2025 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 428 ), DOGMA, emotion ( 6 ), Hardie Karges ( 239 ), Hatred ( 6 ), impermanence ( 6 ), language ( 144 ), meditation ( 189 ), personality ( 3 ), self ( 20 )   

  Buddhism in the Time of Troubles… 

  

  The healing begins when the fighting ends, and hatred subsides in its wake. Because, what is hatred, if not misplaced emotion in search of a carrier, like some disease looking for a victim? We assume that these emotions are ‘ours’, as if we should be proud of that fact, when neither assumption is true. That is, we don’t own those emotions, and even if we did, there’s nothing there to be proud of. And nothing is better proof of the ‘aggregate’ nature of our personalities than the transient nature of ‘our’ emotions.

  Because, when we speak of ‘personality’ it’s clear that we are not speaking of any kind of ‘self’, much less an immortal soul. And that is our predicament here in this life in this world, that we are not much more than a bundle of emotions, looking for a place to lay the burden down. If that sounds like cruel fate under a cruel weight, then the reality itself may not be quite so bleak. Because the flexible nature of impermanent circumstances does have the advantage of a flexible response to changing conditions. If Buddhism is a failure, the it’s a failure as dogma.

  After all, how can you fashion agreement from a core fanbase that speaks probably at least a hundred languages from a few dozen countries spread out over the world’s largest continent and two largest countries over the last two millennia? And that’s just the core! It’s a challenge to be overcome, and it’s a glory to behold, that these diverse peoples from a thousand different circumstances can and do debate the dharma from diverse traditions, whether conservative or liberal, and still agree on certain starting points: the presence of suffering, the vacuity of personality, and the impermanence of…nearly everything.

   

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  hardie karges 9:53 am on December 11, 2022 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: DOGMA, Hardie Karges ( 239 ), karma ( 49 ), past ( 3 ), space ( 4 ), time ( 6 )   

  Buddhist News Flash! Dogma Gets Run Over by Karma 

  

  

  Beat all dogma with the dullest of dull clubs and bury it six point six feet (two meters) under the ground, because Buddhism is better than that. Still the temptations are real, to establish a Buddhism comma INC that can generate ample funds for wayward monks and maybe send a kid or two to school in the process, or at least I hope so. Karma means actions, after all, and that’s almost always better than dogma.

  But the quest for certainty exists, as in all religions, that being their sine qua non, for lack of a better foreign expression to impress you with, haha. Because the only thing certain is the past, and we are its prisoner, if we let it rule us. So, its only use to us is as a guide, or a teacher, and isn’t that why we always chose someone older than us as our teachers? Their past is their certainty and the tool of their trade. But life must be lived, and not merely studied, like so many beans to be counted, while they find a path through us.

  And that’s why we focus on the present, with only an eye to the past, since what was right for that time has a reduced relevance and resonance for the present. Otherwise, we are committed to dogma and the predilections of the past, while the future is a new babe a-borning, and soon must be swaddled and fed. But these are only metaphors, of course, and if time really exists, then it probably has the same number of dimensions as space, namely one, so just here and now. Only one dimension is necessary to define a point, and that’s the point.
   
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  hardie karges 11:48 am on July 19, 2020 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddha ( 49 ), Buddhism ( 428 ), dharma ( 35 ), DOGMA, Koran, rebirth ( 37 ), reincarnation ( 14 )   

  Rapping on Rebirth and Reincarnation, in the Failed State of a Rental Car Nation… 

  

  The best rebirth is the one that occurs every day. That’s the one that comes right after the Koranic ‘little death’ that occurs each night, and right before the large plate of bangers, beans, and mash with which we submit to break our fast…

  And that little baptism indeed feels better than mere goodliness, a splash in the face, and a new start to the race, and no shame short of crying that we have to go and spoil it all by a mad dash to some sh*t-stained place of work, four corners and a stool from which to count more beans and pretend that this is what drives our evolution…

  Language loses all logic in transmission and translation, so what we strive for becomes strife, and the passion we suffer becomes the passion we love, and we fool ourselves into thinking that it’s all from above, when in reality we struggle to make sense of the simplest things—life, love and the happiness of pursuit, in the face of disease, pestilence, and a plenitude of nemeses…

  So let’s call it the ‘little rebirth’ so as not to confuse it with the big ‘R’ of karmic retribution, and reincarnation, jumping generations and landing on layered platforms, slathered thick with that special sauce of multiple feedback loops, such that we can never escape the prison of consciousness, creating enough past lives to fill volumes of pre-history, such that bad karma apparently extends before the birth of the human race, by conservative estimate…

  But can we be blamed for something that predates the birth of consciousness and so intent, by extension? I hope not, since intent is the basis of all guilty verdicts, and if there is no veridiction to the sentences that we are dealt, then it’s probably better to simply say nothing at all…

  The Buddha’s 100,000 lives, more or less, would extend back at least three million years, more or less, probably more if indeed good lives those of his certainly would be, so probably better to simply write it off as metaphor, and get on with our own lives…

  For we waste time in counting, and more precious time in the combat of exposition, stipulating silly syllogisms for the sake of argument, when the only recourse to recognition is through those labyrinthine passageways of the heart…

  Logic falls flat. Reason lies bleeding. Slide rules are antiquated and calculators require batteries, not always included. There is no path forward when the pathway is circular, and no convenient exit when the doors are all closed. Dharma requires no dogma. Dialog requires no debate…

   
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  hardie karges 5:49 am on August 13, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: consciousness ( 29 ), DNA ( 44 ), DOGMA, ego ( 33 ), Holy Grail, intelligent design, predestination ( 5 ), Science ( 25 )   

  Buddhism and Science: Pre-destination is the Holy Grail… 

  …of religion, science, and life, too, the mostly unrequited wish that “it’s all written,” whether in script or bar-code, to the point of retro-fitting the logic that may or may not have actually led up to some fait accompli, though that accomplished fact was never predicted even at the point of inception. This is the need for happy endings, and the one overriding narrative that drives all others, the one theory of everything…

  How many times has something unexpected happened and the first thing you think is, “Well, I guess that it was (or wasn’t) meant to be.” I know you’ve thought that. We all have. That’s a gut reaction. But sometimes I think I take it too far, to the point of filling in the details to justify that conclusion, when the fact is simply: much of life is random. There IS no predestination, and there IS no particular logic leading up to any particular event. Sh*t happens. Truer words have never been spoken… (More …)

   
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  hardie karges 7:50 am on June 2, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: DOGMA, religion ( 158 )   

  LIMITS OF DOGMA 

  You don’t have to throw out religion because of the dogma. That’s like throwing out the dishes with the dishwater. Religion is initiated in experience and culminates in a belief system. One man’s dogma is another man’s belief system is another man’s mind control. Those who denigrate belief systems, including religion, seem to need higher than normal levels of drugs and alcohol to attain that enlightened mental state. Admittedly belief systems can get out of control and into politics. It’s an endless temptation and maybe even the ideal system if it’s capable of self-correction. Dogma is usually not. They’re all guilty of it, of course, Buddhism in the Tibetan theocracy, Christianity in the old Holy Roman Empire, Islam in modern Iran among countless others. Communism was guilty of the same thing. It’s called ‘totalitarianism’, the idea that the state can control everything, including thought, or conversely, that religion can run the government. These things require finesse, tolerance, and time. Some concepts are simply irreconcilable, better just to agree to disagree. Taliban women under veils are as repulsive to modern Western sensibilities as Amsterdam whorehouses are to the mullahs. There’s no easy reconciliation, best just to stay on your side of the line.