streaming consciousness…

Tagged: duality Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• 

  hardie karges 3:57 am on December 17, 2023 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: duality, Hardie Karges ( 240 ), homo sapiens ( 7 ), language ( 145 ), logic ( 14 ), meditation ( 190 ), monkey mind ( 4 ), patanjali, samadhi ( 13 ), samatha ( 4 ), silence ( 13 ), spirituality ( 27 ), yoga ( 6 )   

  Buddhism: Silence is Better than Language…  

  

  You can say ‘namaste’ all day and prove little. You can say nothing and prove much. Or you can sit in samadhi all day and prove everything, ‘samadhi’ being that meditative state of total absorption, in which the threads of language are locked out at the gates without credentials for entry. Because language is that element of mental activity tainted with the brush of corruption, duality at its most obvious, subjects verbing adjectivized objects so adverbially that prepositions threaten to revolt and assume post-positions, conjunctions just looking for somewhere to put an ‘and,’ ‘but’ only ‘if’ conditions can be avoided, so tenses only indicative, nothing subjunctive allowed. 

  All of which is to say that there’s more to life than language, OR logic, and often it’s even positively negative, if you care to find some meditative transcendence for even a moment in this increasingly noisy world or ours, crowded and clusterf*cked almost beyond recognition of the sublime Nature that it once was, notwithstanding the sporadic violence inherent to that same Nature.  

  Language is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it allowed homo sapiens to subdue, or outdo, all its competitors in the competition for the low-hanging fruit of life, those skills allowing multiple individuals to act as one for the purpose of being ‘firstest with the mostest,’ skills indispensable for survival when life is on the line and food is not yet on the table. This can be proven conclusively with the timelines of our competitors’ mutual demise in the face of sapiens’ overwhelming superiority. 

  On a more practical day-to-day basis, it’s simply an easy recipe for mindfulness, antidote for the common complaint of ‘monkey mind,’ during which our minds are so possessed of internal chatter that it’s virtually impossible to think properly, much less achieve some level of ‘calm abiding,’ i.e. samatha. So, ironically, the very thing that is our military strength is our existential downfall—unless we can control it. This is the unique sapiens challenge to zoological superiority and key to the future ascendance of our species—or not. Thus, Buddhist practice is more than an individual accomplishment; it’s truly intrinsic to our survival. 

   

  Reply Cancel reply

  Required fields are marked *

  Name *

  Email *

  Website

  Notify me of new comments via email.

  Notify me of new posts via email.

  Δ

• 

  hardie karges 4:07 am on November 26, 2023 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Calvin, duality, ego ( 33 ), Four Noble Truths ( 18 ), Freud ( 4 ), Hardie Karges ( 240 ), hungry ghosts, maharishi ( 2 ), Maharshi, Mary Baker Eddy, predestination ( 5 )   

  Buddhism in the Bardo Realm: Facing Reality  

  

  All critiques, analyses, and deep discussions of arcane doctrines fall flat in the face of reality. The only important thing is the reduction of suffering. That’s why the Buddha made suffering the focus of his Four Noble Truths, the bedrock of Buddhism, without which there would have been no Buddhism. Because this is the heart and soul of Buddhism, long before the superstitions began creeping in, the past lives and the hungry ghosts and the glittering deities and the evil wicked monsters. And don’t forget the fancy metaphysics, which can be just as superstitious as gods and demons.  

  Because metaphysicians like to talk about perfection, and duality, and free will, and ego, without a shred of proof as to the veracity of any of it—or even the empirical presence of any of it. Who’s ever seen ego? Not Freud. Who’s ever seen predestination? Not Calvin. Who’s seen perfection? Not Mary Baker Eddy. Who’s seen duality? Not Maharshi nor Maharishi. Yet they can all expound on the topics as if they really exist, verbs putting on long pants and a suit to become nouns, leave the hiking boots for tomorrow, in case the latest vehicle won’t fly. 

  But the Buddha probably knew that he was on to something so sublime that it was simple enough to satisfy the threadbare renunciant while subtle enough to satisfy the schooled philosopher—but only for a while. Because soon enough, they’ll be wanting more more, bigger bigger. Just like celebrants banging the drum, the religionists will want more dogma, and the devotees will want more karma. And Original Buddhism will become Big Rig Buddhism, and then there will be Diamond Dog Buddhism, at the same time there’s Crazy Wisdom Buddhism, and so, soon enough, we’ll be right back where we started, and someone will have to sit down and try to figure out what to do next. Hi. 
   
• 

  hardie karges 6:51 am on November 12, 2023 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: duality, Hinduism ( 28 ), karma ( 50 ), New Age ( 8 ), non-duality ( 2 ), quantum physics ( 2 ), rebirth ( 37 ), self ( 20 )   

  Buddhism in the Real World: To Be or Not To Be… 

  

  When you believe in yourself, don’t believe too much, just enough to accomplish what you need, not enough to inflate your ego. But this is a hard thing to measure, so must simply somehow be ‘felt,’ as if it were a real substantial thing. It’s not. This is the problem which often occurs when all the ‘other’ religions, philosophies, theoretical sciences, and sundry spiritualities like Hinduism, Buddhism, quantum physics, and chaos theory all get lumped together as co-equal partners in ‘New Age’ metaphysics. 

  The problem, of course, is that many are mutually contradictory. Many things simply can’t be had both ways, Buddhism and Hinduism being the best examples. Hindus believe in an eternal soul. Buddhists don’t. Still Hindus consider Buddhists a renegade sect and constantly try to surround them and close the circle (zero?) while no one is looking. Karma, rebirth and past lives are the best-laid trap, to which Buddhism must constantly be on guard not to fully submit, lest it become ‘just another Hindu sect.’ 

  And so it is with you. Self is not a binary choice, all or none, duality or non-duality. You can be a personality with a happy and fruitful time in this life and this world without ever being left with the dubious choice of a cosmic eternal all-important soul or a subject-less object-less witness to actions that you have no right to. Our sentences have subjects and objects, whether English, Spanish, or Hindi, and so do you, if you want them. You are only an unwilling participant, simple mindless witness, if you so choose. You can be as active as you want, and you can tell Robert Adams that I said so. 

   
• 

  hardie karges 6:30 am on May 15, 2022 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: autoplay, Castaneda ( 6 ), Don Juan ( 4 ), duality, Four Noble Truths ( 18 ), language ( 145 ), meditation ( 190 ), neuroscience ( 2 )   

  Buddhism, Meditation, and the Sounds of Silence 

  

  

  Words can do damage. We all know that instinctively. And silence never hurt anyone. We know that, too. So,  I would almost like to make this the Fifth Noble Truth, but I guess it’s too late for that, haha. It’s true, though, and I think the practice of meditation intuited this from the get-go, whether it was ever fully articulated or not, until recently. Because we now know about the language overload and barrage that we are subjected to every day, when such a thing might not have been so obvious two thousand years ago.

  But that’s the first thing that the neuroscience researchers asked me, when they interviewed me as a possible test subject for their research on meditation. “Can you stop the internal dialogue?” Hehe, that’s the whole point, IMHO. “Do you know what I’m talking about?” They asked again to make certain I understood. Yes, I know exactly what you’re talking about. And that’s really the only thing that stands out from the entire series of ‘Don Juan’ books written by Carlos Castaneda, in which the shaman Don Juan constantly implores the student to stop that same dialogue, among other things.

  But some people are sensitive to that, at least in sudden form, so it should not be forced. And that’s because we think in a language, or two. There is some debate about whether we thought before we had language, and I believe we did, but once we got it, there’s no turning it off, except deliberately. Otherwise it just goes on and on, seemingly endlessly, until death do us part. And yes, this is likely the origin and mainstay of the ‘duality’ that is such a popular topic in New-Agey forums, whether anyone knows what it means or not. That voice in the background must be the Self or Other, one or the other.

  But there is a social context, also, in which the air waves we all share are simply bombarding us with sound constantly. And if Autoplay on Internet is the worst offender, well, the bar down the street is not much better, nor are the loud-mouthed Americans down the hall at my bare-budget residencia  in Coimbra. Silence is no longer normal. And it should be. How can I quiet the voices in my head, when I can’t quiet the voices all around me? That’s what meditation is for, silent meditation, no app necessary…

  hardie karges and quantumpreceptor are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
  • 

    quantumpreceptor 1:40 am on July 11, 2022 Permalink | Reply

    Yes silence is the key, and we must start with ourselves. We will never congregation the others do. I can only change me with the hopes that you might see a difference and say hey “this silence really has something”.
    Great post as always.

    QP

    • 

      hardie karges 3:18 pm on July 11, 2022 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks for your comments

• 

  hardie karges 5:46 am on November 10, 2019 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 429 ), Donald Trump ( 29 ), duality, Hate ( 2 ), love ( 49 ), religion ( 158 )   

  The Possibilities for Peace, Love and Buddhism in a Trumpian Universe 

  I don’t hate Donald Trump the person. That would be unkind. I hate Donald Trump the concept. And there is more at stake than kindness, anyway, since it is sometimes hard to be kind toward someone who is not a kind person himself. But ultimately we’re all made of the same stuff, so to hate others is ultimately to hate yourself and hate the world we live in, imperfect though it may be, and defined by that, in fact. Even consciousness has a basis in what we call the stuff of this world, so ultimately any mind-body duality is more apparent than real, illusions of the slippery sort, and likely the basis of religion, the division of this world into self and other, mind and body, good and evil, and our attempts to reunite all the apparent opposites, that only exist because we perceive them that way, when if we could avoid them in the first place, then we would truly be a step ahead. But that is the psychic stuff that this world is made of, ‘mental formations’ in Buddhism, the hopes and fears and illusions and divisions and contradictions and emotions that I must write before they smite. But hatred, and love, are in categories by themselves. This era, too, will pass, and we will then have to decide what we’ve learned and where we go from here. But hatred is difficult to take back, un-do, or transform, so probably best avoided altogether…