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  hardie karges 12:17 am on December 3, 2024 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Asia ( 17 ), Buddha ( 49 ), Buddhism ( 428 ), China ( 14 ), Fa Hien, Hardie Karges ( 239 ), India ( 15 ), language ( 144 ), literature, philosophy ( 101 ), religion ( 158 ), travel ( 14 )   

  My Travels with Fa Hien, 5th century Buddhist Pilgrim: Kindle E-book now available 

  

  I am happy to announce that the book “My Travels with Fa Hien, 5^th Century Buddhist Pilgrim”, is now available in Kindle E-book at Amazon US (others soon) as well as physical copies there and at Notion Press, Flipkart, and bookstores in India. This is the true story of the 5^th century Buddhist pilgrim on a 5000 mile trip from central China to eastern India via what is now Pakistan and the mountains and valleys that lie between. In the course of his travels, not only does Fa Hien complete his mission to find the true origins of Buddhism, while translating its sacred texts, but his crew manage to have adventures of their own in the process. This occurs while Rome falls and Europe enters its Dark Age on the other side of the world. It’s a travel book; it’s a dharma book; and it’s a history book, all in one. This is my tribute to Buddhism, Asia, and multiculturalism at its finest. A portion of all sales will go to charities in India. For more information and samples, please join my Fa Hien Facebook group. Enjoy.

  My involvement with this project began with the completion of an MA in Buddhist Studies, at the age of 65, after a long history of travel that covered some 155 countries, during which I studied language and cultures, while buying folk art. Much of that occurred at or after the age of 55 as documented in my own travel epic “Hypertravel: 100 Countries in Two Years,” published in 2012. After that I spent several years compiling travel guides to world hostels, again published on my own micro-imprint. As my interest in Buddhism grew, I attended retreats and spent time in temples and monasteries in Thailand and Myanmar, before finally entering International Buddhist College in south Thailand as an MA candidate in 2017. I completed my MA in 2019, while studying on campus and online, with much travel in Asia.

  Then came the pandemic. After a growing interest in the story of Fa Hien I finally started writing the manuscript in late 2020 in Guatemala and finished the first draft in early 2022 in Lumbini, Nepal, the birthplace of the Buddha himself. After many rewrites and a 2023 sabbatical waiting for further inspiration, I finally finished the book with several new chapters in 2024. Upon careful consideration I decided to publish the book in India, which is the setting for much, if not most, of the book. Unlike the West, also, Fa Hien is known widely there, even if he never gained the hero status that his imitator Xuanzang did in China with the classic epic ‘Journey to the West’. I’d like to change all that and give credit where credit is due, for the sake of Buddhism and travel. A portion of all sales will go to charities in India. For more information and samples, please join my Fa Hien Facebook group. Enjoy.

   

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  hardie karges 11:07 pm on October 23, 2024 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Amazon ( 2 ), book, Fa Hien, Hardie Karges ( 239 ), publication, Silk Road   

  My Travels with Fa Hien, 5th Century Buddhist Pilgrim 

  

  Coming soon to an Amazon near you! My Travels with Fa Hien! (or How I Spent My Covid Vacation, i.e. writing, re-writing, editing, and re-writing again the story of one of my heroes, Fa Hien, aka Fa Xian). He was a Silk Road traveler almost 1000 years before Marco Polo, but he traveled for Buddhism, not profit. So, in my wildest imagination, I decided to join him. This is the story, my tribute to Buddhism and Asia, where I’ve lived much of my life. It will be available worldwide and e-book soon. A portion of all sales will go to needy kids in India. Thank you. Stay tuned. (And, if you’ll join the group I created for this project, I’ll try to keep it clean and updated, haha… https://www.facebook.com/groups/535608355867565)
   
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  hardie karges 6:19 am on March 10, 2024 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: anapanasati ( 8 ), Buddhism ( 428 ), dharma ( 35 ), discipline ( 4 ), Fa Hien, Facebook ( 17 ), Hardie Karges ( 239 ), meditation ( 189 ), Pali ( 20 ), philosophy ( 101 ), present moment ( 5 ), religion ( 158 ), Sanskrit ( 22 ), Theravada ( 51 ), vinaya ( 2 ), Xuanzang ( 3 )   

  Buddhism at the X-roads: More Dharma, Less Drama 

  

  To live from sensation to sensation is to live like an animal. To follow dharma is to live like a human. Because, despite the attraction of the so-called ‘present moment,’ which may or may not be real, the Buddha prized reason and rationality above almost all else, easily verified by his insistence on recognition of the causes and conditions underlying all actions and motivations. He may or may not have said something supporting the ‘present moment,’ but I’m not sure what or when that would have been. 

  Bottom line: reason(s) and rationality are to be prized above almost all else in Buddhism, the one possible exception being the need for, and insistence upon, meditation. And, for me, this is where that ’present moment’ comes into play, it being almost the perfect metaphor for that suspension of belief and disbelief which is meditation, all thought suspended in favor of pure awareness, of breath, if nothing else, anapanasati, the original meditation of which all others have subsequently derived.  

  Meditation is so fundamental to Theravada Buddhism that it has recently almost become re-branded as Vipassana, or ‘insight meditation,’ all the other disciplines involved in the practice of Buddhism notwithstanding. And this is likely what the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims Fa Xian (Hien) and Xuanzang found above all else, silent meditation, since almost nothing else was written, and was almost too heavy to carry once they had it transcribed from the original Pali or Sanskrit into Chinese.  

  But how do you transcribe meditation into any language for inclusion in a book which someone may or not read at some point in history? Meditation was largely independent of written vinaya (discipline), and that is what had sustained Buddhism for around 1000 years by that time. And that’s what sustains it today, all the opinions and debate on Facebook and elsewhere notwithstanding. Original Buddhism required only silence, and concentration, no apps or other accessories necessary.