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  hardie karges 4:56 am on September 15, 2024 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 429 ), equanimity ( 3 ), Forbearance, Hardie Karges ( 240 ), justice ( 3 ), meditation ( 190 )   

  Buddhism in the Bardo Realms: Equanimity is Key…  

  

  Revenge is not sweet. Justice should be blind. Equanimity should prevail. This is a common mental trap, that somehow, we must ‘get even’, even when such is difficult or impossible to accomplish. Still, it’s a psychological juggernaut, somehow engrained in consciousness, that there is a balance beam of tit-for-tat justice, that somehow must be fulfilled or even expanded upon, as if something could be made ‘more right’ by applying penalties to deter future misbehavior, ‘punitive damages’ the operative concept.  

  And this is the basis of civil justice systems, of course, and that’s all well and good, but need not apply to your personal life. Because what’s good for Caesar is not necessarily best for you. The problem is that it’s a never-ending cycle which will never be at peace, just like old-time feuds between the Hatfields and McCoys. When the world was sparsely populated, it was easy just to leave and go elsewhere, but it’s crowded everywhere now. The Muslims made a positive step in limiting ‘punitive damages,’ so that ‘eye for an eye’ means just an eye for an eye, and no more. 

  But I think we Buddhists can go a step farther, so that not only is punishment not necessary, but neither is ‘getting even,’ even on a personal level. The only ‘evenness’ that we should be concerned with is evenness of mind, all the time, and that’s equanimity. There’s never any reason to get all excited, much less vengeful. If punishment is necessary to deter future crime in society, then maybe simple forbearance is the key to bring peace to the self and family. To just ‘let it go’ often works wonders.

   

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  hardie karges 2:12 pm on August 4, 2019 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 429 ), civilization ( 2 ), Forbearance, meanderthals, Middle Path ( 54 ), nature ( 17 )   

  Buddhism and the Winding Path of Forbearance… 

  The world is full of sights and sounds, none of which brings happiness. That is somewhere inside. And this is a central message of Buddhism, of course, and other religions, too, that happiness is not a function of material fulfillment, or even full bellies, so much as it is an internal feeling of psychological contentment, that is not merely quantifiable, but qualifiable, in terms that evoke hard-to-describe pleasures, while invoking few, if any, gods. Because the old war gods have lost their power; and the old goddesses have lost their punch. That was an earlier time when desires were simple and the jobs were few, goddesses there to multiply us, gods there to divide us. As the populations increase, then so do the problems, almost by mathematical certainty. So once our material survival is theoretically guaranteed, then immediately we begin killing each other, even though the other now poses no significant risk, just annoyance, and provokes our lack of forbearance, and our inability to make peace instead of war, to share the wealth instead of fighting over it. And this is the message of much religion, to love each other, but not necessarily THE other, that defining line the rub of religion that sometimes gives it the rep of uniting people in all the wrong ways, against the other, rather than with him, because the mere fact that we see an other is evidence of his or her otherness, is it not? And so continues the march of history, zig zag meanderthals in search of a path, any path, that has an unobstructed field and maybe even a clear exit, just in case we need a rest. Maybe our bellies are TOO full, in fact, that material contentment counter-indicated once it becomes assured, a little uncertainty called for in order to foment change. Monks and rishis fast, after all, not because they want to lose weight, but because they are hungry for another kind of fulfillment, and sometimes it is just that easy to tease out the tiny details of spiritual fulfillment, just enough of a difference to make a difference. We can see in DNA that multiple mutations provide the raw material for evolution, despite the occasional disastrous kerfuffle. So if it’s good enough for nature, then it’s good enough for me. We are arrogant with our predictions, proclamations, and prognostications, but nature is kind in its uncertainty. Civilization has betrayed its promise. It’s time to return to Nature–again…