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  • hardie karges 5:15 am on July 16, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , freedom, , , , Right Action (karma), Right Aspiration, Right Effort, Right Livelihood, Right Mindfulness, Right View,   

    Buddhist Right Speech 

    Right speech (samma vaca) is easy, because you really don’t have to say anything. That’s the point. But if you do say something, then, say something nice. Most of Buddhism is that way. You don’t have to promote anything. you don’t have to do anything. But if you do something, then do something good. Say something good. Be something good. Because you don’t know until you try it. 

    I’m referring to the Buddhist Eightfold Path, of course, that final Nobel Truth after the previous three others which showed the suffering of the world, its main cause—craving, and its main treatment—release from craving. The rest are the Eightfold Path, something like the Eight Commandments, in which the sage advices are a bit sager, like Right View, Right Aspiration, Right Action (karma), Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration (meditation).  

    Buddhism is not a controlling religion. If it were, then it would want to control the moments of the day, minute, and hour: prayer at such-and-such a time, meals at such-a-time, etc., as if these were the important thing of religion. But when a Buddhist says that he wants control, then he wants self-control, a measure of forbearance against predatory life and logic that are certain to happen if our flanks are left unguarded. More importantly, this is a freedom FROM, not a freedom TO, and that means all the difference in the world… 

     

  • hardie karges 10:24 am on February 5, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , freedom, Graeber, , John Locke, Kadiaronk, , , , , Wengrow   

    Buddhism, Craving, and the Path to Enlightenment… 

    When you realize that you and your cravings are the cause of most of your problems, then you are on the path to enlightenment. And that’s the Second Noble Truth, more or less, so fundamental to the practice of Buddhism. After all, most Buddhists worldwide don’t meditate, and many physically can’t, but anyone can train their mind. That’s the heart of the Buddha’s original message, not rebirth, past lives, or even emptiness. Control yourself, and not only will the world be a better place, but you will be a better person.

    But there’s that ugly word ‘control’ again, the same word and concept which cause so much consternation among us Westerners for whom freedom is sacrosanct, and for whom control is the enemy. And that may be fine for the wide-open skies of Montana, but that might not work in all situations. Because, like it or not (I don’t especially like it), the world is becoming a crowded place, and the paradigms of a previous era may not all be appropriate now.

    Whether we take our cues from John Locke or the now-famous Native American scholar Kadiaronk, immortalized in The Dawn of Everything, by Wengrow and Graeber, the result is the same: a freedom is best understood by its limits—by definition. Most importantly, though, is the difference between self-control and control of others. This is where politics meets philosophy, and we find our place in the universe. Then there’s also that word ‘enlightenment’ again, which implies a duality between darkness and light despite any objective standard of reference.

    And that’s the word often revered to the same extent that control is reviled, but not always. Because words themselves can be as dangerous as their deliverance, and seldom do they live up to our expectations. But once they became our operating system, then so it will be until we find something better. Because, ultimately, language is just the interface, and there are more important things to be accomplished. When you realize that your worst curse just might be your greatest blessing, then you are on the path to enlightenment…

     

  • hardie karges 10:49 am on October 3, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , freedom, , , , ,   

    Buddhist Non-attachment and Free Will 

    You can be connected to everything and attached to nothing. That is the Holy Grail, for me, at least, of life in general, and Buddhism in particular. Because, despite the apparent similarities, the difference between the two activities is craving, upadana in Pali/Sanskrit, and that is the deal-killer, as articulated in the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, number two, to be exact. Visually, imagine making contact, but without a hook that attaches you to that other surface.

    Now isn’t that preferable? Because without that hook, then you are free. And with freedom comes responsibilities. But with that hook, then you are enslaved. And when you are enslaved, not only have you lost your precious freedom, but you have lost your moral responsibility. Because if there is no free will, then there is no morality.

    So, the metaphysicians can argue all they want about the existence, or not, of free will, using arguments based on reason and logic, but the proof depends on the necessity—or not—of morality. Because free will can never be proven empirically, since it’s an abstract concept, and thus not subject to the demands of reason nor logic. But it is subject to the demands of morality. Ontologically, there is no absolute free will, though a limited one, subject to circumstances. This world is our circumstance. It demands morality.

     

  • hardie karges 11:24 am on July 11, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , freedom, inanition, , , , , , , , ,   

    The Rocky Middle Path of Buddhism in America… 

    “Give me liberty or give me death” is America’s battle cry for independence, of course, as so brilliantly elucidated by Patrick Henry, and seconded by many others, notably the license plate slogan ‘Live Free or Die,’ among many others of similar emotion. And by ‘America’ I mean the USA, not the lower 40, though they are largely complicit, as is Europe the mother country, in the case of North America, which lacks the large indigenous base of many of the other more southern countries. Even Mexico is around 65% indigenous the last time I checked.

    And freedom is all well and good, as long as we know the details of the liberties and freedoms referred to, but which can be detrimental, and even deadly, if left for imaginations to run wild and machinations to double down in derailing the original intent of a simple life without a lord and master to serve at every beck and call. So now we consider mask-lessness as an inalienable right, even during a pandemic, ditto vaccines, and any restriction on movement during the same world emergency to be a violation. So the Western insistence on freedom to the maximum extent comes very close to an implicit death wish.

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  • hardie karges 12:34 pm on May 16, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , freedom, frequencies, Kristofferson, , , Stephen Hawking,   

    Hawking Paradox Sutra, the Buddhism of Big Questions… 

    Stephen Hawking is certainly one of the most interesting figures of the last century, and his previous best-seller A Brief History of Time was certainly a page-turner, if not exactly a nail-biter, so I was excited to have a chance to read his latest, and presumably last (since he is now deceased) offering, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, like, you know: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where do we go now? Who invented ice cream? Why are women so beautiful? Hey, you gotta’ have priorities.

    Backstory: Freedom and the lack thereof is one of my big themes philosophically, and so it is for many of us, generally in the West, and especially in America, to the point that you can’t escape it, even when you are reading Eastern philosophy, especially that of the Indian/Hindu variety, in which pandits and acharyas will go on and on (I would like to say ‘drone’) about you and your boundlessness and your limitlessness, and wouldn’t it be great if you were unstoppable.

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  • hardie karges 11:32 am on April 18, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , freedom, , , ,   

    Buddhism and the Limits of Freedom… 

    Self-control is a valuable tool, a wonderful trait, and a noble quality. But control of others? Not so much. And this is a sticking point for many Western Buddhists, who cringe at the thought of any sort of control, it being anathema to the Western traditions of freedom and democracy, however ill-conceived and ill-defined. This obsession with freedom arose in response to the tyranny of rulers, so that is the sordid background upon which our story must unfold. It is also the justification for many a disproportionate response which must then invite further repercussions, in an almost endless back-and-forth see-saw of emotions and cataclysms which define the modern history of humankind.

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  • hardie karges 1:09 pm on March 26, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , freedom, , , ,   

    Goodbye Corona, Hello Global Warming, Dark Age Optional… 

    Proof of Vaccination

    I got my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine against the Covid-19 virus today, so I guess that now is as good a time as any to put the finishing touches on this pandemic. Yes, I know that it’s not over and could go on at least another year or more, but for me, this is a defining point, and so I think I hear the fat lady singing. And I say that with a twinge of sadness, because for me it’s been a good year, not in material acquisitions, but in spiritual gain. Because the times of greatest stress and suffering often coincide with the greatest spiritual gains. This is as obvious in Jesus’s eschatological emergence as the Roman Empire entered its down days, as it was in the Buddha’s times, with the emergence of India’s and China’s rise as the two dominant centers of world population, a position that they maintain to this day.

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    • Dave Kingsbury 4:17 pm on March 27, 2021 Permalink | Reply

      First, congratulations on receiving the double dose – each successful step something we can all celebrate. Second, can’t fault your analysis of the recent past nor your prognosis for the near future. Third, you outline new ways of thinking and responding which are also – satisfyingly – a return to older wisdoms. Vive l’humanite!

      • hardie karges 5:03 pm on March 27, 2021 Permalink | Reply

        Hear hear! Thanx for your comments, Dave…

  • hardie karges 11:48 am on February 14, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , freedom, , , ,   

    Buddhism and Self in an (Almost) post-Apocalyptic World… 

    Self-control requires no self, and not much control, either, really, just wise decisions. Which is convenient, since the last thing a Westerner—European or American—wants to hear about is control, something of a dirty word for the Aryan-descended high-steppes drifters.

    My compatriots tend to love their freedoms, even when they are deleterious to health, to an extent that others might, and do, find laughable, witness the current kerfuffles over life-saving masks in the middle of a pandemic. But limits are crucial to Buddhism, in sharp antithesis to the Christianity of eternal life and eternal resources. Oops! That’s another bad word–limit.

    Bottom line: It isn’t what you do that matters so much; it’s what you don’t do. And if that kept me away from Buddhism for many years, perceived as a passive response to active situations, now it attracts me to it. Because now it really is better to do nothing than run around like decapitated barn-fowl in search of answers to questions we never should have asked in the first place.

    So what do we do about global warming? Do nothing, i.e. instead of driving that car: do nothing. Instead of stoking that chimney of steel: do nothing. Instead of shooting that rocket to Mars: do nothing. Get it? So what if our lives revert to the same economic status of one hundred years ago, was that so bad? All we’ve gained since then is technology-based capitalism, not knowledge.

    One hundred years ago, Einstein’s general theory of relativity was proven and quantum mechanics was in progress. The only thing good that’s happened after all that is Internet, so we can keep that and get rid of all the self-driving cars and self-driven egos. Internet is almost the only worthwhile technology of the last century, that and health care, something still out of reach for many world citizens.

    Yet we are obsessed with economic growth as though that were the English term for God, and freedom as if that were our contribution to the Emptiness that underlies all stuff (which it may very well be). The problem is that quest for infinity when we have no true connection to it, except for our worship of it. So worship we can do, as long as we don’t fancy ourselves the master of it. We’re not.

    We are subject to freedom and must obey its dictates. Oops! There’s another dirty word, no, not dictate, but ‘obey.’ This is anathema to the West almost more than control or limits, but crucial to our place in the universe. It may very well be inhuman to dictate, but very human to obey, like the good children we should all strive to be. And it may be very inhuman to try to control others, but the essence of humanity to try to control ourselves.

    For then harsh words will not be spoken, and harsh actions will not be taken. Sound too simple? Yes, it is, and the most difficult thing for us to accomplish, we raised on the sound and fury of argument and debate. But accomplish it we must, if we are to survive another century. Purify your heart. Purify your mind. Prepare for the coming storm.

     

  • hardie karges 12:08 pm on March 8, 2020 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , deliverance, , freedom, primum non nocere   

    Buddhism and the Freedom to do Nothing… 

    Freedom FROM is as much or more important than freedom TO, and this illustrates much of the historic difference between east and west, Buddhism and Christianity, that we Westerners typically want to DO this and DO that, as if all these actions hold supreme importance, as if the world has somehow advanced a step forward if one of the flying Wallenda brothers walks the tightrope over the Grand Canyon or not, as if the spectacles of our life are more important than our fundamental dignity, as if a more important goal is to put the ‘fun’ back in that ‘fundamental’ freedom. But this is a perversion of the concept, IMHO, because a more important freedom is the freedom from the fetters that constrain us, freedom from the ties that bind too tightly, regardless of whether we push that freedom to its final conclusion, regardless of whether we tempt fate simply for the sake of the deliverance we so desire. Because deliverance is easier than all that, it being a simple freedom FROM something, whatever it is that you so fear. Desire need not be brought into this simple equation, when the only result we seek is a simple zero which signifies balance. So why do we need to risk death to prove that we are free, when it is death that we want deliverance from in the first place? Obviously, we don’t. But boredom is the price of freedom, in that once we are free, that we don’t always know what to do with it, because for me to thrust my freedom in your face is to assert the primacy of my freedom to DO something over your freedom to be free FROM something, i.e. me, in this case. But we Americans love to ‘get in people’s faces’, ‘push your buttons’, ‘stand our ground’, even if it means that we reserve the right to follow you around doing just that (and these are all actual quotes, not mere suppositions). And this is something that Buddhism understands well, and makes it negative, in a technical sense, in that you really don’t have to do anything to be a good Buddhist, because more important is what you don’t do, which is to harm anyone else, or any sentient being, for that matter, so not dissimilar from the classic maxim of bio-ethical non-maleficence ‘primum non nocere’, i.e. first do no harm. And the principle carries over easily into social ethics: you don’t have to do anything, as long as you do nothing bad. So ‘not bad’ becomes the definition of ‘good’, and ‘unfettered’ becomes the definition of ‘freedom’. And if this seems like a passive lifestyle, then so be it. You can test your limits as time permits, as long as it does not impinge on the limits of others. After all, the future is distinctly uncertain, and so risky, while the past is certain, but scarcely known. So how can we know where we’re going, if we don’t even know where we’ve been?

     

  • hardie karges 11:42 am on January 12, 2020 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: arrogance, , freedom, , , Paradise, paradox,   

    Paradox in Paradise, the Buddha’s Suffering as Our Own… 

    Life is sometimes too easy. Without struggle there is no need for kindness. Thus we confront a Buddhist paradox, every day, in a world at least partly defined by its suffering, and the need to mitigate that suffering, so that we can survive, without falling into the trap of false flattery and the lure of luxury. Because if the suffering is a matter of opinion and the appropriate means of measure, the imperfection is rife. There may be a perfect world somewhere, of which this is but a poor manifestation, admittedly, but not this reflected world itself, which at times resembles a cheap carnival sideshow. But this is the only world that we truly experience on an ordinary day, so this is the hand we play. And that is okay. If this material world is all we ever know, then so be it. And let the imperfections speak for themselves. Because every imperfection is an opportunity for improvement, in life as in genetics, in which natural mutations provide the raw material for evolution. So if nothing ever changes, then there’s no chance for it to get better, and perfection is just hubris, the arrogance of species, this human species, full of itself and full of its self-importance, which is only partially justified. The human species IS important, but not always for the reasons that we think. It is not important because it is ABOVE the rest of the animal kingdom. It is important, because it is OF the rest of the animal kingdom, in an unbroken chain of Becoming, of which we humans are probably on top, that is true, but which is no reason for celebration, and certainly no reason for arrogance, for we were once only poor struggling mammals, looking for strength and succor. Thus the flip-side of freedom is always responsibility, and that is our lot in life. Always treat people better than they treat you, and the world becomes a nicer place…

     

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