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  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 11:22 am on December 14, 2014 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , ISLAM,   

    Awesomenessificationizing in a World w/o Him 

    “Awesome”: the word defines our lazy consumer/consumed age, selfies self-centered, Christmas especially, speaking volumes while explaining nothing, an idle exclamation and simultaneous proclamation of all things hubristic, ourselves extrapolated outward for viewing and public worship—self-worship—the worst kind, “awesome” not to be confused with “awful” its evil twin, same word really, merely inflected with opposing sentiment, neither of them even in the same emotional league as that original feeling of awe that inspired it, and which inspires millions, that feeling of smallness in witnessing grandiosity…

    So how did the same word, and same original feel, come to mean two such opposite things? That’s what it is to be human, dahling, language—and thoughts—mutating at the speed of sound in direct proportion to the distance from the source, so much like biological Evolution that it’s hard to see them as anything other or different, as often declared by scientific minds specializing in such fields with (pedi)grees much higher than my own…

    We humans are a rather imperfect lot, at best blessed, at worst cursed, in reality most likely somewhere in between, the recipe for fulfillment in direct proportion to intent, a sliding scale of satisfaction, hard to accomplish anything without really intending it, or retrofitting the logic, intent being the key, left in this slow cool world to fend for ourselves or die trying… (More …)

     
    • Kc's avatar

      Kc 1:55 pm on December 14, 2014 Permalink | Reply

      awesome, iconic and literally, words that stick in under and around my craw. do people not read the dictionary anymore?

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 8:28 am on December 7, 2014 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , ISLAM   

    Let’s Get Physical, Living in the Material World, etc…. 

    Life is just full of cliches, isn’t it? Sometimes it seems like we’re just replaying silly love songs as the soundtrack to our lives, all about making it getting it spending it f*cking it and then doing it all over again. This is the world of stuff, possessions and possession; to get spiritual is counter-indicated here at the speed of sound: percussion and repercussions. That’s more fitting for the speed of light: the real world, light electricity and spirit flowing in unison where the destination is indeterminate and not even consequential, where the flow itself is paramount… (More …)

     
    • Kc's avatar

      Kc 6:19 am on December 8, 2014 Permalink | Reply

      York sez there is something beautiful about dementia, that it is like an adult returning to womb. Childlike beauty. Satisfaction surely awaits us all. Today york and I travel couple hours s to a funeral, memorial or what have ye. 59 y.o man w Down syndrome passed. I was a trader of jewelery and antiques but am getting out. No money to be had to be passed to the antique store owners, this town is flat. I will miss it, may get back to it. Then again I wd probably rather read or reread lotsa books. Pax. K

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 5:11 am on November 23, 2014 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , ISLAM, , Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas   

    Why Christians Need Buddhism—and Islam 

    We’re the love monkeys we’re the hate monkeys, we’re the f*ck monkeys we’re the abstention monkeys, we’re the drunk monkeys we’re the sober monkeys, we’re the selfish monkeys we’re the caring monkeys, we’re the active monkeys we’re the passive monkeys, we’re the hot monkeys we’re the cool monkeys, we’re the species that desperately needs some law and order to make sense of it all—or maybe just some Buddhist wisdom or some Muslim discipline.

    There are just too many contradictions to being human to leave it all to chance. We need some direction. We Westerners, Americans in particular, love to feel superior about our upbringing and traditions, but what works for us—or not—doesn’t necessarily work for anyone else. We hold up democracy, capitalism, and Christianity like the great trinity that all should follow, or else, lest they should suffer the consequences of their own ignorance. This is unfortunate. This is chaos.

    There are limits to love, even Christian love. Christianity elevates the reproductive act to the paradigm for life, as if everything should match that intensity and bliss, Protestants favoring the foreplay, while Catholics just settle for more babies. Our passion should rule our lives, so goes the theory, no need for wisdom, little need for discipline. Welcome to the 21st century. Welcome to the Apocalypse. I hope it’s not too late.

    “Live in the moment” is the great mantra of the age, sounding all Buddhist and enlightened, but coming off and being carried out more like carpe diem—seize the day—in Roman fashion, drunk and in love, giving no thought to the morrow. This is not Buddhist mindfulness—i.e. awareness. This is Western recklessness—wreckfulness. Christian pop culture seconds the emotion by elevating Roman romantic love above Greek agape—brotherly love—which is closer to the true Christian meaning.

    The Church’s founding fathers quickly realized the limits of love, and Saint Augustine mixed in as much of Plato as any epistle to any apostle would allow, just like St. Thomas later did with Aristotle, trying to match content with form, rationality with emotion. That’s a nice try, but still not enough. The Age of Reason was no match for the Age of Capitalism and the doctrine of democracy and their Christian handmaidens, and the resulting chaos which would follow, which has brought us to the brink of catastrophe. We’re not facing extinction because of anything Buddhists or Muslims have done wrong.

    This is why the world needs Buddhism. This is why we need Islam. God takes over where Science leaves off, just as intuition takes over where logic fails. We don’t need more doctrines and dogmas. We need cool heads and warm hearts, common sense and discipline. Our love of money is leading us to a no-man’s-land of self-imposed doom, an air-conditioned nightmare as we drive over the cliff, pedal to the metal, and the seat-belts unfastened. May God’s love be with us—if He exists. May Buddhist wisdom and Islamic discipline be with us regardless.

     
    • Kc's avatar

      Kc 10:57 am on November 23, 2014 Permalink | Reply

      Semantics, literalism, God, a he? If you don’t believe in anything but darkness, what is there to lose?

      • hardie karges's avatar

        hardie karges 4:28 pm on November 23, 2014 Permalink | Reply

        They call God a ‘He’; I don’t… Come over to the light whenever you like…

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 6:17 pm on November 9, 2014 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , ISLAM,   

    Buddhism 101: All Life is suffering—ouch! 

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/tonybphotos/298662953/in/set-72157594378558519/

    All Life is suffering. That’s the First Truth of Buddhism, of course, and as far as many people get in their study of Buddhism, with comments like, “That sounds so negative;” or maybe, “Doesn’t sound like much fun.” Such is life, though, life after childhood, at least, when the realities kick in, and it’s time to get a job—ooh, double ouch!

    The Second Truth doesn’t help much: the cause of suffering is desire. Yeow! I always thought Buddhists were cool, and had more fun than this. The Third Truth follows pretty logically: to remove the suffering, add water and allow to cool, i.e. remove the desire. Duh. For anyone still interested in something a little deeper than such simplistic action and reaction, there’s a Fourth Truth, the Middle Way, the avoidance of extremes. If you need that spelled out for you, there’s even an Eight-fold Path—very handy.

    The big boys of Buddhism, Inc. realize that that’s not the best business model, of course, not for fun-loving Americans, anyway, so furiously back-pedal the ‘suffering’ rap, dukkha in Sanskit, going on for hours about how Buddha he no speakee Engrish, and how translations are inadequate, and how he really didn’t mean ‘suffering’ as such. Ahem. Yes, he did. He meant exactly that. Saying he didn’t is like saying that Jesus wasn’t talking about rich people having difficulty getting to heaven. Yes, he was. (More …)

     
    • Esther Fabbricante's avatar

      Esther Fabbricante 5:36 pm on November 11, 2014 Permalink | Reply

      I don’t understand Buddhism at all –

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 9:16 am on October 19, 2014 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , ISLAM, , ,   

    Religions Gone Awry, Systems Rendered Asunder 

    Buddhist shrine in Sri Lanka

    Buddhist shrine in Sri Lanka

    Islam promotes discipline and ends up glorifying violence. Christianity promotes love and ends up glorifying sex. Buddhism promotes non-possession and ends up glorifying money. Hinduism promotes India. Judaism promotes Israel. How did our major religions go so badly wrong? Good question. An even better question is how to set them right again. It won’t be easy.

    Religion was long ago taken over by politics, and used as a tool for manipulation, souls for sale as the price of politics, people’s desire for meaning in life reduced to authoritarian submission and hopes for the best. Truth, beauty, and goodness have been traded for sex, money, and violence in some devil’s bargain, arbitrage of the soul, leveraged buy-outs of vestigial beliefs, so much debris and detritus… (More …)

     
    • chicagoja's avatar

      chicagoja 11:22 am on October 19, 2014 Permalink | Reply

      I agree whole-heartedly. However, understanding God never required a religion, a church or even a holy book.

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 4:20 pm on July 27, 2014 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , ISLAM   

    Let There Be God (and on the Seventh Day We created God)… 

     

     

    Christian God

    Christian God

    The idea of a Michelangelo-like anthropomorphic God, wrathful and scheming (before Jesus made him all love-y dove-y), bad teeth and all, thunderbolt in hand, is so absurd and fantastic, that I’ve long wondered how such nonsense ever got started, and moreover, how it persists. My idea is that it originates in the feedback over death, probably around the time Neanderthals (no, not Me-anderthals) began burying their dead.

    We humans look for meaning, of course, as such is our curse, so some must have wondered about these newly dead: Where do they go? What will they do when they get there? The idea that people are here one moment, then gone the next, is a tough pill to swallow, after all. Even dogs go through mourning. I suspect the phrase “WTF” also originated around this time.

    (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 4:08 pm on July 20, 2014 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , ISLAM,   

    #God as Big #Boss 

    God as Morgan Freeman

    God as Morgan Freeman

    “Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy,” definitely my favorite Commandment, “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work,” etc., keeps us workaholics from working our selves to death, only problem is defining ‘work’ and separating it from non-work.

    But what if I enjoy work? Then is it okay? Are we supposed to be miserable six days a week?

    Then there’s the question of which day is the ‘true’ Sabbath. If you could be Muslim, Jew, and Christian too, some kind of 3-in-1 monotheist, then I guess you’d get a 3-day weekend. Now there’s a thought…

     
    • Kc's avatar

      Kc 10:36 pm on July 23, 2014 Permalink | Reply

      No repro. Here, and you? I recal you did not like condoms. Whatever happened to r list and his wife Vicki?

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 10:38 pm on June 30, 2014 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Bosnia, , Hercegovina, ISLAM, Sarajevo   

    #Sarajevo #Bosnia #Islam: Muslim Right 

    Mosque in Sarajevo, Bonia

    Mosque in Sarajevo, Bonia

    At the mosque in Sarajevo I can hang out and meditate without being hassled.

     

    They have nice rugs, too.  I am a junkie BTW, a textile junkie.

     

    At the mosque in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, they kicked me out, for some reason unspecified.

     

    They never even asked me if I was Muslim or not.

     

    There’s a word for that, I think…

     
    • Kc's avatar

      Kc 10:31 am on July 1, 2014 Permalink | Reply

      Hello, how are you? I see the old cabin in the background, wonder if it is still there? R turned 71 yesterday. We are hanging on w a vengeance. L, k

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 10:34 am on June 26, 2014 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , ISLAM, ,   

    #Buddhism #Christianity #Islam: Time for a New Religion… 

    At their best Buddhism, Christianity and Islam are the head, heart and muscle of the One True Religion (as yet unnamed), the bush of which they all beat around furiously, passionately and mindfully, Buddhism with its ‘many books’ and philosophical approach, Christianity with its Sermon on the Mount and “Love Your Neighbor” One Best Commandment, Islam with its Qur’an Third Testament to the Torah, the Tales of Jesus, and much much more, maybe the greatest one book of all religions which includes all the others on a good day, whether in chapter or verse, sutra or suture…

    At their worst they degenerate into Buddhist passivity, purple passion and pragmatism of the worst kind, thousands of pragmatists plying the streets of Bangkok on any given night, sucking from the rich and giving to the kids, and parents, and anyone who’ll listen to the sad tales of femmes fatales and homos erectus…

    (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 8:42 am on July 8, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Crusade, , ISLAM   

    The Iraq war drags on and on endlessly, no end in sight. 

    They don’t want us there, so why don’t we just leave? Politics. We can’t leave until we’ve created something there in our own image and likeness. All for the love of oil we dust off our ideals and polish our principles. Unfortunately it’s much bigger than Iraq. It’s the new Crusade between Islam and everyone else. They want the world in their image and likeness every bit as much as Bush. There may not be a compromise possible to the Muslim issue. It’s hardball politics. They’ve got oil-derived wealth and intend to use it for political leverage. They feel they have a right to convert moderate Islamic states into religious theocracies with medieval fundamentalist overtones and undercurrents, regardless of who is inconvenienced and aggrieved. The situation reminds me of the American Indian’s encounter with Europeans. There is a just a fundamental clash of goals and values. Only now the stakes are higher, with Soviet-era surplus nuclear weapons unaccounted for. We’ll just have to wean ourselves from oil first, and then let the politics sort itself out. We’ll have to do it sooner or later anyway, so the sooner, the better.

     

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