streaming consciousness…

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  hardie karges 7:05 am on March 25, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Brahmin ( 5 ), caste system ( 2 ), cyclic existence ( 4 ), Dalai Lama ( 12 ), DNA ( 45 ), Jainism, molecular biology, past life ( 2 ), philosophy ( 104 ), rebirth ( 37 ), Tibet ( 8 )   

  Buddhism, Rebirth and DNA… 

  The year 1953 should have been a big one for Buddhism. Something to do with Tibet, you’re probably thinking? No, something to do with the discovery of DNA, I’m thinking, because that meant that we Buddhists would no longer have to twist ourselves into human pretzels and insert our heads halfway up our… meditation postures…

  …just to Ptolemy-like add another feedback loop of ellipses and eclipses to somehow justify and make sense of rebirth, reincarnation in sheep’s clothing, rather than just toss the whole thing out as an outdated vestige of a previous era, in which learning was nascent and science non-existent… (More …)

   

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  hardie karges 7:41 am on February 11, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Aryan ( 13 ), Buddhism ( 432 ), Dravidian ( 2 ), genome ( 5 ), Hinduism ( 28 ), history ( 42 ), Jainism, meditation ( 193 ), Sanskrit ( 22 )   

  Buddhism: Meeting of East and West, Aryans and Dravidians, Nobles and… 

  

  Buddhist shrine in Sri Lanka

  …us, of R1 genome, y-DNA, that is, not mitochrondial, we the barbarians from the north, land of ice and snow, with broken hearts and bad manners, satisfying ourselves with whomever whenever wherever, animal instincts and animal appetites, with an inclination toward wheels, and gears, and wine, and dark beers, anything to make the boring food go down easier, trail food, and whatever gets you through the night…

  But it must have something incredible to watch, erstwhile Aryans, light-skinned and beefy, from creamy milk, rolling in over the high plains, toward India, literally rolling, in chariots and carts pulled by horses and oxen, herding cows and goats and wayward children, lording it over the local slim swarthy dark-skinned Dravidians, so-called, for lack of a better name, in what must have been the world’s first great culture clash, the likes of which wouldn’t be seen again until the American genocide, this just the preamble to that constitution… (More …)
   
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  hardie karges 7:48 am on January 28, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 432 ), Dalai Lama ( 12 ), Dependent Origination ( 7 ), dialectic ( 13 ), EckfardtbTolle, Hinduism ( 28 ), Jainism, koan ( 7 ), linguistics ( 13 ), Nagarjuna ( 2 ), Plato ( 17 ), reification ( 4 ), skandhas ( 10 ), Thai Forest Tradition ( 6 ), Thich Nhat Hanh ( 8 ), Tibetan ( 3 ), Vajrayana ( 22 ), Zen ( 31 )   

  Buddhist Back-Story: Dialectics and Linguistics… 

  Theravada Buddhism has it easy, when it comes to dhamma (dharma) talks, just pull out the old mind-kilesa-breath-nose-navel-‘Buddho Buddho Buddho’ playbook, rinse and repeat, hard to screw up unless you want to get into the murky afterbirth of past lives and kamma (karma), doing Yogic headstands and plotting Ptolemaic cosmic epicycles, trying to explain how anatta (non-self) somehow gets reborn, when there really is nothing there to begin with. But still they do. It’s embarrassing, especially when some of the same ones…

  …get all goo-goo-eyed at the mention of ‘this present moment’, which I agree with, if not to the extent that some would take it. So how can you have both, not only within the same school of Buddhism, but within the same person, e.g. the Dalai (not Theravada) Lama? I can find you quotes of him advocating ‘nowness’ while Eckhart Tolle was still sleeping on sofas, and at the same time opining that if someone’s life hasn’t quite worked out right, then it’s because of something they did in a past life—ouch! What gives? (More …)

  Dave Kingsbury and hardie karges are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Dave Kingsbury 4:00 pm on January 29, 2018 Permalink | Reply

    Like any long-lived belief system, I suppose, as complex as people and societies are themselves. The Science connection seems an interesting extension …

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      hardie karges 10:54 pm on January 29, 2018 Permalink | Reply

      Yes, It’s amazing to me that the original Buddhist debate, basically liberal vs. conservative, is still alive today, after countless twists and turns, and analogous to something similar in politics, which is all well and good, I think, as long as everyone can be polite and civilized about it…

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        Dave Kingsbury 2:34 am on January 30, 2018 Permalink

        Indeed. The questions arising from reincarnation are the ones I struggle with. My best shot is to view it as metaphor and therefore helpful for perspective and even humour.