streaming consciousness…

Tagged: language Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• 

  hardie karges 2:27 am on March 29, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: language, Hardie Karges ( 266 ), meditation ( 215 ), Theravada ( 53 ), Mahayana ( 48 ), Pali ( 21 ), Sanskrit ( 23 ), bodhisattva ( 10 ), arahant ( 2 ), prakrit   

  The Buddha’s Parting Words Revisited: Lamp or Island? 

  

  You can be an island or a lamp, on a bicycle or a ship, and the path to fruition is the same, if you plant seeds along the way. The reference is to the Buddha’s parting words in which he urges followers to be a ‘lamp’ or to be an ‘island’, or either, or both, or neither, in catuhskoti logic, subsequent narrators, translators, and explainers suggesting that the word dipa can somehow mean both, when the reality is that it can only mean either, unless you’re making a play on words in Magadhi prakrit, aka ‘Pali’. 

  Because big brother Sanskrit shows that the original word(s) are clearly distinct, modern transliterations being closer to dvipa than dipa for the word that means ‘island’, for which the prakrit speakers presumably simply slurred down the more complex sorta-three-syllable word into only two distinct syllables, while explainers suggest that the original meaning is essentially the same. The only problem is that they’re not the same. So, this is more than linguistic fun, notwithstanding that Buddha might have simply made a pun, which I’m sure that he was capable of, being the human that he was. 

  Or maybe he was simply being prescient, since being an island refuge for yourself and/or a lamp for yourself and your path (and others’, since lamps tend to radiate outward), is very similar to the difference between the Theravada approach to Buddhist practice and the most obvious approaches to a Mahayana practice, that outward radiation being obviously more diverse by design and definition, more Bodhisattva than arahant. There are many Mahayanas. There is only one Theravada. Or in my Buddhist dialectic, it can allow for two-in-one, all in good time. As I said before, save yourself then save the world.  

   

  Reply Cancel reply

  Required fields are marked *

  Name *

  Email *

  Website

  Notify me of new comments via email.

  Notify me of new posts via email.

  Δ

• 

  hardie karges 4:24 pm on March 27, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 454 ), Hardie Karges ( 266 ), language, meditation ( 215 ), philosophy ( 112 ), religion ( 167 )   

  Buddha Talk: Save Yourself, then Save the World… 

   
• 

  hardie karges 3:12 am on March 22, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 454 ), Hardie Karges ( 266 ), justice ( 4 ), kindness ( 17 ), language, meditation ( 215 ), philosophy ( 112 ), religion ( 167 ), transactional   

  Buddhism 499: Taming the Mind…  

  

  Treat perfect strangers with the same kindness you give your pets and the world will be a better place. And pets deserve that special treatment, of course, but don’t we all? Because all too often, kindness is transactional, tit for tat, is it not? Yes, it is, whether we even realize it or not, we’re so accustomed to that sort of reciprocity, as long as the dog is loveable, of course, and silently obedient. And many Buddhists do that, also, which is not a bad thing in itself, unless it rewards evil at the same time. 

  Because justice and fairness is a real thing, too, of course, and that is the flipside to the equation. Pets are a special circumstance in the hierarchy of the world, and I love them greatly, no vestigial nostalgia for the savage wilderness here, no thank you. I wish that every animal in the world could be tamed and therefore survive, rather than live a precarious existence in a world where it is commonly thought that returning an animal to the wilderness is somehow standard logical procedure. 

  As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Conscientious taming seems perfectly acceptable to me, in lieu of wilderness, but dancing bears would seem to be going too far. But the point is that the kindness so often typically displayed toward our pets de rigueur is often totally lacking in our relationships to our human equals, even when they’ve done much to deserve it. No matter that there are Buddhist websites called Wildmind and so forth, the founding principle of Buddhism is to tame the mind, and that is a very good thing… 

   
• 

  hardie karges 2:18 am on March 15, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: balance, Buddhism ( 454 ), DEMOCRACY ( 11 ), Hardie Karges ( 266 ), language, meditation ( 215 ), Middle Path ( 56 ), salvation ( 2 )   

  Buddhism 101: It is all a question of balance…   

  

  This is one of the not-so-secret secrets of Buddhism and much the meaning of the sometimes meandering Middle Path. If not that, then what would the Middle Path mean? A shortcut to salvation? There may or may not be something like salvation, but there is definitely no shortcut. If anything, Buddhism is hard work. Yes, that’s right. Because that Middle Path may not always be straight and narrow, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy. 

  Which is the usual connotation of the phrase ‘straight and narrow; that it’s goddawful boring and devoid of all sensory pleasure. And there’s some truth to that.  After all, who drinks lukewarm coffee? No one that I know. We drink it hot, or we drink it cold, ginger-laced decaf or double express, unapologetic and often judging it by those very extremities of flavor. No one gets excited by Folgers or Maxwell House, but macchiato always gets a grin and even chicory gets good mentions, even if the caffeine content is not significant. 

  But there is more than a matter of taste and tastes at stake here. This is a matter of discipline, and other issues such as kindness and compassion are directly affected. Because , isn’t it sometimes hard to be nice to people with extreme positions? I’m asking this in the year 2026. The answer is yes, of course. So, it sometimes comes as a surprise that the words ‘polite’ and ‘politics’ have more than some distant connection in ancient Rome. No, they’re intimately connected. And both connotations support the concept of a Middle path. We’ll get there eventually. So, let’s get there politely. This is also the key to democracy.  

   
• 

  hardie karges 1:05 am on March 8, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 454 ), Hardie Karges ( 266 ), Jung Freud, karma ( 52 ), language, meditation ( 215 ), samma kammanta ( 4 )   

  Buddhism and Karma Lite  

  

  Good karma is more than a healthy bank balance. It involves a healthy dose of kindness and compassion, too. Because karma is not transactional. Karma is relational. It is about the way that things are related more than any scorecard or final reckoning. It is like the special sauce that makes anything taste good that has the good fortune to lie beneath it in a pile of randomly ordered circumstances that happen to occur in succession in a well-ordered life. 

  But nothing is random, not really. And I don’t mean past-life karma coming back to enact revenge on the present. No, I just mean that there are always Freudian slips and Jungian archetypes that hover slightly in the background of consciousness that betray all efforts of anonymity and even-handedness when confronted with the necessities of justice and equanimity. ‘Karma’ is our work and our efforts, and so ‘good karma’ the best of these in a world of obscure causes and consequences.   

  But so much or our work never escapes the confines of our own consciousness and consequences, and therein lies the depth charge that keeps giving, for better or worse, modern reactions to previous interactions. It is all a question of balance. If extremes are avoided and conciliation invested, then results will likely be salutary, if not today, then tomorrow. In short: do good things and you will have a good life. Do bad things and you will have a bad life, most likely. Keeping score is not necessary. You will know it by how it feels.   

   
• 

  hardie karges 6:37 pm on March 6, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 454 ), Hardie Karges ( 266 ), language, meditation ( 215 ), religion ( 167 )   

  Buddha Talk: Buddhism and the True Cost of Freedom 

   
• 

  hardie karges 7:49 pm on March 5, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 454 ), Hardie Karges ( 266 ), language, meditation ( 215 )   

  Buddha Talk: Buddhism and Non-Duality 

   
• 

  hardie karges 6:17 pm on March 2, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 454 ), CHRISTIANITY ( 162 ), emptiness ( 31 ), Hardie Karges ( 266 ), language, meditation ( 215 ), shunya ( 12 ), shunyata ( 24 )   

  Buddha Talk #0: Emptiness 

  You can have infinity, i.e. endlessness, with no boundaries, but it’s empty. Or you can have things, but only a limited number of them. You can’t have both. Infinite stuff is a fool’s dream. But that’s exactly what many Christians believe, or buy into, I should say. Because it ties directly into the capitalism that accompanies so much Christianity, especially the Protestant sort, which by no accident came into existence at almost exactly the same time as capitalism, maybe even preceding it by a bit, thereby giving the lie to any idea of mutual causation, in fact maybe a direct cause. 

  And many of those Christian values get carried into Buddhism by the same Christians who gave up their worldly ambitions in the process, at the same time that they cast piercing glances at the senior monks over the status of women in the ranks of the ordained. The meaning of the hallowed Buddhist concept of ‘Emptiness’, i.e. ‘shunyata’, is also up for grabs. Because, while shunya is the Sanskrit word for ‘zero’ and dates from right around the same time as the invention of the zero (yes), and may very well have originally been a philosophical concept long before becoming a mathematical one, that doesn’t stop certain westerners from frowning upon the concept. 

  Because ‘Emptiness’ has a very negative, and strong, Western psychological connotation as the cause of depression and unhappiness, this in a culture that rewards engagement above all else. I see it every day as a digital creator on social media, with no seeming recognition that such engagement is exactly what drives many people away from such media. Apparently driving sales is more important. So, I let many comments go unanswered, not because I agree or disagree with the viewpoint expressed, but simply because that uncertainty is fine, and often not worth fanning the flames of dispute, since the only certainty is negation. Then there’s spiritual bypassing, but that’s for another day. Be kind.

   
• 

  hardie karges 1:28 am on March 1, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 454 ), Cessation of Suffering ( 2 ), dukkha ( 17 ), enlightenment ( 15 ), Hardie Karges ( 266 ), Hinayana ( 7 ), language, meditation ( 215 ), Nichiren, nirvana ( 14 ), suffering ( 31 )   

  Buddhism and Suffering, More or Less… 

  

  I find it mildly humorous how western Buddhists, many of them famous, constantly try to redefine the Sanskrit term ‘dukkha’ as something less than full-fledge ‘suffering’, as if the Buddha would bother creating a new philosophy or religion just to say “Sometimes there is a spot of bother,” haha. No, he pretty much articulated that the four prime instances of suffering are none other than birth, old age, sickness, and death, in no certain order, but generally agreed upon by all sects and schools of Buddhism. 

  All of which would generate nothing much more than a tired ‘duh’, if it weren’t for the birth inclusion, which might raise some eyebrows from Western Christian-like disciples, for whom birth is truly a miracle. And I might agree with that, but maybe for a slightly different reason. Because, I don’t merely believe that birth is a miracle, but that all life is indeed a miracle, especially intelligent (!?) life, and to which I would add any and all ‘stuff’, too, except that the only clue that stuff indeed exists is by the perceptions of those self-same humans, i.e. intelligent life, and their invention of language with which to define it.  

  From there the ruminations on suffering diversify according to the source, including causes such as change as articulated by the Buddha himself (to which I sometimes disagree, to allow for good changes), and others such as “suffering due to separation from loved ones, suffering from being with those we hate, the suffering of not getting what we desire, and lastly, the suffering which arises from the five components which constitute our bodies and minds.”  

  Those last are articulated by the Singapore Nichiren disciples that I confess to knowing little about, and whose conclusions are questionable to me, such as the equation of Enlightenment with Nirvana, and whose inclusion of hellish realms with ‘Hinayana’ seems just incorrect. Yes, I have an MA in Buddhist Studies. But the equation of the ancient Sanskrit word ‘dukkha’ with suffering is certain with the Thai, Lao, and Khmer languages, and in Hindi and Nepalese it’s ‘dukkhee’ or ‘dukkhad’ and means something more like ‘sad’ or ‘unhappy’, so still definitely more than simple dissatisfaction. Birth notwithstanding, old age, sickness, and death, with no recourse, certainly qualify as suffering, so we must deal with that. That is our mission, the cessation of suffering, or at least a healthy reduction.

   
• 

  hardie karges 5:05 pm on February 26, 2026 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 454 ), Hardie Karges ( 266 ), language, meditation ( 215 )   

  Buddha Talk: the Sounds of Silence… 

  Sometimes silence is the best way to celebrate. Not that celebration is necessary, ever, for any reason, but if it is desired, for some reason, then silence is not a bad way to go about it. Because our lives in this world have advanced beyond the simple survival of the individual and by extension the species, to the point where we are at the point of destroying everything we’ve accomplished by the fact that we have over-produced and over-reproduced.  

  Our individual lives are no longer in imminent danger. But the lives of the species are in terrible danger. And the well-being of the individual is similarly impacted, if no longer in immediate danger of destruction. Still, we have been very successful over the course of our existence, and if that calls for celebration, then let it be silent. Because silence is Buddhism’s secret weapon, best seen in the practice of meditation. And if we need to celebrate in order to propagate, then let it be here, in silence, not in the screaming of flesh. 

  The path is not always straight or easy. It often seems to go in circles. Patience is the key that unlocks the door to freedom. But this is not an absolute freedom in the Western sense, the freedom to do this and that. That’s a boy’s dream. Girls have responsibilities to fate and the future. That requires discipline and diligence, karma in the truest sense of actions and reactions. That requires little or no flash or flare, just dedication to the cause of righteousness–truth, beauty, and goodness. That is the Middle Path.