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  hardie karges 2:56 pm on September 22, 2024 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Abrahamic ( 2 ), binary ( 3 ), Buddhism ( 429 ), ego ( 33 ), Hardie Karges ( 240 ), Marx, meditation ( 190 ), Middle Path ( 54 ), religion ( 158 ), renunciation ( 15 ), Science ( 25 ), spirituality ( 27 ), Taoism ( 3 )   

  Buddhism 101: There are no Winners or Losers…  

  

  There are no winners or losers. There are only players and non-players. Either one is fine, but if you play, then play well. The concept of winning and losing is obviously a binary circumstance, as are players vs. non-players or even East vs. West. But sometimes binary terms are effective in conveying a message, even if they are often ineffective in organizing your life. Because, we Buddhists have long been of the opinion that the Middle Path is the best guide to living your life with or without any scientific proof. 

  But the concept of winning vs losing is especially offensive, as it suggests that some people are simply better than others, regardless of any merit displayed or accrued in the process of playing the game, which suggests racism, if not just arrogance or hubris. None of that has ever been proven, of course, and my gut hunch is exactly the opposite: the more mixed the race the more superior, but again that’s hard to prove or disprove. 

  The issue of players vs non-players is more well-defined, though, in that participation is an act of will and not an accident of birth. So, when comparing the aggressive Abrahamic traditions vs the renunciative dharma traditions, it is possible to draw some conclusions, even if they are still subject to interpretations and circumstances. Because, while India and China long ago embraced renunciative dharma and taoist traditions, their cultures are anything but. And while the abrahamic West is known for its aggressive colonialism, some of the world’s finest most peaceful cities and cultures are to be found there today. 

  So, it’s a mixed bag at best, and I myself qualify as a proponent of renunciation only in the sense that too much wrong action has already been done, and so its opposite is now often preferable. But I don’t think that humans should be passive and that’s not how I live my life. So, my conception of Buddhism is somewhat like Marx’s communism, something appropriate after the previous partial phases have occurred, i.e. its time has come. At an earlier time, something else was possibly more appropriate, but not now. So, when someone insults you or feeds bait your ego, do nothing–quickly.

   

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  hardie karges 12:03 pm on February 10, 2023 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Dependent Origination ( 7 ), empathy ( 5 ), Hardie Karges ( 240 ), individualism, Marx, religion ( 158 ), society ( 5 ), sympathy ( 2 )   

  Buddhism, the Individual and Society 

  

  

  You see that other person over there? They’re flesh and blood, just like you. You don’t know what they’re going through, so please be kind; manifest your mind. This is one of the side benefits, one of the depth charges, if you will, of Buddhism, maybe not the most obvious, but just possibly the most powerful. That we are not in this world alone, that if we are created from the same causes and conditions, then we are essentially the same person, one person, indivisible, God optional, with liberty and justice for all.

  The simplest word to describe it is empathy, a shot better than sympathy, which implies that you are observing that one there and judging him, her, or it to be worth your while, or your pity, whereas empathy implies that you are literally putting yourself in that one’s shoes and therefore have a very clear feeling of what that feels like. The difference is murky, but I think that pretty well describes it, and while both may be valuable, empathy is more to the point that Buddhism takes care to make in the law of Dependent Origination: there is a process of which we are all part.

  I’m only taking that a step further: if we’re all a part of the same process, then we are all essentially One. So, what? What’s the big deal? Well, it IS a big deal when you realize that Western philosophy has done much the opposite, elevating individualism to primacy, while relegating society to secondary status, as if the family were the only true society and everyone else were simply actors on a stage or consumers in the marketplace. And this is the unspoken assumption of Marx, also, whose theories might actually work if society were one big family. But we’re not, not yet. Buddhism is a start in the right direction.  
   
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  hardie karges 8:25 am on June 21, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: capitalist, communism ( 21 ), DEMOCRACY ( 10 ), dialectic ( 13 ), ecology ( 2 ), environmentalism ( 2 ), global village, global warming ( 16 ), Hegel ( 4 ), Marx, small planet, TERRORISM ( 3 ), totalitarian   

  #Dialectic Burrito Deluxe: #Marx or #Hegel, Tortilla or Bagel… 

  Marx and Hegel are almost (almost!) equally famous for their dialogues and dialectics, with themselves and others, materialism and idealism respectively, thesis antithesis synthesis, history somehow some way marching forward zig-zag drunkenly, reconciling opposites into higher syntheses supposedly, like a ball rolling downhill, picking up speed, bouncing from side to side, before finally choosing a middle course out of entropy as much as any conscious decision-making progress…

  And so we do just that, apparently, nomadic hunter-gatherers until we had the ways and means to settle down with plants and animals, sedentary farmer-herders until we had the ways and means to build elaborate cities with specialized skills, accomplished artisans-craftsmen until we had the ways and means to sell beyond our local ‘hood, market-based buyers-sellers until we had the ways and means to go long distances, peripatetic merchant-travelers until we had the ways and means to mass-produce anywhere any time… (More …)

   
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  hardie karges 7:22 am on June 21, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Hegel ( 4 ), ISIL ( 8 ), ISLAM ( 67 ), Marx, USSR ( 4 )   

  The Dark Side Dialectic of Religion, Culture and Politics… 

  

  ISIL wages war in the Mideast

  We cringe with horror at the antics of ISIL, but they’re very similar to those employed by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR aka ‘Russia’) before them, that previous political entity with objectives almost exactly the opposite. The fact that the USSR crashed almost simultaneously with the rise of fundamentalist Islam is almost too coincidental to be ignored—almost.

  It’s almost like there IS indeed a dialectic of history—thesis, antithesis, synthesis—as theorized by Hegel, regardless of whether it ultimately has anything to do with the means of production, as theorized by Marx. In this scenario, something at least has to be offered up as an alternative to the dominant capitalist-consumerist system, or whatever system happens to be on top at any given time.

  In this view, therefore, there is no one specific dialectic going on at any one given time, but more of a random one—something anything. Sounds a lot like evolution, doesn’t it? Yes, it does, but more like a cultural evolution, a dialectic of ideas, as theorized by Hegel, in which we seem to be subconsciously struggling toward something else–always. Or is it a function of language itself? (More …)