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  • hardie karges 4:29 am on March 24, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , metta, , , , , , , y-chromosome   

    Buddhism in the Bardo: Survival of the Species…  

    Some people might laugh at a monk in meditation, wasting his life away, but I laugh at the silly fools who cause global warming. Because, after living a long time in Thailand, that’s the main reason that I was reluctant to get involved with Buddhism, the perception that it was too passive, and incapable of dealing with the issues that face the world. So, for me that was an early premonition of what I might now call something like ‘socio-spiritual bypassing,’ i.e. the avoidance of social obligations by invoking the spiritual primacy of renunciation. 

     But at some point, I realized that renunciation was probably a greater tool than all the political action in the world, and, at least on some ways, likely to produce the greater impact, also. Because, for all our sociopolitical posturing, little is accomplished along those lines, and much of the developed world may soon be crisscrossed with windmills, without any detectable difference in our addiction to rapid locomotion, despite the visible degradation of our relationship to Nature. With a population of more than eight billion souls, renunciation may soon be the only avenue of survival. 

    And, if that’s a bitter pill to swallow, then so be it. Because the writing has been on the wall for at least sixty to eighty years now, and we’ve only sunk deeper in our denial of the likely results, as Elon exhorts us to make more babies, so that he can rake in more gazillions. And that’s maybe the saddest part, that the only way that we can show our love for these people on this planet is to create more babies, who must then shoulder the burden of our conundrum.  

    So suddenly renunciation is not a bad option at all, and the disappearance of the y-chromosome only seconds that emotion. Because, whatever the numbers of our reproduction and its proliferation, or not, it’s impossible to live in a world without love. But we might need to change that meaning. And that’s where Buddhism comes in, because love comes in many forms and flavors. Metta, or lovingkindness, is the preferred Buddhist flavor, and the world community is the intended recipient. That’s Buddhism. 

     

  • hardie karges 4:26 am on February 25, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , metta, , , , , ,   

    Kindness and Compassion are the Heart and Soul of Buddhism  

    Buddhism in Bhutan

    Compassion has no expiration date. It’s never too late to make new friends with old enemies. This is one of the secrets to a good life: no grudges, no scorched earth, no retribution, and, most importantly, no regrets. It should be simple, since you don’t really have to do anything, but in fact it’s one of the hardest things ever, so attached as we are to our egos and our ‘face’ that we spend so much time and effort saving, lest someone steal it right off of our heads, haha. 

    The Dalai Lama once said that his religion was simple, and that’s kindness, which is compassion, in a word, same thing, same time, and that’s Buddhism, too, in a word. All the elaborate lists and literary expositions that comprise the Buddhist Abhidharma are unnecessary to describe the heart of Buddhism, so why waste so much time and effort when you can put it all in a word, or two? Because yes, there is another word that needs to be included, and if karuna is the first word, then metta is the second, often translated as ‘lovingkindness’ or simple ‘friendliness.’ 

    Put the two words together, and you’ve captured the heart and soul of Buddhism. In fact, modern standard Thai language does indeed often combine the two words for extra effect, so mettakaruna is a word or phrase that you will hear often there. Suffering is famously the back-story to Buddhism, that and its cessation, and that’s pretty much all you need to know. The cosmology of self and rebirth are important but debatable, IMHO, and thus of secondary importance, ditto nirvana. The analogy to Christian forgiveness might be worth mentioning but it isn’t necessary. Be good; don’t be bad. It’s that simple. 

     

  • hardie karges 4:46 am on September 24, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: brotherly love, , , , , , , metta   

    Love, Buddhist Style…  

    No, Buddhist love is not like falling in love, sorry, more like friendship or brotherly love, no more tears. So, this is one of the main differences between Buddhism and Christianity, and therefore one of the main obstacles for someone hoping to straddle the line between the two and ultimately blend them into a workable hybrid, something of which I approve, BTW, and perceive as being somehow inevitable, such is the status and well-defined dialectical positions of these two pillars of modern religion.  

    This may be controversial with some fierce religionists, but not me. I see it as the highest phase in the history of religion, that in which the family of man becomes inclusive, and everyone reaps the same benefits of being a member of the club. After all, religions have always been successful for their own individual members. The problem is one of how to deal with the non-members, who are all too often perceived as ‘others.’ If this is most obvious with Islam, it is still an issue with many, if not most, of the others. 

    Every religion preaches love, of course, but the devil is in the details. Christianity wants a love that is passionate, as that is the modus operandi of the religion, to FEEL something, first and foremost, whereas wisdom is paramount in Buddhism, that and the action of carrying out the fine and enlightened activities in question, mostly compassion and kindness, nothing more nor less. So, Buddhist metta is probably best translated to the West as ‘brotherly love,’ the same kind that once made Philadelphia famous. It may take more than that to reproduce the species, true, but not much, nod nod wink wink. 

     

  • hardie karges 4:09 am on June 24, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , metta, , , ,   

    Buddhism, Love, and the Middle Path to Survival  

    Europeans and Americans live to fall in love, and many other countries and languages aren’t much better. Live to fall, wow! In the Thai language the equivalent expression would be to get ‘lost in love,’ not much different. But Buddhist metta is better than that, all the best parts of love and none of the bad, friendship mostly. You can be kind and still be balanced. But this is a hard lesson to teach, because we’re hooked on passion like junkies on the hard stuff, and there’s not too much that we can do about it, even if we wanted to. Or can we? Of course, we can. And it’s no accident that the original meaning of the word ‘passion’ is ‘suffering,’ just like that for which Buddhism is so famous. 

    It’s just that at some point we started to like all that excess emotion, just like we began to ‘love our lives,’ while Eastern ascetics continued to renounce the pleasures of flesh and fish, just as they continue to do to this very day. I suppose that the Western attitude is that if we try hard enough, we just might create that eternal life that Jesus promised us all along. Does Virtual Reality count? It might have to, if we’re serious about that as our goal…or, maybe we could just train our minds and tame our desires to a more acceptable level that allows for plenty of free time and a healthy dose of creativity, also. 

    Bingo, the Middle Path is always the solution, not passivity nor stress tests, just good honest old-fashioned hard work, complete with rationality, such that extremes of thought and opinion are rejected in favor of more conciliatory positions. In other words, you might gain less than the wildest stock option, but in return, you are also likely to lose less if your risks fall short of the mark. But that’s more than a conservative business portfolio decision. That’s a principle of life: make steady gains going forward, with always the option to change direction with any new information that accompanies the passage of time. That’s the Buddhist Middle Path. We’re playing for keeps here. 

     

  • hardie karges 4:44 am on May 20, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Buddhist poisons, , , metta, ,   

    Fear, Poisons, and Spiritual Bypassing in Buddhism  

    Fear should not be mistaken for hatred or anger. Fear is easily cured by friendship, metta. Fear, as bad as it is, at the least, is not a sin of aggression, and so is much more easily cured, as long as it is caught in time, before it morphs into fear and/or anger, and thousands of kindergarteners lying dying in pools of blood on sacred school grounds. The only Buddhist form of love is really metta, friendship, Platonic love, without craving nor attachment, always forgiving and conciliatory.  

    So, there is a reason why fear is not one of the prime Buddhist ‘poisons’ in the same way as greed, hatred, and delusion. And that is because it is essentially harmful only to the actor who is victim to the farce, and so, not any crime of aggression is actually committed. The others all hurt somebody—someone else—where fear does not, not necessarily, if dealt with in time. If this is a sin, then it is a sin of the heart, of feeling, of emotions, which are largely kept hidden and therefore not subject to further scrutiny. 

    This might be an example of ‘spiritual bypassing,’ though, a trendy claim favored by psychologists when dealing with personal problems by plaintiffs who favor silence over the confrontation, with emotions, that many psychologists prefer. So, that’s why I hold back my full blessings, though they may certainly have a point. But the counterpoint is that that same accusation could be leveled at meditation, also, which is arguably Buddhism’s greatest contribution to world culture and history. As always, the true path lies in the middle… 

     

  • hardie karges 11:34 am on February 18, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: awakening, , , , , , , metta,   

    Buddhism 101: Metta and Karuna, Love and Compassion 

    Buddhism in Bhutan

    When your burdens become blessings and your hatred becomes love, then you are truly enlightened. And ‘enlightened’ may be a loaded term, filled with false promises and moronic miscalculations, but still it is frequently found. So, I use it, as do many others. Is the Buddha’s ‘awakening’ really any more accurate than to refer to his ‘enlightenment?’ I suppose that ‘awakening’ sounds self-motivated, while ‘enlightenment’ sounds as if a light is being switched on somewhere, but that might only be a difference more apparent than actual…

    But the point is to make some adjustments to your current internal conditions, rather than insisting on changing something else, or someone else, to suit your requirements, which are likely nothing of the sort, but instead desires and cravings and itches wanting scratching, for lack of a better metaphor. And as always, I take the middle position, or path if you prefer, that sweet spot between naked aggression, on the one hand, and passive submission, on the other, such that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and the apparent compromise is in fact a fresh and superior synthesis. We should be open to change, not scared of it.

    But love is not as tricky as it seems, requiring flowers in February, ribbons and bows in December, and God help you if you forget the anniversary, not to be confused with the birthday in another Indo-European language. It’s confusing. But Buddhist love is not. ‘Lovingkindness’ is a Hebrew loanword via Christianity, but metta simply means brotherhood, or sisterhood, as the case may be, universal in its scope and nature, with passion distinctly optional. After all, passion originally meant suffering, and that is the starting point for Buddhism, but not the final word, which is always metta. Most important is to forego all hate…

     

  • hardie karges 4:09 pm on September 25, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Japan, , , metta, , , , ,   

    Buddhism and the Dialectic of Deliverance… 

    Buddhism needs no fancy metaphysics nor linguistics, multiple hells nor forty-two flavors of emptiness. Kindness and compassion are enough, metta and karuna and all that jazz. Which is one of the singular beauties of the faith, of course, that almost nothing is required up front, but some goodwill and a policy of non-aggression, ahimsa, such that oftentimes simply doing nothing, absolutely nothing, is the preferred path to advancement, simply because all other options are of lesser benefit.

    Some sects of Buddhism prefer a more elaborate presentation of gods and goddesses, but this is entirely optional and the historical Buddha himself had none of it. In fact, I’m not sure that the historical Buddha would even recognize Tibetan Vajrayana, or Japanese Zen, as something of his own inspiration. But such is the evolution of culture and language, so that a random mutation can be almost guaranteed to occur every eighty years or so, just like the DNA from which we all descend.

    But that doesn’t mean that Tibetan and Japanese Buddhists have nothing in common. They do. It’s just that these two almost-opposite branches of Buddhism are poised like the horns of a dilemma to offer themselves up as starting points for the next phase of dialectical Buddhism. So, given the superstitious and elaborate nature of Vajrayana and the sparse linguistic and meditation-oriented nature of Zen, what would be the next logical step for Buddhism to advance, at least in the West, that great field of dreams left to conquer?

    It just might be the original Theravadin style, with or without the religious trappings, so a more secular but traditional Buddhism, for lack of better terminology. And this is the current situation in the West, where those two extremes have found highest favor with the freedom-loving West, while the more disciplined original approach has found little favor—until now. Because the current acceptance of secular Buddhism goes back to the Early Buddhist roots in many important ways, but without karma, rebirth and past lives. The only question is how all of this will play out I the long run. My fingers are crossed. We are in need of some new synthesis to advance forward…

     

  • hardie karges 7:05 am on April 17, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , metta, ,   

    Buddhist Metta in the Age of Social Media… 

    Metta is simple and one of the cornerstones of Buddhism: friendship, simple friendship. Or call it ‘loving-kindness’ if that reconciles you with the Hebrew chesed of your Judeo-Christian tradition. Just note that it is not the passion that is usually associated with Christian ‘loving-kindness,’ not even the passionate embrace of a mother and her child. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it’s not necessary. What’s necessary is that the child not experience fear and anger and other defilements and afflictions.

    But we Westerners, particularly Americans, are raised on a diet of emotional cocktails, roller-coasters and built-in toasters, speeding up and then putting on brakes, heating up and then cooling our feet, such that life is nothing but one vast mood swing, which we must then ‘shrink’ by repeated visits to the therapist of our choice. To be a ‘bad-ass’ is a compliment in the US of A, and it shows in our interactions with the world. We fight our enemies to the death on battlefields, while never questioning the enemy within.

    This is one reason why it’s so difficult for Americans to be good Buddhists. Because we look for enlightenment in dialogue and debate, rather than the silence that brilliantly illustrates Emptiness, if not strictly define it. Because we look for our meditation in the words of some endless rap from some best-selling app from the online app-store of one of the world’s richest men, rather than that same silence which the Buddha himself used, as do thousands of monks to this day.

    And whether those monks win or lose the debates that some “spiritual bad-asses” (actual quote) find so rewarding and illuminating is not important. What’s important is quieting the mind (i.e. consciousness) by the necessary hours of silent and still sitting that make life itself the only reward necessary for a rewarding existence. All the cars and bars and Hollywood stars on assorted sh*t-stained sidewalks are but illustrations in a magazine that most people can’t sit still long enough to actually read.

    Compared to these challenges, metta is a literal piece of cake, to be shared with friends on any given day, and maybe even twice on Sunday, or Christmas, or Easter. The world is our sangha, our community, and strangers are as much a part of that as family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers. In fact, that can be its greatest reward, communion with strangers as if they were lifelong friends. You can’t know that pleasure until you test those waters. The first rule of friendship is to be friendly, simple. Smile. Happy Easter. Happy Buddhist New Year.

     

  • hardie karges 7:00 am on January 23, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , metta,   

    Buddhism and the True Meaning of Love 

    ‘Falling in Love’ is all about attachment. True love is all about non-attachment. True love looks for soft spots to protect. Aggression looks for soft spots to attack, and attachment isn’t much better, by weakening that spot, even if not physically attacking. By ‘true love,’ of course, I’m talking about Buddhist metta, typically translated as ‘lovingkindness,’ if you’re Jewish or Christian, but that still preserves some passion, and suffering, so maybe better translated more like the Buddha himself probably intended, so something like ‘brotherly love’ or ‘sisterly love,’ as the case may be. To be clear, I think that being in a relationship is fine, sometimes wonderful, but it shouldn’t necessarily be based on the hysterical (no pun) madness of being ‘in love.’

    Score one for arranged marriages? I wouldn’t go that far. Exercising one’s innate free will, to whatever extent it exists, and despite all the limitations placed upon it, is all about what it is to be human. ‘Give me liberty or give me death’? Haha, once again, I probably wouldn’t go that far. Because true freedom is freedom FROM, not freedom TO, freedom from any and all the defilements that plague us, but not freedom to do anything we want, regardless of whom it hurts. And this is an important distinction. Kileshas are the Buddhist name for those defilements that destroy our humanity and reduce us once again to the animal world from which we’ve evolved.

    It’s funny, though, because often these defilements themselves come paired just like the pair-bonding couples that cause many of the problems in their quest for reproduction rights, in addition to other attachments and liens on property. Because jealousy and revenge are twin kileshas, just like hate and anger, one feeding off the other like two heads of a serpent striking, and best avoided. The great Buddhist dilemma, or tetralemma, is how to deal with aggression. Do you turn the other cheek? But no Christian really did that, did they? To live from sensation to sensation is to live like an animal. To follow dharma is to live like a human.

     

  • hardie karges 10:44 am on August 8, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Alexander the Great, , , , , , Hindi, , , , , metta, , , , , shaman, , , , , Yaqui   

    Buddhist Metta-tation, Friendship Beyond Thought, Language Optional… 

    The truest love is metta, friendship, without all the burdens of possession. That’s Buddhist love, of course, without all the weeping, wailing, and the gnashing of teeth. The Pali word metta often gets written up as ‘lovingkindness’ by latter-day Buddhists, mostly American, who want the passion that term implies, but the Buddha likely intended nothing of the sort. That’s a Christian term, too, from the Hebrew chesed, with a heavy dose of devotion implied, but the Buddha seemed to intend none of that, and the word’s presence in many other Asian languages of the time reflects none of it, either.

    So ‘lovingkindness’ would seem to come from a totally different line of descent by genome. Culture is not genome, though, of course, though they often parallel one another, and the ‘Judeo-Christian’ tradition seems to reflect that. So, we Westerners tend to be emotion junkies, even when that emotion is not necessarily a pleasant one. We are implored to embrace suffering, by that logic, even though suffering implies pain, and the heavy dose of sadness that often brings. The fact that the Pali word dukkha means ‘suffering’ and the related word dukhee means ‘sadness’ in modern Hindi would seem to reflect that range of intent.

    (More …)
     

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