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  • hardie karges 7:15 am on March 3, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , Middle Path, , ,   

    Buddhist Karma and the Middle Path to Salvation   

    You want good karma? Help a beggar to eat. That’s good karma. Because karma literally means ‘acts’ or ‘actions’, though it is often used almost synonymously with the English word ‘fate,’ as though it were all about some sort of predestination. But no, that’s a derivative meaning which may or may not always apply. The most important thing is right actions, or samma kammanta, as specified in the Eightfold Path that concludes the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. 

    And that’s the important thing, to perform good acts, the other steps along the path, not unlike the Ten Commandments of Christianity, including right speech, right livelihood, and, of course, the basics: do not kill, do not steal, and for god’s sake don’t mess with your neighbor’s partner! Is nothing sacred? And if the Christians like to phrase that as ‘thou shalt not covet,’ then the Sanskrit is not so much different. They’re related languages and people, after all, and the Buddha puts ‘craving’ up there as the main cause of suffering. 

    But where East and West might truly differ, though, is in the speed and willingness to act. Because if we in the West see our active ‘go go go’ lifestyles as a normal and predictable outcome of our sojourn upon this planet, I can assure you that not everyone sees life and the world that way, least of all the rishis for which India is so famous, not to mention the pandits, gurus, swamis, and acharyas. And so, there’s a hidden message for them here also: Do something! After all, you can’t sit in a cave all your life, can you? Can you? 

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

    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 9:41 am on January 22, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , grasping, , Middle Path, ,   

    Buddhism in the Bardo: Don’t Forget to Laugh… 

    Sometimes the best antidote to fear is humor, even laughter, the more the better. The proof is in the performance. And it’s contagious. That’s about as Zen-like koanic or as Vajrayana-like superstitious as I can get, not that I feel any need to give equal time to those later schools of Buddhism, but because it works, and whether the Buddha ever said something similar or not, I’m not certain, but I’m sure that he’d agree.

    Because the Buddha was a rational man, and that was a radical thing at the time, though many would prefer the latent ‘non-dualism’ inherent in Buddhism, even though that was hardly the Buddha’s central message. The central message was to reduce suffering, not by going on a shopping spree, but by removing the causes of suffering: grasping and craving, mostly. He also had impermanence on that list, as if all change is bad, but I’d probably prefer a more modern approach to that. Some change is good.

    But I see a subtle message about fear in the Buddha’s teachings, and I think that it’s important to make the implicit more explicit. Because fear is one of the horrors of modern life, since we have been so distant from it for a generation or two, and because it looms so largely on the horizon. Because we’ve become very attached, even addicted, to our lives, which more than a few Buddhist monks have pointed out, and to which I’ve often taken some offense to, but which may just be correct, after all.

    Because, even if the goal is to reduce suffering, the next question is always: at what cost? We certainly don’t expect a woman to submit to a rapist, just to avoid a bruise or two. Most suffering is mental, after all, and submission to fear is certainly not always the answer to it. Fortunately, there is usually a sweet spot between two equally unacceptable alternatives, and that is the goal of Buddhism, to find that middle path. It’s a process, after all, not dogma. Don’t forget to smile. Don’t forget to laugh. Sometimes the best antidote is an anecdote…

     

  • hardie karges 1:58 pm on November 5, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Middle Path,   

    Dharma and the Middle Path as a Law of Nature… 

    There’s always a middle Path, whether or not it’s THE middle Path. This may be a bit of a deviation from the standard central dogma, which likes to break the Middle Path down into the Eightfold Path of Right View, Thought, Speech, Action, Livelihood, Effort, Mindfulness, and Meditation, BUT: who needs dogma, anyway? I don’t. So, I like to think of the Middle Path as a universal principle applicable to a multiplicity of situations, and carrying a message embedded that is worth more than just a little attention.

    Because we are not only just junkies for excess, whether it be luxury or lack, existence or non-existence, or form and emptiness, all aspects of the Buddhist definition, but there seems to be excess embedded into our very value system. For example, when we eat cooked food (yum yum) it’s generally considered best at anything but room temperature, right? We go to great lengths to make our best dishes either steaming hot or icy cold, don’t we? Anything tepid is considered middling, and that’s generally not a good judgment upon a cook’s ability.

    But, why is that? Is there anything intrinsic to taste to be found in that manifestation of attractions to extremes? There’s a possible argument to be made that either extreme is conducive to the preservation of the food, whether at extremely high temperatures or extremely low ones, but that argument quickly falls apart when considering anything besides culinary items. Why do we like bright colors? Why do we like high places? Why do we like deep caves? Perhaps, more to the point: Why do we like getting drunk? Why do we like getting high?

    The most obvious manifestation of these extremes is their danger, but then, on second thought, is it maybe their unnaturalness (is that a word?)? Bingo. Most of us really don’t want to die, now, do we? But we don’t mind pushing the envelope, so to speak, and we certainly don’t mind the thrill aspect. Why? Because it’s not natural, that’s why. And maybe that’s a hidden message of the Buddha: be natural. One definition of dharma, in fact, is just that: the law of Nature. So, does that mean that the Buddha was a Boomer? Cool, that’s okay by me…

     

  • hardie karges 12:03 pm on August 7, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Middle Path, , , , , , Vedas   

    Buddhism in a Hindu World: no Time for Selves and Souls… 

    You should be able to find a comfortable balance between low self-esteem on the one hand, and overt selfish egotism, on the other, in the Buddhist doctrine of anatta, non-self or no-self, same thing. But this is one of the more controversial and misunderstood of the Buddha’s teachings, and subject to much abuse by those who want to go too far in the opposite direction from egotism, by claiming that we are all ‘nobody,’ and should somehow be proud of that. And that’s fine, if that’s what you want, but that’s not what the Buddha said.

    Because in one very real sense, the Buddha’s Middle path is not just the original path between luxury and lack, or even the esoteric existence and non-existence of the later Mahayanists. It is also very much a Middle Path between the competing philosophies of Vedic Brahmanism and the Jainism of his day. Those two, in effect, defined a very real dichotomy between the lush and lavish celebratory rituals of the upper Brahmin class and the self-denial of the renunciant rishis who once made India famous as a religious center, and to some extent still do.

    So, the self vs. no-self controversy for Buddhists was never supposed to be a total refutation of all things selfie, such that we are individually nothing at all and should aspire to nothing more than the average leaf blowing in the wind. The Buddhist doctrine of anatta only means that there is no permanent eternal soul to aspire to union with the cosmic Brahmana principle, as Brahmanic Hinduism invokes, and so nothing to worry about on that count. Peace in this life in this world is to be found by knowing the truths of suffering, craving, and impermanence, and then acting accordingly. Now we can get on with our lives.

     

  • hardie karges 10:31 am on June 5, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , Middle Path, MS_DOS, , , Visual Basic   

    Meditation and Mediation, the Twin Foundations of Buddhism 

    Buddhism in Bhutan

    If you need a reason to meditate, then maybe that’s not really meditation. Meditation neither gives nor responds to demands. It simply IS. To be honest I probably think of it as a system re-boot more than anything else, that row of zeroes at the end of a really big number, that means that a dot will soon come, and then things will begin all over again on the other side of some line. Meditation is the dot between the two zeroes. The zeroes represent emptiness, of course, aka shunyata…

    There are all different flavors of meditation, supposedly, according to all the books and the writers, but they all tend to get back to basics, concentration on something, or everything, or nothing. But for me they all represent that same re-boot, a return to primordial pre-linguistic thought, if only for a few moments. Because once we think in a language, we never really go back. It’s simply not possible. But a new language could substitute for the old, just like Visual Basic took over where MS-DOS left off.

    Could humans ever function with a non-linguistic operating system? Of course, because we once did. And then the invention of language (or the manifestation of that instinct, for you Chomskyites) was probably the biggest revolution in the history of mankind. Just ask the Neanderthals, if you’re lucky enough to have some of their DNA. They disappeared as a species shortly after the appearance of language in Homo sapiens, hint hint.

    Ironically, they had all the same hardware and software for language themselves. Apparently, they “just didn’t have much to say.” (Spencer Wells). But that’s not our problem. Our problem is that we have too much to say, and not enough time to say it. So, we race to the finish line, shooting our mouths off and writing the Great American novel ad infinitum, whether anyone wants to read it or not. Meditation can help with that. The only app you need is silence. Mediation? That’s the Middle Path between extremes…

     

  • hardie karges 6:54 am on April 10, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Dawn of Everything, , , judgment, , Middle Path, , ,   

    Buddhism 101: The Difference Between Cravings and Needs–and Karma… 

    Be careful with judgments. The craving for food of a wealthy person is different from the craving for food of a poor person. If that means that there are good cravings and bad cravings, then we are simply getting bogged down in words, because the craving to be avoided is for something beyond what is necessary. Thus, the craving for food of a starving person is not a craving in the sense that Buddhism abhors. That is a need, not a craving. The craving that Buddhism abhors is the incessant call for more, more, and more far beyond what is needed to sustain the life of someone and his significant others.

    This is implicit, of course, in the Middle Path between luxury and lack, which is at the heart of original Buddhism, before the re-birthers decided that it was always all about that: rebirth, past lives, and the generation-jumping karma of retribution. And that original impetus is definitely what we need now, in our economic stage of advanced capitalism, to be reminded that craving is at the heart of our problem. There is even some scientific evidence coming out now in the best-selling book ‘The Dawn of Everything’ that gluttony and craving are at the heart of certain violent and slave-trading cultures.

    Suddenly it all starts to make sense, doesn’t it? The lifestyles that reward gluttony and craving demand violence and other defilements to sustain them. The one feeds the other in a never-ending cycle of degradation, and our lives suffer as a result. Life is not so difficult, after all, certainly not as difficult as the ‘multiple feedback loops of karma’ invoked by some high priests of reincarnation might make you think. Just be kind, and gentle, and respectful to the rights and dignity of others. The rites and rituals can come and go, but what you don’t do is sometimes more important than what you do.

     

  • hardie karges 6:42 am on April 3, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Middle Path, , , , ,   

    Buddhism of the Present Moment: Averaging Past and Future, Science and Superstition… 

    The one who can control himself, can control the world—his world…

    Sometimes the only way to remove hatred and ignorance from our lives is to remove the haters and ignorant people from our lives. And fortunately, that’s still possible, as our increasingly crowded world still has some empty places yet to be traversed and social ambitions yet to be fulfilled. But what happens when there is no place to hide, when social mobility comes to a standstill? Where do we go then to find peace and quiet, to find love, knowledge, and acceptance, where before there was only ignorance and hate?

    The obvious place to go is inside of course, deep inside, within our own minds and consciousness, both terms that I use with some trepidation, science-lover that I am, when what I really mean is memory. Because other than the constant (live) stream of sense perceptions that occur in real time, then all we really have is memory, which is anathema to the present-moment Buddhist or Eckhart Tolle disciple, but which is nonetheless a major part of our conscious waking moments.

    Besides those two there are only dreams, which occur in present time but in an undefined space, and conscious thinking, which some ‘non-dualists’ and latter-day Buddhists (‘thoughts without thinkers’) insist is not really real, but which nevertheless occupy reams and tomes of studied critiques and analyzed comparisons for the only purpose of knowledge itself, any benefits to be derived in subsequent interactions with the same world of biology, chemistry, and physics, or language, history, and psychology, from which it ultimately came in the process of experiment.

    And none of that can reasonably be denied, though it could certainly be claimed that we have spiritual lives that are bigger and better than all that. And I would tend to agree. So, the challenge is to make sense of it all, science and meditation, or action and renunciation, so that we can combine lives of action with our spiritual lives, which should also include science, and not just deep introspection, which was all that Buddha—and Plato—had. The answer is implicit, of course, in the Middle Path.

    Because that concept of the Middle Path works not only between Buddha’s luxury and lack, or the Mahayanist dichotomy of existence and non-existence, but still works for a modern secular dichotomy between introspection and science. And that is the supreme beauty of Buddhism, of course, that it is an ongoing dialectic, in which wrong choices are corrected. The Buddha himself wasn’t perfect, and even accepted a lesser status for women, which often figures prominently in misguided Buddhist theses for past lives and reincarnation, hint hint. But we can correct the mistakes of the past with the revelations of the present. And so we must.

     

  • hardie karges 4:50 am on March 27, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Middle Path, , ,   

    Buddhism: Life in the Slow Lane… 

    It’s okay to enjoy life, even love it, and still be a good Buddhist, as long as you don’t pretend to possess or attach, crave or covet. Because, even if Buddhism is a religion of renunciation, at its origins, and at the core of its being, it is still pragmatic and rational in its acknowledgement that the average life, for the average householder, must be properly maintained and nourished if any of us are to even have anything to renounce. Renunciation, after all, is not poverty. It is a conscious rejection of the supercilious aspects of human existence that lend it its falseness, and which tend to reduce us to its servants, not its masters.

    Because the master of human existence is the one who can take it or leave it, in its fullness or its emptiness, each of which is valid and credible, neither of which is complete in and of itself, and both of which can serve as valuable paradigms toward fulfillment in the right place and in the right time, the details of which are to be established later. Because Buddhism is nothing if not a fertile middle ground for resettlement, after all the thrusts and forays of penetration and conquest have run their course. Those are but illusions, after all, while the real stuff of life is to be found not in articles of consumption, but in the abstract concepts that occupy thought, feeling, and action. There is nothing mystical about Buddhism in its essence. The Middle Path is all about rationality, ratios, and rations…

     

  • hardie karges 8:08 am on February 6, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Four Noble Trutrhs, , Middle Path, ,   

    Buddhism and the Path Forward… 

    I’m willing to forego some pleasure, if that means I can forego some pain. And that’s the Buddhist Middle Path in a nutshell, if you like nuts. Because that was the dilemma Siddhartha Gautama was faced with, before he was the Buddha, as a prince of the ksatriya (warrior) caste, most likely, and with all the luxury that life can bring. Until one day, that is, when he ventured outside his harem and realized with a shock that real people, those without harems, also suffer sin, disease and death, not to mention old age, which is possibly the worst of all, or so I hear, haha…

    And from that stark realization, of our impermanence and our imperfection, was born the foundation of Buddhism, the Middle Path to avoid suffering. Some people say that Karma, Rebirth, and the resulting past lives are the bedrock of Buddhism. They’re wrong. The later Mahayanists came up with a slightly different Middle Path, translated from different Sanskrit words, that means the path between existence and non-existence, but that came later, by around five hundred years, give or take a century. Indians hated writing things down, for reasons best left to idle conjecture, since if there was a reason to be known, then it likely would have been written.

    The way to avoid, mitigate, and hopefully even cease suffering, if not actually cure it, is to first cease craving, of course. Because if this is a world of suffering, then it is also a world of desire, and that is no coincidence, they locked in a dance to the death that largely defines our dimension—of suffering. If that sounds pessimistic, then I would urge you to check your American Express gold card at the door and contemplate your own death for only a second. Because that length of time is enough to show you that you are not the master of the Universe, nor even your own fate. At best you are only the master of your emotions, and that is where Buddhism does its best work. Before Enlightenment save the world. After Enlightenment save the world. It beats chopping wood—sometimes…

     

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