streaming consciousness…

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  hardie karges 4:11 am on September 17, 2023 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 428 ), ego ( 33 ), Machiavelli, Now, self ( 20 ), selfishness ( 4 )   

  Buddhist Non-Selfishness…  

  

  Be kind to all sentient beings, even the ones that troll you on social media. Because the important thing is not to get even. The important thing is to get odd. Be the difference. Be the one who walks away from a silly dispute, rather than the one who dukes it out until the last man is standing and the rest are all down on the ground. The one who gets the last word is not necessarily the one who wins. The one who wins is the one who is right, but that is not always immediately known. 

  The important thing is to treat people better than they treat you. That way, we are assured that the world will become a better place, later if not sooner, better and not badder. Because the ego is a heartless bastard, intent on nothing but its own imaginary superiority for its own imaginary self, in the mistaken belief that somehow more benefits will accrue to it that way, benefits quantitative in nature the very proof of their inferiority. It’s probably safe to say that if you can count it, then you can’t count ON it, for much of anything but grief and sorrow. 

  Where does this selfish ego find proof of its own exalted status? It doesn’t. That’s pure greed and the will to power, the alpha male proving Machiavelli’s ‘might makes right,’ no matter that the future will prove him wrong—eventually. And that is the crucial trick, to play for time, in the hopes that things can only get better. It’s trendy to say that time doesn’t exist, that the only time is NOW, but the Buddha never said that. The Buddha said to save 25% of your wealth for those inevitable rainy days when work is not possible. Pragmatic considerations are more important than abstract metaphysics. 

   

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  hardie karges 11:45 am on August 21, 2022 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Brahmanism ( 8 ), Eckhart Tolle ( 13 ), Hinduism ( 28 ), Now, past lives ( 8 ), present moment ( 5 ), rebirth ( 37 ), reincarnation ( 14 ), Vedic ( 5 )   

  Modern Buddhism: Past Lives or Present Moment? You Decide… 

  

  

  I accept all forms of Buddhism, as long as they have no quarrel with Science. But, that’s easier said than done, given the spat over rebirth, as to exactly what it means and how it applies. The main conundrum, of course, is that Buddha cut his teeth on his anatta no-self doctrine, and so, if Buddhism accepts rebirth, then what exactly is it that gets reborn? Good question. And many are the answers, ranging from karma to consciousness, anything but the body itself in reincarnation, complete with a permanent self or soul intact.

  Because, that’s the Hindu Vedic Brahmanistic principle that the Buddha was in fierce competition with, and this was the most prominent point of departure between them, so a definite no-no. So, the Buddhists tend to explain the controversy away, while at the same time talking about past and future lives like so many trips to the grocery store. And many Buddhists will explain that not only is this not unscientific, but science is gradually coming around to a similar view. I’ve got a better idea: drop the whole idea, since it’s not really necessary, anyway, so why raise a ruckus over something this has no proven relevance to this life in this world, which is all that we really know?

  The irony is that many of these ‘re-birthers’ are Present Moment Buddhists, also, the same Buddhists who most loudly promote the relatively new idea that this so-called ‘present moment’ is not only all that we can know, but it’s all that there is. But this idea is not only in direct contradiction with Rebirth and Past Lives, but it’s also in contradiction with itself, simply because it defies common sense, in that what we see in life is not a still photo, but a movie, by analogy. Okay, but a movie is a succession of twenty-four frames per second, still the present moment people seem to be insistent upon THIS present moment, and no other.

  This may be only a problem of syntax and semantics though, since Eckhart Tolle has no real problem with his concept of the NOW, which, like particles or waves, may presumably be envisioned as either individual moments or a stream in flow. And, like rebirth, maybe it’s just best not to think about it too much. After all, Eckhart Tolle is not a Buddhist, anyway, and neither is much of what he says, but much also is, and the concept of NOW has much currency in the modern New Age movement. Bottom line: neither can be proven by Science, Past Lives or Present Moments. Still, I’d gladly take NOW, with all its conceptual flaws, if that could put the final nail in the coffin of rebirth. It’s time. We can deal with NOW in the next millennium, if that’s how long it takes…
   
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  hardie karges 7:25 am on August 23, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Bashar, Buddhism ( 428 ), Deepak Chopra ( 5 ), Eckhart Tolle ( 13 ), Lobsang Rampa, New Thought, Now, Now-ness, religion ( 158 ), samadhi ( 13 ), Theosophy   

  The Messy-onic Tradition, part 2: Eckhart and the Also-rans… 

  (Continued from here). I would consider Eckhart Tolle more of a genuine prophet than Deepak Chopra, and with a genuine message, however limited, a fairly well fleshed-out theory of ‘the Now’, but here, too, there is vagueness and also many tossed mixed metaphors conveniently confusing empirical facts with familiar fictions, not the same thing, and dangerously close to anthropomorphic representations of entities that are nothing if not God-substitutes…

  For example, what exactly does Tolle mean when he asks: “What Is It That The Universe Really Wants To Be Created Thru Me?” Is he implying that the ‘Universe’ is like a person with wants and desires? And there are other bothersome examples of vagueness: ‘NOW’, ‘Presence’, and ‘Consciousness’ are all offered in the same breath as equivalencies but still largely undefined, unfortunately…

  And then there are his ‘energy centers’. Google that if you want to get the address of your nearest marijuana dispensary in SoCal. ‘Nowness’ is his big deal, but that can lead to irresponsible hedonism, too, if not correctly applied… (More …)

  hardie karges, NMF, and davekingsbury are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    davekingsbury 3:30 pm on August 24, 2017 Permalink | Reply

    The Eckhart Tolle advice was good. I loved the way he paused before answering. So different from the usual blather from pundits.

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    hardie karges 5:20 pm on August 24, 2017 Permalink | Reply

    Yes, Eckhart is not bad at all…

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    NMF 2:28 pm on September 12, 2017 Permalink | Reply

    What I am discovering in all of this, is that all these teachers are teaching the same thing, spreading the same message, albeit in different ways. Namely: we are expressions of one divine spiritual energy, just in human form having a human experience and that is part of the great Universal Expansion. At the core of their teachings, they all point to the same thing: we are all messiahs, some in training, but all eventually awakening to the truth of who we are Light, Love and Life.

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      hardie karges 5:15 pm on September 12, 2017 Permalink | Reply

      Somethin like that, yes, thx…

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  hardie karges 9:35 am on June 12, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 428 ), CHRISTIANITY ( 160 ), Eckhart Tolle ( 13 ), Now, philosophy ( 101 )   

  Religion 232: Eckhart Tolle, Now-ness, Spirituality, and Identity… 

  https://youtu.be/XgFugIfRlp0

  As you probably already know, thanks to the patronage of Oprah Winfrey and others, Eckhart Tolle has been called “the most spiritually influential person in the world.”  So I was all ready to diss and dismiss him as a charlatan and pop-schlock marketeer, just because he had the temerity to title his obra maestra “The Power of Now”, such now-ness easily classified as ‘cliché’ even, or especially, within high Buddhist circles, if not just by the wannabes, academics and literary hacks like myself…

  Then I decided to actually read his stuff, albeit en espanol, El Poder de Ahora, the work in translation, though he apparently speaks Spanish himself (the English-language e-version is back-ordered for streaming at my library).  Now I haven’t thoroughly absorbed the book yet, but Eckhart Tolle just may be on to something here, something very important, the basis of our identity—or lack thereof…

  Cut to the chase, if you haven’t already: Tolle sees our identifying with our own thought processes as the source of all of our problems.  Wow!  Now I’m not exactly sure yet what he would have us identify with instead, but the effect is palpable, nonetheless. Apparently Tolle would have us identify with ‘consciousness’, albeit one without thought…  (More …)