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    hardie karges 2:25 am on December 28, 2025 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism and the Karma of Intent…  

    If Buddhism is an open doctrine, it needs to be updated frequently. If it’s a closed doctrine, then it loses relevance over time. All of which is to say that the Buddha was a real person, with real thoughts and feelings, not just some otherworldly manifestation emanating from above in some transcendental livestream, as some of the Mahayanists might prefer it, they with bills to pay and demons to slay and Taoists just nipping at their heels waiting for the price of real estate to stabilize. 

    But dharma practice doesn’t have to be hard and cold. It can be soft and warm and still non-clinging. People think of something often referred to as ‘the law’ as something written in stone and cruel in its intentions. But that is not the case with Buddhism. Buddhism is a philosophy, and one that is measured by its results, not just its intentions. And those results are palpable, from the ‘calm abiding’ produced by meditation to the long-term mindfulness produced by ongoing practice.  

    If you’re in it for the bliss, then good luck with that, because it’s a bit uncertain and a bit difficult to measure subjectively or objectively. Personally, I prefer the increased certainty of lesser expectations that accompany devotion to the Middle Path that defines Buddhism. Because that is not a cheap shortcut designed to increase the coffers while padding the rolls. No, that is intrinsic to that which is Buddhism and which is honest to a fault. To avoid extremes is to avoid mistakes. The only certainty is negation, but that is not always a viable approach to a situation that needs action, karma, honest effort. 

     
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    hardie karges 2:16 am on December 21, 2025 Permalink | Reply
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     Buddhism and 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.

     
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    hardie karges 2:22 am on October 12, 2025 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism 302: Save Yourself, then Save the World 

    Fight the war within your heart and so leave the world at peace. That largely summarized the original Buddhist philosophy in a nutshell, with regard to the world at large, at least. Everything is perfect in its imperfection. It is just what it is, so accept it, and make the best of it. In other words: save yourself, then save the world. First Theravada, then Mahayana. It is useless to try to save the world when you yourself have accomplished nothing yet in your own life.

    And, by accomplishment, I don’t mean the acquisition of stocks and bonds, or stocks and grains and the ties that bind families together. I mean the ability to take that or leave that, all in an appropriate context. Some people still diss the Buddha, because he left his wife and son behind, but I think that they prospered well enough in the arftermath, and the alternative would have been far more disastrous. The Buddha never made any money, but no one was more accomplished. You could say the same for Jesus or Plato, I think.

    Opinions fall flat in the face of reality. It is useless to crave certainty. The only certainty in life is death. Gather flowers along the path. Don’t be in such a hurry. Life is in no rush. The waiting is the best part. Once you grasp something, you will only want more. These are among the many messages that the Buddha left us with, and they all work well, about the need for giving and not craving, the acceptance of change and the inevitability of death. Don’t just stand there. Do something good. More importantly: don’t do anything bad.

     
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    hardie karges 2:49 am on August 17, 2025 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhist Skillful Means in the Material World… 

    Buddhism is a social paradigm, too, and a vision of a better world. How is that possible, you ask? How could it not be possible, if everyone could tame the violence that resides there in their minds, implicit in the language we use as operating systems? Because, if craving is the main cause of individual suffering in this world, then violence is the main cause of mutual suffering, and the means of spreading it is by means of language.

    And there is much of the problem right there, because violence is inherent to any form of language and maybe especially to the Indo-European base languages of Sanskrit, Persian, Latin, and German that characterized the early colonial world. So, meditation is the solution to that problem, certainly. The reason language was invented, after all, was for strategic advantage in the battlefield, so we’re lucky that it’s developed other uses and applications in the meantime.

    But Buddhism is nothing if not a philosophy of peace, and that is written into its precepts of kindness and conciliation, if not submission. Because our kindness should not be mistaken for weakness, remember, and that goes double for Buddhism. Skillful means are required to maneuver crooked paths. So, sometimes we have to do things that normally would be unacceptable, with the understanding that it is a measure of the moment, that there is no other option. Death is not an option, forbidden by precept. Everything else is on the table, with the understanding that it is temporary, as is everything.

     
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    hardie karges 4:25 am on May 11, 2025 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism in a Time of Troubles 

    In times of chaos, we need calm minds. In times of crisis and cruelty we need strong hearts. Welcome to the USA, c. 2025. It is a time of peace. It is a time of war. There’s no real way to know what future historians will think about this era, but it probably won’t be good. Goodness is as goodness does, and cruelty just doesn’t count for much, unless you’re engaged in some frightfully fanciful fantasy. But Buddhism is just the opposite of that, and that comes after many a long involved historical dialectic, the likes of which continue to this day.

    But cruelty was never the kicker. Kindness is. The Dalai Lama said it, and I’d second it in a second. In Buddhism you don’t really have to do much of anything, as long as you’re nice about it. In fact, Buddhism is defined more or less by what you’re NOT to do, e.g. the precepts, not to be confused with the commandments, more like the prohibitions. Then there’s Emptiness, ‘shunyata‘, which veritably defines Buddhism by its lack of requirements, meditation being the prime example.

    So, the trick is not to be consumed by the swirl of politics and policies, even when the angst is almost overwhelming. After all, sometimes the worst situations eventually yield the best results. The important thing is to hold fast to certain principles, no matter how difficult that can sometimes be. Then there are ‘skillful means.’ That means that sometimes difficult goals can be accomplished in unfamiliar and unexpected ways. Be creative. The world is waiting patiently.

     
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    hardie karges 4:35 am on April 20, 2025 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism and Mindfulness, Language and Life… 

    ‘Mindfulness’ is a tricky term, full of modern marketing. I prefer ‘consciousness,’ the original meaning to the same word in Pali, sati. Now that may seem like a minor quibble, but I prefer to keep superstitions and general ‘woowoo’ and ‘joojoo’ to a minimum for easier acceptance. Because I don’t want Buddhism to be something magical and mystical, even if that brings in some fervent fanatics full of vim and vigor. But it rules out science and that is the problem for me. Religion and science should be perfectly compatible, and that is best accomplished by staying off each other’s turf.

    Maybe it’s an impossible task, I suppose, but it’s still worth trying, I think. Because already a certain stratum of words has been ‘Buddhafied’ and elevated to a meaning that doesn’t conform to that of the ordinary world and its ordinary usage of the word. I’m not worried about the extra work of cataloging two meanings in my mind, but I’m concerned that we’re losing something by avoiding that original meaning. So, when samsara comes to mean ‘endless cycle of rebirths’, rather than its original meaning as simply ‘the world’ (e.g. in modern Nepali), well, something has changed, and not always for the better. You can check to see if that original meaning still works in every case, and it does AFAIK, but with a difference—authenticity.

    Only rarely does a word totally change meaning within the historical period, like the English word ‘passion’, for instance, once suffering, now a kind of special love, for us silly westerners, of course. In modern standard Thai, the word that now means ‘mindfulness’ is sati, from the Pali, but there it simply means consciousness. When I was lying on the side of the road after a motorcycle accident near Wiang Papao, no one was asking if I was mindful. They were asking if I was conscious. There’s a difference. Original early Buddhism was very down to earth. Transcendence came later. For me mindfulness is the opposite of mindlessness, pure if not simple.

     
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    hardie karges 4:36 am on March 23, 2025 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhist Sati: Enjoy the Mindfulness… 

    Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing, absolutely nothing. Just do it mindfully, with intent and purpose. But this is the hardest thing for a Westerner, European or American, to comprehend, that sometimes we don’t need to be jumping up and down, racing around, and blowing things up, that indeed sometimes it’s preferable to chill, baby, chill, and let things proceed one step at the time with clear and simple awareness, rather than obsess about populating Mars instead of making our own planet earth more livable.

    So, the Mars freaks blow things up in midair, invent self-driving cars, accelerate them zero to sixty in four seconds, bore tunnels under cities, insert chips in your brains, and what have they accomplished? Not nearly enough, and far too much, all at the same time. Have the sick been healed? Have the homeless been given housing? Has anyone even tried? True, the poor may always be with us, but that’s no excuse for not trying to help. Jesus knew that, and the Buddha did, also.

    I’d like to go to Mars, too, truth be told, but only when the time is right, and the opportunities exist for anyone to share in that dream, if they are so inclined. But I made a conscious decision that renunciation would be preferable than for the world to continue on its path of mindless consumption. Enter mindfulness, the opposite of mindlessness. Do things consciously, one thing at a time, without fear nor favor. If something isn’t broken, then don’t pretend to fix it, just to satisfy transient desires. Live like there is no tomorrow, calm and steady, because there may not be…

     
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    hardie karges 4:56 pm on February 2, 2025 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism 499: Causes and Conditions… 

    It’s not enough to temporarily alleviate a bad situation, but better to permanently change the causes and conditions that created it. This gives the lie to the dismissive notions that Buddhism is only interested in the ‘present moment’, and that ‘thoughts have no thinkers’, and other casual self-disses that imply that Buddhism is superficial and unconcerned with deeper meanings. The Buddha never said that, and nothing could be further from the truth. Those are popular modern themes, but the historical reality is quite different.

    In fact, Buddhism has been extremely concerned with causes and conditions since day one. And if that’s readily apparent in the earliest Theravada Buddhism, it’s a frank obsession by the time of Vajrayana. Never is there a call to cease suffering without a simultaneous call to end the causes of suffering. I think it’s even fair to say that this was likely something of a revelation in that pre-scientific time. Because in that era prior to the scientific era of experimentation, deep contemplation was the next best thing.

    Even Einstein knew that from his deep thought experiments, and the Socratic dialogs of Plato at or around the same time as the Buddha’s sutras were a dualistic echo of the same approach. It requires deep thinking and difficult training, not just a fly catcher nabbing a thought or two on their way through the garden to the kids’ pool. It’s even very possible that it was Buddhist monks who invented (yes, invented) the zero, something which would not catch on in the West for almost 2000 years. It first existed as a concept in shunya, before making the jump to higher math. How do you transfer the liquids between two full containers? You need an empty container. That’s a zero. Think about it. Then meditate. That’s a zero.

     
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    hardie karges 4:46 am on January 26, 2025 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism 202: True Love Can Save the Planet 

    The truest love is metta, friendship, without the burden of possession. That’s a hard sell to a teenager with a bone he’s trying to drive home, but it’s true nevertheless, for long-term or short, which is the proof of its purity. Powerful passions may produce plentiful babies, but without lovingkindness, most of those efforts will be largely lost before the high school graduation exercises, and that’s what’s important. Because we’re no longer the young planet that we once were, raw and untamed and unpopulated.

    Now the danger is over-population and the possibility that we might become victims of our own successes, as Global Warming would seem to suggest. So, a different attitude than constant growth is recommended for long-term survival. This means a more thoughtful and less cavalier attitude to our relationship with others, gentler and kinder, less aggressive and careless. If that overlooks the reality that sometimes Buddhism can be too passive, then so be it. The alternative is worse—uncontrolled aggression.

    That’s the reason that I became a Buddhist, to save myself, then save the world. That’s my motto and mantra that also sums up the transition from early self-centered Theravada Buddhism to later society-centered Mahayana Buddhism, not that such a generality explains much about either of them. But the motto and mantra still work, for me, at least. Be kind, first and foremost, and the world will become a kinder place in return. That’s karma.

     
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    hardie karges 3:35 am on January 19, 2025 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhist Meditation for Beginners: Silence, Blessed Silence… 

    When you can sit still for one hour without saying a word or moving a muscle, then you are a meditator. And I don’t really even care what ‘kind’ of meditation you do, I only grudgingly allowing that there are different kinds, I from the old ‘anapanasati’ school, long before Theravada was rechristened ‘Vipassana’ and long before Vajrayana became ‘crazy wisdom’ while the Buddha rolled over in his ashes and checked his phone to see what year it is. “Yep,” he supposedly said, “pretty much right on schedule.” Haha.

    I only draw a line between silent meditation, true meditation, and ‘guided meditation,’ which I consider to be something else entirely. And I don’t mean to imply that that’s bad, because it’s not. It’s just more like a ‘dharma talk’ than mediation IMHO. So, there’s certainly nothing wrong with that, since the definition of such is so broad and inclusive that it can be almost anything, so long as it revolves around the Buddha and Buddhism. But meditation is something different, and if you’re not doing it silently, then you’re missing out on something good—and important. And that’s silence.

    Because silence, I think, is the shunya, zero, that qualifies for the important category of ‘emptiness’ so revered in later Buddhism, and I like it. It’s possible that Buddhist monks even invented the numerical zero, but this is not the place for that discussion. But, if ‘American Buddhism is Buddha-flavored Christianity,’ as someone once said (me), then this is the litmus test.

    Because psychological therapy is famously ‘talk therapy’ and this is something so different that those practitioners can, and do, make a case of ‘spiritual bypassing’ while they claim that ‘thoughts have no thinkers’, thus having some cake while eating it, too. Cool, since it’s an open doctrine, subject to interpretation. But don’t miss the forest for the trees. Good thoughts are essential to good and proper Buddhism, but silent meditation is, also. It’s not a case of one or the other. Talking can sometimes soothe the overwrought mind, but sometimes silence can do it better. And that largely defines Buddhism.

     

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