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hardie karges
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hardie karges
Buddhism 499: Taming the Mind…
Treat perfect strangers with the same kindness you give your pets and the world will be a better place. And pets deserve that special treatment, of course, but don’t we all? Because all too often, kindness is transactional, tit for tat, is it not? Yes, it is, whether we even realize it or not, we’re so accustomed to that sort of reciprocity, as long as the dog is loveable, of course, and silently obedient. And many Buddhists do that, also, which is not a bad thing in itself, unless it rewards evil at the same time.
Because justice and fairness is a real thing, too, of course, and that is the flipside to the equation. Pets are a special circumstance in the hierarchy of the world, and I love them greatly, no vestigial nostalgia for the savage wilderness here, no thank you. I wish that every animal in the world could be tamed and therefore survive, rather than live a precarious existence in a world where it is commonly thought that returning an animal to the wilderness is somehow standard logical procedure.
As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Conscientious taming seems perfectly acceptable to me, in lieu of wilderness, but dancing bears would seem to be going too far. But the point is that the kindness so often typically displayed toward our pets de rigueur is often totally lacking in our relationships to our human equals, even when they’ve done much to deserve it. No matter that there are Buddhist websites called Wildmind and so forth, the founding principle of Buddhism is to tame the mind, and that is a very good thing…
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hardie karges
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hardie karges
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hardie karges
Buddha Talk: 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
Buddha Talk: Buddhism and Language, With and Without…
Language is a tool, not a weapon. It is a gift, not a curse. It all depends on the circumstances, time and place and details of the chase. To be honest, it is almost impossible to imagine life without language, since not only do we habitually think in a language, but for many people the two are inseparable. And that is why meditation is practiced, is it not? Yes, I think it is, because we can think without it, using what I often call ‘mental maps’.
Now, meditators and fellow travelers can gleam and bliss out about ‘insight’ and ‘calm abiding’, but the modus operandi is to cut off the language, or at least slow it down, if not exactly swatting thoughts away like flies on our windshields. The fruit of this activity is not something we can control, but only comment upon, for better or worse. Meditation may or may not provide ‘calm abiding’, much less insight, though those are worthy goals, I feel, but it can reduce the dependency on language, and that helps. It’s interesting that in some languages, to think and to feel are interchangeable concepts, but not so much in English.
The important point to remember is that not only are thought and language not synonymous, but the one is not even necessary for the other. Because, not only do animals think without language, but so do computers, i.e. they use machine language. Machine language is binary, 0’s and 1’s, and its (Boolean) logic corresponds to that, more than, less than, equal to, etc., i.e. ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’. This can just as (or more) easily correspond to all the phenomena of existence as the more familiar Aristotelian logic that we are familiar with, variations on if/then syllogisms. Your dog and cat have little need for that, and you could probably do with less. All you really need is mindfulness.
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hardie karges
Buddhism 499: the Other Cause of Dukkha (Suffering)…
I came into this world kicking and screaming. I hope to leave it in peace. And, while on the surface, that doesn’t seem like so much to ask, in reality, it is among the most difficult. Because, if it were so easy, then wouldn’t we all just snap our fingers as if to say, “I’ll have that,” and then just sit back and enjoy life? And it is that easy, isn’t it? But we don’t do that, do we? Why can’t we all just have a plot of land, rent optional, growing anything and everything we want, and then supplement that with whatever else we want to do? Good question.
The obvious answer to that would be: disease, sickness, and death, of course, the likes of which are capable of stalling any boomer’s big plans with enough reality in the fire hose to kill deals with a simple stroke of the brush. But the extended answer is so circuitous and illogical that we wonder why we didn’t think of it ourselves: craving, desire, greed, selfishness, anger, hatred, etc? Sound familiar? Of course. It sounds like the Buddhist Eightfold Path in reverse, climbing hills and dragging heavy loads on rough pavement, rather than coasting to easy victory.
Because this is our fate as humans, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, in the name of abundance, rather than enjoy our easy victories as homo sapiens ‘wise man’ humans and spread it around equally. Blame it on (our) language(s), if you must, that mental activity of multiplying and dividing thoughts and feelings into times and circumstances, that seem to ensure a checkerboard existence, but the results are no different for our brothers and sisters in the animal kingdom. Loss of a family member or friend leads to sadness, no matter the circumstances, and dealing with that is the lesson to be learned. The Buddha considered that too obvious to mention, I guess. Be kind.
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hardie karges
Buddhism and Non-Duality…
If Buddhism acknowledges no soul, then there should be fewer ‘dark nights of the soul’, and more sunshine and happiness. But it doesn’t always work that way, of course. Because dark nights of the soul are a good metaphor for something that probably has its basis elsewhere, and very possibly in our languages themselves, though it might be hard to know what is cause and what is effect, since all Indo-European languages are constructed similarly, no surprise, and so all have a certain amount of duality built in.
Now, I’ve never called myself a ‘non-dualist’ before, but not because I thought there was nothing there to discuss, but just because I thought that there was maybe not as much as most ‘non-dualists’ were implying. Because if non-duality specifically states that there is no separation between Atman (soul) and Brahman (ultimate reality), as Hinduism clearly states, then Buddhism dealt with that issue long ago by simply denying the existence of any soul, much less the cosmic one that classic Hinduism favors.
But the dualism of language persists, in which subjects do all kinds of things to objects which modern linguists and literary editors have no apologies for. Nothing happens by accident or without an actor acting upon a subject, passive voice be damned. A book written in English language passive voice will not be published in the USA, no matter how accurate or convincing. But Hindi is much more open to that phenomenon of language, so is Spanish, and presumably others.
So, we English speakers are the victims of our own critical thinking, which causes us so many problems of guilt by association with events over which we have no control. But if we insist that nothing happens by accident, then there we hang in the chasm of uncertainty, which is largely of our own creation, in that we create and mold our language to certain styles and norms. There lies much of the dark night of the soul. That’s why meditation is so helpful in reducing the inequities of language.
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hardie karges
A Buddhist Theory of Knowledge
You can learn from the Buddha or you can learn from a virus. The message is largely the same: Do no harm. The virus IS normal. That is the realization. Dealing with it has the opportunity for enlightenment. This is the hand we were dealt: old age, sickness and death. That is the stuff of enlightenment, for those fortunate enough to get that close to the underlying truth of the simulation of reality in forms that our bodies (and minds) are equipped to process. Nothing can change that underlying nature of reality, nor our only partial ability to understand it.
And that is a fundamental truth in itself, our inability to ever truly understand it, totally and completely. It’s a shame that they don’t tell you that at the beginning of every beginning science class: this is only a partial understanding of what there is to know. Does that mean that the laws of science are wrong? No, only that they are incomplete. And they may be incomplete, not only in our knowledge of them, but in their own characteristics and capabilities. Like AI, the laws of science may be learning, not only in what they are, but in what they are capable of being.
Evolution is one of my favorite subjects, and natural selection is key to that, the somewhat mechanical need to reproduce that every DNA cell seems to have at its heart. But we only know a world that is constantly growing, thanks largely to that same urge. But that’s a world largely empty until recently. But I believe that evolution is self-correcting, also, the same instincts that can save human population decline can also correct over-population, details to be worked out later. That’s the future. But it’s still only a simulation, as Buddhism heavily implies, if never states outright. We don’t perceive protons and electrons, tachyons and quarks. We perceive houses and trees, light and sound.
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hardie karges
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.
streaming consciousness... 
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