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  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 5:00 am on September 29, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , politics, , , , worldling   

    Buddhism 101: Freedom from Fear and Hatred 

    The best religions give herd immunity against fear and hatred. The best philosophies explain the reason why. Buddhism can do this, also, whether or not you call it religion, whether or not you’re liberal or conservative. Because whether or not you’re liberal or conservative politically, Buddhism is the opposite of that, in its acceptance, or even encouragement, to renunciation, i.e. to give up all politics, and all other concerns of ‘house holders,’ as if shelters were the special curse of ‘worldlings.’

    And while I haven’t reached that point of detachment from the world, and may very well never, I do understand it, and to a large extent even applaud it, as long as those renunciants don’t assume that they’re by necessity any better than those same householders and other worldlings, on whom they also depend for sustenance and maintenance and news from the world. Because we’re all in this together, no matter our provenance, we all have the same sustenance, rice and bread and the ideas that feed our heads.

    The important thing is to eradicate fear, anger, greed, and hatred, once and for all, forever and completely. And if that takes some constant reinforcement, then so be it, enjoy the process and the esprit de corps. Because it’s important to be part of that community that provides solace and succor, and assurance that everything will be alright, if only we all stick together, maybe not like glue, but maybe more like sticky rice, with mango and coconut milk, yum yum, peace on earth and goodwill to all men.

     
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    hardie karges 3:24 am on August 4, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , politics,   

    Buddhism 334: Right Views are not Political… 

    Politics are not a suitable focus for meditation, and in fact are a great disruption. Which should go without saying, it seems, but for the fact that much meditation is of the ‘guided’ sort. So, caution should be a watchword for practice. After all, silence is the foundation of all traditional meditation practices, so any narrative is going against that stream of consciousness, which at its best is a thoughtless stream.

    But politics is particularly onerous, it being often combative, such as it is, and with no remedy to that in sight. It seems that natural selection does not select for gentleness and conciliation, but for the ability to put freshly fertilized genes into the next generation, without which there may be no next generation. Every breeding couple of every species must produce slightly more than two offspring per couple, or we will all gradually go extinct, as the elevated rates for such a situation amply prove in the present climate.

    Still, some people claim that the Buddha had a political side, but I can’t find much proof of that. His Buddhism of renunciation never advocated total renunciation, though, and that’s the important thing. Partial renunciation is another name for daily meditation, and from there one’s daily life can quickly and vastly improve. The same thing can be said for political activism, as long as it’s peaceful, mindful, and respectful. There are conservative and more liberal sides to all politics, and that’s fine. Just leave the hatred and anger outside. And that will help keep your daily meditation healthy.

     
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    hardie karges 4:17 am on October 15, 2023 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism 499: The Only App You Need Is Silence    

    If in doubt, then leave it out. Some of the cleverest words are never spoken, simply because they might hurt someone in the process…and that’s not good. But that’s one of the most difficult tasks for a Western convert to Buddhism, especially Americans, for whom argumentation is a way of life, even on a good day, even for the best of us, schooled in the liberal arts and dedicated to the proposition that all humans are created equal. 

    But sometimes the advanced degrees only get in the way of politeness and forbearance, which is often seen as old-fashioned or too folksy in an age where a clenched fist stands for political correctness and a loud mouth stands for factual correctness. Good luck with that. But I forgive the BLM (no, not the Bureau of Land Management) for the naïve assumption that ‘Silence is Violence,’ since I know where they’re coming from and largely agree with their goals if not tactics. If history has taught me anything, it’s taught me that there are usually better tactics than violence, or even confrontation. Just ask C.C. Boycott.

    As Buddhists, though, peace of mind is one of the main goals of our path, and that’s non-negotiable, just like human rights and freedom of expression. But patience is a virtue, and most arguments are non-essential. I once had a policy with a previous partner that whenever an argument lasted too long, we should stop, sleep on it, then come back to it again the next day. Guess what? Not once could we even remember what the argument was about, much less care to revisit it the next day, not once. 

    That’s typical of lower-level mind-stuff. We argue the most minute details to the last breath, and still people die of unnecessary wars at a rate that never seems to abate, though that point is arguable, too, haha. Meditation is the best response (non-response?) to too much mind-stuff, of course, and I won’t insult the ape community by calling it ‘monkey-mind.’ That’s us. The only difference is that they don’t meditate, not yet. Silence is our birthright. Be kind and don’t intrude on that of others.  

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 12:23 pm on November 22, 2020 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 2020, , , , , , , politics,   

    Buddhism at the Crossroads of Politics and Religion… 

    Your worst enemy can be your best friend, maybe save your life in the end, if you avoid harsh words, and show him some kindness. And this is especially true in a time of political disruption, when all norms of decency have been cast to the winds of fate, in favor of the expediency of racial familiarity.

    For this is the great advantage of religion, if not the sole purpose, i.e. to provide the comfort of familiarity beyond mere racial and tribal identities. After all, most religions have similar, if not identical, goals. The problem, of course, is spreading that umbrella of familiarity wide enough to include everyone, so as to avoid merely extending tribal associations into the realm of religion.

    For religion has no intrinsic connection to any nation or race, but that which the paths of culture provide. Culture can change, though, and sometimes immediately. There is nothing that necessitates that a European be Christian or an Asian be Buddhist, except that that is the path that the various cultures adopted in adaptation to the stimuli that occurred, whether natural or intentional.

    In fact, the genetic dispositions of the founders of Eastern and Western philosophy are quite similar, probably more similar than the right and left sides of any individual brain. But many, if not most, circumstances are largely random, as best described by the ‘Butterfly Effect’ of Chaos Theory, in which the mere fact that a butterfly might flutter by changes the course of history.

    So we are left to make sense of what seem to be random occurrences as best we can. But they are not all random, and that is the point of science, to find the order in the universe. That is NOT the point of religion, though, which is to find our place in that universe. At one time, in the not-so-distant past, the two endeavors were one and the same thing, not surprising in a human culture that has barely outgrown its diapers.

    That does not imply any false duality, though, merely a hierarchy of necessity in a world grown more complex with the passage of time and the increasing specialization of the species homo sapiens. And if I once thought that we as a species might not survive, given our many sins, of commission and omission, then today I am gratified to find that Nature will likely have an important role in that final determination.

    After all, natural selection is always right. But it is rarely predictive. Hindsight is 2020. Until then, we are best served by a gentleness in our approach to all matters of politics and religion. Buddhism is a good paradigm for that, arguably the best. Purify your heart. Fortify your mind. Lead the world by example…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 3:59 pm on May 7, 2020 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , politics   

    Pandemics, Politics, Global Warming, DNA and DJT… 

    I don’t often write about politics nor pandemics, not because I don’t care, or that I have no interest, but because I have other greater interests, and politics have no easy solutions—and many commentators. But there are meta-theses to this pandemic that are not being discusses by anyone, and so that’s why I feel compelled to comment. The first issue is easy, the treachery of the US government in dealing with this natural disaster, not to be confused with incompetence, which is the normal modus operandi of the Trump administration. But to send people to their probable deaths in uncertain circumstances, when such deaths could be easily prevented, is not just murder. It is genocide, of the genus poverty, thus the annihilation of one class by another higher one. This could be easily prevented by the economic support of those people, from the taxes that they have paid, the same as is done for the corporate entities which are sacred to the US capitalist system, and which all Western European countries are doing for their people.

    (More …)
     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 5:07 am on March 1, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , politics,   

    Making Do in Trumplandia: Religion and Politics… 

    Build bridges not walls, trust not fear, paths without obstacles, hope not despair. And that’s usually seen as the job of politics, economics and policy decisions, creating a more just and better world, usually by creating more money, by creating constant growth, assuming that there are no limits, and planning accordingly, as if oil flows from the ground without end, as if resources are infinite, as if populations can multiply indefinitely with no repercussions. But it doesn’t always work out that way. The obstacles are many and the heroes are few. Sometimes there is simply nothing that you can do; or at least it seems that way. Then philosophy takes over from politics, and religion grows wings. We count our blessings, not our money, and expect nothing from others. Because when the world seems like a cruel place, sometimes the only thing we can do is to change our relation to it; expect less and appreciate more. My neo-Buddhist attitude is pretty simple: If you can’t change the world, then change the narrative…

     
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    hardie karges 4:10 am on January 13, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , ICE, , , , , politics,   

    Buddhism and Donald Trump, Criminal Intent and Modern Justice 

    img_2116Intent is the elephant in the courtroom of modern justice, beyond forensics and beyond genetics, the need to know what someone was thinking and why they thought it, at such-and-such a time and such-and-such a place. But isn’t this a system doomed to failure? And is it really necessary? Only we European-derived Westerners could invent a term like schadenfreude, delight in the misfortune of others, not so much the passive enjoyment of something such so strange, but that we do it so often that we have a name for it…

    But that is indeed the case, that we are so obsessed with our feelings that our whole system of justice is based upon it, such that if someone is supposedly repentant, then that counts in his favor, whereas without it he is doomed to longer incarceration, as if we could really know the difference, so to make ourselves feel good we reward the best actors, and maybe the most honest are doomed to perdition… (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 4:53 am on October 7, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , politics, ,   

    Buddhism and Trump, Religion and Politics… 

    img_2116It’s easy to bemoan my fate as having no choice but to be a citizen of the same country that Donald F. Trump presides over, even if not currently resident, but bemoan even more the fact that he seems to have hijacked my mental process, so that it seems that I am almost totally incapable of thinking about anything else, except how to get this over-stuffed individual out of my life and out of my mind and hopefully even out of my country so that one day I might go back there if circumstances so warrant it…

    I mean: wouldn’t I really rather be spending my time, and precious brain cells, discussing subtle points of dharma, rather than gross points of politics? Of course, though, the argument could be made that I wouldn’t even be a Buddhist if the presence of Donald Trump in his original rise in the political polls hadn’t inspired me to it, for whatever reason, as the two events were nearly simultaneous. For, like the reductios ad absurdum that Mahayana Buddhists once used to disprove the intrinsic existence of ‘stuff’, so I can define myself in opposition to a known quantity… (More …)

     
    • Dave Kingsbury's avatar

      Dave Kingsbury 4:11 pm on October 8, 2018 Permalink | Reply

      … we are the God species, like it or not, holding the keys to survival in the palm of one hand, while the other hand plays with its iPhone… great line, Hardie, in a piece that goes head on and wins through to something very helpful and worthwhile!

    • hardie karges's avatar

      hardie karges 5:20 am on October 9, 2018 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks Dave. I swear I did not know previously of the book of the same title AND on a similar subject. I do now, haha…

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 6:36 am on September 2, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , politics, , , ,   

    Buddhist Dilemma: Is Inner Peace Possible in the Era of Donald Trump? 

    img_1572

    The Golden Spires of Shwedagon Pagoda

    Americans are frightened. People are scared. They read about things like this in books, but never dreamed that they would have to live through it: the American Civil War, the French Revolution, the Boxer Rebellion, The War of Spanish succession, Genghis Khan, the Persian Wars, Adolf Hitler, the Aryan invasion, Rape of Nanking, 100 years War, Josef Stalin, the American Genocide, the Mexican War, Chaco War, World War I, Opium Wars, Crimean War, Vietnam, wars of the world and genocides in general…

    But the American civil war was not really a civil war, as many historians have pointed out, but rather a War between the states, with many unwilling participants on each side of arbitrary lines. What is happening now is the true civil war, an internal conflict not only within societies, but within people’s own minds, as to what is right and what is fair, what is appropriate, and whether there will be violence, whether there will be casualties, and whether there will even be any affordable healthcare to mitigate the circumstances… (More …)

     
    • Dave Kingsbury's avatar

      Dave Kingsbury 9:41 am on September 4, 2018 Permalink | Reply

      A timely and thought-provoking piece. Our small world is impossible to escape, nor should we try. The middle path becomes a touchstone. Thanks for posting, Hardie.

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 4:04 pm on March 4, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , millennials, politics   

    #Buddhism and #Politics, in Defense of post-Millennials: 

    img_1987Yes, this is a dimension of suffering, more than the sum of your life, more than the breadth of this world, an entire dimension, or two, length width depth time and biology chemistry physics, at the very least, all conspiring to keep you within limits, physical limits, by a margin of maybe 51 to 49, you’re doomed, to a life sentence, paragraph, chapter and verse, complete with death, guaranteed, and there’s not much you can do about that, no matter what some sweet-talking New Age guru with his most articulate drugstore Buddhism tells you…

    And then there are the joys, too, to be fair, to be honest, the joys of family, and communion, and art and culture and sex and first love, but still there will be last rites, and that is the point, and the Buddha knew that, fully and well, he not some party-pooper intent on spoiling the fun, just quite aware that for every count of fun there would be two of misery, in some cause-effect relationship, you can plot it on a graph, and call it the Four Aryan Truths, if you want, to be mitigated by the Eight-Part Path (please do not fold), which will not solve all your problems, but it’s a good place to start… (More …)

     

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