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    hardie karges 4:40 am on July 13, 2025 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , letting go, , , present moment   

    Buddhism and the Conundrum of Forgiveness 

    People make mistakes. Life is too short to hold grudges. Forgiveness is necessary. And this may be one area where Westerners score higher on the Richter scale of righteousness than Asians, but that isn’t necessarily the fault of Buddhism. I think forgiveness is certainly encouraged by Buddhism, but other forces are at play, also. Still, forgiveness is one of the foundations of Christianity, and that is to its credit. Because forgiveness is one of the hardest things in life, and it can only be perfected with practice.

    The hard part is sometimes admitting fault, but that is not always necessary, nor is it completely discernible as to who the offending party is. So, then the hard part is simply letting go of those selfish considerations to concentrate on starting anew. Most Buddhists embrace the idea of living in the present moment, so this semi-necessary re-start should be second nature. If we truly live in the present moment, then we’ll never become bogged down in reconciling the past nor plotting the future.

    But that’s easier said than done, and though I’m not the ‘present moment’s biggest loudspeaker, I’m certainly a loyal fan from the bleacher seats. For one thing, the Buddha never said much about the Present Moment, to my knowledge, and for another, it doesn’t mesh well with the concept of karma. The future can be a beautiful sea of possibilities, too, hardly the drudgery that is often characteristic of the past. As always, the Middle Path rules. So, the act of forgiveness need not be some ritual of self-mortification when a simple ‘letting go’ will do just fine.

     
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    hardie karges 4:35 am on July 27, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , knowledge, , , perfection, present moment   

    Buddhism 491: Everything Teaches a Lesson  

    The difference between a blessing and a curse is often only a matter of centimeters or seconds. Attaching a name explains little. Because we only know the final flowers of fruition upon completion, that is perfection, as related in the perfect tense of many languages, better described than the past tense of our own, which is misleading, to think that time can conveniently be divided into three dimensions like space, i.e. past, present, and future, analogous to length, width and breadth, convenient if not correct. 

    And if that plays into a convenient and comfortable ‘present moment’ narrative of the moment (no pun), then so be it. Because if all reality is mostly unknowable, then the future is the best example. But here’s the kicker: so is the present. The only thing that we can truly know is the past, because it is perfected, i.e. completed, complete with neural twin, through which it can be examined. You can’t do that in the present. The present may be singular in its experience, but that doesn’t imply knowledge. That implies attention, absorption, perception, and concentration. 

    Knowledge only comes from perfection, i.e. completion, a much nicer word than mere past, which implies old, mold, withered and weathered. Perfection is much friendlier. So, is that fruit a blessing or a curse? In Buddhism, everything is an opportunity to learn something, so, in effect, nothing is truly a curse. And if it feels that way, there are two possibilities: your feeling is incomplete, or the act itself is incomplete. Either way, perfection is only a step away. Be patient and be diligent. 

     
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    hardie karges 6:19 am on March 10, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , present moment, , , , ,   

    Buddhism at the X-roads: More Dharma, Less Drama 

    To live from sensation to sensation is to live like an animal. To follow dharma is to live like a human. Because, despite the attraction of the so-called ‘present moment,’ which may or may not be real, the Buddha prized reason and rationality above almost all else, easily verified by his insistence on recognition of the causes and conditions underlying all actions and motivations. He may or may not have said something supporting the ‘present moment,’ but I’m not sure what or when that would have been. 

    Bottom line: reason(s) and rationality are to be prized above almost all else in Buddhism, the one possible exception being the need for, and insistence upon, meditation. And, for me, this is where that ’present moment’ comes into play, it being almost the perfect metaphor for that suspension of belief and disbelief which is meditation, all thought suspended in favor of pure awareness, of breath, if nothing else, anapanasati, the original meditation of which all others have subsequently derived.  

    Meditation is so fundamental to Theravada Buddhism that it has recently almost become re-branded as Vipassana, or ‘insight meditation,’ all the other disciplines involved in the practice of Buddhism notwithstanding. And this is likely what the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims Fa Xian (Hien) and Xuanzang found above all else, silent meditation, since almost nothing else was written, and was almost too heavy to carry once they had it transcribed from the original Pali or Sanskrit into Chinese.  

    But how do you transcribe meditation into any language for inclusion in a book which someone may or not read at some point in history? Meditation was largely independent of written vinaya (discipline), and that is what had sustained Buddhism for around 1000 years by that time. And that’s what sustains it today, all the opinions and debate on Facebook and elsewhere notwithstanding. Original Buddhism required only silence, and concentration, no apps or other accessories necessary. 

     
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    hardie karges 11:45 am on August 21, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , present moment, , ,   

    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 10:03 am on January 10, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , MAGA, , , present moment, , Shaivite,   

    Buddhism and the Limits of Control… 

    Self-control isn’t really about controlling anything. It’s about right actions. And this is an important distinction for Western audiences, who simply abhor any limit to their supposed freedoms, whether real or imagined, whether they be MAGA-hat-wearing Trumpists or Buddhists who refuse to give up the Christian core which promises them eternal life.

    So all of a sudden rebirth doesn’t sound so bad, notwithstanding the fact that for most traditional Buddhists that is a curse, not a gift. Nevertheless, we must plead ‘skillful means,’ in order to save the seeker from the grips of false doctrine, whether Muslim or Shaivite, and so admit them into the fold, then work out the details later.

    And in fact a world with no limits is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on unsuspecting adherents to Christianity, Capitalism, and Democracy, but that is our fate, and now we must deal with it. It was instrumental in getting men to the moon, and now we must figure out how to save the earth that they left behind. It created the fires of industry, and now we must figure out how to put the fires out.

    Still the eternalists never give up, assuring us that there are more of us out there somewhere in the Universe, with not one shred of evidence to support it. Like Trumpsters counting votes in absentia, the statisticians count humans by virtue of logic, not math. But the only thing infinite is Emptiness, and that is not the World. That is the possibility that there might be a world.

    Once there actually is a world of perception and cognition and stuff, then it is immediately limited by its very existence and its imminent death. So it is simply better to accept the profound limits of human existence, rather than talk about them, since that might make some people sad, that they may not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and so forth, and so on.

    And so it is with control. That implies a limit on freedom, so people don’t want to hear about it. They want to hear that they are the center of the universe, and can do whatever they damn well please, torpedoes be damned at the same time. There’s only one problem: it’s a lie. Limits define us, by definition, and so are profound, and to be embraced, for that is the predestination that is so often secretly desired, almost as much as infinity, the two concepts of which are mutually exclusive, infinity and predestination.

    It’s almost like the Buddhists who believe in reincarnation at the same time that they believe in the present moment. You can’t do that, not without egregious assaults to fundamental logic and basic agreement of terms. And so avoidance of wrong actions is every bit as important as the execution of right actions. And if that is control, then so be it. Truth is more than a balanced equation. It is a balanced life…

     

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