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  • hardie karges 5:28 am on May 12, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , religion,   

    Buddhism in the Back Room: Doing Laundry to do Laundry… 

    Beware a path too easy, because it may be a false one. Maybe that goes without saying, but probably not, because most people assume that if they ever find an acceptable path in life, then hopefully it should at least be easy. And I get it, me too, but good luck finding that in real life, because real life is nothing if not a challenge. And Buddhism is no different. In fact, ease and benefit may be inversely proportional, i.e. the easier it is, the less benefit you’ll derive from it. Which almost seems too obvious, that you get what you work for, but sometimes it’s necessary to spell things out. 

    This goes to karma, of course, actions, and comes back around as a sort of fate, prescribed actions based on prior performance, anything but predetermined, even when that is what some people want in their religion above all else. Many people can see no reason to believe in a religion when it offers them nothing but freedom of choice. People want magic. Except when they want certainty. Don’t worry. When they know, you’ll know, and life will be nothing if not exciting in the process. 

    And isn’t that what most people want more than anything—excitement? Unfortunately, that is the case all too often. People are more desirous of drama than dharma, and who cares if the kids must figure out what’s right and wrong in their own free time and at their own limited initiative. But Buddhism is better than that. The Buddhist Five precepts are almost identical to the Christian’s second set of Five Commandments, everything except the alcohol. The first set of five are fundamentally Islamic. Then Buddhism only gets better: Emptiness, Consciousness, Kindness, and Goodness, the Four Nesses’ even nobler truth, IMHO. You heard it here first.  

     

  • hardie karges 3:49 am on March 31, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , memories, , , , religion, thoughts,   

    Buddhism 499: Thought as Language and Memory…  

    The things we’re most attached to are our memories. If you can let go of them, then you can let go of anything. But the attachment here is insidious, because it is not strictly voluntary, but more customary, even essential. Because, like computers, we are in many ways defined by speed and memory, the two measurements which simultaneously both limit us and liberate us. What is more basic to our ability to think than language? Memory, of course, even if it’s always the past. Language is optional in the proto-consciousness of our lingo-less ancestors. Memory is not. 

    That’s the strict definition of thought, or awareness, but the sentimental attachments are more problematic. That’s when we become attached to our memories for purely sentimental reasons, or even worse: craving. Craving has long been identified as the chief cause of suffering in the Buddhist worldview, and that isn’t likely to change any time soon. The memories themselves aren’t usually the source of craving, of course, but the objects they represent are, insomuch as all memories are memories OF something. 

    So, here we are, featherless bipeds with a difference: we think like crazy, literally, mostly through the medium of language. In fact, in some people’s eyes, thought is indeed identified with language, as if no thought existed prior to language. I’m not sure how to prove it one way or the other, but I take it as an act of faith that that is not the case. Surely the animal kingdom conducts activities that can only be regarded as thought-driven, given the logic and forethought inferable.  

    Certainly, they have memories, and just as certainly, they have no language. But can we say that they are happier because of their lingo-less existence? Maybe. As always, the sweet spot lies somewhere in the middle. Dogs won’t cure cancer, but they may have less of it to begin with. Still, they’ll likely never live to the ripe old ages that we now consider normal. So, the best bet is to stop the thought stream periodically with meditation, and use memory as a substitute sometimes, but not as a practice of sentimental craving. Bingo. Sounds like an enlightened practice to me.  

     

  • hardie karges 4:29 am on March 24, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , religion, , , , , y-chromosome   

    Buddhism in the Bardo: Survival of the Species…  

    Some people might laugh at a monk in meditation, wasting his life away, but I laugh at the silly fools who cause global warming. Because, after living a long time in Thailand, that’s the main reason that I was reluctant to get involved with Buddhism, the perception that it was too passive, and incapable of dealing with the issues that face the world. So, for me that was an early premonition of what I might now call something like ‘socio-spiritual bypassing,’ i.e. the avoidance of social obligations by invoking the spiritual primacy of renunciation. 

     But at some point, I realized that renunciation was probably a greater tool than all the political action in the world, and, at least on some ways, likely to produce the greater impact, also. Because, for all our sociopolitical posturing, little is accomplished along those lines, and much of the developed world may soon be crisscrossed with windmills, without any detectable difference in our addiction to rapid locomotion, despite the visible degradation of our relationship to Nature. With a population of more than eight billion souls, renunciation may soon be the only avenue of survival. 

    And, if that’s a bitter pill to swallow, then so be it. Because the writing has been on the wall for at least sixty to eighty years now, and we’ve only sunk deeper in our denial of the likely results, as Elon exhorts us to make more babies, so that he can rake in more gazillions. And that’s maybe the saddest part, that the only way that we can show our love for these people on this planet is to create more babies, who must then shoulder the burden of our conundrum.  

    So suddenly renunciation is not a bad option at all, and the disappearance of the y-chromosome only seconds that emotion. Because, whatever the numbers of our reproduction and its proliferation, or not, it’s impossible to live in a world without love. But we might need to change that meaning. And that’s where Buddhism comes in, because love comes in many forms and flavors. Metta, or lovingkindness, is the preferred Buddhist flavor, and the world community is the intended recipient. That’s Buddhism. 

     

  • hardie karges 8:00 am on March 17, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , religion, , , , turn the other cheek   

    Buddhism in a Christian World, Fighting Aggression with Non-Aggression… 

    The great Buddhist dilemma, or tetralemma, is how to deal with aggression. Do you turn the other cheek? But no Christian really did that, did they? Still, the goal is the goal, the difficulty of accomplishing it notwithstanding. And surely some Christians did just that, though Buddhists are probably better at it, given their cultural conditioning, just as some Buddhists are aggressive bullies, in some emulation of the Alpha Male Syndrome, if nothing else. Boys will be boys, and many of those are aggressive by nature. 

    But is there a better way? Aren’t we guilty of another form of spiritual bypassing, if we avoid difficult social and political situations by simply retreating into our spiritual comfort zones and letting the world degenerate into madness? After all, is that any different from using our spirituality to avoid confronting our own emotions and unresolved existential crises? In fact it might be worse, much worse. So, yes, there is an opportunity here for someone to learn a lesson if only he or she wants to put the time and effort into it. 

    But we can’t lose ourselves in the affairs of others. We can only teach what we ourselves know above and beyond question and learn from everything else. The important thing is not to react, or at least not overreact. We are all baited everyday with statements designed to inflame or instill anger when we ourselves intended no such thing at all initially and desire no such thing as result. But such is the nature of aggressive modern culture. And we are in it, regardless of whether we are truly of it or not. If turning the other cheek is to invite further abuse, then nothing has been accomplished. To simply walk away and limit future involvement with the aggressor might be a better solution. 

     

  • hardie karges 6:19 am on March 10, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Fa Hien, , , , , , , religion, , , vinaya,   

    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. 

     

  • hardie karges 8:42 am on March 3, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , religion, , ,   

    Buddhism 301: Emptiness Is Also Silent, and Infinite…  

    Silence is normal. All noise should be treated as an alien force, approached with caution and handled with great care. But, we live in a world of mechanical waves, so we assume that the world should be full of it, percussion and repercussions. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that our worlds should be so full, since our worlds are plural, and everyone must make that choice individually. And this is another case of the glass half-full or half-empty, since it’s likely neither. But which is better?  

    Maybe there was a time in the history of the world when to merely ‘break the silence’ was somehow enlightening, revolutionary, and revealing, worth something in and of itself, but those days are likely long gone as the world rapidly fills up with stuff if not substance, and the resulting benefit is as illusory as it is elusive. What to do, then? Embrace the silence, for all it’s worth, as that should be plenty, for it is itself the raw material of meditation. 

    And, if simple awareness is the stuff of consciousness, then meditation may not be consciousness ‘on steroids,’ God forbid, but hopefully consciousness refined, purified, and made more intense in the process and more sacred in turn. For, what is more sacred than pure consciousness? This is a question that science cannot answer, and likely never will, but if there is something sacred in this life and in this world, then that must be it.  

    Buddhist ‘Emptiness,’ shunyata, based on the numerical concept of zero, is hard to define, and even harder to embody, but if that space is empty, then it must also be silent, and that makes a life more refined and much finer. But which came first, the concept or the number? It doesn’t really matter, now, does it? Embrace it, for to be empty, and silent, does not mean to be lacking. It means to be infinite, as only emptiness can. Stuff is limited. Find a place for it, then forget about it, if you can, for a while, at least.

     

  • hardie karges 4:26 am on February 25, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , religion, ,   

    Kindness and Compassion are the Heart and Soul of Buddhism  

    Buddhism in Bhutan

    Compassion has no expiration date. It’s never too late to make new friends with old enemies. This is one of the secrets to a good life: no grudges, no scorched earth, no retribution, and, most importantly, no regrets. It should be simple, since you don’t really have to do anything, but in fact it’s one of the hardest things ever, so attached as we are to our egos and our ‘face’ that we spend so much time and effort saving, lest someone steal it right off of our heads, haha. 

    The Dalai Lama once said that his religion was simple, and that’s kindness, which is compassion, in a word, same thing, same time, and that’s Buddhism, too, in a word. All the elaborate lists and literary expositions that comprise the Buddhist Abhidharma are unnecessary to describe the heart of Buddhism, so why waste so much time and effort when you can put it all in a word, or two? Because yes, there is another word that needs to be included, and if karuna is the first word, then metta is the second, often translated as ‘lovingkindness’ or simple ‘friendliness.’ 

    Put the two words together, and you’ve captured the heart and soul of Buddhism. In fact, modern standard Thai language does indeed often combine the two words for extra effect, so mettakaruna is a word or phrase that you will hear often there. Suffering is famously the back-story to Buddhism, that and its cessation, and that’s pretty much all you need to know. The cosmology of self and rebirth are important but debatable, IMHO, and thus of secondary importance, ditto nirvana. The analogy to Christian forgiveness might be worth mentioning but it isn’t necessary. Be good; don’t be bad. It’s that simple. 

     

  • hardie karges 5:15 am on February 4, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Fa Xian, , , , , , , religion, , , , , ,   

    Buddhism: Meditation, not Mysticism…  

    Buddhism was never intended to be mystical. Buddha was very rational in his take on life and suffering. Any mysticism came later, mostly in the Vajrayana Buddhism of Tibet that came directly from India, not China, and which had taken firm hold in that country by the Eight Century CE. And while that ‘school’ of Buddhism is often included in the Mahayana tradition which traveled through, and was greatly influenced, by China, such is not the case with Vajrayana, which derives from a later, maybe the last, Indian Buddhist tradition, before it succumbed to the coup de grace by the invasive Mughals, after centuries of losing ground, and followers, to the Brahmanist Hindus. 

    About the only thing that all the Mahayana schools have in common, in fact, is that they are not of the original Theravada tradition, which originated in India and found fertile ground in southeast Asia, mostly. And if the Vajrayana tradition is famous for its multiple levels of heaven and hell, its Tantric yab-yum, mudras and mantras, then Theravada (aka Hinayana), is best known for its lack of all that, and concentration on meditation, especially, to the extent that it’s sometimes known by that most famous meditation technique Vipassana. Meanwhile the Mahayana Buddhism of China is probably best defined by its transcendent Buddha and the vast Emptiness of reality, both more recent developments.

    Many famous Chinese monks, Fa Xian and Xuanzang foremost among them, even made long arduous trips to India just to get it right, like Charlemagne realizing his 8th century French language wasn’t proper Latin. And mostly I believe that meant learning meditation, and some other disciplines, which Theravada monks usually excel at, and Chinese monks often suck at—to this day. In fact, I didn’t really even know what meditation was until I attended some Theravada-based meditation retreats in Southeast Asia, intended for Asians, not Westerners. When you see a layman sitting silent unflinching for two or three hours lost in no-thought: that’s meditation. The monks are even better at it. Now I get it. Get it. 

     

  • hardie karges 4:06 am on January 20, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Branhmanism, , Divine Feminine, , , , Indra, , , , , religion, ,   

    Buddhism and the Divine Feminine  

    Is a creator God a product of patriarchy? Probably. Buddhism doesn’t need it, regardless. Buddhism embodies the Divine Feminine, whether it knows it or not. This goes way back, of course, even before the Abrahamic religions, at least as far back as the Sanskrit-era Dyaus Pitr (think Deus Pater) ‘Sky Father’ of the proto-Hindu Rigveda, and probably before that. But Sky Father was always with Earth Mother Prithvi Mata, and that pretty much defines the Hindu/Buddhist dichotomy that dominated the philosophical debates of 500 BCE India, Hinduism the more male-dominant principle, Buddhist the more female-dominant. 

    And this is important, even if it is seldom stated, or even acknowledged, given the lesser status of Buddhist nuns, in comparison to their male counterparts. But it’s there, and it’s true, from what I can see, and that is good. It means that Buddhism is non-agressive, and that is purpose-built, in stark opposition to the early Brahmanistic war god Indra, which Buddhism refuses to acknowledge as its heritage. It also means that Buddhism is more concerned with down-to-earth issues of kindness, and craving, than abstract considerations of dualism vs. non-dualism. 

    Thus, Buddhism embodies many of the qualities often associated with the ‘divine feminine,’ such as ‘intuition, nurturing, creativity, empathy, and wisdom’ (www.anahana.com). So, it should be unnecessary to say that Buddhism is not a conquering religion, unless you count the hearts and minds conquered, not bodies inscribed with epithets and enlisted in future wars with imaginary enemies. Buddhism is better than that. Conquer yourself and you will have conquered the world, your world… 

     

  • hardie karges 3:25 am on January 14, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , religion,   

    Buddhism 102: the Cessation of Craving  

    If you indulge cravings, then there’s no end to them, just mindless consumption. It’s better to cut them off at the source, your mind. This lies at the heart of Buddhism and is enshrined in the Second of Four Noble Truths as the primary cause of suffering. There are other causes, too, and so other forms of suffering, but this is the main one, and the one for which Buddhism is famous. After all, what is more insufferable than craving and its deleterious effects? 

    Well, that is a debatable point, but most importantly, craving is the one cause of suffering that we are most able to do something about, in order to effect a positive change in that status. Old age and many forms of sickness leave us at their not-so-tender mercies to live or die, but craving is just a clownish monster, mocking our every move, and our every intent to free ourselves from its hideous grip, adding insult to injury, when what we really need is encouragement to succeed.  

    Because craving is akin to addiction, and this is one of the most hideous of worldly phenomena that we must deal with in the course of our short lives, the inability to free ourselves from the grips of habits and substances which are harmful to us, even when we are fully mindful of that fact. But the craving is mindless, not mindful. And so that is where we must nip it in the bud, at the point where the mind has made an unconscious allowance that facilitates this perversion of intent. 

    It is of no importance that the mind may have no more intrinsic importance than the craving, either, or ourselves, for that matter. What is important is that we cease the defilement at the source, rather than make excuses for our failings. And the source is will or lack thereof. If you are willing to allow cravings to control you, then they will do so, without fail. Only if you are willing to exert some discipline can you truly defeat the monsters that inhabit the subconscious realm of craving. Only then are you truly a disciple of the Buddha.  

     

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