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hardie karges
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hardie karges
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hardie karges
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hardie karges
Buddhism 202: No Self Means no Selfishness
Selfishness is a refuge only for the wicked and the ignorant, because it is no refuge at all. And this is possibly the best definition of the Buddhist doctrine of anatta, i.e. non-self, or no-self, that it is the opposite of selfishness. That’s only partially true, though, and is, or was, really more of a point of distinction between an emerging Buddhism and a rapidly evolving ‘Hinduism’, i.e. the Brahmanism of the 5th century BC and its eternal Brahmin and its cosmic self.
And that Buddhist doctrine was later expanded into the equally or even more famous shunyata ‘emptiness’ which took the impermanence and unimportance of the self and expanded it to almost everything, or at least everything pretentious enough to pretend to permanence or even importance. But selfishness is among the worst kileshas, or Buddhist sins, on a par with hate, greed, craving, and anger.
Life is not a popularity contest. If you engage in false flattery, then you’ll only have false friends. If you engage in selfishness, you’ll only have yourself to blame for the craven half-hearted character that you might become in the process. Because selfishness does not elevate the self, such as it is. It can only degrade it, or what’s left of it. Selfishness is that imaginary self at its worst, grasping and clinging like no tomorrow. And that’s the honest truth. Because there is no tomorrow. There is only today. And today will soon go away and become something permanent, in the past, hard and cold. Let’s stay warm.
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hardie karges
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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
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.
streaming consciousness... 
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