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hardie karges
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hardie karges
The Buddhist Middle Path Between Bliss and Industry
The most difficult attachments are to (our) selves and (our) lives, which almost goes without saying, because what could be more logical and apparently natural? But it’s probably worth the effort to say it, because it may not be natural at all, maybe just the opposite, in fact. Because the only thing connecting it all is consciousness, and that hardly implies attachment, only awareness. This is a core principle of Buddhism, and nothing is more important.
Because once you’ve become attached to yourself, then you will certainly become attached to your wife and your children and your job, as if nothing could be more natural. But there is something almost more natural, and that’s non-attachment. Imagine the bliss that becomes possible by simply being alive without transacting, becoming blissfully wet when it rains and playfully engaged when it dries? So, why don’t animals do that, then, as we imagine they do?
But they don’t, or not totally. Jesus has already been busted for claiming that birds don’t build barns, when in fact they clearly do. In the English language we call them nests. In fact, these birds are a full step ahead of those imaginary ‘present moment’ Buddhists, as they are more like Middle Path Buddhists, splitting the difference between bliss and industry, very much in the moment, but with an eye to the future, too. We humans were once like that, planting seeds but also practicing crafts. Cities should be unnecessary with the advent of high tech. Maybe we should try that.
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hardie karges
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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…
streaming consciousness... 
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