streaming consciousness…

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  hardie karges 9:26 am on October 18, 2015 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 465 ), philosophy ( 113 ), religion   

  Modern Religion: Waiting for Godot, or ET, or the Eternal NOW… 

  

  Buddhist Temple in Laos

  I’ve always marveled at how certain songs just feel good, regardless of whatever words are being sung, while other songs are sad for the same reason, something about minor keys, I think. Words are the same way, it seems, especially when you’re trying to get all philosophical. I mean: nobody really wants to hear about categorical moral imperatives—borrrring. But everybody loves to hear about the ETERNAL NOW, philosophy in a spray-can, shake well before using, get in touch with your energy, etc. Why are such words and ideas attractive?

  Simple, dahling: because it feels so good, and it can’t be proven or dis-proven—nice touch. We Western Europeans used to exult in our rationality, our Age of Reason, beyond superstition and the dictates of the Mother Church. And it worked fantastically—up to a point. We still love the fruits of such labor, but not the labor itself, and the discipline that achieved it in the first place. Now we want all that and superstition, too, but without the church, thank you. That means New Age fad religions and pop psychology and life-coaching: people who can’t run their own lives will try to tell you how to run yours. Isn’t it wonderful to be alive in 2015 with so many options? (More …)

  hardie karges and mary are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    mary 11:19 am on October 18, 2015 Permalink | Reply

    serendipidy, now that is a good word, joe powers told me what it means, i still miss him.

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      hardie karges 11:33 am on October 18, 2015 Permalink | Reply

      Tales of Serendib, ancient Sri Lanka, world’s oldest continuously Buddhist country… .

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  hardie karges 10:10 am on May 17, 2015 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: philosophy ( 113 ), POETRY ( 12 ), politics ( 32 ), religion, social commentary   

  Religio-politics 101: Desiderata Considerata 

  

  Texas, Mexico, river, fence and questions

  …and a strange peace comes over me, in the midst of all the chaos, rejection and reflection, in the midst of patchwork solutions to comprehensive problems that are beyond my comprehension… and I think it has to do with people, last but not least of the great apes, violent and intelligent beyond belief, the gentle ones naturally long gone, left only with the hardened ones that must be softened by religion often rendered impossible by the needle tracks of time and the sloppy sutras of space…

  We are pathetic little people with our pathetic little problems of food, shelter and clothing, mostly just demanding dignity, Capital D Dignity, as if that were the most important thing in the world, that self-importance, that self-esteem, that love that is a priori to all other loves, that feeling of being centered in our self slightly above the navel and just below the head let’s call it heart and get it over with, the connections between people one of heart firstly and foremostly…

  I love the so-called losers of this world because they are the humans with heart, sometimes, or sometimes not, but at least they’re usually open to it, for lack of better options, but it’s not that I hate those who are so sure of themselves and such masters of the world; it’s that I pity them for they will never know the feeling of submission, the feeling of being part of an indivisible whole of which they count only for a little bit, whether entertainers CEO’s or politicians, it’s lonely up there…

  Celebrity sickness is the disease of the day in late 21^st C. America, drunk on fame, real or imagined, our obligatory fifteen minutes barely enough in this day and age of hard drugs and random hugs, gotta’ keep the rush coming to see ourselves in pictures on the Big Screen; selfies won’t do for much more than government work, the basic minimum of likes, follows and shares needed to gain some face and hold on to it for a day or two. Why do we see ourselves on the Big Screen at the expense of ourselves on the ground planting seeds and forgiving misdeeds?

  My main memory of a visit to Cuba was the loaded question from a local functionary, fully formed and well-thought-out, could only come from a Commie, stuck behind ironic curtains for most of his life and that of a nation: “Just what do you need Internet for, anyway?”

  (space intentionally left blank)

  Just what DO we need most, anyway? Why are we obsessed with this corporate mentality of skyscrapers Hondas and iPhones while homeless people are sleeping on the streets and begging for food? Is there no middle ground that we can all be part of? Maybe it’s time to reassess our priorities. Maybe it’s time to get back to the garden—a high-tech one—we and our smart-phones: but no two-year contracts, please…
   
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  hardie karges 11:22 am on December 14, 2014 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 465 ), CHRISTIANITY ( 163 ), Christmas ( 11 ), ISLAM ( 67 ), religion   

  Awesomenessificationizing in a World w/o Him 

  “Awesome”: the word defines our lazy consumer/consumed age, selfies self-centered, Christmas especially, speaking volumes while explaining nothing, an idle exclamation and simultaneous proclamation of all things hubristic, ourselves extrapolated outward for viewing and public worship—self-worship—the worst kind, “awesome” not to be confused with “awful” its evil twin, same word really, merely inflected with opposing sentiment, neither of them even in the same emotional league as that original feeling of awe that inspired it, and which inspires millions, that feeling of smallness in witnessing grandiosity…

  So how did the same word, and same original feel, come to mean two such opposite things? That’s what it is to be human, dahling, language—and thoughts—mutating at the speed of sound in direct proportion to the distance from the source, so much like biological Evolution that it’s hard to see them as anything other or different, as often declared by scientific minds specializing in such fields with (pedi)grees much higher than my own…

  We humans are a rather imperfect lot, at best blessed, at worst cursed, in reality most likely somewhere in between, the recipe for fulfillment in direct proportion to intent, a sliding scale of satisfaction, hard to accomplish anything without really intending it, or retrofitting the logic, intent being the key, left in this slow cool world to fend for ourselves or die trying… (More …)

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    Kc 1:55 pm on December 14, 2014 Permalink | Reply

    awesome, iconic and literally, words that stick in under and around my craw. do people not read the dictionary anymore?

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      hardie karges 1:39 pm on December 15, 2014 Permalink | Reply

      apparently not

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  hardie karges 11:27 am on November 2, 2014 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 465 ), philosophy ( 113 ), possession ( 5 ), religion   

  Buddhism 101: ‘Letting Go’, and all that jazz 

  

  One of the Buddha quotes currently making frequent rounds on Facebook these days goes something like (I’m paraphrasing, since my Pali is a little rusty anyway): ‘…the important thing in life…is how well you let go’…

  Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that that quote is accurate and correct, if not entirely complete nor definitive. Now that’s interesting, because I’d always credited Buddhism (from Hindu precedents) as advocating ‘non-possession’. But ‘letting go’ is not ‘non-possession.’ ‘Letting go’ implies that there was previous possession, and that’s an important point. I think I was wrong all these years. (More …)

   
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  hardie karges 7:22 pm on October 26, 2014 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: consciousness ( 29 ), philosophy ( 113 ), religion, thought ( 15 )   

  Religion 101: the Quest for Meaning 

  

  Hindu God

  In the Beginning was the Question: WTF? And thus was born Consciousness, self-consciousness, both blessing and curse. Could the origins of consciousness be of anything besides the juxtaposition of Self and Other? I doubt it. From that is born the recognition of basic relationships, very similar to Boolean logic: more than, less than, equal to, etc. This is primal thought, thought without language. From that all the plethora and panoply of consciousness is possible.

  Now that we have language, it’s hard to imagine thinking without it, because we certainly do think in a language, just as does a computer. But computers existed, and had functions, before language, and so did we humanoids: not much, perhaps, but some, enough to populate several continents, apparently for no other reason than that they were there, and had food.

  From the basic relationships come causal relationships: if this, then that, every time, so one must be the cause of the other. Animals do this all the time, and without language, as we know it. Yet they exist—and have meaning, to us, at least. This cause-effect relationship I suspect is the origin of ‘reason’, in fact, and arises very early in the history of thought, in fact the same word in some languages. (More …)

   
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  hardie karges 9:16 am on October 19, 2014 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 465 ), CHRISTIANITY ( 163 ), communism ( 21 ), DEMOCRACY ( 11 ), Hardie Karges ( 277 ), Hinduism ( 29 ), ISLAM ( 67 ), Judaism ( 7 ), politics ( 32 ), religion   

  Religions Gone Awry, Systems Rendered Asunder 

  

  Buddhist shrine in Sri Lanka

  Islam promotes discipline and ends up glorifying violence. Christianity promotes love and ends up glorifying sex. Buddhism promotes non-possession and ends up glorifying money. Hinduism promotes India. Judaism promotes Israel. How did our major religions go so badly wrong? Good question. An even better question is how to set them right again. It won’t be easy.

  Religion was long ago taken over by politics, and used as a tool for manipulation, souls for sale as the price of politics, people’s desire for meaning in life reduced to authoritarian submission and hopes for the best. Truth, beauty, and goodness have been traded for sex, money, and violence in some devil’s bargain, arbitrage of the soul, leveraged buy-outs of vestigial beliefs, so much debris and detritus… (More …)

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    chicagoja 11:22 am on October 19, 2014 Permalink | Reply

    I agree whole-heartedly. However, understanding God never required a religion, a church or even a holy book.

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      hardie karges 11:29 am on October 19, 2014 Permalink | Reply

      Amen.

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        chicagoja 1:30 pm on October 19, 2014 Permalink

        Except Amen is a reference to an Egyptian god. Funny where some terms come from.

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  hardie karges 10:34 am on June 26, 2014 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 465 ), CHRISTIANITY ( 163 ), Hardie Karges ( 277 ), ISLAM ( 67 ), JESUS ( 21 ), religion   

  #Buddhism #Christianity #Islam: Time for a New Religion… 

  At their best Buddhism, Christianity and Islam are the head, heart and muscle of the One True Religion (as yet unnamed), the bush of which they all beat around furiously, passionately and mindfully, Buddhism with its ‘many books’ and philosophical approach, Christianity with its Sermon on the Mount and “Love Your Neighbor” One Best Commandment, Islam with its Qur’an Third Testament to the Torah, the Tales of Jesus, and much much more, maybe the greatest one book of all religions which includes all the others on a good day, whether in chapter or verse, sutra or suture…

  At their worst they degenerate into Buddhist passivity, purple passion and pragmatism of the worst kind, thousands of pragmatists plying the streets of Bangkok on any given night, sucking from the rich and giving to the kids, and parents, and anyone who’ll listen to the sad tales of femmes fatales and homos erectus…

  (More …)

   
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  hardie karges 8:39 am on September 25, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: ego ( 33 ), personality ( 3 ), religion   

  Put something heavy in a light format, 

  a spoonful of something sweet to jazz up the bitter pill. Soften the tragedy of self-consciousness by giving it an ego to coddle and hug. The face in the mirror keeps looking back increasingly suspiciously. Religion may have the answers to a thousand questions that keep popping up so regularly that it must be more than coincidental, but I doubt it. Religion can only deal with certainties, and those are very few. Put something hard in a soft place and gift-wrap it for future generations to come, the seeds of memory, the fruit of immortality. These are the things that humans do, species specific, above and beyond the duties of genus, aspiring to the heights of genius, destined to settle for something less, a graveyard for egos. You study and slave, you scrimp and save, you sweat and sacrifice, postponing personal pleasures, giving your godly gifts, just to end up alone and afraid in a corner in a room in a building in a neighborhood in a city in a state of despair, in a country on a continent of a world in a universe that really doesn’t care. You take your love when and where you find it. You give your love to anyone who’ll have it.

   
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  hardie karges 12:36 pm on September 17, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: homosexuality ( 6 ), marriage ( 3 ), religion   

  Gay marriage is more about equal rights than the conferral of sacrament 

  and is best dealt with that way. Certainly life partners should be able to share themselves with full legal rights without regard to sexual preference. Nevertheless, full church sacrament will never be granted, not from any of the established churches, anyway. Churches exist to decide between right and wrong and that’s what they attempt to do. The Great Chain of Being figures prominently in the philosophy of many religions, either directly or indirectly. This sanctifies reproduction as something holy, not dirty, not chosen, but a duty.omosexualityH Homosexuality figures into this system only as a sin, an aberration to be condemned. Whether homosexuality should or should not be considered something reprehensible has to do with whether it is a lifestyle chosen or an inherited trait. If chosen, then it is an aberration. If inherited, then it is natural. The debate may never be resolved. Certainly bisexuals throw a monkey wrench into the argument. Certainly no one is born with two sexual needs, are they? Surely one is chosen, isn’t it? By the same token, much sexual activity goes above and beyond the strict call of duty in fulfilling the basic needs of reproduction. Nothing is obvious. Nothing is forbidden. Everything is given. Everything is permitted. Religion that must resort to enforcement is not true religion at all.

   
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  hardie karges 8:34 am on September 13, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: mothers, religion, sex ( 39 )   

  “You’ll spoil your dinner,” my mother used to say 

  with all the conviction of a nutritional specialist issuing pronouncements on the future of the species, as though one bite of the forbidden cookie would send shock waves through the culinary establishment. Mothers are like that. They speak in parables. They speak in circles. They speak in broad terms on multiple issues. They issue directives. They issue freshly washed clothing and recipes for fulfillment. They issue love at low interest, with long-term repayment options. I loved her because I was supposed to love her, even though it was hard sometimes. No, that’s not true. It was hard almost all of the time, she rigid of bent and unyielding in her convictions, a woman of God and little else. I used to call her ‘Mother Superior’ only half-jokingly. At least we kept our sense of humor. I wonder what my father kept hidden. I doubt that he ever had good sex. Maybe he didn’t care. Hey, wait a minute! That’s me!