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  hardie karges 2:22 pm on June 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: drugs ( 7 ), religion, sex ( 39 )   

  SEX, DRUGS, RELIGION 

  One of my previous lovers left me for a woman. That made me stop and think. She swings both ways now, I think, if and when she swings at all. I guess that’s natural when your life consists primarily of sensation. She’s an artist. She’s also an atheist, or so she says. They’re the saddest people in the world, or so it seems. They also seem to be more inclined to drug use, though I couldn’t place causality. They go way beyond recreation, inspiration, and good ol’ fashioned “getting fucked up”. They’re into Club Med, something to kill the pain, that special kind of sympathetic pain that accrues mostly to druggies; they need it special. But don’t forget the ‘opium of the masses’. It kills pain, too, the pain of being. I think the main problem with religion is the picture in our minds of the traditional battle gods with their long beards, war wigs, and bad teeth, threatening us with eternal damnation if we slip and fail. Thor is there with a fist full of thunderbolts, and so’s his boss Woden and Frida the Wonder Woman, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday hanging over us like a sentence of death and a book of lies. It’s so negative, promising Hell for bad behavior, as if we couldn’t behave ourselves otherwise. Islam takes the opposite tack, promising a Heaven full of virgins if we do the right things here and now. Score one for Islam. You already know what Hell is like. Buddhism doesn’t do any of that. It doesn’t lead you into battle, nor does it promise Heaven nor Hell. It just doesn’t do much of anything at all, actually. This world is all illusion. No shit. These are not religion’s bright spots. People have done things in the name of religion that I wouldn’t do to my worst enemy. It doesn’t have to be so hard.

   

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  hardie karges 7:41 am on June 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Asia ( 17 ), LEARNING, religion   

  RACE FOR RELIGION 

  Pidgin English replaces Pidgin Sanskrit and the history of Southeast Asia moves forward into the new millennium. The Indian influence seems as though it were always benign and probably one of the best justifications of India’s reputation as a guru-culture, i.e. a culture of teachers and teachings. It appears that that is exactly what they did in Southeast Asia about two thousand years ago, both as traditional Brahmanists and as the reformers, Buddhists, bringing not only religion, but alphabet and much new vocabulary. But as is always the case, ‘teacher, teach thyself.’ Hinduism in its original form is forever stained by its embrace of the caste system, a polite form of racism. There is always the danger of this in any culture with more than one race, of course, and the religious acceptance of it seems no more than an afterthought to justify what was already the case. While Buddhism never addressed the issue specifically, its lack of a caste system must have made it more attractive, all else being equal. Islam certainly capitalized on the inherent tension in the caste system and complemented it with its simple, but strict, teaching accessible to all, and an army promising plenty of spoils for the victors. To the present day Buddhist temples are centers of learning, if basic, in Southeast Asia and were for a long time almost the only centers. Islamic schools serve much the same function in its sphere of influence. It’s an open question as to why the history of the area is entirely dependent on Chinese annals for chronology and corroboration, given the advanced state of Indian learning and literacy.
   
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  hardie karges 7:50 am on June 2, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: DOGMA ( 5 ), religion   

  LIMITS OF DOGMA 

  You don’t have to throw out religion because of the dogma. That’s like throwing out the dishes with the dishwater. Religion is initiated in experience and culminates in a belief system. One man’s dogma is another man’s belief system is another man’s mind control. Those who denigrate belief systems, including religion, seem to need higher than normal levels of drugs and alcohol to attain that enlightened mental state. Admittedly belief systems can get out of control and into politics. It’s an endless temptation and maybe even the ideal system if it’s capable of self-correction. Dogma is usually not. They’re all guilty of it, of course, Buddhism in the Tibetan theocracy, Christianity in the old Holy Roman Empire, Islam in modern Iran among countless others. Communism was guilty of the same thing. It’s called ‘totalitarianism’, the idea that the state can control everything, including thought, or conversely, that religion can run the government. These things require finesse, tolerance, and time. Some concepts are simply irreconcilable, better just to agree to disagree. Taliban women under veils are as repulsive to modern Western sensibilities as Amsterdam whorehouses are to the mullahs. There’s no easy reconciliation, best just to stay on your side of the line.

   
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  hardie karges 11:35 am on June 1, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Apocalypse ( 12 ), religion   

  APOCALYPSO 

  Tsunamis and typhoons and hurricanes are taking revenge on those who take Nature lightly, changing money in the temple and erecting pleasure parlors right on the edges of her frayed slip. After the tsunami, some Thais asked me if this was it, the Big A, Armegeddon, Apocalypse, as if because I’m a Farang, therefore of Judeo-Christian heritage, I’d know what it’s supposed to look like. Thai Christians take that shit seriously. You don’t just casually go switching religions. If you leave the graven images and the golden Buddhas behind, you at least want a good old-fashioned apocalypse in return, or maybe a Messiah or two. The problem is, if Jesus came back, no Christians would believe it, so the new believers, prostitutes and drug addicts and mixed loose nuts, would have to start all over again. Religion is like that. Desperation makes it very attractive. The more money you have, the more you have to lose, the camel and the eye of a needle and all that.

   
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  hardie karges 7:56 am on May 31, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: love ( 49 ), religion   

  The more we learn, the less we know 

  That’s the hard thing for religion to admit. It is about certainties, after all. It’s hard to admit I really don’t know jack shit about what’s out there; I only know what’s in here, that I feel this incredible love radiating outward and seeping inward that connects me to every living thing that breathes on this one-in-a-trillion planet. It has nothing to do with someone stroking my ego or pulling my leg. It has everything to do with a friendly word from a stranger, a helping hand when you’ve fallen down, or a baby’s smile. Just thinking about it in the fifth dimension of memory can send a shiver up my spine, and a tear to my eye. This is the great gift of Christianity, the transformative power of love. In a dog-eat-dog world, nobody had ever said anything as simple as “love your neighbor as yourself”. Imagine what would happen if everybody actually did that. The problem is that too often those who don’t, take advantage of those who do.

  more or less... and Brian are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Brian 8:45 am on May 31, 2008 Permalink | Reply

    Couldn’t agree more. There is a story that the Rabbi Hillel, a contemporary of Jesus, was challenged by a non-Jew. The challenge was that if Hillel could recite the Torah while standing on one leg, the challenger would convert to Judaism. Hillel stood on one leg, said “do unto others as you have them do unto you. That is the Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study it.”

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    more or less... 9:45 am on January 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    Why connect the ‘golden rule’ to a religion. It was ‘borrowed’ by middle east monotheism from far east ancient wisdom.
    Monotheism has found and exploited the flaw in this meme. The suicide bomber believes he is killing for the good of God, he would hope you would do the same to him. Same story for the abortion clinic bomber… This ‘great gift of Christianity(Monotheism), the transformative power of love’, we can do without! Take ‘Christianity’ out of the equation however then you have something worthy of aspiration and equation to ‘loves power’. Don’t be fooled, religion is a fraud. Fall for the fraud if you must, but know it for what it is. I only relay this simple truth because we are you.

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  hardie karges 8:29 am on May 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: GOD ( 24 ), religion   

  Messiah complex, God simple. 

  If you believe in anything, then you believe in God. But beware of false prophets and easy solutions. It’s time for a new religion, gather up all those shitty little revelations and write them down in a new Bible, if that’ll make you feel any better. Ancestor worship runs in the family, but stops short of a true metaphysics. Oriental religion offers a way out, but no way in. Western religion could use a pill to chill and enjoy the show without everybody demanding the starring role and a share of the box-office. But no drugs, please. It’s time for East and West to meet somewhere besides WWIII-era cheesy GI bars lining the beaches in Pattaya and Frankfurt. It’s time to reconcile science and religion without all the rank and rancor. Science is about probabilities; religion is about certainties. There’s really no need to battle over turf. Islam is way ahead in one area- they have a God with no face, pure and inescapable, while Christians need frequent inspiration from the guy with the tan, and Buddhists prostrate themselves to a thousand graven images while professing non-attachment. Christianity wins the battle over behavior hands-down with the doctrine of unrelenting love, and Buddhism will always be closer to theoretical physics with its flexible approach to reality. But talk’s cheap. As always, do as they say, not as they do. Buddha, Christ, and Muhammad take their places in the head, heart, and muscle of the world and man like the sage, lover, and soldier in all of us: old, middle-aged, and young. Islamic discipline, Christian love, and Buddhist other-worldliness are the tripod legs of one true religion, the trilogy, the triple Gem, the five pillars, the Ten Commandments, and the eight-fold path all showing different sides of One Truth- God exists. Live your life accordingly.

   
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  hardie karges 1:10 pm on May 29, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: GOD ( 24 ), religion   

  ARGUMENTS FOR GOD 

  Maybe there is a God, and maybe he gives a shit. Maybe there is a reason to live. Maybe I need it. Maybe I need the sandy coastline, the muddy rivers, and the purple sunsets. Maybe I need people in general, though maybe no one in particular. My heart is a palimpsest, a lonely beach washed over and rewritten many times by warriors determined to topple my castles in the air. If you can explain it, then it isn’t God. God speaks in silence, in your innermost thoughts. God is that voice inside, your partner in dialogue, your constant companion.

   
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  hardie karges 11:35 am on May 26, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: history ( 42 ), religion   

  AND THE MEEK WILL INHERIT THE EARTH 

  Will the meek inherit the Earth? Forced to take sides in a war they don’t want, they’re left to their own devices when it comes time to take up arms. Most would rather busy their hands working the fields of Abraham, but the powers that be reject simple solutions. Individual egotism becomes group solidarity becomes national pride becomes racial superiority, religion holding the hand that feeds as it follows. Conspiracy rules, a conspiracy of ignorance. Half the world consumes what the other half produces, as if nothing could be more natural, peasants plowing fields becoming poorer and poorer while hunters become herders become warriors become corporate raiders with habits as large as their bellies to feed from the fields of peasants. Everybody gets in on the deal, women holding down the fort while men do the hunting, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

   
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  hardie karges 5:45 am on May 25, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: jihad ( 8 ), religion   

  IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER 

  This is the Bible; this is a new millennium; this is WWIII. Populations are in movement all over the globe to avoid the axe, to avoid the sword, to avoid the inevitable. This is the war to end all wars. This is slow-motion Apocalypse, the first to be televised. This is the year of the virus, DNA carefully packaged in Trojan horses. This is the race to end all races. Jihad rears its ugly head like a ghost from the past, Saladin riding a gilded stallion, forcing the infidels into submission, showing mercy to the repentant. The One God is a jealous God. His three grandsons fight for favor in his eye, Ariel, George, and Osama taking up where Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad left off, jockeying for position in a world growing smaller by the day. Abraham’s house long divided between Jesus’s many children and Muhammad’s brotherhood of the sword, Moses wants nothing more in his old age than his childhood room with a view after years of travel and homelessness. Sibling rivalry for the Father’s favors begins at home.

   
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  hardie karges 11:56 am on May 18, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: GOD ( 24 ), religion   

  RELIGION MADE TO ORDER WITH A MESSIAH ON THE SIDE 

  God may be dead and long gone, but religion is a horse of another color. Religion is more about godliness than God himself. If necessary to create Him, then do so. Draw the hair long and the beard wild, or put him in a business suit with clipboard and calculator. The Chinese portray Buddha (and always have) as a sitting laughing bald guy with a belly bigger than his considerable buttocks. The Thais portray Buddha (and always have) as a tall slender stroller with eyes half-closed and an empty palm extended gracefully. On the other hand, the legendary Avalokitesvara, exporter of Buddhism beyond India’s borders and Bodhisattva par excellence somehow invariably morphed from a man into the woman Kuan Yin/Kannon/Kuan Im everywhere he/she entered the pantheon of worship. Go figure. If Jesus has ever been portrayed as anything other than a well-tanned surfer dude breaking bread with the buds or gazing above invariably back-lit halo-like, I’ve never seen it, but that all started with renaissance ‘hippie’ painters with agendas, or so a high-school teacher assured me. Likenesses of Muhammad are proscribed, of course. Religions tend to give the region of their acceptance the message they need, like it or not. Violent Europeans get the love-priest. Sexually obsessed Arabs get the head wrap for women. Possessive face-obsessed Asians get the religion of renouncement and passive withdrawal.