streaming consciousness…

Tagged: samadhi Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

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  hardie karges 5:34 am on December 2, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Boolean logic ( 4 ), Boy Scouts, consciousness ( 29 ), JESUS ( 21 ), kilesha ( 12 ), logic ( 14 ), Middle Path ( 57 ), mindfulness ( 37 ), philosophy ( 113 ), reification ( 4 ), religion ( 168 ), samadhi, sati ( 19 ), syllogism ( 2 ), Thailand ( 76 ), Thich Nhat Hanh ( 8 )   

  Boy Scouts: be prepared. Buddhists: not so fast… 

  

  The Golden Spires of Shwedagon Pagoda

  This is one of the problems I have with Buddhism, the whole ‘no-thought’ paradigm, that always seems to find currency, notwithstanding the fact that the Buddha never said anything like that, not to my knowledge, anyway, and the term sati, which has taken on the meaning of ‘mindfulness’, probably had no such lofty connotations at the time, the problem now being one of vagueness, if not deliberate obfuscation, in order to inspire awe and reverence, apparently, as if it is untranslatable to the ordinary mortal…

  But it certainly is a common ordinary word in modern standard Thai, something like simple ‘consciousness’ or ‘mind’, so ‘mindfulness’ is a marketing hook to sell a fad to the West, that special sauce and some righteous hocus pocus, such that the makers of the film ‘Samadhi’ have to explain that the term is untranslatable to English, notwithstanding the fact that it is done all the time outside the rarefied circles of New Age fad religions… (More …)

   

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  hardie karges 5:47 am on October 8, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: breath ( 2 ), Buddha ( 49 ), Farang ( 5 ), itch ( 2 ), meditation ( 224 ), samadhi, sangha ( 13 ), Thailand ( 76 ), Vipassana ( 16 )   

  Buddhism and the Meditation Itchy-Scratchies: Peace of Mind, Peace of body… 

  You know the routine: position cushion on the floor, position butt on the cushion, position body on the butt spine straight crack shoulders eyes closed breath focus nose focus navel focus nothing nothing breathing breathing breath breath in out in out breathe breathe hmmmm… hmmmm… breath… hmmmm… hmmmm… Donald Trump….. hmmmm… moron… hmmm… breath… hmmm… Mormon… hmmm… Buddho… hmmm… ice cream… yummm… hmmm… Buddho… hmmm… salsa… hmmmm… afrocubism… hmmmm… Pablo Picasso… hmmmm…  Matisse… hmmm… mind wandering… hmmm… wandering… hmmm…  Buddho… hmmm… breath… hmmm…

  When I first started meditating in northern Thailand my mother-in-law would ask me, “Have you calmed your mind yet?”

  “Calm my mind? I’m still trying to calm my body…” (More …)
   
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  hardie karges 7:25 am on August 23, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Bashar, Buddhism ( 465 ), Deepak Chopra ( 5 ), Eckhart Tolle ( 13 ), Lobsang Rampa, New Thought, Now ( 4 ), Now-ness, religion ( 168 ), samadhi, Theosophy   

  The Messy-onic Tradition, part 2: Eckhart and the Also-rans… 

  (Continued from here). I would consider Eckhart Tolle more of a genuine prophet than Deepak Chopra, and with a genuine message, however limited, a fairly well fleshed-out theory of ‘the Now’, but here, too, there is vagueness and also many tossed mixed metaphors conveniently confusing empirical facts with familiar fictions, not the same thing, and dangerously close to anthropomorphic representations of entities that are nothing if not God-substitutes…

  For example, what exactly does Tolle mean when he asks: “What Is It That The Universe Really Wants To Be Created Thru Me?” Is he implying that the ‘Universe’ is like a person with wants and desires? And there are other bothersome examples of vagueness: ‘NOW’, ‘Presence’, and ‘Consciousness’ are all offered in the same breath as equivalencies but still largely undefined, unfortunately…

  And then there are his ‘energy centers’. Google that if you want to get the address of your nearest marijuana dispensary in SoCal. ‘Nowness’ is his big deal, but that can lead to irresponsible hedonism, too, if not correctly applied… (More …)

  hardie karges, NMF, and davekingsbury are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    davekingsbury 3:30 pm on August 24, 2017 Permalink | Reply

    The Eckhart Tolle advice was good. I loved the way he paused before answering. So different from the usual blather from pundits.

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    hardie karges 5:20 pm on August 24, 2017 Permalink | Reply

    Yes, Eckhart is not bad at all…

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    NMF 2:28 pm on September 12, 2017 Permalink | Reply

    What I am discovering in all of this, is that all these teachers are teaching the same thing, spreading the same message, albeit in different ways. Namely: we are expressions of one divine spiritual energy, just in human form having a human experience and that is part of the great Universal Expansion. At the core of their teachings, they all point to the same thing: we are all messiahs, some in training, but all eventually awakening to the truth of who we are Light, Love and Life.

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      hardie karges 5:15 pm on September 12, 2017 Permalink | Reply

      Somethin like that, yes, thx…

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  hardie karges 10:23 am on July 5, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 465 ), film ( 3 ), Matrix ( 2 ), meditation ( 224 ), movie ( 4 ), Plato ( 17 ), samadhi, video ( 2 ), YouTube   

  #Samadhi for non-#Buddhists and Children of the #Matrix: Turn it down!!! 

  It seems that the movie “The Matrix” has done for the current generation what “Plato’s Cave” did for one almost 2500 years ago, inspiring countless thinkers and wannabe prophets to poke beyond the edges of the common-sense world, just to see if there was anything there, knowing that there would be no sure answers, but an enduring love of the questions, and inspiring narratives that would make any Homer, Shakespeare, Hugo or Cervantes take notice… (More …)