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    hardie karges 4:38 am on May 4, 2025 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: advaita, , , , , , , , , Science   

    Buddhism on the Installment Plan: Samma Advaita? Coming Soon… 

    There should be no quarrel between science and religion, or philosophy and physics, because truth is an evolving body of knowledge. But there is, and it can occupy a lot of space in that wide hopefully open field called consciousness. And if ‘dualism’ is looking for some extra work on tricky subjects, then the opposites of mind and body, or matter, is not a bad place to start. Because that is the core dichotomy which underlies them all, usually, to the point that a convenient synthesis is really not possible.

    If there were an easy synthesis to override the apparent duality, then it would be a simple dialectic. That’s easy with adjectives, but not so easy with nouns. So, the better alternative is often to define the space, so that each can exist in its own sphere of influence. Physics by definition deals with a material conception of reality, and so philosophy should respect that field of knowledge, since nothing can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

    Thus, there is no true metaphysical certainty, because it presupposes an inquiry which is logically misplaced. Philosophy is better off with ethics and logic and anything ese for which certainties are possible. Likewise with science and religion. Science is a method of proof. Religion is not, and more often than not is defined by acts of devotion. That’s not Science, so it’s best to ask questions pertinent to each of the two disciplines. Right non-duality to go with right views and right action? We’re working on it…

     
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    hardie karges 4:56 pm on February 2, 2025 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Science, , , , , ,   

    Buddhism 499: Causes and Conditions… 

    It’s not enough to temporarily alleviate a bad situation, but better to permanently change the causes and conditions that created it. This gives the lie to the dismissive notions that Buddhism is only interested in the ‘present moment’, and that ‘thoughts have no thinkers’, and other casual self-disses that imply that Buddhism is superficial and unconcerned with deeper meanings. The Buddha never said that, and nothing could be further from the truth. Those are popular modern themes, but the historical reality is quite different.

    In fact, Buddhism has been extremely concerned with causes and conditions since day one. And if that’s readily apparent in the earliest Theravada Buddhism, it’s a frank obsession by the time of Vajrayana. Never is there a call to cease suffering without a simultaneous call to end the causes of suffering. I think it’s even fair to say that this was likely something of a revelation in that pre-scientific time. Because in that era prior to the scientific era of experimentation, deep contemplation was the next best thing.

    Even Einstein knew that from his deep thought experiments, and the Socratic dialogs of Plato at or around the same time as the Buddha’s sutras were a dualistic echo of the same approach. It requires deep thinking and difficult training, not just a fly catcher nabbing a thought or two on their way through the garden to the kids’ pool. It’s even very possible that it was Buddhist monks who invented (yes, invented) the zero, something which would not catch on in the West for almost 2000 years. It first existed as a concept in shunya, before making the jump to higher math. How do you transfer the liquids between two full containers? You need an empty container. That’s a zero. Think about it. Then meditate. That’s a zero.

     
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    hardie karges 4:09 am on January 12, 2025 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ai, artificial-intelligence, Hadron Collider, , introspection, machine-learning, , , , Science, ,   

    Buddhism 499: Finding Strength in our Mutual Weaknesses… 

    To know your weaknesses is to know your heart, and from there derives your strength. But it may be a tough sell in this day and age of winners and losers with little in between, still the Buddha’s truth holds true. We are but accidents of fate and creatures of chaos, the ‘good genes’ largely wasted on pretentious and presumptuous pretenders to power, while the rest of us use our mindfulness not as a weapon, but as a tool of deep introspection, probably a better term than ‘self-knowledge’ and the next best thing to hard science, which requires group effort.

    But much can be accomplished with deep introspection, and the best part is that the proof is in the perception, rather than the dictates of science, which will likely always fall short of the requisite proofs which can only be attained at the Hadron Collider. And still, that is not enough, because our brains gnaw at the edges of the known universe like rats with a ball of cheese that is self-expanding. But, at some point we have to take a rest and live our lives and create a society that responds to human needs, not the scientific ones.

    Because we live in a simulation, neural not digital, and this is my great revelation of the modern age, where Buddhism meets science and Virtual Reality is an apt metaphor. So, this life and this world are not an illusion, as often cited, but a simulation, which is a very bit different, without the ring of falseness which haunts the other term. This neural simulation, a twin of the ‘real’ world, is as it should be, but far from the quarks and tachyons which clamor for recognition in the collider. But our neural simulation requires no Collider, but only mindfulness, patient recognition that this is exactly how it should be, no matter how short it may fall from ultimate reality. Don’t think too much…

     
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    hardie karges 2:56 pm on September 22, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Science, ,   

    Buddhism 101: There are no Winners or Losers…  

    There are no winners or losers. There are only players and non-players. Either one is fine, but if you play, then play well. The concept of winning and losing is obviously a binary circumstance, as are players vs. non-players or even East vs. West. But sometimes binary terms are effective in conveying a message, even if they are often ineffective in organizing your life. Because, we Buddhists have long been of the opinion that the Middle Path is the best guide to living your life with or without any scientific proof. 

    But the concept of winning vs losing is especially offensive, as it suggests that some people are simply better than others, regardless of any merit displayed or accrued in the process of playing the game, which suggests racism, if not just arrogance or hubris. None of that has ever been proven, of course, and my gut hunch is exactly the opposite: the more mixed the race the more superior, but again that’s hard to prove or disprove. 

    The issue of players vs non-players is more well-defined, though, in that participation is an act of will and not an accident of birth. So, when comparing the aggressive Abrahamic traditions vs the renunciative dharma traditions, it is possible to draw some conclusions, even if they are still subject to interpretations and circumstances. Because, while India and China long ago embraced renunciative dharma and taoist traditions, their cultures are anything but. And while the abrahamic West is known for its aggressive colonialism, some of the world’s finest most peaceful cities and cultures are to be found there today. 

    So, it’s a mixed bag at best, and I myself qualify as a proponent of renunciation only in the sense that too much wrong action has already been done, and so its opposite is now often preferable. But I don’t think that humans should be passive and that’s not how I live my life. So, my conception of Buddhism is somewhat like Marx’s communism, something appropriate after the previous partial phases have occurred, i.e. its time has come. At an earlier time, something else was possibly more appropriate, but not now. So, when someone insults you or feeds bait your ego, do nothing–quickly.

     
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    hardie karges 3:59 am on February 18, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: atoms, , , , , , , , , , Science,   

    Buddhism is not Opposed to Science…  

    You shouldn’t have to choose between Buddhism and Science. You don’t. Describing the physical nature of reality is not the proper role of Buddhism. The Buddha did not have Samma Paramanu (right atoms) at the top of his list of the Eightfold Path. He had Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, etc., all ‘things’ within the realm of human endeavor. The debate over rebirth notwithstanding, the nature of reality should be off-limits. The nature of human understanding is primary. 

    When I was a child and my mother would ask what I learned in Sunday School, I was famous for replying ‘magic,’ haha, beginners’ luck on my part, that I was prescient enough to see that most religions require a double dose of faith, whether that is pure superstition or not. And most Christian religions are proud of that fact, as if too strong of a reliance on science leaves no room for faith, which is at the heart of most Christianity. With Buddhism it seems optional. Because, while I don’t need the concept of rebirth for Buddhism to make sense to me, I make no issue of it with others, 

    Even science requires some faith, but that’s not the same as belief. After all, how many of us can understand the math that underlies quantum physics? Not me. But I can appreciate the fact that a physicist can, and they agree that the science has been proven empirically countless times. Buddhism requires no such empirical truth. The truth is in your heart and mind, which are one and the same. The foundational truths of Buddhism and Christianity are almost the same.  

    Change passive voice to active, change positive suggestions to negative prohibitions and the five Buddhist Precepts are almost identical to the second half of the Ten Commandments: no killing, no stealing, no lying, no hanky panky, and no drink—simple, except for the drink, which Christianity allows. The first five of the ten commandments more resemble Islam. But the point is that Science is not prescribed nor prohibited by any of this. Science is a method, not a religion, and it’s always tentative, never dogmatic. At its best, Buddhism is the same, and never at odds. 

     
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    hardie karges 3:38 am on December 23, 2023 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism and Non-Possession  

    I travel these lands as if I owned them, when in fact I own nothing, not even my own body parts. And that’s good, because if I owned anything really and truly then I’d be attached to them, till death do us part. That’s no good, because attachments are tantamount to craving, and clinging, Buddhist no-no’s from the word ‘go’. Why? Because they’ll always cause suffering, later if not sooner, and that’s gospel, according to the Buddha. But that’s a sharp contrast, of course, to the typical Western habit of consumption and possession, as if the more we purchase, then the happier we’ll be. 

    Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. In fact, the truth is probably just the opposite: the more we possess, the more miserable we are. But don’t try to convince a rich person of that—or a poor one. Because the truth is not to be found in stats or specs, but in the internal subjective application of deep feeling to the miscellaneous circumstances of life. Scientific proof, and much less truth, can only go so far. You can’t prove happiness, any more than you can prove compassion. But you can feel it. And you’ll know it when you feel it.  

    So, that’s what’s important, and that’s all that we should expect from any religion or philosophy. Because science is better equipped to tell us what the universe is composed of, and how it works, so Buddhism probably shouldn’t waste its time rehashing old themes and memes from two to three thousand years ago as if deep introspection were capable of the same rigorous experiments as science. It’s not. Buddhism is here to tell us how to live our lives. Be kind. Reduce suffering by reducing craving. That’s all. Merry Christmas… 

     
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    hardie karges 8:41 am on March 25, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Drake Equation, , , Science   

    The Lessons of Life and the Lessons of Buddhism  

    Sometimes the worst disasters teach the best lessons. And this itself is one of the most sublime lessons of Buddhism, if never the easiest to embrace, that all of our most elaborate plans will certainly fall apart, sooner or later, in part if not wholly. We will be left with whatever remains, and we should be prepared to deal with it. That doesn’t mean elaborate rituals to be done or the best insurance to be had, simply a willingness to move on with whatever life brings and letting go of any pretense to authority over things we can’t control. 

    Now, I certainly won’t go as far as many ‘non-dualists,’ and neither would the Buddha, in asserting that, essentially, we are nothing, neither doer nor actor nor creator, simply witnesses to that over which we have no control, which is almost everything. I won’t go that far. I’d only say that it’s limited, and all pretenses otherwise are extremely il-advised. The Buddha made it clear that we are composite beings on the best of days, however intelligent, and much less than that quite often. We are not Gods nor even masters of our own domains.  

    As a firm follower of science, but not necessarily a believer, I give us all the credits due any featherless biped, and much more, since it’s not yet proven that there are any more of us ‘out there,’ unless they are related to us, or until we find at least one. The Drake Equation is logic, not evidence. No, I believe that this species is unique, as are each and every one of us, with our own DNA and fingerprints. But that doesn’t give us any special rights to command others and the universe. We are children of this universe. Enjoy.  

     
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    hardie karges 10:41 am on January 1, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , by-passing, , , hungry ghost, , observer effect, , , , Science,   

    Buddhism and the Observer Effect… 

    The one who can control himself, can control the world—his world…

    The more you look for the beauty in this world, the more that you will find. Which, if that sounds self-intuitive, is certainly worth a reiteration, and possibly, a fresh new look. Because, the danger is to take this intuitive truth to its illogical conclusion, and thereby decide that nothing truly exists. This is what the ‘non-dualists’ and even some Buddhists do, and in making a conundrum of existence, essentially make it non-workable, in that nothing gets done, simply because there is no longer any reason to do it…

    The subjective nature of perception is obvious and its contribution to our further conceptions of reality well-documented in the ‘observer effect,’ which makes a mockery of measurement, and, in return, our reliance on science. But does that mean that all Science is unreliable? No, of course not. Does that mean that there is no objective truth? Not necessarily. Does that mean that ‘Buddhism is True?’ Haha, silly book title…

    The cognitive bias of our own subjectivity is itself measurable and can usually be factored into any equation that lends itself to a margin for error. And, considering that the effect shows up in physics, psychology, and even sociology, its impact is notable. That is, like gravity, it can not only bring us down, haha, but it can bend and distort the very nature of our existence. But, what does this have to do with Buddhism?

    Buddhism, especially in its earliest days, long before Emptiness and Zen and Hungry Ghosts, was known mostly for its training of the mind, for the simple purpose of taking a sad situation and making it better, simply by readjusting the usual reactions. And, while this can subject Buddhism to charges of ‘bypassing’ and passivity, it can also have good results to great effect. Regardless, the important point is to balance this with empirical objective information for best results. The world tends to look best at sunrise and sunset, as every photographer knows, wink wink, something about the nature of light and our need for it. Happy New Year!

     
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    hardie karges 6:42 am on April 3, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , Science   

    Buddhism of the Present Moment: Averaging Past and Future, Science and Superstition… 

    The one who can control himself, can control the world—his world…

    Sometimes the only way to remove hatred and ignorance from our lives is to remove the haters and ignorant people from our lives. And fortunately, that’s still possible, as our increasingly crowded world still has some empty places yet to be traversed and social ambitions yet to be fulfilled. But what happens when there is no place to hide, when social mobility comes to a standstill? Where do we go then to find peace and quiet, to find love, knowledge, and acceptance, where before there was only ignorance and hate?

    The obvious place to go is inside of course, deep inside, within our own minds and consciousness, both terms that I use with some trepidation, science-lover that I am, when what I really mean is memory. Because other than the constant (live) stream of sense perceptions that occur in real time, then all we really have is memory, which is anathema to the present-moment Buddhist or Eckhart Tolle disciple, but which is nonetheless a major part of our conscious waking moments.

    Besides those two there are only dreams, which occur in present time but in an undefined space, and conscious thinking, which some ‘non-dualists’ and latter-day Buddhists (‘thoughts without thinkers’) insist is not really real, but which nevertheless occupy reams and tomes of studied critiques and analyzed comparisons for the only purpose of knowledge itself, any benefits to be derived in subsequent interactions with the same world of biology, chemistry, and physics, or language, history, and psychology, from which it ultimately came in the process of experiment.

    And none of that can reasonably be denied, though it could certainly be claimed that we have spiritual lives that are bigger and better than all that. And I would tend to agree. So, the challenge is to make sense of it all, science and meditation, or action and renunciation, so that we can combine lives of action with our spiritual lives, which should also include science, and not just deep introspection, which was all that Buddha—and Plato—had. The answer is implicit, of course, in the Middle Path.

    Because that concept of the Middle Path works not only between Buddha’s luxury and lack, or the Mahayanist dichotomy of existence and non-existence, but still works for a modern secular dichotomy between introspection and science. And that is the supreme beauty of Buddhism, of course, that it is an ongoing dialectic, in which wrong choices are corrected. The Buddha himself wasn’t perfect, and even accepted a lesser status for women, which often figures prominently in misguided Buddhist theses for past lives and reincarnation, hint hint. But we can correct the mistakes of the past with the revelations of the present. And so we must.

     
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    hardie karges 7:45 am on February 13, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Science,   

    Buddhism: A Noble Truth or Two (and a few lesser ones)… 

    The one who can control himself, can control the world—his world…

    Buddha in his Four Noble Truths didn’t say that craving is THE (one and only) cause of dukkha, i.e. suffering. Pali and Sanskrit have no definite articles. But it is certainly one of them, and by the fact that the Buddha mentioned no others right then and there, it certainly seems logical to assume that it is perhaps the greatest of them. He did mention others elsewhere, though, and impermanence comes quickly to mind as one of those that he specifically wrote about in that context.

    Perhaps impermanence was Buddha’s first encounter with dukkha? I know that it was mine, at the ripe old age of eight years old, in Jackson, MS, USA, as my parents prepared to migrate from the Big City out to the nearby countryside, and all that I knew and loved would change overnight, perhaps more than can be easily imagined here and now almost sixty years later. Because not only was that my first encounter with suffering of the existential sort, but it was also my first encounter with culture shock. I cried for days, and not only survived but thrived.

    I even started to like that culture shock around the time I visited my twelfth or thirteenth country a few years later. Similarly, the Buddha did not say anything to the effect that ‘all life is suffering.’ But as he listed the various manifestations of suffering, e.g., birth, old age, disease, and death, then that might certainly be implied. That’s what he was obsessed with, most likely, because that’s what he was shielded from for most of his life—until he went outside. And so we must all go outside to find what is inside each of us.

    And what we find inside is another world, a different world, almost another dimension, as different as Virtual Reality from our modern materialistic world of Science. And it is a world of feeling and perception, the only world that a sentient being can truly know. Everything else is only a likely story, and a likeable story at that. You shouldn’t have to choose between Buddhism and Science. You don’t. And sometimes short-term suffering brings the greatest long-term benefits. Don’t panic. Be patient. Be kind and adapt to changing circumstances. Impermanence shouldn’t be a cause of suffering.

     

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