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  • hardie karges 12:06 pm on November 13, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , consumption, , , , , , , SPECIES   

    Buddhism and Survival of the Species 

    Buddhism is more than just a religion or philosophy. It is a method for planetary survival, and that’s why we’re here right now. Because I care about planetary survival, and I hope that you do, too. And by ‘planet,’ I specifically mean the human race, since I have no doubt that the rock itself can continue to provide for itself, regardless of whether humans had ever shown up to sully the mix. But we are like DNA, and DNA is like language, and so we must cross our T’s and dot our I’s and make sense of random mutations.

    As soon as our survival was assured, we humans set about killing each other. And the coincidence of this with the invention of language may have not been so coincidental at all. Thus, once adopted, language has somehow become intrinsic to our existence, and so it is necessary to make our peace with it. Buddhism is famous for meditation, of course, and so that is one way of dealing with language, by losing it—powerful. Because for all the rap about insight, mindfulness, and ‘calm abiding,’ the one thing common to all meditation is silence. Guided meditation is something else.

    Christianity was fine when the human race was still young, and the need to breed was still arguably extant. But with eight billion people (and counting), the passion of Christ has long since been replaced by the passion of mice, breeding like rabbits and eating like wolves. This is not what the world needs right now. We’re a successful species, unless we continue to kill ourselves. I don’t think a species has ever gone extinct by mass suicide. But we could become the first, regardless of stated intents. Buddhism is one way to resolve this issue favorably, by choosing inner peace over mass consumption…

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  • hardie karges 10:06 am on February 9, 2020 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , over-population, SPECIES   

    How Buddhism Can Save the World… 

    I think the human species is worth saving; so call me old-fashioned. But that’s the deal in this day and age, whether your predilection is politics or religion, or New Age philosophy. Because the clock is ticking, and everyone knows it, even if they prefer to keep it hidden, out of consideration for their wide-screen TV, or their breakfast nook, or their three-car garage, complete with convertible and pickup truck and maybe a Harley or two for good measure on weekends. But the elephant in this room is not rebirth, but birth itself, and an ever-crowded planet, likely ten billion within my lifetime, depending more on my life than the planet’s, because the growth bug is in the predetermined fix, ever since China relaxed its prohibitions, and now Sichuan streets look almost like the Catholic Philippines, with every eligible matron followed by a gaggle of little goslings, each one precious in and of itself, but more like a murder of crows when multiplied exponentially across the breadth of the vast Chinese underbelly, bulging wide over the South Chinese Sea, and ready to give birth somewhere in the lower archipelago. But this is the paradigm we created for ourselves, more more bigger bigger, torpedoes be damned and rivers be dammed, as if resources were unlimited and hope springs eternal in the human breast, with infinite milk and unlimited succor. And that is a matter of faith, for many Christians, especially, full of the fruits of capitalism and ersatz freedom, i.e. freedom to screw up and much much more, full of religion and science and peace and war, that our big juicy smiles are based on more than economic inequality, first come first served, but on inviolable principles of the invisible hand, dollar in the hand is always worth at least ten in the bush, as long as the day of reckoning never comes and past loans can always be repaid with future ones. But guess what? The day of reckoning will come, when confidence crumbles and somebody smells a rat in the recipe, and that’s when doors start closing in succession, like Agent 86 remembering that he almost forgot something, but the doors are already closing, so it’s too late to go back before the show ends unceremoniously as doors slam in our faces. But that’s Christianity for you, full of big-a$$ smiles and frequent flyer miles, when the reality is that our dimension of existence is defined by profound limits, such that we are doomed to die, no matter how hard we try, and the only challenge is to realize that is cool, and this is school, and we are so much the wiser for our study of it. And this is implicit in Buddhism, if not explicit, and thus a social paradigm as much as a philosophical or psychological one, for me at least, and that is all I know: do the right thing, don’t be a jerk, and don’t place yourself above all others. Outcomes are more important than incomes…

     

    • Robert@69 11:06 pm on February 10, 2020 Permalink | Reply

      Nice rap. Lyrical and rhythmic good pacing and rhyming, it all hung together and made sense and one could almost hear a Darrell Scott guitar in the background and maybe a Van Morrison harmonica. I enjoyed it. Thanks

    • hardie karges 11:34 pm on February 10, 2020 Permalink | Reply

      Thank you!

  • hardie karges 5:41 pm on August 18, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , SPECIES   

    Self-Styled Bodhisattva Vow to Save the Species 

    I won’t bother to look for bliss.
    I’ll content myself in the mitigation of
    suffering and in the effort to help others.
    For that is a path forward, no matter
    how many twists and turns must be navigated,
    no matter how winding the cliched and storied path.
    This is a one-stop shop, for all we know,
    so it is wise and prescient of us to gather
    rosebuds while we may, lest they be unavailable
    tomorrow, for lack of stock in house, or merely
    the wrong season for searching.
    Sci-fi scientists look in the farthest most remote
    atmospheres for life and red herrings, myths
    to live by and fantasies to smoke, magic dragons to puff.
    But that is all for an imaginary tomorrow, cowering
    in fear of a fictionalized past that has sworn
    revenge on the far-fetched future.
    Such are the menu options for consciousness,
    three dimensions three tenses three personal
    pronouns and a pocket full of tissues.
    The choices are ours, to run and hide
    or to stand and fight, with possibly a third
    option still grooming on the side.
    Regardless of the ultimate method and final
    forage for fruit, though, just remember that we
    should all be civil, and polite, and seek our highest
    common denominators, not sink to our lowest…

     

  • hardie karges 6:50 am on August 19, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Cretaceous, , , , motivation, Permian, , Ram Dass, SPECIES, Tony Robbins   

    Religion, Philosophy, and Motivational Mishmash… 

    IMG_1184

    Buddhist shrine in Sri Lanka

    Do you want the truth, or do you want to just feel good? For the most part motivational speakers have largely replaced preachers and rabbis, or priests and mullahs, in advising people on spiritual matters, especially in Western countries. Which is not a bad move, as it gives at least some semblance of metaphysical sustenance to battered souls, or non-souls, if you’re Buddhist…

    …just when they need it most, in times of stress and mayhem, which seems to characterize the modern age, and which gives the lie to lame theories of consumption and consumerism which imply that all we need is—love? No, sex; and alcohol, and cigarettes, the Big Three in any street-corner kiosk in Havana… (More …)

     

  • hardie karges 10:40 am on July 16, 2017 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , animal, , , , reintroduction, SPECIES, ,   

    Buddhism, Taming the Wild Child: Save the animal, not the wild… 

    img_2116“…the animals I’ve trapped/Have all become my pets/And I’m living off of grass/And the drippings from the ceiling/But it’s okay to eat fish/’Cause they don’t have any feelings”–Kurt Cobain, ‘Something in the Way’

    And that’s about right, I’d say. But a tamed animal, a mammal—especially cats and dogs—are nothing BUT feelings, it seems to me, having long ago lost their wildness and their feral instincts, on some cold dark night way back when it was far preferable to cultivate humans as masters, in exchange for security alarm services, rather than toughing it out in the wild with wolves and foxes and other lower uncivilized breeds…

    But we Westerners, Americans especially, are so in love with the wild, and the wilderness, or at least our romantic conception of it, that we go to great and elaborate expense to ‘reintroduce’ those other lower species that we once hunted or otherwise annihilated, i.e. ‘extirpated’ to near or even complete extinction… (More …)

     

  • hardie karges 2:22 pm on June 8, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , SPECIES,   

    MORT A CREDIT 

    We are the only species to contemplate suicide, Celine solutions in quick easy installments. Please pay account balance within thirty days of invoice. We may be the first species to go extinct by suicide. We may be the first species to go extinct because we just didn’t really feel like reproducing. We’re just going through the motions. So far as we know, no other animal has ever committed suicide, though interviews with whales continue. It’s against the laws of nature. We flatter ourselves as the scientific animals, discovering the secrets embedded in nature and inventing ever new ways to get even deeper in bed with her. We flatter ourselves as the rational animals, courting favors and suing for marriage, then back-filling logic retroactively to compensate for our lack of foresight. We flatter ourselves as religious, the divinity animals, the infinity animals, in the process of ascent to our rightful place at God’s right hand. We flatter ourselves. We’re all that and more. We’re the ego animals, competing for glory and the love of the flag. We’re the murdering animals, killing for its own sake, and loving every minute of it. We’re the suicide animals, an experiment gone wrong, a bill overdue. The clock is ticking and the fuse is lit. We don’t need to be concerned about Apocalypse; we need to be concerned about species extinction.

     

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