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    hardie karges 4:56 pm on February 2, 2025 Permalink | Reply
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    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 3:35 am on January 19, 2025 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhist Meditation for Beginners: Silence, Blessed Silence… 

    When you can sit still for one hour without saying a word or moving a muscle, then you are a meditator. And I don’t really even care what ‘kind’ of meditation you do, I only grudgingly allowing that there are different kinds, I from the old ‘anapanasati’ school, long before Theravada was rechristened ‘Vipassana’ and long before Vajrayana became ‘crazy wisdom’ while the Buddha rolled over in his ashes and checked his phone to see what year it is. “Yep,” he supposedly said, “pretty much right on schedule.” Haha.

    I only draw a line between silent meditation, true meditation, and ‘guided meditation,’ which I consider to be something else entirely. And I don’t mean to imply that that’s bad, because it’s not. It’s just more like a ‘dharma talk’ than mediation IMHO. So, there’s certainly nothing wrong with that, since the definition of such is so broad and inclusive that it can be almost anything, so long as it revolves around the Buddha and Buddhism. But meditation is something different, and if you’re not doing it silently, then you’re missing out on something good—and important. And that’s silence.

    Because silence, I think, is the shunya, zero, that qualifies for the important category of ‘emptiness’ so revered in later Buddhism, and I like it. It’s possible that Buddhist monks even invented the numerical zero, but this is not the place for that discussion. But, if ‘American Buddhism is Buddha-flavored Christianity,’ as someone once said (me), then this is the litmus test.

    Because psychological therapy is famously ‘talk therapy’ and this is something so different that those practitioners can, and do, make a case of ‘spiritual bypassing’ while they claim that ‘thoughts have no thinkers’, thus having some cake while eating it, too. Cool, since it’s an open doctrine, subject to interpretation. But don’t miss the forest for the trees. Good thoughts are essential to good and proper Buddhism, but silent meditation is, also. It’s not a case of one or the other. Talking can sometimes soothe the overwrought mind, but sometimes silence can do it better. And that largely defines Buddhism.

     
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    hardie karges 7:37 am on December 15, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Buddhist precepts, , , , , , , , spirituality,   

    Buddhism in the Balance: Giving is primary… 

    We own nothing but the experiences of a few hours days weeks months and years upon this planet. We can spend them in mindless consumption or quiet contemplation. The choice is yours. Because, bottom line: you don’t have to do anything, but keep your body alive. But, beyond maintaining the body in an active state, there is no specific call to action. In fact, it’s much more important what you don’t do than what you actually get around to doing in your precious time in this life on this earth.

    Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t kill, don’t steal; these are the commandments of Christianity and the precepts of Buddhism, as well, which seems obvious, until you imagine what must have come before. It wasn’t always pretty. I think that is what is obvious. Neither set of rules and regs says anything about doing this or doing that, though, until you get into the higher levels of commitment, and for Buddhism, that’s right thoughts, right words, right actions, etc., simple. That’s not rocket science. And the main blessed action is to give.

    Because giving serves two purposes, both of equal value. On the one hand, you are helping others. On the other hand, you are reminding yourself that your needs are few and possessions are often unnecessary. In fact, we often become possessed by our very possessions, which seems counter-intuitive, but accurate. Therefore, possessions are really no better than mindless consumption, short-term satisfaction or longer-term, but the result is often the same: we become addicted to the rush, whether the rush of sensation or the rush of satisfaction, for something which often offers no deep level of satisfaction at all. Quiet contemplation is often better.

     
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    hardie karges 4:32 am on December 8, 2024 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism Basics: Metta and Karuna, Kindness and Compassion… 

    Kindness and compassion, metta and karuna, are not the path of weakness. They are the path of true strength, which may or may not coincide with the popular images of ‘big men’ and ‘strong men’ flexing muscles and making waves, but that is not the paradigm of the Buddhist monk in partial renunciation from the world. That is the paradigm of the world that the Buddhist must renounce, at least partially, the world of hatred, fear, and anger, often masquerading as bravado, strength, and victory.

    Ironically, many Buddhists may defer to such popular images of strength and victory while forgoing it themselves. Because they know that such phenomena are the manifestations of the world, samsara, over which they have little of no control. We can only control ourselves. But, if we can stay on the good side of those circumstantial strong men that the world spits out like so many celebrities for sale, then so much the better. That’s ‘skillful means.’ It doesn’t imply superior dharma or any kind of enlightenment on the part of the big man, just survival instincts on the part of the average bloke.

    But Buddhism is a path of kindness and compassion. That much is certain. The only question is how best to manifest that in our own private lives. As always, the Middle Path seems to offer the best clue. Don’t be too passive or too aggressive. There is a sweet spot right there in the middle somewhere, defined by an almost equal distance from the extremes that we must avoid. And if it seems like this is a path for losers and nondescript middlemen, then nothing could be farther from the truth. Living right is its own reward.

     
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    hardie karges 4:40 am on December 1, 2024 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism 202: Thoughts and Thinkers 

    Buddhism in Bhutan

    Samma sankappa, one of the Buddhist Four Noble Truths, is Right Thought = Good Thought, not No Thought. For no thought, maybe samma samadhi is better, Right (Good) Meditation. It’s very popular for New Age-y Buddhists to talk about ‘thoughts without thinkers and/or ‘thoughts that think themselves’, as if they were both particle and wave out there floating around looking for a pickup gig, but that implies that thoughts are bad, and the Buddha never said anything like that.

    I think that the confusion comes with the role of language in thought, and its somewhat checkered past. Because no one would dare say anything bad about sati, i.e. consciousness, mindfulness, or awareness. That’s sacrosanct in Buddhism. And it’s a form of thought, also, but without language. Dogs do it; cats do it. All animals do, to a greater or lesser degree. But: like Boolean logic, we invented language, and now that we have it, it’s hard to go back, at least not full time. And there’s no real reason to.

    Because thought can be a good thing, and the linguistic variety is likely the most powerful type, BUT: it can also be destructive, both to society and to the personality, aka ‘self’. On the metaphysical plane, not only is it not ‘non-dual’, with its definitive subjects and objects, but it’s also argumentative and unsettling, arguably war’s greatest weapon. And while I don’t advocate a return to the ‘non-dual’ lives of bonobos and chimps, I do strongly advocate daily meditation. Because, no matter how powerful linguistic thought can be, its non-linguistic cousin meditation can be much more peaceful. That’s samadhi.

    But this can be a contentious subject for debate, because, on the one hand, thoughts DO just pop up sometimes unannounced and often unwanted. And we DON’T always have total recall, much less immediate recall. But that doesn’t mean that we are passive listeners and watchers of thoughts as they pass in and out of our brains or minds, for lack of better words to portray a very abstract subject. Remember the old saying: ‘Practice makes perfect’? Well, neuroscientists have one, also: ‘Neurons that fire together, wire together.’ That means that we establish neural pathways that can be considered our own, in that they are distinct from that of others. So, yes, to a certain extent, thoughts have thinkers, and thinkers have thoughts. We’re the living proof.

     
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    hardie karges 4:40 am on November 24, 2024 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism 399: Homelessness and the Joy of Giving… 

    Give more than you take. That will be more than enough, and the world will be a better place. That is the essence of almost all religions, Buddhism included, regardless of whether you consider Buddhism first and foremost a philosophy, as I tend to think. But philosophies don’t usually include a call to action, whereas religions usually do. Buddhism doesn’t do that, though, not specifically, but it is implicit in the practice, the original practice. That’s why you’ll see orange or yellow-robed shaved-head monks walking through the markets at daybreak in almost every Theravada country in SE Asia, requesting alms for subsistence, usually food. This giving is usually known as dana.

    This harkens back to an even earlier practice in India wherein long-haired rishis and sannyasins wearing similar saffron clothing but usually without a group of like-minds, would make similar rounds, a practice which continues to this day. The difference is not only that the former are Buddhist and the latter Hindu, but the former have rules and regular routes, and are often registered for this activity, whereas the latter are more likely free and on their own, often in the last phases of life according to the four Hindu ashramas of student, householder, forest dweller, and renunciant—nice.

    But the important thing is the giving. So, instead of seeing a renunciant as a societal parasite reduced to begging, we should see them as symbols of purity, offering laypersons the opportunity to experience the same bliss of renunciation that they not only symbolize but incarnate. It’s only ironic that they themselves often consider themselves—and call themselves—homeless, no pun intended. Because that is the little joke they play on all of us, that the poorest people of the West are linguistically identified with the holiest of the East. I only wish that Western practitioners would follow the same precepts. The food is usually pretty good, at least in Thailand.

     
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    hardie karges 4:36 am on October 27, 2024 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism is the Middle Path between Jainism and Brahmanism… 

    Brahmanism is what we now call ‘Hinduism’, but that term didn’t really exist way back when, only recently applied by the Brits to the plethora of sects and devotions which now constitute Hinduism. But it was in the midst of the Upanishad era at the time of the Buddha, which would redefine the previously Indra-based fire rituals which had reigned during the Vedic times. And with the advent of the new Upanishadic orientation, the resulting resemblance to Buddhism was profound—but still distinct.

    And so was Jainism distinct from both of them, at the same time that it shares much with them. But remember, that the ‘Hinduism’ that the Jain reacted to in the 6th century BCE is not the same as modern Hinduism, either, and that is partly because of this same three-way dialogue. Jainism was largely a reaction against the Brahmanists’ fire sacrifices, they being extreme nonviolent vegetarians. But many modern Hindus are also vegetarians, with Buddhists characteristically somewhere ‘in between.’

    That’s the Middle Path, specifically between the extreme asceticism of the Jains and the lavish rituals of the ‘Hindus’, but also between the many gods of Hinduism and the total lack of them in Jainism. Technically Buddhists don’t really have them, either, but, you know… Later versions of Buddhism were not so strict about that, such as the Tibetan version of Vajrayana, which came direct from India sometime after the 5th century and attested by Padmasambhava in the 8th century.

    But both Jains and Hindus were crazy about souls, Jains finding them everywhere and Hindus finding them cosmic, Atman, preferably in union with the cosmic dharma principle Brahman. But Buddhism found little of value in any of that, and so chose non-self anatta. So, they all evolved into different sects with different orientations, and we generally all get along nicely. The main difference is that Hinduism tilted toward a nationalism which international Buddhism could never assimilate. And Jains, ‘winners’ in Sanskrit, were ultimately the losers.

     
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    hardie karges 5:00 am on October 20, 2024 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism at the Checkout Lane: the Best Rebirth is Spiritual 

    Spiritual rebirth begins within. It should never end. Samsara is something different. Samsara literally means ‘the world,’ always did, though perhaps etymologically from a distant past word connoting ‘wandering,’ but who knows? Etymology is always a best guess. As far as we know, at the time of the Buddha the word meant ‘the world,’ as it does to this day in modern Nepali, the modern language closest to its Sanskrit roots. Hindi probably got tired of the debate, so adopted the Arabic word dunia for most ordinary usage.

    But Buddhists turned the world cyclical, and so that circularity came to represent samsara more than the other aspects of the world itself. And that circularity specifically refers to the concept of rebirth, heavily borrowed from the Hindu concept of reincarnation, but without the literal transfer of the physical body from one generation to the subsequent one. In fact, Buddhism goes to great lengths to explain away the conundrum of <“What is reborn?”> at the same time that they go to equally great lengths to explain exactly what is the nature of this self that we’re denying. It’s a mess.

    Bottom line: the Christians—the evangelical Christians, of all sects—may have beat us to the punch on this issue. Because their insistence on being born again in the spirit is not only in the Bible, in multiple quotations, you may hear it loud and long at any tent revival in the lower US south from participants both black and white, in their exaltation at surviving a ‘Long Dark Night of the Soul’ as originally described by the 16th century Spaniard St. John of the Cross (not Eckhart Tolle).

    There is scarce reference to rebirth in any Buddhist text, though the Brahmanist Hindus and especially Jains would likely have many if only they had bothered to write it down. But that’s another story. The important thing is that spiritual rebirth is a very beautiful thing and idea, whereas physical reincarnation or even sorta kinda almost maybe rebirth of consciousness in a random body is a leap of logic, not to mention dubious science. And to those who say you can’t just pick and choose this and that, from assorted religions, I respectfully respond, “Why not?” They all did. Embrace it.

     
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    hardie karges 3:40 am on October 13, 2024 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism 101: Pain is Our Birthright… 

    Pain is our connection to the realm of sentient being. We are all equal in this regard. But we have a path, thankfully. This refers to the First Noble Truth, of course, something like ‘There is suffering.’ Period. Full stop. That’s the foundational thesis of Buddhism, which all further dissertations struggle to assimilate, what with its apparent pessimism, which only gets worse (before it gets better). ‘Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, dissociation from the loved is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering.’ Yeow. Yes, life’s a real sh*t-show at times. What to do?

    Oh, sure, the PhD’s try to explain it all away by saying that ‘suffering’ can mean ‘dissatisfaction’, ‘stress’, or maybe even ‘bummer’, but the result is the same: it’s not a good look, not when everybody else is bragging about their seven flavors of bliss and their multiple stairways to heaven. But that’s what the Buddha said, and that’s what he meant. But I think that he also meant that’s our connection to the world and each other. Otherwise, how would we even really know that we’re really alive? Pleasure is fleeting.

    But pain is real. And a large part of it is caused by the simple fact of our oh-so-human cravings. Bingo. There’s a path for that, and it will keep us humble in its universality. Because isn’t the underlying cause of all craving, desire, lust, and greed, our selfish assertion that we are something special and deserving of whatever we can get? Haha. Gotcha. Because we are but a bundle of causes and conditions that predictably lead to the defilements which define us: hatred, greed, anger, and those oh-so-pesky cravings. The path outta there is as simple as the decade-old Franz Ferdinand song which seconded that emotion: “Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action.” Simple, no? It works. Try it.

     
    • jmoran66's avatar

      jmoran66 4:25 am on October 13, 2024 Permalink | Reply

      I think you, as they say, nailed it here. There’s nothing to add.

    • hardie karges's avatar

      hardie karges 4:59 pm on October 13, 2024 Permalink | Reply

      Thank you for your comments.

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    hardie karges 4:25 am on October 6, 2024 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism in the Bardo Realms: You Are Never Alone 

    Buddhism in Bhutan

    The existential conundrum of our lives is that we are never alone, nor can we be, nor would we likely ever want to be, even if we could. Think of it this way: Suppose you want to enjoy yourself by yourself or just take a little swim. So, you walk down to the beach, find a nice little spot, and proceed to disrobe and jump right in. There’s only one problem: when you come back, you don’t know if your stuff will still be there or not—bummer. This is what many a happy tourist deals with every day.

    Oh, sure, there are ways to mitigate the circumstances. You can go with a friend, but that friend really can’t jump right in, now, either, can they? No, they can’t, because then any potential plunderer has just doubled his payoff. Even if you have a designated watcher for a larger group, that designee still doesn’t get to have his fun (and you still must trust him not to run). So, maybe hire a professional designee? Ditto. Or you could lock it in a box, if it’s a public space with such amenities, but that would probably preclude a dip in the buff, boo hoo. And even then, would you just wrap the key around your little finger?

    Or, you could just leave the key in your pocketed swim suit, but then, why not just leave your stuff in your room, and saunter to the beach semi-nude and flip-flop friendly, because, after all, nobody will steal a pair of flip-flops, or a towel, now, will they? Or would you even care if they did? And your room is safe, right? But what about the maid? Or you could just drive, and lock everything in the trunk, if you’re American, or the boot, if you’re a Brit, but by this time you’re making quite a big show of it, so maybe just call the whole thing off?

    This is the existential conundrum: that our fates are so intertwined, that it doesn’t leave a lot of time, or space, for accidents or circumstance. So, what is the solution? In a more peaceful time, in a more peaceful world, I have it on good authority that people left their houses unlocked with no ill repercussions, and that is the way that it should be. But that was in a world less crowded than today. And many people take it as their supreme inalienable right to reproduce without limit. So, now we live in a world of eight billion with no end in sight. And there’s no place to hide. So, we must learn to live in peace. And Buddhism is nothing, if not a religion of peace.

     

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