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  • hardie karges 3:25 am on January 14, 2024 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism 102: the Cessation of Craving  

    If you indulge cravings, then there’s no end to them, just mindless consumption. It’s better to cut them off at the source, your mind. This lies at the heart of Buddhism and is enshrined in the Second of Four Noble Truths as the primary cause of suffering. There are other causes, too, and so other forms of suffering, but this is the main one, and the one for which Buddhism is famous. After all, what is more insufferable than craving and its deleterious effects? 

    Well, that is a debatable point, but most importantly, craving is the one cause of suffering that we are most able to do something about, in order to effect a positive change in that status. Old age and many forms of sickness leave us at their not-so-tender mercies to live or die, but craving is just a clownish monster, mocking our every move, and our every intent to free ourselves from its hideous grip, adding insult to injury, when what we really need is encouragement to succeed.  

    Because craving is akin to addiction, and this is one of the most hideous of worldly phenomena that we must deal with in the course of our short lives, the inability to free ourselves from the grips of habits and substances which are harmful to us, even when we are fully mindful of that fact. But the craving is mindless, not mindful. And so that is where we must nip it in the bud, at the point where the mind has made an unconscious allowance that facilitates this perversion of intent. 

    It is of no importance that the mind may have no more intrinsic importance than the craving, either, or ourselves, for that matter. What is important is that we cease the defilement at the source, rather than make excuses for our failings. And the source is will or lack thereof. If you are willing to allow cravings to control you, then they will do so, without fail. Only if you are willing to exert some discipline can you truly defeat the monsters that inhabit the subconscious realm of craving. Only then are you truly a disciple of the Buddha.  

     

  • hardie karges 4:20 am on December 30, 2023 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism in the Balance, Aware and Mindful…  

    You don’t have to fight for your religion, like Christians do. You don’t have to surrender to your religion, like Muslims do. You can just be, right in the center, with eyes open or closed, aware and mindful, with no particular judgements to make either way, good or bad, offensive or non-offensive. This is the way Buddhism works, simple yet effective, with no ribbons or bows, and no deep bows, except the ones you make to the senior monk when in his presence.  

    Christianity is a religion of passion: weeping, wailing and all that gospel. Islam is a religion of submission. Buddhism is a way of life dispassionate, quiet, serene, full of passion only in the original sense of passion as suffering, the stuff of life in this material world, long before someone decided that it could be fun, as long as someone else was suffering more or worse than you. Because suffering exists, whether we are in the throes of it or not, and the only way out is to give it no quarter.  

    So, the way to deal with suffering is to remove its source of sustenance, the craving and lust which it consumes for breakfast and lunch, hunger and thirst of the craven kind, crude and rude, cowardly and unforgiving in its lack of moral distinction. But this kind of turpitude depends on negligence for its survival, inattention to all detail and the passive acceptance of all things most easily proffered. Buddhism has no such luxury. Buddhism demands awareness, and mindfulness, and wakefulness to the sleepy dream that is all too often the standard for life. It’s never too late to meditate… 

     

  • 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… 

     

  • hardie karges 5:53 am on July 1, 2023 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhist Suffering and the Need for Change  

    Language is tricky. Buddha implied that suffering should be expected, and accepted, while in the process of cessation, but that doesn’t mean to embrace it. Good Buddhists don’t embrace anything, and that’s good, because you just might be wrong, and, anyway, to embrace something is to crave it, which is the predominant cause of that same suffering that we are most trying to avoid. There are other causes of suffering, also, according to the Buddha, but the implications are not always clear. Because one of the causes is change itself, which by most modern reckoning can be a positive way of easing suffering, and certainly not a cause of it. 

    So, I’d have to deviate from the Buddha’s teaching there, if only for a minor correction, and if only for a minute. But it does illustrate a major difference between early Theravada Buddhism and later Mahayana (Big Rig, haha) Buddhism. That Large Vehicle of Buddhism was, and is, intended to open Buddhism up for the benefit of the diverse masses, and not just a few select disciples who spend much of their days—and their lives—immersed in chanting the sutras and meditating upon self processes to refute self realities. Got that? It’s complicated. 

    But the upshot is that Early Buddhism is oriented toward self-renunciation, by way of self-enlightenment, and mental training, while Mahayana Buddhism is all about the Bodhisattva vow to forego self-enlightenment until we can all be enlightened, a noble goal indeed. And the two are not mutually exclusive. I see it as a process of: First I save myself, then I save the world. That’s a lofty goal, to be sure, but not entirely impossible, and probably preferable to the Indian stages of life in which I satisfy my life goals, and then I renounce. But when do we save the world? 

    There’s the rub, tough friction in a world of science fiction. Nobody can be bothered with saving the world, at least not until they’ve saved their own precious race. So, the world teeters on the brink of extinction, while everyone counts his money and counts his offspring and that of his brothers. The Universe doesn’t care. That’s just a myth and a cheap talking point. It may be that ignorance is indeed what this world needs more than anything else, if all we can do is make war with the knowledge we’ve gained. The clock is ticking. Every vote counts. 

     

  • hardie karges 4:09 am on June 24, 2023 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism, Love, and the Middle Path to Survival  

    Europeans and Americans live to fall in love, and many other countries and languages aren’t much better. Live to fall, wow! In the Thai language the equivalent expression would be to get ‘lost in love,’ not much different. But Buddhist metta is better than that, all the best parts of love and none of the bad, friendship mostly. You can be kind and still be balanced. But this is a hard lesson to teach, because we’re hooked on passion like junkies on the hard stuff, and there’s not too much that we can do about it, even if we wanted to. Or can we? Of course, we can. And it’s no accident that the original meaning of the word ‘passion’ is ‘suffering,’ just like that for which Buddhism is so famous. 

    It’s just that at some point we started to like all that excess emotion, just like we began to ‘love our lives,’ while Eastern ascetics continued to renounce the pleasures of flesh and fish, just as they continue to do to this very day. I suppose that the Western attitude is that if we try hard enough, we just might create that eternal life that Jesus promised us all along. Does Virtual Reality count? It might have to, if we’re serious about that as our goal…or, maybe we could just train our minds and tame our desires to a more acceptable level that allows for plenty of free time and a healthy dose of creativity, also. 

    Bingo, the Middle Path is always the solution, not passivity nor stress tests, just good honest old-fashioned hard work, complete with rationality, such that extremes of thought and opinion are rejected in favor of more conciliatory positions. In other words, you might gain less than the wildest stock option, but in return, you are also likely to lose less if your risks fall short of the mark. But that’s more than a conservative business portfolio decision. That’s a principle of life: make steady gains going forward, with always the option to change direction with any new information that accompanies the passage of time. That’s the Buddhist Middle Path. We’re playing for keeps here. 

     

  • hardie karges 9:17 am on April 15, 2023 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhist Mindfulness: No Shortcuts to Salvation  

    Mindfulness, sati, requires some awareness of the unpleasant details, also, unfortunately or fortunately, for this is the nature of existence, the existence of suffering and the ways to ameliorate it, on a path to cessation, if not the twenty-five-dollar cure that we’ve grown so accustomed to expect, in some binary fashion, now you see it and now you don’t, as if there were indeed magic bullets that can hit every target, with never a miss—at least in theory. 

    But, until someone can bio-engineer us with eternal life or create us a Virtual Reality so perfect that we can’t tell the difference, then the (not-so?) harsh reality is that each and every one of us will die, later if not sooner, peaceably if not in agony. And this is the truth of Buddhism, that suffering is ubiquitous, and implacable, if not the all-embracing disastrophe that it so recently was. But that was likely due to the dubious emboldenment of patriarchy, in distinct contrast to the previous matriarchal survivalists that sustained us for so many millennia. 

    But the point is that Buddhism is not pessimistic, but realistic, and the obvious corollary would be that the silly-eyed optimism of capitalistic Christianity is itself the cause of many of our problems, especially global warming, for which it is singularly unprepared to offer a credible solution, given the demands of economic growth. But Buddhism can offer that solution: conscious mindful existence that accentuates self-sufficiency, not the excesses of abundance and infinity that capitalism and Christianity demand.  

    In other words: less can indeed be more, in quality if not quantity, and that is the important consideration, now, isn’t it? Yes, I think that it is. And that is also the cautionary tale with so-called ‘mindfulness.’ Be careful which way you turn your gaze of awareness, because you will have to deal with the circumstances in your field of vision. And that is good. Buddhism in its origins never pretended to transcendence. This is the real world we find ourselves in, and that is the challenge… 

     

  • hardie karges 11:43 am on March 18, 2023 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism 499: Suffering doesn’t have to be so sad…  

    Suffering does not mean sadness, maybe in Nepali language, but not in Buddhism. This is one of the lessons, and this is one of the discussions, about what the word ‘dukkha’ really means, and what that means for us. Many pandits try to redefine it variously as ‘stress,’ ‘disappointment,’ ‘dissatisfaction,’ ‘spot of bother,’ haha, or various and sundry other things, but in most modern SE Asian languages the word indeed is usually best translated as ‘suffering,’ however minor or apparently insignificant, which sometimes earns Buddhism the rap as pessimistic.  

    What IS significant is that you will one day die, or simply expire, from this life in this world, and whether anything goes on after that is a matter of sober conjecture. But that IS a limit to your free will and your open skies and your desire for the Christian myth of abundance. For if there is indeed an infinity and/or an eternity, then it is surely empty, and that can indeed be beautiful, just as can the various limits placed upon it. For what is a work of art if not a limit, or definition, of reality, and what is a song? They are nothing if not sublime limits placed upon an undefined eternity. 

    Thus, suffering need not be so cruel. For me it is little more than life in passive voice as much or more than active, if those grammatical terms still have meaning for you. They do for English language literary agents, I assure you, and passive voice is largely prohibited, while in Asian academic circles, it is almost required. Go figure. But I’m not advocating passivity, and that is what kept me from Buddhism for many years, the passivity that I perceived in Thailand. As always, the truth lies in the Middle Path, and the subtle balance between aggression and renunciation. There is always a way forward without resorting to extremes… 

     

  • hardie karges 9:41 am on January 22, 2023 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism in the Bardo: Don’t Forget to Laugh… 

    Sometimes the best antidote to fear is humor, even laughter, the more the better. The proof is in the performance. And it’s contagious. That’s about as Zen-like koanic or as Vajrayana-like superstitious as I can get, not that I feel any need to give equal time to those later schools of Buddhism, but because it works, and whether the Buddha ever said something similar or not, I’m not certain, but I’m sure that he’d agree.

    Because the Buddha was a rational man, and that was a radical thing at the time, though many would prefer the latent ‘non-dualism’ inherent in Buddhism, even though that was hardly the Buddha’s central message. The central message was to reduce suffering, not by going on a shopping spree, but by removing the causes of suffering: grasping and craving, mostly. He also had impermanence on that list, as if all change is bad, but I’d probably prefer a more modern approach to that. Some change is good.

    But I see a subtle message about fear in the Buddha’s teachings, and I think that it’s important to make the implicit more explicit. Because fear is one of the horrors of modern life, since we have been so distant from it for a generation or two, and because it looms so largely on the horizon. Because we’ve become very attached, even addicted, to our lives, which more than a few Buddhist monks have pointed out, and to which I’ve often taken some offense to, but which may just be correct, after all.

    Because, even if the goal is to reduce suffering, the next question is always: at what cost? We certainly don’t expect a woman to submit to a rapist, just to avoid a bruise or two. Most suffering is mental, after all, and submission to fear is certainly not always the answer to it. Fortunately, there is usually a sweet spot between two equally unacceptable alternatives, and that is the goal of Buddhism, to find that middle path. It’s a process, after all, not dogma. Don’t forget to smile. Don’t forget to laugh. Sometimes the best antidote is an anecdote…

     

  • hardie karges 7:13 am on April 24, 2022 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism: Enlightenment on the Installment Plan 

    Someone who is truly enlightened would never make that claim for himself. But that is the situation in which we find ourselves, spreading the gospel of gentleness and kindness in a world that seems to reward only aggression and ego. So ‘spiritual bad-asses’ glory in their revelations and revel in their false righteousness, while the truly righteous among us go about their tasks mostly in silence, taking pleasure in their modest accomplishments and finding satisfaction in their commitment.

    And those tasks consist largely in service to mankind, in one way or another, feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, materially if not spiritually, at least for a moment, if not for a lifetime. Because truly there is no real difference between the two, such that it is hard to be truly enlightened if you’re truly hungry and it’s hard to be enlightened if you’re much too full. That sweet spot of enlightenment lies somewhere in between, as the Buddha himself brilliantly realized.

    And these realizations are at the heart of enlightenment, it not much more than that, really, in greater or lesser degree, so nothing necessarily metaphysical nor transcendent, not really, just the realization that we are here at a moment in history where consciousness is king, and the mechanics of enlightenment are insignificant. The only important thing is the realization: that we are all connected, however distant; that suffering is ever-present, but can be avoided and mitigated; that change is something to be welcomed, not feared; and that right living is always the best revenge, against the forces that would consume you. There are no enemies, not really…

     

  • hardie karges 6:41 am on March 13, 2022 Permalink | Reply
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    Hawking’s Paradox and Buddhism: Emptiness Ain’t so Empty… 

    Continued from July 4, 2021…

    Buddhism is not a religion of passion. So, there’s no reason to get excited. Unless you’re talking about ‘passion’ in the classic Biblical sense of ‘suffering,’ in which case Buddhism certainly recognizes that sort of passion. But that’s not what Westerners, usually Christian born-and-bred, usually mean. And so, as language mutates over time, so does culture. Christianity’s foundation as a religion built on suffering gradually becomes a religion based on “living life to the fullest,” which is all well and good, if you are prepared to accept the consequences. But Buddhism is all about living life to the Emptiest, and that doesn’t mean Nothingness. It means no craving or grasping.

    On the contrary Emptiness is the only glimpse of Infinity and Eternity that we can have in this life, in this world. Because a world of stuff is by definition limited, to this and that and the other, things countable and categorizable. Emptiness, on the other hand, has no limits. There’s only one problem, if you’re into stuff: it’s empty. But can it be perceived? Yes, I think it can. But it can’t be consumed, not in the way that we consume sights and sounds and love on the rebound. That is the world of stuff. But that world is secondary. Without the Emptiness that contains it, that world is not even possible. Emptiness is a vessel, and thus more important and primal than the stuff that it contains—including your illusory self…

     

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