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    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. 

     
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    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. 

     
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    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… 

     
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    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… 

     
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    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…

     
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    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…

     
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    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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    hardie karges 7:45 am on February 13, 2022 Permalink | Reply
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    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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    hardie karges 10:52 am on November 7, 2021 Permalink | Reply
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    Buddhism and the Cessation of Suffering… 

    Sometimes the symptoms are the disease. Suffering is like that, and Buddhism knows that. Whether nirvana is the cure or not is unimportant to me, since nirvana’s association with death is not conducive to a casual discussion of it, like discussing suicide with someone who’s going through tough times. And the clarification that the Buddha’s ‘parinirvana’ was something different is not especially helpful, not when the modern Sanskrit translation apparently is indeed ‘death.’ What IS important is that all suffering be mitigated and ameliorated, however incrementally, whatever the time frame. To reduce suffering by half, and half again, ad infinitum, is indeed the ‘cessation of suffering’ that I envision when I read the Buddhist texts. A cure implies a magic pill. Buddhism is not like that.

    The modern curse of Buddhism is to re-translate everything, apparently to make it sound more Western, so more optimistic, and less pessimistic. But Buddhism is really neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but realistic. Death happens. Get used to it. What happens after that is fertile ground for speculation, but I’m not especially concerned about it. The afterlife, whatever it is, is probably not painful, whether Heaven or Hell or, more likely, none of the above. But the word dukkha, i.e. ‘suffering,’ is one of the words that gets re-translated the most. So now it’s ‘dissatisfaction,’ ‘inconvenience,’ or even ‘stress,’ notwithstanding the fact that modern stress is something most likely unknowable to ancient India. Maybe the word we want is ‘bummer,’ haha, but now I’m admitting to being a ‘boomer,’ aren’t I?

    Fortunately, Buddhism does not have to dovetail perfectly with modern Western psychology, especially of the popular sort, since that just might be wrong, at least from a Buddhist perspective. Most obvious would be the emphasis on ‘emptiness,’ which for a Western psychologist is the source of much distress. But for a Buddhist it’s sublime deliverance, an affirmation of all that is real and holy, and the source of the world itself, in addition to being a scientifically accurate extension of the anatta ‘non-self’ principle, one of Buddhism’s core beliefs. Buddhism is better than Western pop psychology, which too easily descends into faddish commercialism. This is where the traditional sangha community plays an important role. Because without the monkhood Buddhism is just another New Age fad in America. That’s the problem with secular Buddhism. But there is a Middle Way between all the options and variations, and the synthesis is sublime.

     
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    hardie karges 11:18 am on June 6, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Kama Sutra, , Malcolm Gladwell, , , , , , suffering, Vedantic,   

    Buddhist Sutra on Passion and Dispassion… 

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

    Now I make no secret of the fact that I don’t think that Buddhism is necessarily any better than any other religion, philosophy, or way of life. But it is the right one for the right time. And it is no accident that it took me more than half my life (and counting) to finally make the switch from an eclectic form of ersatz Christianity to an equally eclectic form of Buddhism, however much more authentic, I reckon. After all I never got my MA in Christian Studies, though I guess all my liberal arts courses and BA in philosophy is probably as much as that, if not more.

    But neither Buddhism nor Christianity exists in a vacuum, so what we get is a mix of the original intent in its original environment, full of causes and conditions, situations and circumstances, inspirations and misgivings, as combined with the mandates of the mandarins, the rulings of the rulers, the laws of the legislators and the cravings of the consumer. Caveat emptor. But the salient point is that both are but the metaphysical underpinnings and psychological overtones of something much larger, equally symbolic and patently manifest.

    (More …)
     

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