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  • hardie karges 7:15 am on March 3, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , Ten Commandments   

    Buddhist Karma and the Middle Path to Salvation   

    You want good karma? Help a beggar to eat. That’s good karma. Because karma literally means ‘acts’ or ‘actions’, though it is often used almost synonymously with the English word ‘fate,’ as though it were all about some sort of predestination. But no, that’s a derivative meaning which may or may not always apply. The most important thing is right actions, or samma kammanta, as specified in the Eightfold Path that concludes the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. 

    And that’s the important thing, to perform good acts, the other steps along the path, not unlike the Ten Commandments of Christianity, including right speech, right livelihood, and, of course, the basics: do not kill, do not steal, and for god’s sake don’t mess with your neighbor’s partner! Is nothing sacred? And if the Christians like to phrase that as ‘thou shalt not covet,’ then the Sanskrit is not so much different. They’re related languages and people, after all, and the Buddha puts ‘craving’ up there as the main cause of suffering. 

    But where East and West might truly differ, though, is in the speed and willingness to act. Because if we in the West see our active ‘go go go’ lifestyles as a normal and predictable outcome of our sojourn upon this planet, I can assure you that not everyone sees life and the world that way, least of all the rishis for which India is so famous, not to mention the pandits, gurus, swamis, and acharyas. And so, there’s a hidden message for them here also: Do something! After all, you can’t sit in a cave all your life, can you? Can you? 

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  • hardie karges 10:48 am on January 15, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Brahmin caste, , , , , , , Hittite, , , Mittani, , , Ten Commandments,   

    Buddhism 101: Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Actions 

    Think good thoughts, speak good words, perform good acts. It’s contagious. It’s catching. It can make the difference between life and death. And that’s the bedrock of Buddhism, regardless of what the ‘rebirther’ Buddhists or the meditator Buddhists think, they tending to Vajrayana and Mahayanist persuasions, respectively, whether they know it or not, haha. Because the Buddha didn’t call his initial sermon the Four Noble Truths for nothing, and that’s Number One: Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Actions…

    And if that sounds a lot like a song by Franz Ferdinand, then so be it. And if that sounds a lot like the Ten Commandments, then so be it. It’s simple. It’s basic. It’s universal, as it should be. Now I won’t go into the fact that Four Noble Truths can also be translated Four Aryan Truths, but there may be a clue to its universality there. Hittites of Mideast fame were also Indo-Europeans and may have accomplished much more than merely be a thorn in the side of the Semites. The nearby Mittani culture also had close connections with Sanskrit speakers…

    But that’s neither here nor there, and only serves to agitate modern India’s Brahmin caste. What’s important is not nationalism, but rationalism, the kind that thinks before it speaks and looks before it leaps. That was implicit in the earliest Buddhism, also, with its insistence upon the acknowledgement of causes and conditions for all the phenomena of the world, not superstition or divine intervention. And that’s Dependent Origination in a nutshell, a theory that not only defines us, but combines us. We’re all in this together, literally. Be kind.

     

  • hardie karges 5:40 pm on July 12, 2020 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Cargo Cults, , , , Kant, maharishi, , Ten Commandments   

    Buddhism 101: It’s What’s Inside that Counts… 

    If you’re looking for Gods out there, then good luck, because the source of all godliness is inside. And this pertains heavily to the preeminent issue in the history of religion, whether there is one god or many, and it turns out that the answer may instead be ‘none of the above,’ the Kantian solution to a Cartesian problem, any dualism only apparent, when the real issue is the One or the Many…

    The problem of plurality is obvious, just add a god or two for every new situation, even if you’re really just adding another statue or sculpture along the way, thus another manifestation or appearance of a primordial god, rather than a new god itself, him or herself. Because what is a god really and truly worth, if you can simply create a new one on demand?

    This gets into what I would call the ‘Cargo Cult Conundrum’ in which one might erroneously be led into thinking that a longer runway or a higher control tower might attract the really big cargo 747’s with the really good stuff, straight from some celestial factory drawn directly by the supplications of the sentimental and superstitious. But if God is really just an inner projection, then the outer trappings are just that, so much decoration and nothing more nothing less.

    Monotheism was a huge development in the history of religion, usually credited to the Jews, and the Christians and Muslims who came after them in droves, as if everything that came before was polytheistic, and lesser in development. If this is to assume that focus is better than the scatter-shot, then they may be on to something, but I don’t think that’s the heart of the matter.

    I think the gist is that multiple gods are simply too costly, in terms of time, effort, and money, and there you can find much logic. A superstitious view of religion is simply to assume that the more that is invested, then the greater the reward, when there is no evidence to support that. The only thing certain is that giving can feel good, when it is given with faith in deliverance, regardless of the whys and wherefores.

    So now we can simply skip the intermediate steps, if we all agree that God is but a manifestation of our innermost needs and desires, so the trappings can be laid aside and we can work on training our minds toward truth, beauty, and goodness without all the random superstitions tossed in for good measure.

    And that is what Buddhism does, at its best, it goes straight to the heart of the matter, all gods optional, all articles of faith tentative. Because to be a good Buddhist, you really don’t have to do anything. You can meditate in a cave all your life, and go down in history as a maharishi par excellence. Or you can give and donate till your pockets are bare, and it’s all the same.

    The most important thing is what you don’t do. Do no harm. Do no kill. Do not steal. Etcetera etcetera, Five Precepts are almost identical to the Ten commandments, and that is likely no accident. The only thing certain is negation, and that is quantifiable, and measurable. What you do is your choice, the sea of probabilities. We are all connected on the inside, and that is where it counts…

     

  • hardie karges 7:05 am on October 29, 2017 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Eight Precepts, , , , Ten Commandments   

    Buddhism: It’s not what you do in this world; it’s what you don’t do… 

    IMG_0599I know it sounds like some silly game show, but it’s true. What each one of us decides to do and accomplish in this short life is largely subject to our own whims and devices, and not subject to judgment, not if there is any justice in this world. After all, the great sages and prophets don’t spend time on that, and all the great commandments, of any great religion, all begin with: “Thou shall not,” (or was it ‘shalt’?), but not “Thou shall…”

    So it’s not what you do in this world; it’s what you don’t do, and that’s my epiphany for this week, that you really don’t have to do anything! Wow! Who knew? Nothing at all! Just live and breathe and have your being, as long you DON’T kill, and as long you DON’T steal, and as long you DON’T make a nuisance of yourself in any one of a hundred different ways, then you’re doing okay… (More …)

     

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