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hardie karges
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hardie karges
Buddhists Walk, not Run, for Peace, not President…
Good things come to those who wait. Instant gratification is cheap, but unfulfilling. Time is the special sauce that adds flavor. And while it’s not something that the Buddha necessarily talked about, I think it goes well with the general thrust of Buddhism, which is essentially a non-thrust. Western action is heavily reactive, leaving no action unanswered, as I hear Mark Z exhort every day: “Engage, engage, engage,” as if social media were like going blindly into an empty void and people have to be reminded to say something to that best friend that they haven’t seen in years.
Apparently, Mark Z has yet to get the word that people leave Facebook just to get away from the toxic level of aggressive behavior that often passes for engagement. Back to the point of the post: maybe if people weren’t so quick to engage, then maybe everybody would be happier for a few more minutes of each day. Those minutes add up and, if nurtured carefully, can make the difference between a bad life and a good one.
If the monks that Walk for Peace accomplish nothing else, then they get the message out for mindfulness and meditation, that action is more important than reaction, especially when that action is a good one. I doubt that the Buddha ever talked about awareness of breath, but that’s what the monks talk about. That’s not Buddhism; that’s Vipassana meditation, so close enough, I guess. The important thing is that it’s non-reactive. Karma is about actions, not reactions. If you have nothing good to give, then SFTU. Again, the Buddha never said that, but someone did.
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hardie karges
Buddhist Meditation and Mediation…of Extremes
Concentrate on heartbeat, concentrate on breath. Both will grow slower, and life will grow longer. And I don’t know why, but that seems to be true, attention to details such as heartbeat and breath mean that those details will likely become more precise, and with less gasping and grasping. I know, because I count. And if the counting is intended to be intentional, but not transactional, then this is merely one of the side effects, I guess. Meditation does not need a reason to occur, but the benefits can be multiple.
The purpose of meditation is usually something no more—and no less—than calming, traditionally known as samatha or shamatha in Pali or Sanskrit, while the more modern vipassana aims for insight. In practical terms this might be a more thing-focused meditation on something very specific, such as breath, or a more field-focused acceptance of everything within the field of perception, with a view to the ties that bind them. Language is neither necessary nor intrinsic to either and can simply be a recognition that now I am breathing or now I am aware of sound.
Counting breaths is a little bit of a trick with no official status in any meditation ‘system’ that I know of—but it works. And I confess that I had difficulty accomplishing or enjoying meditation, until I adopted that little crutch as a useful tool and metaphor for physical existence. For, isn’t life in a physical body on a physical planet little more than counting the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years until that chapter comes to its last verse and some other narrative take over? It sometimes seems that way. Such is the Middle Path…
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hardie karges
Buddhism: Dharma is a law of Nature…
Dharma is a law of Nature, not a law of men. That much must be acknowledged, even if the details are a little bit sketchy. After all, it would be much too easy just to call it the ‘law of the Buddha’, since it precedes that event by a thousand years or so, even if the details are still no less sketchy. But the Vedic Brahmanists used the word profusely, as if the meaning were obvious, and so we could probably surmise that the term meant something like Socrates’s ‘good life’ or just ‘living right.’
Project that concept into the future Sanatana Dharma and you’ve got the phrase that traditional natives from India, Bharat(a), use to call the vast field of knowledge and belief that we call Hinduism. But I think that Buddhism refined the concept, even without limiting it, not really, as something analogous to the Middle Way, a path between luxury and lack. Add to that the early Buddhist association of dharma with jati, life, to refer to nature, dharmajati, and the symbiosis is complete.
Dharma is irrevocably connected to nature, without much concern for who gets the credit. And that is the Holy Grail for modern creator-less religion, of course, something nature-based and at the same time rational and open to science. Bingo. That’s Buddhism without the superstition, meditation-based, Vipassana, discipline without all the deities. Now reference the Thai Forest Tradition, or any other forest tradition, and the circle is complete, also. Nature is our temple, and dharma is our practice.
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hardie karges
Buddhism 401: Language Falls Flat
Politics is rarely polite. Civilization is often uncivilized. And language is hardly equipped to explain why. So just be nice. Stricter commandments may be easy to come by and easy to plaster on walls and gates, but the cost of strict enforcement is rarely worth the time it takes. So, why make things complicated when a simple rule of thumb will do? After all, aren’t the Buddhist precepts and the Christian commandments similar enough that they hardly bear endless repeating?
The main difference is literary, the contrasting roles of commandment and prohibition, and active voice versus passive voice, differences more of style than substance, the Western preference for direct action versus the Eastern predilection for unspecified involvement. After all, sometimes there is little action available except for jumping up and down, which rarely solves many problems and often creates new ones. In any case language is rarely equipped to help much.
In fact, meditation is the crowning achievement of Buddhism, by almost any measure. Some ‘schools’ emphasize it more than others, true, but all respect and encourage it, and Theravada has largely redefined itself as Vipassana, one of the more ubiquitous and modern forms of meditation, though I personally make not so much difference between them, except in the case of silent versus ‘guided’ meditations. Either way, language rarely explains much, but if it can ‘guide’ or show the way, then that is the proper role for it.
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hardie karges
Buddhism Meditation and Emptiness
Meditation is the art of open heart and open mind, closed mouth, eyes optional. To me it’s almost amazing how many Theravada Buddhists don’t meditate at all, but I suppose that speaks to the time and the place as much as anything, as well as the ultimate goals and prime motives. Because a Thai citizen or resident doesn’t really need a motive to be Buddhist, except to be good and be social and contribute to the overall well being of the populace. If you’re already Buddhist, then you don’t really need a reason to be Buddhist.
But a Westerner needs a reason to be Buddhist, and so for many of us that’s long been a choice of Zen or Vajrayana (Tibetan), two of the more exotic versions of the field, and so an attraction to those for whom an attraction is helpful. The only problem is that the Buddha himself might not recognize either of them as representative of his teachings. For us street-corner philosophers, that’s plenty of motivation by itself, the simplicity and veracity of the original message. So, now that Theravada is re-branding itself as Vipassana, pure and simple, that accomplishes a necessary goal, to get Buddhism back to its root without worrying about word games and past lives.
Because Theravada Buddhists were always the best meditators, even if many never did it. And meditation can accomplish with practice what precepts and concepts can only suggest with words. You can talk about shunyata—emptiness—all day and not know much more than what you started with. Or you can sit silent unflinching for an hour while concentrating on breath and know quite a great deal, without uttering a word. It’s an acquired taste.
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hardie karges
Buddhism: It’s a Process…
I am not the same person as yesterday, and I will be a different person tomorrow. I am not DNA code. I am skandhas, anatta, annicca, that is: I am a ‘heap’ of causes and conditions, nothing permanent, always changing. So don’t get too attached to yourself or to anyone else, because tomorrow offers no guarantees. Oh, and one more thing: there’s no soul, at least nothing like what the Christians or Hindus have in mind, eternal and/or cosmic, though Buddhism usually allows for at least a limited sort of rebirth.
After all, we don’t want to get too dreary now, do we? Certainly not. But the principles listed here are foundational to Buddhism. And so, life and the world are at least somewhat illusory, at least in their most obvious manifestations as part of the visual and sensory feast that constitute our world of perceptions. But there is another principle that is even more important to some of us as Buddhists, and that’s the concept of the Middle path, which can be applied to almost anything, including itself, that hypothetical middle path which defines Buddhism by its very lack of definition.
And such is the history of Buddhism, as it evolves almost dialectically, from thesis to antithesis to synthesis, only to start the process all over again. It is in that view that Buddhism emerged in the first place, as the middle path between the excesses of Hinduism and the extreme renunciation of Jainism. And it is that process which continues today, as Mahayana offers an alternative to the original Theravada, and to which Vajrayana and Zen start the process all over again. Now the original Theravada Buddhism would like to remake itself as Vipassana: meditation, that is, first and foremost. I like that idea.
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hardie karges
Buddhist Love is not like Falling in Love, Sorry…
No, Buddhist love is nothing like the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth that often accompanies Christian ceremonies, whether birth or death or the multicolor gray area in between, mostly sex. Buddhist love, metta, is just a whole lot like friendship, and there’s nothing wrong with that. So, Platonic love, then maybe? I think Plato would be cool with that, maybe too cool. And that’s what falls short for a lot of people, for whom devotion is the primary practice of their religion.
It just doesn’t have the feeling of total surrender required for the religious experience in many people’s minds. But that’s Buddhism: cool, baby, cool. The devotional aspects were the last major additions to the three major canons of Buddhism, and long after the original discipline orientation of Theravada and the transcendental orientation of Mahayana. So, it’s no coincidence that the Tibetans got their Vajrayana straight from the source of India, which is primarily devotional to this day, whether of Shiva or Vishnu, no matter the object. Devotion is the important thing for the devotee.
But whether the two additional ‘vehicles’ may or may not have added something important to Buddhism, the core practice of discipline and dana (giving) remain unchanged. Upgrade the meditative practice of anapanasati to vipassana, and BOOM! You’ve got a rebirth of the original Buddhism with or without the doctrine of Rebirth to the non-Self (?!). Ouch. Yep, that’s better now, just to avoid questions that have no good answers. Too many cooks ruin the broth. The kindness is more important than the love.
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hardie karges
Buddhism: Meditation, not Mysticism…
Buddhism was never intended to be mystical. Buddha was very rational in his take on life and suffering. Any mysticism came later, mostly in the Vajrayana Buddhism of Tibet that came directly from India, not China, and which had taken firm hold in that country by the Eight Century CE. And while that ‘school’ of Buddhism is often included in the Mahayana tradition which traveled through, and was greatly influenced, by China, such is not the case with Vajrayana, which derives from a later, maybe the last, Indian Buddhist tradition, before it succumbed to the coup de grace by the invasive Mughals, after centuries of losing ground, and followers, to the Brahmanist Hindus.
About the only thing that all the Mahayana schools have in common, in fact, is that they are not of the original Theravada tradition, which originated in India and found fertile ground in southeast Asia, mostly. And if the Vajrayana tradition is famous for its multiple levels of heaven and hell, its Tantric yab-yum, mudras and mantras, then Theravada (aka Hinayana), is best known for its lack of all that, and concentration on meditation, especially, to the extent that it’s sometimes known by that most famous meditation technique Vipassana. Meanwhile the Mahayana Buddhism of China is probably best defined by its transcendent Buddha and the vast Emptiness of reality, both more recent developments.
Many famous Chinese monks, Fa Xian and Xuanzang foremost among them, even made long arduous trips to India just to get it right, like Charlemagne realizing his 8th century French language wasn’t proper Latin. And mostly I believe that meant learning meditation, and some other disciplines, which Theravada monks usually excel at, and Chinese monks often suck at—to this day. In fact, I didn’t really even know what meditation was until I attended some Theravada-based meditation retreats in Southeast Asia, intended for Asians, not Westerners. When you see a layman sitting silent unflinching for two or three hours lost in no-thought: that’s meditation. The monks are even better at it. Now I get it. Get it.
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hardie karges
Buddhism and Language: Inner Space and Outer Space…
How can I quiet the voices in my head, when I can’t quiet the voices all around me? That’s what meditation is for, silent meditation, no app necessary. This is the conquering conundrum for much of Buddhism, of course, as when I knowingly posted pictures on Facebook this week of my search for the Buddha ‘out there, somewhere,’ roaming in the Thai countryside. I did that just to see how many people would advise me to change my search and look inward, which is the correct approach, of course, and which they did. And that’s possibly even true of any religion, though probably more so for Buddhism.
But it’s especially true for the practice of meditation, regardless of the religion, particularly when the meditation is of the traditional silent type, no apps necessary nor any commentary by Russell Brand, haha, the only likely difference being that where religion might give answers, meditation would only bring calmness. Vipassana claims insight, and that may be true, but ultimately unpredictable, and unnecessary, and I would rather not place the burden of proof upon the method of inquiry.
Because that is not the traditional goal of meditation, nor should it be, meditation being defined as that activity erasing the slate of its burden of language, whereas insight is usually defined by the language that accompanies it. That’s why I tend to avoid guided meditation, except as a form of ‘dharma talk,’ it not really producing the ‘calm abiding’ that I expect from meditation, if I expect anything. I go there to get away from language, not to add more to it. But maybe that’s just me. For me language is just too important to ignore.
streaming consciousness... 
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