I didn't fall COMPLETELY off the face of the Earth...

Okay, so I haven't posted in over a month. I know, I know. Not good. There were a few times throughout this past winter break from classes that I thought about abolishing this site altogether since it's just taking up space and I hadn't had the dedication to keep up with it, but I have instead decided to persist. This blog plays a very important role in my life, especially while I'm taking new classes. I use this blog as a means of expressing my more life-altering findings and challenges with the hope that people will respond to my queries. It's a sounding board for my academic and emotional struggles that I encounter because of the subject matter I have submitted myself to. In that respect, this blog still has a very important role to play in my life, and although I took a brief hiatus, I intend to keep it alive until. In a way, I need this blog to keep my sanity throughout the semester, so thank you to everyone who has read any of it, and especially thank you to those who decided to comment from time to time. You have no idea how much it means to me.

That being said, I'm back at Drury with a full load, and I expect to have lots and lots to write about in the coming months. I'm taking Intro to the Bible, which has already proved to be very, very interesting (who knew that the Bible we have today really isn't inerrant? ;) ). I'm also enrolled in Middle Eastern Religion (very relevant for this day and age), Confucian Virtue Ethics, Global Awareness (gen. ed. coarse on cultural differences), and Philosophy of Religion. On top of that I'm still an RA, I have to maintain my music scholarships by playing in Drury's ensembles, and I recently received a full scholarship to the Springfield Ballet Company, which is a VERY exciting opportunity for me. A busy semester indeed!

This is just a small post to let everyone know I'm back and I'm ready for whatever Drury will throw at me this semester. It's also to let whoever reads this blog know that I appreciate you. I need you. I need your advice, your input, your encouragement, your critiques, your anything. We're all in this life together, and this online community that we all participate in has a delightful way of reminding me that. So here's to a new semester. May it bring us all one step closer to finding truth and happiness.

Better Late than Never...

So I know it's a bit late, but finals week had me a bit busier than I thought I would be, so I didn't have the time to put up the results of my Eastern Religions and Philosophies project.

I'll start with a brief description for those who weren't directly involved. I sent out a quick questionnaire to a lot of Buddhist bloggers and also posted the same questionnaire on the Buddhist community over on my sidebar ( --> ). The questionnaire had four pretty easy questions:

1. How did you get acquainted with the teachings of the Buddha?
a. If you weren’t a Buddhist your whole life, which tradition did you grow up in? Why did you leave that tradition (if you did)?
2. What, if any, religion or philosophy do you associate yourself with currently? Could you describe your faith a bit?
3. Which of the Buddhist teachings do you find most valuable in your everyday life? Why?
4. Describe your interaction in the Buddhist community. Why do you participate, what brought you to the site, etc.

I ended up getting 20 solid responses which I built my paper upon. Here's a description of the results I synthesized from the responses.

1) Interestingly enough, fourteen of the responses said they came to Buddhism from some Catholic or Anglican background. This statistic is waaay off the demographic statistic for these two faiths. What this says to me is that of all the Westerners who leave a tradition to become Buddhist, Catholics/Anglicans are the most likely to do so. I think this is because of the fact that those traditions (which are very similar) both emphasize suffering, but it is in a helpless, dogmatic way. Instead of saying that we are all suffering but we can take steps to fix it (Buddhism), the Catholic/Anglican tradition says that we are all suffering but it is because we are inherently tainted by original sin. Buddhism offers a more action oriented, less helpless solution which appears to attract Westerners.

2) Most of the people who responded mentioned the Buddha's last words, "Be ye lamps unto yourselves," in one way or another. I think this fits in well with the previous point. People aren't looking for dogma or solutions fed to them that says something to the effect of, "this is the truth, and if you don't believe it you're going to hell," which is the vibe that a lot of Christian traditions tend to give off (there is evidence in monotheistic texts that pluralism is a viable option, by the way, but most churches lean more towards exclusivism).

3) In following point 2, most of the Buddhists who responded call themselves some form of "atheist Buddhist," which tells me they shy away from any mystical, speculative form of the religion. Concepts like reincarnation, the five skandhas, store consciousness, etc, are thrown out the window. What is kept are the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path (though this point is arguable), and the deep rooted sense of compassion instilled in the tradition.

4) I think all of these points put together lend itself to the fact that through globalization and the ecumenical blog-o-sphere, we're seeing the development of a new philosophy. The responses people gave were not Buddhism, but some form of Buddhism-influenced secular humanism. People aren't interested in finding their way out of Samsara and entering into Nirvana, but rather using Buddhism's truths as an ethical system to make themselves and the world around them better. The voice I heard in the surveys was a voice of a developing idea based on impermanence, compassion, and suffering, but it is circling more around social justice, equality, and reason than towards the actual religion of Buddhism, which has a lot of mysticism and speculative faith-based parts to it.

I think it was a really cool project, and it showed me a lot. I hope to keep up with everyone's blogs to see how this trend develops and what comes out of it.

C'mon, Professor. Throw me a bone here...

I've noticed something strange about my relationships with my professors lately. It's a really interesting phenomenon that I think stems both from the fact that I look up to my professors intellectually and from the fact that my classes are so small that I get to be fairly personal with all of them.

The thing I've noticed is that I really care about what they think. When we finish studying a religion or learning about a new philosopher, I really want to know how they feel about it and how it affects them. I know that I should be making up my own mind on these issues, but I really want to know how my role models feel about this stuff, you know?

Today, for example, we finished talking about George Berkeley in my Modern Philosophy course and I found myself wanting to ask Dr. Panza, "So do you think he's right? How does he affect you and your view of the world?" I don't know whether it's appropriate of me to ask questions like that to people who are only being paid to teach me the material, but it's difficult sometimes.

I think that because of the small classes and with how often I see the professors both in and out of class, I feel like we're involved in each other's lives as more than just a teacher and student relationship. To steal from Confucius, I feel like it's more of an elder friend and younger friend relationship. I feel like my professors play a "mentor" role more often than a "professor" role.

I just wish every now and then they'd throw me a bone and tell me whether they think a theory is earth shattering or if it's all wet. It'd help me figure out what I believe a bit more to know how much weight philosophies carry with the people I look up to. Perhaps I'll just put a professor on the spot one of these days and see how they react.

Ego, or Something Else?

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I have a class called Classical Problems in Philosophy. The content of the class is pretty good altogether, but I have a slight problem in that class. There is another kid from a slightly scientific background that really bothers me. I'm going to be human here and admit my flaws.

This kid is as well-prepared as I am, well-thought, and generally intelligent. He really puts me off. I find myself wanting to contradict him simply for the sake of the contradiction. I don't necessarily always disagree with him, but the way he states things makes me want to argue. It's really, really annoying. What is even more annoying is that I'm pretty sure it's my problem, not a problem with him. I have to admit that I'm wrong.

We're both intelligent. I need to accept that. There doesn't have to be a hierarchy where one of us is smarter than the other. It shouldn't be a competition. Why can't we just get along? I need to put my ego aside, stop wanting to be recognized for comprehending the subject matter and making the connections.

I recognize that I'm often egotistical, but I also recognize that I don't want to be. Perhaps the way to clear up the situation is to actually act as if I'm not. If I do everything to change in regards to my ego, I've first got to recognize that I am that way and then cut that off at every path. It's just strange.

Turning a veil into gauze...

Today, my friends, classes started up again. I am so excited! I sat, smiling wide, in each of my classes front and center so I wouldn't miss a single word that the professors uttered (which I found was a strategy to be saved until at least the second class period, as the first is usually reserved for the reading of syllabuses). I'm just so excited to be learning in a direction again! I spent the entire summer soaking up random information from books and blogs, but it feels great to be guided, to be pushed in a direction I wouldn't otherwise go, to become more complete through knowledge. Perhaps that sounds a bit trite and overly optimistic about the power of knowledge, but I suppose that kind of language is hard to avoid after the excitement of all new classes.

I'd like to share a quote with you from one of my new favorite texts, entitled "The World's Religions," by Huston Smith. It's more of a dense book than a textbook, which makes me all the more excited to read. Anywho, it goes thus:

"Being of a different cast of mind, we shall never quite understand the religions that are not our own. But if we take those religions seriously, we need not fail miserably. And to take them seriously we need do only two things. First, we need to see their adherents as men and women who faced problems much like our own. And second, we must rid our minds of all preconceptions that could dull our sensitivity or alertness to fresh insights. If we lay aside our preconceptions about these religions, seeing each as forged by people who were struggling to see something that would give help and meaning to their lives; and if we then try without prejudice to see ourselves what they saw - if we do these things, the veil that separates us from them can turn to gauze."
-Huston Smith

I find that quote to be such an eloquent way to describe why I'm in the department that I'm in. I'm a human, and I am in love with learning as much as I can about the human experience, seeing as I'm a part of it. Everything from classic novels to world religions, from jazz music to philosophies on the Self. It's all helping me to grow into this world we all inhabit and share, now more than ever, as a single race.

So here's to the next semester of classes, to learning and growing, to not being "an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world," as Diogenes puts it. Once more unto the breech, dear friends. Once more.