Greetings Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls of all ages, Fellow Bobcats,
*Let me first just parenthetically state I have no idea what the title of this blog is supposed to mean. I know I say this a lot and I fear it has lost its meaning, but SORRY...
Well! Let me begin today’s highly anticipated blog by issuing a deep, heart-felt apology to all of my faithful readers. While it is true that this past week has seen a most curious decline in blog frequency, let me offer assurance that I have awoken from my grammatical cocoon and am back with ten fingers racing and dancing on these keys. Yes, the crunch-crunch of the typing is sweet music to my ears and I only wish you could hear it as well.
And just one more thing before I get into it-go ahead and remove the gray wreaths from your doors and black ribbons from the neighborhood trees, which you certainly fashioned and hung around the third blogless day of this week. After all, the neighbors are probably beginning to wonder…
While I undoubtedly could see the hurricane of schoolwork on the academic horizon earlier this week, I was caught unprepared by the scholastic tornadoes it spun off in my direction, which came in the form of short reports and superfluous homework assignments. As much as it pains me to admit to any type of wrongdoing in any way, shape, or form, I must concede that there is a fair chance I might have bitten off more than I can chew this semester. Albeit I do certainly love the challenge and rigors of this intellectual odyssey (by this I mean, err, the semester…just trying to jazz it up) I may indeed have my fingers in, as they say, one too many pies. But the storm has only a month left, and while the clear skies of winter break may not be within sight, I know they are there.
This week I attended an informational lecture on Buddhism that, despite my lukewarm expectations, was quiet invigorating. I’d hate to simply regurgitate a list of facts I learned (which I just did, but thank goodness for the backspace key…you lucked out!) so I’ll just say a few words. Buddhism is a non-exclusionary religion which allows the possibility for it to simultaneously coexist with any and all other faiths. It can be used as a sort of magnifying glass to continuously reexamine not only your thoughts, feelings, life, but also religion.
Unsurprisingly, it is often referred to as the most “religious psychology” which holds great appeal for me. Buddhism is also agnostic. I realize the connotation of this term makes some of us a little weary and defensive, but I say connotation for a reason. The denotation is quiet different than what you might expect. Thomas Huxley, a member of an English gentlemen’s club, originally coined the term “agnostic”. It literally means a gnoses, which means to have a deep, penetrating questioning of everything. Obviously this is in stark contrast to our usual association of the word and it’s not so bad, is it? After all, it seems like a verbal extrapolation on Socrates’ famous maxim, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Ultimately, Buddhism addresses the fundamental question, “What do we do about suffering?” This question is paramount to understanding what this religion is all about and from it we get the four noble truths:
1)The way we live is suffering
2)This anguish has a cause. We suffer because we desire.
3)There is relief to anguish. This relief is achieved by understanding that everything is ephemeral, or transitory in nature.
4)You can cultivate a path from this suffering.
I don’t really know about all this. One thing that is interesting is that while Buddhism is considered a religion, it does not in any way fit into the prescribed definition we use in Anthropology to classify religion. Our working definition, which we have been using this semester, which is very general and perhaps even vague, but definitely includes the requisite of “the personification of cosmic forces.”
So I have no conclusion whatsoever about all this, which is a little disappointing but hopefully some of this was interesting and shed a little light on a set of ideas that do seem rational and sound. There is not an ounce of certitude that I can find within my soul when it comes to organized religion (which is very discouraging) but I feel great conviction that God exists with every breath I take. But that is another matter for another day. Rest assured, however, that I have not shaved my head, ordered my robe, or made summer plans for the monestary.
I'm going to go ahead and post this one and start a new blog addressing a few things Casey said, who as it turns out is something of an intellectual :) So you probably read the aforementioned blog first, so hopefully we're all staying on our toes.
And... Scene!
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