Reflection #4: Buddhist Meditation and Temple Visit

After spending last class period practicing the 8 Fold Path, what are your insights about meditation? Could you attain "right thoughts", "right mindfulness" and "right concentration". What makes meditation difficult? Did you notice and peace or insights that came during your practice? Reflect on that experience.

Second, reflect on our field trip to Bongwonsa Temple. What parts of the temple were most interesting and why? What questions about Buddhism did that visit prompt? Think about the life of a monk. What type of choices would a monk have to make to life out his/her spritual truths?

Finally, how would your life have to change if your were to practice Buddhism? 

• Meditation is very important in order to attain peace and get rid of desires that give negative effects in a person's life according to the Buddhist
• I think that it is possible to attain right thoughts, right mindfulness and right concentration by focusing a lot during meditaton and exlcuding any thoughts and ideas that are not "right". Although it is hard, by focusing on breathing and repetitive thought of "rigt" it is very possible to attain these things.
• The most difficult part of meditation is concentrating and not being bothered by other thoughts.
• During my meditation, when i got rid of other thoughts and tried to concentrate on peace and breathing, I think that I did attain some peace and insight.
• In my opinion, the most interesting thing I found in the Buddhist temple is the big temple with all the buddha gold figures. It was interesting because it was a peaceful place and had many majestic buddhist art.
• Some of the main questions that came into my mind after the visit were: Are monks happy with their lives?, How do Buddhist worship?, Does it have similarities with Christianity?, Why do people prefer Buddhism compared to other religions
• I think that a life of a monk is very difficult because they have to live very religious lives with an adequate standard of living. This leads into many choices and sacrifices in order to become a monk.
• If I would become Buddhist, my life would change dramatically because my religion at the moment is Christianity. Also my lifestyle will change tremendously because monks lives very sacred lives and do religious things everyday which I do not do in my daily life.

Reflection #3- Gandhi: Hindu and Activist

Quote: “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

Question: How does that quote exemplify how Gandhi lived out his faith?

This quote exemplifies how Gandhi lived out his faith because he believed in non violent resistance. This is because Gandhi, being a Hindu believer, promoted the idea of non violence and tolerance to things that happen in the world. Also, this quote truly exemplifies his approach to make India independent from the British. The quote basically means that if the British hurt the indians, they would not retaliate and not fight back and eventually, the British will see the error in their ways. In the movie, there is an example of this. During the salt marchers, the Indians would walk in the gate and get repeatedly beaten but they still went on. Even though they got hurt and were in pain, they kept on trying to enter the gate to make a point and send a message to the British. Another aspect of the quote that Gandhi tells his people is that if they fight back against the British, they will just keep fighting each other and it will never end. This is why the whole world will go blind because of all of the rage and fighting surrounding the lives of the people. This is the main reason why Gandhi did not want ot fight back against the British and instead, fight them with non violent resistance. An example of this from the movie is when the leaders were talking about actions to take against the British and most of the leaders wanted to fight back but Gandhi insisted on his approach of non violent resitance.