Sidney
Rogers 3rd
The Buddha’s path to enlightenment
This story is about a monk and his
discovery of enlightenment. He is telling a story about his life and the steps
he went through to find enlightenment. He describes it as a path because there
were somewhat of different phases in this story. He first talks about how when
people are subject to something that is usually negative, and they see others
going to the same fate they are about to face if they haven’t already, it can
be horrifying and humiliating. He uses aging, illness, and death as an example
of this.
He
has lived his life in a palace, with servants and workers. He had three homes
and never had to leave them because everything was done for him by his
servants. His next step is going away from all of that luxury and went forth
into homelessness. He went out on his own and discovered the country side and
villages. Suddenly three similes appeared to him. He compared how different
wood weather it is dry, wet, sappy, or near water would make a fire. He states
that when trying to use wet, sappy wood that’s laying in water to make a fire
you will feel weariness and disappointment.
His
next step is trying to crush his mind with awareness, clenching his teeth and
pressing his tongue against the roof of his mouth is thought to do the trick,
but the pain he feels does not invade his mind and does not remain. He receives
the same fate when he stops breathing, a lot of paint but does not crush his
mind with awareness. His next attempt is to go without food. Yet he is
convinced to not go completely without food, but just a hand full a day. He soon
becomes very emaciated. He decides to start eating solid food once again due to
the fact that any priest or contemplatives feeling pain could not be any
greater than this that he feels. By giving up his exertion, five other monks
were disgusted in him and left him alone. When other monks heard of this they
made a pact not to greet him or help him, but upon his arrival they could not keep their promise and had good
hospitality towards him.
In
the section the elephant simile he talks about how the majesty told him to
gather all of the blind together and show them and elephant. He showed different parts of the elephant to different
people and when the majesty asked them what the elephant was, they al described
it differently depending on what part of the body they were shown. This is a
really good example of how everyone sees things differently and it is hard when
you only see one part of a big picture. I can relate to this because of my job.
My manager is pretty strict that the store does well and makes a lot of money. She
expects a lot out of us girls and we are always trying to do a good job and
impress her. My manger bases how will we do on our numbers. No matter how hard
we are trying to up sale customers and make the numbers better, the numbers don’t
lie. And if the numbers aren’t good, we are terrible employees. I was reminded
of this from the elephant situation because she only looks at part of the big
picture. And that is the number, and how much money we are making. She doesn’t see
how hard we are working and how happy all of our customers are when they leave
our store. Another part of his story that I could relate to my life was the
part where he is greeted by the five monks, and although they said they would
not speak to him, when he was actually there they could not be rude. I am not
the type of person to be aggressive and tell people what I really think. If I
am mad at someone and they confront me about it I usually act as if nothing is
wrong. This had been a problem for me is the past because any hard feelings I have
are not resolved. I feel this is what happened in the story.
Tao Te Ching
What
I got from all of these little poems is that everything is a connection, yin
and yang. From one person to another, one emotion to another, and one idea to
another. In order to recognize something, you have to know the opposite of it.
In order to know the feeling of having something, you need to know the feeling
of absence. I also thought there was a
lot of talk about how to much of something can be bad. I liked the part when it
says “keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt, keep hoarding gold in your
house, and you will be robbed” I liked
this section of over fulfillment because that is so true. You see it in real
life all of the time. People get so much of something valuable, money for
example, that it eventually becomes meaningless. People love to look like they
have a lot even if it leaves them with nothing. I can relate it to a time when I
stayed at a gorgeous house. It was huge and expensive. But I also noticed from
my stay that they couldn’t afford name brand cereal, any kind of shampoo that wasn’t
from Wal-mart or double ply toilet paper. I think these people really sacrificed every
day things, so they could appear to others as being rich and luxurious.
