Extra Credit Blog-Yoga

For my extra credit assignment I decided to attend a Yoga class at the Cary Street Gym. I have not had any previous experience with meditation and I have a lot of friends who take yoga classes, or rather Westernized yoga classes. I was expecting a lot of stretching and breathing, pushing my body to fold in ways it normally doesn’t to release tension. That was pretty much what I got. The class started off right away into the exercises. I wasn’t expecting any sort of lecture about what we were going to do or the goal of this 60 minute class but I wish something was done just because a lot of people don’t realize that this is not real yoga. Yoga is not just about stretching but about knowing about the flow of the pranas and the 5 restraints. One cant really be doing a task if they don’t know what it entails.

Even though I felt there was no background into this class, I liked it overall. I definitely felt a lot better when I left. Through the breathing and stretching exercises I felt very calm and I did feel like I was taking myself away from all the complications that one encounters in life, things that attaches us to this world. The instructor was also very nice and helpful because like I said before I had never done anything like this. My form of exercise is more of running or playing a rough game of basketball so I’m used to more activity so it was quite a change to be sitting still for long periods of time and to hear it called “exercise”. Overall I had a good experience from this class and its something I wouldn’t mind doing again.

            The only question this raises for me is if the professional studios bother to give a lecture about what Yoga is in their classes. The one at Cary St. is one that you can just drop into at any time so they don’t really push the literature. But in the studios that have classes that can only be taken with enrollment, do they go over what Yoga really is and its origin?

Shinto Blog Assignment on "The Weeping Demon"

            For my blog assignment I decided to watch “The Weeping Demon” section of the movie “Dreams” in Kurosawa’s film. The start of this clip was very slow with a man doing nothing but walking for the first 4 minutes in a dark black desert full of fog (totally scary-movie-esque). Then out of no where a creepy guy comes in who is wearing ragged clothes claiming that he is a demon, but was once a human. He talks about how this area used to be a beautiful meadow but because of radiation from bombs and missiles it is now a wasteland full of abnormally large dandelions and weeds. He also talks about how this radiation made the humans become demons.

            I think the main point of this clip was showing an instance in which human interaction had a negative impact on mankind. Because of the bombs dropped all the wildlife in the area perished. There is also no food in the area so these demons revert to cannibalism, which shows how much these people have deterred from normal behavior. I believe this ties with the Shinto belief of sin; sin being anything that causes an imbalance.

Because of human’s this area was bombed and now the humans there are “demons with horns”.  Because these demons revert to cannibalism they have to suffer the ultimate punishment, immortality. They have to live this life disgusted with their appearance and what they have become and live with the pain of their horns “which is more painful than cancer”.

            This movie reminded me a lot of the movie The Hills Have Eyes. The Hills Have Eyes had a similar story line which centered on people that used to live in a town that was used as a test site for the atomic bomb. Because of the radiation from the bombs these people had many medical problems and generations after their children were all severely mutated. These people also reverted to cannibalism and throughout the whole movie you could see how tortured these people were. Both stories speak a similar meaning; that human influence can be very negative on nature and sometimes causes an imbalance. 

Taoism Blog Assignment on the Tao of Pooh

I loved this book! It is great for Westerners to read to get an idea of the religion. The age group of people who would be reading this book is going to familiar with Winnie the Pooh so it really makes it easy to follow. It also leaves an impact and makes the reader remember what this book is trying to tell when we have something to relate it to.  These characters also serve as a standing point for the reader to project themselves to (for example I can see myself somewhat as Owl/Rabbit because they are always over analyzing situations).  It’s kind of funny how I grew up watching Winnie the Pooh but never made the connection (obviously at that age how could I?) about how Pooh was so free and not worried about the different troubles the characters ran into. This can be shown with Hoff quoting Piglet saying, “Pooh hasn't much Brain, but he never comes to any harm. He does silly things and they turn out right”. This emphasizes the concept of P’u- the uncarved block that is so simple, yet will eventually lead to things working out.

            The Busy Backson critique was very surprising (and my favorite part of the whole book). As Americans, who push the phrase “time is money”, this critique was a stab at how our society runs. "Everything has to be filled in, it seems- appointment books, hillsides, vacant lots- but when all the spaces are filled, the Loneliness really begins" (pg. 147). The world has become so distracted with things that do not pertain to religion or family (working, going to school, how to loose that freshman fifteen, planning the best way to support a future family) that we loose track of some of the basic concepts of life. What Hoff said is right, you cannot save time, you can only spend it. So if time has to be spent, why not do it in a relaxing way? Sure we can’t drop our lives and leave everything for faith/destiny to rule, but at the same time it is pointless to feel like we have to control everything. Time is always rushing by, whether we like it or not, so why not have fun while doing it? So "if you want to be healthy, just watch  what a Busy Backson does and then do the opposite" (pg. 95). This critique is one that has really impacted me because I am definitely one of those people that is always trying to get as many things done within a short period of time.

For our class I feel Taoism was easier for us to comprehend. The ideals that Taoism enforces is something that I believe everybody wants to incorporate in their life and is therefore a good solution to the problem of American culture. Like in lecture,  Professor Rasnic talked about how if you were given a huge sum of money (enough that you could live your life without having to work) what would you do? And if you thought I would take some crazy beach vacation- this was an indication that you have too much going on with your life. You need to relax. Although the extreme to which this ideology stretches about not planning anything is something that OCD Westerners cannot do, but it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to imply some of these ideals to a moderate level. It could help our people to be more satisfied with their life and in the long run help resolve medical problems that are stressed induced.

Buddhist Blog Assignment #1

Buddhist Blog Assignment #1

South Park: Buddha Doing Coke

Buddha Doing Coke.

For this assignment I decided to see what South Park had to say about Buddhism. As most of us know South Park is an animated sitcom that is best known for its dark humor on many topics. When I first saw this clip I was really confused. Why would Buddha be doing coke? Doesn’t that violate one of the 10 precepts of not being intoxicated? When I think of intoxicated by the way I don’t think of just being drunk from alcohol, I think of any sort of substance that can cause the mind to deviate in an unusual way. I repeated this clip multiple times, trying to see if I was missing something, but no matter how many times I saw it I still couldn’t get the message the producers of this animated sitcom were trying to get across.

It became clear to me once I started reading Brad Warner’s book Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate. It was chapter 5 (pages 25-32) that shed light on the hidden meaning; that enlightenment can be reached through drugs. In this section of the book Warner highlights that the Buddhism that has become a fad in America is not real Buddhism. One of the fads that was surfacing was the use of “…psychedelic drugs [that] could give you in a single dose the insight that dedicated Buddhist practitioners spend decades working on” (page 26).  He goes on to talk about the “…scam artists that are calling themselves Buddhist teachers…[that will help]…speed a person to enlightenment” (page 26-27). They promise that “…you will receive an authentic kensho or satori experience in which you realize your True Nature just like Buddha did under the Bodhi Tree in a single half-day lesson” (page 27).

Warner strongly imposes this method of practicing Buddhism. He further goes on to state that enlightenment is “…not a cool experience…like that acid trip you took at Burning Man five years ago…it’s not something that someone who’s gotten can now give you” (page 28). Enlightenment is when “…you begin to accumulate little bits of understanding [that] at some point begin to come together…[to] a deeper intuitive knowledge…[that] at some point…reaches a threshold [where] there may be a single moment in which everything seems to change.” (page 29).

In conclusion Warner negates this stereotype by saying that enlightenment cannot be reached through the use of stimulants. It’s not just about achieving that dreamy state of mind in which you detach from the world (because of the excess serotonin floating in your neural synapses); it’s about coming to a deeper understanding about life through time, effort, and energy. An understanding that really can only be done through meditation and proper practice of the religion. America is known for trying to find the shortcuts to everything but in the case of reaching enlightenment from Buddhist teachings, there is no shortcut. 

Blog Assignment #1

Blog Assignment #1

Aim #1- Pleasure
The Afters, "Beautiful Love", Alternative, 2009
Enrique Inglesias, "Tonight" , Pop, 2010 [Song Posted]
Dido, "Sand In My Shoes", Pop, 2009
Cobra Starship, "Good Girls Go Bad", Pop, 2009
Taio Cruz, "Dynamite", Pop, 2010

Aim 3- Community Service


Eminem, "Beautiful", Rap, 2009
Paramore, "Hallelujah", Alternative, 2007
Plumb, "Hang On", Pop, 2009 [Song Posted]
Civl Twilight, "Human", Alternative, 2009
Paramore, "I Caught Myself", Alternative, 2009

For this assignment I tried to find songs from as many different genres as I could to see if specific factors were more common in a specific genre of music. I mostly listen to rock/alternative so maybe that is why most of my results are in a rock category. But hey I tried. I found that there were more songs that could correspond with the pleasure aim versus the community service aim. When I think of community service as a Hindu aim I look at is as someone helping others and thinking that they should work for a greater purpose because they know that their religion says that they should. So I found very few songs (that would be considered pop culture) that talked about going through acts of community service because their religion pushes it (unless you look at Christian singers or bands but even then it was very limited). I think it is so much easier to talk about pleasures is because it relates to everyone whereas the community service aim is usually only applied to those that follow some sort of religion or ideology that places importance on the community service factor. What surprised me the most was how difficult it was to find a song that would somewhat justify to fit in the community service claim. Makes me wonder how much of music has religious inspiration. The Hindu aims are slightly different from American Pop Culture music in the sense that American Music is focused much more on the pleasures of life rather than the religious satisfactions that one receives.

Blog Assignment #2

Blog Assignment #2: Aim #2: Worldly Success

Cash Money Heros, "I made it", Hip Hop, 2010 [Song Posted]

Kanye West, "Can't Tell Me Nothing", Hip Hop, 2010

DJ Khaled, "All I Do Is Win", Hip Hop, 2010

Kanye West, "Golddigger", Hip Hop,  2009

Kanye West, "Flashing Lights",  Hip Hop, 2007

Aim # 4: Liberation

Kutless, "Winds of Change", Rock, 2007

Fireflight, "For Those Who Wait", Rock, 2010

Fireflight, "What I've Overcome", Rock, 2010 [Song Posted]

Relient K, "Be My Escape, Rock,  2004

Fireflight, "Fire In My Eyes", Rock, 2010

I felt that this blog assignment was a lot easier to complete than the last one since concepts of wordily success and liberation is seen in the American music industry. Out of these two aims I found that wordily success was slightly easier to find music for over liberation. Wordily success was very common among in the Hip-Hop and Rap genre. Its possible because most of those songs are either talking about sex, partying, or going from rag to riches. Most of the music that I found for liberation were from bands that claimed to be “Christian Rock”. To look for liberation, I used the term slightly loosely than the Hindu meaning, to mean any way in which a person found salvation.  So many of these Christian rock songs found salvation through Jesus or God. The wordily success aim that the Hindu culture claims is very similar to the American view in wordily success because both are talking about achieving material satisfaction and making the most of yourself. The liberation aim was slightly different in the American music I found because most of the songs were specific in achieving liberation through Jesus. Although the song that I posted the video for, “What I’ve Overcome” by Fireflight, had a strong correlation to the Hindu view of liberation because it talks about an internal change (with struggles) that caused the singer to see herself differently and to view the world differently.