Wow, I am finally done with my first year as a freshman. All I need are a few more credits over this first tier of summer classes and I will officially be a sophmore. I didn’t have the cover letters in my portfolio because I couldn’t find the format to follow in time. I got so caught up with my other two courses that I sort of forgot this one existed. Nearing the end it gained a little energy in my brain and I definitely had one of those holy **** (Feel free to add in the four letter sentence enhancer of your choice) my entire portfolio which I have little to none completed  of is due tomorrow moments! In a weird way it all worked out. When I decided to scrap the first attempt at the assignment I wasn’t planning on using Philosophy on purpose, but it worked out well. Turns out I signed up for philosophy over the summer so if I do get that assignment I will be a step ahead. The prompts this semester were much more difficult for me, not because of their content but, because we were required to actually either go with what the university policy requested us to do. In 1101 we had so much more freedom and it was anything goes as long as we used that author. You as a professor were very helpful and instrumental to the progression of the development of my writing and composition. I wish you an excellent summer and if i minor or major in english I will definitely look for you for future courses to come. Just not at 7am. I like to have appointments with Dr. Pillow at that time.

- Nerissa

Revision #1

Siddartha Guatama is an influential philosophical figure to other philosophers and the entire world. Later known as the Buddha, he is responsible for originating what hundreds of years later would be considered one of the most followed and accepted ways of living by all nations and religions alike.

Born a prince with royalties, riches, and prestige, no one would have thought that this young prince would later become one of the most inspirational and influential philosophers of all time. Siddartha Guatama is said to have originated the teachings, practices and concepts which have now become a world re-known and religiously followed way of life, a universal path to what he called enlightenment. Siddartha Guatama, Later to be known as the Buddha – enlightened one, gave up his life of riches and his duty to his family to find his own understanding of life which gave way to the establishment of the Theo-philosophical movement that is considered to be the oldest and most worldwide accepted to this day, Buddhism. Buddhism has not only influenced the life of the people where it culturally began, in India as an outgrowth from Hinduism, but it has also made its way into the philosophies and discussions of Christianity, Catholicism, and Judaism. The teachings of the Buddha have awaken a new wave of self awareness and detachment of, not only worldly and materialistic objects, but also of our anger, hate, prejudice, and even love. What One man discovered while meditating under a Bohdi(Tree of wisdom) tree hundreds of years ago has gone on to influence not just his life but other philosophers and artists everywhere.

1. The People of the Mind – The uniqueness of Zen Buddhism resides in the ability to control the mind through meditative training. This is the major point of difference between Buddhism and Western religions which rely on notions of God, soul and the hereafter. Buddhist salvation evolves from the conditionism of the forms of existence. The essence of Buddhist doctrine reveals that, only by understanding the mind through meditation, can one achieve insight into Ultimate Reality.
2. The Buddhist Refusal of Theism – Early Buddhism was not interested in questions about existence and the nature of God, considering these unimportant in relation to the question of the release from earthly suffering which is at the heart of Buddhist soteriology. Later Buddhist thought considered theism incompatible with Buddhist doctrine, but at the same time Buddhism developed a dimension of devotion that resembled theistic faith. Conscious of their different religious heritage, Buddhist thinkers in more recent times have nevertheless embraced dialogue with monotheistic religions, emphasizing their common ethical preoccupations, while retaining the nontheistic viewpoint of traditional Buddhism.
3. The Date of Buddha – A precise date of Buddha and location of Kapilavastu eluded the scholars. Buddha lived for eighty years and died either in 544 or 486 B.C. During excavations at Piprahwa, about twenty-one kilometers north of Siddharthnagar, a district headquarter in Uttar Pradesh (India), the stupa yielded an inscribed casket and other antiquities in 1898 and 1972. The inscription indicated that the relics inside the stupa were of Buddha, the Lord of the Sakya community. Again in 1972 dishes in two chambers with the earliest relics of the earliest phase of northern black polished ware, dated between sixth and second century B.C. occurred. The dishes supported by the earliest burnt brick at the town site could be dated around 487 or 483 B.C., when Buddha died. Inscribed terracotta sealings with the legend Kapilavastu unearthed in 1973 settled the identification.
4. A Logic of the Heart: Re-reading Taoism and Zen Buddhism – As is well-known, the term “mind” in Buddhism and Taoism is really mind/heart–while “Busshin” is Buddha mind, it is also Great Compassion. The article argues that the mind/heart of “mind” should be seen as analogous to the particle/wave of light: in the same way that seeing light only as a particle is at best incomplete, and perhaps even misleading, assuming that the Buddhist and Taoism mind/heart operates only according to the logic and rules governing the thinking process create serious problems. To clarify the analogy for the purposes of this paper, particles are to thoughts or the mind as waves are to affect, emotion or the heart. While particles and thoughts operate on the digital or binary logic of differences in kind–a logic of the mind–waves and affect or emotion operate on the analog or alchemical logic of differences of degree–a logic of the heart.
5. The Concept of Self in Buddhism: Some Reflections – Perhaps no other problem has posed so much confusion or proved itself to be so ticklish as the one concerning the concept of the Self in the entire range of Buddhist philosophy. This is clearly an outcome of Buddha’s own silence with regard to all metaphysical concerns, since he looked upon them as involving unending debates and hair-splitting arguments. This very silence/indifference of the Buddha has led to multiple interpretations concerning the existence or nonexistence of the Self in early Buddhism on the part of the thinkers and commentators who followed the demise of the Buddha. Three such interpretations or views are presented in this paper, all drawn from or based upon the scattered utterances of the Master recorded in original Pali texts from time to time.
6. Buddhism and Christianity from a Christian-Buddhist Perspective – As someone who is both a Christian and a practitioner of Zen, it seems to be that at the very least the following five characteristics need to be a firm part of the foundation of Christianity and Buddhism in the 21st century: (1) the transcendental dimension can be realized on the basis of absolute nothingness; (2) spirituality is realized; (3) not only the Kantian autonomy of the individual self but also the oneness between self and the transcendental dimension is realized; (4) the religious life, which looks upon all lives as equal, is realized; (5) time and eternity and, therefore, this and the next world are realized in oneness. However, Christianity seems to claim its absoluteness attached to its old dogmas over other religions.
7. Religions view Religions: Explorations In Pursuit of Understanding – The essays in this book, written by representatives of the major world religions, offer descriptive and/or prescriptive appraisals of other religions, in general, or one other religion, in particular, from the perspective of the religion of the author concerned. It is hoped that this unique exercise in intercultural theology of religions will generate insights and new forms of understanding which can be used by religious leaders and other educators to help correct the disposition toward religious haughtiness, insularity and communalism and the dangerous leanings toward interreligious suspicion, antipathy and animosity which are all too often evident in our contemporary societies.
8. Making The World My Body: Simone Weil and Somatic Practice – French philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943) was convinced that bodily or somatic practices could play a significant role in human moral and religious development. Weil believed that such development hinges on how the world is read (lecture) or interpreted, and somatic practices play a key role in shifting from more to less egocentric readings. Comparing her considerations with those of Japanese Buddhists, and especially Dogen, helps throw into relief her philosophical commitment concerning the body and reveals her preoccupation with purity. (edited)
9. John Dewey and the Buddhist Philosophy of the Middle Way – This paper argues that the central philosophical movement in the complex history of Buddhism that originated with Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha and carried on by Nagarjuna (among other later Buddhist philosophers) shares some common themes with the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey. These themes are the rejection of traditional metaphysics as definitive of philosophy, a return to the correct understanding of the nature of experience, and a particular view about the conduct and nature of philosophy. Dewey is used to illuminate such controversial problems in the Buddhist tradition as why the Buddha is silent about metaphysical questions, what it means to say that everything is anitya, and how we are to understand Nagarjuna’s key concepts of pratityasamutpada and súnyatá.
10. Awareness Bound and Unbound: Realizing the Nature of Attention – This essay takes seriously the many Buddhist admonitions about “not settling down in things” and the importance of wandering freely “without a place to rest.” The basic thesis is that delusion (samsara, ignorance) is awareness trapped (stuck), and liberation (nirvana, enlightenment) is awareness freed from grasping. The familiar words “attention” and “awareness” are used to emphasize that the distinction being drawn refers not to some abstract metaphysical entity but simply to how our everyday awareness functions. This way of distinguishing between delusion and enlightenment is not only consistent with basic Buddhist teachings but gives us insight into some of the more difficult ones, such as the way karma works and the Mahayana claim that “form is not other than emptiness, emptiness not other than form”. Moreover, this perspective illuminates some aspects of our contemporary life-world, including the particular challenges of modern technology and economics.

1. A logic of heart: Re-Reading Taoism and Zen Buddhism ISSN: 0019-0365
2. The Date of Buddha ISSN:0970-7794
3. The Concept of Self in Buddhism: Some Reflections ISSN:0732-4944
4. The Buddhist Refusal of Theism ISSN: 0392-1921
5. The People of the Mind ISSN: 0732-4944

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Journal findings by Title Search Database:

• Contemporary Buddhism An Interdisciplinary Journal

  ISSN: 1476-7953 (electronic) 1463-9947 (paper)
  Publication Frequency: 2 issues per year

   

  Subjects: Buddhism; Philosophy;
  Publisher: Routledge

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  Database		Philosopher’s Index
  Title		On the Buddha
  Author		Gruzalski, Bart K
  		Belmont: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2000.           ISBN   053457596X   Language   English   Publication Year   2000   Publication Type   Book   Update   20081025   Accession Number   1686019
  Title   A Logic of the Heart: Re-Reading Taoism and Zen Buddhism   Author   Glass, Newman Robert   Source   International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 383-392, December 1998   ISSN   0019-0365

 

Here’s the link to the ILL Department of the Library: http://www.library.fau.edu/depts/ill/illdept.htm

**For Application see portfolio