The ultimate question Blog #7

Do you believe that you have a freewill, or do you believe in fate? You must choose one or the other and explain why.

Live or Die in LA --Blog post #6

If you had to choose between #1 or #2, which would you choose?

1) Live a long life, but remain known only to a small group of people. (be an average Joe)

2) Or live large, die in your early twenties, but be insanely famous for the next 1,000 years?

Explain your choice and post by Saturday, the 22nd.

Remember when.... assignment #5

Think back to when you were younger and you had a favorite book, story, or video. Anything from Dr. Seuss to Batman to the fairy tales. My little five year old best friend, Jane, loves the princesses. I think it's Ariel right now, but she changes once in a while What do you remember about yours and why was it your favorite?

For example, I remember all The Cat in the Hat books, but mainly that first one. I remember how worried I got when the cat started causing trouble for the kids. I was worried for them because I didn't want them to get in trouble because of the cat. The characters in the books were so weird and funny looking that I just would stare at the pictures for minutes at a time. But mostly I worried about the kids getting in trouble for all the things that the other characters did. Like Thing One and Thing Two. Why name a character that? Now I know that they are just symbols for all the things kids can get into, but back then, I thought that those were perfect names for them. I particularly like their clothes with circles with their respective numbers in them. Sometimes, I think I was afraid of the Dr. Seuss books, too. Some of those characters looked pretty weird, though, so I wouldn't read some of them.

Post by Thursday, Sept. 13th

The Western World

"The world, friend Govinda, is not perfect or on a slow journey toward perfection; no, it is perfect every moment; all sin already bears its forgiveness within itself; every little boy already bears the old man within himself, every infant bears death, every dying man bears eternal life. No one is able to look at someone else and know how far along on his journey he is; in the highwayman and dice player lurks a Buddha, in the Brahman lurks the highwayman." p. 77 Siddhartha

The passage above reflects one of the core axioms of the allegory(the story). Sometimes what makes this passage and the book difficult for westerners to understand is the philosophy behind it. What can you surmize about this philosophy and how is that philosophy distinct from our western mentality?

Blog due on Thursday.