6/13-6/20/05

June 13, 2005
I love this class! It has given me an understanding of what is inside me (what I’ve been searching for). It amazes me that the things I have written in my journal or talked to my husband about have been discussed in class bringing a new realization and understanding to me. I am much further along my path than I expected. Which is good. That means I’m not really stressing over my journey just enjoying it.

June 14, 2005
I don’t completely understand what we have read in the Three Ways of Thought…. It is interesting though. I get some of the concepts of the little stories, but I get confused on quite a few of them. I’m going to approach this book as my Zen Companion suggests which is not thinking on it too hard. Read the thoughts. If you get them, fine; if not, fine, move on. Some day I may reread them and understand the ones I didn’t understand the first time around.
I get confused on the names of the people. I’m unsure who is speaking sometimes (the narrative parts). It seems these gurus have more than one name. I am just letting this stuff sink in as I have never heard the majority of this stuff and will study it further after I graduate and have more free time on my hands. It’s amazing that even without ever hearing this stuff before, I pretty much understand what we talk about in class and the ideas we talk about mirror my own thoughts.

June 16, 2005
Trying to find the moral of these stories makes a lot of sense in regards to understanding. I’m sure the teacher probably mentioned this before, but today it sunk in.
We were talking about good vs. evil. I think it is actually the natural vs. the unnatural. If you allow yourself to live naturally, you will be compassionate, helpful to others, and not harmful to others. In Asian thought, everything is the same. I take this to mean that if you harm someone else, in essence, you are harming yourself. Some people look at it in Karmic terms and what you do to others will come back to you.

June 20, 2005
I started my paper this weekend. I was really having a hard time figuring out what to write about. The teacher said at the end of class Thursday that he wanted to know we were thinking about this stuff. I decided to write about what I got out of Siddhartha. There are a lot of things in this book that mirror the things I have learned, figured out, and experienced for the past ten years. Maybe it’s presumptuous to think I have been going through what Siddhartha went through (in my own way since it is my journey), but it is also overwhelming at the same time.