what to do about india?

we had a heated discussion last thursday. anton kept coming back at his idée fix: what to do about india?

the question rubbed some people in the class the wrong way. anton's relentless persistence seemed a form of ego-trip.

but india is part of the ONE, and we are part of the ONE. we shouldn't pretend india doesn't exist. we are an individualistic society. we've had a history of political isolationism.  if we all care for what is close to us. isn't that an excuse to inaction? of course not.

helping india is helping the ONE. helping west africa, syria, sudan needs is helping INDIA. helping our homeless and our poor right here in miami is helping the ONE.

in oneness/language india is really not that far. this is where epictetus comes in with his advice of doing what is most immediate to each one of us. there was a passionate argument from angie and destiny in this regard.

what ifs "close" is too comfy?

but speaking in onenes/language, geographical distance is relative. india as near as our own backyard.

how come?

oneness cannot be segregated.

yet, anton may rejoin: "if each part is as valid for the constitution of the whole, the oneness may present --as valid-- an appeal for india proper, over our own backyard."

& in the end this point is also valid. no one can disown it. the only exception being that doing your dharma here, in liberty city or little haiti or little havana, is as valid.

from oneness we get pluralism: there is no one exclusive path in the ONE. as the gita counsels:

As people approach me, so I receive them. All paths lead to me.

so?

have the courage to do what you need to do.

7 steps to follow for your philosophy paper!

1. Introduction: Your introduction should be clear, provocative and provide a road map to your research paper. It doesn’t have to be as specific as detailing what each section will contain, but it should certainly describe what you’ll be examining, analyzing, and proving. Readers begin forming judgments about a research paper after just viewing the introduction, which is why it’s so important to make it shine.

2. Clear Thesis: A good thesis statement expresses your main idea, perspective or position. It is not a statement of known fact. For extra help with writing a thesis statement, visit Questia’s 9-step writing guide.

3. Organization: “Writing Papers Grading Criteria” from Writing-tipstoday.com suggests that your paper be checked for: presentation of references, clarity of language style, spelling, punctuation, grammar, length and overall presentation.

4. Integrating Sources: Professors expect sources—that’s what puts the “research” in “research paper.” Moreover, they expect you to integrate those sources and fuse them with your ideas, equally. If you have 10 sources and only use two, for example, a professor will notice and grade you down.

Just as important, make sure you are using reliable research sources. Ask your professor ahead of time whether your sources are okay—most will not accept sources such as Wikipedia or blog entries; some will only accept sources from approved journal databases.

5. Be Concise: Wordy, bombastic writing will impress no one, especially not your professor. The longer it takes them to understand what you’re saying, the less clear you’ll be and the quicker your grade will drop. If you think you might be rambling, consider having a roommate, peer, or friend read your research paper and offer feedback.

6. Originality: Your writing should be your own. In other words, anything not in quotations should be your ideas and analyses, not anyone else’s. It’s not uncommon for students to pursue the same research topic, but most professors will try to ensure that each one is unique. Many instructors request the thesis ahead of time so they can evaluate it, as well as verify that each student is working on a different research paper. To avoid plagiarism, check out the tips Loraine Blaxter offers in How to Research.

7. Editorial Style: Many professors require a certain research paper format such as APA, MLA, or Chicago. This isn’t a suggestion, and your professor may lower your grade if you don’t follow the correct style. Some grade more harshly than others, but style is especially important in your parenthetical references and on your works cited page. Questia helps you to format your citations, bibliographies and works cited pages in multiple writing styles to help you do well on your research paper.

so, what have you learned from the gita? (second post for comment, due wednesday 11pm)

the battle for berlin, 1945

fight this battle!

midterm behind us, next, bring your dhammapadas for tuesday 's reading

facebook link for midterm reviews!

this is the new facebook link for midterm reviews. 

metaphoring autopoesis

what i mean by metaphoring is entertaining spiritual possibilities with the aim of producing worshiping dispositions. (worship here means just devout attention.)

devout means deliberate & disciplined.

attention means focused and persistent.

buddhist ecology (not what you think)

i found this great article by aspiring buddhist and evolutionary biologist david barash for aeon. 

Part of this sensitivity to nature is a Buddhist grasp of suffering, whose existence constitutes the first of Buddhism's Four Noble Truths. It is no coincidence that Henry David Thoreau, America's first great environmentalist, was also a student of Indian religion and the first translator of the ‘Lotus Sutra’ into English. In this classic teaching, Shakyamuni Buddha compares the ‘Dharma’ — the true nature of reality — to a soothing rain that nourishes all beings.

a buddhist idea of self can shed light on a more progressive (darker) view of ecology:

Each of us arises in conjunction with others, dependent on and inseparable from those others. Trying to locate an inviolate particle of selfhood within anyone (or indeed, in any living thing) is not like finding a solid pit inside an apricot. It is more like peeling an onion: we are layers within layers, with nothing at the centre. Or, like an eddy in a river, each of us can be identified and pointed to, but nonetheless, there isn’t any persistent ‘us’: just a constantly moving pattern of flow, with everyone composed entirely of non-self stuff, all of it passing through. For Buddhists and ecologists alike, we are all created from spare parts scavenged from the same cosmic junk-heap, from which ‘our’ component atoms and molecules are on temporary loan, and to which they will eventually be recycled.

let's be sincere about our doubts:

High on the list of such absurdities are the phenomena of iddhi, supernatural events that are supposed to be generated by extremely skilful and committed meditation. They appear often in Buddhist texts, and I don’t believe a word of them. Higher meditators are claimed to possess various supernatural abilities, becoming invisible on demand, walking through walls, on water, through the air, hearing people and other beings very far away, mind-reading, recalling past lives, even possessing ‘divine eyes’ that permit them to see the arising and passing away of karma.

barash admits the absurdity of it all. ecological poesis has an inseparable noir component.

Ecology is many things: a science, a world view, a cautionary tale. It can be nearly incomprehensible in its mathematical thickets, downright tedious in its verbal pomposity, theoretically abstruse yet dirty-under-the-fingernails practical, often ignored and derided although desperately needed as a voice for basic planetary hygiene and a practical corrective to human hubris. It has been called the ‘subversive science’, since it subverts our egocentric insistence on separateness, and with it, our inclination to ride roughshod over the rest of the natural world.

methinks some of this can still be salvaged as metaphoring auto-poesis.

Notes on Buddhism

... l'homme n'est pas ce qu'il est, il est ce qu'il n'est pas.-- Jean Paul Sartre

Buddhism is a spiritual movement founded by Siddharta Gautama in India in the 6th century BC, the first multi-cultural spiritual tradition in the higher civilization of the Eurasian world.

Buddhism lasted in India for some 1500 years, until it disappeared from India as that country became progressively dominated by Islam. Buddhism moved then to Ceylon, China (first century AD), Korea (fourth century AD), and Japan (sixth century AD); eastward into Burma, Thailand (third century AD), Cambodia (fourth century AD), Indonesia (third century AD) and the other countries of southeastern Asia with the exception of the Philippines. It became the dominant spiritual movement in Tibet (eighth century AD), and Mongolia (thirteenth century AD).

The teaching of Buddha was handed down to succeeding generations in the form of a threefold refuge: the Buddha, the teaching and the community. These are three aspects of the Buddha reality.

1- The teaching itself is a form of Buddha presence. The teaching is supreme insofar as it is in virtue of the teaching that a person is guided to experience the saving illumination concerning the nature of sorrow and the way to release from sorrow. 2- The community has a certain priority since it carries and sustain the entire Buddhist tradition. 3- The doctrine would have had no inner development or preservation or propagation except through the community. Yet supreme over everything is the Buddha reality.

The Message

Buddha's teaching was transmitted orally to his disciples.

1- The theory, 2- the path and the 3- sangha. 

Reality

Reality is composed of dharmas (components) or a succession of microseconds of existence. Buddha departed from the teachings of must Hinduism by not having a precise eschatology (a theory of final things). Life is a stream, a river, of manifestations and extinctions. There's nothing permanent and thereby no fixed self. To make clear this concept Buddhism puts forward the theory of five constituents 1- rupa or corporeality or physical form, 2- feelings or sensations (vedana), 3- ideations (sanna), 40 mental formations or dispositions (sankhara), and consciousness (vinana). Human existence is only a composite of these aggregates.

Karma

Buddhists accept the notion of karma, however, this presented a problem with their notion of no-self. How could one prove that one can reincarnate with a no self, i.e. with no permanent subject? Some scholars have considered this to be unsolvable. The relations between existences has been compared to the analogy of fire, which maintains itself unchanged in appearance and yet is very different in every moment. A sort of ever changing identity.

The Four Noble Truths (hinting at the path)

There are four noble truths. 1-The truth of sorrow, 2-the truth that sorrow originates within us from the craving of pleasure, 3-the truth that this craving can be eliminated and 4-the truth that a methodical path must be followed to obtain this goal. Otherwise human beings would remain indefinitely in samsara.

The Eightfold Path

Hence Buddha formulated the law of dependent origination or paticca-samuppada whereby one condition arises out of another, which in turn arises out of prior conditions. Given the awareness of this law, the question arises as to how one may escape the continually renewed cycle of births, suffering and death. There must be a purification that leads to overcoming this process. Such a liberating purification is effected by following the Noble Eightfold Path constituted by 1-the right views, 2-the right aspiration, 3-the right speech, 4-the right conduct, 5-the right livelihood, 6-the right effort, 7-the right mindfulness and 8-the right meditational attainment.

Nirvana

The aim is to be rid of the delusion of the ego, freeing oneself from the fetters of this mundane world. One who succeeds has achieved enlightenment. The term is nirvana translated as dying out
But nirvana is not extinction. And Buddha repudiated this. Buddhists search for salvation, not annihilation. Although nirvana is often presented as negative, it can be seen as the ultimate goal for salvation in Buddhism.

near death experience (as studied by science)

don't miss this article in science daily about so called NDEs (near death experiences).

 In this case, consciousness and awareness appeared to occur during a three-minute period when there was no heartbeat. This is paradoxical, since the brain typically ceases functioning within 20-30 seconds of the heart stopping and doesn't resume again until the heart has been restarted. Furthermore, the detailed recollections of visual awareness in this case were consistent with verified events.

so? as they say:

Further studies are also needed to explore whether awareness (explicit or implicit) may lead to long term adverse psychological outcomes including post-traumatic stress disorder.

what's your favorite gita theme? (post for comment)

there are specific themes in the gita:

"fight the battle," action in inaction, the importance of karma yoga, one's duty,  the idea of karma vs dharma, the gunas, salvation, spiritual discipline, ignorance of avidya, maya, etc.

what's your favorite (if it's not here bring it forth),

go ahead.

problems with your submission so far...

these are some of the problems i've found,

1- you've researched very little and it shows. without conscientious research you cannot put together a good paper.
2- your counters are generally flimsy, many showing bias, which is not good in principle. remember: your paper is as good as the counters you present!
3- avoid too many points and arguments,  for a 1,500 words you have to maximize the best arguments and counters. prioritize your best arguments!
4- say things clearly! read it out loud and see if you understand what you've written. the art of argumentation is about clarity and elegance.

VICES

excessive superfluous wordiness (use more sentences instead of long prepositional phrases),
tedious repetition (begging the question)
vagueness in your statement (beating around the bush)
hyperbole (big words don't mean a thing),
emotional outbursts,
belittling your counter, instead of proving it wrong is a form of ad hominem.

Today we're reading from the Bhagavad Gita

Are we delusional silicon-based artificial intelligences in a matrix-like forgery rather than carbon-based organisms in the genuine universe?

Click here to find out. 

list of student assistants for all philosophy classes

MWF 9am
Ciara Albury
Esaie Jean Charles
Audi Laguerre
Amanda Torres

MWF 10am
Liz Amor
Jonathan Valdes
Diana Regalado
Ariel Canino

TR 9:50am
Ziqi Wang
Sarah Telemaque
Patricia Suarez
Diego Garcia

TR 11:15am
Rut Silva
JP
Brandon regalado
Melany Dasilva

T 5:40pm
Viviana Banaszak
Sebastian Game
Damian Flores
Ana Maria Toaca
Athina James

what's a student assistant (SA)? 

a leader! 

someone who's able to communicate and interact positively and effectively with their classmates. 

SAs possess sound judgment and strong organizational skills. 

they speak, read and write english fluently. 

SAs are benevolent, hard working and altruistic. 

i'm proud to have them. assistants are supposed to help the class with homework, information about assignments, questions about concepts, etc, & if possible, organize a review before exams. i've had student assistants organize a group of students and help them review material (this is the best kind of help i can think of and i'll definitely reward it).