Alice and Diversity

   "Who are you?" said the Caterpillar.
   This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, "I - I hardly know, Sir, just at present - at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then." (47)



http://trendland.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/alice-in-wonderland-by-annie-leibovitz-1.jpg

A new form of Alice

One of the first questions we confronted coming into this class was "Who are you?" I distinctly remember Professor Bump asking us this question in a deep, thought-provoking way, and looking very deliberately around at each of us. It was almost uncomfortable in a way. I've thought about this question before - who hasn't in high school? - but never to the extent that we have in this class. I also remember talking to a third year Plan II + Architecture student who had Bump, and he told me that after taking this World Lit class, we will never have a problem writing self-analysis essays.

Well. That's for sure. Considering we pretty much write about ourselves every week.

As if university itself wasn't all about finding out who we were and growing along the way, World Lit, or in particular, the Bumpster World Lit intensifies that process by condensing it into one year. We've almost had a focused process of self-discovery and pilgrimage. We've come into this class and been thrown into all manner of odd experiences that we had no way of expecting. We meditated every class, wrote personal stories on the internet, crawled under tables to be reborn as our spirit animals, discussed religious beliefs and the concept of speciesism, and tried to define love and compassion. We've acted out scenes from Alice in Wonderland, Gawain and the Green Knight (and learned to pronounce it K-nit), and Adam and Eve's fall from heaven. We've acted goofy, we've cried or been shocked speechless, and feasted. We've connected to animals at APA who haven't experienced the love they deserved, and I personally learned that there's a lot less to fear about animals then I'd initially thought. Or at least to be uncomfortable with. That's a kind of diversity - a diversity of experience. We've experienced a plethora of situations that we wouldn't have without taking the first step and leaving home.

All of these things have had a changing impact on us. This doesn't even mention the fact that we are away from home, learning independence for the first time and meeting all manners of diverse people and experiencing diversity in thought and philosophy and belief as well. I know I learned alot about myself that I hadn't known before - for example, I can go without a lot of sleep and still manage to somewhat function without being cranky. I've learned I'm a lot stronger than I expected. I learned how much I love to discover and explore. I've learned to look at the world with new eyes - literally, everything I learn in my architecture classes has taught me to see things differently. The patterns in nature can be a source of inspiration, and you can abstract bird feathers into a design for a building. Seriously. YOu can. World Lit has taught me not to take things at face value and to always always say yes to new experiences. My photo class has taught me to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

I honestly feel like the Sadia who came here a semester ago is a very different person from the girl typing this blog right now. An actively changing, growing, evolving person. My roots are the same, but my branches are reaching.

"Then she began looking about, and noticed that what could be seen from the old room was quite common and uninteresting, but that all the rest was as different as possible. For instance, the pictures on the wall next to the fire seemed to be all alive, and the very clock on the chimney-piece (you know you can only see the back of it in the Looking-glass) had got the face of a little old man, and grinned at her." (144)

http://trendland.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/alice-in-wonderland-by-annie-leibovitz-3.jpg

Alice on the brink of another adventure.

Recently we all took the Meyers-Briggs personality test. I was so shocked and excited by its accuracy that I immediately told all of my friends in studio to take the test as well. I discovered I was an INFJ, which is about 1-3% of th population, and is in subcategory of Idealist. That's pretty spot on. That is even further broken down into The Protector. According to thepersonalitypage.com, "INFJs are gentle, caring, complex and highly intuitive individuals. Artistic and creative, they live in a world of hidden meanings and possibilities. Only one percent of the population has an INFJ Personality Type, making it the most rare of all the types."

As someone who lives in a world of hidden meanings and possibilities, I really loved the description of the Looking-glass world that Alice ventured into. I think we've all had that moment in this class (at least I think we have? Just through meditation maybe?) when the ordinary world develops some sort of hidden meaning. Some quirk that doesn't mean the world has changed, but you have. I know after watching Earthlings, I walked around in this wierd funk, feeling completely detached from everyone else, everyone who hadn't seen what we'd just shared in class. The world was wierdly colorful, people were oddly cheery, and the world seemed made of plastic.

This moment has come at better times too. WHen we first went to the Turtle Pond to meditate about nature, just the fact that we were outside on a gorgeous day enjoying the fact that we were outside made the environment and situation much more beautiful. The edges of everything glittered. Just learning about things I normally pass by without giving too much thought to can change the world too. For example when Professor BUmp pointed out the hidden meanings in the symbols that decorate the Tower - something that was just "pretty" before became meaningful. That was great!

As an artist, maybe this comes to me more just because I have this strange imagination that likes to make stories out of the randomest things and gains inspiration from the mundane as well as the magical. Whether that's just me being an INFJ or provoked through this class, I look forward to seeing where we journey to next.

Mother DB

So. I'm not going to break the trend, because I don't think there was much variation in our immediate responses to seeing the prompt for today's DB: Sheer flabbergastedness. I definitely was baffled for a while, and struggled to figure out how i would possibly condense my entire experience thus far into one blog entry. This class, the experiences of this semester, has been such a powerful factor in my growth that I couldn't comprehend trying to explain it all. However, a trip down the path to nostalgia is never one to turn down!

Reading back on our first DB, I laughed out loud. I remember how nervous I was to write about Hopkins' poem, to analyze something like "Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,/ Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion" (Anthology 1, 85). It turns out that the phrase "Fall" would be one I'd soon become ultra familiar with as we kept began to discuss this concept of free falling.

The concept of free falling was a difficult one to grasp. We came to university as high achieving uptight high-strung high-stress highschool graduates (well, maybe not allllll of us), and to be told that to succeed in learning and leading in life, we'd have to let go was pretty shocking. It was like hearing that to make the perfect architecture project, I'd get splashed with wet plaster, ripped apart by a panel of reviewers, and fail a zillion times - the whole thing was "process." Oh, wait, no one told me that, it just happens! Life isn't exactly full of convenient warnings.

Pretty respectable and clean cut, right? Picture of a great student, yeah?

A failaure on the way to success... and learning all the way.

 We continued expanding our mind to new concepts. We learned about Dobie and his significance at UT, and rooted for Table Cloth, who "was full of the pride and energy of life" (Anthology 1, 116). Our third blog, written about perfectionism in which we read of the destructive habits of perfectionists, of suicide, and serious(ly) depressing topics, I found out what exactly it takes to be a Bumpster. It requires an unabashed ability to talk about yourself - to REALLY talk about yourself. Somehow, I ended up writing about stuff that I planned to tell hardly anybody ever, but I guess I couldn't stop myself. This resonated with me: "Perfectionism is a duel with oneself, the ultimate "no-win" situation" (Anthology 1, 164) and I basically spilled my guts. I was terrified actually, that I'd be the only one who came up with something personal, but reading everyone else's blogs truly touched me. It seemed we all collectively decided to take our first step towards free fall. We were letting go, just a bit. But that little bit at the time was huge.

Then came our rebirths. Our animal rebirths. Here was our first defining moment of self-discovery. After meditation, we were instructed to look within ourselves, and find out what animal was our spirit animal. With some searching, I discovered I was akin to the Owl, who provides strength, wisdom, and sanity during an all-nighter spent in the architecture studio.

Guided by my spirit animal...



Cause during those late nights, sanity can be in short supply!

My other spirit animal is the hummingbird. If you wonder why I'm always so chipper, I think the hummingbird can provide a clue. Despite the fact that its life is so tenuous and transient, it is playful and colorful and vibrant, and thrilled with whatever life has to offer. Besides discovering our wild sides, we also charted our growth through life with Alice and Ram Dass. With Alice, we learned more about free fall, and how she exclaimed, "After such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling downstairs!" (13). By falling hard, we'd see how we make such a big deal out of things that really shouldn't be a crisis, and look with fresh eyes at what is truly worth being upset about around us. Ram Dass supplemented this learning by teaching us how to listen to suffering. "We need to enlist the service of the intellect, but not let it block the intuitive compassion of the heart," (130) he teaches. THis lesson in learning and awareness and compassion was right on time as we moved into our unit on Speciesism.

Earthlings was awful. I'm not going to filter this - I personally thought it was just terrible. Not that it was made terribly or anything like that - it was just so gut-twistingly horrifying to see. It was precisely the type of shocker people need in order to open their eyes and be forced to reexamine an issue. For us, this was the issue of how we treat animals. We read about the connection between speciesism, racism, and sexism, and a plethora of texts including Elizabeth Costello by COetzee, The Jaguar, and things about cruelty, such as Nero and the Four Stages of Cruelty. This all connected together and forced us to confront the issue of suffering, an issue most humans try to avoid thinking about unless its about themselves. Nevertheless, we strove to put ourselves in another's shoes... or paws, ,whatever the case, and think about the issue of animals vs. humans from a different perspective. Perhaps what we were trying to learn is that there is no different perspective? 

Regardless of whether we think the same way or not, we share the same planet.

As we progressed on our pilgrimage, we delved into religious texts and how they deal with love and compassion. Our basic conclusion was that all religions embrace this concept of love and empathy and compassion towards our neighbors, whether stranger or friend. While discussing this, we of all diverse backgrounds in our class found how much more alike we are than we are different. It was refreshing to see so much open-minded learning and curiousity about each other. "Compassion is that which makes the heart of the good move at the pain of others. It crushes and destorys the pain of others; thus, it is called compassion. It is called compassion because it shelters and embraces the distressed. -The Buddha" (Anthology 3, 107). We have all been on this journey, and have been compassionate towards one another. Eastern thought and Western thought are different in many ways, but also remarkably similar. REading Ishmael though, we learned about Takers and Leavers, and within Takers, there was no East adn West. There was just Takers, which is who we are now, and who we won't be soon if we continue on a path towards destruction. I think Ishmael was probably one of our more controversial readings - it just forced us to think in ways we weren't used to and presented so many new and different ideas of thinking about the world. Perhaps we were more hesitant to accept some of these thoughts because they dealt with our religions, and people get very attached to their religion. I personally went back to the Qur'an and started researching my beliefs a lot more because of this, so I'm truly glad we read the book.

And then there was Siddhartha. Siddhartha went on a journey, just like we are - perhaps our trips are not identical, but we are similar in that like him, ours is chock full of questions and a search for ourselves. "The hours  where he found his own being were inescapable, whether in shadows or in rain he was once more Siddhartha and the agony of the cycle of existence was once more laid upon him." (18) Siddhartha had a long and strenuous search for himself, but in the end, he realized the journey, the search itself was his answer. THere was no such thing as time, only the present existed, and he was himself at every moment of his life. I wonder what earth shattering discoveries we are to make before the semester is over?



Om.

aryabhatt.com

Siddhartha 2

"The wheel of physical manifestations is turning quickly, Govinda. Where is Siddhartha the Brahmin? Where is Siddhartha the Samana? Where is Siddhartha the rich man? Ephemeral things change quickly, Govinda; you know this." (88)

Life is transient. People go through cycles, aging through different experiences and gaining in wisdom and knowledge. It is when I think of death or hear of it that I realize just how fragile we are. Our time on Earth is a mere blip in the grand scheme of things. Despite the fact that life feels like it lasts a lifetime, which it obviously does, and that a lifetime feels like the longest span of time, we are not truly here for ever. Maybe its a spiritual thing as well - I mean, I kind of think our spirit and soul live on far after our physical shell has expired, but the point is, we are constantly changing. Life is dynamic and in motion. With every breath we take, we breathe in an idea or something that changes us.

I especially like the idea of how ephemeral our MINDS are. Not just our physical body which is easy to see changes in. But we can be totally consumed by a mere thought and that can alter our entire disposition, our entire purpose, our entire direction and journey and pilgrimage. The more we open ourselves and our minds to new ideas, the more we think and learn, the more we change and grow. Certain ideas can take hold and possess us, and certain ones can have the barest influence. The fact is though, we are so malleable, so fragile, both physically and mentally. I think that's what makes life beautiful. That it is not stagnant and boring and repetitious. Unless you stick in your own bubble and stay stagnant of course.

The other thing that struck me is how Siddhartha had so many different selves make up his cohesive self. I often wonder if that is possible. How does one with so many passions and interests figure out what exactly it is you ought to do in life? It took me ages to figure out what I wanted to do, what journey I wanted to take (I'm pretty certain I'll still be trying to figure it out when I'm old and wrinkly) because there are just so many possible paths to go on. How do you pinpoint who exactly you are when there are so many options on who you could be? But that's probably why we change so much. Because we can choose who to become through our different experiences. We might as well take a billion different paths, wander, get lost, fail, succeed, discover beauty and fear on our search towards Om.

Life is a lot of learning, and learning is a lot of experience, and experience is a lot about just letting go and trying it all.



The Ephemeral Theater proposal in China is a temporary structure.

archicentral.com

"He saw people living for themselves, saw them acheive an infinite amount for themselves, saw them travel, wage war, suffer an infinite amount, and endure an infinite amount. He could love them for it, and he saw life and that which is alive - the indestructible Brahman - in each of their passions and actions." (121)

Through that free fall, we discover passion. Humans live with passion, as Siddhartha has discovered - it makes us live life with purpose. I honestly think that passion is what makes us who we are. I don't believe that you need to choose something to do and then try to be passionate about it. I think you should discover what you're passionate about, and then choose to do that in your life. Through our failures and success, we find out what we do for the sake of doing.

This reminds me of a statistic I read on BBC several years ago. I'm not sure how accurately you can gauge the "happiness" of a nation, but one year, Bangladesh was listed as the happiest country in the world. I remember being absolutely baffled. It's a third world country! It's dirty and smelly and crowded and poverty is literally everywhere you turn. But that doesn't mean its not beautiful. I'm still not sure if the statistic was true. But it doesn't really matter. When I thought about it, I realized just how much joy there was. We're a happy people. Despite the pain of poverty and the fact that the country is amongst the poorest and most corrupt in the world, the point is that people try. People remember to enjoy the simple pleasures of life; there is SO MUCH poetry just on the beauty of rainfall. There is art and literature about mango groves and rice paddies, and the romance of drifting along the moving river with your soulmate. People are so full of vibrancy and color and spice and love and a ready willingness to gather together and party that it isn't hard to believe that this truly is a joyful nation.

Its all about the passion. Even if you are a simple ferryman.



We should all strive to do everything with passion!

beliefequalspossibility.com

Asian Religions

Lord Mahavira said, "If you are aware of all your actions, and are careful about what you do in relation to other living things, you will develop spirituality and be in perfect harmony with the natural world." (180)

Coming from an eastern background, I've noticed that there are different attitudes towards spirituality in the East and the West. One of the main differences is a cultural one, but one that I think truly affects how Easterners and Westerners live their lives. That's the idea of individuality and independence. In the Western school of thought, the rugged individualist is celebrated; the American forefathers were the epitomes of rugged individualism. They rebelled against their kingdom and founded an entire country based on the premise of sheer independence. In contrast, Easterners are all about the family unit. Eastern cultures prioritize the elders and the "Wise Ones." We are always taught to put our parents, our brothers and sisters, our grandparents' wishes and desires before our own. There is no celebration of the rugged individualist. That would be sheer selfishness.

Honestly, I think its ideal to strike a right balance. Both the West and the East have strengths and weaknesses, but the brilliant thing about the globalized lives we lead is that we can now draw from many diverse schools of thought! Its important to not be so completely focused on yourself that you disregard the feelings of others, but its also important to consider our own wishes and needs and desires as well as those of the people around us. To me, love and compassion is putting another before yourself, but I think its vital that you are a whole person attuned to your own emotions and worthy of your own care in order to be able to give of yourself. That way, if you are truly aware of yourself, then you can be one with nature and the living world as well.



hiddenlights.wordpress.com

Becoming one with the world.

"Let friendship be our religion, not only in our thoughts but in our actions as well." (183)

We've talked a lot about religion and spirituality in class, and regardless of what anyone believes, we seem to concede that actions are incredibly important. In fact, your actions are what show you for who you really are. Your thoughts are locked up in your head - if you don't act on it, they're nothing. You must put into the world more than you take out, in my opinion. The heart of friendship is love and compassion ( I feel like I've been saying that a lot, huh?) and if we ascribe to the belief/practice of friendship with as much passion as we ascribe to our individual religions or lack of religion, compassion would be much more prevalent in society. It would just be us caring for one another and the rest of the beings we share the world with.

"Friendliness is understood as the wish for others to be happy, and compassion as the wish to alleviate suffering. Both start with ourselves, by recognizing the fact of our own suffering and seeking to uproot its causes. Before turning to the plight of others, it is necessary to understand deeply the origins of suffering within ourselves. Such insight can then lead to a genuine capacity to show others the way to freedom from their inner pain." (169)



Compassion at its finest.

essencerestored.com

Although love and friendliness and compassion is looking beyond oneself, its vital that you understand the emotions of grief and suffering and sources of love within yourself so you can empathize with others. I feel like I can see the phenomenon of suffering much more clearly when I go to Bangladesh, just because it is literally everywhere you look. SOmetimes I wonder if the people who live there are desensitized to it, because while my heart is twisting at the children begging for money, my cousins can walk calmly by. Its not that they aren't bothered, but because they live right next to such blatant suffering, it doesnt register - this is a defensive mechanism that has its uses in keeping one sane, but is also hard to see sometimes. But being surrounded by such pain truly does bother those who live there - they are just better at hiding the effects.

"Ahimsa is not mere negative non-injury. It is positive, cosmic love. It is the development of a mental attitude in which hatred is replaced by love. Ahimsa is true sacrifice. Ahimsa is forgiveness. Ahimsa is Sakti (power). Ahimsa is true strength." (171)

Christianity

"And he answered, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." (156)

To me, this is the basic concept of love - to love another as much as, if not more than you love yourself. And I think love is at the heart of compassion, and compassion is thinking of somebody outside yourself. A lot of times, we get stuck in our own world, in the daily rituals of life that affects only us and perhaps our family and friends. Getting stuck in this rat race takes away the magic and mystery of life that we read of, what Ken Kesey describes as our job "to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom." (83) THe concept of neighborly love doesn't specifically mean the person who lives next door, but rather the human being right outside the boundaries of your own world. It is a common teaching in all religions to consider others. In Islam, there is a story of how the Prophet's wife Ayesha, one day, had some unexpected visitors. All the food left in the house for her, the Prophet, and their children were two dates (the Prophet lived a very meager life, going through poverty as well as relative prosperity). However, she offered the two dates to her two guests rather than deny them sustenance. There is a Hadith, or saying by the Prophet, that "Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day should not hurt his neighbor, and whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day should serve his guest generously, and whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day should talk what is good, or keep quiet." (Al-Bukhari, Volume 8, Number 158) In addition, we are taught to never eat while our neighbor goes hungry.

These are just some small examples of a great wealth of teachings, but the point is - the fundamental unit of compassion is love, and love, I think, is looking beyond yourself and truly caring for another. Obviously there is self love as well, and that is vital - you cannot give of yourself if you don't first love and accept yourself. In ON ANOTHER'S SORROW, Blake writes:

"And can He who smiles on all
Hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small bird's grief and care,
Hear the woes that infants bear-
...
He doth give His joy to all:
He becomes an infant small,
He becomes a man of woe,
He doth feel the sorrow too." (167)

Love and compassion entails putting yourself in another's situation and truly feeling with them. Feeling the pain and the grief and the sorrow and the excitement and happiness that they feel. It is becoming not necessarily ONE with someone else, but being in tune with them.



zenshinequotes.blogspot.com

This goes beyond our species.

Nothing and no one is too small or insignificant or unworthy of being heard. "The eucharist could serve to fight a ritual of absence witha  ritual of presence, forcig upon our attention suffering we would rather ignore." (165)

Ignorance is bliss, true. But bliss is not the best way to live life. If we are not even in tune with the basic cruelties existing in the world, cruelties that we ourselves enact through our simple decisions, how can we truly be compassionate to others? It is necessary to be conscious of the suffering in the world so that we can help. According to Ram Dass, "At another and deeper level, however, the suffering of others spontaneously awakens a response of instant empathy." (55) The thing is, we have to be receptive of other's suffering in order to feel that empathy and be compassionate.

And that's where stepping out of our own bubble, our own mini-universe, comes into play. THere's a huge wide world of beings, human and animal, who are calling out, if only we listen.



http://www.flickr.com/photos/sixsteps/2695066602/

A hugely powerful image of compassion.

"Love and Compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive."

-His Holiness, the Dalai Lama