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Web Exercise 1: Worldview Intro. What do you think your own worldview is like? To get an idea, try answering for yourself the seven basic questions in page 10 of Sire's article. That will begin to give you a sense of the different factors that influence your view of the world. . Web Exercise 2: Refl
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1. WorldviewsExercises
2. Web Exercise 1: Worldview Intro What do you think your own worldview is like? To get an idea, try answering for yourself the seven basic questions in page 10 of Sire's article. That will begin to give you a sense of the different factors that influence your view of the world.
3. Web Exercise 2: Reflection a) What factors (e.g. upbringing, friends, etc.) do you think influence your own worldview? Give specific examples.
b) In which areas of your worldview do you think you are most likely share common ground with other students in the class, and in which areas do you think are more likely to differ?
c) Are there any aspects of your worldview that you think will never change. Why?
4. Powerful delusions
5. Powerful delusions
6. Exercise 3: Challenging Perspective Students read text from Thich Nhat Hanh
Challenges the notion of our ‘separateness’ and argues instead for radical interdependence
Buddhist notion of being under the sway of powerful delusions
Students are asked to zoom in on one of the challenging claims and apply the critique to their own experience.
7. Four Delusions “Self, person, living being, and life span are four notions that prevent us from seeing reality.” (Thich Nhat Hanh 1996)
8. 1. Self “Life is one. We do not need to slice it into pieces and call this or that piece a ‘self’. What we call a self is made up only on nonself elements…” “When we look at a flower, for example, we may think that it is different from ‘nonflower’ things. But when we look more deeply, we see that everything in the cosmos is in that flower. Without all of the nonflower elements – sunshine, clouds, earth, minerals, heat, rivers, and consciousness – a flower cannot be. That is why the Buddha taught that the self does not exist. We have to discard all distinctions between self and non-self.” (p.87)“When we look at a flower, for example, we may think that it is different from ‘nonflower’ things. But when we look more deeply, we see that everything in the cosmos is in that flower. Without all of the nonflower elements – sunshine, clouds, earth, minerals, heat, rivers, and consciousness – a flower cannot be. That is why the Buddha taught that the self does not exist. We have to discard all distinctions between self and non-self.” (p.87)
9. Four elements meditation “Practicing this, we see over and over that the elements inside and outside our body belong to the same reality, and we are no longer confined by our body. We are everywhere.”
(TNH, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, (Broadway, CA, 1999), p.70)
10. 2. Person “We usually discriminate between humans and nonhumans, thinking we are more important than other species. But since humans are made of nonhuman elements, to protect ourselves we have to protect all of the nonhuman elements. There is no other way.” (TNH) “The best way to take care of men and women so that they can be truly healthy and happy is to take care of the environment.” (p.88)
“We need to protect the ecology of the Earth and the ecology of the mind, or … violence and recklessness will spill over into even more areas of life.” (p.86)“The best way to take care of men and women so that they can be truly healthy and happy is to take care of the environment.” (p.88)
“We need to protect the ecology of the Earth and the ecology of the mind, or … violence and recklessness will spill over into even more areas of life.” (p.86)
11. “If you think ‘God created man in His own image and He created other things for man to use’, you are already making the discrimination that man is more important than other things.” (p.88)
12. 3. Living Being “When we look into ourselves, we see minerals and all other non-living-being elements. Why discriminate against what we call inanimate? To protect living beings, we must protect the stones, the soil, and the oceans.” (TNH)
13. 4. Death “This distinction between life and death is not correct. We have to accept death; it makes life possible. The cells in our body are dying every day, but we never think to organize funerals for them. The death of one cell allows for the birth of another.” (TNH).