section #4 Siddhartha

This section deals with many things , like Siddhartha noticing he has fallen into the materialistic world , and discovering he has a son. He also accomplishes what he has been searching for during all his life, which is enlightenment. After being a wealthy merchant for many years he realises that this is not the way he wants to live his life, and he had escaped the jaws of materialism once and he had now fallen back in. This reminds me of a character in a movie named LOL. The character is a boy who has a band and loves to play the guitar, but his father doesn't allow him to play and tells him that he has to study, and basically has his entire life planned out for him. One day this character gets tired of obeying his father, and decides to leave to the concert, because he realises that he has been living a life he doesn't want.

later on Siddhartha reaches a river that turns on his switch of enlightenment, the river speaks ohm to him and he decides to live there with a ferryman. He is now enlightened and feels at peace with the river, until kamala and his son appear back in his life. Kamala then dies and Siddhartha must take care of his son. He claims to love his son , yet he had never loved anyone before. So when Siddharthas son said he wanted to leave it was very sad news for him so de did not let him, but later on he escapes. This also reminds me to another fragment of the movie LOL. The main character , Lola , is a teen ager that is very similar to her mom but neither she or her mother know that. One day lola goes to paris and has many adventures there and she writes about them in her diary, so when her mother reads it by accident she is very surprised. Lola's mother than prohibits many of her activities and keeps her on a tight leash, but later on she sees that Lola is exactly like her. So this relates to Siddhartha in a sense that Lola is Siddharthas son and her mother is Siddhartha, because Siddhartha wants to hide his son from all the dangers , just like his dad did with him. So you can see that history seems to repeat itself and you can see how you change your points of view as a character.

Section #3 Siddhartha

In the third section you can see that Kamala and Siddhartha have established a type of relationship but Siddhartha is forced to become a business man, this goes against his beliefs. Siddhartha analyses his relationship with kamala and concludes that they don't love each other , but for him it is a new opening to the world, and for her it is a chance to profit. I can relate this idea (of two people being with each other because they both benefit) to many different things , first of all to the movie the princess and the frog. In this movie the frog claims to be a prince, and charms one of the princess servants into kissing him, supposedly to make him prince. Here the servant profits because the prince had promised her a bakery, and the frog profits because he gets to become human. In the end the movie ends up making the servant a frog , along with the prince. In the book Siddhartha, Kamala benefits because her work consists of sex and Siddhartha is one of her regular clients and she gains from that. Siddhartha gains a new way to see love , to see the world, and Kamala teaches him to love even though they don't love each other. This allows Siddhartha to get closer to enlightenment.

This section also reminds me of a scientific term called mutualism. Mutualism is when two organisms establish a relationship in which each one benefits. In nature this is a very important part , for example a sloth allows algae to grow on his fur. The sloth benefits because the algae provides camouflage , allowing him to hide from his predators, and the algae gets closer to sunlight which allows it to go through the process of photosynthesis. So the message we get is that many times people use each other to benefit. Just like Siddhartha uses Kamala to get closer to enlightenment.

section #2 Siddhartha

In the second section it speaks mostly of enlightenment and how to find it. In this part Siddhartha leaves behind Govinda who has become one of the Buddha's disciples. As i was reading i was able to find certain segments that have a lot of meaning.

"you are clever , O samana," said the illustrious one, "you know how to speak cleverly , my friend. Be on your guard against too much cleverness." - page 26. Here you can see a conversation between siddhatha and buddha. The message the buddha wants to transfer is that you can be clever , but sometimes too much cleverness is bad. had always been clever , superior to everyone else in a way and he was so used to it that he thought he was even smarter than the buddha, but then buddha outsmarted him and bought him the lesson that he deserved.

"He realized that he was no longer a youth, he was now a man. He realized that something had left him, like the old skin that a snake sheds. something was no longer in him, something that had accompanied him right through his youth and was part of him: this was the desire to have teachers and to listen to their teachings. " - page 30. After having a talk with buddha he realizes that he doesn't want to be lectured but to experience the lectures for himself, to explore the world how ever he wants to do so.

"when anyone reads anything which he wished to study, he does not despise the letters and punctuation marks, and call them illusion, chance and worthless shells, but he reads them, he studies and loves them, letter by letter. But I who wished to read the book of the world and the book of my own nature, did presume to despise the letters and signs. I called the world of appearances , illusion. I called my eyes and tongue, chance. Now it is over ; I have awakened. "- page 32. Siddhartha notices that he has been living life in a very different perspective , he was so concentrated on reading the entire book that he skipped some words along the way , to put it in context with the story. I can connect this paragraph to my life because sometimes you have a task to complete and you focus on the big things on the main ideas and not on the small details that are equally as important.

section #1 siddhartha

connections:

• In the text it mentions that Siddhartha´s parents had very high hopes of him , they where very proud of him and I can relate that to now a days when people have very high expectations for their children and are always very proud , many times you can see a type of competition between parents to prove whoose child was the best. 
• Sometimes when people expect a lot from you you try so hard to make them happy so you forget about your own happiness which is the most important.  
• Sometimes when you feel something is missing you start thinking about many things , about your future , about your surroundings, etc. Well at least it happens to me , that I get elevated thinking about my life and end up finding more problems than I thought I actually had.
• when Siddhartha asks his father for permission to become a samana and his father denies it , Siddhartha proves himself by standing all through the night completely still. sometimes when they don't give me permission I try to prove my point in different subtle ways.

paradox and oxymoron

This image represents a paradox. Paradox is an argument that produces an inconsistency typically within logic or common sense. If you look at this image without really focussing you see the structure of a cube, but if you look at it with detail you notice that the structure is not logical. one of the columns passes behind a wooden bar and proves that this is illogic and cannot be done. In many other paintings you can see that illusions are made with stairs and many use black and white so that it looks more realistic.

These are other examples of paradox, as you can see many times the idea is to make you see it in different dimensions , depending on which part you focus on the most. Many companies like to use paradox constructions in their logo because it adds a bit of interest to the company. many times the shadows also have a big effect because they can cause an optical illusion because the viewer bases their perspective on the shadow. If you look at the first image that is made of lines you see that some parts look deeper than others, that is what tricks people.

This is an example of an oxymoron, an oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms. Here you see that one sign tells you to stop but another one located in the same plays tells you to keep moving so they are total opposites. one of the things I analyzed in class with my group was that to know one you have to know the other , for example you can't know light without dark , or you can't know sweet without sour so things are interdependent.

analects

I chose the analect 4.4 of Confucius because I believe that even though it is simple it has a lot of meaning. The analect said "merely set your heart sincerely upon goodness and you will be free of bad intentions." I can infer that from this analect , the master is trying to tell us that even if you do a little bit of good , you will get good in return. But he also specifies with the word sincerely that we must do it with good intentions and with pleasure , and not just so that you can get good intentions in return.

you can see examples of goodness in those who do charity work specially because they volunteer their time to help those in need, they do it only because they are glad to do so and not because they are expecting something in return , like a prize or a cash reward. But sometimes students do the charity work only because they need the hours to graduate high school, and that is what Confucius does not want.

SPELLBOUND

Should we still have spelling bees? Why? Why not?

When it comes to spelling bees my position is neutral. I believe that participating and preparing in a spelling bee has positive and negative effects. When you inscribe in a spelling bee you are submitting yourself into a long process that has various rounds of competition. If you want to get far in the competition you have to study a humungous quantity of words, now this will take up a big amount of your time. Having little time left makes it very hard to have a social life , and even if you had time many societies specially the one in the United States doesn't include "nerds" much, well at least that is what many people consider the participants of spelling bees. But on another side the positive outcomes of participating are that you don't get involved in things like drugs , gangs , alcohol and other unhealthy things. You also develop more academically and expand your knowledge. When you go to the contests you can become friend of other participants that are just like you and that will give you a social life that is more suitable for you.

Allowing spelling bees to continue have good opportunities just as I had mentioned before, but also has its down side. The state gives children a chance to participate but it is their choice if they give up their social life and possibly stress from the pressure that is placed on them. But it also gives them a chance to participate in a group of few people who share the same interests.

Choose one subject (person). Describe how winning the spelling bee is important to that subject.

Neil , a indian child from Sanclemente, California was probably the one with most pressure to win the competition. He studied 8,000 words daily and had various tutors for the different languages. His parents where very demanding on this subject and pressured him a lot to do his best. His grandfather hired various people to pray for him and offers to feed a few thousand people in india if he won the spelling bee, so he had the pressure from his family. It was important to him so that he didn't disappoint his familly.