Hakuin's art associated with Zen's mind Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Hakuin's art associated with Zen's mind - Essay Example The art surprised out from him as an over whelming response to express his vision over Zen. His painting and inscriptions had spread all over the Japan about his genius wisdom and his wily sense of hum -our. Of about a thousand or more of Hawkins paintings survive till today. Hakuin felt that word are not the only media through which Zen could be passed on to the bent genere, but there are others respects through which teachings of Zen can be visualized. His paintings were filed with novel ideas that never existed before, with liveliness and as through it is the source of Zen, they represented of new themes to a great extent. He regarded the paintings as visual sermons. Though he started painting at the age of sixty, he is considered as one of the greatest painter of Japanese tradition The Zen master started following Hakuin, taking him as example to teach through brush and ink. This tradition is being carried on till today. The main aim in making the paintings is to inspire and instruct about the Zen, that has a very exclusive set of aesthetics principles. The paintings doesn't depict the pure aesthetic phenomena of Zen and so it was reversed as "folk art" The art of Zen doesn't had any pictorial representation of mind, whether symmetrical or asymmetrical, simple of complex. It even ignores the round Zen circles. The thing that is given highest importance in Zen art is the level of "bokki" included in the work. "bokki" here is enlightment of the soul that is achieved thought continuously meditating suppleness, clarity, vigor, intensity, extension and scale through art. And hence the work of art represents the state of enlightment in the artist. The Zen masters, to bring enlightment from deep inside the mind of the people, they performed the duty of shouting as for, they realized that any pain within could be drawn out and that energy is the heat equalized with shouts. So they can cool down their pupil and then give a sharp blow of enlightment. This way he is mobilizing the eyes properly and they attain enlightment unswervingly. Some of the Hakuin's paintings depicted bodhisattva or were almost Buddha like statures. He first outlined and brushed them deeply and filled color lightly. "Daruma", a Zen patriarch was Hakuin's major subject, and the first subject he painted for. The works of Hakuin's with an impression of monumentality conveys that they are with full of sprit and are very vital but exist in an animated manner. The boudhi dharma or Daruma and its spirit work out the real Zen. Hakuin added the most vital messages to the drawings of Daruma, which directly pointed to the heart of the human and insisted the pupil to see their own nature and become Buddha. According to him a human heart has Buddha hood deep within. The Zen is depicted using very few words. Mostly, it is depicted quietly. Enlightment is not attained by the unblinking eyes or by carefully mobilized eyes but by going to a state of immobility. He also taught that students must take care in spreading their rare, innate, own penetrating old wit. They should stay firmly instead. Hakuin as said to be had given lecture fourteen

Jeremy Bentham Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Jeremy Bentham - Essay Example The main basis behind this theory is that an act can be considered to be good or bad depending on the amount of people it is able to help against the number of people who may be inconvenienced so to speak by that same act. In short it can be said that the theory tends to focus on the greater good capacity of an act when determining whether the subject matter is to be considered good or detrimental towards the society (Bykvist, 2009). This is clearly seen in Jeremy Bentham’s claim that it is actually the largest happiness from the biggest number of people that can be considered to be the measure of right and wrong. To put it simply, whether an act is good or not is determined upon the maximization of that utility in question. Something can be considered to be good or bad based on whether it brings more good or bad as an end result. This theory can be said to be both supported and contradicted by a number of nursing and healthcare practices. This can be explained by the diversity of the healthcare sector which means that hardly any two cases are exactly the same thus there are times when the theory may apply to healthcare practices while at other times it does not (Bykvist, 2009). A good example of a healthcare practice that supports this theory is the action of quarantining an individual with a contagious disease. Though such a move may be considered reclusive and even impersonal as the person is kept away from family and friends or any other support system to help them get through such hard times, it is for the greater good that it is done as allowing them contact with others may prove deadly to those who remain uninfected. A practice that may not fit into the greater good system would be the elimination of a ground zero subject who is putting other people at risk as the code of ethics does not support murder under any circumstance. In this instance the greater good is not enough to justify such an act. Two sections of the ANA Code of Ethics

The Importance Of Pre-Modern Society

The Importance Of Pre-Modern Society Human history can be divided into three phases: pre-modern, modern and post modern. There is no definite beginning or end to each of these phases; rather they merge into one another, as not all societies moved forward at the same time. Although most industrialised countries are now considered post modern, a large proportion of the Third World remains modern or in some cases pre- modern. Pre- Modern is the period in society which came prior to Modernity, which began in Europe after the introduction of Industrial society and large scale production. Sociology and modernity are closely intertwined, but it has also been argued that sociology is actually a product of modernity. During this piece I will examine pre- modern society and discuss some of the reasons why the study of this era is important for sociology. What is Pre- modern Society? The pre-modern era spans from before history and can be separated into two phases, before and after settled agriculture. Before settled agriculture, society lives off the land, hunting and gathering. An example of a hunter- gatherer society that exists today is the Arctic foragers, who occupy the circumpolar region of the earth. Due to the lack of vegetation in this area of the world, most Arctic foragers are forced to live on a diet of meat. Many Arctic people are extremely mobile like the feudal societies of pre- modern times. Pre-modern society: The term pre- modern, covers a number of different societal forms: hunter-gatherer, agrarian, horticultural, pastoral and non-industrial. Pre-modern social forms have now virtually disappeared, although they are still in existence in some of todays societies, therefore pre- modern cannot be defined in terms of historical development. In this respect, pre-modern societies can be characterised by a combination of economic, political and cultural circumstances. In pre-modern society, work was not highly specialised and the number of roles necessary to produce things were relatively small, therefore the division of labour was simple when compared to modern societies. Most of the labour forces engaged in agricultural activity and produced food through subsistence farming. The majority of pre-industrial groups had standards of living not much above survival, meaning that most of the population were focused on producing only enough goods for means of survival. The rise of settled agricultural villages meant the build up of storable produce, which represented a cultural advance for civilisation. With the development of storage, in some rare cases came some social unrest, as what could be stored could also be stolen. It should be noted here that in pre- modern times there was very little deviance, as communities were extremely close knit and everybody knew each other. Pre- Modern society was a time without class distinctions and people shared the same sense of values. In Pre- Modern times, a persons sense of purpose was expressed through a faith. Religious officials held the positions of power within the communities and were the intermediaries to the general masses. The population of pre-modern times saw God as the main entity and those closest to him, for example the religious officials, were seen as the community leaders. Persons in pre- modern society did not see themselves as having an individual identity rather a group identity. Social life in pre-modern society also often had religion at its core. Villages were divided into parishes and the observance of religion took place at a community level. In post modern society, the influence of religion appears to have lessened, although it formed the basis for modern penal laws, which regulate human behaviour like religion did in pre- modern times. Industrialisation and the making of Modern Society: In order to understand why the study of pre- modern times is vital to sociology, it is important to look to the Industrial Revolution, as this was a time of great change for European society, and the crossing over from pre- modern to modern society. Industrialisation is the process whereby social and economic change transforms a pre- industrial society into an industrial one. Industrialisation also introduces a form of philosophical change, where people take a different attitude towards their perception of nature. During the Industrial revolution, an economy based on manual labour was replaced by one taken over by industry and the manufacture of machinery. Rapid industrialisation cost many craft workers their jobs and scores of weavers also found themselves unemployed as they could not compete with machinery. Many unemployed workers turned their anger towards the machines that had taken their jobs and began destroying factories and machinery. These activists became known as Luddites and became extremely popular. The British government took drastic measures against the Luddites using the army to protect the factories. The Industrial Revolution saw the emergence of class, urbanisation and the bad conditions in which people had to live and work in. Marxism essentially began as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. As the Industrial Revolution progressed so did the gap between class structures. According to Karl Marx, industrialisation polarised society into the bourgeoisie, and the much larger proletariat. Ordinary working people found increased opportunity for employment in the mills and factories and in some cases had no choice but to move to the towns and cities in search of work. By the early 1900s up to eighty per cent of the population of Britain lived in urban centres (Kumar, 1978, cited in Bilton et al, p.28). Using the clock to time ones self, as a basis of social organisation, was an indicator of the emergence of a modern society. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries both agricultural and manufacturing labour became set by the clock in a way that was very different to pre-modern production. In pre-modern times factors such as hours of daylight set work rhythms, whereas the factories were regulated by the clock, labour was synchronised and took place for a certain number of hours each day and on particular days of the week. For the factory owners and their employees, time now equalled money. The working conditions were often strict with long working hours and a pace that was set by machinery and production. With the Industrial Revolution came an increase in population. Education was still limited and therefore children were expected to work. Child labour was appealing to employers as it was cheaper than employing an adult yet productivity was similar. The machines did not require strength to operate and there were no experienced adult labourers as the system was completely new. By the eighteenth century there was only around thirty percent of the population who engaged in agricultural activity, this enables us to gain some idea of the nature of modern society and the economic changes that took place as modern society developed. The majority of ordinary people were greatly affected by capitalism and industrial production. By the late 1900s Englands Black Country was one of the most industrialised parts of the United Kingdom and in the 1830s was described in the following way; The earth seems to have turned inside out. The coal. is blazing on the surface by day and by night the country is flowing with fire, and the smoke of the ironworks hangs over it. There is a rumbling and clanking of iron forges and rolling mills. Workmen covered in smut, and with fierce white eyes, are seen moving amongst the glowing iron and dull thud of the forge-hammers. (Jennings,1985 p.165) Conclusion: The transition from pre- modernity into modernity was important for sociology as people began to see that society was something important to study. Some argue that this was when sociology began as the emergence of modern societies created a new intellectual world aware of its surroundings and concerned with acquisition of knowledge. Sociology is concerned with the study of human societies.a society is a cluster, or a system of institutionalised modes of conduct.sociology has as its main focus the study of institutions of the advanced or the industrialised societies and of the conditions of transformation of those institutions. (Giddens 1982) As modernity took form, changes in social attitudes within society occurred making society itself interesting to others. Unlike the static pre- modern society, modern societies appear to have created many different groups, causing new and interesting interactions between people. In the pre- modern era, relationships between people in society were extremely similar and perhaps uneventful and society had been static, therefore sociology was not required.

Comparing Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Our Time Essay

Soul Writing in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Our Time      Ã‚  Ã‚  Real writing, soul writing is dangerous; there is an intrinsic, gut-churning element of risk within the process of telling the truth, a risk that yields an adrenaline rush that parallels skydiving and skinny-dipping. The thrill of one's own truth displayed nakedly in little black letters on a white page is scary and beautiful, both chaining and freeing. The issue for authors, like skydivers, is that after they jump out of the plane (start writing) the fears don't disappear. The diver-author asks herself, "Should I really be doing this... What if my parachute doesn't work... What if I'm misunderstood?" Harriet Jacobs and John Edgar Wideman undergo this free-fall, these fears. In the telling of their stories, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs) and Our Time (Wideman), each author is self-conscious. Both authors tell about a minority in their stories; Jacobs speaks of the female slave and Wideman speaks of the African-American gangster. Because they tell the story of a minority to a majority, they can't afford to be misunderstood. They also can't afford to write solely in metaphors because they not only must prove their competence through reserved analysis but also must appeal to the hearts and minds of their audience.    The authors must bring middle class white readers as close to the slave plantation or the Ghetto or the prison cell as possible. For this reason, both authors refer to the reader with questions. This rhetorical device forces the reader to place herself in the situation of the main character. For example, when discussing the abuse she took from her master, Dr. flint, Jacobs asks, "But where could I turn for protection?"(47... ...nd unresolved, not because the authors are incompetent, but because the issues that they write about don't have resolutions. The readers are left with the same frustration as the authors. Past can't be erased, roles can't be traded, and sympathy can't be transformed into empathy. But the sheer act of writing and publishing their stories is a resolution. While to jump off the plane is terrifying, and wind stings the face as one falls, once on the ground the writer can find resolution purely in the explanation itself, even if it ends unresolved.    Works Cited Jacobs, Harriet.   "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl."   The Classic Slave Narratives.   Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.   New York: Mentor, 1987. Wideman, John Edgar. "Our Time" excerpted in Ways of Reading (4th edition), David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky, eds. (Boston: Bedford Books, 1996).

Education Has the Power Essay

A great scholar named Bacon once said â€Å"Knowledge is power.† How do we obtain knowledge? How do we effectively use it? The answer lies in education. The development and maintenance of a country is in the hands of its people. The people need to be educated to make beneficial decisions that would promote economical prosperity for their country. This essay will discuss why education is the single most important factor in the development of a country. First and foremost, a country strives to develop economically and sustainably. There is increasing demands for talented individuals to advance in every field to meet this development objective. These individuals need cultivation to find and develop their talents. Through education, individuals are provided with sufficient information and resources for advancements in their fields; making significant contributions to the economy of the country. Education has a tremendous influence on the civilization of a country. Education provides individuals with knowledge to question conscience, identify the good and the bad, analyze the mistakes of history, and make beneficial decisions. Thus, developing positive character attributes, decreasing the negative road blocks of a country’s development (e.g. crime), and preventing citizens from becoming criminals. As well-educated parents pass on their dignity to future generations, education sustains a system of significant contributions to a country’s society. On the other hand, education could serve as a source of economical growth for a country. Well established educational facilities attract students from all over the world to study in them. These students contribute to local markets by consumerism and by paying tuition. After graduating, many students may choose to stay and contribute to the country because they have settled. By investing in educational facilities, the country is able to profit from young intellectuals who would contribute to the country’s development. Education is the most fundamental factor in the development of a country. When people talk about a country’s development, they often refer to the country’s economical growth, induced by the structures of political, technological, and foreign affair systems. Education inspires intellectuals and innovation that will sustain and advance the country’s economy. There’s a famous proverb stating â€Å"If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, if you teach the man to fish you feed him for a lifetime†. This proverb supports the fact that knowledge leads to sustainable development. Education is a worthwhile investment in human capitals that consequents to significant contributions for the sustainability and advancements in a country’s technology, health, economics, politics, and culture. In conclusion, education is not only the single most important factor in the development of a country, but it is also the most fundamental factor. After all, you wouldn’t see progress or profit from uncultivated workforces, would you?

The Monkey’s Paw: the Light Footprint of British History

The Monkey's Paw: The Light Footprint of British History by M. Lutfi / 1104391 Written in 1906, â€Å"The Monkey's Paw† is a story about Whites' family who received a dried â€Å"monkey's paw†, dubbed as a magical item which will grant their three wishes, from one of their friend, Sergeant-Major Morris. Taking it as a joke, they wished for two hundred pounds, which they later get in the expense of the death of their son, Herbert. Hopeless, they then wished for their son to come back into life, only to realize that those wish won't become true.This story is particularly interesting because the author chose to portray the life of an average English family life, and how they deal with issues such as death of a family member, while still talking about the larger issues in the Victorian age, such as Industrial Revolution, the belief to the spiritual or mythical deity, and cultural issues related to the imperialism. In the start of this story, the reader is presented with the visit of Sergeant-Major Morris to the Whites' family villa, with a â€Å"souvenir† which happened to be a â€Å"magic† monkey's paw from India.After this scene, readers can infer that there's a cultural exchange from the colonized country (as India is one of the country that was colonized by England). The â€Å"magic† monkey paw might be a souvenir or a charm given by locals – at that age, giving a charm to people going overseas was considered to be a symbol of tribute. By accepting the paw, Sergeant-Major Morris successfully brought a piece of Indian culture relic to the UK, and it also could be read as the writer's attempt to say that behind the colonialism, there's some hope of peace and understanding left.Then the story moves forward to the act in which they doubted the effect of the charm. The act could be read as an attempt to introduce how people tend to question the spiritual belief system. In the age where new ideas, founding in science, and inn ovations were praised a lot, people started to question everything – how things work, how the earth functions, and so on. Peoples tend to believe things when they see the â€Å"proof†, especially when the social situation also pledged uncertainty. After they wished to the monkey's paw, they had their wish come true, but in the expense of their son passed away.If the readers read critically to the story, they can find two issues being addressed here by the writer; how one's life revolves, and another bigger issue: the darker side of Industrial Revolution. From the aforementioned scene, the writer hides the message about how one's life revolve; we gain one thing in our life, then we also lose another. You can't be greedy and wish for everything in this life to be picture-perfect; it's a given. This way, the writer addressed, and criticized, eloquently the greediness of imperialists. Another thing to note from this scene is that the Industrial Revolution is not all that f riendly to the humanity.The movement, which starts in the middle of 19th century and ends before World War, is a movement which focused to change the manufacturing process from manual to automatic, using machines to achieve such goal. However, it caused significant damage to the society and labor issues is not an exception. Lots of people became victim; either became dead, lost their job, or got below-average wages. In this story, the cruelness of Industrial Revolution is depicted subtly, but it did leave an impression to the readers. The story reached its end by the couple wishing their son come back into life to the monkey's paw, but their wish was unfulfilled.In this scene, it can be concurred that the writer's trying to remind people to remain rational when times went rough – doing irrational things won't help the situation at all, as depicted in this scene. â€Å"The Monkey's Paw† is a good read for those interested in the British history. The story flows nicely, the character was depicted vividly, and the diction is not too hard to understand. The issues discussed here are also explained in a way that won't make anyone frown, even though the story talks about one of the darkest part of the world history.