As mentioned at the first meeting of our seminar, I originally took this class to fulfill a requirement set forth by the Hutchins School. However upon a little investigation and contemplation of my own, I have begun to think that I might find myself truly enjoying this class. Never having been much of a religious person, I suppose I've shied away from the ideas of organized religion. Though this may always be the case for me, I have recently developed a craving to learn why so many people, perhaps the majority, flock to one categorization or another. I feel that I have a little bit of an upper hand in these investigations of religion; this is due to the fact that I do not have any current preferences, including bias's to a particular denomination or faith. Perhaps my own indifference will make the acceptance of others' more easy to digest. Of the religions reviewed thus, Hinduism and Buddhism, I have found Buddhism to be the most meaningful to me. I think what attracted me the most was the qualities of inner peace that are required steps in becoming a Buddha. What first intrigued to the ideas of Buddhism was the story of Sayamuni Gautauma Siddhartha. Being the son of a ruler in India must have been quite a large weight on the back of the young Buddha. For his father to alter reality in such a way as to promote the idea that the world, as it existed, was a perfect thing, was a terrible farce. It was Buddha's father, whom hid the sick, weak and dead from his sheltered son's eyes. I am not sure whom I would be angrier with; my father for hiding the truth from me, or the state of reality that would be so dreadfully new to me. I suppose that if it weren't for his father the initial shock of reality might not have been there, had life's disappointments been available to him his whole life. Perhaps it was because of this shock that these images made such an impact. It was at this time that the young Buddha got the idea that lif...
