Religious Study: The Middle Path

Recently, I visited to Wheaton Warrenville Sough High School in order to educationally observe. The following is my brief experience from one of the classrooms.

In a religious class, students learned and discussed the concepts, ideas and terms of the five major world religions. On the day that I observed, students were very interestingly learning about the terms of The Ka’aba, Ramadan, Hajj, Kosher Laws, Jehovah / Yahweh, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Diwali, Ahimsa, The Middle Way, Book of Revelation and Gospels. I saw many critical questions, which students made on the board and their discussions were really high and standardize.

I was asked by the teacher to introduce by myself with the class and also to contribute something in the class about the religions. I said that I was a Buddhist monk about one year. Then, teacher asked me to make an explanation about the “Middle Path” of the Buddhism. “Middle Path” is one of the prime concepts, which the Buddha taught. Probably it was theme of Buddhism.

The key meaning of middle path was ‘to avoid the extremism’ in any part of our lives and conditions; even to love, hate, like or dislike on anything, any person, any opinion, any fact, and so on, because no man or nothing is perfect. No body or nothing is perfect to be extremely loved or hated or liked or disliked. Besides, nothing is permanent; everything was changing; is changing; and will be changing. As soon as we extremely love or hate or like or dislike on something or somebody, it makes us to not to see the truth. We could be seeing, thinking and pointing unfairly because of that extremism, which we are having. Reversely, as soon as we avoid that extremism, we are able to see things, cases, problems, persons clearly. Therefore, it makes us to see the truth and it also always makes the appropriate way. Moreover, the ‘middle path’ also reminds us to not to be extremely sad because of very poor conditions in our lives and at the same time, to not to be extremely happy because of very good conditions in our lives. Nothing will be everlasting. In time, it will be changed or erased. Hence, that middle-path approach also makes us to be appropriate living in our daily lives.

It was my contribution about the Buddha’s middle path in that religious class.
Picture: http://adreampuppet.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/buddha-3.JPG

Expectation Theory

In this semester, I am taking the classes of Introduction to Education, and English Composition. Both classes are very interesting.
One of vocabularies those we have to learn in Education class is ‘expectation theory.’ After I read about this theory, I would like to tell or discuss with you as the followings:

Natural Matters

In one of the Buddha’s teaching verses, it said that:

There are four kinds of rats –
Some kinds of rats dig the tunnels, but they do not live in the tunnels.
Some kinds of rats do not dig the tunnels, but they live in the tunnels.
Some kinds of rats dig the tunnels, and they also live in the tunnels.
Some kinds of rats do not dig the tunnels, and they also do not live in the tunnels.

So, what will be or which kind will be your expectation when you see a rat?

According to that verse, there are also four kinds of rains –
Some kinds of rains could make thunders, but they do not actually rain.
Some kinds of rains could not make thunders, but they actually rain.
Some kinds of rains could make thunders, and they rain as well.
Some kinds of rains could not make thunders, and they do not rain as well.

So, what will be your expectation when you hear or see a thunder or cloud?

In that verse, it is also expressed about four kinds of fruits –
Some kinds of fruits have the color of green, but they are actually ripe.
Some kinds of fruits have the color of ripe, but they are actually green; which are unripe.
Some kinds of fruits have the color of green, and they are really green.
Some kinds of fruits have the color of ripe, and they are really ripe.

So, what will be your expectation when you see or get a fruit?

All these rats, rains and fruits are truly natures. What can we truly expect from nature? The above examples show that we can expect from nature, almost nothing. In other words, we can expect something from nature, but carefully because whichever you expect, literally, there is only 25 percent of chance with you.

Manmade Matters

After an excerpt of sharing about natural matter, let’s continue the manmade things.

Firstly, let us read the prime definition of expectation theory.
Expectation theory: First made popular by Rosenthal and Jacobson, this theory holds that a student’s academic performance can be improved if a teacher’s attitudes and beliefs about that student’s academic potential are modified.
Inversely, if a teacher have lower expectation about a student’s academic potential for any reason, such as background of certain student’s, that can make academically suffering in student’s performance.

Alright. One thing that theory did not discuss was, how about if a teacher has extreme highly expectation on a student’s academic potential (for any reason), and the student does not perform well, even at the averaged level? Could the consequences make suffering for student or for teacher or for both? Thinkable matters. Similarly, it happened between Chicagoans or people of the United States and the result of hosting city for 2016 games.

Nowadays, the other matter that I would like to discuss with my readers is, about the color of the clothes. What do you or what can you expect or what do you believe in a person who is wearing a red shirt, or a blue shirt, or a black shirt, or a green shirt or a yellow shirt? It might be important with the color of shirt for some reason for some situation. Nevertheless, in my very own opinion, and especially for the person like me, the color of shirt is not important almost at all. The key is - where I stand for? What I believe in? What is inside of me? Not the color of my shirt. I am talking here how America has freedom to the other world and if I, by myself do not have freedom to wear whatever color shirt I have or I want, what is that freedom? I am not that much clever person. I cannot or I do not want to sell ‘medicine of freedom’ with deep disease inside me. I might be a foolish man indeed. I do not want any kind of position or money for it. But it is me. Let me die poorly, early and simply. I am not talking here about some kind of color and suit I have to wear for specific reason or for job nature or for a ceremony and so on. It is culture and in certain condition. I will be there at that time. But in daily life, I must have my freedom choice. Nobody can control me to wear this kind of color or that kind of suit. But at the same time, what color ever I am wearing, I will be standing for what I believe in, such as ‘Freedom’ and ‘Democracy.’ Any person, any nationality, any skin color, any gender, any religious person, wherever they may live, who stand for ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy,’ is/are my friend/s.

As our former president, JFK said in his speech in Berlin, “Freedom has difficulty, democracy is not perfect,” but we have more freedom than many other societies in the world, with empathy, sympathy, support and respect among human beings. How long it may take us, let us expect for more freedom world, with democracy and dignity.

Thank you!

Picture: http://stanleyinternational.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/mounteverest3.jpg