Book Report- My Spiritual Journey

They book I read throughout the semester was called My Spiritual Journey by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It is somewhat of an autobiography, in that it is a collection of teachings and stories from His Holiness. It was originally titled My Spiritual Autobiography, but it was changed because although all the statements in the book are the Dalai Lama's, "but given the collaborative effort involved in creating this book, it is not an autobiography in the strictest sense."

The book touches on the Dalai Lama's life, and how he came to be where he is now. It then gives excerpts from his teachings that have been translated by his translator Sofia Stril-Rever. Teachings are given in Three Main Parts, and subsections within each part:

• Part I: As a Human Being
• Our Common Humanity
• My Lives Without Beginning or End
• Part II: As a Buddhist Monk
• Transforming Oneself
• Transforming the World
• Taking Care of the Earth
• Part III: As the Dalai Lama
• In 1959 the Dalai Lama Meets the World
• I Appeal to All the Peoples of the World
• Conclusion: I Place My Home in the Human Heart

Last Post- Flexibilty

So after much distress, blogger finally let me log on. For my post this week, I commented on a fellow student's blog who shared her new Background and Significance section for her final Project Proposal. She briefly talked about how there have been a lot of changes to her project and how there will be more as we enter the field. Here is my response:


Kristen,

I agree that even after all is said and done at the end of the semester, there are so many revisions that still need to be made, many of which we aren't yet aware of and won't be until we're in the midst of it.

I'm coming to the same type of situation for my project. As I reworked my entire proposal last night, I kept finding myself focusing less and less on parenting and more on family interaction, at least when it came to observations I intend to make. This brought me to seriously question, "am I going to be doing exactly what I want to be doing here? Is there something else I would rather learn about?" Because heaven knows I won't have time to learn about everything, though I would very much like to.

So now, what do we do? Well pretty much just take it as it comes and try to be flexible. I loved that the rubric for our proposals took into account flexibility of our projects, because this might be one of the most important aspects of our projects.

This nice thing about going in a group the size we have is that it's large enough to have multiple insights and opinions, but small enough that it's not discouraging or intimidating to talk to the group as a whole about bumps in the road. I'm really excited to work in a group with you and with the other ladies (and my man) and I know that we can all really help each other to be flexible, resilient, and positive when we run into the inevitable situations that will call for these qualities time and time again.

-Julia

Journal Entry 1 million

Oops, I guess I didn't realize we were supposed to continue writing journal entries during project presentations.

Well we're leaving in a month from tomorrow. I'm packing boxes for storage right now. My Tibetan class is over. My project presentation is done. My project proposal final draft is a work in progress.

The good news is that I feel as if I know just what I want to do and I felt like my presentation went alright. That day was a very stressful day, I had a major assignment due for one of my classes, and I was trying to organize a surprise for TJ, as it was our last Tibetan class that night. I didn't have one second of spare time to make brownies so I had to buy some from Sugar and Spice at the Cougareat. That made me late to class. I had a basic outline of what I wanted to talk about in my presentation, just a list of the answers to the points that were required for us to make. I got up to do my presentation and remembered just then (I didn't have time to remember earlier) that I hate presentations and I get extremely nervous while I make them. I'm comfortable talking and making conversation, but when it comes to big groups, I think that I freeze up a little.

Journal Entry- Culture Shock

Today in field study preparation class we talked about culture shock. We talked about an assigned article called "Coping with Culture Shock" by Ferraro.

In this article, there are stages in culture shock that travelers go through:

• The Honeymoon Stage
• Irritation and Hostility
• Gradual Adjustment
• Biculturalism

When we talked about these stages in class, our teacher, Ashley, said that she didn't want to number them because it's not that black and white or straightforward. In fact, we will probably go from one stage to another and then back again, maybe even to square one, throughout our trip.