Buddhism is the reality

Emptiness in ‘Buddhism† is the reality of the existence of ourselves, and all the phenomena around us. According to the Buddhist point of view, seeking reality and seeking liberation amount to the same thing. The person who doesn't want to seek reality doesn't really want to seek liberation. If you have to look for it outside yourself, in another place, then you are mistaken. You cannot seek reality outside yourself because you are reality. Perhaps you think that your life, your reality was made by society, by your friends?If you think that way you are far from reality. if you think that your existence, your life was made by somebody else it means that you are not taking the responsibility to understand reality. You have to see that your attitudes, your view of the world, of your experiences, of your girlfriend or boyfriend, of your own self, are all the interpretation of your own mind, your own imagination. They are your own projection, your mind literally made them up. If you don't understand this then you have very little chance of understanding emptiness.You cannot seek reality outside yourself because you are reality. Perhaps you think that your life, your reality was made by society, by your friends? If you think that way you are far from reality. if you think that your existence, your life was made by somebody else it means that you are not taking the responsibility to understand reality. A basic doctrinal assertion in the Buddhist tradition states that Buddhism or â€Å"no self† means that no permanent identity comtinues from one period of time to the next.This according to them is not a pessimistic point of view but rather a simple realistic acceptance of the constantly changing human personality and all of reality as well. They understand that if everything changes, then it is possible for everything on earth to become new. If they grasp fully the essence of â€Å"emptiness†, then it would be possible to face even the toughes t situations in life with a feeling of lightness and peace of mind. With this in mind, one can begin to understand what it means for a Buddhist to cross out the word â€Å"I†.Buddhists can begin to erase this word by reallizing that there is no permanent self to hold onto or protect. Furthermore, emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It does not add or subtract anything from the actual data of physical and mental events. It is looking at the incidents or happenings in the mind and the senses without any thought of whether there’s anything lying behind them. In this mode one does not act or react to any events that transpire which would mean a deeper involvement thus complicating the matter.To master the emptiness mode of perception requires firm training in virtue, concentration and discernment. Without this training, the mind stays in the mode that keeps creating stories and world views. And from the perspective of that mode, the teaching of emptiness sounds simply like another story or world view with new ground rules. It seems to be saying that the world doesn’t really exist,or else that emptiness is the great undifferentiated ground of being from which we all came and to which someday we will all return. QUESTION # 2Snyder’s poetry has the grandeur and detail of nature, and the mental disciplines of Zen Buddhism. He writes I the first person, as individual in the wilderness, but the beauty and glory of the wilderness allows that individual the status of a common man. For Snyder, symbol and metaphor cause a distancing from the thing itself,the thing itself is at least enough. Love and respect for the primitive tribe, honour accorded the Earth, the escape from city and industry into both the past and the possible, contemplation, the communal, peace, and the ascetic.There is not much wilderness left to destroy, and the nature in the mind is being logged and burned off. Industrial-urban society is not â €Å"evil† ut there is no progress either. (quoted in David Kherdian, Six San Francisco Poets, Fresno, Calif. , 1969). â€Å"Wild Mind† according to Gary means elegantly self-disciplined, self-regulating. In wilderness nobody has a management plan for it. Care for the environment is like noblesse oblige. You don’t do it because it has to be done. You do it because its beautiful. You are not being anxious to do good, or feels obligation or anything like that.In â€Å"The Practice of the Wild† Gary introduced a pair of distinctive ideas to our vocabulary of ecological inquiry. Grounded in a lifetime of nature and wilderness observation, Snyder offered the â€Å"etiquette of freedom† and â€Å"practice of the wild† as root prescriptions for the global crisis. Informed by East-West poetics, land and wilderness issues, anthropology, benevolent Buddhism, and Snyder’s long years of familiarity with the bush and high mountain places, these pri nciples point to the essential and life-sustaining relationship between place and psyche.To Snyder, value also translates as responsibility. Within his approach to digging in and committing to a place is the acceptance of responsible stewardship. Snyder maintains that it is through this engaged sense of effort and practice-participating in what he salutes as â€Å"the tiresome but tangible work of school boards, county supervisors, local foresters, local politics†-that we find our real community, our real culture.Many of Snyder's original arguments addressing pollution and our addiction to consumption have by now become mainstream: reduced fossil fuel dependence, recycling, responsible resource harvesting. Others remain works-in-progress: effective soil conservation, economics as a â€Å"small subbranch of ecology,† learning to â€Å"break the habit of acquiring unnecessary possessions,† division by natural and cultural boundaries rather than arbitrary political boundaries.As an ecological philosopher, Snyder's role has been to point out first the problems, and then the hard medicine that must be swallowed. Snyder has become synonymous with integrity-a good beginning place if your wilderness poetics honor â€Å"clean-running rivers; the presence of pelican and osprey and gray whale in our lives; salmon and trout in our streams; unmuddied language and good dreams. † From The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in English. Ed. Ian Hamilton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Copyright  © 1994 by Oxford University Press