Does anybody here apply any of these philosophies to their life?

[caldwe...@osu.edu]

Hey, guys. I was wondering, just out of curiosity, how many of you
actually live by any of philosophies and traditions?

I myself have actually started studying Daoism and have found that
applying its principles to my life actually takes away a lot of stress
about the future. On top of that, it really gives one an open mind
about many things and has really helped me become a better person, I
think.

Well, have any of you guys adopted or already follow any of these
views?

[Kevin Chung]

Well,

i guess you could say that i apply it to my lifestyle. I tend to let
things happen as they come along, for example, if i have plans to go
to a movie, i don't plan it out ahead of time, it's more of
spontaniety. Is that considered Doaist philosophy? But i also
include the Confucius understanding of human relationships, because
throughout my childhood, i was raised to respect my elders. I was
never to talk back to grandparents, parents, teachers, or anything of
that sort. We also have a buddha statue in our house, but that
doesn't really mean anything because it's just there for decoration
lol.

Perhaps i'm viewing the doaist idea wrong, please correct me if so.

[Charles Reichheld]

I couldn't say that I follow any of the philosophies we've studied.
However philosophy has generally impacted me greatly over the last
year. When I learned about western philosophy, I happenned to be
taking psychology and sociology at the same time. The combination of
what I learned from these three things has allowed me to open up my
mind, and I suppose in small respect to the way Daoism stresses
opennes. Being able to think about things more clearly by dropping
biases, stereotypes, or anything that I learned in the past enabled me
to see things from different perspectives, which is also stressed by
daoism. So, while the whole idea of some of these chinese philosophies
seem primitive or ridiculous, it's clear that they have important
messages that really seem like they are on the right track in terms of
finding control within your mind.

[whis...@osu.edu]

If there's one philosohy that I'm already active in, it would be
Daoism. I'm almost always on my own schedule. I definitely have a
problem with getting places on time or finishing things on time, but
it's not on purpose. After studying this philosophy, I am now more
interested in applying these concepts to more aspects of my life (to
an extent).

I noticed others wrote about being familiar with Daoist ideals, which
I think directly reflects the time period or even the location that we
grew up in. I know my grand parents are much more traditional than
the two generations following them.

[caldwe...@osu.edu]

Seeing things in different perspectives is important, but sometimes a
very radical perspective is important too. I think that not taking
anything as the absolute, correct way to do something is important to
being happy.

And as to them seeing primitive, maybe that's the point. A throwback
to nature, to the days when human life was nothing more than survival.
Primitive may seem like a negative thing to you, while it seems a
positive thing to me. And about how it is rediculous... that's the
point of Daoism. To get you thinking in a rediculous, non-restrictive
way. And our two polar opposite views on the same thing using the same
terms is what Daoism is all about.

Sounds like you have the hang of it. :)

[Kevin Chung]

Ah, thanks for the reply! Sorry i got back to you so late. I too do
feel the same way as you do, and spontaneity (SP?) is a key part of my
lifestyle. I usually don't have set plans for any particular day,
unless it's an important event that i must accomplish. Any of the
leisurely activities are planned during the course of the day.

Although it does seem like i follow the daoist ideas, but there are
also limits to which i take it. I won't be "lax" about everything, if
something is definitely important and a need to be done situation,
then i'll break the daoist idea of "whatever man" and get it done. I
mean the example given in class about how a guy jumped off a cliff,
and his friend not caring and just wanted $5, he didn't care if you
are alive or not, if you walk, that's cool, if not, oh well. I would
never have that attitude lol. I sure hope you guys dont either =x

Another thing, sometimes i feel that if both people have a "i dont
care what we do" attitude, it can get to be boring because you can
never make a decision on what to do. What do you guys/gals do in this
situation?

-kevin

[caldwe...@osu.edu]

That's exactly how most of my interactions happen.
"What do you wanna do?"
"I dunno, you?"
"I don't care."

That's a common situation for me, but it doesn't get boring in the
sense of our lifestyles. Yeah, we may get bored, but we'll find
something. We just don't know what at the time. And all the while, the
Daoist is appreciating the moment, not caring what to do next, because
thinking about the future is what causes boredom... to an extent.

[wra...@osu.edu]

I will say this, a lot of the things we've learned about over the
course of this class make a lot of sense to me.

My main philosophy about life is that no matter what religion anyone
may believe in, we are all trying to achieve similar goals... the main
one in this instance is to live life as a good person in whatever
context one is taught. My thinking is, why not just be a good person
in general? Make good decisions and practices in your life by helping
others around you. And in a sense I see a strong connection between
that and the Mencius idea that "we do good to feel good," but it is
not so much of a need to do good for most people but generally a
conscious decision that requires effort in some form.

Hopefully, I will get a chance to expand to new ideals and practices
and perhaps I will give some of the things taught in this class a try,
but for now I am content in what I do.

[tobi...@osu.edu]

Interesting that you bring this up, because I think my whole outlook
on life has changed because of doing just that.

I find that a lot of the statements about how life is by these
philosophies are very true. I believe that the path of joy is much
better that the path of pleasure (from Indian Philosophy) and that
there is a basic social structure to this world as well as absolute
truth (Confucianism). In lecture, I was really struck that there
being "no absolute truth" is an absolute truth. So, I thought that
this absolute truth may apply to religion, which left me with they are
all right, but that would exclude the exclusivists/monotheists; one is
right; or they all are wrong/atheist. This shattered the way that I
looked at life. And so I looked at life again.

It seemed to me that people, myself included, appear to no longer see
any real problems with life, and the wrong things or "evil" (as some
put it) in the world around us, unlike these ancient philosophers
did. I wondered if that is because there were no more problems, but
then I watched the news and saw the fallacy in that train of thought.
It was also interesting that I saw that people are not happy by the
means that the world as I know it say they should. Like Tom Brady, on
a 20/20 interview, said that despite being a famous millionaire
football star, he feels that something is missing in his life. So I
thought, "Is Tom Brady just so selfish that what he has isn't enough?"
But there are many others who have said the same thing as Brady, so it
cannot just be certain selfish people. So I thought that there must
be something wrong with the world and what people are trying to do in
order to be fulfilled. This led me to many interesting thoughts about
whether people are inherently good or bad, or neither one. As
shocking as it seems, I think that people are innately bad; not like
born a criminal, but born broken and with problems. that is a scary
thought to me, but I think that this is how things are and that people
live their whole lives trying to unsuccessfully fix themselves. I
know that is how I felt about myself. Because if Tom Brady cannot be
happy and fulfilled with all the prestige and wealth that he has, how
am I going to be fulfilled when I cannot attain to where he is at.

I guess that this class has made me think about how the world really
is and how I myself am broken and seem incapable to fix that.
Fortunately I have found something that reconciles my wrong apart from
trying to numb the pain or be too busy to feel it, but that is not for
this discussion board. I guess my way of applying this class was to
actually reflect on my life some and to act off of what I saw.

I am really glad that I did that. I feel secure, like I have meaning,
and I am at peace now; and I think that I will for a while.

So in short, I did apply something from this class and it was good.