12.19.05
Posted in Books at 3:19 pm by Stephanie
I loved this book! Meant to be a biography about the Buddha based on what Armstrong admits is sketchy information from Buddhist texts, she gathers enough to give a full idea of who the Buddha was before he became the Buddha and what the Ganges plain was like during his lifetime.
She skillfully tells the story of the Buddha’s enlightenment and his lifetime of teaching others to reach enlightenment. Explaining what makes Buddhism different from other teachings and religions, Armstrong makes sense of the politics, the upheavals as society moved from agrarian to urban and the yearning we all feel for peace and tranquility within ourselves.
The best lesson for me is that everything is transitory. Emotions, physical discomfort (and comfort), other people’s stuff, memory, everything is transitory. Nothing is permanent, it all comes and goes. Once we learn this, nothing seems so important that we cannot be more compassionate and loving to those around us. Something I have come to realize (and continue to forget and relearn) over the past few years. Above all, Buddha taught compassion toward everyone.
Armstrong’s tale of Buddha does not paint him as the saint many would have him be. She shows his blind spots as his life goes along, especially toward the women who wish to become disciples. Buddha struggles mightily with the role of women in his teachings and learns from one of his male disciples that the Buddha’s training is meant for everyone, it’s an equal opportunity road to Enlightenment which means it should be for women too. Whether a product of his time, or he truly has a blind spot, Buddha’s attitude toward women reflects history’s attitude toward women.
Buddha is short (187 pages), easy to read and absolutely fascinating.
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Posted in UIS at 2:51 pm by Stephanie
Just over a week ago, the semester ended. I certainly learned a lot and was stretched academically in ways I had never gone before, a key to a good education, I believe. I was also stretched emotionally as well.
I don’t recommend having friends get diagnosed with terminal diseases at any time. Shauna’s diagnosis of Stage IV Imflammatory Breast Cancer sure wreaked havoc on all aspects of my life, especially class work. This is where communication with your instructors and classmates is imperative. Thanks to the understanding of DrN, I was able to get all my work completed for The Historian’s Craft and turned in for the semester. It was difficult to get through but I made it!
There were other circumstances that led to my withdrawal from the Latin America class but Shauna’s cancer had something to do with it. It just turned out that everything was a bit much for me and my participation in this class was a casualty.
Throughout the semester, I found The Historian’s Craft challenging, frightening and exhilirating. At no point did I ever think I knew what I was doing. At every point I knew I was being stretched to think in ways I hadn’t known before and that whatever I took away from the class would serve me well in the rest of my journey.
We read chewy pieces1, books that challenged our stamina2, books that delighted3 4, and pieces that opened our eyes to other ways of thinking about and doing history.5 6 7 8 9 10 11
And there was the dreaded assignment, the one that was just the most onerous to me, the bibliography of every scholarly article, review and book written about Martin Bernal’s Black Athena. And then, the reading of 3 12 13 14 essays and a distillation into a piece of my own the viewpoints in these essays. I grew to hate Bernal and the controversy he stirred up without having read any of his work.
But even that taught me more than just the mechanics of doing history properly.
At the end of the semester, I highly recommend a discussion with your instructors about your strong points and what needs improving. If your chosen path is one that is dear to you, it doesn’t hurt to be reassured that you are on the right path. I had a very pleasant conversation with DrN in which we discussed comments on assignments I didn’t understand and ways to improve moving forward. She was also very reassuring in her assessment of my talent and dedication to the muse of Clio.
I came away from the semester with a sense of relief that I had survived and was now on break but also with an even hotter sense of desire to continue my studies in History. For that, I am deeply grateful.
Sources:
1Flemming, Rebecca. “Quae Corpore Quaestum Facit: The Sexual Economy of Female Prostitution in the Roman Empire.” The Journal of Roman Studies 89, (1999): 38-61.
2Jordanova, Ludmilla. History in Practice. (London: Arnold). 2000.
3Arnold, John. History: A Very Short Introduction. (Oxford: Oxford University Press). 2000.
4Wunderli, Richard. Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press). 1992.
5Marius, Richard and Melvin E. Page. A Short Guide to Writing About History, 5th Ed. (New York: Pearson Longman). 2005
6Darnton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York: Vintage Books 1985. 74-101.
7Said, W. Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979
8Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001
9Becker, Carl. “Everyman His Own Historian.” The American Historical Review 37, no. 2 (Jan., 1932): 221-236
10Jared Diamond, “A Natural Experiment of History”
11Hill Gates, “Footloose in Fujian: Economic Correlates of Footbinding”
12Burstein, Stanley M.. “A Contested History: Egypt, Greece and Afrocentrism” in Current Issues and the Study of Ancient History (Publications of the Association of Ancient Historians; 7). Claremont: Regina Books, 2002.
13Levine, M.M.. “The Use and Abuse of Black Athena.” Review of Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985, Volume 1), by Martin G. Bernal. American Historical Review 97, no. 2 (Apr 1992): 440.
14Poliakoff, Michael. “Roll Over Aristotle: Martin Bernal And His Critics.” Academic Questions 4, no. 3 (Summer 1991): 12.
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