Notes from 9/23

9/23/10

During class today we touched on topics such as karma, Heaven and Hell, reincarnation, happiness, helping people, and embracing struggles. We started the class, reading our favorite passage from the beginning of the reading from last night. Talks about Heaven and Hell led to the question, how can Heaven and Hell be love at the same time? Well according to yoga/meditation getting to Heaven and Hell take seven steps each and when you reach Heaven and Hell there is a point where you find that you were meant to be there, which is love. However, there is reincarnation, which means you come back to the earth brand new and you start the whole process over again. We then transitioned into the talk of karma and how Gilbert explains that with karma, you must fix the current problems in your life, or you’ll suffer later on in life. We talked about how Gilbert embraces her struggles and takes one step forward only to take two steps back. For example, she told the big male monkey she had her brothers with her so they couldn’t do anything to her, but the next morning she was hit by a bus. But if she wasn’t hit by the bus, she would have never met Wayan and learned of her tragic story, which compelled Gilbert to help Wayan. During this part of the book, Gilbert struggles with happiness, often becoming happy then thinking about her life back home and worrying about the unknown. But comparisons lead to unhappiness, so they key to happiness is to just be.