As one begins the journey to enlightenment in the Buddhist religion, knowledge about worldly affairs is to be forgotten. In this case, the one who is trying to gain enlightenment is encouraged to meditate on what is already known and seek a deeper understanding through pure conjecture to reach self-actualization. This attitude towards knowledge drastically changes from culture to culture as some value it highly while others consider it trivial to understand things that they do not need in order to survive. This begs the question, to what extent can cultural background affect the impact knowledge has on the purpose and meaning one draws from life? Before any real discourse can initiate, it is beneficial to define some terms. To my understanding,
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These people are some of the best examples of those who actually seek purpose and meaning from the knowledge they attain. Faith, in its self is a practice that seems like it would encourage not caring about collecting worldly knowledge, and would rather the individual simply believe what has been passed down from the older generations as the absolute truth. But this is not always the case, as many religions encourage the individual to live a proper worldly life as well, including educating oneself though all reliable outlets. A prime example of this can be found in my grandparents, who are devout Muslims. They both observe all major principles of the religion and it is the main purpose in their lives. However, my grandfather, who looks to first to religion in every scenario, regularly shares scientific articles he has come across with the rest of my family. The point of interest here is that he often understands the articles though the lens of religion. Suppose he finds an article explaining a new cure to a disease plaguing the world, he would most probably exclaim, “God is great” in conjunction with hearing this news. Understanding most knowledge though the lens of religion, he is able to derive meaning and …show more content…
Answers to these questions are often agreed upon over time, but in some cases, our understanding of the world can be too narrow to be able to fully explain a phenomenon. A paradigm to this idea can be found in quantum physics where physicists are unable to concretely understand the results of the two slits experiment. A brief summary of the experiment is that when physicists observe photons going through a set up where they have two slits and a sheet of photosensitive material on the other side, the photons behave as if they were a solid. If the physicists do not observe the photons, the pattern they leave on the photosensitive material is that of a wave. In our case, the actual experiment is not as important though as the idea that the general rules of physics do not fit this phenomenon. Even though great minds have tirelessly reasoned though to attempt to get the answer, they are unable to using their current understanding. This applies to the prescribed title because it helps us understand that although reasoning can be used to help understand the world, sometimes it is impossible to use it to solve the current problem presented until new knowledge is obtained about a subject. This way, although we cannot rule out reason as a way of knowing how knowledge affects purpose or meaning in life, we
These people are some of the best examples of those who actually seek purpose and meaning from the knowledge they attain. Faith, in its self is a practice that seems like it would encourage not caring about collecting worldly knowledge, and would rather the individual simply believe what has been passed down from the older generations as the absolute truth. But this is not always the case, as many religions encourage the individual to live a proper worldly life as well, including educating oneself though all reliable outlets. A prime example of this can be found in my grandparents, who are devout Muslims. They both observe all major principles of the religion and it is the main purpose in their lives. However, my grandfather, who looks to first to religion in every scenario, regularly shares scientific articles he has come across with the rest of my family. The point of interest here is that he often understands the articles though the lens of religion. Suppose he finds an article explaining a new cure to a disease plaguing the world, he would most probably exclaim, “God is great” in conjunction with hearing this news. Understanding most knowledge though the lens of religion, he is able to derive meaning and …show more content…
Answers to these questions are often agreed upon over time, but in some cases, our understanding of the world can be too narrow to be able to fully explain a phenomenon. A paradigm to this idea can be found in quantum physics where physicists are unable to concretely understand the results of the two slits experiment. A brief summary of the experiment is that when physicists observe photons going through a set up where they have two slits and a sheet of photosensitive material on the other side, the photons behave as if they were a solid. If the physicists do not observe the photons, the pattern they leave on the photosensitive material is that of a wave. In our case, the actual experiment is not as important though as the idea that the general rules of physics do not fit this phenomenon. Even though great minds have tirelessly reasoned though to attempt to get the answer, they are unable to using their current understanding. This applies to the prescribed title because it helps us understand that although reasoning can be used to help understand the world, sometimes it is impossible to use it to solve the current problem presented until new knowledge is obtained about a subject. This way, although we cannot rule out reason as a way of knowing how knowledge affects purpose or meaning in life, we