continued from last post

After I ate dinner, I passed out in a post-food coma for about an hour. Then a friend from out of town asked if I wanted to grab coffee, so I went to catch up with her. The beginning of this post and my last post are really rambling, so I hope you can follow them.

What I really wanted to post on was not the tiny details of my evening, but rather my continuing effort to figure out what I hope to get out of the class and how to incorporate what I learn into my life so that it is beneficial to me beyond this one semester. When I can't focus, getting something more out of class is much harder. I definitely see the physical benefits of using muscles that I am not used to and making sure that am at least active twice weekly. I do enjoy learning about the cultural and historical contexts of what we are doing. I think those things are very important.

For another class I am taking called Consumerism and Religion, I visited a coffee shop by the name of Sacred Grounds. The store also offered organic sandwiches and salads, classes in topics like yoga and meditation, and spiritual inspired items, art, and books. The store is very interested in and promotes "mind, body and spirit" well-being. I did notice a strong Eastern religion influence of Buddhism and Hinduism. The context of the influences are of course westernized. It makes me wonder if not recognizing the original context of these influences is somehow disrespecting the original religion or somehow tainting the practices. I wonder what others think about it, especially those who have grown up either Hindu or Buddhist. What I know of western Hindu converts, the practices and meanings are different from those of native practitioners. I think one difficulty for our class is to make these movements our own while acknowledging the original meanings and contexts of these movements. Once the original meaning is completely lost, I think the movements become almost worthless.