Small acts of kindness can help change the world completely. Just as Buddhism believes in the importance of compassion, I to believe in the importance of compassion. .
In an excerpt from "Awareness in Buddhism Without Beliefs," the author talks about stopping and paying attention to what is happening in the moment, as a 'very reasonable definition of mediation.' It was quite hard understanding what the author was trying to get at during the duration of this excerpt. Nonetheless, I felt that the author goes in the next pages goes on to explaining that awareness is a process of deepening of self acceptance. He states that it's 'neither a cold, surgical examination of life nor a means of becoming perfect'. Self awareness is important because when we have a better understanding of ourselves, we are able to experience ourselves as unique and separate individuals. Once we get that self-awareness we then empowered to make changes and to build upon our areas of strength as well as to identify areas where we would like to make improvement. Self-awareness is a critical thing apart of our life. For me, I feel like self-awareness is the first step to goal setting. Self-awareness is being conscious of what you're good at while acknowledging what you still have yet to learn. For me, it's hard to develop this self-awareness, because it hard to accept my mistakes. Obtaining this self awareness is the pathway to happiness. In addition, I don't know what I feel about the meditation thing he was talking about. I wasn't quite sure what he was saying, how awareness is the definition of meditation. It was hard understanding how this type of awareness related to Buddhism. In addition, before I read the excerpt on awareness, I had my own definition of awareness, and now the author throws some random definitions of awareness and I was completely confused by this. In conclusion, I felt that this excerpt was kind of confusing.
