The World as Meditation

The study of any poem often begins with its imagery. Being the centralized idea behind the power of poetry, imagery isn’t always there to just give a mental picture when reading the poem, but has other purposes. Imagery can speak to the five senses using figurative language as well as help create a specific emotion that the author is trying to infuse within the poem. It helps convey a complete human experience a very minimal amount of words. In this group of poems the author uses imagery to show that humanity is characterized as lost, sorrowful and regretful, but nature is untainted by being free of mistakes and flaws and by taking time to take in its attributes it can help humans have a sense of peace, purity, and joy, as well as a sense of

Meditation is very difficult to describe and can only truly be explained once experienced. It is the practice of mental concentration leading ultimately through a sequence of stages to the final goal of spiritual freedom, nirvana. The purpose of Buddhist meditation is to free ourselves from the delusion and thereby put an end to both ignorance and craving. The Buddhists describe the culminating trance-like state as transient; final Nirvana requires the insight of wisdom. The exercises that are meant to develop wisdom involve meditation on the true nature of reality or the conditioned and unconditioned elements that make up all phenomena. The goal of meditation is to develop a concept in the mind.

At an early age, Stephen Kuusisto discovered his love of literature. He speaks of two saints in his life, the first being Mrs. Edinger who taught him how to read. It is evident, in Kuusisto’s writing, that literature was a safe place for him. As the book goes on lines of poetry are written after a story or thought is stated. It was intriguing to read little bits of poems as though it was exactly what was going through Kuusisto’s mind at that very moment. Personally, it seemed as though Kuusisto associated all of his feelings and emotions with poetry. Furthermore, the poetry he quotes is not necessarily

When you are guiding your team member or client through a mindfulness session, there are a few things you can provide which will enhance the experience and ensure both you and your client is well prepared mentally and physically.

She is able to depict the sublime by having Victor’s awe for the storm is combine with the sudden horror and terror that came over him when realizing that his creature, whose silhouette was outlined during the one of the jolts of lightning, the being on which he bestowed life, had claimed the life of his beloved younger brother. Shelley later goes on to incorporate a stanza from her husband’s, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s, poem “Mutability,” “we rest; a dream has power to poison sleep; we rise; one wandering thought pollutes the day; we feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep, embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away; it is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow, the path of its departure still is free; man's yesterday

"The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt."

come to the conclusion that there is a limit to what they can do. A conscious

Meditation focuses on the mind and soul. It helps a person to disconnect from their thoughts and emotions to become more aware, alleviating negative thoughts and emotions.The goal is to achieve mental calmness including hearing, pondering, mindfulness awareness, effort, and intimacy.Meditation is associated with the Buddhism religion, there are two main types of Buddhist meditation, vipassana meaning insight and samantha meaning tranquility. The ritual occurs in schools of Buddhism in China and Japan the practice of sitting in meditation is called Ch’an or Zen Buddhism. Meditation is valuable for the the Buddhism religion it helps them reach Nirvana and liberate from the

We as humans have no real way of knowing our purpose on this world. One potential reasoning for human existence could be whether or not we were put here to congregate together, or to fend for ourselves. John Donne expresses in “Meditation 17” his belief in working together in mankind; whereas in Matthew Arnold’s poem, “To Marguerite – Continued” states that “We mortal enemies live alone.” Even though Donne’s theory would be most ideal to put belief in, I firmly believe in the idea that humans are alone in a sea of people. This concept has been written, sung, and painted about over the centuries. Giotto’s Crucifix, Renee Magritte’s The Human Condition, and Howard Nemerov’s “The Human Condition” all support their own idea of loneliness of each individual in a society.

When discussing the relationship of brain and behavior, the materialist view of human experience runs into conflict with the historically dominant religious accounts. Recent studies, however, suggests that there may be a "middle view" between the two world-views. Religions, especially Buddhism, stress the role of meditation in one's spiritual growth. Meditation has tangible psychological and physiological benefits, though, which can be explained strictly in neurobiological terms. Understanding of how meditation affects the brain, and, by extension, human behavior, also gives insight into consciousness, the role of feedback loops, and the nature of the I-function.

Written by the poet Wallace Stevens, “The Plain Sense of Things” creates an atmosphere of imagination, reality and symbolism of natural progression. Stated by POETRY FOUNDATION, Wallace Stevens is one of America’s most respected poets (Wallace Stevens, 2017). Wallace Stevens work is known for its imagination and relates to both English Romantics and French symbolists and is considered one of the major American poets of the century (Stevens, Wallace 2014). In “The Plain Sense of Things”, it is evident that imagination is a huge aspect within the poem.

In his essay, Imagination as Value, Stevens reminds us that “the imagination is the power of the mind over the possibilities of things […] it is the source not of a single value but of as many values as can reside in the possibilities of things” (136). With these words in mind and from what we have already noted in “Men Made Out of Words,” we can assert that the “possibilities of things,” mentioned in the essay, are the same as the reveries, poems, and myths, hinted at in the poem; however, one needs to clarify the difference between the ‘possibilities of things’ and the ‘things’ themselves. For Stevens, the imagination is ‘metaphysical’ or something which resides in the abstract but at the time it serves as “the only clue to reality [i.e. things]” (137); therefore it is through the imagination that reality derives its possibilities i.e. its myths, reveries, and poems. In Stevens argument, the imagination is the liberator

The poets of this period accordingly placed great emphasis on the workings of the unconscious mind, on dreams and reveries, on the supernatural, and on the childlike or primitive view of the world, this last being regarded as valuable because its clarity and intensity had not been overlaid by the restrictions of civilized reason. (Mutter)

The main two aims for the meditator Descartes are to show that the source of scientific knowledge, as we know it today, does not lay in our senses but the mind, and the compatibility between religion and science (Descartes 35). He aims to split the world into body and mind, where science will deal with the body and religion with the mind.

Shelley argues against this, putting forth that “whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful” defending Imagination as a basis for poetry