The narrator of Journey to the West included the beliefs of Buddhism. Through Buddhism, the protagonists in the story learned to improved themselves for the better. Using quotes from the books, what influenced them to adapt to the beliefs of Buddhism?
Crystal Wong – March 17th Assignment
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5 Responses to Crystal Wong – March 17th Assignment
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I think your question connects the two works together well through their mutual use of Buddhist principles, which are not hard to find in the text. However, what actually influenced them to adapt Buddhist beliefs may be a little more difficult to find; it seems as if you are asking for the reader to simply describe a specific moment. I think you could improve the question by encouraging the reader to analyze the characters more rather than state what event caused them to change their beliefs. For example, rather than asking what event in their lives may have influenced them, what theme (related to Buddhism) can be seen in both of the characters’ journeys?
I agree that the stories are both similar in their buddhist influences, and for that reason think the question is a good one. Specifically, I like how those buddhist influences are asked about in regards to the characters’ self improvement, however I’m not sure we discussed precisely how those buddhist beliefs came to be, and therefore unsure how viable the answers would be.
I think your question really connects these two characters very well. And I agree that both these stories are similar in their belief of buddhism. I really like how your question asks how these characters adapted in the sense of buddhism. I do believe this question to be quite difficult in the sense of using quotes from the book because what you are asking is to analyze how a character adapted their beliefs.
I absolutely love this question for the midterm. It is a question that tests the ability of the student to connect a religion to a fictional text. Also, it gives an idea of which instances the students believed is a step towards Nirvana (enlightenment, or emptiness). All of the texts we have discussed so far in class have a common theme of characters who go through some sort of change over time: Bartleby refused to write, the narrator refused to keep pleasing men. With that being said, analyzing the changes of the characters of “Journey to the West” can help the students further describe and look for good quotes to support their ideas.
In my opinion this is a great question to ask because religion influences literature heavily and there are a lot of elements of Buddhism in the text. Also, another important thing that affects literature in many ways are the major historical events going on at the time, and comparing Buddhism to the texts to see if there are elements of Buddhism in the text and then analyze the texts to see if there are elements of historical events in text.