Religion

Attend 2 religious events or services this week for a religion that is not your own. Check out local temples or events from the UR Chaplaincy to find these events.  Why do you think people go to these events? How does this relate to Scheffler’s argument? 

Evidence: provide selfies outside the two religious events or services and any programs or materials from the religious place. 

Choose four of the following embodied experiences to complete for this purpose project. These experiences are designed to produce awe, absorption, the sublime, or a temporary loss of self-consciousness, but you are not required to feel transcendent. Just make yourself available to the possibility by completing each experience without multitasking or distraction. 

• Hike before dawn and watch the sunrise 

• Spend an evening stargazing in a genuinely dark place.

• Walk at least five miles to a destination that matters to you.

• Sleep outdoors under the open sky.

• Attend a live symphony, ballet, opera, or major choral performance. 

• Join a large group where everyone is singing or dancing and there is loud music 

• Spend one uninterrupted hour looking at a single great artwork at the VMFA

• Sit beside the river for 90 minutes without looking at your phone or listening to anything. 

• Complete a difficult but safe physical challenge and then spend 30 minutes staring at the trees

• Attend a public memorial, festival, or parade 

• Spend five waking hours alone and entirely without speech, screens, reading, or recorded audio.

• Spend several hours doing coordinated physical work with others 

• Visit an ancient place

• Follow the animals in nature for 90 minutes. 

Meditate for four days in a row for 30 minutes each day. Did this practice make you feel more compassionate or detached from your self-interest?  Write about the lessons you gained from meditation (if any) in a critical response to the readings about the ego-driven self. 

Evidence: provide screenshots of whatever meditation program you used and/or four photos of you in your meditation space.