My Everest is to Achieve Enlightenment

PART ONE: Respond to the IMAX film, Everest. What is YOUR Everest? What feat do you hope to accomplish in your lifetime? When? How? What steps will you take to accomplish your objective?

Directions: Please give your essay a descriptive title, make at least one specific reference to a memorable incident in the film, and then write your essay in two or three paragraphs of 250-300 words. State your topic sentence clearly. After you enter your essay, you have 30 minutes to edit it, so proofread it from the perspective of sentences to spelling to punctuation. The length of the sentences in your essay should be about fifteen or twenty words maximum.

Your grade on this assignment will be based on two parts: content and mechanics. The due date for writing your essay in the Everest forum is Wednesday, February 13, at 23:55. No late assignments will be accepted.

PART TWO: Please read and respond to at least five of your classmates' Everest essays in 1000 words total. (Do not write ONE response of 1000 words; write FIVE or more responses of 200 words each.) Please refer to an idea in your classmates' essays and then write a response to that idea. Grading is by word count. 1000 words = 100%; 900 words = 90%; 800 words = 80%; etc.

DUE DATE: Responses entered late will not count. If your assignment is entered after the due date, no one will read it.

It's probably a very personal goal in my life. Some people might think it's weird and maybe they don't even know what it means, but for me one of the main goals in life is achieving total understanding of life. Enlightenment is simply what Buddhists call Nirvana, a state of total acknowledgement of what life, reality, love and death really are. For some reason I feel, just like Jamling felt on the movie, that achieving true enlightenment is in my blood, and this probably is one of the most difficult achievements for a really spiritual person like me.

According to Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha, which is a title not a name) true enlightenment isn't found by meditating all your entire life, or praying all day long, it's a state that one simply reaches by certain experiences in life, and as the Buddha once said, "True happiness can only be obtained by reaching true enlightenment."

Throughout my life I've practiced several meditation exercises and watched several movies that had clearly changed my whole perspective in life, and I give several importance to movies because there's no better way to gather other experiences than to watch them on the big screen.

I hope to achieve this someday, even if I have to live in a Buddhist monastery, because for me happiness is the true meaning of life.

I believe that your goal is great, for me it’s not weird at all. I´m also a very spiritual person, I believe in energy and how it can make us happier. I think that the real meaning of life is to be happy and enjoy it as you can. I would also like to know the complete truth about this life and everything surrounding us. I also believe that the way to achieve this goal is by your own personal experiences in life; these will always make you a better person and help you to understand the real meaning of life. However, I think that is very difficult to understand everything that happens to you and to learn about it.

Maybe achieving this goal will make us all happy, although I believe that it´s kind of impossible to reach that goal at its 100%. I’m sure that we can be very close to it and learn too much about life, but never learn all the secrets and solutions of it. I really hope that you can achieve your goal one day and reach what you are looking for; I think that is what we are meant to do in this life.

I believe that is your last lines, you defined the meaning and the motive of life. “…….. because for me happiness is the true meaning of life”. You practically gave the answer of our mission on earth.

I believe we all share part of your dream. Maybe we will not be able to go to live in to a monastery, but I think that all of our dreams end in the same place: being happy. For me, being in China and mark some difference will make me happy and be my personal nirvana.

I find this theory about nirvana really interesting and I kind of believe that no one gets the main idea of what this means. It will be very difficult, but if you reach nirvana , I believe you will be as perfect as you can get in life. I dare to say this because I know as a fact that all the actions, plans, etc. that we do are just to find that exact balance in which our feelings for everything and life would be exactly as we want them to be.

I hope in some years I could find you all dressed-up with an orange dress and bald. Obviously with a great smile on your face and totally pleased and happy.

Benjamin your essay is very deep, and kind of crazy when you say that you want to live in a Buddhist monastery that make laugh, but still I do think as well that happiness is the meaning of life. I am not a very spiritual person in that type of religion, but I believe that reaching a state of total calmness and the Nirvana thing are true. I would like to experience that state where you feel great, relax, and happy. It’s a nice goal to reach happiness not many people can say that they reach it in their life.

Learning other cultures must be very interesting and also makes you a cult person to learn is not betrayed in what you believed, although I don’t think the knowledge of death is important to reach happiness, well maybe in the scent that you have to accept death as a natural thing and do not feel sad by death, on the contrary you should be happy for the person that passed out for it’s suppose that is in a better place, if that is kind of thing to you have to acknowledge about death the I think is very good.

Hey, I find your goal to be very close to mine, so don’t miss reading it. I think Buddhism is a very rich religion and by being one of the oldest in our world is amazing how it has stand all these years. I guess is because the way they see life is very beautiful and very peaceful. I don’t know that much about Buda, but I know all the priests that live in Tibet are very complete persons. They achieve all the important aspects in life, spirit, body, and mind. I for myself believe that enlightenment is a very hard goal. Your for sure will have to leave this occidental world, because both are absolutely different from one another.

Your essay also reminded me Hesse’s book Siddhartha I liked it very much because it brings another perspective about what occident believes about Buddhism. I think it’s highly ignorant to believe that the founder of such an important culture is fat and smiley all the time and that if you rub his belly you’ll get good luck. I don’t know if that’s the true story but I really like the way Hesse writes. There’s also this short story form Rudyard Kipling that comes in the Book of the Jungle about a man that sets off into a forgotten monastery and he begins finding himself. I hope it’s a nice suggestion and you like it. Well it was very nice reading your essay. Keep digging for enlightenment.

This is a good essay, and I don´t think it´s weird. In a way I want to accomplish the same but I still don´t know what reality is. I knew that Buddha was I title not a name but I didn´t know the name of the Buddha which now I know is Siddhartha Gautama. So, thank you for the information. I also believe that ¨true enlightenment isn't found by meditating all your entire life, or praying all day long, it's a state that one simply reaches by certain experiences in life.¨ I hope you accomplish your goal, and find happiness. Lastly to be sincere I don´t think that you have to live in a Buddhist monastery to accomplish this, but that´s just me. If you want to do it, just do it. And you will accomplish this. I wish you luck in accomplishing your goal.

I enjoyed your essay, especially your ideas and your goals in life. I sincerely admire how you can have an original and specific spiritual dream living in such a materialistic society as ours. I understand how you want to accomplish something that goes beyond material and physical goals. I respect a lot people like you who want to make something different with their lives instead of just living normally like most people have done since the beginning of the history of humanity. I hope you can accomplish this goal in your life one day, and if you need to move to a Buddhist monastery, it would be great since we would both be in Asia, not so far away from each other. Even though I don’t share your exact point of view about Buddhism and spiritualism, I strongly agree with your idea of making Nirvana your goal in life because it gives your life a deep meaning. What I agree the most with you is what you say about achieving true enlightenment through experiences and not through a life of continuous meditation. I believe that people can reach enlightenment by just living to the fullest and true to one’s own principles, not by dedicating your whole life to religion and meditation. Good luck with your dream, and I hope you can one day reach Nirvana and levitate, at least in your mind.

You know what I think but I will refresh it. The people have always tried to be happy but I agree with the health science, we need a holistic “health” and the spiritual development is very poor specially these days that everyone has a material way of thinking, we need to question what we think and what are we doing and when we are able to answer this and other basic questions we will be able to be truly happy. This is not an easy task but only the ones that seek deserve the nirvana.