By SERIAH SARGENTON
Assistant Editor
As part of creating a home for future incoming students and faculty, The College of Saint Rose promised a diverse environment that promotes positive learning. Part of this mission includes celebrating its various faiths.
The Hubbard Interfaith Sanctuary decided to have a week of cultural exploration where members of spiritual life invited students to participate in educational seminars about Buddhist beliefs. On Monday, Oct. 22 Dr. Michael Brannigan held a campus conversation titled “Buddhism for Beginners” where students learned about the origins of the religion and its beliefs.
“Buddhism has a way of sneaking into other religions,” said Joan Horan, director of the campus ministry at Saint Rose.
Horgan said that one of the reasons why spiritual life decided to focus on Buddhism for cultural exploration is because its a religion that’s rarely studied or explored. According to Horgan, this is because Buddhism doesn’t idolize any particular figure, but it forces a person to think about how thoughts can affect their health.
Horgan hopes that students will use this opportunity to expand their minds in order to clarify their own thoughts and actions. This is based on Brannigan’s idea that the essence of Buddhism comes from our minds and hearts.
Brannigan said that there is an eight fold path that is part of the formal truths. In this beginners lesson, he spoke about the first three.
“The first truth is that all life is suffering,” said Brannigan. He explains that at some point in life everyone feels like an outsider. No-one can live life without suffering because it’s apart of human nature. Suffering is described as a deeper form of spiritual pain.
To explain how suffering works in terms of Buddhism, Brannigan brings up the second and third truths which say that suffering is caused by our innermost desires. Since these desires come from within, only we can relieve ourselves of suffering.
“The most insidious of attachments is to an idea or image,” said Brannigan. “Desires are beautiful. They make up who we are and makes us passionate, yet addiction is when we become a slave to our desires.”
When it comes to learning about new faiths, one student felt that her family and herself could apply Buddhist lessons to their own lives. One of the most important lessons that Madison Hempstead, a junior at Saint Rose, has taken away from this conversation is the idea of freeing yourself from your own mind.
Hempstead went to the event with the purpose of learning more about other cultures and religions. In addition, she also wanted to learn how this related to the creation of the sand mandala that occurred throughout the week.
“I think that Buddhism applies to my own life because I am just so busy and stressed out most of the time,” said Hempstead. ”This religion focuses a lot of the importance of relaxation and meditation, which can be very important for me to do, from time to time.”
Hempstead said that by going to this event she gained an awareness of the Buddhist traditions and how to become more accepting of them.
For her, this event showed her that it’s okay to be accepting of unwelcome thoughts as long as you’re aware of them. She said that the key is just to not become overwhelmed by the negative thoughts and not to let them consume you.
Buddhism is not only about freeing the mind, but the heart also. Brannigan described Buddhism as a burning building. Buddhism is a pragmatic religion that relies on a person’s ability to control their thoughts by meditating and riding themselves of bad thoughts.
“I think home is very challenging with diversity,” said Horgan. “You have to think about what do we do to make them feel at home? I believe anything that brings us close to another culture has the ability to break down walls between us.”
