English Teacher @ SSU: I hope you can clarify what it is that would make your experience at SSU even more complete. Is it having a few more souls who are also as thoughtful and as tuned in as you (& Erin)? Is there a sense of isolation--is that it? Are your typical interactions superficial? Or are they gratifying? Is it enough to be a buddha among the unenlightened or must one be a buddha among some other buddhas, as well?
Me: I think a little bit of everything. A lot of interactions here ARE superficial, with no meaning behind them. It would be interesting to find people here that want to connect meaningfully, I suppose that it takes time to find like-minded people. Maybe as I take classes more focused in my major I will begin to find people that I can connect with. It also does seem like outside of classes there is a sense of isolation, apart from having Erin to relate all my daily thoughts with I am alone in the community of SSU. Not that it is a bad thing, I would say I like my time to myself to process my continuous flow of thoughts. That last thought of yours is definitely intriguing, because as far as the story of gautama siddhartha, the original Buddha, he was certainly alone at first, but his teaching spread from India to China, gaining popularity. There is nothing wrong with being unenlightened and alone, it can be freeing, but sometimes it would be gratifying to have others to share my thoughts with and not have to deal with the superficial interactions that contain no value. It seems like many of my fellow students put value into things that I view as having little or no value.
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