#76 Discipline

Do you ever think of discipline and how hard it is to control yourself? I didn’t think much about it until I moved to Thailand with my family and learned some of the differences in the religious culture. Now, I’m no expert but monk’s have it pretty bad in my opinion. I’m not saying that they go through boot camp and do a million push-ups but they go through a lot of discipline and self control not only mentally but physically. Each country may have a few differences in how they pray and meditate but a majority of them live their lives in solitude with other monks. Monk’s have a few jobs that they do during the day like some cleaning up around the monastery such as sweeping the grounds or walking the cattle if there is any. A vast amount of their time during the day is meditating. Now I wouldn’t be able to sit all day on my butt in an “Indian style” position, close my eyes and memorize prayers. First I would fall asleep, and I lack the discipline to not move and stretch my body. I give props to the monks who don’t pass out and go insane from lack of movement.


Another reason why I think monk’s have incredible discipline is their strong stomachs. From what I have learned, they only eat once a day and that is in the morning. Now other countries may consume food throughout the day but the ones who only eat once a day are pretty hard core in the religion world. And not only do they eat once a day, sometimes the scarce food is just rice or a soup. When I was in the Miss Thailand World competition, I had to stay in a small town and do certain activities. One activity was to prepare sticky rice with bamboo, and some Thai food for monks to collect from gracious followers. Early in the morning, the girls had their own pot or box that contained the sticky rice and prepared food and wait outside of their house on the street. When the monks passed by on their morning stroll, the gracious followers would kneel down and wai “the traditional way to greet someone by putting your hands together like praying and bow your head” while the monk would stop and bow his head and say hello. Then you would place your food in their bags they carry and that would be their food for the whole day. Now the little amount of food that I witnessed them getting was so scarce that I started to be thankful for all the little pleasures I indulge myself in.


I’m not saying that I lack control of myself but I do lack the discipline that monks have in their day to day lives.

Persuasion Process Writing

Process Writing
At first I was really skeptical about what I wanted to write about for my Persuasive paper. I’m not sure that persuasive papers are my strong suit so when I found out that persuasion was our next topic, I panicked a bit. I was walking to class one morning when I spotted a poster on the wall in the hallway near the Technology Department. “Should there be limitations to free speech”? Immediately I knew what to write about. I thought it over for a bit and then took the poster down myself and held on to it for inspiration. Then I brainstormed and wrote down what came to mind. At first I was all for freedom of speech, but after hearing my boyfriends views about the matter and researching on the internet, I had a change of mind. I researched the meaning and started from there. The exercise of the grouping that Miss Stephanie wanted from us showed that I had more “cons” than “pro’s” over the issue. My first draft was pretty bad, I wasn’t very confident until I had Miss Stephanie share her insight on my paper and I rearranged the paragraphs to enhance the topic. Next I re-read my paper out loud to Julie and Lionel in class and felt pretty good about my paper. Took some mental notes on what to correct and re-drafted my paper. I added a few more sentences to my smaller paragraphs and a little bit more of my views on the whole matter and feel pretty satisfied with my free speech on free speech.