Analysis Of Wisdom By Robert Thurman

The Hegemony within Me is Uncertain

In today’s society, everyone has the want for an identity. We feel like we need to know everything about ourselves, from who we are, what we are doing, and what we want to do. Even though people may think they have found “self,” it is not necessarily true. According to his article Wisdom, Robert Thurman, a Tibetan Buddhist monk, wrote that the idea of self-sense is only an illusion. The idea of self is false and people should stop searching for the nonexistent self and learn to accept the one they have. With the integration of Buddhist philosophy, he discovered terms such as selflessness and emptiness. Selflessness does not mean that you are nobody. People should end their search for self and instead replace

Thurman compares selflessness to an analogy, “[i]t’s as if your hand represents the universe and you fingers represent all beings. Each of your fingers can wiggle on its own; each can operate independently, just as each being has its own identity. And yet your fingers are part of your hand. If your hand did not exist, your fingers would not exist. You are one of many, many fingers on the hand that is all life” (Thurman 444). Thurman is saying that the world needs you and you need the world. Reaching the state of selflessness means happiness for one’s self and not removing one’s self from everything. One does not need to remove oneself from everything in order to attain selflessness. This realization leads to the acknowledgement that there is no actual self. You can finally stop the journey of looking for it and replace it with compassion. You are able to view others equal to yourself. Through this idea of uniformity, we feel the pain and emotions of others as if they were our own. This means when they hurt, we hurt just as much. However, this can only happen when one’s own problems do not bother one’s self anymore and one is able to care about others. You have the power to help others achieve this enlightenment. In the process of helping them, one can see one’s self as they see someone else. When others have reached selflessness, they will move on to help others that are suffering. And with that, the need to find “self” will come to an end, eventually ending all of the suffering. Karen Ho points out how hegemony dominates the world, especially on Wall Street, and how there is no uniformity. Undergraduates that attend universities such as Harvard and Princeton usually end up with a degree in business and obtain a successful career on Wall Street. This is because they are at the “prime recruiting ground for all of the most prestigious Wall Street,