Republic of the Philippines

AURORA STATE COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY

Zabali, Baler, Aurora

Department of Forestry and Environmental Sciences

UNDERSYANDING THE SELF
1st Semester, SY 2021-2022

Chapter 8

Course Topic: SPIRITUAL SELF

Educational Objectives of the chapter:

At the end of the lesson, the students are expected to:

1. Explore worlds religious belief and practices.

2. Analyze about Frankl’s Logotheraphy.
3. Reflect on about the searching of ones meaning and purpose of life.

Discussion:

The Spiritual Self

 The most intimate, inner subjective part of the self.
 The ability to use moral sensibility and conscience may be seen through the expression of
religion, its belief and practices.

World Religious Belief and Practices

Buddhism

Belief
 Believes that life is not a bed of roses. Instead there are suffering, pain and frustrations.
 When people suffer, they want to experience the goodness of life and avoid disappointments.
 Through practice of meditation, acquiring more wisdom and deeper understanding, and
acceptance of things as they are.

 CUSTOM AND PRACTICES

Two types of meditation

 Samatha –mindfulness of breathing and development of loving kindness
 Vipassana – developing insight into reality.
Buddhist believe in non-violence principle.
Christianity
 Believe in God Jesus Christ.
 Eternal life after death will be achieved through faith in Jesus Christ.
 He died on the cross for the sin of Humanity but resurrected from the death, so anyone who
believe in Him will be save and have eternal life.
 Holy Bible.

Custom and Practices

 Sacraments of Baptism – symbolizes the birth in Christian World.
 Sacraments of Communion – an act of remembrance of Jesus Christ sacrificial love.
 Jesus Christ teaching in Unconditional Love, that is expressed in loving the poor, oppressed,
and outcast of the society.

HINDUISM
 Covers a wide range of traditional belief and religious groups, thus, there is no single
founder of leader.
 Hindu believes that existence is a cycle of birth, death and rebirth, governed by Karma.
 Karma – concept where the reincarnated life will depend on how past life was spent.

Customs and Practices

 Most celebrated Festivals
Diwali – Festival of Lights
Navrati – Festival of nine nights, which celebrate the triumph of Good over Evil.
 Hindus have set dates to honor particular manifestations of God.

ISLAM
 Muslim believe in Allah, who is their “One God”
 Muslim have a strong sense of community – “ummah”.
 ISLAM – means “Willing submission to God”
 Mohammed is the last and Final prophet sent by God.
 The holy book of Islam is called Quran.

Custom and Practices

Five pillars of Islam, foundation of Islam life

1. Shahadah – “there is no God but the one true God and Mohammed is his messenger.”
2. Salat – prayer that is practice 5 times a day.
3. Zakat – offering for the benefit of the poor.
4. Hajj - yearly pilgrimage to Mecca.
5. Sawm – fasting during Ramadan
 Eidul Fitr - Eid al-Fitr, also called the "Festival of Breaking the Fast", is a religious
holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide that marks the end of the month-long dawn-to-
sunset fasting of Ramadan.

Eidul Adha - the 'Feast of Sacrifice' is the most important feast of the Muslim calendar.
is the last of the two Islamic holidays celebrated worldwide each year, and considered the
holier of the two. According to the Quran It honors the willingness of Ibrahim to sacrifice
his son Ismael as an act of obedience to God's command. Before Ibrahim could sacrifice
his son, however, God provided a lamb to sacrifice instead.

Logotherapy and the Search for Meaning of Life

Viktor Frankl’s personal experiences in the Nazi concentration camps during World
War II led him to develop the basic tenets of logotherapy

(Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 44,000 camps and
other incarceration sites (including ghettos). The perpetrators used these sites for a range of
purposes, including forced labor, detention of people thought to be enemies of the state, and for
mass murder.) Over the course of three years, Frankl was moved between four concentration
camps When Frankl's camp was liberated in 1945, he learned of the death of all his immediate
family members.

Despite what happened to him Frankl embraced both the bright and dark sides of human
existence and believed that human sufferings could contribute to human achievement and
meaning in life.
“Everything can be taken from a man, but one thing, the last of the human freedoms – to
choose one’s attitude to any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way.
- Viktor Frankl, Nazi concentration camp survivor

Logotherapy
The pursuit of human existence as well as on man’s search for such a meaning
Logos – denotes meaning (Greek)

There are 3 possible sources of the meaning of life:

1. Purposeful Work
To find meaning of life starts with holding a future goal. Each individual has each own
future goal to achieve or a task to perform. The task or goal to fulfill becomes the
meaning of their life. Therefore, meaning of life is unique to every individual.
2. Courage in the face of Difficulty
A meaningful life is a life with suffering. Suffering is inevitable part of life. To find
meaning of life is to recognize suffering, pain, and death as part of life and to have the
courage to face those life difficulties.

3. Love
“The ultimate secret on the spiritual foundation of life is that love is salvation and joy
eternity.” The ultimate factor to find meaning of life is love.

REFLECTION PAPER #7
Search one quotation from Viktor Frankl and explain why you choose that quotation.
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REFLECTION PAPER #8
What is the Purpose/ Meaning of your Life.

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