Buddhism is a major world religion and philosophy that originated in ancient India over 2,500 years ago. It was founded by Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Buddha, who taught a path towards liberation from suffering and the attainment of inner peace and wisdom. The central teachings of Buddhism revolve around the Four Noble Truths, which state that suffering is a natural part of life, suffering arises from craving and attachment, suffering can be overcome, and the path to the cessation of suffering is the Eightfold Path. The Eightfold Path consists of eight principles that guide individuals towards liberation from suffering: including right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Buddhism also emphasizes the importance of compassion, mindfulness, impermanence, and non-attachment. Compassion towards oneself and others, mindfulness in the present moment, recognition of the impermanence of all things, and non-attachment to specific outcomes are all seen as important practices for achieving inner peace and wisdom. Ultimately, Buddhism is a philosophy and religion that teaches the path towards liberation from suffering and the attainment of inner peace and wisdom. Its central teachings revolve around the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, and it emphasizes compassion, mindfulness, impermanence, and non-attachment as important practices for achieving these goals. Most importantly, Buddhism and its ideals can be utilized in everyday life to relive oneself from stress and help accomplish one’s goals in an efficient manner. Today we will be looking at some ways that Buddhism can be used to help with stress.

Buddhism offers several practices and teachings that can help with stress management:

1. Mindfulness: Buddhism emphasizes the importance of mindfulness, which involves paying attention to the present moment without judgment. Mindfulness meditation can help individuals to reduce stress and anxiety by cultivating a greater sense of awareness and presence in the moment.

2. Compassion: Buddhism teaches the practice of compassion towards oneself and others. By cultivating self-compassion, individuals can reduce negative self-talk and improve their overall well-being. By practicing compassion towards others, individuals can build stronger relationships and a sense of connection that can help to reduce stress.

3. Impermanence: Buddhism teaches that all things are impermanent and constantly changing. This perspective can help individuals to develop a sense of detachment from stressful situations, as they recognize that the situation will pass and change over time.

4. Non-attachment: Buddhism encourages individuals to practice non-attachment, which involves letting go of desires and expectations. By letting go of attachment to specific outcomes, individuals can reduce stress and anxiety related to uncertainty and unpredictability.

5. Right livelihood: Buddhism emphasizes the importance of engaging in work that is meaningful and aligned with one’s values. By pursuing right livelihood, individuals can reduce stress related to work and find greater fulfillment in their careers.

Buddhism offers practices and teachings that can help individuals to manage stress, including mindfulness, compassion, impermanence, non-attachment, and pursuing right livelihood; by incorporating these practices into their daily lives, individuals can develop a greater sense of well-being and resilience in the face of stress.

Eudaimonia is a concept from ancient Greek philosophy that refers to a state of human flourishing, well-being, and fulfillment. It is often translated as “happiness,” but the concept is more complex than just feeling good or experiencing pleasure. Eudaimonia is a more holistic state of being that encompasses all aspects of a person’s life, including their relationships, work, and personal development.

Often associated with the ethical philosophy of Aristotle, who believed that the purpose of human life is to achieve eudaimonia, Eudaimonia is a very efficient way to strive for success and to manage stress. According to Aristotle, eudaimonia is achieved through the cultivation of virtues such as wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance, which enable individuals to live a life of excellence and fulfillment.

While eudaimonia is not a state that can be achieved through external circumstances such as wealth or power, it is also not simply an internal state of mind. Rather, eudaimonia involves a sense of purpose and meaning in life, a sense of connection to others and the world around us, and a sense of personal growth and development. Those who are able to embody Eudaimonia are able to see past tough hurdles and temporary pain, and are able to sacrifice pain in the present for prosperity in the future.

Eudaimonia can help with stress in several ways:

1. Eudaimonia provides a sense of purpose and meaning: when we have a clear sense of purpose and meaning in our lives, we are better able to cope with stress. Eudaimonia provides a framework for individuals to identify and pursue their values and goals, which can help to reduce feelings of stress and anxiety.

2. Eudaimonia promotes the development of virtues: it is achieved through the cultivation of virtues such as wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance. These virtues can help individuals to manage stress by providing a sense of self-control, resilience, and emotional regulation.

3. Eudaimonia also emphasizes personal growth and development: it is not a fixed state, but rather an ongoing process of personal growth and development. By focusing on personal growth and development, we can build their capacity to manage stress and respond to adversity in a more effective way.

4. Eudaimonia encourages connection with others: emphasizing the importance of connection with others and the world around us. By fostering positive relationships and a sense of connection, we can build a support network that can help to reduce stress and provide a sense of belonging.

Ultimately, eudaimonia is a great catalyst for stress management and success, and provides a sense of purpose and meaning; by nature, Eudaimonia promotes the development of virtues, emphasizes personal growth and development, and encourages connection with others. By cultivating eudaimonia, we can build the resilience and capacity to manage stress and lead a fulfilling life.

Stoicism is an ancient philosophical school that originated in Athens, Greece, around 300 BC. Philosophers of Stoicism included the likes of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus. The philosophy emphasizes the importance of rationality and the development of self-control and resilience as a way to navigate the challenges of life. Most notably, Stoicism is famous for its profound ways to handle and control stress. At its core, Stoicism teaches that individuals should focus on what they can control and accept what they cannot control, encouraging the practice of self-discipline and the cultivation of virtues such as wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance. Here are some ways that Stoicism can help you control and contain your Stress.

1. Practice Negative Visualization

Stoics believe that emotions such as anger, fear, and grief are caused by our own judgments and opinions, rather than by external events. Therefore, they advocate for the practice of “negative visualization,” which involves imagining the worst-case scenario to prepare oneself for adversity. By doing this, we can prepare ourselves mentally for the worst, making it less intimidating if it does happen. This practice can help us build resilience and reduce stress.

2. Focus on what you can control:

Stoics believe that many of life’s stressors come from external events that are outside of our control. Therefore, they encourage individuals to focus on what they can control, such as their own thoughts, actions, and attitudes. By focusing on what is within our control, we can reduce feelings of helplessness and stress.

3. Use reason to reframe stressful situations:

Stoics emphasize the use of reason to reframe our thoughts and attitudes toward stressful situations. By using reason to reframe our thoughts, we can develop a more objective perspective on our situation, which can reduce feelings of stress and anxiety.

4. Cultivate virtues such as wisdom and courage:

Stoics believe that cultivating virtues such as wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance can help individuals navigate stressful situations. By focusing on developing these virtues, we can build our capacity to manage stress and respond to adversity in a more effective way.

In summary, Stoicism can be helpful in managing stress by providing practical tools and a philosophical approach to dealing with challenging situations. By focusing on what we can control, practicing negative visualization, using reason to reframe our thoughts, and cultivating virtues such as wisdom and courage, we can reduce stress and build resilience.

Throughout my time as a high school student, I have experienced many trials and tribulations that all cause stress and take a toll on my mental health. I imagine that I am one of millions of teenagers worldwide who feel this overbearing stress and pressure to exceed expectations, and I know that many wish they could have a break from all of these pressures. However, I have found my stress reliever in transcendental meditation, commonly referred to as Tm by practitioners. I first started Tm in third grade, when my Brother, who has ADHD, tried Tm as a way to cope and control his condition. Tm has helped my brother tremendously, and its effects were almost instantaneous. As a result of TM’s success for my brother, the rest of my family, including me, adopted transcendental meditation.

To say that Tm has been merely a stress reliever is an understatement: almost all of my achievements in high school can be credited in some form to Tm. Everyday after I arrive home from school, I always do Tm. Sometimes it is 20 minutes, other times it stretches to 40 minutes. Regardless, it has been a lifesaver. It is common for highschoolers to be drained from the day’s activities, and I am no different. Tm is like a battery charger that revitalizes me and allows me to maintain enough energy to complete all of my homework, study for all of my classes, and update this very blog. I have talked about how to do Tm on this blog before, but I cannot stress the benefits enough. Such practice in any daily routine is the difference between average and Straight A student.

However, as the novel progresses, Victor is driven to borderline insanity by his lust for revenge against the monster.

Victor himself cuts himself from society and commits himself to an animalistic obsession to revenge his family and friends by killing the monster, and the monster likewise contains its cold hearted cruelty that it displayed all throughout the novel. As each of Victor’s family members and friends gets slain by the monster, he becomes more and more inhumane.

“On perceiving me, the stranger addressed me in English, although with a foreign accent. ‘Before I come on board your vessel,’ said he, ‘will you have the kindness to inform me whither you are bound?’ You may conceive my astonishment on hearing such a question addressed to me from a man on the brink of destruction… his limbs were nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering. I never saw a man in so wretched a condition.” (9)

When the final state of Victor is showcased to the reader, Victor is clearly destroyed– both inside and outside. He transitions from an aspiring scientist  to a broken man consumed by his emotions, and motivated by revenge. Victor has himself become an unrecognizable monster who is no longer truly human, and not intrinsically different from the creature he is seeking. Shelley clearly demonstrates this from the first chapter of the novel, showcasing Victor’s ragged appearance, as well as his animalistic determination to follow his creation. 

As the reader accumulates more schema about Victor throughout the first half of the novel, Victor’s love for science becomes increasingly apparent, and during his time at the university in Ingolstadt, Victor is spurred into the art of reincarnation from his mother’s death. Such event is what exposes Victor’s devotion to a life of reason.

“The summer months passed while I was thus engaged, heart and soul, in one pursuit… and the same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so long a time. I knew my silence disquieted them.” (Shelley, 33)

Victor neglects his emotional and social responsibilities. He loses track of his family and friends, growing progressively more isolated. This demonstrates his over-reliance on rationality while ignoring his emotional well-being. Victor’s strong bias towards science and reason over emotion fuels his unhealthy ambition to go beyond human limitations. Shelley shows that through this process, Victor Frankenstein becomes less human, if not monstrous. 

I promise, this is my last Frankenstein post (for now), and I am going to be taking a more casual approach towards my language instead of my usual MLA format. There is a clear dichotomy between emotion and reason in Frankenstein, similar to that of mind-body dualism: how do we know that emotion is separate from reason? How should we judge when to use emotion and reason? Should we find a balance between the two? Is it necessary to find a balance between the two in order to stay human?

In terms of the conflict between emotion and reason, neither Victor Frankenstein nor his monstrous creation ever achieves this balance, and thus never quite attains the ideal of true humanity. As a reader, one can see that each character only embodies the extremes of the two mentalities. Victor starts out the novel as a symbol for total reason and deviates to total emotion as the plot progresses; Frankenstein’s monster symbolizes the opposite, or starts off as emotionally dependent and transitions to cunning, unfeeling being.

Victor’s transformation into a maniac and his demise ultimately symbolizes the consequences of dangerous knowledge. Throughout the novel, the reader is constantly reminded of the consequences of immoral creation in science; from the ongoing murders of Victor’s family and friends to his constant paranoia of the monster watching him. However, the monster also suffers, as it is essentially mistreated and ostracized by everyone it interacts with. Furthermore, at the end of the novel, the monster notes that exacting his revenge on Victor and its murders did not make anything better for itself; instead, the guilt of the murders and the screams of the monster’s victims still haunts it at the end of the novel. The reader is exposed to the harsh truth of dangerous knowledge: neither of the sides involved benefit, and it ultimately only causes the suffering of those involved and the others around them. 

“Are you mad my friend? Or whither does your senseless curiosity lead you? 

Would you also create for yourself and the world a demoniacal enemy. Peace, Peace! Learn my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own.”(156)

Throughout Chapters 17-24 of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s transformation to a disillusioned, guilt-ridden maniac who is only determined to kill his creation is shown in full effect. 

Victor essentially doomed himself to have a lack of humanity as soon as his creation of the creature came to life, and the decision to not properly cultivate this creature to have a humane side to it. In other words, Victor’s downfall to his inhumane state at the end of the novel can be attributed to only his own actions, as he refused to acknowledge his monster as a human and alienated the creature, leaving the creature to be exposed to society’s cruelty all by himself instead of teaching the creature how to act properly first; also, when the creature offers Victor the deal of making it a partner, Victor backs out of the deal, causing the creature to do what it said to do it Victor failed, which was murder everyone Victor knew and eventually kill Victor. However, the focuses of chapters 17-24 do not primarily focus on this aspect of Victor, but rather show that both Victor and his creation are ruthless monsters by the end of the novel: Victor himself cuts himself from society and commits himself to an animalistic obsession to revenge his family and friends by killing the monster, and the monster likewise contains its cold hearted cruelty that it displayed all throughout the novel. As each of Victor’s family members and friends gets slain by the monster, he becomes more and more inhumane; Victor’s transformation from depressed at the start of chapter 17 to willing to carry guns on his wedding night in chapter 23 to his full pursuit of the monster highlights his devolution from an educated scientist pursuing the highs of discovery to a broken shell of a man who wants nothing but for his own creation to be dead. 

“Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?”(97)

Chapters 11-16 of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein highlight the importance of family and close relationships, as well as showcasing the despair that loneliness can have on an individual. For the majority of these chapters, the monster details his travels and ultimately his social ostracization to Victor, showcasing how his grotesque appearance led any person he came across to immediately be frightened and hostile towards the monster; ultimately forcing the monster to live in isolation in a shack next to cottage. There, the monster details his journey to teaching himself English and learning about the people that he was living next door to. The monster grows attached to these people despite them never knowing of the monster’s existence: when the monster eventually confronts the people living in the cottage, they are frightened by its appearance and reject it, leading to the monster’s hatred of humanity. However, Shelley’s purpose of the monster’s rejection dives deeper than a critical plot point: it also serves as a device to build the monster’s lack of social identity. The monster views the close relationships that are present in a family through the individuals in the cottage, and the devotion that accompanies these relationships. It is the cottager’s devotion and familial love for each other that cause the monster to realize how truly alone he is, and how he has and never will experience such emotions and tight bonds in his life. This realization is the driver of the monster’s hatred for Victor and humanity, but also adds to the monster’s ruthless calculating demeanor showcased in later chapters: after this realization, the monster is shown to brutally murder and destroy everyone and thing that Victor ever cared about. In essence, the monster’s loneliness and rejection by society add to the cold brooding demeanor it showcases to Victor in the later stages of the book: this is ultimately Shelley’s way of capturing the importance of community and family for one’s personal identity and view on life. Since the monster never had a family or close relationship of any kind, it cannot establish its own identity as a living being, leaving a monster with no sense of identity and origin, forever to be doomed to live in desolate isolation. Human beings learn to relate to those around them from the minute they are born, yet the monster has no one else like him.