Saturday, December 28, 2019

During Siddharthas Time - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 4 Words: 1128 Downloads: 5 Date added: 2019/07/31 Category Literature Essay Level High school Tags: Siddhartha Essay Did you like this example? When you want to achieve a goal, there are often obstacles that can prevent you from reaching the level of expectation you have for yourself. However, a setback doesnt mean you wont ever reach your goal. In fact, you often learn a lot from your setbacks that can help you in the future. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "During Siddharthas Time" essay for you Create order In Hermann Hesses allegorical novel of spiritual self-discovery, Siddhartha, the authors depiction of the Om and its ability to guide someone through their setbacks is portrayed through Siddharthas turning point, when he experiences the cleansing effects of the Om at the river. During Siddharthas time with the wealthy merchant, Kamaswami, his riches turn him greedy and unhappy. He turns to gambling and binge-drinking to temporarily satisfy him but his high stakes and love for the fear that comes with them drives him to hate himself and grow restless. One night in particular, after he had spent the night with dancing girls and drinking wine, Siddhartha is disgusted with himself and wishes he could rid himself of his pointless life. When he falls asleep that night, he has a vivid dream. In his dream, [Kamalas] little bird was dead, and lay rigid on the floor of the cage. He took it out, and threw it away, out into the lane; and, at the same moment, he received a terrible fright, and his heart ached as if he had cast away everything valuable and good from himself together with that dead bird. (44) Siddhartha interprets the dream as a symbol of the death of all that was good in his soul. Siddhartha realizes that his soul is empty and his life is meaningless. It dawns upon him that he has fallen into samsara, the cyclical pattern of living, suffering, and dying. He leaves the city in despair and heads to the river. In a state of hopelessness, Siddhartha nearly commits suicide. His eyes closed, he was dropping to his death. Just then, from remote regions of his soul, from past periods of his tired life, a sound ran through his mind like a flash. It was a word, a syllable, that he spoke to himself involuntarily in a slurred voice, the sacred om. (47) Siddhartha is stopped by the recognition of the Om from the river. The inner voice that told him to become a samana and to not follow the Buddha has been dormant but is finally awakened. After a deep sleep, Siddhartha is reborn and ready to set out on a new course. With a new outlook on his life, Siddhartha meets Vasudeva, the ferryman, and asks to stay in his hut to learn from the river. While Siddhartha stays with Vasudeva to find the Om at the river, Kamala passes away from a fatal snake bit e, and his son is left with him. Siddhartha struggles to form a relationship with Young Siddhartha and looks to the Om to teach him patience. ?You put no pressure on him, you do not hit him, you give him no orders, because you know that softness is stronger than hardness, water is stronger than rock, love is stronger than physical force. (64) When Siddhartha finds that he has a son, he is immediately overcome by the blind love a parent feels for their child. As a result he dismisses his sons behavior as the result of Kamalas death. Siddhartha tries to win his son over through friendliness and patience and to show him how to live a good life. He tries to groom his son in his own image, but Young Siddhartha realizes it and resents Siddhartha for doing so. Even though Vasudeva reminds Siddhartha that everyone must follow their own voice to enlightenment, Siddhartha is blinded by love, and he ignores it. Eventually, Young Siddhartha leaves the hut in the middle of the night to go back to the town and Siddhartha comes after him the next morning. He saw Kamaswami, he saw the servants, the banquets, the dice players, the musicians; he saw Kamalas songbird in its cage; he relived all this, he breathed the air of samsara; again he was old and tired, again he felt the disgust, again he felt the wish to obliterate himself, again he recovered, thanks to the sacred omSiddhartha realizedthat he could not help his son.(68) As Siddhartha looks around th e city, he has flashbacks of his life there. Through the om, Siddhartha acknowledges he must let his son go and that no amount of reasoning will convince him to stay. Tho om reminds Siddhartha that no one can teach enlightenment, and that enlightenment must be found within. After his son leaves, Siddhartha dives into learning from the river and Vasudeva. HeSiddhartha listenedit was all one, it was all interwoven and knotted together, interconnected in a thousand ways. And all of this together, all the voices, all the goals, all the longing, all the suffering, all the pleasure, all the good and evil, all of this together was the worldthe great song of a thousand voices consisted of a single word, which was om, the absolute. (73) Siddhartha ceases to struggle with his destiny, he ceases to suffer. His soul merges into the unity of the great perfection that is all of the voices in the world speaking together. No longer knowing whether time existed, whether that vision had lasted a second or a hundred years; no longer knowing whether a Siddhartha, a Gotama, an I or a you existed; wounded in his inmost recesses as if by a divine arrow, the wound from which tastes sweet; enchanted and dissolved in his inmost being, Govinda stood there a little while longer, leaning over Siddharthas quiet face, which had just been kissed, which had just been the theatre of all formations, of all becoming, of all being. (81) Siddharthas face is the epitome of enlightenment which, in the past, was known solely by Gotama. However, after Govindas years of following the Sublime One, finally tasted the Nirvana that Siddhartha emanates. After Govinda experiences this great transcendence, he admits that the path and approach to Nirvana used by Siddhartha was indeed the key to reaching it. This path that Siddhartha exemplified proved to be the more successful route, despite Govindas attempts at believing he could reach Nirvana by alternative means. Govinda ultimately realized reaching enlightenment was not something that could be transferred to students by their teachers, but instead, had to come from within that individual. In Hermann Hesses novel, Siddhartha, the author conveys through Siddarthas experiences of trying to reach Om, that likewise, when any individual has a goal that they are trying to reach, it is a process. There can be setbacks while trying to achieve the goal and oftentimes we learn a great deal from those setbacks and obstacles that we encounter.

Friday, December 20, 2019

Don t Become A Philanthropic Colonialist - 999 Words

In 2000, United Nations announced the Millennium Declaration for global development and committed to achieve eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 (United Nations, 2000). Over the past 15 years, by reviewing and reflecting the failures and success of these ambitious goals (Childs, 2015), the debate about international giving continues. To support the stance about â€Å"the U.S. government and NGOs should stop aiding more to foreign countries,† this memo will briefly indicate this stand. In order to be well prepared for our debate, this note could provide a brief outline for this point of view. Don’t become a â€Å"philanthropic colonialist† In the article of â€Å"The charitable-industrial complex,† Buffett (2013) introduced the definition of the term â€Å"philanthropic colonialism.† Literally, this is the colonialism in modern civilization. In efforts to carry out obligations to achieve MDGs and take responsibilities for global development, developed countries promote foreign aid by imposing sets of succeeding practices on other developing and underdeveloped countries with little regard to differentiate and uniqueness of social culture, economy, or political forms (Buffett, 2013). Admittedly, United Nations (2000) declared a promising and inspiring blueprint of globalization—all countries work together peacefully, people won’t suffer from poverty and hunger, children can receive education, gender discrimination will be eliminated (MDGs, 2000)†¦ The deadline of 15-year development

Thursday, December 12, 2019

Purchasing Traditional Purchasing Values

Question: Describe about the Purchasing for Traditional Purchasing Values. Answer: 1. Traditional purchasing values method involves various steps such as material requisition, bidding, purchase order, shipping advice, invoice and payment. This method have been deemed to be slow and labour intensive as each transaction require its own paper trail and the process is repeated sequentially with every new transaction. On the other hand, Just-in-time method (JIT) is a production and stock management system in which materials are purchased and or material units produced or ordered only when actually needed to meet actual customer demand. In JIT system, the manufacturing system inventories are minimized whereas in some cases they are zero. It requires the producers to forecast demand in advance and consequently producing and maintaining an efficient inventory level: an inventory level that ensures improved quality, reduced costs and reduced lead time (Cachon Fisher, 2015). The traditional purchasing method can be viewed as one with a number of resulting inefficiencies such as it consists of a sequence of non- value adding activities which more often than not result into excessive documentation and consequently excessive order processing time. The overall result of this method is excessive administration cost with respect to transaction handling. This method also involves large lot sizes which increase holding costs and probability of wastage. The idea is less deliveries of large quantities. However, this system ensures that inventory is always available as and when needed since there are items in store or being manufactured always (De Toni Nassimbeni, 2014). On the other hand, the JIT system reduces the waste associated with inventory and it also delivers the ability to make frequent and timely deliveries to the customers. The buyer is able to exercise options on the delivery schedule and the method calls for increased innovation in the manufacturing systems. JIT systems makes use of technology and consequently ordering and carrying costs are reduced in the process. Processes are automated and as such, purchase orders can be processed through the systems, inventory records updated automatically therefore reducing manual handling and labor costs. However, the system has its shortcomings in that it involves a major overhaul of business systems during implementation and hence it may be difficult and costly to introduce. JIT also makes the business to be susceptible to a number of operational risks pertinent to the supply chain and a few distortions in supplies can bring into halt the production process (Fazel, Fischer Gilbert, 2013). The benefits accrued by the shop when it maintains both methods are several. While JIT ensures automation of the production and operations, traditional method ensures availability of some optimal inventory at all times hence hedging against the risk of interruption in supplies. JIT system is also expensive implement and therefore a hybrid of the two helps to meet the operational costs almost halfway as traditional method is ideal in cost savings involved with carrying costs and set up or ordering costs of inventory (Wilson, 2014). 2. For the purposes of this discussion, lets assume a situation where the chairs shop uses the JIT system entirely and another scenario where it uses the traditional approach entirely. The advantages involved in maintaining a JIT system in the chair manufacturing shop is that the system ensures improved productivity and quality. This yields a higher customer satisfaction level. Since the shop is manufacturing different types of chairs, the system can be designed such that an optimal product mix of the different types of chairs can be arrived at based on the buyers preferences and buying trends (Gunasekaran, 2014). JIT system is also able to update and monitor inventory levels therefore it will maintain a minimum inventory level such that there is no single time that each type of chair is not available in the manufacturing line. By minimizing the inventory levels, JIT frees up resources to employ elsewhere in the company and therefore working capital which would otherwise be held up in stock will be employed in other business processes. The main disadvantage that would arise in this case would be when there is a disruption on the supply chain and there is no inventory already maintained. This will result to stock outs and possibly the chairs shop may incur reputational costs associated (Monden, 2014). Lets now assume the chairs shop uses the traditional system altogether. The advantages that accrue on maintaining a traditional system is that at no time are there stock outs as the shop will be keen on ensuring that the chairs are available for production and delivery to the buyers. Even where there is a disruption on the supply line, there is always as a safety stock in holding available to the customers. The system also allows for the workers to excise human skills in all the processes and therefore improving interpersonal relations between them, the suppliers and the buyers and in this way they can be able to plan and determine the optimal inventory level that will minimize holding and ordering costs. However, the main disadvantage with this approach is that it may increase waste when not all inventories are purchased. It also increases the inventory costs as well as operational costs (Monczka Trent, 2015). While traditional approach assumes a functional organization devised to bring manufacturing costs to minimum for the particular component, the JIT system assumes an intermediate processes to that addresses the demands for subsequent stages of production directly. From a cost comparison view based on the ability to utilize economies of scale, a tradeoff may exist if the economies of manufacturing derived from the traditional approach are more significant and in this case a traditional system will be preferred from a cost dimension. However, a total cost comparison arising from other costs savings accrued for example in JIT system such reduction of waste, reduced inventory cost and improved quality of products may lead to the shop arriving at a compromise between the two systems so as to tap on the benefits accrued from the two approaches (Pearson Gritzmacher, 2013). References Cachon, G. P., Fisher, M. (2015). Supply chain inventory management and the value of shared information. Management science, 46(8), 1032-1048. De Toni, A., Nassimbeni, G. (2014). Just-in-time purchasing: an empirical study of operational practices, supplier development and performance. Omega, 28(6), 631-651. Fazel, F., Fischer, K. P., Gilbert, E. W. (2013). JIT purchasing vs. EOQ with a price discount: An analytical comparison of inventory costs. International Journal of Production Economics, 54(1), 101-109. Gunasekaran, A. (2014). Just-in-time purchasing: An investigation for research and applications. International Journal of Production Economics, 59(1-3), 77 84. Monden, Y. (2014). Toyota production system: an integrated approach to just-in-time. CRC Press. Monczka, R. M., Trent, R. J. (2015). Purchasing and sourcing strategy: trends and implications. Center for Advanced Purchasing Studies. Pearson, J. N., Gritzmacher, K. J. (2013). Integrating purchasing into strategic management. Long Range Planning, 23(3), 91-99. Wilson, D. T. (2014). An integrated model of buyer-seller relationships. Journal of the academy of marketing science, 23(4), 335-345.