Buddhism A Spiritual Journey - 1420 Words

Buddhism began with Siddharta Gautama in the 6th century B.C.E., he was originally Hindu but formed Buddhism when he saw the four sights of an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and an amendicant. He feels that was his sign to go for a spiritual journey. He tries Jainism and performs asceticism, extreme fasting. Gautama felt there should be something more than Jainism. After eating, he sits under the Bodhi Tree and becomes enlightened with the idea of Buddhism. The Sutra is the book of teachings for Buddhists like a bible to a Christian. He makes the four noble truths that life involves suffering, suffering is from desire, to end suffering you must end craving, and to end craving you must follow the 8-fold path. The 8-fold path is a way to†¦show more content†¦Since I arrived early, I took a walk around the temple and its ground. The smell of flowers filled the air from the incense they were burning. Incense sticks are burned to release the good smell from the lotus flower to offer the gods and pay respect to the Buddha along with clearing the sky. Buddha statues and lotus flowers were around the entire temple and land. The lotus flower represents purity, spiritual awakening, and faithfulness to the Buddhists. Before entering any part of the holy buildings, you must take your shoes off because shoes have a lot of filth on them, they do not want to make their temple dirty also, and they want to preserve the floors as long as they can. When entering the temple I noticed there were no pews, there were only cushions and small tables lined up. Siddhartha Gautama was in the middle of the stage and was the largest statue, since he is the founder for their religion. Apples were placed in front of him as an offer to tell him how blessed they are for all that they have. Observing the people walking around I noticed that some wore monastic robes of a grayish color and a tan color. Wearing the robes represented the monks promise to live a life without materialistic ways of the society. They choose to live as simple as they can; also the Master and his monk shave their heads to not give into vanity but to remain simple. When the service began, I sat off to the