blog post 2: a different religious tone

Temple of 500 Golden Buddhas in Wuhan.

I grew up in a Roman Catholic household, in which I had to go to mass every week until I was 19 years old. This, in conjunction with my developing sense of self and rebellion in my teenage years caused me to strongly resent organized religion. Although I appreciate the values that my parents instilled in me with the aid of religion, I often wonder how my life would be different if I hadn’t grown up a Catholic. It is for this reason, and for the fact that if I were to subscribe to a religion it would be Buddhism, that I found the Chinese way of religion so interesting.

Temple of 500 Golden Buddhas in Wuhan.

On the first full day of our trip, we visited The Temple of 500 Golden Buddhas in Wuhan. The first thing that struck me about this temple was how crowded it was. The courtyards and each building in the monastery were packed with people of all ages. There were a couple tour groups, many older people, and parents with young children, but the most astonishing thing to me was the number of people my age. There were a very large percentage of teens and twenty-somethings, both by themselves and in small groups of friends. This was so surprising to me because I feel like you would never see that in America, especially in Christian churches in and around New England. Not everyone was there to pray, in fact, the temple is a fairly large tourist attraction because of the hall of Buddhas, but the diversity and number of people in the temple that morning was very interesting.

Painting I did of my coin sticking to the statue in the Temple of 500 Golden Buddhas.

Additionally, Buddhism is not a religion of threats and consequence, as Christianity is, but is based in luck and good acts towards others and a cyclical, balanced mindset.

Temple on the Yangtze River with a small pond to release turtles for good fortune.

In the past six or seven years, I have started thinking and acting primarily in this way, but it was fascinating to see the effects of that thought on an entire culture. There were no elements of life that were highly and obviously impacted by the different way of thinking that Buddhism, but the general energy of the people, items in stores, and the design of buildings, art and even general product packaging lent itself to a more Buddhist way of thinking. I think that this was one of the things that made Chinese culture so attractive to me.

Temple in the White Emperor's City.