I believe that people spend their lives seeking our religion, nurturing their faith, and worshipping creation for a variety of reasons. One of the main reasons I think people seek out religion is to find answers to the meaning of life and what happens after death. Humans always want to know the answer to the question “why?” and want to have a sense of what is going to happen. Without a definite answer to these questions, it is unnerving for us. We have had to interpret life as it appears to us which then leads to the formation of a religion as a solution to the lack of answers to these questions. As seen by the existence of the many religions in the world, there are any ways people have interpreted the meaning of life and have created their own views on what happens after death. At the Buddhist temple we got to hear firsthand of what Buddhist believe the meaning of life is. We spent a lot of time hearing about enlightenment and the path to enlightenment through the elimination of worldly desires. In one case, we walked around a temple that had paintings of the finding of a cow, taming the cow, and then letting the cow go again which is used as a representation of the path to enlightenment. This set path of enlightenment and life helps set a clear meaning of life and understanding what is to be done to get to the afterlife and is calming to humans to have this answer and path to follow. Another reason I believe people seek out religion is as a response to their amazement of the complexity and wonder of the natural world. On the fieldtrip yesterday, we had a nice hike to the Buddhist temple and got to be outdoors. Just looking around at the changing leaves, flowers, landscape, and plants, it is mind-blowing to think about the complexity of our world and how amazing it is that we are even alive. It then makes you wonder how all of these things came to be because everything is so beyond anything that humans could ever create. This then brings the idea of a supernatural and the worship of nature. We have learned that in Taoism and Buddhism there is a strong emphasis on nature and that in Korea the people use to worship mountains and their Gods. This practice is not absurd when just spending the time outdoors shows us how wondrous and supernatural the world around us is. Overall this fieldtrip not only taught me more about Buddhism but also gave me a sense of appreciation and understand on why people seek out religions.
