Buddhist Temple Experience

Personal Reflection Essay for Trip to Buddhist Temple

This Sunday morning I had the opportunity to witness my first Buddhist temple service at the Toledo Zen Center. My classmate, Tasi, accompanied me and we arrived to the service around 10:30 in the morning. When we first entered the temple we were both greeted by the man whom I had spoken with about coming, but were instantly amazed at the amount of color there was within the temple and how beautiful it was. I immediately noticed how unique and unusual it was in appearance compared to any religious service that I had ever attended. From the beginning, I was intrigued and was looking forward to observing the Buddhist rituals and routines. After we were greeted we took our seats towards the back of the temple, as that was where we felt most comfortable. I noticed that there were many large pictures of Buddha and his two disciples that surrounded the people. The people participating in the service laid out a mat on the floor and began to kneel around the food they had placed on the mat as well. The monks began reciting a blessing in what they called Pali. Once they had gone through this stage, they began to speak or sing what I believe were verses from their scriptures. Eventually they all turned into a prayer-like position and began to
The way in which I had envisioned their services was very similar to the way in which it turned out to be. It was a very calming and relaxing environment and there were very little interaction within the people, other than the chanting of the scriptures. The only aspect of the service that was I was surprised by was the fact that was very little music or anything that could even resemble music within the service. I generally think of a service having some type of instruments playing, but there were no instruments or any form of music other than the people