The Buddhist Eye Temple

Buddhism is a religion based on self-reflection and developing inner peace through daily practice. I visited the Buddhist Eye Temple in Eugene, a Soto Zen Buddhist temple that is based on Japanese practices and offers regular services, lectures, and zazen. The temple is located within a house and there were many religious symbols of the faith around the rooms. The main room, where the service took place, was an open area with mats and cushions on the floor and an aisle down the center with an altar in honor of Buddha. There was an entrance room which contained many statues and symbols that reflected the Buddhist faith. The house was quiet and had a peaceful feeling the whole time. One would be able to tell that there was great respect for the

The people were welcoming, allowing guests to feel comfortable. From my prior experiences at other religious places of worship, I found the temple to be very intimate and personal to each person. I would have liked to learn about the Buddhist faith before attending the service in order to be more aware of the beliefs and practices, but it was interesting to figure out what was happening. From the one service, I felt as if Buddhism was a lot less based on history and more about the philosophical ways to live life. Buddhism is a religious that intrigues me and I would like to learn more about

For one, there were many more people, but I also felt as though the priest and servers performed the service with little interaction with the people. It began with praying and response, then parts of the scripture were read. The priest’s homily differed greatly from that of the Buddhist priest’s lecture as the Catholic priest recited parts of the bible and explained them. This led to the receiving of the Eucharist, which I did not take part in, but seemed to be very important to the churchgoers. Personally, I had been taught that if you were not baptized into a certain denomination, you should not receive the Eucharist, but the parent volunteer told the students that we were allowed to if we wanted to. At my previous school, I was never allowed to receive the Eucharist for eleven years as a non-Catholic, so this could have been the first time to accept it, but I decided against it.There were songs intermittently that filled the silence at some points, as well as some being literal parts of the service. The music was sung by the people attending the service, as well as a singer. From my previous knowledge and experiences, not much has changed and all of the Catholic masses that I have attended have been very similar, to me. I noticed that there were many elderly people during this service. Although, there were some children that parents hoped to pass their beliefs down to. Most