Buddhism In The Little Buddha

Ever since I was in high school, I was always curious of other religions groups and how they worship. Growing up in the Christian faith, I had an idea of what it like to be a part of Buddhism. I always respect the words of the 14th Dalai Lama for he always looks so happy and kind hearted. I remembered that for one of my classes in high school, we watched The Little Buddha movie. Even though the movie gave a basic history of what the religion is, I always wanted to ask questions as to what a Buddhist really is and what the religion represents. For these reasons is why I decided to visit an actual Buddhist temple for my field assignment.
On September 27th, I went to the Kunzang Palyul Choling (KPC) center located in rural Montgomery County. The

I asked about Jetsunna on where and how she found her. One of the nuns told me that Jetsunna Ahkon Lhamo was found in America in the main Arizona temple. They believed that a few higher level monks recognized that she is the reincarnated of their passed teacher. Ever since, they made her into what she is today and has been teaching people how to properly follow the words of Buddha. I also asked the nuns what was sangha? They said that sangha is a spiritual community for anyone who follows the path of Buddha. It is mostly where the monks and the nuns gather, worship, and meditate. I asked them about prayer, and what a Buddhist prays for. One nun told me that a Buddhist doesn’t pray to God or a divine, but will pray for oneself to obtain Enlightenment. My final question to them is that I asked what was Sansara? The way they described ‘Sansara’ as this dark room with furniture. In this room, you are always wondering where you are, and will always bump into the furniture. Meaning that once you die, you will always wonder in a deep realm until one is reincarnated again. However, if one is enlightened, the room will be bright, and you will see everything. They specified that when one is enlightened, one can chose when, where, and what you can be when reincarnated. Unlike Christianity, there’s no real concept on “eternal life”, but you will constantly be reborn in different realms of life. Because of this, there’s no real concept of sin, our personalities stay the same, one can be born to be to anything, and one can have a fortunate birth as a human. With an unfortunate birth, one can be an animal or something of the earth. They believe that our lives are literally connections of everything. The one thing that blew my mind was when they told me that they don’t believe in the concept of the soul, and that our bodies are like vessels or ‘bags of skin’. That had to been the most