March 10, 2016
Today we visited the Unitarian Universalist Church in Colorado Springs and attended a meditation session led by a religion professor and Buddhist at Colorado College. The UU Church was incredibly interesting as it aims to include all walks of life in its community. The meditation was a different kind of interesting in that we had some great insight from the instructor himself. The experience of the meditation was more difficult but was still a great experience for the class. The introduction to Eastern religion thanks to the meditation class was highly beneficial as well. We gained a lot of insight into the philosophy and religion side of Buddhism.
The UU Church was an incredible experience. I believe most of us had never experienced a church that was completely tolerant of all faiths. The idea that a church could accommodate every religion during its services was completely new to most of us, and it offered a new perspective on what a religious community could be. The Pastor said that they have people from paganism to Islam to Hinduism attending services of one church at the same time without the tensions that you would expect to see at something of the type. The sense of community is apparently upheld in spite of the glaring differences in individual beliefs. This is an amazing feat that I believe is a great model for how we should think of others in common society and not just inside religious matters.
The visit to BodhiMind Center was equally as enlightening, but not for the same reasons. There was a different environment there. It was still welcoming and nice, but there wasn’t as much of a sense of community. It was all very much a sense of everyone doing their own thing. This makes sense, however, seeing as this was a Buddhist session. The Buddhist philosophy very much focuses on the individual aspect of the faith as opposed to relying on a larger community of people and utilizing blind faith. You are supposed to investigate Buddha’s teachings on your own and decide whether they hold true to you or not. The instructor there was incredibly knowledgeable about Buddhist history and philosophy and created a perfect introduction to Buddhism as we start to head toward Eastern religions.
