What I Learned About Buddhism Essay - 1543 Words

One of the reason I took this class is to learn more about religions and their origins but I was specifically interested in Buddhism so I was excited that it was a religion that the class was going to cover. I had little prior knowledge of Buddhism but I didn’t know the origin, important figures and important teachings but I learned that what I thought was inaccurate. This class deepened my interest of Buddhism more because I learned what it really is about and their teaching while also correcting the ideas I had of Buddhism that were wrong. One of the ideas I was wrong about Buddhism is that I thought that they worshipped a deity which was Buddha and that Buddhists pray to him just like Catholics pray to God. In the lectures, I learned that Buddhism didn’t have a god which was weird for me to learn because all the religions that we’ve learned before had a type of God. I found it interesting that Buddha was seen as a teacher and was never turned into a God like in Christianity, he was seen as a revered teacher and great influence to look up to for Buddhists. The lectures also taught me that Buddha himself didn’t believe in a higher power but believed that a person could reach nirvana for themselves and not because a higher power was telling them too because that’s why he did it. He did it for himself when he meditated under the tree so that he could learn about himself and how the world works and its secrets. Learning that Buddhism had no God to obey, I felt likeShow MoreRelatedWhen Asia Was the World Book Analysis Essay1110 Words   |  5 PagesBefore this assignment I never knew anything about Asian history until I got to this class and received this assignment. I can’t believe how much Asian history influenced the way we as Americans look at history now. In Steward Gordon’s When Asia Was The World, I found the story of Xuanzang very interesting. 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