Experiences in a Buddhist Temple
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We like to think of ourselves as competent. One of the great advantages of adulthood, after all, is the sense that we have that we finally have mastered the rules of our society and our culture. We are no longer likely to make the kind of culturally mistakes that embarrassed us as teenagers. However, as soon as we step - even briefly - into a cultural arena that is different from our own we lose this sense of mastery. This sudden ignorance, this overwhelming sense that we are no longer capable of negotiating the simplest transaction without making the kind of elemental mistakes that a young child would be likely to make, is at the heart of what we often call "culture shock". And because such a phenomenon has more to do with the ways in which we view ourselves and the ways in which we value our own sense of knowing cultural rules, culture shock can occur even when the culture that we are encountering is only a little different from our own (Storti 2001). It does not require us to travel around the world to feel as if we are out of our element.I experienced this myself this past week when I went to a Buddhist temple. I have to admit that in choosing this location for this class experiment I had hoped to minimize my own culture shock. While I am not a Buddhist, I have read a far amount about Buddhism (initially for another class paper and then simply out of my own interest). I believed that because I had some background knowledge about Buddhism that I would feel more at home a
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more comfortable here than I had in the courtyard, perhaps because hanging out and not doing anything is what you're supposed to do in a Buddhist garden (I knew this already) while hanging out in a courtyard where everyone else has a job to do seems odd. In other words, I felt that I could "pass" as a native more easily in the garden than I had been able to when I first entered. Also, as I knew from past reading as well as from observing the others in the garden the purpose of coming to a Buddhist garden is to contemplate one's own thoughts and not intrude on others. This desire to find a peripheral role that one can, even as a non-native, lay claim to is a common experience for those who have crossed cultural boundaries (Ward, Bochner, and Furnham p. 41).
After about twenty minutes of sitting in the garden I felt more sure of myself (thus, perhaps, demonstrating that even a non-Buddhist can be inclined toward Buddhist ideals in the appropriate setting), I walked back through the courtyard towards the temple itself. The woman at the information desk had said that I could enter whenever I wished today so long as I took off my shoes and did not disturb the ceremony. When I got to the door of the temple itself I placed my shoes in
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Approximate Word count = 1392
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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