Our religious project my group chose Buddhism, a religion whose "path of practice and spiritual development lead to insight into the true nature of reality." (Sangharakshita) The Wat Mongkolratanaram is the fourth well known Buddhist Temple in America, and for my religious visit project my group and I decided to go there. We anticipated going there because Buddhism was not a religion we were all entirely familiar with, afterwords Professor Alvarez mentioned there was a Sunday Market that consisted of food being served and we jumped the boat. My experience at Wat Mongkolratanaram taught me three of Buddha's beliefs: wisdom, kindness and morality, these three things helped me comprehend what Buddhism stood for and introduced me to a whole new…show more content… Wisdom is what guided us to the Wat Mongkolratanaram, we used our wisdom to look up the directions, make sure to dress culturally appropriate, and take our shoes off beforehand. My group members and I made sure we read a few articles about the temple and Buddhism to ensure we had knowledge about the temple and culture. From our research we learned that Wat Mongkolratanaram is a Theravada Buddhist Temple meaning, "the way (vada) of the elders (thera)" (Molloy p. 140). Theravada Buddhism is conservative, stresses the ideal of nirvana, encourages meditation, and celebrates many ceremonies such as New Years, Loy Krathong and many others. Wisdom is one of the key beliefs in Theravada Buddhism because they believe that elders are wise. Elders, such as the monks, must go through intense training to achieve enlightenment. "If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him" (Buddha quote). With wisdom my group had learned a variety of information from our visit. We learned that women were not allowed to touch the monk at all, if a woman touches a monk the monk must starve for three weeks and mediate while asking for forgiveness. Monks are similar to nuns in Christianity
