On Sunday, January 29th I attended a 11 am service at the “Ekoji Buddhist Temple” located in Fairfax Station. I chose to attend a Buddhist service because I wanted to educate myself on a religion that I knew little about. I grew up and was baptized in a Catholic Church, however I don’t remember much about it. I sometimes attend a Baptist church my family goes to from time to time. I do consider myself a Christian who believes both in God and Jesus Christ. But, I knew going to a Buddhist service would be different then attending a Baptist and/or Catholic Church because the Buddha is not to be consider as a God but a teacher.
Before attending the Ekoji Buddhist Temple, I went online to their website, to see what the service consisted of and …show more content…
As my family and I pulled up to the temple I noticed that it was fairly small. There were two buildings which is divided by a garden and there was a little red statue standing by a tree. The statue was a monk, which was wearing a robe, a kasa (straw hat) and holding a keisaku (a flat wooden stick or slat) in one hand and pair of beads in the other. I later learned that those beads are Buddhist praying beads also referred to as onenju beads. Walking inside the temple it was very open and spacious something I didn’t expect because from the outside it looked small. To the right of me there were a couple of tables with a bunch of information pamphlets about the Buddhism, meditation and yoga classes and they even had pins and calendars to take. Before being able to enter the Hondo (the main temple area through two glass doors), we had to take our shoes off before stepping onto the carpet. I then heard a bell ring (Kansho) which was used to call everyone in for service. As we were making our way to sit down I took a quick glance around the room. I noticed that there was a fair amount of people at the service, everyone seemed to be dressed comfortably and most of all it was