:Intro to Religion Blog

Tuesday we learned about non-western religions, most oriented from China, Japan, and India. The three things that make them different from a western religion was that they are monistic, nonlinear, and praxis. Unlike monotheism, monistic means that it is one non-personal ultimate reality, this was kind of a hard concept to understand considering I grew up in the western religion, having one personal god, who was simulated as a person instead of a thing. When we discussed Hinduism it was very interesting to me that they think of everything as being equal and made from the same thing, called Brahman. The definition I would give karma is definitely not the actually definition of karma, I also found that very interesting.

Next we talked about how they were nonlinear religions, meaning it has a circular time line. This was crazy to think about that in another life time you could have been a plant or an animal, I like how they believe this because of all the karma that they have over a lifetime. The last thing we discussed was the praxis, or the practices they perform. These religions are all about what they do, not what they say. They believe that the only way they can make good karma is by doing all the practices that they talk about, saying it just isn’t good enough. I learned a lot on Tuesday about non-western religions.

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Yesterday we did an Islam pilgrimage called a Hajji, and simulated all the parts that are involved in it. I liked the creative ways Jessica came up with to do all the different parts to the pilgrimage. First we had to purify our hands and feet (we just rinsed our hands with water), next we had to circumambulate around the Ka’aba seven times, for our Ka’aba we had a chair covered in clothe. After doing these two steps then we went over by the library where we had to run between two hills seven times, much like Hagar had to do to find water for her son Ishmael. When we were done running between the hills we got a drink of water much like Hagar drank from the stream when she finally found water. The next thing you do on the Hajji is stand on the top of Arafat for a whole day in silence, no movement, and thinking about the Day of Judgment. For this we stood on the hill by the science center for a minute, this was difficult for some, but it is supposed to be the most fulfilling part of the pilgrimage, or Eliade would say it is the metaphorical death. The next thing we did was throw stones at the three pillars that represent the devil, for this we threw ping pong balls at the sculpture in front of the library. I thought this was a very creative way to simulate this event; it was also my favorite part! After you are done with all those steps you back to the Ka’aba and circumambulate it seven times again. The last step to the pilgrimage is the sacrificing of the lamb, much like in Judaism this is a way of making the meat Kosher, but in Islam it is called Halal.

I fell I will remember this pilgrimage the best because we actually preformed it. This also made it much easier to understand rather than just trying to read a section over it. I wish we could do this for every pilgrimage!

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