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• Place of Worship


  • Buddhist worship at home or in a temple
  • They can also mediate in a gompa (mediation hall)
  • Temples are complex budlings and contain a lot of budlings. Including a stupa (Room where the relics are stored)
  • Buddhists also had a Buddhist Rupa (statue of the Buddha) this can be at home/temples
  • They have monks and nuns that live in a monastery
• Buddhist Worship (Puja)


  Opportunity for Buddhists to give thanks for the Buddhas teaching and reflect upon them
• Forms of Buddhist Worship

  • Meditation
  • Making offerings
  • Chanting a Buddha text
  • Reciting mantras
• Mala


  Prayer beads used to count the number of times a mantra is recited
• Mandla


  Sand art that shows Annica (impermanence)
• Types of Buddhist Meditation


  • Samantha (Theravada Buddhism to promote calmness, focuses on breathing)
  • Vipassana (Insight meditation to gain knowledge and understand impermanence and the nature of reality)
  • Visualisation (Tibetan Buddhists use to image the Buddha and the true nature of existence)
• Mandala


  Art that takes hours to make and is then destroyed to demonstrate impermanence (anicca)
• Anatta


  No fixed souls, only karmic energy lives on and is reborn
• Buddhist Funeral Practices


  • Setting up a shrine with a picture of the deceased and offerings
  • Monk providing a sermon and performing rites
  • Cremation is more usual than burial
  • Theravada Buddhism - low cost funerals with money donated to charity
  • Tibetan - Sky burial with bones eaten by vultures
  • Pure Land - Funeral service similar to other religions with body in a coffin and readings from Buddhist scripture. Bones are picked up by chopsticks after 40 days mourning period is over)
• Major Buddhist Festivals


  • Wesak (Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death)
  • Parinirvana Day (Buddha's death)
• Wesak


  Celebrated in May, commemorates the three major events in Buddha's life, includes releasing paper lanterns and caged birds
• Parinirvana Day


  Mahayana Buddhist festival on 15th February, commemorates when the Buddha achieved final Nirvana
• Buddhist Retreats


  Allow Buddhists to practice meditation and remember the Buddha's life, help free themselves from cravings
• Karma


  Buddhists believe their actions will influence their happiness in the future, they try to ensure 'right action' to escape the wheel of Samsara
• Karuna


  Compassion, part of a Buddhist's spiritual path, accepting suffering in the world and caring for others
• Metta


  Loving kindness, attempting to show kindness to others without expecting anything in return
• Five Moral Precepts


  • To refrain from taking life
  • To refrain from taking what is not freely given
  • To refrain from misuse of sense or sexual misconduct
  • To refrain from wrong speech
  • To refrain from intoxicant that cloud the mind
• The Six Perfections


  • Generosity
  • Morality
  • Patience
  • Energy
  • Meditation
  • Wisdom
• Buddhists do not believe in deity, the precepts and perfections are ways of living rather than commandments given by God