Based on your reading of "Religion and Culture" by Eliza Rosenburg, "Religion" by Sashur Henninger-Rener, and the Gateway into Religions resource, please do the following:

1. Identify and explain in your words two religious practices, rituals, scriptures, artifacts or objects, sites, or beliefs that you thought were interesting that you did not know about before.

2. Then, choose one of the things you identified above and do some additional research in the UMGC library on this topic.

3. Using your research, describe to the class some of the more interesting additional information you found about this topic. Keep in mind that text from outside sources either needs to be fully paraphrased in your own writing style (not just a few words changed) or needs quotation marks, even if cited.

4. Make sure to provide in-text citations for any quote or summaries s in mla format.

5. Provide references for all sources in mla format.

Classmate:

The reading, "Religion and Culture" by Eliza Rosenburg, talks about the origin of the term "religion". The reading states that no one knows where the term "religion" came from but was most likely from the Latin word "religio" (Rosenburg). I consider myself a seeker-agnostic, meaning I am unsure if God exists and if we'll ever know. My understanding of the study of religion in an academic sense is an approach to examining religious concepts from various viewpoints. After reading all the assigned readings, I found the Christian and Buddhist concepts to be the most intriguing. To begin, the Christian faith includes a ceremony known as communion. Which is a service of worship in which blessed bread and wine represent Jesus. There is a large Christian community where I live, and I remember visiting one of their churches and observing a communion ceremony. Everyone would line up, and their paster would place a piece of bread and red wine in their mouths. In Buddhism religion, they believe in reincarnation. In Buddhism, there are a total of six possible worlds of existence, the human realm being just one of them. the other five are the divine, heavenly, animal, hungry-ghost, and hell (Rosenburg). In short, if you didn't live a good life as a human, you could fall to a lower realm in the next life, like the realm of hell or a realm of an animal.

My research on the six realms of The Wheel of Life

The Wheel of Life has a lot of symbols that can be read in different ways. The geometric symbol has six big parts that stand for the "Six Realms" (O'Brien). Buddhist's interpretation of the realms is the cycle of existence, endless rebirth, death, and suffering that they seek to escape (O'Brien). The religion Buddhism is interesting because it is considered the largest religion in the world (National Geographic Society). Buddhism has two views of the world. The first view is "samsara" which is the point of view of delusion or ignorance, and the second view is of enlightenment or truth, called "nirvana" (O' Brien). The terms "samsara" and "nirvana" comes from the sacred language, "Sanskrit". The Sanskrit language is of old Indo-Aryan and is considered a classical language from about 1100 BCE to 1500 BCE (J. Ungarsky). In Buddhism, the word karma refers to how well you lived in your human life. "How good actions produce their effects" ( J. Egge 11). For instance, if a person lived a bad life, a life with bad intentions, then their next life will fall to a lower realm from the wheel of life. According to O'Brien "The Wheel of Life" are: "The realm of Delvas (gods) and Heavenly beings" is the realm for people who are privileged and ignore the suffering of others. "The realm of Asura" is the realm for people with karma of hate and jealousy. "The realm of Hungry Ghosts" is the realm for people with addiction, obsession and compulsion. "The realm of Hell" which is the worst of them all is the realm for people with anger and aggression issues. "The Animal realm" is the realm of ignorant people. Lastly, "The Human realm" is the realm where beings may escape samsara and can be enlightened. "The Human realm" is for those with passion, desire, and doubt.

Explain to your classmate why you think their comments are interesting.

Ask your classmate a question or two to inquire about their further thoughts on a topic or to clarify and expand upon something they have said.