West End Buddhist Temple Analysis

During my visit at the “West End Buddhist Temple and Meditation Centre”, what stood out to me were their use of statues and room design as well as the structure of the meditation center. I noticed that everyone in the room was facing towards the front and center where the statue of the Buddha stood, and everyone need to be barefoot. I noticed that there was a red carpet that ran across the room and to a podium for the Monks to walk on. Once the monk sat above everyone on the podium, they began saying a prayer. The Monk was a male, and during their prayer, they would say parts of a religious text, and the people sitting on the floor, repeated the same chant the Monk had said. After each verse of their prayer, the Monk would chant “saddoo, saddoo,

This concept is called “hegemony”. They accept the conditions the religion holds, along with the rituals they need to take part of. This concept said by him is called “hegemony”(Nye 2008, 61). The Buddhist temple has this structure of power where people follow the actions of the monk, and they take part in rituals without any sort of “resistance” or “resentment” towards it. Gramsci states how, “those who are ruled over come to accept and feel that they have stake in the power that is exploiting them and controlling them” (Nye 2008, 61). The people from the Buddhist temple are willing to accept that the monk is at higher power than they are because they seem to have more knowledge about the religion than they too. Signs of this include how the monk has a carpet to walk on the podium, whereas the others do not. Another example is that everyone is required to sit on the ground, whereas the monk is allowed to sit on a sit on the podium. This denotes how monks are the “higher power” over the general population that visits the temple; everyone follows their