My eldest son is in his final year of high school and I went with him when he visited a Buddhist temple as part of an assignment for “Study of Religions”. He chose “the Five Senses” as his topic for the assignment and this alone frightened off the “Aussie” monk who’d been assigned to him; she referred him on to someone “higher”.

It was interesting to note that Buddhists don’t have any creation theory, nor believe in a God—of a western definition. Buddha was an actual person and it is the truths he and his followers discovered that are strictly held in reverence. Anyone can become a Buddhist; we all have the Buddha nature inside us but it is often held down by all of the crap we pad out our daily lives with.

I had a thought about the Christian saying “they will know we are Christians by our love” and concluded that they would mistake a Buddhist for a Christian because they actually strive to live their entire lives properly; not just forty-five minutes on a Sunday.

One clear difference to other “religions” is that Buddhists are encouraged to question everything. But these questions are exploratory rather than confrontational. We can only discover truths on our own; they cannot be taught—only learnt (there is a difference).