Making the Claim

We get use to staying within our comfort zone and many times don’t look “outside the box”. If it wasn’t for stepping out of that zone many of us would of never became Beta men. With that in mind, there are a lot of cultures we could be learning from and with an open mind we could see how we are more alike than we think. We take pride on calling one of our principles cultural awareness; however how often do we walk away from our comfort zone in order to make this a reality. All we need to do is take the time to participate on what seems estrange and maybe a little different for just a second. By doing this we can appreciate how alike one culture can be from another. We can also improve our development and personal growth; making us more rounded individuals and more understanding of others. This is my experience with becoming more culturally aware.

People like to stay comfortable and when it comes to religion this also applies. Even though we are often told to be open minded, that freedom of religion exist and it’s a human right many of us have never looked farther than Revelations. For my exploration I looked into SGI Buddhism, I had no idea what it was or how it worked. At first if you would of asked me what is Buddhism? I would have said something along of the lines of “it’s a religion practiced in China where people live in monasteries, shave their head and go hmmmmmmm, hhmmmmmmm, all day long”. I was wrong about a lot of things and thanks to this project I was able to face my biases and prejudices, not only to challenge them but to also change them. I learned that when it came to Buddhism their members come in all shapes, colors and sizes. The person I actually talked to the most was a Puerto Rican SGI Buddhist that was introduced to the religion by his dad. He worked a normal job and even though he had a shaven head this was a fashion statement more than anything else. We like to think different happens far away from home; however, these practices were happening in the same city I had grown up and lived for so many years in. I couldn’t really think of ever having personal experiences with anyone that was a Buddhist; however I had already created a schema of what they were like based on movies and main stream culture.

To my surprise I had found Buddhism in America not had I only found it, it was pretty popular among college students. I went to one of their informational meetings and attended a “service”. I was not trying to be disrespectful but I didn’t feel like I should have attended their service since I didn’t know what was going on. Instead of leaving, as any good Latino would I stayed and asked questions. I felt pretty uncomfortable since I was obviously the outsider; on the other hand I was happy to see many of the people were my age and some of them were of Latino descent.

By putting myself in an uncomfortable situation I was able to see things from a different perspective for at least a second. It helped me become closer to a group of people I knew nothing about but had already judged. It helped me break the stereotypes and schema I had created based on thinking I knew something, I really knew nothing about. Lastly it showed me that all it takes is some faith, either in the mystic “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo”, a higher power name God or maybe just believing in ones self to make the difference between success and failure. Making two very different cultures more alike that we would like to admit. The same way there is room to explore culture at many different levels. At the end of the hour it was clear that there is a difference between being culturally aware and making the claim.

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