Year 11 Religious Studies students visited the Manchester Buddhist Centre. Menna Gharib gives her account of the trip:

At the Buddhist Centre we were able to relate Buddhist concepts and key beliefs, which we had studied in the classroom, to the way in which Buddhists incorporate these ideas into their daily lives.

We were given the opportunity to pose questions to the devout Buddhists regarding the extent to which they would accept myths relating to the Buddha’s life and Buddhist concepts. We were all quite surprised with some of the responses, as we learned that many Buddhists may take these teachings symbolically, rather than literally. We eventually came to the conclusion (after a lot of discussion) that Buddhism is a very progressive religion, and that we must realise the difference between the theoretical religion and what Buddhists actually do. This is a particularly valuable argument which we will now be able to discuss in our GCSE examination evaluation questions.

At the Centre we participated in meditation activities, and although quite difficult at first, many of us really started to unleash our inner Buddha! We lost all sense of time and when we were told that we had completed the end of the 20-minute meditation, we were all quite proud of our achievement. However, by the end of the two 20 minute sessions, most of us decided that we should leave the 16-hour meditation to the Buddhist monks in Thailand.

Our visit was a truly enjoyable experience, definitely the most memorable part of the course so far! We were able to gain first-hand experience of what it really means to be a Buddhist in Britain.