HOMEWORK (April 23) Buddism

1. I thought my daily life isn't affected by Buddism, but actually, I follow some customs of Buddism unconsciously. First of all, I say "Itadakimasu." nodding and joining my hands together when I have meals. It seems to be the custom of Buddism. Next, my mother would often said to me "Don't leave rice." It means God inhabits in rice, so if we leave rice, we lose fortune. I think this saying might come from the traditional Japanese thought"mottainai" which in English, "What a waste!" Therefore I rarely leave rice even if I leave my side dish because I remember my mother's words. (Although I usually completely enjoy both rice and side dishes!)
Finally, I found from the lecture given by Priest Mr. Tsutsui Ebun that we use a lot of words related to Buddism, for example, "Gaman"and "Akirameru", but I was very surprised that these words essentially have different meaning from what I thought.
Almost all Japanese don't have particular religion, but Buddism surely takes root in our daily life.

2. I found an article about Islam from Asahi newspaper on May17, page7. It said that the top of the security organization who is the member of Moderate group's house was attacked by members of the fringe group. The topic about Jerusalem and Palestine, that is to say about the conflict of religion and also the conflict between the thoughts of groups, is too difficult for me, but I found some adjectives used to describe Islam. I think the words "terrorism", "groups (having different thoughts), "conflict", "attack" and "exile", etc. I found that most of the words which express Islam seems to be nagative. I don't well understand these problems yet, so I have to know more.