Day 33: Trinity Church Manhattan

I am not really a religious person and I don't believe in God. Psychologically, I think religion is product of human imagination to explain the unexplainable, be it natural phenomenon or social unfairness. Despite all these interpretation, I am not against religion at all. I think to numerous people, religion can be the salvation of their lives. It's good for them. I like churches too. To me, it's not just for religious use, but a tranquil place for all, to contemplate and meditate. In this sense, it's really a god's send. Especially in the place like downtown Manhattan, the trinity church is like a protective shield that isolates the outside chaos and gives people a place to rest their soul.

In the eastern culture, temples serve the same purpose. But it's not until I visited a temple in Soul last year, did I realize that. Nowadays in China, temples are more of a busy tourist attraction than a sacred religious place. Most of the spaces are forbidden to enter. Even the monks are professional, meaning that they literally work in the temple during the day and have their whatever lives they like during the night. I visited a temple in the city center last year in Soul and I was shocked. There, the temples are what it should be, a escape for people from the outside world. There were a lot of people in the temple, the same as the temple in China, but the place is very quite and calm. People were in harmony with the place (people can go anywhere in the temple and sit there, quitely). People respected the place. And people relied on the place.

I felt so sorry for their Chinese counterparts. They loss their basic spirits and become just yet another compound.