Distinguished values in religious coping on improved mood of pilgrims

Abstract

Religion is an important part of the beliefs and ideas people have about themselves, each other and the world they live in. Linked to religious ideas and practices are a variety of rituals. Every religion has its own rituals and the follower identifies the religion with the symbol of rituals and the priesthood used them as instruments of loyalty by expanding them and feasting on the rewards. Rituals often have a close connection with reverence, thus a ritual in many cases expresses reverence for a deity or idealized state of humanity. Ritual is one of the key components of religiosity. Buddhists in Sri Lanka have had a practice of visiting and performing rituals to the most sacred places in Sri Lanka and Anuradhapura is one of the most sacred cities for the Buddhists all over the world and it is filled with ancient dagabas and temples. There are daily and an annual custom for pilgrims from different parts of Sri Lanka to visit the city of Anuradhapura to pay homage to the most sacred places. The Buddhists in general have a strong belief that doing rituals to the sacred places like Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi, Ruwanwelisaya has produced significant and positive changes in their life. In this sense it is important to study the nature of psychological moods on Anuradhapura pilgrims. Buddhism's main concern has always been freedom from dukkha and the path to that ultimate freedom consists in ethical action (karma), meditation and in direct insight into the nature of "things as they truly are". However, the concern is what people expect by performing those rituals while it is clearly mentioned in Buddhism that it is a way of searching for freedom from suffering and attachments. Accordingly, Research problem is focused on the moods of pilgrims after performing rituals. As well as the objective of the study was to observe the types of moods of the pilgrims in Anuradhapura. The study was based on both primary and secondary data. The primary data has been collected randomly from the 99 pilgrims in the several sacred places in Anuradhapura. Structured questionnaires and observations were used to collection of data. Data interpretation was done using quantitative measure. It was observed that as a whole, the performing rituals in front of the most sacred places relieves their bad moods and gets high positive moods. So, there is evidence that performing religious rituals create positive moods of the minds of people and it helps distracting insecurity and uncertainty of the human mind.