Third, studying the history of philosophy provides ample reasons to have some expertise in philosophy of religion. Communal festivals were conducted at times of planting or harvest, or at important times in the history of a community. All members of the community took part, if only symbolically, in the final meal, thus bringing harmony again to the relationship of humans and the kami. At the time, the Japanese had emerged from another period of political chaos, and the new warrior family that took power, the Tokugawa, saw the value of Confucian teachings, along with Buddhism and Shinto, in their effort to establish a lasting peace. The verse of the Holy Quran 30:21 says that Allah Almighty has created pals for us from ourselves in order to find rest and peace of mind and Allah Almighty has enjoined to ensure love and mercy between us. By focusing the mind on one of the images in the mandala, by mimicking the hand position of the Buddha or bodhisattva on which one was concentrating, and by reciting the mantra associated with that being, one might evoke an awareness of one’s own identity with the Buddhas in body, speech, and mind.

Honen (1133-1212), the founder of the Pure Land sect in Japan, taught that all one could do in the degenerate age is call on the name of Amida (Amitabha in Sanskrit), a Buddha who in certain Pure Land Sutras said that he would bring to his pure land all who call on him in faith. The Buddha taught that, regardless of the relative degrees of happiness that one might achieve in life, all living beings eventually become ill, grow old and die. It is worth noting that, while Japanese government leaders used Shinto to legitimate Japan’s War in the Pacific from 1937 to 1945, throughout most of its history, Shinto was a religion linked to nature, agriculture and local communities. The goal of the rituals was to maintain or reinstate the harmony between nature, humans and the kami that the early Japanese appear to have taken as the norm. Because of the warfare of the twelfth century as well as a series of natural disasters that struck the capital region, many Japanese believed that the country was entering a dark period in its history that they called the “degenerate age of the Dharma (or Buddha’s teachings)” (mappo).

Japan’s samurai or warrior class rose to power in the late twelfth century to establish a feudal political system headed in theory by the emperor but in reality by the shogun or leading general of the country. Edo or Tokugawa period (1600-1868) that it became a leading ideology of state and a pervasive teaching in Japanese society. The Japanese religious tradition is made up of several major components, including Shinto, Japan’s earliest religion, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Shinto, or the “way of the spirits or deities,” began to take form in Japan’s pre-historic period before the sixth century C.E. The Quechua and Aymara pantheon was a mix of Christian and pre-conquest spirits and beings. They argued that during such a period few human beings were able to achieve enlightenment through traditional methods. On 4 September 2007, the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported to the UNHRC that “Enhanced cooperation and stronger political will by Member States are essential for combating defamation of religions”. In societies which do not implement a panopticonic ‘big brother’ style of social behavioural condition, i.e societies which respect the soul, the narrative element of human justice remains intact, and so you get punishments which are visual, but also -crucially – rare.

In this early phase, Shinto was the religion of a pre-literate society that was organized around the central social unit of the clan. In Tang times, a man might honor his ancestors by following the rigid rules of social behavior as dictated by Confucianism, attend a Buddhist pageant, and practice Taoist breathing exercises, all in the same day. If God is somehow at or in all times, is God simultaneously at or in each? You cannot have a relationship with God by doing good works. This then must have been the case in all other instances in which God caused people to be killed. That said, the majority of this interest has centered on political Islam as expressed in the realm of mainstream politics and focused on partisan politics (as is the case in many of the papers here). Shinran was the first monk in the mainstream Buddhist tradition to reject the monastic life. Mahayana leaders added hundreds of new sutras or scriptures to the Buddhist canon, texts that introduce Buddhas and bodhisattvas (enlightened assistants to the Buddhas) that were not seen in the earlier tradition.