Looking for a religion similar to Shinto

[ChainLightning]

Tulpas are human, now?

I was just getting used to them not being a toddler's imaginary playmate, anymore.










I really do need to go elsewhere. I'm liable to end up in a heap of trouble, here. Sorry folks; unsubscribed.

[jcaternolo]

Tulpas are human, now?

I was just getting used to them not being a toddler's imaginary playmate, anymore.










I really do need to go elsewhere. I'm liable to end up in a heap of trouble, here. Sorry folks; unsubscribed.

Probably too late, but I didn't claim tulpas were flesh and blood humans. But they are sapient. If someone somehow made a complex AI circuit that was able to fully reason, feel emotions, develop desires (without being determined by a RNG generator), and contemplate it's own existence, would it be any less sapient than a human? I think not. Now, whether that translates to humanity, there are different schools of thought about that, but to me, humanity is the ability to think, feel, and reason. I know that tulpas start off as belief, and are given memories from the host to create justification for existing, but they are perfectly capable of becoming sapient, or at least, humanlike, if enough effort is put into one.

[sirz345]

To be quite honest with you, as a follower of Shinto, I am noticing some serious misconceptions in this argument. Shinto mixes extremely well with polytheism, it is itself a polytheistic religion, the main gods associated with Shinto is the Japanese pantheon, however worship of other gods is fine, although a god like Thor, who controls storms and the sea, is very similar to Susanoo, the Japanese god of almost exactly the same things, and as a traditional Shinto follower, and I have heard this philosophy promoted elsewhere, the Japanese gods come before the other gods as they are interpretations of the same god. It is of course always up to you, the kami of the individual seas, the mountains, the rocks, ancestors are not the same as the gods, despite the word "kami" referring to all of them, the gods are generally considered much more powerful than the more common kami embodied in all things and despite they do have many powers in their area of domain (or in the case of ancestors, their own family members' lives), they are far from the same as the gods. I would encourage you to do a little reading on the Japanese pantheon and the stories of it before you jump to that conclusion. Shinto teaches there is a heaven, an earth, and an underworld called "Yomi" so believe me, there is divinity outside of nature, the gods dwell in heaven and can influence things on earth to which they have power over (Amaterasu controls the son and can affect harvest, her brother Susanoo can call about storms and make the seas calm or rough). I really do hope this is helpful and please if you are curious further feel free to message me with questions.

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Shinto has been combined with seemingly disparate traditions before, particularly Buddhism. In East Asia, the lines between religions often blur. The cognitive dissonance does not seem to bother practitioners as much as it does here in the West. Buddhism seems, at its core teachings, antithetical to some of the concepts in Confucianism, Shinto, Tibetan shamanism, and many other traditions, but the systems have mingled and influenced each other for centuries.

Also, Shinto is a deeply ethnic religion. I mean, in a way all religions are tied up sociologically with a people, but some seem seem to have a more universalist approach or an easier time being adopted by others outside the original culture. Missionary religions like Christianity and Buddhism were much easier to adopt to other cultures whereas Shinto, for example, is extraordinarily rare outside of the Japanese. That might present a challenge but in the end, I do not see how it would be difficult to approach Shinto along with your current beliefs.

The reason it is rare is due to a number of reasons, a big one being Japan cutting itself off from the world around the later half of the 16th century. It did spread however, Ryukyu, a trade partner of Japan before Japan isolated itself is widely considered to have practiced the faith besides Ryukyuans being considered completely separate from Japan with many Ryukyuans (now called Okinawans) still considering themselves non-Japanese. A religious movement does exist in Shinto known as Ko-Shinto, this is a movement trying to restore Shinto before the spread of Buddhism and Daoism into Japan, which in my honest opinion, tainted the faith. Unfortunately, this is extraordinarily hard due to the fact that by the time Japan started producing literature and most of its records, Buddhist and Daoist beliefs were well rooted in Shinto. I personally follow Ko-Shinto, it is not hard, basically it just throws out the beliefs that are very clearly Buddhist and Daoist (i.e. meditation).