Attention Atheists : comments [benlehman]

State Shinto, the primary religion during WW2-era Japan, didn't have reincarnation. Shinto in general doesn't really spend a lot of time on the afterlife, really. And the major forms of Japanese Buddhism, such as Zen and Pure Land Buddhism, also don't have any reincarnation. So I don't think the kamikaze pilots thought they were going to be reborn and rewarded. I would guess that they thought they were defending their homeland from the threat of foreign invasion, especially given that they were named after the "divine wind" (kamikaze) that wiped out the Mongol fleets when they tried to invade Japan.

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Well of course they thought that, but you're thinking in an exclusionary mindset that most of us Westerners use when we think about religion. Many people in Asia who are Buddhists are also other things. This has not always been the case, but in some places, especially in Japan there are well known temples that contain Shinto Shrines and Buddhist shrines.

I have a friend who was born and raised in Korea who, until he went to college, had a combination of religions that his family observed, one of them being Buddhism.

So I'm not arguing that the Shinto actually believed in reincarnation, or that the Jodo sect of Buddhism focused on reincarnation, but they didn't discount it.

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Also, if you had a hardcore Jodo Buddhist you could make the same argument that many Wahabi extremists clerics make to their suicide bombers, and that their act of protecting their homeland makes them pure and they will go to the Pure Land and never have to be reincarnated, or go to Hell.

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Ugh, I wish I would have all this in just one reply. While Jodo, and I don't know enough about Zen in the particulars regarding the afterlife, doesn't focus on reincarnation, it definitely has it. Like Christianity, they see Buddha as a savior that will take you to Heaven so that you will escape Hell, if you're devout enough (say enough chants/Hail Mary's), but they do believe you'll get another chance after you've spent a long time in Hell, just like the other forms of Buddhism.

The ENTIRE idea of Pure Land is to escape the cycle of Death and Re-birth. They see it as a bad thing, not a learning process. They see Buddha as a 'Get out of Jail Free' card, if they follow his twelve step program.

So while they aren't keen on it entirely, they do believe in reincarnation.

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benlehman

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