OGA, Japan — The Japanese have long taken an easygoing, buffetlike approach to religion, ringing out the old year at Buddhist temples and welcoming the new year, several hours later, at Shinto shrines ...

I have to disagree, zichi. While different from other religions in that it doesn't involve worshipping gods, it is a system of beliefs and practices intended to achieve attainment of some kind without ...

We turn now to Japan, a country that has over 77,000 Buddhist temples. For years, they have been a fixture in cultural life there. Yet many are expected to close - 40 percent of them in the next 25 ...

Buddhism began around 2,500 years ago. Its founder was a person known to history as Siddhartha Gautama. Siddhartha was born into a noble family in the kingdom of Kapilavastu, close to what is now the ...

“That’s the image of funeral Buddhism: that it doesn’t meet people’s spiritual needs,” said Ryoko Mori, the chief priest at the 700-year-old Zuikoji Temple here in northern Japan. “In Islam or ...