Indigenous Religions

Humanity use religions as an alternative to explain the unexplainable, at times disregarding certain aspects of scientific studies about the natural world. They give hope to the living and comfort to the dying. The human brain attempts to make sense of the world around us through categorizing and compartmentalizing information for processing. This is what drove ancient civilizations to incorporate the worshipping of deities in day to day life. They did not have the ability nor the resources to study nature. They could not understand where rain, sun, fire, diseases came from. So, they intermingled aspects of nature such as water and human experiences therefore creating the first religions the world has ever known. Overtime, some of these practices …show more content…
Indigenous means to have produced, living, or existing naturally in a specific region or environment. Jainism was originally found in India around the same time as Buddhism and Hinduism where there was great religious renaissance. Later, the religion migrated out of India. So it is no longer remote to India, but the roots of the religion were flourished and foster by Indians. There are 1.2 billion Indians in India and Jains make up two percent of the population. To clarify approximately a little under 24,000,000 out of 1.2 billion. This can also be said for Sikhism originally bounded to India, and dispersed to the rest of the world. Pay a visit to India today and there will be more Sikhs in India than any other region. As for the Shinto religion the same can be said, but differ in the sense that less than 1 percent of its population can be found on another continent (Hawaii and Brazil to be exact). The Shinto religion is indigenous to Japan and still heavily practiced in that particular region. They incorporate some of the original beliefs of Shinto into their community by institutionalizing the key practices. Meaning that even though it is not the major religion of the country, because it was so prominent and one of the oldest Japanese religions. The practices are ingrained into day to day …show more content…
However, these qualities are debilitated through karma over "an eternity of beginningless time." They frequently compare the soul to gold. In their purest forms, they are beautiful and just. With existence on this realm they call earth they are are not pure by simply living. Ordinary aspects of life are harming and and material things bring pollution to the mind (material things are of no value to spiritual gain). Even human relationships are harming to the soul if there is emotional attachment. In the beginning , they are impure (living), but after cleansing and purifying, they become pure and beautiful (ascetic life and