Religion and Its Philosophical Implications

This assignment delves into the complex relationship between religion and philosophy. It encourages students to analyze various perspectives on religion, including its origins, functions, and impact on human thought. Key themes explored include reductionism in understanding religious phenomena, the significance of ritual practices, and diverse interpretations of religious beliefs. The assignment prompts critical thinking and evaluation of different philosophical stances regarding religion's validity and role in society.

Running head: EASTERN PHILOSOPHICAL RITUALS
EASTERN PHILOSOPHICAL RITUALS
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1EASTERN PHILOSOPHICAL RITUALS
The philosophical knowledge of the humans has always contained, in itself, some sort of
religious connection and have tried to give the meaning of life and interpret the actions of
humans that have logical reasons and explanations. Modern science often tries to look at
philosophy as a metaphysical counterpart of psychology. The ancient philosophical schools have
formed the foregrounds for every contemporary debates and the Eastern philosophical views
have had significant and lasting impacts for thousands of years (Jung). Philosophical teachings
that had steam from India, China and Japan are some of the most important ones to be ever
recorded in history and have many different interpretations of them by a huge number of
philosophers. The rituals of the different religions of these regions are also credited with
philosophical contents and are sources of many scholarly discussions over the millennia. In this
paper, three different ritual practices from the Asian continent is taken as examples and are
looked at from three different perspectives using three different philosophical approaches that are
aimed to understand the rituals from alternate viewpoints (Pearson and Schunke)
The selected rituals
The Indian ritual that is going to looked into in the paper is the Yajna. The Chinese ritual
that has been selected to be viewed in this paper is the burial rituals of a person and the different
ways that the family of the deceased are supposed to take when performing the ritual. The
Japanese ritual that has been identified as the topic to be discussed is the ancient lantern festival
or Obon. These three rituals are used as the basic foregrounds for facilitating the different
philosophical approaches to understand the sanctity and logical reasons for the rituals (Zemmour
and Ballet). The three selected Asian countries have some of the oldest religions in the world and
their religious ritual practices are among the oldest surviving practices that have been modified

2EASTERN PHILOSOPHICAL RITUALS
though the ages and different other cultural and religious influences have changed the original
practices, however, the rituals themselves have not varied widely even so.
Brief description of the three aproaches
To delve into these three ritual practices, three modes of approaches will be used that are
supposed to offer insight about the rituals and interpret them through different lenses using
alternate perspectives. A religionist approach is evident about its purpose: it uses religion as the
mode of analyses and tries to understand the practices from a very simplistic religious aspect and
try to match the practice with the religion so that the practice can be validated through religion
(Belzen). However, a religionist approach to any ancient rituals may come off as misled or hold a
basic fallacy, as the ancient religions were not always the same as the modern day religions and
the advent of the new religions have all significantly changed the requirements and methods of
the rituals that have existed even long before the established religions of the modern age.
Reductionism is mostly the practice of taking one particular phenomenon and then trying to
explain the same using another set of phenomena. A reductionist believes that any theory or set
of events can be reduced to some other theory or set of events. For my own personal approach, I
shall be taking on not a very philosophical approach, but shall rather use a method that is more
reliant on logic and rationality to understand the rituals and give details about what are the
reasons for them to be followed or observed (Jung).
A religionist approach to the Indian ritual of Yajna
The religionists maintain that all religions can be described as “sui generis”, a Latin
proverb that literally translates to in a class by itself. According to their belief, the reason for
religion to be born was to facilitate the human connection with something, or someone, which is

3EASTERN PHILOSOPHICAL RITUALS
not seen by the naked eye and the humans have to enhance their senses and the inner eye to feel
the entity (Smith). In most often cases, these entities are said to be existing in other dimensions
that are not felt by the humans on regular basis. This very connection is often viewed as
something sacred or may be recognized as the existence of the cosmic forces that directly
interact with the humans throughout their course of life and death. To apply this approach to the
Indian ritual of Yajna does, somewhat, make sense, as the whole purpose of Yajna (or Yagna) or
Home is to purify the soul and drive away the evil forces from the surroundings of a person so
that the connection with the higher entities can be established more strongly. The religionist
connections are usually advocates of realization of the universal laws that are related to the ways
through which the connections between the human beings and the cosmos are established.
Scientific researches mostly ignore and often overlook these connections as a religious sense of
inquiry is conserved within the human-cosmic interactions. Rituals come in this exact area where
the religionists claim that the practices to establish these connections are sacred and have to be
done with much care and belief. Religionists emphasize on the “sanctity” aspect of religion as
they believe that being sacred is something that is irreducible and this is the fundamental of any
religion (Peters). Religious rituals can be viewed as research methods that are supposed to
uncover the true meaning of something that is “sacred”. The word “Yajna” translate, literally. To
devotion, sacrifice, worship and offering. The ritual is done with fire and mantras and a pit of
sacred fire is used as the medium to make these offerings. The performing of yajna has been
described in the ancient Vedic texts, in the Yajurveda and Brahmanas. A yajna holds a high, and
often supreme, position in the Hindu culture and religion. Though it has been modified by other
religious and regional cultural differences, the basic premise of it has remained the same as well
as the ideologies behind it. Hinduism believes that fire is the supremely sacred entity and

4EASTERN PHILOSOPHICAL RITUALS
something which purifies everything (Lucas). The powers of fire and its spiritual powers can be
essentially religionist in its views and no ritual or offering can be complete without fire.
Hinduism has always had a close affinity with destruction, Shiva being one of the three major
Gods, and the embodiment of wrath and destruction. Hinduism is a staunch believer in the circle
of life and rebirth. Hence destruction is seen as merely a gateway through which something new
is born again. Fire almost acts a catalyst that induces this destruction process; or as a cleansing
agent that burns away the impurities from everything that is earthly and makes sure they are only
in their purest forms so that they can be offered to the Gods without the fear of giving them
anything with flaws or impurity. There are over four hundred forms of yajnas described in the
Vedas, with twenty-one of them being deemed as compulsory and which must be done by any
true Hindu, if a path of righteousness is to be followed (Lucas). From a religionists aspect, yajna
would seem to be an absolutely valid way of making the connection with the cosmos as fire is
inherently been viewed as something utterly pure. From the dawn of civilization, fire has been a
major source of human development and evolution (Segal).
A reductionist approach to the Chinese funeral rituals
While religionists talk about the ultimate sacred aspect of religion and its inclusion in any
ritual, the reductionists reject the notion and voice their opinion denying the fact that religion is
in fact sui generis. They say that religion has no unique or distinct features that would be making
it fall in a class of its own (McCauley). They feel that nothing can be inherently religious and
argue that religion is something that was created by the humans to aid them in their daily lives
and also to make sure some group of the society could be subdued by another who claimed the
rights of performing of the religious rituals (Smith). Reductionists believe that religion can
efficiently be described by analyzing the social, political, economic and psychological aspects of

5EASTERN PHILOSOPHICAL RITUALS
the human society and no single aspect can effectively explain the “whole story”. A great deal of
the religious data is examined to conduct any form of reductionist research that are available
from the society within which the religion operates. The Chinese funeral rituals are ancient and
in most cases predate the modern day religions that are popular and widespread in the country
(Demmrich, Wolfradt, and Domsgen). Upon the death of a family member, the deceased person
is made to sit in a sitting position to help the soul in the process of leaving the body. The friends
and family members of the dead person shave their heads, clip their nails and wash their bodies
after the funeral rites have been executed. The people who are still breathing then commence a
ritual that aims to call the soul of the dead person back so that they can sure of the soul being
released. This ancient ritual may seem like trying to create a connection with the dead by
approaching the soul to come back, but a reductionist method can help to understand that this
only a way of life where people leave behind something that is gone and is now no longer among
us, so that they can move ahead without any backward pull. The person who is dead is released
and the people around him all cleanse themselves marking a new beginning and a new initiative
to go on with life. This does seem an accurate way of looking into the ritual, because even in the
modern society people are always trying to get a fresh start after some tragedy has befallen them.
Religion is something that was established to facilitate the humans with their own lives and this
ritual is one the best examples as to why religion is more like an earthly way of doing things
rather than trying to get closer to the divine.
Personal philosophical approach to the Japanese Obon
Japan has mostly two religions: Shinto and Buddhism. Shinto is as old as the country and
the culture itself, while the later was imported from the Orient mainland during the 6th century.
Even though religion is not a big part of the daily lives of the Japanese people, some ancient

6EASTERN PHILOSOPHICAL RITUALS
rituals have become synonymous with the Japanese culture and are celebrated throughout the
year with various festivals that still have some pagan traits in them (Smith). As a personal view
on religion, a stereoscopic approach h can be beneficial as it leaves a lot of room for different
interpretations and methods that can be adopted to explain the mechanics of religion. Seeing
things through a binocular helps not only seeing things far off with more detail, but also helps to
preserve the three dimensional “stereoscopic” view that people normally have. The ancient
lantern festival of Japan is a ritual and a festival that makes the people have a chance at
connecting with their ancestors who have passed away (Smith). It is believed that the departed
souls come back to the mortal world during Obon and can find their heirs if the living people
signal them with lights. This is a beautiful and often enchanting idea that tries to help people feel
like they are surrounded by their ancestors, even if that is for a momentary period. Seeing this
from a distant viewpoint, the ritual may be deciphered as something that is set to give humans a
moral support and assure them that they are being watched over by their families, even the ones
who are not living amongst them anymore. This may well be a planned placebo that would give
humans the moral high to keep going even in times of troubles to make them believe that they
cannot be harmed by evil forces as they are being protected by their own families who may not
be seen but are certainly there, hovering around them (Spencer).
The different views and approaches to religion and religious rituals can be highly varying
in nature and may help a person to have different interpretations on the same. Religion is a
debated area that needs a lot of explanations to firmly establish its grounds and make sure that it
is accepted by everyone. However, a number of philosophical methods themselves often deny its
validity and discard it as a creation of humans and not any sort of process to reach out to the
cosmic entities.

7EASTERN PHILOSOPHICAL RITUALS

8EASTERN PHILOSOPHICAL RITUALS
References
Belzen, Jacob A. "Religion and Religiosity as Cultural Phenomena: From Ontological
Reductionism to Acknowledgment of Plurality." Psychology as the Science of Human Being.
Springer International Publishing, 2016. 193-208.
Demmrich, Sarah, Uwe Wolfradt, and Michael Domsgen. "Dissociation in religion and
spirituality: God images and religious rituals in the context of dissociative experiences among a
sample of German adults." Journal of Empirical Theology 26.2 (2013): 229-241.
Jung, Carl Gustav. Psychology and Religion Volume 11: West and East. Routledge, 2014.
Lucas, Phillip Charles. "Homo ritualis: Hindu ritual and its significance for ritual theory, by Axel
Michaels, New York, Oxford University Press, 2016, xix–372 pp., US $99.00 (hardback), ISBN
978 0 1902 6262 4." (2017): 1-4.
McCauley, Robert. "Explanatory pluralism and the cognitive science of religion." Mental
Culture: Classical Social Theory and the Cognitive Science of Religion (2016): 11.
Pearson, Christopher H., and Matthew P. Schunke. "In this essay, we set out to survey and
critically assess various attitudes and understandings of reductionism as it appears in discussions
regarding the scientific study of religion. Our objective in the essay is twofold. First, we
articulate what we will refer to as three ‘meta-interpretative’frameworks, which summarize the
distinct positions one can witness in response to the explanations coming..." Sophia 54.1 (2015):
111-113.
Peters, T. "Universal Humanity, Religious Particularity, and Scientific Reductionism." On
Human Nature. 2017. 685-694.

9EASTERN PHILOSOPHICAL RITUALS
Segal, Robert Alan. "Reductionism/anti-reductionism." Vocabulary for the Study of Religion.
Brill, 2015.
Smith, Brent A. "Transforming discourse: Interdisciplinary critique, the university, and the
academic study of religion." Cogent Arts & Humanities 3.1 (2016): 1128318.
Smith, Christian. Disruptive religion: The force of faith in social movement activism. Routledge,
2014.
Spencer, Sidney. Mysticism in world religion. Penguin Books Limited (1963), 2016.
Zemmour, Rémi, and Jérôme Ballet. "Religion and Market: From Economic Reductionism to a
Consideration of the Role of Beliefs." Revue Française de Socio-Économie 2 (2016): 143-161.