Thinking about life and death can really make you think deeper than ever. As my class and I took an exam over the true definition of death, it made me think about it in a personal sense. As a human being we all wonder what is after life? What will we be after life, and how will we reach death? These questions run through everyone's mind, but never really think about the true facts of death. The definition that we as a class came up with for death was still. A body is still, cold, and spiritless. As death overtakes a body, the body is dead, but you yourself are not. Now if all believe in this definition this world would be a lot different. But before one goes and thinks about what is after death, think about the truth that comes with death.

Scared for all the exams that are closing in, I'm especially nervous for my Religions of The World exam. It is a super vigorous course. With a lot of details as to how each religion started, it is becoming overwhelming. Studying is not a close friend of mine, but it needs to be done. What I am planning on studying is Buddhism, Confucian, and Shinto. On top of that I will be looking at the basics of all religions, including how religions might originate, and their fundamentals. My test is not until this Thursday.

This week in Religions of The World we started talking about Shinto. Shinto is a religion created in Japan. It is very similar to Buddhism, and in fact almost 90% of Japanese consider themselves both Buddhist and Shinto. To describe Shinto is like finding the difference from Shinto to Buddhism. Shinto is used for major life events, including birth and marriage. Where as Buddhism is for death, and everything after death. Shinto shrines are very clean areas where people go to worship a deity. Although in Shinto their is an infinite number of Deities, not a single person. So when people worship they worship to all deities, hoping for one to respond. This is also the same thing for Buddhism but they call their deity Buddha. These religions are usually hand and hand, and only 13% of people identify as one religion. Next week we will be learning a more in depth lesson on Shinto.