
One characteristic of Buddhism, in contrast to Christianity, is that Buddhism does not eliminate deities. Rather, they are seen as manifestations of Buddha-consciousness in the mode of a given culture and are kept.
When the MacArthur people took a census of religious beliefs in Japan, they found that there were more religious believers than there were people, because everyone was both a Shinto and a Buddhist.
-- Joseph Campbell
An Open Life: Joseph Campbell in Conversation with Michael Toms(p. 97)
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