Faith in the Three Treasures—the Buddha, the Law, and the Order—has been the religious characteristic of all Buddhism, Hinayana or Mahayana, throughout the twenty-five hundred years of its history. Some Western scholars have argued that because it has no deity Shakyamuni’s Buddhism is not a religion but a system of ethics, morality, and philosophy. But such scholars overlook the religious nature of faith in the Three Treasures.