RE: Why wouldn't it be a religion? Yes, but ....

Well, I did already agree with you that I don’t really consider Confucianism a religion, but let me continue in the role of Devil’s Advocate, here…

Depends on the Buddhist. The Zen schools don’t usually go in for that sort of thing, for example.

Much of that depends on your interpretation.

Each day across the country, schoolteachers lead students in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. That ritualized recitation doesn’t turn it into a religious exercise.

Buddhism is viewed by many of its practitioners as a kind of “mind exercise”—a way of bringing about a mental discipline and strength the way that calisthenics can be used to bring about a physical discipline and strength. Recitation of the Sutras is often used as an aid in concentrating the mind. Few Westerners would recognize this exercise as “prayer”, though it’s often called such by casual observers, due to its superficial similarity.

Buddhists don’t have gods, except to the extent that many Buddhists also adopt elements of other religions. In Japan, Shinto and Buddhism are not usually considered mutually exclusive, though Shinto includes some recognizably polytheistic elements among the animism and ancestor worship.

Nope. I wasn’t confused on that point at all. Similarly, though, Buddhists don’t worship Buddha, except in the same sense of ancestor worship.

So then, essentially, the difference between Confucianism and Buddhism, for you, lies in the fact that Buddhists have extensive rituals, while Confucians don’t.

I don’t see that that’s really an indicator of a religion—Congress has extensive rituals for the open and close of sessions, for reading new bills, and so on, yet it’s not a religion. Similarly, the whole process carried out in a courtroom is ritualized—reading the charges, picking a jury, swearing in witnesses, the order of testimony, the raising of objections, submitting motions, jury deliberations and verdicts: they’re all governed by rituals.