Story too religious? Here's a tip!
When I say "too religious" in my own context, I typically mean too Christian.
I don't mean that disparagingly, I just tend to notice that because the most prominent sources of religion in fiction like Prince of Egypt, Hazbin Hotel, Hunchback of Notre Dame, and even Tolkien's Augustinian view of evil are often sourced in Christianity.
And I personally am not Christian, I'm Agnostic, so I want to typically be more Syncretic. But of course, you can have Christian themes if you so choose, I'm not gonna stop you.
Anyway, when explaining the concept of Hell and Demons in this universe, I first explained Evil through Toby Fox and J.R.R. Tolkien's examples and postulates.
And while I had said Hell was a combination of different punishing afterlives, like Hel and Diyu, I had realised I explained Evil in a very Western sense and neglected to mention concepts like karma.
So, I pivoted to, after explaining the concept of evil, then reframed it, without changing the Western explanation, in the context of balance and harmony found in Indigenous and Eastern belief systems.
I framed evil not just as hollowness and the inability to create, only imitate, but also as the act of causing imbalance and effecting disharmony. Those who are unbalanced can be balanced again, but to do an evil deed is to imbalance.
And I had made sure to account for how karma operates in the life cycle of a sinner in Hell, how eternity does not exist since your karma burns off and you'll eventually reincarnate, but the amount of sins you continue to commit can lengthen your karma or the amount of time you spend in shame can create an anchor similar to what prevents you from reaching enlightenment.
Similarly, the top hero of this universe, nicknamed the Moon King occasionally, is meant to be a kind of Superman or All Might figure, but his absence has led to superstitions made about him. I didn't necessarily want people praying to him like a god because he's an African hero.
Within the story, there were already bad guys kind of Christianising his image. So, how would I contrast that, especially when the character who speaks for him is nicknamed the Speaker of God?
Well, I wanted to frame it more like ancestral guidance, Mufasa appearing in the clouds to guide Simba back home. The people who come to the Speaker of God do not come to repent or beg forgiveness, but to seek guidance and wisdom on what to do because they are lost after making an unguided and unwise decision.
Heroes do not have Commandments, they have to remember what it means to be a hero. Considering the fact that the meaning of wearing a mask and being a hero isn't religious in and of itself, it's a matter of being like "What would the Moon King do? What did he fight for? What do I fight for?" rather than "Beata Maria, you know I am a righteous man, of my virtue I am justly proud."
So, if you think your story is leaning too far into a particular faith and you don't want to lean into it, you can balance it out using framing instead of trying to cut it out entirely. Again, if you want to make Buddhism or Christianity a prominent part of your story, you are free to do that.
I just want to balance it out in my story because media very disproportionately features certain religions so religious themes tend to become cliché at certain points, and my story prominently features characters from a multitude of cultures so I don't want to reduce the whole thing to one specific worldview.
Ironically, the power system was primarily explained with concepts like Qi, so everyone does martial arts in the modern day but then I ran into the problem of explaining a type of German sword magic inspired by Vergil's Yamato so I had to then stop thinking about things from an Eastern lense and focus mainly on how Kunst des Fechtens longsword would make the magic work instead of thinking it like Iaijutsu katana.
