were deeply influenced, taking over its images and ceremonial. For most of the Heian
period the two sects were intermingled.
Despite this, Tendai always retained a distinctive bias towards scholarship and an
intellectual, rather than emotional, approach; it also continued to have somewhat closer
links than Shingon with the court as an administrative body. Moreover, in judging the
relative spiritual progress of people who were not monks, Tendai relied on the existing
class structure. Those born in fortunate circumstances were reaping the rewards of special
merit in previous lives and could look forward to even greater blessings in lives to come.
In short, though all beings were destined to be saved eventually, aristocrats were superior
to the common people in religion as in everything else. It is easy to see that such teaching
would flourish in Heian Japan, which was a predominantly aristocratic society.
As religions of the aristocracy and this government, the two sects were thought of
protectors of court and State. They performed special rituals at times of political
uncertainty arising from such things as the accession of a new emperor, provincial
rebellion or natural disaster. Buddhism had had this protective role since Nara times, but
the Heian sects? links with the court led them to full participation in society and
government quite apart from abnormal occasions.
For Buddhists as well as everybody else, direct contact with china dwindled
though it never lapsed. This was an extraordinary change from the time when Japanese
Buddhism had been little more than a branch of mainland mature, and took on a
distinctively Japanese or national character. Religion, like politics and literature, was
increasingly domesticated.
This meant that Heian Buddhism conformed to the prevailing pattern of group
privilege and local independence within a broad framework of national unity. The sects
were deeply involved in the development of Shoen, and, as elements in the metropolitan
elite; they ranked with the great aristocratic families. Like the latter, they remained
separate and to some extent competing units, deriving their ultimate authority from close
association with the court. At the same time, they gained greatly from the weakening of
centralized government, which enabled them to amass huge incomes from shiki rights, and
to enjoy a large measure of political independence.
However, Buddhism did not just passively accommodate itself to prevailing
secular trends; it was a positive influence in its own right. Japanese politics under the
Fujiwara and cloistered emperors were remarkably free from bloodshed and cruelty, and
this was at least partly due to Buddhist emphasis on the sanctity of life. During the Heian
period Buddhism also ceased to be an exclusively aristocratic religion. Spreading among
the common people, it carried with it – as always – arts, crafts and opportunities for
learning. So, in the long run, Heian Buddhism helped enormously to close the great
technological and cultural gap that had divided the provinces from the court since the days
of the Taika Reform.
Buddhism in any form had always been a missionary religion. Mahayana
Buddhism was not only anxiously to make converts, but was eager to absorb local
religions. In Heian times, Shinto shrines throughout the country were taken over by
Buddhist priests. The deities for whom the shrines had originally been built were now
esteemed as minor manifestations of the cosmic Buddha, and time-honored village
festivals and other community rites continued under Buddhist sponsorship. This
amalgamation of Buddhism and Shinto was the dominant form of religion in Japan from
the eleventh century to the mid-nineteenth century. Even after the forcible separation of
the two faiths for political reasons in the 1870s, the amalgam has lived on among the
people.
52a
Morton, W. Scott. JAPAN, Its History and Culture. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1984
Morton, W. Scott. CHINA, Its History and Culture. United States:
McGraw-Hill, 1980
Varley, H. Paul. Japanese Culture. Honolulu, University of Hawai?i Press,
2000
http://perso.club-internet.fr/thmodin/English/boddhisattva3.html
http://www.koyasan.org/nckoyasan/introduction.html
http://www.compsoc.net/~gemini/simons/historyweb/tendai.html