Buddhism

Buddhism came to Japan in the 6th century and almost immediately got tangled up in political infighting. The first Buddhist statue arrived as a gift of the King of Korea. It was set up in a temple and several young girls, probably of Korean families, were induced to become nuns so that they could care for the temple. But an epidemic struck the capital and opponents of this newly imported religion argued that the gods of Japan were angry at the interloper. The statue was thrown in a canal and the girls were publicly whipped for bringing misfortune on the state.

But this very event caused Buddhism to be associated with bringing in new ideas from outside Japan, so it was supported by the powerful Soga family. Soon the statue was fished out of the canal and it and the girls were re-installed with the statue in a new temple.

Buddhism became a kind of official religion in Japan as part of the modernizing and sinifying program of Prince Shotoku who ruled the country from 593 to 621. He ordered the construction of temples in every province and associated the new religion with the welfare of the state, decreeing monthly rituals in every temple for national peace and well-being.

The prominant Buddhist sects in Prince Shotoku's time and for the following two centuries are known as the Six Schools, but there was considerble cooperation among them. Members of various schools studied with each other and a government license was required for anyone wishing to enter any of the schools.

But parallel to this "official" Buddhism, another tradition was developing, the tradition of the yamabushi. A yamabushi, literally "a man who lies down on a mountain," seeks enlightenment in the forests and mountains. Instead of studying in a monastery, a yamabushi practices asceticism, meditation and ritual, after the model of the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, far from the solemn, ordered life of the cloister.

One of the earliest Yamabushi was named En. Born in 634, he came from a family of traditional healers and diviners. He and others like him adopted Buddhism and grafted it onto native Japanese religious beliefs. The Buddha became the new chief god, the supreme miracle worker who answered people's prayers for rain, no typhoons and easy childbirth. En had no licence to become a Buddhist priest. He didn't need one. He traveled the countryside and the wild places and prayed. This wasn't Buddhism as Prince Shotoku understood it, but it was something the common people could relate to.

Another informal Buddhist priest, Gyogi, helped bridge the gap between official and popular Buddhism. He and his followers, and they were many, studied a little and prayed a lot. He gathered crowds together to preach them the Buddhist doctrine of cause and effect. But Gyogi and his followers went far beyond this. They organized the common people to help themselves. They founded temples that acted as libraries, free medical clinics, and alms houses for the destitute. They helped dig wells and dam rivers to insure a steady supply of water for irrigation. They created an activist form of Buddhism not unlike what is now called "engaged Buddhism."

The power of Gyogi and his engaged Buddhism was demonstrated in the building of the Great Buddha at Nara. This enormous statue was to be a symbol of Japan's status as a "Buddhist" country. But the project languished until, in 743, the emperor asked Gyogi to take over. He did, rousing his followers to the supreme effort required to cast in bronze a 53 foot (16 meters) tall Buddha seated on a 68 foot (21 meters) wide lotus pedestal. The whole thing came to 450 tons (408,600 kg.), by far the largest bronze that had ever been cast in Japan. Unfortunately, the upper half of this statue was wrecked by a fire and, though it was re-built, only the lotus and the legs of the current Great Buddha date from Gyogi's time.

When the young man now known as Kobo Daishi turned to Buddhism, he turned primarily to the tradition of Gyogi. His first biographer, his disciple Shinzei, says that his first move in becoming a Buddhist was to practice aceticism in the mountains. He meditated through the year, wearing cloth made of arrowroot fiber, sleeping out in the snow, subjecting himself to severe discipline.

But he also spent time studying texts. At the pagoda of one of the temples in Nara, Kumedera, he found a copy of the Dainichi-kyo. This, he felt, had a true explanation of the nature of enlightenment and the way to achieve it in an instant. But he couldn't find a teacher in Japan who could explain the sutra to his satisfaction. So, on the sixth day of the sixth month of 804, he set off for China.