Removing The Sheen From Buddhism

[Husky]

While there was no Inanity thread for the above (hence it came here), this next does belong in this thread.



[quote name='Husky' date='02 April 2011 - 10:15 PM' timestamp='1301762232' post='111301']Had something public to post on Japan[/quote]

I've decided on the following lighter article instead. Contains apologetics, and rushes over certain things thereby skipping the crucial details. (But even those who may not know more can still read between the lines.) What's interesting is that even in the piece's arguments for "syncretism", it can't help accidentally alluding to other things entirely (one-way "syncretism", the motivations for this, and how it impacted the affected target population/their reaction).



My many interruptions are in purple.





http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/n...904i1.html

Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2007



SHINTO & BUDDHISM IN JAPAN

Japan's Shinto-Buddhist religious medley





By ERIC PRIDEAUX

Staff writer

Most in Japan may know Buddhism has something to do with controlling lust and anger, and is associated with funerals and graves, while Shinto involves venerating nature, and weddings. But many people have trouble making theological distinctions between the two or even telling a Buddhist temple from a Shinto shrine.



[Caption describing images from separate Temples:] A buddhist saint at Enmei-ji Temple in Zushi, Kanagawa Prefecture, and a pair of Koma-inu statues guarding Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu (Shinto) Shrine in nearby Kamakura symbolize Japan's two main religions. ERIC PRIDEAUX PHOTOS



The following is an attempt to explain why Japanese often get Buddhism and Shinto mixed up:



What is Buddhism?

The Buddha, or "the enlightened one," was born as Gautama Siddhartha in what is today Nepal in the fifth or sixth century B.C. He achieved enlightenment under the Bodh Gaya tree at age 35 and spent his life teaching across central India until his death at age 80, receiving the honorific title Sakyamuni, or "O-Shaka-sama" in Japanese.

Central to Sakyamuni's teaching was that the universe is always changing, including our psychological identities, meaning there is nothing humans can truly call "the self."

Buddhists believe a deep understanding of this is required to dispel the basic causes of suffering. Compassion for all sentient beings is another deeply held tenet.





What about Shinto?

Shinto — the backbone of Japan's cultural identity — is an ancient system of animistic beliefs and customs.



(It's not mere "culture". And it's not only animism. But certainly, animism is an obvious feature. As it is in Daoism, Hellenismos - with its Dryads, Naiads, etc - Native American religion, Hindus' own religion.)



In popular belief, Japan is the land of Yaoyorozu no Kamigami (the 8 million gods). <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' /> Among them are a vast pantheon of deities with well-defined personas. Perhaps most important is Amaterasu Omikami, the sun goddess and legendary ancestor of the Imperial family.

But in the words of author Motohiko Izawa, any entity possessing "uncommonly wondrous characteristics . . . such as a cedar that has lived a thousand years or a river that has long provided people with water" may assume divine status as well.



(Actually, many places/natural phenomena and matter are recognised as Divine either because the Spirit of such a thing is a Kami in itself, or because a Kami settled there and started presiding over the area/rock/garden/tree. E.g. River Gods - like Mountain Gods - can be either: the River itself, or a God (or another 'otherwordly' being) that presides over it, possibly inhabiting it. In this too, Shinto is quite like other heathenisms actually.)





If Buddhism and Shinto are so different, what's confusing?

Ever since Buddhism was introduced to Japan in 552 (some say 538), Japan has seemed uncertain about how to weave it into its cosmology.

The year the religion was introduced, a delegation from the king of Peakche, a territory on the western Korean Peninsula, sent the emperor an image of the Buddha in gold and copper and a collection of the holy texts known as sutras.

The internationalists in the Japanese court welcomed Buddhism. Others saw it as a threat to the status quo, with Buddha nothing more than a "jajin," or devil.

Prince Shotoku (574-622) promoted Buddhism and it took hold. Still, Japan would never see a full conversion away from its indigenous religion, as occurred to a much greater extent across pagan Europe with the introduction of Christianity. Rather, Japanese absorbed Buddhism gradually, mixing it with local folk religions.

This process played out in the divine realm, too, with certain Shinto gods coming to be seen as protectors of the Buddha.

One was Hachiman, the Shinto god of war, who legend has it aided the construction of the Great Buddha statue in Nara during the Nara Period (710-784). This act of kindness won him the name "Great Bodhisattva (Buddhist saint) Hachiman" in 781.



(Legend - of Buddhist, not Shinto, origins - being the operative word. They declared him a future Buddha - a title often handed out. Meanwhile, Hachiman has been a Shinto God since uralte Zeit - not only of war but of peacetimes also - since well before even a [Shinto] Emperor came to be identified as a manifestation of the God. And even that Emperor predated Buddhism's introduction into Japan by several centuries, and preceded the Great Buddha statue of Nara by several centuries more. Otherwise too: Shinto Gods - like Taoist ones etc - are not Bodhisattvas and have nothing to do with Buddhism, regardless of Buddhism inventing myths about such things. The statement is not my opinion.)



Reflecting this meeting of religions, Hachiman was sometimes depicted in sculptures as a very unwarlike Buddhist monk.



(Not surprising, as Buddhism changed the characters of various Shinto Gods all the time* (in other cases, Asian Gods' identities were masked). The above example of the Buddhist-monkish demeanor imposed by Buddhism on the Shinto war God Hachiman when declaring him a bodhisattva, can be contrasted with how elsewhere one of the Shinto Gods - a Mountain God - of a certain inter-related clan of warriors, was distorted from being a rather composed Shinto God into a very ugra Bodhisattva. In his case (and such transformations were always performed by Buddhism on a case by case basis), Buddhism opted for this particular makeover because the target population were a class of determined warriors and the Buddhists imagined this new look for the God would appeal to the Shinto clan they were aiming for. Needless to say, the targets were particularly displeased: they knew their God to be real and that his character was very well defined - i.e. they could see Buddhism was making it up.

* As is transparent, to Buddhism, the Gods are not real (they're just the means to work on target populations) <- which is *exactly* why Buddhists found nothing wrong in falsely inventing/declaring that Gods who in reality uphold their own religion - Shinto or Dao as the case is here - as "bodhisattvas upholding the Dhamma" instead, and to randomly change the real characters of the very real Gods Of Others.)





But what does the eighth century have to do with mixups over temples and shrines now?

The syncretism, or weaving together of religions, would continue over centuries as Japan went about absorbing Pure Land, Zen and other Buddhist sects from China. Over time, cross-pollination between Buddhism and Shinto would deepen in a process known as "shin-butsu shugo" (Shinto-Buddhism coalescence), or less flatteringly as the "shin-butsu konko" (Shinto-Buddhism jumble).

Much of the convergence amounted to Buddhism trying to make a mark on the host culture. Buddhist monks felt certain Shinto divinities needed salvation. So they chanted sutras in front of shrines that were the gods' sacred homes.

Meanwhile, temples started sprouting up next to Shinto shrines, to be called "jingu-ji," meaning "shrine-temples." By the 16th century, such mixing and matching had become official policy.



(Yahari. The above statement conceals a world of important detail, such as how frequently the entire area around Shinto Temples - the lands that go with the Temple - are sacred *Shinto* space: belonging to/inhabited by the God(s) and Divine entities associated with the Temple. And as for "mixing and matching": even the above admits the "convergence" was uni-directional. Like how it was *Buddhist* temples that mushroomed uninvited next to existing ancient Shinto ones, encroaching on sacred Shinto space - and not vice-versa. Buddhists could have had them built anywhere else, yet their whole objective was to get their Temples built on sacred Shinto land next to Shinto Temples frequented by Shintos. It was a policy that was *Buddhist* in origin and calculated intention. Same as was the reasoning behind monks chanting entirely irrelevant Buddhist sutras at Shinto Gods and their abodes who have nothing to do with Buddhism. And insinuating 'bodhisattva' fictions onto the very real Gods of other religions.)



Nationalist yearnings have surfaced periodically, resulting in calls to rid Shinto of its foreign influence, especially during the Meiji Era (1868-1912) push for a State Shinto purged of its foreign Buddhist influences. ***

At Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu shrine in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, Buddhist artifacts were burned and otherwise removed.



(Note that in the given example too, they removed Buddhist artefacts from a Shinto shrine: built for Shinto religion by Shintos to Shinto Gods who inhabit the space and who by their presence make it sacred. The Shintoists were not "vandals" or "intolerant" for having these items removed: they have a right to protect their religion from what they experienced as subversion (which it *is*) of the proper views of their Gods/view of the divine world. But it wasn't even just subversion alone: not all the provocation has been alluded to. Anyway, comments on the above para are at end. ***)



It was impossible, though, to completely sever the link formed over so much time, and this helps explain why Buddhism and Shinto tend to blur together somewhat in the modern Japanese mind.



(- Many of "the modern Japanese mind" are no longer of a religion and have become amnesiac of it, and so, to some such, all long-standing religions in Japan blur.

- And the "impossible" thing is the statement. The concerned Shintos found they could keep their religion entirely separate from Buddhism, since their religion/Gods *are* entirely separate, despite Buddhist insinuations of Buddhism into Shinto religion. And what's more, Shintos found it important to keep their religion separate. To this day, there are Shintos (like Daoists) who take care not to mix the two.)





What evidence of syncretism do shrines display?

Guarding the average Shinto shrine are two stone statues, most often of the mythical Koma-inu, which despite the "inu" (dog) in its name actually looks like a miniature lion.

Koma-inu fend off evil for a wide range of gods. Also seen are statues of O-Inari-sama, the god of rice harvests represented as a bush-tailed fox, as well as other animals, including cows, boars, monkeys and even an occasional pair of turtles.

Koma-inu reveal cultural influences from abroad. Author Hiromi Iwai writes in the book "Nihon no Kamigami to Hotoke" ("The Gods and Buddha in Japan") that Koma-inu's lionlike design can be traced to China, while "Koma" may have been derived from "Korai," an ancient Korean dynasty.



(Lions as Dwarapalakas - or otherwise flanking a Moorty - are not only there in Taoist Temples <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' /> But certainly, it is very much ancient Taoist religious tradition also.)



But Koma-inu's heritage goes even further afield.

In each pairing, one creature's mouth will usually be open and the other's closed. (This is true with other animals as well.) The "A" that seems to issue from one Koma-inu's mouth, and the "M" voiced through the other's closed lips are said by Iwai to represent the ancient Indian belief that the universe began with the first sound and will conclude with the other.

In Hinduism, this is written fully as "A-U-M," with the three letters representing a long list of concepts. One is the triad of Earth, our surroundings and heaven. Another is the trinity of Hindu gods Brahma (the Creator), Vishnu (the god of maintenance) and Shiva (the Destroyer). In a holy word, Aum embodies the entirety of being.

Commonly known in the West as "Om," the term was adopted as a mantra by Buddhists, who in turn transmitted it to Japan via China during the Asuka Period (593-710). After that, it showed up on Shinto statues, reminding visitors to holy sites of our humble place within the greater scheme of things.



(IIRC, as I read it, Shintos themselves attributed Hindu religion as the source for their acquaintance with the Pranava mantram - i.e. a Hindu mantram.)

*** Actually, Shintos had been resisting Buddhism and the hijack of their religion and nation by Buddhism since a long time before the Meiji Era. The Chinese also spent centuries trying to get rid of Buddhism from their space, until its determination settled it as a permanent part of their landscape. (History-writing refers to this last as "persecution" of Buddhism by the Chinese, which is rather inverted, since it concerns a native population's response to a highly let's say "top-down politically-active" non-native religion.)



And crucially, while it's true that in the Meiji era nationalism did influence Japanese policy considerably in many aspects (still, even then, the traditional Shintos active in this particular matter were in it for their *religion*) the accusation of "nationalism" being a driving force in all historical Shinto resistance to Buddhism is incredibly misleading. You find among exactly such immune Shintos those that included Daoist and/or even Hindu Gods in their Shinto Pantheon, with Daoist and/or Hindu rituals for these. Indeed, one very consciously-Shinto warrior clan was not only determined to keep the Shinto Gods and religion safe from Bauddhification, but also the Hindu Gods included in their pantheon with associated practices. A peculiar "nationalism". Other accusations made against the Japanese and ancient Chinese who resisted was "xenophobia". Apparently people can conceive of nothing but a base parochial bias on the part of the Japanese and the Chinese that could induce these to resist Buddhism in favour of their own very independent traditions.





There's a post on IF - one that I am not able to locate now - where someone was quoted mentioning something along the lines of how 'only the idolatrous Hindu and Buddhist religions are capble of understanding the "paganism" of the Hellenes*' or 'understand their loss' (or some such vague statement to do with Hellenismos at any rate). I have this notion that I contested Buddhism's inclusion in such a statement - well, I should have, anyway.

But somewhere in all the above (and in some other posts here concerning Daoism) is embedded the argument for why Buddhism cannot understand: it's not the same type of religion, though some Buddhisms adopt a similar outward semblance.



Nearly forgot to paste the bit that reminded me to put the above piece up:

http://bharatabharati.wordpress.com/2011...dha-rajan/

Tamil Nadu Politcs: Cancerous Church eats into Dravidian parties – Radha Rajan

* Churches and prayer houses are being built-in almost every street in Chennai and close to every Hindu temple, big and small

* Churches are coming up even in the holiest of holy Hindu temple towns and they are being allowed by Dravidian parties to come up close to temples

Oh, look, "official policy".

Invading others' sacred sites is a conversion ploy that's always aimed at the target heathen population that's happily minding its own business by visiting its own temples. There's no other way to get their attention, or have the necessary vicinity to act (missionise) on them. It's the "In Your Face" tactic, akin (=an analogy) to breaking the private-space perimeter of a person to render them anxious, and which forces the victim to take note of the aggressive ideology. The confrontation becomes First Contact/initiates "dialogue". That victims may perceive this tactic as an act of aggression - which it is - is not unheard of, that they grow to resent is is also not uncommon.