A jug fills drop by drop.
All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?
An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.
Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.
Buddha
After a time the Buddhist monasteries began to be ambitious and wanted to have more power and so this became a problem for the Emperor because these monasteries had many people who were loyal to the monastery and would do what ever their leader told them to do because they were their spiritual leaders. The Buddhist were not able to actually take over the emperor and the government because at about the time they were beginning to become very strong is the time when the Samurai began to gain power.
Buddhism was something that really became ingrained in the people because even today we can see people in Japan who still follow the faith and this has really become part of the life of the people. Here is a video of a Buddhist ceremony which is interesting.
Have you ever seen Sons of Provo? If not, the character Danny calls himself a Mormon Buddhist. There's a scene where he is sitting cross-legged by a Joseph Smith statue in meditation while humming a hymn. Just a funny thought.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, back to the topic at hand.
I've always thought of Buddhism from a stereotypical view. Old bald men in orange togas. I would never have imagined that there was a time when Buddhism would have aspired to take over an empire.
Can a religion remain pure and true once it has acquired worldly goals?
*I'm counting wanting to take over an empire as a worldly goal.*
Again we see people attempting to rise to power through religion, only this time it didn't work.
ReplyDeleteI found your post to be very interesting seeing as I've been studying ancient Hinduism, the precursor to Buddhism. I had no idea that Buddhism had spread to Japan in 552 AD! I suppose that our topics are more closely related than I thought. This shows that there was some interaction (even combining!) between our two cultures even as far back as the 6th century! Very cool.
Speaking of combining things.. One thing I discovered when I did some research on the Samurai was that for the most part along with their Bushido code, the Samurai were devout followers of Buddhism. So the Buddhist leaders may have had more influence in feudal Japan than we realize.
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