The popular, participatory Buddhism which followed the aristocratic sects was home-grown and owed little to Chinese prototypes. Much of it centered around one particular figure in the Buddhist pantheon, the benign, sexless Amida, a Buddhist saint who presided over a Western Paradise or Pure Land of milk and honey accessible to all who called on his name. Amida has been part of the confusing assemblage of deities worshiped in Japan for several centuries, but the simplicity of his requirements for salvation made him increasingly popular with the Heian aristocrats, who had begun to tire of the elaborate rigmarole surrounding magical-mystery Buddhism. And as times became more and more unstable during the latter part of the Heian era, people searched for a messianic figure to whom they could turn for comfort. So it was that a once minor figure in the Buddhist Therarchy became the focus of a new, widespread, and entirely Japanese cult.
The figure of Amida, a gatekeeper of the Western Paradise, seems to have entered Buddhism around the beginning of the Christian Era, and his teachings have a suspiciously familiar ring: Come unto me all ye who are burdened and I will give you rest; call on my name and one day you will be with me in Paradise. In India at this time there were contacts with the Near East, and Amida is ordinarily represented as one of a trinity, flanked by two minor deities. However, he is first described in two Indian sutras which betray no hint of foreign influence. During the sixth and seventh centuries, Amida became a theme of Mahayana literature in China, whence he entered Japan as part of the Tendai school. In the beginning, he was merely a subject for meditation and his free assist into Paradise did not replace the personal initiative required by the Eightfold Path. Around the beginning of the eleventh century, however, a Japanese priest circulated a treatise declaring that salvation and rebirth in the Western Paradise could be realized merely by pronouncing a magic formula in praise of Amida, known as the nembutsu: Namu Amida Butsu, or Praise to Amida Buddha.
This exceptional new doctrine attracted little notice until the late twelfth century, when a disaffected Tendai priest known as Honen (1133-1212) set out to teach the nembutsu across the length of Japan. It became an immediate popular success, and Honen, possibly unexpectedly, found himself the Martin Luther of Japan, leading a reformation against imported Chinese Buddhism. He preached no admonitions to upright behavior, declaring instead that recitation of the nembutsu was in itself sufficient evidence of a penitent spirit and right-minded intentions. It might be said that he changed Buddhism from what was originally a faith all ethics and no god to a faith all god and no ethics.
What Honen championed was actually a highly simplified version of the Chinese Jodo school, but he avoided complicated theological exercises, leaving the doctrinal justifications for his
teachings vague. This was intended to avoid clashes with the priests of the older sects while simultaneously making his version of Jodo as accessible as possible to the uneducated laity. The prospect of Paradise beyond the River in return for minimal investment in thought and deed gave Jodo wide appeal, and this improbable vehicle finally brought Buddhism to the Japanese masses, simple folk who had never been able to understand or participate in the scholarly and aristocratic sects that had gone before.
Not surprisingly, the popularity of Honen's teachings aroused enmity among the older schools, which finally managed to have him exiled for a brief period in his last years. Jodo continued to grow, however, even in his absence, and when he returned to Kyoto in 1211 he was received as a triumphal hero. Gardens began to be constructed in imitation of the Western Paradise, while the nembutsu resounded throughout the land in mockery of the older schools. The followers of Jodo continued to be persecuted by the Buddhist establishment well into the seventeenth century, but today Jodo still claims the allegiance of over five million believers.
An offshoot of the Jodo sect, destined to become even more popular, was started by a pupil and colleague of Honen called Shinran (1173-1262), who also left the Tendai monastery on Mt. Thei to become a follower of Amida. His interpretation of the Amida sutras was even simpler than Honen's: based on his stuThes he concluded that only one truly sincere invocation of the nembutsu was enough to reserve the pleasures of the Western Paradise for the lowliest sinner. All subsequent chantings of the formula were merely an indication of appreciation and were not essential to assure salvation. Shinran also carried the reformation movement to greater lengths, abolishing the requirements for monks (which had been maintained by the conciliatory Honen) and discouraging celibacy among priests by his own example of fathering six children by a nun. This last act, justified by Shinran as a gesture to eliminate the division between the clergy and the people, aroused much unfavorable notice among the more conservative Buddhist factions. Shinran was also firm in his assertion that Amida was the only Buddha that need be worshiped, a point downplayed by Honen in the interest of ecumenical accord.
The convenience of only one nembutsu as a prerequisite for Paradise, combined with the more liberal attitude toward priestly requirements, caused Shinran's teachings to prosper, leading eventually to an independent sect known as Jodo Shin, or True Pure Land. Today the Jodo Shin, with close to fifteen million followers, enjoys numerical dominance over other forms of Japanese Buddhism.
The Amadist salvation movement was confronted by its only truly effective detractor in the person of the extremist Rencho (1222-1282), who later took for himself the name of Nichiren, or Sun Lotus. An early novice in the Tendai monastery, he took a different tack from the Amida teachers, deciding that all essential Buddhist truth was contained in the Lotus Sutra itself. Although the Tendai school had originally been founded on the study of the Lotus Sutra, he believed the school had strayed from the sutra’s precepts. Denouncing all sects impartially, he took a fundamentalist, back-to-the-Lotus text for his sermons. Sensing that most of his followers might have trouble actually reading a sutra, he produced a chanting formula of his own which he claimed would do just as well. This Lotus "nembutsu" was the phrase namu myoho renge-kyo, or Praise to the Lotus Sutra. The chanting Amidists had met their match.
The Tendai monks on Mt. Thei did not receive this vulgarization of their teachings kindly, and their urgings, together with his intemperate pronouncements regarding imminent dangers of a Mongol invasion, led in 1261 to Nichiren's banishment to a distant province. Three years later the truth of his warnings became all too apparent and he was recalled by the government. But on his return he overplayed his hand, offering to save the nation only if all other Buddhist sects were eliminated. This was too much for the Japanese ruling circles; they turned instead to a new band of warriors trained in Zen military tactics who promptly repelled the invasion without Nichiren's aid.