[Buddha-l] The upaya express

[JKirkpatrick]

Interestingly, your question has generated a 13th century answer.
It has been generally asserted that in the early Kamakura period
the established Buddhist schools (Kegon, Tendai, Shingon, and
several smaller schools) "didn't do much for dukkha. So, the
great suffering of the people in those times of civil war gave
rise to the new Kamakura Buddhisms: Pure Land, Nichiren, and Zen.
*These* forms, it was argued, put the means of salvation--even in
those times of mappo (the degeneration of the dharma)--into the
hands of the people and so these three new forms of Buddhism
quickly became the three largest school in Japan, and have
remained so. Recently, more careful scholarship has undermined
this explanation. And, as we are now discussing, the last hundred
years of Japanese materialism and Buddhist collaboration with
militarism has reduced Buddhism to a kind of funerary religion.

I am being simplistic, but this is the trend. Obviously Japanese
Buddhists, themselves, are clutching at straws (perhaps in fancy
drinks) to try to reverse it.

Franz Metcalf
_________________________

Hi Frantz,
Hmmmm--in that case, where are Pure Land (or Jodoshinshu) and
Nichiren today? 
I thought I had noticed that the practice of Buddhism in the USA
today is Jodoshinshu, for the most part. Correct, or not? 
How does whatever popular and for mostly lay folks Japanese
Buddhism fare in the USA these days, as compared to the sad
decline in Japan?

Joanna