F Art and Architecture Reflected the Values of Religions and Belief Systems

Japan is home to not one, but two religions, Shinto and Buddhism. Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples often stand side by side, and the Japanese meet no inconsistency worshiping the Buddha and the many Shinto kami with nearly the same breath. Subsequently virtually 1500 years, they are deeply, culturally interconnected – though that was the outcome of a long, complex process known as shin-butsu shugo (Shinto-Buddhism coalescence).

In some ways, Shinto and Buddhism are very unlike: Shinto, the animist prehistoric cult, was born and has always lived only in Nihon; Buddhism came from India via Red china and has spread all over the world. Shinto observes what it has ever been – nature – and doesn't much change its form; Buddhism has developed many dissimilar schools of idea, from Pure State to Zen to Shingon and others.

Shinto
Shinto is a combination of the Chinese words shen (gods) and tao (a way, or path), thus the Manner of the Gods. Shinto has gods (or spirits) to spare, many with very singled-out personalities. Chief among them are Amaterasu Omikami, the sun goddess who is regarded as the divine ancestor of the Imperial family, O-Inari-sama, the god of rice harvests, and Hachiman, the Shinto god of war.

Just kami are not exactly gods; they are spirits of nature that want to help humans be happy. All they desire is some devotion and attention. For most Japanese, that devotion is limited to the local kami of their home, neighborhood, forest or colina. Shinto is a local, domestic organized religion.

Shinto has no scriptures, no central profession of religion, no leader, no holiest place, nor even a concept of an afterlife. One does not need to be a "fellow member" of a Shinto group; it is merely there, for everyone. Shinto does not see human beings as "fallen" or "sinful," but merely as needing occasional guidance from the kami. Shinto concerns staying in harmony with the globe, not escaping it, and the principal purpose of Shinto ritual is to keep the human soul in balance with the spirits of the natural earth.

Shinto worships many gods and spirits – as an animist religion, Shinto sees god in everything, sometimes in specific places or natural features, like a waterfall or tree. When a particular natural object is said to take a spirit (kami), it is often marked, sometimes with a strip of white paper, or the shimenawa, a braided harbinger rope that is tied around a tree with a kami.

You lot volition know you are at a Shinto site by the presence, not just of shimenawa, but past the assuming, upright gates known as torii. These simple, distinctive structures – two uprights topped by curved cross-beams – are everywhere in Nihon. They symbolize the gateway between the natural globe and the spiritual world, and serve equally daily reminders of the interconnection between the two.

Shinto is at the root of Japan's most distinctive cultural expressions, especially the desire for balance and harmony with nature that underlies such arts as Ikebana, compages and garden pattern.

Buddhism
Buddhism, by contrast, came to the archipelago much later, in the sixth century BCE, brought by the same Chinese and Korean monks who brought Chinese language and kanjis, art and architecture, and such staples every bit tea. The Buddha ("Aware I") himself, who was born and lived in India in the 6th century BCE under the name Gautama Siddhartha, is known to Japanese as Shakamuni or O-Shaka-sama.

Buddhism has many scripts, a priestly degree that studies the aboriginal scriptures, and ethical lessons from the Buddha to be learned and followed; Buddhism is not entirely different Shinto in this respect, which is peradventure why they coexist so well.

Buddhism, in its purest forms, has no God per se, though similar Christianity, followers have turned the original prophet into a god, and grafted many older gods and spirits onto it. Buddhism is the faith of ethics and transcendence, with disciplines and methods such as meditation designed to free the Buddhist from the worldly trappings of ego.

The course of Buddhism that arrived in Japan in the sixth century BCE is Mahayana, or the Bang-up Vehicle, Buddhism, which is also dominant in China and Korea. Therevada Buddhism is the course practiced in Bharat, Sri Lanka, Thailand and other South asia countries. Zen Buddhism arrived in Nippon, again from Red china, in the 12th century, and speedily became popular. A grade of Buddhism that promises an afterlife to followers is Jodo-shu or "Pure Land" Buddhism, in which devotion and prayer to the God Amida volition have the deceased to the "pure land" or the Western Paradise, aka sky.

Buddhism and Shinto have coexisted since the inflow of Buddhism all those years agone, as the newer religion tried to impose itself on the native religion, much equally Christianity was added to before local religions, from England to Brazil. But there has been conflict over the centuries, even as recently as the belatedly 19th and early 20th centuries, when the modernizing Emperor Meiji tried to create a state religion past separating the interloper (Buddhism) from the more ancient and native Shinto.

But after 1,500 years in the aforementioned culture, Buddhism and Shinto are woven together in a particularly Japanese way, and virtually Japanese have no problem observing both religions, albeit for different reasons: While weddings are ordinarily performed under Shinto auspices, funerals are almost always a Buddhist thing, to the point that even many Japanese take occasional problem telling where Buddhism ends and Shinto begins. As interesting every bit it is, visitors need not worry besides much about being clear on the distinction.

By DAVID WATTS BARTON

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Source: https://japanology.org/2016/06/buddhism-and-shinto-the-two-pillars-of-japanese-culture/

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