Those later Chinese deities made by
personifying attributes or abstract ideas, which sprang up after the
introduction of Buddhism into China, are also welcomed into the temples
of this sect. That the common people really believe that they themselves
may attain Buddha-hood at death, and enter the Pure Land, is shown in
the fact that their ordinary expression for the dead saint is Hotoke--a
general term for all the gods that were once human. Some popular
proverbs indicate this in a form that easily lends itself to irreverence
and merriment.
The whole tendency of Japanese Buddhism and its full momentum were now
toward the development of doctrine even to startling proportions.
Instead of the ancient path of asceticism and virtue with agnosticism
and atheism, we see the means of salvation put now, and perhaps too
easily, within the control of all. The pathway to Paradise was made not
only exceedingly plain, but also extremely easy, perhaps even
ridiculously so; while the door was open for an outburst of new and
local doctrines unknown to India, or even to China. The rampant vigor
with which Japanese Buddhism began to absorb everything in heaven, earth
and sea, which it could make a worshipable object or cause to stand as a
Kami or deity to the mind, will be seen as we proceed.
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