I really learned a lot the first time I went there, and that really made me a more serious Buddhist than I was in the past.

I think there is a lot more blending of sects in Japan than we might suspect at first glance. I went to a famous temple known familiarly as Shibamata Taishaku Ten (in the neighborhood that is the setting for the famous ‘Tora-san’ movies). It is a Nichiren Shu temple–it seems there is a picture of Taishaku Ten painted on the back of a Gohonzon, thus the temple’s appellation. Also, there is a statue of Dainichi Nyorai (outside, not in a building.)

To see azaleas, I went to a Jodo temple in Kamakura, in a neighborhood of many Nichiren temples–Matsubagayatsu. This Jodo temple had a five-part (five-element) stone monument with Siddham letters all over it.

At a Jodo temple in Setagaya-ku, there was a Jizo statue with several of those thin wooden sotopa sticks around it. One of the sticks had a Siddham letter and the Shingon mantra of Jizo written on it. I think things became a lot more separate and distinct in Kukai’s time and later, but I notice there is still a surprising amount of admixture.

(On another topic, my approach to Buddhism is a bit on the hobbyist side.)

Anyway, thanks for the interesting blog！

Regards,
JL

But that’s only one branch of the tradition. Recently I looked at a few pieces that argued that there never was such as person as the Buddha in the first place. Some of these arguments don’t sound very reality-based themselves to me, but the important thing we do possess, I think, is the Dharma/Dhamma itself, wherever it came from.

And one interesting result of all of these Asian traditional threads of the Dharma/Dhamma coming together and reweaving themselves here in the West, I also think, is that we are beginning to see that they are largely different ways of expressing basically the same teaching, which appeal to different people with different mind-sets. (I realize that this is a hugely controversial point, so I don’t expect every follower of the Dharma/Dhamma to agree with it.)