Buddhas as Kami

The second question raised for me by A Path into the Mountains (still an affiliate link!) was “Can Buddhas be venerated as kami?”.

The reverse is clearly possible, as it is generally agreed to have been common for about a thousand years of Japanese history. Kami were taken to be provisional manifestations of more fundamental Buddhas — forms taken to enable the Buddhas to bring enlightenment to the Japanese. Thus, the kami were revered as Buddhas, and this was a standard part of Japanese Buddhism.

What about the reverse? Is it possible to venerate Buddhas as part of Shinto? To be absolutely clear about this, is it possible to venerate Buddhas as part of Shinto and not Buddhism?

It certainly seems to be consistent with what Shinto has in the way of theology. Buddhas are exceptional existences, and they are believed to have supernatural power. They certainly seem to qualify as kami, and thus be the sort of thing that is venerated in Shinto. We even have direct evidence, in the Nihonshoki and Nihon Ryōiki, from the beginning and end, respectively, of the eighth century, that this is how Buddhas were originally seen in Japan.

Further, we cannot simply say “if you are venerating Buddhas, you are doing Buddhism”. Muslims venerate Christ, as one of the prophets, but Muslims are not Christians, and not even practising Christianity. In general, two different traditions can share an object of veneration without becoming the same tradition. They will generally have different approaches to the shared object of veneration, of course. Muslims and Christians have very different approaches to Christ.

So, what would be a Shinto approach to Buddhas? One possibility is that it would involve petitioning Buddhas for this-worldly benefits, and making offerings to convince them not to curse you. It would not involve seeking enlightenment or release from the cycle of reincarnation, although it might involve seeking supernatural powers. It would look, in short, quite a lot like the description of Yakushi Nyorai (the medicine Buddha) and approaches to him in Miyakeki, a fifteenth-century (probably) collection of myths about the main kami of Izu.

This is an interesting methodological issue. The standard approach, both inside Japan and in the wider world, has been that if it has any Buddha on it, it is Buddhism. That was certainly the approach of the Kokugaku (National Learning) activists who drove the Meiji intervention in Japan’s religious life — they wanted to purge all the Buddhist elements from Shinto. It is even the approach taken by contemporary Shinto practitioners. As I reported a couple of weeks ago, people say that Shinto ceremonies should not be performed before the Buddhas. Is the standard approach wrong?

The issue is not whether something is “really” Shinto, or Buddhism. There are a range of practices in the world, and we try to divide them up in ways that are useful for our understanding. Christianity is not a sect of Judaism because it would be very unhelpful to regard it in that way, notwithstanding the strong arguments from the origins of the younger religion that it is exactly that. Are there Japanese practices involving Buddhist figures that it is more helpful to class as Shinto?

Actually, if we take peripheral Buddhist figures, like Benzaiten, the answer is generally agreed to be “yes”, as she was not pushed out of jinja in the nineteenth century. (And she is also identified with Saraswati, and is therefore also a Hindu figure.) But I think we ought to consider the possibility that some historical or current Japanese practices concerning Yakushi Nyorai (for example, but not at all at random) are better described as Shinto than Buddhist.