Formative Elements of Japanese Buddhism

...atonement original: "ment",* just as they represent one and the same Divine Person, a great step will have been taken for the reconciliation of East and West.

I believe that Gotama Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha derived his ideas about Amida from the prophets of the Babylonian Captivity the period in the 6th century BCE when Jews were exiled to Babylon; the author suggests a historical overlap who were his contemporaries. I believe further that the Buddhology the theological study of the nature of the Buddha of many of the Mahâyâna the "Great Vehicle" branch of Buddhism prevalent in North and East Asia books had its origin in the same Life which lies at the basis of Christian Christology the theological study of the nature and person of Jesus Christ. At the same time, I grant that it is not impossible that the idea of a Savior, such as Amida is, may have arisen in the Indian mind quite independently of Christian revelation. It may have been intended to point people toward that apparently universal axiom of religion—humanity's need for forgiveness and God’s suitable provision for it.

I have felt for years that Amida was the shadow—dim, indistinct, and distorted—of the True Substance, Christ. It is in the recognition of this shadowy identity that I can see, or seem to see, the future conquest of Japan for Christ.

(11). Buddhism speaks of existence before as well as after death. It teaches that a person must expiate to make amends or undergo punishment for a wrongdoing in a body for what they do now in a body, and that they are expiating now in the flesh what they did in former existences in the flesh. Because of this, Buddhism cannot honestly deny the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body.

Still less can the Amida-worshipper deny this truth. They hold that at death, Amida comes to meet the soul and conducts it—preserving its identity—to the Western Paradise the Pure Land, or Sukhavati, where, in a land of absolute purity, it is prepared for the perfection of Nirvana.

Christian and Buddhist therefore both teach, though with differing details, that a person shall rise again with their body and

* The long labors and self-denials original: "mortifications" which Amida is said to have undergone in the process of collecting that store of merit which enabled him to found his Paradise must be looked upon much in the same light as Christ’s life and sufferings on earth. In that sense, I apply the word "atonement" to Amida.