a thousand and one bodhisattvas

The wife arrived from the States and we went to view the Kannons at Sanjusangendo. After an hour trudging in our stocking feet through the freezing temple, I was reminded of the old saying: `When you`ve seen one pagan idol with 11 faces and a thousand arms, you`ve seen them all.`

All those new wave European Shinto revivalists who are currently dissing Seidensticker and Morris (may peace be upon them) for calling Heian religion `an incoherent mishmash` likely haven`t visited this temple, meditated on all the detailed descriptions of the 28 guardian kings who come straight out of the feverish imagination of some wild-eyed naked Hindu fakir, and tried to make a chart.

In a sudden burst of illumination, I realized why Chinese Confucianists were so hostile to the importation of Indian Buddhism and why the T`ang emperors took the trouble to burn down the monasteries in the ninth century. Sublime stuff indeed, but any religion that frees up the menfolk to go madly singing in the mountains, leaving the women to change the diapers and endeavor to raise up the kids with some modicum of filial piety and cultivate in them at least marginally civilized behavior would strike Confucians as a selfish, antisocial cult concerned primarily with individual salvation and pie in the sky by and by. I mean, anyone who`s looked into the matter realizes that Buddhist ethics are about as hazy as the misty moon in the month of June.