ABSTRACT
Buddhism is usually known in the occident as a religion of ascetic practice and atheistic ideas. Whatever the Western critics may say, the influence Buddhism exerted everywhere lay in its practice of love and equality, which was an outcome of its fundamental teaching of the unity of all beings, and of its ideal of supreme enlightenment (Bodhi) to be attained by all. Now the Buddhism brought over to Japan was a developed form of this religion, demonstrated artistically in ceremonies and supported by a system of idealistic philosophy. The Japanese learned for the first time through this religion that there was a deity or superman who looked after the welfare and salvation of all beings without regard to clan or nationality. The introduction, furthermore, of the medical science, of Chinese arts and sciences, especially of writing and astronomy, was always identified with Buddhist missions, and even the conservatives gradually gave in to the irresistible force of the importations.
