Robert Oxnam :: In
the year 552, the Emperor Justinian was on the Byzantine throne, and the
great dome of Hagia Sophia was under construction in Constantinople.
This is when Buddhism, the dominant religion in China at the time, reached
the Japanese islands from Korea, marking the beginning of the Classical
Period in Japan.
H. Paul Varley :: Buddhism is a thousand years old
by this time, had come from India into China, and to a large extent had been sinicized
and had a number of very complex sects. And it's obvious in studying the early
centuries — the late sixth, seventh, even the eighth centuries — that
the Japanese, or at least not very many of them, are very clear about the
differences between the sects that were introduced to Japan.
But certain basic
premises on which Buddhism is based — fatalism, the idea that people are
enmeshed in a process of karma, of fate, what they did in earlier lives affects
them in this life and so forth — the basic Buddhist ideas, were something
that could readily be understood and appreciated and embraced.
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