One of the keynotes of the Hosso teaching (it would require a large volume to describe it all) is the doctrine of Oneness from which the other name of the sect, the Yuishikikyo, or Oneness sect, is derived. A Christian would say, "God is One, and besides Him there is none other." But the Hosso sect (if we may use the word "God" for Buddhist speculations) would put it a little otherwise. "God is One, and besides Him there is nothing." The Universe, or God (for the two were treated as identical) was looked upon as a mighty ocean, unfathomable and unlimited, and the phenomena of nature and life, trees and plants, birds and beasts, sun and stars, men, angels, and even the gods whom men worshipped, were but the waves which appear for a moment on the surface, vanish, and reappear in a different shape. The wave I look at now is but a rearrangement of the drops in the wave which appeared in a different shape in another part of the bay. The god I worship now, on the Himalaya slopes, I call by the name of S'akyamuni; rearrange the particles that compose him, and he will appear presently on the plains of the Ganges as the Hindu Vishnu. The name and the form have been changed, the essence which is a part of the great Ocean of the Universe, which is God, is unchanged, and remains identically the same. Thus it came in India that men passed from one cult to

the other, and that the Hindus, to this day, look upon S'akyamuni as one incarnation of their god Vishnu.

This was the doctrine which enabled Gyogi Bosatsu, and other leading priests of the Nara period, to propound the doctrine of Ryobu-Shinto (or Ryobu-Bukkyo, as it is also called). According to this doctrine, the ancient gods of Japan, Amaterasu, the goddess of the Sun, and the other divinities whom the Japanese had brought from their unknown original homes on the continent of Asia, were not independent spiritual Beings, but merely fresh incarnations of that same divine Essence which had moved for a while on the surface of things, as this or that one of the great Bodhisattvas and Buddhas of the Indian religion. Buddhism had not come to destroy the faith of Japan, but to strengthen it with the additional light that was shining forth from India and China. How far the movement was a popular one, may be doubted. The common people counted for very little in those days; it was an oracle, issuing from the Temple at Ise, that authoritatively proclaimed the identity of Amaterasu and Vairoc'ana. A few years before, in the year 616, the great god of Miwa had very obligingly let it be known throughout Japan that the proper ministers to take charge of funeral rites were the Buddhist clergy. This amounted practically to an endowment of Buddhism.