In matters of religion, Confucianists and Taoists were apparently going on much as usual; but the Buddhist world, distracted partly by the immense volume and bulk of its own religious books, and partly by the multiplicity of the new ideas which the growing commercial activity of the people was importing from foreign countries, was in a state of apparently fermenting chaos. Bodhidharma's attempts at reform (A.D. 520) were already a century old, and his way had already lost some of its prestige: new sects,

e.g. the Sanron, Jojitsu, and Tendai, were already in process of formation, if not actually formed, and Hiouen Thsang had already (A.D. 611) entered the order of monks, and was now preparing for the celebrated journey to India for the purpose of studying at first hand the doctrines of his faith.

Some reform was certainly needed. In the year 618, the Duke of Tang deposed his master, and took his seat on the Imperial throne as Kaotsu, the Founder of the Tang dynasty. One of the most striking incidents of his reign was the presentation of a petition to the throne against Buddhism. It was presented by leading men among the literati and Confucianists, and was strongly worded. Kaotsu accepted the petition and acted upon it. He ordered a general dissolution and suppression of Buddhist monasteries, and sent 100,000 monks and nuns back into lay life. It was probably a necessary measure. The monks were very numerous and very powerful, and they claimed exemption from State control. Abuses of many kinds are apt to spring up in institutions the members of which claim not to be placed on the same footing with ordinary citizens.

Zendo entered the Buddhist order at a very early age. I cannot find whether it was before or after the suppression of the monasteries by Kaotsu; but it was most probably before that event, and his teacher was a certain Shosho () of Misshu (), a prominent person in the then newly-formed Sanron sect. This sect, which is also called the Ichi-dai-kyoshu, or "Sect of the Teachings of Buddha's whole life," made it a feature of its teachings that it professed to accept every one of the many thousand volumes of the Mahayana Canon as of equal authority, without assigning to any single one a pre-eminent place among its compeers. It aimed at the most complete and glorious comprehensiveness

[paragraph continues] (a comprehensiveness, which, I fear, can only be attained by the sacrifice of the critical faculty). Zendo's Buddhist biographer adds that he also studied the Vinaya discipline (a fact which may be taken as showing traces of a somewhat practical turn of mind), and notices further that, during these student days, he was continually restless, that he sighed for greater definiteness, and expressed a longing for that simpler doctrine of Salvation by Faith in Amida, which has always had its exponents in China as well as in Japan.