Nagarjuna is further credited in Japan with having taught that there are two ways of life, the one a road of difficulty and pain (nangyodo), the other one of ease and pleasure. In the first, the aspirant after salvation takes the hard road of asceticism, of fastings and penance, etc., and thus labours to work out his own salvation; in the second, he throws all his own efforts aside, puts his faith in One who has effected salvation for him, and so, like a ship with a stout sail and a favourable wind, attains the haven of his hopes. It is for this reason that Nagarjuna is considered by all the Amitabha sects in Japan as the great Founder, after S'akyamuni, of their Faith. For, in deed, the "Faith in Another" is Faith in Amida. Amida is the One Original Buddha (ichi-Butsu, hon-Butsu), besides whom there is none other, and who has had no beginning. He has manifested himself time and again to men; in the Sukhuvati Vyuha, for instance, there is a list given of eighty-one such manifestations. At the last

he manifests himself as a person whom the Japanese call Hozo Biku, makes a vow for the salvation of man, and works it out until he has established a Paradise where he himself reigns in power, and into which all may enter who have the faith to call upon him. Nagarjuna does not claim to have invented this doctrine. He claims to have found it, and we know that the doctrine must have existed in India before A.D. 147, for we know that in that year the Sukhavati Vyuha was taken by two men, Anshikao and Lokaraksha, to China. We may safely say that Amidaism was a portion of the faith of Mahayana Buddhism from the middle part of the second century. Before that time our notices of it are somewhat vague. Nagarjuna may be considered, by his clearly announced doctrine of salvation by Faith, to have laid, as far as Indian Buddhism is concerned, the foundation of that Third Vehicle which may be said to be the One and True Mahayana.

Nagarjuna is also treated by Japanese Buddhists as having been the first man to bring into Buddhism a set of doctrines known as the Avatasamka or Kegon. The Kegon no longer exists in Japan as a separate organization, but its views still influence a great many writers, and the Kegon Sutras have had more influence on Japanese and Chinese religious art than any other set of the Sutras of the Mahayana.