Buddhism and Shinto

Someone asked what the difference is between a Shinto Shrine and a Buddhist Temple. Perhaps I am very under qualified to answer this question, but I will give my response.

One way to begin is to give some standard textbook definitions of Shinto and Buddhism. Shinto is the indigenous religion of Japan. It goes back to the beginnings of Japan (some two thousand years, probably). It is not a religion practiced anywhere in the world outside of the Japanese people. My own understanding is that it is a religion of nature and ancestor worship.

Buddhism is a religion that goes back some 2500 years, and started in India. It might actually be thought of as an off-shoot of Hindu, in that its founder, Siddhartha Gautama used Hindu ideas as a foundation, then took them a few steps further (sort of how like Christianity is an off-shoot of Judaism, where Jesus used Judaism as a foundation, then went a few steps further). After several hundred years, Buddhism made its way into China, and several hundred years after that, made its way into Japan (somewhere around the year 600).

Unlike Shinto, which has had a constant presence in Japan, Buddhism has had its ebbs and flows through Japanese history. Some Shoguns persecuted the Buddhist priests as preaching a foreign religion, and thus subjecting Japan to foreign influence. Other Shoguns used Buddhism as a sort of government control, and forced all citizens to register with the local Buddhist temples. Now where do the two religions stand?

Before answering that question, we might consider how that question arises. We come from the West. In the West, we make demarcations between religions, like Christianity and Islam, or Judaism and Hindu; one cannot be a Christian, and a Muslim, nor can one be a Jew and a Hindu. Even more, we make demarcations within major religions; one cannot be both Catholic and Baptist. I even remember someone telling me that a specific sect called Jews for Jesus were a contradiction in terms, and, in fact, were neither Jews nor Christian. Even if one looks back in history, there are wars fought between leaders of different Christians and Muslims, Muslims and Jews, Muslims and Hindu, and again, even within a major religion, such as between Protestants and Catholics. It is with this background that we ask the question, “What is the difference between a Shinto shrine, and a Buddhist temple?”

As far as I can tell, the question is not so clear-cut here in Japan. That is, such a question makes sense to us Westerners, but it does not make as much sense in Japan. I read two things that might illustrate this point. It was said in one book that Japanese people are born Shinto, marry as Christians, and die as Buddhists. Another book said something like 90 percent of the Japanese consider themselves practitioners of Shinto, while 80 percent consider themselves Buddhist, and 70 percent consider themselves Christian (I might have gotten the numbers mixed up, but the point is still made). And to top that off, up until the end of World War II, many Japanese even saw the Emperor as a living god (which isn’t really a Shinto or Buddhist belief, but a different sort of religion all together, one which has had implications throughout Japanese history).

Furthermore, having walked around some of these temples and shrines, one sees some interesting features. The largest shrine that we visited, the Senso-ji Shrine, had gods of thunder, and lightning, and such outside the gates, and within, as if protecting the shrine. Once inside the grounds, beside these gods, one sees statues of Buddha in several different forms. Is this to mean that there are two different religions represented in Senso-ji? I don’t think so. I think, rather, where the Westerner sees different religions as mutually exclusive to each other, in Japan there is no such mutual exclusivity. No one here has to draw a line in the sand and proclaim that this is what I believe, and anything beyond is wrong.

One progressive Westerner might say that this is what he might believe, that all religions have their place, and everyone should be able to believe what he wants. However, no matter how progressive any Westerner might claim to be, I have never met a Christian-Muslim-Jew; in fact, when a Westerner typically says that he is Christian (or Muslim, or Jewish), even if he does think himself to be progressive, he does fundamentally mean that he is NOT a Muslim or a Jew (or vice versa).

It, thus, seems to me that there is a demarcation between religions in Western eyes that is lacking in the Japanese mindset. Thus, it seems to me that one way of approaching a description of the difference between a Buddhist temple and a Shinto shrine is completely wrongheaded.

However, there is a different way to approaching the difference between a Buddhist temple and a Shinto shrine, and that is from a purely physical descriptive viewpoint. In this case, one would simply look for physical differences in the architecture, layout, and components of each to try to come up with a difference. That said, I have not studied them enough to be able to tell a structural difference, since they both seem to house some form of a Buddha, have incense, and are decorated in a similar manner. But the untrained eye may not be able to tell the difference between some Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Bottecelli; nor may the untrained ear tell the difference between Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach. In the same way, I don’t think that I have yet developed the sense to tell the physical descriptive difference between a Buddhist temple and Shinto shrine.