The purpose of this research is to examine the respective approaches to salvation of the classical school of Japanese Buddhism, the Pure Land Schools, and Zen. The plan of the research will be to set forth the fundamental features of Buddhism's view of salvation generally, to describe the distinguishing soteriological elements in each sect, and then to discuss the implications of each approach for ethical behavior.
Initially introduced into Japan from China in A.D. 552 (Tsunoda, et al. xix), Buddhism began to develop along various sectarian lines within 100 years. However, there are certain features common to all Buddhist thought: "1) that all life is inevitably sorrowful; 2) that sorrow is due to craving; 3) that it can only be stopped by the stopping of craving; and 4) that this can only be done by a course of carefully disciplined and moral conduct, culminating in the life of concentration and meditation led by the Buddhist monk" (Creel 307).
First and always, Buddhism is religious and transcendent, but implicit in the idea of the holy contained in Buddhism is a whole range of standards for real-world (and therefore ethical) activity. The aim of an individual life is to finally and completely transcend the body (reality, existence). Until this is achieved, the being (not strictly the soul) will revisit (i.e., be reincarnated in) a variety of human forms until craving is fully expunged and one achieves nirvana, or the joining of right moral conduct, an absence of craving, and the importance of a bodhi (enlightenment) that derives from the other two, which is that existence (phenomenal reality) itself is illusory. One who is enlightened is a bodhisattva, and the enlightenment is that reality itself is emptiness. Nirvana is unity or oneness with emptiness, or a freedom from the cares of the world, including care for the fate of the self. The term Mahayana, or the One Vehicle, is associated with the experience or "Way" to the onen...