The rise of Pure Land Buddhism was not merely an outgrowth of the new feudal society, translating
into religious terms the profound social changes which then took place. Already in the late Heian
period we find individual monks who sensed the need for bringing Buddhist faith within the reach
of the ordinary man, and thus anticipated the mass religious movements of medieval times. Kuya
(903-72), a monk on Mt. Hiei, was one of these. The meditation on the Buddha Amida, which had
long been accepted as an aid to the religious life, he promoted as a pedestrian devotion. Dancing
through the city streets with a tinkling bell hanging from around his neck, Kuya called out the name
of Amida and sang simple songs of his own composition, such as:
He never fails
To reach the Lotus Land of Bliss
Who calls,
If only once,
The name of Amida
.
A far, far distant land
Is Paradise,
I've heard them say;
But those who want to go
Can reach there in a day.
In the market places all kinds of people joined him in his dance and sang out the invocation to
Amida, 'Namu Amida Butsu.' When a great epidemic struck the capital, he proposed that these same
people join him in building an image of Amida in a public square, saying that common folk could
equal the achievement of their rulers, who had built the Great Buddha of Nara, if they cared to try.
In country districts he built bridges and dug wells for the people where these were needed, and to
show that no one was to be excluded from the blessings of Paradise, he travelled into regions
inhabited by the Ainu and for the first time brought to many of them the evangel of Buddhism.
