Buddhism has, to begin with, two distinct forms, philosophical and popular, which may practically be taken as two different religions. Philosophical Buddhism--or at least the truest form of it--is a system based upon the recognition of the utter impermanency of the phenomenal world in all its forms and states. It believes in no God or gods whatever as a personal motive power. The only thing eternal is matter, or essence of matter, with the Karma, or Law of cause and effect, dwelling incorporated in it. Through the never-ceasing working of this law innumerable forms of existence develop, which, notwithstanding the appearance of stability they temporarily assume, are, in consequence of the action and reaction of the very law to which they owe their existence, constantly subject to everlasting changes. Constancy is nowhere to be found in this universe of phenomena. It is therefore an act of unspeakable ignorance on the part of human beings, themselves a product of the immutable Karma, to attach a constant value to this dreamy world and allow themselves to lose their mental harmony in the quest of shadowy desires and of their shadowy satisfaction, thus plunging themselves into the boundless sea of misery. True salvation is to be sought in the complete negation of egoism and in the unconditional absorption of ourselves in the fundamental law of the universe. Shâkya-muni was no more than one of a series of teachers whose mission it is to show us how to get rid of our fatal ignorance of this grand truth, an ignorance which is at the root of all the discontent and misery of our selfish existence.
Very different from this is the aspect assumed by the popular form of Buddhism. This is a system built up on the blind worship of personified psychic phenomena, originally meant merely as convenient symbols for their better contemplation, and in the transformation of the human teachers of truth into so many personal gods. This is the reason why Buddhism, so essentially atheistic, has come to be regarded by the ordinary Christian mind as polytheism, or as a degraded form of idolatry.
Now, in all the many sects of Buddhism which have been planted in the soil of Japan since the middle of the seventh century, some of which soon withered, while others took deep root and grew new branches, these two phases have always been recognised and utilised in their proper sphere as means of salvation. For the populace there was the lower Buddhism, while the more elevated classes found satisfaction in the higher form and in an explanation of that True Path which lies hidden beneath the complicated symbolic system.