The whole tendency of Japanese Buddhism and its full momentum were now toward the development of doctrine even to startling proportions. Instead of the ancient path of asceticism and virtue with agnosticism and atheism, we see the means of salvation put now, and perhaps too easily, within the control of all. The pathway to Paradise was made not only exceedingly plain, but also extremely easy, perhaps even ridiculously so; while the door was open for an outburst of new and local doctrines unknown to India, or even to China. The rampant vigor with which Japanese Buddhism began to absorb everything in heaven, earth and sea, which it could make a worshipable object or cause to stand as a Kami or deity to the mind, will be seen as we proceed. The native proverb, instead of being an irreverent joke, stands for an actual truth--"Even a sardine's head may become an object of worship." "Reformed" Buddhism. We now look at what foreigners call "Reformed" Buddhism, which some even imagine has been borrowed from Protestant Christianity--notwithstanding that it is centuries older than the Reformation in Europe. The Shin Shu or True Sect, though really founded on the Jō-dō doctrines, is separate from the sect of the Pure Land. Yet, besides being called the Shin Shu, it is also spoken of as the Jō-dō Shin Shu or the True Sect of the Pure Land. It is the extreme form of the Protestantism of Buddhism. It lays emphasis on the idea of salvation wholly through the merits of another, but it also paints in richer tints the sensuous delights of the Western Paradise. As the term Pure Land is antithetical to that of the Holy Path, so the word Shin, or True, expresses the contrary of what are termed the "temporary expedients." While some say that we should practise good works, bring our stock of merits to maturity, and be born in the Pure Land, others say that we need only repeat the name of Amida in order to be born in the Pure Land, by the merit produced from such repetition. These doctrines concerning repetitions, however, are all considered but "temporary expedients." So also is the rigid classification, so prominent in "the old sects," of all beings or pupils into three grades. As in Islam or Calvinism, all believers stand on a level. To Shin-ran the Radical, the practices even of Jō-dō seemed complicated and difficult, and all that appeared necessary to him was faith in the desire of Amida to bless and save. To Shinran,[9] faith was the sole saving act. To rely upon the power of the Original Prayer of Amitabha Buddha with the whole heart and give up all idea of _ji-riki_ or self-power, is called the truth. This truth is the doctrine of this sect of Shin.[10] In a word, not synergism, not faith _and_ works, but faith only is the teaching of Shin Shu.