General intro
kAmi as the base entities
“Yoshida Kanetomo’s formulation of Shinto in the 14-1500s has a touch of brilliance such that he can be called Japan’s Astika. He developed the idea that the buddha-s and the bodhisattva-s are not the original entities but they are merely manifestation of the kami who are the original divine entities. He also made the case that bauddha and Confucianism are merely second hand versions of Shinto with the kami as the primary pantheon being secondarily interpreted as nAstika buddha-s of chIna deities.”
“The foundation of this lay in the earlier Shinto text Mitsunokashiwa denki which was created at the Ise shrine which lead to the formulation that shinsei or kami-nature is the foundation rather than the tathAgatagarbha and that the tathAgata-s are merely a reflection of kami-nature.”
" Kanetomo however retained the core H elements that had entered the nAstika tradition in his Shinto, namely the worship of deities in the maNDala-s and even established a mapping between the maNDala-s the two primary Ise temples. Kanetomo and his descendants also retained the display of mudra-s in ritual explaining it as a Shinto ractice which had come down in his lineage from the kami known as the Lord of the Polar Star. Further, Kanetomo and successor traditions incorporated nyAsa in more or less a H form with shinto deities placed on the different a~Nga-s as an important ritual."
“A rather remarkable ncantation that they hold coming straight from their primordial goddess goes thus: materasu-sume-O-onkami proclaimed : “The human is a divine being under heaven. He must govern, when he [himself] is calm, then he makes [all others] calm . The heart is thus the primordial land of all the gods. This identification of the hR^idaya as the seat of the deva-s is rather interesting: anyone conversant with the kR^iShNayajuSh will know the incantation hR^idyam mayi… One wonders if the J manifestation of this idea is convergence or had a direct H connection. "