business of such art to portray both the awesome and thegenial sides of experience, because good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant wereall equally important as attributes of the cosmic Buddha. Shingon art is made memorableby this inspiration. Moreover, it identified satori with the elation or heightened awarenessimparted by a masterpiece of art. Shingon enjoyed immense popularity in Heian Japan. Its emphasis on art appealedto the well-developed aesthetic sense of the nobles, who also enjoyed the lavish ritualsassociated with its sacred words and gestures. Even the Tendai communities on Hieizanwere deeply influenced, taking over its images and ceremonial. For most of the Heianperiod the two sects were intermingled.Despite this, Tendai always retained a distinctive bias towards scholarship and anintellectual, rather than emotional, approach; it also continued to have somewhat closerlinks than Shingon with the court as an administrative body. Moreover, in judging therelative spiritual progress of people who were not monks, Tendai relied on the existingclass structure. Those born in fortunate circumstances were reaping the rewards of specialmerit in previous lives and could look forward to even greater blessings in lives to come. In short, though all beings were destined to be saved eventually, aristocrats were superiorto the common people in religion as in everything else. It is easy to see that such teachingwould flourish in Heian Japan, which was a predominantly aristocratic society.As religions of the aristocracy and this government, the two sects were thought ofprotectors of court and State. They performed special rituals at times of politicaluncertainty arising from such things as the accession of a new emperor, provincialrebellion or natural disaster. Buddhism had had this protective role since Nara times, butthe Heian sects links with the court led them to full participation in society andgovernment quite apart from abnor...
