POP-BUDDHISM

The story begins around the 10th century. In many areas of China and Japan, simple shrine-temple areas began to evolve into large “towns before the gates” expanding the social influence and cultural significance of religious institutions. By the early 15th century, festivals and markets were hosted regularly in or near the "towns". Slowly, the temple-shrine complexes and their surrounding districts were developing into cities.

With this, the religious practice of the ordinary person also began to change. Spiritual-cultural goods sold at shrines and temples allowed people to carry a connection to the other world. Guidebooks presented lists of shrines and temples, categorized by the problems each spiritual site specialized in. Pilgrimages became ever more popular among all levels of society. Visitors typically combined a visit to the shrine with lunch at one of the area’s fine restaurants or a teahouse, a stroll by the nearby river. This led to the organisation of urban shrine festivals where processions of portable shrines and recitations of the Heart Sutra were central but ordinary people also participated with music, dancing, and many popular entertainments.

The appearance of this attitude reflects a distinctively urban shift in religious consciousness. Secular and sacred coexisted in a unique blend which has not been seen in history before or after that.

Pop-Buddhism pays tribute to this bygone era when people knew better than at any other time in history that we live in two simultaneous realities - the physical and the metaphysical. That we are in the world, but not really of it.