世は乱れに乱れ、民衆の心も荒れた鎌倉時代。
生き抜くためには、生きている人の半分が殺人者や盗人かも知れないという世において、
権力者や有力者のための鎮護国家、呪詛目的の平安・奈良時代の従来の仏教では、
住職さまがおっしゃるように一般の民衆を救えることは難しかったことが容易に想像つきました。そこで「鎌倉仏教」へと進化した訳ですね。
仏像は、鎌倉時代に仏師の慶派(私たちも知ってる運慶・快慶たち)の素晴らしい技工によって、その姿に肉体のリアリティーを持って頂点を極めました。
そして、万人にわかりやすい、誰もが実践できて救済される仏教へと教義がシンプルになっていく中、やがて仏像自体が重要視されなくなり、仏像は衰退していったそうです。
ちなみに、今の私達の時代の仏教も「鎌倉仏教」のうちの１つなのだそうなのです。
ご住職さんがおっしゃるには、そろそろ今の時代に必要とされる、
再び仏像主体の新しい仏教が生まれてくるのではないでしょうかとの予言も大変面白かったです。
鎌倉の大仏さまの後ろ姿
Back shot of the Great Buddha in Kamakura.
A topic of the workshop "Night of Buddha Statue" on Sept 5 was “Buddhist statues in Kamakura".
Disorder & desperation reigned over the land & people in the KAMAKURA period.
Half of people might be killer or robber to survive and feed their family in that period, the conventional Buddhism could not save soul of people.
The chief priest; lecturer told us the Buddhism in the former HEIAN & NARA periods was to pray for protection of the nation & curse/exorcise by powerful or noble families and the Buddhism had to CHANGE.
The Buddhist statues once reached the peak of the craftsmanship with expressions of realistic physical beauty in the KAMAKURA period by Kei-ha.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_school
As time went by, while the Buddhism was changing to be more practical and easy one for folks, they did not think much of Buddhist statues in their principles. Then, the quality of Buddhist statues deteriorated.
By the way, the Buddhism of nowadays still consists of the same denominations as we had in the Kamakura period, over 800 years ago.
It was very impressive - The chief priest said we will see a new Buddhism coming up soon by necessity in this period when we are confronting various difficulties today and it should place importance on Buddhist statue again.
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