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This introductory chapter reveals the contours of a Buddhist political history in which Southeast Asia's national borders are transcended by connections and perceptions formed among Buddhists of different nationalities, as well as other international protagonists. The monkhood's relations with Washington were based on a mutual keeping up of complementary appearances: that one side was avoiding religion while the other was staying out of politics. Despite appearances, the Buddhist clergy in fact grew more politically internationalized under the U.S. embrace. So, too, was Thai Buddhism growing more religiously internationalized through institutions such as the World Fellowship of Buddhists (WFB). It was through involvement in this group, seen by some as a “miniature Asian U.N.,” that Thailand's lay Buddhist leadership contended with the major international Buddhist issues of the day.

This chapter argues that, while hopes for the Pure Land may have encouraged a reconceiving of death as joyful, the importance placed on right-mindfulness in one's last moments also provoked fears. If correct meditative focus at the moment of death could transcend the sins of a lifetime and secure one's birth in the Pure Land, the reverse was likewise true. Examining instructions for tenth-century deathbed practice, the chapter traces the importance of the “good friend” or zenchishiki—the religious advisor in attendance who guides dying persons in their deathbed visualizations. The emergence of the zenchishiki at the deathbed as a formal ritual role marked a significant step in the growing influence of Buddhist clergy over death-related practices.

This chapter analyzes the concepts of mado and tengudo, developed by the Buddhist clergy as one of the many solutions to the degenerations of the Final Age. For those who sought salvation, the difficulty of attaining their goal during such troubling times encouraged the creation of new practices and interpretations of the Buddha's teachings. It was during this apocalyptic era that the concepts of mado and tengudo emerged. Tengudo, also referred to as mado, was a realm reserved for Buddhist practitioners who had failed to overcome the temptations of evil and could not attain ojo. As Buddhists, they did not fall into one of the three evil realms but into the realm of demons, where they could continue their practice and achieve enlightenment. Thus, tengudo was created as an alternative path for those who practiced Buddhism.

This chapter describes how the Buddhist clergy in Japan were once corrupt and driven by greed. It examines how monastics, from being always respected and treated well even by people of high status, now merely prided themselves over the favors they received, and no longer went around with begging bowls or transfered merit to others. Because of the splendor of the times, the monks of the time used large timbers and stones to build temple halls and shrines, without thinking twice about the labor of the workers. Priests of high rank were those who put the dharma to one side and concentrated solely on making a profit. This chapter explains how the Buddha Way was corrupted by greed through factors such as temples' involvement in prostitution and other irregular practices and their failure to observe their own regulations. It also considers the evils of the Honganji sect, Buddhism's problematic history in Japan, renewed signs of decay, and how the physicians of today have lost the original meaning of the medical Way.