Sources of Japanese Tradition: Volume 1: From Earliest Times to 1600 Book

Thick as fuck! A difficult, difficult book. And also a great achievement for editors and academics making complicated subjects rather more vivid and clear. A lot of this early Japanese history coincides with the development and history of Buddhism. With my Catholic background, the long and complex history of the development of Christianity is at least easily grasped thanks to my cultural understanding, my engagement and struggle with the faith and awareness of its influence over many factors of my life and the lives of my peers. Buddhism is altogether more vague, its Western application being mostly people who like to sit still for a long time, be vegetarian and encourage others to chill out. I would have a similarly vague understanding of Christianity if I were Japanese, that religion with all the crosses were people try hard to be nice and are afraid of the adverse consequences. So the depth of this world I've stumbled into went largely over my head. I think I need time and experience talking to people to get a better sense of Buddhism's immense intellectual history and the broader history of Eastern philosophy, but...what a task that is! A task for many lifetimes.