Buddhism in Japan movement to eradicate Buddhism and bring Shinto to ascendancy arose throughout the country due to the strong connections of Buddhism to the Shōguns. During the Meiji period (1868–1912), after a coup in 1868, Japan abandoned its feudal system and opened up to Western modernism. Shinto became the state religion. Within the Buddhist establishment the Western world was seen as a threat as well as a challenge to stand up to. Buddhist institutions had a simple choice: adapt or perish. Rinzai and Soto Zen chose to adapt, trying to modernize Zen in accord with Western insights, while simultaneously maintaining a Japanese
Reality in Buddhism of interdependent origination. One of the most discussed themes in Buddhism is that of the emptiness ("sunyata") of form (Pali: "rūpa"), an important corollary of the transient and conditioned nature of phenomena. Reality is seen, ultimately, in Buddhism as a form of 'projection', resulting from the fruition ("vipaka") of karmic seeds ("sankharas"). The precise nature of this 'illusion' that is the phenomenal universe is debated among different schools. For example; Buddhist sutras devote considerable space to the concept of reality, with each of two major doctrines—the Doctrine of Dependent Origination ("pratitya-samutpada") and the Doctrine of Cause and Effect ("karma" and