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Updated: June 24, 2025
In Buddhist household worship, the prayers addressed to the family Hotoke proper, the souls of those long dead, are very different from the addresses made to the Shin-botoke. Some of the above are used also by Shinto worshippers. The old samurai still repeat the special prayers of their caste:
These last are called Shin-botoke, 'new Buddhas, or more strictly, 'the newly dead. No direct request for any supernatural favour is made to a Shin-botoke; for, though respectfully called Hotoke, the freshly departed soul is not really deemed to have reached Buddhahood: it is only on the long road thither, and is in need itself, perhaps, of aid, rather than capable of giving aid.
The ordinary words said in Izumo homes to any Shin-botoke take rather the form of adjuration or counsel than of prayer, such as these: These prayers are never uttered aloud. Needless to say that ancestor-worship, although adopted in China and Japan into Buddhism, is not of Buddhist origin. Needless also to say that Buddhism discountenances suicide.
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