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Temples faced a dilemma similar to that of the great medieval monasteries in Europe: how could they maintain themselves--support ceremonies, acquire scriptures and images, reconstruct damaged buildings--without a store of wealth? Financial needs were best meant by control of agricultural land. The landholding structure that supported temples--and everyone else in Heian Japan--was the complex shōen system, which provided income to nobles, religious institutions, local notables, and cultivators, but gave no single individual or institution clear title to the land. The crucial factor in landholding was exemption from taxes, a privilege that swelled holders' coffers and inspired them to compete with one another.
Thus Buddhist leaders found it necessary to maintain ties with the court, which dispensed land rights, even when such ties compromised a temple's religious functions. Moreover, even though they sheltered scholarly and devout monks, monasteries also shared in the corruption and hypocrisy of lay society. Abbots were regularly chosen for their family connections and political acumen, not for the sincerity of their religious calling. Despite precepts that enjoined monks to live in poverty and to shun the taking of life, monasteries accumulated land and wealth, lived off peasant labor, and formed private armies to defend their prerogatives.
Impelled in part by distaste for this situation, in part by the need to practice ascetic rigors in a lonely and severe environment, a few monks escaped to mountain hermitages. There they were joined by others--would-be magicians or peasants inspired by religious vision. Using the practices and rituals of esoteric Buddhism, these people sought to develop special powers within themselves as a method to attain immediate Buddhahood. Such Heian-period religious adepts were known as hijiri. Though apparently few in number in comparison to ordinary monks, hijiri took significant part in preparing the way for the broad acceptance of Buddhism in later ages. Their ascetic rigors gripped the public imagination, and they left their traces in legends, in folk religious practices, and in sculpture on mountain cliffs. Part shaman, part evangelist, hijiri collected donations for temples, preached simple forms of Buddhism to the common people, and chanted prayers for rain or the cure of illness.
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