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=== The Disappearance of the Established Buddhist Institutions Is Inevitable ===
'''B:''' I agree. In that case, the immediate priority would have to be a movement to unify Buddhism. The present fragmentation amounts to nothing more than Buddhists demonstrating their own lack of religious resolve. How many schools and branches does Buddhism actually have today?

'''A:''' I’ve heard there are thirteen schools and fifty-six branches.<ref>“Thirteen schools and fifty-six branches” (jūsanshū gojūrokuha, 十三宗五十六派) was a conventional enumeration of the institutional divisions of Japanese Buddhism in the modern period. Seno’o invokes the formula as evidence of the sectarian fragmentation that his movement sought to overcome.</ref>

'''B:''' But if you start a movement for unification, won’t you in practice simply create one more sect?

'''A:''' Even if it means adding one more sect for the moment, if the movement truly corresponds to the needs of the age, then as it expands and grows stronger, the established Buddhist institutions that have fallen out of step with the times will gradually lose their power and naturally undergo liquidation and disappear. That is just what happened when the new Buddhist movements of the Kamakura period displaced the established Buddhism of Nara and Heian and caused its older forms gradually to dissolve.

'''B:''' Then you’re saying that this Revitalized Buddhist movement represents the highest form of Buddhism demanded by the modern age.

'''A:''' As I said before, so long as Buddhism has its source in the person of the Buddha, is there really any other path by which it can be brought back into unity?

'''B:''' At the very least, it seems to be a method that should be acceptable across the schools. In fact, whichever Buddhist institution you examine, each has doctrines of some substance. But if every school keeps proclaiming exclusively, “Our school alone has grasped the Buddha’s intent,” the beginning seeker is completely bewildered. And if, despite all those differences, they all offer essentially the same opiate-like sermons of escape from reality, modern people will not merely reject Buddhism—they will quite naturally become advocates of its repudiation.

'''A:''' “Rotten wood cannot be carved.”<ref>“Rotten wood cannot be carved” (朽木不可雕也) derives from the Analects 5.10, where Confucius uses the image to describe someone upon whom further instruction would be wasted.</ref> There is no need to fear revolution.

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Even Shinran, regarded as the very model of humility, declared at the establishment of his teaching that “the teachings left by Śākyamuni have all entered the Dragon Palace.”<ref>“The teachings left by Śākyamuni have all entered the Dragon Palace” (釈迦の遺法ことごとく龍宮にいりたまいにき) is from Shinran’s Shōzōmatsu Wasan (正像末和讃, “Hymns of the Dharma-Ages”). The verse describes the disappearance of Śākyamuni’s conventional path of practice and realization in the age of the Final Dharma; the Dragon Palace (ryūgū, 龍宮) is the mythical undersea realm in which Buddhist scriptures were said to be preserved beyond the human world.</ref> To put it plainly, he too rejected the whole of established Buddhism as obsolete.