Wealth and Religion in Yamato

It is certainly not a sin in Yamato to be wealthy. No, indeed, the shrines and temples of the land acknowledge and recognize the importance of wealth. Many of the largest temples horde tax-exempt land in order to garner great wealth for their spiritual and physical upkeep–it is not free to live, after all, and even the simplest food costs money.

Additionally, wealthy patrons are very important to the shrines and temples of the land, even those of the Kensho sect. Imperial patronage keeps the Enryuji Temple complex of Mount Hoei in operation, after all. Many court nobles, wealthy magnates, the Shogunate, and even wealthy warrior clans had donated lands, statues, or even paid for entire temples and shrines to be built in their honour, or the honour of their clans and bloodlines.

However, while Kodo has no issues with wealth or the avaricious hoarding of it, Kensho sees greed and avariciousness as a sin. Being wealthy is not an issue, but being wealthy at the expense of the precepts and tenets, or the expense of your fellow man is wrong.

Kensho began as a movement of the poor and peasant farmers after all. The disenfranchised and downtrodden who felt abandoned by the Old Ways, which seemed to give preferential treatment to the wealthy court nobles alone.

Those who hoard wealth to the point of excess in this life will find themselves all the more destitute in the next. They can even be reborn as spiteful, tortured ghosts who eat, and eat, and eat, but can never be full. Who drink, and can never had their thirst slake. Who can only devour filth, muck, rot, or human waste.

To say nothing of the tortures waiting in the afterlife, during the Cycle of Rebirth, before one can even be reborn. The punishment comes for you, in the afterlife and your next.