Within the Ryōbu Shintō vision, “deity” is not divided into rival camps of Shinto and Buddhist beings, but is understood as a single sacred reality appearing in two complementary modes. The Shinto kami and the Buddhist buddhas and bodhisattvas are interpreted through the framework of *honji suijaku*: the buddhas are the “original ground” (*honji*), while the kami are their “trace manifestations” (*suijaku*), adapted to local culture and capacity. In this way, a kami is not an independent god competing with the Buddha, but a culturally familiar face of the same enlightened reality. The same divine presence thus has both a Shinto form and a Buddhist form, two levels of appearance rooted in one underlying essence.

This understanding produces a kind of dual-yet-one conception of the divine. On one level, many distinct deities are honored—numerous kami alongside various buddhas and bodhisattvas, each with specific rituals, functions, and spheres of concern. On a deeper level, however, these figures are regarded as expressions of a single cosmic principle or Buddha-nature that transcends any one name or form. The relationship between kami and buddhas is therefore complementary rather than antagonistic: the Buddhist deities, especially the great cosmic Buddha, are often treated as the ultimate reality, while the kami serve as localized, accessible manifestations of that higher truth.

This vision also allows the divine to be experienced as both immanent and transcendent. As kami, the sacred is encountered in mountains, rivers, ancestral lines, and the fabric of communal life; as buddhas and bodhisattvas, it is contemplated as a vast, cosmic, and liberating wisdom. Ryōbu Shintō holds these perspectives together, so that the cosmic Buddha is understood to be present in the very natural and social worlds that Shinto venerates. The result is a unified pantheon in which apparent differences between Shinto and Buddhist deities are resolved by seeing them as different doors into the same sanctuary of the sacred.