By the medieval period, notions of formless, originally inherent “perfect and sudden precepts” (endonkai), “Lotus one-vehicle precepts” (Hokke ichijōkai), or “unproduced diamond precepts” (musa kongō hōkai) came to supersede literal adherence to the specifics of the Fan-wang Ching precepts. These “formless readings” of the precepts put forth within the influential T’ien-t’ai school influenced other Buddhist traditions as well and have been seen by many scholars as contributing to a decline in monastic discipline in the latter Heian period. “Formless” understandings of the precepts, rooted remotely in Saichō’s advocacy of bodhisattva precept ordinations, were also linked to an important strand of early medieval Buddhist discourse, found in both Tendai and some of the new Kamakura Buddhist movements, which denies the validity of precepts in the Final Dharma age (mappō mukai) and makes liberation dependent on faith or insight, rather than on the cultivation of morality or the accumulation of merit through good deeds. (Page 19)