The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy [1st ed.] 978-90-481-2923-2;978-90-481-2924-9

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii
Front Matter ....Pages 1-1
“Japanese Buddhism”: Constructions and Deconstructions (Richard K. Payne)....Pages 3-51
The “Philosophy” in Japanese Buddhist Philosophy (John C. Maraldo)....Pages 53-69
One Step Towards Buddhism as Philosophy (Makio Takemura)....Pages 71-81
Japanese Buddhism and Women: The Lotus, Amida, and Awakening (Michiko Yusa)....Pages 83-133
Buddhist Philosophy and the Japanese Cultural System (Rein Raud)....Pages 135-154
The Philosophical Reception of Japanese Buddhism After 1868 (Ralf Müller)....Pages 155-203
Interaction Between Japanese Buddhism and Confucianism (Tomomi Asakura)....Pages 205-234
The Philosophy of the Mandala (Pamela D. Winfield)....Pages 235-253
Carrying Buddha into the Streets: Buddhist Socialist Thought in Modern Japan (James Mark Shields)....Pages 255-285
Salvation and Violence in Japanese Buddhism: The Case of Aum Shinrikyō (Manabu Watanabe)....Pages 287-304
Front Matter ....Pages 305-305
Saichō: Founding Patriarch of Japanese Buddhism (Victor Forte)....Pages 307-335
Kūkai’s Shingon Philosophy: Embodiment (David L. Gardiner)....Pages 337-345
Jōkei (James L. Ford)....Pages 347-360
Hōnen (Mark L. Blum)....Pages 361-379
Zen Master Dōgen: Philosopher and Poet of Impermanence (Steven Heine)....Pages 381-405
Keizan Jōkin and His Thought (Shūdō Ishii)....Pages 407-413
How to Read Shinran (Dennis Hirota)....Pages 415-449
Lotus Land in This Very Body: The Religious Philosophy of Nichiren (Ruben L. F. Habito)....Pages 451-470
Born into a World of Turmoil: The Biography and Thought of Chūgan Engetsu (Steffen Döll)....Pages 471-486
Ikkyū Sōjun (Andrew K. Whitehead)....Pages 487-501
Bankei (Enshō Kobayashi)....Pages 503-509
Hakuin (Juhn Y. Ahn)....Pages 511-535
The Religious Philosophy of Kiyozawa Manshi (Robert F. Rhodes)....Pages 537-563
Inoue Enryō’s Philosophy of Buddhism (Rainer Schulzer)....Pages 565-573
Nishida Kitarō as Buddhist Philosopher: Self-Cultivation, a Theory of the Body, and the Religious Worldview (Mayuko Uehara)....Pages 575-588
D. T. Suzuki and the “Logic of Sokuhi,” or the “Logic of Prajñāpāramitā” (Michiko Yusa)....Pages 589-616
Hiratsuka Raichō: Feminism and Androgynous Sexuality (Saeko Kimura)....Pages 617-633
Hisamatsu Shin’ichi: Oriental Nothingness (André van der Braak)....Pages 635-647
Nishitani Keiji: Nihilism, Buddhism, Anontology (John W. M. Krummel)....Pages 649-679
Nakamura Hajime (Toshi’ichi Endo)....Pages 681-691
On the Buddhist Thought of Tamaki Kōshirō (Makio Takemura)....Pages 693-711
Expressing Experience: Language in Ueda Shizuteru’s Philosophy of Zen (Bret W. Davis)....Pages 713-738
Back Matter ....Pages 739-749

Citation preview

Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8

Gereon Kopf Editor

The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy

Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy Volume 8

Series Editor Yong Huang Department of Philosophy The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong E-mail: [email protected]

While “philosophy” is a Western term, philosophy is not something exclusively Western. In this increasingly globalized world, the importance of non-Western philosophy is becoming more and more obvious. Among all the non-Western traditions, Chinese philosophy is certainly one of the richest. In a history of more than 2500 years, many extremely important classics, philosophers, and schools have emerged. As China is becoming an economic power today, it is only natural that more and more people are interested in learning about the cultural traditions, including the philosophical tradition, of China. The Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy series aims to provide the most comprehensive and most up-to-date introduction to various aspects of Chinese philosophy as well as philosophical traditions heavily infl uenced by it. Each volume in this series focuses on an individual school, text, or person. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8596

Gereon Kopf Editor

Francesca Soans Assistant Editor

The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy

Editor Gereon Kopf Luther College Decorah, IA, USA University of Iceland Reykjavík, Iceland

ISSN 2211-0275          ISSN 2542-8780 (electronic) Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy ISBN 978-90-481-2923-2    ISBN 978-90-481-2924-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018962880 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature B.V. The registered company address is: Van Godewijckstraat 30, 3311 GX Dordrecht, The Netherlands

Introduction

When Dr. Yong Huang asked me whether I was interested in editing the Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, I said, of course, “Yes!” These are exciting times for scholars in the field of Japanese Philosophy and Buddhist Philosophy as the visibility of these fields in academia has increased sharply. New academic societies such as the International Association of Japanese Philosophy and the International Society for Buddhist Philosophy (ISBP), journals such as the Journal of Japanese Philosophy as well as the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy, and academic positions dedicated to these two areas have been added to previously existing ones in Comparative Philosophy, Japanology, and Buddhist Studies. At the same time and interestingly enough, the field of Japanese Buddhist philosophy still seems to lead some kind of shadow existence. Buddhist philosophy is often attributed, if not limited, to texts and thinkers of the South East Asian Buddhist traditions, while Japanese philosophy is mostly associated with post-Meiji Japanese responses to Continental philosophy and often reduced to the philosophers of the Kyoto School and their successors. When Japanese Buddhist philosophy is mentioned, it is frequently limited to the “usual suspects,” Kūkai 空海 (774–835) and Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253), with, perhaps, a sprinkling of Kyoto School philosophy. Due to historical reasons addressed in quite a few of the chapters in this volume, premodern Japanese intellectual achievements have been usually classified as “thought” (J. shisō 思想) and thus demarcated from “philosophy” (J. tetsugaku 哲 学) as such. Post-Meiji and contemporary Buddhist thought, on the other hand, has been identified as “critical-constructive reflection,” to use the classification of the A.A.R., of “engaged Buddhism” and thus, again, distinguished from philosophy proper. INOUE Enryō 井上円了 (1858–1919) applied the term “Buddhist philosophy” (J. bukkyō tetsugaku 仏教哲学) to premodern Japan, but his usage is far from being accepted as the norm or even as convention. TAKEMURA Makio’s 竹村牧男 Buddhism as Philosophy: An Introduction (J. Nyūmon: tetsugaku toshiteno bukkyō 入門:哲学としての仏教), published in 2009, drew up a first draft of how to conceive of Japanese Buddhist philosophy as philosophy and constitutes an important step in the perception of Japanese Buddhist philosophy as philosophy but, unfortunately, has not yet been translated into English. However, the by now famous v

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Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook (2011) was probably the first volume to take seriously the task of discussing Japanese premodern and contemporary Buddhist philosophy as philosophy and, as such, it constitutes a good place to start our discussion. The key question that the Sourcebook raises is how we can conceive of and talk about Japanese Buddhist philosophy. This is the question this volume seeks to answer. Concretely, the questions this volume wants to clarify are the following: What is philosophy? What is the Japanese Buddhist tradition? How do Japanese Buddhists do philosophy? What are the sources, questions, and principles that drive Japanese Buddhist philosophy? What is “Buddhist” about Japanese Buddhist philosophy? What is “Japanese” about Japanese Buddhist philosophy? What are the classics and what is the canon of Japanese Buddhist philosophy? How does their philosophy shape the worldview, beliefs, practices, ethics, and self-understanding of the Japanese Buddhists? How does Japanese Buddhist philosophy help understand Buddhism, Japanese identity, and/or philosophy? What is the relevance of Japanese Buddhist philosophy for Japanese Buddhism in particular, Buddhism in general, and, even more universally, humanity? How does Japanese Buddhist philosophy help us understand what it means to be human? The formulation of these guiding questions seems to imply that “Japanese Buddhism,” “Buddhism,” and even “philosophy” are, in some sense, monolithic, have an identifiable essence, and can be clearly distinguished from those areas and discourses the category “Japanese Buddhist philosophy” seems to exclude. A quick reading of the essays in this volume, however, demonstrates that despite the fact that it is easy and, in some sense, necessary, to use the category “Japanese Buddhist philosophy,” the very assumptions this term arouses are rather difficult, to say the least. So is the question of the canon of Japanese Buddhist philosophy, that is, the sine qua non that has to be included in such a volume. The answer to these questions is, of course, an immense task and thus demands a monumental work to tackle them. Nothing less has been attempted in this volume. To solve this task, this volume has drawn on the expertise of three academic disciplines, philosophy, religious studies, and Japanology, as well as the wisdom of established scholars and the enthusiasm of a new generation of experts in the field of Japanese Buddhist philosophy. The essays of Richard Payne, John Maraldo, Makio Takemura, as well as Rein Raud, Pamela Winfield, Ralf Müller, and Tomomi Asakura, examine and, to some degree, destabilize the very category that gave our volume its title, “Japanese Buddhist philosophy.” Rein Raud and Pamela Winfield explore the limits and limitations of the discipline and the discourse of philosophy––the former by emphasizing the philosophy of poems and the poetry of philosophy, the latter by analyzing Shingon art as an embodiment of philosophy. Interestingly enough, INOUE Enryō, the first Japanese to use the term “Buddhist philosophy,” built a park, the “Park of the Philosophy Temple” (J. tetsugakudō kōen 哲学堂公園), to visualize his philosophy as outlined in his famous Buddhist Philosophy (J. Bukkyō tetsugaku 仏教哲学). Ralf Müller and Tomomi Asakura investigate if and how it is meaningful to delineate separate traditions even though their representatives interacted and influenced each other.

Introduction

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Michiko Yusa, Manabu Watanabe, and James Shield challenge the canon of and the ideology associated with Japanese Buddhism. Michiko Yusa highlights the role of women as authors and subjects of Japanese Buddhist philosophy usually forgotten in introductions and surveys. Manabu Watanabe and James Shields question the widespread assumptions that Buddhists in general are peace-loving and, ironically, that Japanese Buddhists of the Meiji and early Shōwa periods tended to be nationalistic. The image of Japanese Buddhists is further diversified by the essays of Saeko Kimura, James Ford, Steffen Döll, Shūdō Ishii, and Makio Takemura insofar as these authors introduce what can be called the minority report of Buddhist philosophers in Japan. Andrew Whitehead, Enshō Kobayashi, Rainer Schulzer, Toshi’ichi Endō, Robert Rhodes, and Brett Davis add the voices of Buddhist philosophers well known in Japan but rarely, if at all, heard in the Anglophone world. Finally, my colleagues who wrote about the “big names” of Japanese Buddhist philosophy, Victor Forte, Mark Blum, David Gardiner, Steven Heine, Dennis Hirota, Ruben Habito, Juhn Ahn, Michiko Yusa, Mayuko Uehara, André van Braak, and John Krummel did so by exploring new themes and highlighting features and concepts hitherto neglected or devalued. Every reader who takes time to plough through this rather extensive volume will soon recognize central names and common themes as well as multiple and dissonant variations. There are common names such as Prince Shōtoku 聖徳太子 (574–622), Kūkai, and Dōgen who are evoked as the foundation of the canon but also as the representatives of an identity of Japanese Buddhist philosophy. This identity was constructed and reinforced only during the Meiji (1886–1912) and Shōwa (1926–1989) periods by ideologues as well as by philosophers such as INOUE Enryō, WATSUJI Tetsurō 和辻哲郎 (1898–1960), and NISHITANI Keiji 西谷啓治 (1900–1990). Thus, the idea of a Japanese Buddhist philosophical identity is a decisively modern construct. The tension that runs through all the essays in our volume is that between the myth of one “Japanese Buddhist philosophy” and the fact that there were, and are, Buddhist thinkers in Japan doing philosophy with tremendous implications on how we human beings conceive of ourselves. This is the thesis of Takemura’s Buddhism as Philosophy: An Introduction and Chap. 3 of this volume. Each chapter plays a slightly different variation of the theme “culturally specific expression and discourse with universal ramifications,” whether it is the construction or the destabilization of a cultural or discursive identity, whether it is a reflection on individual Buddhist religious systems or a contribution to a particular philosophical problem, whether it is a passing observation or a profound and earth-­shattering insight. It is my hope that this volume will inspire passion for the Japanese culture, the Buddhist tradition, and the philosophical discipline; that it will open the eyes of the reader to appreciate many, and perhaps new, ways of doing philosophy and thinking about the world. Most of all, it is my hope that this volume will facilitate a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. If only one reader gains such an understanding, then all the work that went into this volume was worth the effort. It is, of course, impossible to produce such a massive volume by oneself. It is thanks to the vision of Dr. Yong Huang and the patience of the editors at Springer that this volume is finally able to see the light of day. Of course, this publication

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would not have been possible without the above-mentioned contributors and the translators, Eiji Suhara, Ching-yuen Cheung, and John Krummel, who donated their expertise and time to this work. I would like to thank John Krummel and Francesca Soans, who helped with proofing and formatting during the challenging editing process. I also thank my assistants who helped during the various stages of the book over the years, Hannah Lund, Kat Bay, Joie Tanaka, Mengyu Duan, Lauren Knuckey, and Ngoc Ho as well as the Dean’s office at Luther College who lent financial support. Finally, I would like to thank all the mentors and friends who inspired and motivated me to take on and see through this project through the years: James Heisig, Richard Payne, Makio Takemura, Jin Park, Michiko Yusa, Tsutomu Sagara, Rein Raud, Mayuko Uehara, Patrick Malloy, Aleksi Järvelä, Timothy Knepper, Ching-yuen Cheung, and Francesca Soans. The many conversations and expressions of support have been an incredible inspiration and motivation to persevere with this project and to keep exploring the importance and import of philosophy, Japanese Buddhist and otherwise. Decorah, IA, USA Reykjavík, Iceland

Gereon Kopf

Work Cited Takemura, Makio 竹村牧男. 2009. Nyūmon: tetsugaku toshiteno bukkyō 『入門:哲学としての 仏教』 [Introduction: Buddhism as Philosophy]. Tokyo: Kōdansha.

Contents

Part I Basic Issues in Japanese Buddhist Philosophy 1 “Japanese Buddhism”: Constructions and Deconstructions ��������������    3 Richard K. Payne 2 The “Philosophy” in Japanese Buddhist Philosophy ��������������������������   53 John C. Maraldo 3 One Step Towards Buddhism as Philosophy ����������������������������������������   71 Makio Takemura 4 Japanese Buddhism and Women: The Lotus, Amida, and Awakening ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   83 Michiko Yusa 5 Buddhist Philosophy and the Japanese Cultural System ��������������������  135 Rein Raud 6 The Philosophical Reception of Japanese Buddhism After 1868 ��������  155 Ralf Müller 7 Interaction Between Japanese Buddhism and Confucianism ������������  205 Tomomi Asakura 8 The Philosophy of the Mandala  ������������������������������������������������������������  235 Pamela D. Winfield 9 Carrying Buddha into the Streets: Buddhist Socialist Thought in Modern Japan  ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  255 James Mark Shields 10 Salvation and Violence in Japanese Buddhism: The Case of Aum Shinrikyō ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  287 Manabu Watanabe

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Contents

Part II Individual Philosophers in the Japanese Buddhist Tradition 11 Saichō: Founding Patriarch of Japanese Buddhism ����������������������������  307 Victor Forte 12 Kūkai’s Shingon Philosophy: Embodiment ������������������������������������������  337 David L. Gardiner 13 Jōkei  ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  347 James L. Ford 14 Hōnen  ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  361 Mark L. Blum 15 Zen Master Dōgen: Philosopher and Poet of Impermanence  ������������  381 Steven Heine 16 Keizan Jōkin and His Thought ��������������������������������������������������������������  407 Shūdō Ishii 17 How to Read Shinran ������������������������������������������������������������������������������  415 Dennis Hirota 18 Lotus Land in This Very Body: The Religious Philosophy of Nichiren  ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  451 Ruben L. F. Habito 19 Born into a World of Turmoil: The Biography and Thought of Chūgan Engetsu ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  471 Steffen Döll 20 Ikkyū Sōjun  ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  487 Andrew K. Whitehead 21 Bankei  ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  503 Enshō Kobayashi 22 Hakuin  ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  511 Juhn Y. Ahn 23 The Religious Philosophy of Kiyozawa Manshi  ����������������������������������  537 Robert F. Rhodes 24 Inoue Enryō’s Philosophy of Buddhism ������������������������������������������������  565 Rainer Schulzer 25 Nishida Kitarō as Buddhist Philosopher: Self-Cultivation, a Theory of the Body, and the Religious Worldview ����������������������������  575 Mayuko Uehara 26 D. T. Suzuki and the “Logic of Sokuhi,” or the “Logic of Prajñāpāramitā” ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  589 Michiko Yusa

Contents

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27 Hiratsuka Raichō: Feminism and Androgynous Sexuality  ����������������  617 Saeko Kimura 28 Hisamatsu Shin’ichi: Oriental Nothingness  ����������������������������������������  635 André van der Braak 29 Nishitani Keiji: Nihilism, Buddhism, Anontology ��������������������������������  649 John W. M. Krummel 30 Nakamura Hajime  ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  681 Toshi’ichi Endo 31 On the Buddhist Thought of Tamaki Kōshirō ��������������������������������������  693 Makio Takemura 32 Expressing Experience: Language in Ueda Shizuteru’s Philosophy of Zen ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  713 Bret W. Davis Index  ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  739

About the Editor

Gereon Kopf  received his Ph.D. from Temple University and is currently a Professor of East Asian religions and philosophy of religion as well as the Chair of the religion department at Luther College. He is also an Adjunct Professor of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Iceland. As a research fellow of the Japan Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, he conducted research in 1993 and 1994 at Ōbirin University in Machida, Japan, and at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture in Nagoya, Japan, from 2002 to 2004. During the academic year 2008–2009, he taught at the Centre of Buddhist Studies, University of Hong Kong. During 2013–2014, he was a Visiting Lecturer at Saitama University and a Visiting Researcher at Tōyō University. He is the author of Beyond Personal Identity (2001), the co-editor of Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism (2009), and the editor of the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy. He also contributes a series of essays on Japanese Buddhism to buddhistdoor.net. He is currently developing a non-essentialist philosophy of mind and an ethics based on a non-essentialist conception of identity formation.

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Part I

Basic Issues in Japanese Buddhist Philosophy

Chapter 1

“Japanese Buddhism”: Constructions and Deconstructions Richard K. Payne

1  P  reface in the Form of an Allegory: Seeking Landmarks on a Dusky Moor—Issues in the Comparative Study of the Praxis of the Buddhisms of Japan The attentive reader—you, that is—will have already noted the defining role given to the term “praxis” in the title to this preface. “Praxis” refers to the integral dialectic between thought and practice, these latter two in fact only appearing to exist independently as an artifact of analysis.1 Similarly the expression “Buddhisms of Japan” is explicitly employed as an alternative to “Japanese Buddhism.” These usages are intentional—not simply a matter of stylistics, but serving meta-­theoretical ends. In fact, it is in this realm of meta-theory that the following critique of three prominent approaches to the study of the thought and practice of the Buddhisms of Japan—one theoretical and two disciplinary—is leveraged. The distinction between theoretical and disciplinary creates something of an unbalanced structure in the following, since the theoretical issue—the tendency to essentialize “Japanese Buddhism” in one way or another—is common to both of the disciplinary approaches examined here, that is, comparative philosophy and comparative religion.2 1  The term “praxis” is used here to indicate the irreducible dialectic between the conceptual and the practical, or what in religious terms might be called doctrine and practice. The distinction appears to me to be an artifact of analysis. As used here “praxis” is in explicit opposition to formulations that dichotomize the two, whether doctrine or practice is given precedence. The distinction is based on a dualism of thought and action, itself a problematic one. See Bell, especially first three chapters (Bell 1992). 2  While the term “comparative philosophy” appears to be well established and unproblematic, use of the term “comparative religion” may strike some readers as atavistic. The very fluidity of the ways in which the field of study is identified—comparative religion, religious studies, history of

R. K. Payne (*) Institute of Buddhist Studies, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA, USA © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_1

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R. K. Payne

Treating the Buddhisms of Japan under either rubric from contemporary academic study—religion and philosophy—entails either imposing any number of presumptions. Much effort is required to raise these presumptions out of the strata of cultural sedimentation underlying our present intellectual terrain into the light so we can see them and understand their formative role in structuring our apprehension of the other. As I see it, this is the task of critical inquiry. If instead of a subterranean metaphor we employ the metaphor of a landscape, we might imagine a traveler on an unfamiliar and lonesome moor, someone who had set out for a nice walk in the broad light of morning, now in the late afternoon finding the light rapidly failing, a fog setting in, and uncertain as to where he has reached. Keeping his head about him—he does, after all, hold a doctorate in philosophy or religion, theology or psychology from a respectable university—he begins to look for landmarks, those familiar forms that have in the past reliably guided his footsteps. But as the light fails, it becomes increasingly easy to mistake some tree or outcropping of rock for a different one, particularly those suggested by similarities to the familiar landmarks of home. Thus misguided, our wanderer splashes across unexpected streams, forces his way through brambles, and eventually in desperation climbs up to the top of a rocky knoll. Imagine our wanderer to be lucky, for from there he spies a light in the distance that turns out to be the inn where he is staying. He makes his way back, muddied, clothes in disarray, hungry, and, after getting a late meal, and hopefully a hot bath, retires. Imagine what tales he will tell upon returning to his university. How in that foreign landscape the familiar landmarks—the self, subjectivity, God, morality, logic— all are out of joint, dislocated, and wrong, leading one into bogs instead of down the straight path to home. It is our task here to point out to our now heroic traveler that the problem was not with the landscape but with his mistaking parts of it for the familiar landmarks of his home terrain. It was his expectations that failed him.

2  Introduction “Japanese Buddhism” is an inherently ambiguous phrase, and this allows it to conceal a host of problematic theoretical commitments. On the one hand, the phrase is relatively bland—a mere locative identifying the various forms of Buddhism found in Japan. On the other, however, it can be used with a different kind of adjectival intent, identifying a unique kind of Buddhism, a Buddhism that is Japanese. In the religions, Religionswissenschaft, and so on—reflects one of the points that I am attempting to demonstrate here. The study of religion, when distinguished from theology, originates in a comparative sensibility: Enlightenment universalism, validating all humanity, confronted with the reality of religious pluralism. Comparative in its very origins, then, the academic study of religion does not necessarily entail evaluations as to true or false, which is rather the work of apologetics. For what is still one of the best treatments of the origins of “comparative religions” see Sharpe (1986). Several other works are of value for understanding the origins of the category “religion” and its study, such as Dubuisson (2003).

1  “Japanese Buddhism”: Constructions and Deconstructions

5

following we will examine the covert entailments of the latter, but it is important here at the outset to highlight the ambiguity. The latter kind of adjectival intent implicitly infers the existence of an essence, and our concern here is the intellectual consequences of such essentializing. Given the importance many philosophers attribute to metaphysics, one might expect the following to focus narrowly on the metaphysical implications of essentializing “Japanese Buddhism.” That, however, will not be the case, as it would implicitly reaffirm one of the tendencies of philosophical and religious discourse that we wish to critique, that is, the tendency to narrowly delimit philosophical and religious concerns off from other aspects of human existence. That tendency toward insularity conceals the social, political, and economic consequences of ideology. Expressed differently, philosophy and religion are not to be sequestered off from other ideological discourses, as if they exist in some transcendent realm of pure thought or pure experience, where they are immune from critical reflection on their consequences. After considering the implications of essentializing representations of Japanese Buddhism, the representations of Buddhist praxis in Japan as found in two, apparently parallel, academic endeavors will be examined. These are comparative philosophy and comparative religion. Although their titles suggest that they are parallel constructs, one of the arguments of the second section will be that they are, in fact, divergent. This divergence itself has epistemological consequences that have contributed to the ways in which the Buddhist praxis of Japan has been represented. In order to avoid obscuring generalities,3 we will closely examine a few representative instances. Some of these may be important in the intellectual history of the study of Buddhism in Japan, while others are almost randomly chosen to evidence problems in common representations of the Buddhisms of Japan. Although in some cases, contextualizing information about authors may be introduced, the intent is not to demonize but to closely and critically read texts that evidence the popular and academic conceptions of “Japanese Buddhism.” These close and critically reflective readings allow us to identify several specific intellectually problematic issues. These problematics will be summarized as part of the conclusion.4 It is also necessary at the outset to subvert the very idea that there is any one correct way to represent Japanese Buddhism against which other representations may be judged. Such a project is necessarily doomed to failure. This is clear once we shift our understanding of the referent of the phrase “Japanese Buddhism.” Rather than having any fixed referent, whether as a Platonic ideal form, a natural kind, or a class noun, it is a social construction, one that operates within a sociology or economy of knowledge. To presume that “Japanese Buddhism” has a fixed referent, an 3  Here I am distinguishing generalities from generalizations, the latter statements that are based on some statistically informed analysis of observed phenomena. 4  As common as the problematic issues discussed below have been, it is important to note that in both fields there does seem to be an increasing methodological sophistication. In this regard we refer the reader to Garfield and Edelglass, Edelglass and Garfield, and Heisig et al., as important contributions that balance the issues of universally human and culturally delimited with sensitivity (Garfield and Edelglass 2011; Edelglass and Garfield 2009; Heisig et al. 2011).

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ahistorical essence or a transhistorical identity, that can be represented, conceals the role of selection underlying the referent. In other words, “Japanese Buddhism” is not something discovered but, rather, something made, an artifact of both popular and academic discourse. Such a claim, of course, does not imply that there are not indefinitely many things that can be pointed to stipulatively as instances of Japanese Buddhism. Indeed, the constructed nature of the concept is indicated by this overwhelming number of possible stipulative referents and the plurality of ways in which they can be grouped and categorized.

3  Reifying the Buddhisms of Japan as “Japanese Buddhism” As the object of modern, academic, Westernized5 knowledge, Japanese Buddhism is not a natural kind but, rather, a social construct.6 As a social construct, “Japanese Buddhism” is enmeshed with many other constructs—enmeshments that reach far beyond the usually comfortably sanitized realms of the academic study of religion and philosophy. Categories, such as “Japanese Buddhism,” are not formed as abstract exercises in alternative definitional modalities—stipulative, precising, persuasive, intensional, extensional, ostensive or enumerative, for example—but are rhetorical elements strategically deployed in social, political, economic, and historical maneuverings intended to gain some strategic advantage. Any academic project that ignores, whether purposely or not, the constructed and selective nature of the process of category formation fails in its critical responsibilities (see Baird 1991). It is, in other words, not simply a theoretical or terminological quibble to assert that there is no essence to the category “Japanese Buddhism.” The uncritical use of “Japanese Buddhism” as identifying something both uniquely Japanese and distinct from all other forms of Buddhism has consequences. More broadly, all ethno-­ nationalistic categories are grounded in deleterious preconceptions about a “natural” coherence between ethnic or national identity and religious praxis. This critique, therefore, seeks to problematize the use  of ethno-nationalistic categories in the study and categorization of Buddhism generally. The critique developed here operates at the intersection of both contemporary critical theory and Buddhist thought itself. The critique of reified concepts as social 5  By “Westernized knowledge” I mean here simply that system of knowledge that has the concepts and categories of Euro-American culture as its framework. Despite the fact that this culture is increasingly globalized, that does not mean that its structures and assumptions are in any sense neutral. In fairness, I should note that this notion already presumes a constructivist conception of knowledge, that there is no knowledge that is culturally neutral (see McCarthy 1996; Habermas 1971; Berger and Luckmann 1966; Hacking 2000). 6  Natural kind theory is, of course, a complex and contested epistemological position. I am using the term here in a rather traditional—or perhaps even loose—sense, such as that suggested by W.V. Quine, who used the term to refer to sets of objects that share characteristics in such a fashion that it is possible to reliably attribute by induction characteristics of some members of that set onto other members (see Quine 1969).

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constructs is native to classic Buddhist philosophic thought. From that perspective, the critique of essentialistic preconceptions is neither simply an intellectual exercise nor based solely on the social consequences of the particular essentializations; instead, it is also of consequence for individual persons in relation to their natural tendency to repeat dysfunctional decisions or, in other words, saṃsāra.

3.1  Privileges of the Nation-State Contemporary academic organization of knowledge continues to privilege the nation-state as an organizing principle. In Buddhist studies there are specializations defined by nation-state, such as Tibetan Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism, Korean Buddhism, and our case at hand, Japanese Buddhism. Linguistic boundaries indicated by these categories no doubt significantly motivate these as academic specializations, but historically one suspects that such linguistic specialization was itself motivated by colonialism.7 Upon examination, these geo-political categories reveal value judgments, metaphysical commitments, and the politics of identity that reinforce linguistic boundaries, creating divisions that are dysfunctional for the study of the Buddhisms of Japan. An example of the problematic character of privileging the nation-state as structuring knowledge is categorizing both Saichō 最澄 (767–822) and KIYOZAWA Manshi 清沢満之 (1863–1901) as “Japanese Buddhists,” despite being separated by twelve centuries. Saichō established Tendai Buddhism 天台仏教 in Japan based on the teachings of Zhiyi 智顗 (538–597), the “Chinese Buddhist” founder (usually seen as “third patriarch”) of Tiantai Buddhism天台仏教. Are Saichō and Kiyozawa somehow more closely related than Saichō and Zhiyi? If “Japanese Buddhism” is a coherent, unified monolith, then they necessarily appear to be. One might suppose that the category of language provides a natural and neutral rationale for grouping two figures such as Saichō and Kiyozawa. This idea, however, is also problematic when taking into consideration that these two individuals are separated by more than a thousand years. This is greater than the linguistic distance between ourselves and Geoffrey Chaucer (1342–1400), whose English is exceedingly difficult for most contemporary speakers of English to comprehend—and the changes in the Japanese language over those millennia are more profound than the changes in English from Chaucer’s time to our own. More problematic is the strategy of hypostatizing a “Japanese mind” or “Japanese spirit” that somehow unites Saichō and Kiyozawa. If we take the perspective of lineage, however, Saichō and Zhiyi form a much closer unity, despite the former being Japanese and the latter Chinese.

7  This was particularly evident in the United States in the period after the Second World War, when “area studies” was created in order to respond to the perceived threats of the Soviet Union and the destabilization following the breakdown of colonial empires. This dimension became particularly evident with what was originally called the National Defense Education Act of 1957.

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Another consequence of presuming a unitary identity for Japanese Buddhism contiguous with the modern nation state of Japan, particularly when combined with the presumption that every tradition has a founder, is that the Buddhism of Shōtoku Taishi 聖徳太子 (574–622), dating from the early seventh century, somehow defines the Buddhism of Japan at that time and continues into the present. It takes the Buddhism of a very small group, the court and its direct associates, as it was employed for purposes of state construction, as archetypally fundamental to all forms of Buddhism at any later time in the history of the islands (Como 2008).8 It subsumes a religious culture and its historical development under a modern nation state and the discontinuous historical development of that state.9

3.2  Japanese Exceptionalism Some discussions of “Japanese Buddhism” also engage in the rhetoric of “Japanese exceptionalism” (J. nihonjinron 日本人論). This exceptionalism is evident in Sir Charles Eliot’s early twentieth-century work simply titled Japanese Buddhism (Eliot 1969). Eliot had many qualifications for his work. He had completed a three-­ volume work Hinduism and Buddhism; however, prior to publication he was appointed ambassador to Japan (1919–1925). He decided, therefore, to hold back the chapters on Buddhism in Japan. These form the core of Japanese Buddhism, which he worked on after retiring from his ambassadorial assignment and while still living in Japan (Parlett 1969: viii). Eliot employs an organizing theme common to the study of the Buddhisms of Japan until around the last quarter of the twentieth century. This is the idea that there are significant parallels between it and European Christianity. Indeed, some authors see these apparent parallels as giving the study of the Buddhisms of Japan its raison d’être. Summarizing Eliot’s views on this matter, Sir Harold Parlett wrote, in his preface to Eliot’s volume, that the history of Japanese Buddhism offered phenomena of peculiar interest to the student of religion in Europe,—the conflict between Church and State, the growth of protestant sects “casting aside ritual to offer the common man salvation by faith” or preaching national or universal religion, the evolution of an Established Church lapsing finally into a comfortable torpor,—to mention only a few examples. (Parlett 1969: vii)

8  Implicitly, any form of Buddhist praxis that does not fit with this presumption is deviant or abnormal. 9  Employing this organizational principle for the historiography of Buddhism in Japan is based on political history, which ought to be recognized as in tension with religious history. The dominance of political history is demonstrated by the dependence upon a system of historical periods, which itself imposes the presumption of a unifying essence within the framework of these historical periods—thus the history of Buddhism in Japan is divided by the political categories, such as the familiar Nara, Heian, Kamakura, Meiji, etc. (see Payne 1998).

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This view, namely that the history of the Buddhisms of Japan replicates the Protestant Reformation, has been critiqued by several authors.10 Accepting that such parallels are significant has imposed not only a narrative structure on the historiography of Japanese religion but also modes of interpreting what various Buddhist teachers were saying. More immediately relevant to our inquiry at this point, however, is the way that Eliot characterizes Japan and Japanese Buddhism as exceptional. The opening paragraph of the section specifically dealing with Japan is worth quoting in extenso. Japan is unique among Asiatic countries and it is not surprising to find that Japanese Buddhism, though imported from China, has a flavour (sic) of its own. The first impressions of the tourist are confirmed by the researches of the historian. Any technical definition of Japanese Buddhism as a form of Mahâyâna is inadequate. Whatever its pedigree may be, whatever the doctrines which it accepts in theory, its various phases not only to-day but in some thousand odd years of history smack of the soil. Yet having said this it may be well, at the risk of seeming inconsistent, to point out that the singularity of Japanese Buddhism is partly due to the fact that it is the only instance of Mahayanism now flourishing as a vital religion among people intellectually comparable to Siamese, Sinhalese, or Burmans. Whatever Chinese Buddhism and Lamaism may be for individuals, they are for the masses mere superstitions like the notions of the ignorant peasantry in the countries that follow the Roman or Eastern Churches. (Eliot 1969: 179)

We find here many of the ideas regarding Japanese Buddhist exceptionalism—it is (a) distinct from Chinese Buddhism, (b) distinct from the rest of Mahāyāna Buddhism, (c) mystically rooted in “the soil” of Japan, and (d) the only form of Mahāyāna adhered to by intelligent, cultured people. British imperial history is reflected in Eliot’s evaluation. Since he was a member of the British foreign service for most of his adult life, it is not surprising that this should be the case. Respect for the Sinhalese, Siamese, and Burmese, with which Britain had settled relations, is mirrored by disdain for the Chinese and Tibetans, which were resistant to the Empire. This pattern is consistent with the one revealed by David Chidester in his examination of the history of the study of religion in South Africa (Chidester 1996). When the expanding colonial presence was in conflict with the native tribes of South Africa, they were held to be less than human and to have no real religion. After the end of conflict, when those tribes had been subdued and were passive in the face of colonial exploitation, it was “discovered” that they did have human characteristics, including religion. Also note how Eliot distinguishes the Buddhism of Japan from the Buddhisms of China and Tibet. Japan’s is a “vital religion” of an intellectually respectable people, while the others are “mere superstition.” This opposition is presented as unproblematically paralleling that between Protestant Christianity, on one hand, and Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, on the other. It is structured by Anglo-Protestant prejudices and would probably have passed unnoticed by Eliot’s initial readers in 1935 Britain.

 See Foard (1980), Morrell (1987), Payne (1998), Dobbins (1996), Matsuo (1997), and Ford (2006).

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The reference to “soil” is also important as a marker of Romantic conceptions of nationalistic ethnic identity in contrast to the universalism of Enlightenment humanism.11 Romantic nationalism began toward the end of the eighteenth century and was influenced by Rousseau and Herder. The collapse of the system of empires, evidenced by the French Revolution, opened the way for the assertion of independence by various political groups across Europe and Russia. Each claimed independent status as separate nation-states delimited by ethnic identity, itself conceived as mystically created by shared ancestry and geography. There is a direct link between the conception of Japanese Buddhism as exceptional because it “smacks of the soil” of Japan, and the rhetorics of ethnic identity and ethnic superiority that have had such morally reprehensible consequences.12 Eliot’s allusion to “soil” points to this compound of ideas summarized in the phrase “Blut und Boden” (blood and soil, that is, descent and homeland), one of the mottos of Nazi Germany. According to the rhetoric of blood and soil, which grew out of the nostalgic Romantic aesthetic rejection of modernity, urbanism, and industrialization, anything that is local, that is “rooted” in its native soil, is considered authentic.13 This way of thinking privileged the village (“one’s old home,” J. furusato 故里) and seen through the lens of nostalgia, any lifestyle “close to the earth” is imagined to be authentic, humane, fulfilling.14 Contrasted with the supposed authenticity of the rooted found in rural and village life, urban life is portrayed as uprooted and semiotically marked oppositionally as inauthentic (Adorno 2003; see especially 43–47, where Adorno discusses Heidegger’s nostalgic representation of Swabian farmers). This nostalgia for a supposedly not just simpler but more authentic, more humane, and more spiritual time has led not only to straightforward critiques of modernity but also rejections of modernity in hopes of somehow re-establishing that earlier world. As Max Horkheimer has noted, however,

 The kinds of debates discussed in this essay tend to be politicized. The legacy of European imperialism, which employed a rhetorical stance of hierarchy, was the argument that “they’re not like us,” meaning that because “they” have a different and inferior “mentality,” they are incapable of rational thought or true religion. The Romantic resistance to this employed an argument that “they’re just like us.” Because the latter appears more accepting, it often ends up concealing the imposition of a set of preconceived notions onto the thought of the other. My argument here attempts to move beyond these polarized and politicized positions toward something like “they’re just like us, only different” (see Lloyd 1990; Wardy 2000). 12  As evidenced repeatedly in recent history, the morally deleterious effects of notions of ethnic and religious identity did not end with the destruction of the Third Reich. 13  The notion of “rooted” is itself singularly vague. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger have shown, for example, that “traditions” may be created for economic reasons with very short historical horizons  yet be rhetorically manipulated so as to appear to have originated in antiquity (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). 14  One sees this kind of Romantic nostalgia running throughout the work of Martin Heidegger. In Being and Time, for example, he distinguishes the authentic person from “das Man,” the herd of common humanity found in cities. Such ideas have also entered sociology through the work of Ferdinand Tönnies. For a nuanced review of different forms of Romanticism, see Löwy and Sayre (2001). 11

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we are the heirs, for better or worse, of the Enlightenment and technological progress. To oppose these by regressing to more primitive stages does not alleviate the permanent crisis they have brought about. On the contrary, such expedients lead from historically reasonable to utterly barbaric forms of social domination. (Horkheimer 2004: 86)

Eliot was a product of his time, and it is therefore unfair to pass moral judgment on him personally as having failed by the standards of our time—we, after all, have the advantage of looking back across the Holocaust, which was still to come when he was writing. However, the consequences of the attitudes and assumptions that he wields are part of the reason our own values have changed, our own times are different. It would be our failing to ignore these relationships between conceptions of ethnic identity as rooted in “blood and soil” and the slaughter of millions, not only in Nazi Germany but in many colonial and post-colonial conflicts that followed. The scholarly decision to essentialize religion is not a morally neutral or politically inconsequential act.

3.3  Ahistorical Essentializing If Eliot provides us with an example of an exceptionalist form of essentializing, by imputing an ahistorical ideality, ABE Masao 阿部正雄 (1915–2006) evidences a different aspect of essentializing. Although defined variously across the history of philosophy, an essence does not change over time, and is, therefore, ahistorical.15 Thus, the essence of “Japanese Buddhism,” would not change over time either. “Japanese Buddhism” defined by an ahistorical essence informs representations such as Abe’s description of the significance of Shōtoku Taishi having lectured on the Lotus Sūtra (S. Saddharma puṇḍarīka sūtra), the Vimalakīrti nirdeśa sūtra, and the Śrīmālā devi sūtra: The selection of these three sūtras out of the multitude of texts making up the Buddhist canon clearly shows the Japanese way of thinking and the character of Japanese Buddhism. The intention of Shōtoku was to emphasize the importance of realizing Buddhist truth within a concrete human nexus. In his view, human beings should ideally realize unity with the ultimate truth in daily life. (Abe 1997: 750; Como 2008: 137)

Here we see a dual rhetoric of authority, those of the “founder” and of origins— Shōtoku established the Japanese nation by manifesting the true essence of the Japanese mind, which has remained unchanged since. The modern idealization of Shōtoku, as distinct from the formation of the Shōtoku cult during the two centuries following his death, is overdetermined by a continuing prevalence of the Romantic conception of history as produced by “great men,” propounded by Thomas Carlyle (Como 2008). This “great man” theory of history is evident throughout Abe’s  “Ahistorical” is used here without intending any further claim, such as essences being eternal or transcendent. One should note that there have been attempts to define essences as something created within time, and hence neither ahistorical, nor metaphysically transcendent. These “refined” conceptions, however, seem to play little role outside of self-referential philosophical discourse.

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representation of Shōtoku. For example, “Prince Shōtoku (574–622) was the first to appreciate the universal significance of Buddhism” (Abe 1997: 748). Although it is far from clear what Abe means by this, we can be confident that the idea of “the universal significance of Buddhism” means something very different to us from whatever Shōtoku thought about Buddhism. Abe also goes to rather great lengths to sanitize the political program attributed to Shōtoku. For example, discussing the third article of Shōtoku’s “Seventeen–Article Constitution,” Abe concedes that it “emphasizes a single hierarchy of authority which culminates in the emperor.” Abe then quotes William Theodore de Bary’s Confucian interpretation of this clause to the effect that “sovereignty derives from Heaven, symbolizing the natural moral order. Individual and social morality likewise derive from Heaven” (Abe 1997: 749, quoting de Bary 1969: 259). This is, however, simply an attempt to make centralized political authority “natural” by symbolically deferring authority to “Heaven,” as if an authoritarian hierarchy deriving from a socially constructed transcendent source were necessarily less oppressive.16 It is the pattern of thought here, the sanitizing sublimation of political power, that is consistent with the essentializing conceptualization that makes a mystical unity of “Japanese thought” and “Japanese Buddhism” as a singular, coherent, and unitary reality. An alternative approach to understanding Buddhism—and religion more generally—is to view it not as some kind of essence that manifests itself into the historical world but rather as a translocal network (Murphy 2007: 8). The division of Buddhism into inherently essentializing ethno-nationalistic categories—Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and so on—obscures the Buddhist cosmopolis that extended out from pre-Mogul India to the entirety of East, Central, and South-East Asia. As with our earlier question regarding Saichō and Zhiyi, one may rhetorically ask what makes Japanese Hossō 法相 of the Nara era (710–794) more akin to Taishō era (1912–1926) Zen than to late medieval Indian Yogācāra and Dharmalakṣaṇa thought or Faxiang法相in China, the line of thought from which Hossō derived? When seen as not unlike other networks of social praxis, religion is simply the sum total of social interactions, habits, codified forms of activity, and systems of thought—without anything else, such as “tradition,” defining what it is or providing some sort of standard against which it can be measured.17

 Compare, for example, the claims of transcendent authority made by those who engaged in the witch hunts of European and American history. For a critique regarding the concept of hierarchy as an authoritarian thought system, see Payne (2008: 201–02). 17  This is why, for example, all claims regarding “authenticity” are covert ploys for the power that derives from being able to define what is authentic—part of the tradition—and what is not. One should note the ambiguity of “tradition” that allows for this use as part of a strategy for the power of authenticity. As a simple adjective, “traditional,” one can examine what is meant—a practice that has been done in much the same way for several generations, for example. When it is used as a nominal, such as “the Buddhist tradition,” it is ambiguous enough to be deployed as delimiting what can be included and what can be excluded, that is, what is authentic and what is not. 16

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4  Philosophy, Religion, or What? The representation of the praxis of the Buddhisms of Japan is conditioned by the disciplinary framework or intellectual context within which it is placed.18 As indicated above, we will examine two of the disciplinary frameworks within which the Buddhisms of Japan are frequently treated—comparative philosophy and comparative religion.

4.1  Philosophy, of a Comparative Kind One frequently finds the assertion that comparative philosophy is inherently a way of doing philosophy per se (for example, Ronkin 2005: 11–12).19 Wilhelm Halbfass says in this regard If “comparative philosophy” is supposed to be philosophy, it cannot just be the comparison of philosophies. It cannot be the objectifying, juxtaposing, synoptic, comparative investigation of historical, anthropological data. Comparative philosophy is philosophy insofar as it aims at self-understanding. It has to be ready to bring its own standpoint, and the conditions and the horizon of comparison itself, into the process of comparison which thus assumes the reflexive, self-referring dimension which constitutes philosophy. (Halbfass 1988: 433)

Thus, treating the thought of the practitioners of Buddhism in Japan as philosophy should not simply presume the validity of philosophy as given but first problematize the very conception of philosophy—until recently a step rarely taken in the literature of comparative philosophy. Philosophy as a category of intellectual inquiry has its own history, developing out of Greco-Roman thought, interacting with Christian theological concerns, developing the natural sciences under the influence of Arabic sources, including the translation of Greek works previously lost to the West, becoming increasingly secularized, and, more recently, professionalized. This history has produced a sedimentation of concerns and issues that continue to determine the contours of philosophy as practiced in its European and American forms. Thus, the contemporary practice

 We are also familiar with these kinds of issues in relation to the “museumification” of objects— what happens, for example, when a painting is removed from a ritual environment and placed on a wall in a museum. The context of the ritual environment, such as, a goma altar in a Shingon temple, communicates a very different significance from that of a museum, where for example a painting of Fudō Myō’ō 不動明王 might be juxtaposed to other deities having haloes or auras. The same issues of context can be raised regarding concepts and systems of thought. These concerns may be seen as intellectually rooted in the insight of Ferdinand deSaussure’s (1857–1930) linguistics, that the relation between meaning and symbol is essentially one constructed by the symbol’s use in the linguistic system as a whole, that is, its relation to other symbolic elements in the language. By extension, the same applies to social symbolic elements and also to religious and philosophic systems of thought. 19  Or, alternatively, that all philosophy is of necessity comparative (see Masson-Oursel 1951: 6–9). 18

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of “Western philosophy”20 is itself the end product of three millennia of culturally located discourses that are retrospectively and selectively considered to jointly constitute philosophy. The historical sedimentation of issues and concerns of Buddhist thought is different, not only in its “religious” dimensions but in its “philosophical” as well. While Indian thought largely grew out of a focus on language—grammar, debate, and rhetoric—until recently the historical development of Western philosophy has been more informed by mathematics and mechanics (Gottlieb 2000). The history of Western philosophy supports a wide range of structures of thought, despite repeated attempts by modern philosophers to constrain it to one set of issues or another. A number of what might be called “sub-discourses” has been offered as a way of structuring the whole of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, or ethics. A different approach has been to identify some privileged object of philosophic inquiry: language, experience, or logic. All these options for organizing the rich history of philosophy are, however, embedded in the historical development of philosophy itself. They are not abstract and universal categories of thought but are, rather, ways of thinking that have been created in order to solve some intellectual issue at some particular point in that historical development. As a consequence of this ineluctable historicity of philosophical concepts, defining the thought of Japan’s Buddhisms as philosophy entails a number of constraints and prejudgments. One of those is evidenced in the necessity authors seem to feel for first establishing that philosophy is a human universal, and, second, what range of philosophical discourse provides a common ground for discussing what are represented (circularly) as different kinds of philosophical traditions. Seen critically, this constitutes an attempt to naturalize the categories, concerns, issues, and questions of the Western philosophical tradition. One strategy to naturalize comparative philosophy is to begin by claiming some specific range of philosophical discourse to be universal. Frequently this takes the form of what is arguably a modern constellation of concerns—morality based on selfhood. That is, the attempt to understand what is good and what one ought to do are seen as based in the ways in which the self is understood. One example of this is Joel J.  Kupperman’s Learning from Asian Philosophy (Kupperman 1999). Kupperman argues that the benefit of studying Asian philosophy is that it helps to bring this compounding of ethics and selfhood—which he calls “character formation”—back to its “proper” central role for philosophy, counteracting the “contemporary Western philosophical common sense” that tends toward the establishment of abstract ethical principles, which he claims are disjoined from “lived individuality” (Kupperman 1999: 5). Kupperman’s work is not a synoptic treatment of “Asian philosophy” but, rather, focuses almost entirely on Confucian thought.21  The term “Western philosophy” is, of course, itself not unproblematic. It is employed here simply as a shorthand for the intellectual tradition that derives from the history described in this paragraph, and which continues to define itself in relation to that history, that is, by acknowledging the problems identified over the course of that history as the properly philosophical ones. My thanks to Gereon Kopf for sensitizing me to the need to clarify the usage of this term. 21  Whether this focus on Confucian thought is a consequence of his conception of the proper role of philosophy, or conversely, his interest in Confucian thought is formative of his conception of the 20

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This confluence of ethics and selfhood is also found at the beginning of John M. Koller’s undergraduate survey text, Oriental Philosophies. There Koller claims that the fundamental questions of philosophy are, ‘Who am I?’ and ‘How should I live?’ Since our most important activities are aimed at preserving life and giving it value, it is natural to reflect on how we should live and who we are, developing ideas about the nature of human existence and the good life. (Koller 1985: 1)

Given this particular naturalizing strategy, ethics or moral philosophy is frequently privileged because it appears to be the most “naturally” relevant aspect of philosophy.22 Such a strategy for comparative philosophy—universalizing ethics and identity as natural human concerns—and then constraining the comparative philosophical project to that field, reflects the primary concerns of modernity: ethics and selfhood.23 For instance, Charles Taylor’s study of “modern identity” is rooted in his view that “Selfhood and the good, or in another way selfhood and morality, turn out to be inextricably intertwined themes” (Taylor 1989: 3). However, the way that the themes of ethics and identity are given primacy and seen as interrelated is not unproblematically universal and foundational for the comparison of different systems of thought. This particular configuration seems to be characteristic of modernity as developed in Europe and America. 4.1.1  Issues and Questions: Beyond Presumed Universals Considering the project of comparative philosophy, we can identify two fundamentally distinct, but easily confused, meta-philosophical assumptions at work. In some of the literature one finds the implicit assumption that the variety of philosophical positions is fixed and that the archetypal expression of these positions may be found in Western philosophy (see for example, Scharfstein 1998). Where this assumption is at work, one finds, for example, Yogācāra (J. Hossō 法相, also J. Yuishiki 唯識) being discussed as idealism, or even as Idealism.24 When Yogācāra is identified with idealism, an “already-comparativized” representation of it is created. A selective representation highlights those aspects of Yogācāra that best match the issues, proper role of philosophy is not clear. However, given the primacy of character development in Confucian thought, the work risks a certain circularity—a circularity at variance with Halbfass’s exhortation for a self-reflexively critical comparative philosophy cited above. 22  Koller, for his part, does go on to extend his definition of philosophy to include epistemology as a second order set of concerns. 23  It is trivially true that the concern with morality and selfhood, and with their relationship, is not unique to modernity, despite Taylor’s assertion. However, what I am addressing here is the role of the modern concern in forming the presumptions of certain foundationalist approaches to comparative philosophy. 24  This style of translation, perhaps based on an assumption that such Western philosophical terminology makes a work more easily accessible to a Western audience, continues into the present. This is found, for example, in the Tibetan work discussed below, The Crystal Mirror.

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positions, claims, and difficulties of Western philosophic idealism (usually Berkeleyan).25 The problem is not simply that this is a distortion, as all representations distort in one way or another. Rather, by making the unfamiliar appear familiar, the distortion is made effectively invisible.26 The second meta-philosophical assumption is that the variety of philosophic questions is limited to those presently articulated in Western philosophy.27 Where this assumption is at work, one finds issues of areas such as metaphysics and epistemology being presumed, and the works of figures such as Kūkai 空海 (774–835) and Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253) being interrogated for what they say in answer to these questions. At perhaps the broadest possible scope, this claim would seem to be unproblematic. Certainly all traditions of thought have considered what constitutes true knowledge, for example (Garfield and Edelglass 2011: 3). The difficulty here, however, is that again the underlying presumptions regarding what questions properly constitute a philosophic domain such as epistemology structure the inquiry. Even more fundamentally, however, the overall terrain of Western philosophy is itself not a sui generis architectonic of human thought, despite its orderly presentations in systematic works, but an almost accidental collocation of thinkers and the issues they addressed. Rather than philosophy being a neatly organized and fenced farmyard, it is more a herd of wild horses who wander as they will over a range, a herd that photographers record from time to time and then arrange their photographs into neatly organized and enclosed collections. How else can we make sense of the juxtaposition of Heraclitus (535–475), Augustine (354–430), Benedict Spinoza (1631–1677), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980)?28  The same is true when Yogācāra is treated as psychology or psychotherapy.  This is not to say that there are not aspects of Yogācāra that have an idealistic character. This, however, is different from simply labeling Yogācāra “idealism.” My thanks to John Powers for helping me to clarify this issue. 27  Consider, for example, the claim made by Noa Ronkin to the effect that her “study presupposes that the questions of philosophy and their treatments by various traditions transcend considerations of time and place, and hence that there is, indeed, a basis for a cross-cultural comparison of such traditions as Western scholarship and early Buddhism” (Ronkin 2005: 11). That this approach is in the service of Western philosophy is made explicit by Henry Rosemont, whom Ronkin quotes to the effect that “comparative philosophers can hope to revitalize philosophy in general by articulating alternative conceptual frameworks, showing how, why and that they make sense” (Ronkin 2005: 12). Only if one already presumes the notion of “philosophy in general” does such an approach itself make sense. That such an abstraction is itself a rhetorical device should in fact be evident, once one asks the questions of where such an entity as “philosophy in general” exists? Does it exist somewhere, only to be inadequately instantiated in particular instances of philosophizing? This is, then, itself a kind of Platonic idealization of philosophy, dependent upon an unexamined philosophic position. There are two further assumptions made by Rosemont. First, that contemporary Western philosophy is otiose and in need of revitalization. Whether he is serious about this or simply employing a common trope of crisis is unclear from the context. Second, that “philosophy in general” is itself understood as serving an extra-philosophic end, “assisting the ongoing work of human and biological scientists to solve the puzzles of what it is to be a human being” (Ronkin 2005: 12). 28  These figures are so diverse that even a Wittgensteinian family resemblance might be hard to locate. 25 26

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4.1.2  Comparativism Versus Constructivism: Straw Men and Straw Dogs At times those who argue in favor of philosophy as culturally transcendent argue against any constructivist view on the grounds that it entails an absolute relativist position.29 This is the strategy employed by Henry Rosemont, Jr., in his attempt to support his own vision of comparative philosophy. Regarding constructivism, he claims: [T]he skeptical implications of conceptual relativism in general should be clear: our basic cognitive framework—which ranges from our unreflective conception of what it is to be a human being to our assumptions, beliefs, and presuppositions about the general features of the physical universe—is overwhelmingly determined for us by a set of highly specific environmental circumstances ranging from social relations accompanying stages of history and of culture, to the syntactical peculiarities of our native tongue. (Rosemont 1988: 37)

That Rosemont portrays an absolute relativism is evident when he rhetorically characterizes the constructivist view of our ability to understand the texts of foreign cultures as follows: Can we really translate and interpret Sanskrit, classical Chinese, or other nonwestern texts without imposing our own linguistic, cultural, historical, ontological, and other categories thereon? Must these texts not ultimately be seen as a series of sophisticated Rorschach blots? (Rosemont 1988: 37)

Note the polarity imposed by the form of the question, creating a false dichotomy. Rosemont offers only two options: either projecting our own understandings onto otherwise meaningless Rorschach blot-like texts, or no such imposition at all. Employing a visual metaphor, he offers only two alternatives—transparency or opacity. Rosemont’s claim precludes a third alternative, translucency. With translucency as a third alternative, we can see that there are not simply three alternatives but a range of degrees of translucency, and perhaps neither complete transparency, nor complete opacity. Location on this range depends on the individual reader of a text. For example, although he was certainly respectful of the texts, C.G. Jung (1875– 1961) used Asian texts largely as a means of stimulating and developing his own ideas about the function of the psyche. This in no way invalidates his work, but, rather, demonstrates that a text such as the Secret of the Golden Flower is neither simply transparent nor simply opaque in Jung’s reading of it (Jung 1967). Moving past his opening characterization, or caricature, of the constructivist view, Rosemont reduces the issues of cross-cultural understanding to those of language. He asserts that only a total incommensurability would justify conceptual relativism and that conceptual relativism is fundamental to the constructivist view. As described above, he defines conceptual relativism as the notion that concepts are so rooted in a specific socio-cultural history that, when removed from that history,

 Although it seems to me that the absolute relativism that Rosemont opposes does not necessarily follow from constructivism, many authors link the two (see Boghossian 2006).

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they are meaningless. Thus according to Rosemont’s definition, conceptual relativism implies total incommensurability between socio-cultural systems. He claims, therefore, that if there is any communication, the constructivist/relativist view collapses. Accordingly, [a] person can believe that all natural languages have the same expressive capacities; and therefore believe too that whatever can be expressed in any natural human language can be expressed in any other if the richness, variation, mechanisms for change, and other capacities of natural languages be fully exploited. (Rosemont 1988: 44)

It is this possibility of intertranslatability that Rosemont claims undermines the legitimacy of conceptual relativism. His argument that natural languages “have the same expressive capacities” is not founded on the simplistic view that “there really is a world ‘out there,’ a ‘given’ that we must struggle to apprehend directly and immediately, jettisoning our culturally imposed conceptual framework and linguistic categories to the best of our abilities” (Rosemont 1988: 40). This he refers to as the “myth of the given,” which he rejects. Instead, he suggests something seemingly more subtle but which he admits is only a theoretical possibility. Contrary to his claim of rejecting the “myth of the given,” however, this simply conceals that myth under some additional layers of complexity. He claims that it is not impossible for all peoples to offer a fairly similar account at some time in the future; that is, that they could share the same view of the world in its natural and social aspects. They would in all probability have to become bilingual, maintaining their native language and all learning the same second language; a matter of enormous practical difficulty, perhaps, but not theoretically impossible. (Rosemont 1988: 42–43)

One possible constructivist response to this would be that by becoming bilingual, as required by Rosemont’s fantasy, everyone would also become bicultural—that in learning another language well enough to communicate, they have, at the same time, acquired another culture that itself mediates their understanding of the world.30 This response may seem circular; however, it is the argument made by cultural linguists such as Anna Wierzbicka (see below). As just indicated, Rosemont first sets up as his opponent a radical and absolute relativist. Against this straw man, he argues that disagreements about the nature of the world (cosmology, ontology, metaphysics) are at least theoretically soluble within a language community, and that, at least theoretically, everyone could become bilingual to the extent of sharing a single language, and that because there would be a single language community, all disagreements about the nature of the world are soluble, and that there is therefore no validity to the absolute relativist position, and, further, that this establishes grounds to reject relativism per se. However, arguments from “possible worlds”—in this case two such arguments: a world where both (1) philosophical arguments can be resolved within a language  Attempts to create universal languages, such as Esperanto, have not escaped the problems consequent upon the cultural content of a language (see Eco 1995). Even if Rosemont’s bilinguals knew a universal language, they would also not overcome the initial problems of translating from their first, native language into their second, universal language (see Eco 2001).

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community, and (2) everyone is perfectly bilingual—can only establish the f­ alsehood of a claim as leading to a contradiction, not the truth of any claim.31 The issues of comparative philosophy are not to be resolved in some abstract realm of ideally bilingual readers but, rather, in the specifics of interpretive situations. What is the text? Who is the reader? What are the goals of the author, the text, the translator, and the reader? To take a simple counter-example, consider the translation, now dated, of “dharma” as “law.” Rosemont’s argument would seem to lead us to conclude that the meaning of “law” could be fully explicated in such a fashion as to allow a present-day reader to know what “dharma” means to a Sarvāstivāda Buddhist monk living in medieval India, who read Sanskrit, spoke Prakrit, and was familiar with the Perfection of Wisdom literature, as well as for that monk to understand our present-­ day notion of law. This is not to claim that the understandings of the two would not move toward each other,32 but, rather, simply to emphasize the contextual basis for such understandings. Setting aside the practical impossibility of employing a third language, which Rosemont has admitted, there also remains the epistemological difficulties that follow from concepts having different kinds of referents. Rosemont treats all concepts and all conceptual discourse as equal, that is, his analysis fails to distinguish between concepts such as “perennial plants” and concepts such as “salvation from sin.” Certainly, the concept of perennial plants can be explained so as to become a working concept for almost anyone, since although the category is a social construct, its referents are objects in the material world, tangible and mutually accessible.33 But concepts such as salvation from sin are solely social constructs, that is, they are intersubjective objects, which exist simply within the discursive web of a society34 without the kind of objective referent available for discussing different kinds of plants. It would not simply be a matter of becoming bilingual, as Rosemont suggests, but, as indicated above, of becoming bicultural, in which case we are dealing not with the communication between two people in differing cultures (Rosemont’s translatability), but, rather, with a single, culturally hybridized person. It is not that a Chinese person cannot come to understand the  Rosemont’s argument might also be seen as fallaciously accepting the consequent of a counterfactual conditional: “If everyone spoke the same language, then all problems with cross-cultural interpretation would be solved.” 32  I remain less than satisfied with the vagueness of this metaphoric formulation of understandings that move closer together. 33  Even this empirically oriented model may be overly optimistic. Specifically concerned with the incommensurability of scientific theories, Xinli Wang notes that “substantial semantic and/or conceptual disparities between two comprehensive theories and their languages embedded in two coexistent, distinct, intellectual/cultural traditions can create serious impediments to mutual understanding and communication” (Wang 2007: 2–3). Wang is drawing specifically on the work of Kuhn and Feyerabend in the philosophy of science. 34  The fact that some readers may reject my characterization of salvation from sin as solely an intersubjective object itself reveals a problem with Rosemont’s argument: even being members of the same speech community does not assure resolution of fundamental philosophic disagreements. The first of his two hypotheticals, which serve as the premises of his argument, is revealed as being a very weak foundation. 31

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concept of salvation from sin, as would be required by Rosemont’s characterization of constructivism as entailing an absolute incommensurability, but that in doing so, their cultural locatedness changes. This reveals another presumption made by Rosemont, which is that language exists independently of culture; that language is separate from culture and cognition and is simply a medium for the communication of ideas. This is the classic, and overly simplistic, encoding–decoding model of language, which has come under extensive critique in recent decades (Wierzbicka 2006; Sperber 1975; Bruner 1992; Everett 2012). Rosemont assumes, in other words, that the intertranslatability of propositions is an adequate measure of understanding. Anna Wierzbicka, however, has called attention to the “cultural sedimentation” that structures the conceptual landscape of a society. She asserts: [E]veryday English words like right and wrong, facts, evidence, reasonable, fair, exactly, precisely, and really (among many others) are important instances of words that are “used automatically” and yet contain “a wealth of history” and pass on a great deal of cultural heritage. Words of this kind may be invisible to native speakers, who simply take them for granted and assume that they must have their equivalents in other languages. (Wierzbicka 2006: 10–11, internal quote Gadamer 1975: 11)

Thus, a linguistic expression is not simply a label or container for a mental concept. By the same token, concepts and linguistic expressions are not context-neutral. Translation with comprehension does take place. That does not mean, however, that context contributes nothing to the meanings understood by both parties, making those understandings translucently different from one another. 4.1.3  Danger: Context Ahead Ben-Ami Scharfstein makes an argument against “a misplaced emphasis on context, on the attempt to understand something in the light of a presumably unique, original perspective or context, in the absence of which everything is taken to be misunderstood” (Scharfstein 1988: 84). It is worth noting here at the beginning that, like Rosemont, Scharfstein is constructing a straw man by describing an extreme version of the constructivist concern with context. The rhetorical strategy is similar to Rosemont’s, discussed above, but Scharfstein adds an ad hominem abusive element that also perhaps functions to “poison the well.” Likening a concern with context to the “fantasy of living in the thoughts of someone long dead,” Scharfstein asserts that: [T]he exact restoration of the past philosopher in ourselves [is] no more desirable than it is possible. The truth seems to be that the problem of context is more easily dealt with in practice than in theory, and in practice our habits often lead us to disregard it as an explicit problem. (Scharfstein 1988: 84)

If our habits were such a sure guide, what then would be the need for years of philosophical training?

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His central claim is that concern with establishing an appropriate context for understanding can not only be safely ignored, but that as a methodological principle it should be. Perhaps his most substantive argument is that the dual process of decontextualization and recontextualization is not only natural but necessary: “To take things intellectually out of their immediate context is only to continue what happens at every moment of our lives, when ordinary perception convinces us and memory confirms that some one thing or event resembles some other, previously experienced” (Scharfstein 1988: 86).35 While decontextualization and recontextualization are in fact unavoidably integral to everyday thought processes, this does not mean that a concern with context is the trap or fallacy for a self-reflective comparative philosophy, as Scharfstein suggests. One of his own examples of a potentially fruitful area of future research demonstrates the problems consequent upon his assertion that it is unnecessary to attend to context. Scharfstein discusses Zen kōans such as the well-known “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” He suggests that “Riddles and dilemma tales of the Africans, which they accompany with discussion, stand comparison with earlier Socratic dialogues and with Buddhist, especially Zen, parables and philosophic concepts, as well as with those of the Jains” (Scharfstein 1988: 95).36 The selective, constructed, and circular character of this category is obvious here—it is a group of practices that Scharfstein himself thinks have something in common. Yet that is not simply a perception, as his foregoing argument implies. Treating similarity as a perception fails to recognize the metaphoric character of that treatment. However, although I perceive both this apple and this rose to be red, I do not perceive similarity. Similarity is a judgment based on a comparison of perceptions, even though the act of comparison and judgment may not be verbalized explicitly. Perhaps undertaking a comparative study of Scharfstein’s grouping of discursive practices will produce something interesting, even perhaps something philosophically interesting. The danger, however, is that whatever such a study produces will then be reflexively attributed to the individual terms of the comparison, such as the kōan. However, such an approach can only tell us what is incidentally the case about the kōan, that is, the kōan as a member of that specific grouping, a specific context. If, however, our goal is to understand the kōan, while some aspects might be highlighted by setting it in contrast with other seemingly similar practices, such revelations would  There is a kind of anti-intellectual, populist appeal to Scharfstein’s argument. Indeed, it resonates with fundamentalist arguments for literal readings of the King James Bible—nuances of translation and history can be safely ignored by the ordinary, everyday reading of the text. But if Scharfstein’s argument is accepted, then what follows is that there would be no use for expert knowledge, and no purpose to education, the normal function of which is to move us to something better than ordinary, everyday ways of thinking. 36  It is worth noting that, like Rosemont in the same volume, Scharfstein rhetorically distorts a constructivist view by, for example, talking hyperbolically about, “an extreme emphasis on context” (85), and engaging in an ad hominem abusive fallacy by characterizing those who are concerned with context as “too cautious” because they are fearful (90). He also absolutizes the contextualist position as “arguing that contextual differences [make] a comparison impossible” (88). 35

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require further inquiry to confirm. Such a comparison might provide a stimulus to novel philosophical reflections. However, as a method for studying the individual terms of the comparison, the comparative method alone is merely suggestive of possible topics for further research. Examining the kōan more fully discloses further problems with the decontextualized comparative method that Scharfstein proposes. The standard, textbook representation37 of the kōan is that it records a spontaneous exchange between master and disciple, involving a paradox designed to force the mind past dualistic, linguistic categories, and into direct experience of a transcendent reality.38 Writing on religious uses of language, Dan Stiver, for example, considers it to be instrumental. He finds the kōan to be an example that “especially underscores” this instrumentality of religious language: “a seemingly nonsensical riddle that is to be the means to satori, or Enlightenment” (Stiver 1996: 19).39 Because of the similarity between the religio-philosophic strategy of Plotinus’ neo-­ Platonism, and one minority understanding of the kōan from within the Zen tradition this interpretation is overdetermined to selectively highlight only that one understanding (Heine 1990: 358). This is not to claim that the interpreters were consciously aware of the similarity with Plotinus. Rather, because neo-Platonism informed Romanticism, and neo-Romanticism is such a pervasive part of contemporary Euro-American religious culture, such an interpretation would have resonated, “made sense” to the implicit cultural expectations of the interpreters. Since it appears that this is the representation of the kōan that Scharfstein has in mind for his proposed comparative study of “riddles and dilemmas,” we already have a superficial similarity between the kōan and the Six Enneads, leading to an interpretive representation of the kōan in which the neo-Platonic strategy becomes the exclusive interpretation, and then that neo-Platonized representation of the kōan becomes the basis upon which further comparisons and interpretations are to be made. What is left of the kōan then is nothing more than a thin veneer of catch-­ phrases—“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”—wrapped around preconceptions which are rooted in the history ofWestern philosophy. Such a comparison—between Plotinus wrapped in neo-Platonic robes and Plotinus wrapped in Zen Buddhist robes—actually yields nothing beyond a warm fuzzy feeling of having “discovered” that the two are really very much alike. Of course they are, since the kōan has been

 For example, “A koan (sic) is a form of riddle that seems to have no logical answer. The point of the exercise is to use the koan (sic) to break through dualistic mundane logic and thus come to know the true nature of reality” (Hawkins and Smart 1998: 23). For an important critique of this representation, see Foulk (2000: 15). 38  Both as a matter of fairness and as a claim to authority over this argument, I can say that this representation of the kōan is well-known to me, as admittedly I presented it for several years to undergraduate students in introductory classes on Asian philosophy and religion. 39  At this point, one may well sit back and wonder why all of the authors who characterize the kōan as nonsensical or as paradoxical did not consider the possibility that it actually is a meaningful form of communication which they simply failed to understand—perhaps because they did not have the proper context. 37

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decontextualized and then recontextualized in such a fashion that any significant differences have been hollowed out. A comparison based on such an already-interpreted representation of the kōan might be interesting in the sense of “intellectually useful, pleasurable, or enlightening.” But being already-interpreted, such interesting consequences are not particularly informative regarding kōans as such. Such a comparison may incidentally suggest aspects of the kōan deserving further inquiry, but such hypotheses regarding the kōan cannot stand solely on the basis of those comparisons. Confirming or denying such hypotheses requires understanding the kōan as part of the history of Sino-­ Japanese Zen practice and religious culture.40 In other words, it requires placing the kōan in its natural or native context—which by no means requires “living in the thoughts of someone long dead.” For example, we would then discover that as important a figure as Dōgen used kōans to justify certain ways of organizing and running a monastery, that is, he employed kōans not as “mind-bending” paradoxes intended to push the mind beyond its dualistic limitations but as instances of what can be called “case-law” (see Dōgen 1995).41 Such a contextualized approach is, of course, informed by our own concerns, including similarities that we think we find between the kōan and other rhetorical forms and religious practices. In other words, contextualization does not provide an angelic viewpoint, one free from all interests, any more than it attempts to see through the eyes of the dead. However, these concerns motivate further inquiry, rather than pre-defining the outcome as would necessarily be the case in a negligently decontextualized inquiry. The argument for the necessity of context offered here is not based on a notion of cross-cultural incommensurability, as suggested by Rosemont, or on an impossible act of imagination, as suggested by Scharfstein. It is simply the rather mundane intuition, refined by methodological reflection, that context is a necessary component of meaning. Note that the claim is not that context determines meaning, but, rather, that understanding the context within which any concept is used is requisite in any attempt for a more accurate understanding of that concept.42 For most  One strategy that neither Rosemont nor Scharfstein appear to use, though they could, is the claim that attention to context constitutes the genetic fallacy. In this case, it would involve interpreting the concern with context as an indication of the presumption that the original meaning of a term or concept is determinative of all later usage. Deploying an accusation of the genetic fallacy would then allow dismissing the information that “kōan is an abbreviation of kofu-no-antoku, which was a notice board on which a new law was announced in ancient China. So kōan expresses a law, or universal principle” (Nishijima and Cross 2007: I.41). Such historically contextualizing information, however, helps us to avoid uncritically presuming the universality of neo-Platonic spiritual dynamics and hierarchical metaphysics. 41  It does not seem “unreasonable and intellectually expensive enough to be considered a fallacy” to think that this information might be relevant to us in understanding what Dōgen meant when he wrote the “Genjō-kōan” chapter as a matter of sound interpretation, and not as an “impossible fantasy” of living inside Dōgen’s head (Scharfstein 1988: 85). 42  The inability to assert that differing interpretations are either better or worse would only follow from complete incommensurability. The constructivist view that I am suggesting does not hold to total incommensurability and hence does allow for judgments of adequacy (see Eco 1990). For a 40

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of us most of the time, the context is invisible––for example, when asking the grocer whether he has any apples. However, when working with materials that derive from a different culture, one with different foundational assumptions,43 the absence of contextualization obscures meaning by allowing the concept to be treated as unproblematically equivalent to a familiar one. An additional issue in both Rosemont and Scharfstein is that of selectivity. What texts are chosen as appropriate philosophic interlocutors? The criteria for selection themselves indicate a set of preconceptions about what philosophy is. If philosophy is defined in terms of the underlying structures of thought, or as language, or as logic, or as character formation, each of these conceptions of philosophy effects the choice of interlocutor in any comparative philosophy (Maraldo 1995: 233). The criteria of selection are not themselves unproblematically universal. While there may be analogies and corollaries, those are in our analysis, in our comprehension. This brings us to the willingness to exploit other religio-philosophical traditions to answer our own philosophical questions…an intellectually colonialist project in which the territory of the other is explored by those seeking to exploit its resources for their own projects.44 4.1.4  Comparative Philosophy as Colonialism One approach to the issues surrounding categorizing the Buddhist thought of Japan as philosophy is to ask “Whose questions do we want answers to?” Are the questions those already established over the history of Western philosophic thought, by the existing conception of what philosophical discourse comprises? To do so, however, is of necessity limiting, at best perhaps learning some new answers to our pre-­ existing questions. Even this, however, is dubious given the formative power of the question. The way a question is asked constrains possible answers. The presumptions inherent in the way a question is formulated limits the range of possibilities, constructing, rather than discovering, an answer.

different line of argument regarding adequacy of interpretation, see Neville and Wildman (2001: 188–91). 43  Wang makes this point, using his own terminology. “A presuppositional language is, roughly, an interpreted language whose core sentences share one or more absolute presuppositions. Those absolute presuppositions, which I call metaphysical presuppositions, are contingent factual presumptions about the world as perceived by the language community whose truth the community takes for granted” (Wang 2007: 14). 44  This is a different understanding of the colonialist critique from that of Neville and Wildman. They summarize “Colonialist Theory” as holding that “comparison is a blatantly political move to conform other cultures or religions to the agenda and categories of the comparer’s own, eventually to get all the religions compared to think of themselves in the comparers’ terms” (Neville and Wildman 2001: 188). While some theorists may in fact reduce their analysis to accusations of repressive hegemony, the essential character of colonialism per se is the material exploitation of one society by another. Repression is in the service of exploitation (see Murphy 2007).

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The more difficult, but more productive, approach is to attempt to understand the questions of Japanese Buddhists themselves. This entails not simply seeking answers to familiar questions but seeking to understand unfamiliar questions. Rather than interrogating Japanese Buddhist thought for our own ends, can we allow it to interrogate our own preconceptions? Still in service of philosophy, but not limiting itself to the received categories and conceptions of Western philosophy, this approach actually has the potential to expand philosophy. 4.1.5  The Putative Universality of Philosophy As suggested by Halbfass above, the project of comparative philosophy is frequently grounded on a claim that philosophy is a human universal. For example, Noa Ronkin asserts “that the questions of philosophy and their treatments by various traditions transcend considerations of time and place, and hence that there is, indeed, a basis for cross-cultural comparison of such traditions as twentieth century Western scholarship and early Buddhism” (Ronkin 2005: 11). There is an inherent ambiguity to such claims, however, that implicitly theorizes the comparative project according to the categories of contemporary, developed academic philosophy. Two different senses of “philosophy” are being used in such claims. Asking questions of some particular kind can be called philosophy1 and distinguished from the academically developed system of inquiry or philosophy2.45 Even if philosophy1 can be meaningfully described as a human universal, that does not equate to philosophy2.46 While such claims have been asserted, questioned, and defended, it is more useful to test it. To move this inquiry from the seemingly negative strategy of critiquing the claims of some representative comparative philosophers, we need to control for the bias found in comparative inquiries that fail to bracket the categories, questions, and issues of Western philosophy. This bias is the consequence of presuming to be able to selectively read a text for its philosophical content. More specifically, the study of any classic Buddhist text, whether the Triṃśikā of Vasubandhu, the Lotus Sūtra, or the Kyōgyōshinshō 教行信証 of Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1262), from the perspective of comparative philosophy2 (a comparative approach that presumes the universality of philosophy2) will pre-theoretically select certain aspects of the text as relevant for philosophical consideration. A theory of perception, a theory of buddha-­ nature, or a cosmology might be selected from these texts for comparative purposes. Such selectivity, however, also then dismisses the balance of the text as philosophically irrelevant. It is, however, the balance of the work that provides the meaning-­ establishing context for the ideas that are being selectively decontextualized.47

 Some scholars purposely conflate these (see Deutsch and Bontekoe 1997: xii–xiii).  For a structurally identical argument regarding the universality of metaphysics see Payne (2009). 47  Such selectivity is not effected upon Buddhist texts alone, of course. Consider the consequences of the almost universal silence attendant today upon the theological framing of Descartes’ Meditations. 45 46

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What is thereby erased is the way in which the ideas that have been plucked out fit into the structure of the text or system of thought as a whole. The systemic integrity of the work is at best just obscured, but more likely it is forgotten, ignored, discarded, as irrelevant to the supposedly universal questions, issues, positions of philosophy as formulated over the course of Western intellectual history. As John Clayton has noted, [e]ven if every single proposition in one scheme were translated without remainder into one’s own system, we might still miss the pattern of the Other’s scheme, because what would not thereby be carried over is the network within which the individual propositions were connected with each other and in terms of which their specific location in the scheme is defined. (Clayton 2006: 3)48

In other words, ideas are decontextualized, and then recontextualized into the framework of Western philosophical concerns—a shift that of necessity changes the meanings. For example, a Buddhist theory of perception has one meaning in the context of the path to awakening and another when placed in juxtaposition to present-­day theories of perception. Examination of texts under such a protocol fails to actually test the presumptions of comparative philosophy2 since it is on the very basis of those presumptions that the topics, issues, theories, questions have been selected out of the text in question. Seen in this light, it would appear, put bluntly, that comparative philosophy2 cannot avoid the petitio principii fallacy. The bias is so built-in as to be invisible unless we explore a complex text that itself employs comparison. 4.1.6  Through a Glass, Darkly: The Crystal Mirror Let us consider a Buddhist text that itself employs comparison, the “Grub mtha’ shel gyi melong” by Thuken Losang Chökyin Nyima (1737–1802). The title has been rendered as Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems, which rather begs the question we wish to problematize here—the universality of philosophy. We will, therefore, refer to it as the Crystal Mirror, and to its author as Nyima. “Grub-mtha’” is a Tibetan category of literature that organizes and presents the variety of systems of thought, usually in a kind of dialectic progression constructed for polemic purposes. Jeffrey Hopkins has noted the problematic character of universalizing the category of philosophy to include the grub-mtha’ literature. “In this context, ‘philosophy’ is, for the most part, related to liberative concerns—the attempt to extricate oneself and others from a round of painful existence and to attain freedom” (Hopkins 1996: 170). In other words, the various systems of “tenets” (L. doxa) are presented as a progression leading up to some particular view and thereby demonstrating, at least implicitly, the liberative superiority of that final view over all the others. Hence, Hopkins uses the term “doxography” for this genre. It is not a history of philosophy but, rather, an architectonic of thought with polemic intent. 48

 In addition to John Clayton, just cited, see the three volumes Neville (2001a, b, c).

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Discussing this genre, Daniel Cozort and Craig Preston note that grub-mtha’ differ from Western histories of philosophy by being little concerned with history, nor do they attempt to be comprehensive. “A more subtle difference is that these presentations of tenets are attempts to construct coherent, logically consistent, and ­complete systems of thought, even if the basis for doing so is a bit thin” (Cozort and Preston 2003: ix–x). Several such grub-mtha’ have been translated into English, but of these the Crystal Mirror is rather unique. While still polemical, Nyima appears to have also been concerned with the actual historical development of various systems of thought, especially Chinese and other East and Central Asian systems, rather than the more common exclusive focus on the continuity between Indian and Tibetan Buddhist thought. Though the scholastic traditions of Japanese Buddhism are just as complex and interesting, there are two reasons for using this Tibetan work. Compared with the Tibetan Buddhist traditions of thought, the Japanese scholastic tradition has not received anywhere near the same academic attention—despite Japanese Buddhism having received more focused inquiry by Western scholars for longer. This appears to be the consequence of historical accident, since from early on study of the Buddhisms of Japan emphasized its aesthetic culture—what we might call the “rock garden and tea ceremony” approach.49 This was in keeping with the Romantic themes that inform much of Western religious culture, themes that created a dialectic between how Japanese Buddhism was presented and how it was conceived and studied. Romanticism, of course, emphasized aesthetic sensibility and spontaneity, which have come to be equated with religious experience. Comparable Japanese texts do exist, such as Gyōnen’s Essentials of the Eight Traditions (Gyōnen 1994). However, the second reason for using Nyima’s text is that since our present concern is Buddhist thought in Japan, a work such as Gyōnen’s is already too familiar—we think we already know what the relevant categories and concerns are. The unfamiliarity of Nyima’s work is, therefore, a second benefit for our inquiry here. A third reason is to purposely work against the grain of Buddhist studies based on nation-states, as discussed above. There is nothing inherently “Tibetan” about Nyima’s text, nor is there anything inherently “Japanese” about Gyōnen’s. Our concern here is neither just a matter of getting the issues, categories, questions right, nor some broad conception of cultural context, but rather the specific context of the system of thought underlying Nyima’s own comparisons. The Crystal Mirror offers us an opportunity to see directly how a Tibetan Buddhist thinker approached comparing Buddhist thought with other systems of thought both in India and in China and Central Asia. Doing so constitutes a test case for conceptions of comparative philosophy. With the Indian schools, Nyima follows well-trodden paths, while for the Chinese and Central Asian ones, he does not have the same ready-made interpretive struc As discussed by Elisabetta Porcu, this aestheticized version of Japanese religion is integrally related to the popular Western conception of Zen as the essence of Japanese Buddhism (Porcu 2008).

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tures upon which to draw. One of the consequences of this difference is that while the Indian schools are presented in highly stylized form and reduced to formulae familiar from other instances of this literature, the Chinese and Central Asian ones are more fully rendered, including more attention to the specifics of their history.50 Some of the work’s features follow from the polemic character of the genre. Thus, Nyima takes the buddha-dharma as the norm against which to compare all other systems. For example, Nyima summarizes his presentation of the Lokāyatas, one of the non-Buddhist Indian schools, saying that “this school completely denies past and future lives, cause and effect, liberation, and omniscience. Therefore, among the non-Buddhists, they are the worst” (Nyima 2009: 39). While Nyima’s concerns have certain parallels to Western philosophic ones, his concerns are structured by the context within which he is working. It is not simply a matter of a philosophical versus a religious context, as part of the issue is that employing these categories—philosophy and religion—already begs the question by universalizing them. Hopkin’s use of the term “liberative” is a helpful corrective for moving past the false dichotomy of either philosophy or religion. It avoids introducing the presumptions of contemporary Western understandings of religion, while simultaneously demarcating this literature as having goals different from those of contemporary Western philosophy. In order to discern the philosophical contents of Nyima’s work for comparison, one might attempt to separate out the philosophical pieces from his polemic frame. But what criteria, then, are to be employed in discriminating that which is (truly) philosophical from that which is (merely) polemic? Again, this simply begs the question, reverting back to the questions, categories, concerns, positions determined by the course of Western philosophy’s history. To take an analogous example as a means of clarifying the issues involved in making such a discrimination, Nyima tells us about the spread of the buddhadharma in Central Asia, including not only Mongolia and Khotan but also the legendary land of Shambhala. It would be easy enough for us to look to the sections on Mongolia and Khotan for historical information, while dismissing the information on Shambhala as legendary and lacking any historical significance.51 Yet, just as clearly, that is our judgment of the nature of history, and not Nyima’s.  Some Western authors have attempted to dehistoricize Buddhist thought, on the basis that Buddhist thinkers reject issues of historicity. Ngawang Zangpo (Hugh Leslie Thompson), for example, asserts that “Buddhists who have entered the bodhisattva path cannot restrict their faith to what is verifiable history” (Zangpo 2002: 30). Zangpo bases this on the hermeneutic distinction between definitive (S. nitartha) and provisional (S. neyartha), without any critical reflection on the fundamentally polemic character of this hermeneutic (“my sutra is definitive, yours is in need of interpretation”), and employing a neo-romantic religious rhetoric of timeless truths versus mundane conventionalities. While according to Zangpo, the “Buddha and his spiritual heirs…thumb their venerable noses at conventional history” (32), we find Nyima writing in such a fashion as to undermine this hermeneutic strategy proposed by Zangpo. Or perhaps Zangpo would choose to “thumb his venerable nose” at Nyima. 51  It would be at least equally mistaken to take the Shambhala section as purposely anti-historical, but religiously inspirational, itself a distinction based in contemporary Western popular religious culture. 50

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5  Is the Buddhist Thought of Japan Philosophy or Religion? If Buddhist praxis in Japan does not fit comfortably into the Western academic category of philosophy, perhaps it does fit into the liminal field formed by the overlap of philosophy with religion, that is, philosophy of religion. Considering Keith E. Yandell’s Philosophy of Religion: A Contemporary Introduction, which presents itself as a standard resource in the field, we find repeated references not only to Buddhism but also to Jainism and Advaita Vedanta. However, to the limited extent that Yandell discusses Buddhism substantively, only Theravāda Buddhism is considered. Yandell excludes Mahāyāna Buddhism from any significant consideration, and Japanese Buddhism goes unmentioned. The question of what a particular author chooses to include for consideration, and what is then excluded, reveals the implicit theoretical commitments of any particular work. While inclusion and exclusion reveals the selective and therefore constructed character of any particular project in the philosophy of religion, also problematic is the framework into which such sources are placed. Rather than being structured by the questions, issues, or positions of philosophy, Yandell’s work is informed by a set of fundamentally theological concerns, with the positions of various possible interlocutors being considered for what they can contribute to those concerns. The problem lies with taking the concerns of theology as organizing principles and with how these theological concerns structure the representation of non-Christian systems of thought (for another example, see Davies 1993). Yandell’s philosophy of religion is a (thinly) secularized version of theological inquiry. Consider the frame established at the opening: Does God exist? Is there any reason to think that God exists? Is there no God? Is there any good reason to believe that? What makes us persons? What do the world religions teach about God, human persons, and life after death? How can what they say be evaluated? If God knows in advance what we will do, can we be free? Must we be free if we are responsible for what we do? Can a person survive the death of her body? Is the existence of evil evidence against God’s existence? How are religion and morality related? Is faith inherently irrational? (Yandell 1999: 3)

Admittedly not offered as a formal definition of the philosophy of religion, Yandell however characterizes these questions as “the stuff of the philosophy of religion” (Yandell 1999: 3). Thematically, all of these questions are unified by a concern with God, which certainly meets a minimal definition of “theology” as “talking about God.” Structurally, we find that when there is any mention of religions other than Christianity, they are introduced for how they answer theological questions: God, personhood, and postmortem existence.52 Thus, non-Christian religions are interrogated for how they would answer these and other theological questions, rather than considering whether these questions are relevant to the religious traditions being  Although more adequate in its treatment of Buddhism, Wainwright is also structured by the concerns of Christian theology (Wainwright 2005).

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interrogated, or what questions those traditions themselves seek to resolve. This is, therefore, another intellectually colonialist enterprise. Academic studies that seek to be applicable across religions often abstract from theological categories. Lifting up a Christian category as universal does not, however, free it from its connotative entailments. One instance is the abstracting of the theological concern with salvation, marking the abstracted concept as “soteriology” instead. Even abstracted in this fashion, however, soteriology brings with it a range of meanings that contribute to structuring representations of religions in ways that can be problematic.53 First, “soteriology” presumes that all religious traditions54 are coherently organized, and that the main organizing principle is that of salvation. This is not, however, descriptive.55 Extended to the Buddhisms of Japan, it becomes prescriptive. As such it either imposes a Procrustean interpretation on forms of thought that may be only apparently analogous or marginalizes and obscures aspects that do not fit into this presumption. Second, it is reductionistic. Despite appearing unproblematically foundational for religion, highlighting salvation distorts the Buddhist tradition by enshadowing those aspects that do not fit into current theological conceptions of salvation. Thus, because today religion is not seen as having any relation to embryology or astronomy, those aspects of the Buddhist tradition concerned with embryology or astronomy are ignored, “placed under erasure,” as irrelevant to “the religious quest”56 for salvation. An important inquiry that becomes impossible in such an approach is the relation between the goal of awakening and the cosmological systems that framed it. The path to awakening runs across a specific imagined landscape, and relocating the path to a different landscape changes the path. “Liberative,” a rendering of the Sanskrit “mokṣa” (J. gedatsu 解脱), points to the religious culture of India in which liberation is defined epistemologically as liberation from “ignorance” (S. avidyā, J. mumyō 無明), rather than morally as liberation from sin.57

 While some authors use “soteriology” without any apparent theoretical reflection, one can find useful discussions in Largen (2009: viii–ix) and Buswell and Gimello (1992: 2–3). 54  Note that “religion” is itself a problematic category for the Buddhisms of Japan. 55  A similar rhetoric, also universalized, is the characterization of faith as “ultimate concern” put forth by Paul Tillich (1886–1965) (see Kaufman 1989). Again, this is not descriptive, but is in fact a theological claim, that when extended beyond the scope of what might appropriately be called “the theological religions” becomes prescriptive. 56  Note that this language of “the religious quest” itself derives from Romanticism. 57  Doctrine as the key to understanding Japanese Buddhisms is overdetermined. While doctrinal studies certainly long played an important part in the Buddhisms of Japan, since the Meiji, the modernizing of Buddhism has included an emphasis on doctrinal uniformity within any lineage. Similarly, doctrine is central to philosophy of religion, since it largely reflects the salvific role of proper belief in the Protestant tradition. Thus, both sides of the dialogue contribute their own emphasis on doctrine. One may at least speculate further that since it was during the Meiji that the very idea of “religion” was introduced to Japan, and extended from a descriptor for Christianity to a general category including the Buddhist traditions, the structuring of the Buddhist tradition in Japan has itself been influenced by Christian models of religion per se. 53

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6  J apan’s Buddhisms as Religion: Matrices, Narratives, and Metaphors Reading Japanese Buddhism as religion entails a number of consequences that need to be made explicit rather than, as is usually the case, being allowed to remain active below the level of conscious intellectual reflection. The category “religion” entails several conceptions which ought not be presumed to be universal. Some of these can be clarified by considering what I have called the matrix model of religion, which continues to structure religious studies (Southard and Payne 1998: 52). In addition to the matrix model, examining the grand narrative of “world’s religions” and the metaphors employed in representing the Buddhisms of Japan also reveal the consequences of unexamined assumptions.

6.1  The Matrix of “Religion” The matrix model presumes that the same characteristics structure all religions.58 The matrix metaphor derives from the way a list of characteristics can be arranged along one axis and a list of religions along the other. Both characteristics and religions, however, require selection, and the characteristics selected then impose contents and interpretations onto the religions. Thus, the fundamentally Christian conceptions of what constitutes a religion— such as, a single founder who functions as a reformer, a single authoritative text, a single church providing exclusive membership in a select community—are imposed onto all religions, whether appropriate or not. Thus we have the typical, “textbook” representation of Daoism with the mythic figure Laozi 老子 as the founder, and his Dao De Jing 道德经 is its single authoritative text, despite the dubious character of both ascriptions (for correctives, see Kirkland 2004; Robinet 1997; Pregadio 2006; Strickmann 1981; Bokenkamp 1999). The formation of historical narratives is a more subtle level at which this understanding of all religions as comprising the same universal set of characteristics affects the understanding of religion. Particularly in Western religious historiography, a three-part narrative structure imposes a Protestant conception of religious history as a universal historical process. Based on a reading of both the Bible and Reformation era discourse, religions are conceived to originate as pure ethical and rational teachings. This is then followed by a decline into decadence, particularly marked by attention to “mere externals,” that is, ritualism and priestcraft. Finally, this creates the need for a purifying reformation, a return to the original state of purity and inward-oriented religiosity that has been projected back onto the origins.59  For a very simplistic version of this model of religion see Smith and Rosemont (2005).  Daniel Chandler has noted that “Perhaps the most basic narrative syntagm is a linear temporal model composed of three phases—equilibrium–disequilibrium–equilibrium—a ‘chain’ of events corresponding to the beginning, middle and end of a story” (Chandler 2002: 90). Protestant

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Again, whether appropriate or not, this pattern is employed to structure the history of the Buddhisms of Japan, with Śākyamuni (ca. fifth century BCE) playing the role of founder of a pure ethical and rational teaching, such figures as Hōnen 法然 (1133–1212) and Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253) cast as reformers, and the Senchakushū 選択集 and Shōbōgenzō 正法眼蔵 cast as authoritative texts (see, for example, Kleine 1996). Although not explicitly theorized, the matrix model preconfigures representations of religions into categories that predetermine the outcome of comparative study. When conducted in this fashion, comparative religion succumbs to the petitio principii fallacy in the same way that comparative philosophy2 does. The failure to distinguish religion1 (the human tendency to ask “big questions”) from religion2 (Christian theology, even when secularized as philosophy of religion) leads unavoidably to the imposition of categories and interpretations (see Grillo 2011: 804).

6.2  T  he “Great World Religions”: Making the Buddhisms of Japan Invisible Perhaps the conceptual framework most commonly employed for religious studies is that of “world religions” (Masuzawa 2005). This approach seems to have been developed, at least in part, to avoid the distortions inherent in any apologetic approach. However, it is not, therefore, free from its own biasing presumptions and values. We begin with one example of this approach, which is particularly instructive in that it makes the Buddhisms of Japan invisible and reveals several of the problematic ways that categorizing the Buddhisms of Japan as religion affects its representation. Consider a work picked at random (found while browsing the bookshelves of a friend and fellow academic), The Sacred Writings of the World’s Great Religions, edited by S.E. Frost, Jr. (Frost 1972). This does not seem to have been a particularly “important” or influential work, but it was originally published in 1943, just in time to serve as a text for a new generation of college students, including the many veterans who expanded college enrollments at this time in the United States, and, therefore, at a formative point in the development of the “world religions” approach as found today. Considering its time, the work was no doubt rather radical in categorizing its selections into 13 “great religions of the world.” Importantly, Frost’s presentation did not explicitly privilege Christianity. Frost’s theoretical commitments are made explicit in the opening lines of both his preface and introduction. The Preface opens by saying “The selections from the sacred writings of the thirteen religions included in this book reveal how often relihistoriography of religion goes beyond this abstract framing syntagm, however, adding specific narrative elements that entail conceptions of motivation, and interpretations of the significance of particular events. For a more extended discussion of this religious narrative structure see Kirschner (1996).

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gions, originating in very different cultures and in ages far apart, teach similar doctrines and similar principles of ethics and morals” (Frost 1972: iii).60 With no false modesty, Frost continues, “This volume is therefore not only a treasure house of living religious literature but also a guide to the understanding of the fundamental similarity among religions” (Frost 1972: iii, emphasis added). Likewise, the Introduction simply declares that “The study of man from primitive times to the present day discloses no people without some belief in a power or powers ruling the universe, some form of worship, and some code of conduct or morals. This universal nature of religions is an outstanding fact in the history of mankind” (Frost 1972: 1). Frost defines religion as comprising three things—belief, worship, and morality. The claim that all humans have religion, a theoretical commitment that follows from the universalism of Enlightenment humanism, is not unproblematic. Chidester reveals how a specific understanding of religion can be imposed upon those for whom religion is claimed, such that these categories, belief, worship and morality, are presumed to form a coherent, consistent and universal pattern (Chidester 1996). According to this logic, then, native correlates for the presumptively universal categories are determined—or sometimes simply imagined into existence. Less explicit and, therefore more pervasively formative to Frost’s work, is the metaphor “religions are living beings.” The Introduction continues, There are eleven great “living” religions and several smaller religions today. Four of these, Christianity, Mohammedanism [RKP: Islam], Confucianism, and Hinduism, are maintaining their growth. Four, Judaism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Taoism, show neither gain nor loss over a long period of time. Three of the world’s great religions, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, and Shinto, are definitely on the decline. (Frost 1972: 1)

The metaphor not only entails that some religions are alive and others dead but also the judgment that some are growing (vital), some static (torpid), and still others declining (dying). Frost, however, provides no theoretical basis for the metaphor of religions as living entities, no justification for judging the “life-stage” of a religion, nor any criteria for evaluating its “health.” It is not clear whether these judgments constitute anything more than the author’s impressionistic evaluation, informed by his own values, or are based on some at least potentially identifiable set of sociological or historical data. For Frost, what has kept some religions alive, while others died away, is textualization: The world’s “living” religions differ from the “dead” religions in that they cherish certain definite writings as sacred. The religions which have ceased to exist have left no sacred canon or body of scriptures. (Frost 1972: 1)

Having been prejudged as “dead,” oral traditions can be ignored, despite any ongoing contribution of oral traditions to a living religion, or the continuing existence of independent oral religious traditions. Frost’s example of traces of an oral

 Here we can see a Perennialist interpretation that there is a fundamental unity underlying the “merely apparent” diversity of religions.

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tradition—the Homeric epics—further serves to locate oral religious traditions in the remote, and ultimately irrelevant, past. Frost also never addresses what makes a religion “great.” This question is never explicitly considered, never theorized, justified, explained, or defined. Number of adherents does not seem to be the measure, as Japanese Buddhism goes without mention, while Mormonism and Christian Science, identified as being “among the lesser religious bodies of today [that] are of particular interest to people in the United States” are included along with the other eleven identified in the quotation above (Frost 1972: 1). The selections themselves indicate another implicit commitment, the emphasis on founding texts. For example, Buddhism is represented by selections from the vinaya, sutta and Dhammapada—notably all Pāli sources. This is more than simply a focus on textualized traditions but reflects the idea that founding texts are most authoritative.61 Another commitment may be implicated, which is that after being established, religions undergo a process of decay, later works therefore not being as important for understanding a religion. This is one way religions are essentialized: the essence is found in its foundational texts. This also points to a dehistoricization: the essence of a religion is fixed at its founding and remains unchanged despite later decay. For example, while the Buddhisms of Japan go unmentioned, Shintō 神道 is represented as the “great world’s religion” of Japan. This representation is, unsurprisingly, dehistoricized. Frost identifies Shintō as the national religion of Japan. According to some authorities [RKP: unnamed], it “unquestionably represents the distinctive religious genius of Japan from the very beginning of its history”. Others, while recognizing its deep significance for Japanese life, argue that it is in no sense a religion, but is rather a patriotic cult. Whether we call it a religion or not, it has unquestionably made a significant contribution to the political theory and national stability of Japan. (Frost 1972: 347)

Then, Frost closes his brief introduction of Shintō by asserting that, Worship of the Sun Goddess is emblemized in the national flag of Japan, a rising sun. This religious and patriotic symbol means to each Japanese a promise that, as all the world depends for its life upon the sun, so it must depend for its political life upon Japan and each Japanese is divinely commissioned to force the rule of the Sun Goddess upon the rest of the world. (Frost 1972: 348)

What is today obviously “State Shintō” created in the nineteenth century is then juxtaposed to selections from the Kojiki 古事記 and Nihongi 日本紀,62 which date from the early eighth century. Only a dehistoricized conception of Shintō could consider these to be its founding texts. The idea that religion must have a sacred text leads to these works, clearly charter myths justifying the dominance of the Yamato, being considered religious. In this “suppression of deviations from the expected,”  This further evidences the fact that religious studies incorporates presumptions based on Protestant theology, which shifted authority from the priesthood to the text of the Bible. 62  These are two collections of myths compiled by the decree of the Yamato court. Bowring (2005: 46–53). On their modern recovery see Kasulis (2004: 112–117). 61

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we see a kind of textual reductionism, with “sacred writings” forming a uniform category, and with a set of “scriptures” for each of the “world’s great religions” no matter what the actual historical origins or role of these texts may have been.63 Having all been harmonized in this way, founding texts can then be looked to as authoritative for the three characteristics of a religion as identified by Frost: belief, worship and morals.64 The rhetoric of Frost’s work is first, all religions are fundamentally alike; second, religion comprises belief, worship and morals; third, religions are living entities; and fourth, it is textualized religions that survive. We can now question Frost’s presumptions regarding what constitutes a “great world’s religion.” Although size of membership does not seem to play a part, and growth, maturity, and decline seem to be value judgments, a crude quantitative measure of the number of pages of his text devoted to the various “great world’s religions” is suggestive. Shintō, judged to be declining, perhaps only warrants the seven pages of text devoted to it. Both Buddhism and Judaism are judged by the editor to be in stasis. However, while Judaism is represented by 74 pages of text, Buddhism, as a whole, is represented by 18 pages. In another contrast, Mormonism and Christian Science, supposedly of “particular interest to people in the United States”, have 11 and 9 pages, respectively (Frost 1972: 1). Taken together with other editorial judgments, perhaps we can best consider the editor’s conception of a “great world’s religion” as simply a reflection of how large they loom as “powers,” whether social, political, military or economic.65 The “great world’s religions” approach as exercised by Frost is judgmental, essentialized, and dehistoricized. At least as important, however, is that the religions are all “flattened out,” homogenized—bodies of belief, practices of worship, injunctions about morality, all established by the single, uniform category of sacred writings. Each of the 13 religions is represented en bloc, as monolithic wholes—unchanging, uniform, single, integrated and, although complex, fundamentally unproblematic wholes. This creates a neat arrangement of packaged goods—commodification, not in the sense of items for sale, but rather as imposed uniformity of organization and presentation. The reader of this specific work, with its commodification and its judgments regarding growing, static and declining religions, is not only explicitly informed about living and dead religions but is implicitly informed about what is worthy of how much attention. In the end the reader would know nothing of Zen 禅宗 or Pure Land 浄土宗, much less Nichiren 日蓮宗 or Shingon 真言宗, all of them having been placed under erasure together with the supposedly dead oral religions of Africa and native America.  One sees a similar homogenization in some approaches to mythology, such as that of Joseph Campbell. 64  It is worth noting that Frost’s threefold marker of religion (belief, worship, and morals) echoes those in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who used the same three to determine the existence, or non-existence, of religion among the peoples of southern Africa (see Chidester 1996). 65  One might also expect that market forces played a role in attempting to create a saleable book. 63

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A different example of the problematics of the “world’s religions” approach for Japanese Buddhism is found in Arvind Sharma’s edited volume Our Religions (Sharma 1993). The collection is described as addressing “the seven world religions introduced by preeminent scholars from each tradition” (Sharma 1993, front cover). In this simple statement we find two important suppressed theoretical decisions. First, the idea that there are seven “world religions,” and, second, that there is something valuable about having a scholar “from” a tradition representing that tradition. The first goes entirely undiscussed. No rationale for either organization or selection is provided—the “seven world religions” are simply identified as Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Why seven? Why not four, or eleven, or Frost’s thirteen? Why these seven? Why not a different seven? Why are they presented in the order that they are? These questions, including the fundamental question of how “religion” is being defined such that these seven can be juxtaposed meaningfully in a single volume, not only go unanswered, they go unasked. This is a “strategy of opacity.” Presenting some organization or selection as unproblematic, not requiring any reflection or explanation, conveys an implicit message that this organization or selection are “the given,” just the way things are. The claim of authority is asserted in the introduction, as part of a claim to uniqueness: “because each author belongs to the tradition he is writing about, he speaks not only of his tradition, but his standing in the field enables him also to speak for it” (Sharma 1993: xi).66 Continuing this self-aggrandizement, the claim is made that “poised as he is at the cutting edge of the tradition as it encounters modernity, each author is able to address the contemporary issues the tradition faces in a way that has rarely ever been attempted earlier, much less accomplished” (Sharma 1993: xi). Not addressed anywhere is the individual author’s location within their own tradition—they are simply presented as dual authorities, both empowered to speak of and for the tradition and capable of addressing the contemporary issues faced by it. Failure to locate the author in any way other than by asserting this dual authority constitutes another instance of the strategy of opacity. Not being informed of the author’s location, the reader has no leverage point from which to critically reflect on how they represent the tradition and is left to simply accept their description of it. That an author’s location is important not simply as a matter of “postmodern correctness” is evident when we consider that the author for Buddhism is ABE Masao and examine his representation of Buddhism. Abe is an active proponent of a particular modernist interpretation of Zen Buddhism and is well-known for his participation in the long-running “Cobb-Abe” group promoting Buddhist–Christian dialogue.67 Abe organizes the diversity of Buddhism into two broad categories: “doctrinal forms of Buddhism,” (Abe 1993:  Note that the gender of the pronoun is not in this case simply an outdated vestige of traditional grammar. Despite having been produced in 1993, all of the contributors are men, leaving any feminist dimension completely absent. 67  The “International Buddhist–Christian Theological Encounter” was directed by John Cobb and ABE Masao, hence the common referent “Cobb-Abe,” and met biannually for about 20 years. 66

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85) and “canonical forms of Buddhism” (Abe 1993: 93). In each of these sections, Abe discusses four kinds of Buddhism, presenting them as a progression: Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Tantra, and Zen. This progression is not an historical sequence but is presented by Abe as a developmental sequence, each a stage out of which the next grows. This fundamentally Hegelian historiography leaves the reader with the clear understanding that Zen is the highest fulfillment of the Buddhist tradition.68 Indeed, Abe provides a further Hegelian flourish by structuring the history of each of the four forms into three “cycles.” The architectonic here leaves no room for doubt that it is specifically Japanese Zen that is the highest expression of Buddhism’s own process of self-realization. Being an heir of the Kyoto School, Abe’s Zen is pervaded by Romantic neo-­ Platonism, as mediated through German Idealism. German Idealism was most influential in Japan from Meiji (1868–1912) into the first half of the twentieth century.69 Thus, consonant with German Idealism we find Abe claiming that Buddhist realization is as simple as the Buddhist insight of emptiness (see Pinkard 2002: 136). If there is really nothing, then all that is needed is the experiential recognition of this sheer simplicity. The sheer simplicity of the situation also suggests its immediacy—with the corollary that realization can come in an instant….It was in the hands of Zen that it received due recognition, when it was grasped that if the mind is the main obstacle to realization and the pride of the mind is its rationality, then by undermining such rationality by, for example, bewildering it with a constant mental impasse in the form of a kōan or confronting it with the immobilizing enigma of an ever-existing realization, the Gordian knot did not have to be untangled, it could be cut. (Abe 1993: 93)70

For Western audiences, what Bernard Faure has called the “rhetoric of immediacy” is overdetermined (Faure 1994). Instances from Zen fit easily into a framework of simplicity, spontaneity, paradox, individuality, and “explorations of subjective interiority” already constructed by Romanticism (Pinkard 2002: 136). Abe also employs a rhetoric of displaced agency, a problem for the study of religion more generally. His essay provides numerous instances of displaced agency, including the probably unintentionally amusing: “Early Buddhism is saved from this embarrassment…” (Abe 1997: 94). Being a concept, “early Buddhism” is not the kind of thing that can be embarrassed. One might object that this is unproblematic, being simply an instance of metonymy—specifically the substitution of an institution for people (Chandler 2002: 130). But metonymy is no more unproblematic than metaphor. Just as much as metaphor, any particular metonym imposes a logic of entailments. Displacing agency allows for a variety of rhetorical effects— establishing one interpretation as authoritative and inevitable because it is the work of “Buddhism,” and not of some particular person, and consequently suppressing  This privileging of Zen as the representative of the philosophic dimensions of the thought of the Buddhisms of Japan is also instantiated in Collins (1998). While Collins gives some mention to Saichō and Kūkai, and to the Kyoto School, Zen dominates his presentation of philosophy in Japan. 69  On the Kyoto School, see Yusa (1997). A useful exposition of the Kyoto School, this essay demonstrates the way in which philosophy2 appropriates Buddhist thought into its own projects. 70  Note that the treatment of kōan here is similar to Scharfstein’s, discussed above. 68

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alternate understandings. For example, discussing “skillful means” (S. upāyakauśalya, J. hōben 方便), Abe asserts that this was a “conscious factor in the history of Buddhism,” responsible for the “diversity displayed by Buddhism” (Abe 1997: 72).71 Abe defines skillful means as the doctrine that “the teachings of Buddhism should be preached in consonance with the spiritual, moral, and intellectual level of the audience; Buddhism must speak to its condition” (Abe 1997: 72).72 Displacement of agency is clearest in his closing summary of skillful means: Buddhism applied this principle of skillful means not just to individuals but to whole cultures. To the Hindu elite it presented its teaching in Sanskrit, to the Chinese in Chinese. In Tibet, where the pre-Buddhist religion of Bön contained magical features, it presented itself in magical guise. In South Asia it accomodated itself to the popular worship of spirits. (Abe 1997: 73)73

This approach simplifies a complex historical situation into incoherence. At the same time, it sets the stage for asserting that “emptiness” (S. śunyatā, J. kū 空) is the single core teaching of Buddhism, although the fact that this is an interpretation is suppressed by phrases such as “Buddhism declares that everything without exception is empty” (Abe 1997: 121). By displacing agency, that is, having Buddhism, rather than ABE Masao, assert this, Abe’s interpretation gains the authority of the whole of the Buddhist tradition. And, by asserting that Japanese Zen is the highest insight into emptiness, the juxtaposition is complete—the reader can only conclude that Japanese Zen is the highest form of Buddhism. This is propaganda, not history.

6.3  Structuring Thought: Zombie Metaphors74 Over the last few decades it has become increasingly evident that metaphor is more than simply decorative (Riceour 1977; Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Fauconnier and Turner 2003; Slingerland 2008). Metaphor serves a cognitive function, providing familiar ways of thinking about unfamiliar things. As such, however, metaphors also  Note that also implicit here is a metaphysics of essence and manifestation, the single unitary essence finding diversity of expression because of skillful means. This rhetoric both expresses and reinforces the notion that some specific form of Buddhism, in this case Zen, can be the best, highest expression of that unitary essence. 72  Abe gives no sources for this definition of skillful means as a doctrine, despite crediting it as the key causal factor in the historical process that created the diversity of Buddhist traditions. 73  Abe justifies this adaptability with a morally problematic argument that “one’s actions are to be judged by one’s intentions.” Note also that this is another instance of reification: as an abstract concept, Buddhism can have no “intentions,” and therefore does not need to find justification. 74  The economist Paul Krugman distinguishes between “zombies,” which “remain part of  what everyone…knows to  be  true no matter how many times they have been shown to  be  false,” (Krugman 2012), and “cockroaches,” which are ideas that “no matter how many times you flush them down the toilet, they keep coming back” (Krugman 2013). We could perhaps just as well call this section “cockroach metaphors,” or even perhaps “brain worms” (Smith 2014). 71

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guide thought, and can be employed rhetorically to convince without providing either evidence or argument. It is this latter, rhetorical function that is important to us in regard to the way in which religious studies treats the Buddhisms of Japan. 6.3.1  The Organic Metaphor: Religion as a Living Being Probably one of the most pervasive metaphors in the study of religion is the organic one, that is, treating religion as a living being of some kind, as introduced above. Organic metaphors have had a long history and are also found in Buddhist discourse. When, however, metaphors are treated as causal explanations, then they tend to stop thought, and become dysfunctional. The organic metaphor of concern to us here has its proximate source in Romanticism. The Romantics promoted an organic metaphysics in resistance to the mechanistic philosophy developed in the works of Newton and Hobbes, Descartes and Leibnitz, de Laplace and Spinoza. Instead of interpreting the universe as a great machine, the Romantics asserted that it was a vital, living organism (Beiser 2006: 222–228; Richards 2002: 142). This overarching vitality then also extends to religions. The consequence is a view in which everything goes through a common sequence, coming into existence, growing to maturity, and then declining until it passes away.75 The power of the organic metaphor is that it seems to explain historical events as the natural consequence of an inalterable organic process. But this is a completely empty “explanation.” Regarding Buddhism in Japan, D.T.  Suzuki (J.  Suzuki Daisetsu 鈴木大拙) (1870–1966) provides an example, telling us that after Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu and their immediate followers, [Buddhism] could not continue its healthy growth any longer in its original soil; it had to be transplanted if it were to develop a most important aspect which had hitherto been altogether neglected—and because of this neglect its vitality was steadily being impaired. The most important aspect of Mahāyāna Buddhism which unfolded itself in the mental climate of China was Ch’an (Zen).…This was really a unique contribution of the Chinese genius to the history of mental culture generally, but it has been due to the Japanese that the true spirit of Zen has been scrupulously kept alive and that its technique has been completed. (Suzuki 1967: 122).76

As with Abe, this is propaganda rather than history. Once recognized, we should set aside the claims that Japanese religious culture is superior to Indian and Chinese.77  It is important to note that this idea also contributed to the development of holism (see Harrington 1996). Holism in turn contributes to the constructivist notion, as I understand it, of the integrity of systems of thought. This is distinct, however, from the organic metaphor per se. 76  The collection in which Suzuki’s essay appears is itself a classic example of essentializing, as evidenced in the title concept “the Japanese mind.” Moore’s own appendix to the collection is called “Editor’s Supplement: The Enigmatic Japanese Mind.” Rather than questioning the essentializing presumption that there is “a Japanese mind” in light of contradictory aspects discussed by different contributors, Moore seems to have found it easier to conclude that the essence of the Japanese mind is that it is “enigmatic.” 77  Suzuki claims, for example, that “China failed to perfect the Hua-yen (Kegon) (or Avataṁsaka) or the T’ien-tai (Tendai) system of Mahāyāna thought” (Suzuki 1967: 122). This supposed failure 75

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Part of what makes Suzuki’s representation effective, including the claims of superiority, is the entailments of the underlying organic metaphor. Thus, the soil of India was impairing healthy growth, and Mahāyāna had to be transplanted to China in order to unfold, flower-like, as Chan, but has only been kept alive in Japan, where it has been perfected. By appearing to be a comprehensive explanation, the organic metaphor stops further inquiry. 6.3.2  Agonistic Metaphors: Religions as Armies or Corporations We also find agonistic metaphors employed in the representation of religions. Our example is The Buddhist Tradition in India, China, Japan (de Bary 1969). Although de Bary employs several different metaphors to describe Buddhism in Japan, the metaphors of competition and conflict are noteworthy. For example, “Native Shinto, with neither written scriptures nor a formulated theology, could offer resistance only from its entrenched position in the daily lives of people, but could not compete with Buddhism on its own terms” (de Bary 1969: 255). Paul Fussell has pointed out that as a metaphor “entrenchment” derives from the experiences of tens of thousands of men in the European theater of the First World War, experiences that entered into modern literary use, and then into common discourse (Fussell 1975: 36–74). As in the commodified metaphors of late capitalist imagery of consumption discussed below, religions are reduced to alternative forms of a fundamentally unitary category.78 The terms “resistance” and “compete” also portray religions as massive, semi-autonomous entities opposed to one another, like armies or corporations. Similarly agonistic metaphors are evident in describing the history of Buddhism more generally: “As the first world religion, it had marched triumphantly to the east and west” (de Bary 1969: 256). 6.3.3  C  onsumerist Metaphors: Spirituality and the Consumption of Buddhism One trend of modern popular religious culture has been to distinguish between being spiritual and being religious. In the United States, this distinction goes back at least into the nineteenth century, though then the dichotomy was expressed as “religious” and “churched.” The polarity is, however, fundamentally the same— institution versus individual, doctrine versus experience, salvation versus

would no doubt surprise countless Chinese Buddhists. Even though dating from the 1960s, Suzuki is here echoing the colonialist rhetoric of the Japanese Imperialist justifications for the invasion of China. 78  Striking, also, is the echo of Frost in the emphasis on scripture, to which is now added an intellectualist emphasis “formulated theology,” as if not having “a formulated theology” was a weakness in this contest between Buddhism and Shintō.

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progressing on the path to full self-realization. Simultaneously, an emphasis on the authority of individual selection enforces a consumerist conception of religion. Comparative religion’s historical origins lay in the confrontation with religious pluralism (Sharpe 1986). It differs from a theological response in that it gives equal validity to all religions—a metatheoretical “religious relativity” directly equivalent to anthropology’s metatheoretical cultural relativity (Kuper 1999: 58). Although comparison necessarily entails consideration of both similarities and differences, it is apparent similarities between religions that have done the most to motivate the academic study of religion. One way to address the question of apparent similarities between religions is by “religious needs” theory, that is, any approach that assumes that certain needs are both identifiably religious and universal to all humans.79 Usually religious needs theory is deployed uncritically. For example, considering the difficulty of determining the nature of “The Japanese Transformation of Buddhism,” Royall Tyler points out that Buddhism was already a thousand years old and had spread throughout Asia by the time it reached Japan. Since Buddhism “had lived long and travelled far, it had learned to address the varied religious needs of whole peoples: for example, the need for answers to ultimate questions, the need for appealing objects of faith, and the need for protection from misfortune” (Tyler 1999: 156).80 The theory that there is a universal set of religious needs is, however, a petitio principii fallacy. The circularity involves religion being understood as a matter of religious needs, and, at the same time, some needs are defined as religious. As a consequence, then the two concepts simply refer to one another.81 Similarly circular is Tyler’s claim that “Japanization” is one instance of an unproblematically universal phenomenon. Like other peoples absorbed in an originally foreign religion, the Japanese naturally incorporated Buddhism into their own world. Japanization in this sense corresponds to the process which, elsewhere, made a pilgrimage center out of Le Puy or Santiago de Compostola, or set a painted nativity scene in a medieval French landscape. That is to say, its motive is universal, although its precise forms depend inevitably on accidents of history and geography. (Tyler 1999: 157)

To “naturalize” the process of cultural adaptation, unfortunately, explains nothing. Rather, it marginalizes instances of difference, such as colonial situations in which there is active resistance to adaptation. The concept of being “absorbed in an originally foreign religion” is itself ill-formed. Consider, for instance, Mexican Catholicism, including the cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Were the Spanish in colonial Mexico, a minority, absorbed into an originally foreign religion, or were the majority of the population, non-Spanish Aztecs, Toltecs, and so on, somehow absorbed into the originally foreign religion of Catholicism? That it is, in fact,  It is also important to note that this is a distinctly consumerist conception of religion as something that can be adapted to meet the demands of new markets. 80  Note that this is a fallacy of composition: individual persons have needs, “whole peoples” do not. 81  It also participates in the notion that religion is sui generis, and that therefore there are a distinct category of needs that are uniquely religious in character. 79

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difficult to formulate these questions coherently indicates that the concept of “absorption” is not explanatory. The concept of universal religious needs is sometimes deployed in support of Perennialist claims that there is a single, universal spiritual quest behind the merely apparent plurality, a view often expressed in the slogan attributed to Ananda Coomaraswamy, “many paths, one mountain.” Perennialism is itself one strategy for dealing with the “problem” of religious plurality, and as suggested by Tyler above, postulates a universal spirituality that is locally differentiated. Similarly Ewert Cousins, general editor for the series “World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest,” takes it for granted (either as an article of faith, or of intellectual imperialism) that all religions have some corollary to the notion of spirituality, one that is close enough that it can be usefully subsumed under this general category. Cousins tells readers of the series, including the two volumes on “Buddhist Spirituality,” that in planning the project “no attempt was made to arrive at a common definition of spirituality that would be accepted by all in precisely the same way” (Cousins 1999: xii). It appears, however, that despite recognizing the difficulties of reaching common assent, there was no reflection on the effect of employing (adopting, imposing) a category that is itself so deeply embedded in the contemporary religious culture of the West, perhaps so deeply embedded as to appear unproblematic, universal. Much less does there seem to have been any reflection on how deploying such a category is itself socially constructive of the very thing one claims to exist universally. The very existence of “an encyclopedic history of the religious quest” suggests that there is something about which an encyclopedic history can be written.82 Part of the universalizing discourse evidenced in the rhetoric of spirituality is the displacement of agency, as when Cousins says that “It was left to each tradition to clarify its own understanding of” what the term spirituality in general intended (Cousins 1999: xii). The displacement of agency onto an abstraction, here “each tradition,” further conceals the constructed character of the category. Simultaneously, by cloaking the agency of actual authors, the mantle of the authority of tradition is gained for the work as a whole. This sleight of hand by which “the tradition” is made the agent for defining spirituality for Buddhism, a definition which then implicitly becomes “traditional,” that it is “what the tradition says,” only works if one takes the wizard’s advice and ignores the little man behind the curtain—the individual contributors. Otherwise, it is simply a Sartrean act of “bad faith.” In its present form “spirituality” is both informed by and reinforces consumerist culture. The locus of authority is the individual who selects what they want from a marketplace of spiritualities. One does not submit to the authority of a tradition— the imagery of religio as that which binds together, of yoga as a yoke that constrains  When abstractions, that is social constructs, become themselves the object of study, reification seems to follow. Thus, Hegelian notions of history led Otto to hypostatize a unitary Spirit as the object of the history of religion—“There must be an ‘it’ which is the subject of the process of becoming, and this ‘it’ is that which gives the process of becoming identity, rather than being ‘mere aggregation’” (Murphy 2007: 11).

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one to actions consistent with a certain view of the workings of karma, or of religious practice as discipline, are foreign to this emphasis on the individual as the one who selects and arranges their selections for display. Most important of these selections are experiences, the perfect consumer item, for it is infinitely reproducible and infinitely disposable: being consumed immediately, it leaves only memory and desire.

6.4  A  Cognitive Argument Against Constructivism in Comparative Religion Attempts to reject constructivist interpretations of religion in favor of some universal foundation for religion are not limited to comparative philosophy. The universal characteristics of the human mind, as revealed by cognitive science, would seem to offer such a solid foundation, one not socially constructed. In arguing for a cognitive theory of religion defined as belief in gods, Stewart Guthrie confronts the possible objection that since the concept of religion is a cultural product, resulting from the history of western thought, it cannot be applied outside that domain. He calls this the “ethnocentrism objection.”83 He responds by claiming that although “‘religion’ is a Western folk term….the real question is whether a given term is theoretically coherent enough for cross-cultural travel” (Guthrie 2001: 96). The same argument can be made mutatis mutandis for “philosophy.” Guthrie’s argument that categories such as religion may be applied cross-­ culturally seems to hinge on the distinction he draws between folk terms and theorized terms. He appears to believe, and his argument depends on the truth of this belief, that theorized terms are free from the kinds of cultural entanglements that make folk terms problematic. Despite Guthrie’s optimism, cultural entanglements, or conceptual entailments, will always reassert themselves. No matter how carefully theorized, once put into use, terms will once again gather around themselves the cultural presumptions that are the source of distortion when used cross-culturally. In addition to the difficulties of attempting to fence in a portion of the semantic range of a term, connotations and metaphoric entailments will break down those fences. I believe that the unavoidable entailment of presumptions is a more important problem than is a concept’s being “culture-bound.” It is (almost trivially) true that any stipulative definition such as Guthrie’s “religion” equals “belief in gods” would be “theoretically coherent enough” to be applied cross-culturally. A stipulative approach such as this would, however, seem to almost inevitably generate unfalsifiable claims. Guthrie himself, for example, dismisses what he calls “philosophical Buddhism” as simply irrelevant. That is, claims that Buddhism is a non-theistic religious tradition, and therefore constitutes a counter-example to his universal 83

 Unfortunately, Guthrie does not adequately define the nature of the objection itself.

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claim, are simply rejected—what he calls philosophic Buddhism does not fit his own stipulative definition, therefore it is not relevant to his argument. Guthrie’s own exposition provides an exemplary instance of the problems inherent in attempting to stipulatively define away issues of cultural entailments. After asserting that definition of religion as belief in gods is “not incurably culture-­ bound,” he then goes on to say that this position still is commonsense for most Westerners. For instance, Gargani recently asked, “How can one speak of religion without somehow committing oneself to some thesis regarding the existence of God?” (Gargani 1998: 112; quoted in Guthrie 2001: 96)

We first note the dubious value of citing as supporting evidence what is “common sense for most Westerners.” That something may be common sense for most Westerners points exactly to the culture-bound character of such ideas. Indeed, it seems particularly inapt to cite the common sense of most Westerners in support of an argument that carefully theorizing concepts frees them from cultural bindings. Second, the problem of conceptual entailment is evidenced here by the shift from the plural and lower-case “gods” to the singular and upper-case “God.” There is certainly an important difference between the plurality of competing gods we find in either the Iliad or the Ramayana and the singular, all-powerful creator deity of modern western Christian culture. Here we see how easily, despite Guthrie’s attempt to theorize the term religion so as to apply it cross-culturally, its conceptual entailments bring in an important factor that is not part of the definition, specifically the sleight of hand by which “belief in God” is switched for “belief in gods.” While Guthrie and others might argue that “it’s close enough,” in a society in which one of the grounds upon which the superiority of Christianity is asserted is that it is monotheistic, the difference carries important cultural baggage.

7  Concluding Comments The decision to understand the Buddhisms of Japan as one thing or another, as either philosophy or religion, necessarily entails limiting attention to some particular aspects in order to reveal others. In another context Jeffrey Kripal has said, “Any focus that provides otherwise unavailable insights also necessarily fades or blurs other important aspects” (Kripal 2007: 7). While such focus is of use in developing new knowledge, the conceptual frameworks of either rubric entail certain dangers. Overdetermined interpretations is one danger of such partial revelations. As seen above, because one interpretation (kōan as conceptual paradox) matches the expectations inherent to the framework (neo-Platonic strategy), it comes to be considered the meaning and not simply one interpretation among others. The issues raised by comparative philosophy are not ones that can be successfully addressed within the scope of philosophy2 itself, which has been widely accepted as the defining framework for comparative philosophy. As a defining framework, philosophic positions or issues rooted in the Western philosophical

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t­radition lend themselves either to a colonialist exploitation of resources from Buddhism, without consideration of the Buddhist framework itself or to a refusal to acknowledge the formative role of that framework, its context. Concepts are treated as if they exist autonomously, as if being elemental they could be examined and compared without consideration of their context of origin. The reductionism of this approach makes it similar to chemistry, which when examining copper does not concern itself with whether it came from New Mexico or Poland. Concepts, however, do not exist as isolates, that is, as context-free, self-contained elemental units of thought; they are, in this way, distinct from natural kinds whose referent is something in the objective world. Rather, they are “social kinds,” that is, part of a web of meaning constructed by living humans engaged in the concerns of life (see Millikan 2005).84 The defense against constructivism seems to often reflect an essentialized, dehistoricized, and decontextualized conceptualization of Buddhist praxis. These issues are metaphilosophic in nature—one cannot launch the ship of comparative philosophy as long as it is contained within the bottle of philosophy2. The self-­ referential circularity of the discourse of comparative philosophy as philosophy2 will only continue to be a source of failure, assuming its goal is understanding the thought of the other. It requires some force from outside philosophy to get that ship out of the bottle. While the social construction of conceptual systems and their consequent status as culturally located may look like the hammer of relativism to some, constructivism may be a way to take down the rigging and slip the ship out unharmed.85 Our examination of the study of the Buddhisms of Japan within comparative religions reveals that preconceived principles can make it invisible.86 The “authority of origins” has given preference to Pāli Buddhism. Commodification entails the selection and organization of a discrete set of religions as interchangeable alternatives, and often the Buddhisms of Japan are not part of the offerings. Automatically attributing authority to an insider has privileged certain interpretations over others, not infrequently creating historically distorted representations. Suppression of deviance from the expected reinforces this distortion, as does the displacement of agency, both of which create the aura of inevitability around what are individual decisions, actions, and conceptions. Rhetorically powerful metaphors—organic, agonistic, and consumerist—further structure representations, superficially appearing to be explanations, while entailing understandings that may be unwarranted. Attempts to ground religion in putatively universal aspects of cognition are

 Similarly, Wang locates incommensurability not in the terms employed in different languages, but rather in the sentences, which he identifies as bearing “factual meanings and truth-value status,” employed within a community with its own presuppositions (Wang 2007: 11). 85  It is worth noting in this regard that Karl Mannheim, considered to be a founding figure of the constructivist perspective, defined the sociology of knowledge specifically in opposition to relativism (Mannheim 1936: 264). 86  Comparative philosophy, adopting the notion that India and China are primary, also at times makes Japan invisible (see Baird and Heimbeck 2006). 84

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t­hemselves susceptible to becoming yet another vehicle for covertly universalizing Western cultural preconceptions. The social constructivist argument regarding the categories of both comparative philosophy and comparative religion at the basis of this critique does not depend upon socio-cultural systems being hermetically sealed from one another, that is, on an absolute relativism or a total incommensurability. It is based on an awareness that there are different kinds of concepts. Some may be easily translatable because they point to mutually discernible objects of one kind or another. Other concepts, however, are not easily translated, for the very reason that they are socially constructed. Their meaning is dependent upon a network of associations, which may seem entirely natural and unproblematic to those located within its culture, since adaptation to social realities is a process that begins with preverbal experiences in childhood. Ian Glynn notes that, “Intelligible conversation requires that conventions be shared between those conversing; it does not require that those conventions be based on fact or on correct interpretations of fact. Provided that we are confused in the same way, our conversation is unlikely to draw attention to our confusion” (Glynn 1999: 3). The shared conventions of comparative philosophy and of comparative religion create a variety of distortions in the study of the Buddhisms of Japan. If the project is understanding what the Buddhists of Japan think, feel, do, then our attention is better shifted away from the concerns and presumptions of Western academic projects and placed on what is actually found in the context—both Buddhist and Japanese—of the Buddhisms of Japan.

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Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Largen, Kristin Johnston. 2009. What Christians Can Learn from Buddhism: Rethinking Salvation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Lloyd, G.E.R. 1990. Demystifying Mentalities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Löwy, Michael, and Robert Sayre. 2001. Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity. Trans. Catherine Porter. Durham: Duke University Press. Mannheim, Karl. 1936. Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Harcourt Brace. Maraldo, John. 1995. Tradition, Textuality, and the Trans-lation of Philosophy: The Case of Japan. In Japan in Traditional and Postmodern Perspectives, ed. Charles Wei-hsun Fu and Steven Heine, 225–244. Albany: State University of New York Press. Masson-Oursel, Paul. 1951. True Philosophy Is Comparative Philosophy. Philosophy East and West 1 (1): 6–9. Masuzawa, Tomoko. 2005. The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Matsuo, Kenji. 1997. What Is Kamakura New Buddhism? Official Monks and Reclusive Monks. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 24 (1–2): 179–189. McCarthy, E. Doyle. 1996. Knowledge as Culture: The New Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge. Millikan, Ruth Garrett. 2005. Language: A Biological Model. Oxford: Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press. Morrell, Robert E. 1987. Early Kamakura Buddhism: A Minority Report. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press. Murphy, Tim. 2007. Religionswissenschaft as Colonialist Discourse: The Case of Rudolf Otto. Temenos 43 (1): 7–27. Neville, Robert Cummings. 2001a. The Human Condition: A Volume in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 2001b. Religious Truth: A Volume in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———, ed. 2001c. Ultimate Realities: A Volume in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project. Albany: State University of New York Press. Neville, Robert Cummings, and Wesley J.  Wildman. 2001. On Comparing Religious Ideas. In Ultimate Realities: A Volume in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project, ed. Robert Cummings Neville, 187–210. Albany: State University of New York Press. Nishijima, Gudo Wafu, and Chodo Cross. 2007. Translator’s Note, to the Genjō-kōan chapter of Eihei Dōgen. Shōbōgenzō: The True Dharma-Eye Treasury, 4 vols., 1: 27. Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research. Nyima, Chokyi Thuken. 2009. The Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems: A Tibetan Study of Asian Religious Thought. Trans. Roger Jackson. Boston: Wisdom Publications. Parlett, Sir Harold. 1969. In Piam Memoriam. In Japanese Buddhism, ed. G.B. Sansom, vii–xxxiv. Reprint. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Payne, Richard K., ed. 1998. Re-visioning “Kamakura” Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ———. 2008. Traditionalist Representations of Buddhism. Pacific World: Journal of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, third series 10: 177–223. ———. 2009. How Not to Talk About Pure Land Buddhism: A Critique of Huston Smith’s (Mis-) Representations. In Path of No Path: Essays in Honor of Roger Corless, Contemporary Issues in Buddhist Studies Series, ed. Richard K.  Payne, 147–172. Berkeley: Institute of Buddhist Studies. Pinkard, Terry. 2002. German Philosophy, 1760–1860: The Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Porcu, Elisabetta. 2008. Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture. Leiden: Brill.

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Pregadio, Fabrizio. 2006. Great Clarity: Daoism and Alchemy in Early Medieval China. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Quine, W.V. 1969. Natural Kinds. In Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, 114–138. New York: Columbia University Press. Riceour, Paul. 1977. The Rule of Metaphor: Multidisciplinary Studies in the Creation of Meaning in Language. Trans. Robert Czerny. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Richards, Robert J. 2002. The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Robinet, Isabelle. 1997. Taoism: Growth of a Religion. Trans. Phyllis Brooks. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ronkin, Noa. 2005. Early Buddhist Metaphysics: The Making of a Philosophic Tradition. London: Routledge Curzon. Rosemont, Henry, Jr. 1988. Against Relativism. In Interpreting Across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative Philosophy, ed. Gerald James Larson and Eliot Deutsch, 36–70. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Scharfstein, Ben-Ami. 1988. The Contextual Fallacy. In Interpreting Across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative Philosophy, ed. Gerald James Larson and Eliot Deutsch, 84–97. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1998. A Comparative History of World Philosophy: From the Upanishads to Kant. Albany: State University of New York Press. Sharma, Arvind, ed. 1993. Our Religions. New York: Harper and Collins. Sharpe, Eric. 1986. Comparative Religion: A History. 2nd ed. London: Duckworth. Slingerland, Edward. 2008. What Science Offers the Humanities: Integrating Body and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Noah. 2014. Austrian Economists, 9/11 Truthers and Brain Worms. http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-07-02/austrian-economists-9-11-truthers-and-brain-worms. Smith, Huston, and Henry Rosemont Jr. 2005. The Universal Grammar of Religion, with a Response by Henry Rosemont Jr. Religion East & West 5: 1–10. Southard, Naomi, and Richard K. Payne. 1998. Teaching the Introduction to Religious Studies: Religious Pluralism in a Post-Colonial World. Teaching Theology and Religion 1 (1): 51–57. Sperber, Dan. 1975. Rethinking Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stiver, Dan. 1996. The Philosophy of Religious Language: Sign, Symbol, and Story. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Strickmann, Michel. 1981. Le Taoïsme du Mao Chan: Chroniqe d’une revelation. Paris: Institut des hautes Études. Suzuki, Daisetsu Teitarō. 1967. An Interpretation of Zen Experience. In The Japanese Mind: Essentials of Japanese Philosophy and Culture, ed. Charles A.  Moore, 122–142. Honolulu: East–West Center Press/University of Hawaii Press. Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Tyler, Royall. 1999. The Japanese Transformation of Buddhism. In Buddhist Spirituality: Later China, Korea, Japan and the Modern World, World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest, ed. Takeuchi Yoshinori, vol. 9, 156–163. New York: Crossroad. Wainwright, William J. 2005. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wang, Xinli. 2007. Incommensurability and Cross-Language Communication. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. Wardy, Robert. 2000. Aristotle in China: Language, Categories and Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wierzbicka, Anna. 2006. English: Meaning and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Yandell, Keith E. 1999. Philosophy of Religion: A Contemporary Introduction. London: Routledge. Yusa, Michiko. 1997. Contemporary Buddhist Philosophy. In A Companion to World Philosophies, ed. Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe, 564–572. Malden: Blackwell. Zangpo, Ngawang. 2002. Guru Rinpoché: His Life and Times. Ithaca/New York: Snow Lion Publications.

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Richard K. Payne is Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies at the Institute of Buddhist Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. He received his PhD from the Graduate Theological Union. He specializes in Japanese tantric Buddhism, particularly its ritual practices, and is co-editor of Homa Variations. He also serves as Senior Editor of the Institute’s annual journal, Pacific World, and is chair of the Editorial Committee of the Pure Land Buddhist Studies Series published by the University of Hawaii Press. His numerous publications include Language in the Buddhist Tantra of Japan: The Indic Roots of Mantra and Language Conducive to Awakening: Categories of Language Use in East Asian Buddhism: with Particular Attention to the Vajrayāna Tradition. Dr. Payne is a member of the American Academy of Religion, International Association of Buddhist Studies, and an officer of both the North American District of the International Association of Shin Buddhist Studies, and the Society for Tantric Studies.

Chapter 2

The “Philosophy” in Japanese Buddhist Philosophy John C. Maraldo

1  Putting “Japanese Buddhist Philosophy” in Context The chapters in this book focus on a phenomenon that is named by a conjunction of three terms: Japanese, Buddhist, philosophy. Each of these terms implies a distinction demarcating one domain of inquiry from other related domains: Japanese as distinct from Chinese, Korean, or Indian; Buddhist as distinct from Confucian or Shintō; and philosophy as distinct from religion or psychology. Each of these terms, the three in question as well as their contrasts, reflects a distinctly modern category that abstracts from historical realities that blur the distinctions. Historically, Buddhist teachers in Japan commonly linked their lineages with those in China and India instead of differentiating their teachings from those in other lands. The practices and teachings of what we call Confucianism and Shintō often mingled with Buddhism in Japan, rather than consistently displaying areas of sharp contrast. And, as a category, “philosophy” is a modern western import applied retrospectively to pre-modern Japanese traditions. Even when Japanese scholars differentiated Buddhism from Confucianism and Shintō, their terms of reference were different from ours, and their own practices were often eclectic. What we call Confucianism went by a variety of names, usually indicating schools of some master, such as “the Learning of Zhu Xi”—a school that was occasionally represented by scholars like SATŌ Naokata 佐藤直方 (1650– 1719), who endorsed the Buddhist-inspired practice of quiet sitting, or like ISHIDA Baigan 石田梅岩 (1685–1744), whose “learning of the mind” (J. shingaku 心学) incorporated Zen Buddhist teachings. Shintō 神道, a category literally meaning the “way of the kami or gods” (J. kami no michi 神のみち), retrospectively consolidated several disparate practices, beliefs, and iconographies believed to originate in Japan but which often intermingled with foreign Buddhist teachings. SUZUKI J. C. Maraldo (*) University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL, USA © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_2

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Shōsan 鈴木正三 (1579–1655) is an example of a Zen monk who followed a tradition of incorporating Daoist and Confucian elements into Buddhism and who accepted the idea that Shintō deities were manifestations of the Buddha. A common term for what we render collectively as “Buddhism” was “the way of the Buddha,” a name that likewise invoked the Chinese notion of “way” (C. dao 道) that figured in all three of these differentiated traditions. The recent name and concept of Buddhism as a more or less coherent system of ideas and practices is an invention of modern Europeans that influenced Japanese conceptions as well. Japan’s re-­ encounter with the European West in the mid-nineteenth century encouraged the amalgamation of Japanese traditions into the “teachings” (J. oshie 教) of “Buddhism” (J.  bukkyō 仏教) and “Confucianism” (J.  jukyō 儒教) and the consolidation of a reputedly indigenous Shintō. Pure “Japanese Buddhism” exists only in abstraction from a creative pool of syncretic teachings and practices. In addition to the blur between Japanese intellectual traditions, Japanese scholars in the Meiji Period (1868–1912) faced confusion over the meaning of foreign concepts. Japan’s re-encounter with the European West introduced not only western categories like Buddhism but concepts like philosophy and religion as well. Just what these terms referred to and whether they applied to Japan’s traditions were questions that intellectuals vigorously debated. Japanese translations of philosophy and religion, and their Indo-European cognates, became more or less settled as tetsugaku 哲学 and shūkyō 宗教  respectively, and the question arose whether Buddhism was philosophy or religion, or somehow both at once. One Buddhist modernizer, INOUE Enryō 井上圓了 (1858–1919) considered this question at length and proposed that Buddhism was an intersection of philosophy and religion. He and other Buddhist thinkers associated with the Japanese “enlightenment” (J. keimō 啓蒙) in the Meiji era sought to show that Buddhism was a completely rational system of thought, commensurate with western philosophy and science. Fifty years later, D. T. Suzuki (Suzuki Daisetsu 鈴木大拙) gave lectures in the United States claiming that Buddhism, and Zen in particular, transcended rational thought. Between these two extremes lay a variety of positions, but all bore the mark of an encounter with western philosophy that changed Japanese Buddhist traditions.

2  The Philosophical Significance of Historical Debate The Meiji-era debates about Buddhism’s philosophical status teach us three things. First, traditions like “Japanese Buddhism” and “Shintō” are, at least in part, constructed retrospectively from a juncture in the present. Often reacting to early Meiji government suppression of Buddhist institutions, Japanese Buddhists in this era constructed identities that unified sects and traditions previously kept apart and that differentiated these from a block of other institutions and social practices. The single tradition we call Japanese Buddhism was born out of these reactions, then extended retrospectively into the past. Secondly, Meiji-era Japanese Buddhists

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perceived Buddhism as a single living tradition, not only in contrast to Confucianism and Shintō but also to the western traditions of philosophy and religion. Even where these Buddhist thinkers found an overlap between their own tradition and the newly introduced conception of “philosophy,” their arguments for a partial identity between the two assumed that the traditions and disciplines of the West were distinct from those in Japan. Perceived contrasts with the West also contributed to the construction of “Japanese Buddhism.” Third, Japanese Buddhism as a newly envisioned single tradition altered the conception of western philosophy. It is often said that philosophy cannot be practiced apart from its history, unlike physics or mathematics that can be practiced today without knowledge of their respective histories. When Meiji-era Buddhists encountered western philosophy and incorporated it into their thinking, they interrupted the history of that philosophical tradition and extended its boundaries. The incorporation of western philosophical terms, problems, and methods into Japanese Buddhist discourse meant that the ongoing history of western philosophy itself changed course—and not only from that point in time. When past Japanese Buddhist texts are re-interpreted philosophically, the philosophical tradition’s past in general is re-­ constructed. However, this tradition is not expanded simply by inserting texts into it that display familiar themes and arguments. In fact, philosophers today will most likely feel frustrated when trying to find explicit philosophical arguments and familiar lines of reasoning in Japanese Buddhist texts. Discovering philosophy in Japanese Buddhist traditions cannot be merely a matter of finding replicas of western philosophical arguments or styles of argumentation in old Buddhist texts. It must also be a matter of discovering challenges to traditional western philosophical assumptions and uncovering alternative ways to conceptualize the world. The “philosophy” in Japanese Buddhist philosophy is part of a living tradition, not a relic of the past. In light of this history of ideas, a book on “Japanese Buddhist Philosophy” should not simply take for granted that Japanese Buddhism is philosophical, that it counts as philosophy in some sense of the word. This chapter attempts to demonstrate one sense in which there is such a thing as “Japanese Buddhist philosophy.” It will not be particularly controversial to claim that Buddhists in Japan have practiced philosophy, even if not under that name, insofar as they engaged in critical self-­ reflection, the examination of meanings and classifications, and the justification of considered opinions. To look only for such perennial features of philosophy, however, will not reveal the specific contributions that Japanese Buddhists have to offer both to philosophy’s global history and to the practice of philosophizing today. Japanese Buddhist thought challenges commonplace assumptions in western philosophy and indicates alternative ways of thinking. To illustrate how it does so, this chapter selects two themes and a sample of philosophical methods and styles of argumentation. For the most part, the selection here is limited to examples from pre-­ modern times, before Japanese Buddhists had encountered western philosophy and began to present Buddhism in its terms.

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3  Two Philosophical Themes in Japanese Buddhism 3.1  Language, Reality, and Truth Language is commonly understood to be a means of communication. In this view, words signify meanings that we attach to things and states of affairs. It is precisely the difference between the signs, voiced or written words, on one hand, and the signified objects, on the other, that allows words to refer to things in their absence as well as in their presence. Moreover, words in the syntax of sentences can place things in new contexts and relationships not evident to sensory perception alone. There is, however, another subtle difference assumed to be crucial in the power of words to signify: the difference between the physical basis of words—their sounds when vocalized and their shapes when written—and the meanings detached from that basis. Meanings are taken to be independent of this physical substratum, so that they can float free of their enunciation or inscription. Several Japanese Buddhist thinkers challenge this common assumption by invoking language that is inseparable from its physical basis or, better said, its bodily presentation. They do so in three ways, which are best illustrated in the implicit theories of language by Kūkai, Dōgen, Shinran, and Nichiren. Kūkai 空海 (774–835), the founder of Shingon 眞言 or “Truth-Word” Buddhism in Japan, argued that properly intoning certain words better reveals the nature of the cosmos than does signifying things through ordinary speech and writing. Along with the practice of ritual gestures or mudras and of mandala-visualization, intoning mantras could make the true nature of the universe manifest rather than merely signify it. For Kūkai, ultimate truth consists not in a set of propositions about reality but, rather, in the manifestation of cosmic reality. This cosmic reality is not a static universe indifferent to human striving but itself is dynamic and interactive: its name is Dainichi 大日, the Japanese name for Mahāvairocana Buddha. The activity of Dainichi, referred to as its body, speech, and mind, does not so much point to reality as embody it. Humans gain access to hidden truth not by discovering facts about the universe and formulating propositions that conform to it but by conforming to it themselves: the practitioner’s intonations, gestures, and visualizations resonate with Dainichi’s body, speech, and mind which is their true source. By intoning mantras, practicing mudras, and visualizing mandalas, one does not so much employ a means to the goal of enlightenment as one returns to one’s source. Ultimate truth is ineffable only within conventional or exoteric language; in esoteric practice, it is accessible and personally realizable. Kūkai’s writings employ conventional language in argumentation but only as an expedient means to encourage esoteric practice. There are three points to notice in Kūkai’s implied theory of language. The first is that language has the power to manifest reality and not merely to describe it. In this respect, Kūkai’s proposal resembles the contemporary theory of language as world-disclosure, but it goes beyond that theory in one significant way: words have the power not only to manifest things but to actualize states of affairs, thus bringing them more fully into reality. Second, and even more fully realized, is the

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c­ ompassionate and all-inclusive nature of the universe. Language can transform, and when enunciated properly, it realizes the universe, which, in turn, transforms the practitioner who is inseparable from the universe, making the practitioner more compassionate and less discriminatory. Thirdly, it is preeminently the “esoteric” (J. mikkyō 密教) practice of language that exhibits these powers. Practitioners resonate with the speech, body, and mind of Dainichi, the quasi- personified form of the cosmos, when they vocalize mantras and create certain sound vibrations, form mudras and create certain hand movements, and envision the totality of interrelated things in prescribed mandalas. From a modern philosophical viewpoint, Kūkai’s implicit theory of language invites two objections. First, the mantras, mudras, and mandalas are restricted to a particular group of people, Shingon initiates, who engage in practices accessible to them alone; hence, the theory seems too exclusionary to serve as a general theory of language. Yet, in principle, the theory is no more exclusionary than the exact sciences, which presume that higher mathematics, accessible to relatively few well-­ trained individuals, best describes the nature of the universe. More serious is the objection that the theory offers no way of telling truth from falsity, as scientific experimentation can, for example, in tests independent of the consistency of mathematics. A theory of language that privileges manifestation and realization over reference and description seems to have no independent way of confirming what is said about reality. The general theory of language as world-disclosure answers this objection by pointing out that manifestation comes prior to measures of confirmation and consistency. Kūkai’s theory, in particular, challenges the assumption that language operates independently of reality and can thus either correspond and conform to it or not. Rather, for Kūkai, the sound vibrations of language are part of dynamic reality and can bring a state of affairs into being. Language manifests truth not by correctly representing reality but by fulfilling it, and this fulfillment requires that practitioners actualize in themselves the very nature of the cosmos. In Kūkai’s terms, insofar as the cosmos itself is the compassionate activity of Dainichi, the measure of truth in the practitioner’s language is an ethical measure of compassionate action. To be sure, in this view language is not a human tool or invention but the expressive manifestation of the universe itself. This view is echoed in Dōgen’s implicit theory of language. Contrary to the common opinion that the Zen tradition disparages language, Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253), the founder of the Sōtō 曹洞 School in Japan, held language in high regard. Yet, languages in the narrow sense of human linguistic systems, are but one means to manifest truth.1 The expression of truth also occurs when manifesting things just as they are, free of independent selfhood. For Dōgen, this expression has been “heard” by innumerable buddhas and patriarchs who themselves express a selfless way of being. Because they have heard it, they themselves are able to voice the truth, that is, the Buddha Dharma or Way. “All buddhas and patriarchs are able to enunciate the Way” (DZZ 1: 301), Dōgen proclaims at the opening of “Dōtoku” 道得 (literally, “enunciating the Way”), a chapter of his major  See his Shōbōgenzō 正法眼蔵 fascicle “Esoteric Words” (J. Mitsugo 密語) (Dōgen 2011).

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work, the Shōbōgenzō 正法眼蔵 (Repository of the Eye for the Truth). There is a deep resonance between the words and actions of the buddhas and the expression of phenomena just as they are. The words and expressive actions of those who have thoroughly experienced non-dual reality are themselves expressions of reality. However, it is not only enlightened human beings that can express or give voice to the truth. The “voice of valley streams” and the “forms of mountains” are the expression, the very “tongue” and “body,” of the Buddha” (DZZ 1: 215), Dōgen says in another chapter, the “Keisei sanshoku” 谿聲山色, quoting a poem by the Chinese master Changzong 常總 (1025–1091). Although the word translated as “voice” is a common metaphor for sounds made by things such as insects incapable of language in the narrow sense, Dōgen’s text suggests that the sounds of streams are voices precisely because they are heard proclaiming the truth. They too “voice the Way.” Dōgen’s text may be considered an example of the “preaching of non-sentient beings,” an idea familiar from the sayings of the Chinese master DONGSHAN Laingjie 洞山良介 (807–869) and traceable to the Chinese version of the Amitābha Sūtra of the Pure Land School. This allusion, however, is philosophically not the most interesting aspect of the text. The philosophically significant point in Dōgen’s text is that the voicing medium is inseparable from the content, from what is voiced or expressed. This is no longer a case of signs signifying something different from themselves. The voicing is the manifestation of the selfless way mountain streams; indeed, all phenomena, are, and such voicing differs from verbal expressions that merely represent things or refer to them. It is not entirely accurate to say that phenomena express themselves, as if coincidentally they can point back to themselves. Rather, Dōgen implies that their own enunciation necessarily belongs to their being and fulfills it. “As for the Buddha Way, it is impossible not to enunciate it” (DZZ 1: 36) Dōgen proclaims in the chapter called “Shinjingakudō” 身心學道 (“Body-Mind Studying the Way”). Dōgen’s term “dōtoku,” translated here as “enunciating,” “voicing,” or “expressing,” puns on the double meaning of dō 道, which carries both the verbal sense of saying and the nominal sense of the Way. Dōtoku can at times be translated as “the Way (J. dō 道) giving voice to itself.” “The Way” names both the way that buddhas and aspirants practice and the way things truly are; both human endeavor and reality realized. Thus, Dōgen presents a variation on the theme that language is an expression of the universe itself. Dōgen’s appreciation of language is also apparent in the way he writes. The double meanings, distortions of classical grammar, and echoes of Chinese Zen texts that pervade his writing are all ways of playing with conventional language. Linguistically, many of Dōgen’s own words seem to be metaphors, words referring to something that stands in for something else, voices for gurgling sounds, for example, or mountain streams for phenomena in general. From the vantage point of his implicit philosophy of language, however, such words may be heard as directly evoking a realization of the selfless way all things are. Dōgen’s own realization was evoked by hearing his teacher Rujing 如浄 (1162–1228) in China say “body and mind drop off” (J. shinjin datsuraku 身心脱落) (DZZ 1: 731).2 Dōgen recites these  For a discussion of the sources of this anecdote see Heine (1986); Kodera (1980: 58–68).

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words frequently in the chapters of the Shōbōgenzō, and it is likely that he meant them to evoke a realization in his listeners rather than to report a personal experience. His frequent allusions to Chinese Zen stories may be read or heard in the same light: not as reports of so-called enlightenment experiences occasioned, for example, by hearing the sound of bamboo being struck, but, rather, as evocations that could draw one’s full attention to “presencing the reality at hand” (J. genjōkōan 現 成公案) as he called it. Dōgen’s own words may be meant directly to manifest true reality rather than to represent it metaphorically. In this view, the sound of the bamboo is the voicing of the Way and not merely a phenomenon experienced by someone. The view that language is a form of expression of reality is also echoed in the thought of two other Buddhist reformers in the Kamakura era (1185–1333), Shinran and Nichiren. For the Pure Land thinker, Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1263), voicing Amida Buddha’s name, the nenbutsu 念仏, makes the power of Amida present to lift the believer into the Pure Land (J. jōdo 浄土), where the true nature of all reality is manifest. Yet, it is ultimately not the practitioner’s willful enunciation of the name that saves, but rather its spontaneous ascension from an “entrusting heart” (J. shinjin 信心). By first hearing the teachings, the practitioner is empowered to invoke the name and that, in turn, empowers this trusting faith (Blum 2011: 49). In a sense, when an individual invokes the name, it is invoked by Amida Buddha itself. We might say that, for Shinran, voicing Amida’s name allows one to hear Amida’s voice and open oneself to what is most real. Some contemporary scholars depict such descriptions as part of the imaginaire or reservoir of images that shape the way medieval Japanese Buddhism constructed reality. Ironically, however, the images invoked by the Buddhists at the time were often meant to transcend socially constructed and personally invented “realities,” just as the analysis by scholars today is itself meant to transcend any particular imaginaire. For Nichiren 日蓮 (1222–1282), reciting the very name of the Lotus of the Wondrous Dharma Sūtra (S. Saddharmapuṇḍarīka sūtra), “namu myōhō renge kyō” 南無妙法蓮華教, is as effective as reciting the whole text. The name is like a single drop of ocean water that contains water from all streams and rivers. The name concentrates all the doctrines contained in the sūtra, which itself is an expression of universal workings. Thus, to invoke the name is to allow the true nature, the buddha nature of all things, to become manifest. While Nichiren confines this power to invoking one particular sūtra, his latent view of language reflects a more general philosophy of language as a power beyond human intention to communicate with one another. The views represented here seem to challenge the Indian Buddhist theory known as “the doctrine of two truths” (S. paramārtha saṃvṛti satyau). The two-truths doctrine posits a distinction between conventional and inadequate linguistic formulations of truth, the so-called “provisional truth” (S. saṃvṛti satya) and an ultimately inexpressible, absolute truth, the “ultimate truth” (S. paramārtha satya). The ­philosophy of language represented in these Japanese Buddhist thinkers calls this distinction into question, insofar as they suggest that truth can be fully manifested and articulated—in Kūkai’s “truth-words,” in Dōgen’s general phenomena perceived

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selflessly by the awakened mind, and in the names invoked by Shinran and Nichiren. All of these phenomena are capable of perfectly expressing the truth, given that they are not human conventions. In these speakers’ view, absolute truth is not ineffable. In the chapter of the Shōbōgenzō called “Mitsugo” 密語 (“Esoteric Words”),3 Dōgen calls the view that a buddha’s verbalization falls short of the truth “unenlightened” and elaborates: “The buddhas and patriarchs, having completely penetrated their body-minds and having let them drop away, expound the dharma, do so verbally, and turn the dharma wheel. Many are those who see or hear them and who derive benefit from them” (Dōgen 2011: 160). Two contemporary criticisms of theoretical tendencies and language usage also seem relevant here. One criticism targets “logocentrism” as the tendency to assume that words have a necessary connection to the things they signify and can present them without remainder. If the mantras practiced by Kūkai, the name of Amida Buddha invoked by Shinran, and the title of the Lotus Sūtra recited by Nichiren are unique words that cannot be replaced by any other words and that themselves fully make a reality present, then the linguistic views of these Japanese Buddhist thinkers would seem to be logocentric. Yet logocentrism assumes a fundamental difference between word and its signification, and the critique of it merely takes this difference to be indeterminate. Kūkai, Shinran, and Nichiren, on the other hand, imply that the embodied practice of certain words converts this difference into a consonance between voiced word and vibrant reality. Such words do not signify but rather manifest a dynamic reality that is already incarnated in sounds as in all other phenomena. Kakuban 覚鑁 (1095–1143), a reformer who merged Shingon and Pure Land practices, asserted that since all words are mantras when one enters esoteric Shingon practice, “how much more so the word ‘Amida’” (Kakuban 2011: 79).4 He thus implies that this particular name epitomizes the activity of the “buddha-as-cosmos.” While Dōgen does not invoke particular words that incarnate reality, he explicitly states that all phenomena express the truth, a truth that human practitioners can realize within themselves. The implicit philosophy of language of these Buddhist thinkers subverts the difference assumed by both logocentrism and its critique. Another, closely related criticism targets “phonocentrism,” the tendency to assume that spoken language is natural or original and that written language is derivative. The emphasis on vocalization in these Japanese Buddhist thinkers would seem to indicate their phonocentrism, particularly when they recommend the voicing of certain sounds to manifest reality. Some of these thinkers also taught visual practices but ones that employ mandalas not based in conventional written language, thus privileging spoken language. Yet both phonocentrism and its critique posit a difference between spoken and written signs that the philosophy of these thinkers undercuts. The presumed difference lies between conventional human sounds and conventional written symbols, regardless of the priority of one over the other. Kūkai, Kakuban, Shinran, and Nichiren propose, to the contrary, that sacred mantras or  Dōgen wrote his “Esoteric Words” (DZZ 1: 392–396) in 1243.  Kakuban wrote the “Illuminating Secret Commentary on the five Cakras and the nine Syllables” in 1143. 3 4

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names are the expressions of a cosmic reality beyond human conventions. Their origin lies neither in conventional speech nor in writing. Humans who invoke these expressions resonate with an already expressive reality. Thus, when Dōgen proposes that all phenomena already express the truth that practitioners attain, he, too, disarms this criticism. One final contrast with contemporary philosophies of language helps clarify an alternative suggested by Japanese Buddhist thinkers. The recognition that speaking can be a form of doing has inspired a nuanced theory of speech-acts that Japanese Buddhist views echo. Some speech acts in particular perform, rather than describe, a state of affairs. For example, when I say “I promise,” my utterance enacts the intention known as promising something. The utterance itself actualizes rather than merely describes the state of affairs we call promising. “I promise” is a “performative utterance” (more technically, the performance of an “illocutionary act”). In these particular speech acts, the meaning or content is tied inseparably to the doing. Similarly, in the implicit philosophy of Japanese Buddhist language, the utterance of relevant mantras or names enacts, rather than merely describes, a state of affairs— in this case, the true nature of the universe and all its phenomena. The utterance, however, is not properly understood as a human act of invocation that calls reality into being, as if that reality were a play performed by human actors. Rather, the human utterance resonates with the utterance of the universe itself, personified in the forms of Dainichi or Amida, or spoken in the Lotus Sūtra. For Dōgen, the utterance echoed in the speech acts of all buddhas is originally that of all phenomena voicing their true nature. The notion that performative utterances are the work of cosmic buddhas or of the phenomenal universe itself contrasts with the assumption that willful human activity provides their only genesis. This contrast introduces a second theme that illustrates the philosophy in Japanese Buddhism.

3.2  The Nature of Buddhist Practice The idea that meaning is inseparable from doing is also evident in Japanese Buddhist notions of practice. These notions, in turn, suggest alternatives to commonly-held conceptions in the history of philosophy. One such conception is that practice is a means to an end that surpasses it. Another is that practice actualizes something that is merely potential. Japanese Buddhist thinkers questioned whether practice has only instrumental value—value as a means of achieving something else, either beyond the practice or different in kind from the practice. Some thinkers explicitly questioned whether practice depends upon one’s willful intentions. Other thinkers implicitly questioned the opposition between what is actual and what is merely potential, even if they did not employ the concepts of potentiality and actuality. The idea of “original enlightenment” (J.  hongaku 本覚) that defines much of Japanese Buddhist thought raises the question regarding the necessity of practice for liberation. It is tempting to interpret this idea in terms of potentiality. Harking back to a Chinese text known as the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana

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(C. Dashengqixinlun 大乘起信論), medieval Buddhist thinkers in the Tendai School proposed that, in some sense, all beings intrinsically or originally have buddha-­nature, the awakened state exemplified in a buddha. Some argued further that non-­sentient beings like plants and rocks have buddha-nature, just as do sentient beings with feeling or consciousness. Japanese Buddhists past and present frequently take buddha-nature to mean the “seed” of buddhahood, the potential for it, so that having buddha-nature means having the potential to become awakened. This side of the debate claimed that “original enlightenment” named a potential that could be actualized through practice and was thus distinguishable from “acquired enlightenment.” But some Japanese Buddhists went so far as to claim that all beings are already awakened just as they are; they are already buddha. In this case, the potential is already actualized. Yet another side of the debate interpreted the idea of original enlightenment differently: it argued that the very notion of buddhahood does not permit the admission of opposites such as those between ignorance and enlightenment, defilements and wisdom, saṃsāra and nirvāṇa, or the defiled world and the Pure Land. The mind of oneness gained in practice sees through such discriminations and dissolves them; it transforms reality. Buddha-nature itself is nonarising and non-perishing; and so, indeed, are all phenomena in their true nature, which is empty of self-subsistent being. Rather than thinking in terms of a potential that can be actualized, Buddhists thinkers with this view came to think in terms of an already completed reality that is manifested when it is recognized. Kūkai anticipated this later view when he argued for “attaining buddhahood in this very body” (J. sokushin jōbutsu 即身成仏). If one emphasizes “attaining buddhahood,” then Kūkai’s philosophy appears to support the idea that buddhahood is a potential that can be actualized through the practices of body, speech, and mind mentioned above. If one emphasizes “buddhahood in this very body,” however, then the reality of the “here and now” obviates any reference to another realm, another lifetime, another time in which buddhahood might be attained. Those who are awakened “in this very body” do not discard practice as a means no longer needed. Rather, their practical activity continues as a presentation of Dainichi’s own activity, its own body, speech, and action. The awakened one’s heart and mind are the same as the Buddha’s and participate in its expression. Dōgen’s interpretation adds yet another dimension to the notion of manifesting reality. In the chapter of the Shōbōgenzō entitled “Busshō” 佛性 (“Buddha-nature”), Dōgen reads the famous statement in the Nirvana Sūtra that “all beings have buddha-­ nature” as “all sentient beings, all existence, buddha-nature” (DZZ 1: 14). Dōgen sets “all sentient beings,” indeed “all of existence,” in apposition with “buddha-­ nature,” so that his restatement is frequently rendered as “all beings are buddha-­ nature.” Rather than understanding buddha-nature as the potential of all beings waiting to be actualized, Dōgen states that all phenomena, as they truly are, m ­ anifest selfless buddha-nature. We might take this statement merely to replace one opposition, between potential and actual, with another: between manifest and hidden. In that reading, what is hidden to ordinary eyes becomes evident to eyes opened by enlightenment, as if one removes a veil over one’s eyes. Several writings of Japanese Buddhists, however, suggest an important qualification to this interpretation.

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Metaphors of making visible what was previously hidden are indeed prevalent in Japanese Buddhist texts, but some writings suggest that the manifestation is the work of phenomena themselves, of reality itself, not of a human agent. Practice is an entrance to the dimension where phenomena show themselves as they are: selfless and interconnected, realizing reality. The paradox faced by Dōgen as a young monk introduces the question regarding the nature of practice that his writings later address. The life of the young monk was filled with the demands of numerous difficult and austere practices. However, as young Dōgen asked, if a person is already enlightened, as the doctrine of original enlightenment suggests, then why make efforts to practice at all? Restated in modern terms, why is the need for the means of practice to achieve the goal of enlightenment, when the goal is supposedly already attained? Dōgen’s awakening under the guidance of Rujing eventually gave him an answer. The answer was that Buddhist practice is not a means to an end at all, nor would it be right to say that practice actualizes a universal potential in human beings. Rather, practice manifests enlightenment and enlightenment enables practice.5 Practice-realization names a single activity for Dōgen, not two different stages. “Practice is beginningless; realization is endless” (DZZ 1: 737), Dōgen tells his disciples in the “Bendōwa” 弁道話 (“Negotiating the Way”). Indeed, Dōgen intimates that what Buddhists call “enlightenment” names the natural, dynamic state that describes the condition of all beings which is manifested in their way of being, their “practice.” Several chapters of the Shōbōgenzō use the words shugyō and gyō pertaining to human practice to also describe the natural activity of trees, grasses, mountains, and streams––all of which engage in practice as their natural way of being. He implies that there is nothing in its natural condition that is not practicing. Dōgen suggests that zazen 坐禅, “seated meditation,” epitomizes the natural state of human manifestation; zazen itself manifests truth. It is the practice in which humans naturally express the Way. In the “Dōtoku” chapter, Dōgen writes that zazen itself voices the Way, as an expression that is neither accessible “through someone else” nor through “one’s own power” (DZZ 1: 301). Here Dōgen’s notion of practice raises the question of the role of the will in practice. While it is evident that Dōgen undermines the idea that practice is a means to an end, his influence on the role of the will or intention in practice is less clear. For one thing, his language does not employ exact equivalents of concepts such as “will” and “intention.” However, he does find it necessary to exhort his disciples to practice; they should endeavor to be what they truly can be, to manifest their true, selfless nature. In addition, Dōgen suggests that a mind that willfully aims for something other than what is present becomes an obstruction to manifesting truth. The implication is that humans must endeavor to put themselves in a position where effort is obviated. For Dōgen, the practice of zazen embodies this position, wherein one lets go of willful intentions. This practice does not so much “gain” the mind of oneness as express it. Dōgen repeatedly says that practice is beyond human agency. 5  Dōgen famously coined the phrase “practice and realization are one” (DZZ 1: 737), which is commonly paraphrased as “the oneness of practice and realization” (J. shushō ichinyo 修證一如).

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The question of the role of will and intention is at the heart of Hōnen’s and Shinran’s Pure Land philosophies. To frame the question in terms of the well-known opposition between “other power” (J. tariki 他力) and “self-power” (J. jiriki 自力) does not do justice to the issue, insofar as those terms do not distinguish between the source of liberation and the motivation to seek liberation. Hōnen 法然 (1133–1212) wrote that “Self-power refers to seeking birth by means of efforts applied that come from within yourself. Other-power refers to relying only on the capacity of a buddha to effect spiritual transformation” (Hōnen 2011: 245).6 Both Hōnen and Shinran advocate “other power” to deflect the idea that one is liberated through one’s own efforts. Both reject the notion that practice is simply the means to the goal of liberation or rebirth in the Pure Land. Yet both also affirm the necessity to engage in practice. Hōnen proposes that one does not practice because one believes; rather, one enters the mind of faith by practicing. To practice the invocation of Amida’s name is to enact faith in the power of Amida Buddha’s vow to save all sentient beings. Shinran clarifies that in one’s practice the vow is actually being performed by Amida. Practice is performative and transformative of reality, rather than instrumental as a means to the goal of salvation. Concomitantly, authentic practice for Shinran cannot be an exercise of one’s will. Whatever the motivation, when one engages in practicing the nenbutsu and opens one’s heart to let the name be voiced, one at the same time lets go of all intentions to gain something. One disengages the will and lets the name be uttered through the power of Amida. The disengagement of the will is evident in thinkers associated with “self-power” as well, as we have seen in Dōgen’s case. The Zen master BANKEI Yōtaku 盤珪永琢 (1622–1693) similarly criticized willful attention even while he advocated the need to attend spontaneously to the “unborn mind,” an echo of the non-arising and non-perishing buddha-nature in the doctrine of original enlightenment. Zen master HAKUIN Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1685–1768) advocated single-minded kōan practice to see our true nature, the buddha-nature within us. This seeing, however, occurs in the self-manifestation of this nature and not by means of an ego-directed, willful act. All these Japanese thinkers challenge the assumption that Buddhist practice is a willful means to a desired goal.

4  Philosophical Methods in Japanese Buddhism 4.1  Practice as a Method of Investigation The theme of practice in Japanese Buddhism suggests one surprising method relevant to philosophical investigation. Many of the classical thinkers we have mentioned propose that practice itself is a way of investigating matters. The “one great 6  “The Summary of the Pure Land School” (J. Jōdoshū ryakushō 浄土宗略抄), the source of the excerpt translated as “The Philosophy of the Nenbutsu” in Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 242–244, was written in 1212.

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matter” (J. daiji 大事) of life and death names the most important matter to be investigated. Japanese Buddhists characterized the one great matter as the ultimate reason buddhas appear in the world. However, if one were simply to formulate this reason as a kind of final cause and as a state in which buddhas appear in the world to awaken all beings, thus liberating them from life and death, then the matter would remain a conceptual possibility removed from the real matter of life and death. Conceptual formulation does not embody and realize the reason. In the philosophy of many Japanese Buddhist thinkers, to understand this reason is actually to bring about liberation, and that occurs in practice. Many of these thinkers explicitly advocate Buddhist practice as the preeminent way to investigate the nature of the self that lives and dies and, thereby, to transform it. Dōgen frequently exhorts his disciples to enter into and “penetrate” (J. sankyū 参 究) a question or to enter into and “study” it (J. sangaku 参學) in zazen, sitting it through, and letting it resolve itself. He clarifies that this is a practice of “non-­ thinking” (J. hishriyō 非思量) that neither pursues discursive thought nor tries to avoid thought by not thinking. Contemporary teachers in Dōgen’s lineage speak of this practice as “letting go of thoughts” or as “bare attention” that does not attach to any object. The Japanese Rinzai master Daitō 大燈 (1282–1338) exhorted his monks to “penetrate and clarify the matter of the self” (J. kojikyūmei 己事究明) through kōan and zazen practice. More recently, NISHITANI Keiji 西谷啓治 (1900–1990) used this exhortation as a starting point to compare the Zen investigation of self with other types of investigation (Nishitani 1984). Zen investigation contrasts with subjective introspection and self-reflection, on the one hand, and with objective observation and experimentation on the other. Zen practice dissolves the difference between the investigating mind and the investigated matter. Although for Nishitani, the Zen investigation of self has parallels in the kinds of self-examination we find in Socrates (d. 399 B.C.E.), Augustine (354–430), and René Descartes (1596–1650), Zen practice disengages the willful thinking at work in these philosophers. The mode of (non-)thinking practiced in Zen is neither detached nor self-­ absorbed but is also far from any trance that escapes one’s everyday being in the world. Zen practice defines an alternative philosophical method.

4.2  Styles of Argumentation The philosophical methods implicit in many Japanese Buddhist thinkers are also evident in their broad-ranging argumentation styles. Arguments in this sense, are simply a verbal way of demonstrating a truth and are not confined to a series of statements that count as reasons leading to a conclusion. Several styles of argumentation are discernible in Japanese Buddhist texts, particularly when we contrast these styles with predominant modes of argument in other philosophical literature. First, where predominant modes of argument seek to affirm one position by dismissing others, one prevalent style of Japanese Buddhist argumentation asserted the superiority of a view by showing how it can accommodate differing positions.

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The more inclusive, the better the view, because less accommodating views are considered partial—similar to the manner in which Albert Einstein’s (1879–1955) general theory of relativity supersedes both his special theory and Newton’s theory of gravitation. Some thinkers like Kūkai arranged the differing views through hierarchical levels of understanding, with Shingon’s esoteric level as the most comprehensive. Others simply forged a higher unity, as did Kakuban, who showed how the name Amida worked as an esoteric mantra and who thus merged Shingon and Pure Land Buddhist practices. Thinkers in the Kamakura era (1192–1333), on the other hand, more often promoted a single practice—zazen in Dōgen’s case and the nenbutsu in Shinran’s case—or a single scripture, such as the Lotus Sūtra for Nichiren. These thinkers vied with the historically predominant, all-embracing Tendai 天台 宗 and Shingon schools, and wrote in a milieu that proclaimed the end of the Dharma and impossibility of reaching enlightenment. Their promotion of a single practice that would ensure liberation challenged the Buddhist establishment and the skepticism about the efficacy of practice. While such circumstances help explain the historical reasons for their teaching, the overt reasoning of these thinkers stated that the advocated single practice or scripture simply embodied the essence of the Buddha’s own practice or present activity. Their style of argumentation sought for and distilled from a large variety of available practices a sine qua non for liberation. Rather than argue to exclude other teachings as false, they advanced one practice as essential. A second, related contrast concerns the recognition of perspectives. The explicit use of perspectives is found in philosophical argumentation worldwide as a way to address contending positions. However, instead of arguments that seek to directly target objections to one’s reasons and defeat contending positions, perspectival arguments present positions by employing the visually based metaphor of viewpoint: how the matter in question looks from different angles. The goal may be to demonstrate the superiority of one viewpoint, to advance the relativity of all, or to reach a meta-perspective that is not relative. While less prevalent than other expedients, the use of perspectives in Japanese Buddhist argumentation is notable for its connection to practice and transformation. Kūkai, for example, presents the exoteric and the esoteric teachings of sūtras and Buddhist treatises as matters of perspective, and he even differentiates between various perspectives on the meaning of “esoteric.” His method seems predominantly hermeneutical, an exercise in interpreting texts, but this exercise alone does not give the final word. Kūkai’s search for deeper, esoteric textual teachings is meant to discover a set of practices that disclose cosmic truth. For Kūkai, these practices shift one’s perspective on Buddhist teachings and on the nature of reality. Dōgen’s use of perspectives seems more phenomenological, an exercise in describing the experience of taking up various viewpoints. The “Genjōkōan” chapter of his Shōbōgenzō is an exemplary study of perspectives but not a study for its own sake. The explicit recognition of differing perspectives on a particular state of affairs serves to open one to a central insight: the dharma is transmitted to one when one does not deliberately advance a position from the perspective of the self. Letting phenomena present themselves as they are manifests the

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truth, and this selfless allowance is what the practice of zazen teaches. The theme of letting phenomena first present themselves before one makes judgments is also central to European phenomenologists, but Dōgen’s method contrasts with classical phenomenology in a significant way: Dōgen urges a particular embodied practice meant to shift perspectives. A third contrast between predominant modes of argumentation in western philosophy and prevalent Japanese Buddhist styles concerns the aims of argument. Where predominant modes call for the intended audience to follow a line of reasoning by mentally making inferences, Japanese Buddhist teachers often call for readers or listeners to follow a pattern of behavior, a practice. Rather than inference, Japanese Buddhists use the injunction method to exhort and instruct followers, so that the aim is to get others to perform rather than simply think something. While this argumentation style is concrete and practical, aiming to persuade a particular audience by appealing to shared interests in a particular context, it has something in common with classical rhetorical discourse. However, it aims to introduce a state of affairs rather than convince others of its truth. Rather than a universal capacity for detached reasoning, an ability to engage a certain frame of mind is often the requisite in Buddhist exhortations. Shinran, for example, exhorts his followers to take up the committed frame of mind he calls shinjin, “the entrusting heart,” which opens the practitioner to the true nature of things. Bankei exhorts his followers to practice bare attention, the exercise of the “unborn mind,” literally, the “unborn Buddha mind” (J. fushō no busshin 不生の仏心), which will transform the reality of the practitioner. Dōgen calls for a decision to take up the physical and mental posture of zazen, in which true reality is displayed. In all these cases, one is called to move one’s mind as it were, rather than to take a justified stance toward a particular matter. Metaphorically speaking, moving one’s mind, or letting one’s mind be moved in the right direction, opens one’s eyes for the truth in a way that differs fundamentally from the discriminative reasoning required by the exercise of justification. A fourth contrast concerns the role of authority. An appeal to authority counts as a logical fallacy in most philosophical argumentation but seems to be a common feature of Japanese Buddhist discourse. Kūkai in one instance writes, “How can we know this? It is perfectly clear in the Sūtras and treatises; the evidence is abundant, as I will show subsequently…there is abundant evidence in the Sūtras and treatises to verify my assertions…” (Kūkai 2011: 53–4). In addition, Dōgen frequently cites textual descriptions of the activities of the buddhas, patriarchs, and other Zen teachers to justify the single practice of zazen and to demonstrate the truth. Yet we would misconstrue such references to other teachers and scriptures were we to understand them as substituting the words of others for one’s own verification. On an interpretive level, Kūkai wants practitioners to see that his esoteric reading of authoritative scriptures is possible but, even more, he wants his followers to put into practice the esoteric “wisdom of inner realization” that the texts display. Dōgen appeals to other words and teachings not as a substitute for his own authentication but to exemplify how one can verify or realize a matter experientially. Pointing to authoritative models is a common tactic in Buddhist arguments and a feature they share with Confucian discourse. This modeling reflects the penchant for practical, contextual rhetoric

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rather than abstract reasoning divorced from context. Argument by modeling assumes that the mind of those addressed is linked to the mind of authoritative predecessors, rather than promoting an addressee to reach an independent judgment.

5  Conclusion The topics selected for discussion in this chapter represent only a small portion of philosophical themes and methods treated by classical Japanese Buddhist thinkers, and the indication of alternatives to western philosophy is but one possible approach. Other chapters in this volume explore additional topics and ways in which Japanese Buddhists, both classical and contemporary, have contributed to philosophy as well as to Buddhist traditions. Their writings not only provide fascinating sources for reconstructing the history of world philosophy but they also offer resources for the ongoing global practice of philosophy.

Works Cited Abbreviations DZZ: Dōgen zenji zenshū 『道元禅師全集』 [Complete Works of Zen Master Dōgen]. 2 vols. Ed. Dōshū Ōkubo. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1969–1970.

Other Sources Blum, Mark L. 2011. Buddhist Traditions, Overview. In Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo, 43–50. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Dōgen. 2011. Esoteric Words. Trans. Thomas P. Kasulis. In Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo, 160–161. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Heine, Steven. 1986. Dōgen Casts Off ‘What’: An Analysis of Shinjin Datsuraku. The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 9 (1): 53–70. Hōnen. 2011. Philosophy of Nenbutsu. Trans. Mark L.  Blum. In Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. James W.  Heisig, Thomas P.  Kasulis, and John C.  Maraldo, 242–244. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Kakuban. 2011. The Illuminating Secret. Trans. Dale A.  Todaro. In Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo, 78–80. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Kodera, Takashi James. 1980. Dōgen’s Formative Years in China. Boulder: Prajna Press.

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Kūkai. 2011. Esoteric and Exoteric Teachings. Trans. David L. Gardiner. In Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo, 52–59. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Nishitani, Keiji. 1984. The Standpoint of Zen. Trans. John C.  Maraldo. The Eastern Buddhist 17(1): 1–26.

Sources Not Cited in the Text Abe, Ryūichi. 1999. The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse. New York: Columbia University Press. Bielefeldt, Carl. 1988. Dōgen’s Manuals of Zen Meditation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bloom, Alfred. 2007. The Essential Shinran: A Buddhist Path of True Entrusting. Bloomington: World Wisdom. Dōgen 道元. 1969. The Shōbōgenzō. Trans. Rev. Hubert Nearman, O.B.C. Mount Shasta: Shasta Abbey Press. Kasulis, Thomas P. 2018. Engaging Japanese Philosophy: A Short History. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Müller, Ralf. 2013. Dōgens Sprachdenken: Historische und Symboltheoretische Perspektiven. Freiburg: Verlag Karl Aber. Payne, Richard. 2006. Awakening and Language: Indic Theories of Language in the Background of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism. In Discourse and Ideology in Medieval Japanese Buddhism, ed. Richard Payne and Dan Leighton, 79–96. London: Routledge. Stone, Jacqueline. 1999. Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Waddell, Norman. 1994. The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Hakuin. Boston: Shambala. Yampolsky, Philip B. 1971. The Zen Master Hakuin: Selected Writings. New  York: Columbia University Press. John C.  Maraldo is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of North Florida. He earned a Dr.Phil. from the University of Munich with a dissertation on Der hermeneutische Zirkel: Untersuchungen zu Schleiermacher, Dilthey und Heidegger. and then spent several years in Japan studying Japanese philosophy and Zen Buddhism. He taught at Sophia University, Tokyo; Naropa University, Boulder Colorado; and the University of Southern Illinois, before going to Florida in 1980. In the interim he was a guest professor at the University of Kyoto and the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium, and in 2008–2009 held the Roche Chair in Interreligious Research at Nanzan University, Nagoya, Japan. His interests include comparative philosophy, phenomenology and hermeneutics, and Japanese philosophy in general; and more particularly the thought of Dōgen, Nishida, Nishitani, Kukai, and Watsuji; Buddhist notions of history and of practice, and the sense and significance of non-Western philosophy. In addition to articles on these topics, he has published a translation and study of Heidegger: The Piety of Thinking (with James G. Hart, 1976); Buddhism in the Modern World (co-edited with Heinrich Dumoulin, 1976); Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, & the Question of Nationalism (co-edited with James W. Heisig, 1995), and essays in the series Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy. He is the co-editor of Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook (with J.W. Heisig and T. P. Kasulis, 2011), and the author of Japanese Philosophy in the Making 1: Crossing Paths with Nishida, 2017.

Chapter 3

One Step Towards Buddhism as Philosophy Makio Takemura

1  Wisdom Called Buddhism1 When we first hear the word “Buddhism,” what kind of image enters the mind? Perhaps a temple, but is it a temple near your home, or the one you visited in Kyoto or Kamakura? In your image, the temple may possess a “Japanese” serenity with a sophisticated garden of many flowers and pine trees. You may sense therein the aesthetic world separate from secular society. There are often many tombstones behind the main building of a typical temple, and, aided by the smell of incense, you might feel that Buddhism is the religious equivalent of a funeral ceremony. Often referred to in Japan as “funeral Buddhism” (sōshiki bukkyō 葬式仏教), Buddhism is generally regarded in relation to the pacification of the dead. It is a great duty to comfort the bereaved by mourning them courteously. I myself hold such a perspective of Buddhism, revering it from the bottom of my heart.

Eiji Suhara is a Lecturer of the School of International Letters and Cultures, Arizona State University. He is interested in researching various topics in East Asian religion, philosophy, and cognitive science, and is currently devoted to revealing metaphorical expressions implicitly used in Zen kōan from the perspectives of phenomenology and embodied realism. His works have been published in the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy, Journal of Japanese Philosophy, and Philosophy East and West. 1  This chapter constitutes an  English translation of  the  conclusion to  TAKEMURA Makio’s Nyūmon: tetsugaku toshiteno bukkyō 入門––哲学としての仏教 [Introduction: Buddhism as  Philosophy] (Takemura 2009: 239–257). Reprinted with  the  kind permission of  Professor Makio Takemura and Kodansha Publisher.

Eiji Suhara (Arizona State University) translated this chapter from the Japanese. M. Takemura (*) Toyo University, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_3

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1.1  The Unique Way of “Wisdom” in Buddhism Considering that Buddhism deals with fundamental issues of human life such as existence, language, mind, nature, absoluteness, relation, and time, we can recognize that Buddhism obviously contains “philosophical” characteristics that are underscored by sophisticated logical arguments. Surprisingly, Buddhism embraces a cutting-edge philosophical insight that even Western philosophical traditions have not yet discovered or have only recently discovered. Buddhism, of course, is not superior to Western philosophy because it has realized such philosophical comprehension at an earlier time. However, recognizing Buddhist philosophy’s recent popularity in the West, we can at least suggest that Buddhist wisdom expounds a universal truth not limited to a specific time and place. “Philosophy” originally meant “to love” (Gr. philo) “wisdom” (Gr. sophia). If we love “wisdom,” we should respect the pursuit of all “wisdom” established by human beings found in the investigation of various types of “wisdom” around the world. With such an attitude, we should keep in mind that philosophy exists not only in the West but also in Eastern thought, including Buddhism. It has often been said that there has been no philosophical study in Japan, but Buddhist denominations such as Tendai and Shingon actively conducted systematic investigations of worldviews until the Kamakura era. Moreover, in Buddhism, “wisdom” is not limited to mere rationality but transcends it. Wisdom is not separable from the infinite intelligence emphasized in Buddhism, that is, from “enlightenment” (J. satori 悟り), or the “meditative mind” (J. zenjō 禅定). It is based on the source of life beyond the mind-body or subject-­ object distinctions. Buddhist logic therefore offers a unique viewpoint that overcomes the horizon limited by objective logic. I will try to explain this unique feature of wisdom found in Buddhism in the following paragraphs.

1.2  Truth Regarding Self and World Needless to say, I am not insisting that Buddhism is nothing but philosophy. Buddhism was originally a religion that focused on solving the issues of life and death. A religion with such a soteriological scheme can also respond to the human wish to be saved from the self deeply rooted in defilement. In such a religious inquiry, one may have a miraculous experience that realizes a deep faith, that is, self-awareness of both the helpless self and the transcendental existence that supports the self at the same time. One may also comprehend the unlimited openness of the self by overcoming dualistic forms of knowledge, observed through body-mind practice, while fully living here in this moment. Considering these notions, it is natural to say that Buddhism is neither mere philosophy nor learned knowledge. I, too, do not intend to insist that Buddhism is just a philosophy. It ought to be regarded a religion, and we will argue further that issues

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of morality or ethics also spring from the Buddhist standpoint. Buddhism does have a philosophical perspective that inquires into the truth regarding the self and the world from a logical perspective. In discussions of various topics such as existence, time, and language, it expresses profound wisdom. We need to seriously re-evaluate this precious philosophy of Buddhism in our current chaotic contemporary society.

1.3  The Problem of Overrating Rationality In order to confirm the significance of Buddhist thought in the context of modern society, let us survey the current situation of modernity. When we look at the history of modernity, the monistic cultural value systems of Christianity and Marxism have collapsed, and a plurality of thoughts and value systems has developed in their place. In other words, we have come face- to- face with the perspective of so-called post-modernism, insisting on the absence of absolutes. Science, once regarded as almighty, has accordingly also lost its absolute value. After all, scientific technique evokes various practical problems. We have come to recognize that there are many things we cannot understand on the basis of scientific knowledge characterized by reductionism and objective logic, in turn based on the dualistic distinction of subject and object. Consequently, we now realize that there can be no monistic value applicable to all human beings universally. On the other hand, we have also seen an economic and systematic globalism develop, a “market economy supremacism” (J. shijō keizai shijō shugi), based on the principle of competition. At the same time, due to the expansion of the gap between rich and poor nations, there is a need for establishing a pluralism that demands respect in regard to the uniqueness of each region. As globalism spreads, the greater is the pluralism required at the local level. People are beginning to feel the necessity of “co-existence” (J. kyōsei) with variety, while rejecting the hegemonic situation from both materialistic and mental perspectives. From these insights, we can understand modernity as a period of pluralism. By developing human rationality, we begin to advance a skeptical attitude in regard to the absolute monistic view that is presented by Christianity. The collapse of Marxism also tells us that history does not follow the principle of logic. The reason that science came to a dead end is because we have become overly dependent on rationality. After all, our over-reliance on human rationality caused the collapse of both spiritual and cultural monism. In the same way, the new value system of economic and systematic monism and the principle of competition are all based on individual atomism and utilitarianism, resulting in an over-reliance on human rationality without proper self-criticism. We can say that too much trust in rationality has caused a variety of social issues existing today. We are today witnessing the age of contradictions sprout from the age of modernity.

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1.4  The Environmental Crisis as the Problem of the Other Today we can confirm several concrete social issues that exist in the modern world. At an international level, we are facing environmental problems as well as economic distinctions existing between the South and the North. At a domestic level, we are faced with the problem of the gap between the rich and the poor, the roots of which can be found in the principle of competition. Many have been recently expressing concern with the issue of sustainability due to environmental issues. Because of global warming, as the international community pays close attention to the issue, countries are working on agreements to try and decrease carbon dioxide emissions. However, sustainability poses further problems; that of population, food, water, sanitation, safety, poverty, social conflict, and so forth. All of these problems pose serious issues that can harm the safety and sustainability of the entire planet. Even if environmental issues were to be dramatically corrected with scientific technology, the societal contradictions that exist on earth cannot be fundamentally corrected unless deep-rooted dichotomous relationships in human society (such as governor and governed, oppressor and oppressed, etc.) are completely extinguished. We cannot say that this is a healthy environment for our entire society if large numbers of the poor die while rich countries continue to monopolize their resources. It is always the powerless who are damaged when either natural or man-made disasters occur. As long as certain classes continue governing and exploiting other people and nature into the future, it will be difficult to maintain the sustainability of the earth along with a united, wholesome society. The issue of sustainability is concerned with the task of avoiding infringing upon the abundance of lives in future generations. We need greater awareness of our relationship with others whom we do not see on a daily basis, for the environmental issue is directly related to how we should treat others, not only in the future, but also in this society right now. Fortunately, in modern society, some people understand that following only individual desires without concern for others inevitably results in miserable consequences. In this context, we can begin to see a critical reflection towards the attitude that has been polluting and destroying the environment through the prioritization of human desire over nature. This line of thought has spearheaded a desperate protest against economic globalism founded upon the principle of competition and individualism. Nevertheless, in 2008 this economic supremacism collapsed when the American economy was overwhelmed by a financial crisis. Therefore, at the forefront of modernity, lies the task of solving the following issues: how to construct a new order in global society; how to fix the relationship with others; and how to release ourselves from over-reliance on rationality and objective logic.

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1.5  The Key to Change Because the mission to transform our attitude towards modernity is so critical and urgent, the realization of this transformation requires a more fundamental and deeper philosophical reflection. We would have to regain paramount insights into the essence of the self, as well as other ontological and epistemological issues, while digging into the source of society and the world. Only with such a deep philosophical attitude can we isolate the fundamental problem affecting the system of modern society, even if only from a theoretical standpoint. Again, the perspective of market economy supremacism based on individualism and the principle of competition is limited when it comes to understanding how the individual and the community are supposed to co-exist, as originally intended. The important role of any philosophy is to provide a fundamental ideology capable of implementing a social system in which anybody can realize and fulfill the original meaning of life. Buddhism too, needs to be a religion or a philosophy that seriously and sincerely takes a role in realizing such an ideology. In fact, Buddhism seems to be capable of showing us a solution for the issues posed to us by modern society, by helping people to discover an appropriate way of life, leading society to restore things to the way they ought to be. Religion is capable of accomplishing this feat, as it originally has a transcendental viewpoint that pierces through the relative and limited values of the secular world. With such a focus, Buddhism provides a critique of anthropocentrism and can counter discrimination, suppression, and social competition, while overcoming individualistic atomism. In the context of religion, individual existence cannot stand alone and is often in awe of existence as transcending and supporting it. One is furthermore aware of the existence of others, not only of other human beings, but of all sentient beings as well, which are all part of existence as transcendent, including self and others as co-existing within this realm. This accounts for the possibility of deep sympathy between the self and others, whereby it is not “I” worrying about the suffering of “others,” but rather the suffering is “ours.” With such sympathy, one becomes motivated to protest social inequalities and oppression. Many religious traditions may express essentially distinct principles and worldviews, which reflect the law of exclusive middle, such as the divisions that shape government, rationality, and objectivist logic, all of which are foundations of individualism and competition. Buddhist philosophy has a rich history of developing ideas that have been ignored by perspectives overly reliant on rationality. Such ideas include contextualism and insights into the identification between life and death, reality and existence, sin and salvation, all of which compose the hymn of life, rooted in the deepest levels of human existence. They provide important insights so that we may find a way to convert this exhausted “modern society” into a more humanistic community.

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1.6  A Philosophy Wherein the Self Embraces All Others Moving forward from our discussion above on social issues, let us consider the relationship between humans and the world. Buddhist philosophy affirms a life (the self) that is discovered in the unity of the individual body-mind and the surrounding world. It also characterizes the center of space and time as here and now. Its innovative “wisdom” is such that it fundamentally deconstructs the ordinary view of humanity and the world and provides an important key to the truth of the matter, one that we can confirm with contemplation. Let us reconsider a concrete case of Buddhist philosophy that talks about the authentic self in the context of reconstructing the relationship between self and others. Due to limited space, I will introduce only one such example from Kūkai’s 空 海 (774–835) esoteric (mikkyō 密教) Buddhist doctrine. Kūkai discussed his idea of “ten levels of the mind” (J. jūjūshin 十住心) in writings such as Himitsu mandara jūjūshinron 秘密マンダラ十住心論 (The Discourse on Ten Abiding Minds According to the Secret Maṇḍala) and Hizō hōyaku 秘蔵宝 鑰 (The Treasurable Key to the Secret Storehouse). In his investigation of the human mind, Kūkai discusses the state that enters “absolute rejection” (J. zettai hitei 絶対 否定) at the seventh stage of the “awakened and unborn mind” (J. kakushin fushōshin), representing the Sanron 三論 doctrine; and the state that revives “absolute affirmation” (J. zettai kōtei 絶対肯定) at the eighth stage of the “mind becoming one with the way in suchness” (J. nyojitsu ichidō shin), or the “mind becoming one with the way without (selfish) intention” (J. ichidō muishin), representing the Tendai 天台 doctrine. The notion of resurrection through absolute death that is expressed in these stages seems to be a common feature that is seen in many other religious traditions. Such universality is a unique characteristic attributable only to religion and not to other cultural factors. Here, we should not forget that as a religious notion, this idea has a foundation from which it can fundamentally criticize the values of the secular world. Further, at the ninth stage of the “mind of self nature with no pole” (J. kyokumu jishōshin), representing the Kegon 華厳 doctrine, absoluteness denies itself absolutely, the “suchness does not maintain self nature” (J. shinnyo fushu jishō). Thus only the phenomenal world, consisting of the “dependent origination” of countless elements or the “realm of dharma where things do not impede each other” (J. jiji muge hōkai 事々無碍法界), is manifested. Finally, at the tenth stage of the “secret and solemn mind” (J. himitsu sōgonshin 秘密荘厳心), which represents the Shingon doctrine, the text insists, the self is, after all, just a maṇḍala itself consisting of various buddhas and venerable ones. Kegon thought generally talks about the world made of countless dependent originations between things, but the maṇḍala shows a three-dimensional world formed of dependent originations between personified bodies. Furthermore, the maṇḍala teaches that the whole world in and of itself is just “my” self. We can confirm this idea in the following phrase from Himitsu mandara jūjūshinron:

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The mind abiding to the secret sublime (himitsu sōgōjūshin) is the ultimate stage wherein the one is awakened to the deepest depth of the mind and realizes the nature of the self at the base of reality. Such a state is expressed in the three maṇḍalas, that of the “realm of the womb” (taizōkaie), the “realm of the diamond” (kongōkaie), and the “eighteen assemblies of the diamond” (kongōchō jūhachie). Each maṇḍala also has four kinds of maṇḍalas and seals of wisdom (chiin), that of a great (maka), vow (sammaya), principle (datsuma), and action (katsuma). What is expressed in these four maṇḍalas is infinite and cannot be compared, to even dust in a cloud or a drop of water in an ocean. (KDZ 1: 397)

In other words, various buddhas and venerable ones depicted in the maṇḍala actually exist in the depths of our own minds. In the same manner, Kūkai also offers the following passage in the Sokushin jōbutsuju (“Verse of Becoming the Buddha in This Body”) in Sokushin jōbutsugi 即 身成仏義 (The Meaning of Becoming the Buddha in This Body): The six great elements are interfused without obstruction and are always in a state of unity. The four kinds of maṇḍalas are never separated from each other. Where the three mysterious powers are, [the original nature] is instantly manifested By the state of countless interconnection, I call it [realization of the Buddha] in this very body. (KDZ 1: 507)

When one “becomes the buddha in this body” (J. sokushin jōbutsu 即身成仏) through the practice of the “three mysterious powers” (J. sammitsu kaji 三密加持), one becomes aware that the self is nothing but a wholeness in countless relationships with others, a state expressed in the metal ornamental treasure that hangs in the palace of Indra. Needless to say, such countless relationships are spread across not only spatial planes but temporal planes as well. Here, there is a mysterious view of the human being and individuality presented by the self, which is actually the wholeness of others comprised of both spatial and temporal aspects, incomprehensible from an ordinary perspective. Such an understanding of the self lies beyond the limits of modern rationalism. Yet, this is not a mere illusory or imaginative description; it can be confirmed by actual experience gained through practice and is also comprehensible in a logical manner.

1.7  Sympathetic Oscillation According to the theory of Kegon, “suchness follows dependent origination and does not maintain self nature” (J. shinnyo zuien, fushu jishō). Kūkai identifies this theory as the highest teaching of exoteric Buddhism, also corresponding with NISHIDA Kitarō’s idea that is presented in his philosophy of religion: “the absolute denies itself absolutely and returns to the relative” (J. zettaisha wa zettai ni mizukara o hiteishite sōtai ni hirugaeru). Kegon’s idea that “things do not impede each other” (J.  jiji muge 時事無碍), which explains the world that is full of limitless dependent originations, can also be compared to a theme found in Nishida’s philosophy: “the individual is an individual in relation to individuals” (J. ko wa ko ni taishite ko de aru). Here, we can recognize the contradictory mode of the individual

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in which the individual can exist only in relation to others (that is, an individual cannot stand alone by itself). The relationship between Kegon thought and Nishida’s philosophy has the same logical structure that can be recognized in the theory of individuality. It would be an interesting research topic to compare these ideas in the future. It may be even more significant to apply Nishida’s theory so we can understand Kūkai‘s explanation of the maṇḍala, expressing the personal individual in the state of “interacting with others without impediment” (J. muge shōnyū 無礙蚣入), rather than comparing it to Kegon’s theory of “the realm of dharma where things do not impede each other” (J. jiji muge hōkai 時事無碍法界) which implies the limitless interconnection between things. I previously mentioned that the environmental problems are directly related to the issue of one’s relationship to others. When we concretely consider the order and structure of human society based on an understanding of the fundamental self as discussed above, we will be simply forced to abandon the principle of competition. At that time, we will have a compassionate attitude that others are “other selves,” and that the suffering of others is “my” suffering. It should be noted that the Sanskrit karuṇā, generally translated as compassion, means “oscillating sympathetically” (J. tomo ni furueru 共に震える). Here we may actualize the possibility for us to accomplish a world built on compassion and sympathy. In order to reclaim the future, we should establish a system of society with such an understanding of the fundamental self. On the basis of its deep philosophical “wisdom,” Buddhism therefore has the potential to contribute much to the task of overcoming the critically negative situation posed by modern society.

1.8  The Difference Between Ethics, Morality, and Religion Why is it then that Buddhism, with such a powerful, deep philosophy, has yet to fully demonstrate its capabilities to society? In fact, new forms of Buddhism, such as exhibited by the True Pure Land or Nichiren denominations, have been supporting and fulfilling the lives of many people. Other denominations, such as Tendai, Shingon, Pure Land, and Zen, are also being actively practiced and explored by many followers. Yet, generally speaking, it is hard to say that any denomination has made a huge impact on society. Buddhism’s original tenet does not seem to provide a sufficient contribution to society. Why is that? Religion primarily concerns itself with the existential issue of the self, rather than with social matters. Dōgen also says, in this context: “The most crucial engagement for the Buddhist family is to detach itself from life and death” (J. sei o akirame, shi o akiramuru wa bukke ichidaiji no in’nen nari) (DSM 363). Here, “Buddhist family” refers to Buddhist believers. To comprehend life and death is the most important question for Buddhism or any other religion in general. Overcoming life and death means that one has obtained a complete, satisfactory answer to the existential question: “what is the self,” rather than understanding the answer to the

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metaphysical question “what will happen after death?” That is why Nishida insists that the task of religion is to teach one about the self so that one can know the self, what and where it is. He says: A religion concerns itself with the question of what is the self, or what kind of existence the self is, but not with the question of how the self should be, or how the self should act as an active being . . . . People often try to ground religious imperatives from an imperfect standpoint of the self, a self that is confused. Religiosity never comes from such a mentality. A gambler gets confused and makes a mistake—he then deeply laments his own powerless self. To become confused by a religious matter is to be perplexed with the existential issue of the self, but not with the purpose of the self. (NKZ 10: 322–323)

Here, Nishida points out the difference between religion and ethics or morality: the former deals with the issue of “what is the self,” whereas the latter asks the question “how should the self act.” For the latter case, ethics or morality, we posit the existence of the self itself from the beginning, sans any skeptical attitude, and focus on figuring out how this self should act. In other words, it first asks how we can become a virtuous and loyal person, and then focuses on developing such a self. On the other hand, in religion, the self is the object of inquiry, and investigating the essence of the self becomes the primary task. We need to firmly understand this vital difference between religion and ethics. In order to explicate the existential issue of the self, we also need to deal with the larger issues of the world, including the topics of existence, time, language, and recognition. Because the religious investigation of the self is an extremely profound and serious issue, it may be difficult for an individual to adapt it to social realities. Some may spend their whole lives simply inquiring about the issue of the self. However, as the authentic self is actually realized in the unity of self and others, the individual has to deal with social relationships while investigating the self. Here we find a path that extends from religion to ethics, morality, and real society. These notions have not been properly considered before but should be discussed more seriously in future Japanese Buddhist societies.

1.9  The Task of Japanese Buddhism I would like to point out some further reasons why Japanese Buddhism, as a philosophy, has not affected society: 1. Buddhist institutions have always been controlled by the state, so they could not build a tradition that autonomously investigates the various tasks required to solve the problem presented in each unique period of time. 2. Since the Kamakura era (1185–1333), the mainstream of Japanese Buddhism has focused on teaching an “easy practice” (J. igyō 易行) to provide the masses salvation in the final age of the “end of the Dharma” (J. mappō 末法), and thus has simplified its theoretical doctrines.

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3. Because sectarian Buddhism has become popular and formalized, the essential doctrines of (Mahāyāna) Buddhism tend to be neglected. 4. Due to state policy on religious institutions during the Edo period (1615–1868), Buddhism was suppressed, forced to operate only within each denomination, and thus survived only as a closed and undeveloped discipline. 5. Due to the promulgation of the ideology of “excluding Buddhism and destroying Śakyāmuni Buddha” (J. haibutsu kishaku 廃仏毀釈) during the Meiji era (1868– 1912), Buddhist institutions dramatically lost their power. 6. Because Western philological methods became the main means for studying Buddhism after the modern era, scholars have tended to ignore the transmission and advancement of the traditional doctrines in their profundity. In contemporary Japan, when people hear the word “Buddhism,” probably they will immediately recall practices such as nembutsu 念仏 (reciting the myōgō 名号, “taking a vow to the Amida Buddha”), shōdai 唱題 (reciting the daimoku 題目, “taking a vow to the miraculous Lotus Sūtra”), or zazen 坐禅 (“seated meditation”). These represent the “Kamakura new Buddhism,” each of which selected an “easy practice” as its “selective practice” (J. senju 専修). We should not forget, however, that the Buddhist doctrines developed during the Nara (710–794) and Heian (794– 1185) eras, those of Hossō 法相, Kegon 華厳, Tendai 天台, and Shingon 真言, have formed the basis from which Kamakura Buddhism was established. Nara and Heian Buddhist doctrines contain a profound philosophical worldview, so sophisticated that it is still applicable to the modern world. It may even surpass modern theories. We, of course, cannot neglect the easy practices, including the Buddhism of the faith that was developed after the Kamakura era, which actually possesses tremendous depth from a doctrinal point of view. At the same time, we also should not disdain the vigorous cosmologies discussed in the profound philosophies of Nara and Heian Buddhism. In this chaotic age, we must strive to find the essence of the world while removing sectarian attitudes, all the while contemplating things from their foundation. We should thus pay more attention to the rich thoughts and arguments Buddhism is originally based on. Correspondingly, we then need to develop a deep enough wisdom to respond to the various issues existing in modern society. Existing Buddhist denominations as well as individuals need to make serious efforts to improve the status of Buddhism through the study of the essential Buddhist philosophies and their use to solve contemporary social issues. I would be very delighted if this writing could serve as a guide to help realize this process.

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Works Cited Abbreviations DSM Shoakumakusa 「諸悪莫作」 [The Non-Production of Evil]. In Dōgen jō 道元 上 [Dōgen 1]. Nihon shisō taikei 『日本思想大系』 [Great Thinkers of Japan]. 12 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1970. KDZ Kōbō daishi zenshū 『弘法大師全集』 [Complete Works of Kōbō Daishi]. 8 vols. Osaka: Mikkyō Bunka Kenkyūjo, 1965–1968. NKZ Nishida kitarō zenshū shinpan 『西田幾多郎全集 新版』 [Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō–New Edition]. 24 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2006.

Other Sources Takemura, Makio 竹村牧男. 2009. Nyūmon: tetsugaku toshiteno bukkyō 『入門––哲学としての 仏教』 [Introduction: Buddhism as Philosophy]. Tokyo: Kodansha. Makio Takemura specializes in Buddhist studies and philosophy of religion. He completed his PhD in Buddhology at Tokyo University. He has served as associate professor at Mie University and as professor at University of Tsukuba. He joined the Faculty of Letters of Tōyō University as professor in 2002, where he served as a Dean of the Faculty of Letters from 2007 to 2009. He became the president of Tōyō University in 2009. He has published extensively in the fields of Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism, the philosophy of Nishida Kitaro, and Enryō Inoue. His major publications are Yuishiki no tankyū: Yuishiki sanjūju oyomu, Nishida kiarō to bukkyō: Zen to shinshū no kontei o kiwameru, and Nihonjin no kokoro no kotoba: Suzuki Daisetsu.

Chapter 4

Japanese Buddhism and Women: The Lotus, Amida, and Awakening Michiko Yusa

1  Introduction Buddhism’s claim to be a universal religion would seem to be severely undermined by its exclusion of certain groups of people from its scheme of salvation. Women, in particular, were treated at one time or another as less than fit vessels for attaining awakening. As is well known, even in the days of Gautama the Buddha, the Buddhist order was not entirely free of misogynist sentiments. Female devotees aspiring to follow the Buddha’s teaching often had to overcome discrimination and negative innuendos from their fellow monks and the monastic institutions. This view of women’s “spiritual inferiority” persisted, casting a long shadow over the Buddhism tradition that took root and developed in Japan. Although the idea of sangha—the community of believers made up of monks, nuns, and laymen and laywomen—was duly embraced in Japan, and although women played a vital role in patronizing Buddhism, the misogynistic view became prevalent around the fourteenth century, with the changes in socio-economic environments. It was only in the last century that the iniquitous treatment of women in Japanese Buddhism came to be critically acknowledged by the ecclesiastical authorities, and important steps for a change are taking place slowly but steadily. Despite the hard-to-eradicate subtle institutional chauvinism and dubious perceptions concerning women’s spiritual ability, an increasing number of socially active and articulate Buddhist women are working on improving their image and their social standing in the last decades. What is still needed, however, is the emancipation of androcentric Buddhist ecclesiastical tradition from the yoke of its past.

M. Yusa (*) Department of Modern & Classical Languages, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_4

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2  Part I: Preliminary Matters 2.1  A Brief Historical Overview When Buddhism was formally introduced to Japan in the sixth century C.E., female members of the imperial family and aristocracy were among the first to embrace it and became its powerful patrons, overshadowing its misogynistic streak for centuries. One of the earliest records of the imperial ladies’ keen interest in the Buddhist teaching is found in The Chronicles of Japan, in the chapter on Empress Suiko 推古 天皇 (554–628), the aunt of the important patron of Buddhism, Prince Shōtoku 聖 徳太子 (572–622). According to this record, the Empress had the Prince give lectures on the Shōman-gyō 勝鬘経 (S. Śrīmālādevīsimhanāda Sūtra) for three days in the year 606 (Mitsusada 1983: 302). The significance of the Prince’s choice of this sūtra is obvious, as its protagonist is the highly enlightened Queen Srīmālā, who displays her understanding of the Buddha’s teaching before the Blessed One. Her penetrating understanding won the Buddha’s cry of approval: “Well done!” (Takasaki 1975). Gradually, however, nunneries that once enjoyed robust state support during the Nara period (710–784) began to disappear in the next few hundred years to the point of near extinction, and nuns were no longer listed in the official government registry.1 The reason for this change was closely tied to the change of the land distribution system and the accompanying political form. The imperial family and the powerful aristocrats began to amass wealth, which translated into political power, when the economic system based on the private holdings of lucrative estates (shōen) spread throughout the country. The disappearance of nunneries, however, did not mean that women abandoned Buddhist practice. While several nunneries barely managed to survive during the Heian period (794–1192), the place of practice for women shifted away from the public sphere into their homes, and their practice became personal and private. Moreover, during this period, wealthy women were as indispensable as before to the Buddhist institutions, as they actively assumed the role of the “patron of Buddhist temples” by generously donating their lands and extending financial support. The social upheavals that saw the creation of the military Shogunate at Kamakura during what came to be called the Kamakura period (1192–1333) resulted in a serious challenge to the prestige of the courtiers by the rising warrior clans. From the last decades of the Heian period onward, Japan entered a  period of continuous armed conflicts, and many aristocratic ladies, having lost their husbands in battles, found themselves in dire need of a support system and often congregated at Buddhist temples that offered them protection. Around this time—towards the end of the 1  See various research results contained in Ōsumi and Nishiguchi’s Shirīzu: josei to bukkyō シリー ズ 女性と仏教 [Series: Women and Buddhism] (Ōsumi and Nishiguchi 1989). Ushiyama’s essay “Chūsei no amadera to ama” 「中世の尼寺と尼」 (Ushiyama 1989: 221–270) was translated by Barbara Ruch (Ushiyama 2002: 131–164).

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Heian period—Chan practice was introduced to Japan, which brought in an egalitarian outlook. At around the same time, male Buddhist reformers started to proselytize actively among women. For instance, the monks of the newly formed Ritsu (S. Vinaya) sect revived the dilapidated nunneries and initiated the ordination of women as nuns (see Meeks 2010, 2003). In their effort to reach out to women and to make their service indispensable, a misogynist rhetoric was adopted that women were burdened with “five hindrances” (J. goshō or itsutsu no sawari 五障)2 when it came to attaining Buddhahood and thus they needed the spiritual guidance of the priests. Such an idea spread widely in the fourteenth century, when the shift of political and economic power from courtiers to warriors took place. In this milieu, some women practitioners—many of whom were of the aristocratic class—set out to establish their own convents not only as places of refuge but also places of religious practice.3 The number of convents increased tremendously by the Muromachi period (1336–1553), when numerous amadera dotted the landscape of Kyoto and its vicinity (see Harada 1997). Laywomen, too, actively integrated Buddhist practice into their daily lives throughout the medieval period and well into the Edo period (1603–1867), when the ports were closed off to most Western countries. During the Meiji period (1868–1912), when Japan rejoined the rest of the world, the practice of barring women from the “sacred realm,” the practice ridiculed by Dōgen, for instance, was abolished in 1872 under the government’s effort to eradicate Japan of old superstitions and outdated customs. After the end of the Second World War in 1945, under the occupation of the Allied powers, Japanese women were granted suffrage and attained equal civil and legal status with men. Women’s social position drastically improved, impacting to a lesser degree that of Buddhist monastic women. A Sōtō nun, KOJIMA Kendō, for instance, in the prevailing atmosphere of the postwar emancipation of women, commissioned a volume that researched the entire history of Buddhist nuns not only in the Sōtō sect but also in Asia at large, and published the tome Sōtōshū nisō-shi or The History of the Nuns in the Sōtō Sect (Tajima 1955). Today, Buddhist nuns are actively engaged in social work, both in Japan and abroad. It may be paradoxical, but the fact that women were placed outside the mainstream ecclesiastic system for so long afforded them the freedom and needed energy to dedicate themselves to carry out the bodhisattva work—and to be “socially engaged”—largely unhampered by the traditional administrative work of running large temple complexes and monasteries.

2  This sentiment was expressed as “women were unable to become Brahmā, Indra, Māra, Cakravartin king, and Buddha,” by the first century B.C.E. in India. 3  Hosokawa (1999). He has published numerous essays on the activities of the monks of the reformed Ritsu school from the thirteenth century onward (see Matsuo 1996a, 1996b).

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2.2  Waka as a Testimonial Source What makes the present study of Japanese Buddhist women aesthetically delightful is the fact that many of them were accomplished poets and wrote fine poems. The 31-syllable traditional poetry, called waka (and also tanka), written by Buddhist women, can be read as a testimonial of their religiosity and as the expression of their existential voice.4 The value of adopting waka as a viable textual source will become apparent in the course of this study. Japanese women of the past wrote innumerable waka, which are handed down to us in vast numbers of collections. Female religionists and thinkers, with the exception of a handful, did not leave behind written religious tracts or scholarly commentaries, but they did leave many very fine waka. Up until now, waka poems have been mainly treated in terms of their literary merit, and thus confined to the genre of literary criticism, or Japanese literature, but I propose that they can be studied as a candid expression of the inner voices and spiritual aspirations of the poets. Philosopher NISHIDA Kitarō 西田幾多郎 (1870– 1945), for instance, observed that the short form of waka (or tanka) is conducive to expressing one’s innermost feelings. To quote: To grasp our life-experience by way of the form of short poetry (“tanka”) is to grasp it from the very heart of the present moment. It is to view life from the very point of the moment of experience. Certainly, one’s life is a unitary whole [and not fragmented], but when we grasp concrete and vibrant life, to see it from the side of the environment is one thing, and to grasp it at the very tip of vividly pulsating life is another. Depending on from which angle we approach life, life presents itself differently and we live its different significance. (NKZ 13: 131)5

Nishida is saying that not only is life-experience captured vividly by waka but also that waka can encapsulate deep existential reflections.6 Moreover, adopting poetry as a testimonial document is compatible with the approach which analyzes the self-understanding of the poet concerned. The dimension of self-understanding belongs to the kairological moment—taking a hint from the Catalan philosopher Raimon Panikkar. One’s self-understanding unfolds in a “temporal space,” different from a diachronically construed objectified notion of time (Panikkar 1987, 1993). The “kairological moments” are “transhistorical,” in 4  Waka 和歌 (“Japanese poetry”) is a genre of versification, as distinguished from kanshi 漢詩, “poems in Chinese,” and generally came to be identified with the thirty-one-syllable short poetic form, or miso hitomoji (“thirty-one letters”), which is also called “tanka” 短歌 (“short verse”). Waka have been the favorite means of literary expression lovingly embraced by all classes of the Japanese people, male and female, from time immemorial. Indeed, KI no Tsurayuki 紀貫之 (872– 945), a compiler of the Kokin-shū wrote: “Even frogs in fresh water and warblers in the sky make their songs; why not human beings?” (Saeki 1958: 905). 5  Nishida, “Tanka ni tsuite” 短歌について [“On “tanka”] (NKZ 13: 130–132). The essay is translated into English, and contained in The Bloomsbury Research Handbook on Contemporary Japanese Philosophy (Yusa 2017a: 366–69). 6  Certainly, waka poems were written under diverse conditions. Their contents heavily depended on the motive of the poet and the occasion and the purpose of the poetry composition, and therefore not all waka poems express spirituality.

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that the event of the spirit is “neither merely past nor exclusively present. It belongs to the order of the heart, to the personal life”; as such it has the “contemporary aspect that transcends both time and space without deactivating the time-space frame” (Panikkar 1993: 122). I see that a “kairological” moment has a dimension which is always “timeless” and “present,” as it captures something of the “timeless” quality present within the human heart. To focus on the realm of intimate self-understanding—as a method of studying confessional texts—is effective as we can engage the interlocutor (who may be our contemporary or may belong to a different historical time period altogether) existentially. The premise here is that profoundly inner spiritual experience has the quality of the “eternal now” (Nishida) or “tempiternity” (Panikkar)—although it takes place in space-time. It is “historical” and “transhistorical” at the same time (Panikkar 1993: 122). Nishida would explain that this kairological understanding is constitutive of one’s “jikaku” 自覚 (“self-consciousness”). In short, my methodology consists in taking poetry (mainly the waka poems but not exclusively) as a textual source, with the view that they contain the intimate self-­ understanding of those women poets.

2.3  Three Major Strands of Salvific Message for Women In presenting Japanese Buddhist women’s experience, I arrange my discussion into “three major strands”—that of the message of universal deliverance from suffering advocated by the Lotus of the Wondrous Dharma Sūtra (S. Saddharmapuṇḍarīka sutra, J. Hokekyō 法華経) [hereafter abbreviated “Lotus Sūtra”], that of the grace of Amida Buddha, and the egalitarian affirmation of “spiritual awakening” that transcends the gender distinction of male and female. These three major “paths” of salvation for women emerge out of my study of noh texts (medieval Japanese drama), especially those texts that depict woman as the protagonist. I submit that most lay Japanese Buddhists (both female and male) of the past considered their faith along these rather broad lines, rather than in terms of technical doctrines of a specific school. On the noh stage “salvation” of the protagonist is often intimated, variously depicted in terms of the alleviation of agony, the attainment of peace of mind, the release from attachment, a reunion with a loved one, and so on. Interestingly, female protagonists in the noh drama are often the reincarnation of the merciful Bodhisattva Kan’non, or the spirit of plants, which are also guaranteed enlightenment according to the Lotus Sūtra. Some plays, although small in number, feature an awakened woman. In this case, the protagonist is usually cast as an old woman, who may interact with a young and beautiful traveling woman of pleasure to demonstrate the illusory nature of the dichotomous way of viewing the world in terms of young and old, beautiful and ugly—such is the transcendent perspective of “detachment” that alludes to the world of satori 悟り.

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These three strands certainly do not cover the entire scope of Japanese Buddhist experience; nevertheless, they roughly correspond to the Tendai (including Nichiren in terms of the central importance of the Lotus Sūtra), Pure Land (including the later development of True Pure Land and Ippen’s Ji Sect), and Zen (Rinzai, Sōtō, and Ōbaku lineages) traditions. In actuality, these “strands” are not mutually exclusive, and the demarcating line is not clearly drawn. For instance, Great Saiin Senshi (see Part II, Sect. 3.1, below) was devoted not only to the teaching of the Lotus Sūtra but also cultivated her faith in the rebirth in the Western Paradise of Amida Buddha. While these three strands are intellectually distinguishable, in practice they are intertwined and often overlap. In the present study, I single out one woman each to represent the first two strands, and two women for the third strand. The first strand is represented by Imperial Princess Senshi 選子内親王 (964–1035); the second by Imperial Princess Shikishi 式子内親王 (1149–1201); and the third by Abbess MUGAI Nyodai 無外 如大 (1223–1298) and HIRATSUKA Raichō 平塚 らいてう (1886–1971). This approach by way of “strands” allows us to get closer to the contents of the faith of these women and their practice, instead of going through the venue of official sectarian doctrines to see how women adopted and practiced Buddhism. Moreover, by focusing on their practice, we actually do encounter familiar male Buddhist figures, such as Hōnen and Dōgen, who had guided their female disciples. The focus on women, in fact, opens up a more comprehensive portrayal of Japanese Buddhist practice at large, of which women were a lively part. This approach also reveals how the male-female synergy has enlivened and enriched Japanese Buddhism, just as any other major religious traditions of the world. 2.3.1  The Three Major Strands: The Supporting Texts The first strand, textually supported by the Lotus Sūtra, delivers the message of universal salvation, which by definition does not exclude women. The second strand, supported by the Pure Land Sūtras, asserts that the original vows of Amida (or Amitābha) Buddha save men and women. The third strand, which goes back to the early Buddhist teaching, upholds “awakening” (J. satori 悟り) to be accessible to all practitioners, regardless of their sexes—this idea supported by various Mahāyāna scriptures such as the Queen Shrimala Sūtra (J. Shōman-gyō 勝鬘経), the Vimalakīrti Sūtra (J. Yuimakyō 維摩経), and numerous Chan and Zen texts. 2.3.2  Strand A: The Lotus Sūtra (Hokekyō 法華経) The “Devadatta” chapter7 contains the famous story of the daughter of the dragon king who demonstrates her perfect enlightenment before the entire assembly of the Buddha’s followers. In Japan this chapter has been traditionally referred to in short7  In the Chinese translation, it is Chap. 12; in the Sanskrit version, it is part of Chap. 11, “Apparition of the Jeweled Stūpa.”

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hand as the “daughter of the dragon king,” and became synonymous with the promise that “women can fully attain Buddhahood.” The story begins with Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī filing his report to the Buddha that “the daughter of the dragon king Sāgara, who is barely eight,” has entered “deep meditation” (S. dhyāna), and has arrived at an understanding of the dharma” (Hurvitz 1976: 199). Soon, the dragon girl herself comes to the Buddha’s assembly. Present among them is Śāriputra, the number one disciple of the Buddha. The story unfolds as follows: At that time, Śāriputra spoke to the dragon girl, saying, “You say that in no long time you shall attain the unexcelled Way. This is hard to believe. What is the reason? A woman’s body is filthy, it is not a Dharma-receptacle. How can you attain unexcelled bodhi [awakening]? The Path of the Buddha is remote and vastly deep. … A woman’s body even then has five obstacles. It cannot become first a Brahmā god king, second the god Śakra, third King Māra, fourth a sage-king turning the wheel, fifth a Buddha.8 How can the body of a woman speedily achieve Buddhahood?” At that time the dragon girl had a precious gem, the value of which was the entire thousand-­ millionfold world, which she held up and gave to the Buddha. The Buddha straightway accepted it. The dragon girl said to Bodhisattva Prajñākūta [i.e., wisdom accumulated] and to the venerable Śāriputra, “I offered a precious gem, and the World-Honored One accepted it. Was this quick or not?” The venerable Śāriputra answered, saying, “Very quick!” The girl said, “With your supernatural power you shall see me achieve Buddhahood even more quickly than that!” At that time, in front of the entire assembled multitude and Venerable Śāriputra, the body of the dragon girl turned into that of a male, demonstrating to the world that she has become a perfect bodhisattva. Thereupon, she straightway went southward to the world-system called “Immaculate,” sat on a jeweled bodhi tree, achieved enlightenment, and became a Buddha. Now being endowed with thirty-two marks and eighty beautiful features, she set forth the teaching for all living beings, by filling all ten directions with radiant light. (Hurvitz 1976: 199–201; emphasis added)9

2.3.3  S  trand B: The “Amida Sūtras” (Daimuryōjukyō 無量寿経, Kanmuryōjukyō 観無量寿経, and Amidakyō 阿弥陀経)10 The Pure Land Sūtra or the Sūtra of Eternal Life (S. Sukhāvatīviyūha Sūtra, J. Daimuryōjukyō) guarantees women their rebirth in the Western Paradise of Sukhāvatī, or the Land of Happiness. It is the paradise of Buddha Amitābha  This is the list of “five obstacles” women were burdened with.  See Sakamoto Yukio 坂本幸男 and Iwamoto Yutaka 岩本裕 (Sakamoto and Iwamoto 1976). 10  See Nakajima, Hayakawa, Kino (1964). Hōnen singled out The Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra (J. Daimuryōjukyō大無量寿経), The Sūtra of the Meditation on Amida Buddha (J. Kanmuryōjukyō 観無量寿経), and  The Amida Sūtra (J. Amidakyō 阿弥陀経, or The Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra) as  the  “three principal sūtras of  the  Pure Land teaching.” Ever since, these three sūtras became the standard texts to represent the Pure Land thought in Japan (see Hōnen 1971: 24). 8 9

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(J.  Amida Buddha). Buddha Amitābha (meaning “Infinite Light”; also known as Amitāyus, “Eternal Life”) in his previous life had been a bodhisattva Dharmākara, who practiced under Lokeśvara-rāja. After practicing for five kalpas of deep meditation, he arose from his meditation and went to Lokeśvara-rāja to express his determination to establish his own paradise to receive anyone who would meditate on him or call upon him with these words: “I take refuge in Amida Buddha” (J. namu amida butsu 南無阿弥陀仏). At that time Dharmākara took 48 vows, declaring that if any of these 48 conditions were not met, he would not become a Buddha (Suzuki 1973: 42). The eighteenth vow, considered the most essential and known as the “original vow” (J. hongan 本願), pledges: If, upon my obtaining Buddhahood, all beings in the ten quarters should not sincerely and earnestly desire to be born in my land, and if they should not be born there by their mere thought of me, or invocation of my name up to ten times—except those who have committed the five grave offences and those who are abusive of the true dharma—may I not attain the Highest Enlightenment. (Suzuki 1973: 42; adapted)

Bodhisattva Dharmākara also made a separate vow to ensure the salvation of women in his thirty-fifth vow: If, upon my obtaining Buddhahood, women in all the immeasurable and inconceivable Buddha-worlds in the ten quarters should not, after hearing my Name, be filled with joy and trust and awaken their thoughts to enlightenment and loathe their being women, and if in another birth they should again assume the female body, may I not attain the Highest Enlightenment. (Suzuki 1973: 42; emphasis added)

These two vows formed the cornerstone for women who came to embrace the Pure Land teaching. 2.3.4  S  trand C: The Early Buddhist Scriptures and Its Mahāyāna Development The message of spiritual egalitarianism goes back to the Buddha’s teaching. The early Buddhist scriptures speak of the irrelevance of the sexes when it comes to attaining highest awakening. Compiled in the Tripitaka, the first passage is the account of the acceptance of Mahāpājapatī, Śākyamuni Buddha’s foster mother, to the Buddhist Order, and the establishment of the Order of Nuns: The Buddha, the Blessed One, was staying among the Sakkas at Kapilavasthu in the Banyan Park. The Mahāpājapatī the Gotami approached and greeted him and, standing at a respectful distance, spoke thus to him: Lord, let women retire from household life to the homeless one, under the Dharma and Discipline proclaimed by the Tathāgata. Be careful, Gotami, of retiring from household into homelessness in this Dharma and Discipline proclaimed by the Tathāgata.

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[The Buddha repeated these exact words of refusal three times in response to the repeated plea of Mahāpājapatī.] Then the Blessed One set out for Vesālī, and Mahāpājapatī, too, having had her hair cut off and donned a saffron robe, set out for Vesālī with several Sakka women. Arriving at the Gabled Hall, she stood outside the porch, her feet swollen, her limbs covered with dust, and her face tear-stained. The venerable Ānanda saw her, and hearing from her the reason for her distress, told her to wait a moment while he asked the Lord for the retirement of women from home into homelessness. But the Lord answered him as he had answered Mahāpājapatī. So Ānanda thought to himself: “Suppose that I should now ask the Lord by some other method?” and he spoke thus to the Blessed One: Are women competent, the Blessed One, if they retire from household life to the houseless one, under the Dharma and Discipline proclaimed by the Tathāgata, to attain to the fruit of conversion, to attain to the fruit of once-returning, to attain to the fruit of never-returning, to attain to arhatship? Women are competent, Ānanda. If so, Lord—and, Lord, Mahāpājapatī the Gotami was of great service: she was the Lord’s aunt, foster-mother, nurse, giver of milk, for when the Lord’s mother passed away she suckled him—it were well, Lord, that women should obtain the going forth from home into homelessness. If, Ānanda, Mahāpājapatī the Gotami accepts these eight important rules, that may be ordination for her. (Warren (1977: 441–445; Conze et al. 1964,1975: 23–24; adapted)

Echoing the same view of women’s spiritual competence, the following passage in the Samyutta-nikāya (1.5.6) reads: I call the dharma the coachman, and right understanding the predecessors. Be it woman or man who rides such chariot Approaches nirvāna on account of this vehicle. (Nakamura 1986: 74)11

The verses composed by the first generation of Buddhist nuns are compiled into the Therīgātā. In the following verse, nun Somā overcomes Māra, the tempter: (Māra speaks): “The realm, which is hard to fathom, and which only the sages can attain, is impossible for women to attain, when women have very little wisdom enough to count with two fingers.” (Nun Somā responds): “When the mind is very calm and wisdom dawns forth, for her who observes the truth correctly, how could her being a woman constitute hindrance? The delight of sensual pleasure is thoroughly abandoned, and dark ignorance (avidyā) is sundered into pieces. Know this. You are defeated!” (Nakamura 1982: 20–21)

The assurance of female spiritual equality was given further philosophical foundation by the early Mahāyānists, who developed the understanding of emptiness (śūnyatā) of all things (including the sexual distinctions), and the doctrine of 11

 For another translation see Horner (1930: 104).

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tathāgatagarbha or the Buddha Nature that is inherent in all sentient beings. These ideas rendered the difference of male and female immaterial. This egalitarian view runs through major Mahāyāna sūtras. Japanese Zen (and Chinese Chan) texts, for instance, belong to this strand of egalitarianism that maintains that the ability for spiritual awakening is independent of the sexes.

3  Part II: Case Studies 3.1  The First Strand: The Lotus Sūtra and Women 3.1.1  Daisaiin of Kamo, Princess Senshi Princess Nobuko12 or Senshi 選子 (964–1035), was the youngest daughter of Emperor Murakami 村上天皇 (926–967) and his principal consort FUJIWARA no Yasuiko or Anshi 藤原安子 (927–964).13 The mother died soon after she gave birth to Senshi. In 975, when she was 12  years old, she was chosen by divination to occupy the sacred office of Saiin 斎院, a Shintō office filled by an unmarried imperial princess, who offered proper worship to the deity Wakeikazuchi of Kamo Shrine in Kyoto. What set her apart from the rest of the Saiin was the fact that she remained in the office for the next 57 years—during the reigns of five successive emperors: En’yū 円融天皇 (reigned 969–984), Kazan 花山天皇 (r. 984–86), Ichijō 一条天皇 (r. 986–1011), Sanjō 三条天皇 (r. 1011–16), and Goichijō 後一条天皇 (r. 1016– 1036). It was a remarkable exception to the rule that a new Saiin princess was to be chosen each time a new emperor ascended the throne. Thus, Senshi came to be known as the “Great Saiin,” or Daisaiin 大斎院. 3.1.2  The Sacred Office of Saiin The office of Saiin 斎院 at Kamo, just like its older sister-office of Saigū 斎宮 at Ise, had its root in the ancient Shintō worldview, in which the political affairs were to be dealt with in close connection with the proper worship of kami 神 deities. In time, the religious act of worship was entrusted to the emperor’s unmarried female family member, whose assistance in religious matters was indispensable for the

 “Nobuko” was probably the proper pronunciation of her name, but because the personal names of high-ranking ladies and imperial princesses during ancient and medieval periods were never uttered out of deference, often her name is conventionally pronounced in the “on-reading” (SinoJapanese pronunciation) as “Senshi.” 13  Yasuiko was the daughter of FUJIWARA Morosuke, and gave birth to two princes both of whom became emperor (Reizei and En’yū), as well as four daughters, most of whom served either as Saigū or Saiin. Yasuiko died 5 days after she gave birth to Princess Nobuko. 12

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emperor to execute his political authority.14 As mentioned above, Princess Senshi was chosen as the sixteenth Saiin, when the previous Saiin stepped down, most likely due to her health reasons. Princess Senshi began serving the office during the reign of her older brother, who was enthroned as Emperor En’yū. A careful reader may ask if a Shintō priestess was allowed to embrace the Buddhist faith. According to the code governing the office of Saigū and Saiin, those princesses were required to avoid any contact with Buddhism while serving the office and could not practice it, as the sacred office stood for the unstained Shinto identity. For instance, Saiin and Saigū priestesses were required to observe certain taboo words.15 Besides the observance of the taboo words, they performed daily worship as well as officiated at important seasonal Shinto rituals, which were perceived to insure peace and prosperity throughout the emperor’s domain. Princess Senshi’s situation was exceptional in every respect. To begin with, her appointment as Saiin was extended beyond the normally prescribed terms of the office because it appeared that there was no reason to replace her (and, besides, it was her brother, and not the father, who stepped down from the imperial throne). It is fully possible that it was due to this irregularity of her appointment that she may have reasoned it permissible privately to embrace Buddhism. Commanding great respect from her extended imperial relatives and court ministers as the “Great Saiin,” she enjoyed unparalleled prestige. It is not hard to imagine that no one prevented her from practicing Buddhism, as long as it did not interfere with her execution of her public duty. She did not hide her Buddhist faith either and publicly demonstrated her commitment to the bodhisattva path, which did not escape the attention of the compiler of the historical narrative account, The Great Mirror (J. Ōkagami 大鏡) (1065), which reads: The sacred princesses Saigū and Saiin of the olden days used to avoid things related to Buddhism, be it the worship of Buddha or the study of Buddhist sūtras. But this particular  Saigū and Saiin are now-forgotten Shintō institutions of the sacred office of high priestess that originated in ancient Japan and existed up through the early medieval period. The Saigū princess at Ise worshipped the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, the ancestor deity of the imperial family, while the Saiin princess worshipped the deity Wakeikazuchi at Kamo Shrine. These imperial high priestesses, chosen by divination, performed their religious duties. The perception of those days was that the unity of the sacred realm of kami and the “secular” world of human affairs were vital. Saigū and Saiin princesses, once they stepped down from the office, were no longer bound by any of the regulations and allowed to marry, and their hands were often sought by the reigning emperor or other high-ranking courtiers (see Ellwood 1967: 35–60 and Yusa 2012). An extensive source of the saigū and saiin office is found in Asai (1985). 15  The high priestess was forbidden to utter two kinds of words as “taboo words” (J. imikotoba 忌 み言葉); the first group of words comprised tears, illness, death, and blood—things associated with “pollution” according to the Shintō mind-set; and the second group of words were related to Buddhism. The Buddha was referred to as “nakago” (“middle one”), the Buddhist sūtras as “somekami” (“dyed paper”), Buddhist monks as “kaminaga” (“long-haired ones”), and nuns as “mekaminaga” (female long-haired ones). The ancients believed in the power of words (J. kotodama), which may be behind this practice of observing the taboo words. 14

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3.1.3  Great Saiin’s Waka Collection of the Quest for Enlightenment In 1012 the Great Saiin, now about 50 years old, compiled her collection of waka-­ poetry as part of her ardent Buddhist devotion. She entitled this collection “Hosshin waka-shū” 発心和歌集, or the “Waka Collection Inspired by the Quest for Enlightenment.”16 “Hosshin” corresponds to Sanskrit “bodhicitta”—“the aspiration for enlightenment.” The Japanese word “bodai” is the Sanskrit “bodhi,” which is adopted here as the abbreviation of anuttarasanmyaksambodhi, or the “supreme enlightenment.” (a) The Preface The Preface to the collection reveals Senshi’s full consciousness of what it means to practice Buddhism for her—a female born into the imperial lineage in the land far away from India. It begins thus: For some time I have been devoting my thoughts to the Buddha and my passion to his precious teaching in order to attain enlightenment (bodai 菩提). Śākyamuni Buddha imparted to us the teaching of The Lotus Sūtra of the One Vehicle; therein he sang in verse (gāthās) the praise of the Buddhas of the past. He demonstrated the merit of composition of poetry as lofty and congenial an act with Buddhist practice. Sanskrit verses, however, are in the tongue of the Indian people, separated from us by deserts. Likewise, verses of praise in Chinese are from China, and the customs of each place greatly differ from those of Japan. I, a disciple of the Buddha, was born in Japan in the female body. Instead of acquiring the “manners of how the dwellers of the foreign city walk” (as an old Chinese saying has it), I have thoroughly internalized the hues and sensitivity of my native land. Accordingly, I have studied the waka poetry, the tradition of which goes back to god Susano’o, and learnt how to express the meaning in poetry. I also studied the waka composed by the hungry beggar (and presented to Prince Shōtoku) to learn about the descriptive power of poetry. (Senshi 1985: 292; emphasis added) 16  My sources here are the Hosshin waka-shū (Kamens 1990: 141–149) and the Shinpen kokka taikan (Nakano 1994, 26: 292–294). In the following, the translation of this collection into English is my own.

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Let us take a moment to examine Daisaiin’s understanding of the waka as the chosen means of expressing the Buddhist faith. First, she is proposing that waka is an excellent means of expressing deeply spiritual devotion, equivalent in function to Sanskrit gāthās and Chinese verse. Next, she refers to two classical examples of waka poetry, one attributed to the mythic wind god Susano’o, and the other by an anonymous legendary beggar, who received the attention of Prince Shōtoku (that is, the Prince of Ikaruga). In the Shintō mythology, God Susano’o is the brother of the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, who is the ancestor of the imperial family. Daisaiin is making a conscious allusion to this connection between herself, as Amaterasu’s descendant, and the composition of waka poetry, which, moreover, has been considered a sacred activity directly handed down from the time of the “generation of gods.” (Ishihara 1983: 74–75)17 The second poem mentioned by Daisaiin is attributed to an anonymous poet, who praised the wisdom  of Prince Shōtoku, whose unwavering patronage was essential for Buddhism to take root and prosper in Japan. For Daisaiin, Prince Shōtoku’s legendary wisdom and role as a Buddhist prince must have been something to emulate with pride. Let us return to the Preface by Daisaiin: I open my collection with the dedicatory verses accompanying the “Four Great Vows” and Samantabhadra’s “Ten Great Vows.” This collection contains fifty-five waka in total. I name it “Hosshin waka-shū” or “The Poetry Collection of Bodhi-citta.” The reason for selecting this title is to sow in everyone’s heart the seed of desire to be reborn in the next life in a pure land, on one of the nine ranks of the lotus pedestal. Is the act of pouring resources to build a temple hall or pagoda the only way for someone like me to attain rebirth in the paradise? I think the message of the Buddha’s vow to save all beings is clear. Is receiving a tonsure to become a nun, renouncing this world, and retreating into the mountain forest to sing a loud praise of the virtues of the Buddha the only way to attain Buddhist salvation? I am not certain if relinquishing the art of poetizing would lead me to the gate of the meditation on the “Sound A.”18 My dearest wish is that if there are those who read or hear my poems, may they take up their Buddhist practice and join me in upholding Prabhūtaratna Buddha’s vow.19 If there are those who criticize or sneer at my poems, may they still have the opportunity to practice with me the act of courageous humility of Sadāparibhūta Bodhisattva.20 My heart is so

 The origin of the 31-syllable waka poetry is ascribed to the wind god Susano’o (see Chamberlain 1981: 75). 18  What is referred to here is the Shingon practice of the meditation on the sound “A,” or ajikan. The sound “a” is considered the “mother of all sounds” and contrasted with “hum” which is the last of the syllabic system (cf. “aum”). Kūkai found special significance in the correspondence between the sound and reality, and expounded on it in his meditation. 19  According to Sakamoto and Iwamoto, the Buddha Prabhūtaratna is the Buddha associated with the stūpa worship, as his ashes and bones after his death were divided and given to ten tribes, each of which built a stūpa to venerate the Buddha (see Sakamoto and Iwamoto 1976, 2: 168). 20  According to Sakamoto and Iwamoto, Sadāparibhūta is the Bodhisattva who, dedicated to the dissemination of the Buddha’s teaching, went about everywhere, telling whomever he encountered “I have profound respect for you.” He withstood ridicule, sneer, and even persecution coming from 17

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M. Yusa wholly devoted to the “three treasures”21 so much so that I am prepared to renounce everything else. The sound of the autumn wind that whispers through the tree branches is the voice that murmurs the coming of the old age. Merely to lament over the sunset behind the shady mountains is but to hold onto one’s selfish desire for the prolongation of one’s life on earth. Moved to tears by ardent devotion, I contemplate the marvelous teaching of the Buddha. The compilation of this collection is completed in the eighth month of the ninth year of Kankō 寛弘 (1012 C.E.). (Senshi 1985: 292)

This is the end of the Preface. There is no mistake about Daisaiin’s ardent devotion. (b) The Opening Section The main body of the poetry collection is made up of fifty-five waka, each poem accompanies a selected passage extracted from the Buddhist scriptures in the original Chinese. The scope of this collection would be somewhat comparable to composing a short poem for each book of the Bible, accompanied by a representative passage quoted from each book. The initial section of the collection opens with the “Four Great Vows” 四弘誓願 (J. shigu seigan), the most important prayer for all practitioners of the bodhisattva-­ path. The first vow is: “However innumerable sentient beings there may be, I vow to save them all” (J. shujō muhen seigan do 衆生無辺誓願度). This is the declaration of commitment to Buddhist practice, the primary concern of which is the salvation of all beings. Her accompanying waka refers to the Tendai teaching of the “One Vehicle,” and the paramount importance of the Lotus Sūtra as the carrier of the message of universal salvation. The poem reads: May anyone whosoever rides this raft of the Buddha’s teaching arrive at the other shore! (tare to naku/ hitotsu no nori no/ ikada ni te/ kanata no kishi ni/ tsuku yoshi mo ga na—poem #1).

The second vow, “However rampant are the delusions, I vow to eradicate them all” (“Bon’nō muhen seigan dan” 煩悩無辺誓願断), is the determination to dissolve all delusory attachments. Her waka accompanying this vow reads: There are countless delusions, but the closest ones to me are the five detriments. (kazōbeki/ hō mo nakeredo/ mi ni chikaki mazu wa itsutsu no/ sawari nari keru—poem #2).

those who tried to humiliate him (see Sakamoto and Iwamoto 1976, 3: 133). Among the Japanese Buddhists, Nichiren emulated the act of this “never disparaging bodhisattva.” 21  They stand for “the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha,” and mean “Buddhism.”

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Here, by “five detriments” (J. itsutsu no sawari), she is referring to the “five hindrances” or “obstacles” (J. goshō) ascribed to women, which we saw earlier (see Sect. 2.3.2, above). To be born into a female body may be a cause of “delusory thoughts” (J. bon’nō), but she vows to annihilate any obstacle associated with being born in a female body. For the third vow, “Inexhaustible is the Buddhist teaching but I vow to understand it” (J. hōmon mujin seigan chi 法門無尽誓願知), she expresses her resolution to penetrate into the depth of Buddhist teaching. Her waka reads: How I wish to attain ‘awakening’ (satoru koto), even if I hear it is a narrow gate to enter. (ikanishite/ tsukushite shiran/ satoru koto iru koto kataki/ mon to kike domo—poem #3).

For the fourth vow, “May I bear witness to the supreme enlightenment” (“Mujō bodai seigan shō” 無上菩提誓願証),22 she alludes to the Pure Land teaching: I wish to be reborn on the highest rung of the lotus pedestal that blooms in nine ranks! (kokono shina/ sakihiraku naru hachisuha no ue no ue naru mi tomo naraba ya—poem #4).

The textual source of this teaching of “nine ranks” is in the The Sūtra on the Meditation of Immeasurable Life (J. Kanmuryōjukyō 観無量寿経) (T 12.365).23 We see that the faith in Amida Buddha was part and parcel of Daisaiin’s faith. From this brief introduction to Daisaiin’s poems, we already observe that her waka poems are far from  dry scholarly expositions and pedantic hermeneutical exercise on the Buddhist texts. On the contrary, they express her fervent religious yearning, and as such they are highly existential. Next, Daisaiin turns to the Heart Sūtra (J. Han’nya shingyō 般若心経), which to this day occupies the central place in Buddhist practice in Japan. The recitation of this short sūtra may have been part of her daily devotion. She quotes the famous line, “Shiki soku ze kū, kū soku ze shiki, jū-sō-gyō-shiki yakubu nyoze” (“Form is empty, empty is form; the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness”) (Conze et al. 1978: 54). Her accompanying poem reads: Numerous teachings have been preached through the ages, but this is indeed the pristine heart of the teaching.

22  This fourth vow is slightly differently from the one chanted in the Zen tradition, indicating that Daisaiin adhered to the Tendai teaching. 23  There exists no Sanskrit or Tibetan text of this sūtra. This sūtra is commonly referred to  as “Kangyō” 観経. In this sūtra, the Buddha instructs Vaidehī, the wife of King Bimbisāra, how to meditate on the paradise, on the physical features of Amida Buddha, on his assistant Bodhisattvas, Avalokiteśvara (J. Kan’on 観音or Kanzeon 観世音) and Mahāsthāmaprāpta (J. Daiseishi 大勢至), and so forth, in order to be reborn in Amida Buddha’s Paradise. It describes the nine “ranks” of humanity, classified according to the spiritual aptitude, maturity, and firmness of their faith.

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M. Yusa (yoyo o hete/ tokikuru nori wa/ ookaredo/ kore zo makoto no/ kokoro nari keru—poem #5).

Here, the emphatic “this” (J. kore zo) is said to refer not only to the Heart Sūtra but also to the Buddha’s message in the Lotus Sūtra, namely, the universal salvation of all sentient beings. Next, she gives tribute to each of the “Ten Vows of Samantabhadra” (J. Fugen jūgan 普賢十願),24 which were dear to the Buddhists of the Heian period. Her accompanying poems (poems #6–15) speak of her introspection and exertion at practice. I cite only one poem here, which accompanies the seventh vow of Samantabhadra—“I vow to bring forth the presence of the Buddhas in this world.” The lovely moon that everyone looks up, may it shine peacefully, without being covered up by the cloud. (mina hito no/ hikari o aogu/ sora no tsuki/ nodokani terase/ kumogakure sede—poem #12).

The expression “kumogakure”—the moon hidden by the cloud—is a very common poetic locution, but here it works well, suggesting the brightness of the moon, the symbol of “enlightenment” which adds limpidity to her devotion. Daisaiin next turns to scriptures either well-known or lesser-known—the Sūtra of a Woman Changing Her Body to Attain Buddhahood (J. Ten’nyo jōbutsukyō 転女 成仏経),25 the Wish-Granting Wheel Sūtra (J. Nyoirinkyō 如意輪経), the Amida Sūtra (S. Sukhāvativyūha Sūtra, J. Amidakyō 阿弥陀経), the On the Guiding Principle (J. Rishubun 理趣分),26 the Benevolent Kings Sūtra (J. Nin’nōkyō 仁王 経)27 in two volumes, the Sūtra on Baishajyaguru’s Vows (J. Hongan Yakushikyō 本 願薬師経),28 and the Sūtra of Long Life (J. Jumyōkyō 寿命経 or Issai Nyorai kongō

 Appearing in the last concluding section of the Huayan sūtra, these ten vows were taken by Bodhisattva Samantabhadra, the protector and the supporter of those who engage in arduous religious practice. These vows are: (1) May I honor and worship all the Buddhas, (2) May I praise the Buddha, the Tathāgata, (3) May I generously perform religious giving, (4) May I confess and repent all my evil doings, (5) May I rejoice the merit of charity, (6) May I beseech the teaching, (7) May I earnestly bear witness to the Buddha’s presence in this world, (8) May I faithfully study the Buddha’s teaching, (9) May I always serve sentient beings, and (10) May I give back any merit that I accrue to the rest of the world (see Nakamura 2003: 170). 25  Also known as “Bussetsu tenyoshinkyō” 佛説転女身経 (T 14.564.915–921), this sūtra was among the scriptures the Heian aristocrats tended to include at the time of the memorial service for their deceased female relatives. The first mention of this sūtra appears to be in the year 884 (see Nishiguchi 1987: 106–107). Apparently, this sūtra fell into oblivion by the fourteenth century. 26  This is the 578th section of The 600 Volume Great Prajñāpāramitaā Sūtra. (T 7.220) (see Ishihara 1983: 107). I acknowledge Ian Astley for his help in finding the original text. 27  The Lotus Sūtra, the Sūtra of the Golden Light (J. Konkōmyōkyō) and the Nin’nōkyō were considered the three Buddhist sūtras that had the power to “protect the country” (J. gokoku sanbukyō 護国三部経) (Ishihara 1983: 107). 28  This sūtra was widely popular during the latter half of the Heian period as the sūtra that brought about happiness and wealth to this world by eradicating suffering (see Ishihara 1983: 108). 24

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daranikyō 一切如来金剛陀羅尼経). What is of interest here is not so much the messages of these sūtras themselves as Daisaiin’s poems, which contain precious information concerning her religious life. The Sūtra of a Woman Changing Her Body to Attain Buddhahood (Ten’nyo jōbutsukyō), though a minor sutra, was not to be bypassed especially by women, because of its subject matter. It narrates the story of a female fetus turning into male in the mother’s womb, as it intently listens to the Buddha’s sermon. Some interpret that the sūtra celebrates the female body as the carrier of all humanity. Some interpret that the underlying presupposition of this sūtra is the empty nature of sexes that guarantees women their attainment of perfect awakening. The passage Daisaiin quotes from the sūtra, however, is actually not found in the original, suggesting that she knew about this sūtra but never read it (Ishihara 1983: 110).. This bespeaks the status of this sūtra, which was recited in the service performed for women (but not read and studied). Her waka has the play on the word “turn”: Upon encountering the teaching specifically preached for women, I rejoice; I ‘turn’ to it and listen to the story of a female body ‘turning’ into male. (toriwakite/ tokareshi nori ni/ ainureba/ mi mo kaetsu beku/ kikuzo ureshiki—poem #16).

Her poem “On the Guiding Principle” (the Rishubun) frankly describes her paradoxical position of officially being a high Shintō priestess while privately a practitioner of the Bodhisattva-path. It reads: Every morning when the sun rises, I offer my prayer to the Shintō god, but no one knows that my heart is set on the west. (izuru hi no/ ashita goto ni wa/ hito shirezu/ nishi ni kokoro wa/ iru to naranan—poem #19).

Here, “every morning when the sun rises” refers to the Saiin’s daily worship of the deity of Kamo Shrine, and “the west” is the direction of Amida Buddha’s paradise, on which her heart is “set”—a kin-word associated with the fact that the sun “sets” in the west. In this poem the themes of the devotion to Amida Buddha’s paradise, the merit of spreading the Buddhist teaching to bring about peace to the land, and the reaffirmation of women being able to attain rebirth in the Buddhist paradise are all seamlessly interwoven with her observance of the daily Shinto prayer at dawn. In the poem accompanying the Sūtra of Long Life (J. Jumyōkyō), she reveals her self-understanding that her devotion to Buddhist teaching is directed to the benefit of all sentient beings. She adds, somewhat whimsically, the lifespan of such a devoted person must not be cut too short. Indeed, Daisaiin lived to the age of 72, when the average life expectancy of those days was under 50. Her poem reads: I uphold the teaching for the sake of all sentient beings— I wonder if it allows me to live a little while longer.

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(yosobito no/ tame ni tamoteru/ nori yue ni/ kazunaranu mi ni/ hodo wa henu ran—poem #23).

The expression, “for the sake of all sentient beings” or “for the sake of other people” (yosobito no tame ni), captures the essence of bodhisattva practice. Apparently, the recitation of the Sūtra of Long Life was believed to bring happiness to all beings. (c) The Lotus Sūtra The waka collection reaches its height in this portion dedicated to the 28 chapters of the Lotus Sūtra, which was considered “the King of the Sūtras.” Because of its preeminent status, it was often accompanied by the Sūtra of Inexhaustible Significance (J. Muryōgikyō 無量義経), otherwise known as the “Opening Sūtra” (J. Kaikyō 開経), and the Sūtra of Meditation on the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra (J. [Kan]Fugenkyō 観普賢経), known as the “Closing Sūtra” (J. kekkyō 結経).29 Her collection follows this convention. Here below, only several select chapters will be treated, which best illustrate Daisaiin’s spirituality. For the opening chapter of the Lotus Sūtra she composed a surprisingly lighthearted poem, which says that her early morning Shintō prayer obliges her to sleep through the night. It reads: I know that there are those who solely devote themselves to the Buddha’s teaching without sleeping at night; how deplorable it is that I spend my nights in dreams! (nuru yo naku/ nori o motomeshi/ hito mo aru o,/ yume no naka nite/ sugosu mi zo uki—poem #25).

Her poems dedicated to the Lotus Sūtra are often imbued with exquisite sensitivity for the beauty of nature. For instance, for Chap. 2, “On the Expedient Means,”30 she selects the passage which reads that even a single flowering branch dedicated to a statue (or a painted image) of the Buddha is meritorious, and that just as the fragrance of the flowers wafts in the air, the person who performs such a devotional act forms a “spiritual kinship” (J. kechien 結縁) with the Buddha (Sakamoto and Iwamoto 1976, 1: 116). Her poem reads: The scent of the flowers I offer in my devotion to the Buddha is my guide— may it lead me to encounter innumerable Buddhas intimately. (hitotabi no/ hana no kaori o/ shirube nite/ musu no hotoke ni/ aimizarame ya—poem # 26).

 These three are referred to as the “threefold Lotus Sūtra” (J. Hokke sanbukyō 法華三部経). Emulating examples of the Great Saiin and others, a practice emerged to compose waka poetry to the group of five sūtras (The Amida Sūtra and The Heart Sūtra together with the threefold Lotus Sūtra) and came to be known as the “poems dedicated to the Lotus Sūtra in full” (J. Hoke gukyōka 法華具経歌). 30  These English titles are taken from Hurvitz (1976). 29

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The poem accompanying Chap. 17, “Discrimination of Merits,” talks about the imagery of a bird, which probably is an allusion to “non-attachment,” echoing the passage in the Great Meditation Text (J. Makashikan)—“a bird flies in the sky but leaves no trace.”31 Her poem reads: When the blossoms scatter all around me, I am momentarily bewildered— are they the birds flying down from the heavens? (iroiro no/ hana chirikureba/ kumoi yori/ tobikau tori to/ mie magai ken—poem #41).

In her poem for Chap. 19, “The Merits of the Dharma-Preacher,” Daisaiin mentions her daily morning toilette, which is an occasion for her to reflect on the passage of time, as her reflection in a mirror tells her how everything passes with time: How ashamed I am to see what is reflected in the clear mirror— for the mirror clouds no image. (kumori naki/ kagami no uchi zo/ hazukashiki/ kagami no kage no/ kumori nakereba—poem #43).

The hand-polished mirror was an object of luxury in those days. Besides, a “mirror” is rich in symbolism both in the Shintō and Buddhist traditions. Daisaiin’s reference to a mirror can be interpreted to refer to both traditions—the mirror in Shintō is associated with the sacred object that brought the Sun Goddess Amaterasu out of the heavenly cave; the mirror eventually came to be identified with Amaterasu herself and stands for such qualities as “purity,” “truth,” and “honesty.” The mirror in the Buddhist tradition refers to the original nature of consciousness that reflects reality undistorted but stores nothing, and hence stands for high degree of awareness. For the fifth chapter of the Sūtra “Medicinal Herbs,” in which the Buddha’s compassion is likened to the rain that nurtures shrubs and trees of all sizes alike, her poem delicately combines her appreciation of the beauty of nature and the Buddha’s compassion: Although the color of the flowers blooming on the branch I offer to the Buddha appear to be the same, The scent of the flowers on the branch pointing to the west seems to increase its strength slightly more! (hitotsu iro ni/ waga mi utsuredo/ hana no iro mo/ nishini sasu e ya/ nioi masu ran—poem #29).

 According to the Makashikan, “Birds fly in the air but do not dwell in the air. Even though birds do not dwell in the sky, humans still look for their traces in the sky” (Sekiguchi 1966, 1: 296).

31

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This poem, containing such words as “hana” (flower), “iro” (color), and “waga mi” (my physical existence), readily brings to my mind the famous poem by Lady Ono no Komachi: The color of the flower has faded indeed, reflecting the appearance of my life— as if a long rain has fallen on me. (hana no iro wa/ utsuri ni keri na/ itazura ni waga mi yo ni furu/ nagame seshima ni). (see Saeki 1958: 124)

The contrast between the two poems, however, is striking. While Daisaiin’s poem expresses her devotion to Buddhist practice and her spiritual longing for rebirth in Amida Buddha’s paradise, the poem by Ono no Komachi is a simple, though elegant, poem of gentle self-lament permeated with the sense of melancholy. For Chap. 10 of the Lotus Sūtra, Daisaiin depicts the serene beauty of her abode. This resonates with the observation made by Lady Murasaki below: In the deep night, when the sky is clear and my heart is calm, The predawn moon grows brighter still. (sora sumite/ kokoro nodokeki/ sayonaka ni ariake no tsuki no/ hikari o zo masu—poem #34).

Daisaiin occasionally hints at the darker night of the soul, but she is assured by the compassionate teaching of the Buddha, which sheds bright light even in the darkest night. Had she not encountered the Buddha’s teaching, she would have been lost in a dark abyss. Her poem reads: If the bright light of the moon had not shone, I would still be walking on the dark path all alone. (sayaka naru/ tsuki no hikari no/ terasazu wa, kuraki michi o ya/ hitori yukamashi—poem #45).

The two important chapters in the Lotus Sūtra that directly address women’s attainment of enlightenment are Chap. 12, “Devadatta,” and Chap. 24, “The Bodhisattva Fine Sound.” While the former chapter features the daughter of the Naga king whose body burns into male as she attains enlightenment (see Sect. 2.3.2, above), in the latter Myōon Bodhisattva changes his male body into female—in both cases making the point that the distinction between male and female is only tentative and nothing to do with each person’s ability to attain Buddhahood. Daisaiin’s poem for the “Devadatta” chapter reads as follows: Because there is the precedence that even the obstructions present no obstacles, it leads me to hope that there is no cloud that separates me from enlightenment. (sawari ni mo/ sawaranu tameshi/ ari kereba, hedatsuru kumo mo/ araji to zo omou—poem #36).

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“Sawari” 障 here is the allusion to the “five obstacles” (J. goshō 五障), mentioned earlier (also see poem #2, above). For Chap. 24, “Bodhisattva of Fine Sound,” this is her poem: Oh, Bodhisattva Fine Sound, you are the only one who willingly takes on the despised female body, for the sake of bringing the Buddha’s teaching to women! (kakubakari/ itou ukimi o/ kimi nomizo nori no tame ni to/ narikawari keru—poem #48).

(d) The Closing Section In the concluding section of the collection, Daisaiin first turns to the Nirvana Sūtra (J. Nehan-gyō 涅槃経), which contains the last sermon of the Śākyamuni Buddha followed by his passing. After that she concludes her collection with the “prayer to redirect the fruit of religious merits to the benefit of the world” (J. ekōmon 回向文) taken from Chap. 7 of the Lotus Sūtra, “The Parable of the Magic City”: “May the merits accumulated by the good deeds of the bodhisattvas be given back to all sentient beings so that they will all attain Buddhahood” (願以此功徳、普及 於一切、我等與衆生、皆共成仏道) (Sakamoto and Iwamoto 1976, 2: 52). The following is her poem of the prayer and hope: Whatever the exertion it may be required of me, I wish that everyone—those whom I know and do not know— be reborn on the lotus pedestal as my companions. (ikani shite/ shiru mo shiranu mo/ yono hito o/ hasu no ue no/ tomo to nashiten—poem #55).

3.1.4  Shintō and Buddhist Spiritualities in Daisaiin’s Faith As we saw above, Daisaiin considered her public social responsibilities of being the high Shintō priestess (Saiin) not in conflict with her personal pursuit of the bodhisattva-­path. In fact, it appears that her consciousness of being the Saiin allowed her to expand her awareness to embrace the aspiration of “saving all sentient beings.” In her the Shintō sensibility and Buddhist spirituality appear to have mutually deepened her contemplation and religious practice. Her daily sunrise Shintō prayer for the well-being of the people and the prosperity of the land was, after all, not inimical to the bodhisattva-path. The Shintō observance of ritual cleanliness could easily translate into Buddhist practice of eradicating delusory thoughts and ego-bound defiled mental attitudes. We may conclude then that the life of pure disinterested selfless devotion to a Shintō god was conducive, at least in her case, to leading a contemplative life. Genuine spirituality does not have to be exclusive, and it can transcend the “labels” of Shintō, Buddhist, etc. A quiet life of relative seclusion from the world of daily affairs heightened her sense of seasonal beauty of natural surroundings as well as her appreciation of the “impermanence” of all things.

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Leading a celibate life in relative seclusion in reasonable comfort must have been also conducive to living the life of “spiritual retreat.” It must be mentioned here that not all the Saiin and Saigū princesses were cut out for this spiritual lifestyle, and some were, in fact, dismissed from the office for breaking the codes of behavior. This explains to a great extent why for the majority of Saigū and Saiin princesses of Daisaiin’s days there was no problem to embrace Buddhism, especially after they stepped down from the Shintō office. In that sense Daisaiin’s case, although exceptional, is nothing unusual. Daisaiin was a contemporary of such great female authors as Lady MURASAKI Shikibu 紫式部 and Lady SEI Shōnagon 清少納言. In fact, legend has it that Murasaki wrote her epic novel The Tale of Genji around 1008 in response to the request made by Daisaiin for a new read for her diversion. Lady Murasaki described the atmosphere of Daisaiin’s mansion located in the northern outskirts of Kyoto, thus: The palace of the Saiin impresses me to be a place of refined elegance… . Whenever I make an occasional visit there to view the beautiful moonlit night or the marvelous dawn skies, to appreciate cherry blossoms, or the song of the cuckoos, the Saiin Princess seems to be fully content with her elegant lifestyle, and the place gives out the otherworldly aura shrouded in the mystique of something holy. (Nakano 1994: 194)

3.1.5  The Period of Mappō: The Spiritual Milieu in Daisaiin’s Days Daisaiin’s devotional poems contained in her Hosshin waka-shū serve as a window into the complex facets of Japanese Buddhist practices of the turn of the first millennium C.E. It was the time permeated with fervent religious devotion. Daisaiin died in 1035—only less than two decades prior to 1052 C.E., when the “last period of the Buddha’s teaching” (J. mappō 末法) was supposed to commence. People of all walks of life anxiously anticipated changes to come about with the period of degeneration of the Buddhist dharma. (This vague anxiety and fear were not something unique to Japan; Joachim of Fiore, ca. 1132–1202, for instance, built his theology on the prevailing sentiment of his time that the apocalyptic period was approaching.) In this milieu, the Tendai monk Genshin 源信 (942–1017) composed the Essentials of Salvation (J. Ōjōyōshū), and published it in 985, and in 986, which was the year Princess Senshi was born, he established the nenbutsu group at Yokawa, a remote corner of the monastic compound on Mount Hiei, in order to practice the devotion to Amida Buddha. The lay co-founder of this group, YOSHISHIGE no Yasutane 慶滋保胤 (935–1002), a renowned poet, soon renounced poetry as giving reins to the “fictitious power of imagination” and became a monk. Even the most formidable political figure of the day, Prime Minister and Chancellor FUJIWARA no Michinaga 藤原道長 (966–1027) spent his last years totally devoted to his Buddhist practice, warmly embracing the Lotus Sūtra. His devotion was so outstanding that he came to be compared to such revered figures as Prince Shōtoku and Master Kōbō 弘法大師 (or Kūkai 空海, 774–835) (Matsumura and Yamanaka

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1964, 1: 448). Daisaiin was familiar with all these figures.32 For instance, Michinaga was enormously gratified by Daisaiin blessing his two grandchildren (both of whom later became emperor), during the Kamo festival procession of 1010, blessings she conferred from within her oxen-drawn carriage. A poetry exchange of gratitude and further blessings followed this occasion between Michinaga and Daisaiin (Matsumura and Yamanaka 1964, 1: 294). Daisaiin’s poetry collection indeed eloquently captures the prevalent spiritual milieu of her time. Her Buddhist practice was in keeping with the instructions developed by the Tendai monastics on Mount Hiei. She chose the message of the Lotus Sūtra over the Shingon rituals that were also performed at the emperor’s court. We only need to recall her mention of the Shingon practice of the meditation on the “Sound A” in her Preface to her poetry collection. 3.1.6  Daisaiin and the Imperial Ladies Imperial ladies and women of high-birth were among the important Buddhist patrons during the turn of the first millennium; not only the reigning emperors but also imperial consorts hosted the most celebrated event called the Hokke hakkō 法 華八講, which was a four-day-long celebration of the Lotus Sūtra, that included the recitation and exposition of each chapter by the eminent monks.33 Hokke hakkō was an elaborate event, and to host it was extremely costly, but it came with great prestige. (SEI Shōnagon in her Pillow Book observed that an invitation to one of these events was received with great satisfaction by the guests). For instance, Empress Dowager Senshi 詮子 (962–1001/1002), the elder sister of FUJIWARA no Michinaga and the principal wife of Emperor En’yū, hosted a Hokke Hakkō in 991 (probably in memory of her deceased husband). On that occasion she extended her invitation to Daisaiin. The latter, however, could not accept the invitation on account of her being the Saiin. This is where the social and personal spheres collided. Expressing her regrets, Daisaiin composed the following waka and sent it along with a gift of a small carved tortoise to the Empress Dowager: Being the tortoise living in Mitarashi River34 I am piling up evil karmic deeds. How am I to encounter the floating log of the precious teaching?

 Genshin, for instance, was invited to the court of Emperor En’yū in 974, where he engaged in a debate with a priest from Tōdaiji in Nara. The princess Senshi was then 11 years old. The news of this event must have reached her ears, even if she was not present at the debate. 33  The 28  chapters of the Lotus Sūtra, together with the “opening” and “closing” sūtras, were divided into eight segments (with varying length of two to four chapters), and every day renowned monks and priests, all invited by the host, went over two segments, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon session, covering the entire chapters of the Sūtra over the period of four  days. 34  This is the river that runs through the Upper-Kamo Shrine precinct, where the Saiin performed her annual ritual ablutions. 32

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(gō tsukusu/ imtarashigawa no/ kame nareba nori no ukigi ni/ awanu narikeri). (Ishihara 1983: 260)35

Here, the words “floating log” and the “tortoise” refer to the Indian Buddhist parable of a blind turtle swimming in the vast ocean, and when it pulls out its neck from under the water, it finds itself poking through the hole of a floating log—­ meaning how rare and precious it is to be born a human being and rarer still is it to encounter the Buddha’s teaching (Nakamura 1982: 95).36 In 1026, when the Empress Dowager Akiko 彰子 (or Shōshi, 988–1074), the eldest daughter of FUJIWARA no Michinaga and the principle consort of the late Emperor Ichijō, became Cloistered Imperial Lady Jōtōmon’in 上東門院 on receiving a full Buddhist ordination as a nun, Daisaiin sent this poem to her: Even you have entered the path of truth. I alone am lost, forlorn, in the long dark night. (kimi sura mo/ makoto no michi ni/ irinu nari/ hitori ya nagaki/ yami ni madowamu). (Ishihara 1983: 261)37

These exchanges of poems reveal that Daisaiin maintained close contact with these imperial ladies. It is perhaps through them that Daisaiin was able to obtain various Buddhist Sūtras, sermons and writings of famous monks, and other related materials on Buddhism.38 An old story has it that Daisaiin had in her possession a three-foot tall statue of Amida Buddha, and that she offered her daily recitation of the passages from the Lotus Sūtra seated before this statue (Takahashi 2001, 1: 47). In those days, courtiers and ladies were well versed in the Lotus Sūtra, and some court ladies could even recite the entire sūtra by heart! Although the Saiin’s mansion at Murasakino was set apart from the outside world, it was by no means sealed off, and there were frequent comings and goings. Daisaiin’s poem shows that even an itinerant monk was invited to come into the mansion, when she heard him passing outside her place one early pre-dawn morning, chanting aloud the name of Amida Buddha. She told her lady-in-waiting to ask him to come in so that she could hand him the poem she jotted down impromptu. The poem reads: Hearing the chanting voice of “Amida-butsu,” I awoke from my slumber. I saw the setting moon hanging low in the western sky!  This poem is compiled in the imperially commissioned waka collection, Shūiwaka-shū (ca. 1005). 36  This parable dates back to the early days of Buddhism, the time of the Tērīgātā (see Nakamura 1982: 95). 37  This poem was compiled in the imperially commissioned Goshūi waka-shū. Concerning the ordination of Empress Shōshi and the issues surrounding the female ordinations of that time, see Meeks (2006). 38  It is fully possible that a year before she was chosen as the Saiin priestess, Princess Senshi may have heard about Genshin’s splendid performance as a debater, which took place at the court of Emperor En’yū in 974. Genshin later authored the Essentials of Salvation. 35

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(Amidabutsu to/ tonauru koe ni/ yume samete/ nishi e katabuku/ tsuki o koso mire). (Ishihara 1983: 262)39

The moon was the symbol of the Buddha’s teaching or enlightenment, as mentioned earlier, and the direction of the “west” is, of course, that of Amida Buddha’s paradise. The mention of the itinerant “holy man” (J.  hijiri 聖) is of interest, as many greatly gifted monks deliberately left the prestigious monastic center of Mount Hiei in those days in order to distance themselves from the political influences of the imperial court.

3.2  The Second Strand: The Grace of Amida Buddha 3.2.1  Saiin Princess Shikishi’s Pure Land Faith Imperial Princess Shikishi 式子, (1149–1201), or Noriko, sometimes called Shokushi, was the third daughter of Emperor Goshirakawa 後白河天皇 (1127– 1192), who skillfully maneuvered to keep his political power intact at the critical period of domestic turbulence marked by the fierce military conflicts between the Taira (or the Heike clan) and the Minamoto (or the Genji clan). These military conflicts ushered in the establishment of military government in Kamakura in 1192, headed by MINAMOTO no Yoritomo (1147–1199), which put an end to the Heian Period. Princess Shikishi, like Daisaiin Senshi, was chosen as Saiin, and served the office for 11 years, 1159–1169. Shikishi is best known as a superbly gifted poet, and as many as 42 of her poems were included in the imperially commissioned poetry collection, Shinkokin wakashū (1205). Her fame as a poet even gave rise to a noh play titled Teika, in which FUJIWARA no Teika 藤原定家 (1162–1241), the arbiter of poetry and one of the six compilers of the Shinkokin waka-shū, is depicted as the unrequited lover who sought Princess Shikishi’s attention. The medieval mind made a romantic association between the two outstanding poets in this noh play, but this is merely a fiction. Shikishi had FUJIWARA no Shunzei 藤原俊成 (1114–1204), Teika’s father, as her poetry teacher, and it was Shunzei who recommended Teika to the position of chief steward of the Princess’s household. Teika not only took care of the princess’s estates but also moved in the same poetry circle led by Shunzei, so their paths naturally crossed. What is lesser known is that Shikishi embraced Buddhism sometime in the 1180s, and received the precepts, probably from Hōnen, the founding figure of the Japanese Pure Land Sect. In 1191, she received the full ordination, with the Buddhist name of Shōnyobō 承如房.40 To be fully ordained meant in her case that she led a  This poem, compiled in the collection Kin’yō waka-shū, is prefaced as: “On an August night, when the moon was bright, I heard a “holy itinerant monk” (J. hijiri) calling out the name of Amida; I had him come into the mansion, and asked one of my ladies-in-waiting to hand this poem to him.” 40  The identity of Shōnyobō was not known until Kishi (1955) discovered her as the Imperial Princess Shikishi. 39

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life dedicated to religious practice without leaving her mansion, which was a bequest of her father, the former Emperor Goshirakawa. 3.2.2  Princess Shikishi: The Poet of Love and Nature Shikishi was chosen by divination to serve the office of Saiin in October 1159, one year after the enthronement of Emperor Nijō (r. 1158–1165). (In 1158, Shikishi’s elder sister had been chosen as Saigū). This enthronement of the new emperor was politically calculated by her father, Goshiraka, who abdicated the throne to maintain his influence as the Former Emperor. Though the political situation was highly volatile, the lives of the imperial ladies and princesses seem to have been relatively untouched by it. Nevertheless, the air of dynamic change in the outside world reflected on the general mood of the waka poetry of this period. Shikishi’s waka poems are no exception. Moreover, they are surprisingly fresh and timeless in tone and imagery, especially when she describes nature’s beauty. Her poems that recall her days of Saiin especially reverberate with the sound of deep valleys and forests, which formed the backdrop of the Shintō rituals in which she took part. In comparison with the days of Daisaiin (in office, 975–1031), by the time Shikishi became Saiin (in office, 1159–1169), the protocol and rituals of the Office of Saiin appear to be much more regulated and fixed. For instance, the practice of the annual observation of a “hierophany,” or “the manifestation of god” (J. miare みあれ or 御阿礼) was instituted sometime after Daisaiin’s time. Miare, still observed to this day in a symbolic manner, is a ritual in which the Saiin spent a night in the open field midway between the Sacred Hill (called “Kōyama” 神山, literally “god’s hill”) and Kamigamo Shrine. The deity Wakeikazuchi is believed to descend onto this sacred hill from heaven and spend the night together with the Saiin princess. Her poem, prefaced as “at Kandachi 神館,”41 refers to this “miare” ritual. Her recollection evocatively invites the reader to the dew-laden field: How can I forget? The malva leaves tied together with the grass, to rest my head on it to slumber in the open field—and the dew laden dawn! (wasure me ya/ aoi o kusa ni/ hikimusubi/ karine no nobe no/ tsuyu no akebono—Poem #23).42

In another poem, composed in 1200, a year before her death, and prefaced with these words: “the time when I once was the sacred high priestess (itsuki),” she vividly recalls her youthful memory of having spent a night in the open field: A cuckoos’ cry above my pillow in the sacred hill of a night’s journey.  Kandachi was a temporary “abode” erected on the sacred spot, where once a year, a few days prior to the Kamo Festival, the Saiin princess stayed overnight. The deity would come to her in her sleep. 42  Princess Shikishi’s poems are numbered, more or less in a chronological order of the composition, although the exact dates of many poems remain within the realm of conjecture (see Oda 1995). This poem is compiled in the Shinkokin waka collection (see Sasaki 1997: no. 182). 41

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I shall never forget the sky— A bird softly spoke to me in the dead of the night. (hototogisu/ sono kamiyama no/ tabimakura/ ho no kataraishi/ sora zo wasurenu—Poem #322). (Oda 1995: 469–470)43

She stepped down from the office of Saiin on July 26, 1169, on account of her poor health (she was about 20 years old then). The poem, prefaced by this occasion, reveals her sadness in leaving the sacred office: When the new sacred priestess of Kamo assumed the office, I proceeded to Karasaki, where I performed my last ablutions as the departing Saiin. The following day, I received an inquiry from an imperial princess,44 who resided in Sōrinji in Higashiyama, and who sent me her kind words concerning my last day as Saiin. In response, I composed this poem: Ah, the sacred stream of Mitarashi! I felt as if I no longer saw my reflection on the water As I performed my ablutions at the beach of Shiga My sleeves were drenched with the lake water and my tears. (Mitarashi ya/ kage tae hatsuru/ kokochi shite/ Shiga no uraji ni/ sode zo nureni shi—Poem #307). (Oda 1995: 447–448)45

A marked characteristic of Princess Shikishi’s poetry is her directly entering into an intimate relationship with surrounding nature. She often speaks to the moon, birds, tree branches, grass, blossoms, and so on as a “thou.” The following poem is a good example. It was composed in 1199, the year when she began to feel ill and had the premonition of her approaching death. In this poem she is speaking to a plum tree in the garden next to the eaves, by assuming the perspective of the time when she would no longer be alive: Even if “today” becomes the “olden days,” I am gazing at you, oh, plum tree next to the eaves! You shall never forget me. (nagame tsuru/ kyō wa mukashi ni/ narinu to mo/ nokiba no ume wa/ ware o wasuru na—Poem #209). (Oda 1995: 288–289)

3.2.3  Princess Shikishi’s Buddhist Poems Her poems dating from mid-1180 addresses Buddhist themes, indicating that the former Saiin was by then seriously devoted to Buddhist practice. The following waka refers to one of the ten vows of Bodhisattva Samantabhadra, pledging that he would never abandon any soul at the time of death. The Princess’s waka reads:  The passage is compiled in Shinkokin waka-shū, no. 1486.  This is identified as the daughter of Emperor Toba, Shōshi, or Nobuko (1145–1208). 45  It is in the Senzai waka-shū (published in 1188); this poetry collection was compiled by Fujiwara no Shunzei. 43 44

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M. Yusa Even on the eve when a soul departs from the land of its birth, the moonlight accompanies and sends it off—or so I understand. (furusato o/ hitori wakaruru/ yūbe ni mo/ okuru wa tsuki no/ kage to koso kike—Poem #308). (Oda 1995: 449–450)

We may recall that the “Ten Vows of Samantabhadra” were favorite themes of versification among the Heian nobility, as Daisaiin included them in her poetry collection (see Daisaiin’s Poem #12, above). There is no written record of Princess Shikishi’s first encounter with Hōnen, but it is estimated that it must have been sometime in the 1180s, when the latter’s reputation began to spread among the court nobility as an outstanding charismatic religious figure. Hōnen’s name surfaces for the first time in 1181 in the diary, “Leaves of Jewel” (J. Gyokuyō 玉葉), kept by Prime Minister and later Regent KUJŌ Kanezane 九条兼実 (1149–1207), when Hōnen served as the spiritual teacher for the Chief Councilor of State, Lord FUJIWARA no Kunitsuna 藤原邦綱, who passed away on February 23, 1181 (Takahashi 1990, 5: 40). Lord Kunitsuna was a disciple of Hōnen, and Kanezane noted that he died peacefully. Kanezane belonged to the most powerful branch of the Fujiwaras and was very well connected. In his capacity of Prime Minister he handled the affairs of the state that involved the divination to select Saigū and Saiin. In 1189, Kanezane invited Hōnen to his mansion and asked him to expound on the nenbutsu practice. Eventually, Kanezane’s entire family—his wife Lady Kujō, and their daughter Ninshi––all embraced Hōnen as their spiritual teacher and received the precepts. Princess Shikishi probably came to hear about Hōnen when she was staying with her aunt Lady Hachijō (1137–1211), the beloved daughter of the late Emperor Toba; she was given the title of the Cloistered Lady in 1161, as the “godmother,” junbo, of Emperor Nijō. Lady Hachijō received constant visits from Lord Kanezane, and it is very probable that the name of Hōnen came up in their conversation. It appears that Shikishi received the formal Buddhist precepts and was fully ordained (shukke) under Hōnen, as mentioned earlier. We can approximate the year of her ordination, because FUJIWARA no Teika kept a diary, Meigetsuki, in which we read that when Cloistered Emperor Goshirakawa saw his daughter at a formal gathering in 1191—a year before his death—she showed up wearing a robe of subdued hue,46 a sign that she had renounced this world. This was met with disapprobation by the Cloistered Emperor, who wanted his daughter to enjoy her secular prestige (Imakawa 1977, 1: 347).47 Hōnen’s epistle addressed to Princess Shikishi mentions that by the time she received her full ordination, her faith had been firmly established in her Pure Land faith (Hōnen 1971: 198). The following waka, composed in June 1193, speaks of Shikishi’s Pure Land faith. It is among the several poems of condolence composed for her teacher of  Although the Japanese word for this is “shukke” 出家 (“renunciation of this world”), it appears that it makes better sense to understand it more as a serious lay-practitioner than a “nun.” 47  FUJIWARA no Teika reminisced about Princess Shikishi, how she had to move out of the mansion of Lady Hachijō under the suspicion of having cursed her, and when she took the Buddhist precepts, how her father reacted to it (see Nishiki 1991: 361). 46

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waka, FUJIWARA no Shunzei, upon the death of his beloved wife of 50  years. Echoing Hōnen’s teaching that the loving souls will be reborn on the same lotus pedestal in Amida Buddha’s Pure Land, she consoles the octogenarian teacher and friend in her poem: May you have many more years to live and wake up in the same bed you shared with your wife. Wait for the day when you will grace, like dew, a lotus pedestal together with your beloved. (ikutose mo/ wakare no toko ni/ okifushite onaji hachisu no/ tsuyu o machi miyo—Poem #403). (Oda 1995: 563–564)48

Any attachment, romantic or otherwise, constitutes a source of suffering, according to the Buddhist teaching, and yet in her deep trust of Amida Buddha’s compassion, she rests assured that passionate attachments may be forgiven. Another poem, composed in the last year of her life, praises the message of the Amida Sūtra (Amidakyō) and the Amida Buddha’s boundless compassion that receives all faithful into his paradise: Though heavy it may be my sins formed on me like dew, No soul is allowed to fall. (tsuyu no mi ni/ musuberu tsumi wa/ omokutomo/ morasaji mono o/ hana no utena ni—Poem #351).

3.2.4  Shingon Buddhism and the Imperial Court Princess Shikishi had a family connection to Shingon Buddhism. Her younger brother Prince Shukaku 守覚 (1150–1202) became a monk in 1160, and in 1169 (the same year she retired from the office of Saiin), became the sixth Abbot of the Imperially founded Nin’na Temple 仁和寺 in Kyoto, affiliated with the Shingon school. Shikishi’s older sister Akiko was given the honorary title of the “mother of the emperor” of Prince Tokihito, the future Emperor Antoku, (r. 1180–83) and, in 1187, she was elevated to the rank of Cloistered Imperial Lady, nyoin, with the title Inpumon’in. She received a formal lay-initiation into the Shingon practice of “eighteen paths” in 1192 from Abbot Shukaku at Nin’naji. Shikishi herself was also elevated to the highest rank allowed to the imperial princesses and received a less formal lay-initiation in 1194—this time not from Abbot Shukaku but from his halfbrother, Prince-Priest Dōhō 道法 (1166–1214). It is conjectured that the different treatment of Shikishi and her older sister may be due to the former’s having already been ordained by Hōnen, and that a full-fledged initiation was deemed inappropriate to be administered at Nin’naji. Be that as it may, Dōhō was the disciple of Shukaku and eventually succeeded him as the seventh Abbot of Nin’naji. Although Princess Shikishi was thus initiated into the Shingon practice, it appears that it had little impact on her religious life. In the very last months of her life, priests from Nin’naji  This poem was originally compiled in FUJIWARA no Shunzei’s personal waka collection, Chōshūsō 『長秋草』(1193), no. 187 (see Takayanagi 2008).

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possibly tried to persuade her to switch her practice to Shingon from Pure Land, but in vain. 3.2.5  Hōnen’s Letter to Princess Shikishi Hōnen wrote a long letter to “Lady Shōnyobō,” “Shōnyobō e tsukawasu ofumi” (Hōnen 1971: 194–201), in response to the lady, who was very frail and did not expect to have too long to live. Hōnen begins this letter by apologizing for his long silence but also notes that “just recently I was thinking about how you may be getting on with your nenbutsu practice.” Hōnen had just began his concentrated nenbutsu practice period, known as “betsuji nenbutsu” 別時念仏, which required him to retreat from the outside world. His initial reaction was to interrupt his practice and visit the ailing imperial lady, but in the end he reasoned that in view of the radical impermanence of life, his earnest prayer for her would do more for her attainment of rebirth in the Pure Land than his earthly visit (Hōnen 1971: 194). The remarkable thing about this letter is that Hōnen writes about his central conviction that one’s rebirth in Amida’s paradise is not determined by one’s good deeds or acts, but it is solely due to the power of the Buddha’s vows. It therefore follows that one does not necessarily have to have a teacher-priest at one’s deathbed as the guide, but instead one must take Amida Buddha as the sole teacher-guide. Such a bold affirmation of faith was intended to reassure Shikishi from any doubts or fear. Hōnen promised her salvation on the merit of her unwavering faith alone, not to mention her accumulated daily practice of nenbutsu. We learn from this letter that in the last weeks of Shikishi’s life, “those around her” tried to sow doubts in her mind concerning her rebirth in the Pure Land. Considering such an act as interfering with her attainment of rebirth in the Pure Land, Hōnen writes: Please do not be swayed by the words of even the wisest and most learned priests who, no doubt, deserve our respect. They may be truly accomplished in the matter of Buddhist doctrines, but their understanding (satori サトリ) of salvation is different from ours, and they adhere to a different type of religious practice from ours. Their words would present nothing but obstacles in your attaining rebirth in paradise, and they may actually take you further away from the direct contact with the presence of the Buddha. In that sense I would even say that they preach a harmful teaching. Please do not listen to what ordinary human beings (bonpu 凡夫) say, and solely trust the power of Amitābha Buddha’s vow. (Hōnen 1971: 197)

Concerned for the Princess’s last days and his not being able to be present at the moment of her passing, Hōnen goes on: The merit of your accumulated daily practice of nenbutsu is more than enough for you to attain rebirth in the Pure Land, without a priest at your deathbed to guide you. Remain steadfast in unwavering faith till the end. Even if there are people around you who tell you things contrary to your faith and sow doubts in your mind, you are not to waver. Instead, please have your ladies-in-waiting chant the nenbutsu so that you can hear it constantly and strengthen your concentration. Please discard the idea of having some ordinary mortal at your bedside as a guide to the Pure Land, but look to Amitābha Buddha as your true guide, and put utter faith in Him….

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Close your eyes, put your palms together, calm your mind and meditate on your rebirth in the Pure Land. Think only of Amitābha Buddha and pray: “I beseech you, oh, Lord Amitābha Buddha, the compassionate one. I chant the nenbutsu, as your Vow is absolute. Please come to me at the time of my death, and lead me to your paradise.” And recite the nenbutsu. This is the supreme preparation you can make in meeting your own death. Remain strong. Although I have decided to continue with my present seclusion, I do not go through this practice of continuous invocation of nenbutsu for my sake. Now that I know what you are going through, I shall invoke every single nenbutsu for your sake. May my concentrated prayer will assist you (ekō 廻向) to attain rebirth in the Pure Land. Even if I am not at your bedside, I am firmly resolved to lead you to perfect rebirth. If this intention of mine is pure and sincere, how can it fail to sustain you? I implore you please to place utter trust in my words. (Hōnen 1971: 198–199)

After Shikishi’s passing on January 25, 1201, her ladies-in-waiting remained in her mansion for one full year to remember her. The plum tree in the garden to which the princess called out never to forget her may have softened these ladies’s sorrow and consoled them from time to time. 3.2.6  Hōnen and Women’s Salvation Through this brief study on Princess Shikishi’s religious life, Hōnen emerges as an impressive religious figure who had devoted followers, high and low in their social standings. Aside from his epistle to Princess Shikishi, several of his letters addressed to women (whether they were his disciples or not), explaining the tenets of the Pure Land faith, survive. One such a letter is his response to an inquiry into the merit of the Pure Land teaching by the eminent historical figure HŌJŌ Masako 北条政子 (1157–1225), who was MINAMOTO no Yoritomo’s widow and established the Hōjō regency.49 Also extant is a letter addressed to Lady Kujō 九条殿北政所, the wife of KUJŌ Kanezane, mentioned above.50 There is also a letter addressed to a female disciple who was of the non-aristocratic rank. In all these communications, addressed both to male and female followers, his teaching is consistently free of any misogyny, and there is no specific instructions tailored to female followers. It is safe to assume that discrimination based on the sexes was absent from his religious teaching. Hōnen simply describes why the path of devotion to Amida Buddha and the practice of nenbutsu are the surest way to attain rebirth in the Western Paradise. Sometimes he even goes into detailed explanations of technical terms used in the Pure Land scriptures—even to lay followers. His eagerness to communicate his understanding permeates all these letters, and the shortest written statement known as the “One Page Testament” (Ichimai kishōmon 一枚起請文) is no exception. This testament was a sort of “will” he composed  two  days before his death upon the 49  See Hōnen’s “Kamakura no nihon bikuni ni sinzuru ohenji” 「鎌倉の二品比丘尼に進ずる御 返事」 [“My Reply to the Lady-nun with the Second Court Rank in Kamakura”] (Hōnen 1971: 188–193). 50  See Hōnen’s “Kujō-dono no kitanomandokoro e shinzuru ohenji” 「九条殿の北政所へ進ずる 御返事」 [“My Response to Lady Kujō”] (Hōnen 1971: 193–194).

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solicitation of his close disciples. The document is dated January 23, the  second year of Kenryaku 建暦 (1212), and signed “Genkū” 源空, which was Hōnen’s dharma name given at the time of his ordination in his teens. Therein he reiterates his conviction that even the most learned scholarly monk must possess the simplicity of the illiterate ordinary folks, in order to devote himself to the practice of nenbutsu: All of you who has faith in the nenbutsu practice—even if you are truly learned in the Buddhist scriptures and have the command of the latest Buddhist scholarship—should not flaunt your learning but just devote yourselves to the single-minded nenbutsu practice just like the illiterate ordinary men and women who take the Buddhist vow.51

Recent scholarly findings reveal that the discriminatory passages associated with Hōnen turn out to be later interpolations by his disciples, dating about 100 years after the master’s death.52 These later interpolations include such pejorative statements, found in his Commentary on the Sukhavatīvyūha Sūtra (J. Muryōjukyō-­ shaku 無量寿経釈), as53: Even though women possess two legs, there are hills, which they are prohibited to climb, and there are Buddha’s groves into which they are not allowed to enter. (Hōnen 1971: 55–56)

Careful reading of these blatantly misogynist passages reveals that the place names associated with these “forbidden precincts for women” came into being several decades after Hōnen’s death. (For instance, the Daigoji temple compounds actually had several temples run by nuns, where noble women took refuge during Hōnen’s days). Modern scholars argue that the reason these misleading interpolations were inserted by Hōnen’s disciples was that they wished to establish their new sectarian identity. As a result, they resorted to the strategy to label women as spiritually inferior and being handicapped by the “five hindrances and three-fold submission” (“goshō sanshō”), thus requiring special assistance by monks and priests for their salvation. As mentioned in the Introduction, this was the rhetoric often employed by the Buddhist evangelists of medieval Japan, as they vied to gain women followers to enlarge their fold. Critical assessment of the traditional perception concerning women in Buddhism has been corrected by the new findings.54 Certainly this present study of Daisaiin and Princess Shikishi reveals very little institutionalized sexism existent in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In fact, some

 Genkū 源空 was the Buddhist name Hōnen received at the time he went up to Mount Hiei at age 13, in 1145 (Hōnen 1971: 163–164). 52  A good source for this is “Hōnen no nenbutsu to josei, nyonin kyōkatan no seiritsu” 「法然の念 仏と女性、女人教化譚の成立」 [Hōnen’s Nenbutsu Practice and Women: the Establishment of the Religious Stories to Guide Women] (Imabori 1971: 67–107). 53  For the full text of Hōnen’s text, “Muryōjukyō-shaku,” 無量寿経釈, see Hōnen Ippen (Hōnen 1971: 55–56). 54  Notably, KASAHARA Kazuo, a highly respected scholar, fell to this prejudicial view that had long been taken for granted. He accepted the misogynist statement found in Hōnen’s texts without raising any question (Kasahara 1975: 145–147). 51

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priests went to the other extreme to praise woman as the mother of all the Buddhas. An intriguing entry is found in KUJŌ Kanezane’s diary, in which the Prime Minister noted the occasion of a “senbō” 懺法.55 Senbō was a Buddhist gathering that became widespread among the courtiers; it included the activity of copying the chapters of the Lotus Sūtra with the aim of cleansing one’s accumulated mental defilements. It was often followed by a formal sermon delivered by a renowned priest. On this particular day on November 28, 1182, the senbō that took place at the imperial court was attended by some twenty men and women. Kanezane’s diary reads: The day of senbō. At the 10th hour of the day [i.e., 5–7 p.m.], the master-priest Reverend Chōken arrived. The service began. His sermon was eloquent and noble in spirit. All those who gathered there wiped their tears. We indeed have a precious preacher in this person of Chōken; he is truly to be treasured. In his sermon he referred to a passage from a commentary on the scripture that said: “All women are mothers of the Buddhas of the past, present, and future. In this regard, men are not the true fathers of the Buddhas. It is because when at the time of a Buddha’s coming into this world, he temporarily takes the womb of a mother. It is true that inside the father’s body, there is no union of yin and yang, let alone the fact of conception…. We receive our body not from the father but from the mother. In this respect, women are superior to men—such was the gist of his sermon. I must say that we do not often hear this kind of perspective, and it struck me to be novel and precious a point that merits our reflection. (Takahashi 1990, 5: 150)

From this rather quaint document, we could imagine that pejorative statements concerning women would have been against the prevailing sensibility of the day, especially coming from the mouth of so widely respected a Buddhist teacher-preacher as Hōnen.

3.3  The Third Strand: Awakening 3.3.1  Zen Master Abbess Mugai and the Pioneer Feminist Raichō Zen practice, introduced to Japan around 1200, spread quickly in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It represents for the purpose of this study the third major strand—that of the spiritual awakening or satori—that directly endorses the principle of universal accessibility of awakening regardless of the sexes. In the thirteenth century, Japanese Buddhist monks, looking for a new type of practice, went to China and received their training there in Chan meditation, and brought back a fresh practice from the continent. What contributed to the transmission of Chan from China to Japan was also the political turmoil that accompanied the fall of the Song Dynasty and the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty. This occa Chōken 澄憲 (1126–1203), the son of FUJIWARA no Shinzei, made his name in 1174 with his efficacious prayer. He became a celebrated priest, whose presence was sought after by the court nobles. He excelled in preaching and became the founder of a special preaching style known as Tendai shōdō 天台唱導.

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sioned eminent Chan masters to move to Japan, starting around 1250, especially upon the invitation of the successive Hōjō Regents, who desired to make Kamakura the seat of a new spiritual center. Women took advantage of this atmosphere of ­renovation and dynamic spiritual energy, and pursued zazen practice at major Zen temples, where they were warmly received by the masters, both Chinese and Japanese. In this way, Japanese female students were now able to attain “satori,” the awakening to the “real self.” 3.3.2  Zen Master–Abbess Mugai Nyodai MUGAI Nyodai 無外如大 (1221–1298) was among the first generation of female Zen masters, if not the very first, who founded their own convents. The usual conjecture of Nyodai to be related to a warrior-class family is most likely based on misinformation (Yanbe 1998: 1–11). Although she is conventionally identified as “Adachi Chiyono,” critical scholarship points out that this conjecture turns out to be incongruous, indicating that possibly a biography of another woman (who is actually from the Adachi Family) got mixed up with Nyodai’s.56 It is not even certain if her given name was “Chiyono.” In any case, sometime in her forties, she began her practice under Zen Master Shōichi 聖一 (or En’ni Ben’en 円爾弁円, 1202–1280). En’ni had gone to China, 1235–41, to study Chan teaching under Master Wuzhun Shifan 無準師範 (J. Bujun Shiban, 1178–1249). Upon his return to Japan, his reputation as an accomplished Zen master spread quickly among the nobles and the members of the imperial family, and he received their patronage and devotion. For some time he was appointed abbot to major temples, both in Kyoto and Kamakura, before he finally settled at Tōfukuji as its founding Abbot in 1255. According to the extant letter known as “Nun Mugai Nyogai’s letter in kana” (“Ama Mugai Nyodai kana-fumi”), dated October 17, 1265, which she signed using her Buddhist name, “Nun Nyodai,” we learn that she had already been ordained by then and deeply engaged in her pursuit of the way (see Tachi 2008: 144). Therein, Nyodai mentions the principle teaching of “kū” (śūnyatā, emptiness) as something familiar to her, and expresses her determination to “get to the heart of the Buddha’s direct transmission” (jika ni busseki daiden no okugi o kiwamu to omou). From this letter, we learn that she is aware that she has yet to penetrate the core of Zen teaching and that she is convinced that the path to the breakthrough lies in meditation practice that is “beyond the ordinary study of Buddhist sūtras and commentaries” (kyōron shosetsu no shinri o sutete).57 The following is an episode which most likely concerns Nyodai and which touches on the conflict for women to practice meditation in a monastic setting with  Such a conjecture as “Mugai Nyodai was born a daughter of the Adachi family closely related to the Hōjō regency of the Kamakura Shogunate” has had its day, but now it is critically questioned. 57  The original letter is kept at the Miho Museum, and the image is accessible online at http://www. miho.or.jp/booth/html/imgbig/00001030.htm. The decoding of her handwriting is also online: http://www.miho.or.jp/booth/html/doccon/00000525htm. Both links were accessed on June 1, 2017. 56

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fellow monks. In this story, despite En’ni’s entreaty, the monks at Tōfukuji refused to practice with a nun, saying they could not concentrate on their zazen when a beautiful nun was among them. Thereupon she took up a burning coal and pushed it onto her face; the monks agreed to practice with her only after her face was thus disfigured. Whether this actually took place or not is a moot point as this story belongs to the genre of Zen stories and anecdotes in which beautiful women took such drastic measures to prove their sincerity and be allowed to practice.58 The next document that concerns Nyodai is about the donation of land by the Titular Empress of Kitayama (1196–1302) to “Abbess Nyodai” for the purpose of building a temple to render proper religious service to the deceased Emperor and pray for the peace and prosperity of the surviving imperial family members.59 The emperor mentioned here is Emperor Gosaga (r. 1242–46), who died in 1272, and whose principal wife was Lady Kitayama’s eldest daughter Kisshi (or Yoshiko, 1225–1292), who bore Emperor Gosaga two future emperors, Kameyama and Gofukakusa. During his lifetime, Emperor Gosaga had received the bodhisattva precepts from En’ni in 1257 (Furuta 1980: 302). Also, his second son, KŌHŌ Ken’nichi 高峰顕日 (1241–1316), was trained under En’ni and MUGAKU Sogen (see below), and eventually became a highly distinguished Zen master himself. Thus, Emperor Gosaga’s immediate family members had multiple connections with Master En’ni. Nyodai, who must have had some connection with the Titular Empress of Kitayama, underwent a rigorous training under En’ni as well, as we touched on above. Nyodai, as a fully ordained nun, must have been in an ideal position to act on Lady Kitayama’s request. She built the temple Keiaiji 景愛寺 at “Itsutsuji-Ōmiya” in Kyoto the following year (1278) on the donated land and became its founding Abbess. Thereafter, Nyodai came to be known as the “Abbess of Keiaiji.” Keiaiji later came under the protection of the Ashikaga Shogunate and was ranked as one of the five nunneries in Kyoto, or “Kyoto amadera gozan.” In 1285, Abbess Nyodai traveled to Kamakura in order to further her practice under Mugaku Sogen 無学祖元 (C. Wuxue Zuyuan, 1226–1286), who arrived in Japan in 1279, fleeing Song China from the swords of invading Mongol soldiers.60 He was invited by HŌJŌ Tokimune 北条時宗 (1251–1284), the Regent. Settling at Kenchōji at first, Sogen moved to Engakuji in 1282 as its founder (kaizan 開山). Nyodai’s name is mentioned a few times in the “Words of National Master Bukkō” (J. Bukkō Kokushi goroku 佛光國師語録) (T 82.2549) that chronicled Mugaku’s words and activities. By this time, the Abbess of Keiaiji had over two decades of Zen practice. Thus, it was not surprising that she quickly distinguished herself  Barbara Ruch suggests that women’s beauty must have been a source of trouble not only for the monastics but also for the male academics, east and west, since olden days (Ruch 2002: lxx–lxviii). Christine de Pizan (ca. 1363–1431) has a charming episode in The Book of the City of the Ladies that concerns Novella, the daughter of a learned doctor in Bologna (see de Pizan 1982: 154). 59  The “document of land donation from Rihō” (J. Rihō kishin jō 理宝寄進状) mentions Shijō Teishi 四条貞子 (or the Titular Empress of Kitayama) (Yanbe 1993: 9, 13). 60  He was bestowed the posthumous honorific title of the National Teacher Bukkō 仏光 (literally, “Buddha-Light”). 58

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among the nuns and monks practicing under Sogen. She was given the dharma name “Mugai” 無外 by Master Mugaku, who took one character “Mu” 無 from his own name. Actually his name Mugaku, or Wuxue, had been bestowed on him by his Chinese master, WUZHUN Shifan or Bujun Shiban, under whom En’ni studied. Thus Nyodai trained within the same dharma lineage that extended from China to Japan. By all accounts, Master Sogen was a benevolent teacher, encouraging everyone who came to him to practice zazen. His Goroku contains many names of laywomen as well as nuns who were among his students. According to the Goroku, Nyodai requested Master Sogen to test her understanding of Zen teaching. Thereupon he presented the Abbess with the kōan “Ōryō’s three barriers”—“What is the difference between your own hands and those of the Buddha’s? What is the difference between your own legs and those of donkeys? Each of us human beings are prepossessed with our own ideas; but with the original pure mind of precognitive activities, we can see through these conditions.” The Abbess of Keiaiji responded to each of these three points without hesitation, which demonstrated to the master her mature understanding of Zen teaching. Sogen acknowledged her awakening and bestowed on her the distinction of being one of his “dharma heirs” (J. hassu 法嗣) (T 82.2549.0220b26).61 Mugai Nyodai’s name was entered into the official record of dharma lineage, which is exceptionally rare in the generally “androcentric” Zen monastic tradition of Japan.62 On this memorable occasion of the formal recognition of her awakening, Nyodai composed the following waka: The moon reflecting on the water could have been lost in ignorance Just like myself, a floating cloud, reflecting on the water. (shirade koso/ mayoi kitsuramu/ mizu no tsuki/ ukaberu kumo no/ mi no tagui tomo)63

Master Sogen seems to have had unconditional trust in Nyodai’s ability as an awakened woman and a gifted temple administrator. She appears to have been a woman of her own means. He appointed her in August 1286, shortly before his death on September 3, to build a temple to continue his teaching after his death (T 82.2549.249a24–26). In the following year she founded the temple Shōmyakutō’in 正脈塔院 (or Shōmyaku’in, today’s Shin’nyoji 真如寺) in Kyoto, probably on the property that was at her disposal, to continue the legacy of Master Sogen’s teaching and to venerate his relics. When Nyodai died in 1296, KŌHŌ Ken’ichi had the  The specific passage depicting Mugai Nyodai’s transaction with Master Mugaku is quoted in “Mugai Nyodai no sōken jiin” (Yanbe 1993: 5, 13). 62  In the initial phase of the Japanese Sōtō lineage chart, some nuns’ names appear in the dharma lineage chart, but that practice was discontinued, probably not for the lack of awakened female disciples but because of the “institutionalization” of Zen monastic organizations at large. 63  Translation mine. For the photo of this poem see Amamonzeki jiin no sekai 『尼寺門跡寺院の 世界』 [Amamonzeki: A Hidden Heritage, Treasures of the Japanese Imperial Convents] (Fister and Bethe 2009: 58). The original copy, in her own flowing hand, is kept at the temple Daishōji 大 聖寺 in Kyoto. 61

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Shōmyakutō’in temple renovated and appointed his dharma heir MUSŌ Soseki 夢 窓疎石 (1275–1351)64 as its abbot (see Musō 2010: 30).65 From all these transactions, we have a glimpse of Mugai Nyodai as a capable nun of independent economic means. Her wooden image (zazō 坐像) is today treasured at Hōjiin Monzeki 宝慈院門跡 (an imperial convent) in Kyoto (see Ruch 2002: xliii–lxiii). 3.3.3  Female Zen Practitioners Confounded with Mugai Nyodai Nyodai died in 1296, as mentioned above. Given the dates of Master Daitō (1282– 1337), the following episode associated with her cannot have been about her. It is a risqué exchange of what is supposed to have taken place between a nun called Mujaku 無着66 (who was confounded with Mugai) and the National Teacher Daitō 大燈国師 (SHŪHŌ Myōchō 宗峰妙超). One day Master Daitō passed by her over the Gojō Bridge in Kyoto and recognized the nun. Thereupon he called out to her: “Hey, I wonder why you are wearing a robe, when your name is ‘mujaku’ [meaning “not-wearing clothes”].” Upon hearing these words, the nun undid the sash and began to undress (Nishiyama 2009: 61).67 This story has one point to ponder, namely, Nyodai may have also been called “Mujaku” at some point. Also, a popular waka is associated with Nyodai, although it was composed by another woman whose name was Chiyono—a Chiyono of Mino province, who practiced Zen. The poem reads: No matter how you look at it, when the bottom of the bucket falls away, it will not hold water nor will it keep the reflection of the moon. (tonikaku ni/ takumishi oke no/ soko nukete/ mizu tamaraneba/ tsuki mo yadorazu). (Nishiyama 2009: 56, 61; adapted)

The humor of this poem was so endearing that Master Hakuin 白隠 (1685–1768) drew a picture of a girl holding a wooden bucket the bottom of which was falling out, and inscribed this verse in the top left margin (see Nishiyama 2009: 56). 64  He was a ninth-generation descendent of Emperor Uda (see Musō 2010: 3). This may explain his accepting the imperial princesses among his disciples. 65  At the time of this appointment, Mugaku Sogen was designated as the temple’s honorary founder and Musō was named as its second abbot. In 1342 Musō renamed Shōmyaku’an as Man’nenzan Shin’nyoji, taking the “temple name” (J. sangō 山号) of “Man’nenzan” in memory of master Mugaku (see Nishiyama 2009: 60). “Man’nenzan” 万年山, meaning the “ten thousand years old mountain,” was taken after the “sangō” of Mugaku’s temple in Kamakura, Man’nenzan Shōzokuin 万年山正続院, which was the name of his master Wuzhun’s “Wannienshan” 万年山 in Jingshan China. 66  YANBE Hiroki hypothesizes that this nun Mujaku was a younger relative of Mugai Nyodai, and this possibly explains the confusion in the biographical information of these two women (Yanbe 1998: 1–11). 67  This seems to be the kind of Zen exchanges D. T. Suzuki referred to as “risqué mondō” (Suzuki 1974: 46).

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SUZUKI Daisetz, too, quoted this waka on a postcard to NISHIDA Kitarō, which he sent on a sultry August day with the following note: “The poet’s name is Chiyono, of some province I used to know but now I’ve forgotten. It is a female. If my memory is correct, she is from the Ashikaga period. I have no reference book at hand to check the facts” (Suzuki 2003: 631). The “Ashikaga” period is another name for “Muromachi” period (1338–1573). If Suzuki’s source is correct, Chiyono of Mino Province lived during the Muromachi period—at least a century after Abbess Nyodai. 3.3.4  Musō Soseki and Women Zen Practitioners MUSŌ Soseki, succeeding the will of his teacher KŌHŌ Ken’nichi, continued the tradition of training female Zen students, and ordained, among them, several imperial princesses, some of whom became abbesses of their own convents.68 The lineage of Mugaku-Mugai-Kōhō-Musō and Musō’s dharma heir SHUN’OKU Myōha 春屋妙葩 (1311–1388) appears to be important in terms of the female lineages of Zen practitioners in the fourteenth century. Much research needs be conducted in this area, which is beyond the scope of this present essay. Imperial women trained under these masters themselves became master-teacher, and they greatly contributed to the flourishing of Buddhism, including the establishment of imperial convents (amamonzeki 尼門跡) in Kyoto.69 3.3.5  Chan and Japanese Female Zen Practitioners During the Kamakura period, a considerable number of female students practiced Zen under Japanese and Chinese Chan masters, as mentioned earlier. It appears Chan masters received female students without putting up barriers, as we have already seen in the case of MUGAKU Sogen. Among other notable Chan masters who either settled in Japan or stayed several years in Japan were such eminent masters as RANKEI Dōryū (C. Lanxi Daolong) 蘭溪道隆 (1213–1278), the founder of Kenchōji in Kamakura, and GOTTAN Funei (C. Wuan Puning) 兀庵普寧 (1197– 1276). Also Japanese masters who were trained in China, including such eminent figures as En’ni, Dōgen, and Kangan Giin 寒巌義尹 (1217–1300), continued this ethos and welcomed female students.70 This raises a question as to the impact of the 68  Abbess Musetsu Yu 無説喩 (d. 1363?) of Honkō’in Monzeki 本光院門跡, Abbess Karin Egon 華林恵巌 (d. 1386?) of Hōkyōji Monzeki 宝鏡寺門跡, and Abbess Chisen Shintsū 智泉聖通 (1309–1388) of Donkein Monzeki 曇華院門跡 were all ordained by Musō (see Fister and Bethe 2009: 67–82). “Monzeki” means “imperial convent,” where the imperial princesses lived and practiced Buddhism as nuns. 69  The most informative publication on this point is Amamonzeki, A Hidden Heritage (Fister and Bethe 2009). 70  KANGAN Giin, a son of Emperor Juntoku, had a considerable number of dedicated female followers in Kyūshū, where he established major temples.

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Chan tradition on the training of Japanese female aspirants. Furthermore, Japanese monks who studied under those  Japanese masters, that is, those who had been trained in China and brought back the continental practice, also inherited this egalitarian outlook. SHŪHŌ Myōchō, who later received the posthumous title Daitō Kokushi, mentioned above, for instance, was trained under NANPO Shōmyō or Jōmyō 南浦紹明 (1235–1308), who had studied in Song China, 1259–1267. Daitō Kokushi not only founded Daitokuji but also a nunnery called Myōkakuji 妙覚寺 in the vicinity of Daitokuji in 1331. This nunnery, however, disappeared from the temple record altogether by the early Edo period (see Takenuki 1993: 51–66).71 These Chan and early Zen masters, being cross-culturally informed, did not pay special attention to the idea of the “five hindrances, threefold submission” (J. goshō sanshō 五障三従)72 which was slowly becoming a cliché among their contemporary proselytizing monks of other Buddhist sects such as the Vinaya (J. Ritsu) and Pure Land (J. Jōdo). Was there a specific cultural environment in China that acknowledged female monastics? It seems that in China of that time, women of prominent families had the choice of choosing a life in a convent as an alternative to marriage, and this may have contributed to the respectability of women in the Buddhist monastic system. A further study will no doubt yield a fuller answer to this question. 3.3.6  Dōgen on Women’s Spiritual Capacity Dōgen’s 道元 (1200–1253) egalitarian understanding of women’s spiritual ability makes clearer sense in this context of the early Zen openness towards female practitioners. He studied in China, 1223–1227, under Master Rujing (J. Nyojō) 如浄 (1163–1228) at Tiantongshan (J. Tendōzan) 天童山, and during his practice he had occasions to witness firsthand how women practiced Chan meditation and how their attainment of awakening was publicly acknowledged by the monastic community at large, as well as by the Chinese imperial court. In his Shōbōgenzō 正法眼蔵, on the chapter “Raihai tokuzui” 礼拝得髄 (“Paying Obeisance and Obtaining the Marrow of Teaching”), composed in 1240, Dōgen describes the Chinese customs which he witnessed: Nuns pursue their zazen practice and once they attain awakening, the imperial court issues a decree to appoint her to a position of abbess in a nunnery. At the time of her installation she gives her dharma talk, at the master’s temple, where she had been practicing. At this ceremony her master as well as all the fellow monks are present and listen to her discourse, standing. After that, those monks engage in the exchange of questions and answers with the newly appointed abbess.

 An eminent monk establishing a nunnery was not unusual in those days. For instance, in 1223, predating Daitō Kokushi by over 100 years, a renowned master of the Shingi Kegon School, Myōe 明恵, founded Zenmyōji 善妙寺 for his female followers (see Matsuo 1996b: 109). 72  The “threefold submission” refers to the traditional custom in which a girl obeyed her father when young, then her husband when married, and in her old age she obeyed her eldest son. 71

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Dōgen’s experience abroad also gave him the distance to look critically at Japanese practice, especially the custom of designating certain hills and mountains as the “sacred realm” (J. kekkai 結界), into which women were forbidden to enter. He writes: There is a laughable custom unique to Japan. Namely, they artificially draw boundaries around certain areas and call it sacred area or the hall of religious practice (dōjō 道場), into which nuns and women are forbidden to enter (kekkai). This custom has been practiced for centuries now, and yet no one dares to question its validity…. Moreover, actually, those who dwell within the “sacred realm” freely break the ten precepts and commit weighty sins. Is it not the case, then, that those grave sinners actually disdain those who commit no sin, and that is why they prefer to live within the artificially marked realm? …Those fellows are compounding their sins. Such a devilish realm (makai 魔界) ought to be abolished (Dōgen 1973, 1: 131–133).

On the misogynistic treatment of women, he has the following to say: I ask, what is so precious about being born a man? Space (kokū 虚空, Skt. ākāsha) is space, four elements are four elements, and five skandhas are five skandhas. The distinction between men and women is also thus. Both genders attain awakening. In every respect, the attainment of awakening is what matters utmost. Do not make an issue of whether the person enlightened is male or female (danjo o ronzuru koto nakare 男女を論ずることなか れ). This is the remarkable law of Buddhism (kore butsudō gokumyō no hōsoku nari これ 仏道極妙の法則なり). (Dōgen 1973, 1: 117)

Dōgen’s point is clear that an act of shunning women from the essential framework of salvation is a flagrant violation of the bodhisattva vow. He does not mince his words on this point: What faults do women have? What virtues do men possess?… Say, you vow not to look at women, and yet you chant: “Sentient beings are numerous, I vow to save them all.” Are you perchance not excluding women from the category of “sentient beings”? If you are, you are not a bodhisattva; and you are not exercising the Buddha’s compassion. The idea of not looking at women is but words of holy drunkards who follow the smaller vehicle. (Dōgen 1973, 1: 126)

Also in his “Raihai tokuzui,” which was most likely a sermon delivered to the congregation comprised of male and female disciples as well as important female patrons, Dōgen mentions two enlightened Chinese Chan nuns, MOSHAN Liaoran 末山了然 (J.  Matsuyama Ryōnen), the dharma heir of Gao’an Dayu 高安大愚 (J. Kōan Daigu, n.d.), and Miaoxin 妙信 (J. Myōshin), an accomplished disciple of Yangshan Huiji 仰山慧寂 (J.  Kyōzan Ejaku, 807–883). His point is that these women who attained profound awakening demonstrated that being female has nothing to do with attaining solid awakening. Dōgen established a full-scale Zen monastery deep  in a mountain in 1244, to which he gave the name “Eiheiji” two  years later. Female disciples were among the monastic members; their names are mentioned in the Eihei kōroku 永平広録, the record of Dōgen’s sermons and his writings.73 Based on this document, the modern Sōtō nuns maintain that the first nun trained under Dōgen was Ryōnen 了然. She 73

  For Dōgen and his female disciples see M. Yusa (2018).

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was quite elderly by the time she took up her practice under Dōgen, but her practice was rigorous, and her awakening profound. When she died, Dōgen in lamentation composed two Chinese verses. One of them reads: Steel-solid was your understanding of what is meant by “there is no holiness in the vast universe.” To test your awakening was like putting snowflakes on top of a red-hot burning stove! I cannot refrain from asking—whither have you gone? What sort of moon are you gazing at from under the deep azure waves? (Dōgen 1988, 4: 262–263)

Also found in the Eihei kōroku are Dōgen’s sermons delivered upon the request of nuns. A nun Eshin 恵信 wished to honor her deceased father (Dōgen 1988, 3: 104– 105). Nun Egi 懐義 wished to celebrate the anniversary of the death of her mother (Dōgen 1988, 3: 162–265). Egi earlier had been a member of the Daruma Sect before joining Dōgen’s monastic community. She became indispensable to Dōgen as she took care of him towards the end of his life when he began to ail; she was among those to whom Dōgen entrusted the future of the operation of the monastic community (Tajima 1955: 164–167). Dōgen’s successor, KEIZAN Jōkin 瑩山紹瑾 (1268–1325), similarly had many nuns practicing under him, no doubt carrying on his master’s will.74 Harder times fell on the practicing nuns of the Sōtō sect, however, as the memory of the founder receded in the distance. However, Dōgen’s fundamental conviction that the attainment of enlightenment did not discriminate “the male, the female, the rich, and the poor” (Dōgen 1973, 8: 257) remained a bright light in their hearts. 3.3.7  Hiratsuka Raichō–Zen and Feminism We jump several centuries to conclude this present study of Japanese women Buddhists. I want to include the pioneer feminist HIRATSUKA Raichō 平塚らい てう in this discussion to show the dynamic power of Zen teaching that contributed to forming the women’s liberation movement in modern Japan. Known by her penname of Raichō (meaning ptarmigan, snow grouse, or thunderbird), she grew up as HIRATSUKA Haru 平塚明 (1886–1971). She was part of the women’s liberation movement that got started in the last years of the Meiji period (1868–1912). In her early twenties, before she came to be actively involved in the cause for women’s liberation, she seriously practiced zazen for several years. Through it she came to “grasp” the source of life, the spiritual home beyond the reality of the ego, and it was this awakening, according to her, that sustained her for the rest of her life. Even after she stopped her formal Zen practice, whenever she encountered difficulties, she would just “sit” in zazen meditation, which would refresh her body, mind, and spirit and give her the renewed energy to go on. Her life activities closely paralleled the radically changing social and economic conditions of modern Japan from the  For an extensive study of today’s Sōtō nuns in English, see Paula Arai’s Women Living Zen: Japanese Sōtō Buddhist Nuns (Arai 1999).

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Taishō (1912–1926) to the Shōwa (1926–1989) periods (see Yusa 2011: 1116, 1121–1126). When she was growing up, Japan was in transition from a traditional society to a modern nation, and young people were typically consumed by religious and spiritual questions which concerned their self-identity. In addition, her father allowed her to receive higher education, and she attended Japan Women’s College in Tokyo (she was in the third graduating class). In short, she imbibed the liberal atmosphere of the vibrant Meiji spirituality. It was in her last year of college that she came upon a copy of the Zenkai ichiran 禅海一瀾 (A Wave in the Sea of Zen, 1862) by IMAKITA Kōsen 今北洪川 (1816–1892),75 a renowned Zen master (rōshi老師) and the first Chief Abbot (kanchō 管長) of Engakuji in Kamakura. She began her Zen practice under SHAKU Sōkatsu 釈宗活 (1870–1954), a dharma heir of SHAKU Sōen 釈宗演 (1860–1919).76 What distinguishes Raichō from the Buddhist women of the previous centuries is that she wrote in prose (although she did compose poetry, too), touching on many social issues. Her autobiography contains straightforward accounts of her Zen practice and her “breakthrough” experience called “kenshō.” She tells us how the first audience with Master Sōkatsu went, what it was like to practice Zen that involved such activities as zazen 坐禅 (“meditation”), kōan 公案 (a question to work on, which each student is given by the rōshi), sanzen 参禅 (a private interview with the rōshi), and “sesshin” 接心 (an intensive zazen and sanzen practice extended into one week), and how her initial breakthrough known as “kenshō” 見性 (coming to grasp the true nature of the self) took place (Hiratsuka 2006: 83–96). For instance, we have a rather rare account of how a typical private interview with a Zen master would go: A zazen session usually lasted from forty-five to sixty minutes, the time it took for one incense stick to burn out. Between the zazen periods, we met with Rōshi on a one-to-one basis (called “dokusan” 独参 or “sanzen,” “private interview”). We were not allowed to reveal what took place during the sanzen, or which kōan we had been given. During the sanzen, we were to report to Rōshi any insight we might have gained about the kōan, but more often than not, as soon as we entered the room, we would be told to work harder and be dismissed with a shake of the hand bell. Indeed, it was said that Rōshi could tell how much progress we had made by the mere sound of the gong we would make when our own turn comes around, the fall of our footsteps, the way we opened the sliding doors and bowed. (Hiratsuka 2006: 85)

Raichō’s initial breakthrough came several months into her practice, during the monthly sesshin in July 1906. She vividly recalls those heightened moments: As was the custom, we raised our hands in prayer and recited the Four Vows 四弘誓願文 together before Rōshi’s talk: “Sentient beings are numerous; I vow to save them all. The  He trained many outstanding lay Zen Buddhists, including HŌJŌ Tokiyuki, NISHIDA Kitarō’s mentor. 76  D. T. Suzuki practiced under SHAKU Sōen after the death of IMAKITA Kōsen. SHAKU Sōen inherited Kōsen’s emphasis on training lay Zen students. He also went to the U.S. to speak about Zen at the Parliament of the World Religions (September 10–27, 1893) held in Chicago. His earlier study in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) afforded him a global perspective on Buddhism. 75

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deluding passions are inexhaustible; I vow to sever them. The Buddha’s teaching is profound; I vow to study it. The Buddha’s path is supreme; I vow to realize it.” We next recited Hakuin Zenji’s Chant in Praise of Zazen (Zazen wasan 坐禅和讃): “Sentient beings are intrinsically Buddha. It is just as it is with ice and water. Apart from water, there is no ice. Apart from sentient beings, there is no Buddha….” We came to the last lines: “At this moment, what is there more for you to seek, with nirvana itself manifest before you? This very place, this is the Lotus Land; this very body, this is Buddha.” Then, just as I was about to place my hands on my lap, tears as large as hailstones came pouring down my face. Whenever I cry, I do so in private, choking back the tears. But now, I was crying shamelessly in front of everyone. I could not believe it. These were not tears of sadness, not tears of grateful reverence for Hakuin’s words. No, I was crying because I had broken free of my finite self and reached a state of pure awareness. My whole being had exploded in a flood of tears. I had never experienced this wondrous, strange state before. (Hiratsuka 2006: 92–93 emphasis added)

The realm of deeper consciousness was ready to burst open. This marked the beginning of her true understanding of Zen teaching. She recalls the decisive moment when she underwent the birth of a “new self.” A wave of understanding shot through her, when the master was expounding on The Record of Linji (Rinzairoku 臨済録): Even now I can hear Rōshi’s clear, strong voice: “Upon this lump of reddish flesh sits a True Man with no rank 無位真人. Constantly he goes in and out of the gates of your face. If there is anyone here who does not know this for a fact, look, look!” His voice pierced me like a jolt of electricity, and in that instant I said to myself, “I understand!” Later I heard talks by many Zen masters, but none as compelling as the talk by Rōshi that day. (Hiratsuka 2006: 93)

This initial breakthrough is known as “kenshō” in the Zen tradition. Her account continues: I had finally attained kenshō. I was confirmed by Rōshi and given the dharma name Ekun 慧薫. My kenshō was not a so-called tongo 頓悟 [a sudden awakening]. It had come after more than six months of intense sitting and amounted to a gradual awakening that culminated in a 180-degree turn, a spiritual revolution, an upheaval of the greatest magnitude. I had been reborn. I was a new being. My first birth had been of the flesh, unwilled and outside of my awareness. My second birth was of my true self, born from my efforts to look into the deepest level of my consciousness. I had searched and searched and at last found the entrance to the Great Way of the True Life. (Hiratsuka 2006: 93, emphasis added)

Every practitioner has a different kenshō experience; in her case it came with a great sense of joy and freedom that liberated her to a way of being that she had never known before. She recalls: Unable to contain my joy, …I was oblivious to fatigue; I felt disembodied. The Zen texts had not deceived me when they had declared, “mind and body are one,” or “the mind and body fall away.” And when Shākyamuni declared, “Above the heavens and below the heavens I am the only honored one,” he was not exaggerating but speaking from the truth of experience. What is God? What am I? How is a human being related to God? and the question of one and the many—these philosophical questions that I had wrestled with had been resolved in one flash. I felt emptied and indescribably exhilarated. A great change came over me. I found myself eager to explore the intricate web of human relationships, an aspect of life I had ignored until then…. Never again, in all my days, did I live on such a heightened plane of spiritual awareness or feel so vibrantly alive.

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My mind was crystal clear, limitlessly expanding. My body was marvelously light, as though it did not exist. I never tired. I walked all day and stayed up until one or two in the morning. Life was full of pleasure, beauty, and joy. I overflowed with psychic energy. (Hiratsuka 2006: 93–94)

This newly found energy led her to take reckless actions, leading to an incident in which she ran off with a married man, who was an aspiring writer and espoused the strange idea from reading a novel by G. D’Annunzio that young women were most beautiful at the moment of their death. He wanted to go through with his experiment of killing her out of love, in order to depict her last moments. Half-incredulous and half-in a playful spirit, she set out to a snow-covered mountain with him. Fortunately, the man had neither the courage nor the willpower to go through with his plan. The local policemen were mobilized to look for them and got them safely into custody. This incident caused a great media sensation, and Raichō faced the consequences of her own action. With her resilient spirit, she took the cause of her own disgrace and suffering to be of her own making, which meant that she could also be the master of her own self to weather the storm. She felt the need to resume her serious Zen practice to regain her spiritual height. Therefore she took part in the year-end sesshin at Kaiseiji 海清寺 in Nishinomiya. There her kenshō was recognized, for the second time, by NAKAHARA Nantenbō 中原南天棒 (1839–1925), a renowned Zen master.77 Raichō’s mother recognized that the prospect of a decent marriage for her daughter was now out of the question. The money saved up for her dowry was later used to publish the journal Seitō 青鞜,78 which was the first journal in Japan “of the women, by the women, for the women”—paraphrasing Yosano Akiko’s endorsement of this journal.79 For the inaugural issue of 1911, Raichō was inspired to pen the celebrated manifesto, which began with these lines: In the beginning, woman was truly the sun. An authentic person. Now she is the moon, a wan and sickly moon, depending on another, reflecting another’s brilliance. Seitō herewith announces its birth. Created by the brains and hands of Japanese women today, it raises its cry like a newborn child. (Hiratsuka 2006: 157)

 “Nanten” is a tree called “nandin.” He carved a staff out of a nandin tree and carried it around as his tool of teaching. His religious name is Zenchū 全中. When Raichō proved her understanding, he gave her the Buddhist name of Zenmyō 全明, taking a character from his name, Zen 全, combining it with her name “Haru” 明. Nantenbō advocated a rigorous Zen training and maintained that one should practice under masters of different lineages to strengthen the awakening experience. Raichō passed his strict standard by attaining her second kenshō under him (see Hiratsuka 2006: 129–131). 78  “Seitō” means “bluestockings.” Raichō adopted this name for the journal to preempt male ridicule and criticisms, just as a group of literary-minded society ladies of the eighteenth century London called their literary circle “Bluestocking” as a good joke. 79  Yosano was already a well-established poet by this time, and her endorsement had much impact on the promotion of this journal (YAZ 14: 390). 77

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At the conclusion of this manifesto, she signed it with her pen-name, Raichō. She explains the reason for choosing this pen-name as follows: My acquaintance with the thunderbird, or snow grouse, went back to the time I lived near the northern Alps in Nagano…. I was charmed by the picture of the adult bird with its round and sturdy-looking silhouette, its air of calm repose. I was also intrigued by the fact that it lived at an altitude of 3,000 meters, subsisting on alpine vegetation, and turned pure white in the winter. I was further attracted by the fact that the bird had been indigenous to Japan since the Ice Age. So I did not choose the pen-name entirely by chance. (Hiratsuka 2006: 166)

Being an independently-minded young woman, Raichō began to formulate her philosophical outlook on life, in close connection with her actual concrete experiences of daily life. Instead of merely accepting the abstract idea of gender equality, she began to explore her embodied reality of being a woman as a sexed being. In this venture she was guided by the Swedish feminist philosopher Ellen Key (1848– 1926), whose book Love and Marriage became available in English around that time. Through Key’s writings, Raichō came to learn to appreciate Western approaches to women’s psychology, as well as the positive evaluation of romantic love and marriage. She embraced the sexed body as a fundamental component of her philosophical reflection. Being a woman is not an abstract idea but a concrete embodied reality. This realization was unshakable, because she fell in love with a younger artist, with whom she began  the experiment of cohabitation outside the framework of conventional legal marriage. Soon she discovered she was pregnant. In living the life of a woman in love, she attained a new awakening: “I came to see the need to liberate women not only as human persons but also as sexed women. This was a totally new philosophical problem for me (Hiratsuka 2011b: 1125).”80 The corollary of this conviction is that man, too, has to be “liberated as the sexed body.” For Raichō, thus, romantic love opened up the multi-dimensional reality of love. She reflected on this experience and wrote: [L]ove rooted in self-affirmation and self-development turned out as gateway to the love of others, to the other side of life. In no time, the whole panorama of love of the other unfolded in front of me, first through the love I bore my lover, and then through my love for my child. I ended up experiencing all sorts of contradictions in my life, but I can no longer dismiss them as merely “life’s contradictions.” I have rather come to think of them as gateways that open out onto a wider, larger, and deeper life. And the real harmonization of these two orientations [of self- and other-love] may well be the subtle and ultimate flavor of life itself. (Hiratsuka 2011a: 1125–1126)81

Raichō’s life and thought is a fine example of how Zen awakening can be directly tied to addressing the issues of concrete life and how it may introduce the dimension of authentic subjectivity (J. shutaisei 主体性) into social activities. Authentic sub-

80  Raichō wrote “Kojin to shite no seikatsu to sei to shiteno seikatsu tono aida no sōtō ni tsuite” 「 個人としての生活と性としての生活の間の争闘について」 [“The Conflict of Life as an ‘Individual’ and as a ‘Gender’”] in 1915. 81  Raichō wrote “Haha to shite no ichinenkan” 「母としての一年間」 [“A Year as a Mother”], in 1917.

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jectivity is what Zen calls one’s “original face.” Raichō turned her attention to the dire need for women to be liberated. In so doing, she demonstrated how ideas coming from other sources (in her case, from Ellen Key) could support her Zen awakening and deepen her philosophical reflection. Her lifelong engagement in social activism, including the  women’s suffrage movement in pre-Second World War Japan and the  anti-nuclear movement in the post-Second World War period all sprang from the core of her being, which she clearly came to grasp through her Zen practice in her early twenties. Her Zen awakening remained for life the source that kept her mentally supple, spiritually “ecumenical,” and existentially “poetic.”

4  Conclusion Discriminations raised against women obliged them to examine not only their faith and motives but also the message of spiritual liberation delivered by Buddhism. Japanese women traditionally relied on the Mahāyāna sūtras that supported their bodhisattva practice, or that promised their rebirth in the Pure Land, or assured  “awakening” (J. satori). These scriptures conveyed the message of the immateriality of the distinction between male and female. Obviously, any academic study on such a broad topic as “women in Japanese Buddhism” must be limited in scope, but I trust that the present case study of remarkable Japanese women, presented in three strands of The “Lotus (Sūtra),” “Amida (Buddha),” and “Awakening (experience)” has demonstrated rich and colorful realities of women’s spiritual lives. In concluding this study, let me mention a couple of socially engaged Buddhist nuns in our time. Following the earthquake and tsunami catastrophe that shook up Japan on March 2011, voices of protest were heard from various corners of Japan. Seto’uchi Jakuchō 瀬戸内寂聴 (b. 1922), a popular novelist who became a Tendai nun, for instance, has been a vocal protestor against the reopening of nuclear reactors and carried out a hunger strike despite her frail health. In fact, when this disaster struck the northeastern region of Japan, she was actually lying in a hospital bed, suffering from a narrowing of the spinal canal and could not stand on her legs. Horrified by the incredible scenes televised on the screen in her hospital room, she was called to action. She asked herself: “What am I doing here on a hospital bed? I must do something for the people; I must be with them.” Her courage accomplished the near impossible. She regained a limited mobility and was able to stand on her feet again. She soon visited the disaster-struck areas. In less than a month after the disaster, on the day of the Buddha’s birthday—April 8, 2011—her temple organized a charity bazaar. At that time she gave an interview to a biweekly women’s magazine, in which she said:

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In Tendai Buddhism, we have the motto, mōko rita 忘己利他, “Forget yourself; benefit others.” This is found in Master Dengyō (i.e., Saichō)’s “Rules of Conduct for the Monks” (Sange gakushōshiki 山家学生式). It means, “Leave behind the thoughts of your personal gain and happiness, and exert yourself for the sake of others and for their happiness.” … We are born as human beings, which ultimately obliges us to engage in the activity going beyond the pursuit of one’s own happiness. We need to be grateful for the fact that we are actually being sustained by countless karmic connections (en 縁) to exist at all. We must do our best, each of us, to make just one more soul happy. This is the purpose of life. The act of caring and praying for the victims of the recent earthquake disaster is indeed a small work that each individual performs, and limited in scope. But when these thoughts of individuals are brought together, they gain an enormous momentum and energy that spurs social change. (Seto’uchi 2011: 14–15)

Finally, I must mention another notable nun, who is widely respected in today’s Japan—Aoyama Shundō 青山俊菫 (b. 1933), a Zen master, who is the abbess of the Sōtō Zen Training Nunnery.82 Her teaching goes beyond the monastic “wall,” and her presence is eagerly sought after by the spiritually hungry modern souls. Her books enjoy remarkable longevity as well.83 There are younger nuns, such as MARUYAMA Kōgai 丸山刧外 (born in 1946), who have been contributing to the study of Buddhist women and nuns. Feminist scholarship, too, has been rewriting the chapters on Japanese women and Buddhism. By way of conclusion I reiterate my observation that the misogynist notion that women were being “barred” from attaining buddhahood paradoxically served for women to examine their hearts and minds more existentially and more deeply than otherwise. Also, being placed on the margin of established Buddhist ecclesiastical organizations for a long time, women were able to concentrate on the substance of their faith and bodhisattva practice, so that they may carry out their act of care and compassion more readily and spontaneously. One wonders what it might have been like had women been wholly excluded from participating in the Japanese Buddhist tradition. It would have painted a bleak picture of avidyā (nagaki yami), a thought which Daisaiin Senshi warded off, lest she be dismayed—1000 years ago.

Works Cited Abbreviations NKZ Nishida kitarō zenshū 『西田幾多郎全集』 [Collected Works of Nishida Kitarō]. 20 vols. Edited by Shimomura Toratarō 下村寅太郎, et al. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1978–80 & 1989.

 On this particular training center as well as the cultural and social contributions of the Sōtō nuns, see Paula Arai’s Women Living Zen: Japanese Sōtō Buddhist Nuns (Arai 1999). 83  Her sermons and essays are compiled, and a few have been translated into English. See for instance, Zen Seeds: Reflections of a Female Priest (Aoyama 1990). 82

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SDZ Suzuki daisetsu zenshū 『鈴木大拙全集』 [Collected Works of Daisetz Suzuki]. 32 vols. Second edition. Edited by Shin’ichi Hisamatsu 久松真一, Susumu Yamaguchi 山口益, and Shōkin Furata 古田紹欽. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1980–83. T Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新修大蔵經. 100 vols. Edited by Junjirō Takakusu 高楠順次郎 and Kaigyoku Watanabe 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai, 1924–34. YAZ Teihon yosano akiko zenshū 定本与謝野晶子全集 [Collected works of Yosano Akiko]. 20 vols. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1979–1981.

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Nakano, Kōichi 中野幸一, trans. 1994. Murasaki shikibu nikki 『紫式部日記』 [The Diary of Lady Murasaki]. Shinpen, Nihon koten bungaku zenshū 『新編日本古典文学全集』, Vol. 26. Tokyo: Shōgakukan. Nishiguchi, Junko 西口順子. 1987. On’na no chikara 『女の力』[Women’s Power]. Tokyo: Heibonsha. Nishiki, Hitoshi 錦仁. 1991. Chūsei waka no kenkyū 『中世和歌の研究』 [A Study of the Waka-­ Poetry of Medieval Period]. Tokyo: Ōfūsha. Nishiyama, Mika 西山美香. 2009. Keiaiji, Hōji’in Monzeki. In Amamonzeki, A Hidden Heritage: Treasures of the Japanese Imperial Convents (Exhibition Catalogue), ed. Patricia Fister and Monica Bethe, 54–61. Chicago: Paragon Book Gallery. Oda, Takeshi 小田剛. 1995. Shokushi naishin’nō zenka chūshaku 『式子内親王全歌注釈』 [Commentary on the Collection of Entire Poems of Imperial Princess Shokushi]. Osaka: Izumi Shoin. Ōsumi, Kazuo 大隅和夫, and Junko Nishiguchi 西口順子, eds. 1989. Shirīzu: josei to bukkyō 『 シリーズ 女性と仏教』 [Series: Women and Buddhism], 4 vols. Tokyo: Heibonsha. Panikkar, Raimon. 1987. The Future of Mission. INTERculture 97: 19–27. ———. 1993. ‘‘Trisangam: Jordan, Tiber, and Ganges.’’ In his A Dwelling Place for Wisdom, 109–159. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press. Ruch, Barbara. 2002. Burning Iron Against the Cheek: A Female Cleric’s Last Resort. In Engendering Faith, Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan, ed. Barbara Ruch, lxv–lxxviii. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Saeki, Umetomo 佐伯梅友, ed. 1958. Kokinwaka-shū 『古今和歌集』 [Kokin Waka Collection]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Sakamoto, Yukio 坂本幸男, and Iwamoto Yutaka 岩本裕, trans. 1976. Hokekyō 『法華経』. 2 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Sasaki, Nobutsuna 佐佐木信綱, ed. 1997. Shinkokin waka-shū 『新古今和歌集』 [Shinkokin Waka Collection]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Sekiguchi, Shindai 関口真大, ed. 1966. Makashikan—Zen no shisōgenri 『摩訶止観—禅の 思想原理』 [Mahā-śamatha-vipaśyanā—The Philosophical Principles Behind the dhyāna Practice], Vol. 1. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Senshi, Naishin'nō 選子内親王. 1985. Hosshin wakashū 『発心和歌集』. Shinpen kokka taikan 『新編 国歌大観』 [Comprehensive Collection of Japanese Poetry, New Compilation], Vol. 3, ed. Shinpen kokka taikan henshū-i’inkai 新編 国歌大観編集委員会, 292–294. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten. Seto’uchi, Jakuchō 瀬戸内寂聴. 2011. Mamanaranu inochi dakara koso, hitamuki ni ikite iku 「ままならぬ命だからこそ、ひたむきに生きていく」 [Precisely Because Our Life Is Precarious, We Determine to Live on by Fully Appreciating Every Moment]. Fujin kōron 『婦 人公論』 [Women’s Public Forum] 22: 14–15. Suzuki, Daisetsu 鈴木大拙. 1973. Collected Writings on Shin Buddhism, ed. The Eastern Buddhist Society. Kyoto: Shinshū Ōtaniha. ———. 1974. Kongōkyō no Zen 『金剛経の禅』 [Zen of the Diamond Sutra]. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ———. 2003. Shokan 書簡 [Letters]. Suzuki daisetsu zenshū 『鈴木大拙全集』[Collected Works of Daisetz Suzuki]. Vol. 36. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Tachi, Takashi 舘隆志. 2008. Kamakuraki ni okeru zenshū no nisō—Genkai daishi, jōdō daishi, somyō kara mugai nyodai e 「鎌倉期における禅宗の尼僧—玄海大姉・成道大姉・素妙 尼から無外如大尼へ」 [A Study of Kamakura-period Zen Nuns—from Nuns Genkai, Jōdō, Somyō, to Mugai Nyodai]. Zenbunka Kenkyūjo Kiyō 『禅文化研究所紀要』[Bulletin of the Institute of Zen Culture] 29: 131–153. Tajima, Hakudō 田島柏堂. 1955. Sōtōshū nisōshi 『曹洞宗尼僧史』 [A History of Nuns in the Sōtō Sect]. Tokyo: Sōtōshū Nisōdan Honbu. Takahashi, Mitsugu 高橋貢, ed. 2001. Kohon setsuwa-shū 『古本説話集』[A Collection of Legends and Old Tales]. Vol. 1. Kōdansha: Tokyo.

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Takahashi, Sadaichi 高橋貞一. 1990. Kundoku gyokuyō 『訓読玉葉』 [The Gyokuyō Translated in Modern Japanese]. 8 vols. Tokyo: Takashina Shoten. Takasaki, Jikidō 高崎直道, trans. 1975. Shōman-gyō 『勝鬘経』 [Śrīmālādevīsimhanāda Sūtra]. Tokyo: Chūōkōronsha. Takayanagi, Yūko 高柳祐子. 2008. Chūsei waka no aishō hyōgen: Kenkyū yonen (1193) Bifukumon’in no kaga aishōka-gun ni miru sei to shi 「中世和歌の哀傷表現:建久四年 (1193) 美福門院加賀哀傷歌群に見る生と死」 [Lamentations in Medieval Poem: Life and Death in Poems Lamenting the Death of Bifukumon’in no Kaga in Kenkyū 4 [1193]]. http:// repository.dl.itc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2261/20440/1/da009007.pdf Takenuki, Genshō 竹貫元勝. 1993. Nihon zenshū-shi kenkyū 『日本禅宗史研究』[A Study of the History of Japanese Zen Buddhism]. Tokyo: Yūzankaku. Ushiyama, Yoshiyuki 牛山佳幸. 1989. Chūsei no amadera to ama 「中世の尼寺と尼」 [Medieval Nunneries and Nuns]. In Shirīzu: josei to bukkyō 『シリーズ女性と仏教』, ed. Kazuo Ōsumi and Junko Nishiguchi, Vol. 1, 221–270. Tokyo: Heibonsha. ———. 2002. Buddhist Convents in Medieval Japan. In Engendering Faith—Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan, ed. Barbara Ruch, 131–164. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan. Warren, H. C., trans. 1977. Buddhism in Translations. New York: Atheneum. Yanbe, Hiroki 山家浩樹. 1993. Mugai nyodai no sōken jiin 「無外如大の創建寺院」 [Mugai Nyodai and the Construction of Temples]. Miura kobunka『三浦古文化』 [Ancient Culture of Miura]. 53 (December): 1–14. ———. 1998. Mugai Nyodai to mujaku 「無外如大と無着」[Mugai and Mujaku]. Kanazawa Bunko Kenkyū 『金沢文庫研究』 [Bulletin of the Kanazawa Library]. 301(9): 1–11. Yusa, Michiko. 2011. Women Philosophers Overview. In Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. J. Heisig, T. P. Kasulis, and J. C. Maraldo, 1115–1126. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ———. 2012. Ecosophy and Women in Indigenous Japanese Tradition: ‘Saigū’—The Sacred Office of Imperial Princess. In Dreaming a New Earth: Raimon Panikkar and Indigenous Spiritualties, ed. Gerard Hall, 93–113. Preston: Mosaic Press. ———, ed. 2017a. The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Philosophy. London: Bloomsbury. ———. 2017b. Affirmation Via Negation: A Zen Philosophy of Life, Sexual Desire, and Infinite Love. In The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Philosophy, ed. Michiko Yusa, 333–364. London: Bloomsbury. ______. 2018. Dōgen and the Feminine Presence: Taking a Fresh Look into His Sermons and Other Writings. Religions 9 (8): 232; doi 10.3390/rel9080232. Michiko Yusa is Professor of Japanese Thought and Intercultural Philosophy at Western Washington University in Bellingham. Her PhD. (1983) is from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, where she worked closely with Raimon Panikkar and Ninian Smart. Her numerous publications include several books such as Zen and Philosophy: An Intellectual Biography of Nishida Kitarō; Japanese Religious Traditions, Denki nishida kitarō [A biography of Nishida Kitarō in Japanese], and Basic Kanji with Matsuo Soga. She has also co-edited volumes such as Isamu Noguchi and Skyviewing Sculpture: Proceedings of Japan Week 2003, CIRPIT Review 5 (2014), and a special issue of the symposium on Raimon Panikkar held at the Annual Meeting of American Academy of Religion in Baltimore in 2013. Her most recent book is an edited volume, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Philosophy (London & New  York: Bloomsbury, 2017). She was the president of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy and presently is its Program Chair for the American Academy of Religion. Her on-going research includes Nishida Kitarō’s thought, women's spirituality in Japanese Buddhism (a book project), philosophy of artistic creativity (such as the poet Matsuo Bashō), and the thought of Raimon Panikkar. She held the Roche Chair, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, 2016–17.

Chapter 5

Buddhist Philosophy and the Japanese Cultural System Rein Raud

The analysis of the reciprocal relations of the discipline of philosophy and other cultural phenomena requires a few disclaimers. First of all, the characterization of philosophy as a cultural phenomenon along with literature, music and theater, or culinary arts, fashions and sports, rejects claims that philosophy somehow relates to absolute truths which transcend the limits of any particular cultural context and mean the same things for anyone who manages to reach the heights and/or depths necessary for that purpose. This also entails that any pursuit of philosophy, including Buddhist philosophy in Japan, is only possible within the network of textualities and cultural practices that surround it, and the people engaged in it relate to the cultural codes and institutions of their environment just as they relate to the internal rules of their philosophy and its received heritage. Secondly, we have to acknowledge two major aspects in approaching any cultural phenomenon, namely, its texts and its practice. The texts produced by the people engaged in, say, philosophy (treatises) or literature (stories and poems) or cooking (recipes) are distinct from, yet always related to, the practical aspects of that phenomenon, which determine who produces these texts, how and why they are produced, and how they are used and disseminated. Alternatively, seen from the aspect of practice, texts are a sort of by-­ product of what people do; for example, reciting Buddhist sutras does not imply a deep understanding (or even any understanding) of their semantic, textual, and philosophical content. Both of these aspects are equally relevant to the phenomenon as a whole, and neither can be sufficiently analyzed without the knowledge of the other. Speaking about Buddhist philosophy also suggests that this philosophy is separate from the practice of Buddhism as a religion and something that can be meaningful even for people who do not wish to practice Buddhism at all. Thus, for R. Raud (*) Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_5

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example, we can speak about Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253) as a philosopher as opposed to Dōgen as a religious leader and author of meditation manuals. Such an approach has frequently been contested1 and, perhaps, would not have made sense for Dōgen and his contemporaries either. However, for us it is meaningful to retain the distinction simply in order to make Japanese Buddhist thinkers and their actions understandable in our world, where religion and philosophy are two distinct cultural phenomena that follow different rules and presuppose quite different types of commitment from their carriers. Sometimes this distinction is applied retroactively to all related historical phenomena of all times and places, leading to the assumption that the thought of non-European religiously committed thinkers does not qualify as philosophy (as something distinct from religion). This, however, is unacceptable simply because it limits the signification of such thought to a much narrower field than it deserves. It is well known that the entire Japanese cultural system has evolved, from the very beginning, in constant dialogue with the civilization of the Chinese mainland. The first contacts of the Yamato state with the Chinese empire took place at a time when Buddhism had already reached China and had started to take on a distinctly Chinese shape. Thus, it is understandable that the first impression it made on the Japanese was not as something distinct and separate from other exotic cultural products imported from the continent, but rather as part and parcel of the Chinese culture that the Japanese were willing to take on, some more enthusiastically, others more carefully. It is, therefore, impossible to speak of the “purity” of Buddhism in Japan from the very beginning. In addition, a mutually fruitful interaction with Shintō practices later only added to its hybridity. It should be noted in passing that those Shintō practices, constituted, as they were, within the same ongoing dialogue with the mainland, have never been “pure” in themselves either. Also, during later periods, Buddhist temples and monks fulfilled a role that reached far beyond the practice and dissemination of their religion or the development of their thought and, quite frequently, contributed to the spread of other cultural phenomena imported from China. For example, we know that the Buddhist teacher of Shogun Yoshimitsu 義満 (1358–1408), GIDŌ Shūshin 義堂周信 (1325–1388), reported in his diary that during his conversations with his powerful disciple, the ruler was actively interested in the latest Chinese theories of statecraft, which the Chan Buddhist temples had imported to Japan together with other new trends in Chinese thought and literature (Gidō 1982). It should not be surprising, when we keep all of this in mind, that Buddhist thought and practice has had a far greater role in the Japanese cultural system than simply the influence of particular ideas on particular authors and works. In addition 1  For example, Bernard  Faure  argues that “By placing Buddhist thought within a philosophical context, we are making a choice which – however justifiable – has various consequences. For one thing, it implies an exclusion of the non-philosophical – which is judged to be less relevant in terms of understanding another culture or at least in evoking Western sympathy towards other cultures” (Faure 2009: 33). I can understand Faure’s argument, but the opposite move has similar consequences for those who want to deny the philosophical nature of Buddhist thought.

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to this, we should also note the influence of the structural patterns of Buddhist practice on other cultural patterns, for example, the teacher-disciple relationship or the concept of spiritual progress, and the role of several central Buddhist ideas, such as impermanence, on the Japanese outlook on the world, It would, thus, be fair to say that the entire Japanese cultural system has been permeated with Buddhist influence, but this influence, or “Buddhism” cannot possibly be distilled or traced back to pure forms uncontaminated by other cultural phenomena. Within the confines of this article it is, of course, impossible to trace all the relevant Buddhist influences in the entire Japanese cultural system and artistic practices. I will, therefore, focus on some key categories and issues mainly as they have been reflected in the domain of literature, especially since it can be argued that literature is the filter through which Buddhist influence, and its philosophical aspect, in particular, has been mediated to other spheres of culture.

1  Impermanence and the Japanese Language Before proceeding to the analysis of Buddhist influences in the cultural texts of Japan, it might be in order to briefly reflect on the nature of the Japanese language because many of its structural characteristics make it specifically suited for the purpose of mediating Buddhist thought. In particular, there are two linguistic features in Japanese that have contributed to the naturalization of Buddhist ideas of the “impermanence” (J. mujō 無常) of all things and the concept of “no-self” (J. muga 無我) – namely, the thematic structure of predication and the system for the expression of social relations. As it is well known, the Japanese language does not use the subject-predicate pattern of formulating statements about reality––something that the Western philosophical tradition usually considers natural and universal––but bases such utterances on the opposition of known and unknown information instead. The place that would belong to the subject in a sentence in the Indo-European languages is, in Japanese, occupied by the topic, an item that we are familiar with from previous discourse, and the position of the predicate belongs to something claimed to be relevant to that item, or the rhema, in linguistic terms. In contemporary Japanese, the topic is marked by the particle wa following it, and the rhema, if a nominal construction, is followed by the copulaic auxiliary “desu.” Thus, a sentence mirroring the Western subject-predicate construction would look like this: “Haruko wa gakusei desu” (gakusei = student): “Haruko is a student.” However, the correctness of the English translation notwithstanding, the deep-structural pattern of the sentence would rather be “As far as Haruko is concerned, student is relevant.” This is because the Japanese sentence does not make any claims about the essential nature of Haruko. It does not even imply that Haruko exists, at least not permanently and self-­ sufficiently. The only thing it presupposes is that there is, within our horizons, at a certain moment, an entity about which it is meaningful to speak using the designation “Haruko,” and that another designation, “student,” similarly unsubstantial,

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applies to this entity. Accordingly, we can use the same sentence pattern to say, for example, “Tanaka-san wa sushi desu.” Quite obviously this does not mean that Ms. Tanaka has been sliced and patted on balls of rice but simply that she would like to order sushi for lunch––“as far as she is concerned, sushi is relevant.” Or, when we say, “Kyō wa ii tenki desu” (kyō = today, ii tenki = good weather), we are not saying that good weather is what today essentially or temporally is but that the description of the event “good weather” is pertinent to another event we already know and call “today.” One of the most oft-quoted passages from the Genjōkōan 現成公案 fascicle of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō 正法眼蔵 provides a theoretical elaboration of this way of looking at things: Firewood becomes ashes and it cannot become firewood again. Although this is so, we should not see ashes as “after” and firewood as “before.” You should know that firewood abides in the dharma-configuration of firewood, for which there is a “before” and “after.” But although there is a difference between “before” and “after,” it is within the limits of this dharma-configuration. Ashes abide in the dharma-configuration of ashes, and there is a “before,” and there is an “after.” Just like this firewood, which will not become firewood again after it has become ashes, a human being will not return to life again after death. […] This is like winter and spring. One does not say that “winter” has become “spring,” one does not say that “spring” has become “summer”. (Dōgen 1972, 1:36)

I take the term “hō’i” 法位, translated here as “dharma-configuration’’2, to refer to the particular relation between the elementary particles of existence at a certain moment, which is also the only kind of things our language can meaningfully refer to. “Firewood” and “ashes” are not the different phases that one and the same thing passes through during different stages of its existence, but neither are they separate things with self-contained essences. Instead, they are entities that we have posited purely linguistically, in our efforts to make sense of the world and to organize, from our particular perspective, the chaos that we inhabit. It is easy to see how the thematic structure of language supports and constantly reinforces such a view, instead of making claims about the essential properties or temporary attributes of somehow self-sufficiently existing and self-identical things out there in the world. However, the inability to make such statements is amply compensated for by the freedom such a linguistic medium opens up for associative thinking. The famous opening passage of SEI Shōnagon’s 清少納言 (fl.ca 1000) Pillow Book (J. Makura no sōshi 枕草子) starts with a series of claims about the seasons: Haru wa akebono. […] Natsu wa yoru. […] Aki wa yūgure. […] Fuyu wa tsutomete. […]. As to spring, the dawn. As to summer, the night. As to autumn, the twilight. As to winter, the early morning. (Sei 1958, 19: 43)

Another similar statement is to be found among the poems of Dōgen: haru wa hana/ natsu hototogisu/aki wa tsuki/ fuyu wa yuki saete/ hiyashikarikeri.  See ABE Masao’s “A Study of Dōgen: His Philosophy and Religion” (Abe 1992: 42, n. 12), KIM Hee-jin’s “Eihei Dōgen: A Mystical Realist” (Kim 2004: 155), and Joan Stambaugh’s “Impermanence is Buddha-Nature” (Stambaugh 1990: 50) for different interpretations.

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In spring, the blossoms, summer, cuckoo, in autumn, the moon, in winter, the pure snow, always so chilly. (quoted in Matsumoto 2005: 14)

It would be easy to interpret these sentences as statements about essences—that the essence of what “spring” is manifests itself most clearly at dawn, or through blossoms, and, in a sense, this is correct––but only in a sense, since such essences do not consist in objectively existing properties of external and self-reliant phenomena; instead they are available only in perception to the sensitive viewer. The ability to grasp such “primordial meanings” (J. hon’i 本意), as they came to be called in later theoretical writing, was expected from a person of taste, that is, any successful aristocrat during the heyday of Heian court, and eventually converged with Buddhist practice. For example, in his poetic treatise “Notes on Styles of Old” (J. Korai fūteishō 古来風体抄), FUJIWARA no Shunzei 藤原俊成 (1114–1204) writes about his study of the Mohozhiguan by Zhiyi 智顗 (538–597): a successful poet has to engage in a concentration that is analogous to Buddhist meditation, and, as a result, one is able to penetrate the whole universe through the concentration on one particular topic (1975: 274–75). This resonates with the attitude of Zen expressed at the end of the famous four-line poem attributed to Bodhidharma: “see the essence and become enlightened” (J. kenshō jōbutsu 見性成仏)––spiritual emancipation results from being able to see the world directly. The second aspect of the linguistic structure of Japanese that supports and highlights the feeling of impermanence is the system for the expression of social relations, usually called polite speech (J. keigo 敬語), although the multiple levels it contains reach from the highly respectul to the extremely familiar, that is, quite impolite. In Western linguistic practice, we normally think of politeness as an added aspect that modifies neutral speech: everything can be said in a neutral manner, and if we want to be polite (or impolite), we add stylistic features or replace elements in the neutral utterance to that effect. In Japanese, however, there is no neutral manner to express things, a certain level of politeness is implied in any linguistic expression. An analogy could be made, perhaps, with linguistic expressions of gender: in English, for example, it is impossible to speak about a person without specifying if it is him or her, and many other Indo-European and Semitic languages make gender distinctions even in the form of adjectives or verbal conjugation. The category of gender is, thus, intertwined with the very basic linguistic structures. However, the majority of the languages of the world do not use the category of gender so prominently, and third person pronouns are usually gender-neutral, so if we want to express gender, we have to do it with the help of added material. In Japanese (which, incidentally, now has both gender-specific and gender-neutral pronouns for the third person), the category of politeness is intertwined with the basic structures of expression as tightly as gender is in English: there is no “politeness-neutral” style for speaking about things, and, as a result, the position of the speaker is always expressed in what is said. That, in turn, grounds every utterance in a specific social context, ties it to a certain (type of) situation or occasion – and that only reinforces the structual impermanence inherent in the thematic structure of the language, described above.

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In particular, this social contextuality concerns the use of personal pronouns, a typological feature that the Japanese language shares with the present or older forms of many other East Asian languages. There is no neutral pronoun related to the first person or the second. For example, in classical Chinese, the ruler normally called himself an “orphan” (C. gu 孤) or “bereft person” (C. guaren 寡人), men of equal standing used “slave” (C. pu 僕), and the word a woman used about herself in polite speech, regardless of her actual marital status, was “concubine” (C. qie 妾) (Pulleyblank 1995: 77). The choice of the appropriate expression always depends on the social circumstances, similar to the differentiation between tu and vous in French or du and Sie in German, but, in Japanese, the distinctions have always had many more levels and also include self-designation. In modern Japanese, for example, in order to refer to oneself, one can choose from the range of ore, ware, boku, uchi, kochira, kocchi, yo, watashi, atashi, watakushi or, at the most polite, leave the pronoun out altogether and use certain “humble” verbs or constructions related to one’s own actions. For example, itadaku, “to humbly receive”––the humility of the speaker is implied in the choice of the word––in connection with the causative form, could be glossed as “I humbly accept your permission to…” The paradigm of words that can act as second-person pronouns is as rich, including various forms of the proper name of that person in question. The combination of such designations enables the speaker to express a rich gamut of social relations, sometimes several attitudes at the same time, as for example, in a situation in which a recent university graduate has been newly appointed to a superior position in a firm and has to talk to an older employee of long standing. As I mentioned before, Japanese has no neutral way of pointing to the first or second person because one is always in a speech act and being overpolite may be considered to be as rude as being less polite than necessary. The ability to assess the situation and to pinpoint one’s own position within it (J. kejime けじめ) is one of the most important cultural competences that one must have in the Japanese cultural environment (Bachnik 1992). The necessity of reflecting social hierarchy is, of course, an expression of the Confucian mentality (or the mentality that Confucianism is itself the expression of), but it also underscores the Buddhist view of self as an illusion or construction. The distinction made in Buddhist philosophy between the “absolute truth” (S. paramārthasatya) of reality as it is in its unmediated state and the “shared truth” (S. saṃvṛtisatya) of things that do not have a permanent essence, but that we can nonetheless refer to by conventional designations, is thus brought down to the most basic level of everyday communication. The linguistically expressed self clearly only appears at the “shared truth” level of social interaction but has no reality of its own. This impossibility of pointing to oneself without any social frame of reference makes one much more amenable to the idea that this self is an impermanent phenomenon and not the carrier of some kind of solid identity.

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2  Rejection/Embrace of the World In spite of this apparent suitability of the Japanese language for Buddhist ideas, it appears that their early reception by Japanese intellectuals was not altogether favourable, and the goal of enlightenment did not initially have so much appeal as to turn them away from worldly pursuits. For example, the series of waka poems glorifying wine by ŌTOMO no Tabito 大伴旅人 (665–731) in the Man’yōshū 萬葉 集 anthology contains a verse that rejects the threat of unfavourable rebirth as a risk not to be taken seriously (MYS III 348)3: kono yo ni shi/ tanoshiku araba/ komu yo ni wa/ mushi ni tori ni mo/ ware wa narinamu. If it only were pleasant in this world, then I don’t care if I become an insect or a bird when I am reborn in the next.

Even as late as the early eleventh century, SEI Shōnagon observes that “cruel must be the heart of the man who lets his beloved child become a priest,” because of the austerities that a Buddhist clergyman must practice, hastening to add, though, that “this is how it used to be in olden times, but in these days things have apparently become much more relaxed” (Sei 1958, 19:48). The idea that Buddhist practice requires one to renounce one’s feelings is recurrent and continues to trouble Buddhist writers also in later ages, so, for example, the expression “to turn one’s back to the world” (J. yo o somuku 世を背く) is a euphemism for taking holy orders. As monks came more and more to be involved with artistic practices, including poetry (the Buddhist institution being almost the single channel of upward social mobility for the underprivileged), the contradiction between feelings and the pursuit of enlightenment became a frequent topic. For example, there is a poem by Abbot Henjō 遍昭 in the Kokinwakashū 古今和歌集, the first imperially sponsored anthology of court poetry (KKS 226): na ni medete/ oreru bakari zo/ ominaeshi/ ware ochiniki to/ hito ni kataru na. Seduced only by your name, I have plucked you, maiden-flower – please do not tell anybody about my fall.

According to KI no Tsurayuki’s 紀貫之 preface to the anthology, this poem was written when Henjō fell from a horse on the Saga field (Ki no Tsurayuki 1971: 57), but this explanation is not repeated in the anthology, so we may fairly safely assume that this is a case of overinterpretation, of providing the poem with an explanatory context after the fact that has nothing to do with the original setting. The poem makes much better sense as a comment on monastic vows: plucking a maiden-­ flower would be a breach of these if seen as an expression of suppressed desire, and 3  Poems from anthologies and personal collections will be referred to according to the accustomed practice of literary scholarship, indicating the collection, scroll (where applicable), and number in the critical text. The abbreviations for the collections and the editions used are listed in the references section.

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it is even tempting to read the word “hito” (literally, “person”) of the last line not as “people, others,” but “beloved,” which is a fairly common first meaning of the word in the poetic usage in the anthology. This would make the poem a maze of denials, especially if we might think of it as sent, with the flower, to a person (as it was customary in Japanese aristocratic practice): first, the poet, being a monk, denies his feelings; then he projects them onto the flower that he plucks, seduced by its name; next, he acknowledges the breach of vows, and then denies his feelings as a Freudian slip of a kind, asking the flower to keep it secret; and finally he writes a poem about it for either a particular person or even the whole world to see. However, such a worldly attitude was not something shared by many other Buddhist authors, most of whom considered writing and the underlying emotions a problem not to be taken lightly. This contradiction evolved into what came to be called the “wild words and fleeting phrases” (J. kyōgen-kigo 狂言綺語) debate, after a line by BO Juyi 白居易 (772–846), possibly the best-known Chinese poet in Japan, who, toward the end of his life, denounced his own writing as “wild phrases and floating utterances,” an unworthy pursuit compared to Buddhist spiritual training (LaFleur 1983: 8–9). A similar attitude is voiced by Dōgen, himself an accomplished waka poet, in Shōbōgenzō zuimonki 正法眼蔵随聞記: reading and writing poetry or other kinds of literature does not contribute to one’s spiritual pursuit and it should therefore be given up (Dōgen 1987: 21, 27, 51–52) Others find this more difficult. Thus, we find among the poems of Saigyō 西行 (1118–1190) the following (SZS XVII: 1066): hana ni somu/ kokoro no ikade/ nokoriken/ sutehateteki to / omou wagami ni. The mind that is coloured—by the flowers—how is it that it is still there…when I was sure I had left it behind for good…

And (SKKS IV: 362): kokoro naki/ mi ni mo aware wa/ shirarekeri/ shigi tatsu sawa no/ aki no yūgure Even a body without a heart can still know what melancholy is – when a snipe flies out on a marsh, in autumn twilight.

The latter, probably the best-known verse of Saigyō, is anthologised in the Shinkokinwakashū 新古今和歌集 (SKKS 360–361) with two other poems by major poets of the day, Jakuren 寂蓮 (1139–1202) and FUJIWARA no Teika 藤原定家 (1162–1241), all three ending with the same phrase “aki no yūgure,” “autumn twilight.”4 They, thus, manifest a common aesthetic sensibility. We can read these and other similar poems as expressions of a realization which is still Buddhist in its depths: a rejection of the prohibition against feeling joy for the beauty of the world is a refusal to cling to this prohibition because, as we know, clinging to anything is to be given up. We find many examples of such an attitude in the poetry of the scandalous Zen monk IKKYŪ Sōjun 一休宗純 (1394–1481), whose critique of the 4  Here, I would like to remind the reader that twilight has been pointed out to be the poetic “essence” of autumn already by SEI Shōnagon.

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rigid Zen institutions of his day opposed conscious immersion in the world to their pointless clinging to lineages and correct transmissions. Appointed to head a subtemple of the Daitokuji monastery in 1428, Ikkyū resigned after 10 days and sent a poem to the head monk: I spent ten days in this house, and still think of worldly pursuits. The red thread binding my feet must still be very long. Some day, when you’ll want to come and talk to me, look for me in the fish market, in the pubs, look for me in the brothels. (Ikkyū 1994: 53)

On many other occasions, Ikkyū has similarly rejected or ridiculed the attachment to rules that Buddhist authorities propagate and opposes to them his own understanding of the buddhas, bodhisattvas, and earlier Zen masters as free spirits. For example, in his poem on the picture “Arhat in a brothel,” Ikkyū comments on an apocryphal story about the arhat Ananda, who was lured into a brothel, but an intervention at the last moment by the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, who reads from a sūtra, saves both Ananda and the prostitute who has engaged him. Ikkyū’s attitude toward all this leaves no room for doubt: An arhat without any worldly dust is far removed from the Buddha. Great wisdom opens itself to him only in the tumult of a brothel. What a great shame! Mañjuśrī is reading from his stupid sutra! The elegant pleasures of the beautiful young man are all going to waste! (Ikkyū 1994: 255)

And yet, according to one late poem, Ikkyū is convinced that demons are guiding his brush, which will take him to hell, although he does not seem to care too much about that (1994: 274). Bernard Faure cautions us to read Ikkyū in the context of a trend called “basara” 婆娑羅 (derived from Sanskrit vajra, the esoteric Buddhist symbol of diamond-like wisdom), which links unconventionality, eccentricity, and madness in a new sensibility, and makes transgression an expression of the zeitgeist rather than an exception (Faure 1998: 116). Be that as it may, Ikkyū’s attitude reflects a considerable development from Saigyō’s embrace of the beauty of the world. In his personal collection, Saigyō included an exchange of poems between himself and a prostitute at Eguchi, a spot not very far from the capital famous for its brothels. Apparently Saigyō had been passing through there and when caught in a storm, requested shelter in one of those houses (SanKS 752–753): yo no naka o/ itou made koso/ katakarame/ kari no yadori o/ oshimu kimi kana. Is it not hard enough to live, rejecting the world? So you do not want to share with me even this ephemeral dwelling…

But the woman who opened the door to him refused him entry5: ie o izuru/ hito to shi mireba/ kari no yado ni/ kokoro tomu na to/ omou bakari zo.

 According to the Senjūshō 撰集抄, a thirteenth-century collection of Buddhist tales popularly attributed to Saigyō, the prostitute actually let him in, and he spent the night there in conversation, as a result of which the woman became a nun (Moore 1986: 169).

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Having seen that you were a man who had left his house behind, I cannot but think that you should not let your mind stop at an ephemeral dwelling.

This episode became a popular story and was developed into its final shape in the Nō play Eguchi 江口, attributed to Kan’ami 観阿弥, at the end of which a group of wandering monks encounter the ghost of the Eguchi courtesan, who manifests herself as an incarnation of the bodhisattva of wisdom, Samantabhadra (J.  Fugen Bosatsu 普賢菩薩), and ascends to the Western paradise. Various explanations have been given to this treatment of the story, from the assumption that her superior achievement was caused by her skills in poetry (Yokomichi and Omote 1960, 40: 49) to this being a part of an effort by the Buddhist institution to integrate into itself the earlier shamanistic practices involving female sexuality (Marra 1993: 94) or a strategy to enforce male dominance over the empowerment of the female (Terasaki 1992). We should note, however, that Kan’ami has created an analogous situation also in another play, Sotoba Komachi 卒都婆小町, in which another group of wandering monks is shamed by an ugly old woman sitting on a stupa at someone’s grave, who is able to outwit them in Buddhist debate and then reveals herself to be the famous poetess and legendary beauty ONO no Komachi 小野小町 (fl.ca 850). The subsequent possession of her body by the spirit of Fukakusa 深草, her dead suitor, brings the play to a dramatic climax. Komachi’s cruel treatment of Fukakusa is, in the legendary narratives about her life, the factor that has generated the karma which has brought her to such a miserable condition in the end, but in Kan’ami’s play she finally achieves liberation and enlightenment. The play contains implicit criticism of the institutional and rigid thinking of the monks: initially, when they see the old woman sitting on the stupa, they order her away because she defiles the sacred space. Komachi argues, however, that every being is endowed with the possibility to attain enlightenment and making such distinctions between sacred and profane are inappropriate and inconsistent with the Buddhist teaching. As TERASAKI Etsuko has observed, a pun on the word stupa (sotoba 卒塔婆), which Komachi reads as “the place outside” (soto-ba 外場), even allows her to identify herself with the symbol (1984: 172–173). Thus, whatever other ideological purposes Kan’ami may also have had in mind,6 the idea that outside appearances and the social status of someone is not a reason to subject that person to discrimination along the sacred-profane axis is strongly present in both plays. This is quite evidently an idea that was personally very relevant for the actors of wandering Nō troupes as well. This distinctly Mahāyāna idea of the illusory status and the innate equality of all beings is the axis along which a general transformation in the attitude toward the world has taken place over centuries. The basic impermanence of all things has, in the texts of the court culture, primarily been associated with the impermanence of 6  Peter Thornton has noted that in this play, too, the question of gender is foregrounded both by the text and the acting techniques: the female Komachi being possessed by the male Fukakusa brings about a situation where gender distinctions are dissolved in a space of madness (Thornton 2003: 224), which is indeed analogous to the transformation of the female courtesan into the male bodhisattva of wisdom in Eguchi.

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human relations, to the extent that the expression “ephemeral things” (J. hakanaki koto はかなき事) has started to signify amorous pursuits and affairs, the inevitable end of which makes the world a hateful place, and Buddhist techniques for the achievement of inner peace an attractive way to get out of it. However, little by little, the focus of realization of one’s innate enlightenment starts to move from escaping ephemerality into embracing it in its suchness. We find both positions forcefully articulated in the “Essays in Idleness” (Tsurezuregusa 徒然草) by YOSHIDA Kenkō 吉田兼好 (1283–1352). On the one hand, Kenkō is a Buddhist recluse who warns us against spending time on idle pursuits that do not contribute to our spiritual progress (Yoshida 1964, 30: 119–120, 128–129, 242–246) and especially against the dangers represented by women (Yoshida 1964, 30: 96). On the other hand, however, he is also heir to the court culture and thus judges anyone who has never felt the pangs of love to be insensitive and unaccomplished as human beings (Yoshida 1964, 30: 92). The position is contradictory, but only on the surface: on a deeper level, to realize one’s humanity is to realize one’s Buddha-nature. When we finally reach the Edo period (1600–1868) we can see that the expression “hateful world” (J. uki yo 憂き世) has now turned into the “floating world” (J. ukiyo 浮き世), the world of the licensed quarters to which the rules of the rigidly regulated Neo-Confucian society did not apply. It is perhaps strange to think of Buddhist ethics in this context, yet there is a peculiar rationalization that is used by the inhabitants of this world for their situation, such as the “double suicides of lovers” (J. shinjū 心中), lovers who cannot stay together and so take their own lives in order to be reborn together in Amida’s Western paradise. The opening episodes of the first story in IHARA Saikaku’s 井原西鶴 (1642– 1693) “Five Women Dedicated to Love” (Kōshoku gonin onna 好色五人女) bring the contradictions of the floating world emphatically to the fore. Here we find Seijūrō, the protagonist of the story, engaging in all kinds of transgressive behaviour in his favourite brothel, including parodying Buddhist ceremonies, until he is disowned by his father and is, therefore, unable to pay the bills. He thinks of committing suicide, but does not want his favourite prostitute to take her life with him. She abruptly dismisses him explaining that she always belongs to those who can afford her, only to beg to die together with him at the next moment. Eventually, the girl kills herself, but Seijūrō does not (Ihara 1963, 47: 221–225). Thus nothing is permanent in this world of impermanence, apart from impermanence itself, and true constancy can only be found at the heart of constant change. We can, thus, see that over the course of centuries, the Japanese cultural system has been able to accommodate the Buddhist idea of impermanence and reconcile it with a basic life-affirming disposition: we have come a long way from the rejection of the Buddhist promise of a better next life in exchange for self-limitation in the present to the promise of a better next life as a reward for staying faithful to one’s true feelings, even if those are in direct contradiction of all social norms, and the Buddhist institutions that may have opposed this movement have themselves been outflanked in the process.

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3  Spiritual Progress The revaluation of the transient world in the Japanese cultural system was accompanied, and in many ways supported, by a parallel process that concerned the nature of the individual person’s self-realisation in that world, the model of spiritual progress from the depths of ignorance and delusion toward enlightenment and liberation. For those Japanese who considered enlightenment a goal seriously to be aimed at, the ideas of what this enlightenment was, what it did to their own self, and how their own self actually worked, underwent considerable change over the centuries, and many aspects of that change became quickly visible in their artistic practice. The early views on spiritual progress have seen it as a gradual emancipation from worldly pursuits. Many stories contained in the “Notes on Ghosts and Weird Occurrences in Japan” (J. Nihon ryōiki 日本霊異記) collection by Kyōkai 景戒 (fl. ca 820–830) in the early ninth century stress the separation of the two realms: for example, commenting on prince SHŌTOKU Taishi’s 聖徳太子 respectable attitude toward a beggar, the author says that ordinary people do not recognize sages, but one sage can recognize another; in another story,7 it is said that things forbidden by Buddhist precepts for ordinary people may be permissible to sages. Under the circumstances, the best thing an ordinary person could aim at in the present life was the accumulation of sufficient good karma to achieve a favourable rebirth, but not much more, and such karma was available through acts benefitting society and the Buddhist institutions, in particular. For those who wanted more, the options were to enter monkhood or to join the ranks of wandering ascetics and mystics with idiosyncratic and not very well-articulated worldviews. During the first centuries of the Heian period, things did not change much in this respect. As noted above, SEI Shōnagon did not have a particularly high opinion of organized Buddhism as a career path for a sensitive person (Sei 1958, 19: 48), and for many aristocrats the main contact with the Buddhist institution was the attendance of esoteric rites, a kind of bizarre, but beneficial, entertainment. Even Sei’s list of noteworthy sutras (1958, 19: 248) most probably did not rely on the messages conveyed by the particular texts but on their performance value during recitals or, perhaps, on the quality of their paper or even the aesthetic quality of the boxes in which they were kept, thus reflecting the hierarchy of the texts installed by the dominant Buddhist schools rather than a deeper understanding of their content. A decisive break occurred during the period of political as well as intellectual turmoil in the late Heian and early Kamakura periods (that is, around 1150–1250), which brought Buddhist ideas and practices closer to the general public and transformed them substantially in the process. For the aristocratic culture, this was the period of the emergence of the so-called michi 道 (“way”) theory, or the idea that any pursuit, if practiced with the same kind of focus and concentration, can act as a pathway to the same kind of spiritual progress that Buddhism has to offer. The idea 7  See Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition: The Nihon Ryōiki of the Monk Kyōkai (Nakamura 1997: 110).

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itself is Daoist in origin. In the book of Zhuangzi 莊子, for example, we encounter an episode where cook Ding explains how he carves up the meat of the ox, not by cutting through it, but by separating it at the natural spaces between joints. It is not a skill, but his following the Way (J. dao 道) that makes this possible. As a result, his knife is as good as new even after 19 years of daily usage (Zhuangzi 1996, 1: 92). Espe Møllgaard points out that in this passage, the word used for cutting apart (C. jie 解) is the same as for unraveling the “distinctions that define human life” and, thus, the cook has accomplished a transcendence from the human world to the life of Heaven, yet this is something that cannot be learned technically or methodically (Møllgaard 2007: 51). It is not by perfecting his skill that the cook has attained such mastery but by spiritual progress; however, this progress has come about as a result of the practice of his craft not merely as a craft but as a form of following the Way. Centuries later, Dōgen learns the same thing from two Chinese cooks in Chan monasteries. In his “Instructions for the Cook” (J. Tenzo kyōkun 典座教訓), he reports his astonishment that a cook in his late sixties still sorted mushrooms in the heat of the sun just after midday, although he could easily delegate this task to one of his assistants. “But they are not me,” the cook replies to his inquiry. At another occasion, a head cook from a relatively distant monastery undertakes a journey in order to buy Japanese mushrooms from Dōgen’s crew, but he declines Dōgen’s offer of a meal and sets himself immediately on the return journey in order to be back in time for preparing the next day’s food. Some time later, they meet again and have a Zen conversation. The cook admonishes Dōgen that he does not understand the pursuit of the Way and the meaning of written words. When asked what written words are, he says “one, two, three, four, five” and about the pursuit of the Way, “anywhere in the universe, it is never hidden.” Although the answers of the cook follow the customary norms of Chinese Chan conversation, their message can be read in an entirely rational manner. Any discursive knowledge that can be transmitted is essentially like numerals, which have no referent in reality but nonetheless are not senseless and can, moreover, be organized into a meaningful system according to their own internal logic. Practice, on the other hand, is realized through one’s attitude to reality and is not to be learned or sought after because it can already be present in whatever one does. From this attitude has been derived one of the key points in Dōgen’s Zen teaching: there is no gap between practice and enlightenment, and anything one does can be turned into practice, provided one does that “anything” with the proper disposition of the mind. However, this is not a wholly original insight of Dōgen’s because elements of the michi idea were developed earlier both inside the Buddhist institutions and in broader Japanese social practice. Since early times, Japanese artisans (in fact, all people with specific skills) were assembled into occupational groups or guilds called be, which were largely, but not completely, associated also by kinship ties. These groups were attached to aristocratic clans so that each of these had the monopoly of, or control over, certain activities (Hall 2006, 1: 139–40). Professions

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were transmitted from generation to generation inside the family, but, since bloodlines were not as important to the Japanese as communality, often someone with an aptitude for the family profession could be adopted by the family and even take over its leadership so that the Japanese “stem family is not, strictly speaking, a kinship unit, but an economic organization” (Befu 1985: 39). The same applied to artistic vocations, where it was established as the iemoto system of teaching: the knowledge and skills were transmitted within the family, and anyone wishing to receive this teaching had to become a member. Moreover, the teaching did not usually take place in a structured situation but involved observing the master’s practice and receiving scant comment on one’s own work. This system was analogous to the clan system and the master-disciple relationship at the same time, and any master was anxious to have disciples who would carry on the tradition. In fact, tradition was precisely what mattered. For example, the great poetic reformer FUJIWARA no Shunzei adopted a relative, FUJIWARA no Sadanaga 定 長 (1139–1202) into his family, intending him to become his heir, but when Shunzei later had sons of his own, Sadanaga entered the priesthood and became known as Jakuren, remaining on the friendliest of terms with Teika (1162–1241), who replaced him. Shunzei also adopted one of his granddaughters, who became, as a result of his instruction, one of the best-known female poets of the time. Thus, it is clear that the adoption scheme borrowed from the practice of artisanal guilds had, by the end of the Heian period, already taken on some traits of the teacher-disciple relationship of the Buddhist institution. The latter, in any case, become the main blueprint by which the literary circles organized themselves. As noted above, the poets of the time engaged in spiritual exercises akin to the shikan 止観 meditation practiced in the Tendai school and quite obviously they saw their artistic practice as something generically similar and equal in efficiency to the Buddhist practice of the monastics in temples and monasteries—especially when these, in turn, also trained themselves in literary arts, sometimes with remarkable results. Indeed, the ability to capture Buddhist wisdom by artistic means was reported at the time to be conducive to enlightenment. For example, the scandalous poetess IZUMI Shikibu 和泉式部 (fl.1000), whose affairs with two imperial princes in succession were very much the talk of her day, and whose passionate and fiercely independent love poetry has been a source of inspiration up to modern times,8 is said to have earned enlightenment by a poem (SIS XX: 1342) she sent to SHŌKŪ Shōnin 性空上人, from whom she received a stole in return (Shunzei-kyojo 1976, 73:114): kuraki yori/ kuraki michi ni zo/ irinubeki haruka ni terase/ yama no ha no tsuki. Coming from darkness, and destined to enter another dark path, I ask for your bright light, oh moon over the mountains!

8  The title of YOSANO Akiko’s 与謝野晶子 (1878–1942) first tanka collection “Tangled hair” (Midaregami みだれ髪) distinctly alludes to one of Izumi’s most famous poems.

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Buddhist topics had gradually become an independent subcategory of poetry: as a set topic, shakkyōka 釈教歌 (literally, “songs on the teachings of the Buddha”) first appeared in the Goshūishū 後拾遺集, the fourth imperial anthology, and since the seventh, Senzaishū 千載集, they were important enough to make up a whole scroll. However, in most cases, these poems rarely ventured beyond a fairly superficial treatment of the topics of impermanence and the regret of not practicing Buddhism hard enough, with an occasional request for rebirth in Amida’s Western paradise. A poem by Jien 慈円 (1155–1225), one of the leading poets of the time as well as the long-time head of the Tendai school, might serve as an example (SKKS XX: 1932): toku minori/ kiku no shiratsuyu/ yoru wa okite tsutomete kien/ koto o shi zo omou. Listening to the teaching, I cannot but think of the white dew on the chrysanthemums, that sets at night and evaporates in the early morning.

At the time of this writing, the comparison of the fragility of human life to dew had been a cliché for centuries, and even the pun on kiku 聞く/菊 (to listen/chrysanthemum) has been explicitly borrowed for this context from a love poem by Sosei in the Kokinshū (XI: 470). Strangely enough, a much deeper vision of things with a clearly Buddhist background is to be found in many texts written at the same time on topics that were not explicitly Buddhist. This was the worldview that came to the fore with the evolution of the “rusty loneliness” (J. sabi 寂) aesthetic, which started to develop during the twelfth century, notably within the poetry of Saigyō, evolved into the predominant principle of renga poetry during the Muromachi period, and was installed at the core of the haikai aesthetic with Bashō’s 芭蕉 (1644–1694) work, influencing many other artistic practices, such as the “way of tea” and ink painting in the process. The word sabi first entered poetic usage as a pun, because of its double meaning of “rust” and “loneliness.” The colour of the decayed leaves of late autumn, associated with solitude and desolation, quickly turned from a negatively loaded image into a positive one, along with the changes in the Japanese worldview in the twelfth century. While for earlier poets sabi had mainly negative connotations of desolation and decay, Saigyō’s view was already quite different (SanKS 255): tou hito mo/omoitaetaru/yamazato wa sabishisa nakuba/sumiukaramashi. The mountain village, vanished from the thoughts of anyone who would visit me, would be terrible to live in, if not for this rusty solitude.

The principle of sabi could most appropriately be characterized as an aesthetic of absence. The object of representation is primarily determined by what is not there. In a celebrated manifesto-like poem, Teika has stated this very clearly (SKKS IV: 363): miwataseba/ hana mo momiji mo/ nakarikeri ura no tomaya no/ aki no yūgure.

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When I look around, any flowers or red maple leaves are nowhere to be seen. Just a reed hut on the shore of the bay, in autumn twilight.

The same kind of absence is distinctly stressed by Shun’e 俊恵, as quoted by KAMO no Chōmei 鴨長明 in his poetic treatise, “The Untitled Notes” (J. Mumyōshō 無名抄): For example, in autumn twilight there might be no particular color in the sky, nor sound to be heard, no particular motive whatsoever to be thought of, but all of a sudden your tears begin to flow. Shallow people would find nothing remarkable here, because they are only able to be moved by cherry blossoms and maple leaves that one can see with the eyes. (1961: 87)

Such statements explicitly deny the value of the conventionally established aesthetic “essences” of things, inasmuch as these have a capacity in themselves to turn into hindrances to the way of spiritual progress, just as stated in Linji’s 臨済 (d. 866) famous dictum: if you meet the Buddha, kill him, if you meet a patriarch, kill him.9 However, the dialectic of spiritual progress with received forms is, in fact, much more complicated. A direct perception of reality does not entail unrestricted access to it. The notion of “kata,” one of the central categories of Japanese culture, rests on the assumption that the successful practice of anything requires the internalisation of norms: following the Way, is precisely that, following. The word “kata” means “form,” and, written with a different ideogram, “direction”—the direction one’s movements must take in a particular context. Thus, a dynamic form. There is a kata, or a correct way of doing things, for almost anything. Martial arts practitioners know kata as series of movements they have to be able to repeat with precision, and lovers of complicated food are instructed in the “correct way to eat” as they are introduced to an unfamiliar dish. The kata orders the timespace in which we are embedded. Visitors to a temple garden must always follow the prescribed route, not because they have to obey an invisible disciplinary power but because otherwise they would not see the scenes in the sequence they have been designed in, and their impression would be similar to the reading of a novel with pages in random order. On a deeper level, the same principle applies everywhere. Interestingly, to communicate the frustration of having no way out of a predicament, the Japanese language uses the expression shikata ga nai, literally, “there is no kata for doing this.” In Bashō’s famous travel diary, “The Narrow Road to the Interior” (J. Oku no hosomichi 奥の細道), we find a description of his stay in an inn with two prostitutes on a pilgrimage staying next door. The next morning, the girls ask Bashō and Sora, his companion, to guide them on their way, but Bashō politely declines. However, in Sora’s account of the same episode, there is no mention of such an encounter. This has led most scholars to believe that possibly Bashō invented the whole episode because a similar, if reversed, narrative—that of meeting with the Eguchi 9  A possibly more exact translation of the phrase would use a colloquialism: if you meet the Buddha, erase him. The idea, of course, is not to cause anyone physical harm but to remove preconceived images from one’s mind because they inevitably block one’s direct perception of reality. As SUZUKI Shunryu has paraphrased the statement: kill the Buddha if the Buddha exists somewhere else (Suzuki 1995: 27).

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c­ ourtesan—appears in the biography of Saigyō, whose kata Bashō is following, having decided to visit all the places that Saigyō has mentioned in his work. We can, thus, say that following the Way and progressing spiritually were activities that were not realized with spontaneity nor depended wholly on the blind following of rules but became possible at the margin of spontaneity and rules. One had to internalize the rules to the point that one followed them spontaneously, having erased both their rule-essence and one’s own self. From that point onwards, the breaking of those rules (non-rules now) was already a non-breaking—the kata was followed even if it was not repeated exactly because the internal logic of the kata had now been absorbed by the practitioner and it was that logic, not the practitioner’s self, that produced the change. One could become free of the kata only by mastering it to the utmost perfection, without there remaining any “kata” to be followed any longer. It is in this sense that we can read Bashō’s critical remarks on Saigyō: Someone in mourning has made sadness his master. Someone drinking wine has made pleasure his master. And when Saigyō writes “if not for this rusty solitude,” he has made this rusty solitude his master. (Bashō 1978: 188)

A poem makes the same point ironically and lightly and, therefore, perhaps more forcefully (BHS 185): imo arau onna/ saigyo naraba/ uta yomamu. A woman washes potatoes/if I were Saigyō, I’d write a poem.

Within his aesthetic of absence, Saigyō could perceive the beauty in anything, and “anything” could trigger within him a poetic response, even if that “anything” was not remarkable at all. Bashō notices a woman washing potatoes––not a particularly interesting subject—but Saigyō would have still written a poem because of his inner drive that he could not free himself from. However, writing a poem about the situation and the tension within the aesthetic response it provokes is, after all, precisely what Bashō also did.

4  Concluding Remarks To treat the history of influences Buddhist ideas have exerted on Japanese cultural practice is clearly not possible within the scope of one chapter. I have left out of consideration all such artistic practices that either represent Buddhist imagery or narratives without notable philosophical intepretation, such as the setsuwa tales or visual arts, or those subjugated entirely to religious practice, such as nembutsu-­ odori 念仏踊りdancing, and those forms of artistic expression produced and distributed within the confines of the Buddhist institution only. I hope to have shown, however, that the influence of Buddhist philosophical ideas on cultural texts cannot be analysed on the surface level alone, that is, merely as meaning separated from the

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mechanisms that generate these texts at a deeper level. The impermanence of all things, a category easily understandable to the Japanese already because the structure of the Japanese language makes it easy to convey, is the prerequisite and condition of a model of spiritual progress that leads one to transcend it. This basic teaching of Buddhism is also the model on which Japanese artistic practice relies: the belief that by doing anything with a proper mindset has enabled the practitioners of different arts to turn their medium into the vehicle of emancipation, and the tradition they are carrying forward into the repository of skilful means. However, instead of becoming a rejection of the world and its multiple appearances (as the Buddhist worldview was interpreted in the first stages of reception), these Buddhist ideas evolved within the arts into a life-affirming doctrine that promised its carriers the ability to see beyond the quotidian and to realize the infinite within the minuscule while embracing the world, letting the dynamic forms of practice take over their selves, realizing themselves in the impermanence, the only mode of existence available to anyone.

Works Cited Abbreviations BHS: Bashō haikushū 『芭蕉俳句集』. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1970. GSIS: Goshūiwakashū 『後拾遺和歌集』. Shinpen kokka taikan 『新編国歌大観』 [New edition of “Great Compilation of Japanese Poetry”]. CD-ROM/ Tokyo: Kadokawa Group Publishing, 2003. KKS: Kokinwakashū 『古今和歌集』. Shinpen kokka taikan 『新編国歌大観』 [New edition of “Great Compilation of Japanese Poetry”]. CD-ROM. Tokyo: Kadokawa Group Publishing, 2003. MYS: Man’yōshū 『万葉集』. Shinpen kokka taikan『 新編国歌大観』 [New edition of “Great Compilation of Japanese Poetry”]. CD-ROM. Tokyo: Kadokawa Group Publishing, 2003. SanKS: Sankashū 『山家集』. Shinpen kokka taikan 『新編国歌大観』 [New edition of “Great Compilation of Japanese Poetry”]. CD-ROM. Tokyo: Kadokawa Group Publishing, 2003. SIS: Shūiwakashū 『拾遺和歌集』. Shinpen kokka taikan 『新編国歌大観』 [New edition of “Great Compilation of Japanese Poetry”]. CD-ROM.  Tokyo: Kadokawa Group Publishing, 2003. SKKS: Shinkokinwakashū 『新古今和歌集』. Shinpen kokka taikan 『新編国歌大観』 [New edition of “Great Compilation of Japanese Poetry”]. CD-ROM.  Tokyo: Kadokawa Group Publishing, 2003. SKS: Shikawakashū 『詞花和歌集』. Shinpen kokka taikan 『新編国歌大観』 [New edition of “Great Compilation of Japanese Poetry”]. CD-ROM.  Tokyo: Kadokawa Group Publishing, 2003. SZS: Senzaiwakashū 『千載和歌集』. Shinpen kokka taikan 『新編国歌大観』 [New edition of “Great Compilation of Japanese Poetry”]. CD-ROM. Tokyo: Kadokawa Group Publishing, 2003.

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Other Sources Abe, Masao. 1992. A Study of Dōgen: His Philosophy and Religion, ed. Steven Heine. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bachnik, Jane. 1992. Kejime: Defining a Shifting Self in Multiple Organizational Modes. In Japanese Sense of Self, ed. Nancy Ross Rosenberger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bashō, Matsuo 松尾芭蕉. 1978. Saga nikki 「嵯峨日記」 [Saga Diaries]. In Bashō bunshū 『芭 蕉文集』, ed. Susumu Toyama 富山進. Tokyo: Shinchōsha. Befu, Harumi. 1985. Japan: An Anthropological Introduction. 3rd ed. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle. Dōgen 道元. 1972.  Dōgen 『道元』 [Dōgen], Nihon shisō taikei 『日本思想体系』 [The Structure of Japanese Thought] Vol. 13, ed. Tōru Terada 寺田透 and Yaeko Mizuno 水野八重 子. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. ———. 1987. Shōbōgenzō zuimonki 『正法眼蔵随聞記』. 54th edition. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Faure, Bernard. 1998. The Red Thread: Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2009. Unmasking Buddhism. Malden and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Fujiwara no Shunzei 藤原俊成. 1975. Korai fūteishō 「古来風体抄」. In Karonshū 『歌論集』, ed. Fumio Hashimoto 橋本文雄,  Tamotsu  Ariyoshi 有吉保, and Haruo Fujihira 藤平晴雄. Tokyo: Shōgakkan. Gidō, Shūshin 義堂周信. 1982. Kūge nichiyō kufū ryakushū『 空華日用工夫略集』, ed. Hideo Kageki 過激秀雄. Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan. Hall, John Whitney, ed. 2006. The Cambridge History of Japan. 4th ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ihara, Saikaku 井原西鶴. 1963. Kōshoku gonin onna 『好色五人女』. 5th edition. Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten. Ikkyū Sōjun 一休宗純. 1994. Kyōunshū 『狂雲集』, ed. Seizan Yanagida 柳田 聖山. Tokyo: Kōdansha. Kamo no Chōmei 鴨長明. 1961. Mumyōshō 「無名抄」. In Karonshū 『歌論集』. Nōgakuronshū 『能楽論集』, ed. Sen’ichi Hisamatsu and Minoru Nishio. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Ki no Tsurayuki 紀貫之. 1971. Kokinwahashū kanajo 「古今和歌集仮名序」 [Preface to the Kokinwahashū]. In Kokinwakashū 『古今和歌集』, ed. Ozawa Masao 小沢正夫. Nihon koten bungaku zenshū 『日本古典文学全集』 [Complete Works of Ancient Japanese Literature], Vol. 7. Tōkyō: Shōgakkan. Kim, Hee-jin. 2004. Eihei Dōgen: Mystical Realist. Boston: Wisdom Publications. LaFleur, William R. 1983. The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Marra, Michael F. 1993. Representations of Power: The Literary Politics of Medieval Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Matsumoto, Akio 松本章男 2005. Dōgen no waka 『道元の和歌』 [Dōgen’s Waka Poetry]. Tōkyō: Chūōkōron-shinsha. Møllgaard, Eske. 2007. An Introduction to Daoist Thought: Action, Language, and Ethics in Zhuangzi. London: Routledge. Moore, Jean. 1986. Senjūshō. Buddhist Tales of Renunciation. Monumenta Nipponica 41 (2): 127–174. Nakamura, Kyoko Motomochi, trans. 1997. Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition: The Nihon Ryōiki of the Monk Kyōkai. Richmond: Curzon. Pulleyblank, Edwin G. 1995. Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar. Vancouver: UBC Press. Sei, Shōnagon 清少納言. 1958. Makura no sōshi 『枕草子』. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Shunzei-kyō no musume 俊成卿女. 1976. Mumyōzōshi 『無名草子』. Tokyo: Shinchōsha. Stambaugh, Joan. 1990. Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature: Dōgen’s Understanding of Temporality. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Suzuki, Shunryu. 1995. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. 34th ed. New York: Weatherhill.

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Terasaki, Etsuko. 1984. Images and Symbols in Sotoba Komachi: A Critical Analysis of a Nō Play. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 44 (1): 155–184. ———. 1992. Is the Courtesan of Eguchi a Buddhist Metaphorical Woman? A Feminist Reading of a Nō Play in the Japanese Medieval Theater. Women’s Studies 21 (4): 431–456. Thornton, Peter. 2003. Monomane, Yūgen, and Gender in Izutsu and Sotoba Komachi. Asian Theatre Journal 20 (2): 218–225. Yokomichi, Mario 横道万里雄 and Akira Omote 表章, eds. 1960. Yōkyokushū jō 『謡曲集上』. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Yoshida, Kenkō 吉田兼好. 1964. Tsurezuregusa 『徒然草』. 8th edition. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Zhuangzi 荘子. 1996. Zhuangzi 荘子. Ed. Osamu Kanaya. Vol. 1. 40th ed. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Rein Raud is Professor of Asian and Cultural Studies at the School of Humanities, Tallinn University. He has also worked in the Estonian Institute of Humanities and the University of Helsinki, where he served as a professor in the Department of World Cultures until 2016. In 2011– 2014 he was the President of the European Association of Japanese Studies. His research interests include Japanese Buddhist philosophy and classical literature, as well as cultural theory. His numerous publications include Meaning in Action: Outline of an Integral Theory of Culture and Practices of Selfhood. He is also well known as an author of fiction and for his translations of Japanese classical literature into Estonian.

Chapter 6

The Philosophical Reception of Japanese Buddhism After 1868 Ralf Müller

In the writings of the Japanese Pure Land Buddhist Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1263) we read: “I, Shinran, do not have a single disciple of my own” (SZ Supplement: 10; Saitō 2010: 242; Yuien 1996: 6).1 Is he simply being modest? Does Shinran defy discipleship? Does he rule out the possibility of the reception of his thought? The answer to these questions is not clear; nevertheless, what we do know is that the reader of his writings is supposed to arrive at the Buddha’s original teaching. Shinran’s voluminous works, however, exhibit more than an introduction to, or simple interpretation of, the Buddha’s preaching. We may say that Shinran has given us sermons and treatises that manifest an authentic and unique appropriation of the Buddhist tradition, and, therefore, his works offer the possibility of a thoughtful reception for his interpreters and disciples.

1  R  eception and Its History: Remains and Reminders of the Past The philosopher KUKI Shūzō 九鬼周造 (1888–1941) wrote remarkable verses about Shinran seven centuries after his death: “I will have no disciple, said Shinran; as for me [Kuki], I long to have his soul” (KSZ Supplement, 146; Saitō 2010: 242). Kuki’s poetic reflections express Shinran’s quest for an authentic life, and echo back the existentialist aspect of his philosophy. More than this, his words commit him to Shinran as his teacher. Do these words not enact the most authentic discipleship possible? In fact, SAITŌ Takako takes Kuki’s verses as empirical evidence of his 1  Quoted from Shinran’s Tannishō. English translation is Yuien’s. This exposition of Shinran and Kuki is indebted to Saitō’s article.

R. Müller (*) University of Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Germany © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_6

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receiving the intellectual legacy of Shinran. Thus, at the end of her article, the proof of historical facticity of reception retroactively justifies Saitō’s careful comparison of Kuki’s thought with Shinran’s, which began based on presuming similarities in content. In other words, the factual findings prove the validity of comparing Shinran and Kuki, although a truthful reading is impossible to verify historically.2 Be that as it may, Kuki’s poetic expression demonstrates the history of the reception of a pre-­ modern Buddhist by a modern philosopher in Japan, regardless of whether this discipleship was ultimately judged to be authentic and perfected, or an untimely failure.

1.1  Nishida Kitarō: A Recipient of Buddhism? While there are cases such as Kuki’s resonance with Shinran that require empirical proof (which Saitō has ultimately delivered), there are other cases of reception which seem so clear that they supersede the requirement for textual evidence: NISHIDA Kitarō’s 西田幾多郎 (1870–1945) reception of Zen Buddhism is a case in point. In fact, the lack of historical material which links Zen and philosophy in Nishida’s thinking is rarely at stake. Explanations of Nishida’s intellectual appreciation of the Buddhist tradition are equally rare. The relation seems so evident that citing from one of Nishida’s few letters in which he explicitly talks about Zen and philosophy seems to prove sufficiently their relation in his thinking rather than evincing a scarcity of textual evidence.3 While authors of the European tradition are quoted extensively in most of Nishida’s works published during his lifetime,4 authors of Indian, Chinese, or Japanese literature become more visible only in his later works, and even then in a comparably smaller number of quotes, limited mostly to places where Nishida writes about Eastern culture and its distinction from the West. It is, in fact, difficult to identify an author or a group of authors of the Zen Buddhist tradition as major or even main sources of Nishida’s philosophy. Neither the Chinese Zen Master LINJI 2  To elaborate on Shinran’s philosophical reception: though often considered a religious and pious practitioner of Buddhism only, Shinran is, perhaps, the most widely read pre-modern Buddhist in Japanese philosophy since 1868. TANABE Hajime 田辺元 (1885–1962) was famous for reading Shinran and was inspired to do so by his student TAKEUCHI Yoshinori 武内義範 (1913–2012). In 1935, preceding the works of Tanabe and Takeuchi, two pertinent publications by MATSUBARA Kan and TERADA Yakichi, with the same title are found: The Philosophy of Shinran. Another writing that should be mentioned is MIKI Kiyoshi’s 三木清 (1897–1945) work on Shinran and Pascal (Miki 1999). The sheer amount of material awaits a comprehensive account. Two representative works show the range of Shinran’s intellectual readers: Bloom (2004) presents excerpts of writings by KIYOZAWA Manshi 清沢満之, SUZUKI Daisetsu 鈴木大拙, TAKEUCHI Yoshinori, and others (see Matsuoka 2009). 3  See his letter to Nishitani (NKZ 19: 224–225). 4  References to Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) are the most numerous with approximately 800 footnotes, as indexed in NKZ 24. More than half of the references fall into the philosophical works published during Nishida’s lifetime, vols. 1–10.

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Yixuan 臨濟義玄 (J. Rinzai; died 866 C.E.) nor the great Japanese Master HAKUIN Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1686–1768) are highly visible in any of Nishida’s published works, despite being the founding spirits of modern Japanese Rinzai temples, and, thereby, Nishida’s most intimate guides in his Zen practice. Hakuin is explicitly quoted only once in 1914, and never thereafter. In none of his writings does Nishida evolve a coherent interpretation of any major work of the Zen Buddhist or any other tradition in order to establish proof of the viability or applicability of his philosophical system. Nevertheless, while there are authors who try to determine Nishida’s use of tradition,5 these ideas are put forth for the most part to show that Nishida’s philosophy is furnished by Zen Buddhism as mediated through his own practice, on the one hand, and as mediated by Japanese culture being infused with Zen Buddhism, on the other.6 Without delving too deeply into these speculations, and without judging if we are to take Nishida as a recipient of Eastern, Buddhist, or Zen Buddhist thought, his works expose a diversity of evidence of his being familiar with pre-modern Buddhists other than those of Zen origin. These works range in topics from calligraphy7 to the works of researchers among his contemporaries with whom he was in contact. Together, these offer a broad view of the sources that might have been informing his works. Hence, even in the case of someone such as Nishida, it is worth exploring the textual evidence more deeply to determine what aspects of the Japanese Buddhist tradition and beyond may have influenced him as a philosopher.

1.2  Buddhist Thinkers Not Discussed in Nishida’s Writings To explore the example of Nishida’s influences further, let us explore other figures of the Buddhist literature of pre-modern Japan. Three names provide a good starting point: SHŌTOKU Taishi 聖徳太子 (574–622), Kūkai 空海 (774–835), and JIUN Onkō 慈雲飲光 (1718–1804). To begin with the last of the three, Jiun comes up in a roundtable discussion, where TANIKAWA Tetsuzō 谷川徹三 (1895–1989) draws Nishida’s attention to his calligraphy. Nishida acknowledges the greatness of Jiun’s style but does not state anything else. Later, we find Jiun’s name in a letter Nishida writes to KISHIMOTO Tokiya, stating that Nishida approves of Kishimoto’s studies

5  See Kopf (2005) and Maraldo (2010). However, the problem of a history of reception or of effect is not explicitly treated therein. 6  The Shin Buddhist influence coming from his family as well as from Japanese culture in general is left unmentioned here, since it does not necessarily contradict the reasoning about his Zen Buddhist outlook mentioned before. 7  Calligraphy is a form of thoughtful expression, which should be considered more carefully as a source of Buddhist thought that Nishida was exposed to, and that was, therefore, possibly intensively absorbed by Nishida.

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on Jiun and that he agrees with their results.8 In the case of the Shingon Buddhist Kūkai, there are more instances in which Nishida refers to him or his writings. Most telling are his reflections on cultural morphology and Japanese sources of philosophy, in which he acknowledges the intellectual potential of Kūkai’s writings, for their particular content that diverges from and contributes to philosophy in the West.9 Again, he praises Kūkai’s calligraphy as he does that of Jiun and Hakuin. Regarding Shōtoku, the last of the three pre-modern Buddhists mentioned above, the references are most scarce, based on the recent index of his collected works. In 1942 he sent a letter to DOI Torakazu in which he addresses Doi’s article on Aristotle and Shōtoku. Nishida states that he would agree with Doi’s reading of Aristotle, while he could not comment on Shōtoku because of his lack of proficiency.10 As little text as there is to be found on prominent figures such as Shōtoku, or as strong as Nishida’s interest in calligraphy is, there remains a lot of significant material to be unearthed that will contribute to or change our view of Nishida’s reception of Japanese Buddhism and Buddhist literature. In particular, to give an accurate account of how he received Zen Buddhism, it is important to undergird all reasonable assumptions with all of the philological material available.

1.3  The History and Reception of Philosophy in Japan Developing an account that shows how individual thinkers or their works have been received since the Meiji-period gives insight into pre-modern history beyond mere speculation about intellectual sources and offers more reliable grounds for further exploring how pre-modern ideas have shaped the works of contemporary philosophers. While this article is about pre-modern Buddhists, it is not a study about their respective works as such. Rather, it shows how their works were received by modern thinkers. This will be not an account of the “history of effect” (G. Wirkungsgeschichte) 8  The letter dates 02.12.1944 (NKZ 23: 292). Kishimoto’s writings on Jiun that Nishida refers to could not be located. 9  The comment on Kūkai mentioned here is found in a newspaper interview in which he was asked if there was any philosopher in ancient Japan. Nishida’s answer remains vague but positive: “I don’t know Kōbō Daishi [i.e. Kūkai] so well, but people like him are a kind of philosopher, right?” (NKZ 24: 83–84). He adds: “Since nowadays philosophy is scientific philosophy of the West, there was no philosophy in that sense, but philosophy is not just a matter of form, but of content based on which the works of Confucius and Mencius contain philosophical import” (ibid.). In a text on cultural morphology, Nishida writes that “religions such as the philosophical [schools] of Kegon and Tendai […] did not become religions of our country. As far as the school of Shingon that was Japanized by Kōbō Daishi [i.e. Kūkai] is concerned, it seems to me that its realistic sense converges with our mentality” (NKZ 6: 352). Nishida attributes the most distinguished impact on Japanese culture to the Zen school. Finally, there is his critique on TANAKA Ōdō  田中王堂 (1868–1932). Nishida maintains that philosophy in Japan is lively and not without a pre-modern tradition to draw on. Among the Buddhists he mentions we find Shinran, Nichiren, Dengyō and Kūkai (Kōbō Daishi) (See NKZ 11: 116). 10  Letter no. 3645, dated 22.08.1942 (NKZ 23:39).

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of pre-modern thought but a “history of reception” (G. Rezeptionsgeschichte). This approach can then be developed into a proper comparison with the original works and can focus on displaying the multiplicity of readings of such original works.11 The problem of reception of the pre-modern tradition is distinctive to philosophy in Japan insofar as from the time academic philosophy was introduced from the West, the origin of philosophy was located outside Japan, namely, in Greece. From that perspective, “Japanese” philosophy could only mean “Western” philosophy in Japan. Speaking of other sources of philosophy outside of Europe seems, to most Japanese academics, as only reasonable, if viable at all, if one is referring to the literature of China and India. However, since the Meiji period there have been voices suggesting the existence of original sources that lay the ground for an autochthonous history of Japanese philosophy. In a sense, any account of the reception of pre-modern thought—in the present case limited to the Buddhist tradition—contributes to the construction of a history of Japanese philosophy and helps uncover continuities within the autochthonous literature of pre-Meiji Japan.12

2  Contemporary Accounts of Japanese Buddhist Philosophy While there are quite a few historical accounts of Japanese philosophy that include the pre-modern era, only some of them thematize pre-Meiji thought as philosophy. That is exactly what Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook (Heisig et  al. 2011) attempts to do. Offering more than a simple historical outline of the original texts, the Sourcebook is, moreover, structured in a way that exhibits the reception of pre-­ modern sources, for example, by grouping together authors of Pure Land and Zen Buddhism across the divide of the pre-modern and modern periods marked by 1868. Instances of explicit reference to pre-Meiji times include authors such as KARAKI Junzō 唐木順三 (1904–1980) and TANABE Hajime 田辺元 (1885–1962), both of whom explore the thought of the Zen Buddhist Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253). However, while the Sourcebook brings up the matter of the existence of philosophy in pre-­ modern Japan, there is no particular case from within the ostensibly autochthonous materials that suggests a model for how this appropriation was carried out. In other words, the matter of reception as such is not brought into focus. In fact, there is hardly any account that straightforwardly thematizes the matter of reception itself. One must look into the more recent accounts of Buddhist philosophy in Japan focusing on strands of reception to gain this perspective. Among them Gregor Paul’s account in the Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy is worth mentioning for being concise and comprehensive as well as provocative (Paul 2001).  The attempt to compare the respective readings with each other and eventually with the original texts promises valuable insights of a systematic nature, if sufficient scrutiny is carried out. 12  Inasmuch as philosophy is attributed to individual thinkers, not anonymous collectives, only the former are addressed here. It becomes an almost insurmountable task to identify intellectual currents when speaking of Tendai or Kegon Buddhism, or other schools in general. 11

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Criticizing the Kyōto School’s presumed self-understanding as an original as well as an authentic appropriation of Buddhist tradition,13 Paul questions their all-­ encompassing approach to Buddhism. Hence, he tries to force a wedge into what is called Buddhism ultimately to parse it into what can be considered philosophy and what remains to be taken as religious thought. On this basis, Paul differentiates the authors mentioned in his account as perceiving Buddhism either as an analytically determined corpus of intrinsically philosophical texts or as a comprehensive phenomenon, thereby conflating religion and philosophy. Apart from his analytic rigor, Paul reminds the reader of forgotten themes within the reception and tradition of Buddhism, such as the strand of hetuvidya-tradition in early Japanese Buddhism, upon which Paul grounds his critique of the Kyoto school: Most hetuvidya scholars are critical about the views, which representatives of the Kyoto school, and scholars related to this school, such as Suzuki Daisetz […], have on Buddhism. They hold that these views cannot be justified philologically, and are often irrational. Also, they argue that—contrary to what many followers of the Kyoto school believe—Zen is no exemplary Buddhism but only one branch among many others. (Paul 2001: 92)

Paul’s classification of the modern reception of Buddhism, which is more historical than philosophical, includes a wide variety of authors. At first he introduces changes of Buddhism through Meiji Restoration, and mentions NANJO Bun’yu 南 条文雄 (1849–1927), TAKAKUSU Junjiro 高楠順次郎 (1866–1945), UI Hakuju 宇井白寿 (1882–1963), and thinkers such as INOUE Enryō 井上圓了 (1858–1919) and ANESAKI Masaharu 姉崎正治 (1873–1949), “[who] became interested in comparative philosophy and religious history, and tried to reconstruct Buddhist doctrines from respective points of view” (Paul 2001: 90). While Paul sees, for example, Takakusu’s works as more philological and historical, he contrasts them with Inoue’s works by adding: “Because of his [Inoue’s] willful speculations he was strongly criticized by ONISHI Hajime” (Paul 2001: 91). Paul remarks on the beginning of the Meiji period: “The differences in interests and methods characteristic to the approaches [to a reception of Buddhism] exemplified by Ui, [Inoue] Enryo and Anesaki, may be called exemplary for the whole of Buddhist philosophy since Meiji times” (Paul 2001: 91). All in all, Paul summarizes the modern period and mentions more thinkers and scholars rarely spoken of in this context: “Apart from the given examples of what could still be called (1) scholastic Buddhism—best exemplified by hetuvidya; (2)  See Paul’s summary in five points: “(1) Western logocentrism, scientific orientation, and technology are no means to grasp the absolute or reality as such. Understanding this reality, however, is essential for being able to lead a life […]. Further, an understanding of the absolute is possible, for example, by means of ‘direct experience’ and mystical union. (2) Western logocentrism, its scientific orientation, and technology are dangerous because they may lead to man’s self-destruction. (3) These orientations justify an––unjustified—anthropomorphism because they are employed to enslave nature. Humans ought to live in harmony with nature. (4) The notion of nothingness (in Japanese: mu) and/or emptiness (in Japanese kū) is more fundamental, and more adequate to reality as such, than the notion of being. (5) A kind of dialectical logic is a better means to solve important problems than formal logic. Formal contradictions are no real obstacle for deep thought” (Paul 2001: 92).

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highly speculative comparative ontology informed by Zen and notions of nothingness and emptiness—best exemplified by the Kyōto school—and (3) comparative studies relevant to a philosophy of religion, some other examples of Japanese Buddhist philosophy may be mentioned” (Paul 2001: 91) such as NAGAO Gadjin, DOI Torakazu 土井虎賀寿, TACHIKAWA Musashi, and SUEKI Fumihiko 末木文 美士. Contrary to Paul’s account, John Maraldo’s entry “Japanese philosophy” in the Routledge Encyclopedia is an example of how an historical account invites philosophizing beyond mere critique on philological grounds (Maraldo 2010). He draws on themes within the history of the Japanese Buddhist tradition, which become crucial and vital for discussion for modern thinkers until the present. One of these themes that carries through from pre-modern texts to their modern readers in Buddhist philosophy is language and linguistic articulation. An imbalance might be felt in Maraldo’s entry with regard to the weight given to certain modern authors compared to both their contemporaries and their pre-modern forebears. While he brings up a number of schools and names of pre-Meiji times, such as the so-called six schools of Nara, then Saichō, Kūkai and Dōgen, the Kegonand Tendai-Buddhism, as well as Shinran, Honen, Ippen, and Nichiren, only Nishida and D.T. Suzuki refer to philosophical adepts of the Buddhist tradition in post-Meiji times. This contrasts starkly with Paul’s broad historical outline. However, whereas Paul calls attention to more logical and philological scrutiny, which justifies the work of authors such as Ui or Takakusu, Maraldo comes to a more philosophical conclusion by pointing to a convergence of Buddhist thought in modern and pre-­ modern Japan. As it pertains to an open-ended pursuit both on an epistemological and ontological level, the reader can take up the Buddhist tradition through the eyes of Nishida, its modern recipient: According to many Buddhist thought systems, there is no whole, universal or absolute, without its manifestation in concrete, distinct and relative particulars. In the twentieth century, Nishida reformulated this principle paradoxically: the more relative a truth is—that is, the more deeply embedded or embodied in particulars— the more absolute it is. The absolute must encompass the relative, not stand in opposition to it. In general, Japanese Buddhist philosophy developed through a kind of synecdochic argumentation that appealed not to a priori reasons or empirical evidence nor simply to scriptural sources of authority but to this mutual accommodation of relative and absolute.

2.1  The History of Effects and the Hermeneutics of Reception What does it mean to respond to a tradition, to take up ideas, to appropriate the work of a predecessor, to be a disciple or interpreter? These questions are the concern of the following pages insofar as an account of the history of reception is given and prioritized over against the history of effect. The latter is the central concept of

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Hans-Georg Gadamer’s (1900–2002) work, Truth and Method (2004), the former being an adaptation and complementary concept brought forth in response to Gadamer by Hans-Robert Jauß (1970). Gadamer inserts the idea of the history of effect into the terminology of philosophical hermeneutics in order to reconstruct the linguistic self-relation of subjectivity within the horizon of tradition: the “consciousness of historical effect” opens up the horizon of understanding, and Gadamer determines the horizon-opening function of the historical as being contingent on the pre-understanding of the living presence of the past. Hence, in distinction to the term “effect,” “reception” marks the position of the interpreting subject in its creative appropriation of the object of the past. While Gadamer formally acknowledges the productivity of the subject, he effectively deprives it in the face of the overwhelming of tradition. In a critique of Gadamer, Jauß (as well as Wolfgang Iser) grounds the position of the receiving subject in its finite, but irreducible and original engagement. Prioritizing the productivity of the subject, the history of appropriating the past cannot be divided into success and failure since, if applied coherently, categories such as “misinterpretation” presuppose a given sense and meaning in the work that precedes its being received. Rather than construing the historical appropriation of a particular work as a succession of failed interpretations being overcome by yet other re-readings, the work is originally nothing but its reception. In this context, a history of reception of pre-modern Buddhist authors and their works cannot in the vast multiplicity of their stories be told simply as deformations of original texts and intentions, which would require being measured against buddhological and philological “correct” research of some original meaning. A history of the reception of pre-modern Buddhist authors must reconstruct in a hermeneutically sufficient way the imaginative constructions of the respective authors, regardless of whether they originate from within or beyond scientific discourse. The focus of reception lies in the process of the subjective appropriation instead of in the “pre-­ given unity” of the text. Consequently, the history of effect presumes a history of reception in that it means more than a direction of inquiry; it encompasses a relation to history and cannot be without a historiography. However, the point of caution is that, against any positivistic or historicist approach to the historiography, the presuppositions and the context of the historiography must be addressed and made transparent.

2.2  History of Reception and Buddhist Hermeneutics The history of the philosophical reception of Buddhist thought can also be thought through from within the Buddhist understanding of history. In the face of a persistent and continuous commentary on the Buddhist sūtras, which themselves grow out of the “original words” of the Buddha, there is a trend of interpreting this history as a history of degradation. However, there is a way of understanding particular means

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of teaching, that is, hōben 方便, which, to a certain degree, temporarily neutralizes the direction of time, regarding the original understanding of texts or teachings. There is the possibility of reversing this direction of time, where the means to a text’s transmission is actually perfected in later times. Different factions are split based on their reasoning on this possibility. We can, however, go further into different approaches to commentary. Are we to interpret word-for-word and try to do justice to tradition in the narrowest sense, or can the interpreting be elevated to a higher level? In Jacqueline Stone’s account of Tendai’s tradition of commentary, she proposes using traditional exegesis as a counterfoil to eisegesis, which can be taken as an equivalent to reception as opposed to effect. In Stone’s coining, it is the “mind contemplation” (J. kanjin kuden 観心口 伝) commentary style, which she compares to the former, less productive style of commentary. Stone explains: The kanjin-style interpretative mode found in many medieval kuden texts aims at retrieving hidden meanings held to embody the most profound insights of religious liberation. Such hidden meanings, it was thought, could be accessed only by those with enlightened insight and transmitted only to the properly initiated; they were not part of common doctrinal understanding. This mode of interpretation has been characterized by modern scholars as undermining orthodox doctrinal understanding by encouraging the proliferation of arbitrary, private readings. (Stone 2003: 156)14

Apparently, the hermeneutic dimension of historiography is not directly implied by the distinction of the kanjin-style of interpretation from the common mode of textual interpretation. We can take this distinction, however, as the ground on which the strong position of the receiving interpreter gives greater importance to actuality over historicity.

2.3  B  uddhist Thought in Meiji Japan and “Japanese Philosophy” In considering Tendai-Buddhism commentary, one can see how INOUE Enryō understands the taxonomy of the teachings (J. kyōsō hanjaku 教相判釈) in a modern perspective. He refers to this taxonomy, and uses the Japanese term in his own philosophy. It is Gerard Clinton Godart who reminds us of Inoue’s ingenuity with regard to the textual transmission of Buddhism and his traditional techniques of commentary. In his work Buddhist Philosophy (J. Bukkyō tetsugaku 仏教哲学) Inoue “contrasts traditional Buddhist scholarship, which he calls ‘annotation-study,’  And further: “What all kanjin-style readings have in common is that, from a modern perspective, they are not exegesis, the ‘reading out’ from a text to determine its meaning, though the medieval thinkers who produced them may often have understood what they were doing as uncovering the text’s true purport. Rather, they are a deliberate eisegesis or ‘reading in’ that reconfigures the text in support of a prior insight or philosophical position—in this case, that of original enlightenment” (Stone 2003: 158). See Tuck (1990) who suggests the same division into exegese and eisegese.

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and study in terms of development” (Godart 2004: 124). Formally speaking, Inoue’s approach is based on a reversal of historical perspective, but he does not let go of the idea of progression apart from questions of content and the actual interpretation of Buddhism. Thus Inoue writes: According to annotation-study, all possible truths of Buddhism were already fully explained by Śākyamuni. If one thinks in terms of development, then Śākyamuni, as the first, laid the seed of Buddhism. In other words, according to the former the flower had already opened, while according to the latter the seed planted by the Buddha gradually develops and opens later. (Godart 2004: 124; IES 7: 114)

Even if his own taxonomy of Buddhist schools is inspired by the most progressive commentary style of the Tendai-school, his classification can be seen as originary (see IES 4: 224), insofar as he develops it in line with philosophical theories and concepts. Godart summarizes: What is new about his classification is that he explains it in terms of modern philosophy. In sum, Inoue’s history of Buddhism is a hybrid of classical Buddhist scholars’ kyōsō hanjaku, Hegelian dialectics and evolutionary theory. (Godart 2004: 130)15

We can attribute the beginning of the philosophical reception of Japanese Buddhism in the mid Meiji-period to INOUE Enryō. Only few intellectuals cared for the Buddhist tradition at all. Among them is HARA Tanzan 原坦山 (1819–1892) who taught Indian and Chinese philosophy at Tōkyō Imperial University. INOUE Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎 (1855–1944) brought Neo-Confucianism into view, while others such as NAKAE Chōmin 中江 兆民 (1847–1901) were skeptical of whether using the term “philosophy” was appropriate in the face of the Japanese tradition. That is to say that the history of Japanese philosophy, and in fact, the history of the reception of Buddhist thought, still needs to be written. To what extent this might amount to overcoming Western philosophy remains to be seen.

3  Outline of the Present Account Since there is not a single case in which a pre-modern author has ever been studied in relation to his philosophical reception in modern Japan, the following account remains a proposal. Three Buddhists taken up as sources of philosophy in post-­ Meiji Japan (Shōtoku, Kūkai, and Jiun) have been mentioned. The Zen-Buddhist Dōgen remains to be considered. Shōtoku remains prominent to the present day for introducing Mahāyāna Buddhism to Japan. However, after research peaked in the 1930s, his Buddhist legacy has become neglected, in great part due to difficulties in proving Shōtoku’s authorship of Sangyō gisho, the three earliest sūtra commentaries thought to be written in Japan.16 In the case of Kūkai, his philosophical import has been ­mentioned  For example, Inoue uses the Buddhist notion of “hōben” 方便 to develop his philosophy.   Dennis (2011) provides an excellent attempt to work out different levels and forms of reception in a case study on Shōtoku and a number of his recipients. While his philosophical reception will

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from the late Meiji period onwards, but further philosophical studies remain unexplored until the postwar period, when his thoughts on language, the body, and cultivation were newly discovered. The third author, Jiun, is hardly known beyond the confines of denominational studies, and what is presumed to be his most interesting work for linguistics and philosophy remains to be edited. While there are pre-Meiji interrelations worth studying, such as those between Jiun and Kūkai regarding Shingon, Sanskrit studies, and calligraphy, these cannot be developed in detail in the present study.17 The Zen master Dōgen is, without a doubt, philosophically speaking, the best received Buddhist author of Japan, even beyond the names discussed here.18 While the writings on Shōtoku, Kūkai, and Jiun offer rough sketches, the profile of Dōgen becomes more detailed up to the early Shōwa-period. In either case, the respective ideas will be treated only in relation to their reception. The complexities of the time between the postwar period and the present day will be touched upon briefly at the end.

4  T  he Variety of Sources: Three Pre-modern Buddhists in Modern Japanese Philosophy Despite their writings constituting a vast body of material to draw on, the reception of Shōtoku, Kūkai, and Jiun was limited. Far from being a complete account of their reception, three criteria constrain how we choose from among their readers; those being whether they are early, prominent, and/or, somewhat idiosyncratically, promising commentators.

4.1  Shōtoku Taishi: The First Step Towards Japanese Buddhist Philosophy? When considering Prince Shōtoku (Shōtoku Taishi 聖徳太子) (572–622), the semi-­ legendary regent and politician of the Asuka period, we can begin with one of his most important readers, INOUE Enryō. Being one of the first philosophers in modern Japan, he is among the earliest to introduce Shōtoku (in 1913) as the initial Japanese philosopher of pre-modern times. Even though Inoue does not explain the be revisited below, Dennis addresses Shōtoku’s wide reception by Shinran and other Kamakura Buddhists and beyond, making him a legendary figure within pre-modern Japan. 17  Jiun is also linked to Dōgen (see Koganemaru 2009). 18  Dōgen is another example of someone whose factual influence on Nishida demands a lot of scrutiny, since there are more references to the Sōtō-Zen Buddhist than to Rinzai and other Zen masters of the Rinzai tradition. Rinzai-Zen masters are also outnumbered by the amount of explicit references to Shinran who is the only pre-modern Buddhist to whom Nishida even devoted a single piece: Gutoku Shinran 愚禿親鸞. While numbers of references need evaluation and interpretation, unexpected amounts of quotes should clearly point out the importance of further study.

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particular philosophical import of the new intellectual stance introduced to Japan in the Sangyō gisho 三経義疏—the three earliest sūtra commentaries assumed to have been written by a Japanese—he attributes the commentaries and hence the intellectual stance contained in them to Shōtoku (Inoue 1913: 2–3). In other words, the beginning of philosophy in Japan is attributed to an individual, as in the case of Thales for Western philosophy, but it is a grounding of philosophy not distinct from religion, and in the midst of the reception of a foreign tradition. While Shōtoku’s importance for the institutionalization of Buddhism and the compilation of the Seventeen-Article Constitution is uncontested, his authorship of Sangyō gisho is disputed. It is, nevertheless, interesting that Buddhist scholars emphasize the commentaries’ critical remarks about and decisive distinctions in content from the tradition received, because these evince at least a philosophical stance particular to the commentator. Hence, though the Buddhist scholars look for proof of Shōtoku’s authorship, they show that the ‘Japanization’ of Buddhism through Shōtoku is based on a shift of intellectual framework. Among the first to note this shift in ontological terms is the Buddhist scholar KAMEYA Seikei 亀谷聖馨 (1856–1930) in Lectures on the Mind (Seishin kōwa 精 神講話) of 1911 in which he treats Shōtoku’s view of the dharma-body (Shōtoku taishi no hosshōkan) as distinctive for the Japanization of Buddhism (Kameya 1911: 187–193): “Philosophically speaking, the dharma-body is the reality of the universe [uchū no jitsuzai], the reward and response body [hōshin and ōjin, the other two bodies of Buddha] are the ten thousand beings” (Kameya 1911: 189). According to Kameya, the step forward in tradition that Shōtoku takes is the expression of the non-duality of the phenomenal world and the underlying reality, as Kameya reads it from Shōtoku’s interpretation of the Śrīmālā-sūtra, The 10,000 beings as “the body of marvelous form [myōshiki shin; the rūpa-kāya of the Buddha] is the absolute dharma-body, and therefore, there is nothing relative in the world.” In other words, Shōtoku “praises the Absolute, and in all these explanations that true body, i.e. the dharma body is eternal and unchanging, it is the so-called reality of the universe” (Kameya 1911: 191). The philosophical reading of Shōtoku culminates early in the 1930s. Even if HANAYAMA Shinshō 花山信勝 (1898–1995), who studied the three commentaries of Shōtoku in utmost detail, does not present a comprehensive philosophical theory of Shōtoku’s thinking, he does, in fact, gather further evidence for Shōtoku’s particular reading of the Buddhist tradition (see Mizuno 1991, 1992; Kurokami 1935; Hanayama 1933, 1936, 1963).19 Hanayama’s examination of the commentary on the Lotus Sūtra, the Hokke gisho, possibly written between 606 and 622, gathers a great deal of empirical evidence in support of Shōtoku’s authorship.20 From philological and linguistic research of the Lotus Sūtra commentary, he concludes that the author, presumably Shōtoku, was critical and self-critical rather than apologetically minded, since he explicitly questioned the existing Chinese commentaries, refuted  The most extensive work in a Western language is Bohner (1940). There has not been a lot of philosophical research in any explicit sense since then. 20  This authorship has been contested (see Kanaji 1985; Kamstra (1967: 371–417). 19

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parts of them as unconvincing or simply as incomprehensible while admitting that this incomprehensibility could be, in part, due to the limits of his own intellectual capacities. Hanayama points out that Shōtoku does add philosophical ideas, in particular regarding the idea of “emptiness” (J. kū 空),21 and that he tries to integrate Daoist and Confucian thought into Buddhist thought, as is more evident in the case of the Constitution. Again, based on Shōtoku’s conceptualization of the dharma-body, he draws the conclusion of a difference in comparison to Fayün (467–529), the author of the previously existing Chinese commentary (see Hanayama 1933: 474–475). The dharma-body as the “one fruit” that represents “the ultimate ideal” (Hanayama 1933: 473) to strive for is unlike Fayün’s idea in that Fayün takes Śākyamuni as being able to reappear in the world as the savior of all beings through magical and mystical powers. While this deviates, as Hanayama points out, from the original Lotus Sūtra’s idea of the dharma body (Hanayama 1933: 474–475), Shōtoku’s conception is not only more faithful to the Lotus Sūtra but also free of any kind of superstition. In summary, Hanayama’s Shōtoku expounds his own critical reading of the Lotus Sūtra and discusses its basic intellectual concepts, which in themselves are of philosophical quality. It is an individual who expounds these ideas, which overcome superstition by rational thought.22

4.2  Kūkai: Buddhist Philosophy of Language and Body While in the case of Shōtoku, the philosophical relevance, the textual corpus, and the ideological implications are arguable, Kūkai has been an acknowledged Japanese philosopher since the end of the Meiji period. However, praise of him contrasts  In his concluding remarks to Hokke gisho no kenkyū, Hanayama presents “Taishi’s Buddhism as it appears in the Hokke gisho” (457–496) compiling his ideas under the headings of “The Formless [musō] and True Form of Reality [jissō],” “The Real World [genjitsu no sekai]” and “The Perfected Buddha-Fruit [risō no bukka].” First of all, as Hanayama maintains, the way Shōtoku holds the idea of emptiness (kū) of the Sanron school, the ineffability of the ultimate truth and, at the same time, his affirmation of the phenomenal world, allows us to see him as a precursor of Tendai Buddhism (in its doctrine of shohō jissō) (469). In the same affirmative stance of reality, Shōtoku aims at the eternal insistence of the dharma-body. According to Hanayama, “the dharma body is the Buddha of absolute truth and the personification of values [kachi no jinkakuka]” (474). In this sense Shōtoku merges the temporal and the eternal body of Buddha, based on the idea of the three bodies (474). 22  Let me note in passing, that this debate is not represented in any detail in Nishida’s, Tanabe’s, or even in Watsuji’s works. While Watsuji tried to determine the originality of the Japanese appropriation of Buddhism in Suiko period in terms of its aesthetic or cultural historical perspective, he leaves no more than short remarks of the importance of the early Sūtra commentaries attributed to Shōtoku (WTZ  4: 33). Even in the case of Tanabe, who brought up Shinran or Dōgen as important figures for his thought, the most common judgment prevails in the way he points out: “Shōtoku Taishi introduced the system of Mahāyāna Buddhism to the Japanese spirit” (THZ 8:17). Tanabe notes this in response to MINODA Muneki. On Tanabe and Minoda fighting about the history of Japanese philosophy and thought, see IENAGA Saburō (ISS 7: 67). 21

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starkly with the very limited number of contributions to the factual philosophical reception of his work, which only starts in the latter half of the Shōwa period.23 It might be worth noting in passing that Kūkai was already referred to as a philosopher by Léon de Rosny (1837–1914) as early as 1876 (de Rosny 1876). In 1897 INOUE Tetsujirō mentions Kūkai in a footnote as an important painter, calligrapher, and writer who represents the philosophical potential of Japanese Buddhism. In the Meiji period few references to Kūkai are found in Japanese, but at least he is included in comprehensive accounts of Buddhist and Shingon philosophy by ONO Tōta, composed in 1903 and 1905 (and in 1904, a biography of Kūkai). In fact Ono treats Japanese Shingon Buddhism as synonymous with the thought of its founder Kūkai. With regard to the orthodoxy of Nara Buddhism, Kūkai helped, with his systematization of esoteric doctrines, to bridge the gap between textual study and ritual practice. He achieved this by explaining the relation of the incantation of mantras and dhâranīs and other esoteric practices to the doctrines expressed in the scriptural texts. This becomes a focal point of his philosophical readings as well as the significance of bodily experience and practice pronounced in his thought. In fact, it is the body that mediates theory and practice, doctrine and ritual, thought and experience. One might say that for Kūkai the Buddhist truth is not to simply be intellectually ruminated on but to be experienced through body and practice. Ono begins with a clear delineation of Japanese Buddhism from the Chinese tradition: while China is admittedly the origin of Shingon, Ono insists that “its perfection was entirely the achievement of our Kūkai” (Ono 1903: 272). Again, in a “good Buddhist” perspective, Shingon takes the “more middle way” as opposed to Tendai or Kegon. For Tendai, in Ono’s account, would “lean over to the principle” in which all is subsumed, as is expressed in slogans such as “a chiliocosm in a single thought [J. ichinen sanzen 一念三千]” (Ono 1903: 273). In contrast, Kegon Buddhism would trail away into “complete interpenetration” [J. enyū 円融] because of its idea of the “nonobstruction among individual phenomena” [J. jiji muge 事々 無碍] (Ono 1903: 273). Ono adds: “These [ideas] Kūkai heavily attacks from the side of logic” (Ono 1903: 273). In comparison to the Buddhism of Kūkai’s time, Ono points out that Shingon was “remarkably positivistic” regarding its “logic” and “on the side of practice,” it is “in touch with the common people and socially minded” (Ono 1903: 273). As the most important content in his exposition of Kūkai’s cosmology and anthropology, Ono thinks of ideas such as the “meaning of this very body” [J. soku shin gi 即身義] and the “the meanings of Hum” [J. unjigi 吽字義] (Ono 1903: 274), which are based on the idea that “matter and mind, subject and object are ultimately the reality of oneness [J. ichinyo teki no jitsuzai 一如的の実在]” (Ono 1903: 275), through which he argues in favor of the phenomenal world versus its underlying 23  It is interesting to note that the Shingon sect never produced another great thinker and scholar such as its founder Kūkai, whose system of Shingon was never significantly altered. (See Yamasaki 1988: 33–41; Matsunaga and Matsunaga 1974, 1: 355–356). In contrast, see in the Tendai tradition after Saichō monk scholars (sōgakusha 僧学者) such as Ennin, Annen, Ryōgen and Genshin.

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principle. In fact, Ono sees the value of Shingon residing in its correct view of reality, which seems more important than its reality as a religion. Hence, Ono would favor it as a scientific approach to universality (Ono 1905: 325), since it conceptualizes reality from the bottom up through the plurality of all phenomena of the “six elements” (J. rokudai 六大) to the “self-same reality of matter and mind” (Ono 1905: 327). Ono concludes that “the philosophy of mikkyo has already arrived a thousand years ago at the same position where the most advanced philosophy of today is” (Ono 1905: 327). Unfortunately, until very much later, Ono’s conviction appeared as little more than a matter of rhetoric. Similarly, in 1908, in TANIMOTO Tomeri’s 谷本富 (1867–1946) reflections on Kūkai’s philosophy, one reads little content but finds enormous praise of Kūkai: “Philosophy is that which unites the ten thousand teachings […] and I think our great teacher [Kūkai] was a great philosopher who possessed comprehensive knowledge” (Tanimoto 1908: 59) to achieve such a unity. These comments are set against and in addition to the importance of ethics and morality, which, even if important, are only parts of Kūkai’s work (Tanimoto 1908: 60). In particular in the Treatise on the Ten States of Mind, the Jūjūshinron, the reader can find a complete “philosophical system [tetugaku soshiki]” (Tanimoto 1908: 62). In general, we can say that in the Taishō and early Shōwa-period Kūkai was only mentioned in anthologies of Japanese thought, religion as well as philosophy. However, none of the big names perceived him more broadly. Thus, one can agree with Krummel’s conclusion only partly: “Unfortunately Kūkai has been for the most part ignored by twentieth-century and contemporary philosophers, not only of the West but in Japan as well. This includes NISHIDA Kitarō (1870–1945), WATSUJI Tetsurō 和辻哲郎 (1889–1960), and related major Kyōto school philosophers, in spite of their interest in and influence by Zen and Kegon Buddhism” (Krummel 2011). While Krummel omits the early references to Kūkai, as pointed out above, he leaves out important figures such as IZUTSU Toshihiko and YUASA Yasuo. To start with IZUTSU Toshihiko’s 井筒俊彦 (1914–1993) article “The Logic of Semantic Articulation and Kūkai” (ITC 9: 74–105), we can find him treating Kūkai in the context of contemporary philosophy of language. As Ono did earlier, Izutsu proclaims that Kūkai is a precursor to modern and postmodern philosophy, indicating that he would go even beyond Husserl and Derrida: “But both the ‘logocentrism’ of the criticized Husserl and the ‘dismantling [J. kaitai]’ of the criticizing Derrida are, seen from the perspective of Shingon Mikkyō, in the end a discussion in way of the ‘superficial external interpretation [J. senryaku shaku],’ i.e, it is ­different from the ‘profound esoterical interpretation [J. shinpi shaku]’” (ITC 9: 103) of language and meaning. In a similar direction, Izutsu proceeds as a non-specialist of Shingon thought. While he sees a natural attitude within academia to re-read and misread the Western tradition for ‘inspiration’ (ITC 9: 75), the sources of Eastern philosophy are said to be excluded from this practice (ITC 9: 75). That is why he encourages “us Eastern people to drag our intellectual past onto the scene of the present intellectual con-

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text” for the simple reason “to search for its future possibility” (ITC 9: 76). While he cautions the reader against the difficulties and complexities of Shingon thought, he sees that Shingon not only has the basic character of linguistic philosophy but that “language [J. kotoba コトバ] is the central axis of the whole, is the ground and the source,” it is a “thought system” (ITC 9: 76). The means for Izutsu to see Shingon thought on language as such is the perspective of Humboldt and Saussure on the double articulation of meaning (ITC 9: 77). From this point he wants to approach the most fundamental Shingon idea of “being is language” [J. sonzai ha kotoba de aru].” As Izutsu points out, Kūkai’s Buddhist approach maintains that language is not an artificial means of human expression, but he takes “language as a process of the self linguification of the world of enlightenment” (ITC 9: 81). This, in fact, proposes an approach to language that decenters the human agent and, according to Izutsu, prefigures poststructualism. YUASA Yasuo 湯浅泰雄 (1925–2005) considers a different aspect of Kūkai’s thought accessible in his Complete Works. One important and compelling occasion for Yuasa’s approach is found in a work of Kukai’s translated into English as The Body, Self-cultivation, and Ki-energy (1993), in which his thinking addresses issues of language: where the body is thought of as being cultivated based on the exposition of the Jūjūshinron. Kūkai perfects the dharma-body theory in bringing every human being in direct contact in this world: “Going beyond this Chinese view, Kūkai says that Mahāvairocana, the absolute Dharmakāya Buddha, takes off the secret veil and expounds the dharma himself to the souls of each cultivator,” an idea which is a “revolution in Japanese Buddhism” and of “epoch-making significance in the history of all ideas in India, China, and Japan” (Yuasa 1993: 133). Since cultivation starts on the level of this very body, sexuality must be considered. However, since Kūkai does not provide a theoretical analysis of sexuality, “therefore, we must deal with the tantras as a systematic pragmatic approach” and this is set forth through depictions of the Buddha and mandalas which, at the same time, become visualizations of the cosmic word. Subsequently, he connects the dimensions of language, art, and body. So Yuasa says: “The central idea in Kūkai’s philosophy is ‘becoming a buddha in this very body’ (J. sokushin jōbutsu 即身成 仏)” (Yuasa 1993: 147). In other words, the Buddha does not only transcend ordinary sense experience, but he is realized in his over-brimming function; not only the metaphysical dimension, but the physical (153). As Yuasa alludes: “Kūkai regarded as most important the womb realm, that female principle depicted in the Mahāvairocana Sūtra. In the womb realm, Mahāvairocana is the ultimate source and nurturer of all the universe. Our existence is possible only by virtue of the power brimming over from that source” (Yuasa 1993: 153). In relation to philosophy, Yuasa makes the important point that practice reaches an essential role for the realization of the structure of the world: “Cultivation reverses the way we understand the world in ordinary experience. It is a practice revealing this point: To understand beings merely from the common standpoint of

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the self as a being-in-the-world is simply to understand them inauthentically. Thus, Kukai took the body to be more important than the mind” (153). In other words, the body in practice becomes the source for a more profound understanding of subjectivity that overcomes, breaks through and surpasses the dimension of the “subject” (J. shutai 主体).

4.3  Jiun Sonja: Philosophy Beyond Buddhist Calligraphy The last of the three examples to consider here is the monk JIUN Onkō (JIUN Sonja) who became a novice under NINKO Teiki (1671–1750), a master in the Shingon Vinaya sect. This sect stressed both Shingon (Japanese tantric Buddhism) and traditional monastic discipline. As is well known, under Teiki’s influence, and after a period of training in his late teens and early twenties that included Zen and further Confucian studies, Jiun went on to become one of the leading Buddhist scholars and reformers of the Tokugawa period (1603–1868). His affiliation with the Shingon sect and his immense knowledge of Sanskrit, as well as his extensive practice of calligraphy, put him on a par with Kūkai. Inextricably linked to the Mahāyāna Buddhist understanding of ultimate reality—an understanding most fully expressed in the concept of emptiness—Jiun’s universalistic vision of ethics are expounded in his “Sermons on the Ten Good Precepts.” As Watt points out “beyond encapsulating the heart of Buddhism, in Jiun’s mind the jūzen [十善, “ten good precepts”] stand as universal guide for humankind” (Watt 1999: 353). The “ten good precepts” represent the implications that the Buddhist understanding of ultimate reality has for human conduct. While the importance of his Zen practice has been pointed out, Jiun can be seen as an example of the rationalistic tendencies apparent in eighteenth-century Japanese thought. He had scholarly debates with Confucians, examined Shintō writings, and revisited the tradition of Shingon. Despite all of this scholarly work, he nevertheless chose a writing style accessible to common people. Jiun’s work is of philosophical importance on three levels: first, his views on Buddhism, his cosmology, anthropology, and speculation; secondly, on a meta-­ level, his reasoning and the methods in his systematic account of Buddhist teachings within the tradition and in relation to Confucianism and Shintō; and thirdly, his usage of and theorizing about Sanskrit, the linguistic differences between Chinese and Japanese, and his relationship to Kūkai. However, as pointed out, while Jiun was held in high esteem as a reformer in Tokugawa Buddhism, for his Sanskrit ­studies as well as for his calligraphy, he was hardly referenced by philosophers in modern Japan for his ethical, speculative, or linguistic writings. Nishida is no exception, since he only praised Juin’s calligraphy. Moreover, there are very few extant writings on Jiun. One exception to this rule can be found in 1889: NANJŌ Bun’yū 南條文雄 (1849–1927), the well-known Buddhist scholar trained in Sanskrit and Indian philology, gathered information about Jiun’s life and work in The Story of Buddhism’s Success (J. Butsumon risshihen 佛門立志編). He

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presents not a historical biography of Buddhist monks, scholars and other practitioners but rather a discussion of their individual characteristic engagements and thoughts from a super-sectarian viewpoint.24 The first attempt to bring Jiun’s more intellectual features to the fore finally comes in 1937. He is brought up explicitly as a pre-modern thinker in Discourse on the Thinkers of Modern Japan (J. Kinsei nihon shisōka ron 近世日本思想家論) addressing the period from 1603 onwards. This anthology, published in Risōsha, was edited by none other than INOUE Tetsujirō. The part on Jiun was written by the Shingon Scholar TANAKA Kaiō 田中海応 (born 1878) who points to the difficulties in summarizing the wide-reaching intellectual engagement of Jiun, which was based on the idea of “only tast[ing] the pure Ghee [of Enlightenment]” (Tanaka 1937: 79). He identifies three areas in Jiun’s “restorative thought:” the Expounding of the Vinayana of the Right Dharma (J. Shōbōritsu no teishō) and the Research in Sanskrit Studies, both on Buddhism; and the Unden Shintō (Tanaka 1937: 81), on Japanese thought. While the amount of philosophical insight depicted by Tanaka is still limited and goes hardly beyond what is now available in Western languages (such as Watt 1983), its location is important and interesting, since it was published by the “guardian angel” of Japanese philosophy of that time, INOUE Tetsujirō. More important to mention regarding his philosophical reception, though, is that Jiun was included in the Nihon tetsugaku shisō zensho of 1955, edited by HASEGAWA Nyozekan (and others). Within the volume of Buddhist religious thought, Jiun is again being praised for his suprasecterian viewpoint (see NTSZ 9: 344) and presented with a section from his Dharma Words on the Ten Good Precepts (NTSZ 9: 339–358). Strangely enough, it did not have any effect on the reception of his thought in the postwar period. Chronologically, only very few articles are relevant for an account of Jiun’s postwar reception. But two of the articles put particular emphasis on his calligraphic work, as does OKUMURA Keishin (1963). He maintains that Jiun is anything but a restaurateur of tradition, since he was too critical. His critical spirit was rather in accord and in support of a positivistic and rational spirit of Tokugawa times similar to that put forth by ITŌ Jinsai or MOTOORI Norinaga 本居宣長 (1730–1801) (Okukumura 1963: 2). Jiun goes beyond the medieval sense of art as Okamura maintains, since Jiun’s attitude is to see art as follows: “The highlights of an art work is every tree and every grass wherein the artist manifests; what is notable about an artist is in the brushwork of single points and streaks alone” (Okukumura 1963: 2). As an introduction to a set of his calligraphy, this is an important point he draws from two pertinent quotations of Jiun, yet, instead of expounding on Jiun’s  Nanjō 1889: 23–27, published at Tetsugaku shoin 哲学書院 (Philosophical library). One may still note in passing Jiun’s appearance in One Hundred Funny Stories (J. Kokkei hyakuwa 滑稽百 話, 1909) next to notes on prolific intellectuals and philosophers such as HARA Tanzan or NAKAE Chōmin. It was written by KATŌ Kyōei who cited a short poem of Jiun’s (Katō 1909: 49–50).

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sense of calligraphy or his stance in relation to art, Okamura goes on to explore Jiun’s Shingon thought in the context of his time. KINAMI Takuichi 木南卓一(1990) goes significantly beyond this look at Jiun’s calligraphic expression. His entire program of interpretation is based on the vast amount of calligraphy left by Jiun, but he does not cover the interpretation of the calligraphy as such. He only reads those characters and lines in terms of Jiun’s interpretation of tradition. He stresses that we can transcend time and place through his dharma words and the remnants of his calligraphy. While he reminds his reader that Jiun only based the greatest importance of the “Dharma words on the Ten Good Precepts” among his voluminous collected works, these nevertheless have the potential to speak to everyone: “The Zennist who sees them says, it’s Zen, the scriptualist sees them and says it is the scriptures, the Vinayanist sees them and says, it is Vinaya” (Kinami 1990: 1). Kinami points out that these teachings are not his own, but the ones of tradition transmitted from all the Buddhas. The universality of expression based on Kegon-like expressions is, however, not the most important aspect of this example, since Jiun’s means of expression are not limited to his dharma words, as Kinami maintains (Kinami 1990: 1), but encompasses his calligraphy in Kanji, Kana, and Siddham, too. Juin practiced calligraphy all his life with the “will to protect the dharma” and he did so contrary to the Zen idea of the transcendence of all worldly means (Kinami 1990: 2). The central point here is the association of calligraphy with dharma-nature (J. hosshō sō’ō 法性相 應), that is, the manifestation of the dharma in all beings. However, the condition of reading the calligraphy is also important, possibly more important than being a learned calligrapher (Kinami 1990: 3). Kinami points out that while there is the general idea of protecting the dharma in Jiun’s artistic efforts, those words written in his calligraphy are so particular and important and differ so much from the common contexts that they deserve proper interpretation as expressions of Jiun’s thought (Kinami 1990: 8). Apart from the articles mentioned above, no philosophical analysis of Jiun’s reception is available. Noteworthy, yet insignificant regarding its philosophical content, is a text written by the prominent philosopher UEYAMA Shunpei, “From Kūkai to Jiun Sonja” (J. “Kūkai kara Jiun Sonja he” in Shinjitsujin Jiun Sonja of 2004).25

 In regard to pre-modern Buddhist ramifications, though beyond the context of the present account, it may be worth mentioning Jiun Sonja ni manabu Shōbōgenzō 慈雲尊者に学ぶ『正法 眼蔵』 (Koganemaru 2009), an article on the relation of Jiun and Dōgen. Finally, it might be added, that Akiyama Manabu’s discovery of Jiun in relation to the thought of Huayen Buddhism can be taken as paradigmatic for the basic discourse of classical philology and the studies of antiquity (Akiyama 2008).

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5  The Zen Buddhist Dōgen in Modern Philosophy The Zen Buddhist Dōgen remains the most widely read pre-modern Japanese author in philosophy since the Meiji period until today, but, at the same time, his philosophical reception is most fiercely criticized by his own denomination, that is, by scholars of the Sōtō Zen community.26 The dispute was caused by the pretensions of non-denominational intellectuals to pave the way for an authentic apprenticeship independent of the practice of “sitting-only” (J. shikan taza 只管打坐), which was taught by the Sōtō school as the core of Dōgen’s Zen. However, the predominance of a “practical” interpretation of Dōgen covers up the linguistic complexities of Dōgen’s writings. In particular, only few monks were able to master the Shōbōgenzō’s peculiar style in which Dōgen draws on grammar and semantics at the margins of both the Japanese and Chinese languages. For this reason, non-denominational scholars challenged or even threatened the sectarian authority of the Sōtō school. In short, it became obvious that more than basic knowledge of the Buddha’s teaching and more than training in sitting meditation were required to achieve an understanding of what Dōgen expounds in the Shōbōgenzō 正法眼蔵. Nevertheless, it seems wrong to maintain that Dōgen was (re-)discovered in modernity by non-denominational intellectuals, as has been proposed since the publication of Shamon dōgen 沙門道元 by WATSUJI Tetsurō in 1926. Rather, more than a momentary event, the discovery of the modern Dōgen is a process, which spans most of the Meiji-period. Some of the milestones that may be mentioned, In 1885 a popular edition of the Shōbōgenzō edited by ŌUCHI Seiran 大内青巒 (1845–1918) was published; in 1896 Dōgen and his work were mentioned for the first time in a philosophical journal, Tōyō Tetsugaku 東洋哲学, in a citation of a short abstract on Dōgen by MORITA Goyū 森田悟由 (1834–1915), head of Eihei-ji temple; from 1905 onwards, the famous Shōbōgenzō commentator NISHIARI Bokusan 西有穆山 (1821–1910) gave his lectures at the annual Shōbōgenzō reading group (genzōe 眼 蔵会); in 1911 the logician YODONO Yōjun 淀野耀淳 began a series of articles on “Dōgen’s religion and philosophy” in Tōyō tetsugaku. Various other buddhological, historical, and philological efforts accompanying the emergence of the Shōbōgenzō as a text accessible to the modern reader would be necessary to mention and depict the entire process. To sum up, the Shōbōgenzō’s emergence as a philosophical text exhibits, more than any other example, the history of Japanese philosophy in the making of modernity. The following account starts with some remarks on the denominational commentaries and moves on to the philosophical reception which can be divided into the Meiji, early-Shōwa, and post-war phases.

 The following account is based on H. Kagamishima (1995), G. Kagamishima (1995), Dumoulin (1959), Kim (2004), and Kurebayashi et al. (1972).

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5.1  The Many Faces of Dōgen and His Reception The core dispute based on the opposition of textual and practical study of Dōgen’s teaching mentioned above brings into view various groups of interpreters. Except for one, all groups maintain the importance of seated meditation, while the importance placed on Dōgen’s writings varies strongly. In the case of the so-called “Zennist” group (J. zenjōka 禅定家), all emphasis is put on the practical study of meditation, and hence all of Dōgen’s writings are set aside, unless they serve as purely practical guidance for Zazen, or for the cloistered life in general. Another group established under the auspices of MORITA Gōyu, gave more importance to Dōgen’s writings, in particular to the Shōbōgenzō. These “Genzōnians” (J. genzōka 眼蔵家) as they were known, worked in continuity with traditional commentaries since the Edo period. While they were critical of an abridged version of the Shōbōgenzō, which was compiled in the late 1880s (the Shushōgi), they strictly adhered to the practice of Zazen, claiming that the 95-­ chapters of the Shōbōgenzō were nothing but footnotes to “sitting only” (Kishizawa 1963: 328).27 As a third group, the laity-movement was strongly promoted by ŌUCHI Seiran, the “Vimalakīrti” of Meiji-Japan. While being a lay person, Ōuchi helped to compile the Shushōgi as a kind of catechism. Extracted from the original Shōbōgenzō text, this kind of work presupposed great linguistic and buddhological skills on his part (Ishimoto and Naberfeld 1943; Dumoulin 1959; Heine 2003).28 However, guidance for the laity went hand in hand with rather limited resources, both in practical as well as textual study of Dōgen’s teaching, and entailed some “deviation” from the “pure” standards of practical and textual study within the monastery. Finally, the fourth group to be mentioned shifted the standards for understanding Dōgen’s Zen to an even greater extent, yet took these standards further away from the practical and closer to the textual level. One may even say that the so-called “Genzō-researchers” (J. genzō kenkyūka 眼蔵研究家) dug deeper on a textual level than before, so that the “denominational studies” (J. shūgaku 宗学) of the Sōtō school were in fact heavily indebted to them (Wakatsuki 1986: 125–344). However, matters of belief and faith were put aside in the case of Genzō-researchers (cf. for an opposite example Oka 1927), especially among philosophers such as Watsuji and Tanabe, who considered the concept of truth to be the guiding light.

  The passage reads in Japanese ⌈正法眼蔵九十五巻は、只管打坐の柱脚であります⌋. See Bodiford (2006: 19) mentioning that the Genzōe were open to a wider audience, not only the monks of the Eiheiji. 28  MORITA Goyū comments on the existence of a one-sided preoccupation with studies on Tendai and Kegon Buddhism and calls for lectures on the Shōbōgenzō (see Kurebayashi et al. 1972, and “genzōe” in ZGDJ). 27

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5.2  Nishiari Bokusan as the Beginning of a Critical Reading Before turning to the philosophical readers of Dōgen, the commentator Nishiari deserves some attention. In particular his commentary known as Shōbōgenzō keiteki (Nishiari 2005) is important not only for its explanation of the content of the fascicles but even more for its hermeneutic approach.29 He distinguishes clearly between word and meaning on the textual level in order to disclose the text through a holistic approach, thereby overturning the philological word-by-word dissecting and the positivistic attitude towards the text, both characteristic of Edo period interpretation. As Kagamishima describes Nishiari’s Keiteki, it is a sentence-by-sentence commentary, but it starts holistically from Nishiari’s own understanding of the text, not from single words and their presumed non-ambiguous meanings. That is to say, for Nishiari, interpreting the text is not simply an exercise in philology. Moreover, he takes the practice of zazen to be a way to correct the holistic approach. This interpretation is achieved not by appealing to pure standards of cognitive and scientific research alone but by way of the “real focus and real penetration” (J. jissan jikkyū 実参実究), which was based on “sitting only” to restrain all arbitrariness of interpretation. The aim is to reach an intellectual understanding “along the words and letters” which is coherent with insights based on physical practice (H. Kagamishima 1995: 38). In this way, hermeneutic endeavors into the Shōbōgenzō become existentially bound to a critical and reflective stance, which is largely complementary with a philosophical reading. To be more specific regarding Nishiari’s relation to Dōgen and the traditional commentaries, he takes both a critical stance towards traditional commentaries and, in his own account, a proper adherence to Dōgen’s teachings. Indeed, Nishiari tries to revive the tradition of the genzōka by appealing to the commentary Goshō of Sen’e as the one that remains the most substantial. Furthermore, he criticizes one commentary, Benchū by TENKEI Denson (1648–1735) as heretic and praises another, Sanchū of HONKO Katsudo (1710–1773) as being the most sophisticated. Nishiari adds that the MENZAN Zuihō’s 面山瑞芳 (1683–1769) commentary Monge is “focused too much on the literal meaning” (Weitsman et al. 2012: 17),30 while he is scolded by others for willful interpretations.31 29  Originally presented orally from 1905 until his death in 1910 at the genzōe, it was recorded by TOMIYAMA Soei and subsequently by KUREBAYASHI Kōdō in 1930. Nishiari’s Keiteki received a negative appraisal from YASUTANI Hakuun (1996). In turn, Brian Victoria provided biographical notes on Yasutani’s political engagement by Victoria (2006: 167). 30  Nishiari revives the tradition of Shōbōgenzō commentary and places the greatest importance on a certain lineage within these commentaries since the Edo period. Kurebayashi et al. (1972) distinguish three lineages. This helps to locate Nishiari in tradition. Nishiari attempts to combine two lineages while ultimately siding with one of them (that is, the lineage of Manzan). The first line consists of Manzan, Menzan, and Banshin (not by immediate apprenticeship, but by study; they are labeled the “orthodox sectarian studies” (J. seitōshūgaku 正当宗学). The second line starts with Tenkei, then SHINNŌ Kūin, and finally FUYŌ Rōran; they are labeled “the heretics.” The third line goes from Shigetsu through Katsudō to Zōkai. 31  Shōbōgenzō okikigaki by Sen‘e is included in the Shōbōgenzō shō by Kyōgō.

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5.3  Early Philosophical Readings of Dōgen Attempts to read Dōgen philosophically start, if somewhat timidly, quite early. We find three notable instances among those early readings: the earliest being that of INOUE Enryō 井上円了 (1858–1919) in 1893. Inoue subsumes Dōgen under the more general label of Zen Buddhism and answers questions about how the laity can make philosophical sense of Zen texts without practical realization of enlightenment. Second, we find YAMAGAMI Shōfū 山上嘨風—a representative of the denominational readership—and his attempt to re-express Dōgen’s “cosmology” in a philosophical framework. The third author, YODONO Yōjun, is the first philosopher who offers a presentation of Dōgen’s thought in a comprehensive way, with regard to both religion and philosophy.

5.4  Inoue Enryō and the Wording of Dōgen’s Zen Inoue brings up Dōgen in the context of his “Outline of Zen philosophy” (Inoue 1893; IES 6: 249–326), which gives a systematic account of Zen Buddhism in general. He begins with the main question of how to handle a school of Buddhism that disputes rational accounts of its principles by defying language, which is traditionally thought to be the central medium of philosophy. It is from within this basic question of how to handle the “most mysterious” school of Buddhism in philosophical terms that Inoue introduces examples from Dōgen’s writings. His approach is to qualify Buddhism as an amalgam of religion and philosophy, while the way that he treats philosophy is close to an existential practice that converges with Buddhism on a certain level. In Inoue’s understanding, “truth” is a concern not only of philosophy but of Buddhism as well. The term, however, cannot be reduced to the level of intellectual abstraction: real philosophy needs to be directed at “the living spirit of the ideal” (IES 6: 278). Against a simplistic reading of a “special transmission outside the scriptures,” Inoue tries to work out the basic principles that structure the idea of truth in Zen Buddhism. The specific way in which Dōgen interprets this truth is “body-mind is dropping off” (J. shinjin datsuraku 身心脱落), which works, on one level, as an immediate expression of Zen experience, yet, in the same stroke, re-interprets and challenges common ontological principles of Mahāyāna Buddhism. This could come as a surprise, since Zen Buddhism plays a special role within Mahāyāna Buddhism, as outlined by Inoue, along with the trinity of intellect, emotion, and will: Zen is particular for its physically challenging practice of meditation, and therefore Inoue subsumes Zen practice under the principle of the will to realize the Buddhist path (IES 6: 291). While he claims, as pointed out, that “the school of Zen is the most mystical school in Buddhist philosophy” (IES 6: 279), he maintains that even Zen would never abolish all the sūtras and commentaries of the Mahāyāna tradition. Moreover, as he continues, principles such as “pointing directly at the

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heart of men,” or “to see into one’s own nature and become Buddha” can be found in the main corpus of the Mahāyāna tradition (IES 6: 282). Thus Inoue reasons: “The minute [the Zen school] makes use of sūtras and commentaries, it must inevitably be grounded in principles. If commentaries are grounded in principles, why should it be impossible, to call them philosophy?” (IES 6: 282) Moreover, the respective principles such as “pointing directly at the heart of men” become visible in the midst of Zen practice, not merely somewhere in the background teachings of Zen. For this reason it becomes possible and “after all, necessary to elucidate the traces of the state of enlightenment through the kōan writings of the old and wise, although it is said in regard to the mysterious content of enlightenment that one may not grasp it intellectually, transmit it orally or express it in letters” (IES 6: 306). While each kōan can be read as exhibiting one or another principle attributable to Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy, there is even more to them, if seen as part of one of the famous kōan collections. Kōans can be grouped together and subsumed under recurrent principles. In other words, such grouping can provide a kind of meta-level or meta-theoretical elucidation, since it is a way to delineate specific principles on which particular kōans are grounded and, as a result, it allows one to determine the relationship among those principles. This meta-level is supported, not defeated, by the fact that different ways grouping can be found according to each particular school of Zen and, at times, with different teachers within the same school. As Inoue points out: “In order to make the state of enlightenment […] known, there is the exposition of the ‘Four shouts,’ and the ‘Four Divisions’ […] in the Rinzai school. In the Sōtō school there is the well-known ‘Five stands’ by Tōsan and the ‘Falling off of bodymind’ of Dōgen” (IES 6: 307). In the same vein, Inoue cites Dōgen’s term “un-thinking” from his “teaching of the balanced heart” (IES 6: 308). To summarize, Inoue calls the moment of enlightenment itself “the perishing of the finite form of heart” and the “opening up of the infinite force of will” or, in quoting Dōgen, the “solving of the great matter and dropping off of saṃsāra,” or the “dropping off of body-mind” (IES 6: 309). There are, however, more theoretical implications put forth in such expressions, once we see that they function as more than designators of an unspeakable experience. Not limited to their often “negative” wordings, kōans are related to the more complex structures that are expressed in a number of principles common to all Mahāyāna schools. Additionally, they are processed as steps on the path of enlightenment, that is, they follow up on the initial “state of enlightenment.”32 One may say that the kōan collections and other Zen Buddhist writings present a manual to guide the practitioner through the basic epistemological, linguistic, and ontological principles on a experiential level. Hence, they are continuous with a theoretical elucidation of “Zen Buddhist philosophy.” Particularly in the case of Dōgen, the existence of different genres of kōan practice helps to bridge the “irrational” gap caused by a simplistic reading of the foundational Zen slogan “not founded on words and letters” for writings such as Dōgen’s Bendōwa, also mentioned by Inoue, provide “rational” answers within the confines 32

 Inoue gives a detailed explanations of the “steps after the enlightenment” (IES 6: 310–313).

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of discursive thinking as to why one should practice Zen meditation or how it relates to other Buddhist schools. Dōgen’s famous Shōbōgenzō, then, mediates between rational discourse and the experiential expression of kōans.

5.5  Yamagami and Dōgen’s Monism While Inoue presents Dōgen within the broader spectrum of Zen Buddhism, a few years later, more specific readings of Dōgen can be found in a journal of Buddhist studies, the Sōtō school journal Wayūshi 和融誌. On the occasion of two anniversaries (Dōgen’s 700th birthday and 650th day since his death), two special editions were dedicated to Dōgen with notable articles of philosophical content. The second edition of 1906 encompasses “Eight views, in which we see Zen Master Dōgen,”that is, articles on Dōgen’s view of the universe, human life, ethics, zazen, Buddhist precepts, the Buddha, literature, and women. Among these, YAMAGAMI Shōfū’s article on Dōgen’s “view of the universe” comes closest to an attempt at a denominational reading that presents Dōgen in a philosophical outlook. In Yamagami’s account, Dōgen’s view combines the existential dimension of Zen with cosmo-ontological thought based on Kegon Buddhism (Yamagami 1906), and on these grounds is of philosophic importance. In particular, he presents Dōgen’s thinking as a solution to a never-ending debate between monists and dualists, materialists and idealists (Yamagami 1906: 33) in which only the universe’s infinite extension into time and space is left unquestioned. Yamagami also finds an answer in Dōgen to the monistic materialism of modern science that was growing stronger around the turn of the century. He sees this monistic tendency as incompatible with the Buddhist tradition, which is said to represent—predominantly—a monistic idealism. The synthesis between the two is given in the Shōbōgenzō, which can be read, in Yamagami’s interpretation, as a “concrete monism” (Yamagami 1906: 34). Dōgen’s position comes close to Spinoza’s “substance” in which the material and the mental are nothing but two aspects of the same entity, yet differs from Spinoza in that this substance is dynamic and process-like. Yamagami sees proof for this reading of Dōgen in a passage taken from the fascicle Sangai Yuishin. Yamagami quotes: Therefore, the words of the Thatagata “The three worlds are only one mind” are the entire manifestation of the Thatagata, his whole life is all of this expression. The three worlds are the entire world; that does not say that the three worlds are identical to the mind. The reason is the three worlds, as bright as they may appear in all directions, are still nothing but the three worlds. You shouldn’t misinterpret them as saying they were not the three worlds. In and out, beginning, middle, and end all are the three worlds. (DZZ 1: 443)

This passage offers, in Yamagami’s reading, the starting point of an approach that allows Dōgen to upgrade the phenomenal world to the status of ultimate reality, to the real “substance” of the universe. In comparison to this “concrete monism,” he sees only inferior positions: whether it is the European tradition since the Eleatics, or the Hindu tradition of Vedanta or the Buddhist thought of India represented by

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Nāgārjuna who takes an acosmic stance (Yamagami 1906: 36–37). According to Yamagami, only in Dōgen’s thinking is this one-sidedness or reduction overcome in Eastern thought. Against the partly idealistic, partly skeptical position within the Buddhist tradition, Yamagami goes on to cite from the Muchū setsumu fascile in support of “concrete monism” (Yamagami 1906: 37–38). In it, Dōgen argues, as Yamagami proposes, that even dreams and illusion are manifestations of reality that can be directly experienced in, and as, the phenomenal world. Even if somewhat fragmentary, Yamagami provides, in line with Inoue, a concrete indication of where philosophical implications lie and how to work them out.

5.6  YODONO Yōjun’s Dōgen Against the Zen Tradition Finally, at the end of the Meiji period in 1911, we find the first comprehensive account of Dōgen’s thought, written by the epistomologist and logician YODONO Yōjun33 (1879–1918) in the Tōyō tetsugaku: On “Dōgen’s religion and philosophy.” This is the earliest and most complete account by a layman writing about philosophical facets while acknowledging the religious practitioner in Dōgen. From the beginning, he reasons that the two aspects of religion and philosophy can be separated only analytically. Moreover, Yodono assumes that it is peculiar to East-Asian thought that philosophy is deeply rooted in religion, and further, that philosophical ideas are never entirely abstracted from their existential dimension. Thus, in working out a particular view of life, “the personal character of the [respective] philosopher” (Yodono 1911: 7, 13) becomes clear. Since Dōgen’s work is the lifework of a religious ­practitioner, it is, for the same reason, not possible to understand his philosophy apart from his “view of life” or “absolved from his religious cultivation” (ibid.). The practical dimension of his view of life, therefore, gains prominence over “the perfection of the organizational system” (ibid.), because his view of life aims at a reflection of the factual conditions of life. Eventually, anthropological contemplations should enable one to “work out the actual conditions of questions of human life” (ibid.). Yodono begins the account of Dōgen’s philosophy by a determination of “what human life is” (ibid.), pointing to the Buddhist views of the transience and painfulness of life, which encourages the practitioner, in Dōgen’s view, to “become an original human being” (Yodono 1911: 7, 15). The path to realization is, then, a matter of religion, as Yodono maintains. The matter of good and evil in the Buddhist context, as Yodono adds, is not determinable in absolute terms (Yodono 1911: 7, 18). Questions to be raised here belong to religion, and “in short, the overall moralistic account of Dōgen is erected upon the corner stone of his religion” (Yodono 1911: 7, 19). As Yodono begins to portray the main part of Dōgen’s philosophy in  The reading of his name varies: Kōjun or Yōjun. For information about Yodono, see FSC (8: 375–378).

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its theoretical layout, he cautions, again, that Dōgen remains a religious practitioner. However, as such, a convincing practice of religion strives for a logical rationale for its efficacy: how are we capable of a “penetrating understanding” of the world and why does every human exhibit Buddha nature? Yodono takes all declarations of Dōgen’s regarding these basic questions as indicative of his philosophy. Yet, he warns us that he would not give more than a very preliminary systematization. In particular, he points out, just as Inoue did in the beginning of his outline on Zen, that he would base his account on nothing but the monk’s writings; he would not and could not base his presentation on any kind of experience: Dōgen as Dōgen has his grounds in his religious practice, in particular in his being a practitioner of continuous exercise, of austerity, of asceticism, and of exceptionality. And yet, he needs […] to have ready a penetrating and immediate solution for universe and life. [Thus…] I have to regard all that he reveals about his understanding and his determinations as his philosophy. What I propose as Dōgen’s philosophy is nothing but what he has left behind in his writings [upon which] I give a preliminary order and description. (Yodono 1911: 6: 16)

The initial step into philosophy, as Yodono points out, does not lie in belief and repentance, as in the case of religion, but in a comprehensive and existential doubt, much like Descartes’ methodological cultivation (Yodono 1911: 6: 17). Doubt might be elicited by exceptional situations or individual experiences, but if truly experienced, all of daily life itself gets sucked up into doubt. Exhibiting a broad perspective on philosophy from Descartes to Zhu Xi朱熹 (1130–1200), Yodono writes: When I take up Dōgen’s writings and read them, [I see that] he has acknowledged the great importance of doubt; and as a means of assessing the way of achieving enlightenment, it is important not only to not avoid, but to pass through doubt. This resembles what Zhu Xi pointed out: “Big doubt, big step; small doubt, small step; no doubt, no progress.” Dōgen says, if a slight doubt rises in me, I should doubt everything of everyday life: “If we doubt at all, we have reason enough to doubt that the Lotus grows in the water, that the twigs carry the blossom, and that the earth dwells in the horizontal (Kūge).” (Yodono 1911: 6: 17–18; DZZ 2: 128)

Dōgen’s notion of doubt and skepticism are not, however, restricted to an intellectual understanding but extend to his view of the human body and mind. Hence Dōgen’s monism forms the base of his critique of any dualistic concept of an eternal soul (see DZZ 2: 38). Instead of clinging to ephemeral existence, the authentic attitude of a Buddhist is to accept that neither the mind nor the body is eternal. In fact, taking up a core expression of Dōgen’s, Yodono maintains that existential freedom is realized in “dropping off of body-mind.” This practical task, enacted by way of religious cultivation, is based, as Yodono shows, in an ontological concept of the “mind” (J. kokoro 心) (Yodono 1911: 6: 20–22). Yodono describes a concrete monism based in Kegon metaphysics as Yamagami previously described. Dōgen turns away from idealist ontological statements such as “the mind is all being, all being is the mind,” or epistemological statements such as “penetrating the mind, means to penetrate all being,” since he reads them, as Yodono points out, as an affirmation of the phenomenal world. To Yodono,

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this affirmative stance towards the phenomenal world means that Dōgen engages in philosophy, that is, that he exerts himself to develop his teachings by means of finite knowledge. In gaining momentum over the idea of a mystical union, Dōgen defies, as Yodono points out, any stance “to cut off the path of language and to annihilate the locus of mental function” (Yodono 1911: 6: 23), that is, to leave all intellectual means of earthly life behind, and to stop doing philosophy. In a similar vein, Dōgen defies the “myth” of a “separate transmission outside the scriptures” (Yodono 1911: vol. 5, chap. 4 in reference to the fascicle Bukkyō), since, within a monistic worldview, an all encompassing teaching cannot be separate from the rest of reality. Hence, the intellectual study of the scriptures has its place.

6  T  hree Different Systematic Conceptions of Dōgen as Philosopher By now it has become apparent that the discovery of Dōgen the philosopher predates the Taishō and early Shōwa periods, that is, Watsuji’s work Shamon Dōgen of 1926, to which the discovery is usually granted. What has not been evident until now is that the works from the early Shōwa onwards go beyond a mere description of philosophical facets in Dōgen’s writings. One may say that they achieve a philosophical interpretation of Dōgen’s philosophy, since they are guided by systematic questions. This goes hand in hand with a feature that is common to all of the authors treated here: they take a strong stand in philosophy, while in the post-war period the (Western) concept of philosophy itself is questioned. In two of the present examples, the issue of language is taken up. Watsuji brings in the Greek notion of logos to discuss Dōgen’s term “dōtoku” 道得, the core concept of his interpretation. Tanabe, the second author, engages with the same term but develops the philosophical ramifications even further. Although working on a different term, a third author of that time must be mentioned, AKIYAMA Hanji秋山範二 (1893–1980), who makes room for the issue of mind (more literally “heart”) at the center of his interpretation. While he sidesteps the problem of language, he continues a strategy of Inoue’s by reading Dōgen’s concepts in continuity with the Buddhist tradition. Akiyama will be taken up first, after which the problem of language comes back into focus when turning to Watsuji and Tanabe.

6.1  Giving Dōgen an Ontological Foundation: Akiyama Hanji’s Approach It is not easy to locate Akiyama’s A Study on Dōgen (1935) within the Japanese philosophical landscape at the time he was writing. He is philosophically influenced by Nishida (regarding his phenomenological interpretation, see Kagamishima 40)

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but also indebted practically to Nishida’s opponent TANABE Hajime because of his support for the study’s publication at Iwanami (see preface to Akiyama 1935). Apart from these connections, the voluminous and detailed work has an important place in Dōgen scholarship in its own right. The line of reasoning in his work proceeds as follows: after a dense summary of Dōgen’s biography, Akiyama offers a comprehensive account of where to place Dōgen in the context of other strands of thought of Dōgen’s time, such as Confucianism, Daoism, the different Buddhist schools, and the Zen school. Akiyama gives this account based on explicit evidence taken from Dōgen’s writings and makes it visible that his work is not limited to debates among Zen Buddhist factions but is interwoven with an intellectual discourse of his time. In particular, his thought is not trapped by a notion of a special transmission “inside” the Zen tradition. The main thrust of approximately 300 of the 400 pages is the reconstruction of Dōgen’s philosophy based on an interpretation of the notion of “mind.” The work is divided into two parts under the headings “ontology” (J.  sonzairon 存在論) and “praxeology” (J. jissenron 実践論). Since the variety of important themes of his thought goes well beyond what Akiyama calls “philosophy,” he adds an appendix on religion, education, and economics. As Watsuji was before him, and Tanabe after, Akiyama was aware that his reading of Dōgen contrasted starkly with the denominational approach. Moreover, in addressing Dōgen, Akiyama explicitly marks his stand within Western philosophy: The foundation of Dōgen’s teaching lies in his religion of sitting in which Zen meditation is the Buddha dharma. […] But on one side Dōgen harbours […] utmost deep philosophical ideas. It must surely have been his intention that one tries to understand it through the intellect, was it not? In particular for people doing philosophy in Japan it is a worthwhile mission to deepen what remains of his ideas. In this book I have tried to grasp Dōgen’s ideas through thinking. In its outcome I achieved, as I believe, a systematic précis of the Buddhist thought that has become prominent through Dōgen. I am nothing but a dilettante as regards Buddhism, but I am well acquainted with Western philosophy. […] I believe, that the attempt to throw new light onto Buddhist thought was successful to some degree. (Akiyama 1935: 1)

What becomes of Dōgen’s notion of mind, as seen within the light of Western philosophy? This is a particularly interesting question since this term becomes the starting point and core of Akiyama’s elucidation of Dōgen’s ontology. The Western understanding of the concept of mind does not, however, immediately come into view, and instead is treated in an anti-substantialist context; an approach that is all-­ pervasive in Dōgen’s writings (Akiyama 1935: 77–85). Dōgen attacks the heresy of the Senika school, which presumes that while the physical world, including one’s body, is fleeting, an eternal soul resides within the body (Akiyama 1935: 77–78). Hence, in his own position, Dōgen is in line with early Buddhism and the idea of dependent co-arising (J. engi 縁起), which defies any kind of eternalism. On the other hand, Dōgen directs a critique at the Chan Buddhist DAHUI Zonggao 大慧宗 杲 (1089–1163) who, as Akiyama reads Dōgen, promotes the annihilation of any sense of the self as consciousness (Akiyama 1935: 83). To get a grip on Dōgen’s position in positive terms, a disambiguation of his usage of “mind” is called for. Akiyama elucidates four senses of this notion. The first

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sense is based on the ordinary understanding of “mind” as the various phenomena of consciousness.34 This is the natural sense and starting point for any elucidation (Akiyama 1935: 86). Considering the multiplicity of phenomena in their own right already implies a critique of Dàhuì, since his idea of annihilation of consciousness is nothing but one such phenomenon. (Real annihilation of consciousness would mean death.) Moreover, since all phenomena of consciousness are equal, there is no way to transcend or annihilate consciousness through any such phenomena. While the ordinary understanding of “mind” grounds the various phenomena of consciousness, it also signifies more than the individual instances of consciousness, that is, its totality (Akiyama 1935: 89). Hence, the internal structure of consciousness becomes visible: the content and act of consciousness. “Mind” signifies a totality that encompasses both act and content, that is “the phenomena of consciousness as the concrete totality” (Akiyama 1935: 89). Only on the grounds of such a concrete totality is it possible to analyze and separate mind into act and content. Thus, the multiplicity of conscious phenomena remains the starting point, while at the same time, the structure of noesis and noema become correlative poles of “mind” in its everyday sense. Where, then, does the object have a place in relation to the mind? On the one hand, the object can be conceptualized as the object of external perception—this is the “natural” view in which the external world is opposed to phenomena of consciousness. On the other hand, based on the internal correlation of act and content of consciousness, the object becomes the content of either perception or imagination. “It is [in Akiyama’s example] the tree as the object of inner perception, the being in the world of the mind” (Akiyama 1935: 90). This becomes particularly clear if one thinks of a quality such as the beauty of the tree. Beauty is certainly not an inherent attribute of the externally existing being. However, Dōgen provides yet another sense of the notion of mind, since his analysis is based on a dualistic schema, grounded either internally as the correlation of act and content or externally as the self and the world in which it exists. In furthering this notion of mind, its ontological base becomes visible, since it is all encompassing. As Akiyama puts it, “all beings in the natural world form the mind, and further, the four elements and the five constituents form the mind, whereby the elements of being form the mind; birth and death and coming and going form the mind, whereby the transformation of being immediately forms the mind” (Akiyama 1935: 92). This is how Dōgen overcomes the dualism of ordinary mind. Akiyama maintains, in drawing on quotations of the Sangai yuishin fascicle, that Dōgen “discards the dualistic opposition of the mind and unites it in the world of the one mind” (Akiyama 1935: 92). He sees in this a parallel to the idea of phenomenology, saying “that it is identical to the phenomenological stance of bracketing, but, whereas the latter stops short at ‘bracketing,’ Dōgen’s standpoint is to negate the transcendent being and to disregard the existence of the world beyond the world of the one heart” (Akiyama 1935: 93). Thus, as Akiyama adds, “the idea of ‘three worlds are only one heart’ means that the entire world exhausts the one heart” (Akiyama 1935: 94). 34

 The respective expression in Dōgen’s writings is “ryochi nenkaku” 慮知念覺.

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Akiyama cautions against misreading this idea as being idealistic or spiritualistic, since the Buddha warned against such a misconception based on his understanding of “dependent co-arising” (J. engiron 縁起論) (Akiyama 1935: 94).35 Hence, it is important to emphasize that the mind is not the unidirectional cause of the “external world” (Akiyama 1935: 96). Ontologically seen, mind is nothing but this one all encompassing reality. Epistemologically, it can be divided into subject and object, or inner and outer world, but this separation is motivated merely by the “necessities to understand it intellectually” (Akiyama 1935: 100). Ontologically, the world is only one. This line of discussion relates to, but is different from the conceptual pair of noesis and noema in phenomenology, since they constitute only the essential structure of pure consciousness, whereas the conceptually opposing planes in the case of Dōgen are “the essential planes in the world of the free and natural human” (Akiyama 1935: 100), not limited to the theoretical point of view of some philosophy called phenomenology. In this respect, Dōgen’s concept of “the three worlds are one mind” seems to Akiyama to be far from the artificial differentiation of Husserl’s epistemology but much closer to Heidegger “who aims at an interpretation of dasein” (Akiyama 1935: 100). However, any such comparison is not meant to reduce Dōgen’s teaching to a philosophical system. While Akiyama does not explicitly state his indebtedness to Nishida, his use of Nishida’s concept of subjectivity is possibly revealed in the present context. Akiyama rephrases the idea of mind as follows: “The act [of consciousness] […] is that which can become the ground of all consciousness by being nothing, it is the so-called subject. The content is the plane of being of consciousness that is opposite to the nothingness of the act of consciousness” (Akiyama 1935: 90). The wording of “being the ground by being nothing” is not dissimilar to Nishida’s recurrent phrasings. To summarize, Dōgen’s own usage of the word “mind” is fourfold according to Akiyama’s outline (Akiyama 1935: 101–104). In the first sense, “mind” is equal to the common understanding of the inner world as opposed to the external world, that is, the multiplicity of mental activities, or, more simply put, the phenomena of consciousness. Secondly, if one deepens the understanding of mind analytically, Dōgen, according to Akiyama, defines “mind” in the sense of noesis, that is, the act of consciousness or the subject as opposed to the object, both of which are part of consciousness. Thirdly, Dōgen equates “mind” with the noema as the content of consciousness. As Akiyama puts it: “It is this mind, in which one says ‘mountain, river and the whole world are themselves the mind,’ while watching the mountain, river and the whole world only as mountain, river and the whole world” (Akiyama 1935: 101). Finally, in the fourth sense, Dōgen takes “mind” as the ground which enables and brings into existence every single particular being, even if he aims to overcome any idealist sense of unidirectional causation of being through the mind (Akiyama 1935: 104).  Akiyama gives a more detailed account of this idea based on the example of “the wind blowing” (Akiyama 1935: 94–95).

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Let us sketch the remaining part of Akiyama’s study. Based on his interpretation of “mind,” Akiyama works out the ontological foundation of Dōgen’s teaching comprising the relation of self and world in the notion of “buddha-nature.” Akiyama interprets Bergson’s idea of a “creative evolution” (J. sōzōteki shinka 創造的進化) through Nishida’s phenomenological point of view, for his understanding of buddha-­ nature. In fact, he reads in Bergson’s terminology the common determination of buddha-nature from Dōgen’s quote “impermanence is Buddha-nature.” This evolves further into a dialectical structure, since the transitoriness of the world as a world of becoming is realized, as Akiyama works out, from the dynamic relation of being and nothingness (Akiyama 1935: 118). Actually, it is the self that emerges from, and at the same time mediates, the dialectical structure, moving on through the contradictions internal to the ontological structure of the world (Akiyama 1935: 119). If the mind is the mediating unity of reality, going back into the mind means realizing original subjectivity. This also entails realizing anātman from within the fleeting world of being and nothingness, that is, of becoming. Based on the ontological structure of becoming, Akiyama explores temporality, which in Dōgen’s writing is existential time and hence bound to the self. From there he moves to the most resilient aspect of human temporality: its finite being in samsara. In accordance with the important idea of karma, Dōgen explains why finiteness of human life does not lead to nihilism, and how the traditional notion of no-self (S. anātman) opens up a means to affirm life. This is the turning point in his work, which transitions from his discussion of “ontology” to the part on “praxeology.” This section includes discussion of “the human” and the “non-duality” of living beings and Buddha, the practice of meditation, as well as practical life ­activity. As can be seen from this short outline, Akiyama interprets almost every part of Dōgen’s teaching, understood through the core concept of “mind,” within a philosophical framework as either theoretical or practical.

6.2  The Thrust of Dōgen’s Writings: Watsuji’s Reading WATSUJI Tatsurō’s publication “Dōgen, the Monk” (J. Shamon Dōgen) is noteworthy for being one of the first attempts to engage a single author and his work as a pre-modern source of philosophy outside of the Western tradition. Perhaps without realizing it, Watsuji helped initiate a tradition of Japanese thought in which Dōgen is recognized as the cornerstone of medieval thought, opening up new horizons for philosophy and reconfirming the rich plurality of its resources. Watsuji drew attention to a notion of language within Buddhist speculation that immediately affects our common understanding of philosophy inasmuch as the approach to language he presents does not seem to fit easily into views prevalent in mainstream Western philosophy. Also supporting this idea is the popular Zen slogan (J. fūryū monji, kyōge betsuden 不立文字、教外別伝), which, according to its literal rendering, means “a special transmission outside the scriptures, without relying on words and letters.”

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For now, however, I will assume that language is not confined to the kind of reductionism prevalent in propositional logic and that closer scrutiny is called for. What, then, is the main problem with language in Zen? Experience is frequently pointed to as being so rich, so unmediated, pure and dynamic, that any expression of it in language “downgrades” it to a derivative status, chaining it to previous phenomena already experienced. To be more precise, the raw phenomenality of experience in its living form is pitted against any linguistic approach that sees language as a necessary and constitutive medium of Zen and Zen experience. The thesis I wish to propose discards the unquestioned assumption that Dōgen the Zen Buddhist, and possibly the entire Zen tradition, takes language to be no more than a necessary, but ultimately limited, means of communication. I mean to suggest, rather, that Dōgen offers an unrestrictedly positive re-evaluation of language that leads to a critique of the tradition and culminates in a new notion of language as “perfect expression” (J. dōtoku), a view found in the Shōbōgenzō fascicle of the same title. In this respect I agree in part with the results of Kim Hee-Jin’s groundbreaking reading of Dōgen’s conception of language and those authors who rely on his reconstruction, though my agreement rests on different grounds than theirs. For his part, Dōgen gives a positive twist to the dilemma, declaring that “all the buddhas and patriarchs are able to perfectly express the truth.” The fascicle’s title, “Dōtoku,” can be translated literally as “The ability to talk,” and its contents discuss the prerequisites for a perfect expression of the truth of the Buddhist way. For example, perfect expression depends on the encounter of two people engaged in Buddhist practice, typically an accomplished master and a disciple on the brink of realizing enlightenment. The particular mode of expression used by them is as contingent as is their encounter. This means that expression is far removed from scholastic debate and independent of the confines of any particular positive or negative propositions that need to be refuted, falsified, or elaborated in detail. We should also note that Watsuji’s interpretation amounts to nothing less than a reiteration of the dynamics of perfect expression in Hegelian terms. There is no gainsaying the fact that Watsuji reads Dōgen in a somewhat eclectic, sketchy, and freely-associative manner, picking and choosing from any number of currents of thought prevalent at the time. Yet, what from a philosophical point of view may appear to be a weakness in Watsuji’s approach actually highlights what is most attractive and useful in it. Perhaps the most promising approach is to peel away all the existentialist-motivated metaphysical claims and relate them to a methodology that Watsuji borrows from Dilthey’s hermeneutics. Giving an account of Dōgen’s idea of language does not necessarily involve the heavy burden of these metaphysical claims, especially not if read in the mode of a cultural philosophy, as Watsuji does to some extent. Watsuji faces two main methodological objections, one of them more general, the other with a more specific concern. The first concerns his position as an “outsider” to Dōgen’s Zen (J. mongekan 門外漢), not even a lay practitioner. This poses a problem: How can we reconcile the inner perspective of a practitioner and believer with an objective, scientific approach? The second objection involves the particular

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approach Watsuji takes from his vantage point as an outsider: How is his cultural-­ hermeneutic method related to the inner perspective of Dōgen’s thought? In Watsuji’s own words: Firstly, is it possible that you, as someone who is foreign to Zen, understand Dōgen who emphasized particularly sitting meditation? In trying to get a grip on something sublime and profound, do you not debase and flatten out something that you have not grasped yourself ? Secondly, even if you were capable of understanding this sublimity and profundity to a certain degree, of what use is it to put the personality of such a great and religious man and his manifestation of truth in the service of a cultural-historical understanding? What does cultural-historical understanding mean if one accepts the truth of a religion…? Of what use at all is an understanding based on “secular wisdom”? (Watsuji 1998: 237–238)

Watsuji’s first step in answering these objections was simply to acknowledge that there is an insider’s perspective. He has no intention of arguing against what he saw as an irrefutable fact. His defense of his own approach is to present it as no less irrefutable but on different grounds. He points to the heavy volumes of Dōgen’s works and asks why someone like him would leave such a body of writings behind when they were not simply writings of practical or instrumental concern, such as orders or regulations. Why would he do so, if not for the fact that he puts trust in the possibility of language to mediate and express the Buddhist truth? Why did Dōgen leave such a great quantity of records of his sermons behind, if his truth needs the purity of a direct transmission? Needless to say, he was confident of his ability to transmit his truth through them… The great importance of intensive sitting does not contradict its linguistic expression. (Watsuji 1998: 238)

One may say that Watsuji turns religious motivation into a philosophic one by replacing the intuitive acquisition and inward manifestation of the Buddhist truth with the endless pursuit of truth. He leaves the “possession” of truth to a few religious geniuses such as the Buddha, Nāgārjuna, or Dōgen, and criticizes contemporaneous groups of Zen Buddhists for their engagement in worldly affairs. However, the twofold truth in Watsuji’s reinterpretation of Dōgen becomes clearest here as he differentiates the solution of the “one great matter” of life from its reduction to anything verbal. It is impossible to replace the practice of zazen and lived enlightenment with any explanation or articulation of its experiential content. But this does not mean that verbal expression as such is impossible. Quite to the contrary, every enlightened person is also capable of expressing the experience in symbolic fashion (Watsuji 1998: 264). That said, the final step for Dōgen, moving from the “peripheries” of truth to its “center,” entails elucidating the truth in his own conceptual terms (Watsuji 1998: 314). This is what Watsuji does in the ninth and final chapter of Shamon Dōgen, though he warns against expecting too much, since he has not studied the Shōbōgenzō in its entirety. Instead he presents Dōgen’s thinking through selected examples and chooses four fascicles and their related terms to sketch out Dōgen’s thinking. The major metaphysical theme that Watsuji takes up revolves around the concept of buddha-nature (J. busshō 仏性) and its interpretation through generations of buddhas and patriarchs. Face-to-face transmission does not mean that there is a single and universal expression of truth. Devotion and veneration still demand a critical

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appropriation of the dharma in a creative and intellectual way, even though Dōgen defends the common truth of Buddhism against any kind of plurality and against arbitrary, personal belief. In fact, it is the Busshō fascicle in which Dōgen combines the reinterpretation of ontological assumptions with a linguistic challenge from the Chinese verses of the Nirvana Sūtra. Watsuji takes Dōgen’s notion of buddha-nature as a “universal reality” (J. fuhen teki jitsuzai 普遍的実在) and translates the respective neologism (J.  shitsu’u 悉有) into German as All-sein (Watsuji 1998: 325). Watsuji’s basic motivation, of course, is to overcome any hypostatizing of buddha-­ nature that would elevate it to the status of a transcendent substance. Buddha-nature is the plurality of existing things. It is not ontologically privileged over other particular instantiations of being. Although conceiving of buddha-nature as Buddhist truth is made possible through transmission from an authentic teacher, Watsuji holds that Dōgen’s truth is contained in a rational mode of expression that seeks to avoid any kind of mystical fallacy. As a quasi-monistic concept, All-sein becomes dynamic, Watsuji says, because Dōgen posits truth as a conceptual ingredient in the “dialogue between a buddha and a Buddha,” which takes place in the act of transmission. By merging these two principles as a lived verbalization of the truth, Dōgen aims at avoiding a sclerotic degeneration while at the same time holding on to a discursive, even logical, form of truth (Watsuji 1998: 324). Watsuji points out that there is yet another condition for the verbal and even logical expression of truth to become authentic. It is not only the meeting of two buddhas at the right time but also a correct understanding that supersedes verbal expression. This condition is met by resolve and practice, but it also requires a special kind of internalization of truth. Watsuji sees “intellectual intuition” (G. intellektuelle Anschauung, J. chiteki chokkan 知的直観) as more than just fantasy totally detached from reality (Watsuji 1998, 341). Intellectual intuition must encompass sense perception as well, and begins with empirical reality only to go beyond it. It is the capacity to grasp the meaning that is mediated in and through perception.36 For his part, Dōgen avoids pure philosophical speculation and delegates its expression to practice and progress in one’s meetings with a teacher. However, he does not detach speculation from the writings, concepts, and means of expression embodied in the tradition. He adopts language and rational means in their entirety (Watsuji 1998: 342–3). It is his productive use of language and traditional terminology that makes Dōgen an accomplished thinker in the Buddhist tradition. All of his work is based on the reinterpretation of texts handed down over generations from the Chinese and Indian traditions, that is, he works out their authentic and underlying sense.

 This becomes clear in what Watsuji has to say about the encounter between the Buddha and Mahākāśyapa. He interprets the understanding of the latter as a recognition of the symbolic meaning contained in the simple gesture of holding up a flower (342). Of the many who looked on, only one understood through what he perceived.

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Consequently, Watsuji arrives at Dōgen’s most central concept in order to perform a philosophical appropriation of his thought: In talking about truth that is already expressed in the teachings of the buddhas and patriarchs, Dōgen is, in the last analysis, deploying his own thinking. By face-to-face transmission he discovers himself in the teachings of the buddhas and patriarchs. More precisely, he transforms their teachings into his own system of thought. Transmission is important element, of course, but it does not disable intellectual expression. On the contrary, transmission is a prerequisite to expression. The Buddha dharma attained in transmission is, to use a term of Dōgen’s, the truth of “perfect expression”: it is neither the truth of wordlessness and silence, nor is it a translogical truth. (Watsuji 1998: 343–344)

6.3  L  anguage as the Mediation of Religion and Philosophy: Tanabe’s Interpretation In the 1930s, TANABE Hajime 田辺元 (1885–1962), the successor of Nishida at Kyoto University, worked out an interpretation of Dōgen’s thinking. He began by consciously following in the footsteps of Watsuji. Like Watsuji he tried to uncover the pre-modern sources of Japanese philosophy, not in order to insulate his homeland’s culture from the growing influence of modern Western culture but in order to open it up and make a contribution to a wider “world culture.” Tanabe’s and Watsuji’s interpretation share a central focus: both concentrate on Dōgen’s conviction that language, among other means of articulation, allows for “the perfect expression of Buddhist truth.” If we approach the basic question of how to treat Dōgen’s thought—or at least his main work, Shōbōgenzō—as a whole, and in terms of its relation to philosophy— language offers a good approach here, both because language itself is a necessary, and perhaps even sufficient, means to philosophize, and because Dōgen himself is concerned with scripture and spoken words in the transmission of Buddhist truth. However, Tanabe’s interpretation surpasses Watsuji’s in an important way. Where Watsuji remains a cultural historian, Tanabe proves to be the rightful successor of Nishida’s chair by way of his philosophical rigor. In fact, he was most probably the first prominent philosopher to carry out a metaphysical interpretation of Dōgen, which contrasts with his teacher’s random allusions to Asian sources of a rather dense and systematic nature. According to Tanabe, Dōgen’s speculations in his magnum opus, the Shōbōgenzō, put forth an understanding of philosophy in many ways similar to the Western idea of logos. At the same time, Tanabe sees that Dōgen’s work is taken to be exceptionally important in the tradition of Chinese and Japanese Zen. In other words, Tanabe suggests a metaphysical interpretation of Dōgen and demonstrates how his speculations surpass a great deal of Western or Asian philosophy and thought. Likewise, critical readers of Tanabe’s suggest that this interpretation is a projection of his own strong systematic philosophical position.

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As indicated in the beginning of his writing, Tanabe sees his treatment of the Shōbōgenzō as a philosophical masterpiece as departing from two more common approaches: the purely scientific view that takes the text simply as a historical object (for examination in fields like philology, buddhology, and so on); and the view of adherents of the Sōtō sect who hold the contents and presentation of the book in less than adequate critical veneration. As is the case with other “scriptures,” it was long forbidden to print the Shōbōgenzō, which meant that the book remained hidden in monasteries for centuries. Tanabe addresses both of these concerns, defending himself, first of all, against accusations from the side of the faithful. He admits to being a “man without relation to a religious sect,” and states that he would “not know how the teachings of the founder Dōgen are dealt with nowadays in the Sōtō sect, or how the Shōbōgenzō is being interpreted” (Tanabe 1939: i–ii). How could he, as a layman and mongekan, read the Shōbōgenzō from a philosophical point of view? Would this not amount to simple “blasphemy”? For Tanabe, following Watsuji’s lead, it seemed a matter of duty that he uncover a previously hidden side in Dōgen in order to “honor” him as the precursor of Japanese philosophy. This, in turn, would serve to “reinforce the general self-confidence of the Japanese towards their speculative abilities” (Tanabe 1939: i). This, of course, is not an argument for reading Dōgen as a philosopher, but it does show what was motivating Tanabe. Another motivation, and one more closely linked to the history of philosophy, was the desire to demonstrate the significance of the Shōbōgenzō for modern philosophy as such and to argue that it points beyond Japan, contributing to Western philosophy as well. Tanabe points to still another aspect of his extra-confessional approach. Not only is he not an adherent of Sōtō Zen or familiar with how the sect treats Dōgen’s teaching but he also lacks an experiential background in that he does not practice zazen (Tanabe 1939: ii), an apparent prerequisite for accessing the relevant dimensions of a text such as the Shōbōgenzō. As for the purely scientific approach, Tanabe states at the outset that his treatise will not encompass the whole of Dōgen’s work, or even the whole of the Shōbōgenzō. In fact, he does not even treat its ideas systematically (Tanabe 1939: iii), preferring to see his work more as a preliminary attempt open to later revision. At the same time Tanabe takes a critical stance towards his “fellow” scholar, Watsuji, insofar as the latter opts to read Dōgen from the standpoint of a historian rather than from that of a philosopher. Watsuji is correct in the sense that the Shōbōgenzō is a particular text composed at a particular period in Japan’s past. However, it deserves to be treated, Tanabe insists, as a text of the greatest importance for modern philosophy both East and West. In his view, the text outshines its counterparts in the depth of its speculation (Tanabe 1939: iii). What leads Tanabe towards his interpretation of the Buddhist monk? Apart from incentives which concern culture and religion in general, it is a sense for a deep-­ rooted wisdom in Buddhism that makes it closer to Meiji- and post Meiji everyday life than Western science. Hence in a 1936 essay entitled “Common Sense, Philosophy, and Science,” Tanabe discussed Eastern thought in contrast to Western philosophy, pointing to Buddhist wisdom as a “commonsense correlative to

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philosophy” insofar as its knowledge is mediated by action. In it he set the deeper wisdom of Zen in stark contrast to any kind of mysticism: In the same way that common sense is living knowledge, this philosophy [of Zen Buddhist wisdom] is living philosophy. The wisdom of this philosophy is not conceptually organized as a system of thought, but is, in the end, expressed in action. In Zen, a blow with the stick or a shout suffices to express the truth perfectly [dōtoku]. The intertwining of language [gonji no kattō] is only of secondary importance. (THZ 5: 203)

One notices an appreciation of the Buddhist tradition in Tanabe that is to increase in later works: this tradition seems to have a quality that is missing in modern Western science, even though the Buddhist tradition admittedly lacks an adequate conceptual framework to express this particular quality as such. We should mention that what Tanabe has to say here about the use of the stick and the shouting differs from his future stance towards Rinzai practice. A year later, in 1937, he gave a different twist to the relation of language and the expression of truth, by re-interpreting the notions of kattō 葛藤, the intertwinings of language, and dōtoku 道徳, verbal expression perfected to voice the truth. He drew on Dōgen as a Zen monk who gave primacy of place to language, that is, to a symbolic system that reaches beyond the expressive use of the stick and shouting. For this reason I find it no exaggeration to call the 95th-fascicle Shōbōgenzō of Dōgen the treasure-house of dialectics in Japan. Therein the intertwining of truth is at once its perfect expression [kattō ha sunawachi dōtoku]. The residuum of being that Hegel’s dialectics leaves is wiped out and completely turned into nothing; the transformative mediation of absolute emptiness is realized. (THZ 8: 17)

With Buddhism, the meaning of Japan’s “native” thought and religion, that is, Shintō, becomes “concrete,” or, in dialectical terms, it breaks through its immediacy and arrives at a state of reflection. The same holds true within the Zen tradition where immediate expression of truth through gesture—in Dōgen’s work—is transformed into “reflexive expression” by language. Tanabe acknowledges that “the intertwining of truth by language” becomes “its perfect expression.” In May 1939, Tanabe finally published a revised and expanded version of a lecture held in 1938 by the Iwanami publishing house, My View on the Philosophy of the Shōbōgenzō. Therein, Tanabe devotes chapters to the cultural and political sides of the philosophical discovery of Dōgen, as well as to key philosophical notions such as “kyōryaku” (“the passage of time”). However, the most important contribution is his interpretation of dōtoku (“the perfect expression of truth”). En route to this philosophical interpretation, Tanabe encounters Dōgen who wanted to reconcile the polar opposites of Rinzai and Shinran. Tanabe highlights Dōgen’s middle position, stressing ethical deeds as the will to submit completely to this life and rational expression as the basic mode of our existence. He interprets a crucial term of Dōgen’s, genjōkōan, as signaling the apparently insurmountable contradiction of life. Dōgen, he argues, recognizes the bounds of human reason that cannot be overcome by any critical self-assertion of the finite subject. By setting Dōgen up in a middle ground between the two other monks, Tanabe implicitly attributes to him the role of the “specific” that mediates their relationship to one another.

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Turning to Tanabe’s distinction between religion and philosophy, he writes that philosophy is “correlated to religion in its aim at understanding the absolute meaning of historical reality” (Tanabe 1939: 12–13), which is considered “relative.” In other words, the standpoint of philosophy is set squarely within history; the only place there is to seek the absolute. The absolute is not to be located in a world beyond but in the relativity of the here and now. From a philosophical standpoint, it is never possible to reach the absolute, only perpetually to seek it. In striving, one is forever bound to the limits of human existence. Contrary, but not contradictory to this, human finitude is overcome in religion as one lets go of reliance on one’s own power and submits in an act of repentance to the absolute. It is an act of self-negation that admits one’s temporal and factual inability to overcome one’s finitude. At the same time, the absolute is dependent on the relative insofar as it is dependent on a spontaneous act of repentance, that is, an act of autonomous submission performed by a relative being. This relationship is not a static one; by nature it is dynamic, propelled by the momentum of negation and mutual mediation through negation between the absolute and the relative. Hence Tanabe considers Buddhism close to philosophy in the sense that it considers knowledge based on wisdom to be a means of becoming a Buddha (Tanabe 1939: 14). This seems obvious in the case of Dōgen, who left behind a massive body of written work, composed in a style that is not just enigmatic preaching but a rational and analytic attempt to explain the world in a Buddhist way. This is the basis for Tanabe’s placement of Dōgen in opposition to Rinzai. As he sees it, the mediation between the relative and the absolute in the Rinzai sect is executed only expressively—for example, in using a stick or shouting loudly to arouse one to awakening. In contrast, Tanabe has this to say of Dōgen’s dōtoku, the perfect expression of truth: If we take the word dōtoku in its literal sense as a dialogical mediation of speech, then, according to Dōgen, the truth of the Buddha is not limited to becoming aware of that truth in a sudden awakening in accord with the traditional dictum about “not relying on words and letters, pointing directly to the heart of man, seeing one’s own nature and becoming Buddha.” It is clear that Dōgen goes the route of philosophy in order to penetrate the dialogical dialectic thoroughly. This dialectic is carried through by questioning and answering relatives set in opposition to one another. (Tanabe 1939: 19)

Despite Tanabe’s talk of relatives, qualified relatives are required to turn the give-­ and-­take of a simple dialogue into an expression of truth. This is the task of the bodhisattvas (awakened beings) who remain in the human world, the realm of constant flux. Bodhisattvas continue in their practice of the Buddhist path even though they have already crossed over to salvation. They have experienced the extraordinary but choose to stay behind in the ordinary world in order to promote the salvation of all sentient beings. This is what Tanabe has in mind when he writes that “talk and non-talk correlate, the absolute and the relative, mediate one another” (Tanabe 1939: 19). This manifests “the discourse of philosophy that corresponds to ‘going beyond Buddha’” as the ongoing practice of the way in this life. In terms of ethical work undertaken for the good of all sentient beings “religion is mediated with philosophy” (Tanabe 1939: 19–20). Tanabe writes: “As Dōgen clearly states: ‘The

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wonders that the Buddhas and patriarchs hold up in the air and turn around is knowledge and understanding.’ Truly, his Shōbōgenzō shows the highest approximation to dialectical speculation (Tanabe 1939: 19–20). Be that as it may, Dōgen’s most marked difference from Shinran and Nichiren lies in his philosophical work, in which he “masters the Japanese language freely, enlivens logic and makes the unspoken and unexplained manifest through words and talk” (Tanabe 1939: 20). Exactly how he does this requires further investigation. The repeated use of the same simple and complex framework detailed above justifies a critical look at Tanabe’s enterprise. That said, however, his conviction that Dōgen’s use of language should itself be seen as a perfect expression of Buddhist truth obliges us to take a closer look at this matter as a philosophical question. In particular, we need to flesh out the picture of how language can express truth. Tanabe’s critics often return to the neglect of a number of aspects in his work, beginning with MASUNAGA Reihō 増永霊鳳 (1902–1981), who complained as early as 1939 that in Tanabe’s reading of Dōgen “the domain of religion is diminished, if not replaced, by philosophy” (Masunaga 1939: 628). From the side of the faithful, this represents the core of their critique of the philosopher’s reading of Dōgen. Others have argued in a similar vein. James W. Heisig quotes a student of Tanabe’s: “SHIDA Shōzō traces Tanabe’s route to Dōgen through Watsuji and seems to reflect the general opinion of scholars in the field that his commentaries are more a platform for his own philosophy than they are a fair appraisal of Dōgen’s own views” (Heisig 2001: 324). Shida’s comments should stand as a warning against an uncritical approach to Dōgen. His basic idea is that Tanabe’s treatment undercuts the autonomy of religion, in effect converting all of the Shōbōgenzō into philosophy. Further scrutiny will lead us to reconsider Tanabe’s problematic regarding how a philosophical reading of Dōgen can, and how it cannot, be worked out. This task, the more difficult side of interpreting Dōgen and interpreting Tanabe’s reading of him, remains to be carried out. It must be remarked that both Zen and Dōgen remain so influential for Tanabe’s thought that it is even possible, as HIMI Kiyoshi 氷見潔 has pointed out, to read his 1946 masterpiece, Philosophy as Metanoetics (J. Zangedō toshiteno tetsugaku 懺悔道としての哲学), as a series of paradoxes, or kōans, guiding reason to the realization of the “fundamental and intrinsic contradictoriness of reality as such,” that is, to a genjōkōan—an allusion to a term coined in the Shōbōgenzō (Himi 1990: 322). Possibly, Tanabe’s reading of Dōgen is just as much philosophical to the extent that it contributes to a productive “mis”-reading of the Shōbōgenzō. Will it be surpassed in the post-war period?

7  Delimiting the Concept of Philosophy in Reading Dōgen According to KIM Hee Jin’s diagnosis, the post-war period, the fifth period in his account, “has marked a new maturity in Dōgen studies. […] Dōgen studies have now reached a new phase in which both parties [denominational and non-­ denominational] are compelled to cooperate and transform one another, in order to

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contribute to the common task of furthering self-understanding in an emerging world community” (Kim 2004: 8). What does this entail for philosophers reading Dōgen? In general we can say that ambitious approaches such as Tanabe’s recede into the background, or the philosophical claim becomes less of a systematic incorporation of Dōgen’s thinking or his Shōbōgenzō, and few people continue to talk of the philosophy of Dōgen and even less of Dōgen the philosopher. This coincides with a critique already directed against Tanabe, as indicated before. People tend, instead, to speak of the philosophical in/of Dōgen, or philosophical aspects of his work, or a philosophical stance, or philosophical reflections in Dōgen. This can, in fact, be taken as a symptom of categories such as “philosophy” and “religion” becoming more un-stable. All criticism of Tanabe’s understanding of Dōgen was not entirely public, including the criticism of his own predecessor, NISHIDA Kitarō. More importantly, Nishida’s own understanding of Dōgen and the basis of his harsh critique of Tanabe are still present both in NISHITANI Keiji’s 西谷啓治 writings as well as in UEDA Shizuteru’s 上田閑照. In other words, Nishida, Nishitani, and Ueda are part of a prominent stream among postwar readers of Dōgen, with Nishida providing the link between the different directions taken.37 Following this trajectory of thinking, we will move away from an interpretation that places the philosophical and systematic approach in the foreground, in order to give space to practice and lived experiences and to explain language from a different point of view from Akiyama’s implicit articulation or Watsuji and Tanabe’s explicit articulation. It is noteworthy that Nishida, Nishitani, and Ueda engage in a reading of a Sōtō Zen Buddhist, although all of them adhere to Rinzai Zen practice. While Tanabe’s explanations of Dōgen culminate in an abstract understanding of “genjōkōan,” which he interprets as the universalized expression of contradictory reality, Nishida emphasizes the “realizational” foundation of Dōgen’s teaching: in other words, “religious practice.” He starts from the “Zen meditation of dropping off body and mind” (NKZ 8: 512) and rephrases the well-known passage from the Genjōkōan, saying that to learn the Buddha way is to learn the self, to learn the self is to forget the self, and to verify the self by the 10,000 things coming forth (NKZ 8: 513).  During the period from 1945 to 2012 the variety of continuous efforts to read Dōgen philosophically almost outnumbers any categorical system. Let us simplify the situation by distinguishing the Kyoto philosophers from the rest of the readings of Dōgen. Kim (2004) mentions such works as TAKEUCHI Michio’s Dōgen (1962) and TAKAHASHI Masanobu’s Dōgen no jissen tetsugaku kōzō (The Structure of Dōgen’s Practical Philosophy) (1967). Kim rightly points to the importance of the “intensified efforts to place Dōgen in the historical, social, and cultural contexts in which his thought was formed, rather than to study his thought in the abstract although philosophical treatments of Dōgen still continue” (2004: 8). In his reassessment of the field in 2004, he adds, for examples, NISHITANI Keiji’s Religion and Nothingness, Masao Abe’s A Study of Dōgen: His Philosophy and Religion, or works by T.  P. Kasulis, Joan Stambaugh, Steven Heine, and Carl Olson as representative works of a philosophical reading of Dōgen. From the side of works published in Japanese, authors such as TAMAKI Kōshirō, KARAKI Junzō, TERADA Tōru, KASUGA Yuhō, MORIMOTO Kazuo, and SUGIO Gen’yū should be added. 37

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The way Nishida makes use of Dōgen’s texts is not hermeneutic, since he simply parallels his own thinking with his understanding of Dōgen’s worldview, for example, Dōgen’s expression of shinjin datsuraku (“dropping off body and mind”) with his own notion of the “self-identity of absolute contradictory opposites” (J. zettai mujunteki jikodōitsu 絶対矛盾的自己同一). Rather than providing elaborate interpretations, Nishida leaves the reader with quotations and paraphrasings of Dōgen’s texts that function as illustrations of his own more technical expressions. More precisely, the citations from the Genjōkōan and other texts are illustrative only to people who already have an understanding of either Nishida or Dōgen or both, since the phrases of neither of them are self-evidently intelligible from the given context. Hence, one may maintain that, seen from the side of Nishida’s philosophical discourse, the quotations serve as allusions, and as such they reach beyond the text and refer to the practical or experiential level of Dōgen’s teaching (Müller 2013). In fact, it seems to be the case with Nishida, as opposed to Tanabe, that he does not take Dōgen’s writings as intrinsically philosophical, and hence the realm of philosophy in Nishida’s understanding is not entirely definite. Instead, he seems to acknowledge the multifaceted experience of life that includes science, morality, art, and religion all constituting the whole of reality. At the same time, presenting religious texts within philosophical discourse serves as a reminder of the realizational nature of all activities, the intellectual pursuit of philosophy included. While, for Nishida, Buddhism always remains in the background, even if to some degree serving as an extra-textual source of basic intuitions of his philosophy, he does not adopt any particular concept, neither from Dōgen nor from any other Buddhist authors. By contrast, in Religion and Nothingness (J. Shūkyō wa nanika 宗教は何か) (Nishitani 1982),38 to ground his philosophy, NISHITANI Keiji appeals explicitly to Buddhist sources in order to appropriate particular expressions and notions into philosophical coinages. Dōgen is brought up here in particular in the fifth chapter on emptiness and time in regard to Dōgen’s notion of death and practice of samadhi. Although Nishitani makes use of these notions more extensively and more argumentatively than Nishida does, he is still close to Nishida in the way he introduces Dōgen into the text. One of the earlier, but somewhat random occurrences of a quote from Dōgen’s texts, comes up at the very end of the fourth chapter after a long discussion of Nishitani’s core idea of “absolute this-worldliness.” In fact, at the point where the reader is willing to adopt his idea, Nishitani himself questions the entire reasoning leading to the idea (Nishitani 1982: 107). Similar to Nishida, he uses the 38  Religion and Nothingness is the English translation of Shūkyō to ha naninka (What is Religion?). Dōgen is probably the most important source drawn on in this text. In terms of Dōgen there is a second work important to mention: Nishitani’s lectures on the Shōbōgenzō (Shōbōgenzō kōwa 正 法眼蔵講話), in which he enacts a reading of and introduction to Dōgen’s opus magnum. The lectures were held at the “International Research Institute for Japanese Studies” (Nishinomiya) from 1965 to 1978, and they first appeared in print in the Christian journal “Kyōdai” from 1966 to 1979. They were finally reissued in four volumes by CHIKUMA Shobō from 1987 to 1989, and later in 1991 included in Nishitaniʻs collected works as vols. 22 and 23. These lectures cannot be fully considered here, but the author prepared selected translations and commentary (Müller 2016).

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quote from the Genjōkōan evocatively and allusively and simply states that “the problem [of absolute this-worldliness] is also posed by the famous words of Dōgen’s Genjōkōan” (ibid.). Nishitani is then quick to quote MUSŌ Kokushi 夢窓国師 (1275–1351), a Rinzai Master, maintaining that this second quote would express the same as Dōgen’s quote. Without further explanation or interpretation of these quotes through Nishitani, they appear to the unprepared reader as entirely arbitrary examples. In fact, these quotes are introduced abruptly and discontinuously with the preceding form of discourse, the authority the patriarch’s writings induce does not come by way of logical argument. It is rather an extra-textual allusion. In other words, this authority comes from an insight based on lived experience accessible only to those familiar with Buddhist practice and texts. Further scrutiny is necessary to determine in which way these allusions function on a rhetorical and on an argumentative level. Nevertheless, these Buddhist writings, in particular Dōgen’s, contain quasi-­ terminological expressions that Nishitani imports into philosophical discourse, and, by so doing, he bridges rhetoric and philosophical argumentation. Through this shift from a Buddhist to a philosophical text, Dōgen’s expressions obtain a new meaning derived from neither their original source text nor their new target context, that is, Nishitani’s writings. In other words, Nishitani generates new sources of meaning. But what is the explanation for the emergence of new meaning, which in Religion and Nothingness finds its place within shifts from rhetorical to argumentative usage of Buddhist expressions? There is no obvious answer to this question, since Nishitani does not provide a coherent outline of Dōgen’s thought, which would help explain his adaptation of single expressions, neither does he provide a systematization of Mahāyāna doctrines nor a close reading or elaboration of specific texts. Looking at usage in Religion and Nothingness, one should add that Nishitani avoids imposing a preconceived “philosophical” meaning onto Dōgen’s expression. Rather, he opens up a hermeneutic space between pre-modern expressions and modern philosophical terminology. The common denominator between Buddhist sources and Nishitani’s discourse is an existential stance. Appealing to this stance, Nishitani asks, “What is religion?” He does so not to answer this question in the scientific fashion of religious studies but in order to lead the reader into a discourse that precedes both the commitment to a particular religion as well as the scientific positivism that grounds modern common sense. Addressing such a reflexive ground within the subject, posing the question of what religion is, Nishitani introduces the reader to more general Buddhist terms such as nothingness and emptiness, and, further, to particular expressions of Dōgen’s. Dōgen’s writings serve, in Religion and Nothingness, as a discursive source in between scientific and poetic language. While Nishitani bridges Zen-­ Buddhist religion and philosophical discourse, he questions the philosophical tradition based on textual sources from the West, through the writings of Zen masters such as Dōgen. UEDA Shizuteru furthers this questioning of what religion and philosophy are, by developing a reading of Dōgen beyond the limitations of the denominational approach, on the one hand, and the philosophical approach of Watsuji and Tanabe,

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on the other. As in the case of Nishida and Nishitani, he raises the existential theme of meditational practice in the face of death and impermanence. From this position he asks how to place Dōgen in the field of religion and philosophy, practice and theory, lived experience and linguistic expression. His careful commentary on fascicles such as the Genjōkōan (Ueda 1995) is neither—as in the case of Nishida—framed by his own philosophy, nor—as in the case of Nishitani—based on a philosophical appropriation of Buddhist terms. Moreover, in a critique of Tanabe and Watsuji, he cautions that an interpretation of Dōgen’s quasi terminological expression dōtoku, that is, “perfect expression of truth,” must still consider the relation to practice. The same is true for Dōgen’s critique of the ‘speechlessness’ of the Zen tradition as indicated by the Zen credo of furyū monji, that is, a transmission of the Buddhist teaching not founded on words and letters (that is, the scholastic writings of the Buddhist tradition). As Ueda points out, the Shōbōgenzō must be interpreted through the unspoken, which is ‘perfectly expressed’ in the text (Ueda 1995: 173–174). More precisely, it is the outside of the text that speaks in the unspoken, as a non-text, that is, the relation of the text to its “outside,” zazen, serves as the source of the text itself. This explains Ueda’s choice of writings: he presents a translation of the Fukan zazengi (and variants), the Bendōwa, the Shōbōgenzō Genjōkōan (and at the end of the ­commentary, the supplemental fascicle Shōji). In other words, he places emphasis on the early writings, which are more practical and introductory than the more sophisticated “philosophical” writings such as Busshō. The rationale is obviously to show how the two poles of Dōgen’s thought are connected: his strong adherence to the strict practice of zazen, on the one hand, and his remarkable writings that flow from a source of deep religious insight, on the other: “These three [writings] are everlasting documents of the Buddha-Dharma of the right transmission that Dōgen newly established in Japan” (Ueda 1995: 98). Ueda then sums up the relation between the three writings: Fukan zazangi provides the right principles for the practice of zazen, Bendōwa explains why zazen is the right entrance to the Buddha-dharma, and the Genjōkōan is part of those writings in which “the self-fulfilling samadhi, that is zazen, has become the words in the ‘between [aida]’ of self and other as the self-enlightenment and enlightenment of others for ‘the salvation of all living beings [kuhō gushō]’” (Ueda 1995: 98). He adds, that the Genjōkōan text “sketches the world that opens up on the basis of and, again, through zazen” (Ueda 1995: 99). In short, only in the third text are words of intrinsic value. Relating Dōgen’s writings to the practice of zazen provides the base for Ueda to pursue the question “why was the Shōbōgenzō written” at all (Ueda 1995, 218)? In his answer he repeats his critique of both denominational and philosophical readings of Dōgen. Usually not the practical, but only the intellectual aspect of Buddhism is taken into account: Buddhism is a religion of wisdom, and so is Dōgen’s teaching of Zen. Hence, Dōgen wrote the Shōbōgenzō. But Ueda reproaches such reasoning on two points: all other schools of the Buddhist tradition left writings behind and thus an answer to the question needs a more specific determination of Dōgen’s particular text (Ueda 1995: 209). More

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importantly, though, regarding Buddha Śākyamuni himself, it is not the case that Dōgen chose to abolish meditation practice even after enlightenment or after he began teaching: his teachings remain grounded in zazen as their source. Thus zazen itself is the practice of a Buddhism of wisdom and complementary to writings expressing this wisdom to others. In Ueda’s response to the initial question why the Shōbōgenzō was written, the relation of wisdom and meditational practice is dialectical: Wisdom is dialectically mediated through zazen as the radical negation of all thought. Or, again, linguistic articulation is thought to be intrinsic to sitting meditation by its very negation of language. Thus, Ueda emphasizes the importance of the relation of “text and non-­ text” (174) from within Dōgen’s own writings, as expressed in the Dōtoku fascicle (ibid.). His final answer is as follows: The fact of intensive sitting (shikan taza to iu koto [事]) is the word of intensive sitting (shikan taza to iu koto [言]), but in between thing and word there is a thorough negation [tettei teki hiteisei]. In the fashion of this being echoed, this dynamism as such becomes investigated on the plane of original thought [genshisō] in which intensive sitting comes into existence as already being such a word. There lies the original reason why the SBGZ was written. (Ueda 1995: 222)

8  Japanese Philosophy in the Making To return to the question of the present article: What does it mean include a pre-­ modern author in modern Japanese philosophy in light of Ueda’s reading of Dōgen? His reading invites us to challenge the “traditional” way of doing philosophy (and the adherence to a particular religion), since he provides a new understanding of the relation of wisdom and meditational practice as a performative intertwining of speech and silence. Hence, Ueda’s reception of Dōgen can contribute to shifting the modern concept of philosophy in the global horizon of our times. This implies going beyond both the preconceived European mainstream and its deviant forms and to navigate through both relativism and universalism: the definition of philosophy is not a point of departure, but rather a task, a project in the making.39 Regarding Dōgen, one may differentiate two kinds of readings: one that remains within the confines of the Western tradition, and one that radically questions that tradition. As already indicated, Ueda, Nishitani, and Nishida belong to the latter, whereas Tanabe, Watsuji, and Akiyama belong to the former. If one sides with the Nishida, Nishitani and Ueda camp, one may want to question the actual source of reception and extend it beyond the regular textual corpus. If one prefers remaining ‘half-way’ in between text and Zen, one may, for example, consider the practice of calligraphy. In fact, it seems to be reasonable to take Nishida as reflecting “Japanese culture” in a holistic fashion, in which case culture should be conceived of in all its  Case studies for this claim are Theunissen’s (2000) appeal to Pindar and Jullien’s (2002) discussion of Chinese philosophy vis-à-vis Martin Heidegger (1889–1976).

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material manifestations. Widening the textual reception helps to bring into the picture the reception of the other authors mentioned in this overview: Jiun, Kūkai and even Shōtoku, all of whom encourage a view beyond the most common picture of pre-modern Buddhist sources of philosophy, as well as their sources of reception: all of them left behind calligraphy and poetry just as Nishida did. And yet, regardless of the extension of forms of reception and the cultural differences implied by them, it is essential to remember the importance of logic. In fact, since the very beginning of the Buddhist tradition in Japan, apart from sūtras and meditation practices, the Buddhist tradition of logic (J. immyō) has been transmitted to Japan.40 If one speaks of Japanese philosophy in the making, then it is a making through the reception of tradition. An account of this reception helps to avoid speculative dead-ends, even if it cannot and shall not replace speculative philosophy. Moreover, actively and reflectively defining the history of Japanese philosophy is by itself a philosophical endeavor, always leaning at the edge of a not yet mainstream tradition.

Works Cited Abbreviations DZZ: Dōgen zenji zenshū 『道元禅師全集』. 7 vols. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1988–1993. FSC: Funyama shin’ichi chosakushū 『舩山信一著作集』. 10 vols. Tokyo: Kobushi Shobō, 1998–1999. IES: Inoue enryō senshū 『井上円了選集』. 25 vols. Tokyo: Tōyō Daigaku, 1987–2004. ISS: Ienaga saburō shū 『家永三郎集』. 16 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1997–1999. ITC: Izutsu toshihiko chosaku shū 『井筒俊彦著作集』. 12 vols. Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1991–1993. KSZ: Kuki shūzō zenshū 『九鬼周造全集.』 11 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1980–1982. NKZ: Nishida kitarō zenshū shinpan 『西田幾多郎全集新版』. 24 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002–2009. SZ: Shinran zenshū 『親鸞全集』. 4 vols. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1985–1987. THZ: Tanabe hajime zenshū 『田辺元全集』. 15 vols. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1963–1964. WTZ: Watsuji tetsurō zenshū 『和辻哲郎全集』. 20 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1961–1978. YYZ: Yuasa yasuo zenshū 『湯浅泰雄全集』. 17 vols. Tokyo: Hakua Shobō, 1999–2013. ZGDJ: Zengaku daijiten 『禅学大辞典』. 2nd edition. Tokyo: Taishūkan Shoten, 1985.

Other Sources Akiyama, Hanji 秋山範二. 1935. Dōgen no kenkyū 『道元の研究』. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Akiyama, Manabu 秋山学範二. 2008. Jiun to kegon shisō. Koten kodaigaku kisoron no tame ni 「慈雲と華厳思想—古典古代学基礎論のために」. Koten kodaigaku『古典古代学』 1: 1–27.

40

 Paul elaborates on this claim (Paul 1993: 164–195).

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Bloom, Alfred. 2004. Living in Amida’s Universal Vow: Essays in Shin Buddhism. Bloomington: World Wisdom. Bodiford, William M. 2006. Remembering Dogen: Eiheiji and Dogen Hagiography. The Journal of Japanese Studies 32 (1): 1–21. Bohner, Hermann. 1940. Shōtoku Taishi. Tokyo: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens. de Rosny, Léon. 1876. Zitu-Go Kyau – Dy-Zi Kyau: L’Enseignement De La Vérité: Ouvrage Du Philosophe Kôbaudaïsi, Et L’Enseignement De La Jeunesse. Paris: Impr. de la Revue orientale et américaine. Dennis, Mark. 2011. Rethinking Premodern Japanese Buddhist Texts. A Case Study of Prince Shōtoku’s Sangyō-Gisho. Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception 1 (1): 13–35. Dumoulin, Heinrich. 1959. Das Buch Genjōkōan aus dem Shōbōgenzō des Zen-Meisters Dōgen. Monumenta Nipponica 15 (3–4): 217–232. Enryō, Inoue. 1893. Zenshū tetsugaku joron. Tōkyō: Tetsugaku Shoin. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2004. Truth and Method. Ed. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. London: Continuum. Godart, Gerard Clinton. 2004. Tracing the Circle of Truth: Inoue Enryō on the History of Philosophy and Buddhism. The Eastern Buddhist 36: 106–133. Hanayama, Shinshō 花山信勝. 1933. Hokke gisho no kenkyū 『法華義疏の研究』. Toyko: Tōyō Bunko. ———. 1936. Shōtoku taishi to nihon bunka 『聖徳太子と日本文化』. Tokyo: Naikaku Insatsu Kyoku. ———. 1963. Prince Shōtoku and Japanese Buddhism. Studies in Japanese Philosophy 4: 23–48. Heine, Steven. 2003. Abbreviation or Aberration: The Role of the Shushōgi in Modern Sōtō Zen Buddhism. In Buddhism in the Modern World: Adaptations of an Ancient Tradition, ed. Charles S. Prebish. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heisig, J.W., T.P.  Kasulis, and J.C.  Maraldo, eds. 2011. Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Himi, Kiyoshi 氷見潔. 1990. Tanabe tetsugaku kenkyū: Shūkyō tetsugaku no kanten kara 『田辺 哲学研究—宗教哲学の観点から』. Tokyo: Hokuju Shuppan. Ikeda, Eishun 池田英俊. 1976. Meiji no bukkyō. Sono kōdō to shisō 『明治の仏教—その行動 と思想』. Tokyo: Hyōronsha. Inoue, Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎. 1897. Kurze Übersicht über die Entwicklung der philosophischen Ideen in Japan. Trans. August Gramatzky. Berlin: Reichsdruckerei. Inoue, Enryō 井上圓了. 1913. Tetsukai ichibetsu 『哲界一瞥』. Tokyo: Kokumin Dōtoku Fukyū Kai. Ishimoto, Kiyomatsu, and P.  Emil Naberfeld. 1943. Shushōgi. Eine Zenschrift Für Laien. Monumenta Nipponica 6 (1–2): 355–369. Jauß, Hans Robert. 1970. Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory. New Literary History 2: 7–37. Jullien, François. 2002. Der Umweg über China. Berlin: Merve. Kagamishima, Genryū 鏡島元隆. 1995. Dōgen zenji kenkyū no kaiko to tenbō 「道元禅師研 究の回顧と展望」. In Dōgen shisō no gendaiteki kadai 『道元思想の現代的課題』, ed. Rikizan Ishikawa 石川力山 and Ei’nin Kumamoto 熊本英人, 37–54. Kyōto: Tōeisha. Kagamishima, Hiroyuki 鏡島寛之. 1995. Dōgen zenji kenkyū no dōkō kaiko 「道元禅師研 究の動向・回顧」. Dōgen shisō no gendaiteki kadai 『道元思想の現代的課題』, ed. Rikizan Ishikawa 石川力山 and Ei’nin Kumamoto 熊本英人, 3–36. Kyōto: Tōeisha. Kameya, Seikei 亀谷聖馨. 1911. Seishin kōwa 『精神講話』. Tokyo: Maekawa Bun’eikaku. Kamstra, J.H. 1967. Encounter or Syncretism: The Initial Growth of Japanese Buddhism. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Kanaji, Isamu. 1985. Three Stages in Shōtoku Taishi’s Acceptance of Buddhism. Acta Asiatica 47: 31–47. Katō, Kyōei 加藤教栄. 1909. Kokkei hyakuwa 『滑稽百話』. Tokyo: Bungaku Dōshikai.

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Kim, Hee-Jin. 2004. Eihei Dōgen: Mystical Realist. 3rd ed. Albany: Wisdom Publications. Kinami, Takuichi 木南卓一. 1990. Jiun sonja. Hisseki, shōgai, shisō 「慈雲尊者—筆跡・生 涯・思想」. Bulletin of Tezukayama University 217: 1–40. Kishizawa, Ian 岸澤惟安. 1963. Kōchū no nochi ni sho su 「校注正法眼蔵ののちに書す」. In Shōbōgenzō gekan 『正法眼蔵下巻』, ed. Etō Sokuō 衛藤即応, 323–329. Tokyo: Iwanami. Kiyotaki, Chiryū 清滝知竜. 1907. Gakusha yori mitaru kōbō daishi 『学者より観たる弘法大 師』. Kyoto: Rokudai Shinposha. Koganemaru, Taisen 小金丸泰仙. 2009. Jiun sonja ni manabu shōbōgenzō 『慈雲尊者に学ぶ正 法眼蔵』. Tokyo: Daihōrinkaku. Kopf, Gereon. 2005. Critical Comments on Nishida’s Use of Chinese Buddhism. Journal of Chinese Philosophy 32 (2): 313–329. Krummel, John. 2011. Kūkai. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford. edu/archives/fall2011/entries/kukai/. Kurebayashi, Kōdō 榑林皓堂, Gakusui Nagahisa 永久岳水, and Shōkin Furuta 古田紹欽. 1972. Genzōka to genzō kenkyūka 「眼蔵家と眼蔵研究家」. In Shōbōgenzō zenkō 『正法眼蔵全 講』, ed. Ian Kishizawa 岸澤惟安, 1–3. Geppō 月報. Tokyo: Daihōrinkaku. Kurokami, Shōichirō 黒上正一郎. 1935. Shōtoku taishi no shinkō shisō 『聖徳太子の信仰思想 と日本文化創業』. Tokyo: Daiichi Koto Gakko Shoshinkai. Maraldo, John C. 1998. Buddhist Philosophy: Japanese. In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig. London: Routledge. ———. 2010. Nishida Kitaro. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford. edu/entries/nishida-kitaro/. Matsubara, Kan 松原寛. 1935. Shinran no tetsugaku 『親鸞の哲学』. Tokyo: Monasu. Masunaga, Reihō 増永霊鳳. 1939. Tanabe hajime hakase cho shōbōgenzō no tetsugaku shikan 「田辺元博士著正法眼蔵の哲学私観」. Shūkyō Kenkyū 『宗教研究』 3: 616–630. Matsunaga, Daigan, and Alicia Matsunaga. 1974. Foundation of Japanese Buddhism. Los Angeles: Buddhist Books International. Matsuoka, Shigeo 松岡茂生. 2009. Shinran shūkyō tetsugaku no kenkyū 『親鸞宗教哲学の研 究』. Nagoya: Maruzen Nagoya Shuppan Sabisu Senta. Miki, Kiyoshi 三木清. 1999. Pasukaru, Shinran 『パスカル・親鸞』. Kyoto: Tōeisha. Mizuno, Kōgen. 1991. Buddhist Sūtras: Origin, Development, Transmission. 4th ed. Tokyo: Kōsei Publishing. ———. 1992. The Beginnings of Buddhism. 5th ed. Tokyo: Kōsei Publishing. Müller, Ralf. 2013. ‘Dōgen spricht auch von…’. Zitate des Zen-Patriarchen in Nishidas Philosophie. In Kitarō Nishida in der Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Rolf Elberfeld and Yoko Arisaka. Freiburg: Alber-Verlag. ———. 2016. Nishitani’s Reading of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō (manuscript). Nanjō, Bun’yū 南條文雄. 1889. Butsumon risshi hen 『佛門立志編』. Tokyo: Tetsugaku Shoin. Nishiari, Bokusan. 2005. Shōbōgenzō keiteki 『正法眼蔵啓迪』, 3 vols. Tokyo: Daihōrinkaku. Nishitani, Keiji. 1982. Religion and Nothingness. Trans. Jan van Bragt. Berkeley: University of California Press. Oka, Sōtan 丘宗潭. 1927. Zen no shinkō 『禅の信仰』. Tokyo: Kōmeisha. Okamura, Keishin 岡村圭真. 1963. Jiun no shōgai to shisō 「慈雲の生涯と思想」. Bokubi 『墨美』 127: 2–11. Ono, Tōta 小野藤太. 1903. Nihon bukkyō tetsugaku 『日本仏教哲学』. Tokyo: Bunmeidō. ———. 1904. Kōbō daishi den 『弘法大師伝』. Tokyo: Bunmeisha. ———. 1905. Shingon Tetsugaku 『真言哲学』. Tokyo: Shūkyō Kenkyūkai. Paul, Gregor. 1993. Philosophie in Japan: Von den Anfängen bis zur Heian-Zeit. Eine Kritische Untersuchung. München: Iudicium. ———. 2001. Buddhist Philosophy in Japan, Post-Meiji. In Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy, ed. Oliver Leaman, 89–95. London: Routledge. Saitō, Takako. 2010. In the Search of the Absolute. Kuki Shūzō and Shinran. In Classical Japanese Philosophy, ed. James W. Heisig, 232–246. Nanzan: Nagoya.

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Stone, Jacqueline I. 2003. Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Takeuchi, Yoshinori 武内義範. 1941. Kyōgyō shinshō no tetsugaku 『教行信証の哲学』. Tokyo: Kōbundō. Tanabe, Hajime 田辺元. 1939. Shōbōgenzō no tetsugaku shikan 『正法眼蔵の哲学私観』. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Tanaka, Kaiō 田中海應. 1937. Jiun sonja no shisō 「慈雲尊者の思想」. In Kinsei nihon shisōka ron 『近世日本思想家論』, ed. Tetsujirō Inoue 井上哲次郎, 79–93. Tokyo: Risōsha. Tanimoto, Tomeri 谷本富. 1908. Nihon bunmeishi jō ni okeru kōbō daishi 日本文明史上におけ る弘法大師. Tokyo: Rokumeikan. Terada, Yakichi 寺田弥吉. 1935. Shinran no tetsugaku 『親鸞の哲学』. Tokyo: Kensetsusha. Theunissen, Michael. 2000. Pindar: Menschenlos und Wende der Zeit. Hamburg: C.  H. Beck Verlag. Tuck, Andrew P. 1990. Comparative Philosophy and the Philosophy of Scholarship: On the Western Interpretation of Nāgārjuna. New York: Oxford University Press. Ueda, Shizuteru. 1995. Kaisetsu [commentary]. In Daijō butten 『大乗 仏典 23: Dōgen 道元』, ed. Shizuteru Ueda and Seizan Yanagida, 93–255. Tōkyō: Chūō kōron sha 中央公論社. Ueyama, Shunpei 上山春平. 2004. Shinjitsu no hito jiun sonja 『真実の人慈雲尊者』. Tokyo: Daihōrinkaku. Victoria, Brian Daizen. 2006. Zen at War. 2nd ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Wakatsuki, Shōgo 若月正吾. 1986. Dōgen zenji to sono shūhen 『道元禅師とその周辺』. Tokyo: Daitō shuppan. Watt, Paul B. 1983. Jiun Sonja (1718–1804). Life and Thought. Ann Arbor: Michigan. ———. 1999. Jiun Sonja. In Buddhist Spirituality: Later China, Korea, Japan, and the Modern World, ed. Takeuchi Yoshinori, 348–358. Watsuji, Tetsurō. 1998. Shamon dōgen [The Buddhist Dōgen]. In Nihon seishinshi kenkyū. Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten 岩波書店. Weitsman, Mel, Michael Wenger, and Shōhaku Okumura, eds. 2012. Dōgen’s Genjō Kōan: Three Commentaries. Berkeley: Counterpoint. Yamagami, Shōfū 山上嘨風. 1906. Dōgen zenji no uchūkan 「道元禅師の宇宙観」. Wayūshi 『和融社』 10: 32–39. Yamasaki, Taikō. 1988. Shingon: Japanese Esoteric Buddhism. Boston: Shambhala. Yasutani, Haku’un. 1996. Flowers Fall: A Commentary of Dōgen’s Genjōkōan. Boston: Shambhala. Yodono, Yōjun 淀野耀淳. 1911. Dōgen no shūkyō oyobi tetsugaku 「道元の宗教及び哲学」. Tōyō tetsugaku 『東洋哲学』 18(3): 1–9, (4): 16–29, (5): 15–29, (6): 16–25, (7): 13–23. Yuasa, Yasuo. 1993. The Body, Self-Cultivation, and Ki-Energy. New York: SUNY. Yuien 唯円. 1996. Tannishō: Passages Deploring Deviations of Faith. Trans. Shōjun Bandō and Harold Stewart. Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research. Ralf Müller is currently a research fellow at the Institute for Philosophy located in the University of Hildesheim (Germany). His research interests involve philosophy of language and culture, particularly intercultural philosophy following Ernst Cassirer. In addition, he studies regional philosophies including  pre-modern Buddhist and modern  Japanese philosophy. After completing a doctoral dissertation on “Dōgen’s language thinking: Systematic perspectives from history and the theory of symbols“ at Humboldt University (Berlin, Germany) and postdoctoral studies for two years at Kyoto University (Japan), he has become the principal investigator of the research project “Translating Philosophy in/to Japan” (“Übersetzung von Philosophie nach Japan in kulturphilosophischer Perspektive”) and is also the founding member of the Research Network “Morphology as Scientific Paradigm” (both funded by the German Research Council, DFG). He has published in various languages on themes such as “The  Discovery of Language in Zen: Inoue Enryō’s Prolegomena on the Philosophy of Zen School of 1893” or “The Becoming of Form and the Formlessness of Form: Contributions to the Philosophy of Life  by Ernst  Cassirer and Nishida Kitarō.” For details see www.ralfmueller.eu.

Chapter 7

Interaction Between Japanese Buddhism and Confucianism Tomomi Asakura

In discussions of the “three teachings” (C. sanjiao 三教), it is the rivalry between Buddhism and Confucianism that has had a significant impact on the intellectual history of Japan. Buddhism had been predominant for centuries until its political power was greatly diminished during the reunification process under ODA Nobunaga 織田信長 (1534–1582); subsequently, Neo-Confucianism was adopted by the Tokugawa shogunate and the purified version of its ideology may be regarded as the backbone of the Meiji Restoration (J. Meiji ishin 明治維新). Yet, Buddhism has gradually reclaimed its place as the most important spiritual tradition to the extent that modern Japanese philosophers no longer even mention Confucian thought, especially since the birth of a Japanese style of philosophy represented by the Kyoto School.1 Against this historical background, it may seem questionable if anything like an effective interaction between Japanese Buddhist-inspired philosophy and Confucianism ever existed. However, the interaction between Confucianism and “Buddhist” philosophy calls for an investigation, and we can do this by paying careful attention to the status of “Japanese philosophy” itself. Historically speaking, the modern Westernization process in Japan was mediated primarily through the Confucian intellectual atmosphere dominant in nineteenth-century Japan. The assimilation of Western philosophy was no exception: European philosophical terms were translated into Japanese by exploiting the rich heritage of Confucian/Neo-Confucian expressions (Saitō

1  As described below, the birth of a Japanese style of philosophy is generally attributed to NISHIDA Kitarō (1870–1945). He should be regarded as the first Japanese philosopher in the sense that he attempted to contribute to the metaphysical tradition of Western philosophy (Asakura 2014a: 40–44). In what follows, I use the term “philosophy” to designate the intellectual tradition of Greek origin.

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1977).2 The most famous case of this mediation is seen in the etymological construction of the Japanese term for philosophy itself, “tetsugaku” 哲學, short for “kitetsugaku” 希哲學, by which NISHI Amane 西周 (1829–1897) alludes to ZHOU Dunyi’s 周敦頤 (1017–1073) famous passage expressing the aspiration for wisdom within the Confucian intellectual paradigm. Another remarkable example is the term for metaphysics, the term unanimously rendered as “keijijōgaku” 形而上學— since chosen by INOUE Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎 (1856–1944) in his influential glossary of philosophical terms—which explicitly follows an expression in the Ten Wings (C. Shiyi 十翼) commentaries on the Book of Changes (C. Yijing 易經).3 Besides these basic terms, which are now indispensable in modern East Asian culture, innumerable Confucian/Neo-Confucian expressions were used in early Japanese translations of Western philosophical literature.4 Appropriating the rich intellectual heritage of East Asia, Meiji intellectuals could be excused for believing that they had successfully absorbed Western philosophy (Asakura 2014a: 29–40). Yet, this assimilation or absorption by no means makes Japanese philosophy Confucian. Today, it is almost unnecessary to note that modern Japanese philosophy is influenced primarily by Buddhism and not by Confucianism. Ever since the publication of NISHIDA Kitarō’s 西田幾多郎 (1870–1945) Zen no Kenkyū 善の研究 (1911), the work which allowed some contemporary scholars to celebrate the birth of a genuinely Japanese philosophy, no serious Japanese philosopher ever dared to envision something like a “Confucian philosophy” or suggest a Confucian influence; instead, Japanese philosophy was perceived to be fundamentally defined by Buddhist thought. Although Nishida’s sympathy for Buddhism was neither manifest nor simple (as he consistently warns us not to take the juxtaposition of Buddhism and Western philosophy superficially), it is useless to deny that he was profoundly influenced by the Zen tradition, to which he himself attests.5 In addition, the most distinguished school of philosophy in Japan is undoubtedly the Kyoto School, which was so profoundly influenced by Buddhism that one may call modern Japanese philosophy a “Buddhist philosophy.” (Hereafter, I use the term “Buddhist philosophy” mostly in this sense.) It is safe to say that Confucianism as a traditional discipline and a philosophical resource plays almost no role in modern Japanese philosophy. Although it promoted the early assimilation of Western ideas, the intellectual and spiritual tradition of 2  We ought to recognize this Confucian mediation as the preceding condition for the later development of Japanese philosophy. It is this historical context that makes the status of philosophy itself questionable in contemporary Japanese culture (Asakura 2014a: 29–40). 3  The term appears in Inoue’s widely used glossary of philosophical terms, Tetsugaku Jii 哲學字 彙, first published in 1881. He became the first Japanese professor of philosophy at the Imperial University of Tokyo (before him, all the professors of philosophy were Westerners). 4  In particular, the notion of substance, today usually rendered as jittai 實體, tends to be connected with Neo-Confucian theories. Inoue translates it as “taikyoku” (C. taiji 太極). In the first translation of Benedict Spinoza’s (1632–1677) Ethics (1918), OBI Hanji 小尾範治 (1885–1964) translates the “modification of substance” as “hontai no hatsudō” 本體の發動 in the vein of the Neo-Confucian argument concerning yifa/weifa 已發未發. 5  See, in particular, Nishida’s “Letter 1738” (1965–66, 19: 224–225).

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Confucianism was soon completely lost. We need to remind ourselves that the situation is not the same in China. It is well known that the so-called Contemporary New Confucianism, which flourished in Chinese-speaking regions in the latter half of the twentieth century, was a philosophical movement in which a somewhat dogmatic primacy is given to Confucianism. The most significant philosopher of this movement, MOU Zongsan 牟宗三 (1908–1995), attempted to synthesize the three teachings and Western philosophy (Asakura 2014a, 45–46). We should notice that the interaction between Confucian philosophy and Buddhism (and not between Buddhist philosophy and Confucianism) can be seen clearly in his works, so that the following investigation makes frequent reference to his work. In curious contrast to modern Chinese New Confucianism, however, it seems almost impossible to identify a Confucian influence in modern Japanese philosophy. The equivalent of a Buddhist-Confucian interaction nevertheless exists in a somewhat unrecognizable way in modern Japanese philosophy. It is seen in the “problem of morality” (J. dōtoku no mondai 道徳の問題) within the Buddhist-­oriented philosophical scheme. Although Confucianism itself plays no apparent role, the persistent theme of morality in Japanese philosophy today can be regarded as its equivalent because Confucianism is the quintessential form of moral thought in the East Asian traditions. As it is shown in the modern New Confucian concept of “moral metaphysics,” Confucian thought is a “metaphysical” enquiry based on the primacy of moral reason or “moral mind,” and its emphasis is always on the practical aspect of reason. This basic understanding of Confucianism, most clearly proclaimed by modern Chinese philosophers such as MOU Zongsan, seems to have also been more or less presupposed by almost all of the early modern Japanese intellectuals. Yet, it is during and after the devastation of the Second World War that the philosophical inquiry concerning morality or ethics take on increasing importance among the second generation of the Kyoto School philosophers. We thus need to look into such notions as “morality” (J. dōtokusei 道徳性), “morals” (J. dōtoku 道徳), and “practice” (J. jissen 実践), and the place they occupy in Kyoto School philosophy and its successors in order to clarify the modern version of the Buddhist-­Confucian interaction. It must be added that a consideration of non-Buddhist elements is unavoidable insomuch as a lot of Kyoto School philosophy tries to be rigorously Buddhist. This may sound paradoxical, but it is partly because the study of the relations between various doctrines belongs primarily to the Buddhist tradition in East Asia. This Buddhist tradition is known as “doctrinal classification” (J. kyōsō hanjaku 教相判釋) or, in Chinese panjiao 判教. Conceived by Chinese Buddhists who needed to judge the relations between various Buddhist sutras and doctrines imported from India, it was soon generalized to consider not only Chinese Buddhist theories but also other types of intellectual traditions such as Confucianism and Daoism. Most notably classical doctrinal classification is seen in Kūkai’s 空海 (774–835) tenfold system as presented in his in Jūjū shinron 十住心論 (Treatise on the Ten States of the Mind).6 As we shall see shortly, 6  Kūkai’s Jūjū shinron served as the prototype of comprehensive doctrinal classification in Japan; equally influential is the more literary and introductory discussion on the three teachings in his Sangō shiki 三教指歸.

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even a Kyoto School philosopher found the need to revive this project of doctrinal classification by systematizing all the doctrines known in the modern world, including not only East Asian thought but also Western philosophies. How can such an ambitious Buddhist attempt ignore Confucianism or its modern equivalent? We shall concentrate on the two occasions in the history of modern Japanese philosophy when the problem of morality gained crucial importance. The first concerns the issue of morality among the second generation of Kyoto School philosophers, culminating in the theme of “overcoming modernity,” and its discussion of how to go beyond modernity, thereby transforming society and the world. This discussion is clearly inspired by Confucian ideas. Since this theme is based on the evaluation of past philosophies and thoughts, it is inseparable from a modern version of doctrinal classification conceived by KŌYAMA Iwao 高山岩男 (1905– 1993). The second occasion we will examine in this essay is the postwar Marxist critique of this theme. Inheriting this theme of the Kyoto School, HIROMATSU Wataru 廣松渉 (1933–1994) proceeds to criticize modern Japanese Buddhist philosophy and Buddhism itself from a practical point of view in order to surpass their shortcomings. In both cases, the question is how such notions as morality and morals are problematized in modern Japanese philosophy, or, more specifically, what the place of morality and practice in Buddhist philosophy is? This is the question that will enable us to see the modern version of interaction between Buddhism and Confucianism.

1  T  he Notion of Morality in the Philosophy of the Kyoto School The notion of morality has no comfortable place in modern Japanese Buddhist philosophy. Before turning to the problem of morality in the Kyoto School, we must first draw attention to a few modern Japanese thinkers who have explicitly written on Confucianism. The following are a few random examples: WATSUJI Tetsurō 和 辻哲郎 (1889–1960) wrote on Confucius, TANABE Hajime 田邊元 (1885–1962) explored “Confucian ontology,” and MARUYAMA Masao 丸山眞男 (1914–1996) studied Edo period (1603–1868) Confucianism extensively. These thinkers are not regarded as “Confucian philosophers” akin to the Chinese New Confucians. Whereas it may suffice to point out in the case of Maruyama that he worked exclusively in the field of political science (Maruyama 1974), the other two philosophers’ relationship with Confucianism deserves to be briefly considered before examining the later Kyoto School philosophers’ notion of morality.7

7  Watsuji’s influence on Kōyama is immense, not only in the understanding of Buddhism but also in the typological perspective on human cultures (Hanazawa 1999: 51–52).

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Let us, for the moment, consider the case of Watsuji. There is no doubt that his book on Confucius presents few original ideas, compared to his celebrated interpretation of early Buddhism, which remains one of the most significant philosophical interpretations of early Buddhist theories (Watsuji 1961–63, 5: 1–293; 6: 257–356). But does his innovative work on ethics or moral philosophy show any Confucian influence, especially since the term “ethics” (J. rinri 倫理) already reminds us of this particular tradition? In this work, he heavily relies on the etymology of philosophical terms in Japanese and his beautiful elucidation of the idea of “human relations” (J. jinrin 人倫) reminds us of his profound Confucian learning. Nevertheless, he continues to argue for the need to distinguish ethics from morals, stating that subjective morality does not reveal its ontological foundation in human relations: in ancient Chinese moral thought, morality tends to be explained only on the basis of subjective moral consciousness (Watsuji 1961–63, 9: 7–13). It seems as though his reference to Confucianism is restricted to historical and etymological descriptions only. Unlike Watsuji, Tanabe’s early attitude toward Confucianism—at least at the time when he was still a prominent Kant scholar—is profoundly sympathetic. His understanding of Confucianism is not superficial but deeply rooted in his mentality; he somewhat anachronistically embodies the spirituality of the early Meiji literati, righteously characterizing Confucianism as a paradigm based on morality and moral emotion. In his short essay On Confucian Ontology (Jukyōteki sonzairon ni tsuite 儒教的存在論について), he distinguishes philosophy, monotheism, and Confucianism from this viewpoint, using the term ontology in a very ambiguous sense: Greek ontology is based on artistic experience, Judeo-Christian ontology is based on religious experience, and Confucian ontology is based on moral experience. He describes these three as “representational or plastic,” “voluntary,” and “emotional,” respectively (Tanabe 1963, 4: 289–301). Tanabe clearly understands Confucianism as a kind of moral metaphysics in the sense in which the Chinese New Confucians use this term. Such a reference to Confucianism nevertheless disappears in Tanabe’s later work. This coincides with his turn from Kantianism and the philosophy of science to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770–1831) dialectic and existentialism. At the same time, Buddhism comes gradually to dominate in his writings, especially after the end of the Second World War. Is it again plausible to conclude that there is no significant Buddhist-Confucian interaction in this philosopher of the Kyoto School? We must not be deceived, however, by the apparent lack of references to Confucianism. A kind of Buddhist-Confucian interaction is recognizable in a tremendously different form in modern Japanese philosophy, as has been suggested above. Historically speaking, Confucianism has been critical of Buddhism from a political and social point of view, in the name of morality and justice. This means that a critique of Buddhism from the moral or practical viewpoint in general resonates with the traditional Confucian position. Even if Confucianism itself does not appear to play any role, the consideration of morality and political thought and its persistent conflict with Buddhist philosophy corresponds to the operation of

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Confucian thought in the traditional “three teachings” paradigm. Furthermore, the theme of morality is prevalent in the wartime and postwar Kyoto School philosophers who are influenced by the Confucian spirit of Tanabe. Although the “Kyoto School” label seems to have no need for explanation as long as we are talking about the philosophy of Nishida or Tanabe. Therefore, I would like to turn to three important philosophers from the younger generation, often referred to as the second generation of the Kyoto School, namely, KŌYAMA Iwao, NISHITANI Keiji 西谷啓治 (1900–1990), and KŌSAKA Masaaki 高坂正 顕 (1900–1969). In the following discussion, we will exclude an examination of the discourse of Kōsaka, referring to Tanabe, instead, because these two show considerable similarity in their thought. These Kyoto School philosophers are known to be participants in the infamous wartime symposium concerning “the world-historical standpoint” of the time and the “overcoming of modernity.”8 Mainly because of this, they tended to be neglected in postwar Japanese academia. After the devastation of the Second World War, they ceased to be regarded as living philosophical minds: they were officially purged from Kyoto University, and Kōyama was not permitted to return to his alma mater. Tanabe’s postwar seclusion must be understood in this context as well. It is no exaggeration to say that these core members of the second generation of the Kyoto School have long been treated as something akin to “war criminals” in postwar Japan. At minimum, they were regarded as “rightwing” conservatives or reactionaries not only for their wartime activity but also for their politically conservative attitude and their persistent emphasis on morality, all of which are regarded as somewhat controversial in postwar Japan. Several recent works have elucidated previously unknown or misunderstood aspects of their wartime activity (Hanazawa 1999; Ohashi 2001). For example, their involvement in politics was clearly guided by Tanabe, then professor of philosophy at Kyoto Imperial University. A sense of mission drove these younger philosophers, and their discourses were intended to be a countermeasure against extreme nationalism (hence the “world-historical standpoint”). Furthermore, their concern was focused on the reconstruction of the country after the predictable catastrophe. Their moral attitude appears to have been almost naively innocent; their driving force was not merely political or cultural but primarily moral, as is shown in the key word of their discourses, “moral energy.” It is therefore unfair to regard their wartime activity as a mere submission to Japanese militarism. As mentioned above, they continued to work for the reconstruction of Japanese society even after being officially purged from the university, and the moral c­ haracter 8  The 1941 symposium on the “World-Historical Standpoint and Japan” and related symposia must be distinguished from the “Overcoming Modernity” symposium led by literary critics (Calichman 2008: xi–xii). Yet, the former has also been widely regarded as an ideological justification of the Pacific War and the very idea of a “world-historical standpoint” (sekaishiteki tachiba 世界史的立 場) is often labeled as the mere ideology of the East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (daitō’a kyōkeiken 大東亞共榮圏). Various aspects of theme of “overcoming modernity” in the Kyoto School are discussed in recent studies by, among others, Hanazawa (1999), Ōhashi (2001), as well as Sakai and Isomae (2010).

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of their concern is radically expressed in their postwar engagement in moral education in the newly independent Japan. The socio-cultural agenda of the construction of Japan’s moral education seen among these philosophers is a curious phenomenon, which needs to be discussed elsewhere. There is no doubt that the engagement in moral education by these philosophers was driven by an urgent aspiration to reconstruct a sound civil society after the devastation of war and by a moral passion to reorganize Japanese spirituality. Nishitani and Kōsaka cooperated with AMANO Teiyū 天野貞祐 (1884–1980), Minister of Education in the cabinet of Prime Minister Yoshida, to set up a system of moral education.9 Amano himself was revered for his honorable character and for his Kant scholarship: his pioneering Japanese translation of the Critique of Pure Reason (1921) is still highly esteemed even after the appearance of several newer translations. The discussion of moral education was indeed nurtured in their basically Kantian intellectual atmosphere, which may present an important example of their remarkable similarity to the Chinese New Confucians. The problem of morality, however, is not limited to the problem of moral education. Here we have to see how Kōyama treated the idea of morality in his mostly introductory books on philosophy for general readers. According to him, the problem concerns the very notion of morality itself and the fact that people no longer understand what morality is. In industrialized society, the notion of morality is often seen as unintelligible. He describes the problem with the notion of morality in the following way: The trouble is in the very idea of morality rather than in morality itself. The trouble of morality has arisen from the trouble of the idea of morality. And the origin of the confusion in the idea of morality can be detected in the following two views: that which sees morality as altering in meaning over the course of time, and that which sees morality as changing itself according to differences in classes and societies. (Kōyama 1958: 11)

One notices here a kind of parallelism with the Chinese New Confucians. MOU Zongsan, describing the problematic of morality, also laments the loss of the notion itself as follows: “People nowadays tend to think that morality is restraining… the truth is that morality is for liberating and fulfilling human beings” (Mou 1983: 78–79). The postwar Kyoto philosophers would have fully agreed with this contemporaneous Chinese philosopher. Although the former seldom refer to Confucianism, their cultural and political effort appears to be comparable to that of the old Confucians or the modern version of Confucianism revitalized in the Chinese New Confucian movement. Here let us examine Kōyama’s simplistic and almost vulgar formula that contrasts three different stages of the human mind. Just like Kūkai’s description of the three teachings, which is not exactly a full doctrinal classification but a rough sketch of his Buddhist position, the postwar Kōyama contrasts the position of philosophy to spiritual standpoints, showing a basic understanding of what philosophy is (as far as Kyoto School philosophy is concerned) by contrasting it with two important  The draft entitled Kokumin jissen yōryō 國民實踐要領 became the prototype of postwar Japanese moral education (Amano 1970, 4: 415ff).

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n­ on-­philosophical stages of human development, that is, morality and religiosity (Kōyama 1967: 236ff). His description of the three (or four) stages of one’s development can be summarized in the following way: The first stage is the realm of common or vulgar beliefs about sensual pleasures, which can be called the naturalistic stage; the second is the ethical position of morally conscious persons, which can be called the moral stage; the third is the nearest position to the standpoint of philosophy, which can be called the religious stage. In this description, there is no doubt that Kōyama persists with the existentialist problematization of the “stages on life’s way,” in the same vein as Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855). At the same time, however, his course of pursuit can be seen in the light of Confucian-Buddhist interaction, namely, in the crucial role it gives to the moral stage. Kōyama repeatedly expresses admiration for Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) discovery of antinomies as the “exemplar” of the philosophical mind that had ascended through these stages. It is the dialectical development of reason to negate itself through itself. Especially exemplary is Kant’s exposition of the dialectic of theoretical reason: pure reason faces an irresolvable controversy from within, known as an antinomy, to reveal the primacy of practical reason. Kant not only clearly shows the antinomies of theoretical reason but also an antinomy of practical reason, thereby posing the inexhaustible theme of the postulates of practical reason.10 It is debatable, however, whether Kant adequately grasps the religious stage with his formula of the antinomy of practical reason. The trouble is not so much with the postulation of a monotheistic God but with the formulation of the antinomy itself: the idea of the contradiction between virtue and happiness. Kōyama criticizes Kant for formulating the antinomy of practical reason as such a commonplace and non-­philosophical dilemma.11 In contrast to the Kantian formulation, the purest and most genuine form of the antinomy of moral reason must be found within virtue itself: it is the “contradiction between duties” (Kōyama 1976: 22–28). True antinomy must be found not between virtue and happiness but between duties themselves, that is, in the conflicts of duties (J. gimukattō 義務葛藤). A good example of this can be seen in the true story of an honorable Japanese judge who died of malnutrition shortly after the war because he strictly followed the law that forbade buying food from the black market (Kōyama 1958: 209). In this case, obeying the law and keeping one’s life are two conflicting moral duties. Of course, one can say that it is not necessary to follow a law that is by no means justifiable. One can also treat this conundrum as a mere “borderline case” of moral judgments. However, Kōyama does not elaborate on this point; rather, he says such conflicts of moral duties must be seen as a profoundly human experience, a serious “moral experience” with which moral reason ultimately turns out to be powerless and desperate (Kōyama 1958: 213). It must be noted that we cannot overcome such contradictions as long as we hold to the very standpoint of morality. The conflict of duties means the self-­contradiction  For example, socialist ideals are profoundly postulated by practical reason (Kōyama 1976: 22).  The problem of Kant’s formulation of the antinomy of practical reason is also recognized in a very different manner in New Confucian philosophy (Asakura 2011).

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of Kantian “universal legislation” itself. Reason, then, is forced to degrade and negate itself in a catastrophic way, revealing the limits of reason and morality. This recognition of the limits of morality is indeed a basic view shared by the Kyoto School philosophers, whose existentialist tendency is already clearly manifested in Nishida’s writings: Is even morality, which is supposedly autonomous, really self-sufficient? The ultimate victory of moral good over moral evil would involve the negation of morality itself. The moral will possesses this self-contradiction within itself. (Nishida 1987: 66)

In such a tragic worldview, we can no longer satisfy ourselves with either Kant’s primacy of practical reason or Confucian moral metaphysics. However, it is also true that only those who have a keen sense of morality will recognize such an irresolvable contradiction. Tanabe pursues this point further, designating his position as an “absolute critique”: The self-consciousness that all things are in absolute disruption because of antinomies and self-contradictions is the final result of the demand for self-identical unity in reason. Pure self-identity is possible only for the absolute. Insofar as reason forgets its standpoint of finitude and relativity and erroneously presumes itself to be absolute, it is destined to fall into absolute contradiction and disruption. (Tanabe 1986: 44)

We are destined to face such a self-negation of morality as long as the latter’s standpoint is universal legislation. Any serious moral mind must reach at least up to this point, that is, “one who does not notice this cannot be a philosopher” (Nishida 1987: 85). From the self-negation of moral reason, however, a new sphere will be opened up in a dialectical movement. From this “absolute contradiction” and despair and the resulting self-negation of morality, an absolutely universal field will be opened up, which is the field of absolute contradiction. In this context, Kōyama mentions not only the discourses of Kamakura Buddhism but also the Hegelian interpretation of Greek tragedy, the so-called “reconciliation” with destiny, and Hegel’s notion of religion. This third stage would be called the “religious” realm. However, this is a problematic notion to which we shall return later. In this way, it is a kind of apologetic philosophy that describes three steps of the human mind: the naturalistic stage is sublated in the antinomy of theoretical reason whereas the moral stage is further sublated in the absolute contradiction of reason. This contradiction opens up the religious and philosophical stages. There is no doubt that, among these stages, only the last step makes philosophy possible. Although Kōyama emphasizes that the religious stage itself is not the same as philosophy, philosophy is reached only by proceeding through these stages. Therefore, morality constitutes merely the intermediate level toward the final phase, which would be called the religious. Only by going beyond the moral realm and reaching the religious stage do we begin to understand absolute reality. For this very reason, however, morality has pivotal importance for philosophy: we cannot go beyond morality without first being bound up in it! The formulation described above has its own importance in presenting the meaning of the moralistic worldview within the framework of the religious worldview.

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We are now able to see how the Kyoto School thinkers evaluate the standpoint of morality. However, Confucianism is relevant for the discussion of morality in the East-Asian intellectual traditions. Unlike the Chinese New Confucians, the Kyoto School thinkers never thought of morality as something ultimate; yet, to insist that morality is indeed the necessary intermediary is, in principle, a way to understand the meaning of morality and why it matters. These are two questions that are also at the center of Chinese New Confucian thought. From Tanabe to Kōyama, we find the hidden Confucian moral mind more or less surfacing within and interacting with their predominantly religious or Buddhist philosophies. This can be witnessed in the Kyoto School philosophers’ practical involvement in the transformation of Japanese society and in their view of the historical stages of the nation. It also appears in the evaluation of the meaning of morality in philosophy, which is extensively discussed in Kōyama’s postwar writings. Yet, it is still uncertain how the place of morality is secured in his philosophy.

2  Kōyama’s Doctrinal Classification Generally speaking, Kōyama is regarded as the most systematic theorist in the Kyoto School, despite having received less international recognition than Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani. It must not be forgotten that he was among the core members of the school, heir-apparent of Nishida and Tanabe at least until the end of the war. Among his earliest works in the 1930s are the acclaimed monographs on Nishida and Hegel, and it is no exaggeration to say that his first book-length monograph on Nishida’s philosophy laid the groundwork for Nishida scholarship today. Simultaneously, Kōyama wrote on a relatively unknown theme, Cultural Typology (Bunkaruikeigaku 文化類型學), which attempted to characterize various world cultures such as Greek, Indian, Christian, Buddhist, Chinese, European and Japanese. This typological scheme developed into a theory of world history during the 1940s.12 It is from this typological viewpoint that he tried to classify all the significant types of thought, establishing a modern panjiao system that covers all the philosophical theories in the world.13 The essence of the Kyoto School spirit is crystallized in this postwar reconsideration of the Buddhist notion of “doctrinal classification.” In Kōyama’s 1948 book, Reason, Spirit and Existence (Risei, seishin, jitsuzon 理 性・精神・實存), none of these three notions in the title should be interpreted in

12  In the six-volume Collected Works of Kōyama Iwao (Kōyama iwao chosakushū 高山岩男著作 集), the third volume contains the relevant essays that culminates in Cultural Typology (Bunkaruikeigaku 文化類型學) (1939). These studies naturally contain some full-fledged discussions of Confucianism; yet, its overall estimation is somewhat negative (Kōyama 2007–09, 3: 90–102). Volume 4 of Kōyama’s Collected Works contains the relevant essays, among which the most important is The Philosophy of World-History (Sekaishi no tetsugaku 世界史の哲學) (Kōyama 2007–09: 4: 7–377). 13  The following description of Kōyama’s doctrinal classification is based on Asakura (2014b).

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their commonly understood senses.14 These notions should be taken as technical terms, representing the types of thought and philosophy in the world. Since he consistently put them in Japanese-style quotation marks, these terms will be translated with the initial letter capitalized in the following discussion. First, Reason (J. risei 理性) must be understood in the sense used in rational philosophy or the “philosophy of reason” (G. Vernunftphilosophie), of which Kant is undeniably the most significant exemplar in the history of Western philosophy with his fundamental conception of the primacy of practical reason (Kōyama 1967: 358). Secondly, Spirit (J. seishin 精神) is considered in the context of the “philosophy of spirit” (G. Geistesphilosophie), corresponding to the further development of rational philosophy and the construction of a grandiose “pantheistic” systematization. This effort to establish an absolutely monistic standpoint is exemplified by Hegel. Finally, Existence (J. jitsuzon 實存) is the notion found in existential philosophy or the philosophy of Existence (G. Existenzphilosophie). Kōyama mentions Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Jaspers as the philosophers of this type (Kōyama 1967: 351). These types, formalistic as they seem, are also simply referred to as “idealism” (J. risōshugi 理想主義), “pantheism” (J. hanshinron 汎神論), and “existentialism” (J. jitzuzonshugi 實存主義). In addition to providing a foundation for a general typology of thought and philosophy, Kōyama attempts to study the relationships between these types. The nature of these three types of philosophy has been considerably studied by the previous historians of philosophy, both in the West and in Japan, since German Idealism is one of the central themes in education and research in modern Japanese academia. Indeed, the specialists of German Idealism have sufficiently investigated the necessary development of philosophy from Kant’s system to Hegel’s, which exemplifies the internal evolution from Reason to Spirit. However, the other type of evolution, from Spirit to Existence, remains obscure in previous studies. Hegel’s comprehensive philosophical system breaks down, and existential philosophies, whose necessity is not clearly understood in the history of philosophy, emerge as an afterthought to the end of systems. Kōyama problematizes the emergence of existentialism as an immanent development of the philosophical system in the following way: After long consideration, I have come to the conclusion that the movement from Reason to Spirit and from Spirit to Existence can be found in many areas as far as each of these notions is taken in a wider sense. The development from Reason to Spirit has been investigated mainly from the standpoint of philosophy as the most colorful development of thought in the history of philosophy. This is natural since there is the theoretical necessity in this development from Reason to Spirit to fulfill the deep requirement of reason on which philosophy relies. And the transformation from Spirit to Existence has been neither problematized properly from a philosophical standpoint nor treated as a significant problem in the history of philosophy. This transformation from Spirit to Existence has been questioned instead from a religious standpoint. (Kōyama 1967: 383)  The essay, originally published in 1948, is reproduced as the second part of the 1967 title. Based on this edition, the text is also contained in Collected Works with an excellent introduction by MORI Tetsurō (Kōyama 2007–09, 5: 7–184).

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The two movements or transformations are not equally studied in the history of philosophy. The movement from Reason to Spirit is theoretically or logically explainable as the internal course of development: “The only possible system of reason is pantheism,” as Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) would claim. However, the transformation from Spirit to Existence remains barely understandable; rather, this movement tends to be interpreted as the conversion to religious faith beyond any theoretical necessity. Only by clarifying the logical necessity of a move from a pantheistic system to existentialism can the study of the history of philosophy be brought to perfection. The logical necessity of an existential turn is, however, neither comprehensible in formal logic nor in transcendental logic. The existential turn cannot be explained by Western metaphysical systems, including dialectical logic, because even Hegel’s dialectic cannot explain the breakdown of his own system. In order to comprehend the existential turn as an internal development of a philosophical system, it is therefore necessary to discover a kind of logic or metaphysical system that can explain this event. In other words, it is necessary to find the logic of the existential turn together with new philosophical notions that make it possible to comprehend this turn. Such is Kōyama’s initial presentation of the problem (Kōyama 1967: 378–384). In order to construct such a theory or a logic that comprehends the dynamism of these movements with internal necessity, Kōyama continues to search for historical sources in the history of Buddhism.15 He provides a detailed discussion of “Indian, Chinese, and Japanese” Buddhism in its variety of doctrines, which culminates in the unifying system of doctrinal classification that gradually formed in East Asia, which Kōyama calls “the philosophy of philosophy” (Kōyama 1967: 395). This discussion on the history of Buddhism is unique among modern Japanese philosophies: Nishida and Tanabe attempted to connect the thought of Western philosophy immediately with Zen and Pure Land Buddhism, paying almost no attention to the Tendai (C. Tiantai) 天台, Kegon (C. Huayan) 華嚴, Sanron (C. Sanlun) 三論, or Yuishiki (C. Weishi) 唯識 schools. Kōyama is aware of the difficulty that his predecessors had, insisting that the mediation of these Mahāyāna schools is necessary insomuch as these schools contain the most rigorous theoretical speculations and various useful notions in the Buddhist tradition, comparable to Western philosophy. He states this unique observation in the following way: The new doctrinal classification with the threefold notion of Reason-Spirit-Existence opens the way to understand truly in depth the standpoint of Nembutsu and Zen, which established themselves through their intrinsic critique against Mahāyāna Buddhism. …This will allow the intrinsic interaction between the great spiritual heritages of East and West, which still stay apart like parallel lines that never cross. (Kōyama 1967: 2–3)

 Concerning Kōyama’s interpretation of Greek philosophy, it is sufficient only to mention that the development from Reason to Spirit can be seen in the progress of ancient Greek philosophy from Plato to Aristotle; and the equivalent of the existential turn is also recognizable later in Hellenistic philosophy, especially in Plotinus.

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Thus, Kōyama considers that the study of these “scholastic” schools of Buddhism is necessary only as an intermediary to comprehend the non-scholarly and much more mystical teaching of the nembutsu 念仏 and Zen 禅. This explains why he does not show any interest in specific Buddhist ideas other than the notion of doctrinal classification.16 Still, it cannot be emphasized too strongly that Kōyama’s investigation into these Buddhist schools, not to mention his exploration into a modern panjiao system, is a unique case in the Kyoto School. From a typological perspective, the movements and the transformations of various Buddhist doctrines are to be interpreted as analogous to the ones seen in Western philosophy. Concentrating on the difference or “continuous degrees” within this religious tradition, Kōyama detects the meaning of the early history in Indian Buddhism. First, the development from Hīnayāna to Mahāyāna is analogous to that from Reason to Spirit. The birth of Mahāyāna is one of the favorite topics among modern Japanese Buddhist scholars, but Kōyama focuses on the intrinsic logical necessity of this development without any consideration of historical and cultural conditions. The same is true with later developments within Mahāyāna Buddhism. The differences between the “gateway of the holy path” (J. shōdōmon 聖道門) and that of the Pure Land or between the scholastic Chinese schools and Zen Buddhism are so obvious and apparent that the logical-philosophical nature of these differences tends to be much ignored by present-day Buddhologists. Yet, the breakdown of grandiose Buddhist systems, the turn from the Gateway of the Holy Path to that of the Pure Land and the formation of Zen Buddhism, which rejects scholastic systematization, are similar in meaning to the turn from Spirit to Existence (Kōyama 1967: 397–398). Here it is noteworthy that Kōyama’s focus is not on Indian or Chinese Buddhism but on the internal development within Japanese Buddhism, especially within the Tendai School. Unlike the Chinese Tiantai School, the Japanese equivalent, established in the Heian period (794–1185) by Saichō 最澄 (767–822), plays the role of a fountainhead for the subsequent Buddhism in Japan. Almost all important Kamakura Buddhist thinkers studied at Hieizan Enryakuji 比叡山延暦 寺. The great founders of both Japanese Zen 禅宗 and the Pure Land (J. Jōdo shū 浄土宗) schools were trained in Japanese Tendai doctrines. This means that not only were they educated in that school but also that the school itself had previously produced substantial internal debate and significant deviation from Chinese orthodox doctrines. The turn or leap seen in such thinkers as Genshin 源信 (942–1017), Hōnen 法然 (1133–1212), and Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1262) must not be treated similarly with the birth of the Pure Land sūtras in India and Pure Land theorization in China. Instead, it must be seen in the light of the dramatic and necessary transformation of these thinkers who studied in the Japanese Tendai School (Kōyama 1967: 416). This reference to the history of Japanese Buddhism is intended to illustrate the development of the philosophical logic that comprehends the existential turn.

16  For example, Kōyama sees notions such as reason as strictly Western in origin, discarding the possibility of exploiting any possible conceptual relation with the Buddhist notion of rishō 理性 (not risei) (Kōyama 1967: 397).

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Having made this point that Kōyama’s attempt to formulate his doctrinal classification or typology necessitates the logic of the inner relations between each moment, we may now discuss how far he succeeds in these attempts. As was already mentioned, Kōyama sees the turn from the late Tendai doctrine to the Gateway of Pure Land thought as analogous to the existential turn in European philosophy. The existential or rather “metanoetic” interpretation of Shinran’s doctrines was launched by Tanabe in his Philosophy as Metanoetics (Zangedō toshite no tetsugaku 懺悔道 としての哲學). Kōyama adds to Tanabe’s notion of metanoetics the intermediary character of Tendai doctrines. Indeed, such a consideration was entirely neglected in Tanabe’s writings. Kōyama interprets Japanese Zen Buddhism in the same way. While Zen Buddhism seems to have been fully developed in mainland China, he insists that “Dōgen’s Zen Buddhism is in principle nothing other than a practical form of Japanese Tendai Buddhism” (Kōyama 1967: 421). Yet, as far as we can see in Kōyama’s writings, he does not seem to explain sufficiently the internal necessity to move from Tendai thought to Japanese Pure Land doctrines or to Japanese Zen Buddhism. Despite his brief historical review of Japanese Tendai, he does not scrutinize Zhiyi’s 智顗 (538–597) foundational doctrines themselves. There is no doubt that Tiantai doctrine cannot be adequately comprehended simply with a superficial allusion to “pantheistic” philosophical systems. Even in his attempt to understand the trajectory of Buddhist thought with his threefold typological notion, he does not analyze the traditional disputes of doctrinal classification such as the ones seen in the Tiantai and Huayan schools in China. Unlike MOU Zongsan, he does not take any interest in the settlement of traditional problems such as these, although we must not confuse the latter’s predominantly historical interest with Kōyama’s historical-­typological view. At this point, we must see how far the Chinese New Confucianism elucidates the importance of the Tiantai doctrine. If Kamakura Buddhism’s doctrinal departures from Japanese Tendai must be seen as a necessary consequence of the original Chinese Tiantai doctrine, we should seek the key to this departure in the decisive notion of “perfect teaching” (C. yuanjiao, J. engyō 圓教). However, this connection remains rather unclear in Kōyama’s exposition. As MOU Zongsan showed in remarkable depth, the horizon of Tiantai perfect teaching must be seen in its radical difference from the internal and theoretical development of traditional Buddhism (Mou 1977). According to Mou’s own doctrinal classification, or panjiao, the notion of “perfect teaching” characterizes the unprecedented horizon that encompasses and preserves all previous teachings. As such it is itself insurmountable. Mou goes on to define the nature of this doctrine with the Western philosophical term “ontology” (C. cunyoulun 存有論). Perfect teaching is the first and only full-fledged realization of the ontological question. He refers to it as “Buddhist ontology” (C. fojiaoshide cunyoulun 佛教式的存有論) (Mou 1983, 1985;  Asakura 2011). It encompasses the whole theoretical development within itself, comprehending all dharmas and beings. We are now ready to consider Kōyama’s final answer to the question of a new “logic” that explains the internal necessity of the transition from a pantheistic

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s­ ystem to existential thought. Before giving an answer to this question, Kōyama reformulates the problem, clarifying the three tasks: the first is to comprehend the logical necessity of the development from Reason to Spirit, and then from Spirit to Existence. The second is to comprehend the mutual relations between these three independent moments, which nonetheless contain each other reciprocally and provide an adequate place for each moment. The third is to construct a standpoint that synthesizes the irreversible linear development and the mutual mediation between or comprehension of the three stages (Kōyama 1967: 488–489). Corresponding to the first aspect, the answer is to be given by the logic in which “the denial of reason by reason itself, the denial of logic by logic itself” is realized. This constitutes the dialectical logic of absolute negation or absolute contradiction. This dialectic of absolute nothingness is the existential dialectic, proper to the philosophical type of Existence, for it is not a matter of the contradiction being overcome or resolved but of it being redeemed and increasingly intensified. In other words, absolute contradiction manifests itself in the standpoint of Existence. Kōyama finds such a “dialectical logic” in Mādhyamaka Buddhism and its logic of emptiness in absolute negation (Kōyama 1967: 507–509). In the case of the second and third tasks, what is required is a logic that “gives a proper place” for each moment or doctrinal type. The ultimate standpoint of Existence does not just negate the preceding Reason and Spirit but recovers their specific places. It is this standpoint, which is able to maintain a proper place for various doctrines, that can properly be called the “philosophy of philosophy” or doctrinal classification. This is the standpoint of perfect teaching. Kōyama sees such a “philosophical logic” in the East Asian development of Mahāyāna Buddhism and eventually in Nishida’s logic of basho (Kōyama 1967: 509–510).17 It seems reasonable to suppose that Kōyama’s interpretation of Buddhist logic comes very close to Mou’s elucidation of Tiantai Buddhism. This affinity between both positions allows us to compare “perfect teaching” with the logic of basho that “gives a proper place” to every dialectical moment (Asakura 2014b). Indeed, Nishida’s logic of basho shows several metaphysical aspects that are shared by Mou’s Buddhist ontology, which is based on the interpretation of Tiantai Buddhism. A fuller study of such a comparison lies outside the scope of this chapter (Asakura 2014a). We must nevertheless admit that Kōyama’s answer is somewhat disappointing because he never analyzes the relationship between the logic of basho and Chinese Mādhyamaka. Nor does he explain the logical necessity of the existential turn in Japanese Buddhism. One notable difficulty arises when he finds the turn from Spirit to Existence not only in the typically “religious” Pure Land Buddhism but also in Zen Buddhism. As mentioned above, Kōyama insists that “Dōgen’s Zen Buddhism is in principle nothing other than a practical form of Japanese Tendai Buddhism” (Kōyama 1967: 421). Although Kōyama admits that much is unknown of its historical origins, he tries to characterize Zen Buddhist thought as the transcendence of  Although the English term “logic of basho” is now widely accepted, Kōyama prefers to translate this (J. bashoteki ronri 場所的論理) as “topological logic” (Kōyama 2007–09, 6: 229).

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reason by means of the antinomy of theoretical reason. Pure Land Buddhism, on the other hand, is said to transcend reason through the antinomy of practical reason (Kōyama 1967: 422). Kōyama utilizes the Kantian antinomy in his explanation of the three stages (the naturalistic, the moral, and the religious). In this typology, morality plays the pivotal role as catalyst for the religious or existential worldview. But how does Zen thought utilize the antinomy of theoretical reason instead of practical reason? Here, Kōyama’s oversimplification seems unacceptable. Due to his insufficient understanding of Tiantai/Tendai thought, Kōyama fails to identify the existential turn in Buddhism. There is yet another difficulty with Kōyama’s doctrinal classification. Our initial question was how the interaction between Buddhism and Confucianism could be traced in modern Japanese philosophy. His post-war writings on the status of morality are significant because they reflect the persistent moral spirit in the overall Buddhist framework. In addition, a comprehensive system of this classification of thought and philosophy elucidates the place he assigns to morality as well: For example, Kūkai placed Confucian morality at the second stage in his tenfold doctrinal classification. In Kōyama’s system, however, moral metaphysics does not seems to be assigned any proper place even though his system is intended to give a place to all types of thought and philosophy. Is this failure due to his exclusive focus on the history of Buddhism, Greek philosophy, and German philosophy, discounting the important spiritual heritage of Confucian thought?18

3  Nihilism and the Problem of Morality There indeed seems to be no specific place for moral philosophy in Kōyama’s attempt to create a modern doctrinal classification. Furthermore, this question about the place of morality necessarily leads us to the problem of nihilism. Before turning to the discussion of nihilism, we must first draw attention to the question raised above concerning the place of morality in Kōyama’s typology. At first, it is possible to say that such a complaint is caused only by the old image of doctrinal classification. Among the classic three teachings, Confucianism is the typical guardian of morality, occupying the second stage in Kūkai’s tenfold system as well, while probably no philosophical position is characterized as a typically moral standpoint. As Kōyama takes the framework from Western philosophy, it is natural that his panjiao system does not assign any specific place to the Confucian type of moral metaphysics. However, there is another reason for this result: morality is indeed assigned its place in a dispersed way. In his further discussion of Existence, Kōyama thematically discusses the problem of morality under the title “Existentialism and the Problem of Morality” (Kōyama 1969: 262–278). Here he acknowledges an important thesis concerning morality: there are two types of morality, one is  It should be noted that he applies the “logic of basho” to moral philosophy in his Ethics of Tokoro (Tokoro no rinri 所の倫理) (Kōyama 2007–09, 6: 229–336).

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c­ onceived from the standpoint of moral reason, the other one is conceived from an existential standpoint. From the religious or existential standpoint, evil should not be simply denied or discarded. Whereas Reason implies one idealist morality, in which the relative good is in opposition to evil and reigns in principle, Existence has its own peculiar morality beyond good and evil. Thus, Kōyama distinguishes between two types of morality, morality as it is ordinarily conceived of and morality framed form the religious standpoint. In other words, morality no longer possesses one unique place but has become dispersed over these two stages. Such a morality that goes beyond good and evil is absolutely distinct from ordinary morality. The religious standpoint inevitably appears amoral or extra-moral for this reason. Moral idealism cannot comprehend the greatness of literary works that expose the religious horizon or the morality “beyond good and evil”; for example, The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari 源氏物語) was denounced as “a book of obscenity” in the Edo period since Confucian moral judgment could not accept its explicit descriptions of human love affairs (Kōyama 1969: 11–12). Kōyama seems slightly similar to such thinkers as MOTOORI Norinaga 本居宣長 (1730–1801), although the latter does not identify what is expressed as the religious horizon, nor does he appreciate Buddhism. Typologically speaking, Confucianism represents the idealist moral worldview, whereas Buddhism represents paradoxical morality in the “three teachings” paradigm. In this way, a solution is given to the question of the place of morality. This distinction between two types of morality is, however, not unique to Kōyama; it is expressed in the philosophy of Tanabe in the following way: Even if the good as absolute good transcends relative good and evil, this does not remove it away to the abstract realms of holiness, free of all inclination to evil. It means rather that under its way the orientation toward evil is reversed, so that evil can be purified and changed into a mediator of good. In this way the good also becomes an absolute good beyond all opposition and discrimination between good and evil. For this reason we must distinguish the relative good that belongs to the realm of ethics from the absolute good that is proper to the realm of religion. (Tanabe 1986: 257–258)

Tanabe uses the term “ethics” (J. rinri 倫理) here, but he does not distinguish it from “morality” (J. dōtoku 道徳) in this context. In the realm of morality the leading principle is the “relative good” in its opposition to evil; in the realm of religion and existential philosophy, the “absolute good beyond all opposition and discrimination between good and evil” replaces the relative good, where evil works as a mediator of good. Still, another question arises: if the unmistakably characteristic of the religious is only attributed to the existential type (Existence), the intermediary type (Spirit) would be untenable and would lose its significance. In fact, the distinction between the pantheistic system and the existential turn would become obscure. In this new question, the difficulty resides in the possible confusion between the two types, Spirit and Existence. It must be remembered that the first important philosopher who discovered the dialectical cancellation of Kant’s moral worldview and the religious conversion that follows it, resulting in the philosophy of the Absolute Spirit, is, without a doubt, Hegel in his Phenomenology of Spirit. As Tanabe states, it is in the very midst of the inevitable sinfulness of action that the self “can abandon

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itself metanoetically and find forgiveness and reconciliation with others” (Tanabe 1986: 99). Both Kōyama and Tanabe rely on Hegel’s description of the dialectical cancellation of Kant’s moral worldview. Therefore, it seems as if Spirit corresponds more adequately to the religious stage. However, it is not so simple. If we distinguish Reason and Spirit, the latter indeed seems to correspond to the religious stage, but this stage itself also necessarily contains Existence. Therefore, we are forced to acknowledge that the problematic notion of “the religious stage” contains, if not confuses, both Spirit and Existence. In this way, we can synthesize Kōyama’s theory of three stages of the human mind and his threefold doctrinal classification. This conclusion is not clearly stated in his works, but logical necessity leads to it. The two types of thought—Spirit and Existence—are not necessarily distinguished as long as we use the obscure notion of “religion,” which is usually seen as a kind of keyword in the Kyoto School. However, another question now arises: if the religious stage contains both Spirit and Existence, then what is the true springboard for the existential turn? We can no longer say that it is the contradiction of duties because this view only leads to Spirit. As a result, we have to look for another explanation. At this point, Kōyama is forced to admit that the theory of religion, which tries to exhibit religiosity by means of the antinomy of moral reason, does not truly present philosophical existentialism (Kōyama 1969: 277). Despite his favorite description of how morality faces its internal contradiction in the conflict of duties, for once in his philosophical career he is forced to acknowledge the insufficiency of this formulation. What is, then, the real springboard for the existential turn through the intermediary moment of Spirit, which itself is reached through the absolute contradiction of reason? How can we open up the existential horizon without relying on absolute contradiction? Although the form of the question is not exactly the same, Kōyama indeed gives an answer to this question, somewhat hesitatingly, in his above-­ mentioned lecture, the last two chapters of which are dedicated to this theme. The answer is nihilism: he is forced to admit that the necessary condition of Existence is nihilism and that it is through nihilism that the existential turn actually occurs. After admitting that the realization of nihilism is the necessary step for philosophical existentialism, Kōyama makes haste to find nihilism in the historico-­ cultural condition of Kamakura Buddhism, specifically in the eschatological notion of mappō 末法, the extinction of the Buddha’s teachings in the world. The notion itself is well known: The first 500 years after the death of Gautama Buddha is called the age of the “Right Dharma” (J. shōbō 正法); the next 1000 years are called the age of the “Semblance Dharma” (J. zōbō 像法), the period after the loss of the Right Dharma when only its imitation remains; and the following age (which is believed to have started during the late Heian period) is known as the age of the last and “Decadent Dharma” (J. mappō 末法), during which the Right Dharma has become entirely extinct, and the world sinks into sin and defilement. Yet, the decadent Dharma is not seen as a mere historical period but rather as an eternal truth or the “eternal recurrence” as Kōyama uses this Nietzschean expression. Some Japanese Buddhists came to consider, paradoxically, that it is the very occasion of mappō that allows “the biggest and deepest truth” to be manifested in its eternal recurrence.

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Kōyama concludes that this is the shared background common to Kamakura Buddhist thought: the notion of mappō as the exemplary expression of nihilism (Kōyama 1969: 329–331; 1955: 240ff). There is room for argument on this point. It must be noted that nihilism is more or less foreign to dialectics (Asakura 2009: 163–167). Both Kōyama and Tanabe rely on Hegel’s description of the dialectical cancellation of Kant’s moral worldview, but dialectics itself by no means reveals the nature of nihilism: absolute contradiction does indeed render reason asunder and cast it into a state of self-disruption, but it cannot make the philosopher a nihilist. This explains why Tanabe complains that Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) “disliked the concept of negation and failed to acknowledge adequately its mediating power” (Tanabe 1986: 103). This also explains why Kōyama’s understanding of nihilism can hardly receive any empathy from readers. Indeed, our typologist philosopher does not seem to explicate the concept of “nihilism” itself successfully. The question about the place of morality now leads us to the problem of nihilism and how this concept is explained by the prominent “nihilist” of the Kyoto School. Nishitani’s 1949 lecture on this theme, simply titled “Nihilism” (J. nihirizumu ニヒ リズム), comprises one of the most important Japanese discussions of European nihilism and existential philosophy. Although his later works tend to attract more studies both in Japan and abroad, this work has its own importance, especially when we read it side by side with Tanabe’s Philosophy as Metanoetics and Kōyama’s Reason, Spirit, and Existence. It is not a mere coincidence that I am referring here to works published in the late 1940s: these postwar philosophers were indeed struggling with their “overcoming modernity” agenda. It is also not a coincidence that the Japanese term “jitsuzon” 實存  is attributed to this foremost existentialist philosopher.19 According to Nishitani, nihilism occurs when something being subjected to morality and religion develops a resistance to them (Nishitani 1986–95: 20, 190). Its general characteristics can be described in the following way: it breaks down the standpoint of observing subjectivity in which the “I” that sees and thinks and the “I” that is seen and thought are separated; with this, it reveals a deep fault or a fracture in the Self—the questioning “I” and the “Me” that is questioned. Only here is the self compelled to become unified through the act of thinking “with passion” (G. leidenshaftlich) (Nishitani 1990: 2).20 Furthermore, this act of thinking, in turn, transforms the world itself into a question. From the bottom of the self, the world and the self together become a question—being itself is now transformed into a

 According to Nishitani’s recollection, the term was first employed in his translation of Schelling’s Essay on Human Freedom (1927), then adopted by KUKI Shūzo 九鬼周造 (1888–1941) in his 1928 essay on existential philosophy (Nishitani 1986–95, 15: 327). In English translation, the term is either translated with the upper-case “E” marking the special nature of the term or is rendered using the German “Existenz” (Nishitani 1990: 198; Tanabe 1986). 20  Although Nishitani uses the term “jiko” 自己 extensively, I use distinct expressions such as “the I,” “the Me” and “the Self” just for the sake of clarity. On the problem of the usage of the term “jiko” (see Akitomi 2009: 52). 19

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problem (Nishitani 1990: 4). As Nishitani points out, this questioning itself must be historical, forcing the inquirer to become unified within history: “In Nietzsche’s terms, the history of humankind has to be made the history of the self itself, and history has to be understood from the standpoint of Existence” (Nishitani 1990: 5). All these points are to be repeated and developed in his later works. It must be noted here that Nishitani’s discussion of nihilism is only remotely connected to the nihilistic social atmosphere of postwar Japan. He does not find nihilism in Japanese culture. To him, nihilism is a European concept. The theme of nihilism must be unveiled within the perspective of the history of European culture, not within the perspective of medieval Japan. Contrary to Kōyama’s view of Japanese nihilism, Nishitani incessantly emphasizes the importance of “European nihilism.” Far from evaluating the meaning of the contemporaneous situation in his nation, he instead emphasizes the significance of European nihilism for the Japanese, distinguishing it from postwar Japanese quasi-nihilism. Indeed his description of the history of Western philosophy, from Hegel’s absolute idealism to radical realism and then nihilism, is much more perspicacious and rigorous than Kōyama’s very rough sketch. Nishitani’s interpretation of Nietzsche, in particular, has a decisive importance in the history of Japanese philosophy. Nietzsche discovers affirmative nihilism or the Dionysian “religious affirmation of life,” which views existence in this world to be “already sacred enough for us to affirm enormous suffering” (Nishitani 1990: 66). The self-overcoming of nihilism is first conceived or realized by Nietzsche in the context of European philosophy. At Nishitani’s time, no Japanese philosopher had taken seriously this “first consummate nihilist” in the history of European philosophy and the conception of the “self-overcoming of nihilism.” Nishitani’s explanation as to the importance of European nihilism is nevertheless ambivalent to a high degree. According to him, it is because the Japanese do not have the ability to become nihilists that European nihilism is of fundamental significance for the Japanese. In this context, he mentions the lost “spiritual basis” of the Japanese, which undoubtedly hast to be attributed to Confucianism: What makes the issue still more complicated is the fact that we do not have any spiritual basis whatsoever at present. The West still has the faith, ethics, ideas, and so forth that have been handed down from Christianity and Greek philosophy… Up until the middle of the Meiji period a spiritual basis and highly developed tradition was alive in the hearts and minds of the people. Indeed, the reason Japan was able to take in Western culture with such unprecedented alacrity was that people then were possessed of true ability born of spiritual substance. (Nishitani 1990: 175)

Although Nishitani may think that both “Buddhism and Confucian thought constituted such a basis,” it is the Confucian moral worldview that most characterizes the spiritual culture of Japan “up until the middle of the Meiji period.” However, this worldview has been lost, and, to Nishitani, the Japanese no longer possess the spiritual ability to be truly nihilistic. This means that Nishitani’s emphasis on European nihilism nevertheless contains a socio-cultural response to postwar Japanese society similar to Kōyama’s interest in moral education. On the one hand, Kōyama straightforwardly attempts to enlighten people by writing on the meaning of morality in postwar Japan, working

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together with other philosophers and politicians to implement moral education in compulsory education, as already mentioned. Nishitani, on the other hand, problematizes “the relation of nihilism to our present situation in Japan,” regarding this issue as “at once the point of departure and the final destination of our inquiry” (Nishitani 1990: 3). Although the two follow different procedures, they are both driven by the same “moral energy” to ameliorate the sociocultural condition. But what is the promised “final destination” of Nishitani’s inquiry? At the very end of the work, he points out the deficiency in Nietzsche’s understanding of Buddhism. As is well known, Buddhism is considered by this nihilist European to be the culmination of what he calls décadence, a complete negation of life and will. Ironically, our Japanese nihilist states, “it was not in his nihilistic view of Buddhism but in such notions as amor fati and the Dionysian as the overcoming of nihilism that Nietzsche came closest to Buddhism, and especially to Mahāyāna” (Nishitani 1990: 180).21 For the present, this Buddhist standpoint remains buried in the tradition of the past, far from historical actuality. Not only Confucianism but Buddhism as well does no longer serve as our spiritual basis. “One way to retrieve it and bring it back to life is, as we have been saying, to grasp in advance the point at which our Europeanization is to culminate, and make European nihilism an urgent problem for ourselves” (Nishitani 1990: 181). At this point, we are led to a serious problem with this observation. For, how can we ignore the very fact that it is by criticizing Christian morality that Nietzsche reaches the point at which European nihilism is to culminate? If the way to retrieve the buried tradition of Buddhism is, according to our Japanese nihilist, to “make European nihilism an urgent problem for ourselves,” then the logical consequence will be that Confucian morality must be first retrieved or at least reconsidered. But such a quasi-New-Confucian faith in East Asian moral thought cannot be found in Nishitani’s discourse. This is all the more problematic as he laments the disappearance of “the spiritual basis and highly developed tradition” which was alive in the hearts and minds of the people “up until the middle of the Meiji period.” If the Japanese do not have any “faith, ethics, ideas and so forth” that have been handed down from Confucianism or Buddhism, then how is it possible to become a nihilist. Even more so, how is it possible to overcome nihilism? How can a philosopher skip the actual critique of morals to grasp the point at which nihilism is to culminate? The problem of Nishitani’s philosophy is therefore found in the conspicuous lack of consideration of morality in his postwar writings. Unlike Nietzsche, who considers morals as the central problem to illustrate our value-interpretation and the illusory world, Nishitani does not consider the actual values and workings of morals. How can his intended Buddhist philosophy reveal the flux of becoming? How can this nihilist philosopher overcome nihilism by itself without philosophizing with a hammer? In short, Nishitani lacks the genealogical method, and it is no exaggeration to say that none of the Kyoto School philosophers has successfully analyzed the

 Such a view on Nietzsche is not his original view; it somewhat represents the shared standpoint of Kyoto School philosophy (Tanabe 1986: 103).

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hidden morals in modern ideologies. No one dared to criticize the deceptive workings of morals in the contemporary world. Thus far we have seen that the place of morality is not attributed to any single type of thought but is instead dispersed among the three types in Kōyama’s doctrinal classification. In addition, the most important point that distinguishes Existence from Spirit is the presence of nihilism, the understanding of which requires Nishitani’s elucidations. Yet, nihilism is relevant to morals and morality. Therefore, Nishitani is to be blamed for not analyzing morals with the genealogical method in the way Nietzsche did. Although such a critique is not exactly a Confucian one, we are still led to see at which point modern Japanese Buddhist philosophy is insufficient. However, there is one further critique that we must not ignore: the critique of a postwar Marxist philosopher, who radically criticized not only the above-­ mentioned philosophers but also Buddhism itself. Let us see below how a further proxy war is fought between Buddhism and Confucianism.

4  Hiromatsu’s Marxist Critique Marxism has a long history in Japan. Karl Marx’s (1818–1883) philosophy attracted a lot of attention from the Kyoto School philosophers, and this was not limited to the Marxist philosophers (Hanazawa 1999: 72–76).22 In their narratives of post-­ Hegelian philosophy, neither Kōyama nor Nishitani ignores Marx as the important successor of Hegel’s dialectics, despite their harsh criticism of communism. Moreover, Marxism became an intellectual trend among young students in the early Showa period, before the trend suddenly changed to nationalism. Marxism again became predominant and almost authoritative in postwar Japanese academia, and in that atmosphere the Kyoto School philosophers lost their leading influence. The philosophers of the postwar generation either ignored their predecessors’ Buddhist philosophy or explicitly attacked their “right-wing” tendencies without paying any respect to their philosophical works.23 There are few true criticisms of Japanese Buddhist philosophy that deserve to be discussed. Yet, a significant critique of the Kyoto School philosophers is undertaken by at least one postwar Marxist philosopher. HIROMATSU Wataru 廣松渉 (1933–1994), a professor of philosophy at the University of Tokyo, is a prominent Marxist, though far from being considered to have any connection with Kyoto School philosophy. Both his philosophical standpoint and his philosophical style seem to differ tremendously from those philosophers discussed above, to the extent that one is inclined to see his views as totally foreign to those of our Buddhist philosophers. Nevertheless,  Among the thinkers closely related to the Kyoto School, MIKI Kiyoshi 三木清 (1897–1945) and TOSAKA Jun 戸坂潤 (1900–1945) are notable Marxists. 23  Indeed, Kōyama persistently criticizes Marxism in the postwar period, underscoring that the ablation of capitalism is only a dialectical necessity and neither a factual necessity nor a reality to be gained by “our” hands (Kōyama 1968: 124–135). 22

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Hiromatsu must be considered as the true heir of certain philosophical problems generated by the Kyoto school. This can be said for the following two reasons. First, his philosophical standpoint is based on the peculiar understanding of world history, which is comparable to the “overcoming modernity” scheme of the Kyoto school. Although his opinion of those Buddhist philosophers may at times seem somewhat resentful, his interest in that scheme is confirmed in his book On Overcoming Modernity (kindai no chōkoku ron, 論), in which his substantial discussion of this school is found (Hiromatsu 1989). Thoroughly critical from mostly a political viewpoint, though seemingly without delving into their philosophical theories, Hiromatsu nevertheless does not reject the scheme itself; rather, he points out the insufficiency and deficiencies of their theories. Secondly, Hiromatsu’s philosophical system is itself resonant with Buddhist thought. Apparently, the mention of Buddhism in Hiromatsu’s text is different from that seen in the Kyoto School. His understanding of Buddhism is based neither on personal practice (as in the cases of Nishida and Nishitani) nor on the investigation of classic Buddhist notions (as in the case of Kōyama). Hiromatsu only refers to basic principles such as anātman and emptiness, instead of the later Buddhist developments in China and Japan. In addition, he tends to refer to modern scholarly Buddhist studies on Indian Buddhism, especially those done by such researchers as NAKAMURA Hajime 中村元 (1912–1999). Despite these apparent differences, however, it is undeniable that he regards Buddhism as the most important type of thought to be reconsidered for the sake of the further development of his Marxist philosophy. Because of these two reasons, Hiromatsu’s philosophy must be seen as a development of the Buddhist philosophy pioneered by those philosophers already discussed in the previous sections. If the second generation of the Kyoto School sees Buddhism and the logic of basho as the means for overcoming modernity, Hiromatsu tries to elucidate “the horizon of Marxism,” the still “insurmountable philosophy in the present historical stage” (Hiromatsu 1969: 4). Let us now turn to Hirotmatsu’s critique of the Kyoto School. He states that modernity as a historical stage “is the age of the capitalist social system” (Hiromatsu 1989: 240) the situation also well recognized by the Kyoto School philosophers. The key to the overcoming of modernity, “a practical problem par excellence” (ibid.) must be the same as “the sublation of the capitalist social system” (Hiromatsu 1989: 242). Indeed, the given situation to be overcome is almost unanimously supposed to be capitalism in the discourse of the Kyoto School philosophers. The extent to which they could effectively develop a critique of the capitalist social system within the Japanese empire remains to be questioned. Whatever the Kyoto School philosophers think subjectively, Hiromatsu criticizes, their intention in reality devolves into bourgeois ideology, only to serve the reorganization of “state monopoly capitalism” (Hiromatsu 1989: 240–243). This is reflected in their anthropocentric attitude in philosophy. Kōyama and other thinkers from this generation aim at “overcoming the contradiction between idealism and materialism” with their “philosophical anthropology.” Yet, this conception only falls short of the goal because it

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cannot escape from humanism and anthropocentricism, the typically modern ideology to be overcome (Hiromatsu 1989: 250–253). Such is Hiromatsu’s critical assessment of the Kyoto School philosophers. It is clear that his criticism is pointed at the insufficiency of their understanding of modernity itself and their inability to overcome it. He preserves, inherits, and develops the agenda of overcoming modernity from a Marxist viewpoint, exploring “the horizon of Marxism,” the limit yet to be surpassed, with the help of Buddhist philosophy.24 But what is “the horizon of Marxism”? Neither scientism nor humanism can characterize Marxist materialism, which must be distinguished from both the vulgar version of materialism which is opposed to spiritualism and realism as the classic opponent of idealism. If Marx’s critique of Hegel makes a radical departure from its pantheistic system, it must be interpreted as similar to existentialism in the sense that it opposes any philosophical system that deduces Existence (G. Existenz) from Idea (G. Idee). It observes existence exactly as it is, going beyond the anthropological sleep typically seen in Feuerbach. From The German Ideology onward, Marx oversteps the ideological scheme of modernity that is crystallized in anthropocentrism and the “subject/object schema,” uncovering the essence of humanity as the ensemble of social relations. If one can talk about the anthropological sleep into which Kant, once awakened from the dogmatic slumber, promptly falls again, then the one who is to wake us is Marx (and not Nietzsche). Then, how does Hiromatsu “inherit and develop” the philosophy of Marx? Although a detailed discussion is not necessary here, we can briefly sketch the answer as follows. The reality uncovered in this horizon is to be called the “intersubjective structure of the world,” thoroughly transcending the “subject/object schema” (Hiromatsu 1975: 85), which the early Nishida attempted to overcome with his notion of pure experience. In Hiromatsu’s philosophical system, epistemology is based on the intersubjective structure of the world, replacing the subject/ object opposition with the formula of a fourfold structure, in which both “noesis” (J. nōchi 能知) and “noema” (J. shochi 所知) are already ideal-real doublets, and each of the four moments in the phenomenal and noetic doublets mediate each other in structural relations. In this epistemological scheme of Hiromatsu, however, there appears to be no Buddhist influence. It is not in the epistemological scheme but in the ontological section of his system that a profound resonance with Buddhist thought is manifest. He emphasizes the “worldview of events” (J. kototeki sekaikan 事的世界観), a position which gives primacy to relationships rather than to substances or a “worldview of things” (J. monoteki sekaikan 物的世界観). In his primacy of relations, Hiromatsu replaces the worldview of things with that of events and the primacy of identity with that of difference (Hiromatsu 1975: ii). A critique of the substantialist  Hiromatsu’s immense influence is seen in the next generation of Japanese thinkers. The most well-known is the work of KARATANI Kōjin 柄谷行人 (Karatani 1995). Although the latter’s Marxist inspiration lies within the trajectory of Hiromatsu’s attempt to overcome modernity, he shows little sympathy for Buddhism. 24

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standpoint of entities is found, according to his reading, in the Marxist theory of reification, which uncovers the appearance of social relations in the form of the relation of things or the nature of things in human consciousness. At the same time, and more importantly at least for our present investigation, this Marxist philosopher does not hesitate to underscore that this relationalist “worldview” is clearly in accord with the Buddhist conceptions of “no-self” (S. anātman) and “emptiness” (S. śūnyatā), which reveal the causality of dependent-arising by going beyond subject and substance. If this ontology gives foundation to the whole of his philosophical system, it should be concluded that Buddhist thought is fundamentally connected to his basic philosophical standpoint. We should thus regard Hiromatsu’s philosophy as a descendent of Japanese Buddhist philosophy, as has already been stated. What is crucial in our view is, however, not his critical stance against the Kyoto philosophers or his philosophical approach that resonates with Buddhism. It is Hiromatsu’s significant departure from Buddhism itself. Our Marxist philosopher dares to pose a decisive question: Does Buddhism change the world? The answer to this question seems to be rather simple: Hiromatsu says that Buddhism merely tries to be aware of the situation, whereas Marxism attempts to change the situation. Even if both teachings go beyond reification, revealing true reality as it really is, Buddhism is content with awakening us to this truth, while Marxism prescribes guidelines for liberation from it by persistently analyzing the politico-economic condition. Hiromatsu points out this difference in the following way: In Buddhism, the accent is put on the attainment of insight to see things as empty, thus awakening from delusion. In Marxism, the understanding of the mechanism of reification does not by itself make the reified phenomenon disappear; it is crucial to practically abolish the relations which make such reification possible and to form new relations. Marx presents the theoretico-practical guideline for the liberation from reification, which remains unthinkable in Buddhism. (Hiromatsu 2010: 227–228)

Although Hiromatsu acknowledges that Marx’s explanation is itself insufficient, he notes that this nineteenth-century philosopher nonetheless attempted to prescribe such a guideline, leaving us some valuable clues to help advance the investigation further. This difference seems very simple at first, but it is a decisive critique of Buddhism because it directly hits the point at which this religious tradition is undeniably weak. This critique of Buddhism from a practical standpoint must be recognized as a significant counterargument to any form of Buddhist philosophy. Hiromatsu’s point is that Buddhism does not even attempt to change human conditions because it is unable to abolish real social relations that constitute the material basis for reification; even if it sees how far reification and delusion goes, it does not get rid of its material causes. While the Kyoto School philosophers fall short of overcoming modernity due to their weakness in uncovering the ideology of modernity, Buddhism itself is unable to bring changes to the world, insofar as it remains self-righteously content with the awakening of the self. By pointing out the lack of practical means to change the world, Hiromatsu comes closer to a quasi-Confucian standpoint. There seems to be a kind of Buddhist-Confucian interaction here, albeit in a thoroughly transformed appearance.

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There remains one problem concerning the above statement. We can doubt if this has something to do with a “Confucian” counterattack. It is true that it seems comparable to the Confucian criticism that complains about Buddhism’s inability to change the human condition; Confucians accuse the “self-righteous” spiritualism of Buddhism in the name of justice and cultural values. Yet, we are not so sure that Marxism can really share the same attitude. As shown by the New Confucians, Confucian humanism can be opposed to communism, showing instead an affinity with political conservatism. Moreover, our non-substantialist postmodern philosopher is, practically speaking, alien to the Confucian tradition that seeks substance in morality; a tradition that had almost disappeared long before his birth in the early Shōwa 昭和period (1926–1989). Compared to the Kyoto philosophers, Hiromatsu is far more distant from the Confucian intellectual atmosphere of early Japanese modernity. At this point, we can pose the question whether Hiromatsu’s complaint about Buddhism is comparable not to the Confucian accusation but to the internal conflict in Buddhism itself. It is possible to see that we might search for the true nature of the above discussion not in Confucian moral thought but rather in the Mahāyāna position. Although we do not have enough textual support, it is nonetheless possible to interpret the problem in this way by looking at the dialogue between Hiromatsu and YOSHIDA Kōseki 吉田宏晢, a Buddhist scholar and practitioner. With his interlocutor Yoshida, Hiromatsu discusses the socio-political constitution of the saṃgha as follows, as long as the saṃgha is supported by secular supporters, the idea of communism, which attempts to change the social structure so as to incorporate everyone on earth in an ideal community, is unthinkable (Hiromatsu and Yoshida 1979: 152–156). In response to this accusation, however, Yoshida points out that a significant transformation has, in fact, occurred within Buddhism itself, namely, from the classic understanding of the saṃgha to the Mahāyāna ideal of the bodhisattva. The bodhisattva ideal makes no distinction between the religious and secular societies, at least in the way Buddhism previously considered them. The contrast between the two schools (early Buddhism and Mahāyāna Buddhism) goes further than this. Indeed, even the idea of “awakening” itself is not the same according to traditionalist and Mahāyāna teachings: the bodhisattva does not attain awakening without awakening others. Awakening in Mahāyāna Buddhism is by no means personal. It is realizable only in the interpersonal realm on earth, that goes beyond individual personalities, or rather in the trans-individual horizon. Hiromatsu and Yoshida here come close to concluding that Mahāyāna Buddhism is significantly similar to the Marxist position (Hiromatsu and Yoshida 1979: 155–171). Is it really acceptable to insist that the communist critique of Buddhism is more closely related to the position of Mahāyāna Buddhism? At least, it is possible to view Hiromatsu’s critique of Buddhism as an embodiment or revitalization of the critical spirit within Buddhism itself. Although the above affirmative view of Mahāyāna unfolds mainly through Yoshida, while Hiromatsu continues to identify the inadequacies of Buddhism regarding its self-righteous position, we can say that the latter’s complaints are somewhat comparable to the critique occurring within

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Buddhism itself. It is also possible to say that the layman’s critique inspires the Buddhist practitioner’s unmistakably Mahāyāna answer. Despite the possibility of alternative interpretations, without a doubt we can see an equivalent of the Buddhist-Confucian interaction here. The Marxist philosopher’s significant counterattack against Buddhism, extrinsic from a Buddhist point of view, is clearly comparable to that made by Confucians in earlier times. In addition, if we view this as a more intrinsic critique and connected to differences within Buddhism itself, it will nonetheless illuminate Mahāyāna philosophy.

5  Concluding Remarks Modern Japanese philosophy is, as exemplified by the Kyoto School, fundamentally inspired by Buddhist thought. The traditional theme of the Buddhist-Confucian interaction is not recognizable in its original form in modern Japanese philosophy precisely because the Confucian tradition itself does not attract serious attention among philosophers. Yet, as we have seen, the equivalent of this interaction, although appearing in a thoroughly modified manner, is to be found in the problem of morality in modern Japanese philosophy. In fact, the status of morality is indeed problematic in the philosophies of the second generation of the Kyoto School. Their infamous participation in politics and their understanding of the agenda of “overcoming modernity” embody somewhat anachronistically the Confucian spirituality of earlier Japanese intellectuals, and their “moral energy” persists in their postwar efforts to establish moral education. Among these Kyoto School philosophers, especially important in our view is the great system builder, Kōyama. He explores the problem of morality in an intensified manner in the postwar period and shares many curious similarities with the work of the New Confucian thinker, MOU Zongsan, not only in its vigorous emphasis on the notion of morality but also in its intense interest in the Buddhist project of doctrinal classification. Although the true value of morality for the Kyoto School philosophers comes from its crucial necessity as an intermediate stage between the naturalistic mind and the higher stage of religious spirit, Kōyama (together with Tanabe) nonetheless underscores the importance of morality and the absolute contradiction that it will necessarily engender. However, criticism can be thrown against this moral philosophy. The first concerns the lack of the genealogical method. In Kōyama’s attempt to classify all the types of thought in a comprehensive manner in the threefold formula of Reason-­ Spirit-­Existence, only the existential turn (from Spirit to Existence) attracts his attention. However, dialectical thinking is more or less unable to explain this turn, including the dialectic of absolute contradiction, and Kōyama is eventually forced to acknowledge that morality and its internal contradiction cannot reveal the ultimate truth and that the necessary condition of existence is nihilism, a notion he failed to thoroughly investigate. In addition, even the prominent philosopher of nihilism Nishitani lacks the genealogical method in his understanding of “European

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nihilism,” whereas it is, at least in Nietzsche’s conception, necessary to reveal the origin and the hidden workings of actual morals and evaluations in order to take nihilism to its culmination. Kyoto School philosophy has yet to respond to this criticism. The other critique is, as we have seen, undertaken by a postwar Marxist philosopher from a more practical standpoint. Inheriting the Kyoto School’s scheme of overcoming modernity, Hiromatsu sees Marxism as the insurmountable horizon of modern philosophy. Starting from his own views on world history and modernity, he then reexamines the historical status of Kyoto School philosophy, criticizing its failure to effectively transform society. His point is that they insufficiently comprehend modernity and capitalism, being unconsciously entrapped in bourgeois ideology. To amend their insufficient realization of overcoming modernity, this postwar philosopher attempts to extract the Marxist ideas necessary to transcend and overcome modernism qua capitalism. In this process, he goes on to find deep resonance between the Marxist horizon of non-substantialism and the Buddhist worldview. Yet, he then notes the one deficiency in Buddhism, namely, its powerlessness to prescribe ways for transforming the material basis of the modern human condition, due to its lack of a politico-economic analysis of the modern world. This critique is somewhat equivalent to the Confucian attack on Buddhism; at this point, however, we are not quite sure whether it is an equivalent of Confucian criticism or the revitalization of the Mahāyāna spirit. Although neither has any explicit Confucian connection, both of these possible critiques against Buddhist philosophy concern morality, morals, or practice. One is the genealogical critique, which attempts to analyze the hidden mechanism behind evaluating forces, thereby revealing reality as such. The other is the materialist critique, which commits itself to exposing the infrastructural conditions of ideological worldviews, thereby showing ways to transform society. These possible critical views intend to help the Buddhist philosopher go further in the same direction uncovered by the Kyoto School philosophers, an intention that is unmistakably distinct from the traditional Confucian counterargument to Buddhism. Japanese Buddhist philosophy must respond to these critical arguments in order to advance further in its possible synthesis of Buddhism and philosophy. Such is the possible contemporary—or future—mode of interaction between modern Buddhist-inspired philosophy and the moral/practical viewpoint formerly represented by Confucianism.

Works Cited Akitomi, Katsuya 秋富克哉. 2009. Nīche to nishitani keiji 「ニーチェと西谷啓治」 [Nietzsche and Nishitani]. Heidegger-Forum 3: 46–55. Amano, Teiyū 天野貞祐. 1970. Amano teiyū zenshū 『天野貞祐全集』 [Complete Works of Amano Teiyū]. Tokyo: Kurita Shuppankai. Asakura, Tomomi 朝倉友海. 2009. Seimei no gakumon kara shi no genshōgaku e 「生命の學 問から死の現象學へ」 [From a Study of Life to a Phenomenology of Death]. In Shisēgaku kenkyū 『死生學研究』 [Journal of Death and Life Studies] 10: 147–172.

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———. 2011. On Buddhistic Ontology: A Comparative Study of Mou Zongsan and Kyoto School Philosophy. Philosophy East and West 61 (4): 647–678. ———. 2014a. Higashiajia ni tetsugaku wa nainoka: Kyōtogakuha to shinjuka 『「東アジア に哲學はない」のか:京都學派と新儒家』  [Does East Asia Lack Philosophy? The Kyoto School and New Confucianism] Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. ———. 2014b. Philosophy of Doctrinal Classification: Kōyama Iwao and Mou Zongsan. Dao 13 (4): 453–468. Calichman, Richard F., ed./trans. 2008. Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan. New York: Columbia University Press. Hanazawa, Hidefumi 花澤秀文. 1999. Kōyama iwao 『高山岩男』. Kyoto: Jinbun Shoin. Hiromatsu, Wataru 廣松渉. 1969. Marukusushugi no chihei 『マルクス主義の地平』 [The Horizon of Marxism]. Tokyo: Keisō Shobō. ———. 1975. Kototekisekaikan no zenshō 『事的世界観の前哨』 [The Outpost of the Worldview of Events]. Tokyo: Keisō Shobō. ———. 1989 [1980]. Kindai no chōkoku ron 『論』 [On Overcoming Modernity]. Tokyo: Kōdansha. ———. 2010. Hiromatsu wataru marukusu to tetsugaku wo kataru 『廣松渉マルクスと哲 學を語る』 [Hiromatsu’s Lecture on Marx and Philosophy]. Tokyo: Kawai Bunka Kyōiku Kenkyūjo. Hiromatsu, Wataru, and Kōseki Yoshida 吉田宏晢. 1979. Bukkyō to kototekisekaikan 『佛教と事 的世界観』 [Buddhism and the Worldview of Events]. Tokyo: Asahi Shuppansha. Karatani, Kōjin. 1995. Architecture as Metaphor: Language, Number, Money. Trans. Sabu Kohso. Ed. Michael Speaks. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kōyama, Iwao 高山岩男. 1955. Gendai no fuan to shukyō 『現代の不安と宗教』 [Contemporary Anxiety and Religion]. Tokyo: Sōbunsha. ———. 1958. Dōtoku to wa nanika 『道徳とは何か』 [What Is Morality?]. Tokyo: Sōbunsha. ———. 1967. Tetsugaku to wa nanika 『哲學とは何か』 [What Is Philosophy?]. Tokyo: Sōbunsha. ———. 1968. Kyōiku to rinri 『教育と倫理』 [Education and Ethics]. Tokyo: Sōbunsha. ———. 1969. Jitsuzon testugaku 『實存哲學』 [Existential Philosophy]. Tokyo: Hōbunkan. ———. 1976. Kyōiku tetsugaku 『教育哲學』 [Philosophy of Education]. Tokyo: Tamagawa University Press. –––––. 2007–09. Kōyama iwao chosakushū 『高山岩男著作集』 [Collected Works of Kōyama Iwao]. 6 vols. Tokyo: Tamagawa University Press. Maruyama, Masao. 1974. Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan. Trans. Mikiso Hane. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mou, Zongsan 牟宗三. 1977. Foxing yu bore 『佛性與般若』  [Buddha-Nature and Prajñā-­ Wisdom]. Taibei: Xuesheng Shuju. ———. 1983. Zhongguo zhexue shijiujiang 『中國哲學十九講 』 [Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosophy]. Taibei: Xuesheng Shuju. ———. 1985. Yuanshanlun 『圓善論』 [On the Perfect Good]. Taibei: Xuesheng Shuju. Nishida, Kitarō 西田幾多郎. 1965–66. Nishida kitarō zenshū 『西田幾多郎全集』 [Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō]. 2nd ed. 20 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. ———. 1987. Last Writings. Trans. D.A. Dilworth. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Nishitani, Keiji 西谷啓治. 1986–95. Nishitani keiji chosakushū 『西谷啓治著作集』 [Collected Works of Nishitani Keiji]. 26 vols. Tokyo: Sōbunsha. ———. 1990. The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism. Trans. Graham Parkes with Setsuko Aihara. Albany: State University of New York Press. Saitō, Tsuyoshi 齋藤毅. 1977. Meiji no kotoba 『明治の言葉』 [Meiji Words]. Tokyo: Kōdansha. Sakai, Naoki, and Isomae, Jun’ichi, eds. 2010. Kindaino chōkoku to kyōto gakuha『「近代の超 克」と京都學派』 [Overcoming Modernity and the Kyoto School]. Tokyo: Ibunsha. Tanabe, Hajime 田邊元. 1963–64. Tanabe hajime zenshū 『田邊元全集』 [Complete Works of Tanabe Hajime]. 15 vols. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. ———. 1986. Philosophy as Metanoetic. Trans. Takeuchi Yoshinori. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Ōhashi, Ryōsuke 大橋良介. 2001. Kyōtogakuha to nihonkaigun 『京都學派と日本海軍』 [The Kyoto School and The Japanese Navy]. Tokyo: PHP. Watsuji, Tetsurō 和辻哲郎. 1961–63. Watsuji tetsurō zenshū 『和辻哲郎全集』 [Complete Works of Watsuji Tetsurō]. 21 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Tomomi Asakura is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, Kobe, Japan. He received his doctorate from the University of Tokyo. He has published many articles on metaphysical topics, Kyoto School philosophy, New Confucianism, and the history of metaphysics. He is the author of ‘Higashiajia ni tetsugaku wa nai’ noka: Kyōtogakuha to Shinjuka and Gainen to kobetsusei: Supinoza tetsugaku kenkyū.

Chapter 8

The Philosophy of the Mandala Pamela D. Winfield

1  Introduction Any philosophical inquiry must define its key terms at the outset. In the case of the mandala, however, this process is complicated as one is confronted with a polysemantic term referring to several distinct yet interrelated architectural and imperial concepts. In its original Buddhist context, the mandala is a two-dimensional blueprint for a three-dimensional palace or imperial city. It is an architectural construct that provides a visual metaphor for the majesty of the macrocosmic universe, and in some contexts, for the sovereignty of the meditator’s own microcosmic body-­ speech-­mind complex. The colorful buddhas who reside within the mandala-palace are usually depicted in royal garb holding imperial regalia, as they preside over their enlightened realms as befitting any cakravartin (virtuous world-ruler). Retinues of bodhisattvas in princely attire represent powerful regents for realizing specific enlightened virtues (e.g. all-seeing compassion, diamond-like wisdom, the ability to use appropriate and “skillful means” [S. upāya] effectively). For the initiate attuned to Buddhism’s elaborate iconographic code, these enlightened and enlightening figures carry both ontological as well as soteriological significance as they reside in and regally preside over their perfected environments. In addition to this complexity, however, the mandala’s multivalency is further compounded by layers of nineteenth- and twentieth-century interpretations that have added reductionistic associations and/or anachronistic expectations onto the image. Jungian interpretations of the mandala, for example, essentially assume that all the world’s mandalas function alike, that is, as catalysts to personal individuation. This psychological reductionism is further exacerbated by layers of Orientalist mysticism, which romantically, yet anachronistically, assume that all mandalas P. D. Winfield (*) Elon University, Elon, NC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_8

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function like later Tibetan ones, that is, as catalysts to personal illumination through transformative deity yoga. This essay attempts to strip away such accretions and assumptions. It calls for the recognition of the variety and distinctiveness of early Japanese mandalas and aims to resuscitate the role of the mandala in picturing, but not necessarily producing, enlightenment. As a result, this essay will attempt to return to basics and reconsider two key types of Japanese Buddhist mandalas on their own terms. Specifically, it will provide an iconographic and doctrinal analysis of the eighth-century Taima mandala (J. Taima mandara 当麻曼荼羅) of Amitābha/Amitāyus Buddha (J. Amida nyorai 阿弥陀如来) in his Pure Land of the Western Paradise. It will also examine the famous pair of ninth-century Two-World mandalas (J. Ryōkai mandara 両界曼 荼羅), which depict the Diamond and the Womb World aspects of Mahāvairocana Buddha (J. Dainichi nyorai 大日如来), the cosmic buddha of great light who illumines all equally. This method of unpacking the form of the image to arrive at its philosophical content may seem unusual to some who privilege theory over practice or who attend to abstract doctrine over concrete visual culture. However, this essay recognizes and reiterates the historical fact that the Taima and Two World mandalas themselves were presented as the primary means for learning complex Buddhist doctrines in the first place. These paradigmatic Pure Land and esoteric Shingon 真言 Buddhist images have been selected from Buddhism’s vast iconographic canon because for centuries they have literally given shape and expression to some of Buddhism’s most popular and profound soteriological and ontological formulations. These images have also been selected because they incidentally indicate the important range of Buddhist expression in Japan; from vernacular traditions to elite doctrines, and from explicitly female religious practice to completely non-dualistic gender imagery. Their order of discussion, furthermore, is deliberately designed to revise the accepted standard religious history of Japan which places classical Heian period (794–1185) Shingon Buddhism first before the Pure Land Buddhist movements of the Kamakura (1185–1333) and early medieval periods. A closer art historical examination, however, instead reveals that the eighth-century Taima mandala of Pure Land Buddhism precedes Shingon’s early ninth-century mandalas of the Two Worlds, and that the Taima’s relatively simple palatial iconography serves as a foil for the Two Worlds’ elaborate bicameral multiplex of figures. This revised historical awareness of the pre-existing “cult and praxis” (Payne 2004: 2–5) of Pure Land devotionalism in Japan adds another dimension to previous studies of Shingon’s integration into pre-existing Nara establishment structures (e.g. Abe 1999). A full discussion of early Pure Land–Shingon interactions and images, however, is beyond the scope of this paper and must await the attention of future scholarship. Instead, this essay will conclude with a final reflection on the Taima and Two-World mandalas, as both are unique examples and emblematic models for two distinct Japanese Buddhist worldviews.

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2  The Japanese Buddhist Mandala: A Matter of Definitions The etymology of the Sanskrit noun “maṇḍala” meaning circle or disk can be broken down into two parts. “Maṇḍa” literally means “cream, best part, highest point” and – “la” means “signpost or completion” (Leidy and Thurman  1997: 17). The combination of the two therefore is usually understood to mean the enclosure of an essence, a sacred space which marks off, circumscribes, or embodies the distillation of perfection. The Japanese term “mandara” 曼荼羅 is but an approximate phonetic transliteration of the Sanskrit noun. The paradox of Buddhist mandalas is that this central, personified essence is ultimately essence-less and empty of fixed identity, usually referred to as “emptiness” (S. śūnyatā). Furthermore, for all of its architectural imagery of palatial pavilions, lotus courts, assembly halls, layered floors, and concentric walls with multiple gates, the mandala-palace-enclosure paradoxically represent the open emptiness of an “enlightened realm” (S. dharmadhātu) or heavenly pure land. Much as the casual viewer may tend to reify and substantialize the mandala image, the Buddhist initiate (at least in theory, if not always in practice) understands that the central buddha figure personifies the emptiness of both self and world and that the sacred space of the universal palace, likewise, is both within and without limitations. These considerations raise the thorny issue of how Japanese mandala images have actually functioned within the context of Japanese Buddhist practice. It has long been assumed that all mandalas function identically as colorful aide-mémoires for elaborate visualized meditations. These visualizations, likewise, are assumed to follow the same essential outline. They first equate the imperial palace construct with the meditator’s own body-mind complex, into which retinues of buddhas and bodhisattvas are invited to assemble. All of the figures depicted within this projected self-construction are understood to be personifications of the meditator’s own enlightenment potential. The meditator mentally circumambulates this palatial self-­ projection and consciously identifies him/herself with the palace’s (that is, with his/ her own) resident bodhisattvas. S/he takes on the aspect of the Buddha’s enlightened body, speech, and mind in that s/he forms “hand gestures” (S. mudrās), chants “sacred syllables” (S. mantras), and imagines him/herself as a mandala of morphing shapes and “symbols” (S. samaya) so as to practice what it would look, sound, and feel like to be enlightened. This transformative deity yoga is said to awaken one’s inherent Buddha-potential, the so-called “buddha-mind” (S. bodhicitta), that leads toward full enlightenment. The visualization culminates when the meditator dissolves the entire edifice into emptiness and dedicates the merit generated by the practice to all sentient beings. The Buddhist practitioner in meditation thereby constructs, transforms, and dissolves his/her own projected psycho-physical complex into the empty nature of buddhahood. The mandala has led the adept from everyday spatial thinking that locates distinct objects at specific places to a non-locative, open field thinking in which all forms – including the meditator him/herself – are interrelated, mutually dependent, and infinitely free to morph into one another in meditation, precisely because s/he now realizes they are all empty of any fixed essence.

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This functional understanding of the mandala, however, is overly reductionist. It primarily derives from two sources. First, the equation of all mandalas in the world and across time is the unfortunate legacy of Carl G. Jung’s (1875–1961) orientalist appropriation of the exotic Sanskrit term to explain his psychologized mandala archetype. This archetype effectively sees the world’s “magic circles” as universal and trans-historical expressions of psychic wholeness and health (Jung 1961: 196). Second, the assumption that all mandalas involve transformative deity yoga visualization is the result of the vagaries of historical circumstance. The earliest Buddhist mandalas to enter into the Western European cultural sphere were Tibetan vajrayāna mandalas, whose elaborate visualizations outlined above represent the highest and most fully developed phase of esoteric Buddhist practice, which is identified in Sanskrit as “anuttarayoga tantra.” These Tibetan versions of mandala practice proved to be normative for all subsequent Euro-American scholarship on the subject. Expectations for deity yoga visualizations were therefore erroneously applied to non-esoteric mandalas such as the Taima and/or retrogressively imputed back onto early or middle-period tantric images such as Japan’s Two-World mandala pair. This monolithic understanding of the mandala and its presupposed role in causing the practitioner to attain enlightenment, therefore, does not readily apply to the Japanese context. Put simply, there is an enormous difference between describing and achieving salvation and between images that illustrate soteriological ends and those that claim to effect those ideals through visualized deity yoga. The eighth-­ century Taima mandala, for example, is a so-called “transformation tableau” (J. hensō 変相) that illustrates the soteriological content of its source sūtra, The Visualization Sūtra of Immeasurable Life (J. Kanmuryōjukyō 観無量寿経) (T 12.365) [hereafter abbreviated as Visualization Sūtra], and its commentary by the seventh-century Pure Land patriarch Shandao (J.  Zendō) 善導 (613–681). The Taima mandala image and its medieval handscroll (J. emaki 絵巻) versions were indeed used to explain how to envision the nine levels of Pure Land rebirth in 16 easy steps, just as the sūtra’s original Queen Vaidehī did, followed by her legendary Japanese reincarnation, Chūjōhime 中将姫. However, the contemplator of the Taima mandala does not equate his/her (and usually it was her) body with the heavenly architecture in the image, nor does s/he actively become Amida in deity yoga meditation. Most importantly, no one claims that meditating on the Taima mandala leads to the realization of emptiness. Pure Land thought represents a completely different strain of Buddhist philosophy and doctrine than this. To be sure, there is a certain visual logic that presupposes that “…to see the Pure Land in this life causes one to be born there in the next life” (Glassman 2003: 151), but this is not the same as claiming that meditation on the Taima mandala brings about or causes an existentially transformative religious experience. Furthermore, historically speaking, most who engaged with the Taima mandala did not seek enlightenment per se but primarily looked to it and its female Buddhist protagonists as sympathetic models who found utopian escapes from social injustices similar to their own contemporary concerns (Glassman 2003: 140–145). The Taima mandala thus functioned like other images of heavens or hells in medieval Japan: it was an expression of a Buddhist worldview, an impetus to faith, and a colorful, graphic display of Buddhist life after

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death. It provided a vision of female salvation in a heavenly Pure Land free from suffering and evil, and seeing it generated merit for a fortunate rebirth. It, however, was not a trigger for personal illumination. Likewise, the Two-World mandalas of esoteric Shingon Buddhism in Japan cannot be said to lead one to awakening, although they do doctrinally and graphically illustrate both the ends and means to buddhahood. Robert Sharf has demonstrated that within the paradigmatic 18-stage ritual sequence for Shingon ceremonies, called “jūhachidō” 十八道, the priest never actively meditates on the figures of the Two-World mandalas (Sharf 2002). According to his analysis and according to other corroborations by Shingon scholars such as YORITOMI Motohiro頼富本宏,1 there are too many morphing shapes and too little time for the priest to do anything but liturgically intone the instructions for visualization as part of the ritual theater. He thus deconstructs the “phenomenological model” most notably associated with David Shaner that claims that visualized deity yoga (or in Shingon parlance, kaji 加 持, mutual empowerment) between the meditator and the mandalas’ painted buddhas leads to an experience of enlightened oneness (Shaner 1985). Instead, Sharf argues that the Two World mandalas simply but profoundly empower any sacred space in which they are displayed precisely because they immediately presence the unlimited power of emptiness to arise and temporarily abide as visible forms. As a result, they create empowered space, they do not cause enlightened existence. Here, too, there is a visual logic that presupposes that “with a single glance [at the mandalas], one becomes a buddha” (KDZ 2: 553), but in this case it is not because one actively visualizes kaji (mutual empowerment) with the Buddhist figures in the paintings. Rather, it is because it is understood that seeing the mandalas is tantamount to seeing the Dharma, as the mandalas themselves are said to condense and convey the entirety of the Dharma teaching in visual form. The great esoteric patriarch Kūkai 空海 (774–835) himself explains that “The secrets of the sūtras and commentaries are recorded in a general way in [these] diagrams and images, and the essentials of the Esoteric teachings are actually set forth therein” (KDZ 2: 553, trans. Sharf 2002: 187–188). In this case, therefore, seeing is not believing in the Pure Land sense, but rather, seeing is immediately grasping the truth of suchness and seeing that “emptiness is simultaneously form and form is simultaneously emptiness,” to paraphrase the Heart Sūtra. The examples of the Taima and Two World mandalas, therefore, help to deconstruct the Jungian and Tibetan-influenced interpretative models. They make a compelling case for the variety and distinctiveness of Japanese Buddhist mandalas and highlight their important role in illustrating (not eliciting) the ends and means to buddhahood. Now that we have established what Japanese mandalas are not, we may now move on to examine in more detail what they are. The next two sections will analyze in greater detail the iconographies and doctrines associated with the Taima and Two-World mandalas and will reflect on the philosophical import of the images in this revisionist light.

 Personal communication with the author, Fall 2001, Kyoto, Japan.

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3  T  he Taima Mandala: Pure Land Ontology and Soteriology Made Manifest The Taima mandala is named after Taima-dera 当麻寺 temple in Nara prefecture, Japan, where, according to legend, Lord Yokohagi’s 横佩  aristocratic daughter Chūjōhime enters the nunnery in 763 to work for her deceased mother’s salvation. As Chūjōhime’s legend develops throughout the medieval period, it accommodates the expectations of an increasingly devoted female audience, and Chūjōhime is presented as also taking the tonsure to escape marriage, an evil stepmother, her manipulative father, and a ruined reputation at court. In response to Chūjōhime’s desperate vow to see a living buddha, Amida, in the guise of a nun, appears before the anguished heroine and miraculously weaves a magnificent mandala overnight out of five-colored lotus stem fibers. The apparitional nun then uses the monumental (4 m2) mandala image as a visual aid to teach Chūjōhime how to envision the Pure Land. Chūjōhime’s devotion to Amida and her exposure to the nun’s performance of etoki 絵解き, or picture-explanation, ostensibly generates enough merit for Chūjōhime to ensure her own as well as her mother’s fortunate rebirth in the Western Paradise (Glassman 2003: 146; Kaminishi 2006: 57–73). This tale of the suffering maiden or “princess” (J. hime) updates and reworks for Japanese audiences the content of the fifth-century Visualization Sūtra,2 in which Śākyamuni instructs the suffering Queen Vaidehī to see the Pure Land. In this original Indian miracle tale, Queen Vaidehī is imprisoned by her evil son Ajātaśatru for bringing food to King Bimbisāra, whom Prince Ajātaśatru had tried to starve in prison in an attempted coup. Hearing Vaidehī’s supplications for deliverance, Śākyamuni miraculously appears to her in prison, conjures a vision of pure lands in the 10 directions, asks into which she wishes to be reborn, and according to her selection, teaches her how to visualize 16 aspects of Amida’s Pure Land of Bliss in the Western Paradise (S. Sukhāvatī, J. gokuraku jōdo 極楽浄土) (ten Grotenhuis 1999: 19–20). Again, it is understood that the practice of visualizing the Pure Land generates the merit necessary for the heroine’s eventual rebirth there. The Taima mandala (Fig. 8.1) thus pictures Amida Buddha, the Buddha of Immeasurable Light and Life (S. Amitābha/Amitāyus) in his magnificent Pure Land of Bliss. The image is divided into four registers that illustrate the four chapters of Shandao’s seventh-century commentary on the Visualization Sūtra. 1. Amida’s central court dominates the composition as a whole and illustrates the 48 aspects of the Pure Land outlined in Shandao’s first chapter on “The Court of the Central Doctrine” (J. gengibun 玄義分). Here, the monarch Amida regally sits on a lotus throne flanked by bodhisattvas Kannon観音(S. Avalotikeśvara) and Dai-seishi 大勢至 (S. Mahāsthāmaprāpta). Behind this Amida triad, a multi-storied heavenly palace appears. Its identifiable shinden zukuri寝殿造 2  DDB accessed 9/9/10. Ten Grotenhuis believes that some versions of this sūtra date to the second or third centuries C.E. (ten Grotenhuis 1999: 16).

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1.! Court of Central Doctrine (gengibun

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)

2. Queen Vaideh Prefatory Legend

3. Thirteen of sixteen meditational Concentrations

(j bungi)

(j zengi)

4. Last three meditational concentrations (sanzengi subdivided into nine general visualizations (k bongi

), )

Fig. 8.1  Diagram of the Taima mandala

style of architecture immediately signals the height of eighth-century aristocratic Sino-Japanese architectural fashion. Around this central scene, three peripheral registers of narrative frames akin to filmstrips or cartoon “sequences” (It. prédelle) run down both sides and across the bottom edge of the silk. 2. The left-hand strip of 11 frames depicts the events outlined in Shandao’s second chapter on Queen Vaidehī’s Prefatory Legend (J. jōbungi序文義). The first frame at the top of the register introduces Śākyamuni as the narrator of the vignettes, which actually begin at the base of the strip. Frame 2 at the bottom depicts Vaidehī bringing food and drink to her imprisoned husband, the king. Moving upwards, frame 3 depicts two monks that Śākyamuni sent to preach to the king in prison. Frame 4 above this shows Ajātaśatru becoming furious when he learns his father is still alive. Frames 5–11 narrate the rest of the story: Ajātaśatru threatens to kill his mother, the queen; ministers mediate on her behalf but she is imprisoned; she prays to Śākyamuni who sends two more monks; then Śākyamuni himself appears to her in prison; Vaidehī prostrates herself before him; selects Amida’s Western Paradise from the 10 options; and heeds his teachings on moral rectitude, mental concentration, and 16 steps for visualizing it. Thirteen of these visualizations appear in the peripheral strip of frames to the right. 3. The right-hand strip depicts 13 of the 16 Pure Land “meditational concentrations” (J. jōzengi 定善義) outlined in Shandao’s third chapter. In each frame to the right, Vaidehī appears kneeling before the object or aspect of the Pure Land that Śākyamuni instructs her to meditate on. Read from the top down, they are:

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(1) the sun; (2) the clear waters of the Pure Land; (3) its lapis lazuli ground; (4) its jeweled trees; (5) its jeweled lakes; (6) its multi-storied pavilions; (7) Amida’s lotus throne; (8) the triad of Amida, Kannon, and Seishi; (9) Amida as he appears in visions; (10) Kannon as s/he appears in visions; (11) Seishi; (12) imagining oneself reborn in the Pure Land; and (13) the myriad manifestations of Amida (ten Grotenhuis 1999: 20).3 The remaining three visualizations in the series (that is, nos. 14–16) focus on the Pure Land’s upper, middle and lower levels of possible rebirth. These are depicted and amplified in more detail below. 4. The bottom register directly below Amida’s central lotus pond depicts the last three of these concentrations, which are described in Shandao’s fourth chapter, entitled “General (or non-meditative) visualizations” (J. sanzengi 散善義). Here, a peripheral strip of “nine subdivided degrees of rebirths” (J. kūbon raigō 九品 来迎) run horizontally across the bottom register from right to left. They depict Amida and his retinue “descending from” (J. hensō raigō 変相来迎) and “returning to” (J. kaeri raigō 帰り来迎) the Pure Land as they welcome so-called inferior, intermediate, and superior types to the Western Paradise. Laity occupy the bottom four degrees of rebirth, whereas the top five ranks are reserved for clergy and spiritually perfected beings (Mason 1993: 169; ten Grotenhuis 1999: 17 and 22; Kaminishi 2006: 60). Some iconographic details may vary from version to version of the original embroidered tapestry, which in reality is probably an eighth-century Chinese import around which the Chūjōhime legend and etoki narrative tradition of visual exegesis and proselytization developed. For centuries, therefore, the Taima mandala provided a basic template for imagining the Pure Land and for recounting Vaidehī and Chūjōhime’s associated legends. In addition to this historical and art historical line of reasoning, however, what philosophical content can be gleaned from the image? What does this basic description of the Taima mandala tell us about Pure Land Buddhist ideas about existence and salvation? What doctrinal presuppositions must be brought to the image, and conversely, what does the image bring or add to Pure Land doctrines? First and most importantly, the Taima mandala provides visual evidence that Pure Land ontology is premised on a fundamental split between this world of suffering known as saṃsāra and a post-mortem world of bliss. The left-hand peripheral strip of Vaidehī’s narrative reminds the viewer of the suffering involved in life, and the other three registers remind one that some level of heavenly palatial existence awaits those who faithfully call on Amida and who envision themselves reborn there. This split between saṃsāra versus Amida’s paradise, however, diverges from classical Indian Buddhist cosmology, which stacks heavens and other “psycho-­ meditational heights” (P. jhāna, S. dhyāna) along a vertical continuum still within saṃsāra. 3  Mason offers a competing iconographic reading of the images that substitutes (2) moon (9) The Great Body of Amida (10) Amida in the half-lotus position and (13) The Small Body of Amida (Mason 1993: 169).

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Classical Buddhist cosmology locates the six realms of transmigration in the Realm of Desire on the terrestrial continent of Jambudvīpa in the southern cardinal direction where humans abide. Evermore expansive heavens and evermore subtle realizations in the Realms of Pure Form and Formlessness rise above it like an inverted pyramid or mountain (the mystical Mount Sumeru is often pictured in this inverted fashion in later Indo-Tibetan mandalas). Above the vast and open “top” of this funnel-shaped cosmology, nirvāṇa lies beyond saṃsāra’s last and highest dhyāna of “neither thought not non-thought” in the Realm of Formlessness. In this early Buddhist scheme, heavens such as Amida’s Pure Land of the Western Paradise (or Yakushi’s 薬師 to the East, Miroku’s 弥勒 in Tuṣita, Kannon’s 観音 at Potala or Monju’s 文殊 at Vimala, etc.) were relatively low-level stages in the Realm of Pure Form, still within saṃsāra. By placing unprecedented emphasis on just one rung of the ladder leading to nirvāṇa to the exclusion of all other levels or paths, Pure Land thought essentially extracts one element of a much larger scheme and reifies it to create a bi-level cosmology. This bi-level cosmology, by definition, shifts the ontological status of the heaven from being a state of mind to a concrete place, from a means to enlightenment to an end in itself, and from an existential condition still subject to karmic death and rebirth to a transcendent dimension for post-mortem bliss and repose. Because the Pure Land comes to be regarded as lying beyond saṃsāra’s vicious cycle of reincarnation, one’s ostensibly final rebirth there comes to be equated with buddhahood itself. It is for this reason that one receives a Buddhist name and becomes a “buddha” (J. hotoke 仏) upon death in Japanese Pure Land mortuary rites, and it is for this reason that filial daughters such as Chūjōhime work to perform memorial rites so that their accumulated karmic merit may be dedicated and transferred to assist dead relatives achieve higher levels in the Pure Land. The rest of the cosmology of early Buddhism is essentially ignored. In a similar vein, Pure Land thought exalts the secondary element of the Mahāyāna “three-body” (S. trikāya) doctrine outlining the Buddha’s historical, heavenly, and cosmic aspects. To the exclusion of the other two “bodies” of buddhahood, Pure Land specifically reifies the sambhogakāya (“enjoyment body”) of buddhahood and effectively deifies the heavenly Amida as a salvific figure. This Buddha of Infinite Light and Life vows to save all sentient beings – including women – who sincerely aspire to be reborn in his Pure Land and who invoke his name “with joy… confidence, and gladness” for even ten moments of thought (T 12.360.268a26–28; Gómez 1996: 167). As a result, this simplified bi-level cosmology and blissful, egalitarian soteriology became particularly popular amongst women in Japan from the eighth-century Asuka 飛鳥  period (538–710) onwards. Material evidence of female Pure Land devotion in Japan can be traced back to Lady Tachibana’s shrine of the Amida triad at Horyūji 法隆寺 (c. 710). Thereafter, etoki visual exegesis and instruction based on the eighth-century Taima mandala provided women throughout the late Heian and early medieval periods with an exit strategy of sorts, as it was believed that attaining enlightenment in one lifetime was extremely unlikely in the “degenerate age of the Dharma” (J. mappō 末法, calculated to begin in 1052) and all but

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i­mpossible for women. It is for this reason that Princess Hachijō 八条院 (1137– 1211) in 1191 hurries her entourage so as not to miss the Taima mandala etoki at Taima-dera (Kaminishi 2006: 57) and that Lady Nijō 二条 (1258–1307), Emperor Go-Fukakusa’s 後深草院 (1243–1304) former concubine turned renunciate and itinerant nun, “finds inspiration” in Chūjōhime’s tale when she visits the temple in 1290 (Glassman 2003: 140). The Taima mandala, therefore, not only reflects or expresses doctrinal innovations within Mahāyāna Buddhism but also contributes to them a longstanding tradition of female practice and devotion. These factors become important points of comparison when considering Shingon’s Two World mandalas and the esoteric strain of Buddhism discussed below.

4  T  he Diamond and Womb World Mandalas: Esoteric Ontology and Soteriology Made Manifest In contrast to the presupposition that enlightenment requires eons of reincarnations to attain, esoteric Shingon Buddhism maintains that one can “become a buddha in this very body” (J. sokushin jōbutsu 即身成仏), in this very lifetime. Unlike Pure Land which relies upon the saving grace of Amida’s external, transcendent other-­ power (J. tariki 他力), Shingon maintains that one’s innate, inherent buddha-­ potential, the “buddha-mind” (S. bodhicitta, J. bodaishin 菩提心) simply needs to be activated and actualized through esoteric, secret “quick path” practices. Finally, in terms of this essay’s emphasis, the Taima mandala is associated primarily with popular female practice, whereas the Two World mandalas are associated with elite gender-neutral doctrine. Like the Taima, the Diamond and Womb World mandalas show the ends and means to buddhahood, though Shingon’s definition and location of that enlightened state differs radically from Pure Land’s. Unlike Amida, Shingon’s central deity of Dainichi Nyorai personifies nothing other than the third and most comprehensive dharmakāya (“truth body”) of buddhahood. This cosmic buddha-body is not a salvific figure who vows to save all sentient beings but, rather, is the embodiment of emptiness itself in and as all the world’s infinitely recycling forms. By extension, Dainichi’s enlightened domain is not a directional heaven in either its classical provisional stage aspect or in its later Mahāyāna reified transcendent dimension. Rather, Dainichi’s realm is nothing other than the entire dharmadhātu itself, the universal palace of suchness that embraces form and emptiness as co-equal partners in the process of becoming. The famous pair of Diamond and Womb World mandalas visually map out what the enlightened realm looks like and what compassionate methods can help one realize it, respectively. In the Diamond World to the left (Fig. 8.2a), numerous white full moon disks symbolize the full illumination that has been perfectly acquired in

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Fig. 8.2 (a) Diamond World mandala (b) Womb World mandala

the noumenal realm.4 Its vajra-wielding figures represent the crystal-­clear, infinite refractions of Dainichi’s adamantine “wisdom” (J. chi 智). In the Womb World to the right (Fig. 8.2b), the striking red eight-petalled lotus in the center symbolizes the full flowering of potential enlightenment in this very body, for like a lotus, the esoteric path progressively cultivates the seed of enlightenment from out of the muck of materiality to blossom into the full light of enlightenment. Its figures iconographically encode the tathāgatagarbha “principle” (J. ri 理) that the womb-like phenomenal realm is empty yet full of the potential for birthing Buddhahood if one utilizes esoteric practice. Taken together, the Diamond and Womb World mandalas depict both reality and realization, perfection and potential, wisdom and method, the ends and means of Dainichi’s enlightened and enlightening aspects. It should be recalled, however, that the Diamond-like “wisdom” (chi) of ontological truth and the Womb-like “principle” (ri) of soteriological potential are ultimately “nondual” (J. richi funi 理知不二). It should also be recalled that the fairly obvious penile and uterine connotations of these images ultimately should be seen in a gender-neutral light.5  In this context, the “noumenal” refers to the immaterial, mental dimension of the Diamond World’s cognitive wisdoms, as opposed to the Womb World’s material, physical dimension of concrete phenomena. 5  Most notably, Dainichi’s distinctive “wisdom fist mudrā ” (J. chiken’in 智拳印, Skt. jñānamudrā) in the Diamond World mandala embraces the erect right index finger of adamantine wisdom with all left hand digits of compassionate method, and rock-hard, Diamond-like vajras poke out from between each soft red petal of the Womb World’s unfolding lotus blossom. It is true that the sexual connotations of such imagery is fairly explicit, and that, historically speaking, heterodox movements such as the 12th–14th century Tachikawa sect combined tantric sex practices with Daoist yin-yang theory to literally embody Shingon’s doctrine of nondualism. However, from a doctrinal perspective, such interpretations were deemed heretical and banned. For more on the Tachikawa sect see Faure (2000: 543). 4

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1. The Diamond World mandala pictured to the left explicitly illustrates the esoteric teachings of the patriarch Kūkai whose ninth-century treatise on Becoming a Buddha in This Very Body (J. Sokushin jōbutsugi 即身成仏義) systematically describes the ontological status of the universe and how to realize its truths. He describes Dainichi’s world-body in terms of the six elements (earth, water, fire, air, space and consciousness, that is, all solids, liquids, gases, heat, space, and the awareness to perceive them). He also describes its functions in terms of the three mysteries (J. sanmitsu 三密), which refer to the dharmakāya’s empty body, speech, and mind as expressed through “figures” (J. kei 形, S. bimba), “letters” (J. ji 字, S. akṣara), and “signs” (J. in 印, S. mudrā). He finally describes its appearance in terms of four aspects, literally “four mandalas” (J. shimandara 四 曼荼羅), which correspond to the three mysteries plus their fourth summation, that is, the four ways in which emptiness manifests as world-forms, world-­ sounds, world-thoughts, and the total collection of all world-actions (KDZ 2: 246–247). Accordingly, the Diamond World mandala spatially locates these doctrinal ideas within a nine-hall palatial construct. Dainichi’s mahāmandala depicting his body aspect with six elements is pictured in the center square. Then, moving down and clockwise around the 3 × 3 grid, the bottom center square illustrates the samayamandala portraying the mind aspect, with a codified system of signs or mind-seals to symbolize the original vows of each deity (for example, Dainichi’s gorintō 五輪塔 (“five-element stupa”) appears in the central moon disk, surrounded by Akṣobhya’s vajra, Ratnasambhava’s jewel, Amitābha’s lotus, and Amoghasiddhi’s sword). In the bottom left, the dharmamandala representing the speech aspects mini-mandala, conveys the subtle power of the five wisdom buddhas’ mantras (A, Va, Ra, Ha, Kha) by means of either figures who hold three-pronged vajras (in anthropomorphic mandalas) or siddhaṃ script (in shuji 種字, that is, calligraphic, mandalas). In the left middle square, the karmamandala, symbolizing collective activities, replicates, condenses, and spatializes the dynamic gift interchange amongst all of Dainichi’s multiple emanations. The fifth and sixth mini-mandalas in the Diamond World grid further compress the content of the previous four squares. The three additional squares of Kūkai’s nine-asssembly grid indicate how Dainichi’s adamantine illumination instantiates in the phenomenal realm (Yamamoto 1980: 30).6 2. Unlike the Diamond World which spatially compresses and expresses the noumenal realm of enlightenment, the Womb World mandala houses the Buddha’s compassionate methods for birthing buddhahood in the phenomenal realm. The two hundred and seventy-eight figures residing in 12 palatial halls personify forces necessary for achieving enlightenment in this very body. They can be grouped concentrically or perceived in the round in three or four layers, 6  The order for discussing the nine halls of the Diamond World mandala follows Gengō’s 元杲 (914–995) clockwise spiral analysis beginning with the center, descending down, to the left, up, around and down to the right. Gengō also provides a counter-clockwise analysis starting in the lower right corner and ascending up and around to the left.

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depending on whether one adopts Amoghavajra (705–774) or Śubhākarasiṃha’s (637–735) commentary of the Mahāvairocana sūtra. For the sake of clarity and conciseness, however, this discussion of the Womb World will focus primarily on the tri-partite gong 工-plan grouping of halls. This organizing rubric spatially maps out the path of awakening into three main groups. The seven halls of the central Buddha section personify aspects of one’s innate buddha potential, the two halls of the Lotus section to the viewer’s left exhibit aspects of benign compassion, and the two halls of the Vajra section to the viewer’s right house aspects of adamantine wisdom. These halls are surrounded by a peripheral hall of guardian and celestial deities. Interestingly, in the upper left corner, four stupas appear representing the previously-mentioned four dhyāna states in the realm of Formlessness (namely, realm of infinite spatiality, of infinite consciousness, of nothingness, and of neither thought nor non-thought). Here again we observe that the ancient Indian vertical cosmology has been altered in the Japanese context and subsumed as merely a detail within a far more all-encompassing mandalic worldview. What philosophical import can be gleaned from this admittedly cursory iconographic analysis of the Two World mandalas? What ontological and soteriological doctrines can be discerned and effectively compared with the Pure Land thought of the Taima mandala? First, unlike Pure Land’s vertically split cosmology, Shingon’s Two World mandalas paradoxically illustrate a single ontological plane of existence characterized by radical mind-matter interpenetration, which nevertheless also allows for ultimate (diamond) or conventional (womb) perspectives. Second, in contrast to Pure Land’s aspirational soteriology premised upon the transcendent reliance upon Amida Buddha, Shingon’s Two World mandalas illustrate a distinct soteriology of immanent potential which can be cultivated and fully realized with the help of personified wisdom buddhas, compassion bodhisattvas, and “skillful means” (S. upāya) such as these visual aids. This interpenetrating ontology and self-­ actualizing soteriology has been well articulated in doctrinal treatises and philosophical commentaries throughout Buddhist history, but, in this case, a picture (or two) is worth a thousand words. Both mandalas picture an ontology wherein matter and mind are inextricably linked. Within the Diamond World’s central hall, four figures personifying the elements outstretch their arms at each diagonal corner to embrace the fifth and sixth elements of space and consciousness, personified as Dainichi and his wisdom buddhas, respectively. The Womb World’s central Lotus Court, likewise, illustrates the five elements as a band of rainbow colored light within which the sixth element of consciousness is represented by the wisdom buddhas. In addition to symbolically embedding mind within matter in these ways, however, the mandalas also symbolically embed matter within mind. The five wisdom buddhas (collectively representing the sixth element of consciousness) are themselves equated with the five elements according to Shingon sūtras and commentaries.7 The namesakes of the  As Hakeda points out, Śubhākarasiṃha (637–735) and Bukong’s 不空 (705–774) commentaries invert the correspondences between the five elements and the five wisdom buddhas (Hakeda 1972: 7

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P. D. Winfield Diamond Names Dainichi (Mah vairocana) Fuk j ju (Amoghasiddhi) Mury ju (Amit bha) H sh (Ratnasambhava) Ashuku (Ak obhya)

Wisdom total mirror equality observation action

Elements Space Air Fire Water Earth

Womb Names Dainichi (Great Sun) Tenkuraion (Heaven-Drum-Thunder-Sound) Mury ju/Amida (Immeasurable Light/Life) Kaifuke (Opening Flower King) H d (Jewel Pennant)

Fig. 8.3  Mind-matter correlations of the five Buddhas of the Diamond and Womb Worlds

Fig. 8.4  Simplified schematic locating the five elemental/wisdom Buddhas in the central courts of the Two World mandalas (before they are hung facing one another)

Womb World buddhas, in particular, evoke the qualities of the five elements in their poetic monikers. For example, Dainichi the “Great Sun” is identified with the element of space, “Flower Opening King” with water; “Heaven-Thunder-Drum-­ Sound” with air and so on, as outlined in Fig. 8.3: The abstract series of geometric shapes pictured above represents the five-­ element gorintō stūpa that symbolizes Dainichi in all his material and immaterial aspects.8 The format of the mandala blows apart this “vertically-stacked” series of elemental (and, by extension, mental) correlates and rearranges them into their appropriate cardinal locations in the central halls of the Diamond and Womb World mandalas (Fig. 8.4). These directional correspondences of the Buddhas’ matter and mind line up when the two mandalas are laid out on the floor end to end as they are before they are suspended for ritual display. The Womb World mandala is oriented to the east and the Diamond World is oriented to the west in keeping with the solar imagery of Dainichi whose trajectory to “becoming a buddha in this very body” originates in the eastern phenomenal realm but fully sets in the western dharmadhātu realm of accomplished completion. However, when the two mandalas are suspended along the side walls perpendicular to the main altar, the nondual aspects of their iconographic codes and connotations are linked and “matched” as the two images confront one another across the empowered space of the ritual hall. As a result, this ontology of radical interpenetration of matter and mind extends into other iconographic inter-resonances between the two images as well. In the 240 n. 24). Presented here are Śubhākarasiṃha’s correspondences, corrected from Hakeda’s misordering of Amida and Ratnasambhava. 8  It is for this reason that in Japan the geometric five-element stupa is often used as a grave marker, as it represents the breakdown of the deceased’s physical and mental constituents and their reintegration back into the enlightened makeup of the dharmadhātu.

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Diamond World, figures sit in “fully-illuminated” moon disks supported by lotus thrones, whereas in the Womb World, figures sit on lotus thrones supported by moon disks. As mentioned in footnote 4, in the Diamond World mandala, Dainichi’s mudrā enfolds his single right hand Diamond finger within the closed wrap of the left hand’s material realm, but in the Womb World mandala, this phenomenal realm unfolds to reveal eight fully opened lotus petals with Diamond-vajras interspersed within. Both convey the message that fully enlightened buddha-potential lies ­inherent in the phenomenal realm, they simply picture this enlightened mind either as the very center and source of the material world, or immanent in its every dispersed nook and cranny. They thus simply emphasize what enlightenment looks like from both the accomplished Diamond World perspective and/or the aspiring Womb World angle. On another, broader level, the Two World mandalas also establish an ontology of radical interpenetration by illustrating the interfused mind and matter, ends and means of enlightened existence in two separate mandalas. They thus recognize that reality can be perceived from either the already-enlightened or yet-to-be-­enlightened perspectives. Displaying the two iconographies together, however, stresses that these ultimate and conventional points of view are nondual. This point is particularly evident to the Shingon initiate when the two mandalas strike iconographic valences across the room when they are suspended facing one another, as described above. The Shingon student is thus trained to straddle both the ultimate and conventional perspectives on existence by being able to see clearly and simultaneously – “in a single glance” according to Kūkai – that the ends and means to enlightenment are essentially nondual.9 This ontological discussion of the mandalas’ mental and material content and its double-level visual discourse leads inevitably to the role that “skillful means” (S. upāya) plays in the soteriology of Shingon. There are some images in the esoteric canon such as the Aijikan 阿字観 visualization that are actively meditated upon, but, as mentioned earlier, Robert Sharf has demonstrated that the Two World mandalas are not among them. According to him, the function of the Two World mandalas is to empower the ritual space, not effect personal illumination. That is, whenever these mandalas are displayed in a ritual context, they automatically create a microcosm of Dainichi’s empowered universe and, therefore, automatically transform anyone or anything in their proximity into a resident Buddha. To assume that one actively performs deity yoga visualization with over three thousand figures in two palatial mandalas is to commit anachronistic reductionism. Rather, this article argues that the Two World mandalas can be seen primarily as illustrative ideals for perfecting oneself and one’s world but not catalysts for personal transformation. Kūkai acknowledges in his Catalogue of Imported Items (J. Shōrai mokuroku 将来目録) that images manifest the dharma even better than words and that images themselves are nothing other than emptiness made manifest. When he says that “[s]uchness transcends forms, but without depending on forms it  The great Sōtō Zen master Dōgen Kigen 道元希玄 (1200–1253) came to a similar conclusion when he preached that practice = realization.

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cannot be realized” (Hakeda 1972: 145), he is acknowledging the power of the mandalas to render visible that which is invisible and the capacity of the mandalas to make key esoteric doctrines discernible to the unenlightened. This is in keeping with the Mahāvairocana Sūtra, which states that the “[e]nlightened mind is the cause, great compassion is the foundation, and skillful means are the ultimate” (T 18.848.1c; quoted in Yamasaki 1988: 105). This essentially means that the Diamond World is the cause, the Womb World is the foundation, and the expedient means of both mandalas, which help us to see the dharma so clearly, are nothing other than emptiness. Because of this collapse between signifier and signified, Kūkai claims that even a single glance at them can awakens one’s bodhicitta. In addition, however, one must also recognize that Kūkai wrote this claim in the context of marketing his new form of esoteric Buddhism to the Japanese court and that he may have overstated the mandalas’ efficacy somewhat in order to gain imperial favor.

5  Conclusion The preceding discussions of the Taima and Two World mandalas have demonstrated a number of key philosophical points. First, this essay has deliberately attempted to deconstruct the popular inclination to overgeneralize the mandala’s multiple forms and functions throughout space and time. In terms of form, it has shown that the Taima’s singular view of Amida’s Pure Land palace setting is nothing like the elaborate double-palace complex of Dainichi’s Two World mandalas, and it has shown that the Taima’s peripheral narrative scrollwork depicting how to envision and be reborn in the Pure Land is nothing like the Diamond World’s nine kaleidoscopic, telescoping assembly halls or the Womb World’s tri-partite categorization of concentric layers of courts for wisdom, compassion, and buddhahood. In terms of function, moreover, this essay has deconstructed normative expectation that all mandalas trigger an enlightenment experience through deity yoga; it has shown, rather, that the Taima mandala’s function was historically constructed as a particularly feminine exit strategy to social ills, and the Two World mandalas functioned primarily to empower sacred space, especially when their crisscrossing iconographies resonated across the ritual hall when they were hung facing one another. These surface observations have thus automatically recognized that mandalas vary greatly in terms of their imperial and palatial appearances and that they have played different, distinctive roles in personal piety and ritual efficacy throughout Japanese religious history. Second, the preceding analyses of the Taima and Two World mandalas have revealed the significant philosophical differences between Pure Land and Shingon Buddhism in Japan. Pure Land envisions a split-level universe in which Amida’s transcendent “enjoyment” Buddha body can rapidly descend from heaven on clouds to save a suffering soul in saṃsāra. Shingon by contrast, envisions a radically ­interpenetrating universe in which Dainichi’s wholly immanent and ubiquitous dharma body of buddhahood simultaneously embraces form and emptiness so that

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matter and mind, means and ends, conventional and ultimate perspectives, and all other dyads are fundamentally all seen as nondual. As a result, the Taima mandala shows how to escape the world and be reborn in the Pure Land, whereas the Two World mandalas shows how to see and embrace the world as the enlightened dharmadhātu, while nevertheless avoiding reductionistic monism. The philosophical shifts that created Pure Land’s distinctly dualistic cosmology and Shingon’s nuanced nondualistic richifuni worldview naturally also generated different ideas about salvation as well. Specifically, Pure Land faith relies on the saving grace of Amida’s other-power for rebirth in the next life, whereas Shingon ritual practice strives to actualize inherent original enlightenment so that one can become a Buddha in this very body. Third, the methodological approach of this essay respects the historical primacy of the image in disclosing doctrine and takes these paradigmatic images as a point of entry into discussing larger philosophical issues of existence and salvation. This approach deviates from the standard methods of philosophical inquiry, which are usually shaped by abstract conceptual thinking, non-imagistic ratiocination, and distinctly theoretical argumentation. This essay, by contrast, shifts away from such linear discursive logic premised on theory and moves toward a more spatial, visual, and associative logic premised on practice. Looking at these eighth- and ninth-­ century Japanese images in this way has revealed what people believed and did on the ground, what they felt about their world, their station in life, their real and ideal worldviews, their hopes for transcendent salvation as well as their aspirations for self-and/as-world actualization. One final note of clarification needs to be addressed, which both concludes the present discussion while simultaneously opening it up for future research. These two separate strains of Buddhist philosophy did not always remain distinct throughout Japanese history. The well-known “mixed practices” of the Tendai school combined Pure Land nenbutsu recitation with Tendai’s strain of mikkyō 密教 esotericism along with other elements, and overlaps between Pure Land and Shingon imagery and discourse abounded when the ordained Shingon monk Kakuban 覚鑁 (1094– 1143) integrated Pure Land elements into esoteric practices at Kōyasan 高野山, the main mountain monastery of the Shingon sect. The fascinating interactions and cross-pollinations between Pure Land and Shingon imagery, however, must remain the subject of another study. This investigation constitutes a revisionist introduction into the functional form and content of two kinds of highly influential Japanese mandalas, which literally emplaced philosophical ideas and ideals into the architectural and imperial construct of the mandala palace. These idealized structures, not unlike medieval illustrations of Dante’s (1265–1321) Divina Commedia, profoundly shaped the cultural consciousness of pre-modern society for centuries. Unpacking their detailed iconographies to better understand the disparate Pure Land and Shingon philosophies has revealed both their perceived ontological truths and their disparate soteriological aspirations and shown the depth and range of these views in the process.

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Works Cited Abbreviations DDB Digital Dictionary of Buddhism http://www.buddhism-dict.net/ddb/. Edited by Charles Muller. KDZ Kōbō daishi kūkai zenshū 『弘法大師空海全集』 [The Complete Works of Kūkai]. 8 vols. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1983–85. T Taishō taizōkyō 『大正大藏經』. Edited by Junjirō Takakusu 高楠順次郎 and Kaigyoku Watanabe 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō Kankōkai, 1961.

Other Sources Abe, Ryūichi. 1999. The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse. New York: University of Columbia Press. Faure, Bernard. 2000. Japanese Tantra, the Tachikawa-ryū, and Ryōbu Shintō. In Tantra in Practice, ed. David Gordon White, 543–556. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Glassman, Hank. 2003. ‘Show me the place where my mother is!’ Chūjōhime, preaching and relics in late medieval and early modern Japan. In Approaching the Land of Bliss: Religious Praxis in the Cult of Amitābha, ed. Richard K. Payne and Kenneth K. Tanaka, vol. 17, 139–168. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Gómez, Luis O., trans. 1996. The Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light. Honolulu/Kyoto: University of Hawaii Press/Higashi Honganji Shinshū Ōtani-ha. Hakeda, Yoshito, trans. 1972. Kūkai: Major Works. New York: Columbia University Press. Jung, Carl G. 1961. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Trans. Richard and Clara Winston. Ed. Aniella Jaffé. New York: Random House, Inc. Kaminishi, Ikumi. 2006. Explaining Pictures: Buddhist Propaganda and Etoki Storytelling in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Leidy, Denise Patry, and Robert A.F. Thurman. 1997. Mandala: The Architecture of Enlightenment. In Catalogue for an Exhibit by the Same Name Sept 24, 1997–Jan 4, 1998. New York: Asia Society Galleries. Mason, Penelope. 1993. History of Japanese Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Payne, Richard K. 2004. Introduction. In Approaching the Land of Bliss: Religious Praxis in the Cult of Amitābha, Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism, ed. Richard K. Payne and Kenneth K. Tanaka, vol. 17. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Shaner, David. 1985. The Bodymind Experience in Japanese Buddhism. Albany: State University of New York Press. Sharf, Robert H. 2002. Visualization and Mandala in Shingon Buddhism. In Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context, Asian Religions and Cultures, ed. Robert H. Sharf and Elizabeth Horton Sharf, 151–197. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ten Grotenhuis, Elizabeth. 1999. Japanese Mandalas: Representations of Sacred Geography. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Yamamoto, Chikyō. 1980. Introduction to the Mandala. Kyoto: Dōhōsha. Yamasaki, Taiko. 1988. Shingon: Esoteric Buddhism. Boston: Shambala Publications.

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Pamela D. Winfield is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University, NC, with a PhD from Temple University (2003). Her first book, Icons and Iconoclasm in Japanese Buddhism: Kūkai and Dōgen on the Art of Enlightenment won the Association of Asian Studies – Southeast Conference Book Prize in 2015. Her second book is a co-edited volume with Steven Heine entitled Zen and Material Culture. Her numerous articles and book chapters have appeared in The Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, Religion Compass, Religious Studies Review, and the Southeast Review of Asian Studies, as well as in publications by Oxford University Press, Columbia University Press, Brill, and Routledge. She is currently President of the Society for the Study of Japanese Religions and co-chair of the Arts, Literature and Religion section at the American Academy of Religion. Her research has been supported by the American Academy of Religion, the Association of Asian Studies, the Asian Cultural Council, and the Kobe College Corporation/Japan Educational Exchange.

Chapter 9

Carrying Buddha into the Streets: Buddhist Socialist Thought in Modern Japan James Mark Shields

No society, Japan’s included, that has tried to industrialize in the capitalist mode has failed to generate an indigenous socialist movement… In their formative years, they draw on their predecessor and contemporary movements for models of discourse, organization, and action. At the same time, as an indigenous movement, socialism naturally and inevitably borrows traditional (precapitalist) sentiments, concepts, practices, and protocols of social criticism and protest, which then are selectively assimilated into and help define the particular national variant of “socialism.” (De Bary and Kurata 1964: 212–213)

1  E  arly Hints of Buddhist (Socialism: Tarui Tokichi and the Eastern Socialist Party) While individuals and movements openly advocating “Buddhist socialism” only begin to appear in Japan in the first decade of the twentieth century, germs of the idea can be traced back to the writings of a few scholars and social activists of the 1880s.1 One example of the latter is the Eastern (or Oriental) Socialist Party

This chapter has appeared in slightly different form in my book, Against Harmony: Progressive and Radical Buddhism in Modern Japan (Oxford 2017). 1  As Steven Large rightly notes, though much has been written on the connections between Christianity and socialism in modern Japan, very little attention has been paid to the Buddhist equivalent, despite the fact that there exists “a modern Japanese Buddhist tradition of protest comparable in kind if not in scale to that found in Japanese Christianity” (Large 1987: 153). In fact, surprisingly little scholarly attention has been given to the topic of Buddhist socialism on a broader scale – and what does exist tends to focus on economics more than politics; for example, E. F. Schumacher’s chapter on “Buddhist economics” in Small is Beautiful and P. A. Payutto’s 1992 essay of the same name (Schumacher 1973).

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(Tōyō Shakaitō 東洋社会党), founded by TARUI Tōkichi 樽井藤吉 (1850–1922) in 1882. Though the party was short-lived – setting a dubious precedent for leftwing parties over the next 50 years in being forcibly suppressed by the government within months of its inception – the writings of Tarui and other founding members were, for their day, quite radical, and provide an early example of the tension involved in attempting to transform the world – “make it new!” to use the modernist catchphrase  – while remaining true to one’s cultural (and religious) roots. The “draft of the party’s regulations” (J. Tōyō Shakaitō tōsoku sōan 東洋 社会党党則草案), written by Tarui, contains 17 articles, along with a number of sub-clauses. The first three articles make up the three basic principles on which the Tōyō Shakaitō was founded: 1. We will make sincere love (J. shinai 親愛) the criterion for our words and actions; 2. We will stand on the principle of equality of self and other (J. jita byōdō 自他平等); 3. Our aim is the greatest welfare (J. saidai fukuri 最大福利) for the general public. (Tarui 1968a: 129)

Here, in addition to general (if vague) “socialist” principles, we can see an explicit link to Buddhist doctrine. The term jita byōdō, used to express a call for social and economic quality, is a traditional Buddhist term meaning “equality of self and other in their original nature” (S. ātma-para-samatā) (Muller 2009). These three founding principles are followed by Article Four, which provides four “measures” (J. shudan 手段) by means of which the party intends to “remedy the corrupt practices of the past and destroy the heritage of divisions between rich and poor”: (a) communal ownership of property (J. tenbutsu or tenmotsu kyōyū 天物共有); (b) a cooperative society (J. kyōdō shakai 共同社会); (c) women’s education; and (d) population control (Tarui 1968b: 130). Here again, though the ideals presented would be familiar to most European socialists of the day, the terms employed are rooted in Buddhist – or at least East Asian – traditions. For instance, the term “tenmotsu 天物” in “tenmotsu kyōyū” is a traditional Buddhist term meaning “all the living things in the world” – though in a non-Buddhist context (as tenbutsu) it can simply imply “all things under heaven” (Muller 2007). While it seems likely that Tarui had in mind Herbert Spencer’s argument against private land ownership, here, as elsewhere, he takes pains to frame the issue in familiar East Asian terminology rather than resort to neologisms or katakana.2 While Article Five provides the four ways in which the party intends to expand its message: (a) personal study; (b) speeches; (c) campaigns; (d) books, newspapers, and magazines, Articles Six and Seven give the party’s “oath” (J. meiyaku 盟約), which includes a reiteration of the party’s official name and opens up to a rather lengthy discourse on their ideals, including explicit links to both Buddhist and Daoist doctrine. Here Tarui asserts that the Eastern Socialist Party aligns itself squarely with the “tendencies of oriental civilization,” upon which foundation they 2  Spencer discourses on this topic in chapter nine of his Social Statics (1851), “The Right to the Use of the Earth,” a work that would have tremendous influence on both modern China and Japan (see Akamatsu 1952: 11).

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will be able to “come together with common heart and mind” to “create great clouds that will rain down the blessings of equality upon society.” Of note here is the metaphor of “clouds and rain”: suiten no kumo to nari ichimi no ame to nari 雖天の雲 となり一味の雨となり. Within this phrase one finds the four character set “一味 の雨,” which comes directly from the “Parable of Medicinal Herbs” section of the Lotus of the Wondrous Dharma Sūtra (S. Saddharmapuṇḍarīka sūtra) [hereafter abbreviated as “Lotus Sūtra”], where it refers to the universality of the Buddha’s teaching (or, more specifically, of the One Law of the Lotus Sūtra), and its power to lift all beings without exception towards buddhahood.3 Tarui further writes that as “children of the Buddha” (J. busshi 仏子), party members have a special mandate to look upon the people with compassion. The remaining ten articles further emphasize the moral foundations and “indomitable spirit” of the party, as well as their openness to various measures on the basis of the Buddhist doctrine of hōben 方便 (“skillful means”) (S. upāya) (Tarui 1968b: 130–32). As noted, even at this early stage, we see several of the tensions that would haunt Japanese experiments in progressive and radical Buddhism over the next several decades. First is the natural but difficult attempt to “indigenize” socialism by appealing to traditional Asian concepts and ideas; second is the appeal to the East Asian values of peace and harmony, which was frequently accompanied, among early socialists, with an appeal to the Emperor as benevolent protector of the social welfare of the Japanese people. As AKAMATSU Katsumaro would later write, the Tōyō Shakaitō “was not based on Western socialism [but rather] espoused a peculiar socialist blend of traditional Asian Buddhism and Taoism” (Akamatsu 1981: 91). Of this there is little doubt, but does this mean that Tarui and the members of Tōyō Shakaitō were not “actually” socialists? This, of course, is a normative question, dependent on one’s specific understanding of “socialism,” but it is one that most later socialists and scholars would come to answer in the affirmative, due, in large part, to the party’s lack of a sophisticated economic analysis and their heavy reliance on traditional religious terms and ideals. We will return to the theoretical and practical implications of defining “socialism” towards the end of this essay. At about the same that Tarui was developing his ideas for social reform, KATAYAMA Sen 片山潜 (1859–1933) began promoting a “spiritual socialism” similarly founded on religious ideals. Though Katayama (born YABUKI Sugatarō 藪木菅太郎) relied more directly on Christianity than Buddhism and eventually moved towards a more secular form of socialism and communism,4 he never renounced his early conviction, developed while studying at various universities in the United States from 1887 to 1895, that religious values were crucial in developing personal character and that such character was itself essential to the construction of  “如是迦葉仏所説法 譬如大雲以一味雨 潤於人華各得成実” (“In this way, Kashyapa, the Dharma spoken by the Buddha Is like that great cloud with rain of a single flavor. It moistens all the people and flowers so each one bears fruit”) (T 9.262.0020b18–b19). 4  He founded the Japanese Communist Party in 1922. 3

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community. This theme is one that would be picked up by later Buddhist socialists in Japan and elsewhere. Along the same lines, against the Marxist interpretation of religion, Katayama saw churches in America at the forefront of social welfare and a bulwark against secular commercialism (Sawada 1996: 134).

2  The Coming Plague In the final decade of the Meiji Period, several events played a significant role in shaping societal attitudes towards social activism – and “socialism,” in particular. The first of these was the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–1905. Although, on one level, the war helped to reignite the patriotic fervor that had swept the nation a decade previous with Japan’s defeat of China, the war’s aftermath also saw a dramatic increase in urban social disruption, typified by the Hibiya Riots of 1905, during which mobs in Tokyo expressed their anger over the “unfair” Portsmouth Treaty, signed to end the conflict (Gordon 1991: 1). The spectre of social discord as an inevitable “disease of civilization” (J. bunmeibyō 文明病) had been raised since the 1880s, and now it seemed the worst fears of conservative ideologues had come to pass. In response, the government sought ways to both forestall the more sporadic forms of protest and social activism by implementing “preventive” social policies At the same time, it suppressed the emergence of organized socialism, which they, influenced by European leaders, considered little more than a pretext for chaos and anarchy. There was already precedent for the suppression of “socialist” organizations in the name of public harmony. In 1900 the government invoked the Public Order and Police Law (which would later become the Public Order Preservation Law) to ban the Social Democratic Party 2 days after it was established. Things only got worse, in the government’s eyes, in 1906, with riots (again in Tokyo) against a rise in streetcar fares, followed by a rash of strikes throughout the country in the following year. The root cause of these disturbances was not in itself hard to diagnose: the rapid urbanization and industrialization that had been taking place since 1900 and that would continue throughout the end of the First World War. Another factor, however, frequently noted by both the press and those in power was the spread of education, which had created a class of “educated unemployed idlers” (Gluck 1985: 177). An organized socialist movement emerged in the years following the Russo-Japanese War, organizing strikes and occasional anti-government demonstrations. After the Red Flag Incident (Akahata Jiken 赤旗事件) of 1908 and the High Treason Incident (Taigyaku Jiken 大逆事件) of 1910–1911, the government made further moves to eliminate the “plague” (J. yakubyō 疫病) of what one top official, YANAGATA Aritomo 山縣有朋 (1838–1922), called “social destructionism” (J. shakaihakaishugi 社会破壊主義).

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3  Takagi Kenmyō: (Shin) Buddhist Socialism as Faith and Practice It was in this increasingly dangerous context that we see the first explicit attempt to fuse Buddhist theory and practice with socialism, with the life and work of TAKAGI Kenmyō 高木顕明 (1864–1914), who may well be the first ordained Buddhist priest to explicitly and publicly embrace socialism (J. shakaishugi 社会主義)  – albeit while insisting that it was simply an expression of his personal faith and not a scientific doctrine he had any interest in spreading throughout Japan or the world.5 Born and raised in Aichi prefecture, Takagi entered the Shin sect priesthood (Higashi Honganji aka Ōtani branch), becoming head priest of Jōsenji 浄泉寺 in Wakayama prefecture in 1899, at age 35. It so happened that a large number of his parishioners were burakumin部落民and thus faced the combined suffering of economic hardship and social discrimination. The burakumin problem would become the driving force behind Takagi’s “conversion” to social activism and associations with secular socialists, associations which would eventually cost him his life. On January 18, 1911, Takagi was charged with “high treason” for his alleged complicity in a plot to assassinate the Meiji Emperor and was sentenced to death along with 25 others, including three fellow Buddhist priests, all in their twenties or thirties – UCHIYAMA Gudō 内山愚童 (Sōtō Zen sect, 1874–1911), SASAKI Dōgen 佐々木道元 (Shin sect, 1889–1916), MINEO Setsudo 峯尾節堂 (Rinzai Zen sect, 1885–1919) – along with a Christian doctor, ŌISHI Seinosuke 大石誠之助 (1867–1911).6 While 12 (including Gudō) were summarily executed, Takagi’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He died in prison on June 24, 1914, at the age of 51, apparently by suicide. Defrocked by HIGASHI Honganji on the date of his sentencing in 1911, Takagi’s life and work were re-evaluated during the postwar Ōtani-ha reforms, and in 1996, 82 years after his death, he was fully reinstated by the denomination. As AMA Toshimaro notes, Higashi went so far as to claim for Takagi a guiding role in their future work towards social reform (Ama 2002: 49). In a piece entitled Yo ga shakaishugi 余が社会主義 (My Socialism), written in 1904 on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War but left unpublished until 1959, Takagi outlines his hybrid vision, which, he says, he intends to “put into practice” despite the fact that it may inspire laughter and derision among his readers. From these brief prefatory remarks we can see that Takagi’s socialism is understood primarily as a tool for character transformation, which, it is implied, will lead to social transformation through good works. As such, he sees socialism in very much the way that New Buddhists and other late-Meiji progressives understood Buddhist liberation and unlike the more radical visions of Buddhist socialism expressed in the Taishō and early Shōwa periods. This is not to suggest that Takagi was uninterested in social transformation, but simply that his vision was amelioristic and reformist rather than revolutionary. 5  Takagi in the following discussion of Yo ga shakaishugi I have used Robert Rhodes’s translation, while adding fragments from the original Japanese as necessary (Takagi 2002 54). 6  See Wagatsuma for a record of the High Treason Incident (Wagatsuma 1969).

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Along these same lines, it is also of note that Takagi immediately disavows links not only with the work of Marx and Tolstoy (the two most significant foreign influences on late-Meiji Japanese socialism) but also with a number of the major left-­ wing figures of the day: KATAYAMA Sen (see above), SAKAI Toshihiko (Kosen) 堺利彦 (枯川) (1871–1933), and KŌTOKU Denjirō (Shūsui) 幸徳傳次郎 (秋水) (1871–1911), the radical journalist and father of Japanese anarchism, who would later be charged with leading the plot to assassinate the emperor and was executed during the High Treason Incident (see Notehelfer 1971).7 As a priest within the Ōtani branch of the Shin sect, Takagi was exposed to the significant changes happening as part of the HIGASHI Honganji reforms of the 1890s and early 1900s, including the work of KIYOZAWA Manshi 清沢満之 (1863–1903), just one  year Takagi’s senior. Like Kiyozawa, Takagi envisioned social change arising from a process of individual transformation, based on a reformulation of the traditional Shin Buddhist concept of “shinjin” 信心 – usually translated as “faith” but with the nuance of “opening oneself up” to the saving grace of Other-power. Unlike Kiyozawa, however, Takagi was primarily an activist rather than a scholar and thus warrants the label given him by Alfred Bloom as “an early engaged Buddhist” (Bloom 2004: 23). At the same time, unlike most later radical and progressive Buddhists in Japan, Takagi chose to remain a monk, though, as noted, his ordination was rescinded by the Shin sect upon his arrest. As with the later Buddhist socialist SENO’O Girō 妹尾義郎 (1889–1961), Takagi envisions socialism as a “kind of practice” – that is, as the first step towards reform, rather than simply a call for reform. And yet, as noted above, he sees socialism primarily as a form of existential transformation rather than a theory of politics: “In proceeding to reform society, we have to, first of all, begin from our own spirituality” (Takagi 2002: 55). This move allows Takagi to found his socialism in traditional Pure Land Buddhist principles, such as the nenbutsu 念仏 prayer  – Namu Amida Butsu 南無阿弥陀仏  – which acts as a kind of external guiding force or light. While the power of the nenbutsu is open to all, it shows a preferential option, we might say, for the poor and oppressed, for “Amida’s阿弥陀main concern is for the common people” (Takagi 2002: 55). Takagi’s traditional reliance on “Other-­ power” (J. tariki 他力) is a far cry from the anti-transcendental tone of not only later Buddhist socialists but even many earlier Meiji Buddhist modernists. Unlike these 7  Interestingly, while Katayama was sympathetic to religious forms of socialism, Sakai and Kōtoku represent the more radical and explicitly anti-religious extreme of the various left-wing movements of the day. Kōtoku’s final work, Kirisuto Massatsuron キリスト抹殺論, is a blistering critique of the myth of Jesus Christ, while Sakai would go on to co-found the Japan Anti-Religion Alliance (J. Nihon Hanshūkyō Dōmei 日本反宗教同盟).As anarchist ŌSUGI Sakae 大杉栄 (1885–1923) relates in his autobiography, among the four acknowledged leaders of the Heiminsha – Kōtōku, Sakai, NISHIKAWA Kōjirō 西川光二郎 (1876–1940) and ISHIKAWA Sanshirō 石川三 四郎 (1876–1956) – only the last “did not despise religion.” At the same time, however, Ōsugi notes the outside support of Christian socialists like ABE Iso’o 安部磯雄 (1865–1949) and KINOSHITA Naoe 木下尚江 (1869–1937), and remarks: “the majority of the youths who came in were Christians. After all, Christian ideas were the most progressive in the intellectual world of the day” (Ōsugi 1992: 121–122).

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other Buddhist reformers, Takagi clearly believed that the best bulwark against selfishness and injustice is to maintain an external standard (that is, Amida), representing “the absolute transcendental compassion” (Takagi 2002: 55). Also, like many other progressive Buddhists, Takagi simultaneously reaffirms and reinterprets the foundational Buddhist Three Refuges, Jewels or Treasures: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. While Dharma or what he calls “doctrine” (J. kyōgi 教義) is encapsulated in the Amida’s Vow of compassion, which is, in turn, evoked by practioners through the nenbutsu prayer, Takagi replaces the term “Buddha” with ninshi 人師 (literally, “teacher of human beings”) which also represents his “ideal person.” While Śākyamuni is, of course, the first and most outstanding example of such, the emphasis is on his life as a supporter of the poor and suffering, rather than as a figure of worship or reverance. Takagi’s words here bear quoting, since they get to the tensions inherent in the anachronistic attempt to affirm that Buddhism – or any ancient religious tradition – is, at heart “socialist” (Takagi 2002: 56). Each of his [i.e., Śākyamuni’s] words and phrases reflects his theory of individualism. But what about his life? Casting away his royal rank, he became a mendicant monk, all for the purpose of removing suffering and giving happiness to people. He spent his entire life with only three robes and a begging bowl, and died under the bodhi tree… Wasn’t he a great socialist of the spiritual realm? (Though his socialism is not identical in theory with that of the Heiminsha or that of the followers of Chokugen.) He thought little of social rank or status. He reformed part of the social system of the time. Indeed, there is no question that he succeeded in changing a number of things. (ibid.)

Here Takagi takes pains to emphasize that, while Śākyamuni – and by extension, Buddhism – is certainly socialistic, it is not “identical in theory” with modern forms of socialism, such as that of the Commoners’ Society or the left-wing newspaper Chokugen 直言 (Straight Talk). Takagi fails to explain the nature of the difference, which might simply have to do with the radically different historical, socio-­ economic, and cultural contexts, but may also relate back to Takagi’s reference to the Buddha’s “individualism” and subsequent emphasis on personal transformation as the primary goal of both Buddhism and socialism, as he understands it. Takagi cites the existence of many ninshi following Śākyamuni, including the founders of several of the major Buddhist sects in Japan (except the founders of the Zen and Nichiren sects, though the antinomian Rinzai Zen monk IKKYŪ Sōjun 一 休宗純 [1394–1481] is included in the list). All of these ninshi “reserved their deepest sympathy for the common people.” Unsurprisingly, given his sectarian affiliation, Takagi notes the particular dedication to social welfare of Shin sect founder Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1262), who was, “without a doubt, a socialist who realized a life of non-discrimination in the spiritual realm.” Here, again, however, Takagi adds a quick parenthetical coda – “(However, even this is different from the theory of present-day socialists)” – which we might, once again, interpret as a way of suggesting a lack in contemporary (secular) socialists, that is, their inability or unwillingness to conceive of a realm beyond the material. At any rate, its at this point in the essay that Takagi makes his central claim: “I declare Buddhism to be the mother of the common people and the enemy of the nobility” (J. bukkyō wa heimin no haha ni shite kizoku no teki nari to iuta no de aru 仏教は平民の母にして貴族の敵な りと云ふたのである) (Takagi 2002: 56–57).

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And yet, to this point in his discourse Takagi has yet to discuss the third of the Three Jewels, to some extent, always the most problematic for Buddhist modernists. Here, as with virtually all modernists and progressives, the sangha is broadened to mean not the monastic community but society, if not humanity, at large. Yet Takagi’s interpretation here is unusual in being deeply embedded in Pure Land teachings, like his discussion of Dharma or doctrine. For Takagi, sangha means not simply society but the “ideal world” (J. risō sekai de aru 理想世界である) – that is, the Pure Land. Traditionally understood as a paradisal realm reached after death and the only place in which the Dharma can be actually practiced, Takagi substitutes socialism for Dharma here, suggesting that “the Land of Bliss is the place in which socialism is truly practiced” (Takagi 2002: 57–58). Here it would seem clear that Takagi believes in the Pure Land as an actual realm (as opposed to simply a metaphor, existential condition, or ideal of a future society). At the same time, however, he emphasizes: (a) the fundamental equality of all beings in the Pure Land (from novice bodhisattvas to Amida himself); and (b) the fact that beings in the Pure Land awaken to the “Buddha mind [or] the mind of great compassion,” which prompts them to “fly to other lands to save people to whom they are karmically related.” In other words, Takagi’s Pure Land acts as not only a heavenly model and guide for those of us remaining in the fallen world but also a place where beings are able to act on their fundamental reorientation towards compassion by engaging with this world of suffering (Takagi 2002: 57–58). We have never heard that beings in the Land of Bliss have attacked other lands. Nor have we ever heard that they have started a great war for the sake of justice. Hence I am against war [with Russia]. I do not feel that a person of the Land of Bliss should take part in warfare. (However, there may be those, among the socialists, who advocate the opening of war.) (This refers to Mori Saian). (Takagi 2002: 58)8

Another issue that bedeviled Buddhist modernists and progressives since the Meiji period was the question of faith, both what this implies in a modern, scientific age, and what it means within Buddhist tradition. As a Pure Land Buddhist, Takagi has less reservation in affirming the centrality of “faith” (J. shinkō 信仰) than some of his modernist peers, but he once again reformulates the concept in line with his socialist principles. For instance, he defines faith in terms of a “revolution [or turning] of thought” (J. shisō no kaiten 思想の回転) – that is, a form of personal transformation that is founded in the practice of social welfare. And yet, the traditional Pure Land teaching that we are living in a degenerate age of the “end of the law” (J. mappō 末法) is also reaffirmed, with an understanding that this condition is a result 8  MŌRI Saian, Shingon priest, journalist and publisher of the socialist newspaper Murō shinpō 牟 婁新報, founded in 1900. A member of the New Buddhist Fellowship (Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai) 新 佛教同志會, who was sympathetic to the Heiminsha, Mōri was arrested and jailed at one point for slandering an official (see Ōko’uchi and Matsuo 1965: 159–62). Another New Buddhist, SUZUKI Teitarō (Daisetsu) 鈴木貞太郎 (大拙) (1870–1966) – known to the Anglophone world as D. T. Suzuki – also sympathized with socialism for much of his life, until the mid-1930s, when the danger of such affiliations increased significantly. At the same time – as with many other Buddhist progressives of late Meiji – Suzuki’s early work show a distinctly nationalist flavor, while the politics of his wartime writings remain a matter of fierce debate (see Victoria 1997, 2003; Satō 2008; Satō and Kirchner 2010).

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of social injustice and economic oppression rather than a result of karmic fruits or some form of cosmological determinism. “We live in a country where the common people in general are sacrificed for the fame, peerage, and medals of one small group of people… This is truly a world of defilement, a world of suffering, a dark night. Human nature is being slaughtered by the devil” (Takagi 2002: 58–59). As the final line indicates, although our present fallen state is a result of human greed and desire, it has implications that are deeper than simply the material; human nature itself – literally, the “true nature or humanity” – is at stake. The only way to avoid this destruction is to “open ourselves up” (J. tainin 体認) to the Tathagata’s “mind of compassion” – which implies a commitment to practice, meaning social engagement (Takagi 2002: 59). And this, Takagi insists, has nothing whatsoever to do with social status or prestigious awards: “we do not wish to become recipients of the Grand Order of the Chrysanthemum, general or noblemen like them. We are not laboring in order to become such people” (Takagi 2002: 59). Here Takagi provides a succinct statement of his attempt to fuse the material and spiritual as well as the individual and social realms: “The only thing I wish to accomplish through my great energy and human labor is “progress” (J. kōjō shinpo 向上進歩) and “community life” (J. kyōdō seikatsu 共同生活). We labor in order to produce and we cultivate our minds so that we can attain the Way” (Takagi 2002: 59). Takagi’s conclusion, which echoes in many ways the principles of his New Buddhist peers, calls for a focus on the nenbutsu, which, he asserts, will allow us to rise above the “struggle for existence” and provide the foundation for personal and social transformation: “Inasmuch as this is what the nembutsu (sic) signifies, we must proceed from the spiritual realm and completely change the social system from the ground up. I am firmly convinced that this is what socialism means” (Takagi 2002: 60). Ultimately, Takagi’s Buddhist socialism, in its emphasis on personal transformation as the basis of social change, shares less with Marxist traditions than with the ideas of Leo Tolstoy (despite Takagi’s opening disclaimer) and Oscar Wilde and bears resemblance to the ideas of contemporary Engaged Buddhists such as Thich Nhat Hanh.9 Finally, Takagi was quite willing to criticize the institutional Buddhist leaders of his day, though with the additional risk of being himself part of the very institution he was criticizing. For instance, in Yo ga shakaishugi, he chastizes Dr. NANJŌ Bun’yū 南条文優 (1849–1927), Shin scholar, priest and president of Ōtani University from 1903, for encouraging his listeners to be fearless in attacking their enemies, since “if you die, you will go to the Pure Land.” This, Takagi asserts, is an appeal to feelings of hostility, and one that is used to promote violence – both of which go against the Shin emphasis on compassion (Takagi 2002, 56). Later on, he returns to this theme: “We cannot help but lament when we hear that religious functionaries are praying to gods and Buddhas for victory… Cease taking pleasure in victory and shouting ‘banzai.’ This is because ‘Namu Amida Butsu’ is the voice that leads everyone equally to salvation” (Takagi 2002: 59). TAKAGI Kenmyō was a significant early voice in Buddhist socialism in Japan. He took the reformist ideas of the Buddhist Enlightenment figures and New  See Tolstoy (1990), Wilde (2001), and Nhat Hanh (1998).

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Buddhists of the late Meiji period and embedded them more fully into concrete action towards social reform, without losing the religious principles – in this case, decidedly Shin sect principles – on which he stood. And yet, for all this, there is an undeniable whiff of utopianism in Takagi’s work. Despite the fact that he pushes beyond Kiyozawa’s call for a “Buddhist country” by applying Shin principles of equality and compassion to problems like the burakumin, state prostitution, and imperialist warfare, Takagi’s conflation of the Pure Land of Bliss with a socialist realm simply opens up the problem of how to bring about the large-scale social transformations that may be necessary to reach his stated goals of “progress” and “community” – defined by Ama as “realizing peace through thoroughgoing opposition to war and elimination of social inequality and discrimination [while bringing about a] life free from the ‘struggle for existence’, where labor is used only for producing sustenance so that the cultivation of one’s spiritual life can be actualized without any problems” (Ama 2002: 50). These were (and remain) large goals. Will the nenbutsu and shinjin be enough?

4  Uchiyama Gudō: Self-Awakening to Comfort and Freedom Of all the radical Buddhists of the prewar era, Sōtō Zen priest UCHIYAMA Gudō is probably the best known in the West, not least because he is discussed as the most striking exception to the rule of Zen collaboration with twentieth-century militarism in Brian Victoria’s Zen at War (Victoria 1997: 38–48).10 Among Japanese scholars, too, Gudō’s case has long fascinated, due both to its tragic ending and, one suspects, to the character of the protagonist, who seemed  – much more than TAKAGI Kenmyō – dispositionally suited to the role of tragic martyr.11 Born on May 17, 1874, in the village of Ojiya, Niigata prefecture, Gudō apprenticed to his father as a carver of wooden statues, including Buddha statues and family altars. A bright student, he showed an early indication of his later political  See also Ishikawa, for a treatment of Gudō and the nationalist Sōtō Zen priest TAKEDA Hanshi 竹田範之 (1864–1911) (Ishikawa 1998). Bizarrely, Gudō even appears briefly in Christopher Hitchens’s recent bestselling text/rant: God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, where Hitchens, citing a short passage from Victoria, claims that Gudō, supposedly one of the “good guys,” uses language that smacks of superstition, paternalism, and conformity, and thus reveals himself as little better than the other collaborators in Victoria’s text, or than equally deluded Western religionists, for that matter. Hitchens’s conclusion about Buddhism would hardly bear repeating, were it not disturbingly common in the West among lettered and unlettered alike: “A faith that despises the mind and the free individual, that preaches submission and resignation, and that regards life as a poor and transient thing, is ill-equipped for self-criticism. Those who become bored by conventional ‘Bible’ religions, and seek ‘enlightenment’ by way of the dissolution of their own critical faculties into nirvana in any form, had better take a warning. They may think they are leaving the realm of despised materialism, but they are still being asked to put their reason to sleep, and to discard their minds along with their sandals” (Hitchens 2007: 200–204). 11  See, for example Yoshida (1959), Inagaki (1975), Kashiwagi (1979), Morinaga (1984), and Yoshida (1992: 402–408). 10

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leanings by identifying strongly with the semi-legendary tale of SAKURA Sōgōro 佐倉惣五郎 (aka Sōgo-sama, 1605–1653), a gimin 義民 (martyr, but literally: public-­spirited person) of the early Edo period, who was executed after appealing to the shōgun for help to ease the hardship of the peasants in his village.12 Indeed, the area in which Gudō was raised (former Echigo province) had long experience of rural poverty, as well as a deeply engrained tradition of peasant revolt.13 Upon the death of his father in 1890, Gudō set off on a series of travels throughout the country, looking to further his education, which had been cut off at the elementary level. He spent some time in Tokyo, where he may have stayed at the house of INOUE Enyrō 井上円了 (1858–1919), the Meiji Buddhist Enlightenment reformer, who was a distant relative of Gudō’s mother. Unfortunately, we do not have any concrete evidence for this connection, but the possibility is intriguing, especially when we look at Gudō’s later turn towards Buddhist reform.14 If Gudō did stay with Inoue in the early 1890s, this would have coincided with the latter’s most productive period. Was it Inoue who sparked Gudō’s radicalism? If so, the student certainly went beyond the master. Ordained as a Sōtō Zen monk in 1897, Gudō achieved the rank of abbot in 1904 at the age of 29, taking up the position of head monk at Rinsenji 林泉寺, a temple in the mountains of Hakone, Kanagawa prefecture. Once established, Gudō immediately set to work giving assistance to his parishioners, most of whom were poor. He also began to develop his ideas about Buddhist social organization, looking back to the Chinese saṃgha as a model of simplicity and communal lifestyle. Around the same time, Gudō came into contact with anarchist and socialist ideas, which were beginning to spread on the eve of the Russo-Japanese war. In particular, Gudō was inspired by the ideology of the left-wing Heimin Shimbun, to which he contributed his own declaration of principles in a piece entitled “How I Became a Socialist,” published in the January 17, 1904 issue. In this brief piece, citing various Buddhist texts, including the Diamond Sūtra and Lotus Sūtra, Gudō insists on a fundamental link between (Mahāyāna) Buddhist teachings and socialism (see below). Through contact with the Heimin Shimbun and his acquaintance with Dr. KATŌ Tokijirō 加藤時次郎 (1858–1930), Gudō was introduced to leading socialists KŌTOKU Shūsui and SAKAI Toshihiko (see above). Facing pressure from the gov12  See Walthall, for more on the legend of SAKURA Sōgoro (Walthall 1991). Victoria mistakenly refers to Sakura as a “social reformer” whose “thinking” inspired the young Gudō; in fact it was the story of Sōgo-sama that was the inspiration. 13  According to the collective research and statistical work of AOKI Kōji, YOKOHAMA Toshio, and YAMANAKA Kiyotaka, Echigo was one of only six provinces (out of 71), to experience more than 100 ikki 一揆 (armed peasant revolts) between 1590 and 1867. As Bix notes, memories of this legacy ran deep within the collective cultural bloodstream: “The traditions and practice of dramatic human sacrifice, of people victimized on behalf of their village communities, helped peasants realize the righteousness of their cause and sustained them in pursuing it” (Bix 1986: xxiv–xxv). 14  Ishikawa notes, in particular, the “germination of the idea of the ‘self’ of ‘self-awakening’” in Gudō’s Heibon no jikaku (Ordinary Self-Awakening), which may have come from Inoue. Ishikawa (1998: 99).

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ernment crackdown on left-wing movements following the Red Flag Incident in June 1908, Gudō purchased equipment in order to set up his own underground press within Rinsenji (literally, under the shumidan altar), on which he produced socialist pamphlets and tracts, including some of his own writings. As a result, in May 1909 he was arrested for violating publication laws, and, upon a search of Rinsenji, police claimed to have discovered a cache of materials used to make explosive devices. Implicated along with 22 others in the High Treason Incident, Gudō was convicted and executed on January 24, 1911. According to witnesses, he was serene and even smiling as he climbed the scaffold. As with TAKAGI Kenmyō, Gudō’s priestly status was rescinded by the Sōtō Zen leadership in June 1910, five months after his death, and the sect took great pains to distance themselves from Gudō and his ideas, organizing a series of meetings in the months following the renegade priest’s death in which over 100 Sōtō sect leaders, government administrators, and prominent intellectuals (including well-known philosopher INOUE Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎 [1855–1944]) denounced Gudō and his work, pledging themselves to the principle of “revere the Emperor, protect the nation” (J. sonnō gokoku 尊皇護国) (Ishikawa 1998: 102–03). Also like the case of Takagi, this decision was eventually reversed and an apology issued by the organization, but only eight decades years later, in 1993. According to the official announcement: “when viewed by today’s standards of respect for human rights, Uchiyama Gudō’s writings contain elements that should be regarded as farsighted” and “the sect’s actions strongly aligned the sect with an establishment dominated by the emperor system. They were not designed to protect the unique Buddhist character of the sect’s priests” (Victoria 1997: 47). Unlike the case of HIGASHI Honganji’s reversal on Takagi Kenmyō, the Sōtō Zen sect did not go so far as to dedicate themselves to carrying out Gudō’s work. What was it that made Gudō such a threat? As Victoria notes: of all four priests convicted in the High Treason Incident, Gudō was the most actively involved in “subversive” (that is, socialist and anti-governmental) activities; thus his punishment was harsher than the others. Moreover, he left behind more writings on his beliefs than the other three. And yet, even Gudō’s writings contain little that directly addresses the relationship he saw between the Law of the Buddha and his own social activism. This is not surprising, since neither he nor the other three priests claimed to be Buddhist scholars or possess special expertise in either Buddhist doctrine or social, political, or economic theory. They might be best described as social activists who, based on their Buddhist faith, were attempting to alleviate the mental and physical suffering they saw around them, especially in Japan’s impoverished areas. (Victoria 1997: 39)

While it is certainly true that Gudō and Takagi were not scholars of Buddhism – nor of sociology, politics, or economic theory, for that matter – I believe there is more to the thought of these radical Buddhists than contemporary scholars such as Victoria suggest. Yes, they were activists first, theorists second, but they also struggled, as did their New Buddhist peers and later Buddhist socialists, to establish doctrinal links and reinterpretations of Buddhist teachings to suit the needs of their times, as they

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envisioned them.15 We have seen this already in the work of Takagi. The following section provides a brief analysis of the theoretical work of Gudō, through an examination of his two representative works: In Commemoration of Imprisonment: AnarchoCommunist Revolution (J. Nyūgoku kinen museifu kyōsan kakumei 入獄紀念・無政 府共產・革命) and Ordinary Self-Awakening (J. Heibon no jikaku 平凡の自覚). Anarcho-Communist Revolution, whose title is a direct reference to the Red Flag Incident of June 22, 1908, was the first piece published on Gudō’s secret press. A sixteen-page pamphlet, it provides a fairly clear statement of his central principles at the time (that is, June 1908). Gudō made a thousand copies, which were distributed throughout Japan. This brief work – called by one of the people involved in Gudo’s preliminary hearings as “the most evil writing since the beginning of Japanese history” – would eventually lead to Gudō’s incarceration and death, since it apparently inspired MIYASHITA Takichi 宮下太吉 (1875–1911), one of the ringleaders of the High Treason Incident, to carry out his plot (Ishikawa 1998: 102). The primary theme is the problem of rural poverty, and the author is led fairly quickly into a scathing critique of the (capitalist?) system that allows for a very few to monopolize the labor of the vast majority, who work with no hope of reward. The subtitle of the work – Kosakunin wa naze kurushiika 小作人ハナゼ苦シイカ (“Why do tenant farmers suffer?”) – indicates the implicit connections between Gudō’s chosen theme and his Buddhist commitments. As a Buddhist, he seeks the causes and conditions of suffering, in order to eliminate them by whatever means necessary. Marius Jansen gives the following account of the conditions of a typical tenant farmer during the Edo period, conditions which had changed little by Gudō’s time: The tenant… shared few of the public rights and the duties of his landlord, and he lived under severe economic dependence. His plot was usually too small to give him the opportunity of accumulating anything, and the house in which he lived, and the tools he used, were probably not his own. Paternalism, vital for his life, was expressed in language, deportment, and deference summed up in his status as mizunomi, or “water drinking,” farmer. The landlord was his “parent person,” oya-kata, and he the landlord’s kokata or child. (Jansen 2002: 114)

Here we see that the suffering of tenant farmers was both material and psychological, as they were reduced to the position of almost total dependence on their oya-­kata.16 Yet, while Gudō was an advocate of land reform, “reform” alone would  Whereas Victoria’s remarks come across as somewhat dismissive of the intellectual work of these activist monks, YOSHIDA Kyō’ichi goes to the other extreme, proclaiming that, “Uchiyama Gudō was not a thinker like Kōtoku [Shūsui]. His socialist and anarchist ideas emerged from his experience” (Yoshida 1992: 402). Here Gudō is presented as a something more than “merely” an armchair radical. While this is quite right, we must not get too caught up with the idea that one must either be an “activist” or a “thinker” – but not both. Yoshida is quite right in his work (originally published in 1959) to call for more research on the theoretical connections between Buddhism and political theories such as socialism and anarchism (401). Also see Ishikawa, who argues: “the liberating ideas of Uchiyama present many suggestions that provide a connection between modern and contemporary Buddhism.” (Ishikawa 1998: 104) 16  Bix notes the increase in the power of landlord families over tenants throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, citing it as the primary reason for the growth of peasant riots during the same period (Bix 1986: xx).

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not be enough to solve the dire problem of rural penury: decisive actions must be taken by the oppressed themselves, in order to cut off the source of suffering at its root. To this end, Gudō advises tenant farmers to resist by refusing to deliver rice and stop paying taxes. But he does not stop there. Later on in the essay, the author recommends that farmers refuse military conscription and encourages them to denounce the emperor system, based as it is on a “superstition” rooted in “mistaken ideas.” Although Gudō makes no direct reference in this pamphlet to any specific Buddhist text or doctrine, we can interpret Buddhist connections from several of his expressions and ideas. Perhaps the most conspicuous of these is the unusual phrase “anraku jiyū” 安楽自由, which appears at several key points in the piece and may be understood as a motto for Gudō’s Buddhist-socialist vision. Recall that the Buddhist socialism of TAKAGI Kenmyō was self-consciously sectarian, in the sense that he rooted his socialist convictions in principles and doctrines specific to the Shin Pure Land sect. What, if anything, can we find in Gudō’s vision that is specifically Zen, as opposed to more generally Mahāyāna Buddhist? Is there any evidence that Gudō saw Zen as particularly well-suited to anarcho-­communism? We have noted above the various catchphrases invoked by Gudō to draw the bridge between Buddhism and socialism and that they are all doctrines rooted in the early Mahāyāna texts, and thus, to a large degree, foundational for all East Asian Buddhist sects. If I were to choose a single text that brings together these themes, it would be the Lotus Sūtra – a text that, while foundational to several East Asian schools such as Tiantai (J.  Tendai) and Nichiren, is also deeply respected within other Mahāyāna sects, including Zen. Thus, while we might argue that Gudō’s vision is one with roots in Zen doctrine, we also have to admit that it is not by any means a vision exclusive to Zen (unlike that of Takagi, which does seem exclusive to Shin or Pure Land teachings).17 Indeed, in several important respects – including, perhaps, a willingness to engage in violent revolution – Gudō’s “anarcho-­communism” has much in common with the Zen-Nichiren ultranationalism put forth two decades later by INOUE Nisshō 井上日召 (1887–1967). Moreover, though it, too, would remain loosely defined in the Japanese context, the appeal of anarchism, as opposed to Marxism or other forms of socialism, to many Japanese leftists in late Meiji can be attributed to: (a) its focus on individual freedom and liberty from all constraints, moral or political; and (b) its emphasis on “direct action” as opposed to amelioristic social reform.18 Though it requires some measure of interpretive verve (or deliberate misreading),

 On this issue, Yoshida argues that both Gudō and ITŌ Shoshin shared a fundamental belief in the difference between “the way of original Buddhism” (J. bukkyō honrai no michi 仏教本来の道) and the forms of sectarian Buddhism existent in Meiji Japan (Yoshida 1992: 406). This idea was a staple of Buddhist modernists from early Meiji. 18  Interestingly, Gudō seems to have arrived at his preference for anarchism prior to KŌTOKU Shūsui’s famous lecture at Kinkikan Hall in Kanda, Tokyo, on June 28, 1906, entitled “The Tide of the World Revolutionary Movement” (Sekai kakumei undō no chōryū 世界革命運動の潮流) in which the founder of the Heimin-sha announced his break with social democratic (that is, parliamentary) tactics in favor of revolutionary syndicalism, effecting an irrevocable split in Japan’s young socialist movement (see Notehelfer 1971: 133–137).

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one can see how a Buddhist – and particularly Zen – case could be made for these priorities as well. At the same time, Gudō’s vision for a better world is one that is also heavily informed by the monastic tradition – specifically, the simple and communal life of the (idealized) monastery. Here again, we could argue that the monastic ideal is shared by virtually all forms of Buddhism, but it appears that Gudō’s inspiration was the Chinese Chan tradition that gave birth to Japanese Zen. Around the time he became an abbot, in 1904, Gudō avers, I reflected on the way in which priests of my sect had undergone religious training in China in former times [and] I realized how beautiful it had been. Here were two or three hundred persons who, living in one place at one time, shared a communal lifestyle in which they wore the same clothing and ate the same food. I held to the ideal that if this could be applied to one village, one county, or one country, what an extremely good system would be created. (Inagaki 1975: 112–13)19

As Inagaki Masami notes, Gudō’s insight into the fundamental similarity between the idealized Buddhist saṃgha – rooted in dedication to simple, communal living and, most significantly, a rejection of private property – and the basic assumptions of socialism, was one that would not appear again within Japanese Buddhist thought for another nearly three decades, in the work of SENO’O Girō and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism (see below) (Inagaki 1975: 113). Gudō’s Ordinary Self-awakening is different in both style and content from Anarcho-Communist Revolution. Here the rhetoric is turned down considerably, while the author makes a logical case for freedom and democracy using the leitmotif of jikaku 自覚. While this term can be fairly literally translated into English as “self-awareness” or “self-consciousness,” it also has deep Buddhist roots and associations as a synonym for terms like nirvāṇa, bodhi, and satori; that is, terms used to describe various aspects of Buddhist awakening. Thus I have chosen to render it as “self-awakening.” It seems that Gudō intends to use the term in both its Buddhist and its “Western” – or perhaps philosophical (but also political) – sense. As with his use of the compound “anraku jiyū” in Anarcho-Communist Revolution, the term “jikaku” in this piece implies both a Buddhist awakening (that is, an existential awareness that entails a fundamental personal transformation and encompasses or leads to liberation from suffering) as well as the more overtly Western philosophical sense of gaining “autonomy” (and political “freedom”) through liberation from the constraints of tradition, authority, and personal ignorance. Reading this piece, in its emphasis on “freedom,” the libertarian aspect of Gudō’s vision becomes apparent, and we can see why he identified with anarchism as much as communism as a political ideal.20 While communal living and the abandonment of private property remain a future ideal, Gudō’s immediate concern was the destruction of the semi-feudal  Translation is from Victoria, with modifications by the author (Victoria 1997: 40–41).  Although it is often said that Gudō, following the lead of KŌTOKU Shūsui and SAKAI Toshihiko, abandoned socialism for anarchism, in fact he never makes a clear theoretical distinction between anarchism, socialism, or communism  – just as he never makes a clear distinction between Buddhism and these radical economic and political theories (see Yoshida 1992: 405).

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system that denied farmers the use of what is theirs by “natural right” (J. tōzen no kenri 當然の權利). Thus, for all its anti-imperialism, Ordinary Self-awakening reads as much like a work by John Locke or Thomas Paine  – or FUKUZAWA Yukichi – as of Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels. Finally, let us return to Gudō’s declaration published in the January 17, 1904 edition of the Heimin Shimbun, which, however brief, is his clearest expression of the link between classical Buddhist teachings and contemporary left-wing politics. Here is the declaration in its entirety: As a propagator of Buddhism I teach that “all sentient beings possess Buddha nature” [issai shujō shitsū busshō 一切衆生悉有仏性] and that “within this Dharma there is equality, with neither superior nor inferior” [kore hō byōdō mu kōge 此法平等無高下]. Furthermore, I teach that “all sentient beings are my children” [issai shujō mina kore ako 一切衆生的( 皆)是吾子]. Having taken these golden words as the basis of my faith, I discovered that they are in complete agreement with the principles of socialism. It was thus that I became a believer [shinja 信者] in socialism. (Kashiwagi 1979: 29)21

Gudō cites three well-known phrases from the Mahāyāna sutras: (1) “issai shujō shitsū busshō,” which can be found in many Mahāyāna texts, including both the Nirvana and Lotus sūtras (T 12.374.0402c08–09, T 34.1723.0656a19); (2) “kore hō byōdō mu kōge,” which comes from the Diamond Sūtra (T 33.1701.0167a09), though a more common version is “kore hō byōdō muyū kōge” 是法平等無有高下 (T 8.235.0751c24), while the even more common shorter phrase “hō byōdō” 法平 等 refers to “the sameness of truth as taught by all buddhas” (S. dharma-samatā), giving the term a nuance quite distinct from Gudō’s overtly “political” interpretation; and finally (3) “issai shujō mina kore ako”一切衆生皆是吾子, mistranscribed in Heimin Shimbun as “一切衆生的是吾子,” which, though less common, can be found in the Lotus Sūtra (T 33.1716.0698a17) among other texts. Of course, the speaker in this instance is Śākyamuni Buddha, and not, as Gudō seems to imply, an ordinary monk (though one might argue, Nichiren-like, that an aspirant bodhisattva must take on this aspect of the Buddha as part of his or her vow). In short, here we see Gudō seeking Buddhist foundations for equality in the early (and controversial) Mahāyāna teaching of Buddha nature, which, via the influential Tiantai/Tendai school, would eventually provide a shared foundation for virtually all East Asian Buddhist sects, including Zen, Pure Land (both Jōdo and Shin), and Nichiren. While it remains an open question as to whether the doctrine of Buddha nature can provide a sure foundation for a modern Buddhist conception of social and political equality, it is certainly a feature of East Asian Mahāyāna teachings that has been upheld by socially engaged Buddhists in recent decades.22 Working against  Originally published in Heimin Shimbun 10 (January 17, 1904); reprinted in Kashiwagi (1979: 29); translation taken from Victoria (1997), with author’s modifications. 22  See, for example, Sallie King, who argues against the Critical Buddhists that Buddha nature is both “impeccably Buddhist” and useful as a foundation for Engaged Buddhism (King 1991, 1997). Ishikawa notes the similarities between Gudō and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) on the issue of employing Buddhist teachings to battle discrimination and promote social equality, as well as the struggle to connect Marxism and Buddhism. Of course, as Ishikawa rightly notes, Ambedkar 21

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the egalitarian interpretation favored by Gudō and socially engaged Buddhists, however, is the question of to which “realm” these statements apply. For instance, the well-known teaching of “sabetsu byōdō or sabetsu soku byōdō” 差別即平等 – usually translated as “differentiation is equality” – was taken by prominent Meiji Buddhist figures like SHIMAJI Mokurai (see above) to imply that distinctions in social status and wealth are simply natural givens like age, sex, and so on, and have nothing whatsoever to do with the fundamental equality of the “absolute” realm. In short, rather than try to resolve the “problem” of inequality in the here and now, Buddhists must focus on reaching the realm of undifferentiated being, by which all such superficial distinctions are recognized as illusory. Thus, the argument goes, socialists, whether of the revolutionary or reformist hue, are mistaken in taking the material (that is, contingent) world to be the fundamental reality, missing the forest for the trees, as it were. Of course, Gudō, like most other Buddhist progressives and radicals, would turn this around and ask Mokurai and his ilk why they were fixated on establishing a duality between this world and some other, when, in fact, no “ultimate” distinction can be made (here they could cite both Dōgen and Nichiren as precedent). The world in which we live and suffer is nothing less than the “transcendent” realm in its imperfect, “unawakened” state. The fundamental or “transcendent” equality asserted in the Mahāyāna sutras is for Gudō a call to action – to bring about the transformation of this world of inequality and suffering into a perfected “Buddha land” in which there is “comfort and freedom” (J. anraku jiyū). After all, the key here for Gudō is the logical chain that: (a) suffering exists in this world; (b) social inequality is a primary cause for suffering and thus must be eliminated; (c) in order to eliminate social inequality, the system that creates such inequality must be replaced – even at the risk of one’s life. Gudō’s concern with preserving individual liberty against the economic and political control of the elites (including but not limited to the “thief in chief,” the Emperor) reflects to some degree his anarchist-libertarian leanings, but it also tells us something about the way “socialism” more generally was conceived in Japan at this relatively early stage, by its supporters as well as its detractors. As we have seen, government opposition to socialism was rooted not simply in fear of chaos but also in the perception of socialism as: (a) foreign; (b) individualistic; and (c) materialistic. Already by the late Meiji period, kokutai 国体 ideology was promoting an organic state with deep “historical” roots in the imperial line and associated myths. Thus the main opposition to socialism, beyond its being a foreign import, was that it was unsuited to the constitution (in both the metaphorical and literal sense) of the Japanese people. On the other hand, while a number of self-proclaimed socialists (or anarcho-communists) like Gudō were self-consciously promoting liberal “rights” and “freedoms,” others felt more keenly the weight of the above critique and sought to ground their vision of “socialism” more deeply in Japanese history was working on the basis of Theravāda (as Ishikawa has it: “original” or gensho 原初仏教) Buddhism, and thus could not appeal to the specific doctrine of Buddha nature. Also, whereas Ambedkar eventually abandoned Marxism in favor of Buddhism, Gudō, like TAKAGI Kenmyō and SENO’O Girō, sought to fuse them together (Ishikawa 1998: 100).

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and values, in ways reminiscent of TARUI Tōkichi and the Eastern Socialist Party. Thus early socialists like ABE Iso’o (1865–1949) could write that “an accurate account of the development of socialism in Japan entails going back to the early days of our history and examining the principles which influenced our sovereigns in governing their people in those far-off times” (Abe 1909: 494).23 And, at one of the earliest mass demonstrations of workers, held in the Mukōjima district of Tokyo on April 3, 1901, at which 20,000 people defied a police ban on large public assemblies to pass a series of resolutions for labor legislation and extension of the suffrage, the meeting opened with a pledge of allegiance to “His Majesty the Emperor,” only to conclude with a rousing chorus of banzai! (see Crump 1983: 24).24 As contradictory as such statements may sound, they alert us to several important facts already discussed: (a) the definition of “socialism” is more fluid than we (including many scholars) tend to assume; and (b) this is perhaps even more so in late Meiji Japan, when various key texts remained untranslated, and when various permutations of left-wing thought were arriving in Japan simultaneously (allowing for an interesting historical parallel to the arrival of Buddhism in Japan some 14 centuries earlier).25

5  Problems of Buddhist Socialism in Japan TAKAGI Kenmyō and UCHIYAMA Gudō’s experiments in progressive and radical Buddhism are particularly striking given the growing social conservatism from the late-Meiji period, as noted above, as well as the general skepticism with which  See also Crump who too-readily dismisses such claims as “bizarre” (Crump 1983: 29). Although he avoids the term socialism, well-known pre- and postwar Buddhist historian TSUJI Zennosuke 辻善之助 (1877–1955) writes of the “social welfare” foundations of the imperial state – and thus of the Japanese as a whole – in several books translated in English by the Japanese Red Cross Society in the early 1930s (and thus presumably for foreign consumption) (see Tsuji 1932). Moreover, this tendency to give traditional precedents for socialism can be found in a number of influential late-nineteenth-century Western works dealing with socialism, including William Graham’s Socialism New and Old (1890), which discovers socialism in the work of Solon, the Jewish Jubilee, and the English Poor Laws; see Graham (1890). 24  This preamble was apparently proposed by KATAYAMA Sen, who, like ABE Iso’o happened to be a Christian as well as a socialist. While we might thus attribute the lingering imperialism of early Japanese socialism to the religious sensibilities of its leaders, I believe this would be a mistake, since it appears that such feelings were also widely shared among secular socialists, at least until after the Russo-Japanese War, when we see the first emergence of anti-imperial radicalism in the writings of KŌTOKU Shūsui and UCHIYAMA Gudō. 25  Along these lines, just as they have always been scholars who question the “authenticity” of the transmission of Buddhism to Japan (or, more recently, to the United States), so too we encounter scholars who question the legitimacy of Japanese socialism; Crump, a self-proclaimed “real socialist,” stands at the forefront of these, when he claims that “the vast majority of ideas in Japan which at different times have been labeled ‘socialist’ have been nothing of the sort. The same goes for the groups and the parties (and indeed, the individuals) who have embodied these ideas… The last thing to have crossed most of their minds is the perspective of constructing a genuinely new society which would be worthy of the title socialism” (Crump 1983: xi–xii). 23

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socialist movements have been viewed by Buddhists in Japan and elsewhere. Traditional Buddhist teachings of karma have long been used to both explain and explain away social inequalities, and Japan is no exception to this rule. Buddhist Enlightenment figure SHIMAJI Mokurai was neither the first nor last to blame poverty on the laziness and general moral laxity of the poor (Davis 1992: 177, n. 53). Moreover, for all its emphasis on compassion, East Asian Mahāyāna Buddhism has a particularly quietistic side, due in part to the assimilation of Confucian political ideals (including harmony and hierarchy), as well as interpretations of more arcane philosophical teachings such no-self and emptiness (explored in some detail by the Critical Buddhist movement). Ironically, given the emphasis on interdependence and mutual interpenetration that one finds in East Asian Mahāyāna thought – especially the influential Kegon華厳宗, Tendai天台宗, and Zen 禅宗 schools  – East Asian Buddhists have rarely used these concepts to support a critique of structural inequalities and systems of oppression, focusing instead on “private” acts of sin and vice. Finally, we should note that, in addition to traditional Buddhist skepticism towards socialist “materialism” and “individualism,” another factor that hampers the development of Buddhist socialism in any context is the residual anti-religious aspect of Marxist versions of socialism (this has been an issue with some experiments in Christian socialism and liberation theology). At the theoretical level, the critic ICHIKAWA Hakugen 市川白弦 (1902–1986), who at one point attempted to create his own “Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism” and was involved in newspaper debates surrounding Buddhism and Marxism in the 1930s, has explored the various problems confronting “Buddhist socialism” in the Japanese context. In a chapter devoted to this subject towards the end of The War Responsibility of Buddhists (J. Bukkyōsha no sensō sekinin) (1970), Ichikawa notes no less than 12 specific factors that hinder the emergence of a full Japanese Buddhist socialism: 1. close (i.e., mutually supportive) relations between Buddhism and the state; 2. Buddhist views of the human and society, especially karma; 3. “Confucian” ethics of hierarchy, loyalty and harmony; 4. doctrines like no-self, which inhibit reflection on justice and human rights; 5. the Buddhist “ethics of feeling” (instead of an “ethics of responsibility”); 6. the philosophy of repayment of debt/blessings (on); 7. the theory of interdependence, which subverts political criticism; 8. the doctrine of the Middle Way, which leads to political compromise; 9. ancestor worship, which promotes nationalism via a “family-state”; 10. reverence for the aged, and by extensions, for old things (wabi, etc.); 11. Buddhist/Zen emphasis on “peace of mind” (anjin) over justice; 12. the logic of soku or soku/hi (yes/no) which affirms the status quo. (Ichikawa 1970: 150–54; Ives 2009: 55–56)

These 12 “problems” overlap with Ichikawa’s more general argument regarding the ethical failure of Buddhism – more particularly Zen – in confronting militarism during the early twentieth century. In other words, for Ichikawa, the failure of the development of Buddhist socialism is part and parcel of the “failure” of modern Japanese Buddhism more generally. Upon further inspection, these 12 items can be divided neatly into two categories: (a) deeply embedded features of Japanese/East

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Asian culture – including religious syncretism (that is, 1; 3; 6; 9; 10); (b) Mahāyāna Buddhist doctrines, most of which go back many centuries and have been subject to a large variety of interpretation (that is, 2; 4; 5; 7; 8; 11; 12). While a number of recent critics have focused on the various doctrinal “causes” for Buddhist complicity in modern Japanese nationalism, I suggest it is the first category of Ichikawa’s factors – that is, general features of Japanese culture and religion – that are primarily “responsible” for the rejection of progressive forms of Buddhism and subsequent development of so-called Imperial Way Buddhism.26 After all, with respect to doctrine, there is always the possibility of reinterpretation, a practice that progressive Buddhists in Japan put to good use. It is much harder to fight against deeply-­ ingrained cultural values and practices.

6  Seno’o Girō and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism With its relative openness, the Taishō period (1912–1925) witnessed a blossoming of Marxism and left-wing activism in Japan – in philosophical, political, and literary forms. Within this broader wave, the movement most closely connected to Buddhism was the Muga-ai or Selfless Love society, founded by former Shin priest ITŌ Shōshin 伊藤証信 (1876–1963), whose mission was to promote and engage in compassionate action towards the poor and oppressed. Another figure connected to this movement was economist and writer KAWAKAMI Hajime 河上 肇 (1879–1946), author of the socialist classic Bimbō monogatari 貧乏物語 (Tales of Poverty, published as a serial in the Osaka Asahi Shinbun 1916) (see Najita 1980: 122). Kawakami’s work would eventually inspire later Buddhist socialists, including both ICHIKAWA Hakugen and SENO’O Girō. In addition, the Taishō period witnessed a surge in experiments in communal living, most of them inspired by the life and work of Leo Tolstoy, and several combining Tolstoyan humanism with Buddhist premises and principles, including NISHIDA Tenkō’s 西田天香 (1872–1968) Ittōen 一燈園 and MUSHANAKŌJI Saneatsu’s 武者小 路実篤 (1885–1976) Atarashikimura 新しき村. Despite these Taishō developments, however, by the early Shōwa period (1926–1989), tides had once more begun to turn against progressive politics, religious or otherwise. By the late 1920s, while Buddhist institutions in Japan were claiming neutrality in growing struggles between labor and management, Buddhists leaders knew on which side their bread was buttered  – or perhaps, who was supplying the shōyu. So-called factory evangelists would parrot the government mottos about strength, harmony and unity, while denouncing “socialist agitators.” A backlash was inevitable, and some workers began to campaign for an end to such factory evangelism (Davis  Ives develops this argument  – against Brian Victoria (1997, 2003), but also, to some extent, Ichikawa himself – in chapter four of his Imperial-Way Zen (2009: 101–127).

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1992: 177). It was in this context that Nichiren Buddhist layman SENO’O Girō 妹 尾義郎 (1889–1961) established the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism (Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei 新興仏教青年同盟), based on the notion that “the capitalist system generates suffering and, thus, violates the spirit of Buddhism” (quoted in Shields 2012: 338). The Youth League was the first – and some would argue last – Buddhist socialist movement in modern Japan. On a rainy afternoon on the fifth day of April, 1931, an extraordinary meeting took place in a small room on the third floor of the Young Men’s Buddhist Association dormitory of Tokyo Imperial University. With some 30 lay Buddhists in attendance, most of whom in their twenties and early thirties, along with four watchful uniformed police officers, the following “manifesto” was proclaimed (Inagaki 1974: 2). The modern era is one of suffering. Brothers who want to share fellowship are engaged in conflict beyond their control, while the general public is forced to beg for scraps of bread. Whether you run or you fight, the present age is one of chaos and distress. In such an age, what do Buddhists see, and what contributions are they making? Drunk with their own peace of mind, the majority of Buddhists do not even see a problem. Are Buddhists, who pride themselves on holding the highest principles for human guidance, even remotely involved in the livelihood of the general public? They say: “Religion is above all this; religion values harmony.” And yet, the fact is that religion is playing the role of an opiate, imposed upon the people. Unless the righteous indignation of young Buddhists is aroused, nothing will be done about this. The present condition is not one that those of pure heart can endure. We understand, however, the difficulties of seeking reform within the established institutions, given their lingering customs and decadence. Thus, we cannot help but firmly call for a revitalized Buddhism. First, a revitalized Buddhism must begin with self-questioning. While repudiating existing Buddhist institutions, which have already forefeited their significance, a revitalized Buddhism must simultaneously advocate re-unification with the Buddha. Recognizing that most of the current suffering has its origins in the capitalist economic system, a revitalized Buddhism pledges to collaborate with the people to make fundamental reforms in the interest of social welfare. It is a Buddhism for the people – whose aim is to revolutionize the bourgeois Buddhism of the present. Through a deepening of thought and research, a revitalized Buddhism will examine the modern aspects of Buddhist culture, in order to plant the seeds for future world peace. Moreover, a revitalized Buddhism has nothing to fear from the modern fashion of anti-­ religious movements. This is because we are finite humans yearning for the infinite, who hold that human life requires intimacy even while engaged in struggle, and because we refuse to believe that religion is completely extinct. The religion we seek has no creator god. To have to believe in an omnipotent god in the modern age entails too many contradictions. While adhering to principles of logic and reason, the Buddhism in which we believe reveres the Buddha, who in his practice confirmed the principles of love, equality, and freedom. To us, this reverence is for the natural needs that are sought in the deepest parts of human life. We are convinced that it is by virtue of these very needs that humanity is able to persist in creating unique forms of civilization. Therefore, as for the anti-religious movements, we think that their understanding of human life is insufficient. We believe that by the very dissolution of the many superstitions kept hidden away within palaces of mystery, all the elements will remain for a revival of true Buddhism. Young Buddhists! Now is the time for us to rise up! Let’s throw all conventions aside at once and return to the Buddha. And, beginning with our own personal experience of the Buddhist spirit of love and equality, let’s boldly turn to a restructuring of the capitalist system. Let’s make every effort to construct our ideal Buddhist society! (Inagaki 1974: 3–6)

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With this stirring proclamation, SENO’O Girō along with two dozen associates formally established the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, based on the simple premise that the capitalist system generates suffering and, thus, violates the spirit of Buddhism. With the exception of Seno’o himself, virtually all of the people involved were in their early to mid-twenties, and most were at the time students at various universities. In addition to the regular publication of its journal, “Under the Banner of Revitalized Buddhism” (J. Shinkō bukkyō no hata no moto ni 新興仏教の 旗の基に), the League held a yearly national conference, called “Revitalized Buddhist Youth” (J. Shinkō Bussei 新興仏青). Here various positions were proclaimed and debated. For example, the third conference held in January 1933 asserted the League’s opposition to nationalism, militarism, warfare, and the annexation of Manchuria (J. Manchukuo), while the fourth conference, held in January 1934, stated their commitment to building a “cooperative society,” promoting internationalism, and bringing about a mutually productive unification of all Buddhist sects, and the fifth conference, held in January 1935, made explicit the League’s intent to restructure the capitalist system, vigorously challenge “reactionary religious sects,” and allow each person to reach a state of perfection through inner purification (Kashiwahara 1990: 215). Most, if not all, of these positions were in conflict with the trends of the times, towards growing nationalism, militarism and conservatism. In fact, they would seem to be framed in such a way as to draw attention to the movement. In April 1935, at the invitation of KATŌ Kanjū 加藤勘十 (1892–1978) and TAKANO Minoru 高野実 (1901–1974), leaders of the National Council of Trade Unions, Seno’o took up a position as editor of Rōdō Zasshi 労働雑誌 (Journal of Manual Labor), whose aim was the establishment of a popular front (J. jinmin sensen 人民戦線). In 1936, Seno’o participated in Katō’s Convention of Proletarian Workers and Farmers (J. Rōdō Musan Kyōgikai 労農無産協議会) – later known as the Proletarian Party of Japan (J. Nihon Musantō 日本無産党) – and stood (unsuccessfully) as that party’s candidate in the Tokyo municipal elections. The party campaigned under the banner of “an anti-fascist and anti-bureaucratic popular front.” At the time, however, the government began to increase its pressure on left-wing groups and liberal thought. By 1936 membership in the Youth League had reached nearly 3000, making it an object of legitimate concern for the government. Yet it was Seno’o’s active involvement with the broader left-wing popular front that would lead to his eventual arrest. Under the auspices of the Peace Preservation Act (J. Chian iji hō 治安維持法) of 1925, Seno’o was arrested on December 7, 1936, and charged with treason, and over the next 12 months hundreds of members of all these organizations were rounded up, including Proletarian Party Chairman KATŌ Kanjū. In the spring of 1937, after five months of relentless interrogation, Seno’o confessed his crimes and pledged his loyalty to the emperor. Sentenced to five years in prison, he was released due to ill health in 1942. After the war, he resumed his work for peace and social justice, though in a much quieter vein (see McCormick 2002; Lai 1984).27  While Lai’s study is significant for providing the first English analysis of Seno’o’s thought, it is riddled with psychological generalizations that limit its usefulness. The only other Englishlanguage study of Seno’o and the Youth League is that of Steven Large which, though solid, does not delve very deeply into the philosophy or ethics of Seno’o’s Buddhist socialism (Large 1987).

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Seno’o and the Youth League were fighting a war on (at least) two fronts: against conservative Buddhist institutions and so-called Imperial Way Buddhism, on one hand, and against anti-Buddhist and anti-religious forces, on the other.28 This would require a delicate balance of apologetics and criticism. The League’s Manifesto presents the following three foundational principles:

1. We resolve to realize the implementation of a Buddha Land in this world, based on the highest character of humanity as revealed in the teachings of Sākyamuni Buddha and in accordance with the principle of brotherly love. 2. We accept that all existing sects, having profaned the Buddhist spirit, exist as mere corpses. We reject these forms, and pledge to enhance Buddhism in the spirit of the new age. 3. We recognize that the present capitalist economic system is in contradiction with the spirit of Buddhism and inhibits the social welfare of the general public. We resolve to reform this system in order to implement a more natural society. (Kashiwahara 1990: 214; Hayashi 1976: 26–29)

In general, the Youth League interpreted Buddhism as an atheistic, humanistic, and ethical religion. In this they followed a number of their Buddhist Enlightenment and New Buddhist forebears. Yet while the rejection of preceding and existent forms of Buddhism is also reminiscent of these earlier movements, the language regarding the problems of the capitalist system – and the more explicit emphasis on material well-being – is new, though it has precedents in the work of both Takagi and Gudō. In his writings, Seno’o insists on a proper understanding of the causes and conditions of poverty. Since these causes and condition are both material and spiritual, then naturally the solution to poverty must also, against the secular Marxists, include aspects of the spiritual and material (Seno’o 1975: 312–13, 386). Like Takagi and Gudō, Seno’o strongly denounces the Buddhist establishment for utilizing Buddhist doctrines such as karma and the wheel of rebirth as explanations – and ex post facto justifications – for social inequalities (Seno’o 1975: 275). Along similar lines, he criticizes the oft-employed Buddhist expression of “differentiation is equality” (J. sabetsu soku byōdō 差別即平等) as being an abstract concept that cannot and should not be applied to the social realm (see Inagaki 1974: 16).29 More generally, Seno’o came to reject the blithe metaphysics of harmony – what Critical Buddhists would later call “topicalism” – found within much of the Mahāyāna philosophical

 Leaving aside the residual anti-Buddhist rhetoric emerging from proponents of State Shinto, the two most significant hanshūkyō 反宗教 movements of this period were the Nihon Hanshūkyō Dōmei 日本反宗教同盟 (Japan Anti-Religion Alliance), led by SAKAI Toshihiko and TAKATSU Seidō 高津正道 (1893–1974), and the Nihon Sentoteki Mushinronsha Dōmei 日本戦闘的無神論 者同盟 (Japan Militant Atheists’ Alliance), established by AKITA Ujaku 秋田雨雀 (1883–1962) (see Honma 1971). 29  On both of these points, Seno’o may have been thinking of, and no doubt regretting, some of his own words as a proponent of Nichirenism. In various pieces in the journal Wakōdo 若人, he had argued for precisely such positions (e.g., Seno’o 1975: 13, 48) – positions which, as Lai (1984: 17) notes, are doctrinally sound according to the metaphysical idealism inherent in mainstream TendaiNichiren thought. 28

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tradition, and reaching a peak within the Tendai synthesis,30 and hongaku thought more generally. It is perhaps more accurate to say that in developing his earlier Nichirenism (J. Nichirenshugi 日蓮主義), Seno’o came to see harmony and the overarching vision of totality presented in Mahāyāna/Tendai thought and the Lotus Sutra as a goal to be reached through historical (including economic and political) transformation, rather than an a prior ontological ground that must simply be recognized (Lai 1984: 22). In similar fashion, suffering was an existential condition to be analyzed and eliminated, rather than – as some within the Tendai and associated traditions would have it – an illusory concept to be transcended via a dialectics of emptiness or a deeper realization of Buddha-nature. Before going further with this analysis, it is important to look more closely at Seno’o and the Youth League’s connections to the Nichiren sect, which distinguishes their version of Buddhist socialism from the ones discussed above. In 1919, Seno’o formed a group with the Buddhist philosopher HONDA Nisshō 本多日生 (1867–1931), called “Greater Japan Nichirenist Youth Corps” (J.  Dainippon Nichirenshugi Seinendan 大日本日蓮主義青年団), and in the following year published a piece in Wakōdo 若人 (Youth), the group’s organ, making the case for a recovery of the “humanist” element within traditional Nichiren thought as an antidote to the increasing alienation of modern society (see Matsune 1975: 24–45; Tamamura 1980: 393–411; Large 1987: 155). As Kashiwahara notes, however, by the end of the Taishō period, Seno’o was starting to entertain serious doubts about the justice of the capitalist system and began to consider socialism as a practical foundation for his thoughts on social and religious reform (Kashiwahara 1990: 214). Though this may be considered a turn away from Nichirenism, I would like to suggest that it is also an extension of some fundamental insights of the Nichiren form of Buddhism. Indeed, although he would come to renounce the Nichiren sect as an institution, the establishment of the Youth League in 1931 was, for Seno’o, an attempt to bring about a form of Buddhism that Nichiren himself would advocate were he alive in Seno’o’s own day (Seno’o 1975: 260–62; Inagaki 1974: 11). As one of a number of popular new “reform” movements that arose during the tumultuous Kamakura period (1185–1333), the Nichiren sect developed a unique and influential interpretation of the relation between religious practice and social affairs. Nichiren 日蓮 (1222–1282), the founder of the sect, was, along with many of his day, convinced that the surrounding chaos could only mean that the world had reached its “latter days”  – in Buddhist tradition, a period known as mappō 末法 (literally, “the end of the Dharma/Buddhist law”). Rather than seek release in meditation (as in Zen) or in faith in an otherworldly savior (as in the popular Pure Land sects), Nichiren posited that “salvation” could only be found within society itself  – remade according to the teachings of the Lotus Sūtra.  Zhiyi 智顗 (538–597), the third patriarch and principal systemizer of Chinese Tiantai, developed the notion that the Three Marks of Existence (S. trilakṣaṇa; C. sānxiàng 三相) found in traditional (“Hīnayāna”) Buddhism had been superseded by the Mahāyāna One Real Mark (S. ekalakṣaṇa; C. yīxiàng 一相).

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According to this understanding, it is incumbent upon visionary leaders to work for social reform, so that a “Buddha land” can be created in which there is both peace and prosperity.31 Such obviously includes what we would today call politics, as well as economics, education and various aspects of culture.32 The underlying premise behind this religio-­political vision is that: the self and society are mutually intertwined, and, together as one, shape reality. Thus, in conjunction with one’s own transformation and salvation, the surrounding environment will also change and be saved, which in turn will again have an impact on one’s own transformation. (Machacek and Wilson 2000: 103)

And yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, there is little in Nichiren’s writings to suggest what moderns would call a historical consciousness regarding structural suffering and the need for socio-political change. Indeed, Nichiren’s view of time involved a telescoping of past, present, and future onto the eternity of the moment – a theoretical move that “may also help to obscure the more immediate sense of mujō [i.e., impermanence]” (Lai 1984: 24). Seno’o rectified this problem by developing the concept of “hansei” 反省 – critical reflection or meditation – as fundamental to Buddhist social and political reform. Hansei is a deeply penetrating form of self-reflection that must be grounded in one’s existence with and amongst others. Moreover, hansei is explicitly connected to historical consciousness within the socio-political realm. For Seno’o, the state itself must undergo constant hansei as one of the primary qualities of ruling, along with humaneness and practice. He went so far as to suggest that these three virtues were the true meanings behind Japan’s Imperial Regalia (J. Sanshu no jingi 三種の神器; the mirror, jewel, and sword). traditionally understood as representative of wisdom, goodness, and valor respectively, though, more importantly, as symbols attesting to the divine authority of the emperor (Seno’o 1975: 274–277). For Seno’o – in what must have seemed like blasphemy to Taishō and early Shōwa rightists – the legendary mirror of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu was a poignant symbol of the need for even the most exalted of earthly leaders to go through a process of critical, historical reflection on the actions of his state.33 In similar fashion, Seno’o offered a reinterpretation of the Three Jewels or Refuges (S. triśaraṇa; J. sankiei 三歸依), such that Buddha represents the manifest human ideal, Dharma the law of selfless love, and Sangha a new society, free of exploitation (Seno’o 1975: 384–387).

31  See Nichiren’s Risshō Ankoku-ron 立証案国論 for the best expression of his religio-political vision (Nichiren 1990). 32  More controversially, it also involves a commitment to “breaking off” the false and erroneous views of others – a practice known within the Nichiren tradition as shakubuku 折伏, one for which the new religious movement and Nichiren offshoot Sōka Gakkai 創価学会 has been roundly criticized. Sōka Gakkai has of late  – no doubt in response to public criticism  – turned away from shakubuku towards a principle of shōju 聖衆, which seeks unity between religions. 33  Although this concept may not initially seem reflective of Nichiren’s particular vision of politicoreligious alignment, it, in fact, harks back to Nichiren’s warnings that Japan’s leaders were in danger of losing their mandate due to their lack of attention to the True Dharma.

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7  Final Considerations As we have seen, as early as the 1880s, a few scholars and Buddhist figures in Japan were already beginning to make associations between Buddhism and socialism, even if only at the level of theory. This trend reached the level of practice in the final decade of Meiji, with the life and work (and death) of the radical monks TAKAGI Kenmyō and UCHIYAMA Gudō, and then took form as a broader movement in early Shōwa with SENO’O Girō’s Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism. And yet, as noted, there is significant diversity in the thought of the above figures, which brings us to a significant problem in the attempt to analyze the phenomenon of “Buddhist socialism,” whether in Japan or elsewhere: the very definition of the word “socialism.” In ways akin to the term “Buddhism,” socialism can mean different things to different people in different contexts and situations. Also, like Buddhism, the term is frequently employed by advocates, critics, and scholars alike as if there were an accepted definition upon which all agree. In the case of Japan, there is no question that socialism (in whatever form) was understood by the government – at least by 1905 – as a dangerous, foreign menace. However, there was hardly any of the fear that one finds in Western countries like the United States that socialism is dangerous because it is destructive to individual liberty – or to individualism – more broadly.34 Indeed, as noted above, the government, and conservative ideologues of various stripes, tended to see socialism as being “individualistic,” and thus destructive of the communal, harmonious fabric of the Japanese (or possibly pan-Asian) social identity. A few self-identifying socialists attempted to counter this by arguing that socialism in its pure form is anti-individualistic, and thus well-suited to Japanese custom and traditions, including that of the (revived) imperial state! Besides the charge of individualism was the one of “materialism” – also used by conservative ideologues to argue that socialism was anathema to the Japanese people and their traditional ethos, which, like that of the samurai, was resolutely anti-materialist. Perhaps we would do best to approach the issue of understanding socialism in Japan in the way that contemporary scholars generally approach the problem of defining a religion such as Buddhism. First, we must note the diversity, while attempting to work out the shared features – if such exist – that will allow us to continue to employ the term. One shared feature is the general critique of the capitalist economic system – or, at least, its effects on the poor and/or working classes. As we have seen, however, early socialists in Japan were often just as likely to  One exception to this is, interestingly, the earliest account of “komumiyunisume” and “soshiarisume” to appear in Japan, a critical report by statesman and educator Baron KATŌ Hiroyuki 加 藤弘之 (1836–1916), a leading figure of the early Meiji Civilization and Enlightenment (Bunmei Kaika 文明開化) movement – and opponent of FUKAZAWA Yukichi. In a work entitled Shinsei Tai-i 真政大意 (Outline of New Government), published in 1870, Katō associated both socialism and communism with state control (finding their roots in ancient Sparta), and concluding that while “what lies behind it is earnest idealism… the severity of such a system would, in fact, be unbearable. Nothing could go farther than this in restricting (people’s) customary feelings of freedom and their rights…” (Akamatsu 1952: 6–7).

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oppose a system of land ownership they saw (with justification) as feudal as much as capitalist.35 In addition, the emphasis tended to be on the moral destructiveness of the present system, rather than any structural concerns, partly due to the influence of Christianity and Confucianism. Moreover, there remained among many early socialists a tendency to focus on social welfare – as opposed to social transformation – as a means to resolve the problem of poverty. This tendency may have been especially pronounced among Buddhist socialists, given, on the one hand, the clear historical precedent for Buddhist social welfare, and, on the other, the fear that revolution was extreme and thus anti-Buddhist.36 Still, the economic critique is a shared feature of most, if not all, Japanese socialists – Buddhist or otherwise. One issue that divided Buddhist socialists in Japan was the question of industrialization, and, relatedly, of materialism. Generally, European socialist movements have followed Marx and Engels in being comfortable with industrialization itself, if critical of the effects of such under capitalism. To resist industrialization and appeal to some agrarian ideal was, in the eyes of most European (and many Japanese) socialists, to fall prey to “utopian socialism” – a particularly bourgeois disease that must be resisted at all costs. In Japan, partly due to indigenous movements such as the kokugaku 国学 and emerging kokutai ideologies, and partly due to the influence of Tolstoy’s thought, socialists, particularly those with Buddhist leanings, were faced with difficult choices with regard to matters of industrialization, urbanization, and, more generally, the critique of “materialism” (whether Darwinian, socialist or capitalist) as being anti-Japanese. Finally, the issue of imperialism also plays a complex role in the history of socialism in Japan from mid-Meiji through early Shōwa. Along with the critique of capitalism, an internationalist perspective has generally been a foundation of European socialism. This was generally true in Japan, as well. Early socialists like Katayama Sen tended to be internationally-minded and critical of the various forms of imperialism sweeping the globe in the late nineteenth century. Yet, an anti-­imperialist attitude can quickly and easily slide away from internationalist solidarity towards a form of ethnic nationalism, in which the threat of foreign invasion (whether real or perceived) acts to fan the flames of patriotism. Something along these lines occurred in Japan in the mid-late Meiji period. While the country faced (real) threats from Western powers from the moment of the arrival of Commander Perry’s black ships in 1853, the perception of foreign threat grew in the period following the first Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and especially after the Russo-­Japanese War (1904–1905). Along with Buddhists, Japanese socialists were not immune to the rhetoric of anti-imperialist nationalism.37 What makes  “Tenantry in the Japanese countryside was not something that developed with capitalism, but it had its origins in the inequality of premodern times” (Jansen 2000, 113). 36  Much has been written on social welfare in Buddhist tradition; in Japanese scholarship see Yoshida (1964, 1993). 37  See, for example Katayama’s “Shokkō shokun ni yosu 職工諸君によす” (Summons to the Workers), which reads as a complex mix of international workers’ solidarity, anti-foreign sentiment, and anti-revolutionary paternalist moralizing (Katayama and Nishikawa 1952: 18–22). 35

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things even more complex is the fact that, in the wake of the Sino-Japanese War, Japan would embark on its own experiment in imperialism, which would eventually reach a crescendo with the proclamation of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (J. Dai tō-a kyōeiken 大東亜共栄圏) in the early 1940s. As is well known, even the language of Japanese imperialism was couched in anti-imperialist rhetoric, such that Japanese invasion of Asian countries was itself a mark of pan-Asian resistance to Western global domination. While most socialists of the 1930s were resistant to this line of discourse – a factor which led to their demise by 1936 – its appeal remained (as it does even today among many Japanese). Along these lines, while the primary figures discussed above – Takagi, Gudō, and Seno’o – can all reasonably be called “progressive,” other writers who might reasonably be called “socialist” complicate any ready conflation of socialism with left-­ wing activism in the context of mid-Meiji through early-Shōwa Japan: for example, late-Meiji Shin sect reformer KIYOZAWA Manshi, who wrote of a “Buddhist country” that might one day replace the present capitalist and materialist one38; KITA Ikki 北一輝 (1883–1937), who self-consciously (and, it would seem, sincerely) appropriated the term socialism for his own nationalistic ideas; or even the “ultranationalist” INOUE Nisshō, who shared many assumptions and ideals about self and society with his fellow ex-Nichirenist SENO’O Girō, The life and work of such figures, which fall outside of generally accepted categories of economic, social, and political theory due to their particular religious ideals and affiliations, are useful in helping us to question these categories – especially, but not exclusively, their application to the context of modern Japan.39 Finally, while we must admit that Buddhist experiments in socialism and other forms of radical economic and political activism such as those discussed in this chapter were ideologically far removed from the mainstream of modern Japanese Buddhist thought, and that their effect on Buddhist institutions and doctrine was minimal in the prewar years, they nonetheless point to a significant undercurrent of Buddhist political ­protest and raise the potential of untapped theoretical possibilities for contemporary movements in socially engaged Buddhism.

 Though Seno’o would later criticize Kiyozawa’s “spiritualism” for not paying enough attention to material needs, he generally agreed with the Shin sect reformer’s conviction that materialism by itself was insufficient for true social change (see Seno’o 1975: 386). In this way, as Lai notes, Seno’o’s vision was similar to Tolstoy’s Christian socialism Lai (1984: 40). 39  One way to avoid getting bogged down with the issue of determining the precise meaning of “socialism” and “socialist” is to employ an alternative term – “radical.” We might define “radical” as comprising any position that is: (a) politically engaged; and (b) in opposition to the hegemonic ideology (or ideologies) of any given period. Thus, a “radical Buddhist” is a person engaged in the explicit or implicit use of Buddhist doctrines or principles to foment resistance to the state. The views and activities of radical Buddhists may fall all over the political spectrum – though they tend towards the extremes, for obvious reasons. One of the benefits of the term “radical Buddhism” is that it is context-dependent, and thus frees us from having to make normative claims about the legitimacy or authenticity of these theories and practices in relation to standards of Marxism, socialism, anarchism, fascism, left, right and so on. 38

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Shields, James Mark. 2012. Blueprint for Buddhist Revolution: The Radical Buddhism of Seno’o Girō (1889–1961) and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 39 (2): 331–351. Takagi, Kenmyō 高木顕明. 2002. Yo ga shakashugi 『余が社会主義』. Trans. Robert F. Rhodes. The Eastern Buddhist, New Series 33 (2): 54–61. Tamamura, Taijō 圭室諦成. 1980. Nihon bukkyōshi—III 『日本仏教史−III』. Tokyo. Tarui, Tokichi 樽井藤吉. 1968a. Tōyō Shakaitō tōsoku sōan 「東洋社会党党則草案」. In Nihon shakai undō shisō shi 『日本社会運動思想史』, ed. Hisao Itoya 絲屋寿雄 and Kishimoto Eitarō 岸本英太郎, vol. 2, 125–129. Tokyo: Aoki Shoten. ———. 1968b. Tōyō no kyomutō 「東洋の虚無等」. In Nihon shakai undō shisō shi 『日本社 会運動思想史』, ed. Hisao Itoya 絲屋寿雄 and Kishimoto Eitarō 岸本英太郎, vol. 2. Aoki Shoten: Tokyo. Tolstoy, Leo N. 1990. Government Is Violence: Essays on Anarchism and Pacifism, ed. David Stephens. Trans. Vladimir Tchertkoff. London: Phoenix Press. Tsuji, Zennosuke 辻善之助. 1932. Nihonjin no hakuai 『日本人の博愛』 [The Philanthopy of the Japanese]. Tokyo: Kinkōdō shoseki. Republished together with Nihon kōshitsu no shakai jigyō 『日本皇室の社会事業』 [Social Welfare Activities of the Japanese Imperial Family] in 1934. English translation as The Humanitarian Ideas of the Japanese, and Social Welfare Work by the Imperial Family of Japan, trans. Nakagawa Masao and Takahashi Kazumoto. Tokyo: Japanese Red Cross Society, 1934. Victoria, Brian Daizen. 1997. Zen at War. 2nd ed. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. ———. 2003. Zen War Stories. London: Routledge Curzon. Wagatsuma, Sakae 我妻栄, ed. 1969. Nihon seiji saiban kiroku: Meiji, go 『日本政治裁判記録: 明治・後』. Tokyo: Daiichi Hōki. Walthall, Anne. 1991. The Sakura Sōgorō Story. In Peasant Uprisings in Japan: A Critical Anthology of Peasant Histories. ed. and trans. Anne Walthall. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wilde, Oscar. 2001. The Soul of Man Under Socialism. In The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Selected Critical Prose. London: Penguin. Yoshida, Kyūichi 吉田久一. 1959. Uchiyama gudō to takagi kenmyō no chosaku 「内山愚童と 高木顕明の著作」. Nihon rekishi 『日本歴史』 131 (May): 68–77. ———. 1964. Nihon kindai bukkyō shakaishi kenkyū 『日本近代仏教社会史研究』. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. ———. (1959) 1992. Nihon kindai bukkyōshi kenkyū 『日本近代仏教史研究』. Tokyo: Kawashima Shoten. ———. 1993. Seno’o girō: Kyūdō to shakaishugi 「妹尾義郎—求道と社会主義」. In Yoshida Kyuichi chosakushu, 7: Shakai fukushi, shūkyō ronshu dōjidaishi o kataru—Yaeyama nikki hoka 『吉田久一著作集7 社会福祉・宗教論集 同時代史を語る─八重山日記他』. Tokyo: Kawashima Shoten. James Mark Shields is Professor of Comparative Humanities and Asian Thought and Inaugural Director of the Humanities Center at Bucknell University. Educated at McGill University (Canada), the University of Cambridge (UK), and Kyoto University (Japan), he conducts research on modern Buddhist thought, Japanese philosophy, comparative ethics and philosophy of religion. In addition to several dozen published articles, chapters, and reviews, he is author of Critical Buddhism: Engaging with Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought, Against Harmony: Progressive and Radical Buddhism in Modern Japan, and co-editor of Teaching Buddhism in the West: From the Wheel to the Web and Buddhist Responses to Globalization.

Chapter 10

Salvation and Violence in Japanese Buddhism: The Case of Aum Shinrikyō Manabu Watanabe

1  Introduction Buddhism has the reputation of being a peaceful religion that is opposed to violence. This applies to the context of Japanese Buddhism as well. However, the recent events caused by Aum Shinrikyō オウム真理教 suggest that even Buddhists can be extremely violent. In the following essay I will discuss how the leadership and members of Aum Shinrikyō became violent, even though Buddhist tradition propagates the prescriptions of no killing and no violence. Buddhist scriptures identify five precepts (S. pañcaśīla) as a set of moral guidelines for lay believers. Among them, “abstinence from killing” (S. ahiṃsā), that is, the killing or hurting of any sentient beings is strictly prohibited not only for “monks” (S. bhikṣus) and “nuns” (S. bhiksunīs) but for lay believers as well because such actions cause pain to others and cause their agents to accumulate bad karma. For the same reason, Bhikṣus and bhikṣuṇīs are also prohibited from digging holes in the ground and cutting or trimming trees. However, there were some Buddhist teachings that permit Buddhists to willfully hurt others and we cannot deny that they have some logic behind them. For example, Asaṅga (c. 310–390) wrote that lay bodhisattvas are allowed to do evil deeds like killing or stealing if they have compassion for the recipients of these acts and commit these acts for the sake of others as “skillful means” (S. upāya).1 Elsewhere, I have observed that 1  For a more detailed discussion of the concept of “upāya” see Fujita, Kōkan 藤田光寛. 1995. “Bosatsujikaibon ni tokareru sesshō ni tsuite” 〈菩薩地戒品〉に説かれる「殺生」について [On the ‘Act of Killing’as described in the Chapter on the Precepts of the Bodhisattvabhūmi]. Mikkyō Bunka 密教文化 191: 150. (Fujita 1995: 150) and Python’s Vinaya-Viniścaya-Upāli-Pariprcchā (Python 1973: §20, §§42–43).

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[i]t can be pointed out that there is also a textual background for this way of thinking in traditional Buddhism. The Upāyakauśalya Sūtra (The Skill-in-Means Sūtra) narrates that the Buddha in the last of his previous lives, when he was the captain of a ship, killed a thief in order to save the lives of five hundred merchants.2 The story has a happy ending. The Buddha proudly reports: “Son of the family: For me, saṃsāra was curtailed for one hundred thousand eons because of that skill-in-means and great compassion. And the robber died to be reborn in a world of paradise. The five hundred merchants on board are five hundred future Buddhas of the auspicious eon.”3 Therefore, a murder can be justified if the cause is right even in the Buddhist context. (Watanabe 2007: 36–37)

In the context of Japanese Buddhism, self-mortification is the most common form of justified violence. However, there are other exceptions to the rule, such as the “monk soldiers” (J. sōhei 僧兵) in the late Heian period and Tachikawaryū 立川流 in the Kamakura period. The “monk soldiers” were low class monks that guarded major temples and their manors. Benkei 弁慶 (d. 1198) is one of the historical figures that represents the community of monk soldiers. The Tachikawaryū was a religious practice that comprised elements of Shingon 真言 Buddhism and Onmyōdō4 陰陽道, and had tantric features insofar as its teachings suggest that enlightenment can be attained through sexual intercourse.5 These are regarded as deviations from mainstream Buddhism. However, in the discussion of violence in Japanese Buddhism, it is practically impossible to avoid dealing with Aum Shinrikyō. Aum Shinrikyō murdered one of its members as well as a lawyer’s family in 1989, spread fatal gas in Matsumoto City in 1994, killing seven and injuring 660, and again used gas in the Tokyo Subway System in 1995, killing 11 people and injuring nearly 6,300, along with committing other criminal acts (Watanabe 2005: 631–633). Aum Shinrikyō, founded only in 1984, is one of the most recent among the so-­ called new religions. It claimed to be an authentic expression of Buddhism that included what Mahāyāna Buddhist sectarian rhetoric refers to as “Hinayāna,” Mahāyāna, and the “Tantra Vajrayāna” traditions. These traditions prohibited the killing of sentient beings. However, Aum Shinrikyō’s teachings permitted not only the killing of individuals but even legitimated mass murder. In short, its act of salvation cannot be separated from murder and violence. How was it possible for Aum members to engage in these killings? What was the larger objective? How could these actions be rationalized in religious terms? And how did those who participated in the acts of killing as salvation feel during and after the acts? In this paper, I will analyze the appropriation of Buddhist and other traditions by Aum Shinrikyō by focusing on the idea of salvation closely connected with violence. The real horror of Aum Shinrikyō was that its crimes and the harm it caused to others were based on its peculiar soteriology. Therefore, we must pursue the issue of how its violence is related to its world-view and doctrines.  See the Skill-in-Means Sūtra (Upāyakauśalya Sūtra) (Tatz 1994: 73–74) and Keown’s “Paternalism in the Lotus Sūtra” (Keown 1998: 203f). 3  See The Skill-in-Means Sūtra (Upāyakauśalya Sūtra) (Tatz 1994: 73). 4  This term, literally “Yin Yang Way,” refers to practitioners of Daoism during the Heian period. 5  See Manabe’s 真鍋 Jakyō tachikawaryū 邪教・立川流 (Manabe 1999). 2

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2  Asahara’s Experience of Revelation and Its Implications According to an interview, Asahara Shōkō 麻原彰晃, a. k. a. Matsumoto Chizuo 松 本智津夫, proclaimed that he received a revelation from a “god” who descended from the sky when Asahara was engaging in an ascetic practice on the Miura shore in Kanagawa Prefecture in May 1985. The nameless god said to him, “I appoint you as abiraketsu no mikoto アビラケツノミコト.” Even though the god himself did not reveal the meaning of abiraketsu, Asahara later found out that it meant the four elements––that is, earth, water, fire, and sky––and that abiraketsu no mikoto was “the god of light who leads the armies of the gods” (Takai 1985: 120), that is, the one who is destined to be the center of war. It was his task to prepare for the establishment of the kingdom of Shambhala, that is, an ideal land consisting of people who have obtained psychic powers. According to the god’s revelation, Shambhala would appear around 2100 and 2200 C. E. It is said that Asahara consulted with his tutelary gods such as Śiva and Viṣnu (who are Hindu deities), and they advised him to accept the god’s designation of himself as abiraketsu no mikoto. This is the way Asahara discussed his revelatory experience (see Takai 1985). Here his other appeared as a divine thou. But in this case, the divine thou remained a mere herald and did not become a partner in dialogue. He appears to be a native Shintō god, because he used the Shintō term mikoto, an honorific for a god or nobleman, although abiraketsu seems a quasi-Buddhist term.6 We can point out a few other characteristics of his experience. First, even though this god of revelation should have been very important for Asahara, he had no name. Second, Asahara appears to be using the god to legitimate a new religious status for himself. This god also did not become an object of Asahara’s religious devotion, which is quite unusual in terms of religious practice. Third, even though Asahara claimed to be a Buddhist, he worshipped Hindu deities like Śiva and Viṣnu. It is remarkable that he worshipped Śiva even after he became the founder of a Buddhist sect called Aum Shinrikyō. It is quite probable that the reason why he worshipped Śiva is that the latter is the main deity for yogins. There is no denying that Buddhism was brought to Japan along with Hindu and Chinese deities, as we see in various Buddhist temples in Japan. However, Asahara’s introduction of Śiva into Aum Shinrikyō is not in conformity with the Japanese tradition. His devotion to Śiva rather is as the deity of yogins. It should also be pointed out that Asahara presented himself as a “warrior chosen by the god,” that there are elements of elitism in his original experience, and that his new role put him, by definition, in a relation of conflict with the world surrounding him. It can be said then that his original experience of the god’s revelation contains 6  Abiraketsu might be derived from abiraunken, that is, a vi ra hūṃ khaṃ or a va ra ha kha in Sanskrit. The former is the mantra for Mahāvairōcana in one of the two great mandalas. The latter means the five elements: earth, water, fire, wind, and sky. In the doctrine of the Shingon sect “abiraunken” (S. a vi ra hūṃ khaṃ) and “a va ra ha kha” were regarded as corresponding to each other (see Takai 1985: 120).

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a seed of violence. It can also be said that he chose the vehicle of a god’s revelation, whether consciously or unconsciously, to justify his self-identification of being a “chosen warrior.” It is also quite probable that because he did not have a guru to lend authority to his new tradition, Asahara presented himself as a man who had received a revelation from a god, and he utilized this story to strengthen his conceit and elitism.

3  T  he Theory of the Twelve Steps of Causation as a Process of the Self-Alienation of the True Self Like most new religions in Japan, Aum Shinrikyō is quite syncretic. One of the basic characteristics of Asahara’s doctrine is that it combined the teachings of the Hindu Yoga Sūtra and Buddhism. The former admits the existence of the ātman or true self; the latter denies it and asserts anātman (“no-self”). Asahara does not understand Buddhism to be negating ātman or puruṣa (“spirit”) from every point of view. He assumed that he could integrate Buddhism and Yoga philosophy not only on the theoretical level, but also on the practical level. In this sense Asahara’s Aum Shinrikyō is quite outside classical, orthodox Buddhist teachings, even though he claimed that it is true Buddhism. In one of his earliest writings, titled Initiation, Asahara claimed that satori 悟り was the realization that one could be satiated with anything. This kind of realization can be attained relatively easily through theoretical pursuit on the level of jñāna yoga. One can then begin intensive practices based on such satori (Asahara 1987: 22ff). Gedatsu 解脱 or liberation is then “the process of physically erasing our attachments” by means of Kuṇḍalinī Yoga (ibid.). By leading the energy located in the body to the crown of the head through a passage called suṣumṇā, one will no longer be bothered by sexuality or hunger, and by leading this energy from the crown of the head back down through the body, one attains various supernatural powers (Asahara 1987: 28). According to Asahara, satori is the goal of theoretical pursuit and gedatsu the physical. It is remarkable that Asahara thought both satori and gedatsu could be attained through yoga alone without the help of Buddhism. He said, however, that one needs to master the six Buddhist perfections in order to alter one’s own karma. These are the Buddhist “perfections of wisdom” (S. pāramītas, J. haramitsu 波羅蜜), that is, the six virtues of “making offerings” (S. dāna), observance of the “precepts” (S. śīla), “endurance” (S. kṣānti), “effort” (S. vīrya), “meditation” (S. dhyāna), and “wisdom” (S. prajñā). According to Asahara, one can be become a Tantra Buddha if one fulfills these virtues. Asahara also introduced the classical four infinite virtues of Buddhism as “meditations which lead us to satori and happiness in this life.” Usually these are explained as “charity” (S. maitrī), “compassion” (S. karuṇā), “joy” (S. muditā), and “impartiality” (S. upekṣā). “Maitrī” indicates the mind that takes delight in the happiness of others; “karuṇā” refers to the mind that grieves over the sorrow of others;

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“muditā” identifies the mind that congratulates the good deeds of others; and “upekṣā” designates the mind that does not care about the bad deeds of others. The reason why he introduced these seems to be that those four minds were highly valued not only in early Buddhism but also in the Yoga Sūtra. From the psycho-somatic point of view, it is remarkable that Asahara related the “three vices” (S. tri-viṣa), that is, “greed” (S. rāga), “anger” (S. dveṣa), and “ignorance” (S. moha), to the blocking of the three “paths” (S. ṇādī) of “life energy” (S. prāṇa), suṣumnā, piṅgalā, and iḍā. It is his view that we will be liberated from the three vices if we clean out what is blocking these three paths. We can easily see here the way he mixes the physical with the spiritual. Asahara also interprets the theory of dependent co-origination as a description of the process of degeneration of the “True Self” from its highest state, called “Great Nirvana” (S. mahānirvāṇa), and identified with the teaching of Mahāyāna Buddhism.. He explicitly states, “the law of twelve-membered dependent co-­ origination is no other than the process of the degradation of the soul” (Asahara 1992: 70). According to Asahara, the truth lies in the state of the independent existence of the True Self, where it enjoys absolute freedom, happiness, and delight. Yet, from the Buddhist point of view, there is no substance like self or matter, and everything is co-dependent or interrelated. It is thus a delusion for us to have any notion of the independent existence of a True Self in itself. There is no doubt that his idea of the True Self is contrary to the notion of Buddhist “no-self” (S. anātman) and “dependent co-origination” (S. pratītya-samutpāda) and is instead closer to Hindu substantialism criticized by Buddhism. Asahara claims that delusion consists in the fact of the True Self acquiring illusion by the interference of the so-called “three characteristics” (S. triguṇas) central to Hindu yogic theory. It is a hallucination of the True Self fascinated by the beauty of those guṇas which form the fundamental energies of the universe. These are “goodness” (S. sattva), “passion” (S. rajas), and “dullness” (S. tamas). Asahara interprets sattva as virtue, rajas as vice, and tamas, ironically, as action in his book, Inishieishon イニシエーション (Initiation); and sattva as ignorance, rajas as heat, and tamas as avarice in his later book, Tathāgata Abidhamma (Asahara 1991). It is probable that Asahara confused them with the Buddhist concept of the three vices, that is, avarice, anger, and ignorance. Be that as it may, he is not consistent, because he also claims that sattva is light energy, rajas heat energy, and tamas sound energy. Once caught up in the illusions, the True Self belongs to the causal world, which consists only of spirits and ideas. Here the True Self enjoys the senses of touch, taste, and desire to the full. After experiencing this world to the full, it descends to the lower realm of the astral world, which consists of images that can be perceived by the six senses. Then, the True Self, descending further to this phenomenal world, is born as an infant to live a physical life. On this level it attaches to various objects while perceiving them through the senses. This is the cause of its saṃsāra, to repeat life and death and suffer from it.

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The notion of “saṃsāra” (the “realms of reincarnation”) implies that the soul transmigrates in the six spheres of “hell beings” (S. naraka gati), “hungry spirits” (S. preta gati), “animals” (S. tiryagyon gati), “humans” (S. manuṣy gatia), ­“demigods” (S. asura gati), and “gods” (S. deva gati). Buddhists used to place asuras lower than humans, but Asahara places them above humans. According to him, asuras are beings higher than humans. There is a difference of spiritual levels among humans as well. Aum members who renounced the world were regarded as attaining the higher spiritual level; when they quit the group, they were regarded as descending to the lower level of common humans destined in the next life to descend to the even lower realms of the hell beings, hungry ghosts, and animals. Here we can see a pessimistic view of the human world. People are degenerated True Selves who fell from mahānirvaṇa and are stuck in the mud of suffering. The negative aspects of people are strongly stressed, that is, every human being is corrupt and degenerate. To be born in this world itself means bad karma from the point of view of the True Self. It might also be pointed out here that terms like the causal world or astral world are foreign to Buddhism, and that they may derive from theosophical writings.7

4  S  elf-Power and Other-Power: From the Degenerate State to Absolute Freedom The system of practice that Asahara introduced comprises a mixture of Buddhism and Yoga. From the Buddhist tradition, Asahara borrows the “noble eightfold path” (S. āryāṣṭāṅgika mārga, J. hasshōdō 八正道), the six perfections of wisdom as well as other ideas and practices. The first includes the “right view” (S. samyag dṛṣṭi), “right thought” (S. samyak saṃkalpa), “right speech” (S. samyag vāc), “right conduct” (S. samyak karmānta), “right livelihood” (S. samyag ājīva), “right effort” (S. samyag vyāyāma), “right mindfulness” (S. samyak smṛti), and “right concentration” (S. samyak samādhi). The disciplines of prajñaparamīta relate to the virtues of making offering, observance of precepts, endurance, effort, meditation, and supreme wisdom. From the yogic traditions, Asahara borrows the notions and practices of Raja, Kuṇḍalinī, Jñāna, Astral, and Causal Yoga. He interprets these as well in his own idiosyncratic way. Rāja Yoga as introduced by the Yoga Sūtra comprises the five “prohibitions” (S. yama)––no killing, no avarice, no stealing, no obscenity, and no lying; the three “observances” (S. niyama)––the offering of possessions, peace of mind, and truth; and “the postures” (S. asana), “breath control” (S. prāṇāyāma), “sense control” (S. pratyāhāra), “concentration” (S. dāraṇā), “meditation” (S. dhyāna), and the state of samādhi. Out of these, Asahara seems mostly interested in 7  It is probable that Asahara read the Japanese translation of C. W. Leadbeater’s The Chakras: A Monograph (Leadbeater 1978).

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the first two stages. He learned from Kuṇḍalinī Yoga the devotion to the guru, the emphasis on pious deeds, and the practice of truth. Jñāna Yoga entails mastering formulae and pure wisdom in contemplation, Astral Yoga consists of the exchange of bad for good data in one’s mind, and Causal Yoga refers to the complete ­accomplishment of the discipline of astral yoga. Asahara was inspired by and synthesized these various spiritual and moral practices regardless of their origin. In addition to these practices that are based on “self-power” (J. jiriki 自力), Asahara utilized initiations that rely on “other-power” (J. tariki 他力). I will talk about them in the next section.

5  Initiations Initiations are methods to increase one’s spiritual ability through a guru’s charisma or other techniques that rely on some form of other-power. The earliest form of such initiations in Aum Shinrikyō was the so-called “shaktīpat” during which the guru or a high disciple projects their energy into their disciples by pressing their fingers to the latter’s forehead or crown of the head. This ritual is also called “empowerment.” Asahara states that “[f]rom time to time the savior should utilize a dangerous method called shaktīpat... This is a technique to squeeze out someone’s bad thoughts and karma and to infuse good karma into them” (Asahara 1988: 66).8 I will deal more with this peculiar concept of karma later. In Aum Shinrikyō a variety of initiations named “blood,” “chandali of Hinayāna, perfect salvation,” “bardo,” “Christ,” “Rudra Chaklin,” “narco” (narcotic), “new narco,” candy, and “miracle pond” are being practiced. Some required the charisma of the guru (the initiations of “blood” and “miracle pond”); some utilized narcotics (Christ initiation, “narco,” and “new narco,” etc.); and some utilized pseudo-science (perfect salvation initiation). All initiations, however, were regarded as means to increase the spiritual development of the initiated. In Aum Shinrikyō there was also an initiation called mahāmudrā. In Tibetan Buddhism this was regarded as a secret method for one to become a Buddha in this life (Tanaka 1993: 227). Originally, it means to attain the enlightenment of an innate pure mind through samādhi. However, in the case of Aum Shinrikyō it was interpreted to mean that the guru deliberately provides hardship to his disciple to determine whether the latter has attained true devotion. This was also seen as a way of helping disciples attain enlightenment. After the Aum affair, former executive members of Aum Shinrikyō, who were involved in the crimes, confessed how they felt when they were ordered to commit them, which is the main theme in section VII of this essay.

8  Takashima explains that “[t]he System of upāya and šaktipāta in Kashmir Śaivism” (Takashima 1986: 55–84). Although shaktīpat is traditionally derived from Šaivism and has nothing to do with Buddhism, it is probable that Asahara imitated some yogins or gurus like Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

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6  Asahara’s Theory of Karma According to Asahara the concept of karma itself does not have a negative connotation, and only means that a certain cause brings about a result under a certain condition. Thus, a good cause will bring a good result, and a bad cause will bring a bad result. There are also causes and effects that are neither good nor bad. Basically, Asahara follows the traditional theory of karmic retribution, which asserts that one’s offering and service to others can result in one’s own joy, and one’s abuse of others can result in one’s own suffering. Karmic theory has a deterministic aspect from the start. Asahara supports it and claims that differences between individuals themselves are the results of one’s own karma (Asahara 1988: 35). According to Asahara it is better for us to realize the results of our own karma in this lifetime. That is, it is better for us to work off or pay the price for our bad karma in this life time rather than to be born in the three lower realms of being, the realms of hells, hungry ghosts, and animals. Karmic retribution experienced in this life is called the manifestations of karma. This way of thinking leads to a peculiar theory of karma. Asahara claimed that one’s karma becomes manifest when one practices the Buddhist path. This makes possible the “removal of karma.” As we have seen in Asahara’s explanations of shakīpat, Aum Shinrikyō adherents believe that an accomplished person could remove the bad karma of others and infuse good karma into them. This kind of thinking was transformed into a peculiar justification for violence. That is, the superior’s violence towards subordinates was interpreted as an act of compassion to them, because it provides a means for disciples to work off their bad karma. Here we can see an element of irony in Aum’s view of salvation. An accomplished person who becomes the avatar of destruction and violence can be a truly compassionate savior. This is connected to the dual aspect of the Hindu god Śiva. On the one hand, Śiva extends grace and kindness to his believers; on the other hand, he destroys and slaughters demonic gods (Tachikawa 1980: 83). Although the violent acts of ordinary people and subordinate practitioners are just violence resulting in the accumulation of bad karma, the violence of accomplished people is justified as an act of salvation. We may find here a clearly hypocritical double standard. Asahara himself defined Śiva as “the savior of saviors who enjoys absolute freedom, absolute happiness, and absolute delight and who dwells in Mahānirvāna” (Aum Shinrikyō 1994: 15). He may correspond to Iśvara, the possessor of power, in the Yoga Sūtra, which Asahara relies on (Sahoda 1980: 55). At the same time this is “True Self” (S. puruṣa). When the idea that an accomplished person’s violence is actually an act of salvation was stretched to the extreme, this led to the idea of “poa” (J. poa ポア) in Aum Shinrikyō’s sense. The Tibetan term poa within the context of Tibetan Buddhism originally means the transference of the dead soul to the higher realm (Sangpo and Nakazawa 1981: 280).9 Asahara also knew of this kind of use of the term poa. He even claimed, however, that a deliberate act of murder by a superior being was a case of poa. 9  This book exerted an immense influence on Asahara and his believers including the concept of poa. Once Nakazawa himself claimed that a third of Aum believers read this book of his.

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7  Asahara as Savior Asahara called himself the “highest enlightened one” (J. saishū gedatsusha 最終解 脱者). This means that he has reached within his lifetime the realm of mahānirvāna where the True Selves originally dwelt. It is the realm where Śiva reigns, and Asahara is no other than his avatar or incarnation. It also means that Asahara is the representative of the True Selves. In the context of Aum Shinrikyō, believers aim to reach the realm of mahānirvāna through ascetic practice in order to become Asahara himself as the True Self. Of course, such notions concerning the True Self do not apply to traditional Buddhism with its doctrine of no-self or anātman, for nirvāna is reached by overcoming of the attachment to selfhood. This practice involves the notion of “cloning of the guru” in Asahara’s terminology. A clone signifies a duplicated individual that is identical with the original on the cytological level. In Aum Shinrikyō’s case it means that believers become Asahara himself by purifying and emptying their minds and adopting the “guru’s data.” In Asahara’s words: “In the teachings of Vajrayāna, disciples regard the guru as the absolute, and devote themselves to him. They make every effort to empty themselves and fill their empty vessel with the experience and energy of the guru. That is, it is the cloning of the guru… This is Vajrayāna” (Aum Shinrikyō 1994: 22).10 Although this concept of Asahara, that is, the cloning of the guru, sounds quite foreign to Buddhist ears, it was taken from a Buddhist tradition. In the esoteric Buddhist tradition there is the concept of “transferring water from one vessel to another” (J. shabyō 瀉瓶) (Sangpo and Nakazawa 1981: 147).11 It signifies the complete transference of the teachings and knowledge from master to disciple. Although it is not exactly the same as what Asahara meant by the cloning of the guru, they are quite similar. Unlike the tathāgatagarbha (“buddha nature”) theory, emptiness in the context of Asahara’s Vajrayāna is the hollow state of mind to be filled by the guru’s superb experience and energy. It means that the guru is the absolute and fullness of being, and that disciples are instruments for the multiplication of the guru. It is undeniable that there is an extreme form of guru worship in Aum Shinrikyō. Aum Shinrikyō invented a form of headgear called “perfect salvation initiation.” This device was designed to transfer Asahara’s brain waves into his disciples who wore it. Asahara was said to be in a state of samādhi all the time, and in his own book he claims that his brain waves are almost similar to the brains of those who are brain-dead: As we continue meditation and start experiencing the realm of form, we enter into states called the four dhyānas (meditative concentration). When we reach these states the workings of the brain are gradually put in order and brain waves become alpha dominant. Eventually brain death occurs. (Asahara 1994: 41)  SHIMAZONO Susumu 島薗進  gives a thorough analysis of the concepts of Tantrayāna and Vajrayāna in his recent book Gendai Shūkyō no kanōsei: ōmu shinrikyō to bōryoku 現代宗教の可 能性—オウム真理教と暴力 (Possibilities of Contemporary Religions: Aum Shinrikyō and Violence) (Shimazono 1997: 40–68). 11  YAMABE Nobuyoshi 山部能宜 kindly suggested to me the relationship between the cloning of the guru and shabyō in his personal e-mail to me. 10

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Do we die when brain death occurs, when the brain stops working? The answer is no. Spiritually evolved practitioners do not die as many of my disciples have attested. This is because the nature of our consciousness, its deepest part, exists in the causal, in the heart. (Asahara 1994: 43)

The undoubtedly absurd consequence is that Aum Shinrikyō tried to produce “brain dead” people through “perfect salvation initiation.” The suggestion is that disciples need not think for themselves. However strange it may seem, this is another example of the “cloning of the guru” as salvation. The ultimately enlightened person who is no different than Asahara himself was said to have six supernatural powers and to be able to move back and forth between the mahānirvāna, causal, astral, and phenomenal worlds in his/her life time. Such a one was said to be able to send other people’s souls to higher realms. In this sense, the ultimately enlightened, at the same time, is a savior. This fact had very important implications in regard to the salvation of “pagans” or outsiders to Aum Shinrikyō.

8  F  rom “Three Kinds of Salvation” to Apocalyptic Eschatology and Conspiracy Theory of History Aum Shinrikyō began publishing its monthly journal called Mahāyāna in 1987. In it Asahara has an article on “three kinds of salvation” (Asahara 1988). They are (1) to free people from diseases, (2) to bring worldly happiness to people, and (3) to lead people to satori and gedatsu, that is, “self-realization” and “enlightenment” in Aum’s translation of the terms into English. The first two kinds of salvation are worldly goods in the broad sense, and they are quite common among the new religious movements in Japan. The third is the otherworldly ideal consistent with traditional Buddhism. Around 1988 Aum developed and promoted a plan to transform Japan into Shambhala. This was the “incomparably grand” project “to extend the divine space of Aum all over Japan, and to make Japan the base of world salvation” (Aum Shinrikyō 1988). This was to be the first step toward making the whole world Shambhala. “Shall we build a society based on the Truth? Let a number of souls live according to the Truth, let them realize themselves, and let them go to the higher world. And let us avoid the crisis and build a happy future. Let us execute the great will of our guru and Śiva” (ibid.). These sentences convey images of “bright ­expectations,” but it is difficult to ignore here the destructive intentions of the later Aum. Shimazono Susumu makes the following point: This is a scene familiar to both observers and followers of the New Religions of Japan: the bright hopes of establishing a “holy land” as the model of heaven on earth; the unity of believers as they work towards the fulfillment of that dream; and the figure of the founder smiling benignly as he feels their enthusiasm and urges them on. Thus the desire to create a warm, tranquil community of believers formed part of Aum’s plan for salvation, less than two years before the sect’s turn toward apocalyptic thought. (Shimazono 1995a: 31; Shimazono 1995b: 397)

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This tone of bright expectation before long, however, yielded to apocalyptic eschatology and conspiracy theory. Asahara had a kind of eschatological point of view from the start. In 1987 he predicted that Japan would arm again in 1993 and that there would be a nuclear war between 1999 and 2003 unless Aum Shinrikyō built two branch offices abroad (Asahara 1987: 106–7). Then, in 1989 Asahara predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse, the People’s Republic of China would vanish at the beginning of the next century, and the American president and the secretary general of the Soviet Union would start a war in 1995 that would put an end to the world, in other words, Armageddon (Asahara 1989: 54). He also warned his disciples that more than one fourth of humankind would be annihilated unless Aum Shinrikyō produced accomplished practitioners (ibid.). In 1990 Asahara developed the idea that society in general was under the dominance of a demon called “materialism.” He related this especially to the information network and advertising through mass media that makes us slaves of our desires. He claimed that Jews and Freemasons were behind this conspiracy and was convinced that the people in charge of the Japanese government had already sold their souls to the Freemasons. While the salvation symbolized by the “cloning of the guru” involves inputting the mind with the appropriate information useful for enlightenment, society in general is filled with information that is utterly contrary to such salvation. In this sense, Aum believers were expected to shut their hearts and minds to society and to believe only the information Aum Shinrikyō provided. Therefore, they were obliged to renounce the world and concentrate on their spiritual practice. We see here how Aum made use of and attacked the idea of an information-­ oriented society. In many aspects Aum Shinrikyō was eager to wage an information war against the general society. Asahara regarded a human being as analogous to a computer. We must input the right information and delete wrong information. If it does not function well after one takes these procedures, such a computer is not only useless, but harmful. Therefore, we must terminate it for the good of society. We can easily presume how Asahara and Aum Shinrikyō were thus led to belittle human life in general, including not only “pagans” but Aum believers themselves.

9  Salvation as Subjugation of Others We find a serious problem when we take a general look at the notion of salvation in Aum Shinrikyō, because no salvation is possible without interference by Asahara himself. He is the only person who has attained ultimate enlightenment and he is the avatar or embodiment of Śiva. Therefore, if we accept this assumption and truly want to be saved, we have to get into contact with Asahara in one way or another. According to Asahara, people today are most certainly destined to be reincarnated in the realms of hell, hungry ghosts, or animals. In that case how can Aum Shinrikyō save those contemporary people with bad karma who are not willing to

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have any contact with Asahara and Aum Shinrikyō? In fact it is here that the notion of poa comes in. In other words, Asahara was regarded as the one who could save people who were likely to go to hell because of their bad karma by killing them and sending them to a higher world. This was not considered assassination or mercy killing, but salvational murder, if we dare to put it in this way. In the context of Aum Shinrikyō it could be the most merciful act of all. Therefore, those who were killed or injured by the will of the guru Asahara are the most blessed ones. It seems paradoxical that Aum Shinrikyō believed that evil people, that is, the enemies of Aum Shinrikyō, are worthy of salvation in the sense of poa. In other words, because those enemies are certain to accumulate bad karma and go to hell, Aum should exterminate them for their salvation. In Aum’s internal logic this is a positive act of salvation. Based on this kind of logic, many people who were regarded as Aum’s enemies were killed or injured in various ways. Contemporary people in general are objects of such acts of salvation because there is no other way for them to be saved than to be killed by Asahara. This is why the Aum believers who spread sarin gas in the city of Matsumoto and the Tokyo subway system were able to do it with such a calm demeanor. It is reported that Asahara explained the rationale in the following way to his disciples who carried out the subway attack: “This is poa, understand? Do meditation. Repeat the phrase ‘It is nice to be blessed by the guru, Śiva, and those who have attained the Supreme Truth,’ ten thousand times” (Asahi Shimbun 1996). Asahara thus tried to justify the harm done to several thousand people by sarin gas even though, strictly speaking, injury without death is not worthy of the name “poa.” However strange as it may sound, from the point of view of the removal of karma, Asahara took on the karma of those people to be harmed by gas as their savior.

10  Tantra Vajrayāna as Salvation for All The view of salvation in Aum Shinrikyō is based on the paradox of selfhood and otherness. It becomes rather clear that no “other” to Asahara is permitted in Aum doctrine. The reason why this is the case can be explained as follows. First, the ultimate world that Aum Shinrikyō believes in is Mahānirvāna, where Śiva, the savior of saviors reign. He is the True Self and the ultimate reality at the same time. It is Asahara who attained ultimate enlightenment and who became the avatar of Śiva within his lifetime, that is, he is the only one who was saved and who became the true savior. He achieved enlightenment as well as self-realization. In this way, the only way for Aum believers to be saved was to identify themselves with Asahara. They must empty themselves, absorb the guru’s experiences and data into themselves, and become clones of the guru. Thus, Asahara monopolized the True Self and became its only persona. Aum believers can only be saved when they become a duplicate of Asahara. They must discard their otherness toward the guru and become his double. In this context it is not allowed for anyone to remain an other to the guru or to be different from him. They can only approach the guru and salva-

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tion by eliminating their individuality. In this context mahāmudrā is very important to understand how the executive members of Asahara should follow his order of various criminal activities including mass murder and the killing of innocents. Second, the people who have no mind to believe in Asahara, are regarded as ones beyond salvation who lost sight of the True Self and drowned in the ocean of lustful desires. They are the others for Aum Shinrikyō. These others cannot be saved insofar as they remain as they are. They are destined to be reincarnated in the three lowest realms in the next life. Therefore, unless they become Aum believers, they must be killed by Asahara in poa if they want to be saved. In this sense, in the framework of Aum’s doctrine, the murders committed by Asahara and Aum Shinrikyō must be regarded as a great benevolence. Asahara and his followers have the right to save others by killing them. In conclusion, Asahara is the only person who is and will be saved in Aum’s view of salvation. On the one hand, Aum believers will be saved when they become Asahara’s clones and lose their personal identity. On the other hand, those who were poa-ed by Asahara have lost their individuality when they were killed. By monopolizing the right to be the “True Self” and making salvation a privilege, Asahara has thus made real a nightmare into this world. In short, the essence of Aum doctrine may be summarized as follows: “When you meet the guru, clone him! When you meet others, poa them!” There is no room for people other than Asahara to live in the world where Aum Shinrikyō reigns. This is the necessary conclusion of Aum Shinrikyō’s theory of salvation. In Aum Shinrikyō Asahara combined various kinds of Buddhist traditions, including Tibetan Buddhism with Hindu philosophy represented by Yoga Sūtra. None of these traditions are necessarily dangerous to believers or to society in general. However, all the destructive elements in them together found expression in Aum Shinrikyō. The absolute guru worship represented by the cloning of the guru and the altruistic murder called poa were two major factors that led to violence above all else.

11  P  ractically Salvific: Memoirs of the Former Members of Aum Shinrikyō 11.1  Lingering Shadow: Making Sense of Life in Aum Most of the former members believed in the good intentions of Asahara and Aum Shinrikyō when they were members (Takimoto 1995). It was very hard for them to connect Aum with violence and terrorism. It can be noted that most of the members were afraid of accumulating bad karma by hurting or touching other people or killing living beings including insects. The gap between their fear and the active murdering of other people was so great that it was beyond their imagination that Asahara really meant “poa” as salvation and that he was ready to accumulate bad karma by committing poa upon the enemies of Aum and common people.

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The early memoirs avoid discussing key concepts (poa, etc.) and display bewilderment at the accusations of violence. One can see these as early examples of dissonant behavior, perhaps, an example of how people are sometimes unable to accept evidence concerning what they themselves are involved in even when it is evident to others.

11.2  Talking About Salvation in an Aum Way: Poa and Tantra Vajrayāna Hayakawa Kiyohide 早川紀代秀 (1949–2018) was one of the first generation of Asahara’s disciples. He became a member in 1986 and a samaṇa in 1987. He received an M. A. from Osaka Prefectural University, majoring in site planning. He was an employee of a major construction company, several research institutes, and he himself founded his own company. Hayakawa read Asahara’s first book titled, Chōnōryoku: himitsu no kaihatsu-hō (超能力―秘密の開発法 Super Power: How to Develop It) in February 1986, and he was deeply impressed by its contents. He thought that Asahara was a real practitioner of yoga, and that he should undertake the initiation called Shaktipat for his Kuṇḍalinī to be safely and quickly awakened (Hayakawa 2005: 30). Hayakawa had foreknowledge that according to yoga the true human being was a spiritually awakened one, and that for that purpose his/her Kuṇḍalinī should be awakened. In this way, Hayakawa became a devoted member of Aum Shinrikyō in 1986. Hayakawa was involved in the two major crimes of Aum in the early days that were never revealed until the police raid in March 1995. One of them was the murder of Taguchi Shūji 田口修 二 in February 1989. Taguchi wanted to leave Aum because he knew what had  happened to Majima Teruyuki 真島照之 in the previous year. Majima became disoriented during the spiritual practice, and Aum members tried to calm him down by putting him in water, but then he died during that process. They burnt his body and disposed of his bones, fearing the news of his death would be made public. Asahara feared that Taguchi would talk about Majima’s death to others. Knowing that he would not stay in Aum, he ordered his disciples to kill him if he would not agree to stay. Finally, Hayakawa and four others killed him. Hayakawa explains as follows: This murder was the first mercy killing, that is, poa by the benevolence of the guru that was repeatedly done from then on in order to prevent the hindrance of salvation on the one hand and in order to prevent evil deeds from hindering salvation and blaspheming the guru on the other hand. After the incident I tried to convince myself that it was a devilish act of murder from the secular point of view, but it was a poa by the guru and the salvation of Taguchi, and I tried to calm myself down so that I would not be disturbed. However, it was not easy to control the disturbance in my mind (Hayakawa 2005: 136).

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Then less than a year later, the murder of Sakamoto Tsutsumi’s 坂本堤 family followed. After his arrest, Hayakawa expressed doubt about the authenticity of the guru Asahara. He heard that Asahara had said after his arrest that he had tried to poa himself, but he was not able to do it, because he yielded to the temptation to eat curry with rice provided by the police (Hayakawa 2005: 201). He became despondent over how Asahara could give poa to other people if he was not able to poa himself (Hayakawa 2005: 202). According to Hayakawa, the reason why he was not able to oppose to Asahara was as follows: 1. He regarded Asahara as the enlightened and absolute guru. 2. That authority preached the doctrine of poa, which affirms murder or salvation through murder. 3. Even though he was not willing to follow the guru’s order, he was trained to think that the reason why he was not willing was that his training was not enough or his mind was weak. 4. He thought that it was unavoidable to prevent Armageddon. 5. There was the real threat that he would receive poa if he did not obey Asahara’s order (Hayakawa 2005: 205)

Finally, Hayakawa surmises that the fault of Aum Shinrikyō is that Asahara embraced the fantasy that he was the savior of mankind and that his disciples shared that fantasy (Hayakawa 2005: 211). In conclusion, Hayakawa apologizes for what he had done to the victims and their family. “I believe the suffering we gave cannot be amended in this life. In those days I believed that murder could be salvation if it were the guru’s order, but it was a conceit without the knowledge of my own limitation (Hayakawa 2005: 214).” Hayakawa’s story of his life in Aum and his analysis of guruism are very calm and descriptive. It is no doubt that he would not have been involved in those criminal activities if he had not had religious devotion to Asahara as well as his fear of hell based on his belief in him. He says that he is still a Buddhist and continues his spiritual training. He is not blaming any one including Asahara and himself. He only regrets that he was involved in  horrible violence and the  murder of innocent people. It is Hayakawa’s wish that we understand that the Aum incident was caused by the guru’s religious motivation, and that it was based on the guru-disciple relationship, which requires the disciples to obey every order coming from the guru (Hayakawa 2005: 216).

12  Conclusion In this essay, I dealt with how the Japanese Buddhist tradition could lead to the extreme violence caused by Aum Shinrikyō. It means that a religion of ahimsā or nonviolence bore the fruit of terrorism. First, I dealt with the theoretical background of the issue of the connection between salvation and violence in Mahāyāna

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Buddhism. We cannot deny that the concept of skillful means or “skill-in-means” (S. upāya) is a key to this issue. Aum Shinrikyō is no exception, and it also utilized the concept in the broadest sense. Asahara started as a practitioner of yoga, and he mixed the teachings of the Yoga Sūtra with various traditions of Buddhism like Mahāyāna, Esoteric, and Tibetan. He situated the Hindu deity Śiva as the principal Buddha of Aum Shinrikyō. On the one hand, he created a world-view that believed that  spiritual beings had degenerated, falling into the material world and the lower realms of animals, hungry ghosts, and hells. On the other hand, he identified with the “Great God Śiva” (J. Shiva taishin) who was the ultimate liberated and enlightened being. In this context there were only two ways of salvation: one is to be identical with Asahara as the avatar of Śiva for Aum believers; another is to be sent to the higher realm by the will of Asahara. Asahara ordered his higher disciples to “poa” non-believers who could be harmful to Aum Shinrikyō as in the case of the Sakamoto family, disobedient believers as in the case of Taguchi, and non-believers who were innocent and had nothing to do with Aum Shinrikyō as in the case of victims of the Tokyo Sarin Attack in 1995. The experiences of Aum members that participated in the act of poa are illuminating and help us to understand the logic behind the Aum concept of salvation. Even though most of them were hesitant to commit poa on innocent people, the doctrine of mahāmudrā heavily influenced them, and they thought that they had to overcome the narrowness of their common sense and to achieve what the guru had commanded them to do in order to be enlightened, that is, to become identical with the guru. They also felt the threat that they themselves would be killed in the act of poa if they did not follow his order. In conclusion, Aum Shinrikyō and the surrounding incidents remind us that even Buddhism, known as a peaceful religion, and Buddhists can be led to extreme violence when salvation and skillful means are conceived out of context and without the common sense shared with society.

Works Cited Asahara, Shōkō 麻原彰晃. 1986. Chōnōryoku: Himitsu no kaihatsu hō 『超能力―秘密の開発 法』 [Super Power: How to Develop It]. Tokyo: Yamato Shuppan. ———. 1987. Inishiēshon 『イニシエーション』 [Initiation]. Tokyo: Aum Corporation. ———. 1988. Mahāyāna Sūtra. 『マハーヤーナ·スートラ』 Tokyo: Aum Corporation. ———. 1989. Metsubō no hi 『滅亡の日』 [Judgement Day]. Tokyo: Aum Corporation. ———. 1991. Tathāgata Abidhamma 『タターガタ·アビダンマ』. Tokyo: Aum Corporation. ———. 1992. The Highest Dhamma 『ハイエスト·ダンマ』. Tokyo: Aum Corporation. ———. 1994. The Bodhisattva Sutra: Salvation Through Complete Reliance on the Power of the True Victor. Tokyo: Aum Corporation. Asahi Shimbun. 1996. Asahara’s Calculated Plan for Mass Murder. Asahi Shimbun E-News, April 27. http://iij.asahi.com.

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Aum Shinrikyō オウム真理教. 1988. Kagiri naku toumei na sekai e no izanai 『限りなく透 明な世界への誘い』 [An Invitation to the Boundlessly Transparent World]. Tokyo: Aum Shinrikyō. ———. 1994. Vajirayāna kōsu kyōgaku shisutemu kyōhon 『ヴァジラヤーナコース教学シス テム教本』 [Vajrayāna Course Systematic Textbook of Doctrine]. Tokyo: Aum Shinrikyō. Fujita, Kōkan 藤田光寛. 1995. Bosatsujikaibon ni tokareru sesshō ni tsuite 「〈菩薩地戒品〉に 説かれる「殺生」について」 [On the ‘Act of Killing’as Described in the Chapter on the Precepts of the Bodhisattvabhūmi]. Mikkyō Bunka 密教文化 191: 136–152. Hayakawa, Kiyohide 早川紀代秀 and Kunimitsu  Kawamura 川村邦光. 2005. Watashi ni totte oumu to wa nan datta no ka 『私にとってオウムとは何だったのか』 [What was Aum for Me?]. Tokyo: Popurasha. Hayashi, Ikuo 林郁夫. 1998. Oumu to watashi 『オウムと私』 [Aum and I]. Tokyo: Bungeishunjū. Keown, Demian. 1998. Paternalism in the Lotus Sūtra. Journal of Buddhist Ethics 5: 190–207. Leadbeater, C. W. 1978. Chakura 『チャクラ』 [Chakra]. Trans. Hiroshi Motoyama 本山博 and Yasuo Yuasa 湯浅泰雄. Tokyo: Hirakawa Shuppansha. Manabe, Shunshō 真鍋俊照. 1999. Jakyō tachikawaryū 『邪教・立川流』 [Heresy: Tachikawaryū]. Tokyo: Chikuma-shobō. Miller, Barbara Stoler, trans. 1996. Yoga: Discipline of Freedom: The Yoga Sutra Attributed to Patanjali. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nishida, Kimiaki 西田公昭. 1995. Maindo kontorōru to wa nani ka 『マインドコントロールと は何か』 [What is Mind Control?]. Tokyo: Kinokuniyashoten. Python, Pierre. 1973. Vinaya-Viniścaya-Upāli-Pariprcchā. Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve. Sahoda, Tsuruji 佐保田鶴治. 1980. Kaisetsu yōgasūtora 『ヨーガスートラ解説』 [Commentary on Yoga Sūtra]. Tokyo: Hirakawa shuppansha. Sangpo, Lama Khetsun, and Shin’ichi Nakazawa 中沢新一. 1981. Niji no kaitei: Chibetto mikkyō no meisō shugyō 『虹の階梯:チベット密教の瞑想修行』 [The Ladders of Rainbow: The Practice of Meditation in Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism]. Tokyo: Hirakawa shuppansha. Shimazono, Susumu 島薗進. 1995a. Oumu shinrikyō no kiseki 『オウム真理教の軌跡』 [The Traces of Aum Shinrikyō], 31. Tokyo: Iwanami-shoten. ———. 1995b. In the Wake of Aum: The Formation and Transformation of a Universe of Belief. Trans. Robert Kisala. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 22 (3–4): 381–415. ———. 1997. Gendai Shūkyō no kanōsei: Ōmu shinrikyō to bōryoku 『現代宗教の可能性—オ ウム真理教と暴力』 [Possibilities of Contemporary Religions: Aum Shinrikyō and Violence]. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Tachikawa, Musashi 立川武蔵. 1980. Hindū no kamigami 『ヒンドゥーの神々』 [Hindu Gods]. Tokyo: Serika Shobō. Takahashi, Hidetoshi 高橋英利. 1996. Ōmu kara no kikan 『オウムからの帰還』 [The Return from Aum]. Tokyo: Sōshisha. Takai, Shiomi 高井志生海. 1985. Saishūtekina risōkoku wo kizukutameni kami wo mezasu chōnōryokusha「最終的な理想国を築くために神をめざす超能力者」 [The Adept who Becomes God to Create the Perfect Society]. Towairaitosōn 『トワイライトゾーン』 [Twilight Zone] 120: 118–123. Takashima, Jun 高島淳. 1986. Kashimīru shiva-ha ni okeru upaya to saktipata no taikei 「カシミ ール・シヴァ派におけるupayaとsaktipataの体系」 [The System of Upāya and Šaktipāta in Kashmir Śaivism]. Shūkyō Kenkyū 『宗教研究』 270: 55–84. Takimoto, Taro 滝本太郎, and Tatsuya Nagaoka 永岡辰哉, eds.. 1995. Maindo kontorōru kara nogarete: Ōmu shinrikyō dakkaisha tachi no taiken 『マインド・コントロールから逃れ て:オウム真理教脱会者たちの体験』 [Escaping from Mind Control: The Experiences of Former Members of Aum Shinrikyō]. Tokyo: Kōyū Shuppan. Tanaka, Kimiaki 田中公明. 1993. Chibetto mikkyō 『チベット密教』 [Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism]. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. Tatz, Mark, trans. 1994. The Skill-in-Means (Upāyakauśalya) Sūtra. 1994. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.

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Watanabe, Manabu. 2005. Aum Shinrikyō. In Macmillan Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 2, 2nd ed., 631–663. New York: Macmillan/Palgrave. ———. 2007. Religious Violence amid Love, Compassion, and Hate: A Response to Prof. Mark Juergensmeyer. In Religion and Society: An Agenda for the 21st Century, ed. Gerrie ter Haar and Yoshio Tsuruoka, 29–39. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Manabu Watanabe currently works at the Department of Christian Studies, Nanzan University. He received his PhD from Tsukuba University. Watanabe does research in “other religions” and comparative religion and his interests include religion and psychology, history of religion, and new religious movements. Among his most recent publication is Aumu to iu genshō: Gendai shakai to shūkyō.

Part II

Individual Philosophers in the Japanese Buddhist Tradition

Chapter 11

Saichō: Founding Patriarch of Japanese Buddhism Victor Forte

Saichō 最澄 (767–822), one of the most prominent of Japanese Buddhist innovators, is the renowned ninth-century founder of the Tendai School (J. Tendaishū 天台 宗), the first Japanese Buddhist sect with its own system of temples and monasteries, ordinations, practices and philosophy. It was in the goal of founding and maintaining an authentic Buddhist monastic institution that, for better or worse, influenced his thinking, and structured his philosophy. Although Saichō’s identity as founder is beyond dispute, this accomplishment was initially made possible through what we might call modes of self-displacement, essentially establishing his legitimacy as founder by tracing the origins of Tendai beyond himself to founders even more prominent in the minds of his contemporaries. It is through our participation in this initial displacement of Saichō that the meaning(s) of his contributions to Japanese Buddhism will begin to unfold.

1  On Being a Founder The following three alternative founders provide us with a useful contextual perspective, each essentially leading us back to Saichō. The first founder of Tendai we could say is Śākyamuni Buddha. He is the historical Buddha, the man named Siddhartha Gautama, who, according to tradition, became a Buddha when he discovered, through various meditational insights, the Dharma (J. hō 法) – the universal realities of the cosmos. This pivotal event occurred when Gautama was thirty-five, during the mid-fifth century B.C.E., in what is today northeastern India. The canonical record of Indian Buddhism is grounded in the claim that this founder V. Forte (*) Albright University, Reading, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_11

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spent the remaining forty-five years of his life teaching a number of followers who lived in the same geographical region. What Śākyamuni taught was the Buddhadharma (J. buppō 仏法), his own system of praxis for realizing the universal realities of the cosmos, leading his followers ultimately towards liberation. These direct teachings were first passed down to subsequent generations orally, then, by the first century B.C.E., through collected texts. One could claim that all sects of Buddhism, including Tendai, trace their origins back to Śākyamuni, even though there are a number of historical problems with these kinds of claims. However, such problems are not often a major concern in one’s practical identification with a sectarian tradition, and so a common mode of legitimization for many sects of Buddhism has been for adherents to lay claim to canonical materials originating from India and thereby confirming a direct connection with the historical Buddha. There are also Buddhist sectarians who trace their textual traditions back to buddhas other than the historical Buddha, claiming greater benefits or more advanced, universal teachings. Japanese examples include the Shingonshū 真言宗1 and Jōdo shinshū 浄土真宗.2 Comparative examinations of Japanese Buddhist philosophy and religiosity are primarily grounded in these varying claims of legitimization. Saichō did in fact identify the origins of the Tendai school with Śākyamuni Buddha, but, more specifically, to a single canonical text of India, the Lotus of the Wondrous Dharma Sūtra (S. Saddharmapuṇḍarīka sutra, J. Hokkekyō 法華経) [hereafter abbreviated as “Lotus Sūtra”]. The Lotus Sūtra is arguably the most popular Buddhist text in the history of Japan, and its importance to Saichō and the Tendai school is one major reason for its great popularity. By displacing his own authority with the authority of Śākyamuni, and, more specifically, with teachings found in this single text, Saichō could claim that Tendai was founded not only on the authority of Śākyamuni Buddha but also on the most advanced and most universal of all the Buddha’s teachings. This displacement functions primarily as an act of faith – the impact of the Lotus Sūtra on Saichō did not only lie in a philosophical endorsement of the Mahāyāna but also in providing the faithful with a devotional locus in the unique words and deeds of the Lotus Sūtra Buddha.3 According to Saichō, the Lotus Sūtra revealed the one universal path to liberation offered by the  The Shingon sect was founded by Kūkai 空海 (posthumously Kōbō Daishi 弘法大師), a contemporary of Saichō, who traveled to China on the same voyage in 804. Shingon is the only Japanese sect that is fully esoteric (tantric), and is based, according to tradition, on the preaching of a universal Buddha, Mahāvairocana (J. Dainichi Nyorai 大日如来), who encompasses all buddhas throughout the cosmos as the dharmakāya, or truth body. 2  The Jōdo Shinshū, or True Pure Land school was founded by Shinran 親鸞 in the thirteenth century. Shinran began his career as a Tendai monk, spending a number of years training according to the rigors of monastic life, but he came to realize that he was too burdened by karmic debt to achieve liberation through his own powers. He left the Tendai school and devoted himself to a practice of true entrusting (J. shinjin 信心) in the mythic vow of a celestial Buddha, Amitābha, (J. Amida 阿弥陀), who promised to bring the faithful to his Western Paradise where awakening is certain for all who are reborn there. 3  This devotional meaning was further supported by Saichō’s claim that the buddha of the Lotus Sūtra was not merely the historical Buddha, but the universal and primordial essence of buddhahood, including within itself all buddhas throughout space and time (Stone 1999: 26). 1

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Buddha, containing within itself all the other teachings that could be found within the immense canonical record of Indian Buddhism. He claimed therefore, that there was no other Buddhist text in existence that matched the Lotus Sūtra in its level of profundity and authority. For Saichō, this identification with the Lotus Sūtra placed the Tendai school above all other Japanese schools in its offering of the true Buddhadharma. The second founder one could claim for Tendai Buddhism is the Chinese master Zhiyi 智顗 (538–597).4 Zhiyi is the primary historical founder of the original Chinese school of Tendai Buddhism (C. Tiantai).5 The Chinese had begun an exchange with Indian Buddhism by the first century C.E., or possibly even earlier, importing texts via the Central Asian routes of the Silk Road. Zhiyi was one of the first systematizers of the imported Indian canon, taking the vast numbers of variant Buddhist texts and reducing their teachings down to a uniquely Chinese system of thought and practice.6 His accomplishments in formulating a comprehensive system resulted in his title as founder of Tiantai, although in reality he is recognized as the third Chinese patriarch of the sect, preceded by Huiwen 慧文 (ca. 550), and Zhiyi’s teacher, Huisi 慧思 (515–577). After the mid-sixth century, when Buddhism first began to be imported into Japan, the Chinese became increasingly recognized as both the most direct authorities of the Buddha’s teachings,7 as well as a highly developed civilization that could provide a great deal of value to the recently established Japanese court in terms of capital design, governmental systems, law, literature, and philosophy. By the ninth century this relationship had become firmly established, and it was almost universally assumed that if Japan was going to found any legitimate sects of Buddhism on its own soil, it would have to do so through the authority of China. For Saichō to succeed in founding a Tiantai-based school in Japan, he needed to first travel to China in order to receive the teachings directly. His own legitimacy as a founder was, therefore, completely dependent on being officially recognized by a Chinese Tiantai master. 4  The great majority of English works on Zhiyi and his school use the Wade-Giles system for transliteration of Chinese words. Tiantai is most commonly rendered as “T’ien-t’ai” and the founder of Tiantai is most commonly written in the Wade-Giles form as “Chih-i.” However, because the Pinyin system will be used throughout this chapter, the less recognizable forms of “Tiantai” and “Zhiyi” have been chosen for matters of consistency. In quoted materials, use of Wade-Giles terms will be substituted with Pinyin equivalents placed in brackets. 5  The Tiantai 天台, or “heavenly platform” school, gets its name from the mountain where its founder, Zhiyi, originally settled in 576, thus establishing the future center of the Tiantai sect. 6  Fundamental to this process was Zhiyi’s assumption that all of the Buddhist texts had to be of a piece and could not conflict with one another, since the Buddha would never contradict himself. If clear differences were found, it would have to be a matter of the Buddha’s wise use of “skillful means” (S. upāya), presenting different teachings according to the specific needs and capacities of different followers (Donner and Stevenson 1993: 14). 7  Much of China’s authority came from the fact that it had imported Buddhism directly from India, often through the travels of Chinese pilgrims and Indian teachers during the centuries of the Sui and Tang dynasties. The Japanese pilgrims made their way to China and Korea but had no direct contact with India.

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In this sense, we could make the argument that the founder of Japanese Tendai was the Chinese founder of Tiantai, Zhiyi.8 On one level, Saichō had to allow for the displacement of his own authority by recognizing the authority of the Chinese. This was the only way he was able to gain the support of Japanese leadership for the establishment of a Tendai sect of Buddhism. However, once he did get the backing of the Japanese court to begin developing such a sect in Japan, he would also begin to shape Tendai Buddhism in his own image. By 822, the year of Saichō’s death, he had accumulated enough influence to bring about the creation of a monastic system of Buddhism that was unique in the world, not simply a Japanese replication of a Chinese Buddhist sect. The final founder of Tendai to be considered here is Prince Shōtoku (Shōtoku Taishi 聖徳太子) (574–622).  Prince Shōtoku, according to the eighth-century mytho-historical record entitled the Nihon shoki 日本書紀 (Chronicles of Japan), was a late sixth- early seventh-century imperial regent who was responsible for establishing Buddhism in Japan, as well as authoring the Seventeen Article Constitution (J. Jūshichijō kenpō 十七条憲法), a document that created a Japanese system of imperial rule modeled after the Chinese. The importance of Shōtoku for our discussion is threefold. First, as a member of the imperial family, his identification with the wisdom of Buddhism provided legitimacy to a foreign tradition, shunned by other prominent figures of the time as a threat to indigenous Shintō.9 Second, Shōtoku is also recognized for his deep appreciation of the Lotus Sūtra: the Three Commentaries on Buddhist Sūtras (J. Sangyōgishō 三経義疏) are attributed to him, including a Commentary on the Lotus Sūtra (J. Hokkekyōgishō 法華経義疏) and his reputed knowledge of this text also provided a natural association with the Tendai School. Finally, because of his identification with the initial legitimization of Japanese Buddhism, Shōtoku’s legend continued to expand beyond the seventh century when founders of new Japanese Buddhist sects pointed back to him as their original founder. We find this to be the case with Saichō, who claimed that it was Shōtoku who had originally brought Tiantai to Japan.10 As was the case with other sects claiming their origins in Shōtoku,11 Saichō names Shōtoku in his Hokkeshū fuhō 8  Indeed, after the death of Saichō, the doctrinal education of Tendai monks has been, to this day, centered on the works of Zhiyi to a much greater extent than on the writings of the Japanese founder, Saichō (Groner 2000: xix–xx). 9  During the sixth century, when the new foreign religion of Buddhism began catching the attention of powerful clans with close ties to the court, Shōtoku’s clan, the Sogas, chose to embrace it, while others like the Mononobe and Nakatomi clans resisted, attempting to protect the indigenous traditions of kami worship. The motivations underlying these religious differences were mainly a matter of maneuvering for political advantage (D. Matsunaga and A. Matsunaga 1974: 10). 10  Recent scholarship has questioned Shōtoku’s actual existence. Both TSUDA Sōkichi and Kenneth Doo Young Lee, for example, doubt whether Shōtoku is more than pure legend, although Lee does not think this seriously compromises the importance and cultural impact of Shōtoku (Lee 2007: 35–36). 11  Shinran, for example, recognized Shōtoku as the incarnation of the Japanese bodhisattva of compassion, Kannon 観音, whom he credits with bringing authentic Buddhism to Japan, a form of Buddhism revived by his teacher Hōnen and carried on in Shinran’s Jōdo Shinshū sect (Lee 2007: 124).

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engi 法華宗付法縁起 (Origins of the Lotus School Dharma) as the first promulgator of Tendai in Japan (D. Matsunaga and A. Matsunaga 1974: 109). He does so by identifying Shōtoku with Zhiyi’s original teacher, Huisi (J. Eshi). According to this legend, Huisi was reincarnated as Shōtoku in order to bring the teachings of Chinese Tiantai to Japan.12 The legend actually predated Saichō and was widely believed among his contemporaries both in Japan and China. Saichō’s own belief in the story was, by all accounts, deeply held (Lee 2007: 97–99). Furthermore, openly recognizing Shōtoku as the originator of his own sect had strategic benefits as well because it secured further support by the Japanese court, given the powerful influence of the Shōtoku legend. The importance of this foundational tie with the court cannot be underestimated, and its influence on Saichō’s thought was significant. There would have been no Tendai sect if Saichō was unable to convincingly assert that his newly formed school of Buddhism would serve to protect the nation and preserve the power of the emperor.

2  Choosing a Buddha We have already seen how the sectarian identity of Japanese Tendai was intimately associated with the identity of Śākyamuni Buddha. However, we have also recognized that there is not simply a single historical Buddha included in the Indian canon but many buddhas of different realms and differing identities. Furthermore, it is also the case that the identity of Śākyamuni Buddha mutates considerably throughout the textual evolution of Indian Buddhism. Consequently, what we find as a common theme in the development of Japanese sectarianism is the varying claims of universal authority based upon the emphasis on particular texts and particular manifestations of buddhas. This provided the bases for arguments of either exclusion (schools based on other texts/buddhas do not reach the same level of authority and legitimacy) or inclusion (all teachings of other texts/buddhas are reducible to this teaching). This philosophical strategy of universalism, through either exclusion or inclusion, mirrored the universalism claimed in the governing power of the imperial clan,13 asserted and maintained through both excluding the imperial legitimacy of other rival clans, while symbolically subsuming all clans within the imperial clan. The making of the unified nation of Japan was achieved primarily through universalizing the emperor clan, claimed and codified in the

 What makes the claim even more dubious is that Shōtoku’s birth is recorded to have taken place in 574, and Huisi died 3 years later, in 577. 13  The rise of the imperial Tennō 天王 clan occurred over approximately three centuries (fourthsixth C.E.), as they began to take military control of the Yamato 大和 region of Honshū 本州. Further legitimacy was procured in mythologies tracing the genealogy of the imperial clan back to the sun goddess Amaterasu 天照らす. During the same period, powerful rival clans maneuvered to secure varying levels of political advantage through agreements and inter-marriage with the imperial clan. 12

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eighth-century mythology of the Kojiki 古事記 (Record of Ancient Matters) and the Nihon shoki. In the case of Saichō, his claim of ultimate authority for the Tendai sect was based in the Śākyamuni Buddha of the Lotus Sūtra. Here, we do not have the wise, but quite human, Buddha of the Pali Discourses or the philosophically erudite Śākyamuni of the Diamond Sūtra (J. Kongōkyō 金剛經) – the full title of this text is Vajracchedikā prajñāpāramitā sūtra (J. Kongō hannya haramita kyō 金剛般若波 羅蜜經). The Śākyamuni Buddha of the Lotus Sūtra is a strikingly extraordinary, if not, fantastic being whose parabolic preaching attracts hundreds of thousands of monks, laypersons, bodhisattvas, buddhas, divinities, and other supernatural beings, kings and their retinues. He shines a light out of a white tuft of hair in the middle of his forehead14 that illuminates entire realms of the universe, and as he speaks, flowers fall down from the sky upon his audience15 (Lotus Sutra 1975, 31–34). The powerful devotional image16 of Śākyamuni Buddha, as he appears in the Lotus Sūtra, ignited the imagination of the Nara and Heian court, and Saichō found in both the imagery and teachings of this text a universal message of truth and salvation. It is difficult to determine when exactly Saichō was first introduced to the Lotus Sūtra, or when its authority began to make an impression on him. It is well known that from the time of Saichō’s early childhood, he was immersed in the way of the Buddha (J. butsudō, 仏道), his father even converting the family home into a temple (Matsunaga and Matsunaga 1974: 139). The Lotūs Sūtra had long been a popular text in Japan, and given his childhood indoctrination into Buddhism, Saichō would have been introduced to the text, in all probability, early in his life. By the time he began his official training as a monk at the age of twelve, he was studying the Lotus Sūtra under the Kegon 華厳 (C. Huayan)17 master Gyōhyō 行表 (720–797). Saichō’s teacher was also influenced by other Nara schools of thought, including both the Ritsushū 律宗 (S. Vinaya), or Monastic Rules School, and Hossōshū 法相宗  The ūrṇa––one of the 32 major physical marks attributed to a Buddha, originating from the Lakkhaṇa Sutta (“The Marks of a Great Man”) in the Pali Dīgha Nikāya or The Long Discourses of the Buddha (Walshe 1995: 442). 15  It should be noted that in traditional accounts in both early Chinese Tiantai and medieval Japanese Tendai it was alleged that both Zhiyi and his teacher Huisi were both in attendance when Śākyamuni Buddha originally presented his Lotus teaching to this large assembly on Vulture Peak in India (Stone 1999: 102–103). 16  According to Whalen Lai, the Lotus Sūtra should not be associated with the early Indian Mahāyāna texts known collectively as the Prajñāpāramitā, or Perfection of Wisdom literature but rather with a “kammatic” tradition of texts aimed mainly at the edification of the Buddha. Unlike the “dhammatic” genre of philosophical texts to which the Abhidharma and Perfection of Wisdom texts both belong, the Lotus Sūtra is clearly devotional, not philosophical, belonging to the tradition of the Buddha’s birth stories found in the Jātaka and Avadāna collections (Lai 1987: 86). 17  The Kegonshū, Ritsushū and Hossōshū are among the six schools of Nara period Buddhism. The remaining Saicho’s include the Kushashū 倶舎宗 (S. Abhidharmakośa), the Jōjitsushū 成実宗 (Establishment of Truth School), and the Sanronshū 三論宗 (Three Treatises School centered on the teachings of Nāgārjuna’s Mādhyamaka or Middle Way School). Much of Saichō’s motivation for founding Tendai was to create a Buddhist institution that would function as an alternative to these schools, independent of their oversight. 14

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(S. Yogācārā), Consciousness-Only School. However, according to Paul Groner, Gyōhyō was primarily a meditation teacher (Groner 2000: 24). The emphasis on meditational discipline would have instilled a value for these practices in the young Saichō in addition to the scholastic training of Nara Buddhism. Certainly unknown to him at the time, his early training in both meditation and philosophical study would ultimately prepare him for a readied appropriation of Tiantai Buddhism, as originally formulated in the works of Zhiyi. Central to the Chinese patriarch’s system of discipline was an equal dedication to both study and practice; these functioned like the two wings of a bird, guiding the practitioner steadily towards liberation (Donner and Stevenson 1993: 4). In addition, because Saichō had his initial philosophical grounding in Kegon thought, when he later became interested in the Tiantai teachings and the central importance of the Lōtus Sūtra, he naturally interpreted these materials through the lens of his earlier training in Kegon. Ironically, when he eventually travelled to China in order to receive transmission from a Chinese Tiantai master, the school was in the midst of a reform period when Huayan was gaining influence among Tiantai practitioners (Stone 1999: 14), so Saichō would have found the philosophical syncretism of his Chinese teachers to have a great deal of resonance with his own thinking. Soon after his final ordination at the Nara temple Tōdaiji 東大寺 in 785, Saichō makes the most important decision of his lifetime. He chooses to leave the capital centers of Japanese Buddhism and live in a hermitage on Mount Hiei 比叡山. The reasons for this decision are a matter of conjecture,18 but the great impact it had on his life from that point on are clearly evident. Regardless of his personal reasons for moving to a more secluded environment, it is certain that in doing so he separated himself from Nara Buddhist institutions, and even from his own teacher, Gyōhyō. This gave him both the physical and mental space which eventually led to the development of his own unique vision of Japanese Buddhism. It was during this period that he began studying the texts of Zhiyi and other Tiantai thinkers in earnest and began to identify himself with the Tiantai school. The influence of Zhiyi’s writings on the Lotus Sūtra provided the seeds for Saichō’s own recognition of the superiority of this text. In addition, the political timing of this decision could not have been more fortuitous because the emperor Kanmu 桓武 was also physically distancing the court from Nara Buddhist authorities in order to reduce their influence on the political workings of the capital, first moving the capital to Nagaoka 長岡 in 784 and then to Heiankyō 平安京 (modern day Kyoto 京都) in 794. Mount Hiei was located on the  A number of theories have been offered. Groner provides some of the more prevalent ones in his book on Saichō – that the young monk was repeating the practices of both his teacher Gyōhyō, and Gyōhyō’s teacher, Daoxuan, of retreating to the mountains, or that he was fulfilling a vow his father had made to the kami 神 of Mount Hiei. Possibly, he was moved by the suffering he witnessed among poor farming families, or, as indicated by his composition of a vow (J. ganmon 願 文) written at the time of his move, he was distancing himself from the corrupting influences of the capital in order to be more faithful to the precepts and focus his energies on meditative practices (Groner 2000: 27–28). 18

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outskirts of Heian, so after Saichō had originally taken the initiative to distance himself from the capital, the capital, in the end, followed after him. As the years passed, his reputation grew in Heian as one who represented a sincere and disciplined devotion to the Buddha Way. This eventually caught the eye of the court, and Saichō’s opportunity to establish the Lotus School (J. Hokkeshū 法華宗)19 in Japan was essentially born out of the reputation he had gained from isolating himself. At the same time, during his years studying Tiantai on Mount Hiei, the initial imagining of himself as founder would have emerged, visualizing a new sect of Japanese Buddhism, earnest in its dedication to monastic practice and free from the corruptions and limited Dharma of capital-based Buddhist scholasticism. In this way, Saichō’s interpretations of the Buddhadharma began to take its form and would always function primarily as a bulwark for his sectarian ideals. Of course, the opportunity to found a new sect could only come through interested parties at the centers of political power. His years of reclusive discipline initially caught the attention of a court monk named Jukō 壽興, and, in 797, Saichō was offered a court appointment as well (Groner 2000: 31). However, his opportunity to travel to China resulted primarily from the impressions he made from his accumulated knowledge of both the Lotus Sūtra and Tiantai philosophy. Because of the great popularity of the Lotus Sūtra, his Eight-Part Lotus Lectures (J. Hokke hakkō 法華八講) had begun to be included in memorial services during the late eighth century as a merit-making ritual for the dead (Tanabe 1984: 393–394). The lecture series, initiated by Saichō in 798, was held annually on the anniversary of Zhiyi’s death. The impact of these lectures on the court was pivotal – ritualizing the authority and soteriological power of the Lotus Sūtra, revering the person of Zhiyi as the originator of the Tiantai path, and, at the same time, allowing Saichō to showcase his own reverence for, and erudition of, the most important sacred Buddhist text in Japan. In addition, Saichō was invited by the Wake family, prominent Buddhist reformers with close ties to the court, to join a retreat in 802 discussing the major works of Zhiyi (Groner 2000: 34). After spending twelve  years on Mount Hiei and then providing valued services for the court, Saichō took advantage of his opportunity to travel to China and officially transmit Tiantai to his native Japan.

3  One Buddha, One Vehicle, One Text for All In the Lotus Sūtra Saichō found a universal teaching that asserted the inclusion of all beings in the attainment of Buddhahood. It was primarily this promise that motivated him to establish a Japanese sect of Buddhism founded on the direct teachings of the Lotus Sūtra Buddha, rather than the “commentarial literature” (S. śāstras) upon which the politically powerful Hossō and Sanron schools were based. While in seclusion on Mount Hiei, he found in the works of Zhiyi an important Chinese  Saichō often called his sect of Buddhism “The Lotus School,” in order to recognize its dependence upon a single text – the Lotus Sūtra.

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patriarch who also based his thought on the teachings of the Lotus Sūtra.20 This assumption came mainly through his access to two of Zhiyi’s commentaries written on the text, the Fahuaxuanyi 法華玄義 (Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sūtra) and the Fahuawenju 法華文句 (Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra). These writings were eventually grouped by certain Tiantai traditionalists along with Zhiyi’s Mohezhiguan 摩詞止觀 (The Great Calming and Contemplation) as “the three great texts of the Lotus,” but not until the eighth century, well over a century after Zhiyi’s death (Donner and Stevenson 1993: 42). Even the Mohezhiguan, Zhiyi’s most important work on Tiantai practice, had little connection with the Lotus Sūtra. Zhiyi was influenced by a much wider range of texts, including a number of other sūtras, and unlike Saichō, never reduced all of Tientai thought and practice to the teachings of the Lotus Sūtra. According to Donner and Stevenson: When we examine the early [Tiantai] exegetical and textual record, we find that [Zhiyi] and his successors compiled treatises…for any number of sūtras other than the Lotus, including such long-standing Chinese favorites as the Vimalakīrti, Nirvāṇa, Suvarṇaprabhāsa, and various Pure Land sūtras. Not only is there no evidence that one particular scripture was consistently promoted over others, but [Tang]-period sources indicate that the spiritual descendents of [Zhiyi] realigned [Taintai] doctrine freely in order to accommodate whatever sūtra caught their fancy.21 (Donner and Stevenson 1993: 42)

Although Zhiyi consulted a number of sūtras in order to demonstrate how they were included within his systemization of Buddhist thought, the Lotus Sūtra is placed in a special category of authority, and he does claim its superiority over other Buddhist texts in certain instances. For example, in the Fahuaxuanyi, Zhiyi cites a number of Mahāyāna sūtras to support his categorization of phenomena (S. dharmas, C. fa, J. hō 法), but concludes that only the Lotus Sūtra fully reveals the true subtle nature of phenomena. As a result, other Mahāyāna sūtras were placed in between the Hīnayāna teachings and the Lotus Sūtra based on the level they achieved in revealing the subtle (C. miao 妙). In Paul Swanson’s examination of the Fahuaxuanyi he states: It is the Lotus Sūtra which clarifies the meaning of “dharma”…, therefore it is worthy of the title “subtle.” The other Sūtras… are subtle in some parts and crude in others, except for the Hīnayāna Teachings which are only crude, and the Lotus Sūtra which is only subtle. (Swanson 1989: 129)

Obviously, Zhiyi saw that the Lotus Sūtra was an important enough text to devote two commentaries to its exegesis, but the exclusivity found in Saichō does not  The importance of these works of Zhiyi for the Japanese Tendai sect have far outweighed the works of Saichō. The Tendai examination system, possibly originating from Saichō himself, was based mainly on Zhiyi’s three major works, and monks were expected to demonstrate their own mastery of the material through a series of debates and tests (Groner 1995: 55). 21  This argument contrasts with other contemporary scholars who have claimed that the Lotus Sūtra was always the central text of Tiantai. For example, Daigan and Alicia Matsunaga state that Chinese Tiantai was initially called the Lotus School “due to its complete reliance upon the Lotus Sūtra” (D. Matsunaga and A. Matsunaga 1974: 151). Jacqueline Stone does not seem to see any significant differences between Tendai and Tiantai in the sectarian importance of the Lotus Sūtra, indicating they can be seen as a single tradition in regards to the text, stating, “The Lotus Sūtra is central to the T’ien-t’ai/Tendai tradition…” (Stone 1999: 12).

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reflect Zhiyi’s original systemization of Tiantai from a larger corpus of canonical materials. Consequently, the Lotus tradition is clearly more central to Tendai than to the Chinese school from which it is derived. The exceptional imagery and activity of the Lotus Sūtra Buddha resonated with the kami-directed devotionalism so prevalent in early Japanese religiosity. The philosophical dimensions Saichō drew from the text were partly based on the influence of Zhiyi’s work, but also arose out of a necessity to identify the text as an all-inclusive teaching. Given the limited philosophical development in the Lotus Sūtra, the point of separation between the philosophy of Saichō and the imagination of Saichō22 is perhaps impossible to discern. In the end, it may not matter: his philosophy ultimately functioned to support the ideals of his sectarian imagination as it emerged on Mount Hiei, allowing for new possibilities in Buddhist practice never imagined before. In the message of the Lotus Sūtra Buddha, Saichō found the promise of liberation for all beings without exception. The notion of universal attainment originates mainly from two of the most popular chapters in the text.23 In chapter  3, after Śāriputra (J. Sharishi 舎利子) expresses regret for having followed the lesser vehicle of the śrāvakas (J. shōmon 声聞), Śākyamuni Buddha promises him that in a distant future he will, in fact, become a Buddha named “Flower Light Tathāgata.” Upon Śāriputra’s exclamations of gratitude for hearing the promise of his inevitable Buddhahood, Śākyamuni offers his disciple what may be the most well-known parable of the text. Here, the Buddha tells a story about a concerned father who is able to lure his children out of a burning house by claiming he has three kinds of animal-­ drawn carts, each particular to the likings of individual children, when in actuality he only has one large, beautifully adorned cart. The main explanation provided in the sūtra itself is that this is not an example of falsehood on the part of the father but of skillful means, just as the Buddha uses “skillful means” (S. upāya, J. hōben 方便) to expound the Mahāyāna, the great Buddha vehicle of the bodhisattva (J. bosatsu 菩薩) practitioner. From this parable one could conclude that what only seems like three separate teachings – the śrāvaka, the pratyekabuddha (J. byakushibutsu 辟支 仏) and bodhisattva vehicles, are, in actuality, a single vehicle, the Greater vehicle, or Mahāyāna (J. Daijō 大乗). This led to the ekayāna, or “one vehicle” (J. ichijō 一 乗) theory, professed by Zhiyi and embraced by Saichō, namely, that the Buddha

 As in Bernard Faure’s interpretation of the life and work of the medieval Sōtō patriarch KEIZAN Jōkin 瑩山紹瑾, we can recognize the imaginaire operative in Saichō’s reading of the Lotus Sūtra, in which the imagistic power of the text structures its impact and idiosyncratic meaning (Faure 1996: 10–13). This, however, does not somehow diminish the validity of Saichō’s appropriation of the text – he joined in the cultural fascination for the imagery provided there and offered new possibilities of meaning and an alternative system of Buddhist praxis for his contemporaries by actively participating in the imaginaire. 23  Universal attainment should not be confused with Original Enlightenment (C. benjue, J. hongaku 本覚), a philosophy associated with the Tendai School. Original Enlightenment is not, in any way, developed in Saicho’s thought and only becomes a central idea in Tendai during the centuries after his death. See Jacqueline I. Stone’s Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Buddhism (1999) for the authoritative study on this subject. 22

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was always teaching only one vehicle but taught differently according to the needs and capacities of his followers. The second chapter in the Lotus Sūtra central to Saichō’s message of universal liberation is chapter 12, the chapter on Devadatta (J. Daibadatta 提婆達多). The story of Devadatta can be traced back to the early biographies of the Buddha, and, regardless of its historical merits, Devadatta’s role adds drama and intrigue to the narrative. Although he was Gautama’s cousin, Devadatta is mainly known for his attempts to kill the Buddha and divide the Sangha. His assassination attempts all failed, but he was successful in creating a split among the monks. Devadatta has therefore been traditionally identified as the ultimate evildoer within the Buddhist community, just as Śāriputra is often identified as the misinformed representative of the “lesser vehicle” (S. Hīnayāna, J. shōjō 小乗). However, both are promised the attainment of Buddhahood in the Lotus Sūtra, albeit in some distant future. Not only is Devadatta predicted to become a buddha in the future, but Śākyamuni Buddha also declares that in their encounters during past lives, it was Devadatta who originally taught the wisdom of the Lotus to Śākyamuni. Along with the chapter’s inclusion of a young girl who also attains Buddhahood in an instant, the Lotus Sūtra chooses those who were commonly held to be incapable of becoming Buddhas, namely, those of the lesser vehicle, those with heavy karmic debt, and all female practitioners, in order to demonstrate the power of Śākyamuni Buddha’s promise of attainment. The excluded were now included. The main reason for the supremacy of the Lotus Sūtra, according to Saichō, was that it was the text which revealed the truth of the Buddha’s teaching as a single vehicle, a vehicle that promised to lead all practitioners to the ultimate realization of Buddhahood. Śāriputra! I, for the sake of all beings, By means of this parable Preach the One Buddha-vehicle. If all of you are able To receive these words in faith You shall be able To accomplish the Buddha-way. (Lotus Sutra 1975, 99).

This fact leads Saichō to two primary conclusions. First, because there is in reality only a single vehicle, all Buddhist teachings are ultimately identical and can be subsumed within the message of the Lotus Sūtra. Saichō’s disagreements, and eventual falling out with Kūkai, the founder of the esoteric Shingon school, partially arose out of Saichō’s view of the supremacy of the Lotus Sūtra based on its inclusive universality. By contrast, Kūkai chose a polemic of exclusivity and maintained that the esoteric teachings of the Mahāvairocana Sūtra comprised a more advanced level of the Dharma than the Lotus Sūtra, since the latter text only provided merely exoteric teachings24 (Hakeda 1972: 151).  The argument is based on Kūkai’s understanding of the “three buddha bodies” (S. trikāya, J. sanjin 三身), a teaching originating from the Indian Yogācāra school. He asserts that the esoteric teaching of the Mahāvairocana Sūtra is the preaching of the dharmakāya, (J. hosshin 法身) or 24

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The second conclusion Saichō reached through his interpretation of the Lotus Sūtra was that the single Buddha-vehicle left no one out – everyone, without exception, can be freed from the burning house of conditionality, and all are capable of attaining Buddhahood. More specifically, Saichō imagined the inclusion expressed in the text as a promise to his fellow Japanese, a promise the Japanese people were, in fact, uniquely prepared to fulfill. In contrast to the elitism of the Nara schools, Śākyamuni Buddha himself had declared in the Lotus Sūtra that all Japanese people could achieve liberation. By leaving the shores of Japan to receive the Tiantai teachings directly from a living Chinese patriarch and then returning home to establish a new sect of Tendai Buddhism in Japan, Saichō could initiate the fulfillment of the Buddha’s promise.

4  Returning Home with the Perfect Teaching In 801, when Kanmu decided to plan a diplomatic mission to China in order to establish stronger political ties and to bolster Japan’s image as an advanced cultural partner, Saichō saw his opportunity to legitimize Tendai as a recognized sect of Japanese Buddhism. His inclusion on the trip resulted from his own request, formally presented to the court in 802. Taking advantage of the recent impressions he made in the Lotus lectures and the Wake-sponsored retreat on the works of Zhiyi, Saichō petitioned the court to recognize the sectarian independence of Tendai from the Nara schools. Arguing the superiority of Tendai Buddhism because of its origination from the direct sūtra-based teachings of the Buddha, rather than the commentarial origins of the prominent Hossō and Sanron schools, and citing the practical necessities of bringing home original Tendai texts and receiving legitimacy from the Chinese, Saichō made his case to have two monks join the voyage (Borgen 1982: 6). The actual reasons for the approval of his request are difficult, if not impossible, to determine – certainly there was enough interest in the teachings of Tendai among members of the court to support the growth of its development in Japan. However, concern over the on-going political rivalries between the Sanron and Hossō schools may have provoked the support given to Tendai as a possible way of counterbalancing the competition between these sects (Groner 2000: 37). The details of the trip are not of great importance here, but the teachers Saichō encountered and the extent of their influence on his thought are necessary considerations. It is clear, however, that Saicho’s primary interest in the voyage was to

universal truth body, while the exoteric teaching of the Lotus Sūtra is the preaching of the historical Buddha, Śākyamuni, a nirmānakāya buddha (J. ōjin 応身). As a historical Buddha, Śākyamuni’s teaching is provisional, limited to the historical period of his life, while the teaching of Mahāvairocana Buddha is not limited to a historical period and is, therefore, universal. Saichō claimed that the Śākyamuni of the Lotus Sūtra was, in fact, a universal dharmakāya buddha, and his teaching was therefore equivalent to Mahāvairocana. Kūkai never accepted this claim.

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f­urther legitimize his authority in establishing Japanese Tendai. He had already dedicated years of disciplined study and meditative practice on Mount Hiei according to the Taintai teachings, teachings that had been available in Japan for a generation. Since the initial importation of Tiantai texts in 754 by the Chinese vinaya master Jianzhen 鑑眞 (688–763), Saichō was the first Japanese monastic to take great interest in them (Groner 2000: 7). Furthermore, at the relatively young age of nineteen, Saichō cut his ties with his original teacher Gyōhyō after seven years of affiliation. Although Gyōhyō certainly influenced the development of Saichō’s thought, once the move was made to Mount Hiei, Saichō essentially trained independently of any living teacher for 17 years, before finally leaving for China in 803. The break from Gyōhyō was not precipitated by a known fallingout, but it is clear from the move that Saichō wanted to pursue an independent practice. While on Mount Hiei, this practice became increasingly informed by Tiantai thought and Lotus Sūtra devotionalism. In contrast to his time at Mount Hiei, he trained with Chinese teachers for a very short period, and so by the time he first met with them, he had already formulated much of his own understanding of the Tiantai teachings. After a number of initial setbacks on his voyage, Saichō finally arrived in China late in 804 and immediately set off for the main centers of Tiantai Buddhism in the capital of Taizhou 台州. There he met with the Tiantai monk Daosui 道邃 (dates unknown), and later, on Mount Tiantai, he studied for a period of time with another Tiantai monk Xingman 行満 (d. c.a. 823)25 (Borgen 1982: 16). In addition, he trained briefly with the meditation master Xiuran 脩然, from the Ox Head School (J. Niutou 牛頭) of Northern Chan Buddhism26 (Groner 2000: 43). Both Daosui and Xingman were disciples of the sixth Tiantai patriarch Zhanran 湛然 (711–782). Commonly cited as the most influential Tiantai master after Zhiyi, Zhanran revived the school’s philosophical rigor by confronting the rising influence of Huayan thought during the eighth century and clarifying the similarities and differences between the two schools.27 When Saichō was in China, these new influences were in  Little is known about either of these teachers or their works. Saichō refers to Daosui in his own writings mainly to claim he had received transmission from China. Xingman receives even less attention in Japan, as later Tendai monks associated Xingman with an inferior teaching, at odds with the growing emphasis on original enlightenment thought after Saicho’s death (Groner 2000: 43–45). Later esoteric schools within medieval Tendai traced their origins back to Saichō’s Chinese teachers, arguing that he received doctrinal teachings from Xingman and meditative insight from Daosui. There is, however, a lack of substantial evidence to suggest these two distinct transmissions originating from Saichō’s Tiantai teachers (Stone 1999: 104–105). 26  The claims made by Saichō and subsequent Tendai leaders about the initiations and transmissions he received while in China have come under critical scrutiny by modern Japanese scholars. Some have questioned the actual transmission of Chinese Chan Buddhism, arguing that Saichō included this transmission in order to authenticate the Chan transmission he received in Japan from his original teacher Gyōhyō (Groner 2000: 253). 27  According to Paul Groner, Zhanran’s works helped Saichō to better understand the differences between Tiantai and Huayan, and provided proof for the superiority of the Lotus Sūtra over the sūtra of the Huayan school, the Avataṃsakasūtra, or Flower Garland Sūtra (C. Huayanjing 華嚴 經, J. Kegonkyō 華厳経) (Groner 2000: 249) 25

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their early stages of development. By the time of the Sung, there were divisions that formed within the Tiantai school over its interpretation of Huayan thought.28 Because Saichō had studied Huayan under Gyōhyō, he would not have been unfamiliar with the universalism Huayan shared with Tiantai. The Tiantai formulations of Huayan thought were, consequently, not simply passed on to Saichō during his stay in China but were altered according to his own understanding of the one vehicle teaching in the Lotus Sūtra (Stone 1999: 14). By early 805, returning to study with Daosui, both Saichō and a second Japanese monk, Gishin 義真, were fully ordained as Tiantai monks, both receiving the bodhisattva precepts (C. pusajie, J. bostasukai 菩薩戒). When their departure for Japan was delayed, Saichō left for Yuezhou 越州 where he received instruction and initiations from an esoteric master, Shunxiao 順暁. Saichō spent less than nine months in China but returned safely to Japan in mid-805 with copies of 230 important Chinese Buddhist texts, including 102 esoteric documents (Borgen 1982: 17). More importantly, he could claim official recognition by the Chinese in four traditions – the bodhisattva precepts, Tiantai Buddhism, Chan meditation, and esoteric Buddhism (Stone 1999: 16). The extent of Saichō’s training in China was, from all accounts, minimal. However, upon his return home, he had more individual authority than any Japanese Buddhist who had come before him.

5  Chinese Precedents and Japanese Innovations We have already seen examples of the uniqueness of Japanese Tendai in comparison with Chinese Tiantai Buddhism. Some innovations came directly from Saichō, and several teachings and practices commonly associated with Tendai developed over the generations following him. Greater emphasis on “esotericism” (J. mikkyō 密 教),29 the inclusion of nenbutsu 念仏 practice, changes in the understanding of the precepts,30 and the development of “original enlightenment thought” (J. hongaku 28  These divisions into a “mountain school” (C. shanjia 山家) and “off-mountain school” (C. shanwai 山外) were based on contrasting positions concerning whether or not the mind was originally pure and independent of phenomenal experience (Stone 1999: 9–10). 29  Although Saichō received esoteric initiations in China and studied a number of esoteric texts, including those available to him before he left for China, both those he copied himself during his visit and those he borrowed from Kūkai, his knowledge and experience in esotericism (J. mikkyō 密教) was noticeably limited in comparison to Kūkai. Consequently, he found himself at a great disadvantage as he attempted to promote himself as an esoteric master and to compete with the Shingon School by offering “Tendai esoteric training” (J. Taimitsu 台密). This resulted ultimately in a number of well-documented setbacks and disappointments. It really was not until one of his successors, Ennin 円仁 (794–864) left to train in China in 838 and returned to Japan with a higher level of credibility, that Tendai esotericism began to gain prominence in Japan (D. Matsunaga and A. Matsunaga 1974: 163–164). 30  The Tendai monk Annen 安然 (ninth century) promoted a new attitude towards the precepts, arguing that actual adherence to the rules did not matter as much as one’s attitude towards them (Groner 1987: 133).

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shisō 本覚思想),31 all arose in the centuries after Saichō. However, the great majority of Tendai doctrine can still be traced back to the system of thought originating from Zhiyi. Here we will focus on the main doctrinal precedents set in place by Zhiyi, while also considering the major innovations offered by Saichō. The most significant contribution Zhiyi made to Buddhist philosophy was his doctrine of the “three-fold truth” (C. sandi, J. santai 三諦). This doctrinal foundation served as the main framework of his writings, and a number of Zhiyi’s other theoretical formulations were structured according to the three truths. They originate from his unique interpretation of the “two truths” (S. satyadvaya, C. erdi 二諦, J. shinzoku nitai 真俗二諦)32 as presented by Nāgārjuna, the second-century founder of the Mādhyamaka, or Middle Way School, of Indian Buddhism. In chapter 24 of Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Root Verses of the Middle Way), verses eight and nine, he states the following: The Buddha’s teaching of the Dharma Is based on two truths: A truth of worldly convention And an ultimate truth. Those who do not understand The distinction drawn between these two truths Do not understand The Buddha’s profound truth. (Garfield 1995: 68)

Zhiyi’s move to the three truths arises from his interpretation of verse eighteen33 from the same chapter: Whatever is dependently co-arisen That is explained to be emptiness. That being a dependent designation, Is itself the middle way. (Garfield 1995: 69)

Zhiyi concludes that there is a third truth declared in verse eighteen, designated by Nāgārjuna as the middle way. Here, the simultaneous realization of the dependently co-arisen, or merely conventionally real phenomena, and the ultimate reality of emptiness constitutes the “middle” (C. zhong, J. chū 中) or full integration of the two truths in a single reality. The simultaneity of conventional or provisional truth

 As stated in an earlier footnote, although Tendai Buddhism and original enlightenment thought are commonly associated, Saichō had little, if anything, to do with it. The earliest examples have been traced to Tendai oral transmissions during the eleventh century. 32  The two truths were defined in Indian Buddhist thought as “conventional truth” (S. saṃvṛtisatya, C. sudi, J. zokutai 俗諦) and “ultimate truth” (S. paramārthasatya, C. zhendi, J. shintai 真諦). The conventional truth is associated with phenomena that are dependently arisen, or linguistic designations of phenomena, or the mistaken understanding of phenomena as they truly are. The ultimate truth is associated with emptiness, or direct, non-linguistic experience of phenomena, or the recognition that all truth is ultimately conventional. 33  According to Tiantai biographies of the tradition’s recognized founder Huiwen, it is said that he attained a great awakening when he first came across this verse in his readings. 31

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and ultimate truth also means that both are together equally true, while neither is true in and of itself. One could argue that Zhiyi is mistaken in adding a third truth, when there is little evidence in the verses to suggest that Nāgārjuna intended to do so.34 However, the third truth as formulated by Zhiyi moves the meaning of the two truths towards a Sinitic emphasis on everyday experience, with less weight placed on the merely logical or philosophical implications of the two truths. Living one’s life in accordance with the third truth, or from the standpoint of the middle, allows one to freely engage within the phenomenal world with neither obsessive attachments nor lifeless detachment. It is worthwhile noting that the development of Saicho’s sectarian ambitions while on Mount Hiei grew out of his study of Tiantai, including Zhiyi’s works in particular, as well as a deepening of his regard for the Lotus Sūtra. Zhiyi’s own philosophical development not only centered on a number of Buddhist sūtras in addition to the Lotus but also arose out of a great interest in Mādhyamaka thought, particularly through his involvements in debates with Sanlun scholars35 over the meaning of the two truths (Swanson 1989: 97). In contrast, Saichō adopted a critical stance against the Japanese Sanron school, due to its dependence on commentarial writings rather than the direct teachings of the Buddha found in the sūtras. Yet, Zhiyi’s own explanation of the threefold truth was developed mainly through his interpretive study of the Lotus Sūtra in the Fahuaxuanyi (Swanson 1989: 123). Therefore, Saichō’s indoctrination into the meaning of Zhiyi’s threefold truth was inextricably tied to the message of the Lotus Sūtra. We can find clear evidence of Saichō’s own imagining of new possibilities for Buddhist practice from the standpoint of the middle, combining strict monastic discipline and dedicated engagement with human society. In this way, he carried the practical application of Buddhist monasticism into new directions not found in India, China, or Japan. One of his most ambitious visions for Tendai training was the Sange gakushōshiki 山家学生式 (The System of the Mountain Home Student), requiring each ordained monk to remain on Mount Hiei for twelve years of secluded and intense practice.36 The system was designed to ultimately prepare them, at the conclusion of their training, to take on appointments in various kinds of social services according to their own individual skills and talents37 (Hazama 1987: 111).  In Paul L. Swanson’s examination of Zhiyi’s interpretation of the two truths, he indicates that Zhiyi’s use of Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation of the original Sanskrit may have influenced his conclusion that a third truth was indicated in verse eighteen (Swanson 1989: 3). 35  The Sanlun 三論, or Three Treatises School was a scholastic institution in Chinese Buddhism concerned mainly with Indian Mādhyamaka philosophy. This school was transplanted to Japan as the Sanron school, one of the six Nara sects of Japanese Buddhism. 36  Paul Groner has suggested that after suffering a number of defections of his early followers to other rival sects, it is possible Saichō required the 12 year seclusion in order to ensure his trainees would remain with him (Groner 2000: 124). 37  The required 12 years of seclusion was based on Saichō’s own self-imposed isolation for the same length of time following his ordination as a young man of 19 years. However, it proved too 34

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The Tiantai teaching of the middle also shares similarities with the Huayan doctrine of the unity of “principle” (C. li, J. ri 理) and “phenomenon” (C. shi, J. ji 事). According to the main philosophical system of Huayan, the phenomenal universe, or dharmadhātu (C. Fajie, J. Hokkai 法界), is understood according to the relationship between principle and phenomena, formulated as the fourfold dharmadhātu. First, the dharmadhātu can first be experienced according to shi, the everyday experience of sensory phenomena. Secondly, the dharmadhātu can be experienced as the realm of li, the principle of the phenomenal universe, inaccessible to ordinary sensory perceptions but experienced, according to Huayan, through meditative intuition in the direct realization of the “emptiness” (S. śūnyatā, C. kong, J. kū 空) of all phenomena. The third realm has similarities with the Tiantai middle, where shi and li are mutually inseparable and recognized as an unobstructed unity. In Huayan there is an additional fourth level of the dharmadhātu – the unobstructed interdependence of every phenomena, where each phenomena contains within itself all other phenomena and is included as well in every other phenomena.38 The fourth level of phenomenal reality recognized in Huayan ensures that individual phenomena are not negated in an undifferentiated whole – each phenomenon does not exist independently of the whole, yet is nevertheless unique in its relational place within the whole. As in Zhiyi’s three truths, the fourfold dharmadhātu of Huayan, while recognizing the primordial origins of principle, moves in each subsequent realm towards a deepening in our recognition of, and connection to, the everyday phenomenal world. Huayan philosophy emerged in China after Zhiyi, mainly in the work of Fazang 法藏 (643–712), so we do not find any comparative material in Zhiyi’s works. However, Kegon had already been an important school of thought in Nara Buddhism by the eighth century, and Saichō was aware of its philosophy from the start of his career.39 Because his teacher Gyōhyō, was trained in this system, Saichō had direct schooling in Kegon while under Gyōhyō’s tutelage. In addition, both of Saichō’s Tiantai teachers, Daosui and Xingman, studied under the sixth patriarch and Tiantai reformer Zhanran, In the eighth century, Zhanran had responded to the Huayan system through a Tiantai lens, and so the language of Huayan had already made its way into Tiantai philosophy by the time Saichō arrived in China. The main contrast between early Tiantai and Huayan philosophy originates from a fundamental difference in the understanding of the nature of the mind, which arose from the different textual interests of the founders. Both Fazang and Zhiyi were among the early Chinese systematizers, attempting to reduce the essential difficult for Saichō to find novice monks with the same kind of idealism and discipline, and the requirement was not continued after Saichō’s death (Groner 2000: xix). 38  This fourth dimension of the dharmadhātu is visualized in the image of “Indra’s Net”, where the entire phenomenal universe is imagined as a lattice of diamonds, each diamond reflecting all the other diamonds within itself, and itself reflected in every other diamond. 39  According to Paul Groner, Saichō was, in fact, first introduced to Tiantai Buddhism through the writings of Fazang, where he praised the meditation practices of both Zhiyi and Huisi (Groner 2000: 30).

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teachings of Buddhism from the broad array of materials originating from India. However, they differed in what texts they chose to emphasize. Fazang’s system is grounded in two main sources, the Indian Avataṃsakasūtra, or Flower Garland Sūtra (C. Huayanjing, J. Kegongyō 華厳經), and the sixth-century Chinese apocryphal text entitled Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna (C. Dachengqixinlun 大乘起 信論). Neither is influential in Zhiyi’s work,40 although he does cite the Avataṃsakasūtra41 in the Fahuaxuanyi (Swanson 1989: 159–256). Because of the Kegon influences in Saichō’s early training, The Awakening of Faith plays a more significant role in his own understanding of the relation between the mind and the phenomenal world, and he was particularly influenced by the Qixinlunshu 起信論 疏, Fazang’s commentary on the text (Stone 1999: 13). The Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna is founded on one primary teaching, the “One Mind and Its Two Aspects” (Hakeda 1967: 31). Here, mind is said to have both the aspect of the Absolute Realm of reality, or Dharmadhātu, identified here with Indian Buddhist “suchness” (S. tathātā, C. zhenru, J. shinnyo 真如), and the aspect of mind as phenomena, identified with birth and death or saṃsāra. The One Mind is originally pure and enlightened, void of any distinctions and without conceptions. Because the mind is originally pure, attainment through practice is a misperception, since nothing is actually ever attained. Non-enlightenment is mainly a matter of simply not realizing the original purity of the mind, an ignorance that constructs the phenomenal world of distinctions, resulting in delusional grasping. In his commentary, Fazang identified the aspect of suchness in the Awakening of Faith with li, or principle, and the aspect of phenomena with shi. According to Jacqueline Stone: …[Fazang] interpreted the two aspects of the one mind as suchness that is absolute and unchanging…and suchness that accords with conditions…, equating them with principle… and phenomena…respectively. Suchness in its unchanging, quiescent mode is the one pure mind; in its dynamic mode, responding to the ignorance that is the condition of sentient beings, it manifests the phenomenal world. (Stone 1999: 7)

Here, the indigenous Daoist assertions of a primordial Absolute find their way into Chinese Buddhist conceptions of mind. The influence of these assertions on the 40  The Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna does take on greater significance with later Tiantai practitioners – first with Zhanran who used the text in order to argue against Huayan notions of original purity (Stone 1999: 9). Second, during the Sung dynasty the off-mountain thinkers of Tiantai, began adopting more of its premises (Donner and Stevenson 1993: 86). 41  There is a clear contrast between Fazang’s systematization of foundational Buddhist texts and Zhiyi’s, which reveals the fundamental differences in their respective visions of the Dharma and its accessibility. Although Zhiyi recognizes the Flower Garland Sūtra as the Buddha’s direct teaching of ultimate reality, revealing a sudden method for the most advanced bodhisattvas, he sees it as a “distinct” teaching as well. According to Liu Ming-Wood, “…in the case of the ‘distinct teaching,’ the ‘truth of the middle’…is conceived apart from the ‘truth of emptiness’…and the ‘truth of the provisional’ and the sphere of the Buddha is regarded as detached from the sphere of common experience….The Lotus, on the other hand, transcends even the last remnant of differentiation in taking under its wing all sentient beings” (Liu 1988: 62–63). However, for Fazang, “…the fact that the Garland is beyond the comprehension of the less intelligent is a consequence of its ‘profundity and broadness’ and so a proof of its preeminence” (Liu 1988: 75).

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thought of both the unknown Chinese author of the Awakening of Faith and the philosophy of Fazang is unmistakable. The quiescent aspect of the one mind connotes an unchanging essentiality that maintains its purity in the midst of the dynamic activity of the phenomenal world. The conditioned mind of birth and death is identified as an aspect of the original unborn mind, yet the activity of the former does not alter the quiescence of the latter. Because the original absolute in the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna is associated with the mind, rather than the natural order, as in the Chinese understanding of the Dao 道, and because phenomena are identified as illusory manifestations of an original pure mind, this resulted in both a greater value being placed on li over shi, as well as a centering of Chinese Buddhist philosophy in tathāgatagarbha thought. Tathāgatagarbha (C. foxing 佛性, J. busshō 仏性), literally “buddha womb,” is most commonly rendered as “Buddha-nature.” Although tathāgatagarbha thought originated in India,42 it took on much greater significance in China, influencing the philosophical development of most of the major Chinese schools. Although it provides an underlying positive and even hopeful dimension to Buddhist practice, given its main assertion that all sentient beings are originally endowed with an enlightened Buddha-nature, there are both philosophical and practical dangers associated with its appropriation in East Asian Buddhism. The main philosophical danger is in the possible association of Buddha-nature with an essentialist ontology, which conflicts with the foundational Indian Buddhist teachings of non-self and emptiness. It has also been asserted by some modern scholars that such essentialist views have led to practical consequences, including an indifference to both Buddhist discipline and social inequities (Swanson 1993: 119–136).43 In order to consider Saichō’s unique contributions to the interpretation of the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna and tathāgatagarbha thought in Japanese Buddhism, we first need to evaluate Zhiyi’s influences on his understanding. Zhiyi’s appropriation of Indian tathāgatagarbha thought was not measurably different from any of his Chinese contemporaries. According to Neal Donner, for example, Zhiyi was, “in agreement with the view general to Chinese Buddhism (a view which he helped to define) that enlightenment is the natural state of humanity” (Donner 1987: 51). Yet Zhiyi did not reach the same conclusions about the primordial nature of the One Mind as Fazang and the Huayan school, mainly because Zhiyi equated thought and mind. All thoughts were mind itself, and mind did not somehow exist independently of thought. He “therefore oppose[d] explicitly…those who [upheld] the unchangeability (eternality) of mind …” (Donner 1987: 52). In equating all  Early Indian texts include the Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra and the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra.  Attacks on tathāgatagarbha thought in the 1980s originated mainly from the Critical Buddhism movement in Japan, initiated through the work of HAKAMAYA Noriaki 袴谷憲昭 and MATSUMOTO Shirō 松本史郎, of the Sōtō Zen Komazawa University. They argued that the focus on tathāgatagarbha thought in East Asian Buddhism led to Japanese notions of hongaku 本 覚 (original enlightenment) and wa 和, or harmony. Both of these influential Japanese ideals have been the main cause, according to Hakamaya and Matsumoto, of a number of social injustices in twentieth century Japan. In response, they claim that tathāgatagarbha thought is heretical to foundational Buddhist teachings and should therefore be refuted.

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thought with mind, he reached the rather radical conclusion that all thought, regardless of its good or evil quality, can be equated as well. Because all thought is mind, the contemplation of the mind occurs regardless of whether one contemplates good or evil thoughts – they are equal in that both reveal mind in its true nature as the activity of thought.44 We can see the practical implications of this argument for example, in Neal Donner’s study of Zhiyi’s meditation on evil, in which he considers the resultant inclusion of Buddhist practice for laypeople. In fact for laypeople who live constantly amid evil phenomena there may be no opportunity at all to meditate upon the Six Perfections, and it is that selfsame evil which they employ as an object of meditation45 (Donner 1987: 54).

The implications of Zhiyi’s conclusions here are significant both in terms of Buddhist discipline and social equality. First, Zhiyi recognizes the enlightened Buddha-nature of all beings, thus maintaining the positive and hopeful dimensions of Tathāgatagarbha thought. However, he rejects the assertion of an independent primordial mind that is originally distinct from the phenomenal world. Mind is, instead, equated with all phenomenal experience, and is, therefore, rooted more clearly in the everyday. Moreover, because Zhiyi even subverts the common Buddhist divisions between good and evil qualities of mind, he ultimately negates all possibilities of exclusion, constructing a Dharma that allows for a grounding in social justice. These philosophical precedents, offered to Saichō in the work of Zhiyi, provided not only a philosophical framework to critically respond to Nara Buddhism, but also a sectarian vision of a new, inclusive Japanese Buddhism. Saichō’s unique interpretation of Kegon thought reflects both his devotion to the message of the Lotus Sūtra for universal liberation, as well as the philosophical influences of Zhiyi. Based on his readings of Fazang’s commentary on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna, Saichō adopted Fazang’s language for his examination of suchness, claiming both a quiescent and dynamic aspect. However, borrowing from Zhiyi, he claimed that the quiescent aspect was a one-sided truth and the dynamic aspect was in accordance with the middle (Stone 1999: 14). Saichō’s identification of the dynamic aspect with the middle in the Tiantai threefold truth is a sound response to Fazang because the phenomenal world, or suchness in its dynamic aspect, simultaneously expresses both the conventional and ultimate truth, both form and emptiness. The quiescent aspect is one-sided because it is equated only with ultimate truth, and, as a consequence, conventional truth is excluded, or at the very least, devalued, in the Fazang formulation. By prioritizing the dynamic aspect over the quiescent aspect, Saichō reverses or even overturns the  This does not mean that no distinctions are being made here between good and evil in terms of their karmic effects on the quality of life. The main thrust of Zhiyi’s argument is to exclude all exclusions. Ultimately, this assertion has a moral structure. 45  Here, the traditional Mahāyāna practice of the six perfections is understood as one of the major categories of good thoughts formulated by Zhiyi. Because the six perfections are associated mainly with the bodhisattvic path of the monastic renunciant, laypersons are understood as having limited, if any, access to their actual practice. 44

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orientation of the Awakening of Faith, thereby embracing the reality of the ­phenomenal world, rather than seeing it as an illusory manifestation of the original One Mind.46 With the threefold truth serving as the philosophical foundation for the “doctrine” (C. jiao 教) wing of his system, Zhiyi’s classic work on Tiantai meditation, the Mohezhiguan (The Great Calming and Contemplation), provided instruction for the “practice” (C. guan, 觀) wing. According to Paul Swanson, early in Zhiyi’s career he equated Buddhist practice with doing “seated meditation” (C. zuochan, J. zazen 坐禅). However, after his realization of the threefold truth while secluded on Mount Tiantai, he began to develop a system of practice based in zhiguan 止觀, or calming-contemplation, subsuming chan practice under the category of zhi, or calming (Swanson 2002: 3). This shift to an emphasis on zhiguan over chan was mainly precipitated by Zhiyi’s concern about the practical or dynamic dimensions of practice, which he found lacking in the quietistic leanings of chan (Donner and Stevenson 1993: 8). Zhiguan was for Zhiyi the practice of the middle, where both the dynamic and the quiescent are fully realized. The practice of both zhi and guan can be traced, along with chan, to the earliest Indian Buddhist meditation systems, presented in the Pali Nikāyas, or Collected Discourses of the Buddha. Zhi, or calming meditation, originates from Indian śamatha, and guan, or contemplation (also known as insight meditation), originates from the Indian practice of vipaśyanā.47 Although Zhiyi, in developing his system of practice, certainly recognized the origins of these techniques in the Indian canon and sought to authenticate Tiantai meditation through the appropriation of calming and contemplation, he, nevertheless, fashioned a new understanding and purpose for these practices. Once Zhiyi discovered the threefold truth, his entire system of practice developed into a threefold formula.48 With the threefold truth functioning as principle (li), he systematized the practice of zhiguan into three discernments, used to “contemplate the dharmas of phenomenal experience in order to eradicate the [three] delu-

46  In Stone’s examination of medieval hongaku thought, she points out that this interpretation of Fazang is only found in the work of Saichō and not borrowed from Zhanran or from any Huayan philosopher, claiming, “This represents a crucial step toward the profound valorization of empirical reality found in medieval Tendai original enlightenment thought (Stone 1999: 14).” 47  According to the Pali discourses of the Buddha, calming meditation could be practiced through a number of possible techniques, all concerned with focusing the mind on a single object or thought. When the mind achieves a high enough level of calm, it will naturally reach a series of concentrations or dhyānas (P. jhānas). While centered in these deep stages of concentration, insight or vipaśyanā can be applied to such an extent that the causal nexus of birth and death is discerned, bringing about the extinction of the defilements (S. kleśa, P. kilesa) and the realization of liberation as nirvāna. 48  According to Donner and Stevenson, Zhiyi consulted a number of textual sources to support the theoretical basis of his threefold system of practice, including Nāgārjuna’s commentary on the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra, the Śrīmālā Sūtra, as well as Chinese apocrypha (Donner and Stevenson 1993: 9–10).

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sions and reveal the three truths,” thus producing the three wisdoms49 (Donner and Stevenson 1993: 9–10). For Zhiyi, the ultimate purpose of the Buddhadharma, therefore, was to bring about the realization of the threefold truth in every practitioner, offering alternative paths for those with differing levels of discernment. Zhiyi divided the paths of Buddhist practice into four categories: the tripiṭaka teaching is limited to the lesser vehicle and given to those with dull capacity; the shared teaching is for those with intuitive insight into emptiness, used by the śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha, and bodhisattva; the separate teaching reveals the middle truth to bodhisattvas only, but requires a long, gradual period of training, requiring a dependence on several provisional teachings; and finally, the perfect teaching is given only to bodhisattvas with the highest capacities, where the middle is presented directly without provisional teachings. It is the perfect teaching, according to Zhiyi, that is presented in the Mohezhiguan, through his system of calming-contemplation (Donner and Stevenson 1993: 14–16). Zhiyi’s claim of a perfect teaching (C. yuanjiao 圓教, J. engyō 円教) made a great impact on Saichō’s own vision for his new Tendai sect. He would imagine himself as the one called to bring the perfect teaching to the Japanese people, who were in danger of entering the degenerate age of the Dharma (J. mappō 末法) and unable to achieve liberation through the provisional teachings offered by the Nara schools. But Saichō took the perfect teaching of Zhiyi one step further, claiming that the capacities of all Japanese people were of the highest order. Because the Japanese people possessed “perfect faculties” (J. enki 圓機), Japan was uniquely qualified as a nation to receive the perfect teaching. By delivering the perfect teaching to Japan, Saichō would undo the corrupted Dharma offered by the Nara Buddhists and prevent his people from entering the degenerative age (Groner 2000: 181–182). The most important contribution resulting from Saichō’s vision of the perfect teaching was in the way he applied its meaning to the practice of the Buddhist precepts. There is certainly no innovation originating from Saichō that has gained more attention from modern scholars than his insistence on Tendai ordinations including the Mahāhāyana precepts50 and excluding the Hinayāna precepts.51 Saichō’s basic logic in the matter was certainly cogent given Zhiyi’s four-tiered system of Buddhist practice. If one is to follow the perfect teaching, then it would be necessary to avoid the precepts of the lesser paths and only practice the perfect precepts (J. enkai 円 戒). The perfect precepts were by definition the precepts of the perfect teaching, and  As we have seen with the teachings of Zhiyi thus far, his main concern here is in gaining insight into phenomenal experience from the standpoint of the middle. The particulars of these tripartite elements of Zhiyi’s system are not of great significance for this study, so they will not be included here. They are only mentioned in order to show how the threefold truth functioned as the foundational principle for Zhiyi’s vision of Buddhist practice. 50  In East Asia, the most important and influential set of Mahāyāna precepts of the period were taken from the Chinese Fanwangjing 梵網經, or Brahma’s Net Sūtra, which contained a list of 10 major and 48 secondary precepts. 51  The standard vinaya precepts, or sifenlu 四分律, were the orthodox set of precepts given during both Chinese and Japanese ordinations of the time. 49

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because the perfect teaching promised the direct path (J. jikidō 直道) to liberation, made possible by dedicating oneself to the single vehicle of the bodhisattva, one could not practice the Hinayāna precepts (S. vinaya) of the tripiṭaka teaching. Saichō primarily associated these precepts with the lowest path in Zhiyi’s four-­ tiered system, and so they would only impede the practice of the direct path. Saicho’s view of the precepts was not shared by Zhiyi, or any other major Tiantai figure.52 In this case, he is clearly breaking ranks with his Chinese predecessors and proposing a radical shift in the Japanese practices of the precepts as well.53 Traditionally, ordination practices among the Buddhist sects in both China and Japan included receiving the vinaya precepts. In Tiantai, the Mahāyāna precepts would be given at the conclusion of a monk’s initial training as a recognition of their advanced status, just as Saichō and Gishin had received them in 805 while training in China. However, Saichō essentially reverses the order of these precept ordinations by arguing that the Mahāyāna precepts be given to monks during their initial ordination, and only after spending a full 12 years of training on Mount Hiei would they be given the Hināyāna precepts. This reversal of the precepts was based on Saichō’s interpretation of the traditional bodhisattva path and concerned with the danger of backsliding. Early in the development of the Mahāyāna in India, there was a primary interest in the attainment of non-retrogression. Non-retrogression is not the final attainment of Buddhahood but is placed at the eighth level of attainment in the ten-stage path of the bodhisattva. These stages (S. bhūmis; literally, “grounds” or “lands”) are structured according to the ten perfections, or pāramitās.54 The eighth perfection, named “the perfection of the vow,” is described as the “immoveable ground” (S. acalābhūmi) and is designated as the attainment of non-retrogression (Huntington and Wangchen 1989: 186).55 Once the eighth stage of the path is attained, there is no longer the danger of backsliding out of the progression to eventual Buddhahood. This notion of non-retrogression, therefore, brings about an optimism about 52  Although this is the case, Saichō did find precedence in the works of Zhiyi to support his view of the precepts, namely, in the latter’s sudden path of the bodhisattva (the fourth and highest path), and in his use of the term “perfect precepts” in his writings. Saichō associated both with the necessity for the exclusive practice of the Mahāyāna precepts (Groner 2000: 227). 53  Saichō arrived at this view of the precepts over a period of time, well after returning from his training in China. He began to officially reject the Hinayāna precepts through a series of written statements and petitions beginning in 1818. His language concerning these interests was initially vague, and his ultimate views about precept ordinations evolved over subsequent years based on the lack of success of his initial petitions. Although he certainly based his argument for the use of the Mahāyāna precepts on a valid understanding of the perfect teaching and desired to create a system that would facilitate the attainment of liberation for the Japanese people, he was also motivated by his sectarian interests in distinguishing the Tendai sect from other Japanese schools of Buddhism, as well as achieving greater independence from governmental oversight (Groner 2000: 114–137). 54  These include “generosity” (S. dāna), “morality” (S. śīla), “patience” (S. kṣānti), “energy” (S. vīrya), “meditation” (S. dhyāna), “wisdom” (S. prajñā), “skillful means” (S. upāya), “vow” (S. praṇidhāna), “powers” (S. bala), and “knowledge” (S. jñāna). 55  These ideas are taken from Chandrakīrti’s Madhyamakāvatāra (The Entry into the Middle Way).

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attaining Buddhahood, without actual attainment. Non-retrogression only means the attainment of the promise or guarantee of attainment. This Mahāyāna teaching was of great interest to Japanese founders throughout the medieval centuries because of the deep concern for guaranteeing Buddhahood during a period when many were concerned with the deterioration of the Dharma in the age of mappō. Shinran, for example, the thirteenth-century founder of the Jōdo Shinshū sect, also promised the attainment of non-retrogression through true entrusting (J. shinjin 信 心) in Amida Buddha’s primal vow, achieved through the utter relinquishment of self-power (J. jiriki 自力) (Forte 2009: 160). By identifying the attainment of non-retrogression with the completion of the 12 year training on Mount Hiei, Saichō’s Tendai system provided the Japanese people with a guarantee of Buddhahood.56 According to Saichō’s ultimate view of the precepts, taking the Hinayāna precepts first would impede the attainment of non-­ retrogression by defiling a monk’s practice with the lesser vehicles of the śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha. However, once the necessary training was completed, the Hinayāna precepts could be given to these advanced trainees without the danger of backsliding.57 Moreover, there were a number of additional benefits in holding this view of the precepts, a view that was exclusive to the newly formed Tendai sect. Identification with the Mahāyāna precepts harmonized the three primary categories of traditional Buddhist training – precepts, meditation, and wisdom – with Saichō’s claim of the perfect teaching. The Mahāyāna precepts were the perfect precepts, Zhiyi’s Mohezhiguan provided the system of perfect meditation, and the Lotus Sūtra was the canonical source of perfect wisdom (Groner 2000: 193). Secondly, the Mahāyāna precepts were traditionally identified with laypersons and the vinaya with monastic practice. However, in making the Mahāyāna precepts the official precepts of Tendai ordination, the gap between laypersons and monks was diminished. Laypersons did not even need to turn towards the authority of the monastic institutions to receive these precepts but could independently receive them from one another.58 Third, Saichō claimed that the monastic practice of the Mahāyāna precepts would have a unique and profound power in protecting the nation, thus providing a highly valued benefit to the emperor and court elites (Groner 2000: 176).  According to SHIRATO Waka, Saichō’s insistence on the exclusive practice of the bodhisattva precepts indicated his own recognition of original enlightenment, thus identifying the founder of the Tendai school with a later development in Tendai philosophy. His rationale for this position is that the exclusive practice of the bodhisattva precepts recognizes the Buddha-nature of the practitioner. “This nature is what assures fulfillment of the purpose of keeping the precepts, namely the attainment of enlightenment or Buddhahood. This is practically the same as interpreting the precepts in terms of inherent enlightenment (hongaku)…” (Shirato 1987: 123). 57  Even in this case, Saichō only saw the Hinayāna precepts as provisional and were mainly administered in order to resolve possible disputes with other schools concerning orthodox monastic discipline and seniority (Groner 2000: 193). 58  Saichō went as so far as to argue that the Office of Monastic Affairs (J. sōgō 僧綱), which had functioned as an institutional governing body for all Japanese ordinations since the seventh century, should be abolished in favor of lay administrators (Groner 2000: 177). 56

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6  Confrontation and Defenses Although Saichō may have found fault with the political corruption of the Nara schools in general, he focused mainly on doctrinal differences, citing the superiority of sūtras over commentaries. This was directed primarily at the Sanron (C. Sanlun) and Hossō (C. Faxiang) schools, both highly powerful institutions in Japanese state Buddhism but based in works from the Indian philosophers Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu, rather than the direct teachings of the Buddha. In contrast, the Kegon school claimed its origins in the Avataṃsakasūtra or Flower Garland Sūtra (C. Huayanjing, J. Kegongyō 華厳經) and would be included, according to Saichō, within the corpus of authoritative literature. However, still recognizing the superior authority of the Lotus Sūtra, Saichō further divided schools of thought between those based on the Lotus and those based on other sūtras (Stone 1999: 15). For example, he argued that only the Tendai system based in the teachings of the Lotus Sūtra offered a swift and direct path to enlightenment, a path most suitable for his Japanese contemporaries for achieving liberation, even in a single lifetime. Although the assertion “buddhahood in this very body” (J. sokushin jōbutsu 即身成 仏) is commonly associated almost exclusively with Kūkai and his Shingon school, Saichō makes the same claim for Tendai Buddhism and wrote extensively on the idea in his Hokke shūku 法華秀句, or Excellent Words of the Lotus (Groner 1989: 55). Saichō found no efficacy in Hīnayāna Buddhism, and argued that it would take eons for final attainment if one followed other Mahāyāna systems like Hossō and Kegon Buddhism. The main difference he found between these two paths was that enlightenment achieved through Hossō practice would be a gradual process taking place over eons of time, while the Kegon path would lead to a sudden enlightenment,59 but like Hossō, would nonetheless take eons of practice before sudden realization occurred (Groner 2000: 188–189). Although ninth-century Hossō scholars would not concede that the Tendai system could lead to enlightenment in a short period of time, they did recognize that according to their own system, the achievement of final enlightenment would take an extraordinary amount of time, gradually developing over innumerable lifetimes of practice. The Indian system of thought, from which the Hossō school was derived, was founded in fourth-century India, mainly through the work of the Indian philosopher Vasubandhu.60 Known as both the Yogācāra (Yoga Practice), and the Cittamātra (Consciousness Only) school, the system was primarily concerned with how the phenomenal world is experienced in consciousness, and how yoga practice  Claims of sudden enlightenment are found in Zhiyi’s primary work on Tiantai practice, the Mohezhiguan. Claims of sudden enlightenment are also found in section nine of Fazang’s Huayan work written for empress Wu, The Treatise of the Golden Lion (C. Jinshizizhang 金獅子章) (Chan 1963: 413). 60  Traditionally, the works of the school originate not only from Vasubandhu, but also from his brother Asaṅga, including five treatises, which were said to have been received from the future Buddha, Maitreya. 59

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leads to alterations in consciousness that could be equated with liberation. The main reason for the assertion of a necessitated prolongation of practice is that the karmic conditioning of consciousness is explained in the activity of “karmic seeds” (S. bīja, J. shushi 種子) accumulated over vast numbers of lifetimes, and contained in a “storehouse consciousness” (S. ālayavijñāna, J. arayashiki 阿梨耶識). The karmic seeds condition or “perfume” the way the storehouse consciousness perceives phenomena, resulting in delusional subject-object distinctions and leading to a complex array of ultimately dissatisfying attachments and frustrations in relation to an externalized world. The practice of yoga is essentially a prolonged process of purifying the mind through the elimination of the seeds. By necessity, it is a gradual process and cannot be achieved either quickly or suddenly. These dissimilarities between the Tendai and Hossō positions on the temporal accessibility of liberation led to heated debates between the two schools concerning the personal potential for attainment. According to Indian Yogacara diacritics, there were certain human beings categorized as icchantika (J. issendai 一闡提), who were incapable of ever raising the “mind of enlightenment” (S. bodhicitta, J. bodaishin 菩提心). The icchantika (“unbeliever”) was identified as those whose karmic conditioning had rendered them completely severed from the “wholesome roots” (S. kuśala mūla) of consciousness. This position primarily contradicted Buddha-nature doctrine by claiming an opposing essentialism of the unenlightened.61 Saichō was particularly averse to arguments rejecting the universal Buddha-­ nature and the inclusive potential for enlightenment. Claiming that the Japanese people as a whole possessed perfect faculties and were uniquely prepared to receive the perfect teachings of Tiantai Buddhism, his promotion of the new Tendai sect caught the attention of his Hossō contemporaries. In 817, Saichō’s claims sparked a critical response from Toku’itsu 徳一, a representative of the Hossō School. Their primary disagreements were centered on the possibilities of enlightenment and the textual bases for these possibilities. Toku’itsu argued that individual capacities limit the extent of one’s attainments and exclude certain persons from reaching Buddhahood. His interpretation of the three vehicles as presented in the Lotus Sūtra was not that they were to be subsumed within a single vehicle teaching, but that the Buddha had always recognized varying human faculties for enlightenment and presented different teachings in response to those varying faculties. The one vehicle teaching of the Lotus Sūtra was simply another expedient teaching of the Buddha to encourage the bodhisattva vehicle for those who were capable of entering any of the three vehicles (Groner 2000: 105). Secondly, the Hossō school recognized two categories of the Buddha-nature: the universal and static ribusshō 理佛性, possessed by all persons, and the Buddha-­ nature of practice, or gyōbusshō 行佛性, possessed by only a limited number of  In Japan, the icchantika doctrine has been used to support the discrimination of the Burakumin 部落民 community, persons associated with unclean professions, mainly related to the dead. These kinds of essentialist arguments in East Asian Buddhism have come under recent attack in Japan, mainly by the founders of the Critical Buddhism  (J. hihan bukkyō 批判仏教) movement, HAKAMAYA Noriaki 袴谷憲昭 and MATSUMOTO Shirō 松本史朗.

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people as untainted seeds. Only those who possessed untainted seeds had any ­potential for the attainment of Buddhahood. Because the ribusshō is static, it does not participate in the phenomenal world and so has nothing to do with actualized attainment. Only the gyōbusshō is recognized as potential. Further categorizations of untainted seeds supported notions of practitioners only destined for the attainments of the arhat and pratyekabuddha (Groner 2000: 97–98). These divisions reflect the divisions in East Asian thought discussed earlier between the absolute and the phenomenal world, resulting in clear distinctions and limited interplay between the two. Both Zhiyi and Saichō took unique positions in the East Asian world, which led to a greater universalism of enlightenment potential. Of course, monastic practitioners were seen as advanced in comparison to laypersons even in the Tendai sect, but the philosophical support for greater inclusion is nevertheless available in the abstract and so can therefore be applied in the concrete world. As a result of these challenges coming from Hossō thought, Saichō spent the remaining years of his life engrossed in a series of polemical debates with Toku’itsu, defending his interpretation of the Lotus Sūtra to the end. These confrontations allowed Saichō to develop his thought to a much greater extent than he had ever done before. The majority of his works were written between 817 and his death in 822, producing several pieces responding to, and attacking, Toku’itsu. This period of confrontation seemed to give him greater resolve, as he formulated his radical break from traditional precept ordinations at this time as well. However, it also took a great toll on his physical health, ultimately leading to his death at the age of 56, while still in the midst of defending his Tendai school. Although he never lived to witness all the results of his labors, important innovations like the Mahāyāna precept ordinations were approved soon after his death. Forty-four years later, Saichō was recognized for his important contributions to Japanese Buddhism by Emperor Seiwa 清和 and was granted the posthumous title of Dengyō Daishi 伝教大師  – “Great Master Who Transmitted the Teachings” (D. Matsunaga and A. Matsunaga 1974: 149). The influence of Saichō’s Tendai sect on the flowering of Japanese Buddhism continued well beyond his death, giving birth to a number of new sects in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as monks schooled in Tendai formed their own independent schools, including Eisai 栄西 (Rinzai Zen), Dōgen 道元 (Sōtō Zen), Hōnen 法然 (Jōdo Shū), Shinran 親鸞 (Jōdo Shinshū), and Nichiren 日蓮 (Nichiren Shū).

Works Cited Borgen, Robert. 1982. The Japanese Mission to China, 801–806. Monumenta Nipponica 37 (1): 1–28. Chan, Wing-tsit, trans. 1963. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Donner, Neal. 1987. Chih-i’s Meditation on Evil. In Buddhist and Taoist Practice in Medieval Chinese Society, ed. David W. Chappell, 49–64. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

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Donner, Neal, and Daniel B. Stevenson. 1993. The Great Calming and Contemplation: A Study and Annotated Translation of the First Chapter of Chih-i’s Mo-ho chih-kuan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Faure, Bernard. 1996. Visions of Power: Imagining Medieval Japanese Buddhism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Forte, Victor. 2009. Reflections on the Ethical Meaning of Shinran’s True Entrusting. In Buddhist Roles in Peacemaking: How Buddhism Can Contribute to Sustainable Peace, ed. Chanju Mun and Ronald S. Green. Honolulu: Blue Pine Press. Garfield, Jay L. 1995. The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. New York: Oxford University Press. Groner, Paul. 1987. Annen, Tankei, Henjō, and Monastic Discipline in the Tendai School: The Background of the Futsū jubosatsukai kōshaku. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 14 (2–3): 129–159. ———. 1989. The Lotus Sutra and Saichō’s Interpretation of the Realization of Buddhahood with This Very Body. In The Lotus Sutra in Japanese Culture, ed. George J. Tanabe Jr. and Willa Jane Tanabe, 53–68. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ———. 1995. A Medieval Japanese Reading of the Mo-ho chih-kuan: Placing the Kankō ruijū in Historical Context. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 22 (1–2): 49–81. ———. 2000. Saichō: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Hakeda, Yoshito S. 1972. Kūkai: Major Works. New York: Columbia University Press. ———, trans. 1967. The Awakening of Faith: Attributed to Aśvaghosha. New  York: Columbia University Press. Hazama, Jikō. 1987. The Characteristics of Japanese Tendai. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 14 (2–3): 101–112. Huntington, C.W., Jr., and Geshé Namgyal Wangchen. 1989. The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian Mādhyamika. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Lai, Whalen. 1987. Why the Lotus Sūtra? On the Historic Significance of Tendai. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 14 (2–3): 83–99. Lee, Kenneth Doo Young. 2007. The Prince and the Monk: Shōtoku Worship in Shinran’s Buddhism. Albany: State University of New York Press. Liu, Ming-Wood. 1988. Lotus Sūtra and Garland Sūtra According to the T’ien-t’ai and Hua-yen Schools in Chinese Buddhism. T’oung Pao 74 (1–3): 47–80. Matsunaga, Daigan, and Alicia Matsunaga. 1974. Foundation of Japanese Buddhism. Vol. 1. Los Angeles: Buddhist Books International. Shirato, Waka. 1987. Inherent Enlightenment (‘Hongaku shisō’) and Saichō’s Acceptance of the Bodhisattva Precepts. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 14 (2–3): 113–127. Stone, Jacqueline I. 1999. Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Swanson, Paul L. 1989. Foundations of T’ien-t’ai Philosophy: The Flowering of the Two Truths Theory in Chinese Buddhism. Fremont: Asian Humanities Press. ———. 1993. ‘Zen Is Not Buddhism’ Recent Japanese Critiques of Buddha-Nature. Numen 40 (2): 115–149. ———. 2002. Ch’an and Chih-kuan: T’ien-t’ai Chih-i’s View of ‘Zen’ and the Practice of the Lotus Sutra. Presented at the International Lotus Sutra Conference, July 11–16. Tanabe, Willa Jane. 1984. The Lotus Lectures: Hokke Hakkō in the Heian Period. Monumenta Nipponica 39 (4): 393–407. The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya. 1995. Trans. Maurice Walshe. Boston: Wisdom Publications. The Threefold Lotus Sutra. 1975. Trans. Bunnō Katō, Yoshirō Tamura, and Kōjirō Miyasaka. Tokyo: Kosei Publishing Co.

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Victor Forte MS.  PhD., is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of Asian Studies at Albright College in Reading, PA, U.S. His main research interests are in Buddhist ethics, comparative philosophy, and interreligious dialogue, and he has published articles in these fields, including, “Early Buddhist Inclusion of Intentionality in the Laws of Causation,” “Reflections on the Ethical Meaning of Shinran’s True Entrusting,” a co-authored translation of Ueda Shizutera’s “Seimei, Sei, and Inochi”, and “Making Metta: The Poesis of Wholesome States Among Homeleavers in Pāli Buddhism.” His most recent published article is a response to contemporary Buddhist nationalistic activities, titled “Buddhist Nationalism and Marginalizing Rhetoric in a Dependently Originated World.”

Chapter 12

Kūkai’s Shingon Philosophy: Embodiment David L. Gardiner

Kūkai 空海 (774–835), posthumous title, Kōbō Daishi 弘法大師, is remembered for many things in addition to being the founder of the Japanese Shingon 真言 school of Buddhism. He was not only an important early Buddhist master but became a cultural hero par excellence. A renowned calligrapher, ritual specialist, author of dictionaries, specialist in Chinese poetry and even a civil engineer, Kūkai’s accomplishments were wide ranging. Perhaps more than any of the other “great men” in Japanese Buddhist history, Kūkai is revered by persons belonging to all Buddhist sects as a kind of trans-sectarian holy person. Pilgrimages to his mausoleum on Mount Kōya have been a regular feature of the national landscape for over a millennium, and the graveyard surrounding it is one of the largest in Japan, so sacred has this ground become. The extent to which this fame is fully deserved, or, instead, deftly manufactured after his death, remains hard to say with certainty. Yet his great mastery of multiple skills and his huge impact on the culture of his day, as well as of subsequent generations, cannot be denied. In the popular eye, Kūkai’s philosophical efforts are not commonly highlighted. Even among scholars of Buddhist history, his contributions to Japanese thought are sometimes said to lie more in his systematization of ideas than in his originality. While it is certainly true that he was a systematizer, I do not think the masterful synthetic vision he had for unifying various strains of Buddhist thought and practice was insignificant, nor do I think he had little originality in his ideas. In fact, it seems that aspects of his philosophical genius have often been neglected, perhaps due, in part, to a perception that his fame on other counts was exaggerated. Modern scholars within the Shingon tradition (often priests themselves) have produced abundant studies of Kūkai’s thought; yet these tend to contain little critical assessment since they often fall within the genre of sectarian theological works. The task of this essay D. L. Gardiner (*) Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_12

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is to present a fair-handed treatment of some of the central ideas in Kūkai’s more philosophical works. I hope that doing so will provide a foundation for viewing his contributions to Buddhist philosophy more objectively and even more generously than has commonly been done outside sectarian circles.

1  Esoteric and Exoteric Buddhism If there is one trademark doctrine in Kūkai’s writings, it is his distinction between two types of Buddhist teaching (and by extension, practice), the “esoteric” (J. mikkyō 密教) and the “exoteric” (J. kengyō 顕教) one. His articulation of this difference follows in various ways a model established centuries prior in Chinese Buddhism. This model is called “doctrinal classification” (C. pan jiao 判教) and reflects a particular Chinese method of discerning hierarchies of significance among the various teachings, and at times the sūtras, of the historical Buddha in India. It is certain that Kūkai was well-read in the major philosophical works of the Chinese Tiantai and Huayan (as well as the Faxiang and Sanlun) schools, and the doctrinal classifications in them likely influenced his own creation. However, whatever the impact, it was more implicit than explicit and did not affect the key terms of Kūkai’s classification because the esoteric-exoteric distinction he makes is nowhere to be found in the writings of the four major Mahāyāna traditions in China (Gardiner 1994). After learning about Buddhist texts and meditations as a young man in the Japanese capital city of (and rural mountain retreats near) Nara, Kūkai dropped out of the prestigious government university to study Buddhism more intensively. He eventually got a position as a member of a court-sponsored mission by boat to the capital of Tang dynasty China, Chang’an. How he obtained this position we are not certain, but his profound mastery of written Chinese was likely a reason. While there, it seems he took a detour from his assignment to become a general student of advanced Chinese culture and mainly devoted himself wholeheartedly to the study of Zhenyan Buddhism under master Huiguo 慧果 (746–805) at the Qinglong monastery near the capital. “Zhenyan” means “true word” and is the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit “mantra” (with the same words pronounced “Shingon” in Japanese). It is likely Huiguo who taught Kūkai that this particular tradition of Buddhist practice was “esoteric” and was, thus, different from what the other schools of Buddhism transmitted. Kūkai had trained under Huiguo for about a year when the teacher died, but not before he apparently passed several special teachings to Kūkai alone (he had other Chinese disciples) and urged him to return to his homeland to spread them with vigor. The later Shingon tradition considers Huiguo to be the eighth patriarch of Zhenyan and Kūkai to be his successor. The teachings Kūkai received from Huiguo centered in many ways on the recitation of mantra (Abe 2000).  Not only were mantras understood to have multiple layers of interpretation not comprehensible to the uninitiated, but they were also employed as part of a meditative practice that included specific hand gestures (S. mudrā) and visualizations (S. maṇḍala). These practices together comprise the

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“three intimacies” (J. sanmitsu 三密) of Shingon practice that represent its comprehensive integration of body, speech, and mind into a unified, as well as highly ritualized, and symbolic contemplative regime. A key reason why these practices are called esoteric is that the proper understanding and enactment of them is believed to require personal instruction from a teacher of the sort that cannot be gained from a written text. They are also esoteric because accumulated practice can lead one to insights into deep truths (akin to intimate secrets) about the fundamentally integrated nature of all physical and mental phenomena throughout the universe.

2  Teaching of the Dharmakāya Central among the core truths one is said to be able to witness via Shingon ritual practice is that the entire universe – all physical and mental processes, small and large, visible and invisible, of our known world  – is none other than the body, speech, and mind of the cosmic Buddha Mahāvairocana (J. Dainichi 大日) (Kasulis 1988, 1995). This quasi-theistic (or pantheistic) view of “reality” is shared by other Buddhist Tantric or Vajrayāna traditions. It is common, for example, in Tibetan Buddhist teachings to emphasize that in visualization practice one ought to hold what is called “divine pride” in the purely enlightened nature of the Buddha body one envisions oneself to be, and that, after meditation, one should continue to hold this pride so closely that one experiences not only one’s own body, speech, and mind as that of a Buddha but even sees all physical reality as being a Buddha’s body, all sound as a Buddha’s speech, and all thought processes as a Buddha’s mind. Kūkai’s ideas were very similar and drew much from early Vajrayāna texts from India, such as the Mahāvairocana-sūtra. However, not all other Buddhists (even Vajrayānists) would agree with Kūkai’s understanding of the dharmakāya. The mainstream Mahāyāna view of the “bodies” of an enlightened being took the dharmakāya or “truth/reality body” to be beyond form and, thus, without voice. It is understood to be that dimension of an awakened one that directly realizes or cognizes Emptiness, Ultimate Reality itself, and this realization cannot be put into words. While the nirmaṇakāya (“transformation body”) of a Buddha is the flesh and blood embodiment that guides living beings here on earth (as did Śākyamuni Buddha), and the sambhōgakāya (“enjoyment body”) of a Buddha is his presence in the more subtle dimensions of visionary experience of accomplished practitioners (Amitābha in the Pure Land Sukhāvatī is an example), the dharmakāya has traditionally been understood to be unlike either of these two “form bodies” precisely because it is formless and speechless and also because it is shared by all Buddhas alike; it has no individuality. Thus, Kūkai’s assertion that this body has a name, and that the “dharma body teaches the dharma” (J. hosshin seppō 法身説法), was thought by many to contradict a key Mahāyāna doctrine. He knew very well that his idea was controversial, and he devoted c­ arefully crafted texts to demonstrate the reasonableness of his claim. As I shall discuss in the

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concluding section of the essay, Kūkai had some philosophical bones to pick with what he saw as a tendency of Buddhist thinkers to hypostatize Ultimate Reality, as if it was some “thing” that exists entirely separate from our conventional experience (Gardiner 1994). He countered what he saw as this dualistic view with an expressly non-dualistic vision of the vast field of interdependent reality, when fully grasped in one’s body, speech, and mind, to be none other than the dharmakāya. He simply gave it a name and noted that everything everywhere comes from the reality of interdependence, such that to understand form and sound to be entirely apart from Ultimate Reality is to be confused. Thus arose his declaration that the dharmakāya “teaches” all the time, and that one can encounter this teaching directly and intimately through the practices of Shingon. Kūkai emphasized that the “three intimacies” practice was the method for realizing that one’s body and speech and mind do not merely “belong” to the person but are integrally and intimately involved in processes that extend beyond one’s self in both space and time (Kasulis 2008). In important ways this philosophy derives from the fundamental Buddhist teaching of interdependence and not-self. When one deepens in this practice, as Kūkai put it, “self enters Buddha and Buddha enters self.” This sort of expression can sound theistic, as if Buddha here is a kind of Godhead, and it might even be appropriate to call this mutual-entering a mystical experience of cosmic union with something divine. Vajrayāna traditions typically use this sort of language more so than most other Buddhist schools. They tend to “get around” the matter of sounding theistic, in the sense of positing a substantive entity as a ground of being, by noting that they are not referring to a creator and are, in fact, using the term “Buddha” as a skillful means (S. upāya), an expedient teaching to direct people to ways of deepening awareness of selflessness. According to our earliest Buddhist sources in the Pali Canon, the Buddha himself did not refrain from using words to express that which is realized in deep practice, though he used more negational terms such as “the deathless” and “the unconditioned.” Yet these absences (“un-,” “-less”) are still phenomenologically something, since discovering them engenders transformation. If they were not, there would be no aim to the practice. This question of whether the Ultimate Reality of which Buddhists speak and write is “substantive” or not has been a delicate and, at times, difficult one throughout the tradition. Suffice it to say that the Vajrayāna schools lean more than most others (with the exception of Pure Land schools) toward employing terms for the highest or deepest reality that sound positively substantive (as opposed to merely negational). While Kūkai’s theory did not likely impact traditions outside of Japan, it is interesting to note that his articulated vision of Shingon practice as entailing a kind of union (of body, speech, and mind via the practice of mudrā, mantra, and maṇḍala) with the Buddha Mahāvairocana may well have been the first detailed, systematic account of the theory and practice of Vajrayāna Buddhism in history. This model became the foundation for much of monastic Buddhist practice in Japan for many centuries, particularly through the way it was absorbed into the Tendai school’s programs of practice.

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3  Ten Abodes of Mind In his presentation of the differences between esoteric and exoteric Buddhism, Kūkai highlighted two models. Later tradition dubbed these the “vertical” and “horizontal” perspectives. I described the latter briefly above. It divides all Buddhist teachings into two categories: those preached by a “form” body Buddha and those preached by the “truth” body Buddha Mahāvairocana. While both the vertical and horizontal approaches are classificatory and thus hierarchical, the “vertical” has more than two divisions – ten in all – thus depicting a ladder of successive stages of spiritual awakening ranging from, at the lower end, an animalistic human consciousness concerned only with sensual needs to the completely awakened and compassionate enlightenment of a Buddha. Abodes two and three represent religio-­ ethical orientations (loosely equated with Confucianism and Daoism) to improving the quality of one’s life through a variety of worldviews and practices. Abodes four through nine are aligned with a variety of Buddhist perspectives, with six through nine indicating Mahāyāna schools of thought well represented in Japan at Kūkai’s time (roughly speaking, transplanted versions of the Indian Mādhyamaka and Yogacāra schools, and the Chinese Tiantai and Huayan). The tenth abode is that of Shingon, which Kūkai depicts as offering practices with the unique capacity for fully revealing the wondrous fruits of Buddhahood in one lifetime. Interestingly, however, Kūkai asserts that all nine of the abodes that encompass spiritual teachings (in the first abode these are absent) are skillful manifestations of the compassionate guidance of the Buddha Mahāvairocana, who wisely offers beings opportunities to gradually open their minds in stages through increasingly deep and subtle philosophical perspectives. It is a vast model that manages to include, implicitly, every possible type of religious or spiritual philosophy in its compass. It is, thus, at once exclusive and inclusive. While its critics in Japan pointed to the problems of placing Shingon teachings “at the top,” Kūkai preferred to emphasize the way in which all religious teachings form a grand maṇḍala of spiritual sustenance, each stage of which possesses potential for deep realization. In fact the full title of Kūkai’s best-­ known text that discusses this vision is The Ten Abodes of Mind of the Secret Maṇḍala (J. Himitsu maṇḍala jūjūshin ron 秘密曼荼羅十住心論). The remainder of this essay will focus on the “horizontal” model. As we shall see, it also incorporates notions of maṇḍala.

4  Maṇḍala Vision Kūkai’s theory of the teaching of the dharmakāya is directly linked to his understanding of maṇḍala as both a tool and as a goal of Shingon practice. The two chief iconographic maṇḍalas he introduced from China into Japanese Shingon practice were the “Womb World” (S. Garbhadhātu) and the “Diamond World” (S. Vajradhātu). As a painted scroll image, the Womb World maṇḍala depicted the

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world of forms and deities that represent the unfolding of compassionate activities of the enlightened mind. In terms of the core Mahāyāna Buddhist doctrine of the “Two Truths or Realities,” conventional and ultimate, this unfolding takes place within conventional reality and represents the skillful means of Buddhas working for the sake of awakening others. The Diamond World maṇḍala, on the other hand, depicts the deep wisdom of the enlightened mind, the unshakable awareness that Buddhas possess of the Ultimate Reality of all phenomena as being empty of intrinsic existence. In an East Asian twist on the core Mahāyāna doctrine of Two Truths, Kūkai refers to these maṇḍalas as representing, respectively, “principle” (J. ri 理) and “wisdom” (J. chi 智). It is central to Kūkai’s system of presenting them that they are understood to be conceptually distinct but ontologically inseparable (J. richi funi 理智不二): two and yet not two. It is also central to Kūkai’s understanding of Shingon that the goal of practicing with these maṇḍalas is to transform one’s mode of being in the world such that one no longer experiences individuality as an absolute fact but only as a relative description of one life as part of a whole network of being. When this renewed “envisioning” of the relation between self and world takes full root, when it has been completely embodied, one is said to live in the world that has become a maṇḍala, to experience the world as a Buddha does. This ripe and rich fruit of the practice is also called “adornment” (J. shōgon 荘嚴). This understanding can be expressed as a claim that upon achieving enlightenment one is adorned with the maṇḍala. Perhaps it is even more apropos to say that one realizes fully for the first time (one dis-­ covers) that the world always was a maṇḍala but that some cognitive and sensory dysfunction obstructed direct recognition of this wondrous fact (Gardiner 2008b).

5  The Maṇḍala of the Three Intimacies As mentioned earlier, the core instruments of Shingon practice that are said to catalyze this transformation are the “three intimacies” of mantra (recitation of condensed prayer-like utterances), mudrā (ritual hand gesture), and maṇḍala (envisioning self and world as described above) that correspond respectively to body, speech, and mind. These practices are “intimacies” (sometimes translated as “secrets”) because it is through them that one becomes formally able to explore the fullness of one’s deep connection to the Buddha Mahāvairocana and to the manner in which his body, speech, and mind are expressed/manifested in these very functions of one’s own (Kasulis 2008). While this paradigm of “self enters Buddha, Buddha enters self” indicates an interpenetration of ordinary and transcendent domains of experience on all three levels, there is also a way that mudrā, mantra, and maṇḍala are all expressions of a fundamentally somatic, or body-centered, model of transformation. In the case of maṇḍala, said to correspond to mind, the imaginative act of re-envisioning the world as being an extension of one’s own body, speech, and mind – of transplanting one’s ego-identity with that of an enlightened being whose existence embraces a

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cosmic scale – this ritual envisioning, is essentially an intention to embody a new realization. All three of the “intimacies” integrate the ordinary and the transcendent, the self and the Buddha, through channels that share a very physical aspect: mudrā is bodily gesture; mantra is vocal utterance, with an emphasis on vibrational quality; and maṇḍala takes the “total body” of the universe and one’s own body as co-­ extensive. Kūkai’s vision of Shingon practice stresses the theme of embodiment in multiple ways. This vision thus seems to possess a tension between themes of freedom and of embodiment. One is liberated from the grips of a narrow sense of self yet is freshly endowed, or adorned, with the adornments of fine compassion, wisdom and skillful means. The aim for freedom (the “glance upward”) gets fulfilled simultaneously with a renewed form of grounding, of engagement. There is ascent within descent and vice versa. It is as if liberation manifests most effectively, most joyously, through expansive, limitless, spontaneous engaging. Such an inclusive model of the aim of Buddhist practice is in many ways embedded in the classical Mahāyāna pairing of the Two Truths. Authors from various lineages expressed as much before Kūkai’s time. So why did Kūkai apparently feel a strong need to make these statements? It is hard to know for sure, but below I will suggest one hypothesis.

6  Embodying the Dharma: A Political Act Kūkai’s writings indicate a concern to rebut certain views about the aims of Buddhist practice. One such view is that realizing the dharmakāya entails separating from this world in a very dualistic sense. He seems to have felt that some Buddhists in his day were viewing Ultimate Reality (and its embodiment in the dharmakāya) as “entirely other” in a way that made it appear to be a realm of existence physically removed from our own. In such a dualistic framework, striving for liberation would mean aiming to “go from here to there.” Kūkai portrayed such an orientation to practice as being erroneous from the classical standpoint of the Two Truths doctrine, and he labeled this mistaken view as one that views Ultimate Reality as “absolutely separate” (J. zetsu ri 絶離) (Gardiner 1994, 2008a). The later Mādhyamaka tradition of Tibet takes the position that the two truths are only conceptually distinct and that ontologically they are identical. Kūkai’s position seems the same. According to this understanding, if Ultimate Reality is ontologically identical to Conventional Reality, then the embodiment of Ultimate Reality – which is what dharmakāya means and is – cannot rightly be conceived as a realm “cut off” from this world of ours. The theme of embodiment runs like a vein of silver richly throughout Kūkai’s body of writings. In one of his most famous texts, The Realization of Buddhahood with This Very Body (J. Sokushin jōbutsu gi 即身成仏義), the phrase “this very body” (J. sokushin 即身) denotes both meanings of “in this lifetime” and “in this corporeal form,” meanings that can be interchangeable. However, in Kūkai’s exegesis of the phrases, it is clear that the interpretation of “sokushin” as “in this corporeal form” also suggests something different from the “in this lifetime” interpretation.

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This other meaning focuses on “this body” in terms of its vast interconnectedness (he notes how we share our body’s composite elements with all material phenomena), as being one node in the cosmic body of Mahāvairocana. This somatic interpretation is enhanced by knowing that while the phrase “sokushin” can mean “this body or life,” the word “soku” can also be a verb that means “to attend to” or “with reference to.” In this case, the phrase “sokushin jōbutsu” 即身成仏 can be rendered, “by attending to (paying attention to or focusing on) this body, one becomes a Buddha.” In Kūkai’s famous text of this name, which is a detailed exegesis of the meaning of the four Chinese graphs in the title, he in fact spends a much larger portion of his exposition on the first two terms “this body” than on the latter two, “attaining Buddhahood.” It is as if his text is exemplifying that once this body is fully explored in all its depths and dimensions, the glories of Buddhahood will have become so presently apparent that the path to attainment needs not much elaboration. Kūkai’s non-dualistic approach, which emphasizes the links between the Dharmakāya and the other Buddha bodies more so than the gaps, embodies a spiritual philosophy that is clearly more concerned with immanence than with transcendence. In a passage from The Realization of Buddhahood with This Very Body, Kūkai expresses a view of immanence with a striking natural image. Referring to a concept of profound connection and empowerment, called kaji 加持, that derives from envisioning one’s body, speech, and mind as united in “three intimacy” practice with the Buddha, he offers a metaphor for understanding the two words “ka” and “ji”: “Ka means adding and ji means holding. It is as if the sun of the Buddha’s compassion shines down on the faith-water of the heart of the practitioner, and the practitioner’s faith-water holds its reflection” (Gardiner 2011; Hakeda 1972: 232). This is at once a beautiful image of interpenetration of the transcendent and the ordinary and a poignant portrait of glowing being: the reflection of sun in the water as a metaphor for a spiritual realization that brings the transcendent down to earth, or, in this case, to water. According to this vision, there does not exist a “more perfect world” apart from our world here and now. Our greatest efforts need to attend to this very world that is apparent to our senses. This is necessary both to try to realize its inherent vastness and perfection and to work with the apparently imperfect conditions of our fellow living beings around us to help them out. It is not necessary here to elaborate on Kūkai’s political philosophy that is related to his extensive socio-political engagements. Suffice it to say that his vision of the spiritual and religious dimensions of his life was very consonant with that of the more political. It could be described as a vision of a seamless and integrated whole. Such a view that sees as compatible the spiritual philosophy of a religious path and political engagement with community poses a potential challenge to some forms of modern thought that find the union of these two seemingly incongruous human projects unpalatable. However, the questions remain: Of what value is a spiritual philosophy if it does not palpably impact for the better our life in this body, including our communal life? And of what value are philosophical commitments to political and social causes if they are empty of a driving spiritual concern? Kūkai’s philosophy aims to join what is separated. His

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life’s work succeeded in bringing esoteric Buddhist practice, based on the above theoretical framework, into all the major temples of the other Buddhist schools in Japan in a model that came to be known as the “combined practice of the six schools” (J. rokushū kenshū 六宗兼修). It might be ironic that a seemingly exclusivist claim to having access to the “higher” dispensation of the teaching of the dharmakāya would result in a model of practice that unified without converting. Yet irony may well be in the eye of the beholder. The other Buddhist schools maintained their individual character while adopting some aspects of the Shingon tradition. Core to Kūkai’s vision was the premise that it be embodied in a setting of harmonious communal practice. Score one for Shingon.

Works Cited Abe, Ryūichi. 2000. The Weaving of Mantra. New York: Columbia University Press. Gardiner, David. 1994. Kūkai and the Beginnings of Shingon Buddhism in Japan. Doctoral Dissertation. Stanford University. ———. 2008a. Transcendence and Immanence in Kūkai’s Thought. In Esoteric Buddhist Studies: Identity in Diversity. Proceedings of the International Conference on Esoteric Buddhist Studies, ed. Kōyasan Daigaku, 21–29. Kōyasan: Kōyasan University. ———. 2008b. Metaphor and Mandala in Shingon Buddhist Theology. Sophia: International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Metaphysical Theology and Ethics 47 (1): 43–55. ———, trans. 2011. Kūkai (774–835) [Selected Translations from Kūkai’s Benkenmitsu nikyōron, Sokushin jōbutsugi, Jūjūshinron and Shōji jissōgi]. In Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo, 51–74. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ———. 2015. Body. In The Buddhist World, ed. John Powers, 248–60. London: Routledge Press. ———. 2018. Tantric Buddhism in Japan: Shingon, Tendai and Esotericization of Japanese Buddhism. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. August 2018. DOI: 10.1093/ acrefore/9780199340378.013.619 Hakeda, Yoshito, trans. 1972. Kūkai: Major Works. New York: Columbia University Press. Kasulis, Thomas. 1988. Truth Words: The Basis of Kūkai’s Theory of Interpretation. In Buddhist Hermeneutics, ed. Donald J. Lopez, 257–272. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ———. 1995. Reality as Embodiment: Kūkai’s Sokushin jōbutsugi and Hosshin seppō. In Religious Conceptions of the Human Body, ed. Jane Marie Law, 166–185. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2008. Kūkai’s Philosophy of Intimacy: A Paradigm in Japanese Thought. In Esoteric Buddhist Studies: Identity in Diversity. Proceedings of the International Conference on Esoteric Buddhist Studies, ed. Kōyasan Daigaku, 123–132. Kōyasan: Kōyasan University. David L. Gardiner has taught in the Colorado College Religion Department since 1998. His specialities include Buddhist philosophy, the history of Buddhism in premodern Japan, Buddhist thought in the Nara and Heian periods in Japan, and the life and writings of Kūkai, the founder of the Shingon school of esoteric Buddhism. His PhD is from Stanford University. He spent several years studying at Kyoto University and Kōyasan University, and he has published multiple articles in particular on Kūkai and the early history of the Shingon school. Recent publications include “Body” and “Tantric Buddhism in Japan: Shingon, Tendai, and the Esotericization of Japanese Buddhisms.”

Chapter 13

Jōkei

James L. Ford

Jōkei 貞慶 (1155–1213), posthumously known as GEDATSU Shōnin 解脱上人, was a prominent scholar-monk of the Hossō 法相 school who lived during Japan’s momentous transition to a medieval society. Hossō (C. Faxiang) 法相 is the East Asian transmission of the Indian Yogācāra system of thought. Jōkei is perhaps best known for his critique of Hōnen’s 法然 (1133–1212) exclusive nenbutsu teachings, memorialized in a petition to the Court in 1205 C.E. to censure Hōnen and his followers. He is also noteworthy for promoting devotion to an eclectic array of divine beings ranging from various Buddhas and bodhisattvas to popular kami. This essay will focus on Jōkei’s doctrinal reform efforts for which he has only recently been recognized.

1  Jōkei’s Time Jōkei’s life spans one of the most tumultuous periods in Japanese history (Ford 2006: 13–18). The gradual rise of the samurai class during the latter century of the Heian era (794–1185) culminated in MINAMOTO Yoritomo’s 源 頼朝 (147–1199) military victory over the Taira clan and the establishment of Kamakura as the new seat of power. The imperial and aristocratic court in Kyoto, long the center of political power, was not totally displaced, but its power was severely curtailed. The court now participated in a shared polity with the shogun in Kamakura. This transition was anything but smooth. Indeed, the latter years of the Heian era were marked by political and militaristic strife detrimental to all segments of society. Many were convinced that the world had indeed entered the “final age of the Dharma” (J. mappō 末法). J. L. Ford (*) Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_13

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The powerful religious institutions were hardly divorced from these power struggles. Many, in fact, paid the consequences for strategic alliances they forged during the turmoil leading up to Minamoto’s victory. Most noteworthy was TAIRA no Shigehira’s 平重衡 complete destruction in 1180 of Kōfukuji and Tōdaiji, two of the most powerful and illustrious temple complexes in the old capital of Nara. It is difficult to overstate the eminent status of these institutions at that time in Japan’s history or the psychological impact of their destruction  – think of the Vatican in Rome or the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. Tōdaiji housed the great, 30m- tall bronze-cast image of Vairocana Buddha (J. Birushana 毘盧遮那仏) completed in 652, which was in many ways the ultimate symbol of Buddhist authority. Kōfukuji was the head temple of Jōkei’s Hossō school, arguably the most influential of the six original Nara sects since their establishment in the seventh century. To this political turmoil we should add the emergence of new movements within Buddhism (the Zen and Pure Land schools, in particular) that eventually imparted enormous influence on Japanese religiosity. While the claims of a great “Japanese Buddhist reformation” have been duly qualified by contemporary scholars, there is little question that these new movements exemplify the deep social and religious discontent among many within society at the time (Foard 1980; Payne 1998). All of this is to suggest, again, that Jōkei’s life spanned a critical turning point in Japan’s political, social, and religious history – and his doctrinal reform efforts must be seen in this context.

2  Jōkei’s Life Jōkei was born into the once-powerful Fujiwara clan (Ford 2006: 18–28). Like many of his brothers and uncles, he entered Buddhist monastic world at an early age and remained a cleric for the rest of his life. His training began at Kōfukuji, the prominent and Fujiwara-affiliated temple in Nara, where he studied Hossō doctrine. During his twenties, he appeared at most of the prestigious annual public lectures and, according to the diaries of prominent officials, performed admirably. To that point, it appeared that he was destined for bureaucratic success within the Kōfukuji hierarchy, most likely culminating, like his uncle Kakuken 覚憲 (1131–1212), in the office of superintendent. At the age of 37, however, Jōkei surprised many by leaving Kōfukuji to pursue the life of a “reclusive monk” (J. tonseisō 遁世僧). He moved to a remote mountain temple, Kasagidera, approximately 12 miles north of Nara where, for the next 15 years, he studied, wrote, and lead numerous solicitation campaigns for temple reconstructions and so forth. Jōkei was not a complete recluse during these years. Indeed, records indicate that he made numerous public appearances and maintained contacts with a number of prominent court officials, including emperors. These relationships were no doubt crucial to the many reconstruction projects he initiated or supported. Nevertheless, the departure from Kōfukuji relieved him of “official” status and the numerous institutional constraints and demands that it entailed. In 1208, after

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expanding Kasagidera considerably, Jōkei moved to Kaijusenji, another remote temple. There he lived the remaining 5 years of his life in which he was active in a precept “revival” campaign and wrote his most important treatises on Hossō doctrine. Approximately 50 of Jōkei’s works are extant, ranging from lengthy treatises on Hossō doctrine and precept revival appeals to popular ritual texts known as kōshiki 講式 (Buddhist ceremonials) and fundraising petitions. Among his doctrinal writings are commentaries on Yogācāra/Hossō foundational texts, introductions to “consciousness-­only” (J. yuishiki 唯識) doctrine, and expositions on Hossō contemplative practices. Here I shall focus on one text in particular, his Hossōshū shoshin ryakuyō 法相宗初心略要 (Introduction to the Essentials of the Hossō School) and its “addendum” (J. zokuhen 続編). Before shifting to Jōkei’s philosophy and reforms of Hossō doctrine, it will be necessary to review essential doctrines of the Yogācāra/Hossō doctrines.

3  Basic Hossō/Yogācāra Teachings The Japanese Hossō school traces its lineage to Yogācāra, the fourth to fifth century Indian Mahāyāna school that developed around the writings of Asaṅga (d. 370) and his half-brother Vasubandhu (fourth century). Their interpretations were, in turn, based largely on teachings found in early Mahāyāna sūtras such as the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra (Eliminating the Hidden Connections), the Laṅkāvatāra-­ sūtra (Sūtra on Entering Lanka) and Avataṃsaka-sūtra (Flower Ornament Sūtra). Also referred to as “vijñānavāda” (“way of consciousness”) or “vijñaptimātra” (“consciousness-only”), Yogācāra was, along with Mādhyamika, one of the two most influential Mahāyāna schools in India until the twelfth century, when Buddhism virtually disappeared from its land of origin. Transmitted several times to China in the seventh century, it eventually became known as the “Dharma-characteristics” (C. Faxiang; J. Hossō 法相) or the “Consciousness-only” (C. Weishi; J. Yuishiki 唯 識) school. The tradition was subsequently transmitted to Japan in the late seventh and eighth centuries (Fukihara 1989: 136–86). In each phase of transmission, early Yogācāra teachings were re-interpreted in sometimes novel ways by the Chinese and Japanese scholar-monks carrying the teachings forward. My reference to the school by its Indian (Yogācāra), Chinese (Faxiang) and Japanese (Hossō) titles is meant primarily to distinguish the respective locations. The Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra, the most basic Yogācāra text, claims to contain the third and final turning of the wheel of Dharma. In other words, it asserts that the historical Buddha taught in three progressive stages. The first “turning of the wheel,” the teaching of existence, encompasses the basic Four Noble Truths, dependent origination, and the doctrine of no-self. The second, labeled the teaching of emptiness (S. śūnyatā) and expounded in the Perfection of Wisdom (S. Prajñāpāramitā) literature, emphasized the essential emptiness of all dharmas. Finally, the “third turning of the wheel” embodies the ultimate, unsurpassed teaching of the Buddha. It is known as the true teaching of the middle way that conveys the reality of mind,

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that is, consciousness-only, and avoids the extremes of existence and emptiness. As we shall see, Jōkei made every effort to recover this Yogācāra claim to the “middle way.” (J. chūdō 中道). While not a complete refutation of the earlier teachings, this temporal classification of the Buddha’s teachings clearly depicts Yogācāra as the highest teaching, superseding earlier doctrine. So what is the essential content of those teachings? Basically, it embraces three interrelated doctrines that I shall label “three natures,” “eight modes of consciousness,” and “five classes of beings.”

4  The Three Natures Doctrine The essence of the Hossō teachings, as suggested by its alternative title of “consciousness-­only” (J. yuishiki), is that our knowledge and experience of objective reality is accessible only through mind or consciousness. Whatever we perceive is necessarily transformed by consciousness. It is perhaps the closest equivalent to an “idealist” Buddhist school of philosophy. It would be a mistake, however, to interpret this as a rejection of the actual existence of objective reality. The essential claim is epistemological, not ontological (Lusthaus 2002: 533). At any rate, careful analysis of the different modes of conscious experience, gleaned through contemplative practice and philosophical reflection, yields three natures of reality. Or put another way, every phenomenon of conscious experience has the potentiality of three natures (S. tri-svabhāva, J. sanshō 三性) identified as “imagined nature” (S. parikalpita-svabhāva, J. henge shoshūshō 遍計所執性), “dependent nature” (S. paratantra-svabhāva, J. etaki shō 依他起性), or “perfected nature” (S. pariniṣpanna-­ svabhāva, J. enjō jishō 円成実性). These categories are not ontologically distinct but epistemologically dependent on a practitioner’s level of understanding. Imagined nature is based on the illusion that the objects of consciousness are actually self-existing, independent phenomena. This philosophical position suggests that we essentially reify the conventional categories of language and concepts imposed on the world, assuming them to capture the objective truth of reality itself. Dependent nature refers to the substratum of existence that arises from causes and conditions. It is existence as seen from the perspective of “dependent origination” (S. pratītyasamutpāda). While perceiving the dependent nature of phenomena is a step beyond reifying received categories of perception, it nevertheless imputes a false distinction between subject and object. Finally, the perfected nature is reality as “suchness” (S. tathatā, J. Shinnyo 真如)  – existence as seen from a perfectly accomplished state and realized through rigorous yogic practice. It is the absence of dualistic appropriations relative to both subject and object. The soteriological goal of Yogācāra is to realize this perfected nature and cease clinging to imagined nature. The analogy often used to illustrate these three natures is that of a mirage of water. Imagined nature is the (deluded) perception that the water is real. Dependent nature is the mirage itself, and perfected nature is the emptiness of both the mirage and the observing subject. To perceive the perfected nature is to see the stream prior to any mental construction, even the distinction between self and perceived objects.

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5  The Eight Consciousness and Ālaya-Vijñana In its analysis of the different natures or modes of perception, Yogācāra introduced a new classification system of human consciousness. The early schools of Buddhism generally recognized six consciousnesses, each the byproduct of contact between a sense organ and a corresponding sense object. An ear encounters sound and produces auditory consciousness; an eye encounters shape or color and produces visual consciousness; and so forth. The mind is viewed as a sense organ that encounters mental concepts, producing mental consciousness. According to this schema, the sixth mode of consciousness synthesizes the experiential input from the five senses as well as mental objects into a conceptual framework that we encounter as experience. The Yogācārins expanded this model of consciousness rather dramatically. Perhaps owing to the cultivation of meditative states  – Yogācāra literally means “School of Yoga” – the early formulators of this tradition found this received understanding of consciousness wanting insofar as it did not make sense of altered states of consciousness such as deep sleep, unconscious mental activity, meditative states, and the transition between one life and the next. Instead of the standard six consciousnesses, Yogācārins identified “eight consciousnesses” (J. hasshiki 八識). The first six correspond basically to the schema above except that the sixth mode of consciousness is defined more narrowly. Together, these six consciousnesses constitute what we might call the active or conscious mind. The two additional ones are “manas-vijñāna” (J. mana shiki 末那識), generally rendered as “mind,” and “ālaya-­ vijñāna” (J. araya shiki 阿梨耶識) usually rendered “storehouse consciousness.” The storehouse consciousness, as the name implies, is the storehouse or reservoir of karmic seeds from current and past lives. Under suitable conditions, these seeds come to fruition and give rise to continued existence. It is perhaps analogous to the unconscious mind in Western psychological terms. The manas is an intermediary mode of consciousness that operates between the first six and the storehouse consciousness. Sometimes rendered as “thinking,” connoting its active nature, it is actually the source of delusion because it imputes reality upon the objects perceived through the first six modes and the “subject,” namely the storehouse consciousness. Here, the problematic subject/object dualism is imposed upon suchness or ultimate reality. In other words, manas constitutes attachment to a notion of self; thus, it is often labeled “tainted or defiled mind” (S. klişta-manas, J. zenmai 染汚意). To the novice, this system might seem overly elaborate and even artificial. It is important, however, to see how it attempts to address perennial problems in early Buddhist philosophy. In particular, it endeavors to reconcile the obvious tension between the doctrine of no-self and transmigration governed by the law of karma. If there is no self, what is reborn? And how is it that we experience continuity of identity over time? The answer is that the storehouse consciousness flows like a river beneath the active consciousness, providing the basis for continuity, character, and even memory to some extent. Even when the active consciousness ceases at death, the storehouse consciousness continues to flow. Not only does it provide a conceptual explanation for karma and rebirth, it also supports a soteriological framework for achieving cessation.

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The goal of moral and contemplative practice is, in effect, to gradually purify the storehouse consciousness of defiled karmic seeds that engender the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion. This is the bodhisattva’s path (Ford 2006: 45).

6  Five Classes of Beings Doctrine Finally, the “five classes of beings doctrine” (J. goshō kakubetsu 五性各別), though a somewhat later development in Yogācāra philosophy, merges the traditional “three vehicles” (S. tri-yāna, J. sanjō 三乗) classification of the Buddha’s teaching and the concept of the storehouse consciousness. The first two vehicles include the “voice-­ hearer vehicle” (S. śrāvaka-yāna, J. shōmon jō 聲聞乗) taught to the direct disciples of the Buddha and the vehicle of the pratyeka-buddha (J. engaku jō 縁覺乗), or intuitively realized “private buddha.” Both of these vehicles lead to final nirvāṇa. But this, according to Mahāyāna soteriology, is not the highest realization possible. For that one must pursue the “bodhisattva vehicle” (J. bosatsu jō 菩薩乗) that leads to actual buddhahood. In other words, within early Mahāyāna ways of thinking, there were three possible paths for a follower of the Buddha, but only one leads to the highest realization of a buddhahood. The question for early Yogācāra thinkers was this – why is it that followers of the Buddha seem inclined to one vehicle or another? For the answer, they turned to the storehouse consciousness. First of all, they conjectured that the storehouse contains both tainted and untainted karmic seeds. It is owing to the latter, unconditioned and originating from a beginningless past, that we inherit the karmic potential to realize enlightenment of one form or another. Moreover, the type of undefiled seeds you inherit accounts for your inclination toward one vehicle or another. From this, they reasoned that there must be five classes of beings distinguished as follows. Some possess seeds that correspond to one of the three vehicles noted above, yielding three of the five classes of beings. Just as an acorn, given the right conditions, will grow into an oak tree (but not a cedar), so one with the seed of a śrāvaka will realize the state of an arhat but not buddhahood. A fourth group includes beings with more than one of these three types of untainted seeds. Because it is uncertain which of these seeds will ultimately come to fruition, this group is classified as beings of “indeterminate nature” (J. fujō shō 不定性). Finally, the fifth and most controversial classification of beings, icchantikas (J. issendai一闡提), are those who lack any untainted seeds and are thus incapable of escaping saṃsāra. Essentially meaning “incorrigible” or alternatively translated as “one who has cut off good roots,” such beings can achieve improved rebirth in the human or heavenly realms, but they will never attain nirvāṇa or buddhahood no matter how hard they may strive. In China and, subsequently, Japan, this five classes system became thoroughly reified and was seemingly at odds with the orthodox Mahāyāna teaching that all beings possess “buddha-nature” (J. busshō 仏性, S. buddha-dhātu), the potential to realized buddhahood. It was also at odds with the Lotus of the Wondrous Dharma Sūtra’s (S. Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra) [hereafter abbreviated as “Lotus Sūtra”]

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one-vehicle doctrine, which, in its most popular interpretation, contended that the bodhisattva vehicle superseded or perhaps incorporated prior avenues. Those first two vehicles were dismissed as “skillful means” (S. upāya; J. hōben 方便) taught to induce ignorant beings onto the path. This tension between the traditional three-­ vehicles and the one-vehicle teaching of the Lotus Sūtra is part of the problematic that Jōkei inherits.

7  Jōkei’s Problematic: Identity Versus Difference One way of interpreting the divide between Hossō and other Mahāyāna schools, particularly as each evolved in Japan, is in their contrasting emphasis on difference and identity, respectively. In China there was considerable philosophical debate about the relationship between the phenomenal world of “10,000 things” (C. wanwu, J. manmotsu 萬物) or simply phenomena (C. shih, J. ji 事) and the underlying universal principle (C. li, J. ri 理). If the former is always in flux and the latter is eternal and unchanging, how do they relate? How is the eternal manifest in the changing, the One in the many? In a manner similar to its classification of consciousness and beings, the Faxiang school dwelled at length on different ways to classify the phenomenal “constituents of reality” (S. dharmas). The most widely accepted system, based on a text attributed to Vasubandhu and translated by Xuanzang 玄奘 (602–664), classified dharmas into 100 distinct categories including the eight consciousnesses, 51 mental dharmas, 11 form dharmas including the senses and their associated objects, and so forth (Lusthaus 2002: 542). Such exhaustive analysis was meant to underscore the conditioned, dependent, and ultimately empty nature of all dharmas. However, to opposing schools, this elaborate categorization appeared obsessive and, more problematically, seemed to presume the essential existence of dharmas. Thus, Fazang 法 藏 (643–712), the eminent Huayan patriarch, pejoratively branded the school “faxiang” (J. hossō), meaning “dharma characteristics” and, curiously, the name stuck. In contrast, Fazang labeled the more enlightened schools of thought faxing 法性 (J. hosshō), meaning “dharma nature,” because they focused more properly on the eternal and unchanging “nature” of the phenomenal world. It is analogous to claiming that we choose to dwell on God while others are attached to the corrupt material world. This dispute was not just about emphasis but rather about the underlying relationship between phenomena and principle. In contrast to the fundamentally conditioned nature of all dharmas, Faxiang scholars emphasized the unconditioned nature of the universal principle, that is, tathatā (“suchness”). If the phenomenal world is characterized in this way, Faxiang seemed to ask, and the universal principle is unconditioned, how can there be any relation between the two? Soteriologically speaking, how is a defiled and ignorant mind transformed into a buddha-mind? If the mind is originally pure, as suggested by tathāgatagarbha, “womb of the tathāgata,” (J. nyoraizō 如来藏) thought, how does it ever become impure? According to the Faxiang view, that which is conditioned and dependent in nature (that is, phenomena) cannot by definition interact with, or transform into, that which

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is unconditioned (suchness or principle). In short, spiritual progress is a gradual process of “weeding out” tainted seeds while nurturing necessary virtues (compassion, wisdom, discipline, concentration, and so forth) (Ford 2006: 45). The standard position of most Mahāyāna schools, based on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna (Da sheng qixin lun 大乘起信论), holds that the phenomenal world is produced from suchness by means of ignorance. From this perspective, the root of enlightenment is eternally present and can be transformed in an instant at any time. This text, which had an enormous influence on the development of Mahāyāna Buddhism in East Asia, inspired what has become known as “original enlightenment thought” (J. hongaku shisō 本覚思想), widespread in Japan by Jōkei’s time. It asserts that phenomena and principle, or truth, as well as the ignorant mind and the enlightened mind are inherently non-dual. In fact, ultimate liberation is grounded in this insight of unity (Stone 1999: 5–10). By contrast, Hossō argued, in dualistic fashion, that the distinctions between phenomena and suchness, and more specifically, between the tainted and untainted seeds within the storehouse consciousness, are real. If defiled seeds can transform into undefiled ones, then the opposite must also be true. This implies that an enlightened buddha is capable of backsliding into ignorance, an inconceivable possibility. In Japan, this philosophical divide played out in a well-known “debate” between Hossō scholar-monk Tokuitsu 徳一 (780–842) and Saichō 最澄 (766–822), transmitter of Tendai 天台 (C. Tientai) to Japan (Groner 1984: 91–104). Hossō’s classifications of dharmas, groups according to soteriological capacity, functions of mind, stages on the bodhisattva path, and so forth were all based on analytical differentiation. In contrast, Tendai and Shingon 真言 emphasized emptiness, mutual identity, and non-duality. Collapsing three vehicles into one, the non-duality of phenomena and the universal principle, and the universal realization of buddhahood were all views grounded in the Mahāyāna emphasis on “emptiness.” All dharmas, beings, and even distinctions of time are “identical” in their lack of any enduring essence. Because all things are “empty,” they merge into identity. This enlightened perspective of a buddha is reflected in the following passage authored by the notable Tendai scholar-monk Annen 安然 (841–?): All Buddhas are called the one Buddha; all times are called the one time; all places are called the one place; all teachings are called the one teaching…. The originally inherent, constantly abiding Buddha who is without beginning or end is called all Buddhas; the [always] equal time that is without beginning or end is referred to as all times; the palace of the dharma realm that is without center or periphery is called all places; and the teaching that pervades all vehicles and makes one’s mind realize Buddhahood is called all teachings. (Annen quoted in Sueki 1994: 79–80)

Annen unifies all distinctions (teachings, buddhas, places, and time) into one transcendent identity. This fundamental difference in emphasis  – that is, Annen’s emphasis on mutual identity versus Hossō’s emphasis on causal difference – distinguished Hossō from the dominant schools of Jōkei’s time.1 These opposing perspec1  I am characterizing a qualitative difference of emphasis here. Admittedly, all of the Mahāyāna schools emphasized the doctrine of non-duality (identity) and it appears throughout the Mahāyāna

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tives represent two distinct strategies for addressing the deluded tendency to impute a false reality onto the constituents of our experience. Now recognized as the first reformer of Hossō doctrine in Japan, Jōkei attempted to overcome this philosophical chasm by recovering and emphasizing the Yogācāra doctrine of the “middle way” (Yamazaki 1962, 1969, 1978).

8  Jōkei and the Middle Way For Jōkei, the middle way means that all corresponding dualities are “neither identical nor different” (J. fusoku furi 不即不離). For example, in the addendum to his “Introduction to the Essentials of the Hossō School,” Jōkei explains the distinction between the characteristics of dharmas and their underlying nature: The difference between the characteristics of dharmas (sō 相) and the nature of dharmas (shō 性) is that characteristics come into being and go out of being, while the nature of dharmas neither comes into being nor goes out of being. [At the same time] there is no fixed aspect of characteristics, nor is there a definite characteristic of nature, thus they both return to the one that is identical. What person of wisdom, then, insists only on identity or only on difference? In the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra, the Buddha himself acknowledges the shortcomings in both the view that all characteristics are identical and the view that all are distinct. He did not endorse either view. They are neither one nor different, neither identical nor distinct – this is the profound principle of the ultimate truth…. The true principle (shinri 真理) and its existing phenomenal characteristics are neither identical nor different…. Thus, in our school, the most profound understanding resides in this teaching of “neither identity nor difference” (fusoku furi 不即不離). (ND 63: 401b, 1–13)

In other words, Jōkei argues that, from one perspective, characteristics and nature are different, because one exists conditionally and the other does not; but from another perspective, they are identical in that neither possesses a fixed character (that is, they lack any enduring essence). Thus, both perspectives can be justified, but neither is absolutely true. This realization is the essence of the teaching of the “middle way.” Following this passage, Jōkei applies the same logic to all such dualities: self and other, mind and realm, cause and effect, and so forth. Through this emphasis on “neither identity nor difference,” commensurate with the Hossō understanding of the middle way, Jōkei endeavored to resolve the central doctrinal disputes with the other Mahāyāna schools, particularly Tendai. Just as the first two periods of Buddha’s teachings – existence and emptiness – were incomplete, any teaching that relies on only one of these perspectives is inadequate. Each perspective is valid as long as we realize its limitations, but we must eventually progress to the third-period teaching of consciousness-only. Here, again, it is important to remember Hossō’s unique emphasis on the psychological process of experience. By understanding that all dualities originate in consciousness as byproducts of the corpus. Even so, the Hossō emphasis tended to be on the various distinctions between dharmas, beings, and so forth while Tendai rhetoric in particular increasingly emphasized non-duality to an extreme as reflected in Annen’s quote above.

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causal process involving karmic seeds and perfuming afflictions, the tradition claims that we can eventually transcend the dualities of existence and emptiness as well as self and other. The perfected nature of reality is experienced when we overcome the trap of dualism. Until we have realized suchness in this way, however, dualistic distinctions serve an important soteriological function. They are the means by which we progress along the bodhisattva path, advancing to gradually higher levels of understanding and purified consciousness. As in China, the Hossō school was often accused of being “quasi-Mahāyāna” because of its unorthodox teachings (Ford 2006: 58). Jōkei actually defends the standard Hossō doctrinal positions in large portions of the Hossōshū shoshin ryakuyō, and most of his other doctrinal treatises replicate the standard Hossō analysis of consciousness, dharmas, and so forth as well. In the Zokuhen, Jōkei further argues that these provisional distinctions, from the perspective of existence (that is, the three natures), are indeed valid and useful. However, from the perspectives of emptiness, all dharmas, all people, lack any essential or enduring nature. In this sense, they are identical. In the end, Jōkei distances himself from the traditional Hossō positions through this emphasis on the “middle way,” which he equates with the position that favors “neither difference nor identity.”

9  Five Classes of Being, Three Vehicles, One Vehicle Jōkei also confronted the controversy surrounding Hossō’s five classes of beings doctrine, particularly the category of iccantikas. As we have noted, the five classes doctrine was in tension with the one vehicle teaching embraced by Tendai and the doctrine proclaiming the universality of buddha-nature embraced by all Mahāyāna schools. In his introduction to Hossō teachings, Jōkei initially defends the orthodox five class distinctions. Just as dharmas are distinguished by their characteristics, so, too, people can be differentiated according to their spiritual capacity. If people are not the same, he asks, how then can one vehicle be suitable for all? How can the statement that all beings will equally realize Buddhahood be reconciled with the fact that phenomena and characteristics originate dependently (J. engi 縁起) (ND 63: 410b, 10–11)? He goes on to support the five classes of beings doctrine with references from numerous sutras and commentaries. Finally, he contends that it is the Lotus Sūtra that is provisional to the absolute teaching of the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra (ND 63: 411a.). Despite this traditional defense of the three vehicles and five classes doctrine, in the end, Jōkei offers a creative escape clause for iccantikas. In response to an interlocutor who voices the fearful concern for those who may lack untainted seeds and thus were destined to reside forever within the six realms, Jōkei writes: The vow common to all Buddhas of the three worlds is the unrestricted vow to save all sentient beings. Those who enter the Buddhist path, from the first stage of arousing the aspiration for enlightenment, will surely embrace this vow. They seek enlightenment for the

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benefit of all sentient beings. And although sentient beings are not the same, the great compassion [of the Buddhas] is undifferentiated. If those without the nature [of enlightenment; i.e., iccantikas] were rejected, how could it be the great undifferentiating compassion? (ND 63, 412a: 11–16)

While not entirely refuting the legitimacy of the five classes of beings doctrine, Jōkei clearly asserts that no one will be left behind. If this were not so, then the original vow of Buddhas to save all sentient beings would be false, which is simply unimaginable. So Jōkei affirms the orthodox view that there are “beings without untainted seeds” (S. icchantikas) but, in the end, undercuts the implications of this doctrine. With the help of a compassionate Buddha, anyone can still be aroused to aspire for enlightenment and ultimately achieve it. Although exceptional within the Hossō school, Jōkei’s maneuver recalls a similar move within the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, the text first to mention iccantikas. There a distinction is made between two types of iccantikas – those who have (1) “forsaken all the stock of merit” and (2) bodhisattva-iccantikas. The latter are so classified because of their vows never to enter Nirvāṇa until all beings have achieved enlightenment. The former, the text tells us, “might someday be influenced by the power of the Tathāgatas” to foster the necessary merit. “For this reason,” the text continues, “it is [only] the Bodhisattva-Icchantika who never enters into Nirvāṇa” (Suzuki 1930: 59). Analogously, Jōkei argues that the compassionate power of the buddhas and bodhisattvas is not bound by conventional laws of causality. Acknowledgment of our spiritual status and the karmic choices that led us here is important. But this does not mean we are helpless. In this way, Jōkei attempted to overcome centuries of doctrinal friction between the Hossō school and opposing Mahāyāna schools. First, he relativized the difference between identity and difference by equating the Hossō middle way with the denial of all dualities (fusoku furi). Second, he mitigated the implications of the five classes doctrine and, more specifically, the fate of the iccantikas. Thus, the five classes and one vehicle teachings are “equally true,” but neither is ultimately true.

10  Conclusion Lest the reader conclude that these philosophical debates are irrelevant to the actual practice of Buddhism, allow me to draw a few connections between Jōkei’s philosophical perspectives and his vision of practice. As noted previously, Jōkei was well-known for his eclectic practices and promotion of a variety of divine figures to popular audiences. He was a Buddhist pluralist to the core – this in contrast to figures like Hōnen and Shinran who promoted one practice (the exclusive nembutsu) and one object of devotion (Amida). In essence, Jōkei argued that people, like dharmas, are causally conditioned yielding inherently different spiritual capacities. From his perspective, the plurality of teachings attributed to the Buddha are a consequence of his effort to teach according to the capacity of his audience. This is the essence of skillful means (S. upāya, J. hōben 方便). It is in this spirit that Jōkei writes in the Kōfukuji sōjō:

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Numerous gates to the Dharma await and open according to one’s capacity (ki), and we receive the sweet medicine [of the Dharma] according our karmic predisposition. They are all part of the True Dharma realized by the great teacher Śākyamuni through difficult and arduous practice over innumerable kalpas. Now to be attached to [one single practice] is to utterly obstruct the path to liberation. (KKB 313a)

Similarly, in another text he writes that the “spiritual capacity of bodhisattvas is assorted and different.” Some are inclined to sudden realization, others to gradual realization. In short, the various teachings and practices within the Buddhist tradition exists for a reason – we are not all the same. We each have different karmic predispositions and stand at different points along the bodhisattva path. Nevertheless, these teachings are all true and consistent with each other. From the Hossō perspective, however, their truth is conditioned upon one’s perspective (provisional or absolute, for example) and level of insight. In addition to his defense of Buddhist pluralism, Jōkei also defended the importance of karmic causality and moral discipline. He was deeply concerned that the Tendai emphasis on non-duality had undermined the perceived importance of the abiding by the precepts and distinguishing between wholesome/unwholesome actions. Tendai monks like Annen tended to emphasize the “essence” of the precepts over moral action and contributed, from Jōkei’s perspective, to the moral laxity within the monastic community. Jōkei’s precept revival efforts were meant to counter such relativizing grounded in non-dual thinking (Ford 2006: 131–137). Both of these responses are fundamentally linked to the Yogācāra understanding of consciousness. Remember that the storehouse consciousness is constituted by causally produced seeds, some of which, existing from our beginningless past, determine our basic nature, yielding the five classes of beings doctrine. But the majority of those seeds are at one and the same time the causes of the manifestation of dharmas within consciousness and the effect, by means of perfuming, of prior karmic action. Fundamental to the Hossō understanding of consciousness and the modus operandi of reality itself, our attitudes, dispositions, and moral behavior are both causes and effects in an ongoing stream of karmic causality. Jōkei, it seems, feared that too much emphasis on non-duality was undermining the tradition of Buddhist pluralism and diminishing the perceived necessity of moral behavior (that is, adherence to the precepts). This called for a return to the Yogācāra emphasis on the middle-way in all of its connotations.

Works Cited Abbreviations KKB Kamakura kyū bukkyō 『鎌倉旧仏教』 [The Ancient Buddhism of Kamakura], Nihon shisō taikei 『日本思想体系』 [The Systems of Japanese Thought] 15 vols, edited by Shigeo Kamata and Hisao Tanaka. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1971. ND Nihon daizōkyō 『日本大蔵經』 [The Japanese Tripitaka]. Original edition in 51 vols, 1914– 1922. Revised and enlarged edition in 100 vols. Edited by Suzuki Gakujutsu Zaidan 鈴木学術 財団. Tokyo: Suzuki Gakujutsu Zaidan, 1973–78.

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T Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 『大正新修大蔵經』. 100 vols. Ed. Junjirō Takakusu 高楠順次郎 and Kaigyoku Watanabe 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai, 1924–34.

Works by Jōkei Hossōshū shoshin ryakuō 『法相宗初心略要』 [Introduction to the Essentials of the Hossō School]. ND 63: 357–90. Hossōshū shoshin ryakuyō zokuhen [Zokuhen] 「法相宗初心略要続編」 [Addition to the Introduction to the Essentials of the Hossō School]. ND 63: 390–412. Jō yuishiki ron dōgaku shō 『成唯識論同学鈔』 [A Collaborative Study of the Treatise on Consciousness-Only]. T 66. Jō yuishiki ron jinshi shō 『成唯識論尋思鈔』 [A Study of the Treatise on Consciousness-Only], 17 fascicles. Held in collection of Ryūtani University. Kōfukuji sōjō 「興福寺奏状」 [Ceremonies at Kōfukuji]. KKB 312–316.

Other Sources Foard, James H. 1980. In Search of a Lost Reformation: A Reconsideration of Kamakura Buddhism. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 7 (4): 261–291. ———. 2006. Jōkei and Buddhist Devotion in Early Medieval Japan. New  York: Oxford University Press. Fukihara, Shōshin 富貴原章信. 1975. Nihon chūsei yuishiki bukkyōshi 『日本中世唯識仏教 史』 [The History of Consciousness-Only in Medieval Japan]. Tokyo: Daitō Shuppansha. ———. 1989. Nihon yuishiki shisō shi 『日本唯識思想史』 [The History of Consciousness-­ Only Thought in Japan]. Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai. Groner, Paul. 1984. Saichō: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lusthaus, Dan. 2002. Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism and the Ch’eng Wei-shih lun. London: Routledge Curzon. Payne, Richard K., ed. 1998. Re-visioning “Kamakura” Buddhism. Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism. Vol. 11. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Stone, Jacqueline I. 1999. Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Sueki Fumihiko 末木文美士 1994. Annen: The Philosopher Who Japanized Buddhism. Acta Asiatica 66: 69–86. Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro. 1930. Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra. London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd. Yamazaki Keiki 山崎慶輝. 1962. Nihon yuishiki no tenkai: Jōkei yori Ryōhen e 日本唯識の 展開: 貞慶より良遍へ [The Development of Japanese Consciousness-Only: From Jōkei to Ryōhen]. Bukkyō bunka kenkyū 仏教文化研究所 [Studies in Buddhist Culture] 1: 18–37. ———. 1969. Kamakura ki ni hakki sareta yuishiki setsu 「鎌倉期に発揮された唯識説」 [Consciousness-Only Theory as Discussed in the Kamakura Period]. Nihon bukkyō gakkai nempō 『日本仏教学会年報』 [The Annual of the Japan Society of Buddhist Studies] 69: 139–152. ———. 1978. Hossō yuishiki no kaikakusha Jōkei 「法相唯識の改革者貞慶」 [Jōkei: Reformer of Hossō Consciousness-Only]. Ryūkoku daigaku bukkyō bunka kenkyūjo kiyō 『龍谷大学仏 教文化研究所紀要』 [Bulletin of the Institute for Buddhist Culture at Ryūkoku University] 17: 137–149.

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James L. Ford is Professor of East Asian Religions at Wake Forest University, where he has been teaching since 1998. His primary areas of expertise include Japanese Buddhism, Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions, and comparative religion. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters, he is author of Jōkei and Buddhist Devotion in Early Medieval Japan and The Divine Quest, East and West: A Comparative Study of Ultimate Realities. His current project is an introductory text on the Mahāyāna tradition entitled Mahāyāna Buddhism: A Sociocultural History.

Chapter 14

Hōnen

Mark L. Blum

Hōnen 法然 (1133–1212) is regarded as the founder of the first monastic order of Pure Land Buddhism in Japan. Today all institutional forms of Pure Land (S. Jōdo 浄土) Buddhism derive from Hōnen and taken together comprise the largest form of organized religion in Japan. The textbook evaluations of his historical impact in Japan typically suggest that his understanding of the human condition and the most appropriate Buddhist response to that condition constituted a genuine paradigm shift in Japanese philosophical and religious consciousness at that time, one that continues to reverberate strongly in Japanese culture today. In my view, the ideational structure of Hōnen’s thought was, in fact, mostly derivative of previous Buddhist thinkers, but for reasons that are not entirely clear, the way that he framed these issues led to the creation of a discourse that truly challenged the power structure of the major Buddhist institutions in his day. We know this not merely from the debates they engendered but, more significantly, from the subsequent persecutions that occurred intermittently for two centuries of Hōnen, his disciples, and a number of religious orders that traced their authority to Hōnen by that power structure and even new institutions that replaced it. While Hōnen’s writings evince little in the way of an overt political agenda in a social sense, philosophically they represent a value system that we know brought forth feelings of deep admiration and devotion in some, loathing and fury in others. Just what were those values, why were they so controversial and ultimately so convincing to so much of the Japanese population, how did Hōnen argue them, and in what way do they continue to resonate in the Japanese consciousness today? These are the core issues I attempt to explain below. However, because we cannot fully understand any philosophical system without appreciating its context, particularly a primarily religious thinker like Hōnen, I also present a broad summary of doctrinal and philosophical issues surrounding his core ideas in the generations immediately preceding and following him. M. L. Blum (*) University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_14

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1  Historical Overview Hōnen lived at a time of great social upheaval in Japan, particularly among power elites, and this anxiety was certainly one factor that contributed to the felt need to suppress his movement in some quarters of the ruling oligarchy in his day. Indeed the insecurity that Hōnen generated in the so-called halls of power is convincing historical evidence of his immediate impact on society, at least in the capital. The clan of courtiers that had dominated the court for centuries, the Fujiwara 藤原, was already in political jeopardy by the time of Hōnen’s birth in 1133. For over 50 years prior to this time, shadow courts had been set up by emperors who retired after only a brief time in office under the auspices of monastic renunciation, when their real aim was to rule unencumbered by the legal and political restraints of the court. At any given time, it was not uncommon for there to be a plurality of retired emperors vying to assert their authority, leading to ever increasing ambiguity about who in the capital was actually running the government, a situation that, in turn, allowed the provinces to function in an increasingly independent fashion. Hōnen was thus born into a time when power was devolving from the court to the major landholding clans throughout the realm, and those clans increasingly enforced their power by means of their own clan discipline rather than the increasingly questionable authority of laws and decrees coming from the court. In essence, Japan was transitioning to a feudal system. There were two military families that slowly rose to challenge the Fujiwara monopoly on power: the House of Taira (J. Heike 平家) and the Minamoto Family (J. Genji  源氏). Small but bloody skirmishes in and around the capital began in 1156 among these three groups, the year that Hōnen turned 24  years of age (by Japanese counting). By 1160 the Taira emerged victorious, the first time an explicitly military clan was in power. Their rule was often brutal, and it was only a matter of time before full scale civil war broke out again between 1180 and 1185 when the Taira were finally overthrown by a Minamoto alliance, which then proceeded to create an entirely new administrative apparatus called the bakufu led by a shōgun, or military hegemon, in the hopes of creating political stability. The Minamoto established the bakufu in faraway Kamakura, purposely putting geographical distance between themselves and the court, and thus historians refer to this new political reality as “the Kamakura period.” The Kamakura period is also known for a series of new religious movements that began on a small scale but later grew to dominate philosophical and religious expression in Japanese society. Hōnen was not the first Buddhist leader to embark on a new path, both intellectually and institutionally, and among these religious leaders later recognized as founders of new schools or sects, only Hōnen had an immediate impact so great that his name appears in a wide variety of Kamakura period documents outside Buddhist exegetical writing, such as the Gukanshō 愚管 抄 (The Future and the Past), the Heike Monogatari 平家物語 (Tale of the Heike), and the Shasekishū 沙石集 (Sand and Pebbles).1 While it is apparent that Hōnen 1  Hōnen appears in YOSHIDA Kenkō’s 吉田兼好 (1284–1350) Tsurezuregusa 徒然草, for example, written in 1330, but not any of the other so-called founders of Kamakura period Buddhist schools.

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lived through a period of enormous social, political, and cultural change, and the degree to which the creative minds of that period truly created something new remains a matter of debate, one thing is clear: all the sectarian founders of this period were viewed to some degree as heretical within established circles of power and. as perceived threat to social stability, faced some degree of suppression. But Hōnen is arguably the most enigmatic of all these founder figures, for the following reasons: (1) There are similar hermeneutic moves evident in many of the Buddhist leaders who preceded him. (2) Hōnen’s appeal cannot be easily identified with any social class: he was held in high regard by some in the aristocracy and reviled by others, his extant letters include many top samurai, and his public lectures brought in people of all classes. The two very-high born brothers, Jien 慈円 (1155–1225), abbot of Enryakuji 延暦寺 on Mount Hiei (J. Hieizan), and KUJŌ Kanezane 九条 兼実 (1149–1207), regent and chief minister, for example, came down on opposite sides of the Hōnen argument, one strongly opposed and the other passionately devoted. (3) A great many of the writings that have been attributed to Hōnen by tradition are suspect today. The mixing of class and gender in his interactions with the greater community of the capital may certainly have been cause for concern by some in political power, but issues of violations in social class distinction and authorship attribution are highly complex and, again, outside the purview of this essay. Insofar as the problem of attribution is directly relevant to the content of this essay and the fact that current scholarship has been as yet unable to come to definitive conclusions in this area, it should be stated that the present essay inevitably reflects the perspective of the author. Finally, it is worth noting that today Hōnen has not garnered a great deal of attention among those outside Japan interested in the evolution of philosophy or religious thought in Japanese society. However, the scale of Hōnen’s impact upon the historical development of Japanese thought in the premodern period is matched only by Kūkai 空海 (774–835) and Saichō 最澄 (787–822). Although some in the West have regarded this with skepticism, any such doubts should have been removed by the recent unveiling of a statue of Amida Buddha, carved as a memorial to Hōnen upon his death, inside which a document was found listing over 50,000 names of individuals pledged to his religious vision.

2  Core Issues Hōnen advocated for a form of Buddhism called “Pure Land” and today he is regarded as the founder of the first religious order of Pure Land Buddhism in Japan and probably the first throughout the entire Buddhist world. In terms of religious history, this is regarded as one of his major accomplishments, particularly in light of the fact that this form of Buddhism, if not this particular iteration of it, has dominated institutional religion in Japan for the past 400 years. An examination of the evidence associated with this sectarian ambition, however, results in a conclusion among some scholars, the present author included, that Hōnen himself in fact had

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no such institutional intentions. One must recognize, on the other hand, that among his peers there were some who accused him of this very “crime,” the offense in question being violation of a presumed norm wherein no new sect of Buddhism could be founded without explicit approval from the court. There is only one small document extant in Hōnen’s own hand; by contrast the biographical information about him is voluminous and problematic for its somewhat contradictory content. The lack of historical clarity about both issues of sectarian formation and writing attribution leads to the same pragmatic conclusion for purposes of this essay: namely, that by the name “Hōnen” we are actually referring to what has come down to us historically as a community of people led by Hōnen intellectually, if not socially. That is, we cannot, and therefore will not, attempt to distinguish between the ideas expressed by this community and attributed to Hōnen and the ideas that we know for certain came from Hōnen himself. But regardless of whether his own ambition included founding a new school of Buddhism, the doctrine or episteme of Hōnen was perceived by some as so threatening to the social and political status quo as to warrant persecution. We can easily understand how, as persecution continued, a sense of being marginalized as “other” naturally led to organizing a separate institution. Whether the Hōnen doctrine inevitably led to new sectarian forms is quite another question and beyond the range of this essay but, suffice it to say, this is a matter of historical inference made anachronistically. For though Hōnen was quite confident in his views on the human condition and Buddhist doctrine, he is decidedly vague in reference to his view of his own role in society. The focus here is rather on the nature and content of Hōnen’s thought. Here we have to veer off into Buddhist doctrine and myth in an attempt to reproduce the ideational framework within which Hōnen’s ideas had so much resonance. Like all medieval Buddhist thinkers, Hōnen is at once both philosophical and doctrinal but the philosophy is always embedded in and expressed in terms of religious doctrine. The core issues that define his thought are: (1) the nature of the human potential to understand truth, and whether or not this is a historical issue; (2) the relationship between higher, transcendental knowledge and the empirical self; (3) the transformative power of the human voice when it is used in the service of religious expression; and (4) locating the authority of religious understanding in praxis and the structure and meaning of faith in that praxis. It must be said, however, that the above listing reflects the topics we want to see explained in Hōnen, not necessarily the topics that he himself felt any need to explain. In particular, (3) is clearly implicit in Hōnen’s thought but never addressed by him, and so will not be taken up here. While he does not directly address (4) either, he does speak to many of the issues relevant to this question, so this will be examined below.

3  History and Human Potential Before looking at Hōnen’s stated views, it is important to clarify the relevance of historical consciousness to this period. Unlike the Abrahamic religious traditions, Buddhism did not begin with a clearly stated mythic notion of either a beginning or

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an end of time. On the other hand, there was from the outset a recognition that, like all created things, the “good law” (J. shōhō 正法) that was expressed or revealed by the founder Śākyamuni would fade over time and eventually disappear. To put it in terms of Indian Buddhist doctrine, the truth in the teachings of this or any buddha is “absolute in its truth” (S. paramārtha satya). This is a timeless truth discovered by Śākyamuni Buddha that transcends history. However, the Buddha’s dharma that we know is a dispensation sustained by mankind that is decidedly historical and therefore as fragile as any other historical entity. This is called the “conventional truth” (S. saṃvṛti satya) and quite clearly includes an implication of its own inevitable destruction. As humans, we are not in a position to reject one and cleave to the other. The conventional truth is the truth that is available to us as historical beings. Thus, from very early in the Indian tradition, Buddhists have been concerned with the inevitability of the dissolution of their beloved religious truth over time. In East Asia this concern takes on an intense relevance in the sixth century for a variety of reasons that most scholars regard as political in nature, such as persecutions of the religion and political instability in both the southern and northern dynasties at a time when China was not unified. Whatever the causes, a number of indigenous scriptures are written in China at this time, highlighting the historical crises confronting the religion because of its imminent decline. This is, however accidentally or not, the same period in which Buddhism establishes itself in Japan, and the earliest Buddhist writings in Japan show concern for the dawning of the age called mappō 末法, or the “final era of the dharma.” As stated earlier, “final” here carries with it no apocalyptic significance, for when the dharma disappears utterly from the world, a new buddha will appear to rediscover it and once again create what will appear at that time to be a new dispensation. However, this period of mappō is exceedingly long, typically in East Asia said to be 10,000 years, a number not seen in Indic sources and probably meant to mean simply “a time period longer than anyone’s imagination.” Because there is a wide range of opinion among the many Mahāyāna scriptures in the Chinese canon as to the length of each intermediate period, calculations naturally differed as to when mappō began. In Japan there were basically two schema, 552 and 1052, the latter much more consequential in terms of the impact it had on the imagination at the time, probably because Buddhism was not well known outside the capital and immigrant communities at the time of the earlier date. Although it is difficult to separate cause from effect in this case, the eleventh century in Japan was the time when belief in both mappō consciousness and Pure Land Buddhism became pervasive throughout society. This was particularly true among the literati class in the capital of Kyoto. Rebirth in the Pure Land of Amida Buddha (J. Amida nyorai 阿弥陀如来) was not only a postmortem goal, however. Here it may be worth mentioning that in Buddhism there is an assumption of equivalency between psychology and cosmology. The 31 possible realms or states of existence were understood both as existences and as states of mind. Thus rebirth in the Pure Land was also possible through meditation. Hōnen is often misunderstood by those who fail to take into consideration this aspect of this thought, for it pertains to our understanding of his views of human potential.

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In addition to the political upheaval of his time, Hōnen also lived at a time when belief in mappō was an inevitable “given” about the nature of “the world we live in.” There is thus a general sense of pessimism pervading his time, evidenced in the famous literary work known as the Hōjōki 方丈記 written by Hōnen’s contemporary KAMO no Chōmei 鴨の長明 (1155–1216), who writes of floods, famines, and earthquakes as further evidence, as if any is needed, that the world has entered mappō. Hōnen himself uses this consciousness of the historical moment to advance his position that faith in Amida Buddha and the practice of nenbutsu 念仏 are the most efficacious tools to gain one spiritual and religious peace by providing access to the sacred realm of the Pure Land. However, what is striking in his writings is that he is not pessimistic. One could attribute this simply to his tremendous self-confidence that comes from the depth of this faith. In this view, Hōnen’s doctrine is part of the entire mappō gestalt of his time. However, if we look at the legacy of what he taught, we find that in later generations of writers and thinkers who trace their lineage to Hōnen, the topic of mappō appears but is always treated in a perfunctory way. They are simply not concerned. I would argue, therefore, that while Hōnen uses the mappō understanding to begin his presentation of his views, as he does in his famous Senchaku hongan nenbutsu shū 選擇本願念仏集 (often abbreviated as “Senchakushū 選擇集”) (T 83.2608), he does so mostly as a rhetorical requirement, as this was expected of any Pure Land writer of his time. In fact Hōnen’s religiosity transcends mappō and seeks to move beyond it. This fact, however, does not impede him from declaring that the human condition is such that attaining the traditional Buddhist goal of buddhahood is unlikely. He never states that it is impossible, only that it is exceedingly difficult. Note that in this he is channeling Shandao 善導 (613–681), who made similar statements. Therefore, this perception that for the most part we are not capable of becoming buddhas is not based on historical consciousness, on the belief that the world has entered the pessimistic era of mappō in 1052. At the very least, both thinkers exploit the mappō consciousness of their communities to advance a position that seeks to broaden the understanding of what it means to be human and Buddhist without the goal of buddhahood but with a kind of replacement goal defined as reaching the Pure Land of the Buddha Amitābha/Amitāyus (J. Amida 阿弥陀). At the time, the possibility of reaching this “proximate goal” was not in question, but the timing of it was, as certain Buddhist texts promised this as something that would occur only in later rebirths after one was karmically so situated.

4  Transcendental Knowledge and the Empirical Self The problem with this latter, and for many normative, perspective on Buddhist thought was that it demanded belief in religious thought as transcendent truth regardless of how remote it may seem from what we know. Only alluded to by Shandao but given a prominent position in Hōnen’s thought is, instead, the perspective that religious thought has value only when it is based in “human experience,” or

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what they feel they know. This viewpoint allows Hōnen to pick and choose what aspects of Buddhism he finds relevant to his own situation, to the human condition as understood in his own particular historical context. This amounts to something akin to a Jew or a Christian deciding which parts of the Bible to believe in and which parts to ignore, based on a felt sense of relevance. In the modern and especially the postmodern world, this kind of selective believing is quite common (to the consternation of many religious institutions), but it reflects a confidence in human ratiocination that is arguably much more characteristic of post-enlightenment Europe than anything we expect to see in the twelfth or thirteenth century. Stated another way, Hōnen asserts that I should not see the world passively through the prism of a philosophy whose authority rests in the hermeneutics of my religious ancestors or whatever received truth has been passed on to me, but rather that I have the authority, and in some sense the obligation, to discern what philosophy is relevant to what I have seen myself in the human condition. This is not an entirely new idea for Japanese Buddhism. With incipient roots in the writings of Daosheng 道升 (360–434), Chinese Buddhist hermeneutics in the late sixth century developed the notion of panjiao 判教 to put their own interpretive stamp of their received tradition from India. The various and sorted panjiao developed in sixth and seventh century China incorporated a critical “evaluation” of scriptures and doctrines to create a rationale to explain why such a wide range of ideas all came from the same teacher, Śākyamuni. One of the earliest and most influential panjiao systems was invented by Zhiyi 智顗 (538–597), the founder of the Tendai school, so Hōnen was well-versed in this approach to the Buddhist tradition. Hōnen does not address this tension between transcendental truths as received knowledge and personal knowledge based on the known world; this is, admittedly, my inference. However, the very nature of Hōnen’s perceived threat to “exoteric-­ esoteric system” (J. kenmitsu taisei 顕蜜体制) of medieval Japanese Buddhism is amply evident in the continual efforts to suppress his voice and that of his followers for the next 200 years. The way Hōnen expresses this tension, in my view, is by repeatedly pointing out that there is no one becoming a buddha anymore, that there are very few people who truly understand the contents of what is in the Buddhist canon, and the fact that so much attention is paid to maintaining the proper state of mind at the moment of death suggests that very few people are succeeding in the traditional Buddhist path, the shōdō-mon 聖道門, the “path to self-perfection.”2 Thus, in Hōnen we see the presumption of, in a Buddhist sense, a relative weakness in humanity, an inability to succeed either at Buddhist praxis or at understanding the Buddhist teachings in a satisfactory manner. It is this presumption of inability that infuriated the established institutions around him, especially his own Tendai 天 台 school, because it sent a message that said, in effect, you are wasting your time  The practice of deathbed nenbutsu was very popular at this time, under the presumption that last moments had more karmic significance than the rest of a lifetime and therefore had an immediate and profound impact on future rebirth destiny. Hōnen offered another approach to diffuse the anxiety associated with this belief, arguing that one could do the same practice while healthy and not near death, producing the same benefits without the fear of losing control of oneself as death approached. 2

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in this difficult, often excruciating, life in the monastery. Look at what you are, accept your limitations honestly, and accept the fact that the Buddha Amida has made another path available to you that does not ask so much as the traditional path to nirvāṇa is asking of you now. Thus states the very first page in his Senchakushū, in which he quotes Daochuo in offering the alternative path, the “path to the Pure Land” (J. jōdo-mon 浄土門). It is worth mentioning just how radical this view of human inability was. Buddhism generally follows the Yogic model of the more difficult the practice, the more excellent the attainment. Thus, there is a deeply held presumption of the potential for improvement within everyone, even if one’s past karma might be seen as limiting one’s potential. On this point, the Buddha was decidedly optimistic. Hōnen, for his part, does not reject this deep-seated Buddhist optimism. Instead, he redefines it in a way that demands that individuals should first pass through an existential appraisal of themselves. If you determined that you were indeed certain to become a buddha in this lifetime, you would be praised by Hōnen. However, he himself declared openly and publically that he personally would not be attaining buddhahood, a realization that led him to Shandao’s writings and his own conviction that this is the advised place to start for everyone. Thus, from a Buddhist doctrinal perspective, Hōnen’s assertion of the spiritually limited nature of the human condition both affirms and transcends the mappō doctrine of historical decline. However, if one reviews the many places in his writings that Hōnen asserts this “human inability” argument, one finds that the argument is made rarely on the basis of mappō. A much more common approach is what can only be described as an a priori assumption that among the rankings of human “types,” Hōnen and his countrymen are at the bottom in terms of their spiritual potential. That is, two of the three sūtras that Hōnen regards as authoritative prooftexts for the creation myth of the Pure Land of Amida Buddha contain explicit divisions of humanity into either three or nine categories, each defined as exhibiting a combination of moral integrity and prowess in religious practice. The list in the so-called Contemplation Sūtra attracted much more attention because of its detail and explanation of what practices are appropriate for each of the nine levels it recognizes. Those who are at level nine in the Sūtra of Contemplation on the Buddha of Eternal Life (J. Kanmuryōjukyō 観無量寿経) (T 12.365) [hereafter abbreviated as “Contemplation Sutra”] are described as incapable of focused practice and told to do recitation nenbutsu, but the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra (J. Muryōjukyō 無量壽經) (T 12.360), The Sūtra of the Buddha of Eternal Life, is not explicit about recitation practice, though it does advocate a practice of devotedly focusing on the Buddha, without specifying how this is to be done. In Hōnen’s turn toward recitation practice, there are in fact two major philosophical moves afoot. First, is the shift from mappō as a raison d’être for the assertion of Pure Land belief and practice to the presumption of low human potential compared to the imagined golden age of the Buddha’s time. This can be identified as a major shift from Heian-period Pure Land thought to Kamakura-period Pure Land thought. The second is the assertion of recitation of nenbutsu as a kind of meta-practice that subsumes all other practices within it. The presentation of Hōnen’s views on this subject can be found in chapter 4 of his Senchakushū.

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5  The Authority of Religious Understanding in Praxis This kind of “obligated freedom of thought” demands a choice, and it is the enormous weight given to choice that signals the radical challenge to the status quo in society, both religiously and politically, by Hōnen. If we contrast this with the medieval religious concerns in the Abrahamic world, which demanded that the individual find a way to be obedient to what a self-appointed clergy decided was authoritative within that tradition, Hōnen’s demand seems to be going in the opposite direction: namely, demanding that the individual must choose himself which Buddhism to follow. Of course making that choice and committing to it could only be done within the existing hermeneutic framework pervasive in that time which, by its very pervasiveness, established its authority. However, if the Buddhist clergy in Hōnen’s day thought they could control the discourse on how these choices were to be made through intimidation, precedent, and political support from the secular world, they were sadly mistaken. The textbook version of Japanese history often states that Hōnen was responsible for bringing Buddhism to the masses, but what he really brought was not Buddhism per se, for Buddhism had made significant inroads into the countryside and uneducated classes for quite some time already. By stressing that all people had a choice about what Buddhism would be to them, what Hōnen actually brought to those outside the elite society of the capital was instead a sense of empowerment through personal choice. How was this to be done? For intellectuals like Hōnen and his chief disciples, their choices were written up in carefully argued discursive essays. It is not surprising that Hōnen’s most comprehensive work is a rather long essay called A Collection [of Sources] on the Choice of the Nenbutsu of the Original Vows (J. Senchaku hongan nenbutsu shū 選擇本願念仏集) that lays out his argument with scriptural quotations used as prooftexts. In subsequent generations, not only the major disciples of Hōnen but across the spectrum of Japanese Buddhist writing as a whole in the medieval period, extant works are often at pains to present claims on why one particular form of Buddhist belief and/or practice should be considered paramount. Although we do find some degree of polemics in this, in a broader sense what is being argued is not directed against any particular school or individual, but rather what we see are rationalizations of the author’s personal perspective vis-à-vis Buddhism as a whole. Nichiren is of course the glaring exception in this characterization; he seems to be driven by a massive sense of imminent doom, his crisis-consciousness obviously based in his conclusion that all other forms of Buddhism are the root cause of the world being in disorder. Among these medieval arguments for the authority underpinning one’s personal orientation to the complexity of Buddhist thought, there is one salient concern, common to much of this writing, that scholars trace specifically to Hōnen’s initiative. I am speaking of Hōnen’s choice of which practice one should commit oneself to, which is clearly evident in the wording of the title of the treatise named above: the Choice of the Nenbutsu. More discussion about nenbutsu follows below, but the entryway to any understanding of Hōnen’s hermeneutic lies in recognition that his

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major religious and philosophical concern is (1) choice, and (2) that choice for him is of practice. In a European context one might expect the issue of choice to pertain to belief rather than praxis, and the unusual prominence of faith in Hōnen’s doctrine also suggests this approach. Moreover, even, or perhaps especially, in a nontheistic religious system like Japanese Buddhism with so many points of sanctity, where any tour of Japanese temples today presents the student with an unusually wide array of different buddha and bodhisattva images on their altars, a commitment to this or that particular salvific figure is to be expected. Put in another way, in such a heterogeneous religious culture as was twelfth-­ century Japan, the renewal of religious fervor in a medieval movement such as Hōnen’s would typically express a preoccupation with “proper” faith, blaming societal and institutional religious degradation on impiety (lax observance of holy commandments) and the prevalence of heresies (too many people believing in the wrong thing). These are the kinds of complaints we see in Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), for example. But for Hōnen, the primary choice is over whether or not one can commit oneself to a particular form of practice. While the choice of a particular practice inevitably entails acceptance of a particular belief system from which that practice’s authority is derived – and Hōnen infers that Amida Buddha himself made similarly important choices for mankind’s sake – the enormous historical impact this had on Japanese religious thinking shows quite clearly that framing religious commitment in terms of practice was nevertheless highly significant. I am alluding to a series of post-Hōnen thinkers in the thirteenth century, such as Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253), Nichiren 日蓮 (1222–1282), and a number of people in Hōnen’s lineage, most famously Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1263) and Ippen 一遍 (1234–1289), but there were also a great many others less well-known today, who also presented arguments for their own views of the problem of the human condition and solutions for it, the impact of history upon that problematic and its solutions, and so forth, in terms of the question of what constitutes “proper practice.” Without delving into the specifics of Hōnen’s doctrinal architecture, there is a particular “hermeneutic moment” in the Pure Land intellectual tradition that ­provides the ideational grounding for Hōnen’s perspective. I am referring to the second chapter of Shandao’s exegetical commentary on the Contemplation Sutra, the work that Hōnen claimed led directly to his realization of the truth. In that scriptural narrative, Queen Vaidehī asks for an audience with Śākyamuni Buddha to beg for spiritual comfort and guidance about the afterlife now that she has been imprisoned by her son, along with her husband, the king, both of whom he intends to kill. The Buddha explains that there is an assortment of “pure lands” created and inhabited by different buddhas and then proceeds to miraculously show them to her, one after another, whereupon Vaidehī chooses the pure land of Amitābha. Śākyamuni affirms her good choice and then proceeds to teach her a series of practices that will ensure her successful rebirth in that realm. Although this description is in the sutra, the first point is that it is Shandao who emphasizes the importance of this scene, in particular her choice of this particular pure land and the fact that she herself attains the desired rebirth despite the fact that she is an “ordinary person” with no particular meditative skills or training. The second point that Shandao makes in his exegesis is

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that Śākyamuni’s discourse, because it is aimed at her directly and at us indirectly (through her), is set up in such a way as to guide us to the easiest yet the most heartfelt practice, namely the recitation of the nenbutsu (C. nianfo). The logic flows from the inference, mentioned above, that the Buddha made similar choices of immense significance, and one of them is the buddha’s choice of nenbutsu recitation as the “proper practice” for all living beings. In fact the word Hōnen uses for choice, senchaku (C. xuanze) 選擇, does not appear in the usual list of Pure Land sūtras that Hōnen takes as most authoritative. The closest term we find in the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra, the scripture where the vows to create the Pure Land are most clearly stated, is shequ (J. sesshu) 摂取, which also carries the connotation of acceptance. It is Shandao who mentions this, choosing the synonym biexuan (J. bessen) 別選. The term that Hōnen preferred was senchaku, which appears in an earlier translation of the same Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra.3 The difference in nuance is significant: sesshu implies choosing only in the sense of taking in or embracing, whereas senchaku implies choosing in the sense of selecting one thing and rejecting another (see Sueki 2004). It is this particular notion of choice that is picked up by Hōnen and turned into a hermeneutic principle. Moreover, the attractiveness of this principle only grows in the generations after Hōnen, as can be seen in the salient role it plays in the “Hōnen doctrine,” as it were, fashioned by the many commentaries on his Senchakushū by many of the Pure Land intellectuals of the day, such as Ryōchū 良忠 (1199–1287) in the Jōdo (Pure Land) sect and Zonkaku 存覺 (1290– 1373) in the Shin sect, and especially a work called the Tessenchakushū 徹選擇集4 by Ryōchū’s teacher Benchō 弁長 (1162–1238), which discusses a list of “eight choices” (J. hassenchaku 八選擇) that form the underpinning of nenbutsu practice as seen from Hōnen’s vantage point. This is a valorization of choice that involves conscious rejection, and Hōnen himself repeatedly alludes to “taking this (J. senchaku 選擇) and rejecting that (J. shusha 取捨)” (T 83.2608.1a4, 1a11, 5a7). The underlying principle is efficacy: this approach simply works better or is more authentic than that one. However, the fact that he chose this particular word senchaku to express choice shows that in this demand of conscious rejection there is also an underlying expectation of commitment. There are times in his writing where he will tell someone not to worry if they cannot commit to nenbutsu practice just yet. Fine, he tells them, just do it for a while, and it will compel you to turn to it more fully eventually. However, ideally, Hōnen expects a conscious, committed turn to nenbutsu: this is ultimately the crux of his entire teaching. For some, this meant engagement in recitation practice for hours every day, such as Ryūkan and Hōnen himself. That rejection did not regard the other, non-nenbutsu, forms of belief and practice as illegitimate or heretical; Hōnen labeled them “mixed” or “ancillary,” meaning they were not invaluable but of secondary significance given the limitations in the 3  The Foshuo amituo jing 仏説阿弥陀経 (J. Bussetsu amida kyō) (T 12.362), translation attributed to Zhiqian 支謙 in the first half of the third century. 4  This is an abbreviation. The actual title of this work is Tetsu hongan nenbutsu shū 徹選択本願念 仏集.

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spiritual potential of mankind evident in the world. The degree of rejection intended by Hōnen is still hotly debated by scholars today, but whatever his intended meaning, once his Senchakushū began to circulate,5 its views were obviously upsetting to many clerics devoted to these other forms of Buddhism, and some interpreted his writings as one of the root causes of the rancor against Hōnen both during and after his lifetime, when attempts were even made to desecrate his grave. Indeed one of the controversies today among Japanese scholars who have looked at the material by and around Hōnen is how to read his valorization of nenbutsu at the expense of other forms of Buddhist practice. In his writings, Hōnen uses dichotomies to illustrate the unique qualities of nenbutsu, such as superior/inferior or proper/mixed, that argue for the relative superiority of this practice. He also repeats the claims of some that assert its absolute superiority, for example, that the light of the buddha only falls on those doing nenbutsu practice and not on those doing other practices, or that the only dharma truly transmitted by Śākyamuni to Ānanda for safekeeping was nenbutsu. These claims have been seen by some as characteristic of an evolution of Hōnen’s thought, but the absence of this or that doctrine in his earlier writings is not very strong evidence in his case because most of this writings are difficult to date with certainty, and many of them are clearly apocryphal attributions. If we consider this issue from a macro perspective, the more salient issue is the implication in his overall corpus of teachings for the relationship of Pure Land Buddhism to Buddhism as a whole. Looked at in another way, the issue of choice for Hōnen is one that he creatively expanded to include multiple perspectives that supported his religious worldview, and that worldview is ultimately not one limited to Pure Land Buddhism but speaks to the identity of Buddhism as a whole. There are four components to this system, each with a different role contributing to the process of legitimating Hōnen’s view of recitation nenbutsu as the “chosen practice”: namely, there is the choice of nenbutsu by the individual (presented in chapters 1 and 2 of the Senchakushū); the choice of nenbutsu by Amida Buddha (chapters 3, 7, and 10 of the Senchakushū); the choice of nenbutsu by Śākyamuni Buddha (chapters 4, 5, 11, 12, 13, and 16 of the Senchakushū); and the choice of nenbutsu confirmed by other buddhas (chapters 14 and 15 of the Senchakushū). First is the individual’s choice to commit to nenbutsu as an existential issue, as discussed above. The choice of Amida lies in the content of the 48 vows, that is, what he decided to promise people, how he chose to construct his buddha-land, and how he decided to offer access to it. The role of Śākyamuni is that of presenter of the teaching, for it is Śākyamuni who chooses to communicate the story of Amida to us and who describes his vows in detail; thus Śākyamuni is the authority behind the various iterations of the Amida story displayed in all relevant scriptures. Śākyamuni Buddha provides legitimation for the authority of nenbutsu practice beyond the cult to Amida Buddha, stamping it as a 5  The Senchakushū was composed in response to a request from Kanezane for a written record of his lectures and though the dates of its completion vary, depending on sources, the range is between 1198 and 1205. It initially circulated secretly, with Hōnen himself required to give permission for it to be copied. But this and other writings circulated, Hōnen gave a number of public talks, and the Senchakushū itself was printed in 1227 and circulated widely thereafter.

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practice of authority for Buddhism as a whole. The role of the other buddhas, who appear in Pure Land sutras to affirm the truth of the Amida story, is to provide a kind of cosmological confirmation of the entire epistemic edifice as soteriologically genuine. Hōnen’s reliance on the various writings of Shandao in constructing this hermeneutic suggests that it is probably worth adding the choice made by Queen Vaidehī of Amida’s Pure Land as opposed to all the other postmortem pure lands (a major point for Shandao) as a kind of addendum to this fourfold system. Vaidehī herself does not advocate recitation nenbutsu, but her role is nevertheless vital in substantiating its power, for in response to her plea for help as the interlocutor in the Contemplation Sutra, Śākyamuni expounds a variety of practices for achieving rebirth in Amida’s Pure Land that concludes with recitation nenbutsu, and in the reading of Hōnen, as an imprisoned woman facing death for her action of preventing her husband from starving, she represents the existentialist reality of humanity needlessly and unfairly suffering in the broadest sense, for whom recitation nenbutsu is the appropriate practice.

6  Mantra or Meditation It is not uncommon for Japanese scholars to refer to this historical development of Pure Land Buddhism as the history of nenbutsu. This is because the three major Pure Land thinkers in Japan––Genshin 源信 (942–1017), Hōnen, and Shinran 親 鸞––all identify nenbutsu as the pivotal hermeneutic principle in their doctrinal systems. While all made major contributions to the nenbutsu Gestalt, Hōnen’s contribution had arguably the greatest impact. In Genshin’s Ōjōyōshū 往生要集 and other works attributed to him of dubious provenance the general outline of this system of thought is presented in encyclopedic fashion for the first time. Hōnen wrote commentaries on Genshin’s writings and expressed deep indebtedness to the most innovative and influential Tendai thinker of the later Heian period, but it was Hōnen who creatively put together these same strands of Chinese exegetical thought used by Genshin into a new form that emphasized the power of orality represented by recitation nenbutsu. Thus, to understand Hōnen’s thought is to understand his notion of nenbutsu. Those unfamiliar with the doctrinal complexities of Pure Land discourse typically regard nenbutsu as attractive primarily because it is so simple and easy to perform: simply recite the phrase “namu amida butsu” 南無阿弥陀仏. This view is not entirely wrong. However, why such a simple form of practice came to have such enormous psychological and cultural significance in Japan is another story entirely, one brimming with philosophical complexity and political tension. I will attempt to explain Hōnen’s notion of nenbutsu here by identifying its two basic faces or dimensions and the relationship between them, however paradoxical that relationship may seem. I call these two aspects of Hōnen’s nenbutsu “the rhetoric of mantra” and the “rhetoric of samādhi.”

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Although the traditional “theology” of the Jōdo sect that Hōnen founded rejects the interpretation of his view of nenbutsu as mantra, in fact Hōnen’s nenbutsu rhetoric includes a great deal of power allusions that reflect how mantras and dhāraṇis are used in Buddhism, reflecting long-standing South Asian religious traditions. Mantras and dhāraṇis are like spells in that there is power in their sound; that is, the words are sacred symbols in and of themselves. Their Vedic usage demanded that they have to be uttered as an audible sound and uttered correctly to be effective. In Buddhism mantras and dhāraṇis can be uttered with or without generating sound (that is, said in the mind), but, like their Vedic usage, their repetition generates power regardless of the state of mind of the user. In Mahāyāna Buddhism they are also used in written form, where both the act of writing or printing generates merit, and the visual form itself may be revered much as one reveres a relic, reflecting the same attitude as seen in the cult of the book.6 There are numerous examples of Hōnen urging someone to recite the nenbutsu in this way. Hōnen also urges the importance of maintaining the proper state of mind that Shandao identified as threefold while saying nenbutsu and references the admonition in the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra that those who aim at Birth in the Amida’s Pure Land with doubt will be born on the outskirts of that land and have to wait a considerable time before gaining access to it; nevertheless, for Hōnen it is still better to practice recitation nenbutsu without the proper state of mind than not to practice it at all. In addition, Hōnen also alludes to the mantra-like quality of recitation nenbutsu in another way: the mere fact of participation in nenbutsu praxis can lead to faith. Such is the power of nenbutsu as Hōnen sees it. That is, through nenbutsu praxis the required threefold mindset will naturally dawn upon the practitioner, leading to a more heartfelt nenbutsu and a transformation of the individual to a person of faith. We can similarly identify an unmistakable “rhetoric of samādhi” in Hōnen’s discussion of nenbutsu, and this is equally central to his philosophical perspective. The term samādhi in early Buddhism is a general rubric of meditation, but in Mahāyāna it refers to specific states of deep meditative trance wherein spiritual experiences occur that are otherwise nearly impossible. Among such experiences are religious visions, and, in the case of Pure Land Buddhism, these would be either of Amida Buddha himself or glimpses of what the Pure Land looks like. One of the pillars in Hōnen’s hermeneutic of nenbutsu is its power to bring samādhi attainment, and this is clearly spelled out in chapter 12 of his Senchakushū. This concern reflects a traditional Mahāyāna view that links samādhi experiences with higher stages of progress on the path to buddhahood. Such equivalency works in two ways: attainment of this or that stage is marked or confirmed by experiencing particular samādhis or, more commonly, one assiduously practices meditation in order to attain particular samādhis as a means of reaching a particular stage. Thus, when one is able to attain a vision of the Buddha, it was understood that that meant the person had thereby 6  The Hyakumantō darani 百万塔陀羅尼 commissioned by Empress Shōtoku in 764–770 are an early example of printed dhāraṇi to be used like relics. These were distributed to temples throughout Japan as part of government efforts to put down a rebellion. They constitute the world’s oldest examples of printing and were probably made with a stamp.

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attained either the first, seventh, or eighth of ten stages in the daśabhūmi system, depending on the sūtra. However, even the first stage meant non-­backsliding, which was interpreted to mean Birth in the Pure Land was assured. So, in order to remove anxiety about one’s postmortem destiny, the only path to confirmation was samādhi. The assertion that recitation nenbutsu has the same power to induce a samādhi state begs the question of the doctrinal basis for such belief. On this point, Hōnen’s mature episteme was both criticized by his detractors for overreaching in his interpretation of Buddhist thought and praised by his dharma-descendants for its inspiration. The doctrinal debates are by and large centered on the meaning of the notion of myōgō 名号, which literally means the “sign of the name,” a reference to the “sacred name” of Amida Buddha that forms the core element of the nenbutsu. Hōnen incorporates an evolution of creative writing about nenbutsu that dates back to Daochuo 道綽 (562–645) and Shandao but takes a particularly dramatic jump in the eleventh and twelfth centuries when works written by people associated with the Tendai and Shingon 真言 assert that the three characters of the buddha Amida’s name, “a-mi-da” 阿弥陀, are, on the one hand, the truths at the core of Tendai (C.  Tiantai) religious understanding as explained by Zhiyi, the school’s founder, namely, truth as emptiness, truth as temporarily manifested in the world, and truth as the middle path between and incorporating the first two, and, on the other, the three bodies of all buddhas, namely, the “body of truth” (S. dharmakāya), the “body of blissful reward” (S. sambhogakāya), and the “body manifest in history” (S. nirmāṇakāya). The conflation of these notions only appears in Japan and indicates a rising wave of faith in nenbutsu developing in the period Hōnen was born into. While those notions are also implicit in Hōnen, he takes this weighty conception of the nenbutsu as an unusually dense sign and then adds an emphasis on the eighteenth vow in the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra that makes its salvific character even more explicit. If manuscript evidence is accurate, this view is missing from his early writings, but in his mature statement, as seen in works like his Senchakushū, the eighteenth vow first described in the first half of the sutra and then confirmed by its realization in the second half of the sutra outlines how, through nenbutsu practice and the proper state of mind while doing nenbutsu, rebirth in Amida’s Pure Land is assured. This rebirth can happen either in a samādhi state achieved in this life during meditation or in the form of a physical rebirth into that realm in the next. In addition, samādhi-attainment confers authority. Senchakushū chapter 12 discusses bodhicitta (“the aspiration to awakening”) and samādhi, but it is only samādhi that reflects unassailable authority. Hōnen uses this particular hermeneutic in that context to argue for the interpretations of Shandao as more authoritative than his own teacher Daochuo, whom Hōnen also quotes extensively here and elsewhere. We also see this hermeneutic at work in something like the apotheosis of Hōnen that takes place in the mid-thirteenth century when his legacy is constructed by his disciples and their disciples. I am referring to records of Hōnen’s own samādhi attainment that serve to legitimate his doctrines as similarly authoritative.7 Here Hōnen goes  Most well-known is a document included in the Saihō shinanshō 西方指南抄 edited by Shinran called Sammai hottokki 三昧発得記 (see Blum 2000: 61–94). 7

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beyond even Shandao, who asserted that  recitative and meditative nenbutsu both produce samādhi, by claiming that, in fact, it was recitative nenbutsu who had even greater power in this way. This may look like another instrumental appraisal of vocalized nenbutsu, but Hōnen’s assertion is based on a theological presumption that as “the chosen practice” it naturally had a kind of noumenal power.

7  Existential Humility The recognition of recitation nenbutsu as containing the power to enable the practitioner to attain samādhi states, linked to confirming rebirth in Amida Buddha’s Pure Land, is of deep significance to Hōnen’s project as a whole and often overlooked the modern focus on his advocacy of nenbutsu practice as easy and accessible to the masses. Nenbutsu practice, both the silent and vocal forms, had been popular in Japan since the tenth century and steadily grew in popularity thereafter, so Hōnen’s valorization of recitation nenbutsu was nothing new. What was new was his assertion that it was not inferior to meditative or contemplative nenbutsu because of its ease of performance. To view it as inferior was the common sense view, in line with perhaps 1500 years of the basic values in Buddhist thought and practice. Daochuo and Shandao were admittedly already shaking up this paradigm in seventh-century China, but they were outliers in their day. Daochuo’s work was, in fact, lost by the end of the Tang period, and Shandao only really became prominent in the Song. We have almost no evidence that he was noticed outside his own circle of disciples. In contrast, Hōnen had such an enormous impact that he himself was exiled and many of his disciples executed or banished. In my view, this can hardly be attributed to a broader recognition of the authority of nenbutsu, as it was already so pervasive in Japanese Buddhist culture by this time. I would argue that probably what was most disturbing and most inspiring in Hōnen’s episteme, what really brought him notice, was his assertion of the universal inability of people in his time to succeed in the traditional religious path of Buddhism. To put it another way, Hōnen taught the importance of seeing the world from a perspective of limitation. There is thus a “hermeneutic of limitation” in his writings that is quite striking, and highly unusual, perhaps even unprecedented in Japanese religious thought at that time, though again we see the seeds of this in Shandao. Considering the deep importance of the fin de dharma mentality in Sui and Tang Buddhist discourse in China, Genshin, and late Heian Buddhist discourse in Japan, Hōnen’s perspective is not entirely new, but it is not entirely justifiable doctrinally either. Only the most extreme view of mofa/mappō pessimism posited that during this period no one could succeed at the Buddhist path. Even Hōnen admits that one or two in a thousand might indeed succeed. We must, therefore, recognize his viewpoint as moving beyond doctrinal reiterations to existential recognition. As such this recognition is as much a conclusion as it is a presumption, but by labeling it “exis-

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tential,” I am recognizing it as being, in some sense, irrational, a kind of plea to “common sense,” whatever that means. Hōnen’s dictum pointing out the lack of saints in society, the ordinary nature of practically everyone, is a little different from Shandao’s view in that it occupies a far more central role in his doctrine. The idea behind Shandao’s declaration was that since there are few saints among us, meaning that few can become buddhas, we need a religious teaching that offers some meaningful hope for the many who are only “ordinary persons,” and if we study the canon, we find that the teachings in three sūtras that extol the means of attaining Birth in Amida’s Pure Land fill this need best of all. Hōnen’s view is that, in fact, we are deluding ourselves if we think anyone is going to become a buddha in this lifetime. So whereas the Pure Land doctrines pertaining to Amida Buddha and his vows and the nenbutsu practice are superlative because they offer meaningful religious hope to many in Shandao’s perspective, for Hōnen all forms of Buddhist teaching and practice are respected but presumed to ultimately lead to nenbutsu and Birth as the only goal that is realistically attainable. Although mentioned often in Hōnen’s writings, Hōnen tends to avoid the reductionist viewpoint of the mappō theorists and, instead, argues this conclusion in a way reflective of an emotional appeal but one, nevertheless, grounded in assumptions of empirically common understanding. To wit: if only those who could attain samādhi reached the Pure Land, if only those who could comprehend the many and complex teachings in the scriptures could attain nirvāṇa, if only those who could donate large sums to a monastery or those who could live unfailingly according to the moral precepts could be assured of a favorable rebirth, then those who succeeded in the Buddhist path would be exceedingly few in number. The notion that someone like Śākyamuni would set up a religion on this basis is absurd and morally indefensible. Instead, the religious system of Buddhism has a natural inclination to be as inclusive as possible. While compelling in a kind of humane way, one does not find this kind of rhetoric in the sutras themselves. If anything, the origin myth surrounding the first sermon when the Buddha hesitated to preach at all avers that Śākyamuni’s insights are overtly counter-intuitive, will alienate many, and only a few will directly benefit from them. Hōnen’s stance is thus as much a presumption as it is a conclusion. It was therefore easily critiqued, and Hōnen was much maligned by rival clerics in his day and in the first generations after his death as well. However, it also generated enormous support for him and excitement among the population as a whole. In effect, Hōnen was telling his audiences in the capitol, “I may look like a high-ranking cleric and I do work hard to keep the precepts, but I now know I have no chance of attaining buddhahood. This is precisely why I am so grateful to have encountered the three Pure Land sūtras and the powerful interpretations of Shandao and other Chinese and Japanese who have shown me the way.” Hearing this and looking upon someone so well respected and yet so humble clearly had a profound impact upon a great many people. After all, Hōnen’s popularity was seen as socially pernicious by the old guard. Many of those entrenched in power were all but certain that Hōnen was fomenting antinomian sentiments among the people by these teachings, even though he himself was never accused of violating his monastic code of conduct.

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In conclusion, it is worth restating that Hōnen was an unusually pivotal figure in the history of Japanese thought. The scale and immediacy of his impact was of an order that we simply do not see outside the likes of Prince Shōtoku, Kūkai, and Saichō, though one could argue that in both metrics the number of people Hōnen affected in his own lifetime was greater than the others. Hōnen’s story is also a story of nenbutsu itself, which in the end is much larger than even Hōnen in its historical footprint. Although Hōnen inherited the nenbutsu practice as a sign of special religious significance, he managed to redefine its symbolic content in a way that raised it to an entirely new level of transcendent power. At the same time, he also managed to convince the public that nenbutsu belonged to everyone. In Hōnen people encountered the idea for the first time that there could be a democratically distributed means of access to a buddha and a buddha’s realm, and that through the enactment of this means of access by the medium of the human voice, they too could see what the great saints had seen.

Works Cited Abbreviations CWS: Shinran 親鸞. The Collected Works of Shinran. Translated by Dennis Hirota. 2 vols. Kyoto: Jōdo Shinshū Hongwanji-ha, 1997. HZS: Hōnen zenshū 『法然全集』 [Complete Works of Hōnen]. 3 volumes. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1989. T: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 『大正新修大蔵經』. 85 vols. Edited by Junjirō Takakusu 高楠順次 郎 and Kaigyoku Watanabe 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai, 1924–34.

Other Sources Blum, Mark. 2000. Samādhi in Hōnen’s Hermeneutic of Faith and Practice. In Wisdom, Compassion and the Search for Understanding: The Buddhist Studies Legacy of Gadjin M. Nagao, University of Michigan Buddhist Studies Series, ed. Jonathan Silk, 61–94. Honolulu: University of Hawaii. Sueki Fumihiko 末木文彦. 2004. Hōnen no senchaku hongan nenbutsu shū senjutsu to sono haikei 「法然の『選擇本願念仏集』撰述とその背景」 [The Compilation of Hōnen’s Senchaku Hongan Nenbutsu Shū and its Background]. In Nenbutsu no seija hōnen 『法然: 念仏の聖 者』 [Hōnen, the Sage of the Nenbutsu], Nihon no meisō 『日本の瞑想』 [Meditation in Japan], ed. Shinkō Nakai 中井真孝, vol. 7, 85–110. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan.

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Mark L. Blum is Professor of Buddhist Studies and Shinjo Ito Distinguished Chair in Japanese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and is on the editorial boards of the International Association of Buddhist Studies and The Eastern Buddhist. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he received his PhD in Buddhist Studies at U.C. Berkeley in 1990. His research focuses primarily on medieval Japanese Buddhism, but he has published on all periods of Buddhism in Japan from its initial transmission in the sixth century to the modern period. He also works on topics common to East Asian Buddhism as a whole, including a history of nenbutsu called Think Buddha, Say Buddha: A History of Nianfo/Nenbutsu, and two translations of influential texts from the Chinese canon, the Nirvāṇa Sūtra (vol. 1 of which won the 2015 Khyentse Foundation Prize for Outstanding Translation Work) and the Guanjing shu of Shandao. In addition, he works on themes in Buddhist modernization, having co-edited Cultivating Spirituality: A Seishinshugi Anthology and is currently co-editing both Adding Flesh to Bones: Kiyozawa Manshi’s Seishinshugi in Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought and the Selected Works of D.T. Suzuki: Buddhist Studies. He is also leading a joint research project on Edo period, modern, and postmodern interpretations of the Tannishō and translating the Japanese-­language works of Hōnen.

Chapter 15

Zen Master Dōgen: Philosopher and Poet of Impermanence Steven Heine

1  Overview Zen master Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253), the founder of the Sōtō sect in medieval Japan, is often referred to as the leading classical philosopher in Japanese history and one of the foremost exponents of Mahayana Buddhist thought. His essays and sermons on numerous Buddhist topics included in his main text, the Shōbōgenzō 正 法眼蔵 (Treasury of the True Dharma-Eye), reflect an approach to religious experience based on a more philosophical analysis of topics such as time and temporality, impermanence and momentariness, the universality of Buddha-nature and naturalism, and the role of language and emotions in the experience of enlightenment, as well as practical matters such as ethics and the precepts or meditation and daily activity, than is generally found in the writings of most thinkers in the Japanese Zen school. Zen is known for celebrating itself as a “special transmission outside the scriptures/without reliance on words and letters” (J. kyōge betsuden/furyū monji 教外別 傳/不立文字), which steers clear of engaging in theoretical commentary. In addition to writing the Shōbōgenzō in vernacular Japanese while commenting on Chinese Zen texts, Dōgen also expressed his views through traditional Japanese five-line, 31-syllable waka 和歌 poetry as well as “Chinese verse” (J. kanshi 漢詩) and other kinds of writings in “Sino-Japanese” (J. kanbun 漢文).1 The vantage point of working in several different genres straddling Chinese and Japanese languages and sources gave Dōgen an incomparable philosophical perspective by which to mount his arguments and surmount various viewpoints with which he disagreed. 1  This material can be found in DZZ (7: 152–179). Translations used in this essay are all from my A Blade of Grass (Heine 1989: 85–125).

S. Heine (*) Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_15

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Dōgen’s works are frequently cited by some of the preeminent philosophers of modern Japan, especially representatives of the Kyoto School, including NISHIDA Kitarō 西田幾多郎 (1870–1845), TANABE Hajime 田辺元 (1889–1962), KARAKI Junzō 唐木順三 (1904–1980), WATSUJI Tetsurō 和辻哲郎 (1889– 1969), NISHITANI Keiji 西谷啓治 (1900–1990), and MASAO Abe 阿部正 雄 (1915–2006), all of whom cite Dōgen extensively in their works. His thought has also been frequently compared to a variety of the leading figures in modern western philosophy, including Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and Henri Bergson (1859– 1941) on time, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) on human freedom, Alfred North Whitehead (181–1947) on holistic metaphysics, or Thomas Merton (1915–1968) on mystical contemplation. The single main element in Dōgen’s unique approach to Buddhist theory and practice is his emphasis on the multiple meanings of “impermanence” (J. mujō 無 常) in personal experience and as the basis for Buddhist metaphysics. In particular, he emphasizes the radical impermanence of each and every phenomenon and the need to attain spiritual realization by acknowledging and identifying, rather than resisting or denying, the ephemeral nature of reality. The notion of impermanence or the transiency of all aspects of human and natural existence has always been a fundamental feature of the Buddhist teaching since the sermons of the Buddha dealing with the doctrines of anātman (“non-self”) and anitya (“impermanence”) regarding the insubstantial, selfless nature of things. However, Dōgen repeatedly cautions against any subtle tendency to view ultimate reality––nirvāṇa or the universal “Buddha-nature” (J. busshō 仏性)––as an eternal realm separable from, or independent of, impermanence. Instead, he stresses that a full, unimpeded, and perpetually renewed experience of impermanence and of the unity of “being-time” (J. uji 有時) is the touchstone and framework of every aspect of Buddhist meditative training and spiritual realization. Other key doctrines related to this are the “spontaneous hereand-now manifestation of Zen enlightenment” (J. genjōkōan 現成公案), the “eternal moment of meditation” (J. gyōji no ima 行事の今), the “immediacy of awakening” (J. nikon 而今), and “impermanence-Buddha-nature” (J. mujō-­busshō 無常仏性). In addition to looking at Dōgen’s poetic writings on aesthetic experience, later writings on karma and supernaturalism will be briefly examined for their contributions to his philosophical discussions of mystical awareness and the issues of commitment and responsibility involved in authentic religious practice.

2  Dōgen’s Philosophical Development Much of Dōgen’s emphasis on impermanence is based on his own personal experiences as recorded in his traditional biographies. Although many of the details of these records have been called into question by recent historiographical studies, the symbolism of the main events is still important for understanding the meaning of his philosophy of Zen. According to the traditional accounts, Dōgen was born into an

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aristocratic family at a time when Japan was beginning to be plagued by ongoing civil warfare at the dawn of the Kamakura era. Dōgen experienced profound sorrow and tragedy even at an early age; his father who was a powerful figure in a government in transition died when he was two, and his beautiful mother, a mistress of the father, died when he was seven. It is said that when Dōgen saw the smoke from incense rising and vanishing during his mother’s funeral, he was deeply moved by an awareness of the inevitability of death and the pervasiveness of ephemerality. The orphaned Dōgen had the opportunity through members of his noble family to be trained for a court career. However, he decided to renounce secular life in pursuit of the Buddhist Dharma. At first, he studied on Mount Hiei outside the capital city of Kyoto in the dominant Japanese Tendai sect, in which the central doctrine was an affirmation of “original enlightenment” (J. hongaku 本覚) or the inherent potentiality of all beings to attain the universal, primordial Buddha-nature. However, at the age of 13 Dōgen had a fundamental “doubt” about the doctrine of original enlightenment: If everyone is already enlightened in that they possess the Buddha-­ nature as a natural endowment, he wondered, then why is there a need for sustained meditative practice as required by the Buddha’s teaching? In other words, if the eternal truth exists, then what is the basis for actualizing this over the course of time? Unable to resolve this doubt during his studies with the early stage of the Japanese Rinzai Zen sect at Kenninji temple in Kyoto, Dōgen traveled to China, where the contemplative path of Zen had long become the dominant sect. In his initial stay on the mainland, Dōgen was disappointed by the apparent laxity of the Chinese Zen monks, who failed to inspire him to resolve his doubt. Then, on the verge of returning to Japan unfulfilled after two years of itinerancy, he met the Sōtō (C. Caodong) 曹洞 teacher, Rujing (J. Nyojō) 如淨 (1162–1228), who insisted on an unrelenting approach to meditation. Under the guidance of his new mentor, Dōgen attained an awakening experience of the “casting off of body-mind” (J. shinjin datsuraku 身心 脱落), or a continuing process of liberation from all intellectual and volitional attachments, which signified the resolution of his doubt about the necessity of sustained practice. Once he returned to Japan, Dōgen founded the Sōtō Sect in the Kyoto area in the early 1230s, but because of the sectarian disputes with Tendai and other Zen factions, he moved about a decade later to the remote, pristine mountains of Echizen (now Fukui) Province where he established Eiheiji temple, the center of the Sōtō sect today. Throughout his career, he was known for being a stern and strict, yet compassionate and caring, abbot and mentor for dozens of disciples who carried on the legacy of his teachings. Generally, his philosophy in Kyoto puts a great emphasis on impermanence and naturalism, while his later writings at Eiheiji tend to stress the ethics of enlightenment, yet in both stages he bases spiritual attainment on ongoing, unrelenting “sitting meditation” (J. zazen 坐禅). Dōgen’s Japanese waka poems and Chinese kanshi poems were for the most part written during periods of transition, such as when he returned to Japan after traveling in China in the late 1220s or the year he moved from Kyoto to Echizen in 1243, and therefore are particularly instructive for the way they express his distinctive approach to Buddhist philosophy.

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3  The Temporal Basis for Zen Theory and Practice The resolution of Dōgen’s doubt about original enlightenment was based on his new understanding of the meaning of a fully unified conception of time in relation to enlightenment. Prior to his breakthrough experience, Dōgen apparently presumed the conventional dichotomies between past, present, and future, now and then, life and death, impermanence and nirvana, time and eternity, and finitude and Buddha-­ nature. He thought that human beings were bound to the realms of death and impermanence and that enlightenment was beyond these limits. However, in casting off of body-mind, he realized that a single moment encompasses the unity of practice and attainment, so that practice is not prior to – nor does it lead up to – enlightenment, and enlightenment is not a teleological goal reached only at the end of practice. Rather, Dōgen writes in the Shōbōgenzō “Bendōwa” (“Discourse on Practicing the Way”) fascicle: Practice and realization are identical. Because one’s present practice is practice in realization, one’s initial negotiation of the Way in itself is the whole of original realization…As it is already realization in practice, realization is endless; as it is practice in realization, practice in beginningless. (DZZ 2: 470)

The identity of time and eternity, and of practice and realization, is also the key to Dōgen’s resolution of another dilemma concerning Zen theory. Prior to Dōgen’s arrival in China, Zen was divided on the issue of the relation between zazen meditation and interpreting kōans or philosophical enigmas. The Sōtō sect tended to favor a gradualist approach to zazen known as “silent illumination” (J. mokushō zen), whereas the Rinzai sect favored the Sudden Path based on “kōan introspection” (J. kanna zen). For Rinzai Zen, the quixotic kōan riddles or puzzles represented barriers to language and thought that catapulted the practitioner into a subitaneous awakening to nonconceptuality and silence. Although Dōgen emphasized the priority of “zazen-only” or “just sitting” (J. shikan taza 只管打坐), he also stressed the importance of analyzing and interpreting multiple perspectives embedded in paradoxical kōans as an exercise fully identical with sustained zazen traditions. For example, the Rinzai approach to the kōan, “Does the dog have Buddha-nature?”, which is the first case in the famous Mumonkan (Gateless Gate, C. Wumenguan, J. Mumonkan 無門関) collection, emphasizes that the answer, mu (literally “no,” which can imply non-being, negation, or nothingness), puts an end to discourse and cognition. Dōgen, however, interprets mu as suggesting many implications, including the ontological significance of emptiness or nothingness in addition to the skeptical epistemology implied by a silent response to all inquiries. Dōgen’s main discussion of the Mu kōan case is in the “Busshō” fascicle, in which he examines the notion of Buddha-nature in relation to negation and nothingness from nearly every imaginable angle. Here is a list of the various doctrines Dōgen enumerates, some of which are complementary while others are contradictory, but each plays off and reinforces, yet at the same time undermines, all of the

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other possibilities, so that they should be considered part of an inseparable hermeneutic package rather than as discrete doctrinal items: being-Buddha-nature whole-being Buddha-nature Buddha-nature manifest here-and-now impermanence-Buddha-nature nothingness-Buddha-nature emptiness-Buddha-nature denial of Buddha-nature

u-busshō 有仏性 shitsuu-busshō 悉有仏性 busshō-genzen 仏性現前 mujō-busshō 無常仏性 mu-busshō 無仏性 kū-busshō 空仏性 busshō-mu 仏性無

While emphasizing the parity of affirmation and negation, Dōgen does not overlook the critical and subversive aspect of language, whose foundation is the insubstantiality of nothingness-Buddha-nature, a notion he prefers to the denial of Buddha-­ nature or the termination of discussion regarding the implications of doctrine. Yet, every time Dōgen speaks of the merits of mu, he quickly reverses himself and relativizes this with an emphasis on the fact that in some versions of the case the answer is “yes” (J. u 有). In his discussions of the Mu kōan and many other cases in his writings, Dōgen’s method departs from other Zen thinkers and is quite distinctive in that he consistently challenges and intrudes upon the dialogues he discusses to create inversions and reversals of conventional readings and interpretations, such as by justifying the truth expressed by apparent losers in dialogues or questioning the merit of the apparent winners. Therefore, I refer to his view as the “hermeneutics of intrusion” in that, after going through preliminary stages of offering a comprehensive sweep of approaches to the topic of Buddha-nature, along with an atomized investigation of particular phrasings from the standpoint of multi-perspectivism that fosters the inversion of conventional readings, he takes license to alter the course of the dialogue in the kōan record. Dōgen changes the way the exchange transpires and makes suggestions and counter-suggestions in the spirit of the early Chinese Zen masters’ irreverent creativity that is aimed at enhancing the contemporaneous significance of the case for disciples in training.

4  The Multidimensional Nature of Temporality Dōgen, as first and foremost a Zen master, was primarily concerned with attaining and expressing enlightenment. His philosophy of time was aimed not at developing a speculative or abstract metaphysical theory but at clarifying and refining his existential experience of the casting off of body-mind. According to Dōgen, the unity of temporality harbors a complex, multidimensional experiential structure. First, Dōgen asserts the absolute identity of “being” (J. u 有), or all forms of existence, with time in that whatever exists is a “temporal manifestation” (J. ji 時).

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Nothing – including the ultimate reality of Buddha-nature – exists apart from the temporal domain that is actualized by sustained religious practice. According to Shōbōgenzō “Busshō,” “the Buddha-nature is not incorporated prior to attaining Buddhahood; it is incorporated upon the attainment of Buddhahood. The Buddhanature is always manifested with the attainment of Buddhahood” (DZZ 1: 18). That is, the Buddha-nature is neither an innate potentiality nor an attainable endpoint but is fully integrated with the continuing dynamism of impermanent reality. But, Dōgen stresses, it is also important to clarify the meaning of the impermanence of being-time encompassing Buddha-nature so that it is realized in a way that is free of delusions or misconception. Impermanence for Dōgen should not be conflated with the mere passing away of time in the sense that “time flies like an arrow,” which implies that time is separable from existence, a fleeting yet substantive movement passing from the past through the present and inexorably into the future towards a specific goal. Rather, impermanence is a dynamic, comprehensive nonsubstantive process that is coordinated with the dimension of continuity embracing the identity of all three tenses. The unity of being-time can be provisionally distinguished in terms of two inseparable levels. The first level of spontaneity, suddenness, or immediacy that occurs in each and every holistic moment right here and now, that is, in the eternal now that is beyond relativity in terms of dividing before and after, now and then, or life and death. However, this level of spontaneity should not be understood as mere quickness or rapidity in the conventional sense that time is flying by. Rather, spontaneity is supported by the second level of “continuity” (J. kyōryaku 經歴), which includes the irreversible sequence of past, present, and future in addition to the reversibility and mutual interrelation of the three tenses. In one of the most paradoxical passages in Buddhist philosophy Dōgen writes, “There is continuity from today to tomorrow, from today to yesterday, from yesterday to today, from today to today, and from tomorrow to tomorrow” (DZZ 1: 242). In other words, time is ever moving backwards as well as forwards so that spontaneity is sustained by a multidimensional continuity. The fullness of the moment realized in the casting off of body-mind is not passing away, but instead it harbors the unity of the tenses. Dōgen repeatedly stresses that the unity of being-time does not function in the human or anthropocentric dimension alone, but it is fully trans-anthropocentric in encompassing all forms of existence, and it is especially evident through a contemplation of the beauty of nature and the cyclicality of seasonal rotation. Like many Zen masters in China and Japan, as well as other East Asian mystics in the Daoist and Shintō traditions, Dōgen seemed most content after he moved from the secular, highly politicized strife in Kyoto to the splendor of the Echizen mountains, where he experienced a constant state of communion with the natural environment. In his writings he frequently equates the Buddha-nature with phenomena such as mountains, rivers, and the moon, and he eloquently expresses an aesthetic naturalist rapture in which the rushing stream is experienced as the voice of the living Buddha, while the mountain peak synesthetically becomes Buddha’s face.

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A central feature of aesthetic realization is Dōgen’s use of poetic language, especially elaborate metaphor and philosophical wordplay, to convey a sense of emotional fulfillment that enhances rather than opposes the enlightenment experience of detachment from worldly, materialistic concerns. One of Dōgen’s most eloquent poems was written near the end of his life as he returned from Echizen to the capital city for medical care. Marking the journey to Kyoto for the first time in 10 years, but for what would prove to be the last time, Dōgen wrote the following waka: Kusa no ha ni Kadodesuru mi no Kinobe yama Kumo obi oka aru Kokochi koso sure.

Like a blade of grass, My frail body Treading the path to Kyoto Seeming to wander Amid the cloudy mist on the mountain path. (DZZ 7: 175)

Here, the phrase “a blade of grass” expresses a convergence of departure and return, of feeling and detachment, and of the particularity of an individual sense of frailty with the universal insubstantiality and impermanence of phenomena.

5  Philosophical Implications in Dōgen’s Doctrinal Poems In this section, I cite additional examples of Dōgen’s Japanese and Chinese poetry, as seen in the context of medieval East Asian society from comparative literary and philosophical perspectives, in order to further comment on his doctrines of impermanence, in relation to (a) nature, which deals with the realm beyond and encompassing yet not necessarily transcending humanity; (b) emotions, which refers to the realm of human interiority or subjectivity; and (c) language, which is the vehicle for expression that can be considered in Zen either to distort and disrupt or to convey and enhance the multiple dimensions of truth and reality. The doctrinal poems can be analyzed for the way in which they suggest key aspects of Dōgen’s overall philosophy of religion as expressed in the Shōbōgenzō and other writings, as well as for their affinities with the religious-aesthetic tradition of medieval Japan, in which leading intellectuals, straddling Buddhism and Court aesthetic pursuits, fused spiritual goals with artistic and literary ideals. Dōgen’s waka often make an interesting use of poetic imagery and stylistic conventions but are noteworthy mainly for their didacticism. For example, the f­ ollowing waka seems to be an allusive variation on a famous love poem attributed to KAKINOMOTO no Hitomaro 柿本人麻呂 (662–708) and included in several noted anthologies such as Hyakunin isshū 百人一首by the famous poet FUJIWARA Teika 藤原定家 (1162–1241), who also integrated contemplation into his theory of composition and the Kindai shōka. The original poem conveys the nightlong torment of unrequited love that leaves one unable to sleep. It uses the pillow-word “ashihiki” to modify “mountain,” in that “pheasant” is literally a “mountain bird” (J.

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yamadori), in the first three lines, which provide the setting for the evocation of loneliness and despair in the last two lines: Ashihiki no Yamadori no o no Shidario no Naganagashi yo o Hitorikamonen.

Long night, Long as the Long tail of the pheasant: I find myself here Resting alone. (DZZ 7: 166)

Borrowing the opening lines of this poem so that some of the implications of the original are suggested, Dōgen turns the verse into an expression of the doctrine of the identity of “original enlightenment and marvelous sustained practice” (J. honshō myōshū 本証妙修): Ashihiki no Yamadori no o no Shidario no Naganagashi yo mo Akete keri kana.

Long night, Long as the Long tail of the pheasant: The light of dawn Breaking through. (quoted in Heine 1989: 47)

The image of imminent daybreak is implied in the source poem in the traditional sense of suggesting the sad parting of lovers, or more poignantly here, in a heightened awareness of the partner’s absence. In Dōgen’s version, however, the dawn explicitly and positively connotes the sudden appearance of self-illumination, an effective metaphor for Zen awakening, evoking the event of Śākyamuni’s enlightenment after his nightly vigils. The new poem conveys the interplay of delusion (night) and realization (dawn), and meditation (the “long” night of practice) and awakening (the disclosure of light), to show the unity underlying the different phases and the gradual unfolding of the enlightenment experience. Yet this waka can be criticized from a literary standpoint for using too much of the original verse; the device of variation tends to be more effective if the echoing is somewhat more concealed by the syntax.

6  Impermanence The background theme for the majority of doctrinal poems in Dōgen’s collections is the meaning of impermanence, which, as we have seen, is the fundamental concern in his life and thought. This issue, central to all forms of Buddhist philosophy, also marks the basic point of convergence between Dōgen and the East Asian literary tradition. According to biographical sources, Dōgen’s understanding of impermanence was based on a childhood feeling of anguish and abandonment because of the death of his parents, symbolized by the smoke drifting from the incense at his

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mother’s funeral. Although the traditional account may be exaggerated, it is clear that the deep sense of sorrow Dōgen experienced lies at the root of his philosophy of the unity of practice and realization. Inspired by his grief, Dōgen stresses the need for continuous meditation renewed each and every moment right here and now. In Shōbōgenzō zuimonki 正法眼蔵隨聞記, Dōgen argues repeatedly that “the first and foremost thing to be concerned with is detachment from the ego through the contemplation of impermanence” (DZZ 7: 57). The notion that coming to terms with impermanence is crucial to the abandonment of egocentrism is also stressed in the following passage in Gakudōyōjinshū 学道用心集, which Kyoto School philosopher and intellectual historian KARAKI Junzō cites as exemplifying Japanese lyrical eloquence about transiency. Here Dōgen emphasizes that the aspiration to attain enlightenment and the transformation of the self occur only when impermanence is authentically understood: When you contemplate impermanence genuinely, the ordinary selfish mind does not arise, and you do not seek fame or fortune because you realize that nothing prevents the swift flow of time. You must practice the Way as though you were trying to keep your head from being consumed by fire… If you hear the flattering call of the god Kimnara or the kalavinka bird, regard them as merely the breeze blowing in your ears. Even though you see the beautiful face of Maoqing or Xishi, consider that they are the morning dew obstructing your vision. (DZZ 5: 15–16)

Dōgen distinguishes between two perspectives: the inauthentic or selfish view, which negates or overlooks impermanence and presumes the stability of worldly concerns; and the enlightened standpoint of non-ego, in which a person’s awareness of the fleeting quality of time transmutes into a resolve for perpetual training. An authentic view of impermanence, according to Dōgen, leads one to identify practice and realization with the holistic moment that encompasses self and other, as well as the three tenses of time. Transiency is seen not as a barrier or obstacle to attainment but as the vehicle by which enlightenment is realized and renewed. In Shōbōgenzō “Bendōwa” he maintains, “Even if practiced by only a single person at one time, zazen imperceptibly reverberates throughout every dharma at all times. Therefore, it ceaselessly transmits the Buddha’s teaching in the past, present and future of the entire unlimited universe” (DZZ 2: 540). Impermanence as the very structure of reality must not be resisted but embraced through a sustained awareness of the formlessness of all forms. The theme of time and impermanence has long been dominant in Japanese literature. Poems from the era of the Manyōshū 万葉集 collection in the Nara period, including Hitomaro’s “long verse” (J. chōka) on the discovery of a body washed up on shore and Okura’s long verse, “On the Instability of Human Life,” explore the issues of grief and sadness about the transiency of life and the inevitability of death in a way that probably already reflects a Buddhist sensitivity. Okura’s poem concludes by contrasting the apparent stability of nature (which is “immovable as a rock”) with the unstoppability of the passing of time in the world of human concerns. The poets in the Heian era contributing to the Kokinshū 古今集 explore the meaning of time on a whole new level by describing the fading blossoms and evaporating dew as symbolic of the metaphysical reality of impermanence encompassing

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humans and nature. Poets such as ONO no Komachi 小野小町 (825–900) and ARIWARA no Narihara 在原業平 (825–880) no longer presuppose that there is a distinction between the human and natural worlds. Since both realms are governed by an inalterable flux, nature’s evanescence perfectly mirrors the emotional responses of affirmation and acceptance, of remorse and regret, generated in the self over time. In this period of poetry, time, according to Robert Brower and Earl Miner, is the fundamental theme “since it is the ground and being of almost all the literature of the age. The poets often wrote of time, but it is less a subject than a condition of reality that involves poet and subject matter, poet and other men, theme, and attitude” (Brower and Miner 1961: 216). The monogatari 物語 literature of the Heian period also features time as the basis and framework for creating thematic unity. Genji monogatari 源氏物語, for example, uses poignant images associated with the changing of the seasons to convey the ideal of mono no aware 物の哀れ, which is the feeling of longing and sorrow based on the recognition that all beautiful things and emotions, especially love, must soon pass away. Throughout the tale there runs a preoccupation with evanescence and death. One after another, the characters sicken and die, leaving the survivors with an ever-deeper sense of the transience of worldly things. In the Kamakura period, the opening lines of Heike monogatari 平家物語 as well as the Hōjōki 方丈記  by KAMO no Chōmei 鴨長明 evoke the impermanence underlying human struggles and passions through the imagery of the dying of flowers that once flourished, the brevity of springtime dreams, and the dust that is cast about by the winds of destiny. Medieval Japanese literature goes beyond mere sentimentality in capturing the more subtle and refined emotions at the ground of the experience of impermanence. But it is the yūgen literature of the poets and critics who contributed to the Shinkokinshū 新古今集 in the Kamakura period that reaches a new level, particularly with some of Dōgen’s contemporaries, including FUJIWARA Shunzei (1162– 1241), Teika, SAIGYŌ Hōshi 西行法師 (1118–1190), and Chōmei. Largely based on the meditative practice of “cessation-contemplation” (J. shikan), impermanence is experienced by yūgen writers in terms of the attainment of the true mind (J. ushin) unbound by artifice and distraction. Teika recommends that waka should be composed only when “one is fully immersed in the unique realm of the serene composure and concentration of the mind.” The serenity of the yūgen ideal does not bemoan or resist time. Time is the key not to the problems but to the resolution of existence. Yūgen poetry views nature as redemptive because the state of solitude or desolation in the midst of natural surroundings purifies and liberates ordinary feelings about change. The supreme value of loneliness is expressed in Jakuren’s waka, “Loneliness/The essential color of a beauty/Not to be defined:/Over the dark evergreens, the dusk/That gathers on far autumn hills” (quoted in Brower and Miner 1961: 261). Here, the notion of “loneliness” or “solitude” (J. sabi) becomes a healing experience that embraces impermanence in its most fundamental meaning, rather than viewing it as a pessimistic aspect of human existence. Impermanence for both Dōgen, as reflected in the majority of his verses on the transition of the seasons, and the literary tradition is intimately related to the emotions and the issue of illusion. Impermanence necessarily elicits a personal response

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because change and variability affect self-identity. The attitude that is generated in the person or subject concerning the evanescence of the natural or objective world may be based either on sensing transiency because of experiences of sadness and loss, or introspectively reflecting on its significance through contemplation. As the contemplative stance develops, ordinary emotions are surpassed by means of an impersonal and holistic insight into the non-substantive structure of reality. Yet contemplation does not negate the emotions altogether, and the relation between the contemplative and emotional perspectives is variable and complex. Understanding the instability that coexists with impermanence also leads to a concern with illusion since the status of self and things is fundamentally challenged. In this world of floating dreams and evaporating dew, the question becomes: Is there anything enduring and “really real”? Yoshida Kenkō writes, “The world is a place of such uncertainty and change that what we imagine we see before our eyes really does not exist…. External things are all illusions. Does anything remain unaltered even for the shortest time?” (Yoshida 1981: 77) The degree to which the question of illusion is resolved depends on the level of subjectivity attained in reflecting on the meaning of impermanence. The following kanshi verse, which accompanies one of two famous portraits of Dōgen, uses an intricate wordplay involving the word “real” to make a statement about the inseparability of truth and illusion: If you take this portrait of me to be real, Then what am I, really? But why hang it there, If not to anticipate people getting to know me? Looking at this portrait, Can you say that what is hanging there Is really me? In that case your mind will never be Fully united with the wall (as in Bodhidharma’s wall-gazing meditation cave). (DZZ 4: 250)

The last line alludes to Bodhidarma’s (the first Zen patriarch) practice of zazen while gazing at the wall of a cave for nine years. There is a delightful, self-deprecatory irony in this verse, given the important ritual role portraits play in Zen monastic life as objects of veneration, substituting for a deceased master on ceremonial occasions, a convention Dōgen obviously questions but does not necessarily reject.

7  Nature Dōgen stresses in “Bendōwa” that the instantaneous practice of zazen at once spreads to and is illuminated by the “Buddha activity in which earth, grass, trees, walls, tiles, and pebbles are all involved” (DZZ 2: 464). Thus zazen engages and completes the realization of each and every phenomenon. The mind, therefore, must heed and identify with the mountains and rivers that embody and reveal the Buddha-­ nature. This results in the authentication of the mind, or the realization of the

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universal mind, which experiences the synesthesia of “mountains flowing” or the phantasm of “mountains walking in the sky or on water”; the paradox of the “flowing and non-flowing of the water”; the irony of asking “not whether the observer is enlightened by the mountain but whether the mountain is enlightened by the observer”; and the holistic vision of seeing “a single plum blossom initiating the arrival of spring” (the image of blossoms is particularly emphasized in quite a few kanshi verses). Yet Dōgen is not trying to highlight the attainment of an altered state of consciousness or extraordinary perception; he wants to point to the awareness of nature as it is in its naked or unadorned form. In his creative rewriting of the traditional saying that the originally empty Buddha takes on form “thus or like [nyo] the moon is reflected in water,” Dōgen maintains in Shōbōgenzō “Tsuki” (The Image of the Moon), “‘Thus’ is [nothing other than] the ‘moon in water.’ It is water-thus, moon-thus, thus-thus, in-thus. ‘Thus’ is not ‘like’ [in the sense of similarity, resemblance, or analogy]. ‘Thus’ is ‘as it is’ (ze) [or ‘nothing other than’].” He stresses that beyond the question of whether water does or does not flow is the realization that “water is only thus-itself-the-true-form [nyoze-jissō] of water” (DZZ 1: 262). In the following Chinese kanshi, Dōgen evokes the directness and immediacy of primordial nature through a deceptively simple description. Any reference to individual response has been eliminated, and the poem expresses a full, unimpeded subjective realization by means of harmony with nature: Every morning, the sun rises in the east; Every night, the moon sets in the west; Clouds gathering over the foggy peaks; Rain passes through the surrounding hills and plains. (DZZ 3: 34)

This Chinese verse has an affinity with Japanese poetry, in which nature is generally seen as either a mirror or a model for people. In the first sense, nature reflects human experience and attitudes. Since both humans and nature are bound by the law of incessant change, nature becomes the perfect symbol to represent the way that a human’s state of mind is affected by time. For example, the sorrow of lost or ­unrequited love is seen as resembling fading blossoms, or loneliness is felt like a chilling autumn wind. Yet nature is also depicted as a mystery of transcendental oneness that encompasses and reconciles the transiency that humanity experiences. In the early stages of poetry, such as Okura’s “Lament on Instability,” nature is seen as enduring and stable in a way that contrasts with, and may either console or mock, humanity’s travails and sense of uncertainty. In the yūgen poetry of the period of the Shinkokinshū waka collection from the early Kamakura era, an experience of full immersion in nature comes to have a healing or soteriological quality when viewed from the contemplative gaze of meditation. Yūgen poetry is known for its emphasis on pure nature description as the dominant mode of expression. The depiction of nature is, at times, so simple and direct that it appears to border on realism, as if striving for a vivid and realistic presentation of intriguing aspects of nature experienced by a distant subject. Yet the intended effect is nearly opposite to realism in that nature depicted in its primordial state is

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meant to completely mirror the realization of authentic subjectivity with mind. The aim of yūgen poetry is to overcome the gap between poet or subject and poetic object or topic in order to encounter and capture the essentially unified experience of primordial reality. As literary critic KONISHI Jin’ichi suggests, “The contemplative expressive approach involves the bracketing of a poet’s individual impressions and drawing near to the very essence of the subject. Once the essence has been regained, the poet will recommence grasping forms manifested on a more superficial level of awareness…[leaving the reader with] a sense of profound mystery and difficulty” (Konishi 1981: 204). Thus nature is no longer anything external but rather a contemplative field coterminous with the subjective realization of the mind. The poetic description of nature becomes a spontaneous expression of the attainment of subjective realization. For example, the waka, “About the mountain crest/A brush of cloud floating, Wild geese fly in files passing/As the moon is hiding behind/A pine tree on the ridge, carries the headnote/At no time are delusory thoughts to arise in the mind.” The subjectivity referred to in the title is deliberately hidden by the depiction of nature in the verse. In fact, there may not appear to be any connection between title and verse (as in Dōgen’s verse, “Original Face,” which deals with the turning of the four seasons rather than human subjectivity), thereby setting up the paradox that the greater the realization, the less direct or more veiled the expression, so that the latter does not interfere with but allows the complete and unimpeded unfolding of the former. A famous waka by Teika, which culminates in the image of “descending autumn dusk” (J. aki no yūgure), also used by Saigyō 西行 (1118–1190) and others, conveys the process of liberating subjectivity through an evocation of a transpersonal atmosphere of “supreme desolation” (J. sabi): Miwataseba Hana mo monuji mo Nakarikeri Ura no tomaya no Aki no yūgure.

Looking out Past where there are Cherry blossoms or crimson leaves, To the grass-thatched huts by the bay Clustered in the descending autumn dusk. (quoted in Heine 1989: 63)

The first three lines imply a contemplative flight beyond delimiting horizons that are historical and perceptual in character. The author seeks a path transcending both the poetic tradition, which has relied so heavily on the conventional seasonal images of blossoms and leaves for interpreting transiency, and the ordinary arena of perception, in which the colorful yet fading natural forms seems so irresistibly attractive. The subject thus becomes directly involved in a transcendental experience of nature in its primordial state, unclouded by preconceptions, and the dreary landscape ironically serves as the source of the highest affirmation. The desolation in Teika’s verse may seem at odds with Dōgen’s apparent celebration of the anthropomorphized mountains and rivers, yet both poems are concerned

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with the attainment of a holistic vision in which the vitality and dynamism of nature may redeem or purify the subject. The structure consists of a negation of the subject through an affirmation of the object of perception. This paradoxical affirmation/ negation is based on a realization of the unity of the contemplative field not bound by distinctions. The aim of any attitude is to point beyond personal response to the realm containing and transcending particular perspectives. The quest for both Dōgen and the poets was to express the depths of experience while using the fewest words so as not to obfuscate the true vision. The expression must be a direct manifestation of the mind’s profundity, bypassing false objectification, which reflects an inauthentic personal response to nature. It thereby creates a linguistic field of associations and multiple nuances that manifests the contemplative field of authentic subjectivity. The optimal means of conveying this contemplative stance is a pure description of “water-thusness,” “the sun rising in the east,” “the autumn dusk descending,” or “rice in the bowl, water in the bucket.” These are deceptively simple linguistic devices for spontaneously disclosing the ultimate realization.

8  Emotions Emotion, or subjectivity, is a key to interpreting the main similarities and differences between Dōgen the religious seeker and medieval literature based on yūgen. According to KARAKI Junzo’s analysis, the high point in the development of the view of impermanence in Japanese intellectual history is the overcoming of any trace of emotionalism in Dōgen’s religious thought. Dōgen casts off inauthentic deceptions and fixations through a complete acceptance of impermanence in its fundamental state. He asserts, for example, that the identity of “birth-death, and arising-desistance, is itself [nothing other than] nirvana.” In contrast, Japanese poetry, as Robert Brower and Earl Miner suggest, considers that “the great enemy of nature and human affairs is time… [for time] is a force over which man has no control at all” (Cited in Brower and Miner 1961: 310, 375). Yet to dispute Karaki’s conclusion, at least in part, Dōgen’s poetry does resemble literary expressions in that it shows a remarkable range of emotions, from the celebration of moments of ephemeral beauty to the expression of loneliness, longing, and regret. At the same time, yūgen poetry expressing sabi completes the emotional cycle in emphasizing melancholic resignation or desolation. Transiency for Dōgen and the Japanese religious-aesthetic tradition can be interpreted either “negatively” as a source of suffering, grief, despair, and desolation, or “positively,” as a source of celebration of the promise of renewal and as a symbol of awakening. Although transiency ultimately discloses nonsubstantiality, the subjective attitudes it evokes serve as a kind of necessary illusion or an illusion surpassing illusion in the quest for a transcendental standpoint. The “negative” view of impermanence includes Dōgen’s personal lament for the loss of his parents as well as the

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poignant sorrow at the passing of things represented by the fading spring light and the cicada’s melancholy call. The next poem recalls the Kokinshū era with its use of the pivot-word higurashi, meaning “cicada,” but also suggesting the “setting sun” (J. higure), the message the insect’s sound conveys: Yama fukami Mine ni mo tani ni mo Koe tatete Kyō mo kurenu Higurashi zo naku.

Rising, as the mountain Peaks and valleys deepen – The twilight sound of the cicada Singing of a day Already gone by. (DZZ 7: 164)

Yet a deeper “negative” aspect is the sense of ontological anguish at the universality and inevitability of loss, symbolized by the evaporating dew and the withering of plants and trees in other waka. The “positive” interpretation of transiency is based on the possibilities for renewal and continuity associated with the spring blossoms as well as the moral imperative for sustained practice at every moment. Several poems go beyond the relativity of celebration and desolation to suggest the non-­ substantive moment of transition without substratum or duration as the metaphysical ground of interpenetrating or overlapping seasonal manifestations. These poems express the original face of primordial time in a way that resembles celebration but reveals a more fundamental affirmation of impermanence “as it is” (J. arinomama). In his interpretation of such doctrines as sangai-yuishin (“triple world is mind only”), sokushin-zebutsu (“this very mind is itself the Buddha”), and shinjingakudō (“learning the Way through the mind”), Dōgen argues that the universal mind as the ground of phenomenal reality is neither an independent possession nor an entity that views the world as a spectator from a distance. Rather, it is indistinguishable from “walls, fences, tiles, and stones,” “mountains, rivers, and earth,” or “sun, moon, and sky.” The aim of religious experience is to purify and liberate the individual mind to reach an attunement with the holistic, formless truth of concrete reality. Therefore, the perspective of impermanence is determined by the condition of the mind, or the level of authentic subjectivity attained through a realization of the universal mind through observing transiency. The observer must cast off his or her status as spectator and become fully immersed in the unfolding of impermanence. Since the incessancy of change is inalterable, it is incumbent on the mind of the beholder to transform the negative impression on the individual mind into, first, a positive outlook, and, ultimately, a transcendental awareness so that the limited, negative view is converted into a lyrical, holistic standpoint. Emotions play a complex and potentially productive role in the process of awakening the authentic mind. The poem highlights the underlying connection between a personal attraction to form and color and the development of a spiritual realization of formlessness by focusing on the word medekeri (lit. “love” or “attraction”) in the final line, iro ni medekeri (lit. “attracted to form”). This phrase reinforces Dōgen’s emphasis on the role of an emotional attunement to natural beauty. The word mede-

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keri (also pronounced ai), which also appears in the final sentence of the first paragraph of the Shōbōgenzō “Genjōkōan” (“Spontaneous Realization of Zen Enlightenment”) fascicle as part of the compound word aijaku (“sadness”) suggests either desirous or compassionate love, depending on the context; both meanings seem implicit here. The following waka plays off the image of the full moon, a symbol in the Buddhist tradition for the universality of Buddha-nature, and in Court poetry a symbol for longing and consolation: Ōzora ni Kokoro no tsuki o Nagamuru mo Yami ni mayoite Iro ni medekeri.

Contemplating a clear moon Reflecting a mind as empty as the open sky Drawn by its beauty, I lose myself In the shadows it casts. (DZZ 7: 168)

This poem contains other terms highly suggestive from a Buddhist standpoint: iro (form, the first of the five aggregates that constitute human existence, and the objects of desire); ōzora (the “open sky,” symbolizing emptiness or nonsubstantiality); and mayou (to “lose myself” in the ensnarements of self-imposed ignorance, a concept that is paradoxically identified with enlightenment in Mahayana thought). Through this imagery, the poem asserts the productive interplay between moon and mind, light and dark, and delusion and awakening. To be drawn by the moon for the beauty of its form and color (J. iro) is a self-surpassing experience because it eventually leads to an understanding that the moonlight as the source of illumination mirrors the enlightened mind free of distractions. In responding to the light, however, even a mind originally or “potentially clear” (J. ōzora) invariably becomes lost (J. mayou) in the shadows. Yet just as the shadow is a reflection of the true source, interaction with concealed brightness is also edifying. Thus emotions represent both turmoil and the inspiration to awaken from the bondage they cause. The self must continually lose itself in the shadowy world of impermanence to ultimately realize itself liberated from, yet involved in, the unceasing process of continual change. This recalls the doctrine of ippō-gūjin (“total exertion of a single dharma”) expressed in “Genjōkōan,” which also uses the moon as a metaphor to disclose the interplay of delusion and enlightenment: “Through the unity of body-mind, forms are seen and voices are heard. Although they are realized intimately, it is not like shadows reflected in a mirror, or the moon in water. When one side is illuminated, the other side is concealed” (DZZ 1: 3). In a similar vein, Teika argues that the value of poetic composition is a reflection of the ability of the mind to be actively involved with time and nature, so that “mind and words function harmoniously like the right and left wings of a bird.” In the following waka Teika examines the role of the mind, “Why blame the moon?/For whether gazing on its beauty/Summons tears,/Or whether it brings consolation,/ Depends upon the mind alone.” Teika and Dōgen concur that the mind can be either mired in deception or rectified and liberated from distraction and vacillation based on the realization of the mind’s capacity to overcome its self-imposed attachments. They see the authentic mind arising from a discipline or cultivation of contempla-

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tive awareness, which requires the proper physical posture (just-sitting) and scrupulous concentration, but culminates in a spontaneous or effortless experience. As indicated in the poems of both Dōgen and Teika, the genuine subjectivity of the mind can be understood only in terms of a holistic view of nature symbolized by the moon. It is the experience and description of nature by the authentic subject that seizes on and determines the relativity of the illusion and the truth of impermanent phenomena.

9  Language In contrast to some approaches in Zen, which regard verbal (oral and written) communication as unnecessary or inherently misleading, Dōgen does not reject or seek to abandon language. Rather, he views words and letters as an inexhaustible reservoir of meaningful ambiguities, all of which are embedded and at times concealed in the expressions off everyday speech. In Tenzōkyōkun 典座教訓, Dōgen recounts how he was instructed in the role of language in the practice of Dharma by an elderly monk he met at the beginning of his trip to China. According to “Tenzōkyōkun,” when Dōgen asked the significance of “words and letters,” the monk responded, “One, two, three, four, five… Nothing is concealed throughout the entire universe!” (DZZ 6: 14). This is echoed in “Bendōwa,” which asserts, “Let it go and it fills your hand – it is unbound by singularity or multiplicity. Speak and it has already filled your mouth – it is not restricted by lesser or greater” (DZZ 2: 460). In Shōbōgenzō “Sesshin sesshō” (“Disclosing Mind, Disclosing Nature”) Dōgen stresses the role of “disclosing,” “preaching,” or “explaining” (“setsu” or “toku”) the Dharma: “The essential function of all Buddhas and patriarchs is disclosing mind, disclosing nature. Their everyday life is disclosing mind, disclosing nature; walls, tiles and stone are disclosing mind, disclosing nature…. There is no disclosing without nature, and there is no mind without [the function of] disclosing” (DZZ 1: 450). Thus, all forms of oral and written communication – sūtras, epistles, sermons, sayings, poetry, and philosophy – are part of the continual unfolding of the awakened mind. Therefore, Dōgen’s view is that language is essential to the transmission of enlightenment. Not only does he deny the view that language is inherently misleading, but he insists that the experience of awakening can and must be symbolically disclosed. Conversely, if the expression of Dharma appears to be incorrect, Dōgen suggests that the mistake involves a problematic understanding and not the deficient nature of symbols. Language neither restricts nor conflicts with reality but is an infinite resource for conveying the unlimited meanings of the mind awakened to the multiple aspects of impermanence embodied by nature. Nor is discourse to be understood simply as a discardable “skillful means” (J. hōben 方便) that is used to gain enlightenment and then abandoned once the goal is attained. Discourse is an activity wholly in keeping with true realization, which must be interpreted and discovered continually through language or as an event of expression.

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This standpoint seems quite close to the poetic ideal of yojō, the aesthetic plenitude of overtones of feeling that is intimately connected with yūgen. “Yojō” implies that the brevity and simplicity of poetic depictions of nature is based on having too much to say or reveal about the mind, so that, writes Chōmei, “many meanings are compressed into a single word, [and] the depths of feeling are exhausted yet not expressed” (quoted in Brower and Miner 1961: 269). According to Teika, the “poetic masterpiece must have… a profundity and sublimity of mind and creativity of expression allowing an eminently graceful poetic configuration to emerge with an aesthetic plenitude that overflows [or is outside of] words” (Karaki 1967, 320). The notion of a plenitude overflowing words is expressed by Dōgen that rethink the motto “A special transmission outside the teachings (kyōge betsuden)/No reliance on words and letters (furyū monji),” an apocryphal saying attributed to Bodhidharma and long associated with the Rinzai Zen approach that Dōgen criticizes. Dōgen reads the motto not as an assertion of the priority of silence over speech, as practiced by many of the followers of Rinzai, but as a sign that verbal expression is a creative resource that reflects and enhances the multifaceted perspective of realization. In so doing, Dōgen seems to draw inspiration not only from Chinese Zen dialogues and poetry, but from waka techniques that exploit various kinds of wordplay to plumb the depths of language from the standpoint of a spiritualized, aesthetic intentionality. In the following waka, both of which were delivered during his trip to the Rinzai center in Kamakura at the request of the shogun in 1247–1248, Dōgen critiques the Rinzai approach of the Zen motto. One verse comments on the first part of the motto regarding a special transmission, which is usually said to see enlightenment as outside of the world of conceptual discourse and to support the use of absurd utterances in kōan cases in order to create an impasse with language and thought that requires a breakthrough to a nonconceptual and nondiscursive understanding. The Rinzai view, Dōgen feels, fosters subtle dichotomies between language and Dharma, thought and attainment, and thus the relative and the absolute. Dōgen’s verse uses several types of wordplay to reinterpret the motto so that it suggests a profound and paradoxical interplay or creative tension between the realms of language and enlightenment: Araiso no Nami mo eyosenu Takayowa ni Kaki mo tsukubeki Nori naraba koso.

The Dharma, like an oyster Washed atop a high cliff: Even waves crashing against The reefy coast, like words, May be reached but cannot wash it away. (DZZ 7: 155)

On first reading, this poem seems to support the conventional Zen view. The “Dharma” (J. nori) resides on a lofty “peak” (J. takayowa), above and aloof from the controversy and disputation of the world of discourse, symbolized by the “crashing waves” (J. nami) of the “reefy [Echizen] coast” (J. araiso). Thus the Dharma is located “outside the scriptures” and is not accessible to the written word of the sūtras or the recorded sayings. But the full meaning of the waka rests on the use of

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pivot-words and a relational word whose connotations are so complex and interwoven that they cannot be translated easily. The pivot-words involve the phrase kaki mo tsukubeki, which has at least three implications. First, “kaki” can mean “oyster,” which implies that the Dharma is not a remote entity above the waves but finds its place beyond the water precisely because of the perpetual motion of the waves. This image plays off the traditional Mahāyāna analogy of ocean and waves representing universality (absolute) and particularity (relative). Thus the oyster has been cast out of the universal background by the movement of a particular wave but must return to its source for sustenance. In addition, kaki means “writing,” suggesting the total phenomenon of “language and communication” (J. kotoba), modified by the verb “tsukubeki,” which itself is a pivot-word meaning both “must reach” and “must exhaust.” The twofold significance of the phrase “language must reach/must exhaust” heightens the importance of the role of words and accentuates the creative tension between language and Dharma. The Dharma must be expressed. It cannot escape the necessity of discourse, yet the affirmation of the role of language contains the admonition not to use up or exhaust the Dharma through unedifying discussion. The effect of this phrase is enhanced by the relational word “nori,” which means “seaweed” in addition to “Dharma.” Seaweed makes an association with waves and, like kaki as oyster, highlights the intimate connection between the conceptual discourse of scripture and the realization of Dharma. The following waka uses the second part of the motto on non-reliance on words to stress the priority of language over silence: Ii suteshi Sono koto no ha no Hoka nareba Fude ni mo ato o Todome zari keri.

Not limited By language, It is ceaselessly expressed; So, too, the way of letters Can display but not exhaust it. (DZZ 7: 159)

The subject of the poem is not explicitly identified, but the context suggests that it refers to the Dharma. Like the waka just mentioned, this one can be interpreted in at least two ways. One view, based on the title and the opening line, ii suteshi (lit. “renounce or cast off speech”), is that the waka asserts the conventional Zen negation of language. A literal rendering that supports this understanding would be “Because the Dharma is outside of language, words are renounced, and the way of letters also leaves no trace on it.” In a second, aesthetic interpretation, “nonreliance” is transformed into a positive approach to language because the Dharma is expressed in, but is not exhausted by, words. Every form of speech and writing is Dharma. Dharma is not limited to any particular aspect of expression, so all possibilities for communication must be explored, and there is no risk of exhausting their source. “Ii suteshi” now means that words are cast off precisely as they are employed; their utility is identical to the act of renouncing them. Similarly, the “way of letters” (J. fude), a term associated with literary and scriptural texts as well as calligraphy,

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“leaves no trace” (J. ato o todome). It does not interfere with or impede but perpetually reveals the multifaceted significance of experience, which, whether enlightened or unenlightened, is a manifestation of the Dharma. “Fude” displays the Dharma without using it up. Silence, in the special yojō sense of mysterious depths overflowing words, is advocated by Dōgen not out of an inability to express, but because the Dharma has too many levels of meaning, all of which cannot be held by any particular oral or written discourse. Dōgen’s poetic and philosophical works are characterized by a continual effort to express the inexpressible by perfecting imperfectable speech through the creative use of wordplay, neologism, and lyricism, as well as the recasting of traditional expressions. According to Dōgen’s view of the multiple levels of the aesthetics of language, the symbol is real, and reality, in turn, is symbolic. On one level, the symbolism of language – its logic and ambiguities, conventions and deliberate distortions, grammatical structure, and fantastic imagery  – is considered real inasmuch as it is a direct emanation of an enlightened perspective of reality. A second level indicates that the phenomena and events, beings and circumstances that constitute the so-called reality of existence are symbolic, and, if truly understood, they express a scriptural discourse on the meanings of impermanence. Dōgen argues that the true nature of language is not limited to words but encompasses the full range of human and natural phenomena. In its daily activity each and every aspect of the universe is a manifestation of impermanence, and, as such, each and every aspect of the universe is perpetually uttering the inner meaning of the sūtras. “When committed to the study of the sūtras,” Dōgen writes in Shōbōgenzō “Jishō-zammai” (“Self-realized Samadhi”), “they truly appear. The sūtras are fully manifested throughout the ten directions of the entire universe as mountains, rivers, the whole earth, grass, trees, self, and others” (DZZ 2, 197). As Dōgen also indicates in a group of five waka on the Lotus of the Wondrous Dharma Sūtra (S. Saddharmapuṇḍarīka sūtra), the Mahāyāna scripture should not be understood merely as a transcribed text. Rather, the changing colors of the mountain peak and the murmuring valley streams, the cacophony and echoes of the bustling marketplace, even the monkey’s cry reverberating in the hills all resonate with the call of the sūtra. Furthermore, the sūtra is beyond sound; the fleeting image of a horse galloping past the streaming sunlight lyrically evokes the multiple perspectives of impermanence that are the central message of the scripture. On the third and fundamental level of language, unreality is seen as real precisely because it is symbolic. The third level suggests that the apparently unreal or illusory is basically real in that it, too, represents a symbolic manifestation of impermanence. In that light, Dōgen transmutes a number of Zen terms that conventionally indicate the false or fantastic, such as a “dream within a dream” (J. muchū-setsumu), “painted rice-cake” (J. gabyō), “flower in the sky” (J. kūge), or “entangling vines” (J. kattō), into expressions of transcendental reality that lie beyond the distinctions of truth and untruth. As he writes in Shōbōgenzō “Gabyō” (“Painted Rice-cake”), “If there is no painted rice-cake, there is no remedy to satisfy hunger. Furthermore, satisfying hunger, satisfying no-hunger, not satisfying hunger, and not satisfying no-hunger can be neither attained nor expressed without painted hunger”

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(DZZ 1: 273). Thus the painting of the rice-cake and hunger, or symbolic expression, is more fulfilling than the tangible cake or physical feeling. The third level goes beyond the assertion of the efficacy and universality of discourse in the first two levels to stress the underlying non-differentiation whereby reality and unreality merge as symbol. Dōgen also affirms the power of symbolism in citing his master Rujing’s verse, “The original face has no birth and death/Spring is in plum blossoms and enters into a painting.” According to Dōgen’s commentary, spring is not to be identified with the particular image of the flower. Rather, the atmosphere surrounding the entire painting creates and fulfills the experience of spring. According to Shōbōgenzō “Muchū-setsumu,” having a dream is not a metaphor, but “the reality of the Buddha Dharma.” Thus any subtle gap or distance is fully eliminated by means of an unimpeded, reciprocal identity. Dreams, painting, and art are not “like” reality: they do not stand for the real or represent it in either a conceptual or nonconceptual way; they truly and completely manifest its form. There is no “symbol” in the sense of an idea standing for reality, because reality and idea are “thus the moon-reflected-in-water.” Dōgen’s standpoint on the complete fusion of polarities in concrete imagery is expressed in the following waka, which intertwines the images of moon and dewdrops that are so crucial to Buddhist and poetic expressions of impermanence and nature: Yo no naka wa Nani ni tatoen Mizudori no Hashi furu tsuyu ni Yadoru tsukikage.

To what shall I liken the world? Moonlight, reflected In dewdrops, Shaken from a crane’s bill. (DZZ 7: 179)

According to this verse, the entire world is fully contained in each and every one of the innumerable dewdrops, each one symbolic of the inexhaustible contents of all impermanent moments. Here the dewdrops no longer suggest illusion in contrast to reality because they are liberated by their reflection of the moon’s glow. Conversely, the moon as a symbol of Buddha-nature is not an aloof realm since it is fully merged in the finite and individuated manifestations of the dew. Just as the moon is one with the dewdrops, the poem itself becomes one with the setting it depicts. For Dōgen, all expressions spontaneously and completely realize the authentic mind, which is one with the totality of transient reality. The poem is not a metaphorical pointer to a metaphysical doctrine but an evocative religious-aesthetic embodiment of the experiential depths of the mind attuned to the impermanence of nature.

10  Ethics, Karma, and Supernaturalism in the Late Dōgen In the last 10 years before his death, when he was primarily residing at Eiheiji in the countryside, Dōgen shifted his philosophical concerns from an emphasis on the metaphysics of the temporality of Buddha-nature to more concrete ethical questions of the rewards and punishments for one’s deeds and intentions (Heine 2006).

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Perhaps because he was primarily occupied at this stage of his career with initiating new monks from the region who were relatively unschooled in the subtleties of Buddhist doctrine, Dōgen stressed a literal interpretation of the notion of karma or moral causality. According to Dōgen’s writings of this period, every action generates a retributive consequence, and only authentic repentance and acknowledgment of one’s guilt can offset the effects of evil karma. Yet, by emphasizing the moment-­ to-­moment cause-and-effect process of karmic retribution  – which is inseparable from nirvana as part of the Bodhisattva’s commitment to compassion – Dōgen is consistent with his earlier philosophy, which stressed impermanence and being-time. Although to some extent Dōgen’s interest in this topic was apparent from the time of his first temple in Kyoto in the 1230s, the writings of the late period are particularly intent on establishing ritual precedents and are very much emulative of Song Chinese Zen sources. Dōgen’s concern with formulating the policies and customs of monastic life is reflected in the Eihei shingi 永平清規 materials, particularly the Chiji shingi 知事清規, composed in 1246 shortly after the naming of Eiheiji; it provides instructions on the functions for four main leaders of the temple: director (J. kan’in), rector (J. ino), chief cook (J. tenzo) and supervisor (J. shissui). In each of the four sections on these positions, Dōgen quotes the Chanyuan qing­ guei 禪苑清規 verbatim, or close to it, as is also the case in a number of his shingi writings from the Shōbōgenzō and elsewhere. It is significant that Dōgen introduces the sets of instructions with various examples of kōan cases about the role of leadership in Zen temples. The kōans show Tang masters standing in disregard and defiance of rules and regulations. Assimilating the regulations of institutional structure with an emphasis of radical individuality or anti-structure is a rather remarkable innovation in itself. Although Dōgen is sometimes known for a “clergy for clergy’s sake” (J. shukke shijo shugi) approach, his rules texts indicate not only his thoughts on practice but also his plans for integrating the lay community into the structures of monastic life. On several occasions where Dōgen subtly alters Zen sources in the instructional sections of the text, he does so in order to make a point about the importance of the secular community of donors and lay followers. As the list of titles of the Chiji shingi sections shows, even though these are not instructions preached directly to laypersons, they instruct monks on how members of the lay community should be treated. According to the section on the role of the director, if donors make a donation (or offering) with a clear mind, they will gain the result of being respected or of attaining the same level of buddhahood as monks. Similar sentiments are expressed in the other sections. Another text from this period is known as the 12-fascicle Shōbōgenzō represents additional fascicles that were intended for inclusion in the Shōbōgenzō (which can have 75 or more fascicles depending on the edition). This text expresses a view of karma that seems to reflect an interface with popular religious conceptions of retribution and repentance. Although there are strong refutations of the value of folk religious views expressed in the “Kesa kudoku” 袈裟功徳 and “Kie sanbō” 帰依三

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宝 fascicles, it is clear from a careful reading of these and other fascicles that Dōgen was influenced by supernatural elements in early Buddhist Jātaka tales that were often translated or integrated into East Asian morality tale literature known as “setsuwa bungaku.” In fact, many of the fascicles are concerned primarily with the ritual efficacy and ability to create miraculous transformations by reversing karma of key Buddhist symbols, especially the robe, bowl, and stupas. To a large extent, the 12-fascicle Shōbōgenzō is a text about rituals, yet it cannot be reduced to this single dimension because it contains numerous original enlightenment-like passages that resonate with the main Shōbōgenzō; for example, in expressing the notion that a single instant of wearing the Buddhist robe will provide spiritual protection and bring about an experience of enlightenment for those who wear or otherwise come in contact with it. The emphasis on ritualism in the late period is also seen in sermon 388 of the Eihei kōroku 永平広録 (DZZ 3: 258), which tells a story of a repentance involving demons and celestial spirits; and sermon 379 deals with the use of a master’s supranormal spiritual power in fertility rites. Here Dōgen states that his intention is to invoke a clear sky, and he says that “last year rain fell ceaselessly but now I wish for fine weather like my [Chinese] master who went to the Dharma Hall to wish for fine weather. When he did not go to the Dharma Hall, the Buddhas and patriarchs did not either. Today I am in the Dharma Hall, just like my former teacher” (DZZ 3: 242). Dōgen concludes with an ironic, iconoclastic commentary by pausing, sneezing, and saying, “Once I sneeze, clouds break and the sun appears.” Then he raises the fly-whisk and remarks, “Monks! Look at this. The cloudless sky swallows the eight directions.” The fly-whisk is a ceremonial object that symbolizes the authority of the Zen master, derived from pre-Buddhist shamanistic purification devices as well as imperial scepters. Many sermons express its power to beat up a pack of wild foxes, turn into a dragon or snake, or perform other miraculous functions. Furthermore, Dōgen wrote a couple of very short texts, the Jūroku rakan genzuiki and Rakan kuyō shikibun, celebrating the miraculous appearance on New Year’s day of supernatural arhats which protect Buddhism, while celestial blossoms rain down on the beholders of the visions (DZZ 7: 286). Dōgen states that such visions had been known previously only at Mount Tiantai in China, but the popular religious element expressed here also has affinities with mountain worship. In the brief essay known as the Eiheiji sankareizuiki (DZZ 7: 224), he recounts the three miracles that occurred at Eiheiji over the course of several years: (1) the sounding of a heavenly bell for 200 strokes, something that occurred multiple times, but on one particular occasion in 1251 the sound was so clear and vibrant that even a visiting minister (representing a nonbeliever) was able to hear it; (2) the appearance of five-colored clouds over Eiheiji, again something that had happened at Mount Tiantai but not, according to Dōgen, in Japan; and (3) a mysterious fragrance that seemed to be a blessing that encompassed the temple. Whether Dōgen himself believed or took seriously these accounts or offered them up as a kind of skillful means to inspire his flock is something about which we can only speculate.

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11  Conclusion The impact of Dōgen’s philosophical works remains strong for several reasons. As the founder and author of the main text of the Sōtō Sect, his writings are continually studied and interpreted by Buddhist practitioners and scholars. As an expression of a view of impermanence that seems to capture the essence of Buddhist teaching in the context of the medieval Japanese religious-aesthetic tradition and also anticipates the emphasis on temporality, death, and finitude in modern Western philosophy, the Shōbōgenzō stands at the forefront of international comparative philosophy. While there has been much debate about whether Dōgen’s philosophy may have moved in a new direction in the later period, toward a more straightforward view of karmic retribution while also embracing supernaturalism, there seems to be no question that he remained consistent throughout his career in emphasizing the priority of zazen meditative practice as a means of recognizing and reconciling with the fundamental temporality characterized by the incessant ephemerality of all aspects of human and natural existence.

Works Cited Abbreviations DZZ.: Dōgen zenji zenshū 『道元禅師全集 』[Dōgen’s Collected Works]. 7 volumes. Ed. by Kōdō Kawamura 河村孝道 and Kakuzen Suzuki 鈴木格禅. Tokyo: Shunjūsha 1988–1993.

Other Sources Abe, Masao. 1992. A Study of Dōgen: His Philosophy and Religion. Ed. Steven Heine. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bielefeldt, Carl. 1988. Dōgen’s Manuals of Zen Mediation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brower, Robert, and Earl Miner. 1961. Japanese Court Poetry. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Dōgen 道元. 1972. Dōgen 『道元』 [Dōgen]. Nihon shisō taikei 『日本思想体系』 [The Structure of Japanese Thought], ed. Tōru Terada 寺田透 and Yaeko Mizuno 水野八重子, Vol. 13. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Heine, Steven. 1989. A Blade of Grass: Japanese Poetry and Aesthetics in Dōgen Zen. New York: Peter Lang. ———. 1993. Dōgen and the Kōan Tradition: A Tale of Two Shōbōgenzō Texts. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 2006. Did Dōgen Go to China? What He Wrote and When He Wrote It. New York: Oxford University Press. Karaki Junzō 唐木順三. 1967. Mujō 『無常』 [Impermanence]. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. Kim, Hee-Jin. 1975. Dōgen Kigen–Mystical Realist. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

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Konishi, Jin’ichi. 1981. Michi and Medieval Writing. In Principles of Classical Japanese Literature Vol. 1, ed. Earl Miner, 181–208. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kopf, Gereon. 2001. Beyond Personal Identity: Dōgen, Nishida, and a Phenomenology of No-Self. London: Routledge. LaFleur, William R., ed. 1985. Dōgen Studies. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Leighton, Taigen Dan, and Shohaku Okumura, trans. 2004. Dōgen’s Extensive Record: A Translation of the Eihei Kōroku. Boston: Wisdom Publications. Stambaugh, Joan. 1990. Impermanence is Buddha-Nature: Dogen’s Understanding of Temporality. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Tanahashi, Kazuaki, trans. 1985. Moon on a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dōgen. San Francisco: North Point Press. Waddell, Norman, and Masao Abe, trans. 2002. The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō. Albany: State University of New York Press. Yoshida, Kenkō. 1981. Essays in Idleness. Trans. Donald Keene. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle. Steven Heine is Professor of Religious Studies and History as well as Director of Asian Studies at Florida International University. He specializes in East Asian and comparative religions, Japanese Buddhism and intellectual history, Buddhist studies, and religion and social sciences. Dr. Heine earned his BA at the University of Pennsylvania and MA and PhD at Temple University. Before coming to FIU in 1997, he taught at Pennsylvania State University and directed the East Asian Studies Center there. Professor Heine teaches a variety of courses on modern Asia and methods in Asian Studies at graduate and undergraduate levels as well as Japanese culture and religion, Zen Buddhism, ghosts, spirits and folk religions, religions of the Silk Road, and other aspects of Asian society. Dr. Heine was a Fulbright Senior Researcher in Japan and twice won National Endowment for Humanities Fellowships plus funding from the American Academy of Religion and Association for Asian Studies in addition to the US Department of Education, the Japan Foundation, and Freeman Foundation. He has conducted research on Zen Buddhism in relation to medieval and modern society primarily at Komazawa University in Tokyo.

Chapter 16

Keizan Jōkin and His Thought Shūdō Ishii

1  Keizan’s Biography KEIZAN Jōkin 瑩山紹瑾 (1264–1325) is the fourth generation patriarch of the Japanese Sōtō School after Eihei Dōgen (1200–1253), Ko’un Ejō 孤雲懐弉 (1198– 1280), and Tettsū Gikai 徹通義介 (1219–1309). The Japanese Sōtō School is an independent religious institute that established the “ryōso” 両祖 and “ryōdaihonzan” 両大 本山  systems. Dōgen, known as “jōyōdaishi” 承陽大師 or “kōso” 高祖, founded Eiheiji 永平寺 in Fukui prefecture; and KEIZAN Jōkin, known as “jōsaidaishi” 常済 大師 or “taiso” 太祖, revived the Sōjiji 総持寺 of Tsurumi in Kanagawa prefecture. The temple, which was originally located in Noto, is called Soin 祖院. Today, the Sōtō School is based on the idea of two patriarchs in one body as well as the idea of “funiryōzan” 不二両山, which regards the founding figure kōso as father and the reviving figure taiso as mother. Generally speaking, Keizan’s contribution to the development of the Sōtō School is well recognized; however, he did not receive adequate attention from academia. In my work Dōgen zen no seiritsushiteki kenkyū 道元禅の成 立史的研究, I compare Keizan with Dōgen. My analysis is that in contrast to the “true

Ching-yuen Cheung is a Lecturer of Japanese Studies in Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interest is in Japanese philosophy, especially the philosophy of Nishida Kitarō, postFukushima philosophy, and philosophy of pilgrimage. He is an Editor of the Tetsugaku Companions to Japanese Philosophy and an Assistant Editor of the Journal of Japanese Philosophy. His research publications include Globalizing Japanese Philosophy as an Academic Discipline (coedited with Kevin LAM Wing-keung) and a Xitian xiduolang: Kua wenhua shiye xia de riben zhexue (Nishida Kitarō: Japanese Philosophy from a Transcultural Perspective). This chapter was translated by Ching-yuen Cheung (Chinese University of Hong Kong). S. Ishii (*) Komazawa University, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_16

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dharma” (J. shōbō 正法) constructed by Dōgen, who overcomes the “silent illumination Zen” (J. mokushōzen 黙照禅), Keizan sees the characteristics of the Sōtō School (which is a rival of the Rinzai School) as a return to the tradition of the Silent Illumination Zen. It follows that Keizan supported satori 悟り by experience, which is rejected by Dōgen. Apart from general research such as mine, there are new attempts to understand Keizan such as Bernard Faure’s Vision of Power–Imagining Medieval Japanese Buddhism (1994), in which Keizan is regarded as the one who established a Zen teaching combining Dōgen’s orthodox Zen with various Zen elements in  local religion, schools, and rituals. This was a significant undertaking that deserved positive appraisal. It is worth noting that Zen as a whole came from the Sōtō tradition of kirigami 切紙. Kirigami, a small piece of paper used in in-house religious ceremonies such as funerals, functions as “seal” (J. inka 印可), i.e., as written proof of succession. A collection of kirigami, which can be classified as the oldest kirigami of the Sōtō School, is held in the Yōkōji 永光寺. An ambitious analysis of the collection can be found in the work by ISHIKAWA Rikizan 石川力山, Zenshū Sōden Shiryō no Kenkyū, in which kirigami is seen as the inner idea supporting the Sōtō School after Keizan. There is no comprehensive ancient document with Keizan’s biography. For example, as a representative intra-sectarian biography of the Sōtō School, there is the record, “Biography of Master Keizan of Sōjiji” (SZS 1).1 However, it was written 400 years after Keizan’s death. Other widely read records are the biography in Nihon Tōjō Rentōroku 日本洞上聯燈録, published in 1742, as well as similar biographies based on ten other documents. The current research is based on descriptions in the biography and record in the Tōkokuki 洞谷記, published in the Sōgaku Kenkyū in 1974, and referred to in Bernard Faure’s research focusing on the topic of dreams in Keizan’s works. In addition, I refer to “Tōkoku kaizan oshō jijyaku Saimon” 洞 谷開山示寂祭文 (ZSZS) published by Daihonzan Sōjiji in 1974. Keizan is a Buddhist name. His original name was Jōkin and his child name was Gyōshō 行生. His father was RYŌKAN Jōza 了閑上座, his grandmother was MYŌCHI Wubai 明智優婆夷, and his mother was Ekan 懐観. Myōchi was a pupil at Dōgen’s Kenninji 建仁寺. Both Myōchi and Ekan were devout believers of Kannon Bodhisattva. When Keizan’s mother was 37, she prayed to the 11-faced Kannon and gave birth to her son at Tane 多禰 of Echizen (Maruokachō 丸岡町 of Sakaigun 坂井郡, or Hoyamachō 帆山町 of Takefushi 武生市) in 1264. The strong faith of his mother and grandmother influenced Keizan’s religion. According to his Autobiography, Keizan suggests that in his former life he was once Vipaśyin Buddha (J. bibashibutsu 毘婆尸仏) of the seven buddhas. He was a kuvala (J. kubara 鳩婆 羅) deity with the head of a dog, the body of an owl, and the stomach and tail of a snake with four legs. He lived with the fourth of the sixteen arhats Abheda in the snowy mountains of Uttarākuru. By the destiny of the North, he was born as the Ujiko 氏子 of Hakusan 白山. In this story, Faure notices the implied dualism of local religion represented by the Ujiko of Hakusan, which is not an orthodox Zen idea.

 “Biography of Master Keizan of Sōjiji” is included in the 1649 Tangen Jichō 湛元自澄 (Nichiiki tōjō shosoden 1914).

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In 1271, when Keizan was eight, he became a follower of Tettsū Gikai 徹通義介 (1219–1309), the third generation patriarch of Eiheiji, and shaved his head and became a monk. In 1280, at the age of 17, he became a Buddhist priest ordained by Ko’un Ejō (1198–1280), the second generation patriarch of Eiheiji. In the same year, Ejō passed away on August 24. After the death of Ejō, Keizan followed Jyakuen 寂 円 who belonged to the same school as Dōgen. Jyakuen was an admirer of Dōgen and later built a monastery called Hōkyōji 宝慶寺. Keizan was influenced by Jyakuen in the understanding of the Chinese Caodong (J.  Sōtō) 曹洞 School. According to Nihon Tōjō rentoroku, at that time Keizan also followed TŌZAN Tanshō 東山湛照 (1231–1291), HAKU’UN Egyō 白雲慧暁 (1228–1297), and SHINCHI Kakushin 心地覚心 (1207–1298) of Hottōha 法燈派. In 1291, he became the chief priest of Jōmanji 城万寺of Kaifu 海部 in Awa 阿波 at the age of 28. After a year, he returned to Eiheiji and was allowed to become a monk by fourth generation patriarch Gien 義演. In 1272, Gikai left Eiheiji and lived in Yōbodō. Later in 1293, he moved to Daijōji in Kaga. Daijōji used to be Shingonin 真言院, a temple built by CHŌKAI Ajyari 澄海阿闍梨 who was a monk of Hakusan Tendai. Two years later, in 1295, Keizan visited Gikai in Daijōji again and was enlightened. Gikai was impressed by Keizan, who mentioned Zhaozhou’s 趙州 “the ordinary mind is the Way” and the answer “the Way does not belong to knowing or not knowing.” Keizan was asked to spread Dōgen’s teaching. In 1298 he became the second generation patriarch of Daijōji, where he published his major work, Denkōroku, in 1300. Gikai passed away in 1309, and Keizan passed Daijōji to MEIHŌ Sotetsu 明峰 素哲 (1277–1350) in 1311. One year later, he began the founding of Yōkōji 永光 寺  in Tōkokusan, his most important project. During Keizan’s later years, he founded another temple, Sōjiji, in Noto Peninsula. This temple used to be a school in Kannon’s image. Jōken 定賢, the principal of the school, was impressed by Keizan’s Zen teaching and changed the school into a Zen temple. In the history of the Japanese Sōtō School, Sōjiji became an important temple. On July 7, 1321, he passed the priesthood of Sōjiji to GASAN Jōseki 峨山韶碩 (1276–1366). On August 8, 1324, he passed the priesthood of Yōkōji to Meihō. On the 15th of the same month, he died at age 62. Keizan’s death scene was recorded in Yōkōji’s Tōkoku goso gyōjitsu shiden (SZS 1: 596) as follows: (August 1324) On the15th day of the month, Keizan called a meeting of all monks and said, “Do not think about anything on good and evil. Thinking is a violation of the Way. Therefore, ancient people said, ‘Consciousness is a disease. Not continuing is the cure.’” He also gave the teaching, “Farm in unused land. Sell old land and buy new land. Innumerable seedlings will grow and become seeds again. Bring the hoe to the temple and look for man.” He threw the pen and passed away.

Keizan had two outstanding pupils, Meihō and Gasan. However, according to Tōkoku he actually had six pupils. The other four are MUGAI Chikō 無涯智洪 (d. 1351), KOAN Shikan 壺庵至簡 (d. 1341), KOHŌ Kakumyō 孤峰覚明 (1271– 1361), and CHINZAN Genshō 珍山源照. Kakumyō’s teacher was SHINCHI Kakushin (1207–1298), the Hottō Kokushi and the founder of Kōkokuji in Yura 由 良. Kakushin studied in Song China and followed WUMEN Huikai 無門慧開 (1183–1260), who collected and commented on the kōans of The Gateless Gate (J.

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Mumonkan 無門関) and is associated with the Hottōha 法燈派, a lineage within the Rinzai School. As mentioned earlier, Keizan also followed Kakushin. After Kakumyō received the dharma from Kakushin, he went to Yuan China and followed ZHONGFENG Mingben 中峰明本. Later, Kakumyō followed Keizan and founded Unjūji in Izumo. During 1321–1324, he converted Emperor Godaigo 後醍醐天 皇 to Buddhism and earned the posthumous title “National Teacher who saves the Country” (J. Kokusai kokushi 国済国師). We should not overlook the exchange between Sōtō and Rinzai Schools when we consider the characteristics of Keizan’s Zen.

2  Keizan’s Thought Here, I will mention eight points on the characteristics and meaning of Keizan’s thought. First, I will mention the establishment of gorōhō 五老峰 (Five Masters’ Peaks). According to the Tōkokusan jinmiraisai okibumi 洞谷山尽未来際置文, Keizan’s “thought” (J. shisō 思想), Gikai’s shiso, Ejō’s Blood Sūtra, Dōgen’s bone, and a collection of Dōgen’s teacher Nyojō’s (C. Rujing 如浄) sayings are located in the mountain behind Yōkōji. This is why it is called the Five Masters’ Peaks. The importance of this place is related to the question of the Japanese Darumashū 日本 達磨宗. The Japanese Darumashū is a Zen School founded before Dōgen’s time by Dainichibō Nōnin 大日房能忍 (d. 1196), who achieved enlightenment on his own. Since he did not have a teacher, he sent his followers Renchū 練中 and Shōben 勝 弁 to China in order to receive a dharma seal from FOZHAO Deguang 仏照徳光 (1121–1203). As a result, there is a Rinzai genealogy as follows: Dahui Zonggao – Fozhao Deguang – Dainichibō Nōnin – Kakuan – Ekan (Kakuzen) – Gikai (Gikan) – Keizan Jōkin. Ejō, the second generation of Eiheiji, was also a follower of Kakuan. Reading To Master Jōkin (J. Ji jōkin chōrō 示紹瑾長老), written by Gikai at the age of 88, it becomes clear that Gikai possessed both the dharma seals from Dōgen of the Sōtō School as well as from Dainichibō Nōnin of the Rinzai School. Notably, he called himself “Gikai, the former monk of Daijōji” (DBS 409). Furthermore, according to The Proof of Shisō (a collection of Kōfukuji in Tamana City, Kumamoto Prefecture), Keizan also possessed the dharma seal of the Japanese Darumashū. Through Gikai, Keizan possessed the dharma seals from both Sōtō and Rinzai. However, the establishment of the gorōhō confirmed his affiliation with the Sōtō School. This is significant for the independence of the Sōtō School. Second, I shall mention the writing of Denkōroku, Keizan’s major work. It shows how the patriarchs, from the first Patriarch Mahākāśyapa to the 52nd Patriarch Eihei Ejō, pursued ultimate meaning in the teachings of the Buddha and summarizes how followers are to understand the life of “the patriarchs transmitting the lamp” (J. dentō soshi 伝燈祖師). Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō Busso only gives the names of the patriarchs, but Denkōroku gives the teachings of Sōtō in detail. For example, the characteristics of Sōtō teaching can be seen in the chapter on “Kyōsonjya” 脇尊者: When

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practice arrives at the state of the enlightened mind overcoming human relations, one forgets the fatigue of the body. In this case the self can be preserved. The chapter is a comprehensive guide to practice. However, Keizan also emphasizes enlightenment through experience. According to records of the time, the Cao Dong School in China, named after DONGSHAN Liangjie 洞山良价 and CAOSHAN Benji 曹 山本寂, was renamed Cao Dong School, after CAOXI Huineng 曹渓慧能  and DONGSHAN Liangjie 洞山良价. This change is consistent with the conventional claim in Dōgen’s group that the Caodong School stems from DONGSHAN Liangjie 洞山良价  and was transmitted to YUNJU Daoying 雲居道膺. The naming of TŌKOKUSAN Yōkōji 洞谷山永光寺  is also mentioned in Tōkokuki: “I am the grandson of the 16th Dongshan Liangjie Patriarch. I follow his style, calling the mountain Tōkoku, and the mountain becomes valley as Caoxi becomes Caoshan. I am also the grandson of the 11th Taiyō (Jingxuan 警玄) Patriarch. Therefore, my eyes admire the sunlight. The temple is named as Yōkōji” (Ōtani 1974: 238). This shows his acceptance of Rinzai’s FUSHAN Fayuan 浮山法遠, a figure falling between TAIYŌ Jingxuan 大陽警玄 and YIQING Touzi 投子義青. The emphasis on the Taiyō tradition is clearly a result of the awareness of the Sōtō School. Third, I shall mention the emphasis on the temple-believer relationship. The development of a temple requires the protection of believers. According to Tōkokusan Jinmiraisai Okibumi 洞谷山尽未来際置文, the temple and the believers should be in a good relationship so that the Buddha’s teaching can be passed to the next generation. In Tōkokuki, it is mentioned that “the monks of Yōkōji will follow Keizan’s teaching and develop well” (Ōtani 1974: 235). The system they adopted is not the “open system of succession” (J. jippōjūjisei 十方住持制) but the system of “continuous succession” (J. ichiryūsōjōsei 一流相承制), also called “apprenticeship” (J. tsuchiensei 徒弟院制). As written in Sōjiji Sanmon Jūjishokuji 総持寺山門住持職事, GASAN Jōseki managed the temple by introducing a rotation of monks every five  years and thus successfully prevented the temple from abolishment. As time passed, the duration of rotation was shortened, but the rotation system remained successful. In addition, the inner houses of Sōjiji (Fuzōin, Myōkōan, Tōsenan, Denpōan, Nyoian) were emphasized in a way that these five inner houses began a 75-day rotation in 1501. This contributed to the sustainable development of the Sōtō School. Fourth, I shall mention Keizan’s wishes for the salvation of women. According to Tōkokuki, on May 23, 1325, Keizan announced two wishes. The first wish was announced under HOKYŌ Jyakuen under whom he declared the importance of saving the lives of others. The second was for the salvation of women. These were final words for his mother Ekan. At that time, women had a lowly social status and were discriminated against. Keizan’s wish for the salvation of women served as an important contribution, for which he actively worked throughout his life. Fifth, I shall mention the strong faith in Kannon. This is closely related to what I mentioned earlier, that his mother Ekan was a believer of Kannon, and Keizan called himself “Hakusan no ko” 白山の子 in his autobiography. Hakusan myōri daigongen 白山妙理大権現, a god of Hakusan, is a local Kannon figure who eventually becomes the Dharmapala 護法神of the Sōtō School. Yōkōji was founded by the daughter of SAKAWANO Hachirō Yorichika 酒勾八郎頼親. Her husband was

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Nobunao 信直of Unno Saburō Shigeno 海野三郎滋野. Later, she became a Buddhist and was renamed Sonin 祖忍. In Tōkokuki, the relationship between Sonin and Keizan is compared to the relationship between magnet and iron. She was also viewed as the rebirth of Grandmother Myōchi. There is an 11-faced Kannon in Entsuin 円通院of Tōkokusan, which Ekan kept her whole life. Entsuin is the place where Sonin became a master and prayed for women. Sōjiji, built by Gyōki 行基 (668–749), was also Kannon’s sacred place, which Keizan later redeveloped. Over the main temple gate (J. Sanmon 山門), there is a statue of Kannon Bodhisattva and one of Jizō Bodhisattva. They are named “bodhisattva who emit light” (J. hōkō bōsatsu 放光菩薩), a god to pray for safe delivery. There are other aspects of Keizan and the Kannon faith, but here their relationship is shown clearly. Sixth, I shall mention the writing of Keizan shingi or Nōshū tōkokusan yōkōji gyōji jijo. According to Gikaiden, Ejō ordered Gikai to travel to Zen temples in Japan and China (especially Tian Tong Shan 天童山) to set up “precepts” (shingi 清 規) for the reconstruction of the Sōtō temple after a fire damaged Kōshōji. It was said that he recited a prayer after having congee (J. shukiha fugin 粥罷諷経). However, there is no documentation of the details of the precepts. In fact, the precepts were set by Keizan who succeeded Gikai. Keizan’s precepts suited his time well and have been more influential on the present Sōtō shingi than the Eihei shingi. Meanwhile, the precepts show the independence of the Sōtō School from Rinzai. According to the new precepts, practices were divided concretely into three categories: daily events, monthly events, and annual events. Details on funeral ceremonies and other esoteric Buddhist practices were introduced, which were crucial to the development of the Sōtō School. The good relationship between temple and believers had a significant contribution to the sustainability of the school. Seventh, Keizan promoted zazen. It is well known that Dōgen promoted “sitting-­ only” (J. shikantaza 只管打坐). His first book after returning from Song China was a meditation manual, Fukanzazengi 普勧坐禅儀. Dōgen’s position of valuing zazen is followed by Keizan, who wrote the book Zazenyōjinki 坐禅用心記. In this book, Keizan introduced a method and frequency of breathing, which was not mentioned in Dōgen’s work. In another book Sankonzazensetsu 三根坐禅説, Keizan manifests a compassionate attitude towards practitioners with different abilities. This warm character of Keizan can be seen in his teaching of zazen. Eighth, Keizan benefited from the foundation of human resource development. As is mentioned earlier, the Sōtō School claims that Keizan proclaimed to his two followers, dharma (J. hō 法) is to Meihō 明峰, garan 伽藍 is to Gasan 峨山. The development of a religion is dependent on firm belief and an institution. Keizan developed a well-constructed Sōtō School, in which faith was firmly structured and the place for practice efficiently managed. Keizan’s followers were key to the immense success of the Sōtō School. This success was due to Keizan’s human resource development. Keizan also shifted the location of the school from Eiheiji, located in the mountainous area of Echizen, to Yōkōji and Sōjiji in the Nōtō Peninsula. At that time, water was the major means of transportation. Therefore, to start from the Nōtō Peninsula was the right decision for developing the religion into

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a national one. As history shows, Gasan’s followers also made contributions. However, their success was based on the contribution made by Keizan. The eight points above are inter-related. They left their marks on the history of Sōtō. The founding Zen monk is Keizan Jōkin. Therefore, the Japanese Sōtō School reveres Dōgen and Keizan as the two founders of the school.

Works Cited Abbreviations DBS: Daijōji bunsho 大乗文書 [Mahāyāna Literature]. Sōtōshū kobunsho 『曹洞宗古文書』 [Ancient Literature of Sōtōshū], edited by Ōkubō Dōshū 大久保道舟, vol. 2. Tsukuba: Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1972. DZZ: Dōgen zenji zenshū 『道元禅師全集』 [Dōgen’s Collected Works]. 7 vols, edited by Kōdō Kawamura 河村孝道 and Kakuzen Suzuki 鈴木格禅. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. NTS: Nichi’iki tōjō shosoden 『日域洞上諸祖伝』 [Transmission of all Patriarchs of Nichi’iki Tōjō], 110 vols. Tokyo: Busshokankōkai, 1914. SZS: Sōtōshū zensho 『曹洞宗全書』 [The Complete Documents of the Sōtō School]. 19 vols. Tokyo: Sōtōshū Zensho Kankōkai, 1970–1973. TKK: Tōkokuki 『洞谷記』 [Records of Caves and Valleys]. Shūgaku kenkyū, vol. 16. Tokyo: Sōtōshū Shugakū Kenkyūjo, 1974. ZSZS: Zoku sōtōshū zensho 『曹洞宗全書』 [The Complete Documents of the Sōtō School Continued]. 10 vols. Tokyo: Sōtōshū Zensho Kankōkai, 1973–1976.

Other Sources Faure, Bernard. 1991. Vision of Power–Imagining Medieval Japanese Buddhism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ishii, Shūdō 石井修道. 1991. Dōgen zen no seiritsushi teki kenkyū 『道元禅の成立史的研究』 [Formative Research on Dōgen Zen]. Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan. Ishikawa, Rikizan 石川力山. 2001. Zenshū sōden shiryō no kenkyū 『禅宗相伝資料の研究』. 2 vols. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. Keizan 瑩山. 1944. Denkōroku 『伝光錄』. [The Transmission of the Light Records]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Ōtani, Tetsuo 大谷哲夫. 1974. Shiryō daijōji hihon tōkokuki 「資料 大乗寺秘本洞谷記」. Shūkyō kenkyū 『宗教研究』 16: 231–248. Shūdō Ishii served as a Faculty of Buddhist Studies at Komazawa University for more than 40 years until his retirement. He currently is a director of Matsugaoka Bunkō. He received his Masters of Literature as well as his PhD in Literature from Komazawa University. In 1979, he was honored by the Japanese Association of Indian and Buddhist Studies. He is a leading scholar in Dōgen and Sōtō studies. His publications include, among others, Zengoroku, Dōgenzen no seiritsushiteki kenkyū and Chūgoku zenshūshiwa: Mana-shōbōgenzō ni manabu.

Chapter 17

How to Read Shinran Dennis Hirota

1  Introduction Gutoku Shinran 愚禿親鸞 (1173–1263) maintains his status today as one of the most consequential religious thinkers in Japanese history. The tradition stemming from his thought and teaching activity, Shin Buddhism (J. Jōdo Shinshū 浄土真宗), has been a significant force in Japanese society since the fifteenth century and remains one of the largest Buddhist movements in the world at present, with over twenty thousand temples in Japan and a century-old institutional presence in North America. His writings have been studied in a commentarial tradition going back to his early descendants in the fourteenth century, burgeoning during the Edo period, and continuing in recent times with prominent nonsectarian philosophers such as NISHIDA Kitarō西田幾多郎(1870–1945), SUZUKI Daisetsu 鈴木大拙 (1870– 1966), TANABE Hajime 田辺元 (1885–1962), MIKI Kiyoshi 三木清 (1897–1945), and NISHITANI Keiji 西谷啓治 (1900–1990). Nevertheless, outside of Japan, Shinran’s Buddhist tradition has long received disproportionately little attention, and most academic interest in Shin Buddhism continues to be confined to historical, sociological, or cultural studies.1 There appear to be two general reasons for this marginalization. The basic cause is the lingering assumption, vigorously asserted in the nineteenth century by Christian missionaries in Japan, that Shin is not only geographically and temporally removed from “original” or “authentic” Buddhism but removed fundamentally in philosophical outlook 1  I use “Shin Buddhism” or simply “Shin” to refer to the Japanese tradition stemming from Shinran, and “Pure Land Buddhism” to indicate more broadly the stream of teachings, texts, and practices focusing on Amida Buddha that is found across Asia and may be traced back to India near the beginning of the common era.

D. Hirota (*) Ryukoku University, Kyoto, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_17

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and soteriology.2 Some researchers continue to regard Buddhism as having undergone a sea-change in the Japanese Pure Land tradition, so that it came to be wholly based on simple faith rather than practice.3 Further, the degree of Shin’s supposed removal from the mainstream of Mahāyāna Buddhism is considered evident in the number of striking similarities it possesses to Protestant Christian tradition in both doctrine (the checklist of Karl Barth 1886–1968 is illuminating4) and in social manifestation (critical spirit, focus on laity, married priesthood). In short, Shinran’s teaching has largely been deemed a reductive adaptation of Buddhist symbols and practices to the religious needs of the medieval Japanese peasantry. Further, it is often assumed that, through some accident of history or circumstance, Pure Land beliefs in Japan came to resemble Christian Protestantism.5 This view leads to the second cause, one that concerns the reading of Shinran’s works. Ostensibly his writings provide a rich and reliable resource for the study of his thought. There is a substantial body of works from his own hand, including systematic expositions, commentarial tracts, hymns, and letters, as well as a record of his spoken words, almost all of which were intended to communicate his Buddhist thought in doctrinal terms. Textual problems and questions of authenticity are relatively few, and a number of his works, including his major writing, Passages Revealing the True Teaching, Practice, and Realization of the Pure Land Way (J. Ken jōdo shinjitsu kyōgyōshō monrui 顕浄土真実教行証文類), survive in autograph manuscripts. One might add that a complete English translation of all Shinran’s doctrinal writings has been available for more than a decade (The Collected Works of Shinran [Shinran 1997, hereafter CWS]). A persistent problem has been, however, that the imposition on Shinran’s Buddhism of a common notion of faith as simple creedal assent not only impedes a serious engagement with him as a religious thinker but further leads to distortive readings of his works by masking their actual character. Shinran’s concern in his writings is less to impart doctrinally validated teachings or methods of proper conduct than to articulate and enable a fundamental transformation of awareness. This is because it is precisely such an “overturning” of o­ rdinary 2  “Shakya taught also the doctrine of Nirvāna, which is really annihilation; these Buddhists point the believer to the Peaceful Land in the West, with its myriads of pleasures…. Is there not here an irreconcilable difference?” (M. L. Gordon, quoted in Thelle 1987: 68). 3  It is still commonly heard among researchers that Shin Buddhism lacks a concept of practice, and whether the concept of emptiness has a place in Shin has been a frequent question in journal articles (see Keenan 2001). 4  In Church Dogmatics, Barth reports that, in surveying world religions, he finds Shin to be “the most adequate and comprehensive and illuminating heathen parallel to Christianity” (Barth 1961: 342). Barth’s list of analogues includes: the “more or less explicit structure as the religion of grace,” “Reformation doctrines of original sin, representative satisfaction, justification by faith alone, the gift of the Holy Ghost and thankfulness.” See Hirota for discussions on Shinran and Barth (Hirota 2000: 34–38, 2003, 2006). 5  This has been an early and persistent perception. The Italian Jesuit missionary A. Valignano, who went to Japan in 1579, lamented that Japanese Pure Land Buddhists “hold precisely the doctrine which the devil, father of both, taught to Luther” (Ellison 1973: 43). Barth mentions the possible influence of Nestorianism.

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awareness and entry into a transformed mode of existence that signals the authentic encounter with enlightening activity that lies at the core of his Buddhist thought. His focal issues are, therefore, the nature of a person’s interaction with the Pure Land path and the distinction between provisional and genuine modes of engagement. He recognizes that it is usual for persons initially encountering Pure Land teachings to seek a coherent intellectual understanding of the doctrines from the perspective of the conventional self and to pursue means to assimilate the advantages of the path into their ongoing lives. Shinran, however, views such efforts as a continued assertion of the false discrimination and self-attachment that propel ordinary human life in anxious and painful existence. Thus, he seeks in his writings to precipitate a shift in apprehension that leads to authentic engagement with, and indeed itself arises from, the working of the Pure Land path. In other words, Shinran views the distinctive accessibility and effectiveness of Pure Land Buddhism as rooted in its transformative functioning within the realm of mundane, illusive thought and language. In this article, therefore, I will focus on aspects of reading Shinran, first taking up the overarching issues of Mahāyāna and Pure Land Buddhist thought that contextualize the basic problems in doctrinal understanding he feels compelled to address in his own writings.6 I will then go on to consider the character of his methods of composition in formulating and communicating his own religious awareness. I will close by highlighting several of the major philosophically relevant themes and issues in his thought.

2  Part One: The Context of Shinran’s Thought Buddhist texts may be said to treat two fundamental questions: the nature of the goal of the Buddhist path and the means by which it may be reached. The Japanese Pure Land tradition takes as its basis the compassionate action of Amida, Buddha of Immeasurable Life, who is taught in the Larger Sūtra of Immeasurable Life (S. Sukhāvatīvyūha, J. Daimuryōjukyō 大量寿経) to have established and fulfilled vows to bring all beings to awakening. The central eighteenth vow  states: “If, when I attain Buddhahood, the sentient beings of the ten quarters, entrusting themselves with sincere mind, aspiring to be born in my land, and saying my name perhaps even ten times, should not be born there, may I not attain the supreme enlightenment” (CWS 1: 80, adapted). Regarding this tradition, therefore, it is often assumed that the answers concerning these two basis issues are uncomplicated: the aim is birth, upon death in this world, into a golden paradise (the buddha-field of Amida Buddha named Utmost Bliss and described in Pure Land sutras), and the method of attainment lies in reciting the formula known as the nenbutsu or “Name” (J. myōgō 名号) of Amida Buddha – “namu-amida-butsu” as recommended by the Sūtra of Contemplation on Immeasurable Life Buddha (J. Kanmuryōjukyō 観無量寿経) – firmly believing in his vow to save all beings who do so. 6  I have commented on the various genres and characteristics of Shinran’s works in Ueda and Hirota (1989: 47–55).

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In the case of Shinran, both of these understandings are inadequate and easily become obstructions to a straightforward reading of his writings. The objective in Shinran is not an afterlife in Buddhist paradise, and the way is not recitation of Amida’s name while holding firm faith. To grasp the answers Shinran provides, we must bear in mind that his thought is rooted in two interrelated motifs that lie at the heart of the Mahāyāna Buddhist path: a thoroughgoing rejection of flawed or deficient notions of religious attainment and a searching, self-reflective stance critical of the least trace of ego-attachment, particularly in engagement with the path. Thus, I will begin here by sketching fundamental Mahāyāna Buddhist themes that anchor and find expression in Shinran’s efforts to treat the basic topics of the Pure Land path and that inform his project in his works.

2.1  T  he Goal of the Pure Land Path: The Stage of Nonretrogression Shinran explicitly and repeatedly locates the pivotal center of the Pure Land path not with reaching a world of the afterlife but in the attainment termed, in Mahāyāna Buddhist delineations of the bodhisattva path, “the stage of nonretrogression” (S. avinivartanīya, avaivartika, J. futaiten 不退転), which is often identified with the first of the final ten stages of bodhisattvahood leading to perfect enlightenment. In this, he stands squarely within mainstream Mahāyāna Pure Land thought and reflects its primary concerns. For Pure Land practitioners, as Buddhists, the ultimate aspiration is, of course, for supreme awakening, but the crucial significance of the Pure Land path, in its origins and for Shinran, is as a viable avenue to attain nonretrogression. According to general Mahāyāna thought, bodhisattva aspirants, in the course of their praxis, repeatedly enter into increasingly profound meditative states before surfacing again into the world of ongoing physical existence. If they advance successfully in their immensely long and strenuous endeavor, however, at some point they break through false discriminative thinking in deep meditation and attain or “touch” “suchness” (S. tathatā, J. shinnyo 真如) or “emptiness” (S. śunyatā, J. kū 空) for the first time. According to Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250), the first great systematizer of the teachings expounded in the Mahāyāna sūtras, when persons at last reach this stage of true reality, “They see the dharma, enter the dharma, attain the dharma, and abide in the firm dharma, from which they can never be moved, and thus they ultimately reach nirvāṇa”7 (Nāgārjuna, quoted in CWS 1: 19). Although they again emerge from deep samādhi to carry on their karmic, bodily lives in the world of speech and discriminative perception, and although they must continue to perform the bodhisattva practices in order finally to sever the extensive roots of their 7  Nāgārjuna discusses the theme of birth into buddha-fields, with Amida’s land as representative, in his Treatise on the Ten Bodhisattva Stages (J. Jūjūbibasharon 十住毘婆沙論) (T 26.1521), a commentary treating a portion of the Garland Sūtra.

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afflicting passions and progress through the remaining nine stages of the path, with the realization of wisdom attained in the first stage, a decisive change has taken place. Prior to this attainment, they face the constant danger of lapsing into negligence or despair, or of descending into the eternal repose of a self-indulgent nirvāṇa of merely individual release. Nāgārjuna calls this latter the “death of the bodhisattva.” Genuine practitioners must exert themselves with unremitting vigilance and many times the energy of those who seek merely their own salvation, if they are to perfect true wisdom-compassion and ferry all other beings to enlightenment before themselves. Once bodhisattvas have transcended the reification of self and other and attained suchness, their practice will, henceforth, unfailingly proceed toward their full awakening of buddhahood, and they will never falter or regress to their former state of ignorance.

2.2  Remoteness from the World of Awakening Within the tradition, the primary impetus for the Pure Land path is seen to lie in an acute awareness of distance or separation: growing historical severance from the time of Gautama Buddha; physical separation from the world in which he appeared and gave direct guidance to disciples who revered him; and, above all, personal remoteness from the profound awakening in which he found liberation from the bondage of afflicting passions and saṃsāric existence. Nāgārjuna states that among bodhisattva practitioners are some who are obstructed in their practice by adverse conditions in the world – strife, disease, rampant avariciousness, and above all, the absence of the support they would find in the presence and instruction of an awakened one. The Pure Land path arose out of the quest for a way that the gaping abyss might be overcome, not by replacing or circumventing the bodhisattva path, but by enabling its genuine practice. Moreover, it arises out of a fundamental inversion of perspective, so that the agency of the practitioners is contextualized by the activity of the enlightened wisdom-compassion that they seek to manifest. For practitioners in circumstances hostile to their endeavor, Nāgārjuna raises the question of whether there might be a simpler, quicker path to the basic goal of nonretrogression. He declares that there are indeed various kinds of paths, and he recommends calling the names of the buddhas and bodhisattvas who fill the cosmos as an effective and speedy method to bring one to the threshold of authentic bodhisattvahood. Thus, the path of “easy” or accessible practice resulting in attainment of nonretrogression is to “think on the buddhas (J. nenbutsu 念仏) of the ten quarters and say their names in praise” (T 26.1521.65c-17-71c04).8 For Nāgārjuna, this nenbutsu is a comprehensive practice involving all three modes of human activity – physical action, speech, and thought. One performs deep prostrations in worship as one utters the name of the buddha or bodhisattva, and with focused   The passage is from chapter 9 of Nāgārjuna’s Treatise on the Ten Bodhisattva Stages (Jūjūbibasharon 十住毘婆沙論).

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mind one contemplates the virtues of each buddha and buddha-field one by one. Through this practice, one gains the aid of the buddhas and will be enabled to be born into a buddha’s sphere of enlightened activity at the time of death. There, one will have the instruction and encouragement of the buddha and other beings in that field, so that one will be able to carry on the bodhisattva practices unimpeded and ultimately reach fulfillment. Here, we see the Pure Land path’s fundamental significance as a means to the relatively swift attainment of nonretrogression. Although Nāgārjuna does not restrict such practice solely to Amida’s name, he singles out Amida Buddha and his vows as the prime example of the practice he recommends. In Amida’s vows, attainment of nonretrogression is taught to occur along with birth into the Pure Land. Persons born into Amida’s buddha-field never fall back again into saṃsāric existence. In the supportive environment of the Land of Bliss, surrounded by other bodhisattvas and guided by Amida, they will fulfill the practices for perfect enlightenment and carry on the work for the enlightenment of all beings. During the Heian (784–1185) and Kamakura (1185–1333) eras, Japanese Pure Land Buddhists, building on doctrinal developments in China, elaborated popularly influential images of Amida’s golden Pure Land in written works such as Essentials for Birth (J. Ōjōyōshū 往生要集 [Genshin 1973]) by Genshin 源信 (942–1017), in chapel and garden architecture such as in the Byōdōin temple, and in pictorial art such as the Taima mandala tapestry, which illustrates scenes and descriptions of the Pure Land from the Sūtra of Contemplation on Immeasurable Life Buddha. Achieving ten utterances of the nenbutsu in a person’s final moments in this world in order to neutralize past evil and bring about Amida Buddha’s reception of the person into the hereafter became a widespread concern. As we will see below, Shinran’s contribution to Pure Land Buddhist thought turns, in large part, on rejecting notions of the Pure Land as an object of otherworldly aspiration and returning the tradition to its fundamental Mahāyāna Buddhist orientation and its original concerns with the goal of attaining non-retrogression. Moreover, Shinran probed the manner by which this attainment came to realization, again drawing deeply on Mahāyāna modes of thought.

2.3  A  ctive Enlightenment: Hōnen’s Revolutionary Recasting of Practice It was Hōnen 法然, also Genkū 源空, (1133–1212) who achieved perhaps the most radical doctrinal innovation of the formative period in Japanese Buddhist history. By establishing the practice of vocal nenbutsu  – the utterance of “namu-amida-­ butsu” – as an effective, self-sufficient path of Buddhist praxis, he paved the way for similar developments resulting in other new schools. Thus, Hōnen is recognized as the first, and perhaps most revolutionary, “founder” of a native Japanese Buddhist tradition. Nenbutsu practices in early Buddhist tradition centered on mindfulness exercises conducted in veneration of Śākyamuni Buddha and probably included elements of

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bodily worship and contemplative mindfulness focused by repetition of epithets for the Buddha. Later, the nenbutsu developed into a basic practice of monastics involving ritual prostrations with the body, contemplation on the features of enlightened beings and vocal recitation of their names, conducted with long lists of Buddhas and bodhisattvas. Such nenbutsu practice was, and remains, an indispensable activity in the Tendai monastery of Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei, where Hōnen originally trained and lived. In addition, the Chinese Tientai practice of “constant walking samādhi” (J. jōgyō zammai 常行三昧), in which a monk circumambulates a large statue of Amida, intoning the nenbutsu and meditating on Amida Buddha and features of the Pure Land continuously for ninety days, had been transmitted to Mount Hiei during the Heian period. Moreover, the group practice of “constant nenbutsu” (J. fudan nenbutsu 不断念仏), in which the nenbutsu was chanted continuously for seven days, interspersed with the chanting of sūtra passages and hymns at the “six hours” of the day, was frequently conducted. Although deeply familiar with such comprehensive modes of practice, embracing physical, mental, and verbal discipline, Hōnen taught that simply uttering the Name of Amida Buddha, “namu-amida-butsu 南無阿弥陀仏,” and entrusting oneself to his vow to save all beings, would result in birth into Amida’s buddha-field of enlightened activity, known as the Pure Land (J. jōdo 浄土). No intellectual command of Buddhist teachings, accumulation of merit, moral rectitude, or any act of practice other than the vocal nenbutsu is necessary. Further, according to Hōnen’s interpretation of the teachings, Amida’s Pure Land offers an ideal environment for fulfilling the bodhisattva practices necessary for realizing Buddhahood. Thus, once born there, eventual attainment of Buddhahood becomes fully settled. The Pure Land Buddhist path based on the working of Amida’s Vow is therefore an effective means toward Buddhahood – for Hōnen, the only viable way for people at present, given the long absence of an enlightened guide like Gautama Buddha and the increasingly defiled state of human existence in the world – and it can be practiced independently of any other Buddhist teaching or method of praxis. While traditionally the nenbutsu practice involved mental concentration and the accumulation of numerous recitations, Hōnen taught that in the Pure Land path only the simple saying of “namu-amida-butsu” with complete trust was involved. There was no specified manner of utterance, no necessity for any accompanying ritual or meditative endeavor, and no stipulation of the length of the period of practice or number of repetitions. The question, of course, is why mere vocalization of Amida’s Name should hold the power to bring about birth into a buddha-field and eventual enlightenment. Even through extraordinary achievements of learning, meditative practice, sustained discipline, and compassionate action, such attainment is virtually impossible to accomplish. Without an adequate demonstration that vocal nenbutsu in itself held such power, Pure Land praxis would remain a supplementary discipline within the ­existing schools of Buddhist tradition, one supportive practice to be performed in combination with a range of other methods. Hōnen promulgated his teaching by adopting an innovative perspective on the nature of the practices taught in Buddhist tradition. He reasoned that, although the

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utterance of the Buddha’s name had long been transmitted in various Buddhist schools as one among different kinds of practice useful for attaining enlightenment, the vocal nenbutsu designated in Amida’s vow as the act leading to birth into the Pure Land was qualitatively distinct from the other techniques found in the Buddhist teachings. While the physical act of voicing the Name of Amida in itself might be identical, in other forms of Buddhism it was performed in conjunction with various other practices, including the awakening of the aspiration for enlightenment (S. bodhicitta, J. bodaishin 菩提心) and the selfless transference of merits, and like other practices, its fulfillment as praxis genuinely leading toward Buddhahood turned on the practitioner’s own purity of motive and powers of concentration and discipline. The nenbutsu taught in Amida’s vow, however, as the simple voicing of “namu-­ amida-­butsu” accessible to all beings, regardless of their moral qualities or spiritual capacities, was specifically selected by Amida Buddha as the means by which he could bring to fruition his compassionate vow to liberate all living things from saṃsāric existence. In other words, Amida, through his vow and the salvific virtue of his own already completed performance of endless aeons of bodhisattva practices, established the saying of the Name as the medium by which his own compassionate working could actively reach each being. Thus, the nenbutsu has been prepared as effective practice  – already fulfilled by Amida as the act resulting in birth in the Pure Land – and given to beings as the cause of their attainment. Salvific activity is particularly appropriate in the present age, when the accomplishment of praxis as ordinarily understood in Buddhist tradition has receded beyond the reach of beings. Anticipating this situation, Amida’s vow teaches that one should relinquish the illusions and attachments focused on the self and its capacities and set aside the extensive body of traditional methods of praxis as no longer effective, since they require a purity of performance no longer achievable. The Pure Land tradition characterizes such practices as “self power” (J. jiriki 自力) and instead advocates saying the nenbutsu as the act that embodies “Other Power” (J. tariki 他 力), Amida Buddha’s wisdom-compassion functioning in the world from beyond the ego-self and its calculations. Hōnen’s historical role relates to our concerns here because of the means by which he effected his ground-breaking contribution to Buddhist tradition and his legacy as inherited by his disciples. Based on his principle of “the nenbutsu selected in Amida’s primal vow” (J. senjaku hongan nenbutsu 選択本願念仏) that embodies the Buddha’s Other Power, he established the Pure Land school (J. Jōdoshū 浄土宗) as a valid Buddhist path, effective in itself and independent from the traditionally recognized schools that had been transmitted to Japan from the Asian continent over the preceding centuries. Hōnen set about to accomplish this in his major writing, Collection on the Nenbutsu Selected in the Primal Vow (J. Senjaku hongan nenbutsu-­ shū選択本願念仏集 [Hōnen 1998]), composed in kanbun (classical Chinese) and addressed to an audience versed in Buddhist erudition and its methods of discourse. Here, Hōnen systematically raises the traditional issues involved in recognizing the Pure Land teaching as a legitimate school of Buddhism. These include: the identification of foundational sūtras, the delineation of the historical lineage of masters by which the Pure Land path has been transmitted down to the present, and its doctrinal

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orthodoxy, demonstrated with reference to the sūtras and the commentarial tradition. In his work, Hōnen argues logically and cogently on the basis of scriptural evidence, including extended citations from the recognized Chinese canon. Hōnen allowed his work to be copied only by disciples during his lifetime, but it was published shortly after his death. It immediately garnered vehement censure and counter-argument from scholar-monks of traditional schools, attesting not only to the impact Hōnen’s nenbutsu teaching was already having in Japanese society, but also to the recognition of the forms of scholastic discourse and rational argument into which his thought had been cast. From his followers’ accounts and records of his spoken words and letters, it appears that Hōnen was an immensely charismatic figure, communicating his teaching to both the ordained and lay and persuasively responding to the questions of his many listeners from all walks of life. Nevertheless, the major formulation of his religious thought followed customary models, dictated by his formidable role in Buddhist history.

2.4  The Problematic of Hōnen’s Nenbutsu Teaching As we have seen, Hōnen asserted that the nenbutsu as imparted to beings in Amida’s vow differs profoundly from all other practices handed down in Buddhist tradition. Persons might – and in fact, in the traditional monastic centers, regularly did – perform the utterance of the Buddha’s name as another means of healing the mind and gaining merit, in continuous recitation or as an element of ritual worship or contemplative practice. Or persons might, instead, say the name solely as the act prescribed in Amida’s vow, entrusting themselves wholly to the working of the Buddha’s compassion and abandoning any notion of their own goodness or endeavors as contributing to realization. According to Hōnen, the former manifests self-power or reliance on one’s own capacities for fulfillment, the latter Other Power. He taught that, in present times, it is only the latter that remains operative as genuine practice moving one toward awakening. However, a serious difficulty in understanding this teaching arose among Hōnen’s followers, one that he struggled to deal with but was unable to resolve doctrinally. Disciples found that the nenbutsu of Amida’s vow as proclaimed by Hōnen, in fact, involves two disparate elements, both of which are essential: on the one hand, the actual, vocal saying of Amida’s Name, “namu-amida-butsu,” and, on the other, the wholehearted entrusting of oneself to Amida’s vow. For Hōnen, these two elements of practice and faith – utterance of the nenbutsu and wholehearted entrusting of oneself to Amida’s vow – were mutually and unproblematically interfused as the means devised by Amida Buddha in establishing a path to realization both ­accessible to all, not only a religious elite, and unfailingly effective. However, many who sought to follow his teaching found that in actual engagement, the path appeared to be defined by emphasis on one element or the other, with disparate demands. The question became for many followers: which is central in the life lived in accord with Amida’s vow, practice or trust? Hōnen himself was said to have uttered the nenbutsu

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60,000 times daily and to have urged followers to recite the nenbutsu while carrying on their ordinary activities, throughout their days and lives. At the same time, he taught that genuine trust was grasping that a single utterance, being not one’s own good act but the Buddha’s fulfilled name, was sufficient for attaining birth in the Pure Land. How, then, should persons of the nenbutsu conduct their lives? Followers who emphasized practice tended to assume that since the nenbutsu was provided out of Amida’s wisdom-compassion, those who entrust themselves to the Buddha’s vow will spontaneously, out of joy and gratitude, seek to live in mindfulness of Amida and to recite the name as often as possible. This view, however, sometimes shaded into ethical and eschatological concerns, so that some believed that practitioners of the nenbutsu needed to live in a manner appropriate for birth into Amida’s buddha-field. Their lives were devoted to diligent recitation and moral rectitude, and those who failed to display such dedication were viewed as negligent in their practice. Further, many holding this view adopted older concerns rooted in the Contemplation Sūtra, in which nenbutsu recitation was seen pragmatically as a means of cancelling the karmic effects of one’s past evil.9 This latter belief gave decisive weight to the nenbutsu uttered at the moment of death, when the nullification of one’s final defilements of karmic evil made birth in the Pure Land possible. By contrast, those who emphasized trust tended toward a more relaxed view of nenbutsu recitation and other forms of religious observance or moral rigor, instead insisting on total trust in Amida’s compassion. The Pure Land sūtras speak of ten or even a single utterance as adequate, and Hōnen affirms this teaching, since the name as prepared by Amida holds the resultant virtues of his inconceivably long and perfect practice. When practitioners take refuge in the vow and utter the nenbutsu, their salvation is promised by Amida, and, consequently, they should have no misgivings. At an extreme, however, insistence on leaving everything to Amida’s salvific ­activity led to forms of antinomianism, in which even moral restraint was viewed as the impulse to deny one’s cravings and affirm one’s own goodness. In less acute forms, emphasis on trust led to a denigration of dedication to continued utterance as evidence of doubt of the vow’s power and as a residue of attachment to one’s own action in bringing about attainment. 9  The Sūtra of Contemplation on the Buddha of  Immeasurable Life  ([hereafter abbreviated as “Contemplation Sūtra”]), together with the Larger Sūtra of Immeasurable Life and the Amida Sūtra (S. Sukhāvatīvyūha, J. Amida kyō 阿弥陀経), or Smaller Sūtra), are the three central Pure Land sūtras as determined by Hōnen. The last two sutras are translated in Gomez (1996). Describing practitioners of the lowest of nine grades, the Contemplation Sūtra states: “There are sentient beings who commit such evil acts as the five damning offenses and the ten transgressions and do all manner of wrong. Such foolish persons, because of their evil karma, are destined to fall into the evil courses where they will pass countless kalpas suffering pain without limit. When they face the end of life, such foolish persons are comforted in various ways by a good teacher, who expounds the wondrous dharma for them, teaching them to perform the nenbutsu. But assailed by pain, they lack the respite to think on the Buddha (nenbutsu). Then the virtuous teacher states: ‘If you cannot think on the Buddha, utter [the name of] the Buddha of Immeasurable Life (Amida).’ In this way, continuing in utterance with sincere mind, they say “namu-amida-butsu,” acquiring ten utterances. Because they say the Buddha’s name, with each utterance, they eliminate evils that would result in eighty kotis of kalpas of birth-and-death.”

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Hōnen sought to maintain a tenuous balance between these two, mutually disparaging positions of emphasis on praxis and emphasis on faith: If, because it is taught that birth is attained with but one or ten utterances, you say the nembutsu heedlessly, then faith is hindering practice. If, because it is taught [by the Chinese Pure Land master Shandao that you should say the Name “without abandoning it from moment to moment,” you believe one or ten utterances to be indecisive, then practice is hindering faith. As your faith, accept that birth is attained with a single utterance; as your practice, endeavor in the nenbutsu throughout life. (Hirota 1989: 12–13; also Hōnen 2011: 258–259)

Historically, however, we find that while Hōnen was able to transmit his insights through his own compelling presence while alive, after his death, his disciples developed their individual interpretations of his nenbutsu teaching in diverse directions, with some tending toward emphasis on nenbutsu practice and other toward trust in the vow. The master, in short, had failed to achieve a clear doctrinal resolution of this issue of religious life.

3  P  art Two: Shinran’s Approach: The Phenomenology of Religious Awareness as Transformative 3.1  Pure Land Buddhist Anthropology Shinran’s mode of expression in his writings and his teaching activity may be characterized as phenomenological and therapeutic in intent – directed toward transmitting an encounter with the genuinely Other that is manifest as the Pure Land path – rather than simply doctrinal or apologetic.10 He seeks not to reiterate Hōnen’s achievement in arguing for general recognition of the orthodoxy and institutional legitimacy of the Pure Land School but rather to rectify misapprehensions of the path among Hōnen’s followers themselves. This involves less the correction of ideas than effecting a fundamental change in the nature of a person’s engagement with the path. Shinran’s works, which may largely be seen as carefully selected and arranged anthologies, Japanese translations, or detailed explications of passages drawn from the Pure Land sūtras and commentarial tradition in Chinese, are intended to elicit a response to the compelling “summons” or “call” (CWS 1: 38, 505) of the teaching. As we have seen, at the roots of the early systematization of Pure Land practice lies the aspirants’ recognition of the gulf separating their own being in the world from the life of enlightened wisdom. For Hōnen, it is precisely an awareness of incapacity, deepened to encompass the totality of one’s existence, that opens the possibility for authentic nenbutsu. Thus, Hōnen states that persons  This attitude is most explicit in Tannishō, a record of Shinran’s spoken words (see Hirota 1993 for an analysis), and also in his correspondence. In a letter to his close disciple Jōshin 浄信, for example, he approves of Jōshin’s doctrinal understanding while suggesting it may all be an exercise in calculative thinking: “though what you state is splendid, I am afraid that it has become nothing but your own calculation” (CWS 1: 537).

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attain birth “by becoming their foolish selves” (CWS 1: 531) and also of “turning yourself into a foolish person” (Hirota 1989: 71).11 Only by wholly casting aside adherence to one’s own powers for attaining awakening and thereby fully entrusting oneself to the Buddha’s vow does a person’s utterance become nenbutsu of Other Power.12At the same time, it was necessary that the Pure Land teaching bridge the chasm between the person powerless to accomplish any act of genuine merit and Amida’s salvific activity. For Hōnen, this was achieved by Amida’s compassionate selection of the simple act of nenbutsu and the believer’s singlehearted trust in it. In and through such trust in “the vow in which Amida selected the nenbutsu” (J. senjaku hongan 選択本願), the saying of the nenbutsu becomes at once indispensable in one’s life and that act which, being performed in accord with the Buddha’s Vow, is replete with the Buddha’s virtues. In other words, the vocal nenbutsu thereby becomes effective in bringing beings toward awakening. This solution to the problem of closing the gap between a being and the Buddha, however, implies a reciprocity at work in the relationship between a person’s trust and Amida’s vow,13 and this suggested interaction opens the way for reverting to reliance on one’s own act – either of trust or of nenbutsu – to bring oneself into accordance with the Buddha. As long as Amida’s activity remains an object of a person’s judgment or aspiration, being and Buddha remain vastly parted, and Hōnen’s principle of trusting in Other Power remains paradoxically entangled in self-affirmation.

3.2  D  econstructing the Dichotomy Underlying Trust and Practice For Shinran, the attempts by Pure Land Buddhists to secure some channel for negotiating the rift between being and Buddha – whether wholehearted trust or diligent recitation – inevitably result in the irreconciliable bifurcation of faith and practice as disparate, willed human acts. Although Hōnen teaches that saying the nenbutsu 11  Shinran’s concept of bombu 凡夫 (“foolish being”), although sometimes misrepresented as meaning “common” or “ordinary person,” likewise should be understood as expressing a religious awareness rather than a general condition of humanity. 12  Hōnen, for example, speaks of his own incapacity to fulfill practice: “Although Buddhism is vast, in essence it is composed of no more than the three learnings [of precepts, meditation, and wisdom]… But as for precepts, I myself do not keep a single one. In meditation, I have not attained even one. In wisdom, I have not attained the right wisdom of cutting off discriminative thinking and realizing the fruit” (Hirota 2000). 13  Such reciprocity is expressed by Hōnen through his quotation of Shandao (J. Zendō 善導) (613– 681) on three kinds of relationship (verbal, physical, and mental) between the person of the nenbutsu and Amida. In commentary on a Contemplation Sūtra passage teaching that Amida’s light grasps people of the nenbutsu, Shandao explains that if a person always says Amida’s name, worships, and thinks on Amida, then the Buddha immediately hears, sees, and recognizes the person, for if the being is mindful of Amida, Amida is mindful of the being.

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is practice that has been prepared for beings by Amida Buddha, this teaching alone fails to elucidate precisely how – by what working or mechanism – one’s own utterance is, in fact, practice fulfilled by Amida. At the same time, it is unclear how an attitude of trust or faith, if its sources are human subjectivity, can be the foundation for a genuine link with the realm of awakening or an act of authentic practice, regardless of its object or its impetus in reflective self-awareness. In inquiring after a principle by which either utterance or faith can function as a bond with Amida’s vow and the cause for attaining birth in the Pure Land, we are inevitably shunted between the two without being able to ascertain a firm basis. This was the impasse that vexed Hōnen’s followers. It is here that Shinran incisively brings to bear the Mahāyāna insight into the tenaciousness of human self-attachments, particularly within the sphere of religious praxis. By doing so, he challenges both conceptions of faith and practice and lays bare crucial questions concerning the sources and significance of human subjectivity and agency in relation to the nenbutsu. For Shinran, speaking from a fundamental Buddhist perspective, a good act is one that moves one’s existence toward enlightened wisdom, and evil is any act that impedes such advance. Thus, the problem of performing genuine good and ceasing from evil does not merely concern our ordinary sense of good and evil in relation to ethical conduct in society or even the morality delineated in Buddhist precepts for monastic or lay life. Instead, it involves, more fundamentally, our judgments themselves and the roots of thought and action in discriminative, reifying apprehensions of the self and world. Perceiving the world in terms of oneself and surrounding things as substantial and enduring gives rise to clinging to an elemental level of human existence, and because it is an illusory grasp of reality centered on the ego-­ self, it results in an obsessive, painful experience. Shinran views such false discrimination and reification as being so deeply ingrained in the karmic matrix of a person’s life that human existence is, in itself, inescapably bound to the ignorance of egocentric perception and judgment. This inexorable character of human existence is manifested in the ubiquitous linguisticality of human understanding, by which the world is grasped as disparate objects and values of good and evil are absolutized from the self’s stance. Even endeavor in religious praxis is prone to contamination at its roots, reversing its effects. It is precisely in this that we find the necessity and viability of the Pure Land Buddhist path, which is distinguished from meditative traditions by a fundamental linguisticality that integrates the realization of wisdom with the use of language.

3.3  Linguisticality and the Pure Land Buddhist Path For Shinran, the Pure Land Buddhist teaching is accessible and transformative for persons regardless of their particular intellectual or moral capacities precisely because it provides a way to liberative insight – or contact with what is true and real – through and in the medium of language. In this respect, Shinran’s path differs from Buddhist traditions in which delusional thought and conceptualization

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mediated by language are broken through by means of ascetic discipline and meditative techniques. Borrowing a phrase from the Chinese master Tanluan (J. Donran) 曇鸞 (476–542), he states that in the Pure Land path, “nirvāṇa is attained without severing blind passions” (CWS 1: 70), meaning that even without reaching a point at which dichotomous thinking (language use, conceptualization) has been eradicated, one is filled by or attains suchness (things-as-they-are) or true reality beyond the falsely discriminative grasp of words and concepts. The centrality of language in Shinran’s thought may be grasped from his characterizations of the two fundamental elements in traversing the path: “entrusting” (J. shinjin 信心, “entrustment-mindedness”) of oneself to Amida’s vow, and “practice” (J. gyō 行), which indicates the immediate nexus between our lives in the world and true reality. According to Shinran, shinjin is indicated in the Larger Sūtra by the expression, “hearing [Amida’s] Name” (CWS 1: 474), which is praised by all the Buddhas throughout the cosmos. Such hearing “means that sentient beings, having heard how the Buddha’s Vow arose – its origin and fulfillment – are altogether free of doubt” (CWS 1: 112, 474). Further, he states that practice is “to say the Name of the Tathāgata of unhindered light (i.e., Amida Buddha)” (CWS 1: 13). The religious path, therefore, is to hear Amida Buddha’s Name or Vow and to say the nenbutsu. The pivotal role of language as the vehicle of awakening is apparent. Authentic engagement with it is not, however, simply an intellectual grasp or adoption of the verbal teaching but necessarily involves a shift in engagement with language itself. The language of the Pure Land path must be accessible to people who perform no disciplines to abolish ordinary (in the Buddhist view, delusional) modes of thought, and at the same time, it must possess the power to transform their existence by severing the bonds of delusional thought. That is, although language normally functions as a medium of false discrimination between subject and object and among objects, it must also be able to lead people to break through the horizons and conceptual frameworks of the world and the self that are constructed through our cultural conditioning and our ordinary, egocentric modes of apprehension. How does our engagement with the Pure Land teaching (hearing and saying the Name) differ from our usual, delusional linguistic activity, so that it becomes the cause and the activity of enlightenment? In terms of the path, how are its two dimensions – its linguistic medium and its transcendence of language – integrated? Here, we will consider two aspects of a transformed relation to language: the reflexive awareness of linguisticality and the emergence of true words. These two aspects correspond to opposite faces of the central moment of religious transformation in Shinran’s thought: the falling away of self-power as calculative thinking (J. hakarai はからひ) and the attainment of shinjin. The consequences of both aspects expressed in terms of language may be seen in the following passage: I know nothing at all of “good” or “evil.” For if I could know thoroughly, as Amida Tathāgata knows, that an act was good, then I would know good. If I could know thoroughly, as the Tathāgata knows, that an act was evil, then I would know evil. But with a foolish being full of blind passions, in this fleeting world – this burning house – all matters without exception are empty words (soragoto) and gibberish (tawagoto), with nothing of truth, reality, or

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sincerity (makoto). The nenbutsu alone is true and real. (Tannishō  歎異抄 [A Record in Lament of Divergences], Shinran 1982: 131; CWS 1: 679)

From Shinran’s perspective, communicating the path requires simultaneously a negative aspect of freeing the teaching from ordinary frameworks of understanding and an affirmative aspect of conveying a genuine apprehension of reality. His method in seeking to accomplish this is to speak from his own awareness. This does not provide a process to trace, either in conceptual thought or in methodical action, but may be received as Shinran’s own summons from his stance within the working of the vow. To read his words in accord with his intent, therefore, is to be moved from an appropriation of the teaching into our conventionally perceived universe to a realization of language as false and true in Shinran’s senses. On the one hand, one’s conceptions of self and world and one’s judgments about them come to be seen as shaped by egocentric attachments and as fabrications (“empty words and gibberish”). On the other hand, “the nenbutsu alone is true and real” (CWS 1: 679), accessible to our understanding, yet manifesting as reality that transcends conceptual manipulation. Thus, the teaching has a remedial function, illuminating the falsity of the thought and speech ordinarily generated by human beings. At the same time, it is true word, and thus characterized by the nondualities of word and reality and of act and word, it enters and transforms thought and speech.

3.4  “ Other Power Means Being Wholly Free of Calculative Thinking” As we have seen, for Hōnen the distinction between self-power and Other Power hinged on whether persons relied on their own abilities to accomplish good actions or whether they entrusted themselves to the Buddha’s working. Shinran, however, perceives attachments to one’s own powers as not merely volitional but as involving, at their most fundamental level, one’s very perceptions of good and evil. Thus, he explains “self-power” as “endeavoring to make yourself worthy through mending the confusion in your acts, words, and thoughts, confident of your own powers and guided by your own calculation (emphasis added) (hakarai)” (CWS 1: 525). Hakarai (calculative thinking) is perhaps the single major term in Shinran’s thought adopted from ordinary Japanese instead of the Buddhist canon in Chinese, and for him it expresses the element of human existence that obstructs the Buddhist path. If “doubt” expresses the opposite of shinjin, then the core of doubt is adherence to one’s grasp of good and evil guided by calculative thinking. This is expressed in the Larger Sūtra: [Śākyamuni Buddha said:] Suppose there are sentient beings who, with minds full of doubt, aspire to be born in that land through the practice of various meritorious acts; unable to realize Buddha-wisdom, the inconceivable wisdom, the ineffable wisdom…, they doubt these wisdoms and do not entrust themselves. And yet, believing in [the recompense of] evil and good, they aspire to be born in that land through cultivating the root of good. (CWS 1: 209)

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In the passage from Tannishō quoted above, Shinran uses the term “soragoto” (deceitful, vacuous, or insincere words) to indicate his own realization of the intractable egocentricity of his judgments of good and evil. We find in his works, however, another use of the term “soragoto”; a comparison of these two usages will help us grasp the nature of his insight. In addition to the conception of “soragoto” as the falsely discriminative linguisticality that is an inherent element of unenlightened human existence, Shinran uses the term in the following way: While persons who do not know even the characters for “good” and “evil” All possess a mind true, real, and sincere (makoto no kokoro), I make a display of knowing the words “good” and “evil”; This is the manifestation of great falsity (soragoto). (CWS 1: 429)

As recorded in Tannishō, Shinran confesses to ignorance of “the two, good and evil,” but in this hymn, he speaks of making a “display of knowing the words ‘good’ and ‘evil’” while taking pleasure in his status as a Buddhist teacher. In the Tannishō passage, “false language” (J. soragoto 虚言) expresses the self-­ awareness of one who has awakened to the incapacity to truly determine good and evil, while in the hymn, it characterizes the consciousness of the person who presupposes his ability to judge self and others appropriately, though inevitably doing so from the perspective of the ego-self and its convenience. The hymn identifies Shinran as one possessed of “great falsity,” while the words in Tannishō show him in fact to be, in the context of the hymn, a person of “mind true and sincere” (J. makoto no kokoro). These two aspects reveal that while falsity in the sense of warped and fragmentary apperception cannot be eliminated from human life, blind falsehood as an absolutist and ultimately self-serving judgment of good and evil can, for there are people who, out of the self-awareness of their incapacity, know their own ignorance of genuine “good” and “evil,” and such people are described as people of “truth, reality, and sincerity” (J. makoto). It is likely that Shinran’s words in Tannishō were spoken in response to the concerns of followers regarding the need to accomplish meritorious acts and the fear of having committed evil. Shinran seeks to disclose and, thereby, undermine their assumptions, stating that he himself “knows nothing at all of the two, good and evil.” In this way, he manifests his own lack of a self-reflective self or of calculative thinking, which has collapsed within him into an encompassing world of discriminative perception that is itself evil in the Buddhist sense. This breakdown of an inner, judgmental self that had assumed its own good is the crucial overturning or discarding of self-power, for here the confidence has vanished that one can, through effort to amend the self, decisively rectify one’s own thoughts and acts. Hence, the “false language” (soragoto) of good and evil  – the language of the doubled self or the “mind of calculative thinking” – has fallen away. When Shinran further states that he “has no idea whether the nenbutsu is truly the seed for being born in the Pure Land or whether it is the karmic act for which [he] must fall into hell,” he is expressing his utter incapacity for truly determining good and evil. It is precisely for this reason that, as he states, “hell is decidedly my abode whatever I do” (Shinran 1982: 23,

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CWS 1: 662). Here, on the one hand, the Name and the Vow stand extricated from the bounds of ordinary thought and cease to be means operating within the parameters of the delusional self. On the other, a person’s acts come to be pervaded by an awareness of their roots in a distorted vision of self and world. As stated above, Shinran indicates no method for discarding calculative thinking, since any self-generated attempt would be futile. It is solely through an encounter with Amida’s vow as genuinely Other, originating from enlightened wisdom, that a transformation may occur. He states in a letter: When people first begin to hear the Buddha’s Vow, they wonder, having become thoroughly aware of the karmic evil in their hearts and minds, how they will ever attain birth as they are. Such people … come to abhor such a self and to lament continued existence in birth-­ and-­death; and … then joyfully say the Name of Amida Buddha deeply entrusting themselves to the Vow…. Since shinjin … arises through the encouragement of Śākyamuni and Amida, once that true and real mind is made to arise in us, how can we remain as we were, possessed of blind passions? (CWS 1: 553–554)

Here, “karmic evil” does not express acquiescence to committing evil but rather a penetrating recognition, itself arising through the working of enlightened wisdom, that even one’s judgments of right and wrong stand within an encompassing falsity of ignorance. This is a stance not of self-indulgence but of sensitivity to the pain inflicted on ourselves and on others by the delusive self in saṃsāric existence.

3.5  Attainment of Shinjin For Shinran, the realization of shinjin or entrustment-mindedness is radically transforming, for it is the disclosure of an encompassing and delimiting dimension of existence (Hirota 2009, 2000). It situates and pervades the totality of one’s being without necessarily altering the character of the self or one’s particular circumstances. Hence, Shinran states that it occurs in a person’s life once, irreversibly, and in a single thought-moment (J. ichinen 一念).14 The central sūtra passage informing Shinran’s understanding of shinjin is from the Larger Sūtra: All sentient beings, as they hear the Name, realize even one thought-moment [of] shinjin and joy, which is directed [to them from Amida’s] sincere mind, and aspiring to be born in that land, they immediately attain birth and dwell in the stage of nonretrogression. (CWS 1: 111, adapted)

These words of Śākyamuni in the Larger Sūtra are understood in the Pure Land tradition to indicate that Amida’s seventeenth vow (that  Amida’s name will be praised by all the buddhas throughout the cosmos) and eighteenth vow (that all  For Shinran, an engagement with the teaching that can be shaken by doubts has simply not been genuine attainment of shinjin. He states in a letter referring to a number of people in the Kantō region: “The shinjin the people held from before was shaken by what Jishin-bō is saying; in short, the fact that their shinjin was not genuine has become manifest” (CWS 1: 569).

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beings who say his name in trust will be brought to birth into his Pure Land) have been fulfilled and are operative in the world at present. The central issue for Pure Land commentators and practitioners was to understand Amida’s eighteenth vow and the method of practice prescribed in it. Hōnen interpreted it based on the Contemplation Sūtra passage that describes the person who performs no good act throughout life except the utterance of the nenbutsu ten times at the point of death yet is enabled thereby to attain birth in the Pure Land (see note 7). In Hōnen’s view, this passage reveals not only that simply saying the nenbutsu is the practice indicated in the eighteenth vow but also that, since those who perform good acts and those who perform none are both able to attain birth, attainment depends wholly on the Buddha’s power and not any sort of human praxis. Shinran, however, instead turned to the passage above, which he understood in a manner vastly different from the tradition and from his teacher Hōnen. The passage as translated here reflects Shinran’s unique construal of it, which is indicated by his “reading marks” (J. kunten 訓点) and his commentaries on it.15 Since the passage’s content parallels the eighteenth vow, it had been understood in the Chinese and Japanese tradition to teach that when sentient beings, on hearing Amida’s name, awaken “trust and joy, say [the nenbutsu] even once and, sincerely directing their merits [toward attainment], aspire to be born in [Amida’s] land, then they will attain birth [there on death in this world] and [in the Pure Land] abide in the stage of nonretrogression” (this is the meaning of the sūtra passage as understood prior to Shinran). Shinran diverges from this reading at three significant points, all bearing on his understanding of the nature of shinjin. The first two differences are closely intertwined. Hōnen, following the Chinese tradition of Shandao (J. Zendō 善導) (613–681), understood the eighteenth vow to specify “saying the nenbutsu even but ten times” (J. naishi jūnen 乃至十念) and interprets the parallel phrase (J. naishi ichinen 乃至一念) in the passage on the fulfillment of the vow to indicate “saying the nenbutsu (nen 念) even once” out of trust and joy. It is clearly natural to interpret the two passages in the same way. Shinran, however, while following the tradition in understanding the vow to speak of saying the nenbutsu, explicitly rejects this interpretation of the passage on the fulfillment of the vow. In addition to utterance of the nenbutsu, the term nen may also mean “thought” or “mindfulness,” or it may have a temporal meaning of the briefest interval of time or “instant.” Shinran adopts these latter two meanings for the fulfillment passage, thus placing weight on the realization of shinjin and the nature of this attainment: “realize even one thought-moment of shinjin.” It is not that Shinran understood the vow and the passage teaching its fulfillment to differ. Rather, based on his own experience, Shinran discovered that instead of following Hōnen in interpreting the vow and its practice on the basis of the Contemplation Sūtra, a fuller, more apposite  Shinran’s interpretations of passages from the sūtras and the Pure Land commentarial tradition, indicated with reading annotations (J. kaeriten, kunten), and with honorific and auxiliary verbs and particles, departed radically from commonly accepted understandings at significant points. For a discussion of the significance of his hermeneutical practices, see CWS (11: 23–27).

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understanding was provided in the fulfillment passage of the Larger Sūtra itself. Further, the fulfillment passage illuminated the nature of the nenbutsu in a way that resolved the controversial problem of the bifurcation of utterance and trust. To grasp Shinran’s understanding, it is necessary to turn to his second major deviation from the orthodox interpretation of the passage. The text speaks of beings who “sincerely direct” the merits of their good acts and practices toward attaining birth in the Pure Land. Shinran, however, by inserting honorific auxiliary verbs and particles in Japanese into the reading of the Chinese text, indicates that the agent who “directs” is not the practitioner but the Buddha: Amida “directs his sincere mind” to beings. For Shinran, the words of the sūtra, as Śākyamuni’s exposition, arise from wisdom or true reality and cannot be properly understood merely within the frameworks of our ordinary language use. “Sincere mind,” in its genuine meaning, can only refer to the Buddha’s enlightened wisdom and not the irresolute, self-­ interested human mind. Further, human beings, though they may endeavor to achieve true good, have no pure merit to direct toward attaining awakening. Thus, the sūtra passage is appropriately construed as Amida acting on beings. In this reading, Shinran found expressed in the sūtra the means by which the act of practice selected and fulfilled by Amida becomes the practitioner’s own. Through bringing beings to “hear” his name or vow, Amida Buddha awakens wisdom-­ compassion in them. Through the action of this wisdom, they come to apprehend the flawed, constricted nature of their judgments and their discriminative grasp of self and things in the world, and the obsessive energy that had impelled their calculative thinking falls away. This is simultaneously the emergence of Other Power in their existence; hence, they rejoice and utter the name. Hearing is thus holistic and transformational, pervading the entire existence of the practitioner, though not necessarily altering its concrete conditions or circumstances. Nevertheless, as Shinran states in the letter quoted above, “How can we remain as we were?” Shinran describes the utterance of the name alone as true and real, for it emerges as the manifestation of Amida’s wisdom-compassion working in the practitioner’s existence. Because the nenbutsu arises from the Buddha’s enlightened mind “given” to or awakened in persons, it is the Buddha’s practice, which Shinran describes: The great practice is to say the Name of the Tathāgata of unhindered light. This practice, embodying all good acts and possessing all roots of virtue, is perfect and most rapid in bringing them to fullness. It is the treasure ocean of virtues that is suchness or true reality. (CWS 1: 13)

It is not that Pure Land practitioners perform no practice or that practice in the Pure Land path has been replaced by faith. Rather, they enact the Buddha’s virtues, so that “these virtues quickly and rapidly become perfectly full in the hearts of persons who entrust themselves to them. Thus, though persons … neither know nor seek it, the vast treasure of virtues completely fills them” (CWS 1: 487). This is practice free of all reification of agency or objectification as means or method. Liberated from the shadows of contrivance and acquisition, it is itself the surfacing in the sphere of human speech and action of nondiscriminative wisdom or reality.

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In Shinran’s view, “Supreme nirvāṇa is uncreated dharma-body … true reality … suchness … Amida Tathāgata comes forth from suchness and manifests various bodies – fulfilled, accommodated, and transformed” (CWS 1: 153). Thus, a person’s utterance of the nenbutsu, emerging from the attainment of the Buddha’s mind of awakening in the mode of shinjin, manifests “the treasure ocean of virtues that is suchness or true reality” pervading and transforming a person’s existence (CWS 1: 13). For this reason, Shinran can also assert: “To say Namu-amida-butsu is to praise the Buddha … to repent all the karmic evil one has committed since the beginningless past … to desire to be born in the Pure Land of peace … to give this virtue to all sentient beings” (CSW I: 504). Further, we see from Shinran’s re-interpretation of the fulfillment passage the radical shift in orientation resulting from his distinctive understanding of the nature of shinjin: sentient beings “immediately attain birth and dwell in the stage of nonretrogression.” Pure Land teachings are perhaps liable in any period to be understood as focused on an afterlife in an idealized realm. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as Pure Land Buddhism spread among the laity and the common people amid stark conditions of life and periodic famines and epidemics, yearning for peace in the afterlife was a powerful religious motive.16 In his works, however, Shinran underscores the centrality in the teaching of the stage of nonretrogression (“stage of those truly settled” [shōjōju 正定聚] or “definitely settled” [hitsujō 必 定], “stage equal to Tathāgatas” [nyorai ni hitoshi 如来に等し], etc.), which, as we have seen, was the original goal of the Pure Land path as a development of the bodhisattva practice in Mahāyāna thought. Further, although in the tradition, this goal had been identified with reaching the supportive environment of the Pure Land, Shinran asserts that it is to be attained in the present life.

4  Part Three: Major Issues in Shinran’s Thought 4.1  Truth True reality is the single way, pure and undefiled; there is no other. The true and real is Tathāgata …. The true and real is boundless space…. The true and real is Buddha-nature. (Nirvana Sūtra, quoted in “Chapter on Shinjin” 26, CWS 1: 97)

Shinran frequently employs the concept of truth, but usually not in the modern sense in which doctrinal assertions are believed to represent or accord with the way things are and therefore to be “true.”17 In his writings, the major term corresponding to “true” or “truth” (J. shinjitsu 真実; J. makoto 真, 実) must be taken as basically synonymous with “real” or inconceivable “reality” and its various traditional  Shinran wrote to a follower in a time of famine: “It is saddening that so many people, both young and old, men and women, have died this year and last. But the Tathāgata taught the truth of life’s impermanence for us fully, so you must not be distressed by it” (CWS 1: 531). 17  For a more thorough treatment of this issue, see Hirota (2006, 2008). 16

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Buddhist expressions: suchness, dharma-nature (S. dharmatā, J. hosshō 法性), dharma-body (S. dharmakāya, J. hosshin 法身), nondiscriminative wisdom, and so on.18 At the most fundamental level, therefore, truth for Shinran is not primarily propositional but rather reality itself, as things free of the imposition of discriminative, reifying conceptualization and verbalization. Thus, in Shinran’s thought, truth stands distinct from the character of our ordinary modes of knowing and reflection, which he views not only as fallacious but as insincere and morally corrupt. He states in a commentary: “True and real” (shinjitsu) refers to the Vow of [Amida] Tathāgata being true and real; this is what the term “sincere mind” [in the Eighteenth Vow] means. From the very beginning sentient beings, who are filled with blind passions, lack a mind true and real, a heart of purity, for they are possessed of defilements, evil, and wrong views. (CWS 1: 493)

It is not simply that human thought and perceptions are limited so that truth does not naturally enter its compass; rather, our vision and awareness are fundamentally askew, warped by delusional self-attachments, and thus in conflict with truth. At the same time, however, truth for Shinran stands in relation to human understanding and takes linguistic form. It may be said to emerge in the realm of human apprehension and become manifest in words and concepts. We may get a sense of his notion of truth by looking at the method by which he demonstrates the “truth and reality” (J. shinjitsu) of the teaching of the Larger Sūtra in Teaching, Practice, and Realization of the Pure Land Way (J. Kyōgyōshō monrui). In the first chapter of this work, “Chapter on Teaching,” Shinran argues that the truth of the sūtra is evident from the circumstances in which it was delivered by Śākyamuni Buddha, as related in the sūtra itself. As may be ascertained from the dialogue between Śākyamuni and his disciple Ānanda that frames the delivery of the sūtra proper, immediately prior to expounding his teaching, Śākyamuni has emerged from profound samādhi, called “the samādhi of great tranquility” (CWS 1: 339), and his countenance and physical features hold a splendor and radiance that reflect the depth of his meditation. From the Buddha’s extraordinary appearance, it is clear to his disciple that the sūtra he is about to preach will be not merely one version of the teaching among many, but the teaching – that which Śākyamuni has expressly appeared in our world in order to transmit. Shinran’s argument turns on the following sūtra passage, which he adduces in the first quotation of Teaching, Practice, and Realization after indicating its significance with his question: How is it known that [this sūtra] was the great matter for which Śākyamuni appeared in the world? The Larger Sūtra states: “[Ānanda asked,] Today, World-honored one, your sense organs are filled with gladness and serenity. Your complexion is pure. Your radiant counte-

18  There are other terms, primarily from the Chinese translations of Buddhist texts, that are normally translated “truth,” for example, tai 諦, which is used for the Four Noble Truths (S. satya) and the twofold truth, worldly or conventional truth (S. saṃvṛti-satya, J. zokutai 俗諦) and supreme truth (S. paramārtha-satya, J. shintai 真諦), and dōri 道理 or kotowari 理, which is often translated “principle.” When Shinran refers to the truth of the Larger Sūtra or asserts that the nenbutsu teaching is true, however, he uses the term shinjitsu or the Japanese reading of each of the two characters that make up this term, “makoto.”

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nance is majestic …. Today, the World-honored one abides in the dharma most rare and wondrous. Today, the Great Hero abides where all Buddhas abide …. Today, the Preeminent one of the world abides in the supreme enlightenment. Today, the Heaven-honored one puts into practice the virtue of all Tathāgatas.” (CWS 1: 7–8)

This passage forms the core of Shinran’s proof of the sūtra’s truth. The words that Śākyamuni delivers are known to be true not because they do indeed teach the nature of the world and human existence coherently or because what they assert is ascertained to represent the state of things, but because the words have emerged from the deepest samādhi, which is itself true reality – the “dharma most rare and wondrous” or the “abode of all buddhas.” For this reason, the Buddha’s exposition of his teaching may be said to “put into practice the virtue of all Tathāgatas.” It does this by manifesting, in words, reality that is beyond ordinary verbal expression and conceptualization. This may seem to be foundationalist in that its veracity rests on the Buddha’s realization, but we must note that a critical rift lies between the reality realized by the Buddha, which transcends words and concepts, and any verbal expression of the teaching, so that logical, methodical construction of a secure superstructure of doctrine upon an unshakable foundation of truth is impossible. Moreover, this conception of truth does not rest simply on the authority of the Buddha. Thus, Shinran can assert: If Amida’s Primal Vow is true and real, Śākyamuni’s teaching cannot be lies. If the Buddha’s teaching is true and real, Shan-tao’s commentaries cannot be lies. If Shan-tao’s commentaries are true and real, can Hōnen’s words be a lie? If what Hōnen said is true and real, then surely my words cannot be empty. (Tannishō 2, Shinran 1982: 23)

This is surely a line of logic or reasoning that at bottom turns our usual expectations upside-down. According to this passage, the truth of Amida’s Vow is not demonstrated on the basis of the Buddha’s teaching, but in fact precisely the reverse: the teaching may be called true because of the Vow. Shinran also states this same basic view of truth or reality as underpinning the veracity of its verbal expression from the reverse perspective: After true shinjin has become settled in us, even if Buddhas like Amida or like Śākyamuni should fill the skies and proclaim that Śākyamuni’s teaching and Amida’s Primal Vow are false, we will not have even one moment of doubt. (CWS 1: 575)

Again, the truth of the Vow is not demonstrated by displaying evidence of the teaching’s authority. Rather, it is truth itself as the occurrence or event of its emergence (shinjin becoming settled in one) that provides the touchstone by which one may judge verbal expressions. To augment the sketch of characteristics above, we may note that Shinran’s rejection of hakarai (calculative thinking) is not an abandonment of notions of reasoning and truth. In his writings and recorded words, Shinran lays out his own arguments in rational structures with tight logical connectives. Truth, however, is not arrived at through the thinking with which we normally carry on our everyday lives, for such thinking is rooted in attachments to a delusional self. Rather than viewing truth as a propositional statement or assertion about the world from the stance of a reified

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subject, Shinran characterizes it as a fundamental shift in stance, a transformative event in which the self is dislodged from an absolute standpoint and made aware of its conditioned nature. Truth is the emergence of self-awareness of one’s existence as finite and delusional (evil in the Buddhist sense of being bound to saṃsāric existence). This realization breaks a tenacious ignorance, even as one continues to live in a world of false, discriminative thinking. Thus, one may await the realization of shinjin, but it cannot be brought about by any self-generated contrivance. This sense of truth as a basic shift in mode of existence is expressed in a passage from Shūjishō, a record composed by Shinran’s great-grandson Kakunyo 覚如 (1270–1351). In words that parallel those from Tannishō quoted before, Shinran states: “For myself, I have no idea whether I am bound for the Pure Land or for hell. The late Master Hōnen said, ‘Just come wherever I may be.’ Having received these words, I shall go to the place where the late Master has gone, even if it be hell.”19 To receive Hōnen’s instruction, to hear the Primal Vow, and to receive the truth of the teaching are not a matter of understanding confined within the horizons of ordinary existence but may be expressed as going “to the place where the late Master has gone,” or as a shift in the stance of one’s conduct of life, even as it emerges for the first time as actually saṃsāric. Here, we see a further aspect of Shinran’s conception of truth. Shinran speaks of the importance of his encounter with Hōnen, who beckons to him from across the gap between the place where he stands and ordinary existence. In precisely the same way, in his spoken words and letters, Shinran beckons his disciples from their reasoning of methods for achieving the Pure Land to his own stance, in which hell is decidedly his abode. What is central here is the transformative force of contact with what is true. The true words encountered in the person of Hōnen do not so much call one from the things of the world as they call one from the sameness of the world envisioned and embraced from the stance of the ego-self. The otherness of Other Power manifests itself precisely as the limit or boundary of the framework in which a person measures and gauges the worth and endurance of his own extended existence. For Shinran, only in an existential encounter with otherness through dialogical engagement can the delusional attachments of everyday life be broken. A reasoned or determinedly resolute adherence to the Pure Land teaching cannot bring one beyond the limits of an ego-centered stance. An additional characteristic of Shinran’s notion of truth is its dynamic multivalence. It becomes manifest in the process of understanding because it is a mode of apprehension and not an objectified formulation. The quality of truth lies not in an intellectual grasp alone but in awareness that includes the recognition of its own finitude and its final partiality and untruth. I have dealt with this  The passage continues: “If I had not encountered my good teacher in this life, foolish being that I am, I would surely fall into hell. But receiving the instruction of the Master, I have heard Amida’s Primal Vow and received the truth (kotowari) of being grasped, never to be abandoned. Thus, though it is difficult to part from saṃsāra, I have parted from saṃsāric existence and will decidedly be born in the Pure Land” (SSZ 3: 38).

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aspect of truth as it manifests itself in terms of the structures and concepts of the Pure Land teaching elsewhere (Hirota 2008). Here, I will note only that truth for Shinran is not abstract and transcendent but always truth as enacted and encountered, as Other Power that acts to reveal the situatedness of human understanding. In this sense, truth for Shinran is neither objectified nor emanational; as the selfawareness of karmic beings, it does not stand apart from ignorance and falsity. From the above, we see that in Shinran’s thought, truth is above all enacted, a transformative event, dialogical in character as appropriate to the linguisticality of our existence, and pluralist and nonreifying in its force.

4.2  Reality as Jinen As the essential purport of the Vow, [Amida] vowed to bring us all to become supreme Buddha. Supreme Buddha is formless, and because of being formless is called jinen 自然. Buddha, when appearing with form, is not called supreme nirvāṇa. In order to make it known that supreme Buddha is formless, the name Amida Buddha is expressly used; so I have been taught. Amida Buddha fulfills the purpose of making us know the significance of jinen. (CWS 1: 428, 530)

Although Shinran adopts a number of terms from Buddhist tradition to refer to reality or awakening free of discriminative reification – suchness, dharma-body, thusness, oneness, Tathāgata, etc. – late in life he came to favor yet another word, jinen. Jinen is adverbial in meaning, signifying “thus of itself,” “spontaneously,” or “naturally,” and also came to be used as a noun (“naturalness,” or “nature” in the sense of the natural world). In using this term for suchness or supreme nirvāṇa, Shinran expresses both the ultimate, inconceivable attainment of the Pure Land path and also his vision of reality as inherently dynamic, actively giving rise to the working of wisdom-compassion. Jinen or naturalness is true reality that transcends all conceptual grasp and, at the same time, is always vital, functioning as the liberating force that encompasses and fills the lives of ignorant beings. Shinran defines jinen with regard to the stance of the practitioner as “being made to become so of itself” – that is, being brought to awakening through Amida’s working and not through one’s own designs and endeavor. Shinran identifies various aspects of jinen in its active dimension. As the vow, it works “to bring each of us entrust ourselves to it, saying Namu-amida-butsu” (CWS 1: 427); thus, it is the calling to and awakening of shinjin in beings. Further, “there is no room for the practicer to be concerned about being good or bad” (CWS 1: 427–428), for by its working, all the “practicer’s past, present, and future evil karma is transformed into the highest good” (CWS 1: 453) (this will be discussed below). Thereafter, by jinen, a person “naturally is in accord with the cause of birth in the Pure Land and is drawn by the Buddha’s karmic power” (CWS 1: 496–497). Further, “The spontaneous working (jinen) is itself the fulfilled land” (CWS 1: 382), the Pure Land, which in Shinran’s thought may best be described not as a golden paradise but as inconceivable light or buddha-wisdom. Every

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aspect of our liberation from saṃsāric existence, therefore, and our perfect realization of enlightenment come about not through our contrivance and endeavor, but “naturally, by jinen.” Thus, jinen signifies both formless, supreme Buddha and the working of Amida’s Vow, which arises from, and brings all beings to, “the supreme Buddhahood” that is formless. On the path extending from present life carried on in a world of conceptual meaning and purposes to formless, supreme Buddhahood, the final overcoming of the reification and objectification of forms comes at the moment of death. For Shinran, birth into the Pure Land at the end of life means realization of perfect enlightenment. At the same time, it is impossible to determine a boundary line, such as the time of death, to that which is formless. From Shinran’s comments on jinen above, written when he was 86 years old, it is clear that in the depths of the attainment he calls “realization of shinjin,” he came to know jinen. Thus, he speaks of “the ocean of shinjin that is itself suchness or true reality” (CWS 1: 79). In taking refuge in the Primal Vow, he also went beyond the Vow, and in deepening his experience of “hearing the Name” (realizing shinjin), he transcended the “form” of Namu-­ amida-­butsu (its meaning or utterance) and came to carry on his life within the true and “real existence” (J. jinen) that works without forms. However, he concludes his comments on jinen with an admonition: After we have realized this, we should not be forever talking about jinen. If we continuously discuss jinen, that no working is true working will again become a problem of working. It is a matter of inconceivable buddha-wisdom. (CWS 1: 428)

Once one has apprehended the nature of jinen intellectually, one should not continue to analyze it, for seeking to fathom it with the mind is to remain caught upon forms and concepts. It is precisely where the human intellect ceases to press its devices and designs that the world of jinen opens forth. Hence the phrase, “No working” – no calculation and contrivance – “is true working,” the dynamic of the Vow. Shinran seeks through the term jinen to indicate the dynamic self-manifestation of suchness or true reality in the world of human apprehension, not chiefly as a transcendent realm but as itself the process of awakening, from within, to the horizons of human conception and understanding. Here, the desperate determination propelling human desires and attachments loses its force, finding itself subverted by an intuition of that which pervades all that human discrimination divides into fields of self and other. When Shinran speaks of “the treasure ocean of virtues that is suchness or true reality,” unknown and unsought, instantly becoming “perfectly full in the hearts of persons who entrust themselves” in the realization of shinjin (CWS 1: 13, 487), he is pointing to such awareness. Thus, “our desires are countless, and anger, wrath, jealousy, and envy are overwhelming, arising without pause; to the very last moment of life they do not cease, or disappear, or exhaust themselves” (CWS 1: 488), for we continue to live a saṃsāric existence conditioned by our karmic past. At the same time, “once the true and real mind is made to arise in us, how can we remain as we were, possessed of blind passions?” (CWS 1: 554).

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4.3  Transformation as Entry into Deepening Self-Awareness Jinen means “to be made to become so,” which indicates that without a practicer’s calculating in any way whatsoever, all her past, present, and future karmic evil is transformed into good. “To be transformed” means that karmic evil, without being nullified or eradicated, is made into good, just as all waters, upon entering the great ocean, immediately become ocean water. We are made to acquire the Tathāgata’s virtues through entrusting ourselves to the Vow-power; hence the expression, “made to become so.” Since there is no contriving in any way to gain such virtues, it is called jinen. (CWS 1: 453–454, adapted)

“Transformation” (J. ten-zu) is another reoccurring and distinctive term used in Shinran’s thought. In the tradition preceding Shinran, both Pure Land teachers and ordinary people were widely influenced by the idea that the nenbutsu held the power to eradicate the effects of the evil one had committed (J. metsuzai 滅罪).20 It was based on the passage in the Contemplation Sūtra that provided Chinese and Japanese Pure Land thinkers with a key for understanding the significance of Amida’s eighteenth vow, which we have considered above (see note 7). Shinran, however, does not teach the eradication of evil but rather its transformation into genuine good without ceasing to be evil. Structurally, as a dynamic nonduality or interpenetration, this is the opposite face of realization of shinjin, which is also the manifestation of wisdom-compassion. To express the complex and paradoxical transformation that occurs upon attaining shinjin, Shinran adopts concrete analogies from the Pure Land tradition, such as ice melting and becoming water or streams flowing into the sea and becoming one in taste with saltwater. Both metaphors are used to express the transformation of “afflicting passions” (J. bonnō 煩悩) or evil into virtues of wisdom-compassion or “enlightenment” (S. bodhi, J. bodai): Through the benefit of the unhindered light, We realize shinjin of vast, majestic virtues, And the ice of our blind passions necessarily melts, Immediately becoming water of enlightenment. Obstructions of karmic evil turn into virtues; It is like the relation of ice and water: The more the ice, the more the water; The more the obstructions, the more the virtues. (CWS 1: 371)

In this pair of hymns we see the two moments of transformation that Shinran’s writings articulate. In the first hymn, we are brought to realize shinjin, and at once our delusional thoughts and feelings become the Buddha’s wisdom-compassion. In the second hymn, however, we find that our existence is such that blind passions and Amida’s mind make up a single, interfused whole. While delusions and attachments turn into virtues in the light of wisdom, they remain as they are: the opposite of good. Hence, to the same degree that acts impeding enlightenment proliferate, so virtues are abundant: “The more the ice, the more the water.”  See note 7. For an example of one of Hōnen’s close disciples, see the discussion of Shōkū in Hirota (1987) and Ippen (1997: xlvi ff). See also Hirota (1990) for a translation of a tract attributed to Shōkū’s Seizan branch of Hōnen’s Pure Land school.

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Acts of the ego-self, while remaining as they are, immediately fuse with wisdom, and at the same time, they are gradually transformed, like ice melting to become the water of wisdom. In becoming the same as the Buddha’s wisdom, the evil pervading the self’s existence, which had been hidden from one because of ignorance and self-­ attachment, is brought to light. Hence, one’s evils are said to increase. Moreover, as obstructing evils increase and one’s awareness broadens and deepens, one naturally repents and comes to feel gratitude for Amida’s compassion. This is why Shinran states that the saying of the nenbutsu that arises from shinjin is in itself an act of repentance and praise for the Buddha. All our deeds – the roots of our existence itself  – come to be seen as stemming from ignorance and characterized by karmic evil, so that all possibility of living as persons free of delusional self-­centeredness vanishes, and at the same time, this evil is constantly transformed into good that embodies the action of buddha-wisdom. Shinran characterizes evil as “karmic” (in such terms as “akugō” 悪業 and “zaigō” 罪業, literally “evil karma”).21 Karma signifies the law of cause and effect at work in human existence. In general Buddhist thought, past acts, be they good or evil, become causes manifesting their effects in the present, while present acts become the causes of future results. Good acts necessarily result in circumstances favorable toward more good, and evil in unfavorable ones. For Shinran, all our acts, whether good or evil by the prevailing moral or ethical standards, are evil in the sense of being defiled by ignorance and passions. Moreover, this evil is karmic, meaning that it stretches infinitely back into the past. Since the beginningless past, all our acts have worked only to bind us to saṃsāric life. Due to aeons of repetition and habit, we harbor unknowable evil in the depths of our existence. Hence, to become aware of the roots of our existence is to know the basic nature of the self pervaded by passions and ignorant clinging. This attachment traps us completely, and we cannot let go. Amida, as the elemental embodiment of wisdom-compassion, neither forgives nor redeems evil. Rather, the Buddha becomes one with beings’ karmic evil and blind passions in order to enable their awakening to authentic self-knowledge, which is the realization of no-self. This oneness of Buddha and sentient being, of the virtues of wisdom and karmic evil, is the fundamental nature of Amida himself as Buddha, manifested as “grasping, never to abandon” the person who is evil. Since Amida’s virtue embraces evil and ignorance within itself, not only does a person’s karmic evil not disappear, but it is illuminated by wisdom-compassion, and thus comes to fulfill the activity of Amida’s virtue. One is grasped by compassion just as one is possessed of blind passions, so that one’s evils, which have been committed since the distant past, continue to work out their effects in one’s life by karmic law. But at the same time, they are transformed by the power of Amida’s vow. Thus, one who has attained shinjin, the core of whose existence is karmic evil, is nevertheless filled with the Buddha’s virtues, for one’s karmic evil is the substance of the activity of wisdom-compassion.  See Ueda for a discussion of the significance of karma in Shinran’s thought (Ueda 1986), also in Bloom 2004: 103-121.

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4.4  Temporality [I]n the preceding moment, life ends; in the moment following, you are immediately born in [the Pure] Land, where you will constantly enjoy the pleasure of the uncreated dharma for endless kalpas. (Shandao, quoted in CWS 1: 116, adapted) To entrust oneself to the Primal Vow is [described by Shandao,] in the preceding moment, life ends. This means that [on realizing shinjin,] “one immediately enters the group of the truly settled.” Concerning [the sūtra’s teaching that those who realize shinjin] “immediately attain birth,” [as Shandao states,] in the moment following, you are immediately born. This means, “in that instant one enters the stage of the definitely settled.”22 (CWS 1: 594)

Temporality is a major, distinctive theme in Shinran’s thought. Although time is an inherent element of the Pure Land narratives – the sūtras place the establishment and fulfillment of Amida’s vow aeons in the past, and nenbutsu practitioners look toward birth in the Pure Land in the future – Shinran rejects common assumptions that the Pure Land path can simply be assimilated within the clear-cut temporal and spatial coordinates of ordinary life. Realizing shinjin is for a practitioner, who until then has lived solely within the temporal framework of past, present, and future, to awaken to and be filled with that which transcends the objectified flow of time. Shinran therefore recasts Shandao’s statement above, locating the end of saṃsāric existence within the course of ongoing life. In a hymn, he states: After long waiting, we have been able to encounter the moment. When shinjin, firm and diamond-like, becomes settled: Amida’s compassionate light has grasped and protects us, So that we have parted forever from birth-and-death. (Tannishō 2, Shinran 1982: 38, rev.; CWS 1: 381)

While carrying on life in the world, the person of shinjin has broken the bonds of saṃsāric existence. One does not thereby part from physical existence in the stream of time, which continues to death. Rather, one comes to perceive one’s own existence as thoroughly dominated by the demands of the false self, and thus apprehends the course of time not as simply linear – progressing from past to present and then future – but rather as cyclic and repetitive. Temporal life is not merely historic, but saṃsāric, for the nature of one’s personal existence condemns one to further acts of ignorance. Nevertheless, while within such time, one encounters that which breaks the grip of time’s inevitability. Thus, as we have seen, Shinran teaches that attaining shinjin takes place in “one thought-moment,” the briefest possible instant, at once within the flow of time, but without duration and thus also outside time.23 The realization of shinjin occurs in the course of the practitioner’s life, not merely as a temporal event, but as the interruption of saṃsāric time. It is the point at which that beyond the compulsive birth-and-­ death of the self – the wisdom-compassion of the Vow – breaks into and fills the life  Here Shinran recasts Shandao’s words as referring to present attainment of shinjin rather than bodily death. 23  NISHITANI Keiji compares Shinran’s conception to Kierkegaard’s notion of the moment as the “atom of eternity” in his seminal article (Nishitani 1978). 22

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of the practitioner. At this instant, one’s life as solely saṃsāric time comes to an end; hence, Shinran’s radical reinterpretation of Shandao above. From this point on, each moment of life, as it arises, is transformed into Amida’s virtue, so that one lives both in saṃsāric existence and in wisdom-compassion. To express this, Shinran speaks of “the ultimate brevity and expansion (emphasis added) of the length of time in which one attains the mind and practice [i.e., shinjin and nenbutsu] that result in birth in the Pure Land” (CWS 1).

4.5  Immediate Attainment of Birth Because beings’ realization of shinjin is the “self-directing” or transference (J. ekō 回向) of Amida’s wisdom-compassion to them and its transformative unfolding in their existence, Shinran teaches that at the moment it occurs, one attains nonretrogression. As we have seen, this is the original goal of the Pure Land path in Mahāyāna thought. Shinran asserts that contact with the field of awakening, which had been thought to occur with entry into the Pure Land at death, actually emerges through the Buddha’s activity in one’s life. Moreover, Shinran interprets the Larger Sūtra passage on the fulfillment of the vow as asserting that when beings realize shinjin, they “immediately attain birth” (J. soku toku ōjō 即得往生). This is one of the most striking aspects of his teaching, but it is entirely consistent with his understanding of shinjin as the awakened mind of the Buddha.24 Throughout the preceding Pure Land commentarial tradition, “birth” had meant to enter the Pure Land at the end of life in this defiled world. No master prior to Shinran had taught that one attains birth in the present. Further, it had been taught that once born into the Pure Land, the practitioner becomes able to perform bodhisattva practices until eventually realizing Buddhahood. Thus, reaching the Pure Land and thereafter realizing enlightenment had been seen to lie within a temporal line along which the practitioner progresses from saṃsāric existence to Buddhahood. Shinran fundamentally alters this perspective. Instead of maintaining temporal and spatial conceptions of the practitioner’s movement to the field of enlightenment, Shinran states that the practitioner is not the source of gradual progress toward enlightenment, and yet becomes the locus of the Buddha’s activity. In this way, he brings Pure Land thought into correspondence with basic Mahāyāna insight, in which saṃsāra and nirvāṇa are nondual.

 See Ueda for an extensive, though controversial, discussion of Shinran’s conception of birth from the perspective of Mahāyāna Buddhist thought (Ueda 1984). Ueda criticizes traditional Shin scholastics for ignoring Shinran’s assertion that the phrase “immediately attains birth” indicates attainment of the stage of nonretrogression in the present, while he himself has been criticized for ignoring the importance of the notion of birth into the Pure Land at the time of death. Ueda’s argument should be seen as an assertion of the temporal complexity of Shinran’s conception of “birth.”

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With the notion that beings can go to the Pure Land – the realm of nirvāṇa – on leaving saṃsāric existence at death, it is easy to assume that nirvāṇa lies entirely in one’s future. However, along with the present and the past, the future also comprises the world of saṃsāric time. Since nirvāṇa transcends birth-and-death, it transcends the falsely reifying human conception of time itself. Shinran states: “The realm of nirvāṇa” refers to the place where one overturns the delusion of ignorance and realizes the supreme enlightenment…. Nirvāṇa is… the uncreated…. Buddha-nature…. Tathāgata. This Tathāgata pervades the countless world; it fills the hearts and minds of the ocean of all beings…. Since it is with this heart and mind of all sentient beings that they entrust themselves to the vow… this shinjin is none other than Buddha-nature. (CWS 1: 460–461)

Speaking from his stance in the realization of shinjin, Shinran states that nirvāṇa is not simply transcendent, but “fills the hearts and minds of all beings” drifting in saṃsāric existence. In temporal terms, it is timeless and uncreated, and yet also transtemporal, pervading the immediate present that spans the conceptions of past, present, and future. Nirvāṇa fills the karmically created world of birth-and-death, so that the eternal is not different from the world of impermanence. These two realms are not simply identical, however, for they also stand in a relationship of mutual exclusion. This opposition of time and timelessness is, from another perspective, the opposition between nondiscriminative wisdom and ignorance, or eternal bliss and suffering. While they stand in these relationships of mutual contradiction, nirvāṇa fills saṃsāra. Since the timeless fills the hearts and minds of all beings, one need not depart from the world of saṃsāra in order to touch the timeless. Rather, one enters the timeless that transcends birth-and-death precisely within the realm of saṃsāra, in entering the ocean of the Primal Vow. Thus, “shinjin is none other than Buddha-nature.”

4.6  Under Winds of Compassion Persons of shinjin, looking to the past, perceive the immense burden of karma that informs their own existence, long driven by the delusions of self-attachment. At the same time, they realize that Amida’s vow to free them has been fulfilled in the infinite past and has always been working to grasp them. Looking to the future, they recognize that their saṃsāric existence in the past and present can lead only to further ignorant clinging to self; they are the people whom Śākyamuni describes as “difficult to cure” (CWS 1: 125), people destined for hell, or as Shinran said of himself: “I know truly how grievous it is that I, Gutoku Shinran, am sinking in an immense ocean of desires and attachments and am lost in vast mountains of fame and advantage… How ugly it is! How wretched!” (CWS 1: 125). At the same time, their attainment of birth in the Pure Land in the future has been settled, and looking toward it, they “rejoice beforehand at being assured of attaining what they shall attain” (CWS 1: 474).

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This past and future, each with a dual, contradictory structure that includes both saṃsāric existence and the working of the vow, is established in the present with the attainment of shinjin. At that moment, the vow fulfilled in the inconceivable past, while remaining the past, enters the temporal flow of one’s life, so that “all one’s past, present, and future karmic evil is transformed into good” (CWS 1: 453). Further, one’s attainment of birth in the Pure Land, while remaining in the future, becomes completely settled in the present. Shinran states that the person “immediately attains birth.” The fulfillment of the vow in the past and birth in the Pure Land in the future are aspects of the transtemporal dynamic of wisdom-compassion that, while continuing to encompass the practitioner’s entire existence from the directions of the past and the future, becomes one with it in the immediate present and radically transforms it. The present that we ordinarily experience is no more than a fleeting instant, a barely perceptible point at which the past extends itself into the future, or the promise of the future fades and turns into the past. Such a present is not the authentic present in which we live and act but a present robbed of all significance by the framework of homogenous, objective time we construct. Clinging to an imagined self, we seek to forge its identity and permanence against the flow of time into the past and look anxiously to a future plotted by self-centered hopes and designs. Here, there is only saṃsāric repetition. True time, however – time as self-aware, impermanent existence free of the domination of the egocentric will – holds the potential for life that is novel and fresh. Such time emerges as the present when the vow’s fulfillment and birth in the Pure Land fuse with and transform the past and future. Although saṃsāric time merely stretches on endlessly, the time experienced in the awareness of shinjin, while flowing, does not flow, and while moving, is still. It is time, and it is timelessness (Nishitani 1978,  Ueda and Hirota 1989: 180–181). In the present, one still has one’s existence as a human being possessed of blind passions and devoid of truth and reality. However, because one has realized shinjin and entered the ocean of the vow, one’s life has fundamentally parted from the world of birth-and-death, pervaded by immeasurable light and life. In the vow to liberate the person who is evil – the person of saṃsāric existence – beings awaken to that which transcends such existence, and in the transformation, without elimination, of their delusional feelings and perceptions, they apprehend the working of that  which is true and real. Moreover, such existence is experienced not as fraught with contradiction but as harmonious and whole: “When one has boarded the ship of the Vow of great compassion and sailed out on the vast ocean of light, the winds of perfect virtue blow softly and the waves of evil are transformed” (CWS 1: 56). When we have entered the field of the vow, the waves of evil, which until then had raged in us, become one with the calm winds of wisdom and compassion. This is the life of nenbutsu, in which each moment, as it arises, comes to be pervaded by the working of the vow. Thus Shinran speaks of “the ultimate brevity and expansion (emphasis added) of the length of time in which one attains the mind and practice (shinjin and nenbutsu) that result in birth in the Pure Land” (CWS 1: 298).

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4.7  At Home in the Cosmos [Shandao] explains that the heart of the person of shinjin already and always resides in the Pure Land. “Resides” means that the heart of the person of shinjin constantly dwells there. (CWS 1: 528) Should I have been deceived by Master Hōnen and, saying the nenbutsu, plunge utterly into hell, even then I would have no regrets…. I am incapable of any other practice, so hell is decidedly my abode whatever I do. (Tannishō 2, Shinran 1982: 23; CWS 1: 662)

These two passages from Shinran, taken together, express in spatial or cosmic terms the complex structure of the practitioner’s existence that we have considered in temporal terms above. They may appear, however, to contradict in different ways the basic Pure Land teaching of birth in Amida’s buddha-field at death as the goal of the path. As noted before, the Pure Land Buddhist imagination developed in the early Mahāyāna movement out of a sense of increasing remoteness from the enlightened presence of Śākyamuni. Ideas of buddha-fields throughout the universe provided images of the possibility of overcoming the adversity of present conditions through entry elsewhere into an ideal environment supportive of religious practice. The notion of separation came to be depicted not only temporally but also as inexorable deterioration in terms of circumstances increasingly obstructive to religious ­aspiration and praxis. The teaching of the last dharma-age (J. mappō 末法) widespread in Heian and Kamakura Japan bespeaks this insight. Shinran, too, knew famine and epidemic and further speaks of the injustice and persecution he experienced at the hands of “the emperor and his ministers, acting again the dharma and violating human rectitude,” and of the corruption and jealousy of monks “in the various temples” who “lack clear insight into the teachings” and pursue only their own worldly ends (CWS 1: 289). The problem Shinran focuses on, however, concerns not historical surroundings, but the fundamental finitude of human existence, which in Buddhist terms is finally ignorance or false, discriminative thinking and perception. In Shinran’s understanding, Pure Land teachings address precisely the problem of overcoming the distance from the Buddha’s awakening, but the solution lies not in a displacement of one’s proper abode to an afterworld. Instead, “dwelling” or “abiding” in the condition of nonretrogression in the present is already an entrance into the buddha-field of enlightened wisdom-compassion in this world. Thus, while conducting everyday life in society, the person of shinjin is already “a disciple of Śākyamuni and the other Buddhas” of the cosmos (CWS 1: 117). Grasped by the light of Amida’s wisdom-compassion “and having their bodies touched by it,” practitioners “become pliant and gentle in body and mind” (according to Amida’s thirty-­ third vow, quoted in CWS 1: 117). Anger and envy arise in them moment by moment to the close of life, yet they have become persons “who hear and never forget this dharma [of Amida’s vow]” (CWS 1: 117), so that thoughts and feelings rooted in

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attachment to the ego-self are continually transfixed and transformed by self-­ awareness. Thus, Shinran states: “Signs of long years of saying the nenbutsu and aspiring for birth can be seen in the change in the heart that had been bad and in the deep warmth for friends and fellow-practicers; this is the sign of rejecting the world” (CWS 1: 551). Rejecting the world made up of objects of craving and aversion, one comes to apprehend the burdens of one’s very existence imposed upon and borne by others around one. Between life possessed of afflicting attachments and enlightened existence capable of genuinely compassionate action there lies a temporal gap, with the final crossing occurring when karmic bonds are severed at death. Shinran emphasizes, however, that this is not a removal to another realm: When persons become enlightened, we say they “return to the city of dharma-nature”…. With great love and great compassion immediately reaching their fullness in them, they return to the ocean of birth-and-death to save all sentient beings. (CWS 1: 454)

To go to the Pure Land is to return at once to “the gardens of birth-and-death and the forests of blind passions” (CWS 1: 173), now enabled effectively to enact compassion free of the shadows of discriminative thought and attachment. Shinran states: “All sentient beings, without exception, have been our parents and brothers and sisters in the course of countless lives in the many states of existence. On attaining Buddhahood after this present life, we become able to save every one of them” (CWS 1: 664). At the same time, the active unfolding of awakening that Shinran terms jinen already moves across this temporal rift. Thus, he can express his joy and gratitude: “My heart and mind are rooted in the Buddha-ground of the universal Vow, and my thoughts and feelings flow within the dharma-ocean, which is beyond conception” (CWS 1: 291, 303). Further, the practitioner’s goal of compassionate action that, one with wisdom, has “nothing for its occasion of arising”25  – no objectifying grasp – moves from beyond the self in the present. The nenbutsu practitioner’s ethical life thus comes to be oriented in its depths not by rules to be accorded with, virtues to be enhanced, or ideals to be pursued, but by the nurture of perceptions of one’s existence from beyond the horizons of the ego-self. In the light of wisdom-­ compassion, one finds oneself illumined and pervaded by what is genuinely other, transcending the unfathomable attachments and horizons of self. Thus, the significance and power of Shinran’s Pure Land Buddhist path lies in disclosing the concurrence and interaction of saṃsāric existence and nirvāṇic awakening, afflicting passions and wisdom-compassion, and enabling beings to embody the transformation of the one into the other.

 Pure Land master Tanluan states: “Concerning compassion, there are three occasions for its arising; first, sentient beings as the occasion for arising – this is small compassion; second, things as the occasion for arising – this is medium compassion; third, noting as the occasion for arising – this is great compassion” (T 40.18.19.828c).

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Works Cited Abbreviations CWS: Shinran 親鸞. The Collected Works of Shinran. Translated and edited by Dennis Hirota, Hisao Inagaki, Michio Tokunaga, and Ryushin Uryuzu. 2 vols. Kyoto: Jōdo Shinshū Hongwanji-ha, 1997. SSZ: Shinran shōnin zenshū 『親鸞上人全集』 [The Collected Works of Monk Shinran]. Edited by Daishu Kasai 可西大秀 and Fuminori Hasunuma 蓮沼文範. Tokyo: Yukosha, 1926. T: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 『大正新修大蔵經』. 100 vols. Edited by Junjirō Takakusu 高楠順 次郎 and Kaigyoku Watanabe 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai, 1924–34.

Other Sources Bloom, Alfred, ed. 2004. Living in Amida’s Universal Vow: Essays in Shin Buddhism. Bloomington: World Wisdom. Ellison, George. 1973. Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan. Boston: Harvard University Press. Genshin 源信. 1973. The Teachings Essential for Rebirth: A Study of Genshin’s Ōjōyōshū. Trans. Allan A. Andrews. Tokyo: Sophia University. Gómez, Luis O., trans. 1996. Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light: Sanskrit and Chinese Versions of the Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtras. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Hirota, Dennis. 1987. Religious Transformation in Shinran and Shōkū. Pure Land 4: 57–69. ———, trans. 1989. Plain Words on the Pure Land Way: Sayings of the Wandering Monks of Medieval Japan. Kyoto: Ryukoku University. ———, trans. 1990. On Attaining the Settled Mind: A Translation of Anjinketsujosho. Eastern Buddhist 23 (2): 106–121 and 24 (1) (1991): 81–96. ———. 1993. Shinran’s View of Language: A Buddhist Hermeneutics of Faith. Eastern Buddhist 26 (1): 50–93 and (2): 91–130. ———, ed. 2000. Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhism. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 2006. Asura’s Harp: Engagement with Language as Buddhist Path. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter. ———. 2008. Shinran and Heidegger on Truth. In Boundaries of Knowledge in Buddhism, Christianity, and the Natural Sciences, ed. Paul Numrich, 59–79. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. ———. 2009. Shinran and Heidegger on the Phenomenology of Religious Life. Shinshūgaku (Ryukoku University) Nos. 119–120, 1–30. ———. 2010. Shinran in the Light of Heidegger: Rethinking the Concept of Shinjin. In Classical Japanese Philosophy, ed. James Heisig and Rein Raud, 207–231. Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy 7. Nagoya: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture. Hōnen. 2011. The Promise of Amida Buddha: Hōnen’s Path to Bliss. Trans. Jōji Atone and Yūko Hayashi. Boston: Wisdom Publications. Hōnen. 1998. Hōnen’s Senchakushū: Passages on the Selection of the Nenbutsu in the Original Vow (Senchaku hongan nenbutsu shū). Trans. and ed. Senchakushū English Translation Project. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Ippen. 1997. No Abode: The Record of Ippen. Trans. Dennis Hirota. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

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Keenan, John P. 2001. Shinran’s Neglect of Emptiness. Eastern Buddhist 33 (1): 5–15. Nishitani, Keiji. 1978. The Problem of Time in Shinran. Trans. Dennis Hirota. Eastern Buddhist 11 (1): 13–26. Shinran. 1973. The Kyōgyōshinshō: The Collection of Passages Expounding the True Teaching, Living, Faith, and Realizing of the Pure Land. Trans. Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki. Kyoto: Shinshū Ōtaniha. ———. 1982. Tannishō: A Primer. Trans. Dennis Hirota. Kyoto: Ryukoku University. ———. 1997. The Collected Works of Shinran. Trans. and ed. Dennis Hirota, Hisao Inagaki, Michio Tokunaga, and Ryushin Uryuzu. 2 vols. Kyoto: Jōdo Shinshū Hongwanji-ha. Thelle, Notto. 1987. Buddhism and Christianity in Japan: From Conflict to Dialogue, 1854–1899. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Ueda, Yoshifumi. 1984. The Mahayana Structure of Shinran’s Thought. Trans. Dennis Hirota. Eastern Buddhist 17 (1): 57–78 and no. 2: 30–54. ———. 1986. Freedom and Necessity in Shinran’s Concept of Karma. Trans. Dennis Hirota. Eastern Buddhist 19 (1): 76–100. Ueda, Yoshifumi, and Dennis Hirota. 1989. Shinran: An Introduction to His Thought. Kyoto: Hongwanji International Center. ———. 2011. The Promise of Amida Buddha: Hōnen’s Path to Bliss. Trans. Jōji Atone and Yūko Hayashi. Boston: Wisdom Publications. Hōnen. Dennis Hirota is Professor of Shin Buddhist Studies, Emeritus, and Senior Research Fellow at Ryūkoku University, Kyoto. He is the Head Translator of The Collected Works of Shinran (Kyoto, 1997) and has published books and articles in both Japanese and English on Japanese Pure Land Buddhist tradition, particularly the thought of Shinran and Ippen. He has served as Visiting Professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto, (1996–1997) and Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard Divinity School (1999, 2008). His books include Asura’s Harp: Engagement with Language as Buddhist Path, Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhism, Shinran: Shūkyō gengo no kakumeisha [Shinran and Religious Language], and No Abode: The Record of Ippen. He is co-author, with Ueda Yoshifumi, of Shinran: An Introduction to His Thought and has published on Buddhism in the aesthetic thought of Japan, including Wind in the Pines: Classic Buddhist Writings of the Arts as Way. He is currently completing a book on the thought of Shinran in the light of Heidegger.

Chapter 18

Lotus Land in This Very Body: The Religious Philosophy of Nichiren Ruben L. F. Habito

This essay will sketch out key features of the religious philosophy of the thirteenthcentury Japanese Buddhist figure Nichiren 日蓮 (1222–1282) and then consider his worldview and teaching in the context of the contemporary global scene.1 Here I take “philosophy” as synonymous with “understanding of reality,” involving a view of the human condition and of how human existence relates to the entirety of reality. In using the qualifier “religious,” I refer to the feature in his thought that offers prescriptive elements toward “ultimate transformation,” following a working definition of the term “religion” proposed by Frederick Streng (Streng et  al. 1973; Streng 1985). Nichiren continues to be influential today, not only in Japan but in many other parts of the world as well, especially in those areas where communities of his adherents have established themselves as a significant presence. (Stone 2003; Machacek and Wilson 2000). Nichiren’s Buddhism provides an example of a “way of being religious,” with a fourfold structure including its (1) view of the problematic of the human condition, (2) view of ultimate reality, (3) individual or personal appropriations of the way to ultimate reality, and (4) social expressions of the ultimate way. I will take this fourfold structure as our grid for understanding Nichiren’s religious philosophy, citing from his authenticated writings.2 In the second section, I will 1  The first and major section of this essay is a rewritten version of an earlier work entitled “Nichiren’s Way of Being Religious: A Case Study in East Asian Buddhism,” published in Higashiajia bukkyō no kenkyū—Kimura kiyotaka kyōju kanreki kinen ronshū 東アジア仏教の研 究――木村清隆教授還暦記念論集 [Studies in East Asian Buddhism: Kimura Kiyotaka Felicitation Volume] (Sueki 2003: 3–25). 2  The question of authenticity of a good number of treatises attributed to Nichiren has been a key theme of Nichiren scholarship since 1945 when the work of ASAI Yorin was posthumously published and created a stir among Nichiren followers and scholars (Asai 1945). In a thoroughgoing

R. L. F. Habito (*) SMU Perkins School of Theology, Dallas, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_18

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highlight aspects from this fourfold structure and explore areas of resonance with contemporary themes. I refer the reader to other works that provide excellent accounts of Nichiren’s place in history and the socio-political and cultural contexts of his time (Habito and Stone 1999; Hanano 2010; Stone 1999; Dolce 2002; Satō 1998; Sasaki 1979; Satō 1978; Tokoro 1967; Ienaga 1947, among others).

1  Part 1: Nichiren’s View of Reality 1.1  The Human Condition and Its Problematic Nichiren, at the age of 37, wrote a systematic tract entitled Treatise on Protecting The Nation (J. Shugo kokka ron 守護国家論), critiquing the Pure Land teachings of Hōnen (1133–1212) and emphasizing that the Lotus Sūtra alone among all Buddhist teachings bears efficacious power to save all sentient beings and ensure peace in the land during the degenerate age that his country Japan was now in. The tract opens with the following lines: Upon reflection, I consider myself fortunate to have been born in the Sahā (human) World in Japan and to have unexpectedly escaped the three evil realms, for our chances of being born in the evil realms are as numerous as the number of dust particles in all the world of the universe while our chances of being born in the human realm are as small as the amount of soil on a fingernail. This being said, there is no doubt that in my future lives I will forfeit the rare opportunity of being born a human in Japan to be reborn in the three evil realms. The causes for human beings falling into evil realms after death vary. They go to evil realms such as hell for sinful acts committed for the sake of family and relatives; for the grave crime of killing living beings and other brutal acts; for the sin of national rulers for neglecting the sorrows of the people; for taking refuge in depraved teachings without knowing the right or wrong of Buddhist dharmas, or for being encouraged by wicked teachers. Of those mentioned, even the uninformed are able to discriminate the right from wrong when it comes to the morals of daily affairs. It is not easy, however, even for the enlightened sages to distinguish true from false dharmas and teachers. How much more difficult it is for us, ordinary people in the Latter Age! (Hori 2003: 3)3

The above passage provides us with a capsule of Nichiren’s view of the human condition. We can cite the following three points in this regard. First, as an and insightful work which was published as her doctoral dissertation, Jacqueline Stone has examined Asai’s work and has provided a clear and well-documented guide in English to post-Second World War Nichiren scholarship (Stone 1990). Sueki  provides an introductory study critiquing some of Asai’s positions and offers heuristic proposals in considering the question of authenticity focusing on a contested treatise, the Sandai hihō shō 三大秘法抄 [Treatise on the Three Mystic Dharmas] (Sueki 2000). More recently, a soon-to-be published doctoral dissertation of HANANO Jūdō presents fresh perspectives on the relationship of Nichiren and Tendai Original Enlightenment Thought, raising new controversy to the point of leading to the author’s leaving his temple position and affiliation as a Nichiren priest with the Nichiren Shōshu 日蓮正宗, one of the sectarian groups of Nichiren’s followers (Hanano 2010). 3  I have occasionally made my own minor revisions in the English translations of Nichiren’s texts, based on considerations of style and of inclusive language.

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indication of his philosophical attitude, he takes a straightforward look into the realities of the land and society of his birth, Japan. Secondly, he is keenly aware of the impermanence and the short-lived nature of the human life span and constantly keeps “the question of the afterlife” in the foreground of his concerns. Thirdly, he has expressly taken on a notion prevalent among Buddhists of his day, that Japan had now entered the Latter Days of Dharma, a degenerate period of history as depicted in Buddhist teachings originating in China and widely received in Japan (Nattier 1991). His straightforward look into the historical and social conditions of his day is illustrated by a graphic description given in a passage from the landmark Treatise on Spreading Peace Throughout the Country by Establishing the True Dharma (J. Risshō ankoku ron 立正安国論), presented in 1260 (when Nichiren was 37 years of age) to HŌJŌ Tokiyori北条時頼 (1227–1263), at the time an already retired Shōgun but who was the most influential member of the ruling clan. This was an act that triggered subsequent incidents of harassment and persecution from both the religious and political authorities of his time, marking a significant turn in the trajectory of his entire religious life and career as a Votary of the Lotus Sūtra (Matsudo 2004). In recent years, strange phenomena in the sky, natural calamities on earth, famines and epidemics have occurred and spread over all the land of Japan. Oxen and horses lie dead at crossroads and the streets are filled with skeletons. A majority of the population has perished and everyone has been touched by grief . . . . . . famines and epidemics only grow rampant. Only beggars and corpses are seen everywhere! Corpses are piled high as watchtowers, and lined up like a bridge. .. Why is this country so decadent though the number of emperors has not reached 100? Why is Buddhism in this country so powerless? How did this come about? What is the matter with this country? (Teihon 1: 209; Hori 2003: 107–108)

The deteriorating social situation that Nichiren decries can be traced to various factors, including political instability, militaristic designs by rival groups aspiring to power, and socio-economic inequality, compounded by natural calamities. However, for Nichiren the religious roots of the situation are of prime concern, and this perception of the religious nature of the problem is what moves him to write this treatise and present it to the reigning authorities as a proposal for action. I have pondered the matter carefully with what limited resources I possess and have looked a little at the scriptures for an answer. The people of today all turn their backs upon what is right; to a person, they give their allegiance to evil. This is the reason that the benevolent deities have abandoned the nation and departed together, that sages leave and do not return. And in their stead devils and demons come, and disasters and calamities occur. I cannot keep silent on this matter. I cannot suppress my fears. (Teihon 1: 210; Hori 2003: 108)

Based on his own meticulous study and scrutiny of Buddhist scriptures, Nichiren concludes that it is the slander of the True Dharma on the part of the people, condoned, or even encouraged, by those in positions of political power, that is at the root of the ills of society. Specifically, this slander of the True Dharma was most manifest in the fact that the practice of the recitation of the name of Amida 念仏 had gained popularity among the masses, following the teachings of Hōnen法然 (1133–1212).

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While subjecting the latter to his most virulent attacks, Nichiren nevertheless concurred with him, as well as with the mainline Buddhist schools of the time, on one important point: that they were now living in an age that is termed the “Latter Days of Dharma” (J. mappō 末法). The initial 500 years after the death of Śākyamuni is called the age of “True Dharma” (J. shōhō 正法), wherein the teachings of the Buddha found a hearing and were effectively practiced bearing fruits in enlightenment. The subsequent 1000 years is called the age of “Semblance Dharma” (J. zōhō像法), wherein the teachings and practice remained but enlightenment was sparse. In contrast, in these Latter Days, a period understood to last 10,000 years, the teachings were available, but those who practiced it, much less those who attained enlightenment, were few and far between. This acceptance of the “theory of the Latter Days of Dharma” (J. mappō shisō 末 法思想), a development that found wide acceptance in East Asian Buddhism, is thus a key toward understanding Nichiren’s view of the human situation. This view is placed in the context of the “five principles” that Nichiren enumerates as grounds for the cogency of his message, namely, the Teaching, Capacity, Time, Land, and Sequence of propagation.4 In short, in these Latter Days of Dharma, human beings have become so depraved as to lack the capacity to practice toward enlightenment. It is precisely in this age of depravity of humanity, a condition Nichiren considered as a grave illness, that the most potent and effective medicine was called for, namely, the powerful teaching of the Lotus Sūtra. Nichiren takes the systematic interpretations of the teaching of the Lotus Sūtra by the Chinese Tiantai 天台 Masters Zhiyi智顗 (538–597) and successors as a frame of reference for his own. A key feature of the Tiantai view of reality is the doctrine of the interpenetration of the ten worlds of existence, which Nichiren presents in the following way: As we often look at each other’s faces, we notice our facial expression changes from time to time. It is full of delight, anger, or calm sometimes; but other times it changes to greed, ignorance, or flattery. Anger represents hells; greed—hungry spirits; ignorance—beasts; flattery—asura demons; delight—gods; and calm—human beings. Thus we see in the countenance of people six realms of illusion, from hells to the realm of gods. We cannot see four realms of holy ones (sravaka, pratyekabuddha, bodisattvas and Buddhas) which are hidden from our eyes. Nevertheless, we must be able to see them, too, if we look for them carefully. (Teihon 1: 704; Hori 2002: 134–135)

The human being then for Nichiren is capable of the depths of rage, greed, foolishness, and perversity, understood as manifestations of those lower realms of existence. However, at the same time, humans find interior calm as most proper to their own nature as human beings and are also capable of experiencing joy, a manifestation of the heavenly realm within their own being. Further, and most importantly, a human being also has the capacity to be a “hearer of the Buddha’s Voice” (S. śrāvaka), to be a “self-enlightened one” (S. pratyekabuddha), a bodhisattva, and ultimately, a “perfectly enlightened one” (S. buddha).  “Teaching, Capacity, Time, and Country” (Kyōkijikokushō 教機時国抄) (Teihon 1: 241–245; WND 48–54).

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In contrast, by following erroneous teachings, not discerning their true capacity, or mistaking the time and place they are born in, human beings then are liable to fall into the lower realms, as they commit the grievous act of slandering the true Dharma. This was Nichiren’s diagnosis of his time, fraught with natural calamities as well as social evils that were the cause of the suffering of the multitudes, which led him to call people’s attention to the error of their ways. It was his deep concern for the sufferings of the people of his land and time that propelled him to scrutinize the Buddhist Scriptures and commentaries, in an attempt to understand the religious roots of this human condition. His painstaking search, conducted over a period of many years and involving sojourns at centers of Buddhist learning of his day, led him to the convictions that became the foundation stone for his lifetime teaching. His basic message was this: In order to overcome these evils and sufferings that characterize the human condition in this present society, the whole country, from the leaders in power to the masses of people of all walks of life, need to turn away from error and accept the correct Teaching. This is none other than the teaching of the Lotus Sūtra.

1.2  U  ltimate Reality: The Abiding Buddha and the Wondrous Dharma In the teaching of the Lotus Sūtra, Nichiren saw the answer to the problematic human condition of his time, and this is what he so passionately propagated throughout his life. His numerous writings, from lengthy treatises composed in classical Chinese to short epistolary pieces in colloquial Japanese and written in kana script, all derive from this central motivation, that is, of expounding this teaching of the Lotus Sūtra from various angles. At the fulcrum of this teaching is the figure of the “Abiding Buddha” (J. kuonbutsu 久遠仏), “Lord and Teacher Śākyamuni” (J. kyōshu shaku 教主釈尊), described in the sixteenth chapter of the Lotus Sūtra as having attained enlightenment since time immemorial and yet who also continues to be actively engaged in the events in this “earthly” (S. sahā) world. This Abiding Buddha Śākyamuni is presented as the Father of all sentient beings, who looks upon the latter with compassion, seeking to save them from their ignorance and from the states of suffering caused by this ignorance. This Abiding Buddha, however, is not to be understood simply as a transcendent “out there,” who is separate from our existence as human, or more broadly, sentient, beings. Rather, this figure of the Abiding Buddha is also right at the heart of our very being, that is, as immanent in all of us. A passage in the sixteenth chapter of the Lotus Sūtra, “The Life Span of the Buddha,” contends: “It has been many hundreds of thousands of billions of nayuta of kalpa since I have attained Buddhahood.” It means that Śākyamuni Buddha, within our minds, is an ancient Buddha without beginning, manifesting himself in three bodies and having attained Buddhahood in the eternal past described as 500 dust-particle kalpa ago (Teihon 1: 712; Hori 2004: 146).

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This figure of the Abiding Buddha, manifesting itself in a threefold body since time immemorial, thus emerges as the first image in Nichiren’s description of ultimate reality. This Abiding Buddha, Śākyamuni, Lord of the teachings that culminate in the Lotus Sūtra, is all at once sovereign, teacher, and parent, deserving obedience, homage, and gratitude as such (Teihon 1: 535; WND 220). To the Abiding Buddha Śākyamuni belongs this earthly realm, referred to as “Śākyamuni’s realm” (J. shakuson goryō 釈尊御領), and is thus the field in which the Lotus Land is to be established. He resides in Eagle Peak in the company of the glorified buddhas and bodhisattvas of the multiple universes but yet continues to care for his own children in his own realm in this world. Those who acknowledge him as such in this earthly life will thus be welcomed in Eagle Peak (J. Ryōjusen 霊鷲山) and dwell in glory together with him and the host of Buddhas and bodhisattvas. In contrast, those who fail to do so, that is, who slander him and the true teaching he has expounded in the Lotus Sūtra, will be consigned to the hellish realms. This is a key facet in Nichiren’s understanding of the ultimately real: the immanent and ongoing presence of the Abiding Buddha Śākyamuni, sovereign, teacher, and parent of us all, who out of compassion wishes to lead all sentient beings, his very own children, to the realization of supreme perfect enlightenment, that is, their own buddhahood. There is however another facet of ultimate reality that figures just as prominently in Nichiren’s writings. This is given expression in the Tiantai phrase “three thousand realms in a single moment of life” (J. ichinen sanzen 一念三千). This is a notion that Nichiren inherits from the Tiantai (J. Tendai) masters, which he further develops on his own to become a foundational concept in his religious teaching. This notion begins with the affirmation of the mutual interpenetration of the “ten realms of beings” (J. jikkai goku 十界互具), another element of Tendai doctrine. Simply put, from a human standpoint, this is the view of reality affirming that every human being has within oneself the capacity for being a dweller in any of the nine other worlds, from the hellish realms to the realm of perfect enlightenment or Buddhahood (see passage above). This is but a highly nuanced elaboration of the affirmation underlying the major streams of Mahāyāna Buddhism, especially as it flourished in East Asia, to the effect that “all sentient beings are endowed with Buddha-nature” (Takasaki 1975). Nichiren expounds on this point in graphic ways using examples from Chinese lore and from Buddhist tradition: The “mutual interpenetration of the ten realms” doctrine is as difficult to maintain as it is to see fire in a rock and flowers in wood. However, it is not totally impossible because rocks spark when struck together and a tree blooms in the spring. It is most difficult to believe that the realm of Buddhas is contained in the realm of human beings because it is just like saying that fire is in water or water is in fire. However, it is said that dragon fire comes out of water and dragon water comes out of fire. This is difficult to believe, but we cannot help but believe in it because of the evidence for this. You have come to believe that each of the eight realms is contained in the realm of human beings. Why can you not believe that the realm of Buddhas, too, is contained in it? Ancient Chinese rulers, sages such as Yao and Shun, treated all people equally with compassion, proving the existence of the realm of Buddhas, at least a portion of it, within the realm of human beings. Never-Despising Bodhisattva, described in the twentieth chapter on “Never-Despising Bodhisattva” of the Lotus Sūtra, pressed his hands together in respect

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and bowed to anyone he met because whenever the bodhisattva saw a human being, he saw a Buddha in him. Born to the human world, Prince Siddhartha, young Śākyamuni, became the Buddha. These evidences should be enough to convince you to believe that the realm of Buddhas exists in the realm of human beings. (Teihon 1: 706; Hori 2002: 136–137)

The doctrine of the three thousand realms in a single moment of life thus takes off from this notion of mutual interpenetration of the ten realms, multiplying these against one another and making a hundred, further multiplying this by the “ten modes of suchnesses” (J. jūnyoze 十如是), summing up to a thousand, and again multiplying this sum by the three realms of sentient beings, the non-sentient realm, and the realm of the five constituents of existence, to make a total of three thousand. In short, the number three thousand is taken to represent the universe in its entirety. The thrust of the doctrine. Then. is in the affirmation that every single moment in the life of sentient beings in this earthly realm contains the universe in its entirety, and thus, that supreme perfect enlightenment is realize-able in this very earthly realm. For sentient beings living in this Latter Age, there is no point in undertaking severe ascetic practices of meditation and observance of precepts, as these will not bear any fruit at all. But Nichiren has a message of good news on this point. For those who are incapable of understanding the truth of the “three thousand realms in a single moment of life,” Lord Śākyamuni Buddha, with His great compassion, wraps this jewel with the five characters of Myō, hō, ren, ge, and kyō and hangs it around the neck of the ignorant in the Latter Age of the Dharma. (Teihon 1: 720; Hori 2002: 164)

Ultimate reality, this realm of enlightenment expressed in the doctrine of the three thousand realms in a single moment of life, is directly accessible to anyone, especially those living in this degenerate Latter Age of Dharma, with the simple chanting of the five characters of the august title of the Lotus Sūtra. This brings us to the consideration of Nichiren’s prescriptive teaching on the practice toward attaining ultimate reality.

1.3  P  ersonal Appropriation of Ultimate Reality: The Three Mystic Dharmas The central practice advocated by Nichiren toward the realization of ultimate reality is the recitation, or chanting, of the “august title” (J. daimoku 題目) of the Lotus Sūtra: “Namu-myōhō-renge-kyō” 南無妙法蓮華経. This very act of chanting the title will open the chanter who performs it in faith to that realm of the Abiding Buddha Śākyamuni, which is also expressed as the three thousand realms in one thought-moment. Nichiren repeatedly emphasized that the title “Myōhō-renge-kyō” is not a mere name, as people would tend to think. “It is the very essence (of the Lotus Sūtra), its very heart” (Teihon 2: 1410); thus, the act of chanting, in effect, brings the practitioner to the very reality that it signifies. Nichiren’s teaching on the way to the realization of ultimate reality then consists in a very simple message: accept and believe in the Lotus Sūtra as the highest teaching of the Abiding Buddha, give homage in chant to its august title, and you will realize supreme perfect enlightenment.

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As he continued to expound this message to his followers, he fortified it with features of practice that would enhance its thrust. He came to articulate a three-­ pointed practice, which his followers later called the Three Great Mystic Dharmas (J. sandai hihō 三大秘法). Question: In the period of more than two thousand years since Śākyamuni entered into nirvana, is there a secret teaching that the bodhisattvas Nāgārjuna, Vasubandhu and others who lived in the age of the True Dharma, the Great Master Tiantai, Great Master Dengyo and others who lived in the age of the Semblance Dharma concealed and did not propagate to others? Answer: Yes. These are the True Object of Worship, the True Place of Precept Practice, and the Five Characters of the August Title of the Wondrous Dharma. (Teihon 1: 815)5

The “True Object of Worship” (J. honmon no honzon 本門の本尊) is what those who accepted the Lotus Sūtra in faith can place before themselves in a way that enables them to visualize the content of their faith. This consists of a piece of calligraphy with the homage to august title of the Lotus Sūtra, “Myōhō-renge-kyō” 南 無妙法蓮華経, inscribed vertically in bold letters at the center, flanked by the names of Śākyamuni and Prabhūtaratna Buddha, the two key Buddhas of the Lotus Sūtra, and the prominent bodhisattvas appearing in the sutra. Also inscribed in the periphery are names of Four Heavenly Kings, and the two kings of knowledge, Acala and Rāgarāja, as well as a host of guardian deities from Indic lore and the Japanese pantheon, most prominent among whom are Amaterasu 天照and Hachiman 八幡. Nichiren himself composed many of these pieces for use by his followers in their religious practice.6 Chanting the daimoku in front of the True Object of Worship is a practice that opens the practitioner to the experience of mystic identification with ultimate reality. In short, as both the chant and the object of worship signify the same ultimate reality in their respective ways, this act of chanting effects a fusion of chanting subject and object venerated. The highly intricate notion of ultimate reality as received from the Tiantai thinkers, expressed in the phrase “three thousand worlds in a single thought moment,” is brought by Nichiren to a very down-to-earth mode of religious practice that is accessible to ordinary people. The vocal utterance of the august title of the Lotus Sūtra before a calligraphic icon representing this ultimate reality, in a place made sacred by that very chanting, has been described above as the way open for sentient beings for the realization of ultimate reality. 5  This passage is from the Hokke shuyō-shō法華取要抄 Treatise on Key Points of the Lotus Sūtra, an authenticated treatise (Teihon 1: 810–18). The three mystic dharmas are mentioned in other passages from authenticated writings, but without further development. The treatise that expounds on these three in greater detail is the Sandai hihō honjo ji 三大秘法禀承事 (Teihon 2: 1862–1826), whose authorship is under question, but with cogent arguments brought by scholars for as well as against authenticity. See SUEKI Fumihiko, “Nichiren’s Problematic Works” (Sueki 1999 and also Sueki 2000). 6  One hundred and twenty-eight pieces have been authenticated as being from Nichiren’s own hand and have been preserved. See Lucia Dolce, “Nichiren’s Attitude Toward Esoteric Buddhism” (Dolce 1999, 2002).

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In the background of this practice of chanting, we can see traces of the longstanding Mahāyāna tradition of dhāraņī practice (Habito 2000). As for the calligraphic icon or mandala which is revered as the True Object of Worship, elements of the tantric (esoteric) tradition, begun in India but further developed in East Asia, cannot be ignored as elements in the background (Dolce 2002). The third of the three Great Mystic Dharmas involves the particular place in which such an experience of identification with ultimate reality is actualized. This point has evoked controversy among Nichiren’s followers surrounding the interpretation of key passages in the treatise traditionally attributed to Nichiren that expounds on these three mystic dharmas (Sueki 2000). The starting point at issue is one involving the question of precepts in the life of the practitioner. To place the question in context, it may be helpful to note that a general feature among the world’s religious traditions, not excluding Buddhism, is the set of guidelines for behavior (precepts) on the way to ultimate reality as prescribed by each particular tradition. The observance of precepts (S. śīla) constitutes one of the three pillars in the path to enlightenment as taught since Early Buddhism, together with meditative practice that leads to an experience of unitive awareness (S. samādhi), and wisdom coupled with the learning that leads to this wisdom (S. prajňā). In the light of the notion of the Latter Age of Dharma, an underlying factor in the view of reality and of history that Nichiren received from the East Asian Buddhist heritage, the observance of precepts in the traditional sense is deemed ineffectual toward attaining enlightenment. Nichiren himself observed the general guidelines for monastic living, including celibacy and refraining from eating meat, instilled in him during his years of monastic training in various temples, including Mount Hiei, the center of Tendai practice and learning of the time. His teaching, however, included the affirmation that “simply to embrace the Lotus Sūtra is by itself to uphold the precepts” (Teihon 1: 95; Stone 1999: 288, 444). A treatise by Nichiren entitled The Meaning of Precept-Body and Becoming Buddha in this Very Body (J. Kaitai sokushinjōbutsugi 戒体即身成仏 義), which shows the heavy influence of Esoteric Buddhism and the Doctrine of Original Enlightenment, affirms that “this Lotus Sūtra is the Precept-Body of the three worlds” (Teihon 1: 13). This presages the more developed view expounded in his later treatises that embracing the Lotus Sūtra in faith effectively replaces the three traditional disciplines of observance of precepts, meditative practice, and wisdom. The third mystic dharma specifically refers to the place of reception of the precepts, or in technical terms, the “ordination platform” where a devotee is elevated in sacred ritual to the monastic status, that is, of precept-holder in the full sense of the term. For Nichiren this is no longer a question of receiving formal precepts in the traditional way, as coming of the Latter Age of Dharma already precludes the e­ fficacy of such a ritual. Thus, even the ordination ritual performed at the designated platform dedicated to the Lotus Sūtra in Enryakuji on Mount Hiei is regarded as a provisional one, now superseded by the “Ordination Platform of the True Teaching” (J. honmon no kaidan 本門の戒壇), or True Place of Practice. This is where Nichiren’s followers differ among themselves in the interpretation of this True Place of Practice.

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One group of followers interpret this to be an actual and specific geographical location, designated by imperial or state authority. This seems to be the intention of the following passages in the treatise On the Transmission of the Three Great Mystic Dharmas (Sandai hihō bonjōji 三大秘法禀承事: When the Dharma of the ruler becomes one with the Dharma of the Buddha, the Buddha-­ Dharma accords with the Dharma of the ruler, when the ruler and his ministers all uphold the Three Great Mystic Dharmas, and the past relationship between King Utoku and the monk Kakutoku is again realized in the future in this impure and evil Latter Age of the Dharma, then surely an imperial edict and shogunal decree will be handed down, to seek the most superlative site, resembling the Pure Land of Eagle Peak, and there to erect the ordination platform. You have only to await the time. (Teihon 2: 1864; Stone 1999: n. 2, 289)

This passage would thus lend support to a religious vision that includes socio-­ political action, that is, of the kind geared at bringing about the actualization of this state-sponsored True Ordination Platform that would be the harbinger of the Lotus Land in this very earthly realm. Other followers, however, casting doubt on the authenticity of the above treatise, look to other writings of Nichiren, and interpret the True Place of Practice not as a specific ordination platform but as the entirety of the present earthly realm, the locus in which the Buddha realm is to be manifested. This can only happen as people of the land embrace the Lotus Sūtra and realize the timeless Buddha realm in the present moment with the chanting of the daimoku. This acceptance of the Lotus Sūtra by the people of the land will be the key to the transformation of this earthly realm from a place of greed, anger, and ignorance, a place of conflict and of suffering, to become the veritable Pure Land of the Lotus. Nichiren expresses this vision of a transformed earthly realm in the following passages, in a letter written from his exile in Sado Island: When all people throughout the land enter the one Buddha vehicle and the Wonderful Dharma alone flourishes, because the people all chant namu-myōhō-renge-kyō as one, the wind will not thrash the branches nor the rain fall hard enough to break clods. The age will become like the reigns of Yao and Shun. In the present life, inauspicious calamities will be banished, and the people will obtain the art of longevity. When the principle becomes manifest that both persons and dharmas “neither age nor die,” then each of you, behold! There can be no doubt of the sutra’s promise of “peace and security in the present world”. (Teihon 1: 733; Stone 1999: 291–2)

A passage from Zhanran湛然 (711–788) is often quoted by Nichiren to bolster this vision of the oneness of the people and the land as transformed in the light of the Lotus Sūtra: “You should know that one’s person and the land are (both) the single thought-moment comprising three thousand realms. Therefore, when one attains the Way, in accordance with this principle, one’s body and mind in that moment pervade the dharma realm” (T 46: 295c, 23–24, quoted in Stone 1999: 291). Whether one takes the third Mystic Dharma as calling for a state-sponsored and geographically specific locus of practice, wherein all people will be gathered together as one, or as envisioning a transformed earthly realm as all people come to embrace the Lotus Sūtra and chant its august title, the common thrust of these differing readings of the implication of the third Mystic Dharma is that the act of

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embracing the Lotus Sūtra in faith has concrete implications in terms of the devotee’s understanding of his or her mission vis-à-vis this earthly realm. This is the mission of propagating the Lotus Sūtra and its message to others, and in so doing, becoming instrumental in the transformation of this earthly realm into the true Lotus Land. Taking on this mission of propagation is thus seen as substituting for the traditional observance of the precepts, a key feature of the message of Nichiren Buddhism regarding the way to ultimate transformation. In sum, the recitation of the August Title of the Lotus Sūtra, “namu-myōho-­ renge-kyō,” before an icon of the True Object of Worship in a Sacred Place appropriate for such an act of worshipful recitation is the supreme religious act in Nichiren’s Buddhism. In this very act of recitation the practitioner is opened, in this very body, to the realm of ultimate reality described in terms of the “three thousand worlds in a single thought-moment,” the very realm of the immediate presence of the Abiding Śākyamuni. As such, it is a realization, in this very body, of that ultimate reality itself, understood both as transcendent and as immanent. This can be described as the manifestation of Lotus Land in this very body, on this very Earth. Nichiren’s own religious life and entire career of socio-political engagement grounded on his faith in the Lotus Sūtra was geared toward the ultimate transformation of this Earth into Lotus Land.

1.4  Social Expressions of Nichiren’s Religious Way The movement from the individual or personal appropriation of the way to ultimate reality toward its social expression can be traced in the act of reading the Lotus Sūtra. Nichiren himself kept and carried with him a copy of the Lotus Sūtra, which he habitually perused and annotated, cross-referencing passages and writing in related passages from other sutras, as well as from commentaries of the Chinese Tiantai Masters (Yamanaka 1970). Thus, reading the Lotus Sūtra, in the basic sense of discerning the contents of its religious message, is an underlying activity in Nichiren’s way of being religious. However, there is another, more religiously significant, way of reading that marks Nichiren’s life. In a treatise entitled Lessening One’s Karmic Retribution (J. Tenjūkyōjuhōmon 転重軽受法門), he writes: For example, countless people study the non-Buddhist works known as the Three Records and the Five Canons, but not even one case in ten million is found where a person governs society and behaves as the texts teach. Thus it is very difficult to establish peace in society. One may be letter-perfect in reciting the Lotus Sūtra, but it is far more difficult to act as it teaches. The Simile and Parable Chapter states, “If this person...on seeing those who read, recite, copy, and uphold this sutra, should despise, hate, envy, or bear grudges against them...” The Teacher of the Dharma chapter reads, “Since hatred and jealousy toward this sutra abound even when the Tathagata is in the world, how much more will this be so after his passing?” The Encouraging Devotion chapter reads, “Many ignorant people will attack us with swords and staves...again and again we will be banished.” The Peaceful Practices chapter states, “It [the Lotus Sūtra] will face much hostility in the world and be difficult to believe.” Although these quotations from the sutra are the Buddha’s prophecies, there is no

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reference to when these persecutions will occur. Bodhisattva Never Disparaging and monk Realization of Virtue read and lived those passages. But setting aside the two thousand years of the Former and Middle Age of the Dharma, now, in the Latter Age, only Nichiren seems to be doing so...Nichiren has now read [and lived] the entirety of the Lotus Sūtra. (Teihon 1: 508; WND 200)

This passage indicates the profound sense in which Nichiren understands himself as “reading” the Lotus Sūtra. Having given himself over in his entire being, “without regret at loss of life and limb,” to actualization of the teaching of the Sutra, he lives the implications of the teaching in his own body. This involves the joyful acceptance of the persecution and suffering entailed in its propagation, prophesied in the very words of the Sutra itself. The fact that these persecutions and sufferings did actually take place, many times over, in Nichiren’s life, only served to confirm this conviction, that in his very body he was living the teaching of the Sutra, fulfilling the prophecies therein. Repeated expressions from his writings attest to this confirmation. In his longest treatise, written in the mode of an apologia for his own religious mission, entitled Open Your Eyes (Kaimokushō 開目抄), Nichiren proclaims: The verse says, “Ignorant people will speak ill of us, abuse us, and threaten us with swords and sticks.” In the world today, is there any Buddhist priest other than me, Nichiren, who is spoken ill of, abused, and threatened with swords or sticks on account of the Lotus Sūtra? If I, Nichren, were not here, this verse would be a false prediction. …It says, “In order to slander us in the midst of a great crowd of people they will speak ill of us to kings, ministers, Brahmans, and people of influence.” These would be empty words unless Buddhist priests in this world slandered me and had me exiled. It is further stated, “We will be banished many times.” If I, Nichiren, had not been exiled repeatedly on account of the Lotus Sūtra, what could we do with these two words of “many times”? Even Tiantai and Dengyo did not read these two words from experience, not to speak of other people. I, Nichiren, alone read them from experience. For I perfectly fit the Buddha’s description of the person spreading the Lotus Sūtra “in the dreadful and evil world” at the beginning of the Latter Age of the Dharma. ... Had there not been Nichiren, who would be the practitioner of the Lotus Sūtra to prove the Buddha’s prediction? … As the words of the sutra correspond to me, the deeper I fall into disgrace with the shogunate, the greater my pleasure is. This is like a Hinayana bodhisattva, who has not completely exterminated all delusions and evil passions, wishing to be reborn in this world. That is to say, as he sees his parents suffering greatly in hell, he would intentionally accumulate bad karma in order to go to hell himself, where he would be glad to share their sufferings. I, Nichiren, am in a similar situation. Though my sufferings today are difficult to bear, I am happy for in the future I will be free from the evil realms”. (Teihon 1: 559–561; Hori 2002: 56–58)

For Nichiren, the Lotus Sūtra, besides being a written text that conveys religious teaching about ultimate reality, is itself the embodiment of that ultimate reality. Thus, for him, the act of reading the Lotus Sūtra is not merely one of perusing it in order to discern religious meaning from its verbal expressions, but is in itself a religious act that opens the devotee to embodying the ultimate reality that the Sutra represents and manifests. The meaning that the words of the Sutra intended coincided with the actual events in Nichiren’s life, such that for him, reading the Lotus Sūtra is none other than living the Lotus Sūtra, that is, realizing its religious message in his very own bodily and earthly life. This mode of reading has thus been termed the “bodily reading” (J. shikidoku 色読) of the Lotus Sūtra (Habito 2009).

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The persecutions and tribulations Nichiren experienced in his career were but the inevitable outcome of his perceived religious mission to propagate the teachings of the Lotus Sūtra. Arriving at the conviction of the supremacy of the Lotus Sūtra above all other Buddhist teachings in his thirties, his initial attempts to convince others of the same led to his being driven out of his home temple. As is well-known, the submission to the ruling powers of his treatise “On Establishing Correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land,” denouncing the Pure Land teaching and practice spreading among the people at the time and calling for official support for the teaching of the Lotus Sūtra, triggered reactions from the authorities that brought him repeated persecution and harassment that culminated in his exile to the island of Sado. These instances of persecution and harassment only confirmed him in his convictions of the veracity of the teaching of the Lotus Sūtra, whose very own words predicted such outcomes for those who would propagate its teaching. All this further deepened his religious experience revolving around the actualization of events “predicted” in the Lotus Sūtra, and a sense of mystic identity with key characters of the Lotus Sūtra, notably the “Bodhisattva of Superior Conduct” (J. Jōgyō bosatsu 上行 菩薩). The dynamic that motivates the propagation of the teaching of the Lotus Sūtra is, thus, at the crux of the social expression of Nichiren’s Buddhism. In other words, Nichiren’s Buddhism has an inherent social dimension that is constitutive of the teaching itself, namely, this impetus toward its propagation. The rationale for this presented by Nichiren as issuing from the Lotus Sūtra itself, often citing the image of the Abiding Buddha Śākyamuni as a compassionate Father for whom all sentient beings in this earthly world are his own children. These children are depicted as stricken with an illness that only the strong medicine of the Lotus Sūtra’s teaching can cure. It is precisely out of compassion that the Abiding Śākyamuni summons Bodhisattvas like Superior Conduct and others to spring out of the Earth as his emissaries to deliver this medicine. These emissaries of the Abiding Śākyamuni are put under the special protection of all the heavenly beings and powers of and behind nature, and their prayers are given a direct hearing by these beings and powers. It is in this light that we can note another facet in the social expression of Nichiren’s religion, namely, the intercessionary prayer that he offers on behalf of his followers and their various temporal and spiritual needs in a treatise Prayers (Kitōshō 祈祷抄). And yet, though one might point at the earth and miss it, though one might bind up the sky, though the tides might cease to ebb and flow and the sun rise in the west, it could never come about that the prayers of the practitioner of the Lotus Sūtra would go unanswered. If the bodhisattvas, the human and heavenly beings, the eight kinds of non-human beings, the two sages, the two heavenly Deities, and the demon daughters would by some unlikely chance fail to appear and protect the practitioner of the Lotus Sūtra, then above them they would be showing disdain for Śākyamuni and the other Buddhas, and below they would be guilty of deceiving the beings of the nine realms…I would have to say that, if there are a sun and a moon in the sky, if there are plants and trees on the earth, if there are day and night in this country of ours, then so long as the earth fails to turn upside down and the tides of the ocean continue to ebb and flow, there can be no doubt that the prayers of those who put faith in the Lotus Sūtra will be answered in this world, and that they will enjoy good circumstances in their next existence. (Teihon 1: 672–673; WND 345–346)

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It is with this conviction in the background that Nichiren himself incessantly prays for the needs of his followers, especially those who come to him for help and advice. Among the items included here are his prayers for the curing of physical ailments, for avoidance of misfortune, for safe childbirth, assurance of passage of the dying into the Eagle’s Peak where the Abiding Śākyamuni resides, and so on (Ishikawa 1989). Prayers of this sort are part of the social expression of Nichiren’s religion, inasmuch as these are performed or offered by Nichiren and by the devotees of the Lotus Sūtra not for their own selves and their own individual needs but primarily as an intercessionary petition on behalf of others. The social expressions of Nichiren’s religious path can be seen against the whole backdrop of the bodhisattva doctrine of the Mahāyāna, that is, the ethos of compassion that seeks the deliverance from dukkha and the enlightenment of all sentient beings. His zeal to propagate the teaching of the Lotus Sūtra “unsparing of life and limb” came precisely from this burning desire to alleviate the sufferings of those around him, which he understood as caused by their adherence to erroneous doctrine. His bodily reading of the Lotus, involving profound religious experiences of identification with the words of the Sutra and the actual events in his life, appears to be unique to him and remains as his significant contribution to the Buddhist heritage. His understanding of the efficacy of the prayers of the devotee of the Lotus Sūtra issues from this experientially-grounded conviction of the truth of the Sutra’s teaching. In the background, of course, is his uncritical reception of the folk beliefs of his culture and his times, specifically the belief in superhuman powers such as those represented by the divinities of Shintō mythology. In his own religious perspective, these divinities are seen as subservient to the ultimate power that is enshrined in the Lotus Sūtra (Ueda 1982).

2  Part II: Nichiren’s Philosophy in Today’s Global Society 2.1  R  eading the Signs of the Times: Our Contemporary Human Condition The turbulent character of the social and political conditions of Japan of Nichiren’s time resonates on many levels with the situation our contemporary world, though on an entirely different scale. Our global society in this early phase of the twenty-first century is beleaguered by problems and contradictions of colossal proportions. First, there is the ever-increasing gap between the world’s affluent few and the multitudes of those living in destitute poverty. This is manifested in the raw statistical figure of roughly 24,000 children dying daily of hunger and malnutrition-related causes, while so much food and other vital supplies for human sustenance abound. Second, military expenditures of all the countries combined amount to a staggering sum and continue to escalate year by year, whereas with only a fraction of this amount, many of the problems related to hunger and starvation, poverty and destitution of the multitudes could be adequately addressed. Third, the Earth’s natural

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habitat, which sustains the life of all of us both in the animal as well as plant kingdom, is in the process of deterioration on many levels, and this worsening ecological crisis is coming to a point of threatening the very survival of the human species (See for example www.globalissues.org). This scenario certainly lends itself to being called “the end of history,” and provides ground for doomsday predictions from some sectors. However, it can also be taken as a wake-up call, to arise from our slumbers of indifference and ignorance and take a stark look at the realities before us, calling for a collective response toward its healing. The latter is a kind of response called for especially, but not exclusively, from those who see the world and reality from a religious perspective that includes a vision of ultimate reality and teachings related to overcoming the problematic nature of the human condition grounded on this vision.7 As we survey the gravely dysfunctional situation of our Earth that now confronts us at this stage of our human history, the renowned parable of the Burning House in the third chapter of this Mahāyāna sutra immediately comes to mind. In this parable, appearing in the second chapter of the Lotus Sūtra, human beings are depicted as children dwelling in a dilapidated house about to crumble in flames yet still unable to realize the gravity and deadly consequences of their situation. The Abiding Buddha Śākyamuni is presented as the compassionate Father of all these beings caught in the burning house, exercising all modes of skillful means to call their attention to the situation and to deliver them from peril into a place of safety. The Lotus Sūtra states: “There is no safety in the threefold world; it is like a burning house, replete with a multitude of sufferings, truly to be feared.” In these passages, our compassionate Father, the World-Honored One of Great Enlightenment, admonishes us, the ordinary people of the latter age; it is his warning to us, his ignorant children. Nevertheless, the people do not awaken for even one instant; nor do they conceive a desire to attain the way for even a single moment. (Teihon 2: 1441; WND 891)

This parable is a Mahāyāna development of the fundamental Buddhist doctrine on the human condition as characterized by dukkha, often translated as “suffering,” but which is perhaps more aptly rendered as “unsatisfactoriness,” or “dis-ease.” Nichiren refers to this parable several times in his writings, and it is clear that he was reading this passage in the context of his own times, and vice versa, reading the situation of his own time in the light of the Lotus Sūtra parable. It was this mode of reading, which crystallized into what we can call his “bodily reading of the Lotus Sūtra,” that propelled and empowered him to become socially and politically engaged, as a way of fulfilling a religious imperative. Our contemporary world, plagued by what we can call global dukkha, suffering, is also an arena wherein a wide diversity of views about ultimate reality and ways of 7  There has been a marked resurgence of efforts on the part of members, leaders and intellectuals of many religious communities for inter-religious dialogue and cooperation toward addressing our global malaise. In this regard, a series of Parliaments of the World’s Religions, a gathering of such members, leaders and intellectuals of many faith traditions, has been held every four or five years since the one-hundredth anniversary gathering of the First World Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893, to address such global issues as its key themes. See www.parliamentofreligions. org for the history and current status of this inter-religious movement.

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understanding and addressing the problematic human condition is offered by the many religious traditions with their communities of adherents, who are active players in forging our communal destiny. Whether and how members of these communities can work together toward addressing our global situation will determine the course of our shared future. In this regard, how members of various religious communities read their scriptures in the context of present-day realities presents itself as an urgent task for interreligious conversation. Members of different religious communities can learn from and challenge one another with regard to the reading of our contemporary human condition based on the reading of their own respective scriptural texts, as well as on the various hermeneutical strategies they bring to bear in their reading and interpretation of these texts in the light of contemporary realities. Nichiren’s followers may have something to contribute in this conversation among members of the world’s many religious traditions, as they learn from and emulate their own founder’s “bodily reading” of the Lotus Sūtra, as this challenges them to likewise engage themselves in tasks of repairing the “Burning House” that is this Earthly Realm. However, a challenging task for them is to go beyond the exclusive emphasis on the Lotus Sūtra and rejection of other practices that was part of Nichiren’s message and, instead, to learn to accept adherents of other religious traditions as allies and be able to cooperate with them in the tasks of mending the broken world.

2.2  Ultimate Reality: Personal or Impersonal Nichiren’s view of ultimate reality, as described above, consists of two facets. One, there is his understanding of the Buddha as savior-figure who transcends earthly time and space, and continues to act in various skillful ways out of the depths of his Great Compassion, to liberate all sentient beings whom he regards as his own children, from their situations of suffering and pain (Ueda 1988). Two, the notion of Emptiness, as expounded by Buddhist thinkers beginning with Nāgārjuna and as developed by the Tiantai masters, leads Nichiren to place the notion of the three thousand realms in one thought-moment at the centerpiece of his vision, one which involves the interconnectedness of everything in this multi-layered universe, and this very moment as embodying the fullness of that multidimensional ultimate reality. This two-faceted feature of Nichiren’s vision of ultimate reality invites further philosophical and theological reflection and interreligious conversation, relating to the question of the personal or impersonal nature of ultimate reality. Roughly speaking, and without going into the intricacies of the notions involved, theistic religions, notably Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, also called “the Abrahamic traditions,” affirm that at the heart of reality lies a Personal Core, an all-encompassing Presence who is also compassionate and caring vis-à-vis the entirety of created reality. There are Eastern religions, on the other hand, notably some Indic traditions, that consider ultimate reality in terms of a Nirguṇa Brahman, as well as a significant strand of the Buddhist family of traditions that consider “nirvāṇa,” or else, “śūnyatā,” as key expressions of ultimate reality. Chinese beliefs such as Daoism and Confucianism

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also take Dao as an expression of ultimate reality that is impersonal and immanent in all things in this universe, making a different kind of affirmation. Differences in views relating to ultimate reality among the many religious traditions of the world make for a situation of “conflicting absolute claims,” which can exacerbate the divisions already existing within the human community. This is what gives a sense of urgency for interreligious conversations, to examine the apparent differences in these views of the ultimate and go beyond the surface, seeking to uncover some deeper resonances among them. As one example, in the Christian tradition, though the mainstream expression of its core belief is in a Personal God who is also Trinitarian in nature, there are features of the Divine presented in this tradition as transcending the notion of person and pointing to something that can provisionally be described as a Transpersonal Reality. As such, the stark dichotomy between “personal” and “impersonal” can be overcome in the context of this kind of discourse. In this vein, Nichiren’s textured and intricate descriptions of his view of ultimate reality as embracing both a personal as well as an impersonal dimension might serve as a reference point that can overcome the impasse and transcend the dichotomy of these two poles. However, as noted above toward the end of the previous section, Nichiren’s followers face the challenge of going beyond literalist and particularist ways of reading the Lotus Sūtra, and of taking it as the sole bearer of ultimate truth, and, instead, of being open to other modes of discovering  the Ultimate  in other religions, and thus  be able and disposed  to engage Religious Others in dialogue toward mutual understanding and cooperation. This would be analogous to an attitude of Christians who, while taking  the Bible as divinely revealed, would also be open to the possibility of finding divine revelation in other sources beyond the Bible. For adherents of any specific religious community, this openness to the very possibility of finding truth in sources other than one’s own cherished religious scriptures and traditions becomes a crucial condition for religion to be an agent of, rather than an obstacle to global peace, understanding, and harmony.

2.3  Religious Praxis: Personal and Social Dimensions Testimonies of practitioners of the daimoku indicate that the practice of chanting the august title of the Lotus Sūtra effects a transformation in the inner consciousness of the individual, ascribed by adherents to the mystic power of the Lotus Sūtra itself (Wilson and Dobbelaere 1994). As an individual repeatedly chants “namumyōho-­renge-kyō” and becomes absorbed in that sacred sound, one’s individuality merges with the power of the Lotus Sūtra, and this power begins to inform and enlighten one’s consciousness and one’s attitudes in daily life. The desired outcome is the emergence of a person able to see him or herself and the world in the light of the “three thousand worlds in a single thought-moment” and with the heart and mind of Abiding Buddha Sakyamuni, who regards all beings in this earthly realm as a loving Father regards his own children. In short, this practice of chanting the

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august title of the Lotus Sūtra can lead to the transformation of practitioners from a self-oriented and selfishly motivated human beings to those who are now able to regard the world with a heart of compassion, seeing the interconnectedness of all things from the experiential perspective of the sound of “namu-myōho-renge-kyō.” This inner transformation can lead practitioners of chanting to become engaged in tasks toward the repair and transformation of the turbulent world we live in. In other words, as earnest chanters of daimoku experience what Nichiren describes as a “realization of Lotus Land in This Very Body” in the very act of chanting, they are motivated and empowered by that experience to engage in the tasks of this earthly realm towards its transformation into Lotus Land. The personal and the social dimensions of this practice of chanting are thus integrated and seen as mutually reinforcing. In the context of our global situation as described above, this integration and mutual reinforcement of the personal and the social dimensions of religious practice remains a task and challenge for those who profess adherence to one or other of the many different religions of the world today. All too often, the religious practice of individual adherents of a given tradition can be confined to the level of the personal in ways dichotomized from the social and other dimensions of their lives. The view that confines religion to the private realm, distinguished or separated from the public or socio-political dimensions of our human existence, leads to this kind of dichotomy. Nichiren’s prescriptions for religious practice based on his reading of the Lotus Sūtra as described above, seen in holistic context, by its very nature breaks this dichotomy and effects an integration of the personal and social dimensions of human existence, an integration Nichiren himself modeled in his own life and career.

3  Conclusion: Nichiren as a Philosopher The religious philosophy of Nichiren involves a view of the problem of the human condition, a vision of ultimate reality, as well as a set of practical recommendations toward the attainment of ultimate reality as a way of overcoming our problematic human condition. The stance toward reality presented in Nichiren’s religious philosophy is one that does not stop at contemplating and interpreting the world but also elicits an engagement with the world toward its ultimate transformation. As such, Nichiren would be in good company with those thinkers, whether religious or not, who will not be content with only describing and interpreting the world, but will also dedicate themselves wholeheartedly toward changing it.8

8  Karl Marx famously suggested in his 1845 Theses on Feuerbach that “[t]he philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it” (Marx, quoted in Collier 1999: 359).

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Works Cited Abbreviations Used (Texts and Translations) T Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 『大正新修大蔵經』. 85 vols. Edited by JunjirōTakakusu 高楠順次 郎 and Kaigyoku Watanabe 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai, 1924–34. Teihon Shōwa teihon nichiren ibun 『昭和定本日蓮遺文』 [Critical Edition of Nichiren’s Collected Works]. 4 vols. Tokyo: Risshō Daigaku Shūgaku Kenkyūsho, Revised 1988. WND The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin. Edited by Gosho Translation Committee. Tokyo; Soka Gakkai, 1999.

Other Sources Asai, Yōrin 浅井要麟. 1945. Nichirenshōnin kyōgaku no kenkyū 『日蓮聖人教学の研究』 [A Study of the Doctrine of Nichiren Shōnin]. Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten. Collier, Andrew. 1999. Marx and the End of Philosophy. In The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy, ed. Simon Glendinning, 356–367. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Dolce, Lucia. 1999. Criticism and Appropriation: Ambiguities in Nichiren’s Attitude toward Esoteric Buddhism. Revisiting Nichiren, ed. Ruben L.  F. Habito and Jacqueline I.  Stone. Special Issue of the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 26 (3–4): 349–382. ———. 2002. Esoteric Patterns in Nichiren’s Interpretation of the Lotus Sūtra. Leiden: Universiteit Leiden. Habito, Ruben. 2000. Daimoku and Dhāraņī: Tracing the Roots of Nichiren’s Buddhism. In Kū to jitsuzai: Ejima yasunori tsuitō kinen ronshū 『空と実在: 江島惠教追悼記念論集』 [Śūnyatā and Reality: Ejima Yasunori Commemoration Volume], ed. Yasunori Ejima, 633–643. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ———. 2009. Bodily Reading of the Lotus Sūtra. In Readings of the Lotus Sūtra, ed. Stephen Teiser and Jacqueline I. Stone, 186–209. New York: Columbia University Press. Habito, Ruben, and Jacqueline Stone, eds. 1999. Revisiting Nichiren. Special Issue of the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 26: 3–4. Hanano, Judō 花野充道. 2010. Tendai hongaku shisō to nichiren kyōgaku 『天台本覚思想と日 蓮教学』 [Tendai Original Enlightenment Thought and Nichiren Doctrinal Studies]. Tokyo: Sankibō. Hori, Kyōtsū, ed. 2002–2004. The Writings of Nichiren Daishōnin, 3 volumes. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Ienaga, Saburō 家永三郎. 1947. Chūsei bukkyō shisōshi kenkyū 『中世仏教思想史研究』 [Studies in Medieval Japanese Buddhism]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. Ishikawa, Kyocho 石川教張. 1989. Nichiren shōnin no inori 「日蓮聖人の祈り」 [Prayers of Nichiren]. In Nichiren shōnin daijiten 『日蓮聖人大事典』 [Nichiren Encyclopedia], ed. Kōshō Kawamura 河村孝照 and Kyōcho Ishikawa 石川教張, 355–369. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai. Machacek, David, and Bryan Wilson, eds. 2000. Global Citizens: The Soka Gakkai Movement in the World. New York: Oxford University Press. Matsudo, Yukio. 2004. Nichiren, der Ausűbende der Lotos Sutra. Germany: Books on Demand Gmbh. Nattier, Jan. 1991. Once Upon a Future Time–Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press.

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Sasaki, Kaoru 佐々木馨. 1979. Nichiren to risshō ankokuron 『日蓮と立正安国論』 [Nichiren and (the Treatise) Open Your Eyes]. Tokyo: Hyōronsha. Satō, Hiro’o 佐藤弘夫. 1978. Shoki nichiren no kokkakan 初期日蓮の国家観 [View of Nation in Nichiren’s Early Phase]. Nihon shisōshi kenkyū 日本思想史研究 [Studies in the History of Japanese Thought] 10: 14–28. ———. 1998. Kami—hotoke—ōken no chūsei 『神・仏・王権の中世』 [Kami, Buddhas, and Imperial Authority in [Japan’s] Medieval Period]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. Stone, Jacqueline. 1990. Some Disputed Writings in the Nichiren Corpus: Textual, Hermeneutical and Historical Problems. Ph.D. Dissertation for the University of California, Los Angeles. Ann Arbor: UMI. ———. 1999. Original Enlightenment Thought and the Formation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ———. 2003. Nichiren’s Activist Heirs: Soka Gakkai, Rissho Kosei Kai, Nipponzan Myohoji. In Action Dharma: New Studies in Engaged Buddhism, ed. Christopher Queen, Charles Prebish, and Damien Keown, 63–94. London: Routledge Curzon. Streng, Frederick. 1985. Understanding Religious Life. Belmont: Wadsworth. Streng, Frederick, Charles Lloyd, and Jay T. Allen. 1973. Ways of Being Religious: Readings for a New Approach to Religion. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Sueki, Fumihiko 末木文美士. 1999. Nichiren’s Problematic Works. In Revisiting Nichiren. ed. Ruben L.F.  Habito and Jacqueline I.  Stone, eds. Special Issue of the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 26 (3–4): 261–283. ———. 2000. Nichiren nyūmon: Gensei o utsu shisō 『日蓮入門: 現世を撃つ思想』 [Introduction to Nichiren: Thought to Conquer this Transient World]. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. ———, ed. 2003. Higashiajia bukkyō no kenkyū: Kimura kiyotaka kyōju kanreki kinen ronshū 『東アジア仏教の研究: 木村清隆教授還暦記念論集』 [Studies in East Asian Buddhism. Kimura Kiyotaka Felicitation Volume]. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. 3–25. Takasaki, Jikido 高崎直道. 1975. Nyorai zō shisō no keisei 『如来蔵思想の形成』 [Development of Tathāgatagarbha Thought]. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. Tokoro, Shigemoto 戸頃重基. 1967. Kamakura bukkyō 『鎌倉仏教』 [Kamakura Buddhism]. Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha. Ueda, Honjō 上田本昌. 1982. Nichiren shōnin no kami jingikan「日蓮聖人の神神祇観」 [Nichiren’s View of Japanese Divinities]. In 『日本名僧論集』 Nihon Meisō Ronshu: Nichiren, ed. Nakao Takashi Nakao  中尾尭 and Hōyō Watanabe 渡辺宝陽共編, 124–138. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. ——— 上田本昌. 1988. Nichiren shōnin no buddakan 「日蓮聖人の仏陀観」 Nichiren’s Views of the Buddha. In Nihon bukkyō gakkai nenpō 『日本仏教学会年報』 [Annual Report of the Society for Buddhist Studies] 53: 359–74. Wilson, Bryan, and Karel Dobbelaere. 1994. A Time to Chant: The Soka Gakkai Buddhists in Britain. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Yamanaka, Kihachi 山中喜八. 1970. Teihon chū hokekyō 『定本注法華経』 [Critical Edition of Nichiren’s Handwritten Commentaries on the Lotus Sūtra]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. Ruben L. F. Habito is Professor of World Religions and Spirituality at SMU Perkins School of Theology and Director of Spiritual Formation. He completed doctoral studies at Tokyo University. His teaching speciality includes world religions, East Asian Buddhism, theology of religions and comparative theology, Zen practice and theory, and interreligious perspectives in spirituality and mysticism. His research interests focus on Japanese medieval Buddhism, themes in comparative theology, and socio-ecological engagement and spirituality. Recent publications include “Be Still and Know: Zen and the Bible” (2017) “Zen and the Spiritual Exercises: Paths of Awakening and Transformation” (2013), “The Gospel Among Religions: Christian Ministry, Theology and Spirituality in a Multireligious World” (2010), and “Vida Zen, Vida Divina: un Dialogo entre Budismo Zen y Cristianismo” (2004). He was elected to the American Theological Society in 2015 and was president of the Society for Buddhist Christian Studies from 2003 to 2005

Chapter 19

Born into a World of Turmoil: The Biography and Thought of Chūgan Engetsu Steffen Döll

The history of Japanese Zen 禪 Buddhism has been the object of research for several decades. HAKUIN Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1868–1769), IKKYŪ Sōjun 一休宗純 (1394–1481), and Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253) are names that by now are well known within this history, and indeed, theirs are undoubtedly important biographies. At the same time, however, we may critically remark on a certain scholarly preoccupation with these figures, and this attitude owes much to hagiographies, especially those produced by SUZUKI Daisetsu 鈴木大拙 (1870–1966). In order to attain at least a certain degree of historical accuracy, Dōgen, Ikkyū, and Hakuin must necessarily be interpreted within their respective historical contexts. Hakuin’s intentions, for example, only become fully understandable against the backdrop of Zen’s stale and petrified institutionalism in the Edo period that was called into question by the Ōbaku 黄檗 school of YINYUAN Longqi 隠元隆琦 (1592–1673), who had recently arrived from the Chinese mainland (cf. Wu 2014). Ikkyū, on his part, was the harshest critic of what he saw as an overly cultured, elitist, and therefore degraded, form of Zen that was, however, all-pervasive during the Muromachi 室町 era (1336– 1573). Finally, when Dōgen came back from China, he claimed to have received the “pure, Song-style Chan” and made all efforts to implant it into Japanese soil. However, if near-contemporary sources such as the Buddhist Scripture of the Genkō Era1 are consulted, it becomes clear that Dōgen had almost no impact at all on his contemporaries. It is therefore appropriate to point out that while his writings have enjoyed a rediscovery and revival of stunning proportions, they seem to have remained unread and marginal throughout much of the Japanese history of thought. 1  The Genkō shakusho 元亨釈書 by the monk KOKAN Shiren 虎関師錬 (1278–1346) was presented to the court in 1322 and is the first hagiographical collection of Japanese Buddhism. See Marian Ury, Genkō shakusho: Japan’s First Comprehensive History of Buddhism: A Partial Translation, with Introduction and Notes (Ury 1970).

S. Döll (*) Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_19

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The history of Chan/Zen Buddhism, to be sure, is much more complex than single biographies or intellectual reconstructions are able to grasp. There are manifold factors and a myriad of contingencies to be considered, and it will be much longer until the scholarly community is able to fully trace the exact lines of Chan/ Zen’s historical development. However, distinct threads have started to emerge, one of which is the institutional and intellectual paradigm of the Five Mountains (C. wushan, J. gozan 五山).2 It ties many of the discrepancies outlined above together: It was gozan Zen, not Dōgen’s “Song-style” Zen construction that dominated the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, that mingled with the mighty and powerful, produced cultural artifacts and administered political strategies, and thus came to be regarded as religious orthodoxy. Consequently, it served as the main target of Ikkyū’s aggressive rhetoric, lost its dynamism when the fortunes of the Ashikaga 足利 clan fell and Japan plunged into a century of civil strife, and afterwards remained a mere institutional shell that formed the butt of Hakuin’s acrid ridicule. That is by no means to say that the gozan institution and the form of Zen it propagated was a static entity. In fact, it is a complex development that took place in multiple dimensions such as the political, social, cultural, religious, and literary. Commonly, the history of the gozan is divided into three parts: (1) the early period (middle of the thirteenth to early fourteenth century) when Chinese emigrant monks arrived in Japan and implemented almost unaltered the institutional and intellectual forms they were acquainted with from the mainland into Japanese soil, (2) the zenith (middle of the fourteenth century to early fifteenth century) of Five Mountains Zen, when cultural productivity reached its height, and (3) the period of decline (from the middle of the fifteenth century onward), when cultural saturation reverted into decadence and religious inauthenticity. While this is obviously too simple a categorization, there are strong arguments to be made for an early period that indeed contrasted with subsequent developments in two main respects. One is how early gozan representatives understood and described the importance of lineage within Zen Buddhist discourse. The other pertains to the possibility of a clear demarcation between different intellectual traditions. On the very verge of this early phase in gozan history, the biography of CHŪGAN Engetsu 中巖圓月 (1300–1375) has its place. His career, as may be seen below, is characterized by a prolonged period of studying with various Chan masters on the Chinese mainland and, in consequence, factional open-mindedness. His thought draws on a variety of religious and philosophical systems, such as the Classic of 2  For an institutional history of the Five Mountains 五山 (C. wushan, J. gozan) see Martin Collcutt’s Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan (Collcutt 1981). There are several collections with translations of gozan poetry, the most voluminous of which is Alain-Louis Colas’ Poèmes du Zen des Cing-Montagnes (Colas 1991). Recently, my Im Osten des Meeres: Chinesische Emigrantenmoenche und die fruehen Institutionen des japanischen Zen-Buddhismus has addressed issues of lineage and literature during the early years of the Five Mountains (Döll 2010).

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Changes (C. Yijing 易經), Daoism, Confucianism (both classical and “neo”), canonical Buddhism, and Chan Buddhist iconoclastic rhetoric. In Chūgan, the upheavals that delineate Zen’s early phase in Japan from its later “Japanization” are personified.

1  Chūgan’s Biography When Chūgan was born in 1300,3 the Zen tradition could already look back on more than a half century of success in Japan. In 1233, Dōgen had built a “monks’ hall” (J. sōdō 僧堂) with elevated “meditation platforms” (J. tan 單) within the grounds of Kōshō 興聖 monastery, after the Chinese fashion he had encountered during his sojourn on the mainland. Kōshō monastery’s Monks’ Hall was the first of its kind east of the ocean and can be seen as a signal for the focused pursuit of seated meditation practice. Then, in 1246, LANXI Daolong 蘭溪道隆 (1213–1378) arrived and quickly was installed by the worldly authorities—the Kamakura bakufu 幕府—as the abbot of the first monastery that was granted the official title of “Zen Monastery” (J. zenji 禪寺), thus demarcating the institutionalization of Zen. Apart from these historical landmarks, other Chinese masters came to Japan in quick succession and presided over the vast temple complexes and growing religious congregations of the new, but already prospering, Zen institution. In turn, many Japanese monks felt encouraged to undertake the dangerous voyage to the mainland, and when they came back with their Chinese masters’ credentials, they also enjoyed enormous religious and social prestige. As was the case with most prospective students of Zen, Chūgan was introduced into the Buddhist institution through the well-established schools of esoteric and scholastic Buddhism (that is, Tendai and Shingon). Chūgan was born in Kamakura into the Tsuchiya 土屋 branch of the Taira 平 family that traced its genealogy back to Emperor Kanmu 桓武 (737–806, r. 781– 806). His father was exiled soon after his birth, and his mother felt unfit to raise a son on her own. The infant was given into the care of a wet-nurse in the province of Musashi 武蔵 (in present day Tokyo, Saitama, and Kanagawa prefectures), and although a reunion with his mother’s family was attempted in 1305, his health proved so fragile that he was returned to his wet-nurse. In 1307, after having recovered somewhat from his various ailments, the boy became an acolyte at Kamakura’s Jūfuku 寿福 Zen monastery. In 1308, he accompanied an older monk by the name of Ryūō 立翁 to live in the grounds of Daiji 大慈 monastery from the Tendai lineage. Chūgan’s later writings present Ryūō as a father figure, and it was also through 3  Apart from Chūgan’s detailed Autobiographical Table (J. jirekifu 自歴譜) in UEMURA Kankō’s 上村觀光 Gozan bungaku zenshū 五山文學全集 [Complete Collection of Five Mountains Literature] (GBZ 4: 147–161), the following sketch is based on TAMAMURA Takeji’s 玉村竹二 Gozan zensō denki shūsei 五山禪僧傅記集成 [Collection of Biographies of Five Mountains Zen Monks] (Tamamura 2005: 441a–458a).

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him that Chūgan was introduced to an eclectic form of practice in which elements of doctrinal and meditational Buddhism were combined. Chūgan must have been crushed when Ryūō left Kamakura for a distant mountain retreat, and a severe sickness prevented him from accompanying his first mentor. Following Ryūō’s instructions, he took vows and was ordained by a vinaya (monks’ regulations) master in 1312 but soon went on to study the “maṇḍalas of the Two Realms”4 and other esoteric forms of Buddhism. These, however, failed to provide answers to his curious mind, and although he was already widely read in the Chinese classics, he found satisfaction only when immersing himself in the anecdotal collections, literally, “records of sayings” (J. goroku 語錄), of Chan/Zen masters. It seems to have been the language and literary methods of the goroku especially that drew Chūgan’s attention, and soon he composed verses in Chinese that merited praise even from the highest members of the gozan clergy. Thus, when in the winter of 1314 he was introduced to the Chinese master DONGMING Huiri 東明慧日 (1272–1340), the two seemed to have been able to communicate well enough, and Chūgan became Dongming’s attendant. Dongming had been invited to Kamakura by the regent HŌJŌ Sadatoki 北条貞時 (1272–1311), and since he was the only representative of the Sōtō 曹洞 lineage in a setting that otherwise belonged unanimously to the Rinzai 臨濟 lineage, he was something of a singularity. He gave Chūgan his dharma name (J. hōmyō 法名) Engetsu, but despite this, when Dongming moved to Jufuku monastery, Chūgan chose to study with NANZAN Shiun 南山士 雲 (1254–1335) from the Shōichi 聖一 branch of the Rinzai lineage at Engaku monastery. Nanzan seems to have encouraged his new student to journey to the Chinese mainland, and consequently, the year 1317 sees Chūgan on his way to Hakata requesting permission for his departure abroad. His request, however, was denied, and therefore he returned north and took up study at various monasteries in Kyoto and Kamakura and also at Dōgen’s Eihei monastery in Echizen province (present-day Fukui prefecture). In 1321, Chūgan was one of only two Zen adepts that found admittance to KOKAN Shiren 虎関師錬 (1278–1346), who had gone into seclusion at a subtemple (J. tatchū 塔頭) in Kyoto’s Nanzen 南禪 monastery in order to work on his Buddhist Scripture of the Genkō Era. Several exchanges followed, and we may surmise that these played an essential role in the formation of Chūgan’s thought. In 1324, Chūgan made the acquaintance of the powerful daimyo Sadamune 貞宗 (d. 1334), leader of the ŌTOMO 大友 clan of Bungo province (present-day Oita prefecture). Sadamune became his patron, and it was also due to his intercession that, in the autumn of 1325, Chūgan finally managed to secure a passage on board a China-bound vessel. In China, Chūgan studied with many different masters at several famous monasteries; most well known among these was GULIN Qingmao 古林清茂 (1262–1329) of Baoning 保寧 monastery in Jiankang 建康 province (present-day Jiangsu). His years in China brought Chūgan also into contact with fellow travelling countrymen, 4  The “maṇḍalas of the two realms” (J. ryōkai mandara 両界曼荼羅), that is. the “Womb maṇḍala” (J. Taizō mandara 胎蔵曼荼羅) and the “Diamond Realm maṇḍala” (J. Kongōkai mandara 金剛 界曼荼羅), play a central role in the visualization practices of Shingon meditation.

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RYŪZAN Tokken 龍山德見 (1284–1358) and SESSON Yūbai 雪村友梅 (1290– 1346), for example. He earned renown among the Chinese clergy and mastered the Chinese language to such a degree of perfection that he was invited to expound the dharma in front of several monasteries’ congregations on more than one occasion. Chūgan himself did not seem quite satisfied with the results of his journey, though, and attempted a return to Japan in 1328 but permission was refused. Regularly changing his monastic residence, he continued wandering the Chinese east coast and finally returned home only in the summer of 1332. When the Kamakura bakufu met its demise in 1333, Chūgan traveled with ŌTOMO Sadamune to Kyoto and took up residence in Nanzen monastery. Tragically, Sadamune became sick and died, while Chūgan went to Engaku 圓覺 monastery in Kamakura and started work on his Chūseishi.5 Moreover, although he accepted his one-time mentor DONGMING Huiri’s invitation to the prestigious office of Head Seat (J. zasu座 主) at Kenchō 建長 monastery, their relations seem to have steadily deteriorated. After a prolonged period of changing residence and offices frequently, he was called back by Dongming but stubbornly refused and finally fled to Kyoto. Then in 1339, when Dongming wanted to lay down the office of his abbacy at Kenchō monastery, he called on Chūgan to intervene on his behalf. However, not only did Chūgan fail at his mission, he was also forced to personally deliver the resolution that Dongming would have to stay in office. The old monk seems to have blamed Chūgan, and the latter’s subsequent behavior did little to improve things. ŌTOMO Ujiyasu 大友氏 泰 (1321–1362) had built Kichijō 吉祥 monastery in Tone 利根 (present-day Gunma prefecture) for Chūgan in 1339  in order to commemorate his father Sadamune’s seventh orbit. Chūgan expounded the dharma and, as was custom, was asked by one of the gathered monks to state his lineage. His answer was not Dongming, as his audience had expected, but the obscure DONGYANG Dehui 東 陽德輝6 with whom Chūgan had studied in China for less than half a year. After the ceremony, he was set upon by an enraged crowd of Dongming’s disciples. He managed to escape unscathed only because of two friends intervening. While the reasons for what was perceived as treason by Dongming’s faction remain open to speculation, it seems evident that following the attempt on his life, Chūgan developed a severe paranoia that led to complete seclusion in the years of 1340 and 1341. In 1342, he petitioned to travel to China once more but was refused and had to return without having achieved anything at all. In the following years, we find Chūgan restlessly wandering from one monastery to another, seldom taking office and frequently taking refuge in “his” Kichijō monastery. However, in 1345,  For a summary of Chūgan’s The Master of Moderation and Sincerity, see below. The Chūseishi is published in the GBZ (4: 120–145) and the CZS (123–185). Its postscript is dated 1344 and contains the statement: “When now, 10 years after, I read it, I cannot help but think that there are parts about which I was right and some about which I was wrong. That I wrote this text was caused by nothing more than what moved me at the time” (GBZ 4: 146). 6  Although Dongyang’s dates are unknown, it seems certain that during the 1330s he was abbot of Dazhi Shoufu 大智壽福 Chan monastery that traced its lineage back to BAIZHANG Huaihai 百 丈懷海 (720–814). Upon imperial order he compiled Baizhang’s Regulations for Purity (C. Baizhang qinggui 百丈清規) under the title Chixiu Baizhang qinggui 勅修百丈清規. 5

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the Buddha statue was stolen from the temple’s sanctum; in 1347 (and again in 1355), the abbot’s quarters at Kichijō monastery burned to the ground; and in 1349, fighting erupted in the area and laid waste to the whole complex. By that time, the 30 or 40 monks that Chūgan had succeeded in surrounding himself with had already started to seriously doubt their spiritual leader, and Chūgan asked to be discharged from his office. The Ōtomo refused, and the next years had Chūgan moving between Kamakura monasteries, Kichijō temple, the Ōtomo residence in Bungo, and Kyoto. His fortunes improved in 1351, when Chūgan became abbot first of Kyoto’s Manjū 萬壽 monastery and then, in 1360, of Kennin 建仁 monastery, ranked fourth in the gozan hierarchy. Another attack by a fellow monk who shot two arrows at Chūgan (both missed) resulted in a nervous breakdown that took years for him to recover from. When he finally felt healthy enough to resume duties, he was made head of Nanzen and Tenryū 天龍 monasteries in 1370 and 1373 respectively (first and second among the Five Mountains). He felt his end approaching on the eighth day of the first month in the year of 1375. Asked by his students to provide a “poem when departing from this world” (J. jiseju 辭世頌), he merely answered: “All my life I have talked until I was blue in the face. What would there be left to say? Be off, be off!” He died in the afternoon of that same day, aged 75.

2  The Importance of Lineage Chūgan’s biography is eventful, to say the least, and although his assignments in the uppermost echelons of the gozan hierarchy suggest ultimate success, his frequent episodes of nervousness, anxiety, and paranoia leave the impression of an intelligent but overly sensitive mind tortured by circumstance. In this regard, the issue of lineage stands out as pivotal. In China, worldly authorities had started to organize Chan into the wushan system under the reign of the Northern Song dynasty (960–1126).7 The temple complexes designated as the Five Mountains claimed the highest position and were awarded the title of Chan Monastery (C. chansi 禪寺) along with protection and financial support by the state. In turn, they were held accountable to the Monks’ Bureau (C. senglusi 僧錄司). Above all, they were not at liberty to appoint abbots among themselves but had to suggest three possible candidates, among whom, pending administrative approval, the new abbot was chosen by lottery. This effec-

7  In his Gozan bungaku. Tairiku bunka shokaisha toshite no gozan zensō no katsudō 五山文學. 大 陸文化紹介者としての五山禪僧の活動 [Five Mountains Literature. The Activities of Five Mountains Zen Monks as Mediators of Mainland Culture], TAMAMURA Takeji sees the formal beginnings of the wushan system in the regulations of the Da xiangguo 大相國 monastery in Bianjing 汴京 which stipulated that for every six vinaya monks there should be two Chan adherents.

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tively rendered the formation of factional strongholds impossible since no monastery could rely upon one single faction in order to function. The monks in their studies, on the other hand, usually took residence in different monasteries, mainly depending on the personal reputation of the abbot or Head Seat. A long period of ritual travel (C. xingjiao, J. angya 行脚) was not only common but also acknowledged as one of the three pillars of Chan practice, the others being seated meditation (C. zuochan, J. zazen 坐禪) and work around the monastic complex (C. zuowu, J. samu 作務). Chūgan’s biography amply illustrates the same prolonged ritual travels as well as the resulting non-commitment to any faction. In Japan, however, things never worked that way. When ENNI Ben’en 圓爾辯圓 (1202–1280) returned from China and was installed at the newly built Tōfuku 東福 monastery, the founding documents clearly stated that the abbot had to be a dharma heir of Enni’s. That was also true of Tenryū, Daitoku 大德 and, later on, of Myōshin 妙心 monasteries: these belonged to the lineages of MUSŌ Soseki 夢窓疎石 (1275–1351), SHŪHŌ Myōchō 宗峰妙超 (1282–1338), and KANZAN Egen 關山 慧玄 (1277–1360), respectively. These so-called tsuchien 度弟院 initially were prohibited in the constitution of Japanese gozan, but while factional non-­commitment continued mostly in Kamakura, the magnitude and power of tsuchien steadily grew. Concerning the monks’ practice, on the other hand, initially the bakufu invited and installed Chinese masters such as WUXUE Zuyuan 無學祖元 (1226–86) or YISHAN Yining 一山一寧 (1240–1317) in the gozan monasteries, and these brought with them the Chinese customs they were used to. However, over the course of time, fewer and fewer masters from the mainland came to Japan. Also, fewer and fewer Japanese adepts made the trip to China.8 Obviously something took place that we may well dub a shift of paradigms. No longer was it seen necessary to go to China in order to experience “true” Chan/Zen. Even more importantly, the concept of ritual travel was deemed obsolete and, in the end, forgotten. Thus, if an acolyte took vows with a certain master, it was expected that throughout his career he faithfully remained with him and within his lineage. Not to fulfill these expectations had social, political, and, in extreme cases such as Chūgan’s, even physical repercussions for the alleged miscreant. Seen this way, the anecdote of Chūgan’s “treason” implies more than a personal tragedy: It is the manifestation of different perceptions of what lineage meant. On the one hand, there still was a strong factional open-mindedness that was, actually, prescribed by law within the framework of the gozan. Its representatives are the early Chinese and Japanese masters, and although Dongming may have felt personal antipathy towards his one-time protégé, he never publically reproached 8  A statistic analysis of biographical material relating to the gozan is included in YU Weici’s 兪慰 慈, Gozan bungaku no kenkyū 五山文學の研究 [A Study of Five Mountains Literature] (Yu 2005). His findings are as follows: In the early Five Mountains period, fifteen Chinese Chan masters came to Japan, during its zenith only eleven, and none in its late period. Japanese monks going to China had its peak during the gozan zenith (Yu 2005: 119), while during the early and late periods there were equally few (32 and 37, respectively). Most significant are the developments among Five Mountains monks not going to the mainland: while only 24 are known in the early period, their numbers rose to 178 during the gozan zenith and on to 253 in the late period.

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Chūgan on the grounds of factional disloyalty. Lineage, seen from this perspective, meant prestige based on a spiritual genealogy within the religious institution. It did not imply the hermetical closure of one’s own tradition against that of others, nor did it necessitate the punishment of anyone who decided to change residence, master, or tradition. On the other hand, we have developments that may be claimed to be originally Japanese. Based on the close interconnection between the political powers and the religious institution, models of loyalty and fealty appeared that bound religious practitioners to the one lineage from which they had initially received their ordination. Chūgan, it seems, stood exactly on top of the tectonic fault line between these incommensurable positions.

3  Chūgan’s Thought Within the field of Five Mountains studies, the writings of GIDŌ Shūshin 義堂周 信 (1325–1388) and ZEKKAI Chūshin 絶海中津 (1336–1405) have traditionally been held as the pinnacle of gozan philosophical and literary production.9 However, in the last decades a reevaluation has taken place that has motivated scholars to look at other, less canonical figures. While this is, of course, an ongoing process, it is becoming increasingly clear that Chūgan Engetsu cannot be overlooked as a highly original and controversial thinker. The remarks on his Chūseishi 中正子 (1334/1344) below may serve to illustrate the directions his thought takes. The Chūseishi is in parts dialogical, with large, but infrequent, passages of prose strewn in. After a lengthy “Preface” (J. “Johen” 叙篇 [outer chapter 1]), Chūgan enters into a variety of discussions, the contents of which may be condensed and summarized as follows: • “On humanity and righteousness” (J. “Jingihen” 仁義篇 [outer chapter 2]). When asked about these two concepts that are of central importance to the Confucian discourse of all ages, Chūgan answers: “They are just that, humanity and righteousness.”—“Is there nothing to add?”—“If it is the humanity of master Mo 墨, we must add something.”—“What is that?”—“Righteousness. But if it is the righteousness of Yang Zhu 楊朱, we also must add something.”—“What is that?”—“Humanity.” (GBZ 4: 122)

Contrasting the utilitarian thinker MO (470–391 BCE) with the Daoist YANG Zhu (370–319  BCE), who is most often represented as an adherent of egoism, Chūgan reproaches the former for inadequacy in his views on humanity (implying his correctness on righteousness) and the latter for his neglect of righteousness (implying his appropriate grasp of humanity). Chūgan thus emphasizes the comple9  This conviction is also the basis of Micah Spencer Hecht’s dissertation, Conventions of Unconventionality: The Rhetoric of Reclusion in Kitayama Japanese Five Mountains Literature (Hecht 2005).

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mentary nature of goodwill among men and the subjects’ loyalty towards their hegemon against an unbalanced focus on either the one or the other. When the balance between these is properly preserved, “the way of the myriad kinds of what is good is laid out” (GZS 4: 123). Anticipating what will be his main topic later on, he goes on to say: “Humanity is the essential reality 性 of what is born from heaven[…] Righteousness is the emotion 情 that informs human relations” (GZS 4: 123). • “On the Square and the Round” (J. “Hōenhen” 方圓篇 [outer chapter 3]). Drawing on the Confucian tradition exemplified by quotes from the Confucian Analects (J. Rongo 論語) and the writings of WANG Tong 王通 (584–618), Chūgan establishes the metaphysical chiffres of a fixed and immutable “Square” and an unceasingly moving “Round.” These are said to correspond to “structure” (J. tai 體) and “function” (J. yō 用), to “humanity” (J. jin 仁) and “knowledge” (J. chi 知), to “truthfulness” (J. sei 誠) and “clarity” (J. myō 明), and to “essential reality” (J. sei 性) and “learning” (J. gaku 學), respectively. Once again, while often one gives precedence to either one, it is their complementary nature that is at the heart of Chūgan’s concern. • “On what is pervasive and what is tentative” (J. “Kyōgonhen” 經權篇 [outer chapter 4]). Employing terminological fragments from the Zhuangzi 莊子, Chūgan claims that only those who have grasped what is essential and universal can adequately utilize what is provisional and situational. As an example, “literary virtue” (J. montoku 文德) precedes and must control “military stratagems” (J. buryaku 武略). • “On the exegesis of ‘Revolution’” (J. “Kakukaihen” 革解篇 [outer chapter 5]). Entering the realm of political thought, Chūgan takes up the trigram “Revolution” from the Classic of Changes at some length. As can be witnessed in the change of the four seasons—“Spring produces, summer nourishes, autumn kills, while winter is serene. Exactly because it is serene, it is able to produce anew” (GBZ 4: 128)—change comes inevitably. But that does not mean it may be precipitated arbitrarily: “The way of revolution may not be hurried.” (GBZ 4: 128). • “On regulating the calendar” (J. “Chirekihen” 治曆篇 [outer chapter 6]). Formulating a calendar and calculating the precise date of seasonal events— thereby giving structure and order to the people—was a regularly employed tool of power in all of East Asia. Enthroning a new sovereign thus also meant the formal establishment of a new system of measuring time. Accordingly, Chūgan takes up questions of astronomy and mathematics and hints at their political implications. • “On essential reality and emotions”(J. “Seijōhen” 性情篇 [inner chapter 1]). Quoting at large from a variety of Chinese sources, Chūgan arrives at what proves to be his ultimate concern– psychology and its implications within the framework of Buddhist soteriology.

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In the Records on Music (C. Leji 樂記) it is said: “When man is born, he is serene, and that is his essential reality granted by the heavens. When things stimulate 感 him, he starts to move, and that is his desires 欲 rising from his emotions.” In the Doctrine of the Mean 中 庸 it is said: “The mandate of the Heavens 天命 is called essential reality.” And again: “When happiness and anger, sorrow and joy have not yet arisen, this is called the mean 中. When they have come forth but remain moderate, this is called harmony 和.” […] When happiness and anger, sorrow and joy have not yet arisen, this is the foundation of essential reality. The heavens command it, and it is received. The serenity 靜 of essential reality is the foundation of the heavens. This essential reality is of spiritual quality, imbued with clarity, and empty through and through. Therefore, it is called awakening 覺. When happiness and anger, sorrow and joy have come forth, this is emotion. What we call emotions are the desires of man’s heart. These emotions coagulate obscurely and flock together. Therefore they are called not-awakening 不覺”. (GBZ 4: 134)

The relation between essential reality and emotions thereby is shown to be far from a simple dichotomy: The former claims absolute primacy, while the latter is merely derivative. If it is emotions that thrust the human mind into turmoil, to pacify emotions also means an immediate return to original serenity. While this figure of thought is well known in different Asian traditions, the term “not-awakening” makes the Buddhist context unmistakable. In the theory of “original enlightenment” (J. hongaku 本覺), passions are like dark clouds shrouding a full moon. They impair the moon’s clarity not in the least, and once they are gone, the moon once again becomes visible in its original purity. Likewise, emotions do not mean the absence of awakening but its temporary obscurity. • “On death and life” (J. “Shishōhen” 死生篇 [inner chapter 2]). While the doctrine of original enlightenment undoubtedly formed the philosophical basis for Mahāyāna, it was difficult to harmonize with the notion of “karma” (J. gō 業) that earlier forms of Buddhism had heavily relied upon. In a way, the present chapter is Chūgan’s attempt at accommodating the law of cause and effect within the framework of the universal potential to awakening. Essential reality is based upon serenity. If it is serene, it is possible to awaken. When one is awakened, it is possible to know. Knowledge lies in the study of “things” (J. kakubutsu 格 物).10 Things that are studied become known. They are known, and afterwards they stimulate. They stimulate, and afterwards one moves. Awakening is essential reality, while movement is emotion. Then again, the study of things is not based on nothing. When it is performed by a good person, the result will be one of a good person; when it is performed by a bad person, the result will be one of a bad person; when it is performed by a heavenly being, the result will be one of a heavenly being; when it is performed by a demon or spirit, the result will be one of a demon or spirit; and when it is performed by birds and beasts, grasses and trees, the result will be one of birds and beasts, grasses and trees. There is nothing that results without factors. This is karmic retribution, right? That the basis of karma lies within the realm of shadows (i.e. is unintelligible for mere mortals), and its retribution results within the realm of light (i.e. comes to bear in our everyday lives) is the necessary “correlation of the whole” (J. ri 理) and may not be doubted. (GBZ 4: 137)  The “study of things” is central in the Great Learning (C. Daxue 大學) and is one of the pillars upon which Neo-Confucian exegesis—be it in the tradition of ZHU Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) or, much later, that of WANG Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1529)—rests.

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With this interpretation, the question of awakening versus not-awakening becomes a purely epistemological one. The chain of cause and effect that results in the turmoil of emotions running wild may be deconstructed and retraced to its serene origin under the following circumstances: The circle of death and life is “without anything permanent” (J. mujō 無常). Being without constant is the universal feature of death and life. Somebody who has transcended it is a saint, and he has necessarily dissociated himself from the circle of appearances and death and life. For this reason, a saint is simple, essential reality. He awakens and stands still. He is called a true constant. This is said in opposition to “impermanence” (J. mujō 無常). If he is awakened and does not stand still, he starts to move. When he starts to move, he also starts to know. Knowledge is stimulated by things and turns in the direction of emotion. This is the basis for impermanence. Because it is impermanent, it is called rebirth, and rebirth is the circle of death and life. (GBZ 4: 138)

A paragraph earlier, Chūgan had defined knowledge and the study of things to be one and the same. If that is to be taken seriously, awakening becomes a question of refusing to know, that is, to study external things. As the next chapter makes clear, Chūgan instead establishes a different kind of knowledge directed not towards the realm of things but towards the knower himself. • “On the precepts and on immersion” (J. “Kaijōhen” 戒定篇 [inner chapter 3]). Chūgan goes on to elaborate further on how self-reflective knowledge is to be attained. Here, for the first time, the narrative moves in a decidedly Zen Buddhist direction. When one is “truthful and correct” (J. sei 正) within, this is called immersion. Immersion is “validated” (J. shō 證) in serenity. When one is serene, one “believes” (J. shin 信). If one did not believe, what could there be to immerse oneself in? When it becomes visible on the outside and is practiced, this is called the precepts. “Precept” means to abide by the “prohibitions” (J. kin 禁). When things are prohibited, there is “ritual” (J. rei 禮). Without ritual, what could there be to abide by? When this way is taught to the people, the people conduct themselves accordingly. This is called “wisdom” (J. chi 智). Wisdom is produced from clarity. Clarity is produced from knowledge. Without knowledge, how could there be wisdom? For this reason, if the heart does not believe, how should one “conduct” (J. gyō 行) one’s body and what should one’s mouth “proclaim” (J. setsu 說)? When one does not practice this with one’s own body, one does not correspond to the regulations. When one does not proclaim it with one’s mouth, one does not correspond to the teachings. If regulations and teachings are not something that the heart believes in, it is not possible to effectuate clarity. But if the heart believes in these, then these are acquired within immersion. The great saint from the western regions (i.e. the Buddha) was a valorous man who was truthful within and grasped belief in his heart. Thus, when one practices this with one’s body just as it is, none of one’s services fails to correspond to the “regulations” (J. ritsu 律). When one proclaims this with one’s mouth just as it is, none of one’s words fails to correspond to the “teachings” (J. kyō 教). It is an error that nowadays there is talk about regulations and teachings apart from “meditation” (J. zen 禪). Meditation signifies that the heart is made to believe on the basis of immersion. To make one’s heart believe is a term that means to awaken to one’s essential reality and “err” (J. mei 迷) no longer. When the heart already believes, the emotions of good and evil, greed and dislike remain moderate. If that is so, one corresponds to the regulations without having to look to what is prohibited; one effectuates clarity without having to look to what is preached. (GBZ 4: 138–139)

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In his line of argumentation, Chūgan is very much a man of his time: He recognizes the validity of schools of Buddhism that focus on monastic discipline and/or doctrine but at the same time emphasizes their preliminary nature. While regulations without immersion are mere obedience to traditional forms, ethical conduct flows freely and spontaneously if it is based on immersion. The same holds true for the teachings: Without immersion they cannot but remain approximations, that is, “skillful means” (hōben 方便), while they are verbalizations of the truth if they are based on immersion. • “On questioning about meditation” (J. “Monzenhen” 問禪篇 [inner chapter 4]). Here, in the last and longest chapter of the work, Chūgan deals with the nature of the heart that had become central in the preceding discussions. He says: The heart filled with humanity and righteousness, ritual and humility 讓, still means only to advance one’s emotions in the direction of what is good. All this has nothing to do with the heart we are speaking of. The heart we are speaking of is the Buddha’s mysterious heart, superior to all others 無上妙心 […] Those who succeed to believe in their own heart cease to cheat 欺 themselves. When one does not cheat oneself, there is no delusion 妄. When there is no delusion, one returns to one’s essential reality. To know and speak of the way by which one returns to one’s essential reality is—this is the teaching. To proceed on it and conduct oneself according to it—these are the regulations. To believe in it and validate it—this is called meditation. (GBZ 4: 141)

When pressed on the issue of the “Ascending the Hall” (J. jōdō 上堂) ceremony in Chan/Zen monasteries and the “dharma talks” (J. seppō 說法) the abbot gives on these occasions, Chūgan acknowledges that complementary to the practice of meditation, the master may use verbal approximations as pointers to the truth. But, he is quick to caution, this is because “we desire to express the meaning of true awakening that is independent of words, and to make it easy to understand and believe in for those among our disciples that are not well versed in the texts” (GBZ 4: 142). And although Chan/Zen masters share some of their idiomatic repertoire with that employed by Neo-Confucianism scholars,11 there is a decisive difference: “If we look at their intentions, it lies with slandering the way of our old master, the Buddha. Indubitably, their words have nothing to do with meditation” (GBZ 4: 142). While the above is unable to do more than scratch the surface of Chūgan’s thought, it may have suggested the fields of interest he cultivated and the diverse traditions he took his inspiration from. The outer chapters of the Chūseishi are altogether unconcerned with Buddhist conceptualizations; rather, they present a tour de force through Chinese ethics, metaphysics, pedagogy, political philosophy, and astronomy. These areas are presented in the diction of the Classic of Changes, Confucian and historical writings, the Zhuangzi, and Neo-Confucianism. Chūgan is disclosed therein as a true polymath.

11  Examples given in the text include: “If that’s the case, it’s okay” (C. nen di bian shi qia hao 恁 地便是恰好). “Won’t need the likes of that!” (C. bu yao zhe ban 不要者般). “What’s that talk?” (C. shen me shuo hua 什麼説話). “Out of the question!” (C. wu dao li le 無道理了) (GBZ 4: 142; Iriya and Koga 1991).

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It is highly probable that this part of the book was intended as an admonition to the wielders of political power. When it was finished in 1334, the Kenmu 建武 restoration of Emperor Go-Daigo 後醍醐 (1288–1339, r. 1318–1332 or 1339) and the ensuing power struggles among the military clans was in full swing. In his “On Fathoming the People” (J. “Genminhen” 原民篇), Chūgan described the situation as being close to anarchy: When we look at our country and our dynasty, there is not one among the people that does not wear armor and has taken up arms. The peasants make their profit by loafing about their labor and stealing from one another. Even those that have left their families and cut off their hair pride themselves in their sturdy armor and their sharp-edged weapons, and have discarded what is supposed to be their duty. In the magnitude of calamity and disorder, none is beyond them. (GBZ 4: 105)

Also the order of the chapters seems to point the ruler in what Chūgan deems the necessary direction: at first, he establishes the moral basis of social life as well as metaphysical goals (outer chapters 2 and 3); he next gives precedence to literary virtue and moves on to the question of revolution (outer chapters 4 and 5); he then suggests that military intervention—and therefore the overthrow of an existing government—can only be a last resort. Having attained political power, it is the responsibility of the hegemon to establish normalcy (outer chapter 6) as quickly as possible. Structurally and content-wise, the four inner chapters are more in keeping with the overall doctrinal discussions on original enlightenment and Buddha nature 佛性 than with the anecdotal collections now taken to be typical for Chan/Zen. They are mainly concerned with Chan/Zen Buddhist psychology and soteriology. That they make up the more important part of the book is clear from Chūgan’s preface: The Chūseishi takes Shâkyamuni as its innermost concern, while Confucianism is its outer guise. That is why this text places the outer chapters first and the inner chapters later. In consequence, this should be taken as the principle that out of its outer guise it returns to its innermost concern. (GBZ 4: 121–122)

4  Summary In what can be taken as a sudden metaleptic turn in the narrative, Chūgan addresses, towards the end of the last inner chapter, the contemporary situation of the Japanese Zen school in harshly derogatory terms that read like a rationalization of his later biography. First, he divides the history of Chan/Zen teachings in four periods: The Buddha’s teaching, for the reason that it is the most ancient, is superior to everything else. The teachings of Bodhidharma come next, and they in turn are followed by the teachings of Linji and Caoshan. The teachings of the gentlemen Dahui and Ying’an are, in comparison, inferior[…] Those that are presently calling themselves Zen Buddhists in this country do not take themselves to originate from the Buddha and do not validate

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themselves within their hearts. All they do is flock around their masters and organize themselves in sects—this is truly deplorable! […] If we had the gents Linji or Caoshan coming to our country even once; if they were to witness up close the teachings that our obtuse disciples show and speak; if they were to witness that masters are installed as patriarchs but never even touch the staff or open their mouths in shouts, they would undoubtedly judge this to be erroneous and not even concerned with Chan/Zen at all. Also, if the Buddha or Bodhidharma were to visit our country, they would never legitimate these things. (GBZ 4: 144–145)

Profoundly disillusioned though Chūgan may have been with the situation of Japanese Zen, he kept his critical wits about him. Although the texts of what today is called Neo-Confucianism, but at the time was known as the “study of the correlations of the whole” (J. rigaku 理學) or the “study of the way” (J. dōgaku 道學), were known in Japan at least since the time of Enni,12 it was not until the times of Kokan and Chūgan that this new wave of Confucian thought was reflected in gozan writings (or Japanese writings in general, for that matter). Chūgan, no doubt, made use of these new philosophies; at times he employed the exact phrases that formed the tenets of Neo-Confucianism (for example, “to study external things”) and cited its representatives by name. It is, however, even more important that his references almost entirely distance themselves critically from Neo-Confucian thinkers. His sinocentric ponderings were rather based on Confucius himself, the ancient sages such as ZI Si 子思 (481–402  BCE), the masters MENG 孟 (372–289 BCE) and XUN 荀 (312–230 BCE), YANG Xiong 揚雄 (53–18 BCE), and Tang dynasty philosophers such as WANG Tong: “After master Qian 潛 [i.e. WANG Tong], there is nobody that I care to speak about” (GBZ 4: 122). Far from being an enthusiastic promoter of the newest trends from the mainland, Chūgan preferred to analyze and evaluate Chinese intellectual history in a critical and self-reflective manner and thereby produce a highly original system of thought. The focus on the Chūseishi with its rigidly discursive structure so far has led us to disregard Chūgan’s poems. In general, these are richly textured and highly allusive specimens of poetic literature, and the pair below may, in the form of a postscript, serve to stress anew his literary proficiency, his verbal playfulness, as well as his idiosyncratic choice of topics that must, alas, remain the object of further study (quoted in Iriya and Koga 1991: 299–301). Tea asked Wine In virtuous praise you seem aglow throughout the hymns of Bo Lun 伯倫,13 An approving voice I owe to the songs of Yu Chuan 玉川.14 In general, our styles and tastes have been accorded equal admiration, But one’s alert, the other drunk, their virtue different—how is that?  Enni kept records of the books he brought over from China, and these included Song dynasty Confucian masters such as ZHU Xi and others (see Kojima 2004). 13  BO Lun, also LIU Ling 劉伶 (221–300), is supposed to have been one of the “Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove” 竹林七賢 and as such spent his days idly composing poetry and drinking wine. 14  YU Chuan, also LU Tong 盧同 (d. 835), became famous for his love for tea that even seems to have stifled any thought of worldly advancement within him. 12

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Wine answered Tea Admittedly, you have investigated the Chan of Zhaozhou 趙州,15 But so far you have not yet braved the peak of Mount Cao 曹山 that is filled with piety.16 To sleep, to wake—that’s just the same, and life and death are one, So “How come one’s alert, the other drunk?” seems a rather one-sided way of asking!

Works Cited Abbreviations CZS Chūsei Zenke no shisō 『中生禅家の思想』 [The Thought of Medieval Zen Masters], edited by Hakugen Ichikawa 市川白弦, Yoshitaka Iriya 入矢義高, Seizan Yanagida 柳田聖 山. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1972 (= NST 16). GBZ Gozan bungaku zenshū 『五山文學全集』 [Complete Collection of Five Mountains Literature], edited by Kankō Uemura. 5 vols. Tokyo: Gozan bungaku zenshū hakkō-kai, 1936. NST Nihon shisō taikei 『日本思想大系』 [Anthology of Japanese Thought], edited by Saburō Ienaga 家永三郎 et al. 67 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1970–1982. SNKBT Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei 『新日本古典文学大系』 [New Anthology of Classical Japanese Literature], edited by Akihiro Satake 佐竹昭広. 100  +  6 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1989–2005. X CBETA Wang xinzuan xuzang jing 『卍新纂續藏經』 [Collection of Buddhist Sutras, Continued and in New Edition]. 88 vols. Taipei: CBETA Zhonghua dianzi fodian xiehui, 1998–2018. Digital Version. Available at http://www.cbeta.org/.

Other Sources Colas, Alain-Louis. 1991. Poèmes du Zen des Cing-Montagnes. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. Collcutt, Martin. 1981. Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Döll, Steffen. 2010. Im Osten des Meeres: Chinesische Emigrantenmönche und die frühen Institutionen des japanischen Zen-Buddhismus. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Hecht, Micah Spencer. 2005. Conventions of Unconventionality: The Rhetoric of Reclusion in Kitayama Japanese Five Mountains Literature. PhD Dissertation, University of Hawaii. Iriya, Yoshitaka 入矢義高, ed. 1990. Gozan bungaku shū 『五山文学集』 [Collection of Five Mountains Literature]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. 15  According to the Wudeng huiyuan 五燈會元 vol. 4, ZHAOZHOU Congshen 趙州從諗 (778– 897) asked every monk newly arrived at his monastery: “Have you been here before?” Regardless of the answer, next came the master’s famous dictum: “Go and have a cup of tea!” (quoted in Iriya 1990: 300). 16  CAOSHAN Benji 曹山本寂 (840–901) was a disciple of DONGSHAN Liangjie 洞山良价 (807–869). According to the Wudeng huiyuan 五燈會元 Vol. 13, he said to his students: “My time of mourning has passed.”—“Now that it has passed, what are you going to do?”—“I’m going to drink myself off my feet!” (quoted in Iriya 1990: 300).

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Iriya, Yoshitaka 入矢義高 and Hidehiko Koga 古賀英彦, eds. 1991. Zengo jiten 『禅語辞典』 [A Dictionary of Zen Expressions]. Kyoto: Shibunkaku shuppan. Kojima, Tsuyoshi 小島毅. 2004. Shushigaku to yōmeigaku 『朱子学と陽明学』 [The Studies of Zhu Xi and Yangming]. Tokyo: Hōsō daigaku kyōiku shinkōkai. Tamamura, Takeji 玉村竹二. 1955. Gozan bungaku: Tairiku bunka shokaisha toshite no gozan zensō no katsudō 『五山文學 大陸文化紹介者としての五山禪僧の活動』 [Five Mountains Literature. The Activities of Five Mountains Zen Monks as Mediators of Mainland Culture]. Tokyo: Shibundō. ———. 2005. Gozan zensō denki shūsei 『五山禪僧傅記集成』 [Collection of Biographies of Five Mountains Zen Monks]. Kyoto: Shibunkaku shuppan. Ury, Marian. 1970. Genkō shakusho: Japan’s First Comprehensive History of Buddhism: A Partial Translation, with Introduction and Notes. PhD Dissertation, University of California. Wu, Jiang. 2014. Leaving for the Rising Sun: Chinese Zen Master Yinyuan and the Authenticity Crisis in Early Modern East Asia. New York: Oxford University Press. Yu, Weici 兪慰慈. 2005. Gozan bungaku no kenkyū 『五山文學の研究』 [A Study of Five Mountains Literature]. Tokyo: Kyūko Shoin. Steffen Döll is Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhism at the Asia Africa Institute of Hamburg University. His master’s thesis, published in 2005, was the first monograph on contemporary philosopher Ueda Shizuteru to appear in a European language. His dissertation, published in 2010, studies the role of Chinese emigrant monks in the transmission of Chan Buddhism to Japan as well as in the subsequent processes of institutionalization during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. He co-edits the book series Hamburg Buddhist Studies and continues his work in the field of the entangled intellectual history of pre-modern East Asia both past and present.

Chapter 20

Ikkyū Sōjun Andrew K. Whitehead

The Zen monk IKKYŪ Sōjun 一休宗純 (1394–1481) is one of the most controversial, and one of the least discussed, Japanese thinkers of the Muromachi period 室 町時代 (1337–1573). Although his writings have been translated by a select number of Japanologists in the latter part of the last century,1 the underlying philosophy of his thought remains largely unexplored outside of Japan. Ikkyū remains one of the most celebrated Zen monks of medieval Japan. However, little is known about the actual history of this figure. The records inform us that he was the illegitimate son of the Emperor GO Komatsu 後小松 (1377– 1433) and that his mother was exiled from the court while pregnant. For the first several years, she raised him in impoverished conditions until he was entrusted to the local temple at age six. His serious education in Zen is traced to the hermit-­ monk Kenō 謙翁 (d.1414) of Myōshinji 妙心寺, and Kasō 華叟 (1352–1428), the abbot of Daitokuji 大徳寺. It was Kasō who eventually confirmed Ikkyū’s enlightenment, bestowing him his seal of enlightenment (J. inka 印可), though Ikkyū was reluctant to accept it. In fact, he is recorded to have thrown it in the “fire to burn” (J. inka 引火). For 30 years following the death of Kasō, Ikkyū assumed the role of a wandering monk, moving mainly between Kyōto and Ōsaka, living outside of the monasteries, befriending all classes of society without discriminating among them. In his final years, Ikkyū was made abbot of Daitokuji, which he had helped restore following the Ōnin war, though he spent most of his time at the Shūonan 酬恩庵 hermitage (now called the Shūonan Ikkyūji 酬恩庵一休寺) his disciples had built for him at 1  I cannot overemphasize the tremendous resource I have found in the works of Sonja Arntzen, who has also been kind enough to offer me advice and guidance in my own efforts to draw upon the wealth of material left by this underexplored Zen figure.

A. K. Whitehead (*) Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_20

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the monastery of Myōshōji 妙正寺, following his restoration of this commemorative institution. He died there at the age of 87. Considered one of Zen’s “crazy-monks,” Ikkyū’s ongoing legacy and popularity is owed, to a large extent, to the wealth of hagiographic literature written about him during the Tokugawa period 徳川時代 (1602–1868). In this literature, Ikkyū is represented in such a way as to highlight his superior wit, and the character and tone of his own writings is transfigured and censored. This same transfiguration is later adopted by popular culture in the twentieth century, with the development of cartoons, television shows, and advertising, all of which depict Ikkyū as a young child – as the clever “rascal” Ikkyū-san 一休さん. The unfortunate outcome of this transfiguration is the loss of Ikkyū’s poetry and his unique expression of Buddhist philosophical ideas. Today, there are few Japanese – and even fewer people outside of Japan – who have read Ikkyū’s poetry. In what follows, I present a selection of key philosophical elements from Ikkyū’s writings in order to draw attention to the valuable insights to be found in his poetry.

1  Ikkyū’s Skillful Bending: Language as Skillful Means Ikkyū’s poetry, expressing emptiness and no-thing, is best understood as an adaptation of the practice of direct pointing as skillful means (J. hōben 方便).2 In the writings of Ikkyū, poetry is used as an appropriate form for conveying paradoxical and self-disruptive contexts of instruction. Ikkyū reminds us that language, in poetic form, facilitates the breakdown of the relation between names and forms and the oppositional structures generated through contextualized rhetorical situations. His use of language is best interpreted as a particularly Buddhist method of bringing about appropriate understanding. Along these lines, DESHONG Zong notes: It is natural to think, given the role that names play here [cases of the ancient Chan masters], that this must be a method that is designed to teach the student the appropriate way to handle the issue of reference within the context of Buddhist practice. The larger concern, of course, is the appropriate understanding of the Mahayana notion of emptiness. (Zong 2005: 596)

In the case of the writings of Ikkyū, as with most of the Zen masters, the goal of such practice is not edification for the sake of appropriate understanding in given contexts but the realization that such contexts are “empty,” that is, vacuous,

 The Japanese compound term hōben 方便 is made up of two kanji: hō 方 and ben 便. “Hō” is commonly translated as “method,” “means,” or, in certain specific Buddhist contexts, as “dharma.” “Ben” is commonly translated as “expediency,” “use,” “function,” or “skillful.” There are subtle differences to be inferred from the various translations of hōben. Depending on the translator, it is variably translated as “skill in means,” “skillful means,” “expediency in means,” “expedient means,” “dharma function,” “dharma use,” etc. For a more exhaustive philological treatment of hōben I refer the reader to Michael Prye’s Skilful Means: A Concept in Mahayana Buddhism (Prye 2003).

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non-essential and purely relational to begin with, ultimately enabling spontaneous response in any and all contexts. This point is addressed by Dale Wright as follows: “The skilful means that is involved in the soteriological use of paradox is the capacity to use language fluidly and dynamically so that one ‘settles down’ in neither pole of the opposition, neither affirmation nor negation, but remains open to their common ground which lies between them” (Wright 1982: 335). Ikkyū’s poetry is a performance of this oscillation between affirmative and negative proclamations. Ikkyū’s use of language, and the language he uses, is informed in the case of each poem by its topic and its “audience.” For example, when he writes what Sonja Arntzen has called his “poems of criticism concerning Zen,” Ikkyū assumes the reader to have a proper Buddhist education in scriptures, kōan 公案, and classical literature. The paradoxical function of such poems works only in virtue of an adequate recognition of the reversal of referents with regard to their conventional interpretations. However, when he writes prose pieces, such as “Skeletons,” Ikkyū uses a language that is far more accessible to laymen and disrupts their world-views just as much as his poems would disrupt the views of the educated reader. In both poetry and prose, Ikkyū uses conventional language in unconventional ways. However, this unconventional use of meaningful rhetoric is arguably facilitated all the more in his poetry, where he often deliberately breaks with convention, discussing major figures of his sect and particular forms of behaviour in ways that fail to adhere to the writings of his predecessors. According to Carl Raschke: “The situational transposal of ordinary linguistic meaning is found in poetry, which depends only on a skilful bending of word-uses … in order to rupture the familiar rules of understanding” (Raschke 1974: 101). This idea of skillful bending fits nicely with Ikkyū’s unique practice as skillful means. Ikkyū’s poems bend traditional meanings through the contextual placement of characters, concepts, and terms. They assert paradoxes for the sake of pointing towards no-thing, that is, to the formlessness of things and their non-substantial, relational nature. Such paradoxes are the result of word usages that are “bent,” in the sense that they only provide the occasion for realization in virtue of their queerness in relation to their context. Ikkyū’s poetry often offends in light of this contextual misplacement, shocking readers so that they must reconsider the context itself (and contextualization as such). Thus, Ikkyū’s paradoxes typically are neither solely “in the text” nor solely “in the mind” of the reader: rather, they are expressions of the tensions, or the conflicts, between the two. According to Wright: Not only are statements about ultimate truth paradoxical, but the way in which this truth makes its appearance is also paradoxical. The paradox lies not simply in the thinking subject, but in the way ultimate truth becomes manifest to the subject. The unconditional truth of suchness becomes known only through the conditioned form, a paradoxical manifestation. (Wright 1982: 328)

Read in this light, Ikkyū’s writings paradoxically manifest unconditioned ultimate truth, as demonstrations of the practice of emptiness, as a showing of no-thing. Paradoxically, they both depend on the conventions of language and writing, and, due to the subject matter and style Ikkyū chooses, they at the same time work against

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such conventions. Ikkyū’s writings are therefore paradoxical assertions of paradoxes aimed to undermine conventional forms in a showing of ultimate truth.

2  Writing as Critical Engagement: Conventions and Persons Many of Ikkyū’s poems are criticisms of the Zen institutions and histories of which he was a part. Such criticisms meet the criteria for “critical engagement” put forth by Wright: The accomplished monk is a repository of the community’s purposes, values, practices, and beliefs, and only secondarily, upon that basis, an individual agent who takes the tradition up into critical scrutiny. The capacity for critical distance, however, is based upon and derived from a prior mastery of the monastic language game. (Wright 1992: 124)

Ikkyū’s mastery of the various forms of instruction and practice allows for his critical engagement with the monasteries of his time. His poems are soteriologically effective insofar as he is able to attack conventions by bending the contextual frameworks within which such criticisms are expressed. Discussing names in his prose piece “Skeletons,” Ikkyū notes that there is nothing born into this world that will not eventually become “empty.” Oneself and the original face of heaven and earth and all the world are equally empty. All things emerge from “emptiness.” Being formless it is called “buddha.” The “mind” of buddha, the “buddhahood,” the buddha in our minds, buddhas, patriarchs, and gods are different names of this emptiness, and should you not realize this you have fallen into the hell of ignorance and false imagination. (Heisig et al. 2011: 172)

Failure to account for the fluidity of signification only furthers the illusory reification of the non-essential. This ultimately perpetuates attachment and further entrenches individuals into samsara. However, by taking note of the empty nature of names and forms, spontaneous action/expression/compassion becomes manifest in such a way as to remain non-essential. Such manifestations remain interdependent generations through the relations of no-thing. Conventional linguistic ascriptions maintain their usefulness only to the extent that they are able to engage the world subversively in non-conventional ways. This is how the poetry of Ikkyū differs from standard classical forms. In his poem, “The Ridiculousness of Poetry,” Ikkyū makes this point clear: 嘲文章 人具畜生牛馬愚 詩文元地獄工夫 我慢邪慢情識苦 可嘆波旬親得途 The Ridiculousness of Poetry (no. 367)3 3  Numbering for poems, which are from the so-called “Crazy Cloud Anthology” (J. Kyōun-shū 狂 雲集), corresponds with that from Ikkyū to sono zen shisō 一休とその禅思想 [Ikkyū and his Zen

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Domesticated men are as stupid as cows and horses. Poetry begins as an earthly4 craft. I am ridiculous, wickedly ridiculous, sympathetically writing about suffering. One should not lament such transitory intimacies in finding the way.

Ikkyū’s self-reproach is not without its irony. Ikkyū’s “intimacy” must be construed as non-intimacy, given that his use of metaphor and poetry remain foundationless in light of his appropriation and use of the Buddhist doctrines of emptiness and no-thing. In this sense, his self-reproach fails to produce merit in its application. His metaphors fail to point to anything essential and are therefore only further displacements of displaced content. Such a reading is supported by Ikkyū’s statement that “poetry begins as an earthly craft.” When used properly, poetry is able to disrupt the conventional associations of contextual readings. When metaphors fail, in the sense that they are used in a paradoxical fashion, they ultimately refer to something completely other than the expected conventional referent, if anything at all. Metaphors are thus able to dissolve the conventions with which they are engaged. In other words, the conventional readings of unconventional metaphors unsettle readers enough for them to re-evaluate the process in which these readings ensued. In this re-evaluation, not only the specific context but all contexts are thrown into relief. Readers are forced to suspend, however briefly, the tyranny of the essential and real. As Henry Rosemont Jr. writes: “in the mondo and koan the Zen master is not performing illocutionary but perlocutionary speech acts; he has a specific intent, a specific response that he is desirous of eliciting from his students, and the content of his utterances has little relevance to that response” (Rosemont 1970: 117). At the same time, the context does have relevance to the desired response. In fact, the content is completely determined by the context. Specific contexts, whether they are defined by the use of a title, a specific character, or any other theme, allow Ikkyū to develop poems that, from almost any perspective, seem entirely disjointed throughout. Faure writes: [Ikkyū’s] poems attack the conventional distinction between the sacred and the profane by resorting to the scatological. These lines leave the reader with the philosophical, the scatological, and the erotic, the most contradictory of images and ideas juxtaposed and intermingled, impossible to separate. (Faure 1998: 114)

Despite such collages of varying and contributing perspectives, however, contents remain defined by contexts. They are “all mere names applied by us from our own limited perspectives.” Such perspectives are indicative of experiences within conventional reality. The conventional world depends on an intricate matrix of interdependent concepts that serve to perpetuate the illusory reality of things as they appear. The conThought] published in the Chūsei zenke no shisō 中世禅家の思想 [The Thought of Medieval Zen Figures], volume 16 of Nihon shisō taikei 日本思想大系 [Compendium of Japanese Thought] (Ichikawa et al. 1972: 262–299). All translations, unless otherwise stated, are my own. 4  I translate “地獄” (literally earth/ground prison) as “earthly,” but it is important to note that the term is meant to convey the idea of human existence in the realm of saṃsāra, in a sense trapped in the earthly conventions of life.

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ventional world depends on discriminations, which are solidified by conventions that validate their use. The most fundamental of such discriminatory distinctions is that of self and other. Ikkyū writes: 祖意教意別与同 商量今古未曾窮 松源老々婆心切 人我無明属己躬 (no. 187)5 Does the meaning of the Patriarchs and the Doctrine divert or agree? Dealings in estimations remain ever perplexed. Old Shogen, as sharp and kind as an elderly grandmother, tells us Our ignorance stems from ourselves.

Ikkyū notes that the discrimination of conventional truth and ultimate truth, of his own understanding of Zen and the ultimate meaning as understood by his predecessors, begins with the delusion of self. The drawing of the boundary of self implicitly posits an other, both of which come to appear in the realm of conventional truth. Conventional truth, in this sense, consists in false appearances arising from the illusory distinction between self and other. Conventional truth is thus the mode of awareness that prevails in conventional reality. Conventional reality has meanings that facilitate their self-perpetuation through their integration in conventional social communicative practices. This world of convention not only reifies conventions into objects but also encourages the fictional positing of subjects in relation to them. The experience of others carries with it the experience of a self that stands before, or against, such others. In contradistinction to such conventional experiences, and with the goal of spontaneous engagements in mind, Ikkyū shows great fondness for fishermen, on the grounds that their engagements demonstrate free and easy relations with the surroundings in which they find themselves. 漁父 学道参禅失本心 漁歌一曲価千金 湘江暮雨楚雲月 無限風流夜々吟 Fisherman (no. 216)6 Studying the Way (dō 道), practicing Zen, one loses the Original Mind. The pleasure from a fishing song is worth a thousand pieces of gold. Making a living on the Sagami river, among the clouds of Chu and the moon, Unlimited fūryū, singing, night after night.

According to Ikkyū, the relational person engaged in the study and practice of Zen, engaged in the conventional worlds of discrimination, becomes attached to his/ her progress and development, thereby preventing the dissolution of second-order  See footnote 3.  See footnote 3.

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displacements as a means of showing no-thing, the “Original Mind” (J. honshin 本 心) The fisherman, however, is engaged with the world in such a way as to be purely spontaneous in his actions. He has few attachments and is thereby free to engage the world outside of most conventions and relational contexts. While fūryū 風流 remains a difficult term to translate, Arntzen argues that, in this poem, it “refers to the natural grandeur of the fisherman’s environment as well as the sublimity of such a vocation” (Arntzen 1986: 131). The illusory self is discriminated as meaningful through action, through its engagements in conventional worlds. Existence, therefore, remains relational, inter-dependent and conventional. Ikkyū’s poem points out how the fisherman’s relational existence is of such a nature as to allow free and spontaneous engagements in the “natural grandeur” of his environment. It attests to Thomas Kasulis’ claim that “the Zen ideal is to act spontaneously in the situation without first objectifying it in order to define one’s role” (Kasulis 1981: 136). In the world of convention, the reification of relations is acted out and given meaning through engagements. To this extent, one becomes a self, a person, through the meaningful engagements that distinguish relations. Conventionally, a person is nothing outside of their relations. Ultimately, a person is no-thing. According to Kasulis: “If we could list all the relational determinations (employee, customer, son, and so on), we would not have a list of roles that Mr. A plays – we would have what Mr. A is as a person” (Kasulis 1981: 130).7 To the extent that persons are occasioned as relational positions, and exist only within and through such conventional discriminations, the sum total of relations of engagements determines the conventional existence of the person. Many of Ikkyū’s poems display how relations of conventional worlds affect who (in the sense of how) he is as he is. He writes: 自山中帰市中 狂雲誰識属狂風 朝在山中暮市中 我若当機行棒喝 徳山臨済面通紅 From the Mountains, Arriving in the City (no. 93)8 Crazy Cloud, who knows to what crazy wind he belongs? Morning, in the mountains, I spend my time in the city. If I, upon the appropriate occasion, journeyed to take up the stick or shout “Katsu,” Tokuzan and Rinzai would blush.

Ikkyū divided his time between the wilderness and the monasteries in the city. His engagements with others, therefore, produced starkly different persons, depend7  We are here reminded of Ludwig Wittgenstein. In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 2.0123, he writes: “Wenn ich den Gegenstand kenne, so kenne ich auch sämtliche Möglichkeiten seines Vorkommens in Sachverhalten. / (Jede solche Möglichkeit muss in der Natur des Gegenstandes liegen.) / Es kann nicht nachträglich eine neue Möglichkeit gefunden werden” [“If I know an object I also know all its possible occurrences in states of affairs. / (Every one of these possibilities must be part of the nature of the object.) / A new possibility cannot be discovered later” (Pears and McGuinness 2001: 6)]. 8  See footnote 3.

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ing on their relational contexts. The poem marks Ikkyū’s non-attachment to any specific objectified self. This point is confirmed by Ikkyū’s self-praise concerning his ability to act spontaneously and, therefore, appropriately, even in the event that he should be relationally situated as Tokuzan (C. Deshan) 徳山 (782–865) or Rinzai (C. Linji) 臨濟 (d. 866). He is not determined by his relational situation but is able to engage worlds of convention freely as empty illusions. According to Ikkyū, persons exist only in conventional worlds and can be essentialized only through one’s relational engagements in distinct situations. However, there are different conventional worlds at play in any given instance, and meaningful engagements are able to take place, despite seeming inappropriate or conflicting. This is how skillful means is able to adopt distinct modes of communication in all conventional relations. Ikkyū uses this foundationless quality of all conventional worlds in order to prompt disruptions of the supposed relational contexts in which persons find themselves. 乱世正工夫 丈夫須具正見 諸妄想随境現 馬問良馬麼無 人答此刀利剣 A Man of Righteous Skill in a Disturbed World (no. 292)9 The great one must possess the right view. Various delusions and ideas comply with distinct actualities. About a horse, one asks: “Is it a good horse or not?” Another answers, “This blade is better.”

While seemingly nonsensical, this reply is entirely appropriate for its meaningful intended use. As Arntzen points out, “this poem states that in times of disorder one must constantly be on one’s guard as nothing will be what it seems” (Arntzen 1986: 140). In short, “nothing is as it seems,” at least, not entirely. There is a multiplicity of persons engaged in different communications in the same situation. If we interpret the question as “Is your horse worth stealing?” then it becomes clear that the response is appropriate. The fluid re-contextualization of the relation in which persons are found disrupts the initial situation and dissolves the persons who took part in it: it thereby becomes a different relation between different persons. In this sense, persons behave in accordance with their position, and their position is established in accordance with the relation between persons. Speaking to this point, Kasulis writes: “for Mr. A to function as a person, he must see himself as functioning in certain preestablished relationships” (Kasulis 1981: 130).

 See footnote 3.

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3  Disruption of the Body: Embodiment and Relationality The body as a constitutive element of the conventional self presents innumerable unique constraints and limitations on the relationships that come to be determined as pre-established. The body, therefore, limits the functions assumable by persons, at least insofar as persons conceive of their engagements and relations in terms of their physical situation. Part of the practice that undermines the essentialization of meaningful relations in conventional contexts is, therefore, marked by a return to the body. In zazen 坐禅, one is to remain aware of one’s bodily presence and to focus on such physical activities as breathing and sitting. Ikkyū uses similar imagery in his prose piece “Skeletons.” As a skillful means approach, he uses simple analogies to dissolve the dichotomies of conventional reality. He writes: Who is not a skeleton? It is just because human beings are covered with skins of varying colors that sexual passion between men and women comes to exist. When the breathing stops and the skin of the body is broken there is no more form, no higher and lower. You must realize that what we now have and touch as we stand here is the skin covering our skeleton. Think deeply about this fact. High and low, young and old – there is no difference whatever between them. (Heisig et al. 2011: 174)

Aside from the conventional distinctions of the world, there is no-thing. Ultimately, things are non-dual. In order to show this to his readers, Ikkyū points out how “underneath it all” we are non-different. He continues: “when your breath stops and the skin of your body breaks, you will also become like me. How long do you think you will live in this fleeting world?” (Heisig et al. 2011: 174). We can think back to Ikkyū’s account of the time he removed his robe and placed it before the meal his host had laid out for him. He believed that the meal was prepared for the robe and not for him because he had not been offered a meal when he had visited the same home earlier as a beggar. Beneath the relational appearances, the conventional discriminations, and the second-order displacements, things are non-different. Essentially, things are non-essential. It is as a reminder of this fact that Ikkyū shows the non-distinct nature of bodies and persons. Ikkyū writes: 地獄 三界無安 猶如火宅 箇主人公 瑞巌応喏 Earthly Prison (no. 441)10 The triple sphere offers no peace: It is as though a house on fire. “Master?” Zuigan replies: “Yes.”

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The conventional world, identified here as the “house on fire” of the “triple sphere,” occasions existence through relations of self. The allusion to Zuigan 瑞巖 (ca. 900) is taken from case no.12 of the Mumonkan 無門関. The case is recorded as follows: “[Zuigan] is supposed to have talked to himself as follows: ‘Hello, Master.’ / ‘Yes.’ / ‘Better sober up.’ / ‘Yes.’ / ‘Don’t be fooled by others.’ / ‘Yes, yes’” (Heisig et al. 2011: 174). In worlds of convention, the discrimination of persons takes place and persons are engaged. The specific fashion of such engagements, however, remains to be properly qualified. The most infamous of Ikkyū’s poems are sexual in nature, exploring and transforming the sacred into the profane through the scatological.11 However, it is rarely conceded that these poems provide more than shock value. Being sexual, they are also engagements of and with bodies, and must therefore be explored in light of Ikkyū’s return to the body as a shared pedagogical place. Again, all human beings have bodies. These poems highlight, perhaps even more so than his others, the existential conflict arising out of desires in the face of well-balanced understanding and practice. They also highlight the non-dualist’s appreciation of the breakdown of difference in light of interdependence. To this extent, insofar as my body is like that of those with whom I stand in relation, I can understand my body as extending to theirs and theirs to mine. Bodily experiences of such a nature are able to allow for my body to be as though that of another. They constitute what Graham Parkes terms somatic practices, insofar as they “improve our relations with others … by reducing egocentrism and increasing humility,” thereby helping to “close the gap between beliefs and behaviour, and between ideas and action” (Parkes 2012: 69). Such a reading adds depth to poems like “Making My Hand Mori’s Hand,” a poem that seems at first to be nothing more than a raunchy recounting of masturbation. Ikkyū writes: 喚我手作森手 我手何似森手 自信公風流主 発病治玉茎萌 且喜我会裏衆 Making My Hand Mori’s Hand (no. 536)12 My hand, how it becomes Mori’s hand. In truth the lady has a masterful style; Ill, her cure makes the jeweled stem sprout. The multitude rejoices amidst our meeting.

The illusory nature of conventional worlds is brought into sharper relief through an appreciation of the relations in which the self is found. Ikkyū describes his solitary experience as though it were in relation to Mori 森, his blind lover. This relation of the as though, here and elsewhere, is every bit as real as in other conventional  Bernard Faure, for instance, discusses this aspect of Ikkyū’s poems on sex and sexuality (Faure 1998). 12  See footnote 3. 11

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relations. The perpetuation of conventional worlds takes place in virtue of the fact that we proceed as though they were ultimately real. To this extent, the reality of the illusory persists only so long as it is found to be as though real: as though I exist, as though the tree is the same as the acorn, as though my lover is present before me. It is along these lines that many of Ikkyū’s poems dealing with sex can be read. However, they also carry a moral – or rather an amoral – dimension as well. Having found conventional discriminations to be empty of any essential reality, and therefore instances of relations of no-thing, Zen ethics finds itself unsustainable. For this reason, ethics, like everything else, is discussed along the dividing line of the conventional and the ultimate. However, even within the conventional, and in light of the bodhisattva ideals of compassion and the requisite amoralism that accompanies it, Ikkyū writes poems that criticize prohibitions against sex and other traditional vices. Again, to this end, he often turns to the body, in the sense of the sensual, as his place in common. He writes: 題婬坊 美人雲雨愛河深 楼子老禅楼上吟 我有抱持啑吻興 竟無火聚捨身心 On the Lewdness of Priests (no. 144)13 A beauty’s cloud-rain, love’s a deep river. In the pagoda, a child and an old man meditate silently, singing. Embraced, I find pleasure in the sucking of the proboscis.14 In the end, neither body nor mind is thrown into the fire.

Here again, Ikkyū makes reference to false dichotomies and their impact on correct understanding. Attachment to dualisms, such as pain and pleasure and right and wrong, remains just that, attachment. Against such tendencies, Ikkyū treats sex no differently from zazen or cooking: relational contexts equally able to instigate and facilitate correct understanding. In order to better appreciate this type of reading, it is important to first understand Ikkyū’s conventional amoralism.

 See footnote 3.  Note that Sonja Arntzen translates the characters “啑吻” as kissing. However, such a reading loses the obvious allusion to fellatio that occurs through the reading of “啑” (here read as シャ, from the Chinese sha) as “to suck” (treated, here, as synonymous with its homonymous 歃) and of “吻” as proboscis (still carrying the oral imagery of Arntzen’s “kissing”). At the same time, “啑” can also be read as チ (from the Chinese tì), and can be considered identical with “嚏,” meaning “to sneeze,” adding an allusion to the culmination of the act of fellatio. Though the English rendering provided here may sound clumsier than Arntzen’s translation, it has the advantage of allowing these various meanings to come out.

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4  A  n Ethics of No-Self and No-Thing: Ikkyū’s Conventional Amoralism The Buddhist insistence on the no-self doctrine and the illusory nature of conventional worlds makes it difficult to imagine how any moral system could become established. Moreover, it becomes difficult to imagine how such a dichotomous structure could be philosophically supported and maintained within the non-dualist framework of Zen Buddhism. Perhaps it is for this reason that studies concerning Zen Buddhist ethics remained, until recently, unchartered territory.15 However, recent scholarship on Zen Buddhism has made an active attempt to develop an understanding of what such an ethics would look like. John C. Maraldo, for instance, finds that “Zen Buddhism has always been full of ideals, like the bodhisattva ideal, and imperatives, like precepts” (Maraldo 2009: 195). These ideals and imperatives, however, as empty displacements of no-thing, must be understood as operating only on the level of conventional reality. They are discriminations of behaviours and ways of being, generated out of, and evaluated according to, dichotomous relations pertaining to conventionally real individuals. Such individuals are recognized, on the level of ultimate reality, as non-individuals. To this extent, any Zen Buddhist ethics is unable to ascend to ultimate truth. As Mark T. Unno writes: “If there is no self, defining moral agency becomes problematic” (Unno 1999: 516). Maraldo’s observation is nevertheless an accurate one. Zen does embrace both ideals and imperatives, which can be understood as the conventionally real doctrinal aspirations and codes of conduct that are established in Zen communities. It is these codes of conduct that serve as the basis for what comes to be argued to be Zen ethics. This is a legitimate interpretation. The codes of conduct for Zen monasteries, understood as the “house rules,” are often interpreted as a variation of those found in Confucianism. They are based on tradition, place emphasis on relations between members of the “home,” and are believed to constitute a specific form of authority. Without such a conventional framework, Ikkyū’s antinomianism, his “crazy” style, and the rationale behind the censorship of his writings would fail to make sense. He is outrageous only insofar as he goes beyond the traditional behavioural framework of the communities in which he finds himself. After all, as Gereon Kopf remarks: “[Ikkyū] is remembered best as the Japanese representative of the ‘crazy monks’ who made a name for themselves by breaking the precepts, more specifically by eating meat, drinking sake, and frequenting brothels” (Kopf 2010: 42). The behaviour of Zen’s “crazy monks” aims to undermine the rigidity of conventional structures of discrimination. It is commonly (conventionally) agreed that this is for the sake of liberating sentient beings. However, given the collapse of the distinction between conventional and ultimate reality, the persons of the bodhisattvas can also be understood as practicing transgressions for the sake of realization. It is not that  Mark T.  Unno, for example, notes that “Important as Zen has been in defining the image of Buddhism and Asian religion in the West, the study of Zen Buddhist ethics has been conspicuous by its absence” (Unno 1999: 510).

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conventional persons can be liberated from conventional reality but, instead, that conventional persons can be shown that conventional reality is empty and no-thing. This showing is the practice of the bodhisattva. It includes showing that moral discriminations are also empty. It is along these lines that I interpret Ikkyū’s amoralism, as a demonstration of the empty discriminations of moral valuations. In his prose introduction to four poems on the nature of karma, he writes: Good and evil have never been confused. In this world, those who do good are all friends of Shun and those who do evil are all friends of Chieh [Jie]. The pheasant is always attacked by the hawk, the rat is always bitten by the cat, this is innate in them and predetermined. The way in which all living beings take refuge in Buddha’s virtue is also like this. (Arntzen 1974: 56)

Ikkyū highlights the distinction between conventional moral reality and the ultimate truth of amoralism. The social moral conventions of conventional worlds give a strong binding force to moral valuations (“Good and evil have never been confused”). These conventions are based on previous patterns of behaviour and the moral ascriptions bestowed on them. His use of Shun 舜 (ca. 2200 BCE) and Jie 桀 (1728–1675 BCE) conveys the same tautological support that is often called upon by ethicists: those who are good are good because they are good (friends of Shun), and those who are bad are bad because they are bad (friends of Jie). The moral discrimination of good and bad is situationally evaluated in accordance with previous conventions of moral discrimination, and nothing more. However, the “natural” state of things, exemplified by the hawk and the cat, is not subject to these conventions. Their discriminations are not moralistic. Ikkyū points out that, ultimately, these two kinds of discrimination are non-different, to the extent that they are both empty conventional discriminations generated out of no-thing through the force of karma. Both humans and animals find their specific conventions innate to their conventional worlds, which are predetermined. The tension between the two levels of moral reality must be appreciated if one is to understand Ikkyū’s amoralism. On the conventional level, moral discriminations exist, and they follow the conventions relationally established for their allowance. “Those who are good are friends of Shun.” In other words, there is a way in which conventional moral discriminations adhere to the meta-ethical principles of consistency and universalizability. As R. C. Solomon writes: Both the principles of consistency and universalizability … may be summarized as follows: If some evaluation (or evaluative term) applies in a particular case, then, for any other case exactly similar to that one, or similar in all relevant respects, that evaluation applies. (Solomon 1970: 100)

The flexibility granted by the inclusion of “relevant respects” allows for the conventional perpetuation of moral ascriptions to like occurrences. On the ultimate level, moral discriminations are empty, allowing the practices of the bodhisattva to transgress conventional moral discriminations for the sake of showing their emptiness. However, the eccentric behaviour of the “crazy monks” is ultimately not transgressive insofar as the moral conventions transgressed are non-essential. According to

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the Vimalakirti Sūtra: “They [the bodhisattvas] become prostitutes to liberate those with sexual desires” (quoted in Kopf 2010: 47). Understood in this light, Ikkyū’s transgressions are non-transgressions. They are only demonstrations of the impossibility of moral transgression.

5  Concluding Remarks Ikkyū’s writings are indicative of a novel approach to the practice of skillful means (hōben 方便) in Zen Buddhism. Unlike his predecessors, who are depicted from a third-person perspective in their recorded sayings and practices, Ikkyū’s writings introduce a personal, first-person account of a manifold of tensions that arise in Zen practice. For instance, while Ōbaku 黄檗 (d. 850) strikes his students with a staff, and Rinzai strikes his students with a roar, Ikkyū can be understood as striking his students with the breakdown of dichotomies through poetry and prose. While all three Masters act in a way that could be interpreted as evil and unnecessary (though, in so interpreting, their actions would be qualified in dichotomous propositions), in the works of Ikkyū we find an existential account of conventional reality thrown into relief in light of the bodhisattva ideal. Ikkyū’s writings thereby point directly to no-thing. Specifically, Ikkyū’s writings offer a focused account of different philosophical themes that are often only touched upon in other Zen writings. In this paper, I have touched briefly on several of these themes, including an existential account of the self, the pedagogical value of using the body as a reference point for interdependent generation and non-dualism, the amoralism of the enlightened perspective, and the situational re-adaptation of Buddhist teachings through skillful bending for the sake of contextual re-evaluations and/or breakdowns. This can no more than point to the much larger project of excavating a more comprehensive account of Ikkyū’s philosophical significance, a project that is well worthy of more attention.

Works Cited Arntzen, Sonja. 1974. Ikkyū Sōjun: A Zen Monk and His Poetry. Bellingham: Western Washington State College Press. ———. 1986. Ikkyū and the Crazy Cloud Anthology: A Zen Monk of Medieval Japan. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. Faure, Bernard. 1998. The Red Thread: Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Heisig, James W., Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo, eds. 2011. Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Ichikawa, Hakugen 市川白弦, Yoshitaka Iriya 入矢義高, and Seizan Yanagida 柳田聖山, eds. 1972. Ikkyū to sono zen shisō 「一休とその禅思想」 [Ikkyū and his Zen Thought]. In Chūsei

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zenke no shisō 『中世禅家の思想』 [The Thought of Medieval Zen Figures], 262–299. Nihon shisō taikei 『日本思想大系』 [Compendium of Japanese Thought]. Vol. 16. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Kasulis, Thomas P. 1981. Zen Action Zen Person. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Kopf, Gereon. 2010. Neither Good Nor Evil: A Non-Dualistic Ethics for Today. In Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy 7: Classical Japanese Philosophy, ed. James W. Heisig and Rein Raud, 39–57. Nagoya: Nanzan. Maraldo, John C. 2009. The Alternative Normativity of Zen. In Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy 6: Confluences & Cross Currents, ed. Raquel Bouso and James W. Heisig, 190–214. Nagoya: Nanzan. Parkes, Graham. 2012. Awe and Humility in the Face of Things: Somatic Practice in East-Asian Philosophies. European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (4): 69–88. Prye, Michael. 2003. Skilful Means: A Concept in Mahayana Buddhism. London: Routledge. Raschke, Carl. 1974. Meaning and Saying in Religion: Beyond Language Games. The Harvard Theological Review 67 (2): 79–116. Rosemont, Henry, Jr. 1970. The Meaning Is the Use: Koan and Mondo as Linguistic Tools of the Zen Masters. Philosophy East and West 20 (2): 109–119. Solomon, R.C. 1970. Normative and Meta-Ethics. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 31 (1): 97–107. Unno, Mark T. 1999. Questions in the Making: A Review Essay on Zen Buddhist Ethics in the Context of Buddhist and Comparative Ethics. The Journal of Religious Ethics 27 (3): 507–536. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2001. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Trans. David Pears and Brian McGuinness. New York: Routledge. Wright, Dale S. 1982. The Significance of Paradoxical Language in Hua-yen Buddhism. Philosophy East and West 32 (3): 325–338. ———. 1992. Rethinking Transcendence: The Role of Language in Zen Experience. Philosophy East and West 42 (1): 113–138. Zong, Desheng. 2005. Three Language-Related Methods in Early Chinese Chan Buddhism. Philosophy East and West 55 (4): 584–602. Andrew K. Whitehead is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Kennesaw State University in the United States. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the National University of Ireland. He specializes in East-West comparative philosophy, particularly concerning Japanese Buddhist philosophy, the Kyoto School, Chinese Daoism, and the German and French traditions of phenomenology and existentialism. His current research projects include a philosophical interpretation of the works of the medieval Zen poet Ikkyū Sōjun (1394–1481) and a critical re-interpretation of subjective integration in light of the existential tension that arises at the intersection of complex social systems and phenomenology. His recent publications include the co-edited volumes Imagination: CrossCultural Philosophical Analyses, Wisdom and Philosophy: Contemporary and Comparative Approaches, and Landscape and Travelling East and West: A Philosophical Journey, all of which are published by Bloomsbury Academic. He is presently the President of the Académie du Midi Philosophical Association, an Associate Editor of the journal Comparative and Continental Philosophy, and an Executive Officer of the Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle.

Chapter 21

Bankei

Enshō Kobayashi

BANKEI Yōtaku 盤珪永琢 (1622–1693) was a seventeenth-century Japanese Zen master best known for originating the uniquely Japanese tradition known as “Unborn Zen” (J. fushō Zen 不生禅). Active during the early decades of the feudal Tokugawa period (1600–1868), Bankei was a popular teacher who traveled widely throughout Japan, urging his followers in simple, everyday language to live in the unborn Buddha-mind. His innovative teachings reached a broad audience, lay as well as ordained, helping to popularize Zen among the ordinary people of Japan.

1  A Mischievous Child In one of his talks Bankei described his early childhood: My father, whose surname was Suga 菅, was a masterless samurai (J. rōnin 浪人) and Confucian scholar from the island of Shikoku. He moved here [to Hamada on the main island of Honshū], where I was born. While I was still young he died, leaving me to be raised by my mother. I was an unruly child, my mother later told me, who led the little boys of the neighborhood in making mischief. She also said that already from the age of two or three I was afraid of death. If I was crying or misbehaving the mere mention of someone’s death would make me stop. (“Seppō” 説法 [“Sermons”], BZZ 1: 9)

Thomas Kirchner is a Professor at the International Institute for Zen Buddhism, Hanazono University, and an ordained Buddhist priest at Tenryūji, Kyoto. His major translations are Entangling vines: Zen Kōans of the Shūmon Kattōshū, Dialogues in a dream: the life and Zen teaching of Musō Soseki, and The Records of Linji. This chapter was translated by Thomas Kirchner (Hanazono University). E. Kobayashi (*) Hanazono University, Kyoto, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_21

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Bankei, the fourth of five sons in a family of nine children, was so unusually precocious as a child that he was known among the villagers as “the wonder boy of the Sugas.” He was born on the eighth day of the third month of 1622 in the town of Hamada, near the southern coast of the province of Harima on the Inland Sea. His father, who supported the family as a physician, died when Bankei was only ten, leaving his first son to head the family and carry on in the medical profession. The site of Bankei’s childhood home, located not far from the present-day city of Himeji 姫路 in Hyōgo Prefecture, is now occupied by the temple Gitoku-in 義徳院. The well from which the water was drawn for Bankei’s first bath as an infant can still be found on the temple grounds.

2  The Great Doubt Bankei’s search for truth began not with Zen but with his study of the Confucian classics. At the age of 11 he was sent to the village school, where, in line with the educational customs of the time, he was set to work memorizing the Four Books of Confucianism. While reciting the opening line of the Great Learning (C. Daxue 大 學) he came across the statement, “The way of great learning lies in the clarification of bright virtue” (BKK 13). Seized with a desire to understand the meaning of “bright virtue” (J. meitoku 明徳), he questioned his teachers on the matter. Their definitions, such as “Bright virtue is the goodness of our fundamental nature” or “[b] right virtue is the Principle of Heaven” (BZZ 228), left him dissatisfied. Consumed by the desire to know what this principle was, he lost interest in his schoolwork and devoted all of his energy to his investigation. His desperate search finally led his oldest brother, in despair over Bankei’s obsession, to expel him from the family home. Undeterred, Bankei continued his single-minded questioning. Realizing that he would find no solution to the meaning of bright virtue in Confucianism, he sought out teachers in other traditions. At the age of 13 he began the practice of Pure Land Buddhism at the family temple, Saihōji 西芳寺, under the guidance of Jugon 寿欣, the resident priest. After engaging in Nenbutsu samadhi (J. nenbutsu zanmai 念仏 三昧) for some time, he became convinced that, although the answer to his search could be found only in Buddhism, Pure Land practice was not his path. After studying Shingon 真言 (esoteric) doctrine for some time, he finally turned to Zen, entering the temple Zuiōji 随鴎寺 in the town of Akō 赤穂 to train under UNPO Zenshō 雲甫全祥 (1568–1653), a well-known master of the time. Upon his ordination under Unpo the 16-year-old Bankei was given the name Yōtaku 永琢 (literally, “long [永] polishing [琢]”), signifying Unpo’s hope that his new disciple would “long polish the jewel of the mind in order to illuminate the world.”

3  Solitary Investigation of Bright Virtue What Bankei was seeking in his inquiry into “bright virtue” was not a doctrinally correct interpretation of this concept, of course, but rather an experience of the reality of “bright virtue” itself. After three years of training under Unpo, the 19-year-old

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Bankei, hoping to focus more intensely on his meditation, left Zuiōji and embarked on an extended pilgrimage. Bankei describes his practice during this period as follows: When I asked about bright virtue, Unpo replied, “To know bright virtue you must practice zazen. Do zazen, and you will realize bright virtue.” I therefore immediately took up this practice. Sometimes I would enter the mountains and meditate for seven to ten days without eating, or go among the cliffs and sit myself atop a sharp crag, pull open my robes, and fold my legs in the zazen position with my bare bottom right on the rock. I gave no thought to my life, pressing on in my meditation until I collapsed of exhaustion, no one having brought me food. (“Seppō” 説法 [“Sermons”], BZZ 1: 9)

Even after several years of such practices Bankei felt no closer to understanding “bright virtue,” so at the age of 23 he returned to the area of his birth and secluded himself in a hermitage near the village of Nonaka 野中村. In this hermitage he prepared a prison-like cell about ten feet square and sealed off the entrance. Food was passed to him twice a day through a hole in the wall, and an opening in the floor gave access to the privy. There he embarked on an arduous regimen of training, meditating day and night without ever lying down, pressing on even when his buttocks developed bleeding sores. Finally he contracted a severe illness that caused him to cough up bloody phlegm and left him weak. One day, as he sat in his cell resigned to death, he coughed up a glob of black blood, the size of a soapberry, which struck the wall and slowly ran down. As he watched this, the constriction in his chest suddenly vanished, and he felt an immediate sense of ease. In that instant he attained enlightenment, realizing that in this experience all was brought into harmony and that his questions regarding bright virtue were finally resolved. According to another account, one early spring morning Bankei, gravely ill, was bending down to wash his face in the stream outside his hermitage when the scent of plum blossoms drifted to him on the breeze, and suddenly he experienced a profound awakening. Bankei was 25 years old at the time. When he called upon Unpo and informed him of his experience, the master said, “You have penetrated thoroughly, and attained the marrow of Bodhidharma’s bones” (BZZ 172).

4  Discovery and Deepening of the Experience of the Unborn It appears to have been only after years of continued practice following this first decisive experience that Bankei began to describe this experience as an awakening to the “Unborn” (J. fushō 不生). The “Unborn” was Bankei’s term for the mind as it is prior to our birth: the mind prior to all picking and choosing, prior to all conceptual discrimination, and prior to all self-serving calculation. Bankei taught that if one has an unshakable faith in this “Unborn,” also referred to by Bankei as “Buddha-mind” (J. busshin 佛心), and remains firmly committed to it, then one realizes that nothing more is needed. Bankei describes the experiences of the “Unborn” and “Bright Virtue” using the metaphor of a mirror:

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When you place something in front of a mirror, the mirror reflects it; if you take the object away, the mirror reflects it no more. Because a mirror is clear it reflects things as they are; the bright virtue [i.e., the clear functioning] of the mirror is that it seeks neither to retain the object nor remove it. It is the same with the human mind. The ability of the eye and the ear to perceive anything that enters their perceptual fields, with no need for so much as a single thought, corresponds to “bright” [clarity]; this capacity is the virtue [functioning] of the Buddha-mind. Depth of faith is called Tathāgata. (“Seppō” 説法 [“Sermons”], BZZ 2: 66)

After a sojourn in the area of present-day Gifu Prefecture, during which he refined his experience, Bankei returned to Harima and reestablished the previously defunct temple Kōfukuji 興福寺 near the site of his enlightenment. There he began considering the most suitable and effective way to teach what he had understood. He was still in need, however, of someone to confirm his experience and help clarify his approach to Zen. In 1651, hearing of the arrival in Kyūshū 九州 of the Chinese Rinzai 臨済 master DAOZHE Chaoyuan 道者超元 (d. 1660), he set out for the temple Sōfukuji 崇福寺 in Nagasaki, where Daozhe was staying. One story has it that, in anticipation of his meeting with the master, the free-spirited Bankei, who until then had worn only lay clothes, dressed for the first time in Buddhist robes. Bankei’s career as a monk in appearance as well as in spirit may be said to date from this period. When he reached Kyūshū and met Daozhe, the master told him, “You have sufficiently understood the matter of self, but you have yet to go beyond that to clarify the essence of the Zen school.” Daozhe also said, “You are bound by the question of self, and still haven’t learned how to put the self to work.” Bankei, recognizing Daozhe’s qualities as a teacher, began practice at Sōfukuji. As Bankei could not speak Chinese and Daozhe could not speak Japanese, the two communicated through written messages. On the twenty-first day of the third month of 1652, a year after arrriving at Sōfukuji, Bankei went to Daozhe’s quarters, picked up a brush, and addressed to Daozhe the question, “What is the One Great Matter of birth-and-death?” Daozhe wrote in reply, “Whose birth-and-death?” Bankei immediately held open his arms, and when Daozhe attempted to write something further, Bankei grabbed his brush and threw it to the ground (BZZ 232). The following morning Daozhe announced to the assembly, “Yōtaku has understood the Great Matter. As one who has transcended birth-and-death, let him be appointed to the position of head monk of the monastery.” With this, Daozhe confirmed the 30-year-old Bankei’s experience of the Unborn (BZZ 232–33). Not long thereafter, Bankei returned to Harima, then journeyed to the provinces of Yamato and Mino in central Japan to further deepen his understanding. In 1654, however, he made the long journey back to Nagasaki when he learned of the arrival there of the Chinese Rinzai master YINYUAN Longqi 隠元隆琦 (1592–1673) and the subsequent dissension that arose between Yinyuan’s followers and those of Daozhe. Yinyuan, unlike Daozhe, had the support of Japanese government officials and was apparently Daozhe’s senior in the Chinese Rinzai hierarchy. Realizing that the tension between the two groups was unlikely to abate as long as Daozhe remained in Nagasaki, Bankei attempted to find another temple for his teacher in another area of Japan. His efforts were fruitless, however, and Daozhe returned to China in 1658.

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5  Teaching the People Bankei had meanwhile been designated, in 1657, as Dharma heir of BOKUŌ Sogyū 牧翁祖牛 (d. 1694), the successor of Bankei’s former teacher Unpo. Two years later he was appointed to the post of senpan 前版 by the great monastery Myōshinji 妙 心寺 in Kyoto, and it was about this time that he first adopted the appelation “Bankei.” This period marked the beginning of Bankei’s long teaching career, in which he traveled throughout Japan advocating the practice of the Unborn Buddha-­ mind. The principal temples from which he conducted his preaching were Ryōmonji 龍門寺 in the town of Aboshi, in his home province of Harima; Nyohōji 如法寺, in the province of Iyo on the island of Shikoku; Kōrinji 光林寺 in Edo (modern Tokyo); and Jizōji 地蔵寺 in Kyoto. Although his followers included many daimyō 大名 and other important people, Bankei’s focus on the Dharma kept him from drawing too close to the centers of power. The essence of Bankei’s “Unborn Zen” can be summarized in a single sentence: “Abide always in the sole awareness of the bright Unborn Buddha-mind and everything will be fully resolved” (BZZ 24). Bankei’s Zen teaching was distinctive in several ways. It freed Zen from Chinese modes of expression, relying instead on ordinary, easily understandable Japanese to convey its message; it avoided the use of kōans 公案, preferring to utilize the exigencies of everyday life to point directly to the central issue of Zen; and it addressed all followers – lay and ordained, male and female – in equal terms. For example, Bankei offered the following advice to those grieving over the loss of a beloved parent or child: From now on stop your grieving and devote that time instead to a period of zazen, reciting the nenbutsu, chanting the sutras, or offering flowers or incense, and in that way honor the memory of the departed. This is what is truly known as filial piety or parental devotion. (“Seppō” 説法 [“Sermons”], BZZ 2:64)

This passage, brief as it is, demonstrates several aspects of Bankei’s distinctive style of teaching: placing zazen and nenbutsu on the same footing, avoiding difficult quotes from the sacred texts, and expressing ideas in everyday language. Speaking in his local dialect, Bankei would use colloquialisms corresponding to “Everyone, isn’t it so?” (B 187) to elicit agreement or “Listen closely!” (B 157) to emphasize a point. Bankei’s adroit use of colloquial phrasing was effective in increasing the appeal of his sermons, helping win him devoted followers from among all social classes and Buddhist schools and laying the foundation for a teaching style that brought Zen to the common people. Bankei’s character was another important aspect of his appeal. Numerous anecdotes attest to his humility, his lack of prejudice, and his compassion. It is said, for example, that, when lecturing, Bankei never sat on a raised seat, as Zen masters customarily do, but instead sat on the floor at the same level as his listeners. During retreats he would never accept food prepared especially for him but would insist on eating the same fare as everyone else. One anecdote involves a monk at a retreat who had a reputation for thievery. When other monks who knew of his inclinations

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offered to make him leave, Bankei replied, “I am holding this retreat so that the evil will turn from evil and the good will continue being good, in order that all can realize their inherent wisdom. If from the outset we accept only good people and reject the evil, that would completely counter what I am trying to do” (BZZ 393). Bankei’s uniquely Japanese expression of Zen, with its emphasis on the Unborn Buddha-mind, is actually a return to views central to early Chinese Zen. Bankei’s fundamental standpoint, expressed in his words, “Not one of you here in this place right now is a deluded being – you are all the Unborn Buddha-mind!” (BZZ 1: 9–10) is no different from that of the Tang-dynasty Chinese master Linji when he said, “You who stand here before me are the patriarch-buddha!” (Linji 2009: 9). Bankei saw the confirmation of the Unborn as a transcendence of both self-power and other-power. The names that Bankei chose for his line of teaching reflect this return to the fundamental experience of Buddhism. One name was the Buddha-­ mind School; another was the Clear Eye School (since Unborn Zen opened the inner eye to penetrate the essence of mind). Bankei’s lineage, with its teaching of the Unborn as the true mind prior to all discrimination, flourished during the master’s lifetime and immediately thereafter. Not long after his death at the age of 71, however, it entered a period of decline and, within a few generations, largely disappeared. It nevertheless remains an unusually clear expression of Zen, one that cuts through to the tradition’s heart and may have much to offer Zen in the contemporary world.

Works Cited Abbreviations B Bankei 盤珪. 1981. Nihon no zen goroku 『日本の禅語録』 [The Zen Records of Japan]. 16 vols. Tokyo: Kōdansha. BKK Bankei kokushi no kenkyū 『盤珪国師の研究』 [Research on the National Teacher Bankei]. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1971. BZG Bankei zenji goroku 『盤珪禅師語録』 [Saying of Zen Master Bankei]. Tokyo: Iwanami Bunko, 1975. BZZ Bankei zenji zenshū 『盤珪禅師全集』 [Complete Works of Zen Master Bankei]. Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan, 1976.

Other Sources Linji, Yixuan. 2009. The Record of Linji. Trans. Ruth Fuller Sasaki. Ed. Thomas Kirchner. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

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Enshō Kobayashi is Professor Emeritus of International Zen Studies of Hanazono University. He specialize in Mahāyāna Buddhism Philosophy and Indian Philosophy. He finished his Masters degree at Ryūkoku University, and his PhD at Kansai University. His publications include Bankei: Fushō no hijjiri, Genjinron o yomu: Ningensei no shinjitsu o motomete, and Hataori kabīru no shikon.

Chapter 22

Hakuin

Juhn Y. Ahn

HAKUIN Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1686–1769), born NAGASAWA Iwajirō 長沢岩次郎, also known as Kokurin 鵠林, Old Man Sendai 闡提老人, Zen Master SHINKI Dokumyō 神機独妙禪師, and National Teacher Shōjū 正宗國師, is a Japanese Zen master from a small village named Hara 原, a post station near Mount Fuji on the main eastern seaboard road or Tōkaidō 東海道, in Suruga 駿河 province (present-­ day Shizuoka prefecture). He played an active role in the broad reformation of Zen monastic training and kōan practice that took place during the early half of the Tokugawa period. Hakuin is, perhaps, best known for his popular writings and songs about Zen and other related themes composed in vernacular Japanese, as well as his distinctively bold brush-stroke paintings and calligraphy, but he is also credited with the creation of an equally, if not more, important kōan-system that has been in use for centuries (Miura and Sasaki 1966: xiv; Mohr 1999: 315, 2000; Hori 2003). Moreover, while serving as abbot of the temple Shōinji 松蔭寺 in his hometown Hara for over 50 years, Hakuin was able to attract and offer guidance on kōan practice to a large number of talented students whose spiritual descendants became so successful during the Meiji period (1868–1912) that virtually all Zen masters of the Rinzai Zen sect today trace their lineages back to him. For these and other reasons Hakuin is often touted as the reviver of Rinzai Zen. There is no doubt that Hakuin’s impact on the intellectual history of early modern, and perhaps even modern, Zen in Japan was profound, but the praise that he receives for “reviving” Rinzai Zen should be accompanied by a few caveats. Behind this praise, for instance, what is often at work is the misleading assumption, voiced by scholars such as TSUJI Zennnosuke 辻善之助 (1877–1955), that Buddhism had become degenerate and moribund during the Tokugawa. Although it is true that Hakuin himself frequently characterized the Zen teachings of his contemporaries as J. Y. Ahn (*) University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_22

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a Zen that had lost much of its authenticity and vitality and, thus, in need of reform, it must be borne in mind that such criticism was a reaction not so much to a tradition on the verge of certain death as to the serious challenge posed by, among other things, the arrival of émigré Chinese monks (hereafter “the Ōbaku” 黄檗), growing accessibility of new texts imported from China, changes in patronage patterns, and new social policies implemented by the Tokugawa bakufu 幕府 (Ahn 2008). Indeed, the winds of reform, stirred by the arrival of the Ōbaku—with whom Rinzai monks like Hakuin shared the same spiritual ancestry—and the printing of imported Chinese Buddhist texts, had begun to blow well before Hakuin’s time (Baroni 2000; Jaffe 1991; Mohr 1994, 1999: 313–314). While some like UNGO Kiyō 雲居希膺 (1582–1659), EGOKU Dōmyō 慧極道明 (1632–1721), and KENGAN Zenetsu 賢巖禪悦 (1618–1697) enthusiastically embraced the teachings of the Ōbaku and their emphasis on keeping the precepts, others like GUDŌ Tōshoku 愚堂東寔 (1577–1661) and DAIGU Sōchiku 大愚宗築 (1584–1669) sternly opposed the uncritical acceptance of this new style of Zen from Ming dynasty China and hoped to restore the teachings of Japanese Zen master KANZAN Egen 關山慧玄 (1277–1361), the founder of their home monastery in Kyoto Myōshinji 妙心寺. This, however, does not mean that one side of this dispute sought reform while the other did not. Their differing opinions about the newly imported teachings from Ming China notwithstanding, both pro- and anti-Chinese factions of Rinzai Zen witnessed the rigorous form of communal monastic training carried out by their Chinese counterparts and felt it necessary to question the way this was being done, or not done, in Japan. They accordingly launched an ambitious campaign to revive the practice of “formal retreats” (J. kessei 結制), going on pilgrimage to “consult various Zen masters” (J. hensan 遍參), and participating in communal training in the “monks’ hall” (J. sōdō 僧堂) (Takenuki 1989: 197–204). Most monks’ halls in Japan, however, had fallen into disrepair during the Warring States period, and financial constraints made it less than feasible for most Zen temples to build and operate such a facility. Ambitious abbots like Hakuin thus chose to appropriate the new monastic layout from Ming China, which used a smaller “Zen hall” (J. zendō 禪堂) for training monks in seated meditation (Mohr 1999: 314; Foulk 2008: 47–53). Hakuin’s “revival” of Rinzai Zen was indebted to the late Ming in other ways as well. The newly invigorated Buddhist scholasticism of the late Ming, for instance, also acted as an important catalyst for reforming kōan practice in Japan, where the custom of collecting or purchasing notebooks full of “old cases” (J. kōans) and “capping phrases” (J. jakugo 著語) and carrying them around in special pouches or boxes known as ankenbukuro 行券袋 or missanbako 密参箱 was commonplace (Yanagida 1967: 253; Yanagida 1987: 252–253; Tamamura 1981: 981–1040). The growing accessibility of new Chinese Buddhist primers and commentaries in print and the arrival of the Ōbaku, who brought with them a form of kōan practice that more closely and uncannily resembled the practices recorded in the Song dynasty classics, generated great excitement in the Japanese Zen community. It even inspired some to abandon the old custom of collecting notebooks and participating in secret Zen initiation rituals, which had become the norm in gozan 五山 and ringe 林下

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monasteries after the locus of monastic training shifted from the communal monks’ hall to the more private “memorial temple” (J. tatchū 塔頭) (Tamamura 1981: 981– 1040; Takenuki 1989: 158–159). EGOKU Dōmyō, BANKEI Yōtaku 盤珪永琢 (1622–1693), and many others who studied under the émigré Chinese monks, for instance, began to seriously reengage the various Zen classics and encouraged their own students to rely less on their notebooks and figure out the kōans for themselves. In addition, some like Hakuin and Bankei also opened the closed doors of Zen learning to an even more diverse community of readers and practitioners (for example, daimyo, samurai, merchants, artisans, physicians etc.) through the medium of print and through the well-attended “sermons” (J. teishō 提唱) delivered during formal retreats, which later contributed to the rise of popular religious movements such as the Sekimon Shingaku 石門心学 (Sawada 1993). Most notable in this respect is, perhaps, KOGETSU Zenzai 古月禪材 (1667– 1751) whom Hakuin had at one point in his career considered a potential teacher (Takenuki 1989: 265–266; Mohr 1999: 314; 2000: 254–256). With his firm grasp of the Zen classics, especially the work of Song dynasty Chan master DAHUI Zonggao 大慧宗杲 (1089–1163), and his ability to produce original and insightful comments, verses, and capping phrases in classical Chinese, Kogetsu firmly emerged as a formidable force in the world of Tokugawa Zen. Although Hakuin did not necessarily agree with Kogetsu’s understanding of the Zen classics and eventually gave up on the idea of becoming his student, both men dedicated their careers in remarkably similar ways to restoring communal monastic retreats, mastering the Zen classics, and gaining a personal and direct insight into the ancient kōans. Their efforts paid off: having established themselves as masters of authentic kōan Zen, both Kogetsu and Hakuin, like the émigré Chinese Chan masters, were able to attract a large following with their ability to offer formal recognition or “certification of awakening” (J. inka 印可) to those who were able to successfully complete their kōan training. So similar were these two Zen masters that a large number of talented students who had first trained under Kogetsu later turned to Hakuin for further guidance and formal recognition of their awakening (Akiyama 1983: 146–153; Mohr 1999: 314; Waddell 2009: xxiv–xxxiii). Lastly, Hakuin’s efforts to reform Zen must be set against the larger backdrop of the rise to prominence of the ringe monasteries Daitokuji 大徳寺 and Myōshinji after the Ōnin War (1467–1477). As many of his contemporaries sought formal transmission from an émigré Chinese master, Hakuin took great care to emphasize his own Myōshinji line of Zen, whose own roots traced back to Daitokuji and its founding abbot SHŪHŌ Myōchō 宗峰妙超 (National Master Daitō 大燈國師) (1282–1337). Speaking to an audience that had been exposed to the new style of Zen from Ming China, Hakuin argued that authentic Zen was actually introduced to Japan by Daitō and his teacher NANPO Jōmyō 南浦紹明 (National Master Daiō 大 應國師) (1235–1309) in the thirteenth century; Hakuin, concomitantly, strove to restore Daiō, Daitō, and Kanzan’s Zen, otherwise known as Ōtōkan 應燈關 Zen (Yampolsky 1971: 6; Mohr 1999: 308; Waddell 1994: xiv–xv). One of Hakuin’s greatest accomplishments as a scholar of Zen was, in fact, the completion of a lengthy commentary on the recorded sayings of Daitō entitled Sayings of the

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Country of Huaian (J. Kaiankokugo 槐安國語) in 1749. Perhaps even more important, at least for understanding Hakuin’s growth as a Zen thinker, is his earlier work, the General Sermons Delivered to Introduce the Record of Sokkō (J. Sokkōroku kaien fusetu 息耕録開莚普説), published in 1743, which is a record of the general sermons (J. fusetsu 普説) that he delivered three years earlier. As the title suggests, the general sermons were meant to serve as an introduction to his lectures on the recorded sayings of Daiō’s Chinese teacher XUTANG Zhiyu 虚堂智愚 (1185– 1269) or Old Man Sokkō, but they also happen to conveniently offer an overview of Hakuin’s vision of Zen. I therefore believe any attempt to capture the contours of Hakuin’s philosophy—the aim of this essay—must begin with these sermons, and so that is where we turn next.

1  Ming Buddhist Scholasticism In the spring of 1740, Hakuin delivered some lectures on the Recorded Sayings of Venerable Xutang (C. Xutang heshang yulu 虚堂和尚語録) ostensibly to a crowd of over 400 people at his temple Shōinji. According to the Annalistic Biography of Old Venerable Hakuin, Imperially Recognized as Zen Master Shinki Dokumyō (J. Chokushi Shinki Dokumyō zenji Hakuin rōoshō nenpu 勅諡 神機独妙禅師白隠老和尚年譜; hereafter annalistic biography), this momentous event established Hakuin’s reputation as a great Zen master and put him firmly on the map of Tokugawa Zen (Katō 1985: 200–201; Waddell 2009: 205). At the time Hakuin was 54. Before he delivered these formal lectures, Hakuin, as noted earlier, offered the assembly at Shōinji some general sermons wherein he addressed his deep concerns about the way monastic decorum and Buddhist practice had declined in Japan. As the Zen historian  YANAGIDA Seizan points out, Hakuin’s choice to deliver this critical message in the form of a general sermon is quite noteworthy in that this sermon form, which had fewer restrictions than other forms of Zen pedagogy, was traditionally used as a convenient way of getting straight to the point or truth and seldom, if ever, as a way of formally announcing oneself as a Zen master or abbot in Japan (Yanagida 1987: 237). Hakuin, in other words, used a rather unconventional way of formally carving out a new space for himself and his teachings in the world of Tokugawa Zen. Making good use of the general sermons, Hakuin did get straight to the point. He alerted his audience to the crisis that Zen was facing at the time and urged them to meet this crisis with renewed faith in their ability to “see their own nature” (J. kenshō 見性) and attain “awakening” (J. satori 悟り). Lest the urgency of his message be lost, Hakuin immediately invoked the words of his teacher SHŌJU Rōnin 正受老人 (Dōkyō Etan 道鏡慧端; 1642–1721) who, if we are to trust Hakuin, frequently exclaimed before his students that the Zen school had begun to decline as early as the end of the Southern Song (1127–1279) and reached its nadir by the

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Ming (1368–1644) (Gotō 1967: 2, 379; Waddell 1994: 15). However, Shōju also claimed that what little was left of the Zen school’s real poison unfortunately survived in his native Japan. Later in his sermon, Hakuin locates this poison in the lineage of transmission that Daiō received from Xutang and brought to Japan, more recently reaching Gudō, SHIDO Munan (1603–1676), Shōju, and, by implication, Hakuin himself. Shōju’s harsh assessment of the fate of the Zen school did more than just provide Hakuin with the convenient opportunity to speak of the teachings of his own lineage as the poison of authentic Zen. It also set the perfect stage for a fullscale assault on Ming Buddhist scholasticism, which was another major agenda of the general sermons (Yanagida 1987: 221 and 236). The first to bear the brunt of Hakuin’s assault was Chan master YONGJUE Yuanxuan 永覺元賢 (1578–1657) and his work, the Internal Collection of Chan and Other Matters (C. Chanyu neiji 禪餘内集). Hakuin seems to have chosen to start with Yongjue for several reasons. As one of the more popular Chan texts imported from China, Yongjue’s work easily stood out from the rest. Yongjue also happened to comment on a kōan—Qianfeng’s three kinds of illness (XZJ 138.490b16-491a2)—that Hakuin considered particularly important. What bothered Hakuin was not that Yongjue had chosen to comment on the kōan. Rather, what was troubling about Yongjue’s comment was the fact that his reading was inconsistent with what Hakuin saw in Xutang’s verse comment on the same kōan (T 47.2000.1021b7-9). Simply put, whereas Xutang’s verse dexterously addressed both Qianfeng’s query (“What are the three illnesses and two lights of the dharma body?”) and his disciple Yunmen’s response (“Why doesn’t the fellow inside the hermitage know what’s going on outside?”), Yongjue’s comment, in Hakuin’s opinion, not only failed to do justice to the subtlety of the query but also made no attempt to address the response. To make matters worse, students of Zen in Japan tended to accept Yongjue’s overly straightforward interpretation as the final word on the kōan, copy it on a small slips of paper, and paste the whole thing into the margins of printed Zen classics such as the recorded sayings of Xutang. This practice seems to have disturbed Hakuin a great deal as it discouraged students from attempting to tackle the kōan directly and, consequently, from seeing their own nature. Indeed, Hakuin seems to have been particularly worried about the tendency among Zen students to regard what Ming Buddhist scholasticism had to offer as a simpler, clearer, and thus attractive alternative to directly engaging the perplexing kōans of old. Repeatedly throughout his general sermons Hakuin lambasted the unnamed Zen teachers in Japan who either indiscriminately borrowed words from imported texts such as Yongjue’s Internal Collection of Chan and Other Matters in their own sermons or encouraged their students to put aside the tricky kōans and focus instead on simplified teachings about the inherent tranquility and emptiness of the mind or original nature. However, he was even more vehement in his critique of other alternatives to kōan meditation such as quiet sitting and the immensely popular practice of chanting the name of the buddha Amitābha, also referred to as the “nenbutsu” 念佛.

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For Hakuin, what made both quiet sitting and nenbutsu problematic was their inability to lead the practitioner to kenshō and awakening. It should, however, be made clear that Hakuin did not simply rule out the possibility of experiencing kenshō with the help of these practices. According to his general sermons, practitioners of nenbutsu fail to see their own nature because they misunderstand the true meaning of nenbutsu. Relying on a passage from the Scripture on Contemplating the Buddha of Immeasurable Life (C. Guan wuliangshou fo jing 觀無量壽佛經)— “the height of the buddha’s body is six hundred trillion nayutas of yojanas as innumerable as the sands of the Ganges river” (T 12.365.343b17-18)— Hakuin identified one meaning of the term nenbutsu, namely, “being mindful of the buddha,” as its true aim and purpose and made sure his audience knew that being mindful of the buddha Amitābha and attaining rebirth in his pure land is no different from seeing one’s own nature (Gotō 1967, 2: 396–397; Waddell 1994: 41). If, as he explains, the size of the buddha’s body that one must contemplate is so unimaginably big, then this body must be the dharma body and, if so, the true purpose of nenbutsu and seeking rebirth in Amitābha’s pure land must be awakening. This, he concludes, must mean that the true aim and purpose of nenbutsu and Zen are identical. Well after he gave his lectures on the recorded sayings of Xutang, Hakuin continued to exert a considerable amount of effort to more “accurately” define the relation between nenbutsu and Zen. Similar arguments were made, for instance, in his letters to the governor of Settsu 摂津 NABESHIMA Naotsune 鍋島直恒 (1701– 1749) and the lord of Okayama 岡山 castle IKEDA Tsugumasa 池田継政 (1702– 1776), and also in a relatively short didactic narrative that Hakuin wrote entitled An Account of the Precious Mirror Cave (J. Hōkyōkutsu no ki 寳鏡窟の記) (Yampolsky 1971: 125–179; Waddell 2009: 127–141). One reasonable explanation for Hakuin’s sustained concerns about nenbutsu may, again, be the arrival of the Ōbaku who not only studied kōans and practiced communal forms of seated meditation but also regularly chanted the name of the buddha Amitābha as part of their daily monastic practice (Yanagida 1987: 259; Baroni 2000: 106–121). Unlike Japan where Pure Land and Zen had developed into separate institutions with distinctive characteristics, Chinese Buddhism had not developed such institutions, and for centuries monks in China felt no conflict between their aspiration to attain rebirth in Amitābha’s pure land and their efforts to reach awakening with the help of kōans and seated meditation. In Japan, however, it had become important to clarify sectarian boundaries and identify the orthodox roots of one’s own sect under the new Tokugawa bakufu policies towards temples and shrines such as the head and branch temple system (J. honmatsu seido 本末制度), which may be one reason why Hakuin felt so uneasy about the combined practice of nenbutsu and seated meditation. There is, in fact, some evidence to suggest that the Ōbaku was, indeed, what Hakuin had in mind when he criticized the trend to combine Pure Land and Zen (Yampolsky 1971: 171). However, he was more often inclined to explicitly single out the eminent Chinese monk YUNQI Zhuhong 雲棲株宏 (1535–1615) and the aforementioned Yongjue as the primary culprits behind this trend. Above all else, Hakuin seems to have taken issue with their belief that Pure Land and Zen are separate but equal paths that one can tread simultaneously. Hakuin was particularly

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c­ ritical of Zhuhong’s tendency to regard the pure land of Amitābha as a literal destination in the West that exists separate from the mind. Hakuin adamantly refused to believe that, in the age of the “final dharma” (J. mappō 末法), devotion to Amitābha and his pure land was an easier and more effective means of securing salvation than seated meditation and kenshō. If both paths led to salvation, then they could not, Hakuin contended, have separate goals. Hakuin, as I noted earlier, never wavered in his belief that the key to salvation lay in the experience of kenshō. Rather than reject the devotion to Amitābha and his pure land outright, Hakuin applied an old exegetical spin to it and often claimed that visualizing the dharma body of the buddha and attaining rebirth in his pure land was none other than kenshō (Waddell 1994: 41; 2009: 137; Yampolsky 1971: 127, 136, and 161). He also made use of the same old exegetical move to defend the Platform Sutra against Zhuhong’s criticism of its reference to the distance between the practitioners in China and pure land as 18,000 li 里 (Waddell 1994: 47–60; see T 48.2008.352a15-17). Hakuin insisted that this distance was used in the Platform Sutra figuratively to refer to the mind’s distance from its original nature. This was, indeed, an old exegetical move. The strategy of reading Amitābha and his pure land as mind only (C. weixin jingtu 唯心浄土), as Robert Sharf has shown, was already used in Chan sources from medieval China and may well be as old as Mahāyāna itself (Sharf 2002: 313). So commonplace was this strategy that when the Ōbaku masters were pressed for an explanation, they too preferred to explain nenbutsu in these terms (Baskind 2008).

2  Post-Satori Training The general sermons that Hakuin delivered before his lectures on the recorded sayings of Xutang, as we have seen, serve as a broad commentary on Ming Buddhist scholasticism with a clear emphasis on its main representatives, namely YONGJUE Yuanxuan and YUNQI Zhuhong. However, an equally large portion of the sermons were also devoted to the writings of famous Chan masters from the Song dynasty such as YUANWU Keqin 圓悟克勤 (1063–1135), DAHUI Zonggao, and JUEFAN Huihong 覺範慧洪 (1071–1128). Hakuin was fond of consulting the writings of these masters because they, too, had to deal with the problem of “silent illumination” (J. mokushō 黙照), that is, with the perceived tendency among Zen practitioners to ignore awakening and kenshō. What Hakuin wanted the audience of his sermons to know, in other words, was that his stance toward Ming scholasticism was based on the firm foundation of authentic Song Chan. The general sermons thus functioned as a kind of manifesto. That is to say, the sermons, which he will tellingly revisit at the opening of his new temple Ryūtakuji 龍澤寺 in 1760, offered Hakuin an opportunity to publicly declare where he stood on the issue of awakening and kenshō. They also offered him an opportunity to lay out a basic blueprint of his own curriculum for Zen learning. To articulate this curriculum more efficiently,

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Hakuin turned to a reliable authority on this subject and that authority was GAOFENG Yuanmiao 高峰原妙 (1238–1295). Using Gaofeng’s three essentials—“great root of faith” (C. daxingen 大信根), “great determination” (C. dafenzhi 大憤志), and “great sensation of doubt” (C. dayiqing 大疑情)—as an outline, Hakuin put together a curriculum that seems to have consisted largely of two, or perhaps three, basic stages. First, the practitioner had to develop deep faith in her own ability to experience kenshō. With this conviction the practitioner must then, of course, see her own nature and undergo what Hakuin calls a “great death” (J. daishi 大死). However, to die the great death, the practitioner had to have great doubt, and to have great doubt, she could not settle with her initial satori or kenshō. She had to cultivate this doubt with the help of a rigorous regimen of “difficult-to-pass” (J. nantō 難透) kōan barriers, which requires great determination. Lastly, having successfully generated and resolved great doubt, she must not, Hakuin adds, rest content with this achievement or, worse still, become attached to it and become sick—more on this later—but rather come back to “life” from this “death” and teach Zen to others. This, too, requires great determination. What is, perhaps, most striking about Hakuin’s curriculum is its understanding of great doubt. The arousal of great doubt was seen not as something that takes place in a moment but as part of a longer and, perhaps, indefinite process. According to Hakuin, awakening was not a singular event but something that had to be experienced again and again. The need for such “post-satori training” (J. gogo no shugyō 悟後の修行) is an important theme that Hakuin will revisit and underscore repeatedly at various points in his lengthy career, but the term post-satori training itself, as Norman Waddell points out, does not appear in Hakuin’s writings until his mid-­ seventies (Waddell 2009: 5). The use of difficult-to-pass kōans to deepen one’s initial awakening is, however, a point that Hakuin clearly raised as early as his mid-fifties, as we saw in the case of his General Sermons Delivered to Introduce the Record of Sokkō. Although Hakuin never really goes into the details of the mechanics of post-satori training in any of his writings, he does steadily continue to offer more elaborate pleas for such training in his Orade Tea Kettle (J. Oradegama 遠羅 天釜) (1749), Horse Thistle (J. Oniazami 於仁安佐美) (1751), Old Granny’s Tea Grinding Song (J. Obaba-dono no kohiki uta お婆々どの粉引歌) (1760), The Tale of How I Spurred My Young Self (J.  Sakushin osana monogatari 策進幼稚物語) (1761), The Tale of Yūkichi of Takayama (J. Takayama Yūkichi monogatari 高山勇 吉物語) (1761), and Wild Ivy (J. Itsumadegusa 壁生草) (1765–1766). Again, these sources divulge close to nothing about the mechanics of post-satori training, but what we do find is a recurring list of difficult-to-pass kōans, which changes slightly from one source to the next. The kōans that appear more or less in virtually all of the above sources are: SUSHAN Kuangren’s 疎山匡人 (837–909) long-life stūpa (XZJ 138.484a10-b2); NANQUAN Puyuan’s 南泉普願 (748–835) death (XZJ 138.136a17-b7); Qianfeng’s three kinds of illness; and WUZU Fayan’s 五祖法演 (1024–1104) water buffalo (T 48.2005.297c12-20). There is no way of knowing for certain rationale for this list of kōans, but, if we are to trust Hakuin’s autobiography (that is, Wild Ivy and The Tale of How I Spurred My Young Self) and also his annalistic biography, these kōans had been assigned to him by Shōju

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(Waddell 1999: 32; cf. 2009: 11, 31–33, 169–171; Rikugawa 1963: 49–50). If, however, we are to trust the introductory sermon to his lectures on the Blue Cliff Record, which he delivered in the spring of 1758 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Gudō’s death, the four kōans cited above were Gudō’s “cipher and secret command” (J. angō mitsurei 暗號密令) (Gotō 1967, 2: 348–349). Be it Gudō or Shōju, Hakuin wanted his readers to know that the tradition of using these difficult-to-pass kōans was something that he inherited rather than invented. What Hakuin does not ever tell us, however, is why these and other kōans were deemed so special or “difficult-­to-pass.” It does, however, appear to be the case that some of the kōans were used in post-satori training because there was a good precedent for doing so. Sushan’s long-life stūpa, for instance, was used by none other than Xutang who mulled over this kōan for 4 years after his initial awakening (T 47.2000.1052b12 and 1063b16). As we can see in Xutang’s example, the idea of devoting oneself to post-satori training was not unknown before Hakuin. Similar examples of men who engaged in protracted, and often painful, attempts to wrestle with kōans after their initial awakening are also documented meticulously in Hakuin’s writings on this subject (Waddell 1994: 72–73 and 101; 2009: 73–76; Yampolsky 1971: 65–66). Hakuin may have found the inspiration for his thoughts on post-satori training from these and other examples that often date back to the Song dynasty or to key figures of his own Ōtōkan lineage, but Hakuin’s own work on post-satori training is unique in that no one had ever gone quite to the extent that he did to construct a systematic account of this important phase in the study of kōan Zen. Given the amount of time and energy that Hakuin dedicated to explicating this subject, it hardly seems an exaggeration to say that post-satori training was the hallmark of his philosophy. Hakuin’s thoughts on post-satori training, as we shall see, are extremely complex and closely intertwined with his interests in medicine and Mahāyāna or bodhisattva ethics. Before we move on to these topics, however, we need to take a brief look at the current “kōan-system” (J. kōan taikei 公案体系) used by the Rinzai sect, which was presumably built on the foundation laid by Hakuin (Akizuki 1987; Hori 2003; Kajitani 1968; Miura and Sasaki 1966; Mohr 1999: 315–319; and Shibayama 1943). More often than not, the first kōan that most students receive in this system is Zhaozhou’s “no” (J. mu 無). This also happens to be the first kōan that Shōju used to test Hakuin, and Hakuin himself seems to have preferred to assign this kōan to his beginning students as well. However, later in his career Hakuin began to assign beginners a new kōan that he had devised himself. This is the famous “sound of one hand” (J. sekishu no onjō 隻手の音聲) kōan, which is also often assigned to beginners in the Rinzai kōan- system. As Hakuin tells us in his letter to the lord of Okayama castle, he had begun to assign the sound of one hand kōan to his students only five or six years earlier, that is, around 1747 and 1748. He did so because, he tells us, his students had a much easier time raising the great doubt with this kōan (Yampolsky 1971: 163). There may be some truth to this claim. During Hakuin’s time, the sound of one hand kōan may have seemed easier or at least more familiar because of its relationship to the following line from the famous nō play The Mountain Crone (J. Yamanba 山姥), “[crone] Calls from the valley, wholly empty,

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scatter echoes from each twig, [chorus] till through sound the ear hears silence” (Tyler 1992: 325; cf. Yampolsky 1971: 164; Yoshizawa 2009: 77–81). But, according to Old Granny’s Tea Grinding Song, once the practitioner is done with this kōan, she had to undergo further post-satori training (Waddell 2009: 125). This is also true in the current kōan-system. Not surprisingly, one step in the post-satori training section of the current kōan-­ system is called the eight difficult-to-pass kōans. There is some disagreement as to what these eight kōans are, but the four difficult-to-pass kōans cited earlier seem to be part of this list (Hori 2003: 22–23). There is also some disagreement about how many other categories there are in this kōan-system, but the general consensus is that there are five main categories and the eight difficult-to-pass kōans constitute the fourth (Hori 2003: 19–27). As discussed earlier, however, Hakuin’s curriculum seems to have consisted largely of two, or perhaps even three, stages and not five. In Hakuin’s annalistic biography, his chief disciple TŌREI Enji 東嶺円慈 (1721– 1792), who compiled the biography, wrote the following comment, which seems to evince the tripartite classification of Hakuin’s curriculum: In general, there are three periods in the master’s attainments. First, (from age 15 to 23) he gave rise to doubt in his mind for the first time and saw straight through to the root; second, (from age 23 to 27) he had a personal audience with Shōju and investigated the profound Principle; third, (from age 27 to this year [i.e., 41]) he further refined [his handling of] the contradiction between activity and quietude and the disparity between phenomena and Principle. (Rikugawa 1963: 498–499; Katō 1985: 175–177; cf. Waddell 2009: 198–199)

To be sure, the division of Hakuin’s career into these three stages may have little to do with an existing curriculum or even with the facts of Hakuin’s career, but what is certain is that there is no evidence to suggest that Hakuin had ever devised a rigid and elaborate kōan-system with “main cases” (J. honsoku 本則) accompanied by a set of “peripheral cases” (J. sassho 拶所), as in the case of the current system. This, however, is not to say that the current kōan-system was made out of whole cloth (Mohr 2000: 264). It is not unreasonable to think that the current system may be an outcome of the development of Hakuin’s relatively simple curriculum or perhaps even an older custom of classifying kōans (Mohr 1999: 315). Some of the other technical terms used in the current system to classify kōans such as difficult-­ to-­pass, “going beyond” (kōjō 向上), “five positions and ten major precepts” (J. goi jūjūkin 五位十重禁), and “last barrier” (J. matsugo no rōkan 末後の牢關), for instance, also received special attention in the writings of Hakuin and his disciples (Mohr 2000: 262–266; Gotō 1967: 2, 362–363 and 81–88; Waddell 2009: 171– 172). However, it should be borne in mind that their interest in these terms had less, if anything, to do with a kōan-system than with the prominent place of these terms in Song dynasty Chan. As I have shown elsewhere, the practice of using the term “last barrier,” also known as the “last word” (J. matsugo no ku 末後句), to refer to secret words and formulas (e.g. the five positions) that are exchanged or transmitted at the final stage of one’s training is attested, at least, as early as the Song, but the use of last words as shibboleths came under heavy criticism, and the attempt was thus made to restore the “last word” and “going beyond” to what was presumed to be their original meaning during this period (Ahn 2013). As a great fan of this

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revisionist literature from the Song, Hakuin’s understanding of the “last word” as a way of “going beyond” awakening or the great death by “forgetting its ruts and footprints” (J. sono tesseki o wasureru 忘其轍跡) was, as one might expect, largely in keeping with the way these terms were reinterpreted in this literature (Gotō 1967, 2: 438; Waddell 1994: 97; 2009: 175). As for the “five positions” (J. goi), Hakuin considered this old Zen formula to be the essence of the “Buddha’s teachings in condensed form” (J. butsudō taikō 佛道 大綱). He was, therefore, extremely critical of those who regarded the five positions as curios that old Zen masters hide in their sleeves and took their ignorance instead as “going beyond and pointing directly Zen” (J. kōjō chokushi zen 向上直指禪) (Gotō 1967, 2: 82; cf. Miura and Sasaki 1966: 63). On the contrary, it was, in Hakuin’s opinion, the five positions that perfectly captured the Zen teaching of “going beyond.” According to Hakuin, the first position, “the provisional within the real” (J. shōchūhen 正中偏), stands for dying the great death and seeing the truth or Principle. This position, however, could become compromised (that is, “provisional”) if the practitioner becomes stuck in this state of quiet, unconditioned emptiness and consequently ends up practicing “cesspool Zen” (J. shisuiri zen 死水裡禪) (Gotō 1967, 2: 85; cf. Miura and Sasaki 1966: 68). To overcome the shortcomings of this position the bodhisattva must, Hakuin claims, move to the next position, “the real within the provisional” (J. henchūshō 偏 中正), which stands for “regarding all things [literally, ten thousand dharmas] as one’s own true and pure original face” (Gotō 1967, 2: 86; cf. Miura and Sasaki 1966: 69). The practitioner, however, could similarly become content with this state (J. denchi 田地) and turn into an inferior bodhisattva. This, Hakuin continues, is a consequence of not knowing the “proper deportment of a bodhisattva” (J. bosatsu igi 菩薩威儀). What Hakuin probably had in mind here is the radical antinomian position of certain varieties of subitism; for example, “the ordinary mind is the way” (C. pinchingxin shi dao 平常心是道) that tended to put the cart before the horse, if you will, and emphasizes the futility of seeking a truth outside of ordinary things and experiences with rituals and arduous practices of self-cultivation (seated meditation). However, what such a position conveniently overlooks is the fact that one can only come to such a realization after he or she performs the necessary rituals or practices self-cultivation. The next position, “returning from the real” (J. shōchūrai 正中來), stands for the position of the superior bodhisattva who does not dwell on the fruits of what he or she has realized. Instead, with great compassion the bodhisattva carries out the four great vows (J. shiguseigan 四弘誓願) and “seeks bodhi above and saves living beings below” (Gotō 1967, 2: 87; cf. Miura and Sasaki 1966: 70 and 35–36). But to do so, he or she, we are told, must know how to distinguish “light from darkness.” What we seem to have here is the traditional argument for bodhisattva ethics and for the ability to skillfully make use of expedient means. In other words, distinctions and dualities such as light and darkness can be made for the sake of saving living beings, but this does not necessarily mean that the bodhisattva is therefore attached to these distinctions and dualities.

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This last point then takes us to the next position, “arriving at mutual integration” (J. kenchūshi 兼中至), which stands for “turning the wheel of the truth of the nonduality of light and darkness” (Gotō 1967, 2: 87). The bodhisattva must embrace duality without being engulfed by it like a lotus flower that blooms in the midst of flames (T 51.2076.461a; Ahn 2008: 179 n. 4) and a person who goes on the road without leaving home (T 47.1985.497a12-14) etc. But, as Hakuin reminds us, the bodhisattva must be cautious not to become complacent in this state of nonduality. This is why the bodhisattva must advance into the next position, namely “mutual integration attained” (J. kenchūtō 兼中到) (Gotō 1967, 2: 88). No further explanation is provided by Hakuin on this last position, but he does cite a verse composed by XUEDOU Chongxian 雪竇重顯 (980–1052) that, again, seems to extol the virtues of saving living beings with expedient means (Gotō 1967, 2: 88; Miura and Sasaki 1966: 72). It seems worth pointing out here, however, that YANAGIDA Seizan believes this verse may reflect an attempt—made not necessarily by Hakuin but his disciple Tōrei–to promote Xuedou’s word-savvy brand of Zen without abandoning the form of Dongshan Liangjie’s 洞山良价 (807–869) five positions, which Yanagida characterizes as a very passive style of Zen (Yanagida and Katō 1979: 96–98). Again, what we do not find in Hakuin’s comments on the five positions formula are traces of a kōan-system, but that may not ultimately matter, at least, not from the perspective of Hakuin’s philosophy. Viewed from this perspective, both the kōan-­ system and Hakuin’s ever-elusive curriculum are consistent in that they are both concerned primarily with the task of guiding the practitioner to an initial experience of kenshō and then to an arduous path of post-satori training and ethical engagement in everyday life. If there is, in fact, a historical connection between the system and the curriculum, then the kōan-system seems to have managed to faithfully address and expand upon Hakuin’s concerns about post-satori training. Similar concerns, as I noted earlier, had also received much attention during the Song, and Hakuin was eager to acknowledge this fact, but the innovations that he introduced to the notion of carrying out “meditative work in the midst of activity” (J. dōchū no kufū 動中の工夫), as he preferred to call it, pushed this notion into new directions that the Song Chan masters may have never imagined possible. It is to these new directions that we turn next.

3  Idle Talk on a Night Boat Hakuin was a prolific writer who left a large body of written material behind, but nothing he wrote has received more attention than his Idle Talk on a Night Boat (J. Yasen kanna 夜船閑話) (1757) (for example, Ahn 2008; Aoki 1943; Arai 1964, 2002; Izuyama 1983; Kamata 2001; Kasai 2003; Muraki 1985 and 2003; Naoki 2003; Rikugawa 1962; Shaw and Schiffer 1956). This complicated but entertaining text is essentially a story about Hakuin’s encounter with the hermit Hakuyū 白幽 and the cure that the hermit provided for Hakuin’s Zen illness or malady of meditation (J. zenbyō 禪病). It may be tempting to ask whether this encounter actually

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took place or not, but the story does seem to provide a few allusions to its fictional nature. One could consider, for instance, the title’s allusion to the famous idiom, “the nightboat of Shiraka” (J. Shirakawa yōbune 白川夜船), which refers to the pretense of knowing something that does not actually exist (Izuyama 1983: 114; Mohr 1999: 311; and Waddell 2009: 87); or one could consider Hakuin’s claim that Hakuyū’s age at the time of their encounter was somewhere between 180 (three sexagesimal cycles) and 240 old (four sexagesimal cycles). These hints notwithstanding, speculations about the identity of Hakuyū and his historicity have continued unabated since the eighteenth century (Waddell 2009: 85–87). Few, I suspect, would deny that the aim of the story was not so much to document an encounter as to impart a lesson and, needless to say, this lesson has something to do with post-satori training. Hakuin is said to have offered the teachings contained in this story to students who began to appear at the doorsteps of his temple Shōinji shortly after he assumed the abbacy in his thirties, but it will take another decade or two for the story to get published (Rikugawa 1962: 184). After its first publication as part of Sendai’s Comments on Hanshan’s Poems (J. Kanzanshi sendai kimon 寒 山詩闡提記聞; Gotō 1967, 4: 108–197) in 1746, however, the story continued to appear regularly in Hakuin’s writings. Why did Hakuin decide to include this story in a commentary on Hanshan’s poems? The story was used in this astonishing work of exegesis as an extended commentary on a poem that encouraged its reader to nurture her essence (C. jing 精), change her physical form, and thereby cheat death and become an immortal (Gotō 1967, 4: 107; cf. Iritani and Matsumura 1970: 115– 116). As Hakuin clarifies in his comment on the poem, its true message is not to encourage the reader to ingest an elixir and become an immortal as the Daoist alchemists would do but to nourish life (J. yōjō 養生). Making good use of the teachings he received from the hermit Hakuyū, Hakuin tried to explain what he thought was the true meaning of the poem and the art of nourishing life with the help of the following passage in the Chinese medical classic, Plain Questions (C. Suwen) of the Internal Classic of the Yellow Emperor (C. Huangdi neijing): “Tranquilly content in vacuous nothingness, [the sages] were accompanied by true vital energy; their essence and spirit being guarded from within, whence would illness come forth?” (Gotō 1967, 4: 108 and 116). This idea that one can nourish life by guarding vital energy (J. ki 氣) and thus essence from within was the fundamental premise of Hakuin’s Idle Talk on a Night Boat. To bolster this premise, Hakuin cites, in addition to the above passage from Plain Questions, an impressive array of sources that include Buddhist texts, medical treatises, and Chinese classics such as Mencius and Zhuangzi. Drawing snippets of relevant information from these various sources, Hakuyū, or shall I say Hakuin, weaves together a complex but coherent account of the etiology, diagnosis, and remedy for the malady of meditation. The Idle Talk on a Night Boat inevitably reads a bit like a dry theory-laden classical Chinese medical treatise, but Hakuin framed the hermit’s teaching in a way that made it approachable even to the casual reader. Hakuin set Hakuyū’s rather turgid and technical teaching about nourishing life, which takes up more than two-thirds of the entire story, against the background of his own personal experiences of self-cultivation, focusing particularly on days and

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months that followed his initial awakening experience. This gave a palpable down-­ to-­earth quality to the hermit’s teachings, which other manuals of meditation and medicine generally lack. The story begins with Hakuin’s account of his initial awakening experience, which his annalistic biography records as having occurred in 1708. That same year, shortly after his awakening, Hakuin made his way to Shinano 信濃 province where he met Shōju and learned about post-satori training. Before he left Shōju’s side, Hakuin had not been able to receive the true secrets (J. shinketsu 真訣) of the five positions in their entirety, but he was able to acquire the rest of these secrets from Sōkaku 宗覺 (1679–1730), a fellow disciple of Shōju, two  years later in 1710. Curiously, there is a discrepancy in the way the two extant versions of Hakuin’s annalistic biography—Tōrei’s manuscript compiled in 1789 and his disciple TAIKAN Bunshu’s 大觀文珠 (1766–1842) official version printed in 1821— remember the events that transpired after Hakuin left Shōju and before he began to devote himself to self-cultivation on Mount Iwataki 岩滝 in 1715. Whereas Tōrei’s manuscript places Hakuin’s encounter with the hermit Hakuyū and the end to the former’s illness in 1715, Taikan’s version relocates this event to the year 1710 (Rikugawa 1963: 474–477 and 485–488). Naturally, Takain’s version also relocates the onset of Hakuin’s illness, which Tōrei remembers as having occurred in 1712, to the year 1709 (Rikugawa 1963: 471–473 and 478–480; cf. Katō 1985: 120–131). Why Taikan felt it necessary to move the onset of Hakuin’s illness and his encounter with the hermit Hakuyū closer to his year with Shōju and the completion of the transmission of the secrets of the five positions is difficult to say, but Taikan may have shifted the events around in this manner to address what appear to be inconsistencies in the biography. Tōrei, for instance, seems to have placed the encounter with Hakuyū in the entry for 1715 because it made more sense to associate the encounter with Hakuyū to Hakuin’s post-satori training on Mount Iwataki. However, this seems to have made little sense to Taikan. If Hakuin had already cured his illness with the help of Hakuyū, then it seems fair to ask why it was necessary for Hakuin to engage in more rigorous post-satori training on Mount Iwataki. Even more perplexing, perhaps, is Hakuin’s visit to EGOKU Dōmyō, a Zen master with strong ties to the Ōbaku, in 1713. Both Tōrei and Taikan concur that the visit took place in 1713, but Taikan altered Tōrei’s text in a barely noticeable but significant way that is quite revealing. In Tōrei’s manuscript Hakuin is said to have consulted Egoku because he continued to experience “in his daily functions a contradiction between activity and quietude and a disparity between phenomena and Principle,” which prevented him from “reaching the state of true great peaceful tranquility and great liberation” (Rikugawa 1963: 483). In other words, what Hakuin experienced was the malady of meditation and he wanted a remedy. Egoku’s advice was to wither away together with the grass and trees in the mountains. This, in fact, is why Hakuin headed to Mount Iwataki. Taikan, however, seems to have rightly regarded the insertion of the encounter with Hakuyū between Egoku and Mount Iwataki as incongruous and redundant. To do away with this redundancy, Taikan moved the story of Hakuyū closer to Hakuin’s studies under Shōju and erased the

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short but important reference to the “contradiction between activity and quietude and disparity between phenomena and Principle” in Hakuin’s exchange with Egoku. Their exchange was, thus, no longer explicitly about the malady of meditation and its remedy. It had become a more general exchange about how to attain great liberation. Taikan may have thus ironed out some of the more obvious inconsistencies in Hakuin’s biography, but it seems hard to deny that Hakuin’s encounter with Hakuyū seems to make little sense in the context of the other events that took place between 1710 and 1715. During this period, Hakuin spent most of his time making pilgrimages to consult Zen masters around the country and listening to their lectures. A closer look at the pilgrimages that he made also reveals a certain pattern. In 1713, for instance, Hakuin set out to visit the Zen masters JŌZAN Jakuji 定山寂而 (1676–1736), KOGETSU Zenzai, EGOKU Dōmyō, and TESSHIN Dōin 鐵心道印 (1593–1680). Hakuin’s decision to consult these masters is quite significant, for all of them happen to be closely affiliated with the Ōbaku. Jōzan and Kogetsu were both disciples of KENGAN  Zen’etsu 賢巖禪悦 (1618–1697), who, like Tesshin and the aforementioned BANKEI Yōtaku, received certification of enlightenment from the Ōbaku monk DAOZHE Chaoyuan 道者超元 (J.  Dosha Chōgen; 1602– 1662). Similarly, Egoku had received certification from the Ōbaku monk YINYUAN Longqi 隱元隆琦 (J. Ingen Ryūki; 1592–1673). Hakuin was clearly interested in discovering more about the Ōbaku teachings, but this interest was not stirred overnight. There is good reason to believe that he may have had this interest as early as 1708 while he was still studying under Shōju. Hakuin is known to have wanted to receive the “full precepts” (J. kusokukai 倶足戒), which was a practice that the Ōbaku re-introduced to Japan, at the temple Ekōzenin 慧光禪院, but Shōju deterred the young Hakuin from doing so and offered him the “formless mind-ground precepts” (J. musō shinchikai 無相心地戒) instead (Katō 1985: 95–112; cf. Waddell 2009: 171–172). In short, learning more about Zen and especially Ōbaku Zen seems to have been Hakuin’s primary agenda during the five  years that followed his departure from Shōju. It is therefore difficult to imagine why Hakuin would suddenly want to consult an obscure hermit in the outskirts of Kyoto about the malady of meditation. Moreover, if Hakuin wanted to consult someone about his malady, it would have made more sense to consult Kogetsu and Egoku, who were well versed in Song dynasty teachings on this subject. This is, no doubt, why Tōrei’s original manuscript has Hakuin visiting Egoku to seek advice about this malady.

4  Inner Contemplation If it is indeed the case that Hakuin’s encounter with the hermit Hakuyū was an interpolation, then why, we may ask, was this interpolation necessary? What made Hakuyū and his teachings so special? First, I think we need to understand that the hermit offered more than just a viable remedy for the malady of meditation. If we

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are to trust the Song courses that Hakuin studied with great care, he could have cured his malady of meditation by consulting renowned teachers, reading and studying the old kōans carefully, “going beyond,” and knowing the truth or Way for himself (Ahn 2013). This, as I noted earlier, is exactly what he tried to do between the years 1710 and 1715. Why, then, was it necessary for Hakuin to claim that he had paid the hermit Hakuyū a visit? What Hakuin received from the hermit was an explanation of a technique called “inner contemplation” (J. naikan 内觀). This is an old term that can refer to a variety of different forms of meditation, but the hermit, or, shall I say, Hakuin, used this term to refer to the old practice of calming the mind by having it focus on something called the “cinnabar field” (J. tanden 丹田). As an expedient way of bringing the mind down to the cinnabar field, which is believed to be located near the abdomen, Hakuin recommends in his Idle Talk on a Night Boat and elsewhere something he calls the “soft butter pill” (J. nansogan 輭酥丸) method. Essentially, what this method entails is the practitioner imagining a ball of warm butter melting and flowing down from the top of the head into the vital organs and finally the lower parts of the body. But how, we may ask, does this help someone battle the malady of meditation? In theory, the malady is caused by becoming fixed on false views of the unconditioned and ineffable Way such as silent illumination (which, I might add, is all too often mistaken for quietistic meditation). The problem, in other words, lies in the mind’s tendency to look for such views and reified ideas. Inner contemplation prevents the practitioner’s mind from being led astray this way by calming the mind and developing unwavering concentration. The technique is, therefore, equally effective in keeping the mind from becoming distracted by other impediments to awakening such as attachments and emotions. However, if this was all inner contemplation could do, few would have considered it novel and worthy of note. As a meditative technique for calming and concentrating the mind, inner contemplation, as anyone familiar with Buddhist meditation can readily identify, was another instance of śamatha or calming meditation, which was the basis of virtually all forms of seated meditation in Buddhism. There is, however, something quite novel about Hakuin’s own take on the significance and benefit of inner contemplation. Hakuin believed that inner contemplation not only fostered a sense of calm and concentration in the practitioner but also enabled her to bridge the gap between theory and practice, phenomena and Principle, and most importantly the quietude of meditation and the activity of everyday life. The issue of how to bridge the gap between quietude and activity is actually a very old one that DAHUI Zonggao had also once tried to tackle, but the creative way in which Hakuin approached this issue is what sets him apart as a thinker. In lieu of relying solely on Buddhist sources to think through this issue, Hakuin turned to medical treatises from China, Korea, and Japan. These treatises, which had been the privy of those who belonged to a lineage of physicians for centuries, became far more accessible during the Tokugawa period thanks to the growth of the print industry and a literate community of readers who actively consumed such technical writing. Especially important for Hakuin were medical sources that were heavily influenced by the style of thought pioneered by literati physicians such as ZHU

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Zhenheng 朱震亨 (1281–1358) who successfully combined traditional Chinese medical discourse and the moral philosophy of daoxue 道學 or Neo-Confucianism. Relying on these sources, Hakuin made claims such as the following: An average or mediocre person invariably allows the ki in the heart to rise up unchecked so that it diffuses throughout the upper body. When the ki is allowed to rise unchecked, Fire [heart] on the left side damages the Metal [lungs] on the right side. This puts a strain on the five senses, diminishing their working, and causes harmful disturbances in the six roots. (Waddell 2009: 101–102)

This short but effective description of the workings of vital energy inside the body explains why the mind/heart (J. kokoro 心) tends to be led astray by the objects of the senses and thereby cause damage to the lungs. It also probably explains why Hakuin offered this uncanny description of the symptoms of his malady of meditation: Before the month was out, my heart-fire began to rise against the natural course, parching my lungs of their essential fluid. My feet and legs were ice-cold; they felt as though they were immersed in tubs of snow. There was a continuous thrumming in my ears, as though I was walking beside a raging mountain torrent. I became abnormally weak and timid, shrinking and fearful in whatever I did. I felt totally drained, physically and mentally exhausted. Strange visions appeared to me during waking and sleeping hours alike. My armpits were always wet with perspiration. My eyes watered constantly. (Waddell 2009: 96–97)

Although we find lists of similar symptoms mentioned in earlier treatises on Buddhist meditation such as TIANTAI Zhiyi’s 天台智顗 (538–597) Great Calming and Contemplation (C. Mohe zhiguan 摩訶止觀) (T46.1911.108a22–b7), there is a crucial difference between these earlier accounts and Hakuin’s own account of the malady of meditation. The key to grasping this difference resides in Hakuin’s (or Hakuyū’s) understanding of the nature of the elements. First, as Hakuin (or Hakuyū) explains, “is by nature light and unsteady and always wants to mount upward, while Water is by nature heavy and settled and wants to flow downward” (Waddell 2009: 100). In other words, there is a natural tendency for the mind/heart, which corresponds to the element fire, to rise up and strain the senses. Fire tends to rise, we are also told, when it is depleted of ki and, needless to say, the proper way to nourish fire and thus the mind/heart is to therefore replenish its ki (Waddell 2009: 105). This can be done by bringing the mind down to the lower part of the body (that is, the kidneys and cinnabar field), which is likened to an “ocean of vital energy” (J. kikai 氣海). As novel as this application of medical thought to Buddhist meditation may be, what is truly innovative about Hakuin’s ideas about nourishing ki is the moral ­discourse that supports them. Hakuin, for instance, used the analogy of the relationship between a ruler (the mind/heart), his ministers (kidneys), and the people (cinnabar field) to speak of the practical benefits of nourishing ki by bringing “fire” down to the lower body: Sustaining life is much like protecting a country. While a wise lord and sage ruler always thinks of the common people under him, a foolish lord and mediocre ruler concerns himself exclusively with the pastimes of the upper class. When a ruler becomes engrossed in his

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own selfish interests, his nine ministers vaunt their power and authority, the officials under them seek special favors, and none of them gives a thought to the poverty and suffering of the people below them . . . On the other hand, when the ruler turns his attention below and focuses on the common people, his ministers and officials perform their duties simply and frugally, with the hardships and suffering of the common people always in their thoughts. As a result, farmers will have an abundance of grain, women will have an abundance of cloth. The good and the wise gather to the ruler to render him service, the provincial lords are respectful and submissive, the common people prosper, and the country grows strong. (Waddell 2009: 101)

The moral and political tone of Hakuin’s (or Hakuyū’s) message is unmistakable. The lord must focus on the people below; otherwise, the country will collapse. Similarly, the mind must focus on the cinnabar field below; otherwise, the body will collapse. The need to keep the mind focused on the cinnabar field was not, therefore, just a medical issue but also a moral imperative. It is, I would argue, this creative blending of meditation, medicine, morality, and politics that makes Hakuin’s thoughts on the malady of meditation so different from the earlier discourses on the various illnesses or maladies of meditation.

5  Self-Regulated Labor Hakuin made frequent use of the analogy of the “mind-as-lord” (J. shushin 主心) in his writings. He did so because the analogy, it seems, served several purposes. Using the analogy of the lord who cares for the people below, Hakuin, as we have seen, could argue that the mind must be made to focus on the lower part of the body. With the same analogy Hakuin could also argue that bringing the mind down into the lower part of the body will allow the practitioner to bridge the gap between quietude and activity. How so? Focusing one’s mind on the cinnabar field will calm the mind and nourish ki, but the mind-as-lord will not therefore cease to do its duty to care for the people. In fact, the only way to do one’s duty properly and behave appropriately in activity is, ironically, to nourish the mind in the tranquility and quietude of inner contemplation. Hakuin, however, was a meticulous thinker and philosopher who was clearly aware of the potential problems with this idea. As he asks in his Idle Talk on a Night Boat: “if I control the mind and [fix] it to a single place, would there not be stagnation of vital energy and blood? (Yoshizawa 1999–2002, 4: 126–127). Anxieties about “stagnation” (J. todokoori 滞り), as SHIGEHISA Kuriyama has shown, transformed the way the body was seen and experienced during the Tokugawa (Kuriyama 1997). Among other things, the spread of this anxiety, Kuriyama argues, is related to the ethos of diligence that swept through the Tokugawa populace and, on a larger scale, to Japan’s “industrious revolution” (J. kinben kakumei 勤勉革命) of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Elsewhere, I have also tried to show that this anxiety must also be understood against the larger backdrop of the subtle change that took place in the general attitude towards labor (J. rō 勞) during the Tokugawa (Ahn 2008). Simply put, it became increasingly

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important to faithfully carry out one’s duty or family trade, say, as a farmer, samurai, or daimyo and, more importantly, to do so in a voluntary manner. Activity and labor, as Hakuin and others from this period argued, had to be self-regulated. Failure to do so, they believed, would result in stagnation and eventually illness. With these larger issues in mind, Hakuin quite perceptively and frankly noted that fixing the mind on the cinnabar field may lead to stagnation. However, Hakuyū reassured him that there was no need to be concerned. As an explanation, Hakuyū simply reminded Hakuin of the fact that fire tends to rise upward and must therefore be made to descend and intermingle with water (Waddell 2009: 104). He did, however, also add that fire has not one but two natures, namely the princely and the ministerial. Princely fire (J. kunka 君火), Hakuyū argued, is located in the mind/ heart and governs quietude; ministerial fire (J. shōka 相火) is located in the kidneys and liver and governs activity (Yoshizawa 1999–2002, 4: 129; Waddell 2009: 104– 105). Following an earlier argument made by the Chinese physician LI Zhongzi 李 中梓 (1588–1655), Hakuyū also argued that when the mind/heart is depleted of ki, one can replenish it by making it intermingle with the kidneys, which also happens to correspond to the element water. Although it was left unexplained, what is being taken for granted here is the fact that the left kidney corresponds to water and the right one to ministerial fire (Despeux 2001: 151). When Hakuyū instructs Hakuin to have his mind/heart intermingle with the kidneys he is, in effect, instructing him to make fire intermingle with water. Hakuyū’s description of the workings of fire and water is largely drawn from earlier medical sources, which he cites by name, but his claim that princely fire governs quietude is rather novel. I have already argued elsewhere that this claim was an attempt to underscore the importance of the mind-as-lord’s responsibility to regulate quietude (Ahn 2008: 199). This idea of the mind regulating quietude, however, went against the grain of more traditional theories of nourishing life, according to which life, conversely, could only be nourished if the mind/heart is governed and regulated with quietude. It is for this reason that I characterize Hakuyū or Hakuin’s view of princely fire as novel. For Hakuin, focusing the mind-as-lord on one’s cinnabar field does not, therefore, entail the removal of oneself from the hustling and bustling world of everyday life. On the contrary, Hakuin believed that bringing the mind-as-lord down to the cinnabar field where it can rid itself of views and attachments in quietude is precisely how the mind could maintain a sense of mastery and control, that is, carry out its duty as the lord of the body. And cultivating this sense of self-mastery is how one can carry out the other necessary daily tasks most efficiently. This is why Hakuin could claim that one should not use the need to perform daily duties as an excuse to not practice Zen (Yampolsky 1971: 53). In fact, Hakuin will even argue that ­performing one’s duties is the best way to nourish life. As he writes in his letter to the ailing Jōshōmei’in no miya 浄照明院宮 (Rishū nyo’ō 理秀女王) (1725–1764), abbess of the monzeki 門跡 temple Hōkyōji 寳鏡寺, and her younger sibling Jōmeishin’in no miya 浄明心院宮 (Sonjō nyo’ō 尊乗女王) (1730–1789), abbess of the monzeki temple Kōshōin 光照院:

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Above all else, the practitioner should be weary of the malady of meditation. If even for a moment there arises the thought that the fascinating sensations [produced by] the clearing of the mind in quietude are enjoyable on account of this malady, then this is the practitioner’s attachment to the taste of meditation and thus a great obstruction of the demonic realm and must therefore be abandoned. Everyday, little by little, doing the kind of work that will gradually release sweat is an exceptional form of nourishing life. It is also an expedient means of significantly enhancing the power of concentration and thereby making the mind and body strong and firm. In order to make a living, commoners everyday endure suffering and pain in their hands and feet. Among these folks there are none who possess illness such as headaches, intestinal bloating, exhaustion, and costiveness. (Yoshizawa 1999–2002, 2: 166–67)

There is no easy way of reconciling what Hakuin said here with what he said in other sources such as his Idle Talk on a Night Boat, but I would hazard to guess that Hakuin could make an argument for both inner contemplation and manual labor at the same time without contradicting himself because he did not regard the mind’s mastery of itself and the mind’s mastery of labor as separate tasks. Self-mastery— the art of nourishing life—can only be accomplished if there is no gap between activity and quietude and, conversely, the practitioner can only erase this gap if she attains self-mastery.

6  Hakuin’s Political Philosophy In addition to his writings on kōan Zen and the art of nourishing life, Hakuin also left behind a few writings where he articulated his views on proper governance (Matsubara 2004). His Mutterings to the Wall (J. Kabezoshō 壁訴訟), Moxa (J. Sashimogusa さし藻草), and Snake Strawberries (J. Hebiichigo 辺鄙以知吾) are good examples for such writings. Although they were addressed to different people, the overall message of these politically charged pieces by Hakuin are very similar. In fact, certain parts of the texts are virtually identical. Here, I shall focus on Snake Strawberries for no other reason than the fact that it offers better clues as to how Hakuin’s political message fits in with the other ideas discussed in this essay. Snake Strawberries is the title of a relatively lengthy letter that Hakuin presented to the daimyo IKEDA Tsugumasa, the aforementioned lord of Okayama castle. The letter was first published in 1754. But, for mentioning the shogun TOKUGAWA Ieyasu 徳川家康 (1543–1616) and a book that was falsely attributed to him, the government banned the reprinting of the letter almost two decades later in 1771. The controversial letter, however, begins surprisingly with the benign and harmless praise of the miraculous benefits of reciting the Ten Phrase Kannon Sutra for Prolonging Life (J. Ennmei jikku kannon gyō 延命十句觀音經). This may seem a bit odd and out of place, but Hakuin seems to have believed that faith in compassion, which is an important theme of the scripture and the miracle stories that testify to its efficacy, was the key to good governance, self-mastery, and hence nourishing life. Hakuin rather explicitly claims, for instance, that a good general, “[b]ecause it is his responsibility to protect the nation and bring ease to the common people, night and day without relaxing he polishes the martial arts and practices inner contemplation

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and the power of faith” (Yampolsky 1971: 187). If, as he continues, one recites the Ten Phrase Kannon Sutra for Prolonging Life at the same time, “then by the strength of the natural overflow of the compassion of the gods and Buddhas, his military destiny will become strong, his life span long, his magnanimity broad, and his governing of the province will go as smoothly as if he were rowing a boat with the current” (Yampolsky 1971: 187). What Hakuin is trying to say here, I think, is that trying to establish a compassionate mind as master will allow one to more efficiently do one’s duty and practice inner contemplation. This, I think, is why Hakuin proceeds to describe the fate of incompetent generals in the following manner: “The clear character inherent in all is obscured and destroyed by base personal lusts and desires until the point is reached where the mind-as-master cannot be determined even for a moment” (Yampolsky 1971: 188). This also seems to be why he suggests the investigation of the word “death” (J. shi 死) to warriors. Only by investigating this word, Hakuin claims, will the warrior determine the mind-as-master (Yampolsky 1971: 219). Hakuin’s political philosophy, I believe, was rooted firmly in this notion of cultivating the mind-as-master and achieving self-mastery (cf. Furuta 1991: 58–67). Only when self-mastery is achieved can the general and lord govern the people below in the proper manner. Hakuin also believed that self-mastery had to be accompanied by compassion and benevolence. These are the two virtues that he repeatedly encourages his reader(s) to cultivate in his Snake Strawberries and Mutterings to the Wall. In more practical terms, as a way of cultivating benevolence and self-mastery, Hakuin recommends frugality and moderation, above all else. This recommendation seems to have been an extension of his belief that the suffering of the people was mainly the result of the greed of tyrannical officials. A lord who keeps the company of such officials will, Hakuin contends, lose the hearts of the people and eventually bring the country to ruin. To better illustrate this point, Hakuin uses a familiar analogy. Citing an unnamed text on nourishing life, Hakuin claims that the people are like ki. When ki is depleted and exhausted, the body weakens and eventually the person dies. Similarly, when the people decline, the country falls (Yampolsky 1971: 201–202). The lord must thus be mindful of the people and the mind must be mindful of ki. For the lord, then, nourishing life and nourishing his country are one and the same thing. Hakuin’s concerns about the greed of officials are not historically unfounded. In his Snake Strawberries, Hakuin poured scorn on the lavish spending of officials in womens’ quarters and the ostentatious Edo-bound processions of the daimyo, which were full of countless retainers, entertainers, spikes, horses, and flags (Matsubara 2004: 162). What may be at work here in these words of contempt is an even deeper contempt for the alternate residence (J. sankin kōtai 参勤交代) system. During the Tokugawa period, as a measure of control, daimyo were required to spend a significant portion of the year attending the shogun at Edo. The daimyo were also required to leave their wives and children behind at their permanent residences in Edo as de facto hostages. Their annual trips to Edo thus became a permanent and prominent fixture of Tokugawa life. An unintended, but perhaps inevitable, side effect of implementing the alternate residence system, however, was the tendency among daimyo to engage in a competition to display their wealth and influence in and on their way to Edo; and herein lies the source of Hakuin’s concern.

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Despite Hakuin’s scorn for the lavish expenditures of the daimyo, it is also true that the expenditures related to their service in Edo helped stimulate the economy (Vaporis 2008). But the economy was not what primarily motivated Hakuin to criticize daimyo spending habits. I suspect the Kyōhō famine of 1732 and the general economic conditions of peasant life, which was always at the brink of poverty, were the more important motivating factors behind his criticism of the lavish lifestyles of the daimyo. Also important was the parish system (J. danka seido 檀家制度) implemented by the bakufu. As FUNAOKA Makoto rightly points out, the parish system brought relative financial stability to a larger number of Buddhist temples, which only a handful of temples in Kyoto had been able to enjoy before the Tokugawa. The Buddhist temples had thus become quite dependent on their lay parishioners who, in place of the emperor and the aristocrats, had become their main source of support. Buddhist intellectuals soon turned their gaze towards the morality of everyday life that emphasized the importance of faithfully carrying out one’s family trade (Funaoka 1979: 349–350). The attention that Hakuin pays to the wellbeing of peasants and commoners, as Funaoka cautiously suggests, may very well have something to do with this new socio-economic reality of Buddhism during the Tokugawa. Needless to say, Hakuin’s political philosophy, or any aspect of his philosophy for that matter, cannot be grasped with the brief analysis that I provide above. This essay, in fact, has barely scratched the surface of the large body of literature related to Hakuin. I have, for instance, not discussed the intellectual context of the “popular” tales of cause and effect composed by Hakuin, his life-long interest in and fear of hell, or his response to new bakufu policies in any detail (Funaoka 1979; Muneyama 1986; Yoshizawa 2009: 219–252). Nor have I discussed Hakuin’s extensive musings on the Lotus Sutra or the ideas that he expressed in his art (Yanagida and Katō 1979; Tanahashi 1984; Yoshizawa 2009; Seo 2010). With respect to the study of Hakuin, there is still much that needs to be done. However, I hope what I have been able to cover in this essay was enough to encourage some readers to learn more about Hakuin and his philosophy.

Works Cited Abbreviations T Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 『大正新修大蔵經』. 100 vols, edited by Junjirō Takakusu 高楠順次 郎 and Kaigyoku Watanabe 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai, 1924–34.

Other Sources Ahn, Juhn. 2008. Zen and the Art of Nourishing Life: Labor, Exhaustion, and the Malady of Meditation. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 35 (2): 177–229. ———. 2013. Who Has the Last Word in Chan? Transmission, Secrecy, and Reading During the Northern Song Dynasty. Journal of Chinese Religions 37: 1–72.

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Akiyama, Kanji 秋山範二. 1983. Shamon hakuin 『沙門白隱』 [The Monk Hakuin]. Shizuoka: Akiyama Aiko. Akizuki, Ryōmin 秋月龍珉. 1987. Kōan: Jissenteki zen nyūmon 『公案: 実践的禅入門』 [Kōan: A Practical Introduction to Zen]. Tokyo: Chikuma shobō. Aoki, Shigeru 青木茂. 1943. Dōgen bankei hakuin no ryōbyō tetsugaku 『道元盤珪白隠の療 病哲学』 [Dōgen, Bankei, and Hakuin’s Philosophy of Treating Illness]. Tokyo: Dōshinbō. Arai, Arao 荒井荒雄. 1964. Gyōgazen: Hakuin zenji naikan no hippo ni yoru shinjin kaizō 『仰 臥禅, 白隠禅師内観の秘法による心身改造』 [Gyōgazen: Reforming the Mind and Body According to the Secrets of Zen Master Hakuin’s Inner Contemplation]. Tokyo: Meigen Shobō. ———. 2002. Yasen kanwa: Hakuin zen ni yoru kenkōhō 『夜船閑話: 白隠禅による健康法』 [Idle Talk on a Night Boat: Techniques for Staying Healthy in Hakuin Zen]. 2nd ed. Tokyo: Daizō shuppan. Baroni, Helen J. 2000. Obaku Zen: The Emergence of the Third Sect of Zen in Tokugawa Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Baskind, James. 2008. The Nianfo in Ōbaku Zen: A Look at the Zen of the Three Founding Masters. Japanese Religions 33 (1–2): 19–34. Despeux, Catherine. 2001. The System of the Five Circulatory Phases and the Six Seasonal Influences (wuyun liuqi), A Source of Innovation in Medicine Under the Song. Trans. Janet Lloyd. In Innovation in Chinese Medicine, ed. Elizabeth Hsu, 121–164. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Foulk, T.  Griffith. 2008. Ritual in Japanese Buddhism. In Zen Ritual: Studies of Zen Buddhist Theory in Practice, ed. Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, 21–82. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Funaoka, Makoto 船岡誠. 1979. Hakuin no shisōteki igi 「白隠禅の思想的意義」 [The Significance of Hakuin Zen from the Perspective of Intellectual History]. In Kindai bukkyō no shomondai 『近世仏教の諸問題』 [Various Issues in Early Modern Buddhism], ed. Fumio Tamamuro 圭室文雄 and Hitoshi Ōkuwa 大桑斉, 245–366. Tokyo: Yūzankaku. Furuta, Shōkin 古田紹釿. 1991. Hakuin o yomu: Sono shisō to gyōdō 『白隠をよむ: その思想 と行動』. [Reading Hakuin: His Thought and Actions]. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. Gotō, Kōson 後藤光村, ed. 1967. Hakuin oshō zenshū 『白隠和尚全集』 [The Complete Works of Venerable Hakuin]. 8 vols. 1934–1935. Reprinted edition. Tokyo: Ryūginsha. Hori, Voctor Sōgen. 2003. Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Kōan Practice. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Itō, Kazuō 伊藤和雄. 1956. Hakuyūshi no hito to sho 『白幽師の人と書』 [Master Hakuyū the Person and His Writings]. Zenbunka 『禅文化』 [Zen Culture] 6: 40–48. ———. 1973. Hakuyūshi 『白幽師』 [Master Hakuyū]. Kyoto: Yamaguchi shoten. Iritani, Sensuke 入谷仙介, and Takashi Matsumura 松村昂. 1970. Kanzanshi 『寒山詩』 [Poems of Hanshan], Zen no goroku 『禅の語録』[Recorded Sayings of Zen], vol. 13. Tokyō: Chikuma Shobō. Izuyama, Kakudō 伊豆山格堂. 1983. Yasen kanwa: Hakuin zenji 『夜船閑話: 白隠禅師』[Idle Talk on a Night Boat: Zen Master Hakuin]. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. Jaffe, Richard. 1991. Ingen and the threat to the Myōshinjiha. Komazawa daigaku zenkenkyūjo nenpō 『駒沢大学 禅研究所年報』[Komazawa University Zen Research Institute’s Annual Report]. Vol. 2, 166–132. Kajitani, Sōnin 梶谷宗忍. 1968. Kōan no soshiki 「公案の組織」 [The Structure of Kōans]. In Zen no koten: Nihon 『禅の古典: 日本』[Classics of Zen: Japan], ed. Keiji Nishitani 西谷啓 治, 263–270. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. Kamata, Shigeo 鎌田茂雄. 2001. Hakuin zenji no chōsokuhō oyobi sono keishō no hatten 「白 隠禅師の調息法及び其の継承の発展」. In Zen to shinjinron 『禅と心身論』. [Zen and Theories of the Mind and Body], ed. Enshō Kobayashi 小林円, 113–142. Tokyo: Perikansha. Kasai, Akira 笠井哲. 2003. Hakuin no tanden kokyūhō no keifu 「白隠の丹田呼吸法の系譜」 [The Genealogy of Hakuin’s Cinnabar Field Breaking Technique]. Indogaku bukkyōgaku kenkyū 『インド学と仏教学研究』 [Indology and Buddhology] 51 (2): 164–169. Katō, Shōshun 加藤正俊. 1985. Hakuin oshō nenpu 『白隱和尚年譜』 [Annalistic Biography of Venerable Hakuin]. Kyoto: Shinbunkaku.

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Kuriyama Shigehisa 栗山茂久. 1997. Katakori kō 「肩こり考」. In Rekishi no Naka no yamai to igaku 『歴史の中の病と医学』 [Illness and Medicine in History], ed. Yamada Keiji 山田慶 兒 and Shigehisa Kuiryama 栗山茂久, 37–62. Kyoto: Shibunkaku shuppan. Matsubara, Masaki. 2004. Prolegomena to a Timely Reading of Zen Master Hakuin: His Political Critique, Moral Attitude, and Social Engagement against the Abusive Authority of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Acta Orientalia Vilnensia 5: 154–167. Miura, Isshū, and Ruth Fuller Sasaki. 1966. Zen Dust: The History of the Kōan and Kōan Study in Rinzai (Lin-chi) Zen. Kyoto: The First Zen Institute of America in Japan. Mohr, Michel. 1994. Zen Buddhism During the Tokugawa Period: The Challenge to Go Beyond Sectarian Consciousness. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 21 (4): 341–372. ———. 1999. Hakuin. In Buddhist Spirituality: Later China, Korea, Japan, and the Modern World, ed. Yoshinori Takeuchi, 307–328. New York: Crossroad. ———. 2000. Emerging from Nonduality: Kōan Practice in the Rinzai Tradition since Hakuin. In The Kōan: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism, ed. Steven Heine and Dale S.  Wright, 244–279. New York: Oxford University Press. Muneyama, Yoshifumi 心山義文. 1986. Hakuin no gohōron to minshūka 「白隠の護法論と民 衆化」 [Hakuin’s Defense of the Dharma and Popular Leanings]. In Futaba Kenkō hakase koki kinen 『二葉憲香博士古希記念・日本仏教史論叢』 [Celebration of Dr. Futaba Kenkō’s Seventieth Birthday: Collection of Essays on Japanese Buddhist History], ed. The Publication Committee for the Collection of Essays in Celebration of Dr. Kenkō Futaba’s Seventieth Birthday, 305–322. Kyoto: Nagata Bunshōdō. Muraki, Hiromasa 村木弘昌. 1985. Isō hakuin no kokyūhō: “Yasen kanna” ni manabu 『医僧白 隠の呼吸法: 『夜船閑話』の健康法に学ぶ』 [The Breathing Techniques of the Physician Monk Hakuin: Learning from the Techniques for Better Health in the “Idle Talk on a Night Boat”]. Tokyo: Hakujusha. ———. 2003. Hakuin no tanden kokyūhō: “Yasen kanna” no kenkōhō ni manabu 『白隠の丹田 呼吸法: 『夜船閑話』の健康法に学ぶ』 [Hakuin’s Cinnabar Field Breathing Technique: Learning from the Techniques for Better Health in the “Idle Talk on a Night Boat”]. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. Naoki, Kimihiko 直木公彦. 2003. Hakuin zenji: Kenkōhō to itsuwa 『白隠禅師—健康法と逸 話』 [Zen Master Hakuin: Techniques for Better Health and Other Anecdotes]. Tokyo: Nihon kyōbunsha. Rikugawa, Taiun 陸川堆雲. 1962. Hyōshaku “yasen kanna” 『評釈夜船閑話』 [Annotated Translation of the “Idle Talk on a Night Boat”]. Tokyo: Sankibō busshorin. ———. 1963. Kōshō hakuin oshō shōden 『考証白隠和尚詳傳』 [Evidentiary Study of the Detailed Biographies of Venerable]. Tokyo: Sankibō busshorin. Sawada, Janine Anderson. 1993. Confucian Values and Popular Zen: Sekimon Shingaku in Eighteenth-Century Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Seo, Audrey Yoshiko. 2010. The Sound of the One Hand: Paintings and Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin. Boston: Shambala. Sharf, Robert H. 2002. On Pure Land Buddhism and Ch’an/Pure Land Syncretism in Medieval China. T’oung Pao 88 (4–5): 282–331. Shaw, R. D. M. and Wilhelm Schiffer, S. J., trans. 1956. Yasen Kanna: A Chat on a Boat in the Evening by Hakuin Zenji. Monumenta Nipponica 13 (1–2): 101–127. Shibayama Zenkei 柴山全慶. 1943. Hakuinkei kanwa no ikkanken 「白隠系看話の一管見」 [An Outline of the Practice of Observing the Phrase in Hakuin’s Lineage]. Zengaku kenkyū 『 禪学研究』 [Zen Studies] 38: 1–30. Takenuki, Genshō 竹貫元勝. 1989. Nihon zenshūshi 『日本禪宗史』 [The History of Japanese Zen]. Tokyo: Daizō shuppan. Tamamura, Takeji 玉村竹二, ed. 1981. Nihon zenshūshi ronshū shitanoni 『日本禅宗史論集 下の二』 [Collection of Essays on the History of Japanese Zen, Part II of Vol. 2]. Kyoto: Shibunkaku. Tanahashi, Kazuaki. 1984. Penetrating Laughter: Hakuin’s Zen and Art. Woodstock: The Overlook Press.

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Tyler, Royall, trans. 1992. Japanese Nō Dramas. New York: Penguin Books. Vaporis, Constantin Nomikos. 2008. Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo, and the Culture of Early Modern Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Waddell, Norman, trans. 1994. The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Hakuin: A Translation of the Sokkō-roku Kaien-fusetsu. Boston: Shambhala. ———, trans. 1999. Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin. Boston: Shambhala. ———, trans. 2009. Hakuin’s Precious Mirror Cave. Berkeley: Counterpoint. Yampolsky, Philip B. 1971. The Zen Master Hakuin: Selected Writings. New  York: Columbia University Press. Yanagida, Seizan 柳田聖山. 1967. Rinzai no kafū 『臨済の家風』 [The House Style of Rinzai]. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. ———. 1987. Zen no jidai: Yōsai, Musō, Daitō, Hakuin 『禅の時代: 栄西, 夢窓, 大灯, 白隠』 [The Age of Zen: Yōsai, Musō, Daitō, and Hakuin]. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. Yanagida, Seizan 柳田聖山, and Shōshun  Katō 加藤正俊. 1979. Hakuin 『白隠』 [Hakuin]. Kyoto: Tankōsha. Yoshizawa, Katsuhiro. 2009. The Religious Art of Zen Master Hakuin. Trans. Norman Waddell. Berkeley: Counterpoint. Yoshizawa, Katsuhiro 芳澤勝弘, ed. 1999–2002. Hakuin zenji hōgo zenshū 『白隠禅師法語全 集』 [Complete Collection of the Sermons of Zen Master Hakuin]. 14 vols. Kyoto: Zenbunka Kenkyūsho. Juhn Y. Ahn is Associate Professor of Buddhist and Korean Studies at the University of Michigan. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on death, illness, and Buddhism in East Asia. His current research focuses on the relationship between Buddhist mortuary practices and elite identity formation in fourteenth century Korea. His most recent publication is Buddhas and Ancestors: Religion and Wealth in Fourteenth-Century Korea (2018).

Chapter 23

The Religious Philosophy of Kiyozawa Manshi Robert F. Rhodes

Judged by ordinary standards of success, KIYOZAWA Manshi’s 清沢満之 (1863– 1903) life was an utter failure.1 At an early age, he turned his back on a promising academic career to devote himself to the Ōtani (Higashi Honganji) denomination of the Jōdo Shinshū 浄土真宗 school of Buddhism (also known as Shin Buddhism). Then, in a misguided attempt to achieve spiritual progress, he embarked on an extreme regimen of austerities, leading him to contract tuberculosis. Simultaneously, frustrated in his dealings with the Ōtani administration, he began a reform movement which initially gained widespread support but ended in failure. Several years later, he was appointed president of the newly created Shinshū University (the forerunner of Ōtani University) but resigned from the post within two years when confronted by students protesting his rigorous approach to religious education. Finally, he died at the young age of 43. Despite his apparent failure, Kiyozawa is one of the most important figures of modern Japanese Buddhism. In fact, he was probably the first original philosopher of modern Japan, preceding NISHIDA Kitarō 西田幾多郎 (1870–1945) by nearly a decade. With his thorough training in western philosophy, Kiyozawa sought to reinterpret Buddhism by using new concepts taken from the European intellectual tradition. His Shūkyō tetsugaku gaikotsu 宗教哲学骸骨 (A Skeleton of a Philosophy of Religion) [hereafter abbreviated as “Gaikotsu”] was the first major work on religious philosophy written in Japan. Kiyozawa was, moreover, a deeply religious thinker in the Shin Buddhist tradition. Through his many essays written in j­ argon-­free

1  Kiyozawa’s writings are found in Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003. The only book-length monograph on Kiyozawa is Johnston (1972). Nine of Kiyozawa’s most important essays are translated in Haneda (1984). Important studies on Kiyozawa in Japanese include Nishimura (1951), Terakawa (1973), Wakimoto (1982, 1992), Yasutomi (1999), and Yoshida (1961).

R. F. Rhodes (*) Otani University, Kyoto, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_23

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language, he revived Shin Buddhism, which had long been denigrated as a superstitious faith of unlettered people, as an important spiritual presence in the Japanese religious and intellectual world. Unfortunately, although his name is familiar within Shin Buddhist circles, he had remained relatively unknown to the general public, even among students of Japanese religions. However, this situation has been changing in the past decade, especially with his rediscovery by contemporary philosophers like IMAMURA Hitoshi (1942–2007) and FUJITA Masakatsu.2 The following paper will be divided into four sections. First, I will provide a brief outline of Kiyozawa’s life. The next section will focus on Kiyozawa’s religious philosophy as found in A Skeleton of a Philosophy of Religion [hereafter as “Skeleton”], an English translation of the Gaikotsu. The third section will discuss his later distinctive religious thought, which he called “seishinshugi” 精神主義. The essay will conclude with a consideration of his views on ethics.

1  The Life of Kiyozawa Manshi KIYOZAWA Manshi’s life spanned the first four decades of the Meiji period, an age of far-reaching change in Japanese history. The arrival of Commodore Perry and his “black ships” off the coast of Japan in 1853 touched off a civil war, leading to the destruction of the Tokugawa shogunate that had ruled Japan for over two and a half centuries. This so-called Meiji Restoration of 1868, which took place when Kiyozawa was five, revived (in theory at least) direct rule by the emperor. In order to create “a rich country and strong military” (J. fukoku kyōhei 富国強兵), the new government reversed the Tokugawa policy of isolating Japan from the rest of the world and began to import new technologies and knowledge from western countries aggressively. As part of their modernization program, the Meiji leaders took steps to create a strong central government by abolishing the autonomous feudal domains into which the country had formerly been divided (1871), creating a modern military (1873), and abolishing the special privileges that had been granted to the samurai class (they were prohibited from wearing their swords, the mark of their distinctive status, in 1876). A western-style educational system was instituted, and American and European teachers were invited to staff the new schools. As a result, Japan was thoroughly transformed, politically, socially and economically, within a few decades. Buddhism also faced great hardships during this period. The Meiji government initially promoted Shintō as the state ideology. As a result, it embarked on a program called shinbutsu bunri 神仏分離 to enforce the strict separation of Shintō 2  Imamura introduced Kiyozawa to a wider audience through his essays and a modern Japanese translation of Kiyozawa’s major works. See Imamura (2001, 2003). He also helped edit a new edition of Kiyozawa’s collected works (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003). FUJITA Masakatsu, Professor of Philosophy at Kyoto University and a student of the Kyoto school, has also published modern Japanese translations of many of Kiyozawa’s writings. See Fujita (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007).

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from Buddhism. In its wake, there erupted an anti-Buddhist haibutsu kishaku 廃仏 毀釈 (literally “abolish Buddhism and destroy Śākyamuni”) movement through which many temples and images were destroyed in various parts of Japan. Although the movement subsided within a few years, the event proved traumatic for Japanese Buddhists. At the same time, it also proved therapeutic, since many Buddhists came to recognize the need to reform their religion, making it more responsive to the needs of the people. KIYOZAWA Manshi was born in 1863 as the son of TOKUNAGA Man’nosuke 徳永満之助, a low-ranking samurai from Owari in present-day Aichi prefecture. Kiyozawa changed his surname after he was adopted into the Kiyozawa family in 1888. When the Meiji government abolished samurai privileges, Kiyozawa’s family was reduced to poverty. As Kiyozawa later confessed, it was mainly to receive a scholarship offered by the Ōtani denomination that he was ordained a priest in 1878. He first studied at the Ikueikō, the denomination’s high school, and, after graduation, was sent to study at Tokyo University, where he majored in philosophy. His teachers included Ernest F. Fenellosa (1853–1908), whose lectures on Hegel greatly influenced Kiyozawa. While still an undergraduate, Kiyozawa also took part in the founding of the Philosophical Society (J. Tetsugakukai 哲学会) and served as one of the editors of its journal, Journal of the Philosophical Society (J. Tetsugakukai zasshi 哲学会雑誌). In 1887, Kiyozawa entered the graduate school of Tokyo University to study religious philosophy. It appeared that Kiyozawa was on his way to a rewarding academic career. However, in 1888, Kiyozawa was suddenly recalled to Kyoto to serve as principal of the Jinjō Middle School 尋常中学校 administered by the Ōtani denomination. Although he had to give up his promising future as a university professor, he did so (he later recalled) out of his sense of obligation to the denomination, which had helped defray the cost of his education. In the same year, he married KIYOZAWA Yasu 清沢やす and was adopted into the Kiyozawa family of Saihōji 西方寺, a major temple in Ōhama in Owari. Subsequently, Kiyozawa was to spend the rest of his life in the relatively restricted world of Shin Buddhism. In 1892, Kiyozawa published the Gaikotsu. This brief volume was the first systematic work on religious philosophy written in Japan. In it, he constructed a distinctive philosophy of religion from a Buddhist perspective, using the notions of the finite and Infinite which he gained from his study of western philosophy. It was translated into English by NOGUCHI Zenshirō  野口善四郎  for the World Parliament of Religion held in Chicago in the following year. Two years earlier, in 1890, Kiyozawa had resigned as principal of the middle school (although he continued to teach there) and had embarked on a regimen of extreme asceticism, which he called, using the English term, “minimum possible.” He exchanged his fine western suits for the simple black robe of an ordinary priest and reduced his diet until he finally ate only pine resin and buckwheat flour mixed with water. As YASUTOMI Shinya notes, Kiyozawa may have been inspired by the examples of SHAKU Unshō 釈雲照 (1827–1909) and FUKUDA Gyōka i福田行誡 (1809–1888), who had earlier sought to revive Buddhism through the strict observation of the precepts (Yasutomi 1999: 70).

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This experiment in asceticism led to tragic consequences, as Kiyozawa contracted pulmonary tuberculosis, a disease that was virtually incurable at that time. Gonnyo 厳如 (1817–1894), the abbot of the Higashi Honganji, had died in January of 1894, and Kiyozawa and the other priests attending the funeral were required to remain standing from 2 a.m. to 5 p.m., their freshly shaved heads subject to freezing weather. As a result, Kiyozawa, who was weak from his protracted experiment in “minimum possible,” fell ill and was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He resigned from his teaching posts and, at the urgings of his friends, moved to Tarumi in Hyōgo prefecture for recuperation. His diary from this period, called Miscellaneous Convalescence Notes (J. Hoyō zakki 保養雑記), shows him in great physical and mental anguish, meditating on his impending death as he constantly coughed up blood. However, this event marked a spiritual turning point in Kiyozawa’s life, as it provided him with an opportunity to reflect on the limitations of his own power and abilities. When he finally accepted his friends’ advice to undertake convalescence, Kiyozawa is said to have told them, “With this, the old Tokunaga has died. From now on, I leave this corpse at your disposal” (Nishimura 1951: 141). These words show that Kiyozawa’s earlier unquestioned confidence in his own ability to attain spiritual perfection, exemplified in his asceticism, was utterly broken. As a result, he was forced to surrender his reliance on his own power and entrust himself to Amida Tathāgata. In traditional Shin Buddhist terms, it can be said that this marked his conversion from self-power to other power. As he later recalled, “During my convalescence in 1895 and 1896, my view of life changed completely and was able pretty much able to overturn my deluded thoughts about self-power” (Nishimura 1951: 142).3 Soon thereafter, Kiyozawa began to apply himself earnestly to the study of Shin Buddhist teachings. In the early months of 1895, he composed two works on Shin doctrine, the Record of Sickbed Repentance (J. Zaishō sangeroku 在床懺悔録) finished in January, and the Draft of a Skeleton of Other Power Philosophy (J. Tarikimon tetsugaku gaikotsu shikō 他力門哲学骸骨試稿) written between February and March. The latter is particularly interesting, since in this work he attempted to explain Shin teachings using the philosophical vocabulary that he developed in the Gaikotsu. Neither work, however, was published during his lifetime. Meanwhile, an ambitious plan to transform the Jinjō Middle School was thwarted by ATSUMI Kaien 渥美契縁 (1840–1906), the secretary general of the Ōtani denomination. As a result, Kiyozawa concluded that a total reformation of the Ōtani denomination was necessary if it were to serve as a genuine spiritual force in Japan. Thus, despite his illness, Kiyozawa started a campaign for denominational reform and began to publish a journal called Timely Words for the Religious World (J. Kyōkai jigen 教界時言) in 1896 to spread his views. The movement, known as the Shirakawa-tō 白河党 (Shirakawa Party) movement, after the village near Kyoto where its office was located, initially gathered considerable support. However, after it succeeded in ousting Atsumi from his post, interest gradually ebbed and the movement ultimately was forced to disband without having achieved its goal of  This is found in a memo dating from 1903.

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total reformation. Moreover, Kiyozawa was expelled from the Shin priesthood for his activities. Deeply disappointed by the failure of the reform movement, Kiyozawa returned to Saihōji. The following years were difficult ones for him. Since his father-in-law was still active as chief priest of the temple, Kiyozawa found his presence there unnecessary and unwanted. Moreover, many of the parishioners criticized Kiyozawa’s sermons as too philosophical and difficult to understand. In addition, his tuberculosis only worsened (Haneda 1984: 85). However, these years were also important ones for Kiyozawa, since he was able to deepen his faith through his trials. Kiyozawa eloquently expressed the faith he attained during these years in the following passage from the December Fan (J. Rōsenki 臘扇記), his diary from this period. Our true self is nothing but this: committing our total existence to the wondrous working of the Infinite, and settling down just as we are in our present situation. Once the commitment to the Infinite is made, life and death are no longer of concern. If even life and death are no longer of concern, then surely there is no need to worry about things of lesser importance. Banishment is acceptable. Imprisonment is bearable. Is there anything in slander, rejection or humiliation that could bother us? No there is not. Even if we did worry and trouble ourselves about things such as that, we could do nothing about them. So we should simply enjoy what have been given to us by the Infinite. (Haneda 1984: 25)

This passage, later incorporated into an article called “The Great Path of Absolute Other Power” (J. “Zettai tariki no daidō” 絶対他力の大道) and published in the journal Spiritual World (J.  Seishinkai 精神界), is one of the most widely known statements of his faith. Here Kiyozawa says that we discover our true selves by giving up attachment to our egotistic desires and entrusting ourselves to the “wonderous working of the Infinite,” that is to say, the salvific power of Amida Tathāgata. By entrusting ourselves to the Infinite, we can accept the world as it is (in the words of the quotation above, “settle down just as we are in our present situation”) and realize inner peace and freedom, liberating us even from the anxiety of impeding death. It may be mentioned that during his period Kiyozawa discovered three texts that he came to value highly: the Āgama sūtras, the Tannishō, and the Discourses of Epictetus. So important were these texts for Kiyozawa that he called them “my triple sūtras.” (The term “triple sūtras” refer to the three central texts of Shin Buddhism: Sūtra of Immeasurable Life, Sūtra on the Contemplation of Buddha of Immeasurable Life and the Amida Sūtra.) Both the Āgama sūtras and the Tannishō were peripheral to the Shin Buddhist tradition—and indeed to Japanese Buddhism as a whole—until they were recovered by Kiyozawa. The Āgama sūtras were traditionally disparaged by Japanese Buddhists as being inferior “Hinayanistic” teachings, but Kiyozawa was drawn to their lively descriptions of Śākyamuni’s earnest quest for enlightenment. Likewise, although the Tannishō 歎異抄, a record of Shinran’s talks taken down by his disciple Yuien, is one of the most beloved religious works in contemporary Japan, it was not widely known until it was rediscovered by Kiyozawa.

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But among the three, the Discourses of Epictetus, written by a Roman slave-­ cum-­Stoic philosopher, is arguably the most significant for the development of Kiyozawa’s thought. Between September and November of 1898, he copied out numerous passages from its English translation in the Rōsenki, revealing the depth of his interest in this text. From Epictetus, Kiyozawa appropriated the distinction between what is within our power to control (J. nyoi 如意) and what is not (J. funyoi 不如意). Concerning the former, Kiyozawa argues that we must exert ourselves to the fullest to achieve our desired goals. However, concerning those things which are beyond our power to control, such as illness and death, we must leave them up to the Tathāgata and accept them calmly. The discovery of this distinction in Epictetus allowed Kiyozawa to gain spiritual peace and have the courage to live his life to the fullest even as his tuberculosis worsened. In 1898, Kiyozawa was reinstated into the Shin priesthood and was called to Tokyo in the following year to become the president of the newly established Shinshū University. In Tokyo, he lived at a house which he named “Kōkōdō” 浩々 洞 (Spacious Cavern) with several of his students, including TADA Kanae 多田鼎 (1875–1937), SASAKI Gesshō 佐々木月樵 (1875–1926) and AKEGARASU Haya 暁烏敏 (1877–1954), all of whom subsequently became leading figures in the Ōtani denomination. Together they began to publish the Spiritual World to disseminate their understanding of Buddhism using non-technical language that everyone could understand. Until it was finally discontinued in 1919, this journal remained one of the most widely read Buddhist publications of the time. In its pages, Kiyozawa wrote extensively on his faith, which he expressed using the term seishinshugi, literally “spirit-ism.”4 It refers to the notion that ultimate fulfillment is to be found not in the pursuit of things external to oneself such as material possessions, wealth, fame, etc. but in finding peace and tranquility within oneself, that is, within one’s own spirit. Such a message found resonance in the hearts of many people of his age. However, a strike by the students of the university, demanding that the school receive accreditation from the Ministry of Education enabling graduates to receive teaching licenses, led Kiyozawa to resign his presidency in 1902 and return to Saihōji. Kiyozawa was opposed to granting teacher’s licenses since he believed that students of a religious university should only concern themselves with spiritual development and not worry about achieving a comfortable career after graduation (Haneda 1984: 88). During the last few remaining months of his life, he wrote some of the most important works of modern Shin Buddhist spirituality, including “Negotiations between Religious Morality (Worldly Truth) and Common Morality” (J. “Shūkyōteki dōtoku [zokutai] to futsū dōtoku no kōshō” 宗教的道徳(俗諦)と  As YAMAMOTO Nobuhiro has recently pointed out, a number of articles published in Spiritual World were revised and even ghostwritten by others, notably AKEGARASU Haya. Hence we must be careful in attributing all the views expressed in the articles to Kiyozawa himself (Yamamoto 2010). Of course, it must be noted that Kiyozawa fully accepted responsibility for everything that was published under his name, even when the article “Seishinshugi to seijo” 精神主義と性情, actually written by Akegarasu, came under attack. See Wakimoto (1992: 150). 4

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普通道徳の交渉) and “Liberation through Other Power” (J. “Tariki no kyūsai” 他 力の救済). In the latter work, Kiyozawa sets forth the essential points of his other power faith, stating, “When I am aware of liberation through other power, the way to live my life becomes clear to me. When I forget liberation through other power, the way to live my life becomes uncertain…. Ah, liberation through other power! How my awareness of it frees me from this world of delusion and suffering! How it makes me enter the Pure Land of peace and tranquility!” (Haneda 1984: 45–46, slightly amended).5 His final work, My Faith (J. Waga shinnen 我信念), written a week before his death, is especially important as a concise but masterly summation of his faith. After coughing up a considerable amount of blood, Kiyozawa fell into a coma and passed away in the early morning of June 6, 1903.

2  Kiyozawa’s Philosophy of Religion Turning now to Kiyozawa’s thought, it can be said that the first half of his career was marked by his interest in religious philosophy and the second half with the development of his distinctive approach to religious practice which he called seishinshugi. This section will be concerned with the former. A noted above, in August of 1892, Kiyozawa published the Gaikotsu in which he set forth his distinctive philosophy of religion from a Buddhist perspective. This work is quite brief, taking up just over thirty pages in his collected works. As a matter of fact, its title is a wry reference to its succinctness. According to the preface by Kiyozawa’s colleague INABA Masamaru 稲葉昌丸 (1865–1944), the book was christened “Gaikotsu” (that is, “Skeleton”) because it only sketches out the main points of his arguments, without sufficiently “fleshing” it out (Ōtani daigaku 2002– 2003: 1, 5). The Gaikotsu is the culmination of Kiyozawa’s sustained investigation into religious philosophy lasting nearly five years. As mentioned earlier, Kiyozawa entered the graduate school of Tokyo University to study this topic. In 1888, the year he took up his post as principle of Jinjō Middle School, Kiyozawa began to publish a series of article entitled “Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion” (J. “Shukyō tetsugaku kōgi” 宗教哲学講義) in the Journal of Buddhist Doctrines (J. Kyōgakushi 教学誌) sponsored by the Japanese Buddhist Society (J. Nihon Bukkyō gakkai 日 本仏教学会) in Kyoto. The first installment contained a projected table of contents consisting of twenty chapters (ten each in Part I “On the Nature of Religion” and Part II “On the Development of Religion”). Of the planned twenty chapters, however, Kiyozawa completed only the first four before the journal was discontinued.6  Haneda used “Power Beyond Self” to translate “tariki.” Although this is an insightful translation, it has been amended to “other power” to conform to the common English translation of this term. 6  As a matter of fact, it is probable that Kiyozawa had decided to stop the series before the journal was discontinued. This is suggested by the fact that Kiyozawa’s last piece was published in volume six of the journal, even though the journal itself continued at least until volume ten was issued. See Fujita 2002: 132–133. 5

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As FUJITA Masakatsu notes, many philosophical terms that come to hold prominent place in the Gaikotsu, including “identity of the finite and the Infinite,” “organic constitution,” and “mutuality of prince and subjects,” already appear in the “Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion” (Fujita 2002: 134–135). As mentioned previously, the Gaikotsu was translated into English a year later. The English generally follows the original, but it is important to note that the translation is changed in many places, sometimes quite significantly. To give one notable example, an entirely new chapter entitled “Religion” is added to the Skeleton. In addition, a number of sentences are omitted or modified, and new passages are frequently added, mostly aimed at making the text easier to understand for a western reader. For the same reason, the Skeleton freely employs words taken from Christianity, such as salvation, grace, and soul, to translate Japanese Buddhist terms. But it should be noted that these changes are not due to the capriciousness of the translator. As Noguchi explains in the translator’s preface, Kiyozawa himself went through the translation, revising it where he felt necessary. (Kiyozawa’s proficiency in English can be seen from the fact that he wrote many essays in this language as a student at Tokyo University.) Hence, the Skeleton is not simply a translation of the Gaikotsu but Kiyozawa’s own revised version of the text aimed at a western audience. Since the gist of Kiyozawa’s arguments in the Skeleton is unchanged from the Japanese original, I will refer to the former in the discussion of his religious philosophy below. The Skeleton consists of an introduction and six chapters: Introduction: Religion and Science; Chapter 1: Religion; Chapter 2: Finite and Infinite; Chapter 3: The Soul; Chapter 4: Becoming; Chapter 5: Good and Bad; and Chapter 6: Peace of Mind and Culture of Virtue. Kiyozawa begins the Skeleton with a brief introduction discussing the relationship between reason (J. dōri 道理) and faith (J. shinkō 信仰). Although Kiyozawa acknowledges that many theories have been proposed as to why religion exists, he argues that it is because all people are endowed with a “religious faculty” (J. shukyōshin 宗教心). Moreover, following the evolutionary view of religion then current in religious studies, he attributes the existence of many different religions in the world to the difference in the degree of development of this religious faculty. With these opening words, he next he turns to the relationship between reason and faith. In Kiyozawa’s view, both reason and faith have the Infinite as their object, but there is a major difference between them in that reason investigates the Infinite with the aim of gaining a thorough understanding of it, while faith firmly believes in the reality of the Infinite and aims to receive blessings (the original Japanese term used in the Gaikotsu is kanka 感化 or “transformative influence”) from it. Hence he maintains that “at the point where philosophy completes its work, there begins the business of religion” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 145). However, Kiyozawa continues that “sometimes reason is indispensable to religion” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 145). For example, he notes that intellectuals must often resort to reason to resolve their doubts before they can commit themselves to a religion. In this way, Kiyozawa emphasizes the importance of reason in religion and even goes so far as to say that if a religious dogma is contradicted by

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reason, we should cast aside the dogma in favor of reason. This is because reason provides the means to correct dubious religious positions, but faith provides no such means of correction (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 145). But  Kiyozawa also warns that, as long as one remains attached to reason, it is impossible to enter the world of faith. Reason, he argues, seeks to explain rationally the state of the universe. However, in order to explain A, it becomes necessary to explain B, and to explain B, it is necessary to explain C, ad infinitum. Hence, Kiyozawa argues that reason is “incomplete” in itself and all explanation must ultimately be founded on faith. However, he concludes that reason and faith “should always help, and can never conflict, with each other” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 144). In the first chapter, “Religion,” Kiyozawa presents twelve definitions of religion and concludes with his own view that religion is the unity of the finite (J. yūgen 有 限) with the Infinite (mugen 無限). Earlier, in the “Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion,” he had maintained that religion is something which makes one “perceive the sublime principle (myōri 妙理) of the universe and makes our mind abide peacefully in the realm of utmost pleasure” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 166). In the Skeleton, however, he focuses on the concepts of finite (defined as all that is dependent, relative, a unit, partial and imperfect) and Infinite (which is described as being independent, absolute, one, whole and perfect) to explicate the nature of religion. Henceforth, the terms finite and Infinite constantly recur in Kiyozawa’s writings, forming the core concepts of his philosophical vocabulary. In the next chapter, Kiyozawa attempts to clarify what he means by finite and Infinite. Kiyozawa declares all things in the universe to be finite, inasmuch as they are delimited by, and distinguished from, all other things. In contrast, the universe itself, which is the sum total of finite things in the world, is Infinite, since “nothing exists outside the universe to limit it” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 140). This means, Kiyozawa further argues, that the Infinite is identical in substance with the finite. The reason he gives is as follows: If the Infinite is different from the finite, there should exist something finite outside the Infinite. However, this is impossible since it contradicts the definition of the Infinite. Hence he concludes that the Infinite is identical in substance with the totality of the finite, inasmuch as they refer to the same thing. To explain the structure of the infinite universe, Kiyozawa employs the notion of “organic constitution” (J. yūki soshiki 有機組織) in which “numberless finite (things) form one body of the Infinite” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 139). Kiyozawa further explains this notion as follows: “Numberless units are none of them independent of, and indifferent to, each other, but are dependent on, and inseparably connected with, one another. Not only so, but by this very dependence and connection, every unit obtains its real existence and significance” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 138–139). In other words, he considers the universe to constitute an organic whole, in which each thing is inter-dependent and inter-connected with all other things. He likens this to the human body in which every constituent part is related to all other parts to form one complete whole. Significantly, Kiyozawa’s use of the notion of organic constitution dates back to university days. In his university notebook, there is a

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lengthy passage entitled “Many Results from One Cause” (J. “Ichi’in taka” 一因多 果) written during his senior year (1886). In this passage, he writes: “As explained above, the myriad things in the universe are mutually related to each other in a thousand, ten thousand and (indeed) innumerable ways. This is called ‘organic relationship’ (J. yūkijō no kankei 有機上ノ関係)” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 4: 172). But where did Kiyozawa get this notion? A number of sources have been suggested. Noting that Kiyozawa frequently uses the term “the unity of things” (J. banbutsu ittai 万物一体) to refer to this notion of organic constitution, YASUTOMI Shinya has suggested that it may have its roots in the Neo-Confucian CH’ENG Hao’s (1032–1085) theory of “the benevolence of the unity of all things.”7 Yasutomi has also argued that it may have derived from Kiyozawa’s reading of the German philosopher Rudolph Hermann Lotze (1817–1881) (Yasutomi 1999: 41).8 Another obvious source is the Huayan (J.  Kegon) doctrine of “Dharma-realm of non-­ obstruction of things” (J. jiji muge hokkai 事々無碍法界), in which the universe (or dharma-realm) is envisioned as one all-encompassing organic unity in which all things are mutually related and dependent on each other. In sum, it must be said that Kiyozawa’s notion of organic constitution was the result of his engagement with a whole range of eastern and western thought. But how is this infinite network of inter-connected things organized? One interesting point that Kiyozawa makes concerning its structure is that there is no fixed center to this network but that each and every thing can become its epicenter. He explains this scheme, which he calls “mutuality of prince and subjects” (J. shuhan kōgu 主伴互具), a term which ultimately derives from Huayan philosophy, using the following diagram. A B

C

D

E

In this chart, the letters A through D represent members of a particular family. When A is taken to be the focal point of this family tree, B, C and D are his sons and E his grandson. However, when the chart is understood from the perspective of C, A is his father, B and D are his brothers and E his son. In this way, the chart can be understood from the point of view of any one person. If A is the center (“prince”), all others are understood in relation to him (as “subjects”), but if C is the center (“prince”) then all others are seen in relation to him (as “subjects”). In this way, the

7  However, as Yasutomi himself notes, “unity” for CH’ENG Hao refers, not to the unity of all things in the universe, but the unity between Heaven (i. e., the emperor) and the people (Yasutomi 1999: 36). 8  Kiyozawa’s Junsei tetsugaku 純正哲学 (Pure Philosophy), published in 1889, is devoted to an analysis of Lotze’s Metaphysics. See Ōtani daigaku (2002–2003, 3: 3–51).

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infinite forms a unified interlocking whole in which each and every thing, as it were, can become its epicenter. With this theoretical discussion of organic constitution, Kiyozawa turns to the question of where the Infinite is to be found and how it can be accessed by the finite. Here Kiyozawa argues that the Infinite can be understood either as potentiality or as actuality. (These are terms used in the Skeleton. In the Gaikotsu, they are called “innate cause” [J. insei 因性] and “resultant substance” [J. katai 果体], respectively.) In the former case, the Infinite is understood as an “undeveloped capacity” or seed residing within the finite. In terms of religious practice, this means that the unity of the finite and Infinite (which, as noted above, is Kiyozawa’a definition of religion) is to be achieved by developing a person’s innate potentiality into the Infinite. In the latter case, the Infinite is perceived as a “developed reality” existing beyond the finite and their unity is attained through the “grace” of the external reality. Significantly, the term “grace” is used only in the Skeleton. In the Gaikotsu, Kiyozawa speaks of the developed reality coming to “embrace and lead” (J. setsuin 摂引) the finite to the Infinite. The term “embrace and lead” has a distinctly Shin Buddhist ring, since Shin Buddhism—as well as Pure Land Buddhism in general— speaks of Amida Buddha “embracing and never forsaking” (J. sesshu fusha 摂取不 捨) all believers. In any case, Kiyozawa calls the former approach the “Self-exertion gate” and the latter the “Other-power or Salvation Gate.” Moreover, he declares that “these two gates are the most fundamental distinction in religion” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 136). Kiyozawa’s underlying paradigm here is the distinction made in traditional Sino-­ Japanese Pure Land Buddhism between the gates of self-power and other power: The former refers to the way to attain Buddhahood through one’s own efforts and exertion, while the latter refers to attaining Buddhahood through first gaining birth in Amida Tathāgata’s Pure Land, relying on this Buddha’s vow to bring all beings to his land. Since the Pure Land provides an unexcelled spiritual environment for practicing the Buddhist path, people born there are ensured of attaining Buddhahood quickly and effortlessly. With these observations, in the next two chapters of the Skeleton (Chapter 3, “The Soul,” and Chapter 4, “Becoming”), Kiyozawa turns to the question of how the finite can develop into the Infinite. In the Gaikotsu, Kiyozawa begins the chapter called “The Soul” (J. “Reikon” 霊魂) with the following words (incidentally, these words are missing in the Skeleton): As I concluded in the former chapter, religion essentially consists in the finite progressing and transforming itself into the Infinite through the workings of the Infinite. From the perspective of the finite, this means that the finite develops itself until it reaches the Infinite. Although the finite can refer to all the multifarious things (in the universe), in our concrete cases, it means that our soul or consciousness develops and evolves until it reaches the Infinite. This is the essential point of religion. (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1:12)

In this passage, reminiscent of Martin Heidegger’s (1889–1976) approach in Being and Time of focusing on the Dasein to explicate the nature of being in general, Kiyozawa takes up the human soul or consciousness as the paradigmatic example of the finite in order to examine how the finite can develop into the Infinite. Significantly,

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however, he also declares that all things can develop into the Infinite, including even things in the non-human and insentient realm, such as trees, grasses and even the land on which they grow.9 It is somewhat surprising to find the term “soul” in a treatise on religion written from a Buddhist perspective, since Buddhism denies the existence of an eternal and unchanging soul or ātman. However, Kiyozawa does not use soul to refer to an eternal substance underlying human existence. Rather, he defines it as the “apperceiving Substance” or self-consciousness “which is a synthetic function accompanying all special acts of consciousness” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 133, 132). In other words, “soul” is used to refer to the human awareness or self-consciousness that serves as the unifying center of one’s experience and thought. Kiyozawa emphasizes the need to posit such self-consciousness because, without it, there would be nothing to ensure the continuity of human consciousness, making memory, imagination, judgment and reasoning impossible and, consequently, making morality and religious practice meaningless.10 In this connection, it may be mentioned that Kiyozawa is extremely critical of materialist thinkers who reduce the mind to the functioning of the nervous system and refuse to accept the reality of the psychic activities, calling their views “the most irrational theory ever known in the history of human thought” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 133). But before addressing the question of how the finite soul develops towards the Infinite, Kiyozawa presents an analysis of causality in general, stating that “since the psychical development is a part of universal becoming,” it is necessary to first “investigate the theoretical foundation of the latter principle” (Ōtani daigaku 2002– 2003, 1: 131). He begins by presenting the traditional Buddhist view that all things are in continual flux: The universe is full of becoming…. The sun, the moon, the stars,—mountains, seas, and rivers,—bodies and forces,—molecules and elements,—plants and animals,—societies and nations,—all these are in constant becoming…. (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 131)

Kiyozawa calls the fact that all things change and evolve over time the “lineal” aspect of becoming. However, he also emphasizes that the transformation of a particular entity is assisted and influenced by various outside conditions as well. This he calls the “lateral” aspect of becoming. Kiyozawa explains these two aspects of becoming using several examples, including that of a pupil and teacher. According to this example, a pupil must exert herself and study over a period of time to gain competence in a certain subject. This is the lineal aspect of becoming. However, the pupil does not become an accomplished scholar on her own but needs the assistance of a teacher to reach her goal.. The influence of the teacher is the lateral aspect of 9  The attainment of Buddhahood by the non-human world, known by the term sōmoku jōbutsu 草 木成仏 (the attainment of Buddhahood by grasses and trees) is a major theme in Japanese Buddhism. See Rambelli (2001). 10  In view of the fact that Kiyozawa was familiar with Hermann Lotze’s thought, it is possible that this argument is based on this philosopher, who stressed the “unity of consciousness” and equated this unified consciousness with the soul. On Lotze’s theory of the “unity of consciousness,” see Copleston (1963, 7: 378).

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becoming. Thus, in the student’s scholarly development, both her own efforts and the teacher’s instruction are necessary. Similarly, Kiyozawa concludes, for anything to change, both an inner cause (the pupil’s sustained effort in the case of the example above) and appropriate condition (the teacher’s instructions) are equally necessary. Obviously, such an explanation of causality is based on the Buddhist notion of dependent origination, wherein the result is considered to arise through the interaction of innate causes and external conditions. Kiyozawa further expands upon his interpretation of causality by availing himself of the Huayan theory of “dependent origination of Dharma-realm” (J. hokkai engi 法界縁起), namely, the idea that the universe is an infinite organic unity in which everything is inter-connected with all other things. This notion naturally follows from Kiyozawa’s theory of organic constitution. According to this theory, for any entity to change and develop, everything else in the universe becomes the condition for its change, influencing and abetting its development. As he explains, All things of the universe are in organic connextion (sic) and stand in the relation of mutuality of influences. So in the becoming of any single thing, there is always the dependence between one’s self and the other. The one’s self is called the Cause, the other the Condition. The condition therefore includes all the factors or the aggregate of things which influence or condition the life and existence of the cause. (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 127)

Once again, Kiyozawa resorts to an example, this time a man living in Japan, to explain what he means. This person, Kiyozawa begins, is sustained by food and goods obtained from all over the world: rice and sake from Japan, manufactures of England, products from America, and so forth. The man is, moreover, influenced by “the sun, moon, and stars of the distant heavens, and by all things visible and invisible of the universe” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 127). Hence, Kiyozawa concludes, “even what seems to be a single insignificant fact is, when minutely examined, connected with and conditioned by, all the things of the universe” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 127). In sum, Kiyozawa holds that causality cannot be reduced to a single cause turning into a single result, but it must be understood as the interaction of inner cause and external condition turning into a result. However, Kiyozawa asserts that the law of causality or becoming described above applies only in the realm of the finite and does not pertain to the Infinite. Hence, although people speak of the Infinite transforming itself into the finite or the finite developing into the Infinite, this is impossible in a literal sense. According to Kiyozawa, the Infinite cannot develop into the finite, since (as noted above) nothing can develop by itself but requires an outside condition to induce its development. This is impossible, however, since the Infinite by definition is the sum total of all things in the universe. If a condition were to be posited outside the Infinite, the Infinite could no longer be an Infinite but a finite entity alongside other finite entities. Thus, the statement that the Infinite develops into the finite, or the finite into the Infinite, must be understood metaphorically. It should not be understood in the same way that a finite thing turns into another finite thing, as when (to use Kiyozawa’s example) a rice seed develops into a rice plant or an egg turns into a chick. In this context, Kiyozawa presents some interesting comments on Hegel’s view that things develop through the triadic structure of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis

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(Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 125–126). In Kiyozawa’s view, this theory is similar to the Buddhist theory that all things arise through the interaction of cause and condition. However, Kiyozawa takes issue with Hegel’s position that the Absolute Spirit develops into the relative world. In Kiyozawa’s view, nothing can develop by itself without an external condition for its development. This applies even in the case of the Absolute Spirit, but, according to Hegel, the Absolute Spirit is by definition absolute, and there can exist nothing outside to induce and influence its development. Hence, from Kiyozawa’s perspective, Hegel’s notion of the Absolute Spirit developing into the relative world is unintelligible. How, then, does the finite develop into the Infinite? Or, to use Kiyozawa’s words, how can our souls progress from the finite to the Infinite? His answer is that although the finite soul can never turn itself into an Infinite non-soul, it can shift its “ideal or object” (the term used in the Gaikotsu is “kyōgai” 境界) from the finite to the Infinite. This explanation is rather hard to understand, but Kiyozawa’s point becomes clearer when we consider the metaphor he uses to explain it. He likens the soul to a gemstone: although the brilliance of the uncut stone is not apparent, after it is polished, it gives off a brilliant light. In Kiyozawa’s words, “It is the same gem before polishing and after it. But formerly it glittered only in the inside, while when it is polished it illuminates far and wide” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 123). As Kiyozawa understands it, this change is not the result of the finite turning into the Infinite. Rather, the finite was originally none other than the Infinite, and the finite only regained its innate brilliance. In another passage, he also explains that since the finite soul is originally in organic connection with the Infinite, its real nature is also the Infinite. In realizing that one’s soul is originally a part and parcel of the Infinite, it becomes possible to perceive (J. kakuchi 覚知) its real nature and abide (J. shosuru 処する) in the realm of the Infinite. The final two chapters, “Good and Bad” and “Peace of Mind and Culture of Virtue,” deal with ethics and religious practice, respectively. In “Good and Bad,” Kiyozawa discusses several contemporary ethical theories and defines the good as all that which helps us progress towards the Infinite and the bad as all that which leads us away from the Infinite. The final chapter, which focuses on religious practice, takes up the two paths for approaching the Infinite discussed earlier: the self-­ exertion gate and the other power gate. In both of these gates, religious practitioners strive to gain unity with the Infinite. However, in the self-exertion gate, the Infinite is understood to reside within oneself, or, as Kiyozawa says, “it recognizes the infinite capacity within the soul, or in other words, it recognizes the Infinite as the potential Infinite” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 117). Hence the religious goal of the practitioners of this gate consists of actualizing the Infinite within themselves. In contrast, the other power gate “recognizes the Infinite as a real power outside of ourselves, or, in other words, it recognizes the Infinite as the actual Infinite” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 1: 117). Hence, the practitioners seek to recognize and accept the “grace” (the term used in the Gaikotsu is “transfer of merit by other power” [tariki ekō 他力回向]) that is bestowed by the other power.

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In this way, Kiyozawa sketched out the outline of his philosophy of religion in the Skeleton. Although he relies heavily on the western intellectual tradition to formulate his system, it is clear that his basic orientation derives from Buddhism, particularly from Huayan Buddhist philosophy and Pure Land Buddhism.

3  Seishinshugi As described above, during the latter half of his twenties, Kiyozawa devoted himself to the study of religious philosophy, and his research culminated in the publication of the Gaikotsu in 1891. However, after he contracted tuberculosis two years later, he turned his back on the academic study of religion and instead came to devote himself to spiritual self-cultivation. His meditations on “the great matter of birth-­ and-­death” (to use a traditional Shin Buddhist term) led him to develop his distinctive view of faith, which he called seishinshugi. From 1901 until his death in 1903, he developed and disseminated his seishinshugi philosophy in his essays written for the Spiritual World. The seishinshugi view of life proved extremely popular, appealing especially to the spiritual confusion and loss that afflicted many people during this age. After three decades of bewildering change, the Meiji government had succeeded in transforming Japan into a modern industrialized nation. It had weathered the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, a major uprising by disgruntled former samurai, and in the wake of widespread demand by newly formed political parties, promulgated the Meiji Constitution in 1889, instituting a popularly elected parliament. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, the tremendous changes of the earlier years had ushered in an age of disillusionment and introspection, especially among students and young people. Many of them came to question the value of devoting their lives to the pursuit of social and material success and turned their attention to religion, literature, and philosophy. As ANESAKI Masaharu (1873–1949) wrote in his History of Japanese Religion, the label used to characterize these youths was “hanmon” 煩悶 or “spiritual anguish.” Symptomatic of the malaise of the age was the sensational suicide of FUJIMURA Misao 藤村操 (1886–1903), who killed himself by jumping into the Kegon waterfall at Nikkō in April of 1903, just weeks before Kiyozawa’s death. Fujimura was a promising seventeen-year old student of the elite First Higher School, the preparatory division of Tokyo University. His last testament, carved into a tree trunk near the waterfall, declared that life is “incomprehensible” (J. fukakai 不可解), or, as paraphrased by Anesaki, “a meaningless trial not worth enduring, a riddle never to be solved by religion or philosophy” (Anesaki 1963: 376). Fujimura’s death was widely reported in the press, leading to a number of similar suicides by other “anguished” youths.11  On Fujimura’s suicide and the sense of spiritual anguish it engendered among the youth of the age, see Kinmonth (1982: 206–40). The notion of hanmon and its relation to Japanese literature of this age is explored in Hiraishi (2002).

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The seishinshugi message of inward cultivation found a ready audience among young people seeking spiritual direction in this introspective age. Kiyozawa, too, when he contracted tuberculosis, was thrown into utter despair and experienced life as “incomprehensible.” In an autobiographical passage in his final essay, “My Faith,” he says, “Except for the period when I was not serious about life, I always felt a keen desire to inquire into the meaning of my life. As a result of that inquiry, I eventually reached the conclusion that the meaning of life is incomprehensible. That conclusion has led me to trust in Tathāgata” (Haneda 1984: 55, slightly amended). Although Kiyozawa, like Fujimura, was driven to declare that life is incomprehensible, the experience did not lead him to a nihilistic suicide. Instead, the experience paradoxically allowed Kiyozawa to surrender his egotistical attachments to the self and to entrust himself to Amida Tathāgata, thereby enabling him to live out his life in peace and contentment. In the first issue of Spiritual World, he wrote an article, appropriately entitled “Seishinshugi,” in which he gave a concise outline of his thought. This article begins with the following well known words. It is important to establish our lives upon perfectly firm ground. Without a firm basis, all of our efforts will be in vain. It is like doing acrobatics atop a cloud—an impossible feat: The performers are sure to fall. How can one attain that perfectly firm ground? In my opinion, we arrive at it only through an encounter with the Infinite, or the Absolute. (Haneda 1984: 15)

Here Kiyozawa stresses the need to acquire a “perfectly firm ground”—that is to say, an unshakable faith—if we are to live our lives to the fullest. Such perfectly firm ground, he argues, can only be gained by entrusting oneself completely to the Absolute or the Infinite, that is to say, Amida. As Kiyozawa defines it, seishinshugi is the path of spiritual development through which we gain this perfectly firm ground. There is no need to argue whether the Infinite is to be found within or outside ourselves, since it is not an objective entity that exists somewhere but a subjective reality that manifests itself to a person who has encountered the Infinite through faith. As Kiyozawa says, “Because the Infinite is where the seeker finds it, we cannot define the Infinite as internal or external” (Haneda 1984: 15). Once we have gained such a perfectly firm ground of existence, continues Kiyozawa, we can find true spiritual contentment and live freely and spontaneously, no matter what misfortune may befall us. Such understanding is already clearly expressed in a passage cited earlier from his diary, the Rōsenki, which states that once we have acquired this perfectly firm ground, “life and death are no longer of concern. If even life and death are no longer of concern, then surely there is no need to worry about things of lesser importance” (Haneda 1984: 25). Once we have entrusted ourselves completely to the Infinite, even illness and death, not to mention lesser troubles like loss of fame and fortune, can be accepted calmly. In another entry from this diary, he declares, “Demand not. Seek not. What discontentment can you possibly have? If you are discontent, isn’t that a sign of distrust? Hasn’t Heaven endowed you with all you need? … If you suffer from feelings of discontentment,

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you must further cultivate yourself so that you may learn to be content with the Mandate of Heaven” (Haneda 1984: 26–27).12 Although he uses Confucian terms like “Heaven” and “Mandate of Heaven” here, Kiyozawa’s point is that we can accept whatever situation in which we may find ourselves if we can only give up our self-centered desires and commit ourselves to the Infinite. If we fail to find contentment in our present situation, it is because we have not fully entrusted ourselves to the Infinite. Indeed, he even goes so far as to say, “All sufferings must be regarded as illusions arising wholly from false ideas,” especially the idea that we are in full control of our destinies (Haneda 1984: 17–18). Although Kiyozawa emphasizes the importance of finding inner peace, it does not mean that he enjoins his readers to withdraw from the surrounding world and remain indifferent to it. Rather, as our faith in the Infinite deepens, we not only find ourselves less troubled by outer things, but we also discover that we can, and must, work to transform the world to mirror our spiritual condition. In other words, in deepening our faith in the Infinite, “not only can we deal with people without frustration and distress, but we can transform such activities into a meaningful part of our lives” (Haneda 1984: 16). Anticipating a criticism that was later leveled at him, Kiyozawa maintains that the seishinshugi quest for inner contentment is not a form of spiritual egotism or an escape from the realities of the world. Rather, his point is that unless we first gain a perfectly firm ground for our lives, it is impossible to influence the world around us. He concludes, Thus seishinshugi never rejects but rather welcomes our involvement with people, which can increase both their happiness and ours. Therefore, seishinshugi is never the creed of hermits or passivists. Rather, it encourages and promotes the welfare of the people and the nation through peaceful cooperation. (Haneda 1984: 17, slightly amended)

As this passage indicates, seishinshugi, in Kiyozawa’s view, leads to active engagement with the world. In the latter part of the essay “Seishinshugi,” Kiyozawa stresses that seishinshugi is the path to absolute freedom. But if one tries to act freely just as one pleases, does this not conflict with the freedom of others? Kiyozawa argues that it does not. This is because, like Martin Luther, he understands absolute freedom to be simultaneously absolute submission to others. When we surrender ourselves to the Infinite, our egotistical attachments are completely extinguished, enabling us live and work in the world without coming into conflict with others. At the same time, we can freely take on the demands placed on us by others, since we no longer evaluate such demands as bothersome burdens to be avoided at all costs. In an interesting essay entitled “Seishinshugi and the Three Periods of Time” (J. “Seishinshugi to sanze” 精神主義と三世) written in 1902, Kiyozawa explains that people who follow the path of seishinshugi accept their past with resignation, abide in the present with tranquility, and face the future with energy and enthusiasm. We often dwell on painful events that occurred in the past, but according to Kiyozawa,  This entry, dated February 25, 1899, is later incorporated into the essay “The Great Path of Absolute Other Power.”

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this arises from our inability to come to terms with these events. However, the anger and suffering that memories of past experiences evoke, he maintains, are ultimately subjective feelings, meaning that they are within the range of things that we can control and change. When we realize that our feelings about past events can change, the negative emotions associated with these events disappear, and we can accept them with resignation or, on a more positive note, even with a sense of gratitude. Although the discussion above may give the impression that seishinshugi is obsessed with the past, Kiyozawa argues that this is not the case. In his opinion, the primary importance of seishinshugi lies in the fact that it allows us to live the present moment to the fullest, with an attitude of peace and tranquility. He says, Seishinshugi advocates that our own spirit is of utmost importance. Wherever our spirit is content with the situation in which it finds itself and is able to act freely and without obstruction—that is where we can live in peace. Moreover, I declare that we cannot gain this contentment and freedom unless our spirit is embraced by the compassionate light of the Infinite. (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 6: 92)

Here, Kiyozawa argues that contentment with one’s present situation is gained through faith, which he describes, using the traditional imagery found in Pure Land texts, as the state of being embraced by the compassionate light of Amida. Inasmuch as this unwavering faith frees us from all anxieties, it allows us to act freely and without obstruction, even when we are faced by seemingly insurmountable difficulties. And, turning from the present to the future, Kiyozawa concludes that this faith allows us to face the future with vigor, confronting all adversities with cheerfulness. In this way, in his essays in the Spiritual World, Kiyozawa repeatedly emphasizes the importance of faith, which provides a “perfectly firm ground” of human existence, allowing us to live, to use a traditional Shin Buddhist terms, in a state of anjin 安心 or “peace of mind.” Moreover, he argues that this faith is gained by entrusting oneself wholly to the Infinite, or Amida Tathāgata. What, then, are the characteristics of this Tathāgata? Kiyozawa treats this issue in “My Faith,” his final, and touchingly personal, testimony. He begins this essay by noting that his faith consists of believing in the Tathāgata, and that the Tathāgata is the essence of his faith. Hence, Kiyozawa understands Amida Tathāgata not in traditional Pure Land Buddhist terms as a transcendental being presiding over a splendid Pure Land in the west, but, in the words of HANEDA Nobuo, as “the fundamental reality underlying my existence as a believer” (Haneda 1984: 53). In other words, for Kiyozawa, Amida is less the lord of a postmortem paradise than the source of the salvific power that allows us to live in this world in peace and tranquility. From such perspective, in the main body of the essay, Kiyozawa describes the Tathāgata in dynamic terms as infinite compassion, infinite wisdom, and infinite power. It is infinite compassion, since faith in the Tathāgata frees us from all worries and endows us with happiness. It is infinite wisdom because, through faith, we perceive that the human intellect is limited. When we reach the limits of our intellect, we must make a “leap of faith” and place our trust in the Tathāgata. The realization

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that the human intellect was imperfect was felt especially poignantly by Kiyozawa, who started out as a student of philosophy. In this essay, he confesses, In my religious conviction, I am now aware of the utter uselessness of my self-efforts. In order to realize this, I had to pursue all kinds of intellectual investigations until I finally came to the point where I recognized the utter futility of such efforts. It was an extremely painful process. Before reaching that ultimate point, I thought at times that I had formed some ideas about my religious conviction. But one after another each of those ideas was smashed. Such bitter experiences were unavoidable as long as I sought to establish my religious conviction on the basis of logic or scholarly inquiry. After going through such a difficult process, I have come to realize that I cannot define good or evil, truth or untruth, happiness or unhappiness. Aware of my total ignorance, I have come to entrust all matters to Tathāgata. This is the most important point in my religious conviction. (Haneda 1984: 55–56)

Through a painful process of realizing the limits of his intellect, Kiyozawa states that he was able to entrust himself to the Tathāgata, who is none other than infinite wisdom. Finally, the Tathāgata is infinite power, since it provides us with the strength to live despite all the troubles that plague our lives. Kiyozawa reminiscences, We all know that we should not speak indiscreetly, we should not behave improperly, we should not break the law, we should not act immorally, we should not be impolite, we should not forget our manners. We also know that we must accept responsibility for ourselves, strangers, parents, husband, wife, children, sisters, brothers, friends, good people, bad people, the elderly, and the young. In this case, we are talking about only the most basic ethical principles and we find it difficult to fulfill even these. Anyone who has earnestly tried to observe each and every one of his ethical principles will have to admit the task is impossible. I suffered a great deal under that impossible burden. Had I no other prospect than to bear that impossible burden, I would have committed suicide long ago. But religion has relieved me of my suffering and I no longer feel any need to resort to suicide. (Haneda 1984: 59–60)

Kiyozawa here explains Amida’s infinite power with reference to the problem of morality, which will be taken up at greater length in the following section. He begins by noting that people are imbedded in a network of social obligations, many of which conflict with each other and are impossible to fulfill perfectly. Due to his samurai background, Kiyozawa possessed an inordinately strong sense of duty. But especially in the years after he contracted tuberculosis, he found himself unable to fulfill the duties and obligations that were thrust upon him. The resulting sense of distress and helplessness he experienced even lead him to contemplate suicide. However, continues Kiyozawa, when he attained faith in the Tathāgata, he was relieved of his distress. This was because, in entrusting himself to the Tathāgata, he realized that the Tathāgata has “assumed the burden of my every responsibility.” He explains as follows: Nothing, not even the worst evil, can hinder the working of Tathāgata. There is no need for me to deliberate on what is good or evil, right or wrong. There is nothing I cannot do. I act as I please and do as I am inclined. There is no need for me to be concerned about my every action, even if it turns out to be a mistake or a crime. Tathāgata takes on the responsibility of all my actions. I need only trust in the Tathāgata to live in constant peace of mind. (Haneda 1984: 60)

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Here Kiyozawa makes the radical statement that “nothing, not even the worst evil, can hinder the working of the Tathāgata.” These words are based on the Tannishō, which states that those who entrust themselves to the Tathāgata have no need to “despair of the evil they commit, for no evil can obstruct the working of Amida’s Primal Vow” (Hirota 1997, 1: 661). Since nothing can obstruct the workings of the Tathāgata, Kiyozawa argues that the Tathāgata can free him from the consequences of any action he may take. Hence he no longer has to worry whether he can carry out his obligations or whether his actions are good or evil. By entrusting himself to the salvific power of Amida, Kiyozawa declares that he was liberated from his obsessive need to fulfill his moral obligations flawlessly, thereby freeing him to live his life to the fullest.

4  Kiyozawa’s Ethical Thought Kiyozawa held a distinctive view of ethics, which is closely related to his seishinshugi philosophy. As noted in the previous section, the issues of moral responsibility and the human inability to fulfill it, rooted in Kiyozawa’s own experience, held a central place in his ethical writings. Although I have already discussed this p oint briefly at the end of the previous section, in the following pages, I will review the development of ethical thought chronologically, focusing especially on several essays written for the Spiritual World. But before turning to this topic, it may be useful to outline the historical context in which he wrote these essays. As Gilbert L. Johnston has noted, “Public discussion of issues pertaining to civil morality was a characteristic feature of Japanese society during the 1890s and early 1900s” (Johnston 1991: 32). As a result of Japan’s headlong rush to modernize itself on the basis of new forms of learning imported from the west, many Japanese, both inside and outside the government, came to feel that traditional morality was being dangerously undermined. Moreover, with the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution in 1889 and the beginning of representative government, the Meiji oligarchs who ruled Japan in the name of the emperor felt the need to exalt the imperial institution in order to ensure their own hold on power. As a result, the Imperial Rescript on Education was issued in 1890, the year after the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution. As for the nature of this document, Johnston continues, The Rescript, with its strong endorsement of Confucian virtues, clothed in nativist terms that enabled those virtues to seem uniquely Japanese, very quickly became the centerpiece of a new ethos of patriotic nationalism. The word kokutai (national polity) emerged in conjunction with the new ethos as an expression of the distinctive character of the Japanese state founded upon an unbroken imperial line. Loyalty and filial piety, the two central virtues heralded by the Rescript, became, for all practical purposes, the hallmarks of civilized moral behavior. (Johnston 1991: 32)

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The Rescript, with its emphasis on the virtues of loyalty to the emperor and filial piety, became the centerpiece of a new civil morality that remained dominant until the end of the Second World War.13 A year after the Rescript was issued, UCHIMURA Kanzō 内村鑑三 (1861– 1930), a Christian and a teacher at the First Higher School, refused to bow down before this document and the portrait of Emperor Meiji. In the ensuing uproar, Uchimura was forced to resign. Seizing this opportunity, INOUE Tetsujirō 井上哲 次郎 (1855–1944), professor of philosophy at Tokyo University and the author of the influential Commentary on the Imperial Rescript (Chokugo engi 勅語衍義), launched an attack on Christianity, denouncing this religion, with its emphasis on universal love, as antithetical to the virtues of imperial loyalty and filial piety propounded in the Rescript. In the end, Inoue’s argument, developed most forcefully in his book entitled Clash between Education and Religion (J. Kyōiku to shukyō no shōtotsu 教育ト宗教ノ衝突) won out, and the position that ethics—or more properly, the civil morality proclaimed in the Rescript—takes precedence over an individual’s religious convictions became widely accepted by Japan, Buddhists included (Sueki 2004: 28–30). The Japanese Buddhists’ acquiescence to the nationalistic argument that civil morality takes precedence over personal religious conviction was facilitated by the existence of the traditional Japanese Buddhist theory of “ōbō-buppō sō'e 王法仏法 相依 (literally, “the interdependence of the king’s law [secular law] and the Buddhist law”) or “the idea that the state and Buddhism are dependent on each other as the (two) wings of a bird or two wheels of a cart” (Adolphson 2000: 15). Although Shinran himself was critical of secular authority,14 his successors sought accommodation with the political authorities. As a result, they used the ōbō-buppō theory to stress that Shin believers should obey the king’s laws in everyday life. The ōbō-buppō theory was further developed by Shin Buddhists in the Meiji period using the doctrine of the two truths (J. shinzoku nitai 真俗二諦).15 Traditionally, the two truths referred to the two levels of reality perceived by an awakened person: the supreme truth (S. paramārtha satya) and the worldly truth (S. saṃvṛti satya). The former refers to the ultimate truth about existence, namely that all things are empty, while the latter refers to the world as conventionally experienced by ordinary people. In the Meiji period, however, Shin Buddhists ­reinterpreted these truths in order to develop a new discourse emphasizing the importance of upholding secular morality. According to this new theory, the two truths refer to the two goals that a Shin Buddhist believer should strive to achieve: the goal of birth in  On the creation of a civil morality based on the Rescript in Meiji Japan, see Gluck (1985: 102–569). 14  In the Epilogue to the Kyōgyōshinshō, Shinran bitterly recounts how Honen’s exclusive nenbutsu movement was banned by the government, resulting in the execution of several monks and his banishment to Echigo province. Significantly, in this passage, Shinran specifically criticizes the emperor, the ex-emperor, and his ministers who carried out the persecution. See Hirota (1997, 1: 289). 15  On the development of the Shin Buddhist doctrine of the two truths, see Yasutomi (1999: 76–78). 13

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the Pure Land, equated with the absolute truth, and adherence to secular morality, equated with the worldly truth. The former can be attained only after death, while the latter is to be cultivated in the present life. Based on this theory, it was argued that, as long as one is alive, it is the duty of the faithful Shin Buddhist to follow the moral maxims of society (that is, the worldly truth), including loyalty to the emperor, filial piety, and the five constant virtues (humanity, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faithfulness) derived from Confucianism. Such a morally correct life was considered necessary in order to attain birth in the Pure Land (that is, the absolute truth) in the next life. In this way, the Shin Buddhist denominations inculcated their believers to accept and follow the laws and conventions of society, promising that they will be rewarded with birth in the Pure Land after they died. In the ways recounted above, the nationalistic emperor-centered morality became normative in Japanese society in the 1890s and 1900s. However, Kiyozawa’s interpretation of the relationship between religion and morality developed in a direction quite at variance with the ways sanctioned both by Meiji ideologues and the Shin Buddhist institution. Kiyozawa’s interest in ethics dates back to his university days. The papers he wrote at this time include a rather lengthy essay comparing Spinoza’s ethics with that of Plato (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 4: 28–39). Also, as noted above, the Skeleton contains a chapter entitled “Good and Bad” in which the good is defined as that which leads to the Infinite and the bad as that which leads away from the Infinite. In the essays found in the Spiritual World, he begins to develop his ideas in novel ways. Unlike Inoue, who stressed the priority of loyalty and filial piety over personal religious conviction, Kiyozawa understood ethics as a step on the way to religion. For the second issue of Spiritual World, issued in February of 1901, Kiyozawa authored an essay entitled “The Unity of All Things” (J. “Banbutsu ittai” 万物一 体), in which he addressed the ethical implications of his theory of organic constitution developed in the Gaikotsu. As noted above, the notion of organic constitution holds that everything in the universe is interdependent and inter-connected. According to Kiyozawa, this implies both that everything in the universe belongs to me and, more importantly, that I exist for the sake of all other things in the universe. As illustration, Kiyozawa quotes the well-known verses from the Lotus Sūtra: “Now these three spheres16/ Are all my possession./The living beings within them/Are all my children” (Hurvitz 2009: 67). In the sūtra, this passage describes the Buddha’s compassionate concern towards the world and its beings, but on Kiyozawa’s reading, this passage means that we have an infinite responsibility towards all other entities in the world. It is from this insight into the interdependence of all things, he argues, that both civil morality and the Buddha’s desire to save all beings arise. However, Kiyozawa asks rhetorically, is it really possible for us to accept all living beings as our own children and take responsibility for their spiritual and ­material welfare? His answer is no. Only a Tathāgata, a perfectly enlightened being, can do so. In fact, when we realize that, in practical terms, it is beyond our power to follow the moral command to serve and save all beings, we are immediately assailed by 16

 The realms of transmigration.

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pangs of conscience and afflicted by an acute sense of our inability, rooted in our karmic evil, to help others. Paradoxically, however, this actually proves that we are, by nature, moral and religious beings. When we experience the stirring of such feelings in our hearts, it is a sign that our innate morality and religiosity are attempting to break through our egocentric selves to assert themselves. Hence, argues Kiyozawa, when we are blocked in our attempt to fulfill our responsibility towards others, the pangs of conscience we initially feel gradually turns into an awareness of our karmic evil, which in turn leads us to enter the path of religion to seek liberation from our bondage to birth-and-death. In other words, it is our despair over our inability to fulfill our ethical responsibilities that leads us to embrace religion. In the final portion of the essay, Kiyozawa concludes that, although morality can provide us with the standards of good and evil conduct, it cannot show us the way to extinguish the torments that come from an evil conscience. Only religion can do so. In the case of Shin Buddhism, deliverance comes from entrusting oneself to Amida, who promises to save all beings, taking responsibility for them all, whether they are good or evil, wise or foolish. In this way, Kiyozawa concludes this essay by arguing that ethics necessarily culminates in religion. Kiyozawa further develops his ethical thought in “Peace Beyond Ethics” (“Rinri ijō no an’i” 倫理以上の安慰) published in the Spiritual World in September of 1902. In this essay, he confronts the problem of the human inability to fulfill moral responsibility. How can we free ourselves from the sense of despair arising from our moral shortcomings? Kiyozawa answers that it can be attained through faith in Amida Tathāgata. He starts this essay by citing the example of TAIRA no Shigemori 平重盛 (1138–1179), a samurai of the Kamakura period, who was tormented to the point of death by the need to choose between obedience to the emperor and to his father (the famous warlord TAIRA no Kiyomori 平清盛 [1118–1181]), that is to say, between the obligations of loyalty and filial piety. But, argues Kiyozawa, Shigemori’s despair came from the fact that he placed the greatest importance on worldly ethical norms. However, if he had only acquired a “perfectly firm ground” or faith in the Infinite, Kiyozawa maintains, Shigemori would have been able to live freely without worrying about the ethical demands placed on him. How can faith provide us with this perfectly firm ground that frees us from such despair? Here Kiyozawa first develops his idea, later expressed more fully in “My Faith,” that, when we entrust ourselves completely to the Tathāgata, the Tathāgata frees us from the demands of morality by taking on all of our ethical responsibilities in our place. As a result, “I no longer have any responsibility concerning anything that happens in the universe. I leave it all up to the Tathagata” (Ōtani daigaku 2002– 2003, 6: 121). Kiyozawa explains this further using the Buddhist notion of non-self: RENNYO Shōnin said, “The Buddha Dharma refers to (the teaching of) non-self,” and for one who has believed in the power of the Tathāgata, one’s every raising of the hand, one’s every kick of the foot, is caused by the Tathāgata. One does not perceive the self at all. Since there is no self, it follows that there is nothing you might call the responsibility of the self.

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If RENNYO Shōnin were to appear in today’s world and speak in the words of today, he would surely say that the Buddha Dharma is to be without self-imposed responsibility, trusting in the power of the Tathāgata. (Johnston 1991: 40, slightly altered)

Through faith in the Tathāgata, we awaken to the truth of non-self: that there is no eternal and unchanging “self” underlying our phenomenal existence. Once we realize this fact, we are freed from both attachments to this false sense of “self” as well as the sense of responsibility it engenders. Hence, we are freed from the self-­ imposed responsibility by entrusting ourselves to the Tathāgata. Three days after “Peace Beyond Ethics” was published, Kiyozawa received a letter from KATŌ Hiroyuki 加藤弘之 (1836–1916), the leading Japanese philosopher of the day and Kiyozawa’s senior at Tokyo University, demanding a more detailed explanation of the views presented in this essay (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 5: 390). We do not know what prompted Katō’s request, but it was probably provoked by Kiyozawa’s apparent disregard of the virtues of loyalty and filial piety. Kiyozawa responded four months later with “A Basis Beyond Ethics” (“Rinri ijō no konkyo” 倫理以上の根拠) included in the Spiritual World issued in January of 1903. In this essay, Kiyozawa defined ethics as the principles of human relationship, the most important of which are loyalty to the emperor and filial piety. But, however important these virtues may be, inasmuch as they (along with all other ethical injunctions) are concerned with relationships within the human realm, they only have relative and finite value. True spiritual contentment can only be gained through faith in the Tathāgata. Concludes Kiyozawa, “Once I attain the Tathāgata’s absolute and infinite light within my heart, wherever its spirit is activated, I always recognize an absolute and infinite realm, and in terms of its ethical practice, I attain complete, unobstructed freedom” (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 5: 134). Through our encounter with this light, which symbolizes the salvific power of Amida, we attain true fulfillment, which cannot be attained through ethics. It is significant that, in this essay, Kiyozawa unequivocally rejects the argument that loyalty to the emperor and filial piety provide the ultimate grounds of human fulfillment. Kiyozawa’s further clarifies the relationship between morality and religion in another essay written four months later for the Spiritual World. This essay, entitled “Negotiations between Religious Morality (Worldly Truth) and Ordinary Morality,” was published less than a month before his death. In this essay, he challenges the Shin Buddhist understanding of the role of ethics in religion as enshrined in the two truths theory described above. In Kiyozawa’s understanding, the two truths theory is a profound and sublime teaching, whose goal is to lead all living beings to enlightenment. Hence, inasmuch as the worldly truth is taught by the Buddha for soteriological purposes, it cannot be identical to secular morality, which simply teaches worldly values. In both worldly and religious ethics, the values that are taught are the same: loyalty to the emperor, filial piety and so forth. However, the question for Kiyozawa is why such worldly virtues are taught in Buddhism. Simply put, his answer is that it was taught not because we are expected to fulfill these virtues but to make us realize the impossibility of fulfilling our moral obligations completely, and, hence make us turn to the path of religion. As he explains,

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In any case, the aim of the worldly truth in Shin Buddhism is not to make us fulfill these virtues and act in a respectable manner. Thus, the aim of the worldly truth in Shin Buddhism differs considerably from the everyday ordinary morality, whose aim is to make us act in a respectable manner. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether we act in a respectable or detestable manner. That is not the aim of the Shin Buddhist teaching of the worldly truth. What then, is the aim of the Shin Buddhist worldly truth? Its aim is to make us realize that it is difficult to fulfill these (virtues). (Ōtani daigaku 2002–2003, 6: 152–153)

In the final analysis, the role that moral teaching plays in Shin Buddhism is to show that morality cannot be fulfilled and, through such realization, lead us to entrust ourselves in the salvific power of the Tathāgata.

5  Conclusion Although Kiyozawa’s seishinshugi proved highly influential, it was also subject to widespread criticism.17 Even during his lifetime, its emphasis on introspection and inward cultivation was attacked as a form of escapism or withdrawal into one’s private world gained at the expense of ignoring the many serious social and political problems confronting the country. A representative example of such criticism is found in an article entitled “The Craze of Weakness Thought (Nietzsche-ism and Seishinshugi)” (J. “Ruijaku shisō no ryūkō [Niiche shugi to seishinshugi]” 羸弱思 想の流行 [ニイッチェ主義と精神主義]) by SAKAINO Kōyō 境野黄洋 (1871– 1933). This article was published in the journal Shin Bukkyō (New Buddhism), the organ of another influential contemporary Buddhist movement called “Fellowship of New Buddhists” (J. Shin Bukkyō dōshikai 新仏教同士会) in which Sakaino was a leading member. In this article, Sakaino faulted both Nietzsche and Kiyozawa as “emphasizing feeling and intuition at the expense of the rational side of human nature” (Johnston 1991: 44) and characterized Kiyozawa as an advocate of “resignation-­ism” (J. akirameshugi アキラメ主義). More recently, SUEKI Fumihiko has argued that, although the overriding importance that Kiyozawa gave to faith provided him with a vantage point from which to critique the imperial ideology of the Meiji state, the fact that he denied the importance of worldly morality made it difficult for him to engage in any constructive criticism of the problems that Japanese society was confronting (Sueki 2004: 36–37). It certainly cannot be denied that the emphasis on the inner cultivation of faith can be, and often has been, used to justify passive acceptance of fate and to condone turning a blind eye to social problems. Indeed, it must be admitted that Shin Buddhists who followed in Kiyozawa’s footsteps were unable to deal effectively with the problems of nationalism and imperialism that eventually led to Japan’s militarization and the tragedy of the Second  World War. However, it must be ­ remembered that Kiyozawa’s seishinshugi did not lead him to shun the world. As the brief outline of his life above reveals, Kiyozawa was actively engaged in the world throughout his 17

 On criticisms leveled against Kiyozawa by his contemporaries, see Johnston (1991: 43–45).

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life. Even as his illness worsened, he exerted himself as a teacher and writer in order to work for the reform and to dissemination of Buddhism. As Johnston notes, Because he spoke so much about contentment, there were those who thought he was advocating a withdrawal into a private sphere unrelated to the objective world. In actual fact, he believed that contentment was the only adequate starting point for an active life in society. Lack of contentment, he thought, caused people to seek fulfillment in such things as money, possessions, position in society, worldly success, and the like. Likewise, lack of contentment caused people to follow after intellectual or patriotic movements which, themselves, held little promise of being able to guarantee personal fulfillment. So the religious life, as he saw it, was not simply an end in itself; it was the one satisfactory way of fortifying oneself for active involvement in society. (Johnston 1991: 47)

Here we may recall Kiyozawa’s words, already cited above, that seishinshugi is not a philosophy of world renunciation but rather “encourages and promotes the welfare of the people and the nation.” Furthermore, as Sueki has noted in a later article, Kiyozawa has a relational understanding of human existence which has important ramifications for ethical thought (Sueki 2008: 125–126).18 As discussed above, Kiyozawa understands human existence to be fundamentally relational and expresses this using the Huayan theory of the interdependence of all things in the universe. Although we can only speculate, if Kiyozawa had been able to live longer, he might have been able to develop his understanding of faith to encompass this interpersonal aspect of human existence.

Works Cited Adolphson, Mikael S. 2000. The Gates of Power: Monks, Courtier, and Warriors in Premodern Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Anesaki, Masaharu. 1963. History of Japanese Religion. Reprint. Rutland: Tuttle. Copleston, Frederick. 1963. A History of Philosophy, Volume VII: Modern Philosophy from the Post-Kantian Idealists to Marx, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. New York: Doubleday. Fujita, Masakatsu 藤田正勝, trans. 2002. Gendaigoyaku: Shukyō tetsugaku gaikotsu 『宗教哲 学骸骨』 [Modern Japanese Translation: A Skeleton of a Philosophy of Religion]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. ——— 藤田正勝, trans. 2003. Gendaigoyaku: Tarikimon tetsugaku gaikotsu 『現代語訳 他力門 哲学骸骨』 [Modern Japanese Translation: Skeleton of a Philosophy of Other Power]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. ——— 藤田正勝, trans. 2004. Gendaigoyaku: Seishin shugi 『現代語訳 精神主義』 [Modern Japanese Translation: Seishin shugi]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. ——— 藤田正勝, trans. 2005. Gendaigoyaku: Waga shinnen 『現代語訳 我信念』 [Modern Japanese Translation: My Faith]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. ——— 藤田正勝, trans. 2007. Gendaigoyaku: Zaishō sangeroku 『現代語訳 在床懺悔録』 [Modern Japanese Translation: Record of Sickbed Repentances]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. Gluck, Carol. 1985. Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Haneda, Nobuo, trans. 1984. December Fan: The Buddhist Essays of Manshi Kiyozawa. Kyoto: Higashi Honganji.  Sueki states that the importance of Kiyozawa’s understanding of the relational existence of human existence for ethical thought is on par with that of Levinas’ understanding of the “ Other.”

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Hiraishi, Noriko 平石典子. 2002. Meiji no hanmon seinen tachi 「明治の「煩悶青年」たち」 [The Anxious Youth of the Meiji Period]. Bungei gengo kenkyū: bungakuhen 『文芸原語研 究・文芸篇』 [Etymological Research] 41: 15–84. Hirota, Dennis, trans. 1997. The Collected Works of Shinran, 2 vols. Kyoto: Jōdo Shinshū Hongwanji-ha. Hurvitz, Leon, trans. 2009. Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma. New  York: Columbia University Press. Imamura, Hitoshi. 2001. Gendaigoyaku: Kiyozawa manshi goroku 『現代語訳 清沢満之語録』 [Modern Japanese Translation: Records of Kiyozawa Manshi]. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. ———. 2003. Kiyozawa manshi no shisō 『清沢満之の思想』 [Kiyozawa Manshi’s Thought]. Kyoto: Jinbun Shoin. Johnston, Gilbert. 1972. Kiyozawa Manshi’s Buddhist Faith and Its Relation to Modern Japanese Society. PhD dissertation, Harvard University. ———. 1991. Morality Versus Religion in the Late Meiji Society: Kiyozawa Manshi. Japanese Religions 16 (4): 32–48. Kinmonth, Earl H. 1982. The Self-Made Man in Meiji Japanese Thought: From Samurai to Salary Man. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nishimura, Kengyō 西村見暁. 1951. Kiyozawa manshi sensei 『清沢満之先生』 [My Master Kiyozawa Manshi]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. Ōtani daigaku 大谷大学, ed. 2002–2003. Kiyozawa manshi zenshū 『清沢満之全集』 [Collected Works of Kiyozawa Manshi], 9 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Rambelli, Fabio. 2001. Vegetal Buddhas: Ideological Effects on Japanese Buddhist Doctrines on the Salvation of Inanimate Beings. Kyoto: Scuola Italiana di Studi sull’Asia Orientale. Sueki, Fumihiko 末木文美士. 2004. Kindai nihon to bukkyō 『近代日本と仏教』 [Modern Japan and Buddhism]. Tokyo: Transview. ——— . 2008. Kiyozawa manshi ni okeru shukyō to rinri 「清沢満之における宗教と倫理」 [Religion and Ethics in Kiyozawa Manshi]. Gendai to Shinran 現代と親鸞 [Today and Shinran] 14: 103–158. Terakawa, Shunshō. 1973. Kiyozawa manshi ron 『清沢満之論』 [A Study of Kiyozawa Manshi]. Kyoto: Buneidō. Wakimoto, Heiya 脇本平也. 1982. Hyōden kiyozawa manshi 『評伝清沢満之』 [Kiyozawa Manshi, A Critical Biography]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. ——— . 1992. Kiyozawa manshi: Seishin shugi no bukkyō kakushin 「清沢満之—精神主義と 仏教革新」 [Kiyozawa Manshi: Seishin Shugi and the Reformation of Buddhism]. In Jōdo Bukkyō ni shisō 14 『浄土仏教の思想 14』 [The Philosophy of Pure Land Buddhism 14], ed. Heiya Wakimoto 脇本平也 and Akira Kawanami 河波昌, 3–191. Tokyo: Kōdansha. Yamamoto, Nobuhiro 山本伸裕. 2010. ‘Seishin shugi’ to ha ikanaku shisō na no ka? Zasshi Seishinkai keisai ‘Waga shinnen’ womeguru ichikōsatsu「精神主義とは如何なる思想な のか? 雑誌『精神界』掲載「我信念」をめぐる一考察」 [Who Formulated the ‘Seishin-­ shugi’ Movement? A Study of ‘Waga shinnen’ Published in the Seishinkai]. Gendai to Shinran 『現代と親鸞』 [Today and Shinran] 20: 2–22. Yasutomi, Shinya 安冨信哉. 1999. Kiyozawa manshi to ko no shisō 『清沢満之と個の思想』 [Kiyozawa Manshi and the Philosophy of the Individual]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. Yoshida Kyūichi 吉田久一. 1961. Kiyozawa manshi 『清沢満之』 [Kiyozawa Manshi]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan. Robert F. Rhodes is Professor of Buddhist Studies at Otani University. He received his PhD in East Asian Language and Culture from Harvard University. His research interests include Japanese Pure Land Buddhism and Sino-Japanese Tiantai/Tendai teaching. He is the author of a book on the life and thought of Genshin, a major Japanese Tendai Pure Land monk, entitled Genshin’s Ōjōyōshŭ and the Construction of Pure Land Discourse in Heian Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2017). Together with Mark L.  Blum, he has also edited a collection of essays called Cultivating Spirituality: A Modern Shin Buddhist Anthology (SUNY, 2011).

Chapter 24

Inoue Enryō’s Philosophy of Buddhism Rainer Schulzer

INOUE Enryō 井上円了 (1858–1919) was born in a village temple of the “True Pure Land School” (Jōdoshinshū 浄土真宗) near Nagaoka town in today’s Niigata prefecture. As the eldest son, he followed his father into the priesthood when he was 13 years old. The implementation of Japan’s first modern school system offered him the chance to learn English and other western subjects from the age of 15. When he was 19, his order, the “Eastern Temple of the Original Vow” (J. Higashi honganji 東 本願寺), summoned the promising young priest to Kyoto. The same year, 1877, Tokyo University was founded in the new capital. Thus, only a few months after arriving in Kyoto, Enryō was sent to Tokyo to study western scholarship and science at Japan’s first state university. The reform movement of his sect was hoping to demonstrate that True School faith did not contradict modern civilization in any fundamental way. At Tokyo University, Enryō encountered western philosophy and indeed became Japan’s first graduated philosopher in 1885. Enryō embraced this new model of scholarship and fundamentally altered his standpoint. In the literal sense, “Buddhist philosophy” (J. bukkyō tetsugaku 仏教哲学) first emerged in Japan when Western philosophy and Buddhism met in the academic framework of Tokyo University. Enryō represents this encounter more than any other intellectual during the Meiji period. Among his ample writings we find Buddhist philosophy in two senses: (1) Philosophy with a Buddhist character in the way it was later championed by the Kyoto School and (2) the philosophy of Buddhism as the foundation of Buddhism as a religious institution. Here I will concentrate on the second sense. Regarding the first sense, that is, Enryō’s reformulation of the metaphysics of Tiantai (J. Tendai) 天台 (“Heavenly Plain”) and Huayan (J. Kegon) 華厳 (“Flower Ornament”) Buddhism using the language of modern academic philosophy, I refer to the R. Schulzer (*) Toyo University, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_24

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p­ ublication by TAKEMURA Makio 竹村牧男 in the first issue of International Inoue Enryō Research (Takemura 2013). This article, “On the Philosophy of Inoue Enryō,” is the first comprehensive English language account of Enryō’s metaphysical ideas. Two years after graduation from Tokyo University, Enryō published Prolegomena to a Living Discourse on Buddhism (J. Bukkyō katsuron joron 仏教活論序論) (IES 3: 325–393). This slim volume, which is the only complete work translated into English so far, contains, in condensed form, Enryō’s central ideas about a modern doctrinal foundation of Buddhism (see Staggs 1979: 162–453). In the preface, he declared his rejection of the priesthood’s ordinary apologetic standpoint and expressed his preference for neutral judgments based on philosophical reason. Henceforth a lay scholar, Enryō would not defend Buddhism because he “loved the man Shakyamuni, but because he loved the truth.” The external criteria Enryō applied to prove the value of Buddhism were (1) truth according to philosophical or scientific evidence and (2) contribution to national welfare. He summed them up in his lifelong philosophical slogan, “Protection of Country and Love of Truth” (J. gokoku airi 護国愛理) (IES 3: 327–329). Enryō’s belief that Buddhism fulfills both criteria was grounded in his overall notion that Buddhism is philosophy applied within religious practice for the benefit of society. The tripartite work he announced in the Prolegomena was to consist of a Living Discourse on Refuting the False (J. Haja katsuron 破邪活論), Living Discourse on Disclosing the Right (J. Kenshō katsuron 顕正活論), and Living Discourse on Protecting the Dharma (J. Gohō katsuron 護法活論). Enryō adopted the Buddhist terminology in the titles of these works, that is, “arguing right and wrong” (J. haja kenshō 破邪顕正) in order to “protect the Dharma” (J. gohō 護法) from the reform movement of his sect.1 This suggests that Living Discourse on Buddhism (J. Bukkyō katsuron 仏教活論) as a whole was meant to fulfill the mission with which Enryō was originally sent to Tokyo. However, instead of only presenting a modernized version of True School doctrine, Enryō became a philosophical advocate for a trans-­ sectarian New Buddhism. The first part, Living Discourse on Refuting the False, has, as Enryō explains, a preliminary function (IES 4: 221). It discusses Christian and Buddhist cosmology by comparison with the modern scientific worldview. Whereas the Buddhist universe of beginning and endless causal relations was in harmony with the scientific theories of the conservation of energy, causality, and evolution, the Christian creationist worldview contradicted science and hence was incompatible with modern civilization. Enryō’s judgment about the non-scientific character of Christianity draws heavily on arguments spread by the Londoner X-Club, which was influential in the early days of Tokyo University.2 In fact, besides “refuting the false,” the term  This is based on a note from NANJŌ Bun’yū 南条文雄, who was one of Enryō’s mentors (Ōtani Daigaku 2001, 1: 45). 2  It was not only the works of Herbert Spencer (1820–1930) but also other X-Club (1864–1893) members, such as Thomas H. Huxley (1825–1895), John Tyndall (1820–1893), and John Lubbock (1834–1913) that were widely read at the early Tokyo (Imperial) University. Several books of 1

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“haja” 破邪 had acquired the additional meaning of “destroying the evil” Christian teaching, since the time of the early Christian missions in East Asia.3 Although Enryō denied this meaning of the title of his book (IES 4: 23), for the educated reader the connotation was certainly noticeable. While Living Discourse on Refuting the False is a summary of Enryō’s arguments for the superiority of Buddhism over Christianity that takes “objective” science as a standard, the second book, Living Discourse on Disclosing the Right, contains Enryō’s positive arguments for the “subjective” or immanent truth of Buddhism (IES 4: 262–263). In order to demonstrate Buddhism’s philosophical character, Enryō attempted to disclose the immanent structure or the logical organization of Buddhism. While drawing on the East Asian tradition of “teaching classifications” (J. hankyō 判教), he differed from orthodox accounts in that he did not arrange the various schools, sūtras, and teachings according to the biography of the Buddha. The historical foundation that the Mahāyāna sūtras were indeed spoken by Shakyamuni Buddha had already been shaken to its core. Also different from Kūkai 空海 (774–835), who classified the various teachings as stages of the ascending mind, Enryō wanted to reveal the logical patterns in the historical development of Buddhism. Georg W.  F. Hegel (1770–1831), whose Phenomenology of Mind (G. Phänomenologie des Geistes) bears similarities with both Kūkai’s and Enryō’s viewpoint, had in fact influenced Enryō’s approach. The first generation of enlightenment thinkers of the Meiji period were convinced that the East Asian history of thought was backwards and stagnant because it lacked a culture of discussion and dissent. By revealing dialectical patterns in its genealogy, Enryō meant to prove Buddhism’s progressive philosophical character. In this context, he pointed to the analogy between the pattern of “thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis” (J. seihangō 正反合) and the Yogācāra notion of the “middle of neither existence nor emptiness” (J. ukūchū 有空中) (IES 4: 251–261). The Buddhist doctrine of the Middle Path as it became influential in East Asia was not constructed as the avoidance of extremes but as the sublation (G. Aufhebung) of opposites. The dualisms of being and non-being, affirmation and negation were to be transcended to a higher synthesis, which is ultimately equivalent to the non-discriminative state of enlightenment. Enryō believed that the historical development of Buddhism could be reconstructed as the progressive spelling out of all possible metaphysical positions following dialectical patterns. Through this, Buddhist philosophical truth would become more and more abstract and Buddhism itself more and more encompassing. The apex of such a complete system was to be reached in the unbiased Spencer and Tyndall were reprinted for use as textbooks by the Faculty of Literature of Tokyo University. 3  A phonetic transcription of the name Jesus, written yaso 耶蘇, was coined during the seventeenthcentury Jesuit mission in China. The first character of this Chinese rendering of “Jesus” is a variant of ja in haja 破邪 and has in various contexts the same meaning. The character ja 邪 can be translated as “false” but also as “evil.” Therefore, for both compounds, yaso 耶蘇 and haja 破邪, a second interpretation was also possible: The Chinese transcription of Jesus can be read as “evil resurrecting,” and haja 破邪, which had originally meant “refuting false [views]” or “destroying evil,” acquired “destroying Christianity” as a secondary meaning.

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notion of the middle subsuming all possible viewpoints. Enryō mostly referred to this highest notion of Buddhism, which he believed to coincide with Hegel’s Absolute or Herbert Spencer’s “Unknowable,” as “Suchness” (J. shinyo 真如). The logical organization and dialectical progress of Buddhism served to prove another crucial point in Enryō’s thought. At Tokyo University, Enryō had not only encountered the historical and dialectical thinking of nineteenth-century Europe but also evolutionary theory. One of his teachers, the American Ernest F.  Fenollosa (1853–1908), aimed at synthesizing Hegel’s philosophy with the new biological thinking as represented by Herbert Spencer’s (1820–1903) theory of social organisms.4 The fact that the history of Buddhism follows an immanent logic demonstrates, according to Enryō, that the organized, that is, the organic whole of Buddhism appeared as a “living thing” (J. katsubutsu 活物). This point is crucial for at least three of Enryō’s central arguments about Buddhism. First, it allows him to argue that the Mahāyāna was not only a legitimate but a superior form of Buddhism, since not the seed but the fruits are the finest part of the tree (IES 4: 219f). Second, it makes intelligible that Buddhism, perceived as a social organism, has always adjusted itself to its environment. Therefore, Buddhism could be, and indeed had to be, reformed again and again to be fit for modern civilization (IES 4: 221). Third, only activity itself, which is implied in vitality, guaranteed that Buddhism is able to contribute to the maintenance of society and the “protection of the country.” “Vitality” (J. katsu 活) is one of Enryō’s key concepts that runs through all his writings. Together with “love of truth” and “protection of country,” it constitutes the core of Enryō’s value system. Following a suggestion of Enryō himself, the title of his main work, Living Discourse on Buddhism, could also be translated as Theory of the Vitality of Buddhism because its main objective was to reveal Buddhism’s inherent organic system (IES 4: 213). Since his adolescent years, Enryō firmly professed the ideas of “civilization” and “enlightenment.” This conviction was never abandoned but was superseded by the national principle. In order to face the challenge of the new age, Japan had to become an enlightened and modern country. Accordingly, if Buddhism was to make a contribution to the protection of the country, it had to become the religion of an enlightened and civilized society. In the Prolegomena, Enryō proclaimed with the pathos of the religious reformer: “I relinquished my long cherished wish to found a new religion. I came to the resolution to reform Buddhism and to make it the religion of the enlightened world. This was the year 1885. I think of it as the year zero of the reform of Buddhism” (IES 3: 337). Different from Christianity, Buddhism had the potential to become the religion of a civilized Japan. However, the necessary reform was not just a new course or a new emphasis: Buddhism had to make a full dialectical turn. It had to be turned upside down so that “dead Buddhism” would become “living Buddhism.” Just as his contemporary Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) appealed to the new value of life when condemning the founders of European civilization, Paul (d. 67) and Socrates 4  This is testified by INOUE Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎 (1856–1944) in his 1933 Meiji tetsugaku kai no kaiko 明治哲学界の回顧 [Reminiscence of the Philosophical World during Meiji].

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(d. 399 B.C.E.), for their alleged nihilism, Enryō chided traditional Buddhism for being world-negating, passive, nihilistic, and dead. Buddhism had to be inverted to become a positive, active, and optimistic religion (IES 4: 482–483). What was Enryō’s justification that Buddhism made into its opposite was still Buddhism? In one argument he employed the dialectics of the Middle Path. Only the viewpoint which subsumed every other perspective and was unbiased and complete could be upheld as the truth of the Middle Path. In order to accomplish this path, the teaching of celibacy and vegetarianism had to be complemented by a teaching that allowed marriage and meat eating. The Buddhism of world renunciation had to be complemented by a Buddhism of worldly activism (IES 3: 387–388). This application of speculative logic in practical discourse is arguably the most problematic feature of Enryō’s Buddhist philosophy. Obviously everything can be justified as Buddhism in this way. The Buddhism which teaches peace must be complemented by the Buddhism which goes to war. Life and death, peace and war, good and bad are but two sides of one coin, all encompassed in the unlimited and unbiased potential of Buddhism. The obscuration of the original significance of the Middle Path by theoretical speculation is, in fact, regrettable. Rather than transcending or sublating opposites, the Middle Path, as found in the Pali scriptures, teaches the avoidance of extremes. According to the orthodox biography of the Buddha, he went from the luxurious life of the palace to the other extreme of a life-threatening asceticism. Only after he recognized such extremes as harmful did he find salvation in the middle between licentiousness and rigor. In this instance we have a better argument, since it might be elaborated that every individual and every generation has to search for its own balance between the extremes, not by including them but by avoiding them. This interpretation of the Middle Path will not bring about a revolution but allows for a correction of Buddhism in modernity. However, Enryō had another, more convincing argument for the potential of Buddhism to be world-affirming and proactive. In the last part of his magnum opus on the vitality of Buddhism, he argued that the Mahāyāna itself was meant to be a new, socially engaged Buddhism. After publishing the Prolegomena in 1887, Enryō finished the first and second part of his major work before the end of 1890. The third part, announced as Living Discourse on Protecting the Dharma, did not appear until 22 years later in 1912. It was then published with the plain title Vitalizing Buddhism or Living Buddhism (J. katsubukkyō 活仏教). In this final part of his main work, Enryō outlined the necessary reforms of Buddhism for relating to modern society. However, before addressing this topic, Enryō presented a new account of Mahāyāna philosophy. He claimed that all doctrines of the Great Vehicle could be reformulated in terms of three principles, namely, phenomena, causality, and suchness. They would correspond to the three categories, “attribute” (J. sō 相), “function” (J. yū 用), and “substance” (J. tai 体), as taught in the Awakening of Mahayana Faith (J. Daijō kishinron 大乗起信論). As long as Mahāyāna Buddhism did not divert from these fundamental principles, it could adjust to social change.

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How does this Buddhist metaphysics provide a foundation for the engaged Mahāyāna Buddhism Enryō called for? In his Buddhist writings, Enryō’s fundamental claim that Buddhism applies philosophy in religious practice appears in at least three variations: (1) Buddhism’s theoretical doctrines point the way for ascetic and meditative practices. (2) The moral law of karma is an application of the theoretical doctrine of causality. (3) Awakening to suchness motivates the person to moral action. In Living Buddhism, the third argument plays the key role, which goes along with an orthodox delineation from “Hīnayāna” Buddhism. In Enryō’s view, the older Pali Buddhism represents the individualistic, world-transcending path before enlightenment, whereas the Mahāyāna represents the stage after enlightenment is achieved. Upon the overcoming of their own suffering, the practitioners turn back to practical life in order to save their fellow human beings. Thus, the Bodhisattva Path is not dwelling upon one’s own liberation but bringing the received grace back to the world. Based on the Mahāyāna teaching of compassion, Enryō called for a “secular Buddhism” (J. seken bukkyō 世間仏教) (IES 3: 388) that is broadly engaged in education, mission, and welfare (see Inoue 1898). By demanding institutional modernization, so that Mahāyāna Buddhism would live up to its claim of being a religion of altruism, Enryō became a pioneer of modern East Asian Buddhism. A re-evaluation of the laity and stronger social engagement are common tendencies in postwar Korean, Taiwanese, and Japanese Buddhism. A positive reception of Enryō’s work, however, will be tempered by his explicit nationalistic agenda. Although it can be argued that Enryō’s appeal to concrete welfare action for the sake of the nation did not differ from, for example, Saichō’s 最澄 (767–822) ideas (see Takemura 2012: 130–136), there remains a well-founded, contemporary suspicion regarding the East Asian paradigm of “state-­ protecting” (J. gokoku 護国) Buddhism promoted in the age of nationalism. Enryō was an early representative of this feature of pre-war Japanese Buddhism. He demanded that Japan established overseas missions in the acquired and desired colonies in order to support Japanese rule and to spread Japanese Buddhism. These demands were based on the fact of international competition and the desire to build a rich and strong country.5 Far from arguing for the separation of religion and the state, Enryō also argued for governmental protection and a privileged legal status for Buddhism (see Inoue 1890a, 8: 49–69).6 Enryō’s actual influence and effect is difficult to assess. He played an undisputed important role for the early reform movement by giving Buddhism a new and confident voice in the emerging public sphere. However, once modern Buddhist studies outgrew its fledgling stage, Enryō was left behind. Ever since Enryō has not been read or positively received by Japanese Buddhist scholars for two main reasons. First, the sectarian pluralism of Japanese Buddhism has largely reproduced itself in modern academia. Most schools maintain a research institute for sectarian doctrine  He discusses this topic in his 1904 essay Tairo yoron 対露予論 [My Argument against Russia] (ISE 25: 596–613). 6  He advances this argument in his 1890 Nihon seikyō ron 日本政教論 [Treatise on Politics and Religion in Japan] (ISE 8: 49–69). 5

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and a sectarian university with an emphasis on philological research. There are only two universities with a strong background in Buddhist studies in a trans-sectarian spirit, Tōyō University, founded by Enryō in 1887, and Taishō University founded in 1926. Thus, the ecumenical initiatives of Enryō and other Meiji Buddhist leaders did not succeed in changing the sectarian landscape of Japanese Buddhism in a significant way. Second, and, I believe, more importantly, Enryō not only belongs to the first generation of modern Buddhist scholars in Japan but also to the last generation that was not trained in Sanskrit. Enryō’s writings were not considered historically reliable by the founding figures of modern Japanese Buddhist philology such as ANEZAKI Masaharu 姉崎正春 (1873–1949) and TAKAKUSU Junjirō 高楠順 次郎 (1866–1945). In 1905, Enryō, using only the Chinese canon, still argued for the traditional view that the Mahāyāna sūtras were spoken by Buddha Shakyamuni (IES 5: 296–363). This is the real cause why Enryō is seen by Japanese Buddhist scholars today as not much more than a preliminary episode towards the maturation of modern Buddhist studies in Japan. Indeed many of Enryō’s historical suppositions have been proven wrong by later philological scholarship. One such example is the claim that the Awakening of Mahayana Faith serves as authority for and early summary of Mahāyāna doctrine. This should not, however, belie the fact that Enryō’s main aim was not to be historical. In the preface to the Prolegomena he wrote: [a]lthough there is among Christians much talk that the basic texts of Buddhism are Indian, that the Mahāyāna is not the Buddha’s teaching, that Shakyamuni in fact did not exist, etc.. This [talk] does not concern me in the least. The biography of the man may be not detailed and the origin of the teaching may not be clear. [Anyway,] I would never be so blind and ignorant as to believe a teaching because of its origin or tradition. I only will believe it if it is consistent with today’s philosophical reasoning, and I will reject it if it is not. (IES 3: 327f)

What is exposed in this paragraph is the starting point for a philosophy of Buddhism in the confines of reason. Doctrinal studies, as Enryō envisioned them, are the equivalent to systematic theology in Christian studies. Enryō, however, had few successors. Later examples of a Buddhist quest for a philosophical foundation may be found in the writings of KIYOZAWA Manshi 清沢満之 (1863–1901) and the works of SUZUKI Daisetsu 鈴木大拙 (1870–1966). Today, such debates seem almost absent in Japanese Buddhist studies, aside from the short outbreak of intense debate instigated by the Critical Buddhism scholars. Doctrinal investigations are largely confined to the sectarian perspective, whereas other research is pursued in a strictly historical and philological manner. Modern Japanese Buddhist scholarship has a great many undisputed achievements. However, from Enryō’s perspective it would not be much more than the “dead” scholarship of commentarial analysis and exegesis with modern methods. As TAKEMURA Makio, second-generation disciple of SUZUKI Daisetsu and the 41st president of Toyo University, has remarked in his book Is Buddhism Really Meaningful?, “The majority of scholars in Buddhist studies are doing research under the premise that Buddhism is a good thing, but they are not proficient in reflecting on this premise” (Takemura 1997: Preface). Pointedly, Enryō wanted to initiate an academic discourse about what Buddhism is and what it

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should be, about the value of Buddhism and its contribution to the modern world, about the philosophical foundations of Buddhism and a Buddhist philosophy of religion. In this specific sense, Enryō stands alone as the single founding figure of Buddhist philosophy in Japan.

Works Cited Abbreviations IES Inoue Enryō senshū 『井上円了選集』. 1987–2004. Selected Writings of Inoue Enryō. 25 vols. Tokyo: Tōyō Daigaku.

Primary Sources Inoue, Enryō 井上円了. 1887a. Bukkyō katsuron joron 「仏教活論序論」 [Prolegomena to a Living Discourse on Buddhism], IES 3: 325–93. –––––. 1887b. Bukkyō katsuron honron: Haja katsuron 『仏教活論本論:破邪活論』. [Living Discourse on Buddhism: Refuting the False]. IES 4: 21–185. –––––. 1890a. Nihon seikyō ron 「日本政教論」[Treatise on Politics and Religion in Japan], IES 8: 49–69. –––––. 1890b. Bukkyō katsuron honron: Kenshō katsuron 『仏教活論本論:顕正活論』 [Living Discourse on Buddhism: Disclosing the Right]. IES 4: 187–371. –––––. 1898. Sōhei kairyō ron 『僧弊改良論』 [About Reforming the Deficiencies of the Clergy]. Tokyo: Morie Shoten. –––––. 1912. Katsu bukkyō 『活仏教』 [Living Buddhism], IES 4: 373–536.

Other Sources Inoue, Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎. 1933. Meiji tetsugaku kai no kaiko 『明治哲学界の回顧』 [Reminiscence of the Philosophical World during Meiji]. Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten. Ōtani Daigaku 大谷大学. 2001. Ōtani daigaku hyakunen shi 『大谷大学百年史』 [One Hundred Years of History of Ōtani University], ed. Ōtani Daigaku Hyakunenshi Henshūiinkai 大谷大学 百年史編集委員会, vol. 1. Kyoto: Ōtani Daigaku Staggs, Kathleen M. 1979. In Defense of Japanese Buddhism: Essays from the Meiji Period by Inoue Enryō and Murakami Senshō. Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University. Takemura Makio 竹村牧男. 1997. Bukkyō wa hontō ni imi ga aru noka 『仏教は本当に意味が あるのか』[Is Buddhism Really Meaningful?]. Tokyo: Daitō Shuppansha. –––––. 2012. Nihon bukkyō: shisō no ayumi 『日本仏教: 思想の歩み』 [Japanese Buddhism: The Course of its Thought]. Kyoto: Jōdoshū Shuppanshitsu. ———. 2013. On the Philosophy of Inoue Enryō. Trans. Rainer Schulzer. International Inoue Enryo Research 1: 3–24.

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Rainer Schulzer is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Toyo University in Tokyo. Previously he was a research associate at Tübingen University’s Department of Japanese Studies. His research interests include Buddhist philosophy, comparative ethics, and the early reception of Western philosophy in East Asia. His PhD thesis Inoue Enryō: A Philosophical Portrait submitted to Humboldt University of Berlin was the first comprehensive study of Inoue Enryō in a European language. The revised manuscript will be published as a monograph in late 2018.

Chapter 25

Nishida Kitarō as Buddhist Philosopher: Self-Cultivation, a Theory of the Body, and the Religious Worldview Mayuko Uehara

1  Introduction Studies of NISHIDA Kitarō (西田幾多郎) (1870–1945) in the field of philosophy often treat the Buddhist dimension of his work. There are plenty of literary works as well as abundant scholarly papers on this theme in Japanese that make this Buddhist aspect of Nishida distinctly evident. Outside of Japan, American academic circles, with their 60 years’ history of studies on Nishida’s philosophy, tend to regard his philosophy as Buddhist philosophy. Some scholars’ interpretations seem to place much emphasis on the identity of Nishida’s philosophy as Mahāyāna Buddhism, especially Zen 禅, as if to claim that his philosophy is simply what expresses

John W. M. Krummel is an Associate Professor at the Department of Religious Studies, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, USA. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the New School for Social Research and a Ph.D. in religion from Temple University. He is the author of Nishida Kitarō’s Chiasmatic Chorology: Place of Dialectice, Dialectic of Place. His writings on topics such as Heidegger, Nishida, Schürmann, and Buddhist philosophy, among others, have appeared in a variety of philosophy journals and books. He is also the Editor of Contemporary Japanese Philosophy: A Reader and the Co-translator of Place and Dialectic: Two Essays by Nishida Kitarō. He has translated other works from Japanese and German into English. He is the Co-Editor for Social Imaginaries, Assistant Editor of The Journal of Japanese Philosophy, and the President of the International Association of Japanese Philosophy. This chapter was translated by John W. M. Krummel (Hobart and William Smith Colleges). M. Uehara (*) Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_25

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Buddhist thought in philosophical language.1 But Nishida himself took precautions against this sort of viewpoint that regarded his philosophy solely as Zen. In recent years, however, in North America and Europe, studies of modern Japanese philosophy, in which Nishida may play a central role, have made rapid progress in the direction of seeking novel philosophical possibilities.2 This promises to advance the scholarly understanding of Nishida’s thought without necessarily focusing on its Buddhist aspects. In 2011, corresponding to the 100th anniversary of the publication of his Inquiry into the Good (J. Zen no kenkyū 善の研究), had Nishida been able to be aware of the actual scholarly situation in the West, he would realize the force of his own “philosophy” that is still alive today. With that said, I will look at Nishida as a Buddhist philosopher. In other words, this paper will examine the relation between his philosophy and his experiences in Buddhist practice, that is, sitting meditation (J. zazen 座禅), to which he devoted himself in his youth for 10  years. We may freely associate these experiences, as revealed in his diary and correspondence, with his philosophical thinking, as supported by his use of Sino-Japanese terms and his development of a logic that is suggestively East Asian, in many cases Buddhist, in perspective. He never revealed, within his philosophical texts, the sources of his thinking. Scholars have thus not ceased to inquire after the “Buddhist philosophy” of Nishida, as if it were the invisible logic behind his philosophical thinking. As INOUE Katsuhito 井上克人 made clear in his latest work, Nishida’s monism, or, more appropriately speaking, his logic of “immanent transcendence” (J. naizaiteki chōetsu 内在的超越), was the product of his philosophical training founded on the logic of “ being in itself and activity” (J.  taiyū 体用),3 namely, that of the Awakening of Mahāyāna Faith (S. Mahāyāna Śraddhotpāda Śāstra, J. Daijōkishinron 大乗起信論). According to Inoue, the generation prior to Nishida, INOUE Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎 (1855–1944), INOUE Enryō 井上円 (1859–1919), KIYOZAWA Manshi 清澤満之 (1863–1903), and MIYAKE Setsurei 三宅雪嶺 (1860–1945) advanced the “theory that actuality is immediately reality” (J. genjitsu soki jitsuzai ron 現実即実在論), an eclectic standpoint based on the Awakening of Mahāyāna Faith and reformulated in Western philosophical terms. Nishida was neither the first nor the only philosopher in modern Japan who “consciously systematized the tradition of Japanese thought, assimilating Western philosophy.” Inoue Katsuhito also points out our negligence of the history of Japanese philosophy during the Meiji  For instance, see Robert E. Carter’s affirmation: “What distinguished him, however, was his passion for rendering Buddhist paradoxical utterance, or the Zen experience of immediacy, understandable in the several ‘languages’ of Western philosophy” (Carter 1997: xxiii). This perspective would run the risk of averting the fundamental intention of Nishida’s philosophical project. It is our understanding that his philosophy is not another version of Buddhism but aims at explaining reality. 2  See for example, Bret W. Davis, Brian Schroeder, and Jason M. Wirth’s Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School (2011). This is a representative publication, which reports the latest interests in Japanese philosophy in the Anglophone world. 3  Frédéric Girard gives one explanation of this term when he suggests that “être en soi et activité; la chose en elle-même et le déploiment de ses fonctions” (Girard 2008: 1516). 1 

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period and the tendency to lump all Japanese thought together under the category of Zen (Inoue 2011: 152, 159). We need to take note of this remark and hope that it will encourage further development of the comparative studies of Japanese philosophy relative not only to Zen but also to East Asian thought in general. Nevertheless, as a preliminary examination for the purpose of this paper, I will restrict myself to the task of taking up Zen in relation to Nishida. However, the principal course of our reflection will focus on the “theory of the body” that Nishida earnestly formulated after the 1930s for the purpose of relating his experiences of self-cultivation, in particular sitting meditation, to his philosophical thinking. Nishida’s theory of the body explains the human body through his original concepts and expressions such as “active intuition” (J. kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観), “historical body” (J. rekishiteki shintai 歴史的身体), and “from the made to the making” (J. tsukurartea mono kara tsukuru mono e 作られたものから作るものへ). Here, the body is conceived of as a medium for the historical world as well as for the human being existing therein. The concepts of his later philosophy are characterized, on one hand, by this somatic vision, and, on the other hand, by the “absolutely contradictory self-identity” (J. zettaimujunteki jikodōitsu 絶対矛盾的自己同 一), “inverse correlation” (J. gyakutaiō 逆対応) and “depth in the ordinary” (J. heijōtei 平常底), of which the latter two are crucial concepts of his final stage, that is, his philosophy of religion. My purpose will be to clarify any link between his theory of the body and other key concepts relative to his philosophy of religion. This question generally seems to have been put aside: how did Nishida as a Buddhist philosopher assimilate self-cultivation from his own life into his theory of the body and, furthermore, his philosophy of religion?

2  J ust Sitting as Self-Cultivation: Approaching the Life of Philosophizing Is the philosopher’s own life reflected in his philosophy? Some aspects may be but others may not. As biographies of Nishida show, his younger years did not consist of the life of a blessed elite student. He was born heir to a village chief in Ishikawa, but ruin and bankruptcy of the Nishida family, as well as a feud with his father and the collapse of his parents’ relationship, brought him bad luck. As a high school student, Nishida reveled in intellectual exchanges and friendship with classmates like MATSUMOTO Bunzaburō 松本文三郎 (1869–1944), SUZUKI Teitarō 鈴木 貞太郎 (later Daisetsu 大拙) (1870–1966), and FUJIOKA Sakutarō 藤岡作太郎 (1870–1910). Moreover, he met his lifelong mentor, HŌJŌ Tokiyuki 北条時敬 (1858–1929), mathematician and Zen Buddhist layman, at whose house Nishida boarded and with whom he studied for some time. However, Nishida and kindred spirits, feeling conflict with their high school establishment, withdrew from the school. As a consequence, he could enter the department of philosophy at Tokyo Imperial University (1891) only as a limited status student. Family tragedy continued even after graduation (1894) and marriage (1895), as he faced professional

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instability in both his hometown Kanazawa and another provincial city Yamaguchi, while hoping for an opening to his new life as a philosopher. It is against this background that Nishida began the practice of Zen Buddhism in 1896. From then until his appointment as professor at Gakushūin in 1909 and, in the following year 1910, to the post of associate professor at Kyoto Imperial University and his eventual retirement from that post, he devoted himself to sitting meditation. Although there may have not been any particular direct or concrete motivation that compelled him, it was philosophy that inevitably led him to Zen. This would explain his resolution to face the difficulties of life (Ueda 1996: 99). In April 1896, Nishida studied Rinzai Zen under the guidance of a distinguished priest, the venerable master Setsumon, at Senshin-an in Kanazawa. As UEDA Shizuteru 上田閑照 emphasizes, Zen is nothing but living daily life (USS 4: 27–77). Nishida often “sat” both in the morning and in the evening or the night, according to his journal. Sitting and practicing “Zen meditation” (J. sanzen 参禅) are not by any means to be experienced through any ordinary effort. Nishida, assiduously engaged in the teaching profession, sometimes could not concentrate on Zen. He found it difficult to cope with both scholarship and Zen, especially due to the poor condition of his body. He was still an unknown scholar and only a “scholarly ascetic.” Reproaching himself for his distracting hopes about going abroad, or becoming a professor of a university, he made strenuous efforts to “sit” (NKZ 17: 101). In 1901, he obtained a “Buddhist layman’s name” (J. kojigō 居士号), Sunshin 寸心, and, in 1903, he attained the experience of “seeing his own nature” (J. kenshō 見性); in other words, he was “enlightened” (J. satoru 悟る). Nishida’s journal reminds us of the “bodily” aspect of sitting meditation in Zen. Bodily suffering may seem to impede it. The act of sitting itself suggests that it is somatic. At this point we ought to recall that in Eastern thought there is a tradition that regards mind and body as indivisible or, to put it differently, a tradition that takes account of the body. According to YUASA Yasuo 湯浅泰雄 (1925–2005), self-cultivation is “a practical undertaking that aims to train the mind by training the body and to advance one’s character” (Yuasa 1996: 101). Nishida, as a layman and, moreover, as a philosopher, was a “lay practitioner” of Buddhism. In Japanese Buddhism, the idea of samādhi (J. jō 定), in other words, meditation, developed as a focus of canonical comprehension. Meditation was originally a practice required only of priests and monks with no obligation for lay believers. Self-cultivation entailed “the imposition of restrictions upon one’s mind and body more severe than the life standards of secular daily experience” (Yuasa 1996: 117). The purpose was “to arrive at… a ‘life’ that exceeds the sort of life led by the average human being in society” (Yuasa 1996: 123). Moreover Zen is said to be the sect, from among Buddhist sects, that demands the most rigorous attitude towards practice. The Zen of Dōgen 道元 has inherited from Kūkai 空海 the tradition of Buddhism that emphasizes the body. For Dōgen, Zen meant “the way of learning body-and-­ mind” (J. shinjingakudō 身心学道). In daily life we regard the state of mind, that is to say, consciousness, as normally controlling the body. But the method that reverses this pattern of everyday thinking is “nothing but precisely sitting” (J. shikantaza 只 管打坐). Self-cultivation is to correct the state of the mind in accordance with the form of the body (Yuasa 1996: 205).

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Ueda also appears to view sitting meditation as bodily. Sitting meditation is “entering samadhi” (J. nyūjō 入定) and “exiting samadhi” (J. shutsujō 出定). While this entails entering into sitting meditation and exiting out of sitting meditation, it means that sitting meditation arises in itself and begins to move on its own. In the “aspect of the body” (J. shintaisō 身体相), one goes from the state of rest in sitting meditation to the state of activity of day-to-day living. Sitting meditation entails the “act” (J. gyō 行) of “sitting” (J. suwaru 坐る). What does this mean? Perhaps we ought to read Dōgen’s Fukanzazengi 普勧坐禅儀, Dōgen’s primary meditation manual, to understand his meditation in depth. However, Ueda explains this “act of sitting” by means of ordinary and simple expressions without recourse to Buddhist terminology. To sit in an erect position means that one’s self, without the use of hands or legs, becomes the concretization of concentration by folding hands and knees, fixing one’s position, and straightening the spine. “The self in concentration gives way and disappears to leisurely open up. Thinking or feeling nothingness…single-mindedly identifying with the inhalation and exhalation of breath. As the breath settles, it is no longer one’s own breath but the quiet pulsation of an infinite openness.” It is “thoroughly awake within a deep sleep.” Ueda stresses, however, that this is still a “state” and not sitting meditation. He states that “sitting meditation is when the way of being thoroughly awake becomes an unlimited question.” “Sitting meditation is the concretion of when the self, world, and everything has together become the single question of ‘what?’” And in its openness, “the body anticipates the solution, ‘as such.’” Furthermore, “when it is no longer question nor answer but has become completely identified with nothing, it is sitting meditation” (USS 4: 37–38). In other words, the basic point of sitting meditation is for the body to transcend the stage of consciousness to arrive at the dimension where it is one with the world. There is also a Zen practice called “zenmondō” 禅問答 (“Zen question-and-­ answer”). This is a practice in contrast to sitting meditation. It refers to the point that while in sitting meditation one does nothing, one ought to be doing something in Zen practice. The zenmondō is “a Zen practice in the state of activity (J. gyōtai 行 態)”: “It is the method whereby one grapples with a Zen puzzle (J. kōan 公案) given by the Zen master, brings its answer, or rather, becomes that viewpoint to enter the master’s room,… [and] volunteers one’s body to receive inspection” (USS 4: 39). We can consider this self-cultivation of zenmondō to be very much an active method and, as represented by the activity of “entering the room” (J. nyūshitsu 入室), a bodily method. In a letter addressed to Nishida and dated February 20th, 1898, Suzuki writes the following: One should resolve to administer all of one’s might, the innermost power, and to otherwise die so that one may achieve the samadhi of the kōan… Just as in everyday life all of one’s existence and instinctive latent abilities become suddenly mysteriously activated and summon up all of one’s life-force that ordinarily one is unaware of, hidden deep within the unconscious, so is the function of Zen. Unless one confronts the kōan as a matter of life and death, one is unable to activate the great life-force hidden deep within the human mind (neither an individualistic nor a sexual instinctive impulse, but a coordinating [religious] impulse). The goal of Zen is precisely in becoming self-aware of this life-force. The life-­ force that transcends intellectual discrimination emerges at the realm of authentic self-­

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awareness by breaking-through the darkness of the unconscious, only by letting go of the obsession for discrimination or the ignorance that reincarnates through life-and-death. This is a fact of psychology. (Nishimura 2004: 36–37)

From Suzuki’s expression that “…. all of one’s existence and instinctive latent abilities becomes suddenly mysteriously activated…,” or that it “summons up all of one’s powers that… one is unaware of…”, we can see that self-cultivation in Zen is something that is moved by the motility of life. Although self-cultivation is not accompanied by any rigorous movement of the body, there seems to be a certain severity that overflows the interior of both body and spirit. In what way did Nishida’s own experience of self-cultivation that is bodily, or that assimilated mind and body, as suggested by the testimonies above, begin to construct a foundation for his later thought? In an 1897 letter addressed to YAMAMOTO Ryōkichi 山本良吉 (1871–1942), soon after Nishida began Zen practice, there is a passage referring to the body. How does he understand the body here? “Although this flesh is precious, but is there reason for people in attempting to forcefully maintain it? I think that a person’s life lies not in his flesh but in his ideal…” (NKZSP 19: 47). It becomes interesting when we compare these reflections to Nishida’s thoughts on the body after his Zen experience and after he began formulating his theory of the body. It would not be wrong to think that there was a change in Nishida’s view of the body due to his practice of self-cultivation in the Zen Buddhist tradition and his experience of suffering and conflict.

3  C  oncern for the Body and the Development of a Philosophical Theory of the Body The product of research that bore fruit from his period of self-cultivation in Zen was his Inquiry into the Good (J. Zen no kenkyū 善の研究). Of the two passages that discuss the issue of practice in the first and second parts of the chapter “Action” in Part III “The Good,” we can find the following passages: Seen from the outside, action is a movement of the body. It differs from such physical movements as the flow of water or the falling of a stone in that it is goal-oriented and possesses a kind of consciousness… How does the will arise? The human body is fundamentally constructed so as to make movements appropriate for preserving and developing its own life. Consciousness, arising together with these movements, is initially the simple feeling of pain or pleasure. (NKZ 1: 103; Nishida 1990: 87–88) In my analysis of action I have taken the will and action to be two different things, but their relationship is not one of cause and effect, for they are two sides of one and the same thing. Action is the expression of the will, and that which is regarded from without as action can be regarded from within as the will. (NKZ 1: 111; Nishida 1990: 94)

Although the Nishida of the early period, according to Yuasa, shows no interest in the body, a decisive view of the mind-body relation already appears in the above passage. This conception is proposed more clearly in Nishida’s expressions in

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Intuition and Reflection in Self-Awareness (J. Jikaku ni okeru chokkan to hansei 自 覚に於ける直観と反省) (1917). In comparison to his view of the flesh as recorded in the early period of his Zen training, here he further grasps the connection of the internal world and the flesh that bears activity and motion as a unity of opposing sides. That is to say that the notion of “flesh” becomes even more of a focus. Prior to the 1930s, Nishida’s philosophy did not entail the standpoint of a self practicing and acting in the world but that of a thinking and conscious self. Until this period, the “body” (J. shintai 身体) was, thus, not in  his frequent philosophical vocabulary. Nevertheless, an acute perspective on the mind and body characteristic of Nishida and that sufficiently anticipates the formation of his theory of the body in his later period is evident in Intuition and Reflection in Self-Awareness. It bears the characteristic of Nishida’s unique philosophy of the will. From the world of pure experience we think of the self’s body by concentrating on what follows the self’s will. From this perspective it is the will that creates the self’s body. But from another perspective there results a single center called the self only because the body exists. When I thus extend my hand, seen from within it is the will, but seen from without will is the body of the spiritual realm and the body is the will of the material realm. Our body, as the union of mind and matter, is a single work of art…. The body is the expression of the will. And what conjoins the mind and the body is an internal creative act. (NKZ 2: 238–239)

In this book, Nishida discusses “intuition” (J. chokkan 直観) and “reflection” (J. hansei 反省) within the activity of consciousness, from the standpoint of “the will of absolute freedom,”4 as a systematic development of pure experience. He conceives of the will as the “root of knowledge” (J. chishiki no kontei 知識の根柢) that transcends active consciousness and stands in its extremity. In light of the cognitive act, as an object of cognition the will is something incomprehensible, but stated differently, it is a source of cognition not yet objectified in that cognitive act. We might compare it to “what is given in intuition” or “the experience of a truly concrete intuition” (NKZ 2: 284–287). It contains the motivational power of the act of consciousness itself, without possessing any object, as when the subject of consciousness that is the “I” acts. Therefore it is the starting point of the possibility for all free creations. Indeed “pure experience” (J. junsui keiken 純粋経験) is disclosed in the dimension of this will. In this way, the will of the spiritual realm, according to Nishida, is interconnected with the body of the material realm as opposing sides of the same thing. His way of grasping the mind and body, that is, “thinking the self’s body from the world of pure experience… by concentrating on what follows the self’s will” (NKZ 2: 238–239) follows his understanding of composition in the plastic arts. But might 4  A term Nishida employed under the influence of Fichte’s “absolutes Ich” (NKZ 2: 283). Nishida was also sympathetic to Bergson’s concept of “mémoire.” He states, “We are enabled to act from the root of our individuality by means of memory and to act from the root of the objective realm by means of thought. And by following the will we transcend the objective realm of various things to become creative evolution, that is, pure duration itself… The world of free imagination or fancy is in the standpoint of memory or representation, and the scientist’s world of so-called hypotheses is in the standpoint of thought. And in the standpoint of the will we can freely create reality, in other words, therein is the world of free will” (NKZ 2: 268–269).

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this not have been a reality appropriate to one who had undergone a severe practice that extinguishes the body as it is absorbed in the spiritual realm? Perhaps the student of philosophy truly realized, through his Zen practice, that the body is located at the boundary connecting the so-called world and the self. And yet this link is not so easy to make. For Nishida, this link would be the mind-body relation. But setting this question aside, the fact that a view of the body is already present to this extent in the early Nishida philosophy demands our thorough attention. Let us summarize at this stage the main points of his theory of the body that covers the standpoint of the later Nishida, including “active intuition” (J. kōitekichokkan 行為的直観). After the 1930s, Nishida’s interest turns to human relations, society, or personhood as acting in the world. And he calls such a world wherein acting human beings dwell, “the historical world” (J. rekishiteki sekai 歴史的世界). As “there is no I without the body” (NKZ 6: 202) in Nishida, consciousness appears only on the basis of the body. It is not the reverse. And the body is not the flesh belonging as mere matter to the “material realm,” that is, the “realm of intelligible objects.” It is the body that is not of the universal, rationalized self but rather the self that thoroughly possesses “irrationality” and “free will” (NKZ 6: 408–409). He conceives of this sort of body that cannot be substantialized, that is, the “bodily self” (J. shintaiteki jiko, 身体的自己), as emerging in the dimension where the place in which consciousness acts and deepens itself—the place of self-awareness (J. jikakuteki basho 自覚的場所)—and the place in which the intellect is established when the activity of consciousness disappears—the “place of absolute nothing” (J. zettaimu no basho 絶対無の場所)—are mutually related to each other (NKZ 6: 202). The body as explicated in the above manner would be the human being who “sees things while acting-intuitively.” What then is “active intuition”? How are “action” and “intuition” tied together in this conceptual composite? Nishida’s definition is that “we see things through action. At this time [of action], the thing determines the I and the I determines the object.” “Action” (J. kōi行為) means that as I alter the thing, the thing alters me as well (NKZ 8: 128). Cognition is not a mere mental operation but a thoroughly bodily action. “Seeing” refers to “intuition” (J. chokkan 直観) and means “to grasp things with the body.” As we know from experience, at the moment we comprehend something, the feeling of knowing with the whole body, rather than with the head, appears. The analysis of the content comes after this bodily mastery. We can call this process “grasping with the body.” When we shift our viewpoint to the world itself, in concerning the exercise of active intuition that possesses a dialectical structure, it amounts to “the self-­ determination” of the world itself. Let me verify this with the following passage: We can say that the subject (shutai 主体) determines the environment (kankyō環境) and the environment determines the subject at the place where the world, as a contradictory self-­ identity moving from the made (tsukurareta mono 作られたもの) to the making (tsukuru mono 作るもの), continually determines itself as individual. (NKZ 8: 546)

The various “environments,” that is, nation, race, society, and various other groups positioned within the world, are determined by the “subjects” (and each subject) dwelling within them and in turn determine those “subjects.” And if we

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shift our viewpoint to the perspective of the world wherein various movements of reciprocity or inter-activity obtain amongst those many subjects, we can say that “the world determines itself” even “as a multiplicity of individuals.” There is the environment that reflects the innumerable individual self-determinations of each of these subjects. At the same time, the world reflects the individual self-determination of each environment. “The made” is what has been acted upon and “the making” is what acts upon it. If this is the case, in what way is the continuity of time expressed in the phrase “from the made to the making” related to the body? Nishida explains this relationship as follows: That the species forms the world means that the world constitutes itself as individual. The body is constituted therein and we can say that as historical individuals we see things acting-­ intuitively. But the dialectical movement of history does not only consist in this. While the present is something thoroughly determined, it has been determined in order to be negated. The made, while having passed, continually makes the making (maker). Therein lies the continuity of severance, the self-determination of nothingness. Posit something fundamental in either of the two opposing directions and there would be no historical movement…. To continually constitute itself individually does not mean the continuity from act to act, but rather must be a continuity from the made to the making, in other words, it must be an historical continuity. The made, while independent of its maker, continually makes that making (maker). (For instance, as in the act of artistic composition). (NKZ 8: 546–547)

The body is not merely something biological or animalistic but, as demonstrated here, something that is “constituted” by the workings of the historical world. This body is the human being who exists in the historical world as an individual, “seeing things acting-intuitively.” The definition of active intuition stated that “we see things through action. At this time [of action], the thing determines the I and the I determines the object.” Following Nishida’s thinking, I would like to suggest that when the subject sees the thing that becomes the object, that is, when it intuits something, the next activity is aroused from the thing that has thus been made to change by the subject. This means that the thing acts upon the subject. The object of the subject arouses this action within the subject. In different words, the notion “intuition” and the phrase “to see the thing through action” refer to precisely this sequence of actions. And on the basis of this intuition, the subject then acts upon the thing and is aroused by the thing acted upon to engage in a new action. This sort of activity always happens through the body. As we can discern from the above-quoted passage, the body is “constituted” where “the world constitutes itself as individual,” that is, where the world forms itself. We can, thus, interpret this activity of “constitution” by the body not as being singular but rather to mean that there is a plurality of bodily individuals that function as the world’s constitutive elements. This connection between action and intuition originates in the process “from the made to the making.” Once a thing is “made” at a certain present moment, as something already “made,” it is thrust into the past. And in the next moment, it acts upon the subject as “the making (maker)” and is again acted upon by the subject to be “made.” This is the meaning of the passage, “…the present… has been determined in order to be negated.” While “the made” and “the making” are, in each case, absolutely independent and intermittent, they necessarily continue through history.

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Nishida calls the body that is constituted in this sort of a “continuity of intermittence” “the historical body” (J. rekishiteki shintai 歴史的身体). To explain the notion of the “historical world,” Nishida introduces the concept of “expression” (J. hyōgen 表現). He proposes that “the world of active intuition is a world of infinite expression” and that “our actions are all necessarily expressive acts” (NKZ 8: 146–147). By “expression” Nishida means not only specific forms like literature or art; rather “[e]ven what we regard as our physical movement must be established as the determination of the expressive world qua individual” (NKZ 8: 179). In other words, even a single movement of the body in day-to-day life can be function as “expression.”

4  The Role of the Body in Nishida’s Theory of Religion Nishida was initially hesitant to write about his Buddhist influence. In his later years, however, he tackles the issue of religion and philosophy head-on. The result is his posthumous manuscript, “The Logic of Place and the Religious Worldview” (J. Bashoteki ronri to shūkyōteki sekaikan 場所的論理と宗教的世界観) (1946). Therein, he explains his view of religion by means of a logic he formed after his theory of the body, that is, “the logic of place,” completed as a formulation belonging to the final stage of his life. Needless to say, it is not a Buddhist philosophy of religion. It transcends the distinctions between the various religions to deal with religion defined as “the facticity of the spiritual field.” Nishida states that “the philosopher ought not to fabricate religion on the basis of his own system. The philosopher must explain the facticity of spirituality. For this he must comprehend to some degree the religious mind within himself. True experience is facticity belonging to the religionist” (NKZ 11: 371). We can discern here his ideal of philosophy already present in his Inquiry into the Good that took facticity itself, experience itself, as reality. The task of the philosopher does not lie in the objectification of religion. In this work Nishida sets forth as concepts “inverse correlation” (J. gyakutaiō 逆 対応) and “depth in the ordinary” (J. heijōtei 平常底). Ever since Nishida embarked upon his path as a philosopher, he did not practice sitting meditation. And yet he must have had various experiences of firm self-awareness through the body—for instance, the life experiences of any individual such as bodily disabilities or pain due to illness or old age. In his later years, Nishida formulates his philosophy of religion with the support of these concepts like “inverse correlation” and “depth in the ordinary.” These concepts, however, indicate not the Zen Buddhism that Nishida experienced but rather a profound debt to the thinking of the “True Pure Land” school (J. Jōdo shinshū 浄 土真宗). In his “Logic of Place and the Religious Worldview,” Nishida frequently refers to the True Pure Land sect and Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1263). For example, there is the following passage that suggests one of the major concepts of his later period, “absolutely contradictory self-identity” (J. zettai mujunteki jiko dōitsu 絶対矛盾的 自己同一):

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I think that we find in Japanese Buddhism, in Saint Shinran’s morality of amorality, “spontaneous dependence on the Buddha’s vow” (jinenhōni 自然法爾), the negation qua affirmation of the absolute, the actual qua absolute, peculiar to the Japanese spirit. But this has not previously been positively grasped. (NKZ 11: 438)

I will shortly discuss the concepts of “inverse correlation” and “depth in the ordinary.” The connections of the phrases “actual qua absolute” or “negation qua affirmation of the absolute” in the above passage with Shinran’s thought should then become evident. If it is the case that the concepts of “active intuition” and “historical body” developed as products of his theory of the body on the basis of the ideas of “place” or “absolutely contradictory self-identity” that are the logic of Nishida philosophy, and if his view of religion was formulated on the basis of those conceptual accumulations, his view of the body ought to be recognizable in the concepts “inverse correlation” and “depth in the ordinary” as well. To show this, I would like to draw this out of “The Logic of Place and the Religious Worldview.” First, we need to understand his concept of “inverse correlation.” As the self-negation of the absolute one, our self borders the absolute one in inverse correlation through and through. The more it becomes individual, the more it confronts the absolute one, that is, God. It is as the extremity of individuality that our self confronts God. It encounters the extremity of the holistic one at the extremity of the historical world’s self-­ determination as individual, in thorough contradictory self-identity. (NKZ 11: 430)

Plainly put, “inverse correlation” refers to the relation between the absolute or God and the finite self. While the self exists as the absolute’s self-negation, because the absolute for the self is “contradictory,” it confronts the absolute as other, as distinct from itself. Moreover, to confront or oppose as “the extremity of individuality” and “in thorough contradictory self-identity,” from a certain perspective, means that the self becomes one with the absolute. It means that the self determines itself, or, to put it differently, expresses itself as a self that is one individual thing within the historical world and that by doing so it confronts or opposes the whole of individuals or a single determinate “extremity” of the world. The absolute is this extremity and, at the same time, a single self. The self does not confront the absolute in a simplistic manner but through an extremely intricate structure. Nishida also states that “our self touches the absolute in reverse determination step by step, as a thoroughly singular individual” (NKZ 11: 431). Even as the self is determining itself, from another perspective, it is being determined by the absolute. A determination that sustains this sort of duplicitous viewpoint is not something that can proceed so simply. We can discern here how precipitous is the path to reach the absolute. And as the passage, “[the more] it becomes individual, the more it confronts the absolute one,” shows, the character of being a distinct “individual” deepens by means of self-­ determination as “inverse correlation.” That is to say, that to the extent that the determination of inverse correlation proceeds, the path to becoming an individual and confronting the absolute also progresses. “The more it becomes individual” would mean, borrowing Nishida’s terminology from elsewhere, to be “independent.” The self and the absolute are not in a relationship of mutual dependence. “The relationship of God and person must be comprehended on the basis of the relationship between that which expresses the self

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itself by thoroughly negating itself and that which self-expressively counters it by being expressed.” “Expression” here means creation. Hence it is “the relationship of absolutely contradictory self-identity between the thoroughly creative and that which creates by being created, in other words, what makes by being made.” If to approach the absolute is to comprehend the absolute, its method must be “expressive” and “creative.” Nishida states that “to comprehend the other is one activity.” This means at the same time to “make the self in self-expression” and to “move the other in self-expression” (NKZ 11: 439). What does it mean for the self to “move the other,” that is, the absolute? Can the absolute be moved by the self at all? On this point, Nishida explains: The absolute that exists in itself and moves by means of itself is not beyond opposition. And what is not absolved of opposition is not the absolute. The historical world is established… as negation qua affirmation of the self of the true absolute that includes absolute negation within itself, in a thoroughly contradictory self-identity of the many and the one…. Our selves… are continually forming this world as self-expressive points of this world. (NKZ 11: 447)

The absolute that constitutes a negation qua affirmation of the self not only moves on its own but is moved and made as the self-expression of the self as a finite being. Our following concern is “depth in the ordinary.” It is defined in the following manner as something that guarantees “the self of absolute freedom”: In the depths of the self there is nothing to determine itself. There is nothing instinctive in terms of the subject, nor anything rational in terms of the predicate. It is thoroughly without foundation. It means “the mind that is secure in the ordinary (祗是平常無事),” that is, depth in the ordinary. (NKZ 11: 449)

The phrase to be “thoroughly without foundation” refers to the “absolute nothingness” (J. zettai mu 絶対無) in the logic of place. The self is not determined by someone or something. Rather, it emerges from the self-determination of this absolute nothing. We can say that “depth in the ordinary” is this absolute nothingness. Nishida continues his elaboration: By depth in the ordinary I mean one of the essential standpoints of the self. It refers to the standpoint that, taking our self in its character, it necessarily makes the self as character even more of a self as character. In other words it refers to the true standpoint of the free will… It means the free standpoint of self-conversion, through the self’s negation qua affirmation, of our self established from the absolute one’s self-negation into the individual many. Upon this point our self while touching the beginning of the world is always in touch with its end… Therein lies the consciousness in the absolute presence of our self. Thus, if we take this to be deep, it is thoroughly deep, penetrating to the depths of the depths of the world. (NKZ 11: 451)

“Self-conversion” presumably means the mutual severance, and yet continuity, between self-negation and self-affirmation within the absolute one. To state that the self touches the beginning and the end of the historical world may be expressive of the formative act that continually and thoroughly renews the world, forming and reforming the historical world. At what point do we decisively see the world of religion? The observation “[t]hat our self ends in the absolute by penetrating to the depths of its root does not mean a separation from this actuality. Instead it would mean plumbing to the depths of his-

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torical actuality. It means to exist as the self-determination of the absolute present, by thoroughly becoming a historical individual” (NKZ 11: 421–424). HASE Shōtō 長谷正當 interprets Nishida’s explanation in the following manner. As the historical world is never stable, the “whereabouts” of the human being therein is constantly jolted: Therein lies the necessity for the human being to search for the ultimate ground of the whereabouts of the self not in the historical world but rather in the world of religion. But to search for the ultimate whereabouts in the world of religion is not to depart from or exit the historical world. It rather means to plumb to the bottom of the historical world. (Hase 2007: 19)

In other words there is the infinite dimension of the world of religion within the historical world. And therein the self encounters the absolute in inverse correlation. And that is the significance of “depth in the ordinary.” Now how does the body fit into Nishida’s theory of religion? Previously we saw Nishida’s point that both the absolute and the self approach one another through expression. The self here is “the historical body.” Nishida takes up the example of the name of the Buddha used in chanting, literally, “name” (J. myōgō 名号), in the True Pure Land sect. The Buddha is expressed by myōgō [chanting of the name]. It is said that one is saved through faith in the mystery of myōgō. The discontinuity between the absolute, that is, Buddha, and human being, in other words, the continuity of discontinuity between Buddha and human being, or their mediation of contradictory self-identity, takes place through nothing other than expression, language. What expresses the earnest desire of the Buddha is nothing other than myōgō. (NKZ 11: 442)

As an expression, uttering the word of the “name” (J. myōgō) inevitably involves the body. Even the act of using language, as in reading or writing, is always accompanied by a movement of the body. The body acts without our being conscious of it. According to the theory of the body we looked at earlier, the place where the body or the bodily self emerges is in the self-determination of the “place” (J. basho 場所) wherein both subject and predicate are placed. However, the bodily self vanishes at the stage of absolute nothingness. While Nishida does not discuss this, the body, in the relationship of inverse correlation, must be expressive not only in language but in all sorts of acts. Nevertheless in his “Logic of Place” that became his posthumous work, he was unable to further develop his theory of the body on the basis of the world of religion. This is the issue that he has left us with, and we will have to search for a new perspective on Nishida’s theory of religion.

Works Cited Abbreviations NKZ Nishida kitarō zenshū 『西田幾多郎全集』 [Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō], 20 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1988. NKZSP Nishida kitarō zenshū shinpan 『西田幾多郎全集 新版』 [Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō – New Edition], 24 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2006.

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USS Ueda shizuteru shū 『上田閑照集』 [Works of Ueda Shizuteru], 11 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2001–2003.

Other Sources Carter, Robert. 1997. The Nothingness Beyond God – An Introduction to the Philosophy of Nishida Kitarō. St. Paul: Paragon House. Davis, Bret W., Brian Schroeder, and Jason M.  Wirth, eds. 2011. Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Girard, Frédéric. 2008. Vocabulaire du bouddhisme japonais. Genève: Droz. Hase, Shōtō 長谷正當. 2007. Bashoteki ronri to jōdokyō 「場所的論理と浄土教」 [The Logic of Place and the Pure Land Religion]. Nishida tetsugakkai nenpō 西田哲学会年報 [Annual Report of Nishida Philosophy Association] 4: 1–21. Inoue, Katsuhito 井上克人. 2011. Nishida kitarō to meiji no seishin 『西田幾多郎と明治の精 神』 [Nishida Kitarō and the Spirit of Meiji]. Osaka: Kansai daigaku shuppanbu. Nishida, Kitarō. 1990. An Inquiry into the Good. Trans. Masao Abe and Christopher Ives. New Haven: Yale University Press. Nishimura, Eshin 西村恵信. 2004. Nishida kitarō ate Suzuki daisetsu shokan 『西田幾多郎宛 鈴 木大拙書簡』 [Suzuki Daisetsu’s Letters to Nishida Kitarō]. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Ueda, Shizuteru. 1996. Nishida kitarō: ningen no shōgai toiu koto 『西田幾多郎-­人間の生涯と いうこと』 [Nishida Kitarō – The Life of a Human Being]. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Yuasa, Yasuo 湯浅泰雄. 1996. Shintairon: tōyōteki shinjinron to gendai 『身体論―東洋的心 身論と現代』 [The Theory of the Body: The Eastern Mind-Body Theory and Today]. Tokyo: Kōdansha gakujutsu bunko. Mayuko Uehara has been Professor of Japanese Philosophy at Kyoto University since 2013, prior to which she held the post of Associate Professor at Meisei University in Tokyo for six years. She obtained her PhD from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She currently serves as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Japanese Philosophy. Her recent writings include “Honyaku kara miru shōwa no tetsugaku: Kyōtō gakuha no ekurichūru,” “Nishida tetusgaku no saikaiyaku: kōiteki chokkan toshite no kao no hyōjō,” and Nishida tetsugaku to ichininshō no tetsugakkka.

Chapter 26

D. T. Suzuki and the “Logic of Sokuhi,” or the “Logic of Prajñāpāramitā” Michiko Yusa

1  Introduction The small connective words “soku” and “sokuhi,” typically found in the writings of the Kyoto school thinkers, have baffled many a Western reader. Describing what he termed the “logic of sokuhi,” Daisetz T. Suzuki (1870–1966) wrote: In chapter 13 of the Diamond Sūtra there is a passage that reads: “The Buddha preached the perfection of wisdom, which, he taught, was not the perfection of wisdom; therefore, it is called the perfection of wisdom.” This is the logical form at the heart of the prajñāpāramitā tradition, and also of Zen, and of the “Japanese spirituality.” The basic insight of this passage may be formulated into: To say “A is A” is To say “A is not A.” Therefore, “A is A.” It means that affirmation is negation as well as negation is affirmation. …Thus, in the prajñāpāramitā thought, statements are made such as “a mountain is not a mountain, a river is not a river, and therefore a mountain is a mountain, a river is a river.” (SDZ 5: 380–381)1

Further, Suzuki elaborated on this “logic of sokuhi” as follows: The Buddha preached that the perfection of wisdom (prajñāpāramitā) is at the same time not (sokuhi) the perfection of wisdom, and therefore it is called the perfection of wisdom.” Referring to this formulation, I call it “the logic of sokuhi.” I am not sure if it should be called “logic,” but let us leave it at that for now.

1  Suzuki Daisetsu, “Kongokyō no zen” (1968) in Suzuki Daisetsu Zenshū (SDZ) (1980); also see Osaka Kōryū (1975, 17).

M. Yusa (*) Department of Modern & Classical Languages, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_26

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This “logic of sokuhi” is the logic of spiritual intuition (reiseiteki chokkaku 霊性的直 覚), as well as the key to unlock any Zen kōan. If you understand what it means, you will understand not only the Diamond Sūtra but also the entire Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra of six hundred scrolls! (SDZ 5: 387)

The term “sokuhi” is made up of two ideograms, soku 即 and hi 非. “Soku” (also pronounced “sunawachi” in modern Japanese) is a connective word, meaning “that is,” or “id est”; “hi” (also pronounced “arazu”) negates the compound-word, adding the meaning of “not.” The expression “logic of sokuhi” was first introduced into the writings of the Kyoto school philosophers via NISHIDA Kitarō 西田幾多郎 (1870–1945), the catalytic figure of the Kyoto School of philosophers, and Suzuki’s lifelong friend. He found Suzuki’s insight profound but also expressed reservations, as we read in his letter to Suzuki, concerning this point: What you call the “prajñāpāramitā logic of sokuhi” is full of suggestion. We must construct it logically so that it can stand on its own to face western logic (seiyō ronri 西洋論理). If we don’t do that, it might be labeled “unscientific” (hikagakuteki 非科学的),2 and we may end up depriving the eastern thought (tōyō shisō 東洋思想) of its strength from developing into a globally viable [system of] thought. (NKZ 19: 405)

Nishida adopted and situated the “logic of sokuhi” in a philosophical context, especially in his final essay (Nishida 1945), “Bashoteki ronri to shūkyōteki sekaikan” or “The Logic of Topos and the Religious Worldview” (NKZ 11: 371–464).3 This logic of sokuhi, however, came to Nishida’s attention only in the very last years of his life, leaving him very little time to develop it fully. In the following pages, we shall focus on the birth of this “logic of sokuhi” in Suzuki’s writings, its context and the import in the Diamond Sūtra, and Nishida’s elaboration of this logic.

1.1  Notes on the Text NAKAMURA Hajime, the noted Japanese Buddhologist, was convinced of the necessity to make basic Buddhist scriptures accessible to the readers of modern Japanese, and embarked, together with his colleagues, on the translation of seminal Buddhist scriptures directly from the original Pali and Sanskrit texts. Thanks to these efforts, since the 1960s, major texts, such as the Mahāparinibbāna-Suttanta, the Dhammapada, the Suttanipāta, the Lotus Sūtra, and the Sukhavativyūha Sūtra  Here by “science,” the German word “Wissenschaft” is meant.  The original title is “Bashoteki ronri to shūkyōteki sekaikan” (NKZ 11: 371–464). For an English translation see Michiko Yusa (1986–1987). A more widely circulated translation is  by David Dilworth, “The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious World View” (Dilworth 1987). Unless otherwise noted, the translation by Michiko Yusa is used in this chapter. 2 3

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have become available in modern Japanese translation. Moreover, this group of scholars meticulously consulted Tibetan and Chinese texts and produced reliable, accurate, and eminently readable translations, accompanied by copious notes and commentaries. In addition, these major scriptures were published in an inexpensive “pocket book” edition by Iwanami Shoten. Thus, today we have rich textual resources to draw from, instead of having only the ancient Chinese translations, many of which were made over 1500 years ago. For this reason, in this essay, these modern Japanese translations are used as the main sources, instead of the traditional texts compiled in the Taishō Daizōkyō (or Taishō Tripitaka). For the Diamond Sūtra and the Heart Sūtra, the text used is the translation by NAKAMURA Hajime and KINO Kazuyoshi.4 Most essential and helpful is the fact that for the Diamond Sūtra Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation is printed on the right page, and, the traditional Japanese reading of the Chinese and the modern Japanese translation from Sanskrit are on the left page for easy comparison. I will refer to this translation as “Nakamura-Kino.” For the Sanskrit text of the Diamond Sūtra, the edition with the English translation by Edward Conze was consulted; the Sanskrit text is based on Max Müller’s edition.5 In the context of the present essay, it is relevant to mention that it was through Suzuki’s writings, especially his 1935 Manual of Zen Buddhism (Suzuki 1960) and his 1934 Essays in Zen Buddhism (Suzuki and Humphries 1976) that Conze first heard of the Prajñāpāramitā thought and ended up dedicating the next quarter of a century to the study of these texts (Conze 1960: 24). Such was Suzuki’s scholarly influence on his Western colleagues. For the Sukhāvativyūha Sūtra, NAKAMURA Hajime, HAYASHIMA Kyōshō, and KINO Kazuyoshi’s translation was used (Nakamura et al. 1963). Concerning Daisetz T. Suzuki’s writings, apart from the standard Suzuki Daisetsu zenshū published by Iwanami Shoten (first imprint 1968–71, second imprint 1980– 83), there are a few other series of “selected works” compiled by different scholars, notably, the Suzuki Daisetsu Zen Senshū [Selected Essays on Zen by D. T. Suzuki], published by Shunjūsha. Expedience ruling the day, various editions were consulted for their varying strengths, but the references in the footnotes always include the corresponding volume and page(s) of the second imprint of Suzuki Daisetsu zenshū (abbreviated as SDZ). For NISHIDA Kitarō’s writings, the 1978–80 third imprint of the Nishida Kitarō zenshū (abbreviated as “NKZ”) published by Iwanami Shoten was used, with the exception of volume 19, for which the fourth imprint of 1989 was used.

4  The title of their translation is Han’nya shin-gyō, Kongō han’nya-kyō 般若心経・金剛般若経 (Nakamura and Kino 1960). 5  Edward Conze’s Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā constitutes volume 13 of the “Serie Orientale Roma” under the general editorship of Giuseppe Tucci.

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2  Part I: The Birth or the “Logic of Sokuhi” 2.1  S  uzuki’s Original Question and the Insight Behind the “Logic of Sokuhi” Suzuki was intent on bringing to the foreground a “philosophical” dimension of the prajñāpāramitā tradition in his study on “The Philosophy and Religion of the Prajñāpāramitā,” – Chapter VI of his Essays in Zen Buddhism, Third Series (1934). Therein we encounter Suzuki’s reflection on the nature of logic and wisdom (prajñā): In order to discover a philosophical element in the Prajñāpāramitā text, it is necessary to ascertain its standpoint. When this is not properly done, one may mistake the shadow for the real thing. What, then, is the standpoint of the Prajñāpāramitā? As the Mahayanists understand it, it is not based on logic as commonly understood; but it is based on intuition. The Prajñāpāramitā is a system of intuition. Its thorough understanding requires a leap from logic to the other shore. (Suzuki and Humphries 1976: 269; adapted)

Suzuki describes this intuition as something beyond an ordinary “logical” way of thinking. He draws a clear line between ordinary dualistic conceptual thinking and “wisdom” of the bodhisattva. “Bodhisattva” is understood here and elsewhere in this essay as a dedicated Buddhist practitioner, lay or monastic, who lives to embody the Buddha’s teaching with the aim of bringing happiness to all the individuals and society at large. The following passage, although predating his formulation of the “logic of sokuhi,” clearly demonstrates that Suzuki was consciously working through the style of argument peculiar to the Prajñāpāramitā literature. One notices that the essential ingredients of the “logic of sokuhi” are already present in this exposition: According to the Mahayanists, so-called logic or our ordinary human way of thinking is the outgrowth of a dualistic interpretation of existence – astitva and nāstitva, being and non-­ being. This dualism remains steadfast throughout our thinking. We can never get away from this so long as we stay with the conditions of thinking. The opposition of “A” and “not-A” is fundamental, is the warp and woof of human understanding. But singularly, our heart or spirit never rests quietly so long as we do not transcend this apparently logically essential position. Ordinary logic is the most useful implement in our practical life, for without it we can never expect to rise above the animal plane of existence. It is due to the faculty of forming concepts that we can go, as it were, out of ourselves, out of our immediate experiences. It is the greatest weapon we have over our brother animals. Unfortunately, we have become so enamored with our concept-forming power that we have gradually detached ourselves from the source of our being – the sources that enabled us to construct ideas and carry out abstract reasoning. The result of this is that we have begun to feel somehow uneasy about ourselves. Even when we are convinced of the accuracy and perspicuity of our logic, we seem to cherish somewhere a sense of inner vacuity, we are not able to locate it in our logic, but the logic itself as a whole seems to lack a certain fundamental convincing power. In any event we are dissatisfied with ourselves and with the whole world so long as we cling to the dualism of asti and nāsti, “A” and “non-A.” Perhaps our so-called logic is only the ultimate utilitarian instrument wherewith we handle things belonging to the superficialities of life. The spirit or that which occupies the deepest part of our being requires something thoroughly non-conceptual, i.e., something

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immediate and far more penetrating than mere intellection. The latter draws its materials from concepts. The spirit demands immediate perceptions. Evidently, what may be designated an inner or a higher perception, which expresses itself through the ordinary senses, but which is not bound by them, must be awakened, if the spirit is to be satisfied with itself. The final goal of all the Buddhist disciplines is the awakening of this inner sense. So with the Prajñāpāramitā, the awakening is the one thing that is most needful here. All the teachings expounded in the sūtras, all the bold statements at which the student is warned not to become terrified, are the views extended before the awakened sense of the Bodhisattva. They are his intuitions, they are the dialectic of his immediate experiences, and not that of his concepts. This is the reason why the sūtra so repeatedly refers to seeing things yathābhūtam, i.e., as they are.6 It must be remembered that “seeing” and not “reasoning” or “arguing” logically is here the topic. Yathābhūtam is the term applicable only to the act of seeing or viewing, and not to the process of inference. (Suzuki and Humphries 1976: 270–271)

In regard to the function and the use of traditional Aristotelian logic, Suzuki turns the tables on that logic and propounds a non-linear type of “intelligibility” inherent in spiritual intuitions – hence his “logic of sokuhi.” This idea seems to have matured in him gradually while he engaged in a textual study of Pure Land Buddhist (or Japanese) Shin Buddhist thought. It appears that Suzuki, always interested in Pure Land thought, approached it through his Zen background. Shin Buddhism is traditionally understood as the religion of “tariki” (reliance of human beings on Amida’s infinite compassion and grace in order to be delivered from the sufferings of the world), while Zen Buddhism is that of “jiriki” (the reliance on one’s own effort at attaining awakening to be liberated from the sufferings of the world). Suzuki’s studies strengthened his conviction that both Shin and Zen share a common source of spiritual insights on the psychological, ethical, and logical planes. On the psychological plane, he found that the single-minded concentration on the nenbutsu invocation – the repetition of “I take refuge in Amida Buddha” (namu-amida-butsu) – is comparable to the single-minded concentration Zen students embody to work on the kōan. On the ethical plane, the bodhisattva’s good acts that alleviate the pain of people were akin to the life of gratitude that the Shin followers lead everyday. On the logical plane, Suzuki similarly saw the commonality of the worldview in which “opposites” are seen to form a fluid and dynamic whole—as in the Pure Land thought “the paradise” (J. gokuraku or jōdo) and the “human world” are actually viewed to “interpenetrate” one another without reducing the one to the other. He came to designate this way of thinking as the “logic of sokuhi,” which stood for the “interpenetration” of independent entities.7 In his “Shinshū kanken” [“My View of Shin Buddhism”] (Suzuki 1939b), Suzuki discusses the question of how to articulate the “mutual penetration” of transcendence and immanence in the Buddhist experience:

 “Yathābhūtam” is translated into Japanese as “nyojitsu” 如実 by SUGUHIRA Shizutoshi 杉平顗 智 (SDZ 5: 15, 5: 40). 7  There is a similar view developed by the Christian theology of the Trinity, which sees the reciprocal presence of the three persons of the Trinity—an idea known as “circuminsessio” or “perichoresis.” 6

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For those who adhere to the “tariki” principle, and broadly speaking for those who adhere to Mahāyāna teaching, one must not forget that while they live their daily lives on earth – the life of karmic actions and the “relative” life, they at the same time live the life of transcendence, which is the life of spiritual freedom, freedom from being tied down by the chains of karmic causation. Christianity preaches God’s immanence and transcendence. But the immanence and the transcendence, if taken separately, would make no sense. Rather, we must consider them both together in their internal dynamism. The ordinary logic cannot explain that both dimensions exist at the same time. But that these two directions mutually exist, sometimes mutually attempt to negate each other, and yet both continue to be present – this is the reality of everyday life. How are we to understand this reality by way of logic? The Mahāyāna Buddhist scholars of the past, having grappled with the relationship between affirmation and negation of the karmic actions, or the question of immanent transcendence and transcendental immanence, came up with their own logic. Aśvaghosha had already explained it systematically in his Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith, with the notion of tathatā (shin’nyo 真如).8 …It is in “tathatā” that all the conflicting ideas, such as the affirmation and the negation, find their place of harmony (chōwa 調和) and interpenetration (kon’yū 渾融), because in tathatā, affirmation can turn to negation, and negation affirmation. In this way, “tathatā” has a sound footing both in the world of life and death, the domain that affirms the karmic actions, and the world that transcends life and death, the realm that is beyond the reach of the law of causality. (SDZ 6: 15)9

Suzuki further notes in this connection that, instead of “tathatā,” Buddhists also employed such words as “citta” (J. kokoro 心), “dharmakāya” (J. hosshin 法身), or “śūnyatā” (J. kū 空)  – all referring to the same reality of the interpenetration of transcendence and immanence (SDZ 6: 15–16; Suzuki 1939b). Identifying this intuition as the salient articulation of Mahāyāna spirituality, Suzuki came to call it the logic of sokuhi. In his essay, “Gokuraku to shaba” (“The Paradise and the Human World”) (Suzuki 1941a), he reflects on the relationship between language and spiritual experience. Precisely because the “spiritual” intuition is not something utterly transcendent of the reasoning faculty or the senses but does take on linguistic expression, it is possible for us to talk about it at all. The catch is, if we are trapped by the linguistic expression, we cannot get to the spiritual insight. “Spirituality requires language to express itself (soku-suru 即する), and yet it is not tied down by it (kōsoku serareru 拘束せられる)” (SDZ 6: 76). On the description of paradise in the Sukhāvativyūha Sūtra, Suzuki writes: The essence of spirituality (reisei 霊性) is “utterly empty” (kyomu 虚無) and “limitless” (mukyoku 無極). But these descriptions make very little sense to us, because we are cognitive beings as well. Therefore, we need to introduce the dimension of corporeality (shin 身 and tai 体) to the discussion to add a sensual dimension. If we simply describe spirituality as “utterly empty” or “limitless,” these words are no longer within the realm of our intellectual understanding. But, from the perspective of spirituality, this contradictory reality beyond intellectual understanding and its linguistic expression has a strange reality of its own. This indeed is to be marveled at.  It is good to remember that one of Suzuki’s earliest works was on the Aśvaghosha’s Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana (Suzuki 1900). 9  This excerpt is from “Shinshū kanken” 真宗管見 (SDZ 6: 7–69). The original may have been Suzuki’s essay written in English, entitled “The Shin Sect of Buddhism” published in the Eastern Buddhist (Suzuki 1939a). The text I consulted is a translation into Japanese by SUGIHIRA Shizutoshi 杉平顗智, published in February and March 1942, further edited by D. T. Suzuki in July 1942, and compiled in the Jōdokei shisō ron (Suzuki 1942: 10–11). 8

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It follows, then, that the “body” is the body and yet it is not the body at the same time. This is what I call “the logic of sokuhi” (即非の論理). In the realm of the dharmas10 (dharmadhātu, hokkai 法界), it has to be so. This phenomenal body (色身) is not the same as the dharma body (法身), nor is the dharma body the same as the phenomenal body. Their relationship is not something like that of “the front and the back,” either. It is not entirely wrong to put it that way but is prone to intellectualization, for “the front” and “the back” imply dualistic thinking. Again, it is nothing like the dharma body “swallowing the phenomenal body in one gulp.” What is meant by “soku” (即) is not any of these relationships. The “phenomenal” rupa (shiki 色) and the “principle” dharma (hō 法) are clearly distinguished and stand in opposition, and yet in their very opposition, “rupa is (soku) dharma” (shiki soku hō 色即法), “dharma is (soku) rupa” (hō soku shiki 法即色). This is how it is in the world of spirituality. One may call it “Oneness” or “Non-duality” (ichinyosei 一如性), which is different from the identity of two things. The One is the many, and the many is the One. What is self-­ identical is at the same time not self-identical – this is what is called “ichinyo 一如,” “Non-­ duality.” The Sūtra reads that [in the paradise] “Everyone effortlessly receives the body of emptiness, the body of limitlessness” (自然虚無之身。無極之体).11 This line captures very aptly the reality of this non-duality. The word “jinen” 自然 (meaning “of itself,” i.e., “effortless”) is also fitting. It appears to me that “contradictions” are the products of the human mind. In the world of spirituality, “contradictions” are dissolved “of themselves.” We recognize and pay obeisance to the appearance of “the effortlessly empty body, the limitless body.” In the Prajñāpāramitā tradition, the same intuition is expressed as “phenomenal objects (rūpa) are śūnyatā, śūnyatā is rūpa” (色即是空、空即是色). Śūnyatā is śūnyatā, rūpa is rūpa, and intellectually they cannot be consider to be “one”, and yet where śūnyatā and rūpa are one, and rūpa and śūnyatā are one, we find “non-duality,” which is none other than “of itself” (jinen 自然). What Shinran Shōnin referred to by “jinen hōni” should be considered in this light. In the paradise of the Sukhavativyūha Sūtra, one encounters these two ideograms, “ji-nen,” ubiquitously. (SDZ 6: 76–77)

Suzuki’s reflection on the Pure Land paradise hinges on the notion of “reisei” (spirituality), which has its foundation in the traditional Buddhist analysis of several layers of consciousness. We return to Suzuki’s reflection: There is a line in Shinran Shōnin’s letters that reads: “Although my body is here in the human world, my heart (kokoro) sports in the Pure Land.” The meaning of this statement is very profound. This “heart” (or mind) of Shinran that sports is not the mind that we objectively conceive as the corporeal mind or the biological organ of the heart, but it refers to spirituality that transcends the opposition of body and mind. The mind we ordinarily think of is the intellectual mind characterized by discrimination. One cannot sport in the Pure Land with this mind. The intellectual mind is always looking toward the realm of senses. Even if it turns towards the Pure Land, it carries with it the sensual aspect, and as such, it imparts a sensual hue to the Pure Land. The intellect cannot leave the world of senses, but when the light of spirituality shines on it, that sensual dimension presents itself differently, and “my heart sports in the Pure Land.” The light that shines must come forth from spirituality. 10  “Dharma” is usually translated into English as the “law,” but Suzuki points out that “dharma” here means all the objects of our senses and cognition (see SDZ 6: 16). 11  This is a shortened reference to 容色微妙。非天。非人。皆受自然虚無之身。無極之体 (“Their appearance is subtle; it is neither of heaven nor of human. Everyone receives this empty body, the limitless body”) to which Suzuki refers in the passage prior to the one quoted. This passage is cited from the Daimuryōju-kyō 大無量寿経 (see Nakamura and Kino 1960: 158).

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The spiritual world is the dharma-world (hokkai), which we may call the Pure Land Paradise. The dharmadhātu (the dharma-world) has a metaphysical ring to it, and the Pure Land has a sensual ring. Psychology associated with Pure Land Buddhism tends towards the latter, but in reference to the chapter, “Entering into the Dharmadhātu” of the Huayan Sūtra, I want to consider the Pure Land Paradise and the dharmadhātu as one. I actually consider them one and the same. As I read the Sukhavativyūha Sūtra, I cannot help but feel that it is a passage taken from the Huayan (Gandavyūha) Sūtra. It is because my observation stems from the standpoint of spirituality. “Spirituality” (reisei) is the workings of the mind that is brought about after the manas-­ consciousness turns on itself and makes a turn.12 Before the manas turns on itself, one is focused solely on the intellectual discriminating aspect, and one cultivates ego-attachment within oneself, and cultivates nothing but the occasions that increase delusions outside oneself; seeing the hell and the paradise in a dream, one sews the seeds of anxiety and agony. However, a one hundred eighty degree turn [of the manas consciousness] takes place here, a great turn! After that, the world of senses which one used to look at is no longer the same. Indeed, as before, the feathers of crows are black and those of herons white, but that “black” and “white” are no longer “black” and “white.” This is not to say that they ceased to be black and white and become indistinguishably blurred  – such a statement comes out of one’s mind which is trapped by the intellectual discrimination. The manas-consciousness after its great turn no longer is governed by the dictation of the six consciousnesses (rokushiki 六識). On the contrary, it now gives orders to them. The world of free creativity unfolds. This is the dharmadhātu (hokkai 法界), the Paradise (gokuraku 極楽). Even if the coloring may be different between the metaphysical-sounding “dharmadhātu” and the sensually colorful “paradise,” both are essentially the same. (SDZ 6: 77–78)

To recapitulate: Suzuki came to formulate his “logic of sokuhi” in order to designate the non-dualistic reality of Buddhist spirituality and did so out of his recognition of the universal spiritual principle that was applicable both to Zen and Shin worldviews. Acknowledging the emphasis placed on the two directions of spiritual practice – that of “jiriki” (liberation attained by the effort of the self) and “tariki” (liberation attained by the grace of the Other), which are two vectors, as it were, within Mahāyāna Buddhism, Suzuki observes that what sustains the Mahāyāna worldview is this non-dualistic “interpenetrating co-presence” of the contradictories. This is what the Prajñāpāramitā tradition succinctly summarized in the Heart

12  Suzuki’s earlier extensive study of the Lankāvatāra Sūtra is no doubt behind his statement concerning the Buddhist theory of consciousness (see Suzuki 1978: 40, 190–193, 207–210). Some Buddhist analyses of the mind advance the theory of eight consciousnesses. The first five are associated with the five senses of vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. The sixth consciousness (S. mano vijñāna) is the discriminating consciousness that also gives rise to the sense of ego. The seventh consciousness is called “manas vijñāna (J. mana-tensō-shiki 摩那転送識). It is hidden between the sixth and the eighth consciousness. When this manas-consciousness is awakened and turns to the ālaya vijñāna (J. araya-ganzō-shiki 頼耶含蔵識), it sheds light on the latter and turns the sixth consciousness towards the spiritual dimension. This spiritual awakening of the sixth consciousness leads to the life of spiritual practice, in which one works carefully to transform the defiled content of the ālaya vijñāna into pure content. See Zen Master Hakuin’s “explanation of the eight consciousnesses” (J. hasshiki no ben 八識の弁) in his “Keisōdokuzui” 荊叢毒蘂 (Hakuin 1977: 376–377).

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Sūtra in the famous line: “yad rūpam sā śūnyatā, yā śūnyatā tad rūpam” (“whatever is form, that is śūnyatā (‘emptiness’); whatever is śūnyatā, that is form,”) or “rūpam śūnyatā, śūnyatāiva rūpam”(“śūnyatā is form, śūnyatā indeed is form”) (Nakamura et al. 1963: 185) – “shiki soku ze kū, kū soku ze shiki 色即是空・空即是色.” It is also significant that Suzuki’s scriptural basis is deeply connected to the worldview of the Huayan Sūtra; however, a discussion on this point must wait for another occasion.

2.2  A  Closer Look at Suzuki’s Formulation of the “Logic of Sokuhi” As we saw above, Suzuki introduced the term “sokuhi no ronri” in the series of essays on Pure Land thought (published in his Jōdokei shisō-ron), dating from around 1940. But Suzuki’s keen interest in the “logical expression” of wisdom (prajñā) had been in fermentation for quite a while, as testified in his Essays on Zen Buddhism, the Third Series, and other writings going back to the early 1930s. Suzuki’s most direct and concise explanation of the “logic of sokuhi” is found in his lectures on “Kongōkyō no Zen” (“Zen of the Diamond Sūtra”), delivered in the winter months of 1943 through January 1944. We have already quoted this passage in the introduction, but let us revisit it: “The Buddha preached the perfection of wisdom (prajñāpāramitā), which at the same time is not (sokuhi) the perfection of wisdom, and therefore it is called the perfection of wisdom” (The Diamond Sūtra 13a). To this formulation, I gave the name “the logic of sokuhi.” I am not sure if it should be called “logic” or not, but let us leave it at that for now. (SDZ 5: 387; Suzuki 1975, 4: 23, emphasis added)

What is noteworthy here is that the last line of the Diamond Sūtra 13a referred to by Suzuki – “The Buddha preached that the perfection of wisdom is not the perfection of wisdom, and therefore it is called the perfection of wisdom” (説般若波羅密、即 非般若波羅密、是名般若波羅密) is actually not in the widely circulated Chinese text translated by Kumārajīva (344–413). The Chinese reads: “The Buddha preached the perfection of wisdom. That is, it is not the perfection of wisdom” (仏説般若波 羅密。則非般若波羅密). But both the Nakamura-Kino Japanese translation of the Diamond Sūtra from Sanskrit and the Sanskrit text edited by Conze do have the line, “Therefore it is called the perfection of wisdom” (Nakamura and Kino 1960: 74–75; Conze 1957: 37–38). Suzuki must have added the line, 是名般若波羅密 after the fashion of the traditional Chinese scripture style. Another minor point is that a careful reading of the Chinese text translated by Kumārajīva reveals that the term “sokuhi” 即非 is written sometimes with the ideogram, “soku” 則 (C. ze), and other times with “soku” 即 (C. ji), both mean “is” or “that is.” However, Suzuki did not pay special attention to this minor point that

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“sokuhi” was written either as “jifei” 即非 or “zefei” 則非. From this sort of observation, we may conjecture that Suzuki focused on a philosophical reflection instead of a philological textual study. The textual variations did not concern him, for he was formulating his own understanding of the larger and more comprehensive logical structure of Mahāyāna spirituality, which he came to call sokuhi.

2.3  “ Logic of Sokuhi”: A Way to Encapsulate the Mahāyāna Understanding Suzuki explains that the “logic of sokuhi” is just another metaphysical formulation—just like the non-duality of distinction (J. shabetsu 差別) and unity (J. byōdō 平等) – “shabetsu soku byōdō, byōdō soku shabetsu 差別即平等、平等即差別.” It also points to the same intuition of the interpenetration of the abstract principle (J. ri 理) and concrete things or affairs (J. ji 事),13 which was most famously formulated into the Huayan doctrine of “jijimuge” 事事無礙 (“non-hindrance among concrete things”).14 Again some Mahāyānists explained it in terms of the oneness of the “thing” (J. tai 体) and its “function” (J. yū 用). Suzuki notes that while the “thing” (J. tai) corresponds to the “principle” (J. ri) and “unity” (J. byōdō), the “function” (J. yū) corresponds to the “individual things” (J. ji) and “distinction” (shabetsu). The notion of unity of “the thing and its function” was developed by the Chinese Chan master Linji (J. Rinzai) 臨済 (d. 867) into the teaching of “the total oneness of the person and the function” 全体作用 in which the function is but the person, and the person is nothing but the function. Suzuki points out that, describing this reality of personhood, Linji said: “One becomes the master of one’s own self, and wherever one stands is real” 随処作主、立処皆真. (SDZ 5: 443–444; Asahina 13  Tradiitonally, individual things are compared to numerous waves, and the principle to the vast ocean (i.e., the body of water). As the ocean manifests itself into waves, the ocean and the waves are not in conflict, and waves are not in conflict with one another (see Tsukamoto and Mochizuki 1993). For a textual reference, see Chenguan’s 澄観 Huayan fajie xuanjing 華厳法界玄鏡 (T 45.676). 14  In Huayan Buddhism, the world is divided into four metaphysical moments or “realms” of (1) the things or “concrete facts” (C. shifajie 事法界, J. jihokkai), (2) the realm of the principle (C. lifajie 理法界, J. rihokkai), (3) the realm in which concrete things and the principle interpenetrate (C. lishi wuai fajie 理事無礙法界, J. rijimuge-hokkai), and (4) the realm in which individual things co-exist without any conflict (C. shishi wuai fajie 事事無礙法界, J. jijimuge hokkai). The first is the realm of “differentiation and distinction” (J. “shabetsu”), the world of phenomena. The second is the realm of a commonly held principle (“byōdō”), which brings together individual particulars. The third is the realm of no-interference between the particular individuals and the principle, as things arise by the principle of “dependent co-origination” (S. pratītyasamutpāda, C. yuanqi, J. engi 縁起). The fourth is the realm of dynamic interactions and communication among particular individuals, without conflicting with one another. See the entry “Shihokkai” in the Mochizuki Dictionary of Buddhism (Tsukamoto and Mochizuki 1993–1994: 2) and the Huayan fajie xuanjing (T 45.672).

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1966: 100–101). Likewise, Linji’s teaching of the fourfold relationship between the subject and the object known as “four classifications” (J. shiryōken” 四料揀)15 is none other than a formulation of the Zen experience in a “logical” or systematic manner. For Suzuki, be it the “logic of sokuhi,” or any other metaphysical formulation, they speak of the same spiritual insight. He ponders on the necessity of articulating and sorting out one’s spiritual understanding in terms of a “system” (J. taikei 体系) and concludes that unless one’s experience is sorted out in an encompassing holistic way, it remains powerless and ineffectual. In this context, Suzuki fondly refers to the formulation known as the “five ranks” (J. goi 五位),16 developed by DONGSHAN Liangjie (J. Tōzan Ryōkai) 洞山良价 (807–869) and his followers. The formulation of “five ranks” was apparently incorporated into a system of kōan classification by Japanese Zen master HAKUIN Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1685–1768) and came to be required of advanced Zen students henceforward.17 Seasoned Zen students, who passed their initial kenshō stage, are required to sort out and organize their understanding of kōan practice, in order to see how the solution of numerous kōans may be related to one another. Suzuki observes: [Talking about the kōan practice], there are innumerable numbers of kōan, but one could also say that the kōan is one. Since the realm of all dharmas (hokkai), in which everything arises in mutual dependence (hokkai engi), is absolutely one (zettai itsu), if a student penetrates through the reality of this hokkai, every kōan that is related to this dharma-realm must dissolve of itself all at once. Here is a spiritual insight. But, that insight cannot remain merely on the level of insight. I would imagine it is because human consciousness demands something systematic, something structural. The formulation of the “five ranks” [of the Sōtō doctrine], for instance, is not a formal “logical” expression, but it is an attempt of the Zen adepts to organize systematically the content of their own insight. Zen practitioners are asked to sort out their reflections in terms of five ranks concerning the kōan, which they have solved one by one.

 The text reads: “Sometimes I take away the person but do not take away the surroundings; sometimes I take away the surroundings but not the person; sometimes I take away both person and surroundings; sometimes I take away neither person nor surroundings” (Sasaki 2009: 150–151). 16  The first stage is that of “the unity exists in the distinctions” (J. shōchūhen 正中偏), the second stage is that of “the distinctions exist in the unity” (J. henchūshō 偏中正), and the two together mean “the unity is the distinction, the distinction is in the unity.” These two stages are spatial ways of viewing our experience, and not yet temporal. When the element of temporality enters the discourse, our action arises, and the “coming into being of all things” (J. engi) in the world takes place. Therefore, the next two stages follow: the third being “one’s action comes from the unity” (J. shōchūrai 正中来), and the fourth stage being “one’s action arrives at distinctions” (J. henchūshi 偏中至) – there is a circular movement between stages three and four. And finally, full and ripe awakening transforms the person from ego-centered “lopsided” mode (J. hen 偏) to ego-transcending centered mode (J. shō 正), and one freely exercises one’s authentic actions. That is the fifth stage, “arriving at the non-duality of unity and distinction” (J. kenchūtō 兼中到) (SDZ 5: 446– 447). The same topic is discussed at length in Suzuki’s “Lectures on Zen Buddhism” (Suzuki 1970: 59–74). There seems to be some confusion of “hen” 偏 and “ken” 兼 in the printed text, however, and the reader must navigate very cautiously to follow the thread of Suzuki’s point therein. There appears to be at least two variations concerning the fourth rank, either “henchūshi” or “kenchūshi.” 17  Zen master Hakuin called the fourth rank “the arrival at mutual integration” (J. kenchūshi 兼中 至) (Miura and Sasaki 1965: 62–72). 15

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It is important to systematize one’s thought. Just having an experience is not good enough. Unless we have a system in which we abstractly grasp our entire understanding, we do not know where each individual concrete case [of experience understood through kōan] belongs. Once we organize our insight, our experience gains more power. Here, too, we see the mutual penetration [of insight and intellect]. Experience must be systematized, and the system must have its foundation in experience. Only then, both mutually deepen and shed light on each other. (SDZ 5: 447–448)

Precisely because of this recognition of the essential importance of the hermeneutic “mutually productive circle” of the articulation of the content of spiritual insight and the experience itself, Suzuki speaks of the “discrimination of non-discrimination” (J. mufunbetsu no funbetsu 無分別の分別). Suzuki’s stance as a Zen man is that of an intellectual Zen man. For him, the purity of the mind (or heart) and intellectual discernment imbued with prajñā should not collide with each other. He observes: Experience (taiken 体験) is something beyond discrimination (mufunbetsu), while thinking is discrimination (funbetsu). We must cultivate our [spiritual] discrimination (mufunbetsu no funbetsu) that is beyond the intellectual discrimination. We must have the discrimination that is rooted in [the experience, which sees] beyond discrimination (funbetsu no mufunbetsu). That is why it is beneficial for Zen students to have a “Zen system of thought,” modeled after such as the “five ranks,” for instance. (SDZ 5: 448)

A very important point is made here by Suzuki, namely, the “logical” or systematic understanding of kōan is not inimical to spiritual practice and can be a meaningful enterprise, as it can deepen and clarify the meaning of spiritual experience. Religious practice and intellectual reflection must go hand in hand, according to Suzuki. Let us resort to the familiar metaphor of “the ox and the cart.” If the cart (“logic”) is placed before the ox (“experience”), we go nowhere. In the Zen world, the cart is eventually absorbed (or internalized) by the ox, so that the ox alone can proceed hither and thither without being hampered by the cart but never rejecting the “cart.” Suzuki embraces the “cart” and moves freely, fully utilizing his intellectual capacity.

3  P  art II: The Diamond Sūtra and “Sokuhi”: Prajña as the Source of the “Logic of Sokuhi” 3.1  The Negative Dialectical Style of the Diamond Sūtra Let us go back to the Diamond Sūtra to see what inspired Suzuki to come up with his formulation of the “logic of sokuhi.” The Diamond Sūtra (S. Vajracchedikā prajñāpāramitā sutra, J. Kongō hannya haramita kyō 金剛般若波羅蜜經) is full of statements that are phrased in “negation-qua-affirmation.” This peculiar style has been called “the dialectics of prajñaparamita” by Thich Nhat Hanh (Hanh 1992: 55), or “the dialectical nature of reality” by Edward Conze (Conze 1958: 52). Let us take the passage in question from chapter 13a: “the perfection of wisdom preached

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by the Tathāgata is not a perfection of wisdom the Tathāgata preached; therefore it is called the perfection of wisdom”18 (Conze 1958: 52). Here, the second reference to “prajñāpāramitā” is shortened to “pāramitā,” and its negation “apāramitā” is used. In this case the Sanskrit word directly corresponding to the word “sokuhi” (C. jifei, zefei) is “saiva” (“like so”). But many Sanskrit passages that are translated into “sokuhi” in Chinese lack this word altogether. In fact, it is not necessary in Sanskrit sentences. This fact is instructive in relation to our discussion of the idea of “sokuhi.” In this context, Conze’s remark on the use of “tenocyate,” meaning “therefore,” merits a special attention. It reads: Tena here has the meaning of “therefore,” in either the sense of “that is why,” or “for that reason,” or in the sense of “that is how,” “in the manner.” …The phrase is a common ingredient of Buddhist definitions and argumentations, in the texts of all schools, and it indicates a logical relation which is plausible and can be assented to. In this Sūtra, however, it is used to indicate a paradoxical inconclusive and illogical relation between what precedes and what follows. It pregnantly brings out the opposition which exists between esoteric truth and mere speaking, between the true state of affairs as it is, and the words in which it is expressed. This is quite in keeping with the use of tasmād in the Hridaya [i.e., Heart Sūtra]. Because, we are there told, emptiness is the same as the skandhas, therefore, we are told, the exact opposite is true, i.e., that the skandhas are completely absent in emptiness. By abrogating the principle of contradiction, the logic of the Prajñāpāramitā differs from that of Aristotle…. In the history of human thought different thinkers have preferred different logical rules. Some, the followers of Aristotle, have held that terms should be unambiguous, and, ideally, have one meaning only, in such a way that one word corresponds to one idea. Others again have chosen to load each one of their basic terms with a great number of varying meanings, and to them belong the followers of the Prajñāpāramitā. Their terms śūnyatā is another case in point. It is not here my task to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this approach. It is sufficient to say that it exists, strange as it may seem to the Aristotelians. …If the reader of the English translation is sometimes puzzled about the exact connotation of the word “dharma,” he is in no worse position than the readers of the Sanskrit original. With regard to apratishthita19 we must bear in mind that the English language has never undergone the influence of Buddhist thought, and therefore often offers not ready-made equivalents for Buddhist concepts and attitudes. (Conze 1957: 12–15)

If Suzuki were to formulate a terminology from Sanskrit, he might have called the “logic of sokuhi,” the “logic of tena.” Be that as it may, Conze’s observation that “the English language has never undergone the influence of Buddhist thought” is quite pertinent to our discussion because many misconceptions among different linguistic and cultural environments are, after all, due to the lack of corresponding experiences of the words that are in common used in the ordinary discourse. The exciting challenge of the intercultural encounter lies precisely herein, as it can enlarge our horizon of intelligibility. In the Chinese translation of the Diamond Sūtra, the compound in question, “sokuhi” (C. jifei or zefei), appears about 20 times, and a related negative formulation just about another 10 times. There are essentially two types of negative formu Prajñāpāramitā Tathāgatena bhāshitā saiva-a-pāramitā Tatgāgata bhāshitā. tenocyate prajñāpāramiteti. 19  Meaning “unattached,” or “not caught by”; it is translated into Chinese as 無所住, “having no place to dwell.” In everyday Japanese, its equivalent would be “torawarenai” とらわれない. 18

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lations – namely, (1) “A is not A,” or “A is non-A, therefore it is A,” and (2) “A is neither A nor non-A.” In the following, we will briefly examine the first type of negative statement (from chapters 13a, 10b and 17g, 8, 13c, 17d)20 as well as the second type of negative statement (from chapter 7). In each case, after the Sanskrit lines, the Chinese translation by Kumārajīva, with an English translation, is given. Next, the Nakamura-Kino (1960) translation into modern Japanese is given with an English translation. 1. Chapter 13a (Sanskrit) prajñāpāramitā Tathāgatena bhāshitā saiva-a-pāramitā Tathāgatena bhāshitā. tenocyate prajñāpāramiteti. (Chinese) 仏説般若波羅密. 則非般若波羅密. (“The Buddha preached the perfection of wisdom. That is, not the perfection of wisdom.”) (Japanese) 「如来によって説かれた智慧の完成は、智慧の完成ではな い」と如来によって説かれているからだ。それだからこそ、智慧の完成と 言われるのだ。(“It is preached that “the perfection of wisdom spoken by the Tathāgata is not the perfection of wisdom.” That is why it is called the “perfection of wisdom.”) 2. Chapters 10b and 17g (Sanskrit) kshetra-vyūhāh kshetra-vyūhā iti (Subhūte), ‘vyūhās te Tathāgatena bhāshitāh. tenocyante kshetra-vyūhā iti. (Chinese) 荘厳仏土者則非荘厳。是名荘厳。(“To embellish the Buddha land is not to embellish the Buddha land. For this reason, it is called “to embellish.”) (Japanese) 如来は国土の建設、国土の建設というのは、建設ではないこ とだ、と説かれているからだ。それだからこそ、国土の建設と言われるの だ。(“The Tathāgata preached that making of peaceful Buddha land is not making of peaceful Buddha land. Therefore, it is called making of peaceful Buddha land.”) 3. Chapter 8 (Sanskrit) buddhadharmā buddhadharmā iti (Subhūte) ’buddhadharmāś caiva te Tathāgatena bhāshitāh. tenocyante buddhadharmā iti. (Chinese) 所謂仏法者即非仏法。(“The so-called Buddha dharma is not the Buddha dharma.”) (Japanese) 目ざめた人の理法、目ざめた人の理法というのは、目ざめた 人の理法ではない、と如来が説いているからだ。それだからこそまた目ざ めた人の理法と言われるのだ。(“The Tathāgata preached that the Awakened One’s insight [buddha dharmā] is not the Awakened One’s insight. Therefore it is called the Awakened One’s insight.”) 4. Chapter 13c (Sanskrit) yo’py asau loka-dhātus ’dhātuh sa Tathāgatena bhāshitah. tenocyate lokadhātur iti.

 The Chinese translation by Kumārajīva is traditionally accompanied by the chapter breakdown into 32, originally given by Prince Zhaoming 昭明太子, the heir apparent of Wudi 武帝, first emperor of the Liang 梁 dynasty. Since then, this convention has been adopted by scholars for convenience, even when referring to the Sanskrit text (see Conze 1957: 1; Nakamura and Kino 1960: 209–212).

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(Chinese) 如来説世界非世界、是名世界 (“The Tathāgata preached that the world is not the world; thus it is named the world.”)21 (Japanese) 「如来によって説かれたこの世界は、世界ではない」と如来 によって説 かれているからです。それだからこそ世界と言われるので す。(“The Tathāgata has taught that the world [loka-dhātu] that was spoken of by the Tathāgata is not the world; therefore it is called the world.”) 5. Chapter 17d (Sanskrit) sarva-dharmā iti (Subhūte) a-dharmās Tathāgatena bhāshitā. tasmād ucyante sarva-dharma iti. (Chinese) 所言一切法者。即非一切法。是故名一切法。(“What are called the entire phenomenal objects [dharmas] are not the entire phenomenal objects. Therefore, they are named the entire phenomenal objects.”) (Japanese) 「あらゆる法というものは実は法ではない」と、如来によっ て説 かれているからだ。それだからこそ「あらゆる法」といわれるの だ。(“It is preached by the Tathāgata that ‘All phenomenal objects [sarva-dharma] are not actually phenomenal objects.’ Therefore they are called ‘all possible phenomenal objects.’”) An example of the negative formulation of “A is neither A nor non-A” is taken from chapter 7: 6. Chapter 7 (Sanskrit) yo’sau Tathāgatena dharmo’bhisambuddho deśito vā, agrāhyah so’nabhilapyah, na sa dharmo na-adharmah. tat kasya hetoh? asamskrita-prabhāvitā hy ārya-pudgalāh. (Chinese) 如来所説法。皆不可取不可説。非法非非法。所以者何。一切 賢聖。皆以無為法22。而有差別。(“None of the dharmas that the Tathāgata has preached can be grasped, because they cannot be spoken of. They are neither the phenomenal objects nor the non-phenomenal objects. It is because holy sages abide by the ‘uncreated’ dharma, and moreover, concrete distinctions obtain.”) (Japanese) 如来が現に覚られたり、教え示されたりした法というもの は、認識することもできないし、口で説明することもできないからです。 それは、法でもなく、法でないものでもありません。それはなぜかという と 、 聖 者 た ち は 、 絶 対 そ の も の に よ っ て 顕 さ れ て い る 23か ら で す。(“Because the phenomenal objects that the Tathāgata has fully realized or taught cannot be intellectually grasped nor can it be explained in words. It is neither a phenomenal object nor a non-phenomenal object. It is because the holy enlightened ones are given proof and authenticated by the Absolute itself.”)

 Here the Chinese translation simply uses “not” (C. fei 非), instead of “that is not” (C. 即非), although the meaning remains the same. 22  無為法 is opposed to phenomenally manifested things 有為法, and it denotes the indefinable source of existence. (Nakamura and Kino 1960: 145 n. 49). 23  Conze translates “asamskrta-prabhāvitā hy ārya-pudgalāh” as “an Absolute exalts the Holy Persons” (Nakamura and Kino 1960: 146–147 n. 53). 21

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From this quick exposition of the passages of the Diamond Sūtra, we gain some feel for the use of the negative expressions employed in it. Next, we shall move onto the content of the Diamond Sūtra, which will further make clear why the expression “sokuhi” logically works in that context.

3.2  T  he Practical Message of the Diamond Sūtra and the “Logic of Sokuhi” We must remember that Suzuki was interested in the Diamond Sūtra because it was one of the most basic texts honored in the Zen tradition, and, moreover, he saw how clearly the Mahāyāna spiritual insight of śūnyatā was expressed in it. He saw in the juxtaposition of “is and is not” (J. sokuhi) the essence not only of the prajñāpāramitā tradition but also of the Mahāyāna worldview at large. This sūtra contains guidelines of conduct for the bodhisattvas, the spiritual workers who choose to carry out the work of altruism freely and joyfully. As such, the practical and ethical dimensions present in the religious pursuit of bodhisattvas are especially featured in this sūtra. In this context, the “logic of sokuhi” acquires practical importance. The main section of the sūtra begins with the question posed to the Buddha by the venerable Subhūti: “If a young man of a ‘good family’ (S. kula-putra) or a ‘well bred young woman’ (S. kula-duhitri) wants to pursue the bodhisattva career (bodhisattva-­yana samprasthīta), how should one live, act, and what state of mind should one maintain?” (chapter 2).24 The Buddha, deeming the question worthy of his response, complies with Subhuti’s request. The main points of the Buddha’s teaching may be summarized as follows: 1 . There is no substantive reality to living things; 2. Engage in the act of giving without the thought of accruing merits, and through this practice, learn to give rise to the mind that is not caught by the erroneous thought of substantial view of living beings; 3. Engage in mental training to consider every proposition to have its counter proposition (it helps to nullify the substantive thinking); and 4. The ultimate pledge of the bodhisattvas is to understand and embody the message of the affirmation and negation of the proposition. Concerning the first point, that there is no substantive reality to living things, the sūtra propounds that the thought of “the self or the being, the idea of the soul or of the person” should not be entertained by the bodhisattvas (chapter 3). The Sanskrit terms used for these terms are: “ātman” (“the self,” C. 我相, J. “自我”), “sattva” (“the living being,” C. 人相, J. 生きているもの), “jīva,” (“soul,” C. zhongsheng xiang 衆生相, J. kotai 個体), and “pudgala” (“person,” C. shouzhe xiang 壽者相,

 Conze translates it as “how should a son or daughter of good family, who set out in the Bodhisattva-vehicle, stand, how progress, how control their thought?” (Conze 1958: 22).

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J. kojin 個人).25 This is a clear declaration that this Sūtra stands on the fundamental doctrine of anātman, or no-self, that is, the negation of ego. The second point explains the practice of “giving” (S. dāna) without being caught up in the idea of accruing the merits. Giving, or charity, is the first of the six “perfections of wisdom,” namely, (1) giving (dāna), (2) observing “moral life” (S. śīla), (3) perseverance or “humility” (S. kshānti), (4) diligence, or “striving” (S. vīrya), (5) “meditation” (S. dhyāna), and (6) “wisdom” (S. prajñā) (Suzuki and Humphries 1976: 335–338; SDZ 5: 376–378). In the practice of selfless giving, sustained by the view that there is no substantive self, the bodhisattva will cultivate the mental habit of non-attachment. In the course of giving, the realization of the nature of all things to be śūnyatā should lead to the strengthening of one’s mental attitude of non-­attachment. In this context, the Buddha famously advised: “Give rise to the mind which abides nowhere” (Suzuki and Humphries 1976: 111–114) 応無 所住而生其心 (chapter 10c).26 Here, we see how the practice of egoless “giving” (S. dāna) can lead to “wisdom” (S. prajñā) that clearly discerns the true nature of reality. Suzuki writes: “the source out of which the act of giving emerges is wisdom, prajñā. Once one acquires prajñā, one cannot help but perform the act of giving. For me, prajñā boils down to dāna, and dāna prajñā” (SDZ 5: 378). In the practice of mental training in the teaching of śūnyatā, what Suzuki called the “logic of sokuhi” comes to the center stage. The existence of living beings, the world we live in, the physical features of a holy person, even down to a speck of dust are  first mentioned, are then denied to exist, and only to be affirmed as such. Bodhisattvas must find this constant repetition of mental training helpful, as they can examine their understanding of the true nature of reality, and in this process their mental habit shifts from the ordinary way of thinking into a spiritual way of thinking that transcends the binary objectifying thinking. Concerning the fourth point of the pledge the bodhisattvas make, the sūtra reads: “I pledge to lead all living beings into the realm of eternal peace, which is devoid of defilement. And moreover, even if I lead all living beings into this realm of unsoiled eternal peace, in fact there is not even one living being that will have been led into the realm of eternal peace.” The reason being that if a bodhisattva entertains the idea that there are “living things,” such a practitioner would no longer be called a bodhisattva. …And the reason is that “those who embrace the bodhisattva path” actually do not exist, and therefore they are called bodhisattvas. (chapter 17a)

Moreover, the bodhisattvas accumulate great merits by acknowledging that “everything is devoid of ego, and nothing comes into existence,” but they must not consider those merits as their own. They may know that they have accumulated great merits, but because they have no ego to attach themselves to these merits, the bodhisattvas “do not consider any of these merits as their own” (chapter 28).  In this context, the meaning of word “jīva,” originally “living thing,” comes close to an “individual thing” (Nakamura and Kino 1960: 142 n. 35). 26  This is one of the favorite mottos of Zen adepts. A similar recommendation is repeated as “Give rise to the mind that abides nowhere” (C. 応生無所住心) (chapter 14e). 25

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That Suzuki especially singles out the passage from chapter 13a is significant, as it concerns how to “remember” the kernel of the Buddha’s teaching. Venerable Subhūti asks the Buddha: “How should the bodhisattvas remember the Buddha’s teaching?” The Buddha’s answer is the passage Suzuki quoted: “The Buddha preached the perfection of wisdom, which he taught was not the perfection of wisdom; therefore, it is called the perfection of wisdom,” and as such it is meant as a pointer for the bodhisattvas to “remember” the teaching of the Buddha wherever they may be and in whatever act of benevolence they may be engaged. In other words, if the bodhisattvas remember this line with the proper understanding that comes with it, they have all the tools necessary to pursue their selfless career of liberating all beings from suffering.

3.3  A  Reflection on the Religious Significance of the Practice of Giving Charity or giving (dāna) is always relational. Presupposing a community of more than one person, giving is an eminently social act. It involves the “giver,” the “gift” (which can be material or spiritual), and the “receiver.” Moreover, giving is a very mundane activity, taking place everywhere at all times. As we look into “giving,” however, we see its structure can be a subtly complex one. The Diamond Sūtra talks about one type of giving – the bodhisattva way of giving – which we will contrast with a non-­bodhisattva way of giving, or an inauthentic way of giving, to highlight its uniqueness. The features of the inauthentic ways of giving are marked by the donor’s expectations of return, which creates a sense of obligation in the receiver. “I give this to you, therefore you do such and such for me.” The worst case of this giving may be bribery. Political campaign contributions by large corporations and industries are also of this type of giving. Take a more frivolous example: in Japan it has become a custom in the last 20 years or so for women office workers to give a box of chocolate each to their male co-workers and bosses on Valentine’s Day. The box of chocolate given on this day is called the “obligation chocolate” (“giri choko”). Once the male coworkers and bosses receive this “giri choko,” they are obliged to give back a box of chocolate or whatever a month later, on the 14th of March. This seemingly innocuous custom shows how a gift may create a sense of social obligation and pressure to bind one to return the favor. This obligatory giving is the opposite of giving practiced by the bodhisattvas. The generally accepted practice of “quid pro quo” (proportionate return of favor) is a calculated action based on an ego-centered thinking. The bodhisattva’s way of giving rises above such social conventions and is carried out freely – that is, free of the expectations of “a return in kind.” Why? Because, “One must give without any thought of doing anything good,” so that it would not create any bond of obligation. For one to have the thought of doing something good is for one to be attached to the thought of “something good,” which further implies that such a giving act is stuck in the mold of a substantive ego-self. In other words,

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if one can practice the act of free giving without any expectation or any thought of doing a good act, it is in fact a practice of having no-self, “anātman.” In such an action, not only is there no giver but also there is no “receiver,” and there is no “credit” for the work accomplished. This is where the “logic of A is -A” no longer poses any contradiction. When there is no “ego” that gives the gift, the gift is still given, and yet not given, for there is no “giver” – the non-ego that gives the gift is a bodhisattva. Again, the gift that the bodhisattva gives, in order to lead “all beings to eternal peace,” is “empty of the thought of return,” because the bodhisattvas, out of having no attachment, do not entertain the sense of the substantive reality of those who are led out of suffering. The “logic of sokuhi” (here, “A gift is a non-gift, therefore it is a gift”) makes sense; it no longer presents itself as “logic” but rather how bodhisattvas, committed to the path of prajñāpāramitā (“perfection of wisdom”), perceive the world and work in it. The “logical” contradiction is dissolved with the dissolution of the obstinate idea of the things and all beings as substantive. When that dissolution happens, pure giving simply takes place, and compassion that fuels the bodhisattvas breaks into a realm of emancipation. Such would be the world that “reflects” paradise on this earth. It is in this practical context that the Buddhist tradition speaks of “affirmation qua negation,” and this “negation” is the means to cut through the illusions of existence as substantive reality. It also eradicates the dualistic scheme of subject and object, which is fundamentally embedded in the grammatical structure of many human languages.

4  P  art III: D. T. Suzuki and Nishida Kitarō in Dialogue on the Philosophy of Sokuhi 4.1  Suzuki and Nishida as Voicing the Same Idea D.  T. Suzuki and NISHIDA Kitarō shared close intellectual ties, reflecting each other’s thinking and acting as the “sounding board” to each other. Nishida once described their relationship succinctly: “Daisetz is in the field of religion, and I am in philosophy, but we share the same idea” (NKZ 19: 158). Their relationship was one of mutual dialogue as opposed to one person influencing the other, as has been sometimes portrayed by some scholars. D. Dilworth, for instance, wrote “Suzuki’s direct influence on Nishida’s ‘The Religious Worldview’ essay must … be taken into account” (Dilworth 1987: 146). The reader is to be cautioned that Dilworth reads Suzuki’s work as “religiously and culturally chauvinistic, extolling Japanese Buddhist spirituality at the expense of other Japanese, Asian, and Western forms of religiosity.” In the same breath, he assesses that Suzuki exerted his influence over the shape of the post-war Kyoto school “to retain this agnostic strain of encounter theology” (Dilworth 1987: 146). The fact is that both Suzuki and Nishida personally acknowledged each other as the source of inspiration. In Suzuki’s “Zen of the Diamond Sūtra” (J. Kongōkyō no

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Zen 金剛経の禅), Suzuki makes numerous references to Nishida’s philosophical ideas and terminologies. Suzuki especially finds Nishida’s coinage, “absolute ­present” (J. zettai genzai 絶対現在) to capture the Zen spirit, and he borrows it from Nishida  philosophy (SDZ 5: 430). Another term Suzuki adopts from Nishida is “absolute nothingness” (J. zettai mu 絶対無), especially in explaining the meaning of “non-attachment” or “mujū” 無住 (S. “apratishthita”). Suzuki writes: To speak of the “foundation” – if there were any – of non-attachment is absolute nothingness, which is not “nothingness” in terms of being and non-being. Nor does it mean that there is some other “nothingness” outside being and non-being. It means that “being and non-being” are at once “nothing.” Herein one finds the spiritual intuition. (SDZ 5: 391)

Suzuki read with great interest Nishida’s essays that were related to Buddhism. Therefore it is not surprising to encounter a long passage from Nishida’s writing that Suzuki quotes in his 1941 essay, Zen e no michi (“The path towards Zen,” Suzuki 1941b). The passage quoted from Nishida’s 1940, “Poieshisu to purakushisu” (“Poiesis and praxis) reads as follows: …What the “Eastern no-mind” (tōyōteki mushin) means is nothing to do with the disappearance of the self or some sort of irrationality. It means, in opposition to appropriating a thing as belonging to oneself, the self becomes the self that belongs to the thing. The self becomes the thing that belongs to the Absolute One (zettaisha). [The phrase] “the unity of God and human beings” does not mean that the human beings become God, but rather, it means that each becomes a thing that belongs to God. One’s self is one’s self all the way through. The only difference here is that the self becomes an absolute thing, an absolute fact. This is why I say: “we become a thing and we think, we become a thing and we act.” …The standpoint of Eastern no-mind is not the standpoint from which one grasps the world immanently, but rather it is the standpoint from which one grasps the world transcendentally. It is not a standpoint in which the self disappears, having being taken over by a thing. Rather, it is where the self becomes a thing and acts; it is the standpoint in which the self is embraced [by the Absolute One]. It is the standpoint, in which the self becomes the present moment as the self-determination of the absolute present. (Nishida 1940; NKZ 10: 175, quoted in Suzuki 1941b; SDZ 13: 302-303)

Suzuki quoted this passage of Nishida to illustrate the experience of Zen masters, whose utterance may appear “abrupt” or “non sequitur” to the untrained mind (SDZ 13: 303). From this cursory examination, it is hoped that a picture emerges that Suzuki and Nishida, both independent thinkers, mutually respected and responded to each other’s work and and each developed their own thought being inspired by each other.

4.2  N  ishida’s Adoption and Exposition of the “Logic of Han’nya Sokuhi” Nishida first encountered the expression “logic of sokuhi” in Suzuki’s “Studies on the Pure Land Thought” (J. Jōdokei shisō ron 浄土系思想論), which was published in December 1942, a copy of which he received soon thereafter.27 His first mention 27

 See Nishida’s letter #1728 to YANAGIDA Kenjūrō, January 25, 1943 (NKZ 19: 219).

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of this expression appears in the essay “Ronri to sūri” 論理と数理 (“Logic and the Mathematical Principle,” 1944a), in which he compares western logic and eastern logic. He observed that western logic—whether Kantian critical philosophy, phenomenology, or Hegelian dialectical philosophy—remained within the framework of traditional Aristotelian logic that turned the subject of investigation into an object of classification. Nishida’s critique of Aristotelian logic is that it does not include the discussion of what makes that objectification possible. It is Nishida’s project to establish a logical form that incorporates the speaker into the logical form. This endeavor led him to the formulation of the “logic of topos” (basho) in 1926.28 In his “Ronri to sūri,” Nishida embraces the Buddhist philosophy of “śūnyatā” as helpful in constructing a non-Aristotelian logic. To quote: I maintain that in the Buddhist philosophy, which takes the self as the object of investigation, that is, in the philosophical analysis of consciousness (or mind [kokoro 心]), we encounter “the non-substantive logic” (or logic of “nothingness” [mu 無]). One could call it a logic of the eastern worldview (tōyōteki sekaikan 東洋的世界観). … This eastern worldview, however, is yet logically formulated. What I call the “contradictory self-­ identity” is an attempt to formulate such a logic. It should not be confused with “satori.” Rather, it is the logic of what [Dōgen described as] “all things are manifest as they are” and “all things proceed to authenticate the self.” Mahāyāna Buddhism is not [psychological] subjectivism. The “mind” (kokoro) is not a psychological entity. It is said [in the Diamond Sūtra 18b]: “All minds are no-mind, therefore they are minds.” There must be at work something like the “logic of sokuhi,” so termed by D. T. Suzuki. When that which expresses itself is that which is expressed, “all minds are no-mind.” (Nishida 1944a; NKZ 11: 86-87)

This passage requires further elaboration, but for now suffice it to note that this is the first instance of the mention by Nishida of the “logic of sokuhi.” By the last line just quoted above—“That which expresses itself is that which is expressed,” Nishida refers to the workings of self-­consciousness or “consciousness that permeates every self” (J. jikaku 自覚), in which “I see myself in myself,” and the “I” that sees and “myself” that is seen are one and the same – that is, the seer and the seen are “contradictorily self-identical.” In the mutually determining relationship of that which knows and that which is known, “all the minds are no-minds and therefore they are called the mind” (NKZ 11: 86). As we mentioned in the Introduction, above, it was through Nishida’s writings that the “logic of sokuhi” was introduced into the arena of philosophy. D. Dilworth, who translated Nishida’s essay, paid special attention to the paradoxical discourse present in this essay. Dilworth elaborated on this point in some detail in his “Postscript”: We have … seen that the paradoxical mode reduces to the basic predicative structure of “is and yet is not.” We can alternately characterize this as the logic of the simultaneity, and biconditionality, of opposites without their higher synthesis. Thus “is” if, and only if, “is not,” as in the sokuhi formulation. In Nāgārjuna’s logic, the four positions +1, −1, +1 and  For much fuller discussion on this point see M. Yusa, “Parsing the Topos and Dusting the Mirror: A Radical Internalization of ‘Basho-Topos,’” Journal of Japanese Philosophy, vol. 2 (2014): 7–32.

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M. Yusa −1, and not (+1 and −1) all return to the same basic structure of biconditional opposition. … Nishida came to repossess this same logical form in a contemporary philosophical version. (Dilworth 1987: 130–131)

While this is not the time or place critically to engage Dilworth’s observation, it is important to note that Nishida’s enterprise cannot be reduced simply to “repossessing” the traditional Buddhist logic. Nishida’s philosophical starting point was to articulate his own analysis of what experience is, the nature and the function of consciousness, and the topological mode of all things existent in the world. It was for this reason that Nishida paid utmost attention to establishing a logical structure of the world, which resulted in his “logic of basho or topos” with which he felt he was able to explain his philosophical vision. More recently, J. Heisig’s discussion of the logic of “soku” or the “contradictory unity of contradictions” (Heisig 2001, 65-69, 298), further assisted the entry of the “logic of sokuhi” into the philosophical arena. After his “Ronri to sūri,” Nishida makes an indirect reference to the “logic of sokuhi” in his “Yotei chōwa o tebiki to shite shūkyō tetsugaku e” 予定調和を手引 きとして宗教哲学へ (“Towards a Philosophy of Religion with the Notion of the ‘Pre-established Harmony’ as the Guide” 1944b, NKZ 11.114–146). In this, while referring to the passage of the Diamond Sutra (18b), Nishida describes how religious awareness arises from the very contradictory unity of self-consciousness, in the unity of the knower and the known. We read: What I mean by “religions” is something different from conceiving God as the supreme principle from the standpoint of intellectual knowledge, or recognizing the existence of God as the moral necessity from the standpoint of morality. Nor do I mean that religion is based on a subjective mystical experience. Rather, religion is the standpoint that forms the foundation of intellectual knowledge and morality, that is, the standpoint of the recognition of the reality of “jikaku” (自覚 self-consciousness). No one would consider self-­ consciousness to be “mystical.” It is the standpoint of the existence of oneself…. “Jikaku” (self-consciousness) means that the knower is the known, the thinker is the thought. To put it broadly, that which is expressed is that which expresses. Some may claim that that would be impossible, or self-contradictory. But precisely because it embraces the contradicting directions, it is called “jikaku.” The starting point of [philosophical investigation] is not one’s psychological “cogito,” as Descartes had it. But rather, the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra has it that “all minds are no-mind, therefore they are called the mind.” It may sound paradoxical, but the “discrimination of non-discrimination” is the true “jikaku” (cf. D. T. Suzuki). In the Western philosophy, I think that Nicholas of Cusa’s “docta ignorantia” (muchi no chi 無知の知) comes closest to this understanding. … The deeper one reflects and meditates on the foundation of the self, the more one faces Absolute God. God and human beings are connected in a contradictorily self-identical way. This is nothing mystical. From this standpoint of jikaku, our self, intellectually and actively, is the infinite process of the contradictory self-identity. … (Nishida 1944b; NKZ 11L 137-139)

Finally, in Nishida’s last essay “The Logic of Topos and the Religious Worldview” (Nishida 1945; NKZ 11:  371–464), which he completed two  months before his death, he made several references to the “logic of sokuhi” (NKZ 11: 405, 420, 423,

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430–31, 446). I quote a passage here, in which Nishida expresses his wish to have a clear formulation of the “logic” that speaks for the Buddhist insight into śūnyatā—a logic that Suzuki identified as the “logic of sokuhi”: The world of the Absolute One (zettaisha 絶対者), which is absolutely empty and yet self-­ determines, is the world of the absolute present, which embraces that which expresses itself within itself in a contradictory self-identical way, i.e., it embraces what stands against itself. Thus, it is said: “Give rise to the mind that dwells nowhere” (Diamond Sūtra 10c). Medieval thinkers who compared God to an infinite sphere said that [God has] no circumference and yet everywhere is the center. This is precisely what I call the self-determination of the absolute present. Should this vision be interpreted abstractly, instead of grasping it as the reality of our spiritual experience, these words would but be empty contradictory concepts. The real Absolute, however, simply does not transcend the relative. The world of the Absolute One (zettaisha) is the world wherein everything relates to everything else (gyakutaiōteki ni) in a contradictorily self-identical way through the mutual determination of the one and the many. As the logic of sokuhi has it, it is Absolutely Being because it is Absolutely Nothing; it is absolutely still because it is absolutely dynamic. Our self always stands in this mutual determination and mutual relationship with the Absolute One, i.e., God. To see that in our life (seimei 生命), the present moment of “now” is always the absolute present does not mean that the self abstractly transcends time. Each moment, which does not stand still even for a second, stands in a mutual determination and mutual relationship with the eternal present. That is why, samsāra (life and death) is nirvāna. To transcend oneself means to return to oneself through and through – it is to become the real self. Thus it is said that “all minds are no minds; therefore they are called mind” (Diamond Sūtra 18b). The meaning of the saying, “The mind is Buddha and the Buddha is the mind,” is also intelligible in this context. It is not that mind and Buddha are identical in terms of objective logic. The logic of emptiness of the Prajñāpāramitā tradition (han’nya shinkū no ronri 般若 真空の論理) cannot be grasped by occidental logic. But Buddhist scholars of the past yet to have clarified the profound import of the logic of sokuhi. (NKZ 11: 422–423; Yusa 1987: 88-89; adapted).

While Nishida was in the middle of writing his final essay, he wrote to Suzuki on March 11, 1945, referring to the “logic of sokuhi”: I am currently writing on religion. I want to clarify in this essay that “religion” cannot be treated from the viewpoint of conventional objective logic (taishō ronri 対象論理), but that it requires what I call the logic of the contradictory self-identity, that is, the logic of “sokuhi.” I would like to delineate what the real human being (“nin” 人) is, i.e., the “person” (“jinkaku” 人格), from the standpoint of the prajñāpāramitā logic of sokuhi.29 Furthermore, I would like to situate this “person” in the actual historical world. … I learn a great deal from your book, Japanese Spirituality (Nihonteki reisei 日本的霊性).30 I really like the line, “no thought is the whole mind” (munen soku zenshin 無念即全心), or something to that effect.

 Nishida is here responding to what Suzuki wrote in “Kongōkyō no Zen,” concerning the authentic Zen “person”: “To speak about ‘nothingness’ (mu) or ‘being’ (u), the discussion ends up too logical and intellectual. Therefore, I would like the notion of person (nin) to our discussion. This ‘nin’ is the subject of action; it is the protagonist of spiritual intuition.” (Suzuki 1968; SDZ 5:402). 30  The first edition of Nihonteki reisei contained “Kongōkyō no Zen” as its appendix, and Nishida is referring to it here. In the second edition, the appendix was removed, as Suzuki saw it fit better in a different context. 29

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In my attempt to give a logical structure to my thought, I describe the existence of the self in terms of the “direction of the grammatical subject-term” or “the direction of the predicate-term.” This may not make an immediate sense to you. But if I may explain it, it is really a simple idea. It may appear that I’m toying with logic by using such words as “the subject-term,” “the predicate-aspect,” “the temporal” and “the spatial,” but unless I clarify from the outset their mutual relationship, my thought would not speak to the trained academics. (NKZ 19: 399–400)

Nishida attempted to give a philosophical foundation to the “logic of sokuhi” in his last work, but it turned out to be an unfinished task, as he died on June 7th, 1945, just 3 months after his letter to Suzuki, just quoted above. What Nishida set out to do still remains a viable project for the future.

5  Part IV: “Logic of Spiritual Awareness” D. T. Suzuki looked for a way to communicate the Buddhist spiritual experience both to the Japanese and the Westerners, who were unfamiliar with it or eager to learn more about it. His “logic of sokuhi” came out of his endeavor to explain the Buddhist experience in a concise manner. Formal logic cannot explain the “logic of sokuhi,” as the latter is open to describing the existential reality of our lives by going beyond the logical principle of non-­ contradiction. This does not mean, however, that the sokuhi-type of logic is illogical and that it defines a logical explanation. Several commendable efforts to make sense of the “contradictory logic” of the Kyoto school thinkers have been made.31 Nishida saw in Suzuki’s “logic of sokuhi”  an insight that can clarify the self-­ contradictory structure of self-consciousness – I see myself in myself, in which “I,” who knows, and “myself,” that which is known, are contradictorily one. In his last years of life, Nishida finds the formulation of function y = f (x) helpful, as a way to formulate the “logic of inter-relationality.” On this point, he observes: “The functional relationship indicates that the one (y) reflects (or mirrors) the other (x). Judgment is established by reflecting one’s self within one’s self. This is how the universal determines itself” (Nishida 1944b; NKZ 11: 102-103).32 Let us return to the “logic of sokuhi.” The initial goal of Zen practice is to be awakened to the reality of primordial subject-object unity, that “underlies” or “precedes” our intellectual judgment. The famous words of QINGYUAN Xingsi (J.  Seigen Gyōshi) 青原行思 (d. 740), a major disciple of the Sixth Patriarch Huineng, nicely illustrate this point:

 One example is Nicholaos John Jones’s “The Logic of Soku in the Kyoto School” (Jones 2004: 302–321). 32  For the formula y  =  f (x), see “Yotei chōwa o tebiki to shite shūkyō tetsugaku e” (NKZ 11: 123–124). 31

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Thirty years ago, before this aged monk got into Zen training, I used to see a mountain as a mountain and a river as a river. Thereafter I had the chance to meet enlightened masters and, under their guidance I could attain enlightenment to some extent. At this stage, when I saw a mountain: lo! It was not a mountain. When I saw a river: lo! It was not a river. But in these days I have settled down to a position of final tranquility. As I used to do in my first years, now I see a mountain just as a mountain and a river just as a river. (Izutsu 1977: 208)33

Here, it is not that a mountain magically changes into a non-mountain but, rather, that the speaker’s understanding, expressed by “y,” of the phenomenal world, f(x), changes. The first is the state of ordinary perception in which “the knower and the known are sharply distinguished” (corresponding to Suzuki’s “funbetsu”), the second is the state in which one experiences the unity of consciousness that is prior to its bifurcation into subject and object (Suzuki’s “mufunbetsu”), and the third stage is the recognition that “the undivided unity of consciousness” underlines the subject-object perception, y = f(x). In other words, Suzuki’s “mufunbetsu no funbetsu” refers to the knowledge of non-discrimination.

6  Conclusion: “Logic beyond a Formal Logic” This open-ended essay concludes with the reflection on the “logic” as understood by D. T. Suzuki and Nishida. Suzuki meant by the word “logic” a certain coherent structure of spiritual experience and intuition, which points to a discernible pattern of discourse, or a “system” according to which one’s experience can be organized into a meaningful whole. Nishida defined logic as the “self-expression of living beings,”34 which is to say, it is the self-expression of self-consciousness. Suzuki’s “logic of sokuhi” may be criticized for infringing upon the rule of the “formal logic,” but it may also be viewed to enlarge the mind and its capacity by pointing out the realm beyond an objectifying thinking. Many an artist and a philosopher for centuries have been attempting to liberate logic from the yoke of “formal logic.” Their effort should shift the intellectual focus from the dualistic

 The lyrics of Donovan’s popular song, “First there is a mountain then there is no mountain, then there is,” seem to be inspired by this Zen account. What is remarkable about it is that Donovan captured the meaning with such simplicity. 34  In its full length, the passage from “Ronri to sūri” reads: “I consider logic as the form of the selfexpression of living beings. A living reality (jitsuzai) is that which exists in itself and moves by itself. That which exists in itself and moves by itself comes to have its self-existence in the contradictory self-identity of the many and the one. It has no substratum in terms of the one or the many. That which has its existence by way of the contradictory identity of the many and one is that which expresses itself and that which has its self in its self-expression. To have one’s self in self-expression means that which expresses itself is that which is expressed. That which thinks is that which is thought. That which reflects is that which is reflected. In one word, it pertains to the nature of “jikaku” (self-consciousness)” (NKZ 11: 60). 33

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ratiocinating function of the mind to the self-critical and “poetic” creative function of the mind (or consciousness). Certainly, the discriminating function of the mind is to be respected. But we also need to recognize that the mind is deeper and richer in imagination and creativity than just a geometric mind—Pascal talked about the “esprit of geometry” and the “esprit of finesse.” The ordinary “forma mentis” (the habit of mind, the mental posture) is challenged by the “logic of sokuhi.” Stepping back to reevaluate the workings of our mind, after all, belongs to the nature of the mind itself, and as such is an eminently philosophical activity. The “logic of sokuhi” pushes us to include the logic of spiritual insight into our learned discourse.

Works Cited Abbreviations NKZ: Nishida Kitarō zenshū 『西田幾多郎全集』 [Collected Works of Nishida Kitarō]. 20 vols. Edited by Shimomura Toratarō 下村寅太郎 et al. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1978–80 & 1989. SDZ: Suzuki Daisetsu zenshū 『鈴木大拙全集』 [Collected Works of Daisetz Suzuki]. 32 vols. Second edition. Edited by Shin’ichi Hisamatsu 久松真一, Susumu Yamaguchi 山口益 and Shōkin Furuta 古田紹欽. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1980–83. T: Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō 大正新修大蔵經. 100 vols. Edited by Junjirō Takakusu 高楠順次郎 and Kaigyoku Watanabe 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai, 1924–34.

Other Sources Asahina, Sōgen 朝比奈宗源, trans. 1966. Rinzairoku 『臨済録』 [Record of Linji]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Conze, Edward, trans. and ed. 1957. Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā. Rome: Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. ———, ed. 1958. Buddhist Wisdom Books, Containing the Diamond Sūtra and the Heart Sūtra. London: George Allen & Unwin. ———. 1960. The Development of Prajñāpāramitā Thought. In Buddhism and Culture, Dedicated to Dr. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki in Commemoration of His Ninetieth Birthday, ed. S. Yamaguchi, 24–45. Kyoto: Suzuki Gakujutsu Zaidai. Dilworth, David. 1987. Nishida Kitarō, Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Hakuin 白隠. 1977. Hakuin 『白隠』 [Hakuin], trans. and ed. Shigeo Kamata 鎌田茂雄. Nihon no zen goroku 『日本の禅語録』 [Sayings and Writings of Japanese Zen Masters], vol. 19. Tokyo: Kōdansha. Hanh, Thich Nhat. 1992. The Diamond that Cuts Through Illusion, Commentaries on the Prajñaparamita Diamond Sūtra. Berkeley: Parallax Press. Heisig, James W. 2001. Philosophers of Nothingness. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Izutsu, Toshihiko. 1977. Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism. Teheran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy.

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Jones, Nicholaos John. 2004. The Logic of Soku in the Kyoto School. Philosophy East and West 54 (3): 302–321. Miura, Isshū, and Ruth Fuller Sasaki. 1965. The Zen Koan, Its History and Use in Rinzai Zen. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Nakamura, Hajime 中村元 and Kino Kazuyoshi 紀野一義, trans. 1960. Han’nya shin-gyō, Kongō han’nya-kyō 『般若心経・金剛般若経』 [Heart Sūtra, Diamond Sūtra]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Nakamura, Hajime 中村元, Kyōshō Hayashima 早島鏡正, and Kazuyoshi Kino 紀野一義, trans. 1963. Daimuryōju-kyō 『大無量寿経』 [Sukhāvativiyūha Sūtra]. Jōdo sanbukyō 『浄土三部 経』 [The Three Pure Land Sūtras], vol. 1. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Nishida, Kitarō 西田幾多郎. 1940. Poieshisu to purakushisu 「ポイエシスとプラクシス」 [Poiesis and Praxis]. NKZ 10: 124–176. ­­­———. 1944a. Ronri to sūri 「論理と数理」 [Logic and Mathematical Principles]. NKZ 11: 60–113. ———. 1944b. Yotei chōwa o tebiki to shite shūkyō tetsugaku e 「予定調和を手引きとして宗 教哲学へ」 [Towards a Philosophy of Religion With the Notion of Pre-established Harmony as the Guide]. NKZ 11: 114–146. ———. 1945. Bashoteki ronri to shūkyōteki sekaikan 『場所的論理と宗教的世界観』 [Logic of Topos and Religious Worldview]. NKZ 11: 371–464. ———. 1989. Shokan-shū 『書簡集』 [Letters]. NKZ 19. Osaka, Kōryū 苧坂光竜. 1975. Commentary. In Suzuki daisetsu zen senshū 『鈴木大拙禅選集』 [Selected Works of Daisetz Suzuki on Zen Buddhism], ed. Daisetz Suzuki, 4, 210–222. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. Sasaki, R. Fuller, trans. 2009. The Record of Linji, ed. Thomas Y. Kirchner. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Suzuki, Daisetsu 鈴木大拙, trans. 1900. Aśvaghosha’s Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana. Chicago: Open Court. ———. 1939a. The Shin Sect of Buddhism. Eastern Buddhist 3–4: 227–284. ———. 1939b. Shinshū kanken 「真宗管見」 [My View of Shin Buddhism]. SDZ 6: 7–69. ———. 1941a. Gokuraku to Shaba 「極楽と娑婆」 [The Paradise and the Human World]. Jōdokei shisōron. SDZ 6: 70–91. ———. 1941b. Zen e no michi 『禅への道』 [A Path Toward Zen]. SDZ 13: 207–338. ———. 1942. Jōdokei shisō-ron 『浄土系思想論』 [Essays on the Pure Land Thought]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. ———. 1960. Manual of Zen Buddhism. New York: Grove Press. ———. 1968. Kongōkyō no Zen 『金剛経の禅』 [Zen in the Diamond Sūtra]. SDZ 5: 363–455. ———. 1970. Lectures on Zen Buddhism. In Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, eds. Erich Fromm, D.T. Suzuki, and Richard DeMartino, 59–74. New York: Harper & Row. ———. 1975. Suzuki daisetsu zen senshū 『鈴木大拙禅撰集』 [Selected Works of Daisetz Suzuki on Zen Buddhism]. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ——— and Christmas Humphries, eds. 1976. Essays in Zen Buddhism Third Series. New York: Samuel Weiser. ———, trans. 1978. The Lankāvatāra Sūtra. Boulder: Prajñā Press. Tsukamoto, Zenryū 塚本善隆, and Shinkō Mochizuki 望月信亨. 1993–1994. Mochizuki bukkyō daijiten 『望月仏教大辞典』  [Mochizuki Dictionary of Buddhism]. Kyoto: Sekai Seiten Kankō-kyōkai. Yusa, Michiko, trans. 1986–1987. The Logic of Topos and the Religious Worldview. Eastern Buddhist 19 (2): 1–29; 20 (1): 81–119. ———. 2014. Parsing the Topos and Dusting the Mirror: A Radical Internalization of ‘Basho-­ Topos.’Journal of Japanese Philosophy 2: 7–32.

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Michiko Yusa is a Professor of Japanese Thought and Intercultural Philosophy at Western Washington University in Bellingham. Her PhD. (1983) is from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, where she worked closely with Raimon Panikkar and Ninian Smart. Her numerous publications include several books such as Zen and Philosophy: An Intellectual Biography of Nishida Kitarō; Japanese Religious Traditions, Denki nishida kitarō [A biography of Nishida Kitarō in Japanese], and Basic Kanji with Matsuo Soga. She has also co-edited volumes such as Isamu Noguchi and Skyviewing Sculpture: Proceedings of Japan Week 2003, CIRPIT Review 5 (2014), and a special issue of the symposium on Raimon Panikkar held in Baltimore in 2013. Her most recent publication is the edited volume, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Philosophy (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2017). She was the president of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, and presently is its Program Chair for the American Academy of Religion. Her on-going research includes Nishida Kitarō’s thought, women’s spirituality in Japanese Buddhism (a book project), philosophy of artistic creativity (such as the poet Matsuo Bashō), and the thought of Raimon Panikkar. She held the Roche Chair, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, 2016–17.

Chapter 27

Hiratsuka Raichō: Feminism and Androgynous Sexuality Saeko Kimura

HIRATSUKA Raichō1 平塚らいてう (1886–1971) is known as one of the Japanese feminists and as the editor-in-chief of Seitō 青鞜, the first magazine for women by women in Japan, published in 1911 when Raichō was 25 years old. The opening line in the foreword to its first issue, “[I]n the beginning, woman was the sun” (Hiratsuka 1911), written by Raichō, came to symbolize her ideas or even her identity and was later adopted as the title of her autobiography. According to her autobiography, when she wrote this foreword, she had been practicing Zen Buddhism. Generally speaking, her devotion to Zen tends to be interpreted as a phenomenon of her youth, and her experience with Zen meditation is only mentioned to explain her inclination towards mysticism or spiritualism.2 It is quite possible that the trend towards Zen meditation among intellectuals at that time was connected in a profound way to the spiritualism modernized by thinkers such as Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). It is interesting that, although Swedenborg definitely belonged to the Christian tradition where he was treated as heterodox, Buddhist thinkers such as SUZUKI Daisetsu 鈴木大拙 (1870–1966) and NISHIDA Kitarō 西田幾多郎 (1870–1945) were intrigued by this movement, referring to it in Japanese as the “mysticism boom.” Suzuki introduced Swedenborg to Japan by translating his Heaven and Hell (1758) into Japanese as Tenkai to chigoku 『天界と地獄』. In this sense, a reexamination of Raichō’s Buddhism, as implicit as it may have been,

1  “Raichō” is Hiratsuka’s pen name. Since she published all her writings under the name of Raichō, here I refer to her by her pen name. 2  There are several papers which reassess Raichō as a Buddhist thinker. For example, SHIMADA Akiko 島田暁子mentions that if “Buddhist” means not to be a Buddhist researcher but the one who lives everyday life, we could say Raichō is a perfect Buddhist. She stresses that the first Japanese feminist was born from Buddhism (Shimada 2000: 225–241).

S. Kimura (*) Tsuda University, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_27

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helps us to understand the context and intellectual milieu of later prominent Buddhist philosophers.

1  Encountering Religion HIRATSUKA Raichō––her original name was Haru 明––was born in a typical intellectual family of the Meiji period. Her father had been to Europe and the United States as a high-ranking official of the Meiji government and was instrumental in creating the Meiji Constitution. Thus, Raichō was accustomed to Western culture at an early age, as her father brought home books and artifacts from Europe and the United States. On the other hand, as a young child, Raichō was also influenced by her paternal grandmother, who lived a rather traditional life and spoke in the specific dialect of Kishū 紀州. Her situation at home, which juxtaposed her father’s western modernized culture and her grandmother’s pre-modern folk beliefs and tradition, was indicative of the actual predicament of Meiji (1868–1912) Japan. In particular, intellectuals felt the tension between both traditions that clearly coexisted. Raichō herself was not too familiar with her grandmother’s folk culture. Yet, she felt that the modernized culture from the West did not extend beyond their parents and was a masquerade at best. She could not deny the Japanese tradition as it surrounded her in every aspect of life. Whenever this fragile balance became unhinged, such as during wartime, she remembered her own native tradition. Nevertheless, both Christianity and Buddhism provided an equal foundation for philosophical and religious questions about God in Japan at that time. According to her autobiography, Raichō first started to go to church when reading the Bible on her own nurtured in her an interest in Christianity. However, she increasingly felt uncomfortable with the message of chastity and with the compromise some Christian theologians made with the nascent nationalistic ideology in Japan. Ultimately she came to question the Christian idea of God altogether. She explained that I had another objection to the idea of God defined by Christianity, that is, its positing of a transcendent being high above the heavens in opposition to lowly man, a creature conceived in sin and the embodiment of sin. If God were truly God, supreme and absolute, there should be nothing to oppose him. I preferred to think that God was not transcendent but immanent in the universe, that he was the ground of being for all of nature, including humankind, and that we all resided within God, the Absolute Being. (Hiratsuka 2006: 77)

At the same time, Raichō became interested in the practice of Zen meditation after she read and was stimulated by an article called “My Encounter with God” (Yo ga kenshin no jikken 予が見神の実験) written by TSUNASHIMA Ryōsen 綱島梁 川 (1873–1907) in 1905. Raichō explained her enthusiasm for Ryōsen’s ideas in her autobiography as follows. When I came to the following passages, I was overwhelmed with the realization that I had been searching for God in the wrong way.

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“Verily have I seen God. Verily have I seen Him face to face…entered a realm in which I myself have become God. I give thanks for this, for this utterly confounding, utterly unexpected state of consciousness received directly from God, without the slightest mediation of the testimony or experience of people in the past…. My religious beliefs had been mainly formed by putting my trust in the person of Christ and the prophets, or again, by accepting the validity of their powerful spiritual awareness. Not based on what I myself had experienced, my beliefs were shallow and puerile. …As I immersed myself more deeply in the life of the spirit, I resolved to cast aside all past testimony and rely on myself to hear the voice of God. My earnest quest to find Him was not in vain. Not once, but many times over, I felt His radiant presence in the deepest chambers of my soul. The God I encountered was no longer the God of old, a conventional timeworn image, an abstract ideal. And yet, I thought might there still not be a thin veil separating me from the God whose presence I felt so vividly? …But this no longer is the case. The God of heaven and earth has manifested Himself, as glorious as the noonday sun. God is now a living reality, marvelous and wondrous. Oh, what a blessing!” Reading the article, I realized the futility of filling my head with the words and ideas of others who had made the same quest, or of trying to find the true God, the authentic self, in a world of abstraction that lacked any personal experience. Yet concretely, what must I do in order to come face to face with the living God, to attain true faith and unshakeable peace of mind? It was all very well to say that one should get rid of preconceptions and excessive intellectualizing, “immerse oneself in the life of the spirit,” or “listen with earnest desire for the voice of God,” but to my great distress, I had no idea how to proceed. (Hiratsuka 2006: 82–83)

Ryōsen was a Christian, and he even rejected Zen teachings, claiming a difference between his experience and Zen meditation. In spite of this, Ryōsen’s article and the experience he described therein strongly fascinated Zen Buddhists. After reading Ryōsen’s article, Raichō found the way “to come face to face with the living God, to attain true faith and unshakeable peace of mind” in Zen meditation (Hiratsuka 2006: 83). Although she had never articulated it in this way, her search seemed to have been driven by the hidden, if not unconscious, influence of Emanuel Swedenborg’s ideas.3 Swedenborg was a Christian, albeit one viewed as heretical. In the boom of spiritualism in the West during the nineteenth century, Swedenborg had already combined Christian teachings with Buddhist ideas. In 1887, Philangi Dasa (Herman Vetterling) published a book called Swedenborg the Buddhist and the following year, he started the first Buddhist magazine The Buddhist Ray in the United States. In 1888, a portion of an issue of The Buddhist Ray that mentioned Swedenborg was introduced in the fifth issue of the Hansei kai zasshi 反省会雑誌 (Hansei kai zasshi 5: 4). In 1893, the year the first World’s Parliament of Religions was held in the United States, a Japanese translation of Swedenborg the Buddhist was published in Japan (Yoshinaga 2007: 79–103). 3  Raichō wrote an article in Ōmoto’s newspaper “Jinrui aizen shinbun” 人類愛善新聞, saying that she was astonished she found the similarity between Swedenborg and DEGUCHI Onisaburō’s stories of spirits (see Ide 1987: 248–249).

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In 1903, an elite student FUJIMURA Misao  藤村操 (1886–1903) committed suicide and died at the age of eighteen. Intellectuals were extremely shocked because he had left a poem that attributed his death to a philosophical issue. Raichō explains the philosophical quest many Japanese intellectuals were engaged in at this time as follows: Even as I read indiscriminately, my restless mind teemed with questions: What is God? What am I? What is truth? How should one live? I thought I was the only person obsessed with the ultimate questions of human existence, but to a greater or lesser degree, other young Japanese were also searching for a new philosophy of life. Indeed, from about the time of the war with Russia, a youthful vibrancy and romantic spirit had enlivened the world of thought as intellectuals were increasingly drawn to religious and ethical issues. Nietzsche’s philosophy was particularly popular. This was largely due to Takayama Chogyū, who wrote on Nietzsche’s theory of aesthetics of the instinctive life and glorified the medieval Buddhist monk Nichiren as the embodiment of the Nietzschean heroic ideal. The essays on religion by Tsunashima Ryōsen also had an enthusiastic following. Thinkers vied with one another to propound their ideas on religion and ethics and recent converts to Christianity also translated works like Tolstoy’s My Confession and What I Believe. The shocked reaction of young people to the death of Fujimura Misao, the eighteen-year-­ old philosophy student who threw himself into the Kegon Falls at Nikkō, or the deaths of so many youths who followed his example, can only be understood in the context of this intellectual ferment. Caught between the dissolution of the old feudal ethic and emergent nationalism and militarism, racked with doubts and apprehension, young Japanese gravitated toward religion and philosophy in their search for the meaning of existence and for inner peace. (Hiratsuka 2006: 76)

In 1904, ARAI Ōsui 新井奥邃 (1846–1922), who studied under Thomas Lake Harris (1823–1906), came back to Japan and opened his own school. Thomas Lake Harris was known as a mystic and spiritualistic prophet influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite his Christianity, Arai worshiped an androgynous God called Father-Mother God (J. chichi haha kami 父母神) (Takahashi 2007: 54–56). Arai also suggested that the notion “two-as-one” (J. niji-ichi 二而一) implies that the contradictory two figures should be found as one (Arai 2002: 509–512). This concept later is taken over by SUZUKI Daisetsu and NISHIDA Kitarō. The idea contains an implicit critique of dualism. Arai also emphasized the notion of “love,” explaining that people love people because God loves people (Kudo 2007: 57–62). Raichō does not mention Arai. However, her quasi-bisexual love affair and her commitment to “monism” (ichigenron 一元論) seem to reflect trends of the period that were given expression by Arai. In 1906, IWANO Hōmei 岩野泡鳴 published Mystic Theriantropism (Shinpiteki hanjushugi 神秘的半獣主義) (Iwano 1995). In this monograph, he argues his own theory of mystic individualism while introducing Swedenborg, Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803– 1882), and Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) to Japanese readers. Iwano suggested that the phrase “nature-and-yet-spirit” (J. shizen soku shinrei 自然即心霊) was inspired by Mahāyāna sūtras that advanced the “theory of dependent co-arising in the dharma realm” (J. hōkai engi setsu 法界縁起説) or the dictum that “every law is one, one is everything” (J. manpō wa kore ichi, ichi wa kore issai 万法はこれ一 一はこれ一切). He argues that beings are subjected to a Protean cycle and only

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appear as representations in a specific moment. Therefore, death has to be understood as the metamorphosis of form. Thus conceived, death does not mark an absolute end or indicate finality because, in death, one representation simply changes into another. In the above-mentioned monograph, Iwano proposed a revised version of mysticism that is based on Buddhist thought and challenges Western preconceptions. Ultimately, however, he does not reinforce the Orientalist dichotomy of Japan and the “West” but rather makes the case that both traditions share a common basis. After Raichō left the Christian church, she found a Zen book called One Wave in the Sea of Zen (Zenkai ichiran 禪海一瀾) written by a monk of Engaku Temple 円 覚寺 in Kamakura. During the Meiji period many Japanese intellectuals, such as the famous novelist NATSUME Sōseki 夏目漱石 (1867–1916), practiced Zen at Engakuji. Her friend, KIMURA Masako 木村政子, who achieved enlightenment or kenshō 見性 and received a Buddhist name, invited Raichō to a Zen Buddhist training hall, the Ryōmōan 両忘庵.4 Raichō wrote “As I understood it, the state of heightened awareness achieved in kenshō seemed the same as TSUNASHIMA Ryōsen’s epiphanic experience of God. At last, I knew what I had to do” (Hiratsuka 2006: 84). She started her zazen 坐禅 and kōan 公案 practice and continued this practice for most of her life. It appears that Raichō quickly grasped the core of Zen teachings. She writes her experience as follows. Nor shall I ever forget Rōshi’s commentary on the Rinzairoku. Close to sixty years have passed since then, but I will try to set down the gist of his words: The Buddha has three types of bodies—the Essence body, the Bliss body, the Transformation body—but these distinctions are nothing but names and have never really existed. The true source of the Buddha is none other than the person who is actually listening to this talk. Look at the person, the True Man without rank, without shape or form, yet who truly exists. If you are able to discern this, you are no different from the Buddha. Do not ever release your grip on this. Everything that meets your eyes is this. There is no one among you who cannot attain enlightenment. Even now I can hear Rōshi’s clear, strong voice: “Upon this lump of reddish flesh sits a True Man with no rank. Constantly he goes in and out of the gates of your face. If there is anyone here who does not know this for a fact, look, look!” His voice pierced me like a jolt of electricity, and in that instant I said to myself, “I understand!” (Hiratsuka 2006: 93).

It was the summer of 1906, only half a year from when she started, that she finally attained kenshō. She writes “I had been reborn. I was a new being. (…) My second birth was of my true self, born from my efforts to look into the deepest level of my consciousness. I had searched and searched and at last found the entrance to the Great Way of True Life” (Hiratsuka 2006: 93). Once she attained kenshō, Raichō was given the religious name Ekun 慧薫. The experience itself, however, made her realize the non-dual nature of the human predicament. This non-duality is not a truth that can be found externally but one that has to be discovered through introspection. Only when one sees the “true person of no rank” (J. mui shinnin 無位真人) that is, without distinctions inside, does one reach Buddhahood. This understanding of enlightenment is first described in the Records of Linji (Rinzairoku 臨済録). Raichō took this notion of the “true person”  Ryōmōan was run by a monk who is from Engakuji.

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one step further and concluded that the true self, that is, the authentic person without distinctions, exists prior to all gender distinction and thus is truly non-gendered.

2  Non-gendered Androgynous Sexuality In 1911, Seitō, the first women’s magazine by women in Japan, was published. It began as a literary magazine and gradually assumed a large role for the feminist movement in Japan. Raichō wrote the opening statement for the first publication. In the beginning, woman was truly the sun. An authentic person. Now she is the moon, a wan and sickly moon, dependent on another, reflecting another’s brilliance. Seitō herewith announces its birth. Created by the brains and hands of Japanese women today, it raises its cry like a newborn child. Today, whatever a woman does invites scornful laughter. I know full well what lurks behind this scornful laughter. Yet I do not fear in the least. But then, I ask, what are we to do about the pitiful lot of women who persist in heaping shame and disgrace on themselves? Is woman so worthless that she brings only nausea? No! An authentic person is not. (…) Are women so spineless? No! An authentic person is not. Nor shall I ignore the fact that Seitō, born amid the scorching summer heat, possesses a passion so intense that it destroys the most extreme heat. Passion! Passion! We live by this and nothing else. Passion is the power of prayer. The power of will. The power of Zen meditation. The power of the way of the gods. Passion, in other words, is the power of spiritual concentration. And spiritual concentration is the one and only gateway to the realm of mystery and wonder…. (Hiratsuka 2006: 157–158)

She continues: Now I said mystery. But it is not mystery which is fabricated on top of reality or apart from reality by the tip of your fingers or by your head or by your mind. It is not a dream. I should say that it is the mystery which can be seen through meditation in the depths of the human, seen as the real itself within the bottom of our subjectivity. (Hiratsuka 1911: 39)

She concludes: I shall search for the genius to be found in the very center of this spiritual concentration. Genius itself is mystical. An authentic person…. (Hiratsuka 2006: 157–158)

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Raichō declared that women (and even men) need to become authentic persons through “passion” as “the power of Zen meditation,” in other words, “the power of spiritual concentration”. Raichō indeed acquired the power of spiritual concentration through her Zen meditation practice. SHIMADA Akiko 島田暁子 suggests that Raichō’s words, “In the beginning, woman was truly the sun” or “an authentic person,” designate what the Rinzairoku 臨済録 refers to as “True Man with no rank” (Shimada 2000: 234–35). Raichō believes that the authentic person is non-gendered by one’s nature. She continues as follows: An authentic person is not a man, not a woman. Sexual difference in men or women belongs to one who is in the middle or lower level of spiritual concentration, one who is a mortal and breakable and temporal existence. It does not concern with one who is on the top level high above, who is deathless and immortal. I have never known that there are women in this world, and men in this world. Many men and women have appeared to the eyes of my mind. But I have never seen a man or a woman. Hence, the many outrageous deeds that overflow from the excessive mental mind are hard to cure and make us feel irredeemably tired. The waning of individuality! Indeed, it showed me woman for the first time at the same time, man. And I learned the word of death in this world. Death! The fear of death! At once, I was born into heaven and earth. I was floating between life and death. But this time, alas, what stumbles in front of death, what is immortal, what is called woman. (Hiratsuka 1911: 39–40)

Like many mystics who deny that mysticism implies a monotheistic belief system, Raichō believes that one can only reach the truth if one descends into the depth of the self in Zen meditation. In that ultimate stage at the bottom of the self, there is no gender difference, there is only the “an authentic person” (J. tensai 天才). Raichō says that “Our savior is the genius within us. We no longer seek our savior in temples or churches, in the Buddha or God. We no longer wait for divine revelation. By our own efforts, we shall lay bare the secrets of nature within us. (…) We shall be our own miracles, our own mysteries” (Hiratsuka 2006: 159). This idea not to seek the savior in temples or churches reflects the mystic trend of this time, which included both Christian and Buddhist beliefs and practices. We can thus say that for Raichō mysticism constitutes the rebellion against the old conservative values and authorities in both Japan and the West. From her point of view, the only way to gain women’s freedom and liberation is to attain the full “expression of the genius” that appears once the inauthentic ego-self has been abandoned. She proceeds by asking … That said, what is this true liberation that I most earnestly desire for women? Needless to say, it is nothing less than the fullest expression of the genius and enormous talents that are hidden within us. And in order to realize this, we must cast aside every obstacle that stands in our way. But when I say obstacle, do I mean external pressures or the lack of knowledge? No, this is not what I mean, though these certainly should not be discounted. What I am saying is that the main obstacle is ourselves—we, the possessors of genius, we, who are each one of us a sacred place in which genius resides.

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Only when we cut ourselves loose from the self, will we reveal our genius. For the sake of our hidden genius, we must sacrifice this self…. (Hiratsuka 2006: 158–159)

Here, Raichō claims that in the primordial intact nature there is only the authentic person or genius, an authentic person who is not gendered as man or woman. Since woman only appeared with the impurity of spiritual power, she must seize her own genius hidden behind femaleness. This unique idea could be a bottleneck in some way for the older more archaic traditional woman’s movement, but it indicated a pioneering thought for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) issues. Raichō did not hesitate to express her sexual impulses and did not see any conflict between her Zen practice and her sexual passions. For example, she writes that she shared her first kiss with a young monk, NAKAHARA Shūgaku 中原秀岳. After she finished her meditation in the late evening, she met Nakahara at the door. “On an impulse, I kissed him without moment’s hesitation. I stepped out into the cold wind and hurried home” (Hiratsuka 2006: 103). Raichō said this kiss did not indicate love but rather meant thank you and good-bye. One year later, in 1908, she was involved in an attempted love suicide with the novelist MORITA Sōhei森田草平 (1881–1949). According to her autobiography, Morita was deeply influenced by The Triumph of Death (1894) written by Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938) and sent her a letter: “Women, he wrote, are the most beautiful at the moment of death, and for this reason, he [Morita] intended to kill me [Raichō]. As an artist and a disciple of Beauty, he was determined to see me, the fairest of all, in my last moments” (Hiratsuka 2006: 109). She ran away from her home and went to the snowy mountains with Morita. Certainly she might have been curious, but it is not clear whether she intended to have a heterosexual love affair. Before going to the mountain, he tried to have sexual intercourse with her, but she refused, saying to him, “There’s no point in asking me. I am neither woman nor man. I transcend such distinctions” (Hiratsuka 2006: 108). In the mountain, Morita suddenly said; “I am a coward! I can’t kill anyone! I thought if it were you, I could do it, but I just can’t.” When she heard this, she was disappointed by his cowardice. Morita refused to walk any further and they ended up spending a night in the snow. At that time, after Morita fell asleep, she had a spiritual experience. She recounts this experience as follows: A full moon as bright as a mirror hung high in the deep blue sky. Illuminated by its rays, the chiaroscuro of glistening snow and dark folds of the mountains suggested a host of banners unfurling soundlessly from the heavens. Overwhelmed by the majesty of the scene, I thought I had entered the kingdom of the dead and was sitting alone in a palace of phosphorescent ice and snow, unencumbered by body or mind. I had not forgotten Morita. In fact, I shook him from time to time, but he merely blinked his eyes, oblivious to the sublime grandeur of nature. (Hiratsuka 2006: 116)

She states that her pen-name, Raichō, came from this experience of the sublime in the mountains. “Raichō” is the name of a bird that lives in the snowy mountains. It would be considered a great scandal for a well-born young woman to be involved in an attempted double suicide. However, Raichō herself was not committed to the

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idea of the suicide itself but was simply curious to see the depth of passion in Morita. Once, she yelled at Morita while looking at him kissing her hand and nibbling her fingers, “Sensei, can’t you be serious for once! I detest insincere behavior. Be more serious, will you!”(Hiratsuka 2006: 107). Morita novelized this incident in a 1909 novel Baien 煤煙, serialized in a newspaper. After this incident, she had her first sexual experience with the monk Nakahara. The relationship with him continued until she met her life-long partner, OKUMURA Hiroshi 奥村博史 (1889–1964). It is interesting that, despite her good social standing, she had no compunction about engaging in pre-marital sex as well as in a sensual, if not sexual, relationship with another woman. Just before the encounter with Okumura, she had been devoted to a romantic relationship with a woman for one year. She thus clearly defied the social norms and engaged in, if not promoted, counter-cultural behavior and values. In Seitō, she expressed her feelings transparently to a young woman painter, OTAKE Kōkichi 尾竹紅吉 (1893–1966). According to Raichō’s autobiography, her first impression of Kōkichi was “a boyish young girl with a nicely rounded face” (Hiratsuka 2006: 175). In her essay in the August 1912 issue, Raichō recalls her memory of Kōkichi citing Kōkichi’s letters. Raichō commences her account by narrating her first impressions of Kōkichi. Again my mind is flooded with memories of the night of that meeting. I could not know how fervent were my hugs and kisses, trying to enwrap Kōkichi into my own world. I could not know. But, how could Kōkichi’s heart be burnt so instantaneously, how could it be so fiery. (Hiratsuka 1912a: 82–83)

At that time, Raichō and other members of Seitō were subjected to a malicious rumor due to Kōkichi’s essays published in Seitō. A newspaper reported of a scandalous night involving “the five colored liquor incident” (J. goshiki no sake jiken) and “visiting Yoshiwara incident” (J. Yoshiwara hōmon jiken). The latter event was scandalous because Yoshiwara 吉原was the place for licensed prostitution houses which served men exclusively and which limited the consumption of alcohol to men. In accordance with the moral norms of the time, the newspaper article found it immoral that young women drank alcohol and went to the brothel in Yoshiwara. The newspaper also mocked the “so-called new woman” by focusing on the love affair between Raichō and Kōkichi: “The July issue of Seitō reports the curious doings of Raichō and the good-looking young boy she has been “‘wooing with her left hand’” (Hiratsuka 2006: 178).5 This is because Kōkichi had written in an edition of Seitō that while “Raichō’s ‘From the Oval window’ has been cut due to page limitations, she actually seems to be very busy these days doing work with her right hand and making love with her left hand.”6 After those incidents, many withdrew or cancelled their subscriptions. Under these circumstances, Raichō decided to write and publish an essay defending Kōkichi, who had to resign from Seitō and was 5  In the Seitō, it was written as follows; “As for Raichō’s left hand love’s object, it seems it caused many suspicions. According to a secret detective, that is a very good-looking young boy. It is said that the good-looking young boy had a drink of five colored alcohol at Kōnosu and went to Raichō’s room with an oval window” (Henshū shitsu yori 2 (1912b), no. 2: 110). 6  Henshū shitsu yori 2 (1912a), no. 2: 124.

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admitted to a sanatorium in Chigasaki with tuberculosis. In this essay, Raichō does not deny the rumor of the love affair but rather expresses her honest affection for Kōkichi. Raichō asks Kōkichi to undergo a medical examination for tuberculosis. If the diagnosis was tuberculosis, Kōkichi would be quarantined and they would be separated for at least a certain amount of time. “Hey, I feel it being together like this is only today.” Kōkichi raised her head and glanced at the farewell poem on the blackboard and immediately leaned on me and looked down. “Why only today?” I asked. “I will have an examination. And it will be determined which. Yes, which.” “Yes, it will be determined which. But I don’t know which will it be. Anyway, for better or worse, it is much safer if it is determined which rather than this precarious state where it is not determined.” “But if it is not good, I will not see you anymore. I won’t be allowed to see you.” I held Kōkichi’s big hand without a word. (…) “I hate being a human.” After a long pause, Kōkichi said that she learned what love is for the first time and learned what a heartache feels like for the first time. “No, I can’t. I’m stumped. Because I am a human.” “You won’t be stumped being a human.” “I am different from you. I can’t live without meeting you, I will be too lonely,” Kōkichi said in a weak voice. This is not the first time that she spoke of being lonely. I never know what to do in such cases. I couldn’t do anything to get Kōkichi to work on her own paintings. But at this time I didn’t feel like preaching with the attitude of a teacher or a senior as I usually do. Asking, “Are you lonely? Why?” I put both my hands on Kōkichi’s neck and pressed my breasts to her breasts. “No. No,” I murmured in her mouth. Kōkichi turned her head away from me, but she would not move. I spoke to her as if singing a song while listening quietly to her heartbeats resonating with my body. “Hey, say yes. I will be ill if you are ill. Let’s go to Chigasaki together. To my favorite place, Chigasaki, all right? At night under brightening stars, we will ride on a boat and row to Eboshi island, just the two of us. We will row a boat far to the offing. Hey, is it all right?” Kōkichi was facing downward for a long time. (Hiratsuka 1912a: 88–89)

When Kōkichi said she is lonely being alone in a sanatorium, Raichō kissed her passionately. Doing this, Raichō risked being infected with tuberculosis, but she accepted the possibility of this danger and promised to go to the sanatorium together in case she got sick. These emotions arose so suddenly yet naturally that Raichō could never have denied nor suppressed her affection. The spontaneity and integrity of her affection for Kōkichi was reminiscent of her first kiss with the monk after meditation as described above. Ironically, Raichō met her long-life partner OKUMURA Hiroshi in Chigasaki where she suddenly fell in love with him. For Raichō, homosexual and heterosexual desire are not mutually exclusive. She writes about her non-gendered sexuality as follows in a letter to her parents, which she wrote when she left home to live with Okumura. She published it as “To My Parents on Becoming Independent” (Dokuritsu suru ni oite ryōshin ni 独立するに就いて 両親に) in Seitō of February 1914:

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Generally, perhaps because I do not have a younger sister or brother, I have had the desire to take someone younger—whether man or woman—under my wing and treat him/her kindly. My feelings became clear in these two or three years, as anyone of the same age or older never attracted my attention, while my love interest was always for the younger. I have been giving kisses to him/her as a lover. This way, I was sometimes like his/her older sister or mother and sometimes like his/her lover. (Hiratsuka 1914a: 111)

Raichō rationalizes her affection toward younger people as her unfulfilled affection towards younger siblings. Therefore, her lover could be either a man or a woman. She describes her love as a motherly one; analogically, her “child lover” could be either a girl or a boy. Given her personal account of love, the literary trope of the kiss in her writing can be interpreted either as a metonymic expression of love or as the personal confession of her sexual desire. Raichō encountered the idea of homosexuality for the first time when she read Studies in the Psychology of Sex by Havelock Ellis (1859–1939). She published an abridged translation from it as “Sexual Inversion of Women” (J. Joseikan no dōsei renai 女性間の同性恋愛) in the April 1914 edition of Seitō. The excerpt was translated by Nomo野母but Raichō added an introduction. In this, she explains that her interest in this theory was rooted in her experience of being “an object of love by a woman who had near-inherent sexual inversion for a year” (Hiratsuka 1914b: 1). This article obviously refers to her love affair with Kōkichi. In 1914, Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) by Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) had already been published and widely read. According to this, sexuality at that time did not mean one’s personal sexual orientation but rather indicated a person’s psychotic disease. Raichō was in danger of being considered as having the disease of sexual perversion. Until this time, homosexuality was viewed negatively and regarded as a crime. These books enabled Raichō to make sense of her sexual experiences and categorized her affair with Kōkichi as “sexual inversion.”7 She strove to suppress her homosexual desire. Later in her autobiography, Raichō again recalls her love affair with Kōkichi and writes as follows: There is no denying that Kōkichi was infatuated with me at the time. A third party who called this homosexual love may well have been correct. On my part, it is true that I was very fond of Kōkichi—she had practically thrown herself at me—but my affection had no sexual dimension. I was attracted by her emotional openness, her freshness, and her finely honed sensibility. Something about her stirred my sense of play. Kōkichi meant a great deal to me, but my deepening feelings for Okumura surely proves that my feelings for her were not homosexual. (Hiratsuka 2006: 186)

Apparently, Raichō felt compelled to use her heterosexual relation with Okumura to prove that her affections for Kōkichi had not been homosexual. However, according to her autobiography, it seems that the only way to stay in a relationship with Okumura, who is presumably monogamist, was to abandon her natural affections and emotions. She had to deny her love for Kōkichi as well as her love for the monk Nakahara. One day, she took Okumura to Kaizenji 海禅寺 to introduce him to 7  In this article, Raichō writes the words “sexual inversion” in English, citing one chapter of Ellis’s Studies in the Psychology of Sex.

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Nakahara. She thought she could introduce the monk as her first lover but Okumura got so upset that she said nothing about her affair with him. I thought he would enjoy the visit; instead, I had hurt his feelings and made him sad and angry. Yet Shūgaku and I were very fond of each other. But ours was no ordinary relationship. There were no conditions attached, and we asked nothing of each other. By its very nature and substance, my love for Shūgaku was totally different from the love I bore for Okumura. To me, there was no contradiction in loving two men at the same time, but I also knew that Okumura would never understand or accept this. Explanations would not do any good; he would suffer no matter what. After the visit, I gradually withdrew from the temple. I wish things had turned out differently, but I could not bear to see Okumura suffer. I had to choose one or the other, and he had first claim. (I stopped seeing Shūgaku but continued to hear about him from Kimura Masako until he died in middle age. (Hiratsuka 2006: 229)

In this way, Raichō may have betrayed the genius of her authentic personhood that she had liberated in her religious practice insofar as she applied and transformed the traditional ideology of romantic love within the newly modernizing society. A consistent refutation of dualism would have implied a rejection of monogamous heterosexual marriage as well. However, Okumura would not have understood such an ideal and Raichō did not want to hurt him. She chose Okumura over her personal beliefs. However, it has to be noted that she never accepted the conservative Japanese marriage system. She lived with Okumura from 1914 on and they had two children. She finally did marry him the year her father died in 1941. In her later years, she left spiritualism behind and became an active feminist.

3  Raichō’s Feminism The basis of Raichō’s feminism is the belief that women are human first and female second. When Seitō was discontinued in 1916, she joined the Association of New Women (J. shin fujin kyōkai 新婦人協会) in 1919. In 1920, in the opening statement of a newly published magazine called Woman’s League (J. Josei dōmei 女性 同盟), she looked back at her own opening statement in the first issue of Seitō and admitted that there she had emphasized spiritual freedom and independence over social responsibility. In other words, the statement “In the beginning, woman was the sun” was designed to evoke the self-improvement of women in the sense of a spiritual or religious movement and did not serve as a call for social change. Raichō said that “woman should not only demand freedom or independence or rights in outer life, but rather, prior to demanding those, should return back to herself, understand the dignity of her inner self, possess the freedom of her inner self, and have the freedom and independence of the inner mind” (Hiratsuka 1920: 2–3). Raichō first awakened to feminism when she read Ellen Kay’s (1849–1926) Love and Marriage (1911). While living with Okumura, she entered deeply into Kay’s

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thought. In some sense, Raichō’s feminism first addressed the everyday life of women and practical issues such as the difficulty of earning money while having and raising children. She, thus, put motherhood in the center of the role and responsibility of women. She writes in the same essay that “I believe that what turns everything evil to happiness is not something like “no-self” (S. anātman), nor the philanthropic love as conceived by religious people and thinkers but rather egoistic and also altruistic romantic love and maternal love by means of a woman’s instinct towards her own flesh and blood” (Hiratsuka 1920: 10–11). Her beliefs led her to her involvement in a debate over the protection of motherhood and a salary for housewives. In this debate, her theory of motherhood was criticized by YOSANO Akiko 与謝野晶子 (1878–1942) as advocating the concept of domination and militaristic nationalism (Yosano 1980: 158). According to YONEDA Sayoko 米田佐代子, Raichō did not reply to Yosano on this point, but Yosano’s critique must have marked a turning point in Raichō’s thought. From then on, she rejected nationalism and thought of human beings first as “citizens of the world” (J. sekaimin 世界民) or “citizens of the universe” (J. uchūmin 宇宙民) (Yoneda 2002: 106–108). Even though she changed her focus from spiritual transformation to social change, she never lost sight of her religious experience and devotion she had as a young adult. Therefore, the following question arises: did she ever really lose all her devotion to religion? Is it truly impossible to find any connection between religion and her later works? In her autobiography, she rarely writes about religious enthusiasm in the later part of her life. However, she mentions the name DEGUCHI Nao 出口直 (1837–1918), who was a guru of a new religious sect, Ōmoto 大本.8 Ōmoto is a sect founded in 1892 that originated from Shintō 神道 and conflicted with State Shintō (kokka shintō 国家神道). Deguchi acted as a medium who listens to the gods and writes down their sayings while under trance. It is said, because Deguchi was illiterate, her automatic writings (J. ofudesaki お筆先) demonstrated her spiritual power as a medium. Already in the early Taisho period (1912–1926), Deguchi had predicted that there would be a war against the United States and that Tokyo would be destroyed and reduced to ruins. Raichō’s sister, who was an enthusiastic follower of Deguchi, had evacuated from Tokyo. With the intensification of the war, Raichō moved to her sister’s house away from Tokyo and stayed with her sister’s family until the end of the war. During wartime, the Japanese government repeatedly cracked down on the Ōmoto religion. With State Shintō as the ideology of the empire, the Japanese government thought it to be indispensable to impose its rule and took the policy of limiting religious activities. The government attempted to ban many religions to enable people to concentrate on State Shintō. Deguchi, however, was a traditional shaman and thus followed Japanese folk religion. During her possessions by a god, despite being illiterate, she wrote the god’s words of prophecy. With DEGUCHI Onisaburō 出口王仁三郎 (1871–1948), her associate, who also became a well-­

 Genshi jyosei wa taiyō de atta: Hiratsuka Raichō jiden zoku, (1972: 5).

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known spiritual medium, she started Ōmoto as a new religious movement. While founded in Kyoto, it quickly spread with the help of the mass media. Although such a new religious movement was likely to be persecuted, especially given the political circumstance, shamanic beliefs were widely accepted at the time as a contemporary form of mysticism. Raichō even published a short story called “Evocation” (Kōshin 降神), which recounts a shaman’s possession by a god (Hiratsuka 1912b: 44–53). All protagonists in this story speak with the Kansai ­dialect. The character of the shaman seems to be based on the person of DEGUCHI Nao. In the story, the shaman enters a room and starts murmuring Shintō prayers as if she was in meditation. Since the story is told from the perspective of an anonymous narrator who participated in such an evocation, it is not at all clear if this was based on the experience of Raichō or that of her sister.9 In her own life, Raichō herself was alleged to have shamanic powers. Her biography recounts times when she touched the bodies of sick villagers and cured them (Hiratsuka 1972: 14–16). After the Second World War, Raichō was involved in the peace movement. In 1949, she joined the World Federalist Movement and began the study of Esperanto. It is known that the members of Ōmoto appreciated Esperanto and even published a book in Esperanto in 1924 (Hiratsuka 1972: 59–63). Her involvement in the peace movement and her affiliation with Ōmoto were, thus, not in conflict. From 1930 on, Raichō collaborated with TAKAMURE Itsue 高群逸枝 (1894– 1964). Takamure devoted herself to the study of women’s history with a particular focus on the study of matrilineal systems: Women’s History of Great Japan, vol. 1 (Bokeisei no kenkyū: Dainihon joseishi 1) (1938) and Studies in Uxorilocal Marriage (Shōseikon no kenkyū) (1953). Matriarchy became an important issue for Japanese feminism to assert that the paternal system was not always fundamental to Japanese society. It is known that some groups like shamans and traditional performance dancers accepted the matriarchal system. In Ōmoto, this is also the case. The image of the historical matrilineal system is somehow connected to the image of the shaman. The movement of mysticism, it appears, should have accepted this shamanic tradition, which is not necessarily in contradiction to Zen meditation. Let us reflect on the role of the maternal figure in the religious sphere. Shintō from the beginning included the notion of motherhood or shamanic motherhood as one of the central figures. As for Japanese Buddhism, while Buddhism prohibits monks from having sexual relations with women, it was consistently broken until finally a monk Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1262) married a nun Eshin 恵信 (1182–1268), after a dream in which Avalokiteśvara promised to incarnate in female form as an object of his desire. Since the Meiji period, the institution of priestly marriage has been very common in Japan. KAWAI Hayao 河合隼雄 (1928–2007), a Jungian psychologist very influenced by Buddhism, points out the function of the Mother archetype here (Kawai 1996: 119–120). He explains the function of the Father archetype as the function of cutting and the Mother archetype as the function of the  IDE Fumiko mentioned that Raichō most closely approached Ōmoto around 1932–1933 (Ide 1987: 248). YOSHINAGA Shin’ichi mentioned that Raichō approached Ōmoto because she admired visionaries and shamans (Yoshinaga 2007: 104–115).

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lap. The function of cutting has to be understood in terms of the Freudian notion of castration anxiety. The Mother archetype refers to the origin of life. He even mentions the relationship between his work and Zen Buddhism: “I have felt that my work as a psychotherapist is somewhat similar to Zen” (Kawai 1996: 130.) According to Kawai’s explanation, priestly marriage is permitted in Japan because of the Buddhist emphasis on motherhood. Moreover, it is argued that the father’s power at home was weakened in Japan after the war. This is partly because many men died in the war, and there was an increase in the number of fatherless families. Furthermore, even if the fathers came back, they could not keep their dignity because they lost the war. In other words, the paternal system collapsed. During and after the war, the Japanese family inevitably became centered on the mother. The emphasis on motherhood is rather understandable in these circumstances. Moreover, Japanese Buddhism contains the traditional images of female divinities, and the role of femininity or motherhood in Buddhism cannot be denied. It is mentioned that Raichō’s words, “In the beginning, woman was the sun” implies the image of the sun goddess, Amaterasu Ōmikami 天照大神who is believed to be the original ancestor of imperial lineage. One could further argue that the symbol of the mother goddess is present in the Meiji period, as the Meiji government utilized the image of Empress Jingū (J. Jingū kōgō 神功皇后) on a stamp in 1908 and on the one-yen bill issued in 1878. Empress Jingū figures in the tales of Hachiman 八幡 which emphasize her shamanic features and introduce her as the mother of Emperor Ōjin (J. Ōjin tennō 応神天皇). In addition, Empress Jingū was worshiped as a pregnant warrior who conquered the Korean peninsula. From the strong image of women as shamans or mothers in the Japanese religions of that time, Raichō developed the idea of motherhood as the necessary focal point of social relationships. In her own autobiography, her mother was not a strong enough figure to constitute the basis of the symbolic image of motherhood. Further, even in Raichō’s religious thought, motherhood does not derive from the male-female dualism but rather indicates a primal being prior to the male-female distinction. The most important influence on Raichō, however, is the trend of spiritualism in both the East and the West that functioned as a resistance movement against the conservative and authoritarian system. In addition, Japanese religion has always tended to accept diversity and syncretism. In the Japanese context, it is not difficult to reconcile Zen Buddhism, shamanic Shintō, or even Christian spiritualism. In this context, Raichō conceived of motherhood as something non-dual or mystical and used its concept to ground her religious philosophy.

Works Cited Arai, Ōsui 新井奥邃. 2002. Arai Ōsui chosakushū 『新井奥邃著作集』 [The Collected Works of Arai Ōsui], vol. 7. Kanagawa: Shunpūsha. Hansei kai zasshi 『反省会雑誌』. Vol. 5. 1888. Kyoto: Hanseikai Honbu. Henshū shitsu yori 「編集室より」.1912a. Seitō 『青鞜』 2(6): 121–125.

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———.1912b. Seitō 『青鞜 』2(7): 110–114. Hiraishi, Noriko　平石典子. 2012. Hanmon seinen to jyogakusei no bungeishi: “seiyō” o yomikaete 『煩悶青年と女学生の文学誌:「西洋」を読み替えて』 [A Report on Literature of Anguished Young Men and Schoolgirls: Reinterpreting “West”]. Tokyo: Shinyōsha. Hiratsuka, Raichō 平塚らいてう. 1911. Genshi jyosei wa taiyō de atta 「元始、女性は太陽 であった」 [In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun]. Seitō: Fukkokuban 『青鞜: 復刻版』 [Seitō: Reprinted Edition], vol. 1, no. 1: 37–52. Tokyo: Fujishuppan. ———. 1912a. Marumado yori 「円窓より」 [From the Oval Window]. Seitō: Fukkokuban 『青 鞜:復刻版』 [Seitō: Reprinted Edition], vol. 1, no. 2: 76–108. Tokyo: Fujishuppan. ———. 1912b. Kōshin 「降神」 [Evocation]. Seitō: Fukkokuban 『青鞜: 復刻版』 [Seitō: Reprinted Edition], vol. 2. no. 3: 44–53. Tokyo: Fujishuppan. ———. 1914a. Dokuritsu suru ni oite ryōshin ni 「独立するに就いて両親に」 [To My Parents at Leaving Home]. Seitō: Fukkokuban『青鞜: 復刻版』[Seitō: Reprinted Edition], vol. 4, no. 2: 102–116. Tokyo: Fujishuppan. ———. 1914b. Jyosei kan no douseiren’ai: Erisu 「女性間の同性恋愛: エリス 」[Sexual Inversion of Women: Ellis]. Seitō: Fukkokuban 『青鞜: 復刻版』 [Seitō: Reprinted Edition], vol. 4, no. 4: 1–2, Tokyo: Fujishuppan. ———. 1920. Shakai kaizou ni taisuru fujin no shimei 「社会改造に対する婦人の使命」 [Women’s Responsibility for Social Change]. Josei dōmei 『女性同盟』[Women’s Union], 1, no. 1: 2–11. Tokyo: Shinfujinkyokai. ———. 1972. Genshi jyosei wa taiyō de atta: Hiratsuka Raichō jiden zoku 『元始、女性は 太陽であった:平塚らいてう自伝、続』 [In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun: The Autobiography of Hiratsuka Raichō sequel]. Tokyo: Ōtsuki Shoten. ———. 1987. Hiratsuka Raichō hyōron shū 『平塚らいてう評論集』 [The Critical Essays of Hiratsuka Raichō]. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. ———. 2006. In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun: The Autobiography of a Japanese Feminist. Trans. Teruko Craig. New York: Columbia University Press. Ide, Fumiko 井手文子. 1987. Hiratsuka Raichō: kindai to shinpi 『平塚らいてう:近代と神 秘』 [Hiratsuka Raichō: Modernity and Mysticism]. Tokyo: Shinchō Sensho. Iwano, Hōmei 岩野泡鳴. 1995. Shinpiteki hanju syūgi 「神秘的半獣主義」 [Mystic Therianthropism]. In Iwano Hōmei zenshū 『岩野泡鳴全集』 [The Complete Works of Iwano Hōmei], vol. 9: 3–103. Kyoto: Rinsen Shoten Kawai, Hayao. 1996. Buddhism and the Art of Psychotherapy. Texas: Texas A&M University Press. Kudō Shōzō 工藤正三. 2007. Arai Ōsui no kī wādo 「新井奥邃のキーワード」[Keyword of Arai Ōsui]. Swedenborg o yomitoku 『スウェーデンボルグを読み解く』 [Reading Swedenborg], ed. Japan Swedenborg Association. Yokohama: Shunpūsha. Maruyama, Teruo 丸山照雄 and Masanori Ōba大場正範 et. al., ed. 1986. Konkō to Ōmoto: kyōten sono kokoro to yomikata 『金光と大本: 教典その心と読み方』 [Konkō and Ōmoto: Religious Scripture, Its Essence and Way of Reading]. Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobō. Sasaki, Hideaki 佐々木英昭. 1994. “Atarashii onna” no tōrai: Hiratsuka Raichō to Sōseki『「 新しい女」の到来—平塚らいてうと漱石』 [Advent of “New Women”: Hiratsuka Raichō and Sōseki]. Aichi: Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai. Shimada, Akiko 島田暁子. 2000. Hiratsuka Raichō no shisō to bukkyō 「平塚らいてうの思 想と仏教」 [Hiratsuka Raichō’s Thought and Buddhism]. In Gendai nihon to bukkyō 3: gendaishisō, bungaku to bukkyō: bukkyō o koete 『現代日本と仏教3:現代思想・文学 と仏教:仏教を超えて』 [Contemporary Japan and Buddhism 3:Contemporary Thought, Literature and Buddhism: Beyond Buddhism], ed. Takasuke Kobayashi 小林孝輔 and Eishun Ikeda 池田英俊, 225–241. Tokyo: Heibonsha. Sueki, Fumihiko 末木文美士. 2004. Kami o miru: Tsunashima Ryōsen 「神を見る:綱島梁川」 [Seeing God: Tsunashima Ryōsen]. Fukujin 『福神』 [Gods of Good Fortune] 9: 161–176.

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———. 2006a. Jyosei no mezame to Zen: Hiratsuka Raichō 「女性の目ざめと禅:平塚らいて う」 [Women’s Awakening and Zen: Hiratsuka Raichō]. Fukujin 『福神』 [Gods of Good Fortune] 11: 152–165. ———. 2006b. Zen to jyosei no shisō keisei: Soshin, Tachibana Someko kara Hiratsuka Raichō e 「禅と女性の思想形成:祖心、橘染子から平塚らいてうへ」 [Zen and Thought Formation of Women]. Zen bunka kenkyūjo kiyō 『禅文化研究所紀要』 [Bulletin of Zen Culture Research Center]. 28: 581–592. Takahashi, Kazuo 高橋和夫. 2007. Gendai ni tūzuru ‘kyōiku eno nageki’: ‘Yoroshiku tanin no ko to byōdō ni kōshi o,’ 「現代へと通ずる教育への嘆き: よろしく他人の子と平等に公視 を」 [Continuing “Lament for Education”: Be Looked Equally]. In Swedenborg o y­ omitoku 『スウェーデンボルグを読み解く』 [Reading Swedenborg], ed. Japan Swedenborg Association, 21–24. Yokohama: Shunpūsha. Tomida, Hiroko. 2004. Hiratsuka Raichō and Early Japanese Feminism. Leiden: Brill. Tunashima, Ryōsen 綱島梁川. 1995. Ryōsen zenshū 『梁川全集』 [The Complete Works of Ryōsen]. 10 vols. Tokyo: Ōzorasha. Yoneda, Sayoko 米田佐代子. 2002. Hiratsuka Raichō: Kindai nihon no demokurashī to jendā 『 平塚らいてう:近代日本のデモクラシーとジェンダー』 [Hiratsuka Raichō: Democracy and Gender in Japanese Modernity]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan. Yosano, Akiko 与謝野晶子. 1980. Hiratsuka, Yamakawa, Yamada joshi ni kotau 「平塚、山 川、山田三女史に答ふ」 [Answering to Three Women, Hiratsuka, Yamakawa, Yamada]. In Teihon Yosano Akiko zenshū 『定本与謝野晶子全集』 [Ultimate Edition, The Complete Works of Yosano Akiko], vol. 17. Tokyo: Kōdansha. Yoshinaga, Shin'ichi 吉永進一. 2007. Bukkyo zasshi no Swedenborg 「仏教雑誌のスウェーデ ンボルグ」 [Swedenborg in Buddhist Journals]. In Swedenborg o yomitoku 『スウェーデ ンボルグを読み解く』[Reading Swedenborg], ed. Japan Swedenborg Association, 16–20. Yokohama: Shunpūsha. Saeko Kimura is Professor for Liberal Arts, Department of International and Cultural Studies at Tsuda College. Her specialization is in Japanese Literature. She finished her PhD at Tokyo University. She received the Japanese Women’s History Studies Prize in 2009. From 2005 to 2009 she served on the committee of Japanese Literature Associations. Recently, she has been exploring post-Fukushima literature. Her publications include A Brief History of Sexuality in Premodern Japan and Sono ato no shinsaigo no bunkron.

Chapter 28

Hisamatsu Shin’ichi: Oriental Nothingness André van der Braak

HISAMATSU Shin’ichi 久松 真一 (1889–1980) was a well-known Zen philosopher and Zen Buddhist scholar. As a student of NISHIDA Kitarō 西田幾多郎 (1870–1945), and a teacher of ABE Masao (1915–2006), he can be seen as loosely connected to the Kyoto School. However, although he was a professor at Kyoto University and received an honorary doctoral degree from Harvard University, Hisamatsu has primarily become known in the West as a charismatic lay Zen master, who criticized Japanese Zen for its focus on awakening (J. satori 悟り) at the expense of consideration of social and political issues. His aim was to come to a reformed, true Zen. Although more members of the Kyoto School were both philosophers and Zen practitioners, notably NISHITANI Keiji 西谷啓治 (1900–1990) and UEDA Shizuteru 上田関照, in Hisamatsu’s life and work one finds most strongly the tension between academic philosophy and its limits, on the one hand, and Zen practice and awakening, on the other hand. Throughout his life, Hisamatsu aimed to bridge the gap between philosophy and religion: Philosophy wants to know ultimately, and religion wants to live ultimately. For the whole man, however, both are one and not two; they are inseparable. The religion isolated from philosophy falls into ignorance, superstition, fanaticism, and dogma, while the philosophy with religion estranged from it cannot but be deprived of life. Both religion and philosophy in their present conditions seem to expose such faults. (Hisamatsu 1996: 435)

While Christopher Ives has extensively written elsewhere about Hisamatsu as a Zen master (Ives 2010), this essay will focus on his contributions as a philosopher.

A. van der Braak (*) Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_28

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1  Biography In his autobiographical essay Memories from My Student Life, Hisamatsu recounts how he was first raised in a devout Shin Buddhist family but then underwent a “conversion from the religious life of naive religious belief which avoids rational doubt, to the critical life of modern man based on autonomous rational judgment and empirical proof” (Abe 1981: 28).1 As a result, he entered Kyoto University in 1912 and studied philosophy with NISHIDA Kitarō. Western philosophy had been introduced in the Meiji period (1868–1912) as a highly rational and logical discipline. Many young Japanese that were religiously inclined turned to philosophy in order to probe their religious concerns in greater depth. As Abe notes, however, Hisamatsu’s motivation for turning to philosophy differed: he had already left behind the religious faith in which he was reared and deeply believed, a faith that he described later as merely a case of “leave-it-up-to-the-Almighty-ism which avoided all doubt” (Abe 1981: 30). However, his philosophical life also proved unsatisfactory. Hisamatsu came to despair of philosophy and human reason. As Abe notes, this reason was the autonomous reason of the Western Enlightenment: For Hisamatsu, reason was not merely a means to idealistically contemplating the world of intelligibility in some transcendental beyond. Nor was it dualistic intellectual reason scrutinizing the objective world. More than anything else, it has to be autonomous reason, laying by itself the subjective foundation of the self and examining critically all dogmas and presuppositions, those of religion included. (Abe 1981: 31)

Autonomous Enlightenment reason could not address Hisamatsu’s deeply felt existential religious concerns. As Abe explains, the standpoint of autonomous reason will inevitably crumble away to the extent that it is penetrated: “The further autonomy is penetrated the deeper one falls into a kind of self-entanglement, until the self-entanglement extends itself throughout one’s entire existence. Such self-­ binding, or self-collapse, is an inescapable self-contradiction inherent in autonomous reason” (Abe 1981: 32). Hisamatsu turned to Zen in an attempt to break through such inescapable self-­ contradiction and to find a standpoint beyond both the theocentric, heteronomous faith of his youth, and the anthropocentric, autonomous reason of academic philosophy. With Nishida’s recommendation, he joined the Rinzai Zen monastery at Myōshinji temple in 1915 and studied with Zen Master IKEGAMI Shosan. During the rōhatsu sesshin 臘八接心 of December 1915, he attained awakening, kenshō 見 性.2 As he would write himself later, in such an awakening, the rational self is cast off in negation. This results in autonomy of a deeper dimension, which has broken beyond and completely shaken off the limitations of rational autonomy. It is fundamental, absolute autonomy free of the fatalistic, absolute antinomy that characterizes rational autonomy. (Hisamatsu 1975a) 1  Abe’s essay was originally published in Japanese as “Hisamatsu Shin’ichi Sensei no Kaku no Tetsugaku” 「久松真一先生の覚の哲学」. Risō 理想 424 (September 1968): 10–24. 2  As Abe notes, Hisamatsu himself does not take kenshō (seeing one’s Nature, insight into the Self) as an experience, for “experience” indicates something happening in time and space, whereas kenshō by nature is trans-temporal and trans-spatial (1981: 32, n4).

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The standpoint of such an awakening is, in Abe’s terms, a world with neither God nor man, transcendence nor immanence, self nor other, mind nor matter, life nor death, good nor evil, right nor wrong, love nor hate, inner nor outer, movement nor stillness, time nor space, past nor present nor future.[…] It transcends all aspects of man and God, the profane and the sacred, time and eternity, philosophy and religion, knowledge and faith. It brings about the absolute transcendence of transcendence, though not in the direction of some distant beyond: the very standpoint of transcendence is inverted from its foundation. This is a fundamental conversion of all things, including even the standpoint of immanence transcended by transcendence. (Abe 1981: 37f)

Hisamatsu spent the rest of his life attempting to express such a religious awakening, in philosophical as well as non-philosophical ways. In 1928, he taught in Kyoto at what is currently Hanazono University and at Ryūkoku University. From 1932 on, he taught at the Philosophy Faculty of Imperial Kyoto University, and from 1943 to 1949, he served as the chair for Buddhism and philosophy of religion. In 1957–1958 he traveled to Europe and the United States, teaching at Harvard University and meeting with Paul Tillich (1886–1965), Martin Buber (1878–1965), Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973), Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961), and Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). Abe Masao claims that Hisamatsu’s philosophy “is not philosophy as it is understood in the West, but Awakening itself. Hisamatsu, the philosopher of Awakening, was not a philosopher in the ordinary sense: he was an awakened man” (Abe 1981: 28). Regardless of the truth value of such an assertion, such claims create problems for the assessment of Hisamatsu’s philosophical thought. What if someone claimed that “Thomas Aquinas was not a philosopher in the ordinary sense: he was a saint”? We would legitimately protest that such assertions have no place in philosophical discourse. Abe also states that Hisamatsu’s philosophy, then, however important it may be, was but one of many self-­ expressions of his awakening, all stemming from the same source. The philosophy of Awakening differs in no way from a flower arranged by Hisamatsu for the tea ceremony. In that one flower his philosophy is fully manifested. Those who cannot see the philosophy of Awakening in that flower will fail to see it in his philosophical works as well. (Abe 1981: 28)

Nevertheless, in this essay we will attempt to assess Hisamatsu’s philosophy of awakening on its own terms, regardless of his awakened state as a Zen master. Therefore, we will have to make a distinction between philosophy and religion.

2  Oriental Nothingness Whereas the fundamental question of the onto-theological mainstream of the West has been “what is being?” the counter question of the Kyoto School has been “what is nothingness?”3 Rather than an ontology, the philosophy of the Kyoto School can  General information on the Kyoto School in this paper has been taken from Davis 2010.

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be described as a meontology, a philosophy of non-being or nothingness (Davis 2010: section 3.1). The Japanese Mahāyāna Buddhist notion of “nothingness” is connected to both the Indian Buddhist notion of śūnyatā (“emptiness”) and the Chinese Daoist pre-­ ontology of wu 無 (“nothingness”). Śūnyatā in the work of Nāgārjuna (ca. 150 C.E.) means that all things come to being in “pratītya-samutpāda” (“interdependent origination”) and are therefore empty of “svabhāva,” a complex notion that can mean, depending on the context in which it is used, substance, essence, or true nature (Westerhoff 2009: 12f; 19–52). The notion of “wu” emphasizes an indeterminate, distinctionless reality as the origin of all things. This unnamable nondualistic source of all being and relative non-being is also referred to as the nontranscendent field of dao. Both of these two strands of thought, Nāgārjuna’s śūnyatā and the Daoist wu, were combined in the Zen notion of nothingness (Kasulis 1981: 14f). “Śūnyatā” is technically translated as “kū” (C. kong 空), and the Chinese “wu” is changed only in pronunciation into the Japanese “mu.” The thinkers of the Kyoto School tend to favor the term mu, which is found predominantly in Zen. The nothingness of the Kyoto School thinkers, however, is not a relative nothingness, an absence of being, but an “absolute nothingness” (J. zettai mu 絶対無), a term coined by Nishida, that encompasses both being and not-being. The term “zettai” literally means a “severing of opposition,” which implies the sense of “without an opposing other.” Absolute nothingness must embrace, rather than stand over against, relative nothingness (Davis 2010: section 3.3). Hisamatsu, also, no doubt influenced in this by his teacher Nishida, initially attempted to express his “standpoint of awakening” by the term “Oriental nothingness” (J. tōyōteki mu). In 1928, Hisamatsu gave a talk entitled “Oriental Nothingness.” Until about 1946, this expression was used by him to indicate the standpoint of awakening to the true Self (Ohashi 1990: 229). Hisamatsu’s primary text on Oriental nothingness is his 1939 essay “The Characteristics of Oriental Nothingness,” published in Japanese in 1946 and in English in 1959.4 In his Preface, he distinguishes between the mere conceptual demands and scholarly interests of men that drive academic descriptions of nothingness and the religious impulse to provide a signpost for those who seek to realize nothingness. This religious impulse has driven Zen patriarchs throughout the ages to “make a compass to sail the ocean of fog” (ON 66). It is in this latter spirit that Hisamatsu aims to provide conceptual clarification of the notion of Oriental nothingness, first by negative delineation, then by positive description. Hisamatsu starts by arguing that Oriental nothingness is different from five common Western conceptions of nothingness. First, nothingness is not the negation of being, such as when one says “there is no desk” or “there is no pleasure.” Second, it is not a predicative negation as in “the desk is not a chair” or “pleasure is not grief.” Third, it is not an abstract concept that would indicate nonbeing in general rather than being. Fourth, it is not a conjecture, as when while alive, one would imagine 4  For this article, the revised translation by TOKIWA Gishin has been used (Hisamatsu 2005). References will be indicated as ON.

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oneself as dead or non-existing. Fifth, it does not refer to an absence of consciousness, as in deep sleep, unconsciousness, or death (ON 66–75). According to Hisamatsu, Oriental nothingness has a meaning that is distinct from all five meanings of nothingness in the Western context. Oriental nothingness is beyond the dualism of being and nonbeing. It is not a passive, contemplative state that can be achieved through meditation practice but an active contemplative mind. Hisamatsu then goes on to enlist six positive delineations of Oriental nothingness.

3  The Six Characteristics of Nothingness (1) Not a single thing: According to Hisamatsu, there is a reason for the fact that Oriental nothingness is often understood as an absence of being: it does have a characteristic that could be expressed in this sense. This is the characteristic of “not a single thing,” which means that “as regards that which is generally said “to be,” there is in and for Oriental nothingness not one single such thing” (ON 75). Oriental nothingness does not refer to an objective world outside the mind that can be perceived. In this sense, it is radically different from the ordinary structure of human consciousness that always assumes a perceiver that is connected with an internal or external object. Hisamatsu calls this the structure of noema-noesis, and explains: Such an “I” is an “I” which can not but be limited by color when seeing color, by sound when hearing sound, by evil when thinking of evil, and by good when thinking of good. It is an “I” which is always limited and captured by the “internal” and “external” realms, that is, by objects. […] But, on the contrary, the “I” which does not have an object, the “I” which does not have a single thing, is the “I” which is no longer dependent upon or attached to anything. It is the “I” which is not of the nature of noema-noesis. (ON 77)

Oriental nothingness as “not a single thing” refers to such a non-objectified form of consciousness. It is the same as Huineng’s “One-direct-Mind,” (T 48.2008.352c) which refers to “a Straightforward Mind, which is not captured by anything” (ON 78). Only such a mind, Hisamatsu adds, is capable of a “samadhi of free unattached play” (C. youxisanmei; J. yugezanmai遊戯三昧). This is not, however, an individual experience of samadhi but one beyond subject and object altogether, a “One-­ Form Samadhi” that is explained by Huineng 惠能 (638–713) as follows: If in all places you do not give rise to form, and if, as regards all forms that are, you do not give rise to either love or hate, and if, further, there is no accepting or rejecting, if you do not think of profit, coming to be, passing away, and such things, if you are peaceful, tranquil, unimpeded and unconcerned, this is called One-Form-Samadhi. (T 48.2008.361ab)

Therefore, the first characteristic of Oriental nothingness refers to a non-­ discriminating, non-objectified consciousness that leaves behind the distinction between subject and object. (2) Empty space: Oriental nothingness has also frequently been explained in the Mahāyāna Buddhist literature through the use of the concept of empty-space.

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Hisamatsu explains this in terms of Yongming’s ten meanings of empty-space:5 no-­ obstruction (it does not get in the way of anything), omnipresence, impartiality (it has no preferences), broad and great, formless, purity (it lack afflictions), stability (it does not come into being or pass away), voiding-being, voiding-voidness (beyond the opposition of being and nonbeing), and without obtaining (it neither clings to anything nor can be clung to). However, Hisamatsu stresses that “Oriental Nothingness is not the same as empty-space, which has neither awareness nor life, whereas Oriental Nothingness is the One who is ‘always clearly aware.’ Therefore it is called ‘Mind,’ ‘Self,’ or ‘The True Man’” (ON 82). (3) Mind-in-Itself: The concept of empty-space does not fully exemplify Oriental nothingness, since it does not capture the qualities of awareness and life. Oriental nothingness is living and possesses mind, even self-consciousness. This is the “Mind-in-Itself” nature of Oriental nothingness. However, this is not the same as what is ordinarily called mind, since it also possesses the ten characteristics of empty space. (4) Self. The Mind that possesses the characteristics of empty space can be misunderstood as something viewed objectively outside of oneself. Oriental nothingness, however, is fundamentally subjectivity. Therefore, Hisamatsu adds “Self” as a fourth characteristic of Oriental nothingness in order to stress this aspect of Mind: “This Mind is not the mind which is seen, but is, on the contrary, the Mind which sees. Speaking in terms of ‘seeing,’ this Mind is the ‘active seeing’ and not the passive ‘being seen’” (ON 88). However, such an active seeing does not mean that Oriental nothingness is a subject as opposed to an object. Hisamatsu merely uses the image of subjectivity in order to prevent it from being taken as something transcendent and objective, as is often the interpretation of the Zen phrase “Mind is Buddha”: As indicated before, the Mind of which I am speaking is not merely that which is ordinarily called mind, but is the Mind which is itself Buddha. But when I say Buddha, this, again, is frequently taken as transcendent and objective. Buddha is often considered to be, in relation to us humans, “other” and objective. If Buddha were something perceived as an object by our senses, then its being “other” and objective would go without saying. But even a Buddha which becomes an object of feeling, faith, volition, or reason must also be said to be something other and objective. In such a case, we are not Buddha; we rather stand in contrast to Buddha. The “I” which thus stands in contrast to Buddha can not be said to be a Self or Subject. (ON 88)

Therefore, Hisamatsu’s notion of Self does not refer to a subject that stands in contrast to objects. It is not, Hisamatsu remarks, the naïve self-subject of modern anthropocentrism but rather an absolute subject that also includes that which a naive subject would consider something “other.” Later, Hisamatsu would expand this metaphor of the Self into his notion of the Formless Self, which would even replace the metaphor of Oriental nothingness itself.  In his Records Mirroring the Original Source (C. Zongjinglu 宗鏡録), fascicle six (T48.2016.446c), YONGMING Yanshou 永明延壽 (904-975) explains these meanings quoting from the Commenting on the Mahāyāna śāstra (C. Shimoheyanlun 釋摩訶衍論) fascicle three.

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(5) Freedom: Oriental nothingness as the subject is, moreover, the completely free subject. Hisamatsu lists several kinds of freedom. He addresses the Zen saying “If you wish to go, go; if you wish to sit, sit; when hunger comes, take food; when drowsiness comes, sleep” (ON 91). This does not refer to the freedom to indulge in all desires but to the mature freedom out of which one criticizes and controls such indulgent freedom. This freedom even includes freedom from the Buddha. Hisamatsu notes that “the placing of Buddha transcendentally and objectively outside of ordinary beings is a rope which still constrains freedom” (ON 92). He quotes Linji’s (J.  Rinzai) 臨済 (d. 866) famous saying, “encountering Buddha, killing Buddha, encountering the Patriarch, killing the Patriarch” (ON 92). (6) Creative: Oriental nothingness can be likened to consciousness that reflects all things. However, this is very different from Western notions. What Kant speaks of as the “mind which creates all things,” however, is so-called “consciousness-­in-general” (Bewusstsein überhaupt). For Kant mind forms according to the formal categories of “consciousness-in-general” the impressions which it has received from what he calls the “thing-in-itself.” Such a mind is like a mirror which in turn reflects according to the form(s) of reflection that which comes to be reflected in it from the outside. In as much as that which is reflected by the mirror is something transformed by the form(s) of reflection it is not separate from the mirror. If, however, there were only the mirror and nothing coming to it reflected from the outside, there could be no reflected image. The image, thus, can not be said to be produced from within the mirror. (ON 95f)

Hisamatsu points out the limited usefulness of the analogy of the mirror: “In Buddhism, that which is reflected in the mirror is not something which comes from outside the mirror, but is something which is produced from within the mirror” (ON 96). Therefore, Hisamatsu prefers the analogy of the water and the waves: Waves are not something which come from outside the water and are reflected in the water. Waves are produced by the water but are never separated from the water. When they cease to be waves, they return to the water—their original source. Returning to the water, they do not leave the slightest trace in the water. Speaking from the side of the waves, they arise from the water and return to the water. Speaking from the side of water, the waves are the movement of the water. While the water in the waves is one with the waves and not two, the water does not come into being and disappear, increase or decrease, according to the coming into being and disappearing of the waves. Although the water as waves comes into being and disappears, the water as water does not come into being and disappear. Thus, even when changing into a thousand or ten thousand waves, the water as water is itself constant and unchanging. (ON 96)

The relationship between the water and the waves illustrates the creative nature of Oriental nothingness. The waves, which are produced and disappear, can be likened to the ordinary self of man; the water can be seen as Oriental nothingness as the True Self. Therefore, the realization of the True Self is simultaneously a return to the creative source of Oriental nothingness. This aspect of Oriental nothingness is reminiscent of the Daoist pre-ontology of wu as the source of the ten thousand things.6 6  Hisamatsu also cites Huineng: “Self-Nature, in its origin constant and without commotion, produces the ten thousand things” (T 48.2008.39a).

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4  T  he Way of the Absolute Subject: Realizing The Formless Self As Ohashi notes, Hisamatsu used the term “Oriental nothingness” until about 1946 as an expression of the True Self (Ohashi 1990: 229). After 1946, he used the expression “the absolute subject.” Ohashi interprets this not as a shift in standpoint but as a further development of Hisamatsu’s philosophy of awakening (Ohashi 1990: 229). In the 1950s, the comparative field of Zen and psychoanalysis led to dialogues between Japanese Zen masters and Western psychotherapists. In 1957, a conference on Zen and psychoanalysis was held at the National University of Mexico at Cuernavaca, resulting in the famous collection of essays Zen and Psychoanalysis. D.T. Suzuki (Suzuki Daisetsu 鈴木大拙) (1870–1966), who was very active in such East-West dialogues, invited Hisamatsu in 1957 to come to the West. In the fall semester of 1957, Hisamatsu taught at Harvard Divinity School, where he conducted dialogues with theologian Paul Tillich on the subject of the Formless Self.7 In early 1958, Hisamatsu had conversations with Carl Jung, Martin Buber, and Martin Heidegger.8 Hisamatsu’s dialogue with Jung took place at Jung’s home in Küssnacht, on the outskirts of Zürich, on May 16, 1958. Later, Jung refused his permission to have the transcript of their talk published. He felt that a satisfactory mutual understanding had not been reached in their encounter (Abe 1985: 61, n6). Part of the transcript was published later. In reading it, one starts to wonder whether Hisamatsu’s adaptation of the term “Self” was a felicitous one. Jung and Hisamatsu are clearly talking at cross-purposes, as is obvious from the following exchange: HISAMATSU: Is the “Ί-consciousness” (ego-consciousness) different from the “self-­ consciousness” or not? JUNG: In the ordinary usage, people say “self-consciousness,” but psychologically it is only “I-consciousness.” The “self” is unknown, for it indicates the whole, that is, the conscious and the unconscious… HISAMATSU: What! The “self” is not known? JUNG: Perhaps only the half of it is known and it is the I. It is the half of the “self”. (Abe 1985: 62)

Hisamatsu’s dialogues with Tillich were somewhat more successful. They focused on the notion of the Formless Self. Tillich asked whether the Formless Self is conscious or possesses a psychological awareness. Hisamatsu answered that the split between subject and object is not present in the Formless Self. He gave the example of the functioning of one’s eyes: If the seer is consciously aware of seeing—for instance, this glass of orange juice—then that is not pure seeing … In pure seeing, however, in which the duality between the seer and

7  A record of this dialogue was published as “Dialogues East and West: Paul Tillich and Hisamatsu Shin’ichi,” Eastern Buddhist 4/2 (1971): 89–107; 5/2 (1972): 107–128; and 6/2 (1973): 87–114. 8  For a transcript of the Hisamatsu-Jung dialogue, see their “On the Unconscious, The Self, and Therapy: A Dialogue—Carl C. Jung and Shin-ichi Hisamatsu” (Jung and Hisamatsu 1968).

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the seen is overcome, the orange juice in a sense “disappears.” It is there; yet it is not. It is this sort of “disappearance of mind” that is meant by “No-Mind” or “No-Mindedness.” When one is conscious of what one is doing, you can speak of a state of mind; for the mind remains. (Hisamatsu 1971: 94)

As opposed to Tillich’s term “Being itself,” which stands in dualistic opposition to nonbeing, Hisamatsu stressed that the Formless Self is beyond the opposition between form and formless. Tillich persisted that the Formless Self is somehow separate from the specific forms in which it manifests itself. However, Hisamatsu answered, the Formless Self does not have any form apart from the specific forms in which it manifests itself (Stambaugh 1999: 66). As Joan Stambaugh comments, What Tillich is unable to understand or accept is that one expression or form is not the exclusive manifestation of the Formless Self, shutting out any other manifestations. The Formless Self can manifest itself in any form. And yet any one expression or form expresses the ultimate entirely. It is not a partial manifestation, but a total one. (Stambaugh 1999: 66)

5  Fas Society Together with several of his students at Kyoto University, Hisamatsu founded the Gakudō Dōjō 学道道場 (Association for Self-Awakening) in 1944. Perhaps as a result of these international activities, in 1958 the Gakudō Dōjō was renamed the FAS Society: “F” stands for “realizing the Formless Self,” “A” stands for “All Mankind,” and “S” stands for “Suprahistorical history.” Its aim is to spread the standpoint of fundamental self-awakening of all mankind. In this way, Hisamatsu attempted to encapsulate his vision of a true, reformed Zen: Awakening to the Formless Self, the dimension of depth, the Self as the ground of human existence; Standing on the standpoint of All Humankind, the dimension of width, human being in its entirety; Creating history Suprahistorically, the dimension of length, awakened human history. (Ives 2010: 218)

In such a three-dimensional view of awakening, awakening to the Formless Self is only the first dimension, that of depth. It is a basis for the dimensions of width (expanding this awakening to include all of humanity) and length (creating history supra-historically). For Hisamatsu, awakening to the Formless Self also implies taking the standpoint of all humankind and creating history anew: The Formless Self, which is no-birth-and-death freed from birth-and-death, must function and give rise to all things in actuality. This is the True Self (F), which constitutes the source of A and S. It is Self-Awakening. In that it is spatially boundless (formless), it is the basis of All Humankind, and in that it transcends the three periods of past, present and future, it is the basis of Suprahistorical history. Since this Self is no-thought (mu-nen), no-mind (mu-­ shin), and the true reality of no-boundary, one can stand in the standpoint of all humankind and create history while transcending history. (Ives 2010: 227)

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Awakening to True, Formless Self is connected to the Zen notion of “seeing into one’s nature.” By this, Hisamatsu means not a particular object that needs to be realized, not a ground or void: By the seeing of one’s nature we do not mean any objective contemplation, objective awareness, or objective cognition of Self-Nature or Buddha-Nature; we mean the Awakening of the Self-Nature itself. Since there is no Buddha apart from this awakening, to ‘become Buddha’ means to come to the true Self-Awakening. (Ives 2010: 218)

Hisamatsu’s three-dimensional standpoint is further expressed in the Society’s “Vow of Humankind”: Keeping calm and composed, let us awaken to our True Self, become fully compassionate humans, make full use of our gifts according to our respective missions in life, discern the agony both individual and social and its source, recognize the right direction in which history should proceed, and join hands without distinctions of race, nation, or class. Let us, with compassion, vow to bring to realization humankind’s deep desire for Self-­ emancipation and construct a world in which everyone can truly and fully live. (Ives 2010: 218)

6  Hisamatsu’s Legacy of Oriental Nothingness The notion of absolute or Oriental nothingness occupied a specific, time-bound place in the discourse of the Kyoto School thinkers. As Ueda notes, Nishida and TANABE Hajime 田辺元 (1885–1962) attempted to use the notion of absolute nothingness with the purpose of “bridging the differences between East and West, with the aim of conceiving the world anew within a horizon that included these differences” (Ueda 2011: 24). After the Second World War, the problem of the arrival of nihilism in both European and non-European cultures increasingly made the notion of the “absolute” ring hollow: “even ‘absolute nothingness’—an idea conceived in the horizon of the world and with Eastern traditions in the background— had ceased to be effective in its present form” (Ueda 2011: 26). Therefore, it could no longer be the basic category of thought in a world horizon. Whereas Nishitani responded to this by “borrowing” the notion of śūnyatā and using it rather freely in his philosophy, Hisamatsu took a different direction: that of the Formless Self. As we have briefly noted above, the mature Hisamatsu stressed the multidimensionality of awakening. The realization of the Formless Self (Oriental nothingness) was only the basis for the dimensions of All Mankind and Suprahistorical History. Hisamatsu stressed the political and historical aspects of compassion, creating history anew for all mankind, and decried the overemphasis on satori in contemporary Zen in Japan, leading to an apolitical “Zen within a ghostly cave.” Yet, ironically enough, Hisamatsu has become well-known to a larger audience in Europe primarily through his early notion of Oriental nothingness, that he left behind after 1946. The reason for this was the German publication in 1975 of his

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1939 essay “The Characteristics of Oriental Nothingness,” translated as Die Fülle des Nichts: vom Wesen des Zen [The Fullness of Nothingness: on the Essence of Zen]. This essay was presented as Hisamatsu’s most important piece of writing (G. Kernstück) (Hisamatsu 1975b: 67). As a result, the notion of Oriental nothingness came to be associated with Hisamatsu’s philosophy, probably more strongly than was warranted by Hisamatsu’s own philosophical development. In an ironical twist of fate, the presentation of the realization of Oriental nothingness as the essence of Zen to a Western audience may have inadvertently encouraged the rise of a Western “Zen within a ghostly cave.” It is instructive to contemplate that a similar fate befell Nishida and his notion of “pure experience,” that had a large impact on Western interpretations of Nishida’s philosophy, even though he only used it in An Inquiry into the Good and left it behind in his later writings. These writings, however, were mostly only published in Japanese and therefore not accessible to a Western audience. Thomas Kasulis points out an interesting contrast (intentionally overdrawn) between, on the one hand, Nishida, Nishitani, WATSUJI Tetsurō 和辻哲郎 (1889– 1960) and Tanabe, who wrote primarily for a Japanese audience, and, on the other hand, Suzuki, Hisamatsu, and Abe, who wrote primarily for a Western audience (Kasulis 1998: 256ff). Although all these thinkers treasure the importance of direct personal awakening, they disagree with regard to the relationship between awakening and philosophy. Nishida and Nishitani tended to avoid references to the satori experience as a foundation for their philosophies. For them, satori is something to be explained philosophically, not something that explains (away) the problems of philosophy. Suzuki, Hisamatsu, and Abe, however, emphasized the immediate realization of nothingness, satori, as a precondition for philosophical thinking, as we have seen in Hisamatsu’s philosophy of awakening. The assumption is that without the clarity of that experience, philosophical thinking runs into unavoidable obstacles. Philosophical problems may be solved in normal philosophical discourse, but their solution inevitably leads to further philosophical problems. Only in satori can philosophical problems be truly resolved (and, in a sense, dissolved). (Kasulis 1998: 256)

Kasulis explains this differences in terms of audience. For a Japanese audience, the reality and importance of Buddhist awakening was not in question. The problem was what awakening could mean in a modern context. The challenge was, therefore, to find ways in which the experience of awakening could enrich Western philosophy with new and useful categories. For Suzuki and Abe, whose audience was primarily Western, the importance of Buddhist awakening could not be taken for granted. Therefore, their first task was to point to the importance of such an experience itself; the second task was to explain how it differed from Western notions of transcendence. Rather than locate satori within the everyday, they had to show their Western audience that it was beyond the everyday, but in a non-Western, non-Christian way. This might also have been a reason to select Hisamatsu’s early work on Oriental nothingness for translation into

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German: it addresses both of these tasks very well, perhaps in better ways than his mature writings on F.A.S. Therefore, a fundamental antinomy remains in Hisamatsu’s legacy of Oriental nothingness. Hisamatsu’s fundamental kōan 公案 for Zen practice was: “if whatever you do won’t do—what do you do?” Perhaps this kōan is also a fitting description of Hisamatsu’s own relationship to academic philosophy and his practice of it.

Works Cited Abbreviations ON Hisamatsu Shin’ichi. Oriental Nothingness. Translated by Gishin Tokiwa. 2005. Accessed 28 Mar 2011. http://www.fas.x0.com/writings/hisamatsu/toyotekimunoseikaku.html. T Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 『大正新修大蔵經』. 100 vols. Edited by Junjirō Takakusu 高楠順次 郎 and Kaigyoku Watanabe 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai, 1924–34.

Other Sources Abe, Masao. 1981. Hisamatsu’s Philosophy of Awakening. The Eastern Buddhist 14 (1): 26–42. ———. 1985. The Self in Jung and Zen. Trans. Christopher A. Ives. The Eastern Buddhist 18(1): 57–70. Davis, Bret W. 2010. The Kyoto School. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta. Accessed 15 Sept 2010. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ sum2010/entries/kyoto-school. Hisamatsu, Shin’ichi. 1971. Dialogues East and West: Conversations Between Dr. Paul Tillich and Dr. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi. Eastern Buddhist 4 (2): 89–107. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi. 1975a. Ultimate Crisis and Resurrection. Trans. Gishin Tokiwa. Eastern Buddhist 8 (May 1975): 12–29; 8 (October 1975): 37–65. ———. 1975b. Die Fülle des Nichts: vom Wesen des Zen. Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Nesker. ———. 1996. After the Academic Life. In Hisamatsu Shin’ichi Chosakushu, trans. Gishin Tokiwa, vol. 1, 435–438. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. ———. 2005. The Characteristics of Oriental Nothingness. Trans. Gishin Tokiwa. Accessed 28 Mar 2011. http://www.fas.x0.com/writings/hisamatsu/toyotekimunoseikaku.html. Ives, Christopher. 2010. True Person, Formless Self: Lay Zen Master Hisamatsu Shin’ichi. In Zen Masters, ed. Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, 217–238. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jung, Carl G., and Shin’ichi Hisamatsu. 1968. On the Unconscious, the Self and the Therapy. Psychologia 11: 25–32. Kasulis, Thomas P. 1981. Zen Action/Zen Person. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ———. 1998. Masao Abe as D.T. Suzuki’s Philosophical Successor. In Masao Abe: A Zen Life of Dialogue, ed. Donald W. Mitchell, 251–259. Boston: Charles E. Tuttle. Ohashi, Ryōsuke. 1990. Shin-ichi Hisamatsu. In Die Philosophie der Kyōto-Schule: Texte und Einführung, ed. Ryōsuke Ohashi, 227–251. Freiburg/München: Karl Alber Verlag. Stambaugh, Joan. 1999. The Formless Self. Albany: State University of New York Press.

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Ueda, Shizuteru. 2011. Contributions to Dialogue with the Kyoto School. In Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School, ed. Bret W.  Davis, Brian Schroeder, and Jason M. Wirth, 19–32. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Westerhoff, Jan. 2009. Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka. A Philosophical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. André van der Braak has been affiliated with the Faculty of Religion and Theology at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam since 2012, as Professor of Buddhist Philosophy in dialogue with other world views. He has a background in comparative philosophy and clinical psychology and obtained his PhD at the Radboud University Nijmegen. In addition, he has been authorized as a Zen teacher since 2013 within the Maha Karuna Chan tradition of Ton Lathouwers. He is active as a Zen teacher at Zen in Baarn. His numerous publications include his book Nietzsche and Zen: Self -Overcoming Without a Self, and papers such as “Aspects of Belonging in Multiple Religious Belonging”, “Zen-Christian Dual Belonging and the Practice of Apophasis: Strategies of Meeting Rose Drew’s Theological Challenge”, and “Beyond ‘kusala’ and ‘askuala’: Mindfulness and Buddhist Ethics.”

Chapter 29

Nishitani Keiji: Nihilism, Buddhism, Anontology John W. M. Krummel

Is there such a thing as a Buddhist philosophy, a specifically Japanese Buddhist philosophy? The question calls for a complex answer, involving a discussion of what is “Buddhist” and what is “philosophy.” If one were to answer “yes,” for the twentieth century, the Kyoto School of philosophy comes to mind. But for the most part, although the writings of the Kyoto School founder, NISHIDA Kitarō 西田幾 多郎 (1870–1945), were replete with Buddhist inspired ideas, their Buddhist origins were not always made explicit until in his very last works. Nishida’s most famous disciple NISHITANI Keiji 西谷啓治 (1900–1990), on the other hand, never seemed to have any qualms about discussing certain elements in his thinking as Buddhist, in particular, Mahāyāna or Zen-inspired. Yet the issue is not a simple one and it would be reductive to identify Nishitani as nothing but a Buddhist thinker. He certainly was not sectarian or dogmatic in his use of Buddhist concepts, and he also proves himself to be a global thinker in his use of non-Buddhist, i.e., Christian or western ways of thinking. His major concern throughout his career was nihilism and modernity, and we see in his works the unfolding of a philosophical conversation between western philosophy, Christianity, and Buddhism in dealing with the issues of nihilism and modernity. In the following, I will begin with a short biographical introduction to Nishitani the philosopher. I will then discuss his views on nihilism, and the various Mahāyāna Buddhist motifs he appropriates and employs in developing his own response to nihilism and the perennial questions of human existence. I will also argue that his appropriation of Buddhist concepts in his response to nihilism leads him to what I call “anontology.”

J. W. M. Krummel (*) Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_29

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1  Biography The problem of nihilism was not just a scholarly or academic issue for Nishitani. The issue is such that it cannot but be deeply existential, and for Nishitani this concern was personal with biographical origins. He states that what moved him to begin the study of philosophy was a kind of “pre-philosophical nihilism” (J. tetsugaku izen no nihirizumu 哲学以前のニヒリズム) (C 20: 186).1 His father was killed by tuberculosis when he was 16 and he soon found himself ill with tuberculosis as well. He became occupied with a kind of “existential doubt” about his own existence and fell into a state of despair or nihilism, which he describes as a mood of “nihility” (J. kyomu 虚無) (see C 20: 178ff, 180, 186, 193–95). The compounding of these various misfortunes made him feel as if life itself is nothing but suffering and that the only way to escape it is by dying (C 20: 176). It was in this context that Nishitani encountered the writings of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky at the age of 20, which had a decisive effect on his thinking. He found both thinkers to be well-attuned to the issue of nihilism. The anomie thus led him to the enterprise of philosophy. But it also eventually led him to the awareness of the Mahāyāna doctrines surrounding the theme of “emptiness” (see C 8: v; SN xxxiii). We thus find in Nishitani’s biographical details already the origins of a deep interconnectedness in his work between Buddhism, philosophy, and nihilism. At the age of 37, shortly before the Second  World War, Nishitani went to Germany and ended up studying with Martin Heidegger at the University of Freiburg during 1937–39. Heidegger at the time was lecturing on Nietzsche and working on the question of nihilism, and Nishitani’s contact with Heidegger must have given some shape to his own initial interest in the question. During his time there Nishitani himself gave a talk on Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Meister Eckhart (see Heisig 2001: 84). Nishitani published his first major book-length work during the war years in 1940, Kongenteki shukansei no tetsugaku 根源的主観性の哲学 (The Philosophy of Originary Subjectivity), a collection of shorter works spanning a period of 10 years. Therein we find the question of religion that becomes a major focus of his philosophical career along with the question of nihilism and the groundlessness of human existence. But once the war was over, nihilism becomes even more of a pressing issue to deal with. This can be seen in the series of his major post-war publications: Kami to zettai mu 神と絶対無 (God and Absolute Nothingness) of 1  Nishitani’s works will be identified as follows: Nishitani keiji chosakushū [Collected Works of Nishitani Keiji] (Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1987–1995) will be identified with a “C” followed by the volume number and page number/s. If there is an available English translation, the initials for the English title will follow with the page number/s: “On Modernization and Tradition” in Modernization and Tradition in Japan, edited by YASUSHI Kuyama and NOBUO Kobayashi, (Nishinomiya: International Institute for Japan Studies, 1969) = MT; On Buddhism (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2006) = OB; Religion and Nothingness (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982) = RN; Self-Overcoming of Nihilism (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990) = SN; and “Science and Zen” in The Buddha Eye, edited by Frederick Franck (NY, NY: Crossroad, 1991, 1982) = SZ.

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1948/49, Nihirizumu ニヒリズム (Nihilism) and Roshia no kyomushugi ロシアの 虚無主義 (Russian Nihilism) both2 of 1949, as well as Shūkyō to wa nani ka 宗教 とは何か (What is Religion?)3 of 1956/61. In all of these works a major concern is what Nishitani calls the “self-overcoming of nihilism.” In Shūkyō to wa nanika, a collection of essays Nishitani began in response to a request for an essay on “what is religion?” Nishitani makes ample use of Mahāyāna motifs, especially emptiness, to tackle the question of nihilism. Major works from his later years (the 1970s and 80s) include Bukkyō ni tsuite 仏教について (On Buddhism)4 and Kū to soku 空と 即 (“Emptiness and Immediacy”), wherein he continues his examinations of Buddhism and emptiness vis-à-vis nihilism and modernity.

2  Appropriation of Buddhism Nishitani inherits many themes from his mentor NISHIDA Kitarō; themes from Nishida’s last (1945) essay, Bashoteki ronri to shūkyōteki sekaikan, are especially noticeable. But Nishitani refines them to the extent that one might say he had surpassed Nishida in the attempt to articulate the Prajñāpāramita way of thinking in the language of contemporary philosophy. The most conspicuous is the notion of “nothingness” (J. mu 無), traceable beyond Nishida to Mahāyāna Buddhism. What Nishitani calls the “field of emptiness” (J. kū no ba 空の場) corresponds loosely to Nishida’s “place of absolute nothing” (J. zettai mu no basho 絶対無の場所). Nishitani, however, by employing the term “emptiness” (J. kū 空), makes the Mahāyāna reference more explicit. Moreover, he focuses the employment of this Buddhistic sense of nothingness or emptiness in responding to the sense of nothingness that arises in modern nihilism. That is to say that he uses the concept of “mu” to broadly encompass both its negative connotation in nihilism (i.e., what he more specifically calls “nihility,” kyomu) and its salvific connotation in Buddhism (for which he uses the Mahāyāna designation of emptiness). Nishitani freely integrates many other motifs taken from Buddhism into his philosophical discourse, including distinctive ideas associated with the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras, Madhyamaka, Kegon (C. Huayan), Tendai (C. Tiantai), Pure Land, and Zen (C. Chan), e.g., the notions of karma (J. gō 業), dharma (J. hō 法), “universal suffering” (S. duḥkha), interpenetration, samādhi, “the original countenance,” “the great doubt,” the three truths, primal vow, etc. In his autobiographical Watakushi no tetsugakuteki hossokuten (My Philosophical Starting Point),5 Nishitani writes that he has come to understand things “according to the Buddhist way of thinking.” He probes into the depths of

 They were translated together into English as The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism (SN).  Translated into English as Religion and Nothingness (RN). 4  Translated into English as On Buddhism (OB). 5  See Parkes’ introduction to Nishitani’s Self-Overcoming of Nihilism (SN xviii, 194 n. 11). 2 3

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the Buddhist ­tradition, however, so as to make them applicable to contemporary issues—a reappropriation of the past that unfolds its relevance to the present. While Nihirizumu (and Rosshia no nihirizumu) dealt primarily with European authors with an implicit and unobtrusive reference to Buddhist thought, the standpoint of a freely appropriated Buddhist religiosity becomes pronounced in Shūkyō to wa nanika. Therein he admits his standpoint of Zen insofar as Zen seems most successful in clearly portraying the “original form” (J. honrai sō 本来相) of reality (C 10: 288; RN 261). He states that he is borrowing Buddhist concepts “only insofar as they illuminate ‘reality’ and the essence and actuality of man” (C 10: 5; RN xlix). In doing so, he claims to have freely removed them from their traditional determinations and preconceptions so that he is “taking a stand at one and the same time within and without the confines of tradition” (C 10: 6; RN xlix). Nishitani’s orientation has much to do with his conviction that authentic philosophy is inseparable from religion. But by “religion” (J. shūkyō 宗教), he has something specific in mind. Instead of a dogmatic adherence to a tradition, “religion” for Nishitani entails a specific attitude to life, which he finds to be a matter of utmost urgency in the contemporary situation where we face issues of modernization and technologization. This stance runs parallel to the critique of Japanese Buddhism he vocalizes in his later works, such as Bukkyō ni tsuite, for having become detached from real life. Nishitani’s project then, together with that of overcoming modern nihilism, is the renewal of tradition via a creative “retrieval” (in the Heideggerian sense of the term) of its source, a deconstruction that is also a (re)construction (See C 17: 127–129; OB 28–30). And by “retrieval of its source,” Nishitani has in mind, first and foremost, the existential appropriation of the Mahāyāna standpoint of emptiness. So, on the one hand, his work explicates Mahāyāna concepts in light of contemporary philosophy while, on the other hand, it provides an existential grounding by showing their relevance to contemporary issues. In the following sections I shall cover these themes in greater detail, starting with the issues of modernity and nihilism.

3  Modernity and Techno-scientism For Nishitani, the problem of nihilism in the contemporary world is inseparable from the conflict between the religious and the scientific worldviews, an antagonism that emerges with the rise of modernity. His inquiry into religion begins from this starting point, the problems lying at the root of the modern world that provide a clue as to the ground of human existence and of reality itself (C 10: 4; RN xlviii). The development of science in the modern world has given birth to the scientistic worldview with its double tendency of reification and nullification, i.e., the objectification and technological manipulation of things in general, including man himself as objectified subject, on the one hand; and the resulting nullification of the meaning of the being of man and things. The technologization of the world, with its mechanistic paradigm, has led to the reduction of everything within its grasp as ­manipulable

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stock, extinguishing as a consequence any residue of humanity. Nishitani traces this trend of “mechanization” (J. kikaika 機械化) to a process of objectification upon what he calls the “field of consciousness” (J. ishiki no ba 意識の場) or the “field of being” (J. u no ba 有の場). A field (J. ba 場) for Nishitani is akin to what in phenomenology is called a horizon, a framework wherein phenomena become manifest in a certain way. But Nishitani has Nishida’s concept of “place” (J. basho 場所) in mind as well. The field of consciousness is the standpoint we ordinarily assume in our day-to-day being-in-the-world, involving sense perception and rational analysis. Through the process of objectification, it separates things qua objects as outside from the self qua subject as inside. This is the function of representation that posits objects (J. taishō 対象, G. Gegen-stände) as standing-opposed to the subject to be comprehended via concepts so that we can then go on to manipulate them, not only conceptually but technologically as well. Developing Nishida’s view that the subject-object duality is a fragmentation of an originary whole,6 Nishitani claims that this dichotomization prevents any authentic self-presentation of the reality of things as they are on their own (See C 10: 13–14; RN 9–10). But at the same time, the self, closed up within itself and set apart from things, is also represented in an object-like manner. The self of self-consciousness, thus, is a represented self that conceals its authentic mode of being. The self here is not in touch with itself. Hence this field is a place of the mutual alienation of self and things. The field of consciousness is also the field of being because it is whereupon we relate to beings. And by “being” (J. u 有) Nishitani means things posited in opposition to the subject and reified as enduring substances. The reification enables us to possess them and manipulate them, whether conceptually or physically, which in turn reassures us of our own subsistence. But this also entails that the ego itself is possessed by its objects: “One is held by what one holds” (J. motsumononi motareyō tosuru もつものにもたれようと する)7 (C 11: 190). As a field of dichotomization into subject-­object that proves to be a mutual alienation between self and things, the field of consciousness/being is also a field of possession in the sense of both possessing and being possessed. According to Nishitani, Descartes was the first to articulate this dualistic standpoint in philosophy with his theory of the cogito that dichotomized reality into res cogitans (“thinking thing”) and res extensa (“extended thing”). On the one side is the self-conscious ego consisting of thought standing over against the world, and on the other side is that world consisting of extended matter whose movements and alterations are governed by the laws of mechanics. Throughout modernity this duality, founded upon the proposition cogito, ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”), has been treated as self-evident. Taking Cartesian philosophy to be the prime exemplar of the ontological standpoint of modern man, Nishitani finds it to also represent within it the very source of the problem lurking in modernity: self-projection fueled 6  Nishida throughout his oeuvre understood this variously in terms of pure experience, pure intuition, self-awareness/realization, basho, the dialectical world, etc. 7  See also Davis’s explanation of the double meaning involved in the Japanese graph for “being” (J. u 有) in his “The Step Back Through Nihilism” (Davis 2004a: 156). Aside from “being” or “exist,” it can also mean “possess.”

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by the will (See C 10: 19–20, 25; RN 14, 19). This is the source of both the objectification of things and the mechanization of the world, both as for-self, seen from the perspective of the ego. This obviously parallels the rise of science and the development of technology, permitting man’s control of nature understood as a mechanism that follows mathematical laws. But with the uncovering of such laws of nature, the universe, losing its magic and poetry, comes to assume more and more the features of a cold and lifeless world. And the laws of mechanics governing the universe reveal themselves to be utterly indifferent to human concerns about life and death, right and wrong (RN 52). Furthermore, as Nishitani’s mentor in Germany, Heidegger, had already noted, the technology that appropriates these laws, encroaches upon human existence itself. Man is not exempt from mechanization. In other words, concomitant to the objectification of things that turns everything into an “it,” is the loss of humanity. We find ourselves living in a “dead” world governed by cold mechanical laws with no place for meaning or purpose. This has given the world a countenance entirely different from that presupposed by traditional religion. Like Dostoevsky’s “underground man,” we have no choice but to bang our head against it (See C 10: 56, 60; RN 48, 52). The great irony that Nishitani finds in the rise of technology is the inversion in the relationship between man and nature: the controller has become the controlled, the subject becomes subjected to the rule of machination (G. Machenschaft) (See C 10: 95, 98; RN 84, 86–87). Not only has the world become mechanized, man himself becomes mechanized and reduced to an energy source, a cog in the machine (C 10: 96; RN 85; MT 77). That is, with the unveiling of the laws of nature, the human subject unfolds its character as a mechanism controlled by natural laws and blindly in pursuit of its irrational impulses and desires, hence heteronomous from without and within8 (See C 10: 98, 99; RN 87, 88). Nishitani recognizes this second aspect, slavery to endless desires and impulses, as what Buddhism had already sought to expose as karma (C 11: 168). In such a world we no longer find any place for an ethical purpose sanctioned by divine governance or teleology. As a consequence the whole business of life and world is deprived of meaning (C10: 99, RN 88). Hence, as Nietzsche’s mad man uttered, “God is dead and we have killed him.” Rather than a higher purpose, what governs human behavior is only the endless pursuit of self-­ will, extinguishing the “thou” (MT 78), reducing all to an “it,” a manifestation of what Nietzsche called the “will to power.” The resulting sense of meaninglessness in human existence and life leads to the rise of nihilism.

4  Nihilism Nishitani traces the origin of nihilism in the modern West to the loss—under the impact of mechanization and techno-scientism—of a transcendent or transcendental ground that would sustain any meaning, purpose, or value (see C 8: 143–144; SN  On this double heteronomy, see Davis’ “The Step Back Through Nihilism” (Davis 2004a: 144).

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157). With no supernatural realm beyond, the world discloses its indifference to man. Since the Renaissance, with the development of the natural sciences, the world has come to appear unfeeling, as mechanical and nonteleological, with no supernatural realm (the world of eternal being or “essences”) beyond this one (see C 8: 176; SN 174). Yet modern nihilism as exemplified by the Russian nihilists of the nineteenth century still possessed trust in science and technology. Scientism was its faith. Hope was invested in the progress and improvement of human existence that science seemed to promise. We see this faith in the character Bazarov in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons and the revolutionary Chernychevsky against whom Dostoevsky directed his polemic in Notes from Underground. But the modern twins of science and technology proved to be a double-edged sword. As an instrument of subjection it also subjects its subject. The comportment to the world as nothing but matter and mechanism unfolds its sense of meaninglessness (see C 10: 62, 96–97; RN 54, 85). Reducing all, including man, to mechanical material processes, scientism leads to the collapse of teleology and of any sense of purpose or meaning, including the faith of positivism itself (SZ 114, 117, 131). As all human endeavors ultimately come to naught, even science becomes exposed as fundamentally meaningless9 (see C 10: 53–54; RN 46–47). In the end, the very tenets of scientism itself are undermined so that, in contemporary nihilism, there is the loss of certainty and trust not only in religion but in science itself. Both science and its ideal of progress are thus robbed of any meaning-bestowing ground (C 10: 248; RN 226). While, on the one hand, the undermining of religious teleology provides man with a sense of autonomy, on the other hand, that self-centered autonomy is subject to an aimless “infinite drive” (J. mugen shōdō, 無限衝動), an unrestricted pursuit of “self-will” (J. jiko ishi 自己-­意 志) (C 10: 259; RN 236; Davis 2004b: 109). Human existence discloses its character as a mechanism endlessly subjected to impulses, a cog in the greater machine that is the cold and indifferent universe. As the scientistic worldview that arose as a consequence of the rationalist and Enlightenment traditions of the West thus becomes undermined by its own spiritual vacuity, nihilism arises as inseparable from techno-scientism. And this resulting sense of meaninglessness opens up at the ground of the being of things, including the ground of human existence. This Nishitani calls “nihility” (J. kyomu 虚無, literally “hollow nothing”) (C 10: 97, 103– 04; RN 85, 92). Nihilism, Nishitani explains, is an issue rooted in the core of human existence that transcends time and space and surfacing whenever the being of man becomes an existential problem (C 8: 7; SN 3). And yet in modernity the issue has become aggravated to become manifest as a particular historical phenomenon (see C 8: 8; SN 4). As a sign of the collapse of social order, spiritual decay, and the loss of meaning, nihilism, Nishitani notes, is the dominant temper of modern Europe (C 10: 54, 189; 9  See Hase’s analysis of the distinction between modern and contemporary nihilism, the latter which involves this collapse of meaning within scientism itself, in his “Nihilism, Science, and Emptiness in Nishitani,” (Hase 1999: 150ff). He criticizes Nishitani for missing this distinction. However, although Nishitani may not have made the distinction explicit, we do find evidence in his works that he was aware of this self-undermining of science.

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RN 47, 168). But as a potentially universal problem, it can arise in any era or region (see C 8: 175; SN 173), e.g., in ancient India, as illustrated in the central role of the fundamental problem of “suffering” (S. duḥkha) as a basic element in the world of “birth-and-death” (S. saṃsāra) (C 10: 189–190; RN 168–169). But Nishitani is especially interested in the mood of nihilism in postwar Japan. In its globalization, the modern trend of nihilism is no longer confined to the West. According to Nishitani, by the time Japan had fully incorporated techno-scientism and its mechanization of the world from the modern West, Buddhism and Confucian thought that in the past constituted her spiritual basis had already lost their power of relevance, leaving a spiritual vacuum10 (see C 8: 177–178; SN 174–175). Westernization only contributed to this spiritual decay. In response, Nishitani calls for a reappropriation of tradition that would open up a new possibility for the overcoming of nihilism (C 8: 183; SN 179). The point is to breathe new life into tradition in its encounter with modernity. What this entails is certainly not a rejection of the modern in a turn to the past but instead a “living through” (J. ikinuite 生きぬいて) the modern (see C 17: 140; OB 37–38). This renewal of tradition, in particular Buddhism, becomes a major theme in his later works of the 1970s and 80s. But the content of what such a renewal might entail is already found in Shūkyō to wa nanika. What is this nihility that human existence is confronted with? Nishitani uses the term to refer to the sense of nothingness that assaults our comportment to the world, the uprooting of any meaningfulness to life that turns one’s own being into a question: “that which renders meaningless the meaning of life” (C 10: 6; RN 4). Nihility arises when our day-to-day routine is disrupted by some calamity, when what we ordinarily take for granted as the support for our endeavors is thus lost in “a fundamental negation of life, existence, ideals…” to bring our life and existence and their meaning into question (C 10: 6; RN 3). Meaning is rendered meaningless at the foundation of the depths of one’s existence and at the grounding of the world, i.e., ultimately on the levels of ethics and religion, so that one finds nothing to rely on. In other words, it signifies what Nietzsche meant by the “death of God” (see C 20: 189). Nishitani observes that the historical ground that has supported western civilization for thousands of years and laid the foundation for its culture, ethics, religion, is now quaking and cracking with the opening of its nihility (see C 8: 175; SN 173). Modern nihilism as such is this realization that we have been hovering over an abyss of fundamental meaninglessness. Subject and object, man and world, ideas and matter, ideals and actualities, are all affected, “nullified” (J. muka 無化) in the display of their “illusory appearance” (J. kagen no sō 仮現の相) (C10: 139; RN 122). Nihility for Nishitani thus constitutes a second field (ba) that breaks through the field of consciousness/being. Nihility is the field whereupon human existence confronts the universality of “death” (J. shi 死). In such occasions, one’s “self-existence” stands revealed as defined upon a surrounding void, a gaping abyss under the very ground on which 10  Much later, in On Buddhism (J. Bukkyō nit suite), Nishitani levels a critique against Japanese Buddhism for having lost its grip on individual conscience and permitting its relevance to become relegated to mere social custom in activities like funerals (see C 17: 121; OB 24).

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one stands (C 10: 6, RN 3). Nishitani reminds us that although we are not always aware of it, this is the reality of our existence: We always have one foot planted in the vale of death, and we can fall into the abyss of nihility at any moment (C 10: 6; RN 4). The point is that our existence is intimately linked with nonexistence; life is inseparable from death. In the face of death and nihility, all life and existence lose their certainty as reality. Death and nihility are just as real in defining our existence (C 10: 11; RN 7). With the presencing of nihility, what we ordinarily take for granted as real is nullified, all being, the being of all things, becomes a single great question mark and our very existence itself “turns into a question mark” (J. toi ni ka 問いに 化, gimonfu ni ka 疑問符に化) (see C 8: 8, 13; SN 4, 7; C 10: 6–7; RN 4). At the beginning of Nihirizumu Nishitani tells us that nihilism is first and foremost a problem of the self, an existential matter whereupon the ground or essence of its existence itself becomes a question (see C 8: 4; SN 1–2, also C8: 284, SN 188). Nihility refers to this nullification of ground, when one has been forced to confront one’s own self to ask: “who am I?,” “for what purpose, why, do I exist?,” “what value is my life?,” “what values should I live on?” With the revelation that one’s existence cannot be taken for granted, one experiences a profound anxiety confronted with the void underfoot. And in experiencing nihility as a problem intrinsic to the self, the self becomes aware of itself from the limits of its existence, that is, to reveal itself to itself as nihility (C 10: 22; RN 16). The advent of nihilism as such breaks asunder the field of consciousness/being and its substantialist presuppositions of the dualistic standpoint that gave rise to techno-scientism. When things appear to be ultimately meaningless, without substance, we are forced by the negation of what we had taken for granted to take a step back to see the reality of our existence under a new light. This marks a fundamental conversion of life that comes to question our ego-centric and anthropo-centric assumptions: Instead of asking what use things have for us, we come to ask for what purpose we ourselves exist (C 10: 7; RN 4–5). This forces one into a standpoint of “passionate” existence (J. patosuteki jitsuzon パトス的実存) (C 8: 12; SN 7), that is, an existential sense of lived intimacy with the groundlessness of one’s existence. If philosophy for the Greeks begins with the sense of wonder or amazement (J. thaumazein), for Nishitani it is nihilistic despair that initiates the philosophical enterprise by pulling the rug from under one’s feet. But this is not simply an intellectual event and, instead, has profound existential implications. The existential realization of nihility takes its shape in doubt. In light of their nihility, the self-certainty of the cogito as well as of the substantiality of things, revealed as self-deception, sinks into a “profound doubtfulness” (J. gimon ni kasuru 疑問に化する) (see C 10: 20; RN 15). And as the subject-object dichotomy becomes itself questionable, the distinction between doubter and doubted drops away and the self is realized as the very “doubt in its profundity” (J. ōinaru gi 大い なる疑) (C 10: 23; RN 17–18). Confronted with the nihility underfoot, one might try to cover it over and seek to return to the busy-ness and trivial pursuits of everyday living. But when everything becomes nullified and engulfed into “doubt” (J. gi 疑), doubt itself becomes reality (C 10: 125, 154; RN 111, 136). It is beyond our control or volition. The doubt itself can no longer be doubted, it is an indubitable

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doubt. In speaking of “realization” here, Nishitani has in mind the double sense of the English for “realization” (J. jitsugen 実現; jikaku 自覚): its awareness and its actualization: our “becoming aware” (J. taininn 体認; wakaru わかる) of reality and reality realizing itself in our awareness11 (C 10: 8; RN 5). Borrowing a Zen term, Nishitani calls this “the self-presentation of the great doubt” (J. daigi genzen 大疑現前) (C10: 21, RN 16) and takes nihilism to be the modern form of what Zen calls “the great ball of doubt” (J. daigidan 大疑團) (C11: 185). “Doubt” in this existential sense must be distinguished from Descartes’ methodical doubt (see C 10: 21f, 24–25; RN 15f, 18–19). It is not a state of consciousness. Descartes’ doubt takes place on the field of consciousness that divides self and things without opening up their nihility. It is methodical and theoretical. Reaching deeper than the certainty of self-consciousness achieved via Cartesian doubt, the “great doubt” on the other hand is a form of existential engagement that has to do with the question of life and death concealed under the ground of self and things, a realization of the presence of their nihility or “death” everywhere. The Cartesian cogito, as a state of self-attachment, itself becomes a question and is no longer seen as a substance or res. The “great doubt” instead opens the path to a more radical non-objectifiable subjectivity. In realizing nihility through the “great doubt” as the reality of self and world, one has torn asunder the field of consciousness/being to enter into the “field of nihility” (J. kyomu no ba 虚無の場), presenting reality in a new light (see C 10: 18, 22, 34; RN 13, 16, 29). Here nothing can be objectified and substances are nullified; everything is revealed in its original “form” (J. sō 相) in the form of a question mark. The overcoming of nihilism as such is “the single greatest issue facing philosophy and religion in our times” (C 10: 54; RN 47). Not only is it the starting point of philosophy, it is the beginning of the religious quest for, according to Nishitani, religion is what poses the question, “For what purpose, why, do I exist?” (C 10: 5–6; RN 2–3, 21) Nishitani understands “religion” to arise as an authentic dimension of life only from a profound personal existential crisis, at the limits of one’s existence, where the meaningfulness of day-to-day living is negated. The religious quest is man’s search for “true reality,” and religion itself provides the avenue for that “real self-realization/awareness of reality” (J. jitsuzai no jikaku 実在の自覚; jikojitsugen 自己実現) (C 10: 8–9; RN 5–6). In other words, it is the self-realization of reality that occurs through one’s confronting and overcoming nihilism. But authentic religion as such needs to be distinguished from what Nishitani later goes on to criticize as an ossified form of Buddhism in modern Japan. For the revivification of religious tradition must be renewed and enlivened through a retrieval of its living source (see C 17: 125–126; OB 27). That opening of nihility in nihilism, the presentation of the “great doubt” that begins the religious quest, liberates one from an inauthentic presentation of, and attachment to, reality. This direct confrontation with nihility, Nishitani tells us, is the first step away from it (RN 44). In that sense, the Nietzschean cry that “God is 11  This in fact is a development of his mentor Nishida’s own sense of self-awareness (J. jikaku 自 覚).

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dead” resonates with the Zennist Rinzai’s cry to “kill the Buddha” (see C 10: 290; RN 263). Neither has to be taken as necessarily anti-religious. Nihility serves as a field of “ecstatic transcendence” (J. datsujitekina chōetsu 脱自的な超越) or “ecstatic self-detachment” (J. datsujisei 脱自性) whereby the self is forced out of its egoistic bounds and horizon of representation to assume responsibility in its existence (J. jitsuzon 実存) for the creation of new meanings upon the abyss of meaninglessness (C 10: 105, 108; RN 93, 95). Drawing us nearer to the true manifestation of the selfness or reality of things and self, nihility provides the groundwork for a new attitude towards life (C 10: 105; RN 93). This is the sense behind his project of “overcoming nihilism through nihilism” (J. nihirizumu o tōshite nihirizumu o chōkoku ニヒリズムを通してニヒリズム超克) (C 8: 219; SN 90; C 20: 192). While nihilistic meaninglessness was the inevitable outcome of modernity’s mechanization and dehumanization of the world, it also can lead to a deeper self-­ investigation that unveils what underlies the field of consciousness/being. The existential journey through the “great doubt” unburdens us of any misconception of reality and attachment to the self and things as substantial (see SZ 124). To overcome nihilism, we thus need to penetrate nihility. We need to pursue its negative connotation to its consummation (SZ 131). This entails a critical appropriation of what nihilism unveils that runs parallel with a creative retrieval of what tradition has to offer (see Davis 2004a: 144–145). As things and self are nullified of their substantiality upon the field of nihility, reality emerges as what it is: non-substantial. It is what it is, without substance. This is where nihilism leads Nishitani to a creative appropriation of tradition, specifically Mahāyāna Buddhism. For according to Nishitani, the presentation of the “great doubt” unveils what Zen calls our “original countenance” (J. honrai no menmoku 本来の面目). (C 10: 26; RN 21). And reality as it is, without substance, is what the Mahāyāna tradition has called the “suchness” (J. nyojitsu 如実 tathatā) of reality. To elucidate this turn that nihilism opens up, Nishitani quotes the Zen saying: “Beneath the great death is the great enlightenment” (J. daishi no shita ni daigo ari 大死の下に大悟あり) (C 10: 26; RN 21). What this means is that when everything, including one’s self, becomes a great mass of doubt, and the sense of self as a volitional subject or agent drops off, the reality of things and self suddenly becomes present in its suchness. Breaking through nihility, we are thus born anew. Yet insofar as it is viewed as other than, or transcendent to, standing over against, life/being/meaning, as their negation—a mere “nay-saying” that denies the reality of things—nihility in itself cannot be the full realization of reality. The nothingness of nihilism is still something that is viewed from the biased perspective of one’s self-existence as out there in opposition to, threatening, negating, one’s existence (C 10: 109; RN 95). Nishitani, in other words, recognizes in nihilism the dichotomization of being and non-being. Nothingness is here reified in nihility as the opposite of being. It is viewed as some “thing” relative to being (C 10: 139; RN 123). Nishitani thus identifies nihility with what Nishida called relative nothing (J. sōtai mu 相対無). While on the field of consciousness things are objectified, on the field of nihility they are nullified of that representational status. Nihility thus challenges the unquestioned reification of reality but in itself fails to resolve the question of

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existence or meaning. Due to its purely antipodal negativity (J. shōkyokutekina hiteisei 消極的な否定性), it can neither abide in existence nor depart from it (C 10: 155; RN 137). Just as being and substance become shackles in our everyday standpoint, nihility becomes a shackle in the mood of nihilism. Nihility then is a spot to “run across quickly,” it demands a conversion; it is to be questioned and transcended (C 10: 12, 155; RN 112, 137). Rather than as the endpoint of our existential journey Nishitani takes nihility as a passage way to a “bottomless freedom” that exceeds all fetters of attachment. Only then do we land upon the awareness of “a clearing akin to the empty sky [kokū no gotoki hirake 虚空の如き開け], which cannot be confined to any systematic closure” (C 10: 240; RN 219). By “empty sky” (J. kokū), Nishitani has in mind the Buddhist Mahāyāna concept of “emptiness” (S. śūnyatā, J. kū).12 Nishitani will ultimately assimilate the nihility of nihilism into this more encompassing clearing of emptiness that consummates or fulfills the self-realization of reality. While both concepts can be expressed by the Japanese term “mu” (“nothingness”), Nishitani, borrowing the schema of Nishida, distinguishes emptiness as absolute nothingness (J. zettai mu) from nihility as relative nothingness (J. sōtai mu). What distinguishes absolute nothing is that its nothingness is self-negating, its emptiness is self-emptying, so as to preclude any reification or attachment. It is this process of self-emptying that grounds being. On the other hand nihility as relative nothing negates being from outside of being. Hence in emptiness, as nothingness itself is negated, things appear as they are upon their “originary foundation” (J. moto もと) (C 10: 123, 126; RN 110, 112). “Absolute negation” (J. zettai hitei 絶対 否定) as the negation of negation thus proves to be a “great affirmation” (J. ōkina kōtei 大きな肯定) (C 10: 155; RN 138). It is on the basis of this Buddhist standpoint of śūnyatā as a nothingness that is “absolute,” not relative, that nihilism is to be conquered or rather penetrated.

5  Emptiness For the third stage after the field of consciousness/being and the field of nihility, one thus arrives at the “field of emptiness” (J. kū no ba), involving liberation from the fetters of dualism, egoism, mechanism, and nihilism. In his work on nihilism, Nihirizumu, Nishitani suggests the consideration of a field he identifies as “Buddhist emptiness” (J. bukkyō no kū 仏教の空; bukkyōtekina kū 仏教的な空) (C 8: 283, 287; SN 187–188, 190) in order to confront and appropriate nihility squarely. In Shūkyō to wa nanika, this becomes the “field of emptiness.” This is where the self-­ realization of reality, including both being and its negation, is fully manifest—the field that makes possible in the first place both beification and nullification, affirmation and negation. Prior to their objectification or substantialization on the field of consciousness and prior to their nullification on the field of nihility, things are 12  It is good to note here that the same graph for kū 空 can mean “empty” or “emptiness” as well as “sky.” “Kokū” thus can also mean “empty emptiness” in the sense of an “empty space” or void.

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founded upon their “truly originary and original appearance” on the field of emptiness. This is their “origin” (J. moto) where things are “in-themselves” (J. jitai 自体) beyond the categories of substance, object, or subject (C 10: 126; RN 112). But this also applies to the negation of these categories. Emptiness thus is an “abyss” (J. shinen 深淵) for the abyss of nihility (C 10: 111; RN 98). It is where nihility itself is nullified, negated, and its nothingness radicalized, in the realization that the being of self, things, and world are manifestations of nothingness, yet nevertheless real as “reality realizing itself in our awareness” (C 10: 8; RN 5). While inheriting Nishida’s concept of “absolute nothing,” Nishitani is unfolding its implications here directly in line with the Mahāyāna motif of emptiness to signify a turn or conversion from the negative attitude of nihilism towards an affirmative stance vis-à-vis the world’s nothingness. By breaking through the relative nothingness of nihility that negates everything, self and world are in turn reaffirmed in the absolute nothingness of their emptiness. On this basis, Nishitani views the conversion from the field of nihility to that of emptiness as necessary for overcoming nihilism. The task of “overcoming nihilism by passing through nihilism” entails what he will call in English a “trans-­ descendence” through the field of nihility to the origin of things in the field of emptiness. Since emptiness is the field for the realization of reality, it also becomes manifest in the human self. Nishitani understands what Buddhism takes as enlightenment to mean the self-realization of reality in one’s self-awareness (C 10: 8; RN 5). In his early work, Kongonteki shukansei no tetsugaku of 1940, Nishitani calls this standpoint, “originary subjectivity” (J. kongenteki shukansei 根源的主観性) and explains it to be “the self-awareness of the bottom dropping out” (J. dattei no jikaku 脱底の 自覚) and a turn to “the background of our own selves” (J. warewarejishin no haigo 我々自身の背後) (C 1: iii; C 11: 243). Subjectivity as such involves radical selfquestioning leading to disentanglement from self-attachment. “Subjectivity” (J. shukansei) here is not the Cartesian ego cogito but instead refers to the Buddhist notion of “no-self” (S. anātman,  J. muga 無我) and its East Asian development as “nomind” (J. mushin 無心), in other words, the non-substantial groundlessness or emptiness of the self’s “self-nature” (S. svabhāva,  J.  jishō 自性) (See C1: 88). The emptiness that Nishitani discusses in Shūkyō to wa nanika is a development of this earlier idea, as a field more basic than the self-consciousness of the ego cogito. Rather than an intellectual self-consciousness obtained through methodical doubt, it entails an existential self-awareness obtained through the “great doubt” (J. daigi 大疑) (C10: 21; RN 15–16). Through the self-realization of the “great doubt,” one dies to the ego to be revived, as if waking from a dream, to one’s true self, in the “great enlightenment.” That is to say that the self realizes itself at the point of its self-­negation. By discovering one’s own non-substantiality, one is liberated from the prison of selfabsorption, in what Meister Eckhart refered to as Abgeschiedenheit (“detachment,” J. ridatsu 離脱) (C 10: 72; RN 63), and released into emptiness. The fixated structure that we ordinarily assume to be the self, what Dōgen called “body-­and-­mind” (J. shinjin 身心), is broken off. This emancipatory “dropping off of body-and-mind” (J. shinjin datsuraku 身心脱落) frees us of the fetters of s­ elf-­fixation and releases us into the world thus seen in a new light (C 10: 206–207; RN 184–185). Hence as

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Dōgen stated in his Genjōkōan, “to learn the Buddha-way is to learn one’s self and to learn one’s self is to forget one’s self” (C 10: 121; RN 107). In addition to Eckhart and Dōgen, Nishitani also appropriates D.T.  Suzuki’s formula derived from the Diamond Sutra: “self is not self, therefore it is self” (C 10: 276; RN 251). Selfapprehension in the Cartesian sense, on the other hand, represents for Nishitani a form of self-attachment or self-captivity. The standpoint of emptiness breaks through that self-imprisonment, to disclose instead the true form of the self in its suchness (C 10: 107; RN 95). This “origin” or “root” (J. moto) of the self is the very field of emptiness that opens up the world and things (C 10: 170; RN 151). The emptying of the self of ego—Dōgen’s “dropping-off body-and-mind” or Eckhart’s “detachment”—opens a dynamic clearing for the disclosure of our interconnectedness with the world. What Nishitani means by “originary subjectivity” (J. kongenteki shukansei) is thus the subjectivity of selflessness or “egoless subjectivity” that unfolds one’s non-duality with the world of others as it frees one from the restrictive confinement of a reified ego. This obviously has ethical implications and provides a counterpoint to an over-­ emphasis in modern times upon the pursuit of individual desires. The nihilism that is a consequence of modern techno-scientism is rooted in a kind of demonic volitional drive that Buddhism recognized as karma, whereby we mindlessly run after the gratification of desires. Release from the fetters of the ego entails the negation of that will or karma. To realize the subjectivity of no-self, self-will must be broken through. So the standpoint of emptiness that realizes selflessness, for Nishitani, proves to be an emancipation from that “volitional drive” (J. ishi 意志) (see C 10: 276; RN 251). Freedom from the fetters of attachment thus is not the freedom of the will. It is disconnected from volition (C 10: 314; RN 285). Emptiness negates the will lying at the root of self-attachment and self-centeredness. Emancipated from that drive, we no longer project the ego upon the world and can let phenomena advance towards us instead. So parallel to the self’s liberation from ego-attachment, thing-events liberated from the act of objectification or instrumentalization are permitted to manifest themselves in their original character as they truly are in their suchness. Nishitani thus quotes Dōgen’s statement from the Genjōkōan that “…for all things to advance forward and practice and confirm the self is enlightenment” (C 10: 121; RN 107). Rather than an egoistic apprehension of reality that centers on and projects one’s volitional self, the realization of emptiness clears an open space for one’s interactions with the world. Nishitani associates the nothingness of this originary subjectivity that realizes volitionless freedom with the nothingness found behind the face of God in certain western traditions of mysticism and negative theology, the “God beyond God.” He has in mind primarily the theology of Meister Eckhart, especially its concept of the “godhood” (G. Gottheit; J. shinsei 神性) that is the essence of God.13 In Nishitani’s reading, by “godhood” Eckhart refers to an originary divinity that ontologically exceeds God the person, the anthropomorphized divinity of conventional theology  “Gottheit” has been commonly translated in English as “godhead,” but “godhood” seems closer to its meaning.

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that stands over against creation. Godhood instead is an “absolute nothingness” that breaks through or negates that personality or subjectivity of God (C 10: 70, 74–75, 102; RN 61, 65–66, 90). It is no-thing in the sense that it is bildlos, image-free and formless, for it is ineffable and exceeds all delimitations, standing above the opposition between Creator and creature, God and man14 (C 10: 111; RN 99). As such godhood is the place of God’s origin but wherein God is not God—that is, substantially speaking (C10: 77, RN 67). But that nothingness is the origin to which one’s self also returns in the pursuit of its self-nature, free from all forms and images (See C10: 71, 111–12;  RN 62, 99). Nishitani thus quotes Eckhart’s statement, “The ground of God is the ground of my soul; the ground of my soul is the ground of God” (C10: 72; RN 63). So referring to Eckhart’s proclamation that “I flee from God for the sake of God,” one authentically bears witness to God only when one finds one’s true self in the nothingness of godhood beyond any theistic conception (C 10: 73; RN 64). This is not accomplished, however, in mere contemplative detachment that withdraws one from the world. It is accomplished in the concrete reality of living, a living without why, without reference to any abstract laws. For Nishitani this means that only in the here-and-now, without reference to some transcendental principle over-there, can man bear witness to the essence of God and find his own original self (see C 10: 72–73; RN 63–64). Godhood as such, for Nishitani, ultimately refers to the field of the presencing-absencing of phenomena, life-and-­ death (or “death-sive-life,” J. shi soku sei 死即生) of man (C 10: 72; RN 63). Of the thinkers of the West, Nishitani thus finds Eckhart to come closest to the insights of Mahāyāna and aligns Eckhart’s godhood with Buddhist emptiness. Nishitani interprets the Christian ideal of “divine love” (Gr. agape) according to the Mahāyāna sense of emptiness as well. While God the person may be a harsh but just lawgiver, the impersonal godhood is the endless source of “indiscriminate love” (J. musabetsu no ai 無差別の愛) (C10: 67;  RN 58). This corresponds to the Buddhist ideal of compassion that is supposed to flow from the realization of no-self and made possible by emptiness (see C 10: 68; RN 59). Following Nishida’s reading of Christianity in his last essay Bashoteki ronri to shūkyōteki sekaikan, Nishitani finds the exemplification of that ideal in Christianity in its notion of kenōsis, that is, God’s self-emptying. And through kenōsis he is able to make the connection between agape and śūnyatā explicit. In the same way that the true self is selfless, the true God as a self-emptying godhood is kenotic. The indiscriminate flow of agape upon the world has its source in kenōsis. In turn God’s kenōsis becomes manifest within history in the ekkenōsis of Christ, “God crucified,” emptying himself of divine form to take “the form of a servant” among men to save humanity15 (C 10: 31, 68; RN 26, 59). Moreover, the Christian idea that man was created in the image of God signifies, for Nishitani, the very potential of realizing via self-emptying the absolute nothingness of one’s originary self. By actualizing that image in one’s soul, one becomes a “son of God.” Eckhart called this the “birth of God in the soul” (C 10: 71; RN 62). Nishitani understands this in terms of a “resurrection of the true self” from 14 15

 In German, “Bild” can mean “form” as well as “image.”  See Paul’s letter to the Philippians in the New Testament 2:4ff.

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out of a breakdown of egoity or will (see C 10: 102; RN 90–91). And only with such breakdown of ego and volition in self-emptying does non-discriminate love (agape) become possible. While nihility that is a relative nothing is  negative, emptiness as an absolute nothing is radically positive. The key to understanding this positivity of nothingness lies in the Mahāyāna conception of emptiness. Emptiness entails a double negation that negates nihility to reaffirm being. From this standpoint of emptiness, naïve realism that posits a substantial reality behind phenomena and self, on the one hand, and the negative attitude of nihilism that negates reality, on the other hand, are both overcome. This double negation is a negation of both attachment to things and self as substantial and attachment to their annihilation. Their emptiness of substance— or in Buddhist parlance, “self-nature” (S. sva-bhāva, J. jisshō)—is what permits their ongoing presencing and absencing, making them appear and disappear in the ways they do. Nishitani takes this to be their original reality, or in Mahāyāna terms, their “suchness” (S. tathatā, J. nyojitsu 如実). Emptiness is the very basis on which things are present, disclosing their “bottomless suchness”—the “original countenance” of self and world. Hence in its transcendence of the ordinary standpoint of naïve realism, as “beyond” or on the “yonder-side” of the field of consciousness/ being, emptiness is in fact immanent to, opening up on the “absolute this-side of” (J. zettaiteki shigan 絶対的此岸), the world of phenomena and one’s very self (C 10: 170; RN 151). The three-step “transcendence” (J. chōetsu 超越) from egoity to nihility to emptiness is thus not really a step beyond but a step back, a reorientation to life itself that Nishitani termed, in his emendation of the English translation of Shūkyō to wa nanika, as a “trans-descendence” (RN 171ff)16 to an authentic mode of worldly living.17 While nihility is existentially realized as other than one’s being albeit threatening in its imminence, emptiness is realized as immanent on the “absolute near side” (J. zettaiteki shigan) of one’s true self (see C 10: 170; RN 151). The transition entails a turning from the standpoint that the self’s nothingness threatens its being to the standpoint that nothingness is one’s self, its reality, a conversion from “nullification” (G. Nichtung, J. muka 無化) to “beification” (G. Ichtung, J. uka 有化) (C10: 140, 279, RN 124, 254). Rather than being a correlate of existence emptiness is existence. In its double negation that negates the negation of being, the abysmal nothingness of emptiness affirms being. And as negation thus turns to reaffirmation, “great death” (J. ōinaru shi 大なる死) becomes “great life” (J. ōinaru sei 大なる生) (C10: 254, RN 231). In this way emptiness connects us to the world.

 See also the translator’s comment in RN (304).  On the idea of “stepping back” see Davis (2004a: 140, 142). Davis here also calls this “transdescendence” a “radical re-gress.”

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6  Circuminsession Nishitani explicates the ontological positivity of emptiness that opens up our interconnectedness with the world of things and others in terms of “circuminsession.” This is an idea traceable to the Kegon (C. Huayan) 華厳 concept of “jijimuge” (C. shishi wuai 事事無礙), in turn traceable to the original Buddhist doctrine of “dependent origination” (S. pratītya-samutpāda, J. engi 縁起) that Mahayāna thought starting with Nāgārjuna equated with emptiness itself. As touched upon above, it is through a radical self-negation via the “great doubt” and “great death” of the ego that the self becomes free, that is, of the fetters of attachment and reification—of both ego and things—to open itself to authentic engagement with the world. Such opening of the self for Nishitani also means the self-realization of emptiness in the world of interdependent, i.e., non-substantial, thing-events. Even before developing the idea of circuminsession in Shūkyō to wa nanika, Nishitani had considered in his earlier work on “nihilism” (J. Nihirizumu) the Buddhist notion of “dependent origination” (J. engi), whereby everything in the world is related to everything else so that nothing arises from its own “power” (J. jiriki 自力, literally, “self-power”) (C 8: 287; SN 190). In Shūkyō to wa nanika, emptiness qua field becomes the “field” (J. ba) for such a world of interdependent thing-events. The world-nexus of space-time consists of this web of interrelationships spreading out not only horizontally in space but also vertically in time, in both dimensions endlessly. That infinite web unfolding in all directions reconstitutes our present being at every moment. Our existence stands against the backdrop of this incomprehensibly vast network of interrelationships (C 10: 245; RN 223). Earlier the Kegon school of China had described this in terms of the “dharmadhatu” (J. hokkai 法界, literally, “realm of truth/reality”) of “non-obstruction among thing-­ events” (J. jiji muge), which Dōgen then explicated further as inclusive of the “non-­ obstruction amongst moments in time” (J. jiji muge 時時無礙). Who or what we are is framed upon this endless and dynamic field of interrelations and interdependencies, whereby our “being-(t)here” (G. Dasein, J. gensonzai 現存在) is at once “being-in-the-world” (J. sekai-nai-sonzai 世界-内-存在) and “being-in-time” (J. toki ni okeru u 時における有), involved and implicated in the world-nexus of “being-doing-becoming” (J. aru-nasu-naru ある-なす-なる) (see C 10: 264; RN 240). As a focal point within, and inseparable from, the ebb and flow of that world-­ time-­nexus, we are, we act, and we become. The problem is that even within this network of interrelationships, when one assumes the standpoint of the ego, to imprison and enclose oneself in “ignorance” (S. avidyā), one becomes a slave to the drive of what Nietzsche called the will-to-power and what ancient Buddhist doctrine regarded as karma. In realizing emptiness on the other hand, one realizes the “original countenance” of one’s true self to allow the world-nexus to advance forth. Breaking-away from the “endless drive” (J. mugen shōdō), one attains an authentic freedom in selfless being and doing (C 10: 293; RN 265).

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Nishitani characterizes that field of emptiness as an endless void, where all things are gathered together even while each remains uniquely itself (C 10: 166; RN 148). Nishitani here takes Nishida’s own appropriation of the western mystical notion of the cosmic sphere without circumference found in Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), and unpacks its connection with Buddhist ideas already implicit in Nishida. In a circumference-less sphere, the center is everywhere. This means that each point in space and time, each thing or event, in its selfness, serves as the “center” (J. chūshin 中心) of everything else in the universe (C 10: 164; RN 146). And in its interconnectedness with everything else, each mirrors the rest. Each qua center assembles all others on to itself, drawing on their support. But in turn it supports all others as world centers. As center, each plays the role of “master” in relation to which all others are “servants.” Its being grounds the being of everything else in that it plays an essential role in their constitution via interconnectedness. But at the same time it itself is what it is in reliance upon all others and as such it is their “servant.” All are simultaneously “master” (J. shu 主) and “servant” (J. jū 従) to one another (see C 10: 166; RN 148–49). The autonomy of each entails the subordination of all else but also means the subordination to all else. On this basis Nishitani states that “absolute autonomy” (J. zettaitekina jishusei 絶対的な自主性) and “absolute subordination” (J. zettaitekina jūzokusei 絶対的な従属性) come about in unison on the field of emptiness (C 10: 304; RN 275). Simultaneously master and servant, each thing is also autonomous and subordinate, itself and not-itself, being and nothing. This image of the cosmos as a network of inter-supportive monadic points reminds one of the myth of Indra’s net where in every eye of the net is a jewel mirroring all others. This ancient Indian idea was developed in Kegon thought in terms of “interpenetration” (J. sōnyū 挿入), whereby each interpenetrates everything else. Developing these Buddhist ideas, Nishitani thus calls the interrelationship that constitutes the universe, “circuminsessional interpenetration” (J. egoteki sōnyū 回互的 挿入) or “circuminsessional relationship” (J. egoteki renkan 回互的連関). Appropriating the motif of mutual self-negation among elements that appeared in Nishida’s final works, Nishitani thus develops it further in terms of the Kegon notion of interpenetration. The empty cosmos is an endless circumference-less sphere of interpenetrating thing-events. As every thing-event is co-constitutive, nothing is independent and everything is empty. Everything is interpenetrating on the basis of the emptiness of each. Nishitani terms this dispersed gathering of multiple centers, “world” (J. sekai 世界). According to Nishitani, only on the basis of this circuminsessional interpenetration upon the field of emptiness can all thing-events be gathered together to constitute the single order of the world while each simultaneously retains its own uniqueness (C 10: 166; RN 148). And the field of emptiness that is a field of circuminsessional interpenetration is, in turn, a field of “infinite indeterminateness” (J. mugennaru mugensei 無限なる無限性) or “inexhaustible possibility” (J. mujinnaru kanōsei 無尽なる可能性), a bottomless storehouse of possibilities that become manifest in the way things are (C 10: 294; RN 267; SZ 126). On this basis, Nishitani, borrowing Heidegger’s terminology, states that when a thing is, “the world worlds” (J. sekai ga sekai suru 世界が世界する) (see C 10: 169, 179,

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184; RN 150, 159, 164). Emptiness and circuminsession are together seen as the “origin” or “basis” (moto) of the world, things, and self (C 10: 183; RN 163). They are inseparable from being. How does Nishitani apply this idea of circuminsessional interrelationship to the human self? Like any other thing-event, the human self also plays the role of center. All things are gathered into the self as the world’s absolute center. Yet, at the same time, that “self-centeredness” (J. jikochūshinsei 自己中心性) is selfless, and its self-mastery is subordinate to the being of all others, on the basis of its dependence upon the entire network for its being (C 10: 274; RN 249). The self realizes its freedom in the service of others, that is, in open engagement with the world. Such a self is a “self that is not a self,” for it has its “original basis” (J. moto) in all things, just as all things are in their original basis in the self. The “being-(t)here” (G. Dasein) of the self is constituted upon the inexhaustible storehouse that is the field of circuminsessional interpenetration (C 10: 298; RN 271). In realizing this, one is released into an open engagement with the world.

7  Anontology The above two concepts of emptiness and circuminsessional interpenetration are two major features of Nishitani’s unique brand of ontology or what I prefer to call “anontology.” In addition to those two major notions developed from an appropriation of Buddhist thought, Nishitani appropriates other equally significant ideas borrowed from the Mahāyāna worldview to constitute a sophisticated and singular form of “(an)ontology.” But to distinguish his vision from ontological reification as well as nihilistic (i.e., meontological) negation of being, I shall call it “an-ontology.” Upon the field of emptiness as an open clearing realized as the world, beings come and go, presence and absence, become and pass. As such, they simply are. In terms of Nishitani’s 1982 essay “Kū to soku,” their being is “transparent” (J. tōmei 透明) in the realization that they are manifestations of emptiness. At the same time emptiness is realized in them as its images.18 In his earlier works, he had rendered this sense of “image” by using the Tendai (C. Tiantai) 天台term, “provisional” or “illusory” (J. ke 仮). While the provisionality or imaginariness of things negates their apparent substantiality (their reified being), it does not render them unreal. Neither reified nor nullified, things are real in their suchness, which in Tendai thought was called “the middle” (J. chū 中) between annihilating emptiness (the nothingness reified in nihilism) and provisional being (being reified as substance). Nishitani makes use of this Tendai position of the “middle” as how things are in their original mode prior to being objectified or substantialized, or even nullified, by the epistemological subject. Thus Nishitani’s “ontological” perspective is not simply an ontology that focuses on “being” or a meontology that focuses on its opposite, “non-being.” It is an an-ontology that takes a middle standpoint permitting a view 18

 See Masashi (2008: 177–178).

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encompassing being and non-being, affirmation and negation. This stance of Nishitani is predicated upon his basic notion, discussed above, of the self-­realization of reality as the self-emptying of emptiness. This provides the basis for what Nishitani perceives to be the primal reality whereby things are in themselves and the self is in itself. And the anontology of emptiness in turn provides the basis for an ethics of how to live. That primal basis of the real is the point in X where X is not-itself. And that precisely is where X is itself. Nishitani here is borrowing—if not directly, at least through the mediation of Nishida’s appropriation—D.T. Suzuki’s formulation of the “logic of is/is-not” (J. sokuhi no ronri 即非の論理) that Suzuki discovered in the Diamond Sūtra. This is in direct opposition to the mainstream western tradition of substantialism. Nishitani claims that in the history of western thought, being has, for the most part, been treated through the category of “substance” (J. jittai 実体) as that which retains self-identity amidst changes (C 10: 124; RN 110). This view might be traced to Aristotle who opposed, as the thing’s real essence, its “substance” (Gr. ousia) to its accidental properties. But we come to regard something as substance only because we objectify it, positing it externally in contrast to, and as represented by, the “subject” (J. shutai 主体) (C 10: 124; RN 110). Such a thing is not as it is in itself but only to the extent of its eidetic form thus disclosed. That is to say that the eidetic form, its idea or “look,” is imposed upon it by the subject, the one who looks at it. But “in itself” (J. jitai自体) each and everything is unknown (see C 10: 13; RN 119–20). Its being is unnamed and refuses determination. This darkness is precisely what the “great doubt” reveals. Knowing this in realizing the emptiness of substance then is a “knowing of non-knowing” (J. muchi no chi 無知の知), an unmediated and hence non-objective realization of things in themselves, their suchness, as non-objectifiable (see C 10: 124, 174; RN 110, 154–55). In the experience of nihility, the being of self and things qua substance become questionable. And in the realization of emptiness, the mode of being of things as in-themselves, their selfness beyond the subject-object relation, is revealed as non-substantial, as neither subject nor object, neither ideal nor material. Nishitani thus contrasts as non-­ substantial this selfness or “it-self” (J. jitai) of a thing, its self-identity that realizes emptiness free of representation, from the Aristotelian notion of “substance” (J. jittai) that can be grasped objectively or even subjectively qua “subject” (J. shutai). The self-identity of a thing is maintained not as a substance but in its relationship with the rest of the cosmos. And yet in-itself, undistorted by any artificial imposition, it is not what it appears to be. It is the suchness of things that is the beification of emptiness. It is only from this basis that a thing becomes grasped and represented as an object vis-à-vis a subject and known conceptually, though not concretely, upon the field of consciousness (Unno 1990: 308). And yet as the most originary basis of the self-identity of things, the in-itself is more substantial than the Aristotelian substance. Nishitani thus also calls it a “non-substantial substantiality” (J. hijittaitekina jittai 非実体的な実体) (C 10: 142; RN 125). And this applies both to the identity of the thing in-itself (substance) and the identity of the self in-itself (subject), and, moreover, to their non-duality, i.e., the “root-source” (J. moto) whereupon we are what we are in ourselves and things are what they are in themselves (C 10: 120–21;

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RN 107). The self-realization of a reality in-itself occurs in the non-duality between the knowing of non-knowing and the substantiality of non-­substantiality upon the field of emptiness. And the same applies to the theistic ­concept of God, whereby God in-itself—or in-Godself—is not God and thus is God, i.e., God’s godhood where God is desubstantialized in emptiness, escaping itself in ecstasis, hence kenōsis permitting agape becomes possible (C 10: 78, 130; RN 68, 115). To elucidate this anontological scheme in reference to things in general, Nishitani makes use of an ancient saying, “water does not wash water, fire does not burn fire.” The conventional view, perhaps traceable to Aristotle, is that it is the substance of fire that makes it what it is. In the case of fire, this substance consists of its unique capacity and activity of combustion. This is its “form” (Gr. eidos, J. keisō 形相), whereby it displays itself to us, in a way rationally recognizable by the human intellect (C 10: 127; RN 113). But to grasp things eidetically, that is, according to the way they display themselves to us and the way we grasp them, is still to objectify them and see them from the standpoint of the subject, an imposition of our reason into their interiority. This cannot then be how a thing is on its own (C 10: 128; RN 114). While grasping what something is, it fails to put us directly in touch with the very point that it is, the “basis” (J. moto) of the thing (C 10: 129–130; RN 115). The distinction is between a thing in relation to other things and for us and a thing in-­ itself. To the extent that water cannot wet, it is not water. To the extent that fire cannot burn, it is not fire. Yet precisely for not burning itself, fire is fire; and for not wetting itself, water is water (C 10: 85; RN 76). X is not X, therefore it is X. For in precisely in its act of burning firewood, fire does not burn itself; and in not burning itself, it burns firewood. It burns in relation to something else, but in-itself (in relation to itself) it does not burn. Nishitani refers to fire as it is for itself as something distinct from its “substance” (J. jittai) that is recognized from the outside only in its “activity” (Gr. energeia) of burning (C 10: 130; RN 116). Substance, or in Buddhist terms “self-nature” (S. svabhāva, J. jishō), thus only refers to its outward look or “form” (Gr. eidos) based on what it can do (i.e., combustion for fire), as seen by the human intellect, and not to its originary being. By contrast, the mode of being of a thing in-itself completely negates that substantiality, it is its “non-self-nature” (J. mujishō 無自性) realized in its emptiness, its “non-substantial substantiality” (see C 10: 132; RN 117). In the case of fire, this non-fire-nature is its non-combustion (not burning itself) in the very act of combustion (C 10: 132; RN 117). Nishitani seems to have in mind the Mahāyāna negation of the idea of substantiality on the basis of interdependence. If substance is defined as ontological independence, and yet its recognition is predicated upon the look (combustion) something displays in relation to something else (firewood) and for an observing intellect (the human subject), substance is not really what it is purported to be. Substance is non-substantial, it is empty. Adopting the soku-hi formulation Suzuki developed from the Diamond Sutra, Nishitani thus says that the truth of “This is fire” is “This is not fire, therefore it is fire” (C 10: 133; RN 118). The soku-hi formulation of the anontological structure of being applies to human existence as well: The self is not the self, hence it is the self. The true self is where it is emptied of its reified ego, it is no-self (anātman, muga), the negation of ego.

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Traditional philosophy has often defined the self as self-knowing or self-­ consciousness. Yet for Nishitani, the self in-itself is essentially “not-knowing” (J. fuchi 不知) that is at one with the “knowing” (J. chi 知) of the self19 (C 10: 173; RN 154). And this not-knowing is the self as it is in-itself in a self-awareness that is a “knowing of not-knowing.” He seems to be driving at the non-substantiality of the self that earlier he referred to as “the originary subjectivity of no-self” (J. muga no kongenteki shukansei 無我の根源的主観性) (C 1: 88). From this standpoint of egoless subjectivity, the ego is a mask worn vis-a-vis others and constituted in self-­ attachment, while “in-itself” (J. jitai) the self is empty. In Shūkyō to wa nanika, he speaks of the person as such a “mask” (J. kamen 仮面) (in its original Latin sense of “face” [J. men 面] or persona) worn by absolute nothingness, an appearance with nothing behind it (C 10: 80–82; RN 70–72). Our “original countenance” behind that mask only appears in its true form when we have disengaged ourselves from fixating upon the body-and-mind that we ordinarily regard as the cardinal point on which our being hinges (C 10: 206–07; RN 184–85). As we already discussed above, this is Nishitani’s appropriation of Dōgen’s concept of “dropping-off body-and-mind” (J. shinjin datsuraku). And to elucidate this further, he refers multiple times to another idea from Dōgen’s Genjōkōan that to learn the Buddha-way is to learn one’s self, which in turn is to forget one’s self (e.g. C 10: 121; RN 107). Nishitani, borrowing Tendai terminology, describes this anontological mode, whether of thingly or human existence, as the “middle” (J. chū 中) between “provisionality/illusion” (J. ke 仮) and “emptiness” (J. kū) (C 10: 82; RN 72). That is to say, it’s true being in-itself neither can be reified as substance in an illusory manner—and its appearance as substance would merely be its provisional reality—nor annihilated into utter nothingness. It simply is. The absolute nothingness of emptiness (which here needs to be carefully distinguished from the Tendai usage of “emptiness” in that triad) breaks-through attachment that would reify as well as nihilistic hate that would annihilate. Instead, in the realization of emptiness, personality becomes manifest in its “form of suchness… in unison with absolute nothingness…” (C 10: 107; RN 95). This standpoint of the “middle” (J.  chū) is also a standpoint from the “center” (J.  chūshin)—both terms involving the character “chū”—of a being, the thing as it is in-itself. While from the standpoint of reason things appear to us as substances or as objects because they are being viewed “from the circumference,” i.e., from the outside, Nishitani calls the way things are in themselves, their selfness “at their own center” (J. sorejishin no chūshin それ自身の中 心), the ontologically non-objective mode of “the middle” (J. chū) (C 10: 159; RN 141). According to the Tendai doctrine of the three truths (J. santai 三諦), reality is manifest through these three modes of ke, kū, and chū. Although ke was rendered in the English translation of Shūkyō to wa nanika as “illusion,” in having its appropriate place in the realization of reality, properly speaking, it designates not illusion but rather the provisional (see Kasulis 1990: 265 n.2). And “emptiness” in this Tendai triad corresponds to what Nishitani means by nihility, the static and reified sense of 19  He also states that “non-consciousness” (J. hiishiki 非意識) is at the base of all “consciousness” (J. ishiki 意識) (C10 173, RN 153).

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nothingness, as opposed to the dynamic and affirmative sense of emptiness as self-­ emptying. Instead, it is the “middle” that corresponds to that affirmative sense of a self-emptying emptiness. Of the three, it provides the most comprehensive viewpoint. By taking the “middle” standpoint, one’s comprehension encompasses both the provisional reality of things amidst their emptiness and the emptiness of things in their very reality. Its stance provides the most comprehensive realization of reality. What this means is that the “middle”-mode of a thing, in being itself (“provisionally”) and in not being itself (in its “emptiness”) entails a “double exposure” (J. nijūutsushi 二重写し) of life and death, the immediacy of being and non-being (C 10: 85; RN 76). And this is how Nishitani understands the Heart Sutra’s formula, “form is emptiness, emptiness is form” (see C 10: 115; RN 102). In themselves, things are empty, and yet they are not unreal. Things in themselves are neither subjective representations that idealism takes them to be nor objective entities that realism and materialism take them to be. But neither are they unreal or pointless nothings that nihilism takes them to be. Prior to their objectification or representation and prior to their nullification, things are themselves on the field of emptiness, in their fundamental and original form (C 10: 123; RN 110). One might safely state that Nishitani’s entire threefold topological progression from the field of being/consciousness, to the field of nihility, and finally the field of emptiness, is inspired by the general Mahāyāna dialectic of the “middle way,” especially its articulation according to the Tendai doctrine of the three truths. Of course Nishitani’s anontological topology also definitely takes off from Nishida’s roughly triadic scheme of the period of his 1926 Basho essay. But there are also significant differences between Nishitani and Nishida in this regard. Nishida’s scheme unfolds, in the regression back to one’s source, from the “place of being” (J. u no basho) to the “place of relative nothing” (J. sōtai mu no basho)—alternatively called the “place of oppositional nothing” (J. tairitsuteki mu no basho) or the “field of consciousness” (J. ishiki no ba)—and finally to the place of absolute nothing (J. zettai mu no basho). One might roughly correspond the first two bashos to the standpoint of realism/materialism and that of idealism, respectively, for Nishida equates relative nothing with consciousness in its relationship to “beings.” What distinguishes Nishitani’s scheme is that to Nishida’s triad, he adds the thematic of the very issue that led him to philosophy as well as Zen practice in the first place, that is, nihilism. So Nishitani’s triadic topology unfolds from the field of being, which is also the field of consciousness, to the field of nihility, and finally to the field of emptiness. The field of being and the field of consciousness for him are the same because whether one’s focus is on the object or on the subject, the act of objectification, hence attachment to and reification of being as substance, is involved. Regardless of one’s focus, one is here assuming the dichotomy of subject-object in their mutual alienation. Under the influence of the general Mahāyāna triadic scheme—and fully articulated in the Tendai three truths scheme—that takes negation in itself as a fetter of attachment, and under the impact of his own concern with nihilism, Nishitani adds as a moment in his topological regression, the field of nihility that negates the being of self and things. Both the field of being and the field of nihility need to be overcome through the realization of the third field, that of

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emptiness, that can be equated with Nishida’s place of absolute nothing. So while Nishida’s topology might be said to involve the movement from realism to idealism to nothingness, Nishitani’s topology involves the movement from substantialism (inclusive of both realism and idealism) to nihilism to nothingness. In any case the final field upon which the paradoxical soku-hi statements (“this is not X, therefore it is X”) make sense is the field of “emptiness” (S. śūnyatā). (C 10: 133; RN 118). The field of reason—what Nishitani elsewhere calls the field of consciousness or of being—by contrast is the standpoint where things are represented in the form in which they appear when we think about them. It is only on the field of consciousness or reason that things are separated from the self and posited as external objects (C 10: 122;  RN 108). As things qua objects become contained within a representational framework, self and things are mutually alienated. A thing in-itself, completely free from representation, however is empty. In contrast to the field of the mutual alienation and reification of self and things, on the field of emptiness, the selfness of a thing is not some definite what (Gr. eidos), describable in substantial terms. It does not matter whether one’s focus is upon the subject or upon the object. In either case one misses reality, the naked being of which, detached from the gaze of a representing subject, escapes description and reason20 (see C10: 141; RN 124). As unknown (to reason), reality is realized in its emptiness (see C10: 157; RN 139). This is where the human self has its originary basis as well, the basis of the original self in itself: “Emptiness is self” (C 10: 170; RN 151). The field of emptiness is the abysmal ground that opens up and makes possible things qua objects and self qua subject. Whatever ground or principle one seeks to discover as “cause,” “reason,” “purpose,” etc., whether of the world, things, human existence, knowledge, etc., one fails to reach its bottom. Here fact as “primal fact” (J, hongenteki jijitsu 本源的事実), Nishitani declares, is bottomless, groundless, simply cut off from every how, why, wherefore (C 10: 177–178; RN 158). To realize freedom in realizing emptiness then would be to live “without why.”21 Another important Buddhist concept Nishitani makes use of in unfolding his anontology is samādhi (J. jō, 定). In their emptiness, in their non-objectified “middle”-mode of being, things are settled into their originary “position,” their samādhi-being (J. jōzai, 定在). This appropriation is quite innovative since samādhi has been traditionally associated with meditation as a state of complete concentration or absorption. But literally samādhi connotes “settling,” “gathering,” or “concentrating” in general. Nishitani interprets this as referring to the state of settledness or self-gathering that applies to the originary form of all things, the primal activity that settles a thing to where it belongs in the cosmos, its localized and appropriate place where it assumes a “position” vis-à-vis the web of interdependent origination  And this is where Nishitani’s topological scheme that regards the field of being and the field of consciousness to be identical diverges from Nishida’s scheme that separated the place of being and the place of relative nothing (equated with the field of consciousness). 21  As in Angleus Silesius’ versification of Meister Eckhart’s ideal: “The rose is without ‘why’; she blooms, because she blooms…” (“Die Rose ist ohne warum; sie blūhet, weil sie blūhet” [Silesius 1895: 69]). 20

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(see C 10: 145ff; RN 128ff). In dying to one’s ego and realizing no-self, in the meditative absorption of samādhi, one ceases projecting one’s self onto things. In this state of absolute passivity, self and thing are “settled in their own place/s” (or: samādhi-being, J. jōzai), and things are manifest just as they are, in suchness. This seems to roughly correspond to what Dōgen called “dwelling in the dharma position” (J. jūhōi 住法位). At the same time this is to be distinguished from any notion of a fixed substance. The settledness making something what it is, is paradoxically a non-substantiality. Substantially speaking it is unsettled (Heisig 2001: 225) in that it opens the thing inter-relationally to all other things. This takes us back to the concept of circuminsessional interpenetration, as well as non-substantial substantiality, we discussed above. On this basis, its formlessness or emptiness is its very suchness. Samādhi as the natural state of beings designates the natural spontaneity whereby “things and persons are what they are and do what they do” (Heisig 2001: 249) selflessly without reification or self-attachment. The realization of the samādhi-being of things and self is the realization of emptiness, which in turn is the realization of the suchness that characterizes the affirmativity or positivity of emptiness. “Suchness” (S. tathatā, J. noyjitsu) is a Buddhist term Nishitani appropriates to describe that positivity of emptiness. In the realization of emptiness, one awakens to the “original countenance” of the self and of the world, emptied of reifications or attachments, and this is an awakening to the suchness of reality. The term in Buddhist discourse has a more positive connotation that counters the negative connotation that might be wrongly associated with emptiness. As the culmination of the process of realization (as well as negation) it designates the standpoint that has negated and transcended nihility that negates and transcends being. This negation of negation equals affirmation, as the axis of conversion from negation to affirmation, from the relative nothingness of nihility to the absolute nothingness of emptiness, dynamically identical with being (Abe 1990: 26). As absolute negation equals absolute affirmation, “absolute nothingness is immediately absolute being” (J. zettai mu soku zettai u 絶対無即絶対有) (C 13: 93). All phenomena are revealed as appearing in a dimension of bottomlessness that Nishitani at one point designates with the Greek and Heideggerian term for “truth,” aletheia (see SZ 126). Through our “great death,” abandoning and throwing away self-­ attachment, the field of bottomlessness is opened up where we receive all phenomena (SZ 128–129). As we already saw in the previous sections, that abyss engulfs not only beings but their opposite, non-being as well. In that emptiness nihility itself is nullified and transcended through the double negation of being and nothing, reification and nullification. In this nihilation of nihility, the negative converges with the positive to form the basis for life-affirmation, the lived realization of nothingness as reality, so that the “great death” turns to the “great life” (C 10: 254; RN 231–232). Rather than a confrontation with nothingness qua nihility as other to one’s being, an X in opposition to being, one realizes its lived reality, one lives nothing. Suchness designates this lived affirmativity of nothingness. The nothingness here is “absolute” (J. zettai 絶対) in that it is a self-emptying on the basis of which reality presents itself freed from the fetters of attachment (See C 10: 40; RN 34).

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That is to say, it is a standpoint that has cut itself off from opposition or ­dichotomization.22 Emptiness as fundamentally self-emptying allows for the manifestation of things; it gives place to beings, returning us to affirm their being. It is then only as self-emptying that emptiness is truly emptiness, equatable with fullness and hence being (see Kasulis 1990: 268–69). Non-different from the world as it is without ground, it affirms reality as “primal fact,” cut off from any how, why, wherefore, reminding us of Eckhart’s Leben ohne Warum (“life without a reason why”) (C 10: 177–178, 202; RN 158, 180). On this basis life can be meaningless yet no longer nihilistic, for it is life living itself, freed from fetters. Everything is emptied but at the same time realized in its suchness, with new life. Nishitani thus takes emptiness qua suchness to constitute the basis for a positive attitude to life, a free—that is unattached, unfettered—reaffirmation of existence. Emptiness in this sense proves to be a field of “beification” (G. Ichtung, J. uka), the field of “the great affirmation” (J. ōkina kōtei) where we can say “Yes” to all things, overturning the “No” of nihilism, overcoming nihility that is the field of nullification (G. Nichtung, J. muka) (C 10: 140, 149; RN 124, 131). Stepping through nihilism into emptiness returns us to this affirmativity (J. kōteisei 肯定性) that characterizes the “original form” (J. honrai no sugata 本来の姿) of being alive (C 20: 193). In this sense emptiness is also the “field of essential life” (J. honshitsutekina sei no ba 本質的な生の場), the “field of life-and-death” (J. shisokusei seisokushi no ba 死即生、生即死の場) (C10: 120; RN 106). If nirvana means dying to the samsaric “life” of attachment, including attachment to life and death in their dichotomized reifications, it entails a rebirth to a “life” of affirmation, an affirmation of both life and death (See C 10: 198, 202f; RN 176–177, 180). If the realization of emptiness means rebirth to a life that affirms the very suchness of reality, the locus of liberation or salvation is this world, not another. Its realization occurs here-and-now, and not in another transcendent realm, or in Buddhist terms on the yonder shore beyond samsāra. The apparently transcendent nature of emptiness that is beyond the conventional world is in fact realized in this concrete world, on “the near side” or “this shore” (J. shigan, 此岸) of the stream of birth-and-death. Nishitani accepts the Mahāyāna reading that what classical Buddhism spoke of as crossing-over to the “other shore” beyond the stream of suffering is actually a realization of what is on “this shore” (C 10: 112; RN 99). So in the realization of emptiness, nothingness that is no longer perceived as a threat other to being and life is instead experienced in one’s very being-in-the-world. No longer on the “far side” of meaning and life as in nihilism, it is dynamically experienced on the “absolute near side” of one’s existence, that is, this world, this life. Its realization is a matter of awakening to what is always already here and now, a return to “as-is-­ ness” (J. arinomama ありのまま) (C 20: 193) As the field of the possibility and actualization of the world and existence of things, emptiness is immanent in, not separate from, things, and thus lies “on the near and not the far side.” (C 10: 110, 170; RN 97, 151). There is only “this world and this earthly life” (RN 90), to which  The Japanese word for “absolute,” zettai, literally means “severing from,” or “cutting off” (J. zetsu 絶), “opposition” (J. tai 対).

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we are returned and awakened in the transcendence of transcendence, the negation of negation. Nishitani also characterizes this as an “absolutely transcendent near-­ side” (J. zettaitekini chōetsutekina shigan 絶対的に超越的な此岸), lying “nearer to the self than the self to itself” (C10: 102; RN 90). Emptiness as the field transcending both the conventional standpoint and its nullification (i.e., the first two fields: being/consciousness/reason and nihility), nevertheless is situated here “on our near side,” at the abysmal ground of our being (see C 10: 103; RN 91). Just as God’s ground is realized as “my ground” in Eckhart, emptiness lies on this side of the stream of reality. Nirvāna then is not on the “yonder shore” beyond samsāra as the conventional or unsophisticated understanding of Buddhism might have it. On this basis Nishitani claims Buddhism to be unique as a “religion of the absolute near side” (J/zettaiteki shigan no shūkyō 絶対的此岸の宗教) (C 10: 112; RN 99). The way to overcoming the sense of helplessness vis-à-vis karma and samsāra, and the sense of nihility this brings, necessitates, then, a conversion of one’s orientation not to the “other-shore” beyond the stream of samsāra. Instead, on the basis of what we have discussed, it calls for the radicalization of one’s orientation in the direction of the suchness of this life and world realized in the self-emptying emptiness that nullifies nihility. What kind of a life is this life of affirmation? The lived realization of emptiness, its existential appropriation, conquers nihilism with an attitude of profound play that might be characterized by the gatheredness of samādhi we discussed above, or, in Eckhartian terms, life living itself without why or Leben ohne Warum (C 10: 202; RN 180). In freedom from the fetters of attachment, all our work takes on the character of play without aim or reason or cause, having cast off the character of why or wherefore (C 10: 277–278, 284ff; RN 252, 258ff). Living becomes autotelic and autonomous. Being without purpose here no longer means senselessness as in nihilism but rather that every thing and every act occurs or exists for its own sake, invested with its own worth. They possess their own value without reference to anything beyond. When work becomes play, it possesses its own earnestness in its natural and spontaneous accord with the nature of things (dharma) or “dharmic naturalness” (J. hōni jinen 法爾自然) (C 10: 281; RN 255). No longer centered on the ego and hence freed of karmic debt, work is play or “playful samādhi” (J. yuge zammai 遊戲三昧) (C 10: 278–279; RN 252–253). Parallel to the realization of no-self, doing here is non-volitional and spontaneous, for which Nishitani invokes the ancient Chinese term of “non-doing” (C. wuwei, J. mui 無 為)23 (C 10: 283–284, 306; RN 257, 277). And this doing of non-doing, parallel to the true self that is no-self, occurs together with the realization of the emptiness of emptiness. On the basis of the anontology of emptiness then we have an ethics of how to live or how to approach life, despite all of its unpleasanteries and negativities (nihility). Another significant and relevant Mahāyāna motif that Nishitani employs in setting forth his “soteriology” or ethics of living emptiness or living life without why in response to nihilism is the teaching of “non-abiding nirvana.” This is nirvana freed from its reification and attachment as a state transcendent to, hence other than, 23

 This concept was borrowed from Daoism and incorporated into Chinese Chan.

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this very life (samsāra). The Mahāyāna tradition has always warned its practitioners of the danger of clinging not only to emptiness as a concept but also to the goal or ideal of nirvāna. The point was that such clinging to nirvana that withdraws and isolates one from the world would be life-negating and world-denying, another fetter in the way of authentic freedom. As we already saw in our discussions above, the escape from karma and the world of suffering is not to an other-worldly bliss but rather in realizing the immediacy between samsāra and nirvana. Nishitani thus approvingly quotes Dōgen’s statement that “birth-and-death (J.  shōji 生死, i.e., samsāra) itself is nirvāṇa (nehan 涅槃)” and that “birth-and-death is itself the life of the Buddha” (C 10: 200, 203; RN 178, 180). True nirvāṇa, Nishitani explains, is “non-abiding” (J. fujū 不住), non-different from samsāra (C 10: 202; RN 179). That is to say that it is not an eternal realm separate from this world of change. Authentic freedom is to be realized in this world but through its unfettering from the volitional imperialism of the ego and its drives. Nirvāṇa as Leben ohne Warum occurs in the here-and-now, in this world and this life.24 In that facticity of things, the negative orientation converges with the positive orientation, nullification proves to be beification, and a field opens up wherein emptiness and fullness, samsāra and nirvāna, are revealed in their original identity (see SZ 131). The realization that “being is immediately nothing” (J. u soku mu 有即無) or that “form is immediately emptiness” (J. shiki soku ze kū 色即是空) entails a standpoint at the point of “immediacy” (J.  soku 即) that enables one to see both being and nothingness (See C 10: 109; RN 97). In taking a stance on this soku (“is,” “immediacy”) between form and emptiness, being and nothingness, one breaks through the shackles of both substance and nihility to be liberated from their double confinement and released into emptiness, that is, empty emptiness, non-abiding nirvāna. In this realization that encompasses both being and non-being, whereby both the positive stance of naïve realism or materialism and the negative stance of nihilism are revealed in themselves to be inadequate, enabling us to overcome attachment to either, we are exposed to reality as two-layered. This brings us back to what we discussed above as the Tendai stance of the “middle” (J. chū 中) between— or rather encompassing—“provisionality” and “emptiness.” Everything in its nothingness bears the stamp of an illusory or provisional reality and yet in its suchness is real in its very appearance: “At the originary level, this appearance is provisional in its very reality and real in its very provisional aspect” (C 10: 147; RN 129). The world revealed in its concrete suchness is thus viewed neither mechanistically nor teleologically, neither as simply dead matter nor as vital and living. It is neither merely the “scientific” world nor the merely “mythical” world, neither the world of mere “matter” nor of mere “life” (see C 10: 59, 106–07; RN 52, 94). The “doubleexposure” of the “middle” stance on the field of emptiness makes explicit the irreducibility of reality and life to dichotomous terms that Nishitani characterizes as  This motif evidently becomes furthered in his later works of the late 1970s and 1980s, as a pattern of a transcendence connected to the “earth” or “land” (J. tsuchi 土), with the idea that the “Kingdom of God” (J. kami no kuni 神の国) or Heaven or the “Pure Land” (J. jōdo 浄土) is already here and now (see C 17: 246–27; OB 124–125; OB 14).

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nothingness, identifies with Mahāyāna emptiness, and recognizes in Eckhart’s godhood beyond God (see C 10: 112; RN 99). Reality is the irreducible nonduality of “life and death” (J. seishi ichinyo 生死一如), being and nothing. Therefore the realization of reality demands a single vision grasping both sides—the positive and the negative orientations, life and death, being and nihility—simultaneously, a vision that encompasses “the great death” and “the great life” (see C 10: 59, 105–106; RN 52, 93; SZ 129, 135–136). Seen thus together in emptiness, the opposites cancel each other out as ultimately empty, revealing the actual world in its truth and reality as seen through this “middle” vision.

8  Conclusion Before we close our discussion of Nishitani’s Buddhist philosophy, I want to raise two issues for critical assessment. The first issue is the mode of language or terminology that he employs. It is not such an easy matter to bring together systematically two mutually alien, in this case, ancient eastern and modern western modes of thought. And yet Nishitani has succeeded, I believe, in giving voice in a highly sophisticated manner and within the frame of contemporary philosophical discourse the difficult and intricate thought content of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Especially when we compare him to his mentor NISHIDA Kitarō and some of his attempts to render Mahāyāna insights in the terminology of western philosophy, Nishitani’s appropriation of existentialist and phenomenological conceptual influences seems more appropriate and apt in capturing the matter he sought to express. By contrast the Neo-Kantian and Hegelian- inspired terminology and concepts in Nishida’s thinking did not necessarily work to his advantage. The second issue I want to raise has to do with the triad of being-nihility-­ emptiness and the emphasis on the transcendence of emptiness over dualities, whether of subject-object or of being-non-being. If emptiness signifies the irreducible complexity of reality, might not Nishitani’s emphasis upon the double exposure of the opposite aspects of reality, its dichotomization, even for the very purpose of overcoming that duality, undermine its own purpose by blinding us to the multiplicity that dichotomization covers over? And in setting up its own tacit dichotomy between emptiness and duality does it ignore that very complexity of the manifold of reality that exceeds and escapes any sort of binary schematization? This may be a danger implicit in Nishitani’s thought (as well as Nishida’s later thought and perhaps of other Kyoto school thinkers). We might rather also recognize the fluctuating plurality of disparates that constitutes the complex manifold of reality to account for its emptiness of substantiality—a plurality masked over by the dualities we project. One might then reinterpret the “middle” as not simply between opposites of a dichotomy but a “middle” view encompassing the irreducible manifold itself. The vision of emptiness as reality revealing itself in that “middle” standpoint, as Nishitani claims, is neither nihilistic nor positivistic; nor is it materialistic atheism,

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theism, or pantheism. It points to the anontological (under)ground that environs the comings and goings, constructions and destructions, of being and non-being, on and meon. We might add that it refers to the open clearing of an infinitely rich and deep world of manifold possibilities, actualities, and their negations, and inclusive not only of opposites but of disparates. In that sense it encompasses more than a reductive dichotomization of reality into opposites, but includes the vast and irreducible complexity of a manifold plurality and gathers them in their emptiness. The simplicity that is emptiness simultaneously permits that irreducible excess; and reciprocally, that excess complexity calls for the emptiness of substance. Its vision and realization in human awareness is what Nishitani envisioned to be true “religion.” In negating the reified negation of being, it returns us to affirm non-reified existence along with life and meaning. Such is the realization of emptiness but I think that this also means the recognition of complexity and multiplicity. Life and reality is not only finite; they are complex. Nishitani’s philosophical project, in that sense, brings ancient Mahāyāna Buddhist insights into the contemporary world setting, where age-old securities are today crumbling to unfold the irreducible complexity of “truth,” and makes them relevant for our day-to-day living.

Works Cited Abbreviations C Nishitani keiji chosakushū 『西谷啓治著作集』 [Collected Works of Nishitani Keiji]. Tokyo: Sōbunsha 1987–1995. MT Nishitani, Keiji 西谷啓治. On Modernization and Tradition in Japan. In Modernization and Tradition in Japan, edited by Nobuo Kobayashi and Yasushi Kuyama, 69–96. Nishinomiya: International Institute for Japan Studies, 1969. OB Nishitani, Keiji 西谷啓治. On Buddhism. Translated by Seisaku Yamamoto and Robert E. Carter. Albany: SUNY Press, 2006. RN Nishitani, Keiji 西谷啓治. Religion and Nothingness. Translated by Jan Van Bragt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. SN Nishitani, Keiji 西谷啓治. Self-Overcoming of Nihilism. Translated by Graham Parkes and Setsuko Aihara. Albany: SUNY, 1990. SZ Nishitani, Keiji 西谷啓治. Science and Zen. In The Buddha Eye: An Anthology of the Kyoto School, edited by Frederick Franck, 111–137. New York: Crossroad, 1991.

Other Sources Abe, Masao. 1990. Nishitani’s Challenge to Philosophy and Theology. In The Religious Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji, ed. Taitetsu Unno, 13–45. Fremont: Asian Humanities Press. Davis, Bret W. 2004a. The Step Back Through Nihilism: The Radical Orientation of Nishitani Keiji’s Philosphy of Zen. Synthesis Philosophica 19 (1): 139–159.

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———. 2004b. Zen After Zarathustra: The Problem of the Will in the Confrontation Between Nietzsche and Buddhism. Journal of Nietzsche Studies 28: 89–138. Hase, Shoto. 1999. Nihilism, Science, and Emptiness in Nishitani. Buddhist-Christian Studies 19 (1): 139–154. Heisig, James W. 2001. Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School. Honolulu: University of Hawaii. Kasulis, Thomas P. 1990. Whence and Wither: Nishitani’s View of History. In The Religious Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji, ed. Taitetsu Unno, 259–278. Fremont: Asian Humanities Press. Masashi, Hosoya. 2008. Sensation and Image in Nishitani’s Philosophy. In Neglected Themes & Hidden Variations, ed. Victor Sōgen Hori and Melissa Anee-Marie Curley, 177–200. Nagoya: Nanzan Institute. Silesius, Angelus. 1895. Der Cherubinische Wandersmann. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Unno, Taitetsu. 1990. Emptiness and Reality. In The Religious Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji, ed. Taitetsu Unno, 307–320. Fremont: Asian Humanities Press. John W. M. Krummel is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY. He has a PhD. in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research and a PhD. in Religion from Temple University. He is author of Nishida Kitarō’s Chiasmatic Chorology: Place of Dialectice, Dialectic of Place. His writings on topics such as Heidegger, Nishida, Schürmann, and Buddhist philosophy, among others, have appeared in a variety of philosophy journals and books. He is also the editor of Contemporary Japanese Philosophy: A Reader and the co-translator of Place and Dialectic: Two Essays by Nishida Kitarō. He has translated other works from Japanese and German into English. He is Co-Editor for Social Imaginaries, Assistant Editor of The Journal of Japanese Philosophy, and the President of the International Association of Japanese Philosophy.

Chapter 30

Nakamura Hajime Toshi’ichi Endo

Nakamura Hajime was perhaps one of the most gifted scholars in the twentieth century, able to move from one area of specialty to another with equal ease and authority. He is widely acknowledged as a scholar of great accomplishment, even to the extent that the output of his work is said to easily equal that of a hundred scholars. Ronald Burr, in his editorial preface, remarks: “He stands in a tradition of scholars who have held the chair of philosophy at Tokyo University, and who are of astonishingly high caliber in the amount and quality of the scholarship they have produced” (Burr 1992: ix). It was his early works such as A History of the Early Vedānta Philosophy (1950–1956) and Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples (1948–1949) that brought about a breakthrough in his early career and made him an internationally acclaimed thinker. He expanded the horizon of his research into Indian, Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese, and European thought, cutting across the Eurasian continent. His interest in human thought culminated in the comparative analysis of human thought, both East and West. He summarizes his approach to his studies thus: In recent scholarship there has been a tendency to avoid comparative studies. … Gradually, however, I have come to believe that this tendency to avoid comparative study has gone too far. Each study by a specialist should, at some point, be placed in a comprehensive framework to make clear the significance of the total subject matter. I think that there is a need now to reconsider some of the problems of the history of thought from a comparative perspective, and although no one has the massive competence to treat all cultural traditions in a comparative depth, perhaps something of importance can emerge from modest efforts in a comparative direction. (Burr 1992: 4–5)

How many scholars and thinkers are adequately equipped with the tools and the necessary philosophical vision to delve into the area of the comparative history of ideas from ancient times to modern days? An ordinary scholar would never think of T. Endo (*) University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_30

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venturing into the deep recess of unknown territory. This final stage of his scholarship was foreseen even from the earliest period of his academic career, and everything he did was steadily geared towards the blossoming of what he calls human “thought,” which he defines as “guiding principles for man to live” (Nakamura 1986: 11). He recalls that the first step towards this was made when his predecessor teacher UI Hakuju 宇井 伯寿 (1882–1963) at Tokyo University told him one day that scholars when young should explore Indian philosophy to gain a wide and objective viewpoint so that Buddhism could be objectively studied. This is how, Nakamura says, he began to work on the studies of Vedānta philosophy (Nakamura 1986: 13). Hajime Nakamura was born on November 28, 1912, in a city named Matsue in Shimane Prefecture and moved to Tokyo at an early age. Graduating from the Department of Indian Philosophy and Sanskrit Literature, University of Tokyo, he became an associate professor of the same department in 1943. His area of discipline is usually categorized as “Indian Philosophy.” He was known as one of the frontrunners in this area of specialty. However, he preferred to call himself a student of academic truth. In academic circles in Japan before and during his time, sectionalism prevailed in every field of studies. This prompted him later on to set up an academic institute where the barrier of sectionalism would be completely removed and true academic pursuit could be realized. After his retirement from Tokyo University, he established the institute Tōhō Gakuin  東方学院 (The Eastern Institute, Inc.) and became its first founder-director in 1973. The Institute’s doors were open to anyone with a sincere zeal for study, irrespective of age, academic qualifications, occupation, nationality, or gender. He called this a “Terakoya” 寺子 屋 (“temple-hut”) (1986: 177). He pursued his studies tirelessly and uncompromisingly until his death. The strength of his scholarship stems from his firm belief that scholarship must be understood by all, for which purpose logical sequences and arguments in writings must be clear to the reader (Nakamura 1986: 58). As his areas of research cover a wide range and as in each discipline he has distinctly contributed to human knowledge, the following categories of his areas of research on a broad basis may be adopted for clarity and convenience.

1  Indian Studies At Tokyo University Nakamura lectured on the history of Indian thought until his retirement. He authored many books and articles covering ancient Indian thought up to modern philosophers who had left lasting influences on the history of modern India. As he reports, he began his research into Indian philosophy as a prelude to the study of Buddhism (Nakamura 1986: 13). Working for several years on the study of Vedānta philosophy, he contended that Indian philosophy should be investigated from the methodological perspectives of thought and philology. He examined every available text in Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Chinese, Greek, or any language relevant to the subject. Such thorough textual examination, as anyone who has read his works

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would notice, makes Nakamura’s scholarship solid and difficult to dispute. This attitude persists in every field of study he undertook. Nakamura’s interest in Indian philosophy encompassed many fields, including Buddhist studies. He moved freely from one discipline to another, covering texts such as the Vedas, Upaniṣad, and Mahābhārata, the philosophies of Śaṅkara, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṃkhaya, and Yoga, the logic of Dharmakīrti, translations of the Nyāya-­ sūtra, and Jaina and Hindu studies. He covered even the modern era of Indian philosophy, including philosophers such as Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886), Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945), Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948), B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956), and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975), who left indelible marks on the history of modern India. Commenting on the underlying principal axis of Nakamura’s scholarship, MAYEDA Sengaku, one of his beloved pupils, says: The scholastic production of Dr. Nakamura sprouted with vigor and continued to expand like a banyan tree, granting people respite and tranquility. The banyan tree possesses numerous enormous trunks that have their roots firmly embedded in the soil. At a casual glance one gets the impression that each trunk is an individual tree. However, upon closer observation one notices that the trees all constitute one immense cosmos-like formation, with a single tree in the center as the axis with all the others securely attached to it. In the case of Dr. Nakamura, I personally am of the opinion that the tree that constituted the central axis, was none other than Indian philosophy. (Mayeda 2000: vi)

How important Indian philosophy was to Nakamura can be measured in terms of his publication of his Selected Works (Definitive Edition) (1988–1999), which contains 32 volumes on Indian philosophy, though the volumes 2–4 have no direct bearing on India. When glancing at the vast expanse of his scholarship, all the branches merge toward the trunk that is deeply rooted in the soil, and the trunk is nourished and sustained by the question of self-introspection and rethinking of how man should live (Nakamura 1986: 192). This is the question Nakamura began to ponder, and in search of its answers, he set out on his long journey wandering into different directions. The cultural history of India was another area in which he took special interest. He believed that there was no “thought” that was in isolation from the realities of the society. His intention in venturing into the study of the historical development of Indian society was to examine the basis for the rise and establishment of ideas. He wrote an extensive work on the ancient history of India called Ancient History of India in two volumes in 1963 and 1966. KARASHIMA Noboru 辛島昇 (1933– 2015), an expert in the history of south India, observes that at a time when there was no comprehensive history of ancient India written in Japanese, books such as Nakamura’s, with citations and references freely made from Sanskrit originals and Chinese Buddhist texts, could have been written only by a man of genius (Karashima 2005: 27). Nakamura was not a historian but was only interested in the socio-­ cultural background in which he believed the Indian ways of thinking were embedded. In the field of Indian Studies, the definition that has been associated with the discipline is gradually being broadened, and now it is very much part of the “area studies” that became prominent since the end of the Second World War, particularly in the United States and Germany. MAYEDA Sengaku, well known for his study of

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the philosophy of Śaṅkara, tracing the history of “Indian Studies” in Japan, comments that it covers Indian culture, religions, history, and other areas as topics of research through literature and material things (Aruga 2005: 124). Although Nakamura’s works on Indian philosophy may be included in the older definition of the discipline that was substantially based on the various types of literature, his approach can be said to have differed from the Western methodology that was the order of the day in Europe and America at that time. Even when the new movement of “area studies” was gradually gaining currency, it was he who became one of the frontrunners to introduce and raise the standard of the relevant research approaches adopted among scholars of Japan at a time when scholarly works were at a standstill due to the aftermath of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. His last lecture entitled “Is Indology ‘Egyptian Studies’?” at the University of Tokyo reflects his thought, the thought he cherished throughout his career as an important methodology for his research. Perhaps Hajime Nakamura is remembered most in the western world as the author of the Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples. Though written early in his academic career, this work became a focal point of discussion among Western readers. It also became a textbook at several universities in the United States. He got involved in this work, he writes, in 1943 at the request of ITŌ Kichinosuke  伊藤吉之助 (1885–1961) of the Department of Philosophy, University of Tokyo, who was one of the leading members of a committee commissioned by the Ministry of Education of Japan to promote a comparative study of the ways of thinking of different peoples. The themes given to him were “ways of thinking of Indian people as reflected especially in linguistic style and logic” and “ways of thinking of the Chinese and Japanese peoples as found in the process of accepting Buddhism” (Nakamura 1981: xiii; 1986: 147). He recalls that in order to make the work academically accurate, he had to have a clear methodology: “I realized that if I was not clear on methodology, I would not achieve the scientific accuracy desired” (Nakamura 1981: xiii). It would have been a daunting task for any scholar to single-handedly undertake such a work at the highest level of research. It requires not only the necessary skill and highly demanding academic apparatus but also a firm conviction and vision that such a work would bring about a fruitful result – perhaps making use of its outcome as a launching-pad for a self-criticism and introspection based on objective evidence which was needed in Japan at the time. Arthur Frederick Wright writes: The Catastrophe which befell Japan in 1945 ushered in a period of great intellectual and spiritual ferment. Japanese intellectuals asked themselves fundamental questions about their nation and their culture, about the potential of a new Japan in a new world order. One facet of this great effort of reappraisal and projection was comparative study which, it was hoped, would give the Japanese a fresh view of their culture and society, their myths and their values. Mr. Nakamura, as the preface to the Japanese edition indicates, was drawn to this new effort at national self-knowledge through intercultural comparisons. (Wright 1981: vii)

This intention and motivation of Nakamura in undertaking the work is well reflected in the prefaces to the first Japanese edition of the Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples, volumes 1 (1947) and 3 (1949). This work grew with the author over the years, as is evident from the fact that a new chapter dealing with the ways of

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thinking of the Korean people was subsequently added to the work under the title of “Ways of Thinking of the Tibetan and Korean Peoples” published in 1989. Less known in his scholarship is the attitude underlying the society as a whole, though his studies centered mainly on thought and religion. Nakamura’s scholarship, writes HOSAKA Shunji, was a comprehensive approach to society as a whole (Hosaka 2005: 80). In this process there are no boundaries that separate culture and thought from economy, politics, and community. Such an attitude to scholarship is well reflected in his idea that man is always a social being. He always sounded a warning to those who blindly followed the supremacy of Western scholarship and ideas and advocated that “Asian studies” should evolve from within Asia, with Buddhism as a yardstick to measure the extent of cultural evolution in Asia, in general, and in Japan, in particular. His attitude to Asian studies (this also applies to all his works) manifests itself in the spirit of absolute freedom of scholarship, based on the strict examination and critique of the source material and fair viewpoints, through which the object of investigation is carried out with empathy and compassion.

2  Buddhist Studies Hajime Nakamura is often considered to be a Buddhist scholar based on the fact that he authored many works on the various forms of Buddhism, beginning with early Indian Buddhism to Mahāyāna Buddhism in Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan. Of particular interest among his vast collection of works is his passion for early Buddhism. His greatest contribution to Buddhism, as is widely acknowledged, is that his writings are clear and easy to understand even by those who are not specialists in the subject. The prevailing academic criticisms at that time were that writings on Buddhism were pedantic and beyond the comprehension of ordinary readers. It was his conviction that Buddhism, deeply rooted in Japanese spirituality, should be made available to the public through writings that were comprehensible and meaningful to them. He made this conviction a reality by writing numerous books and translations in a language intelligible to the ordinary public. He began with Gotama Buddha- A Life of Śākyamuni, Words of Śākyamuni, and Words of the Buddha  – Suttanipāta  – all published in 1958. The last one, in particular, was acclaimed a masterpiece in translation and accepted among intellectuals as a departure from the restrictions of traditional writings. In this translation, some of the new words or terms used by him, which had never been considered by his predecessors as appropriate, are today widely accepted. In his translation of the Suttanipāta he makes it clear that the work’s content is very closely related to the Indian socio-­religious norms at the time, and nothing could be said particularly of its Buddhist character. Nakamura believed that if Gotama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, was grasped as a historical figure, then the Suttanipāta was the work, or at least one of such works, that would depict the Buddha’s life vividly (Nakamura 1985: 433). He, thus, tried his best to do away with anything that could be considered later additions when

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translating it. If later Buddhist interpretations and ideas were to be employed, then the spirit of what the Buddha wished to convey in the early days of his Dispensation would be completely lost. Nakamura once said that he tried to make it as simple and as easy to understand as possible (1985: 441). His interest in translating early sources in Pali into modern Japanese saw the publication of more works subsequently. The Dhammapada, Mahāparinibbāna-sutta, and Theragāthā are just a few of them. The life of the Buddha, one of his main subject-areas for the study of early Buddhism, was improved and revised several times as he advanced in his studies of early Buddhism. He tried to be impartial, and his usual thoroughness in not only quoting and citing literary works but also incorporating archeological and epigraphic evidence is seen in this work too. His Selected Works (Definitive Edition) in 40 volumes (32 volumes plus 8 additional volumes) contains eight volumes on early Buddhism. Of particular interest among them are volumes 17 and 18 that discuss Buddhist ethics and socio-economic problems as found in early sources. Such topics as equality among men, economic ethics, problems related to the environment, sense of nationalism, and peace eloquently speak to Nakamura’s interest in contemporary issues. He had a clear understanding that the core of Japan’s spiritual culture is Buddhism. He writes that the study of Buddhism was important even to his own search for a spiritual foundation. Early Buddhism centering on the Buddha was his main concern, and he poured his energy and attention into it (Nakamura 1986: 222). The studies on Mahāyāna Buddhism were also on Nakamura’s agenda. He translated many Mahāyāna texts into simple and lucid Japanese. In his Selected Works, there are at least four works under the title of Mahāyāna Buddhism (volumes 20–23). One example of his interest in the various aspects of human activities is a work entitled “Ideal existing in Buddhist Fine Arts” (Mahāyāna Buddhism, volume 4). Another contribution in this field is a series called “Reading the Mind” (J. Kokoro o miru 心を見る) (NHK 1986) in which many translations into Japanese were made from the Sanskrit originals. Thus, he has covered a vast extent of Asia, cutting across the Indian subcontinent, along the Silk Road, to China, and then to Korea, and finally to Japan in the northern Buddhist tradition, together with the southern Buddhist tradition traversing Sri Lanka, Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, and other countries in the region. In short, his academic interests have yielded what can be termed as “Nakamura-ology” (the totality of Nakamura’s scholarship). He followed his principle that results of his research should be published as soon as they were ready. He would say, the present writer recalls, that one should not become afraid of mistakes because they could be rectified when one’s research advanced; the ­advancement of scholarship was possible only when constructive criticism was made and adequately taken into account for further improvement of one’s research. Such an observation could have been possible only by a scholar of the caliber of Hajime Nakamura who was thorough and eager to learn in any field of his choice. Nakamura believed that there could be four ways of doing research on Japanese Buddhism: (1) A sectarian approach dealing with the establishment, development, division, and philosophical stance of each sect existing today; (2) Understanding the history of Japanese Buddhism along the line of the historical and social development of Japanese ethnicity; (3) Examining how Buddhism, a universal religious

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system of the Orient, transformed itself after its introduction to Japan; and (4) Understanding how Japanese culture faces the various systems of world culture, especially in the modern period. TAMURA Tamura, Kōyū 田村晃祐 remarks that Nakamura adopted the fourth one as his own methodology for the study of Japanese Buddhism (2005: 165). In other words Nakamura always compared and contrasted both Eastern and Western thought. For example, he found a universal message in the works of Prince Shotoku 聖徳太子 (574–622) when he compared the prince’s ideal with other kings and monarchs of different regions and periods, including King Aśoka of India. An interesting approach adopted by Nakamura in dealing with self-introspection and contributions made towards building modern Japan is to focus on two historically important figures: one is SUZUKI Shōsan 鈴木正三 (1579–1655), a Zen master, and the other is TOMINAGA Nakamoto 富永仲基 (1715–1746). Suzuki is known for his contribution to the idea that Buddhism could be practiced by anyone irrespective of his/her occupation; to fulfill the utmost in any chosen occupation was the best form of the practice of Buddhism. He also rejected occupational discrimination of people. Tominaga, on the other hand, is remembered for his persistent idea that Mahāyāna Buddhism does not represent the words and teaching of the Buddha. Although in recent years, Suzuki’s philosophy has come to be evaluated by some Japanese thinkers as contributing to modern economic ethics, Nakamura was one of the first to recognize Suzuki’s philosophical contribution towards work ethics in Japan nearly 60 years ago. Nakamura’s contribution in the field of Japanese Buddhist studies is in no way negligible. He placed Japanese Buddhism in a much wider spectrum, even within the context of world religions. He emphasized a need to study links and connections between Buddhist thought and the thought of the world and has shown to us that some of the Japanese Buddhist monks’ efforts preceded the thinkers of the West at times. He also showed some shortcomings in Japanese Buddhist thought. Such an attempt by him made the study of Japanese Buddhism more globalized.

3  Jaina Studies Less known in Nakamura’s scholarship may be the study of Jainism. However, his vision of scholarship, focused on human history and ideology, has to be taken into consideration. For him Jaina studies were very much part of his whole process of investigation into Indian philosophy, thought, and history that to him formed what India is today. According to OKUDA Kiyoaki 奥田清明, a Jaina scholar in Japan, KANAKURA Enshō 金倉圓照, who pioneered Jaina studies in Japan in the 1930s and 1940s, was responsible for elevating Jaina studies to the level of Der Jainismus: Eine indische Erlösungsreligion of Helmuth von Glasenapp (1891–1963) published in 1925 (Okuda 2005: 175). Okuda believes that after Kanakura, the standard of Jaina studies in Japan was further raised to where they stand today by Nakamura. Equipped with all the necessary tools such as the ancient as well as modern

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languages, including Hindi, and familiarity with the history of ancient India, Nakamura had easy access to the ancient texts of Jainism and the language skill to read modern works, particularly of German scholars.

4  Hindu Studies For one who had authored A History of Ancient India, A History of the Early Vedānta Philosophy, and works on the other religions of India, it was a natural course of investigation and interest to write on Hinduism. He was aware at the time that the subject had been dealt with by many specialist scholars of Hinduism. Nakamura’s contribution in this field, as told by YAMASHITA Hiroshi 山下博司, is an attempt to write “a continuous history” of Hinduism, spanning almost from its inception up until today (Yamashita 2005: 110). This kind of methodology was once again possible by a scholar of vast knowledge of Indian history and philosophy, and Nakamura met all these requisites.

5  Buddhist Dictionaries In the field of Buddhist studies, as in other fields, various dictionaries, indices, and glossaries have been compiled by Japanese scholars. This has been a great contribution to the advancement of Buddhist studies in Japan. Each dictionary, glossary, or index has many stories to tell behind its compilation. The amount of work put in and hardship undergone by the compilers is often difficult for an ordinary man to grasp. The time spent and sacrifices made are sometimes beyond our imagination. Dedication and love for scholarship seem to be the key for the success of such works. Nakamura was a scholar whose vision of compiling a dictionary was somewhat different from the traditional approach. In the past, Buddhist dictionaries were brought out using traditional Buddhist terms and concepts that were intelligible mainly to the specialists. It was often the case that a layman having no training in Buddhist studies found it difficult to comprehend. If Buddhism was to be propagated among people in society and was to be also made a guide for people at large, the writings needed to be understood by ordinary people. This was the underlying principle Nakamura kept throughout his career as a scholar and was applicable as well to the compilation of a Buddhist dictionary he started when young. There is an episode related to this dictionary. The manuscripts were given to the printer, but due to some reasons they were never found, in spite of the fact that the company and mass media desperately searched for them and even made an appeal to the public for help. When this was told to Nakamura, he is reported to have calmly said that it was not morally right to disappoint those who had helped him in collecting data for the dictionary. He restarted the project with great courage and determination to make it better. The dictionary called Great Dictionary of Buddhist Terms 佛教語大辞典

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was finally published 8 years after he returned to this project in 1981. Nakamura was a scholar who never stopped his scholarship even for a moment. Since its publication, he added new materials to the dictionary and made it more readable. He edited several dictionaries and glossaries till his death. All this was the result of his wish that the Buddhist terms should be made available to the people in their own words.

6  Comparative History of Ideas As early as 1958 Nakamura expressed his thought: “In order to achieve peace and happiness of humanity, it is imperative to promote the mutual understanding among the various peoples in the world. To make it a reality it is necessary that the studies of comparative ideas must be advanced a step further” (Kawasaki 2005: 91). Nakamura’s scholarship began based on a vast vision he had towards achieving understanding of humanity. His focus, though wandering into diverse directions at times, always returned to Japan. He examined all possible materials to have a better understanding of Japanese people and their culture. At the same time, the idea of a comparative study of philosophy spread into different directions at different points of time in his career. His works on the Vedānta philosophy, or ways of thinking of eastern peoples, were all started as a prelude to the vast amount of scholarship that developed later and which, as it became distinctly clear to all as time passed, began to move in one direction. Leaving India, Tibet, China, and Japan in Asia, he stepped into the area of the history of ideas of the world, while still having in mind a lasting question on Japanese ideas. The extent and importance Nakamura attached to this venture can be measured by the number of works included in his Selected Works (Definitive Edition). Of the eight additional volumes, Nakamura dedicates four volumes to the “History of World Thought” and the other four to the “Thought of Japan.” This indicates clearly that a comparative approach to the study of thought was his methodology for the task. In the field of comparative philosophy, Nakamura talks about its methodology by giving an example of the central philosophy of Buddhism. In Buddhism there is the theory of “12 links of causality.” This has 12 items beginning with “ignorance,” “karmic formation,” “consciousness,” etc. Although this theory is specific to Buddhism alone, items such as “decay and death,” “birth,” “ignorance,” or “delusion” are the problems of any culture. In other words, they are the universal problems of mankind. Comparative philosophy or thought has, as its target, such universal problems, or the problems that became common to both East and West. Nakamura had a clear vision as to why such a process of comparison in philosophy or thought was needed. He was firmly convinced that if the studies concerning philosophy were to become meaningful as something that would truly come alive, one should abandon the attitude that one’s theory was true and others’ were false; and it is imperative that people must have self-introspection and speak out mutually. Such an attitude of Nakamura, one could infer, would have been influenced by Buddhism,

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especially early Buddhist teachings of Gotama Buddha. He contributed greatly in the field of comparative philosophy and was instrumental in establishing an academic association called the Japanese Association of Comparative Philosophy 日本比較思想学会 in 1974. He acknowledges that the methodology for the study of comparative philosophy in Japan is still in a state of confusion and suggests two methods: one is the direction into historical particulars; and the other is the direction into “universalization.” Nakamura never stopped walking on the path that he believed would lead to the advancement of human knowledge. He had the academic tools and a clear vision to steer his career through. All these made him a scholar and at the same time a human with compassion, the quality he cultivated because of the strong influence of Buddhism.

Works Cited Aruga, Kōki 有賀弘紀. 2005. Nihon ni okeru indo-gaku no keifuō 「日本におけるインド学の 系譜」 [Genealogy of Indian Studies in Japan]. In Nakamura Hajime: bukkyō no oshie, jinsei no chie 『中村元:仏教の教え・人生の知恵』 [Hajime Nakamura: Teachings of Buddhism, Wisdom of Life], 124–129. Tokyo: Kawadeshobō Shinsha. Burr, Ronald. 1992. Editor’s Preface. In A Comparative History of Ideas by Hajime Nakamura, ed. Ronald Burr, ix–xi. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. Hosaka, Shunji 保坂俊司. 2005. Ajiagaku to shite no Nakamura-sensei no gyōseki 「アジア 学としての中村先生の業績」  [Prof. Hajime Nakamura’s Contribution to Asian Studies]. In Nakamura Hajime: bukkyō no oshie, jinsei no chie 『中村元:仏教の教え・人生の 知恵』  [Hajime Nakamura: Teachings of Buddhism, Wisdom of Life], 80–85. Tokyo: Kawadeshobō Shinsha. Karashima, Noboru 辛島昇. 2005. Nakamura Hajime sensei no indo kodaishi kenkyū ni suite 「 中村元先生のインド古代史研究について」 [On Prof. Hajime Nakamura’s Studies of the Ancient History of India]. In Nakamura Hajime: bukkyō no oshie, jinsei no chie 『中村元: 仏教の教え・人生の知恵』 [Hajime Nakamura: Teachings of Buddhism, Wisdom of Life], 26–29. Tokyo: Kawadeshobō Shinsha. Kawaski, Shinjō 川崎信定. 2005. Hikaku shisō 「比較思想」 [Comparative Thought]. In Nakamura Hajime: bukkyō no oshie, jinsei no chie 『中村元:仏教の教え・人生の知恵』 [Hajime Nakamura: Teachings of Buddhism, Wisdom of Life], 86–91. Tokyo: Kawadeshobō Shinsha. Mayeda, Sengaku. 2000. Hajime Nakamura (1912–1990). Philosophy East and West 50 (3): iv– viii. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Nakamura, Hajime 中村元. 1981. Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii. ———, trans. 1985. Buddha no kotoba: suttanipāta 『ブッダのことば:スッタニパータ』 [Words of the Buddha: Suttanipāta]. Revised translation. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. ———, trans. 1986. Gakumon no kaitaku 『学問の開拓』 [Exploring the Learning]. Tokyo: Kōsei Shuppansha. ———, trans. 1989. Nakamura Hajime senshū 『中村元選集』 [Selected Works of Hajime Nakamura]. 32 vols. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. NHK: Kokoro o miru 「心を見る」 [Reading the Mind]. 1986. Ed. Nihon hōsō kyōkai 『日本放 送協会』 [NEH]. Cassettes and Tapes. Tokyo: NEH.

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Okuda, Kiyoaki 奥田清明. 2005. Nakamura Hajime sensei to jainakyō kenkyū 「中村元先生 とジャイナ教研究」 [Prof. Hajime Nakamura and His Studies of Jainism]. In Nakamura Hajime: bukkyō no oshie, jinsei no chie 『中村元:仏教の教え・人生の知恵』 [Hajime Nakamura: Teachings of Buddhism, Wisdom of Life], 170–176. Tokyo: Kawadeshobō shinsha. Tamura, Kōyū 田村晃祐. 2005. Nakamura Hajime hakushi no nihon bukkyōron 「中村元博士 の日本仏教論」 [Dr. Hajime Nakamura’s Thought on Japanese Buddhism]. In Nakamura Hajime: bukkyō no oshie, jinsei no chie 『中村元:仏教の教え・人生の知恵』 [Hajime Nakamura: Teachings of Buddhism, Wisdom of Life], 165–169. Tokyo: Kawadeshobō Shinsha. Wright, Arthur Frederick. 1981. Foreword to Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples, by Hajime Nakamura, ed. Philip P. Wiener, v–ix. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii. Yamashita, Hiroshi 山下博司. 2005. Nakamura Hanjime sensei to hindūkyō kenkyū 「中村元 先生とヒンドゥー教研究」 [Prof. Nakamura and the Studies of Hinduism]. In Nakamura Hajime: bukkyō no oshie, jinsei no chie 『中村元:仏教の教え・人生の知恵』 [Hajime Nakamura: Teachings of Buddhism, Wisdom of Life], 110–113. Tokyo: Kawadeshobō Shinsha. Toshi’ichi Endo is Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong. He is specialized in Buddhist studies, especially in Early Buddhism, Pali Commentarial studies, Sri Lankan Buddhism, and Japanese Buddhism. He is a former professor in the Postgraduate Institute of Pali and Buddhist Studies at the University of Kelaniya and was associate professor at the University of Hong Kong. He finished his PhD at the  University of Kelaniyan in 1995. His publications include, among others, Dāna: The Development of Its Concept and Practice, Pali Atthakatha Correspondence Table (co-compiled), Buddha in Theravada Buddhism: A Study of the Concept of Buddha in the Pali Commentaries, and Studies in Pali Commentarial Literature: Sources, Controversies and Insights.

Chapter 31

On the Buddhist Thought of Tamaki Kōshirō Makio Takemura

1  Memories of My Years as a Student I attended Tokyo University, enrolling in the Department of Indian Philosophy of the Faculty of Letters from 1969 to 1971, the master’s program in the graduate school’s Indian philosophy curriculum from 1972 to 1974, and its doctoral program from 1974 to 1975. I then dropped out of the doctoral program and took up the position of assistant at the department. During this period the three giants of this field, NAKAMURA Hajime 中村元 (1911–1999), HIRAKAWA Akira 平川彰 (1915– 2002), and TAMAKI Kōshirō 玉城康四郎 (1915–1999), were teaching in the Department of Indian Philosophy, and I took their courses and received their instruction. As I think about it now, I was indeed blessed with fortune. At the same time that I graduated from the department, NAKAMURA Hajime retired. In his daily lessons, nothing seemed to ever bother him, and he was always peaceful and genial. I had decided to work for a publisher, and when I went to pay

John W. M. Krummel is an Associate Professor at the Department of Religious Studies, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, USA. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the New School for Social Research and a Ph.D. in religion from Temple University. He is the author of Nishida Kitarō’s Chiasmatic Chorology: Place of Dialectice, Dialectic of Place. His writings on topics such as Heidegger, Nishida, Schürmann, and Buddhist philosophy, among others, have appeared in a variety of philosophy journals and books. He is also the Editor of Contemporary Japanese Philosophy: A Reader and the Co-translator of Place and Dialectic: Two Essays by Nishida Kitarō. He has translated other works from Japanese and German into English. He is the Co-Editor for Social Imaginaries, Assistant Editor of The Journal of Japanese Philosophy, and the President of the International Association of Japanese Philosophy. This chapter was translated by John W. M. Krummel (Hobart and William Smith Colleges). M. Takemura (*) Toyo University, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_31

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him my respects on my graduation, he encouraged me by saying that editors will become the movers for university professors and will be regarded as higher in rank. HIRAKAWA Akira had the reputation of taking good care of graduate students and many adored him. Because he had had a difficult childhood, he was very practical in his thinking and regarded matters from a variety of standpoints. TAMAKI Kōshirō’s area of specialty at Tokyo University was China. While he did not have very many students, he did not pay attention to worldly matters. He had the countenance of an entirely aloof philosopher who explores the truth. I decided to study with TAMAKI Kōshirō because I initially wanted to study Kegon thought in graduate school. When I selected “consciousness-only” (S. vijñāpti-mātra, J. yuishiki 唯識) thought, which ranks as the stage preceding Kegon, as the topic of research for my master’s study, he allowed me to freely engage in my research. He silently kept an eye on and cared for me as I conducted my research the way I wanted to. I would like here to briefly mention the characteristics of these three professors. NAKAMURA Hajime identified himself as a philosopher without limiting himself to either the East or the West. His research domain was vast and, in fact, without confining himself to China or Japan, he also dealt with Greek philosophy and modern European philosophy and attempted to write a world history of intellectual speculation. He was also the founder of the Society of Comparative Thought. However, his method of inquiry focused only on a comparison of the subject matter of the various speculative traditions of the East and the West. His was not the posture of one deeply delving into the various issues of human existence. However, the breadth of his work is eye-opening. On the other hand, HIRAKAWA Akira has left excellent and substantive work based on the literature in every field of Buddhist studies, focusing on research of the Ritsuzō 律蔵 (S. Vinaya-piṭaka) and the emergence of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and leading up to his studies in Chinese and Japanese Buddhist history. As such, it would not be an exaggeration to regard him as an unprecedented Buddhologist. His standpoint was to derive his conclusions as objectively (inductively) and logically (deductively) as possible, without inserting any value judgments into the scholarship. This method was based on a tradition inherited from Professor UI Hakuju 宇井伯寿 of the Indian Philosophy Department of Tokyo University. Hirakawa had an outstanding power of recollection and was able to give guidance in many issues, for example, where a certain phrase or word from a Buddhist scripture could be found in the Taishō daizōkyō 大正大蔵経 (The Great Taishō Collection of Sūtras). He also held the opinion that one ought not to engage in comparative thought without a firm foundation in research in a specific field. In contrast to the these two, TAMAKI Kōshirō engaged in the study of Buddhism as well as Western philosophy from the standpoint of subjectively pursuing the issue of his own salvation and nirvana. In fact, he was engaged not only in the activities of academia but also in the practice of the Buddha-way. He began practicing Zen 禅 from a young age and, at some point, began practicing under an old master who incorporated Rinzai-like methods into the Sōtō sect. However, Tamaki states that, in the end, noticing conspicuous worldly desires, such as honor, in the old master, who

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had allegedly attained enlightenment, and experiencing the limits of the relevance of “kōan” 公案 practice to his own problems, he left that Zen training. Afterwards he developed and trained in his own method of deepening “dhyāna” (J. zen禅定), which he continued for the rest of his life, and, in his later years, he even held “sitting meditation” (J. zazen 座禅) sessions at his home with scholars as trainees. The scholarly style of TAMAKI Kōshirō was more speculative than demonstrative. Rather than being an objective investigation of Buddhist thought, it was an attempt to construct what we might call “Tamaki philosophy.” HIRAKAWA Akira observed that such a method, even if it was good for Tamaki himself, did not attract students. But even so, developing an original philosophy would have been beyond the scope of Tamaki’s concerns. Yet, if his lived quest in the pursuit of his own truth had in some sense provided inspiration for younger people, this would have been of value. Tamaki in this way, coupled with his skillful narrative, had many fans from the general public. While HIRAKAWA Akira’s Buddhalogy was popular among experts, Professor TAMAKI Kōshirō’s Buddhalogy received support from a broader range. I hope that this discussion can serve as information concerning where TAMAKI Kōshirō stood within the world of Buddhist studies in Japan.

2  T  he Buddhalogy of Tamaki Kōshirō: A Summary of His Study of Comparative Thought TAMAKI Kōshirō was born in 1915  in Kumamoto, studied at the Fifth Higher School, and eventually studied at Tokyo University’s Department of Indian Philosophy and Sanskrit Literature of the Faculty of Letters. In 1942, he was conscripted and entered military life, and after the war in 1951, he was re-admitted into graduate school and studied Buddhism and Western philosophy. In 1954, he assumed the position of associate professor at the Faculty of Letters at Tōyō University, and in 1959 he assumed the position of associate professor at the Faculty of Letters of Tokyo University. In 1976, he reached retirement age of Tokyo University and assumed the duty of professor at the Faculty of Letters of Tōhoku University until 1979, then became professor at the Faculty of the Humanities and Sciences of Nihon (Japan) University. The spiritual path of his later years up until 1995 is detailed in The Manifestation of the Dharma: Learning the Buddha-Way (J. Damma no kengen: butsudō ni manabu ダンマの顕現––仏道に学ぶ) (Tamaki 1995). He passed away in January 1999 due to illness. Throughout his later years, he published several writings that trace his own life path, including the above-mentioned work. Needless to say, they include An Inquiry into the Buddha-Way (J. Butsudō tankyū 仏道探究), a work from his later years and published posthumously (Tamaki 1999). These works record the following incidents from his life: He was born into a family in which his grandfather was a believer in the Jōdo Shin 浄土真 (True Pure Land) sect, and this exerted some influence on Tamaki. In a course on natural science during his high school years, learning of the difficulty in distinguishing between living and non-living things, he asked several

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fundamental questions, such as, what it means to be alive, what it is that would pass­on without any distinction from non-living things, and, if there is a living soul, when passing-on [to the afterlife] would be possible with certainty. During the summer of his third year in high school, he trained in sitting meditation at the Bairinji temple in Kurume and was struck by the character of the old master there. When he was studying in the Department of Indian Philosophy at Tokyo University, he looked up to OKUYAMA Gentarō 奥山源太郎 (monastic name: Keikai慧海), who was his senior. Okuyama had mastered Zen and was even adept at healing, and Tamaki received instruction from him in sitting meditation. But, in the end, he concluded that OKUYAMA Keikai’s behavior was not in accord with the Buddha-way. (OKUYAMA Keikai passed away in 1942.) During the same period, Tamaki practiced sitting meditation under FURUKAWA Gyōdō 古川堯道 of the Engakuji temple in Kamakura as well and also became a devout believer of ASHIKAGA Jōen 足 利浄円 of the Jōdo Shin sect. During his employment at Tōyō University, he practiced sitting meditation under Master HAKUSUI Keisan 白水敬山 of the Heirinji temple. In the year following his transfer to the Faculty of Letters of Tokyo University, he practiced sitting meditation under YASUTANI Haku’un 安谷白雲, the student of HARADA Sogaku 原田祖岳. Beginning to question kōan Zen, he continued his practice in search of “the Buddha’s Zen.” On February 2, 1941, he had an explosive religious experience in Tokyo University’s Central Library and ten days later returned to his former state. He experienced several such “explosions,” large and small, throughout his lifetime. Tamaki states that in December 1993, when he was seventy-nine years old, his “yearning mind” suddenly dropped off, and since then, every time he entered samādhi, the dharma would overflow his entire personal body with a tremendous force emanating without end outwards to the great cosmos (Tamaki 1999: 47). During the course of searching for truth in his youth, Tamaki refused to choose between Zen or Jōdo (Pure Land) and sought, without bias, instruction from anyone or any school that could satisfy his religious impulse. He then devoted himself to self-cultivation through sitting meditation under YASUTANI Haku’un. He received the kōan of the character mu 無 (“nothing”) and, grappling with this puzzle, he eventually attained kenshō 見性 (“seeing one’s own nature”). Tamaki writes: Recalling my state of mind of that time, while I have repeatedly “exploded” and returned to my normal state, I have come to realize that kenshō is to “explode.” It is an “explosion,” in other words, an awakening. The two are homogeneous (Tamaki 1999: 23).

In self-cultivation in the way of Zen, one is given the task of grappling with kōans [in addition to sitting meditation]. However, at some point, Tamaki abruptly found himself profoundly in doubt concerning this practice. His question was as follows: While practicing in this way I came to realize a matter of surprisingly great importance. Kōans involve the mondōs 問答 [questions and answers] of the Zen priests and monks of China. I was given such a kōan and was desperately grappling with it. In other words, it was someone else’s (another person’s) issue. If the questions and answers of the Zen priests and monks were themselves problems that were alive, a real kōan would entail immediately throwing to the master the fundamental issue of one’s own present self or, put differently, the fact that one has returned to one’s former state. That is to say that while struggling with

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each succeeding kōan given to me after my kenshō, I had become oblivious to the fact that I had returned to my former state. I was astonished with the fact that an absolutely unsettled dark mass of ego — with the satisfaction of solving one kōan after another — was holding sway deep in the depths of the unconscious. If I were to continue kōan meditation in this way, this unsettled mass of ego would probably have remained there alone just as it is (Tamaki 1999: 23–24).

In this way TAMAKI Kōshirō recalls, “…master Yasutani examined my situation in detail and readily confirmed it. At this point I dissociated myself from the Zen sect’s practice of sitting meditation and resolved instead to learn ‘the Buddha’s dhyāna.’” (Tamaki 1999: 24). His [ensuing] practice and experience became very much involved in the formation of this thought. On the other hand, he vigorously dedicated himself to scholarly research during this period as well. While at Tōyō University, he studied Kant and the Vijñāpti-­mātra (Consciousness-only) thought, as well as the thought of both the Mountain and OffMountain schools of Huisi 慧思 (515–577) and Zhiyi 智顗 (538–597) of the Chinese Tiantai (J. Tendai) 天台 sect. After his transfer to Tokyo University, he was responsible for Chinese Buddhism and Japanese Buddhism and also lectured in an introductory course on Buddhism. During this period he completed his dissertation on the Tiantai theory of “true aspects,” in Unfolding the Grasping of the Mind: the Tiantai True Aspects Doctrine (Kokoro hasoku no tenkai: tendai jissō ron 心把捉の展開–– 天台実相論) (Tamaki 1961). In 1965 he collected his studies on modern Indian thought, for example, Ramakrishna (1836–1886), Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950), and Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), to author The Formation of Modern Indian Thought (J. Kindai indo shisō no keisei 近代インド思想の形成) (Tamaki 2001b). In addition, he published The Formation of Chinese Buddhist Thought (J. Chūgoku bukkyō shisō no keisei 中国仏教思想の形成) (Tamaki 1971), and then having researched Kegon (C. Huayan 華厳) thought, he published The Worldview of Eternity: The Avataṃsaka (J. Eien no sekaikan: kegon 永遠の世界観––華厳) (Tamaki 1965) and Introduction to Huayan (J. Kegon nyūmon 華厳入門) (Tamaki 2003). Attempting a thorough elucidation of Dōgen’s 道元 (1200–1254) thought, he published the Shōbōgenzō 正法眼蔵 in two parts as Lectures on the Buddhist Canon (Tamaki 1993), and completed six volumes of Shōbōgenzō: A Contemporary Translation (J. Gendaigoyaku shōbōgenzō 現代語訳 正法眼蔵) (Tamaki 1993–1994). As stated previously, TAMAKI Kōshirō began pursuing “the Buddha’s dhyāna,” and from that period on, the study of original Buddhism became a major subject for him. In that context, on the basis of a passage from the Udāna, with a scene depicting Śākyamuni’s attainment of Buddhahood, Tamaki ascertained that the Śākyamuni’s awakening was to “the manifestation of the dharma.” His first essay referring to this was “The Primal State of the Dharma in Buddhism” (J. Bukkyō ni okeru hō no kongen tai 仏教における法の根源態), published in The Investigation of the Dharma in Buddhism (J. Bukkyō ni okeru hō no kenkyū 仏教における法の 研究) (Tamaki 1975). He then delved further into this and came to interpret or assess other philosophies and thought from this standpoint. He accordingly came to illuminate and understand Dōgen’s Zen or enlightenment from that standpoint as well. This can be discerned, for example, in his introduction to Shōbōgenzō Part 1.

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Let me present here a section from it. In this we witness Tamaki’s attitude of attempting a subjective investigation of Buddhism. Before inquiring into Dōgen’s “Buddha,” we must first clarify the archetype of “Buddha” in the Buddha himself. Needless to say, that archetype is “the manifestation of the dharma to the trainee”…. We will try to discern in this standard of the Buddha-way Dōgen’s Buddha-way. And to question the meaning of the “Buddha” that became manifest to Dōgen himself in the transitions of Dōgen’s Buddha-way is precisely the theme of this book. Needless to say, it is indispensable for the author himself [myself] to participate in and learn of the Buddha’s dhyāna. For otherwise how could there be any comprehension of the meaning of the “Buddha” that became manifest to Dōgen as he devoted himself to the Buddha-way? The more Dōgen concentrates on the Buddha-way, the more the meaning of the “Buddha” in its appealing manifestations fluctuates. Thus in the course of Dōgen’s long truth-seeking, a “Buddha” possessing innumerable senses emerges. If we were to refer to each instance by instance in every volume of the entirety of the Shōbōgenzō, we would likely find innumerable senses of the “Buddha.” Even if only examining the passages cited in this essay, as is already evident, the list would be endless. Nevertheless no matter how myriad the senses of the Buddha are in the Shōbōgenzō, there is no difference in the fact that each “Buddha” is without form. We can see that that formless “Buddha” had ripened by degrees within Dōgen’s personal body. We cannot even imagine how the “Buddha” would have ripened in his personal body all the more had he been able to maintain a lifespan of seventy or eighty years. But it would probably be difficult to predict how that ripening would have occurred. Herein emerges one significant issue in the entirety of the Buddha-way (Tamaki 1993: 104).

Tamaki sees that in Dōgen the Buddha [its meaning] was not distinctly established. He states that while the dharma is also the “tathāgata” (J. nyorai 如来), its meaning becomes stable only after it became a proper noun. In that sense, considering that Dōgen passed away at a young age and was at the peak of his development, he makes the following assessment and conclusion: For Dōgen himself, that is to say for ourselves, to encounter the name of the Buddha where we can truly nod in approval: that would be the Buddha-name that is birthed from oneself as one earnestly engages in simply sitting, sitting in the lotus position, being prompted and supported by the tathāgata. When the immeasurable life of the Buddha finally emerges after acting, feeling, and calling that Buddha-name, it signals the perfection of Dōgen’s own, or in broader terms, our own Buddha-way. Needless to say this is but one scene within the entire Buddha-way. And it is from that single scene that emerges a new beginning in the face of the future (Tamaki 1993: 115–116).

Tamaki, in fact, was not only engaging in the study of Buddhist thought, he was also deeply engaged in the study of Western philosophy and contributed immensely to comparative thought studies with Western philosophy and Buddhism. In particular, he investigated in detail Kant and Vijñāpti-mātra (Consciousness-only) thought and claimed that between them there is a relationship of close correspondence. He was also profoundly drawn to Schelling and had read through all of his works. There is an essay of comparative research from a relatively early period, called “Tathāgatagarba Thought and Schelling’s Philosophy” (J. Nyorai zō shisō to

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sheringu tetsugaku 如来蔵思想とシェリング哲学). However, Tamaki’s assessment of Schelling was that his was “…ultimately a rallying cry for positivist philosophy [according to Tamaki, a philosophy that begins with truth itself rather than being directed towards the truth] that asserts the accomplishment of salvation by Christ. It lacks philosophical unfolding” (Tamaki 1997: 236–237; Tamaki 1999: 63–64). Furthermore, immediately after the war, when living in Kumamoto, he developed a deep appreciation for Heidegger, and, at the age of fifty, he toured the world in 1966 and paid a visit to Heidegger and conversed with him. He writes as follows concerning what transpired: Because I had discovered the commentatorial archetype of “the manifestation of the dharma” only when nearing sixty, I had not yet at that time been aware of the dharma’s manifestation. During that period my mind was captivated by Kegon and it had taken a permanent root at the back of my mind. With Kegon on my mind, I said to Heidegger: “What you mean by being [Sein] presences from the ground [Grund]. But in my case, it presences not only from the ground but from four, eight, and ten directions.” At that point Heidegger, huddling his short plump body to make it even smaller and forcefully extending his right hand forward, stated, “in my case as well, it comes from over there,” and quickly withdrew his hand. Seeing this at that moment I realized that this man had also received the manifestation of the true God into his own body. And I came to understand that those in Germany who have been criticizing him for being an atheist have no comprehension of him at all (Tamaki 1997: 240).

However, Tamaki concludes that “in the end Heidegger as well produces nothing more than philosophical thought. He did not reach holistic-personal thought. Therefore no matter how one cultivates that thought, that is all there is. By no means could one transcend thought” (Tamaki 1997: 241). Tamaki’s assessment appears to be that the philosophers of Western modernity, in the end, had failed to attain the ultimate standpoint of his own thinking. Tamaki studied the thought of Jesus, Paul, Socrates, and Confucius of antiquity, and, as a result, claimed that, like the Buddha, they had all experienced “the manifestation of the dharma” and spoke of that experience on the basis of “holistic-­ personal thought.” Furthermore, although their expressions are distinct, the content is the same. These studies occupy a significant place within Tamaki’s comparative thought studies. We shall limit ourselves here, in this regard, to the passage dealing with Jesus: It is said that when Jesus stood up in the Jordan River after receiving baptism in the river from John, God’s pneuma descended from the heavens like a dove and appeared to him alone. At that moment a voice from heaven was heard, “This is my beloved son and with him I am pleased.” By God’s pneuma is meant the breath of God, the life of God, God Himself, life itself…. When that pneuma of God appeared to Jesus, it was guaranteed that Jesus is the Son of God. And that was Jesus’ awakening. Jesus awoke as life itself became manifest. One awakens as the Buddha or life itself manifests. If that is the case, even though the words — spirit (holy spirit?) and dharma, God and tathāgata — are different and their expository methods distinct, are they not the same in the end? (Tamaki 1999: 161–162).1

 Here Tamaki refers to the biblical Gospel of Matthews 3:16–17.

1

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As evident from the above, TAMAKI Kōshirō has produced a large quantity of writings, covering a wide area, driven by personal concerns. I believe they provide much inspiration for trainees and students searching for truth. In addition, his popular books written in a manner that is comparatively easy to understand are gaining the popularity and favor of a broad demographic. Nevertheless, if we were to examine and evaluate these works as scholarly studies, they appear to have certain elements difficult to assess as accurate or reasonable. For example, in his comparative study of Kant and Vijñāpti-mātra (Consciousness-­ only) thought, Tamaki takes the various eye-, ear-, nose-, tongue-, body-, and mind-­ consciousnesses as corresponding to what Kant means by sensation, the “obscuration-consciousness” (S. manas-vijñāna) as corresponding to the imagination, and the “storehouse-consciousness” (S. ālāya-vijñāna) as corresponding to apperception, to indicate how much they resemble one another (Tamaki 1997: 234; Tamaki 1999: 61). However, it is unthinkable for there to be consciousness in sensation or for there to be the power of imagination in the obscuration-consciousness that is always fixated upon an unceasing and unchanging substantial ego. Nor can it be thought that apperception is proper to the storehouse-consciousness that sustains the individual body (the body furnished with the five [sensory] roots) and the environing world of matter (the receptacle world) and that is said to be nescient. We ought rather to regard the imagination and apperception as belonging to what Buddhism calls “mind-consciousness” (S. mano-vijñāna). Tamaki claims that the storehouse-consciousness involves ego-attachment (Tamaki 1997: 65–66). In particular, he makes an appealing point in the following passage where he states: While there is an object for the obscuration-consciousness by which one is captivated, in the storehouse-consciousness one is integrated with that object, and we can accordingly say that the storehouse-consciousness itself is ego-attachment. Furthermore if we were to state this differently the very fact of I myself is therefore ego-attachment (Tamaki 1997: 66).

But, at least, according to Vasubandhu’s Triṃśikā-vijñaptimātratā (Thirty Verses on Consciousness-Only), the storehouse-consciousness is “undefiled and indefinable” [or: morally neutral without impediments] (S. akliṣṭa-avyākṛta), and the “mental element” (S. caittasikā dharma) corresponding to it is nothing more than a mental factor that operates pervasively. Neither “afflictions” (S. kleśa) nor “secondary afflictions” (S. upakleśa) apply to it nor do attachment or fixation accompany it. Only thus can it be the receptacle for perfuming. Although according to Sthiramati’s theory, as discussed in the Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi-śāstra (Discourse on the Theory of Consciousness-Only), there is attachment in all of the eight consciousnesses, this theory is refuted in the Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi-śāstra as unreasonable even when viewed under the light of the Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra (Discourse on the Stages of Yogic Practice) or of the Triṃśikā-vijñaptimātratā. The assertion that the storehouse-­ consciousness involves ego-attachment would inevitably be denied within the theoretical system of Vijñāpti-mātra thought.

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3  Holistic-Personal Thought and the Manifestation of the Dharma 3.1  On Holistic-Personal Thought TAMAKI Kōshirō claims that through Buddhist studies and comparative thought studies he came to “a particular thesis concerning that archetype of universal awakening.” The thesis is that “when pure life that is without form becomes manifest to the subject engaged in holistic-personal thought, he/she realizes for the first time a fundamental conversion of the human being itself, in other words, an awakening” (Tamaki 2001a, Preface). What he means here by “pure life” is the dharma he frequently mentions. In this way Tamaki Kōshirō’s thought has become integrated into two key phrases, “holistic-personal thought” and “dharma.” In the following we will look at Tamaki’s explications of these two terms. We will first discuss holistic-personal thought. The work What is at the Root is almost entirely dedicated to the discussion of holistic-personal thought, containing chapters entitled, “The Theory of the Comparative Thought of Holistic-Personal Thought,” “Holistic-Personal Thought and the Seven Views of Life,” “Analytical Psychology and Holistic-Personal Thought,” “Cerebral Physiology and Holistic-­ Personal Thought,” etc. What sort of thing does Tamaki call holistic-personal thought? At the opening of “The Theory of the Comparative Thought of Holistic-Personal Thought,” he states the following: What is holistic-personal thought (contemplation)? It is the counterpart to the thinking of objects. Object-thought, being established on the basis of the correlation between subject and object, is epistemological and involves classification. In terms of cerebral physiology it belongs to the function of the cerebral neo-cortex. It has dominated every field of human thought from the very beginning of thinking in the human race till now. We can say that for human beings it is the most natural and instinctive. By contrast holistic-personal thought is a thinking that engages spirit and body, not to mention, wisdom, feeling, and mind, that is, the holistic person as one body. In Indian thought this was yoga and in Buddhism it was called zen [meditation] (or dhyāna), and in China it was called míng xiǎng (contemplation). When speaking of meditation we may be reminded of the vernacular saying, “to be lost in contemplation.” But primarily contemplation involves the whole person. The character míng (J. mei 冥) can be found here and there in the Chinese classics, but the phrase míng xiǎng 冥想 (not瞑想), as far as the author is aware of, can be traced back to Zhi Dun 支遁 (314–366 CE). He uses the phrase to mean meditation (J. zen) in Buddhism (Tamaki 2001a: 33).

In this case we may understand this holistic-personal thought to correspond to meditation or dhyāna. Indeed, the natural sciences try to achieve results by placing the object before oneself, extracting its elements through division, abstracting the laws amongst them, and manipulating those various elements. Therein lies the object-­logic that takes as its premise subject-object dualism. In contrast Tamaki affirms a way of thought that subjectively inquires after the truth by uniting the mind with the body.

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Zen originally had inherited, from Indian Buddhism, the traditions of “precepts, meditation, and wisdom” [the three disciplines for observance], “śamatha vipaśyanā” (“tranquility and contemplation”), and the practice of non-thinking. This act of the cessation of thought involves the mind’s unification. In unifying the mind there lies the horizon for observing anything. In this tradition stemming from India, there would be frequent cases, in such observations, of visualizing the way things are as objects. While dhyāna (meditation) and knowledge were practiced as indivisible, Tamaki would rather speak of meditation (J. zen) or dhyāna only, and in that respect we may say that he is somewhat distinct. However, in the method of seeing the four Nikāyas and the four wisdoms of suchness (so-called seeing consciousness-only) in Vijñāpti-mātra, one is ultimately forced upon a horizon where there can be neither subject nor object. Passing through that point, non-discriminatory wisdom is opened up and true suchness is disclosed. At this ultimate pole, one stands upon a world that transcends subject-object dualism as well as object-logic. This method, however, of viewing Vijñāpti-mātra, while preserved in the literature, was not necessarily concretely inherited as a method of practice. This method of seeing in actuality, thus, had no effect upon Buddhist adherents of later generations. If there is a tradition in Buddhism that had an effect upon Tamaki, it would have to be the self-cultivation experience of “sitting meditation” (J. zazen). In particular the Zen (C. Chan) of China was called patriarch Zen and professed, among others, the oneness of meditation and wisdom. Its point was that the pursuit of dhyāna is directly related to the realization of wisdom. While Tamaki rejected kōan Zen, he did not reject zazen (sitting meditation). Instead, it is probably from the standpoint of zazen that he became interested in “the Buddha’s dhyāna.” While Tamaki studied the Buddha’s dhyāna, the holistic-personal thought he advocates, being commensurable with that of Jesus or Socrates, does not necessarily entail the crossing of legs, the placing of hands in a mudrā, and the taking of a specific position. In particular, it does not assume acting on the basis of constant bodily control. Nevertheless, it demands an investigation of one’s entire body and spirit. In What is at the Root, there is a chapter called “Holistic-Personal Thought and the Seven Views of Life.” Here Tamaki establishes the following seven stages concerning the view of life: (1) life according to molecular biology; (2) life according to cerebral physiology; (3) life as the object of medical science; (4) life as self-­ consciousness; (5) life of the self in terms of the unconscious; (6) life as the personal body; and (7) life of the self in terms of openness. In regard to these seven horizons of life, he states that by “pursuing the unifying substance of self-existence” (Tamaki 2001a, 103) on the basis of holistic-personal thought, one goes deeper at each stage until finally arriving at their ultimate. In other words, by deepening holistic-personal thought, these seven horizons are gradually illuminated. Concerning these seven horizons, Tamaki explains: [Of the seven,] the first three stages are life viewed scientifically, and the following three stages are life immediately connected to one’s own self. If we were to call the former life from the standpoint of the objective viewpoint, the latter would be life from the subjective standpoint. Furthermore, the ranking of each stage, taking self-existence as the axis,

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expresses a tendency that inclines from far to near, from abstract to concrete, from superficial to deep, and from exterior to interior. At the same time each proceeding stage develops by enveloping the preceding stage. We can moreover say that while the first six stages indicate life in closure, by contrast only the final seventh stage indicates a life that is open (Tamaki 2001a: 90).

In this way he claims that through repeated training in holistic-personal thought, the ultimate of self-existence becomes realized. Here Tamaki explicates and rates each of the life-views. “Life as self-­ consciousness” is what corresponds to the issue of what Kant calls self-­consciousness or transcendental apperception. “Life of the self in terms of the unconscious” deals mainly with Freud and also engages in comparison with the manas- vijñāna and the ālāya-vijñāna of Vijñāpti-mātra thought. (In that case, this seems somewhat to clash with his earlier identification of Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) apperception with the ālāya-vijñāna.) In regard to “life as the personal body,” he says that it is something that transcends the ālāya-vijñāna. Let me explicate what he means by this life. In holistic-personal thought, this would be the substance that had been condensed through the concentration and unification of the self’s whole existence. Tamaki calls this the personal body because it is unmistakably a kind of body, wherein all mental acts, both conscious and unconscious, have been assimilated and dissolved. Even though he calls it a body, it is not something that opposes the mind or spirit in any sense. In addition, because it dissolves everything belonging to the mind or spirit, we cannot call it (an ālāya-) consciousness as in Vijñāpti-mātra thought. What is certain is that it is a certain kind of thing or substance that dissolves or assimilates into itself every so-called mental or material thing (Tamaki 2001a: 104). By such a self, Tamaki means the self that will become evident later as a karmic result (karma-vipāka). In his own path of truth-seeking, only after being led to the phrase, “the manifestation of the dharma,” did he make the discovery of “the karmic body.” However, the order is reversed here: in disclosing the self-searching process founded on holistic-personal thought, one first becomes conscious of the karmic body and then later encounters the dharma. Concerning the final life of the self as openness, he states: “Formless pure life is enabled to turn from the closed self to the open self only after it becomes manifest to the personal body and permeates and fulfills it” (Tamaki 2001a: 107). He writes here: “This means the disintegration of selfhood that is merged with the body. When that happens the body is opened. That is to say that the center of the body is swept-­ through with formless pure life” (ibid.). Yet he also adds: “This does not mean that the bodiliness of the personal body has dissolved. For the personal body that emerges ‘here and now’ through its entanglements with all kinds of things from the endless past, as embodied, is unmistakably real” (ibid.). Accordingly, at the ultimate stage of holistic-personal thought, oneness with formless pure life is realized. Perhaps that formless pure life itself is the very body of holistic-personal thought. If so, what is it? In the following I would like to pursue this issue.

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3.2  On the Dharma That Becomes Manifest We will now discuss the dharma. In the history of Buddhism, there is no unequivocal agreement concerning what exactly Śākyamuni’s enlightenment consisted of. Within that context TAMAKI Kōshirō expressed it in the phrase, “the manifestation of the dharma.” This corresponds in form to the saying of the Buddha in the “Important Matter” in the Vinaya-piṭaka, and the Udāna also contains such a line. Accordingly Tamaki decided that Śākyamuni’s enlightenment means “the manifestation of the dharma.” Let us look at Tamaki’s reasoning on this point: Evening Verse: When the dharma manifests to the trainee intently entering into samādhi, at that moment, indeed, all of his doubt disappears. That is to say that he knows the dharma of co-­ dependent origination. Midnight Verse When the dharma manifests to the trainee intently entering into samādhi, at that moment, indeed, all of his doubt disappears. That is to say that he had come to know the extinction of the various relationships. Daybreak Verse When the dharma manifests to the trainee intently entering into samādhi, at that moment, indeed, all of his doubt disappears. He stands secure having shattered the army of demons. It is as though the sun had illuminated the void (Tamaki 1999: 29–30).

In regard to this dharma, Tamaki says, “it cannot mean life itself completely separate from form. Although it is, so to speak, what we may call pure life, we must not become captivated by such words.” He explains: When exposed to these words, I experienced a solution to the meaning of religious experience, such as the large and small explosions I had undergone, or that of defects and deficiencies being thrown out through the torn bottom of an old tub. This single phrase, the concise phrase, “the manifestation of the dharma” had converted my consciousness (Tamaki 1999: 30–31). Moreover, when the Buddha gained some disciples later, he came to rephrase the dharma as tathāgata (nyorai). Because the tathāgata is the dharmakāya (法身; J. hosshin), it possesses formless life as its body. Therefore, although dharma and tathāgata are identical, we come to feel greater intimacy with it when we regard it as the tathāgata. Thus I decided to write that “the dharma or the tathāgata becomes manifest.” In other words, the absolute other-power that means “the manifestation of the dharma” would mean the absolute power of the tathāgata (Tamaki 1999: 31).

In regard to the transitions between the above three verses, he provides the following explanation: In other words, in the poem that begins with “the manifestation of the dharma” in “the evening,” co-dependent origination becomes apparent and, moreover, penetrates the Buddha’s personal body. When it becomes “midnight,” co-dependent origination is ­extinguished and the dharma penetrates the Buddha’s personal body even further and is thoroughly grasped. And at “daybreak,” the dharma that had penetrated his personal body overflows the personal body while shattering every sort of worldly desire, and emanates without end towards cosmic space as if the sun were illuminating the void (Tamaki 1999: 33).

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In regard to this last verse, Tamaki renders it anew: The dharma that manifested itself to and penetrated the Buddha’s personal body and was thoroughly grasped overflows his personal body while shattering every sort of worldly desire, and emanates without end towards cosmic space as if the sun were illuminating the void (Tamaki 1999: 49).

And he adds: Seeing this, even if there is a great difference in dimension between the Buddha’s dhyāna and my own that emulates it, in terms of quality they are identical. For in my own dhyāna as well, the dharma that had been thoroughly grasped by my self overflows myself and emanates towards the infinite space (ibid.).

In any case what then is the content of this dharma? Concerning this, he has only stated that it is a formless and pure life. Indeed he has not provided any explanation beyond this point. What sort of a thing then is pure life? He does suggest, however, that what emanates is “the four immeasurable minds of kindness, compassion, joy, and giving,” or, put differently, “great wisdom and great compassion.” He further states here that “the karmic body is completely eradicated” (Tamaki 1999: 50). Concerning what the dharma becomes manifest to, he frequently mentions the karmic body (or karmic results, karma vipāka). He specifies on page 33 of Inquiry into the Buddha-Way that “the dharma or the tathāgata becomes manifest to the karmic body.” His explication in regard to this “karmic body” taking on a fixed shape, is indeed appealing. For example, he states the following: It is the knot of the cosmic community for at the same time that it is my own all-inclusive body manifesting here and now, reincarnating and transmigrating from the infinite past while intersecting with all living things and all sorts of things, being born and dying, dying and being born anew, it intersects with all sorts of things. It is at the apex of self-nature while also being at the apex of public-nature. And its root, furthermore, is deep without bottom, unconscious, unknowing, unillumined, dark, deficient, and incoherent (Tamaki 1999: 34).

In this way, TAMAKI Kōshirō’s thought did not focus only on the manifestation of the dharma but concluded with the idea that “the dharma or the tathāgata becomes manifest precisely to this karmic body and continues penetrating it and being thoroughly grasped by it.” He claims further that this dharma is active without end and that all the Buddhas emerged from out of its infinite activity (Tamaki 1999: 34–35). Of Tamaki’s vast oeuvre, all of them return to this theme. And not only is this the case for Śākyamuni, but the claim would be that this likewise applies to Jesus, Paul, Socrates, and Confucius as well. In the following I would like to state my own view concerning Tamaki’s that “through holistic-personal thought the dharma becomes manifest to the karmic body, and moreover becomes thoroughly grasped by it and furthermore emanates from the karmic body.” The dharma that appears here in the texts is in the plural. To that extent it is greatly doubtful whether, as Tamaki claims, it can be something like pure life, that is, without shape or form. Some readings take the word to be in the feminine singular, but, generally speaking, that would be impossible. Even from the context prior to these lines, there is the so-called observation of seeing in order, see-

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ing in reverse, and seeing both in order and in reverse of the twelve-fold dependent origination; and the dharma that becomes manifest here would signify each item of the twelve-fold chain. In the first place, according to the Udāna, when Śākyamuni “was enlightened for the first time” under the Bodhi tree, only after enjoying nirvāna for seven days and “re-emerging from that contemplation,” did he engage in the observation of seeing the twelve-fold co-dependent origination in order, in reverse, and in both directions (Nakamura 1992: 393–398). These verses do not declare that his discovery was made during contemplation. NAKAMURA Hajime renders this passage as “…when all kinds of things become manifest to the brahmin endeavoring at deep thought…” (ibid.). We cannot deny that there is also a way of reading the verses by viewing them as poetry separate from the commentary (the prose section) of the Udāna. But, in such a case as well, it cannot be denied that the dharma that appears in these verses is plural. Tamaki himself, in his previously mentioned essay, “The Primal State of the Dharma in Buddhism,” renders the passage as “the various dharmas…” (Tamaki 1975: 58). The line “It is as though the sun had illuminated the void,” in the final verse is a metaphor that attempts to express the fact that Śākyamuni, having sufficiently observed the twelvefold co-dependent origination, forward and backward, had completely overcome his doubt. It is unlikely that it means the emanation of the dharma through Śākyamuni. How exactly would something formless emanate in space? Even if something did emanate through Tamaki, what sort of an effect would such a mighty dharma concretely have on the people around him or in the area far and near? Tamaki asserts that the dharma becomes manifest to the self qua karmic body. Despite this explanation, I cannot say that I do not have any questions. What sort of a world is the horizon wherein the so-called emptiness-nature without shape or form, the dharma-nature in that sense or, in other words, what is called true suchness, becomes manifest? Tamaki’s explanation is that when the dharma becomes manifest, it is to the individual existing as a karmic body that the dharma becomes manifest. But in the self-awareness of what may be called formless pure life, as even that “to” [of the assertion that the dharma becomes manifest to the self] would be destroyed, would it not be the case that the dharma becomes manifest where only the dharma alone becomes self-aware upon the dharma itself? If we were to withdraw a step from there, is it not that the individual’s way of being is made self-­ aware? It is not that there is an individual who then has an experience. Rather, is it not that there is experience, and then we become persuaded of the self? The reality is that there is nothing in Tamaki’s commentary concerning the scene of that very moment when the dharma becomes manifest. For example, in Vijñāpti-mātra thought, in the itinerary of self-cultivation (the ten abidings, the ten acts, the ten dedications, the ten stages, and buddhahood), true suchness is validated through the occurrence of non-discriminatory wisdom at the beginning of the ten stages. True suchness is nothing other than emptiness-nature, and this indeed would be a world without shape or form. But this enlightenment is unmistakably by no means the recognition of objects. In the Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi-­ śāstra it is stated that non-discriminatory wisdom “tightly binds” true suchness. Indeed, it entails an enlightenment wherein wisdom and true suchness are as one.

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Wisdom is a conditioned dharma and true suchness is an unconditioned dharma and therein lies a contradiction. However, in the midst of non-discriminatory wisdom, there should be no single interruption of “to” [that is, in the manifestation of true suchness to one’s wisdom/knowledge]. Next, I will touch upon the issue of whether the content of enlightenment is truly without shape or form. In the traditional transmission of Zen, it is stated that Śākyamuni was enlightened by seeing “the morning star.” It does not say that he was enlightened to the dharma. On the other hand, in Vijñāpti-mātra thought, after emerging from non-discriminatory wisdom, a “subsequently acquired wisdom” (S. prstha-labdha-jñāna, J. gotokuchi 後得智) that is analytic is to be aroused and one is not at all to remain in fusion with the world of true suchness. Emerging from the world without forms, there begins the conduct of wisdom vis-à-vis the world of irreplaceable individuals, and one awakens to the analysis and investigation of the appropriate world. The mode of this wisdom, transcending the seeing of substances and not remaining upon the fixation of objects at all, will be to cognize emptiness, phenomena without self-nature, as simply phenomena in their true suchness. In other words, the way of seeing of self and world is different after the achievement of enlightenment. Dōgen states, for instance, that “the mountains and waters of here and now are the presencing of the ancient Buddha-way.” But this is no different from “eyes horizontal, nose vertical.” Yet, in Tamaki, there is no reference to the change in the way of seeing the world after the manifestation of the dharma; instead, all he speaks of is exclusively the dharma. Fundamentally speaking, true suchness, as emptiness-nature, is the original nature of the various dharmas. It is not the case that there is dharma-nature alone somewhere without the various dharmas. Dharma and dharma-nature can be distinguished but cannot be separated. This point is made in the famous verse of the Prajñāpāramitā Heart Sūtra, “form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” Nothing is solved in accepting the manifestation of the dharma by just presupposing its formlessness without any explanation of the sort of relationship it has with form or shape and in what way forms and shapes emerge from it. As a real issue, for example, when the dharma is thoroughly grasped by the karmic body and then emanates, what sort of alteration does the karmic body manifest? No matter what sort of excellent state is realized at the time of entering samādhi, if nothing has changed after exiting samādhi, what then is the point? Among the published dialogues of AKIZUKI Ryōmin 秋月龍珉 and YAGI Seiichi 八木誠一, there is a book called When the Dharma Becomes Manifest (ダ ンマが露わになるとき) (Akizuki and Yagi 1990). The Zen scholar AKIZUKI Ryōmin, taking a liking to Tamaki’s phrase, decided to use it as the book title. However, the meaning of the dharma that Akizuki has in mind and the meaning of the dharma discussed by Tamaki are, in fact, distinct. Expressing the above-­ mentioned line, “form is emptiness, emptiness is form,” as an issue of the self in the here and now, Akizuki calls it “the trans-individual individual.” “Trans-individuality” is emptiness-nature and the “individual” is form (in fact, signifying the entirety of form, sensation, perception, volition, and consciousness [i.e., the five aggregates]). For Akizuki, the dharma that becomes manifest is “the trans-individual individual”

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and by no means merely “trans-individuality.” For otherwise, the self-awareness of “the true self” could not be established. While up to that point one thinks of “the individual” alone to be one’s self, through self-awareness of the fact that the self is a “trans-individual individual,” the “individual” is opened up, and achieving self-­ awareness of “the primordial self,” one attains the decisiveness of religious security. It is not “trans-individuality” alone that becomes manifest to the “individual.” Instead, the “trans-individual individual” becomes manifest to the “individual” itself. And this self-awareness happens when the individual reverses its fixation upon the self as object and identifies itself as individual. In fact, this means that the “individual” is working as a “true individual,” and in Tamaki’s words, what is significant is the emergence in the actual world of the remarkable activity of the karmic body itself, having thoroughly grasped the dharma (although what is remarkable here is not necessarily clearly seen by others). In that sense, to discern enlightenment merely in the mastery of the dharma, without discovering a further network from there that emerges into the actual world, is rather problematic as an understanding of Buddhism and as a religious philosophy. Tamaki at a certain stage, viewed traditional kōan Zen as problematic, and so, embarked on his own path. In consequence, he would assert that he had entered the identical realm of Śākyamuni and, in his very last years, that he had achieved the state of emanating dharma without end. But traditional Zen transcends the mode of being captivated by enlightenment and instead, by applying enlightenment to life in the actual world, takes as its ideal a quiet approximation [to enlightenment] within one’s living that is no different than that of the ordinary civilian. It finds its path in what is called “depth in the ordinary.” In addition, Zen tells us that the perfection of art is to conceal itself and tells us to remove one’s trace. The following is a formula representative of such kōans that would realize this Zen ideal. DAIŌ Kokushi 大応国師, also known as NANPO Jyōmyō南浦紹明, (1235– 1308) states the following: In this sect there are three obligations, so-called understanding, organization, and progress. Understanding means the exposition of the mind-nature of the teachings of the many Buddhas as well as the various points of the patriarchs. Next, organization means the various buddhas and patriachs, as it is called, twisting the nose and winking the eyes, while streaming true compassion, that is to say, “muddy cow flying into the sky, stone-horse entering the water,” and so on. Finally, progress means the direct teachings of buddhas and patriarchs, the reality of the various dharmas, etc. In other words, “heaven is this very heaven, earth is this very earth, mountain is this very mountain, water is this very water, the eyes are horizontal, the nose is vertical,” and so on (Akizuki 1987: 77–78).

From this we can conclude the following: • Understanding = the issue of setting-forth the principles of the “way” (C. dao, J. dō 道) and dharma found in the sūtra commentaries or in the sayings of the patriarchs. • Organization = the intent to work; becoming enlightened in an instant and using fist and stick, and so on; and the issue of setting-forth the usefulness of opportunity.

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• Progress = the thought of what is beyond, the issue of removing the smells of Zen and of enlightenment by throwing away the seeing of the dharma and the seeing of the Buddha. The kōan system of HAKUIN Keikaku 白隠慧鶴 (1685–1788)  implies the following: The “dharmakāya” (J. hosshin法身), the embodiment of truth, organization, explanation, the limitless, and progress. To these we add the gates of purgatory after death. Dharmakāya = true suchness, Buddha-nature, the mind-nature of the self, one’s originary face, etc. The character of mu (“nothing”), the sound of one hand clapping, and so on. • Organization = to bring to life the domain of enlightenment in the ordinary world. The cultivation of the above. • Explanation = to freely express in language the world of enlightenment. • The limitless = taking as its subject the site that is very difficult to reach. An example of this are the eight infinities of Hakuin. • Progress = the issue of going further beyond the limitless, transcending all of which one had attained. • The gates of purgatory after death = placed as the final hurdle. (Akizuki 1987: 82) Rather than going further above, progress here means to realize the free state of not being captivated by anything, throwing away what one had attained. It means to descend from the height of enlightenment down to the actual world by discarding the seeing of the dharma and of the Buddha. Even this is, indeed, installed into the kōan system. While Tamaki viewed kōan practice as problematic, the problem instead was that he could not accept it as pertaining to his own issue. Kōan practice, in conjunction with the master’s inspection, has also the effect of preventing one from falling into the narrow path of self-righteousness. Comparing such traditional Zen practices and what Tamaki calls “the Buddha’s dhyāna,” which is the more profound? The verdict may differ depending on the person. But I have a deeper admiration for the world of Zen where having attained enlightenment one attempts to erase that enlightenment. While the phrase, “the manifestation of the dharma,” is indeed appealing, I cannot help but think of these problems in regard to it.

4  Closing Remarks In the above, I attempted to trace the essential elements of TAMAKI Kōshirō’s thought, focusing on the works of his final years. The fact that Tamaki earnestly hammered away through both practice and learning throughout his life by pursuing his path subjectively through and through, we might add, was something truly unusual. Tamaki himself, in maintaining both practice and learning, claimed that

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while all Western philosophers of today are inadequate in having failed to reach the state he has arrived at, he himself in the end had realized the dhyāna of the same quality as that of Śākyamuni. Furthermore, he added that it is of the same world as that of the ancient sages. Ultimately he returned to the position that “the dharma or the tathāgata becomes manifest to this karmic body, penetrates it, and is thoroughly grasped by it (and furthermore emanates through it without limit)” (Tamaki 1999: 34–35). Yet, the fact of the matter is that it would be difficult to state that TAMAKI Kōshirō methodically formulated his thought on the basis of an accurate reading of the Udāna or of the “Important Matter” of the Vinaya piṭaka as texts. Rather, we ought to say that, prioritizing his own experience and speculation, he found and assembled from the Buddhist canon verses which might be interpreted as evidence. With that said, we may still esteem his work as the philosophy of Tamaki Buddhism or as Tamaki philosophy. However, in that case, although his skillfully expressed compositions are widely received by the general readership as an appealing Tamaki philosophy, I think there is a need to analyze its essence in detail.

Works Cited Akizuki, Ryōmin. 1987. Kōan 『公案』 [Kōan]. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. Akizuki, Ryōmin 秋月龍珉 and Seichi Yagi 八木誠一. 1990. Damma ga arawani naru toki 『ダ ンマが露わになるとき』 [When the Dharma Becomes Manifest]. Tokyo: Seidosha. Nakamura, Hajime 中村元. 1992. Gōtama budda 1 『ゴータマ・ブッダ1』 [Gautama Buddha 1]. Nakamura hajime senshū kettei handai 『中村元選集決定版』 [Selected Works of Nakamura Hajime definitive edition], vol. 11. Tokyo: Shunshūsha. Tamaki, Kōshirō 玉城康四郎. 1961. Kokoro hasoku no tenkai: Tendai jissō ron 『心把捉の展 開—天台実相論』 [Unfolding the Grasping of the Mind: The Tiantai True Aspects Doctrine]. Tokyo: Sankibō. ———. 1965. Eien no sekaikan: Kegonkyō 『永遠の世界観—華厳経』 [The Worldview of Eternity: The Avataṃsaka Sūtra]. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. ———. 1971. Chūgoku bukkyō shisō no keisei 『中国仏教思想の形成』 [The Formation of Chinese Buddhist Thought]. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. ———. 1975. Bukkyō ni okeru hō no kenkyū 『仏教における法の研究』 [The Investigation of the Dharma in Buddhism]. Tokyo: Shunshūsha. ———. 1993. Shōbōgenzō: Buttenkōza 『正法眼蔵: 仏典講座』 [Shōbōgenzō: Lectures on the Buddhist Canon]. Tokyo: Daizō. ———. 1993-1994 Gendaigoyaku shōbōgenzō 『現代語訳 正法眼蔵』 [Shōbōgenzō: A Contemporary Translation], 6 vols. Tokyo: Daizō ———. 1995. Damma no kengen: Butsudō ni manabu 『ダンマの顕現—仏道に学ぶ』 [The Manifestation of the Dharma: Learning the Buddha-Way]. Tokyo: Daizō ———. 1997. Bukkyō o tsuranukumono 『仏教を貫くもの』 [That which Penetrates Buddhism]. Tokyo: Daizō ———. 1999. Butsudō tankyū 『仏道探究』 [An Inquiry into the Buddha-Way]. Tokyo: Shunshūsha. ———. (1983). 2001a. Tōzaishisō no kontei ni arumono 『東西思想の根底にあるもの』 [What Is at the Root of Eastern and Western Thought]. Tokyo: Kodansha.

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———. 2001b. Kindai indo shisō no keisei 『近代インド思想の形成』 [The Formation of Modern Indian Thought]. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku. ———. 2003. Kegon nyūmon 『華厳入門』 [Introduction to Huayan]. Tokyo: Shunshūsha. Makio Takemura specializes in Buddhist studies and philosophy of religion. He completed his PhD in Buddhology at Tokyo University. He has served as associate professor at Mie University and as professor at University of Tsukuba. He joined the Faculty of Letters of Tōyō University as professor in 2002, where he served as a Dean of the Faculty of Letters from 2007 to 2009. He became the president of Tōyō University in 2009. He has published extensively in the fields of Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism, the philosophy of Nishida Kitaro, and Enryō Inoue. His major publications are Yuishiki no tankyū: Yuishiki sanjūju o yomu, Nishida kiarō to bukkyō: Zen to shinshū no kontei o kiwameru, and Nihonjin no kokoro no kotoba: Suzuki Daisetsu.

Chapter 32

Expressing Experience: Language in Ueda Shizuteru’s Philosophy of Zen Bret W. Davis

Abandon words and speaking, and say a word! —Wumen (Nishimura 1994: 103; Shibayama 2000: 175) What can be understood with and expressed by language is not, in the end, language. … Any yet, at the same time, it is not the case that there is something that cannot be expressed by language. Rather, at bottom lies what I have called the primordial movement of “exiting language and exiting into language.” —Ueda Shizuteru (Ueda 2002a: 309)

As the central figure of the third generation of the Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy, UEDA Shizuteru 上田閑照 (b. 1926) has not only followed in the footsteps of his predecessors, NISHIDA Kitarō 西田幾多郎 (1870–1945) and NISHITANI Keiji 西谷啓治 (1900–1990), but has taken several strides forward in their shared pursuit of what can be called a “philosophy of Zen.”1 The “of” in this phrase should be understood as a “double genitive,” that is, in both its objective and subjective senses. Ueda not only philosophizes about Zen, he also philosophizes from Zen. Like Nishida and Nishitani before him, he has devoted himself to the 1  Although Ueda is widely recognized as the most important contemporary philosopher in the lineage of the Kyoto School, only fairly recently has research began to appear on his thought in Japanese and in Western languages. See the essays gathered in Shūkyōtetsugaku kenkyū 21 (2004) and Tōzai shūkyō kenkyū 4 (2005), as well as Davis (2008, 2013a, 2014b), Döll (2005, 2011, 2015), Heisig (2005), and Nagel (1998). On the Kyoto School and Ueda’s place therein see Davis (2014a) (Unless otherwise noted, all translations in this essay are my own. Since the subject of this essay is Ueda’s philosophy of Zen, I will generally use Japanese readings of terms and phrases from the Chan/Zen tradition. Names of Chinese figures, however, will be given in pinyin with Japanese pronunciations in parentheses. Japanese and Chinese names are written in the order of family name followed by given name.).

B. W. Davis (*) Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_32

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practice of Zen as well as to the study of Western philosophy. However, what does it mean to speak, much less philosophize, about Zen experience? Ueda has in fact concentrated much of his attention on questions concerning the relation between Zen and philosophy or, more generally, between experience and language. Any development of a “philosophy of Zen,” Ueda recognizes, must begin with the question of what it means to “speak of experience.” What does it mean to express, that is, to speak from and about experience? This question has been at the heart of Ueda’s philosophical path from the beginning. His many works on this topic include a seminal early (1968) essay “Zen and Language,” later re-titled “The Language of Zen” (Ueda 2001: 183–260), articles written in German including “Awakening in Zen Buddhism as a Word-Event” (Ueda 1982a), and a recent article, “Language in a Twofold World,” which Ueda put together to represent his thought in a major anthology of Japanese philosophy (Ueda 2011a). In these and other works, Ueda convincingly demonstrates that the question of the relation between language and experience has always been a pivotal issue for the Zen tradition itself. He also shows how this tradition can help us, in the wake of the “linguistic turn” in philosophy, to return afresh to this fundamental question.

1  Z  en as a Practice of Commuting Between Silence and Speech Ueda begins by acknowledging that the Zen stance or stances toward language often appear extremely paradoxical, if not contradictory (Ueda 2001: 183–184). On the one hand, the fundamental practice of Zen is silent, seated meditation (J. zazen 坐 禅). On the other hand, the verbal “question and response” (J. mondō 問答) encounters involving  a kōan 公案 (a problem given to practitioners) that take place in sanzen 参禅 (one-on-one meetings with the teacher) are equally central to Zen practice, at least in the Rinzai tradition. On the one hand, Zen is said to be “not founded on words and letters” (J. furyū monji 不立文字). Words are said to be like a “finger pointing at the moon” or a “painting of a rice cake,” and our fixation on words is often derided as a barrier to the direct experience of seeing the moon or tasting a rice cake. Even Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253)—that most philosophical and prolific author among Japanese Zen masters who is well-known for his affirmation of language as a medium for the “expressive attainment of the Way” (J. dōtoku 道得)—warns against becoming “enmeshed in the traps and snares of words and letters.” Before reading his own or any other texts, Dōgen encourages us to “cast everything aside and singlemindedly engage in zazen,” that is, to “set to rest our interpretive activity of investigating sayings and pursuing words and learning” and to “just sit” in silence (Dōgen 1990a: 1, 24–25 = Dōgen 2002: 17–18; Dōgen 1990b: 171). On the other hand, striking affirmations of the expressive power of language can be found not only in Dōgen but in many classical Zen texts, such as the following saying quoted

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by Ueda, “Zen is like spring and words are like the flowers. Spring abides in the flowers and all the flowers are spring. Flowers abide in spring and all of spring is the flowers” (Ueda 2001: 240). Can we reconcile these apparently contradictory claims of the limits and the ubiquity, of the impotence and the power of language? Can nothing be expressed or can everything be expressed? Are we to remain silent or are we to speak? Deshan (J. Tokusan) 徳山 (780–865) thrust the dilemma upon us and presses us for an answer, “Thirty blows if you can speak; thirty blows if you can’t”! (Sasaki and Kirchner 2009: 300). Zen’s ambivalent attitude toward language has become a favorite topic for scholarly commentary in the West. Zen is accused by some Western critics of evincing a self-contradiction in its texts or an inconsistency between its teachings and its practices. Even scholars who take a more sympathetic approach tend to suggest that Zen needs the latest developments in Western hermeneutics, deconstruction, and philosophy of language in order to attain a self-critical modern or post modern understanding of itself. Notably, the general consensus among both critical and sympathetic scholars is that Zen’s claims to “not be founded on words and letters” and to entail a transcendence of the domain of language cannot be accepted at face value, insofar as contemporary Western philosophy teaches us that there is nothing, or at least no experience, that takes place outside of language.2

2  I will discuss the noteworthy views of Wright (1998) and Hori (2000) below. A lucid attempt to moderate the debate between the proponents of “Traditional Zen Narrative” (TZN) and “Historical and Cultural Criticism” (HCC) can be found in Heine (2008). In seeking a middle way beyond the extremes of the TZN view that language is merely a heuristic instrument (a disposable finger pointing at the moon) and the HCC accusation that Zen’s use of language dissolves into sheer nonsense, Heine argues that “Zen writings are fully expressive of spiritual attainment, rather than merely a prelude to the abandonment of language,” and that Zen invents “a creative new style of expression that uses language in unusual and ingenious fashions to surpass a reliance on everyday words and letters” (Heine 2008: 29, 38, 40). Along with Hee-jin Kim, Heine prefers the epistemological and soteriological affirmations of language in Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō to other figures and texts in the Zen tradition that stress the need to cut through the “entangling vines” of language (see Heine 1994; Kim 1987; Kim 2007). A more critical treatment of the topic of language in Zen can be found Faure (1993), who argues that Chan (Zen) emerged as “first and foremost … a discourse on practice and a discursive practice” that, like all discourses, is “subject to specific epistemological, cultural, and sociopolitical constraints” (Faure 1993: 194). While dismissive of what he sees as Chan/Zen’s “rhetoric of immediacy,” which purports to attain to a “pure experience” outside of language, Faure, too, is more sympathetic with Dōgen’s affirmative view of language. He writes: “A recurrent description of awakening is that ‘the path of language is cut off, all mental functions are extinguished.’ However, language was also perceived as having an infinite depth. Therefore, the possibility of an awakening taking place within language could not be excluded. Perhaps this alternative is at the background of the famous opposition drawn by Dōgen between Linji’s notion of the ‘true man without a rank’ (C. wuwei zhenren, J. mui no shinnin)—who has awakened outside (and without) language—and his own advocacy of the ‘true man with a rank’ (C. youwei zhenren, J. ui no shinnin)—who has awakened with and within language” (Faure 1993: 195–196). As we shall see, however, Ueda problematizes this apparent dichotomy between with/within and outside/ without language, and in so doing offers a fresh alternative that is able to account for both positive and negative attitudes toward language found in the Zen tradition (including Dōgen).

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In contrast to philosophical interpretations that would either deconstructively discredit Zen or hermeneutically reinterpret it in order to save it from its supposed self-misunderstanding, Ueda shows how we can understand its contradictory stances toward linguistic expression not as an inconsistency that plagues Zen but rather as a dynamic interplay essential to it. Zen’s paradoxical ambivalence toward language is not a problem; it’s the point. In this essay I seek to demonstrate how Ueda develops an original and compelling interpretation of the role of language in the Zen tradition, an interpretation which is based first and foremost on the traditional self-­ understanding of Zen figures and texts themselves and yet also speaks to recent developments in Western philosophy. We will need to proceed one step at a time in order to get Ueda’s understanding of the relation between experience and expression, or between Zen and language, properly in view. Let us begin with his quotation of a passage from Bankei 盤珪 (1622–1693), “There is a time to look at the written records of the patriarchs. But when you are seeking to acquire the principle (J. ri 理) of the sutras and records, looking at them will blind you. When you are looking back at this principle [after having attained it], however, they will provide verification of it” (Ueda 2001: 240– 241). In other words, one must first set aside words in order to attain the Dharma eye with which it becomes possible to understand and express the Dharma in words. Ueda finds this bidirectional movement away from and back into language epitomized in the twin practices of the Rinzai 臨済 Zen tradition, namely zazen or silent seated meditation and sanzen or verbal interviews with a Zen master (Ueda 1994: 18).3 According to Ueda, “[z]azen is a bottomless stillness and silence, whereas sanzen is a cutting edge of movement and speech” (Ueda 2001: 210). Elsewhere he elaborates: Zazen is a thoroughgoing silence, a continual deepening into stillness; sanzen is a matter of words, words that are born of the stillness of zazen. … Zen practice is the repetition of going from zazen to sanzen, and from sanzen back to zazen. This cycle is the same as that from emptiness to opposition and back again to emptiness; from silence to words and back again to silence; from rest to activity and back again to rest. Through this repetition, emptiness becomes ever more free of things, opposition becomes ever more clear-cut, silence becomes ever deeper, and words become ever more expressive. (Ueda 1994: 28)

The bilateral movement between these two practices, or between these two aspects of the one practice of formal training in Rinzai Zen, can be understood in terms of a double negation: “Zazen is a negation of language, and sanzen is a negation of silence” (Ueda 2001: 210). Or it can be understood in terms of a “twofold breakthrough: through language to primordial silence, and then through silence back again to primordial language” (Ueda 1989a: 74 = Ueda 1991b: 61, translation modified; see also Ueda 1982a: 216). The apparent contradictions in Zen between negating and affirming language, between prohibiting and demanding words, can

3  More fully, Ueda explains the practice of Zen as a dynamic triad which, in addition to zazen and sanzen, includes samu 作務 (“work”) together with angya 行脚 (“wandering”) (see Ueda 1982a: 213; Ueda 1991b: 59; Ueda 2011b: 99).

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thus be understood as exhortations to participate in the interplay of this twofold movement. Ueda, in fact, sees this bilateral movement not just as an essential aspect of Zen practice but as the essential relation between experience and language as such. He calls this double movement that of “exiting language and exiting into language” (J. kotoba kara dete, kotoba ni deru 言葉から出て、言葉に出る).4 One must break through the sedimentations of language to experience things afresh; and one must allow this fresh experience of things to find its appropriate linguistic expression. Whereas in Zen training the two moments of this movement are deepened and intensified in the twin practices of zazen and sanzen, in the “practice of everyday life” (J. nichijōkufū 日常工夫), experience and expression are not two separate occurrences but rather occur as two sides of the same primordial event of “exiting language and exiting into language.” As we shall see, the nondual yet radically bivalent movement expressed by this phrase is how Ueda understands the relation between language and experience in general, and the event of “pure experience” (J. junsui keiken 純粋 経験) in particular.

2  The ABCs of Nishida’s Philosophy of Pure Experience The notion of “pure experience” is often understood—or misunderstood—to refer to a mystical state of rapture. Ueda stresses, however, that Zen is not an otherworldly mysticism; it is rather a “non-mysticism” (G. Nicht-Mystik, J. hishinpi-­ shugi 非神秘主義) or “de-mysticism” that repeatedly passes through and beyond a silent state of unio mystica on the way back to a nondual (that is, “not one and not two”) experience of living in the linguistically articulated world of plurality (see Ueda 2002b; Davis 2008). Zen is not a matter of transcending the everyday world of speech merely to dwell in a higher ineffable abode, but rather a matter of “trans-­ descending” or “stepping back” from our habitual linguistic reifications of experience to the primordial wellsprings of what Nishida calls “radical everydayness” (J. byōjōtei 平常底). It was only a number of years after Ueda first developed a philosophical account of Zen’s return to the roots of everyday experience—an account that sought to explain the death-and-rebirth of language at this primordial level of experience—that he first began a serious engagement with Nishida’s philosophy, taking as his principal focus the philosophy of “pure experience” set forth in Nishida’s maiden work, An Inquiry into the Good. In the preface to An Inquiry into the Good, Nishida expresses his intention to “explain all things on the basis of pure experience as the sole reality” (Nishida 1987: 4 = Nishida 1990: xxx). In the opening paragraph of the first chapter, Nishida 4  This key phrase can also be translated as “exiting language and then exiting into language.” But, as we shall see, it is important to bear in mind that Ueda thinks of this as a bidirectional and circling movement. I will keep the phrase in quotes to indicate that the two moments of the movement must be thought together.

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declares that “by pure I am referring to the state of experience just as it is without the least addition of deliberative discrimination.” He then gives as his first example of a pure experience “the moment of seeing a color or hearing a sound … prior not only to the thought that the color or sound is the activity of an external object or that one is sensing it, but also to the judgment of what the color or sound might be.” In other words, in pure experience “there is not yet a subject or an object, and knowing and its object are completely unified” (Nishida 1987: 9 = Nishida 1990: 3). In the following pages and in the course of the book, however, Nishida expands his definition of pure experience to include not only activities having duration, such as a “climber’s determined ascent of a cliff and a musician’s performance of a piece,” but also the “activity of thinking” itself, at least when it advances in a nondual and non-volitional manner (Nishida 1987: 11, 19 = Nishida 1990: 6, 13). In the most expansive sense of the term, Nishida claims that “we cannot leave the sphere of pure experience” (Nishida 1987: 16 = Nishida 1990: 9). Clearly there are ambiguities in Nishida’s uses of the term “pure experience,” but it is not my intention to try to sort these out here, or to show how Nishida’s path of thought unfolded as an attempt to deal with the philosophical problems that remained unresolved in his maiden work (see, in this regard, Ueda 1991a: 145–168, 261–381; Ueda 1993: 88–89; Ueda 1995: 43–47). Rather, I am presently concerned with Ueda’s interpretation of pure experience, especially as it pertains to the question of language. Ueda distinguishes between three senses of the term “pure experience” in Nishida’s text: an originary “event,” an unfolding “state,” and a philosophical “standpoint” (Ueda 1991a: 79).5 Ueda is mostly concerned with the first of these, which he not only calls the “original” (J. gensho 原初) or “primordial” (J. genshi 原 始) sense, but also the “proper sense” (J. shōgi 勝義) of pure experience (Ueda 1991a: 151–153; Ueda 2002b: 68). This primordial sense of pure experience is an originary “event” (J. dekigoto 出 来事), more literally an “advent” of something that arises and comes forth from out of the blue, from nowhere, from “nothing” (J. mu 無). Such an event may be triggered by a “limit situation,” such as a near-death experience or an impasse in Zen 5  According to Ueda, Nishida eventually realized that, as a philosophical standpoint which intended to “explain everything,” “pure experience” was insufficient because it did not account for the intellectual reflection involved in this activity of explaining itself (Ueda 1991a: 167). In response to this problem, Nishida shifted to a standpoint of “self-awareness” that would include both “intuition” and “reflection.” Nishida’s understanding of self-awareness as a matter of “seeing the self within the self” led to his middle period philosophy of “place,” which was subsequently developed through his considerations of alterity and history into his later period philosophy of the dialectically self-determining world. In the latter, as Nishida himself notes in his 1936 preface to An Inquiry into the Good, the notion of “pure experience” is rethought as “acting-intuition” (Nishida 1987: 6–7 = Nishida 1990: xxxiii). In any case, while Nishida’s abiding concern was with developing a system of philosophy which could “explain everything,” Ueda focuses his attention on the sense in which the primal event of pure experience takes place as a death-and-rebirth of language and meaning, which entails a death-and-rebirth of the linguistic horizons and meaningful parameters of—and thus of the very possibility of—explanation. In this sense, while Nishida was more concerned with developing a philosophical system on the basis of Zen experience, Ueda is more concerned with giving a phenomenological account of the basic Zen experience itself.

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kōan training, but it often manifests as something extraordinarily ordinary, as is the case with Nishida’s example of “seeing a color or hearing a sound.” Insofar as it is a primordial event of pure experience, seeing a color or hearing a sound takes place as an immediate experiential unity prior to the introduction of “deliberative ­discrimination” (J. shiryo-funbetsu 思慮分別), analytical “judgment or discernment” (J. handan 判断, literally “splitting and severing”; “discernment” literally implies “separation by sifting”), and linguistic articulation (J. bunsetsu 分節, literally “division into segments”; “articulation” literally implies “division into jointed segments”). Such events of pure, direct, and immediate experience are rare, insofar as we are generally aware of things, not as they “show themselves from themselves,” but only as they get sifted through the filter of a sedimented linguistic framework. As paradigmatic examples of pure experiences that burst through these linguistic filters, Ueda refers to classical stories of enlightenment experiences, such as Xiangyan 香厳 (J. Kyōgen, d. 898) hearing a pebble strike a stalk of bamboo, an event which Ueda expresses with the onomatopoeic expression, “kachin!”—we might say in English, “ping!” (Ueda 2002b: 210–211). He also relates a story told by Nishida about D. T. Suzuki who, when asked to explain Zen, startled everyone by shaking the table, “gata-gata!”—an onomatopoeia for a rattling sound (Ueda 2001: 2–3 = Ueda 1994: 12; see also Nishitani 1991: 26). It is well worth pausing to note here that the Japanese language is replete with onomatopoeias or “sound-­ imitating-­words” (J. giongo 擬音語), as well as with “condition-imitating-words” (J. gitaigo 擬態語) for the other four senses, for emotions, and for a variety of other states of affairs. Along with the prevalence of grammatical forms similar to the middle voice, which express the nondual self-unfolding of an event prior to its bifurcation into the subject/object dualism implied by the active and passive voices (see Elberfeld 2011), this vast vocabulary of imitative words is an aspect of the Japanese language with intriguing philosophical implications. Insofar as onomatopoeias could be understood along the lines of Paul Valéry’s characterization of a poem as “a prolonged hesitation between sound and sense” (quoted in Dworkin 2009: 181), these giongo and gitaigo could be understood as traces of the birth of sense, a birth that take place in what Ueda is calling pure experience and as what we will see him call an “originary word” (J. kongengo 根源語, G. Urwort). While, on the one hand, these proto-linguistic expressions give rise to newly articulated worlds of meaning, on the other hand, Xiangyan’s kachin! and Suzuki’s gata-gata! point back to a level of nondual immediacy that precedes the reconstitution of these experiences by means of linguistic conceptualization, that is, by means of what Nishida calls “deliberative discrimination” and the interpretive “fabrications” (J. saikū 細工) subsequently imposed on the world by a dualistically alienated ego-subject. According to Ueda, Nishida’s unprecedented venture was to develop, in the wake of his intense practice of Zen, a philosophy of (double genitive) pure experience. His philosophy is based on the idea of “pure experience” which, in turn, is based on what this term indicates, namely the fact of pure experience itself. In other words, Nishida’s “philosophy of pure experience” speaks not only about but also from this wellspring of all experiential reality. According to Ueda, this means that Nishida

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had to proceed in two directions: from out of pure experience toward a discourse of philosophy, and from within the discourse of philosophy back toward pure experience. Speaking from out of the event of pure experience is said to proceed in two stages: first to poetic expression and then on to philosophical discourse. In sum, according to Ueda’s three-tiered model, level A is the primordial event of pure experience; level B is the “Ursatz” (J. konponku 根本句) or “rudimentary phrase” level of poetic-religious expression; and level C is the discursive level of worldly prose, including philosophy (Ueda 2002b: 13–18, 68–72; Ueda 1993: 173–176; see also Davis 2004a: 256ff.). Whereas level A is indicated by Nishida with the term “pure experience,” level B includes such proto-philosophical expressions as, “Pure experience is the sole reality.” On its own, the latter could be taken as a rudimentary phrase analogous to the Zen saying, “The world in its totality has never been hidden” (J. henkai katsute kakusazu 遍界不曾蔵) (Ueda 2002b: 69–70; Hori 2003: 216).6 On level C, such an Ursatz becomes a Grundsatz or “fundamental principle” (J. konpon-­ meidai 根本命題) around which a philosophical discourse is constructed. Whereas the tradition of Zen is characterized by its movement back and forth between levels A and B, Ueda suggests that Nishida was the first philosopher and practitioner of Zen to successfully traverse the entire spectrum from A to C and from C back to A (Ueda 1981: 71–81; Ueda 1993: 183; Ueda 2002b: 14). Following in the wake of Nishida and then Nishitani, Ueda himself can be understood to have self-consciously inherited this bilateral undertaking of developing a “philosophy of Zen” as a “philosophy of pure experience.”

3  The Linguistic Turn: Away from Pure Experience? One might expect that a philosophy of Zen as a philosophy of pure experience would be welcomed as a synthetic fruit born out of the modern encounter of certain East Asian and Western traditions.7 Yet, in the context of the currents of Western 6  Ueda also refers here to Dōgen’s “the presencing of truth” (J. genjō-kōan 現成公案) as a rudimentary phrase. As if in counterpoint to the idea that “nothing is hidden,” however, in the text that bears the title Genjōkōan Dōgen proclaims: “When one side is illuminated, the other side is darkened” (Davis 2009: 256). Working out the relation between such contrasting and/or complementary rudimentary phrases found in Zen literature (level B) would require developing a philosophy of Zen (level C). In this case, one might argue that “nothing is hidden” does not entail that everything is simultaneously illuminated. 7  The idea of “pure experience” has in fact been frequently attacked by critics of Zen and the Kyoto School who claim that it is as ideologically motivated as it is epistemologically questionable (see Faure 1993: 78–80; Sharf 1995). While in some cases I would question the epistemological assumptions and ideological motivations of these critics themselves, I do not doubt that the notion of “pure experience” can and has been used for ideological ends and in epistemologically questionable ways, at least by epigones, if not at times by the Kyoto School philosophers themselves. I will nevertheless make the case in what follows that Ueda’s specific account of “pure experience” as a bivalent event of “exiting language and exiting into language” is a viable and compelling way to think about the relation between experience and language, a way, moreover, that effectively calls

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philosophy, which has undertaken a massive “linguistic turn” on both sides of the Atlantic,8 it appears to be not only anachronistic but anathema to speak of a “pure experience” that in any sense precedes linguistic conceptualization. Ueda argues that an inherent ambiguity in experience leads to two divergent views of language. The ambiguity is namely that “experience” means both the immediate experience of something (E) and the linguistically mediated understanding of that which is experienced (U).9 According to Ueda, experience is always in some sense a conjunction of E/U. Views of language diverge, however, depending on whether one attends predominantly to U, and hence to E only as it is reflected in U; or attends to E, and moreover to the element of non-meaningful excess (X) in E that surpasses or withdraws from any given linguistic understanding (U). After Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) transcendental turn and especially after it is echoed in the more recent linguistic turn, modern Western philosophers have tended to adopt the first view, according to which, “Everything that is experienced is always already experienced as interpreted through language.” Ueda, however, defends the second view, according to which, “The to-be-interpreted experience E is always somehow more than the linguistically interpreted experience [U]” (Ueda 2011b: 135–137). “Originally and truly,” writes Ueda elsewhere, “experience as such transcends that which is grasped in experience with the help of language” (Ueda 2011b: 170). Ueda understands “pure experience” to be an event in which the EX element of experience breaks through linguistically established E/U (or, as Ueda writes in this case, e/U) experience and transforms it into an originary EX/U experience that is more transparently “at once in and beyond language” (Ueda 2011b: 144). The subtlety of Ueda’s notion of a “pure experience” that is “at once in and beyond language” is today, however, likely to fall on deaf ears. The author of an influential philosophical critique of mysticism, Steven Katz, states what he professes to be his “epistemological assumption” in no uncertain terms: “There are no pure (i.e. unmediated) experiences.” We must acknowledge, he goes on to say, “that the [mystical] experience itself as well as the form in which it is reported is shaped by concepts which the mystic brings to, and which shape, his experience.” Hence, he concludes, the “notion of unmediated experience seems, if not self-contradictory, at best empty” (Katz 1978: 26). In a sense, Ueda would agree that such experiences are “empty,” and yet he would add that it is precisely an exposure to this emptiness or indeterminacy that introduces an element of immediacy in all genuine experience. In other words, he would turn the tables on Katz and say that a purely mediated experience is what is impossible, or at least such would not be worthy of the name “experience.” In this way Ueda could be seen as radicalizing Hans-Georg into question some of the philosophical assumptions of these critics (and of the philosophers on whom they rely). 8  Ueda’s familiarity is with the continental European tradition of philosophy rather than with the Anglo-American analytic tradition, and I will be referring mainly to continental philosophies of language. For a landmark anthology of the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy, see Rorty (1967). 9  This ambiguity is clearer in German, since erfahren is often used in the sense of “to find out” or “to come to know” as well as “to experience.”

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Gadamer’s (1900–2002) point that “every experience worthy of the name thwarts an expectation” (Gadamer 2004: 350). Insofar as our “expectations” (G. Erwartungen) or “prejudgments” (G. Vorurteile) are framed by our linguistic horizons, every experience worthy of the name would to some extent tear through the very fabric as well as fabrications of language. To be sure, this is radicalizing Gadamer’s point in a way that would perhaps be unacceptable to Gadamer himself, who in Truth and Method claims that “man’s relation to the world is absolutely and fundamentally verbal in nature, and hence intelligible” (Gadamer 2004: 471).10 For Gadamer, our linguistic horizons are constantly in the process of being modified, expanded, and through dialogue fused with other linguistic horizons; yet throughout all this “man’s being-in-the-world is primordially linguistic” and so our “verbal experience of the world is ‘absolute’,” it “embraces all being-in-itself” and is “prior to everything that is recognized and addressed as existing” (Gadamer 2004: 440, 446–447; for some of Ueda’s references Gadamer in this regard, see Ueda 2002a: 61, 383). This view of Gadamer’s is adeptly applied by Dale S. Wright in his critique of “romantic” interpretations of Zen which claim that language “acts as a ‘filter’ or a ‘veil’ obstructing the purity of experience,” and that its positive use is limited to serving as an “instrument” to direct others to this purportedly non-linguistic experience (Wright 1998: 65–68). “Language,” Wright asserts in opposition to this romantic view, “is a universal and inescapable element in all of our experience, and any account of language or of Zen must now come to terms with this realization” (Wright 1998: 73). Language is said to be “present even in the ‘direct’ perception of an object” (Wright 1998: 71), for it is by means of language that “the world (the given) is focused and organized in advance of every encounter with entities, persons, or situations. Thus, when we see something, we have already interpreted it— immediately—as whatever it appears to be” (Wright 1998: 72). We sense in the background, not just Gadamer, but also Kant when Wright adds: “Although this language refers to something extralinguistic—something beyond language—that something appears to us as the reality that it is through language” (Wright 1998: 72). Indeed, the epistemological orientation of many of the philosophers who have made the linguistic turn can be traced back in part to Kant’s transcendentalism, according to which sensible intuitions are made intelligible though being organized—we might say “filtered”—by the categories of our faculty of understanding (Kant 1965: 65). This transcendentalism gets linguisticized, historicized, and culturized by philosophers after Kant, such that the filters of our understanding are identified with language, which is formed and reformed through history and which varies from culture to culture. What generally persists is the central claim of Kant’s  Gadamer’s insistence on the irreducibly linguistic nature of our relation to the world is strongest in the period of his magnum opus, Truth and Method (1960). Subsequently, there is arguably a turn in his thinking away from too closely identifying being with language, and late in life he sometimes reflects on the limits of language (see Gadamer 2000). In an interview with an Indian philosopher, he goes so far as to say that “language is always limited. At some point, we have to look beyond language” (Gadamer in Pantham 1992: 130). For a fuller treatment of Gadamer in this regard, see Davis (2015).

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dualistic transcendentalism that we do not and cannot know “things in themselves” but can only know things as they appear to us, that is, as phenomena. When the very idea of a “thing in itself” as “something beyond language” is dropped, or shaved off with Ockham’s razor, then we are left with a full-blown linguistic idealism, which identifies being with language. Or, at least, as Gadamer more cautiously claims, “being that can be understood is language” (Gadamer 2004: 470). Victor Sōgen Hori’s views are particularly relevant here, based as they are on his academic background in philosophy as well as his extensive monastic training in the Rinzai Zen tradition. While twice raising, in passing, the crucial objection that “in Buddhism … there is the state of meditation, called samādhi, which does indeed seem to be a state of pure consciousness” (Hori 2000: 308, see also 282), Hori agrees with Katz and others (such as Wright) that there is no “pure consciousness” in the sense of an ability to “see things as they are” in the world without the mediation of language and concepts (Hori 2000: 284). Hori begins by affirmatively citing the Kantian notion that “ordinary perception is saturated with conceptual activity which gives meaning to sensation” (Hori 2000: 283), and yet he himself implicitly goes on to reveal how Zen radically calls into question the ontological and epistemological dualism inherent in the Kantian view.11 The enlightening experience of kenshō 見性, argues Hori, should be understood, “not as a breakthrough to a pure consciousness without cognitive content but instead a breakdown of subject and object within the cognitive complexity of ordinary experience” (Hori 2000: 292). “Kenshō is not a state of non-cognitive consciousness awaiting the monk on the other side of the limits of rationality,” it is rather “the realization of nonduality within ordinary conventional experience.” In this sense, “it is a breakthrough not out of, but into, conventional consciousness” (Hori 2000: 307). However, Hori goes on to say that “the original nonduality of subject and object at first obliterates duality and then resurrects it” (Hori 2000: 307, emphasis added). This implies that what occurs is, in fact, two breakthroughs: as Hori himself puts it, there is first a breakthrough from duality to a “first-order nonduality” (which overcomes the dualities inherent in the conventional world and yet remains itself problematically opposed to duality), and then there is a breakthrough to a “second-order nonduality (the nonduality of duality and nonduality)” (Hori 2000: 300–301).  Nishitani calls this dualism into question by referring to what he calls “the paradox of representation.” In ordinary dualistic experience on what Nishitani calls “the field of consciousness,” “all things are taken to be objective entities, in opposition to which the self-conscious ego is posited as a subjective entity.” The paradox of representation lies in the fact that “an object is nothing other than something that has been represented as an object, and even the very idea of something independent of representation can only come about as a representation” (Nishitani 1987: 122 = Nishitani 1982: 108). That is to say, the very idea of a “thing in itself” outside representation is itself a representational idea. Nishitani’s solution to this paradox, however, is not to declare a subjective or linguistic idealism but rather to suggest the possibility of nondualistic experience. The field of consciousness is both a place of alienation from things and a place wherein things are distorted by being reduced to objects within the representational horizon of the egocentric subject. Only by breaking through this field of dualistic and egocentric experience, and, moreover, through the field of nihilism, wherein the world loses all its (egocentric) meaning, can one experience things nondualistically on “the field of emptiness” (see Davis 2004b: 155–158).

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In other words, kenshō would involve the dynamic of a double breakthrough, out of and back into conventional consciousness. This is precisely what Ueda means by pure experience as the extremity of the irreducibly double movement of “exiting language and exiting into language” (Ueda 2002a: 386). Kenshō, according to Ueda, is thus not just a breakthrough beyond language, it is also an “originary event qua advent (dekigoto) of language” (Ueda 2001: 256). For Ueda, pure experience is not simply a non-linguistic state; it is, as we shall see, the event of an “originary word” (Ueda 2002a: 307; Ueda 1982a: 232). Although Hori’s focus is on criticizing the notion of a “pure consciousness” that could purportedly operate in the world without being in language, this is decidedly not what Ueda means by “pure experience,” and Hori’s critique can be seen as complementing and being complemented by Ueda’s interpretation of “pure experience.” In Ueda’s terms, in order to counteract those who would isolate and misconstrue the moment of “exiting language,” Hori can be understood as rightfully emphasizing the moment of “exiting into language.” Following Nishida and much of the Zen tradition, Ueda himself may at times emphasize the moment of “exiting language”; but, in the end, he always stresses that both of these moments are partial abstractions from the concrete whole of the movement of “exiting language and exiting into language.”

4  T  he Sigetic Re-turn: Pure Experience as the Pivot Between Silence and Speech Ueda is not only well aware of critiques of the idea of linguistically unmediated experience, he is well versed in the post-Kantian linguistic turn in philosophy from which they derive. He cites Wilhelm von Humboldt’s (1767–1835) thesis that “it is language alone that provides access to reality,” Ernst Cassirer’s (1874–1945) view that human experience depends on the mediation of symbols, and Otto Bollnow’s (1903–1991) claim that “man lives with objects … exclusively in the manner in which language conveys them to him” (Ueda 1982a: 233; Ueda 2001: 198–199; Ueda 2002a: 295). On occasion Ueda also makes reference in this regard to the views of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), Gadamer, and Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). Wittgenstein famously wrote: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (Wittgenstein 1964: 56).12 Heidegger declared: “Only where there is language, is there world” (Heidegger 2000: 56). Derrida made a similar point when he wrote: “there is nothing outside of  This statement retains its significance beyond the restrictions of the representational philosophy of language of this early work. Wittgenstein later speaks of a plurality of “language games,” each defining a “form of life,” as collectively defining the shifting parameters of the worlds in which we dwell (see Wittgenstein 1958: 11). It should also be noted that, in his early period, Wittgenstein is also interested in directing out attention the experience of the mystical which exceeds the limits of our linguistically determined worlds.

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the text” (Derrida 1976: 158). All of these claims might be thought to imply that language is coterminous with the parameters of our experiential world and, thus, that it would be senseless to speak of either pre-linguistic experience or a world outside language. And yet, we might ask, is there room in our experience for a speechless encounter with that which is not yet saturated with meaning? Do we in any sense experience “being that cannot be understood,” or, if being is defined as what can be understood, what about “the nothing” that cannot be understood? What about the nothing that lies outside the text? What about the “fundamental experience of the nothing” in which the meaning of entities slips away? Heidegger, in fact, describes, as an essential trait of human existence, the experience of “being held out into the nothing,” that is, of standing out beyond (ek-sisting) the horizonal limits of intelligibility (Heidegger 1998: 91).13 If “language is the house of being,” as Heidegger later famously remarks (Heidegger 1998: 239), a house is a home, replies Ueda, only in the process of leaving and returning to it; otherwise it is a bird cage or a prison house (Ueda 2001: 387). The limits of language may demarcate the limits of the intelligible world, but when these limits are such that they can no longer be transgressed, they inscribe us in a linguistic “world-cage” (G. Weltkäfig) (Ueda 1982a: 216). Ueda agrees in large part with philosophers such as Gadamer and Bollnow, who claim that “language directs every experience through its horizons of articulation and interpretation.” But, he points out, “the world-opening power of language has another side to it.” “The horizon of understanding produced by language often makes new experiences difficult and sometimes even impossible for us precisely because it does function as horizon.” A “horizon” (from the Greek horizein meaning “to bound or limit”) opens up a meaningful space for dwelling precisely by delimiting the range of possibilities in which things can be viewed and understood. Language thus “opens up the world for us as a horizon of meaning, but this world is also defined and limited through language, even as its open character blinds us to its limitedness.” A horizon is essentially a delimited openness, and if we only attend to the fact that the horizonal world opened up through language makes things manageable and meaningful, forgetting its essential limitations, the “linguistically conceived world” easily becomes a “world-net” or “world-cage” in which we are caught and imprisoned (Ueda 1989a: 73 = Ueda 1991b: 61, translation modified; see also Ueda 1982a: 214–216). Heidegger would agree that we cannot simply disregard what lies beyond our linguistic horizons. The delimited openness of the horizon, he tells us, is but “the side turned toward us of a surrounding openness.” Moreover, in itself this openness is like a “free expanse,” an “open-region” which lies beyond the horizons that establish the boundaries of our meaningful worlds; it is an “open and yet veiled expanse” that extends beyond and embraces all domesticated being (Heidegger 2010: 72–75,  On Heidegger’s understanding of “the nothing,” and Ueda’s interpretation of Heidegger’s shift from experiencing the nothing in an attunement of “anxiety” (G. Angst) to experiencing it in an attunement of “releasement” (G. Gelassenheit), see Davis (2013b: 465–468).

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132). Ueda calls the unlimited open region that encompasses our delimited horizons of meaning the “hollow expanse” (J. kokū 虚空) and explains that our ­being-in-the-­world is twofold: we always exist within the finite openness of a meaningful world, which is, in turn, situated within an infinite openness that exceeds and enfolds all such inherently delimited horizons of intelligibility.14 We should not, after all, be content to attend only to what makes sense to us here and now, that is, to what we can speak about intelligibly at any given moment, within the horizons of intelligibility of any given historical-cultural-linguistic context. Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) suggests that a common aim of phenomenology and cultural anthropology should be to get back in touch with “the wild region” (F. la région sauvage) that frees one from being a prisoner within the sedimented horizons of one’s own culture and enables one to communicate with other cultures (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 120, translation modified; see Ueda 1995: 36). With regard to Derrida, we should note that he deconstructs not only the idea of a “transcendental signified” outside the text but also the idea that we are locked up within any given horizons of textuality. Citing various later writings, François Raffoul shows how Derrida increasingly turned his attention to the experience of “the event,” understood as the arrival of something that cannot be anticipated or predicted as a possibility within one’s current horizons of intelligibility. Genuine experience of an event is thus an experience of “the advent of the impossible,” since “the absence of horizon [i.e., of a given range of meaningful possibilities] is the condition of the event.” “The event is first of all that which I do not first of all comprehend”; the event is the advent of what is not yet, of what does not yet exist in any meaningful sense (Raffoul 2010: 301–304). The event, we could thus say, is an encounter with an initially meaningless “nothing” that arrives from outside our textual or linguistic horizons. It is the advent of that which brings speech to a halt and demands that we pass through a silent recognition and re-cognition to respond in a way that now, in some measure, speaks differently. At the avant-garde of the linguistic turn in philosophy, we thus find a return to a recognition of the limits of language. Should we then resign ourselves to say, with the early Wittgenstein, “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence” (Wittgenstein 1964: 74; see Ueda 2011b: 150–151)? Or should we venture into the paradox of saying more about this silence that lies just beyond the edges of our wor(l)ds? Ueda is in fact not alone in wanting to attend to silence and to the outside that can only be pointed to from within the discourse of philosophy. Heidegger claims that “language itself has its origin in silence,” and adds that, “Since we humans are always already thrown into a spoken and said discourse, we can only ever be silent in withdrawing from this discourse; and even this is rarely achieved” (Heidegger 1999: 218). Merleau-Ponty makes a similar plea for a radical return to a “primordial silence” as the origin of “authentic speech” when he writes: 14  On Ueda’s phenomenology of “being-in-the-twofold-world” (J. nijūsekainaisonzai 二重世界内 存在), according to which we are situated within a world of meaning which is in turn situated within a “hollow-expanse,” see Ueda (2002a: 329–345; Ueda 2002c: 294–295; Ueda 2002d; Ueda 2011a: 769; Ueda 2011b: 75–76; Ueda 1992: 63–64).

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The linguistic and intersubjective world no longer surprises us, we no longer distinguish it from the world itself, and it is within a world already spoken and speaking that we think. … It is, however, quite clear that constituted speech, as it operates in daily life, assumes that the decisive step of expression has been taken. Our view of [human being] will remain superficial so long as we fail to go back to that origin, so long as we fail to find, beneath the chatter of words, the primordial silence, and as long as we do not describe the action which breaks this silence. (Merleau-Ponty 1962: 184; for Ueda’s references to Merleau-Ponty’s phrase “le silence primordial,” see Ueda 1982a: 216; Ueda 2001: 201; Ueda 2002a: 302)

I have quoted this passage from Merleau-Ponty at length because it closely corresponds to Ueda’s account of language in Zen. Ueda describes, by way of reference to Zen practice and texts, both the return from language to silence and the birth of language out of silence. And “pure experience” for Ueda indicates precisely the dynamic bidirectional event of “exiting language [into silence] and exiting [silence] into language.” Ueda writes: In an extreme formulation, pure experience is “the moment of seeing a color or hearing a sound, prior to the bifurcation of subject and object.” … In the strict sense, “neither subject nor object” clearly designates an experience free from all language. It does not point, however, to a state of mere quietistic silence, but originally to a primordial event, the Ereignis, which itself becomes the impetus that drives us to express that experience in words. (Ueda 1995: 43)

Pure experience is not just an interruptive event that tears through the linguistic framework of our horizons of understanding; it is not just an experience that cuts off words. That is only half the story—or in fact not even half, since without the other half there is no whole to which it could be a half. The other half of the whole story is that “the very experience that cuts off language is under way toward becoming language” (Ueda 2002a: 68). With this conception of the relation between language and experience, which traces them back to a radically bivalent event, Ueda seeks to move beyond both “the extreme position that everything is within language” and “the opposite extreme position … according to which language is what cloaks the true face of the world and blocks the way to true reality.” While both views have a point, “as standpoints, they are both one-sided” (Ueda 2002c: 293 = Ueda 2011a: 767). Rather than as standpoints, Ueda situates them as moments within the primordial movement of “exiting language and exiting into language.” He explains this as follows: I wish to see a dynamic integration of the fact that in and through this movement the possibility of experience is conditioned by language, with the fact that what is experienced at its extreme tears through the linguistic world. Precisely because language is a condition for the possibility of experience, being at a loss for words is a fundamental experience, and it is precisely this fundamental experience that seeks new words for its self-understanding. I am not supposing that, when there is an event of language being torn through, the ineffable is in some manner there. This is a crucial point. What I call exiting language and then exiting into language is not a smooth and automatic movement. It is rather a movement consisting of a twofold breaking through: language is torn through into silence and silence is torn through into language. It is precisely this movement that is primordial experience, which altogether I understand as a living wellspring of the death and resuscitation of experience. (Ueda 2002c: 293 = Ueda 2011a: 768)

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“Exiting language and exiting into language” is thus not just a matter of Zen practice or Zen experience; or rather, Zen practice is a radicalization of everyday experience, a stepping back to the roots of experience as this movement between silence and speech, between meaninglessness and meaning, between emptiness and form. Ueda thus comes to speak of “pure experience,” not simply as an ineffable occurrence that precedes language—for this would be to amputate only one part of the nondual yet bivalent dynamic of exiting and reentering language—but rather as what he calls the primordial event of an “originary word.” In this way, Ueda interprets Nishida’s “pure experience and its spontaneous self-unfolding” in terms of “an originary word and its articulation” (Ueda 2002a: 75).

5  Oh!––Pure Experience as Originary Word As we have seen, pure experience for Ueda is not an ineffable state of stillness in which one should permanently dwell. Much less is it a transcendent or immanent realm of meaning prior to or beyond language. Ueda affirms that there is no meaningful experience outside of our linguistic horizons of intelligibility; there is no meaningful world without words. Pure experience indicates rather the originary interplay of silence and speech in a dynamic event that at once annuls and resuscitates language (Ueda 1982a: 219; Ueda 2002a: 299–300). As this originary event, pure experience is the pre-linguistic and pre-meaningful origin of language and meaning. But “pre-” here indicates that such experiences are both not yet and in the process of becoming linguistically meaningful. Pre-linguistic is also already proto-­ linguistic. The nonduality and purity of pure experience is always already under way toward becoming impure, that is, toward becoming dualistic experience within (re)established boundaries of meaning. The “purity” of pure experience could be thought of as a kind of limit concept, an indication of the limit of horizons of language and meaning, the limit at which the originary event of the delimitation or reformation of these horizons takes place. Analogous to Heidegger’s notions of “authenticity” and “inauthenticity,” experience traverses a spectrum between purity and impurity and, proximally and for the most part, we find ourselves situated the latter. To be sure, there is according to Zen a state of pure concentration called “samādhi” (J. zenjō 禅定) which takes one—insofar as one exhaustively empties oneself into a deep stillness and becomes an “absolute nothing” beyond or before the very opposition of something and nothing—utterly beyond or before language and meaning (see Ueda 1994: 17, 22, 28). Recall that we first introduced Ueda’s idea of the primordial movement of “exiting language and exiting into language” in terms of the movement between zazen and sanzen: one exits language as one enters a profound silence in zazen, and then one exits this silence and reenters the linguistically mediated world afresh in sanzen. More precisely, the movement between zazen and sanzen is not simply that between silence and speech, for while there may be a deep dimension of silence without speech, there is never speech without silence.

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Just as a text that completely covers the white background of the paper on which it is written would cease to be an intelligible text, continuous speech that completely suppresses its essential interplay with silence would mutate into a deafening white noise. The speech of sanzen, in fact, reverberates out of and back into the silence of zazen, since the ultimate dimension of silence does not stand opposed to speech but rather enfolds it and affords it a dimension of depth (see Ueda 2011b: 154–155, 170). With this in mind, we can nevertheless say that in zazen and sanzen the “exiting language” and “exiting into language” polarities of the event of pure experience are mutually intensified. The twofold practice of Zen slows down and bifurcates, as it were, the bivalent pulse of experience, so as to enable one to awaken to and freely participate in the movement of the death and rebirth of sense—a movement which, more or less, takes place at each moment of our lives. Yet how does this event of “exiting language and exiting into language” happen in the pure experience of “the moment of seeing a color or hearing a sound”? What would it mean to say that a twofold movement of pure experience takes place in a “moment” or “instant”?15 Moreover, insofar as one is hearing a particular sound, is it not already a linguistically delimited phenomenon, and, thus, is it not already encountered within the context of a language world? Ueda agrees that the vast majority of our experiences take place within predominantly predetermined linguistic worlds of meaning. And yet what he, following Nishida, is calling “pure experience” is an originary event of “exiting language and exiting into language” that opens up a world in the first place.16 This “new world” can of course always be seen as a modification of a previously existing world; but an inexplicable element of newness is necessarily involved in any genuinely creative modification. The innovative reformation of a linguistic world also requires a moment and element of creatio ex nihilo. This event of creation is both passive and active; or rather, “it occurs” (G. es ereignet sich) in a manner that precedes and undercuts the dualistic ontology that determines this grammatical duality: the sheer passivity of hearing the sound of a pebble striking bamboo immediately corresponds to the sheer activity of Xiangyan’s laughter as this articulation of a nondual middle-voiced event of pure experience gives birth to a new or newly reformed being-in-the-world (see Ueda 2001: 219, 234–235; see also Ueda 1982a: 216–217). The sounds and expressions with which Zen masters have  attained enlightenment are paradigmatic “originary words” for Ueda: kachin! is an originary word 15  The word Nishida uses for a “moment” of pure experience is not the usual shunkan 瞬間 but rather setsuna 刹那, derived from the Sanskrit ksana, which is a technical Buddhist term for the smallest increment of time (Nishida 1987: 9 = Nishida 1990: 3). Although Abhidharma Buddhist philosophers sometimes calculated a ksana to be approximately 1/75 of a second, Ueda suggests that the Kierkegaardian notion of Augenblick as a momentary irruption of eternity into time is closer to what is at issue here (see Ueda 1991a: 79; Ueda 2002a: 375). 16  One could compare this to Heidegger’s discussion of artworks, and poetry in particular, as opening up and establishing a world. “Poetry,” writes Heidegger, “is the founding of being in the word” (Heidegger 2000: 59). Developing this idea, John T. Lysaker writes that “certain poems enable us to experience the birth of sense in such a radical fashion that they transform the sense of all that is” (Lysaker 2002: ix).

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that begins to articulate itself in Xiangyan’s laughter; and we are looking back through dualistic linguistic articulations of this nondual event when we say, “Xiangyan laughed upon hearing a pebble strike a stalk of bamboo.” The pure experience of the sound both ek-statically removes one from and in-statically reintroduces one into a language world. “The moment when the sound struck him, the net of the linguistic world, the closed ego, was broken through.” At the same time, the sound itself is an originary word, a “non-verbal fore-word to language, through which the way to language is newly opened” (Ueda 1989a: 74 = Ueda 1991b: 62, translation modified). In written texts, we find originary words, or at least traces of originary words, above all in poetry. Ueda returns time and again to one such trace found in Rainer Maria Rilke’s (1875–1926) self-composed epitaph, etched on his tombstone: Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust, Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel Lidern. Rose, oh pure contradiction, desire and joy To be the sleep of no-one under so many Lids. (Rilke 1975: 123–124, translation modified)

In his multiple readings of Rilke’s epitaph, Ueda always focuses our attention on a single word, and the least conspicuous word at that: the “oh” in the phrase “Rose, oh pure contradiction” (Ueda 2001: 186ff.; Ueda 1982a: 218ff.; Ueda 2011b: 29ff. = Ueda 1982b: 30ff.). Like a glimpse of the empty kernel of the rose itself, for Ueda this utterance is a trace of the pure experience from out of which the petals of the poem evolve, from out of which the rose expresses itself by way of “articulation” (J. bunsetsu 分節) or division into phrases or “linguistic segments” (J. bunsetsu 文節). As if following through on Rilke’s attempt to whittle his entire life and poetry down to a single verse, to what in Zen would be called his “death poem” or “world departing verse” (J. jisei 辞世), Ueda retraces even these compact lines back to the originary word from which they were to have sprung. According to Ueda, an originary word such as the “oh” of Rilke’s epitaph both cuts off and gives birth to language; it is, as it were, the rotating hub of the “and” in the dynamic movement of “exiting language and exiting into language.” On the one hand, in the direction of exiting language into silence, the Oh! manifests the astonishing “pure presence” of an X that “robs us of speech.” Here the “rose” becomes, or rather “debecomes” an Oh! “Language is gathered back into the inarticulate in order to debecome [entwerden] in absolute quietude.” On the other hand, in the direction of exiting silence into language, “this Oh! is also and at the same time the prefatory, starting point for the words of the verse that follow it …. It is the very first, primordial sound that reverberates in absolute stillness,” and out of this kernel the word and world of the rose is articulated (Ueda 2011b: 30–31 = Ueda 1982b: 32; see also Ueda 1982a: 219–220; Ueda 1989a: 74–74; Ueda 1991b: 62–63). As a

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verse from Zen proclaims: “when a single flower blooms, the world arises” (J. ikka kai sekai ki 一花開世界起) (Iriya et al. 1992: 251 = Cleary and Cleary 1977: 123). In short, writes Ueda, “as an occurrence of ‘pure experience’, the Oh! is also a circular movement from language through absolute silence and back again to ­language” (Ueda 2011b: 32 = Ueda 1982b: 33). As an “instant” of pure experience, an originary word is thus the primordial axis point of the convergence and divergence of the bidirectional movement of “exiting language and exiting into language” (see Ueda 2002a: 388). Such originary words of pure experience entail the death-and-rebirth of language and, as such, the death-and-rebirth of self and world. The “Oh-event” occurs not just as a dynamic unity of silence and language, but also as a dynamic unity of word or speech (J. koto 言) and fact or affair (J. koto 事)—and it is indeed remarkable that these are homonyms in Japanese (see Marra 2011: 6–7, 76–77). This linguistic doubling could be seen as testimony to the fact that, in the originary nondual Oh-event, “reality and language are not yet divisible”; an Urwort is also an Ur-sache (Ueda 1982a: 220). Moreover, as Nishida remarks of pure experience, the nondual Oh-event evinces a dynamic unity of person and thing insofar as it precedes the split between subject and object. In short: “The Oh! occurs as an ek-static unity of person, language, and reality (or affair)” (Ueda 2011b: 32 = Ueda 1982b: 33). Conversely, this ek-static event, in which we are drawn out of ourselves and drawn into an originary nondual occurrence, is an in-static event in which differentiations of language, self, thing, and world are born anew in a movement of self-unfolding and self-articulation. The both centrifugal and centripetal event of pure experience is the death-and-rebirth of the self and its linguistically articulated world. This is how Ueda explains the secret of death in life, the death that gives life, a secret that Rilke sought to intimate and embody in his own way.

6  The Langauge of Zen: Haiku and Kōan The words of Rilke’s epitaph sound forth out of the Oh! without losing a sense of the silence in which the Oh! itself reverberates. Elaborating on Ueda’s indications (see Ueda 2001: 230; Ueda 1982a: 222–223), we can witness this twofold sense of sound as a determination of silence—this perceptual understanding of sound as at once an expression and a cloaking of silence—directly presented to us in Matsuo Bashō’s 松尾芭蕉 famous haiku: 古池や 蛙とび込む 水の音

furuike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto

The old pond – A frog leaps in The sound of the water!

(Ueda 2001: 230)

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It could be said that the kireji 切れ字 (literally “severing phoneme”), namely “ya” や, is the originary word of this haiku. Following Ueda’s German translation of another haiku (see below), I have translated ya here with an unspoken dash. But it could also be translated as “oh” or “ah.” Read with a sigh of nostalgic resignation, ya gestures back to the peaceful silence of “the old pond,” primordially empty of the distractions of noise and aboriginally free of the delimitations of form. And yet, conversely, read with a rising tone of anticipation, ya gestures forward to the wondrously sonorous event of the frog’s splash. The haiku reminds us of—or perhaps awakens us for the first time to—the nondual intimacy of silence and expression, of emptiness and form, of death and life. Ueda also cites the following Zen poem in this regard: 一鳥鳴いて 山更に 幽なり

icchō naite yama sarani yū nari

(Ueda 2001: 230)

A solitary bird calls out, and The mountain grows all the more Darkly mysterious. We may also read another of Bashō’s haikus in this manner: 閑かさや 岩にしみいる 蝉の声

shizukasa ya iwa ni shimi-iru semi no koe

Oh quietude – Seeping into the rock The cicada’s voice

Stille – in den Felsen dringt Zikadenstimme

(Ueda 1982a: 223)

Rilke would likely have esteemed such Zen poetry as what he once called “the kind of speech that may be possible there, where silence reigns” (Rilke 1967: 18). In a poem from Sonnets to Orpheus, Rilke writes: “Full round apple, pear and banana, / gooseberry … All this speaks  /  death and life into the mouth.” Edging toward the death of language, he goes on: “Do not things slowly become nameless in your mouth?” And then he urges us back toward the rebirth of speech: “Dare to say what you call apple … ambiguous, sunny, earthy, of the here and now—: / O experience, sensing, joy—, immense!” (Rilke 1970: 40–41, translation modified). Words not only “gently fade before the unsayable” (Rilke 1970: 88–89), they also spring forth into ever new vibrant possibilities of expression. Zen’s originary words are often more abrupt than Rilke’s poetry. Whereas the poet allows things to slowly become nameless and words to “gently fade before the unsayable,” Huangbo 黄檗 (J. Ōbaku, d. 850) prefers to shatter our wordy worlds with a stick. Certainly one of the most famous of Zen’s originary words is Linji’s 臨

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在 (J. Rinzai, d. 866) “shout” (C. he, J. katsu 喝). Ueda writes that Linji’s shout is “the reality of the self and the world balled together in a single X, an X that bursts forth as a single ray of clarity; it is the reality of a single shout that embodies a place beyond meaning that is directly prior to articulation, a place of non-thinking at the utmost limits of principle where words have been severed.” He goes on to say that this originary word of Linji’s “clears a pathway that brings ‘that which transcends language’ into language,” and the result is none other than the text, The Record of Linji (Ueda 2001: 220). We could also view Zhaozhou’s (J.  Jōshū) 趙州 (778–897) “No!” (C. wu, J. mu 無) as a great originary word of Zen. On the one hand, like a “red hot iron ball” in your throat, this No! chokes off all possibilities of linguistic expression based on dualistic discrimination (that is, a doctrinal or intellectual answer to the question of whether or not a dog has Buddha-nature). Wumen (J. Mumon) 無門 (1183–1260) thus calls this No! “the gateless barrier of Zen” (Nishimura 1994: 21; Shibayama 2000: 19) and places it at the beginning of his collection of kōans called the Wumenguan (J. Mumonkan) 無門関, which can be translated as The Gateless Barrier, The No-Gate Barrier, or The Barrier of Nothing. In his preface to the collection, Wumen disparages the foolishness of “one who clings to words and phrases and thus tries to achieve understanding” (Nishimura 1994: 16; Shibayama 2000: 9). As the so-called Wu or Mu kōan, Zhaozhou’s No! stands as a gateless barrier to anyone who attempts to approach the Wumenguan by means of the linguistically delimited forms of dualistic intellection. “Gateless is the Great Way,” writes Wumen in a poem appended to his preface. However, in the following line he adds: “There are thousands of ways to it.” Wumen’s No! is both a barrier he uses to repel us, and the gate he puts before us and challenges us to somehow pass through. Don’t think about it dualistically or nihilistically, be this No!, he tells us. Then, having passed through this barrier by becoming one with it, “you may walk freely in the universe” (Nishimura 1994: 17; Shibayama 2000: 10). Having thrown away words, they are now at your disposal. Of course, rarely, if ever, is this breakthrough a once and for all affair. True, according to an old saying, “if you break through one kōan, hundreds and thousands of kōans have all been penetrated at once.” Yet in the kōan system of Rinzai Zen, one’s initial passing of the “main case” (J. honsoku 本則) of the Mu kōan is followed by up to a hundred or more “checking questions” (J. sassho 拶所), each of them a kōan in its own right. One may encounter these further kōans as, on the one hand, reiterations of the “first barrier” (J. shokan 初関) that one must still pass through by way of cutting off all dualistic intellection based on linguistic conceptualization, or, on the other hand, as articulations of the originary word No!—which can now be understood as the “first entrance” (note that the character guan/kan 関 can also mean “entrance”) into the world of Wumen’s collection of texts, and thus into the entire kōan system of Rinzai Zen as established by Hakuin. A kōan, as used in Rinzai Zen, can be understood in this regard as “a means of on the one hand robbing one of all language, and on the other hand of reviving one into language from a place where there is no language” (Ueda 2001: 209). Kōan training, indeed,

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involves not only undergoing experiences that transgress one’s accustomed linguistic horizons (and which therefore may initially seem simply ineffable); it also involves encountering “turning words” (J. tengo 転語) which trigger experiences that transform and expand one’s horizons. While, on the one hand, learning to free oneself from the prison house of sedimented language, on the other hand one learns to freely pursue an “explication of words” (J. gonsen 言詮), as a subsequent level of kōans in Hakuin’s system is called.17 The practice of Zen thus aims at a “freedom from language for language” (Ueda 1982a: 215; Ueda 1989a: 73 = Ueda 1991b: 60). Stuck in neither speech nor silence, that is, both free from words and free for words, one is at home in traveling  the circling way of “exiting language and exiting into language.”18

Works Cited Cleary, Thomas and J. C. Cleary, trans. 1977. The Blue Cliff Record. Boulder: Shambhala. Davis, Bret W. 2004a. Provocative Ambivalences in Japanese Philosophy of Religion: With a Focus on Nishida and Zen. In Japanese Philosophy Abroad, ed. James W. Heisig, 295–329. Nagoya: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture. ———. 2004b. The Step Back Through Nihilism: The Radical Orientation of Nishitani Keiji’s Philosophy of Zen. Synthesis Philosophica 37: 139–159. ———. 2008. Letting Go of God for Nothing: Ueda Shizuteru’s Non-Mysticism and the Question of Ethics in Zen Buddhism. In Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy 2, ed. Victor Sogen Hori and Melissa Anne-Marie Curley, 226–255. Nagoya: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture. ———. 2009. The Presencing of Truth: Dōgen’s Genjōkōan. In Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings, ed. Jay Garfield and William Edelglass, 251–259. New  York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2013a. Review of Shizuteru Ueda, Wer und was bin ich: Zur Phänomenologie des Selbst im Zen-Buddhismus (Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 2011). Monumenta Nipponica 68 (2): 321–327. ———. 2013b. Heidegger and Asian philosophy. In The Bloomsbury Companion to Heidegger, ed. François Raffoul and Eric S. Nelson, 459–471. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. ———. 2014a. The Kyoto School. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (winter 2014 edition), ed. Edward N.  Zalta. URL http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/ kyoto-school/.  “Gonsen kōan bring to light the fact that while the Fundamental is ‘not founded on words and letters’, it is nevertheless expressed through words and letters” (Hori 2003: 21). 18  It remains to be discussed how dialogue—beginning with the mondō of sanzen—is an essential aspect of language for Ueda. It is noteworthy that, in his first book on Zen, the long chapter on language is followed by an equally long chapter on dialogue (Ueda 2001: 183–319). In his first German essay on the topic of language and Zen, Ueda writes: “The verbal as well as the nonverbal articulation … takes place primarily in the betweenness [im Zwischen] of person and person…. The originary word articulates itself in the encounter with and in facing the other…. The place of articulation is primarily the between [das Zwischen]” (Ueda 1982a: 229). There is also a form of Zen-affiliated poetry that Ueda attends to, the “linked verses” of renku 連句, which is noteworthy for its radically dialogical character (see Ueda 2001: 321–344; Ueda 2011b: 59–71 = Ueda 1989b: 25–36). On Ueda’s understanding of interpersonal dialogue and its relevance to intercultural dialogue, see Davis (2014b: 182–194; 2017). 17

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Bret W. Davis is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Maryland. He received his PhD in Philosophy from Vanderbilt University and completed his post-­ doctoral research at Otani University and Kyoto University. He was a visiting scholar at Freiburg University and Kyoto University. He specializes in continental philosophy with a focus on Heidegger, phenomenology, and hermeneutics, Japanese Philosophy with a focus on the Kyoto School, East Asian thought, with a focus on Zen Buddhism, and cross-cultural philosophy. His numerous publications include his books, Japanese Philosophy in the World (Sekai no naka no Nihon no tetsugaku), Heidegger and the Will: On the Way to Gelassenheit, and The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy. Articles include “Zen after Zarathustra: The Problem of the Will in the Confrontation between Nietzsche and Buddhism” and “The Kyoto School.”

Index

A absolute contradiction, J. zettai mujun 絶対矛 盾, 196, 584 absolute negation, J. zettai hitei 絶対否定, 76, 660 absolute nothingness, J. zettai mu 絶対無, 586, 608, 638, 650, 651, 660, 673 absolute truth, S. paramārtha-satya, 59, 140, 365 Aijikan 阿字観, 249 Ajātaśatru, 240, 241 Akṣobhya, 246 ālaya-vijñāna, 351–352, 700, 703 aletheia, 673 AMANO Teiyū 天野貞祐 (1884-1980), 211 Amaterasu Ōmikami 天照大神, 631 Amida Buddha (Amitayus / Amitabha), J. Amida nyorai 阿弥陀如来, 236 Amitābha Sūtra, 58 Amoghasiddhi, 246 Amoghavajra, 247 anātman, 186, 227, 290, 295, 382, 605, 607, 669 Ankenbukuro 行券袋, 512 anontology, 649–678 ARAI Ōsui 新井奥邃 (1846-1922), 620 argumentation, 55, 56, 65–68, 161, 197, 251, 482, 601 aristocrats, 84, 98, 139, 146, 532 Aśoka, 687 Asuka, 165, 243 authority, 11, 12, 22, 34, 36, 38, 41–43, 45, 67, 93, 161, 174, 197, 269, 279, 290, 301, 308–312, 314, 315, 319, 320, 330, 331, 348, 361, 362, 364, 367, 369–373, 375,

376, 403, 436, 460, 498, 518, 528, 557, 571, 681 Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna, S. Mahāyāna Śraddhotpāda Śāstra, J. Daijōkishinron大乗起信論, 576 B ba 場, field, 653 bakufu, 362, 473, 475, 477, 512, 516, 532 banbutsu ittai 万物一体, 546, 558 BANKEI Yōtaku 盤珪永琢 (1622–1693), 64, 503, 513 basho 場所, place, 653 becoming a Buddha in this very body, see sokushin jōbutsu 即身成仏 beification, 660, 664, 668, 674, 676 Benchō 弁長, 371 Bendōwa 弁道話, 63 BO Lun 伯倫, J. HAKU Rin, also LIU Ling劉 伶, J. RYŪ Re (221-300), 484 bodhicitta, 94, 250, 375 bodhisattvas, 97, 103, 143, 193, 235, 237, 240, 247, 262, 287, 312, 324, 328, 347, 357, 358, 419–421, 456, 458, 463, 498, 500, 604–607 bodies of the buddha, 166, 375 bosatsu igi 菩薩威儀, 521 Buddhism, 3–46, 53, 71–80, 83–129, 135, 155–200, 205–232, 235, 257, 287–302, 307–333, 337, 348, 361, 387, 408, 415, 451, 471, 488, 504, 511, 537, 565–572, 575, 617, 637, 649–678, 682, 694, 714 bukkyō katsuron joron 仏教活論序論, 566 bukkyō tetsugaku 仏教哲学, v, vi, 163, 565

© Springer Nature B.V. 2019 G. Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9

739

740 busshin 佛心, 505 busshō 佛性, buddha-nature, 62 butsudō taikō 佛道大綱, 521 C Cakravartin, 85, 235 Caodong, see Sōtō 曹洞 CAOSHAN Benji 曹山本寂, J. Sōzan Honjaku (840-901), 485 Carl Jung (1875-1961), 642 catalogue of imported items, shōrai mokuroku, 249 Chan Monastery, J. zenji 禪寺, C. Chansi, 476 choice/commitment to a practice, 96, 263 Christianity, 8, 9, 29, 30, 32, 33, 36, 44, 73, 224, 255, 257, 281, 416, 466, 544, 557, 566–568, 594, 618, 620, 649, 663 CHŪGAN Engetsu 中巖圓月(1300-1375), 472 Chujōhime 中将姫, 238 Chūseishi 中正子(1334-1344) (“The Master of Moderation and Sincerity”), 478 circuminsession, 665–667 circuminsessional interpenetration, 666, 667, 673 circuminsessional relationship, 666 cogito ergo sum, 653 compassion, 78, 101, 111, 122, 129, 235, 247, 250, 257, 261–264, 273, 287, 288, 290, 294, 310, 343, 344, 354, 357, 402, 423, 424, 441, 444–445, 447, 455–457, 463, 464, 466, 468, 490, 497, 507, 521, 530, 531, 554, 570, 593, 607, 644, 663, 685, 690, 705, 708 conflicts of duties, 212 Confucianism, 33, 36, 53–55, 140, 171, 183, 205–232, 281, 341, 466, 473, 483, 498, 504, 558 Contemplation Sūtra, 368, 370, 373, 424, 426, 432, 440 conventional truth, S. saṃvṛti-satya, 321, 365, 435 Crazy Cloud Anthology, J. Kyōun-shū 狂雲集, 490 D dafenzhi 大憤志, 518 daiseishi 大勢至, S. mahāsthāmaprāpta, 240 daigi 大疑, great doubt, 658, 661 daimoku 題目, 80, 457, 458, 460, 467, 468 Dainichi nyorai 大日如来, S. Mahāvairocana Buddha, 236, 308

Index DAINICHIBŌ Nōnin 大日房能忍 (d. 1196), 410 daishi 大死, great death, 518, 659 Daitō 大燈國師 (1282-1337), 119, 513 Daitokuji 大徳寺, 121, 143, 487, 513 Daochuo道綽 (562-645), 375 Daoism, 31, 183, 207, 288, 341, 466, 473, 675 Daosheng 道升 (360-434), 367 Dao 道, 54, 147, 325 Darumashū日本達磨宗, 410 Dasein, 185, 547, 665, 667 daxingen 大信根, 518 dayiqing 大疑情, 518 death, 11, 29, 65, 72, 75, 76, 78, 79, 93, 95, 108–111, 113, 114, 118, 123, 124, 126, 138, 155, 176, 179, 184, 196, 198, 222, 239, 243, 259, 262, 265–267, 280, 291, 295, 296, 298, 300, 310, 314–316, 319, 323–325, 327, 333, 337, 351, 363, 367, 373, 377, 383, 384, 386, 388–390, 401, 404, 408, 409, 417, 419, 420, 423–425, 431, 432, 439, 442–447, 452, 454, 480, 481, 485, 487, 503, 505, 506, 508, 512, 518, 519, 521, 523, 531, 540–543, 551, 552, 558–560, 569, 579, 594, 610, 611, 620, 621, 623, 624, 637, 639, 643, 656–659, 663–665, 671, 673, 674, 676, 677, 682, 689, 709, 717, 718, 727, 729–732 death of God, 656 Deity yoga, 236–239, 249, 250 Descartes, René, 65 Dhammapada, 34 dharma, 19, 57, 60, 66, 76, 78, 79, 89–91, 96, 101, 104, 114, 118–122, 124, 125, 138, 166, 167, 170, 173, 183, 189, 190, 218, 222, 239, 243, 249, 250, 257, 261, 262, 270, 278, 279, 307, 314, 315, 317, 321, 324, 326–328, 330, 339, 343–345, 347, 349, 353–358, 365, 372, 375, 383, 389, 396–401, 403, 408, 410, 412, 418, 424, 434–436, 438, 442, 446, 447, 452–462, 474, 475, 477, 482, 488, 515–507, 517, 521, 559, 560, 566, 569, 595, 596, 599, 601–603, 620, 651, 673, 675, 695–699, 701–709, 716 dharmadhātu, 244, 248, 251, 323, 324, 595, 596, 665 dharmakāya, J. hosshin 法身, 317, 435, 594, 704, 709 dhyāna, P. jhana, C. chan 禪, J. zen 禅, 242, 327, 695, 701, 702, 709 Diamond Sūtra, 265, 270, 312, 589–591, 597, 600–607, 609–611, 662, 668, 669

Index Diamond World Mandala, 245, 246, 249, 342 dōchū no kufū 動中の工夫, 522 doctrinal classification, J. kyōsōhanjaku教相 判釈, C. panjiao判教, 207, 218 dōgaku道學, C. Daoxue, study of the way, 484 Dōgen 道元 (1200-1253), v, 16, 32, 57, 121, 136, 159, 249, 370, 381, 408, 714 DONGSHAN Liangjie 洞山良价 (807-869), 485, 522, 599 dōtoku道得, expression, 58, 187, 193, 198, 199, 714 dōtoku道徳, morality, 207, 221 double exposure, 671, 676, 677 doubt, 37, 112, 143, 165, 181, 221, 230, 231, 257, 261, 278, 301, 310, 363, 374, 383, 384, 424, 428, 429, 431, 436, 460, 476, 504, 518–520, 544, 620, 636, 650, 651, 657–659, 661, 665, 668, 696, 704, 706 dropping-off body-and-mind, J. shinjin datsuraku 身心脱落, 670 duḥkha, 651, 656 dwelling in the dharma-position, 673 E egoteki renkan, 666 egoteki sōnyū, 666 Eihei shingi 永平清規, 402, 412 Eiheiji 永平寺, 122, 175, 383, 401–403, 407, 409, 410, 412 elements, 6, 13, 20, 32, 54, 76, 77, 122, 139, 147, 169, 184, 190, 207, 243, 246–248, 251, 266, 275, 278, 288, 289, 294, 299, 328, 344, 375, 382, 403, 408, 420, 423, 428–430, 442, 451, 456, 459, 474, 488, 495, 527, 529, 548, 583, 592, 599, 614, 649, 656, 666, 700, 701, 709, 721, 722, 729 emaki 絵巻, 238 embodiment, vi, 230, 244, 297, 337–345, 401, 441, 462, 495–497, 618, 620, 709 Emperor Go Komatsu 後小松 (1377-1433), 487 Emperor Go Fukakusa 後深草院 (1243-1304), 244 emptiness, S. śūnyatā, J. kū 空, 38, 116, 323, 418, 660 Engakuji 圓覺寺, 117, 124, 621, 696 engi 縁起, S. pratītya-samutpāda, 665 engyō, C. yuanjiao 円教, 218, 328 Enlightenment in the Meiji era, J. keimō 啓蒙, 54 ENNI Ben’en 圓爾辯圓 (1202–1280), 477 Enryakuji 延暦寺, 217, 363, 459

741 entrusting heart, J. shinjin 信心, 59, 67 esoteric Buddhism, see mikkyō 密教 essential reality, J. sei/shô性, C. xing, 479 ethics, J. rinri倫理), 209, 221 etoki 絵解き, 240, 242–244 F field of being, 653, 671, 672 field of consciousness, 653, 656–660, 664, 668, 671, 672, 723 field of emptiness, 651, 660–662, 666, 667, 669, 671, 672, 676, 723 five element stupa, J. gorintō 五輪塔, 246 five hindrances-threefold submission, J. goshō sanshō 五障三従, 121 Five Mountains, J. gozan五山, C. wushan, 472 four mandalas, J. shimandara, 246 FUJIOKA Sakutarō藤岡作太郎 (1870-1910), 577 Fujiwara 藤原, 92, 104–107, 109–111, 115, 139, 142, 148, 348, 362, 387, 390 fukakai 不可解, 551 Fukanzazengi普勧坐禅儀, 412, 579 fukoku kyōhei富国強兵, 538 funiryōzan 不二両山, 407 fushō Zen 不生禅, 503 G GEDATSU Shōnin 解脱上人, 347 Gendaigoyaku shōbōgenzō 現代語訳 正法眼蔵, 697 Genjōkōan 現成公案, 59, 66, 138, 192, 194–198, 382, 396, 662, 670, 720 Genkō shakusho元亨釈書, Buddhist Scripture of the Genkô Era, 471 Genshin 源信, 104–106, 168, 217, 373, 376, 420 GIDŌ Shūshin義堂周信 (1325–1388), 136 God, 4, 29, 43, 44, 53, 89, 94, 95, 99, 103, 108, 125, 212, 263, 264, 275, 289, 290, 292, 294, 302, 353, 389, 411, 412, 454, 467, 490, 531, 585, 594, 608, 610, 611, 618–623, 629, 630, 637, 650, 654, 656, 658, 662, 663, 669, 675–677, 699 Goi 五位, 521, 599 Goi jūjūkin 五位十重禁, 520 Gokuraku極楽, paradise, 593, 596 Gonnyo 厳如 (1817-1894), 540 Gorōhō五老峰, 410 Goshō sanshō五障三従, 114, 121 Gottheit, 662 Gozan五山, see Five Mountains

742 Great death, see daishi 大死, great death Great doubt, see daigi 大疑, great doubt Great Learning, C. Daxue 大學, 480, 504 Gyakutaiō 逆対応, 577, 584 H Hachiman 八幡, 458, 631 Haibutsu kishaku, 廃仏毀釈, 80, 539 Haja 破邪, 567 HAKUIN Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1686-1768), 64, 119, 125, 157, 158, 471, 472, 511–532, 596, 599, 709, 733, 734 Hakusan白山, 408, 409, 411 HASE Shōtō 長谷正當, 587 Heart Sūtra, 97, 98, 100, 239, 591, 601, 671, 707 Heian period (794-1185), 84, 85, 98, 107, 146, 148, 217, 222, 236, 288, 368, 373, 390, 421 Heidegger, Martin (1889-1976), 10, 185, 199, 215, 382, 547, 637, 642, 650, 654, 666, 679, 699, 724, 726, 728, 729 Heijōtei 平常底, 577, 584 Hensō 来迎, 238 Hensō raigō 変相来迎, 242 Higashi honganji 東本願寺, 109, 259, 260, 266, 451, 537, 540, 565 Himeji 姫路, 504 HIRAKAWA Akira 平川彰 (1915-2002), 693–695 HIRATSUKA Raichō 平塚らいてう (1886-1971), 88, 123–128, 617–631 HIROMATSU Wataru 廣松渉, 208, 226 HISAMATSU Shin’ichi 久松 真一 (1889– 1980), 208, 226–232, 635–646 HŌJŌ Tokiyuki北条時敬 (1858-1929), 113, 116, 117, 119, 124, 453, 474, 577 Hōjōki, 方丈記, 366, 390 Hokkai, 323, 595, 596, 598, 599, 665 Hōnen 法然 (1133-1212), 32, 64, 88, 89, 107, 110–115, 161, 217, 310, 333, 347, 357, 361–378, 420–427, 429, 432, 436, 437, 440, 446, 452, 453, 557 Honmatsu seido 本末制度, 516 Honrai sō, J, 652 Honsoku 本則, 520, 733 Horyūji, 243 Hosshin seppō, J, 94, 104, 339, 435, 594, 704, 709 Hossō, C. Faxiang 法相, Yogācāra, 12, 15, 80, 94, 95, 104, 318, 331–333, 347–350, 353–358 Hotoke, 94, 100, 243

Index Hoyō zakki 保養雑記, 540 Huayan, see Kegon, C. Huayan 華厳 Human weakness, 367 Humanity, J. nin 仁, C. ren, 4, 10, 76, 97, 99, 145, 228, 262, 263, 275, 277, 325, 367, 368, 373, 387, 392, 426, 454, 478, 479, 482, 558, 643, 653, 654, 663, 689 I Ichigenron 一元論, 620 Ichiryūsōjōsei 一流相承制, 411 Igyō 易行, 79 IKKYŪ Sōjun 一休宗純 (1394-1481), 142, 143, 176, 261, 471, 472, 487–500 Impermanence, J. mujō無常, C. wuchang, 103, 112, 137–140, 144, 145, 149, 152, 186, 198, 279, 381–404, 434, 444, 453, 481 Inka J 印可, 408, 487, 513 INOUE Enryō 井上円了 (1858–1919), 54, 160, 163–166, 177–182, 265, 557, 558, 565–572, 576 INOUE Katsuhito 井上克人, 576 INOUE Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎(1855-1944), 164, 168, 172, 206, 266, 557, 568, 576 Interpenetration, 168, 247–249, 273, 342, 344, 440, 454, 456, 457, 593, 594, 598, 651, 666, 667, 673 ISHIDA Baigan 石田梅岩, 53 Ishiki no ba, 653, 671 J Jakuen寂円, 142, 148, 390 Jakugo 著語, 512 Ji jōkin chōrō 示紹瑾長老, 410 Jijimuge hōkai 事事無碍法界, 598, 665 jijimuge 事事無碍, 598, 665 jikaku ni okeru chokkan to hansei自覚に於け る直観と反省, Intuition and Reflection in Self-Awareness (1917), 581 Jingū kōgō 神功皇后, 631 jippōjūjisei 十方住持制, 411 Jōkei貞慶 (1155-1213), 347–358 jō, 578, 672 Jōdo Shinshū 浄土真宗, 308, 310, 330, 415, 416, 422, 537, 565, 584 Jōyōdaishi 承陽大師, 407 jōzai, 672, 673 J. jirekifu 寿福寺, 473 Jūfukuji 寿福寺, 474 jūhachidō, 239 jūhōi, 673

Index K kaeri raigō, 242 kaji, mutual empowerment, 239 Kakuban 覚鑁 (1095-1143), 60, 66, 251 kakubutsu, 格物, C. gewu, things, 480 Kamakura period, 84, 85, 120, 146, 278, 288, 362, 368, 390, 559 Kannon 観音, S. Avalotikeśvara, 240 Kant, Immanuel, 156, 209, 211–213, 215, 221–223, 641, 697, 698, 700, 703, 721, 722 KANZAN Egen 關山慧玄 (1277-1360), 477, 512 KARATANI Kōjin 柄谷行人, 228 Karma-vipāka, 703, 705 karma, J. gō業, C. ye, 480, 651 karmamandala, 246 Kasō 華叟 (1352-1428), 487 katsubukkyō, J. 活仏教, 569 katsubutsu 活物, 568 KAWAI Hayao 河合隼雄 (1928-2007), 630, 631 Kegon, C. Huayan 華厳, 39, 76–78, 80, 98, 121, 158, 159, 168, 169, 181, 216, 218, 273, 312, 313, 319, 320, 323–326, 331, 338, 341, 353, 546, 549, 551, 562, 565, 596–598, 620, 651, 665, 666, 694, 697, 699 KEIZAN Jōkin瑩山紹瑾 (1264-1325), 316, 407–413 Kenchōji 建長寺, 117, 120 kenchūtō 兼中到, 522, 599 Kennijin建仁寺, 383, 408, 476 Kenninji 建仁寺, 383, 408 Kenō 謙翁 (d.1414), 487 kenōsis, 663, 669 kenshō 見性, seeing one’s nature, 124–126, 139, 514, 516–518, 522, 578, 599, 621, 636, 696, 697, 723, 724 Kichijōji 吉祥寺, 475, 476 kikaika 機械化, mechanization, 653 King Bimbisāra, 97, 240 kirigami切紙, 408 KIYOZAWA Manshi 清澤満之 (1863-1903), 7, 156, 260, 282, 379, 537–562, 571, 576 kōan公案, 21–23, 37, 44, 64, 65, 118, 124, 178, 384, 385, 398, 402, 489, 491, 511–513, 515, 518–520, 579, 593, 599, 600, 621, 646, 695–697, 709, 714, 719, 731–734 kōan taikei 公案体系, 519 kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観, 577, 582

743 kōjō chokushi zen 向上直指禪, 521 kōjō 向上, 520 KOKUSAI kokushi 国済国師, see KEIZAN Jōkin瑩山紹瑾 (1264-1325) kongen shukansei 根源的主観性, 650, 661, 662, 670 KŌSAKA Masaaki 高坂正顕 (1900-1969), 210, 211 Kōshōji 興聖寺, 412 kōso 高祖, 107, 110, 118, 143, 407 KŌYAMA Iwao 高山岩男 (1905-1993), 108, 208, 210–224, 226, 227, 231 Kōyasan 高野山, 251 Kū, see śūnyatā, C. kong 空 kū no ba 空の場, 651, 660 Kūkai 空海 (774-835), 16, 37, 56, 57, 59, 60, 62, 66, 67, 76–78, 95, 104, 157, 158, 161, 164, 165, 167–171, 173, 200, 207, 211, 220, 239, 246, 249, 250, 308, 317, 318, 320, 331, 337–345, 363, 378, 567, 578 KUKI Shūzō 九鬼周造 (1888-1941)155, 156, 223 kunka 君火, 529 kuvala, J. kubara 鳩婆羅, 408 kyomu 虚無, 594, 650, 651, 655, 658 Kyoto School, J. Kyōtō gakuha 京都学派, 37, 160, 161, 169, 205–214, 217, 222, 223, 225–229, 231, 232, 538, 565, 576, 589, 590, 607, 612, 635, 637, 638, 644, 649, 677, 713, 720 L Lady Nijō 二条 (1258-1307), 110, 244 Lanxi Daolong 蘭溪道隆, J. Rankei Dōryū (1213–1278), 120, 473 Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra, 368, 371, 374, 375 laws of nature, 654 learning of the mind, J. shingaku心学, 53 Leben ohne warum, 674–676 Li, C. 里, 323–325, 327, 353, 517 limitation, hermeneutic of, 376 LINJI Yixuan臨濟義玄, J. Rinzai Gigen (d. 866/867), 156–157 literary virtue, J. buntoku文德, C. wende, 479, 483 logic of basho, 219, 220, 227, 610 logocentrism, 60, 169 Lord Yokohagi, 240 Lunyu論語, J. Rongo, Confucian Analects, 479

744 M machination (Machenschaft), 654 Madhyamaka, 219, 312, 321, 322, 341, 343, 651 Mahāparinibbāna-sutta, 686 Mahāvairocana sūtra, 247, 250, 271, 317, 339 Mahāyāna, 9, 29, 37, 39, 40, 61, 80, 81, 88, 90–92, 128, 144, 164, 167, 171, 177, 178, 197, 216, 217, 219, 225, 230–232, 243, 244, 265, 268, 270, 271, 273, 274, 277, 278, 288, 291, 296, 301, 302, 308, 312, 315, 316, 324–326, 328–331, 333, 338, 339, 341–343, 349, 352–357, 360, 365, 374, 381, 396, 399, 400, 416–418, 420, 427, 434, 443, 446, 456, 459, 464, 465, 480, 488, 517, 519, 535, 567–571, 575, 576, 594, 596, 598–600, 604, 609, 620, 638–640, 649–652, 659–661, 663, 664, 667, 669, 671, 674–678, 685–687, 694, 711 manas-vijñāna, 351, 596, 700, 703 Maṇḍala, 56, 57, 60, 76–78, 170, 235–251, 289, 338, 340–343, 459, 474 Mandate of the Heavens, J. tenmei天命, C. tianming, 480 Manjūji 萬壽寺, 476 mantra, 56, 57, 60, 61, 66, 168, 237, 246, 289, 338, 340, 342, 343, 373–376 mappō 末法, 79, 104–105, 222, 223, 243, 262, 278, 328, 330, 347, 365, 366, 368, 376, 377, 446, 454, 527 MARUYAMA Masao 丸山真男 (1914-1996), 208 Marx, Karl (1818-1883), 226, 228, 229, 260, 270, 281, 468 Master Meng孟, J. Mō (372-289 BCE), 484 Master Mo 墨, J. Boku (470-391 BCE), 478 Master Xun 荀, J. Jun, (312-230 BCE), 484 matsugo no rōkan 末後の牢關, 520 MATSUMOTO Bunzaburō松本文三郎 (1869-1944), 577 matter and mind, 168, 169, 247, 248 Meiji Period (1868-1912), 54, 85, 123, 158–160, 164, 165, 167, 168, 174, 180, 224, 225, 258, 262, 264, 271, 272, 281, 511, 538, 557, 565, 567, 576, 618, 621, 630, 631, 636 Meister Eckhart (1260-1328), 650, 661, 662, 672 meitoku 明徳, 504 method, 22, 55, 64–68, 80, 87, 91, 160, 171, 188, 225, 226, 231, 236, 244–246, 251, 293, 324, 338, 340, 385, 412, 416, 417,

Index 419, 421, 422, 429, 431–433, 435, 437, 474, 488, 526, 571, 578, 579, 586, 690, 694, 695, 699, 702 middle, 31, 75, 179, 192, 224, 225, 238, 242, 246, 312, 321–323, 326–328, 375, 472, 539, 568, 569, 611, 623, 628, 667, 670–672, 676, 677, 718, 719 MIKI Kiyoshi 三木清 (1897-1945), 156, 226, 415 mikkyō 密教, 57, 76, 169, 251, 320, 338 military stratagems, J. buryaku武略, C. wule, 479 Miroku 弥勒, 243 missanbako 密参箱, 512 MIYAKE Setsurei 三宅雪嶺 (1860-1945), 576 Mohe zhiguan 摩訶止觀, 527 mokushōzen黙照禅, 408 Monju, 243 MOTO’ORI Norinaga 本居宣長 (1730-1801), 172, 221 MOU Zongsan 牟宗三 (1909-1995), 207, 211, 218, 231 mu, 160, 384, 385, 611, 638, 651, 660, 709 mu 無, nothing, 118, 519, 609, 651, 696, 718, 733 muga, 137, 661, 669, 670 muge shōnyū 無礙蚣入, 78 mui shinnin 無位真人, 621 Mumonkan 無門関, 384, 410, 496, 733 Muromachi period 室町時代 (1337-1573), 85, 120, 149, 487 mushin, 608, 661 MUSŌ Soseki 夢窓疎石 (1275-1351), 119, 120, 477 myōgō 名号 80, 375, 417, 587 N NAKAMURA Hajime 中村元 (1911-1999), 227, 590, 591, 681–690, 693, 694, 706 nantō 難透, 518 nehan 涅槃, see nirvāṇa, J. nehan 涅槃 Nenbutsu 念佛, 59, 64, 66, 104, 110, 112–114, 260, 263, 264, 320, 347, 366–369, 371–378, 417, 419–430, 432–435, 440–443, 445–447, 504, 507, 515–517, 593 nenbutsu zanmai 念仏三昧, 504 Neo-Confucianism, 164, 205, 482, 484, 527 Neo-Kantianism, 209 Nichiren 日蓮 (1222-1282), 333, 451–468 Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), 666

Index Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900), 16, 223–226, 228, 232, 382, 561, 568, 620, 650, 654, 656, 665 nihilism, 186, 220–226, 231, 232, 569, 644, 649–678, 723 nihility, 650, 651, 655–661, 664, 668, 670, 671, 673–677 nirvāṇa, J. nehan 涅槃, 62, 91, 125, 243, 264, 269, 270, 291, 295, 315, 327, 352, 357, 368, 377, 379, 382, 384, 394, 402, 416, 418, 419, 428, 434, 438, 443, 444, 458, 466, 611, 674–676, 694, 706 NISHI Amane 西周 (1829-1897), 206 NISHIDA Kitarō 西田幾多郎 (1870-1945), 77, 86, 120, 124, 133, 156–157, 169, 195, 203, 205, 206, 382, 415, 537, 575–587, 590, 591, 607–612, 616, 617, 620, 635, 636, 649, 651, 677, 679, 711, 713 NISHITANI Keiji 西谷啓治 (1900-1990), 65, 195, 196, 210, 382, 415, 442, 635, 649–678, 713 no-mind, J. mushin, C. wuxin 無心, 299, 397, 608–611, 643, 661 no-self, 137, 186, 229, 273, 290, 291, 295, 349, 351, 441, 498–500, 559, 605, 607, 629, 661–663, 669, 670, 673, 675 nondual, 245, 248, 249, 443, 717–719, 728–732 nonduality, 429, 440, 522, 677, 723, 728 nothingness, J. mu 無, 160, 161, 186, 195–197, 219, 247, 384, 523, 579, 583, 608, 609, 611, 637–641, 645, 650, 651, 656, 659–664, 667, 670, 672–674, 676, 677 nullification, 424, 652, 657, 660, 664, 671, 673–676 nyojitsu 如実, 76, 593, 659, 664 Nyojō’s, C. Rujing 如浄 (1162-1228), 121, 383, 410 O Ōbaku 黄檗 (d.850), C. Huangbo, 471, 500, 512, 516, 517, 524, 525, 732 objectification, 394, 433, 439, 584, 609, 652–654, 660, 662, 671 objects, 6, 13, 14, 19, 37, 41, 42, 46, 56, 65, 72, 73, 79, 101, 149, 162, 168, 184, 185, 191, 228, 237, 241, 276, 289, 291, 298, 326, 327, 332, 350, 351, 353, 357, 391, 393, 394, 396, 403, 420, 426–428, 447, 458, 471, 484, 492, 493, 506, 527, 544, 550, 582–583, 595, 599, 603, 607,

745 609, 613, 625, 627, 630, 639, 640, 642, 644, 653, 656, 661, 668, 670–672, 677, 700–702, 707, 708, 718, 719, 722–724, 727, 731 Ōjin Tennō 応神天皇, 631 original countenance, 289, 294, 651, 664, 670, 673 original enlightenment, J. hongaku本覺, C. benjue, 61–64, 163, 251, 316, 319–321, 325, 327, 330, 354, 383, 384, 388, 480, 483 originary subjectivity, 661, 662, 670 other power, J. tariki 他力, 64, 244, 251, 260, 292–293, 422, 423, 426, 429–431, 433, 437, 438, 508, 540, 541, 543, 547, 550, 553, 704 P panjiao 判教, J. kyōsōhanjaku教相判釈, doctrinal classification, 207, 214, 217, 218, 220, 367 phonocentrism, 60 pinchingxin shi dao 平常心是道, 521 place, see Basho 場所, place place of absolute nothing, 582, 651, 671, 672 place of oppositional nothing, 671 positivism, 197, 655 practice, 3, 12, 53, 72, 77, 84, 85, 135, 157, 168, 207, 208, 236, 255, 256, 288, 289, 307, 308, 337, 338, 349, 350, 366, 382, 411, 415, 416, 453, 454, 473, 474, 488, 489, 504, 511, 512, 543, 566, 576, 578, 596, 635, 662, 687, 694, 714 prajñāpāramitā, 589–614, 707 pratītya-samutpāda, J. engi 縁起, 291, 638, 665 Princess Hachijō, 244 principle, J. ri, 245, 323, 342, 353, 598, 716 pure experience, J. junsui keiken 純粋経験, 5, 228, 581, 645, 653, 715, 717–731 Pure Land, 35, 58–60, 62, 64, 66, 78, 88–90, 95, 97, 107–108, 110–113, 121, 128, 155, 159, 216–220, 236–244, 247, 250, 251, 260, 262–264, 268, 270, 278, 308, 315, 339, 340, 348, 361, 363, 365, 366, 368, 370–377, 415–422, 424–434, 437–440, 442–447, 452, 460, 463, 504, 516, 517, 543, 547, 551, 554, 558, 587, 593, 595–597, 608, 651, 676, 695, 696 Q Queen Vaidehï, 238, 240, 241, 370, 373

746 R Ratnasambhava, 246, 248 reality, 4, 53, 75, 77, 95, 137, 160, 213, 242, 271, 298, 307, 339, 349, 362, 382, 386, 418, 427, 451, 479, 491, 504, 532, 544, 576, 594, 619, 638, 652, 683, 706, 717 Recorded sayings, J. goroku語錄, C. yulu, 398, 500, 513–517 rekishiteki sekai 歴史的世界, 582 rekishiteki shintai 歴史的身体, 577, 584 religion, 3, 53, 72, 83, 135, 136, 158, 213, 258, 287, 310, 361, 387, 408, 412, 416, 451, 498, 538, 568, 577, 592, 618–622, 635, 650, 684 religiosity, 31, 79, 86, 212, 222, 308, 316, 348, 366, 559, 607, 652 religious path, 344, 376, 428, 464 res cogitans, 653 res extensa, 653 rigaku理學, C. lixue, study of the correlations of the whole, 484 righteousness, J. gi義, C. yi, 265, 478, 479, 482, 558 Rinzai, C. Linji 臨済 (d.866), 150, 494, 641, 733 Rinzai Zen, Rinzai school, 165, 178, 195, 259, 261, 333, 383, 384, 398, 408, 410, 511, 512, 578, 636, 716, 723, 733 Rinzairoku 臨済録, 621, 623 Ritsuzō 律蔵, S. Vinaya-piṭaka, 694 ritual, J. rei/rai禮, C. li, 8, 13, 56, 103, 105, 108, 168, 239, 248–251, 293, 314, 337, 339, 342, 343, 349, 391, 402, 403, 421, 423, 459, 477, 481, 482 Rujing 如浄, 58, 63, 121, 383, 401, 410 Russian nihilists, 655 Ryōchū 良忠 (1199-1287), 371 ryōkai mandara 両界曼荼羅, two world mandala, 236, 474 S Saichō 最澄 (767-822), 7, 217, 307, 354, 363 Śākyamuni (563-483 B.C.E.), 32, 80, 90, 94, 103, 164, 167, 199, 240, 241, 261, 270, 271, 307, 308, 311, 312, 316–318, 339, 358, 365, 367, 370–373, 377, 388, 420, 429, 431, 433, 435, 436, 444, 446, 454–458, 461, 463–465, 467, 539, 541, 685, 697, 704–708, 710 samādhi, 196, 198, 292, 293, 295, 373–377, 400, 418, 421, 435, 436, 459, 504, 578, 579, 639, 651, 672, 673, 696, 704, 707, 723, 728

Index samādhi-being, 672, 673 śamatha vipaśyanā, tranquility and contemplation, 702 sambhogakāya, 243, 339, 375 sammitsu kaji 三密加持, 77 saṃsāra, 7, 62, 178, 186, 242, 243, 250, 288, 291, 292, 324, 352, 437, 443, 444, 490, 491, 656, 674–611, 676 sankin kōtai 参勤交代, 531 sanmitsu 三密, 246, 339 Sanron, C. Sanlun 三論, 76, 167, 216, 312, 314, 318, 322, 331 sanzen参禅, having an audience with one's Zen master, 124, 578, 714 sassho 拶所, 520, 733 SATŌ Naokata 佐藤直方 (1650–1719), 53 satori 悟り, 22, 72, 87, 112, 115, 116, 128, 269, 290, 296, 408, 514, 518, 609, 635, 644, 645 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph (1775-1854), 216, 223, 698, 699 science, 13, 19, 43, 54, 57, 73, 179, 191, 192, 196, 208, 209, 544, 565–567, 590, 652, 654, 655, 695, 702 seihangō 正反合, thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis, 567 seishinshugi 精神主義, 538, 542, 543, 551–556, 561, 562 Seitō 青鞜, 126, 617, 622, 625–628 seken bukkyō 世間仏教, 570 self, 4, 65, 72–73, 116, 140, 170, 221, 237, 256, 290–292, 340, 350, 364, 389, 411, 417, 492, 506, 541, 579, 596, 619, 636, 653, 696, 718 self-consciousness, 213, 216, 548, 609, 610, 612, 613, 640, 642, 653, 658, 661, 670, 702, 703 self-nature, 76, 77, 640, 641, 644, 661, 663, 664, 669, 705, 707 self-power, J. jiriki 自力, 64, 292–293, 330, 422, 428–430, 508, 540, 547, 665 Senchakushū 選擇集, 32, 366, 368, 371, 372, 374, 375 senju 専修, 80 senpan 前版, 507 seppō 説法339, 482, 503, 505–507 sesshin接心, extended intensive zazen practice, 124, 126, 397, 636 shaba娑婆, the human world, 594 Shandao 善導 (613-681), 238, 240–242, 366, 368, 370, 371, 373–377, 425, 432, 442, 443, 446 shiguseigan 四弘誓願, 521 shikantaza只管打坐, 412, 578

Index shinbutsu bunri 神仏分離, 538 shinden zukuri, 240 shingi 清規, 121, 402, 412 Shingon, 13, 35, 56, 57, 60, 66, 72, 76, 78, 80, 95, 105, 111–112, 158, 165, 168–173, 236, 239, 244, 245, 247, 249–251, 262, 288, 289, 308, 317, 320, 331, 337–345, 354, 375, 409, 473, 474, 504 shinjin datsuraku, 58, 177, 196, 383, 661, 670 Shinjingakudō 身心學道, 58, 395, 578 Shinran 親鸞, 25, 59, 155, 217, 261, 308, 330, 373, 584, 630 shintai 身体, 321, 435, 577, 579, 581, 582, 584 shisuiri zen 死水裡禪, 521 shōbō 正法222, 408 Shōbōgenzō 正法眼蔵, 32, 57, 58, 121, 138, 174, 381, 697 shōchūrai 正中來, 521, 599 shōdai 唱題, 80 shōka 相火, 387, 529 Shōtoku聖徳太子 (574-622), 8, 12, 157, 310, 687 shuhan kōgu 主伴互具, 546 SHŪHŌ Myōchō 宗峰妙超 (1282-1338), 119, 121, 477, 513 shuji mandalas 種字曼荼羅, 246 shūkyō 宗教, 54, 652 shushin 主心, 528 siddhaṃ script, 173, 246 skillful means, J. hōben方便, C. fangbian, 38, 235, 247, 249, 250, 257, 287, 302, 309, 316, 329, 340, 342, 343, 353, 357, 397, 403, 465, 482, 488–490, 494, 495, 500 sō 相, attribute, 355, 569, 658 Sōjiji 総持寺, 407–409, 412 soku 即, 590, 597, 676 sokuhi 即非, 597 sokuhi no ronri 即非の論理, 597, 668 sokushin jōbutsu 即身成仏, 62, 77, 170, 244, 246, 331, 343, 344 Sokushin jōbutsugi 即身成仏義, 77, 246 sōshiki bukkyō 葬式仏教, 70 Sōtō 曹洞, 57, 409, 474 Sōtō shingi 曹洞清規, 412 Śubhākarasiṃha (637-735), 247, 248 subject-object, 72, 228, 332, 351, 613, 653, 657, 668, 671, 677, 702, 719 substantialism, 291, 668, 672 suchness, S. tathatā, C. zhenru, J. shinnyo 真 如, 76, 77, 145, 239, 244, 324, 326, 350, 351, 353, 354, 356, 418, 419, 428, 433–435, 438, 439, 457, 489, 568–570, 659, 662, 664, 667, 668, 670, 673–676, 702, 706, 707, 709

747 sukhāvatī, J. gokuraku jōdo, 89, 240, 339 śūnyatā, J. kū, C. kong 空, 38, 91, 116, 167, 223, 229, 237, 323, 349, 418, 446, 468, 594, 595, 597, 601, 604, 605, 609, 611, 638, 644, 651, 660, 663, 667, 670, 672 SUZUKI Daisetsu 鈴木大拙 (1870–1966), 39, 54, 156, 415, 471, 571, 589, 591, 617, 620, 642, 711 SUZUKI Shōsan鈴木正三 (1579-1655), 54, 687 svabhāva, self-nature, 638, 661, 669 T tai 体, substance, 435, 479, 569, 594, 598, 674, 697 Taima Mandara 当麻曼荼羅, 236 Taima-dera 当麻寺, 240, 244 tairitsuteki mu no basho 対立的の場所, 671 taishō 対象, object, 653 Taishō daizōkyō 大正大蔵経, 591, 694 TAKEMURA Makio 竹村牧男, 71, 566, 571 TAMAKI Kōshirō 玉城康四郎, 195, 693–710 TANABE Hajime 田辺元, 156, 159, 183, 190, 208, 382, 415, 644 Tannishō 歎異抄, 155, 379, 425, 428, 430, 436, 437, 442, 446, 541, 556 Tantra, 37, 51, 170, 238, 290 tariki 他力, other power, 64, 244, 260, 293, 422 tariki ekō 他力回向, 550 tathāgata, J. nyorai 如来, 353 tathāgatagarbha, C. foxing 佛性, J. busshō 仏 性, buddha-nature, 92, 245, 295, 325, 326, 353 tathatā, suchness, C. zhenru, J. shinnyo 真如, 324, 350, 353, 418, 594, 659, 664, 673 techno-scientism, 652–657, 662 technology, 74, 160, 538, 654, 655 teishō 提唱, 513 teleology, 654, 655 Tendai, C. Tiantai, 天台, 7, 39, 62, 66, 72, 76, 78, 80, 88, 96, 97, 104, 105, 128, 129, 148, 149, 158, 159, 163, 167, 168, 175, 216–220, 251, 268, 270, 273, 277, 278, 307–312, 315, 316, 318–322, 327–333, 340, 345, 354–356, 358, 367, 373, 375, 383, 421, 456, 459, 473, 565, 651, 667, 670, 671, 676, 697 Tenryūji 天龍寺, 476 thaumazein, 657 The Tale of Genji, J. Genji monogatari源氏物 語, 104, 221 Theragāthā, 686

748 three body(ies) doctrine, S. trikāya, J. santai 三体, 167, 375, 455 three mysteries of body, speech and mind, 56, 62, 237, 246, 339, 340, 342, 344 Tibetan Buddhism, 7, 293, 294, 299 todokoori 滞り, 528 Tokuzan, C. Deshan 徳山 (782-865), 493, 494 tomo ni furueru 共に震える, 78 topology, 671, 672 TOSAKA Jun 戸坂潤 (1900-1945), 226 Truth, 11, 56–61, 72, 91, 140, 161, 211, 239, 270, 291, 308, 339, 350, 364, 383, 428, 457, 482, 489, 504, 514, 566, 601, 620, 637, 665, 682, 694, 720 tsuchiensei 徒弟院制, 411 tsukurareta mono kara tsukuru mono e 作られ たものから作るものへ, 582 TSUNASHIMA Ryōsen 綱島梁川 (1873-­ 1907), 618, 620, 621 U UEDA Shizuteru 上田閑照, 195, 197, 635, 713–734 u no ba 有の場, field of being, 653, 671 upāya, hōben 方便, skillfull means, 235, 247, 249, 257, 287, 293, 302, 309, 316, 329, 340, 353, 357 V Vajrayāna, 238, 288, 295, 298–301, 339, 340 vijñāpti-mātra, J. yuishiki 唯識, consciousness-only, 694, 697, 698, 700, 702, 703, 706, 707 Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi-śāstra, 700, 706–707 visualization, 56, 170, 237–242, 249, 338, 339, 474 Visualization Sūtra of Immeasurable Life, J. Kanmuryōjukyō 観無量寿経, 238 W waka和歌, 86, 381 WANG Tong 王通, J. Ō Tō (584-618), 479, 484 WANG Yangming 王陽明, J. Ō Yōmei (1472-1529), 480 WATSUJI Tetsurō 和辻哲郎 (1889-1960), 169, 174, 208, 382, 645 weixin jingtu 唯心浄土, 517

Index will to power, 654, 665 Wisdom Fist Mūdra, J. chiken’in 智拳印, 245 wisdom, J. chi智 C. zhi, 245, 342, 481 worldview of events, J. kototeki sekaikan事的 世界観, 228 WUMEN Huikai 無門慧開 (1183-1260), 409 wuwei 無為, 675, 715 WUXUE Zuyuan 無學祖元, J. MUGAKU Sogen (1226–1286), 117, 477 Y Yakushi nyorai 薬師如来, 243 YANG Xiong 揚雄, J. YŌ Yū (53-18 BCE), 484 YANG Zhu楊朱, J. YŌ Shu (370-319 BCE), 478 Yijing易經, J. Ekikyō, 206, 473 YINYUAN Longqi 隠元隆琦 (1592-1673), 471, 506, 525 YISHAN Yining 一山一寧, J. ISSAN Ichinei, (1240-1317), 477 yō 用, function, 479 yōjō 養生, 523 Yogācāra, J. Hossō, C. Faxiang 法相, 12, 15, 16, 313, 317, 331, 332, 341, 347, 349–352, 358, 567 YONGJUE Yuanxuan 永覺元賢 (1578-1657), 515, 517 YU Chuan 玉川, J. GYOKU Sen, also LU Tong盧同, J. RO Dō (d. 835), 484 YUASA Yasuo湯浅泰雄 (1925-2005), 169, 170, 578 yuishiki, C. weishi 唯識 yūkijō no kankei 有機上ノ関係 15, 216, 349, 350, 546 Z zazen 坐禅, sitting meditation, 63, 65–67, 80, 116–118, 121, 123–125, 175, 176, 179, 188, 191, 198, 199, 327, 383, 384, 389, 391, 404, 412, 477, 495, 497, 505, 507, 576, 621, 695, 702, 714, 716, 717, 728, 729 ZEKKAI Chūshin 絶海中津 (1336–1405), 478 Zen no kenkyū 善の研究, Inquiry into the Good, 206, 576, 580 Zen 禪, C. Chan, 471, 481 zenjō 禅定, 72, 175, 728 zettaimu no basho 絶対無の場所, place of absolute nothingness, 582

Index zettaimujunteki jikodōitsu 絶対矛盾的自己同 一, self-identity of absolute contradictories, 577 ZHAOZHOU Congshen 趙州從諗, J. JŌSHŪ Jūshin (778-897), 485 Zhiyi 智顗 (538-597), 7, 12, 139, 218, 278, 309–319, 321–331, 333, 367, 375, 454, 527, 697

749 ZHOU Dunyi 周敦頤 (1017-1073), 206 Zhuxi 朱熹, J. Shuki (1130-1200), 181, 480 Zhuangzi 莊, J. Sōshi (4th century B.C.E.), 147, 479, 482, 523 Zonkaku 存覺 (1290-1373), 371 Zuigan 瑞巖 (ca. 900), 495, 496