History of Pure land Buddhism

English translation of the French language text “History of Pure Land Buddhism”

The cult of Amida and Kwannon began to spread in Japan, if not from the time of the first official introduction of Buddhism, come first of all from Korea (552), at least very shortly afterwards. It is even not impossible that the Buddha in regalia offered by King Semei of Kudara, in 552, to Emperor Kimmei, was an Amida, and not merely a Sakyamuni.^¹ In any case, when Emperor Yomei’s son, Prince Umayado - known posthumously as Shotoku Taishi (= the Holy, the Virtuous), and who has been called the Asoka or Constantine of Japanese Buddhism - became in 593 the real master of the empire, among the numerous Temples built by him, there was one constructed especially to honour an image of Amida: this was, in 602, the Zenkoji, in Nagano (Shirano), consecrated to Amida, Kwannon and Dai-Seishi. The Prince himself, who had written a commentary on the Lotus of the True Law, (in Japanese, the Hokke), was regarded later as an incarnation of Kwannon. ^² On his death, in 621, the Korean Eji, who had initiated him, declared that he wished to meet him in Paradise, in order to work with him for the conversion of beings, and the following year, at the request of his widow, this Paradise was depicted in a beautiful embroidery, the famous Tenjukoku-mandara: perhaps it was a matter of Miroku’s (Maitreya’s) Paradise, perhaps of the Pure Land. ^³

A decisive step in Amidism was soon to be taken. We read indeed in the Nihongi (the official chronicle of the empire from the beginning of the world up to the year 697, compiled in 720 from various more ancient annals) of 640 (according to our chronology): “The Monk E-on, who has just returned to Japan, was summoned last autumn to the Imperial Palace, and he explained the text of the Muryo jiu kio (Sukhavativyuha-sutra).” ^⁴ This kind of Buddhist lecture at court was already traditional^⁵, as were the travels to China, where the Japanese went to make enquiries about the Dharma come from India. ^⁶ In 608, E-on, or Enon, had therefore been sent to the continent by the Empress Suiko; he remained there till 639, and it was before Emperor Jommei that he came to give a commentary on the Pure Land Sutra, the most precious booty of his sacred search in the great T’ang empire. In 652, he began his exposition again, in the form of a discussion with another Monk planned in advance, before a numerous assembly of Monks. ^⁷ A few years later, Dosho, founder in 653 of the Hosso sect (daughter of the Chinese school of Hiuan-tsang, Fa-siang), was a devotee of the “Trinity of Amida” (Amida sanzon).

In the course of the brilliant Tempyo era, or era of (the court at) Nara (707 - 781), inaugurated by Empress Gemmyo, Amidism made numerous adherents, at least in the capital and round about.

Two bonzes then preached it with verve; Gyogi and Chiko. The latter, who belonged to the Sanron (Chinese: San-loun) sect, was the author of an essay on the Western Paradise. The pictures of this Paradise began to multiply. During the year 756, in the Zenriuji monastery, consecrated to Miroku (Maitreya), a young woman of the world entreated Amida to show himself to her. This was Princess Chujo, daughter of a Fujiwara. After six days of prayer, she obtained a wonderful vision: in the disguise of a nun and her maidservant, Amida, followed by Kwannon, came into the Temple, and settled down there to embroider a great representation of Sukhavati (Japanese: Jodohen). This miraculous picture, from a copy which was made in 1503, is still shown today. According to a legend, which was very popular for a long time, it was a matter of a kind of tapestry embroidered with lotus fibus; in fact, it appears that the original was woven with silken threads. ^⁸ This was the famous Taima-mandara. A few small fragments^⁹

of it still exist, and a replica of it reduced in size can be seen in the Guimet Museum. ^¹0 It faithfully illustrates the Meditation Sutra, while drawing inspiration from the commentary by Chan-t’ao, brought to Japan a few years before.

The first explicit literary mention up to this time found in Japanese literature of belief in the “Descent of Amida” is met with in the narrative of the death of the Monk Gomyo, an illustrious member of the Hosso sect (which made use especially of the name of Vasubandhu), occurred unexpectedly in Nara in 834. It is a matter of one of those miracles of which we have already seen some like accounts in Chinese literature. Gomyo was priest-in-charge of the Shoto-in sanctuary in the Gengoji Temple in Nara. A Monk from the same monastery who desired to consult him one day made his way towards the sanctuary. Now, as he approached it, he heard voices and very delicate music which seemed to come from inside: it was the procession of Bodhisattvas who had come to fetch Gomyo in order to lead him to the Pure Land. ^¹1 Some indications of the belief are older. In 760, on the death of the old Dowager-Empress Komyo (whose daughter Empress Koken, immoral and devout, was also deemed to be an incarnation of Kwannon), the Monks and Nuns in each province were required to copy the Pure Land Sutra ^¹2; at the same time in all the provincial Temples there had to be executed pictures of the Pure Land (Amida-jodo) as well as colossal statues nearly five metres high, representing the “Amida Trinity”. These representations were not a novelty however. The image honoured by Prince Shotoku was already, it appears, of this type. A gilded bronze from the end of the seventh Century shows each of the three personages standing on a lotus borne by a long, winding stem emerging from a lake covered with flowers; they stand out against a screen decorated with genies and former Buddhas. ^¹3 Another Amida, dating from 658, bears a thanksgiving inscription from the donor. As for images of Kwannon, specimens multiplied rapidly, reproducing various types all come from China. A statuette of the Great Compassionate One goes back perhaps to 606. Another, in bronze, perpetuated at the Toindo the memory of Emperor Kotoku (+ 654) at the desire of his widow. ^¹4 Another bears the date 690. Soon there would be the Kwannon with eight arms (Fuku-kenjaku-Kwannon), of the thousand hands (Senju-Kwannon), of the eleven heads (Juichimen-Kwannon), etc. We spoke in the last chapter of these types of others too. A Yumechigai-Kwannon (“who changes dreams” into happy dreams), dating from about 660, is preserved in Nara at the Horyuji (Horyu Gakumonji, the Temple of Knowledge), which is the oldest Buddhist Temple in the country. ^¹5 The Kondo of the same Horyuji offers a whole series of paintings (Amida Trinity, various Kwannons) which were in existence around 710. ^¹6 In 727, Gyoji proceeded with the ceremony of “the opening of the eyes” of another image of Kwannon. At the To-daiji, which was the great official Temple of Nara, they still preserve, in the Sangatsudo chapel, a piece of dry lacquer-work of the eighth Century (733 ?) representing Kwannon, with eight arms and three eyes (the third in his joined hands), flanked by the Gods Bonten (Brahma) and Taishakuten (Indra)^¹7, as well as a Fukukinjaku-Kwannon of syncretistic form inspired by the Hindu Siva, which would date from 746. ^¹8

In 761, the very year which followed the Amidist manifestation occasioned by the obsequies of Komyo, there was built, in order to celebrate there the sacred meal on the anniversary of her death, the first Temple in Japan consecrated solely to Amida. This was the Amida-jodo-in, situated in the south-west angle of the Kokkeji courtyard (west of Todaiji). Soon after, about 780, a member of the Hosso, Shokai, wrote two works in honour of Amida: the Amida-kakwa, a commentary on a rite of purification come from Chan-t’ao, and the Saiho-nembutsu-shu, or Collection of Invocations to the Buddha of the West. ^¹9 The following century was to see the erection of the Gokurakuji, or Temple of Paradise (of Amida), in the Kii (Yamashiro province), by the Fujivara no Mototsune.

All these doings in no way signified that Amidism was breaking away from then on as a religion, or merely a particular sect. Gyoji, for example, so zealous for Amida, did not scruple to preach Miroku (Maitreya) at the same time, even while remaining attached by his office to the service of Yakushi (Bhaisajyaguru). ^²0 Nevertheless, the Amidist trend was powerful. It was to continue to grow, for several centuries, in a strongly syncretistic atmosphere.

For some time, indeed, Amida, like all the other great Buddhas, was readily identified with certain divinities (kami) of the old national Shinto. It was to add to his popularity at the same time as assuring him the favour of the authorities. Already in the seventh Century after a period of competition, the practice had been encouraged of founding Shintoist sanctuaries in the enclosure of Buddhist Temples, and reciprocally, along with decorating with images, statues and reliquaries of the new religion the national sanctuaries, which up till then did not require any decoration.^²1 About the beginning of the eighth Century, a Juiguji (a Buddhist Temple of the Palace of the Gods) was annexed to the great sanctuary of the Goddess of Amaterasu at Ise. The propaganda then carried on by Gyoji (670 - 749), the most famous of the great priests of the Nara era, had given the impetus to the movement. That of his disciple Roben (689 - 773) accentuated it. In 743, in Nara, at the time of the erection of the Todaiji, which was to contain a huge statue of the Buddha Rocana (Vairocana)^²2, Emperor Shomu (724 - 748), urged on by Roben, issued a decree declaring that the laws of the Buddhas and the laws of the Empire were to be regarded as identical. ^²3 As much as a “Buddhification” of Japan, that was a Japanisation of Buddhism. Regularly, from then on, bonzes participated in the Shinto rites. In 750, the God Hachiman became guardian of the Todaiji. In 766, an Empress considered herself at the same time a Buddhist Nun and a high Priestess of the national divinities. ^²4 Like the majority of “eastern” cults which were formerly introduced into Rome in the time of the Empire, but contrary to Christianity, which always objected to compromising, the great “religion of the West” gave proof, in its conquest of the Empire of the Rising Sun, of considerably flexibility. It must be said that it had been prepared for a long time by its congenital indulgence with regard to the “worldly” point of view for those not yet “awakened”, as well as by its theory of various planes of truths - lower and higher, open and hidden, relative and absolute - or again of the sign (Vyanjana) and the significance (artha), a theory which had received in the Mahayana great development and constant application. This was the Ryobu-Shinto (Ryobu = double face, double doctrine), Shinto in two parts, or doctrine of amalgamated Shintoism and Buddhism. Without succeeding in always shaping the popular cult, it was going to expand during the Heian period (794 - 858) and to be systematised during the Fujivara period (859 - 1086).

Ryobu-Shinto is founded on the Honzi-suijaku, i.e. on the relation established between the “fundamental principle” and the “manifested trace”, or, in other terms, between the profound reality and the appearance. A passage from the Lotus, (Hokki) and another from the Sutra of Vairocana, (Dainichikio) were, on the Buddhist side, invoked in its favour. Of course, the relation functions in one way or another, according to whether it is interpreted by a Shintoist or Buddhist. “Esoterically speaking”, a representative of the national orthodoxy will say, “the Buddhas are the originals, the Kamis are only the humble manifestations of them; but from the esoterical point of view, the Kamis are the original and true, the Buddhas are only appearances (gongen) of them.” ^²5 Contrariwise, the Buddhist Minamoto-no-Yoshiyam: “All the divinities, heavenly and earthly, are ever only the relative manifestations of Amida or Dainichi”. This was already the thesis expressed by Kukai, who had had a revelation of it in an ecstasy. And it was in the same manner that Chinese Buddhism had recognised the Emperor as representing Heaven: it had simply translated the idea into its own language, by making the Emperor an incarnation of Manjusri. Authority will apply itself generally to holding an equal balance between the two associated cults; it will hold that Kamis and Buddhas equally express “the impenetrable mystery of the active and passive principles” and “the very essence of everything holy and spiritual”, and for example, in 1614, Icyasu Tokugawa’s edict proscribing Christianity will declare: “Japan is called the country of the Buddha, and not without reason . . . The Kamis and the Buddhas differ in name, but their signification is one and the same: it is as though the two halves of a piece of split wood were reunited”. ^²6

Not to mention eight hundred myriads of nameless Kamis, a hundred individualised Kamis were therefore adopted by Buddhism as gongen. Others, under the name of Bosatsus, were assimilated to the Bodhisattvas. A calendar was constituted, which assigned a special Bosatsu to each day of the month. ^²7 Strong in the conviction on fundamentals which presided over this system, the biographer of Honen, at the end of the thirteenth Century, will write of a Kami: “It was in reality Amida himself.” Amida was therefore identified, according to time and place, with various divinities of Shinto. Thus, he was with the God Hiyoshi Shoshinji, and in this form he had a Temple on Mount Hisi. ^²8 On Mount Kumano (Kii), a great place of pilgrimage, the God Iyetsunomiko was considered to be one of his incarnations, under the new name of Shojo gongen. But above all, just as Vairocana annexed Amaterasu, he received as gongen or suijaku Hachiman - God of War! In 859, as Gyokyo, a Priest of the Sanson sect, offered a sacrifice to Hachiman in his Temple and prayed him to come and take possession of it, he saw, it is said, the august forms of Amida, Kwannon and Seishi appear before him, and the God ordered him to found a new Temple in which to worship the “Triad”. ^²9 A little later another story will be told, that of a man who implored Hachiman for his salvation, and whom the God shamelessly directed to Honen, exclusively the devotee of Amida. ^³0

As for the Bosatsu (Bodhisattva) Kwannon, he played as fine a part, since he was recognised in Izanami, Goddess of the Earth, wife and sister of Izanagi, Goddess of Earth, wife and sister of Izanagi, God of Heaven, mother of Amaterasu, the dazzling Goddess of the Sun. ^³1

Two new sects, come from China at the beginning of the Heian era, prospered from then on and took precedence of the six old sects of Nara. They were the Tendai and the Shingon. Both had at once established their centre in the vicinity of Kyoto, then Heian-Kyo, “the city of Peace”, founded in 794 by the great Emperor Kwammu on the lines of the Chinese capital, then Ch’ang-an. The Founders of both (sects) did hardly anything, them too, but to spread, while more or less adapting them, the teachings which they had gone to seek in China. On both sides, finally, the Honji-suijaku was professed, and on both sides Amida was adopted.

The Japanese patriarch of the Tendai, Saicho (767 - 822), honoured later under the name of Denzyo Daishi (Daishi = Grand Master), was in the habit of invoking Amida, and recommended this practice around him. We shall not be astonished if we recall that he had stayed on Mount T’ien-t’ai (Japanese: Tendai), where the teaching of Tche-yi was perpetuated. The Tendai Temples, whose tendency, as in the mother-school of China, is syncretistic, give welcome to all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas; but when by chance they contain only a single image, this image is that of Amida.^³2

Saicho’s successor, Ennin or Jikaku Daishi (793 - 864), a particularly eclectic mind, had also undergone a long period of instruction in China, from 830 to 850. He had brought back from it the Inzei-nembutsu, i.e. a nembutsu sung or chanted, by choirs succeeding each other in turn, as he had seen it practised on Mount Wout’ai by the disciples of Fa-tchao (Hossho). He had brought back too the Inzei Amidakyo, a singing in a very plaintive tone of the verses of the Short Sutra (Amidado). ^³3 Another of his foundations was, in 848, the Jogyo-zammai-do, or hall for the habitual practice of samadhi (meditation), which he had built on Mount Hiei, and in which his disciple So-o was to inaugurate in 865 the continual nembutsu.^³4 It is to the same Tendai that Kwya Shonin (903 - 972), inventor of a “dancing nembutsu”, belonged. This visionary, who was perhaps the son of Emperor Uda, went everywhere, in public places, dancing and repeating the nembutsu with a particular intonation. The people called him “the saint of the market place”. Come to propagate this cult in the capital, he was a witness there of the ravages of the great epidemic of 951. Out of pity for its victims, he erected a great statue of the eleven-headed Kwannon and built a Temple to contain it, the Saikoji (Yamato, Oji), where he died. ^³5 A celebrated Nô, Atago Kuya, sings his fame.

From the Tendai again was Enshin Sozu, or Genshin (942 - 1017), head of the Eshin-in monastery at Yokawa, in a retired corner of Mount Hiei (Hieizan), far from the official centre of the sect. He was a simple soul at the same time as being an artist and literary man. We already know something of his work as painter and writer. We know that it is to him that there harks back, if not the creation, at least the fixing and the great popularity of the type of the “Descent”, or Raigo. He always had before his mind a representation of Amida, majestic in form. His pictures free themselves from the conventions of the style received from China as well as from the rigidity of composition which the Shingon already imposed. In the beautiful Raigo of the Chion-in which is attributed to him, we recognise the Kyoto landscape, with its hills covered with trees, the verdant pine, the cherry-tree blossom, “rendered with a lot of delicacy and feeling”. ^³6 The six volumes of his great work, the Ojoyoshu (“Elements essential for rebirth”) have not less contributed than his art as a painter to give Amidism a new flight. They have more vigorously put their empress on the evolution of the doctrine and have prepared the ground for the Amidist sects properly so-called. This work, one of the first, in my opinion, which have been printed in Japan^³7, is a popular work. It is based mainly on the commentary which Chan-t’ao (Zendo) had made on the Meditation Sutra (Kwambukkyo). Genshin is not contented with describing at length in it the sufferings of the hells, the misery of other conditions of being, finally the joys of the Pure Land. He adds to these descriptions a whole Treatise on the nembutsu in ten parts, considering in turn its doctrinal foundations, its blessings, its conditions, its varieties, its method. As Chan-t’ao and previously T’an-louan had done, he opposes the “power of another” (tariki) to the “self-power” (jiriki), and his teaching tells us to trust without reservation to Buddha Amida, while remembering his original Vow. Assuredly, there are other Buddhas, but Amida typifies them all, and all their powers are found concentrated in his power. “The nembutsu is the thing essential for being reborn in the Pure Land”, and that is the goal each must set himself. Nembutsu (Sanskrit: Buddhanusmrti = to think of the Buddha, to bear him in mind): this word signifies “meditation on the Buddha”; but previously, in Japanese Buddhism, following a practice received from China, it was used to designate more precisely either mental concentration favoured by the repetition of a formula, or this repetition itself; and the formula in question was an invocation of Amida. We shall have to come back to it. In the earliest days, it was rather a monastic practice. Efforts such as those of Kuya tended to make it a popular practice. Genshin contributed to it greatly in his turn, by attributing to the pronunciation of the sacred Name a value independent of the meditative element which it was at first considered to sustain. He thus accentuated the pietist character of Amidism. Without ever engaging in active propaganda, he nevertheless exercised a profound influence. A remarkable thing, this influence flowed back even into China. A specimen of Ojoyoshu, which he had sent there, made a strong impression, and when the Emperor of China received the news of his death, he had a pagoda built for him where his image was honoured. ^³8

The founder of the Shingon (in Chinese: Tch’en-yen = “True Word”, or Mi-tsong, “School of Mystery”), Kukai, canonised under the name of Kobo Daishi (774 - 835), was, at the same time as (being) the introducer of the Tantric doctrines recently planted in China by Vajrabodhi, one of the most effectual artificers of Ryobu-Shinto. ^³9 Although he had founded his sect on the doctrinal writings of Nagarjuna^⁴0, he does not seem to have himself given a very special place to Amida. The Buddha of the West was most assuredly not unknown to his sect, but, like the Buddhas of the other cardinal points, or even like the innumerable figures of diverse provenance welcomed by it into its pantheon, he is hardly more than a pawn on the magic chequerboard of the mandalas, the centre of which is invariably occupied by the great Dainishi (Mahavairocana), as in the Kegon sect. For it is Dainichi whom the Shingon honours in the first place as supreme Buddha, while assimilating him to the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. However the Koyasan, the centre of the sect opened itself boldly to Amidist tendencies. One of Kukai’s principal successors, Kakuban Shonin (1095 - 1143) was a fervent devotee of the nembutsu. The explanations which he gave of his practice are moreover in conformity with the general teaching of his school. He saw condensed in the mysterious name of Amida the whole mystery of the Word, i.e. the whole Shingon. Amida, said he, “is only another name for the Great Sun Buddha”, i.e. Dainichi. “The Pure Land”, he continued, “is none other than the Palace of the Great Sun Buddha. Amida is the intellectual power of the Great Sun Buddha, and this latter is the substance of Amida’s personality. The Pure Land of Amida is in reality everywhere, so that the spot where we meditate on him, or where we happen to be, is truly his own Land. If we succeed in grasping this Truth, in realising it, it is then no longer necessary for us to leave this present world in order to go after our death to the Pure Land: we are there already. In our body and present personality, such as we are, we are already assimilated to Amida, and him to the Great Sun Buddha.” At nearly the same time as Kakuban, two other Shingon Monks practised and preached the nembutsu: one of them, Yokwan (or Eikwan) (1032 - 1111), in Kyoto; the other, Chingai (1091 - 1152), in Nara. Under Genshin’s influence, both tended to dissociate it from meditation in order to make an independent practice of it. Through that very thing, they disengaged themselves somewhat, if not doctrinally, at least practically, from the idealist and magical symbolism of their sect.^⁴1

About the same time again, a Monk who had passed through the Tendai and who had also studied the Shingon, Ryonin Shonin (1072 - 1132), accentuated this tendency and founded the first Japanese Amidist sect, which still exists today. For some time already he had practised on his own account the nembutsu, in an Ohara Temple where he lived retired. He had even attained, it is said, to repeating it as many as 60,000 times a day, when Amida appeared and said: “Great is the merit of the nembutsu, but there is a 1,000,000,000 times more merit in it when one says it for others than when one says it for oneself. If therefore you teach it to others with this intention, their merit will become yours.” Impressed by this revelation, Ryonin left his solitude in order to propagate the Yuzu-nembutsu, or “circulating nembutsu”. Soon, in 1124, he was led to organise the Yuzumen-butsushu; it was the first Amidist association properly separated, totally autonomous, as neither India or even China had known it. The founder came to Kyoto, built Temples, converted Emperor Toba and a number of great personages. He advocated, with a view to multiplying the effect, the recitation of the nembutsu in common, in great assemblies, called Dai Nembutus, “the great Nembutsus”. ^⁴2 A curious thing, the texts on which he founded his doctrine were less the Amidist Sutras than the Lotus (Hokke-kio) and the Avatamsaka-sutra (Kegon-kio), or “Sutra of the Garland of Flowers”, which relates the history of the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra, the associate of the great Vairocana. He was the preferred authority of the Kegon sect, heir in Nara of the Hua yen school, founded in China in the seventh Century by Tche-yen and Fa-tsang, and predecessor of the Shingon. ^⁴3 Ryonin, apparently such an innovator, therefore showed himself faithful in that to the Shingon. He was at the same time faithful to the Tendai, in the tradition of that noble personage, dead more than a century before, who, we are told, spent the whole day reading the Lotus Sutra and all the night praying to Amida. ^⁴4

It has been possible to write that his sect results from a compromise between Amidist piety and the principles of the Lotus. The development of the Jodo sects, in the century which followed, was on the point of extinction. But it was to be restored to life, in 1231, by Homyo’s preaching. ^⁴5

Ryonin was to receive the posthumous title of Sho-o Daishi. When he died in 1132, Honen was close to being born. The cult of Amida did not stop spreading. It imposed itself on all the sects, who now all had their Amida-dos more and more numerous. ^⁴6 Only it was generally a shared cult. Often too it was a cult weighed down by esotericism and magic, darkened by the old recurring terrors. The spirit of the T’an-louan or of a Chan-t’ao, the spirit of a Genshin was not sustained. The spirit of Kukai swept it away. Under the influence of the Shingon, at the same time as an important place was made for terrible divinities, the belief in charms, in the operative value of magical gestures, of formulas (dharanis and mantras) and symbolic figures or diagrams (“circles”: mandalas; Japanese: mandaras) more and more penetrated Amidist circles. The Sutras of Amida were understood in the spirit of the Vairocana Sutra, which said: “Thanks to the original Vow of the Buddhas, a miraculous power abides in the mantras, so that by pronouncing them a boundless merit is acquired”. The images of the Pure Land, congealed into the forms created by Kukai, and this hieraticism was the sign of the new kind of interest directed to them: their principal object was no longer to awaken faith, to stir up aspiration or kindle devotion, but they were used in “mystic” rites such as the Amida-hos, introduced into China in the course of the ninth Century. The efficacy of these rites, of a technical and mechanical order so to speak, no longer had anything relevant to the emotions of the heart. ^⁴7 The various kinds of Amida-mandaras, in use in these ceremonies, multiplied.^⁴8 The Taema-mandara, the origin of which we have stated, became the object of a superstitious veneration. The esoteric type of “the red Amida”, called Guharijiki Amida, tended to prevail. ^⁴9

The whole of Buddhism, furthermore, experienced then in Japan the same ambiguous success. It stood a good chance of becoming wholly a “Mantrayana” and a “Tantrayana”. It was less on its part an accidental or backward (belated) degeneration than one of those “chronic relapses” of which M. Sylvain Lévi spoke, i.e. giving way to one of its congenital propensities. Among its first and greatest doctors themselves, a Nagarjuna, an Asanga, the Mahayana shows in fact “intimate affinities with magic”. The Pseudo-Asvaghosa, whose influence was immense in the Far East, favoured it. From time immemorial the “great feats of magic” of the Buddha were celebrated, and Taranatha, in his history of Indian Buddhism, did not fail to observe that, from a remote epoch, there had been in India “very great magicians of mantras”, withholders of secret practices. ^⁵0 In our Meditation Sutra, the highest privilege which is the due of the most excellent beings of the nine degrees consists in obtaining immediately, on their entry into Sukhavati, “of innumerable hundreds of thousands of dharanis”, and the Long Sutra specifies for its part that this knowledge of dharanis, possessed “up to the acquisition of the throne of Bodhi”, constituted the special object of the thirty-third point of the original Vow. ^⁵1 Japanese Buddhism was besides an official religion, marked from the beginning of its arrival in the archipelago by compromises with the authorities. Profiting from the very first from the prestige of Chinese culture, it had been taken up by the upper classes almost without a struggle. It had never passed as in China through the sieve of persecution. It displayed itself a long time at court in sumptuous liturgies and in formal “Scripture readings”; but if that was more than a show, scarcely anything other than benefits for this life was sought from it. Its close alliance with Shinto had made it, moreover, a “hybrid religion”. ^⁵2 Finally, it had rapidly become a feudal power, a propertied caste, a wheel of State. Spiritual aspiration and sincerity paid the price for such a state of affairs.

But at the same time, favoured by circumstances about to be disclosed, an indistinct sense of unease was spreading. Something new was getting ready to break through, like a young shoot of spring. A number of devotees of Amida were beginning to take a dislike to the mysteries and the magnificent but mechanical cult of the Shingon, as to the meta-physics or theosophy of the Tendai. More and more the ritual or doctrincal complications which still held them in check lay heavy on them. Stifling a magical atmosphere, some souls aspired to a deliverance. A religious reform was in the air, of which Ryonin’s preaching had been the presaging sign. Amidism was ripe. Its great sects were about to constitute themselves one after another and rapidly become, for centuries, the most flourishing of all.

Such a success can be explained too up to a certain point - without speaking of the political situation about which a few words will be said in the following chapter - by a characteristic of the Japanese soul, which has been noted by the Japanese themselves: what one of them calls “the accentuated tendency to establish a system of narrow and exclusive relations”, which is expressed naturally “in the aspect of devotion, or literally of absolute surrender to a specific person”^⁵3; in short, through a certain personalism inherent in the Japanese turn of mind and far removed from the Indian mentality.

“The defect of Chinese Buddhist thought”, Professor Enjoy Inaba wrote in 1918, “is to have separated the abstract law from the concrete person and to have made it the sole support of religion . . . It is an absurdity for a religion to call for a sacred (holy) fervour if it is centred on a pure law; it is only in absolute devotion to some person that we taste the joy prostrating in supreme reverence and of offering prayers from the depths of our heart.” ^⁵4 The criticism, if it holds, would apply as much to Indian Buddhism as to Chinese Buddhism, and to the Hinayana still more than the Mahayana. Be that as it may, the tendency inspiring it is ascertained in Japanese Confucianism as well as in the various branches of Japanese Buddhism. In the ninth Century, Sugawara Michizana put in the first rank of the Confucian virtues loyalty, become in him loyalism, and thus established the code of Japanese chivalry, “of the caste of the Samurai, blindly devoted to the honour of their Lord, ready to sacrifice their lives for him at any moment”. “If I err by studying Tchu hi”, another Confucianist, Ansai Yamasai wrote in the seventeenth Century, “I err with him without the least regret.” ^⁵5

In Japan, minds do not appear to feel the repugnance often observed elsewhere at thinking of the absolute in personal form. So it is that in the Shingon, the worshippers of Dainichi Noryai (Vairocana Tathagata), the Great Sun Buddha, say of him that “although present everywhere, he has a body, mouth and mind”^⁵6; in their eyes he is the universal and eternal substance, he is absolute, but he is nonetheless a concrete, individual and living being. This conception, which is that of the Adi-Buddha, was not born in Japan, but it is remarkable that it should be implanted there. In the Dharma-kaya, it might be said, the Japanese Buddhist alludes in the first place to the kaya. Moreover, in Japan the founders of sects are always the object of an extremely tenacious devotion, to the point of attracting to their person an important part of the religious ceremonies. Doubtless in relation to India this is not a complete novelty; after all, the very cult of Buddha Sakyamuni did not begin in any other fashion, and the Pancakrarma, a Tantric work, enjoins the disciple “to leave very other cult in order to make a cult of his guru”^⁵7; but the tendency is intensified here: shall we not soon see a Kawabara converted by Honen, making “day and night” a cult of his image? ^⁵8

Everywhere finally the accent is put on the permanent necessity of faith in the Buddha, trust in him, preceding and accompanying understanding of his teaching. “We must put faith before everything”, said, for example, Ennin (Jikaku) of the first generation of the Tendai (792 - 862); “a man without faith would be like a man without hands who, even if he penetrated into the treasure chamber, would be unable to take anything from it.” And later, Dogen, founder of one of the Zen sects: “Faith is what allows us to enter the world of the Law of the Buddha”. Doubtless, here again, one could quote, on the part of Indian authors, many apparently analogous declarations. The Siksa-samuccaya, for example, pronounces “a thrilling eulogy of faith”; Nagarjuna, in whom the Amidists see one of their first ancestors wrote: “The Law of the Buddha is a great sea; faith gives access to it, knowledge transports us across it.” ^⁵9 It is clear, in fact, that for every Buddhist the taking of the Triple Refuge, Homage to the Triple Jewel, was an act of faith. But it is also plain to be seen in such texts that faith is only a first preparation of the heart, as shame, fear, and remorse can be, before the second preparation which consists in the moral life; it is but the first of the “hundred and eight doors through which the sight of the Dharma is obtained”. ^⁶0 The converts of Buddha, a Upali, Vacchagotta, Magandiya, Pingiya, begin by believing in his word; in this sense, they are “liberated by faith”; but afterwards it is necessary that, having received the teaching, they should go away into a solitary place and set to reflecting, until they “know”, “see”, “grasp” the Truth themselves, until they realise in themselves “the Perfection of Wisdom”: only then will they arrive “on the other side of the ocean of death”. ^⁶1 Converted by Asvaji, Sariputra has a “radiant and pure” face only once he has himself “understood, realised, mastered the Dharma”, once he has “dived deeply into the Dharma” and has thus “passed beyond doubt”. Likewise, the first narration of the Sutralamkara ends with these words: “When the Brahmins had heard these verses, some obtained faith, others renounced the world, others finally obtained the Way”. ^⁶2 The gradation is obvious. In short, faith is only a first step, almost at once gone beyond, like a threshold. We must attain to “not depending on any other”. We must, by an inward experience, arrive at knowledge (vidya); for ignorance (avidya) is “the defilement which stains more than the others”.

Japanese Nôs insist on this first step. For them, the “initial faith” does not have a simple chronological or pedagogical value. The same Dogen said again - although he represented a school which, by the very fact of attaching an extreme importance to the relation of Master and disciple, more than any other wished to enkindle the experience: “In order to discover the true Buddhism, we must give up deciding what is good and what is evil according to our personal judgement; we must reject our own way of thinking in order to follow the Buddha’s teaching”. He charged the scholars of his day with clinging to their own ideas, with denying everything which deviated from them, or with forcing (straining) the sense of the teachings in order to discover their own opinion in them; “the least we can say”, he concluded, “is that they are not able to make any progress in the Way of the Buddha”. And again, in a spirit very close to Amidism: “For mercy’s sake, even if I had in the past piled up sin upon sin, and the chains of the passions thwarted my progress, let all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who have attained illumination have pity on me! Let them deliver me from the chains of my sins! Let them turn aside the obstacles in my path! Let me enter in through the door of their merits and become absorbed in the infinite world of the Law of the Buddha! Let them extend their mercy to me!” ^⁶3

There was therefore, it may be said, in the Japanese soul, a sort of virtual Amidism. While flourishing in Japan, in the circumstances about to be seen, Amidism properly so-called was particularised, then immediately diversified. The Yuzumen-butsushu of Ryonin was only a first branch of it, with its vigour soon almost exhausted. The two main branches are still today the two sects founded at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries respectively by Honen and Shinsan: the Sect of the Pure Land (Jodo-shu) and the True Sect of the Pure Land (Jodo-shin-shu).

5 Ibid., p. 135 (autumn 606): “The Empress asked the Prince Imperial to read the Sho-mangio (Srimala-devisimhavada); he concluded by explaining it in three days. This year, the Prince Imperial has also expounded the Hokki-kio at Okamoto Palace. The Empress is greatly pleased, etc.” From the end of the sixth Century, Japan showed intense zeal in procuring the Buddhist books from China.

1⁷ Serge Elisseev in Louis Reau’s Universal History of the Arts, bk. IV (1939), pp. 393 and 397 - 398. Jean Buhot, in General History of Religions, bk IV, pp. 478 - 480 and 496. The Todaiji (= great eastern monastery) was founded in 743 - 760, by Emperor Shomu; it was a national enterprise. C.B. note 22.

1⁸ Jean Buhot, History of the Arts in Japan, bk. 1, pp. 108 - 109. Three eyes, eight arms, noose of the hunter of souls, Amida in his head-dress emitting materialised rays. The pedestal is a lotus cup (calyx) on a stepped footing. In 761, another image of Kwannon was placed in the Kofukuji, between two great embroideries, one of which represents the Potalaka mountain (Kwannon’s heaven) and the other, Amida’s Paradise. M.W. de Visser, op. cit., p. 326. On the finest statues of Kwannon of the Nara epoch: G.B. Sansom, Japan, p. 181.

2³ The decree also spoke of veneration for the “Three Treasures” (Buddhism, Shinto, Confucianism). C.B. Sansom, op. cit., pp. 156 - 160. It was to be related later that before fulfilling his design, in 742, the Emperor caused the Goddess Amaterasu to be consulted through Gyoji In Ise. But the fact is not recorded in the official notices. C.B. Shu Osumi, History of the Religious and Philosophical Ideas of Japan, (Kyoto, 1929), pp. 193 - 196; Sansom, op. cit., pp. 161 - 162.

3⁰ Z. Tsuji, Studies in the History of Japanese Buddhism. Coates and Ishizuka, op. cit., pp. 390 - 393. Jean Buhot, Japan, loc. cit., p. 485. C.B. Kokka, no 600 (November 1940), pl. 1: image of Hachiman in the form of Jizo Bosatsu, a kind of image much revered from the beginning of the Heian era. In 783, a text calls Hachiman Bosatsu: it is the first known case of this category of assimilation. The Temple of Yakushi in Nara possesses an image of Hachiman dressed as a bonze (810 - 824). C.B. Sansom, op. cit., p. 275. The Temple of Hachiman built by Yoritomo in Kamakura in 1160 will be half Shintoist and half Buddhist.

3¹ Georges Shurhammer, Shin-to, pp. 65 - 70. C.B. H. H. Gowen, op. cit., pp. 47 - 51. Some female associations invoked, with an eye to a happy delivery, the Shintoist divinity Koyasu-myojin, become Koyasu_Kwannon or Koyasu-Jizo: L.S. Ito, in Monumenta nipponica, VIII (1952), pp. 412 - 415. This category of assimilation is not uniquely peculiar to Japan. C.B. Sylvain Levi, Nepal, bk. 1, p. 319: “The same Gods, with different titles and ranks belong, the majority of them, in common to the various churches: such as the idol, adored in a Temple alongside the Tundi Khel, which the Gomkhas worship as Mahakala, while the Buddhists hail in it Padmapani who wears on his diadem the image of Amitabha. . . . Even in the nineteenth Century, the Singaku sermons blend Buddhism and Shinto (and even Confucianism). But starting from 1869, a “bureau of ecclesiastical affairs” (Jiugi jimu-kyoku) will separate Shinto from Buddhism. Despite that, even today “it is rare to find a Japanese who is exclusively and all his life Shintoist. The majority are also Buddhists; they become so more and more in proportion as they age. Shinto is in fact commonly regarded as suitable for obtaining the goods of this world, health, fortune, longevity. One addresses oneself for that to the Kamis who during their lives have especially enjoyed these gifts. Buddhism is for the other world and assures our salvation in it or a happy rebirth. The two faiths therefore complement each other harmoniously, far indeed from entering into conflict.” Pierre Humbertclaude, S.M., Little Cultural Guide for the Use of the Missionary, (Tokyo, 1948), pp. 47 - 48.

3⁷ The Ojoyoshu was often republished up to the twentieth Century. A specimen of an edition of 1217 is still preserved. An edition of 1253 seems to reproduce faithfully a copy of the first edition which the author had sent to China. C.B. Reischauer, op. cit., (1930), pp. 17 - 18. In 1938, S. Hanayama republished the work (C.B. Buddhist Bibliography, 1950, no. 476). The editions had been especially numerous in the first days of the Jodo and the Shin.

3⁸ G.B. Sansom, op. cit., pp. 293 - 296. M. Anesaki, History of Japanese Religion, pp. 151 - 153. Coates, op, cit., p. 38. A “Life of Genshin Sozu”, by an unknown author, was discovered in 1914 and published in 1916 in the Sangegakuho (Transactions of the Tendai Sect on Mount Hiei); C.B. Coates, p. 197.

4³ On the Kegon, C.B. G.B. Sansom, op. cit., pp. 151 - 153 and 161 - 162. On its Chinese and Indian ascendancy: Paul Masson-Oursel, The Yuan jen luan, in Asiatic Journal, April 1915: René Grousset, History of the Far East, bk. 1, p. 123; H. de Glasenapp, Indian Philosophy, p. 275. Chapter 26 of the Lotus, added after the event, is dedicated to Samantabhadra.

4⁴ It is a matter of Takashina Yoshitomi, who died in 980. C.B. M.W. de Visser, op, cit., pp. 666 - 667. Likewise the Chinese Yi-tsing (+ 713) proclaimed himself a disciple of two Venerable Masters, one of whom never stopped decorating the altar of Amitayus while the other read the Lotus daily: Report on religion . . . , ch. 40 (translated J. Takakusu, pp. 202 and 205).

4⁷ Amidaho: “an esoteric ceremony meant to wipe out sins, to assure birth in Paradise and to bring happiness to the dead. Amida in a circle (Amidamandara) figures in it in the centre of the dais.” (Hobogirin, I, p. 27). The ceremony was introduced into Japan in the ninth Century; it became common in the Fujivara era (eleventh Century).

4⁸ Amidamandara: “circle of the Amidaho. There are several varieties of it; the most usual is called: Kuhommandara (circle of nine classes). The Amidas of the nine classes appear in it surrounded by the four Buddhas of the Diamond Plane, twelve Buddhas of light (personifying the twelve names of Amitabha) and twenty-five Bodhisattvas.” (Hobogirin, I, p. 28).

5⁰ Avadana-sataka, Ananda’s verses, Sylvain Lévi, The doctrine of sacrifice in the Brahmangs. A. Schiefner, Taranatha’s Geschichte des Buddhismus in Indien, (1869), p. 201, etc. C.B. Rudolf Otto, Mystic Science of the East and of the West, (translated Jean Gouillard, 1951), p. 148. On Asvaghosa’s reputation as an exorcist: Sylvain Lévi in Asiatic Journal, vol. 215, p. 259, following Hiuan-tsang, Memoirs. . . , vol. 50, pp. 431 - 439. The Mahavairocana-sutras, already full of esotericism and magic, originated in Nalanda: C.B. R. Tajima, Study of the Mahavairocana-sutra; Asanga, Mahayana-sutralamkara, XII, 23, sees in the dharani the formula which fixes and transmits the profound Truth perceived in samadhi; he does not give it therefore an independent value, but he does not the less attribute to it a magical importance; see also XVIII, 73. C.B. Paul Oltramare, Buddhist Theosophy, p. 433.

5⁴ In the review Manjito, 1918, pp. 7 - 8. (H. Nakamura, loc. cit., pp. 113 - 114). Parallel declarations from Dr. Ryotai Hatani, in the review Rokujogakuho, in 1917 (ibid.). “The Indian and Chinese Buddhists”, M. Nakamura remarks again, pp. 114 - 115, “prize the cosmic body of Buddha considered as an eternal law; the Japanese Buddhists parade a marked inclination to take as the object of their veneration the Buddha considered as having acquired by his ascesis the most excellent moral virtues.”

5⁶ Samajigiki (Instructions for the practice of samadhi), a Shingon work. . . We know that, right at the beginning of his apostolate in Japan, St Francis Xavier unfortunately borrowed his name to designate the true God. C.B. Encounter of Buddhism and the West, (coll. “Theology”, 1952), ch. 11; James Brodrick, St Francis Xavier, (French translation, 1954), pp. 386 - 396, 439 - 441, 486, note.

5⁷ For “the Master takes away sin, the Master takes away fear, the Master causes you to pass beyond the great fear of the ocean of misery”; Pancakrarma, ed. Louis de La Vallee Poussin, 1896, pp. 45 and 48. Although tradition attributes it to Nagarjuna, this work is due, at least in part, to Sakyamantra (eleventh Century).

5⁸ Coates, op. cit., pp. 638 - 639, (chapter 37). And Shinran said one day: “It matters little to me whether I go later to hell or somewhere else, but since my old Master taught me to invoke the name of Buddha, I practise his teaching. . .” (quoted by D.T. Suzuki, Essays on Zen Buddhism, vol. 1, p. 60).

5⁹ Treatise on Perfect Wisdom, II, 1 (translated Ét. Lamotte, p. 56); and II, 2: “In the Law of Buddha, faith is primordial; it is through faith that one has access to it.” (p. 62). C.B. the Satyasiddhi-sastra of Harivarman, translated into Chinese by Kumarajiva (Fcheng che louan): “The arguments for are insoluble; the arguments against are insoluble. What is to be done? Believe in the word of the Buddha.”

6¹ Majjhima nikaya, I. p. 378 - 379, p. 510. Sutta-Nipata, V. 1147 ss. C.B. Paul Oltramare, Buddhist Theosophy, pp. 339 - 340. Asvaghosa, Buddhasarita, IX, 63 - 64: “It is not by another’s words that I shall resolve this doubt . . . After having determined the true by ascesis and contemplation, I want to grasp myself what is certain on this subject.” It has been noted that, in the Nikayas, the word samadhi held the place which the word faith holds in the Bible.

6² Translated E. Huber, p. 9 (according to Kumarajiva’s version). The Tibetan version has simply” “These Brahmins, having heard the eulogy of the Tathagata’s virtues, manifestly had faith in the Buddha.” But it is not that it wishes to enhance faith particularly. It is satisfied with transforming the doubting Brahmins into believers without yet granting them the access to the two higher stages conferred on them by the Chinese. Sylvain Levi, About Asvaghosa, in Asiatic Journal, vol. 215, p. 274. Samyutta nikaya, III, 235.