History of Pure Land Buddhism

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

The Founder of the Jodo-shu was a spiritual man and a poet. He was not, properly speaking, a writer. ^¹ Nor did he have the gifts of a public speaker, or an organiser. Nevertheless, thanks to his personal radiance, thanks, too, to the charm of the simplicity, of the vernal freshness which emanated from his teaching, his foundation swiftly came into great vogue in all classes of society, from the lower classes to the imperial court. No one, furthermore, was of a less aggressive and revolutionary temperament than he. As much as his character was kindly, his mind was benevolent. He did not readily anathematize. Living himself in serenity, he took care not to offend anybody and sought concord in everything. He did not condemn those who followed a way other than his. He had never thought of deviating from the best Buddhist tradition. This tradition, he said, contains various teachings, all coming from Buddha Shaka, who taught to each person what suited him individually: like a good doctor, who applies his remedies according to the sickness; that is why the sum of his teachings is so varied. ^² Now the way which we follow in the Jodo “is not contrary to the teaching of any sect, since all the sects revere the Sutras whence we draw it, and since no sect has forbidden its adherents to follow it. Only, everywhere there has been superadded, in smaller or greater number, mental exercises which no one had the right to impose, and these exercises, by rendering the Law impracticable for the common run of people, above all in our wretched epoch, took away its practical value.” Honen was therefore able clearly to distinguish the two paths: Shodo and Jodo, and to chose the second; he did not disown the one in the name of the other. ^³ To the Monk Koni, who, even while admiring his practice, reproached him with rejecting the Sutras which do not speak of it, he replied: “I do not reject them; I declare only that the reading of them, useless to scholars, is impossible to the simple.”

This conciliating frame of mind had not prevented opposition, which had been harsh. In 1204, come together in the Kofukuji Temple of Mount Hiei, the representatives of one of the two branches of Tendai, the Sammon branch^⁴, had decided to deliver to the government a memorial of protest. Written, it is said, by the famous Gedatsu Shonin, of the Kasaji, the memorial accused Honen of nine offences: he depicts a false Amida, enlightening only those who invoke him, and turning away from those who practise meditation and asceticism; he disdains Shaka; he rejects the religious disciplines; he neglects all the Gods of the country; he ignores the teaching of the Pure Land Sutras which inculcate the practice of all kinds of good works; he misunderstands the real signification of the nembutsu; he corrupts the morals of the clergy; finally (inevitable cause of complaint, and which always holds) he disturbs public order.

We know the effect of this petition and of the incidents following on: the exile of 1209. After Honen’s death, the bonzes of the Hieizan returned to the charge with the support of some from Nara. They demanded the confiscation of all his writings, the banishment of his leading disciples, the destruction of his cenotaph in Otani. Between 1215 and 1240, they obtained not fewer than seven imperial decrees against the Jodo-Shu. The decree of 1227, in particular, was the signal for a veritable persecution.^⁵

Each person, according to his disposition, will be able to find damnable or fine, laughable or pitiable, the fierce animosity of these men, dedicated to the total extinction of the passions, against one of their equals who preached peaceably, to the same end, a spiritual way a little different from theirs. Although disciples of Buddha, these men were sons of a country which always shone by virtue of its warrior qualities. They were men too, just that, and when not overcome by a heroic effort, the human tendencies to resentment are on the contrary exacerbated by the illusive consciousness of spiritual interests at stake. Several adversaries of Honen furnish a remarkable example of this. Their fanaticism, to tell the truth, was often the behaviour “less of doctrinal bigots than of licentious Monks”^⁶ or of politicians anxious at the sight of their compromised situation. This whole story shows in any case the usual powerlessness of endeavours to smother a spiritual pressure when it is the response to a deep need.

The Jodo-Shu was moreover supported in its success by the increasing devotion to Amida. This, we have already seen, had not ceased to grow in the body of the nation since the remote epoch when, in 931, Emperor Uda, become a Shingon Monk, died while invoking the Buddha of the West. In 939, a nembutsu-in, that is a large room (hall) especially intended for the practice of the nembutsu, had been opened in the precincts of the Todaiji in Nara. This custom had spread. Many monasteries now had their jogyodo, become a nembutsu-in, on the model of the one founded by Jikaku Daishi and So-o on Mount Hiei; Shunjobo, a former adversary of Honen, will install one on Mount Koya. Already Amidism was reflected in a great part of Fujiwara art. In the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries, Amidist conceptions had inspired the arrangement and ornamentation of some famous Temples, notably of the Howodo, erected in 1053 in the Byodo-in, on the site of a Fujiwara property (Uji, near Kyoto). The plan of the Howodo was symbolical; the central building represented the body of a phoenix (Howo); to right and left, galleries represented wings; the rear, a storeyed hall formed the tail; in the front stretched the lake “of the eight virtues”, an integral part of the architectural composition; this entire ensemble was an Amida Paradise. Inside reverence was paid to a statue of the Buddha in gilded wood, sculpted by the bonze Jocho in 1057. Other statues of Amida were the object of an assiduous cult: such as the great seated Amida sixteen feet high installed about 1020 in another suburb of Kyoto, in the Jorokudo (Shorin-in). ^⁷

In the year 1009, a lady of the court Muresaki Shikibu, had noted in her private diary: “Everything belonging to this world, although of brilliant appearance, is ephemeral; men, whoever they may be, ought only, and without slackening, to read and understand the Amida Sutra.” ^⁸ In the lifetime of Honen, at the time of the famine of 1180, which caused numerous deaths in Kyoto, a group of pious men, brought together and urged by a bonze of the Zinon-in Temple, gave themselves the task of tracing on the foreheads of the dying or dead the first of the Chinese characters forming the name of Amida. Kamo Chomei, who reports the fact in his celebrated Hojoki, says next of himself that inside his hut, “against the north wall and under a paper screen”, he has “suspended an image of Amida”. ^⁹ The Heike Monogatari (“History of the Hei” or Taira), a work from the beginning of the thirteenth Century, the most popular perhaps in all Japanese literature, contains in this regard another very significant testimony. It is a kind of national epic, analogous to our “chansons de gest”, relating the struggles and misfortunes, still quite recent, of the great Taira family, vanquished by the Minamoto clan. The author of it, according to the legend, was a blind man who went about singing it in the streets, and his rhymed prose is in fact intended to be sung, or rather chanted, in the manner of Buddhist hymns, with musical accompaniment. Honen’s influence already makes itself felt in it. Here is how it reports the suicide of the old Empress Nii Dono, grandmother of the little Emperor Antoku, after the navel disaster of Dan-no-ura, the 25th April 1185:

“. . . The Nii Dono, who had already decided what she was going to do, having put on a double outside garment, in a mourning colour, dark grey, and having lifted up the long skirts of her hakama of shining silk, put the sacred Jewel under her arm and hung the sacred Sword from her belt. This done, she took the Emperor in her arms and said: “Although I am only a woman, I do not want to fall into the enemy’s hands, but I want to go with our sovereign Lord. Let those among you who so will follow me.” Then she slowly advanced towards the gunwale of the ship.

“With an expression of surprise and anguish, the little Emperor asked Nii Dono: “Where do you want to take me, Amaze?” Turning then to the young sovereign her face streaming with tears, she replied: “This world is a region of suffering, a remote spot, not bigger than a canary-seed. But there exists, beneath the waves, another country, the Pure Land of perfect happiness, it is another capital, from which affliction is absent. It is there I wish to take you, my Lord.” And even while comforting him, she gathered up her long hair and fastened it to her dress the colour of mountain doves. At these signs, the child-sovereign, blinded by tears, joined together his little hands and turned first to the east to bid farewell to the divinity of Isa and to Sho-Hachiman-gu, then to the west to recite the nembutsu over and over again. This done, the Empress hugged him in her arms, and still saying to him to console him: “In the depths of the ocean we have a capital”, jumped with him into the sea. ^¹0

“Alas!” concludes the narrator, “what woe! The capricious winds of springtime had quickly dispersed his august and flourishing form. Alas! what grief! The rough, devouring waves received the jewel of his body. .” Through this conclusion more human than strictly Buddhist, the Heike Monogatari is of the same mind with the Gempei Seisuki, an analogous work which, a few years previously, told the same story. In the latter, however, no mention is made of the Pure Land, and there is even no more question of a prayer to Amida than salutations to the Shinto divinities. It does not seem, therefore, that these details, so touching, are historical. But their insertion into the epic narrative is an indication, confirmed by other facts, of the popularity of Amidism in the thirteenth century. And it appears well established besides that, under the spell of Honen’s teaching, “a certain number of samurai weary of the world sought to hasten their entry into Paradise by means of suicide, although there may be nothing in his theories which might justify such an action.” A less violent practice is attributable to the same influence. The ex-Regent Higashiyama (1193 - 1252), who had inherited admiration of Honen from his grandfather, made a vow to spread about a hundred thousand copies, printed on wood, of the Amida Sutra; he had them made in China and flooded Japan with them.^¹1

Like literature, the theatre was opened to Amidism. It was about the end of the twelfth Century and the beginning of the thirteenth that the first nôs were composed. The genre flourished over about three centuries. Very often, in these short plays lyrical rather than truly dramatic, it will be a matter of Amida, his Vow, his Pure Land, according to the shades of opinion of the various sects. The Hyakuman, for example, is sprinkled with half a score of nembutsus. The Atago Kuya declares: “If you say once: Adoration to Buddha Amida, you will rise up on a lotus to Paradise.” Likewise, the Ohara go ko, which takes up moreover, putting it in the mouth of the Nun-Empress Toku-ko (Kenrei-mon-in), daughter of Nii Dono and mother of the little Antoku, the pathetic account of the Hieke Monogatari. ^¹2 The personage of the Atsumori make the “ten invocations” to Amida, they entreat him while recalling his original Vow to him, and right at the end, after having evoked the single combat in which Atsumori perished, killed by Kumagai Naozane who later became a Monk, the chorus expounds the posthumous reconciliation of the two enemies under the sign of the Buddha of mercy:

The Yugyo-Yanagi contains a declaration which reflects the spirit of Honen: “Shaka is already dead. Miroku is not yet born. If you do not have confidence in the Vow of Amida, how will you attain Buddhahood? Adoration to the Buddha. The original Vow does not lie. Since he has taken upon himself the Promise whose excellence nothing in the world surpasses, the way which leads to the other shore is to get into the boat of the Power of Another (tariki).” In the Sanemori, the famous warrior of this name, killed in the battle of Shinohara in 1183, is seen returning in the guise of an old man who consoles himself in melancholy fashion by contemplating a “Descent”:

Since 1168, the year when he made Kamakura his administrative capital, Yoritomo had planned to construct a colossal Amida there. In fact, the statue, of wood, was erected only in 1238, when the mischief-making against Honen’s sect was still going on. Soon a whirlwind came to destroy it. But Amidist fervour was so great that as early as 1252 it was replaced by the magnificent statue of gilded bronze, cast by Ono Goroemu, which can still be admired today. It is the celebrated seated Dai-butsu, fifteen metres thirty high, Amida-Shaka, a replica of the Rocana-Shaka of Nara, according to the same formula of the “two Blessed Ones in one”, Ni son ichi. Better turned out than that of Nara, it is, by far, the most expressive of the colossal statues of Asia. Although the head and arms had to be remade, under the Tokugawa, in the aftermath of a fire, “the beauty and dignity of the statue as a whole are indescribable” and “it still deserves that we cross seas and continents to see it.” ^¹5 When it appeared to the eyes of all in its first splendour, in the middle of the thirteenth Century, the Daibutsu of Kamakura was the symbol of triumphant Amidism.

A man then appeared, who attacked not only the Jodo, but also the Zen, and the Shingon, even the sects of Nara. He charged the Tendai, which he considered to be the heir of the true tradition, with having allowed itself to be contaminated by innovations. ^¹6 Without perceiving that he himself represented a quite impure combination of the Buddhist spirit and the old national ideal, he accused all the others of betraying the purity of original Buddhism. All forms of Amidism were particularly odious to him. This man was called Nichiren, “the Sun Lotus”. Born in 1222, son of an unassuming fisherman of Kominato, he had in the first place been received as a novice in the small neighbouring Monastery of Kiyosumi, where he had learned, as was the case everywhere then, to practice the nembutsu. Active, energetic, ambitious, fanatical, he joined to an unshakeable Buddhist faith a fierce patriotism, let us say even an integral nationalism. He appealed ceaselessly to “the prosperity of the nation”. He has been compared to the Anglo-Saxon “revivalists”, to the Hebrew Prophets, to Savonarola. “No other person has conceived such a proud idea of his mission on earth”. ^¹7 This “tumultuous genius” forms a perfect contrast to Honen, who naturally became one of his favourite targets. In the appeal to the secular arm, he came to take the place, with an acrimony more sincere, of the Hieizan Monks against the Jodo-shu.

Nichiren inveighed against Amidism in his speeches (Kukatsu). Several of his writings are not less violent: 1259, a “Dissertation on the Protection of the State” (Shugo kokka ron); in 1260, a “Treatise on the Stability of the Country by the Establishment of Orthodoxy” (Rissho ankoku ron); in 1268, an open letter to Dorui, of the Kenchoki; in 1272, a long pamphlet, the “Treatise which opens your eyes” (Kaimokusho); finally, in 1274, the “Treatise on the Main Point of the Lotus” (Hokke shuyo sho). In his eyes, Amida is nothing but a usurper, and the piety of the masses with regard to it is only a manifestation of the hysterical tendency of a troubled epoch. He is full of scorn for this vulgar sentimentality. ^¹8 “To expect the coming of Amida at the moment of death, as do all the Japanese of this century, is as if one wished to rear calves with mare’s milk, as if one wished to see the moon’s reflection in a mirror of brick!” ^¹9 Honen is the one chiefly responsible. He has dared to claim that the practices of the Law “are no longer timely, that they are no more than a waste of time”; he has coolly declared: “The Law is too profound, religious feeling has become too superficial, not one man in a thousand is able to profit from the Hokkakio’s teaching, our share (portion) of knowledge is henceforward insufficient to lift us towards such spheres”. This man, “sworn enemy of the Hokkekio”, is one of these “flatterers”, of these “proud hearts filled with self-conceit”, whom the Sutra denounced beforehand, he has led his fellow-countrymen astray by preaching his way of easy practice to them. “His lies have been a draught of dupery for the people.” ^²0 His error was to follow blindly the false explanations given in former days in China by bad Masters, the T’an-lowans, the Tao-tch’aos, the Chan-t’aos. Following them, he has turned his eyes away from an essential clause of the Vow of Amida. He has not wanted to see that the future (prospective) Buddha excluded in advance from his protection all-those who committed one of the five sins of immediate damnation (killing one’s father, one’s mother or an Arhat; wounding a Buddha’s body; doing injury to the harmony of the community) or who cast scorn on the True Law. He has also forgotten that the Lotus declares: “If someone does not believe this Sutra or if he disparages it, at death he will pass into the great Avici Hell.” ^²1 Honen has yet another fault which Nichiren denounces with more pathetic accents: “he has rejected the Founder of the religion”. He and all the adherents of his nembutsu are mortal enemies of Buddha Shaka. They go away repeating: “Shaka has no ties to us as Amida has”; to celebrate Amida they choose a date which ought to recall to their minds the memory of the “compassionate Father”. Such insults cause the betrayals of the wretched Devadatta to be renewed among us. If we tolerate them, “we, his well-beloved children, we render ourselves guilty of filial impiety towards him.” As for these people who think only of their Riken^²2, and do not cease to repeat his name, are not they real pagans? They do not burn stupas, but they cause them to fall of themselves in ruins. Yes, it is the great Avici which awaits them! ^²3

This scandal had been foretold. Since two centuries before we have entered the dark age of the Map-po. Now, the Nirvana Sutra expressly says that those who will then transgress the Law will be as numerous as the mass of the earth of the ten directions is enormous, while those who will still keep it will be like the small amount of earth able to be placed on a fingernail. The “perverse sects” are the fruit of this degeneration. But, “the protecting divinities forsake a world where the Law is outraged”. And Nichiren explains, as in former times was done by the enemies of the Christian faith in Rome in the days of Arnobius and St. Augustine, that Amidism, with its sacrilegious innovations, is the main cause of the public disorder and calamities of every kind at present befalling the world. More serious cataclysms are in preparation; let none neglect the “warning signs”: the earthquake of 1257, the comet of 1264 . . . Let us meditate on the fate of China, victim of the invasion by the Barbarians (the Mongols). Japan’s turn is coming, if it continues to give itself up to the perverse doctrine. Therefore, let a setting to rights be effected! Let the State intervene, in the name of public safety, so as to cause such an offence to cease! ^²4

As certain individuals reproached him for this appeal to force, Nichiren explained to them: When a country does not yet know the Law, it is fitting to bring it to receive it by a “peaceful inveigling”; but if, having received it, it becomes a “destroyer” of it, the situation is quite different. It is necessary then to take up arms, in order to protect the inhabitants of this country against the destroyers of the Law, who are their enemies. Does not a father fight someone who attempts to take the life of his son? “I, Nichiren, have for all Japanese the love of a father and mother.” Will it be said that killing is forbidden by the Law? But there is killing and killing. He who avenges his parents commits only a light fault, and if one kills an enemy of the Law, “were one guilty of the five sins of immediate damnation, one will attain rebirth among men and Gods.” ^²5

Like many impassioned people, at the very moment when he threatens, Nichiren imagines himself threatened. “I make a great Vow”, he then exclaims. “They can say to me: your father and mother will be beheaded if you do not say the nembutsu; I shall remain deaf to these words. All the evils which they can promise me are to me only dust in the wind. I will be the pillar of Japan. I will be the eye of Japan. I will be the great ship of Japan. Nothing shall make me break this oath.” ^²6

Nichiren did not reject the Amida Sutra (Muryojukio), but he saw in it a kind of prologue to the Lotus. He did not agree to “put in the same rank the light of the stars and that of the moon, or the nine mountains and Sumeru.” Just as he subordinated all the other Buddhas to Sakyamuni, so did he see in the Lotus “the clear mirror”, “the essence of all the Sutras”, that which alone contains “the Way without a superior”. He lovingly called it: “the Lotus of the wonderful Law”. With a lyricism from which the polemical point was by no means absent, he celebrated “the Pure Land of Vulture’s Peak”, where Sakyamuni had promulgated it. Indignant to the insults which it had received from Honen and his ilk, he consoled himself by thinking that “the brilliance of the Sutra born on Vulture’s Peak is in no way tarnished by the ugliness of the sects of this country”. To the Namu-Amida-Butsu, he opposed his Namu-Myoho-Renge-Kyo which signifies: “Homage to the Holy Scriptures of the Lotus”^²7

a sacred formula which his disciples recite, still today, to the sound of a small drum. Those who he brought together found themselves forming the Hokke-Shu, “Lotus Sect”, which has been quite gratuitously compared to “Jesuitism”. ^²8 He was to die reciting verses of his adored Lotus.

But, if this enemy of innovations had some success as founder of a new sect^²9 his appeal to the secular arm did not meet with the response which he expected. The regency of the Hojos was not to be persuaded. To complete the paradox, he himself underwent exile on two occasions, in 1261 in Izu, then in 1271 on the island of Sado. It was during his first winter on Sado, in a dilapidated hovel belonging to a ruined Temple, that he wrote the impassioned pages of his Kaimokusho. More than once, he was on the point of being torn to pieces by the Kamakara populace whose beliefs he insulted. Charged with high treason in 1271, he was arrested and condemned to death, but at the moment when he presented his neck to the executioner, a flash of lightening came to paralyse the latter’s hand. Nichiren’s life was thus saved. Soon after, in 1274, the first attempt at a Mongol invasion seemed to verify his predictions and earned him a return of popularity. But from that time, tired, he retired to Mount Menobu, continuing to write, but giving up the struggle. At the time of the second attempt launched by Khublai in 1281, he was too near his end (1282) to be able to draw along Amida’s boat in the route of the Mongol fleet. ^³0

He had written with melancholy: “The Sutra says: There is already much hate in the world today, there will be much more still after the Buddha’s death. These words are indeed the expression of the truth.” ^³1 Did not he have any idea that he busied himself more than all others in making the prophecy come true? Neither he nor Honen, it is very obvious, revived to the letter Sakyamuni’s teaching. None of the Mahayana Sutras is really the “Word of the Buddha”. The preaching on Mount Gridhrakuta is no more historical than the “Original Vow, and the metaphysical phantasmagoria of the Lotus has the same unreality as the jewelled trees and lotuses endowed with life of Amida’s Paradise. Nichiren was a powerful and magnificent personality. Honen had, at least, better preserved the heritage of Buddhist benevolence.

The attacks of Nichiren should not surprise us beyond measure. It had required all the tolerance congenital to the spiritual temperament of the Indian and Chinese Buddhists in order that a way so peculiar as Amidism might not stir up violent opposition on their part. The latter, however, was none the worse for it. The Jodo-Shu continued to progress. Its vitality was no more endangered by the soaring of the Zen sects, recently founded by Eisai (1141 - 1215) and Dogen (1200 - 1253) in imitation of the Chinese Dhyana (Tch’an). But, to a graver degree then its existence was threatened by invective and persecution or by the rivalry of a competing foundation, the unity of the Jodo was compromised (endangered) by internal causes. So it was, and seriously so, from the beginning, and even before the first assaults of Nichiren.

In extolling his “little way”, Honen, as we have seen, had not wished to promote a radical innovation. Much less still did he wish to authorise the least in the world - as Luther was accused later, with his too paradoxical “pecca fortiter” - a slackening of morals. He was not one of the extremists who claimed that “whoever pronounces the name of Amida, be it by pure inadvertence, be it in a blasphemy, is assured of Paradise”.^³3 Very soon, besides, he had expressly put his disciples on guard:

“Buddha Amida has promised never to deceive the trust which a sinner places in him. But, look to it, it is a matter of the trust that past repeated sins are remitted, not of the trust that we can continue to sin with impunity by trusting to Amida’s mercy. No Buddha has ever encouraged wrongdoing. The presumptuous will be punished in the following way; they will lose consciousness during their death-struggle, and will not be able to make the required invocations at the moment of their passing.” ^³4

Later, in 1209, he had to revert to this subject, in order to disown a group of would-be disciples, who lived in the Hokuroku-do Monastery. It is the famous “Letter sent to Hokostsu” or “Written Vow to put an end to the doctrine of the single thought”. The tone of it, by way of exception, is harsh. One feels that he himself wishes to clear himself of analogous accusations, and to break off any appearance of solidarity with those who merit them:

“Among those who adhere to the nembutsu, there is a numerous band of fools and crazy people . . . Perversely propagating a false law of the single thought, they render themselves guilty of the sin of omitting the disciplinary practices; more than that, founding a doctrine according to which no thought of the Buddha is necessary, since faith is sufficient and all things are identical, they even give up the lowest practice of a single invocation . . . In order to experience during one ksana the pleasures of the five passions they do not fear to take upon themselves a karma which for endless kalpas will consign them to the three evil destinies (gati). Here in effect is what they preach: Whoever trusts in Amida’s Vow need not fear at all to commit the five offences; let each therefore act in this respect according to his own pleasure; it is no longer necessary either to put on the kasaya: let each dress delightfully in court robes, and refuse themselves neither lust nor the consumption of meat . . . Not only do these people oppose other doctrines, but they give up the very practice of the nembutsu. Favouring loose and shameless deeds, they teach scorn of the prohibitions and a return to worldly life. There were no heretics during the present dynasty: now, behold, through them Mara is already hatching his plans.” ^³5

But, setting aside this crude interpretation, everything still did not appear clear to everyone in this so simple teaching. Its very simplicity rendered it ambiguous. Let us leave on one side certain less serious discussions, such as the discussion concerning the exact nature of Sukhavati^³6 which went on endlessly inside the Jodo-Shu without provoking major troubles. The very centre of the doctrine and its putting into practice gave rise almost immediately to divergent explanations, which were to end in schisms, and several of these explanations would not come into being without recalling in a disquieting fashion the crude error condemned by Honen in his “written Vow”.

Honen used few technical terms. His attitude was essentially pragmatical. Rather as Buddha had formerly done, whose “middle way” avoided on right and left all the discussions (thesis) which were of no account as regards liberation^³7 he declined to accept problems which appeared to him to be pure speculation. In order to self-induce disgust for the world, Sakyamuni thought there was no point in asking, for example, if this world is eternal or not: it was better even not to raise this kind of problem. In order to attain liberation, one must not seek to define it too closely. Thus now in order to attain and preserve a simple and trusting faith in Amida: Honen therefore set aside the theoretical justifications attempted by some or others of his own teaching, not by declaring them false, but by declining to enter on them. “Such is not”, he said, “my religion. In my religion, there is nothing to say on the subject of the invocation of the sacred name, except to put our whole heart into making it, in the firm conviction that we will be reborn in the Pure Land.” But the questions nonetheless remained raised, the attempts at explanation nonetheless went on just the same. Like the disciples of Sakyamuni, Honen’s disciples felt the need, despite their Master’s adjurations, “to encumber themselves with opinions”. They buried themselves in a “jungle of opinions”, they were tossed in a “tumult of opinions”, they fettered themselves with the “shackles of opinions”. Once more the law was confirmed that “thought knows no keener stimulant than the very limit which people claim to assign to it”. ^³8 Honen laboured under an illusion. “I have stated everything precisely in the Senchakushu,” he said one day, “this book will transmit my teaching, and everything I specify in it will prevent deviation.” At the very end of his life, while singing the Ichimai Kishomon, he again traced these words: “I have given here again all my principles, so as to prevent heterodoxy after my departure; it seems to me that there remains nothing more to say.” ^³9 In fact, from shortly after his death, the “reserved questions” became questions acrimoniously disputed, and internal dissensions rent the Jodo-Shu.

Three points above all became the object (subject) of controversies (controversy).

Feelings were divided first and foremost on the question of understanding (knowing) whether, in addition to trusting faith and devotional practices, moral strenuousness were necessary, whether it would count for something among the conditions of salvation. Modern historians, Eastern as well as Western, Buddhist as well as Christian, have not failed to point out the analogy of this debate with that which brought to grips Catholics and Protestants in Christianity, touching the respective roles of faith and works^⁴0 or the relations of “justification” and “sanctification”. Honen had quoted a sentence from Chan-t’ao: “Without deeds, faith is dead, and without faith, deeds are dead.” He could just as well have said with St. Bernard: “There is no more works without faith than fruits without flowers; but on the other hand faith without works is dead, as the flower blossoms in vain which is not followed by a fruit.” ^⁴1 If a certain accusation of immoralism was crude, a certain accusation of moralism, in the opposing camp, was not less distorted.

Moreover, this salutary faith in Amida, which all admitted, where did it come from? Was it engendered and sustained by the sole effort of the faithful follower, was it his own act - or else was it due itself to the kind generosity of this Buddha? “Nobody”, Honen had said, “is saved except at his own desire.” But where did this desire come from? Were there not different degrees possible in the tariki, or different ways of understanding its opposition to the jiriki, even after having received Honen’s opinion? On that were grafted all kinds of more subtle disputes, which remind us of the disputes stirred up in the West on various occasions, from St. Augustine and the “Semi-Pelagians”, to the Arminians and Gomerists of Dutch Calvinism, concerning the initium fidei and the mode of operation of grace. They also have their parallels, closer still, in the heart of Hindu doctrines, in Vishnuism most especially, with the two confronted arguments called “the cat” and “the monkey”: Does God seize the soul to save it as the cat carries away its kittens far from danger, or does the soul seize on God in order to be saved by him, like the young monkey hanging on to its mother’s side? ^⁴2 In other words, was there, in the process of attaining salvation, a part left to the initiative and own activity of the creature? All this, of course, in the Buddhist context, which was neither Hindu nor Christian.

Not less keen, to conclude, was the controversy, stronger perhaps to us, known by the name of “Dispute of the single thought and multiple thoughts”, Ichinen tanen no arasoi. ^⁴3 As often happens, the opposition of school was written down beforehand in the diversity or ambiguity of the fundamental texts, as the Chinese tradition read them. In fact, the versions of the Amidist Sutras “differ in the number and duration of thoughts of Amida, a condition of access to the Pure Land. Sometimes it is a matter of a single thought, sometimes of ten thoughts, sometimes of thoughts uninterrupted for a day and a night or ten days and nights, sometimes of constant thought, etc. . .” ^⁴4 One could hesitate as to the meaning of the expression “single thought”: it seems indeed that, in the usage of some of the ancients, such as Tao-tch’ao, it signified not a thought formed on a single occasion, but a thought singly occupied with Amida, “without there being room for anything else”. One could also ask, as the Chinese had already done without being able to reach agreement, what was the nature of these ten thoughts: was it a matter simply of the name thought repeated ten times, or of ten thoughts detailing the various attributes of the Buddha or perhaps again of ten different sorts of meditation in miniature? ^⁴5 Certain expressions, besides, were obscure or equivocal. What exactly did the ancient authors understand by the expression nai tche, “up to”, when they wrote that one had to invoke Amitabha “up to ten times” or “up to once”? ^⁴6 The very passage of the Meditation Sutra, cited in the preceding chapter, was not perfectly clear. Each person therefore gave his solution. Out of that was born a long dispute, which became brisker commencing with Honen. Its range went strangely beyond the immediate practical interest, as we shall see better further on. Some, evidently strongly in favour of some traditional interpretations, but also sometimes influenced by the immanentist metaphysics of the Tendai and by the symbolical mysticism of the Shingon, energetically maintained the sufficiency of the “single thought” (ichinen-gi): since Amida himself, in attaining illumination, had compressed all the merits acquired over innumerable kalpas into the sole formula of the nembutsu, this formula had the power of miraculously transferring, at a single stroke, the merits contained by it into the soul of the devotee of Amida. It was to transpose into Amidism the idea of the Avatamsaka: “A single thought causes Bodhi to be born in the heart.” But others, more timorous, more refractory to outside influences, and who interpreted or chose the texts otherwise, taught the necessity, or at least the convenience, the major utility of “multiple thoughts” (tanen-gi). They had the right to invoke the authority of Honen himself and of his practise, known to all. They could call to mind how he had protested, in his Letter of 1209, against those who went about saying: “If Honen Shonin repeats the nembutsu sixty thousand times a day, it is merely to come to terms with the general public.” They could also draw support from the example of old Shunjobo Chogen, come from the Shingon to the Jodo, who, before dying in 1200, had organised foundations in various places for the perpetual nembutsu. ^⁴7 Some of them, who based themselves more especially on the Meditation Sutra, revered by all, came from it to work out in detail methods for the production of these “multiple thoughts”. In this way they reproduced, against the ardent declaration of their Master, the ancient requirements, as they are expressed, for example, in Pseudo-Asvaghosa, who added to the trusting invocation “the contemplation of Amida’s Buddhahood, joined with mental exercises”. They reintroduced the complication in a spiritual movement which was born from an aspiration to simplicity. In entering on this way, they finished by distinguishing five different methods with a view to obtaining rebirth in the Pure Land. Taking up a genre of exercises classical in Buddhism the fifth of these methods consisted in concentrating one’s mind on the perfection of a Buddha-Land, then in training one’s visual imagination to perceive in detail all the beauties contained in this Land, from those of its Buddha and Bodhisattvas, and so on for each of the other senses . . . ^⁴8 It was the old procedure of the “application of the senses” taught to Indian novices for the “meditation on the horrible” (asubha). On the one side, they came dangerously close to the heresy of the Hokuroku-do, which itself had sheltered at the beginning, as we saw just a moment ago, under the standard of the “unique thought”, and they appeared to open the door to presumption, laxity or indifference. On the other side, on the other hand, was not the door again opened to formalism, doubt or routine?

Between these three subjects (objects) of discussion, there was a logical link. Those who insisted on moral activity and self effort (not necessarily “self power”) even in the practice of the nembutsu, were also those who showed themselves most strongly in favour of the multiplication of formulas. Those on the contrary who were afraid above all of diminishing the value of faith and of taking something away from the gracious initiative of Amida, were also those who proclaimed the absolute sufficiency of the “single thought” most uncompromisingly. In the first group, with traditionalist leanings, there was notably Shokobo (+ 1237), who was to be the Patriarch of the Jodo-Chinzei, principal body of the Jodo, as well as Chosai and Ryukwan “the zealot”. The chief personality of the second group was Kosai (1163 - 1247). In the centre stood Zennebo, also called Shoku (+ 1247), leader of the Jodo-Seizan.

Honen had not long before chosen Zennebo as reviser of his Senchakushu. This confidence was well placed. No one indeed, among his disciples, seems to have inherited more of his spirit. He re-read day and night, it is said, Zendo’s commentary on the Meditation Sutra. In 1234, the Monk Tsunoto who had come to him to set forth his doubts, he replied: “Let him who recites the nembutsu in faith do it with or without knowledge. What does it matter? It is the simple fact of saying “Namu Amida Butsu” which obtains rebirth. There are people who satisfy themselves with saying it while believing in the efficacity of the Vow of Amida, while others seek moreover to take into account the principles which create this efficacity. The mind of these and those works differently, but if on the one hand and on the other there is the same faith, rebirth is likewise assured.”

Zennebo, who has written a great deal, is the author of a little work in five chapters, the Godansho, of sober as much as firm doctrine, totally dedicated to defining the authentic nembutsu, “which will continue to exist even when the Triple Treasure has disappeared from the earth”. It is what one recites with a simple heart, believing that it assures, without the help of any self-effort, rebirth in the Western Paradise. Zennebo recognised two qualities in it, or two essential determinations. Using an expressive method, he calls it on the one hand “the nembutsu of white wood”, in opposition to all the nembutsus more or less subtly coloured with jiriki^⁴9; and on the other he calls it “the nembutsu without foundation” - Honen said: “the independent nembutsu” - by which he understands that it is to be practised just as it is, without looking for any clever explanation of this marvellous grace which flows from the original Vow. ^⁵0 Instead of letting ourselves be allured by thoughts of jiriki - thoughts which always derive from ignorance at once of our own nature and of the Buddha’s grace - or indulging ourselves in untimely reflection on the efficacity of the nembutsu, we must nourish this latter with the always keener consciousness that we are too weak to get the better of our evil passions; without looking any further, we must turn this consciousness, and our passions themselves, into so many occasions for turning to the Buddha, with a feeling, also always keener, of trust and gratitude. Thus there will be realised the union of the faithful with the Buddha. And Zennebo concludes: “Live in an inward, continual relationship with Amida, by the ceaselessly repeated invocation of his name. Then the glorious light which emanates from him will pervade your whole being, allowing nothing dark or impure to continue in existence.” ^⁵1

As much as and more than Zennebo, Jokakubo Kosai appeared to wish to magnify Amida. The alpha and omega of all things, he declared, resides in his power. But if he claimed with an uncompromising fervour the first of the two qualities recognised by Zennebo in the nembutsu, he set aside the second, and the metaphysical explanations to which he devoted his attention while commenting on the thesis of the “single thought” indeed, whatever he may say, in again “colouring” with jiriki this nembutsu which he too would have wished to be “of white wood”. Shunjo, Honen’s biographer and the avenger of the doctrinal purity of the sect, will write of him: “This man saw the Jodo through Tendai eyes. He distinguished in Amida as it were two personalities: one, the fundamental or original; the other, the temporal and incarnate. The Amida of whom it is told that he attained illumination in former times was the incarnate Amida; the original Amida was the primordial intelligence which has no beginning and which is none other than the universal Buddha Nature.” In this perspective, the main point of the “single thought” did not consist in the material fact of pronouncing the formula only a single time, but, a quite different thing, in the inward fact of “realising” within oneself the fundamental personality of the Buddha by identifying oneself with it. The single thought was therefore in reality rather the “unique thought”. It ought to reunite in the beneficiary of the Vow with the thought which had inspired this Vow in the future Amida. The two aims, that of the Vow and that of the Nembutsu, thus converged to blind while losing themselves in the original Amida, in the ineffable place “where active and passive are no longer distinguished, where wisdom and faith make but one”. “Rebirth in the Pure Land”, Kosai might have written, “has for necessary condition that the thought of the believer on the one hand, and on the other the thought (proceeding) from the wisdom of the Buddha should correspond with one another and blend with one another. When the thing takes place, rebirth in the Pure Land follows spontaneously. That depends neither on the time, nor the duration, nor the period, nor the number nor on the greater or lesser depth of reflections.” ^⁵2

Such assertions made an open scandal - if at least we are to believe the orthodox tradition of the Jodo-Shu, for nothing remains of Kosai’s works. They could even accuse this intemperate spirit of reviving the immoral doctrine of the Hokuroku-do heretics. That was a mistake. But Kosai bore in mind too much the long moulding he had formerly received in the Tendai, before adhering to the Jodo at the age of thirty-six. In 1204, he stated his ideas precisely in a “Document in seven articles”. Observation was made to him that they were not in conformity with those of Zendo. As he was stubborn, Honen, with whom he had however become an intimate, found himself obliged to expel him. ^⁵3

1 For the information of connoisseurs, his best compositions are his letters to friends. He had friends throughout Japan; one of the best known is Kumagai no Jiro Naozane, a warrior who had contributed in 1184 to the victory of the Mimasaka and who became a Monk in 1191. C.B. infra, p. 181.

2 Honen drew inspiration in saying this from an explanation classical since Nagarjuna, who had distinguished in Buddha’s teaching four “points of view”: worldly, individual, therapeutic and absolute, and had written: “The individual point of view is to preach the Law taking into account the spiritual state of the individual . . . According to the therapeutic point of view, there are Dharmas which exist as remedies, without existing however as real natures . . .”; Treatise on the Great Perfections of Wisdom, I, 16 (translated Et. Lamotte, bk. 1, pp 31 - 33). But the application made by Honen is quite different from Nagarjuna’s.

3 Shunjo, his biographer and faithful interpreter, will make the same distinction. Charles Eliot, Japanese Buddhism, pp. 266 and 364. Coates op, cit., pp. 81 - 87. C.B. the Buddhist proverb quoted by H.H. Gowen, op, cit., p. 22, with regard to the diversity of sects: “The paths go up on different sides, numerous and far apart, but when we contemplate the calm, full moon, single the mountain-crest appears to us.” History of Japan, (French translation 1933).

7 Albert Maybon, The Temples of Japan, pp. 40 and 81. René Grousset, The Civilizations of the East, bk. 4, p. 109. Jean Buhot, History of the Arts in Japan, bk. 1, p. 173. Coates, p. 285. Sansom, op, cit., p. 295. The Howodo still exists, fire has destroyed the entire remainder of the Byodo-in.

9 Hojoki (= Notes from a ten-foot square hermitage; 1212). C.B. W.G. Aston, Japanese Literature, (translated H.D. Davray, 1902), pp. 145 - 146. This minuscule writing is a “zuichitsu” (“offhand”), celebrated among all in Japan. Beside the image of Amida, Chomei had also put one of Fugen (Samantabhadra), and before the two he put a copy of the Hokkekio.

1⁰ Heike Monogatari, I. XII (English translation by A.L. Sadler, in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. 49, p. 1, 1921, pp. 320 - 321). “And at this moment, from all those who still lived rose a cry horrible and so heart-rendering, that it could not be exceeded by any of the cries from all the damned who live in the most fiery part of the great Avici Hell.” C.B. Noel Peri, Five Nôs, p. 229: “The Princess has seen in former days the Temple of Isa, and the imperial retinue making its way there, reflected in the clear water of the Mimosuso; this recollection recurs to her at the moment when she speaks of a country of delight hidden under the waves.” This scene will be compared with the dialogue of Andromache and her child, in Euripides, Andromechi, v. 501 ss.

1² Nii Dono’s daughter threw herself into the sea after her mother. Saved by the soldiers of the conqueror Yoshitsume, she became a Nun. This is the subject-matter of the Ohara Go Kô (the imperial visit to Ohara) by Kwanze Seami Mutokiyo (translated Noel Peri, Five Nôs, 1921; a freer translation in Steinilber-Oberlin and Kuni Matsuo, The Book of the Nôs, (1929)

1³ Translated Noel Peri, Five Nôs, p. 152. The death of Atsumori, killed in 1184, is related by the Heike Monogatari. The Atsumori, whose author is also Kwanze Seami Mutokiyo, is prior to 1435.

1⁵ Jean Buhot, op. cit., pp. 208 - 209. H.H. Gowen, op. cit., pp. 183 and 115 - 117. Serge Elisseev, loc. cit., pp. 415 - 416. Gaston Migeon, In Japan, p. 49. Lafcadio Hearn, Journey to the Land of the Gods, p. 162: “Contrary to all expectation, the more you approach the Giant-Buddha, the more its charm is accentuated. You raise your eyes to the beautiful, solemn face..” Many people hold the Daibutsu of Kamakura to be the masterpiece of Japanese art. However G.B. Sansom, op. cit., pp. 408 - 409 (C.B. pp. 153 - 155) judges that the work is not of the first merit: “if its excessive mass and its attitude slightly inclined to the front make a vivid impression, the sculpture is deficient through the weakness of its execution.” The statue is made of bronze sheets riveted to one another, and then carved on the spot. Since 1494 it has been in the open; previously a great Temple served to shelter it. It has suffered little from the earthquake of September 1923. The Daibutsu of Nara, erected by Shomu in 748 in imitation of the great stone Buddha of Lo-yang (672), is a Shaka-Roshana (Vairocana), conceived in accordance with the teaching of the Kegon sect.

1⁷ G. Renondeau, The Doctrine of Nichiren, (1953), p. 7, with supporting quotations. To this work, containing the translation of six Treatises by Nuhiren, the majority of our quotations refer back.

1⁸ C.B. Nissatsu Arai, Outlines of the doctrine of the Nichiren Sect, (Tokyo, 1893), p. 111. M. Anesaki, Nichiren, the Buddhist Prophet, (Cambridge, 1919, pp. 8 - 9); History of Japanese Buddhism, p. 198.

2⁰ Kaimokusho, ch. 10 (Renondeau, pp. 174 - 176 and 186. Quotations from Honen’s Senchakushu. Nichiren charges him with having concealed the opinion of Dengyo Daishi, which he knew well, because it was not favourable to him.

2¹ Shugo kokka son. C.B. G. Renondeau, Nichiren’s Treatise on the State, in T’oung Pao, bk. 40, (1950). This clause of the original Vow has been the object of controversy for a long time. Chan-t’ao had previously sought a reconciliation of the canonical texts, which are not in agreement. After him again, this point was to be discussed, among others by Kiang-hing and Yuan-hiao, under the T’ang. C.B. Paul Demieville, The Chinese Versions of the Milinda-panha, (1924), p. 239.

2³ Kaimokusho, ch. X; Kokke Shuyo Sho, etc. (Renondeau, pp. 178, 304, 315, etc.). Nichiren exaggerates. Shunjo, for example, will begin his biography of Honen with these words: “Shaka Nyorai, our Master, moved by his deep paternal compassion . . .” (p. 85).

2⁹ Some information on the sect in G.B. Sansom, Japan, pp. 397 to 402; H.H. Gowen, op. cit., pp. 178 - 180, etc. Thanks, at least in part, to Nichiren, the Lotus was to continue to enjoy an immense reputation in Japan; still in 1912, on the death of Emperor Meiji, the chief Princes of the blood copied the Hokkesutra in favour of the soul of the deceased and laid it in the Sanyuji Temple in Kyoto.

3⁰ In 1274, the armies of Khublai Khan (Huang-Ti) disembarked in the Bay of Imazu, but were not able to maintain themselves there. In 1281, ten thousand men disembarked on the island of Kiou-siou with European engines of war, added to a war equipage already formidable, probably on the advice of Marco Polo. Forced to take to the sea again, their fleet was annihilated by a storm: it was the “Great Wind” of 14th August 1281, of which Marco Polo has given the description. C.B. G.B. Sansom, op. cit., pp. 372 - 384, or Marquis de la Mazeliere, Japan, History and Civilization, vol. 2 (1907), pp. 189 - 197. Learning one day that the Mongol envoys had been executed, Nichiren wrote to a friend: “It is a great pity that these innocent men should have been beheaded, while the Nembutsu, Shingon, Zen and Ritsu Priests, who are the enemies of the country, have been left safe and sound.”

3⁵ Quoted by Paul Demieville, The Chinese Versions . . ., pp. 242 - 243. C.B. Ruysbroeck, The Mirror of Eternal Salvation, ch. 16, against those who “wish to know neither good nor evil, and claim to have discovered in them unconditional being. . . Many who appear spiritual are consumed by these ideas, and become worse than demons.” Works, bk. 1, p. 116 - 117.

3⁶ Was it only a “Land of Fruition”; into which the profane could not enter, or else a “Land of Metamorphosis”, to which all had access? C.B. Hobogirin, III (1937), art. Butsudo by Paul Demieville, p. 203.

3⁷ Samyutta nikaya, II. C.B. ibid., the parable of the sinsapa leaves; or Majjhima nikaya: “The Master is free of all theories; he has conquered liberation by the rejection of all opinions”, etc. Brahma-jalasutra.

4² August Barth, Forty Years of Indianism, bk. 1, pp. 198 - 199. Louis de la Vallee Poussin, Buddhist Morality, p. 226. Pierre Charles, S.J., The Intellectual Unity of Mankind, in Human Races, first congress of the Aucam (Louvain, 1930), p. 40.

4⁹ Father Wieger, Amidism. . . , p. 45, translates a little differently: “Let your heart be like a white board”, and following Coates he comments by using an expression familiar to us: “tabula rasa”. The general sense remains the same. In his commentary on the Meditation Sutra, Chan T’ao previously distinguished, but in a sense a little different, a “correct” practice of the nembutsu and a “mixed” practice.

5⁰ Shinran will say likewise, in one of his remarks reported by Yui-embo, Tannisho: “The nembutsu transcends all reasoning, for it is inexpressible, indefinable and inconceivable” (translated Tosui Imadate, Kyoto, 1928, p. 14).

5¹ C.B. Shizutoshi, A Study in the Pure Land Doctrine, as interpreted by Shoku, the Founder of the Seizan Branch of the Pure Land Sect, in The Eastern Buddhist, vol. V, 1929, pp. 80 - 102. The same: The Pure Land Doctrine as Illustrated in the “Plainwood” Nembutsu by Shoku (ibid., vol. 6, 1932, pp. 23 - 39: translation and commentary of the Godansho).

5³ Shunjo, ch. 29 (p. 523). Details of Honen’s chief disciples in Coates, pp. 48 - 52 and 532 - 533. With regard to Kosai and Shinran, who were both considered heretics, the author asks if an impartial study of their fundamental principles ought not to lead us to judge that their sects are in reality authentic off-shoots of the Jodo. As far as we can judge, it appears to us however that the two cases are not entirely the same.