Category Archives: Books

fa-hien, Blog, Books

A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms

legge-record-of-buddhistic-kingdomsIn 399 CE, a Chinese Mahāyāna monk named Fa-hien set out for India to find a complete copy of the Vinaya, the rules and precepts for fully ordained monks.

After Fa-hien set out from Ch’ang-gan, it took him six years to reach Central India; stoppages there extended over [another] six years; and on his return it took him three years to reach Ts’ing-chow [China].

A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, p115-116

After his trip, Fa-hien wrote a book about what he saw. Fa-hien’s book was translated into English by James Legge (1815-1897). Legge, at the time he published his translation in 1886, was professor of Chinese studies at Oxford University. Throughout the book, Legge offers extensive notes explaining for his Western audience the background and meaning of what Fa-hien saw in his travels.

From Legge’s Introduction:

Nothing of great importance is known about Fa-hien in addition to what may be gathered from his own record of his travels. I have read the accounts of him in the ‘Memoirs of Eminent Monks,’ compiled in A.D. 519, and a later work, the ‘Memoirs of Marvelous Monks,’ by the third emperor of the Ming dynasty (A.D. 1403-1424), which, however, is nearly all borrowed from the other; and all in them that has an appearance of verisimilitude can be brought within brief compass.

His surname, they tell us, was Kung, and he was a native of Wu-yang in P’ing-yang, which is still the name of a large department in Shan-hsi. He had three brothers older than himself; but when they all died before shedding their first teeth, his father devoted him to the service of the Buddhist society, and had him entered as a śramaṇera, still keeping him at home in the family. The little fellow fell dangerously ill, and the father sent him to the monastery, where he soon got well and refused to return to his parents.

When he was ten years old, his father died; and an uncle, considering the widowed solitariness and helplessness of the mother, urged him to renounce the monastic life, and return to her, but the boy replied, ‘I did not quit the family in compliance with my father’s wishes, but because I wished to be far from the dust and vulgar ways of life. This is why I choose monkhood.’ The uncle approved of his words and gave over urging him. When his mother also died, it appeared how great had been the affection for her of his fine nature; but after her burial he returned to the monastery.

On one occasion he was cutting rice with a score or two of his fellow disciples when some hungry thieves came upon them to take away their grain by force. The other śramaṇeras all fled, but our young hero stood his ground, and said to the thieves, “If you must have the grain, take what you please. But, Sirs, it was your former neglect of charity which brought you to your present state of destitution; and now, again, you wish to rob others. I am afraid that in the coming age you will have still greater poverty and distress. I am sorry for you beforehand.” With these words he followed his companions to the monastery, while the thieves left the grain and went away, all the monks, of whom there were several hundred, doing homage to his conduct and courage.

When he had finished his noviciate and taken on him the obligations of the full Buddhist orders, his earnest courage, clear intelligence, and strict regulation of his demeanor were conspicuous; and soon after, he undertook his journey to India in search of complete copy of the Vinaya-piṭaka. What follows this is merely an account of his travels in India and return to China by sea, condensed from his own narrative, with the addition of some marvelous incidents that happened to him, on his visit to the Vulture Peak near Rājagṛha.

A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, p1-2

The book offers a fascinating look at Buddhist life and practice at the start of the fifth century. Keep in mind, that at the same time Fa-hien was exploring India, Kumārajīva was busy translating the Lotus Sutra into Chinese.

Several things Fa-hien witnessed were of particular interest to me. For example, having recently finished Jan Nattier’s “A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra,” it was interesting to note that some Buddhist communities that Fa-hien encountered included both Mahāyāna and Hinayāna monks, while others were strictly Hinayāna or Mahāyāna. In The Inquiry of Ugra the Mahāyāna Bodhisattva path was not a separate teaching but just one of the vehicles available to renunciants. Centuries later, Fa-hien finds evidence of a separation of the Mahāyāna and Hinayāna schools, while still finding areas where they practiced together.

I also found the topic of Pratyeka buddhas fascinating. In the Lotus Sutra, we hear of people seeking Pratyekabuddhahood, one of the three provisional vehicles, but nothing about someone actually attaining this goal.

Fa-hien witnessed:

At this place there are as many as a thousand topes of Arhans and Pratyeka Buddhas.

A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, p40

Topes is another word for stupas. Legge offers this note about Pratyeka Buddhas:

In Singhalese, Pasê Buddhas; called also Nidâna Buddhas, and Pratyeka Jinas, and explained by ‘individually intelligent,’ ‘completely intelligent,’ ‘intelligent as regards the nidânas.’ This, says Eitel (pp. 96, 97), is ‘a degree of saintship unknown to primitive Buddhism, denoting automats in ascetic life who attain to Buddhaship “individually,” that is, without a teacher, and without being able to save others. As the ideal hermit, the Pratyeka Buddha is compared with the rhinoceros (khadga) that lives lonely in the wilderness. He is also called Nidâna Buddha, as having mastered the twelve nidânas (the twelve links in the everlasting chain of cause and effect in the whole range of existence, the understanding of which solves the riddle of life, revealing the inanity of all forms of existence, and preparing the mind for nirvāṇa). He is also compared to a horse, which, crossing a river, almost buries its body under the water, without, however, touching the bottom of the river. Thus in crossing saṃsāra he suppresses the errors of life and thought, and the effects of habit and passion, without attaining to absolute perfection.” ‘ Whether these Buddhas were unknown, as Eitel says, to primitive Buddhism, may be doubted.

A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, p40

Underscore “without being able to save others,” which tells you all you need to know about Pratyeka buddhas.

(See Pratyekabuddhas Before Śākyamuni)

Legge, who came to China as a Christian missionary, is mostly supportive of Buddhism, but takes offense at Fa-hien’s tale of a monk who attained parinirvāṇa by cutting his own throat.

[At a distance of 50 paces from the rock dwelling of Devadatta] is a large, square black rock. Formerly there was a bhikṣu who, as he walked backwards and forwards upon it, thought with himself: ‘This body is impermanent, a thing of bitterness and vanity, and which cannot be looked on as pure. I am weary of this body, troubled by it as an evil.’ With this he grasped a knife and was about to kill himself. But he thought again: ‘The World-honored one laid down a prohibition against one’s killing himself.’ Further it occurred to him: ‘Yes, he did; but I now only wish to kill three poisonous thieves.’ Immediately with the knife he cut his throat. With the first gash into the flesh he attained the state of a Srotaāpanna; when he had gone half through, he attained to be an Anāgāmin; and when he had cut right through, he was an Arhat, and attained to parinirvāṇa; (and died).

Legge responds in a note:

Our author expresses no opinion of his own on the act of this bhikshu. Must it not have been a good act, when it was attended, in the very act of performance, by such blessed consequences? But if Buddhism had not something better to show than what appears here, it would not attract the interest which it now does. The bhikshu was evidently rather out of his mind; and the verdict of a coroner’s inquest of this nineteenth century would have pronounced that he killed himself ‘in a fit of insanity.’

A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, p86

Not everything Fa-hien saw in India accorded with traditional Buddhism.

In this Middle Kingdom there are ninety-six sorts of views, erroneous and different from our system, all of which recognize this world and the future world (and the connection between them). Each has its multitude of followers, and they all beg their food: only they do not carry the alms-bowl. They also, moreover, seek (to acquire) the blessing (of good deeds) on unfrequented ways, setting up on the roadside houses of charity, where rooms, couches, beds, and food and drink are supplied to travelers, and also to monks, coming and going as guests, the only difference being in the time (for which those parties remain).

There are also companies of the followers of Devadatta still existing. They regularly make offerings to the three previous Buddhas, but not to Śākyamuni Buddha.

A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, p61-62

I’ll end here with Fa-hien’s tale of the woman who accused the Buddha of having gotten her pregnant.

Outside the east gate of the Jetavana, at a distance of seventy paces to the north, on the west of the road, Buddha held a discussion with the (advocates of the) ninety-six schemes of erroneous doctrine, when the king and his great officers, the householders, and people were all assembled in crowds to hear it. Then a woman belonging to one of the erroneous systems, by name Chañchamana, prompted by the envious hatred in her heart, and having put on (extra) clothes in front of her person, so as to give her the appearance of being with child, falsely accused Buddha before all the assembly of having acted unlawfully (towards her). On this, Śakra, Ruler of Devas, changed himself and some devas into white mice, which bit through the strings about her waist; and when this was done, the (extra) clothes which she wore dropt down on the ground. The earth at the same time was rent, and she went (down) alive into hell. (This) also is the place where Devadatta, trying with empoisoned claws to injure Buddha, went down alive into hell. Men subsequently set up marks to distinguish where both these events took place.

A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, p59-60
ugra, Blog, Books

A Few Good Men

The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra

A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of UgraAfter reading Jan Nattier’s deconstruction of  the predictions of the extinction of Buddhism in Once Upon A Future Time, I remembered that I had a copy of Nattier’s “A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra.” In this 2003 book Nattier deconstructs the meaning of the early Mahāyāna. Was it a new doctrinal school, a reformist sect, or simply a “movement”?

She concludes:

If the Mahāyāna as reflected in the Ugra thus fails to conform to any of the three major categories–a new doctrinal school, a reformist sect, or simply a “movement”–to which it has been assigned in buddhological literature to date, how then was this term used by the Ugra’s authors? Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps–given the volume of ink that has been spilled in an attempt to define the “Mahāyāna” in recent years–the Ugra offers us a very simple and straightforward answer. For the authors of this sūtra, the Mahāyāna is nothing more, and nothing less, than a synonym of the “bodhisattva path.” For the Ugra, in other words, the Mahāyāna is not a school, a sect, or a movement, but a particular spiritual vocation, to be pursued within the existing Buddhist community. To be a “Mahāyānist”–that is, to be a bodhisattva–thus does not mean to adhere to some new kind of “Buddhism,” but simply to practice Buddhism in its most rigorous and demanding form.

A Few Good Men, p195

This conclusion originally surprised me, but upon reflection I realized that this accords well with the Lotus Sutra, which promises at the conclusion of the first chapter:

The Buddha will remove
Any doubt of those who seek
The teaching of the Three Vehicles.
No question will be left unresolved.

While the Lotus Sutra goes on to declare that there is only One Vehicle, the lesser path of the Bodhisattva vehicle is clearly a part of the Buddha’s provisional teachings. As Nattier notes:

If the Ugra cannot offer us a glimpse into the very dawn of the bodhisattva enterprise, it nonetheless remains a valuable witness to one of the earliest stages in the development of that path. It portrays a Buddhist community in which the path of the bodhisattva was viewed as an optional vocation suited only for the few; where tensions between bodhisattvas and Śrāvakas were evident, but had not yet led to institutional fission generating a separate Mahāyāna community; and where texts containing instructions for bodhisattva practice were known and transmitted by specialists within the larger monastic saṃgha. It emphatically does not convey a picture of the Mahāyāna as a “greater vehicle” in the sense of a more inclusive option, for the bodhisattva vehicle is portrayed as a supremely difficult enterprise, suited only (to borrow the recruiting slogan of the U.S. Marine Corps) for “a few good men.” And while the Ugra reflects an environment in which lay men were beginning to participate in such practices, there is no evidence that its authors even considered the possibility that women (whether lay or monastic) might do so as well.

A Few Good Men, p196
mappō, Stone Last Age, Books

The Last Age: A Dark Era

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Jacqueline I. Stone wrote the journal article “Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age: Mappō Thought in Kamakura Buddhism” (PDF) in 1985 while still a UCLA Master’s student who went by Jackie Stone. Her essay declares:

Buddhist tradition maintains that as the world moves farther and farther away from the age of Shakyamuni Buddha, understanding of his teachings grows increasingly distorted and people’s capacity to practice and benefit from those teachings accordingly declines, until eventually Buddhism is lost. Sutras and treatises divide this process of degeneration into three sequential periods beginning from the time of the Buddha’s death: the age of the True Dharma (Skt. saddharma, Jap. shōbō) the age of the Counterfeit Dharma (saddharma-pratirūpaka, zōhō) and the age of the Final Dharma (saddharma-vipralopa, mappō).

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p29 of Part 1

Ta-Chi-Ching, the Great Collection Sutra, contains three periods and divides the decline into five consecutive 500-year periods. The fifth 500-year period is the age when “quarrels and disputes will arise among the adherents to my [Shakyamuni’s] teachings, and the Pre Dharma will be obscured and lost.” The “True” and “Counterfeit” ages each last 1,000 years and the “Final Dharma” age was said to last 10,000 years, which also meant an indefinite period.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p33 of Part 1

This was true as far as Buddhism of Kamakura Japan was concerned.

In 1991, however, Jan Nattier, a PhD graduate of Harvard University, published “Once Upon A future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline,” which was based on her doctoral thesis delivered in 1988. In her book, Nattier clearly shows that the concept of three ages of decline and especially the last age, mappō, were the product of Chinese commentators and not the product of Indian Buddhism.

But mappō was very real for Buddhists of Japan.

By the latter part of the Heian Period (794-1185), a majority of Japanese believed that the world had entered a dark era known as mappō the age of the Final Dharma. Buddhist tradition held that in this age, owing to human depravity, the teachings of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni would become obscured, and enlightenment all but impossible to attain. By the mid-eleventh century, natural disasters, social instability and widespread corruption among the Buddhist clergy lent seeming credence to scriptural predictions about the evil age of mappō —predictions which in turn gave form to popular anxieties, feeding the growing mood of terror, despair and anomie known as mappō consciousness.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p28 of Part 1

The idea of mappō involves not only the decline of the world—as suggested by the “five defilements”—but the failure of the means of salvation itself. At a time when the bodies of plague victims periodically littered the streets, when fires and earthquakes leveled temples and government offices alike, when warrior clans rose to challenge a tottering nobility in a series of bloody altercations that radically altered the political structure, Japanese on the whole must have come to realize the uncertainty of this world with an immediacy that people but rarely experience under more tranquil conditions. The prediction that in this hour, Buddhism too would decline must have filled them with a horror beyond imagining.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p62 of Part 2

 
Book List

Dollarhide Senji-Shō, mappō, Books

Knowing the Time: The Age of the Last law

dollarhide-nichiren-senji-sho-bookcoverAmong the Kamakura Buddhist leaders Nichiren stands alone in his interpretation and understanding of the Age of the Last Law.14 The Age of the Last Law was in part the basis upon which he established his school. Honen and Shinran also based their schools upon the idea of the Age of the Last Law, but both held that it could not be overcome or conquered. By contrast, Nichiren thought that the Age of the Last Law could be overcome and conquered. Nichiren regarded the Age of the Last Law as the period best suited for the teaching of the Lotus Sutra , and as the best possible period in which to attain salvation. His practice consisted in repeating the words “Namu Myoho Renge Kyo” or “Homage to the Lotus of the Wonderful Law.” This practice, for Nichiren, was the sole means to achieve salvation in the Age of the Last Law.17

Nichiren's Senji-Shō, p12
14
I have translated the three ages of the Buddha’s teaching as follows: 1 . Shōbō (Skt. saddharma), Age Of the Perfect Law; 2. zōbō (Skt. saddharma pratirūpaka), Age of the Counterfeit Law; and 3. mappō (Skt. saddharma vipralopa) Age of the Last Law.return
17
He states in the Kyōgyōshō Gosho (Essay on the Teaching, Practice and Proof), “This age is evil and corrupt and many people slander [the Lotus Sūtra]: I am making an effort to sow the seeds of Buddhahood [in their minds] by causing them [to chant] “Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō” which is the essence of the Lotus Sutra.return
mappō, Nattier Decline, Books

Once upon a Future Time: The Missing Mo-Fa

nattier-once-upon-bookcoverTo the specialist in East Asian Buddhism, one of the most striking features of the texts reviewed in the previous chapter is that not a single one of them contains any reference to the concept of mo-fa (Jpn. mappō), lit. “end-dharma” or “final Dharma.” For it was not any of the timetables discussed above, but rather a three-part system culminating in a prolonged period of mo-fa, that was to become the most influential historical frame of reference in the Buddhist schools of China, Korea, and Japan.

Building on the concepts of saddharma (“True Dharma”) and saddharma-pratirūpaka (“semblance of the True Dharma”) that we have already met in the Indian sources, East Asian Buddhists formulated a system of three periods in the history of the Buddhist religion, which were expected to occur in the following sequence:

  • a period of the “True Dharma” (Ch. cheng-fa /Jpn. shōbō, corresponding to Skt. saddharma) immediately following the death of the Buddha, during which it is possible to attain enlightenment by practicing the Buddha’s teachings;
  • a period of the “Semblance Dharma” (Ch. hsiang-fa / Jpn. zōbō, a term patterned on but not identical to Skt. saddharma-pratirūpaka), during which a few may still be able to reach the goal of enlightenment, but most Buddhists simply carry out the external forms of the religion; and
  • a period of the “Final Dharma” (Ch. mo-fa / Jpn. mappō, a term for which no proper Sanskrit equivalent exists), during which traditional religious practice loses its effectiveness and the spiritual capacity of human beings reaches an all-time low.

While this system is known only in East Asian Buddhist sources, it is clearly constructed with reference to elements that were already known in India.

Once Upon A Future Time, p65-66
mappō, Nattier Decline, Dollarhide Senji-Shō, Stone Last Age, WONS, Blog, Books

The Problem With Mappō

Is it time to let go of our attachment as Nichiren Buddhists to the doctrine of Mappō, the Latter Age of Degeneration?

Back on Aug. 17, 2019, I wrote a blog post entitled “Does the Eternal Buddha’s Teaching Lose Its Potency?” I argued then that the Lotus Sutra clearly teaches that the Eternal Buddha is always present. How could his teaching decline?

To explore the issue, I recently picked up Jan Nattier’s “Once Upon A Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline.” The first half of of Nattier’s 1991 book is devoted to establishing the roots of the prediction of the decline in Buddhism.

From Nattier’s book I learned of Kenneth Dollarhide’s “Nichiren’s Senji-Shō: An Essay on the Selection of the Proper Time.”  The book, published in 1982 as Volume One in Studies in Asian Thought and Religion, includes a description of Nichiren’s life and the Age of the Last Law.

Finally, I picked up Jacqueline Stone’s two-part journal article “Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age: Mappō Thought in Kamakura Buddhism,” [PDF] which was published in 1985 in the Spring and Autumn editions of The Eastern Buddhist.

Over the next several weeks I will be publishing excerpts from these  sources.

Before that, I want make clear that Nichiren did not contend that the Lotus Sutra would lose its effectiveness over time. In Shugo Kokka-ron, Treatise on Protecting the Nation, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, Pages 25-27, Nichiren writes:

QUESTION: Do you have any scriptural passages proving that the Lotus Sūtra alone will remain even after other sūtras all disappear?

ANSWER: In the tenth chapter on “The Teacher of the Dharma” of the Lotus Sūtra, Śākyamuni Buddha declared in order to spread the sūtra, “The sūtras I have preached number immeasurable thousands, ten thousands, and hundred millions. Of the sūtras I have preached, am now preaching, and will preach, this Lotus Sūtra is the most difficult to believe and to understand ” It means that of all the sūtras which the Buddha has preached, is now preaching, and will preach during 50 years of His lifetime, the Lotus Sūtra is the supreme sūtra. Of the 80,000 holy teachings, it was preached especially to be retained for people in the future.

Therefore, in the following chapter on “The Appearance of the Stupa of Treasures,” the Buddha of Many Treasures emerged from the great earth, and Buddhas in manifestation from the worlds all over the universe gathered. Through these Buddhas in manifestation as His messengers, Śākyamuni Buddha made this declaration to bodhisattvas, śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha, heavenly beings, human beings, and eight kinds of supernatural beings who filled the innumerable (400 trillion nayuta) worlds in eight directions:

“The purpose of the Buddha of Many Treasures to emerge and gathering of Buddhas in manifestation all over the universe is solely in order for the Lotus Sūtra to last forever. Each of you should vow that you will certainly spread this Lotus Sūtra in the future worlds of five defilements after the sūtras which have been preached, are being preached, and will be preached, will have all disappeared and it will be difficult to believe in the True Dharma.”

Then 20,000 bodhisattvas and 80 trillion nayuta of bodhisattvas each made a vow in the 13th chapter on “The Encouragement for Upholding This Sūtra”, “We will not spare even our lives, but treasure the Unsurpassed Way.” Bodhisattvas emerged from the great earth, as numerous as dust particles of the entire world, as well as such bodhisattvas as Mañjuśrī and all also vowed in the 22nd chapter on the “Transmission,” “After the death of the Buddha … we will widely spread this sūtra.” After that, in the 23rd chapter on “The Previous Life of the Medicine King Bodhisattva” the Buddha used ten similes in order to explain the superiority of the Lotus Sūtra over other sūtras. In the first simile the pre-Lotus sūtras are likened to river-water and the Lotus Sūtra, to a great ocean. Just as ocean water will not decrease even when river-water dries up in a severe drought, the Lotus Sūtra will remain unchanged even when the pre-Lotus sūtras with four tastes all disappear in the Latter Age of defilement and corruption without shame. Having preached this, the Buddha clearly expressed His true intent as follows, “After I have entered Nirvana, during the last five-hundred-year period you must spread this sūtra widely throughout the world lest it should be lost.”

Contemplating the meaning of this passage, I believe that the character “after” following “after I have entered Nirvana” is meant to be “after the extinction of those sūtras preached in forty years or so.” It is, therefore, stated in the Nirvana Sūtra, the postscript of the Lotus Sūtra:

“I shall entrust the propagation of this supreme dharma to bodhisattvas, who are skillful in debate. Such a dharma will be able to last forever, continue to prosper for incalculable generations, profiting and pacifying the people. ”

According to these scriptural passages the Lotus-Nirvana Sūtras will not become extinct for immeasurable centuries.

Quotes from Mappō discussion

The Vision of Buddhism, Blog, Books

The Vision of Buddhism

The Wife adheres to a New Year’s Day rule: Don’t do anything on New Year’s Day that you don’t want to end up doing all year long.1 She cleans and straightens the house over the days leading to New Year’s Eve in order to enjoy her relaxed holiday. Having been married 34 years, I’ve adopted her rule – do only things you want to do all year long on New Year’s Day – but without all the preparatory inconvenience.

So today, Jan. 1, 2024, I’ve strictly limited television viewing. I’ve ignored the leaves littering the bottom of the pool in the backyard. And I’ve spent the majority of the day in my recliner reading.

I picked up Richard J. Smith’s “The I Ching: A Biography,” which I had been reading the day before. This is one of the “Lives of Great Books” series which “recount the complex and fascinating histories of important religious texts from around the world.” I’ve previously read “The Lotus Sutra: A Biography” and “The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography,” both by Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Vision of Buddhism bookcoverHowever, in keeping with my “only do things you want to do all year long,” I put The I Ching biography down and picked up “The Vision of Buddhism” by Roger J. Corless. This was an introductory Buddhism text recommended by Jan Nattier in her book “Once Upon A Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline.” (More about that book tomorrow and subsequent days.)

I was attracted to this book by Corless’ effort to reject the Western tendency to teach Buddhism as a linear historical tale.

History is an academic discipline that has developed in the western hemisphere. The western hemisphere has been strongly influenced by the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and their conception of time as something created by God in and through which God manifests himself. On this view, time is meaningful. It has a beginning and an end, and the end is a goal, so that there is development, a progressive achievement of the goal. It makes sense to ask “What is the meaning of life?” A Christian hymn says “God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year.” As soon as we substitute the word Buddha for God in this sentence, however, there is a problem.

History as a secular discipline has many of the features of the Abrahamic tradition’s view of time. God has been gradually eased out, and the notion of goal or purpose has become suspect, but the assumption that time is meaningful and that development is real does not seem to have been given up by even the most radical critics of the philosophy of history.

Buddhism, on the other hand, sees things as changing over time, but it does not see things as becoming more meaningful as they change. Change, for Buddhism, is a primary characteristic of cyclic existence (samsara), and history is just a lot of change. All that we can say about history, Buddhistically, is that as time goes on we get more of it.

I greatly enjoyed his summary of the basic story of the Buddha’s life, which uses the Tibetan story of the “Twelve Acts of the Buddha”:

  1. Waiting in the Tushita Heaven
  2. Growing in the womb of Mayadevi
  3. Birth as a human for the last time.
  4. Attainment of intellectual and physical skills
  5. Marriage and the enjoyment of sensuality
  6. Renunciation of the worldly life
  7. The practice of extreme self-denial
  8. The march to the center
  9. Overcoming Mara
  10. Attaining enlightenment
  11. Teaching
  12. Final Nirvana

His summary of the teaching of emptiness – or as he explains it, “transparency” – was very useful and I was looking forward to seeing how his college textbook published in 1989 would proceed. At that moment, however, I needed to run an errand with The Wife. (All year long I’ll do this!)

When I was able to return to my recliner, I picked up “The Vision of Buddhism” but instead of returning to where I had left off I decided to first browse the book index.

As a Nichiren Buddhist I’m always interested in what an introductory college text has to say about the Kamakura period of Japan’s Buddhist development.

Nothing. The word Kamakura does not appear in the index. The entry for “Japan, and Buddhism” points to pages 59-62.

This happens to be the place where Corless has devoted a little more than two full pages to “Nichiren Shoshu (“The Orthodox Nichiren Lineage”). There is no other index entry for Nichiren.

In Corless’ Chapter 2, The Value of Worldly Skills (Act 4 of the Buddha), in the subsection entitled “Social Buddhism,” he writes:

Social Buddhism
There are two forms of Buddhism that, in very different ways, emphasize social action above all else: the Nichiren Shoshu of Japan, and the reform movement of Dr. Ambedkar in India.

NICHIREN SHOSHU
Nichiren Shoshu, “The Orthodox Nichiren Lineage,” is nothing if not clear, organized, and motivated. It claims to have the true Buddhism, proves it by its physical success, and aims at the destruction of all other forms of religion. Its roots are in a medium length Mahayana Sutra, Saddharmapundarika Sutra or Sutra on the True Dharma which is like a White Lotus, called the Lotus Sutra for short. This text presents Shakyamuni in his gigantic-sized, Sambhogakaya form preaching the Mahayana doctrines that had been withheld from the Hinayana. It may have been written about the beginning of the Christian era. Partly perhaps because it was chosen by the Chinese monk Chih-i (531-597 C.E.) as the perfect expression of Mahayana, it has become one of the most popular texts of Far Eastern Buddhism. It was studied by Nichiren (1222-1282 C.E.), a Japanese Tendai monk practising on Mount Hiei. He seems to have decided that the scholastic exegesis of the Lotus Sutra had become over-subtle, and that its main points had been missed. The Sutra was not concerned, he felt, with voluminous doctrinal formulae, but with the victory of the oppressed under the leadership of the Bodhisattva Vishishtacharitra (“He of Superlative Action”; known as Jogyo Bosatsu in Japan), who is mentioned in chapter 15 of the Lotus Sutra as the leader of a vast army of Bodhisattvas who emerge from below the earth to worship the Buddha. Coming out of the earth signified, for Nichiren, the release of the lowly from injustice, and he identified Vishishtacharitra with himself. Later followers came to regard Nichiren as the pre-eternal Buddha, superior to all other Buddhas. Only by cleaving to the supreme doctrine of the Lotus Sutra could anyone be free, either relatively (i.e., within samsara) or absolutely (i.e., by leaving samsara). He expressed his contempt for competing forms of Buddhism in four staccato phrases:

  1. “Nembutsu muken”: Those who recite the Buddha’s Name in the hope of paradise will be reborn in hell.
  2. “Zen temma”: The practitioners of Zen are deluding demons.
  3. “Shingon bokoku”: The Tantric Buddhists, who say they are protecting the country, are traitors.
  4. “Ritsu kokuzoku”: The Buddhists who punctiliously observe the monastic regulations are rebels.

The government attempted to execute Nichiren as a troublemaker, but he was saved by a miracle, and exiled to the island of Sado between 1271 and 1274. He founded two temples before he died, and began the Hokke Shu, “Lotus Lineage” which emphasized the great merit of reciting the mantra NAM’MYOHO-REN-GE-KYO, “Hail to the Lotus Sutra.” Since the Lotus Sutra says that reciting a single phrase from it earns as much merit as reciting all of it, and since, according to classical Chinese thought, the essence of a book is encapsulated in its name or title, those who recite NAM’MYO-HO-REN-GE-KYO will find that they get all that they need.

After Nichiren’s death, the lineage did not have a large following until Toda Josei (1900-1958 C.E.) became president of the Soka Gakkai, “Value-Creation Society,” in 1951. Soka Gakkai is a lay organization that grew out of the educational theories of Makiguchi Tsunesaburo (1871-1944) who, in his four-volume work Soka Kyoikugaku Taikei, “A System of Value-Creation Education,” written between 1930 and 1934, offered the unexceptionable idea that education should increase the student’s sense of values. Toda befriended Makiguchi, both joined the Nichiren Shoshu (an outgrowth of the Hokke Shu), and, after Makiguchi’s death, Toda whipped up what had been a study circle into a tightly run missionary society. He vowed to obtain the conversion of seven hundred and fifty thousand families before his death, and far exceeded his goal.

Today, Soka Gakkai is a potent force in Japanese society, able to stage breathtakingly unified mass meetings and, through the Komeito, “Clean Government Party,” it is powerfully influential in the Diet (the Japanese parliament). Its militancy alarms non-members, who may argue that it is not really Buddhism. Soka Gakkai claims, for instance, that Japan lost the Second World War because the Four Divine Kings deserted Japan when the Lotus Sutra was neglected. Soka Gakkai also has a world mission, with an American headquarters near Los Angeles and branches throughout the United States. Members of Soka Gakkai in America, where it is called Nichiren Shoshu of America (N.S.A.), attribute such varied practical benefits as release from drug addiction, a happy sex life, improved sports performance, good business deals, and successful hitch-hiking to the persistent recitation of the mantra NAM’MYO-HO-REN-GE-KYO. Unlike most Buddhists, they make great efforts to gain converts, and may claim that other Buddhists are not “real” Buddhists. And, whereas Nichiren himself originally claimed the Lotus Sutra as the salvation of Japan, American devotees patriotically use it to pay homage to the Stars and Stripes, sometimes with fife-and-drum bands.

After reading this I was exhausted and took a nap. I set my watch’s timer for 30 minutes and closed my eyes.

Napping I don’t mind doing for the rest of the year. Reading Corless’ book, not so much. When I got up from my nap I went to my office to write this. Writing is something I want to do all year. Explaining how many ways Corless gets Nichiren Buddhism wrong, I can do without.

I’ll go do gonyo now while my wife proof-reads this. After I do my 32 Days of the Lotus Sutra post I’ll consider my wife’s suggestions and post this. Tomorrow I plan to pick up Jan Nattier’s “A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparip̣rcchā)

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The Wife’s objection: I feel this is misleading. The rule is – What you do on NYD will dominate or be a major focus for the coming year. Therefore you want to do pleasurable and rewarding things. return
Blog, Books

Shingyō Hikkei

In 1966, Nichiren Shu established what it called the Protect the Dharma Movement. This movement sought to create a unity of faith and training that would focus and thus amplify efforts to propagate the Lotus Sutra. To that end, Watanabe Kōin, Chief Administrator of the  Nichiren Sect Headquarters, created the Shingyō Hikkei, a handbook for members of the Nichiren Sect.

Writing in the Preface to the handbook in April 1972, Kōin said:

Sufferings of people today could be said to arise from a spiraling egotism. Only the way of Bodhisattva as expounded in the Lotus Sutra can put an end to it. Today the ideal world still seems out of our reach. Once believers of the Lotus Sutra unite themselves, and receive divine response, however, it is next to nothing to overcome worldly interests and desires. Unfortunately there has not been concerted effort among the members of the Nichiren Sect although many have distinguished themselves in scholarship and training. Therefore, just as Japan had established a unified public education system, we intend to focus our efforts in strengthening faith and training of all members of Nichiren Sect through a unified system of faith and training. Beginning with the 750th anniversary (1972) of the birth of our Founder we hope to carry out a great revolution in order to establish the faith and training for the members of the Nichiren Sect.

We realize that opinions differ, but we earnestly urge you to have a broad outlook and join us in a movement which has just been started to bring about the unified system of faith and training so that all Nichiren Sect members who believe in the same faith, no matter which temple or church they may belong to, may be able to learn this unified basic program and be worthy as “Followers of Nichiren,” as Nichiren Shonin put it. We believe that all members of the Nichiren Sect should be able to perform services together, join in discussion sessions, and live together with the same goal of “obtaining Buddhahood together.”

In 1978, the Nichiren-shū Shūmin, the Nichiren sect headquarters, published the first English translation of the Shingyō Hikkei.

In September 1978, Matsumura Juken, Chief Administrator, Nichiren Sect Headquarters, wrote in the introduction to the English translation:

When our Founder Nichiren Daishonin spread the Odaimoku “Namu Myoho Renge-kyo” representing the teaching of the Lotus Sutra, which is the essence of the Buddha’s heart, he pointed out that it should be spread not only in Japan but also throughout the world. In accordance with this, I believe that the Protect the Dharma unity of faith and training movement should also be widely spread overseas. I therefore urged the prompt publication of an English translation of the Shingyō Hikkei. Reverend Kyotsu Hori, Bishop of Hawaii Nichiren Mission, kindly took responsibility for translating it into English. As a result of his efforts we have finally come to greet the day of its publication. I would like to express my deep gratitude to him.

I sincerely hope that those overseas arm themselves with this Shingyō Hikkei and strive to practice the faith and training by reciting (by mouth), keeping (in mind), and practicing (by body) the heart of the Lotus Sutra and the teachings of our Founder, so that this world may become bright and secure, and that everyone may enjoy the life in the land of the Buddha.

I pray from the bottom of my heart that each of the overseas ministers may engage in active missionary works.

I found several copies of the English translation of the Shingyō Hikkei on a dusty shelf in a classroom of the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church. I gave a copy to my son, who recently joined the church. I’ve also put the text of the book on the church website. You can find it here.

Given that (before I published this article) a Google search for “Protect the Dharma Movement” would get you exactly zero articles, one can assume the movement fizzled out. Whether Nichiren Shu headquarters lost interest, or the overseas ministers dropped the ball, the result is the same.

That’s unfortunate.

While I have many doctrinal arguments with Nichiren Shoshu and Soka Gakkai, one cannot fault the top-down direction of this global organization that focuses members on their practice.  Go to any group meeting at a home or a chapter session at a community center and you feel right at home.  It’s like going to Starbucks. No matter where you go, you know you’re in Starbucks and you know what you’ll get.

That’s not what you get with the confederation of temples that is Nichiren Shu. Less like Starbucks, the temples in America (the only ones I have experience with) are more like independent Italian restaurants. The restaurants are recognizable as Italian, but each has a different focus and flavor. The shami who left to strike out on his own focusing solely on Shodaigyo services has established the first pizzeria of the bunch.

I regularly attend services at four different temples. In order to do that I am required to  have four different service books. Woe be to the random online visitor to another temple. Yes, for the most part, one can count of reciting Hoben Pon and Jiga Ge, but not always. Never at that pizzeria and only occasionally at restaurants that like to vary the menu each week.

All things are possible if people are united in one spirit. Nothing can be accomplished if they are not united.

It’s ironic that this quote from Nichiren comes from his Treatise on Cooperation.

The original Protect the Dharma Movement had an element that sought to bind everyone together in the effort to propagate the Lotus Sutra.

At eight o’clock every morning we, members of the Nichiren Sect, wherever we are and whatever we are doing, should direct our hearts towards Lord Sakyamuni Buddha and Nichiren Shonin, who reside on Mt. Minobu, and recite the Odaimoku and say a prayer for the protection of the Dharma.

Let us all practice this prayer and encourage our neighbors to join us.

The way you recite the Odaimoku is up to you. It may be voiced or silent; it may be said three times or ten times. The point is for everybody, no matter where he lives, to say a prayer at the same time in one mind.

If Nichiren Shu in America is going to continue to act as independent Italian restaurants, it would be nice if they could settle on a single act such as the Protect the Dharma Movement prayer to establish a little more itai doshin.

Nichijo, Blog, Books

Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo

I first heard the name Nichijo Shaka in 2017. It came up in a discussion about a one-time shami of Rev. Kenjo Igarashi of the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church. As far as I know this was  Rev. Igarashi’s first and last attempt to train an American to become a Nichiren Shu priest. It did not end well. When the shami left, he became a follower of Nichijo Shaka of Hawaii. The impression I was given was that  Nichijo Shaka was a Nichiren priest who sought to strip out everything Japanese from Nichiren Buddhism and to create an American Lotus Sutra teaching. He called his effort the Buddhist School of America. I imagined a renegade Japanese priest running an unsanctioned operation. I was wrong on several counts.

nichijo-bookcover
Available for purchase on Amazon

Wanting to know more, I found Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo, a book published in 2014. Reading the book in 2021, I learned that Nichijo Shaka, who was born John David Provoo on Aug. 6, 1917, in San Francisco, had another connection to the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church. Before Provoo sailed to Minobu in 1966 to complete his training as a Nichiren Shu priest, he spent the last five months of 1965 studying with Bishop Nippo Aoyagi Shaku, who served in the Sacramento Church from 1964  to 1968. According to the book, Provoo conducted Sunday school in English at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church, lectured to English-speaking groups outside the church and worked at a local hospital during that period.

I have tried to find collaborating information on the life of John Provoo and especially Nichijo Shaka’s efforts to create an American Buddhism, but I haven’t found anything. No one who attends the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church today remembers a blue-eyed Caucasian priest-in-training running the Sunday school 55 years ago. Rev. Igarashi, who came to Sacramento in 1989, dismisses Nichijo Shaka as a trouble-maker. I’m told followers of Nichijo Shaka still gather, but I’ve been unable to find one who who is willing to talk to me about his teachings. Nichijo Shaka died in 2001.

But these connections to Sacramento are not what makes John David Provoo famous. As the book’s back-cover blurb explains:

This is the personal saga of John David Provoo. In 1940, the young American Buddhist studying at an ancient monastery in Japan was urged by the U.S. Embassy to return home. In 1941, he enlisted in the US Army in San Francisco, and was soon stationed in the Philippines. Within six months of the outbreak of war, he was captured along with thousands of others on the island fortress of Corregidor, in the mouth of Manila Bay.

In the early months after capture, the Japanese used him as an interpreter, a role that created suspicion in the minds of some that he had become a collaborator. After years of privations in POW camps in Taiwan, he was moved to Bunkwa Camp in downtown Tokyo, and forced to make propaganda broadcasts with others, including Iva Toguri, from Radio Tokyo, until the end of the war.

In the post war years, he was continually harassed by the FBI throughout a second Army enlistment. In 1949, he was discharged, taken immediately into federal custody and charged with treason for events on Corregidor and taking part in radio programs. His trial was foreshadowed by the conviction of Iva Toguri, cast by the government as the non-existent “Tokyo Rose”.

This book is his personal narrative of the events that led up to his prosecution and his final return to the training for the Buddhist priesthood.

Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo is written as a first-person tale told by John David Provoo, but the final version of the book was rewritten by John Oliver. Here’s the About the Author blurb:

John Oliver earned Bachelor degrees in Political Science and Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1969. In the 1970s, he discovered his passion for homebuilding, and has spent most of his life as an artisan building contractor in California and Hawaii. In a chance encounter with Bishop Nichijo Shaka on the rural Big Island in 1983, he found a direct use for his liberal arts education. His collaboration with Rev. Shaka resulted in the biography, “Nichijo”, copyrighted in 1986, but never published. In 2014, living in semi-retirement in Sonoma County, California, he finally found the time to complete the thoughtful rewrite that was begun nearly 30 years before. “Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo” was released in October of 2014.

Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo, p248

 

Having read the book for a second time, I’m going to attempt to set aside by journalistic skepticism, and accept as fact what is written in Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo. There are some fascinating aspects of how Provoo came to be a Nichiren Shu Buddhist priest.

Table of Contents

Nichijo: The Path to the Lotus Sutra
Nichijo: The Disciple Finds His Master
Nichijo and Nippo
Nichijo: A Novice Priest at War
Nichijo: The Right Reverend
Nichijo: The Buddhist School of America
Nichijo: The Missing Piece of Provoo’s Story

Nichijo: Errata

Stone: Tanaka Millennialism, Blog, Books

Japanese Lotus Millennialism

millennialism_persecution_violence_bookcover
Download PDF copy of “Japanese Lotus Millennialism”

From Militant Nationalism to Contemporary Peace Movements
In 2000, the Syracuse University Press published “Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases,” an anthology of articles edited by Catherine Wessinger. Inside, is a chapter written by Jaqueline I. Stone entitled, “Japanese Lotus Millennialism: From Militant Nationalism to Contemporary Peace Movements.”

Having just finished reprinting quotes from Stone’s article on Chigaku Tanaka’s efforts to establish the Honman No Kaidan “By Imperial Edict and Shogunal Degree,” I want to add some additional discussion of Tanaka’s efforts to leverage Nichiren’s doctrines to enhance the cause of Japanese nationalism in the early 20th century.

As Stone explains in the article:

During Japan’s modern imperial period, intense nationalism, militarism, and war were assimilated to new millennial visions of a world harmoniously united under Japanese rule. Certain elements in the teachings of the medieval Buddhist teacher Nichiren were appropriated to these visions. His discourse about Japan as the place where a new Dharma would arise to illuminate the world was given an imperialist reading; his advocacy of assertive proselytizing or shakubuku—which for Nichiren had meant preaching and debate—was adopted as a metaphor for armed force; and his emphasis on giving one’s life for the Lotus became a celebration of violent death in the imperial cause. Such millennialist appropriations inspired not only extremists committed to political assassination or coups but also broadly legitimated the violence that pitted Japan as a whole against other Asian countries and the West.

Japanese Lotus Millennialism, p274

And after Japan’s defeat in the Pacific War, Nichiren’s teachings were again sought:

It is little exaggeration to say that ultranationalistic Lotus millennialism died in August 1945 in the flames of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But even before these ruined cities had been rebuilt, a new Lotus millennialism had risen to take its place. Postwar Lotus millennialism envisions a time when, by awakening to the universal Buddha nature, people everywhere will live in harmony and with mutual respect. Different Nichiren- and Lotus-related religious groups offer variations on this basic theme, but on one point they all agree: in that future time, there will be no war. Nuclear weapons, in particular, will be abolished.

Japanese Lotus Millennialism, p274

The importance of Nichiren in the aspirations of Japan is emphasized in Stone’s conclusion:

What also strikes one in considering modern Lotus millennialism is how close it lies to mainstream aspirations. Perhaps a romantic advocate of direct imperial rule, such as Kita Ikki, whose ideas were appropriated in the service of a military insurrection, cannot be considered a mainstream figure; nor perhaps can the followers of Nihonzan Myōhōji, who advocate passive resistance and reject violence even in self-defense. But their millennial visions were at the moment of their emergence not so very remote from the hopes of large segments of the population, being intimately connected to widespread desires, respectively, for a strong Japanese empire in the 1930s and for abolition of the atomic threat in the immediate postwar period. This is all the more true in the case of the large Nichiren Buddhist lay movements, such as the Kokuchūkai, Risshō Kōsei-kai, and Sōka Gakkai. Tanaka gave voice to the patriotic sentiments of many and elevated them to a holy status in his rhetoric of Nichirenshugi; the support his movement won from government bureaucrats and military leaders shows that his vision was useful to official agendas. In the postwar period, Risshō Kōsei-kai and Sōka Gakkai articulate a widespread revulsion against war and fears about the continuing nuclear threat, offering a path by which the common citizen can contribute to their eradication. Such examples suggest that millennial thinking is by no means limited to the marginal or disenfranchised, but can serve to legitimize the actions of armies and politicians, and also give expression— albeit in intensified form—to aspirations shared by a majority.

Japanese Lotus Millennialism, p280

Beginning today and continuing through Aug. 18, I will publish quotes that explain how Nichiren’s teachings have been adapted to promote both war and peace.