“Hongaku thought” is best understood not as a monolithic philosophy, but as a multivalent discourse, albeit one that included among its many forms some highly developed doctrinal formulations. It was, moreover, a discourse embodied in specific practices, lineages, and concerns about authority and legitimacy. “Original enlightenment thought” is a convenient designation for the great range of concepts, perspectives, arguments, and doctrinal formulations informed by ideas of original enlightenment, but it was by no means either unified or an exclusively philosophical enterprise. The term will be used in this study based on this understanding. (Page 52)