Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p37-38 of Part 2In the Bendōwa (A Story of the Way) chapter of Dōgen’s major work Shōbōgenzō (The Eye and Treasury of the True Dharma), we find the following exchange:
QUESTION: Is it possible to obtain the proof of enlightenment by this practice [of zazen] even during this evil latter age?
ANSWER: The doctrinal schools emphasizing names and appearances distinguish between the True, Counterfeit, and Final Dharma ages, but in True Mahayana (Zen) we find no such distinction. It teaches that all who practice will attain the way.
Category Archives: mappō
The Last Age: Shinran’s Emphasis on ‘Other Power’
[Shinran, the founder of the Jōdo-Shin or True Pure Land sect, put absolute stress on the idea of “other-power.”]
Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p45-46 of Part 1Shinran’s emphasis tariki [other-power] even extended to the nembutsu itself. Honen had stressed repeated recitation of the nembutsu to purify oneself of evil karma and to assure one’s rebirth. He himself appears to have chanted sixty thousand, and later seventy thousand, nembutsu a day. Shinran, on the other hand, felt that excessive preoccupation with the number of recitations placed too much emphasis on one’s own endeavors. A single nembutsu uttered with faith would ensure one’s rebirth; subsequent callings-on-the-name were meaningful as expressions of gratitude. …
What evolved [from Shinran’s teaching] differed not only from Honen’s doctrine but virtually from the whole of Buddhism: a teaching in which the principles of karmic causality and merit accumulation, as well as aspiration and endeavor for enlightenment, were in effect set aside and superseded by faith in the original vow. And even the fact that one had faith, Shinran held, was not due to one’s own will to believe, but to one’s being grasped (seshu) by Amida’s compassion.
The Last Age: Dengyo’s Role
Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p39 of Part 1Hōnen’s views on the subject apparently derived in part from a peculiar work called the Mappō tōmyō ki (A Lamp for the Age of the Final Dharma), generally attributed—in error, it is now thought—to Saichō (Dengyō Daishi, 766-822), founder of the Japanese Tendai sect. The treatise suggests that as the world moves farther and farther away from the time of the historical Buddha, human capacity to observe the monastic precepts inevitably declines, until, by the time of mappō, no one will be capable of keeping the precepts at all. In that age, it says, the “monk without precepts” or the “monk in name only” who merely shaves his head and dons a robe, presenting the appearance of a monk, is the treasure of the world and a true merit-field for the people; he is a lamp for the age of the Final Dharma. By the end of the Heian period, the monastic precepts were often honored more in the breach than the observance, and the Mappō tōmyō ki was widely interpreted to justify the laxity of the Buddhist clergy as no fault of its own, but an unavoidable consequence of the degenerate age.
The Last Age: Honen’s Vocabulary
Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p34-35 of Part 1The word mappō had been popularized by Genshin (942-1017) in his Ōjōyōshū (Essentials of Rebirth), and by the late Heian period it began to exercise a morbid fascination on the public mind. The mappō doctrine provided a way to account for the horrors multiplying daily, but at the same time instilled a new fear with its implications of an age when the Dharma would be lost. …
The first of the Buddhist leaders of the Kamakura period to formulate a doctrine specifically in terms of mappō thought was Hōnen Genkū-bō (1133-1212), founder of the Japanese Jodo or Pure Land sect. As a young man, Hōnen had studied at the prestigious Tendai institution on Mount Hiei, outwardly still prosperous but inwardly divided by ugly power struggles. The corruption he saw around him and his acute reflection on his own spiritual shortcomings confirmed in him the belief that “already the age is that of mappō, and its people all are evil.”
Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p47-48 of Part 1Hōnenk’s teaching set in motion a powerful new force in the realm of Japanese religion. Moreover, being first among the Buddhist leaders of the Kamakura period to propose a religion specifically for the age of the Final Dharma, Hōnen in large measure defined the vocabulary of contemporary mappō thought. Anyone else who took up the theme would be virtually compelled to address the issues he had raised: the nature of the time and the people’s capacity, whether people could attain enlightenment through their own efforts, whether monastic precepts remained valid in the Final Dharma age, difficulty versus ease of practice, and so forth.
The Last Age: A Dark Era
Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p29 of Part 1Buddhist 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, p33 of Part 1Ta-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.
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.
Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p28 of Part 1By 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, p62 of Part 2The 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.
Knowing the Time: The Emergence of the Lotus Sūtra
Nichiren's Senji-Shō, p25-26[In the Senji—shō] he discussed the spread of the Lotus Sūtra during the two periods of the Perfect and Counterfeit Law and concluded that although the Lotus Sūtra was known and taught by such people as Chih-i, Miao-lo, and Dengyō Daishi they realized that the Age of the Last Law was the ideal time to spread the Lotus Sūtra.
Nichiren … explained to his listeners how fortunate they were to be born in the Age of the Last Law and to be able to hear the Lotus Sūtra. He taught that the Buddha was simply preparing the ground for this teaching; the prior periods were periods of fermentation, periods in which conditions had to develop which would allow for the emergence of the Lotus Sūtra. … [N]ichiren is making the main point of the Senji—sho. He is differentiating the past and future and stating that it is better to be born in the Age of the Last Law as common people, able to practice Lotus Sūtra Buddhism, than to have been born kings or great monks in any prior time.
Knowing the Time: The Decision Between Truth and Falsehood
Nichiren's Senji-Shō, p24In the Senji—shō Nichiren reviewed the history of the spread of Buddhism after the Parinirvāṇa of the Buddha, and reaffirmed once again his often repeated conviction that the Age of the Last Law was the most significant period since the death of the Buddha for the propagation of the Lotus Sūtra. Since his age (Age of the Last Law) was the fifth of the five five hundred year periods, Nichiren thought a conflict would take place between the True Buddhism and what he called heretical Buddhism. He stated in the Senji—shō that the persecutions he suffered and the national calamities which the nation experienced were indications of the crisis when the decision between the truth and falsehood, between the one who was a messenger for the Buddha (himself) and his opponents must be decided. In other words, Nichiren saw the crisis facing Japan as the period just prior to the establishment of the True Buddhism, which would flourish during the Age of the Last Law.
Nichiren looked back in the Senji-shō at the persecutions he had to suffer over the years, and examined the prediction he made in order to demonstrate that he had been given the sacred mission, as the messenger of the Buddha, to establish Japan as the center from which the true Buddhism would spread throughout the world.
Knowing the Time: The Pure Land
Nichiren's Senji-Shō, p19The Pure Land for Nichiren was not a world situated at some far place, but a spiritual realm which would be realized on this earth whenever the Lotus Sutra was preached to the people of the Age of the Last Law. Whenever humanity returned to the faith and followed the Buddha’s teaching as found in the Lotus Sūtra, then, Nichiren believed, would come the end of the Age of the Last Law.
Nichiren began his public teaching by calling for the restoration of Tendai Buddhism as the basis for national salvation in the Age of the Last Law. Three times he approached the government and twice he was rebuked and exiled. He saw his mission as staying in the world during the Age of the Last Law in order to transform the world into the true Buddha Land.
Knowing the Time: Living The Lotus Sutra
Nichiren's Senji-Shō, p17-18At Sado, Nichiren began to make distinctions between the traditional Tendai manner of reading the Lotus Sūtra and his interpretation of the scripture. The traditional Tendai teaching divided the scripture into two parts: the first fourteen chapters were called shakumon (realm of trace) and were thought to reveal the unity of the teaching (one vehicle doctrine), and the second fourteen chapters were called homon, the true teaching.
Nichiren divided the Lotus Sūtra into three sections, which overlapped the traditional Tendai two-part division of the text. According to Nichiren, in Chapters Ten to Twenty-two, the third section, the practice of the bodhisattva was stressed. Nichiren considered Chapter Sixteen, “Revelation of the (Eternal) Life of the Tathāgata” the most important chapter of the text, since the eternity of the Buddha was shown to be clarified and understood through the continual, eternal practice of the bodhisattva, and this eternal life of the Tathāgata could be perceived through the practice of the bodhisattva. In this third section the bodhisattva was seen often as a martyr who must suffer for the sake of the truth. For instance, in Chapter Thirteen, “Exhortation to Hold Firm,” and Chapter Twenty, “The Bodhisattva Never-Despise,” it is stated that bodhisattvas will suffer and die in order to propagate the Lotus Sūtra.
Nichiren argued that Chih-i and Saichō understood the Lotus Sūtra only theoretically and hence only as a provisional teaching, but that he, Nichiren, understood the scripture factually in that he was living the text through his suffering and hardships as predicted in the text itself.
Knowing the Time: The Worst of Times; The Best of Times
Nichiren's Senji-Shō, p13-14The late twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Japan were periods of almost constant natural disaster. From about 1225 until 1261 Japan was hit with a series of earthquakes, followed by floods and storms, shortages of food, and plagues. During this period not only were there natural calamities taking place, but the new government of the Kamakura Bakufu, which deprived the old regime in Kyoto of real political power, began toward the end of the twelfth century to rule the nation.
Nichiren, conscious that he was living in the Age of the Last Law, came to the conclusion that the Lotus Sutra should be the foundation for secular as well as religious life. Because he saw religion as the foundation of secular life, he felt the people of Japan had been deceived by the other schools of Buddhism as well as by a corrupt and illegal government. The other schools of Buddhism had abandoned the Buddha, and the government had destroyed the Emperor. Thus, in 1260 he wrote the Risshō Ankoku Ron and presented it to Hōjō Tokiyori, the regent in Kamakura. In this essay Nichiren described the sad state of affairs in Japan. …
Nichiren opposed the other schools because he thought they were dividing Buddhism and were destroying the teachings of the Buddha. He believed this would lead to the destruction of both Japan and of Buddhism. In the Risshō Ankoku Ron, Nichiren suggested that the way to stop the calamities and to attain the Pure Land on this earth was for the people to “refrain from making donations to fallen priests and confine their gifts to the good.” And the peace and security of the country would come about only when “the mind of man changes with time and the nature of things according to circumstances. If you wish for the security of the country and desire peace in the present and future, think deeply and stamp out erroneous doctrines.” According to Nichiren, Japan had entered the Age of the Last Law because the gods had abandoned the nation which no longer had faith in the Lotus Sūtra.
Nichiren said that the people had forgotten the Lotus Sūtra or had slandered the Lotus Sutra, so in order for the gods to return to the country and to protect it, the people must turn to the Lotus Sūtra with absolute trust and faith.
Nichiren's Senji-Shō, p16He regarded the Age of the Last Law not as the worst and darkest of the three periods but as the best of the three periods since it was the time when the Lotus Sūtra would spread among the people of the world. Nichiren believed that whenever mankind returned to the faith and followed the Buddha’s teaching according to the Lotus Sūtra, the Age of the Last Law would come to an end.