It is in connection with sacred geography that the political and ideological character of certain kanjin-style readings becomes most obvious. In a commentary on Chih-i’s Fa-hua wen chü (Words and phrases of the Lotus), Sonshun (1451-1514), a Tendai scholar-monk of the Kantō Eshin tradition, writes concerning Gṛdhrakūṭa (Eagle or Vulture Peak), the mountain where the Lotus Sūtra was said to have been preached:

[As for the tradition that] all Buddhas of the three time periods invariably dwell on this mountain when they expound the Lotus Sūtra: This mountain lies to the northeast of Rājagṛha [the capital of Magadha]. Because the Lotus Sūtra expounds the essential [teaching] that the worldly truth constantly abides, the Lotus is expounded in the direction of the demon gate, and prayers are offered [there] for the well-being of the Son of Heaven, so that the country may be at peace and the people happy. For this reason, [the temples on] Mt. T’ient’ai in the land of the T’ang and on Mt. Hiei in Japan were erected to the northeast of the ruler’s palace and revered as places of practice for the protection of the nation. … Those monks who dwell on Mt. Hiei even for a time should be understood as the assembly who hears the Dharma on Sacred [Eagle] Peak.

Here Sacred Eagle Peak, Mt. T’ien-t’ai, and Mt. Hiei are identified by virtue of all lying in a common direction, namely, northeast of the capital, and in a position to block the malevolent influences thought to originate from that direction. The equation of Mt. Hiei with the site of the Lotus Sūtra’s preaching is used to legitimize its authority as the major cultic center for rituals of nation protection. (Page 163)

A widespread instance of numerical correspondence, rooted in Chinese thought and developed in esoteric Buddhism, involves correlations of fives: the five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water) are equated with the five directions (east, south, center, west, and north); the five planets; the five virtues (benevolence, propriety, good faith, righteousness, and wisdom); the five colors; the major five organs of the human body; and so forth. In esoteric Buddhism, these pentads are further equated with the five great elements (earth, water, fire, wind, and space) and the five Buddhas, and in medieval Tendai, they are assimilated to the five tones used in shōmyō chanting or to the five characters myō, hō, ren, ge, and kyō that comprise the tide of the Lotus Sūtra. Such associations reflect underlying assumptions about the oneness of microcosm and macrocosm, and—when assimilated to the episteme informed by esoteric Buddhism—about all phenomena as nondual manifestations of the cosmic Buddha, Mahāvairocana or Dainichi. Such an understanding of the world, assuming an inner unity endlessly refracted in each of its elements, was by no means limited to medieval Japan. A number of scholars have written on the episteme of medieval Europe, in which the world was seen in totalistic fashion as a system of hidden correspondences, upon whose proper recognition and identification rested the practice of such arts as astrology, divination, and magic. (Page 160-161)

[T]he stūpa of the Buddha ManyJewels emerging from beneath the earth and rising into the air indicates breaking through the mind-ground of ignorance to dwell in the emptiness that is the supreme meaning; Śākyamuni’s three acts of purifying myriads of millions of world spheres means that one purifies oneself of the three categories of delusion, and so on. Through this “interpretation from the standpoint of mind-contemplation” (kuan-hsin-shih, kanjin-shaku) the meaning of a text is taken into oneself and personally appropriated. (Page 158)

In the T’ien-t’ai/Tendai tradition, kuan-hsin or kanjin (literally, the “contemplation of the mind”) generally denotes meditative practices, in contrast to doctrinal study (chiao-hsiang, kyōsō). The choice of “the mind” as the object of contemplation is grounded in a passage of the Hua-yen Ching: “The mind, the Buddha, and all living beings: these three are without distinction.” Chih-i reasoned that, for novice practitioners, the “Buddha” as an object of contemplation would be too deep, while “living beings” would be too broad. Contemplating one’s own mind, however, is easy.

However, in his commentary Pa-hua wen-chii (Words and phrases of the Lotus Sūtra), Chih-i uses the term kanjin in a somewhat different sense as the last of the “four modes of interpretation” (ssu-shih, shishaku), a four-part hermeneutical guideline for interpreting the “words and phrases” of the Lotus Sūtra. The first is to see the sūtra’s words and phrases in terms of “causes and conditions” (yin-yüan, innen)—that is, how they represent the Buddha’s response to the specific receptivity of his hearers. The second, “correlation with teachings” (yüeh-chiao, yakkyō), is to understand them in terms of each of the “four teachings of conversion “—the categories into which Chih-i analyzed the Buddhist teachings. The third, pen-chi or honjaku, is to understand them from the two viewpoints of the “trace teaching” and the “origin teaching,” the two exegetical divisions into which Chih-i analyzed the Lotus Sūtra. Fourth, having grasped the meaning of a particular word or phrase from these three doctrinal perspectives, one then internalizes it, contemplating its meaning with respect to one’s own mind. In this case, the “words and phrases” of the Lotus Sūtra are understood as referring not to abstract or external events, but to the practitioner’s own contemplation and insight. For example, in the kanjin reading of the sūtra’s opening passage, “Thus have I heard at one time” the word “I” (wo, ga) is interpreted as follows: “The dharmas produced by dependent origination prove, on contemplation, to be at once empty, conventionally existent, and the middle. ‘Empty’ means that self (wo) is without self. ‘Conventionally existent’ means that self is distinguished [from other]. ‘The middle’ means the true and subtle self. The words “at one time” are interpreted in this way: “To contemplate the mind as first empty, then conventionally existent, and then as the middle is the sequential mind-contemplation. To contemplate the mind as simultaneously empty, conventionally existent, and the middle is the perfect and subtle mind-contemplation.” In these instances, words and phrases of the Lotus are taken as revealing the threefold contemplation and discernment. (Page 157)

“Transmission to one’s own son” (jisshi sōzoku) was by no means uncommon, blood sons being indicated by the term “true disciple” (shintei or shin deshi) in lineage charts. Shinran has sometimes been cele brated as the first Japanese Buddhist monk to take a wife openly, but de facto clerical marriage is attested since the Nara period and was widespread by the late Heian: “Those who hide it are saints; those who don’t do it are Buddhas,” the retired emperor Goshirakawa is said to have remarked. For monks to marry or amass property was a violation of the Ritsuryō code, yet the right of their wives and children to inherit had been legally recognized since the ninth century, suggesting that the practice was far from uncommon. By the latter Heian period, such practices were being assimilated to the institution of the master-disciple lineage. Early examples of father-to-son transfer of temple administrative positions can be found by the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, becoming established custom by the mid-Kamakura period. Jisshi sōzoku was also practiced among lineages of scholar monks, such as those of the Eshin and Danna schools, as the above example of the Sugiu lineage indicates. (Page 139)

Another ritual form employed in kai kanjō, as in other medieval Tendai kanjō, was mirrors, used to convey the perfect interfusion of the three truths. Kai kanjō specifically required a round mirror, representing the Lotus Sūtra, and an octagonal mirror, representing the Fan-wang Ching, regarded as the primary and secondary textual bases for the bodhisattva precepts. Other significations of the mirrors were also elaborated, for example: “The round mirror is the mirror of the Wonderful Dharma (myōhō). The octagonal mirror is the mirror of the lotus blossom (renge). Their fusion is the word ‘sūtra’ (kyō). The title [of the Lotus Sūtra, Myōhō Renge Kyō] is understood as the threefold contemplation in a single mind. This is also the threefold contemplation of the secret store of the precept lineage.” (Page 136-137)

Original enlightenment thought, in short, was not limited to transmissions concerning doctrine but informed those concerning the temples, icons, deities, and practices of Mt. Hiei; the bodhisattva precepts; and Buddhist vocal music. Virtually all forms of medieval Tendai secret transmissions were grounded in the assumption of original enlightenment. It was this, in fact, that lent them their potency as secret transmissions: In each case, the ultimate “secret” is that a particular set of forms, actions, or whatever the specific content of the transmission, is in itself the expression of innate enlightenment. The clear presence of hongaku ideas in transmissions associated with kaihōgyō, rites directed toward the kami, precept observance, and the chanting of hymns also raises serious questions about the claim that original enlightenment thought represents a theory divorced from practice. (Page 130)

The “perfect interfusion of the mirror and its images,” the second of Saichō’s two references to oral transmission, represents a variation on the same teaching, this analogy having been used by Chih-i to illustrate that the three truths are perfectly integrated and inseparable. Here one must imagine not a glass mirror, but one made of bronze or some other metal, polished to form a reflecting surface. The luminous, reflecting quality of the mirror represents emptiness; the images reflected in it represent conditioned, provisional existence; and the mirror itself represents the middle. These three are always inseparable and simultaneous, three aspects of one reality. (Page 122)

The earliest [T’ien-t’ai/Tendai Origin Myth] is the biography of Chih-i by his disciple Kuan-ting (561-632), according to which Hui-ssu (515-577) welcomed Chih-i as a disciple, saying, “In the past, we heard the Lotus together on Sacred [Eagle] Peak; impelled by this karmic connection, you have now come again!” The tradition that Hui-ssu and Chih-i had together heard the Buddha’s original preaching of the Lotus Sūtra was widespread in China, even outside the T’ien-t’ai school, and appears to have represented their shared mastery of the “Lotus samādhi,” the insight into the profound meaning of the Lotus Sūtra that Chih-i would later express as the threefold truth. Prominent among Japanese antecedents for the incorporation of this account into the Eshin and Danna origin myth is the lineage that Saichō drew up for his newly established Tendai school, which identifies Hui-ssu and Chih-i in the line of transmission as “auditors on Sacred [Eagle] Peak in India.” Saichō traced the historical roots of his lineage to Hui-ssu and Chih-i; however, the Buddha with whom he began the lineage is not the historical Śākyamuni, but, in the words of the Fo-shūo kuan P’u-hsien P’u-sa hsing-fa Ching, Śākyamuni who is “Vairocana Pervading All Places.” As noted in chapter l, this early conflation of the historical Śākyamuni with the omnipresent cosmic Buddha would undergo major development in Tendai esoteric thought. Eventually it also gave rise to the tradition, recurring in medieval Tendai ritual and doctrinal transmission texts, that “the assembly on Sacred [Eagle] Peak is solemnly [present] and has not yet dispersed” (ryōzen ichie ennen misan). (Page 102-103)

Whether the new schools are seen as emerging from the “womb” of Tendai original enlightenment thought, or taking form as a reaction against it, or developing out of it by dialectical process, all these views reflect the influence of an evolutionary model of Buddhist history in which the new Kamakura Buddhism represents the apex. Occasionally there is even a hint of telos at work, as though the very raison d’être of Tendai original enlightenment thought was to give rise to the new Kamakura Buddhism. Hongaku thought thus becomes merely one more locus from which to reassert tired stereotypes of a vibrant, reformist “new Buddhism” reacting against a corrupt, elitist “old Buddhism.”

To point out that existing models of the relationship between Tendai hongaku thought and the new Kamakura schools serve to privilege the latter is in no way to disparage the achievements of men like Shinran, Dōgen, and Nichiren. Nevertheless, such assumptions prejudice our understanding and need to be reexamined if a more balanced view is to be obtained.