The influence of hongaku thought has been detected in virtually every medieval departure from the monastic ideal, from the sexual license of ranking clerics to the predations of warrior monks. How, one begins to wonder, did so decadent an intellectual tradition manage to survive and flourish for nearly six hundred years?

In fact, the characterization outlined above is a two-dimensional picture of the incredibly rich tradition of medieval Tendai, in effect reducing it to a cardboard backdrop against which to depict the more fully embodied personae of the new Buddhist founders. The doctrine of original enlightenment may indeed have served at times to rationalize misconduct or have been used ideologically to support the authority of ruling elites. Charges that this discourse undermined traditional scholarship, denied the necessity of practice, and contributed to moral corruption are not altogether groundless. But they need to be reexamined and seriously qualified in the light of both primary documents and the historical context. This will be the task of subsequent chapters. (Page 93)

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The major critic of Tamura [Yoshirō]’s presentation of Nichiren is Hanano Michiaki, a scholar of both Nichiren and medieval Tendai. Hanano opposes the move of Asai, Shigyō, Tamura, and others to exclude from the consideration of Nichiren’s thought those texts attributed to him that deal with hongaku ideas. In contrast to Tamura and the Nichiren Shū scholars, Hanano positions Nichiren firmly within the intellectual tradition of Tendai original enlightenment thought. Like them, however, Hanano sees Nichiren as emphasizing practice, in contrast to a purely theoretical and abstract Tendai hongaku doctrine, thus “elevating it [original enlightenment thought] to the realm of religion.” (Page 91-92)

It will now be clear why “dialectic” is an appropriate term to describe Tamura [Yoshirō]’s theory. First Tendai original enlightenment thought establishes the “thesis” of absolute nonduality: ordinary worldlings, just as they are, are the originally enlightened Buddha. Then in a counterreaction, out of soteriological concern and as a sort of “skillful means,” Hōnen asserts the “antithesis” of duality: the Buddha is “Other,” and salvation is both temporally and spatially removed from the present world. Shinran, Dōgen, and Nichiren represent “synthesis.” They are the ones shown as uniting the best in both “nondualistic” and “dualistic” systems, retaining the philosophical subtleties of Tendai hongaku thought while obviating its moral ambiguities and tendency uncritically to affirm the world by a renewed emphasis on practice and an acute existential awareness of human limitations. Tamura’s theory unites elements of both the “matrix” and “radical break” positions, arguing that the thought of Shinran, Dōgen, and Nichiren was neither simply an extended development of original enlightenment thought nor merely a reaction against it, but contained elements of both. Using as its organizing principle the question of the relationship between the absolute and the relative, the nondual and the dual, and the Buddha and the ordinary worldling, Tamura’s scheme provides a useful framework for considering both similarities and differences in the thought of these three figures and their common basis in Tendai hongaku doctrine. It represents the most comprehensive treatment thus far of the relationship of original enlightenment thought to the new Kamakura Buddhism, and subsequent studies, this one included, must inevitably be indebted to it. Nevertheless, as do earlier theories, it presents certain problems, to which we shall now turn. (Page 92)

Tamura [Yoshirō] acknowledges the presence of certain passages strongly suggestive of hongaku thought even in unimpeachable documents from the latter part of Nichiren’s career. Nichiren writes, for example, that “this world is the [Buddha’s] original land; the pure lands of the ten directions are defiled worlds that are its traces, or, “Śākyamuni of wondrous awakening (myōkaku) is our blood and flesh. Are not the merits of his causes (practice) and effects (enlightenment) our bones and marrow? ” However, Tamura says, on close examination such writings, “while maintaining nondual original enlightenment as their basis, in fact emerge from it.” Nichiren’s “Śākyamuni of wondrous awakening” is no mere abstract, all-pervasive Dharma-body but also encompasses the virtues of the reward-body Buddha who has traversed practice and attainment, as well as the concreteness of the manifested body, the historical Buddha who appeared in this world. Nor was Nichiren content merely to assert that this world is the Buddha’s pure land; he attempted actually to realize the pure land in this present world through bodhisattva conduct, by spreading faith in the Lotus Sūtra. As in the case of Dōgen, Nichiren’s emphasis on the concrete (ji) is not the affirmation of the phenomenal world seen in medieval Tendai hongaku thought but an emphasis on action that “restored the dynamic power of practice in the actual world.” Like Dōgen, Nichiren maintained the ontological nonduality of the Buddha and living beings as his basis, but “descended” to confront the relative distinctions of the world. (Page 91)

In Tamura [Yoshirō]’s view, Nichiren ultimately arrived at a position extremely similar to Dōgen’s; however, Nichiren’s relationship to original enlightenment thought must be understood as undergoing change and development over the course of his career. Nichiren’s early writings suggest that he was at first strongly drawn to hongaku ideas, especially the identification of the pure land with the present world. His earliest extant essay, written at age twenty, reads:

When one attains the enlightenment of the Lotus Sūtra, then one realizes that one’s body and mind that arise and perish are precisely unborn and undying. And the land is also thus. Its horses, cows and the others of the six kinds of domestic animals are all Buddhas, and the grasses and trees, the sun and moon, are all their holy retinue. The sūtra states, “The dharmas dwell in a Dharma position, and the worldly aspect constantly abides.”

Nichiren ‘s early writings often employ this nondual standpoint to attack the exclusive nembutsu doctrine of Honen, which he saw as antithetical to the traditional Tendai vision of a Buddhism united in the One Vehicle of the Lotus Sūtra. However, as Nichiren himself grew more exclusivistic in his claims for the sole validity of the Lotus and more critical of other teachings, he came into conflict with the authorities. Beginning around the time of his first exile (1261-1264), Tamura says, Nichiren became less concerned with monistic hongaku thought and increasingly attentive to problems in the realm of relative distinctions, such as time and human capacity. This can be seen in his growing concern with such issues as comparative classification of the Buddhist scriptures; the age of mappō, the capacity of beings living in that age; and the karma of the specific country of Japan. Nichiren’s writings from this time also show an emerging sense of his own mission as the “votary of the Lotus” (Hokekyō no gyōja), who propagates its teachings even at the risk of his life. Especially from the time of his exile to Sado Island (1271-1274), he became critical of the nondual Taimitsu tradition that had formed the basis of his earlier thought. (Page 90-91)

Tamura [Yoshirō], like Shimaji [Daitō], characterizes Tendai original enlightenment thought as “absolute affirmation of reality” and the “climax” of Buddhist philosophy, a synthesis of Tendai, Kegon, esoteric, and Zen elements that carried to the farthest possible point the denial of any separation between ordinary worldlings and the Buddha’s enlightened reality. Tamura himself terms original enlightenment thought a teaching of “absolute nonduality” (zettaifuni) or “absolute monism” (zettai ichtgen ron), a term now commonly used in Japanese scholarly writing in reference to Tendai hongaku thought. By “absolute monism,” Tamura means not a single entity or essence underlying all phenomena, but that the realm of the Buddha’s enlightenment (i.e., the realm of principle, or ri) and the conventional realm of changing phenomena (ji) are thoroughly conflated. This identification is on the one hand ontological, consistent with classic Madhyamaka teachings about the emptiness of the dharmas and the nonduality of ultimate and conventional truth, as expressed in the phrase “saṃsāra is nirvāṇa.” But in Tendai hongaku thought, the identification holds on the existential level as well: the deluded thoughts of ordinary beings as such are the Buddha’s enlightenment. In Tamura’s terms, both the “existential aspect” and “illusional aspect” of reality are “absolutely affirmed. ” Tamura writes:

Tendai original enlightenment thought … sought to go to the utmost heights, and also to the foundation, in breaking through every sort of relativistic conception. In having reached the ultimate of nondual absolutism, it may be said to encompass the highest level of philosophical principle. However, for the same reason, it gave rise to problems in the realm of ethics and practice. As we have seen, from the late Kamakura into the Nanbokuchō and Muromachi periods, in response to the secularization of society in general, the absolute monism of orig inal enlightenment thought became mere affirmation of reality. The secular realm and secular affairs, even the defilements, were regarded as true. …

While showing respect for the intellectual heights of Tendai original enlightenment thought, in order to revive the dynamism of practice and salvation in the real world, it may be said that the founders of the new Kamakura Buddhism descended from the peak of nondual absolutism to reassert in some way a dualistic relativism. (Page 85-86)

Before moving on to the third theory, we may note one further strand of scholarly argument that, while neither sectarian nor theological, has worked to reinforce the idea of the new Kamakura Buddhism as a reaction against original enlightenment thought. This is the scholarship of historians of the kenmitsu taisei, the system of exoteric doctrine and esoteric ritual that characterized the established schools of Buddhism in the medieval period and served ideologically to support the ruling parties. Kuroda Toshio, who originated this approach, wrote that “kenmitsu ideology in its most archetypical form is found in the Tendai doctrine known as hongaku shiso.” Sato Hiroo has argued that nondual hongaku ideas equating this world with the pure land were employed to legitimize established systems of rule. Taira Masayuki sees hongaku thought as contributing both to aristocratic monopolizing of high clerical offices and to a climate in which strict observance of monastic precepts was devalued:

Novices who were scions of the nobility, having received the secret transmission of arcane rites, were easily able to lord it over the most senior monks accomplished in difficult and austere practices. This was because of original enlightenment thought. The discourse of absolute affirmation found in original enlightenment thought readily translated into an immediate affirmation of personal desires, becoming an excuse for precept-breaking and the excesses of aristocratic monks. It was further employed to rationalize the attack and razing of rival temple shrine complexes and became the intellectual basis for the activities of warrior monks (akusō).

Being concerned primarily with the institutional and ideological aspects of medieval religion, kenmitsu taisei historians have not focused on the issue of what continuities and discontinuities obtain between Tendai hongaku thought and the teachings of the new Kamakura Buddhist leaders. However, in that they have treated hongaku thought as an ideology of the dominant kenmitsu Buddhism, and the itan-ha or marginal heterodoxies as resisting kenmitsu authority, their work has contributed to the picture of the two as standing in opposition. (Page 84-85)

Hakamaya [Noriaki] sees original enlightenment thought as an “experiential” philosophy stressing the ineffability of suchness. Thus, in his view it makes light of faith, intellect, and the use of language, by which the truth of dependent origination is to be discerned and investigated. Hakamaya sees the critical use of intellect and language as inseparable from normative Buddhism: Śākyamuni’s hesitation to preach was not because his realization was ineffable, but because of the difficulty of communi cating a teaching that goes “against the current” of the reality-affirming ideas that most people hold, based on the notion of topos. Without words, error cannot be criticized, nor truth demonstrated. Moreover, without language, we would not only be unable to recall and reflect crit ically upon the past but would lose all sense of time itself, becoming locked in a timeless, eternal present—a loss of the very faculty that distinguishes us as humans. (Page 81)

Several structural similarities can be identified between the “radical break” arguments of both Nichiren Shū and Sōtō Shū scholars. In both cases, the founder—whether Nichiren or Dōgen—is seen as a critic of medieval Tendai hongaku thought. Specifically, he is seen as restoring a normative emphasis on practice that medieval Tendai is said to have lost sight of in a one-sided emphasis on original enlightenment. This move is then more broadly ascribed to all the founders of the new Kamakura Buddhist movements. The sources of the founder’s inspiration are located not in the “corrupt” religious milieu of his own time and place, which he is said to have rejected, but in an “orthodox” tradition rooted in China, which he reformulates in a distinctive way. Lastly, his later medieval successors who bring hongaku discourse to bear on their interpretation of his work—and whose readings become normative for the premodern period and beyond—are seen not as developing possibilities latent in his thought, but as betraying his original critical stance. These parallels suggest that similar concerns have informed the scholarship on both sides. (Page 77)

Asai Yōrin‘s locating of Nichiren in opposition to medieval Tendai was explicitly extended to the other Kamakura founders by one of his disciples, Shigyō Kaishū (1907-1968). …

Where, according to Shigyō, medieval Tendai simply declared that the defilements are expressions of original enlightenment just as they are (jinen hongaku), in Dōgen’s thought, original enlightenment is mediated by practice and self-awakening, and in Shinran’s thought, by the relinquishing of egotistical reliance on one’s own efforts (jiriki). In addition, where medieval Tendai thought had taught contemplation of the mind of ordinary persons, the new Kamakura schools stressed faith in the enlightenment of the Buddha.

Similar statements have continued to emerge from the Nichiren Shū academic circle based at Risshō University and appear to represent a certain orthodoxy. Asai Endō, for example, writing twenty years after Shigyō, claims that medieval Tendai stressed only the Buddhahood inherent in ordinary people and “disregarded even [the stage of] hearing the Dharma and embracing it with faith,” which he terms “a confusion of theory and practice, a pernicious equality.” Its insistence on the identity of ordinary persons with an originally enlightened Buddha “became an empty theory divorced from the times,” unable to bring about positive spiritual results in an age of turmoil accompanying the rise of the warrior class. “The founders of the new Kamakura Buddhism left Mount Hiei, weary of this kind of Buddhist thought that gave priority to theory, being divorced from reality. Therefore, while Hōnen, Shinran, Dōgen, and Nichiren each have their own unique religious qualities, they are all alike in the point of having resolved to overthrow abstract theory.” (Page 71-72)