Buddhism before the Lotus Sutra was divided into three vehicles – the Śrāvaka vehicle, the Pratyekabuddha vehicle and the Bodhisattva vehicle. These are introduced in Chapter One of the Lotus Sutra when Mañjuśrī explains the teaching of a long-ago Buddha called Sun-Moon-Light.

To those who were seeking Śrāvakahood, he expounded the teaching of the four truths, a teaching suitable for them, saved them from birth, old age, disease, and death, and caused them to attain Nirvāṇa. To those who were seeking Pratyekabuddhahood, he expounded the teaching of the twelve causes, a teaching suitable for them. To Bodhisattvas, he expounded the teaching of the six paramitas, a teaching suitable for them, and caused them to attain Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi, that is, to obtain the knowledge of the equality and differences of all things

Walpola Sri Rahula’s What the Buddha Taught offers an excellent discussion of the Four Noble Truths. Dale S. Wright’s The Six Perfections: Buddhism & the Cultivation of Character outlines the Bodhisattva practice. However, the teaching of the twelve causes is more problematic.

Those Twelve Causes are detailed in Chapter 7 of the Lotus Sutra:

[Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Tathāgata expounded] the teaching of the twelve causes, saying, ‘Ignorance causes predisposition. Predisposition causes consciousness. Consciousness causes name-and-form. Name­-and-form causes the six sense organs. The six sense organs cause impression. Impression causes feeling. Feeling causes craving. Craving causes grasping. Grasping causes existence. Existence causes birth. Birth causes aging-and-death, grief, sorrow, suffering and lamentation. When ignorance is eliminated, predisposition is eliminated. When predisposition is eliminated, consciousness is eliminated. When consciousness is eliminated, name-and-form is eliminated. When name-and-form is eliminated, the six sense organs are eliminated. When the six sense organs are eliminated, impression is eliminated. When impression is eliminated, feeling is eliminated. When feeling is eliminated, craving is eliminated. When craving is eliminated, grasping is eliminated. When grasping is eliminated, existence is eliminated. When existence is eliminated, birth is eliminated. When birth is eliminated, aging-and-death, grief, sorrow, suffering and lamentation are eliminated.’

In the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings this is called the “Twelve-linked Chain of Dependent Origination.”

In the past I’ve relied on Ryuei McCormick’s Understanding the 12-Linked Chain of Causation. Having now read The Essentials of Buddhist Philosophy, I feel Junjiro Takakusu offers a very accessible explanation of this teaching. This is long, but well worth the read.

The Wheel of Life is a circle with no beginning, but it is customary to begin its exposition at Blindness (unconscious state). Blindness is only a continuation of death. At death the body is abandoned, but Blindness remains as the crystallization of the effects of the actions performed during life. This Blindness is often termed Ignorance; but this Ignorance should not be thought of as the antonym of knowing; it must include in its meaning both knowing and not knowing—Blindness or blind mind, unconsciousness.

Blindness leads to blind activity. The ‘energy’ or the effect of this blind activity is the next Stage, Motive, or Will to Live. This Will to Live is not the kind of will which is used in the term ‘free will’; it is rather a blind motive toward life or the blind desire to live.

Blindness and Will to Live are called the Two Causes of the Past. They are causes when regarded subjectively from the present; but objectively regarded, the life in the past is a whole life just as much as is the life of the present.

In the life of the present the First Stage is Subconscious Mind. This is the first stage of an individual existence which corresponds, in actual life, to the first moment of the conception of a child. There is no consciousness yet; there is only the Subconscious Mind or the Blind Will toward life. When this Subconscious Mind advances one step and takes a form, it is the Second Stage of the present, Name-Form. The Name is the mind, because mind is something we know by name but cannot grasp. Name-Form is the stage of prenatal growth when the mind and body first come into combination.

In the Third Stage a more complex form is assumed and the six sense organs are recognized. They are the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body (organ of touch) and mind.

The Fourth Stage corresponds to the first one or two years after the birth of the child. The six sense organs reach the state of activity, but the sense of touch predominates. The living being begins to come into contact with the outside world.

Now that the living being is able to manifest its consciousness, it begins to take in the phenomena of the outside world consciously. This is the Fifth Stage called Perception, representing the growth scale of a child three to five years old. Here the individuality of the living being is definitely recognized; in other words, the status of the present life has been formed.

The above five Stages are called the Five Effects of the Past appearing in the Present. In these Stages the individual is formed, but the individual is not entirely responsible for its own formation because the causes of the past have effectuated the development of these Stages. From here on, the individual begins to create causes on his own responsibility, or in other words, enters the proper sphere of self-creation.

The first of the Three Causes in the Present is Desire. Through Perception the individual experiences sorrow, pleasure, suffering, enjoyment, or neutral feeling. When the experience is sorrow, suffering, or neutral feeling nothing much will happen. But when it is pleasure or enjoyment, the individual will endeavor to make it his own. This effort is Desire; it produces attachment. The first step of this attachment is the next Stage, Cleaving, the effort to retain the object of Desire. The last state of this attachment is Formation of Being. The term Existence is often used for this Stage, but as it is a link between the present and future, and the preliminary step for Birth, I believe that ‘Formation of Being’ is a more fitting term.

Desire, Cleaving and Formation of Being represent the three stages of the activities of an adult, and together constitute the Three Causes in the Present. While an individual is enjoying the effects of the past, he is forming the causes for the future. While the plum fruit is ripening on the tree, the core in the fruit is being formed. By the time the fruit is ripe and falls to the ground, the core too is ready to bring forth a new tree of its own to bear more fruits in the future.

As to the Future there are two Stages—Birth and Old age-Death, or in short, Birth and Death. When viewed from the Three Causes in the Present, Birth and Death may be termed the effects. But when viewed in the light of the continuous Wheel of Life, we may regard the future as the time when the Causes in the Present open out and close. Also, the Effects of the Future contain in themselves causes for the life still further in the future.

The present is one whole life, and so is the future. Past, Present and Future are each a whole life. In this Wheel of Life, the present is explained particularly minutely with eight stages, but in truth Blindness and Will to Live of the past and Birth and Death of the future have the same constituent stages as those of the present.

Because we human beings are accustomed to make the present the starting point of consideration, naturally the future is regarded as effects of the present. Therefore the life in the future is given descriptively as Birth and Death. And because the past is regarded as the cause of the present, it is given as causal principles, Blindness and Will to Live.

It is quite possible to reconstruct the Wheel of Life in the following manner in which Birth and Death are to be regarded as merely an abbreviated description of a whole life and Blindness and Will to Live are to be regarded as an ideological description of a round of life. Past, Present and Future are relative terms.

It is clear that the Causation Theory of Buddhism is not like the theory of causality of classical physical science which is a fixed theory. In Buddhism every Stage is a cause when viewed from its effect; when viewed from the antecedent cause, it is an effect. It may be also said that there is a cause in the effect, and an effect in the cause. There is nothing fixed in this theory.

The Blindness, which remains after the death of a living thing, is the crystallization of the actions (karma) which the living being performed during its life, or in other words, the ‘energy’ or influence of the actions that remain. One’s action (karma) is the dynamic manifestation of mental and physical energy. This latent energy may be called action-influence or potential energy. Action-influence remains after the action ceases, and this is what makes the Wheel of Life move. As long as there is energy, it has to work, and the Cycles of Causations and Becomings will inevitably—subconsciously or blindly—go on forever.

In other words, a living being determines its own nature and existence by its own actions. Therefore we may say the living being is self-created. The act of self-creation has continued in the past for thousands and millions of lives, and the living being has gone around the circle of Twelve Divisioned Cycle of Causations and Becomings over and over again.

For the next month and a half I will be publishing daily excerpts from The Essentials of Buddhist Philosophy.

In discussing Nichiren’s teaching in The Essestials of Buddhist Philosophy, Junjiro Takakusu has a distinct view:

Nichiren’s attacks against these schools became more violent than ever when he was mobbed, attacked and banished to Izu in 1261. Even after his return to Kamakura and to his native place to see his ailing mother, he did not refrain from his violent protest against the government as well as the religion, and went so far as to say that Tokiyori, the Hōjō Regent who believed in Zen and wore a Buddhist robe, was already in hell and that the succeeding Regent Tokumune was on the way to hell. Upon the arrival of the Mongolian envoys demanding tribute, he again remonstrated the Regime to suppress the heresies and adopt the Lotus doctrine as the only way out of national calamities. In 1271 he was arrested, tried and sentenced to death. In a miraculous way he escaped the execution and was banished to the remote island of Sado at the end of the same year.

I find it fascinating that Takakusu would describe Nichiren’s attacks on the other schools as violent. Violence was what Nichiren experienced at Seichoji Temple on April 28, 1253, when he declared the supremacy of the Lotus Sutra. His non-violent efforts to persuade the rulers of Japan to adopt the Lotus as the teaching of the nation and to shun other sects was answered with exile to Izu.

Takakusu declares that Nichiren was “tried and sentenced to death.” This is not supported by Nichiren’s writings. I’ve also never read another source who suggested that Nichiren was given a trial where he could dispute the charges or that this trial resulted in a death sentence.

I admit to quibbling now, but as a retired editor I can’t abide Takakusu’s suggestion that somehow Nichiren was responsible for the “miraculous way he escaped the execution.”

Takakusu takes this “violent” view of Nichiren and applies it to his later followers:

The school, always colored by a fighting attitude, had many disputes with other religious institutions. In 1532, for example, it had a conflict with Tendai, the mother school, called the war of Tembun. One of the Nichiren sects called Fujufuse Sect (‘no give or take’) refused to comply with the parish rule conventionally set forth by the government and was prohibited in 1614 along with Christianity by the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Again, we have violence against Nichiren followers described as their fault. Rev. Ryuei Michael McCormick offers this description of the dispute in 1532:

Despite the power struggles and doctrinal conflicts, the Kyoto temple militias gained in strength as the Ashikaga Shogunate’s power waned and Japan descended into anarchy. When the Nembutsu based peasant rebellions threatened the city of Kyoto in the summer of 1532, the militias came out in force to defend the city, and for the next four years they ruled the city of Kyoto. This brief rule of the Nichiren Buddhist townspeople is known as the Lotus Uprising (Hokke Ikki) in contrast to the Pure Land Buddhist peasant rebellions known as the Single-minded [Faith in Nembutsu] Uprisings (Ikko Ikki).

The Lotus Uprising ended disastrously in 1536 when a Nichiren Buddhist lay follower challenged and then defeated a Tendai monk in a public debate. Incensed, the warrior-monks of Mt. Hiei descended upon the city in force and burned down all 21 of the Nichiren Buddhist head temples in Kyoto as well as the whole southern half of the city and a good portion of the northern half. This event is known as the Tenmon Persecution.

History of Nichiren Buddhism

As for the Fujufuse Sect, it was not violent in its refusal to support institutions that failed to accept the Lotus Sutra as the supreme teaching of the Buddha. But the response of the regime to their defiance was certainly violent.

Perhaps Takakusu was again influenced by the times. As I explained yesterday, the lectures Takakusu gave in 1937-39 may have reflected the pre-World War II context. The Nichirenism of Chigaku Tanaka in those pre-war years certainly displayed “a fighting attitude.”

Tomorrow: Takakusu’s Wheel of Life