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)