WlHDJ:E:<I~B;;!BW.AillJ'i:J 570Ji'f) C:;iFL, fillO)B~i\t::t~.:::<b.::O)t&:"f: li;iF~~'L (20) ""Cv'i5o +*~~~lll±I!!.:I:;Xi.:::li, l+ir~M!§~J\JJ t i.J~ji, I), :llliMO){~ftPJT~~~ t (21) p-J M[§ ~tH> <P&!;Z_i5~l'J$ 7J: -:J ""CV>t..: (~ifj~%J:t~'i')o (23) (24) (25) Jacqueline STONE -tOOLIJt'&:·J~Il5t~ ($J'YilllfT~1f~~~i'i WtfJJ£LiJ/\i8\:~5!:'1'4~:rlt¥11-ffitr.l 200Mf-, 185Ji'f) o (22) Nenhutsu Leads to the Avid Hell: Nichiren's Critique of the Pure Land Teachings lftJ;i!~i!H:£t!~~~+=J r:kiE*lffilf:k~~.J 262.9.35co 262.9.50ao ilfJ;¥H1HiH:£~1iin§(( ~ ~ 1'iJ W *iE*.Iffr'lf*~~.l 262.9.19bo llfJ;i!~1~P%J1[FJJ]I&*J 51&7G::¥ (1278) 7 R14B W!Bf-DJ:E:;tB~~A Jld:Jt.l 1572Ji'f) I 1fJ;¥!illHIH:£i!~fflJ;I]1!1f.6"~ ~+:tLJ W:kiE;r;..!Tfiif:k~if£.1 0 (26) *ll&:l#*rr&:m<=P:k:I2G~:l't~f<t (*~ii r*F&~'it~Lliilt:l't~~£f£.1 (27) 2000::¥' pjf J!JZ.) B ~*-r:·ti, iG:i:FllR 1 B il' G~::¥ 2 JHO B ;J; -c B jj;*1.JD1l'fiff Cfi'L 0 1T) i.Jtf,f.J~lt~~'L, 88Fs~O)fi~1:Yi.J~1:Yt)~1-""Cv'i5o .:.::.-ct±, I*~UJ t \,' -7¥!Jl.~= J: i51.Jof!f:tffm~;O)t§fi;i.Jt7J: ~ n, -f'O):tffmi:;t~t±.7iJf~* -TB::f$ f~ HIR t 7J: -:J -c c.' i5 o ~~)(~ *!f:lf~'it= c2oo2J r;r;..lf1l%tt~~~~O):t±~tJi~5!:s9li7f~.J :tiWi!frm The earliest writings of Nichiren 85ill (1222-1282) center on two issues: the errors of Honen's Senchakushii and the unique salvific power of the Lotus Szttra. These were not independent themes; Nichiren began to preach and write in opposition to the spread of Honen's exclusive nenbutsu (senju nenbutsu lffi}*1?~) doctrine. In countering it, he staked out new intellectual territory that differentiated him from the Tendai of his day and helped shape his own, distinctive reading of the Lotus Szttra. Nichiren's writings prior to his famous Rissho ankoku ron .lLiE'£Z:~i\!1li (1260) have not garnered as much scholarly attention as his later essays and letters, but they contain some of his most detailed criticism of Honen's teaching. Here I will focus primarily on these early works to show how Nichiren's critique of Honen's Pure Land school laid the foundation for his own doctrine of exclusive devotion to the Lotus Szttra (prior scholarship includes Kawazoe 1955-56; Furuta 1958; Nakao 1974; and Asai 1976). >=j:ln§ ~ [1999] WB~{~ftPO)>*~C:i~HL.J "EJ1151,Jt~§ ~tH1'Jig [1989] E!ii±f:Jji-~IJI~O)li)f~.J ::IS~I±l/W. 114 The Spread of the Exclusive Nenbutsu In his Senchaku hongan nenbuts~ shz-z ]1H~;t!m*f!~~ (Passages on [Amida Buddha's] exclusive choice of the nenbutsu as according with his original vow; hereafter, Senchakushz-z), the Pure Land teacher Genku-bo Honen iW.~miH!!< (1133-1212) famously argued that benighted people living now in the Final Dharma age (mappo *it) can no longer achieve liberation through precept observance, meditation, and study, which depend upon the exertion of "selfpower" (jiriki E!:i:l) or one's own abilities; rather, one should set aside these traditional disciplines and instead rely wholly on the transcendent "Other-Power" (tariki 1lli:i:J) of Amida Buddha's compassionate vow that all who place faith in him and invoke his name will be born after death in his pure land, said to lie far away in the western quarter of the cosmos. Others before Honen had maintained that th~ chanted nenbutsu was particularly 115 suited to the limited capacity of sinful persons in the latter age, but he was the first to insist that all other practices be rejected in its favor. By Nichiren's time, about two generations after Honen, initial efforts by the religious and secular authorities to suppress the exclusive nenbutsu movement had largely subsided, and in eastern Japan, Honen's followers were building a patronage base among Bakufu warriors. Judging from Nichiren's observations, their advance came at no small cost to traditional Buddhist practices and institutions. Under the influence of Honen's disciples, he wrote, people were now cutting the fingers off of statues of Sakyamuni Buddha and reshaping them to form the mudra of Amida, and converting halls that enshrined Yabishi Nyorai to Amida halls. Chapels dedicated to the Japanese Tendai founder Saicho 1lil ii (766/767-822) and other Tendai patriarchs were allowed to fall into disrepair, while lands once designated for their support had been confiscated and offered to halls newly erected for nenbutsu practice. On Mt. Hiei itself, the ritual copying of the Lotus Stttra, carried out for more than four hundred years, had been replaced by the copying of the three Pure Land sutras, and the annual lectures on the teachings of the Tiantai founder Zhiyi ':Ww§i (538-597) had been supplanted. by lectures on the writings of Shandao i!lfr~ (613-681), whom Honen had claimed as a patriarch of his new Pure Land school (Rissho Daigaku Nichiren kyogaku kenkyujo [hereafter Rissho] 1988, vol. 1, pp. 12, 223, 322-23). It is worth noting that, almost from the outset, Honen's followers singled out the Lotus Stitra for attack. According to the 1205 Kofukuji petition, some among them claimed that persons who embraced the Lotus Stttra would fall into hell, or that those who recited it in hopes of achieving birth in Amida's Pure Land - an extremely common practice - were guilty of slandering the Mahayana (Kamata and Tanaka 1971, p. 34).Cl) Nichiren records that the Pure Land teachers of his time actively discouraged people from reciting or copying the Lotus Satra to benefit deceased relatives, saying that not one person in a thousand could be saved by such practices (Rissho 1988, vol. 1, p. 191), and also disparaged the sutra by saying that practicing 116 the Lotus is like a small boy trying to wear his grandfather's shoes; or that the Lotus is like last year's calendar or like a stout bow and heavy armor, which are useless to someone without physical strength; or that forming a karmic connection with the Lotus Satra will prevent one's birth in the Pure Land (ibid., pp .. 12, 117, 194). Such comments level specifically against the Lotus the criticism of rijin gemi ~i~'H~lf1*.k ("the principle is profound but [human] understanding is limited"), which Honen had borrowed from the Chinese master Daochuo ~~:!\I (562-645) to assert that traditional disciplines were beyond the capacity of deluded persons of the mappo era (Anle ji T 47:13c8; Senchakitsha, T 83:1bl2-13, 2a22). Not only was the Lotus Satra the central scripture of the influential Tendai school and also widely revered in the larger religious culture, but, at least since the mid-Heian period, its practice had been closely linked to Pure Land aspirations. We see this, for example, in liturgical programs common in Tendai monasteries, independent religious societies, and personal practice regimens - in which Lotus recitation was conducted in the morning and the nenbutsu chanted at night (Shioda 1955; Kiuchi 1978). Ojoden, setsuwa, and dedicatory prayers all testify that the Lotus Satra was often copied and recited with the aim of birth in Amida·s Pure Land. Given this longstanding close association, it is not surprising that some among Honen's followers should see pointed rejection of the Lotus in particular as a necessary step in establishing the nenbutsu as an exclusive practice. The spread of the exclusive nenbutsu had troubled Nichiren since his youth. His first extant work, the Kaitai sokushin jobutsu gi J1X 1\'ll!P ,!it PX: f?ll ~ (Essence of the precepts and the meaning of realizing buddhahood with this very body), written when he was twenty-one, draws on traditional Tendai Lotus and esoteric teachings of the interpenetration of the dharmas to attack the Senchakushzi for teaching aspiration to a'buddha land apart from one's own body and mind, a position that Nichiren saw as contravening both HTnayana and Mahayana sutras (Rissho 1988, vol. 1, p. 11). Nichiren's objections were reinforced during his studies at Mt. Hiei and other temples in the capital region (see 117 his Nenbutsusha tsuiho senjoji, ibid., vol. 3, pp. 2258-72). When he took up residence in Kamakura, around 1255, he turned his attention to a sustained critique. Nichiren had carefully examined both the Senchakusha itself and Harren's source texts. He was well aware o£ and occasionally drew upon, earlier criticisms of this work, such as the Kofukuji petition, Myoe's Saijarin; ]osha's Dan Senchaku; and Koen's }ado ketsugi sho. But in his estimation, these earlier rebuttals were inadequate, "like a little rain falling in a time of severe drought, which leaves trees and grasses more parched than ever, or a weak force dispatched against a powerful enemy, who is only emboldened thereby" (ibid., vol. 1, p. 90). In pursuing what he deemed to be the heart of the Senchakushzi's error, Nichiren countered its doctrine with the chief hermeneutical strategy that Honen himself had employed in establishing his claim for the sole efficacy of the nenbutsu in the Final Dharma age: creative use of a comparative classification of the Buddhist teachings (kyohan ~HU). True and Provisional Kyahan represent attempts to order the whole of the Buddhist teachings in the service of particular visions or models of the Buddhist path. Harren's model takes as its starting point the limitations of human capacity in the Final Dharma age. He drew on the claims of earlier, Chinese Pure Land masters for the superior accessibility of Pure Land practices in this deluded era. Daochuo had distinguished between the teachings of the Path of the Sages (shadamon ~i&:F~), which stress pursuit ofliberation through selfpower, and the Pure Land teachings (jodomoniffr±J~), which encourage reliance on the Other-Power of Amida Buddha's compassionate vow. Tanluan (476-542) had similarly distinguished between the ways of "difficult practice" (nangyo Y!lHr) and "easy practice" (igyo ~11') by which bodhisattvas in training might attain the stage of non-retrogression. And .Shandao had divided practices leading to birth in Amida's Pure Land into "sundry practices" (zagyo tf.IE.fT), or those not directly connected to Amida, and "main practices" (shagyo JE11') or those based on the Pure Land sutras, especially the chanted nenbutsu. Uniting these distinctions into a schema of progressively narrowing selection and rejection, Honen argued that Amida himself had singled out the chanted nenbutsu as the sole practice according with his original vow, and that it should now replace all teachings of the Path of the Sages, difficult practice, and sundry practice categories (Senchakushzl, T 83:1b5-6c9). No matter how doctrinally sophisticated these latter teachings might be, Honen asserted, because benighted people living now in the mappo era lacked the ability to practice them, they were in effect soteriologically useless. He argued that if Amida truly intended to save all beings, he would not have made that salvation contingent upon on acts that only a few people could perform, such as studying sutras, commissioning srupas, or keeping the precepts, but solely upon the chanting of his name. Nichiren countered using the same weapon of doctrinal classification. But where Honen had begun with the issue of human capacity, Nichiren took as his basis the distinction between true and provisional teachings, which in his understanding had been established by the Buddha himself. According to the traditional Tendai classificatory system, Sakyamuni Buddha had for forty-two years preached provisional teachings (gonkyo tf4'k) in accordance with his listeners' varying capacities, revealing only partial or expedient truths; not until the last eight years of his life did he preach the true teaching (jikkyo '!it'tt), perfectly unifying all partial truths within itself and opening the possibility of buddhahood to all beings_c2) The Lotus was the sutra of which the Buddha himself had said, "In these forty years and more [before preaching this sutra], I have not yet revealed the truth," and, "Frankly discarding expedient means, I will preach only the unsurpassed Way" (Wuliangyi jing, T 9:386b1-2; Miaofa lianhua jing, T 9:10a19). The nenbutsu, Nichiren argued, belonged to a lesser category of provisional Mahayana and did not represent the Buddha's final intent. He likened it to the scaffolding erected in building a large srupa: once the stupa (the Lotus Szura) has been completed, the scaffolding (the nenbutsu) should be dismantled (Rissho 1988, vol. 1, p. 35). It was a grave mistake, he said, to dismiss the Lotus 118 119 I \, Szttra as suited only to advanced practitioners, when the Buddha had in fact preached it for all beings. As for it being "too profound," the degree to which a teaching can benefit people depends upon its depth; now in the Final Dharma age, Nichiren insisted, only the true teaching can save ignorant and evil persons perpetually submerged in the sea of birth and death. "Scholars who say that [the Lotus] is not for ordinary worldlings should fear violating the Buddha's intent," he said (ibid., p. 67). And as far as ease of practice is concerned, he argued, nothing could be easier than embracing the Lotus Szttra, which clearly states that a single moment's faith and rejoicing in its message surpasses the merit of carrying out provisional teachings for countless kalpas (ibid., pp. 108-9). In the understanding of premodern exegetes, sutras were not simply teachings about metaphysical or soteriological principles but actually embodied the very principles they express and therefore enabled their devotees to realize those principles through practice. Put in these terms, for Nichiren, the difference between true and provisional was very simple: Only the true teaching allows all beings to become buddhas. Many Mahayana sutras teach the emptiness and interpenetration of the dharmas, the ontological basis upon which all can in principle realize buddhahood. But according to the Tendai classification schema, this basis remains theoretical or incomplete in the provisional Mahayana, which denies the possibility of buddhahood to persons of the two so-called Hinayana vehicles, sravakas and pratyekabuddhas, who seek to escape the wheel of birth and death in personal nirvaq a. For Nichiren, the realization of buddhahood by persons of the two vehicles (nijo sabutsu =~Hr:1?*) stood synechdochally for the buddhahood of all: "If others cannot attain buddhahood, then neither can oneself; he insisted. "But if others can attain buddhahood, then oneself can do so as well"" (ibid., p. 70). And, as he often noted, the Lotus Szttra explicitly extends the possibility of buddhahood not only to persons of the two vehicles but also to other categories of persons said to struggle under heavy soteriological hindrances: women (represented by the Naga princess) and evil men 120 (represented by Devadatta). Nichiren explained the Lotus Szttra·s promise of universal buddhahood in terms of the mutual possession of the ten dharma realms (jikkai gogu -tW.KJ!..): all unenlightened beings of the nine realms from hell dwellers to bodhisattvas innately possess the buddha realm, and the buddha realm encompasses the nine realms of unelightened beings. This principle, he said, was what qualified the Lotus as the "wonderful Dharma" (myoho ~J;it) (ibid., p. 10; see also 70, 73, 110, 124-25, 137-44, and 17183).C3l He employed it, not only to explain the Lotus Szttra·s teaching of universal buddhahood in concrete terms but also to undercut elements definitive of Honen's teaching, such as the notion of enlightenment as something to be anticipated in the next life, after achieving birth in Amida·s Pure Land. Because the Pure Land sutras do not teach the perfect interpenetration of the buddha realm and the nine deluded realms, Nichiren asserted, the buddha Amida depicted in these teachings is only a provisional Buddha, and the birth in the western Pure Land that they promise exists in name only. All the superior realms of buddhas and bodhisattvas mentioned in the various sutras, such as Maitreya·s Tu~ita heaven or Amida's Land of Peace and Sustenance, are merely provisional names; the "Fathoming the Lifespan" chapter of the Lotus reveals that the true pure land is to be realized here in the present, Saha world. 'The originally enlightened Buddha of the perfect teaching abides in this world, .. he wrote. "... Thus wherever the practitioner of the Lotus Szttra dwells should be considered the Pure Land" (ibid., p. 129). Nichiren also used the mutual possession of the ten realms to undercut the very distinction between self-power and Otherpower on which the exclusive nenbutsu rested. Because it makes clear that the self contains the buddha realm and the buddha realm is inherent in the self, he said, the Lotus Szttra encompasses both self-power and Other-power, even while transcending their dichotomy (ibid., p. 73). In short, Nichiren's opposition to Honen's Pure Land doctrine rested on a distinction between the true teaching, which allows all to become buddhas, and provisional teachings, which do not. 121 This distinction would remain fundamental to his later criticism, not only of the Pure Land teachings generally, but also of other Buddhist forms. Nichiren's Innovative Readings Scholars approaching Nichiren from the standpoint of institutional history have sometimes suggested that, in his early criticisms of Honen's Pure Land school, Nichiren still identified with the older, kenmitsu Buddhist establishment (e.g., Ikegami 1976; Sato 1978). From a doctrinal standpoint, however, Nichiren by no means simply reasserted a traditional Tendai stance. Rather, in opposing the exclusive nenbutsu, he developed the true-provisional distinction in innovative directions that laid the basis for his own teaching of exclusive commitment to the Lotus Szltra. Let us briefly consider three interrelated aspects of his interpretation. (1) The Lotus Sutra as the teaching for mappo First, in order to counter Honen's claim that the chanted nenbutsu was uniquely suited to the particular soteriological demands of the mappo era, Nichiren appropriated a controversy, current in medieval Tendai circles, about whether or not provisional teachings lead to buddhahood. He remarks that "ordinary scholars of the Tendai school allow that some degree of attainment is possible" through the sutras preached before the Lotus, suggesting that this represented the majority position in his day. However, Nichiren himself rejected it (Rissho 1988, vol. 1, p. 125; see also his related group of early essays, pp. 144-57). In so doing, he drew on Zhiyi's likening of the process by which the Buddha instructed his disciples to sowing, cultivating, and reaping a harvest. For Nichiren, only the Lotus Sutra plants the seed of buddhahood; the most that provisional teachings can do is cultivate the capacity of persons who have already received that seed by hearing the Lotus Szttra in prior lifetimes. That is, in the final analysis, no one has ever attained buddhahood except through the Lotus Szttra. To counter the assertions of Honen's disciples, Nichiren applied this claim specifically to the issue of 122 mappo: People in the True and Semblance Dharma ages (shobo iE ¥*, zobo f~dt) could benefit from provisional teachings such as the nenbutsu because they had already formed a connection to the Lotus Szttra in the past (hon'i uzen /.fs:B1f'ff). But people born in the Final Dharma age have not yet formed such a connection (honmi uzen **if~) and thus cannot benefit from the nenbutsu or other provisional teachings, no matter how earnestly they might practice them. Nichiren was not the first to see the Lotus as uniquely suited to the mappo era; the sutra itself says that it is intended for an evil time after the Buddha's nirvan.a, and Saicho also wrote that in mappo, the one vehicle of the Lotus Szttra would spread (Hieizan senshuin 1989, vol. 2, p. 349). But Nichiren may have been the first to connect mappo with the idea of the Lotus Sutra as the only teaching that implants the seed of buddhahood. In later years, he would identify the seed of buddhahood specifically with the sutra's title or daimoku, Myoho-renge-kyo, or ichinen sanzen in actuality (ji no ichinen sanzen $0)-;%.-:=-T) (Rissho 1988, vol. 1, pp. 715; vol. 2, pp. 1480, 1731). This concept of mappo as an era when people have not yet received the seed of buddhahood was in turn linked to Nichiren's assertive teaching method, which he developed in his early encounters with Honen's followers. Some among them evidently objected that preaching the Lotus Szttra as he did to persons already committed to nenbutsu practice merely caused them to malign the Lotus Szttra and thus fall into the evil paths. Nichiren countered that since those born in mappo for the most part have not yet formed good roots (i.e., a karmic connection to the Lotus Sutra), they are likely to reborn in the evil paths in any event. But if one forcefully preaches the Lotus Szttra to them, even if they malign it, they will nonetheless form a "reverse connection" (gyakuen J!E*~) to it that will enable to them to attain buddhahood at some future point (ibid., pp. 204-5; see also p. 68). Nichiren's writings from the 1250s do not yet employ the term shakubuku1JT 1:1t, but the logic underlying his choice of that approach to Dharma teaching is already present in his early arguments against Honen's followers. 123 (2) Countering slander of the True Dharma Second, in asserting the true-provisional distinction in his argument against the exclusive nenbutsu, Nichiren redefined the offense of maligning the True Dharma (hiho shobo lBi'~lE1t, or simply hobo ~it). This term occurs frequently in the Mahayana sutras, where it typically means to speak ill of the Great Vehicle scriptures and was probably intended to deflect criticism from the Buddhist mainstream that the Mahayana was not the Buddha's teaching (Mochizuki 1954-63, vol. 5, pp. 4327d-28d). The Lotus itself warns in unforgettable terms about the horrific retributions in the Avlci Hell awaiting those who speak ill of the sutra and refuse to take faith in it (T 9:15b28-16a9). Nichiren notes that exclusive nenbutsu teachers stoutly denied that they were maligning the Lotus Szttra by discouraging its practice. On the contrary, they insisted, their point was simply that the Lotus Szttra far surpasses the abilities of persons born in the present, deluded Final Dharma age; those who attempt to practice it will therefore only fail in their efforts and fall into the lower realms in their next rebirth. One would do far better to set aside the Lotus Sutra in this life and instead chant the nenbutsu in order to be born after death in Amida's Pure Land, where conditions are more favorable, and gain the enlightenment of the Lotus Szttra there (Rissho 1988, vol. 1, pp. 75, 133, 490). For Nichiren, this assertion was far worse than mere verbal abuse of the sutra, as it turned people away from the one teaching able to rescue them from their grave soteriological hindrances. In opposition to arguments of this kind from Honen's disciples, he expanded the definition of Dharma slander to include not only verbal disparagement, as the term suggests, but rejection of the true teaching in favor of the provisional (see ibid., pp. 37, 186-87, 256-72 passim, and 490). Herein, he said, lay the Senchakusha's fundamental error. Honen had "taken the 637 scriptures in 2,883 fascicles of the Lotus Szttra, the esoteric teachings, and all the other Mahayana sutras preached by the Buddha in his lifetime-- ·and relegated them to the Path of the Sages·, difficult practice, and sundry practice categories, urging people to discard, close, put aside, and abandon them" (ibid., p. 216). 124 Lumping the true teaching of the Lotus Szttra together with the categories of teachings to be abandoned, and instead advocating faith in the nenbutsu, a provisional expedient, amounted to maligning the True Dharma - in the Lotus Szttra's own words, the cause for rebirth in the Avici hell. Nichiren was by no means the only Buddhist teacher to condemn the Senchakushzi as a work that slanders the True Dharma, but he may have been unique in interpreting Dharma slander as the confusion of true and provisional. His critique of the Pure Land teachings traditionally summed up in the phrase "nenbutsu leads to the Av!ci hell" (nenbutsu mugen ~{L.~Fa,)-was not mere abuse hurled against a rival doctrine but was grounded in the logic of the true-provisional distinction. The spread of the exclusive nenbutsu, Nichiren argued, was turning all Japan into a country of Dharma slanderers. The calamities of his day, including epidemics, earthquakes, famine, and eventually, the Mongol threat, derived in his eyes from this error of rejecting the true in favor of the provisional. And this insight, he believed, morally obligated him to speak out in protest. In the months before submitting the Rissho ankoku ron to Bakufu authorities, his first public remonstrance against the Senchakushzi, Nichiren wrote that for several years he had been pondering those passages from the Lotus and Nirvana sutras that speak of the need to defend the Dharma even at the risk of one's life (ibid., pp. 117-18, 119). In later years, over the course of two exiles, attempts on his own life, and sanctions imposed on his disciples, Nichiren would develop an entire soteriology in which enduring persecution for the Lotus's sake confirms the truth of the sutra's prophecies, eradicates past sins, fulfils the bodhisattva mandate, repays one's moral debts, and guarantees the attainment of buddhahood. But before any of that transpired, his early opposition to the nenbutsu had already led him to conclude that, as a disciple of the Buddha, he must denounce slanders of the Dharma, whatever the personal cost. ''I ':i (3) Nichiren's Lotus Exclusivism Third, in opposing the doctrine of the Senchakushzi, Nichiren 125 began to frame the practice of the Lotus Szttra as an exclusive commitment. Unlike Honen's earlier critics, he did not reassert the mainstream position that different forms of practice are appropriate for persons of differing capacity. For most Tendai scholar-monks of his time, the distinction between true and provisional did not entail abandoning multiple practices. Rather, they maintained that, because the one vehicle of the Lotus Szttra "opens and integrates" (kaie r,¥]~) all other teachings within itself, any form of practice - whether esoteric ritual performance, sutra copying, or nenbutsu chanting - in effect becomes the practice of the Lotus Szura when carried out with this understanding. This interpretative stance had supported the widespread participation of both monastics and lay people in multiple forms of religious devotion and informed the close association, mentioned above, of the Lotus Szttra with Pure Land aspirations. But for Nichiren, the opening and integration of all teachings into the Lotus Szttra meant that they lose their separate identity, just as the many rivers, emptying into the ocean, assume the same salty flavor and lose their original names (Rissho 1988, vol. 1, p. 25). In other words, they are no longer to be carried out as independent practices. Significantly, it was during the same, early period, around the mid-1250s, when Nichiren began promoting the chanting of the daimoku of the Lotus Siztra, Namu-myoho-renge-kyo, as a particularly accessible form of Lotus devotion, one that would become the definitive marker of his tradition. Nichiren would not fully develop the theoretical basis .of daimoku practice for some years yet, but his later claim - that the daimoku contains all the primordial Sakyamuni Buddha's practices and resulting virtues and confers on its practitioners the benefits of the six paramitas without having to practice them (ibid., p. 711) grows out of his early understanding that the opening and integration of all teachings into the Lotus Szttra negates their practice as independent forms. Scholars have long seen Nichiren's daimoku as indebted to Honen's exclusive nenbutsu; both are simple invocations, accessible even to the illiterate, said to be uniquely suited to 126 human capacity in the Final Dharma age and able to save even the most ignorant and sinful (e.g., Ienaga 1990, pp. 71-81). However, the exclusive nenbutsu was by no means the only influence on Nichiren's daimoku practice. Although not widespread, the daimoku had been chanted long before Nichiren's time and had particular connections to Tendai esoteric ritual practice (Stone 1998; Dolce 2002, pp. 294-315). The model of the path underlying Nichiren's teaching also differs markedly from Honen's: Where the exclusive nenbutsu doctrine stresses religious fulfillment through birth in one's next life in Amida's Pure Land, where enlightenment can then be attained, Nichiren's thought retains a tantric matrix, in which, through faith and the chanting of the daimoku, enlightenment is realized with this very body, and the pure land is manifested in the present world. Nonetheless, in promoting the daimoku, Nichir.en does seem to have taken from Honen the idea of a single, universally accessible form of practice, not dependent on wealth, learning, or monastic status. We could say that, even while criticizing the exclusive nenbutsu, he appropriated Honen's idea of exclusive practice and assimilated it to a Lotus Sz7traspecific mode, grounding it in what he understood to be the true, rather than the provisional, teachings. Conclusion In his later writings, Nichiren spoke of his early critique of the nenbutsu as mere preparation for his polemics against the esoteric teachings, which he had come to see as his most pressing task (Rissho 1988, vol. 1, p. 838; vol. 2, pp. 1090, 1133). Nonetheless, his early rebuttals of the Pure Land school exerted a formative influence on his later thought and conduct. In countering Honen's nenbutsu doctrine, Nichiren established a conceptual framework - centered on the distinction between true and provisional- within which he would develop his own doctrine of exclusive devotion to the Lotus Sutra. That c9nceptual framework also committed him to an adversarial path of rebuking "slander of the Dharma" that would eventually pit him against the entire religious establishment and the government that patronized it, 127 provoking the repeated persecutions that marked his tumultuous career. At the same time, Nichiren's early opposition to the nenbutsu led him to reject features of the larger religious culture - not only the nenbutsu itself but engagement in multiple practices and even the soteriological goal of birth in Amida's Pure Land, the most commonly sought-after postmortem destination, regardless of one's school or lineage affiliation. His stance of Lotus exclusivism endowed his fledgling community with a unique identity that allowed it to survive him and emerge as an independent movement. With Nichiren, the idea of exclusive practice ceased to be an exception limited to Honen's lineage and became established as an alternative mode within Japanese religion. Endnotes Cll Notes: Muju ~1± (1226-1312) also mentions nenbutsu devotees who threw copies of the Lotus Szttra into the river or asserted that persons who recited it would fall into hell (Watanabe 1966, pp. 86-87). 2 <l For the complex Tiantai!Tendai doctrinal classification system known as the "five periods and eight teachings" (goji hakkyo IiJI~.FJ\#k), see Chappell 1983. Within the "five periods," Nichiren took the sutras of first four periods as "provisional" and those of the fifth period, the Lotus and Nirvar;a srrtras, as "true." In his later writings, Nichiren went beyond the traditional Tendai kyohan in developing his own interpretation of the Lotus Szttra centered on the origin teaching (honmon 2Js:F~) or latter fourteen chapters of the Lotus, and especially the daimoku as its heart, ideas codified by later followers as the "fivefold comparison" (gojzl sotai 1Ll!H§M). <3 l 111e mutual possession of the ten realms expands into the three thousand realms in a single thought-moment, or ichinen sanzen - ~ .= -=r-, which Nichiren saw as both the ontological basis for realizing buddhahood and the all-encompassing timeless reality of the primordially awakened Sakyamuni Buddha revealed in the "Fathoming the Lifespan" chapter of 128 the Lotus Szztra. Especially in his q.rly writings, however, Nichiren addressed ichinen sanzen primarily in terms of the mutual possession of the ten realms. References Asai Endo [1976] "Shuso tai Honen-bo." Osaki gakuho 128, pp. 22-43. Chappell, David W, ed. [1983] T'ien-t'ai Buddhism: An Outline of the Fourfold Teachings. Tokyo: Daiichi shobo. Dolce, Lucia [2002] "Esoteric Patterns in Nichiren's Interpretation of the Lotus Sutra." Ph.D. dissertation. Leiden University. Furuta Shokin [1958] "Nichiren kyogaku no shiso seiritsu keitai: Tai Honen kyogaku no mondai ni furete." lndogaku bukkyogaku kenkyz7 7, no. 1, pp. 29-43. Hieizan senshuin, ed. [1989] Dengyo Daishi zenshzi. 5 vols. Tokyo: Sekai seiten kanko kyokai. Ienaga Saburo [1947; rev. 1990] Chzisei bukkyo shisoshi kenkyz7. Kyoto: Hozokan. Ikegami Songi [1976] "Nichiren to kokka: In Nichiren to sono kyodan 1, ed. Kawazoe Shoji et aL Kyoto: Heirakuji shoten, pp. 62-84. Kamata Shigeo and Tanaka Hisao, eds. [1971] Kamakura kyz7 bukkyo. Nihon shiso taikei 15. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Kawazoe Shoji [1955-56] "Nichiren no shukyo keisei ni okeru nenbutsu haigeki no igi" (I) and (2). Bukkyo shigaku 4, nos. 3-4, pp. 59-71, and 5, no. 1, pp. 45-57. Kiuchi Gyoo [1978] 'A.sa daimoku yu nenbutsu." Nih on bukkyo gakkai nenpo 43, pp. 233-44. 129 II'~I il "ill ~/I Mochizuki Shinko [1954-63] Mochizuki bukkyo daijiten. 10 vols. Tokyo: Sekai seiten kanko kyokai. Nakao T akashi [1974] "Nichiren Shonin no Jodoshu hihan to sono igi." In Nichiren kyogaku no shomondai, ed. Motai Kyoko Sensei koki kinen ronbunshil kankokai. Kyoto: Heirakuji shoten, pp. 225-44. Rissho Daigaku Nichiren kyogaku kenkyujo, ed. [1952-59; rev. 1988] Showa teihon Nichiren Shonin ibun. 4 vols. Minobu-cho, Yamanashi Prefecture: Minobusan Kuonji. Sato Hiroo "Shoki Nichiren no kokkakan: Kamakura kyu [1978] bukkyo to no hikaku ni oite." Nihon shisoshi kenkyz-z 10, pp. 14-28. Shioda Gisen ·Asa daimoku to yil nenbutsu." Osaki gakuho 103, [1955] pp. 64-68. Stone, Jacqueline I. [1998] "Chanting the August Title of the Lotus Sz-ztra: Daimoku Practices in Classical and Medieval Japan." In Re-Visioning "Kamakura"Buddhism, ed. Richard K. Payne. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, pp. 116-66. Watanabe Tsunaya, ed. [1966] Shasekisha. Nihon koten bungaku taikei 85. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. 130 SESSION III The Lotus Sutra and 'Culture' t!¥*!C:Jt1t ! UNIVERSAL AND INTERNATIONAL NATURE OF THE LOTUS SUTRA Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on the Lotus Sutra Edited by The Rissho University Executive Committee for the Seventh International Conference on the Lotus Sutra Tokyo 2013 / ~~r!¥&~~ ~7@ -st. lEA?!/- 1m t5t 140 fflJ ~~a~ A~ The Seventh International Conference on the Lotus Sutra for Celebrating the 140th Anniversary of Foundation of Rissho University on Universal and International Nature of the Lotus Sutra $i$ft:r ....... "? ri!¥~0) ffJJ!!·t! · oo ~·t!J E3 ~ ~ ~ 2012~10F.l15E3(~) ·168(9<) :lz:lE:k~ :k!IFoJ;fX~ 11~~El8~~ ~6~~~ ::E 11 ~ 11 :lz: lE *IE*~ * ~ ~mill*~