CHAPTER THREE

The Rise of Japanese Buddhism

_The new doctrine of the Buddha is exceeding excellent, although difficult to explain and comprehend. _(Message accompanying the first image of the Buddha to enter Japan, ca. A.D. 552)

_PRE-BUDDHIST SHINTO SHRINE

_

DURING THE SIXTH CENTURY B.C., in the rich and reflective civilization flourishing in what is today northeast India and Nepal, a child was born to the high-caste family of Gautama. He was later known by various names, including Siddhartha (the one who has reached the goal), Sakyamuni (sage of the Sakyas), or simply Buddha (the enlightened). His childhood was idyllic, and at the age of sixteen he took a wife, who bore him a son. As a youth he was completely sheltered from the sorrows of the flesh through the offices of his father, who commanded the servants never to let him leave the palace compound. Yet finally, the legends relate, he managed to escape this benign prison long enough to encounter old age, sickness, and death. Understandably distressed, he began pondering the questions of human mortality and suffering, a search which led him to a holy man, whose devoutness seemed to hold the answers.

True to his convictions, he renounced wealth, family, and position and embarked upon the life of an ascetic. A spiritual novice at the age of twenty-nine, he traveled for the next six years from sage to sage, searching for the teachings that might release him from the prison of flesh. Finally, with disciples of his own, he left all his teachers and devoted himself to meditation for another six years, at the end of which he was close to death from fasting and privation. But he was no nearer his goal, and abandoning the practices of traditional religion, he set out to beg for rice. Although his disciples immediately deserted him as unworthy to be a teacher, he was undeterred and enjoyed his first full meal since leaving his father's palace. He then had a deep sleep and learned in a dream that realization would soon be his. He proceeded to a wood and began his final meditation under the now legendary Bodhi tree--where he at last found enlightenment. Gautama had become the Buddha.

For the next forty-nine years he traveled the length of India preaching a heretical doctrine. To appreciate what he taught, one must grasp what he preached against. At the time, the predominant religious system was Brahmanism, which was based upon the Upanishads, a collection of early Vedic writings. According to this system, the universe was presided over by the Brahman, an impersonal god-form which was at once a pantheistic universal soul and an expression of the order, or _dharma_, of the cosmos. This universal god-form was also thought to reside in man, in the form of the _atman_, roughly translatable as the soul; and the individual was believed to be able to rise above his physical existence and experience the uniting of this _atman _with the larger god-form through practice of a rigorous physical and mental discipline, which became known as yoga. Not surprisingly, all formal communications with the universal

god-form had to be channeled through a special priest class, who called themselves Brahmans.

The Buddha disputed these beliefs. He taught that there was no universal god and hence no internal soul, that there is, in fact, no existence in the world. All perception to the contrary is illusory. Enlightenment therefore consists not of merging one's atman with the greater god-head, but rather in recognizing that there actually is nothing with which to merge. Consequently the aim is to transcend the more troublesome aspects of perception, such as pain, by turning one's back on the world--which is nonexistent in any case--and concentrating on inner peace. The Buddha stressed what he called the "Four Noble Truths" and the "Eightfold Path." The Four Noble Truths recognized that to live is to desire and hence to suffer, and the Eightfold Path (right views, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration) provided a prescription for the resolution of this suffering. Followers of the Eightfold Path understand that the external world is illusory and that its desires and suffering can be overcome by a noble life, guided by mental fixation on the concept of nonexistence.

The original teachings of the Buddha are more a philosophy than a religion, for they admit no supreme god, nor do they propose any salvation other than that attainable through human diligence. The aim is temporal happiness, to be realized through asceticism--which was taught as a practical means of turning one's back on the world and its incumbent pain. There were no scriptures, no sacred incantations, no soul, no cycle of rebirth, nothing beyond one's existential life.

Since the Buddha left no writings or instructions regarding the establishment of a religion in his name, his followers called a council some ten years after his death to amend this oversight. This first council produced the earliest canon of Buddhist teachings, a group of _sutras _or texts purporting to reproduce various dialogues between the Buddha and his disciples. A second council was held exactly one hundred years later, supposedly to clarify points raised in the first meeting. But instead of settling the disagreement which had arisen, the meeting polarized the two points of view and shattered monolithic Buddhism once and for all.

As Buddhism spread across India into Ceylon and Southeast Asia, a distinct sectarian split developed, which might be described as a controversy between those who strove to preserve the teachings of the Buddha as authentically as possible and those who were willing to admit (some might say compromise with) other religions. The purer form, which was established in Southeast Asia, came to be called Hinayana, or the Lesser Vehicle (purportedly because of the exclusionary strictness of its views). The other branch, comprising the beliefs that spread to China and thence to Japan, was described as Mahayana, or the Greater Vehicle.

This division also resulted in two versions of the _sutras _being canonized. That revered by the Hinayanists is known as the Pali Canon and was set down in the Pali language (a dialect of Indian Sanskrit) around 100 B.C. The _sutras_ of the eclectic Mahayanists grew over the centuries, with additions in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and, later, Chinese. In addition to the original thoughts of the Buddha, they included large sections of commentary or secondary material. The Chinese, particularly, had strong speculative minds and thought nothing of amending the teachings of a simple Indian teacher. The Indians also found the Buddha's thought a shade too austere for their tastes, but instead of embellishing it as the Chinese did, they gradually plowed it back into the theological melange of pantheistic Hinduism until it finally lost any separate identity.

Buddhism is said to have officially reached China during the first century A.D., and after some three hundred years of adjusting it to suit their established teachings of Confucianism and Taoism, the Chinese embraced it as their own. (It was the admittance of Taoist beliefs into Chinese Buddhism that laid the foundations for the school of Ch'an Buddhism, the parent of Japanese Zen.) Buddhism did not replace the two earlier Chinese religions but, rather, provided an alternative spiritual framework wherein the Chinese, structured, Confucianist bent of mind could be merged with their Taoist yearning for mystical philosophy to produce a native religion at once formal and introspective. During the third, fourth, and fifth centuries a virtual parade of Indian Mahayana Buddhist teachers traveled north around the high Himalayas and into China, there to dispense their own respective brands of the Buddha's thought. The Chinese, on their part, set about importing Indian Sanskrit _sutras_ and translating them via a process whereby Indian philosophical concepts were rendered directly by pre- existing Chinese terms--the literal pounding of round Indian pegs into square Chinese holes. Since no more effective way has yet been found to destroy the originality of foreign ideas than to translate them word for word into the nearest native approximation, Chinese Buddhism became, in many ways, merely a rearrangement of existing Chinese philosopThes.

The date Chinese Buddhism was introduced to Japan has traditionally been set at A.D. 552. In that year, the records state, a Korean monarch, fearful of belligerent neighbors, appealed to the Japanese for military assistance, accompanying his plea with a statue of the Buddha and a missal of _sutras_. Since the Japanese had for many centuries reserved their primary allegiance for their sun-goddess, whose direct descendant the emperor was thought to be, they were wary of new faiths that might jeopardize the authority of the native deities. After much high-level deliberation it was decided to give the Buddha a trial period to test his magical powers, but unfortunately no sooner had the new image been set up than a pestilence, apparently smallpox, swept the land. The new Buddha was swiftly consigned to a drainage canal by imperial decree.

Twenty years later a new emperor came to the throne, and he was persuaded to give the Buddha another try by a political faction which thought a new religion might undermine the theological position of the established nobility. By odd coincidence, no sooner had a new Buddha been imported than another plague broke out. The new Buddha statue and all accompanying trappings were disposed of, but the plague only worsened, allowing the pro-Buddhist faction to turn the tragedy to their advantage by blaming those who had desecrated the statue. After more political maneuvering, this faction took the somewhat unprecedented step of assassinating the hesitant emperor in order to ensure a place for Buddhism in Japanese life. Finally the faith did catch hold, and, by the beginning of the seventh century, temples and pagodas were being built.

As interest grew in both the doctrines of the Buddha and the political innovations of the new T'ang dynasty, which had come to power in China in 618, the Japanese aristocracy began to copy Chinese civilization, gradually abandoning much of their indigenous culture. Although new Japanese monks were soon writing and reciting Chinese _sutras_, Buddhist ideas, now twice removed from their Indian origins, were grasped imperfectly if at all by most Japanese. Indeed, few of the early aristocracy who professed Buddhism viewed it as anything other than a powerful new form of magic--a supplement to the native gods, or _kami_, who presided over harvests and health. Given the difficulty Japanese scholars had in understanding Chinese texts, it is easy to sympathize with later Zen monks who claimed the _sutras_ were mainly a barrier to enlightenment.

Three fundamental types of Buddhism preceded Zen in Japan: the early scholarly sects which came to dominate Nara; the later aristocratic schools whose heyday was the noble Heian era; and, finally, popular, participatory Buddhism, which reached down to the farmers and peasants. The high point of Nara Buddhism was the erection of a giant Buddha some four stories high whose gilding bankrupted the tiny island nation but whose psychological impact was such that Japan became the world center of Mahayana Buddhism. The influence of the Nara Buddhist establishment grew to such proportions that the secular branch of government, including the emperor himself, became nervous. The solution to the problem was elegantly simple: the emperor simply abandoned the capital, leaving the wealthy and powerful temples to preside over a ghost town. A new capital was established at Heian (present-day Kyoto), far enough away to dissipate priestly meddling.

The second type of Buddhism, which came to prominence in Heian, was introduced as deliberate policy by the emperor. Envoys were sent to China to bring back new and different sects, enabling the emperor to fight the Nara schools with their own Buddhist fire. And this time the wary aristocracy saw to it that the Buddhist temples and monasteries were established well outside the capital--a location that suited both the new Buddhists' preference for remoteness and the aristocracy's new cult of aesthetics rather than religion.

The first of the Heian sects, known as Tendai after the Chinese T'ien- t'ai school, was introduced into Japan in 806 by the Japanese priest Saicho (767-822). The Tendai stressed the authority of the Lotus Sutra, which recognized the Buddha as both an historical person and the realization in human form of the universal spirit--an identity implying the oneness of the latent Buddha nature in all matter, animate and inanimate. Although the school was avowedly eclectic, embracing all the main Mahayana doctrines, it was bitterly opposed by the Nara schools, which campaigned unsuccessfully to convert Tendai novices. Saicho countered their opposition by pointing out that his Buddhism was based on an actual sutra, purportedly the Buddha's own words, whereas the schools of Nara had contented themselves primarily with wrangling over commentaries or secondary interpretations of the Buddha's teachings. Saicho also introduced the question of individual morality, a concern conspicuously absent in Nara Buddhism.

The Tendai sect became dominant during the ninth and tenth centuries, when its center on Mt. Thei (on the outskirts of Kyoto) swelled to over three thousand buildings. Although Saicho himself appears to have been benign in nature, practicing the principles of morality he taught, in later years the Mt. Thei Tendai complex became the base for an army of irascible monks who frequently descended upon Kyoto to harass courtiers and citizens alike. In the late sixteenth century, the entire complex was burned to the ground and thousands of monks slaughtered by a fierce shogun who was determined to stop the intervention of Tendai monks in public affairs. Tendai survives today as a religion primarily of the upper classes, with a membership of something over a million, but even by the end of the Heian era it had become mainly ceremonial.

The other Buddhist sect to gain prominence during the Heian era was Shingon, founded by a younger contemporary of Saicho named Kukai (774- 835). He also went to China, where he studied teachings of the Che-yen school, a type of Buddhism known as "esoteric" because of its kinship to the mystical Tantrism of Tibet. The elaborate rituals of the Japanese Shingon temples were an immediate success with the ceremonially minded Heian aristocracy. Shingon was superb theater, with chants, incantations, sacred hand signs (_mudra_), and meditation on the sacred _mandala_--geometrical diagrams purportedly containing the key to the cosmological meaning of reality. The headquarters for the Shingon school was established on Mt. Koya, near Kyoto but sufficiently removed that the monks were not tempted to dabble in state affairs. Nevertheless, in later years it too became a stronghold for mercenary warrior-monks, with the result that it also was chastened by an outraged shogun. Today there are Shingon monasteries in remote mountain areas, standing regal and awesome in their forested isolation, and the sect still claims over nine million practitioners, scattered among a host of offshoots.

The popular, participatory Buddhism which followed the aristocratic sects was home-grown and owed little to Chinese prototypes. Much of it centered around one particular figure in the Buddhist pantheon, the benign, sexless Amida, a Buddhist saint who presided over a Western Paradise or Pure Land of milk and honey accessible to all who called on his name. Amida has been part of the confusing assemblage of deities worshiped in Japan for several centuries, but the simplicity of his requirements for salvation made him increasingly popular with the Heian aristocrats, who had begun to tire of the elaborate rigmarole surrounding magical-mystery Buddhism. And as times became more and more unstable during the latter part of the Heian era, people searched for a messianic figure to whom they could turn for comfort. So it was that a once minor figure in the Buddhist Therarchy became the focus of a new, widespread, and entirely Japanese cult.

The figure of Amida, a gatekeeper of the Western Paradise, seems to have entered Buddhism around the beginning of the Christian Era, and his teachings have a suspiciously familiar ring: Come unto me all ye who are burdened and I will give you rest; call on my name and one day you will be with me in Paradise. In India at this time there were contacts with the Near East, and Amida is ordinarily represented as one of a trinity, flanked by two minor deities. However, he is first described in two Indian _sutras _which betray no hint of foreign influence. During the sixth and seventh centuries, Amida became a theme of Mahayana literature in China, whence he entered Japan as part of the Tendai school. In the beginning, he was merely a subject for meditation and his free assist into Paradise did not replace the personal initiative required by the Eightfold Path. Around the beginning of the eleventh century, however, a Japanese priest circulated a treatise declaring that salvation and rebirth in the Western Paradise could be realized merely by pronouncing a magic formula in praise of Amida, known as the _nembutsu: Namu Amida Butsu_, or Praise to Amida Buddha.

This exceptional new doctrine attracted little notice until the late twelfth century, when a disaffected Tendai priest known as Honen (1133- 1212) set out to teach the _nembutsu_ across the length of Japan. It became an immediate popular success, and Honen, possibly unexpectedly, found himself the Martin Luther of Japan, leading a reformation against imported Chinese Buddhism. He preached no admonitions to upright behavior, declaring instead that recitation of the _nembutsu _was in itself sufficient evidence of a penitent spirit and right-minded intentions. It might be said that he changed Buddhism from what was originally a faith all ethics and no god to a faith all god and no ethics.

What Honen championed was actually a highly simplified version of the Chinese Jodo school, but he avoided complicated theological exercises, leaving the doctrinal justifications for his

teachings vague. This was intended to avoid clashes with the priests of the older sects while simultaneously making his version of Jodo as accessible as possible to the uneducated laity. The prospect of Paradise beyond the River in return for minimal investment in thought and deed gave Jodo wide appeal, and this improbable vehicle finally brought Buddhism to the Japanese masses, simple folk who had never been able to understand or participate in the scholarly and aristocratic sects that had gone before.

Not surprisingly, the popularity of Honen's teachings aroused enmity among the older schools, which finally managed to have him exiled for a brief period in his last years. Jodo continued to grow, however, even in his absence, and when he returned to Kyoto in 1211 he was received as a triumphal hero. Gardens began to be constructed in imitation of the Western Paradise, while the _nembutsu_ resounded throughout the land in mockery of the older schools. The followers of Jodo continued to be persecuted by the Buddhist establishment well into the seventeenth century, but today Jodo still claims the allegiance of over five million believers.

An offshoot of the Jodo sect, destined to become even more popular, was started by a pupil and colleague of Honen called Shinran (1173-1262), who also left the Tendai monastery on Mt. Thei to become a follower of Amida. His interpretation of the Amida _sutras _was even simpler than Honen's: based on his stuThes he concluded that only one truly sincere invocation of the _nembutsu_ was enough to reserve the pleasures of the Western Paradise for the lowliest sinner. All subsequent chantings of the formula were merely an indication of appreciation and were not essential to assure salvation. Shinran also carried the reformation movement to greater lengths, abolishing the requirements for monks (which had been maintained by the conciliatory Honen) and discouraging celibacy among priests by his own example of fathering six children by a nun. This last act, justified by Shinran as a gesture to eliminate the division between the clergy and the people, aroused much unfavorable notice among the more conservative Buddhist factions. Shinran was also firm in his assertion that Amida was the only Buddha that need be worshiped, a point downplayed by Honen in the interest of ecumenical accord.

The convenience of only one _nembutsu _as a prerequisite for Paradise, combined with the more liberal attitude toward priestly requirements, caused Shinran's teachings to prosper, leading eventually to an independent sect known as Jodo Shin, or True Pure Land. Today the Jodo Shin, with close to fifteen million followers, enjoys numerical dominance over other forms of Japanese Buddhism.

The Amadist salvation movement was confronted by its only truly effective detractor in the person of the extremist Rencho (1222-1282), who later took for himself the name of Nichiren, or Sun Lotus. An early novice in the Tendai monastery, he took a different tack from the Amida teachers, deciding that all essential Buddhist truth was contained in the Lotus Sutra itself. Although the Tendai school had originally been founded on the study of the Lotus Sutra, he believed the school had strayed from the _sutra's _precepts. Denouncing all sects impartially, he took a fundamentalist, back-to-the-Lotus text for his sermons. Sensing that most of his followers might have trouble actually reading a _sutra_, he produced a chanting formula of his own which he claimed would do just as well. This Lotus "_nembutsu_" was the phrase _namu myoho renge-kyo_, or Praise to the Lotus Sutra. The chanting Amidists had met their match.

The Tendai monks on Mt. Thei did not receive this vulgarization of their teachings kindly, and their urgings, together with his intemperate pronouncements regarding imminent dangers of a Mongol invasion, led in 1261 to Nichiren's banishment to a distant province. Three years later the truth of his warnings became all too apparent and he was recalled by the government. But on his return he overplayed his hand, offering to save the nation only if all other Buddhist sects were eliminated. This was too much for the Japanese ruling circles; they turned instead to a new band of warriors trained in Zen military tactics who promptly repelled the invasion without Nichiren's aid.

Persecution of his sect continued, reaching a high point in the mid- sixteenth century, when a band of rival Tendai monks burned twenty-one Nichiren temples in Kyoto, slaughtering all the priests, including a reputed three thousand in the last temple.

The sect has survived, however, and today Nichiren Shoshu and its lay affiliate, the Soka Gakkai, or Value Creation Society, claim the membership of one Japanese in seven and control of the country's third largest political party. The Soka Gakkai recently dedicated a vast new temple at the foot of Mt. Fuji, said to be the largest religious structure in existence. With services that often resemble political conventions, the Nichiren sect has achieved might once have been thought impossible: it has simplified even further the ingenuous philosophy of its founder, embellishing the praise of the Lotus Sutra with marching bands and gymnastic displays in sports-stadium convocations.

The Japanese reformation represented by Amidism and Nichiren was a natural outcome of the contempt for the average man that characterized the early sects. It also opened the door for Zen, which found an appeal among the non-aristocratic warrior class to equal that of the popular Buddhist sects among the peasantry and bourgeoisie. As it happened, the warriors who became fired with Zen also took control of the government away from the aristocracy after the twelfth century, with the result that Zen became the unofficial state religion of Japan during its great period of artistic activity.