Home > Positioning > Subjects > Metaphilosophy > Philosophy in Japan > Buddhism in Japan

Buddhism in Japan

Until the Edo period Japan’s learning was centred on the Buddhist temples. Kūkai in the ninth century, Hōnen and Shinran at the turn of the thirteenth, and Dōgen in the thirteenth gave different answers to what study is for.

Kūkai (774–835), founder of the Shingon school, ranked the teachings as stages of the mind, with the esoteric teaching at the top. In his Distinguishing the Exoteric and Esoteric Teachings (Benkenmitsu nikyōron), study of the exoteric teachings is study of doctrines, and the esoteric is done with the body. In John Krummel’s summary, “exoteric Buddhism emphasizes the intellectual study and comprehension of the doctrines set forth in the sūtras”, while “esoteric Buddhism provides a bodily hermeneutic whereby esoteric truths … can be experienced”.

Hōnen (1133–1212) had been renowned as a Tendai monk of wide learning, and set it aside. “Although Buddhism is vast, in essence it is composed of no more than the three learnings [of precepts, meditation, and wisdom.] … But as for precepts, I myself do not keep a single one. In meditation, I have not attained even one. In wisdom, I have not attained the right wisdom” (tr. Hirota). His One-Sheet Profession of Faith (Ichimai kishōmon, 1212) tells those who entrust themselves to the nembutsu, the recitation of Amida Buddha’s name, that “however well versed in the lifetime teachings of the Buddha”, they “should consider themselves as illiterate, stupid persons” (literally, as those “who do not know a single letter”), “and without pretensions to wisdom, should single-heartedly recite the Nembutsu” (tr. Inagaki).

His disciple Shinran (1173–1263) sent questioners elsewhere for learning. In the Tannishō, a record of his words made by a disciple, he tells visitors that “there are many eminent scholars in the southern capital of Nara or on Mount Hiei to the north, you would do better to meet with them”; for himself, “I simply accept and entrust myself to what my revered teacher told me, ‘Just say the nembutsu and be saved by Amida’”. What saves is Other Power (tariki), not self-power (jiriki): “concerning the nembutsu, no working is true working. For it is beyond description, explanation, and conceptual understanding.” Late in life he wrote of jinen, being made so of itself, “not through the practicer’s calculation”, and ended by warning against talking of it too much: “we should not be forever talking about jinen. If we continuously discuss jinen, that no working is true working will again become a problem of working” (all tr. Collected Works of Shinran).

The Tannishō’s second half is the compiler’s own, written against views he held to diverge from Shinran’s, and one of them was that study is needed for birth in the Pure Land. That claim, he writes, is “hardly worth mentioning”: “It is the Path of Sages that takes learning to be essential; it is called ‘difficult practice.’” Learning keeps one use: “If one studies, more and more one realizes Amida’s fundamental intent”, so as to explain to those who doubt that the Vow excludes no one; “only then is there meaning in being a scholar”. Of disputation: “Where disputation takes place, blind passions arise. The wise keep their distance.” (same translation)

Dōgen (1200–1253), of the Sōtō line of Zen, made the study the self. “Genjōkōan” (1233), which he set at the head of his Shōbōgenzō, opens: “To study the way of the buddhas is to study oneself. To study oneself is to forget oneself. To forget oneself is to be verified by the myriad dharmas. To be verified by the myriad dharmas is to slough off one’s own body and mind and the body and mind of others” (tr. Sōtō Zen Text Project). The object is the Buddha Way (butsudō), and what decides is the direction of knowing: “Bringing the self to practice and verify the myriad dharmas represents delusion; the myriad dharmas proceeding to practice and verify the self [is awakening].” The way of it is seated meditation, “just sitting” (shikan taza), in which practice and realisation are one (shushō) and “meditation is not a means to an end” (as Shigenori Nagatomo describes the Sōtō teaching).