Tendai Buddhism

Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism by Jacqueline Ilyse Stone (Studies in East Asian Buddhism, No. 12:  University of Hawaii Press) Being recognized as a major study in Buddhist studies and recognized as one of the best religious studies books of 2000, Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism represents some important historical and conceptual clarifications of perennial themes in Mahayana Buddhism.

Original enlightenment thought (hongaku shiso) dominated Buddhist intellectual circles throughout Japan's medieval period. Enlightenment, this discourse claims, is neither a goal to be achieved nor a potential to be realized but the true status of all things. Every animate and inanimate object manifests the primordially enlightened Buddha just as it is. Seen in its true aspect, every activity of daily life‑eating, sleeping, even one's deluded thinking‑is the Buddha's conduct. Emerging from within the powerful Tendai school, ideas of original enlightenment were appropriated by a number of Buddhist traditions and influenced nascent theories about the kami (local deities) as well as medieval aesthetics and the literary and performing arts.

Scholars and commentators have long recognized the historical importance of original enlightenment thought but differ heatedly over how it is to be understood. Some tout it as the pinnacle of the Buddhist philosophy of absolute nondualism. Others claim to find in it the paradigmatic expression of a timeless Japanese spirituality. According to other readings, it represents a dangerous antinomianism that undermined observance of moral precepts, precipitated a decline in Buddhist scholarship, and denied the need for religious discipline. Still others denounce it as an authoritarian ideology that, by sacralizing the given order, has in effect legitimized hierarchy and discriminative social practices. Often the acceptance or rejection of original enlightenment thought is seen as the fault line along which traditional Buddhist institutions are to be differentiated from the new Buddhist movements (Zen, Pure Land, and Nichiren) that arose during Japan's medieval period.

Jacqueline Stone's groundbreaking study moves beyond the treatment of the original enlightenment doctrine as abstract philosophy to explore its historical dimension. Drawing on a wealth of medieval primary sources and modern Japanese scholarship, it places this discourse in its ritual, institutional, and social contexts, illuminating its importance to the maintenance of traditions of lineage and the secret transmission of knowledge that characterized medieval Japanese elite culture. It sheds new light on interpretive strategies employed in premodern Japanese Buddhist texts, an area that hitherto has received little attention. Through these and other lines of investigation, Stone problematizes entrenched notions of "corruption" in the medieval Buddhist establishment. Using the examples of Tendai and Nichiren Buddhism and their interactions throughout the medieval period, she calls into question both overly facile distinctions between "old" and "new" Buddhism and the long‑standing scholarly assumptions that have perpetuated them. This study marks a significant contribution to ongoing debates over definitions of Buddhism in the Kamakura era (1185­-1333) , long regarded as a formative period in Japanese religion and culture. Stone argues that "original enlightenment thought" represents a substantial rethinking of Buddhist enlightenment that cuts across the distinction between "old" and "new" institutions and was particularly characteristic of the medieval period.

Author introduction: Anyone who has read even a little about medieval Japanese religion has no doubt encountered at least one reference to the immensely influential Tendai Buddhist discourse of "original enlightenment" (hongaku), the assertion that all beings are Buddhas inherently. And anyone who has studied a bit further may well have been struck by the profound ambivalence surrounding "original enlightenment thought" (hongaku shiso) as discussed in modern scholarship. On one hand, it has been touted as the pinnacle of Buddhist philosophical achievement, the quintessential expression of Japanese spirituality, and the basis of medieval aesthetics. On the other, it has been condemned as a pernicious influence that corrupted orthodox Buddhist scholarship, undermined morality, and even legitimized political oppression. Nowhere has this ambivalence appeared more strikingly than in discussions of the relationship between Tendai hongaku thought and the Pure Land, Zen, and Nichiren Buddhist movements that emerged during the Kamakura period (1185‑1333). Original enlightenment thought, one reads, was the intellectual matrix from which these new movements emerged, but they found their true identity in rejecting it.

Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism represents an attempt to make sense of the original enlightenment discourse, its place in medieval Japanese religion, and the issues involved in its study. I have found it necessary to consider this subject in two broad contexts: that of the medieval Buddhist world, in which ideas of original enlightenment emerged and flourished, and that of twentieth‑century scholarship, whose methods and assumptions have shaped the way medieval Japanese Buddhism has been understood. In both contexts, the subject of original enlightenment thought intersects another issue that has generated much scholarly interest of late: that of rethinking the nature of the Buddhist developments of the Kamakura period, long considered the formative moment in Japanese Buddhist history. The present study is thus as much about Kamakura Buddhism as it is about original enlightenment thought. It does not offer a grand unified theory of Kamakura Buddhism; probably no single theory could do justice to a subject of such richness and complexity. It does, however, call into question several entrenched assumptions that have informed our study of this period and suggests new perspectives.

Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism is divided into three parts. Part 1, "Perspectives and Problems," outlines the background of medieval Tendai original enlightenment discourse and the major trends in scholarship on this subject. Chapter 1 traces the genealogy of Tendai hongaku thought and the extent of its influence on medieval Japanese culture, as well as the problemstextual, definitional, and methodological‑that confront the researcher in this area. Chapter 2 outlines the issues involved in scholarship on the relationship of Tendai original enlightenment thought to the new Kamakura Buddhism. Despite its influence as the most powerful religious institution of its day and the immense impact of its teachings on medieval art and culture, Tendai Buddhism has for a long time garnered interest chiefly as the "womb" of the new movements and the "mother" of their five great founders‑Eisai, Dogen, Honen, Shinran, and Nichiren‑who all began their religious career as Tendai monks. Ever since Tendai original enlightenment discourse first began to attract scholarly attention early in this century, some connection between hongaku ideas and the doctrines of the new Kamakura Buddhism has been assumed. However, the nature of that connection has been much disputed. This chapter introduces the competing scholarly theories on this subject and points out their underlying assumptions, especially the tendency to frame the issue in ways that privilege the new schools as somehow more authentically "religious" than the parent, Tendai tradition.

Part 2, "The World of Medieval Tendai," contextualizes ideas of original enlightenment by locating them within the historical, institutional, and intellectual framework of medieval Tendai Buddhism. Chapter 3 explores the "culture of secret transmission," the tradition of master-disciple lineages in which such ideas were developed and disseminated, centering on the great Tendai center at Mt. Hiei northeast of the imperial capital. It examines the origins of this culture in the formation of lineages of esoteric ritual, in the monopolizing by aristocrats of the highest clerical ranks, and in the Tendai tradition of religious debate. It also considers the politics of succession in monastic lineages and the rise of competing Tendai institutions in eastern Japan. The medieval period has often been considered a time of Tendai scholarly decline, but in fact, evidence points to considerable intellectual activity. Chapter 4 addresses the hermeneutical techniques employed in medieval Tendai oral transmission (kuden) texts and specific doctrinal formulations in which notions of original enlightenment were expressed. My concerns in these two chapters are to redress a tendency to treat the hongaku literature, as an abstract body of philosophy or "thought" by clarifying its specific contexts, and to show that medieval Tendai, long condemned in modern scholarship as elitist and decadent, was actually a vital and innovative religious tradition.

Whatever their differences, most theories to date about the relationship of Tendai original enlightenment ideas to doctrines of the new Kamakura Buddhism have found in the former a tendency toward "uncritical world affirmation," which, in declaring all beings to be innately enlightened just as they are, in effect denied the necessity of Buddhist practice and legitimated evil conduct. In contrast, the founders of the new Buddhist movements are characterized as having restored the primacy of practice and ethical considerations. Chapter 5 calls this characterization into question through an examination of specific texts. It also suggests a new perspective for understanding the relation of original enlightenment thought to the new Kamakura Buddhism, in which both hongaku ideas and the teachings of the new movements are seen as part of a larger, particularly medieval concern with reimagining liberation in a "nonlinear" fashion, that is, as directly accessible in the present moment and not dependent on moral cultivation or the long‑term accumulation of merit.

Part 3, "Nichiren and His Successors," shifts focus from medieval Tendai to one of the new Kamakura founders, Nichiren (1222‑1282), and the tradition that emerged from his early following. Much of the debate over the relationship between the new Kamakura Buddhism and Tendai hongaku thought has taken place in the context of the scholarly study of Nichiren, who has been alternatively characterized as upholding, rejecting, or reforming Tendai original enlightenment doctrine. This chapter refocuses this discussion by presenting Nichiren's thought as expressive of the same sort of Kamakura‑period reimagining of enlightenment found in hongaku thought but transformed by assimilation to a very different social context and set of ideological concerns.

Original enlightenment thought, in a broad sense, was not exclusive to Tendai Buddhism, nor is the question of its relationship to the new Kamakura Buddhism limited to the Kamakura period. Chapter 7 moves beyond the thirteenth century to examine how, in the process of institutionalization, scholar‑monks in the various lineages of Nichiren's new Buddhism, the Hokkeshu, appropriated the interpretive techniques and doctrinal formulations of Tendai hongaku thought, thoroughly assimilating them to Nichiren's teaching of exclusive faith in the Lotus Sutra and the practice of chanting its title or daimoku. In so doing, they developed a distinctively Nichiren Buddhist mode of original enlightenment discourse.

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