Dharma World Buddhist magazine

Engaged Lotus Buddhism in Medieval Japan

by Lucia Dolce

The influence of Nichiren's reading of the Lotus Sutra reached far beyond his lifetime, and in later ages his Buddhism would be taken as a model for active participation in religious, social, and political life.

At the turn of the twentieth century, several books in English presented Japanese Buddhism as a religion that lacked social involvement and expressed its attitude to the world in escapist tones: "Buddhism, brought face to face with the problem of the world's evil and possible improvements, evades it." "Buddhism did indeed teach kindness to animals, making even the dog sacred. . . . Yet human beings suffer. Buddhism is kind to the brute and cruel to man"1) The image of meditating monks closed in their monasteries sustained this perception of Buddhism. Yet modern observers also dedicated several pages to the activities of a medieval monk, Nichiren, whose Buddhism they described as an embodiment of the realism of the Lotus Sutra. Nichiren's emphasis on Shakyamuni appeared to their eyes as a rejection of mythical buddhas and imaginary paradises and an attempt to positively root Buddhism in the soteriological activity of the historical Buddha, "insisting that it is necessary for man to work out his own salvation."2) According to these Western interpreters, Nichiren's contribution to Lotus Buddhism was not so much at the philosophical level, but on the religious side, "attempting as he did to make the truths of the Lotus gospel live in the hearts of his followers as matters of individual experience, through active practice and earnest loyalty to Sakyamuni."3)

Who was Nichiren and to what extent did his Buddhism represent a form of social concern based on the Lotus Sutra, albeit in the particular shape that this could take in medieval Japan? Nichiren (1222-82) is perhaps better known for his exclusive faith in the Lotus Sutra, but the large textual corpus he left also reveals that his interpretation of the Lotus Sutra was firmly rooted in the awareness of the hic et nunc of the world in which he lived and that he was deeply concerned with embodying the meaning of the scripture in society. The influence of his reading of the Lotus reached far beyond his lifetime, and Nichiren's Buddhism would in later ages be taken as a model for an active participation in the religious, social, and political life of Japan. It may be of interest, therefore, to explore how Nichiren constructed what we might call today an "engaged" Lotus Buddhism.

Nichiren was born in Awa Province (Chiba Prefecture), at that time a remote area of eastern Japan, in a crucial moment in Japanese history, when the military government had consolidated its power in Kamakura at the expense of the imperial court. Nichiren was in close contact with the military class from a young age, and among his followers many would be lower- and medium-rank samurai. In 1253 Nichiren proclaimed his belief in the excellence of the Lotus Sutra by invoking the title of this scripture, Namu myoho renge kyo (I take refuge in the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law)--a practice that would become distinctive of his school and of all other movements inspired by him. Nichiren's tribulations began early in his career: he was forced to leave his home temple because of a conflict with a local landlord; he started preaching in Kamakura, but soon encountered opposition and began a life of exile. In 1261, after sending a treatise to the government in Kamakura, where he discussed the current situation of Japan, he was arrested and sent to Izu, where he remained for two years. In 1271 he was nearly executed, and eventually he was once again sent into exile, on the island of Sado in the Sea of Japan, where he spent years of great hardship. Released in 1274, he returned to Kamakura, to leave again, this time of his own will, for Minobu, a mountainous area near Mount Fuji, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

This personal experience and the difficult times in which he lived may have made Nichiren acutely aware of the conflicting reality in which Buddhism had to operate. Yet he did not develop a pessimistic or a passive view of the world; on the contrary, he sought to transform this world so that it could become a mirror-image of the realm of the Lotus Sutra.

Nichiren's thought was born out of an original evaluation of the Lotus scripture in relation to particular ages and individuals. One of his early works, Kyo-ki-ji-koku sho [The Teaching, Capacity, Time, and Country], written during the Izu exile, presents five criteria for understanding the value of a Buddhist scripture. These include not only the doctrinal content of the text, but also the time in which this is propagated, the country that upholds it, the karmic capacities of the people to whom it is addressed, and the teacher who propagates it. The essence of these principles is that, while the Lotus Sutra is a supreme teaching because it offers ultimate buddhahood to everyone, its significance is fulfilled only if the doctrine of salvation expressed in the Lotus Sutra is realized concretely. To achieve this, it is necessary to take into account the spatio-temporal coordinates of the place where buddhahood is to be actualized. Nichiren mapped a tangible entity, the Japan of the thirteenth century, as the object of his concern.

Awareness of Time and the Capacity of Man

Nichiren presented Japan as being in the final ages of the Dharma (mappo), when destruction and decline are inevitable. In this he followed a Buddhist theory of time that conceived the historical distance between the origin of Buddhism in India and its contemporary reality in an Eastern country as a time of progressive detachment from an immediate realization of buddhahood. In Nichiren's understanding, however, this "end of time" was not just an unavoidable, apocalyptic moment in history; it was an indispensable condition for a new age to start.

Nichiren expressed this idea by using different concepts. First of all, he reevaluated the negativity that was inherent in the idea of mappo by claiming that the most complete teaching of the Buddha, the Lotus Sutra, was meant for the most degenerate period, and for the ordinary people who live in the midst of the ugliness and confusion of the period of humanity's decline. He proposed a new way of reading the Lotus Sutra, not according to the natural order of the chapters, but in the reverse order, starting from the conclusion, that is, the section that outlines the merits that will be produced by the practice of the Lotus Sutra. In one of his writings, pondering what kind of people the Lotus Sutra had been expounded for, he explained that, if one reads the sutra from top to bottom, those who benefit from the preaching of the Lotus are first, the bodhisattvas; second, the shravakas; and third, the ordinary beings. However, if one reads the central chapters of the scripture, "The Teacher of the Law," "The Emergence of the Treasure Tower," "Devadatta," "The Admonition to Embrace the Sutra" and "Peaceful Practices," in the reverse order, one will understand that the sutra is fundamentally aimed at the beings who live after the demise of the Buddha, and, in particular, among these, at those who live in mappo.4) In other words, Nichiren recognized that the historical condition of human beings born in corrupted times gave them no hope of salvation. Yet it is they who are the focus of the preaching of the Buddha, rather than those who were already sure of their salvation, either because they were destined to it or were prophesied to attain it.

But Nichiren's affirmative evaluation of mappo was not confined to the theological level. He highlighted the causal relationship between concrete events and history and the concept of mappo. "You may detest this world, but you cannot escape it," Nichiren wrote in a letter to two of his followers. "It is evident that the people of Japan are going to encounter great sufferings, you see it in front of your eyes. . . . In the tenth month of Bun'ei 11 the people of the islands of Iki and Tsushima perished at once [because of the Mongols' attempt to invade Japan]. How could one regard this solely as other people's concern? How miserable the soldiers who went off to confront the invaders must feel! They had to leave behind their aged parents, small children, young wives."5)

Nichiren emphasized the responsibility of man, not the inevitability of the cosmological process. Declining conditions of life were also the outcome of human action, within the community itself. Nichiren spoke of wicked monks that were the internal cause for the misfortunes of his country, and used a metaphor to explain it: even if one were to set fire to Mount Sumeru and allowed it to burn for a long time, it would not be damaged in the least; but if the fire started from within, Mount Sumeru would be burnt and destroyed in a minute.6) In other words, it was people's ignorance that provoked degeneration. Nichiren vindicates a particular idea of human responsibility in a historical sense. If man realizes the cause of the decay, he has the possibility to halt the degeneration of his history. Capacity thus means understanding, but its dimensions are historical.

Nichiren pointed at the significance of one's historical time as a turning point for a better life of the community. In this way, time acquired a soteriological function, and history, as the space in which social actions unfold, became the producer of salvation. Here Nichiren displays the characteristics of a millenarian prophet, who sees in the final ages the moment for the institution of a new religious world. His concern with the actual conditions of his society and the solutions he offered are similar to the "civic millenarianism" of Girolamo Savonarola, a fifteenth-century Italian monk, who explained contemporary political events in the light of the decline of Christian faith and sought a solution in a closer adherence to the religious and social values indicated by his interpretation of Christianity, which he said had to be carried out by all members of society, starting from the king.

Creating a Pure Land on Earth

Nichiren stressed this present existence and the necessary struggle to turn it into a positive experience, through the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, rather than focusing on a paradise that would take shape after death. At a doctrinal level, we can say that Nichiren conceived only one reality, both for man and for the Buddha: the saha world. Vulture Peak, the place on earth where the Lotus Sutra was taught, represented in his eyes both this world of ours and the most perfect world, the only possible paradise. Nichiren considered the assembly on Vulture Peak as a symbol of those who, having received the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, were able to transform this saha world of ours into a "resplendent land," the Pure Land of Bliss. In Nichiren's hermeneutic, the "original land" thus equals the human world. Since the world where man lives is also the original world in which the Buddha attained his buddhahood, the concrete reality of man becomes the ground of the most complete enlightenment, the ultimate reality. This world, while appearing tainted and corrupted, is a pure land if it becomes the place of action of human beings enacting the bodhisattva path as expounded in the Lotus Sutra: "A hundred years' practice in the Pure Land of Bliss does not equal the merit of a single day's practice in this defiled world."7)

Keeping the Country at Peace

Nichiren's ideal of salvation was not confined to the individual's inner life or to the subjective world, but was an imperative to engage oneself actively in the transformation of the place where one lives into a more perfect society. The referents of his discourse were therefore not only his followers, but also the rulers and other political agents, whose actions had the greatest consequences for society.

Nichiren purported to clarify the religious meaning of the historical experience of Japan. He started his speculation on mappo wondering on the reasons for the political events of his time, for instance the defeat of the imperial armies at the hands of the Kamakura warriors, and the grief and sorrows that wars and daily hardship had caused among the populace. In his writings one reads equally of the concern for the fate of Japan as a country, and for the individuals who had to cope with wars, death, epidemics, and earthquakes. Nichiren engaged in a continuous correspondence with his followers, where he offered spiritual guidance for their problems, religious or not, but he also attempted to speak to the government. The most famous example of his attitude is perhaps the Rissho ankoku ron [Treatise on the Establishment of the Correct Teaching for the Protection of the Country], which he submitted in 1260 to the retired shogunal regent Hojo Tokiyori. Nichiren presented the social conflicts of his time as essentially different from others that had taken place in the history of Japan, and warned that fateful calamities, including internal revolts and invasions from foreign countries, afflicted Japan because its rulers did not embrace Buddhism as expressed in the Lotus Sutra. The fact that this treatise was presented to the most influential person in the government attests to Nichiren's realistic perception of the consequences of political action for society. His discourse on the relation between religion and political power drew on the traditional notion of the mutual dependence of the "law of the king" and the "law of the Buddha," and presented the authority of the Lotus Sutra as a principle to which even rulers were to subordinate themselves. But Nichiren was also convinced of the necessary role of the country for the accomplishment of Buddhism: "Nations prosper thanks to the Dharma, and the Dharma is honored because of the people. If the country disappears and the people die, who will venerate the Buddha and who will trust in the Dharma?"8)

In medieval Japan, the country was the spatial container where-in Buddhism could realize its path, and thus Nichiren elected Japan as the Buddha-land in which an ideal Buddhist world could be constructed. This concern was also, in his own words, a way of repaying his debt to the place of his birth, since his being born in Japan during the mappo period allowed him to put into practice the Lotus Sutra. In thirteenth-century Buddhist culture, one could not expect a discourse on peace of global dimensions. Yet Nichiren did not speak of peaceful existence in abstract terms; he envisaged it in the specific reality he lived, and endeavored to construct a peaceful country of Japan.

A Lotus Activism?

Nichiren felt that his responsibility as a practitioner of the Lotus was not to achieve his own happiness but to help the entire country of Japan to achieve it. The emphasis of his teachings was not on a future world wherein salvation would eventually take place, but on the need to adapt Buddhism to the temporal vicissitudes of the community, in accordance with the necessities of the time--an expression that recurs often in his writings. By conceiving the spatio-temporal reality in which he lived as the moment of the realization of the truth, he offered a way to overcome the present as only a temporarily negative reality. He also clearly indicated the elements that were necessary to bring into the present the qualities of eternity: an awareness of the historical situation, discomfort in accepting it as it is, and the will to improve it, both at the individual and social levels, at the cost of personal loss.

It would not be true to history to idealize Nichiren as a social or political reformist, but it is interesting to note that the history of Nichiren's Lotus Buddhism is dotted with chronicles of engagement in social life, from the movements of the machishu in Kyoto in the Muromachi period to the several modern intellectual and political movements that have been influenced by Nichiren's hermeneutics of the Lotus.9) A term, Nichirenism (Nichiren-shugi), has even been coined to indicate currents of thought that have taken it as a model of Buddhist participation in history. This includes both ultranationalists and socialist ideologues, who often interpret Nichiren in contrasting terms--from spiritual guide of the military enterprises of prewar Japan to model of pacifist democratic ideals based on Buddhist principles, to a religious reformer comparable with Martin Luther. In all their diversity these readings point to the social dimension of Nichiren's interpretation of the Lotus Sutra.

Notes

1) W. E. Griffis, The Religions of Japan, New York: Charles Scribners's Sons, 1895, pp. 187, 315-16.
2) Ibid., pp. 280-81. See also A. Lloyd, "The Developments of Japanese Buddhism," Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. 22, 1894, pp. 337-506.
3) J. B. Pratt, The Pilgrimage of Buddhism, London: Macmillan, 1928, pp. 646-47.
4) Hokke shuyosho [On the Essential Meaning of the Lotus Sutra], Showa teihon Nichiren shonin ibun, 4 vols., Rissho Daigaku Nichiren Kyogaku Kenkyujo, ed., Minobu: 1989 (hereafter Teihon), p. 813.
5) Kyodaisho [Letter to Two Brothers], Teihon, p. 925.
6) Senjisho [Treatise on the Selection of Time], Teihon, p. 1050.
7) Hoonsho [On Repaying One's Obligations], Teihon, p. 1249.
8) Rissho ankoku ron, Teihon, p. 220.
9) For an overview of several historical figures who were influenced by Nichiren's interpretation of the Lotus Sutra, see Yoshiro Tamura and Eishu Miyazaki, eds., Koza Nichiren 4: Nihon kindai to Nichiren-shugi [Modern Japan and Nichirenism]. Tokyo: Shunjusha, 1972.

Lucia Dolce is senior lecturer in Japanese religions at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where she also directs the Centre for the Study of Japanese Religions. She specializes in Japanese religions and thought, with a particular research interest in the religiosity of the medieval period.

This article was originally published in the January-March 2007 issue of Dharma World.

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