History of Pure land Buddhism

English translation of the French language text “History of Pure Land Buddhism”

The one who was to become famous in universal religious history under the name of Honen Shonin (the Reverend or the Venerable Honen) was born in 1133 in the Mimasaka province. His first name was Seishi Maru (“consecrated to Seishi”). He was an only son. It is told that as a child, he was already in the habit of turning solemnly towards the West. A scoundrel mortally wounded his father: as the child, then nine, showed a desire for vengeance, the dying father preached forgiveness and universal goodwill to him. Taken care of by an uncle who was a Monk, the young Seishi Maru became a Monk himself, at fourteen, in one of the numerous monasteries of Mount Hiei where he received the name of Genku. At eighteen, he went over the west side of the mountain, to Kurodani, so as to follow in solitude the teachings of Eiku (+ 1179), who had been the chief disciple of Ryonin, and who made known to him Genshin’s Ojoyoshu. A stay in Nara enabled him to get to know the ancient sects in their centre. He immersed himself afterwards in the Scriptures, and is said to have read five times right through the 5,000 books of the Tripitaka. Everybody admired his knowledge. But he himself was not satisfied. ^¹

Indeed, long years of study and meditation had not led him to find his way through the wilderness of the schools and the labyrinth of controversies. Around him, everything appeared to him at once decadent and complicated. Far away indeed was the age “of Pomp and Splendour” (Eigwa) which the eleventh Century had been for Japan. The long and glorious predominance of the Fijivaras had come to an end. For more than fifty years, power had escaped from them to pass into the hands of the “Emperors in Monks’ robes”, nominally “retired” (the Ho-o), but still playing an active role in the affairs of the State. Japan had entered a period of calamities and civil wars (the Gempei period), carriers, as always, of misery and immorality. Inaugurated by the struggle of the Mimasaka and the Tairas, this gloomy period was to go on for a long time yet after 1168, the date of the foundation of Kamakura by the conquering general Yoritomo Minamoto (the Tairas will be beaten only in 1185 and peace will return only in 1189). Mount Hiei did not always offer a sure refuge to meditation. The Tendai, which participated then like all Japanese Buddhism in the feudal character of society, had long since been open to the corruption of the world; from the top of Hieizan, its leaders played an active role in politics, and its monasteries sheltered bands of soldier-Monks, a terror to the civil power, and a constant menace to the capital. The latter had just especially suffered from them in 1156 and 1159. Since Emperor Shirakawa (1073 - 1086) had declared that three things escaped his power: the waters of Kamogawa, the gaming dice and the bonzes of Kieizan, the situation had only grown worse. The year 1160 had been marked again by bloody riots. People lived in despair. Everywhere the public calamities were interpreted as a sign of the end of the world. . .^² , at once too prosperous and degenerated. With Eiku himself, he felt at variance. ^³

The years passed. He thus reached the age of forty-two. It was in the spring of 1175. Called upon one day to speak out, he finally declared that henceforth he renounced the doctrines and practices of all the sects in order to be content with the nembutsu by itself. “I have questioned at length”, he will say, “a crowd of scholars and Monks so as to know if there was anybody able to teach me anything, or only to suggest something useful to me. In the Kurodani library, my heart heavy, I read the Scriptures from one end to the other. Finally, I fell one day on a passage by Zendo (Chan-t’ao), in his commentary on the Meditation Sutra. Here is the passage: “Walking or standing still, on your feet, sitting or lying down, simply repeat the name of Amida, with all your heart; do not leave off this practice, for even a moment: that is the work which leads to salvation, according to the Vow and the promise of this Buddha.” While reading these words, I was struck by the fact that even such an ignorant one as I, merely by trusting in the truth of this assertion, was able to acquire merits sufficient for rebirth in the Happy Land.” ^⁴

After his declaration, Genku parted from the Tendai. He came to live in the retreat of Yoshimizu, or “Foundation of Joy”, a retreat with a predestined name. Soon after, impelled by circumstances, he constituted Amidism as a separate sect, without giving it however a framework comparable to that of the established sects. It was the Jodo (Chinese: Ching-tu) or Jodo-shu, i.e. the community, “the family” of the adherents of “Rebirth” in the Pure Land^⁵, the first of the sects called “Kamakura sects”, which have been described as autochthonous, “in the sense that they were the product of Japanese genius and zeal”. ^⁶ It is clear that Genku could not import his sect from China, as the founders of all the other Japanese sects had done formerly, since for a long time China had no particular sect devoted solely to Amitabha. Let us observe nevertheless that, if he did not go himself to seek the light in China, anymore than Shinran or Nichiren soon, he found it in a Chinese writing. ^⁷ On every occasion, and to the end of his life, he will appeal to the words of Zendo, of “good Father Zendo” as he says in a letter, attributing to them an authority equal to that of the Sutras. He saw in Zendo an incarnation of Amida himself.

A modern Japanese historian, M. Mahasaru Anesaki, has compared Honen to St. Francis of Assisi^⁸, who was nearly his contemporary, and he is compared the narrative of his life with the Fioretti. ^⁹ He has joined the “Buddhist saint” and the Christian saint in a selfsame devotion. The comparison has been partially revived by M. Rene Grousset. ^¹0 The religious experience of Honen, founded on the recognition of the state of the sinner, is not without some relation either to that which was to create Martin Luther in the West. This resemblance to “the Lutheran heresy”, more marked still in the sect which issued from Shinran, the principal successor of Honen, was stated from the sixteenth Century by St. Francis Xavier and his successors. Karl Barth is surprised at what appears to him to be a misunderstanding on the part of the great missionary; but he himself makes scarcely any other difference between the two doctrines of grace than the real efficacy of the name of Jesus Christ opposing the futility of taking refuge in Amida, without instituting a comparison which would permit a pronouncement on the content of the faiths. ^¹1 The resemblance noted by Xavier has become a kind of leitmotif among Western scholars. ^¹2 We shall have occasion to see what is to be thought of it. Let us note here only that - in order not to go back to Tz-u-min - one of those who paved the way for Honen, Ryonin, propagated a doctrine which could indeed rather be connected with the Catholic doctrine of indulgences - or even, to tell the truth, with its abuses: has not a Japanese historian noted the resemblance of the Yuzumen-butsushu with a financial society? Honen, doubtless, did not take up explicitly the ideas of Ryonin, but more than once he happens to express himself in terms which approach them. ^¹3 Other parallel facts could be pointed out, those in Catholicism. Thus it was that the Dominican Nicolas of Strasbourg delivered about 1324, before the chapter of his Order assembled in Louvain, a Sermon on the Mount of Gold, in which he advocated in a way which appeared then a little unusual a reliance without reservations on the merits of Christ. ^¹4 Moreover, an analogy could be pointed out, nevertheless basically fallacious, between the thought of the Amidist Masters and the mysticism which the Protestants customarily condemn in the Catholic tradition. Finally, Father Mainage could write that Amidism was “a reserved Lutherism”: “for Luther”, he explained, “the corruption of man, incurable, was covered with the grace of Christ; for Amidism, it is the sole evil which surrounds, without being able to corrupt, the essential goodness of human beings. A yearning of the heart, and purity shines.” ^¹5

However, it may be with these comparisons - for the bottom of things (as regards fundamentals) we shall see better further on how things stand - the fact is that Honen wanted, as Sakyamuni had formerly done in India, to cleanse the religious life by bringing it back to essentials. Above all he wanted to simplify the methods of salvation, in order to bring it within the reach of all. He found support for that in the canonical texts; but he argued besides from the wretched situation of his epoch, and that would be for every Buddhist a very strong argument. It was admitted indeed that little by little, inevitably, the Law of the Buddha declines. Each century, it was thought, marks a new decay. At the very beginning, each person could without difficulty penetrate to the bottom of the meaning of the teachings; afterwards, he could still devote himself steadfastly to meditation; next, he continued for some time at least to maintain the Prohibitions; but, in the course of his heavy recitations, the Law does not cease to wear away, like the wheel of a moving cart, which by dint of turning will break. ^¹6

This pessimistic conception, in conformity with the old Indian doctrine of the four diminishing yugas^¹7, had always impressed minds. As early as the fourth Century of our era, when Buddhism was still, externally, very vigorous in India, when it was in process of conquering all China, Basubandhu ended his famous Treasure of the Abhidharma with this melancholy observation: “He who is self-enlightened (= the Buddha) has gone, the upholders of his Law have gone, the world no longer has a guardian, evil is now at full liberty. The Sage’s religion is at its last breath, this is the age when the vices are powerful, those who wish to be liberated must be diligent.” Others, in the centuries which followed, lamented having come into the world in the unhappy period when Sakyamuni was henceforth too far in the past, while Maitreya was still too far in the future. In the ninth Century, in his poem to the glory of Avalokitesvara, Vajradatta expressed an analogous sentiment in sombre and grandiose images: “The world”, he sang, “is plainly about to disappear, for even today and rapidly the majestic mountains which supported it are reduced to dust, and the infinite oceans are drying up!”^¹8

But, more precisely, it was believed, from already very ancient times, that the Law preached by Sakyamuni was to know a duration dividing into three periods. The first period was that of the real Law, correct Law, or Perfect Law (Sad-dharma; Japanese: Sho-bo); the second was that of the Copied Law, the Pseudo Law, or image of the Law, (Pratirupa-dharma; Japanese: Zo-bo); the third, finally, was that of the Terminating Law, the Degenerated Law, the last days or Decadence of the Law (Paschima-dharma; Japanese: Map-po). This doctrine, which was set forth in the commentaries on the Lotus, had been brought back with vigour by Saicho. Now, according to the chronology then admitted (accepted), which had Sakyamuni living about 1,000 years before our era, the age of the Sho-bo had been long past; the age of the Zo-bo itself had concluded; and since the year 1052 the dark age of the Map-po had been entered on. The coincidence of this date with the calamities which had burst on their country had depressed many of the Japanese faithful. Everywhere the name of Map-po resounded like a knell. Honen’s argument was therefore to find a hearing.

“How”, he said in substance, “shall we attain to true and unfailing knowledge? And without it, without this sword of knowledge, how shall we cut the bonds of evil passion, the source of wicked behaviour? Today men are too weak to understand and assimilate the three kinds of thought and the four kinds of discipline; they are too inconstant to follow to the end the way of great asceticism or abstract contemplation; even among Monks, how many of them really succeed in stopping their mind, the monkey always capering on the branches, or merely calming a little its sportive disposition? Thus, for the majority, life wastes away without fruit, and at their last hour they are deprived of all means of salvation. We live in a very forward age, and each century sees our vigour declining. The Map-po stretches its shadow over us. The rules of human masters no longer have any power, and we no longer have any strength. But, in this universal decadence, which the Scriptures had clearly announced, the Vow of Amida continues to exist. It is the rock to which we must grapple ourselves. It is the “sheet-anchor” which we must grasp, the “life-belt” which will preserve us from the deep. Salvation remains accessible to whomsoever, with a sincere heart, will invoke the sacred Name.”

Such then is the “short cut”, such the “little way” which Honen wishes to show all:

This was taking up the old tradition of Amidism, which said: “The partisans of the other sects are ants which wish to climb up high mountains; the adherents of the Western Paradise follow, sails unfurled, the stream of the water, and Amida comes to meet them.” ^²0

To one of his correspondents, Honen wrote: “Some people who evidently bear the weight of a bad karma reject the teaching of the Pure Land and turn others away from it; blind men who ruin themselves, and take away from sinners the shortest and surest way of being saved. They seem to have lost the seed of Buddhahood which exists in the depths of every man’s heart. So much the worse for them and for those allow themselves to be led astray by them! They are not ripe for rebirth . . . Do not desire it for them, let them go. Be satisfied with setting forth the teaching and let people dispose of their fate. It is a fact that salvation is wholly in the nembutsu, but do not compel anyone to recite it, for voluntary recitation is alone meritorious.” ^²1

He further said: “The nembutsu is superior to all other practices, because every virtue is eminently contained in the sole sacred Name. There are the four wisdoms, and the three bodies, and the ten faculties, and the four breakings of bonds, etc. . . All this is inherent in the sacred Name of the Buddha.” He distrusted the pride of the wise: “If you become an educated man”, he remarked, “you put yourself in danger of losing the frame of mind required for practising the nembutsu”, for you are tempted to rely on your own knowledge; now, “when you take refuge in the sacred Name, you must do it with the inward yearning of the desperate man who, in acute affliction, cries out: “Oh! save me!” He explained, not without some subtlety: “If someone, strong in the conviction that a single invocation suffices for rebirth near Amida, begins to slacken in his habitual practice of the nembutsu, his faith corrupts his practise; if, on the other hand, strong with incessant practice, he admits some doubt as to the rebirth of him who would be satisfied with a single invocation, then it is his practice which corrupts his faith. Have faith therefore in the efficacy of even the single nembutsu, but at the same time practise it without ceasing all your life long.” The idea of the faith which saves has without doubt never been more keenly expressed than by one of his aphorisms: “rebirth in the Pure Land is certain, if only you believe truly that it is; but also it is uncertain, if you come to be uncertain about it.” But nothing should be able to shake the certitude and confidence of the staunch devotee of Amida: “Even if a Buddha all enhaloed with light came to tell you: it is ridiculous to believe that a man full of passion and sins can attain Paradise merely by repeating the nembutsu, do not believe him. Do not allow the least doubt to enter you.” ^²2

He himself had all kinds of luminous visions. One day, he saw in a dream the great Zendo, who congratulated him. In 1198 - he was 65 - a great light appeared to him; it was like a body of crystalline water, on a ground of emerald blue. The same year he saw the jewels of the Pure Land, of its soil, its trees, its palaces. Constantly, from then on, he perceived hidden and marvellous things. He heard the choruses of the heavenly birds, the music of harp and flute, which are heard in Amida’s Paradise. The “Three Honoured Ones” came frequently towards him, colossal in stature; as much as Amida and Kwannon, the personage Seishi had complete distinctness; he made an image of him; he felt himself in a mysterious unity with him and was not afraid to declare it. ^²3 He has left us the account of all these wonders in a writing which he called: “How I attained sammai (samadhi)” and which was published after his death. All kinds of occult powers were attributed to him, and it was said that he had become able to see in the dark night, thanks to the light flashing from his eyes.^²4

Honen was not a doctrinaire, but a mystic and poet. His visions only materialised an impression which did not leave him. “Everything in the universe suggested to him the presence of the saviour Buddha and of his love which embraces everything”. ^²5 He was able to suggest it to others:

Without loud propaganda, Honen enlisted numerous disciples. About 2,000 are spoken of, who were attached to him by personal ties. Some of them have remained famous in the history of the Jodo. Without speaking of the six who were the source of the subdivisions of the sect or of its schisms, and whom the following chapter will introduce to us, there was Horembo, a privileged witness of his prodigious manifestations; Sickaku, a renowned orator, author of a book on “Faith in the one only (Amida)” (Yuishinsho); Kao (Ko Admidabutsu) who was one day to collect his ashes; Seikwambo, very close, to whom he addressed his letter on the way in which he had attained sammai (ecstasy); Zenshobo, an apostolic soul, who was never able to rest content in the thought that he had attained rebirth and wanted to help all others to attain it; many others still . . .

Honen also enjoyed the confidence of several successive Emperors. He was the spiritual adviser of three of them: Go-Shirakawa (= Shirakawa II) who died (1192) while repeating the nembutsu; Takakura and Go-Taba. Their protection was not always sufficient, however, to shelter him from attacks. His teaching was condemned by the authorities of Mount Hiei. He was obliged then to withdraw to Yoshimizu, without however ceasing all activity. In 1206, the attacks became more violent. Two young

Amidists had sung the hymns too well in the course of a ceremony, and two of Go-Taba’s maids-of-honour had too much admired them. The affair was presented as a act of seduction, and the two unfortunate singers were put to death. Go-Taba could not defend Honen from the intrigues which followed. At the beginning of 1207 a decree exiled him to the distant province of Sanuki (Shikoku island). The chief followers of the Jodo were likewise banished. It was the first time that such a persecution raged in Japan. ^²8 At the moment when it became threatening, a disciple said to Honen: “No doubt you are right, but it seems to me that we ought to have regard for public opinion”; to which the Master replied: “I could not live without continuing to teach what I have taught, even if it meant my death.” ^²9 In Senuki, his first act was to teach the nembutsu to the head of the district. However, the Emperor having had some uneasy dreams, the punishment was soon softened; but, out of fear of the terrible Monks of Hieizan, Honen was still kept out of the capital. He lived then four years of peaceful old age in Kachiodera Temple, in a suburb of Osaka. In 1211 permission was finally given him to return to Kyoto: this return was a triumph, which Shunjo compares to Sakyamuni’s retinue descending from the Heaven of the Thirty-three Gods. But he was approaching his end. He was to die in Otani, on the seventh of March 1212, aged 79.

He had continued to the end to give out his message, in conversation and by correspondence. On his deathbed, in response to the request of his beloved disciple Seikwambo, he gave once more a summary of it to the group of faithful followers who surrounded him. It is the “Testament on a scrap of paper”, Ichimai Kishomon, a writing from his own hand, which reproduced for the last time his principal idea: “Our devotion does not consist in the meditation recommended and practised by the sages of the past, nor in the contemplation of the hidden depths of the name Amida ... If I had practised in secret something other than what I have preached, or if I had fostered within myself a teaching esteemed more profound, I would deem myself unworthy of now being saved by Amida. My last advice is that the most learned, leaving all pedantry, trust for their salvation to the nembutsu alone.” Then he revealed that, for the past ten years, he had lived in the continual perception of the glory of the Pure Land. Seishi, Kwannon and “numerous saints” appeared to him, but only he saw them. “In a voice gentle and strong”, till the following day he repeated the sacred Name. He had composed a whole series of little poems on the Buddha of the West; his last words were again a stanza in his honour: “His light pervades the worlds in every direction - His favour does not abandon him who calls on his Name.” And, about the middle of the day, he expired.

In the service which took place seven weeks after his death, the head of the Mu Temple, Koin, publicly explained how he had thrown in the fire the pamphlet which he had formerly written against him, to range himself among his fervent disciples. A few years later, as the persecution raged anew, in order to avoid the profanation of his remains, they were secretly conveyed to another suburb of Kyoto, to Saga, then into the house of a Monk attached to the Koeyuji. In 1282, in Aono, they were burnt. The ashes were placed in a commemorative chapel (gobodo), where the nembutsu was regularly practised, before an image of Amida, due to the brush of Genshin, which Honen himself had installed in this place. Later they created there the celebrated Komyoji. In Kyoto itself, the Chion-in, became the spiritual centre of the Jodo, welcomed part of the ashes as well as an image on wood, venerated in the main sanctuary. The small hermitage of the Kurodani also perpetuates the memory of the long spiritual quest of Honen Shonin in his last earthly existence. ^³1

A little less than a century after his death, his great biography appeared, composed by order of the retired Emperor Go-Fushimi. It was the work of Shunjo, a former Monk of Mount Hiei. ^³2 Another document of greater importance, written by Honen himself, had come to light shortly after his death: the Senchaku Hongwan Nembusshu, “Texts relative to the original Vow and the Nembutsu”, more briefly, Senchakushu. This writing of sixteen chapters opens with a statement of the classical distinction of the two paths: the Shodo-mone, “path of the sage” or “of wisdom”, where one goes ahead on his own initiative and by his own power, and the Jodo-mone, “path of the Pure Land”, which is the path of faith, open to every man and privileged way of salvation for the times of the Map-po; we might translate it, with Father Wieger: an ascetic way and a mystical way, but on condition of envisaging a simple, popular mysticism, within the reach of all. The work cites and comments on numerous texts from the three fundamental Amidist sutras and from Chan-t’ao’s commentary on the Meditation Sutra. Honen had composed it in 1198, with the help of two secretaries, in response to a request from his friend Kanesane Tsukinowa^³3, who had adhered to him from 1177 and who had become subsequently Prime Minister, then Regent. His survey enables us to specify the originality of the Jodo-Shu in relation to its antecedents. ^³4

Among the “four disciplines” or spiritual practices intended to unify the “three kinds of thought” or the three aspects of consciousness, disciplines advocated in the Tendai, there were two which had relation to Amida. There was on the one hand the Jozo Zammai, an exercise which consisted in a meditation carried on for ninety days and nights, interspersed with supplicating appeals to Amida in order to be liberated from illusions and passions; and on the other hand, the Jogyo Zammai, of equal duration, where attention was maintained by the contemplation of an image of the Buddha of the Pure Land. ^³5 Honen has no difficulty in showing that those are exercises too hard for ordinary men; besides, the nembutsu practised in them does not really have as its aim the obtaining from Amida of rebirth in his Land, but of realising immediately, in samadhi (ecstasy), the universal identity. Indeed, we know that Ryonin, whose influence Honen had at first undergone through the medium of his Master Eiku, himself taught explicitly that all the distinctions of objects are due to a mental illusion and that we must succeed in seeing all things in the universe penetrate each other. Finally, whatever may be the practice it adopts, the Tendai believes in a power proper to man, superior to the power of the Buddha, which is to fail to recognise the force of the original Vow.

Honen next examines Genshin’s trend in the Ojoyoshu. Genshin is wrong, he thinks, still to unite the nembutsu with other disciplines; he does not do away with every effort of mental concentration^³6, and he believes in the equality of the two powers: the self power and the power of the invoked Buddha. The same applies to Yokwan and Chingai, in the Shingon. Only Zendo had been completely in the right when he radically opposed the Jodo to the Shodo. It is Zendo’s teaching, it is his religion, which Honen wishes to follow in it completeness. It can be characterised by saying that it deems the nembutsu at once necessary and sufficing. No other discipline can be itself alone procure salvation, whereas the nembutsu has an absolute efficacy, and this efficacy comes to it totally from the Buddha who is invoked; therefore we must invoke him with faith, without bother to introduce any meditative element into this invocation, as if we sought to discover something in ourselves and by ourselves. Doubtless the mind must be “fixed”, must be “calmed”, as Sakyamuni taught before this; but an effort of mental concentration is not necessary for that: sufficient is a movement of sincere trust in Amida. ^³7 Everyone is capable of it, and consequently rebirth in the Pure Land is accessible to all, even to those who are not yet ripe for final illumination; even for those who are not yet liberated from their passions. ^³8

When Chan-t’ao asked that the nembutsu be recited “whole-heartedly”, did not he understand by that precisely the effort of mental application which Honen now wishes to set aside or dispense with? Did he not teach that an element of the meditative or contemplative order is inherent in every salutary invocation? We can at least raise the question. It is quite possible that Honen made, in reading certain texts, a misinterpretation analogous to that which our contemporaries are prone to make in reading ancient texts - or even Pascalian texts - where the “heart” is in question. It would seem ore manifest still that the Master of the Jodo largely freed himself from the prescriptions, so distinct and developed at such length, of the Sutra of the Meditation on Amitayus which Chan-t’ao set himself to comment on and which Honen himself held in such high esteem. The prescriptions of the Sutra concerned at the same time moral conduct and spiritual exercises. Does not Sakyamuni there teach Queen Vaidehi, at her request, to “concentrate her thought”, to “apply it to serious (earnest) meditation”? Does he not expound to her “the triple goodness” which every aspirant to the Pure Land must possess in himself? Does he not urge his hearers to commit to their memory everything he is about to explain to them “in detail”? Does he not recommend “studying and reciting the Mahayana sutras”? Does he not repeat, with regard to several classes of beings, that if they are born near Amitabha, it is after having practised the Virtues and Prohibitions, and “cultivated the sextuple memory”, and “through the effect of their good qualities come at last to maturity”? ^⁴0 It is true that already the hymn of Wenn-ti, which figured (appeared) at the head of every edition since Kalayasas’ translation in 424, proclaimed that a single invocation of the sacred Name, a single thought aspiring to Amida, was sufficient to destroy all the sins of all one’s existences; and the Sutra itself appears to have wished to formulate in the first place so many exactions only with a view to enhancing, by a backwards progression, the miraculous merit of the nembutsu. In order to (let us) come at once to the last category of it, “the lowest of the lowest degree”: “If there is someone”, it is said, “who has done evil, committed the ten criminal acts and the five mortal faults, this man, being stupid and ready for new crimes, deserves to fall into a wretched condition and to suffer violent afflictions for numerous kalpas. But it comes to pass on the evening of his death that he is addressed by a good and well informed (learned) Master, who comforts him, preaches the excellent Law to him and teaches him to be mindful of the Buddha. Tired out, the man is not even capable of having this thought. Then some good friends come to tell him: “If you are unable to exert yourself to think of Buddha, you can at least pronounce his name: Buddha Amitayus!” And thus he it is who, sincerely, repeats the name; he it is who thinks of the Buddha until he has completed the thought ten times (during the time of ten thoughts), repeating the formula: “Namo-mitayushe-Buddhaya). By means of the power of the merit attached to the pronunciation of the name, he expiates, at each repetition, the faults which shut him in the cycle of birth and death for a duration of twenty million kalpas. He will see, while dying a golden lotus flower appear before his eyes, like the disk of the sun, and in

Despite some subsisting difficulties, we can judge that such a text sufficiently justifies Honen’s interpretation and the orientation which he gave to Amidism, and supposing on the other hand that he wrongly understood the “heart” of which Chan-t’ao spoke, he could read in the old Chinese Master other passages which gave him good reason. Nevertheless, even in insisting above all on the salutary minimum, and in declaring the entire sufficiency of the “cry from the heart” which the nembutsu is, Honen recommended, just the same as did Chan-t’ao, constantly self-communing interiorly in the recollection of Amida. The traveller who must cross a river to escape a pressing peril thinks of nothing else; his mind is wholly occupied with it; so with the being who for his salvation takes refuge in Amida. Such a one, said Tao-tch’ao, the initiator of Chan-t’ao, “thinks of Amida’s Dharma-kaya, he thinks of his Wisdom, or else of his supernatural powers, or of the beauty of the marks of his body, or of the light which goes forth from his tuft of hair, or again of his original Vow”; in short, he thinks of everything to do with Amida, and thinks only of him. Honen approves such language. The Senchakushu does not neglect either to recommend many exterior practices (kotogyo), such as the recitation of the three fundamental sutras, the adoration of the images of Amida, various offerings, prayers and chants. No more than he rejected all meditation, did Honen disdain every rite then. He himself, in 1188, had insisted on celebrating for the first time, in the Ho-o Go-Shri-rakawa palace, the Nyohokyo, an adaptation of a rite indicated in the Lotus, which consisted in an offering of the three recopied sutras; in 1204 he celebrated it again for seven days. ^⁴2

But all this, in his thought, is only devotional or ceremonial practices, not a more or less necessary spiritual training. Once more, the nembutsu suffices solely by itself, and “if someone imagines something besides, he thus deprives himself of the favours of Amida and Shaka, he excludes himself from the original Vow”. ^⁴3 Much more, if you have a deep faith, it is enough to hear the nembutsu pronounced by another, for it is neither the movement of the lips nor the sound of the voice which counts.

Honen himself one day said: “I have never passed a single day without reading the Scriptures, except the day when Kiso kwanja invaded the capital.” But later on the nembutsu was to monopolise him totally. This was to start from the first day of the year (1198), at 2 p.m., according to his written testimony, immediately after the luminous vision of which we have spoken. One of the advantages of this incessant practice, was in his eyes, to maintain the soul in the constant desire for the Pure Land and in this way to turn it aside from every bad desire. Others and among the greatest had done the same thing before him: Doshaku (Tao-tch’ao), Ryonin: and in the generation which preceded his, the practice was not rare. Certain individuals, however, criticised him for it, and accused him of illogicality. He encouraged in this way, they claimed, the belief in the power of self effort which he fought against on the other hand. But he defended himself energetically. “Everything depends”, he said, “on the thought which is in the heart. Even if you pronounce the sacred Name only once or twice, you can do it while believing in salvation through your own power; whilst even if you repeat it hundred and thousands of times each day for hundreds and thousands of days, provided that at each repetition you put all your faith in the merits solely of the Great Vow, the nembutsu you practise is indeed that of salvation by Amida’s power.” ^⁴4

Furthermore, he added, if I multiply the invocations, it is not with an eye to a benefit which I am afraid of not yet having obtained; “I repeat the nembutsu not like someone who puts in a claim, but like someone who has already received.” ^⁴5

To conclude, rightly practised, the nembutsu ought to maintain a disposition of soul of which Honen gave the example, and which he also recommended in his spiritual direction. He has defined it in some sort of a letter which he addressed one day to the widow of the Shogun Yoritomo (+ 1199), and which will finish by indicating his mind to us:

1Honen the Buddhist Saint, his life and teaching, compiled by imperial order. Translation, historical introduction, explanatory and critical notes by Reverend Harper Havelock Coates, M.A., D.D. and Reverent Ryugaku Ishizuka (Kyoto, Chinin, 1295), XCIV and 958 pages. (In commemoration of the 750th Anniversary of the Founding of the Jodo Sect), pp. 125 - 146. We have already often referred to this essential work, which we shall cite from now on by the sole name either of its first editor, Coates, or its ancient author, Shunjo.

4Shunjo, ch. VI (pp. 186 - 187). Honen was able to recall these remarks by Genshin: “If it is necessary as in the esoteric or exoteric sects, to trust only to one’s own intelligence and one’s own virtues, how could beings as stupid as I dream of their salvation?” (Quoted in Linossier Miscellanies, vol. 1, pp. 101 - 102).

5In China itself and from an ancient epoch, the community of the “sons of Buddha” was already organised on the model of lay families. The Buddhist sects are designated in Chinese by the word shu, which signifies “ancestral filiation”; the founder patriarch is “the ancestor”, so, and his successors are his descendents, shison. Hobogirin, II, art. Busshi, p. 173. C.B. Clement of Alexandria, Stromate, I, 3: “Every disciple, by obedience to the Master’s words, becomes his son.”

7We shall therefore be able to confirm, with slight qualifications, the judgement of M.H. Hui, History of Chinese Buddhism, (Tokyo, 1936), according to which there is not a single sect in Japan which is not due to the Chinese sects. C.B. Buddhist Bibliography, 1950, no. 814.

8Honen, the Pietist Saint of Japanese Buddhism, in Transactions of the third international Congress for the History of Religions, vol. 1, (Oxford, 1938), p. 122. History of Japanese Religion, p. 179. It has also been noted that the year of Honen’s death (1212) was that in which St. Francis received the Vows of St. Claire and gave her the Formula vivendi. In his History of Asia, (translated G. Lepage, 1929), pp. 85 - 86, H.H. Gowen has remarked the coincidence between the religious movement of the Kamakura sects, and that which gave birth to the great mindicent Orders.

1² H. Haas, Amida Buddha unsere Zuflucht, (1910). Coates, p. 186. A.K. Reischauer, Studies in Japanese Buddhism, (1917), pp. 106 - 107. “Like Luther more than three centuries later, Genku found an assurance of salvation and a deep religious life in faith in Amida. Previously, all the doctrines of various sects had not brought him peace”; and p. 258: “antinomianism”. Bruno Petzold, in The Eastern Buddhist, vol. 2, 1923, p. 357. (The author likewise associates Denzyo Daishi with the Theologien Germanica). Louis de la Vallée Poussin. Buddhism (4th edition, 125), p. 269. Rudolf Otto, Indiens Gnadenreligion und das Christentum (Munchen, 1930). G.B. Sansom, The Western World and Japan, (1950), p. 133, etc. H. Pinard de la Boullays, in Dictionary of Spirituality, f. XIV - XV, col. 2231. Further, James Brodrick, op. cit., p. 378.

1⁷ A doctrine which is expressed in the allegory of the Law of the Dharma. On the Yugas: Mircea Eliade Time and Eternity in Indian Thought, in Eranos-Jahrbuch, XX Munsch und Zeit, (1952), pp. 224 - 229. Likewise, in the Hindu tradition, allusion is constantly made to the decadence into which they are always diving deeper; the vedic sacrifices are now no longer able to be carried out in their perfection; also, full of pity, the Gods have instituted easier rites. C.B. Charles Eliot, op. cit., p. 392.

1⁸ Vasubandhu, Abhidharmakosa, ch. 8, in fine. C.B. the translation by Louis de la Vallée Poussin, fasc. VI (1925), p. 224. A Chinese inscription in Ed. Chavannes, Archaeological Mission . . ., p. 346. Vajradatta, Lokesvarasataka, (translated S. Karpelès), loc. cit., p. 459. More than that, it is admitted that, even in the time of Sakyamuni, the world was already evil: “As this Jambudvipa (= this world) is evil, the life of the Buddha in it is short”, Mahaprajnaparamita-sastra, 34 (in Hobogirin, II, p. 182). A sermon of St. Augustine will offer material for reflection on the contrasted parallel of these religions with the Faith of Christ. Sermon 81, n. 8: “The world grows old, and there are everywhere only groans of the oppressed . . . Is it then of small account, that, in this old age of the world, God has sent Christ to you in order to renew you, when everything is falling apart? Christ has come at the time when everything is growing old, in order to renew you yourself . . . This world destined to perish was inclining towards its setting. Is it surprising that it should abound in sufferings? But he it is who came to comfort you in the midst of these sufferings and to promise you everlasting rest. Therefore, do not be attached to this old man which is the world. Do not decline to rejuvenate yourself in Christ who says to you: the world perishes, the world grows old, the world vanishes, the world is suffering from the asthma of age. Do not be afraid. Your youth will be renewed in you like the eagle’s” (translation, G. Bardy).

1⁹ Honen, Ojo Taiyosho (The Main Point about Rebirth), and Letter to the wife of Kanezane (translated Léon Wieger, Chinese and Japanese Amidism, pp. 39 - 40). C.B. H. Minamoto, translated by Raymonde Linossier, in Linossier Miscellanies, bk. 1, pp. 98 - 102. Pierre Charles, Honen and Salvation by Faith . . ., loc. cit., M. Anesaki, Some Pages in Religious History of Japan (rather free translations and commentaries stamped with a concern for modernity).

2⁸ However, a few other cases of exile are cited. Thus in 699, in the reign of the Emperor Mommu, a Buddhist of “mystical” tendencies of the name of En-mo-Ozmu, accused of witchcraft was banished to a small island of Izu-no-kuni. C.B. A.K. Reischauer, Early Japan History, I, p. 169. M. Anesaki, op. cit., p. 177. Charles Eliot, Japanese Buddhism, pp. 264 - 266.

3³ Charles Eliot, Japanese Buddhism, p. 263. Coates, pp. 16, 39, 43 - 46, 252 - 253, 487, 756. Honen had entrusted the manuscript of the Senchakushu to Kanezane, forbidding its publication in his lifetime; but when he was exiled in 1207, his disciples remaining in Kyoto had no more news of him; when he returned in 1211, plans were ready for the publication of the work, so that this was able to take place in 1212, scarcely a few months after Honen’s death.

3⁶ In fact, in the Ojoyoshu, Genshin asked whether the nembutsu ought to be meditation or recitation, and he replied by quoting a traditional text: “Sometimes recitation and meditation go hand in hand, sometimes meditation precedes and recitation follows, sometimes it is recitation which is followed by meditation.”

3⁷ Arijui, to quieten the mind, a frequent word in the canonical texts has assumed in the Jodo the special sense of : to fix the mind of Amida and his Paradise. C.B. Hobogirin, I, p. 33. Already the Digha Nikaya, II, 140, speaks of him who dies “with a mind calmed in the Buddha”.

4¹ Op. cit., n. 30 (pp. 196 - 198). C.b. n. 28 and 32 (pp. 195 - 196 and 200). The “sincerely” called for by the Sutra will be noted. Honen did not cease to comment on it persistently. Also we can hardly agree to the judgement made by Father Wieger, op. cit., p. 49: “By ridding the nembutsu of the ascetic accessories which reinforced it, he inervated it and made it a mechanical act without moral bearing.”