History of Pure Land Buddhism

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

In the present case, however, more than in any other, the question arises. In the final reckoning, is this religion of Buddha Amida in conformity with the spirit of Buddhism? Are not the Sutras which lay its foundation, and still more the men who have belatedly interpreted these Sutras, going on the contrary, in inviting man “to rely solely on the magnificently efficacious help of the divinity”, so far as to effect a “radical change”, a complete reversal of Sakyamuni’s teaching? ^¹ Has not a new ideal finished by triumphing, involving a new conception as to the way of salvation? ^² Are not the kind religion and easy way of the Tariki decidedly irreconcilable with the austere and long discipline of the Jiriki? “Is not the spirit of awakening” (Bodaishin), which essentially constitutes the Buddhist, adulterated when it is assimilated to “the spirit of faith”? ^³ Still more, when it has been declared, as in the Jodo-Shin, that this “spirit of faith” is the spirit of awakening par excellence, the Daibodaishin? ^⁴ Even after having pointed out, as we did at the beginning, the characteristics which previously announced or prepared for it in the first Buddhism, must not we acknowledge that its practice is exactly contrary to Buddha’s exhortation: “Lead a holy life to put an end to suffering” and his final recommendation; “Be yourselves your own lamp and own refuge?” ^⁵

It has sometimes been thought so, not without plausibility, or even without some truth. That Buddhism “does not belong”, Father Leon Wieger wrote for example. ^⁶ It is a “pseudo-Buddhism”, stated Father Henri Dore. ^⁷ It has been seen as a sketch of the Christian religion. Paul Claudel said one day: “The Amida of China and Japan is almost Christian.”. ^⁸

Without any doubt, indeed, in the number of its adherents, Amidism is practically “a true theism”. It is for them a “religion of grace”, although not properly of redemption. “The stellar map of the domains of the Buddhas matters little to these common people; universal Buddhahood matters little to them . . . They are unacquainted with all these theories.” The place which they give to Amida in their heart is practically unique and the rebirth anticipated by them in his Pure Land is scarcely distinguished in their eyes from a definitive salvation^⁹: “an eternal solstice, where the day will never set, noon brightness, springtime temperature, summer’s charm, autumn’s abundance and, not to overlook anything, the quietude and leisure of winter! A place all of light, peace and perfection! A place where they adore the boundless light!” ^¹0 To judge not only by the texts, but a long living observation, it can also be said that many Amidists do “acts of contrition and love, which are very beautiful”. “Their morality is extraordinarily pure.” “Nothing has ever resembled Christian prayer as much as” their prayer. They pray “humbly, fervently, from the very heart”; their attitudes are “natural and touching”. “Never in my life shall I forget”, Father Wieger has further written, “the feeling I experienced while contemplating a young Amidist mother, making her devotions before the illumined and empty throne. She first shut her eyes and concentrated deeply, her lips murmuring the act of repentance and request. Then she set before the throne two small children, the second of whom could scarcely walk, and who, perfectly trained, did in the most earnest manner what their mother had done. Finally she drew from her bosom the third, a young baby, took his head delicately between thumb and forefinger, and bent it towards the throne . . .” ^¹1

In truth, with these “common people” of Amidism, ignorant of doctrinal subtleties, the Christian can well have the impression “of being at home”.^¹2 He can indeed hope, with the missionaries who have lived among them, that their acts of worship and petition, across the formulas taught to them, go “direct to the God of conscience, to the only true God, to the Father of all souls” and the words of the Apostle Paul recur to his memory, on those men who seek God, “si forte attrectent cum aut inveniant, quamvis non longe sit ab unoquoque nostrum”. ^¹3 He is only the more struck, however, by the nebulous unreality in which the entire object of their faith is submerged.

We are not speaking here in the name of the Christian faith, but as a human observer. What is their story of the Vow of Amitabha? ^¹4 And what is this Amida himself? What is this phantasmagoria of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in which he figures? What, finally is all this great machinery, half mythological, half metaphysical, of the Mahayana? He who adheres to the Christian mystery does not have either, it is true, direct evidence. His adhesion is an act of faith. At least he trusts to precise, dated, explicit testimonies, whose value he is enabled to appreciate. But here, what shadow of a guarantee do we find? We cannot even appeal vaguely for it to Sakyamuni’s authority, for it is too evident that, despite the constant care which they show to be connected with him, the works in which all these marvels are to be read have nothing to do with the Sakyamuni of history. The objection of the Hinayanists remains invincible: “Show us in our canon”, the author of the Kathavatthu said to the Mahayanists, “the name and tradition of these Buddhas whom you wish to impose on us!” The expedient of the “extensions” or mystical fissures introduced into the thread of our common life without the profane perceiving them, is plainly able to convince only those who are already converted to the preaching of our Sutras. When one has patiently investigated the origins, and, bit by bit, drawn up an inventory of the dossier of Amidism taken on its own word, whatever the scantiness of the results obtained, and whatever the obscurities which remain, one is sure, in any case, of having analysed, beautiful perhaps though it be, only a grand dream.

The contrast in situation with the Christian revelation is more profound. For Christ does not profess to be, as does the herald of Amida, the announcer of a fabulous history and an imaginary Heaven. He is, he says himself, in his humanity the Image of the invisible God. He is his own witness to himself. He presents himself - we continue to speak as a simple observer - as the object of the faith which he preaches. Even that which, from him, must be believed, is not without roots in our human soil, and the most unbelieving account, if it is not inaccessible to spiritual values, cannot fail to enter into a kind of admiring, helpless amazement before some great acts, in each of which the Christian newness is expressed: such as, following close upon the preaching, so brief, and the death of Christ, the extraordinary sloughing of what Christians name the Old Testament in the New Testament; such again as the immediate interpretation of the Fact of Christ effected by those two geniuses of a type entirely apart, St. Paul and St. John. The historian can also indeed patiently seek out the origin, more or less remote, of each of the elements which were employed by these two great interpreters or their emulators, and at first by Jesus himself, in order to encompass the traits of his figure and divine work. He can discover one by one the various human sources of all this stock of ideas, images and, if you like, myths. But whatever the result of his work of analysis, one essential fact that Christ has, the most really, the most historically, the most incontestably in the world, produced on some of those who saw him and conversed with him, or who discerned the prodigious commotion produced deep in hearts through his passing, an impression so powerful, that those men have not had too much of all this stock of ideas, images and myths, to try to make understood what he was in himself and for us. ^¹5

There is nothing in Buddhism which really resembles this Fact of Christ. It is a matter here of a unique fact, the most tangible of facts - the documents which yield it to us in its complexity are still all bubbling with a contagious life - at the same time as the most charged with ontological density; of a fact, furthermore, in relation to which, in the Christian vision of the universe, everything is ordered, hierarchically arranged and, so to speak, valorised in taking its exact proportions. The thoughtful Buddhist believes in no such thing, and does not feel the need to believe in any such thing. His spiritual life rests on wholly other principles. Also this is only a contrast that we are sketching, and not a refutation. But it is permissible, without abandoning the hope that we have mentioned, to experience a feeling of sadness in thinking of these “common people” of Amidism whose belief is in fact such a deception. ^¹6

In thinking again of many of them, we can also think that Amidism was on many occasions of quite mediocre quality. The disdain with which a number of Buddhists have overwhelmed it is not all intellectual disdain. It often became in the course of centuries, principally in China, a simple and popular cult, which had no longer much Buddhistic about it, and as well could often be hardly worthy of the name of religious. With it, mythology took precedence of spirituality, imagination of interiority. Without refining on universal suffering and without concerning themselves about a Nirvana too pure and subtle, many have quite simply sought the continuation of existence close to the Buddha of long life (Amitayus, Wou-liang-cheou-Fo), as others beside them sought it close to the Queen of the West (Si-wang-mou), “original Breath of the Great Yin”. Both groups were greedy for the same “peaches of immortality”. The Pure Land of the first and the Paradise of the Immortals of the second had become interchangeable; their respective origins, Buddhist and Taoist, were no more than a matter for the learned. ^¹7

Pure religion or superstition, soaring of the soul or defeat of the spirit, spiritual progress in a sense which would bring it close to Christianity or simple “deviation” from the old Buddhist ideal through the effects of “intellectual indolence” and “weakness of religious conscience”^¹8, it is a fact in any case that Amidism has been able to respond, whatever the quality of this response, to certain aspirations of the human soul which classical Buddhism ignores, disdains or mortifies. Now these same aspirations are taken into Christianity, which ratifies while transmuting them. Certain historians have even explained in this way the small success which Christian preaching met with in the regions of Japan where the Jodo was most firmly established: as if, in advance, the place had been taken. ^¹9 For China, as we saw in the preceding chapter, missionaries have proposed an analogous explanation.

But whatever the case may be with popular Amidism, the theory, known to cultivated minds, is certainly less simple. It is very different and is going to take us very far from Christianity. Two things, however, could mislead us here. On the one hand, we must take into account the practical necessity which every translator faces of rendering by the words of our religious vocabulary, entirely impregnated with Christian ideas, formulas whose meanings or at least whose harmonies are never quite the same. “There is nothing so fallacious as this transposition of the terms of one religion to another.” ^²0 On the other hand, more than one modern Amidist, notably in the Shin-Shu sect, has undergone Christian influences or endeavoured, speaking for Westerners, to present his faith by way of Christian analogies. Some call Amida “Creator” and “Father”, or else explain his role according to the idea of salvation through Jesus Christ.^²1

At the beginning of this century, a propaganda work, the Shinshu hyakywa, presented an Amidism very modernized and all tinged with Christianity. ^²2 The Bonze Tada Kanai, about 1910, thoroughly pushed this tendency. ^²3 In 1926, M.J. Takakusu spoke to us of “St. Shinran”.^²4

Still in the same sect, another author, Hyakuzo Kurak showed the source of the religion in the fact that he who loves cannot remain alone but aspires to be united to an eternally beloved being. ^²5 Yet another expressed his satisfaction at meeting in the gospels many traits coinciding, he said, with the ideal of his own faith, etc. ^²6 Most often this is a matter of only a superficial glaze, and the parallels which would be really significant are illusory. Not less illusory are the analogies imagined by some comparatists, such as Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, in a spirit of universal concordism. To compare, for example, Amitabha with the “Father” who draws us to Him, Sakyamuni to the “Son” whom He has sent to us, Avalokitesvara to the “Holy Spirit” through whom He is accessible to us, is not shed any light: it is on the contrary to confuse everything. ^²7 It finally comes about, it seems, that in reporting the sayings of the most celebrated Amidists, certain European translators let themselves be influenced, albeit unconsciously, by one or another evangelical saying, in the mould of which they naturally shape their sentence.

These considerations incite us to caution. Moreover, Amidist writers consider themselves to react, and we cannot set their testimony aside. Through the doctrine which founds it, the cult of Amida assumes a signification which takes from it all essential resemblance to the Christian religion ^²8 - at the same time however as it makes of it quite another thing than a vulgar religion or a simple agglomeration of superstitions. This cult thus recovers its place inside Buddhism; it re-enters Buddhist orthodoxy.

At first, the rigorous doctrine of karma, despite appearances, remains intact. It is through the force of his own karma that the future Amitabha has projected his Western Paradise. Besides, a thing of more immediate importance, each person will benefit from it only in accordance with the law of his own karma. This is what Kia-t’sai explained very well, in the seventh Century:

“In the matter of salvation, the fact that some are able to think of Amida and invoke him, and others not, is a consequence of anterior karma. If a being’s karma does not allow him salvation when death comes, all efforts to save this being will be in vain. Even Buddha Amitabha is powerless to save him. For one does not draw water from a dry straw, and one does not kindle the wet straw.

“Every awakening of conscience is the effect of karma. If, on his death bed, an exhorted sinner willingly implores Amitabha’s protection, that comes to him from a reserve of good karma acquired in his prior existences: he is ripe. Whereas if a sinner, likewise exhorted, does not understand and does not want, it is because he is not yet ripe.” ^²9

Reflections doubtless in conformity with the most prevalent good sense, based on a too common experience. But this dry straw from which Amida himself cannot draw water scarcely resembles those desert stones from which the all-powerful God is able to raise up when He so pleases sons to Abraham, and the spiritual universe dominated by the idea of maturation is scarcely compatible either with the one who gives a place of honour to the sudden invasions of converting grace. Nothing in it brings to mind, nothing in it allows what the Psalmist names “the change of the Right Hand of the Most High”. ^³0 In Amidism as everywhere else in Buddhism, if one can apparently “cheat” karma, even that is still a product of karma. To change a man’s karma is the first of the three things which no Buddha can do. ^³1 No fissure, therefore, in this iron law. And from where could a veritable forgiveness come to the sinner?

The doctrine explained so clearly by Kia-ts’ai finds a perfect warranty in the teaching of the great Nagarjuna, who wrote in his Treatise on the Perfect Wisdom:

Question: If the Buddha, once having entered the state of concentration (samadhi) of the Lion’s Play, proceeds in such a way that the damned, ghosts, animals and eight other difficult conditions are liberated and reborn in the abode of the Caturmaharajikas Gods, and even in that of the Paranirmitasavartins, is there still any need to acquire merits and practise goodness in order to obtain the fruit of reward?

Answer: We have said above that the beings of great merit have seen the rays of the Buddha and thus found salvation; those whose transgressions and defilements were profound only arrived at understanding at the moment when the earth quaked. When the sunrise lights up a lotus pool, the ripe lotuses at once open, while the young shoots do not yet open; likewise, when the Buddha casts his rays, beings of accomplished merit and sharpened knowledge immediately attain liberation, whereas others, etc. When a fruit-tree is shaken, the ripe fruit fall first, etc. ^³2

Always this idea of maturation, associated with the idea of karma. Honen, it is true, appears to contest them, in a reply which Shunjo reports, and that shows once more his tendency to escape from the circle in which Buddhist principles hold him enclosed. But in him this is only a practical tendency, and the theory is not shaken by it. Indeed, if we look closely into the matter, we perceive that he refuses only to admit that rebirth, fruit of the Nembutsu, is the fruit of merits acquired in prior existences; on the Nembutsu itself considered as a fruit, he is silent. ^³3 Hence we do not see that he is opposed to what T’an-louan said: “If certain people do not have the strength or deliberate lucidity to invoke Amida at their death, that has to be, their karma being taken into account: they are not yet ripe”. T’an-luan concluded: “Karma is a brute force, which does not tolerate any benign interpretation.” ^³4

It is therefore not without a little of the bad faith inherent in all propaganda, or at least not without the use of some reservation in the exposition of the truth, that the author of the Sutra of the Meditation of Amitayus represented Sakyamuni as saying, at the moment of completing his work: “O Ananda, this Sutra can also be called the Sutra on the total removal of the obstacle of karma (karmavarana-visuddhi).” The Long Sutra was more sincere when, after the explanations given by Sakyamuni on the condition of the inhabitants of Sukhavati, it had Ananda say: “O Blessed One! The maturation of acts and the recompense of acts, that passes understanding!” ^³5 Such a focussing carry us very far, despite first appearances - and despite the persistence of certain similarities on the plane of concrete psychology - from the Lutheran doctrine. They carry us no less far from the Catholic theology of merit and grace, salvation through redemption, repentance and hope. Amida does not say, like the God of the Bible:

He never said veritably to any sinner, like Jesus: “Go, your sins are forgiven you.” ^³7

Every Amidist also knows well, even if he is without culture, that his Buddha is not a God in any sense whatever, and not one has the notion of calling him God in the sense which the Christians give to this name. Nor is there any who makes of him a mediator between God and men; not even an Isvara, a “Lord”, in the Hindu sense of the word. Not one is entirely ignorant of the story which a very popular Sutra relates of him, the story of the Vow that he expressed, long before becoming a Buddha, at the time when he was called Dharmakara. This Vow was supported on the innumerable anterior merits whose projecting energy did not depend on any divinity, so that the Pure Land and the right of entry for each person are, on this score again, wholly ruled by karma, although freely interpreted thanks to the “transfer of merits”. In this regard, the case of Amida is the same as that of Sakyamuni, who also accumulates “during hundreds of thousands of aeons” an “abundant store of roots of good”, in order to benefit by it those who are “devoted to him”:

Amida is therefore no exception to all the beings about whom it is exclaimed with astonishment: “These great sovereign Buddhas have been flies and grubs!” ^³9

If he is somewhat reflective, every Amidist knows well, besides, that the Western Paradise, taken literally, is not yet Liberation. It is attained only, as Nagarjuna previously said, as a sure stage - in the career of the Bodhisattva, each Bhumi marks a stage - when the karma with which one is affected does not yet incline to complete illumination. ^⁴0 “It is a hard undertaking”, said Honen, “to become a Buddha; but it is easy to be born in the Pure Land”. ^⁴1 Doubtless such a Paradise is not a wretched dream in the manner of the Svargas, one of those dreams from which one will have to be awoken one day by suddenly finding oneself in an inferior condition again. It is not either like the Palace of Brahma, which is burnt up with the world each time the world is burnt up, at the end of the kalpa.^⁴2 But if the Long Sutra tells us in one place, in an emphatic manner, that its inhabitants are as happy as a Bhikshu who has just attained Nirvana, it specifies almost immediately that this happiness comes to them from the fact that their hope is henceforward firm and untroubled. ^⁴3 If therefore rebirth in the Pure Land is an incomparable advantage for the faithful man, it is less through the joys that it bestows on him than through the certitude it brings him. He knows that henceforward, in his advance to Nirvana, there will be no more regression: “O Sariputra, of all the beings who are born in Sukhavati, not one will backslide any more.” ^⁴4 Even he who sojourns on earth again to help in the salvation of others, will not be caught up anew in the cycle of birth and death. ^⁴5 He has indeed finished with this wearying course through the three worlds and the five destinies, with these illusive ascents up to the ethereal regions of the Arupyadhatu, followed by fresh falls down to the gloomier abodes of the Kamadhatu. ^⁴6 Distant as he may yet be, the goal no longer ceases to be in sight.

This enables us to understand more fundamentally how easily fallacious are the comparisons attempted between the thought of the Amidist masters and the thought of a Luther, as indeed with any other witness for Christian thought. No doubt, the simplification of the religious apparatus, the total trust in Amida, the deliverance from the anguish of sin, and among the extreme Amidists, the rejection of works, of monachism and contemplation, find very exact parallels in our own religious history. Doubtless also, it is easy to comment on the nembutsu by the words of Joel: “Whoever will invoke the Name of the Lord will be saved”, or by those of St. Paul: “If your lips avow that Jesus is Lord . . . you will be saved”; it is easy to apply to the opposition of the Jiriki and the Tiriki the teaching of the third chapter of the Epistle to the Romans on justification by faith. ^⁴7

None of that is unimportant. This essential fact forgotten however, that the principal occupation of Amida, in the centre of the Land where he reigns, is to preach.

According as in the faith of the Buddhists of China, Sakyamuni gave way or was dimmed before Amitabha, the Assembly of the Law changed into Paradise. Nevertheless this Paradise has never ceased to be still an Assembly of the Law. The Happy Land still corresponds to Vultures Peak. It also corresponds to the Tusita heaven, where Maitreya delivers the Law under the tree of dragon flowers. The three Amidist Sutras are as explicit and also insistent as possible on this subject. The Buddhas of the four cardinal points, like those of the intermediate points, do not cease to preach in the entire world. Amitayus is an Arhat, and he preaches. ^⁴8

And the main occupation of the beings assembled around him is to be taught. In this regard, we must also avoid pressing too far the comparisons which we evoked with the paintings of a Fra Angelico or the poems of a St. Ephraim. They could be usefully corrected by appealing to another Christian work, the Roman mosaic of Saint Pudentienne^⁴9; the place where Christ is sitting is in some sort intermediary between the heaven of eternity, depicted in the upper part, and the mountain of the Beatitudes; already Christ is seated in the majesty of his glory, but he still teaches beings on the path; his Apostles, who surround him, are already of the elect, the first two among them have already received the crown, and nevertheless they still learn and prepare to preach in their turn the Gospel to the world. . .

But, as this unique masterpiece differs completely, in style and composition, from the frescoes of Sukhavati, the respective themes of the two preachings, that of Christ and that of Amida, also completely differs.

We know the message of Christ, which is summed up wholly in Him. What does Amida preach, for his part, if not universal Buddhism, eternal Buddhism? He no longer applies himself to hold on him the mind of his listeners, he no longer tells them that the spirit of awakening is concentrated in the spirit of faith, he no longer asks them for an act of devoted trust in his person: that is all accomplished, and has borne its fruit. But they are not at the end for all that. Now that they are here assembled in his mystical school, he delivers to them a teaching whose object goes beyond him. He gives way before the Doctrine. The Canonical Texts tell it to us: he explains in their profoundest signification the three Jewels, the Four Noble Truths, the five supernatural faculties, the six Perfections, the seven degrees of knowledge, the Eightfold Path (path of eight branches), the twelve divisions of the Scriptures, the way of Nirvana. His two great attendants and all the other Bodhisattvas aid him in his task. As soon as a lotus half-opens its flower on the sacred lake, the soul which rises from it sees them before her who expound to her at once the mysteries of “the wonderful law”. ^⁵0 To his preaching, the heavenly birds, swans, curlews, peacocks, regularly lend their assistance: three times each day and three times each night, they give together an instructive concert. Their song, resounding in the soul, causes to arise in it the recollection of Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. The music of the waters itself, a music “melodious and pleasing”, arising from all the rivers, does not cease to proclaim the great carrier words of supreme peace: “suffering, impermanence, impersonality, (an-atman), void (vacuity), calm, Nirvana”.^⁵1

Finally, despite the little philosophical development he may have, the more thoughtful Amidist knows in addition that the Amida whom he invokes keeps up for the time being the aspect of a personal saviour only for the vulgar, and is in reality, like all the other Buddhas, only a relative manifestation of the Absolute. He knows that in this Absolute, in this “Everlasting” - it is one of the names of Nirvana, and it is also used to designate Amida ^⁵2 - the paradise and its Buddha are no longer distinguished from one another. ^⁵3 Doubtless the Christian himself says something analogous. Without needing for this any training in technical reflection, he has only to give himself over to the movement of his faith and hope. He then proclaims, with Origen or Ruysbroeck, that all Heaven is for him in Christ, because Christ is himself this Kingdom of which He is King, himself the Tree of Life, himself the “living Paradise”. ^⁵4

With the legion of mystics, he refuses to receive from God any good separated from this sole good which is God himself. ^⁵5 With Hadewijch, the Flemish mystic, he sees Him who is enthroned in the heavens make only one with those heavens. ^⁵6 He sets his dwelling place, with Surin^⁵7, in “the limitless space, the immensity of being which is God”. He exclaims with Bossuet^⁵8: “O Eternity, you are only in God, but rather, O Eternity, you are very God!” Like the Buddhist again, the Christian knows that the Absolute, free from everything, pervades everything, “present everywhere like the subtle fire”. ^⁵9 but the resemblance, here also, is deceptive. For in the one case and in the other, we see immediately, the direction of the thought is contrary. In Christianity, indeed, it is so to speak heaven which is absorbed into God. The “Paradise of God” gives way finally, like a final theophany, before the “God of Paradise”: “prôton men Paradeisos, O Theos”. ^⁶0 In Buddhism on the contrary, it is the Buddha who, in so far as being distinct and personal, is reabsorbed into an Absolute transcending all knowledge and letting itself be somewhat described allusively only in terms of void and space. ^⁶1 The “King of the Dharma” (Dharmaraja) gives way before the sphere or place of the Dharma (Dharma-dhatu). As Noritake Tsuda says, if the vulgar honour Amida as the Lord of Pure Land, localised somewhere, very far off, in the West, he who is not content with these fancies understands that the personage of Amida is only the symbol or the incarnation of Light and Eternity. ^⁶2

Up to the limit of mystical aspirations and thought, the personalism of the Christian faith is affirmed and triumphs. For the Christian, Eternity is one of the names of God, like Truth or Justice; for the Buddhist, and for the Amidist himself, it does not turn out thus, even when these names appear interchangeable with the name of a Buddha: for the meaning of the relationship is otherwise. “No original Buddha! No unique Buddha!” This cry of Asanga, the leader of the mystical Yogacara school, is that of Amidism as well. “No creator God!” Amidism repeats after its two Indian patriarchs, Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu. That is why, when he pronounces the sacred name, the inner attitude of the thoughtful Amidist is not the same as that of the Christian in prayer, and the words of prayer and invocation, which we have used like everybody else, express this attitude only in a very approximate manner. ^⁶4 We have to do with two spiritual universes which do not meet.

In short, when Amida appears in his personal aspect, he is, by his origin and role, only a being essentially like all of us, and one can speak, in recalling the story of his “original vow”, of the euhemerism in which the Pure Land Sutras, like so many other Mahayanist Sutras, take delight. When, on the contrary, he takes on vaster proportions, becomes a supernatural being and seems to begin to put on a divine dignity, it is only to vanish at last like a phantom and to dissolve into a cosmical principle in the midst of which his personality is not sublimated but abolished. This principle is indeed, like the Zeus of the orphic verse, “the beginning, middle and end” of everything, but it is so void, so evanescent, that we are not astonished that the former missionaries, seeking the analogy which would enable them to grasp it, have designated it as the materia prima of their own philosophy. Aristotle himself had translated thus the Apeiron of Anaximander. He had not in this way done justice to the thought of his predecessor, and the Catholic missionaries did not render entire justice either to the endeavour of Buddhist thought. Perhaps however the error in interpretation of these missionaries was, all things considered, less than that of Aristotle. ^⁶5

The fact, in any case, is evident: to the degree that we enter into the underlying doctrine of Amidism, we see disappearing into it all truly essential differences from the other forms of the Mahayana, while between Christianity, and it the gap becomes wider in proportion. This will become clearer still if we give our attention to some aspects of the thought of the Amidist masters which up till now have been able to remain in shadow, especially in what has to do with the true relation between Amida and his faithful.

When the learned Monk Kosai, expelled as we have seen from the original community of the Jodo-Shu, founded in 1204 the ephemeral sect called “of the sole thought”, he conceived this thought not as a simple emanation of the soul aspiring to a concrete, personal and living being, but as the taking consciousness, by itself definitive, of an intimate identity with the original Amida, the absolute Amida, that is, with the hidden principle of which the represented or imaged Amida was only the symbol or means to an end: with the “primordial intelligence which fills the universe and exists in the heart of all living beings”; in short, with very Buddhahood. That, in Kosai, was a heritage from the Tendai sect to which he had at first belonged and whose syncretism and immanentist tendency we have noted. But we must not think this case unique. In fact, despite Honen’s reprobation, in the very century which followed his death, the same “heresy” was revived. For Ippen Shonin, Founder of another dissident sect, the Ji-Shu, “The Namu Amida Butsu is itself rebirth, and this rebirth is non-birth”; it is useless therefore to seek further or higher: “There is only the name of the Buddha Amida, and beyond it there exists neither him who pronounces it nor him whom this name designates. Beyond it there is no rebirth. All things are qualities included in the body of the very name of the Buddha.” ^⁶6

Kosai and Ippen were both considered heretics. The second was stamped by Zen, as the first by the Tendai. Both however only made explicit a thought which was absolutely peculiar neither to the Tendai nor Zen. It was previously that of Ryonin, the founder of the Yuzumen-Butsushu. And this thought is found as well, although usually less formally expressed there, in the Shin-Shu. The great seat founded by Shinran is distinguished above all, we have seen, by its exclusive cult of Amida, the radicalism of its faith, its passionate negation of every kind, of every shadow of “self power”. But if we look at it closely, we perceive that these traits so marked are of value only for the practical order and on the plane of relative truth. Thus it is that, according to the explanations of Rennyo Shonin, founded on those of Zonkaku (1290 - 1373), the invocation of Amida alone implies the invocation of all the Buddhas, who all have in him their common source, and not only all the Buddhas, but all the Shinto divinities, since these are in reality Buddhas; such is the reason, added Rennyo why the cult practised in the Shin-Shu is a true national cult; its apparent exclusiveness is not negative, but on the contrary fully comprehensive, and if the devotee of Amida is not to invoke any other, it is because all the others are present in Amida alone. Let us also recall that, for Shinran himself, the Pure Land is not distinct, in reality, from Nirvana. It is not a stage towards illumination, but very illumination. Now the latter is by no means transferred to the future: it is produced in the very act of the nembutsu. “There is no need”, taught Shinran, “for you to wait for the last moment of your existence for a numerous assembly of Buddhas to descent to welcome you.” Trust in the original Vow is infallible, since the blessed rebirth is none other than the trusting heart itself. Through the effect of the invocation of Amida in a sentiment of compassion which writes with his, the “Supreme Truth” is attained, which is none other than the unsubstantiality of the Buddha and beings apparently profane (Butsubonittai). ^⁶7

It was in conformity with this teaching of the founder that some faithful followers of the sect declared, in the sixteenth Century, before those who wanted to attract them to the Christian faith: “In putting our trust in the Vow made by Amida, we hope in this life to attain salvation and become Buddhas.” ^⁶8 And this is also why the modern theoraticians and apologists of the Shin-Shu can, without falsifying the doctrine, set themselves to show that this religion of salvation is at the same time, like all Buddhism, a religion of illumination, and that the affirmation so distinct and exclusive of “other power” is not in any way opposed, properly understood, to the recognition of a “self power”. Just as Nirvana is none other, in absolute truth, than Samsara, so, still in absolute truth, the Tariki is none other than the Jiriki, and even there is no other way of affirming the Jiriki in all its definitive force than by professing the Tariki. The “original Vow” is not an external and temporal act, it is the expression of a profound will, which is not different from mine. Therefore the more I entrust myself to the sole power of the Buddha Amida, the more I really base myself on my own power and will, the sole one which is truly mine beyond my illusory personality, in the ultimate, timeless region, in which the particularities of Amida disappear like mine in order to make room for our identity in the absolute.

This kind of dialectical reversal, this transition from the same into the other, founded on the doctrine of the planes of truth, is frequent in Buddhism. Nowhere perhaps is it more paradoxical than in Shinran’s posterity, because the apparent opposition between the two contraries which we are about to see identified with each other does not exist only on the plane of ideas, but on the plane of the most concrete and deeply engaged spiritual life. We must, however, indeed admit it as a fact. “The ultimate belief which justifies the teaching of the Shin-Shu”, says for example M. Gesho Sasaki, “has without doubt nothing to do with an objectivism nor with a subjectivism”, for it posits “the truth of a concrete synthesis in the I and the Thou in the illumined spirit (enlightened mind) of the Buddha”; the I and the Thou are in reciprocal inclusion. ^⁶9 And M.D.T. Suzuki, quoting an ancient work of the sect: “Amida and ourselves are united so as to form a single one; the one cannot be separated from the other, even for a moment, so that each of our thoughts is a thought of Amida, and each of our breaths is emitted by his virtue. Let us be separate even while being one, and let us be one in the separation, or to speak in more personal terms, let Amida be his own saviour, in saving others; here in truth is the mystery of mysteries.” “Psychologically”,

M. Suzuki says further, “the assurance on the part of living beings of being the objects of the original Vow, is identical with the enlightenment on the part of Amida himself. Such is the idea which is at the base of the doctrine of the Tariki. In this doctrine, the enlightenment attained by oneself, as the Buddhists of former generations understood it, has taken the form of faith in an enlightenment of Amida.” ^⁷0

Can it be said that it was precisely Shinran who had disquieted the keepers of the orthodoxy of the Jodo? Would not they have scented, so to speak, in his attitude the shaking of belief in a real Amida, in a real Pure Land, in a real soul of each person? Were they not right to distrust a showy objectivism which was at bottom only the most daring of subjectivisms, and is not the party of the Ryukwans and the Shokobus thus justified in having expelled Shinran, in order to preserve in its simplicity the faith which they held from Honen? - But in reality the case of the Jodo itself is not unlike the case of the Jodo-Shin. Ryoyo Shozei, who was at the beginning of the sixteenth Century the seventh successor of Honen, explained emphatically that the transfer of the soul to paradise, its rebirth in a lotus, and all the other details, are only figures of speech; in fact, he said, neither the beings of the nine categories, nor the venerable Saints, nor Amida himself are to be conceived as existing in the Pure Land, seeing that this is not a particular place: it is the symbol of the ultimate and absolute reality, it is the unique (sole) reality, everywhere present, so that we are able to be identified with it everywhere, wherever we are. ^⁷1

It is possible, true enough, to express the opinion that Ryoyo Shozei imparted a new orientation to the Jodo. But he was not without warrant. The fidelity of a Zennebo to the thought of Honen has never given rise to suspicion. Now Zennebo already professed a doctrine analogous to that of the Ryoyo Shozei, a doctrine which he expressed by using classical comparisons. “When a piece of dry wood catches fire,” he said, “the fire rapidly consumes the wood, and once all the wood has become embers, it can no longer be said whether it is fire or wood; it can be called fire quite as well as wood. The piece of dry wood is the image of mortal beings, incapable by themselves of any good work, capable only of committing transgressions. When, putting their trust in Amida, they give themselves over to him, then Amida enters their heart and his illumination (enlightenment) becomes their enlightenment. Likewise again, everywhere where there is water, the moon is reflected in it, and in this reflection moon and water are inseparable. Thus rebirth is attained when Amida enters our heart, and when our works have become his and when his have become ours. It is then the unity of Amida and ourselves.” ^⁷2

If we go back as far as Honen, we shall discern finally that he has developed his personal and apparently personalist religion only on the ground of thought common to all the Mahayana, the monistic ground “which is the spiritual and mental element uniform for every believing Buddhist”. ^⁷3 He contested no more than any other this ground of thought. He did not absolutely call it in question any more than either Samsara, for example, or karma. He judged only that it is accessible, as spiritual intuition, only to beings endowed with superior qualities, and not, at least immediately, to ordinary mortals such as we nearly all are in these centuries of decadence. No more than any other did he take Amida for a saviour God, or for an intercessor close to some supreme God. In conformity with the teaching of his favourite Sutra, he formally taught that in having recourse to him we must not disdain any other of the innumerable Buddhas, and that in reality we do not forsake any of them, for “he who acquires the perception of Amitayus sees at the same stroke these innumerable Buddhas.” Despite the charges that Nichiren was to bring against him, he rated the Lotus of the True Law very highly; he also cited as an authority the Hanju Zammai (Pratyutpanna-Sutra), and he did not disdain either to explain the Keyon-ko (Avatamsaka-Sutra); his legend even relates that by the accent of profound sincerity which he brought to it, he called forth the admiration of the divine Dragon. During his stay in exile in Sanuki, he made pilgrimages to all the holy places of the places of the province, notably to the Zentsuji, one of the principal Shingon Temples. When the nun Awataguchi saw him in a dream, two months after his death, in the guise of the God Hachimen, such a vision had nothing in it to disconcert those whose guide he had been, and the account which the Nun gave of it engendered only edification. ^⁷4 In recalling these things, one will appreciate, while giving to them due weight, the two following facts: on the one hand, the fact that Honen did not condemn any sect as though his own taught theoretically the sole way of salvation^⁷5, and on the other the fact that he felt himself in a profound identity with Amida, by the means of his manifestation in Seishi. One of the classic books of his sect was to teach also that the nembutsu leads to an ecstasy in which all duality of the spirit of the faithful follower and the spirit of Amida is effaced. ^⁷6

If therefore, better than others, Honen appears to escape from the universal ground of Buddhism and to approach somewhat our own religious conceptions, it is solely by reason of his systematic pragmatism, which forbade him ever to leave completely the plane of relative truth. “I invoke a personal Buddha,” he affirmed, “and I maintain that his invocation suffices, without the addition of philosophy.” ^⁷7 It was sufficient for him also to know that, thanks to the original Vow, all beings are able to acquire the capacity of becoming Buddhas in their turn; the theoretical question of knowing besides if each person, by the simple fact that he exists, possesses or not in himself the “Buddha nature” - a Buddhist analogue of what not long ago was called among us the problem of immanence, and which we are going to meet again soon. - this question appeared to him without interest. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that his practical belief implied in fact an affirmative response. The Meditation Sutra had sufficiently taught him that each person must realise the Buddha in his heart. ^⁷8 In the month before his death, he made this reply to a disciple who asked him if he was truly assured of his salvation: “I came from the Pure Land, and I am making ready to return there” ^⁷9

Also, as soon as the explanation comes to light, we see it substantially the same everywhere. Even in Honen, Buddhist liberation is an unveiling rather than an act; it is a taking consciousness rather than a change or reception. If we take the two words as symbols of two opposed conceptions, we shall say that it is an enlightenment, not a salvation.

1 W. Corswant, Salvation by faith in the Japanese Buddhism of the Great Vehicle, in Review of Theology and Philosophy, (Lausanne), 1941, pp. 113 - 114.

4 Ibid, pp. 92 - 93. “The Shin sect has given a special value to the term Daibodaishin, which generally only adds to the idea of Bodaishin the value of superiority which the teaching of the Great Vehicle confers on it. According to Shinran, the Daibodaishin is a fourth Spirit of Awakening which is superposed on the three others: it consists in belief in the Transference of the power of the Vow of Amida . . .”

5 Digha nikaya, XVI, 2, 26. There in fact is a “strange contradiction with the teaching of Gautama”: Charles Eliot, Hinduism and Buddhism, vol. 3, p. 351. C.B. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, The Development of the Pure Land Doctrine in Buddhism, loc. cit., p. 285: “How much of the Pure Land (Jodo) idea is deducible from the teaching of primitive Buddhism so called, or from the personality of Sakyamuni Buddha himself”?

9 C.B. I.Tsing, Report on religion . . . , cp. 32, speaking of “to live in future in Sukhavati always” (translated S. Takakusu, p. 162).

1⁰ St. Bernard, Sermon 33 on the Song of Songs, n. 6 (translated Albert Beguin); and sermon 26, n. 1: “Lumen incircumscriptum”.

1³ Acts, XVII, 27 - 28. C.B. L. Wieger, art. China, col. 863: “The Chinese Buddha is so dehumanized, so etherealized, so aureoled with divine attributes, that he blinds into the God of conscience, and is only an imprecise name to designate Him. . .” See too Thomas Ohm, Die Liebe zu Gott in den nichtchristlichen Religiones, (Munchen, 1950), pp. 281 - 287 and 458 - 459.

1⁴ We wonder what indeed signifies the question raised by M.D.T. Suzuki, Essays on Zen Buddhism, vol. 3, p. 196, of knowing what thought Amitabha had exactly in mind when he wanted his Name to resound through the whole universe. Is not this to drive the accommodation of language to the point of nonsense?

1⁶ Part of the contrast we are seeking to show can be evoked by these words of the Apostle John: “Quod manus nostrae contrectaverunt de Verbo vitas . . .”, (I Jo. I.I), or by those of Saint Bernard, Sermo de Aquaeductu: “Verbum caron fatum est, it habitat jem in nobis. Habitat in memoria nostra, habitat in cogitatione, quia usque and ipsam descendit imaginationem. . .”

1⁷ Henri Maspero, op. cit, pp. 66 and 78; Taoism, p. 36; and in Illustrated Asiatic Mythology, p. 237. C.B. Kokka, May 1912, p. 244: “It is doubtful how far such teaching found acceptance among the more intelligent people . . .”

1⁸ C.B. Paul Oltramare, Buddhist Theosophy, p. 424. A.K. Reischauer, op. cit., pp. 256 and 259. Ebisawa-Arimichi, Relation between the Ethics of Bushido and Christianity, in Cultural Nippon, vol. VII, (1939), p. 4: “In a word, the Buddhist devotees of those days actuated by their egoistic desires, sought to attain salvation only through the benevolence of Amida Buddha.”

1⁹ G.B. Sansom, The Western World and Japan, (1950), p. 133: “It seems that the Pure Land teaching satisfied some essential need of the times, which were full of hardship and danger, specially for those in the lower ranks of society, whose lives were wretched. It is perhaps significant that in those parts of Japan where the Jodo sect was most firmly established, there were few converts to Christianity, presumably because believers in Pure Land Buddhism found it a satisfying faith.”

2² C.B. Noel Peri, in Bulletin of the French School of the Far East, vol. XI, (1911), p. 223. G.B. Sansom, The Western World and Japan, pp. 477 - 478. H. H. Coates, op. cit., pp. XLIV - XLVIII, etc.

2³ Some of his addresses have been translated by Haas (Amida Buddha Unsere Zuflucht), and by Lloyd (The Praises of Amida, Tokyo, 1907).

2⁷ Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism, p. 248: “The parallel with some forms of Christianity is very close. Amitabha both “draws” men to himself and “sent” his son Gautama to lead men to him, and he is every accessible through the holy spirit of Avalokitesvara”, etc. Previously, R.F. Johnston, Buddhist China, (1913), p. 103. C.B. infra, note 63.

2⁸ Shidzutoshi Sugihira, The Pure Land Doctrine as illustrated in Shoku’s “Plain-wood” Nembutsu, in The Eastern Buddhist, vol. VI, 1932, p. 23: “It seems to us that there is a universal miscomprehension in the West concerning the nature of Pure Land Buddhism, interpreting it as a King of salvation in its Christian form, etc.”

2⁹ Translated Leon Wieger in Amidism. . ., p. 26 (seventh Century). Kia-t’sai only extends to prior existences, according to the doctrine universally received in Buddhism, the Law which Honen will recall to mind in order to put on guard impenitent sinners (C.B. supra, ch. VIII).

3¹ There are three things a Buddha cannot do: change or stop karma; save beings not destined to it; empty the world of all sentient beings. C.B. Charles Eliot, Japanese Buddhism, p. 388.

3² First Part, ch. 14 (translated Et. Lamotte, vol. I, pp. 479 - 480). C.B. the pseudo-Asvaghosa: “Those who invoke the Buddhas whole-heartedly as a consequence of their karma” (quoted supra, ch. 2).

3³ Shunjo, ch. 23, (pp. 430 - 431). Shunjo himself, relating the conversion of Sikaku, attributes it to the good karma inherited from a previous life: ch. 17, (p. 326).

3⁴ In L. Wieger, Amidism, p. 24. The first translator of the Sukhavativyuha concluded: “Everything in this world is the result of karma; a natural law, inevitable, inexorable, which rules all that exists between Heaven and Earth, a universal law, whose origin is a mystery” (ibid, p. 11). In the following translation made by Chu-k’ien, genies inscribe the reckoning of good and bad actions, as in the Treatises of the Tao: “a concession made to the Chinese surroundings”. (L. Wieger, p. 13). C.B. Henri Maspero, Taoism, (1950), p. 23).

3⁷ Matt, 9.2; Mk 2.5, etc. With stronger reason there is nothing in Amidism which resembles the dogma of the redemption properly so-called.

3⁸ Mahakarmavibhanga, (translated S. Levi, p. 129). Shinran. C.B. the Atsumori Nô: (Through the power of the Vow of Amida) . . . Be it as deep as the sea under the rocky strand, the sin is expiated; withdrawn from the deep, the being becomes a Buddha, and the cause of his liberation is the merit of another existence . . . (translated Noel Peri, p. 147). The idea which is expressed in these texts combines in some degree the two ideas of grace and karma. Pali Buddhism gave it a place, at the same time as it did the idea of Pure Lands. C.B. the important text quoted by Paul Mus, Barabudur, p. 802. Sumangalavilasini, commenting on the Tevijja Sutta: “The karma of the worlds of pure Form and beyond Form acts towards the world of Desire like the overflow of a great river which overlaps a little brook, does away with it, takes its place and spreads about.”

4⁸ Long Sutra, n. 16 (p. 36) and 11 (p. 28), etc. Short Sutra, n. 2 (p. 91). On this score, it is to Purgatory rather than to Heaven that Sukhavati could be compared; or again, to those Paradises of which Origen speaks in the Perierchon, II, 11, 6, where the saints, after this life, pass through various stages of instruction.

4⁹ Or even, to the “glory of St. Thomas Aquinas” in the Spanish chapel in Sainte-Marie-Nouvelle of Florence: the Saint, seated, enthroned in the open sky, his forehead emitting luminous rays, symbols of the teaching which he continues to spread around.

5¹ Short Sutra, n. 6 (pp. 95 - 96). Long Sutra, n. 18 (pp. 37 - 38). Meditation Sutra, n. 25 (p. 193). Suffering, impermanence, impersonality, are in fact already the basic teaching of the Lesser Vehicle. M. Paul Mus can say of the great compositions of Tuan-huang, as of those of Yun-kang and Long-men, and without excepting the Paradises of Amida from them, that the veritable subject of them is the Law: Barabudur, p. 599, note.

5² “Amrta”. It is the same word as “ambrosia”. C.B. pseudo-Asvaghosa (Kumalarata?) on the Sangha: “the Vessel of this Ambrosia (= of Buddha)”. Sylvain Levi. About Asvaghosa, in Asiatic Journal, vol. 215, p. 278. Brhad-Aranyaka Upanishad, 11.6: “It is Immortality, Brahman, the All”.

5³ C.B. the Bonze Mochizuki, of the Jodo, in Steinilber-Oberlin, op. cit., p. 208: “The Paradise of the Pure Land is Amida himself, who is essence, time, space, absolute wisdom.” Thus, in the Lotus, the inhabitants of the Buddha-Land are made of the same pure substance as this Land, and each one “existing by himself does not see other beings outside himself.” (Burnouf, p. 224).

5⁴ Origen, Contra Celsum: “autobasileia”. Ruysbroeck, The Mirror of Eternal Salvation, chapters 1 and 3 “this living Paradise which He is himself”, “the Kingdom of Heaven is the living Christ in us” (Works, French translation, vol. 1, third edition, 1919, pp. 48 - 49 and 67). Previously, Clement, Stromites, VI, I,: “The Saviour is our gnosis and spiritual Paradise.”

5⁵ The Cloud of Unknowing, ch. iii: “Think of God only and not of his goods”. (translated Armel Guerne, 1953, p. 22): Theodoret, Ninth Discourse on Providence! “The haven, for those who have attained the peak of virtue, is neither life, resurrection, nor anything other admirable, but that One alone, who constitutes the object of their desire.” (translated Yvan Azema, 1954, p. 286).

5⁹ To compare Surangama-Sutra, translated S. Beal, A Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, (1871), p. 335 (C.B. Paul Mus, The Buddha in regalia, p. 107) and pseudo-Denis, Heavenly Hierarchy, ch. 15, 2 “The sensible fire is so to speak present everywhere, it illumines everything without mingling with anything and while remaining totally separated. . . It envelops what it consumes, and does not let itself be enveloped by it . . . It is active, powerful, everywhere invisible and present . . .” (M. de Gandillac, p. 237; Darboy, new edition, p. 61).

6⁰ Nicetas Stethatos, Second Letter to the Sophist. C.B. Jean Danislou, Earth and Paradise in the Fathers of the Church, in Eranos-Yearbook, XXII, (1954), pp. 471 - 472: “This heavenly paradise itself finally is only a final theophany of . . . the first archetype, the trinitarian God hidden from the apophetic theology. . . The Fathers have designated the personal Pneuma as the perfume of the divine life. The Son is the archetypal Tree of Life of which that of Paradise is the sacrament. . . In the depths of the luminous darkness, the terra vera, principalis, archetype, the root of life, of which our present earth is only the final reflection, appears to us in the Father . . .”

6¹ On these relations between the idea of the absolute and the idea of space (void), C.B. Andre Baseau, The Absolute in Buddhist Philosophy, evolution of the notion of asamskata (multi-copied thesis, Paris, centre of university documentation, 1951). C.B. infra, ch. 12, note 79. Asanga, Mahayana Sutralamkara, IX, 15. The Atago-Kuya Nô says: “There is only one Buddha (whatever the name given to him), which really means: there is only the unity of the Buddhas (G. Renondeau, Buddhism in the Nô, p. 112).

6⁴ C.B. H. Nakamura, op. cit., p. 115: “The authority devotee of the nembutsu does not pray: he expresses his joy and gratitude. To pray to Amida would be contrary to his Vow.” Edward Conze, op. cit., p. 158. The Bonze Kemyo Kawasiki, in Steinilber-Oberlin, op. cit., p. 218: “The Buddhist asks nothing of Buddha: his prayer is an act of faith, of homage, an effort to purify his consciousness . . .” There is in this last text at once a modernising interpretation and a polemical point, opposing the Amidist’s homage to the self-interested demons of the Christian: “The Christian wants some benefit from God . . .”

6⁵ C.B. Weiner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, (second edition, 1948), pp. 23 - 27. Paul Mus, op. cit., p. 580.

6⁶ Texts quoted in Leon Wieger, Amidism. . ., pp. 43 - 44, and in D.T. Suzuki, Essays on Zen Buddhism, vol. 3, (Translated Rene Daumal, 1943), pp. 233 and 234. C.B. Supra, ch. 9.

6⁷ C.B. supra, ch. 9, Coates, pp. 58 - 59. R. Fujishima, Japanese Buddhism, p. 141. Hobogirin, II, pp. 197 - 198. D.T. Suzuki, op. cit., pp. 231 - 232.

6⁹ A Study of Shin Buddhism, (Kyoto, 1925), pp. 28 and 44 - 45. This idea of reciprocal inclusion thanks to the profound identify with Amida is the central idea of the work.

7⁰ The Development . . ., loc. cit., pp. 313 - 314 and 320 - 321. Such was already, in another form, the teaching of the Mahayanist Awakening of Faith, translated by M. Suzuki (p. 98): “The totality of infinite merits constitutes in fact the sole spirit, perfect in itself, which does not at all have to seek anything outside itself.”

7² It is the doctrine called Sesshu-Fusha (“to welcome” and “not to leave”). C.B. The Eastern Buddhist, V, (1929), pp. 97 -98.

7³ Coates, op. cit., pp. IX, XVI - XLVI. The author speaks on several occasions of “pantheism”. It is better, we believe, to avoid here this vague or equivocal term, all the more since in its customary usage it has not taken account of the distinction of the planes of truth, as professed by the Mahayana. C.B. Rene Grousset, The Civilizations of the East, vol. IV, p. 100: “No God is more personal”, and yet everything is grounded “on the metaphysical monism”.

7⁴ Shunjo, ch. VII (pp. 203 - 204), XXI (p. 404), XXII (p. 574), XXXV (p. 620), XXXVIII (pp. 643 - 645). Amitayur-dhyana-Sutra, (pp. 180 - 181).

7⁵ Shunjo, ch. 32. To vaunt his own way, he said, as if it was the sole right one, to regard the others as bad, would be to transgress against the will of the Buddhas (p. 577). No sect, the Jodo any more than another, has dared to claim that it is the sole way. Nichiren himself would not have said it of his without distinctions.

7⁶ As we see, for example, in the saying that Moslem tradition attributes to Hallaj: “I am the Truth!” (C.B. Louis Massignon, The Passion . . . of Al Hallaj, vol. 1, pp. 61 - 62; Leonce de Grandmaison, Jesus Christ, vol. 2, pp. 77 - 78). C.B. F.M. Capes, St. Catherine de Ricci: In ecstasy, Catherine asks a slightly sceptical sister: “Who do you think I am? Catherine or Jesus?”, and the sister exclaims : “You are Jesus!” (In A. O’Rahilly, Life of Father William Doyle, French translation, 1927, p. 208, note 7). But these facts will be interpreted differently according to the underlying thoughts.

7⁹ Shunjo, ch. 37 (p. 635). C.B. Hobogirin, II, p. 187). D.T. Suzuki, Essays on Zen Buddhism, vol. 3, p. 226: “The whole construction of Buddhist philosophy is grounded on an idealist monism, without the realism of the Jodo making an exception.”