An Assessment of Jacqueline Stone’s Original
Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism[1]
James Dobbins (Oberlin College)
Society for the Study of Japanese Religion
Chicago AAS Annual Meeting, March 23, 2001
Jacqueline Stone’s book on hongaku shisô, or “original enlightenment
thought,” is a work of both scope and detail. It
glides over its subject matter, sometimes pausing to take a close-up look
at things, but other times moving in wide arcs to get a panoramic view. It
tends to be a book about “forests” rather than “trees,” though it does
examine its fair share of “trees” along the way. Overall,
I would describe it as one of the most thought-provoking and multifaceted
books I have read in a long time.
In content the work is structured around the theme of hongaku, original
enlightenment, which according to Stone was not so much a philosophical
principle as a mode of discourse that operated pervasively in medieval
religion. Its base was Tendai Buddhism, mainly among the lineages and traditions
of Mt. Hiei, but it also reached widely into other medieval circles, including
the so-called new schools of Kamakura Buddhism such as Nichiren. Stone
examines this theme in its various guises and manifestations, and charts
how it developed and diversified, and also what social mechanisms were
at work enhancing, preserving, and transmitting it. The
particular phenomena that Stone examines are broad-ranging and multifarious,
but together they offer a representative picture of the structure and content
of medieval religion as a whole.
As I
think about Stone’s work, I can identify a number of scholarly topics which
form epicenters within the book, any of which would make a challenging
study in its own right. Some are
prominent in the first half of the book, others in the second half, and
still others emerge here and there throughout the work. The
first one I would mention is the story of Tendai Buddhism as it unfolded
in Japan. The Tendai monastic center
on Mt. Hiei was the primary site for the development and elaboration of
the hongaku discourse, so it is only natural that this would become
a topic of examination. Stone offers an extensive and sophisticated overview
of the debates within this discourse, the sectarian lineages among which
hongaku
ideas proliferated, and the Tendai culture of secret teachings which surrounded
and undergirded hongaku conceptualizations. Though
focused on the issue of hongaku, this part of the book in fact provides
an eye-opening picture of Tendai Buddhism in the latter half of the medieval
period, when Mt. Hiei exerted considerable influence on Japan’s religious,
social, and political spheres.
The second focal point found in the book is Nichiren Buddhism. Ostensibly,
Stone examines the Nichiren school as one example of Kamakura Buddhism
to show its appropriation of hongaku themes and practices and its
linkages to Tendai. This section is actually one of the best overviews
of the rise of Nichiren Buddhism available in English. The account includes
a survey of the thought of Nichiren (1222-82) himself, and an exposition
of how his teachings were interpreted and elaborated by later medieval
followers, especially in response to the hongaku ideas of Tendai
doctrinal centers in the Kantô region. In
this section Stone emphasizes the interactive character of medieval Japanese
religion. She stresses that both
the Nichiren school and other forms of Buddhism all developed in engagement
with and reaction to diverse religious viewpoints and proponents in the
medieval context. This interactive
portrayal of medieval religion is an important model in Stone’s analysis
of both Tendai and Nichiren.
The third topic of examination prominent in the book is Kamakura Buddhism
or, perhaps more appropriately, the dynamics of religion in medieval Japan. Stone
resists the temptation of seeing the hongaku discourse as the “matrix”
out of which Kamakura Buddhism arose, as some Japanese scholars claim. But
she does postulate a set of religious assumptions which both Tendai’s hongaku
proponents and the Kamakura schools were party to: 1) nonlinearity: the
idea that liberation occurs in a single moment rather than in a linear
path of practice or cultivation; 2) single condition: liberation is thought
to depend on a single factor rather than a multiplicity of elements or
causes; 3) all-inclusiveness: both the moment of liberation and the factor
on which it depends contain the whole of enlightenment; and 4) non-obstruction
by evil karma: liberation is not dependent to overcoming evil. These premises
offered a common basis for medieval Buddhists to interact, sometimes positively
and sometimes negatively. They may
have arrived at different conclusions and their rationales may have varied,
but they drew on a shared paradigm. This analysis, though not without problems,
may be Stone’s most original proposal in the book.
Another contribution of Stone’s book is that it helps correct several stereotypes
about medieval Buddhism. Prominent among them is the perception that the
hongaku
world-view led to clerical degeneracy on Mt. Hiei and that the new Kamakura
schools were an attempt to reform Buddhism as a result. This view has been
propounded by sectarian and secular scholars alike. A latter-day manifestation
of it is the denunciation of hongaku thought by the contemporary
proponents of Critical Buddhism (Hihan Bukkyô), who claim that its
absolute affirmation of the immediate world results in religious and moral
complacency. Stone argues that there is sufficient evidence of ethical
concerns and religious devotions among medieval Buddhists who were part
of hongaku culture to call this assumption into question. And these
Buddhists felt no sense of contradiction between the absolute affirmationof
the world found in hongaku and their lives of ethical and religious
rectitude.
Let me add one observation about perceptions of clerical degeneracy in
Japanese history. There is no doubt that this was a powerful and widespread
view in circulation during Kamakura times. Of course, whether there was
actually more clerical corruption then than in earlier periods is impossible
to know for sure. What we can say, however, is that this perception became
part of the motivation and rationale for new and fairly profound changes
in religion. If we look at other periods in Japanese history in which clerical
degeneracy became an issue—the early Tokugawa period and the Meiji period
come to mind—significant religious changes were also afoot then, inspired
in part by this sense of decline. One thing we might conclude from this
is that a heightened concern over clerical degeneracy and corruption may
be one marker of impending change in Japanese religious history.
Another valuable discussion in the book centers on the religious and social
mechanisms by which medieval Buddhism operated: master-disciple lineages,
esoteric initiations, kuden or secret teachings, and subjective
kanjin
hermeneutics. These were the conventions
that surrounded and upheld hongaku ideas in Tendai culture. Whenever
medieval hongaku is mentioned, it refers not only to the idea of
original enlightenment but also to these practices which treated
hongaku
truths as sublime teachings demanding esoteric handling. In
a way these practices worked to concentrate authority in a privately controlled
world of religious elites. When the medieval historian Kuroda Toshio talks
about the primacy of the esoteric over the exoteric, and of hongaku
discourse as a possible unifying ideology in medieval Buddhism, he is probably
referring not to the doctrinal tenets of hongaku per se, but to
this network of religious mechanisms which surrounded and maintained it,
and which created a social superstructure in which people had to operate.
In reflecting on Stone’s book, I cannot help but think what a long way
Buddhist Studies has come in the last three or four decades. In the old
days it was dominated by textual translations, usually of a philosophical
or doctrinal nature, or by standard “life and thought” studies of important
Buddhist figures. The primary alternative to such approaches was works
on Japan’s new religions, written mainly from an anthropological or sociological
perspective. Those two worlds of scholarship seldom interacted, and tended
to look at each other with suspicion. And then something began to change
in Buddhist Studies. The social and the political could no longer be ignored.
Even in studies of medieval and ancient texts, questions of social location
and political impact emerged as important. They did not displace Buddhological
concerns. Rather, those complex systems of thought and practice were considered
the field in which social and political issues were played out. I tend
to trace this shift in orientation to the challenges laid out by Kuroda
Toshio in his alternative interpretations of medieval Buddhism. Though
his own discipline was history, his influence began to spill over into
Buddhist scholarship as well, both in this country and in Japan. Nowadays
his claims are being challenged or revised in various ways (and Stone herself
seeks to do so somewhat in her book), but they certainly cannot be ignored.
Stone’s work I regard as the product of this new style of Buddhist Studies.
It is well grounded in textual and doctrinal analysis—reminding us that
sociological and anthropological approaches, while rich and indispensable,
are still not sufficient for understanding these systems of religion—but
it also considers these doctrinal questions in the light of the larger
world of medieval social organization.
Finally, I would like to make a few comments about what might be called
the scholarly quest for a “unified field theory” of Japanese religion.
This can be found among both Western and Japanese scholars, though it occurs
perhaps more on a subconscious level than a conscious one. Stone’s book,
rightly or wrongly, might be taken as presenting yet another “unified field
theory,” or at least one applicable to medieval religion and Kamakura Buddhism.
Misreaders of the book will take that unifying principle to be hongaku
thought, though that is more Shimaji Daitô’s and Tamura Yoshirô’s
theory than Stone’s. Hers might be the idea of a nonlinear, single-conditioned,
all-inclusive view of the ideal religious state. Other “unified field theories,”
though oriented to social and political concerns, would include Kuroda’s
concept of kenmitsu Buddhism. Akin to that are the analytical categories
of Ritsuryô Bukkyô, or establishment Buddhism, and Han-Ritsuryô
Bukkyô, or anti-establishment Buddhism, proposed by Miyazaki Enjun,
a historian of Jôdo Shinshû. The near-defunct portrayal of
Kamakura Buddhism as a Reformation, found in both Western and Japanese
scholarship, is also an implicit “unified field theory. ” Even Byron Earhart’s
textbook presenting Japanese religions as “unity in diversity” or Ian Reader’s
and George Tanabe’s study of genze riyaku, worldly benefits, contain
overtones of a “unified field theory. ”
There are a couple of points that I would like to make about this quest
for a “unified field theory. ” Specifically, we should note that some theories
contain the presuppositions of the very phenomena they seek to analyze.
That is, they are distillations out of that material and projections back
onto it, and hence circular. For instance, the ideas of hongaku
and kenmitsu are each lifted directly from Tendai terminology, and
thus as theories of Japanese religion they unwittingly predispose themselves
to see Tendai and Tendai-derived phenomena as representative of Japanese
religion. Why, for instance, would we choose hongaku rather than
sokushin
jôbutsu, “attainment of Buddhahood in this very body,” as the
paradigm for Japanese religion? Wouldn’t sokushin jôbutsu,
which is used by both Shingon and Tendai, work better than hongaku?
On second thought, would it privilege Shingon unduly? Neither of these,
however, explains very well the perennial concern about ordination, as
well as the various precept movements, highlighted by Matsuo Kenji and
acknowledged by Stone. Matsuo presents his own theory on Kamakura Buddhism
based on ordination traditions and protocols, which itself could be construed
as a “unified field theory. ”
The point here is not what the best theory is, but that theories themselves
carry as much baggage as the material that they analyze. Hence, what makes
a good theory is not that we discern it is right, but that it reveals or
discloses something that was not seen before. But at the same time that
it reveals one thing, it also obscures another. The best theories ultimately
lead us into a world of complexity, the vast ocean of Japanese religion.
And once we enter, it becomes difficult to privilege one theory over another.
In fact, one theory might best lead to another, even when they appear contradictory
on the surface. Stone’s book, it seems to me, while presenting its own
particular theories, leads us into this world of complexity.
In conclusion, I would like to thank Stone for this enlightening and challenging
study. It is a difficult book, but an important one. In the end, what I
find most impressive is that Stone has chosen—for whatever reason—to do
what is hard instead of what is easy. She could have easily produced the
definitive work for us on Nichiren Buddhism. (And I’m still expecting that
book from her. ) But instead she chose to undertake this more ambitious
and complex conceptual project. I believe her work will become a standard
reference on Tendai, Nichiren, and Kamakura Buddhism, and will inform and
educate many specialists of Japanese religion for years to come.