Rissho Ankoku Ron-Part 4
The guest, growing more indignant than ever, said:
“A wise monarch, by acting in accord with heaven and earth, perfects his rule’ a sage, by distinguishing between right and wrong, brings order to the world. The monks and priests of the world today enjoy the confidence of the entire empire. If they were in fact evil monks, then the wise ruler would put no trust in them. If they were not true sages, then men of worth and understanding would not look up to them. But now, since worthies and sages do in fact honor and respect them, they must be nothing less than paragons of their kind. Why then do you pour out these wild accusations and dare to slander them? To whom are you referring when you speak of ‘evil monks’? I would like an explanation!”
The host said:
“In the reign of Emperor Gotoba there was a priest named Honen who wrote a work entitled the Senchaku Shu. He contradicted the sacred teachings of Shakyamuni and brought confusion to people in every direction. The Senchaku Shu states: “The Chinese priest Tao-ch’o distinguished between the Shodo or Sacred Way teachings and the Jodo or Pure Land tea hings and urged men to abandon the former and immediately embrace the latter. First of all, there are tow kinds of Sacred Way teachings, the Mahayana and the Hinayana. Judging from this, we may assume that the esoteric Mahayana doctrines of Shingon and the true Mahayana teachings of the Lotus Sutra are both included in the Sacred Way. If that is so, then the present-day sects of Shingon, Zen, Tendai, Kegon, Sanron, Hosso, Jiron and Shingon - all these eight schools are included in the Sacred Way that is to abandoned.
“The priest T’an-luan in his Ojo Ron Chu states” ‘I note that Nagarjuna’s Jujubibasha Ron says: “There are tow ways by which the bodhisattva may reach the state in which there is no retrogression. One is the Difficult-to-Practice Way, the other is the Easy-to-Practice Way.”
“The Difficult to Practice Way is the same as the Sacred Way, and Easy to Practice Way is the Pure Land Way. Students of the Pure Land sct should first of all understand this point. Though they may previously have studied teachings belonging to the Sacred Way, if they wish to become followers of the Pure Land school, they must discard the Sacred Way and give their allegiance to the Pure Land teachings.”
Honen also said: “The Chinese priest Shan-tao distinguished between correct and incorrect practices and urged men to embrace the former and abandon the latter. Concerning the first of the incorrect practices, that of reading and reciting sutras, he states, that, with the exception of the recitation of the Kammuryoju Sutra and the other Pure Land sutras, the embracing and recitation of all sutras, whether Mahayana or Hinayan, exoteric or esoteric, is to be regarded as an incorrect practice. Concerning the third of the incorrect practices, that of worshipping, he states that, with the exception of worshipping the Buddha Amida, the worshipping or honoring of any of the other Buddhas, bodhisattvas or deities, of the heavenly and human worlds is to be regarded as an incorrect practice. In the light of this passage, it is clear that one should abandon such incorrect practices and concentrate upon the practice of the Pure Land teaching. What reason would we have to abandon the correct practices of the Pure Land teaching, which insure that, out of a hundred persons, all one hundred will be reborn in the Western Paradise, and cling instead to the various incorrect practices and procedures, which could not save even one person in a thousand? Followers of the Way should ponder this carefully!”
Honen further states: “In the Jogen Nyuzo Roku we find it recorded that, from the six hundred volumes of the Daihannya Sutra to the Homomu Sutra, the exoteric and esoteric sutras of Mahayana Buddhism total 637 works in 2,883 volumes. All of these should now be replaced by the recitation of the single Mahayana phrase, the Nembutsu. You should understand that, when the Buddha was preaching according to the capacity of this various listeners, he for a time taught the tow methods of concentrated meditation and unconcentrated meditation. But later, when he revealed his own enlightenment, he ceased to teach these tow methods. The only teaching that, once revealed, shall never cease to be taught, is the single doctrine of the Nembutsu.”
Again Honen states: “The passage which says that the practitioner of the Nembutsu must possess three kinds of mind is found in the Kammuryju Sutra. In the commentary on that sutra, we read: ‘Someone asked: “If there are those who differ in understanding and practice from the followers of the Nembutsu, persons of heretical and mistaken belief, how can one make certain that their perverse and differing views will not cause trouble?”’ We also see that these persons of evil views with their different understanding and different practices are compared to a band of robbers who call back the travelers who have already gone one ore two steps along their journey. In my opinion, when these passages speak of different understanding, different practices, varying doctrines and varying beliefs, they are referring to the teachings of the Sacred Way.”
Finally, in a concluding passage, Honen says: “If one wishes to escape quickly from the sufferings of life and death, one should confront these two superior teachings and then proceed to put aside the teachings of the Sacred Way and choose those of the Pure Land. And if one wishes to follow the teachings of the Pure Land, one should confront the correct and incorrect practices and then proceed to abandon all those that are incorrect and devote one’s entire attention to those that are correct.”
When we examine these passages, we see that Honen quotes the erroneous explanations of T’an-luan, Tao-ch’o and Shan tao and establishes the categories he calls Sacred Way and Pure Land, Difficult to Proactice Way and Easy to Practice Way. He then takes all the 637 works in 2,883 volumes that comprise the Mahayana sutras of the Buddha’s lifetime, including those of the Lotus Sutra and Shingon, along with all the Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and deities of the heavenly and human worlds, and assigns them all to the Sacred Way, the Difficult to Practice Way and the incorrect practices categories, and urges men to “discard, close, ignore and abandon” them. With these four injunctions, he leads all people astray. And on top of that he groups together all the sage monks of the three countries of India, China and Japan as well as the students of Buddhism of the ten directions, and calls them a “band of robbers,” causing the people to insult them!
In doing so, he turns his back on the passages in the three Pure Land sutras, the sutras of his own sect, which contain Amida’s vow to save everyone, “except those who commit the five cardinal sins or slander the True Law.” At the same time, he shows that the fails to understand the warning contained in the second volume of the Lotus Sutra, the most important sutra expounded in the five preaching periods of the Buddha’s life, which reads: “One who refuses to take faith in this sutra and instead slanders it… After he dies, he will fall into the hell of incessant suffering.”
And now we have come to this later age, when men are no longer sages. Each enters his own dark road, and all alike forget the direct way.. How pitiful, that no one cures them of their blindness! How painful, to see them vainly lending encouragement to these false beliefs! And as a result, everyone from the ruler of the nation down to the humblest peasant believers that there are no true sutras outside the three Pure Land sutras, and no Buddhas other that the Buddha Amida with his two attendants.
Once there were men like Dengyo, Gishin, Jikaku and Chisho who journeyed ten thousand leagues across the waves to acquire the sacred teachings, or visited all the mountains, and rivers of Japan to acquire Buddhist statues which they held in reverence. In some cases they built holy temples o on the peaks of high mountains in which to preserve those scriptures and statues; in other cases they constructed sacred halls in the bottoms of deep valleys where such objects could be worshipped and honored. As a result, the Buddhas Shakyamuni and Yakushi shone side by side, casting their influence upon present and future ages, while the Bodhisattvas Kokuzo and Jizo brought benefit to the living and the dead. The rulers of the nation contributed counties or villages to that the lamps might continue to burn bright before the images, while the stewards of the great estates offered their fields and gardens to provide for the upkeep of the temples.
But because of this book by Honen, this Senchaku Shu, the Buddha Shakyamuni is forgotten and all honor is paid to Amida, the Buddha of the Western land. The Buddha’s transmission of the Law is ignored, and Yakushi, the Buddha of the Eastern Region, is neglected. All attention is paid to the three works in four volumes of the Pure Land scriptures, and all the other wonderful teachings that Shakyamuni proclaimed throughout the five periods of his preaching life are cast aside. If temples are not dedicated to Amida, then people no longer have any desire to support them or pay honor to the Buddhas enshrined there; if monks do not chant the Nembutsu, then people quickly forget all about giving those monks alms. As a result, the halls of the Buddha fall into ruin, scarcely a wisp of smoke rises above their mossy tiles; and the monks’ quarters stand empty and dilapidated, the dew deep on the grasses in their courtyards. And in spite of such conditions, no one gives thought to protecting the Law or to restoring the temples. Hence the sage monks who once presided over the temples leave and do not return, and the benevolent deities who guarded the Buddhist teachings depart and no longer appear. This has all come about because of this Senchaku Shu of Honen.
How pitiful to think that, in the space of a few decades, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people have been deluded by these devilish teachings and in so many cases confused as to the true teachings of Buddhism. If people favor perverse doctrines and forget what is correct, can the benevolent deities be anything but angry? If people cast aside doctrines that are all- encompassing and take up those that are incomplete, can the world escape the plots of demons?
Rather than offering up ten thousand prayers for remedy, it would be better simply to outlaw this one evil doctrine that is the source of all the trouble!
Rissho Ankoku Ron-Fifth Question