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Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan

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Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan Studies in East Asian Buddhism 8 Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan William M. Bodiford A Kuroda Institute Book University of Hawaii Press • Honolulu © 1993 Kuroda Institute Contents Preface ix Stylistic Conventions xv Acknowledgments xvii Abbreviations xix 1. Introduction 1 PART ONE: EARLY SŌTŌ COMMUNITIES 2. Dōgen: The Founder of Eiheiji 21 3. Giin: The Beginnings of Higo Sōtō 37 4. Senne and Kyōgō: Commentators on Dōgen's Shōbō genzō 44 5. Gikai: The Founder of Daijōji 51 6. Jakuen and Giun: Local Growth and Ties to Eiheiji 65 7. Early Schisms: The Question of the Sandai Sōron 70 8. Keizan: The Founder of Yōkōji 81 PART TWO: REGIONAL EXPANSION 9. Sōjiji: The New Institutional Center 95 10. The Popularization of Sōtō 108 11. Formation of the Sōtō Order 122 PART THREE: SŌTŌ ZEN PRACTICE 12. Kōan Zen 143 13. Precepts and Ordinations 163 14. Zen Funerals 185 15. Conclusion 209 Notes 217 Bibliography 283 Glossary 309 Index 331 -vii- 1 Preface The Sōtō school is the largest Buddhist organization in modern Japan. It ranks with the various Pure Land schools as one of the most successful of the new Buddhist denominations that emerged during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods (roughly thirteenth-sixteenth centuries). During this medieval period Sōtō monks developed new forms of monastic organization, new methods of Zen instruction, and new applications for Zen rituals within lay life—many of which lie outside our received image of Zen. These developments played a profound role in medieval rural society and helped shape present-day Buddhist customs for a vast number of Japanese. Yet in spite of its significance for enriching our understanding of Japanese religion, medieval Sōtō has remained largely unknown, even among specialists. Most Western descriptions of Japanese Zen either ignore Sōtō completely or equate Sōtō exclusively with the teachings of Dōgen (the school's nominal founder), even though modern Sōtō practices continue many medieval-period elements unknown to Dōgen or even foreign to his teachings. In focusing on these later developments, this book attempts to illuminate how Sōtō Zen (and rural Zen in general) functioned as a religion within the context of medieval Japanese society. In the course of this study I became convinced that it is crucial to approach the study of Japanese Zen in the same way that one studies any other aspect of Japanese religion. On the surface this proposition probably seems obvious enough. Traditional Zen scholarship, however, has emphasized ideals over actual practices and Chinese antecedents over Japanese conventions. Most discussions of Japanese Zen proceed from the assumption that it can be explained best as a continuation of Chinese traditions, totally severed from the religious and cultural context of Japan. Such discussions follow the lead of early Japanese Zen leaders, who strongly emphasized their connections to China. Yet our awareness -ix- of the importance of China as a source of legitimization in Japanese Zen ideology should caution us against too one-sided a focus on Zen's foreign roots. After all, the new Japanese Zen institutions developed in an overall cultural matrix very different from that of China, served Japanese patrons, and even in the beginning housed primarily (almost exclusively in the case of Sōtō) Japanese monks. We must bare in mind that Chinese traditions, the way in which these Chinese traditions were perceived by Japanese monks, and the actual conditions of Japanese Zen cannot automatically be equated. In my emphasis on this Japanese context, I do not mean to suggest that every significant element originated in Japan or lacks parallel historical examples in other Buddhist cultures. Nor do I intend to suggest that Zen somehow gradually became more "Japanese." What I do intend to suggest is that our understanding of Zen in Japanese religious life will be incomplete unless we extend our analyses to include the larger cultural milieu within which Zen practices occur. The critical study of Japanese Zen Buddhism is less than one hundred years old. Although certain prewar scholars, such as Kuriyama Taion (1860-1937) and Washio Junkyō (1868- 1939), still can be read with profit (if one is cautious), the contours of the historical landscape were mapped first by the generation of Japanese scholars that emerged during and just following the Second World War. At that time, the work of a few exceptional historians— Ōkubo Dōshū, Suzuki Taizan, Tamamura Takeji, and Tsuji Zennosuke—formulated the interpretations that would become the accepted standards for the postwar era. Even today no 2 one should study Japanese Zen history without consulting their works. In this book, however, their names are cited only rarely and their interpretations are mostly ignored. Such lacunae do not indicate that I am not in debt to their scholarship. Indeed, I am. But they do indicate that the range of new sources now available has allowed a different historical landscape to emerge. Newly discovered texts have raised issues and revealed events unknown to these men. New information has challenged their previously accepted analyses. The range of new sources is breathtaking. Many types of texts previously ignored, such as secret initiation documents (kirikami), have become accessible for the first time. Other texts cited in previous studies have been republished in more trustworthy formats. Ōkubo Dōshū himself compiled and transcribed the first reliable edition of Dōgen's collected writings (Dōgen Zenji zenshū, 2 vols., 1969-1970), as well as more than two thousand documents collected from Sōtō monasteries throughout Japan (Sōtōshū komonjo, 3 vols., 1972). During 1970-1973, the Sōtō school not only reedited and enlarged its earlier (20 vols., 1929-1935) edition of "The Complete Works of the Sōtō School" (Sōtōshū zensho) but also published a ten-volume supplement of previously unavailable -x- works. During the same period, manuscript versions of Dōgen's Shōbō genzō and related commentaries as well as the writings of early Sōtō patriarchs became available for the first time in their original form (Eihei shōbō genzō shūsho taisei, 25 vols., 1974-1982). Early manuscript copies of many individual texts (such as the Denkōroku, the Tōkokuki, and the Kenzeiki) also were discovered and published in critical editions. As recently as 1990 the earliest known manuscript copy of Keizan's Tōkoku shingi was discovered among the remains of a temple fire. These newly available original sources are particularly significant because they reveal the inadequacies of the editions previously used by scholars. We now know that many of the Japanese Sōtō Zen texts first published during the Tokugawa period (and subsequently reprinted in the modern editions of Buddhist scripture) had been extensively edited. The order of textual entries might have been rearranged to fit what Tokugawa-period Sōtō historians regarded as the correct sequence of events (e.g., the Shōbō genzō Zuimonki, Tōkokuki, and Kenzeiki). In many cases original citations of Chinese materials were "corrected" to agree with the Ming edition of the Buddhist canon (e.g., the "Shinji" Shōbō genzō). Japanese passages were rewritten in Chinese form (e.g., the Denkōroku). When these standard editions later were used for the critical study of Sōtō history, distortions could not be avoided. Discrepancies between different texts attributed to the same time period or to the same author forced mistaken judgments of textual authenticity. Without access to the original manuscripts, previous scholars had little choice but to follow inaccurate chronologies. More important, the questions being asked of these historical sources also have changed. In recent years a new generation of scholars has been examining Japanese Zen history and practices with greater vigor. It has become increasingly clear that Japanese Zen practice cannot be understood in isolation without consideration of other meditative and shamanistic traditions in Japan. The roles of rural Zen temples must be analyzed in the larger context of general medieval social developments. Sophisticated and systematic analyses of the place of Zen in the religious, social, and political lives of average monks and lay people must replace the simple recounting of the biographies of eminent monks. The goroku (literally "recorded 3 sayings," but in Japan restricted to compositions written in Chinese) of famous Zen teachers can no longer monopolize descriptions of Zen practices. Even as these alternative approaches are applied, the specter of Dōgen (especially disputes over the correct interpretation of his legacy) continues to haunt much Japanese scholarship on Sōtō traditions. In this book as well, in spite of my deliberate efforts to free my discussion of Sōtō traditions from a one-sided emphasis on Dōgen, I could not ignore him -xi- completely. When I wrote the first draft of this study without any discussion of Dōgen I discovered that this very omission raised the question of how he figured in various later developments. One reason for this linkage is that both scholars and general readers automatically equate Sōtō with Dōgen (as do the standard reference works). A discussion of Dōgen certainly serves the needs of narrative convenience, since many of the main concepts, characters, and locations for later events can be introduced together with his activities. A more important linkage, however, derives from the course of internal Sōtō politics and institutional disputes. Since the Tokugawa period various groups of Sōtō monks have promoted competing images of Dōgen as a standard for discrediting earlier Sōtō practices and for justifying reforms aimed at reshaping Sōtō institutions. While their interpretations of Dōgen have differed, one constant has been the tendency to interpret many medieval developments as deviations from an idealized "orthodoxy" attributed to Dōgen. My own approach to the historical interpretations that have been advanced under the influence of these Sōtō disputes is not entirely free from internal tensions. Issues of orthodoxy or attempts to extract religious standards lie outside the realm of objective scholarship.
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