A New Buddhist Dialectic - A Gift from the Space Matrix
Part 5 of an ongoing series.
Note: As with the other essays in this series, it is not necessary to read the prior entries in order to understand this one. However, there will be some callbacks to those earlier pieces which may be confusing sans the proper context, so if you enjoy this work, I highly encourage you to check out the other “A New Buddhist Dialectic” posts, which can be found here:
For a trainee in esoteric Tendai school doctrine in the Kamakura era, praying to Akasagarbha Bodhisattva (Jpn: Kokuzo Bosatsu, sometimes translated into “Space Matrix” or “Space Repository”) would have been commonplace. This is especially true for those at Seichoji temple (also known as Kiyozumi-dera), as Akasagarbha was once the temple’s “honzon,” or principle object of reverence.
Situated on the peaks of Mt. Myoken in modern-day Chiba prefecture, the temple feels isolated from the world around it. Even today, despite the temple’s close proximity to the city of Kamogawa, it’s veiled in an otherworldly quiet. Higher parts of the temple grounds overlook the area surrounding the mountain, the view extending all the way to the ocean. When one perches oneself atop those summits, It almost feels as if one is standing at the edge of the world; a fitting location for the worship of Akasagarbha, the enlightened lord of “space.”
This was where Nichiren initially went to study Buddhism at the age of 12. At the time, it’s believed he was called Zennichimaro, but he eventually took the monastic name Rencho when he reached adulthood. He recalled his prayers to Akasagarbha during this period in a letter called “Ha Ryokan-to Gosho,” or “A Letter Refuting Ryokan-bo and Others, as follows (per Kyotsu Hori’s translation):
As you know, I, Nichiren, have been eagerly studying since childhood. When I was 12 years old I began praying to Bodhisattva Space Repository to help me to become the wisest man in Japan. The reason for my prayers was complicated, too complicated to explain here in detail.
If this were the entire story, then perhaps Nichiren would have led a relatively normal life within the Tendai monastic system. However, according to a letter he wrote to the priests at Seichoji two decades after he had left the temple, Seichoji Daishu-chu, his prayers were, at some point, answered:
As a youngster, I was once given the great wisdom from the Bodhisattva Space Repository in human form. Probably feeling pity for me due to my prayers pleading to become the wisest man in Japan, a large gem as big as the morning star was given to me, which I received in my right sleeve. As a result I was able to read all the scriptures of Buddhism, perceiving the comparative superiority among the eight schools and among all the scriptures of Buddhism.
Nichiren implies that it was this gift from the Space Matrix which eventually led to his awakening to the Lotus Sutra as the proper object of worship for the oncoming Latter Age. While Nichiren is more often seen as a paragon of bravery, the one who remonstrated the government and fiercely admonished the leaders of the established Buddhist schools when those transgressions could (and for Nichiren, almost did) result in one’s murder or execution, he hints in this same letter to an underlying fear, writing “I knew that if I spoke of this my life would be in jeopardy.” Yet he persisted in order to “repay the favor” he “owed to Akasagarbha”; his dedication to the Buddhas overpowering any lingering doubt he may have still harbored at that time.
Indeed, Nichiren’s story seems intimately connected to “space” and the heavenly luminaries. One of the most famous stories regarding his life is, after all, the interruption of his attempted beheading by a mysterious ball of light, which Nichiren later attributed to the god of the moon. He later claimed to have been visited by a “god of the stars.” However, it is not space, but the Earth which truly completes Nichiren’s story.
As described back in part three of this essay series, Shakyamuni’s Lotus Sutra assembly is interrupted in the text’s fifteenth chapter when the ground splits open and billions of radiant golden bodhisattvas emerge from the chasm, filling the air around Prabhutaratna’s massive seven-jeweled stupa. These bodhisattvas were the students of the Eternal Shakyamuni Buddha in the distant past, and had been cultivating the Buddha way in secret for countless years, unbeknownst to even the great bodhisattvas Maitreya or Manjusri.
“Among those great bodhisattvas, appearing from out of the earth of the whole world,” Nichiren writes in Kaimokusho, “the four great sages Jōgyō (Superior-Practice), Muhengyō (Limitless-Practice), Jōgyō (Pure-Practice), and Anryūgyō (Steadily-Established-Practice) were outstanding in appearance.” He continues:
Awe stricken by these four, those great bodhisattvas and others who had come to listen to the preaching of the Lotus Sutra on Mt. Sacred Eagle and up in the sky could not even gaze upon them nor understand who they were. Standing in front of these four who had come from underground, four bodhisattvas in the Flower Garland Sutra, four bodhisattvas in the Great Sun Buddha Sutra, and 16 bodhisattvas in the Diamond Peak Sutra seemed to be men squinting at the sun or fishermen facing the emperor.
Over time, these mysterious figures became a focus of attention for Nichiren, and for good reason, as they are mentioned in no text preceding the Lotus Sutra, nor following it. The revelation that so many highly-advanced beings had been in our world for so long essentially stays forgotten, as if it had never occurred in the first place.
To make this detail even stranger, it is these bodhisattvas, led by the four mentioned in the passage above, who Shakyamuni entrusted the Lotus teaches to first and foremost. “No, good men!” Shakyamuni Buddha says to the many bodhisattvas from other worlds in attendance at the beginning of Chapter Fifteen. “I do not want you to protect or keep this sūtra because there are Bodhisattva-mahāsattvas sixty thousand times as many as the sands of the River Ganges in this Sahā-World [i.e. our world]. They are each accompanied by attendants also numbering sixty thousand times as many as the sands of the River Ganges. They will protect, keep, read, recite and expound this sūtra after my extinction.” Later, in the twenty-first chapter, the Bodhisattvas from the Earth proclaim:
World-Honored One! After your extinction, we will expound this sūtra in the worlds of the Buddhas of your replicas and also in the place from which you will pass away. Why is that? It is because we also wish to obtain this true, pure and great Dharma, to keep, read, recite, expound and copy [this sūtra], and to make offerings to it.
It is this connection between the Bodhisattvas from the Earth and the eventual propagation of the Lotus Sutra following Shakyamuni Buddha’s passing which prompted Nichiren’s fascination, and eventual identification, with them. He hints at some karmic relationship to them in a postscript to his “Treatise on All Phenomena as Ultimate Reality” (Shoho Jisso-sho), addressed to the similarly exiled priest Sairen-bo on the island of Sado. It reads:
I have written previously about doctrines that have been transmitted to me. Especially in this letter, I wrote of matters of utmost importance. Is this due to an inexplicable bond between you and me in the past? Or, are we avatars of the four bodhisattvas such as Superior-Practice, leaders of bodhisattvas as many as 60,000 times the number of sands of the Ganges River? There must be a profound reason. I handed over to you all the doctrines important to my life. I might be a follower of those numerous bodhisattvas who emerged from the earth.
While presented as speculation here, it seems that this identification of himself with the bodhisattvas, and Superior-Practice (Visistacaritra) Bodhisattva in particular, only grew more entrenched during his period of exile on Sado. He gives an interpretation of the Lotus Sutra’s prophecies in his work “The Selection of the Time” as follows:
In the fifth 500-year period, when all the teachings of the Buddha are about to disappear, Superior-Practice Bodhisattva will be entrusted with the five ideograms of myō, hō, ren, ge, and kyō, Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, as the cure for those slanderers and non-believers of Buddhism who suffer from white leprosy.
He further writes in Hokke Shuyo-sho, or “Treatise on the Essence of the Lotus Sutra”:
When the country has thus gone out of order, there is no doubt that holy men such as Superior-Practice Bodhisattva will appear in this world, establishing the three doctrines of the essential section of the Lotus Sutra, and spreading the Odaimoku of Namu Myōhō Renge-kyō widely throughout the world.
From these kinds of passages, it becomes clear that Nichiren saw himself as fulfilling the duty of Superior-Practice Bodhisattva in promulgating the practice of the Daimoku. Kishio Satomi elaborates on the evolution of Nichiren’s belief during his banishment in the fourth chapter of his book “Japanese Civilization: Its Significance and Realization”:
For the first time, he combined his own personality with that of Honge Jogyo. In icy cold, he spent every day and night in meditation after recalling his severe persecutions and pondering over his unique system of philosophy of religion which must now be established, as a matter of course, owing to his fulfilment of the prophecy.
Thus, as with the prophecies around the Latter Age we discussed back in part two of this series, the prophecy around the Bodhisattvas of the Earth drove Nichiren and his followers to fulfill it and make it real. Like Prince Shotoku and other significant Buddhists who came before him, Nichiren wrote himself into the narrative of the Buddhist dialectic, further refining Japanese Buddhism and seemingly bringing it a step closer to some sort of fruition…
However, as stated earlier in this series, the Nichiren school of Buddhism was the very last to come to full maturity in Japan, and after its establishment following Nichiren’s death, the country would endure several centuries of theological stagnation, culminating in the funerary Buddhism of the Edo period. Contrary to Shakyamuni’s many teachings on accepting impermanence, the faith he established would ironically gain a reputation as a sort of dreary death cult overly concerned with grieving the deceased; the vitality of men like Nichiren giving way to a sense of complacency.
“Warriors’ sons these days turn monk and get through life by skinning the dead,” the Edo-era Zen master Suzuki Shosan reportedly said, bemoaning the state of Buddhism in his time. “That’s as low as you can sink.” He continues:
It’s all right to turn monk for enlightenment, but it’s all wrong to do it for a livelihood. It’s suffering to covet just one hundred koku. Enough to keep yourself alive is ample. Those who’ve gone to hell because of the world have a hope the Buddha’s teaching will save them. But those who’ve gone to hell because of the Buddha’s teaching – who’s going to save them? They haven’t a hope of rising again for all eternity.
Yet that does not mean that the story ends here. To conclude this initial phase of the essay series, we need to dip our toes into Buddhism’s modern era.
Until then, thank you all very much for reading.
To be continued…