内容抜粋 志士の言葉
【日蓮上人――仏教僧】
[朗読試聴]
「お聞きなさい。雲の上で時鳥《ほととぎす》の声がします。時を知る時鳥は、田植えせよと教えてくれているのです。ならばすぐ苗を植え、実りの時に後悔せずにすむようにしようではありませんか。今こそ法華経を植えるとき。私こそはそのために仏に遣わされた者なのです。」
「今は末法の世が始まったばかりである。邪法のもたらす害毒は非常に強く、折伏《しゃくぶく》は欠かせない。危篤の病人に薬が必要なように、無慈悲に見えてこれが慈悲なのだ」
「法華経のために死ぬことができるのなら、わが命も惜しくはない」
SAINT NICHIREN - A BUDDHIST PRIEST
【BOOK】
I-BUDDHISM IN JAPAN （第1章 日本の仏教）
RELIGION is man's chiefest concern. Properly
understood, a man without a
religion is unthinkable. In this strange
existence where our wishes are so much
more than our faculties, and our
hopes exceed all that the world does or can give,
something must be done to
remove these incongruities, in our thought at least, if
not in our actions
as well. Indeed we often hear some say that they are "men of no
religion."
By that they simply mean that they do not sign their names to any
distinct
set of dogmas, own no order of priests as their guides, and pay no homage
to any wooden or metallic or psychic image as their god. But a religion they
nevertheless have. The Inscrutable within them is tamed in some way, be it
by
Mammon-Worship or Whiskey-Oblations or some other soporific or sedative
method of his own choosing. A man's religion is his own explanation of
life; and
some explanation of it is an absolute necessity for his
well-being in this world of
strifes.
Then that all-important question
of death, the hope of the poor and the dread of
the rich - that is the
question of all questions. Where death is, religion must be; - a
sure sign
of our weakness it may be, but withal also of our noble birth, and of
deathlessness within us. Not to die by dying, - that is what all the sons of
Adam
yearn after, and Japanese no less than Hebrews' or Hindoos of famed
religiosity.
And for twenty-five centuries before we heard of any thing
about Resurrection,
we have managed to die in some fashion, some of us in
very creditable fashion,
thanks for all the good religions we have had.
With this beautiful land as our
earthly home, with cherry blossoms to adorn
our joyous spring, and maples
to paint our serene autumn, and peaceful
domesticity as our lot in life,
existence has been a burden to us only very
seldom, and death has been
grievous unto us so much the more. With our
desire to live "a thousand and
eight thousand years," the thought of death
was a double pain, to be alleviated
only by a faith that could introduce us
into a still better land, be it a saint's home
in Shinto heaven, or a lotus
garden in Buddhist paradise. We feared death
not so much from our cowardice
as from our attachment to this beautiful land
of ours. Religions we needed
to resign ourselves when fate or duty called us from
the beloved land of
our birth.
The Japanese has a religion of his own, which in all probability
he brought with
him from his home in Central Asia. What the exact nature of
that religion
originally was is not easy to tell. Its similarity to the
Mosaic Faith has been
recently pointed out, and another attempt was made to
find in us the Lost Ten
Tribes of the Jewish record. But whatever it had
been, the time came when it was
superseded and eclipsed by a very much more
complex, and, may we say, refined
faith of Indian origin. We can easily
imagine the effect of the Hindoo faiths as it
first made its way among
Japanese. Its gorgeous ceremonies, high mysticisms, and
speculations bold
and labyrinthine, must have struck the simple-hearted people
with wonder.
It satisfied the eyes of the ignorant, whetted the intellect of the
learned, and served the purpose of the ruler. Notwithstanding some patriotic
opposition against the wholesale importation of an exotic faith, the Hindoo
religion spread in Japan with gigantic strides. For a time at least, the
ancient
faith was placed wholly in the background and the new reigned
supreme for
centuries in succession.
The date of the introduction of
Buddhism into Japan is the thirteenth year of the
reign of Kinmei, the
twenty-ninth emperor, which we make to be 552 of the
Christian era, or
"1501(sic.) year after Buddha's entrance into Nirvana," as
Buddhist
chronologists like to have it. The great temple of Tenwoji was built as
early as 587(sic.) AD. at Naniwa (Osaka) by Shotoku Taishi, the wisest prince
the country has had, and "the father of Japanese Buddhism." The next
century
(seventh) saw active proselyting going on throughout the empire,
the emperors
themselves taking the initiatives in the work. About this time
there was a great
revival of Buddhism in China under the leadership of
Hiuen Chwang, that
famous priest of the Tau dynasty, whose adventurous
journey into India was so
vividly described by Barthelemy St. Hilaire; and
scholars were sent from Japan
across the water to study under the man who
had sought the faith in the land of its
birth. The emperors of the Nara
dynasty (708-769) were all strong supporters of
Buddhism, and the mighty
temples that still adorn the ancient capital of the same
name witness to
the power attained by the new religion so soon after its
introduction into
the land.
But the new enthusiasm reached its acme, when by the beginning of
the ninth
century, two Buddhist scholars, Saijo and Kukai returned from
their study in
China, each with a sect of his choosing. The emperor Kammu
who removed the capital
from Nara to Kyoto gave each a conspicuous site for
temple-building, and
endowments and privileges affixed thereto. Saijo built
Eizan lying to the
northeast of the new capital, the direction from which
all evils were thought to
come. Kukai posted himself at Koya in the
province of Kii, but had a temple-site
given him in the south end of the
capital, the famed Toji with its peering pagoda
right south of the railway
station being his own establishment. With Eizan founded
in 788, and Koya in
816 A.D., we may say that Japanese Buddhism had rooted
itself firmly in the
native soil. No competition with it by any other faith was
possible, and no
wonder that its founders thought that its foundations were
immovably laid
as the mountains on which they builded.
Thus in the beginning of the ninth
century we find the so-called "eight sects of
Buddhism"* [For those who may
not yet be familiar with them, we might just as well
mention them here.
They are (1) Sanron , (2) Hoshoo, (3) Kegon , (4) Ritsu, (5) Jojitsu,
(6)
Gusha, (7) Tendai, and (8) Shingon.] firmly established in the land. For four
centuries after the death of Kakai we hear nothing about the introduction
or
formation of any new sect in Japan. The "eight" grew on in power and
influence,
Saijo's (Tendai) leading all the rest. And here as elsewhere
assumption of power
by spiritual bodies brought in all the attending
corruptions. Soon the priesthood
became emperor of emperors, so much so
that one of the latter expressed
the annoyance due to his priest-subjects
by the wellknown saying, "Two things
are beyond the power of my control:
the water of the Kamo and mountain-priests."
Emperor after emperor, and
noble after noble vied with one another in building,
endowing, and
embellishing temples of their particular devotion; and the large city
of
Kyoto and its suburbs, with their magnificent religious structures, - porches,
pagodas, hexagons, bell-houses, - are one huge monument of the faith that
once
flourished among us.
Near the close of the twelfth century, a
pacific settlement of the country after long
internecine wars gave rise to
a new activity in religious thought. The great
Yoritomo crippled the
temporal power of the priests, but showed them due respect
as the people's
spiritual guides; and the result was the rise of many great teachers
honourable for their learning and virtue. The Hojos who succeeded him were
most of them faithful devotees of Buddhism. Tired with the pomp and
vain-gloriousness of the then existing sects, they caused the Zen or meditative
school of Buddhism to be introduced from China (1200), and several great
temples
were built, in Kyoto, Kamakura, and Echizen, to perpetuate the new
form of
worship in the land. The new became a favorite faith with the upper
and
intellectual classes, its esoterism and endless metaphysics standing in
strong
contrast to the ceremonial shows of the older sects. - The populace
too needed a faith
other than the high intellectualities of the Zen
philosophy, or the unapproachable
sublimities of the older cults. And such
a faith was furnished them by a priest
called Genka (Saint Honen), who,
about 1207 A.D. introduced among them what
has since been called the Jodo
or "pureland" sect. It taught above all other things,
the possibility of
entrance into the Pure Land merely by calling upon the name of
Buddha, and
hence was otherwise called Nen-Butsu or Call-on-Buddha sect.
The simple
"Nam-Amida-Butsu" (I commit myself to thee O thou Amitabha Buddha)
was set
music on the hand-bell; and the whole uttered with plaintive voice and
often attended with a dance gave entirely new features to, thus far, a very
august
form of belief. A branch of this was the Shin sect, started at about
the same time
by a priest named Hanyen (Saint Shinran) , destined to
eclipse all other sects
by the influence it was to have over the mass of
the people. The very novel feature
of this sect was the removal of the vows
of chastity from the priest-class, and
considerable leniency thus afforded
to their free indulgence in the common joys of life.
Buddhism thus
vulgarized, its approach to the commonalty was greatly facilitated;
and now
without any imperial authority to forward its propagation, it began to be
a
power among the people, - a matter of very great consequence to the ages that
followed.
The addition of one more branch, that of Jisha, to the Nen-Butsu
sect completed
the development of the exoteric school of Buddhism in Japan,
the three coming
to be adopted by the people almost simultaneously with one
another, and with
the esoteric Zen school which invaded the cultured
society of the time.
The country was to have one more sect, - twelve in
all, - immediately following
the last we have mentioned. We may say
therefore that the thirteenth century was
the last and greatest formative
period of Japanese Buddhism. The century was really
the reformative era of
the Hindoo faith in Japan. No such lights as we saw then have
appeared
since, and we of this century still hang upon the words then uttered with
all the conviction of the age. Here, as elsewhere, enthusiasm disappeared
together
with superstition, and we, afraid of being nonscientific, are
cowardly creatures,
basing our actions wholly upon the visible, and upon
the faint echoes of the time
when men were sincere without our knowledge,
and heroic without our crowding cares.
Let us call up a hero then to shame
us in our vaunted faith, and in our love of
ignoble ease, when heaven and
earth are calling us to nobler deeds and greater sacrifice.
II-BIRTH AND CONSECRATION （第2章 誕生そして出家）
On a spring day of the lst year of Teiwo (1222),
as the sun rose above the billowy
horizon, and the easternmost outpost of
Earth's nations caught its first rosy rays, a
child was born to a fisher's
family in the village of Kominato (Little Haven) near
the most eastern cape
of the province of Awa. The father was a fugitive there for
some political
reasons, now a poor fisherman without any outward distinction; and
the
mother, also, of no mean birth, a devout worshipper of the Sun-god, of whom
the gift of a son had long been asked, and now granted in answer to her prayers.
They named him Zen-Nichi-Maro (Good-Sun-Boy) in pious commemoration of the
deity who called him into being, - a fact which had considerable to do when
the child
came to decide his mission to this world, as we shall see
afterward. All the wonders
and miracles which are reported to have attended
his birth, how a crystalline
spring spontaneously gushed forth in the
fisher's garden "to wash natal
uncleanliness away," how a white lotus of
unusual magnitude, entirely out of
season, opened near by "to cast
fragrance into the air," etc., - we of this century are
accustomed to
ascribe to the devout imaginations of the time. But the date of his
birth
is worth particular mention here, as it was a point much ruminated upon by the
young enthusiast as the awful question of his country's salvation afterward
came
before his mind. The year was the 2171st after Buddha's entrance into
the
Nirvana; that is, after the first "millennium of the right law" had
ended,
and the second "millennium of the image-law" had also spent itself,
and
the third and last "millennium of the latter law" had just been ushered
in; when as was prophesied by the Great Teacher, a light was expected to
appear
to the east of him to shine the darkness of the last days. The day
was the 16th of
the second month (according to the lunar calendar), a day
after the same great
event in Buddha's life, which was on the 15th of the
same month. Correspondences
such as these were of immense importance to a
mind like our hero's.
When he came to be twelve years old, the pious
inclination of his parents decided
upon his being made a priest.
Considering what he did in after years, we can well
believe many stories
told about his remarkable childhood; and we do not wonder
if the paternal
ambition of the fugitive-fisherman saw in his son's consecration to
a
priestly office an opportunity for the lad's rise in society, as in that age of
rigid social distinctions, religion was the only way open for a low-born
genius
to show itself in the world. Not far from the place where he was
born, was a temple,
Kiyozumi by name, and its abbot Dozen had local
reputation for his learning and
virtue. There the boy Zen-nichi was taken,
and entrusted to the care of the benignant
teacher who seems to have taken
special delight in the youth. Passing his novitiate of
four years, he was
formally consecrated a priest at the age of sixteen under the new
name of
Rencho; and already the good abbot, watching the unusual ability of
his
young disciple, was beginning to think of nominating him as his possible
successor
in his office. The youth remained his parents' hope, and his
teacher's pride, when behind all
outward appearances struggles were going
on in his mind, which drove him at last
from the region of his birth, to
seek enlightenment throughout the country.
III-IN AND OUT OF DARKNESS （第3章 闇の内外《うちそと》）
He was fairly introduced into the elementary
knowledge of Buddhism when
several questions presented themselves to his
mind for solution. The most
apparent was the existence of multitudinous
sects in Buddhism. "Why is it" he
asked to himself, "that Buddhism which
had its origin in the life and teaching of
one man is now divided into so
many sects and divisions? Is Buddhism more than
one? What means that which
I see around me, that one sect speaks evil of all
others, each maintaining
that it has Buddha's true mind? The waters of the sea
have the same taste,
and there can be no two ways in the teachings of Buddha. Oh
wherein lies
the explanation of this division into sects, and which among these
sects is
Buddha's way, the way I should walk in?"
Such was his first and greatest
doubt, an entirely reasonable doubt, we believe.
We also have similar doubt
about Buddhism and some other religions, and we can
entirely sympathize
with our hero in the struggle he had. As neither his abbot nor
anybody else
relieved him from his doubt, he naturally resorted to his prayers.
One day
as he came from his worship at the temple of the Bodhisattwa of his special
devotion, the burden within him became unbearable, and down he came to the
ground
with abundant hemorrhage from his mouth. His friends helped him up,
and it was
sometime before he returned to consciousness again. We are still
pointed to the exact
spot of this occurrence, a little bamboo bush near by
with certain reddish tints
in its leaves being supposed to have taken its
colours from the blood that was spattered
on that occasion. One evening,
however, as his eyes were poring over the Nirvana Sutra,
said to have been
delivered by Buddha just before his entrance into that blessed state,
the
following caught the attention of the young priest, to the inexpressible relief
of
his troubled mind: Trust in the Word and not in man. That is, he was not
to trust in
human opinions, however plausible and highsounding, but in the
sutras as left by
the Great Teacher, and he was to decide all questions by
them and them only. His
mind was now at ease. He found something to stand
upon, whereas thus far all
had been sinking sand under him. Who, by reading
the above account of the Japanese
priest, is not reminded of a similar case
in the convent of Erfurth four hundred years ago,
when after much
questionings, "loss of consciousness," etc., the young German monks found
his rest in an old Latin Bible that caught his eyes, and clung to it ever
afterward as
his stronghold of faith and life?
But in case of the
Buddhist priest, the question of the authoritative scripture was
not so
simple a one as in that of the Christian Luther. Whereas the German had a
single Bible to rely upon, the Japanese had dozens, often of very contradictory
natures, from which to make his selection of the canon of the supreme
authority.
This, however, was a comparatively easy task in the age when the
so-called Higher
Criticism was wholly unknown, and men put their simple
trust upon the records of
the ancients without questioning why and
wherefore. It was enough for our hero
that he found that one of the sutras
gave the chronological order of all the great
sutras in both mahayana and
hinayana. The order given was, beginning with
the Avatamsaka Sutra,
supposed to contain Buddha's first public utterances, (1)
the Agamas (Kegon
Kyo), containing his teachings of the first twelve years of his
ministry,
(2) the Vaipulya Sutras (Agon Kyo), containing those of the second
sixteen
years, (3) the Pragna Sutra (Hannya Kyo), of the third fourteen years,,
and
(4) the Sadharma-Pundarika Sutra (Myo-Ho-Renge or Hokke Kyo) , of the
last
eight years of his life. Natural conclusions from this order were that the
last-mentioned sutra contained the essence of the teaching of Buddha's whole
life;
or in the words of Nichiren, it had in it "the principle of all
things, the truth of
eternity, and the secret importance of Buddha's
original state and of the virtue of
his enlightenment." Hence its beautiful
name of "the Sutra of the Lotus of the
Mysterious Law." It is not our
purpose here to enter into a critical examination of
the exact order of the
Buddhist canons, or of the comparative value of one above
others. I think
it is fairly settled now that the sutra that Nichiren thought so much
of
was a later product, some 500 years after Buddha's death, and that the
Amitartha Sutra that gives the order of the different canons here mentioned was
written expressly for the purpose of giving authenticity and superlative
authority
to the new canon. But be these whatever they may, it only
suffices us to know that
our hero accepted them in the order here given,
and found in Saddharma-Pundarika
Sutra the standard of the Buddhist faith,
and a clear simple explanation of
the all-comprehensibility of so many
dicordant views in Buddhism. As he came to
this conclusion, the joy and
gratitude within him burst into abundant tears.
"I," he finally said to
himself, "I who left my father and mother, and gave myself to
the service
of this excellent faith, - should I cling to the traditional teachings of
common priests, and not seek the golden words of the Tathagata (Buddha)
himself?"
He was twenty years old when the holy ambition rose in his mind.
Seclusion in
a country-monastery became no more possible. Bidding farewell
to his abbot and order,
he launched out boldly into the world, to seek the
truth far and wide.
His first destination was Kamakura, the Shogun's capital
of the time. A
country-priest in the metropolis - a Luther in Rome, -
strange phenomena met his
eyes, and strange doctrines reached his ears.
With the magnificence of its
temple-structures and the pomp of its
priest-classes, the city was given up wholly
to falsities. The Zen sect
leading the high, and the Jodo sect the low, the former
into quagmires of
futile speculation, and the latter into a delirium of blind trust in
Amitabha, Buddha's Buddhism was not to be found anywhere. Yea more, he saw
Buddha's very images given to children for toys, and Amitabha of only fabulous
existence was given the supreme position in what they called Buddhist
worship!
Men clad in holy garments vaunted themselves in their open shame.
Salvation,
they taught, consisted only in calling upon the name of
Amitabha, and not in acts
of virtue and discipline; and so amidst the din
of Nan-Amida-Butsu, licentiousness
of the grossest kind prevailed among the
people. During his five years' stay in
Kamaknra, he saw enough to convince
him of the presence of the Latter Day
already in the world, and the need
and opportunity of a new faith to bring in a new
era of light, as foretold
by the Worshipful in his Holy Sutra. Only but recently,
Saint Daia, an
object of universal adoration, had died a death, which sent horrors.
to all
his followers. His body ''shrivelled up into the smallness of a child," and the
color of his skin changed into "pitchy darkness," - unmistakable signs of
his fall into
Hell, and evidences of the diabolical nature of the faith he
represented. Then, too,
what do those monstrosities in the sky signify?
Three aerial forms, white and red,
hung clear against the western sky, and
when the two white disappeared, the red
remained "as a pillar of fire
piercing through the zenith." The whole was succeeded
by a violent
earthquake bringing down many temples to the ground, and men and
beasts
groaned under the debris of the structures intended for their salvation. "All
because the true sutra is not preached in the land, and errors are taught
and
believed in. Am I not he of eternal appointment to revive the Faith in
the
land?"......With thoughts such as these, Rencho left Kamakura behind
him, wisely
remarking that "the capital of a country is a place for
disseminating the truth, and
not for learning it."
After a short visit
to his parents, he set out for further search after knowledge.
Eizan
towering in the direction of Kimon (Devil's Gate) from Kyoto to ward all
evil influences from off the Mikado's capital, has for the last one thousand
years
been the chief repository of Buddhist learning in Japan. There
twenty-five hundred
feet above the sea-level, encompassed by tall
cryptomeria forests, and with a magnificent
view of the placid Lake Biwa
below, the ways of Sakya were searched into, contemplated,
and transmitted.
In its days of prosperity, the whole mountain must have worn the aspect
of
a bustling colony, harbouring, as it did, an army of mendicants three thousand
strong,
a dread of the populace as well as of the emperors. It was here
that Genka studied, and
formulated his exoteric school of Buddhism so
contrary to the tenets taught in the mountain,
and had it afterward so
widely adopted by the people. His disciple Hanyen, the founder of
the Shin
sect, was also a student here, as were also many others who had had national
reputations for their attainment in the secret laws of the Faith. And now
our Rencho,
ambitious of the propagation of genuine Buddhism in Japan, came
four hundred miles on
his feet from his fisher's hut in the province of
Awa, to seek enlightenment in the same mountain.
With the new opportunities
for investigation here afforded, Rencho took in with
avidity all that he
could lay his hands upon. But his speciality was Saddharma
Pundarika Sutra,
- his Sutra, - of which valuable manuscripts and commentaries
were
accessible in the mountain. Indeed, the Tendai sect of which Eizan was the
centre, made a great deal of this Sutra. What are called "the sixty volumes" of
the
sect are so many commentaries upon this one book. Such a wonderful book
is it
that Tendai, the Chinese founder of the sect, wrote thirty volumes
upon it; and
one of his disciples, Myogaku, finding that the master's
commentaries still needed
commentaries, wrote another thirty volumes upon
the first thirty volumes. Ten of
these volumes treat separately of each of
the six Chinese hieroglyphics that compose
the name of the Sutra! So deep
to the ancient did appear the meaning of the book
which to us appears as
nothing very extraordinary. - For ten long years, Rencho stayed
in Eizan,
delving into these intricacies. We can only give the conclusions he came to.
He was now thoroughly convinced of the view he had entertained of the
superiority of
the Pundarika Sutra above all the other Sutras; of its
introduction into Japan in its pure
from by Saijo, the founder of Eizan,
and of considerable vitiations introduced thereto
by priests who came after
him. Often to Kyoto, and once to Nara and Koya, he carried
his researches,
to establish him further in his conviction; and when no more doubting was
possible,
he was ready to lay down his life for the Sutra. Once he saw with
his own eyes all the principal
deities of the land coming to promise
protection to him; and as they vanished in the air,
a divine chorus was
heard in the sky, saying, "Shi-nin-gyo-seken, no-metsushujo-an"
(this man
will go round the world, and destroy the darkness that is in men). He was not
the only mystic, however, who has had smilar visions and visitations.
He was now thirty-two years of age, friendless, unknown, yet independent and
indomitable. He had no ancestral lineage to lay his claim upon, as had
Hanyen of
the Shin sect. He was a fisherman's son, "a sudra of the
sea-coast," as he
afterward called himself. Neither was his study
prosecuted in a foreign land, as
were those of Saijo, Kukai, and other
eminent "theologians," - a matter of prime
importance, then, as now, of
being accepted by Japanese as a holder of a key to the
secret of any branch
of knowledge.
Patronage of any kind he had absolutely none; much less,
imperial patronage, as
had most other sect-founders in abundance. He alone
began single-handed,
against powers of all kinds, with a view wholly at
variance with those of the influential sects
of the day. He is the only
case, as far as we know, of Japanese Buddhists, who, without
any example to
follow after, stood for a Sutra and a Law with his life in his hand. His life is
interesting not so much for the doctrinal views he maintained and
promulgated, as for the brave
way in which he upheld them. Religious
persecution in its true sense began in Japan with Nichiren.
IV-PROCLAMATION （第4章 宣言）
"A prophet is not without honour save in his own
country." Yet it is a pathetic
fact to know that a prophet usually begins
his public career in his own country.
Homeless as he is in this world, he
yet feels the attraction of his home, and despite
the kind of treatment he
is sure to receive there, he resorts there as a hart pants
after the
water-brooks, only to be rejected, stoned, and expelled. Rencho's course
was not to be otherwise.
In his humble home at Little Haven, he found his
parents eagerly waiting for the
return of their son; and the first and
greatest of all his trials was to protest against
their natural desire of
seeing him installed as the abbot of the monastery that had
nursed him in
his youth. He now changed his name to Nichiren, Sun-Lotus,
significant of
the god who called him into being, and of the Sutra he was to give to
the
world. On the 28th day of the fourth month of the fifth year of Kencho (l253.),
as the rosy sun was half above the eastern horizon, Nichiren was upon a
cliff
looking toward the broad Pacific, and to the seas before him and the
mountains
behind him, and through them to the whole universe, he repeated
the form of
prayer he had framed for himself, the form that was intended to
silence all others,
to lead his disciples to the end of the earth, and be
their watchword to all
eternity, - the form, indeed, that embodied the
essence of Buddhism, the constitution
of man, and of the universe. It was
NAM-MYO-HO-REN-GE-KYO, Namah
Saddharmapundarikaya Sutraya, I humbly trust
in the Sutra of the Mysterious
Law of the White Lotus.
Nature addressed
in morning, he was to address his townsmen in afternoon. His
fame had
already gone around the whole neighborhood. He who spent fifteen years
in
study in Kamakura, Eizan, and Nara, must have something new, deep, and
edifying to say to his countrymen. So they came, young and old, men and women,
some repeating haraharitaya of the Shingon sect, others the nam-amida-butsu
of
the Jodo. When the temple was all filled, and "incense perfumed its four
corners,"
Nichiren appeared on the pulpit "at the beating of a drum." A man
just reaching
fulness of manhood, with many marks of vigils upon him, the
eyes of a zealot, the
dignity of a prophet, - he was the cynosure of the
whole congregation, and his
opening words were watched with breathless
silence. He took up his sutra, the
Pundarika, read a part of its sixth
chapter, and "with countenance mild, and voice
resonant" he thus began:
"Years have I spent in the study of all the sutras, and read and heard all that
different sects have to say about them. In one of them we are told that for
500
years after Buddha's entrance into Nirvana, many will attain Buddhahood
without
any exertion on their part; and for the succeeding 500 years, with
diligence and
ascetic contemplation. This is the millennium of the right
law. Then will
come 500 years of sutra-reading, and another 500 years of
temple-building. This is
the millennium of the image-law. Then will be
inaugurated the five centuries of
'the concealment of the pure law,'
wherein the merit of the Tathagata's teaching
shall have exhausted itself,
and all ways of enlightenment shall be lost to mankind.
This is the
beginning of the latter-day-law, which will continue for ten thousand
years. ..........Now it is two hundred years since the world entered the last
millennium. And to us so far removed from the direct teaching of Buddha,
there is
but one way provided for our attainment of Buddhahood; and that
way is contained
in the five characters of Myo-Ho-Ren-Ge-Kyo. Yet the Jodo
calls upon the people to
shut this precious sutra, and to turn no more ear
to it; and the Shingon reviles it as
unworthy even of loosing the shoes
from off the feet of their sutra, the
Mahavairokana. Are not such spoken of
by the Worshipful in the second book of
the Pundarika, in the chapter on
parables, as the exterminators of the seeds of
Buddhism, whose sure end
will be endless Hell? He that has ears to hear and eyes
to see, let him
understand, and divide truth from falsehood. Know that the Jodo is
a way to
Hell, the Zen, the teaching of infernal hosts; the Shingon, a heresy to
destroy the nation, and the Ritzu, an enemy of the land. These are not my own
words, but I found them in the sutra. Hark to the cuckoo above the
cloud.
He knows the time, and warns you to plant. Plant now therefore, and
do not repent
when the harvest season comes. Now is the time for planting
the Lotus Sutra, and
I am the messenger sent by the Worshipful for that
end." He ended, and an
uproar of indignation arose from the infuriated
audience. Some said that his mind
was out of order, and hence he might be
pardoned; others that his blasphemy was
worthy of the severest punishment.
The landlord who attended the meeting would
see to the blasphemer's being
dispatched as soon as he stepped out of the holy
ground. But the old abbot
was kind. His pupil might some day repent, resume his
former orthodoxy, and
so end his dreaming. At dusk, he ordered two of his disciples
to take
Nichiren out of the district by ways safe from the landlord's
attack.
V-ALONE AGAINST THE WORLD （第5章 孤独な戦い）
Rejected at home, he made his way right into
Kamakura, the capital of the
country, "the best place for disseminating the
truth." There in a spot owned by
nobody, in what is still called
Matsuba-ga-Tani (Pine-Leaf's Dale), he had a little
strawhut built for him.
Here he posted himself with his Pundarika Sutra, - an
independent man, - to
begin his conquest of errors around him. The great Nichiren
sect had its
beginning in this hut. The stupendous temple-structures at Minobu,
Ikegami,
and other places, with more than five thousand temples in the land, and
two
million souls that worship in them, - all had their beginning in this hut and
this
one man. So are great works always born. One indomitable soul, and the
world
against him, - therein lies the promise of all permanent greatness.
The twentieth
century may well learn of this man, of his faith and bravery,
if not of his doctrines.
Had Christianity itself such a beginning in Japan?
Mission-schools,
mission-churches, allowances in money, helps in men, -
great Nichiren, he began
with himself alone, with none of these!
For a
year he is silent once more in study and contemplation. Meanwhile he had
his fiist disciple, named Nissho afterward, who came all the way from Eizan,
attracted by the view they had in common upon the state of Buddhism in
Japan.
Nichiren is exceedingly glad, because he can now appear before the
public, and lay
down his life there without the fear of his doctrines being
lost to his country. So he
began in the spring of 1254 what was never heard
of before in the land, - street
preaching. He repeated materially, amidst
the gibes and railings of the
metropolitan hearers, what he had first
proclaimed to his townsmen. To the retort
that it was not becoming for a
man of his order to preach by the way-side, his
decisive answer was that it
was becoming for a man to eat standing in time of war.
To the rebuke that
he must not speak evil of the faith adored by the ruler of the
land, his
plain reply was that "the priest is Buddha's messenger, and fear of the
world and men agrees not with his vocation." To the natural doubt that the other
forms of worship could not all be mistaken, his simple explanation was that
"the
scaffold is of use only till the temple is done." For six years he
preached in this
manner, in season and out of season, till his work and
person began to call public
attention. Among his disciples were counted not
a few of men in high authority,
some even of the Shogun's household, and
there was a fear that the whole city
might be carried away by his
influence, if not checked in due time. There were
Abbot Doryu of Kencho-ji,
Abbot Ryochu of Komyo-ji, Ryokwan of Gokuraku-ji,
Ryukwan of Daibutsu-ji,
etc., all high dignitaries of vast influence, who took
counsel together for
the suppression of the rising faith in the capital. But
Nichiren's audacity
was more than all their united efforts against him. Taking
advantage of
many calamities that had recently befallen the land, he prepared
what is
still considered the most remarkable production of the kind,
-
Rissei-Ankoku-Ron, A Treatise on Bringing Peace and Righteousness to
the
Country. Therein he recounted all the evils from which the land was then
suffering, and traced their cause to the false doctrines taught among the
people.
These he proved by extensive quotations from sutras. The remedy, in
his view, lay
in the universal acceptation by the nation of the highest of
all sutras, the
Pundarika; and pointed out, as the sure result of refusal
of such a gift, civil wars
and a foreign invation. Never before were more
caustic terms applied to the
church-dignitaries of the land. The whole
treatise was a battle-cry, declaration of
war of the most determined kind,
which if fought through, could have but one issue,
the extirpation of his
sect, or of all the other sects. It was enthusiasm indistinguishable
from
madness, and Hojo Tokiyori, one of the wisest rulers the country has had,
decided upon its suppression by the removal of the zealot from the capital. But
the politic man did not know the kind of soul he was dealing with. It was a
soul prepared
for death, and with such sincerity in it that it had already
begotten other souls like it,
no less prepared for encounter with all kinds
of trial, as was abundantly proved afterward.
Nothing could intimidate
these men, and "warfare against Buddha's enemies" was carried
on with
unabated vigor, till by force the little company was disbanded and its leader
carried
away as an exile to a far-off province.
VI-SWORD AND EXILE （第6章 法難と流罪《るざい》）
For fifteen years following the publication of
his treatise, his life was a continuous
battling with the powers and
principalities of his world. He was first banished to
Idzu, where he
remained three years, making converts in his exile. On his return
to
Kamakura, he was entreated by his followers to stop "warfare" and devote
himself mostly to their edification; to which his decided answer was that "now
in
the beginning of the Latter Day, when the virulence of errors is so
strong, polemic
attack is a necessity as medicine to a disease at its
crisis, and is a mercy, though it
does not appear so." He at once resumed
his old attitude, - an incorrigible
priest, - heedless of the destruction
now hanging over his head. One evening, when
on his missionary tour with
several of his disciples, he was suddenly attacked by a
company of men,
swords in hand. The leader of the attacking party was no other
than the
landlord who had determined upon the removal of the audacious renovator
at
the time of his proclamation of the new doctrines four years ago. Three of his
disciples
were killed, one priest and two laymen, in their effort to save
the life of their master. Thus the
sutra had its first martyrs in Japan,
precious to the memory of the myriad who
now put their trust in the same.
Nichiren escaped with a wound in his forehead,
the mark of his fidelity to
the Law.
But the real crisis came in the autumn of 1271. His life had been
spared thus far,
for the law of the time forbade the capital punishment of
the priest-class; and
though his impudence was now beyond forbearance, his
shaven head and
sacerdotal robes were his strong protection against the
rigor of the law. But when
nothing could prevent his vituperative attack
upon the existing faiths of the land,
and with them upon the authorities
both civil and clerical, Hojo decided upon his
being delivered to the hand
of the executioner as an extraordinary measure in his
special case. The
so-called "Danger of the Sutra (Go-ho-nan) at Tatsunokuchi" is a most
notable event in the religious history of Japan. Its historic veracity has been
recently doubted; but the "danger" shorn of the miracles which later piety
attached
to the event, seems unquestionable. The popular account is on this
wise: At the
instant when the executioner lifted up his sword for the final
despatch, repetition
by Nichiren of sacred words* [Rin-kei yok-ju-sha,
Nen-pi Kwan-on-riki, To-jin dan-dan ye.
When on the scaffold life is to
end,
And Kwanyin's power is contemplated,
The blade of the sword to
pieces will crumble]
from his Sutra brought down a sudden gust of wind from
heaven, and to the utter
bewilderment of all around him, the blade was
broken into three pieces, and no second stroke
was possible by the
paralysis of the swordsman's hand. Soon a messenger reached
the spot
"galloping at full-speed," bringing a writ of release from Kamakura, and the
cause
of the Sutra was thus saved. - But we can explain the incident
without calling in the aid of
a miracle. The superstitious fear of the
executioner to put an end to the life of a man of the holy
order is
perfectly natural in that age. And when he saw the calm composure of the
dignified priest ready to receive the fatal stroke in the attitude of offering
prayer, we can well
imagine the poor executioner shaking with fear of
heavenly punishment, should he be
instrumental in shedding innocent blood.
A similar fear must have overtaken the ruler himself
who had decided upon
this unprecedented execution; and he at once sent out a messenger
with the
sentence of exile instead of death. The escape we believe was narrow, but was
perfectly
natural.
The exile which was to take the place of death was a
severe one. He was now
carried to Sado, a forlorn island in the Japan Sea,
at that time the most
inaccessible part in the whole country, and the
favorite place of banishment for
criminals of the most offensive kind. That
he survived the exile of five years in this
island is a wonder. One severe
winter he passed through with little beyond the
mental food of his Sutra.
His was another conquest of mind over body, spirit over
force. At the close
of his banishment, he added one more province to his spiritual
dominion.
Ever since, Sado and the neighboring populous province of Echigo have
remained fanatically loyal to his cause.
His indomitable courage and
perseverance now called forth the fear and
admiration of the authority at
Kamakura: and this, together with the fast
approaching danger from the
Mongol attack in fulfillment of his prophecy of a
foreign invasion, secured
him permission for his return to the capital (1274). Soon
after his arrival
there, he obtained a charter for the free promulgation of his
doctrines in
the land. Spirit conquered at last, and for seven centuries it was to be
a
power in the nation.
VII-THE LAST DAYS （第7章 最後の日々）
The man was now fifty-two years of age, and most
of his life had been spent in
vigils and battlings with the world. He was
now free to speak to his country-men;
but the way in which the permission
was given to that effect did not please him at
all. It was fear which
induced the Hojos to grant freedom, whereas he aimed at the
willing
acceptation of the Sutra by the ruler and his people. He now began to think
of retiring to a mountain after the manner of his Hindoo Master, there to end
his
days in quiet contemplation and instruction of his disciples. Herein we
believe lies
his greatness, and the main reason of the permanence of his
sect. When the world
began to receive him, he left it. Here was an
opportunity for stumbling for souls
less than his.
But to his
disciples, the removal of the interdiction of their tenets was the
commencement of open aggressive actions against the adherents of the older
sects.
We are told of temple after temple "stormed and brought down by
vocal attacks."
We know what the manner of these zealots is. Each carries a
drum in his hand,
and all in unison repeat their prayer, -
Nam-Myo-Ho-Ren-Ge-Kyo, - with five
strikes to accompany its five syllables.
Twenty of them is stunning to our ears, and
we can well imagine the effect
of hundreds of them in their new vigor and
enthusiasm, going from house to
house, from temple to temple, through the city of
Kamakura, calling for its
immediate surrender to the new faith. The zeal, the fire,
the intolerance
of the founder, are still distinctly visible in his disciples of
today, -
the only case of martial zeal in the naturally inoffensive and pessimistic
religion of Buddha.
Our hero's last days were peaceful. He established
himself in Mt. Minobu to the
west of Mt. Fuji, and there with the splendid
view of the ocean to the south, and
noble mountains beside and behind him,
he received the homage of his admirers
from all parts of the land. Here he
lived to see his prophecy literally fulfilled in the
great Mongol invasion
of 1281, which of course increased his
fame and influence considerably. The
year following that great event, he was
carried to Ikegami (near Omori
Station) as a guest of one of his lay-disciples, and
there died on the 11th
day of the 10th month, 1282. His last wish was to have his
doctrines
preached in the imperial city of Kyoto, to have "the holy hearings" at last,
and he appointed one Nizzo, then a boy fourteen years of age, for this
work. One
feature of his death-bed scene needs our notice. They brought to
him an idol of
Buddha as his possible consolation in his last hours; but he
beckoned with his hand
to remove it at once, with evident signs of much
displeasure. Then they unrolled
before him a kakemono with the name of
Saddharma-Pundarika Sutra written in
magnificent Chinese characters.
Thereto he slowly turned his body, and clasping
his hands towards it, he
breathed his last. A bibliolater, and not an idolater, was
he.
VIII-AN ESTIMATE OF HIS CHARACTER （第8章 人物評価）
No more enigmatic character has appeared in our
history than this subject of our
essay. To his enemy he was a blasphemer, a
hypocrite, a belly-server, a king of
mountebanks, and all that. Books were
written, some of them very ingenious, to
prove his charlatanism. He is the
favorite mark of attack when Buddhism is to be
ridiculed by its enemies. He
is made the scapegoat of all that is opprobrious in
that religion, by his
brother-Buddhists out of his own sect. No man in Japan had
more calumnies
piled upon him. And when Christianity made its appearance in the
land, it
too took its part in the matter, and many more stones were thrown at him
from that quarter as well. I know one of its famed ministers once turning his
whole
attention in that direction. Indeed, for a Christian man in Japan to
write anything
laudatory this man sounds as impious as to speak good words
for Judas Iscariot.
But I for one venture my honour, if need be, for this
man. Most of his doctrines, I
grant, cannot stand the test of the
present-day criticism. His polemics were
inelegant, and his whole tone was
insanoid. He certainly was an unbalanced
character, too pointed in only one
direction.
But divest him of his intellectual errors, of his hereditary
temperament, and of
much that his time and surroundings marked upon him,
and you have a soul
sincere to its very core, the honestest of men, the
bravest of Japanese. A hypocrite
cannot keep his hypocrisy for twenty-five
years and more. Neither can he have
thousands of followers ready to lay
down their lives for him. "A false man found a
religion?" Carlyle exclaims.
"Why, a false man cannot build a brick house." I look
around me, and I see
5,000 temples manned by 4,000 priests and 8,000 teachers,
and
1,500,000-2,000,000 souls worshipping in them after the manner prescribed by
this man, now seven hundred years after his death; and I am told to take
all these
as the work of a shameless mountebank! My belief in human nature
is too strong
for me to believe in any such thing. If falsity is so
permanent upon his earth,
by what other means shall we distinguish honesty
from it?
The most fearless of men, his courage was based wholly upon his
conviction that
he was Buddha's special messenger to this earth. He himself
is nothing, - "a sudra
of a seacoast" - but in his capacity as a vehicle of
the Pundarika Sutra, his person
had all the importance of heaven and earth.
"I am a worthless, ordinary priest," he
once said to a man in authority; -
"but as a promulgator of the Pundarika Sutra, I
am Sakyamouni's special
messenger, and as such Brahma serves me on my right
hand and Sakra on my
left, the Sun guides me and the Moon follows me, and all
the deities of the
land bend their heads and honour me." His own life was of no
account
whatever to him; but that his nation should persecute him, the bearer of
such a law, was lamentable to him beyond his power of expression. If demented he
was, his dementia was of a noble sort, hard to be distinguished from that
highest
form of self-respect which knows its own worth by the worth of the
mission it was
sent to fulfill. Nichiren was not the only man in History
who has had such an
estimate of himself.
Therefore, the holy sutras,
and especially his own Pundarika, were the constant
sources of his
consolation during years of hard persecution. Turning to Nichiro his
favorite disciple, who to approach his master's boat as it was launched for its
voyage to the land of the exile, had his arms painfully disabled by the
angry
strokes of its oarsmen, Nichiren had this consolation to offer: "Know
that staves
and exiles are the necessary accompaniments of the preachers of
the Sutra in the
Latter Day. What was written in the chapter on exhortation
in the Pundarika
Sutra two-thousand years ago, has now come upon thee and
me. Rejoice, therefore,
for the time of the conquest of the Sutra is at
hand." His exilic epistles to his disciples
are full of quotations from
sutras. In one of them he writes: "In the Nirvana Sutra,
we have the
doctrine of 'the turning of heaviness into lightness.' We receive this
heaviness in this life, and with it, lightness in the life to come is assured.
* * * Devabodhisattwa was killed by heretics, Aryasimha was beheaded, and
Nagardjuna met diverse temptations; and they in the Right-Law Age,
in
Buddha's own land. How much more then in this end of the earth, in the
beginning of the Latter-Law Age? etc." The Christian Bible was not more precious
to Luther than the Pundarika Sutra to this man. "If I can die for the sake
of my
Sutra, I count not my life precious," were his words on many critical
occasions. A
bibliolater he might have been, as in one sense our own Luther
was; but a book
certainly is a nobler object of worship than images and
forces of all kinds, and a
man that could die for a book is a nobler sort
of hero than most that go by that
name. Let the modern Christian reviler of
Nichiren see whether his Books is not
covered with dust; or if it is daily
mumbled in his mouth, and its inspiration hotly
defended, whether he could
endure sword and exile for fifteen years, and stake his
life and soul for
it, that it might be adopted by the people to whom he is sent.
Nichiren
should be the last man to be stoned by the owners of that Book, which
more
than all other books, did fashion for the better the affairs of mankind.
Nichiren's private life was the simplest that could be imagined. Thirty years
after
he had established himself in the strawhut in Kamakura, we find him
in a similar
structure in Minobu, when wealthy laymen were his disciples,
and ease and comfort
were at his command. Very intolerant to what he called
"Buddha's enemies,"
he was the mildest of men when he dealt with the poor
and stricken. His letters to
his disciples breathe the softest of tempers,
in great contrast to the fire in his
memorable "Treatise." No wonder that
they thought so much of him.
Indeed, Nichiren's life always reminds me of
Mahomet without the
concupiscence of the latter. The same intensity, the
same insanoid fanaticism,
yet withal the same sincerity of purpose, and
much of inward pity and tenderness,
in one as in the other. Only I believe
the Japanese was greater than the Arabian,
in that the former had more
confidence in his Sutra than the latter in his Koran.
Physical force was
not a necessity to Nichiren, seeing that he had such a book to
trust in. It
alone without any human agency is a power enough, and no force is
needed to
establish its worth. History that has acquitted Mahomet of hypocrisy,
ought
have done more toward a right estimate of Nichiren.
Divested therefore of
his thirteenth century garb, of the aberration of his critical
knowledge,
and of a little taint of insanity that might have dwelt in him, (as it
dwells in all great men, I suppose,) there stands before us a remarkable figure,
one
of the greatest of his kind in the world. No more independent man can I
think of
among my countrymen. Indeed, he by his originality and
independence made
Buddhism a Japanese religion. His sect alone is purely
Japanese, while all others
have had their beginnings either in Hindoo, or
Chinese, or Corean minds.
His ambition, too, embraced the whole world of his
time. He speaks of the eastward
march of Buddhism from India to Japan till
his time, and of the westward march
of its improved form from Japan to
India from his time on. He was therefore
an exception among passive
receptive Japanese, - not a very tractable fellow no doubt,
because he had
a will of his own. But such alone is the nation's backbone,
while much else
that goes by the name of affability, humility, receptivity, or beg-ability,
is no better than the country's shame, fitted only for swelling the number of
"converts"
in proselytizers' reports to their homeland. Nichiren minus his
combativity is
our ideal religious man.
参考文献
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