A True Priest, the Pot Headed Priest(1)
Priest Nisshin’s Ordeals
Jacqueline I. Stone
The Virtuous Deeds of Nisshin Shonin (Nisshin Shonin tokugyo ki)
is a hagiographical account of the life of Kuonjoin Nisshin (1407 –
1488), an evangelizer of the Nichiren or Lotus sect (Hokkeshu). The
historical Nisshin was born or adopted into the Haniya family, a
warrior clan in Kazusa Province in eastern Japan, and tonsured as
a young man in the Nakayama lineage of Nichiren Buddhism. In
early twenties, he journeyed to the imperial capital of Kyoto and
began his career of disseminating faith in the Lotus Sutra by
roadside preaching. Over the course of his life, he traveled
throughout the country, based primarily in Kyoto and Hizen in
Kyushu, and founded more than thirty temples. Among these was
Honpoji in Kyoto. Virtuous Deeds was written by Honji-in Nissho
(1628 – 1689) the Honpoji’s twentieth chief abbot. Its twenty
sections deal with Nisshin’s early mastery of doctrine; the
mysterious portents of his proselytizing mission; successes in
preaching and converting; his confrontation with the shogun;
resulting imprisonment, torture, and eventual release; his founding
of temples and the manifestations following his death of his
supernatural power to answer prayers. Nissho wrote the Virtuous
Deeds in literary Chinese; later, however, the Honpoji’s twenty-
seventh chief abbot, Joon-in Nichidatsu, expanded and rewrote it in
the Japanese syllabary for accessibility to a broader readership.
This version was published in 1704. The following translation is of
seven sections from Nichidatsu’s edition of the text.
Nisshin’s efforts to spread faith in the Lotus Sutra were modeled on
those of Nichiren (1222 – 1282), the originator of the Hokke sect.
Nichiren is regarded as one of the founders of the new Buddhist
movements of the Kamakura period, (1185 – 1333). Like others of
these founders, Nichiren taught that only one, universally
accessible form of Buddhism led to enlightenment in the Final
Dharma age (mappo). For Nichiren, this single form was faith in the
Lotus Sutra, expressed in the chanting of its daimoku or title,
Namu-myoho-renge-kyo. Nichiren, who began his religious life as a
monk of Tendai Buddhism, adopted the premise of that school that
the Lotus Sutra represents the Buddha’s true teaching, and all
other sutra, his provisional teachings. However, while the Tendai
school tended to encompass other forms of Buddhism as “skillful
means” leading to the one vehicle of the Lotus, Nichiren took a
strongly exclusivistic approach. In the Final Dharma age, he
claimed, teachings other than the Lotus were utterly ineffectual. To
disbelieve the Lotus Sutra, or to hold some other teaching to be its
equal, was in his eyes, tantamount to “slander of the Dharma” and
the cause fear for falling into the hells. He therefore adopted the
practice of shakubuku, the “harsh method” of spreading the Lotus
by actively rebuking attachment to other teachings. Shakubuku
was for him an act of compassion necessary to awaken others
from the sin of “Slandering the Dharma” and enable them to form a
karmic connection with the Lotus Sutra that would eventually
assure their enlightenment. He therefore believed himself bound to
declare the exclusive truth of the Lotus, even at the risk of his life.
In Nichiren’s view, belief or disbelief in the Lotus Sutra was not
merely an individual matter but had implications for society as a
whole. Based on Tendai notions of the nonduality of the self and
the objective world, he argued that a succession of disasters
besetting Japan in his day – drought, famine, epidemics, and
earthquakes – had come about because the people at large and
abandoned the Lotus Sutra in favor of Pure Land, Zen, and other
“erroneous" teachings. His Treatise on Establishing the Right
(Teaching] and 8ringing Peace to the Country (Rissho ankoku ron)
urges that the ruler cease offering support to the priests of such
teachings and uphold the Lotus alone in order to restore peace to
the land. Nichiren submitted this treatise as a memorial to Hojo
Tokiyori, the mast powerful figure in the Kamakura Bakufu or
warrior government, in 1260. In it, he warned that two further
disasters – internecine strife and attack from abroad – would occur
if his advice were not heeded. An attempted rebellion in 1271 and
the Mongol invasion attempts of 1274 and 1281 lent seeming
credence to his predictions.
Nichiren's attacks on other forms of Buddhism aroused hostility
among both leading clergy and government officials. He was exiled
twice, attempts were made on his life, and his followers were
occasionally imprisoned or had their lands confiscated. Nichiren
saw the persecutions he met as opportunities to expiate his own
past acts of slander against the Dharma that he believed he hat
committed in prior lives. Moreover, the Lotus Sutra speaks of trials
that its practitioners shall encounter in the evil age after the
Buddha’s nirvana. Probably a reflection of the difficulties
encountered by the emerging Mahayana community that had
compiled the sutra, these passages appeared to Nichiren as
predictions being fulfilled in his own person. The harsh treatment he
encountered thus served to confirm in his own eyes the
righteousness of his actions. The idea that one meets persecution
as a validation of one’s faith recurs throughout the Nichiren tradition
and has played an important though double-edged role in its
history. At times, it has provided adherents with a moral basis for
resisting secular authority, as well as the courage to endure brutal
opposition. However, it has occasionally inspired some among
them to court opposition deliberately, thus becoming a self-fulfilling
prophecy. The theme of willingness, even eagerness, to suffer for
the sutra’s sake emerges clearly in Virtuous Deeds, as does
Nisshin’s desire to follow in Nichiren’s footsteps in this regard.
Judging from his writings, Nisshin believed that being Nichiren’s
Dharma heir was not merely a matter of belonging to a Hokke
lineage, but of acting as Nichiren had acted and experiencing the
hardships he had experienced. Like Nichiren, he was also
convinced that facing persecution on account of the Lotus Sutra
would guarantee his eventual achievement of Buddhahood.
After Nichiren’s death, the memory of his uncompromising stance
and his readiness to give his life for his faith provided an inspiration
that helped shape the early tradition. Virtually all monks (and also
some nuns) among his following took Buddhist names having as
their first character the nichi of Nichiren, indicating that they were
heirs to his teaching and task of proselytizing. Leaders among the
fledgling order also carried on his practice of shakubuku through
preaching, debate, and memorializing officials. A distinctive activity
of the emerging Hokke sect was “admonishing the state” (Kokka
Kangyo), a practice modeled on Nichiren’s submission of the
Rissho ankoku ron as a memorial to Hojo Tokiyori. Letters of
admonition (moshijo) were submitted to the ruler – the emperor or,
more often, the shogun, or his local officials. Such letters restated
the message of the Rissho ankoku ron, urging the ruler to discard
provisional teachings and uphold the Lotus alone for the peace and
prosperity of the country. Sometimes a copy the Rissho ankoku
ron itself was appended or, less frequently, a composition of similar
purport by the writer of the letter, such as the admonitory treatise
written by Nisshin in Virtuous Deeds. Going up to Kyoto to
“admonish the state” was almost expected of any monk who was
chief abbot of a Hokke lineage in eastern Japan. An early example
was Jogyoin Nichiyu (1298 – 1373) of the temple Hokekyoji of the
Nakayama lineage in Shimosa Province, who figures in Virtuous
Deeds as Nisshin’s forebear and spiritual protector. In 1334 he
went to Kyoto to present a letter of admonition to the Emperor
Godaigo. He was arrested and imprisoned for three days, counting
it an honor to meet persecution, even briefly, for the sutra’s sake.
Six years later he made the journey again to admonish the first
Ashikaga shogun, Takauji. By Nisshin’s time, the tradition seems
to have elaborated on Nichiyu’s activities. In the Transmission of
the Lamp (Dento sho), his history of the various Nichiren lineages,
Nisshin wrote that Nichiyu was nearly beheaded in the course of
another remonstration attempt in 1356. Nisshin, who was also of
the Nakayama lineage and who practiced as a young man at the
Hokekyoji, must have been deeply impressed by Nichiyu’s
example. Nisshin him-self is said to have remonstrated with nobles
and warrior officials on eight occasions.
Following the initial efforts of Higo Ajari Nichizo (1269 – 1342),
who first preached Nichiren’s doctrine in Kyoto, the major Hokke
lineages all began to establish temples in the imperial capital. By
the mid-fifteenth century, it is estimated that nearly half the
population of Kyoto belonged to the Hokke sect. While its major
social base was among the rising urban mercantile population or
machishu, converts were also made among aristocrats and
powerful samurai. As the various Hokke lineages became well
established, Nichiren’s exclusivistic stance and the practice of
confrontational shakubuku became harder to sustain. The history
of the sect can in fact be seen in terms of ongoing tensions
between conciliatory factions seeking to make practical
accommodations with ruling authorities and other forms of religion
to ensure the sect’s welfare and prosperity, and those who insisted
on a strongly exclusivistic position. Nisshin was among a number
of monks, chiefly from new lineages that had split off from older
ones, who believed that the Nichiren order was becoming
excessively accommodating and losing the strict spirit ...