Gyōnen and His Age

Myōe's interest in Ch'eng-kuan and the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men is noteworthy and was no doubt maintained among his disciples. However, it was not in the Myōe lineage that Ch'eng-kuan and hisContemplations of the

Perfect interfusion of the Three Sages would achieve their highest Japanese recognition. Rather, that was to be the accomplishment of scholar monks in a tradition of Kegon learning quite distinct from Myōe's. I refer to Sōshō Shōnin 宗性上人 (1202-1278), and especially to his foremost intellectual heir, Gyōnen Daitoku 凝然大德 (1240-1321).

Sōshō was Prior (Inju 院主) of the Sonshōin 尊勝院, a subsidiary cloister within the Tōdaiji complex founded in 960 by Kōchi 光智 (894-979 ──

the monk traditionally regarded as the tenth Japanese "Patriarch" of Kegon).

The custom at the Sonshōin was to emphasize the older scholastic traditions of Buddhism, to organize them according a Kegon perspective, and to preserve their integrity vis a? vis the more recently imported Shingon and Tendai esoteric traditions that were dominant through most of the Heian period. Sōshō was true to this Kegon scholastic heritage ── indeed, he reconsecrated the Sonshōin to the explicit purpose of asserting Kegon over and against Mikkyō ── whereas his more famous near contemporary, Myōe, was drawn especially to those aspects of Kegon that could most readily be combined with Shingon esoterism. Sōshō was also a devotee of Maitreya and one of the first chroniclers of the Japanese monastic tradition. In matters of Kegon thought per se he was especially indebted to Fa-tsang and

Ch'eng-kuan.[79]

Sōshō's disciple Gyōnen was probably the single most learned and prolific Japanese monk of his day. His erudition was truly catholic in its scope and he is regarded not only as the chief reviver

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and systematizer of Kegon thought in medieval Japan but also as a leading authority on monastic discipline (Vinaya, 律, Chinese: Lü, Japanese: Ritsu) and an influential Pure Land thinker. Probably the most famous of Gyōnen's many writings is the Hasshū kōyō 八宗綱要 (available in many editions), which has been for centuries the standard "textbook" on the basic doctrines of the six schools of Nara Buddhism and the two schools of Heian

Buddhism. This is a work of broad learning, all the more impressive when one realizes that it was composed in 1268, when Gyōnen was only 28 years old! His scholarship developed steadily throughout his long career, however, and his later works reflect even greater erudition.[80]

The Six Nara Schools are:

Sanron 三論 (Chinese: San-lun = Madhyamaka)

Jōjitsu 成實 (Chinese: Ch'eng-shih = *Tattvasiddhi or *Satyasiddhi) Hossō 法相 (Chinese: Fa-hsiang = Yogācāra / Vijñānavāda, a.k.a. 唯識 Chinese: Wei-shih, Japanese:Yuishiki)

Kusha 俱舍 (Chinese: Chü-she = Abhidharmakośa) Kegon 華嚴 (Chinese: Hua-yen)

Ritsu 律 (Chinese: Lü = Vinaya, a.k.a. 戒律 Chinese: Chieh-lü, Japanese:

Kairitsu)

The Two Heian Schools are Tendai 天台 (Chinese: Tien-t'ai) Shingon 真言 (Chinese: Chen-yen)

Although the title of Gyōnen's work refers to hasshū (8 schools) it actually treats also of a ninth and a tenth, viz., Zen 禪 (Chinese: Ch'an) and Jōdo 淨土 (Chinese: Ching-t'u).

Gyōnen's chief mentor, under whom he was ordained and who brought him to Tōdaiji's Kaidan'in 戒壇院 (Ordination Hall) where he lived almost all of his studious life, was Sōshō's Tōdaiji confrere, Enshō 圓照 (1221-1277).

Enshō was a major figure in his own right. He first studied Sanron 三論 (i.e.. East Asian Madhyamaka) Buddhism, but was also well versed in Shingon and in non-sectarian Pure Land (Jōdo 淨土), for the "Sanron"

studied at Tōdaiji in those days was actually an amalgam of Madhyamaka doctrine (kyōri 教理) with Mikkyō practice and Jōdo devotionalism.

Enshō's Pure Land beliefs were shaped in part by his studies under Ryōhen p. 375

Shōnin 良遍上人 (1195-1252), a Hossō 法相 scholar of the Kōfukuji 興 福寺 (another great Nara temple) who compiled the Kanjin kakumushō 觀 心學薨鈔 (T2312:71), the classic Japanese summary of Yogācāra

doctrine.[81] From this fact one may speculate that Enshō's Pure Land Buddhism was of the sort that had long been associated with Yogācāra, not the sectarian variety newly promulgated in Japan by Hōnen, et al. One

should note too that Enshō, although an adherent of the so-called "Old Buddhism," also studied yet another kind of Buddhism which, in the Japan of his day, was among the "newest," at least in the sense that it was one of those most recently imported from China. I refer to Ch'an or Zen 禪 Buddhism, which Enshō studied for a time at Kyoto's Tōfukuji 東福寺 under the tutelage of Enni Ben'en 圓爾辯圓 (1202-1280), a Rinzai 臨濟 (Chinese: Lin-chi) monk who had lived in Southern Sung China from 1235 to 1241. Enshō was also an administrator and fund-raiser, as well as a scholar-monk. He was entrusted, for example, to complete the rebuilding of the Kaidan'in which, like the Daibutsuden 大佛殿 (the main hall at Tōdaiji containing the colossal bronze Buddha) and most other building Tōdaiji buildings, had been destroyed in the great conflagration of December 7, 1180 when nearly the whole of the Tōdaiji complex was torched by Taira 平 forces in the great civil wars between the Taira and Minamoto 源 clans.

This was a conflict in which the Nara monasteries, which then had their own standing armies, were deeply implicated. As master of the Ordination Hall, Enshō is said to have presided over the ordination of thousands of monks.

In matters of Kegon doctrine Gyōnen was a disciple of Sōshō, and Kegon was certainly in Gyōnen's view the paramount school of Buddhist thought.

However, he studied also with several other eminent scholar-monks of the day and it is quite likely that to him Kegon's paramountcy consisted less in any autonomous superiority than in its ecumenical capacity to encompass all forms of Buddhism.

Gyōnen's chief Vinaya teacher, for example, was Shōgen 證玄 (d.u.), the rebuilder of another important Nara monastery, the Tōshōdaiji 唐招提寺, which had been founded in the eighth century as the residence of the great Chinese Vinaya expert Chien-chen 鑑真 (687-763, Japanese: Ganjin), the monk who first conducted ordinations at Tōdaiji's Kaidan'in 戒壇院. Of course, the subject of Vinaya would have been important to Gyōnen in his role as Prior of the Kaidan'in, a position to which he succeeded after Enshō's death. However, it was important to him also because there was a general renewal of interest in Vinaya during the reformist Kamakura period when the Tendai Buddhism of Mt. Hiei was under attack as corrupt and when its corruption was widely blamed on, among other things, its lack of a strict Vinaya tradition. Then too, there was the challenge mounted against Tōdaiji's ascendancy in Vinaya matters by Shunjō 俊仍 (1166-1217),

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a Tendai monk who had studied in Sung China from 1199 to 1211. On his return to Kyoto, Shunjō established at the Sennyūji 泉涌寺 a new school of Vinaya (called Hokukyō-ritsu 北京律, the "Vinaya of the Northern Capital") based on Sung Chinese models in which Vinaya was combined with

elements of Ch'an discipline and Pure Land devotion. By contrast, Gyōnen's teachings on monastic discipline ── set forth in his masterpiece of Vinaya scholarship, the Rishhū kōyō 律宗綱要 (T 2348:74) ── were a learned reassertion of the classical Dharmaguptaka (i.e., "Ssu-fen" 四分 or

"Nan-shan" 南山) Vinaya that had been established in T'ang China by Tao-hsüan 道宣 (596-667) of Chung-nan shan 中南山.

Gyōnen also studied Shingon and Tendai esoterism under Shōshu 聖守 (1219-1291) who was Enshō's elder brother, a Shingon monk, and the founder of the Shingon'in 真言院 in Nara.

Perhaps the most surprising testimony to the breadth of Gyōnen's interests and learning, and to the catholicity of his Buddhism, were his extensive studies of Pure Land. Sectarian Pure Land, of course, was one of the most vigorous new developments in Japanese Buddhism during the Kamakura 鎌 倉 era (1185-1333). As might be expected, many representatives of older Buddhist traditions were quite hostile towards it. Myōe, for example, is famous for his very strong attack on the Pure Land teachings of Honen 法 然 (1133-1212), the founder of the Jōdo-shū 淨土宗.[82] Gyōnen, by contrast, followed the more ecumenical model of his teacher Enshō. In fact, he had deep sympathy for Pure Land, which he found not at all incompatible with the various "orthodoxies" he promoted (Kegon, Ritsu, etc.). Indeed, he wrote eloquently and with impressive learning to establish the legitimacy of Pure Land devotionalism. Gyōnen's Pure Land devotionalism was

influenced not only by Enshō but also by two other Pure Land teachers of the day ── Chōsai 長西 (1184-1266/68) and Shinkū Shōnin 真空上人 (1204-1268, a.k.a. Eshinbo 迴心房). Chōsai, one of Hōnen's younger disciples, was known for teaching a moderate version of Pure Land doctrine (criticized by the later Jōdo-shū as heterodox). According to Chōsai,

reliance on the saving power of Amitābha's vow was not incompatible with the rest of Mahāyāna. Shinkū was a monk of Sanron sectarian affiliation who was also learned in the Shingon and Vinaya traditions. By the 1260's, however, when Gyōnen studied with him for five years in Kyoto, Shinkū

had conceived a strong devotion to Amida and the Pure Land. This devotion led him to leave Kyoto and move to Kamakura, to the Muryōju'in 無量壽寺, where he committed himself entirely to Pure Land teaching for the final year of his life. Gyōnen's Pure land teachings may be found in several of his many writings but their most thorough and systematic exposition is his 1312 composition the Jōdo hōmon genrushō 淨土法門源流章 (T 2687:84).

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Gyōnen's knowledge of the Hua-yen/Kegon was encyclopedic and there is no major figure in the earlier Chinese and Japanese history of the tradition with whom he was not familiar. Nevertheless, it is apparent that he had a special interest in Ch'eng-kuan, and it may be that he is the first Japanese Kegon scholar of whom that may be said. Indeed, he would later be criticized for his fidelity to Ch'eng-kuan. In the Tokugawa period, Kegon thought enjoyed a kind of revival led by the scholar-monk Hōtan 鳳潭 (1657-1738. a.k.a. Sōshun 僧濬, Genko Dōjin 幻虎道人) and his disciple Fujaku 普寂 (1707-1781). Hōtan held that Ch'eng-kuan and Tsung-mi had departed from the Hua-yen orthodoxy formulated by Chih-yen and Fa-tsang and were responsible for what might be called the intellectual deracination of the tradition. Hōtan's reasons for taking this revisionist view are too complicated to summarize here, but they turn on issues similar to those that arose in the Sung debates between proponents of the Hua-yen doctrine of

"nature-origination" (性起 Chinese: "hsing-ch'i" Japanese: "shōki") and partisans of the T'ien-t'ai teaching of "nature-inclusion" 性具; Chinese:

"hsing-chü" Japanese: "shōgu"). Noting the extent to which Gyōnen was indebted to Ch'eng-kuan, Hōtan aimed at him many of the same criticisms he made of Ch'eng-kuan and Tsung-mi themselves. Modern Japanese scholarly views of the early history of Hua-yen owe much to Hōtan.