Nichiren and the Lotus Sutra: Esoteric Patterns in a Medieval Interpretation of the Lotus Scripture

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This study reconsiders the doctrine and practice of Nichiren (1222-1282), one of the major figures in Japanese religious history, through a re-evaluation of his ambiguous relation to esoteric Buddhism. Making use of a variety of material from the Nichiren corpus, including iconographic sources such as the surviving calligraphic mandalas and his annotated copy of the Lotus Sutra, which have hitherto been neglected by Western and Japanese scholarship alike, the book situates Nichiren's thought within the hermeneutical and ritual tradition of esoteric interpretations of the Lotus Sutra. In bringing to light Nichiren's esoteric antecedents, this study also sheds light on the development of esoteric Buddhism in Japan.Nichiren was the initiator of one of the Kamakura period movements, today known as Nichiren school. His religious thought focused on one scripture, the Lotus Sutra, which he interpreted following the Sino-Japanese exegesis of the T'ien-t'ai/Tendai school. However, Nichiren's interpretation developed along exclusivist lines that emphasized the absolute superiority of the Lotus Sutra and harshly criticised other schools and contemporary movements. These aspects of Nichiren's thought have contributed to drawing a picture of him as a Buddhist fundamentalist sui generis.The present study demonstrates that such an image of Nichiren is based on modern sectarian agendas and on a fundamental misunderstanding of the development of thirteenth-century Japanese Buddhism. My contention is that the 'orthodoxy' and 'orthopraxis' that Nichiren constructed were the result of a complex appropriation and reformulation of elements belonging to a tradition that Nichiren criticized openly, that is, esoteric (or Tantric) Buddhism, and that his criticism of this tradition rather was a taxonomic strategy of legitimation. While the received image of medieval Buddhism has focused on the birth of devotional schools devoted to a single, non-esoteric, Buddhist practice, the hypothesis followed in this project is that esoteric Buddhism was the dominant form of Buddhism in the Kamakura period, it was part of Nichiren's education, and part of the exegetical tradition of the Lotus Sutra as upheld by the Tendai school. The dynamics of Nichiren's interaction with the esotericism elaborated within Japanese Tendai, what we today call Taimitsu, are the particular focus of this project. Taimitsu itself is a little known form of Tantric Buddhism. My research into its doctrinal and ritual aspects demonstrates that Taimitsu scholar-monks carried out a process of esoterization of the Lotus Sutra, which reached its full development in Japan in the mid- and late Heian period, and spread beyond Taimitsu sectarian circles. It is in this context that Nichiren adopted and re-employed fundamental esoteric exegetical categories, and borrowed specific esoteric ritual elements. This study suggests that Nichiren formulated an alternative hermeneutical model which, while hovering within a traditional Tendai structure and explicitly negating the value of esoteric teachings, reiterated the linguistic, ontological and soteriological categories of esoteric Buddhism, prevalent in his milieu. The book is divided in two parts. Part I considers Nichiren's attitude towards esoteric Buddhism in the context of the specific hermeneutics of the Lotus Sutra. Part II develops the issue of adoption of esoteric categories, focusing on one constituent of Nichiren system: the icon that he established as the major object of worship (honzon) and consciously constructed according to esoteric mandalic patterns. I considers the polysemic nature of Nichiren's mandala and the converging of influences from a variety of sources in the shapes it assumed. Furthermore, I analyse one specific precedent of Nichiren's honzon in detail, the mandala used during the esoteric rituals of the Lotus (hokkeho).