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

本研究通过对日本宗教史上的重要人物之一日人(1222-1282)与密宗的模糊关系的重新评价，重新审视其教义与实践。这本书利用了日人语料库中的各种材料，包括现存的书法曼陀罗和他的《莲花经》注解副本等图像来源，这些材料迄今都被西方和日本的学者忽视，这本书将日人的思想置于对莲花经深奥解释的解释学和仪式传统之内。在揭示日人深奥的前世的同时，这项研究也揭示了深奥佛教在日本的发展。日人是镰仓时期运动之一的发起人，即今天所知的日人学派。他的宗教思想集中在一部经典《莲花经》上，这部经典是他在中日对天台/天台派的注释之后所解释的。然而，日仁的解释是沿着排他性路线发展的，强调《莲花经》的绝对优势，并严厉批评其他流派和当代运动。日仁思想的这些方面有助于将他描绘成一个佛教原教旨主义者的独特形象。目前的研究表明，这样的日仁形象是基于现代宗派议程和对13世纪日本佛教发展的根本误解。我的论点是，日仁所建立的“正统”和“正统”是对日仁公开批评的传统，即密宗(或密宗)佛教元素的复杂挪用和重新表述的结果，而他对这一传统的批评更像是一种合法化的分类策略。虽然中世纪佛教的接受形象集中在专注于单一的、非深奥的佛教修行的虔诚学校的诞生，但在这个项目中遵循的假设是，深奥佛教是镰仓时期佛教的主要形式，它是日仁教育的一部分，也是天台学派所坚持的莲花经注释传统的一部分。日仁与日本天台所阐述的深奥之道的互动，也就是我们今天所说的台光，是这个项目特别关注的焦点。大弥陀本身就是密宗佛教的一种鲜为人知的形式。对其教义和仪式方面的研究表明，太宗学僧对《莲花经》进行了密化的过程，在平安中后期达到了在日本的充分发展，并蔓延到太宗教派之外。正是在这样的背景下，日仁采纳并重新使用了基本的深奥注释范畴，并借用了特定的深奥仪式元素。这项研究表明，日仁形成了另一种解释学模型，该模型徘徊在传统的天台结构中，明确否定深奥教义的价值，重申了他所处环境中盛行的深奥佛教的语言学、本体论和经世论范畴。这本书分为两部分。第一部分从《莲花经》的具体释义角度来考察日仁对密宗的态度。第二部分提出了采用深奥范畴的问题，着重于日人系统的一个组成部分：他建立的作为主要崇拜对象的图标(洪宗)，并有意识地按照深奥的曼陀罗模式构建。我考虑了日仁曼陀罗的多义性，以及来自各种来源的影响在它所呈现的形状上的汇聚。此外，我还详细分析了日仁尊宗的一个具体先例，即在神秘的莲花仪式(Hokkeho)中使用的曼陀罗。

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).