Okay, we have something called a new site, and it's brought across the Japan Sea by servants from Japan and additional planners, and they plant it. And most of the accounts of the origins of Japanese men have to do with these people, these men, going back and forth across the Japan Sea, bringing over, transmitting from Chinese masters, this form of the Japanese, so that the infantry can come and take off to our own base. But what I'm going to do is something a little bit different. I'm going to try to treat them not so much as Japanese men, not so much as the simple transmission of the religion from China to Japan. It is that. But I'm also going to try to treat it as the development of a new religion in Japan.

[01:05]

That is to say, I'm going to emphasize the Japan-ness of Japanese men, rather than the Zen-ness of Japanese men. And try to think about how this new religion coming into Japan was received and reconfigured to create what we now call Japanese men. So what that means is that I'm going to have to talk a lot about Japanese history, rather than talk about simply the transmission of Chinese history to Japan, and talk about the Japanese context within which it was transmitted. So what I thought I would do today was talk mostly about that, in other words, give you a broad sense of how Zen fits into the broader picture of Japanese history. And then tomorrow, focusing more specifically on individual figures, and especially their thoughts, how they conceived of Zen, the early figures in Japan.

[02:18]

And I hope that, although by necessity, because I'm talking about Japanese people, I won't have to do more lecture today. I hope that tomorrow, when I'm talking about things that are completely more familiar to you all, whether it's, say, the idea of interpretation of Zen, that we can have a more open discussion. I hope that, don't let them start talking, because you've said what you want to say. And so I'll take that somewhat to heart, although I certainly need a break from the talk. I don't want to drone on here for three hours without good talking. So what I'll do is I'll talk, and then I'll, you can jump in at any time, but I like to stop sometimes and say, help me out here. There are questions that I don't know what they're going to be. If you look at Japanese Zen, in terms of Japanese history, then the question of the origin of that Zen becomes much more problematic when exactly Zen took place.

[03:37]

And much of that problem arises from the question of what you mean by Zen. Not so much in the philosophical sense, what is Zen? But historically, what we mean when we say the Zen school. If you look at 15 of those Japanese schools, there'll be a chapter, inevitably, at least one, on the Zen school. And that chapter will be lodged within a larger set of chapters about the different denominations of Japanese Buddhism. When you say Buddhism in Japan, Japanese Buddhism is a kind of system. Historically speaking, there have been denominations, at least for many centuries, of Japanese Buddhism. Japanese Buddhism has been divided up into a number of different denominations, of which the Zen school has none.

[04:42]

So a particular denomination of Japanese Buddhism that came into, onto the island in the 12th century. And then, just at the beginning of Japan's medieval period, the period that saw the transition from the court of the Socratic government of the Heian to the military government of the Samurai. Are you guys familiar with these terms? Okay, you've used them a lot. Japanese history is divided up into, leaving aside the early period, and Nara period, and that's either named after the location of the capital. And then there's Heian period, and then you come up to the period. And then Mino-Machi period, and then the other, the Tokugawa period, and finally coming into the 19th century, the Meiji period.

[05:54]

So Heian begins around 800. Kamakura begins around 1200. Mino-Machi begins around, let's say, 1550. Edo period begins 1600. Meiji period comes around 1850. So Zen then comes into extense right here at this point, the Kamakura period. And this is a major turning point in Japanese social and cultural political and religious history. The transition from the Heian to the Kamakura to the period of Heian and the Socratic culture. Because of these things that have occurred, it's the beginning of the Samurai period. Yugo. This period is the 19th century Yugo.

[07:00]

I was talking about this period. This is the part that's called the early model. It was the modern revolution. It may be a definition of a revolution, but over a period of the 19th century Yugo there has been a fight throughout this long period, 400 years. The long period of 600 years. So, the very school then comes in around 1200 and becomes patronized by, attracted to the new Samurai government. And becomes patronized by them and gets established as one of the prime denominations of Japanese Buddhism. That's one story about the Zen school and its expansion. If you look more closely at this story, if you look at books not about the history of Japanese Buddhism as a whole, but the history of Japanese Zen,

[08:10]

then it turns out that this Zen school, as one of the denominations of Japanese Buddhism, is itself a kind of fiction. Or a, what, an abstraction, a convention, covering three different schools. A kind of moon-guide, so-called. And, typically, Obaki school. I won't talk much about this Obaki school, because it has a line over it that needs to be pronounced here. There is no Zen school in the abstract historically, but rather there are three traditions that get these denominations.

[09:17]

Yes, Soko, Minzai, and Obaki. Minzai and Soko, then, introduced them in the 12th century. The reason Obaki gets parentheses is that it wasn't introduced then. The Obaki school represents an introduction from China to Japan of the Ming dynasty Zen Buddhism. This in the 17th century. And that gives you the idea of a very small aspect of Japanese Zen. Only a few monasteries have this sort of denomination. Soko, it has a three-branched temple that represents Buddhism. It's a kind of footnote in the Japanese Zen. Typically, the questions of Japanese Zen are focused on the Minzai and Soko traditions. And it turns out that the fiction of Japanese Zen then covers really two quite distinct traditions.

[10:24]

Historically and ideologically. That is, the Minzai Zen is the Zen that was patronized by the Shogunate. That became established during the medieval period, Mido-Matsushu, Hamakura and Mido-Matsushu, as a kind of upper class, what we might call a Christian alien Zen. Patronized by the Shogunate and by the poor. A developing, very wealthy, urban monastery. Monastery that is in the major metropolitan centers of Japan. Especially the imperial capital of Soko and the military capital of the city of Kamakura. Even today, if you go on a tour of the monastery, because it's located in almost all of the Minzai monasteries, Daisetsu, or Tenjutsu, or Keisutsu, or Tenjutsu.

[11:30]

All the famous monasteries. All the famous monasteries, right? Some are such as the Daisetsu. You see traditional medieval Japanese Zen. By the Minzai. With the beautiful gardens, the lances, and the... And this is the scroll. So, that kind of Zen is often called Samurai Zen. By the Shogunate. Then, there is the Soko Zen. Which is sometimes called Peasant Zen. Just Peasant Zen. This form of Zen, as it turns out, did not flourish in the early Peasants. In the Soko or Kamakura. But instead, spread itself throughout the countryside. In more rural, less central areas. In the process, becoming deeply embedded in the community of the countryside.

[12:32]

Adapting itself to those communities. Not developing the prominent literary and cultural qualities that we associate with Japanese Zen. Or at least, developing them. Not participating very much in the government-sponsored system of Zen monastic hierarchy. Which is called the Five Mountains of Zen. That goes on. Five, literally five mountains. But it's a system, a governmental system of organizing the new Zen monasteries. In the hierarchy. And the five, actually more often than not. In principle, five major monasteries are usually organized by the government. The Soko institutions did not take that form. And did not get that kind of support

[13:35]

from the government. So, institutionally, quite different. Historically, their experience and their profile. And also, as we know, ideologically, quite different. We can say the Yungai Zen is characterized historically as Kannage. Kannage is looking at the story. In other words, the Zen of the core. The kind of Zen in which the monks focused on the traditional koan stories, the Mu koan, which I'm going to get into in a little bit. Study those stories, the Mu-based stories, to bring about a kin-show of the awakening, the feeling of awakening.

[14:37]

And, meanwhile, Soko Zen, as you know, did not use that type of training. But instead, emphasized just the context. The unity of practice and awakening itself. But there are a few things that I'll mention. So, both institutionally and religiously, and then the two schools disagree with each other. And they don't leave each other alone. They argue with each other. They criticize each other. And the Yungai Zen school says, or the Soko Zen school, you guys say you're all so-and-so, so-and-so, but you don't ever have any kind of awakening. Whereas we recognize that Zen is just a means for getting to awakening. Without that, you've got nothing. The Soko Zen, as you know,

[15:45]

gives out the Yungai Zen saying, you guys are all unique and special, and you don't understand the basic doctrines yet. But we have a foundation in our practice to express that, not to go after it. That kind of relaxation, the basic truth. So, and then Obaku comes in, and says he's confused. Okay. So, two models then, at least, of what we say the origins of Zen. One, the origins of the Soko Zen school in the 16th century, the 12th century development that's taking place alongside other schools. And then, the origins of this double or triple model of different schools.

[16:46]

Where do these come from? What are the origins? Well, the notion of the Zen school, as I say, is a kind of fiction of an intellectual school. That is to say, this notion that there is something called a Zen school has to do with the understanding of Japanese Buddhism as divided into different intellectual schools. Sure, there is no historical institution called the Zen school, but there is a certain Buddhist camp of intellectual Buddhism. That is distinguished from all other forms of Buddhism. And when you say the Zen school, that's what we say. It's an approach, a generally recognizable approach that has its own pictures, it has its own literature, it has its own religious form. Not to be confused with other forms of Japanese Buddhism, even if within that, there are the Buddhists.

[17:50]

This notion that Zen is an intellectual position in regards to Buddhism was placed before us in probably some sense in the 19th century by the Meiji period. In the Meiji period, when Japan had its revolution and threw over the shogunate, that is to say, the military government re-established the empire, they did so in reaction to the outside world. And in that reaction, there was a kind of dual aspect to that reaction. One was, we have to define ourselves as a nation-state, which includes not only our policy, but also an intellectual or cultural spiritual position, which includes ourselves as Japanese. So we need to recover the essence of our tradition,

[18:51]

and at the same time, we need to modernize and become a modern society, and relate our tradition to the modern world. So in that dual reaction, which in some sense was, in many circumstances, really in a struggle to work out the relationship, one of the things that happened was that the earlier Buddhism was seen as not indigenous people. It was seen as a Chinese people. And in the recovery of the Japanese spiritual essence, or cultural essence, Buddhism changed over. It was Chinese, it wasn't. Shinto. Japanese. So Japanese then invented something called Shinto as their indigenous spirit. Older than Buddhism. Buddhism then, after having been... Yes.

[19:56]

They invented some kind of coherent spiritual tradition called Shinto. It had to be Shinto. Indeed. I'm sorry. Shinto is one of the new religions. It has a distinct spirit. It's based on a lot of different histories. Brought together and organized. It was something that was going on for centuries. It was the various folk practices and literary pieces that existed in Japan. Yes. It's quite interesting. I think for someone who's been carrying on, what we've spoken of, what we've spoken in

[20:59]

what we've said, it had no name. It had no organization. It had no ideology that we know of. Bear in mind, Buddhism and writing came together. We don't have a written record, let alone a philosophy of anything prior to that. Anything that we know about pre-Buddhist Japan, Buddhism comes into Japan in the 6th century. And our earliest writing about Japanese history was even later than that. And when we get that writing, let's say records of imaginations of what Japan might have been like before it came into contact with China, we are obviously getting records that have been, that are themselves in the absence of Chinese people. We don't have any independent records,

[22:03]

except for the archaeological records of these statues, swords, spears, and stuff, but those are also things of Japanese history. So it's very hard to get behind Chinese cinephiles. Yes. Well, now we have this relationship between the 12th century and the 19th century, and talk about why in the 19th century the Zen, this thing Zen, came into being. I'm about to talk about that. I wanted to go back and ask you why, what were the conditions in Japan in the 12th century that kind of laid the ground for Zen coming in? We'll talk about that. Well, a big concern in the 19th century was that it was clear to the Japanese that

[23:03]

Zen was going to come to Japan. Most of our sense of Shinto comes from pre-war Japanese ideology. It developed over quite a few decades and then becoming intensified as it became part of the Japanese propaganda, both internally and externally. What Japan is is a product of modern nationalism, much like India is a product that we now know is a product of Indian nationalism when it was developing. And, my point is about to be in some sense, so, yes, you. I thought that the interesting thing was that the significant number of families in the household were

[24:04]

all Japanese. Well, we don't really know much about the household religion. The reason for that is probably obvious, but the thing to do is in our own homes where everybody lives. Perhaps behind your question is the larger one, what sense of antithesis is indigenous to Japan? And here's the sort of problem I was just talking about. You cannot get back to what is indigenous prior to Chinese history. We know that antithesis has been very important. We have good records for China going way back to 1140. So, and there we see

[25:06]

a new sort of take on antithesis which is a very superficial doctrine. We just have no way of knowing what Japanese religiosity was like prior to contact with that sort of thing. We know from our earlier written records that Japanese didn't accept antithesis as part of a certain traditional religion. No antithesis was very valid, very good. It's a very honest truth. There's been a lot of romantic imagination about the three simplified Japanese. And it's taken very sense, depending upon the context in which it's being done, about the people who do it. The standard one is that they were happy, fun-loving people, innocent, no good, living at one with nature in their little

[26:08]

parts of Ireland. And then, there was one Buddhism group. And Buddhism brought dark things like karma, real pain, hell. And they got sick. And they began to agonize. And, therefore, they were encouraged to put all their senses to work. And Buddhism taught them, in other words, that they needed Buddhism. Which is what you listen to people do, right? They start out by telling you you should shoot up and then they give you an answer for that. So the Japanese learned that they would shoot up. And then, they had Buddhism for all those centuries. And then, in the 19th century, they threw it off. They recognized that it was all just a Chinese and Indian stuff. It wasn't native to them. And they went in search of the recovery of their wonderful nature in that world. That was the story that was Shishinko's

[27:10]

rebellion against Buddhism. The actions of Japanese people. And Shishinko didn't think that it was true. So, that's the kind of, that's the dark truth. Then, there was also a bright truth in that the Japanese were a bunch of ignorant louts running around in the woods. Native. And Buddhism came in and took a lot of them. That's the Buddhist story. And talked on how to become friendly to them. And then, there were various combinations of those such that there's something like an authentic Japanese person. If you want to have Japanese essence plus Buddhism rather than separation, then you come up with something called Japanese Buddhism, which is different from all other forms of Buddhism because it combines the genius of the Japanese people, their wondrous nature, the eminence of the spirit in the world, such that the two families become the state of ritual

[28:10]

rather than the two parties. And Japanese drives the conflict and the war. Lots of new things. Stuff that you get from the Japanese people. It's trying to combine the Japanese essence and Buddhism. And that was very important for the war effort. Because the Japanese knew that the other Asians were Buddhist. Just to say, the Japanese are going to save me. It's not as attractive as saying, the Japanese are going to lead the recovery of our native Asians. So they knew what something was now called Buddhism or Hinduism. To find Asian spiritual spirits. And drive out the white spirit.

[29:12]

And there are lots of connotations in our own founding. One of the things that was being part of that mission was part of the missionary mission to restore the Asian spiritual and Buddhist spirit. And they wanted to assert that in Japan. So in some sense what I'm saying is that the notion of a Zen spirit comes out of 19th and early 20th century Japanese efforts to recover or create a form of Japanese spirit.

[30:14]

And one of the things that they did in the modernization of Buddhism was to understand it as a philosophy. A set of philosophy. To weed out from it those things which the superstitious practice. Magical things, all the sorts of stuff they saw as embarrassing in their pre-modern history. And create systems of Buddhist philosophy. So the Meiji Meiji creators of the few Japanese cities in Japan developed what they called the Twelve Fields of Japanese which then were Japanese. In a system of six, two, and four. That is to say, six fields

[31:19]

introduced into Japan first in the Hinata field. Then two fields of Heian which are Tendai and Shindo. That first one there was the Seven. And then four fields of Kamakura those were the Jodo school. Two schools of Jodo. Jodo and Jodo-shin. The creator of Jodo-shin. And the doctor of Jodo-shin. And then the Michiden school. Tokugatai in modern history. And then Zen. So, here's where you get the notion of one Zen school alongside four or three other Kamakura schools. And in a larger picture

[32:21]

there's two. And each of these schools had they were distinctive not just because of their historical but because of the particular philosophies they held. If you want to see an example of that that way of understanding Japanese citizens, you can look at a book that I think was still in print. I'm sure you have it in your library. It's by a man named Takashi who was one of the great major scholars of Japanese citizens and he called the essential philosophy of Japan. It's got 12 chapters and one of the positions they're like philosophical positions in other words this is a modern religion. It's a set of theologies in my book. These aren't just ancestral cultures but they do that. Takakutsu. A philosophical position. Am I going to be able to read this?

[33:26]

I don't think I'm going to be able to read this. I can use my well I'll just try to read this. The essential philosophy of Japan. Of Buddhism. So when I say got rid of it, what I mean is got rid of it in print. They didn't necessarily get rid of it in their other tracts. But one thing you see for example, particularly in funeral services. Magical practices. The good stuff, the stuff you really

[34:31]

want, they set aside and treat it as responsible. Doctrine of the mind. Doctrine of the nature of things. Dharma theories. Whether the objects are pertinent to the mind or not. Empty responsibility. That's what they advertise to the set of people. And then you see these tools that you're supposed to have to get a position out there. They cleaned up their act. The division into six, two, and four is not just historical but it represents I mean historical in the sense that they match

[35:32]

theories. They represent a larger picture of the history of Japan and the Japanese people. Such that the Nara period represents an introductory period during which Buddhism was devoted to philosophy. And those six schools of Nara are scholastic schools. We're making values of these schools. And one of the judgments is authentic Buddhism is not just scholastic for an elite core of trained monks. But Nara Buddhism was scholasticism and ritual practice. For the core. It was superseded then by more dynamic, more powerful

[36:32]

kinds of schools. Which were deeply contemplative. They had their theology to be sure. But they also understood the importance of time. And they therefore emphasized meditation as a spiritual practice. However, they remained aristocratic as Heian period was. And although their founders, famous Kusai, Baiso, although these guys were authentic, we're talking here in normative terms, value-based terms, although they were authentic Buddhist geniuses, their tradition came under the influence of the aristocratic culture and became Buddhist asceticism, superstition, logic, such that by the end of the Heian period,

[37:39]

in the 12th century, when the military overthrew the Heian aristocratic system and established then Buddhism needed a reform. And the fourth rule of Kamakura then represents the popularization of Buddhism. The return of Buddhism to its primary mission, which is to save people, everyone, without distinction, male or female, high or low. So Jodo, Jodo-shin, Nichiren, and Zen, all are characterized by this attitude of reformation, of seeking to get past the scholasticism, the ritual practices of the earlier traditions, and to recover Buddhism for the individual.

[38:40]

At every level. In doing this then, they differ from the earlier systems in that they were what is called scholastic, the term of art, in understanding before Kamakura. That is to say, recognizing that there was a great range of Buddhist options, both teachings and practices, they presented one type of focus on something. A particular way of thinking about Buddhism, a particular set of doctrines, a particular concept. And urged their followers to devote themselves solely to this one type. So Jodo and Jodo-shin emphasize the doctrine of Amida, and the vow to save sinners, and urged them to focus simply on the practice of

[39:45]

Nembutsu, the repetition of the Buddha's name and face, and seek salvation in the Pure Land. Nichiren focused on the doctrine of the Lotus Feet that has one vehicle in the Lotus Feet. That Dr. Min has promised that in our age, the Lotus Feet will be the basis for all of us, and that faith in the Lotus Feet itself would allow us this week to come out of this situation we would likely go completely shuffling through our worship of the Buddha. And, therefore, our practice would be that the recitation of the name of the Buddha, the dharma of the Buddha, comes from the practice of the Buddha. So Zen, as one of these four schools, put a emphasis on the Buddha. Emphasize the doctrine that we all have an inheritance of the mind, and that you can realize that mind through practical practice.

[40:46]

So let go of all the other isolation philosophies and all the other ridiculous stuff, and just keep practicing. That would be fine. And part of what's going on here, of course, is a normative judgment made by people in the 19th and 20th century that a Lutheran tradition is bad, that theology is a dead end, and that total commitment to, or devotion to, a single practice is a dead end. In other words, they are picking up on Protestant theology that is coming, and they are recreating a picture of the history of Japanese tradition that will make it look like various forms of Protestant theology. Yes? You said in an article that maybe you didn't even get to hear it, but essentially you touched

[41:48]

the example of the idea that although Japanese Catholics didn't even know that this article, but the idea that people were being miserable because of not being able to absorb most of the Catholicism and theology and so they were being simplified versions of it, and they were left to decay following the passage of the text. And that is a situation where Does everyone know the term mokpo? Mokpo is central to the way that people talk about this kamakura Buddhism. This is called kamakura new Buddhism, of course, as opposed to the old

[42:48]

Buddhism that has decayed. What is mokpo? Maybe you can define it a bit. Well, the point of it is that the idea that there is a period of time period between time periods such that first age is such that Buddhism arrives and comes along and there would be a period of time after you die that Buddhism becomes viable as a religion and so forth and then there would be a period after that which is the third period and that would be mokpo and that would be law. And then I guess after that it fades off into oblivion until it gets through to us in America. The dregs of the dregs. So you're saying we're in the third period of Buddhism.

[43:49]

The third period this is the third, actually, I'll cut it down. The second is called droho, which means oftentimes like a powder pit where you take the dharma and the first period is so we know the true law the true dharma the counterfeit dharma and then the final dharma. This is so moral to bear in mind that it's important for us guys to study so that the I is the I of the true dharma and one way of understanding exactly the so-called remedy is look, the original system of the truth is fixed in this book. Even in the last period. So in this little doctrine that comes out

[44:52]

of the Indian tradition it's especially inspired when in the early centuries of common world we had more such a religion as the Vedas and a lot of these big teachings of the course and the Vedas had a strong sense of how their religion was coming to life and that they were in the last period and so they began writing about this in the whole book of Gandhariya in this book and it's called the yeah, the one book

[45:52]

completely blank on the page I'm out of my lots of novels and movies can't come up with a chance so look it up Gandhariya, that's in the book it's about the development of this notion of the last period yeah it's actually not ma it's just the yeah, the way that the Japanese put the word together if you have a su before a ho then it becomes a ma ma means final character final final yeah which character

[46:52]

of the small person oh this is amazing this is an amazing way of systematizing the differences between the two and characterizing this period the Kamakura period as a selective period that's a movie this doctrine is very important for understanding the development of this image of the Kamakura period because the people who dominated in developing this image of Buddhism as a philosophy were Jodo and Pure Land and so when they looked back at the history of Buddhism the high point in the history of Buddhism was the discovery of the need

[47:53]

for their own religious support the Kamakura period is characterized in modern times as a period of extraordinary religious anxiety not just transformation of government from aristocracy to famine but a period in which the entire country will have shot a swat and will have to wait for Maitreya to come back in front of them again but what's important for us is to recognize that this period was dated by the Japanese 1052 just at the end of this chaotic period so the picture is then that all these Buddhists who believed in this doctrine recognized by the time they got into the 12th century that they could no longer achieve enlightenment and that none of the Buddhist teachers had enlightenment even the whole thing was

[48:53]

just going on a lot of people are really talking about nobody actually being a Buddhist being a realized Buddhist and therefore they needed and this doctrine of Mokpo was central then to the development of the two formative forms of Buddhism for the Maitreya that is the Pure Land form, Jodo and Yodo because that was built into their theology for those people living in the Mokpo period who by definition cannot save themselves the solution is to call on the other powers you can't save yourself by your own power you have to rely on another. So it was very convenient for them because they were the ones in charge of creating this system of the 12 schools in the Meiji period to take the central point in their own theology

[49:54]

and leave it back to the Buddhists as what drove the development of new forms of Buddhism not so convenient for them as you yourself pointed out you can look in vain for Dogen and his emphasis that we cannot save ourselves the other three including Nichiren emphasized this Mokpo doctrine Dogen did not it doesn't quite fit but they made it fit because it started up at the same time another reason why it doesn't quite fit is highly reused it remains a monastic form of Buddhism emphasizing monastic rituals and monastic attempts at exchange and although it has some message for ordinary people it can hardly be seen as a popular religion. Indeed, it was appreciated in the cross-religion

[50:55]

by the Samurai government precisely because it was high Chinese culture elite monastic culture and they did not want a bunch of people running around saying, it's the last days all the rules are off we'll be saved by some Buddha in another land it doesn't matter whether we sin or not if we have faith or not, you can imagine if you're a government you do not want this to spread around in your country that you can sin and be saved it's a dangerous thought we'd much rather have people say just sit so Zen doesn't fit into this but it was pushed into this model and modern Buddhism liked it of course because it put Zen in play as one of the popular forms of Buddhism appropriate for the modern world rather than some people would act yes I've been running past your question for a long time could you comment

[51:56]

at the rise of the common period the rise of the shogunate to the military government and so forth and it was coincided with the later demopolization people would you comment as an aside on the fact that at that point the Chinese had been collapsed on a commando invasion and was occurring at that point the external threat was known and that contributed to the atmosphere of this monopoly do you agree? yeah there's kind of a double question here, it's a good question one is was there a monopole atmosphere at this time or is that something you'd imagine or should that be after all you have to believe in monopole take it seriously before you get anxious

[52:56]

about it so that's one question that's one question and then there's this other question of what about the relationship with China Kubla Khan by the second half certainly of the 15th century the Japanese had become very aware that the Mongols were moving down through north China and then taking over the southern states and by the mid-15th century they had done that they had taken over Korea and China's next and Korea is a very good place for the Mongols to meet the Koreans and to launch two invasions into Japan I think right around the turn of the 15th century so yes there certainly was anxiety in Japan among the military because they were going to have to fight these Mongols and among the Kors

[53:57]

to what extent that contributed, usually the Kamakura of spiritual reformation has said to be characteristic of a period slightly earlier in other words late 12th century and early 13th century during which the Heian Kors got into civil war different military factions fighting to be the supporters of the Kors but in fact they were fighting for power the Kors had no power of its own it had to use the military factions as its supporters so the military factions were fighting in Japan in the civil war throughout the second half of the 12th century and by 1185 they had established a separate government which was technically supposed to be a government appointed by the Kors but they just set it up and said now give us the papers to make us official so the notion of social honesty in Japan

[55:03]

is usually not tied to the Mongol invasion which comes 100 years later but rather to this civil war alright but then there's the question to what extent was there real honesty and two reasons typically given one the theological reason the other this civil war now for that second one the question is who benefits and who loses from the civil war if you're thinking about the couple thousand courtiers living in Kumkyoto at this time sure they were nervous they were losing their land holdings in the countryside because they had their prosperity by rice land spread throughout the country and now they couldn't get access to the taxes from those lands because the military people in the countryside had taken over that and they were taking the rice so of course those people

[56:05]

in the capital were nervous but we're only talking about a few thousand people literally what about the people who were taking the rice this was not a bad time this was a time of optimism a sense you can make it you don't just have to work for the land so there are lots of people in Japan who are very happy at this time not in desperate need of religious salvation they're busy taking hold of the country and getting the rice and getting power and struggling for power we shouldn't imagine then this kind of millennium or something where everyone is in this sort of generalized put on top of that the theological question if you don't have mapo as a basis for your theology already would you be that nervous about it? notice what we're doing is we're taking a doctrine of the Pure Land the schools that developed at this time

[57:06]

and reading them back as central to the beliefs of the people of this time but they weren't. Pure Land Jodo-sun and Jodo-shinshu were not central to the beliefs of people at this time they were arising at this time to be sure but whether they were arising out of belief or the belief came after they became converted there's another question so there's a lot of questions here about how they're characterized in this period could you be a little more precise about where Jodo I'm somewhat aware that then around late 15th century essentially I mean Jodo-shinshu as I were earlier but some of the main Chinese masters came in the late 15th century which is leading the modern age 1500 and that's pretty much corresponding to this process that's happening between the ages but where did Jodo-shinshu

[58:09]

come from well here again we have origins Jodo is said to arise with the contemporary of Aesop in the 12th century second half of the 12th century that's where the Jodo school established Jodo in the famous monk perhaps the most famous of the reforming monks of this period a man named Tongen and to everyone this is one of the few famous founders of Japanese schools who was actually famous in his own time Jodo was not a shinran in each of them these guys were marginal type in their own way Tongen was a very common in the 12th century he began to teach the notion that the pure land practices

[59:09]

were the teaching and he began to teach that so I think that he slightly earlier and then so that's the Jodo school the pure land school then the pure land the true pure land school of Shin Jodo-shinshu it's said to have originated by from one of his disciples the most famous of all the pure land shinran shinran now the problem of origin here has to do with this that although Tongen was very famous and got the pure land stuff out into the world so that he could do about it he himself was a Tendai monk and Jodo was not a

[60:10]

such a genius he was a Tendai monk he was a Tendai monk and he followed the Tendai and Jodo remained in the Tendai tradition well into the universe Shinran was more the radical and he began to set up institutions on his own traveling around the countryside and his mausoleum became a sacred site for Jodo which the Tendai people didn't like and so his tradition of Shinjutsu began to develop and he became dependent on the Jodo and then there's the other great figure from this time which we see now a set of schools named after him and he is also someone younger than Tendai so he was in the basically just the second half

[61:16]

of the Jodo and his movement was also a Tendai movement it was called the Lodhi school a Tendai example but not even Lodhi he was just a real form of just one more creature going around teaching in the form of born again and so he was a unicorn but the amazing thing is to look back and saw all of these starting at the same time and they evolved into unicorn Christians despite the fact that institutionally they are quite Christian people yes and I'm wondering what is the Lodhi sutra in the Indian the Lodhi mantra the Lodhi sutra? yes the mantra is present in the Lodhi sutra and you see the purpose of the Lodhi sutra

[62:17]

in some way to say a thought mantra I'm wondering whether you see that in many if you say naturally rose mantra naturally rose rise I'm just thinking maybe that's where the mantra became so important rose rose the Lodhi sutra had been popular for centuries and it did have a notion probably it's not the original notion of the Lodhi sutra but it was plugged together with this idea of not both ways such that it was the test for the last belief now so there was a kind of generic sense that people had for a long time what happens towards the end of the Heian period

[63:17]

is that this generalized notion becomes associated with a specific issue of Mapo in this sinful schema that used to be on the board but has now been erased such that the issue came, can we save ourselves and that was the issue for the period I'm just thinking that the nation of the Lodhi sutra was not the idea that the Lodhi sutra was the Lodhi sutra maybe Mapo comes from the Heian period it's the beginning of that understanding before the Heian interpretation that maybe they really weren't concerned about it I guess that your question is are you over-emphasizing the attribution of

[64:19]

Mapo anxiety to the modern I'm just curious how it develops in actual times and I may be I don't want to leave the impression that no one cared about this doctrine of Mapo in this time I don't know obviously it generated enthusiasm for Pure Land style of Buddhism and it really I'm just saying we have a tendency because of an aging emphasis on this to think of this period as a period of high spiritual anxiety and I'm not sure that it was there were a lot of people who were quite happy and if you read Buddhist books from this time you read Dogen but lots of other Buddhist books and that issue, we're in a special time and we have special needs, is not necessarily front and center for many many, I would say most of the people who are writing about Buddhism it's front and center for people who have a theology based on Mapo but if you don't

[65:20]

bear in mind all these schools are continuing the fifth yada school not quite all of them are continuing but certainly the Hosto school, the Yodachata school is a very powerful school and has no doctrine, no need for doctoral doctrine in particular and Tendai and Shugan are there, they're very powerful they're the most powerful schools throughout the society and they are not particularly eager to have a doctrine that says these ones will now outmode you into this form, which is amazing so they either ignore or downplay a doctoral doctrine but they are seen as an interagency of having been eclipsed at this point whereas modern historians stepping outside of that theological kind of history, of Tengu history where Japanese Buddhism says nonsense, we're the mainstream and Pure Land is the modern the way someone looking back, say, on Protestantism

[66:22]

and Protestantism was mainstream Christianity in the age of Jesus and Calvin and forget the Pope, who kept the church and keep the Orthodox keep all the other schools continue right on yeah was there an earlier scriptural textual basis for the maple? there are sutras specifically that refer to a scripture does Diamond mention it? a lot of Buddhist sutras have some sort of about Buddhism after the Buddha definition of Mahayana scripture the consciousness of a Hindu

[67:22]

from the Buddha will often have some sense of that but it doesn't drive theology typically except in the context of the Pure Land it was called Mozart right, same word how did an idea for the Chinese come about? there was a big idea for the Chinese too as a kind of generic Buddhist idea it's one of the ways in which Buddhists have talked somewhat the way you've talked about you know, the general time almost every age students talk about the general time not the tradition every age because the golden age is over I mean, if this is the golden age, we're in trouble right? you want to have a golden age in the past somewhere so by definition then, your time is a kind of degeneration from that so it became a standard

[68:23]

sort of expression for Buddhism in these benighted times when there are no great masters but however great your masters usually, I mean, there are some forms of saying my master is the greatest but usually they say my master is, you know, a really great master in the past the Buddha couldn't have said that so yes I was thinking that you may be able to divide it off a little bit.

[69:34]

Say it won't be in your book. Perhaps you can prepare it in one of the books. Oh, wait a minute. I didn't mean that. I didn't mean that either. Or whether it's different. I don't know if you think we're going to be able to do it. It is now. I think this is a book. So. Yeah, I didn't mean to say that there are golden ages. I just meant that cultures construct golden ages. The way 19th century created the classical world. For the right wing. The 60s for the left. And it's weird. It's really worth. It's weird being a representative of the golden age. And now my undergraduate students come and they want to talk to me about what it was like. I was just curious how much people in these periods, like in the reform period here,

[70:39]

practice these very strictly, identify with them in the same way we talk about religion now. Someone's a Catholic, someone's whatever. Do people very, very strictly in the same way identify with one sect, with Buddhism there, in the same way we talk about modern religion? Well, this is another story that has to be, maybe we should talk about it. It's okay to take these away. One of the things that's at play here, and it's very important for understanding the identification of the Zen schools in Japan, is the word school. Or sect. Denomination.

[71:41]

The Japanese word is shu. That means shinshu. The shu school. So the shinshu. Or the zen shu. The soto shu. And very often you'll see it translated as sect. The history of Japanese Buddhism and of Zen is much driven by modern understandings of what a shu is. And this modern understanding is actually a political understanding. It's a modern understanding of what a denomination is, and how it is in Japanese history. It was developed by the government. The Meiji government separated church and state, so that the Buddhists could no longer be part of the state,

[72:46]

because they had to emigrate to the United States. And then they defined shinshu as not a religion, and said it was just the national culture. And therefore shinshu could be the faith of the Japanese people. And because they knew about the separation of church and state, they said it was a country, so this would franchise Buddhism as a definition. But, in doing so, they nevertheless required that all religions be registered in Japan. And they would determine whether you were a legal body. In other words, religions became legal corporations. And they stated that the legal corporation depended upon the recognition of the state. So, you had to define yourself as a corporation, a legal corporation. And those corporations were called shinshu.

[73:47]

And they insisted, primarily what you needed to do was to have a history, a specific history, a specific set of texts, and a specific doctrine. And you had to define that as the religious tradition. And so shinshu did that. It made clear that we needed the modern shinshu, and the government worked as all shinshu. So one of the things that happened, then, was that the government would only recognize a limited number of shinshu. And so there was a coalescence of some. And so-so is a very good example of that. In medieval times, there was no so-so shinshu. So-so shinshu was developed when the government set out to recognize which were the legal forms of Buddhism. And so-so shinshu, an age in which the two distinct traditions, with no umbrella organization, got under the same umbrella, called the so-so shinshu.

[74:51]

That's why we have two thousands. Because we are a modern amalgamation, like you think the amalgamation of two distinct monastic traditions. And the other-I mean, the minzai never got it together so well. Minzai is sixteen different factions. All the different stages of modernization. Because they had this great, famous monastery, wealthy monastery, with independent property and so on. Then we've got shinshu-ha. Ha means a faction. They were actually separate religions, right? Until they all had to get together under the umbrella called minzai. So now they're called ha. We were lucky, because we were lucky. But still, please, please, the shinshu was important. Because every few years there was a shift from one monastic to the other.

[75:56]

They would negotiate a treaty with the Shinshu. They would negotiate a treaty with the Shinshu. And therefore they could never find each other. Of course, we didn't. So. But this term, then, you know, if we-what happens then, of course, is that when you look back, we imagine that it had been adopted. That there were only the corporate factions. And the first place to look for the formation of this type of corporate body, the thing that made it possible for the Japanese government to say, okay, now you're all going to be shinshu, if you look back to their predecessors, the Tokugawa government, they only ever did. Tokugawa is the name of the family. The military family that moved in 600 in about 1850. When they took power in the 17th century, Buddhism was all over the map,

[76:57]

including monasteries whose armies that they had had to fight in order to unify the country. So in the period just before this, families of power, it was called Sengoku, a warring state. When warlords were fighting all over Japan to unify the country, to hate the prophets, and eventually they started to unify the country. And in the process, they defeated Buddhist monasteries and burned the castles and slaughtered the monks because these people were part of the political, all the political factions that were fighting against the Japanese government. Once they got control of it, just as they divided up the country so that they knew who the lord of this place really was, they created provinces and took their opponents and friends and so on and empowered them to do things. They said as long as you stay in your property,

[77:58]

don't try to take anyone else's living or more than that. And then they made all of them come to Tokyo to be baptized. Kendo was called in those days. And have their families in Tokyo so that they could create these provinces and provinces. That's the way they organized it. Unify the country. To be the sacrifice of the people. They said you Buddhist schools will be established and supported, patronized by the government. You'll become an arm of the government if you promise not to proselytize, not to cause trouble, and you have the Hakushin community in Tokyo, like the lord. So they created them in Tokyo. It's called a university, but it's actually part of the Hakushin community. Every of these recognized factions of Buddhism would have to have headquarters in Tokyo under the eyes of the civil society.

[79:01]

And then any problems they had would have to be reported to the government. Even their theological problems. If they had a dispute over the meaning of Shantagama, they could not resolve it themselves. They had to take it to the government, reporting it to the government to decide the meaning of Shantagama. And in fact, there were major debates about the meaning of transmissions that would take place during this time. And there were certain issues in the recent centuries that were finally decided by the government whether or not it was possible for a lineage to be transmitted to a non-Buddhist rather than to a Buddhist. It had to be solved by the government. We were very reluctant to bring any such debate to the government because, in principle, any complaint to the government was subject to death. We had to deal with it. You had to have friends in the government before you went to the government.

[80:06]

And famous individuals like Manjaro had to have headquarters in Tokyo in order to be a recognition of the meaning of Shantagama. You might be surprised. What were the terms of these statements? What were the terms of the debate? Well, actually, you can read the dissertation that was produced by Stephen Stanford about Manjaro. When the government, at this time, organized and official-bodied the different Buddhist factions, it led to a lot of... because they would establish certain temples and fix the hierarchy and the relationships of all the temples, they all had to be related to certain temples. Then there was a lot of sandals, so there was a clear political hierarchy and one of the traditions. And one of the traditions, the medieval traditions, was that whenever you went to a new monastery,

[81:08]

you could take on a new lineage. Because each monastery had its own lineage. So, if you were, say, at Sogyi or Heian, if you were appointed the abbot of that place, you would then take on the lineage of that monastery, starting with Goden, Goden, Gogen, and lots of other things. So you could move, shift your lineage according to your appointment. The people were shifting their lineage trying to get appointments and so on, and they were shifting their lineage. And so one faction, the Daijoji faction, which is up near Heian, and related to such a reality, they, Manzan and many other people from this faction, wanted to regularize and prevent the shift of the lineage because they had been recognized by the administration as chief representatives. And so they started a movement whereby it was

[82:12]

not appropriate for Sogyi-monks to change their lineage to a monastery-like lineage. And then Manzan eventually took it to Heian and appealed to the government and got it accepted by the government, such that the orthodox tradition of Sogyi-monks would mainly be fixed from the masters, by the masters, according to the masters, which he eventually got it. It's not a very edifying debate. It's not a very edifying debate, but it does show you how important lineage is in the history of the understanding of what a shū is, especially in the Zen tradition, but not in the Buddhist tradition. In any case, my point is, it's going to be a long story, but there will be a short point.

[83:12]

In the Meiji period, it created modern religious corporations that looked back to basically those institutions that had been conceived, and they were actually, at this time, political unions. Everyone, according to this new organization, everyone in Japan had to become a member of one of these unions. Every citizen had to register, and every child at birth was registered at one of these temples. And therefore, the government promised, through this system, promised that every temple would have a dantaku. You could call it a dantaku. You're not a priest, you're a dantaku. In other words, I'm a dantaku of this temple. That is to say, I am a lay member

[84:14]

of this community. Every son in Japan had to become a lay member of some of these unions, and they would sign up. No matter what your personal identity was. They would cover certain skills. There were no generics. There were no generics. Now, this is true. This is true. They didn't care which one you belonged to, but you had to register because that was the system. That's how they knew where people were and how many there were. No. This ended with the Meiji Revolution. But you can imagine, insofar as that military government was now calling the question, or at least the Buddhists were actually calling the question, it must have been for ordinary people. Because Buddhism was seen by ordinary people, most of whom, as they typically do under most governments, suffer. So Buddhism was seen as an arm of government

[85:17]

and part of the problem. And there was a lot of ill will directed towards the Buddhists because they didn't care about meeting the government. The government took over the family registry. And that continues today. So, like, every person in Japan has a registry at the office, the local government office at the time where they were born and where their family lived. And, if you look at my wife, typically a woman's registry shifts to the husband's family whose property it comes from. So then the woman will shift to them. But if the husband is a guy who's a foreigner, like me, hers remains with her father and is written notebook that says, married a foreigner, God knows what happened to her after that. So she is formally still

[86:21]

the father's daughter rather than my wife. But, but the carryover of this whole association of Buddhism with the government continues. I don't care any day if you guys have been reading about this, there's always the agony. There's always the good afternoon, the outcast, good afternoon. Good [...] afternoon. And then there's people. The people of the ghetto. These are outcast families that go back to the federal period that we're talking about. Certain classes of people who were considered police and shields. And they did not want to have contact. And they were unrecognizable physically. But they were recognizable geographically because of their genetics. And so,

[87:21]

if you know where families, people have been registered, then you know whether they are ghetto people or not. And then you know not to marry them, not to hire them, not to trust them. And the Buddhist churches knew where everyone was born. So they were in charge of maintaining this social distinction and keeping the certain class outcast. And then they had a business of selling their temple records to investigators. Marriage investigators. And businesses investigators and so on. And it continued right up even after the government was approved. They had all the old records of these families. Ghetto families. And so right up until our own time, they had been making those records available to people. So that the Jewish authorities were not confused about either marriage

[88:23]

or ghetto people. And now, in the 1980s, after a representative of both those people in the state and the International Conference was formed, there was even more discrimination. And this went back to the ghetto movement, people's movement politically. So those who were deeply embarrassed and had to go back and apologize to the national ghetto faculty for that sort of discrimination and not intentionally be a part of it. And so, now they've been, for the last ten years or so, they've been trying to set up lawful campuses and directors to speak to people about the Holocaust at all levels. And one of the other things they found out was that the socialists, you know, whenever we die, we get a posthumous Jewish name. A monk artificial is making us

[89:24]

monks, posthumous monks so we'll have a better rebirth wherever we happen. So, when the Jewish priests, socialists, would make up names for the ghetto people, they would slip in a term that would indicate the ghetto people so that in the next world there'd be nothing safe. And no one would confuse them with good people. And so, in the graveyard there are these ghetto people that you don't want your ancestors burying together with someone who's Jewish. You don't want to have these leaders who are coming back to churchyards or that type of feeling that sometimes you have to distinguish these people from these people from these people. So, all those and that kind of practice continues even though there's been a separation between the church and the ghetto.

[90:35]

Okay. Anyway, what I wanted to say is that the sense of shoe then is already in the 17th century. Same thing as in some other It's a legal issue. And the most important thing to know about this is that this is a time when it goes back to the question that was originally asked. Did people in early times think of themselves as members of a shoe? The answer is no. Some did. In the more what you might call born-again type, there's always a range of sort of relaxed religious types to highly intense religious types. There's some people who said that, for example, only faith in the Lord Jesus will save you. They felt, even though they were laymen, they felt that density within each of those conditions was one to one. But for the

[91:38]

most part, people did not belong to any denominations. These were not denominations. They had no congregations, lay congregations. These were monastic organizations. And then, whatever monastic organization is in your neighborhood, I mean, after all, Buddhists in Japan have never gone to church. They just go for festivals and things like that. So if somebody's having a festival, you go to it. And you don't know whether it's a pure land festival or some kind of festival. Only the monks care about these kinds of things. And only the monks participate in meetings that would define a historical religion. So, that's really a modern thing. But, modern history has led that past now into a version of history that goes all the way back to the founding of the Zen School. So that, even though they know better, the historians know better, the imagination is, when Dogen came back from China, he created

[92:38]

the Soko School, and then a bunch of people became the Soko School and they lived forever. But, in fact, you have a rather different picture. He's just a monad. He was a Buddhist monk that came down here this month and came back from China. But, preachers, yes. Now, maybe it's time to take a break. Take a break.

[92:59]

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