The Story of Jesus and the Buddhist
Teacher
Of all the episodes in Christian literature
that fall outside the canon, one of the most delightfully bizarre is the Tenchi Hajimari no Koto, commonly
translated as The Beginning of Heaven and
Earth. While the content has very little to do with the origins of the
universe, it does contain a number of very interesting stories about Jesus
living out his existence in a uniquely Japanese world.
To what extent the Tenchi was considered sacred scripture and
read within the communities of southern Japan is a matter of scholarly debate.
What makes this work unique is that unlike other non-canonical works, such as
the Gnostic gospels that competed for attention among ancient Christians in the
same communities and geographical regions where the Bible would come to
dominate, the Tenchi represents as
genuine a cultural appropriation as one can imagine. Given what appropriation has come to mean in
our time, it can certainly be argued that one way to view the Tenchi is as a
deeply flawed attempt at Christian testimony. But perhaps the reason for this
has as much to do with the short, but palpable, existence of Christianity in
the age prior to Japan’s expulsion order, which forced Westerners out of the country.
The incomplete nature of the Tenchi and its mix of broken biblical
narrative suggests that those Japanese Christians in the south who were most
affected by the foreign religion never entirely succumbed to its influence.
Among all the episodes found in the Tenchi, the confrontation between Jesus (who
is called The Holy One) and the Buddhist teacher Gakujuran in a temple is among
the liveliest. And perhaps it is because the confrontation fails to promote
Christianity in a way that recommends the new religion above other religions, that
the Tenchi becomes uniquely Japanese,
both because it retains the content of its Japanese surroundings as well as the
Japanese tendency to blend religious traditions.
Christal Whelan’s popular translation
of the Tenchi records how Jesus first
encounters Gakujuran, whose name signals his function in society. The word gakusha
in Japanese means scholar, and so it seems more appropriate to think of this
man as a scholar in the Buddhist scriptures, rather than only a teacher or
practitioner. The Holy One comes to a
temple to hear from this man, who teaches the Buddhist scriptures and others
(we can assume the latter means other holy books outside the Buddhist canon). Gakujuran
tells those listening that the six-lettered name Amida Namu Butsu, a reference to the Shin Buddhist recitation
formula known as the nembutsu, saves
those who recite it so they may attain Buddhahood in the next world. The
reference to Amida leaves little doubt about the influence of Shin Buddhism on
the Tenchi given that the practice of
this recitation is unique to this sect. In an interesting exchange, Jesus does
not argue this point with Gakujuran, but asks him to further explain about
the types of places people go after they die. The scholar responds that on a
Boat of Vows (a popular image in Shin Buddhism) they go to either the Buddhist heaven or hell. Again the Holy One appears
to concede this point and changes the subject, asking about the terms under
which creation came into being. The teacher responds by asking him instead to
explain those origins. The Holy One accepts the challenge and after a
short exposition tells the people that those worshipping Buddha are in fact
worshipping Deusu (the God of the
Christians) who made all things. Gakujuran’s disciples decide to follow the
Holy One but note that the former had taught them the truth of cause and
effect, a nod to the continuing wisdom found in Buddhism. The final movement
creates a bit more drama, as the Holy One tells Gakujuran to cast aside the
Buddhist scriptures to follow him. Gakujuran responds that the scriptures are
important and too valuable to discard. The narrator tells us that because such an
argument about which scriptures are important is futile, The Holy One instead creates
a test in which the full body of the Buddhist scriptures are set up against the
weight of one book (presumably the Tenchi
itself or a reference to the Christian scriptures, which the Japanese
Christians may or may not have encountered at some point in time). When the
books are weighed, the one book is heavier than the issai-kyo (all the Buddhist scriptures combined). At this point,
Gakujuran asks to be baptized.
Looking at this short episode, some
observations about the text can be made that provide insight into the Japanese
Christians, their culture, and the continuing influence of Buddhism in their
lives. It is no accident that the whole incident occurs in a temple. Jesus’ first
encounter of the Jewish religious leaders was at the Temple in Jerusalem. But
this is no Jewish temple in the Tenchi.
Rather than a bimah (a raised
platform in the temple used for reading the Torah scroll), we find a raised
seat in the center of the temple, reflecting Buddhist architecture.
Second, Amida Buddha is compared to
Jesus and both function as saviors. One cannot but help to hear echoes of St.
Paul speaking in front of the Greeks at the Areopagus in Athens, where he
declares that the statue they erected to an unknown god is actually the
Christian god (Acts 17:23-31), and continues by quoting from their own poets
and dramatists to explain the ways in which God is omnipresent to us all. Or
one is reminded of the words of St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans who notes
that the pre-Christian world knew God in their hearts but intentionally chose
not to serve him. These small glimpses may have been the same kind that
influenced Japanese Christians to respond to the possibility of universalism,
even if the Western tradition does not retain these stories in such a way. Yet the Tenchi’s universalism is even more
pronounced. The Holy One gives no indication that Buddhism is a flawed path. The
classic example of the Japanese doctrine of honji
suijaki, in which Shinto deities take on roles in the Buddhist pantheon, is
on full display as Jesus simply lets Gokujuran’s statement stand about Amida as
a means to salvation. In fact, The Holy One directly supports this view, when
in his concluding remarks, he declares: “As for the one you worship as Buddha,
he is called Deusu, Lord of Heaven. He is the Buddha who introduced the
salvation to help humankind in the world yet to come.”
If we take seriously the Pure Land teachings
of Shin Buddhism that most notably arise in this episode, then we can look to
the contest of the books as they are weighed against each other. Shin Buddhism was
often distinguished by its appeal to simplicity and the common people against
meditative versions of Japanese Buddhism that developed alongside their
counterpart as institutional norms. Teachers such as Yuenbo and Rennyo argued
that Shin Buddhism did not require the level of literacy or sophistication
found among the followers of other sects whose central focus was meditation. Nor
did Shin Buddhism require long hours of meditation in the pursuit of
enlightenment (satori), which was
both a luxury reserved for those who had the means and a hardship for those who
could not forsake their livelihoods. Shin Buddhism invited simplicity and this
was reflected in the recitation of the nembutsu
as the only necessary practice. So
perhaps it is not surprising that in an ironic twist of fate, the Tenchi appears to reverse the roles of
its characters in this final moment. While the Shin Buddhist Gokujuran adopts the role of
the book-smart scholar who has accumulated a vast library of Buddhist learning
(the issai-kyo), it is Jesus who reflects
the virtue of simplicity when he recommends just one book, which is heavier
than all the other books combined. The writer may have been having some fun at
the reader’s expense. By reflecting a Shin Buddhist value as a Christian one, it
turns out that Jesus becomes the more observant Shin Buddhist because he
understands that a great repository of book smarts is not the answer to a more
virtuous life.
Whelan reports that Japanese
Christians became embarrassed by the fantastic stories and the mythical quality
of the contents found in the Tenchi when
confronted by outside Christians who later returned to Japan and were not a
part of these generational communities. Yet the Tenchi’s view of a Jesus who maintained a close connection to Buddhism
is important given the ease with which foreign materials and ideas were
apprehended, boiled down, but often reshaped into the collective consciousness
of the Japanese people. From kanji and tea culture that found its way from
China and a syllabary language known as katakana built intentionally for foreign loan words to
pop culture and sports, cultural philosophy in Japan has regularly affirmed
foreign influence, rather than chasing it away. It is only under such conditions,
where appropriation is not a scare word, that Jesus can become a Buddhist and the
adoption of a text like the Tenchi became
possible.
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