In this post,
I wanted to examine the background of adversity which has
silenced Jodo Shinshu Buddhists over the centuries, and especially address this
through the lens of the modernization of Buddhism, which has effectively removed
all sects from their supernatural (or superstitious) origins to forms that attain
towards self-reflection and modesty.
Buddhism has
not been apt to resist the incursion of Western rationalism. One likely
reason has been that Buddhism’s lack of resistance is evidence of the absence of an
intellectual heritage, which unlike in Christianity saw doctrinal disputes and intellectual
showdowns as the norm. Of course it would be a somewhat simplistic effort
to paint over disputations that occurred in Buddhism, and the sects that did
form did not do so out of an abundance of encouragement towards
self-expression. It does, however, seem that the Western assault by scholars of
Buddhism was much fiercer than ever could be anticipated. One only has to look
at the parallel incursion into Islam made by challenges to its origins, texts,
and ideas that have been met with severe and even radical retaliations,
including fatwas against Western intellectuals. The West has always done a tidy
job of forcing its neighbors into conversations they didn’t want to participate
in, and using language that isn’t always familiar or appropriate.
In Japan, Jodo
Shinshu has been censored at numerous points in its history. During his own
time Shinran, the founder, was persecuted and defrocked, and sent into exile. The
sect rose to prominence again under Rennyo, but was shortly after persecuted by
the Tendai school who used sohei (warrior monks) to oppose him. Rennyo had to flee
for his life, but the Shin Buddhists found their own form of resistance in the ikko-ikki, a group of warrior monks that
came from the ranks of the common people and fought back. Eventually, the Tokugawa
shogun Ieyasu split the sect in two in order to diffuse the concentration of
power. The West and East schools were formed as a result. Still in many places,
Shin Buddhists were persecuted and had to go underground, practicing their
strange nenbutsu in secret.
The swirling
defeat of Japan at the hands of the United States had serious religious
repercussions. Emperor Hirohito spoke to the people of his country directly and
offered a surrender of Japanese forces to the Allies. For many in Japan who
were hearing his voice for the first time, the revelation of the emperor was a
painful and unbearable thing. The religious organizations around Jodo Shinshu
suffered as well. Existential realities were laid bare: the emperor who was thought to be a god living
among his people, a descendant of the sun god Amaterasu, was not invincible.
The Ohigashi Schism of 1962, urged by the Dobokai movement, which was itself in
favor of joining the modern world, demonstrated how deeply divided the faithful
(shinjin)were on issues relating to
Pure Land doctrine. The Dobokai Movement (of the Eastern Jodo Shinshu) wished
to scrub much of the superstition of the ancient order and replace it with a “thoughtful”
alternative that enjoyed a kind of Buddhism a
la carte, trying to undo the more tenuous doctrines of reincarnations and
Pure Lands that exist on some otherworldly metaphysical plane. Like many of the
Buddhist sects in Japan, Jodo Shinshu was able to escape annihilation primarily
because nothing like the Western philosophy of a church and state architecture
existed. The questions raised by secularism did not require an answer that
required the takedown of the entire sect. If one looks deeper, it is worth
mentioning that the full canon of Buddhist doctrines (issai-kyo) were never
venerated in the community of Shin Buddhists who built their own path primarily
on three seminal sutras. But the same was true of most sects. Yet,
discriminating never took on the form of rejection that it did in the a la carte style of the West that ignored
or invalidated material. Shin Buddhism again could transform without having to
rebrand itself given and so it did.
Across seas,
the situation was similar. In the United States, where Shin Buddhism was introduced
on the West Coast in the 1800s, there were minor outcries and concerns that
priests from Japan had come to convert. Despite this, temples stayed secluded
in their respective immigrant communities. To keep suspicion at an absolute
minimum, many temples were built to resemble churches, used pews and lecterns,
and featured songs similar in style to Christian hymns. The Buddhist Churches
of America, drew their name in 1944 for the purposes of not being singled out,
but assimilating, after many Japanese had been interned under suspicion of
loyalty to Japan during the war. Under the terms of their internment during the
war, many Japanese were forced to sell their houses and businesses and shut
down their Buddhist temples. So when they were released and others came to the
United States, it was clear that blending in remained the only reasonable
gamble.
Shin Buddhism,
which is currently the largest sect of Buddhism in the United States, is
perhaps the most invisible, since despite sharing Buddhism in its namesake, the
sect carries on traditions that are quite different from the meditative
components found in other Southeast Asian forms. The rise in popularity of meditation
in the West and the move away from the more superstitious elements has caused
Jodo Shinshu Buddhists to re-evaluate their fundamental core principles. Both
immigrant and native Shinshu Buddhist populations have in one form or another
surrendered to a more sophisticated aura that is enjoyed in the West. This has
not been received as a defeat as the very nature of the Buddhist scriptures and
the overwhelming amount of material meant that Buddhism itself was never a
canonistic religion. There was never a New Testament canon that had to be venerated
by all of the sects, so that each sect was free to hold onto those writings
near and dear to its own understandings. In such a scenario, shifting emphases
seemed to invite variation. The newfangled rise of psychological sciences over
the past 100 years, gave Buddhism further leverage with which to work as the
study of the brain became more sophisticated. Even today, those like the Dali
Lama have embraced this relationship and expressed how psychology is a sibling
of Buddhist practice, while scientists run observations or do brainwave scans
on meditating Buddhists to give further credence to the performative structures
that have long been a part of its methodology.
Given the lack of contemplation on a First Cause or Creator God, the
faithful had as much a chance of enlightenment as the Buddha who offered it.
Not even the moral exemplarist model found in Christianity could compare. All
Buddhists had the ability to become buddhas. All could become enlightened. And
since there was no need for a Creator God, even an atheistic Buddhism could be
established in the a la carte Buddhism
of our day. Books like Buddhism Without
Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor, a New York Times bestseller, demonstrated the
potential of a Buddhism that is capable of recognition in a world that is
increasingly hostile to religious belief and dogma. Nevertheless, where the
West had created a Buddhism that could be appreciated for its secular
flexibility, Buddhism in its various native contexts never fully extricated
itself from its supernatural origins.
