Part 14 (1/2)
K[=o]b[=o] Irenicon.
K[=o]b[=o] indeed was both the Philo and Euhemerus of j.a.pan, plus a large amount of priestly cunning and what his enemies insist was dishonesty and forgery. Soon after his return from China, he went to the temples of Ise,[18] the most holy place of s.h.i.+nt[=o].[19] Taking a reverent att.i.tude before the chief shrine, that of Toko Uke Bime no Kami or Abundant-Food-Lady-G.o.d, or the deified Earth as the producer of food and the upholder of all things upon its surface, the suppliant waited patiently while fasting and praying.
In this, K[=o]b[=o] did but follow out the ordinary s.h.i.+nt[=o] plan for securing G.o.d-possession and obtaining revelation; that is, by starving both the stomach and the brain.[20] After a week's waiting he obtained the vision. The Food-possessing G.o.ddess revealed to him the yoke (or Yoga) by which he could harness the native and the imported G.o.ds to the chariot of victorious Buddhism. She manifested herself to him and delivered the revelation on which his system is founded, and which, briefly stated, is as follows:
All the s.h.i.+nt[=o] deities are avatars or incarnations of Buddha. They were manifestations to the j.a.panese, before Gautama had become the enlightened one, or the jewel in the lotus, and before the holy wheel of the law or the sacred shastras and sutras had reached the island empire.
Further more, provision was made for the future G.o.ds and deified holy ones, who were to proceed from the loins of the Mikado, or other j.a.panese fathers, according to the saying of Buddha which is thus recorded in a j.a.panese popular work:
”Life has a limited span, and naught may avail to extend it.
This is manifested by the impermanence of human beings, but yet, whenever necessary, I will hereafter make my appearance from time to time as a G.o.d (Kami), a sage (Confucian teacher), or a Buddha (Hotoke).”[21]
In a word, the s.h.i.+nt[=o] G.o.ddess talked as orthodox (Yoga) Buddhism as the ancient characters of the Indian, Persian and pre-Islam-Arabic stories in the Arabian Nights now talk the purest Mohammedanism.[22]
According to the words put into Gautama's mouth at the time of his death, the Buddha was already to reappear in the particular form and in all the forms, acceptable to s.h.i.+nt[=o]ists, Confucianists, or Buddhists of whatever sect.
Descending from the shrine of vision and revelation, with a complete scheme of reconciliation, with correlated catalogues of s.h.i.+nt[=o] and Buddhist G.o.ds, with liturgies, with lists of old popular festivals newly named, with the apparatus of art to captivate the senses, K[=o]b[=o]
forthwith baptized each native s.h.i.+nt[=o] deity with a new Chinese-Buddhistic name. For every s.h.i.+nt[=o] festival he arranged a corresponding Buddhist's saints' day or gala time. Then, training up a band of disciples, he sent them forth proclaiming the new irenicon.
The Hindu Yoga Becomes j.a.panese Riy[=o]bu.
It was just the time for this brilliant and able ecclesiastic to succeed. The power and personal influence of the Mikado were weakening, the court swarmed with monks, the rising military cla.s.ses were already safely under the control of the shavelings, and the pen of learning had everywhere proved itself mightier than the sword and muscle.
K[=o]b[=o]'s particular dialectic weapons were those of the Yoga-chara, or in j.a.panese, the s.h.i.+ngon Shu, or Sect of the True Word.[23] He, like his Chinese master, taught that we can attain the state of the Enlightened or Buddha, while in the present physical body which was born of our parents.
This branch of Buddhism is said to have been founded in India about A.D.
200, by a saint who made the discovery of an iron paG.o.da inhabited by the holy one, Vagrasattva, who communicated the exact doctrine to those who have handed it down through the Hindoo and Chinese patriarchs. The books or scriptures of this sect are in three sutras; yet the essential point in them is the Mandala or the circle of the Two Parts, or in j.a.panese Riy[=o]bu. Introduced into China, A.D. 720, it is known as the Yoga-chara school.
K[=o]b[=o] finding a Chinese worm, made a j.a.panese dragon, able to swallow a national religion. In the act of deglut.i.tion and the long process of the digestion of s.h.i.+nt[=o], j.a.panese Buddhism became something different from every other form of the faith in Asia. Noted above all previous developments of Buddhism for its pantheistic tendencies, the s.h.i.+ngon sect could recognize in any s.h.i.+nt[=o] G.o.d, demi-G.o.d, hero, or being, the avatar in a previous stage of existence of some Buddhist being of corresponding grade.
For example,[24] Amateras[)u] or Ten-Sh[=o]-Dai-Jin, the sun-G.o.ddess, becomes Dai Nichi Ni[=o]rai or Amida, whose colossal effigies stand in the bronze images Dai Butsu at Nara, Ki[=o]to and Kamakura. Ojin, the G.o.d of war, became Hachiman Dai Bosatsu, or the great Bodhisattva of the Eight Banners. Adopted as their patron by the fighting Genji or Minamoto warriors of mediaeval times, the Buddhists could not well afford to have this popular deity outside their pantheon.
For each of the thirty days of the month, a Bodhisattva, or in j.a.panese p.r.o.nunciation Bosatsu, was appointed. Each of these Bodhisattvas became a Dai Mi[=o] Jin or Great Enlightened Spirit, and was represented as an avatar in j.a.pan of Buddha in the previous ages, when the j.a.panese were not yet prepared to receive the holy law of Buddhism.
Where there were not enough Dai Mi[=o] Jin already existing in native traditions to fill out the number required by the new scheme, new t.i.tles were invented. One of these was Ten-jin, Heavenly being or spirit. The famous statesman and scholar of the tenth century, Sugawara Michizane, was posthumously named Tenjin, and is even to this day wors.h.i.+pped by many children of j.a.pan as he was formerly for a thousand years by nearly all of them, as the divine patron of letters. Kompira, Benten and other popular deities, often considered as properly belonging to s.h.i.+nt[=o], ”are evidently the offspring of Buddhist priestly ingenuity.”[25] Out of the eight millions or so of native G.o.ds, several hundred were catalogued under the general term Gon-gen, or temporary manifestations of Buddha.
In this list are to be found not only the heroes of local tradition, but even deified forces of nature, such as wind and fire. The custom of making G.o.ds of great men after their death, thus begun on a large scale by K[=o]b[=o], has gone on for centuries. Iyeyas[)u], the political unifier of j.a.pan, s.h.i.+nes as a star of the first magnitude in the heavens of the Riy[=o]bu system, under the mime of T[=o]-sh[=o]-g[=u], or Great Light of the East. The common people speak of him as Gon-gen Sama, the latter word being an honorary form of address for all beings from a baby to a Bosatsu.
In this way, K[=o]b[=o] arranged a sort of clearing-house or joint-stock company in which the Bodhisattvas, kami and other miscellaneous beings, in either the native or foreign religion, were mutually interchangeable.
In a large sense, this feat of priestly dexterity was but the repet.i.tion in history, of that of Asanga with the Brahmanism and Buddhism of India three centuries before. It was this Asanga who wrote the Yoga-chara Bhumi. The succession of syncretists in India, China and j.a.pan is Asanga, Hiuki[=o] and K[=o]b[=o].
The Happy Family of Riy[=o]bu.
Nevertheless this attempt at making a happy family and ploughing with an ox and a.s.s in the same yoke, has not been an unqualified success. It will sometimes happen that one G.o.d escapes the cla.s.sification made by the Buddhists and slips into the fold of s.h.i.+nt[=o], or _vice versa_; while again the label-makers and pasters--as numerous in scholastic Buddhism as in sectarian Christendom--have hard work to make the labels stick. A popular Gon-gen or Dai-Mi[=o]-jin, whose name and renown has for centuries attracted crowds of pilgrims, and yielded fat revenues as regularly as the autumn harvests, is not readily surrendered by the old Buddhist proprietors, however cleverly or craftily the bonzes may yield outward conformity to governmental edicts. On the other hand, the efforts, both archaeological and practical, which have been made in recent years by fiercely zealous s.h.i.+nt[=o]ists, savor of the smartness of New j.a.pan more than they suggest either sincerity or edification. It often requires the finest tact on the part of both the strenuous Buddhists and the stalwart purists of s.h.i.+nt[=o], to extricate the various G.o.ds out of the mixture and mess of Riy[=o]bu s.h.i.+nt[=o], and to keep them from jostling each other.
This reclaiming and kidnapping of G.o.ds and transferring them from one camp to another, has been especially active since 1870, when, under government auspices, the Riy[=o]bu temples were purged of all Buddhist idols, furniture and influences. The term Dai Mi[=o] Jin, or Great Ill.u.s.trious Spirit, is no longer officially permitted to be used of the old kami or G.o.ds of s.h.i.+nt[=o], who were known to have existed before the days of K[=o]b[=o]. In some cases these G.o.ds have lost much of the esteem in which they were held for centuries. Especially is this true of the infamous rebel of the tenth century, Masakado.[26] On the entrance into Yedo of the Imperial army, in 1868, his idol was torn from its shrine and hacked to pieces by the patriots. His place as a deity (Kanda Dai Mi[=o] Jin, or Great Ill.u.s.trious Spirit of Kanda) was taken by another deified being, a brother to the aboriginal earth-G.o.d who, in the ages of the Kami, ”resigned his throne in favor of the Mikado's ancestors when they descended from Heaven.” The apotheosis of the rebel Masakado had been resorted to by the Buddhist canonizers because the unquiet spirit of the dead man troubled the people. This method of laying a ghost by making a G.o.d of him, was for centuries a favorite one in j.a.panese Buddhism. Indeed, a large part of the practical and parochial duties of the bonzes consists in quieting the restless spirits of the departed.