PART II

I. The Koan Exercise and the Nembutsu

We are now in the position to see in what relation the koan exercise stands to the practice of the Nembutsu. Chinese Buddhism has developed along the two lines of Zen and Nembutsu, and to treat of their relationship means to gain knowledge concerning some of the fundamental psychological facts of the Buddhist life, and also, as I wish to maintain, of all the religious life.

Among the circumstances that led to the mechanical treatment of the koan, we may mention the prevalence of the Nembutsu in Yuan and Ming. The Nembutsu literally means, 'to think of the Buddha', and consists particularly in the recitation of the name of Amitābha Buddha (o-mi-to-fo in Chinese).

Historically, we can trace the origin of the Nembutsu teaching in the very early days of Buddhism in India. In China the first known group of Nembutsu devotees was the White Lotus Society led by Hui-yüan (died 416). The gradual democratization of the Buddhist faith down through the successive dynasties favoured the spread of the Nembutsu all over China and alongside of the more aristocratic Zen. Superficially considered, the Nembutsu is the very opposite of Zen, for when Zen depends on nobody outside one's self, the Nembutsu puts its reliance exclusively on the Buddha. But when the psychology of the Nembutsu is analysed there is something in the recitation of the Buddha's name as practised by the Pure Land followers, which corresponds to the holding of a koan in Zen. It was owing to this psychological common ground that their mutual approach was possible, Zen to Nembutsu and Nembutsu to Zen.

The Nembutsu was by no means mechanical in the beginning. Thinking of the Buddha came first and the invocation by name followed. But as in everything else, the content that first determined the form is later determined by the form; that is, the order is reversed. The Buddha's name may be invoked by a devotee without necessarily his thinking of the Buddha, of his excellent virtues, of his saving vows; but as he repeats the name it calls up in him all the memories and images concerning the Buddha, and without his being conscious of it, he is ever more absorbed in the contemplation of the Adored One. The invocation that was started mechanically is now turned in a direction that was not previously so designed.

The new psychology thus ushered in began to influence the adherents of the koan in late Yuan, and there were some Zen masters who took a decided stand against it. They saw the danger of the koan turning into a Nembutsu recitation, for in that case both the spirit of Zen and the reason for the koan exercise would be destroyed.

Even when the practice of the Nembutsu grew quite universal in the fifteenth century, invading even the Zen monasteries, the masters resisted the practice, advising their pupils to see who it is that calls upon the Buddha or recites his name. For instance, Tu-fêng Chi-shan,¹ who probably died towards the end of the fifteenth century, said: 'The main thing is to understand the ultimate meaning of life; therefore, exert yourself and spare no effort to see who it is that does the invoking of the name. The word Who is most important; concentrate yourself on this one word.'

Ch'u-shan Shao-ch'i (1404-1473) writes to one of his disciples: 'The idea of the invocation is to know that the Buddha is no other than your own mind; but what is this mind? See into the whence of your thought which makes you utter the name of the Buddha; where does it originate? But you must go even farther than this and make inquiries as to the who of this person who wants to see into the whence of a thought. Is it mind, or Buddha, or matter? No, it is none of these, say the masters. What is it, then?'

This is the way the masters dealt with the Nembutsu in connection with the koan exercise if one wanted to master Zen. An inquiring spirit was by no means to be lost sight of. The following quotations from the Yuan and Ming Zen teachers show which way the wind was blowing in the thought world of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries. T'ien-ju Wei-tsê, who flourished early in the fourteenth century, was a great figure during the Yuan dynasty, and there is no doubt that the Nembutsu movement was going on quite strongly then and encroaching upon the realm of Zen. Wei-tse could not ignore it and wished to define clearly where Zen differed from Nembutsu and how far the one agreed with the other. In the second volume of his Sayings (yü'lu) it is written:

'There are some these days among the laity as well as in the Brotherhood who desire by means of the Nembutsu to be born in the Land of Purity and wonder if the Nembutsu is not to be distinguished from Zen. In my view, they fail to recognize that Zen and Nembutsu are not the same and yet are the same; for the object of Zen is to understand what life means, and the object of the Nembutsu is also that. Zen directly points to the mind in every one of us, declaring that to see into the nature of every being means attaining Buddhahood; whereas the Nembutsu aims at reaching the Land of Purity which is no other than one's own mind, and seeing into the original nature of every being which is Amitābha himself.

'If this is so, how can one differentiate Nembutsu from Zen? We read in a sūtra that it is like entering into a great city which is provided with gates on its four sides; people coming from different quarters will find their own entrance as there is more than one gate. But, once in, they are in the same city. Zen and Nembutsu each appeals to a special type of character; that is all.

'In the Nembutsu you can distinguish between that which is effective and that which is not. Why? If the devotee's invocation does not go farther than his lips while his mind is not at all thinking of the Buddha, this kind of invocation is not effective. If on the other hand his lips and his mind are conjointly working towards the Buddha as his name is recited, so that his mind always works in union with the Buddha, his Nembutsu will surely bring its result. Suppose here is a man carrying a rosary in his hand and reciting the Buddha's name with his lips; but if in the meantime his thoughts are all in confusion, running wild in every direction, he is the one whose invocation is on his lips only and not in his mind. He is uselessly fatiguing himself, his labour comes to naught. It is far better to be thinking of the Buddha in the mind even though the lips are not moving, for such is the real follower of the Nembutsu.

'Do we not read in a sūtra that all the Tathāgatās in the ten quarters are lovingly thinking of all beings just as a mother does of her children; for beings that are drowning in the ocean of birth and death are like children who are wandering in strange foreign countries. The Buddha like a loving mother thinks of them, and though he may not be talking about his compassionate feeling, his heart never ceases thinking of his lost children. If the children thought of their mother in the same way, will not they, mother and children, some day come face to face?

'Therefore, the sūtra says that if the hearts of all beings long for the Buddha and think of him they will surely see him either in the present or in the future. The present means this life, the future means the life to come. If this is so, he who intensely longs for the Buddha and thinks of him, will most assuredly come into his presence. What then is the difference between coming into the presence of the Buddha and attaining satori by the study of Zen?

'Says the Master Huan-chu: The study of Zen aims at elucidating the meaning of birth and death, whereas the Nembutsu proposes to get settled with the question of death and birth; choose either one of the pathways, for there is no disputation to be aroused about them. Quite true, there is no disputation between the two, but do not allow yourself to keep both with you. Let the Zen devotee keep himself exclusively to Zen, and let the one who recites the Nembutsu keep exclusively to the Nembutsu. If the mind is divided between the two, neither will be attained. There is a comparision drawn by an old master between such a divided mind and a man who tries to be in two boats simultaneously and is in neither. So far, there is no harm, perhaps, but a worse case may come to him at any moment, for he may fall between the two boats if he does not look out for himself.

'As for myself, I do not know much, but this I can tell, that in the Nembutsu just these four syllables are held up: O-mi-to-fo (a-mi'da-butsu in Japanese), which indicates no way, at least to Zen beginners, as to how to proceed with it. They are naturally at a loss, and fail to know what to do with the subject. But in the study of the koan you are told that you are each in possession of "the original face" which is the same as it is in all the Buddhas, only that in us it is not recognized. Try and see into it all by yourself without depending on anyone else. In this it may be said that you have a kind of clue whereby to go on with your Zen.'

One of the first Zen masters to introduce the idea of Nembutsu into Zen was Yang-ming Yen-shou.¹ He laid great importance on Zen Yogins devoting themselves to the practice of the Nembutsu to this extent, that he declared that those who follow Zen without Nembutsu may fail nine out of ten in their attainment of the final goal, whereas those who practise Nembutsu will all without exception come to realization; but the best are those who practise Zen and Nembutsu, for they will be like a tiger provided with horns. What Yang-ming exactly means by this statement is not easy to comprehend, for he does not tell us as to its practical side; that is, how to practise both Zen and Nembutsu at the same time. Did he mean to practise the Nembutsu after the attainment of Zen, or vice versa? Until this practical question is definitely settled, we may not venture either to refute or to defend Yang-ming.

This much we can say, that the Nembutsu had been making steady progress even among followers of Zen as early as the tenth century, and Yang-ming, as one of the greatest syncretists China ever produced, attempted to include into his system of Zen philosophy every school of Buddhism, and the Nembutsu naturally came to be fused into it. Besides, there was another strong reason why Zen had to listen to the appeal of the Nembutsu, which was this. Zen being too philosophical (though not in the ordinary sense of the term) exposed itself to an utter disregard of the emotional side of life. Zen indulges itself in excessive satori, so to speak, and as the result it frequently dries up its tears which must be shed over ignorance, over the miseries of life, over the world filled with iniquity. Thus Zen holds out no hope for a land of bliss and purity which is so vividly felt by the followers of Nembutsu. Did Yang-ming mean this when he said that Zen must be accompanied by the Nembutsu? The following remarks made by K'ung-ku Ching-lung, who flourished early in the fifteenth century, seem at least partly to point this interpretation. He says:

'Those who practise Zen are so exclusively devoted to Zen, thinking that they are thus exerting themselves to the attainment of quietude and nothing else: as to invoking the name of the Buddha in order to be born in the Land of Purity and worshipping him and reciting the sūtras in the morning and evening, they practise nothing of the sort. Such devotees may be called those who have Zen but have no Nembutsu. Yet really those followers of Zen are not of the right kind; they are mere sticklers of the koan exercise, they are quite like a stick or stone or brick. When they are attacked by this form of mental disease, they cannot be saved, except perhaps only one out of ten.

'Zen is a living spirit; it is like a gourd floating on water, when you touch it it dances most lively. Therefore, it is said that regard should be paid to the living spirit of the masters and not to their dead words. But there are others who practising Zen do not slight the teaching of the Nembutsu school and will regularly attend the morning and evening services. Indeed, the truth of Zen is met with anywhere you go if you only look for it. Hsüeh-fêng laboured hard as cook wherever he went, and Yang-chi busied himself as overseer of the monastery; they never made light of their daily life while innerly they devoted themselves to Zen. Yang-ming mastered the Zen of his teacher, Tê-shao, and yet was well disposed to propagate the doctrine of the Pure Land school. Is he not one who innerly was round and outwardly square? Innerly, he was all that could be desired of a Bodhisattva, and outwardly, acted as if he were one who belonged to the Śrāvakas. He is one who has both Zen and Nembutsu.'¹

There is something lame in this interpretation, but the fact is not to be denied that the Nembutsu was rapidly undermining the strongholds of Zen in those days, and we will presently see that in the psychology of the Nembutsu there is a factor that can readily ally itself with the koan exercise in its mechanical phase. For in spite of this attitude of K'ung-ku towards the Nembutsu as a kind of Śrāvaka practice, he proceeds to uphold it as of the same efficiency as the koan exercise in the realization of the true Buddhist life.

In K'ung-ku's letter to another of his disciples, which was evidently written in answer to an inquiry concerning the practice of Nembutsu, the author advises him just to say the Nembutsu not necessarily with a philosophical attitude of mind; that is, with no inquiring spirit. The main point in the Nembutsu is to have a believing heart and quietly say it without troubling oneself about things of this world. Ku says:

'The doctrine of the Nembutsu is the shortest road to the realization of the Buddhist life. Be convinced of the unrealness of this bodily existence, for to get attached to the vanities of this worldly life is the cause of transmigration. What is most desirable is the Land of Purity and what is most dependable is the Nembutsu. No matter how you are thinking of the Buddha, intensely or leisurely, no matter how you are invoking his name, whether loudly or softly, do not allow yourself to be constrained by any rule, but keep your mind unruffled, restful, and in silent contemplation. When it attains a state of unity undisturbed by environment, some day an accident will unexpectedly cause in you a sort of mental revolution, and thereby you will realize that the Pure Land of Serene Light is no less than this earth itself, and Amitābha Buddha is your own mind. But you must be careful not to let your mind expectantly wait for such a momentous event, for this will prove a hindrance to the realization itself.

'The Buddha-nature is a spontaneous generation in the sense that it is not a product of intellection, nor of imagination. When I say this, however, you may take it for a state of unconsciousness, which is another great error to be avoided. The only thing that is essential in this connection is to have a believing heart and not to allow any unnecessary and disturbing thoughts to become mixed in it. As you go on thus in the practice of Nembutsu while you may have no chance of attaining satori in this life, you will after death surely be reborn in the Pure Land, where by going up various grades you will finally arrive at the position which never turns back.

'The master Yu-t'an makes people hold this: "Who is it that practises the Nembutsu? What is it that is my own nature, which is, Amitābha?" This may be called the Nembutsu said in a strained state of mind or the Nembutsu accompanied with an inquiring spirit. It is not necessary for you to follow this method; just say your Nembutsu in an ordinary frame of mind.'

K'ung-ku's advice that the Nembutsu is not necessarily to be backed by an intensification of an inquiring spirit opens the way to the mechanical method of invocation. This is what made Hakuin and his school rise furiously against some of the Chinese Zen masters of the fourteenth century and after.

Chu-hung, the author of the Ming Masters, the Frontier Gate of Zeny and many other works, who was also bitterly attacked by Hakuin, comments on K'ung-ku Ching-lung: 'Most Zen teachers tell people to see who he is that invokes the Buddha's name, but Ching-lung states that this is not absolutely necessary. As medicine is to be prescribed according to disease, so is the truth to be taught according to capacity. Each of these two is justifiable and there is no option to be made between them.'¹

This method of invocation endorsed by such masters as Ching-lung and Chu-hung is based on psychological facts, and the subject may better be approached now from the viewpoint of the Nembutsu and not from that of Zen. Let us then see what is really meant by the Nembutsu.

Footnotes

1 In The Reputed Zen Masters of the Ming Dynasty, compiled by Chu-hung.

1 Died 975.

1 From a letter to one of his disciples as quoted in Chu-hung's Ming Masters.

1 Biographies of the Famous Ming Masters.