These days, because of the splendor of the times, monks know no hardship and enjoy the finest clothing, food, and housing, living lives of unequaled comfort. They have forgotten that they depend on the world for their nurture and are obliged to others for their well-being, and without exception they put on airs and behave arrogantly. As persons who left their households, monastics were originally solitary people. Being so unfortunate that they had no household of their own, they fled the world, cutting off all common attachments. Therefore a monastic should have no possessions and no desire for fame; he should follow a master and lead a humble life. He should go around with a begging bowl to receive alms in return for transferring merit for the benefit of others.1 Or else he should live as a hermit, sewing his own clothes and carrying firewood and water to cook his own meals in his hut. There he should spend his days offering incense, flowers, and holy water; accumulating merit through the study of Buddhist doctrine and the practice of austerities; and seeking a state of no self and no desire. Or he should search for a wise master, traveling from province to province and in remote regions so as to gain instruction in the deepest meanings of the dharma. Or yet again, he should undergo training in a particular school, obtain a temple upon reaching a certain age, instruct the people in Buddhist teachings, and guide them to reach salvation in the next life.
The Corruption of Present-Day Buddhist Clergy
As people who gather merit and acquire virtue through years of austerities and difficult practice, monastics have always been respected and treated well even by people of high status. At present, however, they merely pride themselves over the favors they receive, and they no longer go around with begging bowls or transfer merit to others. They are spared the effort to supply their own clothes and food; they are negligent in their study and practice; they do not travel to faraway lands; and they acquire temples before they reach the right age. In their arrogance they ignore the laypeople, showing no desire to assist them, and they display more greed and deceitfulness than any layman. They dress in ornate clothing and are concerned solely to surround themselves with splendor. They use large timbers and stones to build temple halls and shrines, without thinking twice about the labor of the workers. They lavish gold and silver on Buddha canopies, fretwork, sacred cabinets, and draperies, squandering the world’s resources on splendor. With frivolous flattery they hand out compliments, deceiving the laypeople so as to get them to agree to all kinds of selfish requests. They are quick to understand that women young and old and nuns have little wisdom and are easily charmed. Therefore they preach to them about this-worldly benefits or scare them with talk about the next life and urge them to have rites performed or prayers said and to make donations and offerings. Taking advantage of others’ goodwill toward them, they trick people into making offerings without giving anything in return. They ignore normal moral obligations, maintaining that they cannot take part because they have left the world; but when it suits them, they may plot to file a complaint on the basis of those same obligations. At times they engage in quarrels with laypeople or even sue them, using convoluted arguments and big words. They are more bigoted and obstinate than any layman and always put their own obligations last. When a matter is not to their liking, they use their unworldly status to force the other party to yield. In their dealings they are very selfish indeed.
These days, it is common for the position of chief priest of a temple to be secretly bought and sold. Age and virtue are of no relevance, and temple priestships are priced according to the size of the temple’s property. The official monastic ranks, such as priest general, dharma seal, great abbot, or master,2 used to be reserved for priests of great virtue and knowledge, but now they are traded for bribes, with no consideration for age or virtue. Therefore, monks who are clever in the way of greed and who have a talent for collecting money seek promotion early and acquire positions at the great temples. Priests of high rank are thus those who have put the dharma to one side and concentrated solely on making a profit.
Lesser monks are all the more driven by greed. They organize Buddha viewings,3 hold sermons, and perform rites for feeding the hungry spirits,4 but not to save the sentient beings; they do this only as a way to make a profit. For memorial services, funerals, and prayer ceremonies they establish different grades and procedures, depending on the size of the donation. They organize lotteries, collect donations and offerings, and run confraternities with monthly fixed dues. They also plan credit associations and all sorts of other activities intended to further the circulation of money.5 In the rare event that a notable or wise monk appears who edifies the people and attracts their faith, the bonzes flock together to capitalize on this and devise ways to gain a profit by selling this single virtuous person. They may have shaved heads and wear dharma garments, but underneath, they are as greedy as any boor. All they think about is how to live off the laypeople without putting themselves to any trouble.
These days, the Buddha Way has been corrupted by greed. In addition to this, the monks engage in fornication and meat eating, and they sneak around to enjoy all kinds of inappropriate pleasures. They pay no heed to their temple duties and leave the morning and evening sutra recitations, tea ceremonies, and merit-transferring rites to trainees. These trainee monks, too, are arrogant, and even while they call themselves “temple caretakers” or “cloister representatives,” they refuse to perform such religious duties. In the end these tasks end up being turned over to filthy menial monks, who, banging on gongs and clappers, conduct some sort of imitation of the rites. The offering of flowers and other things is of no concern to the chief priest and is left to the lowest hedge-priests. The chief priest does not serve the Buddha, and many days pass between each time he sees the face of the main Buddha image in his temple. He suits himself by leaving the temple to indulge in amusements even in the evening, staying overnight at other places. There he wastes money drinking fine sake and enjoying good food. Or he may keep a woman in another house that he calls his concubine’s residence; he may even hide his woman within the very temple and have children with her. He lets others run a restaurant or a tea stand, taking a share in the profits, or he participates in gambling matches with dice and cards. When he returns to the temple he scolds the monks who have been on duty, and to divert attention from his own misbehavior, he blames them for running the temple badly or other things. Meanwhile the other monks take advantage of the chief priest’s absence to steal donations made to the temple. They take coins from the offering box and spend them on drink and food, they gamble, and they abandon the temple they have been left in charge of to indulge themselves with whores in the brothels. Both the master and his subordinates misbehave and break the law.
If such misbehavior escalates, it can lead to the temple’s ruin. Donations from other places and funds for the performance of permanent memorial services are embezzled,6 temple buildings and landholdings are sold off, long-cherished temple paraphernalia such as statues and sutras are pawned, and objects donated by parishioners or left to the temple as mementos of deceased people are lost. The money is squandered on gambling, fornication, and other amusements, and in the end, even the position of chief priest is put up for sale.
Monastics have no wives and children and no families to take care of, and being independent, they can do as they like, free of all worries. If they commit an error that cannot be covered up, they simply retire. Even when they go into retirement, they commit various kinds of deceit and swindle their parishioners. After having collected money for a provision fund, they sell the temple—and even if they pass it on to a disciple, they contract debts without worrying about the problems these may cause, leaving it to their successor to suffer the consequences. They hand over the post of chief priest after first having made generous arrangements for themselves, and on top of that, they pester their successor, claiming that he has numerous obligations to his old master, even though there is no sign of any relationship between master and disciple in the true sense of the word. For these reasons, temples everywhere have lost their old and venerable treasures, such as Buddha statues and scriptures; their precincts are dilapidated; and their lands have been squandered away. Temples are burdened with debts incurred by generations of chief priests, and most of them are in trouble.
Even after they have retired, monks do not become frugal. They establish a dwelling in a town house or the house of a layman, or they set up a retirement house on the town outskirts and live a life of self-indulgence. They go out to the pleasure quarters at night and sleep in the morning, they keep women, and they play go, shogi, and games of chance. They use their retirement funds to make high-interest loans, and if it looks as if their evil deeds will come to light and an official investigation might be instigated, they flee and hide, visiting small temples in different provinces and going underground there. After a while they acquire a new temple, where they once more deceive the lay households who are their parishioners. Their free and easy way of life has no compare in this world. In the past, if famous and wise monks ran away, it was because they disliked being treated with extravagance when they inspired faith in high-ranking people, or because they could no longer bear the pressure of crowds of people gathering around them. They were unhappy with the fact that all this upset the virtuous life that they had upheld in their quiet seclusion, or they grew tired of having to listen to the greedy desires of laypeople. They thus would simply disappear and withdraw to a mountain forest or a distant valley to concentrate on the dharma. The monks of this age are different. They flee because they have given people trouble and committed too many crimes. Among the chief priests of our time there are few who perform their duties to the end, and many retire because of excessive offenses.
This is how it is even with monks who are chief priests of a temple; when it comes to lower-ranking trainee monks or monks who wander around from one province to another, things are even worse. Petty thefts, fraud, robbery, and elopement are by no means rare. Monks have always maintained that they have fled the world and that they are “long-sleeved worthies” to whom conventional rules do not apply.7 The laypeople, too, have of old had the habit to look the other way and close their ears, never blaming or punishing them. Therefore, monks reckon that it is nobody’s business how they behave, and they act without concern for shame or reputation. Their way to make a living is the easiest in the world. The four classes of warriors, farmers, artisans, and merchants, and all others as well, have to depend on their own efforts to secure clothing, food, and housing; only monks are exempt from this. Wherever they roam there are plenty of temples, and they are never short of a place to live. It is said that because monastics have left their households, they have no home in any of the Three Worlds of past, present, and future—but these days, these so-called house-leavers can pick and choose between any number of homes. And when it becomes inconvenient for them to have a home, they give it up and act with complete freedom.
Temple Income, Ranks, and Perquisites
Temple income came to be as good as fixed as, together with the establishment of a lasting peace, the funds parishioners are expected to provide to their temples became largely set both in the towns and in the countryside. A warrior’s house stipend is not fixed, because it depends on the year’s harvest in his domain and on the price of rice. The same applies to farmers. Townspeople’s income also varies with their success in trade and with the rise and fall of prices and therefore is not fixed. Such matters do not affect temple income, which is as if set in stone. If monks are particularly greedy, they can moreover extort more money from the people by organizing Buddha viewings and sermons, collecting donations and offerings, and performing rites and prayer ceremonies. However much they take in, it will not result in a reduction of their fixed income. This is a business that has no need for investment capital, and there is no other business quite like it. Because temples both in the towns and in the country have an income that is as good as fixed, novices and trainee monks grow accustomed to this regular revenue and are raised to be indolent. As noted above, they undergo no hardship or austere training, nor do they engage in profound studies; they have no knowledge about the dharma, and to make things even worse, they are unremittingly self-indulgent. This is because the world has become too splendorous.
Such misbehavior should be stopped by the head temple or the liaison temple,8 but liaison temples, too, have a high income and much authority; therefore, they are all the more given to luxury and covert debauchery and are in no position to chastise others. Moreover, for some reason there is no census register of monastics, so keeping them all properly under control is virtually impossible. The teachings and precepts of the Buddha Way are stuck in the [wrongheaded] notion that it is a good thing to ignore sins and to refrain from cutting down those who deserve to be cut down; thus there is no one who corrects wrongdoers. Further, whatever a monastic may do, it will have no consequences for his secular relatives, so that he has nothing to fear. Therefore few monks are true to the Way, while an ever growing number are neglectful to the extreme. When among men, they display their authority and dwell in luxury, disdaining even men of high status; when retiring from the world, they behave like boors and tramps. From start to finish, they live off the state and swindle the realm at their whim.
Temples with official connections, such as imperial cloisters, imperial prayer temples, other official prayer temples, head temples, and liaison temples, have special ranks and tasks.9 These temples are richly decorated both on the inside and the outside, and they employ large numbers of people. They are covered in illustrious crests of chrysanthemum, paulownia, and hollyhock leaf, radiating authority.10 Sliding doors and screens close off their main sanctuaries and entrance halls, hiding their Buddha images from view. This prevents ordinary people from worshipping and gives a general impression of inaccessibility, showing a lack of interest in saving the people. Those temples that do allow the people to worship station special guards to serve as watchmen, and these scold and threaten visitors who fail to follow the right procedures. This is not how things should be in the Buddha Way. These temples make a great show of authority even in their outward appearance; on the inside, their sumptuousness is extraordinary. They must rank highest in the world when it comes to displaying lavishness from morning to night.
When priests from temples of this kind perform ceremonies in front of the Buddha, such as funerary services, rites of transferring merit, and memorial rites, they do so with a great show of dignity; yet there is little reverence for the Buddha in their incense burning and sutra reciting. Rather than expressing faith [the lavishness of the procedures] serves to underline the dignity of the priests themselves. When it comes to their parishioners, priests often fail to perform the funerals and memorial services of small-scale warriors or rear vassals in person, passing them on to stand-in priests instead. Should a parishioner make a special request to have the priest perform the rite in person, even this involves a fee of gratitude. There should be no difference between high and low ranks in the Buddha Way, and salvation should not depend on fees of gratitude. When priests of this sort meet with parishioners of lesser rank, they make a grand display of authority. They sit in a higher place than their parishioners and look down upon them with a condescending air, more stern and commanding than a warrior. By rights, the parishioners are the patrons on whom the priest and the temple depend; but this is certainly not how they are treated.11
When priests of this sort go on a journey, they take along vast amounts of traveling attire. They travel in palanquins with vermilion wickerwork and wear garments of gold brocade, and they select the best quality of folding parasols and luggage boxes.12 They are accompanied by a procession of men-at-arms and footmen similar to those of warrior houses—these days, high-ranking priests’ processions are in fact grander than those of warriors. Those who travel back and forth to distant provinces are especially extravagant. Flaunting their status as representatives of a temple holding a vermilion seal, they force all passers-by to stop.13 Showing no consideration for the exertions of the coolies and horses supplied by the post stations, the priests have them carry large loads of long-handled equipment and the like. They arrogantly proceed right down the middle of the road, blind to the inconvenience that they cause others. In their haughty pride they appear as though they would not hesitate to kick away any person unlucky enough to stumble in front of their train.
When monks who reside within one of the imperial cloisters or other special temples travel, even on personal business, they carry prominently the placard showing the temple’s prerogative to freely requisition post-station coolies and horses.14 They themselves ride in a palanquin or on horseback, showing no concern whatsoever for the burden imposed on the post-station coolies and horses. Their passage is even more imposing than that of a mounted warrior, and they intimidate people. They have truly lost all sense of gentleness, humility, and charity. Even a chief priest of a great temple with a high court rank and large stipend should refrain from a boastful display of authority and intimidation. He should not slander the laws of the state and should be especially careful to show respect to warriors, who are the state’s guardians. He should not set himself above warriors. Even the lowest samurai puts his life on the line for the state, and this makes him the equal of the wisest and most virtuous of priests; therefore, no priest should be disdainful or fail to treat him with propriety.
One who has left his household and escaped from the world should show no anger, whatever injustice is visited upon him. He should guide the people with single-minded gentleness and carry out his dharma duties. He should not scorn the lowly and benighted nor shun outcasts and beggars. Through his teaching he should transform evil men into good men, and he should teach good men to proceed on the way to buddhahood. In olden times, virtuous monks avoided positions that secured them a permanent supply of food, and when a daimyo offered them temple lands, they would firmly refuse. They left large donations alone, asking only for modest ones. When offered official appointments, they humbly declined—so it is said. This helps us to realize the truth about our own time. These days, the priests of those temples and shrines who have official appointments and set incomes are all arrogant and given to luxury. Despite the Buddhist ideal of “loving all equally,” they do not hesitate to behave unlawfully and inhumanly toward those of lesser status because, due to the splendor of our age, they enjoy a stable income based on having numerous parishioners. They have turned their backs on the Way of the buddhas and the gods and they have all lost the favor of the divine realm. This shows that this Way will not stand if [the priesthood] is guaranteed a fixed supply of clothing, food, and shelter.
These days, moreover, imperial cloisters, head temples, and liaison temples lend out money to branch temples and other parties under the name of “temple hall funds” or “preservation funds,” charging exorbitant interest in return. In fact, the original amount of such funds is very small. The temple takes in money from rich townspeople and farmers, lends it out, and shares the profits with the original owners.15 This is a lowly, mean business, very different from the elevated stature such temples always insist on. Since the branch temples are under the control of the higher-level temples, the latter are free to squeeze and extract interest from them. It is as though parents robbed their own children. Alternatively, a great temple may lend only the name of such a fund to a townsman or farmer, charging a fee in return. The townsman or farmer then exploits the authority attached to the temple’s name to lend out money at high interest. Temples and shrines with vermilion-seal land grants or with long-standing official status similarly lend out money under the name of “august tomb fund,” “memorial service fund,” or “tea ceremony fund,” taking interest from the poor. The priests say that this interest will be used to cover the costs of honoring the gods and buddhas, but in fact only a small fraction of the money is spent on such things, while most of it goes into their own pockets to pay for their luxurious way of living. To collect interest in this manner is against the Way of the buddhas and the gods. What would accord with the hearts of the buddhas and the gods would be to give assistance to the poor and help them. It goes against the Way of the buddhas and the gods even to take back what one has lent; to take interest on top of a loan is outrageous.
If a loan falls into arrears or the payment of interest is overdue, the priests of such temples fly into a rage and marshal all kinds of accusations. If the other party is a warrior, they become rude and use harsh words to cast shame over him. If their adversary is a townsman or a farmer, they use foul language and scold him, or they arrange for the town or village officials to keep strict watch over him [so he will not abscond], stirring up trouble and putting pressure on him. They behave like those demons called asura, or like “hungry spirits with means.”16 If they cannot put enough pressure on their victim on their own, they appeal to the shogunal authorities and file a lawsuit. Like merciless devils, they never give up until they get what they are after. Is that the kind of behavior that would please the buddhas and the gods? When money has been collected by stripping the fat from the bones of the poor, even if some is offered to the spirit of the noble deceased for memorial or merit-transferring services, would that spirit welcome such offerings? What impiety!
Temples’ Involvement in Prostitution and Other Irregular Practices
Vermilion-seal lands and other areas near the gates of temples and shrines have come to be called “places of evil.”17 Their grounds reek of the business of fornication; they are full of “hells” offering illicit prostitutes and serve as hideaways for kept women.18 Packed with taverns serving fish and fowl and tea stands put together of rush mats, they also offer other kinds of amusements, such as theater plays, pantomimes, jugglers, and storytellers—all conspiring to deceive people and steal their money. Even in the provinces, these vermilion-seal lands are nests of gamblers, troublemakers, thieves, and murderers.
The first principle of the Buddha Way is to shun women, and places such as Mount Hiei and Mount Kōya are off-limits to women.19 Even so, priests install large numbers of women in their temple precincts; and even worse, a great deal of prostitution takes place. This is completely unacceptable. A place that should be pure is turned into a place of utmost impurity. This might have been reasonable if it would help evil men to become good by way of the principle of furthering good and chastising evil, but this is not the case. Without any reason at all, numerous tools of deception are displayed in temple grounds in order to make evil men even more evil. How outrageous! Among the monks who live in these places, not a single one has a true heart; all have the hearts of bandits, and even novices and temple apprentices fall into wicked ways from a young age. They learn how to be troublemakers and follow their masters’ example by behaving just as wantonly; therefore, all monastics have become troublemakers. Really, there are no words to describe the misconduct of today’s priests, both in the cities and in the countryside.
In the vicinity of the shogunal castle such matters are investigated from time to time, so that there is some outward discretion and things are not so obviously visible. As one travels out from this city of Edo, however, one finds that monks are hardly controlled at all. Daimyo do not have the means to suppress them, and they harass laypeople at will, as arrogant as though the entire district were theirs. In the villages, since temples must impress their seals on the registers of religious affiliation each year, the monks act as if no official business can be conducted without them. Therefore farmers fear and revere the monks, causing them to puff themselves up even more. Monks interfere even in lawsuits and conflicts, and while they maintain that they are intervening in order to bring matters to a harmonious solution, they are in fact partial toward one or the other party for reasons that have to do with their own desires. “Pushing from behind” and “offering aid,” they cause even insignificant cases to develop into large conflicts. In the process, they use their authority to engage in fornication and other grossly unlawful acts.
In provincial backwaters and areas where the fiefs of multiple holders intersect, it is not easy to take recourse to the law. All is decided locally, with matters left up to the devices of those concerned, and often questions of propriety and justice become badly skewed. Many take advantage of this situation to commit acts of injustice and cruelty.
In Edo, of course, and in the eight Kantō provinces, people readily undertake lawsuits. As already mentioned, even farmers are familiar with the handling of suits, and they have a general understanding of rectitude and the severity of crimes and punishments. Even if matters are left to be settled among equals, they can judge quite readily what is right and wrong. In the distant provinces, however, lawsuits are known only from ancestral tales, and people have no idea about how to judge rectitude and justice. Things have always simply been settled locally; they have no understanding of justice and reckon that the wisest way of dealing with things is to smooth them over amicably. To them, the talk of monks, who are knowledgeable and worldly-wise, sounds reasonable, and they listen carefully to them. Buoyed by this, the monks can easily show favoritism and arrange things in a one-sided manner, thereby ensuring that the weak and poor lose and the evil and rich win. If someone wins over his fear and defies a monk’s words, or reproaches him in disgust over his misbehavior, the monk will carry a grudge against that person and take revenge. He may refuse to stamp his temple registration at the time of the religious survey; or he may fail to send over the necessary documents when someone in the household is to be married or adopted into a house elsewhere.20 When there is a death in the household, he may draw out the preparations for the funeral, for example by feigning illness, or he may shame the family by slandering the deceased as a sinner and refusing to perform the rites intended to secure the deceased’s salvation. Whether they are right or wrong, monastics have of old always been treated with reverence both in the cities and in the countryside. Especially in the distant provinces and in rural places, people have placed all their trust in them, and when dealing with unadorned rustics, monks have been able to act with complete freedom.
It has recently become fashionable for temples in villages around the country to give bribes to the court regent houses and other noble families so as to gain permission to enshrine these families’ ancestral tablets and call the temple an “official prayer temple” or the “repository of the ancestral tablets” of one noble house or another. The monks adorn cabinets, draperies, and curtains in the temple with the family crests of these nobles and in that way add to the temple’s own prestige. By selling their ancestral tablets, the court regents and nobles have for a long time further fueled priestly arrogance and thus caused trouble for layfolk. This is an inhumane and unfortunate way to act. Monks buy nobles’ prestige and use it to harass the simple folks. This is truly a gross insolence: they deceive the Buddha, sell the dharma, and steal authority. They are in truth the greatest enemies of the state in our age.
Another fashion of our times, which is spreading both in the cities and in the countryside, is to erect grand halls and shrines and apply for court rank. It is said that in the ancient Engi era [901–923], Buddha halls and pagodas were not to be larger than seven ken square. Also, there were limitations as to how many people per province and district could be allowed to leave the world and become monastics in any given year, and permission was not given lightly. Perhaps kingly law was still correct at that time,21 or perhaps this was possible because it occurred during the reign of the famed Emperor Daigo of the Engi era; for sure it was a special measure different from what was done before and after. However that may be, it was a measure that reduced the outlay of the state, prevented the people from falling into poverty, and set clear limits on the extravagance of the Buddha Way. Today no such limit exists, and the size of Buddha halls and pagodas is enormous, as is the extravagance of their adornment. In villages everywhere temple construction has the highest priority. No building is larger than the temple—there is not even another building of the same order. What about such splendor, which exceeds that of all the temple’s parishioners?
The money monks use to erect such Buddha halls and pagodas or to further their own careers by securing court rank is not something that people have willingly contributed for the good purpose of edifying the populace. Monks urge people to make donations and offerings, bringing strong pressure to bear on those who are reluctant to do so. They do not care whether such a donation will cause people trouble with their lands or even ruin their house; they simply apportion out the shares each has to pay and take what they need. As mentioned above, they squeeze the lifeblood out of the people by all possible methods of greed—credit associations, loans, and extortionate interest—and use the proceeds to build Buddha halls and shrines and to enhance their own careers. On their vermilion-seal lands they have begun organizing lotteries, which invite large crowds of people to travel the road of greed. They make people rob one another, and from this battle between the greedy they extract a profit that is used to build Buddha halls and shrines. In today’s world, the buddhas and the gods have become generals on the battleground of avarice. These temples with vermilion-seal land were originally built with the help of donations gathered from the provinces. Now, they can no longer collect sufficient funds through donations, and, as is said, nothing beats a lottery.
As for donation-gathering tours sanctioned by the authorities, in these days of luxury [high-ranking monks] do not go on these rounds personally. They send so-called temple caretakers in their place, or they appoint contractors and “money masters,” who use various tricks to inspire awe and fear and take people’s money in that way. Colluding with one another, these caretakers and contractors start doing their own private deals on the side. Because they wallow in drink and women day and night, the people they visit on their rounds see through their pretenses to what they truly are. They inspire no faith, and confronted with their ugly conduct, people cease to make donations. If the monks would make these rounds themselves, traveling lightly, and if they would give excellent dharma sermons with a mind to edify the people and in that way inspire a sincere wish to erect a Buddha hall or a shrine, surely the people would willingly make donations, and their endeavor would succeed. In that case, they would not even need the sanction of the authorities.
In medieval times, monks who erected Buddha halls and pagodas did not use sanctioned donation tours, credit associations or loans, and least of all lotteries. They achieved their aim thanks to the faith of the people. Even when they did travel around to beg for donations, they personally donned straw sandals and brought out their walking sticks, spreading salvation among the people and collecting offerings in return. Halls and shrines that are founded by way of such physical exertions must be good places to live in for the buddhas and the gods. The gods and buddhas will hardly be pleased, however, by the splendor that is thrown up these days with the help of impure money. It is doubtful whether the halls and shrines of our times are indeed dwelling places of gods and buddhas at all. Certainly the buddhas and gods do not feel the least pleasure in the grandness and splendor of their halls and shrines. Delighting in grandeur and magnificence is a form of greediness typical of unenlightened beings. As the saying has it, “Rather a single candle from a poor man than ten thousand from a rich man.” When offerings are made in a spirit of true faith, the gods will respond even to a single candle or a single drop of water. How can buddhas and gods be moved merely by the splendor of their halls and shrines [if no true faith is involved]? One casts shame on the buddhas and gods when one competes with others in human greediness by exuberating in luxury and exploiting large numbers of people. The shrines to the great deity Amaterasu at Ise have thatched roofs, and offerings made there consist of only a single heihaku branch, so they say.22 It is said that Śākyamuni meditated sitting under a tree or on a rock or the grass, wearing hemp robes. Over time his followers adopted ever more elaborate fashions and robes, and halls and shrines became grand, magnificent structures. Monks have grown addicted to luxury and comfortable laziness, and behind the façade of holiness they have become greedy bandits. Many who use the Way of the gods and buddhas to make a living do so by swindling the people.
These days, those who preach the Way of the gods and buddhas are all bandits. Śākyamuni Buddha set forth his teachings to help people order their lives and assist the world. But in the end, in place of his dharma of no self, no greed, purity, and no defilement, the vices above all banned by the precepts—desire, anger, sexual misconduct, slander, and drunkenness—have now become the norm. The dharma is as sullied as mud; there is not a single spot of purity left in it, and it has turned into a Way for stealing from the people and damaging the state.23 If Śākyamuni were to appear in the world today, he would be shocked. He would punish the monks and put a stop to the whole of Buddhism. Those monks are lucky indeed that Śākyamuni or Bodhidharma has not yet put in an appearance.
It is most peculiar that this state of affairs has not incurred some form of punishment. The gods must have returned to Heaven and the buddhas to their Pure Lands; the Way of correspondence between this world and the other must have come to an end, causing divine rewards and punishments to cease altogether.24 Have all monks fallen into hell and become sheer sinners? Seeing how evil the world has become, it is only to be expected that there are no longer any devout and upright monks and that the dharma has been cast aside.
The Evils of the Honganji Sect
A place that has lost even the last shred of the Buddha Way is the Honganji sect.25 In medieval times, Hōnen preached chanting the name of Amida Buddha, Nichiren proselytized chanting the title of the Lotus Sutra, and other learned monks founded yet other sects.26 One claimed his method would lead people to buddhahood; others said their own was assuredly the means to generate the greatest merit. They thus confused the masses and caused competition for people’s hearts to emerge within the single dharma of Śākyamuni. Their crimes are not few, but at least they all abstained from breaking the monastic precepts. They set up strict rules for the time after their own karma [had run out], did not seek court rank and title, did not desire temple income, and disliked luxury and splendor. Because people naturally drift toward laziness when their finances are secure, these learned monks shunned stable temple incomes. Knowing what was best for the dharma and for the monastic community, each instituted his own rules and guidelines, stipulating that even in these latter days of the dharma, a monk’s property should be limited to three robes and a begging bowl and that he should always abide by the Way of poverty, observe the precepts, and devote himself to the study and practice of Buddhist teachings.
In all sects, the rules laid down by the founding patriarchs are strict. Only the patriarch of Honganji, Shinran, was different. First of all, he allowed fornication and alcohol. In his sect, no particularly profound study was necessary—there is no dharma method other than that of the three Amida sutras—and he had a wife and children and lived in stable comfort.27 He truly turned his back on the teaching of Śākyamuni and deviated greatly from the dharma. I am told that the chapter “Unimpeded Wisdom” in the sutra Fujōdatsu-kyō says, “They store and nourish wives and children; gold, silver, and lapis lazuli; green fields and residences; slaves and servants.”28 This is impure to the extreme; yet it is the house that the Honganji monks inhabit. On the other hand, as noted above, the monks of all sects have now become corrupt and have abandoned the precepts. Compared with them, should one perhaps prefer a sect that has been in breach of the dharma from the very outset? Things that brand the monks of other sects as the greatest sinners and criminals under Heaven are in fact quite normal in this sect—a curious matter indeed.
The monks of the Honganji sect have wives, children, and dependents. They pass on their inheritance to their children and grandchildren, who grow up in the temple where they are born, have no teacher other than their father, and do not engage in any form of study or practice. They know nothing about the hardships of this world and do not foster any disciples. Even if they were to excel at their studies or in their practice, their achievements would not lead to a promotion to a larger temple, nor would they rise in rank. It is difficult for one with the status of a disciple to become a temple holder; it is those who never move who are guaranteed a life of stable comfort. Because they [are expected to] have a household with a wife and children, nobody reprimands them for their lust. In truth, even among businesses that do not need capital, they enjoy lives of great comfort.
Even more puzzling is the fact that the lay followers of this sect do not resent these comfortable, lazy monks in the least. They treat them with greater devotion than is shown to any monk who is firm in his abidance by the precepts. They surrender themselves to the teachings of this sect with extraordinary dedication. Thousands, tens of thousands, even millions of them are united in their rejection of prayer rituals and in their single-minded dedication to Amida alone. In that respect this sect stands out from all others; its followers are so strongly united that they do not even intermarry with members of other sects. They call their sect the “True” Pure Land sect, and they boast that theirs is the sect of paradise, outshining the rival Pure Land sect in the strength of its faith.29 They call Honganji the “August Head Temple” or the “August Imperial Cloister” and grant it more respect even than they do the holder of the domain or fief where they reside.30 People who are unable to pay their annual land taxes to the daimyo or fief holder, and who refuse to contribute to extraordinary levies, make handsome donations to this August Head Temple without stint. Even misers who close their purses for their own parents and children and who would rather suffer from hunger and thirst than use money for food and drink make special offerings to the so-called August Imperial Cloister. This is truly a sect that treats the people with extreme greed.
As a result, the two Honganji temples in Kyoto are grand on a scale that is not easily rivaled by the headquarters of any other sect. It is said that the double-roofed main hall is thirty-seven ken square and has ninety-two pillars along its front façade. Each is three shaku in diameter and is made of fine-grained timber of the best-quality zelkova wood. With these pillars lined up like a string of jewels, the effect is superb beyond words. In addition, there are the founder’s hall, the guests’ quarters, the bell tower, the monks’ quarters, the outer gate, the encircling wall, and the inner gate—all richly decorated from one corner to the other and constructed with a quantity of timbers unequalled, it is said, anywhere in Japan. When people see all this splendor they are overwhelmed and exclaim that even if all castle towers in the realm, including that of the shogun’s castle in Edo, were to be rebuilt, one would need only half this amount of timber. They may well be right.
The stream of offerings from followers in the provinces never wanes even for a day. Valuables of all conceivable kinds spout upward like water from a fountain, and the monks live in a state of magnificent luxury and comfort that is unrivaled in the whole of Japan. The head temples of other sects never receive offerings directly from laypeople living in the provinces. To maintain the temple they depend on their own temple income, combined with gratitude payments from their branch temples. Even if they enjoy splendor and luxury, they are no match for Honganji. Honganji receives monetary donations from each and every one of its lay households throughout the country, even those in the most rustic and remote corners. The head temple itself exacts these donations. The head temple also distributes the Buddha images that laypeople enshrine in their family altars, as well as printed materials produced by the sect such as hymns and scriptures. Moreover, the head temple gives aged laymen and laywomen permission to shave their heads, and when they receive such permission, people send gratitude offerings. All these forms of income amount to a huge sum. Other head temples do not have such arrangements.
Nor is this all. Even daily necessities such as brushes, ink, paper, rice, grains, oil, candles, tea, sake, soy sauce, charcoal, firewood, vegetables, and pickles are delivered by large numbers of lay groups organized into confraternities for this purpose. It is said that whatever the quantity, these confraternities supply such items as and when they are required. Apart from this there are both regular deliveries of goods and additional deliveries for special occasions, with the result that the Honganji head temples overflow with an abundance of materials that not even the lord of a great province can match. In line with this example, other temples of this sect, from the provincial temples of rinban status down to the most minor branch temples,31 are all extremely rich because they mimic the head temple in collecting goods from their parishioners, and because they organize confraternities to supply them with daily necessities. This kind of system does not exist in other sects.
The fact that its priests are united [with their parishioners] in this manner is of great advantage to the Honganji sect, but the result is that [these parishioners] give second priority to the holder of the domain or fief in which they live and pay no heed even to their relatives. At times, this can be harmful to the state and an obstacle to military vigilance. Lord Ieyasu himself was troubled by uprisings of Honganji followers when he was still in Mikawa.32 At that time, such uprisings occurred not only in Mikawa but in many provinces, causing military leaders great trouble. Even prominent warriors were taken in by this sect’s teachings and joined the uprisings; not a few lost their sense of loyalty and duty. Among all Buddhist sects, this one in particular teaches that this life is temporary while the afterlife is eternal. Therefore, those who are misled by such teachings tend to lose their sense of duty and readily commit evil acts in this present world. It will not do for such teachings to spread too widely among the people. It is particularly bad if warriors have faith in this sect. Such warriors are wont to commit acts of betrayal against their own lord. I hear that in the early days of Tokugawa rule, orders were sent to all daimyo and lesser Tokugawa vassals to the effect that this sect must be shunned.33
A certain person says, “In various provinces, the population has decreased because people follow the practice of ‘thinning’ their children. However, in provinces where the Honganji sect is widespread, people are firm in their faith, and no such inclination toward cruelty is seen. Quite to the contrary, the population has increased, and it is said that in those regions there are no useless sorts, nor do people fall into poverty. That is why the population is large in the five home provinces, in Ōmi, Iga, Ise, Mino, Owari, and Mikawa, in Wakasa, Echizen, Kaga, Noto, Etchū, and Echigo, and in Kii and Harima. This is because Honganji stresses the importance of descendants continuing the bloodline, even in the case of monks, and because families are united in upholding their faith. This is a sect that accords fully with the Way of the divine country of Japan.” This sounds reasonable enough and might be granted if it were said about Shinto. This sect, however, belongs to the Way of the Buddha, and yet it offends against the Way of the Buddha. What is more, it also creates trouble for the state, and it goes to extreme lengths in its greedy exploitation of the people. Therefore it is the vilest sect of all.
Today, there are two vile enemies that undermine the great Way of the realm. The first is the Honganji sect. As I have already explained, this sect has lost Śākyamuni’s teaching and utterly destroyed the dharma. It is said that Hōnen, the founder’s teacher, broke with him out of abhorrence for his violation of the precepts. Today Honganji followers revere this same founder as “Saint Shinran.” The other enemy is prostitution. The Way pertaining to the union of man and woman is linked to the harmony between Heaven and Earth; it is a crucial element of human morality. It should not be reduced to the greedy realm of buying and selling. It is true that prostitution is an ancient custom; they say that it was invented by Guan Zhong.34 He created a great evil indeed. This custom has since spread steadily, and it has been practiced widely especially during the past two hundred years; today, it is everywhere.
It is probably difficult even for the state itself to put a stop to these two evils—the Honganji sect and prostitution. It is frightful how difficult it is to maintain the Way of good over a long period, and how easily that Way becomes empty and hollow. Consider how the Ways of Shinto, Confucianism, and Buddhism are being cast aside. Consider, too, how the laws established by …35 are crumbling. Once the Way of evil has gained a foothold, it will grow as time passes and nobody will be able to stop it. Such are all matters in the realm, large and small. Of course, Buddhism would be of supreme value to the state if it would act in accord with Śākyamuni’s teachings; but as it is today, it is a great threat that corrupts the state, leads the people astray, and brings no benefit.
Buddhism’s Problematic History in Japan
The corruption of the state by Buddhism is not something that has happened in a night and a day. It is said that Buddhism first came to our land during the reigns of the emperors Kinmei and Yōmei.36 This was the beginning of Buddhism’s disturbance of the realm and corruption of the state. From this time many generations of emperors and their subordinates had faith in it. Emperor Tenmu, especially, issued an edict on the twenty-seventh day of the third month of the fourteenth year of his reign [685], stating that “in all provinces, Buddhist shrines must be built in every house; a Buddha statue and a sutra must be worshipped there and revered with offerings.” This is recorded in the [Nihon] shoki.37 Thereafter, Buddha halls were built and the Buddha was worshipped at every private house in the provinces. In the age of Emperor Kanmu [r. 780–806], great sages such as Saichō and Kūkai appeared.38 Among their followers emerged many notable and wise monks who demonstrated various marvels with their dharma powers. With deep faith in Buddhism, generations of emperors deeply revered such monks, and eventually they entrusted even matters of the realm and the state to them. Those below follow the example of those above, and thus all in the realm, from court nobles down to the common people, surrendered to Buddhism. Because it was Buddhist priests who prayed for peace in the realm, the Buddha Way attained great authority. The monastics took advantage of this to plunder the realm, founding Buddha halls and pagodas and living in luxury to their heart’s content.
Among military leaders, Lord Minamoto no Yoritomo in Kamakura also consulted the buddhas and gods over state affairs, and in his age the power of the Buddha Way grew excessively. The Ashikaga shogun, too, followed suit and added luster to temple complexes. Because temples and monasteries received many donations of vacant land, they gained vast power, and their rise became unstoppable. In the end the realm could no longer control them. Already by the age of Emperor Suzaku, around the Chōryaku period [1037–1040],39 monks had begun to don armor and brandish swords. They brought out the gods associated with their temples and, carrying them on palanquins to Kyoto, threatened the court. The evil monks of Enryakuji on Mount Hiei, of Miidera, and from Kōfukuji in Nara not only terrorized the court but also invaded the holdings of smaller temples in the surrounding areas. Taking this as a lesson, soon monks throughout the country became absorbed in the business of war. Buddhist adepts made it their vocation to commit armed raids and to kill. I am told that nothing like this ever occurred either in India or in China; it happened for the first time in Japan. It is a truly unspeakable event.
All this has happened because the court put too fervent a faith in Buddhism and showed too much favor to monks, showering them with official appointments and temple fiefs. Taking the position that kingly law and Buddhist law “are like the two wheels of a cart,” or making weak-kneed imperial pronouncements—such as, for example, that of [Retired Emperor Shirakawa, who said that] “the mountain monks [of Enryakuji] and the waters of the Kamo River are beyond my imperial powers”—the court caused monks to become full of overweening pride.40 That an emperor should make such a pronouncement shows that the monks of that age must have been unbridled in their perpetration of evil deeds. Even today, Enryakuji monks brag about it. Each single word uttered by an emperor carries weight, and this saying is still alive to this day.
Do those monks really have the ability to pacify the realm and the state with prayer rituals and the like? Miracles may occur, but they are small, individual events; they are not something that can hold sway over the whole. Moreover, one can hardly depend on miracles. The realm and the state rest ultimately on the military Way. The rewards and punishments of the military Way are clear for all to see. The Buddha Way cannot compare with this. When the military Way extends to all, it complies with the Way of Heaven, with the Way of loyalty and filial piety, and also with the Way of the gods and buddhas. There will be no need to worship the buddhas and gods beyond this. But generations of emperors and military leaders feared Buddhism and relied on the potency of its prayers both in matters of the realm and state and in personal matters. Therefore they lost the military Way that should have been their own, and in the end, they lost the realm. They were led astray by mysterious Ways from other lands such as China and India, and they became blind to the Way of the bow and arrow, which is the Japanese spirit of our own Divine Land.41 How sad! Weak from their wallowing in luxury and depravity and their daily use of silk and brocade, they turned to the useless devices of Buddhism—as though that could give them any real strength!
It is said that even Lord Minamoto no Yoritomo entrusted himself to the gods and buddhas and had faith in monks. He believed that the successes that were won through the loyalty and meritorious deeds of his warriors were due to the protection of the buddhas and gods, and his faith in the monks grew even more. It would have been better if he had rewarded his warriors as much as he favored those monks, and it is sad indeed that he strayed from the military Way in this manner. Ōe no Hiromoto wrote in his diary, “It is doubtful whether in the end warriors will continue to be grateful to him.”42 Hiromoto seems to have been correct in his surmise; loyal retainers such as the Wada and Hatakeyama were destroyed, and in the end, this lord’s house perished.43 How sad it is that Lord Yoritomo strayed into the Buddha Way, failed to dispense awards and punishments correctly, and lost the military Way!
Long ago, Minamoto no Mitsunaka entered Buddhism at an advanced age and took the monastic name Mankei. It is said that he received the precepts from Eshin; but when he was given the fifth precept against killing, Mankei closed his eyes and would not listen.44 This single episode alone shows that even when he entered Buddhism in his old age, he did not lapse in his dedication to the military Way. It is because they descend from such warriors that the Minamoto have excelled in the military Way ever since and that they have risen to become the supreme leaders of the realm.45 It is regrettable indeed that Lord Yoritomo appears to have put the Buddha Way above the military Way. Most ordinary warrior leaders have been led into error and have placed their trust in the Buddha Way, and, unawares, they have put the military Way to the side. If they had simply shown faith in Buddhism, it might have been all right, but they soon took to showering monks with favors, and the mistakes that we have already noted above began to arise.
As I have already argued, the Buddha did not have secure access to clothing, food, and shelter, nor did he favor grand magnificence in Buddha halls and pagodas—let alone the authority that comes with court rank and office stipends. However, the monastic system has gone awry, and monks have been provided with munificent official appointments and stipends and with splendid grand halls and pagodas. None of this is in accord with the true dharma. Already in Mitsunaka’s time, there were countless great temples in and around the capital, in Nara, and in the home provinces, all of which held high rank and had great resources at their disposal. The three thousand priestly quarters of Enryakuji on Mount Hiei held lands worth eight hundred thousand koku and housed more than ten thousand monks, it is said. The eight thousand priestly quarters of Mount Kōya disposed over one million koku. These temples seized vast incomes for their own use, and temples throughout the country followed their example by stealing official fiefs to an unprecedented degree. The Buddha Way’s might was all pervasive, extending to Heaven above and Earth below and arrogantly claiming a place above the military Way. In the fierceness of their momentum, the monks grew strong enough to make themselves enemies of the military Way.
In our land, Buddhism first threw the royal court into chaos and destroyed it; subsequently it soiled the military Way and deceived military leaders. Ultimately its evil reached such an extreme that monks saw themselves as superior to the state. It appears that finally the punishment of the Buddha descended upon them in the Tenshō years, when Lord Oda Nobunaga burned Mount Hiei, attacked Nara, crushed Ishiyama Honganji,46 and reduced the number of temples and monasteries elsewhere. Lord Toyotomi Hideyoshi destroyed Mount Kōya and Negoroji and brought temples in the provinces under his control.47 This amounted to the total subjugation of Buddhism. Until that time, famous and wise military leaders appear to have feared the otherworldly punishments of the buddhas and remained unable to crush the temples’ power. Showing the temples respect and endowing them with donations, they left monks free to act on their arrogance. But with its might the Oda house reduced the temple complexes to ashes in a single instant, and the monks disappeared like dew on a sword blade. When Mount Hiei was attacked, it is said that among the bodies of young male servants found in the monk’s halls were also those of many women—truly, it was a good riddance. The evil acts of centuries were wiped out at a single stroke. Those monks who survived this attack hid themselves away and later begged Lord Toyotomi to allow the rebuilding of a mere semblance of the temples. Their behavior had undergone a complete transformation, and they displayed a commendable understanding of the real meaning of Buddhism.
After this, the Divine Lord put in place regulations and handed down strict orders to all temples and monasteries. He established head temples and liaison temples for all sects, and even schools for the monks. Buddhism was completely reformed, and for the first time in many years monks once more followed the dharma. Under the influence of the Divine Lord’s benevolent virtue, the monks of the various sects ceased to crave official appointments and temple fiefs; they cultivated an attitude of no self, polished their moral virtues, and returned to the original Way of the Buddha. Of course, he did not bestow large holdings even on those temples in different parts of the country to which he granted vermilion-seal lands. He did not make extensive grants even to Daijuji in Mikawa, Zōjōji in Edo, and Chion’in in Kyoto.48 This was good for Buddhism and good for the monks, and it paid due heed to the expenses of the state—an act of awe-inspiring divine wisdom indeed!
Renewed Signs of Decay
Now, more than two hundred years have passed, and the world has become splendid to excess. The number of temples and shrines has gradually increased, as have their court ranks and office fiefs, and once more the monastics have grown arrogant. The Way of Buddhism has been lost completely, and even in provincial villages monks have become decadent and lost all sense of compassion. Buddhism was first restored in those exceptional reforms; then, it was lost once more. How deplorable! Although monks no longer bear armor and swords, their greed and wickedness and their craving for luxury have multiplied. The total number of temples in the whole of Japan today must be around five hundred thousand,49 while probably around two million live in these temples. In addition, there are countless practice halls, retreats, and wayside shrines, and the number of adherents, practitioners, nuns, and the like living there must be enormous. All these tens of thousands of people have grown into an idle class within the realm; what is worse, they have easy access to clothing, food, and shelter, and they spend their days and nights squandering the state’s resources. They do not devote themselves to the Way of Buddhism, they lead lives of luxurious laziness and evil greed, and they make a standard practice of swindling the people who uphold the state.
Furthermore, the habit of generations of emperors and military leaders in the middle ages to elevate Buddhism above the military Way still has some remaining influence, and there is a tendency for monks to put themselves above warriors. In a contest over superiority, there are various reasons why warriors cannot match monks. First, if one compares the grand halls and pagodas spread across Japan with the dwellings of warriors, including even those of the daimyo, one finds that those dwellings are inferior and the pagodas and temples superior. However splendid castles throughout the country may be, they cannot compete with the halls and pagodas of the temples and monasteries. Moreover, there are probably fewer warrior houses than there are temples, and warriors have lower court ranks than monks. When it comes to clothing, warriors cannot dress up in gold brocade, while monks wear it all the time. In sheer numbers, are not warriors fewer than monks? The position of warrior comes with many constraints, and a warrior cannot move freely on his own initiative. In fact, a warrior cannot know whether he will live to see another day. Monks are in a position where they can move with complete freedom, without any restraints. Moreover, their lives are not on the line. Monks are respected and feted by all. Although people are obliged to bow and scrape before a warrior, underneath they may in fact feel ill will or hatred.
Thus, as for the Buddha Way, buildings are both grand and numerous, the number of monastics is large, their rank and dignity are great, and their clothing is magnificent. They have freedom of movement, their lives are not in danger, and, most important, they bask in the faith of the common people. As for the military Way, however, the reverse is true; the situation of warriors is inferior in all these aspects. This is why warriors cannot match monks and why the Buddha Way prevails over the military Way. As noted above, this is the residual aftereffect of the acts of generations of emperors and warrior leaders.
I have heard that when Lord Toyotomi Hideyoshi surveyed the number of temples and shrines, there were some 11,900 temples and 208,000 shrines. It appears that there were more shrines than temples. By now, however, the number of temples has grown enormously. In connection with the prohibition of Christianity, it was made obligatory for the most marginal rural people to have a parish temple, and a great many temples were built even in provincial villages. Thus monks appear to sit proudly ahead of warriors in all matters. Nevertheless, there is one “flaw in the jewel”—the lack of [vast] temple fiefs [such as temples enjoyed before Tokugawa rule]. Only in this regard are monks worse off than warriors and is Buddhism forced to take a place below the military Way. Yet temple fiefs are probably more generous even than the set stipends enjoyed by the high court nobility.50
The fief income of temples in Kyoto and its vicinity cannot be even a tenth of what it was before the reforms of the Tenshō years, but even so, it is probably greater than the house stipends of court nobles of both high and lesser rank. Even now that they have been reduced to a tenth of what they were before, temple incomes are large. But although they surpass the set stipends of court nobles, they cannot match warrior house stipends. Were temples to receive vast fiefs as in the past, it would be difficult to keep them below warriors and subject to warrior direction. It is no wonder that the military leaders of earlier ages were unable to control them, and it was most perspicacious of the Divine Lord not to give them such fiefs. That he should act with such foresight brings tears of thankfulness to my eyes, and surely both the buddhas and Śākyamuni himself must be delighted.
However, as the world has grown too prosperous for its own good, temple lands have steadily expanded, and some temples have acquired higher court rank, larger incomes, and a higher temple status. They have accumulated chapels and plots of land and begun various enterprises such as lending out money at interest. Even at village temples in the countryside, the income from parishioners has become more or less set and has come to resemble a fixed stipend. The monks have become indolent and lost all sense of shame. Not only have tens of thousands of monks been guaranteed clothing, food, and shelter; even worse, those same people commit shameless crimes to their heart’s desire, and the evil they foment creates much trouble for the state. It is no wonder that in distant provinces people fall into destitution, end up without a household to depend on, and die an untoward death. Can this really be allowed to continue?
The Failure of Temples and Monks to Observe Their Own Regulations
Monastics of all sects break not only the laws of the state but also the regulations of their own sects. Relying neither on age nor merit but only on greed, they defile their court ranks, tarnish the priestly positions in the big temples, and altogether act heedlessly. Let me give a few examples.
The regulations of the Sōtō sect of Zen, laid down by the Divine Lord, state that one cannot become a senior monk unless one has practiced the dharma for twenty years since first participating in a retreat,51 and that one cannot become an abbot and acquire one’s own temple with less than twenty-five years of practice.52 The Divine Lord must have laid down these regulations after discussions with virtuous monks of that sect. At these retreats, monks face one another and exchange questions and answers about the meaning of the dharma.53 This serves to test who is in front and who behind. At these sessions the monks used to ask unexpected questions and correct misunderstandings. But today, they secretly show one another the points they will raise prior to the session. It is no longer an examination, as it was before. It is like a performance of set pieces in sword or spear practice, not a real contest. Today, monks do not exert themselves in practice nor do they train their mental powers, and so they can no longer deal with a serious contest.
Not only have retreat sessions become purely formal but also monks no longer care to wait for twenty years or to strain themselves with any dharma practice. They become senior monks simply by paying a bribe of ten ryō. To acquire a temple, so I hear, they send these ten ryō to Kyoto. Stating falsely that they have completed twenty years of practice, they pay five of the ryō to the head temple to obtain an authentication of their statement. They then proceed to the Kajūji house, to which they pay the remaining five ryō, and with its recommendation, they readily obtain an imperial edict allowing them to become a senior monk and thereby qualify for promotion to the rank of grand abbot.54
Thus, the retreat is false, the dharma practice is false, and the number of years of practice is also false. Both the head temple and the Kajūji house know that these are all false, but both nevertheless readily give permission so long they are paid five ryō. If the monks would really undergo the years of training specified in the regulations, they could not hold their own temple until they are at least forty. These days, however, neither merit nor age are of any consequence, and through the kind of machinations described above, monks acquire temples while they are still youngsters. Moreover, those who are unable to raise enough money for bribes are denied promotion to the title of grand abbot even if they have practiced the dharma as stipulated and acquired merit in that way. What is one to think of such a state of affairs?
If monks would acquire their temples according to the regulations, after reaching the age of forty or more, their behavior would likely be good and they would not fall into error. As things are, however, they become grand abbots without engaging in the stipulated number of years of dharma practice by simply paying money collected through greed. Because they come to hold their own temple at a young age, they do nothing but engage in unsavory deeds and are all the more ready to discard the dharma and concentrate on making a profit, and gradually they fall into evil ways. Thus they violate the dharma, the rules of their own founder, and, most important, the laws of the land. Moreover, as they accumulate more money by evil means, they move on to better temples, proportionate to the power of their wealth. They become chief priests of great temples or of temples with vermilion-seal lands, thereby securing large official fiefs.
The overall head temple of the Sōtō sect is Eiheiji in Echizen province. It is said that he who wishes to become chief priest of this head temple must raise a sum of at least 2,000 ryō. One thousand ryō is needed for the various expenses incurred when entering the cloister, while another 1,000 ryō is needed to cover the costs of paying one’s respects to the imperial court, including gratitude payments and such.55 Recently, a change of head priest took place there. A certain monk of that sect whose years of dharma practice and merit qualified him to be chief priest failed to be appointed because he was unable to collect enough money. Instead, a monk appeared from Ōshū [in the far north]. He was unlearned and impious to the extreme, but he was wise in the ways of the world and skilled at deceiving people; he thus raised those 2,000 ryō by means of various stratagems and secured entrance to the cloister. This is how it is even with the position of chief priest of the highest head temple. It goes without saying that positions at lower temples are also bought for a price based on each temple’s rank and the number of parishioners.
The founder of Eiheiji was the patriarch of the Sōtō sect, precept master Dōgen [1200–1253]. Dōgen had originally settled in Uji in Yamashiro province, but he found that this place was too close to the capital and all its distractions, and for that reason he retired to the mountains of Echizen. The court admired his virtue, and more than once imperial envoys were dispatched to ask for his services, but he declined to leave. At one time, it is said, he replied with a poem:
Although the mountains of Eiheiji [and my own merits] are shallow, the honor of this imperial order is profound.
If I were to return, people would surely deride me as a monkey—an old monk in a scarlet robe!
With these words, he sent the envoy home.56
In spite of the fact that the founder Dōgen had such superior merit, he derided himself, saying that people would laugh at him as a monkey were he to appear in the capital dressed up in scarlet robes, and he did not accept the imperial appointment. This kind of merit, polished at a place far removed from the dust of unenlightened greed, has steadily disintegrated in later ages. Today, monks tainted by utter impiety wear scarlet robes without any good reason and act as the masters of great temples. Surely, they have lost their sense of both duty and shame.
It is said that matters are no different in the Rinzai sect, also of Zen. The founder of Rinzai’s head temple Myōshinji was Zen master Egen [1277–1348]. Egen, too, had a great sense of virtue, and when he was invited by the court, he declined. He sent seven imperial envoys away, but people complained that this was too much and that he was going against the wishes of the emperor. He, too, felt trepidation on this account, and so he decided to present himself at the court. By a fortunate accident he met the eighth imperial envoy on the road and thus accompanied him to the palace. Since that time, this has become the established precedent of this sect, and nowadays it is said that its monks accept imperial appointment as grand abbot only after seven and a half envoys. But in fact, again, dharma practice or years of merit are of no consequence; for thirty ryō, the court and the head temple will make all the necessary arrangements.
Circumstances differ slightly from one sect to another, but they are all similar. Nowadays, court ranks and senior titles are not awarded in recognition of great achievement in learning or great merit in practicing a sect’s dharma. If one only makes a gratitude payment, imperial appointment is granted without hesitation. Court ranks have become entirely a commodity sold by the court, and they do not deserve the world’s reverent respect. Because all sects can freely buy ranks and appointments for money, the dharma rules of the patriarchs and the laws of the shogunate are ignored in the interest of immoral profiteering. These days, the chief priests and high-ranking monks of the head temples, the liaison temples, and the other great temples of the various sects are by no means wise men of great virtue. They are ringleaders in a world of greed and immorality. They are the greatest villains of the state.
The Way of the buddhas and gods is meant to restrain human desire, to purify people’s minds, and to protect the state through compassion. However, the millions of temple and shrine priests in the provinces and in the villages lead lives of overweening pride, placing themselves above the farmers and the warriors as they wallow in luxury and indolence. None in the world are as dedicated to greed, immorality, lawlessness, and inhumanity as they are. They turn the gods and buddhas into chiefs of evil and soil the state with their wickedness. One wishes for prompt reforms. If millions of evildoers are left to conduct their business as they do today, surely neither the Way of Heaven nor the buddhas and gods will continue to overlook this state of affairs. Is it not certain to bring great disaster to the realm? It is a most fearsome matter. If only this evil is reformed and the law restored, the Way of Heaven and the buddhas and gods will once again illuminate us, shower us with their compassion, and resume their protection of the realm and state. Then, this evil world will be transformed into a good world where the seven misfortunes will instantly disappear and the seven fortunes materialize,57 and our land will indeed become a Pure Land where all the sentient beings are filled with faith. Will not the buddhas and gods as well as all the myriad things of the world then be as one, united in emptiness, with all in a state of peace and harmony? I pray for such reforms from the bottom of my heart.
The physicians of today have lost the original meaning of the medical Way. Wantonly they pride themselves on their opulence and display a greediness that is beyond words. The basic principle of medicine is to help others by benevolent practices, and its principal duty is to find the causes of illness and alleviate patients’ sufferings. Han Tuizhi wrote, “Should I become prime minister and heal the realm, or should I become a physician and save others in acute need?”58 The slightest tinge of greed will prevent one from administering such wondrous assistance. When the general Guan Yu [d. 219] of Shu sustained an arrow wound in his arm, he had the physician Hua Tuo treat his injury. Within a day he was healed. Guan Yu was overjoyed and offered a hundred taels of gold as a token of his gratitude, but Hua Tuo refused to accept this gift, saying, “I am a person who heals the sick. I am by no means a person with a predilection for gold.”59
In its origin the medical Way is a part of the Way of the sages; it is an expression of the compassion fundamental to the Way of benevolence. It was said already of the famous physicians Jivaka and Bian Que that they were manifestations of bodhisattvas.60 Also in our country, there were those who were free of all desire for luxury and indolence and who single-heartedly devoted themselves to the practice of benevolence: the Wake and Tanba lineages [in ancient times],61 and, more recently, people such as Imaōji Dōsan and Kai Tokuhon.62
The physicians of our own time, however, have become negligent in their medical practice under the influence of the excessive splendor of our age. They live in luxury, wear magnificent clothes, and dwell in lavish houses with entrance halls and the like. Even their servants flaunt an air of authority, and their families lead prosperous lives. They break all rules of proper conduct and enjoy themselves with sake and good food every day. This is the reason why they are so lacking in the wondrous powers of the medical Way. Because they are devoid of any sense of sincerity, they pay attention only to their outward appearance; they pretend to be great physicians and swindle the people. Moreover, people respect these doctors, believing that since they look so impressive, they must be good at the art of healing. Because both parties have no true sense of rectitude, their eyes are blind, and they are unable to discern the true from the false.
The Arrogance of Physicians with Official Appointments
Physicians are greedy beyond words in the way they carry out their profession. When a patient is rich—whether he is from a venerable family or of lowly birth—they treat him with great care, but when he is poor, their treatment of him is slipshod. Physicians with shogunal appointments and physicians in the service of large and small daimyo are particularly arrogant.63 When they visit the ill they travel by palanquin, and they surround themselves with footmen and menials as though they were warriors. They want to show that a physician’s cortege is something special and give the public the impression that they are particularly popular by rushing through the streets and making more of a noisy disturbance than any warrior entourage would. They are a nuisance for passers-by or even start quarrels with them. They hit and kick people who happen to touch their medicine chest and behave in an authoritarian manner, declaring that the medicine chest is an important tool of their profession. All this is most unreasonable. A warrior depends on his lance or spear to defend himself when his life is in danger, and of course nobody should touch it; if someone were to interfere with it, it is indeed reasonable that he be told off. A medicine chest, however, contains tools for helping others. Should one hurt others over the very tools that are meant to help them? This is a most unbefitting way to behave for a person charged with dispensing benevolence—and one with the appearance of a monk at that.64
When all these retainers arrive at the house of a patient, it is common practice for them to extort money for what they call a “lunch fee.” The going rate is 50 or 100 hiki of gold, or even 200 or 300—the equivalent of from half a bale of rice to one or two bales. This far exceeds what lunch for the four or five, or eight or nine retainers in their cortege should cost. The retainers collect such a “lunch” at each of the several houses where the physician calls. Therefore, these days poor households cannot readily ask a famous physician to call on them or seek treatment from him. Even if one goes to a physician’s house, he will examine your economic health before he even takes your pulse, and if you are diagnosed as poor, he will not put his heart into treating you. Because physicians pride themselves on their opulence, behave with arrogance, have abandoned the practice of benevolence, and are driven by greed, few patients ask them for treatment. With few patients, physicians cannot gain experience in their practice. The illnesses of people of high status or great wealth are due mostly to overindulgence in sexual desire or too much drink and food, and such illnesses cannot be treated. The afflictions of the lowly and the poor require much more extensive and varied examinations because they result from a range of difficult diseases, and the physician must ascertain whether the cause is shallow or deep, the life root firm or weak. All this supplies a physician with opportunities to gain experience. Nowadays, however, physicians shun the lowly and the poor, and consequently they fail to acquire skill in healing.
For physicians to carry long and short swords and behave like warriors is a recent phenomenon. In the early days of the Tokugawa reign, it is said, they had the appearance of monks and wore loose black overcoats.65 They never carried even a small sword, nor did they travel in palanquins or surround themselves with retainers. They lived in common town houses and did not use family names. They were frugal, dutiful, and sincere in their efforts to alleviate the suffering of the sick. However, as the world became more splendorous they grew ever more indolent. Around the Genroku years, especially, their habits became sumptuous, and they began to boast of being favored by persons of high status. They received great stipends similar to those of a proper warrior, and because of those great stipends, they strayed even further from the practice of dispensing benevolence and began to behave like warriors in all things. About their carrying swords I have heard the following. At some time, when a certain physician with the name of Yamazoe Shōshun’in was called at a mature age to the province where the shogun was staying, he was unexpectedly ordered to remain overnight in attendance. “I left my sword in my palanquin,” he observed. “Should I go and fetch it now that I am to remain overnight?” “Good that you thought of this; do fetch it,” was the reply.66 Others noted those words of praise, and this reply was taken to mean that physicians were allowed to carry a sword on their person as a precaution at all times. Thus this custom spread from the physicians of the inner quarters to those on duty in the outer quarters, and then to those on special call and trainees.67 After this, physicians in the service of large and small daimyo also began to wear swords, rubbing shoulders with warriors in the belief that they are their equals. It is truly scandalous that they should think so, and it goes against the meaning of practicing benevolence.
The profession of a physician is not such that it requires him to put his life on the line, whereas a warrior is someone who has given over his life to the state. The two are as different as Heaven and Earth, and physicians cannot be compared to warriors; instead, they should be compared to monks of the various Buddhist sects. When they dispense benevolence to patients, physicians should not distinguish between those of high and low birth. They should enter even the huts of the lowliest beings and offer them treatment.68 Even physicians with official appointments should treat people of high and low status with equal care, ignoring the dirtiness of their patients, holding their hands and feet, massaging their shoulders and examining their eyes, testing their urine and their stool, and at times even drawing out their pus and blood by sucking it. This is a profession that should not shun any kind of impurity. It is on that basis that, in thanks for their treatment and as a recompense for their medicine, they receive various goods from townspeople, farmers, and those below and obtain what they call “stipends by appointment” from daimyo. Since this is a humble profession that does not distinguish between high and low, physicians should be regarded as equivalent with monks; to put physicians on a par with warriors is truly outrageous.
The Greedy Practices of Physicians of Lower Status
Because physicians holding official appointments and other famous physicians behave with such arrogance, town doctors and provincial doctors of lower status imitate them and become insolent. They do not apply themselves to the Way of healing but pay attention solely to the magnificence of their appearance and use all their energy in the pursuit of profits. Caring only for status, repute, and profit, they have lost the will to help others. They vie with one another over the efficacy of their treatments without giving the least consideration to the well-being of their patients. They wish to avoid, for example, the possibility that the world will blame them for “failing in their treatment of so-and-so, or letting someone-or-other die.” Thus they become nervous even before a patient’s illness has become difficult to heal and cut short their treatment without following up how the illness develops. If they have injured a patient because of a mistake in their treatment, they may not even try to remedy this; they simply walk away and leave the patient to another doctor. Or, when things reach a critical state, they flee to hide their own error. In other cases, they steal from another physician a patient who—thanks to the first doctor’s painstaking efforts—is on the verge of recovery and claim the merit as their own. In yet other cases they fail to pay proper attention to a patient, never caring that this will have dire consequences, because their hearts are darkened by greed. Mistakes of many kinds occur because they concentrate on their own interests rather than those of the sick.
The manner in which doctors select households for treatment is extremely coldhearted. On their rounds they call many times on those who are rich and can be expected to be generous with their thanks payments, and they make a special effort to sell their skills to them. When it comes to poor households, however, they refuse to make any visits at all, or they leave them to their apprentices, without even considering whether the latter’s prescriptions are appropriate or not. Those apprentices are just as coldhearted. Saying that they need practice, they pester the patients in all kinds of ways and cause them unnecessary pain. Because they are inexperienced in examining patients, they often prescribe the wrong medicines and make mistakes, but their masters do not care about the apprentices’ mistakes. In general, the education of apprentices is much poorer than before. Apprentices cannot learn their profession unless their masters take them along on calls to patients, show them each patient’s condition, and explain it to them in such a way that they can understand. Nowadays there are no physicians who teach in that way, nor are they sincere in their efforts to help the sick; the only thing they see is their own profit. When it comes to the lowliest physicians, one can never be sure whether the medicines they sell are real or fake. It is a disgrace indeed.
In this age people like to live at leisure without any physical exertion, and because physicians lead easy lives, their numbers have increased both in the cities and in the countryside—everywhere they display their opulence, swindle the people, and pursue their greed for profits. The number of people who take medicines has also surged. In our time both rich and poor have gotten out of kilter. There are more rich people and more poor people, and both have their own illnesses. The rich live lives of effeminate indolence, eating an excess of tasty food and drinking too much, and they suffer because of overindulgence. The poor are exposed to the cold winds of winter and the blazing heat of summer, and they suffer from illnesses of exhaustion induced by ceaseless worries. The afflictions of the poor are more numerous than those of the rich, and yet they are unable to take the medicines they need. The rich wrap themselves up and take medicine at the smallest sign of illness; in fact they even use medicines when they are perfectly healthy, something they call “health-promoting supplements” or “restorative remedies.” The physicians, too, are quite happy to put different names on the illnesses of the rich and supply them with medicines. There are many who suffer from heartburn; they say that this illness did not exist before. I have been told that this illness arises because people today live in comfort, using their minds more than their bodies, and because they eat and drink too much. In the old days, there were none who did not use their bodies or who overate, and therefore this illness simply did not exist. This must be an illness of peaceful times. These days, it affects both the noble and the rich. Similarly, the number of prostitutes has also increased in many places, and many suffer from syphilis. I have heard that many show signs of general exhaustion, as well as various other diseases.
In ancient times, around the Daidō years [806–810], it is said, there were few diseases and only twenty-eight types of treatment. As time passed, the number of diseases and treatments increased, and so did the number of physicians and patients. As the tendency toward luxury and profit seeking caught hold, the numbers of sick people, physicians, and derelicts grew as well, leading to a boom in medicine peddlers of various kinds. Growth in the number of physicians made it difficult to make a living in the medical profession; physicians became even more perfunctory in dealing with patients and began to compete over treatments or over the sale of medicines. So-called charlatans also began to appear. These give out miracle medicines that produce an immediate effect there and then—ignoring the fact that such cures will at some later time damage the bodies of the sick. Or else these charlatans produce a temporary effect by burning moxa without paying proper attention to the crucial points.69 The poor do not have the means to use large quantities of medicine, nor can they take the time to rest sufficiently to restore their health. Therefore they lay the future aside and, thinking only of easing their immediate condition, resort to medicines that will later prove to be poison. Nowadays there is any number of charlatans and medicine peddlers; many exhaust the resources of the world and shorten people’s Heaven-given life span. Were the desire for luxury and profits to wane in the world and poverty be brought to an end, would not there be fewer sick people, fewer derelicts, and fewer who shorten their own lives? In such an age would not even physicians become upright, pulled along by the times?
I do not know how many tens of thousands of physicians there are in the world, but not a single one among them follows the original meaning of dispensing benevolence. There may well be honest and dedicated physicians in far provinces and in rural places where there is neither luxury nor greed for profits, but because those places are remote, they are unable to gather knowledge and experience, and because sick people are few, they cannot polish their ability to treat patients. Unfortunately, they thus simply rot away. It is truly a cause for regret that it is impossible to undergo training in medicine in the provinces.70 If such training were possible, it would save many lives. One wishes, too, for rules like those for monks, stipulating that unless a doctor has sufficient training and is of a certain age, he cannot treat patients. I will consider these matters in more detail elsewhere.
The Way of medicine should serve to help people, together with the Buddha Way: those practicing it should not have any concern for luxury or lazy comfort; they should be without arrogance, keep far from greed for profit, be sincere and humble, make no distinction between high and low, and shun no impurity. These days, however, physicians are greedy for luxury and profit, fickle and arrogant. Both this and the fact that there are so many sick people are results of what is happening in the world. As for curing the state of affairs with physicians, will it not be difficult to restore uprightness unless we first treat the world’s illness? If such treatment of the world were successful, there would be fewer sick people and fewer physicians, and their abuses would cease.