Buddhism is generally concerned with final liberation from a life of suffering (caused by desires), sickness, old age and death. The earliest practice was individual seated meditation that produces the true wisdom of self-knowledge and the nature of reality. In the years following the death of the first Indian Buddha, Sakyamuni, a number of councils sought to codify and preserve authoritative teachings; this gave rise to a conservative literalism, a resistance to change any portion of the accepted canon, its language or form. This attitude toward safeguarding doctrine led to a three-step process whereby practice (orthoprax) was subordinated to hearing and mastering the correct text (orthodox) for transmission.
The Lotus Sutra is a late poetic synthesis of early Buddhist thinking and practice. It was transcribed from the common language into Sanskrit to add to its prestige in the monastaries, where it was given as the final teaching by a Master Guru to a disciple after a long initiation. This text speaks in the mythology and symbolism of priestly Brahmanism, the form being a Greco-Indian theatrical setting that begins with discourse (sophistry, rhetoric, speculation). Following meditative absorption (samadhi), the gathered aspirants, devotees, gods, fantastic creatures and eminent monks of no doubt enjoy further and greater truth on a transcendent visionary plane accessed by suprasensory perception. There are many teachings by parable; claiming position as the supreme teaching, the text insists that all bodhisattvas are subject to a discipline of authentic Buddhism, meaning a progressive adaptation of the wisdom of all traditions to fit local custom and language, though it admits all minor means as interim steps toward salvation and a certain end of enlightenment, and as previously mentioned, orthoprax was secondary to proper transmission of orthodox.
As a Japanese Buddhist eschatological prophet, Nichiren Daishonin the Great Sage of the Sun Lotus born in the house of an exiled fisherman, preached a rhetoric of doctrinal legitimacy among clashing Buddhist sectarians by privileging the Lotus Sutra in his social activism, political dissent and religious criticism; he also relentlessly pointed to the failures and corruption of the community, suffering backlash, arrest, and nearly execution. Nichiren was saved by a lightning strike that caused the crowd to panic; especially in a context of natural disasters and losses in war that seemed like divine punishment, Nichiren viewed himself as a purifier reconciling a wicked world and an Ideal world, and himself as the fulfillment of a transpersonal reality transferred into a historical concretization (an avatar) anticipated by the earlier incarnations of the Eternal Buddha.
The Lotus Sutra arrives from India in Japan after several translations; though Nichiren rejected the Pure Land Buddhists and the Zen Buddhists, he saw value in the Brahmin worship of Shiva as a loving father, the social order gained by Confucianism, and the place of meditation as part of a practice in praise of the Lotus Sutra and social activism as spiritual discipline (what the Brahmins call Karma Yoga). He also accepted Shinto, which included the indigenous ethos and mythological worldview, kinship with nature, purification rituals and a shrine sanctuary, featuring a mandala with the native Sun Goddess and God of War among the characters gathered to chant and perform (devotional) Bhakta Yoga for the Lotus Sutra. Nichiren believed that Buddhism originated with the Moon Tribe in India and spread east to Japan, the land of the Rising Sun, and because of astronomical signs and missionary zeal, and he applied the decline tropes from later translations of the Lotus Sutra to himself as prophecy fulfilled. He exhorted the accurate preservation and transmission of the Lotus Sutra and its teaching of true dharma to a degenerate age, an offer of salvation for anyone who seeks liberation. His early fanaticism, at odds with orthopraxy, eased when he adopted the ideal of Sadaparibhuta, or Bodhisattva Never Disparaging, who was beaten with sticks yet still declared witness to the potential buddha in his attackers.
Nichiren taught that all humans are potential buddhas, or bodhisattvas who vow to postpone final liberation until all beings are saved, an idea fitting his eschatology whereby historical progress is the decline and subsequent return to the perfect origin of the individual and society. It also produces "permanent bodhisattvas" who revel in the status of spiritual masters and sensuous life. This is different from Theravada Buddhism, which teaches there is only one Bodhisattva who will become the Future Buddha (a teacher of gods and men, and a further incarnation of the Eternal Buddha, of which Sakyamuni was the first and Nichiren an interim embodiment); practice is thus nothing more than the refinement of an already attained enlightenment. In this system, practice is seated meditation which leads to the wisdom of right views and right intention, the ethical conduct of right speech, right action and right livelihood, and finally, the right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration that produces samadhi.
Other Buddhist sects (schools) in Japan included the monastic community of Kukai, who taught ten stages in the life of the mind. First, the goat life of greed, anger, ignorance and animal impulse. Next, in the childlike state, one has some ethics and rules for conduct, rights and duties (the purpose of Confucianism). Third, the fearless mind that practices discipline for immortality and rebirth in a pure land; fourth, self-enlightened apathy, followed by cultivated compassion; sixth, meditative union and seven, logical arguments. Eighth is knowledge of multiple worlds and ninth is qualified non-dualism. Last and most supreme is the most secret and sacred Glorious Mind, or complete realization of oneness with the cosmic body of the Great Sun Buddha. By this means, perfect enlightenment can be gained in this lifetime by any aspirant through a combination of meditation and rituals prescribing posture, gesture, mantra and mandala. Zen Buddhism in Japan was represented by Dogen, who taught that non-dual consciousness and living is not possible without strict practice of seated meditation. For Dogen, practice is not doctrinal argumentation or play with words, though critique is necessary to rid oneself of erroneous beliefs.
The Pure Land sect gained popularity in Japan by adopting tropes earlier associated with the Future Buddha. Declaring the path to enlightenment and final liberation beyond the capacity of most people, Amida Butsu's vow to the Buddha Sakyamuni is that anyone who chants his name once will be reborn in the Western Paradise. Facing the suffering of natural catastrophe and threat of war, many ceaselessly chanted "Namu Amida Butsu" with hope of reprieve from suffering by the intervention of an outside entity and higher power. Preaching a gospel of purification, Nichiren roared at the community's resignation to corrupt politics and lack of vigorous activity towards the renewal of the individual, society and earth.
Nichiren advocated a program of praise to the Lotus Sutra, and encouraged people to social reformation and personal transformation. However, his eschatology shows the need for the Future Buddha, as the formless Eternal Buddha manifests in imperfect but progressive temporal buddhas, incarnations, forms or avatars. In the Theravada tradition, this figure is the only Bodhisattva, Maitreya. The Lotus Sutra abounds in references to the Future Buddha, including his past life as Fame Seeker. This ancient composite savior and king of great power comes after the early Buddhist contact with Zoroastrianism and inspiration by Persian duality and eschatology. The figure was an especial favorite of early Greco-Buddhist artists, and after the first Sakyamuni statue in Japan was thrown into a canal, six Maitreya statues were erected in various Temples, four of them nunneries. The seventh Temple was dedicated again to Sakyamuni.
As the Bodhisattva Ideal, Maitreya inaugurates a golden age of righteousness, unified social order and victory of truth. He represents the creative impulse of social activism and purification, an ideal of redemption distorted by politics that attached qualities of omnipotent monarch to the figure, warped in our time into a clown. "The image was appropriated and distorted, as it was in the Theravada countries, by the Chinese rulers as they sought to enhance the Buddhist kingship. In doing so, the Maitreyan image lost its prophetic role. On the other hand, the cult of Maitreya, which emerged on Chinese soil in order to meet the genuine Spiritual needs of the clergy and laity, was soon superceded by a more popular Amitabha cult. It is tragic that popular minds have associated Maitreya with the jovial laughing Buddha, an image which had lost the historic meaning of the lofty Bodhisattva who was expected the become the future Buddha" (Kitagawa 117).
The cult of Maitreya, the White Lotus Society, was known for its long hair and white robes. Until his iconic descent before the close of the cycle as the chief of men, the Future Buddha Maitreya lived in a perfect society and paradise of saintly hermits seeking deliverance by seated meditation. Devotees sought entry to his Heaven for a face-to-face encounter by chanting a mantra, or hoped to prolong life or be reborn on earth during his mission to hear him preaching the True Word and witness his use of empire to unify the social order. In Korea, the King built a Temple for Maitreya's descent, a place where he could regularly explicate the True Dharma. Led by an evangelical aristocrat, a writer, lover of wine and music who often meditated in the mountains, the group was a non-sectarian Buddhist synthesis promoting non-violent patriotism and social activism, love of Maitreya, self-realization, purification of sins, and good rebirth for the self, ancestors and family by way of seated meditation and active contemplation.
Offering an Ideal of human and social perfection, the Maitreya ideal thrived among oppressed sectarians living outside of traditional Buddhism, whose naive Romanticism, lack of coherent ideology and lack of group organization could not withstand the rise of Pure Land Buddhism and its Western Paradise. The figure was revived and extended in the nineteenth century by European and American theosophists.
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