Myōe
81 Myōe 明恵 (1173–1232) A Japanese monk ordained in both the Shingon and Kegon heritages, Myōe was an original and restive thinker who straddled the borders of traditional Buddhism and new directions of his age. His theory of universal salvation supported efforts to recognize the disinherited and marginalized members of society at the same time as he criticized the moral laxity of popular źnenbutsuŻ practices and what he saw as the distortions of the “heretical” Pure Land thinker Hōnen.* In its place, he championed a restoration of monastic discipline and advocated a “mantra of light” that focused on rebirth in the Pure Land rather than the attainment ofbuddhahood in this life as Kūkai* had taught. In a rich body of sermons, academic treatises, exegetical commentaries, poetry, rituals, and polemical tracts, Myōe sought to bring doctrinal abstractions to bear on religious and sociopolitical realities. In the “Letter to an Island” reproduced here in the form reconstructed by his disciple Kikai (1178–1251), Myōe addresses the island of Karumoshima that seems to remind him of the causal production of all things in the mind. By identifying with the island and inviting it to “live inside of him,” he seeks to appropriate the idea that all is consciousness and that all other persons and things themselves are beyond reach because of their own nature and qualities. Only by denying the disjunction of the knower from the object of knowledge, can one reach the ground where one can communicate with all things—even a cherry tree. The letter highlights Myōe’s inmost feeling of being an integrated part of the world of beings, beyond their differences , all participating in the most excellent being that is Buddha. [fg] A let ter to an isl and Myōe 1197, 36–39 To begin with, think of your own being as an island. This island is the object of attachment to the world of desire. In terms of the senses, it belongs to the categories of color and shape. It is apprehended by sight as an object of visual consciousness and is composed intrinsically of eight elements.16 Since it is in the nature of all things to know, there is no being that can escape awakening. And seeing that this knowing is by its nature the principle of all things, there is no place from which principle is absent. 16. [The four primary elements of earth, water, fire, and air, and the four derivative elements of sight, smell, taste, and touch.] 82 | bu d d h i s t t r a d i t i o n s The principle of all things is their way of being, their suchness. This suchness itself is the spiritual body, the undifferentiated principle of all things that is not distinct from the world of beings. In the same way, one cannot think of inanimate beings as existing apart from beings with sense. The body of the terrestrial realm is one of the ten bodies of the Tathāgata and thus is not located outside the sublime being of Vairocana. As the doctrine which states that all the six traits of things17 merge perfectly and without hindering each other, the island in its own being is a body belonging to the terrestrial realm. In terms of one particular aspect, this island is the body of sensible beings, of retribution for acts, of the listener, of self-awakening, of the bodhisattva, and of the Tathāgata, and it is intelligent, spiritual, and spatial. Given that its own being is made of ten bodies that extend in all directions, the island exhaustsIndra’s net, merging freely and perfectly with everything. It is located high above all our conceptions and far surpasses the reach of knowledge. Thus, when one thinks hard about the principle that rules the island in the presence of the enlightenment of the ten buddhas of the źFlower Garland SutraŻ, one realizes that the secondary retribution (the receptacle world) and the principal retribution (the individual body) do not hinder each other. The One and the many move freely in and out of each other without obstruction, just as they merge into each other in the limitless expanse of Indra’s net. The spiritual realm, which extends everywhere, is beyond conceiving, and the ten perfect and ultimate bodies of the Tathāgata are complete. Then why look for the Tathāgata Vairocana elsewhere than in the very being of the island...
OR
