Cultivating Spirituality: A Modern Shin Buddhist Anthology

Chapter 2: Kiyozawa Manshi: Life and Thought

52 MARK L. BLUM Shimaji Daitø}‰[‹[‘ŠŠ~   %>      the Honganji both for his high school studies in Kyoto and then at Tokyo Imperial University. Faced with two experiences of local school closings as a teenager, he later admitted that his chief attraction to joining the priesthood was the scholarship money the branch supplied to its dedicated students. 55 56 MARK L. BLUM Kiyozawa entered what is now the University of Tokyo in 1882, and the next year moved from the Preparatory Division to the College of Letters, majoring in Western philosophy. He studied under Ernest Fenollosa (1853–1908), a scholar of Asian art from Salem, Massachusetts who nevertheless taught politics, philosophy, and business at the University of Tokyo from 1878 to 1886. Kiyozawa was initially devoted completely to philosophy and was accepted into the graduate program after graduation in 1887, intending to become professor of philosophy at the University of Tokyo. But only one year later he was asked by Higashi Honganji to leave school and become principle of their middle school in Kyoto, and he complied. Prior to this time he served as secretary of the Tetsugakkai 哲学会 (Philosophical Association) founded by Inoue Enryø 井上円了 (1858–1919), a fellow recipient   ]`%                  @ >       *  ^ %      departing from tradition. When we remember that Kiyozawa’s project was, at its core, an attempt to reinvigorate Shin Buddhism, the choice of these particular works is remarkable in that it shows that he was seeking a paradigm entirely different from the way Shin Buddhism was taught in the seminaries. Agongyø The Agongyø (Ch. ahan jing, a transliteration of the Sanskrit term ågama) are Chinese translations of the earliest strata of sutra literature traditionally ascribed to the Sarvåstivåda school, much of which        åyas of the Påli canon used in the Theravåda school. Extant only in Chinese and Tibetan translation, this Sanskrit-based sutra material had long been a part of the Chinese canon, but largely ignored in East Asia due to the overwhelming influence of Mahåyåna Buddhism there. The Mahåyåna sutras frequently refer to the beliefs and practices of non-Mahåyåna monks as misguided or even shallow, and these Agongyø are the scriptures from the pre-Mahåyåna period. Thus, early in Chinese Buddhism the texts in the Agongyø corpus were designated as only of a preparatory nature, of interest only to scholars. As mentioned in Chapter 1, however, Kiyozawa lived at a time when the Japanese Buddhist tradition was rocked with a new appreciation for the early Buddhism represented 58 MARK L. BLUM in the Agongyø that previously had been dismissed as primitive and inferior. The Shin tradition was certainly no different in this, and thus Kiyozawa’s embrace of early Buddhism was not something he would have learned from Honganji religious education or culture. In this reverence for the Agongyø, Kiyozawa seems particularly impressed with three things: the psychological insight into the core Buddhist problem of avidyå (spiritual ignorance), the personal relationship between the Buddha and his disciples, and the commitment                them for the sake of pursuing the path: family, patriotic duty, ethical standards, even philosophy itself. There also is a concreteness typically missing from Mahåyåna texts in these early sutras, wherein the Buddha addressed everyday problems and psychological doubts expressed %            Epictetus Already holding a strong respect for the intellectual honesty of Socrates, particularly his fearlessness in the face of death, Kiyozawa was strongly moved when he read the Stoic Epictetus. Epictetus (~50–~135 C.E.) had been a slave as a young man and was physically handicapped from the experience, and yet he was undaunted by those limitations in his dogged pursuit of truth, something that appears to have been     @ >\   % has its origins in the unenlightened aspect of the self, and only can be relieved by a corresponding growth in the enlightened aspect of the self. According to the Discourses of Epictetus, the responsibility for doing so rests with the individual. This position is of a piece with the approach to avidyå presumed in the Agongyø and later elaborated in the early Buddhist commentarial literature known as Abhidharma. Many see Kiyozawa’s esteem of Epictetus to be representative of his study of Western philosophy as a whole, but it also should be noted that like the Agongyø\ ^ ƒ             of the values of cultivating discipline and personal responsibility. Tannishø The Tannishø is the only work...