Encyclopedia of Buddhism Volume One A -L Robert E. Buswell

O RIGINAL E NLIGHTENMENT (HONGAKU)
Practice and enlightenment
This reinterpretation has significant implications for
Buddhist practice. According to conventional views,
enlightenment is attained as the culmination of a linear
process in which the practitioner gradually accumulates
merit, extirpates defilements, and eventually
reaches awakening. Original enlightenment literature
describes this view as the perspective of “acquired enlightenment,”
which “proceeds from cause (practice)
to effect (enlightenment)”; it is judged to be, at best,
an expedient to encourage the ignorant, and at worst,
a deluded view. Original enlightenment doctrine reverses
this directionality to “proceed from effect to
cause.” In other words, practice is seen, not as the cause
of an enlightenment still to be attained, but as the expression
of an enlightenment already inherent. One
could also express this as a shift from a linear to a
mandalic view of time, in which practice and enlightenment
are simultaneous.
Original enlightenment doctrine has often been
criticized as leading to a denial of religious discipline:
Why practice, if one is already enlightened? While the
danger of this sort of antinomian interpretation certainly
exists, original enlightenment thought is more
accurately understood as representing a transformation
in how practice is understood. It opposes instrumentalist
views of practice as merely a means to
achieve something else, and instead redefines practice
in nonlinear terms as the paradigmatic expression of
the nonduality of the practitioner and the buddha.
Moreover, despite its thoroughgoing commitment
to a nondual perspective, original enlightenment doctrine
distinguishes between the experiential state of
knowing (or even simply having faith) that “all dharmas
are the buddhadharma” and that of not knowing
it. It is only on the basis of insight into nondual original
enlightenment that such statements as “sam sara is
precisely nirvana” can be made. Based on such insight
or faith, however, not only formal Buddhist practice
but all other activities of daily life can be seen as constituting
the buddha’s behavior.
Hongaku doctrine and medieval
Japanese culture
Original enlightenment teachings developed within,
and also contributed to, a broader medieval tradition
of “secret transmission,” deriving largely from private
master-to-disciple initiation into the ritual procedures
transmitted within lineages of esoteric Buddhism. In
time, knowledge, not only of ritual and doctrine, but
of poetry, the visual and performing arts, and also
many crafts came to be handed down through master–
disciple lineages. The “orally transmitted teachings” of
original enlightenment thought were similarly elaborated
and passed down within specific Tendai teaching
lineages. Chief among these were the Eshin and
Danna lineages; each had several sublineages. Despite
conventions of secrecy, evidence points to considerable
exchange among lineages and to individual monks
receiving transmissions from more than one teacher.
The premises of original enlightenment doctrine
were also assimilated to other vocabularies and influenced
the broader culture. One such area of influence
was Shinto theory. From around the mid-Heian period
(794–1185), local deities (kami) had been understood
as “traces” or manifestations projected by the
universal buddhas and bodhisattvas as a “skillful
means” to benefit the people of Japan. This view clearly
subsumed kami worship within a Buddhist framework.
Original enlightenment thought, with its emphasis on
concrete actualities as equivalent to absolute principle,
set the stage for a revalorization of the kami as equal,
or even superior, to buddhas, and thus played a key
role at the theoretical level in the beginnings of formal
Shinto doctrine.
Original enlightenment thought also influenced the
development of medieval aesthetics, especially poetic
theory. Though the composition and appreciation of
verse were vital social skills in elite circles, many clerics
saw poetry as a distraction for the committed Buddhist
because it involved one in the world of the senses
and the sin of “false speech.” Original enlightenment
ideas provided one of several “nondual” strategies by
which poets, many of whom were monks and nuns,
reclaimed the composition of verse, not only as a legitimate
activity for Buddhists, but, when approached
with the proper attitude, as a form of Buddhist practice
in its own right. From this perspective, poetry, or
art more generally, was seen, not as a second-level representation
of a higher, “religious” truth, but as an expression
of innate enlightenment.
See also: Exoteric-Esoteric (Kenmitsu) Buddhism in
Japan; Kamakura Buddhism, Japan; Poetry and Buddhism;
Shingon Buddhism, Japan; Shinto (Honji Suijaku)
and Buddhism; Shugendo; Tantra
Bibliography
Groner, Paul. “A Medieval Japanese Reading of the Mo-ho chihkuan:
Placing the Kanko ruiju in Historical Context.” Japanese
Journal of Religious Studies 22, nos. 1–2 (Spring 1995):
49–81.
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