Category Archives: Stone Last Age

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The Last Age: Shinran’s Emphasis on ‘Other Power’

[Shinran, the founder of the Jōdo-Shin or True Pure Land sect, put absolute stress on the idea of “other-power.”]

Shinran’s emphasis tariki [other-power] even extended to the nembutsu itself. Honen had stressed repeated recitation of the nembutsu to purify oneself of evil karma and to assure one’s rebirth. He himself appears to have chanted sixty thousand, and later seventy thousand, nembutsu a day. Shinran, on the other hand, felt that excessive preoccupation with the number of recitations placed too much emphasis on one’s own endeavors. A single nembutsu uttered with faith would ensure one’s rebirth; subsequent callings-on-the-name were meaningful as expressions of gratitude. …

What evolved [from Shinran’s teaching] differed not only from Honen’s doctrine but virtually from the whole of Buddhism: a teaching in which the principles of karmic causality and merit accumulation, as well as aspiration and endeavor for enlightenment, were in effect set aside and superseded by faith in the original vow. And even the fact that one had faith, Shinran held, was not due to one’s own will to believe, but to one’s being grasped (seshu) by Amida’s compassion.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p45-46 of Part 1
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The Last Age: Dengyo’s Role

Hōnen’s views on the subject apparently derived in part from a peculiar work called the Mappō tōmyō ki (A Lamp for the Age of the Final Dharma), generally attributed—in error, it is now thought—to Saichō (Dengyō Daishi, 766-822), founder of the Japanese Tendai sect. The treatise suggests that as the world moves farther and farther away from the time of the historical Buddha, human capacity to observe the monastic precepts inevitably declines, until, by the time of mappō, no one will be capable of keeping the precepts at all. In that age, it says, the “monk without precepts” or the “monk in name only” who merely shaves his head and dons a robe, presenting the appearance of a monk, is the treasure of the world and a true merit-field for the people; he is a lamp for the age of the Final Dharma. By the end of the Heian period, the monastic precepts were often honored more in the breach than the observance, and the Mappō tōmyō ki was widely interpreted to justify the laxity of the Buddhist clergy as no fault of its own, but an unavoidable consequence of the degenerate age.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p39 of Part 1
mappō, Stone Last Age

The Last Age: Honen’s Vocabulary

The word mappō had been popularized by Genshin (942-1017) in his Ōjōyōshū (Essentials of Rebirth), and by the late Heian period it began to exercise a morbid fascination on the public mind. The mappō doctrine provided a way to account for the horrors multiplying daily, but at the same time instilled a new fear with its implications of an age when the Dharma would be lost. …

The first of the Buddhist leaders of the Kamakura period to formulate a doctrine specifically in terms of mappō thought was Hōnen Genkū-bō (1133-1212), founder of the Japanese Jodo or Pure Land sect. As a young man, Hōnen had studied at the prestigious Tendai institution on Mount Hiei, outwardly still prosperous but inwardly divided by ugly power struggles. The corruption he saw around him and his acute reflection on his own spiritual shortcomings confirmed in him the belief that “already the age is that of mappō, and its people all are evil.”

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p34-35 of Part 1

Hōnenk’s teaching set in motion a powerful new force in the realm of Japanese religion. Moreover, being first among the Buddhist leaders of the Kamakura period to propose a religion specifically for the age of the Final Dharma, Hōnen in large measure defined the vocabulary of contemporary mappō thought. Anyone else who took up the theme would be virtually compelled to address the issues he had raised: the nature of the time and the people’s capacity, whether people could attain enlightenment through their own efforts, whether monastic precepts remained valid in the Final Dharma age, difficulty versus ease of practice, and so forth.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p47-48 of Part 1
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The Last Age: A Dark Era

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Jacqueline I. Stone wrote the journal article “Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age: Mappō Thought in Kamakura Buddhism” (PDF) in 1985 while still a UCLA Master’s student who went by Jackie Stone. Her essay declares:

Buddhist tradition maintains that as the world moves farther and farther away from the age of Shakyamuni Buddha, understanding of his teachings grows increasingly distorted and people’s capacity to practice and benefit from those teachings accordingly declines, until eventually Buddhism is lost. Sutras and treatises divide this process of degeneration into three sequential periods beginning from the time of the Buddha’s death: the age of the True Dharma (Skt. saddharma, Jap. shōbō) the age of the Counterfeit Dharma (saddharma-pratirūpaka, zōhō) and the age of the Final Dharma (saddharma-vipralopa, mappō).

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p29 of Part 1

Ta-Chi-Ching, the Great Collection Sutra, contains three periods and divides the decline into five consecutive 500-year periods. The fifth 500-year period is the age when “quarrels and disputes will arise among the adherents to my [Shakyamuni’s] teachings, and the Pre Dharma will be obscured and lost.” The “True” and “Counterfeit” ages each last 1,000 years and the “Final Dharma” age was said to last 10,000 years, which also meant an indefinite period.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p33 of Part 1

This was true as far as Buddhism of Kamakura Japan was concerned.

In 1991, however, Jan Nattier, a PhD graduate of Harvard University, published “Once Upon A future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline,” which was based on her doctoral thesis delivered in 1988. In her book, Nattier clearly shows that the concept of three ages of decline and especially the last age, mappō, were the product of Chinese commentators and not the product of Indian Buddhism.

But mappō was very real for Buddhists of Japan.

By the latter part of the Heian Period (794-1185), a majority of Japanese believed that the world had entered a dark era known as mappō the age of the Final Dharma. Buddhist tradition held that in this age, owing to human depravity, the teachings of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni would become obscured, and enlightenment all but impossible to attain. By the mid-eleventh century, natural disasters, social instability and widespread corruption among the Buddhist clergy lent seeming credence to scriptural predictions about the evil age of mappō —predictions which in turn gave form to popular anxieties, feeding the growing mood of terror, despair and anomie known as mappō consciousness.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p28 of Part 1

The idea of mappō involves not only the decline of the world—as suggested by the “five defilements”—but the failure of the means of salvation itself. At a time when the bodies of plague victims periodically littered the streets, when fires and earthquakes leveled temples and government offices alike, when warrior clans rose to challenge a tottering nobility in a series of bloody altercations that radically altered the political structure, Japanese on the whole must have come to realize the uncertainty of this world with an immediacy that people but rarely experience under more tranquil conditions. The prediction that in this hour, Buddhism too would decline must have filled them with a horror beyond imagining.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p62 of Part 2

 
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The Problem With Mappō

Is it time to let go of our attachment as Nichiren Buddhists to the doctrine of Mappō, the Latter Age of Degeneration?

Back on Aug. 17, 2019, I wrote a blog post entitled “Does the Eternal Buddha’s Teaching Lose Its Potency?” I argued then that the Lotus Sutra clearly teaches that the Eternal Buddha is always present. How could his teaching decline?

To explore the issue, I recently picked up Jan Nattier’s “Once Upon A Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline.” The first half of of Nattier’s 1991 book is devoted to establishing the roots of the prediction of the decline in Buddhism.

From Nattier’s book I learned of Kenneth Dollarhide’s “Nichiren’s Senji-Shō: An Essay on the Selection of the Proper Time.”  The book, published in 1982 as Volume One in Studies in Asian Thought and Religion, includes a description of Nichiren’s life and the Age of the Last Law.

Finally, I picked up Jacqueline Stone’s two-part journal article “Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age: Mappō Thought in Kamakura Buddhism,” [PDF] which was published in 1985 in the Spring and Autumn editions of The Eastern Buddhist.

Over the next several weeks I will be publishing excerpts from these  sources.

Before that, I want make clear that Nichiren did not contend that the Lotus Sutra would lose its effectiveness over time. In Shugo Kokka-ron, Treatise on Protecting the Nation, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, Pages 25-27, Nichiren writes:

QUESTION: Do you have any scriptural passages proving that the Lotus Sūtra alone will remain even after other sūtras all disappear?

ANSWER: In the tenth chapter on “The Teacher of the Dharma” of the Lotus Sūtra, Śākyamuni Buddha declared in order to spread the sūtra, “The sūtras I have preached number immeasurable thousands, ten thousands, and hundred millions. Of the sūtras I have preached, am now preaching, and will preach, this Lotus Sūtra is the most difficult to believe and to understand ” It means that of all the sūtras which the Buddha has preached, is now preaching, and will preach during 50 years of His lifetime, the Lotus Sūtra is the supreme sūtra. Of the 80,000 holy teachings, it was preached especially to be retained for people in the future.

Therefore, in the following chapter on “The Appearance of the Stupa of Treasures,” the Buddha of Many Treasures emerged from the great earth, and Buddhas in manifestation from the worlds all over the universe gathered. Through these Buddhas in manifestation as His messengers, Śākyamuni Buddha made this declaration to bodhisattvas, śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha, heavenly beings, human beings, and eight kinds of supernatural beings who filled the innumerable (400 trillion nayuta) worlds in eight directions:

“The purpose of the Buddha of Many Treasures to emerge and gathering of Buddhas in manifestation all over the universe is solely in order for the Lotus Sūtra to last forever. Each of you should vow that you will certainly spread this Lotus Sūtra in the future worlds of five defilements after the sūtras which have been preached, are being preached, and will be preached, will have all disappeared and it will be difficult to believe in the True Dharma.”

Then 20,000 bodhisattvas and 80 trillion nayuta of bodhisattvas each made a vow in the 13th chapter on “The Encouragement for Upholding This Sūtra”, “We will not spare even our lives, but treasure the Unsurpassed Way.” Bodhisattvas emerged from the great earth, as numerous as dust particles of the entire world, as well as such bodhisattvas as Mañjuśrī and all also vowed in the 22nd chapter on the “Transmission,” “After the death of the Buddha … we will widely spread this sūtra.” After that, in the 23rd chapter on “The Previous Life of the Medicine King Bodhisattva” the Buddha used ten similes in order to explain the superiority of the Lotus Sūtra over other sūtras. In the first simile the pre-Lotus sūtras are likened to river-water and the Lotus Sūtra, to a great ocean. Just as ocean water will not decrease even when river-water dries up in a severe drought, the Lotus Sūtra will remain unchanged even when the pre-Lotus sūtras with four tastes all disappear in the Latter Age of defilement and corruption without shame. Having preached this, the Buddha clearly expressed His true intent as follows, “After I have entered Nirvana, during the last five-hundred-year period you must spread this sūtra widely throughout the world lest it should be lost.”

Contemplating the meaning of this passage, I believe that the character “after” following “after I have entered Nirvana” is meant to be “after the extinction of those sūtras preached in forty years or so.” It is, therefore, stated in the Nirvana Sūtra, the postscript of the Lotus Sūtra:

“I shall entrust the propagation of this supreme dharma to bodhisattvas, who are skillful in debate. Such a dharma will be able to last forever, continue to prosper for incalculable generations, profiting and pacifying the people. ”

According to these scriptural passages the Lotus-Nirvana Sūtras will not become extinct for immeasurable centuries.

Quotes from Mappō discussion