A widespread instance of numerical correspondence, rooted in Chinese thought and developed in esoteric Buddhism, involves correlations of fives: the five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water) are equated with the five directions (east, south, center, west, and north); the five planets; the five virtues (benevolence, propriety, good faith, righteousness, and wisdom); the five colors; the major five organs of the human body; and so forth. In esoteric Buddhism, these pentads are further equated with the five great elements (earth, water, fire, wind, and space) and the five Buddhas, and in medieval Tendai, they are assimilated to the five tones used in shōmyō chanting or to the five characters myō, hō, ren, ge, and kyō that comprise the tide of the Lotus Sūtra. Such associations reflect underlying assumptions about the oneness of microcosm and macrocosm, and—when assimilated to the episteme informed by esoteric Buddhism—about all phenomena as nondual manifestations of the cosmic Buddha, Mahāvairocana or Dainichi. Such an understanding of the world, assuming an inner unity endlessly refracted in each of its elements, was by no means limited to medieval Japan. A number of scholars have written on the episteme of medieval Europe, in which the world was seen in totalistic fashion as a system of hidden correspondences, upon whose proper recognition and identification rested the practice of such arts as astrology, divination, and magic. (Page 160-161)

[T]he stūpa of the Buddha ManyJewels emerging from beneath the earth and rising into the air indicates breaking through the mind-ground of ignorance to dwell in the emptiness that is the supreme meaning; Śākyamuni’s three acts of purifying myriads of millions of world spheres means that one purifies oneself of the three categories of delusion, and so on. Through this “interpretation from the standpoint of mind-contemplation” (kuan-hsin-shih, kanjin-shaku) the meaning of a text is taken into oneself and personally appropriated. (Page 158)

In the T’ien-t’ai/Tendai tradition, kuan-hsin or kanjin (literally, the “contemplation of the mind”) generally denotes meditative practices, in contrast to doctrinal study (chiao-hsiang, kyōsō). The choice of “the mind” as the object of contemplation is grounded in a passage of the Hua-yen Ching: “The mind, the Buddha, and all living beings: these three are without distinction.” Chih-i reasoned that, for novice practitioners, the “Buddha” as an object of contemplation would be too deep, while “living beings” would be too broad. Contemplating one’s own mind, however, is easy.

However, in his commentary Pa-hua wen-chii (Words and phrases of the Lotus Sūtra), Chih-i uses the term kanjin in a somewhat different sense as the last of the “four modes of interpretation” (ssu-shih, shishaku), a four-part hermeneutical guideline for interpreting the “words and phrases” of the Lotus Sūtra. The first is to see the sūtra’s words and phrases in terms of “causes and conditions” (yin-yüan, innen)—that is, how they represent the Buddha’s response to the specific receptivity of his hearers. The second, “correlation with teachings” (yüeh-chiao, yakkyō), is to understand them in terms of each of the “four teachings of conversion “—the categories into which Chih-i analyzed the Buddhist teachings. The third, pen-chi or honjaku, is to understand them from the two viewpoints of the “trace teaching” and the “origin teaching,” the two exegetical divisions into which Chih-i analyzed the Lotus Sūtra. Fourth, having grasped the meaning of a particular word or phrase from these three doctrinal perspectives, one then internalizes it, contemplating its meaning with respect to one’s own mind. In this case, the “words and phrases” of the Lotus Sūtra are understood as referring not to abstract or external events, but to the practitioner’s own contemplation and insight. For example, in the kanjin reading of the sūtra’s opening passage, “Thus have I heard at one time” the word “I” (wo, ga) is interpreted as follows: “The dharmas produced by dependent origination prove, on contemplation, to be at once empty, conventionally existent, and the middle. ‘Empty’ means that self (wo) is without self. ‘Conventionally existent’ means that self is distinguished [from other]. ‘The middle’ means the true and subtle self. The words “at one time” are interpreted in this way: “To contemplate the mind as first empty, then conventionally existent, and then as the middle is the sequential mind-contemplation. To contemplate the mind as simultaneously empty, conventionally existent, and the middle is the perfect and subtle mind-contemplation.” In these instances, words and phrases of the Lotus are taken as revealing the threefold contemplation and discernment. (Page 157)

“Transmission to one’s own son” (jisshi sōzoku) was by no means uncommon, blood sons being indicated by the term “true disciple” (shintei or shin deshi) in lineage charts. Shinran has sometimes been cele brated as the first Japanese Buddhist monk to take a wife openly, but de facto clerical marriage is attested since the Nara period and was widespread by the late Heian: “Those who hide it are saints; those who don’t do it are Buddhas,” the retired emperor Goshirakawa is said to have remarked. For monks to marry or amass property was a violation of the Ritsuryō code, yet the right of their wives and children to inherit had been legally recognized since the ninth century, suggesting that the practice was far from uncommon. By the latter Heian period, such practices were being assimilated to the institution of the master-disciple lineage. Early examples of father-to-son transfer of temple administrative positions can be found by the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, becoming established custom by the mid-Kamakura period. Jisshi sōzoku was also practiced among lineages of scholar monks, such as those of the Eshin and Danna schools, as the above example of the Sugiu lineage indicates. (Page 139)