The Shingon Vinaya sect

Continuing to read Tanabe’s Religions of Japan in Practice when I came across an article about a little-known sect in Japanese Buddhism called the shingon risshū sect (真言律宗). This sect appears to be an off-shoot, or another branch of Shingon Buddhism, and was founded by a Shingon monk named Eison (叡尊 1201-1290). I mentioned Eison and his disciple Ninsho briefly in a previous post for their charity and evangelical work, but I wanted to talk more in full here since there’s essentially no English sources on them.¹

According to this article written by Paul B. Watt, Eison was one of seven children, but when his mother died at eight, his father could not care for all the children, so Eison was sent off to the Shingon temple of Daigoji in Kyoto for education in both Shingon and Kusha sect teachings. Eison appears to be a regular monk, training and studying as usual, until 1234 when he came across a Buddhist text called the Dainichikyō (the Vairocana Buddha Sutra) and a commentary of the sutra by Chinese monk, Yi-Xing, which made him realize just how important the precepts were in Buddhist practice. Further, he inspired by Kūkai’s words on the subject.

By 1235, Eison joined a group of monks who wanted to revive the lost Vinaya precepts, the pratimoksha, or gusokukai (具足戒) in Japanese. The lineage for the Vinaya Precepts had died out in Japan some time before.² In order to ordain as a proper monk, one followed the Vinaya precepts and needed a preceptor and other monks as witnesses, according to tradition, but since no such monks could be found the next best thing was to take the vows before an image of the Buddha itself, and that’s what Eison and three other monks did in 1236 in a ceremony called jisei jukai.

In the 1240′s, Eison was already head of a famous monastery called Saidaiji in Kyoto, and was actively lecturing at other temples and bestowing the precepts. He would administer the five and eight precepts to lay disciples, or even the full Buddhist monastic precepts mentioned above.

Later Eison turned more and more to charity work, with his disciple Ninshō (忍性 1217-1303). Ninsho had a deep faith in the Manjushri Bodhisattva, who encouraged charitable acts in the scriptures, so the two traveled to Kamakura, the new seat of power at the time, and also visited outcast groups like lepers, criminals and the poor. Eison for example, visited the prisons in Nara city and bathed, fed and bestowed the Buddhist precepts to people there in 1242. Eison worked with villages and landowners to set aside land where killing of animals was either forbidden or at least refrain on certain days. Eison and Ninsho were invited by officials in Kamakura to stay at such-and-such temple, but the two ignored these requests and usually stayed in more austere settings.

Also, in their later years, Eison and Ninsho began actively promoting a Shingon mantra called the kōmyō shingon (光明真言) or Mantra of Light, as a popular lay practice, just as the famous monk Myōe (明恵) had done a couple generations earlier. This led to the Mantra of Light becoming a central mantra in the Shingon Vinaya sect even to this day.

When Eison passed away, he was posthumously called kōshō bosatsu or “Kosho Bodhisattva”. A disciple named Kyō compiled sayings by Eison including this gem:

In a talk given at Muryōjin of Kokawadera, [the Master] said: the sacred teachings of Hossō, Sanron, Tendai and Kegon, the Exoteric and the Esoteric, the provisional and true, if properly understood, have just one meaning. In the end, it is discarding the self and, solely for the sake of others, setting aside personal gain. Even if later I spoke about it at leisure, it would not go beyond this. (trans. Paul B. Watt)

I mention all this because I had come across one temple of the Shingon Risshū sect in past accidentally while watching a documentary (I had no idea who they were), and also because this kind of debunks the accepted belief in Western circles that the older schools of Japanese Buddhism were aloof and unconcerned with the needs of people in the day. :-/

¹ Will fix that soon, when I update Wikipedia one of these days.

² Originally introduced to Japan by Chinese monk Jianzhen (鑒真) known in Japan as Ganjin, the lineage flourished in Nara/Kyoto for a long time, administered each year at Todaiji temple, but died out due to Japan’s isolation, and political maneuverings that came later. Tendai Buddhism replaced them with the Bodhisattva Precepts instead.