When only nine years of age, the boy afterward called Hō-nen, was converted by his father's dying words. He went to school in his native province, but his priest-teacher foreseeing his greatness, sent him to the monastery of Hiyéizan, near Kiōto. The boy's letter of introduction contained only these words: "I send you an image of the Bodhisattva, (Mon-ju) Manjusri." The boy shaved his head and received the precepts of the Ten-dai sect, but in his eighteenth year, waiving the prospect of obtaining the headship of the great denomination, he built a hut in the Black Ravine and there five times read through the five thousand volumes[4] of the Tripitaka. He did this for the purpose of finding out, for the ordinary and ignorant people of the present day, how to escape from misery. He studied Zen-dō's commentary, and repeated his examination eight times. At last, he noticed a passage in it beginning with the words, "Chiefly remember or repeat the name of Amida with a whole and undivided heart." Then he at once understood the thought of Zen-dō, who taught in his work that whoever at any time practises to remember Buddha, or calls his name even but once, will gain the right effect of going to be born in the Pure Land after death. This Japanese student then abandoned all sorts of practices which he had hitherto followed for years, and began to repeat the name of Amida Buddha sixty thousand times a day. This event occurred in A.D. 1175.
Hō-nen, Founder of the Pure Land Sect.
This path-finder to the Pure Land, who developed a special doctrine of salvation, is best known by his posthumous title of Hō-nen. During his lifetime he was very famous and became the spiritual preceptor of three Mikados. After his death his biography was compiled in forty-eight volumes by imperial order, and later, three other emperors copied or republished it. In the history of Japan this sect has been one of the most influential, especially with the imperial and shōgunal families. In Kiōto the magnificent temples and monasteries of Chiōn-in, and in Tōkiō Zō-jō-ji, are the chief seats of the two principal divisions of this sect. The gorgeous mausoleums,—well known to every foreign tourist,—at Shiba and Uyéno in Tōkiō, and the clustered and matchless splendors of Nikkō, belong to this sect, which has been under the patronage of the illustrious line of the Tokugawa,[5] while its temples and shrines are numbered by many thousands.
The doctrine of the Jō-dō, or the Pure Land Sect, is easily discerned. One of Buddha's disciples said, that in the teachings of the Master there are two divisions or vehicles. In the Maha-yana also there are two gates; the Holy path, and the Pure Land. The Smaller Vehicle is the doctrine by which the immediate disciples of Buddha and those for five hundred years succeeding, practised the various virtues and discipline. The gateway of the Maha-yana is also the doctrine, by which in addition to the trainings mentioned, there are also understood the three virtues of spiritual body, wisdom and deliverance. The man who is able successfully to complete this course of discipline and practice is no ordinary person, but is supposed to possess merit produced from good actions performed in a former state of existence. The doctrine by which man may do so, is called the gate of the Holy Path.
During the fifteen hundred years after Buddha there were from time to time, such personages in the world, who attained the end of the Holy Path; but in these latter days people are more insincere, covetous and contentious, and the discipline is too hard for degenerate times and men. The three trainings already spoken of are the correct causes of deliverance; but if people think them as useless as last year's almanac, when can they complete their deliverance? Hō-nen, deeply meditating on this, shut up the gate of the Holy Path and opened that of the Pure Land; for in the former the effective deliverance is expected in this world by the three trainings of morality, thought and learning, but in the latter the great fruit of going to be born in the Pure Land after death, is expected through the sole practice of repeating Buddha's name.
Moreover, it is not easy to accomplish the cause and effect of the Holy Path, but both those of the doctrine of the Pure Land are very easy to be completed. The difference is like that between travelling by land and travelling by water.[6] The doctrines preached by the Buddha are eighty-four thousand in number; that is to say, he taught one kind of people one system, that of the Holy Path, and another kind that of the Pure Land. The Pure Land doctrine of Hō-nen was derived from the sutra preached by the great teacher Shaka.
This simple doctrine of "land travel to Paradise" was one which the people of Japan could easily understand, and it became amazingly popular. Salvation along this route is a case of being "carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, while others sought to win the prize and sailed through bloody seas."
Largely through the influence of Jō-dō Shu and of those sects most closely allied to it, the technical terms, peculiar phraseology and vocabulary of Buddhism became part of the daily speech of the Japanese. When one studies their language he finds that it is a complicated organism, including within itself several distinct systems. Just as the human body harmonizes within itself such vastly differing organized functions as the osseous, digestive, respiratory, etc., so, embedded in what is called the Japanese language, there are, also, a Chinese vocabulary, a polite vernacular, one system of expression for superiors, another for inferiors, etc. Last of all, there is, besides a peculiar system of pronunciation taught by the priests, a Buddhist language, which suggests a firmament of starry and a prairie of flowery metaphors, with intermediate deeps of space full of figurative expressions.