MEDIOS EN EL QUE SE EXPRESA LA VINCULACIÓN CON EL MEDIO.

In the previous chapter I briefly quoted from the discussion recorded in the Shōjigi

Mondō commentary to illustrate the proceedings of such a verbal exchange. The

matter that was debated there, i.e., whether the rihosshin expounds the Dharma or not, comes up in Dōhan’s own commentary as well. Sometime later, Yūkai’s

commentaries bring up the topic. In this section, I discuss both those later occurrences because I would like to suggest that: Firstly, occurrences of the mondō format in commentarial texts may sometimes be registrations of actual exchanges instead of text-rhetorical devices. This means that the given passage requires a slightly different treatment. And second, that what happens here is that a problem that is external to the

Shōjigi, a contradiction in Kūkai’s Hizōki, came to be a regular topic of discussion

during dangi on Shōjigi on Mt. Kōya.

In Dōhan’s commentary, the matter of the rihosshin is brought up by a questioner in regards to the term nyorai that occurs in the very first sentence of the

Shōjigi. (KZ1, 521) The point of discussion becomes to which Buddha bodies the

term refers. Dōhan’s commentary tackles the question head-on, when a questioner asks:

“Question: Which of the three bodies (sanjin三身47_{) does “nyorai” here [in}

Shōjigi] indicate? Or, does it refer to all three?

47 _{The three-body theory is one of the conventional schemes for Buddha bodies based on bodies in}

different functions. Though variedly interpreted, the general outline is usualy similar. There is the Dharma-body (hosshin, Sk. dharmakāya), an absolute entity generally considered to be beyond language and thought, having no form or activity. The second body in the scheme is the hōshin報真

(Sk. saṃbhogakāya), or ‘reward body’, that expounds the Dharma for very advanced sentient beings such as Bodhisattvas. And lastly there is the hengeshin変化身 (Sk. nirmāṇakāya) or transformation body where the Buddha manifests in the form of a sentient being to expound the Dharma directly for the benefit of other sentient beings

Answer: All three bodies together have this [seppō activity].

(SZ 14, 10) The term nyorai then refers to all three types of bodies available to the Buddha, which is fully in accord with Kūkai’s idea that all bodies are Dainichi. He explains this later

in Shōjigi. (KZ1, 532-33) This could have been the end of the matter, had the author

merely wanted to clarify this. Or, if he had intended to make his point more convincing, he could have supplied additional evidence to strengthen his position.

Instead, the interrogator retorts with a question that brings up a problem that lays outside of the Shōjigi’s text,but that becomes interesting in light of the topic addressed. Homing in on the Dharma body of the three, he suggests that nyorai seppō cannot possibly include all three bodies because the Dharma body - here discussed as

rihosshin - does not expound the Dharma because it cannot have speech.

Rebuke: But among these three bodies, the rihosshin48_{[i.e., the hosshin in its}

absolute aspect] is not a teacher (kyōshu教主) that expounds the Dharma. Hence it says somewhere that ‘on the side of samādhi (teihen定辺) there is no verbal expression (gonsetsu 言説), but on the side of wisdom (ehen恵辺) there is verbal expression.’49 _{Additionally, in the state (i位) of self-}

48 _{The term rihosshin理法身 is in Shingon at times also used in conjunction with chihosshin 智法身,}

wisdom Dharma body, to distinguish the Dharma body’s absolute aspect from its wisdom aspect. Kūkai treated these as two modes of description of the same a-dual entity. Here, however, the context suggests that it is being used to refer to one of the three bodies, where it corresponds to the

Dharmakāya in the Mahayāna sense, i.e., an absolute and inactive entity beyond cognition. We shall see below that Yūkai, in a way one Dōhan’s scholastic successors, explicitly identifies the rihosshin as the jishōshin of Kūkai’s four-body scheme. In Yūkai’s interpretation, the chihosshin would then be equivalent to the self-oriented ji juyū shin, one of the two aspects of the nirṃanakāya. He explains this in his first commentary, dealing with the same passage as Dōhan here. (SZ 14, 208)

49 _{This sentence was already encountered earlier, when the discussion of the mondō sessions quoted}

enlightenment (jishō自證), [things] become totalized (sō総) and one cuts off linguistic expression and abolishes the [distinction between the] mind and its objects. Hence the commentary on the Dainichikyō says: ‘at this point (sho 処), language (gongo 言語) is completely exhausted and the [distinction between the] mind and its objects (gyō行) has also perished.’ Moreover, it also says: ‘The speaker (sessha 説者) is without speech and the observer

(kansha 観者) is without looking.’ Now how can one then say that all three

bodies each expound the Dharma?

Answer: That there is no verbal expression in the sate of self-enlightenment, means that the “talent” with which one has been endowed (hiki被機) [i.e., the presence of the absolute itself within the human body] has no verbal

expression. It does not mean that there is no verbal explanation of the truth of inner realization (naishō内證). What we call the teaching of Shingon is the true linguistic expression that is [precisely] in accordance with the true meaning [of things] (nyogi shinjitsu no gonsetsu如義真実言説). It is used only between Buddha’s. Moreover, as for your statement that the rihosshin does not preach is concerned, that is not the true meaning of the present teaching [of Shingon mikkyō]. It is the meaning established by the scholars that cling to the web of the exoteric [teachings]. When it says somewhere that there is no linguistic expression in the state of samādhi, it only looks at speech’s aspect (sō相) of teaching others (keta化他).”

What the questioner brings up is, in essence, what the Shingon discourse considers to be the exoteric view of the Dharma body - as is suggested by the reply to the question. Kūkai held the opposite position that the hosshin expounds the teaching actively and in all sorts of ways. However, the interrogator produces evidence from the

Dainichikyō and one of Kūkai’s own writings, that this hosshin does not expound the

Dharma. This points to a problem that lies in the Hizōki and the Dainichikyō: though Kūkai’s explicit position is that the hosshin engages actively in seppō, there are two passages of scripture that contradict this. One of which is found in his own writings. The occasion of commenting on the Shōjigi here becomes an opportunity to attempt to address a problem that actually lies in two other texts.

The magnitude of the problem that this contradiction presents can be glanced from a passage in the somewhat older Shōjigi mondō commentary we already

discussed. The passage was already discussed in section one of this study, but I will return to it briefly. In the Mondō, Dōhan himself steps forward and brings up the same passage from the Hizōki to argue that the rihosshin does not preach. In response to this, the interrogators made a clever rhetorical move as defense:

“In this connection the following question was raised: ‘[But] are the Dharma body of subsumed principle and the teihen [mentioned in the Hizōki quote] the same thing, or different things?” (SZ 14, 46a)

This is a clear question: Who is to say that Kūkai actually talks about in the passage is the same as the rihosshin? Unfortunately for the interrogating party “all those present, in short, agreed that they are the same [thing].” (SZ 14, 46a) In this instance then, Dōhan’s observation was accepted as a valid point, a real problem of contradiction in

one of Kūkai’s works. The importance of solving such an inconsistency can be glanced from the effort and time subsequently invested in order to come to an explanation. “[At that time] a superior interpretation (shōgi勝義) was not yet

accepted nor rejected (seibai成敗)” and discussion over the matter continued without a solution, so “the next day, following that Shōhen, Hosshō, Dōhan, and so on, had come in, refined debate (seidan清談) was held again on the teachings (hōmon法門) of the previous day.” (SZ 14, 46a) A clear solution to Kūkai’s self-contradiction is, in the end, not established in the Mondō because the debate leads away from Dōhan’s initial point.

As we have already seen, Dōhan’s later commentary on the Shōjigi does present a solution to the matter. The statement does not mean that there is no linguistic expression at all, but only that there is no linguistic expression for the benefit of other beings. The Shingon language, which is fully in accord with reality, is spoken in that domain, but only between the Buddhas. After this question has been resolved, the commentary moves on to discuss another question on the same sentence. But why does such a collateral matter appear during an explication of Shōjigi?

A reading of the commentary as a scholastic text may suggest that Dōhan does this as a rhetorical move to support his point that nyorai refers to the three bodies, but as I already suggest, there are more convincing methods available to do that. Or perhaps the author decided to take advantage of an opportunity to connect a point in

the Shōjigi to another problem he is aware of, in order to present his solution to it.

This is a plausible explanation, but in light of Raiyu’s kaji-theory exposition, the explanation here leaves much to be wanted in detail and evidence. However, in light of what we now know about the production of commentarial literature during

scholastic lecture cycles, I would suggest that there may be a more compelling explanation.

Dōhan had raised the matter earlier, in the Mondō commentary, and it may very well be so that the mondō in his commentary is a registration of an actual question-answer exchange as well. In that case, the problem comes up in Dōhan’s commentary because the issue was raised during the lecture session, or because it was selected as point of discussion beforehand. Against this scholastic background of lecture and debate, the occasion gave more advanced students an opportunity to demonstrate their skill by solving the problem, while for the less advanced students in the audience it was a chance to be educated in how to formulate the correct solution and the establish of the traditional hosshinseppō position of Shingon.

Yūkai, one of Dōhan’s successors on Mt. Kōya and likely familiar with his scholarship, raises the Hizōki problem in both of his commentaries as well. Saliently, he does so in the mondō format. The question is posed in a slightly different form from Dōhan’s. In both it is asked to which of the fourfold Dharma body’s proposed by Kūkai “nyorai” refers. The answer is, of course, all four. Here too, the Hizōki passage is brought up to counter the answer. Yūkai’s second commentary proposes a solution that is different from Dōhan’s:

“Kongōchōgyō kaidai金剛頂経開題 says: “All four types of Dharma body

expound this path (dō 道)”. Only, with regards to what was just brought up for questioning [from the Hizōki], that is only that for one moment, temporarily,

(ichiō一往) samādhi (jō定) and wisdom (e恵) “look each other in the eye”

(sōmō相望) [in a relative division]. In reality, there can be seppō there. <As usual (tsune no gotoshi 如常)>” (ZSZ 17, 428-29)

In order to solidify his claim, the defender first refers to a text where Kūkai says explicitly that all four bodies expound the Dharma - a solution that is perhaps only possible because the question is now rephrased in terms of the fourfold Buddha body. Yūkai’s other commentary brings in more explicit evidence from Kūkai’s writings, that contains exactly the right terms: it is said that the ryōbu-sutras are preached by

the jishō juyū richi ni hosshin 自性受用理智二法身, or the “two Dharma bodies of ri

and chi that are the jishō body and the juyū body of Kūkai’s four bodies respectively”. (SZ 14, 208b) The matter is thus resolved.

But what is more salient in the quote from Yūkai’s second commentary is the little note at the end of the discussion concerning the Hizōki quote: “As usual. (tsune

no gotoshi 如常)” I read this as an reference to the proceedings of the mondō session

as it took place. That is, it reports that the discussion progresses as usual. We have already seen that Toganoo has argued that the format of discussion and the topics of debate become increasingly ritualistic and determined as the Kamakura period

progressed toward Yūkai’s time (Toganoo 1982b, 394) In light of this, “as usual” can be read to suggest that the debate progressed according to the usual routine and that the correct interpretation was eventually established. Because the routine is

supposedly familiar to the reader, there is no need to write it down at full length - though we are, regrettably, not aware of what the full routine may have entailed.

Based on these observations I wonder whether it perhaps be so that this external matter of the Hizōki-contradiction became an integral part of the Shōjigi commentarial tradition on Mt. Kōya. Such development would resonate well with the earlier observation that older commentaries began to be used as haibun-textbooks for lectures around this time. Moreover, it may not be the only instance. Yūkai’s mention

of Zen in his second commentary, though slightly different in form, addresses basically the same Zen/language related issue as Dōhan did. I think this matter deserves further exploration, but it will have to be postponed until a future opportunity.

I would like to propose that in light of the passages just treated, there is enough evidential basis to suggest that it may be so that not all mondō section in commentaries are textual devices, but that a number of them - perhaps even a substantial amount - might be records of actual mondō exchanges. Such an observation has potential ramifications for how academic scholars read a

commentary, because it may suggest that the opinions presented during the mondō are not necessarily in alignment with those of the commentary’s author. I find that this exposes an important characteristic of the commentarial text that needs to be taken into consideration when reading passages in Shōjigi commentaries.

Now that the circumstances and motivations of Shōjigi explications have become somewhat cleared and a slightly different approach to the texts has been suggested on the basis thereof, the next chapter can take a brief dip into the commentarial discussion and assess exactly how commentators have framed their discussion of the Shōjigio. Or how they have made it relevant to their audiences.