Ippen

Biography

Early life

Ippen was born to the Kōno clan who ruled the Iyo Province (modern Ehime Prefecture) on the island of Shikoku. After the decline of the Kōno clan, his father, Michihiro, became a monk at Hōgonji temple, which is where Ippen was born. Ippen's secular name may have been Kawano Tokiuji (河野時氏), Tsūshū (通秀), or Tsūshō (通尚). As a monk, he was given the Dharma names Zuien and Chishin (智真). Ippen means one (一) yet all pervading (遍). He is respectfully referred to as "Ippen Shōnin," where "Shōnin" (上人) signifies a holy person.

Following his mother's death and on his father's command, Ippen became a Buddhist monk at an early age and resided at Keigyōji temple as early as 1245. In 1251, he traveled to Dazaifu to study under a Tendai monk called Shōtatsu who was devoted to Amida Buddha and who urged Ippen to "learn to read the sūtras and commentaries of the Pure Land school." Ippen was also sent to study the Pure Land sutras in Hizen under a monk named Kedai, who changed Ippen's name from Zuien to Chishin, because Zuien refers to "various good karmic conditions," which sounded like a self-power oriented name. After studying with Kedai, he returned to study with Shōtatus for twelve years. Both Shōtatsu and Kedai were disciples of the Pure Land teacher Shōkū (1177–1247), who was the founder of the Seizan branch of Jōdoshū.

When his father died, the 25-year old Ippen returned to secular life and assumed family responsibilities at his home province of Iyo. He got married and became head of the household. Eventually, in 1271, he eventually felt called to renounce a second time, which, according to different accounts, was for one of four different reasons:

He had a philosophical insight about karma while watching a spinning top (Ippen Hijiri'e).

He was fleeing a relative trying to kill him in an inheritance dispute (Ippen Shōnin Ekotobaden).

He saw the hair of two of his napping wives turning into snakes, making him fearful of jealousy (Ippen Shōnin Nenpuryaku).

He had inheritance problems with his two jealous wives. (Hōjō Kudaiki).

Forming a new hijiri order

Ippen then spent the next three years as a solitary hijiri before gaining his first and foremost disciple, Taa Amidabutsu. By the time he returned to Iyo in 1278 he may have had a few other followers as well. Ippen's activities were varied, and included chanting sessions (of nembutsu and sutra), practicing an ecstatic form of dancing nembutsu, handing out nembutsu ofuda (お札) and keeping a register of the converted.

His activities drew a wide following from all social classes. The dancing nembutsu practice began as early as 1279, and may have been derived from traditional funerary practiced tied with placating the spirits of the dead. In Ippen's teaching though, dancing nembutsu was seen as a spontaneous ecstatic expression of Ippen's joyful faith in the nembutsu. The idea that one's faith can lead to such ecstatic joy is also found in the Pure Land Sutras. The dancing nembutsu practice became quite popular throughout Japan and it was spread by many different groups not just Ippen's sect.

Ippen continued to travel throughout Japan, gathering a band of followers and proselytizing a unique version of Pure Land Buddhism. During Ippen's time, hijiri were often affiliated with specific temples and promoted specific geographical sites (especially mountains like Mount Kōya). However, Ippen created an independent group of hijiri not based on any single temple or site. Instead, his teaching was based on the immanent presence of Amida in all places. Nevertheless, this new universal movement also embraced all the popular devotions and local deities of Japan, since they were all considered to be manifestations of Amida Buddha's power. This universality and inclusiveness allowed Ippen's movement to absorb many hijiri groups, including those of Zenkōji and sections of Mt. Kōya's hijiri community. According to Foard, Ippen's movement soon emerged as "the leading order of medieval mendicancy, and perhaps the major source of Pure Land propagation for over a century and a half."

The tradition came to be known as "Jishū", a name which ultimately comes from a passage in Shandao to those who practice nembutsu in each of the six times of the day. This referred to specific periods of intense uninterrupted nembutsu practice that Ippen's group would undertake at certain times of the year where different hijiri would take turns in leading the chant during the six four-hour periods of the day. According to Foard, the intended meaning of the term is equivalent to “twenty four hours a day nembutsu group.” Male members of the group were given names that all ended in Amidabutsu (such as Taamidabutsu etc.), and female member names all ended in ichibō ("the one Buddha"). All members wore plain grey robes and black kasaya, and shaved their heads.

Death and Legacy

In 1289, Ippen passed away in Hyōgo. Maintaining his creed of itinerancy without fixed abode (issho fujū), Ippen claimed that “my work of guiding is only for this one lifetime”. Thus, thirteen days before his death, on the morning of 10th day of the 8th month, 1289, Ippen entrusted a few of the books he possessed to monks at Shosha-yama for dedication. He then burned all his remaining writings and texts while chanting the Amida-kyō, declaring: “All the sacred teachings of the lifetime of the Buddha are exhausted and brought to completion in Namo Amida Butsu.” Thus he left behind no scholastic system. Some of his works kept by some of his disciples however and eventually copied and published. Dennis Hirota has translated some of these writings into English in No Abode: The Record of Ippen (1997). Ippen also told his disciples not to waste their times in funerary rituals and to leave his body for the animals.

After Ippen's death some of his disciples committed religious suicide by jumping off a cliff, seeking to attain birth in the Pure Land together with him. Other key disciples, like Taa Amidabutsu and Shōkai continued to practice and promote Ippen's teachings. Shōkai went on to found Kankikō-ji temple in 1291. He also wrote the Illustrated Biography of the Itinerant Monk Ippen (Ippen hijiri-e), the oldest surviving Ippen biography. In 1292, three years after Ippen's death, Ippen's birthplace, Hōgon-ji, was rebuilt by his disciple Sen'a and became a key Ji-shū temple.

The current Ji-shū religious order regards Ippen as its founder, but its formal establishment as a sect was due to the work of Taa Amidabutsu and the later policies of the Tokugawa shogunate. From an institutional perspective, the key founder of Ji-shū was Taa Amidabutsu Shinkyō. After Ippen's death, Taa reorganized the various hijiri groups, which had originally disbanded, into a formal organization and began group wanderings again. Taa also established specific precepts and regulations for the Jishū monks, molding it into a proper religious institution. In 1304, Taa handed over the wandering group to the third leader of Ji-shū, Ryōa. Taa himself established a thatched hut in Sagami Province known as the Tōma Dōjō, where he stayed until the end of his life. This would later become the Konkōin Muryōkōji temple. The Jishu sect thrived during the Muromachi period, but later declined in size, as other Pure Land schools like Jōdo Shinshū grew.

In the Edo period, the lineages of Ikkō Shūshin and Koku'a, which are thought to have originally been separate hijiri systems, were absorbed into a formal Ji-shū sect that combined all temples aligned with Taa Amidabutsu's line along with other hijiri temples that regarded Kūya as a founder. This is how the modern Ji-shū sect coalesced.

Teachings

Doctrine

While Ippen is primarily depicted as a wandering preacher who ministered to the common people in simple ways, his teachings reflected a deep knowledge of Pure Land doctrine. Ippen's teachings were primarily influenced by Shōkū, founder of the Seizan branch of the Jōdo-shū. Ippen was also strongly influenced by the nondualism of Zen and studied under the Zen monk Kakushin (覚心; 1207–1298), who was a student of Dōhan (道範; 1179–1252) and Dōgen (道元; 1200–1253). From Kakushin, Ippen received inka, a form of dharma transmission which recognised his Zen realisation.

Shōkū's view held that "the various Buddhist practices contain no more than a portion of the merit of the single practice of the nembutsu and serve merely to lead people to recite the nembutsu." As such, all other Buddhist practices are merely skillful means to lead us to abandon all self-power in an encounter with the Buddha's Original Vow and Other-power, an encounter manifested in the nembutsu.

Another key doctrine taught by Shōkū and adopted by Ippen was that the liberation of all beings was non-dual with the liberation of Dharmakara bodhisattva as Amida Buddha. Because of this, the one moment of saying the nembutsu is also the one moment of liberation, as well as the one moment of Dharmakara's attainment of Buddhahood as Amida ten kalpas ago. The practice of the nembutsu thus links us with the very enlightenment of the Buddha eons ago, which transcends time and space. This non-dual Pure Land teaching is termed kihō ittai in the Seizan school, which means "the oneness of sentient being and Buddha". It is a key doctrine taught in the Anjin Ketsujō Shō, a key Seizan work attributed to Shōkū.

Ippen's core doctrine, expressed in his poem of "the non-duality of ten and one," exemplifies this:

Since Amida's enlightenment (the "ten kalpas past," i.e., when he attained buddhahood) pervades all reality, sentient beings can touch this the very moment we remember the Buddha through even a single nembutsu (this is the "one thought-moment" which is non-dual with the "ten"). When a person abandons self-power, all discrimination and false thinking and relies solely on Amida, they realize the immanent non-duality between themselves and Buddhahood, which manifests as the single-minded nembutsu. Ippen's doctrine, rooted in Seizan school teachings, is that these two events are nondual. Amida's enlightenment is the nembutsu of the present moment. Therefore, as Ippen wrote, "each moment is the moment of death, and each moment is birth in the Pure Land."

Saying the nembutsu

This view of simple-minded nembutsu recitation is expressed in a letter by Ippen which characteristic of his teaching to say the nembutsu while "doing away with the multiplicity of expectations in our hearts." When asked by a follower what kind of mental attitude was needed for the recitation of the nembutsu, Ippen wrote in response that no special attitude was necessary besides just reciting Na-mu-a-mi-da-butsu and that nembutsu followers should not worry about these things and just focus on recitation. Ippen further writes: When Kūya Shonin was once asked in what state of mind one should recite the Nembutsu, he answered simply, “Abandon”, and did not say anything further. This is recorded in Saigyō's Senjūshō. This saying is really the golden rule. The Nembutsu followers abandon wisdom, folly, the knowledge of good and bad, the thought of one’s social position, noble and mean, high and low, the fear of hell, the desire for a land of happiness, and even the aspiration for enlightenment as exhorted by different schools of Buddhism. In short the Nembutsu followers abandon all these. When the Nembutsu is thus recited, it is in perfect accord with the incomparable Original Vow of Amida. When the Nembutsu is recited without interruption with this frame of mind, there is no thought of Buddhahood or self-hood, not to say anything about the presence of an argumentative mood; the world of good and bad is no more than the Land of Purity itself and beside this there is nothing for which we cherish a desire or from which we turn away. The universe, with all its beings, sentient and non-sentient, with blowing winds and roaring waves, is no other than the Nembutsu. You must not imagine that man is the only being who is embraced by the incomparable Vow. But if my words are hard to understand, leave them as they are, giving no further thoughts to them, and just recite the Nembutsu putting your absolute trust in the Original Vow. As for the Nembutsu, whether you recite it with a believing heart or not, it never fails to be in accord with the incomparable Original Vow of other-power. In the Original Vow of Amida, nothing is wanting and nothing is superfluous. Beside this, what mental equipment do you wish to have? Only going back to the state of mind found in a simple-minded Nembutsu devotee, recite the Nembutsu. Na-mu-a-mi-da-butsu. This practice is one which relies completely on the Buddha's other-power and abandons all self-power. Ippen held that any attempt to alter and improve the nembutsu by our own efforts is pointless, even any attempt to generate faith. According to Ippen, this self-powered attitude in when "we imagine that we can by ourselves learn and practise the way of severing ourselves from the bondage of birth and death." This attitude inevitably leads to pride, egoism and contempt towards others. As such, one must abandon all self-powered efforts, ideas and discrimination, and simply single-mindedly say the nembutsu without any further thought.

Hijiri practices

Ippen led the Ji-shū community on continual itinerancy (yugyō), guiding the people (including peasants and outcasts) to the Pure Land through the practices of dancing nenbutsu and fusan (distribution of nembutsu slips). Ippen's community adopted numerous religious practices from past wandering hijiri and local traditions like the yamabushi including mountain asceticism, pilgrimages to sacred places, retreats at sacred places hoping to receive divine messages in dreams or visions, funeral rites, distribution of talismans (ofuda), ecstatic dancing, and "the keeping of a register for recording the names of the faithful."

Regarding the dancing nenbutsu, Ippen taught: “Merely hearing that the nembutsu is the teaching of Amida brings such joy that one cannot help but dance." Ippen would also cite the Sutra of Immeasurable Life in defense of the practice, which states: "persons who have beheld a World-honored one in a past life are now able to entrust themselves to this teaching; With humble reverence they hear and uphold it, and they leap and dance, rejoicing greatly." Ippen's dancing nenbutsu events often became popular spectacles. In populated areas, a raised platform called an “odori-ya” was often set up, and men and women dancers (among Ippen's 20–40 companions, nearly half were nuns) formed a circle, singing and dancing until the spectators too were drawn in, reaching states of religious ecstasy. Its extreme and frenzied character provoked resistance from conservative circles.

While his thought has been praised by thinkers like Yanagi Muneyoshi, Ippen himself placed value not on abstract doctrine but focused on the practice of propagating the single-minded recitation of the six-syllable nembutsu. The way Ippen taught the nembutsu to others is described by the term ippen-nembutsu (single nembutsu, or "once" nembutsu) which indicated a single racitation of "Namu-amida-butsu" (I take refuge in Amida Buddha). According to Hirota, his method of propagation "seems to have been an 'exchange' or 'bestowal' of utterance in which Ippen, reciting the Name himself, would urge a passerby to follow his example." This first single utterance was seen as highly important for Ippen, since it indicated that the person was now sure to attain rebirth in the Pure Land. Furthermore, this single moment of recitation is also non-dual with the essence of Amida's Buddhahood.

After a person had responded to Ippen's nembutsu with a recitation of their own, Ippen would then hand them a slip of paper (fuda) with "Namo Amida Butsu" (南無阿弥陀仏; meaning "I pay homage to Amida Buddha") printed on it. Ippen describes this as an image which could be used on an altar, indicated that they might have been considered as sacred honzon by the people. Since Amida's name was considered to embody enlightenment itself, it could also have served as concrete symbol of an individual's conversion and future enlightenment. It thus served as a tangible link to the sacred for common people and made their religious practice of accepting the nembutsu an embodied one rather than an intellectual one.

Art

Ippen himself was greatly devoted to paintings of Shandao's allegory of the "White Path", so it is appropriate that his life led to the production of a great many portraits, sculpted images, and illustrated narrative scrolls (emaki 絵巻).

The Ippen Hijiri-e (一遍聖絵) was edited by Ippen's disciple Shōkai (聖戒) and, according to an inscription dated 1299, was painted by the artist En'i (円伊) (Kankikō-ji 歓喜光寺, Kyoto, and Tokyo National Museum). The twelve handscrolls on silk show Ippen's trip around Japan, and are well known for their naturalistic depiction of "famous places", including Mount Fuji (富士), Kumano, Shitennō-ji (四天王寺), Zenkō-ji (善光寺), Enoshima (江ノ島), Yoshino (吉野), Itsukushima (厳島), and Naruto (鳴門). The treatment of space shows the influence of Song and Yuan Chinese landscape painting. A second type of biographical handscroll Ippen Shōnin Engi-e 一遍上人縁起絵), edited by Ippen's other disciple, Sōshun (宗俊), was painted sometime between 1304 and 1307. The original scrolls no longer exist but were copied in many other versions including those at Shinkō-ji (真光寺), Hyōgo Prefecture. These versions are characterized by the addition of the biography of Ippen's most important disciple, Taa (他阿, 1237–1319). In the Shinkō-ji version, the first four scrolls depict Ippen's life, while the last six concern the life of Taa and the spread of Ji Sect teaching. The Kinren-ji (金蓮寺) in Kyoto has a Muromachi period copy of the now-lost work dated 1307.