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Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses the issue of the conflict between the restriction on proselytism contained in the Sōniryō and the necessity of propagating Buddhism for all creatures as exposed in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, and the attempts to reconcile this conflict as emerging in literary and historical sources.

Paper long abstract:

In Ancient Japan, Buddhism was regulated by the Sōniryō (Law on Monks and Nuns, 718), a law modeled on the Tang-period Daosengge (Regulations for the Taoist and Buddhist Clergy, 637), and aimed at managing state events and protecting the state through rituals. Monks were official priests who had received official ordination and could not merge with common people. We find this thought also in the famous preface to a poem by monk Dōji (?–744) collected in the Kaifūsō (Collection of Fond Remembrance of the Past, 751), who declines Prince Nagaya’s invitation to a banquet, because Buddhist monks should not meddle in secular affairs: in fact, the values of the Buddhist clergy, who had renounced the world, and those of worldly people differ completely. However, the ordained Buddhist monks faced the contradiction between the state Buddhism regulated by the Sōniryō and the Buddhist doctrine aiming to bring salvation to all creatures.

The politics of ancient Japan tried to overcome this contradiction: in the Shoku Nihongi (Annals of Japan. Continued, 797), a communication for the monks issued in 718 by the Council of State encouraged the study and practice of Buddhism inside the monastic institutions and in conformity with the Sōniryō; however, as for the groups that “beg and propagate” Buddhism privately, such as the Gyōki (668–749)’s one, the practice of begging could be accepted because “one’s heart follows the softening of the light.” The phrase “softening of the light” refers to the wakōdōjin (lit. “softening the light and becoming one with the dust”), a doctrine, incorporated from the Laozi into early Chinese Buddhism, and widely known also in Japan through the Yuimagyō gisho (Commentaries to the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, 613) and other Tendai-related texts, all leading to honji-suijaku medieval theory.

In this paper, taking into account rules, precepts, and monks’ biographies, such as the Enryaku sōroku (Records of Monks until the Enryaku Era, ca. 788), I will show how ancient Japan tried to balance the restrictions on proselytism contained in the Sōniryō and the necessity of propagating Buddhism outside the state system.