By Rev. Ken Yamada
Spiritual awakening takes various routes, depending on the person. Swift and direct, or twisting and turning. Two of Jodo Shinshu’s most important teachers in modern times took such opposite routes.
Daisetz Teitarō Suzuki (1870-1966), absorbed in Zen practice, experienced a profound realization early in life. By contrast, Kiyozawa Manshi (1863-1903) struggled for years, delving deep into philosophy before awakening to spiritual truth.
Commemorating Kiyozawa’s 100-year birth anniversary, Suzuki wrote:
Kiyozawa was prominent not only due to his intellect, but also because his strong will and passion were penetrated by the depth of his faith. Today, such prominence is still maintained among his pupils. You may say that Kiyozawa was indeed a type of genius in this realm.
Despite a brilliant mind and iron will, Kiyozawa could not grasp “faith” until his life was struck by a series of failures, health problems, and personal tragedies. Before then, he seemed destined to become a distinguished philosopher in Japan.
His journey is described in the essay, “Two Models of the Modernization of Japanese Buddhism: Kiyozawa Manshi and D.T. Suzuki,” by Hashimoto Mineo and Murakami Tatsuo (The Eastern Buddhist, 2003, Vol. 35, No. 1/2).
Growing up impoverished, Kiyozawa received a Higashi Honganji scholarship, eventually attending Tokyo Imperial University, studying Western philosophy under professor Ernest Fenollosa. He learned about Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Mill and Spencer. In Hegel, he found an investigative method providing a framework for his understanding. “Kiyozawa’s original intention in studying in Tokyo was to become a philosopher,” Hashimoto wrote.
At the graduate level, he studied philosophy and became an editor of “Philosophy Association Journal” (Tetsugakkai zasshi 哲学会雑誌). At the Academy of Philosophy (Tetsugakukan 哲学館), he taught psychology, logic and philosophy. He joined the Philosophy Society, focused on comparative study of Eastern and Western philosophy.
In 1889, he returned to Kyoto and wrote a series of papers investigating metaphysics through strict logic. He saw a universal connection between all things (oneness of all things), connecting the “one” (Infinite) with “the many” (finite).
In “Lectures on the History of Western Philosophy” (Seiyō tetsugakushi kōgi), he wrote:
One is, from the beginning, not one. The many exist as the one and the one exists where the many exist. They are neither completely the same nor entirely different. The one as many and the many as one, only this is immutable. Call it Nature, it is all nature. Think of it as True Suchness, and it is True Suchness. Call it myriad of things, and it is myriad of things.
In “Development Circle of Thought—Philosophy and Religion” (Shisō Kaihatsu kan), he wrote, “when one completes the developmental circle of thought, returning to the original, fundamental category, where reason is satisfied, one then flips into religion.” In short: philosophy inquiry eventually leads to religion.
In “Critique of Hegelian Dialectics II” (Shūkyō tetsugaku gaikotsu), he wrote the reasoning mind relates to the Infinite through “investigation,” whereas the religious mind relates to the Infinite through “acceptance.” If reason and faith are contradicting, accept reason and discard faith.
According to Hashimoto:
[Kiyozawa’s] philosophy of religion can be summarized as follows: the finite, (dependent, relative, part, imperfect), and the Infinite (Independent, Absolute, Whole, Perfect) are of the same substance (“identity of the two terms” nikō dōtai 二項胴体). The universe is “an organic constitution, in which innumerable finite entities make up one body, the Infinite.” Moreover, Kiyozawa stresses “the principle of persistent identity” in the “becoming” of these finite entities, which is “an action of the entire universe or of the Infinite itself.”
However, Kiyozawa fell short logically understanding the Buddhist view of “the finite many within the Infinite One,” concluding “faith” transcends logic, according to Hashimoto.
Consequently Kiyozawa’s move back to Kyoto—to accept a position from Higashi Honganji, to which he felt obligated —was Kiyozawa’s pivot towards living “religion” and abandoning philosophy, according to Hashimoto. Experiencing “the inconceivability of the finite many within the Infinite One” required “experimentation,” not theorizing. In a letter, Kiyozawa wrote, “There is nothing in this world as interesting as these experiments.”
In Kyoto, he worked as a middle school principal with a good salary, married, lived in a big house, wore Western clothes, and took rickshaw rides to school.
He soon ditched that worldly life for asceticism. He shaved off his hair, wore only priestly robes, used wooden clogs, refrained from meat, secluded from his wife and children, intensely studied and chanted, and eventually reduced meals to mere buckwheat flour mixed with water. According to Hashimoto, “Through these ‘experiments,’ Kiyozawa attempted with his own body to prove what he wrote in his Skeleton of a Philosophy of Religion, seeking to realize ‘the inconceivable’ within himself.”
In “Requirements for Religious Conviction,” (Shūkyō teki shinnen no hissu jōken ), he wrote:
If you decide to go after religious conviction, you must first stop depending on anything except religion. Unless you go through the gateway of pessimism once where you leave your house behind, throw away your possessions, and turn away from your wife and children, it is difficult to attain true religious conviction.
During this time, Kiyozawa led a campaign to reform the Higashi Honganji denomination, which he felt was mired in politics, tradition, outdated beliefs and worldly concerns. Those efforts ultimately failed.
In 1895, his body weakened by severe ascetism, Kiyozawa contracted tuberculosis. Moving to a sanatorium in Kobe, he told friends, “Old Tokunaga died here. Now I leave this corpse at your disposal.”
He found respite in Epictetus (died 135 C.E.), a Stoic philosopher and former slave whose past mistreatment resulted in a physical disability.
The Discourses of Epictetus state:
Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our actions. The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others. Remember, then, that if you suppose that things which are slavish by nature are also free, and that what belongs to others is your own, then you will be hindered. You will lament, you will be disturbed, and you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you suppose that only to be your own which is your own, and what belongs to others such as it really is, then no one will ever compel you or restrain you. Further, you will find fault with no one or accuse no one. You will do nothing against your will. No one will hurt you, you will have no enemies, and you will not be harmed.
Kiyozawa read the Āgamas, the earliest sutras of Śakyamuni Buddha’s teachings. According to Hashimoto, “He was the first Meiji scholar to appreciate the Āgamas, which had formerly been neglected as being Theravāda scriptures. With the spirit of a Buddhist practitioner, he was trying to discover the everyday practice of Śakyamuni from these ancient texts.”
Two years before his death, his most serious students gathered around Kiyozawa in Tokyo, starting a community called Kōkōdō, signifying “direct experience” and “reliance on the Absolute Infinite.” Under the banner of Seishinshugi (Spirituality at the forefront), they published Seishinkai journal (Spiritual World), featuring essays interpreting orthodox Buddhist teachings via logic, reason, and relevance to one’s life. Members included Akegarasu Haya, Sasaki Gesshō, Kaneko Daiei, Soga Ryōjin, and others, who themselves later would play important roles in Jōdō Shinshū’s evolution.
Kiyozawa found deep meaning in Tannishō, a record of Shinran Shonin’s teachings recorded by disciple Yuien. Kiyozawa’s “Three Great Sutras” were Tannishō, Āgamas, and The Discourses of Epictetus, and his three great people were Shinran, Śakyamuni, and Socrates.
In his diary, Kiyozawa quotes Socrates on death:
Socrates said: When I was away at Thessaly, Heaven nurtured and protected my family through the loving care they received from others. Now, if I go away to the remote country of death, will not Heaven again nurture and protect them?
(Nobuo Haneda translation in December Fan)
Nishimura Kengyō, an editor of Kiyozawa Manshi’s Collected Works, wrote:
What Kiyozawa learned from reading the Āgamas was “Śakyamuni’s spirit of renunciation” and from Epictetus was the “awareness of one’s limited self.” If we are to say that Kiyozawa understood the Nembutsu of the Tannishō through the Āgamas and The Discourses of Epictetus, it means that he saw renunciation in “namu” and our limited self in “amidabutsu.” One leaves one’s family and world in a single-minded entrusting of namu, and at that same moment, both the family and the world reemerge as the merit-giving activity of Amida Buddha.”
According to Hashimoto, “The spirituality (seishin) that Kiyozawa advocated was the religious attitude that ‘accepts the Infinite,’ and such Seishin-shugi was ‘religious conviction.’”
In “The Great Path of Absolute Other Power,” Kiyozawa wrote:
“By entrusting myself to the absolute and infinite, I am beyond fears of the problem of life-and-death. And with the problem of life-and-death beyond our fears, how much more so problems of lesser importance! Banishment is welcome. Imprisonment is bearable. How should we be concerned with censures, rejections, or humiliations? Rather let us enjoy above all else what has been accorded to us by the absolute and infinite.”
(Translation: Bando Shōjun, The Eastern Buddhist, Vol. 5 No. 2, Oct 1972)
Kiyozawa’s religious conviction came to transcend academic theory, flipping his attitude to “abandoned reason and choose faith.”
A year before his death, Kiyozawa resigned his final teaching position, amid a student strike and protests. Around this time, his wife and oldest son died from illness. He said, “Everything has collapsed this year—the school, my wife and children, and now I will collapse.”
He returned home to Saihōji temple, his illness worsening. As he coughed blood, he wrote his most important essay, Waga Shinnen (My Religious Conviction), describing his faith.
In explaining how he felt and what he realized in clear, simple language, he produced perhaps the first and foremost record of spiritual awakening related to Japanese Buddhism in modern times.
He wrote:
What is my religious conviction? It is to trust in Tathāgata. What is the Tathāgata in which I trust? It is the fundamental reality underlying my existence as a believer…
…the moment this trust arises in my mind, it dispels all my distress and suffering and immediately makes me calm and peaceful. When this trust appears in my mind, it fills up my mind so completely that there is no room left for delusions and false notions…
Of course, we can believe in the benefit by listening to what others say about it. But more often than not, that alone gives us only a vague idea of the nature of the benefit. In order to know whether the benefit of trust really exists or not, we must undergo religious experimentation within ourselves…
In my religious conviction I am now aware of the utter uselessness of my self-efforts. In order to realize this, I had to pursue all kinds of intellectual investigations until I finally came to the point where I recognized the utter futility of such efforts. It was an extremely painful process. I thought at times that I had formed some ideas about my religious conviction. But one after another each of those ideas was smashed. Such bitter experiences were unavoidable as long as I sought to establish religious conviction on the basis of logic or scholarly inquiry. I have come to realize that I cannot define good or evil, truth or untruth, happiness or unhappiness. Aware of my total ignorance, I have come to entrust all matters to Tathāgata. This is the most essential point in my religious conviction…
Without waiting until the world after death, the Tathāgata in which I trust has already given me the greatest happiness in this life…
By entrusting the great question of life and death to Tathāgata, I have no fear, no discontentment…
(Nobuo Haneda translation in December Fan)
The last line in Kiyozawa’s diary reads, “Be a slave to Tathāgata and not to any other.” He died June 6, 1903 at the age of 39.
Soga wrote: “Until Kiyozawa appeared, no one seriously considered Other Power faith. Without him, Shinran would never have been regarded as one of the pinnacles in Japanese intellectual history. The faith, which Kiyozawa devoted his entire life to achieving, will long remain in the annals of Japanese Buddhism and may be the greatest accomplishment since Hōnen and Shinran.”
-Rev. Yamada is editor at Higashi Honganji’s Shinshu Center of America