Ippen (一遍上人), also known as Zuien, (1234 – 1289) was
a Japanese Buddhist itinerant preacher (hijiri) who founded the Ji (時宗 time sect) branch of Pure Land Buddhism.
Ippen came from Iyo (伊予) province, (modern Ehime
prefecture, in Shikoku (四国) and was originally called Chishin (智真). He first studied
Tendai (天台) Buddhism on Mt. Hiei (比叡), Kyoto, and then Pure
Land (Jodo 浄土) Buddhism at Dazaifu (太宰府), Kyūshū.[1]
During a pilgrimage to Kumano (熊野), the kami deity enshrined
there revealed to Ippen that enlightenment was determined by Amida Buddha (阿弥陀) and that Ippen
should devote himself to preaching the importance of reciting the name of Amida, nembutsu (念仏).
Ippen and a band of followers then travelled throughout the country proselytizing with their ecstatic nembutsu dance
(nembutsu odori 念仏踊り), and won a wide following among common people.[2] Other practices associated
with the Ji-shu include scheduled sessions of chanting (hence the name time-sect), the handing out of slips of paper with
the nembutsu written on them, and keeping a register of the converted.
Ippen's insistence on constant travelling and giving up of family and possessions led to his nicknames: "Traveling Saint"
(Yugyō Shōnin 遊行上人) and "Holy Man of Renunciation" (Sute hijiri 捨聖). [3]
Doctrine
Ippen's doctrine was primarily influenced by Shoku, founder of the Seizan branch of the Jodo Shu, who "insisted 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."[4] However he was also strongly influenced by the non-dualism of
Zen and even received inka (a seal of recognition) as a
Zen Master from Roshi Kakushin.
Due to this Zen-influence, the Jodo Shinshu poet Harold
Stewart argued that Ippen overlooked a necessary dynamic dualism between the defiled human being (bonbu) and the
Buddha:
"It has recently been claimed that it was Ippen ‘who placed the lintel on the twin pillars erected by Honen and Shinran’ but this view seems untenable for several reasons. The
foundation-stone of the Mahayana Metaphysic is nonduality,
which requires a pair of terms that are one and at the same time two, for only thus can unity be transcended. To cope with this
problem, Nagarjuna developed his Madhyamaka
dialectic as a criticism of the inadequacy of both philosophical monism and monotheology. When such exponents of ultimate unity
speak of the One, they should be asked the Zen question: ‘When the many are reduced to the One, to what then is the One
reduced ?’ A possible Zen answer to this koan could be: ‘Mu!’-that is to say, ‘To None, to Nothing, to Emptiness’. But as this answer might be mistaken for
nihilism, it would be safer to reply: ‘To the Not-Two’. Ippen Shonin's saying: ‘In the invocation the invoker and the invoked are
one’ shows the influence of Zen, but in this unity what then becomes of the very real difference between the pure Amida Buddha
and the defiled human bonbu, who are worlds apart? To be effective in practice, the religious life requires a dynamic tension
between these two opposites, the ki and the ho, the sentient being and the Dharma. In Ippen's
attempt to eliminate both Buddha and bonbu, so as to arrive at a ‘purer’ Nembutsu, he has merely succeeded in reducing nonduality
to unity again."[5]
However, whether or not Stewart's argument contains soteriological or practical truth, he
overlooks the fact that Rennyo introduced the same Seizan doctrine of ki ho ittai (the
unity of the individual and buddha) into the Jodo Shinshu tradition after reading the
(probably Seizan) text known as the Anjin Ketsujo Sho.
Legacy
Before his death Ippen burnt all his writings, saying that "they have all become namuamidabutsu (devotion to Amida Buddha)",
but copies were kept by some of his disciples. An English translation of his writings is No Abode: The Record of Ippen by
Dennis Hirota (University of Hawaii Press / Ryukoku-Ibs Studies).
After Ippen's death many of his disciples appear to have committed suicide, throwing themselves into the sea in the hope of
being born in the Pure Land. Such phenomena perhaps help to explain the limited spread of the Ji-shu, and certainly the ecstatic
fervor of the early Ji-shu seems to have mitigated against mainstream acceptance.
Art
Ippen himself was greatly devoted to paintings of Shan-tao'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) (Kankikouji 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" (see meisho-e 名所絵), including Mt.
Fuji (富士), Kumano, Shitennōji (四天王寺), Zenkōji (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 Chinese Song and Yuan period landscape painting (see Sōgenga (宋元画). 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 Shinkōji (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 Shinkouji 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. Kinrenji (金蓮寺) in Kyoto has a
Muromachi copy of the now-lost work dated 1307.[6]
References
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Credits
Paragraphs 2,3,4,11,12 are all courtesy of the Japanese Architecture and Art Net Users System [7].
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