<?xml version="1.0"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xml:lang="en">
	<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&amp;feedformat=atom&amp;user=James</id>
	<title>The Radical Buddhism Project - User contributions [en]</title>
	<link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&amp;feedformat=atom&amp;user=James"/>
	<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/Special:Contributions/James"/>
	<updated>2026-11-02T07:54:33Z</updated>
	<subtitle>User contributions</subtitle>
	<generator>MediaWiki 1.46.0</generator>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=Senoo_Giro&amp;diff=1266</id>
		<title>Senoo Giro</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=Senoo_Giro&amp;diff=1266"/>
		<updated>2026-10-21T21:46:23Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: /* Writings */&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Seno&#039;o Girō}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1889–1961) was a Japanese lay Buddhist activist and founder of the Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei 新興仏教青年同盟 (Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism), one of the most sustained and theoretically developed experiments in “Buddhist socialism” in prewar Japan.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, ch. 6; Matsune Takashi (1975), &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039;.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Beginning as a devotee of the Nichirenshugi 日蓮主義 (Nichirenism) movement, particularly the reformist current led by Honda Nisshō 本多日生, Seno&#039;o gradually became disillusioned with sectarian Buddhism and Japanese nationalism over the course of the 1920s, turning increasingly toward socialism, Marxism, internationalism, and anti-capitalist activism.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Miwa Zehō (2011), “Seno&#039;o Girō no Nichiren shinkō”; Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, pp. 210–216.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; From 1931 until his arrest in 1936, he led the Youth League in a campaign that fused Nichiren-inflected Lotus Sutra devotion with an increasingly materialist, anti-capitalist, and revolutionary interpretation of the Buddhadharma.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o Girō (1933), &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039;, in Inagaki Masami, ed., &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; (Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan, 1975), 325–388; Shields (2012), “A Blueprint for Buddhist Revolution.”&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; After months of detention and interrogation, Seno&#039;o underwent political recantation (tenkō 転向) in 1937, but resumed left-wing Buddhist and pacifist activism after 1945. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Biography ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o Girō was born on December 16, 1889, in Tōjō 東城, Nuka district 奴可郡, Hiroshima Prefecture (now part of Shōbara city), the fourth son in a family of ten children.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Inagaki Masami (1974), &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, p. 30; Inagaki Masami, “Kaidai to kaisetsu,” &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, I:448.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; His father Tamejirō, whose family operated a sake brewery, died of a stroke in 1896, when Seno&#039;o was seven; the brewery subsequently declined along with the family&#039;s economic circumstances. His mother Haru came from nearby Niimi in Okayama Prefecture, from a family that claimed ancestral ties to the Ashikaga lineage.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Inagaki (1974), &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, p. 30; &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VII:487 (May 14, 1961).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Chronic illness repeatedly interrupted Seno&#039;o&#039;s education. After becoming seriously ill in 1909, he suspended his studies at Tokyo&#039;s elite First Higher School (Ichikō) and, following repeated unsuccessful attempts to return, formally withdrew in September 1911.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, I:69 (September 25, 1909); Inagaki Masami, “Kaidai to kaisetsu,” &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, I:448–50.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Raised in a Jōdo Shinshū 浄土真宗 (True Pure Land) household, Seno&#039;o began turning seriously toward Nichiren Buddhism during his convalescence in 1911, when Matsuzaki Kyūtarō 松崎久太郎, a local tofu maker and devoted Nichiren layman, introduced him to Nichiren&#039;s teachings and the &#039;&#039;Lotus Sutra&#039;&#039;.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, I:165–66 (February 20 and 25, 1911).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Their encounters initiated an increasingly intensive engagement with Nichiren Buddhism that would profoundly shape his subsequent religious development.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
After some years of searching for a viable vocation—including an unsuccessful attempt to pursue study in Shanghai and a brief period working at a patent office in Japanese-occupied Taiwan—Seno&#039;o increasingly turned toward religious life. After returning from Taiwan in poor health in March 1915, he embarked that autumn on a pilgrimage to major Nichiren Buddhist temples and sacred sites. His journey brought him to Shakuson Shūyōin in Sōja, Okayama Prefecture, an institution run by the Nichiren priest Shaku Nikken 釈日研 and his wife Myōzenni, where Seno&#039;o remained for several months before entering the Nichiren priesthood at Myōhonji on December 6, 1915, at the age of twenty-five.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, I:258 (March 23–27, 1915), 263–67 (September–December 1915).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Over the following years his devotional commitment deepened amid a series of personal crises. During his mother&#039;s final illness in 1916, Seno&#039;o urged her to embrace the &#039;&#039;Lotus Sutra&#039;&#039; and Nichiren Buddhism; she died on July 7. The near-total blindness of his elder brother Sadatarō 定太郎 the following year further intensified a religious struggle in which Seno&#039;o interpreted family misfortunes through the Nichirenist concept of &#039;&#039;hōbō&#039;&#039; 謗法 (slander of the Dharma) and its karmic consequences, responding with increasingly rigorous fasting and devotional practice.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, I:272–73 (April–July 1916); Miwa Zehō 三輪是法 (2011), “Seno&#039;o Girō no Nichiren shinkō: Taishō gonen kara shichinen no nikki o tegakari ni,” &#039;&#039;Tōyō bunka kenkyūjo shohō&#039;&#039; 15: 1–17.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; After moving to Tokyo in 1918, Seno&#039;o became increasingly drawn to the reformist Nichirenism of Honda Nisshō 本多日生. Following consultations with Honda and his associates, he resolved to serve Buddhism as a lay adherent (&#039;&#039;zaike&#039;&#039; 在家) rather than pursue advancement within the priesthood.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ōtani Eiichi (2001), &#039;&#039;Kindai Nihon no Nichirenshugi undō&#039;&#039;, pp. 270–71.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; On March 7, 1919, at Honda&#039;s recommendation, he began working full-time with the Tōitsudan 統一団 (Unification Group), assisting with meetings, publications, lectures, and the organization&#039;s work among younger adherents.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, II:23 (March 7, 1919); see also Inagaki Masami (1974), &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, p. 61.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; In November 1919, under Honda&#039;s guidance, Seno&#039;o founded the Dainippon Nichirenshugi Seinendan 大日本日蓮主義青年団 (Greater Japan Nichirenist Youth Corps), which brought together students and other young people from universities and schools across Tokyo and subsequently developed into a nationwide movement with members in Korea, Taiwan, and Sakhalin.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, II:82–83 (November 5, 1919); Inagaki (1974), &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, pp. 62–63.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Seno&#039;o&#039;s Nichirenism at this stage remained strongly nationalist and patriotic. In 1920 he married Saitō Fumiyo, a fellow schoolteacher from Tōjō, and their first son, Tetsutarō, was born that December; his name honored the naval admiral, military theorist, and Nichirenist Satō Tetsutarō 佐藤鉄太郎.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Takiguchi Motoichi, “Seno&#039;o Sensei to Saitō Sensei,” &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō Nikki Geppō&#039;&#039; 2 (July 1974): 3–4; &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, II:179 (December 13, 1920).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
During the 1920s, Seno’o’s religious and political outlook underwent a gradual but profound transformation. The Great Kantō Earthquake of September 1923 did not immediately dislodge his Nichirenist understanding of society. In diary entries written shortly after the disaster, he interpreted the conflagration through familiar Buddhist and Nichirenist categories of karma, impermanence, the Lotus Sutra, and Risshō Ankoku. At the same time, the catastrophe—and especially the violence against Koreans that accompanied it—confronted him with forms of social suffering that would contribute to what he later described as his gradual “awakening to society.”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno’o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, II:352–55 (September 1923; entries written September 17); Kimura Noriaki, “Seno’o Girō ni kansuru ichi kōsatsu: Shakai e no mezame,” &#039;&#039;Nichiren Kyōgaku Kenkyūjo kiyō&#039;&#039; 28 (2002): 40–54. See also Seno’o Girō, “Mujō kara shin’ai made” 無常から信愛へ [From Impermanence to Devotion], later revised as “Mujō yori shin’ai e,” in &#039;&#039;Seno’o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039;, 197–220.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; During 1924 these concerns acquired a more explicitly economic dimension. While mediating tenant-farmer disputes in Yamanashi, Seno&#039;o encountered rural poverty and conflict between landlords and cultivators at close range; elsewhere that year he condemned capitalism as a form of egoism and concluded that meaningful change required the transformation of institutions as well as individuals.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Naitō Masayuki, “Seno&#039;o sensei to Kosaku Sōgi,” &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō Nikki Geppō&#039;&#039; 2 (July 1974): 7–8; &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, II:389–90 (August 2, 1924).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Similar encounters with industrial labor sharpened this criticism. By March 1928, after visiting women workers at the Kurashiki Spinning Company&#039;s Masu factory, he was asking whether genuine human well-being was possible unless the capitalist system itself were “reformed or abolished.”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, III:269 (March 31, 1928).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; At the same time, Seno&#039;o was reading widely across socialist, anarchist, and Marxist thought, including Bebel, Kropotkin, Bernstein, Kautsky, Bukharin, Kawakami Hajime 河上肇, and Sano Manabu. His engagement was eclectic rather than doctrinaire: he remained wary of reducing human suffering to economics alone even as materialist analysis increasingly persuaded him that moral exhortation could not adequately address structural inequality. By September 1928 he could write that “the more I study, the more I feel the truth of Marxism.”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, III:186, 190 (March 1927), 253 (January 19, 1928), 280, 286–87 (May 1928), 317 (September 24, 1928), 321 (October 23, 1928).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; His growing critique of capitalism was accompanied by mounting dissatisfaction with established Buddhism and with the nationalist Nichirenism in which he had been formed. By 1930 he was moving decisively away from the religious and political framework of Honda Nisshō and the Tōitsudan, toward the nonsectarian and explicitly anti-capitalist “Revitalized Buddhism” that would provide the basis for his new movement.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Inagaki Masami (1974), &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, pp. 76–77; Seno&#039;o Girō, “Shinkō Bukkyō e no tenshin” 新興仏教への転身 [Conversion to Revitalized Buddhism] (1931), in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039;, 260–301.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On April 5, 1931, Seno’o and roughly two dozen associates founded the Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ([[Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]]) at a meeting held at Tokyo Imperial University, with uniformed police observing the proceedings.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, “Sengen” 宣言 [Declaration] and “Kōryō” 綱領 [Program] (1931), reprinted in Inagaki Masami, &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, 3–6; [founding-meeting source].&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; As chairman and principal intellectual and organizational leader, Seno’o oversaw the League’s rapid expansion over the following five years. Surviving records indicate that it established as many as twenty-six branches across twenty prefectures, although contemporary government agencies produced somewhat lower estimates.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ōtani Eiichi, “Nakajima Shige,” 6.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; The League published journals, pamphlets, and manifestos, held annual national conferences, and increasingly collaborated with labor, tenant, anti-discrimination, antiwar, and antifascist movements. Seno’o’s own political activities likewise extended beyond Buddhist circles. From April 1935 he served as editor and publisher of &#039;&#039;Rōdō zasshi&#039;&#039; 労働雑誌, a labor journal established with Katō Kanjū and Takano Minoru, and by 1936 he and the YLRB were actively promoting the Popular Front (&#039;&#039;jinmin sensen&#039;&#039; 人民戦線) as a means of bringing progressive Buddhists into broader cooperation with workers, farmers, socialists, and other antifascist forces.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Matsune Takashi (1975), &#039;&#039;Seno’o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039;, 76–77, 86–89; Seno’o Girō, “Jinmin sensen to Bukkyōto” 人民戦線と仏教徒 [The Popular Front and Buddhists], &#039;&#039;Kyōgaku Shinbun&#039;&#039;, July 7, 1936.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o&#039;s public activism ended abruptly when he was arrested on December 7, 1936, at the offices of &#039;&#039;Rōdō zasshi&#039;&#039;. Under the Peace Preservation Law 治安維持法, police and prosecutors built a case alleging that Seno&#039;o and the Youth League were working toward the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the emperor system, portraying him, in the language of the prosecution, as a communist “cloaked in the mantle of Buddhism.”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ogata Hiroshi, &#039;&#039;Bukkyō to shakai undō&#039;&#039;, [page for characterization to verify]; Matsune Takashi (1975), &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039;, 91–100.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; After five months of detention and interrogation, Seno&#039;o confessed and, in May 1937, underwent &#039;&#039;tenkō&#039;&#039; 転向 (political recantation), publicly repudiating his former political commitments and affirming loyalty to the emperor.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Matsune (1975), &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039;, 93–104.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; The League nevertheless attempted to continue without him, reorganizing its leadership and holding its seventh national congress on May 9, 1937, at which Hayashi Reihō became chairman and Aoki Sōei secretary-general.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Matsune (1975), &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039;, 96.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Meanwhile, the investigation widened as police assembled evidence from interrogation records, member statements, League publications, and other documents, which they interpreted as demonstrating the organization&#039;s revolutionary aims. In October 1937, more than two hundred people associated with the YLRB were detained in a nationwide roundup; the organization was effectively destroyed, and twenty-seven members were eventually prosecuted.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Tokkō gaiji geppō&#039;&#039;, October 1937; Ogata Hiroshi, &#039;&#039;Bukkyō to shakai undō&#039;&#039;, 380–86; Matsune (1975), &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039;, 103–8.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Seno&#039;o himself was sentenced in 1939 to five years&#039; imprisonment, reduced to three years on appeal in 1940, and was released early because of illness in 1942.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Matsune (1975), &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039;, 111–17.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Following his release from prison in 1942, Seno&#039;o largely withdrew from public political activity for the remainder of the war but gradually returned to Buddhist reform and left-wing activism after Japan&#039;s surrender. On July 7, 1946, he joined former YLRB colleagues, including Hayashi Reihō and Mibu Shōjun, in establishing the Bukkyō Shakaishugi Dōmei 仏教社会主義同盟 (Buddhist Socialist League), and the following year supported the locally based Shinano Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei 信濃仏教青年同盟 (Shinano Buddhist Youth League).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Mibu Shōjun, “Kaisetsu,” &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VI:533–35; &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VI:97 (March 16, 1947).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; In 1948 the Buddhist Socialist League was reorganized as the Bukkyō Shakai Dōmei 仏教社会同盟 (Buddhist Social League), with Seno&#039;o as chairman, and in April 1949 twenty-three progressive Buddhist organizations established the Zenkoku Bukkyō Kakushin Renmei 全国仏教革新連盟 (National Buddhist Reform Federation), again with Seno&#039;o as chairman.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VI:171 (April 29, 1948); Mibu Shōjun, “Kaisetsu,” &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VI:533–45; Yoshida Kyūichi (1966), “Seno&#039;o Girō to Bukkyō shakaishugi,” pp. 141–42.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; In December 1949 he joined the Japan Socialist Party 日本社会党, while peace activism became an increasingly important part of his work during the 1950s.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VI:282 (December 27–28, 1949), 287 (January 3, 1950), 289 (January 8, 1950).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; By 1958, however, he was criticizing what he regarded as the Socialist Party&#039;s political “ambiguity” and finding greater decisiveness in the Communists, even while retaining reservations about Communist political practice.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VII:276 (April 21, 1958).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; On January 1, 1960, he recorded that he had joined the Japan Communist Party 日本共産党 late the previous year, fulfilling what he called a “long-cherished desire.”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VII:391 (January 1, 1960).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; He also remained deeply troubled by his 1937 &#039;&#039;tenkō&#039;&#039; 転向, writing in 1957 of having “given in and converted” and condemning his own “weakness and compromise.”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VII:231 (August 15, 1957).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Seno&#039;o died in 1961, at the age of seventy-one.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Ideas ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o&#039;s mature thought, elaborated most fully in &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 社会変革途上の新興仏教 (Revitalized Buddhism on the Road to Social Reform) (1933) and developed across numerous essays during the 1930s, represents one of the most sustained attempts by a modern Buddhist thinker to bring Buddhist thought and practice into constructive engagement with Marxist social analysis and revolutionary politics.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o Girō, &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 社会変革途上の新興仏教 [Revitalized Buddhism on the Road to Social Reform] (1933), reprinted in Inagaki Masami, ed., &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; (Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan, 1975), 325–88; Shields (2012), “A Blueprint for Buddhist Revolution,” 340–41.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Seno&#039;o accepted much of the Marxist critique of religion, including the charge that religion could function as an “opiate” by encouraging suffering people to depend upon supernatural powers or compensation in another world rather than confront the conditions producing suffering in this one. He argued, however, that such criticism did not apply to Buddhism properly understood. “Original Buddhism,” he maintained, rejected dependence upon supernatural beings and directed attention instead toward suffering and its causes within the conditions of human existence.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o, &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039;, 331, 334, 337; see also Seno&#039;o Girō, “Hanshūkyō undō hihan” 反宗教運動批判 [A Critique of the Anti-Religious Movement] (1931), in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039;, 302–15.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Śākyamuni Buddha, in Seno&#039;o&#039;s interpretation, had taught neither belief in a creator god nor dependence upon an eternal soul, while later Buddhists had transformed figures such as Amida and Dainichi into superhuman objects of reliance. Revitalized Buddhism therefore required both the recovery of Buddhism&#039;s non-theistic foundations and the repudiation of the “narcotic” role that Buddhism itself had come to play in society.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o, &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039;, 331–37.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Central to this project was Seno&#039;o&#039;s radical reinterpretation of the Three Jewels (&#039;&#039;sanbō&#039;&#039; 三宝). Buddha referred above all to the historical Śākyamuni, whom the YLRB revered as the “highest human personality” (&#039;&#039;jinrui no yūsuru saikō jinkaku&#039;&#039; 人類の有する最高人格)—the fullest realization of human possibility rather than a supernatural source of salvation. Dharma Seno&#039;o interpreted through interdependence, nonattachment, and no-self, developing the latter into an ethic of “selfless love” (&#039;&#039;muga-ai&#039;&#039; 無我愛) to be realized through practice. Sangha, meanwhile, no longer referred primarily to the historical monastic community but became the model for a communal society (&#039;&#039;kyōdō shakai&#039;&#039; 共同社会) organized around equality, cooperation, and freedom from exploitation.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, “Sengen” 宣言 [Declaration] and “Kōryō” 綱領 [Program] (1931), reprinted in Inagaki Masami, &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, 3–6; Seno&#039;o Girō, &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 社会変革途上の新興仏教 [Revitalized Buddhism on the Road to Social Reform] (1933), in Inagaki Masami, ed., &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; (Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan, 1975), 363–67; Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, 217–19.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Buddhist liberation thereby acquired an explicitly social dimension. No-self was not merely a doctrine concerning personal identity but an ethical practice through which attachment to the isolated self gave way to action on behalf of others; liberation from such attachment could not be complete while the social relations in which human beings lived remained structured by exploitation.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o, &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039;, [page to verify].&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o nevertheless insisted that structural transformation alone could not overcome the sources of suffering and exploitation. Capitalism had to be transformed, but changing economic institutions would not by itself overcome the egoism and attachment that helped reproduce relations of domination. Social reconstruction therefore had to proceed together with the ethical transformation of persons through the “practice of selfless love” (&#039;&#039;muga-ai no jissen&#039;&#039; 無我愛の実践).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o Girō, &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 社会変革途上の新興仏教 [Revitalized Buddhism on the Road to Social Reform] (1933), in Inagaki Masami, ed., &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; (Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan, 1975), 367; Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, 219–20.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
At the same time, Seno&#039;o sharply criticized Buddhist doctrines when they served to legitimate existing inequalities. Although Buddhism professed the equality of human beings, he argued, historically it had disregarded the reality of class inequality in favor of an abstract equality expressed in the Mahāyāna formula “differentiation is precisely equality” (&#039;&#039;sabetsu soku byōdō&#039;&#039; 差別即平等). Against such metaphysical reconciliation, Seno&#039;o insisted that Buddhism confront the concrete social and economic inequalities of the present.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o Girō, “Shinkō Bukkyō e no tenshin” 新興仏教への転身 [Conversion to Revitalized Buddhism] (1931), in Inagaki, ed., &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039;, 275.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; In this respect, his critique strikingly prefigures aspects of the later criticism of &#039;&#039;hongaku&#039;&#039; 本覚 (original enlightenment) thought associated with the Critical Buddhist movement (&#039;&#039;Hihan Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 批判仏教).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Shields (2012), “A Blueprint for Buddhist Revolution,” 341; Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, 219.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Complementing this critique was Seno&#039;o&#039;s emphasis on &#039;&#039;hansei&#039;&#039; 反省 (self-reflection or critical self-examination). In his 1924 reinterpretation of Nichiren&#039;s &#039;&#039;Risshō Ankokuron&#039;&#039; 立正安国論, Seno&#039;o redirected a text frequently appropriated for nationalist purposes toward a demand for critical self-examination: before condemning other nations or peoples, Japan had to confront the injustices within its own society, including discrimination against Chinese, Koreans, &#039;&#039;burakumin&#039;&#039;, and workers.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o Girō, “Risshō ankoku no gendaiteki igi” 立正安国の現代的意義 [The Contemporary Significance of Establishing the Right and Pacifying the Nation], &#039;&#039;Wakōdō&#039;&#039; 5, no. 10 (October 1924), reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039;, 82–85; Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, 224.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o&#039;s “social Buddhism” (&#039;&#039;shakaiteki Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 社会的仏教) can also be situated within a wider interwar current of socially engaged religion. Ōtani Eiichi has drawn particular attention to its parallels with the “social Christianity” (&#039;&#039;shakaiteki Kirisutokyō&#039;&#039; 社会的基督教) of the sociologist and Congregationalist theologian Nakajima Shigeru 中島重. Both criticized forms of religion centered narrowly on individual salvation and sought instead to connect personal transformation with the reconstruction of society. Their respective this-worldly ideals—the Buddha-land and the Kingdom of God—were conceived as cooperative societies to be realized through concrete social and political engagement rather than relegated to another world.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ōtani Eiichi 大谷栄一, “Nakajima Shigeru no shakaiteki Kirisutokyō to Seno&#039;o Girō no shakaiteki Bukkyō” 中島重の社会的基督教と妹尾義郎の社会的仏教 [Nakajima Shigeru&#039;s Social Christianity and Seno&#039;o Girō&#039;s Social Buddhism], &#039;&#039;Shūkyō kenkyū&#039;&#039; 宗教研究 82, no. 4 (2009): 963–65.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o&#039;s ethic of selfless love was accompanied, particularly by the middle of the 1930s, by an increasingly explicit commitment to nonviolence. His earlier rhetoric, however, could be more ambiguous. During the early years of the YLRB he occasionally invoked the Buddhist expression issetsu tashō 一殺多生 (“kill one to save the many”) in discussing revolutionary social change—a phrase also employed in contemporary radical Buddhist circles to legitimate political violence. Seno&#039;o&#039;s precise meaning in these passages requires caution, particularly because statements made in the early 1930s were subsequently reconstructed through police interrogation and prosecution.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt; Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, 235–36.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; By the middle of the decade, however, Seno&#039;o was articulating an increasingly explicit rejection of political violence. During the investigation of the YLRB, the authorities nevertheless treated his earlier revolutionary language as evidence of the movement&#039;s allegedly violent character, an interpretation Seno&#039;o disputed.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Shihōshō Keijikyoku 司法省刑事局, &#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei no kessei keika to sono honshitsu&#039;&#039; 新興仏教青年同盟の結成経過とその本質 [The Formation and Essential Character of the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism], &#039;&#039;Shisō shiryō panfuretto&#039;&#039;, no. 3 (Tokyo: Shihōshō Keijikyoku, April 1938), cited in Inagaki Masami, &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, 200; Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, 235–36.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o&#039;s radical Buddhism also became increasingly internationalist and anti-imperialist. His shock at the treatment of Koreans and political radicals following the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 contributed to his growing rejection of ethnic and national exclusivism. By the founding of the YLRB in 1931, international conflict, discrimination against burakumin 部落民, and the status of women had become explicit concerns of his program of Buddhist social reform, while during the 1930s Seno&#039;o increasingly connected war, fascism, and imperialism with capitalism and other structures of domination.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, “Sengen” 宣言 [Declaration] (1931), reprinted in Inagaki Masami, &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, 3–6; Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, 218.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; His rejection of boundaries extended to Buddhism itself. Seeking to overcome inherited sectarian divisions, Seno&#039;o adopted the invocation &#039;&#039;Namu Shakamuni Budaya&#039;&#039; 南無釈迦牟尼仏陀耶 (“Homage to Śākyamuni Buddha”) as an expression of common devotion to the historical Buddha and rejected the elevation of any single sectarian scripture as uniquely authoritative. Revitalized Buddhism would instead seek a common Buddhist foundation beyond the competing institutions and doctrinal allegiances of the established sects.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o Girō, “Shinkō Bukkyō e no tenshin” 新興仏教への転身 [Conversion to Revitalized Buddhism] (1931), in Inagaki Masami, ed., &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; (Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan, 1975), 276–77; Lai, Whalen (1984), “Seno&#039;o Girō and the Dilemma of Modern Buddhism: Leftist Prophet of the Lotus Sutra,” &#039;&#039;Japanese Journal of Religious Studies&#039;&#039; 11, no. 1: 7–42, 33–35.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== The Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism ===&lt;br /&gt;
{{Main|Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o&#039;s ideas found their fullest institutional expression in the Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei 新興仏教青年同盟 (Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism), which he founded in April 1931 and led until his arrest in December 1936. The League sought to translate Revitalized Buddhism into social and political practice. Surviving records indicate that it established as many as twenty-six branches across twenty prefectures, although contemporary government agencies produced somewhat lower estimates. Through its publications, annual conferences, lectures, and local branches, the YLRB pursued a program combining Buddhist reform with opposition to capitalism, war, discrimination, and, increasingly, fascism and imperialism.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, “Sengen” 宣言 [Declaration] and “Kōryō” 綱領 [Program] (1931), reprinted in Inagaki Masami, &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, 3–6; [source for twenty-six branches/twenty prefectures]; [source for contemporary government estimates].&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; During the mid-1930s, Seno&#039;o and other League members became increasingly involved in labor, socialist, antifascist, and Popular Front activities. The League attempted to continue after Seno&#039;o&#039;s arrest and subsequent &#039;&#039;tenkō&#039;&#039; 転向 (political recantation), reorganizing its leadership and holding its seventh national congress on May 9, 1937. In October, however, more than two hundred people associated with the YLRB were detained in a nationwide roundup, effectively destroying the organization; twenty-seven members were eventually prosecuted.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Matsune Takashi (1975), &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039;, 96, 103–8; &#039;&#039;Tokkō gaiji geppō&#039;&#039; 特高外事月報, October 1937; Ogata Hiroshi, &#039;&#039;Bukkyō to shakai undō: Shu to shite Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ni tsuite&#039;&#039;, 380–86.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Writings ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1921). &#039;&#039;Hikari o shitauite&#039;&#039; 光を慕ひて [Seeking the Light]. {{annotation|An early autobiographical testimony of faith, recounting Seno&#039;o&#039;s childhood illness, his discovery of the Lotus Sutra, and his developing commitment to Nichiren Buddhism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1923). “Hei&#039;i naru Nichirenshugi” 平易なる日蓮主義 [Nichirenism, Plain and Simple]. &#039;&#039;Wakōdō&#039;&#039; 若人 4, nos. 7–8 (July–August 1923). Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 31–49. {{annotation|A three-part dialogue among a Nichirenist spokesman, a student, and a businessman, reflecting Seno&#039;o&#039;s still-nationalist and class-conciliatory position during his years with the Dainippon Nichirenshugi Seinendan.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1924). “Risshō ankoku no gendaiteki igi” 立正安国の現代的意義 [The Contemporary Significance of Establishing the Right and Pacifying the Nation]. &#039;&#039;Wakōdō&#039;&#039; 若人 5, no. 10 (October 1924). Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 82–85. {{annotation|An early reinterpretation of Nichiren&#039;s &#039;&#039;Risshō Ankokuron&#039;&#039; that emphasizes critical self-examination and increasingly questions forms of state-centered Nichirenism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1927). “Honzonron hihan” 本尊論批判 [Critique of Theories of the Object of Worship]. &#039;&#039;Wakōdō&#039;&#039; 若人 8, nos. 3–9 (March–September 1927). Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 86–196. {{annotation|A major extended work from Seno&#039;o&#039;s later Nichirenist period, critically examining competing understandings of the Buddhist object of worship.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1928). “Shōwa Ishin” 昭和維新 [Shōwa Restoration]. &#039;&#039;Wakōdō&#039;&#039; 若人 9, no. 1 (January 1928). Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 221–41. {{annotation|An essay that moves from a celebration of benevolent imperial rule to an indictment of the zaibatsu and parliamentary politicians as the true “gravediggers” of Japan, marking Seno&#039;o&#039;s growing economic radicalism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1928). “Kyōsantō jiken ni chokumen shite Ninnō gokoku-kyō no issetsu o yomu” &#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG28KJC|共産党事件に直面して仁王護国経の一節を読む]]&#039;&#039;&#039; [&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG28KJC-T|Confronting the Communist Party Incident: Reading a Passage from the Sutra for Humane Kings Protecting the Nation]]&#039;&#039;&#039;]. &#039;&#039;Wakōdō&#039;&#039; 若人 9, no. 6 (June 1928). Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 242–54. {{annotation|Written in response to the 1928 Communist Party Incident and reflecting Seno&#039;o&#039;s growing engagement with the relationship among Buddhism, political repression, and radical social movements.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism (Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei 新興仏教青年同盟) (1931). &#039;&#039;&#039;[[SD31FPM-T|Founding proclamation and mission statement]]&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SD31FPM|宣言・綱領]]&#039;&#039;&#039;). {{annotation|The League&#039;s founding proclamation and mission statement, drafted by Seno&#039;o and unanimously adopted at its founding meeting on April 5, 1931. The proclamation was subsequently expanded and revised.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1931). “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ni tsuite” &#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG31SBT|新興佛教青年同盟について]]&#039;&#039;&#039; [&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG31SBT-T|On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]]&#039;&#039;&#039;]. &#039;&#039;Chūgai Nippō&#039;&#039; 中外日報 (April 7, 1931). {{annotation|Published two days after the founding of the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, this article explains Seno&#039;o&#039;s break with organized Nichirenism, reproduces the League&#039;s three-point platform, and argues that genuine Buddhist renewal requires both trans-sectarian unity and the transformation of capitalist economic structures.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1931). “Shinkō Bukkyō undō no shinro: Issei ni Butsuda no dai-sanka ni kaere” &#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG31SBU|新興佛教運動の進路――一斉に佛陀の大傘下に帰れ――]]&#039;&#039;&#039; [&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG31SBU-T|The Course of the Revitalized Buddhism Movement: Return Together beneath the Buddha’s Great Banner!]]&#039;&#039;&#039;]. &#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō no hata no moto ni&#039;&#039; 新興佛教の旗の下に (April 1931). Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 255–59. {{annotation|An early programmatic statement of Revitalized Buddhism calling on Buddhists to transcend inherited sectarian divisions and return collectively to the historical Buddha Śākyamuni.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1931). “Shinkō Bukkyō e no tenshin” &#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG31SBE|新興佛教への転身]]&#039;&#039;&#039; [&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG31SBE-T|Conversion to Revitalized Buddhism]]&#039;&#039;&#039;]. Serialized in &#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō no hata no moto ni&#039;&#039; 新興佛教の旗の下に, beginning April 1931. Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 260–301. {{annotation|Seno&#039;o&#039;s extended account of his turn toward Revitalized Buddhism, rejecting established sectarian institutions and connecting Buddhist renewal with criticism of the capitalist economic order.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1931). “Hanshūkyō undō hihan” &#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG31HSU|反宗教運動批判]]&#039;&#039;&#039; [&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG31HST-T|A Critique of the Anti-Religious Movement]]&#039;&#039;&#039;]. &#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō no hata no moto ni&#039;&#039; 新興佛教の旗の下に (August 1931). Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 302–15. {{annotation|A response to contemporary anti-religious and Marxist critiques, distinguishing established religion from a this-worldly and socially engaged Buddhism while taking seriously materialist criticism of religious institutions.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1932). “Bukkyōgaku no saihihan” 仏教学の再批判 [A Re-Critique of Buddhist Studies]. Serialized in &#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 新興仏教, January–September 1932. {{annotation|A sustained reconsideration of Buddhist thought that was subsequently revised and expanded into Seno&#039;o&#039;s major theoretical work, &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039;.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1932). “Nōson no kyūhaku to nōson jiin no undō” &#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG32NNU|農村の窮迫と農村寺院の運動]]&#039;&#039;&#039; [&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG32NNU-T|Rural Distress and Rural Temple Activism]]&#039;&#039;&#039;]. &#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 新興仏教 (July 1932). Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 316–24. {{annotation|An analysis of rural poverty and the crisis confronting village temples, arguing that Buddhist institutions could not address rural suffering without confronting its underlying social and economic conditions.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1933). &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 社会変革途上の新興仏教 [&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG33SHS-T|Revitalized Buddhism on the Road to Social Reform]]&#039;&#039;&#039;]. Tokyo: Bukki-sha 仏旗社. Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 325–88. {{annotation|Seno&#039;o&#039;s central theoretical work, bringing Buddhist thought into sustained engagement with Marxist social analysis and setting out six “demands of the modern age” that a revitalized Buddhism must confront.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1934). “Bukkyō to heiwa undō” &#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG34BHU|仏教と平和運動]]&#039;&#039;&#039; [&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG34BHU-T|Buddhism and the Peace Movement]]&#039;&#039;&#039;]. &#039;&#039;Kokumin Bukkyō Seiten&#039;&#039; 国民仏教聖典. {{annotation|An extended reflection presenting peace as a fundamental Buddhist commitment while confronting the relationship among social conflict, class struggle, and political violence.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1936). “Jinmin sensen to Bukkyōto” 人民戦線と仏教徒 [The Popular Front and Buddhists]. &#039;&#039;Kyōgaku Shinbun&#039;&#039; 教学新聞 (July 7, 1936). {{annotation|A late pre-arrest statement addressing the relationship between Buddhist commitment and the emerging Popular Front movement.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1936). “Sekai heiwa no tettei e” 世界平和の徹底へ [Toward the Thorough Realization of World Peace]. &#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō Shinbun&#039;&#039; 新興仏教新聞 (December 1936). {{annotation|A late statement of Seno&#039;o&#039;s commitment to world peace, published in the final period of the Youth League&#039;s activity.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Tetsutarō 妹尾鉄太郎 and Inagaki Masami 稲垣真美, eds. (1974–75). &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎日記 [The Diary of Seno&#039;o Girō]. 7 vols. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai. {{annotation|Seno&#039;o&#039;s personal diaries, covering more than five decades from 1909 to 1961 and providing the most important primary source for reconstructing his religious, political, and personal development. The diaries are especially valuable for tracing changes in his Nichiren Buddhist faith, his political radicalization and 1937 &#039;&#039;tenkō&#039;&#039;, and his postwar return to socialist, peace, and Communist activism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎. Inagaki Masami 稲垣真美, ed. (1975). &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集 [Collected Religious Writings of Seno&#039;o Girō]. Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan (Daizō Sensho 17). {{annotation|The principal posthumous collection of Seno&#039;o&#039;s religious and political writings. It brings together his major published works from the pre-arrest period, although numerous shorter writings remain scattered across &#039;&#039;Wakōdō&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039;, the YLRB &#039;&#039;Geppō&#039;&#039;, and other periodicals.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contemporary and Participant Sources ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== Contemporary Documents ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Kankichi Saiji 神吉斎爾 (1932 or 1933). “Shinkō Bukkyō no gokai o toku” 新興仏教の誤解をとく [Clearing Up Misunderstandings of Revitalized Buddhism]. Tokyo: Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei. {{annotation|A contemporary League publication responding to criticism and misunderstanding of Revitalized Buddhism, useful for reconstructing how the movement represented and defended itself publicly.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Naimushō Keihokyoku Hoanka 内務省警保局保安課. &#039;&#039;Tokkō gaiji geppō&#039;&#039; 特高外事月報 [Special Higher Police and Foreign Affairs Monthly Report]. Tokyo: Naimushō Keihokyoku Hoanka. Issues cited: June 1936 and October 1937. {{annotation|Contemporary Special Higher Police reports documenting official surveillance of Seno&#039;o, the Youth League, and related political activity immediately before and during the repression of 1936–37.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Naimushō Keihokyoku Hoanka 内務省警保局保安課. &#039;&#039;Tokkō geppō&#039;&#039; 特高月報 [Special Higher Police Monthly Report]. Tokyo: Naimushō Keihokyoku Hoanka. Issue cited: November 1936. {{annotation|A contemporary Special Higher Police report documenting official surveillance of Seno&#039;o, the Youth League, and related political activity shortly before Seno&#039;o&#039;s arrest.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Ogata Hiroshi 緒方浩 (1939). &#039;&#039;Bukkyō to shakai undō: Shu to shite Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ni tsuite&#039;&#039; 仏教と社会運動――主として新興仏教青年同盟に就いて [Buddhism and Social Movements: Mainly Concerning the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]. &#039;&#039;Shisō kenkyū shiryō tokushū&#039;&#039; 思想研究資料特輯, no. 52. Tokyo: Shihōshō Keijikyoku. Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Shakai mondai shiryō sōsho&#039;&#039; 社会問題資料叢書, ser. 1. Kyoto: Tōyō Bunka-sha, 1972. {{annotation|An extensive Justice Ministry study of Seno&#039;o and the Youth League based on materials assembled during the investigation and prosecution. An indispensable source for the state&#039;s case against the movement, but one whose characterization of the League as revolutionary and subversive must be read in the context of its institutional and prosecutorial origins.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Shihōshō Keijikyoku 司法省刑事局 (1938). “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei no kessei keika to sono honshitsu” 新興仏教青年同盟の結成経過とその本質 [The Formation and Essential Character of the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]. &#039;&#039;Shisō shiryō panfuretto&#039;&#039; 思想資料パンフレット, no. 3. Tokyo: Shihōshō Keijikyoku. {{annotation|A Justice Ministry account of the League produced during the repression, documenting the state&#039;s reconstruction of its formation, ideology, organization, and political activities. As a prosecutorial source, its descriptions and interpretations require comparison with League documents, diaries, and participant testimony.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== Participant and Family Retrospectives ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Hayashi Reihō 林霊法 (1976). &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei: Shakaishugi to Bukkyō no tachiba&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎と新興仏教青年同盟――社会主義と仏教の立場 [Seno&#039;o Girō and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism: The Standpoint of Socialism and Buddhism]. Tokyo: Hyakkaen. {{annotation|A retrospective account by a leading Youth League activist who became acting chairman after Seno&#039;o&#039;s arrest, providing an important participant perspective on the League&#039;s relationship between Buddhism and socialism and on its organizational history.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Mibu Shōjun 壬生照順 (1978). “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei jiken” 新興仏教青年同盟事件 [The Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism Incident]. In &#039;&#039;Shūkyō dan&#039;atsu o kataru&#039;&#039; 宗教弾圧を語る [Speaking about Religious Repression], edited by Koike Kenji 小池健治, Nishikawa Shigenori 西川重則, and Murakami Shigeyoshi 村上重良. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. {{annotation|A participant&#039;s retrospective account of the repression of the Youth League, valuable particularly for comparison with contemporary police and Justice Ministry records.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Mibu Shōjun 壬生照順 and Nakano Kyōtoku 中濃教篤 (1959). &#039;&#039;Shinkōsha no teikō: Shūkyō heiwa undō no rekishi&#039;&#039; 信仰者の抵抗――宗教平和運動の歴史 [Resistance of Believers: A History of the Religious Peace Movement]. Tokyo: Seishin Shobō. {{annotation|An early postwar account by figures closely connected with the history of progressive Buddhist and religious peace movements, providing an important participant perspective on Buddhist resistance, the Youth League, and the prewar repression.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō Nikki Geppō&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎日記月報 (nos. 1–7, June 1974–January 1975). {{annotation|Supplements issued with the publication of Seno&#039;o&#039;s diaries, containing reminiscences and essays by family members, former Youth League activists, and other associates. Contributors include Matsune Takashi, Eguchi Nobuyori, Matsuura Takeo, Oda Ritsuko, Seno&#039;o Tetsutarō, Takada Shigeyoshi, and others. The supplements provide valuable retrospective testimony on Seno&#039;o&#039;s family life, religious development, League activism, tenant disputes, arrest, and &#039;&#039;tenkō&#039;&#039;.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Secondary Literature in English ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Brons, Lajos (2022). &#039;&#039;A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism&#039;&#039;. punctum books, 73–89. {{annotation|An open-access philosophical study situating Seno&#039;o and the Youth League within a comparative genealogy of “radical Buddhism” alongside [[Uchiyama Gudo|Uchiyama Gudō]], [[Lin Qiuwu]], and other modern Buddhist radicals. Brons emphasizes the philosophical and utopian dimensions of Seno&#039;o&#039;s attempt to combine Buddhism with socialist and Marxist thought.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Lai, Whalen (1984). “Seno&#039;o Girō and the Dilemma of Modern Buddhism: Leftist Prophet of the Lotus Sutra.” &#039;&#039;Japanese Journal of Religious Studies&#039;&#039; 11, no. 1: 7–42. {{annotation|The first substantial English-language study devoted to Seno&#039;o, emphasizing his intellectual formation within Nichiren and Tendai Buddhist thought and interpreting his career, in dialogue with Robert Bellah, through the category of Buddhist “prophetic individualism.”}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Large, Stephen S. (1987). “Buddhism, Socialism, and Protest in Prewar Japan: The Career of Seno&#039;o Girō.” &#039;&#039;Modern Asian Studies&#039;&#039; 21, no. 1: 153–71. {{annotation|An early English-language political biography drawing extensively on Seno&#039;o&#039;s published diaries and tracing his development from Nichirenist patriotism through socialist activism, the Youth League, arrest, and political recantation.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Shields, James Mark (2012). “A Blueprint for Buddhist Revolution: The Radical Buddhism of Seno&#039;o Girō (1889–1961) and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism.” &#039;&#039;Japanese Journal of Religious Studies&#039;&#039; 39, no. 2: 333–51. {{annotation|An open-access analysis centered on &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 社会変革途上の新興仏教, examining Seno&#039;o&#039;s effort to bring Buddhist thought into constructive engagement with Marxist social analysis and revolutionary politics.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Shields, James Mark (2014). “Seno&#039;o Giro: Life and Thought of a Radical Buddhist.” In Todd Lewis, ed., &#039;&#039;Buddhists: Understanding Buddhism Through the Lives of Practitioners&#039;&#039;, 280–88. Wiley-Blackwell. {{annotation|A concise biographical introduction to Seno&#039;o&#039;s life and thought written for a general and classroom readership.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Shields, James Mark (2017). &#039;&#039;Against Harmony: Progressive and Radical Buddhism in Modern Japan&#039;&#039;. New York: Oxford University Press, ch. 6. {{annotation|A study of Seno&#039;o and the Youth League within the broader development of progressive and radical Buddhism in modern Japan, emphasizing Seno&#039;o&#039;s transformation of Nichiren Buddhist concepts through his engagement with socialism, Marxism, and revolutionary politics.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Secondary Literature in Japanese ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Inagaki Masami 稲垣真美 (1974). &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e: Seno&#039;o Girō to Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei&#039;&#039; 仏陀を背負いて街頭へ――妹尾義郎と新興仏教青年同盟 [Taking the Buddha on Their Backs and Going to the Streets: Seno&#039;o Girō and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. {{annotation|The foundational Japanese-language biography of Seno&#039;o and history of the Youth League. Written by the scholar who subsequently edited Seno&#039;o&#039;s collected religious writings and co-edited his diaries, it established much of the biographical and documentary framework used by later scholarship, although some of its interpretations—particularly of the prosecution of the League—have been qualified by subsequent researchers.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Matsune Takashi 松根鷹 (1975). &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎と「新興仏教青年同盟」 [Seno&#039;o Girō and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]. Tokyo: San&#039;ichi Shobō. {{annotation|An important critical reconstruction of the Youth League that supplements and at points challenges Inagaki&#039;s account, drawing particular attention to internal organizational dynamics, participant testimony, and the circumstances surrounding the repression and dissolution of the movement.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Miwa Zehō 三輪是法 (2011). “Seno&#039;o Girō no Nichiren shinkō: Taishō gonen kara shichinen no nikki o tegakari ni” 妹尾義郎の日蓮信仰――大正五年から七年の日記を手がかりに [Seno&#039;o Girō&#039;s Nichiren Faith: Using His Diaries from 1916 to 1918 as a Guide]. &#039;&#039;Tōyō bunka kenkyūjo shohō&#039;&#039; 東洋文化研究所所報 15: 1–17. {{annotation|A close diary-based reconstruction of Seno&#039;o&#039;s religious crisis between 1916 and 1918—including his mother&#039;s death, his brother&#039;s blindness, and his own illness—and his path toward Honda Nisshō and the Tōitsudan, before his later turn toward socialism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Nakano Kyōtoku 中濃教篤 (1969). “‘Seno&#039;o Girō’ nōto” 「妹尾義郎」ノート [Notes on Seno&#039;o Girō]. &#039;&#039;Gendai shūkyō kenkyūjo shohō&#039;&#039; 現代宗教研究所所報 3: 59–71. {{annotation|An early study of Seno&#039;o by a scholar who subsequently wrote extensively on the intellectual history of the Youth League and modern Nichiren Buddhism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Ōtani Eiichi 大谷栄一 (2001). &#039;&#039;Kindai Nihon no Nichirenshugi undō&#039;&#039; 近代日本の日蓮主義運動 [The Nichirenist Movement of Modern Japan]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. {{annotation|A major history of modern Nichirenism that provides the broader religious and institutional setting for Seno&#039;o&#039;s formation, including the movements associated with Tanaka Chigaku and Honda Nisshō.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Ōtani Eiichi 大谷栄一 (2008). “Hansen, han-fashizumu no Bukkyō shakai undō: Seno&#039;o Girō to Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei” 反戦・反ファシズムの仏教社会運動――妹尾義郎と新興仏教青年同盟 [An Antiwar, Anti-Fascist Buddhist Social Movement: Seno&#039;o Girō and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]. In &#039;&#039;Kokka to shūkyō: Shūkyō kara miru kingendai Nihon&#039;&#039; 国家と宗教――宗教から見る近現代日本, vol. 1, edited by Arai Ken and Tanaka Shigeru, 447–81. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. {{annotation|A substantial study of Seno&#039;o and the Youth League as an antiwar and anti-fascist Buddhist social movement, emphasizing the relationship between religious commitments, organization, and political participation.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Ōtani Eiichi 大谷栄一 (2009). “Nakajima Shige no shakaiteki Kirisutokyō to Seno&#039;o Girō no shakaiteki Bukkyō” 中島重の社会的基督教と妹尾義郎の社会的仏教 [Nakajima Shigeru&#039;s Social Christianity and Seno&#039;o Girō&#039;s Social Buddhism]. &#039;&#039;Shūkyō kenkyū&#039;&#039; 宗教研究 82, no. 4: 963–65. {{annotation|A concise comparative study identifying parallels between Seno&#039;o&#039;s “social Buddhism” and Nakajima Shigeru&#039;s “social Christianity,” including their critiques of religious individualism and their this-worldly and cooperative social ideals.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Ōtani Eiichi 大谷栄一 (2014). “Nichirenshugi kara Bukkyō shakaishugi e: Seno&#039;o Girō no shisō to undō” 日蓮主義から仏教社会主義へ――妹尾義郎の思想と運動 [From Nichirenism to Buddhist Socialism: Seno&#039;o Girō&#039;s Thought and Movement]. In &#039;&#039;Shirīzu Nichiren 4: Kingendai no hokke undō to zaike kyōdan&#039;&#039; シリーズ日蓮4――近現代の法華運動と在家教団, edited by Nishiyama Shigeru, 196–211. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. {{annotation|A synthetic account of Seno&#039;o&#039;s intellectual and organizational development from Nichirenism to Buddhist socialism, emphasizing the relationship between changes in his religious thought and his social activism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Ōtani Eiichi 大谷栄一 (2015). “Seno&#039;o Girō to Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei no hansen, heiwa undō” 妹尾義郎と新興仏教青年同盟の反戦・平和運動 [Seno&#039;o Girō and the Youth League&#039;s Antiwar and Peace Movement]. In &#039;&#039;Ajia no shakai sanka Bukkyō: Seikyō kankei no shiza&#039;&#039; アジアの社会参加仏教――政教関係の視座, edited by Sakurai Yoshihide, Togawa Masahiko, and Yano Hidetake, 73–104. Sapporo: Hokkaidō University Press. {{annotation|A detailed study of the antiwar and peace dimensions of Seno&#039;o&#039;s thought and the Youth League&#039;s activism, placing them within the wider history of socially engaged Buddhism in modern Asia.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Rizaki Kei 理崎啓 (2016). &#039;&#039;Ōyoso no hibi: Seno&#039;o Girō to shūkyō dan&#039;atsu&#039;&#039; 大凡の日々――妹尾義郎と宗教弾圧 [Ordinary Days: Seno&#039;o Girō and Religious Persecution]. Tetsuzandō. {{annotation|A diary-based study concentrating on Seno&#039;o&#039;s experience of repression, his 1937 &#039;&#039;tenkō&#039;&#039;, and his subsequent religious and political life, including his postwar peace activism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Shimane Kiyoshi しまねきよし (1978). “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei: Seno&#039;o Girō” 新興仏教青年同盟――妹尾義郎 [The Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism: Seno&#039;o Girō]. In &#039;&#039;Tenkō: Kyōdō kenkyū, kaitei zōho-ban&#039;&#039; 転向――共同研究・改訂増補版, edited by Shisō no Kagaku Kenkyūkai 思想の科学研究会, 349–65. Tokyo: Heibonsha. {{annotation|A study placing Seno&#039;o and the Youth League within the broader history and problematics of political recantation (&#039;&#039;tenkō&#039;&#039;) in prewar Japan.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Yoshida Kyūichi 吉田久一 (1966). “Seno&#039;o Girō to Bukkyō shakaishugi” 妹尾義郎と仏教社会主義 [Seno&#039;o Girō and Buddhist Socialism]. &#039;&#039;Nihon rekishi&#039;&#039; 日本歴史 212: 139–42. {{annotation|An early scholarly treatment of Seno&#039;o centered on his attempt to formulate a distinctively Buddhist socialism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Yoshida Shizukuni 吉田静邦 (1979). “Seno&#039;o Girō no shisō to kōdō” 妹尾義郎の思想と行動 [Seno&#039;o Girō&#039;s Thought and Action]. &#039;&#039;Bukkyō keizai kenkyū&#039;&#039; 仏教経済研究 8: 95–111. {{annotation|A study of the relationship between Seno&#039;o&#039;s Buddhist social thought and his practical political and economic activism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Yoshida Shizukuni 吉田静邦 (1985). “Fashizumu-ki no nōmin undō to Seno&#039;o Girō (1)” ファシズム期の農民運動と妹尾義郎（一） [Peasant Movements in the Fascist Period and Seno&#039;o Girō (1)]. &#039;&#039;Komazawa joshi tanki daigaku kenkyū kiyō&#039;&#039; 駒沢女子短期大学研究紀要 18: 25–38.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Yoshida Shizukuni 吉田静邦 (1986). “Fashizumu-ki no nōmin undō to Seno&#039;o Girō (2)” ファシズム期の農民運動と妹尾義郎（二） [Peasant Movements in the Fascist Period and Seno&#039;o Girō (2)]. &#039;&#039;Komazawa joshi tanki daigaku kenkyū kiyō&#039;&#039; 駒沢女子短期大学研究紀要 19: 27–37. {{annotation|Together, Yoshida&#039;s two-part study examines Seno&#039;o&#039;s engagement with agrarian and tenant-farmer movements and situates his activism within the wider history of prewar peasant organization.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite This Article ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
First version, 28 July 2026. Main: Brons, Lajos. Other: (none).&lt;br /&gt;
Substantially revised and expanded, September 2026. Main: Shields, James Mark. Other: Brons, Lajos. --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Shields, James Mark, and Lajos Brons ({{REVISIONYEAR}}). &amp;quot;Seno&#039;o Girō&amp;quot;. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/Senoo_Giro&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[category:Senoo Giro]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[category:Shinko Bukkyo Seinen Domei]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[category:Biographies]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[category:Japan]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=Senoo_Giro&amp;diff=1265</id>
		<title>Senoo Giro</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=Senoo_Giro&amp;diff=1265"/>
		<updated>2026-10-21T21:45:17Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: /* Writings */&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Seno&#039;o Girō}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1889–1961) was a Japanese lay Buddhist activist and founder of the Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei 新興仏教青年同盟 (Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism), one of the most sustained and theoretically developed experiments in “Buddhist socialism” in prewar Japan.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, ch. 6; Matsune Takashi (1975), &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039;.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Beginning as a devotee of the Nichirenshugi 日蓮主義 (Nichirenism) movement, particularly the reformist current led by Honda Nisshō 本多日生, Seno&#039;o gradually became disillusioned with sectarian Buddhism and Japanese nationalism over the course of the 1920s, turning increasingly toward socialism, Marxism, internationalism, and anti-capitalist activism.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Miwa Zehō (2011), “Seno&#039;o Girō no Nichiren shinkō”; Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, pp. 210–216.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; From 1931 until his arrest in 1936, he led the Youth League in a campaign that fused Nichiren-inflected Lotus Sutra devotion with an increasingly materialist, anti-capitalist, and revolutionary interpretation of the Buddhadharma.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o Girō (1933), &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039;, in Inagaki Masami, ed., &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; (Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan, 1975), 325–388; Shields (2012), “A Blueprint for Buddhist Revolution.”&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; After months of detention and interrogation, Seno&#039;o underwent political recantation (tenkō 転向) in 1937, but resumed left-wing Buddhist and pacifist activism after 1945. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Biography ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o Girō was born on December 16, 1889, in Tōjō 東城, Nuka district 奴可郡, Hiroshima Prefecture (now part of Shōbara city), the fourth son in a family of ten children.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Inagaki Masami (1974), &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, p. 30; Inagaki Masami, “Kaidai to kaisetsu,” &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, I:448.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; His father Tamejirō, whose family operated a sake brewery, died of a stroke in 1896, when Seno&#039;o was seven; the brewery subsequently declined along with the family&#039;s economic circumstances. His mother Haru came from nearby Niimi in Okayama Prefecture, from a family that claimed ancestral ties to the Ashikaga lineage.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Inagaki (1974), &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, p. 30; &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VII:487 (May 14, 1961).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Chronic illness repeatedly interrupted Seno&#039;o&#039;s education. After becoming seriously ill in 1909, he suspended his studies at Tokyo&#039;s elite First Higher School (Ichikō) and, following repeated unsuccessful attempts to return, formally withdrew in September 1911.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, I:69 (September 25, 1909); Inagaki Masami, “Kaidai to kaisetsu,” &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, I:448–50.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Raised in a Jōdo Shinshū 浄土真宗 (True Pure Land) household, Seno&#039;o began turning seriously toward Nichiren Buddhism during his convalescence in 1911, when Matsuzaki Kyūtarō 松崎久太郎, a local tofu maker and devoted Nichiren layman, introduced him to Nichiren&#039;s teachings and the &#039;&#039;Lotus Sutra&#039;&#039;.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, I:165–66 (February 20 and 25, 1911).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Their encounters initiated an increasingly intensive engagement with Nichiren Buddhism that would profoundly shape his subsequent religious development.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
After some years of searching for a viable vocation—including an unsuccessful attempt to pursue study in Shanghai and a brief period working at a patent office in Japanese-occupied Taiwan—Seno&#039;o increasingly turned toward religious life. After returning from Taiwan in poor health in March 1915, he embarked that autumn on a pilgrimage to major Nichiren Buddhist temples and sacred sites. His journey brought him to Shakuson Shūyōin in Sōja, Okayama Prefecture, an institution run by the Nichiren priest Shaku Nikken 釈日研 and his wife Myōzenni, where Seno&#039;o remained for several months before entering the Nichiren priesthood at Myōhonji on December 6, 1915, at the age of twenty-five.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, I:258 (March 23–27, 1915), 263–67 (September–December 1915).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Over the following years his devotional commitment deepened amid a series of personal crises. During his mother&#039;s final illness in 1916, Seno&#039;o urged her to embrace the &#039;&#039;Lotus Sutra&#039;&#039; and Nichiren Buddhism; she died on July 7. The near-total blindness of his elder brother Sadatarō 定太郎 the following year further intensified a religious struggle in which Seno&#039;o interpreted family misfortunes through the Nichirenist concept of &#039;&#039;hōbō&#039;&#039; 謗法 (slander of the Dharma) and its karmic consequences, responding with increasingly rigorous fasting and devotional practice.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, I:272–73 (April–July 1916); Miwa Zehō 三輪是法 (2011), “Seno&#039;o Girō no Nichiren shinkō: Taishō gonen kara shichinen no nikki o tegakari ni,” &#039;&#039;Tōyō bunka kenkyūjo shohō&#039;&#039; 15: 1–17.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; After moving to Tokyo in 1918, Seno&#039;o became increasingly drawn to the reformist Nichirenism of Honda Nisshō 本多日生. Following consultations with Honda and his associates, he resolved to serve Buddhism as a lay adherent (&#039;&#039;zaike&#039;&#039; 在家) rather than pursue advancement within the priesthood.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ōtani Eiichi (2001), &#039;&#039;Kindai Nihon no Nichirenshugi undō&#039;&#039;, pp. 270–71.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; On March 7, 1919, at Honda&#039;s recommendation, he began working full-time with the Tōitsudan 統一団 (Unification Group), assisting with meetings, publications, lectures, and the organization&#039;s work among younger adherents.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, II:23 (March 7, 1919); see also Inagaki Masami (1974), &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, p. 61.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; In November 1919, under Honda&#039;s guidance, Seno&#039;o founded the Dainippon Nichirenshugi Seinendan 大日本日蓮主義青年団 (Greater Japan Nichirenist Youth Corps), which brought together students and other young people from universities and schools across Tokyo and subsequently developed into a nationwide movement with members in Korea, Taiwan, and Sakhalin.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, II:82–83 (November 5, 1919); Inagaki (1974), &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, pp. 62–63.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Seno&#039;o&#039;s Nichirenism at this stage remained strongly nationalist and patriotic. In 1920 he married Saitō Fumiyo, a fellow schoolteacher from Tōjō, and their first son, Tetsutarō, was born that December; his name honored the naval admiral, military theorist, and Nichirenist Satō Tetsutarō 佐藤鉄太郎.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Takiguchi Motoichi, “Seno&#039;o Sensei to Saitō Sensei,” &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō Nikki Geppō&#039;&#039; 2 (July 1974): 3–4; &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, II:179 (December 13, 1920).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
During the 1920s, Seno’o’s religious and political outlook underwent a gradual but profound transformation. The Great Kantō Earthquake of September 1923 did not immediately dislodge his Nichirenist understanding of society. In diary entries written shortly after the disaster, he interpreted the conflagration through familiar Buddhist and Nichirenist categories of karma, impermanence, the Lotus Sutra, and Risshō Ankoku. At the same time, the catastrophe—and especially the violence against Koreans that accompanied it—confronted him with forms of social suffering that would contribute to what he later described as his gradual “awakening to society.”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno’o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, II:352–55 (September 1923; entries written September 17); Kimura Noriaki, “Seno’o Girō ni kansuru ichi kōsatsu: Shakai e no mezame,” &#039;&#039;Nichiren Kyōgaku Kenkyūjo kiyō&#039;&#039; 28 (2002): 40–54. See also Seno’o Girō, “Mujō kara shin’ai made” 無常から信愛へ [From Impermanence to Devotion], later revised as “Mujō yori shin’ai e,” in &#039;&#039;Seno’o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039;, 197–220.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; During 1924 these concerns acquired a more explicitly economic dimension. While mediating tenant-farmer disputes in Yamanashi, Seno&#039;o encountered rural poverty and conflict between landlords and cultivators at close range; elsewhere that year he condemned capitalism as a form of egoism and concluded that meaningful change required the transformation of institutions as well as individuals.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Naitō Masayuki, “Seno&#039;o sensei to Kosaku Sōgi,” &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō Nikki Geppō&#039;&#039; 2 (July 1974): 7–8; &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, II:389–90 (August 2, 1924).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Similar encounters with industrial labor sharpened this criticism. By March 1928, after visiting women workers at the Kurashiki Spinning Company&#039;s Masu factory, he was asking whether genuine human well-being was possible unless the capitalist system itself were “reformed or abolished.”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, III:269 (March 31, 1928).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; At the same time, Seno&#039;o was reading widely across socialist, anarchist, and Marxist thought, including Bebel, Kropotkin, Bernstein, Kautsky, Bukharin, Kawakami Hajime 河上肇, and Sano Manabu. His engagement was eclectic rather than doctrinaire: he remained wary of reducing human suffering to economics alone even as materialist analysis increasingly persuaded him that moral exhortation could not adequately address structural inequality. By September 1928 he could write that “the more I study, the more I feel the truth of Marxism.”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, III:186, 190 (March 1927), 253 (January 19, 1928), 280, 286–87 (May 1928), 317 (September 24, 1928), 321 (October 23, 1928).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; His growing critique of capitalism was accompanied by mounting dissatisfaction with established Buddhism and with the nationalist Nichirenism in which he had been formed. By 1930 he was moving decisively away from the religious and political framework of Honda Nisshō and the Tōitsudan, toward the nonsectarian and explicitly anti-capitalist “Revitalized Buddhism” that would provide the basis for his new movement.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Inagaki Masami (1974), &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, pp. 76–77; Seno&#039;o Girō, “Shinkō Bukkyō e no tenshin” 新興仏教への転身 [Conversion to Revitalized Buddhism] (1931), in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039;, 260–301.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On April 5, 1931, Seno’o and roughly two dozen associates founded the Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ([[Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]]) at a meeting held at Tokyo Imperial University, with uniformed police observing the proceedings.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, “Sengen” 宣言 [Declaration] and “Kōryō” 綱領 [Program] (1931), reprinted in Inagaki Masami, &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, 3–6; [founding-meeting source].&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; As chairman and principal intellectual and organizational leader, Seno’o oversaw the League’s rapid expansion over the following five years. Surviving records indicate that it established as many as twenty-six branches across twenty prefectures, although contemporary government agencies produced somewhat lower estimates.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ōtani Eiichi, “Nakajima Shige,” 6.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; The League published journals, pamphlets, and manifestos, held annual national conferences, and increasingly collaborated with labor, tenant, anti-discrimination, antiwar, and antifascist movements. Seno’o’s own political activities likewise extended beyond Buddhist circles. From April 1935 he served as editor and publisher of &#039;&#039;Rōdō zasshi&#039;&#039; 労働雑誌, a labor journal established with Katō Kanjū and Takano Minoru, and by 1936 he and the YLRB were actively promoting the Popular Front (&#039;&#039;jinmin sensen&#039;&#039; 人民戦線) as a means of bringing progressive Buddhists into broader cooperation with workers, farmers, socialists, and other antifascist forces.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Matsune Takashi (1975), &#039;&#039;Seno’o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039;, 76–77, 86–89; Seno’o Girō, “Jinmin sensen to Bukkyōto” 人民戦線と仏教徒 [The Popular Front and Buddhists], &#039;&#039;Kyōgaku Shinbun&#039;&#039;, July 7, 1936.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o&#039;s public activism ended abruptly when he was arrested on December 7, 1936, at the offices of &#039;&#039;Rōdō zasshi&#039;&#039;. Under the Peace Preservation Law 治安維持法, police and prosecutors built a case alleging that Seno&#039;o and the Youth League were working toward the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the emperor system, portraying him, in the language of the prosecution, as a communist “cloaked in the mantle of Buddhism.”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ogata Hiroshi, &#039;&#039;Bukkyō to shakai undō&#039;&#039;, [page for characterization to verify]; Matsune Takashi (1975), &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039;, 91–100.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; After five months of detention and interrogation, Seno&#039;o confessed and, in May 1937, underwent &#039;&#039;tenkō&#039;&#039; 転向 (political recantation), publicly repudiating his former political commitments and affirming loyalty to the emperor.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Matsune (1975), &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039;, 93–104.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; The League nevertheless attempted to continue without him, reorganizing its leadership and holding its seventh national congress on May 9, 1937, at which Hayashi Reihō became chairman and Aoki Sōei secretary-general.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Matsune (1975), &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039;, 96.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Meanwhile, the investigation widened as police assembled evidence from interrogation records, member statements, League publications, and other documents, which they interpreted as demonstrating the organization&#039;s revolutionary aims. In October 1937, more than two hundred people associated with the YLRB were detained in a nationwide roundup; the organization was effectively destroyed, and twenty-seven members were eventually prosecuted.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Tokkō gaiji geppō&#039;&#039;, October 1937; Ogata Hiroshi, &#039;&#039;Bukkyō to shakai undō&#039;&#039;, 380–86; Matsune (1975), &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039;, 103–8.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Seno&#039;o himself was sentenced in 1939 to five years&#039; imprisonment, reduced to three years on appeal in 1940, and was released early because of illness in 1942.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Matsune (1975), &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039;, 111–17.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Following his release from prison in 1942, Seno&#039;o largely withdrew from public political activity for the remainder of the war but gradually returned to Buddhist reform and left-wing activism after Japan&#039;s surrender. On July 7, 1946, he joined former YLRB colleagues, including Hayashi Reihō and Mibu Shōjun, in establishing the Bukkyō Shakaishugi Dōmei 仏教社会主義同盟 (Buddhist Socialist League), and the following year supported the locally based Shinano Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei 信濃仏教青年同盟 (Shinano Buddhist Youth League).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Mibu Shōjun, “Kaisetsu,” &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VI:533–35; &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VI:97 (March 16, 1947).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; In 1948 the Buddhist Socialist League was reorganized as the Bukkyō Shakai Dōmei 仏教社会同盟 (Buddhist Social League), with Seno&#039;o as chairman, and in April 1949 twenty-three progressive Buddhist organizations established the Zenkoku Bukkyō Kakushin Renmei 全国仏教革新連盟 (National Buddhist Reform Federation), again with Seno&#039;o as chairman.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VI:171 (April 29, 1948); Mibu Shōjun, “Kaisetsu,” &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VI:533–45; Yoshida Kyūichi (1966), “Seno&#039;o Girō to Bukkyō shakaishugi,” pp. 141–42.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; In December 1949 he joined the Japan Socialist Party 日本社会党, while peace activism became an increasingly important part of his work during the 1950s.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VI:282 (December 27–28, 1949), 287 (January 3, 1950), 289 (January 8, 1950).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; By 1958, however, he was criticizing what he regarded as the Socialist Party&#039;s political “ambiguity” and finding greater decisiveness in the Communists, even while retaining reservations about Communist political practice.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VII:276 (April 21, 1958).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; On January 1, 1960, he recorded that he had joined the Japan Communist Party 日本共産党 late the previous year, fulfilling what he called a “long-cherished desire.”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VII:391 (January 1, 1960).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; He also remained deeply troubled by his 1937 &#039;&#039;tenkō&#039;&#039; 転向, writing in 1957 of having “given in and converted” and condemning his own “weakness and compromise.”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039;, VII:231 (August 15, 1957).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Seno&#039;o died in 1961, at the age of seventy-one.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Ideas ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o&#039;s mature thought, elaborated most fully in &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 社会変革途上の新興仏教 (Revitalized Buddhism on the Road to Social Reform) (1933) and developed across numerous essays during the 1930s, represents one of the most sustained attempts by a modern Buddhist thinker to bring Buddhist thought and practice into constructive engagement with Marxist social analysis and revolutionary politics.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o Girō, &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 社会変革途上の新興仏教 [Revitalized Buddhism on the Road to Social Reform] (1933), reprinted in Inagaki Masami, ed., &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; (Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan, 1975), 325–88; Shields (2012), “A Blueprint for Buddhist Revolution,” 340–41.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Seno&#039;o accepted much of the Marxist critique of religion, including the charge that religion could function as an “opiate” by encouraging suffering people to depend upon supernatural powers or compensation in another world rather than confront the conditions producing suffering in this one. He argued, however, that such criticism did not apply to Buddhism properly understood. “Original Buddhism,” he maintained, rejected dependence upon supernatural beings and directed attention instead toward suffering and its causes within the conditions of human existence.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o, &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039;, 331, 334, 337; see also Seno&#039;o Girō, “Hanshūkyō undō hihan” 反宗教運動批判 [A Critique of the Anti-Religious Movement] (1931), in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039;, 302–15.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Śākyamuni Buddha, in Seno&#039;o&#039;s interpretation, had taught neither belief in a creator god nor dependence upon an eternal soul, while later Buddhists had transformed figures such as Amida and Dainichi into superhuman objects of reliance. Revitalized Buddhism therefore required both the recovery of Buddhism&#039;s non-theistic foundations and the repudiation of the “narcotic” role that Buddhism itself had come to play in society.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o, &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039;, 331–37.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Central to this project was Seno&#039;o&#039;s radical reinterpretation of the Three Jewels (&#039;&#039;sanbō&#039;&#039; 三宝). Buddha referred above all to the historical Śākyamuni, whom the YLRB revered as the “highest human personality” (&#039;&#039;jinrui no yūsuru saikō jinkaku&#039;&#039; 人類の有する最高人格)—the fullest realization of human possibility rather than a supernatural source of salvation. Dharma Seno&#039;o interpreted through interdependence, nonattachment, and no-self, developing the latter into an ethic of “selfless love” (&#039;&#039;muga-ai&#039;&#039; 無我愛) to be realized through practice. Sangha, meanwhile, no longer referred primarily to the historical monastic community but became the model for a communal society (&#039;&#039;kyōdō shakai&#039;&#039; 共同社会) organized around equality, cooperation, and freedom from exploitation.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, “Sengen” 宣言 [Declaration] and “Kōryō” 綱領 [Program] (1931), reprinted in Inagaki Masami, &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, 3–6; Seno&#039;o Girō, &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 社会変革途上の新興仏教 [Revitalized Buddhism on the Road to Social Reform] (1933), in Inagaki Masami, ed., &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; (Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan, 1975), 363–67; Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, 217–19.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Buddhist liberation thereby acquired an explicitly social dimension. No-self was not merely a doctrine concerning personal identity but an ethical practice through which attachment to the isolated self gave way to action on behalf of others; liberation from such attachment could not be complete while the social relations in which human beings lived remained structured by exploitation.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o, &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039;, [page to verify].&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o nevertheless insisted that structural transformation alone could not overcome the sources of suffering and exploitation. Capitalism had to be transformed, but changing economic institutions would not by itself overcome the egoism and attachment that helped reproduce relations of domination. Social reconstruction therefore had to proceed together with the ethical transformation of persons through the “practice of selfless love” (&#039;&#039;muga-ai no jissen&#039;&#039; 無我愛の実践).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o Girō, &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 社会変革途上の新興仏教 [Revitalized Buddhism on the Road to Social Reform] (1933), in Inagaki Masami, ed., &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; (Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan, 1975), 367; Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, 219–20.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
At the same time, Seno&#039;o sharply criticized Buddhist doctrines when they served to legitimate existing inequalities. Although Buddhism professed the equality of human beings, he argued, historically it had disregarded the reality of class inequality in favor of an abstract equality expressed in the Mahāyāna formula “differentiation is precisely equality” (&#039;&#039;sabetsu soku byōdō&#039;&#039; 差別即平等). Against such metaphysical reconciliation, Seno&#039;o insisted that Buddhism confront the concrete social and economic inequalities of the present.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o Girō, “Shinkō Bukkyō e no tenshin” 新興仏教への転身 [Conversion to Revitalized Buddhism] (1931), in Inagaki, ed., &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039;, 275.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; In this respect, his critique strikingly prefigures aspects of the later criticism of &#039;&#039;hongaku&#039;&#039; 本覚 (original enlightenment) thought associated with the Critical Buddhist movement (&#039;&#039;Hihan Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 批判仏教).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Shields (2012), “A Blueprint for Buddhist Revolution,” 341; Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, 219.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Complementing this critique was Seno&#039;o&#039;s emphasis on &#039;&#039;hansei&#039;&#039; 反省 (self-reflection or critical self-examination). In his 1924 reinterpretation of Nichiren&#039;s &#039;&#039;Risshō Ankokuron&#039;&#039; 立正安国論, Seno&#039;o redirected a text frequently appropriated for nationalist purposes toward a demand for critical self-examination: before condemning other nations or peoples, Japan had to confront the injustices within its own society, including discrimination against Chinese, Koreans, &#039;&#039;burakumin&#039;&#039;, and workers.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o Girō, “Risshō ankoku no gendaiteki igi” 立正安国の現代的意義 [The Contemporary Significance of Establishing the Right and Pacifying the Nation], &#039;&#039;Wakōdō&#039;&#039; 5, no. 10 (October 1924), reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039;, 82–85; Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, 224.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o&#039;s “social Buddhism” (&#039;&#039;shakaiteki Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 社会的仏教) can also be situated within a wider interwar current of socially engaged religion. Ōtani Eiichi has drawn particular attention to its parallels with the “social Christianity” (&#039;&#039;shakaiteki Kirisutokyō&#039;&#039; 社会的基督教) of the sociologist and Congregationalist theologian Nakajima Shigeru 中島重. Both criticized forms of religion centered narrowly on individual salvation and sought instead to connect personal transformation with the reconstruction of society. Their respective this-worldly ideals—the Buddha-land and the Kingdom of God—were conceived as cooperative societies to be realized through concrete social and political engagement rather than relegated to another world.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ōtani Eiichi 大谷栄一, “Nakajima Shigeru no shakaiteki Kirisutokyō to Seno&#039;o Girō no shakaiteki Bukkyō” 中島重の社会的基督教と妹尾義郎の社会的仏教 [Nakajima Shigeru&#039;s Social Christianity and Seno&#039;o Girō&#039;s Social Buddhism], &#039;&#039;Shūkyō kenkyū&#039;&#039; 宗教研究 82, no. 4 (2009): 963–65.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o&#039;s ethic of selfless love was accompanied, particularly by the middle of the 1930s, by an increasingly explicit commitment to nonviolence. His earlier rhetoric, however, could be more ambiguous. During the early years of the YLRB he occasionally invoked the Buddhist expression issetsu tashō 一殺多生 (“kill one to save the many”) in discussing revolutionary social change—a phrase also employed in contemporary radical Buddhist circles to legitimate political violence. Seno&#039;o&#039;s precise meaning in these passages requires caution, particularly because statements made in the early 1930s were subsequently reconstructed through police interrogation and prosecution.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt; Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, 235–36.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; By the middle of the decade, however, Seno&#039;o was articulating an increasingly explicit rejection of political violence. During the investigation of the YLRB, the authorities nevertheless treated his earlier revolutionary language as evidence of the movement&#039;s allegedly violent character, an interpretation Seno&#039;o disputed.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Shihōshō Keijikyoku 司法省刑事局, &#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei no kessei keika to sono honshitsu&#039;&#039; 新興仏教青年同盟の結成経過とその本質 [The Formation and Essential Character of the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism], &#039;&#039;Shisō shiryō panfuretto&#039;&#039;, no. 3 (Tokyo: Shihōshō Keijikyoku, April 1938), cited in Inagaki Masami, &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, 200; Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, 235–36.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o&#039;s radical Buddhism also became increasingly internationalist and anti-imperialist. His shock at the treatment of Koreans and political radicals following the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 contributed to his growing rejection of ethnic and national exclusivism. By the founding of the YLRB in 1931, international conflict, discrimination against burakumin 部落民, and the status of women had become explicit concerns of his program of Buddhist social reform, while during the 1930s Seno&#039;o increasingly connected war, fascism, and imperialism with capitalism and other structures of domination.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, “Sengen” 宣言 [Declaration] (1931), reprinted in Inagaki Masami, &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, 3–6; Shields (2017), &#039;&#039;Against Harmony&#039;&#039;, 218.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; His rejection of boundaries extended to Buddhism itself. Seeking to overcome inherited sectarian divisions, Seno&#039;o adopted the invocation &#039;&#039;Namu Shakamuni Budaya&#039;&#039; 南無釈迦牟尼仏陀耶 (“Homage to Śākyamuni Buddha”) as an expression of common devotion to the historical Buddha and rejected the elevation of any single sectarian scripture as uniquely authoritative. Revitalized Buddhism would instead seek a common Buddhist foundation beyond the competing institutions and doctrinal allegiances of the established sects.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Seno&#039;o Girō, “Shinkō Bukkyō e no tenshin” 新興仏教への転身 [Conversion to Revitalized Buddhism] (1931), in Inagaki Masami, ed., &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; (Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan, 1975), 276–77; Lai, Whalen (1984), “Seno&#039;o Girō and the Dilemma of Modern Buddhism: Leftist Prophet of the Lotus Sutra,” &#039;&#039;Japanese Journal of Religious Studies&#039;&#039; 11, no. 1: 7–42, 33–35.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== The Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism ===&lt;br /&gt;
{{Main|Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno&#039;o&#039;s ideas found their fullest institutional expression in the Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei 新興仏教青年同盟 (Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism), which he founded in April 1931 and led until his arrest in December 1936. The League sought to translate Revitalized Buddhism into social and political practice. Surviving records indicate that it established as many as twenty-six branches across twenty prefectures, although contemporary government agencies produced somewhat lower estimates. Through its publications, annual conferences, lectures, and local branches, the YLRB pursued a program combining Buddhist reform with opposition to capitalism, war, discrimination, and, increasingly, fascism and imperialism.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, “Sengen” 宣言 [Declaration] and “Kōryō” 綱領 [Program] (1931), reprinted in Inagaki Masami, &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e&#039;&#039;, 3–6; [source for twenty-six branches/twenty prefectures]; [source for contemporary government estimates].&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; During the mid-1930s, Seno&#039;o and other League members became increasingly involved in labor, socialist, antifascist, and Popular Front activities. The League attempted to continue after Seno&#039;o&#039;s arrest and subsequent &#039;&#039;tenkō&#039;&#039; 転向 (political recantation), reorganizing its leadership and holding its seventh national congress on May 9, 1937. In October, however, more than two hundred people associated with the YLRB were detained in a nationwide roundup, effectively destroying the organization; twenty-seven members were eventually prosecuted.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Matsune Takashi (1975), &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039;, 96, 103–8; &#039;&#039;Tokkō gaiji geppō&#039;&#039; 特高外事月報, October 1937; Ogata Hiroshi, &#039;&#039;Bukkyō to shakai undō: Shu to shite Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ni tsuite&#039;&#039;, 380–86.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Writings ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1921). &#039;&#039;Hikari o shitauite&#039;&#039; 光を慕ひて [Seeking the Light]. {{annotation|An early autobiographical testimony of faith, recounting Seno&#039;o&#039;s childhood illness, his discovery of the Lotus Sutra, and his developing commitment to Nichiren Buddhism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1923). “Hei&#039;i naru Nichirenshugi” 平易なる日蓮主義 [Nichirenism, Plain and Simple]. &#039;&#039;Wakōdō&#039;&#039; 若人 4, nos. 7–8 (July–August 1923). Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 31–49. {{annotation|A three-part dialogue among a Nichirenist spokesman, a student, and a businessman, reflecting Seno&#039;o&#039;s still-nationalist and class-conciliatory position during his years with the Dainippon Nichirenshugi Seinendan.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1924). “Risshō ankoku no gendaiteki igi” 立正安国の現代的意義 [The Contemporary Significance of Establishing the Right and Pacifying the Nation]. &#039;&#039;Wakōdō&#039;&#039; 若人 5, no. 10 (October 1924). Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 82–85. {{annotation|An early reinterpretation of Nichiren&#039;s &#039;&#039;Risshō Ankokuron&#039;&#039; that emphasizes critical self-examination and increasingly questions forms of state-centered Nichirenism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1927). “Honzonron hihan” 本尊論批判 [Critique of Theories of the Object of Worship]. &#039;&#039;Wakōdō&#039;&#039; 若人 8, nos. 3–9 (March–September 1927). Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 86–196. {{annotation|A major extended work from Seno&#039;o&#039;s later Nichirenist period, critically examining competing understandings of the Buddhist object of worship.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1928). “Shōwa Ishin” 昭和維新 [Shōwa Restoration]. &#039;&#039;Wakōdō&#039;&#039; 若人 9, no. 1 (January 1928). Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 221–41. {{annotation|An essay that moves from a celebration of benevolent imperial rule to an indictment of the zaibatsu and parliamentary politicians as the true “gravediggers” of Japan, marking Seno&#039;o&#039;s growing economic radicalism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1928). “Kyōsantō jiken ni chokumen shite Ninnō gokoku-kyō no issetsu o yomu” &#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG28KJC|共産党事件に直面して仁王護国経の一節を読む]]&#039;&#039;&#039; [&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG28KJC-T|Confronting the Communist Party Incident: Reading a Passage from the Sutra for Humane Kings Protecting the Nation]]&#039;&#039;&#039;]. &#039;&#039;Wakōdō&#039;&#039; 若人 9, no. 6 (June 1928). Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 242–54. {{annotation|Written in response to the 1928 Communist Party Incident and reflecting Seno&#039;o&#039;s growing engagement with the relationship among Buddhism, political repression, and radical social movements.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism (Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei 新興仏教青年同盟) (1931). &#039;&#039;&#039;[[SD31FPM-T|Founding proclamation and mission statement]]&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SD31FPM|宣言・綱領]]&#039;&#039;&#039;). {{annotation|The League&#039;s founding proclamation and mission statement, drafted by Seno&#039;o and unanimously adopted at its founding meeting on April 5, 1931. The proclamation was subsequently expanded and revised.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1931). “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ni tsuite” &#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG31SBT|新興佛教青年同盟について]]&#039;&#039;&#039; [&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG31SBT-T|On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]]&#039;&#039;&#039;]. &#039;&#039;Chūgai Nippō&#039;&#039; 中外日報 (April 7, 1931). {{annotation|Published two days after the founding of the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, this article explains Seno&#039;o&#039;s break with organized Nichirenism, reproduces the League&#039;s three-point platform, and argues that genuine Buddhist renewal requires both trans-sectarian unity and the transformation of capitalist economic structures.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1931). “Shinkō Bukkyō undō no shinro: Issei ni Butsuda no dai-sanka ni kaere” &#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG31SBU|新興佛教運動の進路――一斉に佛陀の大傘下に帰れ――]]&#039;&#039;&#039; [&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG31SBU-T|The Course of the Revitalized Buddhism Movement: Return Together beneath the Buddha’s Great Banner!]]&#039;&#039;&#039;]. &#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō no hata no moto ni&#039;&#039; 新興佛教の旗の下に (April 1931). Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 255–59. {{annotation|An early programmatic statement of Revitalized Buddhism calling on Buddhists to transcend inherited sectarian divisions and return collectively to the historical Buddha Śākyamuni.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1931). “Shinkō Bukkyō e no tenshin” &#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG31SBE|新興佛教への転身]]&#039;&#039;&#039; [&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG31SBE-T|Conversion to Revitalized Buddhism]]&#039;&#039;&#039;]. Serialized in &#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō no hata no moto ni&#039;&#039; 新興佛教の旗の下に, beginning April 1931. Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 260–301. {{annotation|Seno&#039;o&#039;s extended account of his turn toward Revitalized Buddhism, rejecting established sectarian institutions and connecting Buddhist renewal with criticism of the capitalist economic order.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1931). “Hanshūkyō undō hihan” &#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG31HSU|反宗教運動批判]]&#039;&#039;&#039; [&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG31HSH-T|A Critique of the Anti-Religious Movement]]&#039;&#039;&#039;]. &#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō no hata no moto ni&#039;&#039; 新興佛教の旗の下に (August 1931). Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 302–15. {{annotation|A response to contemporary anti-religious and Marxist critiques, distinguishing established religion from a this-worldly and socially engaged Buddhism while taking seriously materialist criticism of religious institutions.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1932). “Bukkyōgaku no saihihan” 仏教学の再批判 [A Re-Critique of Buddhist Studies]. Serialized in &#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 新興仏教, January–September 1932. {{annotation|A sustained reconsideration of Buddhist thought that was subsequently revised and expanded into Seno&#039;o&#039;s major theoretical work, &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039;.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1932). “Nōson no kyūhaku to nōson jiin no undō” &#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG32NNU|農村の窮迫と農村寺院の運動]]&#039;&#039;&#039; [&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG32NNU-T|Rural Distress and Rural Temple Activism]]&#039;&#039;&#039;]. &#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 新興仏教 (July 1932). Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 316–24. {{annotation|An analysis of rural poverty and the crisis confronting village temples, arguing that Buddhist institutions could not address rural suffering without confronting its underlying social and economic conditions.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1933). &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 社会変革途上の新興仏教 [&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG33SHS-T|Revitalized Buddhism on the Road to Social Reform]]&#039;&#039;&#039;]. Tokyo: Bukki-sha 仏旗社. Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集, 325–88. {{annotation|Seno&#039;o&#039;s central theoretical work, bringing Buddhist thought into sustained engagement with Marxist social analysis and setting out six “demands of the modern age” that a revitalized Buddhism must confront.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1934). “Bukkyō to heiwa undō” &#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG34BHU|仏教と平和運動]]&#039;&#039;&#039; [&#039;&#039;&#039;[[SG34BHU-T|Buddhism and the Peace Movement]]&#039;&#039;&#039;]. &#039;&#039;Kokumin Bukkyō Seiten&#039;&#039; 国民仏教聖典. {{annotation|An extended reflection presenting peace as a fundamental Buddhist commitment while confronting the relationship among social conflict, class struggle, and political violence.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1936). “Jinmin sensen to Bukkyōto” 人民戦線と仏教徒 [The Popular Front and Buddhists]. &#039;&#039;Kyōgaku Shinbun&#039;&#039; 教学新聞 (July 7, 1936). {{annotation|A late pre-arrest statement addressing the relationship between Buddhist commitment and the emerging Popular Front movement.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1936). “Sekai heiwa no tettei e” 世界平和の徹底へ [Toward the Thorough Realization of World Peace]. &#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō Shinbun&#039;&#039; 新興仏教新聞 (December 1936). {{annotation|A late statement of Seno&#039;o&#039;s commitment to world peace, published in the final period of the Youth League&#039;s activity.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Tetsutarō 妹尾鉄太郎 and Inagaki Masami 稲垣真美, eds. (1974–75). &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō nikki&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎日記 [The Diary of Seno&#039;o Girō]. 7 vols. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai. {{annotation|Seno&#039;o&#039;s personal diaries, covering more than five decades from 1909 to 1961 and providing the most important primary source for reconstructing his religious, political, and personal development. The diaries are especially valuable for tracing changes in his Nichiren Buddhist faith, his political radicalization and 1937 &#039;&#039;tenkō&#039;&#039;, and his postwar return to socialist, peace, and Communist activism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Seno&#039;o Girō 妹尾義郎. Inagaki Masami 稲垣真美, ed. (1975). &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō shūkyō ronshū&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎宗教論集 [Collected Religious Writings of Seno&#039;o Girō]. Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan (Daizō Sensho 17). {{annotation|The principal posthumous collection of Seno&#039;o&#039;s religious and political writings. It brings together his major published works from the pre-arrest period, although numerous shorter writings remain scattered across &#039;&#039;Wakōdō&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039;, the YLRB &#039;&#039;Geppō&#039;&#039;, and other periodicals.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contemporary and Participant Sources ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== Contemporary Documents ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Kankichi Saiji 神吉斎爾 (1932 or 1933). “Shinkō Bukkyō no gokai o toku” 新興仏教の誤解をとく [Clearing Up Misunderstandings of Revitalized Buddhism]. Tokyo: Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei. {{annotation|A contemporary League publication responding to criticism and misunderstanding of Revitalized Buddhism, useful for reconstructing how the movement represented and defended itself publicly.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Naimushō Keihokyoku Hoanka 内務省警保局保安課. &#039;&#039;Tokkō gaiji geppō&#039;&#039; 特高外事月報 [Special Higher Police and Foreign Affairs Monthly Report]. Tokyo: Naimushō Keihokyoku Hoanka. Issues cited: June 1936 and October 1937. {{annotation|Contemporary Special Higher Police reports documenting official surveillance of Seno&#039;o, the Youth League, and related political activity immediately before and during the repression of 1936–37.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Naimushō Keihokyoku Hoanka 内務省警保局保安課. &#039;&#039;Tokkō geppō&#039;&#039; 特高月報 [Special Higher Police Monthly Report]. Tokyo: Naimushō Keihokyoku Hoanka. Issue cited: November 1936. {{annotation|A contemporary Special Higher Police report documenting official surveillance of Seno&#039;o, the Youth League, and related political activity shortly before Seno&#039;o&#039;s arrest.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Ogata Hiroshi 緒方浩 (1939). &#039;&#039;Bukkyō to shakai undō: Shu to shite Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ni tsuite&#039;&#039; 仏教と社会運動――主として新興仏教青年同盟に就いて [Buddhism and Social Movements: Mainly Concerning the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]. &#039;&#039;Shisō kenkyū shiryō tokushū&#039;&#039; 思想研究資料特輯, no. 52. Tokyo: Shihōshō Keijikyoku. Reprinted in &#039;&#039;Shakai mondai shiryō sōsho&#039;&#039; 社会問題資料叢書, ser. 1. Kyoto: Tōyō Bunka-sha, 1972. {{annotation|An extensive Justice Ministry study of Seno&#039;o and the Youth League based on materials assembled during the investigation and prosecution. An indispensable source for the state&#039;s case against the movement, but one whose characterization of the League as revolutionary and subversive must be read in the context of its institutional and prosecutorial origins.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Shihōshō Keijikyoku 司法省刑事局 (1938). “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei no kessei keika to sono honshitsu” 新興仏教青年同盟の結成経過とその本質 [The Formation and Essential Character of the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]. &#039;&#039;Shisō shiryō panfuretto&#039;&#039; 思想資料パンフレット, no. 3. Tokyo: Shihōshō Keijikyoku. {{annotation|A Justice Ministry account of the League produced during the repression, documenting the state&#039;s reconstruction of its formation, ideology, organization, and political activities. As a prosecutorial source, its descriptions and interpretations require comparison with League documents, diaries, and participant testimony.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== Participant and Family Retrospectives ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Hayashi Reihō 林霊法 (1976). &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei: Shakaishugi to Bukkyō no tachiba&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎と新興仏教青年同盟――社会主義と仏教の立場 [Seno&#039;o Girō and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism: The Standpoint of Socialism and Buddhism]. Tokyo: Hyakkaen. {{annotation|A retrospective account by a leading Youth League activist who became acting chairman after Seno&#039;o&#039;s arrest, providing an important participant perspective on the League&#039;s relationship between Buddhism and socialism and on its organizational history.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Mibu Shōjun 壬生照順 (1978). “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei jiken” 新興仏教青年同盟事件 [The Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism Incident]. In &#039;&#039;Shūkyō dan&#039;atsu o kataru&#039;&#039; 宗教弾圧を語る [Speaking about Religious Repression], edited by Koike Kenji 小池健治, Nishikawa Shigenori 西川重則, and Murakami Shigeyoshi 村上重良. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. {{annotation|A participant&#039;s retrospective account of the repression of the Youth League, valuable particularly for comparison with contemporary police and Justice Ministry records.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Mibu Shōjun 壬生照順 and Nakano Kyōtoku 中濃教篤 (1959). &#039;&#039;Shinkōsha no teikō: Shūkyō heiwa undō no rekishi&#039;&#039; 信仰者の抵抗――宗教平和運動の歴史 [Resistance of Believers: A History of the Religious Peace Movement]. Tokyo: Seishin Shobō. {{annotation|An early postwar account by figures closely connected with the history of progressive Buddhist and religious peace movements, providing an important participant perspective on Buddhist resistance, the Youth League, and the prewar repression.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō Nikki Geppō&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎日記月報 (nos. 1–7, June 1974–January 1975). {{annotation|Supplements issued with the publication of Seno&#039;o&#039;s diaries, containing reminiscences and essays by family members, former Youth League activists, and other associates. Contributors include Matsune Takashi, Eguchi Nobuyori, Matsuura Takeo, Oda Ritsuko, Seno&#039;o Tetsutarō, Takada Shigeyoshi, and others. The supplements provide valuable retrospective testimony on Seno&#039;o&#039;s family life, religious development, League activism, tenant disputes, arrest, and &#039;&#039;tenkō&#039;&#039;.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Secondary Literature in English ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Brons, Lajos (2022). &#039;&#039;A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism&#039;&#039;. punctum books, 73–89. {{annotation|An open-access philosophical study situating Seno&#039;o and the Youth League within a comparative genealogy of “radical Buddhism” alongside [[Uchiyama Gudo|Uchiyama Gudō]], [[Lin Qiuwu]], and other modern Buddhist radicals. Brons emphasizes the philosophical and utopian dimensions of Seno&#039;o&#039;s attempt to combine Buddhism with socialist and Marxist thought.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Lai, Whalen (1984). “Seno&#039;o Girō and the Dilemma of Modern Buddhism: Leftist Prophet of the Lotus Sutra.” &#039;&#039;Japanese Journal of Religious Studies&#039;&#039; 11, no. 1: 7–42. {{annotation|The first substantial English-language study devoted to Seno&#039;o, emphasizing his intellectual formation within Nichiren and Tendai Buddhist thought and interpreting his career, in dialogue with Robert Bellah, through the category of Buddhist “prophetic individualism.”}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Large, Stephen S. (1987). “Buddhism, Socialism, and Protest in Prewar Japan: The Career of Seno&#039;o Girō.” &#039;&#039;Modern Asian Studies&#039;&#039; 21, no. 1: 153–71. {{annotation|An early English-language political biography drawing extensively on Seno&#039;o&#039;s published diaries and tracing his development from Nichirenist patriotism through socialist activism, the Youth League, arrest, and political recantation.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Shields, James Mark (2012). “A Blueprint for Buddhist Revolution: The Radical Buddhism of Seno&#039;o Girō (1889–1961) and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism.” &#039;&#039;Japanese Journal of Religious Studies&#039;&#039; 39, no. 2: 333–51. {{annotation|An open-access analysis centered on &#039;&#039;Shakai henkaku tojō no shinkō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 社会変革途上の新興仏教, examining Seno&#039;o&#039;s effort to bring Buddhist thought into constructive engagement with Marxist social analysis and revolutionary politics.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Shields, James Mark (2014). “Seno&#039;o Giro: Life and Thought of a Radical Buddhist.” In Todd Lewis, ed., &#039;&#039;Buddhists: Understanding Buddhism Through the Lives of Practitioners&#039;&#039;, 280–88. Wiley-Blackwell. {{annotation|A concise biographical introduction to Seno&#039;o&#039;s life and thought written for a general and classroom readership.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Shields, James Mark (2017). &#039;&#039;Against Harmony: Progressive and Radical Buddhism in Modern Japan&#039;&#039;. New York: Oxford University Press, ch. 6. {{annotation|A study of Seno&#039;o and the Youth League within the broader development of progressive and radical Buddhism in modern Japan, emphasizing Seno&#039;o&#039;s transformation of Nichiren Buddhist concepts through his engagement with socialism, Marxism, and revolutionary politics.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Secondary Literature in Japanese ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Inagaki Masami 稲垣真美 (1974). &#039;&#039;Budda o seoite gaitō e: Seno&#039;o Girō to Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei&#039;&#039; 仏陀を背負いて街頭へ――妹尾義郎と新興仏教青年同盟 [Taking the Buddha on Their Backs and Going to the Streets: Seno&#039;o Girō and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. {{annotation|The foundational Japanese-language biography of Seno&#039;o and history of the Youth League. Written by the scholar who subsequently edited Seno&#039;o&#039;s collected religious writings and co-edited his diaries, it established much of the biographical and documentary framework used by later scholarship, although some of its interpretations—particularly of the prosecution of the League—have been qualified by subsequent researchers.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Matsune Takashi 松根鷹 (1975). &#039;&#039;Seno&#039;o Girō to “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei”&#039;&#039; 妹尾義郎と「新興仏教青年同盟」 [Seno&#039;o Girō and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]. Tokyo: San&#039;ichi Shobō. {{annotation|An important critical reconstruction of the Youth League that supplements and at points challenges Inagaki&#039;s account, drawing particular attention to internal organizational dynamics, participant testimony, and the circumstances surrounding the repression and dissolution of the movement.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Miwa Zehō 三輪是法 (2011). “Seno&#039;o Girō no Nichiren shinkō: Taishō gonen kara shichinen no nikki o tegakari ni” 妹尾義郎の日蓮信仰――大正五年から七年の日記を手がかりに [Seno&#039;o Girō&#039;s Nichiren Faith: Using His Diaries from 1916 to 1918 as a Guide]. &#039;&#039;Tōyō bunka kenkyūjo shohō&#039;&#039; 東洋文化研究所所報 15: 1–17. {{annotation|A close diary-based reconstruction of Seno&#039;o&#039;s religious crisis between 1916 and 1918—including his mother&#039;s death, his brother&#039;s blindness, and his own illness—and his path toward Honda Nisshō and the Tōitsudan, before his later turn toward socialism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Nakano Kyōtoku 中濃教篤 (1969). “‘Seno&#039;o Girō’ nōto” 「妹尾義郎」ノート [Notes on Seno&#039;o Girō]. &#039;&#039;Gendai shūkyō kenkyūjo shohō&#039;&#039; 現代宗教研究所所報 3: 59–71. {{annotation|An early study of Seno&#039;o by a scholar who subsequently wrote extensively on the intellectual history of the Youth League and modern Nichiren Buddhism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Ōtani Eiichi 大谷栄一 (2001). &#039;&#039;Kindai Nihon no Nichirenshugi undō&#039;&#039; 近代日本の日蓮主義運動 [The Nichirenist Movement of Modern Japan]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. {{annotation|A major history of modern Nichirenism that provides the broader religious and institutional setting for Seno&#039;o&#039;s formation, including the movements associated with Tanaka Chigaku and Honda Nisshō.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Ōtani Eiichi 大谷栄一 (2008). “Hansen, han-fashizumu no Bukkyō shakai undō: Seno&#039;o Girō to Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei” 反戦・反ファシズムの仏教社会運動――妹尾義郎と新興仏教青年同盟 [An Antiwar, Anti-Fascist Buddhist Social Movement: Seno&#039;o Girō and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]. In &#039;&#039;Kokka to shūkyō: Shūkyō kara miru kingendai Nihon&#039;&#039; 国家と宗教――宗教から見る近現代日本, vol. 1, edited by Arai Ken and Tanaka Shigeru, 447–81. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. {{annotation|A substantial study of Seno&#039;o and the Youth League as an antiwar and anti-fascist Buddhist social movement, emphasizing the relationship between religious commitments, organization, and political participation.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Ōtani Eiichi 大谷栄一 (2009). “Nakajima Shige no shakaiteki Kirisutokyō to Seno&#039;o Girō no shakaiteki Bukkyō” 中島重の社会的基督教と妹尾義郎の社会的仏教 [Nakajima Shigeru&#039;s Social Christianity and Seno&#039;o Girō&#039;s Social Buddhism]. &#039;&#039;Shūkyō kenkyū&#039;&#039; 宗教研究 82, no. 4: 963–65. {{annotation|A concise comparative study identifying parallels between Seno&#039;o&#039;s “social Buddhism” and Nakajima Shigeru&#039;s “social Christianity,” including their critiques of religious individualism and their this-worldly and cooperative social ideals.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Ōtani Eiichi 大谷栄一 (2014). “Nichirenshugi kara Bukkyō shakaishugi e: Seno&#039;o Girō no shisō to undō” 日蓮主義から仏教社会主義へ――妹尾義郎の思想と運動 [From Nichirenism to Buddhist Socialism: Seno&#039;o Girō&#039;s Thought and Movement]. In &#039;&#039;Shirīzu Nichiren 4: Kingendai no hokke undō to zaike kyōdan&#039;&#039; シリーズ日蓮4――近現代の法華運動と在家教団, edited by Nishiyama Shigeru, 196–211. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. {{annotation|A synthetic account of Seno&#039;o&#039;s intellectual and organizational development from Nichirenism to Buddhist socialism, emphasizing the relationship between changes in his religious thought and his social activism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Ōtani Eiichi 大谷栄一 (2015). “Seno&#039;o Girō to Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei no hansen, heiwa undō” 妹尾義郎と新興仏教青年同盟の反戦・平和運動 [Seno&#039;o Girō and the Youth League&#039;s Antiwar and Peace Movement]. In &#039;&#039;Ajia no shakai sanka Bukkyō: Seikyō kankei no shiza&#039;&#039; アジアの社会参加仏教――政教関係の視座, edited by Sakurai Yoshihide, Togawa Masahiko, and Yano Hidetake, 73–104. Sapporo: Hokkaidō University Press. {{annotation|A detailed study of the antiwar and peace dimensions of Seno&#039;o&#039;s thought and the Youth League&#039;s activism, placing them within the wider history of socially engaged Buddhism in modern Asia.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Rizaki Kei 理崎啓 (2016). &#039;&#039;Ōyoso no hibi: Seno&#039;o Girō to shūkyō dan&#039;atsu&#039;&#039; 大凡の日々――妹尾義郎と宗教弾圧 [Ordinary Days: Seno&#039;o Girō and Religious Persecution]. Tetsuzandō. {{annotation|A diary-based study concentrating on Seno&#039;o&#039;s experience of repression, his 1937 &#039;&#039;tenkō&#039;&#039;, and his subsequent religious and political life, including his postwar peace activism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Shimane Kiyoshi しまねきよし (1978). “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei: Seno&#039;o Girō” 新興仏教青年同盟――妹尾義郎 [The Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism: Seno&#039;o Girō]. In &#039;&#039;Tenkō: Kyōdō kenkyū, kaitei zōho-ban&#039;&#039; 転向――共同研究・改訂増補版, edited by Shisō no Kagaku Kenkyūkai 思想の科学研究会, 349–65. Tokyo: Heibonsha. {{annotation|A study placing Seno&#039;o and the Youth League within the broader history and problematics of political recantation (&#039;&#039;tenkō&#039;&#039;) in prewar Japan.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Yoshida Kyūichi 吉田久一 (1966). “Seno&#039;o Girō to Bukkyō shakaishugi” 妹尾義郎と仏教社会主義 [Seno&#039;o Girō and Buddhist Socialism]. &#039;&#039;Nihon rekishi&#039;&#039; 日本歴史 212: 139–42. {{annotation|An early scholarly treatment of Seno&#039;o centered on his attempt to formulate a distinctively Buddhist socialism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Yoshida Shizukuni 吉田静邦 (1979). “Seno&#039;o Girō no shisō to kōdō” 妹尾義郎の思想と行動 [Seno&#039;o Girō&#039;s Thought and Action]. &#039;&#039;Bukkyō keizai kenkyū&#039;&#039; 仏教経済研究 8: 95–111. {{annotation|A study of the relationship between Seno&#039;o&#039;s Buddhist social thought and his practical political and economic activism.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Yoshida Shizukuni 吉田静邦 (1985). “Fashizumu-ki no nōmin undō to Seno&#039;o Girō (1)” ファシズム期の農民運動と妹尾義郎（一） [Peasant Movements in the Fascist Period and Seno&#039;o Girō (1)]. &#039;&#039;Komazawa joshi tanki daigaku kenkyū kiyō&#039;&#039; 駒沢女子短期大学研究紀要 18: 25–38.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* Yoshida Shizukuni 吉田静邦 (1986). “Fashizumu-ki no nōmin undō to Seno&#039;o Girō (2)” ファシズム期の農民運動と妹尾義郎（二） [Peasant Movements in the Fascist Period and Seno&#039;o Girō (2)]. &#039;&#039;Komazawa joshi tanki daigaku kenkyū kiyō&#039;&#039; 駒沢女子短期大学研究紀要 19: 27–37. {{annotation|Together, Yoshida&#039;s two-part study examines Seno&#039;o&#039;s engagement with agrarian and tenant-farmer movements and situates his activism within the wider history of prewar peasant organization.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite This Article ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
First version, 28 July 2026. Main: Brons, Lajos. Other: (none).&lt;br /&gt;
Substantially revised and expanded, September 2026. Main: Shields, James Mark. Other: Brons, Lajos. --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Shields, James Mark, and Lajos Brons ({{REVISIONYEAR}}). &amp;quot;Seno&#039;o Girō&amp;quot;. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/Senoo_Giro&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[category:Senoo Giro]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[category:Shinko Bukkyo Seinen Domei]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[category:Biographies]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[category:Japan]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=SG31SBT-T&amp;diff=1264</id>
		<title>SG31SBT-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=SG31SBT-T&amp;diff=1264"/>
		<updated>2026-10-21T21:41:17Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Seno’o Girō, “On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism”}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Senoo Giro|Seno’o Girō]] 妹尾義郎 (1931). “On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism” (&#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ni tsuite&#039;&#039; 新興佛教青年同盟について). ([[SG31SBT|Japanese original here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{Textual Verification}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div style=&amp;quot;margin:0.2em 0 0.7em 0; line-height:1.8;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Translation|Translation]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
4. [[#Notes|Notes]]&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 1; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The times are in constant flux. Everything is subjected to merciless selection. Any claim to continued existence is possible only in a form suited to the times; what fails to take such a form will sooner or later be entered on the list of things destined to collapse. Thus, [the wise?]&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Corresponds to 賢明, an unusual grammatical subject in the provisional Japanese transcription.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; constantly look squarely at the direction of the age, never neglecting to [reckon fully?]&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The Japanese includes an undeciphered character or characters: 自らを[?]よく清算.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; with themselves and respond appropriately to the new era. This is not accommodation to the times but a principle of self-regulation belonging to a healthy living organism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 2; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
We have now dissolved the Greater Japan Nichirenist Youth League and formed the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism. We have also renamed the magazine Wakōdo (“Young People”)&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The source prints 若人; its reading and the exact subsequent magazine title should be verified bibliographically.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; “Under the Banner of Revitalizing Buddhism” and resolved to launch a new movement under the following platform.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 3; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
1. We venerate Śākyamuni Buddha as the highest personality known to humanity and, in accordance with the guiding principle of fellowship, faith, and love, seek to realize the establishment of a Buddha land.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
2. We regard all established Buddhist denominations as the vestigial remnants of institutions that have desecrated the Buddhist spirit. We reject them and seek a renewed proclamation of Buddhism appropriate to the present age.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
3. We regard the existing capitalist economic system as contrary to the Buddhist spirit and an obstacle to the welfare of the masses. We seek to reform it and bring about the society to come.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 4; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Looking back, our youth organization was founded in the autumn of 1919. In the following year we launched Wakōdo; over the ensuing thirteen years we published 127 issues. Of course, in the Buddhist world as a whole we were a Nichirenist organization hardly worth mentioning. Yet I believe that within Nichirenist circles we may have represented something epoch-making. At any rate, we fought single-mindedly, as a crystallization of sincere devotion and a great surge of ardor, taking the practice of Nichirenism as our watchword.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 5; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
But historical circumstances eventually compelled the self-reckoning and abrupt change of direction described above. Saint Nichiren taught: “In studying the Buddha Dharma, one must first learn to discern the times,”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The two Nichiren quotations retain Seno’o’s 1931 wording; compare, but do not silently replace it with, the transmitted Senji shō 選時抄.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; and “To say that one should preach the Dharma according to people’s capacities is a grave error.” What penetrating insight! He transcended the individually oriented, “medicine prescribed according to the illness” model of salvation and adopted methods of social salvation directed beyond the individual toward the objective conditions of society. Indeed, what would Saint Nichiren do were he to appear in our own day? And Shinran? Dōgen?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 6; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Self-reckoning demands the utmost accuracy. Its standard must be determined in the concrete realities of lived experience; otherwise it is a lie. Thus we came to recognize the error of conventional religious movements distorted by individualism and idealism, and became convinced that advancing religious activity through concrete social methods was precisely what an age-appropriate religious movement required. At the same time, we clearly recognized the worldwide historical necessity of a Buddhist revival through a movement uniting all Buddhists under the Buddha’s name, rather than remaining indefinitely attached to denominational forms.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 7; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
As for the three articles of the platform set out above, I believe that any Buddhist who rejects the notion of religion as a merely private affair, sees its value as a social movement, and advocates Buddhist unity as an important means of social concord would naturally support the first two articles when seeking to reform established denominations that have reached the limits of disorder. With regard to the third article, as our predecessors have repeatedly demonstrated in essays in Chūgai Nippō, social movements that leave untouched the transformation of the existing capitalist system—whose economic arrangements underlie the basic conditions of life—are, ultimately, merely palliative.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The Japanese compound 彌縫 is a consequential but provisional transcription requiring image confirmation.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; That hardly needs saying at this point. We are watching closely how this issue will be handled by the All-Japan Buddhist Youth Federation now being formed, and expect it to be the decisive test of that federation’s reason for existing.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 8; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
After all, is not the Buddhist spirit upheld by the thirteen denominations and fifty-six branches, in brief, a recognition of impermanence and an affirmation of a life grounded in faith and love? Indeed, love gives rise to right understanding and heeds humanity’s demand for mutual love rather than merely inherited forms. A movement to unite all Buddhists under the Buddha’s name should therefore be possible so long as even a trace of aspiration to the Way remains. And in the difficult undertaking of transforming capitalism, should not Buddhists above all be the ones to exert themselves to the utmost in the construction of a Buddha land?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The article announces the transition from the Greater Japan Nichirenist Youth League to the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, reproduces its three-point platform, and argues that Buddhist renewal requires trans-sectarian unity and transformation of capitalist economic structures.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Base text:&#039;&#039;&#039; Seno’o Girō 妹尾義郎, 「新興佛教青年同盟について」, &#039;&#039;Chūgai Nippō&#039;&#039; 中外日報, April 7, 1931. The present edition derives from the eight-part Japanese and English working master (v9, October 19, 2026), reportedly prepared using nine enlarged newspaper image crops. The introductory record calls the transcription “seven-paragraph,” but the supplied text identifies eight numbered units, with the three-point platform in §3. These are editorial divisions, not confirmed printed section headings.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Editorial status:&#039;&#039;&#039; Working transcription and translation, not yet a fully collated diplomatic edition. The historical orthography is preserved. The source file marks doubtful characters and punctuation, and those marks are retained. The available newspaper images do not permit reliable identification of the original page and column transitions. Consequently, page-navigation markers have not been inserted into this edition. Comparison witnesses include the separate 1931 YLRB founding declaration and January 1933 「われらの綱領」; neither may substitute for the 1931 newspaper text.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Priority checks:&#039;&#039;&#039; §1 波動/流動, 賢明 and [ ? ]; §2 「若人」 and renamed publication; §3 manifesto wording; §4 劃期的, 純眞, 大潮 and punctuation; §5 the two Nichiren quotations; §6 清算; §7 「中外」の論説, 彌縫 and 全日本佛青聯盟; §8 生活提唱 and 人類相愛の要求に聽く. All remain provisional pending final comparison with the newspaper image.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields (2026). Conjectural English readings are marked with square brackets.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotations: James Mark Shields.&lt;br /&gt;
Base: working transcription v9, 19 October 2026.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno’o Girō (1931). “On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism” (&#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ni tsuite&#039;&#039; 新興佛教青年同盟について). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/SG31SBT-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Senoo Giro]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English Translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=SG31SBT-T&amp;diff=1263</id>
		<title>SG31SBT-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=SG31SBT-T&amp;diff=1263"/>
		<updated>2026-10-21T21:34:58Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: Created page with &amp;quot;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Seno’o Girō, “On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism”}}  Seno’o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1931). “On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism” (&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ni tsuite&amp;#039;&amp;#039; 新興佛教青年同盟について). (Japanese original here.)  {{Textual Verification}}  __NOTOC__  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Contents&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  1. Translation 2. Source Note 3. #How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this T...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Seno’o Girō, “On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism”}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Senoo Giro|Seno’o Girō]] 妹尾義郎 (1931). “On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism” (&#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ni tsuite&#039;&#039; 新興佛教青年同盟について). ([[SG31SKB|Japanese original here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{Textual Verification}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Translation|Translation]]&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&lt;br /&gt;
4. [[#Notes|Notes]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 1; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The times are in constant flux. Everything is subjected to merciless selection. Any claim to continued existence is possible only in a form suited to the times; what fails to take such a form will sooner or later be entered on the list of things destined to collapse. Thus, [the wise?]&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Corresponds to 賢明, an unusual grammatical subject in the provisional Japanese transcription.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; constantly look squarely at the direction of the age, never neglecting to [reckon fully?]&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The Japanese includes an undeciphered character or characters: 自らを[?]よく清算.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; with themselves and respond appropriately to the new era. This is not accommodation to the times but a principle of self-regulation belonging to a healthy living organism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 2; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
We have now dissolved the Greater Japan Nichirenist Youth League and formed the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism. We have also renamed the magazine Wakōdo (“Young People”)&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The source prints 若人; its reading and the exact subsequent magazine title should be verified bibliographically.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; “Under the Banner of Revitalizing Buddhism” and resolved to launch a new movement under the following platform.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 3; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
1. We venerate Śākyamuni Buddha as the highest personality known to humanity and, in accordance with the guiding principle of fellowship, faith, and love, seek to realize the establishment of a Buddha land.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
2. We regard all established Buddhist denominations as the vestigial remnants of institutions that have desecrated the Buddhist spirit. We reject them and seek a renewed proclamation of Buddhism appropriate to the present age.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
3. We regard the existing capitalist economic system as contrary to the Buddhist spirit and an obstacle to the welfare of the masses. We seek to reform it and bring about the society to come.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 4; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Looking back, our youth organization was founded in the autumn of 1919. In the following year we launched Wakōdo; over the ensuing thirteen years we published 127 issues. Of course, in the Buddhist world as a whole we were a Nichirenist organization hardly worth mentioning. Yet I believe that within Nichirenist circles we may have represented something epoch-making. At any rate, we fought single-mindedly, as a crystallization of sincere devotion and a great surge of ardor, taking the practice of Nichirenism as our watchword.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 5; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
But historical circumstances eventually compelled the self-reckoning and abrupt change of direction described above. Saint Nichiren taught: “In studying the Buddha Dharma, one must first learn to discern the times,”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The two Nichiren quotations retain Seno’o’s 1931 wording; compare, but do not silently replace it with, the transmitted Senji shō 選時抄.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; and “To say that one should preach the Dharma according to people’s capacities is a grave error.” What penetrating insight! He transcended the individually oriented, “medicine prescribed according to the illness” model of salvation and adopted methods of social salvation directed beyond the individual toward the objective conditions of society. Indeed, what would Saint Nichiren do were he to appear in our own day? And Shinran? Dōgen?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 6; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Self-reckoning demands the utmost accuracy. Its standard must be determined in the concrete realities of lived experience; otherwise it is a lie. Thus we came to recognize the error of conventional religious movements distorted by individualism and idealism, and became convinced that advancing religious activity through concrete social methods was precisely what an age-appropriate religious movement required. At the same time, we clearly recognized the worldwide historical necessity of a Buddhist revival through a movement uniting all Buddhists under the Buddha’s name, rather than remaining indefinitely attached to denominational forms.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 7; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
As for the three articles of the platform set out above, I believe that any Buddhist who rejects the notion of religion as a merely private affair, sees its value as a social movement, and advocates Buddhist unity as an important means of social concord would naturally support the first two articles when seeking to reform established denominations that have reached the limits of disorder. With regard to the third article, as our predecessors have repeatedly demonstrated in essays in Chūgai Nippō, social movements that leave untouched the transformation of the existing capitalist system—whose economic arrangements underlie the basic conditions of life—are, ultimately, merely palliative.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The Japanese compound 彌縫 is a consequential but provisional transcription requiring image confirmation.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; That hardly needs saying at this point. We are watching closely how this issue will be handled by the All-Japan Buddhist Youth Federation now being formed, and expect it to be the decisive test of that federation’s reason for existing.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 8; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
After all, is not the Buddhist spirit upheld by the thirteen denominations and fifty-six branches, in brief, a recognition of impermanence and an affirmation of a life grounded in faith and love? Indeed, love gives rise to right understanding and heeds humanity’s demand for mutual love rather than merely inherited forms. A movement to unite all Buddhists under the Buddha’s name should therefore be possible so long as even a trace of aspiration to the Way remains. And in the difficult undertaking of transforming capitalism, should not Buddhists above all be the ones to exert themselves to the utmost in the construction of a Buddha land?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The article announces the transition from the Greater Japan Nichirenist Youth League to the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, reproduces its three-point platform, and argues that Buddhist renewal requires trans-sectarian unity and transformation of capitalist economic structures.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Base text:&#039;&#039;&#039; Seno’o Girō 妹尾義郎, 「新興佛教青年同盟について」, &#039;&#039;Chūgai Nippō&#039;&#039; 中外日報, April 7, 1931. The present edition derives from the eight-part Japanese and English working master (v9, October 19, 2026), reportedly prepared using nine enlarged newspaper image crops. The introductory record calls the transcription “seven-paragraph,” but the supplied text identifies eight numbered units, with the three-point platform in §3. These are editorial divisions, not confirmed printed section headings.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Editorial status:&#039;&#039;&#039; Working transcription and translation, not yet a fully collated diplomatic edition. The historical orthography is preserved. The source file marks doubtful characters and punctuation, and those marks are retained. The current master does not identify reliable printed page/column transition coordinates; accordingly, no {{tpage}} markers have been invented. Comparison witnesses include the separate 1931 YLRB founding declaration and January 1933 「われらの綱領」; neither may substitute for the 1931 newspaper text.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Priority checks:&#039;&#039;&#039; §1 波動/流動, 賢明 and [ ? ]; §2 「若人」 and renamed publication; §3 manifesto wording; §4 劃期的, 純眞, 大潮 and punctuation; §5 the two Nichiren quotations; §6 清算; §7 「中外」の論説, 彌縫 and 全日本佛青聯盟; §8 生活提唱 and 人類相愛の要求に聽く. All remain provisional pending final comparison with the newspaper image.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields (2026). Conjectural English readings are marked with square brackets.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotations: James Mark Shields.&lt;br /&gt;
Base: working transcription v9, 19 October 2026.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno’o Girō (1931). “On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism” (&#039;&#039;Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ni tsuite&#039;&#039; 新興佛教青年同盟について). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/SG31SKB-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Senoo Giro]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English Translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=SG31SBT&amp;diff=1262</id>
		<title>SG31SBT</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=SG31SBT&amp;diff=1262"/>
		<updated>2026-10-21T21:33:58Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:妹尾義郎、「新興佛教青年同盟について」}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Senoo Giro|妹尾義郎]] (1931). 「新興佛教青年同盟について」 [On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]. ([[SG31SBT-T|English translation here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{Textual Verification}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div style=&amp;quot;margin:0.2em 0 0.7em 0; line-height:1.8;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Text|Text]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
4. [[#Notes|Notes]]&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 1; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
時代は不斷に波動する。一切は容赦なく淘汰される。存在の主張は常に時代相應の形態に於てのみ可能であつて、でない存在は早晩、崩壞のリストに編入される。だから、賢明は常に時代の動向を正視し、自らを[?]よく清算&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;原紙判読保留。新聞紙面との再照合が必要。&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;して新時代に善處することを怠らない。それは時代への迎合ではない、よき生命體のもつ自律の法則である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 2; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
こんど、私どもは大日本日蓮主義青年團を解消して、「新興佛教青年同盟」を結成し、雜誌「若人」を「新興佛教の旗の下に」と改めて、左記の綱領をかゝげて新運動を開始することになつた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 3; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
一、我等は人類の有する最高人格、釈迦牟尼佛を鑽仰し、同胞信愛の教綱に則って佛國土建設の實現を期す。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
二、我等は全既成宗団は佛教精神を冒瀆したる残骸的存在なりと認め、之を排撃して佛教の新時代的宣揚を期す。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
三、我等は現資本主義経済組織は、佛教精神に背反して大衆生活の福利を阻害するものと認め、之を改革して当来社会の実現を期す。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 4; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
顧みれば、わが青年團が發團したのは大正八年の秋であつた。越えて九年「若人」を創刊し、爾來十三年、通算百二十七號の「若人」を發行した。もとより、全佛教界に對しては、語るに足らぬ一日蓮主義團體であつた〔？〕&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;句読点の校合未了。&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;。しかし、日蓮主義教界にとつては或は劃期的存在でありえたかと信じてをるが、ともあれ、私どもとしては、日蓮主義の實踐をモットーとした純眞の結晶、熱誠の大潮として、一途に戰ひつづけて來たものだ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 5; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
だが、時勢は遂に前記のごとき自己清算と急角度の轉向をなさしめた。日蓮聖人は教へられた、「佛法を學ばん法は必ず先づ時を習ふべし」「されば機に隨つて法を説くと申すは大なる僻見なり」と。何と徹した識見だ！！いはゆる個人的「應病與藥」式救濟運動を止揚して、超個人的に社會の客觀的情勢を對象としての社會的救濟方法を採用されてをられる。まことに「日蓮聖人が現代に出現されたら何をなさらうか？」親鸞は？道元は？&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 6; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
清算はつとめて正確を要する。正確の規準は現實の生活線上に決定されねばウソだ。かくして我等は從來のゆがめられたる個人的觀念的宗教運動の非を悟つて、社會的具體的方法による宗教運動への進出こそ時代相應の宗教運動であることを確信した。と同時に、いつまでも宗團的形態に固執すべきでなく、廣く佛陀のみ名による全佛教統一運動に、佛教復興の世界的必然性を明晰に認識した。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 7; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
前掲の三綱領について、一と二の綱領は、宗教を一私事と考へず、社會運動としての價値を思ひ、それの統一が社會和合の重要なる契機であらねばならぬことを倡する佛教徒にして、苟くも、亂脈の限りをつくした既成教團の改革を志す場合、恐らく何人もが取つて出るであらう態度だと信じる。また第三の綱領については、すでに「中外」の論説でも屢々諸先輩が論明されたごとく、生活の基礎條件である經濟機構について、現存資本主義の改造をぬきにした社會運動が、結局、彌縫のそれであることも、今更言ふまでもないことであらう。私どもは、今や結成される全日本佛青聯盟について、此の一點がいかに取り扱はれるかに、深甚ある注意を拂つてゐるが、この一點こそ該聯盟の成立價値を決定する重點だと期待してゐる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 8; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
けだし、十三宗五十六派が奉ずる佛教精神は、約言すれば、無常の認識と信愛の生活提唱ではあるまいか。まことに、愛は正しき認識を生み、傳統の形式以上に人類相愛の要求に聽くものだ。從つて、佛陀のみ名による佛教統一運動のごときは、一片の求道心だも存せば、何の障碍もなく實現されるはずのものであり、資本主義改造の難事業の如きも、佛教徒こそ、佛國土建設のために率先して死力を盡すべきではなかつたらうか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The article announces the transition from the Greater Japan Nichirenist Youth League to the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, reproduces its three-point platform, and argues that Buddhist renewal requires trans-sectarian unity and transformation of capitalist economic structures.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Base text:&#039;&#039;&#039; Seno’o Girō 妹尾義郎, 「新興佛教青年同盟について」, &#039;&#039;Chūgai Nippō&#039;&#039; 中外日報, April 7, 1931. The present edition derives from the eight-part Japanese and English working master (v9, October 19, 2026), reportedly prepared using nine enlarged newspaper image crops. The introductory record calls the transcription “seven-paragraph,” but the supplied text identifies eight numbered units, with the three-point platform in §3. These are editorial divisions, not confirmed printed section headings.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Editorial status:&#039;&#039;&#039; Working transcription and translation, not yet a fully collated diplomatic edition. The historical orthography is preserved. The source file marks doubtful characters and punctuation, and those marks are retained. The available newspaper images do not permit reliable identification of the original page and column transitions. Consequently, page-navigation markers have not been inserted into this edition. Comparison witnesses include the separate 1931 YLRB founding declaration and January 1933 「われらの綱領」; neither may substitute for the 1931 newspaper text.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Priority checks:&#039;&#039;&#039; §1 波動/流動, 賢明 and [ ? ]; §2 「若人」 and renamed publication; §3 manifesto wording; §4 劃期的, 純眞, 大潮 and punctuation; §5 the two Nichiren quotations; §6 清算; §7 「中外」の論説, 彌縫 and 全日本佛青聯盟; §8 生活提唱 and 人類相愛の要求に聽く. All remain provisional pending final comparison with the newspaper image.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Transcription and editorial review: James Mark Shields.&lt;br /&gt;
Newspaper basis: Chūgai Nippō, 7 April 1931; images not finally collated.&lt;br /&gt;
Working master: v9, 19 October 2026.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno’o Girō (1931). “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ni tsuite” 新興佛教青年同盟について [On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]. &#039;&#039;Chūgai Nippō&#039;&#039;, April 7. Transcribed and edited by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/SG31SBT&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Senoo Giro]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Original Texts in Japanese]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=SG31SBT&amp;diff=1261</id>
		<title>SG31SBT</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=SG31SBT&amp;diff=1261"/>
		<updated>2026-10-21T21:28:21Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: Created page with &amp;quot;{{DISPLAYTITLE:妹尾義郎、「新興佛教青年同盟について」}}  妹尾義郎 (1931). 「新興佛教青年同盟について」 [On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]. (English translation here.)  {{Textual Verification}}  __NOTOC__  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Contents&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  1. Text 2. Source Note 3. How to Cite this Text 4. Notes  == Text ==  &amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 1; paragraph nu...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:妹尾義郎、「新興佛教青年同盟について」}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Senoo Giro|妹尾義郎]] (1931). 「新興佛教青年同盟について」 [On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]. ([[SG31SKB-T|English translation here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{Textual Verification}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Text|Text]]&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&lt;br /&gt;
4. [[#Notes|Notes]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 1; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
時代は不斷に波動する。一切は容赦なく淘汰される。存在の主張は常に時代相應の形態に於てのみ可能であつて、でない存在は早晩、崩壞のリストに編入される。だから、賢明は常に時代の動向を正視し、自らを[?]よく清算&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;原紙判読保留。新聞紙面との再照合が必要。&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;して新時代に善處することを怠らない。それは時代への迎合ではない、よき生命體のもつ自律の法則である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 2; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
こんど、私どもは大日本日蓮主義青年團を解消して、「新興佛教青年同盟」を結成し、雜誌「若人」を「新興佛教の旗の下に」と改めて、左記の綱領をかゝげて新運動を開始することになつた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 3; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
一、我等は人類の有する最高人格、釈迦牟尼佛を鑽仰し、同胞信愛の教綱に則って佛國土建設の實現を期す。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
二、我等は全既成宗団は佛教精神を冒瀆したる残骸的存在なりと認め、之を排撃して佛教の新時代的宣揚を期す。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
三、我等は現資本主義経済組織は、佛教精神に背反して大衆生活の福利を阻害するものと認め、之を改革して当来社会の実現を期す。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 4; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
顧みれば、わが青年團が發團したのは大正八年の秋であつた。越えて九年「若人」を創刊し、爾來十三年、通算百二十七號の「若人」を發行した。もとより、全佛教界に對しては、語るに足らぬ一日蓮主義團體であつた〔？〕&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;句読点の校合未了。&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;。しかし、日蓮主義教界にとつては或は劃期的存在でありえたかと信じてをるが、ともあれ、私どもとしては、日蓮主義の實踐をモットーとした純眞の結晶、熱誠の大潮として、一途に戰ひつづけて來たものだ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 5; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
だが、時勢は遂に前記のごとき自己清算と急角度の轉向をなさしめた。日蓮聖人は教へられた、「佛法を學ばん法は必ず先づ時を習ふべし」「されば機に隨つて法を説くと申すは大なる僻見なり」と。何と徹した識見だ！！いはゆる個人的「應病與藥」式救濟運動を止揚して、超個人的に社會の客觀的情勢を對象としての社會的救濟方法を採用されてをられる。まことに「日蓮聖人が現代に出現されたら何をなさらうか？」親鸞は？道元は？&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 6; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
清算はつとめて正確を要する。正確の規準は現實の生活線上に決定されねばウソだ。かくして我等は從來のゆがめられたる個人的觀念的宗教運動の非を悟つて、社會的具體的方法による宗教運動への進出こそ時代相應の宗教運動であることを確信した。と同時に、いつまでも宗團的形態に固執すべきでなく、廣く佛陀のみ名による全佛教統一運動に、佛教復興の世界的必然性を明晰に認識した。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 7; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
前掲の三綱領について、一と二の綱領は、宗教を一私事と考へず、社會運動としての價値を思ひ、それの統一が社會和合の重要なる契機であらねばならぬことを倡する佛教徒にして、苟くも、亂脈の限りをつくした既成教團の改革を志す場合、恐らく何人もが取つて出るであらう態度だと信じる。また第三の綱領については、すでに「中外」の論説でも屢々諸先輩が論明されたごとく、生活の基礎條件である經濟機構について、現存資本主義の改造をぬきにした社會運動が、結局、彌縫のそれであることも、今更言ふまでもないことであらう。私どもは、今や結成される全日本佛青聯盟について、此の一點がいかに取り扱はれるかに、深甚ある注意を拂つてゐるが、この一點こそ該聯盟の成立價値を決定する重點だと期待してゐる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Editorial paragraph 8; paragraph numbers not printed --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
けだし、十三宗五十六派が奉ずる佛教精神は、約言すれば、無常の認識と信愛の生活提唱ではあるまいか。まことに、愛は正しき認識を生み、傳統の形式以上に人類相愛の要求に聽くものだ。從つて、佛陀のみ名による佛教統一運動のごときは、一片の求道心だも存せば、何の障碍もなく實現されるはずのものであり、資本主義改造の難事業の如きも、佛教徒こそ、佛國土建設のために率先して死力を盡すべきではなかつたらうか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The article announces the transition from the Greater Japan Nichirenist Youth League to the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, reproduces its three-point platform, and argues that Buddhist renewal requires trans-sectarian unity and transformation of capitalist economic structures.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Base text:&#039;&#039;&#039; Seno’o Girō 妹尾義郎, 「新興佛教青年同盟について」, &#039;&#039;Chūgai Nippō&#039;&#039; 中外日報, April 7, 1931. The present edition derives from the eight-part Japanese and English working master (v9, October 19, 2026), reportedly prepared using nine enlarged newspaper image crops. The introductory record calls the transcription “seven-paragraph,” but the supplied text identifies eight numbered units, with the three-point platform in §3. These are editorial divisions, not confirmed printed section headings.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Editorial status:&#039;&#039;&#039; Working transcription and translation, not yet a fully collated diplomatic edition. The historical orthography is preserved. The source file marks doubtful characters and punctuation, and those marks are retained. The current master does not identify reliable printed page/column transition coordinates; accordingly, no {{tpage}} markers have been invented. Comparison witnesses include the separate 1931 YLRB founding declaration and January 1933 「われらの綱領」; neither may substitute for the 1931 newspaper text.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Priority checks:&#039;&#039;&#039; §1 波動/流動, 賢明 and [ ? ]; §2 「若人」 and renamed publication; §3 manifesto wording; §4 劃期的, 純眞, 大潮 and punctuation; §5 the two Nichiren quotations; §6 清算; §7 「中外」の論説, 彌縫 and 全日本佛青聯盟; §8 生活提唱 and 人類相愛の要求に聽く. All remain provisional pending final comparison with the newspaper image.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Transcription and editorial review: James Mark Shields.&lt;br /&gt;
Newspaper basis: Chūgai Nippō, 7 April 1931; images not finally collated.&lt;br /&gt;
Working master: v9, 19 October 2026.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Seno’o Girō (1931). “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ni tsuite” 新興佛教青年同盟について [On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism]. &#039;&#039;Chūgai Nippō&#039;&#039;, April 7. Transcribed and edited by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/SG31SKB&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Senoo Giro]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Original Texts in Japanese]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH30MTZ-T&amp;diff=1260</id>
		<title>IH30MTZ-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH30MTZ-T&amp;diff=1260"/>
		<updated>2026-10-21T19:41:18Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Marxism and Zen: Notes”}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Ichikawa Hakugen]] 市川白弦 (1930). “Marxism and Zen: Notes” (&#039;&#039;Marukusu shugi to Zen—oboegaki&#039;&#039; マルクス主義と禅――覚え書). ([[IH30MTZ|Japanese original here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div style=&amp;quot;margin:0.2em 0 0.7em 0; line-height:1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Translation|Translation]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 [[#I|Section I]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.2 [[#II|Section II]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.3 [[#III|Section III]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4 [[#IV|Section IV]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.5 [[#V|Section V]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|219|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
The editors have assigned me the topic indicated above, but depending on how one approaches it, this is an exceedingly broad question, one that can be resolved only through the painstaking research and practice of numerous scholars. In this essay, I shall confine myself to reviewing and criticizing the various responses thus far advanced from the Buddhist side, while setting out a preliminary outline of my own views. Because of limitations of space, moreover, my account of Marxism&#039;s rejection of religion will be allowed to emerge only insofar as is necessary in examining the views of these various thinkers.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The responses thus far offered by those who support religion—primarily Buddhism—may, so far as I have seen, be classified approximately as follows. I welcome corrections if I have misunderstood anything.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (A) Concerning the respective standpoints of Marxism and religion ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) Marxist categories and religious categories are entirely different. Religious people need only conduct themselves as religious people.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Imanaka Tsugimaro 今中次麿, Chūgai Nippō, April 10, 1930; Akegarasu Haya, ibid.,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|220|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
April 24; and certain scholars of religion who emphasize the distinctive character of religious values.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) Marxism, as a theory of economic reform, should cease its criticism of religion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kimura Taiken, Chūgai Nippō, April 18.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) Buddhism is neither idealism nor materialism. Mind and matter are nondual; one must cling neither to mind nor to matter.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Matsubara Chien, Chūgai Nippō, January 25; Yabuki Keiki and Kimura Taiken, ibid., April 23; Koyanagi Shigeta, Bunka Jihō, March 25.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) Through contemplation of emptiness, Buddhism frees itself from attachment to things.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Takagami Kakushō, Chūgai Nippō, January 26.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) The principle of social reform is exhausted by the Mahāyāna bodhisattva path of benefiting oneself and benefiting others. Nothing need be added to this.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kihira Tadayoshi, Chūgai Nippō, April 25.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) Marxism is itself a kind of religion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kido Mantarō, Shūkyō kenkyū, 「七一二」; Itō Shōshin, Chūgai Nippō, March 5.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (B) Concerning Marxist practice ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(7) Class struggle is impermissible.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Almost all the writers surveyed, although Kido and Itō take somewhat different positions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(8) Spiritual awakening must come first. Equality cannot be realized unless everyone genuinely awakens.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Akegarasu Haya, Chūgai Nippō, April 24; Kagawa Toyohiko and Inazu Kizō, ibid., February 2; Yabuki Keiki, ibid., April 20; Nishida Kitarō, Art and Morality (Geijutsu to dōtoku 芸術と道徳), p. 175.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (C) Concerning Marxism&#039;s rejection of religion ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(9) Marxists confuse religion as it presently exists with the essence of religion. Their rejection is directed only against religion in its present condition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Uno Enkū, Chūgai Nippō, February 22; Ifukube Ryūki, ibid., April 22; Kaneko Hakumu, A Religious Critique of Socialism (Shakaishugi no shūkyōteki hihan 社会主義の宗教的批判).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(10) Established religions contain many elements that ought to be rejected.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Terada Yakichi, Chūō Bukkyō, May 1930; Miki 三木保幾, Yomiuri Shinbun, April 27.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(11) Particular historical forms of religion may be rejected, but the essence of religion cannot be denied, so long as human beings experience the anguish of life and death or possess&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|221|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
a longing for the “infinite.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Ifukube Ryūki, Chūgai Nippō, April 22; Kimura Taiken, ibid., April 27.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(12) At the root of class struggle lies human selfishness. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat alike act according to the same principle. First teach them selflessness (muga 無我). Here lies the proper domain of religion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Terada Yakichi, Bunka Jihō, December 28, 1929, and various other writers.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(13) Bread alone cannot resolve the problem. Religion becomes a question only after bread has been secured.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Yabuki Keiki, Chūgai Nippō, April 20; Kawai Teiichi, ibid., April 27.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(14) Buddhism is not what is commonly called otherworldliness. It seeks to establish the Buddha-land here on earth.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Inazu Kizō, Chūgai Nippō, February 2; and other writers.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (D) Concerning the course Buddhism (or religion) should take in the future ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(15) Adopt the socially realistic orientation of Mahāyāna Buddhism, together with its orientation toward spiritual idealism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Ono Seiichirō, Yomiuri Shinbun, May 2.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(16) Become socially engaged. Save individuals through engagement with society.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kimura Taiken, Yomiuri Shinbun, April 27; Hoashi Riichirō, ibid., May 1.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(17) Abandon otherworldliness and engage with reality.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Terada Yakichi, Chūō Bukkyō, May.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(18) While maintaining a spiritual standpoint, engage with material conditions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kimura Taiken, Yomiuri Shinbun, April 27.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(19) Do not compromise with materialism. The materialization of religion is the degeneration of religion. Religion&#039;s true vocation lies in spiritualizing matter.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Tsuge Nobuhide, Yomiuri Shinbun, May 23.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(20) Become a movement of the masses; and yet do not become class-based. Embrace all humanity.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kimura Taiken, Yomiuri Shinbun, April 27; Miki 三木保幾, ibid., May 6; Hoashi Riichirō, ibid., May 7; Tanaka Kōtarō, ibid., May 6.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|222|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I shall now examine the views set out above. Given the hurried character of these notes, there will undoubtedly be places where I have failed to express myself fully, or even failed to observe the proper courtesies. I welcome criticism and correction. I shall comment on the arguments in the order of their original numbering; readers are asked to compare the two.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) This reflects the capitalist conception of the division of labor—or, alternatively, the Hīnayāna attachment to fixed doctrines (hōshū 法執). Such a habit of compartmentalization divides and sets against one another the many organically interconnected phenomena of life.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Ten Oxherding Verses (Jūgyūju 十牛頌) describe one who returns to the world, exposing his chest and walking barefoot through the marketplace, covered in dust and ashes, his face filled with laughter.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The liberated person has abandoned even the pride of possessing a separate thing called “religion itself.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) So long as Marxists remain Marxists, and so long as religious people do not cooperate in the struggle to win the materialist conception of history, it is only natural that Marxists will not abandon their rejection of religion. To demand this of them without overcoming historical materialism is meaningless.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) “Mind and matter are one; form and mind are nondual”—the opiate-like character of intuitionism lies precisely in brandishing such expressions indiscriminately.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As a pure expression of intuition, this was valid; it correctly pointed toward the world of direct intuition. But once we descend into the world of distinctions, mind has its own principles, just as matter has its own laws.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Distinction is itself equality” may have significance as an indication of an experiential standpoint. Yet the complacency that wraps itself in the smoke screen of “the unity of mind and matter,” forgetting both material laws and the principles of consciousness, is exceedingly crude.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is why the ancient sages also sought meticulous discrimination through subsequently attained wisdom (gotokuchi 後得智). Here, what is required is not so much the fusion of mind and matter as their dialectical examination.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) The objective is correct. But what holds true for a genius does not necessarily hold true for everyone. What is appropriate for a solitary person is not necessarily appropriate for someone with a spouse and children.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Capitalism has transformed everything—even human beings themselves—into “things,” into commodities. We must therefore also investigate the conditions under which everyone might live, as far as possible, free from domination by material things.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|223|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
(5) “Do good deeds. The purpose of human life is exhausted by this.” Such a statement is at once perfectly clear and profoundly ambiguous.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
But consider a mouse about to be devoured by a cat: how, precisely, is it supposed to practice “benefiting oneself and benefiting others” (jiri rita 自利利他)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) Everything depends upon how religion is defined. At the very least, however, we should attend to one conspicuous difference between conventional religion and Marxism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Religion seeks to alter one&#039;s state of mind in order to forget the oppressive character of one&#039;s environment. Marxism, by contrast, seeks to transform the environment and thereby change one&#039;s state of mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(7) How extraordinary that Buddhists who have affirmed slaughter and warfare under slogans such as “Sword and Zen are one” (kenzen ichinyo 剣禅一如) should now be terrified by the cry of “class struggle” and rush frantically to offer moral guidance!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
They must either repent of their past or change their present conduct. This demands serious self-examination.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(8) The criticism offered under (4) can also be applied here.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Furthermore, the argument that equality is pointless because inequalities will inevitably arise again comes perilously close to saying that medical treatment is useless because the patient will eventually fall ill again, or that eating is pointless because one will eventually become hungry again.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(9) I agree with this view. One qualification, however, must be kept in mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
For Marxists, who seek to comprehend every phenomenon in its historical and actual existence, there can be no eternal and unchanging “essence” of religion apart from the actual historical forms assumed by particular religions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consequently, the defense that religion need only return to its original “essence” amounts, from a Marxist standpoint, to an empty slogan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(10) This is something everyone acknowledges.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(11) The problem of life and death can be resolved without recourse to religion. There have been adherents of Marxism who found peace of mind by entrusting this very problem to Marxist practice—although that is another matter if one chooses to call such a commitment “religion.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There are, moreover, various kinds of infinity. Extensional infinity—what Hegel called the “bad infinite”—is itself one form of infinity. Yet this is precisely the kind of infinity that we ordinarily desire. The matter calls for more careful examination.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|224|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
(12) The criticism offered under (4) can also be developed in response to this position. I shall return to the question later.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(13) What does religion propose to do for the millions of unemployed people who are constantly wandering on the brink of starvation? Are distinguished religious teachers concerned only with the salvation of souls?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(14) Buddhism has frequently been defended through statements of this sort. Yet even Christianity has contemplated the coming of the Kingdom of God “on earth.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Marxism&#039;s rejection of religion is directed not principally at overcoming religious doctrines, but at overcoming the idealistic character of religious practice—the illusory methods by which religion proposes to establish its ideal society.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Lenin regarded religion as the illusory happiness of the masses.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(15), (18) Both assertions remain exceedingly vague. The question is how these ideals are to be realized concretely: what means, methods, and sequences of action are required, and what theoretical foundations justify them?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(19) To speak of “spiritualizing matter” is careless. Teachings suggesting that everything depends upon one&#039;s state of mind have repeatedly compelled human beings to embrace falsehood and unnatural conduct.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To hold one&#039;s nose while eating rotten meat, or to cover one&#039;s ears while stealing a bell—this is the magic of spiritualism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(20) Neither “humanity” nor “human beings in general” exist as undifferentiated abstractions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Whatever one thinks of their merits, to admonish the masses who seek to abolish class distinctions through struggle against becoming class-conscious, and to preach peace in the name of “humanity,” is—in its actual consequences, whether religious people intend it or not—to support the capitalists who defend the existing order and to intensify the oppression of the propertyless.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Lenin regarded religion as a form of spiritual oppression directed against the proletariat.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In the present age, even ideas such as “humanity,” “peace,” and “universal love” cannot escape the pressures of class division. Thus religion becomes increasingly estranged from the propertyless.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is not my “opinion.” It is a fact before our eyes.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I shall conclude this criticism by citing Miura Sangendō 三浦参玄洞&#039;s remarks:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Since social movements arise from the objective circumstances of a particular society and historical moment, one must understand that it is impossible to decide in advance whether to proceed to the right&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|225|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
or to the left. When a ship is listing to starboard and about to capsize, passengers who recognize the danger will quickly leap from the right side to the left. At such a moment, even if someone were to shout, ‘The safest place on a ship is in the middle,’ no one would pay the slightest attention.” (Chūgai Nippō, June 28, 1929)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What particularly interests us when comparing Eastern and Western thought is the difference between their respective conceptions of “things” or “matter,” and their differing attitudes toward “history.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To understand the laws of nature and thereby “conquer nature” was the guiding principle of Bacon and, subsequently, of European and American civilization. By contrast, to “wander in accordance with the workings of nature” was the orientation of Zhuangzi and the fundamental disposition of the Eastern spirit. For the former, nature was the nature investigated by the natural sciences; for the latter, it was an intuitive, supra-empirical nature. Consequently, empirical “things” were, for the former, objects to be investigated and conquered, while for the latter they were things to be renounced and transcended. As the Zhuangzi puts it, “Losing oneself in things and losing one&#039;s nature in conventionality.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In both East and West, philosophy began with the “problem of existence” and proceeded toward the dialectical examination of “being” (u 有) and “nonbeing” (mu 無). Yet in the West, the pursuit of being led toward “development,” whereas in the East, the aspiration toward nonbeing led toward “cessation” (jakumetsu 寂滅).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In the former, being and nonbeing became primarily categories of factual cognition; in the latter, they were connected with judgments of value. Accordingly, even with respect to the category of “cause and effect,” the natural-scientific conception of causality characteristic of the West was contrasted in the East with moral or religious causality.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In short, from the standpoint of the Eastern spirit&#039;s orientation toward emptiness (kū 空), “things” appeared as “provisionally existent” or “to be renounced.” It must therefore be regarded as almost inevitable that a rigorous science of “things”—that is, natural science—did not develop in the East. Whether one speaks of “elementary learning” or “great learning,” [continues].&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|226|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
…or of “setting one&#039;s heart upon learning at fifteen,” all such learning was ultimately nothing other than the learning of the sages.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Next, let us consider “history.” I remarked earlier that Western civilization was oriented toward “development.” Darwin conceived of the “evolution” of living beings, while Bergson expounded “creative evolution” in time. In the East, however, what was sought was a “return to the original source” (henpon gen&#039;gen 返本還源), as in the Ten Oxherding Verses (Jūgyūju 十牛頌), while calls for the “restoration of royal government” were also advanced.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The objective of political revolution was to return to the ancient age of Yao and Shun; the objective of religious reform was likewise to return to the time of the founding patriarchs. It is therefore hardly surprising that the conception of “history” failed to develop in the East, since the essence of historical consciousness lies in “development.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Thus materialism and historical scholarship—and historical materialism all the more—remained exceedingly remote from the Eastern mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Here lies the problem.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How profound and beautiful was the spiritualism of the ancient East! Yet might its disregard for “things” have caused the mind, paradoxically, to stumble over material things, rendered its worldview crude, and encouraged it to conceive the means of practice in merely idealistic terms?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Today, when the material structures of history have become increasingly complex and contradictory, this question demands particular reflection.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) Just as we must not distort the principles of mind by imposing upon them the principles of matter, so too must we refrain from violating physical laws through psychological principles.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Many questions that are now simply matters for medicine or natural science were once treated as theological problems. Numerous errors and harmful practices arose in religious forms through ignorance of natural laws—for example, offering sacrifices and praying for rain.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
People sometimes sought through religion to escape physical dangers that could be avoided by the means taught by the natural sciences. One might, for instance, attempt to avert lightning through prayer when it could be avoided through the use of a lightning rod.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Here lies one reason why religion has been described as the illusory happiness of the masses.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) It is necessary to understand the principles of social development. What determines the course of history is not the religious “gospel,” but rather the economic structure of society.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
No one would imagine that the problem of unemployment could be solved through the “gospel” or a charity soup kitchen.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|227|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
No one would suppose that what can be achieved through the conscious regulation of economic laws could instead be obtained through faith in Inari. Such errors arise from a failure to understand social or economic laws.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
For modern people, the god of fate is often nothing more than the circulation of economic forces fluctuating in the marketplace.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) Numerous errors arise from misunderstanding the principles governing human relations.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Some religions have maintained that women and slaves cannot attain Buddhahood. Even today, at the foot of Mount Hiei in Kyoto, there remains a stone pillar marking a boundary that prohibits entry to “women and cattle” (nyonin gyūba kekkai 女人牛馬結界). Religious authorities placed women and cattle in the same category. This is indeed a “precious” historical document in the history of women&#039;s liberation!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How often has the doctrine of karmic retribution (inga ōhō 因果応報) confined the poor and the oppressed to timidity, servility, and ignorance?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) Finally, we must understand the relationship between economic circumstances and human beings.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Most tragedies and crimes have their roots in material hardship. As the saying goes, “Poverty dulls the mind.” Other expressions—“The wealthy do not quarrel,” “When food and clothing are sufficient, people understand propriety,” “Without a secure livelihood there can be no steadfast mind,” and “Upbringing matters more than lineage”—all attest to how closely external circumstances and states of mind are intertwined.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Even if we were ordered to commit murder, we would be unable to do so. The principal reason is that we do not presently find ourselves in circumstances that would lead us to such an act.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Conversely, it would surely be futile to teach a young man sexual restraint while simultaneously exposing him to obscene conduct.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Do not inquire whether human nature is good or evil; provide favorable conditions” (zen&#039;en 善縁), said Zen Master Dōgen. There is also the story of Mencius&#039;s mother moving house three times.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
For the development of each person&#039;s character, it is necessary to establish the best possible conditions and remove harmful material obstacles.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Those who emphasize spiritual awakening must first understand the importance of the environment. How many people could sit calmly atop a smokestack a hundred jō high?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must not attempt to guide everyone according to principles that apply only to a genius. Just as awakening (bodai 菩提) has its own principles, delusion (komō 虚妄) has its own necessities. We must guide all people through principles that actually govern their lives.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To reduce every social problem indiscriminately to human selfishness or attachment to the self (gashū 我執) is not necessarily mistaken, but it is exceedingly abstract.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must guard against the recklessness of attempting to address every social problem through such an empty conception of society.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|228|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
(5) Yet I am not advocating a “compromise” or “eclectic synthesis” between Buddhism and the materialist conception of history. Compromise and eclecticism invariably diminish the distinctive character of both positions, weaken their vitality, and frequently introduce confusion into the very manner in which they are combined. Here lies the defect of eclecticism. It is rash simply to proclaim, without further consideration, “Become socially engaged!” or “Attend to material conditions!”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) To attempt to combine only the conclusions of different worldviews arising from different standpoints is like grafting bamboo onto a tree. We must first undertake a dialectical examination of the standpoints themselves.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Just as Kūkai, in the Treatise on the Ten Stages of Mind (Jūjūshinron 十住心論), and Yanshou, in the Record of the Mirror of the Teachings (Zongjing lu 宗鏡録), sought to organize different standpoints into coherent systems, so too must we, from the standpoint of Zen—grounded in the original nature of the human mind—critically examine and situate the various worldviews.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must recognize the respective significance and truth of each within its proper position and domain. At the same time, we must select, reject, and subject them to dialectical examination in such a way that they become stages along the path toward Zen, or means of realizing Zen itself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Here lies the task of correct thinking.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must not confine ourselves to improvised adjustments in practice, such as simply calling upon Buddhists to engage with reality or sympathize with the propertyless. We must also undertake the revision and systematic reorganization of our worldview.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== V ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I shall now offer a brief criticism of Marxism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The essential task of Zen is, first of all, for each person to return to their original face (honrai no menmoku 本来の面目).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Record of Linji (Rinzai-roku 臨済録) says:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Upon this mass of red flesh there is a true person of no rank, constantly entering and leaving through the gateways of your face. Those who have not yet verified this—look! Look!”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Now Marx says:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The only means by which humanity can recover its humanity, its very essence, is through the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and a resolute return—not to God, but to humanity itself—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|229|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
This call for the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and for a resolute, rightful return to humanity itself can, ironically, be “deepened” into a maxim of Zen.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen practice has been the realization of one&#039;s true nature (kenshō 見性) and the direct pointing to the human mind (jikishi ninshin 直指人心). It is not a direct pointing toward heaven, nor a direct pointing toward some other shore.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Zen school brought Buddhist theory and practice—which had been elaborately adorned with mythological and idealistic conceptions—entirely back into the sphere of everyday human life.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Go drink tea,” “Wash your bowl,” “Three pounds of flax,” “The cypress tree,” “Fine snowflakes falling everywhere,” and “Every day is a good day”: such are its expressions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In dissolving religious representations into everyday life, and in refusing to adhere to fixed articles of faith, Zen is profoundly non-idealistic. Indeed, for the person who lives Zen, even Buddhism itself becomes a piece of useless furniture.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, before the Marxist notion of a “rightful return to humanity itself” can be deepened into our own maxim, numerous questions must be examined and settled. Accomplishing this is, of course, beyond the purpose of the present essay. Here I shall merely indicate the direction and general outline of such an examination.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) Marxism advocates the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a form of authoritarianism. It seeks to abolish coercive power through coercive power—like attempting to wash a lump of earth with mud.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) Marxism confuses the subject with its conditions. However profoundly material things may condition the mind, they can never entirely constitute the conditions of the mind. Food, after all, is not immediately identical with life itself. Do not forget the subject.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) Marxism adopts a genetic or developmental approach to mental and cultural phenomena. This approach possesses breadth and novelty. Yet it lacks the depth of intuition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Marxist conception of humanity is, so to speak, an investigation of the human skin and flesh, rather than an insight into the innermost essence of the human being. In this respect, its predecessor Feuerbach had advanced further.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) Genetic investigation is certainly one method of understanding, but it is not the only method.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
One need not know how water came into existence in order to know its taste. We must not suppose that the significance of every cultural phenomenon can be determined entirely through an investigation of its origins.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There are undoubtedly many aspects of religion&#039;s origins and significance that can be exposed through Marxist methods and overcome through Marxist practice.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|230|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
Yet I cannot believe that religion can thereby be wholly negated. The essential seeds of religion lie within the very nature and limitations of what it means to be human.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) At the very least, the standpoint upon which Zen rests belongs to a domain that cannot be an object of negation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Negation can take place only through “thought.” Yet the standpoint of Zen does not lie within the world of thought. It is of the kind expressed by the saying, “The moment you turn toward it, you turn away from it.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Descartes began his philosophy by doubting the certainty of all existence and truth. Ultimately, he arrived at the self-evidence of “doubting,” or, in other words, of “thinking.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The standpoint of Zen transcends even such thinking, yet may also be likened to the ground or place (basho 場所) that makes possible the expression and establishment of all thought. Marxism, too, merely dances upon the palm of what transcends thought.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) No one is born a Marxist. Everyone becomes one.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The possibility of moving from one worldview to another rests upon the fact that the active dimension of consciousness can always transcend any particular content of consciousness. This is also why Marxists can understand the bourgeois worldview.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consciousness possesses infinity and universality in itself. Even the materialist Feuerbach acknowledged this.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Actual consciousness is always in contact with something beyond its own contents and is unified through that which transcends them.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(7) Both ignorance (mumyō 無明) and attachment (shūjaku 執着) represent forms in which this unity remains incomplete.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The divisiveness and attachment characteristic of consciousness appear to be inherent in human nature itself. Consequently, although they are frequently stimulated and intensified by our environment, we cannot say that every form of attachment and anxiety is produced by environmental conditions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
So long as human beings possess such a nature and such limitations, they will continually seek to “return” to the primordial “One.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Thought, as the principle of division, is simultaneously a demand for unity. Yet the ultimate duality cannot be overcome through thought—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|231|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
…because thought is a principle that processes all phenomena through relations between subject and predicate—that is, through “opposition.” The final opposition must therefore be entrusted to a leap beyond thought. Here lies the path toward Zen.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(8) If the origins of religion can be attributed to contradictions in the material environment, then do animals and plants exploited by human beings likewise possess religion?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There are no contradictions in the environment itself. It must be the human mind that experiences contradictions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As the verse says: “There is no sorrowful rain upon the banana leaves; it is only those who hear it whose hearts are broken.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must first clarify the essential nature of mind. Contradiction exists only insofar as there is mind; conditions exist only insofar as there is a subject.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(9) According to Marx, what distinguishes human beings from animals is material “production.” But was it the material environment that initiated such production?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Human activity must already be acknowledged here. We must therefore investigate the essential nature of human agency.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(10) The Marxist assertion that life determines consciousness is as crude as the following argument: “Police officers are poor. Therefore, they are Marxists.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Kropotkin was born into the aristocracy and became a revolutionary.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Moreover, this logic provides no grounds for condemning as “traitors” comrades who became reactionaries after their material circumstances improved. Such condemnation can find its justification only from a standpoint that establishes some form of humanitarian ideal.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(11) Hegel, who excluded idealism from his philosophy, thereby concealed within it the seeds of a reactionary philosophy that glorified the existing order, notwithstanding the revolutionary character of his dialectic.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Marxism, which seeks to carry the revolutionary character of dialectics to its logical conclusion, likewise runs the risk—through its exclusion of conscious purpose—of descending into material fatalism or, alternatively, ending in blind destructiveness.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(12) We must establish our objectives as purely and rigorously as possible. Having done so, we must select the most appropriate and effective plans and means for realizing those objectives, adapting them to changes in the material and spiritual structures of our circumstances at any given time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|232|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
In doing so, we need only determine our concrete methods through the proper application of induction and deduction. There is no necessity to proceed according to a dialectical schema of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Marxism proclaimed its liberation from metaphysics, yet through dialectical materialism it has once again plunged into metaphysics.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Now, I shall attempt to summarize the objective I have in mind:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To take as our ultimate aim the fullest possible realization and enjoyment, by all people, of their inherently endowed nature of mind; to establish the spiritual and material conditions necessary for this purpose; and, toward that end, for everyone to work according to their abilities, receive according to their needs, and endure only the minimum sacrifice recognized as necessary by the clearest possible exercise of reason.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In pursuit of this comprehensive objective, we must sometimes attend to the purity of mind, sometimes seek guidance in the universality of principle, and sometimes trace the myriad transformations of particular circumstances.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Through direct intuition, critical reflection, and investigation, we continually aspire to fulfill the Buddhist path “together with all sentient beings.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Marxism and Zen: Notes” (&#039;&#039;Marukusu shugi to Zen—oboegaki&#039;&#039; マルクス主義と禅――覚え書) is a 1930 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦 (1902–1986). It catalogs twenty positions advanced by other religious thinkers; these positions should not automatically be read as Ichikawa&#039;s own. His replies address them selectively, including a joint response to items (15) and (18).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This translation follows the Japanese transcription [[IH30MTZ]] and the text printed in 『市川白弦著作集』 (&#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; [Collected Writings of Ichikawa Hakugen]), vol. 3, pp. 219–232. The essay reportedly appeared in &#039;&#039;Chūō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 中央仏教 in June 1930; the original issue, collected volume imprint, and text require final verification. Page markers correspond to the Japanese source and link back to the original.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotations: James Mark Shields, 2026.&lt;br /&gt;
Collected source: Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū, vol. 3, pp. 219–232.&lt;br /&gt;
Full diplomatic verification pending.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1930). “Marxism and Zen: Notes” (Marukusu shugi to Zen—oboegaki マルクス主義と禅――覚え書). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. The Radical Buddhism Project. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH30MTZ-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English Translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH30MTZ-T&amp;diff=1259</id>
		<title>IH30MTZ-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH30MTZ-T&amp;diff=1259"/>
		<updated>2026-10-21T19:39:49Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Marxism and Zen: Notes”}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Ichikawa Hakugen]] 市川白弦 (1930). “Marxism and Zen: Notes” (&#039;&#039;Marukusu shugi to Zen—oboegaki&#039;&#039; マルクス主義と禅――覚え書). ([[IH30MTZ|Japanese original here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div style=&amp;quot;margin:0.2em 0 0.7em 0; line-height:1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Translation|Translation]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 [[#I|Section I]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.2 [[#II|Section II]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.3 [[#III|Section III]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4 [[#IV|Section IV]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.5 [[#V|Section V]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|219|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
The editors have assigned me the topic indicated above, but depending on how one approaches it, this is an exceedingly broad question, one that can be resolved only through the painstaking research and practice of numerous scholars. In this essay, I shall confine myself to reviewing and criticizing the various responses thus far advanced from the Buddhist side, while setting out a preliminary outline of my own views. Because of limitations of space, moreover, my account of Marxism&#039;s rejection of religion will be allowed to emerge only insofar as is necessary in examining the views of these various thinkers.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The responses thus far offered by those who support religion—primarily Buddhism—may, so far as I have seen, be classified approximately as follows. I welcome corrections if I have misunderstood anything.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (A) Concerning the respective standpoints of Marxism and religion ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) Marxist categories and religious categories are entirely different. Religious people need only conduct themselves as religious people.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Imanaka Tsugimaro 今中次麿, Chūgai Nippō, April 10, 1930; Akegarasu Haya, ibid.,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|220|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
April 24; and certain scholars of religion who emphasize the distinctive character of religious values.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) Marxism, as a theory of economic reform, should cease its criticism of religion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kimura Taiken, Chūgai Nippō, April 18.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) Buddhism is neither idealism nor materialism. Mind and matter are nondual; one must cling neither to mind nor to matter.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Matsubara Chien, Chūgai Nippō, January 25; Yabuki Keiki and Kimura Taiken, ibid., April 23; Koyanagi Shigeta, Bunka Jihō, March 25.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) Through contemplation of emptiness, Buddhism frees itself from attachment to things.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Takagami Kakushō, Chūgai Nippō, January 26.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) The principle of social reform is exhausted by the Mahāyāna bodhisattva path of benefiting oneself and benefiting others. Nothing need be added to this.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kihira Tadayoshi, Chūgai Nippō, April 25.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) Marxism is itself a kind of religion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kido Mantarō, Shūkyō kenkyū, 「七一二」; Itō Shōshin, Chūgai Nippō, March 5.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (B) Concerning Marxist practice ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(7) Class struggle is impermissible.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Almost all the writers surveyed, although Kido and Itō take somewhat different positions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(8) Spiritual awakening must come first. Equality cannot be realized unless everyone genuinely awakens.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Akegarasu Haya, Chūgai Nippō, April 24; Kagawa Toyohiko and Inazu Kizō, ibid., February 2; Yabuki Keiki, ibid., April 20; Nishida Kitarō, Art and Morality (Geijutsu to dōtoku 芸術と道徳), p. 175.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (C) Concerning Marxism&#039;s rejection of religion ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(9) Marxists confuse religion as it presently exists with the essence of religion. Their rejection is directed only against religion in its present condition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Uno Enkū, Chūgai Nippō, February 22; Ifukube Ryūki, ibid., April 22; Kaneko Hakumu, A Religious Critique of Socialism (Shakaishugi no shūkyōteki hihan 社会主義の宗教的批判).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(10) Established religions contain many elements that ought to be rejected.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Terada Yakichi, Chūō Bukkyō, May 1930; Miki 三木保幾, Yomiuri Shinbun, April 27.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(11) Particular historical forms of religion may be rejected, but the essence of religion cannot be denied, so long as human beings experience the anguish of life and death or possess&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|221|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
a longing for the “infinite.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Ifukube Ryūki, Chūgai Nippō, April 22; Kimura Taiken, ibid., April 27.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(12) At the root of class struggle lies human selfishness. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat alike act according to the same principle. First teach them selflessness (muga 無我). Here lies the proper domain of religion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Terada Yakichi, Bunka Jihō, December 28, 1929, and various other writers.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(13) Bread alone cannot resolve the problem. Religion becomes a question only after bread has been secured.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Yabuki Keiki, Chūgai Nippō, April 20; Kawai Teiichi, ibid., April 27.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(14) Buddhism is not what is commonly called otherworldliness. It seeks to establish the Buddha-land here on earth.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Inazu Kizō, Chūgai Nippō, February 2; and other writers.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (D) Concerning the course Buddhism (or religion) should take in the future ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(15) Adopt the socially realistic orientation of Mahāyāna Buddhism, together with its orientation toward spiritual idealism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Ono Seiichirō, Yomiuri Shinbun, May 2.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(16) Become socially engaged. Save individuals through engagement with society.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kimura Taiken, Yomiuri Shinbun, April 27; Hoashi Riichirō, ibid., May 1.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(17) Abandon otherworldliness and engage with reality.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Terada Yakichi, Chūō Bukkyō, May.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(18) While maintaining a spiritual standpoint, engage with material conditions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kimura Taiken, Yomiuri Shinbun, April 27.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(19) Do not compromise with materialism. The materialization of religion is the degeneration of religion. Religion&#039;s true vocation lies in spiritualizing matter.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Tsuge Nobuhide, Yomiuri Shinbun, May 23.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(20) Become a movement of the masses; and yet do not become class-based. Embrace all humanity.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kimura Taiken, Yomiuri Shinbun, April 27; Miki 三木保幾, ibid., May 6; Hoashi Riichirō, ibid., May 7; Tanaka Kōtarō, ibid., May 6.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|222|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I shall now examine the views set out above. Given the hurried character of these notes, there will undoubtedly be places where I have failed to express myself fully, or even failed to observe the proper courtesies. I welcome criticism and correction. I shall comment on the arguments in the order of their original numbering; readers are asked to compare the two.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) This reflects the capitalist conception of the division of labor—or, alternatively, the Hīnayāna attachment to fixed doctrines (hōshū 法執). Such a habit of compartmentalization divides and sets against one another the many organically interconnected phenomena of life.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Ten Oxherding Verses (Jūgyūju 十牛頌) describe one who returns to the world, exposing his chest and walking barefoot through the marketplace, covered in dust and ashes, his face filled with laughter.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The liberated person has abandoned even the pride of possessing a separate thing called “religion itself.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) So long as Marxists remain Marxists, and so long as religious people do not cooperate in the struggle to win the materialist conception of history, it is only natural that Marxists will not abandon their rejection of religion. To demand this of them without overcoming historical materialism is meaningless.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) “Mind and matter are one; form and mind are nondual”—the opiate-like character of intuitionism lies precisely in brandishing such expressions indiscriminately.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As a pure expression of intuition, this was valid; it correctly pointed toward the world of direct intuition. But once we descend into the world of distinctions, mind has its own principles, just as matter has its own laws.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Distinction is itself equality” may have significance as an indication of an experiential standpoint. Yet the complacency that wraps itself in the smoke screen of “the unity of mind and matter,” forgetting both material laws and the principles of consciousness, is exceedingly crude.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is why the ancient sages also sought meticulous discrimination through subsequently attained wisdom (gotokuchi 後得智). Here, what is required is not so much the fusion of mind and matter as their dialectical examination.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) The objective is correct. But what holds true for a genius does not necessarily hold true for everyone. What is appropriate for a solitary person is not necessarily appropriate for someone with a spouse and children.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Capitalism has transformed everything—even human beings themselves—into “things,” into commodities. We must therefore also investigate the conditions under which everyone might live, as far as possible, free from domination by material things.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|223|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
(5) “Do good deeds. The purpose of human life is exhausted by this.” Such a statement is at once perfectly clear and profoundly ambiguous.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
But consider a mouse about to be devoured by a cat: how, precisely, is it supposed to practice “benefiting oneself and benefiting others” (jiri rita 自利利他)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) Everything depends upon how religion is defined. At the very least, however, we should attend to one conspicuous difference between conventional religion and Marxism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Religion seeks to alter one&#039;s state of mind in order to forget the oppressive character of one&#039;s environment. Marxism, by contrast, seeks to transform the environment and thereby change one&#039;s state of mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(7) How extraordinary that Buddhists who have affirmed slaughter and warfare under slogans such as “Sword and Zen are one” (kenzen ichinyo 剣禅一如) should now be terrified by the cry of “class struggle” and rush frantically to offer moral guidance!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
They must either repent of their past or change their present conduct. This demands serious self-examination.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(8) The criticism offered under (4) can also be applied here.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Furthermore, the argument that equality is pointless because inequalities will inevitably arise again comes perilously close to saying that medical treatment is useless because the patient will eventually fall ill again, or that eating is pointless because one will eventually become hungry again.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(9) I agree with this view. One qualification, however, must be kept in mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
For Marxists, who seek to comprehend every phenomenon in its historical and actual existence, there can be no eternal and unchanging “essence” of religion apart from the actual historical forms assumed by particular religions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consequently, the defense that religion need only return to its original “essence” amounts, from a Marxist standpoint, to an empty slogan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(10) This is something everyone acknowledges.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(11) The problem of life and death can be resolved without recourse to religion. There have been adherents of Marxism who found peace of mind by entrusting this very problem to Marxist practice—although that is another matter if one chooses to call such a commitment “religion.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There are, moreover, various kinds of infinity. Extensional infinity—what Hegel called the “bad infinite”—is itself one form of infinity. Yet this is precisely the kind of infinity that we ordinarily desire. The matter calls for more careful examination.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|224|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
(12) The criticism offered under (4) can also be developed in response to this position. I shall return to the question later.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(13) What does religion propose to do for the millions of unemployed people who are constantly wandering on the brink of starvation? Are distinguished religious teachers concerned only with the salvation of souls?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(14) Buddhism has frequently been defended through statements of this sort. Yet even Christianity has contemplated the coming of the Kingdom of God “on earth.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Marxism&#039;s rejection of religion is directed not principally at overcoming religious doctrines, but at overcoming the idealistic character of religious practice—the illusory methods by which religion proposes to establish its ideal society.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Lenin regarded religion as the illusory happiness of the masses.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(15), (18) Both assertions remain exceedingly vague. The question is how these ideals are to be realized concretely: what means, methods, and sequences of action are required, and what theoretical foundations justify them?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(19) To speak of “spiritualizing matter” is careless. Teachings suggesting that everything depends upon one&#039;s state of mind have repeatedly compelled human beings to embrace falsehood and unnatural conduct.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To hold one&#039;s nose while eating rotten meat, or to cover one&#039;s ears while stealing a bell—this is the magic of spiritualism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(20) Neither “humanity” nor “human beings in general” exist as undifferentiated abstractions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Whatever one thinks of their merits, to admonish the masses who seek to abolish class distinctions through struggle against becoming class-conscious, and to preach peace in the name of “humanity,” is—in its actual consequences, whether religious people intend it or not—to support the capitalists who defend the existing order and to intensify the oppression of the propertyless.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Lenin regarded religion as a form of spiritual oppression directed against the proletariat.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In the present age, even ideas such as “humanity,” “peace,” and “universal love” cannot escape the pressures of class division. Thus religion becomes increasingly estranged from the propertyless.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is not my “opinion.” It is a fact before our eyes.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I shall conclude this criticism by citing Miura Sangendō 三浦参玄洞&#039;s remarks:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Since social movements arise from the objective circumstances of a particular society and historical moment, one must understand that it is impossible to decide in advance whether to proceed to the right&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|225|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
or to the left. When a ship is listing to starboard and about to capsize, passengers who recognize the danger will quickly leap from the right side to the left. At such a moment, even if someone were to shout, ‘The safest place on a ship is in the middle,’ no one would pay the slightest attention.” (Chūgai Nippō, June 28, 1929)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What particularly interests us when comparing Eastern and Western thought is the difference between their respective conceptions of “things” or “matter,” and their differing attitudes toward “history.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To understand the laws of nature and thereby “conquer nature” was the guiding principle of Bacon and, subsequently, of European and American civilization. By contrast, to “wander in accordance with the workings of nature” was the orientation of Zhuangzi and the fundamental disposition of the Eastern spirit. For the former, nature was the nature investigated by the natural sciences; for the latter, it was an intuitive, supra-empirical nature. Consequently, empirical “things” were, for the former, objects to be investigated and conquered, while for the latter they were things to be renounced and transcended. As the Zhuangzi puts it, “Losing oneself in things and losing one&#039;s nature in conventionality.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In both East and West, philosophy began with the “problem of existence” and proceeded toward the dialectical examination of “being” (u 有) and “nonbeing” (mu 無). Yet in the West, the pursuit of being led toward “development,” whereas in the East, the aspiration toward nonbeing led toward “cessation” (jakumetsu 寂滅).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In the former, being and nonbeing became primarily categories of factual cognition; in the latter, they were connected with judgments of value. Accordingly, even with respect to the category of “cause and effect,” the natural-scientific conception of causality characteristic of the West was contrasted in the East with moral or religious causality.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In short, from the standpoint of the Eastern spirit&#039;s orientation toward emptiness (kū 空), “things” appeared as “provisionally existent” or “to be renounced.” It must therefore be regarded as almost inevitable that a rigorous science of “things”—that is, natural science—did not develop in the East. Whether one speaks of “elementary learning” or “great learning,” [continues].&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|226|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
…or of “setting one&#039;s heart upon learning at fifteen,” all such learning was ultimately nothing other than the learning of the sages.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Next, let us consider “history.” I remarked earlier that Western civilization was oriented toward “development.” Darwin conceived of the “evolution” of living beings, while Bergson expounded “creative evolution” in time. In the East, however, what was sought was a “return to the original source” (henpon gen&#039;gen 返本還源), as in the Ten Oxherding Verses (Jūgyūju 十牛頌), while calls for the “restoration of royal government” were also advanced.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The objective of political revolution was to return to the ancient age of Yao and Shun; the objective of religious reform was likewise to return to the time of the founding patriarchs. It is therefore hardly surprising that the conception of “history” failed to develop in the East, since the essence of historical consciousness lies in “development.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Thus materialism and historical scholarship—and historical materialism all the more—remained exceedingly remote from the Eastern mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Here lies the problem.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How profound and beautiful was the spiritualism of the ancient East! Yet might its disregard for “things” have caused the mind, paradoxically, to stumble over material things, rendered its worldview crude, and encouraged it to conceive the means of practice in merely idealistic terms?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Today, when the material structures of history have become increasingly complex and contradictory, this question demands particular reflection.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) Just as we must not distort the principles of mind by imposing upon them the principles of matter, so too must we refrain from violating physical laws through psychological principles.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Many questions that are now simply matters for medicine or natural science were once treated as theological problems. Numerous errors and harmful practices arose in religious forms through ignorance of natural laws—for example, offering sacrifices and praying for rain.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
People sometimes sought through religion to escape physical dangers that could be avoided by the means taught by the natural sciences. One might, for instance, attempt to avert lightning through prayer when it could be avoided through the use of a lightning rod.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Here lies one reason why religion has been described as the illusory happiness of the masses.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) It is necessary to understand the principles of social development. What determines the course of history is not the religious “gospel,” but rather the economic structure of society.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
No one would imagine that the problem of unemployment could be solved through the “gospel” or a charity soup kitchen.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|227|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
No one would suppose that what can be achieved through the conscious regulation of economic laws could instead be obtained through faith in Inari. Such errors arise from a failure to understand social or economic laws.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
For modern people, the god of fate is often nothing more than the circulation of economic forces fluctuating in the marketplace.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) Numerous errors arise from misunderstanding the principles governing human relations.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Some religions have maintained that women and slaves cannot attain Buddhahood. Even today, at the foot of Mount Hiei in Kyoto, there remains a stone pillar marking a boundary that prohibits entry to “women and cattle” (nyonin gyūba kekkai 女人牛馬結界). Religious authorities placed women and cattle in the same category. This is indeed a “precious” historical document in the history of women&#039;s liberation!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How often has the doctrine of karmic retribution (inga ōhō 因果応報) confined the poor and the oppressed to timidity, servility, and ignorance?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) Finally, we must understand the relationship between economic circumstances and human beings.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Most tragedies and crimes have their roots in material hardship. As the saying goes, “Poverty dulls the mind.” Other expressions—“The wealthy do not quarrel,” “When food and clothing are sufficient, people understand propriety,” “Without a secure livelihood there can be no steadfast mind,” and “Upbringing matters more than lineage”—all attest to how closely external circumstances and states of mind are intertwined.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Even if we were ordered to commit murder, we would be unable to do so. The principal reason is that we do not presently find ourselves in circumstances that would lead us to such an act.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Conversely, it would surely be futile to teach a young man sexual restraint while simultaneously exposing him to obscene conduct.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Do not inquire whether human nature is good or evil; provide favorable conditions” (zen&#039;en 善縁), said Zen Master Dōgen. There is also the story of Mencius&#039;s mother moving house three times.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
For the development of each person&#039;s character, it is necessary to establish the best possible conditions and remove harmful material obstacles.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Those who emphasize spiritual awakening must first understand the importance of the environment. How many people could sit calmly atop a smokestack a hundred jō high?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must not attempt to guide everyone according to principles that apply only to a genius. Just as awakening (bodai 菩提) has its own principles, delusion (komō 虚妄) has its own necessities. We must guide all people through principles that actually govern their lives.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To reduce every social problem indiscriminately to human selfishness or attachment to the self (gashū 我執) is not necessarily mistaken, but it is exceedingly abstract.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must guard against the recklessness of attempting to address every social problem through such an empty conception of society.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|228|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
(5) Yet I am not advocating a “compromise” or “eclectic synthesis” between Buddhism and the materialist conception of history. Compromise and eclecticism invariably diminish the distinctive character of both positions, weaken their vitality, and frequently introduce confusion into the very manner in which they are combined. Here lies the defect of eclecticism. It is rash simply to proclaim, without further consideration, “Become socially engaged!” or “Attend to material conditions!”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) To attempt to combine only the conclusions of different worldviews arising from different standpoints is like grafting bamboo onto a tree. We must first undertake a dialectical examination of the standpoints themselves.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Just as Kūkai, in the Treatise on the Ten Stages of Mind (Jūjūshinron 十住心論), and Yanshou, in the Record of the Mirror of the Teachings (Zongjing lu 宗鏡録), sought to organize different standpoints into coherent systems, so too must we, from the standpoint of Zen—grounded in the original nature of the human mind—critically examine and situate the various worldviews.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must recognize the respective significance and truth of each within its proper position and domain. At the same time, we must select, reject, and subject them to dialectical examination in such a way that they become stages along the path toward Zen, or means of realizing Zen itself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Here lies the task of correct thinking.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must not confine ourselves to improvised adjustments in practice, such as simply calling upon Buddhists to engage with reality or sympathize with the propertyless. We must also undertake the revision and systematic reorganization of our worldview.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== V ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I shall now offer a brief criticism of Marxism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The essential task of Zen is, first of all, for each person to return to their original face (honrai no menmoku 本来の面目).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Record of Linji (Rinzai-roku 臨済録) says:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Upon this mass of red flesh there is a true person of no rank, constantly entering and leaving through the gateways of your face. Those who have not yet verified this—look! Look!”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Now Marx says:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The only means by which humanity can recover its humanity, its very essence, is through the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and a resolute return—not to God, but to humanity itself—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|229|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
This call for the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and for a resolute, rightful return to humanity itself can, ironically, be “deepened” into a maxim of Zen.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen practice has been the realization of one&#039;s true nature (kenshō 見性) and the direct pointing to the human mind (jikishi ninshin 直指人心). It is not a direct pointing toward heaven, nor a direct pointing toward some other shore.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Zen school brought Buddhist theory and practice—which had been elaborately adorned with mythological and idealistic conceptions—entirely back into the sphere of everyday human life.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Go drink tea,” “Wash your bowl,” “Three pounds of flax,” “The cypress tree,” “Fine snowflakes falling everywhere,” and “Every day is a good day”: such are its expressions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In dissolving religious representations into everyday life, and in refusing to adhere to fixed articles of faith, Zen is profoundly non-idealistic. Indeed, for the person who lives Zen, even Buddhism itself becomes a piece of useless furniture.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, before the Marxist notion of a “rightful return to humanity itself” can be deepened into our own maxim, numerous questions must be examined and settled. Accomplishing this is, of course, beyond the purpose of the present essay. Here I shall merely indicate the direction and general outline of such an examination.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) Marxism advocates the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a form of authoritarianism. It seeks to abolish coercive power through coercive power—like attempting to wash a lump of earth with mud.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) Marxism confuses the subject with its conditions. However profoundly material things may condition the mind, they can never entirely constitute the conditions of the mind. Food, after all, is not immediately identical with life itself. Do not forget the subject.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) Marxism adopts a genetic or developmental approach to mental and cultural phenomena. This approach possesses breadth and novelty. Yet it lacks the depth of intuition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Marxist conception of humanity is, so to speak, an investigation of the human skin and flesh, rather than an insight into the innermost essence of the human being. In this respect, its predecessor Feuerbach had advanced further.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) Genetic investigation is certainly one method of understanding, but it is not the only method.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
One need not know how water came into existence in order to know its taste. We must not suppose that the significance of every cultural phenomenon can be determined entirely through an investigation of its origins.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There are undoubtedly many aspects of religion&#039;s origins and significance that can be exposed through Marxist methods and overcome through Marxist practice.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|230|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
Yet I cannot believe that religion can thereby be wholly negated. The essential seeds of religion lie within the very nature and limitations of what it means to be human.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) At the very least, the standpoint upon which Zen rests belongs to a domain that cannot be an object of negation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Negation can take place only through “thought.” Yet the standpoint of Zen does not lie within the world of thought. It is of the kind expressed by the saying, “The moment you turn toward it, you turn away from it.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Descartes began his philosophy by doubting the certainty of all existence and truth. Ultimately, he arrived at the self-evidence of “doubting,” or, in other words, of “thinking.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The standpoint of Zen transcends even such thinking, yet may also be likened to the ground or place (basho 場所) that makes possible the expression and establishment of all thought. Marxism, too, merely dances upon the palm of what transcends thought.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) No one is born a Marxist. Everyone becomes one.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The possibility of moving from one worldview to another rests upon the fact that the active dimension of consciousness can always transcend any particular content of consciousness. This is also why Marxists can understand the bourgeois worldview.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consciousness possesses infinity and universality in itself. Even the materialist Feuerbach acknowledged this.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Actual consciousness is always in contact with something beyond its own contents and is unified through that which transcends them.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(7) Both ignorance (mumyō 無明) and attachment (shūjaku 執着) represent forms in which this unity remains incomplete.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The divisiveness and attachment characteristic of consciousness appear to be inherent in human nature itself. Consequently, although they are frequently stimulated and intensified by our environment, we cannot say that every form of attachment and anxiety is produced by environmental conditions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
So long as human beings possess such a nature and such limitations, they will continually seek to “return” to the primordial “One.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Thought, as the principle of division, is simultaneously a demand for unity. Yet the ultimate duality cannot be overcome through thought—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|231|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
…because thought is a principle that processes all phenomena through relations between subject and predicate—that is, through “opposition.” The final opposition must therefore be entrusted to a leap beyond thought. Here lies the path toward Zen.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(8) If the origins of religion can be attributed to contradictions in the material environment, then do animals and plants exploited by human beings likewise possess religion?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There are no contradictions in the environment itself. It must be the human mind that experiences contradictions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As the verse says: “There is no sorrowful rain upon the banana leaves; it is only those who hear it whose hearts are broken.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must first clarify the essential nature of mind. Contradiction exists only insofar as there is mind; conditions exist only insofar as there is a subject.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(9) According to Marx, what distinguishes human beings from animals is material “production.” But was it the material environment that initiated such production?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Human activity must already be acknowledged here. We must therefore investigate the essential nature of human agency.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(10) The Marxist assertion that life determines consciousness is as crude as the following argument: “Police officers are poor. Therefore, they are Marxists.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Kropotkin was born into the aristocracy and became a revolutionary.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Moreover, this logic provides no grounds for condemning as “traitors” comrades who became reactionaries after their material circumstances improved. Such condemnation can find its justification only from a standpoint that establishes some form of humanitarian ideal.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(11) Hegel, who excluded idealism from his philosophy, thereby concealed within it the seeds of a reactionary philosophy that glorified the existing order, notwithstanding the revolutionary character of his dialectic.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Marxism, which seeks to carry the revolutionary character of dialectics to its logical conclusion, likewise runs the risk—through its exclusion of conscious purpose—of descending into material fatalism or, alternatively, ending in blind destructiveness.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(12) We must establish our objectives as purely and rigorously as possible. Having done so, we must select the most appropriate and effective plans and means for realizing those objectives, adapting them to changes in the material and spiritual structures of our circumstances at any given time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|232|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
In doing so, we need only determine our concrete methods through the proper application of induction and deduction. There is no necessity to proceed according to a dialectical schema of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Marxism proclaimed its liberation from metaphysics, yet through dialectical materialism it has once again plunged into metaphysics.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Now, I shall attempt to summarize the objective I have in mind:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To take as our ultimate aim the fullest possible realization and enjoyment, by all people, of their inherently endowed nature of mind; to establish the spiritual and material conditions necessary for this purpose; and, toward that end, for everyone to work according to their abilities, receive according to their needs, and endure only the minimum sacrifice recognized as necessary by the clearest possible exercise of reason.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In pursuit of this comprehensive objective, we must sometimes attend to the purity of mind, sometimes seek guidance in the universality of principle, and sometimes trace the myriad transformations of particular circumstances.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Through direct intuition, critical reflection, and investigation, we continually aspire to fulfill the Buddhist path “together with all sentient beings.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Marxism and Zen: Notes” (&#039;&#039;Marukusu shugi to Zen—oboegaki&#039;&#039; マルクス主義と禅――覚え書) is a 1930 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦 (1902–1986). It catalogs twenty positions advanced by other religious thinkers; these positions should not automatically be read as Ichikawa&#039;s own. His replies address them selectively, including a joint response to items (15) and (18).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This translation follows the Japanese transcription [[IH30MTZ]] and the text printed in 『市川白弦著作集』 (&#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; [Collected Writings of Ichikawa Hakugen]), vol. 3, pp. 219–232. The essay reportedly appeared in &#039;&#039;Chūō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 中央仏教 in June 1930; the original issue, collected volume imprint, and text require final verification. Page markers correspond to the Japanese source and link back to the original.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields (2026). This is a provisional translation pending final diplomatic collation. The meaning of 「唯物史観を戦い取る」 in II (2) remains under review because the following sentence also refers to 「唯物史観を克服せずして」. The abbreviation 「七一二」 following 『宗教研究』, the exact source of the Marx quotation in Section V, selected proper-name readings, and the Hegel reference in V (11) require further verification. Editorial readings are not silently substituted for the historical text.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotations: James Mark Shields, 2026.&lt;br /&gt;
Collected source: Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū, vol. 3, pp. 219–232.&lt;br /&gt;
Full diplomatic verification pending.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1930). “Marxism and Zen: Notes” (Marukusu shugi to Zen—oboegaki マルクス主義と禅――覚え書). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. The Radical Buddhism Project. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH30MTZ-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English Translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH30MTZ-T&amp;diff=1258</id>
		<title>IH30MTZ-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH30MTZ-T&amp;diff=1258"/>
		<updated>2026-10-21T19:39:36Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: Created page with &amp;quot;{{Textual Verification}} {{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Marxism and Zen: Notes”}}  Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦 (1930). “Marxism and Zen: Notes” (&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Marukusu shugi to Zen—oboegaki&amp;#039;&amp;#039; マルクス主義と禅――覚え書). (Japanese original here.)  __NOTOC__  &amp;lt;div style=&amp;quot;margin:0.2em 0 0.7em 0; line-height:1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Contents&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; &amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; 1. Translation&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; &amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 Section I&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; &amp;amp;nbsp;...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{Textual Verification}}&lt;br /&gt;
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Marxism and Zen: Notes”}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Ichikawa Hakugen]] 市川白弦 (1930). “Marxism and Zen: Notes” (&#039;&#039;Marukusu shugi to Zen—oboegaki&#039;&#039; マルクス主義と禅――覚え書). ([[IH30MTZ|Japanese original here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div style=&amp;quot;margin:0.2em 0 0.7em 0; line-height:1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Translation|Translation]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 [[#I|Section I]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.2 [[#II|Section II]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.3 [[#III|Section III]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4 [[#IV|Section IV]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.5 [[#V|Section V]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|219|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
The editors have assigned me the topic indicated above, but depending on how one approaches it, this is an exceedingly broad question, one that can be resolved only through the painstaking research and practice of numerous scholars. In this essay, I shall confine myself to reviewing and criticizing the various responses thus far advanced from the Buddhist side, while setting out a preliminary outline of my own views. Because of limitations of space, moreover, my account of Marxism&#039;s rejection of religion will be allowed to emerge only insofar as is necessary in examining the views of these various thinkers.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The responses thus far offered by those who support religion—primarily Buddhism—may, so far as I have seen, be classified approximately as follows. I welcome corrections if I have misunderstood anything.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (A) Concerning the respective standpoints of Marxism and religion ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) Marxist categories and religious categories are entirely different. Religious people need only conduct themselves as religious people.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Imanaka Tsugimaro 今中次麿, Chūgai Nippō, April 10, 1930; Akegarasu Haya, ibid.,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|220|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
April 24; and certain scholars of religion who emphasize the distinctive character of religious values.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) Marxism, as a theory of economic reform, should cease its criticism of religion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kimura Taiken, Chūgai Nippō, April 18.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) Buddhism is neither idealism nor materialism. Mind and matter are nondual; one must cling neither to mind nor to matter.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Matsubara Chien, Chūgai Nippō, January 25; Yabuki Keiki and Kimura Taiken, ibid., April 23; Koyanagi Shigeta, Bunka Jihō, March 25.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) Through contemplation of emptiness, Buddhism frees itself from attachment to things.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Takagami Kakushō, Chūgai Nippō, January 26.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) The principle of social reform is exhausted by the Mahāyāna bodhisattva path of benefiting oneself and benefiting others. Nothing need be added to this.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kihira Tadayoshi, Chūgai Nippō, April 25.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) Marxism is itself a kind of religion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kido Mantarō, Shūkyō kenkyū, 「七一二」; Itō Shōshin, Chūgai Nippō, March 5.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (B) Concerning Marxist practice ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(7) Class struggle is impermissible.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Almost all the writers surveyed, although Kido and Itō take somewhat different positions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(8) Spiritual awakening must come first. Equality cannot be realized unless everyone genuinely awakens.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Akegarasu Haya, Chūgai Nippō, April 24; Kagawa Toyohiko and Inazu Kizō, ibid., February 2; Yabuki Keiki, ibid., April 20; Nishida Kitarō, Art and Morality (Geijutsu to dōtoku 芸術と道徳), p. 175.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (C) Concerning Marxism&#039;s rejection of religion ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(9) Marxists confuse religion as it presently exists with the essence of religion. Their rejection is directed only against religion in its present condition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Uno Enkū, Chūgai Nippō, February 22; Ifukube Ryūki, ibid., April 22; Kaneko Hakumu, A Religious Critique of Socialism (Shakaishugi no shūkyōteki hihan 社会主義の宗教的批判).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(10) Established religions contain many elements that ought to be rejected.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Terada Yakichi, Chūō Bukkyō, May 1930; Miki 三木保幾, Yomiuri Shinbun, April 27.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(11) Particular historical forms of religion may be rejected, but the essence of religion cannot be denied, so long as human beings experience the anguish of life and death or possess&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|221|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
a longing for the “infinite.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Ifukube Ryūki, Chūgai Nippō, April 22; Kimura Taiken, ibid., April 27.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(12) At the root of class struggle lies human selfishness. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat alike act according to the same principle. First teach them selflessness (muga 無我). Here lies the proper domain of religion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Terada Yakichi, Bunka Jihō, December 28, 1929, and various other writers.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(13) Bread alone cannot resolve the problem. Religion becomes a question only after bread has been secured.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Yabuki Keiki, Chūgai Nippō, April 20; Kawai Teiichi, ibid., April 27.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(14) Buddhism is not what is commonly called otherworldliness. It seeks to establish the Buddha-land here on earth.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Inazu Kizō, Chūgai Nippō, February 2; and other writers.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (D) Concerning the course Buddhism (or religion) should take in the future ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(15) Adopt the socially realistic orientation of Mahāyāna Buddhism, together with its orientation toward spiritual idealism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Ono Seiichirō, Yomiuri Shinbun, May 2.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(16) Become socially engaged. Save individuals through engagement with society.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kimura Taiken, Yomiuri Shinbun, April 27; Hoashi Riichirō, ibid., May 1.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(17) Abandon otherworldliness and engage with reality.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Terada Yakichi, Chūō Bukkyō, May.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(18) While maintaining a spiritual standpoint, engage with material conditions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kimura Taiken, Yomiuri Shinbun, April 27.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(19) Do not compromise with materialism. The materialization of religion is the degeneration of religion. Religion&#039;s true vocation lies in spiritualizing matter.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Tsuge Nobuhide, Yomiuri Shinbun, May 23.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(20) Become a movement of the masses; and yet do not become class-based. Embrace all humanity.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
— Kimura Taiken, Yomiuri Shinbun, April 27; Miki 三木保幾, ibid., May 6; Hoashi Riichirō, ibid., May 7; Tanaka Kōtarō, ibid., May 6.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|222|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I shall now examine the views set out above. Given the hurried character of these notes, there will undoubtedly be places where I have failed to express myself fully, or even failed to observe the proper courtesies. I welcome criticism and correction. I shall comment on the arguments in the order of their original numbering; readers are asked to compare the two.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) This reflects the capitalist conception of the division of labor—or, alternatively, the Hīnayāna attachment to fixed doctrines (hōshū 法執). Such a habit of compartmentalization divides and sets against one another the many organically interconnected phenomena of life.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Ten Oxherding Verses (Jūgyūju 十牛頌) describe one who returns to the world, exposing his chest and walking barefoot through the marketplace, covered in dust and ashes, his face filled with laughter.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The liberated person has abandoned even the pride of possessing a separate thing called “religion itself.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) So long as Marxists remain Marxists, and so long as religious people do not cooperate in the struggle to win the materialist conception of history, it is only natural that Marxists will not abandon their rejection of religion. To demand this of them without overcoming historical materialism is meaningless.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) “Mind and matter are one; form and mind are nondual”—the opiate-like character of intuitionism lies precisely in brandishing such expressions indiscriminately.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As a pure expression of intuition, this was valid; it correctly pointed toward the world of direct intuition. But once we descend into the world of distinctions, mind has its own principles, just as matter has its own laws.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Distinction is itself equality” may have significance as an indication of an experiential standpoint. Yet the complacency that wraps itself in the smoke screen of “the unity of mind and matter,” forgetting both material laws and the principles of consciousness, is exceedingly crude.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is why the ancient sages also sought meticulous discrimination through subsequently attained wisdom (gotokuchi 後得智). Here, what is required is not so much the fusion of mind and matter as their dialectical examination.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) The objective is correct. But what holds true for a genius does not necessarily hold true for everyone. What is appropriate for a solitary person is not necessarily appropriate for someone with a spouse and children.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Capitalism has transformed everything—even human beings themselves—into “things,” into commodities. We must therefore also investigate the conditions under which everyone might live, as far as possible, free from domination by material things.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|223|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
(5) “Do good deeds. The purpose of human life is exhausted by this.” Such a statement is at once perfectly clear and profoundly ambiguous.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
But consider a mouse about to be devoured by a cat: how, precisely, is it supposed to practice “benefiting oneself and benefiting others” (jiri rita 自利利他)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) Everything depends upon how religion is defined. At the very least, however, we should attend to one conspicuous difference between conventional religion and Marxism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Religion seeks to alter one&#039;s state of mind in order to forget the oppressive character of one&#039;s environment. Marxism, by contrast, seeks to transform the environment and thereby change one&#039;s state of mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(7) How extraordinary that Buddhists who have affirmed slaughter and warfare under slogans such as “Sword and Zen are one” (kenzen ichinyo 剣禅一如) should now be terrified by the cry of “class struggle” and rush frantically to offer moral guidance!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
They must either repent of their past or change their present conduct. This demands serious self-examination.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(8) The criticism offered under (4) can also be applied here.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Furthermore, the argument that equality is pointless because inequalities will inevitably arise again comes perilously close to saying that medical treatment is useless because the patient will eventually fall ill again, or that eating is pointless because one will eventually become hungry again.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(9) I agree with this view. One qualification, however, must be kept in mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
For Marxists, who seek to comprehend every phenomenon in its historical and actual existence, there can be no eternal and unchanging “essence” of religion apart from the actual historical forms assumed by particular religions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consequently, the defense that religion need only return to its original “essence” amounts, from a Marxist standpoint, to an empty slogan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(10) This is something everyone acknowledges.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(11) The problem of life and death can be resolved without recourse to religion. There have been adherents of Marxism who found peace of mind by entrusting this very problem to Marxist practice—although that is another matter if one chooses to call such a commitment “religion.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There are, moreover, various kinds of infinity. Extensional infinity—what Hegel called the “bad infinite”—is itself one form of infinity. Yet this is precisely the kind of infinity that we ordinarily desire. The matter calls for more careful examination.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|224|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
(12) The criticism offered under (4) can also be developed in response to this position. I shall return to the question later.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(13) What does religion propose to do for the millions of unemployed people who are constantly wandering on the brink of starvation? Are distinguished religious teachers concerned only with the salvation of souls?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(14) Buddhism has frequently been defended through statements of this sort. Yet even Christianity has contemplated the coming of the Kingdom of God “on earth.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Marxism&#039;s rejection of religion is directed not principally at overcoming religious doctrines, but at overcoming the idealistic character of religious practice—the illusory methods by which religion proposes to establish its ideal society.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Lenin regarded religion as the illusory happiness of the masses.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(15), (18) Both assertions remain exceedingly vague. The question is how these ideals are to be realized concretely: what means, methods, and sequences of action are required, and what theoretical foundations justify them?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(19) To speak of “spiritualizing matter” is careless. Teachings suggesting that everything depends upon one&#039;s state of mind have repeatedly compelled human beings to embrace falsehood and unnatural conduct.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To hold one&#039;s nose while eating rotten meat, or to cover one&#039;s ears while stealing a bell—this is the magic of spiritualism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(20) Neither “humanity” nor “human beings in general” exist as undifferentiated abstractions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Whatever one thinks of their merits, to admonish the masses who seek to abolish class distinctions through struggle against becoming class-conscious, and to preach peace in the name of “humanity,” is—in its actual consequences, whether religious people intend it or not—to support the capitalists who defend the existing order and to intensify the oppression of the propertyless.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Lenin regarded religion as a form of spiritual oppression directed against the proletariat.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In the present age, even ideas such as “humanity,” “peace,” and “universal love” cannot escape the pressures of class division. Thus religion becomes increasingly estranged from the propertyless.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is not my “opinion.” It is a fact before our eyes.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I shall conclude this criticism by citing Miura Sangendō 三浦参玄洞&#039;s remarks:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Since social movements arise from the objective circumstances of a particular society and historical moment, one must understand that it is impossible to decide in advance whether to proceed to the right&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|225|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
or to the left. When a ship is listing to starboard and about to capsize, passengers who recognize the danger will quickly leap from the right side to the left. At such a moment, even if someone were to shout, ‘The safest place on a ship is in the middle,’ no one would pay the slightest attention.” (Chūgai Nippō, June 28, 1929)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What particularly interests us when comparing Eastern and Western thought is the difference between their respective conceptions of “things” or “matter,” and their differing attitudes toward “history.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To understand the laws of nature and thereby “conquer nature” was the guiding principle of Bacon and, subsequently, of European and American civilization. By contrast, to “wander in accordance with the workings of nature” was the orientation of Zhuangzi and the fundamental disposition of the Eastern spirit. For the former, nature was the nature investigated by the natural sciences; for the latter, it was an intuitive, supra-empirical nature. Consequently, empirical “things” were, for the former, objects to be investigated and conquered, while for the latter they were things to be renounced and transcended. As the Zhuangzi puts it, “Losing oneself in things and losing one&#039;s nature in conventionality.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In both East and West, philosophy began with the “problem of existence” and proceeded toward the dialectical examination of “being” (u 有) and “nonbeing” (mu 無). Yet in the West, the pursuit of being led toward “development,” whereas in the East, the aspiration toward nonbeing led toward “cessation” (jakumetsu 寂滅).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In the former, being and nonbeing became primarily categories of factual cognition; in the latter, they were connected with judgments of value. Accordingly, even with respect to the category of “cause and effect,” the natural-scientific conception of causality characteristic of the West was contrasted in the East with moral or religious causality.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In short, from the standpoint of the Eastern spirit&#039;s orientation toward emptiness (kū 空), “things” appeared as “provisionally existent” or “to be renounced.” It must therefore be regarded as almost inevitable that a rigorous science of “things”—that is, natural science—did not develop in the East. Whether one speaks of “elementary learning” or “great learning,” [continues].&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|226|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
…or of “setting one&#039;s heart upon learning at fifteen,” all such learning was ultimately nothing other than the learning of the sages.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Next, let us consider “history.” I remarked earlier that Western civilization was oriented toward “development.” Darwin conceived of the “evolution” of living beings, while Bergson expounded “creative evolution” in time. In the East, however, what was sought was a “return to the original source” (henpon gen&#039;gen 返本還源), as in the Ten Oxherding Verses (Jūgyūju 十牛頌), while calls for the “restoration of royal government” were also advanced.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The objective of political revolution was to return to the ancient age of Yao and Shun; the objective of religious reform was likewise to return to the time of the founding patriarchs. It is therefore hardly surprising that the conception of “history” failed to develop in the East, since the essence of historical consciousness lies in “development.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Thus materialism and historical scholarship—and historical materialism all the more—remained exceedingly remote from the Eastern mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Here lies the problem.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How profound and beautiful was the spiritualism of the ancient East! Yet might its disregard for “things” have caused the mind, paradoxically, to stumble over material things, rendered its worldview crude, and encouraged it to conceive the means of practice in merely idealistic terms?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Today, when the material structures of history have become increasingly complex and contradictory, this question demands particular reflection.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) Just as we must not distort the principles of mind by imposing upon them the principles of matter, so too must we refrain from violating physical laws through psychological principles.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Many questions that are now simply matters for medicine or natural science were once treated as theological problems. Numerous errors and harmful practices arose in religious forms through ignorance of natural laws—for example, offering sacrifices and praying for rain.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
People sometimes sought through religion to escape physical dangers that could be avoided by the means taught by the natural sciences. One might, for instance, attempt to avert lightning through prayer when it could be avoided through the use of a lightning rod.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Here lies one reason why religion has been described as the illusory happiness of the masses.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) It is necessary to understand the principles of social development. What determines the course of history is not the religious “gospel,” but rather the economic structure of society.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
No one would imagine that the problem of unemployment could be solved through the “gospel” or a charity soup kitchen.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|227|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
No one would suppose that what can be achieved through the conscious regulation of economic laws could instead be obtained through faith in Inari. Such errors arise from a failure to understand social or economic laws.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
For modern people, the god of fate is often nothing more than the circulation of economic forces fluctuating in the marketplace.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) Numerous errors arise from misunderstanding the principles governing human relations.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Some religions have maintained that women and slaves cannot attain Buddhahood. Even today, at the foot of Mount Hiei in Kyoto, there remains a stone pillar marking a boundary that prohibits entry to “women and cattle” (nyonin gyūba kekkai 女人牛馬結界). Religious authorities placed women and cattle in the same category. This is indeed a “precious” historical document in the history of women&#039;s liberation!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How often has the doctrine of karmic retribution (inga ōhō 因果応報) confined the poor and the oppressed to timidity, servility, and ignorance?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) Finally, we must understand the relationship between economic circumstances and human beings.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Most tragedies and crimes have their roots in material hardship. As the saying goes, “Poverty dulls the mind.” Other expressions—“The wealthy do not quarrel,” “When food and clothing are sufficient, people understand propriety,” “Without a secure livelihood there can be no steadfast mind,” and “Upbringing matters more than lineage”—all attest to how closely external circumstances and states of mind are intertwined.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Even if we were ordered to commit murder, we would be unable to do so. The principal reason is that we do not presently find ourselves in circumstances that would lead us to such an act.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Conversely, it would surely be futile to teach a young man sexual restraint while simultaneously exposing him to obscene conduct.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Do not inquire whether human nature is good or evil; provide favorable conditions” (zen&#039;en 善縁), said Zen Master Dōgen. There is also the story of Mencius&#039;s mother moving house three times.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
For the development of each person&#039;s character, it is necessary to establish the best possible conditions and remove harmful material obstacles.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Those who emphasize spiritual awakening must first understand the importance of the environment. How many people could sit calmly atop a smokestack a hundred jō high?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must not attempt to guide everyone according to principles that apply only to a genius. Just as awakening (bodai 菩提) has its own principles, delusion (komō 虚妄) has its own necessities. We must guide all people through principles that actually govern their lives.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To reduce every social problem indiscriminately to human selfishness or attachment to the self (gashū 我執) is not necessarily mistaken, but it is exceedingly abstract.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must guard against the recklessness of attempting to address every social problem through such an empty conception of society.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|228|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
(5) Yet I am not advocating a “compromise” or “eclectic synthesis” between Buddhism and the materialist conception of history. Compromise and eclecticism invariably diminish the distinctive character of both positions, weaken their vitality, and frequently introduce confusion into the very manner in which they are combined. Here lies the defect of eclecticism. It is rash simply to proclaim, without further consideration, “Become socially engaged!” or “Attend to material conditions!”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) To attempt to combine only the conclusions of different worldviews arising from different standpoints is like grafting bamboo onto a tree. We must first undertake a dialectical examination of the standpoints themselves.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Just as Kūkai, in the Treatise on the Ten Stages of Mind (Jūjūshinron 十住心論), and Yanshou, in the Record of the Mirror of the Teachings (Zongjing lu 宗鏡録), sought to organize different standpoints into coherent systems, so too must we, from the standpoint of Zen—grounded in the original nature of the human mind—critically examine and situate the various worldviews.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must recognize the respective significance and truth of each within its proper position and domain. At the same time, we must select, reject, and subject them to dialectical examination in such a way that they become stages along the path toward Zen, or means of realizing Zen itself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Here lies the task of correct thinking.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must not confine ourselves to improvised adjustments in practice, such as simply calling upon Buddhists to engage with reality or sympathize with the propertyless. We must also undertake the revision and systematic reorganization of our worldview.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== V ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I shall now offer a brief criticism of Marxism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The essential task of Zen is, first of all, for each person to return to their original face (honrai no menmoku 本来の面目).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Record of Linji (Rinzai-roku 臨済録) says:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Upon this mass of red flesh there is a true person of no rank, constantly entering and leaving through the gateways of your face. Those who have not yet verified this—look! Look!”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Now Marx says:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The only means by which humanity can recover its humanity, its very essence, is through the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and a resolute return—not to God, but to humanity itself—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|229|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
This call for the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and for a resolute, rightful return to humanity itself can, ironically, be “deepened” into a maxim of Zen.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen practice has been the realization of one&#039;s true nature (kenshō 見性) and the direct pointing to the human mind (jikishi ninshin 直指人心). It is not a direct pointing toward heaven, nor a direct pointing toward some other shore.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Zen school brought Buddhist theory and practice—which had been elaborately adorned with mythological and idealistic conceptions—entirely back into the sphere of everyday human life.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Go drink tea,” “Wash your bowl,” “Three pounds of flax,” “The cypress tree,” “Fine snowflakes falling everywhere,” and “Every day is a good day”: such are its expressions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In dissolving religious representations into everyday life, and in refusing to adhere to fixed articles of faith, Zen is profoundly non-idealistic. Indeed, for the person who lives Zen, even Buddhism itself becomes a piece of useless furniture.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, before the Marxist notion of a “rightful return to humanity itself” can be deepened into our own maxim, numerous questions must be examined and settled. Accomplishing this is, of course, beyond the purpose of the present essay. Here I shall merely indicate the direction and general outline of such an examination.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) Marxism advocates the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a form of authoritarianism. It seeks to abolish coercive power through coercive power—like attempting to wash a lump of earth with mud.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) Marxism confuses the subject with its conditions. However profoundly material things may condition the mind, they can never entirely constitute the conditions of the mind. Food, after all, is not immediately identical with life itself. Do not forget the subject.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) Marxism adopts a genetic or developmental approach to mental and cultural phenomena. This approach possesses breadth and novelty. Yet it lacks the depth of intuition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Marxist conception of humanity is, so to speak, an investigation of the human skin and flesh, rather than an insight into the innermost essence of the human being. In this respect, its predecessor Feuerbach had advanced further.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) Genetic investigation is certainly one method of understanding, but it is not the only method.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
One need not know how water came into existence in order to know its taste. We must not suppose that the significance of every cultural phenomenon can be determined entirely through an investigation of its origins.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There are undoubtedly many aspects of religion&#039;s origins and significance that can be exposed through Marxist methods and overcome through Marxist practice.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|230|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
Yet I cannot believe that religion can thereby be wholly negated. The essential seeds of religion lie within the very nature and limitations of what it means to be human.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) At the very least, the standpoint upon which Zen rests belongs to a domain that cannot be an object of negation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Negation can take place only through “thought.” Yet the standpoint of Zen does not lie within the world of thought. It is of the kind expressed by the saying, “The moment you turn toward it, you turn away from it.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Descartes began his philosophy by doubting the certainty of all existence and truth. Ultimately, he arrived at the self-evidence of “doubting,” or, in other words, of “thinking.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The standpoint of Zen transcends even such thinking, yet may also be likened to the ground or place (basho 場所) that makes possible the expression and establishment of all thought. Marxism, too, merely dances upon the palm of what transcends thought.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) No one is born a Marxist. Everyone becomes one.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The possibility of moving from one worldview to another rests upon the fact that the active dimension of consciousness can always transcend any particular content of consciousness. This is also why Marxists can understand the bourgeois worldview.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consciousness possesses infinity and universality in itself. Even the materialist Feuerbach acknowledged this.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Actual consciousness is always in contact with something beyond its own contents and is unified through that which transcends them.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(7) Both ignorance (mumyō 無明) and attachment (shūjaku 執着) represent forms in which this unity remains incomplete.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The divisiveness and attachment characteristic of consciousness appear to be inherent in human nature itself. Consequently, although they are frequently stimulated and intensified by our environment, we cannot say that every form of attachment and anxiety is produced by environmental conditions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
So long as human beings possess such a nature and such limitations, they will continually seek to “return” to the primordial “One.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Thought, as the principle of division, is simultaneously a demand for unity. Yet the ultimate duality cannot be overcome through thought—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|231|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
…because thought is a principle that processes all phenomena through relations between subject and predicate—that is, through “opposition.” The final opposition must therefore be entrusted to a leap beyond thought. Here lies the path toward Zen.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(8) If the origins of religion can be attributed to contradictions in the material environment, then do animals and plants exploited by human beings likewise possess religion?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There are no contradictions in the environment itself. It must be the human mind that experiences contradictions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As the verse says: “There is no sorrowful rain upon the banana leaves; it is only those who hear it whose hearts are broken.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must first clarify the essential nature of mind. Contradiction exists only insofar as there is mind; conditions exist only insofar as there is a subject.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(9) According to Marx, what distinguishes human beings from animals is material “production.” But was it the material environment that initiated such production?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Human activity must already be acknowledged here. We must therefore investigate the essential nature of human agency.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(10) The Marxist assertion that life determines consciousness is as crude as the following argument: “Police officers are poor. Therefore, they are Marxists.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Kropotkin was born into the aristocracy and became a revolutionary.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Moreover, this logic provides no grounds for condemning as “traitors” comrades who became reactionaries after their material circumstances improved. Such condemnation can find its justification only from a standpoint that establishes some form of humanitarian ideal.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(11) Hegel, who excluded idealism from his philosophy, thereby concealed within it the seeds of a reactionary philosophy that glorified the existing order, notwithstanding the revolutionary character of his dialectic.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Marxism, which seeks to carry the revolutionary character of dialectics to its logical conclusion, likewise runs the risk—through its exclusion of conscious purpose—of descending into material fatalism or, alternatively, ending in blind destructiveness.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(12) We must establish our objectives as purely and rigorously as possible. Having done so, we must select the most appropriate and effective plans and means for realizing those objectives, adapting them to changes in the material and spiritual structures of our circumstances at any given time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|232|original|IH30MTZ}}&lt;br /&gt;
In doing so, we need only determine our concrete methods through the proper application of induction and deduction. There is no necessity to proceed according to a dialectical schema of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Marxism proclaimed its liberation from metaphysics, yet through dialectical materialism it has once again plunged into metaphysics.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Now, I shall attempt to summarize the objective I have in mind:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To take as our ultimate aim the fullest possible realization and enjoyment, by all people, of their inherently endowed nature of mind; to establish the spiritual and material conditions necessary for this purpose; and, toward that end, for everyone to work according to their abilities, receive according to their needs, and endure only the minimum sacrifice recognized as necessary by the clearest possible exercise of reason.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In pursuit of this comprehensive objective, we must sometimes attend to the purity of mind, sometimes seek guidance in the universality of principle, and sometimes trace the myriad transformations of particular circumstances.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Through direct intuition, critical reflection, and investigation, we continually aspire to fulfill the Buddhist path “together with all sentient beings.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Marxism and Zen: Notes” (&#039;&#039;Marukusu shugi to Zen—oboegaki&#039;&#039; マルクス主義と禅――覚え書) is a 1930 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦 (1902–1986). It catalogs twenty positions advanced by other religious thinkers; these positions should not automatically be read as Ichikawa&#039;s own. His replies address them selectively, including a joint response to items (15) and (18).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This translation follows the Japanese transcription [[IH30MTZ]] and the text printed in 『市川白弦著作集』 (&#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; [Collected Writings of Ichikawa Hakugen]), vol. 3, pp. 219–232. The essay reportedly appeared in &#039;&#039;Chūō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 中央仏教 in June 1930; the original issue, collected volume imprint, and text require final verification. Page markers correspond to the Japanese source and link back to the original.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields (2026). This is a provisional translation pending final diplomatic collation. The meaning of 「唯物史観を戦い取る」 in II (2) remains under review because the following sentence also refers to 「唯物史観を克服せずして」. The abbreviation 「七一二」 following 『宗教研究』, the exact source of the Marx quotation in Section V, selected proper-name readings, and the Hegel reference in V (11) require further verification. Editorial readings are not silently substituted for the historical text.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotations: James Mark Shields, 2026.&lt;br /&gt;
Collected source: Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū, vol. 3, pp. 219–232.&lt;br /&gt;
Full diplomatic verification pending.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1930). “Marxism and Zen: Notes” (Marukusu shugi to Zen—oboegaki マルクス主義と禅――覚え書). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. The Radical Buddhism Project. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH30MTZ-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English Translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH30MTZ&amp;diff=1257</id>
		<title>IH30MTZ</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH30MTZ&amp;diff=1257"/>
		<updated>2026-10-21T19:39:17Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:市川白弦、「マルクス主義と禅―覚え書」}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Ichikawa Hakugen|市川白弦]] (1930). 「マルクス主義と禅――覚え書」 [Marxism and Zen: Notes]. ([[IH30MTZ-T|English translation here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div style=&amp;quot;margin:0.2em 0 0.7em 0; line-height:1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Text|Text]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 [[#一|Section 一]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.2 [[#二|Section 二]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.3 [[#三|Section 三]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4 [[#四|Section 四]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.5 [[#五|Section 五]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|219}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
マルクス主義と禅&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
――覚え書――&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
編集者から右の題目を課せられたのであるが、これは見かたによってはなはだ広汎な問題であって、諸家の綿密な研究と実践とをまって解決せらるべき性質のものである。この稿においてはまずこれまで仏教者側から提出された解答の諸相を回顧し批評し併せて卑見の草案を羅列するに止めよう。而してマルクス主義の宗教否定の紹介も、頁の都合上、諸家の意見を吟味する際に自から隠顕する程度にしておく。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 一 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
これまで宗教――主として仏教を支持する人たちから与えられた解答は、私の見たかぎりでは、およそ左のごとく類別される。誤解があったならば御叱正を乞う。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== （イ）マルクス主義と宗教との立場に関して ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（1）マルクス的範疇と宗教的範疇とはまったく別だ。宗教家は宗教家らしくしていればよろしい。――今中次麿（『中外日報』、一九三〇・四・一〇。この稿、以下特に年表記のないものは、一九三〇年のもの）、暁烏敏（同、&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|220}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
四・二四）、その他宗教的価値の独自性を高調する宗教学者の一部。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（2）経済改革理論としてのマルクス主義は宗教批判をやめるべきだ。――木村泰賢（『中外日報』、四・一八）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（3）仏教は唯心論でもなく、唯物論でもない。色心不二、心に執するも物に執するも不可――松原致遠（『中外日報』、一・二五）、矢吹慶輝・木村泰賢（同、四・二三）、小柳司気太（『文化時報』、三・二五）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（4）仏教は空観によって事物への執着を離れる――高神覚昇（『中外日報』、一・二六）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（5）社会改良の原理は「自利、利他」大乗の菩薩道に尽きる。これ以上加えるべき何物もない。――紀平正美（『中外日報』、四・二五）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（6）マルクス主義も一種の宗教だ。――城戸幡太郎（『宗教研究』、七一二）、伊藤証信（『中外日報』、三・五）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== （ロ）マルクス主義の実践に対して ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（7）階級闘争不可――諸家ほとんど全部（ただし城戸、伊藤両氏はやや趣がちがう）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（8）精神の自覚が先決問題。万人が真に自覚せぬかぎり平等は行なわれない。――暁烏敏（『中外日報』、四・二四）、賀川豊彦・稲津紀三（同、二・二）、矢吹慶輝（同、四・二〇）、西田幾多郎（『芸術と道徳』、一七五頁）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== （ハ）マルクス主義の宗教否定に対して ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（9）かれらは現存の宗教と宗教の本質とを混同している。かれらの宗教否定の対象は宗教の現状に過ぎない。――宇野円空（『中外日報』、二・二二）、伊福部隆輝（同、四・二二）、金子白夢（『社会主義の宗教的批判』）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（10）既成宗教には否定せらるべき多くの部分がある。――寺田弥吉（『中央仏教』、一九三〇年五月）、三木保幾（『読売新聞』、四・二七）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（11）宗教の特定の存在形式は否定されるにしても宗教の本質は否定されない。人間に生死の悩み、もしくは&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|221}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「無限」への欲求がある限り。――伊福部隆輝（『中外日報』、四・二二）、木村泰賢（同、四・二七）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（12）階級闘争の根底は人間の利己主義にある。ブルジョアもプロレタリアも同じ原理に立つ。まずかれらに無我を勧めよ。ここに宗教の領域がある。――寺田弥吉（『文化時報』、一九二九・一二・二八）その他諸家。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（13）パンだけで問題は解決しない。宗教はパンを得た後の問題だ。――矢吹慶輝（『中外日報』、四・二〇）、川合貞一（同、四・二七）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（14）仏教はいわゆる彼岸主義ではない。地上に仏国土を建設せんとする。――稲津紀三（『中外日報』、二・二）、その他諸家。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== （ニ）将来、仏教（宗教）の採るべき態度に就いて ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（15）大乗仏教の社会的現実的態度、精神的理想主義的態度をもってせよ。――小野清一郎（『読売新聞』、五・二）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（16）社会化せよ。社会に即して個人を救え。――木村泰賢（『読売新聞』、四・二七）、帆足理一郎（同、五・一）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（17）彼岸主義を棄てて現実に即せ。――寺田弥吉（『中央仏教』、五月）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（18）精神的立場に立つべきも物質に即せ。――木村泰賢（『読売新聞』、四・二七）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（19）唯物主義と妥協するな。宗教の物質化は宗教の堕落だ。物質を精神化するところに宗教の本領がある。――柘植信秀（『読売新聞』、五・二三）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（20）大衆化せよ。しかも階級化するな。全人類的であれ。――木村泰賢（『読売新聞』、四・二七）、三木保幾（同、五・六）、帆足理一郎（同、五・七）、田中耕太郎（同、五・六）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|222}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 二 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
以下、諸家の見解を吟味する。覚え書のあわただしさ、意を尽くさざる点、礼を失することもあるであろう。大方の批正を仰ぎたい。上記番号順に批評する。彼此対照を乞う。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) 資本主義的分業観念の反映。しからずんば小乗的法執。かかる分業癖が有機的な幾多の生命現象を分割し拮抗させた。「胸を露わし足を跣にして塵に入り来る。土を抹し灰を塗って笑顔に満つ」（『十牛頌』）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
自由人は「宗教自体」といった矜持を棄てた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) マルキシストがマルキシストであるかぎり、而してかれらの唯物史観を戦い取ることに宗教家が協力しないかぎり、マルキシストとしては宗教否定を断念せぬのが当然。唯物史観を克服せずしてかかる要求を提出するのは無意味である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) 「物心一如、色心不二」――これを振り回すところに直観主義の阿片性がある。それは純なる直観の表白であった。而して直観の世界を示唆するものとして正しかった。が、ひとたび差別の世界へ下るならば、精神には精神の理法、物質には物質の法則がある。「差別即平等」は体験的立場への示唆としての意味をもつ。「物心一如」の煙幕へ、物の法則も心の理法も忘却させて陶然としている安心ははなはだ粗雑である。ゆえに古聖も「後得智」の綿密ならんことを願った。ここでは物心の融一よりも物心の弁証こそ望ましい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) 目標は正しい。しかし天才に妥当することは必ずしも万人に妥当しない。孤独者に妥当なことは必ずしも妻子ある者に妥当でない。資本主義が一切を、人間そのものをさえ「物」化し商品化した。万人ができうるかぎり物への関心から放たれて生活しうることを条件を考究することも必要である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|223}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) 「善事を為せ。人生の目的之に尽きる」ということほど、明白であり、かつ曖昧である。しかしながら、たとえば猫に食われんとするとき、鼠はいかにして「自利、利他」を履行しうるや。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) 宗教の定義によっていかようにも考えられる。ともかく従来の宗教とマルクス主義との顕著な差異のひとつとして次のことに留意したい。宗教が心持を変えることによって環境の圧迫を忘れようとするに対して、マルクス主義は環境を変えることによって心持を変えようとする。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(7) 「剣禅一如」といった合い言葉のもとに、殺戮と、戦争とを肯定してきた仏教者が、「階級闘争」の声におびえて「善導」に狂奔するのは奇怪である。過去を懺悔するか、現在を改めるか。三省を要す。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(8) これの批評は(4)の批評から演繹されよう。而して平等にしたところでじきに差別ができるから駄目だという論理はややもすると治療したところでまた病気するだろうから治療するに及ばない。飯を食ったところでまた腹がへるだろうから食うのは無駄だという論理と混同されやすい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(9) 私も同意見である。ただし次のことに留意したい。歴史の見地から一切の事象を現実の相の下に把握するマルクス主義者にとっては、諸宗教の現実形態を離れて、永遠に変わらぬ宗教の「本質」といったものは存在しない。ゆえに宗教の本質にさえ還ればいいのだという弁護は、マルクス主義にとっては無意味な掛声にすぎぬ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(10) 万人の認むるところ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(11) 生死の問題は宗教によらなくとも解決せられる。生死をマルクス主義の実践に託することにおいて安心を見出した主義者もあった。――これを宗教といえば別だが。さて無限には色々ある。外延的な無限――ヘーゲルのいわゆる「悪無限」もまた無限のひとつである。しかし通常われわれが欲求するものは&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|224}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
実にこの種の無限である。なお詳しい考察が必要であろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(12) この批評も(4)のそれから演繹されよう。なお後に考察する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(13) しからば絶えず飢餓線上に彷徨せる幾千万の失業者に向かって宗教は何を為さんとするか。高貴なる宗教家は霊魂の救済にのみ関心すればいいのか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(14) かかる言葉によってしばしば仏教が弁護せられた。しかしキリスト教ですら神の国を「地上にも来す」ことを考えている。マルクス主義における宗教否定の主眼は宗教教理の克服ではなくて宗教的実践の観念性――宗教の理想国建設方法の架空性の克服にある。レーニンは宗教を「民衆の幻想的幸福」だと考えた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(15)(18) いずれもはなはだ漠然としている。問題はそれらの理想を具体化するための手段、方法、順序およびこれらの理論的基礎付けにある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(19) 物質を精神化するとは杜撰な表現である。心の持ちかたひとつだといった教えが、しばしば人間に虚偽と不自然とを強いた。「鼻をつまんで腐肉をくらい、耳を掩うて鈴を盗む」――これが精神主義の魔術である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(20) 「人類」とか「人間一般」とかいったものはどこにもいない。その良し悪しは別として、闘争によって階級を揚棄せんとする大衆に向かって階級化を戒め「人類」の名において平和を説くことは、宗教家が意図するとせざるとにかかわらず、事実においては守勢の側の資本家を擁護し、無産者を圧迫する結果になる。レーニンは宗教を「無産者に対する精神的圧迫」と考えた。現代にあっては「人類」「平和」「博愛」などの観念すら階級化を余儀なくされている。かくて宗教はますます無産者の側から離れてゆく――これは私の「意見」ではない。現前の事実である――ここに三浦参玄洞の言葉を引いてこの批評を結ぶ。「社会運動はその社会その時代の客観的情勢を基調として興るものなる以上、予め右で行こう&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|225}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
とか左で行こうとか予定のつけ得られぬものであることを覚悟せねばならぬ。一船が右舷に傾いて正に覆らんとするとき、危いと気付いた程の乗客は、逸早く右から左へ飛退いて行くだろう。その時一人のあるありて『船は中央に乗るのが一番安全である』と叫んでも誰も耳には止めぬであろう」（『中外日報』、一九二九・六・二八）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 三 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれが東西両洋の思想を対比して特に興味を感ずることは、両者における「物」に対する考えかたの相違、および「歴史」に対する態度の違いである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
自然法を理解して「自然を征服する」ことはベーコンの、而してまた欧米文化の指標であった。「自然の機に遊ぶ」ことは荘子の、而して東洋精神の基調であった。前者における自然は自然科学的自然、後者における自然は直観的、超経験的な自然であった。したがって経験的なる「物」は、前者においては研究し征服せらるべき「物」であったが、後者においては厭離し超越せらるべきものであった。「荘子」にいう「己を物に喪い、性を俗に失う」。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
哲学は西洋においても東洋においても「存在の問題」から出発し「有」「無」の弁証に進んだ。しかし彼にあっては「有」を求めて「発展」に向かい、ここにおいては「無」を願って「寂滅」に向かった。有無は彼においてはおもに事実認識の範疇となり、ここにおいては価値認識に結合せられた。したがって「因果」の範疇に関しても彼の自然科学的因果に対してここでは道徳的ないし宗教的因果が考えられた。約言すれば「物」は東洋精神の空観的傾向に対しては「仮有なるもの」「厭離すべきもの」として現われた。東洋に厳密なる「物」の学――自然科学が発達しなかったのはむしろ当然といわねばならぬ。「小学」といい「大学」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|226}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
といい「十五にして学に志す」というも、みな聖人の学にほかならなかった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
次に「歴史」について考えてみる。さきに西洋の文化は「発展」に向かったといった。ダーウィンは生物の「進化」を考え、ベルグソンは時間における「創造的進化」を説いた。しかし東洋においては「返本還源」（『十牛頌』）が求められ「王政復古」が唱えられる。政治革命の目標は尭舜の古に帰ること、宗教改革のそれもまた祖師の昔に帰ることであった。東洋に「歴史」の観念が発達しなかったのも当然である。歴史観念の本質は「発展」であるから。かくて唯物論と歴史学とは――まして唯物史観は東洋人にとって極めて縁遠いものであった。問題はここにある。古東洋の精神主義はいかに深くかつ美しいものである。しかしながら「物」に対する軽視が、かえって心を物のために躓かせ、その世界観を粗雑にし、実践の手段を観念化する傾きはないか。歴史の唯物的機構が複雑化し矛盾化したる今日、特にこのことが省みられねばならぬ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 四 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) 物質の原理をもって精神の原理を枉めてはならぬように心理をもって物理を侵してもならぬ。今日では単に医学、自然科学の問題であるものが、かつては神学の問題であった。幾多の誤謬と禍害とが自然法への無理解から宗教の形において現われた。雨を祈って犠牲を捧げるごとき。物理の学が教える手段をもって物理の脅威から逃れるものを人は時に宗教によって逃れんとした。避雷針をもって避けえられる落雷を祈禱によって避けんとするごとき。宗教が民衆の幻想的幸福だと称せられる理由のひとつがここにある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) 社会進化の原理を知ることが必要である。歴史の行程を規定するものは宗教の「福音」ではなくて、むしろその社会の経済的機構である。失業問題を解決するものが「福音」や「慈善鍋」だとは何人も考え&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|227}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ぬであろう。経済法を意識的に統制することによって得られるものを「稲荷」の信仰をもって獲得せんとするごとき、いずれも社会法ないし経済法の無理解に基づく錯誤である。近代人にとって運命の神はしばしば市場に浮動する流通経済に過ぎない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) 対人法を誤ることから幾多の誤謬が生まれる。女人と奴隷とは成仏しえないと考えた宗教もあった。京都の比叡山麓には今なお「女人牛馬結界」の石柱が残っている。女人と牛馬とは宗教家によって同列に処理せられた。まさに婦人解放史における「貴重なる」史料である。「因果応報」の教理がいかにしばしば貧しきもの虐げられしものを萎縮と卑屈と愚昧とに閉じ込めたことであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) 最後に経済的環境と人間との関係を理解することが必要である。悲劇と犯罪との大部分が生活難に根ざしている。「貧すれば鈍する」といわれる。「金持喧嘩せず」とか「衣食足って礼節を知る」とか「恒産無き者は恒心無し」とか「氏より育ち」とかいずれも環境と心境とがいかに密接に結合しているかを語る。われわれに殺人を為せといわれてもできるものではない。主なるわけは現在さような環境に置かれていないからである。これに反して、たとえば一人の青年の目前において猥褻な行為を見せつけておきながら、かれに禁欲を教えることはまず無効であろう。「性の善悪を問うな、善縁を与えよ」（道元禅師）。「孟母三遷」の話もある。各人の人格的完成のためになるべく良き条件を設定し悪しき物質的障害を除去することもまた必要であろう。精神の自覚を高調せんとする者はまず環境の重要さを理解しなければならぬ。百丈の煙突の尖端に平然と腰掛けられる者が幾人あろう。天才にあてはまる原理をもって万人を導こうとしてはならぬ。菩提に菩提の理法があるように、虚妄には虚妄の必然がある。万人を支配する原理を通して万人を導かねばならぬ。一切の社会問題を一様に人間の利己主義（我執）に還元することは、間違いではないにしてもはなはだ抽象的である。かかる空疎な社会観をもって一切を処理せん&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|228}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
とする無謀を慎みたい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) しかし私は仏教と唯物史観との「妥協」や「折衷」を説くのではない。妥協、折衷はつねに両者の独自性を減殺し活力を弱めまたしばしば折衷の仕方に混乱を招く。ここに折衷主義の欠陥がある。漫然と「社会化せよ」「物質に即せよ」と主張するのは軽率である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) 異なった立場から現われた異なった世界観の結果のみを結合せんとするのは木に竹を接ぐようなものだ。まず立場と立場との弁証が行なわれなければならぬ。空海が『十住心論』において、延寿が『宗鏡録』において、諸の立場を系統付けんとしたように、われわれもまた禅の立場――人心の本然に立脚して諸世界観の立場を批判し位置づけ而して各の位置と領域とにおけるそれぞれの意義と真理性とを認め、しかもそれらが禅にいたる過程、または禅を実現するための方便となるように、取捨し弁証せられねばならない。ここにこそ正しき思惟の任務が存在する。単に現実に即せよとか無産者に同情せよとかいうようにわれわれの実践に関する「思い付き」的な修正に止まらず、さらにわれわれの世界観に関する修補と組織化とが行なわれることも必要であろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 五 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
簡単にマルクス主義を批評する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅の本領はまず各人が本来の面目に帰ることである。「赤肉団上一無位の真人あり。常に汝等の面門より出入す。未だ証拠せざる者は看よ看よ」（『臨済録』）。さてマルクスはいう「人間が其人間性、其本体を取戻すことのできる唯一の方法は一切の宗教表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく、彼自身への決然&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|229}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
として正当なる復帰」という宗教否定の言葉は、皮肉にもそのままこれを禅の標語にまで「深める」ことができる。禅の実践は見性であり直指人心であった。直指天国でもなく直指彼岸でもない。禅宗ははなはだ神話的観念論的に荘厳せられていた仏教の理論と実践とをまったく人間の日常生活の内へ解消してしまった。「喫茶去」といい「洗鉢」といい「麻三斤」といい「柏樹子」といい「好雪片々」といい、また「日々是れ好日」という。あらゆる宗教的表象を生活の中へ解消させた点において、固定した信条をもたない点において、禅ははなはだ非観念論的である。まことに禅の生活者にとっては仏教さえも「閑家具」であった。しかしながらマルクス主義者のいわゆる「人間自身への正当なる復帰」がわれわれの標語にまで深められるためには、幾多の吟味と清算とを経なければならぬ。もちろんこれを成し遂げるのが本稿の目的でない。ここではただかかる吟味と清算との方向と輪郭とを描くに止める。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) マルクス主義はプロレタリアの独裁を説く。それはひとつの強権主義である。強権を否定するに強権をもってする。泥をもって土塊を洗うにひとしい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) マルクス主義は主体と条件とを混同している。物は心を制約することいかに大なりといえども心の条件になりきらない。食物がただちに生命ではないように。主体を忘れるな。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) 精神ないし文化現象に対して発生論的な見かたを採る。そこには広さと新しさとがある。しかし直観の深みがない。マルクス主義の人間観はいわば人間の皮と肉との研究である。真髄の洞察ではない。この点は先駆者フォイエルバッハの方が進んでいる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) 発生論的研究も理解のひとつの方法ではある。しかし唯一の方法ではない。水の味を知るには水の成立を知る必要はない。発生論的方法によって一切の文化現象の意義が全部的に決定されると考えてはならぬ。宗教の起源と意義とはマルクス学的方法によって曝露せられ、マルクス主義的実践によって清算せ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|230}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
られる箇所も多々あるであろう。が、これによって否定し尽くされるとは考えられぬ。宗教の本質的なる萌芽は、人間的なるものの本質と制約の中に横たわっている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) 少なくとも禅がよって立つところのものはまったく否定の対象にならぬ領域である。否定は「思惟」を通して行なわれるよりほかはない。しかし禅の立場は「思惟」の世界には無い。「向わんとすれば即ち背く」底のもの。デカルトはその哲学を一切の存在と真理の確実性を疑うことから始めた。そして終に「疑う」こと、いい換えれば「思う」ことの自明性に到達した。禅の立場はかかる思惟すらも超越してしかも一切の思惟を表現し成立せしむる根底もしくは場所にも比せられるもの。マルクス主義もまたかかる超思惟的なるものの掌上で踊るにすぎない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) 生まれながらのマルキシストは無い。いずれもマルキシストになったのである。ひとつの世界観から他の世界観へ移りうるのは意識の作用的側面が常に特定の意識内容を超越しうるからである。かれらがブルジョアの世界観をも理解しうるのはそのためである。意識はそれ自身無限性、普遍性をもつ。しかもこのことは唯物論者フォイエルバッハすら認めたところであった。現実の意識は常にその意識内容を超えたものに触れ、このものに統一せられている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(7) 無明といい執着といい、いずれもこの統一が十全でない形である。意識の分裂性と執着性とは先天的に人間性そのものに内在しているようである。したがってわれわれの環境によって触発せられ倍加せられることがはなはだ多いにしても、一切の執着と不安とが環境の所産であるとはいわれまい。人間がかくのごとき本質と制約とを有するかぎり、かれは絶えず根源の「一」なるものへ「還らんとする」であろう。分裂の原理としての思惟は同時に統一への要求にほかならぬ。しかし最後の二元は思惟によって克服されることはできない。思惟は一切の現象を主辞と賓辞との関係において、すなわち「対立」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|231}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
において処理する原理だから。最後の対立は思惟からの飛躍に委ねられねばならぬ。ここに禅への通路がある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（8）宗教の起源が物質的環境の矛盾に帰せられるならば、同様に人間に搾取せられる動植物もまた宗教をもつか。環境そのものに矛盾は無い。矛盾を感ずるものは人間の精神でなければならぬ。「芭蕉葉上愁雨無し、只だ是れ時人聴いて断腸」。まず精神なるものの本質が明らかにされねばならぬ。精神あっての矛盾であり、主体あっての条件である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（9）マルクスによれば人間を動物から区別するものは物質的「生産」である。かかる生産を開始したものは物質的環境であったか。そこにはすでに人間的なる能動性が認められねばならぬ。而して人間の能動性の本質に向かって究明が加えられるべきである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（10）生活が意識を決定するというマルクス主義の主張は「巡査は貧乏である。ゆえに彼らはマルキシストである」という論理のごとく粗雑である。クロポトキンは貴族から出て革命家となった。かつこの論理は、生活が楽になったために反動化した同志を「裏切り」の名をもって非難する根拠をもたぬ。かかる非難は何らか人道主義的な理想を設定する立場においてのみその根拠を見出す。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（11）その哲学から理想主義を排除したヘーゲルは、そこにかれの弁証法の革命的性質にもかかわらず、現状讃美の反動哲学に堕するひとつの機縁を潜めていた。弁証法の革命性を徹底せんとするマルクス主義は同じく目的意識の疎外のためにかえって物質的宿命観からしずんば盲目的破壊主義に終わる危険をもつ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（12）われわれはなるべく純粋に厳密に目的を設定し、しかる後この目的実現のためにその時々の環境の物質的並びに精神的機構の変化に随ってなるべく純粋な、なるべく有効な計画と手段とを選択しなければな&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|232}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
らぬ。その際われわれは帰納と演繹との正しき適用によって具体的方法を決定すればいいのであって、必ずしも定立、反定立、総合といった弁証法による必要はない。形而上学からの離脱を叫んだマルキシズムはかく唯物弁証法において再び形而上学へ没入してしまった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
さて私はかかる目標を試みに次のごとく略叙しよう。「常に万人ができうるかぎり本具の心性を生かし楽しむことを究極目的としてそのために必要なる精神的ならびに物質的条件を造営するために、万人が能力に応じて働き、必要に応じて取り、できうるかぎり明確なる思惟が認めた最小の犠牲を忍ぶ」。われわれはかかる包括的目標に向かってあるときは精神の純浄に照らし、ある時は理の普遍に尋ね、またあるときはことの万変を辿って、直観し、考察し、調査することによって常に「衆生と共に」仏道を成ぜんことを願うものである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;quot;Marxism and Zen: Notes&amp;quot; (&#039;&#039;Marukusu shugi to Zen—oboegaki&#039;&#039; マルクス主義と禅――覚え書) was written by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦 in 1930. The essay surveys twenty responses to Marxism from Buddhist and other religious thinkers before advancing Ichikawa&#039;s own critique of both religious idealism and Marxist materialism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This transcription follows Ichikawa Hakugen, 「マルクス主義と禅――覚え書」, in 『市川白弦著作集』 (&#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; [Collected Writings of Ichikawa Hakugen]), vol. 3, pp. 219–232. The reported original publication is &#039;&#039;Chūō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 中央仏教 (June 1930), pending bibliographical confirmation against the original issue. The edition, publisher, and publication year of volume 3 should also be checked before a complete print citation is supplied.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Page markers reproduce the pagination of the collected text. This transcription is provisional: the punctuation of the reference to 今中次麿 in item (1), the abbreviated 『宗教研究』 reference in item (6), and some personal names and classical quotations remain subject to full comparison with the scans. No unresolved reading should be represented as definitively established.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Transcription and editorial review: James Mark Shields.&lt;br /&gt;
Collected source: Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū, vol. 3, pp. 219–232.&lt;br /&gt;
Textual and bibliographic verification outstanding.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1930). “Marukusu shugi to Zen—oboegaki” マルクス主義と禅――覚え書 [Marxism and Zen: Notes]. In Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū, vol. 3, 219–232 [imprint verification pending]. Transcribed and edited by James Mark Shields. The Radical Buddhism Project. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH30MTZ&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Original Texts in Japanese]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH30MTZ&amp;diff=1256</id>
		<title>IH30MTZ</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH30MTZ&amp;diff=1256"/>
		<updated>2026-10-21T19:38:52Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:市川白弦、「マルクス主義と禅――覚え書」}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Ichikawa Hakugen|市川白弦]] (1930). 「マルクス主義と禅――覚え書」 [Marxism and Zen: Notes]. ([[IH30MTZ-T|English translation here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div style=&amp;quot;margin:0.2em 0 0.7em 0; line-height:1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Text|Text]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 [[#一|Section 一]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.2 [[#二|Section 二]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.3 [[#三|Section 三]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4 [[#四|Section 四]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.5 [[#五|Section 五]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|219}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
マルクス主義と禅&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
――覚え書――&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
編集者から右の題目を課せられたのであるが、これは見かたによってはなはだ広汎な問題であって、諸家の綿密な研究と実践とをまって解決せらるべき性質のものである。この稿においてはまずこれまで仏教者側から提出された解答の諸相を回顧し批評し併せて卑見の草案を羅列するに止めよう。而してマルクス主義の宗教否定の紹介も、頁の都合上、諸家の意見を吟味する際に自から隠顕する程度にしておく。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 一 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
これまで宗教――主として仏教を支持する人たちから与えられた解答は、私の見たかぎりでは、およそ左のごとく類別される。誤解があったならば御叱正を乞う。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== （イ）マルクス主義と宗教との立場に関して ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（1）マルクス的範疇と宗教的範疇とはまったく別だ。宗教家は宗教家らしくしていればよろしい。――今中次麿（『中外日報』、一九三〇・四・一〇。この稿、以下特に年表記のないものは、一九三〇年のもの）、暁烏敏（同、&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|220}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
四・二四）、その他宗教的価値の独自性を高調する宗教学者の一部。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（2）経済改革理論としてのマルクス主義は宗教批判をやめるべきだ。――木村泰賢（『中外日報』、四・一八）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（3）仏教は唯心論でもなく、唯物論でもない。色心不二、心に執するも物に執するも不可――松原致遠（『中外日報』、一・二五）、矢吹慶輝・木村泰賢（同、四・二三）、小柳司気太（『文化時報』、三・二五）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（4）仏教は空観によって事物への執着を離れる――高神覚昇（『中外日報』、一・二六）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（5）社会改良の原理は「自利、利他」大乗の菩薩道に尽きる。これ以上加えるべき何物もない。――紀平正美（『中外日報』、四・二五）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（6）マルクス主義も一種の宗教だ。――城戸幡太郎（『宗教研究』、七一二）、伊藤証信（『中外日報』、三・五）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== （ロ）マルクス主義の実践に対して ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（7）階級闘争不可――諸家ほとんど全部（ただし城戸、伊藤両氏はやや趣がちがう）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（8）精神の自覚が先決問題。万人が真に自覚せぬかぎり平等は行なわれない。――暁烏敏（『中外日報』、四・二四）、賀川豊彦・稲津紀三（同、二・二）、矢吹慶輝（同、四・二〇）、西田幾多郎（『芸術と道徳』、一七五頁）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== （ハ）マルクス主義の宗教否定に対して ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（9）かれらは現存の宗教と宗教の本質とを混同している。かれらの宗教否定の対象は宗教の現状に過ぎない。――宇野円空（『中外日報』、二・二二）、伊福部隆輝（同、四・二二）、金子白夢（『社会主義の宗教的批判』）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（10）既成宗教には否定せらるべき多くの部分がある。――寺田弥吉（『中央仏教』、一九三〇年五月）、三木保幾（『読売新聞』、四・二七）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（11）宗教の特定の存在形式は否定されるにしても宗教の本質は否定されない。人間に生死の悩み、もしくは&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|221}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「無限」への欲求がある限り。――伊福部隆輝（『中外日報』、四・二二）、木村泰賢（同、四・二七）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（12）階級闘争の根底は人間の利己主義にある。ブルジョアもプロレタリアも同じ原理に立つ。まずかれらに無我を勧めよ。ここに宗教の領域がある。――寺田弥吉（『文化時報』、一九二九・一二・二八）その他諸家。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（13）パンだけで問題は解決しない。宗教はパンを得た後の問題だ。――矢吹慶輝（『中外日報』、四・二〇）、川合貞一（同、四・二七）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（14）仏教はいわゆる彼岸主義ではない。地上に仏国土を建設せんとする。――稲津紀三（『中外日報』、二・二）、その他諸家。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== （ニ）将来、仏教（宗教）の採るべき態度に就いて ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（15）大乗仏教の社会的現実的態度、精神的理想主義的態度をもってせよ。――小野清一郎（『読売新聞』、五・二）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（16）社会化せよ。社会に即して個人を救え。――木村泰賢（『読売新聞』、四・二七）、帆足理一郎（同、五・一）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（17）彼岸主義を棄てて現実に即せ。――寺田弥吉（『中央仏教』、五月）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（18）精神的立場に立つべきも物質に即せ。――木村泰賢（『読売新聞』、四・二七）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（19）唯物主義と妥協するな。宗教の物質化は宗教の堕落だ。物質を精神化するところに宗教の本領がある。――柘植信秀（『読売新聞』、五・二三）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（20）大衆化せよ。しかも階級化するな。全人類的であれ。――木村泰賢（『読売新聞』、四・二七）、三木保幾（同、五・六）、帆足理一郎（同、五・七）、田中耕太郎（同、五・六）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|222}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 二 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
以下、諸家の見解を吟味する。覚え書のあわただしさ、意を尽くさざる点、礼を失することもあるであろう。大方の批正を仰ぎたい。上記番号順に批評する。彼此対照を乞う。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) 資本主義的分業観念の反映。しからずんば小乗的法執。かかる分業癖が有機的な幾多の生命現象を分割し拮抗させた。「胸を露わし足を跣にして塵に入り来る。土を抹し灰を塗って笑顔に満つ」（『十牛頌』）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
自由人は「宗教自体」といった矜持を棄てた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) マルキシストがマルキシストであるかぎり、而してかれらの唯物史観を戦い取ることに宗教家が協力しないかぎり、マルキシストとしては宗教否定を断念せぬのが当然。唯物史観を克服せずしてかかる要求を提出するのは無意味である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) 「物心一如、色心不二」――これを振り回すところに直観主義の阿片性がある。それは純なる直観の表白であった。而して直観の世界を示唆するものとして正しかった。が、ひとたび差別の世界へ下るならば、精神には精神の理法、物質には物質の法則がある。「差別即平等」は体験的立場への示唆としての意味をもつ。「物心一如」の煙幕へ、物の法則も心の理法も忘却させて陶然としている安心ははなはだ粗雑である。ゆえに古聖も「後得智」の綿密ならんことを願った。ここでは物心の融一よりも物心の弁証こそ望ましい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) 目標は正しい。しかし天才に妥当することは必ずしも万人に妥当しない。孤独者に妥当なことは必ずしも妻子ある者に妥当でない。資本主義が一切を、人間そのものをさえ「物」化し商品化した。万人ができうるかぎり物への関心から放たれて生活しうることを条件を考究することも必要である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|223}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) 「善事を為せ。人生の目的之に尽きる」ということほど、明白であり、かつ曖昧である。しかしながら、たとえば猫に食われんとするとき、鼠はいかにして「自利、利他」を履行しうるや。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) 宗教の定義によっていかようにも考えられる。ともかく従来の宗教とマルクス主義との顕著な差異のひとつとして次のことに留意したい。宗教が心持を変えることによって環境の圧迫を忘れようとするに対して、マルクス主義は環境を変えることによって心持を変えようとする。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(7) 「剣禅一如」といった合い言葉のもとに、殺戮と、戦争とを肯定してきた仏教者が、「階級闘争」の声におびえて「善導」に狂奔するのは奇怪である。過去を懺悔するか、現在を改めるか。三省を要す。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(8) これの批評は(4)の批評から演繹されよう。而して平等にしたところでじきに差別ができるから駄目だという論理はややもすると治療したところでまた病気するだろうから治療するに及ばない。飯を食ったところでまた腹がへるだろうから食うのは無駄だという論理と混同されやすい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(9) 私も同意見である。ただし次のことに留意したい。歴史の見地から一切の事象を現実の相の下に把握するマルクス主義者にとっては、諸宗教の現実形態を離れて、永遠に変わらぬ宗教の「本質」といったものは存在しない。ゆえに宗教の本質にさえ還ればいいのだという弁護は、マルクス主義にとっては無意味な掛声にすぎぬ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(10) 万人の認むるところ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(11) 生死の問題は宗教によらなくとも解決せられる。生死をマルクス主義の実践に託することにおいて安心を見出した主義者もあった。――これを宗教といえば別だが。さて無限には色々ある。外延的な無限――ヘーゲルのいわゆる「悪無限」もまた無限のひとつである。しかし通常われわれが欲求するものは&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|224}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
実にこの種の無限である。なお詳しい考察が必要であろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(12) この批評も(4)のそれから演繹されよう。なお後に考察する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(13) しからば絶えず飢餓線上に彷徨せる幾千万の失業者に向かって宗教は何を為さんとするか。高貴なる宗教家は霊魂の救済にのみ関心すればいいのか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(14) かかる言葉によってしばしば仏教が弁護せられた。しかしキリスト教ですら神の国を「地上にも来す」ことを考えている。マルクス主義における宗教否定の主眼は宗教教理の克服ではなくて宗教的実践の観念性――宗教の理想国建設方法の架空性の克服にある。レーニンは宗教を「民衆の幻想的幸福」だと考えた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(15)(18) いずれもはなはだ漠然としている。問題はそれらの理想を具体化するための手段、方法、順序およびこれらの理論的基礎付けにある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(19) 物質を精神化するとは杜撰な表現である。心の持ちかたひとつだといった教えが、しばしば人間に虚偽と不自然とを強いた。「鼻をつまんで腐肉をくらい、耳を掩うて鈴を盗む」――これが精神主義の魔術である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(20) 「人類」とか「人間一般」とかいったものはどこにもいない。その良し悪しは別として、闘争によって階級を揚棄せんとする大衆に向かって階級化を戒め「人類」の名において平和を説くことは、宗教家が意図するとせざるとにかかわらず、事実においては守勢の側の資本家を擁護し、無産者を圧迫する結果になる。レーニンは宗教を「無産者に対する精神的圧迫」と考えた。現代にあっては「人類」「平和」「博愛」などの観念すら階級化を余儀なくされている。かくて宗教はますます無産者の側から離れてゆく――これは私の「意見」ではない。現前の事実である――ここに三浦参玄洞の言葉を引いてこの批評を結ぶ。「社会運動はその社会その時代の客観的情勢を基調として興るものなる以上、予め右で行こう&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|225}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
とか左で行こうとか予定のつけ得られぬものであることを覚悟せねばならぬ。一船が右舷に傾いて正に覆らんとするとき、危いと気付いた程の乗客は、逸早く右から左へ飛退いて行くだろう。その時一人のあるありて『船は中央に乗るのが一番安全である』と叫んでも誰も耳には止めぬであろう」（『中外日報』、一九二九・六・二八）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 三 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれが東西両洋の思想を対比して特に興味を感ずることは、両者における「物」に対する考えかたの相違、および「歴史」に対する態度の違いである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
自然法を理解して「自然を征服する」ことはベーコンの、而してまた欧米文化の指標であった。「自然の機に遊ぶ」ことは荘子の、而して東洋精神の基調であった。前者における自然は自然科学的自然、後者における自然は直観的、超経験的な自然であった。したがって経験的なる「物」は、前者においては研究し征服せらるべき「物」であったが、後者においては厭離し超越せらるべきものであった。「荘子」にいう「己を物に喪い、性を俗に失う」。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
哲学は西洋においても東洋においても「存在の問題」から出発し「有」「無」の弁証に進んだ。しかし彼にあっては「有」を求めて「発展」に向かい、ここにおいては「無」を願って「寂滅」に向かった。有無は彼においてはおもに事実認識の範疇となり、ここにおいては価値認識に結合せられた。したがって「因果」の範疇に関しても彼の自然科学的因果に対してここでは道徳的ないし宗教的因果が考えられた。約言すれば「物」は東洋精神の空観的傾向に対しては「仮有なるもの」「厭離すべきもの」として現われた。東洋に厳密なる「物」の学――自然科学が発達しなかったのはむしろ当然といわねばならぬ。「小学」といい「大学」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|226}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
といい「十五にして学に志す」というも、みな聖人の学にほかならなかった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
次に「歴史」について考えてみる。さきに西洋の文化は「発展」に向かったといった。ダーウィンは生物の「進化」を考え、ベルグソンは時間における「創造的進化」を説いた。しかし東洋においては「返本還源」（『十牛頌』）が求められ「王政復古」が唱えられる。政治革命の目標は尭舜の古に帰ること、宗教改革のそれもまた祖師の昔に帰ることであった。東洋に「歴史」の観念が発達しなかったのも当然である。歴史観念の本質は「発展」であるから。かくて唯物論と歴史学とは――まして唯物史観は東洋人にとって極めて縁遠いものであった。問題はここにある。古東洋の精神主義はいかに深くかつ美しいものである。しかしながら「物」に対する軽視が、かえって心を物のために躓かせ、その世界観を粗雑にし、実践の手段を観念化する傾きはないか。歴史の唯物的機構が複雑化し矛盾化したる今日、特にこのことが省みられねばならぬ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 四 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) 物質の原理をもって精神の原理を枉めてはならぬように心理をもって物理を侵してもならぬ。今日では単に医学、自然科学の問題であるものが、かつては神学の問題であった。幾多の誤謬と禍害とが自然法への無理解から宗教の形において現われた。雨を祈って犠牲を捧げるごとき。物理の学が教える手段をもって物理の脅威から逃れるものを人は時に宗教によって逃れんとした。避雷針をもって避けえられる落雷を祈禱によって避けんとするごとき。宗教が民衆の幻想的幸福だと称せられる理由のひとつがここにある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) 社会進化の原理を知ることが必要である。歴史の行程を規定するものは宗教の「福音」ではなくて、むしろその社会の経済的機構である。失業問題を解決するものが「福音」や「慈善鍋」だとは何人も考え&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|227}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ぬであろう。経済法を意識的に統制することによって得られるものを「稲荷」の信仰をもって獲得せんとするごとき、いずれも社会法ないし経済法の無理解に基づく錯誤である。近代人にとって運命の神はしばしば市場に浮動する流通経済に過ぎない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) 対人法を誤ることから幾多の誤謬が生まれる。女人と奴隷とは成仏しえないと考えた宗教もあった。京都の比叡山麓には今なお「女人牛馬結界」の石柱が残っている。女人と牛馬とは宗教家によって同列に処理せられた。まさに婦人解放史における「貴重なる」史料である。「因果応報」の教理がいかにしばしば貧しきもの虐げられしものを萎縮と卑屈と愚昧とに閉じ込めたことであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) 最後に経済的環境と人間との関係を理解することが必要である。悲劇と犯罪との大部分が生活難に根ざしている。「貧すれば鈍する」といわれる。「金持喧嘩せず」とか「衣食足って礼節を知る」とか「恒産無き者は恒心無し」とか「氏より育ち」とかいずれも環境と心境とがいかに密接に結合しているかを語る。われわれに殺人を為せといわれてもできるものではない。主なるわけは現在さような環境に置かれていないからである。これに反して、たとえば一人の青年の目前において猥褻な行為を見せつけておきながら、かれに禁欲を教えることはまず無効であろう。「性の善悪を問うな、善縁を与えよ」（道元禅師）。「孟母三遷」の話もある。各人の人格的完成のためになるべく良き条件を設定し悪しき物質的障害を除去することもまた必要であろう。精神の自覚を高調せんとする者はまず環境の重要さを理解しなければならぬ。百丈の煙突の尖端に平然と腰掛けられる者が幾人あろう。天才にあてはまる原理をもって万人を導こうとしてはならぬ。菩提に菩提の理法があるように、虚妄には虚妄の必然がある。万人を支配する原理を通して万人を導かねばならぬ。一切の社会問題を一様に人間の利己主義（我執）に還元することは、間違いではないにしてもはなはだ抽象的である。かかる空疎な社会観をもって一切を処理せん&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|228}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
とする無謀を慎みたい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) しかし私は仏教と唯物史観との「妥協」や「折衷」を説くのではない。妥協、折衷はつねに両者の独自性を減殺し活力を弱めまたしばしば折衷の仕方に混乱を招く。ここに折衷主義の欠陥がある。漫然と「社会化せよ」「物質に即せよ」と主張するのは軽率である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) 異なった立場から現われた異なった世界観の結果のみを結合せんとするのは木に竹を接ぐようなものだ。まず立場と立場との弁証が行なわれなければならぬ。空海が『十住心論』において、延寿が『宗鏡録』において、諸の立場を系統付けんとしたように、われわれもまた禅の立場――人心の本然に立脚して諸世界観の立場を批判し位置づけ而して各の位置と領域とにおけるそれぞれの意義と真理性とを認め、しかもそれらが禅にいたる過程、または禅を実現するための方便となるように、取捨し弁証せられねばならない。ここにこそ正しき思惟の任務が存在する。単に現実に即せよとか無産者に同情せよとかいうようにわれわれの実践に関する「思い付き」的な修正に止まらず、さらにわれわれの世界観に関する修補と組織化とが行なわれることも必要であろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 五 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
簡単にマルクス主義を批評する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅の本領はまず各人が本来の面目に帰ることである。「赤肉団上一無位の真人あり。常に汝等の面門より出入す。未だ証拠せざる者は看よ看よ」（『臨済録』）。さてマルクスはいう「人間が其人間性、其本体を取戻すことのできる唯一の方法は一切の宗教表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく、彼自身への決然&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|229}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
として正当なる復帰」という宗教否定の言葉は、皮肉にもそのままこれを禅の標語にまで「深める」ことができる。禅の実践は見性であり直指人心であった。直指天国でもなく直指彼岸でもない。禅宗ははなはだ神話的観念論的に荘厳せられていた仏教の理論と実践とをまったく人間の日常生活の内へ解消してしまった。「喫茶去」といい「洗鉢」といい「麻三斤」といい「柏樹子」といい「好雪片々」といい、また「日々是れ好日」という。あらゆる宗教的表象を生活の中へ解消させた点において、固定した信条をもたない点において、禅ははなはだ非観念論的である。まことに禅の生活者にとっては仏教さえも「閑家具」であった。しかしながらマルクス主義者のいわゆる「人間自身への正当なる復帰」がわれわれの標語にまで深められるためには、幾多の吟味と清算とを経なければならぬ。もちろんこれを成し遂げるのが本稿の目的でない。ここではただかかる吟味と清算との方向と輪郭とを描くに止める。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) マルクス主義はプロレタリアの独裁を説く。それはひとつの強権主義である。強権を否定するに強権をもってする。泥をもって土塊を洗うにひとしい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) マルクス主義は主体と条件とを混同している。物は心を制約することいかに大なりといえども心の条件になりきらない。食物がただちに生命ではないように。主体を忘れるな。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) 精神ないし文化現象に対して発生論的な見かたを採る。そこには広さと新しさとがある。しかし直観の深みがない。マルクス主義の人間観はいわば人間の皮と肉との研究である。真髄の洞察ではない。この点は先駆者フォイエルバッハの方が進んでいる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) 発生論的研究も理解のひとつの方法ではある。しかし唯一の方法ではない。水の味を知るには水の成立を知る必要はない。発生論的方法によって一切の文化現象の意義が全部的に決定されると考えてはならぬ。宗教の起源と意義とはマルクス学的方法によって曝露せられ、マルクス主義的実践によって清算せ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|230}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
られる箇所も多々あるであろう。が、これによって否定し尽くされるとは考えられぬ。宗教の本質的なる萌芽は、人間的なるものの本質と制約の中に横たわっている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) 少なくとも禅がよって立つところのものはまったく否定の対象にならぬ領域である。否定は「思惟」を通して行なわれるよりほかはない。しかし禅の立場は「思惟」の世界には無い。「向わんとすれば即ち背く」底のもの。デカルトはその哲学を一切の存在と真理の確実性を疑うことから始めた。そして終に「疑う」こと、いい換えれば「思う」ことの自明性に到達した。禅の立場はかかる思惟すらも超越してしかも一切の思惟を表現し成立せしむる根底もしくは場所にも比せられるもの。マルクス主義もまたかかる超思惟的なるものの掌上で踊るにすぎない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) 生まれながらのマルキシストは無い。いずれもマルキシストになったのである。ひとつの世界観から他の世界観へ移りうるのは意識の作用的側面が常に特定の意識内容を超越しうるからである。かれらがブルジョアの世界観をも理解しうるのはそのためである。意識はそれ自身無限性、普遍性をもつ。しかもこのことは唯物論者フォイエルバッハすら認めたところであった。現実の意識は常にその意識内容を超えたものに触れ、このものに統一せられている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(7) 無明といい執着といい、いずれもこの統一が十全でない形である。意識の分裂性と執着性とは先天的に人間性そのものに内在しているようである。したがってわれわれの環境によって触発せられ倍加せられることがはなはだ多いにしても、一切の執着と不安とが環境の所産であるとはいわれまい。人間がかくのごとき本質と制約とを有するかぎり、かれは絶えず根源の「一」なるものへ「還らんとする」であろう。分裂の原理としての思惟は同時に統一への要求にほかならぬ。しかし最後の二元は思惟によって克服されることはできない。思惟は一切の現象を主辞と賓辞との関係において、すなわち「対立」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|231}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
において処理する原理だから。最後の対立は思惟からの飛躍に委ねられねばならぬ。ここに禅への通路がある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（8）宗教の起源が物質的環境の矛盾に帰せられるならば、同様に人間に搾取せられる動植物もまた宗教をもつか。環境そのものに矛盾は無い。矛盾を感ずるものは人間の精神でなければならぬ。「芭蕉葉上愁雨無し、只だ是れ時人聴いて断腸」。まず精神なるものの本質が明らかにされねばならぬ。精神あっての矛盾であり、主体あっての条件である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（9）マルクスによれば人間を動物から区別するものは物質的「生産」である。かかる生産を開始したものは物質的環境であったか。そこにはすでに人間的なる能動性が認められねばならぬ。而して人間の能動性の本質に向かって究明が加えられるべきである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（10）生活が意識を決定するというマルクス主義の主張は「巡査は貧乏である。ゆえに彼らはマルキシストである」という論理のごとく粗雑である。クロポトキンは貴族から出て革命家となった。かつこの論理は、生活が楽になったために反動化した同志を「裏切り」の名をもって非難する根拠をもたぬ。かかる非難は何らか人道主義的な理想を設定する立場においてのみその根拠を見出す。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（11）その哲学から理想主義を排除したヘーゲルは、そこにかれの弁証法の革命的性質にもかかわらず、現状讃美の反動哲学に堕するひとつの機縁を潜めていた。弁証法の革命性を徹底せんとするマルクス主義は同じく目的意識の疎外のためにかえって物質的宿命観からしずんば盲目的破壊主義に終わる危険をもつ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（12）われわれはなるべく純粋に厳密に目的を設定し、しかる後この目的実現のためにその時々の環境の物質的並びに精神的機構の変化に随ってなるべく純粋な、なるべく有効な計画と手段とを選択しなければな&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|232}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
らぬ。その際われわれは帰納と演繹との正しき適用によって具体的方法を決定すればいいのであって、必ずしも定立、反定立、総合といった弁証法による必要はない。形而上学からの離脱を叫んだマルキシズムはかく唯物弁証法において再び形而上学へ没入してしまった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
さて私はかかる目標を試みに次のごとく略叙しよう。「常に万人ができうるかぎり本具の心性を生かし楽しむことを究極目的としてそのために必要なる精神的ならびに物質的条件を造営するために、万人が能力に応じて働き、必要に応じて取り、できうるかぎり明確なる思惟が認めた最小の犠牲を忍ぶ」。われわれはかかる包括的目標に向かってあるときは精神の純浄に照らし、ある時は理の普遍に尋ね、またあるときはことの万変を辿って、直観し、考察し、調査することによって常に「衆生と共に」仏道を成ぜんことを願うものである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;quot;Marxism and Zen: Notes&amp;quot; (&#039;&#039;Marukusu shugi to Zen—oboegaki&#039;&#039; マルクス主義と禅――覚え書) was written by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦 in 1930. The essay surveys twenty responses to Marxism from Buddhist and other religious thinkers before advancing Ichikawa&#039;s own critique of both religious idealism and Marxist materialism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This transcription follows Ichikawa Hakugen, 「マルクス主義と禅――覚え書」, in 『市川白弦著作集』 (&#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; [Collected Writings of Ichikawa Hakugen]), vol. 3, pp. 219–232. The reported original publication is &#039;&#039;Chūō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 中央仏教 (June 1930), pending bibliographical confirmation against the original issue. The edition, publisher, and publication year of volume 3 should also be checked before a complete print citation is supplied.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Page markers reproduce the pagination of the collected text. This transcription is provisional: the punctuation of the reference to 今中次麿 in item (1), the abbreviated 『宗教研究』 reference in item (6), and some personal names and classical quotations remain subject to full comparison with the scans. No unresolved reading should be represented as definitively established.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Transcription and editorial review: James Mark Shields.&lt;br /&gt;
Collected source: Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū, vol. 3, pp. 219–232.&lt;br /&gt;
Textual and bibliographic verification outstanding.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1930). “Marukusu shugi to Zen—oboegaki” マルクス主義と禅――覚え書 [Marxism and Zen: Notes]. In Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū, vol. 3, 219–232 [imprint verification pending]. Transcribed and edited by James Mark Shields. The Radical Buddhism Project. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH30MTZ&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Original Texts in Japanese]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH30MTZ&amp;diff=1255</id>
		<title>IH30MTZ</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH30MTZ&amp;diff=1255"/>
		<updated>2026-10-21T19:38:31Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: Created page with &amp;quot;{{Textual Verification}} {{DISPLAYTITLE:市川白弦、「マルクス主義と禅――覚え書」}}  市川白弦 (1930). 「マルクス主義と禅――覚え書」 [Marxism and Zen: Notes]. (English translation here.)  __NOTOC__  &amp;lt;div style=&amp;quot;margin:0.2em 0 0.7em 0; line-height:1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Contents&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; &amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; 1. Text&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; &amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 Section 一&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; &amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.2 #二|...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{Textual Verification}}&lt;br /&gt;
{{DISPLAYTITLE:市川白弦、「マルクス主義と禅――覚え書」}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Ichikawa Hakugen|市川白弦]] (1930). 「マルクス主義と禅――覚え書」 [Marxism and Zen: Notes]. ([[IH30MTZ-T|English translation here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div style=&amp;quot;margin:0.2em 0 0.7em 0; line-height:1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Text|Text]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 [[#一|Section 一]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.2 [[#二|Section 二]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.3 [[#三|Section 三]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4 [[#四|Section 四]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.5 [[#五|Section 五]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|219}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
マルクス主義と禅&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
――覚え書――&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
編集者から右の題目を課せられたのであるが、これは見かたによってはなはだ広汎な問題であって、諸家の綿密な研究と実践とをまって解決せらるべき性質のものである。この稿においてはまずこれまで仏教者側から提出された解答の諸相を回顧し批評し併せて卑見の草案を羅列するに止めよう。而してマルクス主義の宗教否定の紹介も、頁の都合上、諸家の意見を吟味する際に自から隠顕する程度にしておく。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 一 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
これまで宗教――主として仏教を支持する人たちから与えられた解答は、私の見たかぎりでは、およそ左のごとく類別される。誤解があったならば御叱正を乞う。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== （イ）マルクス主義と宗教との立場に関して ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（1）マルクス的範疇と宗教的範疇とはまったく別だ。宗教家は宗教家らしくしていればよろしい。――今中次麿（『中外日報』、一九三〇・四・一〇。この稿、以下特に年表記のないものは、一九三〇年のもの）、暁烏敏（同、&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|220}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
四・二四）、その他宗教的価値の独自性を高調する宗教学者の一部。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（2）経済改革理論としてのマルクス主義は宗教批判をやめるべきだ。――木村泰賢（『中外日報』、四・一八）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（3）仏教は唯心論でもなく、唯物論でもない。色心不二、心に執するも物に執するも不可――松原致遠（『中外日報』、一・二五）、矢吹慶輝・木村泰賢（同、四・二三）、小柳司気太（『文化時報』、三・二五）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（4）仏教は空観によって事物への執着を離れる――高神覚昇（『中外日報』、一・二六）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（5）社会改良の原理は「自利、利他」大乗の菩薩道に尽きる。これ以上加えるべき何物もない。――紀平正美（『中外日報』、四・二五）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（6）マルクス主義も一種の宗教だ。――城戸幡太郎（『宗教研究』、七一二）、伊藤証信（『中外日報』、三・五）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== （ロ）マルクス主義の実践に対して ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（7）階級闘争不可――諸家ほとんど全部（ただし城戸、伊藤両氏はやや趣がちがう）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（8）精神の自覚が先決問題。万人が真に自覚せぬかぎり平等は行なわれない。――暁烏敏（『中外日報』、四・二四）、賀川豊彦・稲津紀三（同、二・二）、矢吹慶輝（同、四・二〇）、西田幾多郎（『芸術と道徳』、一七五頁）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== （ハ）マルクス主義の宗教否定に対して ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（9）かれらは現存の宗教と宗教の本質とを混同している。かれらの宗教否定の対象は宗教の現状に過ぎない。――宇野円空（『中外日報』、二・二二）、伊福部隆輝（同、四・二二）、金子白夢（『社会主義の宗教的批判』）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（10）既成宗教には否定せらるべき多くの部分がある。――寺田弥吉（『中央仏教』、一九三〇年五月）、三木保幾（『読売新聞』、四・二七）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（11）宗教の特定の存在形式は否定されるにしても宗教の本質は否定されない。人間に生死の悩み、もしくは&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|221}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「無限」への欲求がある限り。――伊福部隆輝（『中外日報』、四・二二）、木村泰賢（同、四・二七）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（12）階級闘争の根底は人間の利己主義にある。ブルジョアもプロレタリアも同じ原理に立つ。まずかれらに無我を勧めよ。ここに宗教の領域がある。――寺田弥吉（『文化時報』、一九二九・一二・二八）その他諸家。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（13）パンだけで問題は解決しない。宗教はパンを得た後の問題だ。――矢吹慶輝（『中外日報』、四・二〇）、川合貞一（同、四・二七）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（14）仏教はいわゆる彼岸主義ではない。地上に仏国土を建設せんとする。――稲津紀三（『中外日報』、二・二）、その他諸家。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== （ニ）将来、仏教（宗教）の採るべき態度に就いて ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（15）大乗仏教の社会的現実的態度、精神的理想主義的態度をもってせよ。――小野清一郎（『読売新聞』、五・二）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（16）社会化せよ。社会に即して個人を救え。――木村泰賢（『読売新聞』、四・二七）、帆足理一郎（同、五・一）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（17）彼岸主義を棄てて現実に即せ。――寺田弥吉（『中央仏教』、五月）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（18）精神的立場に立つべきも物質に即せ。――木村泰賢（『読売新聞』、四・二七）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（19）唯物主義と妥協するな。宗教の物質化は宗教の堕落だ。物質を精神化するところに宗教の本領がある。――柘植信秀（『読売新聞』、五・二三）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（20）大衆化せよ。しかも階級化するな。全人類的であれ。――木村泰賢（『読売新聞』、四・二七）、三木保幾（同、五・六）、帆足理一郎（同、五・七）、田中耕太郎（同、五・六）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|222}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 二 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
以下、諸家の見解を吟味する。覚え書のあわただしさ、意を尽くさざる点、礼を失することもあるであろう。大方の批正を仰ぎたい。上記番号順に批評する。彼此対照を乞う。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) 資本主義的分業観念の反映。しからずんば小乗的法執。かかる分業癖が有機的な幾多の生命現象を分割し拮抗させた。「胸を露わし足を跣にして塵に入り来る。土を抹し灰を塗って笑顔に満つ」（『十牛頌』）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
自由人は「宗教自体」といった矜持を棄てた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) マルキシストがマルキシストであるかぎり、而してかれらの唯物史観を戦い取ることに宗教家が協力しないかぎり、マルキシストとしては宗教否定を断念せぬのが当然。唯物史観を克服せずしてかかる要求を提出するのは無意味である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) 「物心一如、色心不二」――これを振り回すところに直観主義の阿片性がある。それは純なる直観の表白であった。而して直観の世界を示唆するものとして正しかった。が、ひとたび差別の世界へ下るならば、精神には精神の理法、物質には物質の法則がある。「差別即平等」は体験的立場への示唆としての意味をもつ。「物心一如」の煙幕へ、物の法則も心の理法も忘却させて陶然としている安心ははなはだ粗雑である。ゆえに古聖も「後得智」の綿密ならんことを願った。ここでは物心の融一よりも物心の弁証こそ望ましい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) 目標は正しい。しかし天才に妥当することは必ずしも万人に妥当しない。孤独者に妥当なことは必ずしも妻子ある者に妥当でない。資本主義が一切を、人間そのものをさえ「物」化し商品化した。万人ができうるかぎり物への関心から放たれて生活しうることを条件を考究することも必要である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|223}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) 「善事を為せ。人生の目的之に尽きる」ということほど、明白であり、かつ曖昧である。しかしながら、たとえば猫に食われんとするとき、鼠はいかにして「自利、利他」を履行しうるや。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) 宗教の定義によっていかようにも考えられる。ともかく従来の宗教とマルクス主義との顕著な差異のひとつとして次のことに留意したい。宗教が心持を変えることによって環境の圧迫を忘れようとするに対して、マルクス主義は環境を変えることによって心持を変えようとする。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(7) 「剣禅一如」といった合い言葉のもとに、殺戮と、戦争とを肯定してきた仏教者が、「階級闘争」の声におびえて「善導」に狂奔するのは奇怪である。過去を懺悔するか、現在を改めるか。三省を要す。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(8) これの批評は(4)の批評から演繹されよう。而して平等にしたところでじきに差別ができるから駄目だという論理はややもすると治療したところでまた病気するだろうから治療するに及ばない。飯を食ったところでまた腹がへるだろうから食うのは無駄だという論理と混同されやすい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(9) 私も同意見である。ただし次のことに留意したい。歴史の見地から一切の事象を現実の相の下に把握するマルクス主義者にとっては、諸宗教の現実形態を離れて、永遠に変わらぬ宗教の「本質」といったものは存在しない。ゆえに宗教の本質にさえ還ればいいのだという弁護は、マルクス主義にとっては無意味な掛声にすぎぬ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(10) 万人の認むるところ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(11) 生死の問題は宗教によらなくとも解決せられる。生死をマルクス主義の実践に託することにおいて安心を見出した主義者もあった。――これを宗教といえば別だが。さて無限には色々ある。外延的な無限――ヘーゲルのいわゆる「悪無限」もまた無限のひとつである。しかし通常われわれが欲求するものは&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|224}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
実にこの種の無限である。なお詳しい考察が必要であろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(12) この批評も(4)のそれから演繹されよう。なお後に考察する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(13) しからば絶えず飢餓線上に彷徨せる幾千万の失業者に向かって宗教は何を為さんとするか。高貴なる宗教家は霊魂の救済にのみ関心すればいいのか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(14) かかる言葉によってしばしば仏教が弁護せられた。しかしキリスト教ですら神の国を「地上にも来す」ことを考えている。マルクス主義における宗教否定の主眼は宗教教理の克服ではなくて宗教的実践の観念性――宗教の理想国建設方法の架空性の克服にある。レーニンは宗教を「民衆の幻想的幸福」だと考えた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(15)(18) いずれもはなはだ漠然としている。問題はそれらの理想を具体化するための手段、方法、順序およびこれらの理論的基礎付けにある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(19) 物質を精神化するとは杜撰な表現である。心の持ちかたひとつだといった教えが、しばしば人間に虚偽と不自然とを強いた。「鼻をつまんで腐肉をくらい、耳を掩うて鈴を盗む」――これが精神主義の魔術である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(20) 「人類」とか「人間一般」とかいったものはどこにもいない。その良し悪しは別として、闘争によって階級を揚棄せんとする大衆に向かって階級化を戒め「人類」の名において平和を説くことは、宗教家が意図するとせざるとにかかわらず、事実においては守勢の側の資本家を擁護し、無産者を圧迫する結果になる。レーニンは宗教を「無産者に対する精神的圧迫」と考えた。現代にあっては「人類」「平和」「博愛」などの観念すら階級化を余儀なくされている。かくて宗教はますます無産者の側から離れてゆく――これは私の「意見」ではない。現前の事実である――ここに三浦参玄洞の言葉を引いてこの批評を結ぶ。「社会運動はその社会その時代の客観的情勢を基調として興るものなる以上、予め右で行こう&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|225}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
とか左で行こうとか予定のつけ得られぬものであることを覚悟せねばならぬ。一船が右舷に傾いて正に覆らんとするとき、危いと気付いた程の乗客は、逸早く右から左へ飛退いて行くだろう。その時一人のあるありて『船は中央に乗るのが一番安全である』と叫んでも誰も耳には止めぬであろう」（『中外日報』、一九二九・六・二八）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 三 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれが東西両洋の思想を対比して特に興味を感ずることは、両者における「物」に対する考えかたの相違、および「歴史」に対する態度の違いである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
自然法を理解して「自然を征服する」ことはベーコンの、而してまた欧米文化の指標であった。「自然の機に遊ぶ」ことは荘子の、而して東洋精神の基調であった。前者における自然は自然科学的自然、後者における自然は直観的、超経験的な自然であった。したがって経験的なる「物」は、前者においては研究し征服せらるべき「物」であったが、後者においては厭離し超越せらるべきものであった。「荘子」にいう「己を物に喪い、性を俗に失う」。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
哲学は西洋においても東洋においても「存在の問題」から出発し「有」「無」の弁証に進んだ。しかし彼にあっては「有」を求めて「発展」に向かい、ここにおいては「無」を願って「寂滅」に向かった。有無は彼においてはおもに事実認識の範疇となり、ここにおいては価値認識に結合せられた。したがって「因果」の範疇に関しても彼の自然科学的因果に対してここでは道徳的ないし宗教的因果が考えられた。約言すれば「物」は東洋精神の空観的傾向に対しては「仮有なるもの」「厭離すべきもの」として現われた。東洋に厳密なる「物」の学――自然科学が発達しなかったのはむしろ当然といわねばならぬ。「小学」といい「大学」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|226}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
といい「十五にして学に志す」というも、みな聖人の学にほかならなかった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
次に「歴史」について考えてみる。さきに西洋の文化は「発展」に向かったといった。ダーウィンは生物の「進化」を考え、ベルグソンは時間における「創造的進化」を説いた。しかし東洋においては「返本還源」（『十牛頌』）が求められ「王政復古」が唱えられる。政治革命の目標は尭舜の古に帰ること、宗教改革のそれもまた祖師の昔に帰ることであった。東洋に「歴史」の観念が発達しなかったのも当然である。歴史観念の本質は「発展」であるから。かくて唯物論と歴史学とは――まして唯物史観は東洋人にとって極めて縁遠いものであった。問題はここにある。古東洋の精神主義はいかに深くかつ美しいものである。しかしながら「物」に対する軽視が、かえって心を物のために躓かせ、その世界観を粗雑にし、実践の手段を観念化する傾きはないか。歴史の唯物的機構が複雑化し矛盾化したる今日、特にこのことが省みられねばならぬ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 四 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) 物質の原理をもって精神の原理を枉めてはならぬように心理をもって物理を侵してもならぬ。今日では単に医学、自然科学の問題であるものが、かつては神学の問題であった。幾多の誤謬と禍害とが自然法への無理解から宗教の形において現われた。雨を祈って犠牲を捧げるごとき。物理の学が教える手段をもって物理の脅威から逃れるものを人は時に宗教によって逃れんとした。避雷針をもって避けえられる落雷を祈禱によって避けんとするごとき。宗教が民衆の幻想的幸福だと称せられる理由のひとつがここにある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) 社会進化の原理を知ることが必要である。歴史の行程を規定するものは宗教の「福音」ではなくて、むしろその社会の経済的機構である。失業問題を解決するものが「福音」や「慈善鍋」だとは何人も考え&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|227}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ぬであろう。経済法を意識的に統制することによって得られるものを「稲荷」の信仰をもって獲得せんとするごとき、いずれも社会法ないし経済法の無理解に基づく錯誤である。近代人にとって運命の神はしばしば市場に浮動する流通経済に過ぎない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) 対人法を誤ることから幾多の誤謬が生まれる。女人と奴隷とは成仏しえないと考えた宗教もあった。京都の比叡山麓には今なお「女人牛馬結界」の石柱が残っている。女人と牛馬とは宗教家によって同列に処理せられた。まさに婦人解放史における「貴重なる」史料である。「因果応報」の教理がいかにしばしば貧しきもの虐げられしものを萎縮と卑屈と愚昧とに閉じ込めたことであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) 最後に経済的環境と人間との関係を理解することが必要である。悲劇と犯罪との大部分が生活難に根ざしている。「貧すれば鈍する」といわれる。「金持喧嘩せず」とか「衣食足って礼節を知る」とか「恒産無き者は恒心無し」とか「氏より育ち」とかいずれも環境と心境とがいかに密接に結合しているかを語る。われわれに殺人を為せといわれてもできるものではない。主なるわけは現在さような環境に置かれていないからである。これに反して、たとえば一人の青年の目前において猥褻な行為を見せつけておきながら、かれに禁欲を教えることはまず無効であろう。「性の善悪を問うな、善縁を与えよ」（道元禅師）。「孟母三遷」の話もある。各人の人格的完成のためになるべく良き条件を設定し悪しき物質的障害を除去することもまた必要であろう。精神の自覚を高調せんとする者はまず環境の重要さを理解しなければならぬ。百丈の煙突の尖端に平然と腰掛けられる者が幾人あろう。天才にあてはまる原理をもって万人を導こうとしてはならぬ。菩提に菩提の理法があるように、虚妄には虚妄の必然がある。万人を支配する原理を通して万人を導かねばならぬ。一切の社会問題を一様に人間の利己主義（我執）に還元することは、間違いではないにしてもはなはだ抽象的である。かかる空疎な社会観をもって一切を処理せん&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|228}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
とする無謀を慎みたい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) しかし私は仏教と唯物史観との「妥協」や「折衷」を説くのではない。妥協、折衷はつねに両者の独自性を減殺し活力を弱めまたしばしば折衷の仕方に混乱を招く。ここに折衷主義の欠陥がある。漫然と「社会化せよ」「物質に即せよ」と主張するのは軽率である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) 異なった立場から現われた異なった世界観の結果のみを結合せんとするのは木に竹を接ぐようなものだ。まず立場と立場との弁証が行なわれなければならぬ。空海が『十住心論』において、延寿が『宗鏡録』において、諸の立場を系統付けんとしたように、われわれもまた禅の立場――人心の本然に立脚して諸世界観の立場を批判し位置づけ而して各の位置と領域とにおけるそれぞれの意義と真理性とを認め、しかもそれらが禅にいたる過程、または禅を実現するための方便となるように、取捨し弁証せられねばならない。ここにこそ正しき思惟の任務が存在する。単に現実に即せよとか無産者に同情せよとかいうようにわれわれの実践に関する「思い付き」的な修正に止まらず、さらにわれわれの世界観に関する修補と組織化とが行なわれることも必要であろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 五 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
簡単にマルクス主義を批評する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅の本領はまず各人が本来の面目に帰ることである。「赤肉団上一無位の真人あり。常に汝等の面門より出入す。未だ証拠せざる者は看よ看よ」（『臨済録』）。さてマルクスはいう「人間が其人間性、其本体を取戻すことのできる唯一の方法は一切の宗教表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく、彼自身への決然&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|229}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
として正当なる復帰」という宗教否定の言葉は、皮肉にもそのままこれを禅の標語にまで「深める」ことができる。禅の実践は見性であり直指人心であった。直指天国でもなく直指彼岸でもない。禅宗ははなはだ神話的観念論的に荘厳せられていた仏教の理論と実践とをまったく人間の日常生活の内へ解消してしまった。「喫茶去」といい「洗鉢」といい「麻三斤」といい「柏樹子」といい「好雪片々」といい、また「日々是れ好日」という。あらゆる宗教的表象を生活の中へ解消させた点において、固定した信条をもたない点において、禅ははなはだ非観念論的である。まことに禅の生活者にとっては仏教さえも「閑家具」であった。しかしながらマルクス主義者のいわゆる「人間自身への正当なる復帰」がわれわれの標語にまで深められるためには、幾多の吟味と清算とを経なければならぬ。もちろんこれを成し遂げるのが本稿の目的でない。ここではただかかる吟味と清算との方向と輪郭とを描くに止める。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) マルクス主義はプロレタリアの独裁を説く。それはひとつの強権主義である。強権を否定するに強権をもってする。泥をもって土塊を洗うにひとしい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) マルクス主義は主体と条件とを混同している。物は心を制約することいかに大なりといえども心の条件になりきらない。食物がただちに生命ではないように。主体を忘れるな。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) 精神ないし文化現象に対して発生論的な見かたを採る。そこには広さと新しさとがある。しかし直観の深みがない。マルクス主義の人間観はいわば人間の皮と肉との研究である。真髄の洞察ではない。この点は先駆者フォイエルバッハの方が進んでいる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) 発生論的研究も理解のひとつの方法ではある。しかし唯一の方法ではない。水の味を知るには水の成立を知る必要はない。発生論的方法によって一切の文化現象の意義が全部的に決定されると考えてはならぬ。宗教の起源と意義とはマルクス学的方法によって曝露せられ、マルクス主義的実践によって清算せ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|230}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
られる箇所も多々あるであろう。が、これによって否定し尽くされるとは考えられぬ。宗教の本質的なる萌芽は、人間的なるものの本質と制約の中に横たわっている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) 少なくとも禅がよって立つところのものはまったく否定の対象にならぬ領域である。否定は「思惟」を通して行なわれるよりほかはない。しかし禅の立場は「思惟」の世界には無い。「向わんとすれば即ち背く」底のもの。デカルトはその哲学を一切の存在と真理の確実性を疑うことから始めた。そして終に「疑う」こと、いい換えれば「思う」ことの自明性に到達した。禅の立場はかかる思惟すらも超越してしかも一切の思惟を表現し成立せしむる根底もしくは場所にも比せられるもの。マルクス主義もまたかかる超思惟的なるものの掌上で踊るにすぎない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(6) 生まれながらのマルキシストは無い。いずれもマルキシストになったのである。ひとつの世界観から他の世界観へ移りうるのは意識の作用的側面が常に特定の意識内容を超越しうるからである。かれらがブルジョアの世界観をも理解しうるのはそのためである。意識はそれ自身無限性、普遍性をもつ。しかもこのことは唯物論者フォイエルバッハすら認めたところであった。現実の意識は常にその意識内容を超えたものに触れ、このものに統一せられている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(7) 無明といい執着といい、いずれもこの統一が十全でない形である。意識の分裂性と執着性とは先天的に人間性そのものに内在しているようである。したがってわれわれの環境によって触発せられ倍加せられることがはなはだ多いにしても、一切の執着と不安とが環境の所産であるとはいわれまい。人間がかくのごとき本質と制約とを有するかぎり、かれは絶えず根源の「一」なるものへ「還らんとする」であろう。分裂の原理としての思惟は同時に統一への要求にほかならぬ。しかし最後の二元は思惟によって克服されることはできない。思惟は一切の現象を主辞と賓辞との関係において、すなわち「対立」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|231}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
において処理する原理だから。最後の対立は思惟からの飛躍に委ねられねばならぬ。ここに禅への通路がある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（8）宗教の起源が物質的環境の矛盾に帰せられるならば、同様に人間に搾取せられる動植物もまた宗教をもつか。環境そのものに矛盾は無い。矛盾を感ずるものは人間の精神でなければならぬ。「芭蕉葉上愁雨無し、只だ是れ時人聴いて断腸」。まず精神なるものの本質が明らかにされねばならぬ。精神あっての矛盾であり、主体あっての条件である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（9）マルクスによれば人間を動物から区別するものは物質的「生産」である。かかる生産を開始したものは物質的環境であったか。そこにはすでに人間的なる能動性が認められねばならぬ。而して人間の能動性の本質に向かって究明が加えられるべきである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（10）生活が意識を決定するというマルクス主義の主張は「巡査は貧乏である。ゆえに彼らはマルキシストである」という論理のごとく粗雑である。クロポトキンは貴族から出て革命家となった。かつこの論理は、生活が楽になったために反動化した同志を「裏切り」の名をもって非難する根拠をもたぬ。かかる非難は何らか人道主義的な理想を設定する立場においてのみその根拠を見出す。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（11）その哲学から理想主義を排除したヘーゲルは、そこにかれの弁証法の革命的性質にもかかわらず、現状讃美の反動哲学に堕するひとつの機縁を潜めていた。弁証法の革命性を徹底せんとするマルクス主義は同じく目的意識の疎外のためにかえって物質的宿命観からしずんば盲目的破壊主義に終わる危険をもつ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
（12）われわれはなるべく純粋に厳密に目的を設定し、しかる後この目的実現のためにその時々の環境の物質的並びに精神的機構の変化に随ってなるべく純粋な、なるべく有効な計画と手段とを選択しなければな&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|232}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
らぬ。その際われわれは帰納と演繹との正しき適用によって具体的方法を決定すればいいのであって、必ずしも定立、反定立、総合といった弁証法による必要はない。形而上学からの離脱を叫んだマルキシズムはかく唯物弁証法において再び形而上学へ没入してしまった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
さて私はかかる目標を試みに次のごとく略叙しよう。「常に万人ができうるかぎり本具の心性を生かし楽しむことを究極目的としてそのために必要なる精神的ならびに物質的条件を造営するために、万人が能力に応じて働き、必要に応じて取り、できうるかぎり明確なる思惟が認めた最小の犠牲を忍ぶ」。われわれはかかる包括的目標に向かってあるときは精神の純浄に照らし、ある時は理の普遍に尋ね、またあるときはことの万変を辿って、直観し、考察し、調査することによって常に「衆生と共に」仏道を成ぜんことを願うものである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;quot;Marxism and Zen: Notes&amp;quot; (&#039;&#039;Marukusu shugi to Zen—oboegaki&#039;&#039; マルクス主義と禅――覚え書) was written by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦 in 1930. The essay surveys twenty responses to Marxism from Buddhist and other religious thinkers before advancing Ichikawa&#039;s own critique of both religious idealism and Marxist materialism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This transcription follows Ichikawa Hakugen, 「マルクス主義と禅――覚え書」, in 『市川白弦著作集』 (&#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; [Collected Writings of Ichikawa Hakugen]), vol. 3, pp. 219–232. The reported original publication is &#039;&#039;Chūō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 中央仏教 (June 1930), pending bibliographical confirmation against the original issue. The edition, publisher, and publication year of volume 3 should also be checked before a complete print citation is supplied.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Page markers reproduce the pagination of the collected text. This transcription is provisional: the punctuation of the reference to 今中次麿 in item (1), the abbreviated 『宗教研究』 reference in item (6), and some personal names and classical quotations remain subject to full comparison with the scans. No unresolved reading should be represented as definitively established.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Transcription and editorial review: James Mark Shields.&lt;br /&gt;
Collected source: Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū, vol. 3, pp. 219–232.&lt;br /&gt;
Textual and bibliographic verification outstanding.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1930). “Marukusu shugi to Zen—oboegaki” マルクス主義と禅――覚え書 [Marxism and Zen: Notes]. In Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū, vol. 3, 219–232 [imprint verification pending]. Transcribed and edited by James Mark Shields. The Radical Buddhism Project. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH30MTZ&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Original Texts in Japanese]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=Ichikawa_Hakugen&amp;diff=1254</id>
		<title>Ichikawa Hakugen</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=Ichikawa_Hakugen&amp;diff=1254"/>
		<updated>2026-10-13T14:51:02Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: /* Writings */&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{Provisional Entry}}&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (市川白弦, 1902–1986) was a Japanese Rinzai Zen (臨済宗) priest, philosopher, and activist who became the foremost internal critic of &amp;quot;Imperial-Way Zen&amp;quot; (皇道禅, kōdō Zen), the wartime alignment of Japanese Zen Buddhism with state militarism and emperor-centered ideology.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives, Christopher (2009). &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics&#039;&#039;. University of Hawai&#039;i Press, p. 1.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; A professor at Hanazono University (花園大学) in Kyoto for over two decades, he spent the postwar period compiling and prosecuting the war responsibility of Japanese Buddhist institutions, including his own compromises during the war. Drawing on his teacher Ogasawara Shūjitsu&#039;s (小笠原秀実) Buddhist anarchism, on Kropotkin, and on Nishida-school philosophy, Ichikawa developed a systematic synthesis he called &amp;quot;Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (仏教者・アナキスト・コミュニズム, B・A・C) or &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (空-無政府-共同体論, S・A・C), grounding anarchist politics and communist economics in the Prajñāpāramitā concept of emptiness (空, kū). He remains the central reference point for any account of Zen&#039;s twentieth-century political entanglements and of Japanese Buddhist attempts at self-criticism after 1945.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Biography ==&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa was born in 1902, the thirty-fifth year of the Meiji period, in Gifu Prefecture north of Nagoya, the son of the resident priest of a small temple, Kezōji, affiliated with the Myōshinji (妙心寺) branch of Rinzai Zen.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 14.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; His mother came from a declining landlord family in Owari (present-day Aichi Prefecture); he had one younger sister.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 14.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; As a child he witnessed the poverty of his father&#039;s tenant parishioners at first hand, and as a middle-school student he watched his father sever ties with a parishioner family who had accused him of profiting from reciting &amp;quot;the dregs of the sutras,&amp;quot; an episode that left him permanently uneasy about the economics of temple life.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura Osamu (森村修) (2019). 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論（Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism）」――小笠原秀実の仏教アナキズムと西谷啓治の自衛論批判をめぐって」 [Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot;: On Ogasawara Shūjitsu&#039;s Buddhist Anarchism and Ichikawa&#039;s Critique of Nishitani Keiji&#039;s Argument for Self-Defense]. 『異文化. 論文編』 20: 157–158.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; A minor bureaucratic error also shaped his youth: his given name, Toshimizu (利水), was mistranscribed as &amp;quot;Shūsui&amp;quot; (秋水) on his school certificate not long after the 1911 High Treason Incident (大逆事件, also called the Kōtoku Incident, 幸徳事件), and his resulting protracted dispute with school officials coincided with, and reinforced, his growing interest in the executed anarchist Kōtoku Shūsui (幸徳秋水).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 159.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
By his own account Ichikawa was constitutionally &amp;quot;a coward&amp;quot; (臆病者, okubyō-mono): he dreaded conscription, military discipline, and death itself, and came to experience the emperor, as commander-in-chief with the power to command death, as bound to soldiery and mortality in what he called a &amp;quot;trinity.&amp;quot;&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 15.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; He treated this &amp;quot;cowardice&amp;quot; not as an excuse but as the psycho-physiological root of a lifelong antiwar and anti-kokutai (国体) temperament, and later wrote that &amp;quot;a coward&#039;s realization of social solidarity&amp;quot; had been the energy source of his youth.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 19.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Alongside the poetry of Ishikawa Takuboku (石川啄木), the anarchist essays of Ōsugi Sakae (大杉栄), Hugo, Tolstoy, Bakunin, Marx and Engels, Jack London, and Kropotkin, the young Ichikawa also corresponded with the then-unknown writer Miyazawa Kenji (宮沢賢治).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 16.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Through these readings a &amp;quot;humanistic anger at the evils of society and the state&amp;quot; took hold in him, feeding an early ambition to fuse socialist thought with Buddhism.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 16.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In 1920 Ichikawa entered a Myōshinji-branch training monastery in Kyoto, and in 1923 he enrolled at the Rinzai-affiliated university that later became Hanazono University, where he met Nishida Kitarō&#039;s (西田幾多郎) senior disciple Hisamatsu Shin&#039;ichi (久松真一) and, more decisively, Ogasawara Shūjitsu (小笠原秀実, 1885–1958), a philosopher-poet and self-described anarchist who became his only acknowledged teacher.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 159.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; After graduating in 1926 he taught English at Hanazono Middle School while continuing independent study of Western philosophy, and by around 1930 he had begun to formulate what he later named &amp;quot;Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (仏教者・アナキスト・コミュニズム, B・A・C), the idea that a genuinely contemporary Buddhist social thought would have to be simultaneously anarchist and communist.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 160.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; The escalating repression of the early 1930s under the Peace Preservation Law (治安維持法), and in particular the 1933 death under torture of the novelist Kobayashi Takiji (小林多喜二), shook his confidence that such a program could be realized; by his own later admission, his youthful &amp;quot;conviction&amp;quot; in B・A・C began &amp;quot;wobbling from the ground up,&amp;quot; and he gradually rationalized political quietism on the grounds that, as a temple priest, he could not commit his parishioners to a movement they had not chosen.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 160–161.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa&#039;s wartime record was ambiguous rather than uniformly collaborationist. His first book, 『禅の基本的性格』 (Zen no Kihonteki Seikaku, The Fundamental Character of Zen, 1942), avoided nationalist celebration, unusually for Buddhist writing of the period.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 18.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Yet in the September 1942 installment of a series on &amp;quot;War, Science, and Zen&amp;quot; serialized in the journal 『大法輪』 (Daihōrin), he described the Pacific War as a holy war (聖戦, seisen) fought to secure lasting peace in Asia, a position scholar Ishii Kōsei (石井公成) has since called opportunistic and which Ichikawa himself, after 1945, judged to reflect a wartime failure of &amp;quot;tenacity and autonomy.&amp;quot;&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, pp. 18–19.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
After the war Ichikawa turned this same scrutiny outward and inward at once. He became a professor at Hanazono University in 1949 and began publishing pointed critiques of Zen quietism, most notably &amp;quot;On the Solitary Aloofness of Zen&amp;quot; (禅の孤高性について, 1950) and &amp;quot;Concerning Zen Praxis&amp;quot; (禅の実践について, 1951), which accused institutional Zen of a self-satisfied detachment from social and political responsibility.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 19.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; These essays provoked Myōshinji ecclesiastical officials to attempt his removal from the Hanazono faculty; he refused to resign and was retained after the university president brokered a face-saving internal inquiry, with the backing of faculty committed to academic freedom.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 19; Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 162–163.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; With Ogasawara he briefly co-founded the journal 『思想紀元』 (Shisō Kigen, The Era of Thought), which folded after three issues, and from October 1952 to September 1957 he served on the Kyoto City Board of Education (京都市教育委員会), where he defended Asahigaoka Middle School (旭丘中学校) in Kyoto against government charges of &amp;quot;biased education&amp;quot; and delivered a public lecture there marking the 1953 Korean War armistice.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 19; Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 161–163.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In 1952, after the postwar purge of Kyoto School philosopher Nishitani Keiji (西谷啓治) was lifted, Ichikawa engaged him in a public exchange over Japanese rearmament, criticizing Nishitani&#039;s endorsement of American-aligned unilateral peace and &amp;quot;self-defense&amp;quot; as neglectful of the economic and geopolitical interests actually driving remilitarization.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 188–196.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Ichikawa also joined the 1950 Stockholm Appeal campaign against nuclear weapons (原爆禁止ストックホルム・アピール) and, from 1965 until its 1973 disbanding, took part in demonstrations of the Kyoto chapter of Betheiren (べ平連), the citizens&#039; league opposing the Vietnam War, reportedly its oldest regular participant.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 20.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa retired from Hanazono University in 1972 and moved to Chiba to live near his son, Ichikawa Hiroshi (市川浩), himself a philosopher. He had his name struck from the Myōshinji monastic registry, returned to lay status, and devoted his remaining years to what he called &amp;quot;Liberation Zen Studies&amp;quot; (解放の禅学, kaihō no Zengaku), memorialized in a 1976 autobiographical essay of that title.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 20.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; He died of pneumonia in 1986; colleagues Furuta Shōkin (古田紹欽) and Hayashi Munehide proposed for him the posthumous Buddhist name &amp;quot;Zetsugaku Hakugen Zenjin&amp;quot; (絶学白弦禅人, Scholarship-Surpassing Zen Man Hakugen).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 22.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Ideas ==&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa&#039;s mature social thought crystallized in what he termed &amp;quot;Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (仏教者・アナキスト・コミュニズム, B・A・C), also rendered &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (空-無政府-共同体論, S・A・C) to foreground its metaphysical basis in the Prajñāpāramitā concept of emptiness (空, kū).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 160, 175.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; On his formulation, emptiness supplies the basic spirit and organizing principle of a good society: politically this yields anarchism, in the sense of a Buddhist rejection of any social order founded on domination; economically it yields communism, in the sense of the negation of exclusive private property; and religio-ethically it demands cultivating the subjective character needed to build and sustain such a community.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 160.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Ichikawa traced this synthesis directly to his teacher, Ogasawara Shūjitsu, whose poetic gloss on the Heart Sutra (&amp;quot;般若心経意&amp;quot;, Hannya Shingyō-i) and philosophy of &amp;quot;experiential apprehension&amp;quot; (體認論, taininron) read emptiness not as a negation but as unafraid, all-embracing joy, and who preferred to translate &amp;quot;anarchism&amp;quot; as &amp;quot;free association&amp;quot; (自由連合, jiyū rengō) rather than as &amp;quot;the absence of government&amp;quot; (無政府主義, museifu shugi).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 166–170.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Following Ogasawara, Ichikawa also insisted on distinguishing &amp;quot;anarchism&amp;quot; (アナキズム), an ideology, from &amp;quot;the anarchist&amp;quot; (アナキスト), a living person, so that a thinker&#039;s professed politics could not simply be equated with, or excused by, their personal conduct.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 176.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A second pillar of his thought was &amp;quot;origin humanism&amp;quot; (原点ヒューマニズム, genten hyūmanizumu), the claim that the individual stands at the tense intersection (&amp;quot;origin,&amp;quot; 原点, genten) of two distinct axes of freedom: a &amp;quot;vertical&amp;quot; axis (竪の自由) of transcendent, contemplative Zen freedom, epitomized by the Rinzai (Linji) injunction to &amp;quot;become master of oneself wherever one stands&amp;quot; (随所に主となる, zuisho ni shu to naru), and a &amp;quot;horizontal&amp;quot; axis (横の自由) of social freedom modeled on Marx&#039;s account of workers reclaiming subjectivity from commodification.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 22; Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 177–179.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Ichikawa argued that Zen enlightenment becomes ethically responsible only when these two freedoms are held in dynamic, if inherently difficult, unity, rather than allowing contemplative freedom to excuse political passivity, or social activism to dispense with inner freedom.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 177–179.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa&#039;s diagnostic project, pursued most fully in 『仏教者の戦争責任』 (Bukkyōsha no Sensō Sekinin, Buddhists&#039; Responsibility for the War, 1970), catalogued the specific doctrinal resources of Zen and Japanese Buddhism that had been mobilized to legitimate Imperial-Way Buddhism (皇道仏教, kōdō Bukkyō): karmic (業, gō) explanations of poverty and suffering as deserved; the formula &amp;quot;differences are none other than equality&amp;quot; (差別即平等, shabetsu-soku-byōdō), used to sanctify existing social hierarchy including the emperor&#039;s status; the ethic of indebtedness and gratitude (恩, on), directed above all toward the emperor; the valorization of social harmony (和, wa); a soteriology of accommodation to &amp;quot;things as they are&amp;quot; (あるがまま, arugamama); and, especially, a Zen &amp;quot;aloofness&amp;quot; (孤高性, kokōsei) that treated genuine enlightenment as standing above social and political judgment and thereby left institutions silent in the face of militarism.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, pp. 21–22, and &#039;&#039;passim&#039;&#039;.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Crucially, he refused to treat war responsibility (戦争責任, sensō sekinin) as a closed historical question to be settled by ritual apology, insisting on structural self-examination and applying the same standard to his own wartime writings, including the 1942 essay that had called the war &amp;quot;holy.&amp;quot;&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, pp. 20–21.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In &amp;quot;The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō&amp;quot; (絶対無のつまずき――西田幾多郎の場合, 1959) Ichikawa extended this critique to the Kyoto School&#039;s founder, arguing that Nishida&#039;s philosophy of &amp;quot;place&amp;quot; (場所, basho) and &amp;quot;absolute contradictory self-identity&amp;quot; (絶対矛盾の自己同一, zettai mujun no jiko dōitsu) was, in principle, capable of grounding a radically egalitarian, even anarchist, social philosophy purged of all external authority, but that under wartime pressure Nishida had instead let this logic underwrite the imperial kokutai; Ichikawa contrasted this outcome with what he considered Suzuki Daisetsu&#039;s (鈴木大拙) more genuinely anarchist-compatible postwar reading of Kegon (華厳) philosophy and its vision of a world of &amp;quot;mutual non-obstruction&amp;quot; (事々無礙法界, jiji-muge hokkai).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 196–199.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; The same conviction that Buddhist metaphysics carries no single, fixed political valence, but is always realized through the concrete choices of &amp;quot;living&amp;quot; Buddhists rather than abstract doctrine, underlies both his critique of the Kyoto School and his 1952 public dispute with Nishitani Keiji over rearmament, in which Ichikawa argued that Nishitani&#039;s case for Japanese &amp;quot;self-defense&amp;quot; ignored how remilitarization served international monopoly capital and Cold War strategy rather than a genuine security &amp;quot;vacuum,&amp;quot; and proposed instead a demilitarized, economically democratized solidarity of peoples across national borders.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 188–196.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Later commentators, including Morimura Osamu (森村修), have argued that this vision of borderless, horizontally federated solidarity among &amp;quot;cowards&amp;quot; anticipates aspects of postwar and contemporary anarchist theory, including Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt&#039;s concept of the multitude.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 191–193.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Writings ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A four-volume collected works, &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 [Collected Works of Ichikawa Hakugen], was published posthumously (Kyoto: Hōzōkan 法蔵館, 1993). The selection below follows the original publication dates and venues reported in that collection, except where otherwise indicated. For texts available on the Radical Buddhism Project (RBP), the Japanese and English titles link directly to the respective editions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Marukusushugi to Zen: oboegaki&#039;&#039; マルクス主義と禅――覚え書 [Notes on Marxism and Zen]. &#039;&#039;Chūō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 中央仏教 (June 1930). {{annotation|An early, tentative attempt to read Zen practice alongside Marxist categories, predating the fuller B・A・C synthesis of the 1950s.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Bukkyō yori mita Hēgeru no benshōhō&#039;&#039; 仏教より見たヘーゲルの弁証法 [Hegel&#039;s Dialectic from the Perspective of Buddhism]. &#039;&#039;Gendai Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 現代仏教 88 (1932). {{annotation|Critiques Hegelian dialectical logic from a Buddhist standpoint, laying groundwork for Ichikawa&#039;s later objections to reading Zen and Nishida philosophy through dialectical categories.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen no kihonteki seikaku&#039;&#039; 禅の基本的性格 [The Fundamental Character of Zen]. Tokyo: Dōbunkan 同文館, 1942. {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s first book; conspicuously avoids the nationalist rhetoric common in contemporaneous Buddhist writing, though it appeared alongside his more openly wartime-affirming journalism of the same year.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zengaku sasshin no ichi shihyō: Zen no seiji rinri sōken no tame ni&#039;&#039; 禅学刷新の一指標――禅の政治倫理創建のために [A Target for Reform in Zen Studies: Toward the Construction of Zen Political Ethics]. &#039;&#039;Zengaku kenkyū&#039;&#039; 禅学研究 39 (June 1946). {{annotation|An early postwar call to rebuild Zen scholarship around explicit political ethics.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* [[IH49KST|&#039;&#039;Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 共産主義思想の展開と仏教]] [[IH49KST-T|Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought]]. In &#039;&#039;Gendai Bukkyō mondai gokō&#039;&#039; 現代仏教問題五講, edited by Nakajima Bunkyō 中島文鏡. Tokyo: Yangu Iisuto Sha, 1949. {{annotation|Situates Buddhist thought in relation to the postwar spread of communist ideas in Japan.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen no kokōsei ni tsuite: Zen ni taisuru gigi&#039;&#039; 禅の孤高性について――禅に対する疑義 [On the Solitary Aloofness of Zen: Some Doubts about Zen], parts I–II. &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 思想 307, 308 (January–February 1950). {{annotation|The essay that provoked Myōshinji&#039;s attempt to remove Ichikawa from the Hanazono faculty; argues that Zen&#039;s self-image of detached, &amp;quot;high-minded&amp;quot; enlightenment functioned to excuse institutional silence during the war.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Hannya shingyō shinkō&#039;&#039; 般若心経新講 [New Lectures on the Heart Sutra]. Tokyo: Tōsei Shuppansha 東成出版社, 1951. {{annotation|A doctrinal commentary on the Heart Sutra that already frames prajñā-emptiness in terms of joy, liberation, and social solidarity rather than mere negation.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen no jissen ni tsuite: rekishi tenkanki ni okeru hihanteki shiron&#039;&#039; 禅の実践について――歴史転換期における批判的試論 [On Zen Praxis: A Critical Exploratory Essay at a Historical Turning Point]. &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 思想 326 (October 1951). {{annotation|A follow-up to the 1950 &amp;quot;solitary aloofness&amp;quot; essay, further developing the demand that Zen practice be answerable to historical and social conditions.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;“Owasareta genjitsu” no tetsugaku: Nishitani hakase no jieiron ni tsuite&#039;&#039; 「負わされた現実」の哲学――西谷博士の自衛論について [The Philosophy of &amp;quot;Imposed Actuality&amp;quot;: On Dr. Nishitani&#039;s Argument for Self-Defense]. &#039;&#039;Chūō Kōron&#039;&#039; 中央公論 (May 1952). {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s opening rebuttal in his public exchange with Nishitani Keiji over the postwar peace treaty and Japanese rearmament.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Nishitani kyōju no saibusōron&#039;&#039; 西谷教授の再武装論 [Professor Nishitani&#039;s Argument for Rearmament]. &#039;&#039;Ushio&#039;&#039; 潮 (August 1952). {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s closing statement in the Nishitani debate, reiterating that rearmament served Cold War and capital interests rather than genuine national security. Ives (2009) cites this same essay as appearing in &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 58, no. 8 (August 1952); the discrepancy over the venue remains unresolved.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* [[IH55ZC|&#039;&#039;Zen to kyōsanshugi&#039;&#039; 禅と共産主義]] [[IH55ZC-T|Zen and Communism]]. Date of first publication requires confirmation (provisionally ca. 1955). {{annotation|Explores Zen&#039;s relationship to communism and the possibilities and limits of bringing Buddhist awakening into dialogue with Marxist thought.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Hannya-kyō: Hannya shisō no gendai e no tenkai&#039;&#039; 般若経――般若思想の現代への展開 [The Wisdom Sutras: The Development of the Philosophy of Prajñā for the Contemporary Age]. Kyoto: San&#039;ichi Shobō 三一書房, 1956. {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s fullest mid-career statement of Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism, grounding it explicitly in Prajñāpāramitā philosophy.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* [[IH56ZTM|&#039;&#039;Zen to Marukishizumu&#039;&#039; 禅とマルキシズム]] [[IH56ZTM-T|Zen and Marxism]]. 1956; reprinted in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 2, &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; 禅と現代思想 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan 法蔵館, 1993), 293–312. {{annotation|Distinguishes Zen experience from Zen as ideology; criticises Zen&#039;s historical accommodation of social hierarchy and wartime power, and explores the relationship between spiritual practice and social transformation.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zettai mu no tsumazuki: Nishida Kitarō no baai&#039;&#039; 絶対無のつまずき――西田幾多郎の場合 [The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō]. &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 思想 (1959). {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s central critique of his teacher&#039;s teacher, Nishida Kitarō, arguing that Nishida&#039;s own logic could have grounded an anarchist ethics but was instead bent to serve the wartime &#039;&#039;kokutai&#039;&#039;.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Bukkyō to shakai seigi no mondai&#039;&#039; 仏教と社会正義の問題 [Buddhism and the Problem of Social Justice]. &#039;&#039;Sōzō&#039;&#039; 創造 94–104 (ten installments, 1959–1960). {{annotation|A serialized study connecting Buddhist ethics to concrete questions of social and economic justice.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* [[IH61ZKA|&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム]] [[IH61ZKA-T|Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism]]. &#039;&#039;Jiyū Shisō&#039;&#039; 自由思想 5 (1961); reprinted in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 3 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan 法蔵館, 1993), 319–345. {{annotation|Develops the anarchist implications of Kegon philosophy&#039;s &amp;quot;realm of mutual non-obstruction&amp;quot; (&#039;&#039;jiji muge hokkai&#039;&#039; 事々無礙法界), contrasting wartime totalitarian interpretations with Suzuki Daisetsu&#039;s postwar vision while questioning the continued centrality of the emperor. Proposes Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.) and argues that Buddhist social ethics must address class relations, alienated labour, and the transformation of material conditions.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Nihon no seijiteki shūkyō: Tennō Shintō to Sōka Gakkai&#039;&#039; 日本の政治的宗教――天皇神道と創価学会 [Japan&#039;s Political Religions: Imperial Shinto and Sōka Gakkai]. &#039;&#039;Jiyū&#039;&#039; 自由 63–65 (1963). {{annotation|Extends the critique of Buddhist accommodation to state power into a comparative account of postwar Japan&#039;s new religious-political formations.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* “A Preliminary Conception of Zen Social Ethics,” parts I–II. &#039;&#039;Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū&#039;&#039; 印度学仏教学研究 11, no. 10 (January 1963): 20–31; 13, no. 2 (1965): 12–20. {{annotation|A rare English-language statement of Ichikawa&#039;s project, presenting the outlines of a systematic Zen social ethics for an international scholarly audience.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Fuhenteki kū&#039;&#039; 普遍的空 [Universal Emptiness]. &#039;&#039;Zengaku kenkyū&#039;&#039; 禅学研究 55 (July 1966). {{annotation|Develops the concept of emptiness (&#039;&#039;kū&#039;&#039; 空) as a universal, non-sectarian ethical resource rather than a purely Buddhist doctrinal category.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; 禅と現代思想 [Zen and Contemporary Thought]. Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten 徳間書店, 1967. {{annotation|Places classical Zen concepts into direct conversation with contemporary Marxist and existentialist thought.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Bukkyōsha no sensō sekinin&#039;&#039; 仏教者の戦争責任 [Buddhists&#039; Responsibility for the War]. Tokyo: Shunjūsha 春秋社, 1970. {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s landmark work, systematically documenting Buddhist institutional and doctrinal complicity in Japanese wartime imperialism; the primary source for his account of his own &amp;quot;coward&#039;s&amp;quot; psychology and its role in his wartime accommodation.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Nihon ni okeru Bukkyō shakaishugi no mondai&#039;&#039; 日本における仏教社会主義の問題 [The Problem of Buddhist Socialism in Japan]. In &#039;&#039;Bukkyōsha no sensō sekinin&#039;&#039; 仏教者の戦争責任, 150–176. Tokyo: Shunjūsha 春秋社, 1970; published in English as “The Problem of Buddhist Socialism in Japan,” &#039;&#039;Japanese Religions&#039;&#039; 6, no. 3 (August 1970): 15–37. {{annotation|The chapter in which Ichikawa explicitly proposes &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (S・A・C) as a more precise alternative to the label &amp;quot;Buddhist socialism.&amp;quot;}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Nihon fashizumu-ka no shūkyō&#039;&#039; 日本ファシズム下の宗教 [Religion under Japanese Fascism]. Tokyo: Enuesu Publishing, 1975. {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s last book, extending his war-responsibility critique from Zen specifically to Japanese religion under fascism more broadly, and containing his frank admission that he was unsure he would have the courage to resist a renewed war.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Kaihō no zengaku e: jiden-fū ni&#039;&#039; 解放の禅学へ――自伝風に [Toward a Liberating Zen Studies: An Autobiographical Approach]. &#039;&#039;Shisō no kagaku&#039;&#039; 思想の科学 68 (1976). {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s principal autobiographical essay, written the year he formally left the Myōshinji monastic registry, recounting his childhood, his &amp;quot;cowardice,&amp;quot; and the genesis of his social thought.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Secondary Literature in English ==&lt;br /&gt;
* Ives, Christopher (2009). &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics&#039;&#039;. University of Hawai&#039;i Press. {{annotation|The definitive English-language monograph on Ichikawa, combining a detailed intellectual biography with an independent argument locating Imperial-Way Zen within a longer history of &amp;quot;Buddhism for the protection of the realm.&amp;quot;}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Victoria, Brian Daizen (2006 [1997]). &#039;&#039;Zen at War&#039;&#039;, 2nd ed. Rowman &amp;amp; Littlefield. {{annotation|The book that first brought Ichikawa&#039;s documentation of Zen&#039;s wartime collaboration to a wide English readership, drawing extensively, and by its author&#039;s own acknowledgment, on Ichikawa&#039;s research.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Ives, Christopher (1995). &amp;quot;Ethical Pitfalls in Imperial Zen and Nishida Philosophy: Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s Critique&amp;quot;. In: Heisig, James W., &amp;amp; John C. Maraldo (Eds.), &#039;&#039;Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, &amp;amp; the Question of Nationalism&#039;&#039;: 16–39. University of Hawai&#039;i Press. {{annotation|An earlier journal-length statement of the argument later expanded into Ives&#039;s 2009 monograph, focused specifically on Ichikawa&#039;s critique of Nishida philosophy.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Secondary Literature in Japanese ==&lt;br /&gt;
* Morimura Osamu (森村修) (2019). 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論（Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism）」――小笠原秀実の仏教アナキズムと西谷啓治の自衛論批判をめぐって」 [Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot;: On Ogasawara Shūjitsu&#039;s Buddhist Anarchism and Ichikawa&#039;s Critique of Nishitani Keiji&#039;s Argument for Self-Defense]. 『異文化. 論文編』 20: 155–208. {{annotation|The most comprehensive Japanese-language study of Ichikawa&#039;s S・A・C/B・A・C thought, tracing its origin in Ogasawara Shūjitsu&#039;s Buddhist anarchism and situating it in relation to the 1952 Nishitani debate and contemporary &amp;quot;new anarchism.&amp;quot;}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Fujii Yūsuke (藤井祐介) (2014). 「市川白弦と小笠原秀実」 [Ichikawa Hakugen and Ogasawara Shūjitsu]. 『唯一者』 13: 15–20. {{annotation|Reconstructs the direct intellectual debt Ichikawa owed to his teacher, arguing for continuity between Ogasawara&#039;s &amp;quot;philosophy of experiential apprehension&amp;quot; and Ichikawa&#039;s mature ethics.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Ishii Kōsei (石井公成) (2004). 「宗教者の戦争責任――市川白弦その人の検証を通して」 [The War Responsibility of Religionists: Through an Examination of Ichikawa Hakugen Himself]. In: Ikegami Yoshimasa (池上良正), Oda Yoshiko (小田淑子), Shimazono Susumu (島薗進), Sueki Fumihiko (末木文美士), Seki Kazutoshi (関一敏), &amp;amp; Tsuruoka Yoshi (鶴岡賀雄) (Eds.), 『暴力――破壊と秩序』 [Violence: Destruction and Order], vol. 8 of 『岩波講座 宗教』: 223–249. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten (岩波書店). {{annotation|A critical reassessment of Ichikawa&#039;s own wartime record, arguing that his postwar self-criticism, while unusually rigorous, understated the extent and timing of his wartime ambiguity.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Tsurumi Shunsuke (鶴見俊輔) (1993). 「解説」 [Commentary]. In: Ichikawa Hakugen, 『市川白弦著作集』 [The Collected Works of Ichikawa Hakugen], vol. 3: 485–493. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. {{annotation|An afterword by a leading postwar intellectual historian and fellow Betheiren activist, situating Ichikawa&#039;s concept of habitual wartime complicity within broader Japanese debates on tenkō (転向) and social responsibility.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite This Article ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
First version, 29 July 2026. Main: Brons, Lajos. Other: (none).&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Brons, Lajos ({{REVISIONYEAR}}). &amp;quot;Ichikawa Hakugen&amp;quot;. &#039;&#039;Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/Ichikawa_Hakugen&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Biographies]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Japan]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA-T&amp;diff=1253</id>
		<title>IH61ZKA-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA-T&amp;diff=1253"/>
		<updated>2026-10-13T14:48:36Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism”}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; [[IH61ZKA|禅・華厳・アナキズム]]) is a 1961 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 3 of &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343, with references on pp. 344–345.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Japanese original:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH61ZKA|禅・華厳・アナキズム]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contents ==&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section1|I]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section2|II]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section3|III]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section4|IV]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section5|V]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section6|VI]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|319|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is known as the “Nishida philosophy” of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), the foremost representative of modern Japanese philosophy, was established in his 1926 essay “Place.” Although the idea of “place” (&#039;&#039;basho&#039;&#039; 場所) emerged through the concept of topos (place) found in Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotle’s De Anima, it was more fundamentally connected with the Mahāyāna Buddhist concepts of emptiness (&#039;&#039;kū&#039;&#039; 空; Sanskrit śūnyatā) and the dharma-realm (&#039;&#039;hokkai&#039;&#039; 法界; Sanskrit dharmadhātu), especially the realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (&#039;&#039;jiji muge hokkai&#039;&#039; 事々無礙法界), a world of experience in which individual things and events mutually interpenetrate and mutually determine one another. In other words, Nishida’s thought was fundamentally connected with the philosophy of prajñā and Kegon philosophy. His central idea—that the mutual determination of individual things within the place of “absolute nothingness” is simultaneously the self-determination of the universal—expressed, through the mediation of the modern Western logic of the individual ego, the fundamental unity of the logical structures of prajñā emptiness and Kegon’s non-obstruction of phenomena. In essence, this philosophy should have established a metaphysical foundation for thoroughgoing freedom and equality through the Eastern logic of nothingness. It contained the possibility of establishing a philosophy of freedom that rejected all external authority (Autorität) and power (Macht), even casting off the clothing of so-called “religion.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-a&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-a|a]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-b&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-b|b]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|320|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet as imperial Japan’s wartime system expanded, and as pressure from the political Right and the military against the “liberal” tendencies of Nishida philosophy and the Kyoto School intensified, this philosophy of the place of absolute nothingness—or the philosophy of the “self-determination of facts”—gradually developed a logic that provided an ideological foundation for the Imperial Way and the “holy war.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ōya Sōichi went so far as to say that Nishida had “sold his soul to secure the safety of his body.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-2-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-2|2]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Among Nishida’s writings from this period were “The Principle of the New World Order” (1943) and “On the National Polity” (1944). The latter subsequently appeared as the fourth supplementary essay in his Philosophical Essays, was published in the journal &#039;&#039;Tetsugaku kenkyū&#039;&#039; 哲学研究, and was included in the Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō. The former, however, was not included in the collected works.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-3-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-3|3]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, the logic of place, or the philosophy of the non-obstruction of phenomena, should not have provided a foundation for the Imperial Way. On the contrary, it should have provided a foundation for anarchism. In my essay “The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō” (published in &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 思想, January 1959, and reprinted in the present volume), I wrote the following in its conclusion:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The place of absolute nothingness, the dialectical universal, forms the principle of world-formation through its self-conscious determination. This principle and the Imperial Way constitute an absolute contradiction that cannot be reconciled. Within the sphere of objectifying logic, the two assert themselves against and mutually exclude one another by their very nature. If the Imperial Way were genuinely to become subjective beyond the domain of objectifying logic, then, in the very process of becoming subjective, it would have no alternative but to dissolve itself by negating those accidental, particular, and irrational elements that constitute its essential nature. In the process of fully realising itself as subject, the Imperial Way must relinquish the ego. It loses itself by returning to the place of absolute nothingness, the true historical world. Conversely, the logic of the place of absolute nothingness—the logic of the predicate—is something that fundamentally negates the Imperial Way conceived as subject. Nishida’s “theology of the logic of place” should not have provided a foundation for Japan’s founding mythology and the politico-religious philosophy of the eternal imperial order. Rather, it should have furnished a logical system that brought these to an end. Likewise—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|321|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and, contrary to what happened in Nishida’s own case, it should have been a philosophical system that regarded even national morality as fundamentally illusory (&#039;&#039;koke&#039;&#039; 虚仮). As a philosophy of place, in which absolutely free individuals are mediated by a universal that mediates without any mediating entity, this system should have provided the foundation for a democratic association of free individuals in the deepest sense. It should have demanded that the Imperial Way shed its former character, anticipated the disappearance of the state, and provided the foundation and promise of a community without coercive power. The logic of the predicate began with Nishida the philosopher, only to founder in Nishida the imperial subject.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to Nishida, the actual world must be a world of individuals—I, you, and others. An individual might initially be understood as a determination of the universal, such as existence or living beings. By adding specific differences to what is universal, proceeding through successive classifications, and finally passing beyond them, one might conceive of the individual as a limiting point. Yet an individual conceived in this manner is not a genuine individual. Such an individual can never escape being merely a part of the universal. The individual must determine itself.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-4-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-4|4]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Only something that determines itself—that is, something that becomes conscious of itself, forms itself, and chooses for itself—can truly be called an independent individual. Yet an individual can determine itself only in relation to other individuals. I exist as myself in relation to you, just as you exist as yourself in relation to me. “An individual must be conceived as standing in relation to another individual. It is only through standing in relation to another individual that an individual can be conceived as such. It is impossible to conceive of a single individual existing alone. For mutually independent things to stand in relation to one another is precisely what it means for things to act upon one another. […] For mutually independent things to enter into relations, some form of mediation must be conceived between them.” (Emphasis added by Ichikawa.)&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-5-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-5|5]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; If this mediator were some universal that unified the individuals—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|322|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—then that universal would itself amount to another individual, and the independence of the original individuals would necessarily be lost. (It would be rather like two people who could meet only in the presence of a guardian.) Behind individual beings there is no overarching universal that encompasses them. What mediates independent individuals cannot be some positive, substantial universal. Rather, it must be a dialectical universal understood as the determination of the place of nothingness. Within the place of absolute nothingness, individuals engage with and cooperate with one another while remaining genuinely independent. I remain entirely myself, and you remain entirely yourself; yet at the same time I am you, and you are me. Each is an autonomous, self-governing existence possessing an irreplaceable individuality, yet each may freely become subject or object in relation to the other, working and cooperating together. This is how the world of historical reality must truly be constituted. Borrowing a term from Kegon philosophy, Nishida calls this world of existential encounter and interconnection the “realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena” (&#039;&#039;jiji muge no sekai&#039;&#039; 事々無礙の世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The logic of the place of absolute nothingness, which makes possible free and autonomous interaction and cooperation among independent, individual existences—this was, so to speak, the fundamental logic of Nishida’s social philosophy or philosophy of the world.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consequently, what should follow from this logic is a society of genuinely autonomous and free individuals, liberated from attachment to the ego and its objects. Such a society would not merely be free of domination through force; it would be a freely associated human community in which there was no place even for “authority” understood as power disguised in ethical clothing.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet this open conception of the world, grounded in the logic of place and the Zen–Kegon understanding of emptiness and the non-obstruction of phenomena, was constrained and distorted by Nishida’s samurai sensibilities, his position within the academic establishment, and the circumstances of imperialist Japan. Its possibilities were deformed until it descended into the Theory of the National Polity and The Principle of the New World Order. And this was the same course that Japanese Buddhism generally followed at the time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|323|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎, one of the leading Buddhist scholars of modern Japan—supervising editor of the &#039;&#039;Taishō&#039;&#039; Revised Tripiṭaka, professor emeritus at Tokyo Imperial University, and recipient of the fourth Order of Culture (Nishida received the second)—argued in “The Principle of Totality in Buddhism” that Mahāyāna Buddhist logic and ethics were, from the beginning, totalitarian. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-6-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-6|6]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; According to Takakusu, the logical structure of this totalitarianism is expressed in Kegon thought through the doctrine of the Four Dharma-Realms (&#039;&#039;shihokkai&#039;&#039; 四法界), culminating in the fourth, the Realm of the Non-Obstruction of Phenomena (&#039;&#039;jiji muge hokkai&#039;&#039; 事々無礙法界). He maintained that, with the World War as its turning point, the world had begun moving toward totalitarianism: “Today even Westerners are beginning to practise totalitarianism, whereas the Japanese have actually practised it since ancient times. Through Japan’s Yamato totalitarianism, we can provide a model for the world. Through Buddhism’s principle of totality, we can guide the world. […] Japan as it actually exists must be governed through the Imperial Way. It is truly gratifying that the Kegon principle of totality should be put into practice. […] However excellent Buddhism may be, there must be no attempt to regard it as a form of government through the Buddhist Way existing alongside Japan’s government through the Imperial Way.” Takakusu concluded: “We now find ourselves in the midst of the National Spiritual Mobilization campaign, at a time when the Japanese spirit must be manifested in its totality. […] We should fully appreciate the true meaning of Kegon and undertake service to the nation without the slightest disorder and without a trace of selfishness. All people should forget themselves, relinquish themselves, and devote themselves to national affairs. We should realise the truth that the sage has no self, yet there is nothing that is not the self.” The Kegon scholar Kamekawa Kyōshin 亀川教信, in his essay “The Structure of Dependent Origination” (&#039;&#039;Engi no kōzō&#039;&#039; 縁起の構造), &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-7-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-7|7]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; and Yamagami Kaizen 山上戒全, in his essay “Kegon” 華厳, &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-8-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-8|8]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; developed interpretations of Kegon thought along similar lines. The Zen scholar Nakane Kandō 中根環堂, in “Totalitarianism and Zen” (&#039;&#039;Zentaishugi to Zen&#039;&#039; 全体主義と禅), &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-9-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-9|9]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; argued that Japan’s national polity was not the flat, horizontal totalitarianism of the West. Rather, its principle of one emperor and all his subjects constituted a three-dimensional, organic unity, in which affection resembled the relationship between father and child, while duty preserved the proper distinctions between ruler and subject. Underlying this hierarchical unity, he maintained, was the Kegon philosophy of “one is many, and many are one” (&#039;&#039;ichi soku ta, ta soku ichi&#039;&#039; 一即多・多即一). The path to fully realising this unity was seated meditation. Through grasping the essence of &#039;&#039;zazen&#039;&#039;—“thinking from the standpoint of nonthinking”—one could accomplish the sacred imperial undertaking of bringing the world under one roof (&#039;&#039;hakkō ichiu&#039;&#039; 八紘一宇). The lectures on “The Problem of Japanese Culture” given by Nishida at Kyoto Imperial University’s Monday lecture series in 1938—&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-c&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-c|c]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|324|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and Kōyama Iwao’s subsequent lectures on “Cultural Typology” likewise sought to contribute to the construction of a “New Order in East Asia” by invoking the Kegon logic of phenomena.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet all these attempts were nothing other than distortions of Kegon philosophy and Zen thought. Let us return once more to Takakusu for an example.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In his Commentary on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (&#039;&#039;Kegongyō tangenki&#039;&#039; 華厳経探玄記), Fazang (Hōzō 法蔵, 643–712), the third patriarch of the Chinese Huayan school, classifies the infinite mutual identity and interpenetration of phenomena within the world of experience into ten categories, known as the “Ten Profound Forms of Dependent Origination” (&#039;&#039;jūgen engi&#039;&#039; 十玄縁起). The tenth is called the “Gate of the Complete Illumination and Possession of Virtues by Principal and Companion” (&#039;&#039;shuhan enmyō gutokumon&#039;&#039; 主伴円明具徳門). The countless phenomena of the experiential world alternately become principal and companion, forming an endlessly interconnected symbolic world. If one phenomenon is taken as principal, all the others become its companions and are subordinated to it. But if another is selected as principal, all the remaining phenomena—including the one formerly taken as principal—become its companions and are encompassed by it. This is the principle of the complete illumination and possession of virtues by principal and companion. Takakusu paraphrases the doctrine in concrete terms: “Both principal and companion should work together harmoniously and openly, those above and below acting with one heart. Totalitarianism means that parent and child do not oppose one another but join forces and work together. If this cannot be accomplished, it is not totalitarianism. […] When similar things come together, one becomes their centre and principal. We may therefore apply this to the actual relationship of one emperor and all his subjects.” He also declared: “Our country has been totalitarian since the very beginning of its founding. […] Through the Meiji Restoration, it returned to its original totalitarianism.” And further: “We Japanese, who already possess the principle of totality in our actual national existence, are bringing the vision of Kegon’s one true dharma-realm into reality. This is something truly precious.” Takakusu thus maintains that the truths of the non-obstruction of phenomena, the completeness of principal and companion, and the identity of one with all and all with one are already realised within the system of one emperor and all his subjects—a system that regards democracy as contrary to the national polity and rests upon an authoritarian, status-based morality. This is a typical example of philosophy placed at the service of the authorities.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-d&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-d|d]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|325|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The condition of Japanese Buddhism described above had already taken root in the period of the Taika reforms. Leaving aside for the moment the earlier circumstances of state Buddhism in China, the new government, established through the reforms of 646, eventually undertook the construction of the Great Buddha Hall at Tōdaiji. It enshrined Vairocana Buddha there and established provincial monasteries and nunneries throughout the country, where scriptures for the protection of the state were to be recited. In this way, temples, monks, and nuns came under the control of state authority.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Immediately after Japan’s defeat, Suzuki Daisetsu, in “The Construction of a Spiritual Japan” (September 1946), argued that a new Japan must be constructed upon the principle of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm (&#039;&#039;hokkai engi&#039;&#039; 法界縁起) found in Kegon philosophy.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To place the emperor above the people is a symbol of the will to power. […] Rather, the emperor should possess a quality of immanence, becoming interconnected with the people in endlessly overlapping relationships. […] Just as the entire world should constitute a dharma-realm mandala of nations, so within Japan itself, the emperor and the people must become a single whole in which phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. Only then will a spiritual Japan become possible.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If we express this schematically, Japan up to the present has resembled Figure 1. Although there appears to be a connection between those above and those below, it can be severed at any point along the way. Before the wishes of those above reach those below, they must pass through military cliques, bureaucrats, and financial interests. Those below have no clear idea where these directives originate. Moreover, the people themselves have no direct connections with one another. […] They do not know how to think for themselves—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure1.png|thumb|360px|Figure 1. Suzuki Daisetsu’s diagram of hierarchical relations in prewar Japan (reproduced by Ichikawa, p. 325).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|326|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—[…] All that was demanded of them was reverent obedience to imperial commands. […] The system of one emperor and all his subjects symbolises the will to power on the one hand and, on the other, extinguishes the autonomy of individual citizens.” (pp. 158–159)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki goes on to describe the dharma-realm mandala that ought to be constructed by the emperor and the people. Although the passage is lengthy, I shall quote it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the emperor descends from the Plain of High Heaven and joins ordinary human beings upon this earth, the people, for their part, must abandon their servile sense of inferiority. […] They must establish their own autonomy and recognise fully that nothing can replace the value of individual personality.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“They must understand that respecting oneself is also the basis for respecting others. Each individual is complete in themselves, and at the same time all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. […] Because each is complete, all are non-obstructing; because all are non-obstructing, each is complete.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The political form of Japan as a dharma-realm mandala may be represented schematically in Figure 2. A, B, C, and so forth represent the people, the countless inhabitants of the nation. Yet each is an individual, a monad capable of autonomous action, thought, and sensation.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-e&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-e|e]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Each is complete in themselves. Each is an independent and free personality. Precisely for this reason, each enters into inexhaustibly interconnected relationships with others. These monads have thrown their windows wide open, sharing their own light with others while receiving the light of others in return.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-f&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-f|f]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The chords and straight lines within the circle represent communication, reciprocal interaction, and mutual interpenetration among the monads.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure2.png|thumb|360px|Figure 2. Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala: A–H represent individuals, while S at the centre represents the emperor (reproduced by Ichikawa, p. 326).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|327|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The S at the centre is an inward reflection of that which comprehensively encompasses the surrounding A, B, C, and so forth from without. A, B, C, D, and the others are each independent, yet each possesses totality. Accordingly, A, B, C, and D are joined by curved lines to form a great circle. This great circle, just as it is, represents each individual monad, each individual ‘blade of grass’ among the people. To express this meaning, it is concentrated and reflected in the small circle at the centre.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The great circle encompasses the people as a whole, but merely saying that it encompasses them does not provide anything concrete that can be pointed to. For this reason I have placed S at the centre. S is none other than the emperor, the centre of the national polity. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It might seem possible to remove S from the great circle surrounding it and place it above. But doing so would introduce a considerable danger that the will to power and a dualistic conception would reappear. The feudal mentality would inevitably be reproduced. Moreover, placing S within the circle should serve to strengthen the unity of the circle itself. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“As Japanese and as East Asians, we must establish a new national polity through our own autonomy, freedom, and constructive vision. Needless to say, its establishment must be spiritual through and through; it must be built upon spiritual awakening. Only then can it attain universality. Only then can something emerge from among us that will contribute to the advancement of world spiritual culture and to the various institutions of practical life.” (pp. 160–163)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This work by Suzuki may be regarded as the foremost postwar document in which a Buddhist thinker sought, with enthusiasm and sincerity, to envision a new political order for Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As is already clear, there is a fundamental distance and difference between Takakusu’s wartime interpretation and Suzuki’s postwar interpretation of the Kegon doctrine of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm, understood in relation to the realities of Japan. (We should pay particular attention to Suzuki’s insistence that the new order must be built upon spiritual awakening through and through.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s case, we may wonder whether, had he lived into the postwar period, he would have recognised the need to revise his earlier interpretation. In Suzuki’s case, we might ask whether truth acquires its illumination—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|328|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and power precisely when it is spoken at a time when speaking it is both necessary and difficult. Nevertheless, judging from what we have before us, we cannot avoid concluding that Suzuki’s interpretation is the one that truly brings the meaning of Kegon thought to life in contemporary Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s and Suzuki’s interpretations, the position of the emperor differs in the way represented by the two diagrams discussed above. At the same time, this difference in position may also reflect a difference in the position of Vairocana Buddha, the prototype of the emperor’s position.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s account, we find the following statement:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In Kegon terms, the great Vairocana Buddha at the centre is active. All the attendant beings of the outer Vajra circle are active as well. The great mandala of the total mobilisation of principal and companion is manifested. This is the phenomenal manifestation of the dependent origination of the Kegon dharma-realm—the manifestation of the true dharma-realm.” (pp. 251–252)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki, on the other hand, argues:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the original form of Japan’s national polity is understood in this way, the sequence of ideas suggested by expressions such as ‘the benevolence of the sovereign’ and ‘the light of the imperial reign’ acquires a different meaning from that traditionally attached to them. ‘Benevolence’ will no longer be associated with power, but will instead become something characterised by reciprocity. Nor will ‘light’ be something that shines only from above. Rather, it will signify the reciprocal illumination of the original light possessed by each individual.” (p. 164)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet neither account clarifies the most fundamental issue: the internal and logical relationship between Vairocana Buddha and the emperor (in Suzuki’s case, the emperor understood as a human being).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Since Takakusu asserts government through the Imperial Way while refusing to recognise government through the Buddhist Way, he must explain what logic he adopts in relation to the doctrine of original ground and manifest traces (&#039;&#039;honji suijaku&#039;&#039; 本地垂迹).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki speaks of the “benevolence of the sovereign,” meaning the emperor’s benevolence. But what, concretely, does that benevolence signify? Similarly, when he says that “light” does not come only from above, what exactly is the “light that comes from above”? Is there still an “above” within Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala? If so, what does that position represent? Is it a position above others occupied by the emperor as a human being? These questions remain unanswered.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki maintains that his dharma-realm possesses universality. But can a logic and an ethics that permanently place a single human being belonging to one particular hereditary lineage at the centre of the world genuinely claim universality?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Blood,” as something irrational and contingent,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|329|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—can it be assigned a particular cosmic and ethical significance from the standpoint of the Buddhist Dharma, or indeed from the standpoint of universal ethics?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki writes: “The unbroken imperial line will become something for which we should stake our lives when it is understood in the following way: the perpetuity of the imperial lineage symbolises the perpetuity of the ideals cherished by the Japanese people.” (p. 165)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The “ideals” mentioned here presumably refer to what Suzuki calls the “construction of a spiritual Japan.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Leaving aside for the moment the question of who actually risked their lives to reject imperialist Japan and construct a spiritual Japan, why should the perpetuity of these ideals require a particular human being belonging to a particular hereditary lineage? What would happen if that individual, exercising their fundamental human rights, refused to serve as such a symbol? And what should peoples without such a symbol do?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Even if the emperor occupied the position proposed by Suzuki, so long as the unbroken hereditary imperial line is recognised—that is, so long as some form of the emperor system is recognised—and so long as universality is claimed for this system, does its logic not contain the possibility of developing into a new version of the doctrine of “eight corners of the world under one roof” (&#039;&#039;hakkō ichiu&#039;&#039; 八紘一宇)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If the logic of Kegon’s dependent origination of the dharma-realm were pursued consistently, carrying Suzuki’s interpretation to its ultimate conclusion beyond Takakusu’s, would not even a “democratic” emperor system headed by a human emperor lose its logical foundation? And would not the very structure of meaning represented in Suzuki’s second diagram consequently undergo a fundamental transformation?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, despite these questions, Suzuki’s interpretation emphasises “the value of the individual as a morally free person, as a spiritual existence, and as an independently autonomous being who cannot be reduced to an antlike mass under the vague designation of ‘totalitarianism’” (p. 142).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki also rejects the principle of domination through force:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“There should be no power standing outside the dharma-realm. To suppose that an organisation cannot be sustained without such power is to fail to recognise the irrationality of seeking it outside itself. The dharma-realm is already a complete organisation in itself. The power that organises it is originally inherent within the organisation itself. When this power is sought outside, what exists within becomes distorted and is diverted in an unintended direction. […]”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|330|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—The construction of a spiritual Japanese state must not take power as its fundamental principle. It must be a faithful reflection in our actual lives of the realm in which all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing.” (pp. 153–154)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Let us pay particular attention to Suzuki’s observation that the dharma-realm is already a complete organisation and that the power necessary to organise it is inherent within the organisation itself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This recalls the anarchist idea of free association. Viewed politically, it may be understood as suggesting anarchism as the form of a new human society embodying the Kegon world of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon dharma-realm, grounded in the rejection of both the principle of coercive power and the principle of private ownership, may be described as a world of Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.)—although Suzuki, it seems to me, has never addressed the question of private ownership.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-g&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-g|g]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon (1809–1865), who envisaged the perfected form of society as a “unity of order and anarchy,” proposed a conception that, at least in this respect, may be applied directly to Kegon’s Lotus Treasury World (&#039;&#039;renge zō sekai&#039;&#039; 蓮華蔵世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The traditional position of Japanese Zen was that State Shinto and the Buddha-Dharma were fundamentally one. The Edo-period Zen master Tōrei Enji 東嶺円慈 (1721–1792) explained it as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Fundamentally, ‘kami’ means mind. When the impurities of the mind have been completely extinguished and it becomes as clear as a mirror, this is called kami. Thus, the Way of the kami takes the mirror as the representation of its essential nature.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The mirror of the mind is originally pure, eternally abiding, and serenely still: this is called Kuni-no-Tokotachi-no-Mikoto 国常立尊. The mirror of the mind is originally perfectly luminous, and there is nothing that it does not reveal: this is called Amaterasu Ōmikami 天照大神. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“One should understand that the Way of the kami and the Buddha-Dharma share the same underlying principle. They are nothing other than the single Dharma of seeing one’s nature.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-10-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-10|10]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The same position was held by Tōrei’s teacher, Hakuin Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1685–1768). The Meiji-period Zen master Imakita Kōsen 今北洪川 (1816–1892) likewise expressed this understanding:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In our country there is the Way of imperial sovereignty. This is the great Way of the ancestral deity and the true teaching of rulers. Its transmission has continued from the distant past, with the imperial descendants forming a single unbroken lineage, into which no other family has entered. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“This is what makes our imperial Way uniquely distinguished among all the nations of the world.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-11-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-11|11]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|331|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—A true man of our imperial nation must first establish firmly within himself the pillar of the Japanese spirit, which neither fire can burn nor water drown. Once he has suddenly penetrated through to realisation, there will be nothing deficient in his ability to judge and uphold the Imperial Way.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Tōrei’s interpretation lacks any logic capable of grounding, from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma, the unbroken imperial lineage that constitutes the core of State Shinto. It remains entirely unclear how the fundamental Buddhist principle that “all conditioned things are impermanent” (&#039;&#039;shogyō mujō&#039;&#039; 諸行無常) could be reconciled with Shinto’s assertion that the imperial throne will endure as long as heaven and earth. The same applies to Imakita Kōsen. Indeed, among Japanese Zen masters from Kokan Shiren (1278–1346), Hakuin, and Tenkei Denson (1648–1735) down to the present, the most fundamental questions have been almost entirely neglected. How can the kami of Shinto be identical with the fundamental subject of human existence? How can a hereditary lineage be identical with a divine lineage? And how can a religious tradition that, through monastic renunciation, takes the discontinuation of hereditary descent as a principle provide a Zen Buddhist justification for the continuity of that very descent? Hakuin, Tōrei, and virtually every other Zen practitioner have revealed a fatal weakness of vision in their understanding of Shinto.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-h&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-h|h]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is no relationship whatsoever between the eternity of Zen truth and the political and supposedly “ethical” continuity of a particular bloodline. No logic exists by which the unbroken imperial lineage—a survival from the customs of ancient peoples—can be justified from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma or Zen. Above all, the Imperial Way Zen that emerged after the Meiji Restoration represents the most extreme decadence of Zen. The only possible support for the forced identification of hereditary continuity with moral continuity seems to lie in the doctrine of karmic causation across the three times, as found in Hakuin’s “Song of Giving” (&#039;&#039;Segyōka&#039;&#039; 施行歌). Yet even this doctrine cannot establish such an identification. It can do no more than explain differences of social status and circumstances in the present life. Moreover, the doctrine itself can scarcely withstand modern criticism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the dignity of humanity, the poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) wrote: “There can be no god more sacred than yourself. And this is what the oldest and the newest myths alike ultimately mean.” (“Laws for Creation”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon, writing of human sovereignty, declared, “Every citizen is king.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-12-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-12|12]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet to identify Amaterasu Ōmikami with the fundamental subject of human existence, as Japanese Zen has done, is ultimately to negate State Shinto—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|332|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and to deny any necessary, intrinsic connection between Zen and the Japanese national polity, or between Zen and the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Does not the fact that Japanese Zen practitioners have failed to recognise and openly acknowledge this conclusion demonstrate that their Zen thinking has remained insufficiently thoroughgoing, and that they have not genuinely achieved the condition of being “independently liberated, dependent upon nothing” (&#039;&#039;dokudatsu mu’e&#039;&#039; 独脱無依; Record of Linji, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Christian existentialist philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948), who advocated religious libertarian communism, was described by the philosopher Heinemann as a “mystical anarchist.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-13-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-13|13]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; The French philosopher Simone Weil (1909–1943), who took an interest in Eastern thought, especially Zen, and criticised Christian theology, was an anarchist who participated in the Spanish Civil War.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In my view, the social philosophy of Zen may be described as &#039;&#039;Prajñā–Śūnyatā&#039;&#039; Anarchist Communism—an anarchist communism of wisdom (&#039;&#039;hannya&#039;&#039; 般若) and emptiness (&#039;&#039;kū&#039;&#039; 空). (See my book &#039;&#039;Hannyakyō&#039;&#039; 般若経, published by San’ichi Shobō.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why is it that Western religious anarchists have resisted state power—Berdyaev, for example, became a communist under imperial Russia and was imprisoned—whereas not only do we find almost no comparable examples in Zen or Kegon Buddhism, but examples of precisely the opposite tendency are overwhelmingly numerous? Let us consider two or three circumstances that may help explain this situation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The first is the obscuring of the difference in level between the world of experiential reality and the world of ordinary empirical experience, between the world of selfless intuitive action and the actual world of the empirical individual ego. This produces a “mixture or confusion of two worlds of reality.” The realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (&#039;&#039;jiji muge no sekai&#039;&#039; 事々無礙の世界) belongs to the reality disclosed in the experience of prajñā. Yet this realm readily overlaps and merges with the ordinary world of empirical facts, so that the tension arising from the discontinuity between the two is never firmly established. We may recall that Nishida, the author of An Inquiry into the Good (&#039;&#039;Zen no kenkyū&#039;&#039; 善の研究), acknowledged in replying to Takahashi Satomi’s criticism that he had failed to recognise a qualitative distinction between pure experience and impure experience—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|333|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—a point that has important implications for both Zen studies and Buddhist studies. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-14-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-14|14]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The circumstances described above are connected with the fact that Buddhist practitioners have traditionally placed the emphasis of their religious training upon the attainment of peace of mind. As Nishida wrote in his diary, “Do not run after the peripheral matters of scholarship and forget the foundation of peace of mind.” Consequently, the culmination of their practice tends toward an attitude of being at home wherever one finds oneself—expressed in the saying, “Wherever one lives becomes home.” To that extent, there is a psychological tendency to beautify and rationalise the circumstances of each particular moment. Moreover, the subject of prajñā intuition is characterised as something that reflects and receives, as suggested by expressions such as “ocean-seal samādhi” (&#039;&#039;kaiin zanmai&#039;&#039; 海印三昧), “precious-mirror samādhi” (&#039;&#039;hōkyō zanmai&#039;&#039; 宝鏡三昧), and the “place of absolute nothingness” (&#039;&#039;zettai mu no basho&#039;&#039; 絶対無の場所). This characteristic corresponds to the orientation toward peace of mind described above. Even before a sustained determination to transform the surrounding environment can emerge, the practitioner has already entered the contemplative enjoyment of things. The fact that the East, characterised by what has been called “Asiatic stagnation,” has excelled in the arts of cultivation, and that much of “Zen culture” has taken an artistic form, is connected with this tendency. It is interesting that archery and martial techniques, originally intended for combat against enemies, became in times of peace the disciplines of &#039;&#039;kyūdō&#039;&#039; 弓道 and &#039;&#039;budō&#039;&#039; 武道, directed toward confronting oneself, and were subsequently internalised, intellectualised, systematised, and transformed into forms of contemplation. Everything associated with the “Way” (&#039;&#039;dō&#039;&#039; 道) has a contemplative character. In other words, it finds a place of repose within the framework of established social conventions and institutions. Affluent Buddhist practitioners enjoying leisure in periods of social stability could readily immerse themselves in the contemplative world of Kegon. Anxious Buddhists living through periods of crisis likewise entered this world of contemplation in search of peace of mind. In such a world, empirical historical reality becomes veiled by the harmonious non-obstruction of all phenomena. It is beautified and, in proportion to this beautification, accepted and rationalised.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
All phenomena in the world are said to appear within ocean-seal samādhi, mutually interpenetrating in infinitely overlapping relationships. In my view, the Lotus Treasury World (&#039;&#039;renge zō sekai&#039;&#039; 蓮華蔵世界) described in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (&#039;&#039;Kegongyō&#039;&#039; 華厳経) is both a realm of reality disclosed through the active intuition of prajñā and a visionary world constituted through creative imagination around that experience. Here, however, harmonious non-obstruction refers to the actual activities of practitioners living within the rigid framework of caste society, together with the mutually non-obstructing phenomena of their visionary world. It does not mean that the raw, living reality inhabited by the masses is itself a world of harmonious—&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-i&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-i|i]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|334|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—non-obstruction. Within ocean-seal samādhi, three layers of reality must surely appear: the mutually non-obstructing facts of the practitioner’s immediate activity, the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena within an intuitive vision, and the dark reality of conflict and contradiction. It would be a mistake to paint over this three-dimensional world with a single, flat colour of harmonious non-obstruction.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In contrast, we may recall the following words of Herbert Read (1893–1968): “Religion is closely connected with art (poetry). […] During the Spanish Civil War, observers were struck by the religious fervour of the anarchists. In that country of a latent renaissance, anarchism inspired not only heroes but saints—new kinds of people who devoted their lives, through sensuous imagination and practical action, to creating a new form of human society.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-15-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-15|15]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The following criticism may be applied to the misguided realism that results from confusing worlds belonging to different levels of experience:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It is clear that Fazang’s Kegon philosophy—its doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena and of the absoluteness of phenomena mutually non-obstructing—expresses a truth that can be realised only through the fundamental intuition of ocean-seal samādhi, understood through the doctrine of the arising of phenomena from their true nature (&#039;&#039;shōki&#039;&#039; 性起). “When this becomes merely an intellectual doctrine, however, it denies the mediation of practice and turns into a facile, absolutist worldview. […] “The doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena certainly does not mean simply accepting the ‘things’ of existing reality as they are and asserting their harmony. Genuine non-obstruction among phenomena unfolds upon the foundation of religious intuition. […] “The Kegon system is a religious worldview manifested through ocean-seal samādhi. If this is forgotten, and the ‘things’ of empirical reality are accepted merely as they appear to the discriminating consciousness of ordinary people, and their harmony is then proclaimed, the result is an entirely different philosophy. “Phenomena are absolute because each constitutes part of the Lotus Treasury World. To ignore this and claim that every phenomenon possesses absolute significance amounts to affirming existing reality just as it stands. One misstep, and this becomes an unconditional affirmation of existing structures of domination and social organisation. “A philosophy of absolute affirmation can thereby become a philosophy in the service of rulers who sanction existing reality as it is.” (Kamata Shigeo 鎌田茂雄)&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-16-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-16|16]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|335|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This criticism may be said to identify correctly the errors and pathologies into which Kegon thought, and indeed Mahāyāna Buddhism more generally, have been liable to fall, and into which they have frequently fallen in practice—as, for example, in the cases of Sengzhao (384–414) and Dahui (1089–1163).&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-17-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-17|17]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The criticism emphasises the distinction between the realm of religious experience and that of ordinary empirical experience, insisting that the latter must be purified “through the practice of the bodhisattva path and vows grounded in compassion.” In this respect, it overcomes the vulgarism characteristic of Takakusu’s interpretation and, together with Suzuki’s view cited within it, rests upon an orthodox doctrinal foundation. This position might be described as a shift from the contemplative tendency found in Fazang toward the experiential orientation of Chengguan (737–839), accompanied by an emphasis on religious instruction and propagation grounded in that experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon world of the non-obstruction of phenomena is the joint product of experience and vision. It belongs to a dimension altogether different from the sphere of action in which the structural contradictions of actual class society are grasped, analysed, and practically overcome. Indeed, it is a world that can exist only within that particular dimension. It possesses neither the foundation nor the logic necessary to generate objective practice capable of overcoming the fundamental structural contradictions of the world in which we live. In this respect, there is no essential difference between Fazang and Chengguan. Even if this philosophy does not affirm mere facts or empirical reality as they stand, but instead rejects them as false and illusory, such rejection occurs entirely within subjective consciousness. It does not occur within the sphere of objective, transformative practice. Consequently, in actual historical circumstances, it amounts to a “doctrine of double truth”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-18-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-18|18]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; that affirms the existing order. There is therefore nothing surprising about Buddhists who consciously distinguish the world of prajñā experience from ordinary empirical reality nevertheless acting, in practice, as defenders of the established social system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== V ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
When Kegon thought attempts to formulate a social ethics within the actual world without overcoming the traditional characteristics and limitations examined above—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|336|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—that is, when it constructs morality through the logic of mutual identity (&#039;&#039;sōsoku&#039;&#039; 相即) and the dependent-origination logic of mutual dependence and interrelationship (&#039;&#039;sōi sōkan&#039;&#039; 相依相関), expressed in propositions such as “The principal is principal in relation to the companion, and the companion is companion in relation to the principal,” or “Mind is mind in relation to matter, and matter is matter in relation to mind”—the result will be an ethics of concord, harmony, and paternalistic benevolence.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Without capital there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no labour. At the same time, without labour there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no capital. The joint activity of capital and labour is precisely what constitutes industry. […] If those who provide wages deserve respect, then those who provide labour deserve equal respect. Indeed, neither party is simply giving something to the other; rather, industry consists of capital and labour being brought together.” (Shibusawa Eiichi) &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-19-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-19|19]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of cooperation between capital and labour expressed by this industrial capitalist is presented by a Zen practitioner in the following manner:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If one understands that self and other are originally nondual, there should be no difficulty whatsoever. Labour is the capitalist’s capital, and capital is the labourer’s labour. How, then, could conflict possibly arise?” (Iida Tōin) &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-20-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-20|20]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of harmony can also become a morality of war. A Kegon scholar writes:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In times of peace, the understanding of dependent origination provides a foundation for harmonious relations, through the recognition of the profound karmic connections that bind people inseparably together. But in times of emergency, it also manifests itself as a spirit of fearless, unobstructed struggle, enabling Japanese citizens to fulfil their responsibilities in their respective positions.” (Kamekawa Kyōshin) &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-21-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-21|21]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When every single member of the nation, embraced within the august imperial authority, rises with this sense of the completeness of principal and companion, the hundred million people are no longer limited to merely a hundred million. Rather, the hundred million simultaneously manifest a power multiplied a hundred millionfold.” (Ibid.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to this Kegon scholar, it is only through the conception of the state arising from Japanese national consciousness that the relationship between the individual and the whole can truly be perceived in its proper form, through the practical apprehension of inexhaustible dependent origination expressed as “one is all, and all is one.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-22-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-22|22]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet this very logic has found concrete expression in postwar Japan in the workers’ handbook, or “Mirror,” of Ōmi Kenshi, and has continued to produce results as a morality of worker training developed through cooperation between industrial capital and Zen. The Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (&#039;&#039;Keidanren&#039;&#039; 経団連)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|337|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—supported the establishment of a Zen training centre where a recent roundtable entitled “Zen and Business” discussed the adjustment of human relations through Zen, the rationalisation of business management, and measures concerning labour. Among the statements recorded in that discussion were the following:&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-j&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-j|j]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Our most important policy, as our managing director has just explained, is first of all to bring about a complete change in the attitudes associated with student life. We want participants to examine themselves, their membership in the company, and the relationship between the individual within the company as a whole and the whole constituted through individuals. We want them to analyse themselves and then begin working with a renewed consciousness of themselves as members of the company. This is our most fundamental policy.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-23-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-23|23]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“We received some questionnaire responses saying that, although participants had expected the monks’ talks at the Zen temple to be thoroughly religious and solemn, they found them quite approachable—even including discussions of attitudes toward romantic love—and therefore very pleasant to listen to. […] If possible, we would appreciate talks that include a little of this sort of romantic interest, since they seem to be very well received.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What I wish to address here is Kamekawa’s interpretation of the “completeness of principal and companion” (&#039;&#039;shuhan gusoku&#039;&#039; 主伴具足), which is essentially the same as Takakusu’s interpretation. In this case, the relationship running from principal to companion is thoroughly one-directional and extremely concrete in its historical reality, since it provides a foundation for imperial absolutism under the Meiji Constitution. By contrast, the possibility of the companion becoming principal remains merely conceptual. In other words, this suggests that the logic of the completeness of principal and companion should not be applied to class society. In Kamekawa’s interpretation, principal and companion cannot genuinely be said to possess complete and perfect reciprocity. Even Fazang himself, who originally formulated this logic, probably did not entirely escape this danger. Kamata, in the essay discussed earlier, also takes up this problem and warns against confusing the reality of religious experience with empirical reality. Yet, as I have already pointed out, this criticism amounts to a “doctrine of double truth,” in which existing reality is denied at the level of consciousness but accepted in actual practice. An anarchist-communist society would surely provide the best expression of the complete illumination and mutual fulfilment of principal and companion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|338|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== VI ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a saying, “Kill the Buddha and kill the patriarchs” (&#039;&#039;Unmonroku&#039;&#039; 雲門録). Perhaps no tradition is as thoroughgoing as Zen in refusing to recognise externally imposed authority. The Tang-dynasty Zen master Linji Yixuan (&#039;&#039;Rinzai Gigen&#039;&#039; 臨済義玄, d. 867) emphasised the freedom of the “true person of no rank,” who “becomes master wherever one stands” and is “independently liberated, dependent on nothing.” It was in the spirit of such freedom that Danxia Tianran (Tanka Tennen 丹霞天然, 739–824) burned a Buddha image and Deshan Xuanjian (Tokusan Senkan 徳山宣鑑, 782–865) burned Buddhist scriptures. Zhaozhou Congshen (&#039;&#039;Jōshū Jūshin&#039;&#039; 趙州従諗, 778–897) declared, “I do not delight in hearing even the single word ‘Buddha.’” A king once visited Zhaozhou accompanied by his retainers, but Zhaozhou did not descend from his seat to welcome him. The following day, when the king sent an official to convey his thanks for the previous day’s reception, Zhaozhou descended from his seat and received the visitor’s greeting. When his disciples later asked why he had acted differently, Zhaozhou replied: “You would not understand. When a person of the highest rank comes, I receive him upon my meditation seat. When a person of middling rank comes, I descend from my seat to receive him. When a person of the lowest rank comes, I go outside the monastery gate to receive him. This is the custom of my house.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-24-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-24|24]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As suggested by the passage, “In the Western realm there is a land called Peace and Nourishment. […] There is no system of kingship there, nor any hierarchy of official ranks,” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-25-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-25|25]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; the future society envisioned by Buddhists may be understood as a world of anarchist communism. Kropotkin (1842–1921)&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-k&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-k|k]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; argued that our cultural achievements and the material necessities of life are the fruits of the labour of countless people extending back into the distant past. Consequently, none of us has grounds for calling them “my own.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-26-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-26|26]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Buddhists likewise understood these things as products of the endlessly interwoven activities of sentient beings: they are originally “property of the four quarters” (&#039;&#039;shihōmotsu&#039;&#039; 四方物), belonging to all sentient beings, and do not admit the possessive designation “mine” (&#039;&#039;mama-kāra&#039;&#039;). &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-27-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-27|27]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; (Nevertheless, texts such as the Brahmā’s Net Bodhisattva Precepts Sūtra already contain the notion of “property of the king.”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problems Buddhism must confront today in order to develop a social ethics or an ethics for the world are approximately as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|339|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
First, there is the problem of bringing together the recovery of Buddhism’s supranational character and the recovery of nationalism. In the expression “protection of the nation” (&#039;&#039;chingo kokka&#039;&#039; 鎮護国家), “nation” originally referred to the royal household, the territory, and the people, but its principal concern was the emperor. (In China, too, the term “state” (&#039;&#039;kokka&#039;&#039; 国家) could signify the Son of Heaven&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-28-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-28|28]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; or the imperial court&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-29-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-29|29]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;.) Consider, for example, the “Ten Secret Rites for the Protection of the Nation” (Chingo &#039;&#039;kokka&#039;&#039; no jikka hihō 鎮護国家の十箇秘法) in Japanese Tendai Buddhism. The majority concern the emperor personally, including rites for imperial enthronement, prayers concerning the emperor’s life, and precepts conferred for safe childbirth within the imperial household. In any event, because Buddhism was associated with state power from the earliest period of its development, it tended to lack a critical analysis and examination of the essential nature of political power. There was, of course, an intention to educate sovereigns so that they might govern benevolently, and this intention sometimes achieved positive results. Nevertheless, considerable suspicion of kings also existed. We find statements such as, “A monk should approach a king as though approaching a servant-master relationship” (Saddharma-smṛtyupasthāna Sūtra, &#039;&#039;Shōbōnenkyō&#039;&#039; 正法念経), and “Kings constantly increase taxation and arbitrarily punish people who have committed no offence. […] Though they see people suffering poverty and distress, they never give rise to compassion. They indulge in women without fearing the evil destinies” (Tang translation of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, &#039;&#039;Kegongyō&#039;&#039; 華厳経).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As in early Buddhism, Buddhist scriptures often regarded kings as people who inflicted harm upon the population. Kings were therefore placed alongside thieves and robbers, and among the misfortunes suffered by ordinary people—calamities of flood and fire, robbery, and wicked persons—there was also the “calamity of the king.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-30-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-30|30]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must discover a logic capable of bringing together a recognition of the evils of the state with the recovery of a legitimate nationalism, understood, for example, in terms of national independence and cooperation among peoples. In connection with this problem, we must also investigate how to reconcile the contradiction between spiritual freedom, expressed in the Record of Linji as “remaining unstained by birth and death, free to come and go” (&#039;&#039;shōji ni somazu kyojū jiyū&#039;&#039; 生死に染まず去住自由), and political and social freedom. “Without religion, the state could not exist,” declared Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-31-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-31|31]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet religion can exist without the state—although whether Zen should properly be called a “religion” is itself open to question. We have already seen how modern Japanese Zen was distorted by the state power of the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|340|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In considering the relationship between Buddhism and the state, the next question is that of class. Marx wrote: “The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas in every age. The class that constitutes the dominant material power in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual power. The class that controls the means of material production also controls the means of intellectual production. Consequently, the ideas of those who lack access to the means of intellectual production are, in general, subordinated to that class.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-32-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-32|32]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; It hardly needs explaining that the ideology of modern Japanese Zen was no exception to this general principle. Even in the process of conversion from a Japanese Zen bound by nationality under imperial Japan to a cosmopolitan Zen without national affiliation in a “cultural Japan,” this principle may have been operating to some degree. Dr. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi 久松真一, a Zen thinker internationally renowned alongside Suzuki Daisetsu, has discussed the crisis confronting the present age and the problem of world ethics. In the murderous development of atomic physics, he sees a crisis of humanism itself. He points to the unprecedented disparity between the extraordinary advances of science and the failure of morality to keep pace, insisting upon the need to strengthen our ethical capacities in order to correct this imbalance. Moreover, he maintains that such ethical capacities must not be based upon the egoism of particular nations, blocs of nations, classes, or ideologies. He therefore urges the immediate establishment of a new world ethics. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-33-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-33|33]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; This is certainly a valuable suggestion. Yet, when we reconsider the matter, is the disparity between science and ethics really a crisis of humanism or an impasse in human civilisation? The overwhelming majority of the world’s peoples, together with the majority of conscientious scientists, have repeatedly protested and resisted the murderous application of atomic power. They are not in the least guilty of ideological bias. Indeed, it is precisely this vast popular struggle for peace that has prevented a revolutionary rupture between science and morality. Those who are biased, those who expose the crisis of humanism, are none other than the “merchants of death” of monopoly capital.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How, then, does the F.A.S. Zen movement centred on Dr. Hisamatsu deal with the standpoint of class in its vow to “create superhistorical history”? Are the wisdom and power involved in this historical creation like distilled water—&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-l&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-l|l]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|341|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—colourless and transparent? How would its social ethics differ from the social ethics of Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.), which grounds itself in an Absolute?&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-m&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-m|m]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; “I can promise to be fair, but I cannot promise to be impartial,” wrote Goethe. (Ichikawa’s note: In this connection, I would draw attention to the system being developed by the materialist Umemoto Katsumi, who, in contrast to Nishida philosophy’s “active intuition” (&#039;&#039;kōiteki chokkan&#039;&#039; 行為的直観), is working out a logic of “practical intuition” (&#039;&#039;jissenteki chokkan&#039;&#039; 実践的直観) grounded in class consciousness.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problem of class is connected with the problem of human self-alienation, particularly alienation in labour. Unless Buddhism confronts this problem directly, it will be unable to develop a contemporary social ethics. This necessarily requires Buddhists to incorporate the standpoint of wage labourers into their own thinking. In other words, they must consciously adopt the standpoint of workers—human beings treated as commodities.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Alienated labour alienates (1) nature from humanity, and (2) human beings from themselves, from their own active functions and life-activity. In doing so, it alienates humanity from its species-being. […] The immediate consequence of the alienation of human beings from the products of their labour, their life-activity, and their species-being is the alienation of human beings from one another—die Entfremdung des Menschen von dem Menschen.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-34-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-34|34]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Under capitalism, even human beings become commodities. The education of young men and women amounts to investing capital in their bodies, while young people must devote themselves to the problem of how to sell themselves in the “personality market.” This is an education and morality grounded in the commodity economy, expressed through the language of adjustment and human relations. Expressions such as “human resources,” “human dock” [medical checkups], and the “Zen boom” are profoundly revealing. Someone remarked: “At the entrance there was a sign saying, ‘Look beneath your feet.’ That is the first priority. I believe this is how sound enterprises will emerge. From the standpoint of the business community, this is a cheap investment. Something like this will come back with a ten-thousandfold return.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-35-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-35|35]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|342|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Prostitution is only a particular expression of the general prostitution of the worker—allgemeine Prostitution des Arbeiters. And since prostitution constitutes a relationship that includes not only the prostitute but also the other party, whose baseness is even greater, capitalists too belong to this category.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-36-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-36|36]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I distinguish this kind of human self-alienation&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-n&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-n|n]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;, which I call horizontal alienation, from existential and religious self-alienation, or vertical estrangement. Horizontal alienation will never be overcome by the class that enjoys it as something comfortable, but only by the class that has no choice but to experience it as suffering. (This follows the same logic and psychology as the Buddhist overcoming of vertical estrangement, which begins with the contemplation of suffering.) To adopt the standpoint of wage labourers treated as commodities, and to resolve to overcome human self-alienation in labour—which is simultaneously self-alienation in capital—is precisely to adopt a standpoint of class consciousness. A merely abstract affirmation of humanity, incapable of understanding class consciousness as anything other than class egoism, misses the fundamental problem. The claim that human self-alienation can genuinely be overcome only from the standpoint of a universal human ethics—without uniting the opposing standpoints of class and humanity—rests upon the illusion that those who comfortably enjoy alienation might suddenly awaken one morning and collectively recognise it as suffering. The genuinely practical path toward overcoming alienation must instead begin by abandoning this facile sentimentalism, adopting the standpoint of those who experience alienation as suffering, and apprehending historical reality as it actually exists. This means grasping historical reality from a standpoint that unites objectivity and partisanship.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“What is at issue here is a confession, and nothing more. For humanity to have its sins forgiven, it need only proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-37-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-37|37]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|343|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-o&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-o|o]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;”—was this not what Marx accomplished through his analysis of the commodity in Capital? And might this not be the concrete content, within the field of economics, of Dōgen’s expression “to be verified by all things”? Beginning with labour-power as a commodity, one arrives, by abstracting from its capitalist determinations, at the commodity itself (the downward movement). Through scientific investigation of this commodity, one then clarifies how its inherent self-contradiction constitutes the elementary form of the class contradictions of capitalist society (the upward movement). Might not the disclosure of this circular process—understood, moreover, as an “open system” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-38-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-38|38]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;—through practical intuition constitute the social-scientific content of Nishida philosophy’s method of “becoming a thing in order to see, and becoming a thing in order to think”?’&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Today, we human beings—and Buddhist practitioners themselves—live within and are sustained by a commodity-economic society, a “world of prostitution.” This entire condition is what is meant by the “falsity of the secular world” (&#039;&#039;seken koke&#039;&#039; 世間虚仮), a world of falsehood and empty words.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Karl Löwith (1897–1973) gives an illuminating account of how even Kierkegaard, Marx’s philosophical antipode, demonstrated through the circumstances of his own life the validity of Marx’s insight into the relationship between capital and labour. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-39-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-39|39]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; On the other hand, when we attempt to realise objectively the mutual non-obstruction of phenomena (&#039;&#039;jiji muge&#039;&#039; 事々無礙) within an intersubjective society, we will surely have much to learn from Kropotkin’s persuasive criticisms concerning the limits of the philosophy of dependent origination. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-40-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-40|40]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What makes us conscious of the falsity of the secular world in this aspect, and inspires us to resolve to overcome it, is historical truth—the Dharma (dharma ダルマ)—proper to this sphere. For the moment, I leave aside the objectifying-logical and metaphysical dimensions of alienation. Nevertheless, we must not neglect a rigorous criticism of attempts to “empty” the objectivity of an object rather than transforming the object itself. Here, it seems to me, lies the starting point for a dialectical relationship between social ethics and social science among Buddhists.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Explanatory Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-a&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;a. Nishida’s philosophy of place. Nishida Kitarō’s 1926 essay “Place” (&#039;&#039;Basho&#039;&#039; 場所) develops the notion of a locus in which individual things are constituted through relationships and self-determination. Ichikawa argues that this philosophy’s rejection of a fixed, substantial universal ought to support freely associated individuals, rather than an emperor-centred political order. [[#ed-call-a|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-b&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;b. The four dharma-realms. In Huayan/Kegon thought these are the realm of phenomena (事法界), the realm of principle (理法界), the non-obstruction of principle and phenomena (理事無礙法界), and the non-obstruction of phenomena with one another (事事無礙法界). Ichikawa centres his political reading on the final realm, without assuming that interdependence automatically entails political equality. [[#ed-call-b|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-c&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;c. Takakusu and wartime Buddhist thought. Takakusu Junjirō (1866–1945) was a prominent Buddhist scholar associated with the &#039;&#039;Taishō&#039;&#039; canon. Ichikawa cites his “Principle of Totality in Buddhism” (「仏教の全体性原理」; Ichikawa’s source reference 6) as evidence of the use of Kegon categories to defend wartime totalitarianism. The passage documents Takakusu’s interpretation, not an uncontested meaning of Kegon doctrine. [[#ed-call-c|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-d&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;d. Principal and companion. Fazang’s “principal and companion” (&#039;&#039;shuhan&#039;&#039; 主伴) allows different phenomena to become the focus of a relationship, with the others functioning as companions. Ichikawa argues that making one hereditary sovereign permanently principal defeats the reciprocity that the doctrine is meant to express. [[#ed-call-d|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-e&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;e. Suzuki’s diagrams. Figures 1 and 2, reproduced from Suzuki Daisetsu’s postwar account, respectively depict an elevated apex with disconnected subjects and a circle of mutually related individuals. In Figure 2, S still represents the emperor. Ichikawa’s question is why even the revised, immanent arrangement requires a fixed hereditary centre. [[#ed-call-e|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-f&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;f. Monad with open windows. Suzuki reverses Leibniz’s well-known image of monads as having “no windows.” His metaphor of open windows expresses both distinct individuality and reciprocal exchange, but it does not itself settle the problem of the emperor’s status in the political whole. [[#ed-call-f|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-g&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;g. Buddhist Anarchist Communism. Ichikawa proposes Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.) as one possible political expression of Kegon interdependence, combining resistance to coercive external authority with opposition to private appropriation. Although Suzuki’s self-organising dharma-realm suggests anarchist free association, Ichikawa explicitly observes that Suzuki does not address private ownership. B.A.C. is therefore Ichikawa’s extension, not Suzuki’s own political programme. [[#ed-call-g|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-h&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;h. Zen and the imperial lineage. Ichikawa contrasts impermanence (&#039;&#039;shogyō mujō&#039;&#039; 諸行無常) with claims about the eternal imperial lineage. His objection is to making a particular hereditary institution a necessary expression of Zen insight. [[#ed-call-h|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-i&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;i. Ocean-seal samādhi. Ocean-seal samādhi (&#039;&#039;kaiin zanmai&#039;&#039; 海印三昧) evokes a comprehensive religious vision in Kegon thought. Ichikawa cautions against treating the harmony experienced or imagined in such a state as already realised in historically unequal or conflictual societies. [[#ed-call-i|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-j&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;j. Corporate Zen and industrial relations. Ichikawa refers to Zen training supported by business interests and a roundtable on “Zen and Business,” criticising the use of self-cultivation and harmony to promote managerial efficiency while leaving labour–capital inequalities intact. His printed references 23 and 35 both cite issue 70 of the journal Zen 禅 (March 1961). [[#ed-call-j|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-k&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;k. Common ownership and Kropotkin. Kropotkin’s account of wealth as the accumulated product of countless people’s labour supports Ichikawa’s criticism of exclusive appropriation. Ichikawa connects this to Buddhist language about goods belonging to the wider community, but also acknowledges traditions recognising royal ownership. Buddhist ownership terminology in the Japanese text requires final source-level verification. [[#ed-call-k|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-l&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;l. F.A.S. Zen. Associated with Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, F.A.S. refers to Formless Self, All Humankind, and Suprahistorical History. It seeks to unite awakening with universal ethical action. Ichikawa welcomes its aspirations but questions whether a standpoint claiming to transcend class and national divisions adequately addresses the material interests and historical antagonisms shaping social life. [[#ed-call-l|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-m&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;m. Moral Re-Armament. Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.) was an international moral and spiritual renewal movement. Ichikawa invokes it as a comparison when questioning whether a purportedly class-neutral universal ethics can engage specific structures of economic power. This is a comparative reference, distinct from his criticism of F.A.S. Zen. [[#ed-call-m|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-n&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;n. Horizontal and vertical alienation. Ichikawa distinguishes social and economic “horizontal alienation” from existential or religious “vertical estrangement.” Drawing on Marx’s account of alienated labour, he insists that the Buddhist encounter with suffering must also address historically specific exploitation. The two dimensions are related but not reducible to one another. [[#ed-call-n|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-o&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;o. Marx’s commodity analysis and practical intuition. Ichikawa compares Marx’s method in Capital with Nishida’s “active intuition” (&#039;&#039;kōiteki chokkan&#039;&#039; 行為的直観) and suggests a historically grounded “practical intuition” (&#039;&#039;jissenteki chokkan&#039;&#039; 実践的直観). His comparison is methodological, not an equation of Nishida’s philosophy with Marx’s critique of political economy. He insists that changing social relations cannot be replaced by inwardly “emptying” an object. [[#ed-call-o|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Original References ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Ichikawa’s printed references, pp. 344–345. Working transcription; bracketed uncertainty notices are editorial, not original. --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;1. 西田幾多郎の思想は、当初から体制擁護的な契機を含んでいた。拙稿「絶対無のつまづき――西田幾多郎の場合」、『思想』、一九五九年一月、本巻所収「西田幾多郎論」参照。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-2-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 2. 大宅壮一「西田幾多郎と敗北」、『文藝春秋』、一九五四年六月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-3-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 3. 政府の「大東亜宣言」の草案として、一部の者の要請によって書かれたものだが、東条首相の拒否によって採択されなかった。その全文は矢吹一夫「昭和人物秘録」の「西田幾多郎博士の大東亜戦争観」にのせられている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-4-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 4. 西田幾多郎『哲学の根本問題・続編』、一〇六―一〇七頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-5-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 5. 同書、一〇七頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-6-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 6. 日本諸学振興委員会、哲学講演会での講演（一九三七年）の記録。西田幾多郎「学問的方法」と共に、『文部省教学叢書』第三集（一九三八年）に収録。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-7&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-7-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 7. 大阪毎日新聞社編『日本仏教概論』、一九四二年。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-8&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-8-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 8. 東京帝大仏青編『仏教思想講座』巻三、一九三九年。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-9&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-9-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 9. 高楠順次郎、前掲論文。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-10&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-10-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 10. 『宗門無尽灯論』、流通第一〇。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-11&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-11-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 11. 『禅海一瀾』、岩波文庫版、三一、三四頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-12&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-12-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 12. P. J. Proudhon, Proudhon’s Solution of the Social Problem, p. 45.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-13&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-13-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 13. F. H. Heinemann, Existentialism and the Modern Predicament, p. 154.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-14&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-14-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 14. 西田幾多郎『思索と体験』、一一八頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-15&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-15-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 15. H. Read, The Philosophy of Anarchism, pp. 24–25.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-16&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-16-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 16. 鎌田茂雄「華厳哲学の根本的立場」、中村元編『華厳思想』所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-17&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-17-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 17. 拙著『般若経』、三一書房、六九頁、第六巻所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-18&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-18-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 18. 船山信一「明治哲学における護教主義現実主義の三つの論理」、『思想』、一九六一年一月。二重真理説はキリスト教神学の恩寵と理性、仏教の真諦と俗諦の説にみられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-19&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-19-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 19. 渋沢栄一「労働問題解決の根本義」、『社会政策時報』、一九二〇年九月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-20&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-20-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 20. 飯田欓隠『無門関鑽燧』、一九二四年十一月、一七九頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-21&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-21-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 21. 亀川教信（龍谷大学教授）『縁起の構造』、一九四四年八月、五八一、五八五頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-22&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-22-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 22. 同書、五九頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-23&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-23-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 23. 「禅と企業」、『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-24&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-24-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 24. 『禅苑蒙求』。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-25&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-25-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 25. 支遁「阿弥陀仏像讃並序」。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-26&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-26-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 26. P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism. Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 57f.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-27&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-27-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 27. 拙著『般若経』第四章、三一書房。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-28&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-28-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 28. 『晋書』（陶侃伝）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-29&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-29-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 29. 『事物起源』、学校学事部、詞賦。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-30&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-30-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 30. 宮本正尊編『大乗仏教の成立史的研究』、三七六頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-31&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-31-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 31. M. Bakunin, Gott u. d. Staat. (Gesammelte Werke. Bd. I)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-32&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-32-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 32. K. Marx, Die Deutsche Ideologie, S. 44 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus. Bd. 29)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-33&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-33-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 33. 『京都新聞』、一九六一・一・一四および『維摩七則』、一六三頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-34&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-34-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 34. K. Marx, Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte, S. 103, 106 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus, Bd. 42)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-35&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-35-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 35. 『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-36&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-36-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 36. Marx, ibid. S. 128.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-37&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-37-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 37. 「ルーゲへの手紙」、一八四三年（『マルクス・エンゲルス選集』補巻四、一三五頁）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-38&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-38-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 38. 梯明秀『資本論への私の歩み』、一二七頁以下。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-39&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-39-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 39. K. Löwith, Von Hegel zu Nietzsche. 邦訳、七〇頁以下。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-40&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-40-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 40. P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism, pp. 48, 56, 59, 64. P. Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, chap. I.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
Translated from Ichikawa Hakugen, “&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039;” 禅・華厳・アナキズム (1961), reprinted in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 3 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343; original source references occupy pp. 344–345. The original reference numbers are retained as superscript numerals, distinct from the translator’s explanatory notes. Suzuki Daisetsu’s two diagrams are reproduced from the scanned collected edition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is a working translation. Several quotations and Japanese readings require final collation; the original reference list is reproduced below as a working transcription with linked numbering. References 23 and 35 both cite issue 70 of Zen (March 1961).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotation: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1961). “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism” (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; [[IH61ZKA|禅・華厳・アナキズム]]). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH61ZKA-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA&amp;diff=1252</id>
		<title>IH61ZKA</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA&amp;diff=1252"/>
		<updated>2026-10-13T14:47:46Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:市川白弦「禅・華厳・アナキズム」}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
市川白弦（1961年）。「禅・華厳・アナキズム」 [Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism]。『市川白弦著作集』第3巻（法蔵館、1993年）、319–345頁所収（本文319–343頁、注344–345頁）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;English translation:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH61ZKA-T|Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 目次 ==&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section1|一]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section2|二]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section3|三]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section4|四]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section5|五]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section6|六]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 本文 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|319}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 一 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
近代日本の哲学を代表する西田幾多郎（一八七〇―一九四五）のいわゆる「西田哲学」が確立したのは、かれの論文「場所」（一九二六年）においてであった。この「場所」の思想は、プラトンのティマイオスおよびアリストテレスのデ・アニマにおける Topos（場所）の概念を介して生まれた思想であるが、しかし本質的にはむしろ大乗仏教の「空」Sūnyatā ないし法界 Dharma-dhātu とくに「事々無礙法界」（個物と個物、事実と事実とがたがいに相即・相入する体験の世界）の思想、いいかえるならば般若の哲学ないし華厳哲学と根源的につながっていたのであり、「絶対無」の場所における個物の相互限定即一般者の自己限定という西田の根本思想は、西欧近代の個我の論理を媒介として、般若の「空」と華厳の「事々無礙」との根源的一の論理構造をしめすものであり、それは本質的には、東洋の無の論理をもって、徹底した自由と平等の形而上的根拠を確立するはずのものであった。それはすべての外的な権威 Autorität 権力 Macht を否定し、いわゆる「宗&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|320}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
教」の衣裳さえ脱した自由の哲学を創立する契機を含んでいた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この絶対無の場所の哲学ないし「事実の自己限定」の哲学は、しかしながら、帝国主義日本の戦時体制の展開につれて、西田哲学ないし京都学派の「自由主義」的ニュアンスに対する右翼および軍部の圧迫の強化につれて、しだいに「皇道」および「聖戦」に理念的基礎をあたえる論理を、くりひろげるにいたった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宅壮一はこのことについて、西田は「魂を売って肉体の保証を求めた」とさえ極言している。&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-2-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-2|2]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;大田のものに、「世界新秩序の原理」（一九四三年）および「国体論」（一九四四年）がある。後者はのちに『哲学論文集』第四補遺として雑誌『哲学研究』にのせられ、『西田幾多郎全集』にも収められたが、前者は『西田幾多郎全集』にも収められていない。&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-3-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-3|3]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら、場所の論理または事々無礙の哲学は、皇道の基礎づけとなるものではなく、それとは反対に、むしろアナキズムの根拠となるはずのものであった。拙稿「絶対無のつまずき―西田幾多郎の場合」（『思想』一九五九年一月、本巻所収）には、「むすび」のなかで、つぎのように書いている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
絶対無の場所、弁証法的一般者はその自覚的限定として世界形成の原理を形成する。この原理と皇道とは合一しえない絶対矛盾である。この二つは対象論理の場においてたがいに自らを主張し、たがいに排除しあう本質のものである。対象論理の領域をこえて皇道が真に主体化しようとすれば、主体化の過程において、それの本質である偶然的、特殊的、非合理的なものを無化することによって、皇道は自らを解消するほかはない。皇道は主体として徹する行程のなかで脱我せざるをえない。皇道は絶対無の場所、真の歴史的世界にかえることにおいて自己を失う。逆にいえば、絶対無の場所の論理、述語主義の論理は「主語的な皇道を根源的に否定する底のものである」。西田の「場所的論理的神学」は日本の建国神話と天壌無窮の祭政哲学を根拠づけるのではなく、かえってこれを奉ずる論理体系であったはずである。同様&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|321}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
にしてそれは、西田のばあいとは逆に、国民道徳をも根源的に「虚仮」と観ずる体系であったはずである。この体系は絶対に自由な個物と個物とを媒介する一般者、媒介するものなくして媒介する一般者として、もっとも深い意味における民主的な自由連合の場所の哲学であるはずである。それは皇道の脱皮を要求し、国家の消滅を予示し、もっとも深い意味における無権力の共同社会を基礎づけ約束し、形成する述語主義の歴史哲学であるべきであった。述語主義の論理は哲学者西田に出発して、臣民西田のなかで挫折した。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
西田によれば、現実の世界は個物（我・汝・彼）の世界でなければならない。個物はまず一般者（たとえば存在とか生物とか）の限定として考えられるであろう。一般的なるものに種差を加えて、最後に種に至り、さらにこれを越えて、極限点として個物という如きものを考えることができる。併しかかる考え方によって考えられた個物というものは、真の個物ではない。それは何処までも一般者の一部分という意味を脱することはできない。個物は自己自身を限定するものでなければならない&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-4-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-4|4]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;。自己自身を限定するもの、すなわちみずから自分を自覚し、形成し、えらびとるものであって、はじめて独立した個物ということができる。しかし個物が自分自身を限定するということは、他の個物との関係においてでなければならない。私は汝に対する私としてあるのであり、おなじく汝は私に対する汝である。「個物は個物に対すると考えられねばならない。個物は唯個物に対することによって、個物と考えられるのである。唯一つの個物というものは考えられない。互いに独立するものが、互いに相関係するということが、物と物とが相働くということである。（中略）互いに独立的なるものが相関係するというには、その間に媒介者というものが考えられねばならない」（傍点市川）。この媒介者が&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-5-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-5|5]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;、もしも個物と個物とを統一する、あるひとつの一般者であるとするならば、この一般者はすでにひとつの個物にほかならず、しかもこのものの存在によって、さきの個物の独立は失われ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|322}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
るほかはない。（たとえていえば、甲と乙とがつねに後見人の立会いのもとに交渉するばあいのように）。個物と個物との背後には、これを包括するなんらの一般者も存在しないのである。独立した個物と個物とを媒介するものは、なんらかの有的な一般者ではなく、無の場所的限定の意味をもつ、弁証法的一般者でなければならない。個物と個物とは、絶対無の場所において、真に独立独歩でありながら、たがいに交渉し共働するのである。私はどこまでも私であり、汝はどこまでも汝であって、しかも私は汝であり、汝は私である、という消息がそこにある。それぞれにかけがえのない個性をもつ自主自律の存在であって、しかもたがいに主となり客となって、自由に相働き、相提携する。歴史的現実の世界の真実のありかたは、このようなものでなければならない。西田はこのような実存の交わり、実在の連関の世界を、華厳哲学の言葉をかりて、「事々無礙の世界」とよんでいる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
独立した個性的実存の自主自由な交渉・共働を成りたたせる、絶対無の場所の論理――いうなればこれが西田の社会哲学ないし世界哲学の根本の論理であった。それゆえ、この論理からみちびかれるものは、自我と対象への固執をはなれた、真に自主自由な個物の共同社会であり、したがってそこには「力」による支配の論理が存在しないばかりか、倫理的な擬装をつけた力としての「権威」が介在する余地のない、自由連合の人類社会でなければならない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら場所の論理、禅・華厳における空・事々無礙の論理を背景とする、このような開放的な世界の論理は、西田のサムライ的生活感覚と官学的社会存在と帝国主義日本の情勢とによって、その可能性を拘束され奇形化されて、遂に「国体論」と「世界新秩序の原理」にまで、落ちぶれるにいたった。そしてこれは、当時の日本仏教が共通して辿ったコースであった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|323}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 二 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
近代日本の代表的な仏教学者、高楠順次郎（「大正新脩大蔵経」の責任監修者、東京都大名誉教授、第四回文化勲章受章、西田は第二回）は「仏教の全体性原理」&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-6-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-6|6]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;において、大乗仏教の論理と倫理とはもともと全体主義であるといい、この全体主義の論理構造をしめすものが、華厳思想における「四法界」の理説であり、その究極のすがたが第四の「事々無礙法界」である、そしてわれわれの世紀は「世界戦争を一転機として、世界が全体主義に向って来た」と述べ、「今日では西洋人も全体主義を行いかかって居り、日本人はこれを昔から実際に行って居たのであります。我々は日本の大和全体主義を以て、世界に模範を示すことも出来る。仏教の全体性原理を以て、世界を指導することも出来る。（中略）現実の日本は皇道治化でなくてはならぬ。この原理である華厳の全体性原理を、実際に行わせらるるのは、誠に結構である。（中略）いくら仏教がよいといっても、それを日本の皇道治化と並んで、仏道治化と見るような型はあってはならぬ」といい、「吾々は今現に国民精神総動員の時局に接し、日本精神の全体的発揚を要する時代（中略）思うままに華厳の真意を味わって、一糸乱れず、一点の私のない奉公を、企図すべきである。総ての人が自己を忘れ、自己を捨てて、国事に臨むということになりたいものであります。聖者無己、無不己の実を表したいものであります」と結んでいる。華厳学者亀川教信はその著「縁起の構造」&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-7-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-7|7]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;において、山上戒全は論稿「華厳」&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-8-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-8|8]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;において、おなじ趣旨の華厳思想を展開し、禅学者中根環堂は「全体主義と禅」&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-9-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-9|9]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;において、日本の国体は西洋の平面的な全体主義ではなく、一君万民としての、「情は父子の如く、義は君臣の分を守る」、上下一体の立体的一体主義であり、その根底には、「一即多・多即一」の華厳の哲理がある。この一体主義に徹する途は坐禅であり、「非思量底を思量する」坐禅の真髄をつかむことによって、八紘一宇の聖業を貫徹することができる、と説いた。昭&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|324}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
和十三年（一九三八）の京都帝大「月曜講義」における、西田の「日本文化の問題」、およびこれにつづく高山岩男の「文化類型学」もまた、華厳思想の「事実」の論理を援用して、「東亜新秩序」の建設に、寄与しようとするものであった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら、これらの試みは、すべて華厳哲学および禅思想の歪曲にほかならなかった。歪曲の事例を、もういちど高楠の場合に見よう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
中国における華厳宗第三祖法蔵（六四三―七一二）の『華厳経探玄記』は、体験の世界における事実と事実とが、無限に相即し相入するさまを、「十玄縁起」として、十門に類別して説いているが、その第一〇に、「主伴円明具徳門」というのがある。体験界の無限の事実は、たがいに主となり伴となって、重々無尽の象徴的世界を形成し、その中のひとつを主とすれば、他の一切はそれの伴となって、この一に従属し、他のひとつを主としてとりあげるならば、さきの一をふくめた他の一切が、いまの一の伴となって、これに包摂される、というのが、「主伴円明具徳」の理法である。高楠はこれを具体的にパラフレイズして、「主たるものも、伴たるものも、双方とも円満に明朗に、上下一心で以て働いて行く、親と子と対立するのでなく、親と子と力を合せて行くのが全体主義である。それが出来なくては全体主義でない。（中略）同じようなものが集まって、その中心が主たるものであるから、これを一君万民の実際に当てていってもよいのであります」といい、「我国は肇国の当初から全体主義である。（中略）明治維新に於て、本然の全体主義に還元した」「華厳の一真法界の光景を、吾々は、現実の日本国民、即ち全体性原理を現有している吾々国民は、実際にこれを現実化して居るのである。これは実に尊いことである」とも説いている。民主主義を「反国体的」とみる一君万民体制と、これを支える権威主義身分道徳のうえに、事々無礙、主伴具足、一即一切、一切即一の真実が実現している、と高楠は言うのである。典型的な、観念の御用哲学である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|325}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
日本仏教のこのようなありかたは、これに先だつ中国の国家仏教の事情はしばらくおいて、大化二年（六四六）「それ天地の間に君として、万民を宰することは、独り制むべからず、要ず臣の翼須つ……」、という「改新の詔」をもって出発した新政府が、やがて東大寺大仏殿の建立を発願し、ここに毘盧遮那仏（梵網経の本尊仏、通説には「華厳経」のそれという）を安置し、諸国に国分寺、国分尼寺を建立して、護国の諸経文を読誦させることを企画し、寺院、僧尼を国家権力の統制のもとにおこうとした時代に、すでに根をおろしたものであった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 三 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
日本敗戦の直後、鈴木大拙博士は「霊性的日本の建設」（一九四六年九月）のなかで、新しい日本は、華厳の法界縁起の理法のうえに、建設されねばならぬ、と述べている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「天皇を上に戴くと言うことは、力の意欲の象徴である。（中略）天皇は寧ろ内在性をもって、万民の間に重々無尽に繋がれて行くべきである。（中略）世界全面が国家群の法界曼荼羅であるように、日本の国内も亦、天皇と万民を一つのものにして、事々無礙とならなければならぬ。霊性的日本はここで始めて可能になる。これを図式にすると、今までの日本は図１の如きものであった。（上と下）の繋がりはあるようだが、それは途中でいくらでも切られる。上意なるものが下通するまでに、軍閥もあり、官僚もあり、財閥もある。どこが上意の出処か、下のものにはさっぱりわからぬ。これに加えるに、『万民』の間には、各自の繋がりが全くない。（中略）彼等各自は、自分で考え&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure1.png|thumb|360px|図1　鈴木大拙が示した従来の日本の上下関係（市川白弦、325頁所収）。]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|326}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ることを知らぬ。（中略）唯、“承詔必謹”をのみ是れ願った。（中略）一君万民主義は、一方においては力の意欲を象徴し、他方においては国民各自の自主性を滅却する。（一五八―一五九頁）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
天皇と万民とによって創建せられる法界曼荼羅は、つぎのようなものでなければならぬ、という。長文だが引用する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
天皇が高天原から降りて、この大地の上に、人間として青草人草の仲間入りをなされると同時に、青草人草の国民の方では、（中略）奴隷的自卑根性を放擲しなければならぬ。個己の自主性を樹立し、人格的価値の他に換うべきもののない、と云うことを、十分に認識し、自ら尊ぶは、また大いに他を尊ぶ所以であることを、覚悟しなければならぬ。個々円成であると同時に、事々無礙である。（中略）個々円成の故に事々無礙である、事々無礙の故に、個々円成である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
法界曼荼羅の日本的政体面における様相を、（中略）示してみる（図２）。ＡＢＣ等は万民であり億兆である。併し彼等は一々の個己である、自主的に行為し、思惟し、感覚するところのモナッドである。個々円成である。それぞれに独立し、自由である人格的存在である。それであるが故に、何れへと重々無尽的に連関する。このモナッドは、窓を十分に開け放って居るので、自分の光を他へも分ち、他のをも自分に受け入れる。円中の弦線及び直線は、各モナッド間の連絡、回互、円融と云うようなものを指示する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure2.png|thumb|360px|図2　鈴木大拙の法界曼荼羅。周辺のA–Hは民衆、中心のSは天皇を示す（市川白弦、326頁所収）。]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|327}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
中心のＳは、周辺のＡＢＣ等を全面的に外廓的に総括したものを、内面的に反映せしめたのである。ＡＢＣＤ等はそれぞれに孤立して、而も全体性を有つものであるから、ＡＢＣＤ等は孤線で繋ぎ合せて、一個の大円相を形成し、その大円相がそのままで、一々のモナッド、一々の「民草」に外ならず、と云う意味をもたせて、中央の小円相に集中して反映せしめてあるのである。大円相は国民全体を包むものであるが、包むと云うだけでは、これを指して示すべき具体性の事が見られぬので、中心部にＳをおいた。Ｓが即ち国体の中心である天皇である。（中略）Ｓを外廓の大円相から離して、上方においても可なるように思われるかも知れぬが、それは力の意欲、二元性の構想が入りこんで来る恐れが多分にある。封建的心理態の再現があるにきまっている。それのみならず、Ｓが円相内にあることによって、円相そのものの結合が、一層の強さを有つであろう。（中略）吾等は日本人として、東洋人として、自主的に、自由の構想で、建設すべき新たな国体なるものがなくてはならない。その建設の筋道は言うまでもなく、どこまでも霊性的でなくてはならぬ、霊性的自覚の上に築かれたものでなくてはならぬ。それで始めて世界性を持ち得る、世界の精神的文化の向上、及び生活実際面における諸般の施設に対して、何かの貢献を為し得べきものが、吾等の間から出て来るのである。（一六〇―一六三頁）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
鈴木博士のこの著作は、仏教者が日本の新しい政体を、熱意と誠実をもって構想した、戦後における随一の文献だといえるであろう。すでに明らかであるように、華厳の法界縁起説の日本的・現実的把握について、戦時中における高楠説と、戦後における鈴木説とのあいだには、原理的な距離と違いがある（「どこまでも霊性的自覚の上に築かれたものでなくてはならぬ」という、鈴木博士の指摘に注目すべきであろう）。このばあい、高楠説については、もしも高楠が戦後のこんどに生存していたならば、さきの解釈に修正の必要をみとめなかったかどうか、また鈴木説については、真実はこれを語ることが必要かつ困難であるときに語られてこそ、光&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|328}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
と力をもつのではないか、という疑いがもたれるのであるが、ここに見られるかぎりにおいて、われわれは鈴木説こそ華厳思想の真実を、現代日本に生かすものだと考えざるをえない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
高楠説と鈴木説とでは、天皇の位置が上記の前図と後図との違いになっているが、同時にこの位置の違いは、天皇の位置の原型としての毘盧遮那仏の位置の違いでもあろう。高楠説には、「華厳の方でいいますと、中心である大毘盧遮那仏も活躍する。その外輪を飾る外金剛の部属悉く活躍する。住伴総動員の大曼荼羅を現ずるのである。これが華厳の法界縁起の実現した現相である。（『真法界の顕現である』）（二五一―二六頁）という言葉がみられ、鈴木説には、「日本の国体の本来の姿が、此の如きものと考えられるとき、“君の恵”及び“御代の光”などで示唆せられる一連の思想は、従来それらに附着せられたものと違ってくるのである。“恵”は力と連想せられることがなくなって今度は回互性をもったものとなろう。“光”も只只上方からのみ照らし来るものではなくて、各自のもつ本来の光りの交互的耀らし合いと言うことになるであろう」（一六四頁）という主張が読まれるが、どちらの論説においても、毘盧遮那仏と天皇（鈴木説では人間天皇）との内面的・論理的連関という、もっとも核心的な一点が明らかでない。高楠説が、「皇道治化」をたてて「仏道治化」をみとめないという以上、いわゆる本地垂迹説にかかわるどのような論理をとるのか、それが明らかにされねばならない。鈴木説にいう「君の恵」は天皇の恵みであるが、天皇の恵みとは具体的に何をさすのか、「光り」もただ上方からのみ来るのではないといわれる場合、「上方から来る光り」とは具体的に何であるのか、鈴木説の法界曼荼羅にも「上方」があるのか、その場合の上方とは何であるのか、その上方は人間天皇として上方であるのか、これらの点が明らかでない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
鈴木説の法界は世界性をもつというのであるが、唯一特定の血統にぞくする一人の人間を、つねに世界の中心に位置せしめる論理と倫理が、はたして世界性をもつといえるであろうか。「血」という非合理的、偶&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|329}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
然的なものに、特定の宇宙倫理的意義をもたせることが、仏教のダルマ（法）の立場において、そしてまた世界倫理の立場においてみとめられるであろうか。「万世一系は、次のように解せられるとき、吾等の身命を賭すべきものとなるであろう。即ち皇統の永遠性は、日本国民の懐抱して居る理想の永遠性を象徴するもの、と見るときである」（一六五頁）。ここにいう「理想」とは、鈴木説のいわゆる「霊性的日本の建設」であろう。このばあい、帝国主義日本を否定して霊性的日本を建設するために、いったい誰が身命を賭したのか、という問題はしばらくおくとして、この理想の永遠性を象徴するために、なにゆえ特定の血統の「人間」を必要とするのか、その人間が自己の基本的人権において、この象徴たることを否定した場合はどうなるのか、またこのような象徴をもたぬ国民はどうすればよいのか。天皇の位置がたとえ鈴木説のようであったとしても、血の万世一系をみとめるかぎり、すなわちなんらの天皇制をみとめるかぎり、そしてこの体制の世界性を主張するかぎり、その論理は新しいかたちの「八紘一宇」説に展開する契機を含むのではないか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
華厳の法界縁起の論理を、高楠説から鈴木説の方向に、どこまでも徹底させるならば、人間天皇による「民主的」な天皇制さえもその論理的根拠を失い、したがって鈴木説の後図も、その意味構造が本質的に変わるのではなかろうか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら、このような疑問にもかかわらず、「道徳的自由人としての個己、霊性的存在としての人格、ただ漠然たる“全体主義”の名の下で、蟻群化し能わぬ独立自主性の個体の価値」（一四二頁）を強調する鈴木説が、力による支配の原則をみとめない鈴木説――「法界の外に立つ力は、あるべきではない。力がないと組織が持てないというのは、そのようなものを外に求めることの非理なるに気が付かないからである。法界はそれ自身で完全な組織体である。これを組織する力は、組織そのものの中に固より具わって居るのである。それを外に求むるから内にあるものが却って歪められて、あらぬ方向へ転出する」（中略）――霊性的&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|330}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
日本国家の建設は、力を主体としたものであってはならぬ。事々無礙法界を、そのままに、吾等の生活を実際に映したものでなければならぬ」（一五三―一五四頁）――このような社会像は「法界はそれ自身で完全な組織体である。これを組織する力は、組織そのものの中に固より具わって居る」という指摘に注目しよう。それはアナキズムにおける「自由連合」の思想を想起させる、これを政治的にみるならば、華厳の法界縁起世界の象徴としての、新しい人類社会における、アナキズムを示唆するものとみられるであろう。力の原則の否定と、私有の原則の否定を土台とする華厳の法界は Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B・A・C) の世界だといえるであろう（もっとも、鈴木博士は、私有制について言及されたことはないように思われる）。「秩序と無政府との統合」Unity of order and anarchy に社会の完成されたかたちをみたプルードン（一八〇九―一八六五）の構想は、このことに関するかぎり、そのまま華厳の蓮華蔵世界にあてはまるであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
国家神道と仏法とは、根源においてひとつであるというのが、日本禅の伝統的な見解であった。江戸時代の禅匠東嶺円慈（一七二一―一七九二）は、つぎのように説いている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「大凡神」とは心なり。心垢滅尽して、鏡の明了なるが如き、是れを神と謂う。是の故に神乗は鏡を以て表体と為す。心鏡本来清浄常住寂然、是れを国常立尊と謂う。心鏡本来円明、物として現ぜざること無き、是れを天照大神と謂う。（中略）まさに知るべし、神乗仏法、同一理体、但だ是れ見性の一法を出でず。&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-10-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-10|10]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この事情は東嶺の師、白隠慧鶴（一六八五―一七六八）の場合も同じであったが、明治の禅匠今北洪川（一八一六―一八九二）も同じ見解をのべている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「吾が朝には皇極の道有り。是れ天祖神明の大道にして、王者の正教なり。其の授受の悠久や、神孫一統、他姓を交えず。（中略）是れ吾が王道の万国に特絶する所以なり。」&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-11-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-11|11]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|331}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
吾が皇国男子大丈夫は、先ず火も焼くこと能わず、水も溺らすこと能わざる底の、和魂真柱を肚内に堅立し、以て一旦豁然として貫通すれば、則ち皇極の道を権衡するに於て、亦間然する無し。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
東嶺の見解は、国家神道の核心をなす、皇統の万世一系を、仏法の立場から根拠づける論理を欠いている。仏教の基本原理である「諸行無常」と、神道の核心である皇位の天壌無窮とを、どのようにして媒介するか、まったく不明である。洪川の場合も同様、いや『虎関師錬』（一二七八―一三四六）、白隠、『天桂伝尊』（一六四八―一七三五）を含めて、現代にいたる日本禅の宗匠において、神道の神がどうして人間の根源的主体と同一であるのか、血統がどうして神系と同一であるのか、血統の断絶（出家生活）を原則とする宗旨が、どうして血統の連続を禅法的に基礎づけ得るのか、このもっとも本質的な問題点が、まったくかえりみられていない。白隠も東嶺も、そしてすべての禅者が、その神道観において、視力の致命的な弱さをばくろしているといえよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅的真実の永遠性と、特定の血統の政治的「倫理的」一系性とは、なんの関係もないのであり、皇統の一系――それは原始民族の遺風である――を、仏法ないし禅の立場から基礎づける論理は、存在しない。わけても明治以後の皇道禅は、禅のデカダンスの最大なるものである。血の一系と徳の一系との同一を強弁する論理（？）は、白隠の「施行歌」にみられるような、三世因果の思想のほかにはないであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
が〈じ〉はこの思想をもっても、基礎づけられない、それは現世の身分境遇の差別を説明するものでしかないのだから、この思想はむしろや現代の批判にたえ得るものではない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
詩人ホイットマン（一八一九―一八九二）は、人間の尊厳について、「君自身より神聖な神はありようはない。そしてこれこそは、もっとも古い、もっとも新しい神話が、共に最後に意味するものなのだ」（“Laws for Creation”）という。プルードンは人間の主権について、「すべての市民は王である」 (Every citizen is king.) と書いているが&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-12-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-12|12]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;、日本禅のように、天照大神と人間の根源的主体とを、同一視することは、けっきょく国家神&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|332}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
道を否定することにほかならない。禅と日本国体、禅と天皇制との内面的・必然的連関をみとめないことにほかならない。これまで日本の禅者が、この帰結を自覚し表白していないということは、この禅者たちの禅的思惟が不徹底であり、真に「独脱無依」（『臨済録』）になっていないことを、しめすのではなかろうか。宗教的自由共産主義をとなえたキリスト教的実存哲学者ニコラス・ベルジャーエフ（一八七四―一九四八）は、哲学者ハイネマンによって、神秘的アナキスト mystical anarchist とよばれ&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-13-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-13|13]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;、東洋思想わけても禅に心をよせて、キリスト教神学を批判したフランスの女流哲学者シモーヌ・ヴェイユ（一九〇九―一九四三）は、スペイン内乱に参加したアナキストであったが、禅の社会思想は、わたくしのみるところでは Prajñā (般若) of Śūnyatā (空) Anarchist Communism であろう（拙著『般若経』、三一書房参照）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 四 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
西欧の宗教的アナキストたちが、国家権力に抵抗しているのに（ニコラス・ベルジャーエフは帝政ロシアにおいて、共産主義者となって、投獄された）、禅ないし華厳の仏教に、このような事例がみられないばかりでなく、かえって逆の事例が、圧倒的に多いのは、どうしたことであろう。この諸事情の二、三をあげて、検討してみよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
最初にあげられることは、体験の事実の世界と日常的経験の事実の世界、無我の行為的直観の世界と経験的個我の現実の世界との、次元のちがいの朦朧化による、「二つの事実界の混合ないし混同」ということである。事々無礙の世界は般若体験の事実界であるが、これがたんなる経験的事実界と、容易に重なりあい融けあって、両者の断絶による緊張関係が、確立しない事情にある。人は、「善の研究」の著者西田が、高橋里美の批評に答えて、「純粋経験と非純粋経験とのあいだに、質差をみとめなかったことを、思いおこすであ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|333}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ろう。&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-14-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-14|14]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; この西田の見解は、禅学、仏教学にとっても、重要な意義をもっている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
右の事情は、仏教者の修為求道の重心が、「学問ノ末ニ走リテ、安心ノ本ヲ忘レ勿レ」（西田幾多郎『日記』）というように、「安心」の確立にあるがために、その到達点が「住めば都」といった、随処に安住する生きかたとなり、そのかぎりにおいて、その時々の環境が美化・合理化される心理的必然につながるとともに、般若直観の主体が「海印三昧」「宝鏡三昧」または「絶対無の場所」という言葉がしめすように、映すもの容れるものという性格においてあらわれる（これはさきの安心主義とも照応する）ために、環境に対する対象的変革的意志の執念が成立する以前に、観照の風流に乗ってしまうからでもある。「アジア的停滞」の東洋が、芸道の面においてすぐれているのも、「禅文化」の大半が芸道的であるのも、このことにつながる。敵とたたかうための弓術、武術が、平和の時代において、自己と対決する弓道、武道に転化し、内面化し、思想化し、体系化するとともに観照化したことは、興味ふかい。すべて「道」的なものは観照的なものである。いいかえるならば、「概成」の社会的約束ないし体制のワクのうちに安住するものである。有機的時代の有閑富裕な仏教者は、容易に華厳的観照の世界に遊んだであろうし、危機時代の不安な仏教者も、安心をもとめて観照の世界に入ったのである。この世界では、経験的な歴史的現実が、無礙円融のヴェールにおおわれて美化せられ、美化の度合に応じて、受容され合理化されるのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
世界のあらゆる事象は、海印三昧に映現して、重々無尽に円融する、と説かれている。思うに、「華厳経」にみられる蓮華蔵世界は、般若の行為的直観の事実界であるとともに、この事実を中心として構想された、創造的想像 creative imagination によるヴィジョンの世界である。このばあい無礙円融というのは、頑固なカースト社会体制のワクのなかでの、体験者の身辺的行為の事実、およびヴィジョンの世界の諸現象が円融無礙であることであって、人民大衆が生活しているなまなましい現実の世界が円融&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|334}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
無礙なのではない。海印三昧には、体験者の身辺的行為的な事々無礙の事実と、直観的ヴィジョンにおける円融の事実と、矛盾し抗争する暗い現実とが、三重の層をなして映現しているはずである。この立体的世界を、平板な円融無礙の一色に塗りつぶすことは誤りであろう。これと対照する意味において、ハーバート・リード（一八九三―一九六八）のつぎの言葉が思いおこされる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教は芸術（詩）と密接につながっている。（中略）スペイン内乱において、観察者は、アナキストの宗教的情熱に打たれた。アナキズムは、この潜在的ルネサンスの国において、英雄たちばかりか聖者たちを、すなわち、新しいかたちの人類社会の創造のために、感覚的想像と実践とにおいて生命をささげた、この新しい人々を鼓舞したのである。&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-15-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-15|15]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
次元のちがった世界の混同からくる、あしき現実主義について、つぎの批評が成り立つであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
法蔵の華厳哲学の表明する、事々無礙なる現象円融論、現象絶対論は、「性起」説すなわち海印三昧なる根本直覚をへてこそ、はじめて体得される真理であることは、明らかであるが、それが単なる思想として表現される時は、実践の媒介を否定し、安易な絶対主義的な世界観となる。（中略）現象円融論は、単に現実の「事」をそのまま認め、その円融を主張するのでは決してない。ほんとうの意味で事々無礙は、宗教的直覚の上に展開するものだからである。（中略）華厳の体系は、海印三昧によって発現する宗教的世界観である。この点を忘却して、現実の「事」を凡夫の分別からそのままの「事」として認め、その円融を説くならば、全く異なった思想となる。現象を絶対とするのは、その現象が蓮華蔵世界の一つを作っているからである。これを無視して、現象がすべて絶対的な意味を持つと云うことは、現実をそのままに肯定することになる。一歩あやまれば、現実の支配構造、社会構造を、無条件で肯定することになる。絶対肯定の哲学は、現実をそのまま認用する支配者の御用哲学ともなる。（鎌田茂雄）&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-16-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-16|16]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|335}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この批評は、華厳思想ないし大乗仏教のおちいりがちな、そして事実しばしばおちいった錯誤と病弊――たとえば僧肇（三八四―四一四）、大慧（一〇八九―一一六三）の場合&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-17-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-17|17]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;――を、正しく指摘しているといえよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この批評は体験界と日常的経験界との区別を強調し、後者は「菩薩行の実践と慈悲に基づく誓願によって」浄化されねばならぬと主張する。それは高楠流の俗物主義を克服するものであり、この批評のうちに引かれた鈴木博士の見解とともに、正統説に立脚するものである。この見解は、いわば法蔵にみられる観照的傾向から、澄観（七三七―八三九）の体験主義への方向転換であり、この体験主義による教化伝道の主張であろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
華厳の事々無礙の世界は、体験とヴィジョンの共同制作の所産であって、現実の階級社会の構造的矛盾を把握し、分析し、これを実践的に揚棄しようとする行為の場とは、かかわりのない別次元の事柄であり、その次元でしか成り立たない世界である。この世界は、われわれの生活する世界の機構的根本矛盾を揚棄する、対象的実践を生む根拠・論理をもっていない。この点において、法蔵と澄観とのあいだに本質的な違いはない。それは単なる事実、単なる現実を肯定するのではなく、むしろこれを虚仮虚妄として否認するといっても、それは主観的意識の内部でのできごとであって、対象的変革的実践の場においてのできごとではなく、したがって事実においては、現状肯定の「二重真理説」&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-18-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-18|18]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;であるほかはない。般若体験の世界と、単なる経験的現実の世界との峻別を自覚する仏教者が、事実において体制擁護的であることは、少しも不思議ではないのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 五 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
華厳思想が、さきにみたような伝統的な性格・制約を揚棄しないままで、現実世界のなかで社会倫理を形&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|336}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
成する場合には、すなわち「主は伴に対する主であり、伴は主に対する伴である」「心は物に対する心であり、物は心に対する物である」といった「相即」の論理、「相依相関」の縁起の論理によって、モラルを形成する場合には、そこに和合・調和・温情主義の倫理が生まれるであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
資本あっての事業、事業あっての労働であると同時に、労働あっての事業、事業あっての資本である。資本と労働との共同活動が即ち産業である。（中略）賃金を与える者貴くば、労働を与える者も同じく貴い。否、其の孰れも与えるのではない、資本と労働の持寄りに外ならない。（渋沢栄一）&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-19-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-19|19]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この産業資本家における労資協調のモラルは、禅者によってつぎのように示される。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「自他元来不二」なることを知らば、何の難義もない筈ぢゃ。労が家の資本ぢゃ。同時に資が家の労ぢゃ。争はどうしても起らぬ筈ぢゃ。（飯田欓隠）&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-20-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-20|20]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
和合のモラルは戦争のモラルともなる。華厳学者はつぎのように述べている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
平時にあっては、互いに離れ難きあつき因縁の繋りとして、睦みあうための基盤となれる縁起観は、非常の時であっては、また無礙の大敢闘精神の発露となって、日本国民としての責務を、その各々の持場に於て、果さしめてゆくのである。（亀川教信）&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-21-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-21|21]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
全国民の一人一人が、何れも御稜威のうちにあって、此の主伴具足感に奮い起つとき、一億の民は単なる一億に局限されずして、一億は同時に一億乗の力を発揮することとなる。（同）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この華厳学者によれば、「一即一切、一切即一」の無尽縁起の行為的把握に於て、個と全の関係が、真に如の形態に見得られるのは、わが日本国における国民的自覚の上に、浮び上って来る国家観に於てのみなることが知られる&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-22-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-22|22]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;」のであるが、この論理は戦後の日本において、かの近江絹糸の工員手帳（「鑑」）のなかに具体化し、また産業資本と禅との提携による工員錬成のモラルとして、その実績をあげつつある。「経団連」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|337}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
の支援によって発足した、さる禅道場における、最近の座談会「禅と企業」は、禅によるヒューマン・リレーションの調整と、企業経営の合理化および労務対策について語っているが、そのなかにつぎのような言葉がみられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一番大きな方針は、唯今私の方の常務が、申し上げましたように、ともかく一応学生生活の気分を一新する。そして自分というものと、会社の所属と、あるいは会社全体の中の個、個による全体ということを見ること、そして自分自身を一応分析して、会社の一員として一新して働いてもらうということを、一番根本方針にしておるわけです。&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-23-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-23|23]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅寺でのお坊さんのお話は、非常に抹香臭いものだと考えておったところ、恋愛観も飛びだすということで、非常にくだけておって、ききよかった（中略）というアンケートもございました。なるべくならそういう風に、お色気をまじえたお話も、大変喜ぶようですので、お願いします。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ここで、言いたいのは、「主伴具足」にかんする亀川説（前記高楠説も同じ）についてである。この場合、主から伴への方向は、天皇絶対主義を根拠づけるものとして、どこまでも一方的であり、かつきわめて具体的現実的（帝国憲法的）であるが、伴が主としてとりあげられる方向は、観念的でしかない。このことは、いいかえるならば、主伴具足の論理を、階級社会に適用すべきではない、ということを示唆する。亀川説の場合には、主伴は真に円明具足とはいわれないのであり、この論理の創唱者法蔵自身ですらおそらくこの危険をまぬかれてはいなかったであろう。さきの鎌田氏は、同じ論文のなかで、この問題をとりあげ、「体験界の事実と経験界の事実との混同をいましめている」が、この批判が意識において否認して、現実において認容する、「二重真理説」にほかならぬことは、すでに指摘したとおりである。無政府共産社会こそ、主伴円明具徳のもっともよき象徴であるであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|338}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 六 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「仏を殺し祖を殺す」（『雲門録』）という言葉があるが、外的対象的な権威をみとめないことにおいて、禅のように徹底的であるものはないであろう。「無位の真人」の「随処に主となる」「独脱無依」の自由を強調したのは唐の禅匠臨済義玄（？―八六七）であったが、このような自由において、「丹霞天然」（七三九―八二四）は仏像を、「徳山宣鑑」（七八二―八六五）は経文を焼いたのである。「仏の一字、吾れ聞くを喜ばず」と趙州従諗（一七八―八九七）はいっている。この趙州のところへ、時の国王が部下をつれて訪れたことがあったが、趙州は座席（禅床）を降りて迎えることもなかった。その翌日、王が客将として昨日の答礼を述べさせると、彼は座席から降りて、客の挨拶をうけた。のちになって、門弟はあれはどうしたことかとたずねると、お前にはわからぬだろうが、「第一等の人来らば、禅床の上に接し、中等の人来らば、禅床を下って接し、末等の人来らば、三門の外に接す」これが自分の家風である、とかれは答えた。&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-24-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-24|24]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「西方に国有り、安養と名づく。（中略）国に王制なく、階爵の序無し」&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-25-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-25|25]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;という言葉がしめすように、仏教者が構想した未来社会は、無政府共産の世界であったと考えられる。クロポトキン（一八四二―一九二一）は、われわれの文化財、生活資料が、悠遠な過去からの、無数の人間の労働の果実であり、われわれはそれらに対して、「わがもの」my own と主張する根拠をもたないと述べている&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-26-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-26|26]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;が、仏教者もまた、これらのものが、衆生の重々無尽に交錯連関した活動の所産として、もともと全衆生に所属する「四方物」であり、「わがもの」mama-kāra という規定をゆるさない、と考えたのである。&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-27-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-27|27]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;（ただし「梵網菩薩戒経」などにはすでに「国王もの」という思想がみられる。）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
仏教が現代において、その社会倫理ないし世界倫理を形成するために、とりくまねばならぬ問題は、およそつぎのとおりである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|339}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
まず仏教の超国家性の回復と、ナショナリズムの回復との総合の問題がある。いわゆる「鎮護国家」における国家は、王室、国土、人民の意味であったが、その主眼は天皇であった（中国においても、「国家年少胸懐を出でず」の国家は天子の意味であり&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-28-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-28|28]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;、「国家、神宗より専ら経術を以て士を取る」の国家は朝廷の意味であった&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-29-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-29|29]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;）。日本天台における「鎮護国家の十箇秘法」をみても、「天皇御即位灌頂」「皇帝御本命持念」「後宮安産御授戒」というように、天皇の一身にかんするものが、大半を占めている。いずれにせよ、仏教はその成立の当初から、国家権力と結びついてきたために――そこには、主権者を教化して善政をしかせよう、という意図があり、それが成果をおさめた場合もあるのだが――国家権力の本質を批判的に分析し検討する点に欠けるところがあった。しかし国王に対する警戒も強かったのであり、「比丘まさに王に近づくのは奴の如し」（『正法念経』）、「王は恒に賦税を多くし、横しまに過無き人を罰す」（中略）諸の貧苦の人を見ながら、會て憐愍の念無し。女人に耽り染って悪道を懼れず」（『唐訳華厳経』）といった言葉がみられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
仏典では、原始仏教に於けると同様に、国王は人民に害をなすものと考えられていた。だから、国王は《盗賊と並べられ、庶民の蒙る災難として「水火の難、盗賊の難、悪人の難」とともに、「国王の難」が挙げられている。&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-30-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-30|30]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
国家悪の認識と、正しいナショナリズム（たとえば民族の独立と民族の提携）の回復との、総合の論理がみいだされねばならぬであろう。そしてこの問題との連関において、「生死に染まず去住自由」（『臨済録』）といった霊性的自由と、政治的、社会的自由との矛盾の統一の問題が探究される必要があるであろう。「宗教なくして、国家はありえない」&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-31-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-31|31]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; とバクーニン（一八一四―一八七六）はいったが、しかし宗教は国家なくしてありうるのである（もっとも禅を「宗教」とよんでいいかどうかは問題である）。近代日本の禅が、天皇制国家権力によって、どのようにゆがめられたかについては、上来見てきたとおりである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|340}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
国家との連関において、つぎに考えられるのは、階級の問題である。マルクスは、「支配階級の思想はどの時代においても支配的な思想である。社会の支配的な物質的な力であるところの階級が、同時にその社会の精神的な力である。物質的生産の手段を左右する階級は、同時に精神的生産の手段を左右する。だから同時にまた、精神的生産の手段を欠いている人々の思想は、おおむねこの階級に隷従させられることになる」&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-32-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-32|32]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; と書いているが、近代日本の禅イデオロギーもまた、この通則の例外でなかったことは、説明するまでもない。帝国主義日本における、国籍にしばられた日本禅から、「文化日本」における無国籍のコスモポリタン禅への、転向のプロセスのうちにも、この通則がなにほどか働いているのかもしれない。鈴木大拙博士とならんで世界的に著名な禅者久松真一博士は、「現在の直面する危機と世界倫理」にかんして、原子物理学の殺人的展開のうちに、ヒューマニズムそのものの危機を見、科学の異常な発達とモラルの立ち遅れとの未曾有の「跛行」を指摘して、「倫理力を増強して、この跛行を整形する」必要を力説し、しかもその倫理力が、特定の国家や国家ブロックや階級やイデオロギーのエゴイズムに立つものであってはならぬ、として新しい世界倫理を確立する急務を提唱していられる。&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-33-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-33|33]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; まことに貴重な示唆である。しかしながら、ひるがえって考えるならば、科学と倫理との跛行は、はたしてヒューマニズムの危機とか、人類文化の行詰りとかいうものであろうか。世界の圧倒的多数の人民大衆は、良心的な多数の科学者とともに、原子力の殺人的利用に、繰り返し抗議し抵抗しているのである。かれらはいささかも偏向者ではない。そればかりか、この厖大な人民大衆の平和のためのたたかいこそが、科学とモラルの革命的分裂をくいとめているのである。偏向的であるのは、ヒューマニズムの危機をばくろしているのは、独占資本の「死の商人」たちにほかならない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
久松博士を中心とするＦ・Ａ・Ｓ禅がかかげるところの誓願「超歴史的歴史の創造」（to create Superhistorical history） は、階級的視点をどのように処理しているのであろうか。その歴史創造の智と力とは、蒸溜水のご&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|341}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
とく無色透明であろうか。その社会倫理は、絶対者に基礎をおくＭ・Ｒ・Ａ（道徳再武装）の社会倫理と、どのようにちがうであろうか。「わたくしは公正であることは約束できるが、不偏不党であることは約束できない」（ゲーテ）（市川註・われわれはこのばあい、西田哲学の「行為的直観」との対比において、階級的自覚における「実践的直観」の論理を展開しつつある、唯物論者梅本克己氏の体系に注目したいと思う）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
階級の問題は、人間の自己疎外の問題、とくに労働における自己疎外の問題につながる。この問題と、まともにとりくむことなしには、仏教社会倫理の現代的形成はなしとげられないであろう。このことは、仏教者が賃金労働者の視点を、自己のうちに位置づけること、いいかえるならば、「商品」としての労働者（人間）の自覚的な視点を自分のうちに措定することを、必然的にするであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
疎外された労働は、人間から（一）自然を疎外し、（二）自己自身を、彼自身の活動的機能を、彼の生活行為を疎外することによって、それは人間から〈類〉を疎外する。（中略）人間が彼の労働の、彼の生活行為の生産物から、彼の類的存在から疎外される、ということからくる直接の帰結は、人間の人間からの疎外 die Entfremdung des Menschen von dem Menschen である。&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-34-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-34|34]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
資本制社会においては、人間までが商品化される。青年男女の教育は、かれらのからだに「元手をいれる」ことにほかならず、青年たちは、「パースナリティの市場」において、「いかにして自分を売りつける」かの問題に腐心せざるをえない。アジャストメントというヒューマン・リレイションという、商品経済の土台のうえでの教育であり道徳である。「人的資源」といい「人間ドック」といい、ないしは「禅ブーム」という、まことに象徴的な言葉である。「玄関に、脚下照顧」とありましたが、脚下照顧が第一ですね。これからこそ健全な企業がでてくると思います。これは財界人の立場から言えば、安い投資ですよ。こんなものの「粒万倍」になって帰ってきますよ。&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-35-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-35|35]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|342}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
売淫は、労働者の一般的売淫 allgemeine Prostitution des Arbeiters の、特殊な表現にすぎない。そして売淫は、淫売婦だけでなく、その相手――その卑劣さいっそう大きい――もはいる、一つの関係であるから、資本家たちもまたこの範疇にはいるのである。&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-36-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-36|36]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような人間の自己疎外――わたくしはこれを人間の水平的な自己疎外 horizontal alienation として、実存的宗教的な自己疎外すなわち垂（鉛）直的な自己疎外 vertical estrangement と区別するのだが――は、これを快適なものとして享受する階級によっては、決して克服されず、これを苦痛としてうけとるほかない階級によってのみ、克服されるであろう（このことは、人間の垂直的な自己疎外の克服が、仏教のばあい、苦観にはじまるのと同じ論理・心理である）。商品としての賃金労働者の視点にたって、労働における人間の自己疎外（それは同時に、資本における人間の自己疎外でもある）を、克服しようと決意することは、われわれが階級的自覚にたつことにほかならない。階級的自覚を、階級的エゴイズムとしてしかとらえることのできない、平板な人類肯定する立場にはかなならない。「人類的世界倫理の立場においてこそ、人間の自己疎外は真に克服されるのだ」という見解、すなわち、階級的立場と人類的立場との対立の統一ではなく、たんなる人類的立場の視点は、人間の自己疎外を快適としてうけとっている階級が、ある朝、一斉にこれを苦痛として自覚するに至る、という幻想に立っている。しかし真に現実的な克服の道は、この甘いセンティメンタリズムをすてて、疎外を苦痛とするものの立場を主体として、現実をそのあるがままにとらえることから、始められるほかはない。それがすなわち歴史的現実を、客観性と党派性とを統一する立場において、とらえることである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ここでは一つの懺悔が問題なのであって、それ以上のことではない。人類がその罪業をゆるされるには、ただその罪業を実際にあるがままのものとして、公言すればたりるのだ。&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-37-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-37|37]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|343}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「その罪業を実際にあるがままのものとして公言する」こと――これが『資本論』における商品の分析ではなかったか。これが道元の「万法に証せらるる」ということの、経済学の分野における内実ではなかろうか。労働力としての商品から、それの資本制的規定の、捨象された商品に到達し（下向運動）、これの科学的究明を媒介として、自己に直接的な自己矛盾が、資本制社会の階級的矛盾の細胞形態であることを、明らかにすること（上向運動）、この円環行程の、しかも「開かれた体系」&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-38-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-38|38]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; を、実践的直観において明らかにすることこそ、西田哲学の「物となって見、物となって考える」という方法の、社会科学的内実ではなかろうか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
こんにちわれわれ人間が、そして仏教者そのものが、商品経済社会（「売淫的世界」）によって生かされ、生きていること、この事態の全体が、「世間虚仮」であり、「そらごとたわごと」である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
カール・レヴィット（一八九七―一九七三）は、「マルクスの対蹠人たるキルケゴールさえ、資本と労働の関係への、マルクスの洞察を、人間としての生活そのものをもって実証」した実情を、興味ふかく記述している。&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-39-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-39|39]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; 他方われわれは、間主体的 inter-subjective 社会における事々無礙を、客観的に現実化しようとする場合に、逢着するであろう「縁起哲学の限界」について、クロポトキンの説得的な評論から、多くのことを学ぶであろう。&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-40-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-40|40]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
世間の虚妄を――それの対象論理的・形而上的疎外をしばらくおく。ただし、対象そのものを変えるかわりに、対象の対象性を「空ずる」ことへの、きびしい批判をおこたってはならぬのだが――このようなアスペクトにおいて、われわれに自覚させ、このものの克服を決意させるものこそ、この分野における歴史の真実（ダルマ）であり、ここに仏教者における、社会倫理と社会科学との弁証の起点がある、とおもわれる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Original References ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Ichikawa’s printed references, pp. 344–345. Working transcription; bracketed uncertainty notices are editorial, not original. --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;1. 西田幾多郎の思想は、当初から体制擁護的な契機を含んでいた。拙稿「絶対無のつまづき――西田幾多郎の場合」、『思想』、一九五九年一月、本巻所収「西田幾多郎論」参照。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-2-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 2. 大宅壮一「西田幾多郎と敗北」、『文藝春秋』、一九五四年六月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-3-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 3. 政府の「大東亜宣言」の草案として、一部の者の要請によって書かれたものだが、東条首相の拒否によって採択されなかった。その全文は矢吹一夫「昭和人物秘録」の「西田幾多郎博士の大東亜戦争観」にのせられている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-4-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 4. 西田幾多郎『哲学の根本問題・続編』、一〇六―一〇七頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-5-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 5. 同書、一〇七頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-6-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 6. 日本諸学振興委員会、哲学講演会での講演（一九三七年）の記録。西田幾多郎「学問的方法」と共に、『文部省教学叢書』第三集（一九三八年）に収録。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-7&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-7-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 7. 大阪毎日新聞社編『日本仏教概論』、一九四二年。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-8&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-8-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 8. 東京帝大仏青編『仏教思想講座』巻三、一九三九年。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-9&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-9-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 9. 高楠順次郎、前掲論文。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-10&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-10-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 10. 『宗門無尽灯論』、流通第一〇。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-11&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-11-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 11. 『禅海一瀾』、岩波文庫版、三一、三四頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-12&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-12-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 12. P. J. Proudhon, Proudhon’s Solution of the Social Problem, p. 45.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-13&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-13-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 13. F. H. Heinemann, Existentialism and the Modern Predicament, p. 154.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-14&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-14-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 14. 西田幾多郎『思索と体験』、一一八頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-15&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-15-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 15. H. Read, The Philosophy of Anarchism, pp. 24–25.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-16&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-16-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 16. 鎌田茂雄「華厳哲学の根本的立場」、中村元編『華厳思想』所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-17&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-17-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 17. 拙著『般若経』、三一書房、六九頁、第六巻所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-18&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-18-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 18. 船山信一「明治哲学における護教主義現実主義の三つの論理」、『思想』、一九六一年一月。二重真理説はキリスト教神学の恩寵と理性、仏教の真諦と俗諦の説にみられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-19&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-19-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 19. 渋沢栄一「労働問題解決の根本義」、『社会政策時報』、一九二〇年九月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-20&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-20-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 20. 飯田欓隠『無門関鑽燧』、一九二四年十一月、一七九頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-21&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-21-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 21. 亀川教信（龍谷大学教授）『縁起の構造』、一九四四年八月、五八一、五八五頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-22&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-22-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 22. 同書、五九頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-23&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-23-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 23. 「禅と企業」、『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-24&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-24-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 24. 『禅苑蒙求』。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-25&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-25-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 25. 支遁「阿弥陀仏像讃並序」。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-26&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-26-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 26. P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism. Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 57f.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-27&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-27-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 27. 拙著『般若経』第四章、三一書房。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-28&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-28-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 28. 『晋書』（陶侃伝）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-29&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-29-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 29. 『事物起源』、学校学事部、詞賦。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-30&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-30-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 30. 宮本正尊編『大乗仏教の成立史的研究』、三七六頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-31&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-31-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 31. M. Bakunin, Gott u. d. Staat. (Gesammelte Werke. Bd. I)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-32&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-32-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 32. K. Marx, Die Deutsche Ideologie, S. 44 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus. Bd. 29)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-33&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-33-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 33. 『京都新聞』、一九六一・一・一四および『維摩七則』、一六三頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-34&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-34-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 34. K. Marx, Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte, S. 103, 106 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus, Bd. 42)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-35&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-35-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 35. 『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-36&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-36-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 36. Marx, ibid. S. 128.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-37&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-37-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 37. 「ルーゲへの手紙」、一八四三年（『マルクス・エンゲルス選集』補巻四、一三五頁）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-38&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-38-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 38. 梯明秀『資本論への私の歩み』、一二七頁以下。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-39&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-39-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 39. K. Löwith, Von Hegel zu Nietzsche. 邦訳、七〇頁以下。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-40&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-40-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 40. P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism, pp. 48, 56, 59, 64. P. Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, chap. I.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
「禅・華厳・アナキズム」（1961年）は、市川白弦の華厳思想と無政府主義の関係を論じた論考。本ページは『市川白弦著作集』第3巻（法蔵館、1993年）、319–343頁の本文をもとにした作業用の翻刻である。原著所収の注は344–345頁であり、下記に翻刻する。図１・図２は鈴木大拙の論述から市川が引用した図である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
本翻刻はなお原本との最終校合を要する。本文中の上付き数字は原著の参照番号を示す。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Transcription and editing: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1961). “Zen, Kegon, anakizumu 禅・華厳・アナキズム” [Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism]. Transcribed and edited by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH61ZKA&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Japanese originals]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA&amp;diff=1251</id>
		<title>IH61ZKA</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA&amp;diff=1251"/>
		<updated>2026-10-13T14:45:57Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism”}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; [[IH61ZKA|禅・華厳・アナキズム]]) is a 1961 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 3 of &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343, with references on pp. 344–345.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Japanese original:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH61ZKA|禅・華厳・アナキズム]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contents ==&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section1|I]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section2|II]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section3|III]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section4|IV]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section5|V]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section6|VI]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|319|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is known as the “Nishida philosophy” of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), the foremost representative of modern Japanese philosophy, was established in his 1926 essay “Place.” Although the idea of “place” (&#039;&#039;basho&#039;&#039; 場所) emerged through the concept of topos (place) found in Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotle’s De Anima, it was more fundamentally connected with the Mahāyāna Buddhist concepts of emptiness (&#039;&#039;kū&#039;&#039; 空; Sanskrit śūnyatā) and the dharma-realm (&#039;&#039;hokkai&#039;&#039; 法界; Sanskrit dharmadhātu), especially the realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (&#039;&#039;jiji muge hokkai&#039;&#039; 事々無礙法界), a world of experience in which individual things and events mutually interpenetrate and mutually determine one another. In other words, Nishida’s thought was fundamentally connected with the philosophy of prajñā and Kegon philosophy. His central idea—that the mutual determination of individual things within the place of “absolute nothingness” is simultaneously the self-determination of the universal—expressed, through the mediation of the modern Western logic of the individual ego, the fundamental unity of the logical structures of prajñā emptiness and Kegon’s non-obstruction of phenomena. In essence, this philosophy should have established a metaphysical foundation for thoroughgoing freedom and equality through the Eastern logic of nothingness. It contained the possibility of establishing a philosophy of freedom that rejected all external authority (Autorität) and power (Macht), even casting off the clothing of so-called “religion.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-a&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-a|a]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-b&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-b|b]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|320|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet as imperial Japan’s wartime system expanded, and as pressure from the political Right and the military against the “liberal” tendencies of Nishida philosophy and the Kyoto School intensified, this philosophy of the place of absolute nothingness—or the philosophy of the “self-determination of facts”—gradually developed a logic that provided an ideological foundation for the Imperial Way and the “holy war.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ōya Sōichi went so far as to say that Nishida had “sold his soul to secure the safety of his body.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-2-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-2|2]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Among Nishida’s writings from this period were “The Principle of the New World Order” (1943) and “On the National Polity” (1944). The latter subsequently appeared as the fourth supplementary essay in his Philosophical Essays, was published in the journal &#039;&#039;Tetsugaku kenkyū&#039;&#039; 哲学研究, and was included in the Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō. The former, however, was not included in the collected works.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-3-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-3|3]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, the logic of place, or the philosophy of the non-obstruction of phenomena, should not have provided a foundation for the Imperial Way. On the contrary, it should have provided a foundation for anarchism. In my essay “The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō” (published in &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 思想, January 1959, and reprinted in the present volume), I wrote the following in its conclusion:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The place of absolute nothingness, the dialectical universal, forms the principle of world-formation through its self-conscious determination. This principle and the Imperial Way constitute an absolute contradiction that cannot be reconciled. Within the sphere of objectifying logic, the two assert themselves against and mutually exclude one another by their very nature. If the Imperial Way were genuinely to become subjective beyond the domain of objectifying logic, then, in the very process of becoming subjective, it would have no alternative but to dissolve itself by negating those accidental, particular, and irrational elements that constitute its essential nature. In the process of fully realising itself as subject, the Imperial Way must relinquish the ego. It loses itself by returning to the place of absolute nothingness, the true historical world. Conversely, the logic of the place of absolute nothingness—the logic of the predicate—is something that fundamentally negates the Imperial Way conceived as subject. Nishida’s “theology of the logic of place” should not have provided a foundation for Japan’s founding mythology and the politico-religious philosophy of the eternal imperial order. Rather, it should have furnished a logical system that brought these to an end. Likewise—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|321|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and, contrary to what happened in Nishida’s own case, it should have been a philosophical system that regarded even national morality as fundamentally illusory (&#039;&#039;koke&#039;&#039; 虚仮). As a philosophy of place, in which absolutely free individuals are mediated by a universal that mediates without any mediating entity, this system should have provided the foundation for a democratic association of free individuals in the deepest sense. It should have demanded that the Imperial Way shed its former character, anticipated the disappearance of the state, and provided the foundation and promise of a community without coercive power. The logic of the predicate began with Nishida the philosopher, only to founder in Nishida the imperial subject.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to Nishida, the actual world must be a world of individuals—I, you, and others. An individual might initially be understood as a determination of the universal, such as existence or living beings. By adding specific differences to what is universal, proceeding through successive classifications, and finally passing beyond them, one might conceive of the individual as a limiting point. Yet an individual conceived in this manner is not a genuine individual. Such an individual can never escape being merely a part of the universal. The individual must determine itself.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-4-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-4|4]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Only something that determines itself—that is, something that becomes conscious of itself, forms itself, and chooses for itself—can truly be called an independent individual. Yet an individual can determine itself only in relation to other individuals. I exist as myself in relation to you, just as you exist as yourself in relation to me. “An individual must be conceived as standing in relation to another individual. It is only through standing in relation to another individual that an individual can be conceived as such. It is impossible to conceive of a single individual existing alone. For mutually independent things to stand in relation to one another is precisely what it means for things to act upon one another. […] For mutually independent things to enter into relations, some form of mediation must be conceived between them.” (Emphasis added by Ichikawa.)&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-5-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-5|5]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; If this mediator were some universal that unified the individuals—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|322|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—then that universal would itself amount to another individual, and the independence of the original individuals would necessarily be lost. (It would be rather like two people who could meet only in the presence of a guardian.) Behind individual beings there is no overarching universal that encompasses them. What mediates independent individuals cannot be some positive, substantial universal. Rather, it must be a dialectical universal understood as the determination of the place of nothingness. Within the place of absolute nothingness, individuals engage with and cooperate with one another while remaining genuinely independent. I remain entirely myself, and you remain entirely yourself; yet at the same time I am you, and you are me. Each is an autonomous, self-governing existence possessing an irreplaceable individuality, yet each may freely become subject or object in relation to the other, working and cooperating together. This is how the world of historical reality must truly be constituted. Borrowing a term from Kegon philosophy, Nishida calls this world of existential encounter and interconnection the “realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena” (&#039;&#039;jiji muge no sekai&#039;&#039; 事々無礙の世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The logic of the place of absolute nothingness, which makes possible free and autonomous interaction and cooperation among independent, individual existences—this was, so to speak, the fundamental logic of Nishida’s social philosophy or philosophy of the world.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consequently, what should follow from this logic is a society of genuinely autonomous and free individuals, liberated from attachment to the ego and its objects. Such a society would not merely be free of domination through force; it would be a freely associated human community in which there was no place even for “authority” understood as power disguised in ethical clothing.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet this open conception of the world, grounded in the logic of place and the Zen–Kegon understanding of emptiness and the non-obstruction of phenomena, was constrained and distorted by Nishida’s samurai sensibilities, his position within the academic establishment, and the circumstances of imperialist Japan. Its possibilities were deformed until it descended into the Theory of the National Polity and The Principle of the New World Order. And this was the same course that Japanese Buddhism generally followed at the time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|323|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎, one of the leading Buddhist scholars of modern Japan—supervising editor of the &#039;&#039;Taishō&#039;&#039; Revised Tripiṭaka, professor emeritus at Tokyo Imperial University, and recipient of the fourth Order of Culture (Nishida received the second)—argued in “The Principle of Totality in Buddhism” that Mahāyāna Buddhist logic and ethics were, from the beginning, totalitarian. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-6-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-6|6]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; According to Takakusu, the logical structure of this totalitarianism is expressed in Kegon thought through the doctrine of the Four Dharma-Realms (&#039;&#039;shihokkai&#039;&#039; 四法界), culminating in the fourth, the Realm of the Non-Obstruction of Phenomena (&#039;&#039;jiji muge hokkai&#039;&#039; 事々無礙法界). He maintained that, with the World War as its turning point, the world had begun moving toward totalitarianism: “Today even Westerners are beginning to practise totalitarianism, whereas the Japanese have actually practised it since ancient times. Through Japan’s Yamato totalitarianism, we can provide a model for the world. Through Buddhism’s principle of totality, we can guide the world. […] Japan as it actually exists must be governed through the Imperial Way. It is truly gratifying that the Kegon principle of totality should be put into practice. […] However excellent Buddhism may be, there must be no attempt to regard it as a form of government through the Buddhist Way existing alongside Japan’s government through the Imperial Way.” Takakusu concluded: “We now find ourselves in the midst of the National Spiritual Mobilization campaign, at a time when the Japanese spirit must be manifested in its totality. […] We should fully appreciate the true meaning of Kegon and undertake service to the nation without the slightest disorder and without a trace of selfishness. All people should forget themselves, relinquish themselves, and devote themselves to national affairs. We should realise the truth that the sage has no self, yet there is nothing that is not the self.” The Kegon scholar Kamekawa Kyōshin 亀川教信, in his essay “The Structure of Dependent Origination” (&#039;&#039;Engi no kōzō&#039;&#039; 縁起の構造), &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-7-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-7|7]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; and Yamagami Kaizen 山上戒全, in his essay “Kegon” 華厳, &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-8-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-8|8]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; developed interpretations of Kegon thought along similar lines. The Zen scholar Nakane Kandō 中根環堂, in “Totalitarianism and Zen” (&#039;&#039;Zentaishugi to Zen&#039;&#039; 全体主義と禅), &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-9-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-9|9]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; argued that Japan’s national polity was not the flat, horizontal totalitarianism of the West. Rather, its principle of one emperor and all his subjects constituted a three-dimensional, organic unity, in which affection resembled the relationship between father and child, while duty preserved the proper distinctions between ruler and subject. Underlying this hierarchical unity, he maintained, was the Kegon philosophy of “one is many, and many are one” (&#039;&#039;ichi soku ta, ta soku ichi&#039;&#039; 一即多・多即一). The path to fully realising this unity was seated meditation. Through grasping the essence of &#039;&#039;zazen&#039;&#039;—“thinking from the standpoint of nonthinking”—one could accomplish the sacred imperial undertaking of bringing the world under one roof (&#039;&#039;hakkō ichiu&#039;&#039; 八紘一宇). The lectures on “The Problem of Japanese Culture” given by Nishida at Kyoto Imperial University’s Monday lecture series in 1938—&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-c&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-c|c]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|324|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and Kōyama Iwao’s subsequent lectures on “Cultural Typology” likewise sought to contribute to the construction of a “New Order in East Asia” by invoking the Kegon logic of phenomena.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet all these attempts were nothing other than distortions of Kegon philosophy and Zen thought. Let us return once more to Takakusu for an example.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In his Commentary on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (&#039;&#039;Kegongyō tangenki&#039;&#039; 華厳経探玄記), Fazang (Hōzō 法蔵, 643–712), the third patriarch of the Chinese Huayan school, classifies the infinite mutual identity and interpenetration of phenomena within the world of experience into ten categories, known as the “Ten Profound Forms of Dependent Origination” (&#039;&#039;jūgen engi&#039;&#039; 十玄縁起). The tenth is called the “Gate of the Complete Illumination and Possession of Virtues by Principal and Companion” (&#039;&#039;shuhan enmyō gutokumon&#039;&#039; 主伴円明具徳門). The countless phenomena of the experiential world alternately become principal and companion, forming an endlessly interconnected symbolic world. If one phenomenon is taken as principal, all the others become its companions and are subordinated to it. But if another is selected as principal, all the remaining phenomena—including the one formerly taken as principal—become its companions and are encompassed by it. This is the principle of the complete illumination and possession of virtues by principal and companion. Takakusu paraphrases the doctrine in concrete terms: “Both principal and companion should work together harmoniously and openly, those above and below acting with one heart. Totalitarianism means that parent and child do not oppose one another but join forces and work together. If this cannot be accomplished, it is not totalitarianism. […] When similar things come together, one becomes their centre and principal. We may therefore apply this to the actual relationship of one emperor and all his subjects.” He also declared: “Our country has been totalitarian since the very beginning of its founding. […] Through the Meiji Restoration, it returned to its original totalitarianism.” And further: “We Japanese, who already possess the principle of totality in our actual national existence, are bringing the vision of Kegon’s one true dharma-realm into reality. This is something truly precious.” Takakusu thus maintains that the truths of the non-obstruction of phenomena, the completeness of principal and companion, and the identity of one with all and all with one are already realised within the system of one emperor and all his subjects—a system that regards democracy as contrary to the national polity and rests upon an authoritarian, status-based morality. This is a typical example of philosophy placed at the service of the authorities.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-d&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-d|d]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|325|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The condition of Japanese Buddhism described above had already taken root in the period of the Taika reforms. Leaving aside for the moment the earlier circumstances of state Buddhism in China, the new government, established through the reforms of 646, eventually undertook the construction of the Great Buddha Hall at Tōdaiji. It enshrined Vairocana Buddha there and established provincial monasteries and nunneries throughout the country, where scriptures for the protection of the state were to be recited. In this way, temples, monks, and nuns came under the control of state authority.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Immediately after Japan’s defeat, Suzuki Daisetsu, in “The Construction of a Spiritual Japan” (September 1946), argued that a new Japan must be constructed upon the principle of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm (&#039;&#039;hokkai engi&#039;&#039; 法界縁起) found in Kegon philosophy.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To place the emperor above the people is a symbol of the will to power. […] Rather, the emperor should possess a quality of immanence, becoming interconnected with the people in endlessly overlapping relationships. […] Just as the entire world should constitute a dharma-realm mandala of nations, so within Japan itself, the emperor and the people must become a single whole in which phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. Only then will a spiritual Japan become possible.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If we express this schematically, Japan up to the present has resembled Figure 1. Although there appears to be a connection between those above and those below, it can be severed at any point along the way. Before the wishes of those above reach those below, they must pass through military cliques, bureaucrats, and financial interests. Those below have no clear idea where these directives originate. Moreover, the people themselves have no direct connections with one another. […] They do not know how to think for themselves—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure1.png|thumb|360px|Figure 1. Suzuki Daisetsu’s diagram of hierarchical relations in prewar Japan (reproduced by Ichikawa, p. 325).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|326|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—[…] All that was demanded of them was reverent obedience to imperial commands. […] The system of one emperor and all his subjects symbolises the will to power on the one hand and, on the other, extinguishes the autonomy of individual citizens.” (pp. 158–159)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki goes on to describe the dharma-realm mandala that ought to be constructed by the emperor and the people. Although the passage is lengthy, I shall quote it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the emperor descends from the Plain of High Heaven and joins ordinary human beings upon this earth, the people, for their part, must abandon their servile sense of inferiority. […] They must establish their own autonomy and recognise fully that nothing can replace the value of individual personality.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“They must understand that respecting oneself is also the basis for respecting others. Each individual is complete in themselves, and at the same time all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. […] Because each is complete, all are non-obstructing; because all are non-obstructing, each is complete.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The political form of Japan as a dharma-realm mandala may be represented schematically in Figure 2. A, B, C, and so forth represent the people, the countless inhabitants of the nation. Yet each is an individual, a monad capable of autonomous action, thought, and sensation.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-e&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-e|e]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Each is complete in themselves. Each is an independent and free personality. Precisely for this reason, each enters into inexhaustibly interconnected relationships with others. These monads have thrown their windows wide open, sharing their own light with others while receiving the light of others in return.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-f&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-f|f]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The chords and straight lines within the circle represent communication, reciprocal interaction, and mutual interpenetration among the monads.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure2.png|thumb|360px|Figure 2. Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala: A–H represent individuals, while S at the centre represents the emperor (reproduced by Ichikawa, p. 326).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|327|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The S at the centre is an inward reflection of that which comprehensively encompasses the surrounding A, B, C, and so forth from without. A, B, C, D, and the others are each independent, yet each possesses totality. Accordingly, A, B, C, and D are joined by curved lines to form a great circle. This great circle, just as it is, represents each individual monad, each individual ‘blade of grass’ among the people. To express this meaning, it is concentrated and reflected in the small circle at the centre.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The great circle encompasses the people as a whole, but merely saying that it encompasses them does not provide anything concrete that can be pointed to. For this reason I have placed S at the centre. S is none other than the emperor, the centre of the national polity. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It might seem possible to remove S from the great circle surrounding it and place it above. But doing so would introduce a considerable danger that the will to power and a dualistic conception would reappear. The feudal mentality would inevitably be reproduced. Moreover, placing S within the circle should serve to strengthen the unity of the circle itself. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“As Japanese and as East Asians, we must establish a new national polity through our own autonomy, freedom, and constructive vision. Needless to say, its establishment must be spiritual through and through; it must be built upon spiritual awakening. Only then can it attain universality. Only then can something emerge from among us that will contribute to the advancement of world spiritual culture and to the various institutions of practical life.” (pp. 160–163)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This work by Suzuki may be regarded as the foremost postwar document in which a Buddhist thinker sought, with enthusiasm and sincerity, to envision a new political order for Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As is already clear, there is a fundamental distance and difference between Takakusu’s wartime interpretation and Suzuki’s postwar interpretation of the Kegon doctrine of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm, understood in relation to the realities of Japan. (We should pay particular attention to Suzuki’s insistence that the new order must be built upon spiritual awakening through and through.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s case, we may wonder whether, had he lived into the postwar period, he would have recognised the need to revise his earlier interpretation. In Suzuki’s case, we might ask whether truth acquires its illumination—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|328|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and power precisely when it is spoken at a time when speaking it is both necessary and difficult. Nevertheless, judging from what we have before us, we cannot avoid concluding that Suzuki’s interpretation is the one that truly brings the meaning of Kegon thought to life in contemporary Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s and Suzuki’s interpretations, the position of the emperor differs in the way represented by the two diagrams discussed above. At the same time, this difference in position may also reflect a difference in the position of Vairocana Buddha, the prototype of the emperor’s position.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s account, we find the following statement:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In Kegon terms, the great Vairocana Buddha at the centre is active. All the attendant beings of the outer Vajra circle are active as well. The great mandala of the total mobilisation of principal and companion is manifested. This is the phenomenal manifestation of the dependent origination of the Kegon dharma-realm—the manifestation of the true dharma-realm.” (pp. 251–252)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki, on the other hand, argues:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the original form of Japan’s national polity is understood in this way, the sequence of ideas suggested by expressions such as ‘the benevolence of the sovereign’ and ‘the light of the imperial reign’ acquires a different meaning from that traditionally attached to them. ‘Benevolence’ will no longer be associated with power, but will instead become something characterised by reciprocity. Nor will ‘light’ be something that shines only from above. Rather, it will signify the reciprocal illumination of the original light possessed by each individual.” (p. 164)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet neither account clarifies the most fundamental issue: the internal and logical relationship between Vairocana Buddha and the emperor (in Suzuki’s case, the emperor understood as a human being).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Since Takakusu asserts government through the Imperial Way while refusing to recognise government through the Buddhist Way, he must explain what logic he adopts in relation to the doctrine of original ground and manifest traces (&#039;&#039;honji suijaku&#039;&#039; 本地垂迹).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki speaks of the “benevolence of the sovereign,” meaning the emperor’s benevolence. But what, concretely, does that benevolence signify? Similarly, when he says that “light” does not come only from above, what exactly is the “light that comes from above”? Is there still an “above” within Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala? If so, what does that position represent? Is it a position above others occupied by the emperor as a human being? These questions remain unanswered.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki maintains that his dharma-realm possesses universality. But can a logic and an ethics that permanently place a single human being belonging to one particular hereditary lineage at the centre of the world genuinely claim universality?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Blood,” as something irrational and contingent,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|329|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—can it be assigned a particular cosmic and ethical significance from the standpoint of the Buddhist Dharma, or indeed from the standpoint of universal ethics?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki writes: “The unbroken imperial line will become something for which we should stake our lives when it is understood in the following way: the perpetuity of the imperial lineage symbolises the perpetuity of the ideals cherished by the Japanese people.” (p. 165)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The “ideals” mentioned here presumably refer to what Suzuki calls the “construction of a spiritual Japan.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Leaving aside for the moment the question of who actually risked their lives to reject imperialist Japan and construct a spiritual Japan, why should the perpetuity of these ideals require a particular human being belonging to a particular hereditary lineage? What would happen if that individual, exercising their fundamental human rights, refused to serve as such a symbol? And what should peoples without such a symbol do?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Even if the emperor occupied the position proposed by Suzuki, so long as the unbroken hereditary imperial line is recognised—that is, so long as some form of the emperor system is recognised—and so long as universality is claimed for this system, does its logic not contain the possibility of developing into a new version of the doctrine of “eight corners of the world under one roof” (&#039;&#039;hakkō ichiu&#039;&#039; 八紘一宇)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If the logic of Kegon’s dependent origination of the dharma-realm were pursued consistently, carrying Suzuki’s interpretation to its ultimate conclusion beyond Takakusu’s, would not even a “democratic” emperor system headed by a human emperor lose its logical foundation? And would not the very structure of meaning represented in Suzuki’s second diagram consequently undergo a fundamental transformation?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, despite these questions, Suzuki’s interpretation emphasises “the value of the individual as a morally free person, as a spiritual existence, and as an independently autonomous being who cannot be reduced to an antlike mass under the vague designation of ‘totalitarianism’” (p. 142).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki also rejects the principle of domination through force:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“There should be no power standing outside the dharma-realm. To suppose that an organisation cannot be sustained without such power is to fail to recognise the irrationality of seeking it outside itself. The dharma-realm is already a complete organisation in itself. The power that organises it is originally inherent within the organisation itself. When this power is sought outside, what exists within becomes distorted and is diverted in an unintended direction. […]”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|330|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—The construction of a spiritual Japanese state must not take power as its fundamental principle. It must be a faithful reflection in our actual lives of the realm in which all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing.” (pp. 153–154)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Let us pay particular attention to Suzuki’s observation that the dharma-realm is already a complete organisation and that the power necessary to organise it is inherent within the organisation itself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This recalls the anarchist idea of free association. Viewed politically, it may be understood as suggesting anarchism as the form of a new human society embodying the Kegon world of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon dharma-realm, grounded in the rejection of both the principle of coercive power and the principle of private ownership, may be described as a world of Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.)—although Suzuki, it seems to me, has never addressed the question of private ownership.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-g&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-g|g]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon (1809–1865), who envisaged the perfected form of society as a “unity of order and anarchy,” proposed a conception that, at least in this respect, may be applied directly to Kegon’s Lotus Treasury World (&#039;&#039;renge zō sekai&#039;&#039; 蓮華蔵世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The traditional position of Japanese Zen was that State Shinto and the Buddha-Dharma were fundamentally one. The Edo-period Zen master Tōrei Enji 東嶺円慈 (1721–1792) explained it as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Fundamentally, ‘kami’ means mind. When the impurities of the mind have been completely extinguished and it becomes as clear as a mirror, this is called kami. Thus, the Way of the kami takes the mirror as the representation of its essential nature.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The mirror of the mind is originally pure, eternally abiding, and serenely still: this is called Kuni-no-Tokotachi-no-Mikoto 国常立尊. The mirror of the mind is originally perfectly luminous, and there is nothing that it does not reveal: this is called Amaterasu Ōmikami 天照大神. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“One should understand that the Way of the kami and the Buddha-Dharma share the same underlying principle. They are nothing other than the single Dharma of seeing one’s nature.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-10-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-10|10]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The same position was held by Tōrei’s teacher, Hakuin Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1685–1768). The Meiji-period Zen master Imakita Kōsen 今北洪川 (1816–1892) likewise expressed this understanding:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In our country there is the Way of imperial sovereignty. This is the great Way of the ancestral deity and the true teaching of rulers. Its transmission has continued from the distant past, with the imperial descendants forming a single unbroken lineage, into which no other family has entered. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“This is what makes our imperial Way uniquely distinguished among all the nations of the world.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-11-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-11|11]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|331|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—A true man of our imperial nation must first establish firmly within himself the pillar of the Japanese spirit, which neither fire can burn nor water drown. Once he has suddenly penetrated through to realisation, there will be nothing deficient in his ability to judge and uphold the Imperial Way.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Tōrei’s interpretation lacks any logic capable of grounding, from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma, the unbroken imperial lineage that constitutes the core of State Shinto. It remains entirely unclear how the fundamental Buddhist principle that “all conditioned things are impermanent” (&#039;&#039;shogyō mujō&#039;&#039; 諸行無常) could be reconciled with Shinto’s assertion that the imperial throne will endure as long as heaven and earth. The same applies to Imakita Kōsen. Indeed, among Japanese Zen masters from Kokan Shiren (1278–1346), Hakuin, and Tenkei Denson (1648–1735) down to the present, the most fundamental questions have been almost entirely neglected. How can the kami of Shinto be identical with the fundamental subject of human existence? How can a hereditary lineage be identical with a divine lineage? And how can a religious tradition that, through monastic renunciation, takes the discontinuation of hereditary descent as a principle provide a Zen Buddhist justification for the continuity of that very descent? Hakuin, Tōrei, and virtually every other Zen practitioner have revealed a fatal weakness of vision in their understanding of Shinto.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-h&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-h|h]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is no relationship whatsoever between the eternity of Zen truth and the political and supposedly “ethical” continuity of a particular bloodline. No logic exists by which the unbroken imperial lineage—a survival from the customs of ancient peoples—can be justified from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma or Zen. Above all, the Imperial Way Zen that emerged after the Meiji Restoration represents the most extreme decadence of Zen. The only possible support for the forced identification of hereditary continuity with moral continuity seems to lie in the doctrine of karmic causation across the three times, as found in Hakuin’s “Song of Giving” (&#039;&#039;Segyōka&#039;&#039; 施行歌). Yet even this doctrine cannot establish such an identification. It can do no more than explain differences of social status and circumstances in the present life. Moreover, the doctrine itself can scarcely withstand modern criticism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the dignity of humanity, the poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) wrote: “There can be no god more sacred than yourself. And this is what the oldest and the newest myths alike ultimately mean.” (“Laws for Creation”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon, writing of human sovereignty, declared, “Every citizen is king.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-12-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-12|12]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet to identify Amaterasu Ōmikami with the fundamental subject of human existence, as Japanese Zen has done, is ultimately to negate State Shinto—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|332|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and to deny any necessary, intrinsic connection between Zen and the Japanese national polity, or between Zen and the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Does not the fact that Japanese Zen practitioners have failed to recognise and openly acknowledge this conclusion demonstrate that their Zen thinking has remained insufficiently thoroughgoing, and that they have not genuinely achieved the condition of being “independently liberated, dependent upon nothing” (&#039;&#039;dokudatsu mu’e&#039;&#039; 独脱無依; Record of Linji, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Christian existentialist philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948), who advocated religious libertarian communism, was described by the philosopher Heinemann as a “mystical anarchist.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-13-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-13|13]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; The French philosopher Simone Weil (1909–1943), who took an interest in Eastern thought, especially Zen, and criticised Christian theology, was an anarchist who participated in the Spanish Civil War.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In my view, the social philosophy of Zen may be described as &#039;&#039;Prajñā–Śūnyatā&#039;&#039; Anarchist Communism—an anarchist communism of wisdom (&#039;&#039;hannya&#039;&#039; 般若) and emptiness (&#039;&#039;kū&#039;&#039; 空). (See my book &#039;&#039;Hannyakyō&#039;&#039; 般若経, published by San’ichi Shobō.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why is it that Western religious anarchists have resisted state power—Berdyaev, for example, became a communist under imperial Russia and was imprisoned—whereas not only do we find almost no comparable examples in Zen or Kegon Buddhism, but examples of precisely the opposite tendency are overwhelmingly numerous? Let us consider two or three circumstances that may help explain this situation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The first is the obscuring of the difference in level between the world of experiential reality and the world of ordinary empirical experience, between the world of selfless intuitive action and the actual world of the empirical individual ego. This produces a “mixture or confusion of two worlds of reality.” The realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (&#039;&#039;jiji muge no sekai&#039;&#039; 事々無礙の世界) belongs to the reality disclosed in the experience of prajñā. Yet this realm readily overlaps and merges with the ordinary world of empirical facts, so that the tension arising from the discontinuity between the two is never firmly established. We may recall that Nishida, the author of An Inquiry into the Good (&#039;&#039;Zen no kenkyū&#039;&#039; 善の研究), acknowledged in replying to Takahashi Satomi’s criticism that he had failed to recognise a qualitative distinction between pure experience and impure experience—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|333|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—a point that has important implications for both Zen studies and Buddhist studies. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-14-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-14|14]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The circumstances described above are connected with the fact that Buddhist practitioners have traditionally placed the emphasis of their religious training upon the attainment of peace of mind. As Nishida wrote in his diary, “Do not run after the peripheral matters of scholarship and forget the foundation of peace of mind.” Consequently, the culmination of their practice tends toward an attitude of being at home wherever one finds oneself—expressed in the saying, “Wherever one lives becomes home.” To that extent, there is a psychological tendency to beautify and rationalise the circumstances of each particular moment. Moreover, the subject of prajñā intuition is characterised as something that reflects and receives, as suggested by expressions such as “ocean-seal samādhi” (&#039;&#039;kaiin zanmai&#039;&#039; 海印三昧), “precious-mirror samādhi” (&#039;&#039;hōkyō zanmai&#039;&#039; 宝鏡三昧), and the “place of absolute nothingness” (&#039;&#039;zettai mu no basho&#039;&#039; 絶対無の場所). This characteristic corresponds to the orientation toward peace of mind described above. Even before a sustained determination to transform the surrounding environment can emerge, the practitioner has already entered the contemplative enjoyment of things. The fact that the East, characterised by what has been called “Asiatic stagnation,” has excelled in the arts of cultivation, and that much of “Zen culture” has taken an artistic form, is connected with this tendency. It is interesting that archery and martial techniques, originally intended for combat against enemies, became in times of peace the disciplines of &#039;&#039;kyūdō&#039;&#039; 弓道 and &#039;&#039;budō&#039;&#039; 武道, directed toward confronting oneself, and were subsequently internalised, intellectualised, systematised, and transformed into forms of contemplation. Everything associated with the “Way” (&#039;&#039;dō&#039;&#039; 道) has a contemplative character. In other words, it finds a place of repose within the framework of established social conventions and institutions. Affluent Buddhist practitioners enjoying leisure in periods of social stability could readily immerse themselves in the contemplative world of Kegon. Anxious Buddhists living through periods of crisis likewise entered this world of contemplation in search of peace of mind. In such a world, empirical historical reality becomes veiled by the harmonious non-obstruction of all phenomena. It is beautified and, in proportion to this beautification, accepted and rationalised.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
All phenomena in the world are said to appear within ocean-seal samādhi, mutually interpenetrating in infinitely overlapping relationships. In my view, the Lotus Treasury World (&#039;&#039;renge zō sekai&#039;&#039; 蓮華蔵世界) described in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (&#039;&#039;Kegongyō&#039;&#039; 華厳経) is both a realm of reality disclosed through the active intuition of prajñā and a visionary world constituted through creative imagination around that experience. Here, however, harmonious non-obstruction refers to the actual activities of practitioners living within the rigid framework of caste society, together with the mutually non-obstructing phenomena of their visionary world. It does not mean that the raw, living reality inhabited by the masses is itself a world of harmonious—&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-i&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-i|i]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|334|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—non-obstruction. Within ocean-seal samādhi, three layers of reality must surely appear: the mutually non-obstructing facts of the practitioner’s immediate activity, the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena within an intuitive vision, and the dark reality of conflict and contradiction. It would be a mistake to paint over this three-dimensional world with a single, flat colour of harmonious non-obstruction.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In contrast, we may recall the following words of Herbert Read (1893–1968): “Religion is closely connected with art (poetry). […] During the Spanish Civil War, observers were struck by the religious fervour of the anarchists. In that country of a latent renaissance, anarchism inspired not only heroes but saints—new kinds of people who devoted their lives, through sensuous imagination and practical action, to creating a new form of human society.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-15-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-15|15]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The following criticism may be applied to the misguided realism that results from confusing worlds belonging to different levels of experience:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It is clear that Fazang’s Kegon philosophy—its doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena and of the absoluteness of phenomena mutually non-obstructing—expresses a truth that can be realised only through the fundamental intuition of ocean-seal samādhi, understood through the doctrine of the arising of phenomena from their true nature (&#039;&#039;shōki&#039;&#039; 性起). “When this becomes merely an intellectual doctrine, however, it denies the mediation of practice and turns into a facile, absolutist worldview. […] “The doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena certainly does not mean simply accepting the ‘things’ of existing reality as they are and asserting their harmony. Genuine non-obstruction among phenomena unfolds upon the foundation of religious intuition. […] “The Kegon system is a religious worldview manifested through ocean-seal samādhi. If this is forgotten, and the ‘things’ of empirical reality are accepted merely as they appear to the discriminating consciousness of ordinary people, and their harmony is then proclaimed, the result is an entirely different philosophy. “Phenomena are absolute because each constitutes part of the Lotus Treasury World. To ignore this and claim that every phenomenon possesses absolute significance amounts to affirming existing reality just as it stands. One misstep, and this becomes an unconditional affirmation of existing structures of domination and social organisation. “A philosophy of absolute affirmation can thereby become a philosophy in the service of rulers who sanction existing reality as it is.” (Kamata Shigeo 鎌田茂雄)&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-16-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-16|16]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|335|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This criticism may be said to identify correctly the errors and pathologies into which Kegon thought, and indeed Mahāyāna Buddhism more generally, have been liable to fall, and into which they have frequently fallen in practice—as, for example, in the cases of Sengzhao (384–414) and Dahui (1089–1163).&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-17-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-17|17]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The criticism emphasises the distinction between the realm of religious experience and that of ordinary empirical experience, insisting that the latter must be purified “through the practice of the bodhisattva path and vows grounded in compassion.” In this respect, it overcomes the vulgarism characteristic of Takakusu’s interpretation and, together with Suzuki’s view cited within it, rests upon an orthodox doctrinal foundation. This position might be described as a shift from the contemplative tendency found in Fazang toward the experiential orientation of Chengguan (737–839), accompanied by an emphasis on religious instruction and propagation grounded in that experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon world of the non-obstruction of phenomena is the joint product of experience and vision. It belongs to a dimension altogether different from the sphere of action in which the structural contradictions of actual class society are grasped, analysed, and practically overcome. Indeed, it is a world that can exist only within that particular dimension. It possesses neither the foundation nor the logic necessary to generate objective practice capable of overcoming the fundamental structural contradictions of the world in which we live. In this respect, there is no essential difference between Fazang and Chengguan. Even if this philosophy does not affirm mere facts or empirical reality as they stand, but instead rejects them as false and illusory, such rejection occurs entirely within subjective consciousness. It does not occur within the sphere of objective, transformative practice. Consequently, in actual historical circumstances, it amounts to a “doctrine of double truth”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-18-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-18|18]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; that affirms the existing order. There is therefore nothing surprising about Buddhists who consciously distinguish the world of prajñā experience from ordinary empirical reality nevertheless acting, in practice, as defenders of the established social system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== V ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
When Kegon thought attempts to formulate a social ethics within the actual world without overcoming the traditional characteristics and limitations examined above—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|336|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—that is, when it constructs morality through the logic of mutual identity (&#039;&#039;sōsoku&#039;&#039; 相即) and the dependent-origination logic of mutual dependence and interrelationship (&#039;&#039;sōi sōkan&#039;&#039; 相依相関), expressed in propositions such as “The principal is principal in relation to the companion, and the companion is companion in relation to the principal,” or “Mind is mind in relation to matter, and matter is matter in relation to mind”—the result will be an ethics of concord, harmony, and paternalistic benevolence.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Without capital there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no labour. At the same time, without labour there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no capital. The joint activity of capital and labour is precisely what constitutes industry. […] If those who provide wages deserve respect, then those who provide labour deserve equal respect. Indeed, neither party is simply giving something to the other; rather, industry consists of capital and labour being brought together.” (Shibusawa Eiichi) &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-19-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-19|19]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of cooperation between capital and labour expressed by this industrial capitalist is presented by a Zen practitioner in the following manner:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If one understands that self and other are originally nondual, there should be no difficulty whatsoever. Labour is the capitalist’s capital, and capital is the labourer’s labour. How, then, could conflict possibly arise?” (Iida Tōin) &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-20-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-20|20]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of harmony can also become a morality of war. A Kegon scholar writes:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In times of peace, the understanding of dependent origination provides a foundation for harmonious relations, through the recognition of the profound karmic connections that bind people inseparably together. But in times of emergency, it also manifests itself as a spirit of fearless, unobstructed struggle, enabling Japanese citizens to fulfil their responsibilities in their respective positions.” (Kamekawa Kyōshin) &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-21-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-21|21]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When every single member of the nation, embraced within the august imperial authority, rises with this sense of the completeness of principal and companion, the hundred million people are no longer limited to merely a hundred million. Rather, the hundred million simultaneously manifest a power multiplied a hundred millionfold.” (Ibid.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to this Kegon scholar, it is only through the conception of the state arising from Japanese national consciousness that the relationship between the individual and the whole can truly be perceived in its proper form, through the practical apprehension of inexhaustible dependent origination expressed as “one is all, and all is one.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-22-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-22|22]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet this very logic has found concrete expression in postwar Japan in the workers’ handbook, or “Mirror,” of Ōmi Kenshi, and has continued to produce results as a morality of worker training developed through cooperation between industrial capital and Zen. The Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (&#039;&#039;Keidanren&#039;&#039; 経団連)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|337|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—supported the establishment of a Zen training centre where a recent roundtable entitled “Zen and Business” discussed the adjustment of human relations through Zen, the rationalisation of business management, and measures concerning labour. Among the statements recorded in that discussion were the following:&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-j&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-j|j]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Our most important policy, as our managing director has just explained, is first of all to bring about a complete change in the attitudes associated with student life. We want participants to examine themselves, their membership in the company, and the relationship between the individual within the company as a whole and the whole constituted through individuals. We want them to analyse themselves and then begin working with a renewed consciousness of themselves as members of the company. This is our most fundamental policy.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-23-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-23|23]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“We received some questionnaire responses saying that, although participants had expected the monks’ talks at the Zen temple to be thoroughly religious and solemn, they found them quite approachable—even including discussions of attitudes toward romantic love—and therefore very pleasant to listen to. […] If possible, we would appreciate talks that include a little of this sort of romantic interest, since they seem to be very well received.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What I wish to address here is Kamekawa’s interpretation of the “completeness of principal and companion” (&#039;&#039;shuhan gusoku&#039;&#039; 主伴具足), which is essentially the same as Takakusu’s interpretation. In this case, the relationship running from principal to companion is thoroughly one-directional and extremely concrete in its historical reality, since it provides a foundation for imperial absolutism under the Meiji Constitution. By contrast, the possibility of the companion becoming principal remains merely conceptual. In other words, this suggests that the logic of the completeness of principal and companion should not be applied to class society. In Kamekawa’s interpretation, principal and companion cannot genuinely be said to possess complete and perfect reciprocity. Even Fazang himself, who originally formulated this logic, probably did not entirely escape this danger. Kamata, in the essay discussed earlier, also takes up this problem and warns against confusing the reality of religious experience with empirical reality. Yet, as I have already pointed out, this criticism amounts to a “doctrine of double truth,” in which existing reality is denied at the level of consciousness but accepted in actual practice. An anarchist-communist society would surely provide the best expression of the complete illumination and mutual fulfilment of principal and companion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|338|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== VI ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a saying, “Kill the Buddha and kill the patriarchs” (&#039;&#039;Unmonroku&#039;&#039; 雲門録). Perhaps no tradition is as thoroughgoing as Zen in refusing to recognise externally imposed authority. The Tang-dynasty Zen master Linji Yixuan (&#039;&#039;Rinzai Gigen&#039;&#039; 臨済義玄, d. 867) emphasised the freedom of the “true person of no rank,” who “becomes master wherever one stands” and is “independently liberated, dependent on nothing.” It was in the spirit of such freedom that Danxia Tianran (Tanka Tennen 丹霞天然, 739–824) burned a Buddha image and Deshan Xuanjian (Tokusan Senkan 徳山宣鑑, 782–865) burned Buddhist scriptures. Zhaozhou Congshen (&#039;&#039;Jōshū Jūshin&#039;&#039; 趙州従諗, 778–897) declared, “I do not delight in hearing even the single word ‘Buddha.’” A king once visited Zhaozhou accompanied by his retainers, but Zhaozhou did not descend from his seat to welcome him. The following day, when the king sent an official to convey his thanks for the previous day’s reception, Zhaozhou descended from his seat and received the visitor’s greeting. When his disciples later asked why he had acted differently, Zhaozhou replied: “You would not understand. When a person of the highest rank comes, I receive him upon my meditation seat. When a person of middling rank comes, I descend from my seat to receive him. When a person of the lowest rank comes, I go outside the monastery gate to receive him. This is the custom of my house.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-24-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-24|24]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As suggested by the passage, “In the Western realm there is a land called Peace and Nourishment. […] There is no system of kingship there, nor any hierarchy of official ranks,” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-25-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-25|25]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; the future society envisioned by Buddhists may be understood as a world of anarchist communism. Kropotkin (1842–1921)&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-k&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-k|k]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; argued that our cultural achievements and the material necessities of life are the fruits of the labour of countless people extending back into the distant past. Consequently, none of us has grounds for calling them “my own.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-26-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-26|26]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Buddhists likewise understood these things as products of the endlessly interwoven activities of sentient beings: they are originally “property of the four quarters” (&#039;&#039;shihōmotsu&#039;&#039; 四方物), belonging to all sentient beings, and do not admit the possessive designation “mine” (&#039;&#039;mama-kāra&#039;&#039;). &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-27-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-27|27]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; (Nevertheless, texts such as the Brahmā’s Net Bodhisattva Precepts Sūtra already contain the notion of “property of the king.”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problems Buddhism must confront today in order to develop a social ethics or an ethics for the world are approximately as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|339|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
First, there is the problem of bringing together the recovery of Buddhism’s supranational character and the recovery of nationalism. In the expression “protection of the nation” (&#039;&#039;chingo kokka&#039;&#039; 鎮護国家), “nation” originally referred to the royal household, the territory, and the people, but its principal concern was the emperor. (In China, too, the term “state” (&#039;&#039;kokka&#039;&#039; 国家) could signify the Son of Heaven&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-28-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-28|28]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; or the imperial court&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-29-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-29|29]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;.) Consider, for example, the “Ten Secret Rites for the Protection of the Nation” (Chingo &#039;&#039;kokka&#039;&#039; no jikka hihō 鎮護国家の十箇秘法) in Japanese Tendai Buddhism. The majority concern the emperor personally, including rites for imperial enthronement, prayers concerning the emperor’s life, and precepts conferred for safe childbirth within the imperial household. In any event, because Buddhism was associated with state power from the earliest period of its development, it tended to lack a critical analysis and examination of the essential nature of political power. There was, of course, an intention to educate sovereigns so that they might govern benevolently, and this intention sometimes achieved positive results. Nevertheless, considerable suspicion of kings also existed. We find statements such as, “A monk should approach a king as though approaching a servant-master relationship” (Saddharma-smṛtyupasthāna Sūtra, &#039;&#039;Shōbōnenkyō&#039;&#039; 正法念経), and “Kings constantly increase taxation and arbitrarily punish people who have committed no offence. […] Though they see people suffering poverty and distress, they never give rise to compassion. They indulge in women without fearing the evil destinies” (Tang translation of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, &#039;&#039;Kegongyō&#039;&#039; 華厳経).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As in early Buddhism, Buddhist scriptures often regarded kings as people who inflicted harm upon the population. Kings were therefore placed alongside thieves and robbers, and among the misfortunes suffered by ordinary people—calamities of flood and fire, robbery, and wicked persons—there was also the “calamity of the king.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-30-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-30|30]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must discover a logic capable of bringing together a recognition of the evils of the state with the recovery of a legitimate nationalism, understood, for example, in terms of national independence and cooperation among peoples. In connection with this problem, we must also investigate how to reconcile the contradiction between spiritual freedom, expressed in the Record of Linji as “remaining unstained by birth and death, free to come and go” (&#039;&#039;shōji ni somazu kyojū jiyū&#039;&#039; 生死に染まず去住自由), and political and social freedom. “Without religion, the state could not exist,” declared Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-31-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-31|31]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet religion can exist without the state—although whether Zen should properly be called a “religion” is itself open to question. We have already seen how modern Japanese Zen was distorted by the state power of the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|340|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In considering the relationship between Buddhism and the state, the next question is that of class. Marx wrote: “The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas in every age. The class that constitutes the dominant material power in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual power. The class that controls the means of material production also controls the means of intellectual production. Consequently, the ideas of those who lack access to the means of intellectual production are, in general, subordinated to that class.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-32-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-32|32]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; It hardly needs explaining that the ideology of modern Japanese Zen was no exception to this general principle. Even in the process of conversion from a Japanese Zen bound by nationality under imperial Japan to a cosmopolitan Zen without national affiliation in a “cultural Japan,” this principle may have been operating to some degree. Dr. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi 久松真一, a Zen thinker internationally renowned alongside Suzuki Daisetsu, has discussed the crisis confronting the present age and the problem of world ethics. In the murderous development of atomic physics, he sees a crisis of humanism itself. He points to the unprecedented disparity between the extraordinary advances of science and the failure of morality to keep pace, insisting upon the need to strengthen our ethical capacities in order to correct this imbalance. Moreover, he maintains that such ethical capacities must not be based upon the egoism of particular nations, blocs of nations, classes, or ideologies. He therefore urges the immediate establishment of a new world ethics. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-33-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-33|33]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; This is certainly a valuable suggestion. Yet, when we reconsider the matter, is the disparity between science and ethics really a crisis of humanism or an impasse in human civilisation? The overwhelming majority of the world’s peoples, together with the majority of conscientious scientists, have repeatedly protested and resisted the murderous application of atomic power. They are not in the least guilty of ideological bias. Indeed, it is precisely this vast popular struggle for peace that has prevented a revolutionary rupture between science and morality. Those who are biased, those who expose the crisis of humanism, are none other than the “merchants of death” of monopoly capital.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How, then, does the F.A.S. Zen movement centred on Dr. Hisamatsu deal with the standpoint of class in its vow to “create superhistorical history”? Are the wisdom and power involved in this historical creation like distilled water—&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-l&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-l|l]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|341|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—colourless and transparent? How would its social ethics differ from the social ethics of Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.), which grounds itself in an Absolute?&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-m&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-m|m]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; “I can promise to be fair, but I cannot promise to be impartial,” wrote Goethe. (Ichikawa’s note: In this connection, I would draw attention to the system being developed by the materialist Umemoto Katsumi, who, in contrast to Nishida philosophy’s “active intuition” (&#039;&#039;kōiteki chokkan&#039;&#039; 行為的直観), is working out a logic of “practical intuition” (&#039;&#039;jissenteki chokkan&#039;&#039; 実践的直観) grounded in class consciousness.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problem of class is connected with the problem of human self-alienation, particularly alienation in labour. Unless Buddhism confronts this problem directly, it will be unable to develop a contemporary social ethics. This necessarily requires Buddhists to incorporate the standpoint of wage labourers into their own thinking. In other words, they must consciously adopt the standpoint of workers—human beings treated as commodities.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Alienated labour alienates (1) nature from humanity, and (2) human beings from themselves, from their own active functions and life-activity. In doing so, it alienates humanity from its species-being. […] The immediate consequence of the alienation of human beings from the products of their labour, their life-activity, and their species-being is the alienation of human beings from one another—die Entfremdung des Menschen von dem Menschen.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-34-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-34|34]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Under capitalism, even human beings become commodities. The education of young men and women amounts to investing capital in their bodies, while young people must devote themselves to the problem of how to sell themselves in the “personality market.” This is an education and morality grounded in the commodity economy, expressed through the language of adjustment and human relations. Expressions such as “human resources,” “human dock” [medical checkups], and the “Zen boom” are profoundly revealing. Someone remarked: “At the entrance there was a sign saying, ‘Look beneath your feet.’ That is the first priority. I believe this is how sound enterprises will emerge. From the standpoint of the business community, this is a cheap investment. Something like this will come back with a ten-thousandfold return.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-35-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-35|35]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|342|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Prostitution is only a particular expression of the general prostitution of the worker—allgemeine Prostitution des Arbeiters. And since prostitution constitutes a relationship that includes not only the prostitute but also the other party, whose baseness is even greater, capitalists too belong to this category.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-36-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-36|36]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I distinguish this kind of human self-alienation&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-n&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-n|n]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;, which I call horizontal alienation, from existential and religious self-alienation, or vertical estrangement. Horizontal alienation will never be overcome by the class that enjoys it as something comfortable, but only by the class that has no choice but to experience it as suffering. (This follows the same logic and psychology as the Buddhist overcoming of vertical estrangement, which begins with the contemplation of suffering.) To adopt the standpoint of wage labourers treated as commodities, and to resolve to overcome human self-alienation in labour—which is simultaneously self-alienation in capital—is precisely to adopt a standpoint of class consciousness. A merely abstract affirmation of humanity, incapable of understanding class consciousness as anything other than class egoism, misses the fundamental problem. The claim that human self-alienation can genuinely be overcome only from the standpoint of a universal human ethics—without uniting the opposing standpoints of class and humanity—rests upon the illusion that those who comfortably enjoy alienation might suddenly awaken one morning and collectively recognise it as suffering. The genuinely practical path toward overcoming alienation must instead begin by abandoning this facile sentimentalism, adopting the standpoint of those who experience alienation as suffering, and apprehending historical reality as it actually exists. This means grasping historical reality from a standpoint that unites objectivity and partisanship.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“What is at issue here is a confession, and nothing more. For humanity to have its sins forgiven, it need only proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-37-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-37|37]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|343|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-o&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-o|o]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;”—was this not what Marx accomplished through his analysis of the commodity in Capital? And might this not be the concrete content, within the field of economics, of Dōgen’s expression “to be verified by all things”? Beginning with labour-power as a commodity, one arrives, by abstracting from its capitalist determinations, at the commodity itself (the downward movement). Through scientific investigation of this commodity, one then clarifies how its inherent self-contradiction constitutes the elementary form of the class contradictions of capitalist society (the upward movement). Might not the disclosure of this circular process—understood, moreover, as an “open system” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-38-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-38|38]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;—through practical intuition constitute the social-scientific content of Nishida philosophy’s method of “becoming a thing in order to see, and becoming a thing in order to think”?’&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Today, we human beings—and Buddhist practitioners themselves—live within and are sustained by a commodity-economic society, a “world of prostitution.” This entire condition is what is meant by the “falsity of the secular world” (&#039;&#039;seken koke&#039;&#039; 世間虚仮), a world of falsehood and empty words.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Karl Löwith (1897–1973) gives an illuminating account of how even Kierkegaard, Marx’s philosophical antipode, demonstrated through the circumstances of his own life the validity of Marx’s insight into the relationship between capital and labour. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-39-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-39|39]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; On the other hand, when we attempt to realise objectively the mutual non-obstruction of phenomena (&#039;&#039;jiji muge&#039;&#039; 事々無礙) within an intersubjective society, we will surely have much to learn from Kropotkin’s persuasive criticisms concerning the limits of the philosophy of dependent origination. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-40-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-40|40]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What makes us conscious of the falsity of the secular world in this aspect, and inspires us to resolve to overcome it, is historical truth—the Dharma (dharma ダルマ)—proper to this sphere. For the moment, I leave aside the objectifying-logical and metaphysical dimensions of alienation. Nevertheless, we must not neglect a rigorous criticism of attempts to “empty” the objectivity of an object rather than transforming the object itself. Here, it seems to me, lies the starting point for a dialectical relationship between social ethics and social science among Buddhists.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Explanatory Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-a&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;a. Nishida’s philosophy of place. Nishida Kitarō’s 1926 essay “Place” (&#039;&#039;Basho&#039;&#039; 場所) develops the notion of a locus in which individual things are constituted through relationships and self-determination. Ichikawa argues that this philosophy’s rejection of a fixed, substantial universal ought to support freely associated individuals, rather than an emperor-centred political order. [[#ed-call-a|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-b&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;b. The four dharma-realms. In Huayan/Kegon thought these are the realm of phenomena (事法界), the realm of principle (理法界), the non-obstruction of principle and phenomena (理事無礙法界), and the non-obstruction of phenomena with one another (事事無礙法界). Ichikawa centres his political reading on the final realm, without assuming that interdependence automatically entails political equality. [[#ed-call-b|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-c&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;c. Takakusu and wartime Buddhist thought. Takakusu Junjirō (1866–1945) was a prominent Buddhist scholar associated with the &#039;&#039;Taishō&#039;&#039; canon. Ichikawa cites his “Principle of Totality in Buddhism” (「仏教の全体性原理」; Ichikawa’s source reference 6) as evidence of the use of Kegon categories to defend wartime totalitarianism. The passage documents Takakusu’s interpretation, not an uncontested meaning of Kegon doctrine. [[#ed-call-c|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-d&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;d. Principal and companion. Fazang’s “principal and companion” (&#039;&#039;shuhan&#039;&#039; 主伴) allows different phenomena to become the focus of a relationship, with the others functioning as companions. Ichikawa argues that making one hereditary sovereign permanently principal defeats the reciprocity that the doctrine is meant to express. [[#ed-call-d|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-e&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;e. Suzuki’s diagrams. Figures 1 and 2, reproduced from Suzuki Daisetsu’s postwar account, respectively depict an elevated apex with disconnected subjects and a circle of mutually related individuals. In Figure 2, S still represents the emperor. Ichikawa’s question is why even the revised, immanent arrangement requires a fixed hereditary centre. [[#ed-call-e|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-f&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;f. Monad with open windows. Suzuki reverses Leibniz’s well-known image of monads as having “no windows.” His metaphor of open windows expresses both distinct individuality and reciprocal exchange, but it does not itself settle the problem of the emperor’s status in the political whole. [[#ed-call-f|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-g&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;g. Buddhist Anarchist Communism. Ichikawa proposes Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.) as one possible political expression of Kegon interdependence, combining resistance to coercive external authority with opposition to private appropriation. Although Suzuki’s self-organising dharma-realm suggests anarchist free association, Ichikawa explicitly observes that Suzuki does not address private ownership. B.A.C. is therefore Ichikawa’s extension, not Suzuki’s own political programme. [[#ed-call-g|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-h&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;h. Zen and the imperial lineage. Ichikawa contrasts impermanence (&#039;&#039;shogyō mujō&#039;&#039; 諸行無常) with claims about the eternal imperial lineage. His objection is to making a particular hereditary institution a necessary expression of Zen insight. [[#ed-call-h|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-i&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;i. Ocean-seal samādhi. Ocean-seal samādhi (&#039;&#039;kaiin zanmai&#039;&#039; 海印三昧) evokes a comprehensive religious vision in Kegon thought. Ichikawa cautions against treating the harmony experienced or imagined in such a state as already realised in historically unequal or conflictual societies. [[#ed-call-i|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-j&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;j. Corporate Zen and industrial relations. Ichikawa refers to Zen training supported by business interests and a roundtable on “Zen and Business,” criticising the use of self-cultivation and harmony to promote managerial efficiency while leaving labour–capital inequalities intact. His printed references 23 and 35 both cite issue 70 of the journal Zen 禅 (March 1961). [[#ed-call-j|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-k&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;k. Common ownership and Kropotkin. Kropotkin’s account of wealth as the accumulated product of countless people’s labour supports Ichikawa’s criticism of exclusive appropriation. Ichikawa connects this to Buddhist language about goods belonging to the wider community, but also acknowledges traditions recognising royal ownership. Buddhist ownership terminology in the Japanese text requires final source-level verification. [[#ed-call-k|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-l&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;l. F.A.S. Zen. Associated with Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, F.A.S. refers to Formless Self, All Humankind, and Suprahistorical History. It seeks to unite awakening with universal ethical action. Ichikawa welcomes its aspirations but questions whether a standpoint claiming to transcend class and national divisions adequately addresses the material interests and historical antagonisms shaping social life. [[#ed-call-l|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-m&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;m. Moral Re-Armament. Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.) was an international moral and spiritual renewal movement. Ichikawa invokes it as a comparison when questioning whether a purportedly class-neutral universal ethics can engage specific structures of economic power. This is a comparative reference, distinct from his criticism of F.A.S. Zen. [[#ed-call-m|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-n&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;n. Horizontal and vertical alienation. Ichikawa distinguishes social and economic “horizontal alienation” from existential or religious “vertical estrangement.” Drawing on Marx’s account of alienated labour, he insists that the Buddhist encounter with suffering must also address historically specific exploitation. The two dimensions are related but not reducible to one another. [[#ed-call-n|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-o&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;o. Marx’s commodity analysis and practical intuition. Ichikawa compares Marx’s method in Capital with Nishida’s “active intuition” (&#039;&#039;kōiteki chokkan&#039;&#039; 行為的直観) and suggests a historically grounded “practical intuition” (&#039;&#039;jissenteki chokkan&#039;&#039; 実践的直観). His comparison is methodological, not an equation of Nishida’s philosophy with Marx’s critique of political economy. He insists that changing social relations cannot be replaced by inwardly “emptying” an object. [[#ed-call-o|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Original References ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Ichikawa’s printed references, pp. 344–345. Working transcription; bracketed uncertainty notices are editorial, not original. --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;1. 西田幾多郎の思想は、当初から体制擁護的な契機を含んでいた。拙稿「絶対無のつまづき――西田幾多郎の場合」、『思想』、一九五九年一月、本巻所収「西田幾多郎論」参照。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-2-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 2. 大宅壮一「西田幾多郎と敗北」、『文藝春秋』、一九五四年六月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-3-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 3. 政府の「大東亜宣言」の草案として、一部の者の要請によって書かれたものだが、東条首相の拒否によって採択されなかった。その全文は矢吹一夫「昭和人物秘録」の「西田幾多郎博士の大東亜戦争観」にのせられている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-4-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 4. 西田幾多郎『哲学の根本問題・続編』、一〇六―一〇七頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-5-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 5. 同書、一〇七頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-6-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 6. 日本諸学振興委員会、哲学講演会での講演（一九三七年）の記録。西田幾多郎「学問的方法」と共に、『文部省教学叢書』第三集（一九三八年）に収録。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-7&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-7-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 7. 大阪毎日新聞社編『日本仏教概論』、一九四二年。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-8&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-8-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 8. 東京帝大仏青編『仏教思想講座』巻三、一九三九年。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-9&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-9-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 9. 高楠順次郎、前掲論文。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-10&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-10-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 10. 『宗門無尽灯論』、流通第一〇。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-11&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-11-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 11. 『禅海一瀾』、岩波文庫版、三一、三四頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-12&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-12-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 12. P. J. Proudhon, Proudhon’s Solution of the Social Problem, p. 45.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-13&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-13-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 13. F. H. Heinemann, Existentialism and the Modern Predicament, p. 154.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-14&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-14-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 14. 西田幾多郎『思索と体験』、一一八頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-15&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-15-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 15. H. Read, The Philosophy of Anarchism, pp. 24–25.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-16&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-16-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 16. 鎌田茂雄「華厳哲学の根本的立場」、中村元編『華厳思想』所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-17&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-17-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 17. 拙著『般若経』、三一書房、六九頁、第六巻所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-18&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-18-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 18. 船山信一「明治哲学における護教主義現実主義の三つの論理」、『思想』、一九六一年一月。二重真理説はキリスト教神学の恩寵と理性、仏教の真諦と俗諦の説にみられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-19&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-19-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 19. 渋沢栄一「労働問題解決の根本義」、『社会政策時報』、一九二〇年九月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-20&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-20-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 20. 飯田欓隠『無門関鑽燧』、一九二四年十一月、一七九頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-21&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-21-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 21. 亀川教信（龍谷大学教授）『縁起の構造』、一九四四年八月、五八一、五八五頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-22&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-22-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 22. 同書、五九頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-23&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-23-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 23. 「禅と企業」、『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-24&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-24-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 24. 『禅苑蒙求』。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-25&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-25-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 25. 支遁「阿弥陀仏像讃並序」。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-26&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-26-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 26. P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism. Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 57f.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-27&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-27-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 27. 拙著『般若経』第四章、三一書房。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-28&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-28-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 28. 『晋書』（陶侃伝）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-29&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-29-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 29. 『事物起源』、学校学事部、詞賦。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-30&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-30-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 30. 宮本正尊編『大乗仏教の成立史的研究』、三七六頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-31&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-31-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 31. M. Bakunin, Gott u. d. Staat. (Gesammelte Werke. Bd. I)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-32&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-32-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 32. K. Marx, Die Deutsche Ideologie, S. 44 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus. Bd. 29)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-33&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-33-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 33. 『京都新聞』、一九六一・一・一四および『維摩七則』、一六三頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-34&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-34-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 34. K. Marx, Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte, S. 103, 106 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus, Bd. 42)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-35&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-35-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 35. 『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-36&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-36-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 36. Marx, ibid. S. 128.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-37&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-37-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 37. 「ルーゲへの手紙」、一八四三年（『マルクス・エンゲルス選集』補巻四、一三五頁）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-38&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-38-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 38. 梯明秀『資本論への私の歩み』、一二七頁以下。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-39&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-39-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 39. K. Löwith, Von Hegel zu Nietzsche. 邦訳、七〇頁以下。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-40&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-40-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; 40. P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism, pp. 48, 56, 59, 64. P. Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, chap. I.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
Translated from Ichikawa Hakugen, “&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039;” 禅・華厳・アナキズム (1961), reprinted in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 3 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343; original source references occupy pp. 344–345. The original reference numbers are retained as superscript numerals, distinct from the translator’s explanatory notes. Suzuki Daisetsu’s two diagrams are reproduced from the scanned collected edition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is a working translation. Several quotations and Japanese readings require final collation; the original reference list is reproduced below as a working transcription with linked numbering. References 23 and 35 both cite issue 70 of Zen (March 1961).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotation: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1961). “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism” (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; [[IH61ZKA|禅・華厳・アナキズム]]). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH61ZKA-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA&amp;diff=1250</id>
		<title>IH61ZKA</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA&amp;diff=1250"/>
		<updated>2026-10-13T14:39:39Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism”}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム) is a 1961 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 3 of &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343, with references on pp. 344–345.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Japanese original:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH61ZKA|禅・華厳・アナキズム]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contents ==&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section1|I]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section2|II]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section3|III]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section4|IV]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section5|V]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section6|VI]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|319|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is known as the “Nishida philosophy” of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), the foremost representative of modern Japanese philosophy, was established in his 1926 essay “Place.” Although the idea of “place” (basho 場所) emerged through the concept of topos (place) found in Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotle’s De Anima, it was more fundamentally connected with the Mahāyāna Buddhist concepts of emptiness (kū 空; Sanskrit śūnyatā) and the dharma-realm (hokkai 法界; Sanskrit dharmadhātu), especially the realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge hokkai 事々無礙法界), a world of experience in which individual things and events mutually interpenetrate and mutually determine one another. In other words, Nishida’s thought was fundamentally connected with the philosophy of prajñā and Kegon philosophy. His central idea—that the mutual determination of individual things within the place of “absolute nothingness” is simultaneously the self-determination of the universal—expressed, through the mediation of the modern Western logic of the individual ego, the fundamental unity of the logical structures of prajñā emptiness and Kegon’s non-obstruction of phenomena. In essence, this philosophy should have established a metaphysical foundation for thoroughgoing freedom and equality through the Eastern logic of nothingness. It contained the possibility of establishing a philosophy of freedom that rejected all external authority (Autorität) and power (Macht), even casting off the clothing of so-called “religion.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-a&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-a|a]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-b&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-b|b]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|320|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet as imperial Japan’s wartime system expanded, and as pressure from the political Right and the military against the “liberal” tendencies of Nishida philosophy and the Kyoto School intensified, this philosophy of the place of absolute nothingness—or the philosophy of the “self-determination of facts”—gradually developed a logic that provided an ideological foundation for the Imperial Way and the “holy war.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ōya Sōichi went so far as to say that Nishida had “sold his soul to secure the safety of his body.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-2-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-2|2]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Among Nishida’s writings from this period were “The Principle of the New World Order” (1943) and “On the National Polity” (1944). The latter subsequently appeared as the fourth supplementary essay in his Philosophical Essays, was published in the journal Tetsugaku kenkyū 哲学研究, and was included in the Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō. The former, however, was not included in the collected works.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-3-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-3|3]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, the logic of place, or the philosophy of the non-obstruction of phenomena, should not have provided a foundation for the Imperial Way. On the contrary, it should have provided a foundation for anarchism. In my essay “The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō” (published in Shisō 思想, January 1959, and reprinted in the present volume), I wrote the following in its conclusion:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The place of absolute nothingness, the dialectical universal, forms the principle of world-formation through its self-conscious determination. This principle and the Imperial Way constitute an absolute contradiction that cannot be reconciled. Within the sphere of objectifying logic, the two assert themselves against and mutually exclude one another by their very nature. If the Imperial Way were genuinely to become subjective beyond the domain of objectifying logic, then, in the very process of becoming subjective, it would have no alternative but to dissolve itself by negating those accidental, particular, and irrational elements that constitute its essential nature. In the process of fully realising itself as subject, the Imperial Way must relinquish the ego. It loses itself by returning to the place of absolute nothingness, the true historical world. Conversely, the logic of the place of absolute nothingness—the logic of the predicate—is something that fundamentally negates the Imperial Way conceived as subject. Nishida’s “theology of the logic of place” should not have provided a foundation for Japan’s founding mythology and the politico-religious philosophy of the eternal imperial order. Rather, it should have furnished a logical system that brought these to an end. Likewise—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|321|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and, contrary to what happened in Nishida’s own case, it should have been a philosophical system that regarded even national morality as fundamentally illusory (koke 虚仮). As a philosophy of place, in which absolutely free individuals are mediated by a universal that mediates without any mediating entity, this system should have provided the foundation for a democratic association of free individuals in the deepest sense. It should have demanded that the Imperial Way shed its former character, anticipated the disappearance of the state, and provided the foundation and promise of a community without coercive power. The logic of the predicate began with Nishida the philosopher, only to founder in Nishida the imperial subject.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to Nishida, the actual world must be a world of individuals—I, you, and others. An individual might initially be understood as a determination of the universal, such as existence or living beings. By adding specific differences to what is universal, proceeding through successive classifications, and finally passing beyond them, one might conceive of the individual as a limiting point. Yet an individual conceived in this manner is not a genuine individual. Such an individual can never escape being merely a part of the universal. The individual must determine itself.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-4-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-4|4]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Only something that determines itself—that is, something that becomes conscious of itself, forms itself, and chooses for itself—can truly be called an independent individual. Yet an individual can determine itself only in relation to other individuals. I exist as myself in relation to you, just as you exist as yourself in relation to me. “An individual must be conceived as standing in relation to another individual. It is only through standing in relation to another individual that an individual can be conceived as such. It is impossible to conceive of a single individual existing alone. For mutually independent things to stand in relation to one another is precisely what it means for things to act upon one another. […] For mutually independent things to enter into relations, some form of mediation must be conceived between them.” (Emphasis added by Ichikawa.)&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-5-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-5|5]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; If this mediator were some universal that unified the individuals—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|322|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—then that universal would itself amount to another individual, and the independence of the original individuals would necessarily be lost. (It would be rather like two people who could meet only in the presence of a guardian.) Behind individual beings there is no overarching universal that encompasses them. What mediates independent individuals cannot be some positive, substantial universal. Rather, it must be a dialectical universal understood as the determination of the place of nothingness. Within the place of absolute nothingness, individuals engage with and cooperate with one another while remaining genuinely independent. I remain entirely myself, and you remain entirely yourself; yet at the same time I am you, and you are me. Each is an autonomous, self-governing existence possessing an irreplaceable individuality, yet each may freely become subject or object in relation to the other, working and cooperating together. This is how the world of historical reality must truly be constituted. Borrowing a term from Kegon philosophy, Nishida calls this world of existential encounter and interconnection the “realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena” (jiji muge no sekai 事々無礙の世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The logic of the place of absolute nothingness, which makes possible free and autonomous interaction and cooperation among independent, individual existences—this was, so to speak, the fundamental logic of Nishida’s social philosophy or philosophy of the world.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consequently, what should follow from this logic is a society of genuinely autonomous and free individuals, liberated from attachment to the ego and its objects. Such a society would not merely be free of domination through force; it would be a freely associated human community in which there was no place even for “authority” understood as power disguised in ethical clothing.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet this open conception of the world, grounded in the logic of place and the Zen–Kegon understanding of emptiness and the non-obstruction of phenomena, was constrained and distorted by Nishida’s samurai sensibilities, his position within the academic establishment, and the circumstances of imperialist Japan. Its possibilities were deformed until it descended into the Theory of the National Polity and The Principle of the New World Order. And this was the same course that Japanese Buddhism generally followed at the time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|323|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎, one of the leading Buddhist scholars of modern Japan—supervising editor of the Taishō Revised Tripiṭaka, professor emeritus at Tokyo Imperial University, and recipient of the fourth Order of Culture (Nishida received the second)—argued in “The Principle of Totality in Buddhism” that Mahāyāna Buddhist logic and ethics were, from the beginning, totalitarian. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-6-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-6|6]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; According to Takakusu, the logical structure of this totalitarianism is expressed in Kegon thought through the doctrine of the Four Dharma-Realms (shihokkai 四法界), culminating in the fourth, the Realm of the Non-Obstruction of Phenomena (jiji muge hokkai 事々無礙法界). He maintained that, with the World War as its turning point, the world had begun moving toward totalitarianism: “Today even Westerners are beginning to practise totalitarianism, whereas the Japanese have actually practised it since ancient times. Through Japan’s Yamato totalitarianism, we can provide a model for the world. Through Buddhism’s principle of totality, we can guide the world. […] Japan as it actually exists must be governed through the Imperial Way. It is truly gratifying that the Kegon principle of totality should be put into practice. […] However excellent Buddhism may be, there must be no attempt to regard it as a form of government through the Buddhist Way existing alongside Japan’s government through the Imperial Way.” Takakusu concluded: “We now find ourselves in the midst of the National Spiritual Mobilization campaign, at a time when the Japanese spirit must be manifested in its totality. […] We should fully appreciate the true meaning of Kegon and undertake service to the nation without the slightest disorder and without a trace of selfishness. All people should forget themselves, relinquish themselves, and devote themselves to national affairs. We should realise the truth that the sage has no self, yet there is nothing that is not the self.” The Kegon scholar Kamekawa Kyōshin 亀川教信, in his essay “The Structure of Dependent Origination” (Engi no kōzō 縁起の構造), &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-7-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-7|7]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; and Yamagami Kaizen 山上戒全, in his essay “Kegon” 華厳, &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-8-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-8|8]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; developed interpretations of Kegon thought along similar lines. The Zen scholar Nakane Kandō 中根環堂, in “Totalitarianism and Zen” (Zentaishugi to Zen 全体主義と禅), &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-9-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-9|9]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; argued that Japan’s national polity was not the flat, horizontal totalitarianism of the West. Rather, its principle of one emperor and all his subjects constituted a three-dimensional, organic unity, in which affection resembled the relationship between father and child, while duty preserved the proper distinctions between ruler and subject. Underlying this hierarchical unity, he maintained, was the Kegon philosophy of “one is many, and many are one” (ichi soku ta, ta soku ichi 一即多・多即一). The path to fully realising this unity was seated meditation. Through grasping the essence of zazen—“thinking from the standpoint of nonthinking”—one could accomplish the sacred imperial undertaking of bringing the world under one roof (hakkō ichiu 八紘一宇). The lectures on “The Problem of Japanese Culture” given by Nishida at Kyoto Imperial University’s Monday lecture series in 1938—&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-c&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-c|c]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|324|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and Kōyama Iwao’s subsequent lectures on “Cultural Typology” likewise sought to contribute to the construction of a “New Order in East Asia” by invoking the Kegon logic of phenomena.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet all these attempts were nothing other than distortions of Kegon philosophy and Zen thought. Let us return once more to Takakusu for an example.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In his Commentary on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Kegongyō tangenki 華厳経探玄記), Fazang (Hōzō 法蔵, 643–712), the third patriarch of the Chinese Huayan school, classifies the infinite mutual identity and interpenetration of phenomena within the world of experience into ten categories, known as the “Ten Profound Forms of Dependent Origination” (jūgen engi 十玄縁起). The tenth is called the “Gate of the Complete Illumination and Possession of Virtues by Principal and Companion” (shuhan enmyō gutokumon 主伴円明具徳門). The countless phenomena of the experiential world alternately become principal and companion, forming an endlessly interconnected symbolic world. If one phenomenon is taken as principal, all the others become its companions and are subordinated to it. But if another is selected as principal, all the remaining phenomena—including the one formerly taken as principal—become its companions and are encompassed by it. This is the principle of the complete illumination and possession of virtues by principal and companion. Takakusu paraphrases the doctrine in concrete terms: “Both principal and companion should work together harmoniously and openly, those above and below acting with one heart. Totalitarianism means that parent and child do not oppose one another but join forces and work together. If this cannot be accomplished, it is not totalitarianism. […] When similar things come together, one becomes their centre and principal. We may therefore apply this to the actual relationship of one emperor and all his subjects.” He also declared: “Our country has been totalitarian since the very beginning of its founding. […] Through the Meiji Restoration, it returned to its original totalitarianism.” And further: “We Japanese, who already possess the principle of totality in our actual national existence, are bringing the vision of Kegon’s one true dharma-realm into reality. This is something truly precious.” Takakusu thus maintains that the truths of the non-obstruction of phenomena, the completeness of principal and companion, and the identity of one with all and all with one are already realised within the system of one emperor and all his subjects—a system that regards democracy as contrary to the national polity and rests upon an authoritarian, status-based morality. This is a typical example of philosophy placed at the service of the authorities.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-d&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-d|d]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|325|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The condition of Japanese Buddhism described above had already taken root in the period of the Taika reforms. Leaving aside for the moment the earlier circumstances of state Buddhism in China, the new government, established through the reforms of 646, eventually undertook the construction of the Great Buddha Hall at Tōdaiji. It enshrined Vairocana Buddha there and established provincial monasteries and nunneries throughout the country, where scriptures for the protection of the state were to be recited. In this way, temples, monks, and nuns came under the control of state authority.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Immediately after Japan’s defeat, Suzuki Daisetsu, in “The Construction of a Spiritual Japan” (September 1946), argued that a new Japan must be constructed upon the principle of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm (hokkai engi 法界縁起) found in Kegon philosophy.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To place the emperor above the people is a symbol of the will to power. […] Rather, the emperor should possess a quality of immanence, becoming interconnected with the people in endlessly overlapping relationships. […] Just as the entire world should constitute a dharma-realm mandala of nations, so within Japan itself, the emperor and the people must become a single whole in which phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. Only then will a spiritual Japan become possible.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If we express this schematically, Japan up to the present has resembled Figure 1. Although there appears to be a connection between those above and those below, it can be severed at any point along the way. Before the wishes of those above reach those below, they must pass through military cliques, bureaucrats, and financial interests. Those below have no clear idea where these directives originate. Moreover, the people themselves have no direct connections with one another. […] They do not know how to think for themselves—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure1.png|thumb|360px|Figure 1. Suzuki Daisetsu’s diagram of hierarchical relations in prewar Japan (reproduced by Ichikawa, p. 325).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|326|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—[…] All that was demanded of them was reverent obedience to imperial commands. […] The system of one emperor and all his subjects symbolises the will to power on the one hand and, on the other, extinguishes the autonomy of individual citizens.” (pp. 158–159)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki goes on to describe the dharma-realm mandala that ought to be constructed by the emperor and the people. Although the passage is lengthy, I shall quote it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the emperor descends from the Plain of High Heaven and joins ordinary human beings upon this earth, the people, for their part, must abandon their servile sense of inferiority. […] They must establish their own autonomy and recognise fully that nothing can replace the value of individual personality.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“They must understand that respecting oneself is also the basis for respecting others. Each individual is complete in themselves, and at the same time all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. […] Because each is complete, all are non-obstructing; because all are non-obstructing, each is complete.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The political form of Japan as a dharma-realm mandala may be represented schematically in Figure 2. A, B, C, and so forth represent the people, the countless inhabitants of the nation. Yet each is an individual, a monad capable of autonomous action, thought, and sensation.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-e&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-e|e]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Each is complete in themselves. Each is an independent and free personality. Precisely for this reason, each enters into inexhaustibly interconnected relationships with others. These monads have thrown their windows wide open, sharing their own light with others while receiving the light of others in return.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-f&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-f|f]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The chords and straight lines within the circle represent communication, reciprocal interaction, and mutual interpenetration among the monads.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure2.png|thumb|360px|Figure 2. Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala: A–H represent individuals, while S at the centre represents the emperor (reproduced by Ichikawa, p. 326).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|327|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The S at the centre is an inward reflection of that which comprehensively encompasses the surrounding A, B, C, and so forth from without. A, B, C, D, and the others are each independent, yet each possesses totality. Accordingly, A, B, C, and D are joined by curved lines to form a great circle. This great circle, just as it is, represents each individual monad, each individual ‘blade of grass’ among the people. To express this meaning, it is concentrated and reflected in the small circle at the centre.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The great circle encompasses the people as a whole, but merely saying that it encompasses them does not provide anything concrete that can be pointed to. For this reason I have placed S at the centre. S is none other than the emperor, the centre of the national polity. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It might seem possible to remove S from the great circle surrounding it and place it above. But doing so would introduce a considerable danger that the will to power and a dualistic conception would reappear. The feudal mentality would inevitably be reproduced. Moreover, placing S within the circle should serve to strengthen the unity of the circle itself. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“As Japanese and as East Asians, we must establish a new national polity through our own autonomy, freedom, and constructive vision. Needless to say, its establishment must be spiritual through and through; it must be built upon spiritual awakening. Only then can it attain universality. Only then can something emerge from among us that will contribute to the advancement of world spiritual culture and to the various institutions of practical life.” (pp. 160–163)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This work by Suzuki may be regarded as the foremost postwar document in which a Buddhist thinker sought, with enthusiasm and sincerity, to envision a new political order for Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As is already clear, there is a fundamental distance and difference between Takakusu’s wartime interpretation and Suzuki’s postwar interpretation of the Kegon doctrine of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm, understood in relation to the realities of Japan. (We should pay particular attention to Suzuki’s insistence that the new order must be built upon spiritual awakening through and through.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s case, we may wonder whether, had he lived into the postwar period, he would have recognised the need to revise his earlier interpretation. In Suzuki’s case, we might ask whether truth acquires its illumination—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|328|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and power precisely when it is spoken at a time when speaking it is both necessary and difficult. Nevertheless, judging from what we have before us, we cannot avoid concluding that Suzuki’s interpretation is the one that truly brings the meaning of Kegon thought to life in contemporary Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s and Suzuki’s interpretations, the position of the emperor differs in the way represented by the two diagrams discussed above. At the same time, this difference in position may also reflect a difference in the position of Vairocana Buddha, the prototype of the emperor’s position.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s account, we find the following statement:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In Kegon terms, the great Vairocana Buddha at the centre is active. All the attendant beings of the outer Vajra circle are active as well. The great mandala of the total mobilisation of principal and companion is manifested. This is the phenomenal manifestation of the dependent origination of the Kegon dharma-realm—the manifestation of the true dharma-realm.” (pp. 251–252)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki, on the other hand, argues:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the original form of Japan’s national polity is understood in this way, the sequence of ideas suggested by expressions such as ‘the benevolence of the sovereign’ and ‘the light of the imperial reign’ acquires a different meaning from that traditionally attached to them. ‘Benevolence’ will no longer be associated with power, but will instead become something characterised by reciprocity. Nor will ‘light’ be something that shines only from above. Rather, it will signify the reciprocal illumination of the original light possessed by each individual.” (p. 164)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet neither account clarifies the most fundamental issue: the internal and logical relationship between Vairocana Buddha and the emperor (in Suzuki’s case, the emperor understood as a human being).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Since Takakusu asserts government through the Imperial Way while refusing to recognise government through the Buddhist Way, he must explain what logic he adopts in relation to the doctrine of original ground and manifest traces (honji suijaku 本地垂迹).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki speaks of the “benevolence of the sovereign,” meaning the emperor’s benevolence. But what, concretely, does that benevolence signify? Similarly, when he says that “light” does not come only from above, what exactly is the “light that comes from above”? Is there still an “above” within Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala? If so, what does that position represent? Is it a position above others occupied by the emperor as a human being? These questions remain unanswered.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki maintains that his dharma-realm possesses universality. But can a logic and an ethics that permanently place a single human being belonging to one particular hereditary lineage at the centre of the world genuinely claim universality?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Blood,” as something irrational and contingent,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|329|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—can it be assigned a particular cosmic and ethical significance from the standpoint of the Buddhist Dharma, or indeed from the standpoint of universal ethics?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki writes: “The unbroken imperial line will become something for which we should stake our lives when it is understood in the following way: the perpetuity of the imperial lineage symbolises the perpetuity of the ideals cherished by the Japanese people.” (p. 165)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The “ideals” mentioned here presumably refer to what Suzuki calls the “construction of a spiritual Japan.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Leaving aside for the moment the question of who actually risked their lives to reject imperialist Japan and construct a spiritual Japan, why should the perpetuity of these ideals require a particular human being belonging to a particular hereditary lineage? What would happen if that individual, exercising their fundamental human rights, refused to serve as such a symbol? And what should peoples without such a symbol do?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Even if the emperor occupied the position proposed by Suzuki, so long as the unbroken hereditary imperial line is recognised—that is, so long as some form of the emperor system is recognised—and so long as universality is claimed for this system, does its logic not contain the possibility of developing into a new version of the doctrine of “eight corners of the world under one roof” (hakkō ichiu 八紘一宇)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If the logic of Kegon’s dependent origination of the dharma-realm were pursued consistently, carrying Suzuki’s interpretation to its ultimate conclusion beyond Takakusu’s, would not even a “democratic” emperor system headed by a human emperor lose its logical foundation? And would not the very structure of meaning represented in Suzuki’s second diagram consequently undergo a fundamental transformation?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, despite these questions, Suzuki’s interpretation emphasises “the value of the individual as a morally free person, as a spiritual existence, and as an independently autonomous being who cannot be reduced to an antlike mass under the vague designation of ‘totalitarianism’” (p. 142).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki also rejects the principle of domination through force:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“There should be no power standing outside the dharma-realm. To suppose that an organisation cannot be sustained without such power is to fail to recognise the irrationality of seeking it outside itself. The dharma-realm is already a complete organisation in itself. The power that organises it is originally inherent within the organisation itself. When this power is sought outside, what exists within becomes distorted and is diverted in an unintended direction. […]”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|330|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—The construction of a spiritual Japanese state must not take power as its fundamental principle. It must be a faithful reflection in our actual lives of the realm in which all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing.” (pp. 153–154)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Let us pay particular attention to Suzuki’s observation that the dharma-realm is already a complete organisation and that the power necessary to organise it is inherent within the organisation itself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This recalls the anarchist idea of free association. Viewed politically, it may be understood as suggesting anarchism as the form of a new human society embodying the Kegon world of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon dharma-realm, grounded in the rejection of both the principle of coercive power and the principle of private ownership, may be described as a world of Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.)—although Suzuki, it seems to me, has never addressed the question of private ownership.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-g&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-g|g]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon (1809–1865), who envisaged the perfected form of society as a “unity of order and anarchy,” proposed a conception that, at least in this respect, may be applied directly to Kegon’s Lotus Treasury World (renge zō sekai 蓮華蔵世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The traditional position of Japanese Zen was that State Shinto and the Buddha-Dharma were fundamentally one. The Edo-period Zen master Tōrei Enji 東嶺円慈 (1721–1792) explained it as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Fundamentally, ‘kami’ means mind. When the impurities of the mind have been completely extinguished and it becomes as clear as a mirror, this is called kami. Thus, the Way of the kami takes the mirror as the representation of its essential nature.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The mirror of the mind is originally pure, eternally abiding, and serenely still: this is called Kuni-no-Tokotachi-no-Mikoto 国常立尊. The mirror of the mind is originally perfectly luminous, and there is nothing that it does not reveal: this is called Amaterasu Ōmikami 天照大神. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“One should understand that the Way of the kami and the Buddha-Dharma share the same underlying principle. They are nothing other than the single Dharma of seeing one’s nature.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-10-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-10|10]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The same position was held by Tōrei’s teacher, Hakuin Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1685–1768). The Meiji-period Zen master Imakita Kōsen 今北洪川 (1816–1892) likewise expressed this understanding:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In our country there is the Way of imperial sovereignty. This is the great Way of the ancestral deity and the true teaching of rulers. Its transmission has continued from the distant past, with the imperial descendants forming a single unbroken lineage, into which no other family has entered. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“This is what makes our imperial Way uniquely distinguished among all the nations of the world.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-11-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-11|11]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|331|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—A true man of our imperial nation must first establish firmly within himself the pillar of the Japanese spirit, which neither fire can burn nor water drown. Once he has suddenly penetrated through to realisation, there will be nothing deficient in his ability to judge and uphold the Imperial Way.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Tōrei’s interpretation lacks any logic capable of grounding, from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma, the unbroken imperial lineage that constitutes the core of State Shinto. It remains entirely unclear how the fundamental Buddhist principle that “all conditioned things are impermanent” (shogyō mujō 諸行無常) could be reconciled with Shinto’s assertion that the imperial throne will endure as long as heaven and earth. The same applies to Imakita Kōsen. Indeed, among Japanese Zen masters from Kokan Shiren (1278–1346), Hakuin, and Tenkei Denson (1648–1735) down to the present, the most fundamental questions have been almost entirely neglected. How can the kami of Shinto be identical with the fundamental subject of human existence? How can a hereditary lineage be identical with a divine lineage? And how can a religious tradition that, through monastic renunciation, takes the discontinuation of hereditary descent as a principle provide a Zen Buddhist justification for the continuity of that very descent? Hakuin, Tōrei, and virtually every other Zen practitioner have revealed a fatal weakness of vision in their understanding of Shinto.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-h&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-h|h]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is no relationship whatsoever between the eternity of Zen truth and the political and supposedly “ethical” continuity of a particular bloodline. No logic exists by which the unbroken imperial lineage—a survival from the customs of ancient peoples—can be justified from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma or Zen. Above all, the Imperial Way Zen that emerged after the Meiji Restoration represents the most extreme decadence of Zen. The only possible support for the forced identification of hereditary continuity with moral continuity seems to lie in the doctrine of karmic causation across the three times, as found in Hakuin’s “Song of Giving” (Segyōka 施行歌). Yet even this doctrine cannot establish such an identification. It can do no more than explain differences of social status and circumstances in the present life. Moreover, the doctrine itself can scarcely withstand modern criticism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the dignity of humanity, the poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) wrote: “There can be no god more sacred than yourself. And this is what the oldest and the newest myths alike ultimately mean.” (“Laws for Creation”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon, writing of human sovereignty, declared, “Every citizen is king.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-12-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-12|12]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet to identify Amaterasu Ōmikami with the fundamental subject of human existence, as Japanese Zen has done, is ultimately to negate State Shinto—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|332|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and to deny any necessary, intrinsic connection between Zen and the Japanese national polity, or between Zen and the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Does not the fact that Japanese Zen practitioners have failed to recognise and openly acknowledge this conclusion demonstrate that their Zen thinking has remained insufficiently thoroughgoing, and that they have not genuinely achieved the condition of being “independently liberated, dependent upon nothing” (dokudatsu mu’e 独脱無依; Record of Linji, Rinzairoku 臨済録)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Christian existentialist philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948), who advocated religious libertarian communism, was described by the philosopher Heinemann as a “mystical anarchist.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-13-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-13|13]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; The French philosopher Simone Weil (1909–1943), who took an interest in Eastern thought, especially Zen, and criticised Christian theology, was an anarchist who participated in the Spanish Civil War.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In my view, the social philosophy of Zen may be described as Prajñā–Śūnyatā Anarchist Communism—an anarchist communism of wisdom (hannya 般若) and emptiness (kū 空). (See my book Hannyakyō 般若経, published by San’ichi Shobō.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why is it that Western religious anarchists have resisted state power—Berdyaev, for example, became a communist under imperial Russia and was imprisoned—whereas not only do we find almost no comparable examples in Zen or Kegon Buddhism, but examples of precisely the opposite tendency are overwhelmingly numerous? Let us consider two or three circumstances that may help explain this situation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The first is the obscuring of the difference in level between the world of experiential reality and the world of ordinary empirical experience, between the world of selfless intuitive action and the actual world of the empirical individual ego. This produces a “mixture or confusion of two worlds of reality.” The realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge no sekai 事々無礙の世界) belongs to the reality disclosed in the experience of prajñā. Yet this realm readily overlaps and merges with the ordinary world of empirical facts, so that the tension arising from the discontinuity between the two is never firmly established. We may recall that Nishida, the author of An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no kenkyū 善の研究), acknowledged in replying to Takahashi Satomi’s criticism that he had failed to recognise a qualitative distinction between pure experience and impure experience—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|333|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—a point that has important implications for both Zen studies and Buddhist studies. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-14-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-14|14]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The circumstances described above are connected with the fact that Buddhist practitioners have traditionally placed the emphasis of their religious training upon the attainment of peace of mind. As Nishida wrote in his diary, “Do not run after the peripheral matters of scholarship and forget the foundation of peace of mind.” Consequently, the culmination of their practice tends toward an attitude of being at home wherever one finds oneself—expressed in the saying, “Wherever one lives becomes home.” To that extent, there is a psychological tendency to beautify and rationalise the circumstances of each particular moment. Moreover, the subject of prajñā intuition is characterised as something that reflects and receives, as suggested by expressions such as “ocean-seal samādhi” (kaiin zanmai 海印三昧), “precious-mirror samādhi” (hōkyō zanmai 宝鏡三昧), and the “place of absolute nothingness” (zettai mu no basho 絶対無の場所). This characteristic corresponds to the orientation toward peace of mind described above. Even before a sustained determination to transform the surrounding environment can emerge, the practitioner has already entered the contemplative enjoyment of things. The fact that the East, characterised by what has been called “Asiatic stagnation,” has excelled in the arts of cultivation, and that much of “Zen culture” has taken an artistic form, is connected with this tendency. It is interesting that archery and martial techniques, originally intended for combat against enemies, became in times of peace the disciplines of kyūdō 弓道 and budō 武道, directed toward confronting oneself, and were subsequently internalised, intellectualised, systematised, and transformed into forms of contemplation. Everything associated with the “Way” (dō 道) has a contemplative character. In other words, it finds a place of repose within the framework of established social conventions and institutions. Affluent Buddhist practitioners enjoying leisure in periods of social stability could readily immerse themselves in the contemplative world of Kegon. Anxious Buddhists living through periods of crisis likewise entered this world of contemplation in search of peace of mind. In such a world, empirical historical reality becomes veiled by the harmonious non-obstruction of all phenomena. It is beautified and, in proportion to this beautification, accepted and rationalised.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
All phenomena in the world are said to appear within ocean-seal samādhi, mutually interpenetrating in infinitely overlapping relationships. In my view, the Lotus Treasury World (renge zō sekai 蓮華蔵世界) described in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Kegongyō 華厳経) is both a realm of reality disclosed through the active intuition of prajñā and a visionary world constituted through creative imagination around that experience. Here, however, harmonious non-obstruction refers to the actual activities of practitioners living within the rigid framework of caste society, together with the mutually non-obstructing phenomena of their visionary world. It does not mean that the raw, living reality inhabited by the masses is itself a world of harmonious—&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-i&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-i|i]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|334|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—non-obstruction. Within ocean-seal samādhi, three layers of reality must surely appear: the mutually non-obstructing facts of the practitioner’s immediate activity, the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena within an intuitive vision, and the dark reality of conflict and contradiction. It would be a mistake to paint over this three-dimensional world with a single, flat colour of harmonious non-obstruction.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In contrast, we may recall the following words of Herbert Read (1893–1968): “Religion is closely connected with art (poetry). […] During the Spanish Civil War, observers were struck by the religious fervour of the anarchists. In that country of a latent renaissance, anarchism inspired not only heroes but saints—new kinds of people who devoted their lives, through sensuous imagination and practical action, to creating a new form of human society.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-15-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-15|15]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The following criticism may be applied to the misguided realism that results from confusing worlds belonging to different levels of experience:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It is clear that Fazang’s Kegon philosophy—its doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena and of the absoluteness of phenomena mutually non-obstructing—expresses a truth that can be realised only through the fundamental intuition of ocean-seal samādhi, understood through the doctrine of the arising of phenomena from their true nature (shōki 性起). “When this becomes merely an intellectual doctrine, however, it denies the mediation of practice and turns into a facile, absolutist worldview. […] “The doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena certainly does not mean simply accepting the ‘things’ of existing reality as they are and asserting their harmony. Genuine non-obstruction among phenomena unfolds upon the foundation of religious intuition. […] “The Kegon system is a religious worldview manifested through ocean-seal samādhi. If this is forgotten, and the ‘things’ of empirical reality are accepted merely as they appear to the discriminating consciousness of ordinary people, and their harmony is then proclaimed, the result is an entirely different philosophy. “Phenomena are absolute because each constitutes part of the Lotus Treasury World. To ignore this and claim that every phenomenon possesses absolute significance amounts to affirming existing reality just as it stands. One misstep, and this becomes an unconditional affirmation of existing structures of domination and social organisation. “A philosophy of absolute affirmation can thereby become a philosophy in the service of rulers who sanction existing reality as it is.” (Kamata Shigeo 鎌田茂雄)&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-16-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-16|16]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|335|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This criticism may be said to identify correctly the errors and pathologies into which Kegon thought, and indeed Mahāyāna Buddhism more generally, have been liable to fall, and into which they have frequently fallen in practice—as, for example, in the cases of Sengzhao (384–414) and Dahui (1089–1163).&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-17-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-17|17]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The criticism emphasises the distinction between the realm of religious experience and that of ordinary empirical experience, insisting that the latter must be purified “through the practice of the bodhisattva path and vows grounded in compassion.” In this respect, it overcomes the vulgarism characteristic of Takakusu’s interpretation and, together with Suzuki’s view cited within it, rests upon an orthodox doctrinal foundation. This position might be described as a shift from the contemplative tendency found in Fazang toward the experiential orientation of Chengguan (737–839), accompanied by an emphasis on religious instruction and propagation grounded in that experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon world of the non-obstruction of phenomena is the joint product of experience and vision. It belongs to a dimension altogether different from the sphere of action in which the structural contradictions of actual class society are grasped, analysed, and practically overcome. Indeed, it is a world that can exist only within that particular dimension. It possesses neither the foundation nor the logic necessary to generate objective practice capable of overcoming the fundamental structural contradictions of the world in which we live. In this respect, there is no essential difference between Fazang and Chengguan. Even if this philosophy does not affirm mere facts or empirical reality as they stand, but instead rejects them as false and illusory, such rejection occurs entirely within subjective consciousness. It does not occur within the sphere of objective, transformative practice. Consequently, in actual historical circumstances, it amounts to a “doctrine of double truth”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-18-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-18|18]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; that affirms the existing order. There is therefore nothing surprising about Buddhists who consciously distinguish the world of prajñā experience from ordinary empirical reality nevertheless acting, in practice, as defenders of the established social system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== V ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
When Kegon thought attempts to formulate a social ethics within the actual world without overcoming the traditional characteristics and limitations examined above—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|336|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—that is, when it constructs morality through the logic of mutual identity (sōsoku 相即) and the dependent-origination logic of mutual dependence and interrelationship (sōi sōkan 相依相関), expressed in propositions such as “The principal is principal in relation to the companion, and the companion is companion in relation to the principal,” or “Mind is mind in relation to matter, and matter is matter in relation to mind”—the result will be an ethics of concord, harmony, and paternalistic benevolence.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Without capital there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no labour. At the same time, without labour there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no capital. The joint activity of capital and labour is precisely what constitutes industry. […] If those who provide wages deserve respect, then those who provide labour deserve equal respect. Indeed, neither party is simply giving something to the other; rather, industry consists of capital and labour being brought together.” (Shibusawa Eiichi) &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-19-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-19|19]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of cooperation between capital and labour expressed by this industrial capitalist is presented by a Zen practitioner in the following manner:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If one understands that self and other are originally nondual, there should be no difficulty whatsoever. Labour is the capitalist’s capital, and capital is the labourer’s labour. How, then, could conflict possibly arise?” (Iida Tōin) &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-20-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-20|20]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of harmony can also become a morality of war. A Kegon scholar writes:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In times of peace, the understanding of dependent origination provides a foundation for harmonious relations, through the recognition of the profound karmic connections that bind people inseparably together. But in times of emergency, it also manifests itself as a spirit of fearless, unobstructed struggle, enabling Japanese citizens to fulfil their responsibilities in their respective positions.” (Kamekawa Kyōshin) &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-21-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-21|21]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When every single member of the nation, embraced within the august imperial authority, rises with this sense of the completeness of principal and companion, the hundred million people are no longer limited to merely a hundred million. Rather, the hundred million simultaneously manifest a power multiplied a hundred millionfold.” (Ibid.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to this Kegon scholar, it is only through the conception of the state arising from Japanese national consciousness that the relationship between the individual and the whole can truly be perceived in its proper form, through the practical apprehension of inexhaustible dependent origination expressed as “one is all, and all is one.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-22-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-22|22]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet this very logic has found concrete expression in postwar Japan in the workers’ handbook, or “Mirror,” of Ōmi Kenshi, and has continued to produce results as a morality of worker training developed through cooperation between industrial capital and Zen. The Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren 経団連)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|337|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—supported the establishment of a Zen training centre where a recent roundtable entitled “Zen and Business” discussed the adjustment of human relations through Zen, the rationalisation of business management, and measures concerning labour. Among the statements recorded in that discussion were the following:&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-j&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-j|j]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Our most important policy, as our managing director has just explained, is first of all to bring about a complete change in the attitudes associated with student life. We want participants to examine themselves, their membership in the company, and the relationship between the individual within the company as a whole and the whole constituted through individuals. We want them to analyse themselves and then begin working with a renewed consciousness of themselves as members of the company. This is our most fundamental policy.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-23-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-23|23]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“We received some questionnaire responses saying that, although participants had expected the monks’ talks at the Zen temple to be thoroughly religious and solemn, they found them quite approachable—even including discussions of attitudes toward romantic love—and therefore very pleasant to listen to. […] If possible, we would appreciate talks that include a little of this sort of romantic interest, since they seem to be very well received.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What I wish to address here is Kamekawa’s interpretation of the “completeness of principal and companion” (shuhan gusoku 主伴具足), which is essentially the same as Takakusu’s interpretation. In this case, the relationship running from principal to companion is thoroughly one-directional and extremely concrete in its historical reality, since it provides a foundation for imperial absolutism under the Meiji Constitution. By contrast, the possibility of the companion becoming principal remains merely conceptual. In other words, this suggests that the logic of the completeness of principal and companion should not be applied to class society. In Kamekawa’s interpretation, principal and companion cannot genuinely be said to possess complete and perfect reciprocity. Even Fazang himself, who originally formulated this logic, probably did not entirely escape this danger. Kamata, in the essay discussed earlier, also takes up this problem and warns against confusing the reality of religious experience with empirical reality. Yet, as I have already pointed out, this criticism amounts to a “doctrine of double truth,” in which existing reality is denied at the level of consciousness but accepted in actual practice. An anarchist-communist society would surely provide the best expression of the complete illumination and mutual fulfilment of principal and companion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|338|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== VI ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a saying, “Kill the Buddha and kill the patriarchs” (Unmonroku 雲門録). Perhaps no tradition is as thoroughgoing as Zen in refusing to recognise externally imposed authority. The Tang-dynasty Zen master Linji Yixuan (Rinzai Gigen 臨済義玄, d. 867) emphasised the freedom of the “true person of no rank,” who “becomes master wherever one stands” and is “independently liberated, dependent on nothing.” It was in the spirit of such freedom that Danxia Tianran (Tanka Tennen 丹霞天然, 739–824) burned a Buddha image and Deshan Xuanjian (Tokusan Senkan 徳山宣鑑, 782–865) burned Buddhist scriptures. Zhaozhou Congshen (Jōshū Jūshin 趙州従諗, 778–897) declared, “I do not delight in hearing even the single word ‘Buddha.’” A king once visited Zhaozhou accompanied by his retainers, but Zhaozhou did not descend from his seat to welcome him. The following day, when the king sent an official to convey his thanks for the previous day’s reception, Zhaozhou descended from his seat and received the visitor’s greeting. When his disciples later asked why he had acted differently, Zhaozhou replied: “You would not understand. When a person of the highest rank comes, I receive him upon my meditation seat. When a person of middling rank comes, I descend from my seat to receive him. When a person of the lowest rank comes, I go outside the monastery gate to receive him. This is the custom of my house.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-24-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-24|24]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As suggested by the passage, “In the Western realm there is a land called Peace and Nourishment. […] There is no system of kingship there, nor any hierarchy of official ranks,” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-25-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-25|25]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; the future society envisioned by Buddhists may be understood as a world of anarchist communism. Kropotkin (1842–1921)&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-k&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-k|k]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; argued that our cultural achievements and the material necessities of life are the fruits of the labour of countless people extending back into the distant past. Consequently, none of us has grounds for calling them “my own.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-26-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-26|26]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Buddhists likewise understood these things as products of the endlessly interwoven activities of sentient beings: they are originally “property of the four quarters” (shihōmotsu 四方物), belonging to all sentient beings, and do not admit the possessive designation “mine” (mama-kāra). &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-27-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-27|27]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; (Nevertheless, texts such as the Brahmā’s Net Bodhisattva Precepts Sūtra already contain the notion of “property of the king.”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problems Buddhism must confront today in order to develop a social ethics or an ethics for the world are approximately as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|339|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
First, there is the problem of bringing together the recovery of Buddhism’s supranational character and the recovery of nationalism. In the expression “protection of the nation” (chingo kokka 鎮護国家), “nation” originally referred to the royal household, the territory, and the people, but its principal concern was the emperor. (In China, too, the term “state” (kokka 国家) could signify the Son of Heaven&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-28-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-28|28]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; or the imperial court&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-29-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-29|29]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;.) Consider, for example, the “Ten Secret Rites for the Protection of the Nation” (Chingo kokka no jikka hihō 鎮護国家の十箇秘法) in Japanese Tendai Buddhism. The majority concern the emperor personally, including rites for imperial enthronement, prayers concerning the emperor’s life, and precepts conferred for safe childbirth within the imperial household. In any event, because Buddhism was associated with state power from the earliest period of its development, it tended to lack a critical analysis and examination of the essential nature of political power. There was, of course, an intention to educate sovereigns so that they might govern benevolently, and this intention sometimes achieved positive results. Nevertheless, considerable suspicion of kings also existed. We find statements such as, “A monk should approach a king as though approaching a servant-master relationship” (Saddharma-smṛtyupasthāna Sūtra, Shōbōnenkyō 正法念経), and “Kings constantly increase taxation and arbitrarily punish people who have committed no offence. […] Though they see people suffering poverty and distress, they never give rise to compassion. They indulge in women without fearing the evil destinies” (Tang translation of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, Kegongyō 華厳経).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As in early Buddhism, Buddhist scriptures often regarded kings as people who inflicted harm upon the population. Kings were therefore placed alongside thieves and robbers, and among the misfortunes suffered by ordinary people—calamities of flood and fire, robbery, and wicked persons—there was also the “calamity of the king.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-30-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-30|30]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must discover a logic capable of bringing together a recognition of the evils of the state with the recovery of a legitimate nationalism, understood, for example, in terms of national independence and cooperation among peoples. In connection with this problem, we must also investigate how to reconcile the contradiction between spiritual freedom, expressed in the Record of Linji as “remaining unstained by birth and death, free to come and go” (shōji ni somazu kyojū jiyū 生死に染まず去住自由), and political and social freedom. “Without religion, the state could not exist,” declared Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-31-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-31|31]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet religion can exist without the state—although whether Zen should properly be called a “religion” is itself open to question. We have already seen how modern Japanese Zen was distorted by the state power of the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|340|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In considering the relationship between Buddhism and the state, the next question is that of class. Marx wrote: “The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas in every age. The class that constitutes the dominant material power in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual power. The class that controls the means of material production also controls the means of intellectual production. Consequently, the ideas of those who lack access to the means of intellectual production are, in general, subordinated to that class.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-32-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-32|32]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; It hardly needs explaining that the ideology of modern Japanese Zen was no exception to this general principle. Even in the process of conversion from a Japanese Zen bound by nationality under imperial Japan to a cosmopolitan Zen without national affiliation in a “cultural Japan,” this principle may have been operating to some degree. Dr. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi 久松真一, a Zen thinker internationally renowned alongside Suzuki Daisetsu, has discussed the crisis confronting the present age and the problem of world ethics. In the murderous development of atomic physics, he sees a crisis of humanism itself. He points to the unprecedented disparity between the extraordinary advances of science and the failure of morality to keep pace, insisting upon the need to strengthen our ethical capacities in order to correct this imbalance. Moreover, he maintains that such ethical capacities must not be based upon the egoism of particular nations, blocs of nations, classes, or ideologies. He therefore urges the immediate establishment of a new world ethics. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-33-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-33|33]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; This is certainly a valuable suggestion. Yet, when we reconsider the matter, is the disparity between science and ethics really a crisis of humanism or an impasse in human civilisation? The overwhelming majority of the world’s peoples, together with the majority of conscientious scientists, have repeatedly protested and resisted the murderous application of atomic power. They are not in the least guilty of ideological bias. Indeed, it is precisely this vast popular struggle for peace that has prevented a revolutionary rupture between science and morality. Those who are biased, those who expose the crisis of humanism, are none other than the “merchants of death” of monopoly capital.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How, then, does the F.A.S. Zen movement centred on Dr. Hisamatsu deal with the standpoint of class in its vow to “create superhistorical history”? Are the wisdom and power involved in this historical creation like distilled water—&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-l&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-l|l]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|341|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—colourless and transparent? How would its social ethics differ from the social ethics of Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.), which grounds itself in an Absolute?&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-m&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-m|m]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; “I can promise to be fair, but I cannot promise to be impartial,” wrote Goethe. (Ichikawa’s note: In this connection, I would draw attention to the system being developed by the materialist Umemoto Katsumi, who, in contrast to Nishida philosophy’s “active intuition” (kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観), is working out a logic of “practical intuition” (jissenteki chokkan 実践的直観) grounded in class consciousness.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problem of class is connected with the problem of human self-alienation, particularly alienation in labour. Unless Buddhism confronts this problem directly, it will be unable to develop a contemporary social ethics. This necessarily requires Buddhists to incorporate the standpoint of wage labourers into their own thinking. In other words, they must consciously adopt the standpoint of workers—human beings treated as commodities.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Alienated labour alienates (1) nature from humanity, and (2) human beings from themselves, from their own active functions and life-activity. In doing so, it alienates humanity from its species-being. […] The immediate consequence of the alienation of human beings from the products of their labour, their life-activity, and their species-being is the alienation of human beings from one another—die Entfremdung des Menschen von dem Menschen.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-34-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-34|34]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Under capitalism, even human beings become commodities. The education of young men and women amounts to investing capital in their bodies, while young people must devote themselves to the problem of how to sell themselves in the “personality market.” This is an education and morality grounded in the commodity economy, expressed through the language of adjustment and human relations. Expressions such as “human resources,” “human dock” [medical checkups], and the “Zen boom” are profoundly revealing. Someone remarked: “At the entrance there was a sign saying, ‘Look beneath your feet.’ That is the first priority. I believe this is how sound enterprises will emerge. From the standpoint of the business community, this is a cheap investment. Something like this will come back with a ten-thousandfold return.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-35-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-35|35]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|342|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Prostitution is only a particular expression of the general prostitution of the worker—allgemeine Prostitution des Arbeiters. And since prostitution constitutes a relationship that includes not only the prostitute but also the other party, whose baseness is even greater, capitalists too belong to this category.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-36-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-36|36]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I distinguish this kind of human self-alienation&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-n&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-n|n]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;, which I call horizontal alienation, from existential and religious self-alienation, or vertical estrangement. Horizontal alienation will never be overcome by the class that enjoys it as something comfortable, but only by the class that has no choice but to experience it as suffering. (This follows the same logic and psychology as the Buddhist overcoming of vertical estrangement, which begins with the contemplation of suffering.) To adopt the standpoint of wage labourers treated as commodities, and to resolve to overcome human self-alienation in labour—which is simultaneously self-alienation in capital—is precisely to adopt a standpoint of class consciousness. A merely abstract affirmation of humanity, incapable of understanding class consciousness as anything other than class egoism, misses the fundamental problem. The claim that human self-alienation can genuinely be overcome only from the standpoint of a universal human ethics—without uniting the opposing standpoints of class and humanity—rests upon the illusion that those who comfortably enjoy alienation might suddenly awaken one morning and collectively recognise it as suffering. The genuinely practical path toward overcoming alienation must instead begin by abandoning this facile sentimentalism, adopting the standpoint of those who experience alienation as suffering, and apprehending historical reality as it actually exists. This means grasping historical reality from a standpoint that unites objectivity and partisanship.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“What is at issue here is a confession, and nothing more. For humanity to have its sins forgiven, it need only proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-37-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-37|37]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|343|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-o&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-o|o]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;”—was this not what Marx accomplished through his analysis of the commodity in Capital? And might this not be the concrete content, within the field of economics, of Dōgen’s expression “to be verified by all things”? Beginning with labour-power as a commodity, one arrives, by abstracting from its capitalist determinations, at the commodity itself (the downward movement). Through scientific investigation of this commodity, one then clarifies how its inherent self-contradiction constitutes the elementary form of the class contradictions of capitalist society (the upward movement). Might not the disclosure of this circular process—understood, moreover, as an “open system” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-38-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-38|38]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;—through practical intuition constitute the social-scientific content of Nishida philosophy’s method of “becoming a thing in order to see, and becoming a thing in order to think”?’&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Today, we human beings—and Buddhist practitioners themselves—live within and are sustained by a commodity-economic society, a “world of prostitution.” This entire condition is what is meant by the “falsity of the secular world” (seken koke 世間虚仮), a world of falsehood and empty words.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Karl Löwith (1897–1973) gives an illuminating account of how even Kierkegaard, Marx’s philosophical antipode, demonstrated through the circumstances of his own life the validity of Marx’s insight into the relationship between capital and labour. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-39-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-39|39]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; On the other hand, when we attempt to realise objectively the mutual non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge 事々無礙) within an intersubjective society, we will surely have much to learn from Kropotkin’s persuasive criticisms concerning the limits of the philosophy of dependent origination. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-40-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-40|40]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What makes us conscious of the falsity of the secular world in this aspect, and inspires us to resolve to overcome it, is historical truth—the Dharma (dharma ダルマ)—proper to this sphere. For the moment, I leave aside the objectifying-logical and metaphysical dimensions of alienation. Nevertheless, we must not neglect a rigorous criticism of attempts to “empty” the objectivity of an object rather than transforming the object itself. Here, it seems to me, lies the starting point for a dialectical relationship between social ethics and social science among Buddhists.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Explanatory Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-a&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;a.&#039;&#039;&#039; Nishida’s philosophy of place. Nishida Kitarō’s 1926 essay “Place” (Basho 場所) develops the notion of a locus in which individual things are constituted through relationships and self-determination. Ichikawa argues that this philosophy’s rejection of a fixed, substantial universal ought to support freely associated individuals, rather than an emperor-centred political order. [[#ed-call-a|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-b&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;b.&#039;&#039;&#039; The four dharma-realms. In Huayan/Kegon thought these are the realm of phenomena (事法界), the realm of principle (理法界), the non-obstruction of principle and phenomena (理事無礙法界), and the non-obstruction of phenomena with one another (事事無礙法界). Ichikawa centres his political reading on the final realm, without assuming that interdependence automatically entails political equality. [[#ed-call-b|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-c&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;c.&#039;&#039;&#039; Takakusu and wartime Buddhist thought. Takakusu Junjirō (1866–1945) was a prominent Buddhist scholar associated with the Taishō canon. Ichikawa cites his “Principle of Totality in Buddhism” (「仏教の全体性原理」; Ichikawa’s source reference 6) as evidence of the use of Kegon categories to defend wartime totalitarianism. The passage documents Takakusu’s interpretation, not an uncontested meaning of Kegon doctrine. [[#ed-call-c|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-d&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;d.&#039;&#039;&#039; Principal and companion. Fazang’s “principal and companion” (shuhan 主伴) allows different phenomena to become the focus of a relationship, with the others functioning as companions. Ichikawa argues that making one hereditary sovereign permanently principal defeats the reciprocity that the doctrine is meant to express. [[#ed-call-d|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-e&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;e.&#039;&#039;&#039; Suzuki’s diagrams. Figures 1 and 2, reproduced from Suzuki Daisetsu’s postwar account, respectively depict an elevated apex with disconnected subjects and a circle of mutually related individuals. In Figure 2, S still represents the emperor. Ichikawa’s question is why even the revised, immanent arrangement requires a fixed hereditary centre. [[#ed-call-e|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-f&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;f.&#039;&#039;&#039; Monad with open windows. Suzuki reverses Leibniz’s well-known image of monads as having “no windows.” His metaphor of open windows expresses both distinct individuality and reciprocal exchange, but it does not itself settle the problem of the emperor’s status in the political whole. [[#ed-call-f|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-g&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;g.&#039;&#039;&#039; Buddhist Anarchist Communism. Ichikawa proposes Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.) as one possible political expression of Kegon interdependence, combining resistance to coercive external authority with opposition to private appropriation. Although Suzuki’s self-organising dharma-realm suggests anarchist free association, Ichikawa explicitly observes that Suzuki does not address private ownership. B.A.C. is therefore Ichikawa’s extension, not Suzuki’s own political programme. [[#ed-call-g|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-h&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;h.&#039;&#039;&#039; Zen and the imperial lineage. Ichikawa contrasts impermanence (shogyō mujō 諸行無常) with claims about the eternal imperial lineage. His objection is to making a particular hereditary institution a necessary expression of Zen insight. [[#ed-call-h|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-i&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;i.&#039;&#039;&#039; Ocean-seal samādhi. Ocean-seal samādhi (kaiin zanmai 海印三昧) evokes a comprehensive religious vision in Kegon thought. Ichikawa cautions against treating the harmony experienced or imagined in such a state as already realised in historically unequal or conflictual societies. [[#ed-call-i|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-j&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;j.&#039;&#039;&#039; Corporate Zen and industrial relations. Ichikawa refers to Zen training supported by business interests and a roundtable on “Zen and Business,” criticising the use of self-cultivation and harmony to promote managerial efficiency while leaving labour–capital inequalities intact. His printed references 23 and 35 both cite issue 70 of the journal Zen 禅 (March 1961). [[#ed-call-j|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-k&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;k.&#039;&#039;&#039; Common ownership and Kropotkin. Kropotkin’s account of wealth as the accumulated product of countless people’s labour supports Ichikawa’s criticism of exclusive appropriation. Ichikawa connects this to Buddhist language about goods belonging to the wider community, but also acknowledges traditions recognising royal ownership. Buddhist ownership terminology in the Japanese text requires final source-level verification. [[#ed-call-k|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-l&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;l.&#039;&#039;&#039; F.A.S. Zen. Associated with Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, F.A.S. refers to Formless Self, All Humankind, and Suprahistorical History. It seeks to unite awakening with universal ethical action. Ichikawa welcomes its aspirations but questions whether a standpoint claiming to transcend class and national divisions adequately addresses the material interests and historical antagonisms shaping social life. [[#ed-call-l|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-m&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;m.&#039;&#039;&#039; Moral Re-Armament. Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.) was an international moral and spiritual renewal movement. Ichikawa invokes it as a comparison when questioning whether a purportedly class-neutral universal ethics can engage specific structures of economic power. This is a comparative reference, distinct from his criticism of F.A.S. Zen. [[#ed-call-m|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-n&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;n.&#039;&#039;&#039; Horizontal and vertical alienation. Ichikawa distinguishes social and economic “horizontal alienation” from existential or religious “vertical estrangement.” Drawing on Marx’s account of alienated labour, he insists that the Buddhist encounter with suffering must also address historically specific exploitation. The two dimensions are related but not reducible to one another. [[#ed-call-n|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-o&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;o.&#039;&#039;&#039; Marx’s commodity analysis and practical intuition. Ichikawa compares Marx’s method in Capital with Nishida’s “active intuition” (kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観) and suggests a historically grounded “practical intuition” (jissenteki chokkan 実践的直観). His comparison is methodological, not an equation of Nishida’s philosophy with Marx’s critique of political economy. He insists that changing social relations cannot be replaced by inwardly “emptying” an object. [[#ed-call-o|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Original References ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Ichikawa’s printed references, pp. 344–345. Working transcription; bracketed uncertainty notices are editorial, not original. --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;1.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎の思想は、当初から体制擁護的な契機を含んでいた。拙稿「絶対無のつまづき――西田幾多郎の場合」、『思想』、一九五九年一月、本巻所収「西田幾多郎論」参照。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-2-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;2.&#039;&#039;&#039; 大宅壮一「西田幾多郎と敗北」、『文藝春秋』、一九五四年六月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-3-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;3.&#039;&#039;&#039; 政府の「大東亜宣言」の草案として、一部の者の要請によって書かれたものだが、東条首相の拒否によって採択されなかった。その全文は矢吹一夫「昭和人物秘録」の「西田幾多郎博士の大東亜戦争観」にのせられている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-4-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;4.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎『哲学の根本問題・続編』、一〇六―一〇七頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-5-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;5.&#039;&#039;&#039; 同書、一〇七頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-6-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;6.&#039;&#039;&#039; 日本諸学振興委員会、哲学講演会での講演（一九三七年）の記録。西田幾多郎「学問的方法」と共に、『文部省教学叢書』第三集（一九三八年）に収録。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-7&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-7-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;7.&#039;&#039;&#039; 大阪毎日新聞社編『日本仏教概論』、一九四二年。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-8&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-8-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;8.&#039;&#039;&#039; 東京帝大仏青編『仏教思想講座』巻三、一九三九年。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-9&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-9-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;9.&#039;&#039;&#039; 高楠順次郎、前掲論文。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-10&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-10-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;10.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『宗門無尽灯論』、流通第一〇。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-11&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-11-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;11.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅海一瀾』、岩波文庫版、三一、三四頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-12&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-12-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;12.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. J. Proudhon, Proudhon’s Solution of the Social Problem, p. 45.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-13&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-13-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;13.&#039;&#039;&#039; F. H. Heinemann, Existentialism and the Modern Predicament, p. 154.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-14&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-14-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;14.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎『思索と体験』、一一八頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-15&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-15-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;15.&#039;&#039;&#039; H. Read, The Philosophy of Anarchism, pp. 24–25.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-16&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-16-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;16.&#039;&#039;&#039; 鎌田茂雄「華厳哲学の根本的立場」、中村元編『華厳思想』所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-17&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-17-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;17.&#039;&#039;&#039; 拙著『般若経』、三一書房、六九頁、第六巻所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-18&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-18-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;18.&#039;&#039;&#039; 船山信一「明治哲学における護教主義現実主義の三つの論理」、『思想』、一九六一年一月。二重真理説はキリスト教神学の恩寵と理性、仏教の真諦と俗諦の説にみられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-19&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-19-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;19.&#039;&#039;&#039; 渋沢栄一「労働問題解決の根本義」、『社会政策時報』、一九二〇年九月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-20&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-20-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;20.&#039;&#039;&#039; 飯田欓隠『無門関鑽燧』、一九二四年十一月、一七九頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-21&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-21-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;21.&#039;&#039;&#039; 亀川教信（龍谷大学教授）『縁起の構造』、一九四四年八月、五八一、五八五頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-22&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-22-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;22.&#039;&#039;&#039; 同書、五九頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-23&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-23-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;23.&#039;&#039;&#039; 「禅と企業」、『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-24&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-24-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;24.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅苑蒙求』。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-25&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-25-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;25.&#039;&#039;&#039; 支遁「阿弥陀仏像讃並序」。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-26&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-26-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;26.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism. Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 57f.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-27&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-27-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;27.&#039;&#039;&#039; 拙著『般若経』第四章、三一書房。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-28&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-28-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;28.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『晋書』（陶侃伝）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-29&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-29-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;29.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『事物起源』、学校学事部、詞賦。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-30&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-30-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;30.&#039;&#039;&#039; 宮本正尊編『大乗仏教の成立史的研究』、三七六頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-31&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-31-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;31.&#039;&#039;&#039; M. Bakunin, Gott u. d. Staat. (Gesammelte Werke. Bd. I)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-32&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-32-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;32.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Marx, Die Deutsche Ideologie, S. 44 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus. Bd. 29)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-33&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-33-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;33.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『京都新聞』、一九六一・一・一四および『維摩七則』、一六三頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-34&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-34-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;34.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Marx, Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte, S. 103, 106 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus, Bd. 42)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-35&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-35-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;35.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-36&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-36-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;36.&#039;&#039;&#039; Marx, ibid. S. 128.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-37&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-37-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;37.&#039;&#039;&#039; 「ルーゲへの手紙」、一八四三年（『マルクス・エンゲルス選集』補巻四、一三五頁）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-38&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-38-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;38.&#039;&#039;&#039; 梯明秀『資本論への私の歩み』、一二七頁以下。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-39&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-39-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;39.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Löwith, Von Hegel zu Nietzsche. 邦訳、七〇頁以下。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-40&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-40-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &#039;&#039;&#039;40.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism, pp. 48, 56, 59, 64. P. Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, chap. I.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
Translated from Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, anakizumu” 禅・華厳・アナキズム (1961), reprinted in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 3 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343; original source references occupy pp. 344–345. The original reference numbers are retained as superscript numerals, distinct from the translator’s explanatory notes. Suzuki Daisetsu’s two diagrams are reproduced from the scanned collected edition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is a working translation. Several quotations and Japanese readings require final collation; the original reference list is reproduced below as a working transcription with linked numbering. References 23 and 35 both cite issue 70 of Zen (March 1961).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotation: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1961). “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism” (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH61ZKA-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA&amp;diff=1249</id>
		<title>IH61ZKA</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA&amp;diff=1249"/>
		<updated>2026-10-13T14:29:21Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism”}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム) is a 1961 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 3 of &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343, with references on pp. 344–345.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Japanese original:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH61ZKA|禅・華厳・アナキズム]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contents ==&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section1|I]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section2|II]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section3|III]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section4|IV]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section5|V]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section6|VI]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|319|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is known as the “Nishida philosophy” of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), the foremost representative of modern Japanese philosophy, was established in his 1926 essay “Place.” Although the idea of “place” (basho 場所) emerged through the concept of topos (place) found in Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotle’s De Anima, it was more fundamentally connected with the Mahāyāna Buddhist concepts of emptiness (kū 空; Sanskrit śūnyatā) and the dharma-realm (hokkai 法界; Sanskrit dharmadhātu), especially the realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge hokkai 事々無礙法界), a world of experience in which individual things and events mutually interpenetrate and mutually determine one another. In other words, Nishida’s thought was fundamentally connected with the philosophy of prajñā and Kegon philosophy. His central idea—that the mutual determination of individual things within the place of “absolute nothingness” is simultaneously the self-determination of the universal—expressed, through the mediation of the modern Western logic of the individual ego, the fundamental unity of the logical structures of prajñā emptiness and Kegon’s non-obstruction of phenomena. In essence, this philosophy should have established a metaphysical foundation for thoroughgoing freedom and equality through the Eastern logic of nothingness. It contained the possibility of establishing a philosophy of freedom that rejected all external authority (Autorität) and power (Macht), even casting off the clothing of so-called “religion.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-a&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-a|a]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-b&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-b|b]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|320|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet as imperial Japan’s wartime system expanded, and as pressure from the political Right and the military against the “liberal” tendencies of Nishida philosophy and the Kyoto School intensified, this philosophy of the place of absolute nothingness—or the philosophy of the “self-determination of facts”—gradually developed a logic that provided an ideological foundation for the Imperial Way and the “holy war.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ōya Sōichi went so far as to say that Nishida had “sold his soul to secure the safety of his body.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-2-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-2|2]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Among Nishida’s writings from this period were “The Principle of the New World Order” (1943) and “On the National Polity” (1944). The latter subsequently appeared as the fourth supplementary essay in his Philosophical Essays, was published in the journal Tetsugaku kenkyū 哲学研究, and was included in the Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō. The former, however, was not included in the collected works.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-3-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-3|3]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, the logic of place, or the philosophy of the non-obstruction of phenomena, should not have provided a foundation for the Imperial Way. On the contrary, it should have provided a foundation for anarchism. In my essay “The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō” (published in Shisō 思想, January 1959, and reprinted in the present volume), I wrote the following in its conclusion:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The place of absolute nothingness, the dialectical universal, forms the principle of world-formation through its self-conscious determination. This principle and the Imperial Way constitute an absolute contradiction that cannot be reconciled. Within the sphere of objectifying logic, the two assert themselves against and mutually exclude one another by their very nature. If the Imperial Way were genuinely to become subjective beyond the domain of objectifying logic, then, in the very process of becoming subjective, it would have no alternative but to dissolve itself by negating those accidental, particular, and irrational elements that constitute its essential nature. In the process of fully realising itself as subject, the Imperial Way must relinquish the ego. It loses itself by returning to the place of absolute nothingness, the true historical world. Conversely, the logic of the place of absolute nothingness—the logic of the predicate—is something that fundamentally negates the Imperial Way conceived as subject. Nishida’s “theology of the logic of place” should not have provided a foundation for Japan’s founding mythology and the politico-religious philosophy of the eternal imperial order. Rather, it should have furnished a logical system that brought these to an end. Likewise—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|321|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and, contrary to what happened in Nishida’s own case, it should have been a philosophical system that regarded even national morality as fundamentally illusory (koke 虚仮). As a philosophy of place, in which absolutely free individuals are mediated by a universal that mediates without any mediating entity, this system should have provided the foundation for a democratic association of free individuals in the deepest sense. It should have demanded that the Imperial Way shed its former character, anticipated the disappearance of the state, and provided the foundation and promise of a community without coercive power. The logic of the predicate began with Nishida the philosopher, only to founder in Nishida the imperial subject.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to Nishida, the actual world must be a world of individuals—I, you, and others. An individual might initially be understood as a determination of the universal, such as existence or living beings. By adding specific differences to what is universal, proceeding through successive classifications, and finally passing beyond them, one might conceive of the individual as a limiting point. Yet an individual conceived in this manner is not a genuine individual. Such an individual can never escape being merely a part of the universal. The individual must determine itself.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-4-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-4|4]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Only something that determines itself—that is, something that becomes conscious of itself, forms itself, and chooses for itself—can truly be called an independent individual. Yet an individual can determine itself only in relation to other individuals. I exist as myself in relation to you, just as you exist as yourself in relation to me. “An individual must be conceived as standing in relation to another individual. It is only through standing in relation to another individual that an individual can be conceived as such. It is impossible to conceive of a single individual existing alone. For mutually independent things to stand in relation to one another is precisely what it means for things to act upon one another. […] For mutually independent things to enter into relations, some form of mediation must be conceived between them.” (Emphasis added by Ichikawa.)&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-5-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-5|5]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; If this mediator were some universal that unified the individuals—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|322|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—then that universal would itself amount to another individual, and the independence of the original individuals would necessarily be lost. (It would be rather like two people who could meet only in the presence of a guardian.) Behind individual beings there is no overarching universal that encompasses them. What mediates independent individuals cannot be some positive, substantial universal. Rather, it must be a dialectical universal understood as the determination of the place of nothingness. Within the place of absolute nothingness, individuals engage with and cooperate with one another while remaining genuinely independent. I remain entirely myself, and you remain entirely yourself; yet at the same time I am you, and you are me. Each is an autonomous, self-governing existence possessing an irreplaceable individuality, yet each may freely become subject or object in relation to the other, working and cooperating together. This is how the world of historical reality must truly be constituted. Borrowing a term from Kegon philosophy, Nishida calls this world of existential encounter and interconnection the “realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena” (jiji muge no sekai 事々無礙の世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The logic of the place of absolute nothingness, which makes possible free and autonomous interaction and cooperation among independent, individual existences—this was, so to speak, the fundamental logic of Nishida’s social philosophy or philosophy of the world.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consequently, what should follow from this logic is a society of genuinely autonomous and free individuals, liberated from attachment to the ego and its objects. Such a society would not merely be free of domination through force; it would be a freely associated human community in which there was no place even for “authority” understood as power disguised in ethical clothing.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet this open conception of the world, grounded in the logic of place and the Zen–Kegon understanding of emptiness and the non-obstruction of phenomena, was constrained and distorted by Nishida’s samurai sensibilities, his position within the academic establishment, and the circumstances of imperialist Japan. Its possibilities were deformed until it descended into the Theory of the National Polity and The Principle of the New World Order. And this was the same course that Japanese Buddhism generally followed at the time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|323|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎, one of the leading Buddhist scholars of modern Japan—supervising editor of the Taishō Revised Tripiṭaka, professor emeritus at Tokyo Imperial University, and recipient of the fourth Order of Culture (Nishida received the second)—argued in “The Principle of Totality in Buddhism” that Mahāyāna Buddhist logic and ethics were, from the beginning, totalitarian. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-6-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-6|6]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; According to Takakusu, the logical structure of this totalitarianism is expressed in Kegon thought through the doctrine of the Four Dharma-Realms (shihokkai 四法界), culminating in the fourth, the Realm of the Non-Obstruction of Phenomena (jiji muge hokkai 事々無礙法界). He maintained that, with the World War as its turning point, the world had begun moving toward totalitarianism: “Today even Westerners are beginning to practise totalitarianism, whereas the Japanese have actually practised it since ancient times. Through Japan’s Yamato totalitarianism, we can provide a model for the world. Through Buddhism’s principle of totality, we can guide the world. […] Japan as it actually exists must be governed through the Imperial Way. It is truly gratifying that the Kegon principle of totality should be put into practice. […] However excellent Buddhism may be, there must be no attempt to regard it as a form of government through the Buddhist Way existing alongside Japan’s government through the Imperial Way.” Takakusu concluded: “We now find ourselves in the midst of the National Spiritual Mobilization campaign, at a time when the Japanese spirit must be manifested in its totality. […] We should fully appreciate the true meaning of Kegon and undertake service to the nation without the slightest disorder and without a trace of selfishness. All people should forget themselves, relinquish themselves, and devote themselves to national affairs. We should realise the truth that the sage has no self, yet there is nothing that is not the self.” The Kegon scholar Kamekawa Kyōshin 亀川教信, in his essay “The Structure of Dependent Origination” (Engi no kōzō 縁起の構造), &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-7-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-7|7]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; and Yamagami Kaizen 山上戒全, in his essay “Kegon” 華厳, &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-8-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-8|8]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; developed interpretations of Kegon thought along similar lines. The Zen scholar Nakane Kandō 中根環堂, in “Totalitarianism and Zen” (Zentaishugi to Zen 全体主義と禅), &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-9-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-9|9]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; argued that Japan’s national polity was not the flat, horizontal totalitarianism of the West. Rather, its principle of one emperor and all his subjects constituted a three-dimensional, organic unity, in which affection resembled the relationship between father and child, while duty preserved the proper distinctions between ruler and subject. Underlying this hierarchical unity, he maintained, was the Kegon philosophy of “one is many, and many are one” (ichi soku ta, ta soku ichi 一即多・多即一). The path to fully realising this unity was seated meditation. Through grasping the essence of zazen—“thinking from the standpoint of nonthinking”—one could accomplish the sacred imperial undertaking of bringing the world under one roof (hakkō ichiu 八紘一宇). The lectures on “The Problem of Japanese Culture” given by Nishida at Kyoto Imperial University’s Monday lecture series in 1938—&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-c&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-c|c]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|324|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and Kōyama Iwao’s subsequent lectures on “Cultural Typology” likewise sought to contribute to the construction of a “New Order in East Asia” by invoking the Kegon logic of phenomena.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet all these attempts were nothing other than distortions of Kegon philosophy and Zen thought. Let us return once more to Takakusu for an example.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In his Commentary on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Kegongyō tangenki 華厳経探玄記), Fazang (Hōzō 法蔵, 643–712), the third patriarch of the Chinese Huayan school, classifies the infinite mutual identity and interpenetration of phenomena within the world of experience into ten categories, known as the “Ten Profound Forms of Dependent Origination” (jūgen engi 十玄縁起). The tenth is called the “Gate of the Complete Illumination and Possession of Virtues by Principal and Companion” (shuhan enmyō gutokumon 主伴円明具徳門). The countless phenomena of the experiential world alternately become principal and companion, forming an endlessly interconnected symbolic world. If one phenomenon is taken as principal, all the others become its companions and are subordinated to it. But if another is selected as principal, all the remaining phenomena—including the one formerly taken as principal—become its companions and are encompassed by it. This is the principle of the complete illumination and possession of virtues by principal and companion. Takakusu paraphrases the doctrine in concrete terms: “Both principal and companion should work together harmoniously and openly, those above and below acting with one heart. Totalitarianism means that parent and child do not oppose one another but join forces and work together. If this cannot be accomplished, it is not totalitarianism. […] When similar things come together, one becomes their centre and principal. We may therefore apply this to the actual relationship of one emperor and all his subjects.” He also declared: “Our country has been totalitarian since the very beginning of its founding. […] Through the Meiji Restoration, it returned to its original totalitarianism.” And further: “We Japanese, who already possess the principle of totality in our actual national existence, are bringing the vision of Kegon’s one true dharma-realm into reality. This is something truly precious.” Takakusu thus maintains that the truths of the non-obstruction of phenomena, the completeness of principal and companion, and the identity of one with all and all with one are already realised within the system of one emperor and all his subjects—a system that regards democracy as contrary to the national polity and rests upon an authoritarian, status-based morality. This is a typical example of philosophy placed at the service of the authorities.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-d&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-d|d]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|325|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The condition of Japanese Buddhism described above had already taken root in the period of the Taika reforms. Leaving aside for the moment the earlier circumstances of state Buddhism in China, the new government, established through the reforms of 646, eventually undertook the construction of the Great Buddha Hall at Tōdaiji. It enshrined Vairocana Buddha there and established provincial monasteries and nunneries throughout the country, where scriptures for the protection of the state were to be recited. In this way, temples, monks, and nuns came under the control of state authority.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Immediately after Japan’s defeat, Suzuki Daisetsu, in “The Construction of a Spiritual Japan” (September 1946), argued that a new Japan must be constructed upon the principle of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm (hokkai engi 法界縁起) found in Kegon philosophy.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To place the emperor above the people is a symbol of the will to power. […] Rather, the emperor should possess a quality of immanence, becoming interconnected with the people in endlessly overlapping relationships. […] Just as the entire world should constitute a dharma-realm mandala of nations, so within Japan itself, the emperor and the people must become a single whole in which phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. Only then will a spiritual Japan become possible.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If we express this schematically, Japan up to the present has resembled Figure 1. Although there appears to be a connection between those above and those below, it can be severed at any point along the way. Before the wishes of those above reach those below, they must pass through military cliques, bureaucrats, and financial interests. Those below have no clear idea where these directives originate. Moreover, the people themselves have no direct connections with one another. […] They do not know how to think for themselves—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure1.png|thumb|360px|Figure 1. Suzuki Daisetsu’s diagram of hierarchical relations in prewar Japan (reproduced by Ichikawa, p. 325).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|326|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—[…] All that was demanded of them was reverent obedience to imperial commands. […] The system of one emperor and all his subjects symbolises the will to power on the one hand and, on the other, extinguishes the autonomy of individual citizens.” (pp. 158–159)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki goes on to describe the dharma-realm mandala that ought to be constructed by the emperor and the people. Although the passage is lengthy, I shall quote it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the emperor descends from the Plain of High Heaven and joins ordinary human beings upon this earth, the people, for their part, must abandon their servile sense of inferiority. […] They must establish their own autonomy and recognise fully that nothing can replace the value of individual personality.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“They must understand that respecting oneself is also the basis for respecting others. Each individual is complete in themselves, and at the same time all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. […] Because each is complete, all are non-obstructing; because all are non-obstructing, each is complete.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The political form of Japan as a dharma-realm mandala may be represented schematically in Figure 2. A, B, C, and so forth represent the people, the countless inhabitants of the nation. Yet each is an individual, a monad capable of autonomous action, thought, and sensation.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-e&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-e|e]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Each is complete in themselves. Each is an independent and free personality. Precisely for this reason, each enters into inexhaustibly interconnected relationships with others. These monads have thrown their windows wide open, sharing their own light with others while receiving the light of others in return.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-f&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-f|f]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The chords and straight lines within the circle represent communication, reciprocal interaction, and mutual interpenetration among the monads.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure2.png|thumb|360px|Figure 2. Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala: A–H represent individuals, while S at the centre represents the emperor (reproduced by Ichikawa, p. 326).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|327|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The S at the centre is an inward reflection of that which comprehensively encompasses the surrounding A, B, C, and so forth from without. A, B, C, D, and the others are each independent, yet each possesses totality. Accordingly, A, B, C, and D are joined by curved lines to form a great circle. This great circle, just as it is, represents each individual monad, each individual ‘blade of grass’ among the people. To express this meaning, it is concentrated and reflected in the small circle at the centre.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The great circle encompasses the people as a whole, but merely saying that it encompasses them does not provide anything concrete that can be pointed to. For this reason I have placed S at the centre. S is none other than the emperor, the centre of the national polity. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It might seem possible to remove S from the great circle surrounding it and place it above. But doing so would introduce a considerable danger that the will to power and a dualistic conception would reappear. The feudal mentality would inevitably be reproduced. Moreover, placing S within the circle should serve to strengthen the unity of the circle itself. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“As Japanese and as East Asians, we must establish a new national polity through our own autonomy, freedom, and constructive vision. Needless to say, its establishment must be spiritual through and through; it must be built upon spiritual awakening. Only then can it attain universality. Only then can something emerge from among us that will contribute to the advancement of world spiritual culture and to the various institutions of practical life.” (pp. 160–163)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This work by Suzuki may be regarded as the foremost postwar document in which a Buddhist thinker sought, with enthusiasm and sincerity, to envision a new political order for Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As is already clear, there is a fundamental distance and difference between Takakusu’s wartime interpretation and Suzuki’s postwar interpretation of the Kegon doctrine of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm, understood in relation to the realities of Japan. (We should pay particular attention to Suzuki’s insistence that the new order must be built upon spiritual awakening through and through.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s case, we may wonder whether, had he lived into the postwar period, he would have recognised the need to revise his earlier interpretation. In Suzuki’s case, we might ask whether truth acquires its illumination—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|328|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and power precisely when it is spoken at a time when speaking it is both necessary and difficult. Nevertheless, judging from what we have before us, we cannot avoid concluding that Suzuki’s interpretation is the one that truly brings the meaning of Kegon thought to life in contemporary Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s and Suzuki’s interpretations, the position of the emperor differs in the way represented by the two diagrams discussed above. At the same time, this difference in position may also reflect a difference in the position of Vairocana Buddha, the prototype of the emperor’s position.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s account, we find the following statement:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In Kegon terms, the great Vairocana Buddha at the centre is active. All the attendant beings of the outer Vajra circle are active as well. The great mandala of the total mobilisation of principal and companion is manifested. This is the phenomenal manifestation of the dependent origination of the Kegon dharma-realm—the manifestation of the true dharma-realm.” (pp. 251–252)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki, on the other hand, argues:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the original form of Japan’s national polity is understood in this way, the sequence of ideas suggested by expressions such as ‘the benevolence of the sovereign’ and ‘the light of the imperial reign’ acquires a different meaning from that traditionally attached to them. ‘Benevolence’ will no longer be associated with power, but will instead become something characterised by reciprocity. Nor will ‘light’ be something that shines only from above. Rather, it will signify the reciprocal illumination of the original light possessed by each individual.” (p. 164)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet neither account clarifies the most fundamental issue: the internal and logical relationship between Vairocana Buddha and the emperor (in Suzuki’s case, the emperor understood as a human being).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Since Takakusu asserts government through the Imperial Way while refusing to recognise government through the Buddhist Way, he must explain what logic he adopts in relation to the doctrine of original ground and manifest traces (honji suijaku 本地垂迹).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki speaks of the “benevolence of the sovereign,” meaning the emperor’s benevolence. But what, concretely, does that benevolence signify? Similarly, when he says that “light” does not come only from above, what exactly is the “light that comes from above”? Is there still an “above” within Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala? If so, what does that position represent? Is it a position above others occupied by the emperor as a human being? These questions remain unanswered.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki maintains that his dharma-realm possesses universality. But can a logic and an ethics that permanently place a single human being belonging to one particular hereditary lineage at the centre of the world genuinely claim universality?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Blood,” as something irrational and contingent,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|329|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—can it be assigned a particular cosmic and ethical significance from the standpoint of the Buddhist Dharma, or indeed from the standpoint of universal ethics?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki writes: “The unbroken imperial line will become something for which we should stake our lives when it is understood in the following way: the perpetuity of the imperial lineage symbolises the perpetuity of the ideals cherished by the Japanese people.” (p. 165)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The “ideals” mentioned here presumably refer to what Suzuki calls the “construction of a spiritual Japan.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Leaving aside for the moment the question of who actually risked their lives to reject imperialist Japan and construct a spiritual Japan, why should the perpetuity of these ideals require a particular human being belonging to a particular hereditary lineage? What would happen if that individual, exercising their fundamental human rights, refused to serve as such a symbol? And what should peoples without such a symbol do?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Even if the emperor occupied the position proposed by Suzuki, so long as the unbroken hereditary imperial line is recognised—that is, so long as some form of the emperor system is recognised—and so long as universality is claimed for this system, does its logic not contain the possibility of developing into a new version of the doctrine of “eight corners of the world under one roof” (hakkō ichiu 八紘一宇)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If the logic of Kegon’s dependent origination of the dharma-realm were pursued consistently, carrying Suzuki’s interpretation to its ultimate conclusion beyond Takakusu’s, would not even a “democratic” emperor system headed by a human emperor lose its logical foundation? And would not the very structure of meaning represented in Suzuki’s second diagram consequently undergo a fundamental transformation?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, despite these questions, Suzuki’s interpretation emphasises “the value of the individual as a morally free person, as a spiritual existence, and as an independently autonomous being who cannot be reduced to an antlike mass under the vague designation of ‘totalitarianism’” (p. 142).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki also rejects the principle of domination through force:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“There should be no power standing outside the dharma-realm. To suppose that an organisation cannot be sustained without such power is to fail to recognise the irrationality of seeking it outside itself. The dharma-realm is already a complete organisation in itself. The power that organises it is originally inherent within the organisation itself. When this power is sought outside, what exists within becomes distorted and is diverted in an unintended direction. […]”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|330|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—The construction of a spiritual Japanese state must not take power as its fundamental principle. It must be a faithful reflection in our actual lives of the realm in which all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing.” (pp. 153–154)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Let us pay particular attention to Suzuki’s observation that the dharma-realm is already a complete organisation and that the power necessary to organise it is inherent within the organisation itself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This recalls the anarchist idea of free association. Viewed politically, it may be understood as suggesting anarchism as the form of a new human society embodying the Kegon world of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon dharma-realm, grounded in the rejection of both the principle of coercive power and the principle of private ownership, may be described as a world of Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.)—although Suzuki, it seems to me, has never addressed the question of private ownership.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-g&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-g|g]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon (1809–1865), who envisaged the perfected form of society as a “unity of order and anarchy,” proposed a conception that, at least in this respect, may be applied directly to Kegon’s Lotus Treasury World (renge zō sekai 蓮華蔵世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The traditional position of Japanese Zen was that State Shinto and the Buddha-Dharma were fundamentally one. The Edo-period Zen master Tōrei Enji 東嶺円慈 (1721–1792) explained it as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Fundamentally, ‘kami’ means mind. When the impurities of the mind have been completely extinguished and it becomes as clear as a mirror, this is called kami. Thus, the Way of the kami takes the mirror as the representation of its essential nature.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The mirror of the mind is originally pure, eternally abiding, and serenely still: this is called Kuni-no-Tokotachi-no-Mikoto 国常立尊. The mirror of the mind is originally perfectly luminous, and there is nothing that it does not reveal: this is called Amaterasu Ōmikami 天照大神. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“One should understand that the Way of the kami and the Buddha-Dharma share the same underlying principle. They are nothing other than the single Dharma of seeing one’s nature.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-10-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-10|10]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The same position was held by Tōrei’s teacher, Hakuin Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1685–1768). The Meiji-period Zen master Imakita Kōsen 今北洪川 (1816–1892) likewise expressed this understanding:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In our country there is the Way of imperial sovereignty. This is the great Way of the ancestral deity and the true teaching of rulers. Its transmission has continued from the distant past, with the imperial descendants forming a single unbroken lineage, into which no other family has entered. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“This is what makes our imperial Way uniquely distinguished among all the nations of the world.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-11-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-11|11]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|331|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—A true man of our imperial nation must first establish firmly within himself the pillar of the Japanese spirit, which neither fire can burn nor water drown. Once he has suddenly penetrated through to realisation, there will be nothing deficient in his ability to judge and uphold the Imperial Way.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Tōrei’s interpretation lacks any logic capable of grounding, from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma, the unbroken imperial lineage that constitutes the core of State Shinto. It remains entirely unclear how the fundamental Buddhist principle that “all conditioned things are impermanent” (shogyō mujō 諸行無常) could be reconciled with Shinto’s assertion that the imperial throne will endure as long as heaven and earth. The same applies to Imakita Kōsen. Indeed, among Japanese Zen masters from Kokan Shiren (1278–1346), Hakuin, and Tenkei Denson (1648–1735) down to the present, the most fundamental questions have been almost entirely neglected. How can the kami of Shinto be identical with the fundamental subject of human existence? How can a hereditary lineage be identical with a divine lineage? And how can a religious tradition that, through monastic renunciation, takes the discontinuation of hereditary descent as a principle provide a Zen Buddhist justification for the continuity of that very descent? Hakuin, Tōrei, and virtually every other Zen practitioner have revealed a fatal weakness of vision in their understanding of Shinto.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-h&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-h|h]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is no relationship whatsoever between the eternity of Zen truth and the political and supposedly “ethical” continuity of a particular bloodline. No logic exists by which the unbroken imperial lineage—a survival from the customs of ancient peoples—can be justified from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma or Zen. Above all, the Imperial Way Zen that emerged after the Meiji Restoration represents the most extreme decadence of Zen. The only possible support for the forced identification of hereditary continuity with moral continuity seems to lie in the doctrine of karmic causation across the three times, as found in Hakuin’s “Song of Giving” (Segyōka 施行歌). Yet even this doctrine cannot establish such an identification. It can do no more than explain differences of social status and circumstances in the present life. Moreover, the doctrine itself can scarcely withstand modern criticism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the dignity of humanity, the poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) wrote: “There can be no god more sacred than yourself. And this is what the oldest and the newest myths alike ultimately mean.” (“Laws for Creation”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon, writing of human sovereignty, declared, “Every citizen is king.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-12-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-12|12]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet to identify Amaterasu Ōmikami with the fundamental subject of human existence, as Japanese Zen has done, is ultimately to negate State Shinto—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|332|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and to deny any necessary, intrinsic connection between Zen and the Japanese national polity, or between Zen and the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Does not the fact that Japanese Zen practitioners have failed to recognise and openly acknowledge this conclusion demonstrate that their Zen thinking has remained insufficiently thoroughgoing, and that they have not genuinely achieved the condition of being “independently liberated, dependent upon nothing” (dokudatsu mu’e 独脱無依; Record of Linji, Rinzairoku 臨済録)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Christian existentialist philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948), who advocated religious libertarian communism, was described by the philosopher Heinemann as a “mystical anarchist.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-13-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-13|13]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; The French philosopher Simone Weil (1909–1943), who took an interest in Eastern thought, especially Zen, and criticised Christian theology, was an anarchist who participated in the Spanish Civil War.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In my view, the social philosophy of Zen may be described as Prajñā–Śūnyatā Anarchist Communism—an anarchist communism of wisdom (hannya 般若) and emptiness (kū 空). (See my book Hannyakyō 般若経, published by San’ichi Shobō.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why is it that Western religious anarchists have resisted state power—Berdyaev, for example, became a communist under imperial Russia and was imprisoned—whereas not only do we find almost no comparable examples in Zen or Kegon Buddhism, but examples of precisely the opposite tendency are overwhelmingly numerous? Let us consider two or three circumstances that may help explain this situation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The first is the obscuring of the difference in level between the world of experiential reality and the world of ordinary empirical experience, between the world of selfless intuitive action and the actual world of the empirical individual ego. This produces a “mixture or confusion of two worlds of reality.” The realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge no sekai 事々無礙の世界) belongs to the reality disclosed in the experience of prajñā. Yet this realm readily overlaps and merges with the ordinary world of empirical facts, so that the tension arising from the discontinuity between the two is never firmly established. We may recall that Nishida, the author of An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no kenkyū 善の研究), acknowledged in replying to Takahashi Satomi’s criticism that he had failed to recognise a qualitative distinction between pure experience and impure experience—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|333|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—a point that has important implications for both Zen studies and Buddhist studies. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-14-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-14|14]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The circumstances described above are connected with the fact that Buddhist practitioners have traditionally placed the emphasis of their religious training upon the attainment of peace of mind. As Nishida wrote in his diary, “Do not run after the peripheral matters of scholarship and forget the foundation of peace of mind.” Consequently, the culmination of their practice tends toward an attitude of being at home wherever one finds oneself—expressed in the saying, “Wherever one lives becomes home.” To that extent, there is a psychological tendency to beautify and rationalise the circumstances of each particular moment. Moreover, the subject of prajñā intuition is characterised as something that reflects and receives, as suggested by expressions such as “ocean-seal samādhi” (kaiin zanmai 海印三昧), “precious-mirror samādhi” (hōkyō zanmai 宝鏡三昧), and the “place of absolute nothingness” (zettai mu no basho 絶対無の場所). This characteristic corresponds to the orientation toward peace of mind described above. Even before a sustained determination to transform the surrounding environment can emerge, the practitioner has already entered the contemplative enjoyment of things. The fact that the East, characterised by what has been called “Asiatic stagnation,” has excelled in the arts of cultivation, and that much of “Zen culture” has taken an artistic form, is connected with this tendency. It is interesting that archery and martial techniques, originally intended for combat against enemies, became in times of peace the disciplines of kyūdō 弓道 and budō 武道, directed toward confronting oneself, and were subsequently internalised, intellectualised, systematised, and transformed into forms of contemplation. Everything associated with the “Way” (dō 道) has a contemplative character. In other words, it finds a place of repose within the framework of established social conventions and institutions. Affluent Buddhist practitioners enjoying leisure in periods of social stability could readily immerse themselves in the contemplative world of Kegon. Anxious Buddhists living through periods of crisis likewise entered this world of contemplation in search of peace of mind. In such a world, empirical historical reality becomes veiled by the harmonious non-obstruction of all phenomena. It is beautified and, in proportion to this beautification, accepted and rationalised.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
All phenomena in the world are said to appear within ocean-seal samādhi, mutually interpenetrating in infinitely overlapping relationships. In my view, the Lotus Treasury World (renge zō sekai 蓮華蔵世界) described in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Kegongyō 華厳経) is both a realm of reality disclosed through the active intuition of prajñā and a visionary world constituted through creative imagination around that experience. Here, however, harmonious non-obstruction refers to the actual activities of practitioners living within the rigid framework of caste society, together with the mutually non-obstructing phenomena of their visionary world. It does not mean that the raw, living reality inhabited by the masses is itself a world of harmonious—&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-i&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-i|i]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|334|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—non-obstruction. Within ocean-seal samādhi, three layers of reality must surely appear: the mutually non-obstructing facts of the practitioner’s immediate activity, the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena within an intuitive vision, and the dark reality of conflict and contradiction. It would be a mistake to paint over this three-dimensional world with a single, flat colour of harmonious non-obstruction.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In contrast, we may recall the following words of Herbert Read (1893–1968): “Religion is closely connected with art (poetry). […] During the Spanish Civil War, observers were struck by the religious fervour of the anarchists. In that country of a latent renaissance, anarchism inspired not only heroes but saints—new kinds of people who devoted their lives, through sensuous imagination and practical action, to creating a new form of human society.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-15-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-15|15]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The following criticism may be applied to the misguided realism that results from confusing worlds belonging to different levels of experience:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It is clear that Fazang’s Kegon philosophy—its doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena and of the absoluteness of phenomena mutually non-obstructing—expresses a truth that can be realised only through the fundamental intuition of ocean-seal samādhi, understood through the doctrine of the arising of phenomena from their true nature (shōki 性起). “When this becomes merely an intellectual doctrine, however, it denies the mediation of practice and turns into a facile, absolutist worldview. […] “The doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena certainly does not mean simply accepting the ‘things’ of existing reality as they are and asserting their harmony. Genuine non-obstruction among phenomena unfolds upon the foundation of religious intuition. […] “The Kegon system is a religious worldview manifested through ocean-seal samādhi. If this is forgotten, and the ‘things’ of empirical reality are accepted merely as they appear to the discriminating consciousness of ordinary people, and their harmony is then proclaimed, the result is an entirely different philosophy. “Phenomena are absolute because each constitutes part of the Lotus Treasury World. To ignore this and claim that every phenomenon possesses absolute significance amounts to affirming existing reality just as it stands. One misstep, and this becomes an unconditional affirmation of existing structures of domination and social organisation. “A philosophy of absolute affirmation can thereby become a philosophy in the service of rulers who sanction existing reality as it is.” (Kamata Shigeo 鎌田茂雄)&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-16-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-16|16]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|335|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This criticism may be said to identify correctly the errors and pathologies into which Kegon thought, and indeed Mahāyāna Buddhism more generally, have been liable to fall, and into which they have frequently fallen in practice—as, for example, in the cases of Sengzhao (384–414) and Dahui (1089–1163).&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-17-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-17|17]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The criticism emphasises the distinction between the realm of religious experience and that of ordinary empirical experience, insisting that the latter must be purified “through the practice of the bodhisattva path and vows grounded in compassion.” In this respect, it overcomes the vulgarism characteristic of Takakusu’s interpretation and, together with Suzuki’s view cited within it, rests upon an orthodox doctrinal foundation. This position might be described as a shift from the contemplative tendency found in Fazang toward the experiential orientation of Chengguan (737–839), accompanied by an emphasis on religious instruction and propagation grounded in that experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon world of the non-obstruction of phenomena is the joint product of experience and vision. It belongs to a dimension altogether different from the sphere of action in which the structural contradictions of actual class society are grasped, analysed, and practically overcome. Indeed, it is a world that can exist only within that particular dimension. It possesses neither the foundation nor the logic necessary to generate objective practice capable of overcoming the fundamental structural contradictions of the world in which we live. In this respect, there is no essential difference between Fazang and Chengguan. Even if this philosophy does not affirm mere facts or empirical reality as they stand, but instead rejects them as false and illusory, such rejection occurs entirely within subjective consciousness. It does not occur within the sphere of objective, transformative practice. Consequently, in actual historical circumstances, it amounts to a “doctrine of double truth”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-18-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-18|18]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; that affirms the existing order. There is therefore nothing surprising about Buddhists who consciously distinguish the world of prajñā experience from ordinary empirical reality nevertheless acting, in practice, as defenders of the established social system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== V ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
When Kegon thought attempts to formulate a social ethics within the actual world without overcoming the traditional characteristics and limitations examined above—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|336|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—that is, when it constructs morality through the logic of mutual identity (sōsoku 相即) and the dependent-origination logic of mutual dependence and interrelationship (sōi sōkan 相依相関), expressed in propositions such as “The principal is principal in relation to the companion, and the companion is companion in relation to the principal,” or “Mind is mind in relation to matter, and matter is matter in relation to mind”—the result will be an ethics of concord, harmony, and paternalistic benevolence.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Without capital there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no labour. At the same time, without labour there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no capital. The joint activity of capital and labour is precisely what constitutes industry. […] If those who provide wages deserve respect, then those who provide labour deserve equal respect. Indeed, neither party is simply giving something to the other; rather, industry consists of capital and labour being brought together.” (Shibusawa Eiichi) &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-19-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-19|19]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of cooperation between capital and labour expressed by this industrial capitalist is presented by a Zen practitioner in the following manner:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If one understands that self and other are originally nondual, there should be no difficulty whatsoever. Labour is the capitalist’s capital, and capital is the labourer’s labour. How, then, could conflict possibly arise?” (Iida Tōin) &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-20-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-20|20]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of harmony can also become a morality of war. A Kegon scholar writes:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In times of peace, the understanding of dependent origination provides a foundation for harmonious relations, through the recognition of the profound karmic connections that bind people inseparably together. But in times of emergency, it also manifests itself as a spirit of fearless, unobstructed struggle, enabling Japanese citizens to fulfil their responsibilities in their respective positions.” (Kamekawa Kyōshin) &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-21-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-21|21]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When every single member of the nation, embraced within the august imperial authority, rises with this sense of the completeness of principal and companion, the hundred million people are no longer limited to merely a hundred million. Rather, the hundred million simultaneously manifest a power multiplied a hundred millionfold.” (Ibid.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to this Kegon scholar, it is only through the conception of the state arising from Japanese national consciousness that the relationship between the individual and the whole can truly be perceived in its proper form, through the practical apprehension of inexhaustible dependent origination expressed as “one is all, and all is one.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-22-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-22|22]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet this very logic has found concrete expression in postwar Japan in the workers’ handbook, or “Mirror,” of Ōmi Kenshi, and has continued to produce results as a morality of worker training developed through cooperation between industrial capital and Zen. The Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren 経団連)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|337|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—supported the establishment of a Zen training centre where a recent roundtable entitled “Zen and Business” discussed the adjustment of human relations through Zen, the rationalisation of business management, and measures concerning labour. Among the statements recorded in that discussion were the following:&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-j&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-j|j]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Our most important policy, as our managing director has just explained, is first of all to bring about a complete change in the attitudes associated with student life. We want participants to examine themselves, their membership in the company, and the relationship between the individual within the company as a whole and the whole constituted through individuals. We want them to analyse themselves and then begin working with a renewed consciousness of themselves as members of the company. This is our most fundamental policy.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-23-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-23|23]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“We received some questionnaire responses saying that, although participants had expected the monks’ talks at the Zen temple to be thoroughly religious and solemn, they found them quite approachable—even including discussions of attitudes toward romantic love—and therefore very pleasant to listen to. […] If possible, we would appreciate talks that include a little of this sort of romantic interest, since they seem to be very well received.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What I wish to address here is Kamekawa’s interpretation of the “completeness of principal and companion” (shuhan gusoku 主伴具足), which is essentially the same as Takakusu’s interpretation. In this case, the relationship running from principal to companion is thoroughly one-directional and extremely concrete in its historical reality, since it provides a foundation for imperial absolutism under the Meiji Constitution. By contrast, the possibility of the companion becoming principal remains merely conceptual. In other words, this suggests that the logic of the completeness of principal and companion should not be applied to class society. In Kamekawa’s interpretation, principal and companion cannot genuinely be said to possess complete and perfect reciprocity. Even Fazang himself, who originally formulated this logic, probably did not entirely escape this danger. Kamata, in the essay discussed earlier, also takes up this problem and warns against confusing the reality of religious experience with empirical reality. Yet, as I have already pointed out, this criticism amounts to a “doctrine of double truth,” in which existing reality is denied at the level of consciousness but accepted in actual practice. An anarchist-communist society would surely provide the best expression of the complete illumination and mutual fulfilment of principal and companion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|338|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== VI ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a saying, “Kill the Buddha and kill the patriarchs” (Unmonroku 雲門録). Perhaps no tradition is as thoroughgoing as Zen in refusing to recognise externally imposed authority. The Tang-dynasty Zen master Linji Yixuan (Rinzai Gigen 臨済義玄, d. 867) emphasised the freedom of the “true person of no rank,” who “becomes master wherever one stands” and is “independently liberated, dependent on nothing.” It was in the spirit of such freedom that Danxia Tianran (Tanka Tennen 丹霞天然, 739–824) burned a Buddha image and Deshan Xuanjian (Tokusan Senkan 徳山宣鑑, 782–865) burned Buddhist scriptures. Zhaozhou Congshen (Jōshū Jūshin 趙州従諗, 778–897) declared, “I do not delight in hearing even the single word ‘Buddha.’” A king once visited Zhaozhou accompanied by his retainers, but Zhaozhou did not descend from his seat to welcome him. The following day, when the king sent an official to convey his thanks for the previous day’s reception, Zhaozhou descended from his seat and received the visitor’s greeting. When his disciples later asked why he had acted differently, Zhaozhou replied: “You would not understand. When a person of the highest rank comes, I receive him upon my meditation seat. When a person of middling rank comes, I descend from my seat to receive him. When a person of the lowest rank comes, I go outside the monastery gate to receive him. This is the custom of my house.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-24-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-24|24]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As suggested by the passage, “In the Western realm there is a land called Peace and Nourishment. […] There is no system of kingship there, nor any hierarchy of official ranks,” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-25-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-25|25]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; the future society envisioned by Buddhists may be understood as a world of anarchist communism. Kropotkin (1842–1921)&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-k&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-k|k]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; argued that our cultural achievements and the material necessities of life are the fruits of the labour of countless people extending back into the distant past. Consequently, none of us has grounds for calling them “my own.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-26-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-26|26]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Buddhists likewise understood these things as products of the endlessly interwoven activities of sentient beings: they are originally “property of the four quarters” (shihōmotsu 四方物), belonging to all sentient beings, and do not admit the possessive designation “mine” (mama-kāra). &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-27-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-27|27]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; (Nevertheless, texts such as the Brahmā’s Net Bodhisattva Precepts Sūtra already contain the notion of “property of the king.”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problems Buddhism must confront today in order to develop a social ethics or an ethics for the world are approximately as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|339|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
First, there is the problem of bringing together the recovery of Buddhism’s supranational character and the recovery of nationalism. In the expression “protection of the nation” (chingo kokka 鎮護国家), “nation” originally referred to the royal household, the territory, and the people, but its principal concern was the emperor. (In China, too, the term “state” (kokka 国家) could signify the Son of Heaven&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-28-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-28|28]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; or the imperial court&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-29-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-29|29]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;.) Consider, for example, the “Ten Secret Rites for the Protection of the Nation” (Chingo kokka no jikka hihō 鎮護国家の十箇秘法) in Japanese Tendai Buddhism. The majority concern the emperor personally, including rites for imperial enthronement, prayers concerning the emperor’s life, and precepts conferred for safe childbirth within the imperial household. In any event, because Buddhism was associated with state power from the earliest period of its development, it tended to lack a critical analysis and examination of the essential nature of political power. There was, of course, an intention to educate sovereigns so that they might govern benevolently, and this intention sometimes achieved positive results. Nevertheless, considerable suspicion of kings also existed. We find statements such as, “A monk should approach a king as though approaching a servant-master relationship” (Saddharma-smṛtyupasthāna Sūtra, Shōbōnenkyō 正法念経), and “Kings constantly increase taxation and arbitrarily punish people who have committed no offence. […] Though they see people suffering poverty and distress, they never give rise to compassion. They indulge in women without fearing the evil destinies” (Tang translation of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, Kegongyō 華厳経).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As in early Buddhism, Buddhist scriptures often regarded kings as people who inflicted harm upon the population. Kings were therefore placed alongside thieves and robbers, and among the misfortunes suffered by ordinary people—calamities of flood and fire, robbery, and wicked persons—there was also the “calamity of the king.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-30-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-30|30]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must discover a logic capable of bringing together a recognition of the evils of the state with the recovery of a legitimate nationalism, understood, for example, in terms of national independence and cooperation among peoples. In connection with this problem, we must also investigate how to reconcile the contradiction between spiritual freedom, expressed in the Record of Linji as “remaining unstained by birth and death, free to come and go” (shōji ni somazu kyojū jiyū 生死に染まず去住自由), and political and social freedom. “Without religion, the state could not exist,” declared Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-31-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-31|31]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet religion can exist without the state—although whether Zen should properly be called a “religion” is itself open to question. We have already seen how modern Japanese Zen was distorted by the state power of the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|340|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In considering the relationship between Buddhism and the state, the next question is that of class. Marx wrote: “The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas in every age. The class that constitutes the dominant material power in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual power. The class that controls the means of material production also controls the means of intellectual production. Consequently, the ideas of those who lack access to the means of intellectual production are, in general, subordinated to that class.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-32-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-32|32]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; It hardly needs explaining that the ideology of modern Japanese Zen was no exception to this general principle. Even in the process of conversion from a Japanese Zen bound by nationality under imperial Japan to a cosmopolitan Zen without national affiliation in a “cultural Japan,” this principle may have been operating to some degree. Dr. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi 久松真一, a Zen thinker internationally renowned alongside Suzuki Daisetsu, has discussed the crisis confronting the present age and the problem of world ethics. In the murderous development of atomic physics, he sees a crisis of humanism itself. He points to the unprecedented disparity between the extraordinary advances of science and the failure of morality to keep pace, insisting upon the need to strengthen our ethical capacities in order to correct this imbalance. Moreover, he maintains that such ethical capacities must not be based upon the egoism of particular nations, blocs of nations, classes, or ideologies. He therefore urges the immediate establishment of a new world ethics. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-33-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-33|33]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; This is certainly a valuable suggestion. Yet, when we reconsider the matter, is the disparity between science and ethics really a crisis of humanism or an impasse in human civilisation? The overwhelming majority of the world’s peoples, together with the majority of conscientious scientists, have repeatedly protested and resisted the murderous application of atomic power. They are not in the least guilty of ideological bias. Indeed, it is precisely this vast popular struggle for peace that has prevented a revolutionary rupture between science and morality. Those who are biased, those who expose the crisis of humanism, are none other than the “merchants of death” of monopoly capital.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How, then, does the F.A.S. Zen movement centred on Dr. Hisamatsu deal with the standpoint of class in its vow to “create superhistorical history”? Are the wisdom and power involved in this historical creation like distilled water—&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-l&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-l|l]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|341|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—colourless and transparent? How would its social ethics differ from the social ethics of Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.), which grounds itself in an Absolute?&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-m&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-m|m]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; “I can promise to be fair, but I cannot promise to be impartial,” wrote Goethe. (Ichikawa’s note: In this connection, I would draw attention to the system being developed by the materialist Umemoto Katsumi, who, in contrast to Nishida philosophy’s “active intuition” (kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観), is working out a logic of “practical intuition” (jissenteki chokkan 実践的直観) grounded in class consciousness.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problem of class is connected with the problem of human self-alienation, particularly alienation in labour. Unless Buddhism confronts this problem directly, it will be unable to develop a contemporary social ethics. This necessarily requires Buddhists to incorporate the standpoint of wage labourers into their own thinking. In other words, they must consciously adopt the standpoint of workers—human beings treated as commodities.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Alienated labour alienates (1) nature from humanity, and (2) human beings from themselves, from their own active functions and life-activity. In doing so, it alienates humanity from its species-being. […] The immediate consequence of the alienation of human beings from the products of their labour, their life-activity, and their species-being is the alienation of human beings from one another—die Entfremdung des Menschen von dem Menschen.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-34-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-34|34]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Under capitalism, even human beings become commodities. The education of young men and women amounts to investing capital in their bodies, while young people must devote themselves to the problem of how to sell themselves in the “personality market.” This is an education and morality grounded in the commodity economy, expressed through the language of adjustment and human relations. Expressions such as “human resources,” “human dock” [medical checkups], and the “Zen boom” are profoundly revealing. Someone remarked: “At the entrance there was a sign saying, ‘Look beneath your feet.’ That is the first priority. I believe this is how sound enterprises will emerge. From the standpoint of the business community, this is a cheap investment. Something like this will come back with a ten-thousandfold return.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-35-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-35|35]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|342|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Prostitution is only a particular expression of the general prostitution of the worker—allgemeine Prostitution des Arbeiters. And since prostitution constitutes a relationship that includes not only the prostitute but also the other party, whose baseness is even greater, capitalists too belong to this category.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-36-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-36|36]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I distinguish this kind of human self-alienation&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-n&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-n|n]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;, which I call horizontal alienation, from existential and religious self-alienation, or vertical estrangement. Horizontal alienation will never be overcome by the class that enjoys it as something comfortable, but only by the class that has no choice but to experience it as suffering. (This follows the same logic and psychology as the Buddhist overcoming of vertical estrangement, which begins with the contemplation of suffering.) To adopt the standpoint of wage labourers treated as commodities, and to resolve to overcome human self-alienation in labour—which is simultaneously self-alienation in capital—is precisely to adopt a standpoint of class consciousness. A merely abstract affirmation of humanity, incapable of understanding class consciousness as anything other than class egoism, misses the fundamental problem. The claim that human self-alienation can genuinely be overcome only from the standpoint of a universal human ethics—without uniting the opposing standpoints of class and humanity—rests upon the illusion that those who comfortably enjoy alienation might suddenly awaken one morning and collectively recognise it as suffering. The genuinely practical path toward overcoming alienation must instead begin by abandoning this facile sentimentalism, adopting the standpoint of those who experience alienation as suffering, and apprehending historical reality as it actually exists. This means grasping historical reality from a standpoint that unites objectivity and partisanship.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“What is at issue here is a confession, and nothing more. For humanity to have its sins forgiven, it need only proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are.” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-37-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-37|37]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|343|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-o&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-o|o]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;”—was this not what Marx accomplished through his analysis of the commodity in Capital? And might this not be the concrete content, within the field of economics, of Dōgen’s expression “to be verified by all things”? Beginning with labour-power as a commodity, one arrives, by abstracting from its capitalist determinations, at the commodity itself (the downward movement). Through scientific investigation of this commodity, one then clarifies how its inherent self-contradiction constitutes the elementary form of the class contradictions of capitalist society (the upward movement). Might not the disclosure of this circular process—understood, moreover, as an “open system” &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-38-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-38|38]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;—through practical intuition constitute the social-scientific content of Nishida philosophy’s method of “becoming a thing in order to see, and becoming a thing in order to think”?’&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Today, we human beings—and Buddhist practitioners themselves—live within and are sustained by a commodity-economic society, a “world of prostitution.” This entire condition is what is meant by the “falsity of the secular world” (seken koke 世間虚仮), a world of falsehood and empty words.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Karl Löwith (1897–1973) gives an illuminating account of how even Kierkegaard, Marx’s philosophical antipode, demonstrated through the circumstances of his own life the validity of Marx’s insight into the relationship between capital and labour. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-39-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-39|39]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; On the other hand, when we attempt to realise objectively the mutual non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge 事々無礙) within an intersubjective society, we will surely have much to learn from Kropotkin’s persuasive criticisms concerning the limits of the philosophy of dependent origination. &amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-cite-40-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-40|40]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What makes us conscious of the falsity of the secular world in this aspect, and inspires us to resolve to overcome it, is historical truth—the Dharma (dharma ダルマ)—proper to this sphere. For the moment, I leave aside the objectifying-logical and metaphysical dimensions of alienation. Nevertheless, we must not neglect a rigorous criticism of attempts to “empty” the objectivity of an object rather than transforming the object itself. Here, it seems to me, lies the starting point for a dialectical relationship between social ethics and social science among Buddhists.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Explanatory Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-a&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;a.&#039;&#039;&#039; Nishida’s philosophy of place. Nishida Kitarō’s 1926 essay “Place” (Basho 場所) develops the notion of a locus in which individual things are constituted through relationships and self-determination. Ichikawa argues that this philosophy’s rejection of a fixed, substantial universal ought to support freely associated individuals, rather than an emperor-centred political order. [[#ed-call-a|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-b&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;b.&#039;&#039;&#039; The four dharma-realms. In Huayan/Kegon thought these are the realm of phenomena (事法界), the realm of principle (理法界), the non-obstruction of principle and phenomena (理事無礙法界), and the non-obstruction of phenomena with one another (事事無礙法界). Ichikawa centres his political reading on the final realm, without assuming that interdependence automatically entails political equality. [[#ed-call-b|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-c&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;c.&#039;&#039;&#039; Takakusu and wartime Buddhist thought. Takakusu Junjirō (1866–1945) was a prominent Buddhist scholar associated with the Taishō canon. Ichikawa cites his “Principle of Totality in Buddhism” (「仏教の全体性原理」; Ichikawa’s source reference 6) as evidence of the use of Kegon categories to defend wartime totalitarianism. The passage documents Takakusu’s interpretation, not an uncontested meaning of Kegon doctrine. [[#ed-call-c|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-d&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;d.&#039;&#039;&#039; Principal and companion. Fazang’s “principal and companion” (shuhan 主伴) allows different phenomena to become the focus of a relationship, with the others functioning as companions. Ichikawa argues that making one hereditary sovereign permanently principal defeats the reciprocity that the doctrine is meant to express. [[#ed-call-d|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-e&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;e.&#039;&#039;&#039; Suzuki’s diagrams. Figures 1 and 2, reproduced from Suzuki Daisetsu’s postwar account, respectively depict an elevated apex with disconnected subjects and a circle of mutually related individuals. In Figure 2, S still represents the emperor. Ichikawa’s question is why even the revised, immanent arrangement requires a fixed hereditary centre. [[#ed-call-e|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-f&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;f.&#039;&#039;&#039; Monad with open windows. Suzuki reverses Leibniz’s well-known image of monads as having “no windows.” His metaphor of open windows expresses both distinct individuality and reciprocal exchange, but it does not itself settle the problem of the emperor’s status in the political whole. [[#ed-call-f|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-g&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;g.&#039;&#039;&#039; Buddhist Anarchist Communism. Ichikawa proposes Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.) as one possible political expression of Kegon interdependence, combining resistance to coercive external authority with opposition to private appropriation. Although Suzuki’s self-organising dharma-realm suggests anarchist free association, Ichikawa explicitly observes that Suzuki does not address private ownership. B.A.C. is therefore Ichikawa’s extension, not Suzuki’s own political programme. [[#ed-call-g|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-h&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;h.&#039;&#039;&#039; Zen and the imperial lineage. Ichikawa contrasts impermanence (shogyō mujō 諸行無常) with claims about the eternal imperial lineage. His objection is to making a particular hereditary institution a necessary expression of Zen insight. [[#ed-call-h|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-i&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;i.&#039;&#039;&#039; Ocean-seal samādhi. Ocean-seal samādhi (kaiin zanmai 海印三昧) evokes a comprehensive religious vision in Kegon thought. Ichikawa cautions against treating the harmony experienced or imagined in such a state as already realised in historically unequal or conflictual societies. [[#ed-call-i|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-j&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;j.&#039;&#039;&#039; Corporate Zen and industrial relations. Ichikawa refers to Zen training supported by business interests and a roundtable on “Zen and Business,” criticising the use of self-cultivation and harmony to promote managerial efficiency while leaving labour–capital inequalities intact. His printed references 23 and 35 both cite issue 70 of the journal Zen 禅 (March 1961). [[#ed-call-j|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-k&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;k.&#039;&#039;&#039; Common ownership and Kropotkin. Kropotkin’s account of wealth as the accumulated product of countless people’s labour supports Ichikawa’s criticism of exclusive appropriation. Ichikawa connects this to Buddhist language about goods belonging to the wider community, but also acknowledges traditions recognising royal ownership. Buddhist ownership terminology in the Japanese text requires final source-level verification. [[#ed-call-k|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-l&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;l.&#039;&#039;&#039; F.A.S. Zen. Associated with Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, F.A.S. refers to Formless Self, All Humankind, and Suprahistorical History. It seeks to unite awakening with universal ethical action. Ichikawa welcomes its aspirations but questions whether a standpoint claiming to transcend class and national divisions adequately addresses the material interests and historical antagonisms shaping social life. [[#ed-call-l|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-m&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;m.&#039;&#039;&#039; Moral Re-Armament. Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.) was an international moral and spiritual renewal movement. Ichikawa invokes it as a comparison when questioning whether a purportedly class-neutral universal ethics can engage specific structures of economic power. This is a comparative reference, distinct from his criticism of F.A.S. Zen. [[#ed-call-m|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-n&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;n.&#039;&#039;&#039; Horizontal and vertical alienation. Ichikawa distinguishes social and economic “horizontal alienation” from existential or religious “vertical estrangement.” Drawing on Marx’s account of alienated labour, he insists that the Buddhist encounter with suffering must also address historically specific exploitation. The two dimensions are related but not reducible to one another. [[#ed-call-n|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-o&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;o.&#039;&#039;&#039; Marx’s commodity analysis and practical intuition. Ichikawa compares Marx’s method in Capital with Nishida’s “active intuition” (kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観) and suggests a historically grounded “practical intuition” (jissenteki chokkan 実践的直観). His comparison is methodological, not an equation of Nishida’s philosophy with Marx’s critique of political economy. He insists that changing social relations cannot be replaced by inwardly “emptying” an object. [[#ed-call-o|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Original References ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Ichikawa’s printed references, pp. 344–345. Working transcription; bracketed uncertainty notices are editorial, not original. --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;1.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎の思想は、当初から体制擁護的な契機を含んでいた。拙稿「絶対無のつまづき――西田幾多郎の場合」、『思想』、一九五九年一月、本巻所収「西田幾多郎論」参照。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;2.&#039;&#039;&#039; 大宅壮一「西田幾多郎と敗北」、『文藝春秋』、一九五四年六月。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-2-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;3.&#039;&#039;&#039; 政府の「大東亜宣言」の草案として、一部の者の要請によって書かれたものだが、東条首相の拒否によって採択されなかった。その全文は矢吹一夫「昭和人物秘録」の「西田幾多郎博士の大東亜戦争観」にのせられている。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-3-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;4.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎『哲学の根本問題・続編』、一〇六―一〇七頁。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-4-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;5.&#039;&#039;&#039; 同書、一〇七頁。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-5-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;6.&#039;&#039;&#039; 日本諸学振興委員会、哲学講演会での講演（一九三七年）の記録。西田幾多郎「学問的方法」と共に、『文部省教学叢書』第三集（一九三八年）に収録。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-6-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-7&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;7.&#039;&#039;&#039; 大阪毎日新聞社編『日本仏教概論』、一九四二年。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-7-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-8&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;8.&#039;&#039;&#039; 東京帝大仏青編『仏教思想講座』巻三、一九三九年。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-8-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-9&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;9.&#039;&#039;&#039; 高楠順次郎、前掲論文。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-9-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-10&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;10.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『宗門無尽灯論』、流通第一〇。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-10-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-11&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;11.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅海一瀾』、岩波文庫版、三一、三四頁。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-11-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-12&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;12.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. J. Proudhon, Proudhon’s Solution of the Social Problem, p. 45. &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-12-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-13&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;13.&#039;&#039;&#039; F. H. Heinemann, Existentialism and the Modern Predicament, p. 154. &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-13-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-14&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;14.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎『思索と体験』、一一八頁。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-14-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-15&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;15.&#039;&#039;&#039; H. Read, The Philosophy of Anarchism, pp. 24–25. &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-15-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-16&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;16.&#039;&#039;&#039; 鎌田茂雄「華厳哲学の根本的立場」、中村元編『華厳思想』所収。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-16-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-17&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;17.&#039;&#039;&#039; 拙著『般若経』、三一書房、六九頁、第六巻所収。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-17-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-18&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;18.&#039;&#039;&#039; 船山信一「明治哲学における護教主義現実主義の三つの論理」、『思想』、一九六一年一月。二重真理説はキリスト教神学の恩寵と理性、仏教の真諦と俗諦の説にみられる。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-18-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-19&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;19.&#039;&#039;&#039; 渋沢栄一「労働問題解決の根本義」、『社会政策時報』、一九二〇年九月。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-19-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-20&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;20.&#039;&#039;&#039; 飯田欓隠『無門関鑽燧』、一九二四年十一月、一七九頁。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-20-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-21&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;21.&#039;&#039;&#039; 亀川教信（龍谷大学教授）『縁起の構造』、一九四四年八月、五八一、五八五頁。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-21-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-22&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;22.&#039;&#039;&#039; 同書、五九頁。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-22-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-23&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;23.&#039;&#039;&#039; 「禅と企業」、『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-23-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-24&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;24.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅苑蒙求』。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-24-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-25&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;25.&#039;&#039;&#039; 支遁「阿弥陀仏像讃並序」。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-25-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-26&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;26.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism. Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 57f. &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-26-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-27&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;27.&#039;&#039;&#039; 拙著『般若経』第四章、三一書房。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-27-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-28&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;28.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『晋書』（陶侃伝）。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-28-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-29&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;29.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『事物起源』、学校学事部、詞賦。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-29-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-30&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;30.&#039;&#039;&#039; 宮本正尊編『大乗仏教の成立史的研究』、三七六頁。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-30-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-31&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;31.&#039;&#039;&#039; M. Bakunin, Gott u. d. Staat. (Gesammelte Werke. Bd. I) &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-31-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-32&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;32.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Marx, Die Deutsche Ideologie, S. 44 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus. Bd. 29) &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-32-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-33&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;33.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『京都新聞』、一九六一・一・一四および『維摩七則』、一六三頁。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-33-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-34&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;34.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Marx, Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte, S. 103, 106 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus, Bd. 42) &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-34-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-35&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;35.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-35-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-36&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;36.&#039;&#039;&#039; Marx, ibid. S. 128. &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-36-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-37&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;37.&#039;&#039;&#039; 「ルーゲへの手紙」、一八四三年（『マルクス・エンゲルス選集』補巻四、一三五頁）。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-37-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-38&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;38.&#039;&#039;&#039; 梯明秀『資本論への私の歩み』、一二七頁以下。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-38-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-39&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;39.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Löwith, Von Hegel zu Nietzsche. 邦訳、七〇頁以下。 &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-39-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-40&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;40.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism, pp. 48, 56, 59, 64. P. Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, chap. I. &amp;lt;span class=&amp;quot;mw-cite-backlink&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-cite-40-1|↑]]&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
Translated from Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, anakizumu” 禅・華厳・アナキズム (1961), reprinted in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 3 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343; original source references occupy pp. 344–345. The original reference numbers are retained as superscript numerals, distinct from the translator’s explanatory notes. Suzuki Daisetsu’s two diagrams are reproduced from the scanned collected edition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is a working translation. Several quotations and Japanese readings require final collation; the original reference list is reproduced below as a working transcription with linked numbering. References 23 and 35 both cite issue 70 of Zen (March 1961).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotation: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1961). “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism” (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH61ZKA-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA&amp;diff=1248</id>
		<title>IH61ZKA</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA&amp;diff=1248"/>
		<updated>2026-10-13T14:03:20Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism”}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム) is a 1961 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 3 of &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343, with references on pp. 344–345.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Japanese original:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH61ZKA|禅・華厳・アナキズム]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contents ==&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section1|I]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section2|II]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section3|III]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section4|IV]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section5|V]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section6|VI]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|319|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is known as the “Nishida philosophy” of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), the foremost representative of modern Japanese philosophy, was established in his 1926 essay “Place.” Although the idea of “place” (basho 場所) emerged through the concept of topos (place) found in Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotle’s De Anima, it was more fundamentally connected with the Mahāyāna Buddhist concepts of emptiness (kū 空; Sanskrit śūnyatā) and the dharma-realm (hokkai 法界; Sanskrit dharmadhātu), especially the realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge hokkai 事々無礙法界), a world of experience in which individual things and events mutually interpenetrate and mutually determine one another. In other words, Nishida’s thought was fundamentally connected with the philosophy of prajñā and Kegon philosophy. His central idea—that the mutual determination of individual things within the place of “absolute nothingness” is simultaneously the self-determination of the universal—expressed, through the mediation of the modern Western logic of the individual ego, the fundamental unity of the logical structures of prajñā emptiness and Kegon’s non-obstruction of phenomena. In essence, this philosophy should have established a metaphysical foundation for thoroughgoing freedom and equality through the Eastern logic of nothingness. It contained the possibility of establishing a philosophy of freedom that rejected all external authority (Autorität) and power (Macht), even casting off the clothing of so-called “religion.”&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-a&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-a|a]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-b&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-b|b]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|320|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet as imperial Japan’s wartime system expanded, and as pressure from the political Right and the military against the “liberal” tendencies of Nishida philosophy and the Kyoto School intensified, this philosophy of the place of absolute nothingness—or the philosophy of the “self-determination of facts”—gradually developed a logic that provided an ideological foundation for the Imperial Way and the “holy war.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ōya Sōichi went so far as to say that Nishida had “sold his soul to secure the safety of his body.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-2|2]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Among Nishida’s writings from this period were “The Principle of the New World Order” (1943) and “On the National Polity” (1944). The latter subsequently appeared as the fourth supplementary essay in his Philosophical Essays, was published in the journal Tetsugaku kenkyū 哲学研究, and was included in the Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō. The former, however, was not included in the collected works.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-3|3]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, the logic of place, or the philosophy of the non-obstruction of phenomena, should not have provided a foundation for the Imperial Way. On the contrary, it should have provided a foundation for anarchism. In my essay “The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō” (published in Shisō 思想, January 1959, and reprinted in the present volume), I wrote the following in its conclusion:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The place of absolute nothingness, the dialectical universal, forms the principle of world-formation through its self-conscious determination. This principle and the Imperial Way constitute an absolute contradiction that cannot be reconciled. Within the sphere of objectifying logic, the two assert themselves against and mutually exclude one another by their very nature. If the Imperial Way were genuinely to become subjective beyond the domain of objectifying logic, then, in the very process of becoming subjective, it would have no alternative but to dissolve itself by negating those accidental, particular, and irrational elements that constitute its essential nature. In the process of fully realising itself as subject, the Imperial Way must relinquish the ego. It loses itself by returning to the place of absolute nothingness, the true historical world. Conversely, the logic of the place of absolute nothingness—the logic of the predicate—is something that fundamentally negates the Imperial Way conceived as subject. Nishida’s “theology of the logic of place” should not have provided a foundation for Japan’s founding mythology and the politico-religious philosophy of the eternal imperial order. Rather, it should have furnished a logical system that brought these to an end. Likewise—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|321|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and, contrary to what happened in Nishida’s own case, it should have been a philosophical system that regarded even national morality as fundamentally illusory (koke 虚仮). As a philosophy of place, in which absolutely free individuals are mediated by a universal that mediates without any mediating entity, this system should have provided the foundation for a democratic association of free individuals in the deepest sense. It should have demanded that the Imperial Way shed its former character, anticipated the disappearance of the state, and provided the foundation and promise of a community without coercive power. The logic of the predicate began with Nishida the philosopher, only to founder in Nishida the imperial subject.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to Nishida, the actual world must be a world of individuals—I, you, and others. An individual might initially be understood as a determination of the universal, such as existence or living beings. By adding specific differences to what is universal, proceeding through successive classifications, and finally passing beyond them, one might conceive of the individual as a limiting point. Yet an individual conceived in this manner is not a genuine individual. Such an individual can never escape being merely a part of the universal. The individual must determine itself.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-4|4]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Only something that determines itself—that is, something that becomes conscious of itself, forms itself, and chooses for itself—can truly be called an independent individual. Yet an individual can determine itself only in relation to other individuals. I exist as myself in relation to you, just as you exist as yourself in relation to me. “An individual must be conceived as standing in relation to another individual. It is only through standing in relation to another individual that an individual can be conceived as such. It is impossible to conceive of a single individual existing alone. For mutually independent things to stand in relation to one another is precisely what it means for things to act upon one another. […] For mutually independent things to enter into relations, some form of mediation must be conceived between them.” (Emphasis added by Ichikawa.)&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-5|5]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; If this mediator were some universal that unified the individuals—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|322|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—then that universal would itself amount to another individual, and the independence of the original individuals would necessarily be lost. (It would be rather like two people who could meet only in the presence of a guardian.) Behind individual beings there is no overarching universal that encompasses them. What mediates independent individuals cannot be some positive, substantial universal. Rather, it must be a dialectical universal understood as the determination of the place of nothingness. Within the place of absolute nothingness, individuals engage with and cooperate with one another while remaining genuinely independent. I remain entirely myself, and you remain entirely yourself; yet at the same time I am you, and you are me. Each is an autonomous, self-governing existence possessing an irreplaceable individuality, yet each may freely become subject or object in relation to the other, working and cooperating together. This is how the world of historical reality must truly be constituted. Borrowing a term from Kegon philosophy, Nishida calls this world of existential encounter and interconnection the “realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena” (jiji muge no sekai 事々無礙の世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The logic of the place of absolute nothingness, which makes possible free and autonomous interaction and cooperation among independent, individual existences—this was, so to speak, the fundamental logic of Nishida’s social philosophy or philosophy of the world.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consequently, what should follow from this logic is a society of genuinely autonomous and free individuals, liberated from attachment to the ego and its objects. Such a society would not merely be free of domination through force; it would be a freely associated human community in which there was no place even for “authority” understood as power disguised in ethical clothing.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet this open conception of the world, grounded in the logic of place and the Zen–Kegon understanding of emptiness and the non-obstruction of phenomena, was constrained and distorted by Nishida’s samurai sensibilities, his position within the academic establishment, and the circumstances of imperialist Japan. Its possibilities were deformed until it descended into the Theory of the National Polity and The Principle of the New World Order. And this was the same course that Japanese Buddhism generally followed at the time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|323|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎, one of the leading Buddhist scholars of modern Japan—supervising editor of the Taishō Revised Tripiṭaka, professor emeritus at Tokyo Imperial University, and recipient of the fourth Order of Culture (Nishida received the second)—argued in “The Principle of Totality in Buddhism” that Mahāyāna Buddhist logic and ethics were, from the beginning, totalitarian. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-6|6]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; According to Takakusu, the logical structure of this totalitarianism is expressed in Kegon thought through the doctrine of the Four Dharma-Realms (shihokkai 四法界), culminating in the fourth, the Realm of the Non-Obstruction of Phenomena (jiji muge hokkai 事々無礙法界). He maintained that, with the World War as its turning point, the world had begun moving toward totalitarianism: “Today even Westerners are beginning to practise totalitarianism, whereas the Japanese have actually practised it since ancient times. Through Japan’s Yamato totalitarianism, we can provide a model for the world. Through Buddhism’s principle of totality, we can guide the world. […] Japan as it actually exists must be governed through the Imperial Way. It is truly gratifying that the Kegon principle of totality should be put into practice. […] However excellent Buddhism may be, there must be no attempt to regard it as a form of government through the Buddhist Way existing alongside Japan’s government through the Imperial Way.” Takakusu concluded: “We now find ourselves in the midst of the National Spiritual Mobilization campaign, at a time when the Japanese spirit must be manifested in its totality. […] We should fully appreciate the true meaning of Kegon and undertake service to the nation without the slightest disorder and without a trace of selfishness. All people should forget themselves, relinquish themselves, and devote themselves to national affairs. We should realise the truth that the sage has no self, yet there is nothing that is not the self.” The Kegon scholar Kamekawa Kyōshin 亀川教信, in his essay “The Structure of Dependent Origination” (Engi no kōzō 縁起の構造), &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-7|7]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; and Yamagami Kaizen 山上戒全, in his essay “Kegon” 華厳, &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-8|8]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; developed interpretations of Kegon thought along similar lines. The Zen scholar Nakane Kandō 中根環堂, in “Totalitarianism and Zen” (Zentaishugi to Zen 全体主義と禅), &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-9|9]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; argued that Japan’s national polity was not the flat, horizontal totalitarianism of the West. Rather, its principle of one emperor and all his subjects constituted a three-dimensional, organic unity, in which affection resembled the relationship between father and child, while duty preserved the proper distinctions between ruler and subject. Underlying this hierarchical unity, he maintained, was the Kegon philosophy of “one is many, and many are one” (ichi soku ta, ta soku ichi 一即多・多即一). The path to fully realising this unity was seated meditation. Through grasping the essence of zazen—“thinking from the standpoint of nonthinking”—one could accomplish the sacred imperial undertaking of bringing the world under one roof (hakkō ichiu 八紘一宇). The lectures on “The Problem of Japanese Culture” given by Nishida at Kyoto Imperial University’s Monday lecture series in 1938—&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-c&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-c|c]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|324|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and Kōyama Iwao’s subsequent lectures on “Cultural Typology” likewise sought to contribute to the construction of a “New Order in East Asia” by invoking the Kegon logic of phenomena.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet all these attempts were nothing other than distortions of Kegon philosophy and Zen thought. Let us return once more to Takakusu for an example.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In his Commentary on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Kegongyō tangenki 華厳経探玄記), Fazang (Hōzō 法蔵, 643–712), the third patriarch of the Chinese Huayan school, classifies the infinite mutual identity and interpenetration of phenomena within the world of experience into ten categories, known as the “Ten Profound Forms of Dependent Origination” (jūgen engi 十玄縁起). The tenth is called the “Gate of the Complete Illumination and Possession of Virtues by Principal and Companion” (shuhan enmyō gutokumon 主伴円明具徳門). The countless phenomena of the experiential world alternately become principal and companion, forming an endlessly interconnected symbolic world. If one phenomenon is taken as principal, all the others become its companions and are subordinated to it. But if another is selected as principal, all the remaining phenomena—including the one formerly taken as principal—become its companions and are encompassed by it. This is the principle of the complete illumination and possession of virtues by principal and companion. Takakusu paraphrases the doctrine in concrete terms: “Both principal and companion should work together harmoniously and openly, those above and below acting with one heart. Totalitarianism means that parent and child do not oppose one another but join forces and work together. If this cannot be accomplished, it is not totalitarianism. […] When similar things come together, one becomes their centre and principal. We may therefore apply this to the actual relationship of one emperor and all his subjects.” He also declared: “Our country has been totalitarian since the very beginning of its founding. […] Through the Meiji Restoration, it returned to its original totalitarianism.” And further: “We Japanese, who already possess the principle of totality in our actual national existence, are bringing the vision of Kegon’s one true dharma-realm into reality. This is something truly precious.” Takakusu thus maintains that the truths of the non-obstruction of phenomena, the completeness of principal and companion, and the identity of one with all and all with one are already realised within the system of one emperor and all his subjects—a system that regards democracy as contrary to the national polity and rests upon an authoritarian, status-based morality. This is a typical example of philosophy placed at the service of the authorities.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-d&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-d|d]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|325|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The condition of Japanese Buddhism described above had already taken root in the period of the Taika reforms. Leaving aside for the moment the earlier circumstances of state Buddhism in China, the new government, established through the reforms of 646, eventually undertook the construction of the Great Buddha Hall at Tōdaiji. It enshrined Vairocana Buddha there and established provincial monasteries and nunneries throughout the country, where scriptures for the protection of the state were to be recited. In this way, temples, monks, and nuns came under the control of state authority.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Immediately after Japan’s defeat, Suzuki Daisetsu, in “The Construction of a Spiritual Japan” (September 1946), argued that a new Japan must be constructed upon the principle of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm (hokkai engi 法界縁起) found in Kegon philosophy.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To place the emperor above the people is a symbol of the will to power. […] Rather, the emperor should possess a quality of immanence, becoming interconnected with the people in endlessly overlapping relationships. […] Just as the entire world should constitute a dharma-realm mandala of nations, so within Japan itself, the emperor and the people must become a single whole in which phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. Only then will a spiritual Japan become possible.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If we express this schematically, Japan up to the present has resembled Figure 1. Although there appears to be a connection between those above and those below, it can be severed at any point along the way. Before the wishes of those above reach those below, they must pass through military cliques, bureaucrats, and financial interests. Those below have no clear idea where these directives originate. Moreover, the people themselves have no direct connections with one another. […] They do not know how to think for themselves—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure1.png|thumb|360px|Figure 1. Suzuki Daisetsu’s diagram of hierarchical relations in prewar Japan (reproduced by Ichikawa, p. 325).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|326|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—[…] All that was demanded of them was reverent obedience to imperial commands. […] The system of one emperor and all his subjects symbolises the will to power on the one hand and, on the other, extinguishes the autonomy of individual citizens.” (pp. 158–159)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki goes on to describe the dharma-realm mandala that ought to be constructed by the emperor and the people. Although the passage is lengthy, I shall quote it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the emperor descends from the Plain of High Heaven and joins ordinary human beings upon this earth, the people, for their part, must abandon their servile sense of inferiority. […] They must establish their own autonomy and recognise fully that nothing can replace the value of individual personality.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“They must understand that respecting oneself is also the basis for respecting others. Each individual is complete in themselves, and at the same time all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. […] Because each is complete, all are non-obstructing; because all are non-obstructing, each is complete.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The political form of Japan as a dharma-realm mandala may be represented schematically in Figure 2. A, B, C, and so forth represent the people, the countless inhabitants of the nation. Yet each is an individual, a monad capable of autonomous action, thought, and sensation.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-e&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-e|e]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Each is complete in themselves. Each is an independent and free personality. Precisely for this reason, each enters into inexhaustibly interconnected relationships with others. These monads have thrown their windows wide open, sharing their own light with others while receiving the light of others in return.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-f&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-f|f]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The chords and straight lines within the circle represent communication, reciprocal interaction, and mutual interpenetration among the monads.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure2.png|thumb|360px|Figure 2. Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala: A–H represent individuals, while S at the centre represents the emperor (reproduced by Ichikawa, p. 326).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|327|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The S at the centre is an inward reflection of that which comprehensively encompasses the surrounding A, B, C, and so forth from without. A, B, C, D, and the others are each independent, yet each possesses totality. Accordingly, A, B, C, and D are joined by curved lines to form a great circle. This great circle, just as it is, represents each individual monad, each individual ‘blade of grass’ among the people. To express this meaning, it is concentrated and reflected in the small circle at the centre.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The great circle encompasses the people as a whole, but merely saying that it encompasses them does not provide anything concrete that can be pointed to. For this reason I have placed S at the centre. S is none other than the emperor, the centre of the national polity. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It might seem possible to remove S from the great circle surrounding it and place it above. But doing so would introduce a considerable danger that the will to power and a dualistic conception would reappear. The feudal mentality would inevitably be reproduced. Moreover, placing S within the circle should serve to strengthen the unity of the circle itself. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“As Japanese and as East Asians, we must establish a new national polity through our own autonomy, freedom, and constructive vision. Needless to say, its establishment must be spiritual through and through; it must be built upon spiritual awakening. Only then can it attain universality. Only then can something emerge from among us that will contribute to the advancement of world spiritual culture and to the various institutions of practical life.” (pp. 160–163)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This work by Suzuki may be regarded as the foremost postwar document in which a Buddhist thinker sought, with enthusiasm and sincerity, to envision a new political order for Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As is already clear, there is a fundamental distance and difference between Takakusu’s wartime interpretation and Suzuki’s postwar interpretation of the Kegon doctrine of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm, understood in relation to the realities of Japan. (We should pay particular attention to Suzuki’s insistence that the new order must be built upon spiritual awakening through and through.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s case, we may wonder whether, had he lived into the postwar period, he would have recognised the need to revise his earlier interpretation. In Suzuki’s case, we might ask whether truth acquires its illumination—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|328|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and power precisely when it is spoken at a time when speaking it is both necessary and difficult. Nevertheless, judging from what we have before us, we cannot avoid concluding that Suzuki’s interpretation is the one that truly brings the meaning of Kegon thought to life in contemporary Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s and Suzuki’s interpretations, the position of the emperor differs in the way represented by the two diagrams discussed above. At the same time, this difference in position may also reflect a difference in the position of Vairocana Buddha, the prototype of the emperor’s position.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s account, we find the following statement:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In Kegon terms, the great Vairocana Buddha at the centre is active. All the attendant beings of the outer Vajra circle are active as well. The great mandala of the total mobilisation of principal and companion is manifested. This is the phenomenal manifestation of the dependent origination of the Kegon dharma-realm—the manifestation of the true dharma-realm.” (pp. 251–252)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki, on the other hand, argues:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the original form of Japan’s national polity is understood in this way, the sequence of ideas suggested by expressions such as ‘the benevolence of the sovereign’ and ‘the light of the imperial reign’ acquires a different meaning from that traditionally attached to them. ‘Benevolence’ will no longer be associated with power, but will instead become something characterised by reciprocity. Nor will ‘light’ be something that shines only from above. Rather, it will signify the reciprocal illumination of the original light possessed by each individual.” (p. 164)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet neither account clarifies the most fundamental issue: the internal and logical relationship between Vairocana Buddha and the emperor (in Suzuki’s case, the emperor understood as a human being).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Since Takakusu asserts government through the Imperial Way while refusing to recognise government through the Buddhist Way, he must explain what logic he adopts in relation to the doctrine of original ground and manifest traces (honji suijaku 本地垂迹).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki speaks of the “benevolence of the sovereign,” meaning the emperor’s benevolence. But what, concretely, does that benevolence signify? Similarly, when he says that “light” does not come only from above, what exactly is the “light that comes from above”? Is there still an “above” within Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala? If so, what does that position represent? Is it a position above others occupied by the emperor as a human being? These questions remain unanswered.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki maintains that his dharma-realm possesses universality. But can a logic and an ethics that permanently place a single human being belonging to one particular hereditary lineage at the centre of the world genuinely claim universality?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Blood,” as something irrational and contingent,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|329|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—can it be assigned a particular cosmic and ethical significance from the standpoint of the Buddhist Dharma, or indeed from the standpoint of universal ethics?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki writes: “The unbroken imperial line will become something for which we should stake our lives when it is understood in the following way: the perpetuity of the imperial lineage symbolises the perpetuity of the ideals cherished by the Japanese people.” (p. 165)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The “ideals” mentioned here presumably refer to what Suzuki calls the “construction of a spiritual Japan.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Leaving aside for the moment the question of who actually risked their lives to reject imperialist Japan and construct a spiritual Japan, why should the perpetuity of these ideals require a particular human being belonging to a particular hereditary lineage? What would happen if that individual, exercising their fundamental human rights, refused to serve as such a symbol? And what should peoples without such a symbol do?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Even if the emperor occupied the position proposed by Suzuki, so long as the unbroken hereditary imperial line is recognised—that is, so long as some form of the emperor system is recognised—and so long as universality is claimed for this system, does its logic not contain the possibility of developing into a new version of the doctrine of “eight corners of the world under one roof” (hakkō ichiu 八紘一宇)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If the logic of Kegon’s dependent origination of the dharma-realm were pursued consistently, carrying Suzuki’s interpretation to its ultimate conclusion beyond Takakusu’s, would not even a “democratic” emperor system headed by a human emperor lose its logical foundation? And would not the very structure of meaning represented in Suzuki’s second diagram consequently undergo a fundamental transformation?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, despite these questions, Suzuki’s interpretation emphasises “the value of the individual as a morally free person, as a spiritual existence, and as an independently autonomous being who cannot be reduced to an antlike mass under the vague designation of ‘totalitarianism’” (p. 142).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki also rejects the principle of domination through force:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“There should be no power standing outside the dharma-realm. To suppose that an organisation cannot be sustained without such power is to fail to recognise the irrationality of seeking it outside itself. The dharma-realm is already a complete organisation in itself. The power that organises it is originally inherent within the organisation itself. When this power is sought outside, what exists within becomes distorted and is diverted in an unintended direction. […]”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|330|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—The construction of a spiritual Japanese state must not take power as its fundamental principle. It must be a faithful reflection in our actual lives of the realm in which all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing.” (pp. 153–154)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Let us pay particular attention to Suzuki’s observation that the dharma-realm is already a complete organisation and that the power necessary to organise it is inherent within the organisation itself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This recalls the anarchist idea of free association. Viewed politically, it may be understood as suggesting anarchism as the form of a new human society embodying the Kegon world of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon dharma-realm, grounded in the rejection of both the principle of coercive power and the principle of private ownership, may be described as a world of Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.)—although Suzuki, it seems to me, has never addressed the question of private ownership.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-g&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-g|g]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon (1809–1865), who envisaged the perfected form of society as a “unity of order and anarchy,” proposed a conception that, at least in this respect, may be applied directly to Kegon’s Lotus Treasury World (renge zō sekai 蓮華蔵世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The traditional position of Japanese Zen was that State Shinto and the Buddha-Dharma were fundamentally one. The Edo-period Zen master Tōrei Enji 東嶺円慈 (1721–1792) explained it as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Fundamentally, ‘kami’ means mind. When the impurities of the mind have been completely extinguished and it becomes as clear as a mirror, this is called kami. Thus, the Way of the kami takes the mirror as the representation of its essential nature.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The mirror of the mind is originally pure, eternally abiding, and serenely still: this is called Kuni-no-Tokotachi-no-Mikoto 国常立尊. The mirror of the mind is originally perfectly luminous, and there is nothing that it does not reveal: this is called Amaterasu Ōmikami 天照大神. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“One should understand that the Way of the kami and the Buddha-Dharma share the same underlying principle. They are nothing other than the single Dharma of seeing one’s nature.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-10|10]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The same position was held by Tōrei’s teacher, Hakuin Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1685–1768). The Meiji-period Zen master Imakita Kōsen 今北洪川 (1816–1892) likewise expressed this understanding:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In our country there is the Way of imperial sovereignty. This is the great Way of the ancestral deity and the true teaching of rulers. Its transmission has continued from the distant past, with the imperial descendants forming a single unbroken lineage, into which no other family has entered. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“This is what makes our imperial Way uniquely distinguished among all the nations of the world.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-11|11]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|331|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—A true man of our imperial nation must first establish firmly within himself the pillar of the Japanese spirit, which neither fire can burn nor water drown. Once he has suddenly penetrated through to realisation, there will be nothing deficient in his ability to judge and uphold the Imperial Way.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Tōrei’s interpretation lacks any logic capable of grounding, from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma, the unbroken imperial lineage that constitutes the core of State Shinto. It remains entirely unclear how the fundamental Buddhist principle that “all conditioned things are impermanent” (shogyō mujō 諸行無常) could be reconciled with Shinto’s assertion that the imperial throne will endure as long as heaven and earth. The same applies to Imakita Kōsen. Indeed, among Japanese Zen masters from Kokan Shiren (1278–1346), Hakuin, and Tenkei Denson (1648–1735) down to the present, the most fundamental questions have been almost entirely neglected. How can the kami of Shinto be identical with the fundamental subject of human existence? How can a hereditary lineage be identical with a divine lineage? And how can a religious tradition that, through monastic renunciation, takes the discontinuation of hereditary descent as a principle provide a Zen Buddhist justification for the continuity of that very descent? Hakuin, Tōrei, and virtually every other Zen practitioner have revealed a fatal weakness of vision in their understanding of Shinto.&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-h&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-h|h]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is no relationship whatsoever between the eternity of Zen truth and the political and supposedly “ethical” continuity of a particular bloodline. No logic exists by which the unbroken imperial lineage—a survival from the customs of ancient peoples—can be justified from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma or Zen. Above all, the Imperial Way Zen that emerged after the Meiji Restoration represents the most extreme decadence of Zen. The only possible support for the forced identification of hereditary continuity with moral continuity seems to lie in the doctrine of karmic causation across the three times, as found in Hakuin’s “Song of Giving” (Segyōka 施行歌). Yet even this doctrine cannot establish such an identification. It can do no more than explain differences of social status and circumstances in the present life. Moreover, the doctrine itself can scarcely withstand modern criticism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the dignity of humanity, the poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) wrote: “There can be no god more sacred than yourself. And this is what the oldest and the newest myths alike ultimately mean.” (“Laws for Creation”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon, writing of human sovereignty, declared, “Every citizen is king.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-12|12]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet to identify Amaterasu Ōmikami with the fundamental subject of human existence, as Japanese Zen has done, is ultimately to negate State Shinto—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|332|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and to deny any necessary, intrinsic connection between Zen and the Japanese national polity, or between Zen and the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Does not the fact that Japanese Zen practitioners have failed to recognise and openly acknowledge this conclusion demonstrate that their Zen thinking has remained insufficiently thoroughgoing, and that they have not genuinely achieved the condition of being “independently liberated, dependent upon nothing” (dokudatsu mu’e 独脱無依; Record of Linji, Rinzairoku 臨済録)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Christian existentialist philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948), who advocated religious libertarian communism, was described by the philosopher Heinemann as a “mystical anarchist.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-13|13]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; The French philosopher Simone Weil (1909–1943), who took an interest in Eastern thought, especially Zen, and criticised Christian theology, was an anarchist who participated in the Spanish Civil War.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In my view, the social philosophy of Zen may be described as Prajñā–Śūnyatā Anarchist Communism—an anarchist communism of wisdom (hannya 般若) and emptiness (kū 空). (See my book Hannyakyō 般若経, published by San’ichi Shobō.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why is it that Western religious anarchists have resisted state power—Berdyaev, for example, became a communist under imperial Russia and was imprisoned—whereas not only do we find almost no comparable examples in Zen or Kegon Buddhism, but examples of precisely the opposite tendency are overwhelmingly numerous? Let us consider two or three circumstances that may help explain this situation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The first is the obscuring of the difference in level between the world of experiential reality and the world of ordinary empirical experience, between the world of selfless intuitive action and the actual world of the empirical individual ego. This produces a “mixture or confusion of two worlds of reality.” The realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge no sekai 事々無礙の世界) belongs to the reality disclosed in the experience of prajñā. Yet this realm readily overlaps and merges with the ordinary world of empirical facts, so that the tension arising from the discontinuity between the two is never firmly established. We may recall that Nishida, the author of An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no kenkyū 善の研究), acknowledged in replying to Takahashi Satomi’s criticism that he had failed to recognise a qualitative distinction between pure experience and impure experience—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|333|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—a point that has important implications for both Zen studies and Buddhist studies. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-14|14]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The circumstances described above are connected with the fact that Buddhist practitioners have traditionally placed the emphasis of their religious training upon the attainment of peace of mind. As Nishida wrote in his diary, “Do not run after the peripheral matters of scholarship and forget the foundation of peace of mind.” Consequently, the culmination of their practice tends toward an attitude of being at home wherever one finds oneself—expressed in the saying, “Wherever one lives becomes home.” To that extent, there is a psychological tendency to beautify and rationalise the circumstances of each particular moment. Moreover, the subject of prajñā intuition is characterised as something that reflects and receives, as suggested by expressions such as “ocean-seal samādhi” (kaiin zanmai 海印三昧), “precious-mirror samādhi” (hōkyō zanmai 宝鏡三昧), and the “place of absolute nothingness” (zettai mu no basho 絶対無の場所). This characteristic corresponds to the orientation toward peace of mind described above. Even before a sustained determination to transform the surrounding environment can emerge, the practitioner has already entered the contemplative enjoyment of things. The fact that the East, characterised by what has been called “Asiatic stagnation,” has excelled in the arts of cultivation, and that much of “Zen culture” has taken an artistic form, is connected with this tendency. It is interesting that archery and martial techniques, originally intended for combat against enemies, became in times of peace the disciplines of kyūdō 弓道 and budō 武道, directed toward confronting oneself, and were subsequently internalised, intellectualised, systematised, and transformed into forms of contemplation. Everything associated with the “Way” (dō 道) has a contemplative character. In other words, it finds a place of repose within the framework of established social conventions and institutions. Affluent Buddhist practitioners enjoying leisure in periods of social stability could readily immerse themselves in the contemplative world of Kegon. Anxious Buddhists living through periods of crisis likewise entered this world of contemplation in search of peace of mind. In such a world, empirical historical reality becomes veiled by the harmonious non-obstruction of all phenomena. It is beautified and, in proportion to this beautification, accepted and rationalised.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
All phenomena in the world are said to appear within ocean-seal samādhi, mutually interpenetrating in infinitely overlapping relationships. In my view, the Lotus Treasury World (renge zō sekai 蓮華蔵世界) described in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Kegongyō 華厳経) is both a realm of reality disclosed through the active intuition of prajñā and a visionary world constituted through creative imagination around that experience. Here, however, harmonious non-obstruction refers to the actual activities of practitioners living within the rigid framework of caste society, together with the mutually non-obstructing phenomena of their visionary world. It does not mean that the raw, living reality inhabited by the masses is itself a world of harmonious—&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-i&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-i|i]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|334|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—non-obstruction. Within ocean-seal samādhi, three layers of reality must surely appear: the mutually non-obstructing facts of the practitioner’s immediate activity, the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena within an intuitive vision, and the dark reality of conflict and contradiction. It would be a mistake to paint over this three-dimensional world with a single, flat colour of harmonious non-obstruction.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In contrast, we may recall the following words of Herbert Read (1893–1968): “Religion is closely connected with art (poetry). […] During the Spanish Civil War, observers were struck by the religious fervour of the anarchists. In that country of a latent renaissance, anarchism inspired not only heroes but saints—new kinds of people who devoted their lives, through sensuous imagination and practical action, to creating a new form of human society.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-15|15]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The following criticism may be applied to the misguided realism that results from confusing worlds belonging to different levels of experience:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It is clear that Fazang’s Kegon philosophy—its doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena and of the absoluteness of phenomena mutually non-obstructing—expresses a truth that can be realised only through the fundamental intuition of ocean-seal samādhi, understood through the doctrine of the arising of phenomena from their true nature (shōki 性起). “When this becomes merely an intellectual doctrine, however, it denies the mediation of practice and turns into a facile, absolutist worldview. […] “The doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena certainly does not mean simply accepting the ‘things’ of existing reality as they are and asserting their harmony. Genuine non-obstruction among phenomena unfolds upon the foundation of religious intuition. […] “The Kegon system is a religious worldview manifested through ocean-seal samādhi. If this is forgotten, and the ‘things’ of empirical reality are accepted merely as they appear to the discriminating consciousness of ordinary people, and their harmony is then proclaimed, the result is an entirely different philosophy. “Phenomena are absolute because each constitutes part of the Lotus Treasury World. To ignore this and claim that every phenomenon possesses absolute significance amounts to affirming existing reality just as it stands. One misstep, and this becomes an unconditional affirmation of existing structures of domination and social organisation. “A philosophy of absolute affirmation can thereby become a philosophy in the service of rulers who sanction existing reality as it is.” (Kamata Shigeo 鎌田茂雄)&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-16|16]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|335|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This criticism may be said to identify correctly the errors and pathologies into which Kegon thought, and indeed Mahāyāna Buddhism more generally, have been liable to fall, and into which they have frequently fallen in practice—as, for example, in the cases of Sengzhao (384–414) and Dahui (1089–1163).&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-17|17]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The criticism emphasises the distinction between the realm of religious experience and that of ordinary empirical experience, insisting that the latter must be purified “through the practice of the bodhisattva path and vows grounded in compassion.” In this respect, it overcomes the vulgarism characteristic of Takakusu’s interpretation and, together with Suzuki’s view cited within it, rests upon an orthodox doctrinal foundation. This position might be described as a shift from the contemplative tendency found in Fazang toward the experiential orientation of Chengguan (737–839), accompanied by an emphasis on religious instruction and propagation grounded in that experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon world of the non-obstruction of phenomena is the joint product of experience and vision. It belongs to a dimension altogether different from the sphere of action in which the structural contradictions of actual class society are grasped, analysed, and practically overcome. Indeed, it is a world that can exist only within that particular dimension. It possesses neither the foundation nor the logic necessary to generate objective practice capable of overcoming the fundamental structural contradictions of the world in which we live. In this respect, there is no essential difference between Fazang and Chengguan. Even if this philosophy does not affirm mere facts or empirical reality as they stand, but instead rejects them as false and illusory, such rejection occurs entirely within subjective consciousness. It does not occur within the sphere of objective, transformative practice. Consequently, in actual historical circumstances, it amounts to a “doctrine of double truth”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-18|18]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; that affirms the existing order. There is therefore nothing surprising about Buddhists who consciously distinguish the world of prajñā experience from ordinary empirical reality nevertheless acting, in practice, as defenders of the established social system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== V ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
When Kegon thought attempts to formulate a social ethics within the actual world without overcoming the traditional characteristics and limitations examined above—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|336|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—that is, when it constructs morality through the logic of mutual identity (sōsoku 相即) and the dependent-origination logic of mutual dependence and interrelationship (sōi sōkan 相依相関), expressed in propositions such as “The principal is principal in relation to the companion, and the companion is companion in relation to the principal,” or “Mind is mind in relation to matter, and matter is matter in relation to mind”—the result will be an ethics of concord, harmony, and paternalistic benevolence.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Without capital there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no labour. At the same time, without labour there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no capital. The joint activity of capital and labour is precisely what constitutes industry. […] If those who provide wages deserve respect, then those who provide labour deserve equal respect. Indeed, neither party is simply giving something to the other; rather, industry consists of capital and labour being brought together.” (Shibusawa Eiichi) &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-19|19]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of cooperation between capital and labour expressed by this industrial capitalist is presented by a Zen practitioner in the following manner:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If one understands that self and other are originally nondual, there should be no difficulty whatsoever. Labour is the capitalist’s capital, and capital is the labourer’s labour. How, then, could conflict possibly arise?” (Iida Tōin) &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-20|20]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of harmony can also become a morality of war. A Kegon scholar writes:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In times of peace, the understanding of dependent origination provides a foundation for harmonious relations, through the recognition of the profound karmic connections that bind people inseparably together. But in times of emergency, it also manifests itself as a spirit of fearless, unobstructed struggle, enabling Japanese citizens to fulfil their responsibilities in their respective positions.” (Kamekawa Kyōshin) &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-21|21]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When every single member of the nation, embraced within the august imperial authority, rises with this sense of the completeness of principal and companion, the hundred million people are no longer limited to merely a hundred million. Rather, the hundred million simultaneously manifest a power multiplied a hundred millionfold.” (Ibid.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to this Kegon scholar, it is only through the conception of the state arising from Japanese national consciousness that the relationship between the individual and the whole can truly be perceived in its proper form, through the practical apprehension of inexhaustible dependent origination expressed as “one is all, and all is one.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-22|22]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet this very logic has found concrete expression in postwar Japan in the workers’ handbook, or “Mirror,” of Ōmi Kenshi, and has continued to produce results as a morality of worker training developed through cooperation between industrial capital and Zen. The Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren 経団連)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|337|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—supported the establishment of a Zen training centre where a recent roundtable entitled “Zen and Business” discussed the adjustment of human relations through Zen, the rationalisation of business management, and measures concerning labour. Among the statements recorded in that discussion were the following:&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-j&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-j|j]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Our most important policy, as our managing director has just explained, is first of all to bring about a complete change in the attitudes associated with student life. We want participants to examine themselves, their membership in the company, and the relationship between the individual within the company as a whole and the whole constituted through individuals. We want them to analyse themselves and then begin working with a renewed consciousness of themselves as members of the company. This is our most fundamental policy.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-23|23]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“We received some questionnaire responses saying that, although participants had expected the monks’ talks at the Zen temple to be thoroughly religious and solemn, they found them quite approachable—even including discussions of attitudes toward romantic love—and therefore very pleasant to listen to. […] If possible, we would appreciate talks that include a little of this sort of romantic interest, since they seem to be very well received.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What I wish to address here is Kamekawa’s interpretation of the “completeness of principal and companion” (shuhan gusoku 主伴具足), which is essentially the same as Takakusu’s interpretation. In this case, the relationship running from principal to companion is thoroughly one-directional and extremely concrete in its historical reality, since it provides a foundation for imperial absolutism under the Meiji Constitution. By contrast, the possibility of the companion becoming principal remains merely conceptual. In other words, this suggests that the logic of the completeness of principal and companion should not be applied to class society. In Kamekawa’s interpretation, principal and companion cannot genuinely be said to possess complete and perfect reciprocity. Even Fazang himself, who originally formulated this logic, probably did not entirely escape this danger. Kamata, in the essay discussed earlier, also takes up this problem and warns against confusing the reality of religious experience with empirical reality. Yet, as I have already pointed out, this criticism amounts to a “doctrine of double truth,” in which existing reality is denied at the level of consciousness but accepted in actual practice. An anarchist-communist society would surely provide the best expression of the complete illumination and mutual fulfilment of principal and companion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|338|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== VI ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a saying, “Kill the Buddha and kill the patriarchs” (Unmonroku 雲門録). Perhaps no tradition is as thoroughgoing as Zen in refusing to recognise externally imposed authority. The Tang-dynasty Zen master Linji Yixuan (Rinzai Gigen 臨済義玄, d. 867) emphasised the freedom of the “true person of no rank,” who “becomes master wherever one stands” and is “independently liberated, dependent on nothing.” It was in the spirit of such freedom that Danxia Tianran (Tanka Tennen 丹霞天然, 739–824) burned a Buddha image and Deshan Xuanjian (Tokusan Senkan 徳山宣鑑, 782–865) burned Buddhist scriptures. Zhaozhou Congshen (Jōshū Jūshin 趙州従諗, 778–897) declared, “I do not delight in hearing even the single word ‘Buddha.’” A king once visited Zhaozhou accompanied by his retainers, but Zhaozhou did not descend from his seat to welcome him. The following day, when the king sent an official to convey his thanks for the previous day’s reception, Zhaozhou descended from his seat and received the visitor’s greeting. When his disciples later asked why he had acted differently, Zhaozhou replied: “You would not understand. When a person of the highest rank comes, I receive him upon my meditation seat. When a person of middling rank comes, I descend from my seat to receive him. When a person of the lowest rank comes, I go outside the monastery gate to receive him. This is the custom of my house.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-24|24]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As suggested by the passage, “In the Western realm there is a land called Peace and Nourishment. […] There is no system of kingship there, nor any hierarchy of official ranks,” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-25|25]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; the future society envisioned by Buddhists may be understood as a world of anarchist communism. Kropotkin (1842–1921)&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-k&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-k|k]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; argued that our cultural achievements and the material necessities of life are the fruits of the labour of countless people extending back into the distant past. Consequently, none of us has grounds for calling them “my own.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-26|26]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Buddhists likewise understood these things as products of the endlessly interwoven activities of sentient beings: they are originally “property of the four quarters” (shihōmotsu 四方物), belonging to all sentient beings, and do not admit the possessive designation “mine” (mama-kāra). &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-27|27]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; (Nevertheless, texts such as the Brahmā’s Net Bodhisattva Precepts Sūtra already contain the notion of “property of the king.”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problems Buddhism must confront today in order to develop a social ethics or an ethics for the world are approximately as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|339|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
First, there is the problem of bringing together the recovery of Buddhism’s supranational character and the recovery of nationalism. In the expression “protection of the nation” (chingo kokka 鎮護国家), “nation” originally referred to the royal household, the territory, and the people, but its principal concern was the emperor. (In China, too, the term “state” (kokka 国家) could signify the Son of Heaven&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-28|28]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; or the imperial court&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-29|29]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;.) Consider, for example, the “Ten Secret Rites for the Protection of the Nation” (Chingo kokka no jikka hihō 鎮護国家の十箇秘法) in Japanese Tendai Buddhism. The majority concern the emperor personally, including rites for imperial enthronement, prayers concerning the emperor’s life, and precepts conferred for safe childbirth within the imperial household. In any event, because Buddhism was associated with state power from the earliest period of its development, it tended to lack a critical analysis and examination of the essential nature of political power. There was, of course, an intention to educate sovereigns so that they might govern benevolently, and this intention sometimes achieved positive results. Nevertheless, considerable suspicion of kings also existed. We find statements such as, “A monk should approach a king as though approaching a servant-master relationship” (Saddharma-smṛtyupasthāna Sūtra, Shōbōnenkyō 正法念経), and “Kings constantly increase taxation and arbitrarily punish people who have committed no offence. […] Though they see people suffering poverty and distress, they never give rise to compassion. They indulge in women without fearing the evil destinies” (Tang translation of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, Kegongyō 華厳経).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As in early Buddhism, Buddhist scriptures often regarded kings as people who inflicted harm upon the population. Kings were therefore placed alongside thieves and robbers, and among the misfortunes suffered by ordinary people—calamities of flood and fire, robbery, and wicked persons—there was also the “calamity of the king.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-30|30]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must discover a logic capable of bringing together a recognition of the evils of the state with the recovery of a legitimate nationalism, understood, for example, in terms of national independence and cooperation among peoples. In connection with this problem, we must also investigate how to reconcile the contradiction between spiritual freedom, expressed in the Record of Linji as “remaining unstained by birth and death, free to come and go” (shōji ni somazu kyojū jiyū 生死に染まず去住自由), and political and social freedom. “Without religion, the state could not exist,” declared Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-31|31]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet religion can exist without the state—although whether Zen should properly be called a “religion” is itself open to question. We have already seen how modern Japanese Zen was distorted by the state power of the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|340|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In considering the relationship between Buddhism and the state, the next question is that of class. Marx wrote: “The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas in every age. The class that constitutes the dominant material power in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual power. The class that controls the means of material production also controls the means of intellectual production. Consequently, the ideas of those who lack access to the means of intellectual production are, in general, subordinated to that class.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-32|32]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; It hardly needs explaining that the ideology of modern Japanese Zen was no exception to this general principle. Even in the process of conversion from a Japanese Zen bound by nationality under imperial Japan to a cosmopolitan Zen without national affiliation in a “cultural Japan,” this principle may have been operating to some degree. Dr. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi 久松真一, a Zen thinker internationally renowned alongside Suzuki Daisetsu, has discussed the crisis confronting the present age and the problem of world ethics. In the murderous development of atomic physics, he sees a crisis of humanism itself. He points to the unprecedented disparity between the extraordinary advances of science and the failure of morality to keep pace, insisting upon the need to strengthen our ethical capacities in order to correct this imbalance. Moreover, he maintains that such ethical capacities must not be based upon the egoism of particular nations, blocs of nations, classes, or ideologies. He therefore urges the immediate establishment of a new world ethics. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-33|33]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; This is certainly a valuable suggestion. Yet, when we reconsider the matter, is the disparity between science and ethics really a crisis of humanism or an impasse in human civilisation? The overwhelming majority of the world’s peoples, together with the majority of conscientious scientists, have repeatedly protested and resisted the murderous application of atomic power. They are not in the least guilty of ideological bias. Indeed, it is precisely this vast popular struggle for peace that has prevented a revolutionary rupture between science and morality. Those who are biased, those who expose the crisis of humanism, are none other than the “merchants of death” of monopoly capital.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How, then, does the F.A.S. Zen movement centred on Dr. Hisamatsu deal with the standpoint of class in its vow to “create superhistorical history”? Are the wisdom and power involved in this historical creation like distilled water—&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-l&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-l|l]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|341|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—colourless and transparent? How would its social ethics differ from the social ethics of Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.), which grounds itself in an Absolute?&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-m&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-m|m]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; “I can promise to be fair, but I cannot promise to be impartial,” wrote Goethe. (Ichikawa’s note: In this connection, I would draw attention to the system being developed by the materialist Umemoto Katsumi, who, in contrast to Nishida philosophy’s “active intuition” (kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観), is working out a logic of “practical intuition” (jissenteki chokkan 実践的直観) grounded in class consciousness.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problem of class is connected with the problem of human self-alienation, particularly alienation in labour. Unless Buddhism confronts this problem directly, it will be unable to develop a contemporary social ethics. This necessarily requires Buddhists to incorporate the standpoint of wage labourers into their own thinking. In other words, they must consciously adopt the standpoint of workers—human beings treated as commodities.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Alienated labour alienates (1) nature from humanity, and (2) human beings from themselves, from their own active functions and life-activity. In doing so, it alienates humanity from its species-being. […] The immediate consequence of the alienation of human beings from the products of their labour, their life-activity, and their species-being is the alienation of human beings from one another—die Entfremdung des Menschen von dem Menschen.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-34|34]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Under capitalism, even human beings become commodities. The education of young men and women amounts to investing capital in their bodies, while young people must devote themselves to the problem of how to sell themselves in the “personality market.” This is an education and morality grounded in the commodity economy, expressed through the language of adjustment and human relations. Expressions such as “human resources,” “human dock” [medical checkups], and the “Zen boom” are profoundly revealing. Someone remarked: “At the entrance there was a sign saying, ‘Look beneath your feet.’ That is the first priority. I believe this is how sound enterprises will emerge. From the standpoint of the business community, this is a cheap investment. Something like this will come back with a ten-thousandfold return.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-35|35]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|342|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Prostitution is only a particular expression of the general prostitution of the worker—allgemeine Prostitution des Arbeiters. And since prostitution constitutes a relationship that includes not only the prostitute but also the other party, whose baseness is even greater, capitalists too belong to this category.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-36|36]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I distinguish this kind of human self-alienation&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-n&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-n|n]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;, which I call horizontal alienation, from existential and religious self-alienation, or vertical estrangement. Horizontal alienation will never be overcome by the class that enjoys it as something comfortable, but only by the class that has no choice but to experience it as suffering. (This follows the same logic and psychology as the Buddhist overcoming of vertical estrangement, which begins with the contemplation of suffering.) To adopt the standpoint of wage labourers treated as commodities, and to resolve to overcome human self-alienation in labour—which is simultaneously self-alienation in capital—is precisely to adopt a standpoint of class consciousness. A merely abstract affirmation of humanity, incapable of understanding class consciousness as anything other than class egoism, misses the fundamental problem. The claim that human self-alienation can genuinely be overcome only from the standpoint of a universal human ethics—without uniting the opposing standpoints of class and humanity—rests upon the illusion that those who comfortably enjoy alienation might suddenly awaken one morning and collectively recognise it as suffering. The genuinely practical path toward overcoming alienation must instead begin by abandoning this facile sentimentalism, adopting the standpoint of those who experience alienation as suffering, and apprehending historical reality as it actually exists. This means grasping historical reality from a standpoint that unites objectivity and partisanship.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“What is at issue here is a confession, and nothing more. For humanity to have its sins forgiven, it need only proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-37|37]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|343|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are&amp;lt;sup id=&amp;quot;ed-call-o&amp;quot;&amp;gt;[[#ed-note-o|o]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;”—was this not what Marx accomplished through his analysis of the commodity in Capital? And might this not be the concrete content, within the field of economics, of Dōgen’s expression “to be verified by all things”? Beginning with labour-power as a commodity, one arrives, by abstracting from its capitalist determinations, at the commodity itself (the downward movement). Through scientific investigation of this commodity, one then clarifies how its inherent self-contradiction constitutes the elementary form of the class contradictions of capitalist society (the upward movement). Might not the disclosure of this circular process—understood, moreover, as an “open system” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-38|38]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;—through practical intuition constitute the social-scientific content of Nishida philosophy’s method of “becoming a thing in order to see, and becoming a thing in order to think”?’&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Today, we human beings—and Buddhist practitioners themselves—live within and are sustained by a commodity-economic society, a “world of prostitution.” This entire condition is what is meant by the “falsity of the secular world” (seken koke 世間虚仮), a world of falsehood and empty words.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Karl Löwith (1897–1973) gives an illuminating account of how even Kierkegaard, Marx’s philosophical antipode, demonstrated through the circumstances of his own life the validity of Marx’s insight into the relationship between capital and labour. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-39|39]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; On the other hand, when we attempt to realise objectively the mutual non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge 事々無礙) within an intersubjective society, we will surely have much to learn from Kropotkin’s persuasive criticisms concerning the limits of the philosophy of dependent origination. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-40|40]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What makes us conscious of the falsity of the secular world in this aspect, and inspires us to resolve to overcome it, is historical truth—the Dharma (dharma ダルマ)—proper to this sphere. For the moment, I leave aside the objectifying-logical and metaphysical dimensions of alienation. Nevertheless, we must not neglect a rigorous criticism of attempts to “empty” the objectivity of an object rather than transforming the object itself. Here, it seems to me, lies the starting point for a dialectical relationship between social ethics and social science among Buddhists.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Explanatory Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-a&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;a.&#039;&#039;&#039; Nishida’s philosophy of place. Nishida Kitarō’s 1926 essay “Place” (Basho 場所) develops the notion of a locus in which individual things are constituted through relationships and self-determination. Ichikawa argues that this philosophy’s rejection of a fixed, substantial universal ought to support freely associated individuals, rather than an emperor-centred political order. [[#ed-call-a|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-b&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;b.&#039;&#039;&#039; The four dharma-realms. In Huayan/Kegon thought these are the realm of phenomena (事法界), the realm of principle (理法界), the non-obstruction of principle and phenomena (理事無礙法界), and the non-obstruction of phenomena with one another (事事無礙法界). Ichikawa centres his political reading on the final realm, without assuming that interdependence automatically entails political equality. [[#ed-call-b|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-c&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;c.&#039;&#039;&#039; Takakusu and wartime Buddhist thought. Takakusu Junjirō (1866–1945) was a prominent Buddhist scholar associated with the Taishō canon. Ichikawa cites his “Principle of Totality in Buddhism” (「仏教の全体性原理」; Ichikawa’s source reference 6) as evidence of the use of Kegon categories to defend wartime totalitarianism. The passage documents Takakusu’s interpretation, not an uncontested meaning of Kegon doctrine. [[#ed-call-c|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-d&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;d.&#039;&#039;&#039; Principal and companion. Fazang’s “principal and companion” (shuhan 主伴) allows different phenomena to become the focus of a relationship, with the others functioning as companions. Ichikawa argues that making one hereditary sovereign permanently principal defeats the reciprocity that the doctrine is meant to express. [[#ed-call-d|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-e&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;e.&#039;&#039;&#039; Suzuki’s diagrams. Figures 1 and 2, reproduced from Suzuki Daisetsu’s postwar account, respectively depict an elevated apex with disconnected subjects and a circle of mutually related individuals. In Figure 2, S still represents the emperor. Ichikawa’s question is why even the revised, immanent arrangement requires a fixed hereditary centre. [[#ed-call-e|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-f&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;f.&#039;&#039;&#039; Monad with open windows. Suzuki reverses Leibniz’s well-known image of monads as having “no windows.” His metaphor of open windows expresses both distinct individuality and reciprocal exchange, but it does not itself settle the problem of the emperor’s status in the political whole. [[#ed-call-f|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-g&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;g.&#039;&#039;&#039; Buddhist Anarchist Communism. Ichikawa proposes Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.) as one possible political expression of Kegon interdependence, combining resistance to coercive external authority with opposition to private appropriation. Although Suzuki’s self-organising dharma-realm suggests anarchist free association, Ichikawa explicitly observes that Suzuki does not address private ownership. B.A.C. is therefore Ichikawa’s extension, not Suzuki’s own political programme. [[#ed-call-g|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-h&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;h.&#039;&#039;&#039; Zen and the imperial lineage. Ichikawa contrasts impermanence (shogyō mujō 諸行無常) with claims about the eternal imperial lineage. His objection is to making a particular hereditary institution a necessary expression of Zen insight. [[#ed-call-h|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-i&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;i.&#039;&#039;&#039; Ocean-seal samādhi. Ocean-seal samādhi (kaiin zanmai 海印三昧) evokes a comprehensive religious vision in Kegon thought. Ichikawa cautions against treating the harmony experienced or imagined in such a state as already realised in historically unequal or conflictual societies. [[#ed-call-i|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-j&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;j.&#039;&#039;&#039; Corporate Zen and industrial relations. Ichikawa refers to Zen training supported by business interests and a roundtable on “Zen and Business,” criticising the use of self-cultivation and harmony to promote managerial efficiency while leaving labour–capital inequalities intact. His printed references 23 and 35 both cite issue 70 of the journal Zen 禅 (March 1961). [[#ed-call-j|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-k&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;k.&#039;&#039;&#039; Common ownership and Kropotkin. Kropotkin’s account of wealth as the accumulated product of countless people’s labour supports Ichikawa’s criticism of exclusive appropriation. Ichikawa connects this to Buddhist language about goods belonging to the wider community, but also acknowledges traditions recognising royal ownership. Buddhist ownership terminology in the Japanese text requires final source-level verification. [[#ed-call-k|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-l&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;l.&#039;&#039;&#039; F.A.S. Zen. Associated with Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, F.A.S. refers to Formless Self, All Humankind, and Suprahistorical History. It seeks to unite awakening with universal ethical action. Ichikawa welcomes its aspirations but questions whether a standpoint claiming to transcend class and national divisions adequately addresses the material interests and historical antagonisms shaping social life. [[#ed-call-l|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-m&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;m.&#039;&#039;&#039; Moral Re-Armament. Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.) was an international moral and spiritual renewal movement. Ichikawa invokes it as a comparison when questioning whether a purportedly class-neutral universal ethics can engage specific structures of economic power. This is a comparative reference, distinct from his criticism of F.A.S. Zen. [[#ed-call-m|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-n&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;n.&#039;&#039;&#039; Horizontal and vertical alienation. Ichikawa distinguishes social and economic “horizontal alienation” from existential or religious “vertical estrangement.” Drawing on Marx’s account of alienated labour, he insists that the Buddhist encounter with suffering must also address historically specific exploitation. The two dimensions are related but not reducible to one another. [[#ed-call-n|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div id=&amp;quot;ed-note-o&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;o.&#039;&#039;&#039; Marx’s commodity analysis and practical intuition. Ichikawa compares Marx’s method in Capital with Nishida’s “active intuition” (kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観) and suggests a historically grounded “practical intuition” (jissenteki chokkan 実践的直観). His comparison is methodological, not an equation of Nishida’s philosophy with Marx’s critique of political economy. He insists that changing social relations cannot be replaced by inwardly “emptying” an object. [[#ed-call-o|↑]]&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Original References ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Ichikawa’s printed references, pp. 344–345. Working transcription; bracketed uncertainty notices are editorial, not original. --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;1.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎の思想は、当初から体制擁護的な契機を含んでいた。拙稿「絶対無のつまづき――西田幾多郎の場合」、『思想』、一九五九年一月、本巻所収「西田幾多郎論」参照。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;2.&#039;&#039;&#039; 大宅壮一「西田幾多郎と敗北」、『文藝春秋』、一九五四年六月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;3.&#039;&#039;&#039; 政府の「大東亜宣言」の草案として、一部の者の要請によって書かれたものだが、東条首相の拒否によって採択されなかった。その全文は矢吹一夫「昭和人物秘録」の「西田幾多郎博士の大東亜戦争観」にのせられている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;4.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎『哲学の根本問題・続編』、一〇六―一〇七頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;5.&#039;&#039;&#039; 同書、一〇七頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;6.&#039;&#039;&#039; 日本諸学振興委員会、哲学講演会での講演（一九三七年）の記録。西田幾多郎「学問的方法」と共に、『文部省教学叢書』第三集（一九三八年）に収録。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-7&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;7.&#039;&#039;&#039; 大阪毎日新聞社編『日本仏教概論』、一九四二年。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-8&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;8.&#039;&#039;&#039; 東京帝大仏青編『仏教思想講座』巻三、一九三九年。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-9&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;9.&#039;&#039;&#039; 高楠順次郎、前掲論文。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-10&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;10.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『宗門無尽灯論』、流通第一〇。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-11&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;11.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅海一瀾』、岩波文庫版、三一、三四頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-12&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;12.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. J. Proudhon, Proudhon’s Solution of the Social Problem, p. 45.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-13&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;13.&#039;&#039;&#039; F. H. Heinemann, Existentialism and the Modern Predicament, p. 154.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-14&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;14.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎『思索と体験』、一一八頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-15&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;15.&#039;&#039;&#039; H. Read, The Philosophy of Anarchism, pp. 24–25.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-16&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;16.&#039;&#039;&#039; 鎌田茂雄「華厳哲学の根本的立場」、中村元編『華厳思想』所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-17&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;17.&#039;&#039;&#039; 拙著『般若経』、三一書房、六九頁、第六巻所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-18&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;18.&#039;&#039;&#039; 船山信一「明治哲学における護教主義現実主義の三つの論理」、『思想』、一九六一年一月。二重真理説はキリスト教神学の恩寵と理性、仏教の真諦と俗諦の説にみられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-19&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;19.&#039;&#039;&#039; 渋沢栄一「労働問題解決の根本義」、『社会政策時報』、一九二〇年九月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-20&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;20.&#039;&#039;&#039; 飯田欓隠『無門関鑽燧』、一九二四年十一月、一七九頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-21&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;21.&#039;&#039;&#039; 亀川教信（龍谷大学教授）『縁起の構造』、一九四四年八月、五八一、五八五頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-22&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;22.&#039;&#039;&#039; 同書、五九頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-23&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;23.&#039;&#039;&#039; 「禅と企業」、『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-24&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;24.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅苑蒙求』。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-25&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;25.&#039;&#039;&#039; 支遁「阿弥陀仏像讃並序」。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-26&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;26.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism. Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 57f.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-27&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;27.&#039;&#039;&#039; 拙著『般若経』第四章、三一書房。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-28&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;28.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『晋書』（陶侃伝）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-29&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;29.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『事物起源』、学校学事部、詞賦。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-30&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;30.&#039;&#039;&#039; 宮本正尊編『大乗仏教の成立史的研究』、三七六頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-31&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;31.&#039;&#039;&#039; M. Bakunin, Gott u. d. Staat. (Gesammelte Werke. Bd. I)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-32&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;32.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Marx, Die Deutsche Ideologie, S. 44 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus. Bd. 29)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-33&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;33.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『京都新聞』、一九六一・一・一四および『維摩七則』、一六三頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-34&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;34.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Marx, Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte, S. 103, 106 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus, Bd. 42)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-35&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;35.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-36&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;36.&#039;&#039;&#039; Marx, ibid. S. 128.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-37&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;37.&#039;&#039;&#039; 「ルーゲへの手紙」、一八四三年（『マルクス・エンゲルス選集』補巻四、一三五頁）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-38&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;38.&#039;&#039;&#039; 梯明秀『資本論への私の歩み』、一二七頁以下。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-39&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;39.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Löwith, Von Hegel zu Nietzsche. 邦訳、七〇頁以下。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-40&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;40.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism, pp. 48, 56, 59, 64. P. Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, chap. I.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
Translated from Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, anakizumu” 禅・華厳・アナキズム (1961), reprinted in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 3 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343; original source references occupy pp. 344–345. The original reference numbers are retained as superscript numerals, distinct from the translator’s explanatory notes. Suzuki Daisetsu’s two diagrams are reproduced from the scanned collected edition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is a working translation. Several quotations and Japanese readings require final collation; the original reference list is reproduced below as a working transcription with linked numbering. References 23 and 35 both cite issue 70 of Zen (March 1961).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotation: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1961). “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism” (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH61ZKA-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA&amp;diff=1247</id>
		<title>IH61ZKA</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA&amp;diff=1247"/>
		<updated>2026-10-13T13:56:53Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism”}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム) is a 1961 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 3 of &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343, with references on pp. 344–345.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Japanese original:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH61ZKA|禅・華厳・アナキズム]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contents ==&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section1|I]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section2|II]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section3|III]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section4|IV]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section5|V]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section6|VI]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|319|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is known as the “Nishida philosophy” of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), the foremost representative of modern Japanese philosophy, was established in his 1926 essay “Place.” Although the idea of “place” (basho 場所) emerged through the concept of topos (place) found in Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotle’s De Anima, it was more fundamentally connected with the Mahāyāna Buddhist concepts of emptiness (kū 空; Sanskrit śūnyatā) and the dharma-realm (hokkai 法界; Sanskrit dharmadhātu), especially the realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge hokkai 事々無礙法界), a world of experience in which individual things and events mutually interpenetrate and mutually determine one another. In other words, Nishida’s thought was fundamentally connected with the philosophy of prajñā and Kegon philosophy. His central idea—that the mutual determination of individual things within the place of “absolute nothingness” is simultaneously the self-determination of the universal—expressed, through the mediation of the modern Western logic of the individual ego, the fundamental unity of the logical structures of prajñā emptiness and Kegon’s non-obstruction of phenomena. In essence, this philosophy should have established a metaphysical foundation for thoroughgoing freedom and equality through the Eastern logic of nothingness. It contained the possibility of establishing a philosophy of freedom that rejected all external authority (Autorität) and power (Macht), even casting off the clothing of so-called “religion.”&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;lower-alpha&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Nishida’s philosophy of place. Nishida Kitarō’s 1926 essay “Place” (Basho 場所) develops the notion of a locus in which individual things are constituted through relationships and self-determination. Ichikawa argues that this philosophy’s rejection of a fixed, substantial universal ought to support freely associated individuals, rather than an emperor-centred political order.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;lower-alpha&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;The four dharma-realms. In Huayan/Kegon thought these are the realm of phenomena (事法界), the realm of principle (理法界), the non-obstruction of principle and phenomena (理事無礙法界), and the non-obstruction of phenomena with one another (事事無礙法界). Ichikawa centres his political reading on the final realm, without assuming that interdependence automatically entails political equality.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|320|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet as imperial Japan’s wartime system expanded, and as pressure from the political Right and the military against the “liberal” tendencies of Nishida philosophy and the Kyoto School intensified, this philosophy of the place of absolute nothingness—or the philosophy of the “self-determination of facts”—gradually developed a logic that provided an ideological foundation for the Imperial Way and the “holy war.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ōya Sōichi went so far as to say that Nishida had “sold his soul to secure the safety of his body.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-2|2]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Among Nishida’s writings from this period were “The Principle of the New World Order” (1943) and “On the National Polity” (1944). The latter subsequently appeared as the fourth supplementary essay in his Philosophical Essays, was published in the journal Tetsugaku kenkyū 哲学研究, and was included in the Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō. The former, however, was not included in the collected works.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-3|3]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, the logic of place, or the philosophy of the non-obstruction of phenomena, should not have provided a foundation for the Imperial Way. On the contrary, it should have provided a foundation for anarchism. In my essay “The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō” (published in Shisō 思想, January 1959, and reprinted in the present volume), I wrote the following in its conclusion:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The place of absolute nothingness, the dialectical universal, forms the principle of world-formation through its self-conscious determination. This principle and the Imperial Way constitute an absolute contradiction that cannot be reconciled. Within the sphere of objectifying logic, the two assert themselves against and mutually exclude one another by their very nature. If the Imperial Way were genuinely to become subjective beyond the domain of objectifying logic, then, in the very process of becoming subjective, it would have no alternative but to dissolve itself by negating those accidental, particular, and irrational elements that constitute its essential nature. In the process of fully realising itself as subject, the Imperial Way must relinquish the ego. It loses itself by returning to the place of absolute nothingness, the true historical world. Conversely, the logic of the place of absolute nothingness—the logic of the predicate—is something that fundamentally negates the Imperial Way conceived as subject. Nishida’s “theology of the logic of place” should not have provided a foundation for Japan’s founding mythology and the politico-religious philosophy of the eternal imperial order. Rather, it should have furnished a logical system that brought these to an end. Likewise—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|321|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and, contrary to what happened in Nishida’s own case, it should have been a philosophical system that regarded even national morality as fundamentally illusory (koke 虚仮). As a philosophy of place, in which absolutely free individuals are mediated by a universal that mediates without any mediating entity, this system should have provided the foundation for a democratic association of free individuals in the deepest sense. It should have demanded that the Imperial Way shed its former character, anticipated the disappearance of the state, and provided the foundation and promise of a community without coercive power. The logic of the predicate began with Nishida the philosopher, only to founder in Nishida the imperial subject.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to Nishida, the actual world must be a world of individuals—I, you, and others. An individual might initially be understood as a determination of the universal, such as existence or living beings. By adding specific differences to what is universal, proceeding through successive classifications, and finally passing beyond them, one might conceive of the individual as a limiting point. Yet an individual conceived in this manner is not a genuine individual. Such an individual can never escape being merely a part of the universal. The individual must determine itself.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-4|4]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Only something that determines itself—that is, something that becomes conscious of itself, forms itself, and chooses for itself—can truly be called an independent individual. Yet an individual can determine itself only in relation to other individuals. I exist as myself in relation to you, just as you exist as yourself in relation to me. “An individual must be conceived as standing in relation to another individual. It is only through standing in relation to another individual that an individual can be conceived as such. It is impossible to conceive of a single individual existing alone. For mutually independent things to stand in relation to one another is precisely what it means for things to act upon one another. […] For mutually independent things to enter into relations, some form of mediation must be conceived between them.” (Emphasis added by Ichikawa.)&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-5|5]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; If this mediator were some universal that unified the individuals—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|322|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—then that universal would itself amount to another individual, and the independence of the original individuals would necessarily be lost. (It would be rather like two people who could meet only in the presence of a guardian.) Behind individual beings there is no overarching universal that encompasses them. What mediates independent individuals cannot be some positive, substantial universal. Rather, it must be a dialectical universal understood as the determination of the place of nothingness. Within the place of absolute nothingness, individuals engage with and cooperate with one another while remaining genuinely independent. I remain entirely myself, and you remain entirely yourself; yet at the same time I am you, and you are me. Each is an autonomous, self-governing existence possessing an irreplaceable individuality, yet each may freely become subject or object in relation to the other, working and cooperating together. This is how the world of historical reality must truly be constituted. Borrowing a term from Kegon philosophy, Nishida calls this world of existential encounter and interconnection the “realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena” (jiji muge no sekai 事々無礙の世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The logic of the place of absolute nothingness, which makes possible free and autonomous interaction and cooperation among independent, individual existences—this was, so to speak, the fundamental logic of Nishida’s social philosophy or philosophy of the world.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consequently, what should follow from this logic is a society of genuinely autonomous and free individuals, liberated from attachment to the ego and its objects. Such a society would not merely be free of domination through force; it would be a freely associated human community in which there was no place even for “authority” understood as power disguised in ethical clothing.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet this open conception of the world, grounded in the logic of place and the Zen–Kegon understanding of emptiness and the non-obstruction of phenomena, was constrained and distorted by Nishida’s samurai sensibilities, his position within the academic establishment, and the circumstances of imperialist Japan. Its possibilities were deformed until it descended into the Theory of the National Polity and The Principle of the New World Order. And this was the same course that Japanese Buddhism generally followed at the time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|323|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎, one of the leading Buddhist scholars of modern Japan—supervising editor of the Taishō Revised Tripiṭaka, professor emeritus at Tokyo Imperial University, and recipient of the fourth Order of Culture (Nishida received the second)—argued in “The Principle of Totality in Buddhism” that Mahāyāna Buddhist logic and ethics were, from the beginning, totalitarian. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-6|6]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; According to Takakusu, the logical structure of this totalitarianism is expressed in Kegon thought through the doctrine of the Four Dharma-Realms (shihokkai 四法界), culminating in the fourth, the Realm of the Non-Obstruction of Phenomena (jiji muge hokkai 事々無礙法界). He maintained that, with the World War as its turning point, the world had begun moving toward totalitarianism: “Today even Westerners are beginning to practise totalitarianism, whereas the Japanese have actually practised it since ancient times. Through Japan’s Yamato totalitarianism, we can provide a model for the world. Through Buddhism’s principle of totality, we can guide the world. […] Japan as it actually exists must be governed through the Imperial Way. It is truly gratifying that the Kegon principle of totality should be put into practice. […] However excellent Buddhism may be, there must be no attempt to regard it as a form of government through the Buddhist Way existing alongside Japan’s government through the Imperial Way.” Takakusu concluded: “We now find ourselves in the midst of the National Spiritual Mobilization campaign, at a time when the Japanese spirit must be manifested in its totality. […] We should fully appreciate the true meaning of Kegon and undertake service to the nation without the slightest disorder and without a trace of selfishness. All people should forget themselves, relinquish themselves, and devote themselves to national affairs. We should realise the truth that the sage has no self, yet there is nothing that is not the self.” The Kegon scholar Kamekawa Kyōshin 亀川教信, in his essay “The Structure of Dependent Origination” (Engi no kōzō 縁起の構造), &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-7|7]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; and Yamagami Kaizen 山上戒全, in his essay “Kegon” 華厳, &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-8|8]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; developed interpretations of Kegon thought along similar lines. The Zen scholar Nakane Kandō 中根環堂, in “Totalitarianism and Zen” (Zentaishugi to Zen 全体主義と禅), &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-9|9]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; argued that Japan’s national polity was not the flat, horizontal totalitarianism of the West. Rather, its principle of one emperor and all his subjects constituted a three-dimensional, organic unity, in which affection resembled the relationship between father and child, while duty preserved the proper distinctions between ruler and subject. Underlying this hierarchical unity, he maintained, was the Kegon philosophy of “one is many, and many are one” (ichi soku ta, ta soku ichi 一即多・多即一). The path to fully realising this unity was seated meditation. Through grasping the essence of zazen—“thinking from the standpoint of nonthinking”—one could accomplish the sacred imperial undertaking of bringing the world under one roof (hakkō ichiu 八紘一宇). The lectures on “The Problem of Japanese Culture” given by Nishida at Kyoto Imperial University’s Monday lecture series in 1938—&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;lower-alpha&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Takakusu and wartime Buddhist thought. Takakusu Junjirō (1866–1945) was a prominent Buddhist scholar associated with the Taishō canon. Ichikawa cites his “Principle of Totality in Buddhism” (「仏教の全体性原理」; Ichikawa’s source reference 6) as evidence of the use of Kegon categories to defend wartime totalitarianism. The passage documents Takakusu’s interpretation, not an uncontested meaning of Kegon doctrine.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|324|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and Kōyama Iwao’s subsequent lectures on “Cultural Typology” likewise sought to contribute to the construction of a “New Order in East Asia” by invoking the Kegon logic of phenomena.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet all these attempts were nothing other than distortions of Kegon philosophy and Zen thought. Let us return once more to Takakusu for an example.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In his Commentary on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Kegongyō tangenki 華厳経探玄記), Fazang (Hōzō 法蔵, 643–712), the third patriarch of the Chinese Huayan school, classifies the infinite mutual identity and interpenetration of phenomena within the world of experience into ten categories, known as the “Ten Profound Forms of Dependent Origination” (jūgen engi 十玄縁起). The tenth is called the “Gate of the Complete Illumination and Possession of Virtues by Principal and Companion” (shuhan enmyō gutokumon 主伴円明具徳門). The countless phenomena of the experiential world alternately become principal and companion, forming an endlessly interconnected symbolic world. If one phenomenon is taken as principal, all the others become its companions and are subordinated to it. But if another is selected as principal, all the remaining phenomena—including the one formerly taken as principal—become its companions and are encompassed by it. This is the principle of the complete illumination and possession of virtues by principal and companion. Takakusu paraphrases the doctrine in concrete terms: “Both principal and companion should work together harmoniously and openly, those above and below acting with one heart. Totalitarianism means that parent and child do not oppose one another but join forces and work together. If this cannot be accomplished, it is not totalitarianism. […] When similar things come together, one becomes their centre and principal. We may therefore apply this to the actual relationship of one emperor and all his subjects.” He also declared: “Our country has been totalitarian since the very beginning of its founding. […] Through the Meiji Restoration, it returned to its original totalitarianism.” And further: “We Japanese, who already possess the principle of totality in our actual national existence, are bringing the vision of Kegon’s one true dharma-realm into reality. This is something truly precious.” Takakusu thus maintains that the truths of the non-obstruction of phenomena, the completeness of principal and companion, and the identity of one with all and all with one are already realised within the system of one emperor and all his subjects—a system that regards democracy as contrary to the national polity and rests upon an authoritarian, status-based morality. This is a typical example of philosophy placed at the service of the authorities.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;lower-alpha&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Principal and companion. Fazang’s “principal and companion” (shuhan 主伴) allows different phenomena to become the focus of a relationship, with the others functioning as companions. Ichikawa argues that making one hereditary sovereign permanently principal defeats the reciprocity that the doctrine is meant to express.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|325|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The condition of Japanese Buddhism described above had already taken root in the period of the Taika reforms. Leaving aside for the moment the earlier circumstances of state Buddhism in China, the new government, established through the reforms of 646, eventually undertook the construction of the Great Buddha Hall at Tōdaiji. It enshrined Vairocana Buddha there and established provincial monasteries and nunneries throughout the country, where scriptures for the protection of the state were to be recited. In this way, temples, monks, and nuns came under the control of state authority.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Immediately after Japan’s defeat, Suzuki Daisetsu, in “The Construction of a Spiritual Japan” (September 1946), argued that a new Japan must be constructed upon the principle of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm (hokkai engi 法界縁起) found in Kegon philosophy.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To place the emperor above the people is a symbol of the will to power. […] Rather, the emperor should possess a quality of immanence, becoming interconnected with the people in endlessly overlapping relationships. […] Just as the entire world should constitute a dharma-realm mandala of nations, so within Japan itself, the emperor and the people must become a single whole in which phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. Only then will a spiritual Japan become possible.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If we express this schematically, Japan up to the present has resembled Figure 1. Although there appears to be a connection between those above and those below, it can be severed at any point along the way. Before the wishes of those above reach those below, they must pass through military cliques, bureaucrats, and financial interests. Those below have no clear idea where these directives originate. Moreover, the people themselves have no direct connections with one another. […] They do not know how to think for themselves—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure1.png|thumb|360px|Figure 1. Suzuki Daisetsu’s diagram of hierarchical relations in prewar Japan (reproduced by Ichikawa, p. 325).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|326|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—[…] All that was demanded of them was reverent obedience to imperial commands. […] The system of one emperor and all his subjects symbolises the will to power on the one hand and, on the other, extinguishes the autonomy of individual citizens.” (pp. 158–159)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki goes on to describe the dharma-realm mandala that ought to be constructed by the emperor and the people. Although the passage is lengthy, I shall quote it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the emperor descends from the Plain of High Heaven and joins ordinary human beings upon this earth, the people, for their part, must abandon their servile sense of inferiority. […] They must establish their own autonomy and recognise fully that nothing can replace the value of individual personality.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“They must understand that respecting oneself is also the basis for respecting others. Each individual is complete in themselves, and at the same time all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. […] Because each is complete, all are non-obstructing; because all are non-obstructing, each is complete.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The political form of Japan as a dharma-realm mandala may be represented schematically in Figure 2. A, B, C, and so forth represent the people, the countless inhabitants of the nation. Yet each is an individual, a monad capable of autonomous action, thought, and sensation.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;lower-alpha&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Suzuki’s diagrams. Figures 1 and 2, reproduced from Suzuki Daisetsu’s postwar account, respectively depict an elevated apex with disconnected subjects and a circle of mutually related individuals. In Figure 2, S still represents the emperor. Ichikawa’s question is why even the revised, immanent arrangement requires a fixed hereditary centre.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Each is complete in themselves. Each is an independent and free personality. Precisely for this reason, each enters into inexhaustibly interconnected relationships with others. These monads have thrown their windows wide open, sharing their own light with others while receiving the light of others in return.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;lower-alpha&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Monad with open windows. Suzuki reverses Leibniz’s well-known image of monads as having “no windows.” His metaphor of open windows expresses both distinct individuality and reciprocal exchange, but it does not itself settle the problem of the emperor’s status in the political whole.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The chords and straight lines within the circle represent communication, reciprocal interaction, and mutual interpenetration among the monads.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure2.png|thumb|360px|Figure 2. Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala: A–H represent individuals, while S at the centre represents the emperor (reproduced by Ichikawa, p. 326).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|327|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The S at the centre is an inward reflection of that which comprehensively encompasses the surrounding A, B, C, and so forth from without. A, B, C, D, and the others are each independent, yet each possesses totality. Accordingly, A, B, C, and D are joined by curved lines to form a great circle. This great circle, just as it is, represents each individual monad, each individual ‘blade of grass’ among the people. To express this meaning, it is concentrated and reflected in the small circle at the centre.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The great circle encompasses the people as a whole, but merely saying that it encompasses them does not provide anything concrete that can be pointed to. For this reason I have placed S at the centre. S is none other than the emperor, the centre of the national polity. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It might seem possible to remove S from the great circle surrounding it and place it above. But doing so would introduce a considerable danger that the will to power and a dualistic conception would reappear. The feudal mentality would inevitably be reproduced. Moreover, placing S within the circle should serve to strengthen the unity of the circle itself. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“As Japanese and as East Asians, we must establish a new national polity through our own autonomy, freedom, and constructive vision. Needless to say, its establishment must be spiritual through and through; it must be built upon spiritual awakening. Only then can it attain universality. Only then can something emerge from among us that will contribute to the advancement of world spiritual culture and to the various institutions of practical life.” (pp. 160–163)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This work by Suzuki may be regarded as the foremost postwar document in which a Buddhist thinker sought, with enthusiasm and sincerity, to envision a new political order for Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As is already clear, there is a fundamental distance and difference between Takakusu’s wartime interpretation and Suzuki’s postwar interpretation of the Kegon doctrine of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm, understood in relation to the realities of Japan. (We should pay particular attention to Suzuki’s insistence that the new order must be built upon spiritual awakening through and through.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s case, we may wonder whether, had he lived into the postwar period, he would have recognised the need to revise his earlier interpretation. In Suzuki’s case, we might ask whether truth acquires its illumination—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|328|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and power precisely when it is spoken at a time when speaking it is both necessary and difficult. Nevertheless, judging from what we have before us, we cannot avoid concluding that Suzuki’s interpretation is the one that truly brings the meaning of Kegon thought to life in contemporary Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s and Suzuki’s interpretations, the position of the emperor differs in the way represented by the two diagrams discussed above. At the same time, this difference in position may also reflect a difference in the position of Vairocana Buddha, the prototype of the emperor’s position.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s account, we find the following statement:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In Kegon terms, the great Vairocana Buddha at the centre is active. All the attendant beings of the outer Vajra circle are active as well. The great mandala of the total mobilisation of principal and companion is manifested. This is the phenomenal manifestation of the dependent origination of the Kegon dharma-realm—the manifestation of the true dharma-realm.” (pp. 251–252)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki, on the other hand, argues:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the original form of Japan’s national polity is understood in this way, the sequence of ideas suggested by expressions such as ‘the benevolence of the sovereign’ and ‘the light of the imperial reign’ acquires a different meaning from that traditionally attached to them. ‘Benevolence’ will no longer be associated with power, but will instead become something characterised by reciprocity. Nor will ‘light’ be something that shines only from above. Rather, it will signify the reciprocal illumination of the original light possessed by each individual.” (p. 164)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet neither account clarifies the most fundamental issue: the internal and logical relationship between Vairocana Buddha and the emperor (in Suzuki’s case, the emperor understood as a human being).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Since Takakusu asserts government through the Imperial Way while refusing to recognise government through the Buddhist Way, he must explain what logic he adopts in relation to the doctrine of original ground and manifest traces (honji suijaku 本地垂迹).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki speaks of the “benevolence of the sovereign,” meaning the emperor’s benevolence. But what, concretely, does that benevolence signify? Similarly, when he says that “light” does not come only from above, what exactly is the “light that comes from above”? Is there still an “above” within Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala? If so, what does that position represent? Is it a position above others occupied by the emperor as a human being? These questions remain unanswered.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki maintains that his dharma-realm possesses universality. But can a logic and an ethics that permanently place a single human being belonging to one particular hereditary lineage at the centre of the world genuinely claim universality?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Blood,” as something irrational and contingent,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|329|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—can it be assigned a particular cosmic and ethical significance from the standpoint of the Buddhist Dharma, or indeed from the standpoint of universal ethics?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki writes: “The unbroken imperial line will become something for which we should stake our lives when it is understood in the following way: the perpetuity of the imperial lineage symbolises the perpetuity of the ideals cherished by the Japanese people.” (p. 165)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The “ideals” mentioned here presumably refer to what Suzuki calls the “construction of a spiritual Japan.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Leaving aside for the moment the question of who actually risked their lives to reject imperialist Japan and construct a spiritual Japan, why should the perpetuity of these ideals require a particular human being belonging to a particular hereditary lineage? What would happen if that individual, exercising their fundamental human rights, refused to serve as such a symbol? And what should peoples without such a symbol do?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Even if the emperor occupied the position proposed by Suzuki, so long as the unbroken hereditary imperial line is recognised—that is, so long as some form of the emperor system is recognised—and so long as universality is claimed for this system, does its logic not contain the possibility of developing into a new version of the doctrine of “eight corners of the world under one roof” (hakkō ichiu 八紘一宇)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If the logic of Kegon’s dependent origination of the dharma-realm were pursued consistently, carrying Suzuki’s interpretation to its ultimate conclusion beyond Takakusu’s, would not even a “democratic” emperor system headed by a human emperor lose its logical foundation? And would not the very structure of meaning represented in Suzuki’s second diagram consequently undergo a fundamental transformation?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, despite these questions, Suzuki’s interpretation emphasises “the value of the individual as a morally free person, as a spiritual existence, and as an independently autonomous being who cannot be reduced to an antlike mass under the vague designation of ‘totalitarianism’” (p. 142).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki also rejects the principle of domination through force:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“There should be no power standing outside the dharma-realm. To suppose that an organisation cannot be sustained without such power is to fail to recognise the irrationality of seeking it outside itself. The dharma-realm is already a complete organisation in itself. The power that organises it is originally inherent within the organisation itself. When this power is sought outside, what exists within becomes distorted and is diverted in an unintended direction. […]”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|330|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—The construction of a spiritual Japanese state must not take power as its fundamental principle. It must be a faithful reflection in our actual lives of the realm in which all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing.” (pp. 153–154)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Let us pay particular attention to Suzuki’s observation that the dharma-realm is already a complete organisation and that the power necessary to organise it is inherent within the organisation itself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This recalls the anarchist idea of free association. Viewed politically, it may be understood as suggesting anarchism as the form of a new human society embodying the Kegon world of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon dharma-realm, grounded in the rejection of both the principle of coercive power and the principle of private ownership, may be described as a world of Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.)—although Suzuki, it seems to me, has never addressed the question of private ownership.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;lower-alpha&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E7&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Buddhist Anarchist Communism. Ichikawa proposes Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.) as one possible political expression of Kegon interdependence, combining resistance to coercive external authority with opposition to private appropriation. Although Suzuki’s self-organising dharma-realm suggests anarchist free association, Ichikawa explicitly observes that Suzuki does not address private ownership. B.A.C. is therefore Ichikawa’s extension, not Suzuki’s own political programme.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon (1809–1865), who envisaged the perfected form of society as a “unity of order and anarchy,” proposed a conception that, at least in this respect, may be applied directly to Kegon’s Lotus Treasury World (renge zō sekai 蓮華蔵世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The traditional position of Japanese Zen was that State Shinto and the Buddha-Dharma were fundamentally one. The Edo-period Zen master Tōrei Enji 東嶺円慈 (1721–1792) explained it as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Fundamentally, ‘kami’ means mind. When the impurities of the mind have been completely extinguished and it becomes as clear as a mirror, this is called kami. Thus, the Way of the kami takes the mirror as the representation of its essential nature.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The mirror of the mind is originally pure, eternally abiding, and serenely still: this is called Kuni-no-Tokotachi-no-Mikoto 国常立尊. The mirror of the mind is originally perfectly luminous, and there is nothing that it does not reveal: this is called Amaterasu Ōmikami 天照大神. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“One should understand that the Way of the kami and the Buddha-Dharma share the same underlying principle. They are nothing other than the single Dharma of seeing one’s nature.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-10|10]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The same position was held by Tōrei’s teacher, Hakuin Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1685–1768). The Meiji-period Zen master Imakita Kōsen 今北洪川 (1816–1892) likewise expressed this understanding:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In our country there is the Way of imperial sovereignty. This is the great Way of the ancestral deity and the true teaching of rulers. Its transmission has continued from the distant past, with the imperial descendants forming a single unbroken lineage, into which no other family has entered. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“This is what makes our imperial Way uniquely distinguished among all the nations of the world.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-11|11]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|331|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—A true man of our imperial nation must first establish firmly within himself the pillar of the Japanese spirit, which neither fire can burn nor water drown. Once he has suddenly penetrated through to realisation, there will be nothing deficient in his ability to judge and uphold the Imperial Way.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Tōrei’s interpretation lacks any logic capable of grounding, from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma, the unbroken imperial lineage that constitutes the core of State Shinto. It remains entirely unclear how the fundamental Buddhist principle that “all conditioned things are impermanent” (shogyō mujō 諸行無常) could be reconciled with Shinto’s assertion that the imperial throne will endure as long as heaven and earth. The same applies to Imakita Kōsen. Indeed, among Japanese Zen masters from Kokan Shiren (1278–1346), Hakuin, and Tenkei Denson (1648–1735) down to the present, the most fundamental questions have been almost entirely neglected. How can the kami of Shinto be identical with the fundamental subject of human existence? How can a hereditary lineage be identical with a divine lineage? And how can a religious tradition that, through monastic renunciation, takes the discontinuation of hereditary descent as a principle provide a Zen Buddhist justification for the continuity of that very descent? Hakuin, Tōrei, and virtually every other Zen practitioner have revealed a fatal weakness of vision in their understanding of Shinto.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;lower-alpha&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E8&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Zen and the imperial lineage. Ichikawa contrasts impermanence (shogyō mujō 諸行無常) with claims about the eternal imperial lineage. His objection is to making a particular hereditary institution a necessary expression of Zen insight.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is no relationship whatsoever between the eternity of Zen truth and the political and supposedly “ethical” continuity of a particular bloodline. No logic exists by which the unbroken imperial lineage—a survival from the customs of ancient peoples—can be justified from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma or Zen. Above all, the Imperial Way Zen that emerged after the Meiji Restoration represents the most extreme decadence of Zen. The only possible support for the forced identification of hereditary continuity with moral continuity seems to lie in the doctrine of karmic causation across the three times, as found in Hakuin’s “Song of Giving” (Segyōka 施行歌). Yet even this doctrine cannot establish such an identification. It can do no more than explain differences of social status and circumstances in the present life. Moreover, the doctrine itself can scarcely withstand modern criticism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the dignity of humanity, the poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) wrote: “There can be no god more sacred than yourself. And this is what the oldest and the newest myths alike ultimately mean.” (“Laws for Creation”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon, writing of human sovereignty, declared, “Every citizen is king.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-12|12]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet to identify Amaterasu Ōmikami with the fundamental subject of human existence, as Japanese Zen has done, is ultimately to negate State Shinto—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|332|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and to deny any necessary, intrinsic connection between Zen and the Japanese national polity, or between Zen and the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Does not the fact that Japanese Zen practitioners have failed to recognise and openly acknowledge this conclusion demonstrate that their Zen thinking has remained insufficiently thoroughgoing, and that they have not genuinely achieved the condition of being “independently liberated, dependent upon nothing” (dokudatsu mu’e 独脱無依; Record of Linji, Rinzairoku 臨済録)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Christian existentialist philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948), who advocated religious libertarian communism, was described by the philosopher Heinemann as a “mystical anarchist.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-13|13]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; The French philosopher Simone Weil (1909–1943), who took an interest in Eastern thought, especially Zen, and criticised Christian theology, was an anarchist who participated in the Spanish Civil War.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In my view, the social philosophy of Zen may be described as Prajñā–Śūnyatā Anarchist Communism—an anarchist communism of wisdom (hannya 般若) and emptiness (kū 空). (See my book Hannyakyō 般若経, published by San’ichi Shobō.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why is it that Western religious anarchists have resisted state power—Berdyaev, for example, became a communist under imperial Russia and was imprisoned—whereas not only do we find almost no comparable examples in Zen or Kegon Buddhism, but examples of precisely the opposite tendency are overwhelmingly numerous? Let us consider two or three circumstances that may help explain this situation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The first is the obscuring of the difference in level between the world of experiential reality and the world of ordinary empirical experience, between the world of selfless intuitive action and the actual world of the empirical individual ego. This produces a “mixture or confusion of two worlds of reality.” The realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge no sekai 事々無礙の世界) belongs to the reality disclosed in the experience of prajñā. Yet this realm readily overlaps and merges with the ordinary world of empirical facts, so that the tension arising from the discontinuity between the two is never firmly established. We may recall that Nishida, the author of An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no kenkyū 善の研究), acknowledged in replying to Takahashi Satomi’s criticism that he had failed to recognise a qualitative distinction between pure experience and impure experience—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|333|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—a point that has important implications for both Zen studies and Buddhist studies. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-14|14]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The circumstances described above are connected with the fact that Buddhist practitioners have traditionally placed the emphasis of their religious training upon the attainment of peace of mind. As Nishida wrote in his diary, “Do not run after the peripheral matters of scholarship and forget the foundation of peace of mind.” Consequently, the culmination of their practice tends toward an attitude of being at home wherever one finds oneself—expressed in the saying, “Wherever one lives becomes home.” To that extent, there is a psychological tendency to beautify and rationalise the circumstances of each particular moment. Moreover, the subject of prajñā intuition is characterised as something that reflects and receives, as suggested by expressions such as “ocean-seal samādhi” (kaiin zanmai 海印三昧), “precious-mirror samādhi” (hōkyō zanmai 宝鏡三昧), and the “place of absolute nothingness” (zettai mu no basho 絶対無の場所). This characteristic corresponds to the orientation toward peace of mind described above. Even before a sustained determination to transform the surrounding environment can emerge, the practitioner has already entered the contemplative enjoyment of things. The fact that the East, characterised by what has been called “Asiatic stagnation,” has excelled in the arts of cultivation, and that much of “Zen culture” has taken an artistic form, is connected with this tendency. It is interesting that archery and martial techniques, originally intended for combat against enemies, became in times of peace the disciplines of kyūdō 弓道 and budō 武道, directed toward confronting oneself, and were subsequently internalised, intellectualised, systematised, and transformed into forms of contemplation. Everything associated with the “Way” (dō 道) has a contemplative character. In other words, it finds a place of repose within the framework of established social conventions and institutions. Affluent Buddhist practitioners enjoying leisure in periods of social stability could readily immerse themselves in the contemplative world of Kegon. Anxious Buddhists living through periods of crisis likewise entered this world of contemplation in search of peace of mind. In such a world, empirical historical reality becomes veiled by the harmonious non-obstruction of all phenomena. It is beautified and, in proportion to this beautification, accepted and rationalised.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
All phenomena in the world are said to appear within ocean-seal samādhi, mutually interpenetrating in infinitely overlapping relationships. In my view, the Lotus Treasury World (renge zō sekai 蓮華蔵世界) described in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Kegongyō 華厳経) is both a realm of reality disclosed through the active intuition of prajñā and a visionary world constituted through creative imagination around that experience. Here, however, harmonious non-obstruction refers to the actual activities of practitioners living within the rigid framework of caste society, together with the mutually non-obstructing phenomena of their visionary world. It does not mean that the raw, living reality inhabited by the masses is itself a world of harmonious—&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;lower-alpha&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E9&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Ocean-seal samādhi. Ocean-seal samādhi (kaiin zanmai 海印三昧) evokes a comprehensive religious vision in Kegon thought. Ichikawa cautions against treating the harmony experienced or imagined in such a state as already realised in historically unequal or conflictual societies.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|334|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—non-obstruction. Within ocean-seal samādhi, three layers of reality must surely appear: the mutually non-obstructing facts of the practitioner’s immediate activity, the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena within an intuitive vision, and the dark reality of conflict and contradiction. It would be a mistake to paint over this three-dimensional world with a single, flat colour of harmonious non-obstruction.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In contrast, we may recall the following words of Herbert Read (1893–1968): “Religion is closely connected with art (poetry). […] During the Spanish Civil War, observers were struck by the religious fervour of the anarchists. In that country of a latent renaissance, anarchism inspired not only heroes but saints—new kinds of people who devoted their lives, through sensuous imagination and practical action, to creating a new form of human society.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-15|15]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The following criticism may be applied to the misguided realism that results from confusing worlds belonging to different levels of experience:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It is clear that Fazang’s Kegon philosophy—its doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena and of the absoluteness of phenomena mutually non-obstructing—expresses a truth that can be realised only through the fundamental intuition of ocean-seal samādhi, understood through the doctrine of the arising of phenomena from their true nature (shōki 性起). “When this becomes merely an intellectual doctrine, however, it denies the mediation of practice and turns into a facile, absolutist worldview. […] “The doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena certainly does not mean simply accepting the ‘things’ of existing reality as they are and asserting their harmony. Genuine non-obstruction among phenomena unfolds upon the foundation of religious intuition. […] “The Kegon system is a religious worldview manifested through ocean-seal samādhi. If this is forgotten, and the ‘things’ of empirical reality are accepted merely as they appear to the discriminating consciousness of ordinary people, and their harmony is then proclaimed, the result is an entirely different philosophy. “Phenomena are absolute because each constitutes part of the Lotus Treasury World. To ignore this and claim that every phenomenon possesses absolute significance amounts to affirming existing reality just as it stands. One misstep, and this becomes an unconditional affirmation of existing structures of domination and social organisation. “A philosophy of absolute affirmation can thereby become a philosophy in the service of rulers who sanction existing reality as it is.” (Kamata Shigeo 鎌田茂雄)&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-16|16]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|335|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This criticism may be said to identify correctly the errors and pathologies into which Kegon thought, and indeed Mahāyāna Buddhism more generally, have been liable to fall, and into which they have frequently fallen in practice—as, for example, in the cases of Sengzhao (384–414) and Dahui (1089–1163).&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-17|17]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The criticism emphasises the distinction between the realm of religious experience and that of ordinary empirical experience, insisting that the latter must be purified “through the practice of the bodhisattva path and vows grounded in compassion.” In this respect, it overcomes the vulgarism characteristic of Takakusu’s interpretation and, together with Suzuki’s view cited within it, rests upon an orthodox doctrinal foundation. This position might be described as a shift from the contemplative tendency found in Fazang toward the experiential orientation of Chengguan (737–839), accompanied by an emphasis on religious instruction and propagation grounded in that experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon world of the non-obstruction of phenomena is the joint product of experience and vision. It belongs to a dimension altogether different from the sphere of action in which the structural contradictions of actual class society are grasped, analysed, and practically overcome. Indeed, it is a world that can exist only within that particular dimension. It possesses neither the foundation nor the logic necessary to generate objective practice capable of overcoming the fundamental structural contradictions of the world in which we live. In this respect, there is no essential difference between Fazang and Chengguan. Even if this philosophy does not affirm mere facts or empirical reality as they stand, but instead rejects them as false and illusory, such rejection occurs entirely within subjective consciousness. It does not occur within the sphere of objective, transformative practice. Consequently, in actual historical circumstances, it amounts to a “doctrine of double truth”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-18|18]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; that affirms the existing order. There is therefore nothing surprising about Buddhists who consciously distinguish the world of prajñā experience from ordinary empirical reality nevertheless acting, in practice, as defenders of the established social system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== V ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
When Kegon thought attempts to formulate a social ethics within the actual world without overcoming the traditional characteristics and limitations examined above—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|336|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—that is, when it constructs morality through the logic of mutual identity (sōsoku 相即) and the dependent-origination logic of mutual dependence and interrelationship (sōi sōkan 相依相関), expressed in propositions such as “The principal is principal in relation to the companion, and the companion is companion in relation to the principal,” or “Mind is mind in relation to matter, and matter is matter in relation to mind”—the result will be an ethics of concord, harmony, and paternalistic benevolence.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Without capital there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no labour. At the same time, without labour there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no capital. The joint activity of capital and labour is precisely what constitutes industry. […] If those who provide wages deserve respect, then those who provide labour deserve equal respect. Indeed, neither party is simply giving something to the other; rather, industry consists of capital and labour being brought together.” (Shibusawa Eiichi) &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-19|19]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of cooperation between capital and labour expressed by this industrial capitalist is presented by a Zen practitioner in the following manner:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If one understands that self and other are originally nondual, there should be no difficulty whatsoever. Labour is the capitalist’s capital, and capital is the labourer’s labour. How, then, could conflict possibly arise?” (Iida Tōin) &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-20|20]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of harmony can also become a morality of war. A Kegon scholar writes:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In times of peace, the understanding of dependent origination provides a foundation for harmonious relations, through the recognition of the profound karmic connections that bind people inseparably together. But in times of emergency, it also manifests itself as a spirit of fearless, unobstructed struggle, enabling Japanese citizens to fulfil their responsibilities in their respective positions.” (Kamekawa Kyōshin) &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-21|21]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When every single member of the nation, embraced within the august imperial authority, rises with this sense of the completeness of principal and companion, the hundred million people are no longer limited to merely a hundred million. Rather, the hundred million simultaneously manifest a power multiplied a hundred millionfold.” (Ibid.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to this Kegon scholar, it is only through the conception of the state arising from Japanese national consciousness that the relationship between the individual and the whole can truly be perceived in its proper form, through the practical apprehension of inexhaustible dependent origination expressed as “one is all, and all is one.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-22|22]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet this very logic has found concrete expression in postwar Japan in the workers’ handbook, or “Mirror,” of Ōmi Kenshi, and has continued to produce results as a morality of worker training developed through cooperation between industrial capital and Zen. The Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren 経団連)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|337|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—supported the establishment of a Zen training centre where a recent roundtable entitled “Zen and Business” discussed the adjustment of human relations through Zen, the rationalisation of business management, and measures concerning labour. Among the statements recorded in that discussion were the following:&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;lower-alpha&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E10&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Corporate Zen and industrial relations. Ichikawa refers to Zen training supported by business interests and a roundtable on “Zen and Business,” criticising the use of self-cultivation and harmony to promote managerial efficiency while leaving labour–capital inequalities intact. His printed references 23 and 35 both cite issue 70 of the journal Zen 禅 (March 1961).&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Our most important policy, as our managing director has just explained, is first of all to bring about a complete change in the attitudes associated with student life. We want participants to examine themselves, their membership in the company, and the relationship between the individual within the company as a whole and the whole constituted through individuals. We want them to analyse themselves and then begin working with a renewed consciousness of themselves as members of the company. This is our most fundamental policy.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-23|23]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“We received some questionnaire responses saying that, although participants had expected the monks’ talks at the Zen temple to be thoroughly religious and solemn, they found them quite approachable—even including discussions of attitudes toward romantic love—and therefore very pleasant to listen to. […] If possible, we would appreciate talks that include a little of this sort of romantic interest, since they seem to be very well received.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What I wish to address here is Kamekawa’s interpretation of the “completeness of principal and companion” (shuhan gusoku 主伴具足), which is essentially the same as Takakusu’s interpretation. In this case, the relationship running from principal to companion is thoroughly one-directional and extremely concrete in its historical reality, since it provides a foundation for imperial absolutism under the Meiji Constitution. By contrast, the possibility of the companion becoming principal remains merely conceptual. In other words, this suggests that the logic of the completeness of principal and companion should not be applied to class society. In Kamekawa’s interpretation, principal and companion cannot genuinely be said to possess complete and perfect reciprocity. Even Fazang himself, who originally formulated this logic, probably did not entirely escape this danger. Kamata, in the essay discussed earlier, also takes up this problem and warns against confusing the reality of religious experience with empirical reality. Yet, as I have already pointed out, this criticism amounts to a “doctrine of double truth,” in which existing reality is denied at the level of consciousness but accepted in actual practice. An anarchist-communist society would surely provide the best expression of the complete illumination and mutual fulfilment of principal and companion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|338|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== VI ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a saying, “Kill the Buddha and kill the patriarchs” (Unmonroku 雲門録). Perhaps no tradition is as thoroughgoing as Zen in refusing to recognise externally imposed authority. The Tang-dynasty Zen master Linji Yixuan (Rinzai Gigen 臨済義玄, d. 867) emphasised the freedom of the “true person of no rank,” who “becomes master wherever one stands” and is “independently liberated, dependent on nothing.” It was in the spirit of such freedom that Danxia Tianran (Tanka Tennen 丹霞天然, 739–824) burned a Buddha image and Deshan Xuanjian (Tokusan Senkan 徳山宣鑑, 782–865) burned Buddhist scriptures. Zhaozhou Congshen (Jōshū Jūshin 趙州従諗, 778–897) declared, “I do not delight in hearing even the single word ‘Buddha.’” A king once visited Zhaozhou accompanied by his retainers, but Zhaozhou did not descend from his seat to welcome him. The following day, when the king sent an official to convey his thanks for the previous day’s reception, Zhaozhou descended from his seat and received the visitor’s greeting. When his disciples later asked why he had acted differently, Zhaozhou replied: “You would not understand. When a person of the highest rank comes, I receive him upon my meditation seat. When a person of middling rank comes, I descend from my seat to receive him. When a person of the lowest rank comes, I go outside the monastery gate to receive him. This is the custom of my house.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-24|24]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As suggested by the passage, “In the Western realm there is a land called Peace and Nourishment. […] There is no system of kingship there, nor any hierarchy of official ranks,” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-25|25]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; the future society envisioned by Buddhists may be understood as a world of anarchist communism. Kropotkin (1842–1921)&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;lower-alpha&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E11&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Common ownership and Kropotkin. Kropotkin’s account of wealth as the accumulated product of countless people’s labour supports Ichikawa’s criticism of exclusive appropriation. Ichikawa connects this to Buddhist language about goods belonging to the wider community, but also acknowledges traditions recognising royal ownership. Buddhist ownership terminology in the Japanese text requires final source-level verification.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; argued that our cultural achievements and the material necessities of life are the fruits of the labour of countless people extending back into the distant past. Consequently, none of us has grounds for calling them “my own.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-26|26]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Buddhists likewise understood these things as products of the endlessly interwoven activities of sentient beings: they are originally “property of the four quarters” (shihōmotsu 四方物), belonging to all sentient beings, and do not admit the possessive designation “mine” (mama-kāra). &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-27|27]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; (Nevertheless, texts such as the Brahmā’s Net Bodhisattva Precepts Sūtra already contain the notion of “property of the king.”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problems Buddhism must confront today in order to develop a social ethics or an ethics for the world are approximately as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|339|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
First, there is the problem of bringing together the recovery of Buddhism’s supranational character and the recovery of nationalism. In the expression “protection of the nation” (chingo kokka 鎮護国家), “nation” originally referred to the royal household, the territory, and the people, but its principal concern was the emperor. (In China, too, the term “state” (kokka 国家) could signify the Son of Heaven&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-28|28]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; or the imperial court&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-29|29]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;.) Consider, for example, the “Ten Secret Rites for the Protection of the Nation” (Chingo kokka no jikka hihō 鎮護国家の十箇秘法) in Japanese Tendai Buddhism. The majority concern the emperor personally, including rites for imperial enthronement, prayers concerning the emperor’s life, and precepts conferred for safe childbirth within the imperial household. In any event, because Buddhism was associated with state power from the earliest period of its development, it tended to lack a critical analysis and examination of the essential nature of political power. There was, of course, an intention to educate sovereigns so that they might govern benevolently, and this intention sometimes achieved positive results. Nevertheless, considerable suspicion of kings also existed. We find statements such as, “A monk should approach a king as though approaching a servant-master relationship” (Saddharma-smṛtyupasthāna Sūtra, Shōbōnenkyō 正法念経), and “Kings constantly increase taxation and arbitrarily punish people who have committed no offence. […] Though they see people suffering poverty and distress, they never give rise to compassion. They indulge in women without fearing the evil destinies” (Tang translation of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, Kegongyō 華厳経).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As in early Buddhism, Buddhist scriptures often regarded kings as people who inflicted harm upon the population. Kings were therefore placed alongside thieves and robbers, and among the misfortunes suffered by ordinary people—calamities of flood and fire, robbery, and wicked persons—there was also the “calamity of the king.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-30|30]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must discover a logic capable of bringing together a recognition of the evils of the state with the recovery of a legitimate nationalism, understood, for example, in terms of national independence and cooperation among peoples. In connection with this problem, we must also investigate how to reconcile the contradiction between spiritual freedom, expressed in the Record of Linji as “remaining unstained by birth and death, free to come and go” (shōji ni somazu kyojū jiyū 生死に染まず去住自由), and political and social freedom. “Without religion, the state could not exist,” declared Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-31|31]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet religion can exist without the state—although whether Zen should properly be called a “religion” is itself open to question. We have already seen how modern Japanese Zen was distorted by the state power of the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|340|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In considering the relationship between Buddhism and the state, the next question is that of class. Marx wrote: “The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas in every age. The class that constitutes the dominant material power in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual power. The class that controls the means of material production also controls the means of intellectual production. Consequently, the ideas of those who lack access to the means of intellectual production are, in general, subordinated to that class.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-32|32]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; It hardly needs explaining that the ideology of modern Japanese Zen was no exception to this general principle. Even in the process of conversion from a Japanese Zen bound by nationality under imperial Japan to a cosmopolitan Zen without national affiliation in a “cultural Japan,” this principle may have been operating to some degree. Dr. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi 久松真一, a Zen thinker internationally renowned alongside Suzuki Daisetsu, has discussed the crisis confronting the present age and the problem of world ethics. In the murderous development of atomic physics, he sees a crisis of humanism itself. He points to the unprecedented disparity between the extraordinary advances of science and the failure of morality to keep pace, insisting upon the need to strengthen our ethical capacities in order to correct this imbalance. Moreover, he maintains that such ethical capacities must not be based upon the egoism of particular nations, blocs of nations, classes, or ideologies. He therefore urges the immediate establishment of a new world ethics. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-33|33]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; This is certainly a valuable suggestion. Yet, when we reconsider the matter, is the disparity between science and ethics really a crisis of humanism or an impasse in human civilisation? The overwhelming majority of the world’s peoples, together with the majority of conscientious scientists, have repeatedly protested and resisted the murderous application of atomic power. They are not in the least guilty of ideological bias. Indeed, it is precisely this vast popular struggle for peace that has prevented a revolutionary rupture between science and morality. Those who are biased, those who expose the crisis of humanism, are none other than the “merchants of death” of monopoly capital.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How, then, does the F.A.S. Zen movement centred on Dr. Hisamatsu deal with the standpoint of class in its vow to “create superhistorical history”? Are the wisdom and power involved in this historical creation like distilled water—&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;lower-alpha&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E12&amp;quot;&amp;gt;F.A.S. Zen. Associated with Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, F.A.S. refers to Formless Self, All Humankind, and Suprahistorical History. It seeks to unite awakening with universal ethical action. Ichikawa welcomes its aspirations but questions whether a standpoint claiming to transcend class and national divisions adequately addresses the material interests and historical antagonisms shaping social life.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|341|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—colourless and transparent? How would its social ethics differ from the social ethics of Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.), which grounds itself in an Absolute?&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;lower-alpha&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E13&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Moral Re-Armament. Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.) was an international moral and spiritual renewal movement. Ichikawa invokes it as a comparison when questioning whether a purportedly class-neutral universal ethics can engage specific structures of economic power. This is a comparative reference, distinct from his criticism of F.A.S. Zen.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; “I can promise to be fair, but I cannot promise to be impartial,” wrote Goethe. (Ichikawa’s note: In this connection, I would draw attention to the system being developed by the materialist Umemoto Katsumi, who, in contrast to Nishida philosophy’s “active intuition” (kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観), is working out a logic of “practical intuition” (jissenteki chokkan 実践的直観) grounded in class consciousness.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problem of class is connected with the problem of human self-alienation, particularly alienation in labour. Unless Buddhism confronts this problem directly, it will be unable to develop a contemporary social ethics. This necessarily requires Buddhists to incorporate the standpoint of wage labourers into their own thinking. In other words, they must consciously adopt the standpoint of workers—human beings treated as commodities.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Alienated labour alienates (1) nature from humanity, and (2) human beings from themselves, from their own active functions and life-activity. In doing so, it alienates humanity from its species-being. […] The immediate consequence of the alienation of human beings from the products of their labour, their life-activity, and their species-being is the alienation of human beings from one another—die Entfremdung des Menschen von dem Menschen.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-34|34]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Under capitalism, even human beings become commodities. The education of young men and women amounts to investing capital in their bodies, while young people must devote themselves to the problem of how to sell themselves in the “personality market.” This is an education and morality grounded in the commodity economy, expressed through the language of adjustment and human relations. Expressions such as “human resources,” “human dock” [medical checkups], and the “Zen boom” are profoundly revealing. Someone remarked: “At the entrance there was a sign saying, ‘Look beneath your feet.’ That is the first priority. I believe this is how sound enterprises will emerge. From the standpoint of the business community, this is a cheap investment. Something like this will come back with a ten-thousandfold return.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-35|35]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|342|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Prostitution is only a particular expression of the general prostitution of the worker—allgemeine Prostitution des Arbeiters. And since prostitution constitutes a relationship that includes not only the prostitute but also the other party, whose baseness is even greater, capitalists too belong to this category.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-36|36]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I distinguish this kind of human self-alienation&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;lower-alpha&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E14&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Horizontal and vertical alienation. Ichikawa distinguishes social and economic “horizontal alienation” from existential or religious “vertical estrangement.” Drawing on Marx’s account of alienated labour, he insists that the Buddhist encounter with suffering must also address historically specific exploitation. The two dimensions are related but not reducible to one another.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;, which I call horizontal alienation, from existential and religious self-alienation, or vertical estrangement. Horizontal alienation will never be overcome by the class that enjoys it as something comfortable, but only by the class that has no choice but to experience it as suffering. (This follows the same logic and psychology as the Buddhist overcoming of vertical estrangement, which begins with the contemplation of suffering.) To adopt the standpoint of wage labourers treated as commodities, and to resolve to overcome human self-alienation in labour—which is simultaneously self-alienation in capital—is precisely to adopt a standpoint of class consciousness. A merely abstract affirmation of humanity, incapable of understanding class consciousness as anything other than class egoism, misses the fundamental problem. The claim that human self-alienation can genuinely be overcome only from the standpoint of a universal human ethics—without uniting the opposing standpoints of class and humanity—rests upon the illusion that those who comfortably enjoy alienation might suddenly awaken one morning and collectively recognise it as suffering. The genuinely practical path toward overcoming alienation must instead begin by abandoning this facile sentimentalism, adopting the standpoint of those who experience alienation as suffering, and apprehending historical reality as it actually exists. This means grasping historical reality from a standpoint that unites objectivity and partisanship.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“What is at issue here is a confession, and nothing more. For humanity to have its sins forgiven, it need only proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-37|37]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|343|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;lower-alpha&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E15&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Marx’s commodity analysis and practical intuition. Ichikawa compares Marx’s method in Capital with Nishida’s “active intuition” (kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観) and suggests a historically grounded “practical intuition” (jissenteki chokkan 実践的直観). His comparison is methodological, not an equation of Nishida’s philosophy with Marx’s critique of political economy. He insists that changing social relations cannot be replaced by inwardly “emptying” an object.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;”—was this not what Marx accomplished through his analysis of the commodity in Capital? And might this not be the concrete content, within the field of economics, of Dōgen’s expression “to be verified by all things”? Beginning with labour-power as a commodity, one arrives, by abstracting from its capitalist determinations, at the commodity itself (the downward movement). Through scientific investigation of this commodity, one then clarifies how its inherent self-contradiction constitutes the elementary form of the class contradictions of capitalist society (the upward movement). Might not the disclosure of this circular process—understood, moreover, as an “open system” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-38|38]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;—through practical intuition constitute the social-scientific content of Nishida philosophy’s method of “becoming a thing in order to see, and becoming a thing in order to think”?’&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Today, we human beings—and Buddhist practitioners themselves—live within and are sustained by a commodity-economic society, a “world of prostitution.” This entire condition is what is meant by the “falsity of the secular world” (seken koke 世間虚仮), a world of falsehood and empty words.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Karl Löwith (1897–1973) gives an illuminating account of how even Kierkegaard, Marx’s philosophical antipode, demonstrated through the circumstances of his own life the validity of Marx’s insight into the relationship between capital and labour. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-39|39]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; On the other hand, when we attempt to realise objectively the mutual non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge 事々無礙) within an intersubjective society, we will surely have much to learn from Kropotkin’s persuasive criticisms concerning the limits of the philosophy of dependent origination. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-40|40]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What makes us conscious of the falsity of the secular world in this aspect, and inspires us to resolve to overcome it, is historical truth—the Dharma (dharma ダルマ)—proper to this sphere. For the moment, I leave aside the objectifying-logical and metaphysical dimensions of alienation. Nevertheless, we must not neglect a rigorous criticism of attempts to “empty” the objectivity of an object rather than transforming the object itself. Here, it seems to me, lies the starting point for a dialectical relationship between social ethics and social science among Buddhists.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Explanatory Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references group=&amp;quot;lower-alpha&amp;quot; responsive=&amp;quot;0&amp;quot; /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Original References ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Ichikawa’s printed references, pp. 344–345. Working transcription; bracketed uncertainty notices are editorial, not original. --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;1.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎の思想は、当初から体制擁護的な契機を含んでいた。拙稿「絶対無のつまづき――西田幾多郎の場合」、『思想』、一九五九年一月、本巻所収「西田幾多郎論」参照。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;2.&#039;&#039;&#039; 大宅壮一「西田幾多郎と敗北」、『文藝春秋』、一九五四年六月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;3.&#039;&#039;&#039; 政府の「大東亜宣言」の草案として、一部の者の要請によって書かれたものだが、東条首相の拒否によって採択されなかった。その全文は矢吹一夫「昭和人物秘録」の「西田幾多郎博士の大東亜戦争観」にのせられている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;4.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎『哲学の根本問題・続編』、一〇六―一〇七頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;5.&#039;&#039;&#039; 同書、一〇七頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;6.&#039;&#039;&#039; 日本諸学振興委員会、哲学講演会での講演（一九三七年）の記録。西田幾多郎「学問的方法」と共に、『文部省教学叢書』第三集（一九三八年）に収録。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-7&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;7.&#039;&#039;&#039; 大阪毎日新聞社編『日本仏教概論』、一九四二年。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-8&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;8.&#039;&#039;&#039; 東京帝大仏青編『仏教思想講座』巻三、一九三九年。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-9&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;9.&#039;&#039;&#039; 高楠順次郎、前掲論文。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-10&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;10.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『宗門無尽灯論』、流通第一〇。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-11&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;11.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅海一瀾』、岩波文庫版、三一、三四頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-12&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;12.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. J. Proudhon, Proudhon’s Solution of the Social Problem, p. 45.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-13&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;13.&#039;&#039;&#039; F. H. Heinemann, Existentialism and the Modern Predicament, p. 154.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-14&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;14.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎『思索と体験』、一一八頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-15&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;15.&#039;&#039;&#039; H. Read, The Philosophy of Anarchism, pp. 24–25.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-16&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;16.&#039;&#039;&#039; 鎌田茂雄「華厳哲学の根本的立場」、中村元編『華厳思想』所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-17&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;17.&#039;&#039;&#039; 拙著『般若経』、三一書房、六九頁、第六巻所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-18&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;18.&#039;&#039;&#039; 船山信一「明治哲学における護教主義現実主義の三つの論理」、『思想』、一九六一年一月。二重真理説はキリスト教神学の恩寵と理性、仏教の真諦と俗諦の説にみられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-19&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;19.&#039;&#039;&#039; 渋沢栄一「労働問題解決の根本義」、『社会政策時報』、一九二〇年九月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-20&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;20.&#039;&#039;&#039; 飯田欓隠『無門関鑽燧』、一九二四年十一月、一七九頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-21&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;21.&#039;&#039;&#039; 亀川教信（龍谷大学教授）『縁起の構造』、一九四四年八月、五八一、五八五頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-22&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;22.&#039;&#039;&#039; 同書、五九頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-23&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;23.&#039;&#039;&#039; 「禅と企業」、『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-24&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;24.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅苑蒙求』。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-25&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;25.&#039;&#039;&#039; 支遁「阿弥陀仏像讃並序」。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-26&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;26.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism. Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 57f.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-27&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;27.&#039;&#039;&#039; 拙著『般若経』第四章、三一書房。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-28&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;28.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『晋書』（陶侃伝）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-29&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;29.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『事物起源』、学校学事部、詞賦。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-30&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;30.&#039;&#039;&#039; 宮本正尊編『大乗仏教の成立史的研究』、三七六頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-31&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;31.&#039;&#039;&#039; M. Bakunin, Gott u. d. Staat. (Gesammelte Werke. Bd. I)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-32&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;32.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Marx, Die Deutsche Ideologie, S. 44 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus. Bd. 29)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-33&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;33.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『京都新聞』、一九六一・一・一四および『維摩七則』、一六三頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-34&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;34.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Marx, Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte, S. 103, 106 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus, Bd. 42)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-35&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;35.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-36&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;36.&#039;&#039;&#039; Marx, ibid. S. 128.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-37&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;37.&#039;&#039;&#039; 「ルーゲへの手紙」、一八四三年（『マルクス・エンゲルス選集』補巻四、一三五頁）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-38&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;38.&#039;&#039;&#039; 梯明秀『資本論への私の歩み』、一二七頁以下。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-39&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;39.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Löwith, Von Hegel zu Nietzsche. 邦訳、七〇頁以下。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-40&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;40.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism, pp. 48, 56, 59, 64. P. Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, chap. I.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
Translated from Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, anakizumu” 禅・華厳・アナキズム (1961), reprinted in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 3 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343; original source references occupy pp. 344–345. The original reference numbers are retained as superscript numerals, distinct from the translator’s explanatory notes. Suzuki Daisetsu’s two diagrams are reproduced from the scanned collected edition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is a working translation. Several quotations and Japanese readings require final collation; the original reference list is reproduced below as a working transcription with linked numbering. References 23 and 35 both cite issue 70 of Zen (March 1961).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotation: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1961). “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism” (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH61ZKA-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA-T&amp;diff=1246</id>
		<title>IH61ZKA-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA-T&amp;diff=1246"/>
		<updated>2026-10-13T13:50:11Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism”}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム) is a 1961 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 3 of &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343, with references on pp. 344–345.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Japanese original:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH61ZKA|禅・華厳・アナキズム]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contents ==&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section1|I]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section2|II]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section3|III]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section4|IV]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section5|V]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section6|VI]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|319|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is known as the “Nishida philosophy” of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), the foremost representative of modern Japanese philosophy, was established in his 1926 essay “Place.” Although the idea of “place” (basho 場所) emerged through the concept of topos (place) found in Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotle’s De Anima, it was more fundamentally connected with the Mahāyāna Buddhist concepts of emptiness (kū 空; Sanskrit śūnyatā) and the dharma-realm (hokkai 法界; Sanskrit dharmadhātu), especially the realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge hokkai 事々無礙法界), a world of experience in which individual things and events mutually interpenetrate and mutually determine one another. In other words, Nishida’s thought was fundamentally connected with the philosophy of prajñā and Kegon philosophy. His central idea—that the mutual determination of individual things within the place of “absolute nothingness” is simultaneously the self-determination of the universal—expressed, through the mediation of the modern Western logic of the individual ego, the fundamental unity of the logical structures of prajñā emptiness and Kegon’s non-obstruction of phenomena. In essence, this philosophy should have established a metaphysical foundation for thoroughgoing freedom and equality through the Eastern logic of nothingness. It contained the possibility of establishing a philosophy of freedom that rejected all external authority (Autorität) and power (Macht), even casting off the clothing of so-called “religion.”&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Nishida’s philosophy of place. Nishida Kitarō’s 1926 essay “Place” (Basho 場所) develops the notion of a locus in which individual things are constituted through relationships and self-determination. Ichikawa argues that this philosophy’s rejection of a fixed, substantial universal ought to support freely associated individuals, rather than an emperor-centred political order.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;The four dharma-realms. In Huayan/Kegon thought these are the realm of phenomena (事法界), the realm of principle (理法界), the non-obstruction of principle and phenomena (理事無礙法界), and the non-obstruction of phenomena with one another (事事無礙法界). Ichikawa centres his political reading on the final realm, without assuming that interdependence automatically entails political equality.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|320|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet as imperial Japan’s wartime system expanded, and as pressure from the political Right and the military against the “liberal” tendencies of Nishida philosophy and the Kyoto School intensified, this philosophy of the place of absolute nothingness—or the philosophy of the “self-determination of facts”—gradually developed a logic that provided an ideological foundation for the Imperial Way and the “holy war.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ōya Sōichi went so far as to say that Nishida had “sold his soul to secure the safety of his body.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-2|2]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Among Nishida’s writings from this period were “The Principle of the New World Order” (1943) and “On the National Polity” (1944). The latter subsequently appeared as the fourth supplementary essay in his Philosophical Essays, was published in the journal Tetsugaku kenkyū 哲学研究, and was included in the Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō. The former, however, was not included in the collected works.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-3|3]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, the logic of place, or the philosophy of the non-obstruction of phenomena, should not have provided a foundation for the Imperial Way. On the contrary, it should have provided a foundation for anarchism. In my essay “The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō” (published in Shisō 思想, January 1959, and reprinted in the present volume), I wrote the following in its conclusion:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The place of absolute nothingness, the dialectical universal, forms the principle of world-formation through its self-conscious determination. This principle and the Imperial Way constitute an absolute contradiction that cannot be reconciled. Within the sphere of objectifying logic, the two assert themselves against and mutually exclude one another by their very nature. If the Imperial Way were genuinely to become subjective beyond the domain of objectifying logic, then, in the very process of becoming subjective, it would have no alternative but to dissolve itself by negating those accidental, particular, and irrational elements that constitute its essential nature. In the process of fully realising itself as subject, the Imperial Way must relinquish the ego. It loses itself by returning to the place of absolute nothingness, the true historical world. Conversely, the logic of the place of absolute nothingness—the logic of the predicate—is something that fundamentally negates the Imperial Way conceived as subject. Nishida’s “theology of the logic of place” should not have provided a foundation for Japan’s founding mythology and the politico-religious philosophy of the eternal imperial order. Rather, it should have furnished a logical system that brought these to an end. Likewise—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|321|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and, contrary to what happened in Nishida’s own case, it should have been a philosophical system that regarded even national morality as fundamentally illusory (koke 虚仮). As a philosophy of place, in which absolutely free individuals are mediated by a universal that mediates without any mediating entity, this system should have provided the foundation for a democratic association of free individuals in the deepest sense. It should have demanded that the Imperial Way shed its former character, anticipated the disappearance of the state, and provided the foundation and promise of a community without coercive power. The logic of the predicate began with Nishida the philosopher, only to founder in Nishida the imperial subject.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to Nishida, the actual world must be a world of individuals—I, you, and others. An individual might initially be understood as a determination of the universal, such as existence or living beings. By adding specific differences to what is universal, proceeding through successive classifications, and finally passing beyond them, one might conceive of the individual as a limiting point. Yet an individual conceived in this manner is not a genuine individual. Such an individual can never escape being merely a part of the universal. The individual must determine itself.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-4|4]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Only something that determines itself—that is, something that becomes conscious of itself, forms itself, and chooses for itself—can truly be called an independent individual. Yet an individual can determine itself only in relation to other individuals. I exist as myself in relation to you, just as you exist as yourself in relation to me. “An individual must be conceived as standing in relation to another individual. It is only through standing in relation to another individual that an individual can be conceived as such. It is impossible to conceive of a single individual existing alone. For mutually independent things to stand in relation to one another is precisely what it means for things to act upon one another. […] For mutually independent things to enter into relations, some form of mediation must be conceived between them.” (Emphasis added by Ichikawa.)&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-5|5]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; If this mediator were some universal that unified the individuals—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|322|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—then that universal would itself amount to another individual, and the independence of the original individuals would necessarily be lost. (It would be rather like two people who could meet only in the presence of a guardian.) Behind individual beings there is no overarching universal that encompasses them. What mediates independent individuals cannot be some positive, substantial universal. Rather, it must be a dialectical universal understood as the determination of the place of nothingness. Within the place of absolute nothingness, individuals engage with and cooperate with one another while remaining genuinely independent. I remain entirely myself, and you remain entirely yourself; yet at the same time I am you, and you are me. Each is an autonomous, self-governing existence possessing an irreplaceable individuality, yet each may freely become subject or object in relation to the other, working and cooperating together. This is how the world of historical reality must truly be constituted. Borrowing a term from Kegon philosophy, Nishida calls this world of existential encounter and interconnection the “realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena” (jiji muge no sekai 事々無礙の世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The logic of the place of absolute nothingness, which makes possible free and autonomous interaction and cooperation among independent, individual existences—this was, so to speak, the fundamental logic of Nishida’s social philosophy or philosophy of the world.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consequently, what should follow from this logic is a society of genuinely autonomous and free individuals, liberated from attachment to the ego and its objects. Such a society would not merely be free of domination through force; it would be a freely associated human community in which there was no place even for “authority” understood as power disguised in ethical clothing.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet this open conception of the world, grounded in the logic of place and the Zen–Kegon understanding of emptiness and the non-obstruction of phenomena, was constrained and distorted by Nishida’s samurai sensibilities, his position within the academic establishment, and the circumstances of imperialist Japan. Its possibilities were deformed until it descended into the Theory of the National Polity and The Principle of the New World Order. And this was the same course that Japanese Buddhism generally followed at the time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|323|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎, one of the leading Buddhist scholars of modern Japan—supervising editor of the Taishō Revised Tripiṭaka, professor emeritus at Tokyo Imperial University, and recipient of the fourth Order of Culture (Nishida received the second)—argued in “The Principle of Totality in Buddhism” that Mahāyāna Buddhist logic and ethics were, from the beginning, totalitarian. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-6|6]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; According to Takakusu, the logical structure of this totalitarianism is expressed in Kegon thought through the doctrine of the Four Dharma-Realms (shihokkai 四法界), culminating in the fourth, the Realm of the Non-Obstruction of Phenomena (jiji muge hokkai 事々無礙法界). He maintained that, with the World War as its turning point, the world had begun moving toward totalitarianism: “Today even Westerners are beginning to practise totalitarianism, whereas the Japanese have actually practised it since ancient times. Through Japan’s Yamato totalitarianism, we can provide a model for the world. Through Buddhism’s principle of totality, we can guide the world. […] Japan as it actually exists must be governed through the Imperial Way. It is truly gratifying that the Kegon principle of totality should be put into practice. […] However excellent Buddhism may be, there must be no attempt to regard it as a form of government through the Buddhist Way existing alongside Japan’s government through the Imperial Way.” Takakusu concluded: “We now find ourselves in the midst of the National Spiritual Mobilization campaign, at a time when the Japanese spirit must be manifested in its totality. […] We should fully appreciate the true meaning of Kegon and undertake service to the nation without the slightest disorder and without a trace of selfishness. All people should forget themselves, relinquish themselves, and devote themselves to national affairs. We should realise the truth that the sage has no self, yet there is nothing that is not the self.” The Kegon scholar Kamekawa Kyōshin 亀川教信, in his essay “The Structure of Dependent Origination” (Engi no kōzō 縁起の構造), &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-7|7]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; and Yamagami Kaizen 山上戒全, in his essay “Kegon” 華厳, &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-8|8]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; developed interpretations of Kegon thought along similar lines. The Zen scholar Nakane Kandō 中根環堂, in “Totalitarianism and Zen” (Zentaishugi to Zen 全体主義と禅), &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-9|9]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; argued that Japan’s national polity was not the flat, horizontal totalitarianism of the West. Rather, its principle of one emperor and all his subjects constituted a three-dimensional, organic unity, in which affection resembled the relationship between father and child, while duty preserved the proper distinctions between ruler and subject. Underlying this hierarchical unity, he maintained, was the Kegon philosophy of “one is many, and many are one” (ichi soku ta, ta soku ichi 一即多・多即一). The path to fully realising this unity was seated meditation. Through grasping the essence of zazen—“thinking from the standpoint of nonthinking”—one could accomplish the sacred imperial undertaking of bringing the world under one roof (hakkō ichiu 八紘一宇). The lectures on “The Problem of Japanese Culture” given by Nishida at Kyoto Imperial University’s Monday lecture series in 1938—&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Takakusu and wartime Buddhist thought. Takakusu Junjirō (1866–1945) was a prominent Buddhist scholar associated with the Taishō canon. Ichikawa cites his “Principle of Totality in Buddhism” (「仏教の全体性原理」; Ichikawa’s source reference 6) as evidence of the use of Kegon categories to defend wartime totalitarianism. The passage documents Takakusu’s interpretation, not an uncontested meaning of Kegon doctrine.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|324|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and Kōyama Iwao’s subsequent lectures on “Cultural Typology” likewise sought to contribute to the construction of a “New Order in East Asia” by invoking the Kegon logic of phenomena.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet all these attempts were nothing other than distortions of Kegon philosophy and Zen thought. Let us return once more to Takakusu for an example.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In his Commentary on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Kegongyō tangenki 華厳経探玄記), Fazang (Hōzō 法蔵, 643–712), the third patriarch of the Chinese Huayan school, classifies the infinite mutual identity and interpenetration of phenomena within the world of experience into ten categories, known as the “Ten Profound Forms of Dependent Origination” (jūgen engi 十玄縁起). The tenth is called the “Gate of the Complete Illumination and Possession of Virtues by Principal and Companion” (shuhan enmyō gutokumon 主伴円明具徳門). The countless phenomena of the experiential world alternately become principal and companion, forming an endlessly interconnected symbolic world. If one phenomenon is taken as principal, all the others become its companions and are subordinated to it. But if another is selected as principal, all the remaining phenomena—including the one formerly taken as principal—become its companions and are encompassed by it. This is the principle of the complete illumination and possession of virtues by principal and companion. Takakusu paraphrases the doctrine in concrete terms: “Both principal and companion should work together harmoniously and openly, those above and below acting with one heart. Totalitarianism means that parent and child do not oppose one another but join forces and work together. If this cannot be accomplished, it is not totalitarianism. […] When similar things come together, one becomes their centre and principal. We may therefore apply this to the actual relationship of one emperor and all his subjects.” He also declared: “Our country has been totalitarian since the very beginning of its founding. […] Through the Meiji Restoration, it returned to its original totalitarianism.” And further: “We Japanese, who already possess the principle of totality in our actual national existence, are bringing the vision of Kegon’s one true dharma-realm into reality. This is something truly precious.” Takakusu thus maintains that the truths of the non-obstruction of phenomena, the completeness of principal and companion, and the identity of one with all and all with one are already realised within the system of one emperor and all his subjects—a system that regards democracy as contrary to the national polity and rests upon an authoritarian, status-based morality. This is a typical example of philosophy placed at the service of the authorities.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Principal and companion. Fazang’s “principal and companion” (shuhan 主伴) allows different phenomena to become the focus of a relationship, with the others functioning as companions. Ichikawa argues that making one hereditary sovereign permanently principal defeats the reciprocity that the doctrine is meant to express.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|325|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The condition of Japanese Buddhism described above had already taken root in the period of the Taika reforms. Leaving aside for the moment the earlier circumstances of state Buddhism in China, the new government, established through the reforms of 646, eventually undertook the construction of the Great Buddha Hall at Tōdaiji. It enshrined Vairocana Buddha there and established provincial monasteries and nunneries throughout the country, where scriptures for the protection of the state were to be recited. In this way, temples, monks, and nuns came under the control of state authority.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Immediately after Japan’s defeat, Suzuki Daisetsu, in “The Construction of a Spiritual Japan” (September 1946), argued that a new Japan must be constructed upon the principle of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm (hokkai engi 法界縁起) found in Kegon philosophy.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To place the emperor above the people is a symbol of the will to power. […] Rather, the emperor should possess a quality of immanence, becoming interconnected with the people in endlessly overlapping relationships. […] Just as the entire world should constitute a dharma-realm mandala of nations, so within Japan itself, the emperor and the people must become a single whole in which phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. Only then will a spiritual Japan become possible.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If we express this schematically, Japan up to the present has resembled Figure 1. Although there appears to be a connection between those above and those below, it can be severed at any point along the way. Before the wishes of those above reach those below, they must pass through military cliques, bureaucrats, and financial interests. Those below have no clear idea where these directives originate. Moreover, the people themselves have no direct connections with one another. […] They do not know how to think for themselves—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure1.png|thumb|360px|Figure 1. Suzuki Daisetsu’s diagram of hierarchical relations in prewar Japan (reproduced by Ichikawa, p. 325).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|326|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—[…] All that was demanded of them was reverent obedience to imperial commands. […] The system of one emperor and all his subjects symbolises the will to power on the one hand and, on the other, extinguishes the autonomy of individual citizens.” (pp. 158–159)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki goes on to describe the dharma-realm mandala that ought to be constructed by the emperor and the people. Although the passage is lengthy, I shall quote it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the emperor descends from the Plain of High Heaven and joins ordinary human beings upon this earth, the people, for their part, must abandon their servile sense of inferiority. […] They must establish their own autonomy and recognise fully that nothing can replace the value of individual personality.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“They must understand that respecting oneself is also the basis for respecting others. Each individual is complete in themselves, and at the same time all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. […] Because each is complete, all are non-obstructing; because all are non-obstructing, each is complete.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The political form of Japan as a dharma-realm mandala may be represented schematically in Figure 2. A, B, C, and so forth represent the people, the countless inhabitants of the nation. Yet each is an individual, a monad capable of autonomous action, thought, and sensation.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Suzuki’s diagrams. Figures 1 and 2, reproduced from Suzuki Daisetsu’s postwar account, respectively depict an elevated apex with disconnected subjects and a circle of mutually related individuals. In Figure 2, S still represents the emperor. Ichikawa’s question is why even the revised, immanent arrangement requires a fixed hereditary centre.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Each is complete in themselves. Each is an independent and free personality. Precisely for this reason, each enters into inexhaustibly interconnected relationships with others. These monads have thrown their windows wide open, sharing their own light with others while receiving the light of others in return.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Monad with open windows. Suzuki reverses Leibniz’s well-known image of monads as having “no windows.” His metaphor of open windows expresses both distinct individuality and reciprocal exchange, but it does not itself settle the problem of the emperor’s status in the political whole.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The chords and straight lines within the circle represent communication, reciprocal interaction, and mutual interpenetration among the monads.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure2.png|thumb|360px|Figure 2. Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala: A–H represent individuals, while S at the centre represents the emperor (reproduced by Ichikawa, p. 326).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|327|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The S at the centre is an inward reflection of that which comprehensively encompasses the surrounding A, B, C, and so forth from without. A, B, C, D, and the others are each independent, yet each possesses totality. Accordingly, A, B, C, and D are joined by curved lines to form a great circle. This great circle, just as it is, represents each individual monad, each individual ‘blade of grass’ among the people. To express this meaning, it is concentrated and reflected in the small circle at the centre.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The great circle encompasses the people as a whole, but merely saying that it encompasses them does not provide anything concrete that can be pointed to. For this reason I have placed S at the centre. S is none other than the emperor, the centre of the national polity. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It might seem possible to remove S from the great circle surrounding it and place it above. But doing so would introduce a considerable danger that the will to power and a dualistic conception would reappear. The feudal mentality would inevitably be reproduced. Moreover, placing S within the circle should serve to strengthen the unity of the circle itself. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“As Japanese and as East Asians, we must establish a new national polity through our own autonomy, freedom, and constructive vision. Needless to say, its establishment must be spiritual through and through; it must be built upon spiritual awakening. Only then can it attain universality. Only then can something emerge from among us that will contribute to the advancement of world spiritual culture and to the various institutions of practical life.” (pp. 160–163)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This work by Suzuki may be regarded as the foremost postwar document in which a Buddhist thinker sought, with enthusiasm and sincerity, to envision a new political order for Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As is already clear, there is a fundamental distance and difference between Takakusu’s wartime interpretation and Suzuki’s postwar interpretation of the Kegon doctrine of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm, understood in relation to the realities of Japan. (We should pay particular attention to Suzuki’s insistence that the new order must be built upon spiritual awakening through and through.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s case, we may wonder whether, had he lived into the postwar period, he would have recognised the need to revise his earlier interpretation. In Suzuki’s case, we might ask whether truth acquires its illumination—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|328|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and power precisely when it is spoken at a time when speaking it is both necessary and difficult. Nevertheless, judging from what we have before us, we cannot avoid concluding that Suzuki’s interpretation is the one that truly brings the meaning of Kegon thought to life in contemporary Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s and Suzuki’s interpretations, the position of the emperor differs in the way represented by the two diagrams discussed above. At the same time, this difference in position may also reflect a difference in the position of Vairocana Buddha, the prototype of the emperor’s position.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s account, we find the following statement:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In Kegon terms, the great Vairocana Buddha at the centre is active. All the attendant beings of the outer Vajra circle are active as well. The great mandala of the total mobilisation of principal and companion is manifested. This is the phenomenal manifestation of the dependent origination of the Kegon dharma-realm—the manifestation of the true dharma-realm.” (pp. 251–252)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki, on the other hand, argues:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the original form of Japan’s national polity is understood in this way, the sequence of ideas suggested by expressions such as ‘the benevolence of the sovereign’ and ‘the light of the imperial reign’ acquires a different meaning from that traditionally attached to them. ‘Benevolence’ will no longer be associated with power, but will instead become something characterised by reciprocity. Nor will ‘light’ be something that shines only from above. Rather, it will signify the reciprocal illumination of the original light possessed by each individual.” (p. 164)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet neither account clarifies the most fundamental issue: the internal and logical relationship between Vairocana Buddha and the emperor (in Suzuki’s case, the emperor understood as a human being).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Since Takakusu asserts government through the Imperial Way while refusing to recognise government through the Buddhist Way, he must explain what logic he adopts in relation to the doctrine of original ground and manifest traces (honji suijaku 本地垂迹).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki speaks of the “benevolence of the sovereign,” meaning the emperor’s benevolence. But what, concretely, does that benevolence signify? Similarly, when he says that “light” does not come only from above, what exactly is the “light that comes from above”? Is there still an “above” within Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala? If so, what does that position represent? Is it a position above others occupied by the emperor as a human being? These questions remain unanswered.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki maintains that his dharma-realm possesses universality. But can a logic and an ethics that permanently place a single human being belonging to one particular hereditary lineage at the centre of the world genuinely claim universality?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Blood,” as something irrational and contingent,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|329|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—can it be assigned a particular cosmic and ethical significance from the standpoint of the Buddhist Dharma, or indeed from the standpoint of universal ethics?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki writes: “The unbroken imperial line will become something for which we should stake our lives when it is understood in the following way: the perpetuity of the imperial lineage symbolises the perpetuity of the ideals cherished by the Japanese people.” (p. 165)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The “ideals” mentioned here presumably refer to what Suzuki calls the “construction of a spiritual Japan.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Leaving aside for the moment the question of who actually risked their lives to reject imperialist Japan and construct a spiritual Japan, why should the perpetuity of these ideals require a particular human being belonging to a particular hereditary lineage? What would happen if that individual, exercising their fundamental human rights, refused to serve as such a symbol? And what should peoples without such a symbol do?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Even if the emperor occupied the position proposed by Suzuki, so long as the unbroken hereditary imperial line is recognised—that is, so long as some form of the emperor system is recognised—and so long as universality is claimed for this system, does its logic not contain the possibility of developing into a new version of the doctrine of “eight corners of the world under one roof” (hakkō ichiu 八紘一宇)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If the logic of Kegon’s dependent origination of the dharma-realm were pursued consistently, carrying Suzuki’s interpretation to its ultimate conclusion beyond Takakusu’s, would not even a “democratic” emperor system headed by a human emperor lose its logical foundation? And would not the very structure of meaning represented in Suzuki’s second diagram consequently undergo a fundamental transformation?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, despite these questions, Suzuki’s interpretation emphasises “the value of the individual as a morally free person, as a spiritual existence, and as an independently autonomous being who cannot be reduced to an antlike mass under the vague designation of ‘totalitarianism’” (p. 142).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki also rejects the principle of domination through force:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“There should be no power standing outside the dharma-realm. To suppose that an organisation cannot be sustained without such power is to fail to recognise the irrationality of seeking it outside itself. The dharma-realm is already a complete organisation in itself. The power that organises it is originally inherent within the organisation itself. When this power is sought outside, what exists within becomes distorted and is diverted in an unintended direction. […]”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|330|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—The construction of a spiritual Japanese state must not take power as its fundamental principle. It must be a faithful reflection in our actual lives of the realm in which all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing.” (pp. 153–154)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Let us pay particular attention to Suzuki’s observation that the dharma-realm is already a complete organisation and that the power necessary to organise it is inherent within the organisation itself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This recalls the anarchist idea of free association. Viewed politically, it may be understood as suggesting anarchism as the form of a new human society embodying the Kegon world of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon dharma-realm, grounded in the rejection of both the principle of coercive power and the principle of private ownership, may be described as a world of Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.)—although Suzuki, it seems to me, has never addressed the question of private ownership.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E7&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Buddhist Anarchist Communism. Ichikawa proposes Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.) as one possible political expression of Kegon interdependence, combining resistance to coercive external authority with opposition to private appropriation. Although Suzuki’s self-organising dharma-realm suggests anarchist free association, Ichikawa explicitly observes that Suzuki does not address private ownership. B.A.C. is therefore Ichikawa’s extension, not Suzuki’s own political programme.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon (1809–1865), who envisaged the perfected form of society as a “unity of order and anarchy,” proposed a conception that, at least in this respect, may be applied directly to Kegon’s Lotus Treasury World (renge zō sekai 蓮華蔵世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The traditional position of Japanese Zen was that State Shinto and the Buddha-Dharma were fundamentally one. The Edo-period Zen master Tōrei Enji 東嶺円慈 (1721–1792) explained it as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Fundamentally, ‘kami’ means mind. When the impurities of the mind have been completely extinguished and it becomes as clear as a mirror, this is called kami. Thus, the Way of the kami takes the mirror as the representation of its essential nature.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The mirror of the mind is originally pure, eternally abiding, and serenely still: this is called Kuni-no-Tokotachi-no-Mikoto 国常立尊. The mirror of the mind is originally perfectly luminous, and there is nothing that it does not reveal: this is called Amaterasu Ōmikami 天照大神. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“One should understand that the Way of the kami and the Buddha-Dharma share the same underlying principle. They are nothing other than the single Dharma of seeing one’s nature.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-10|10]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The same position was held by Tōrei’s teacher, Hakuin Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1685–1768). The Meiji-period Zen master Imakita Kōsen 今北洪川 (1816–1892) likewise expressed this understanding:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In our country there is the Way of imperial sovereignty. This is the great Way of the ancestral deity and the true teaching of rulers. Its transmission has continued from the distant past, with the imperial descendants forming a single unbroken lineage, into which no other family has entered. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“This is what makes our imperial Way uniquely distinguished among all the nations of the world.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-11|11]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|331|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—A true man of our imperial nation must first establish firmly within himself the pillar of the Japanese spirit, which neither fire can burn nor water drown. Once he has suddenly penetrated through to realisation, there will be nothing deficient in his ability to judge and uphold the Imperial Way.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Tōrei’s interpretation lacks any logic capable of grounding, from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma, the unbroken imperial lineage that constitutes the core of State Shinto. It remains entirely unclear how the fundamental Buddhist principle that “all conditioned things are impermanent” (shogyō mujō 諸行無常) could be reconciled with Shinto’s assertion that the imperial throne will endure as long as heaven and earth. The same applies to Imakita Kōsen. Indeed, among Japanese Zen masters from Kokan Shiren (1278–1346), Hakuin, and Tenkei Denson (1648–1735) down to the present, the most fundamental questions have been almost entirely neglected. How can the kami of Shinto be identical with the fundamental subject of human existence? How can a hereditary lineage be identical with a divine lineage? And how can a religious tradition that, through monastic renunciation, takes the discontinuation of hereditary descent as a principle provide a Zen Buddhist justification for the continuity of that very descent? Hakuin, Tōrei, and virtually every other Zen practitioner have revealed a fatal weakness of vision in their understanding of Shinto.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E8&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Zen and the imperial lineage. Ichikawa contrasts impermanence (shogyō mujō 諸行無常) with claims about the eternal imperial lineage. His objection is to making a particular hereditary institution a necessary expression of Zen insight.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is no relationship whatsoever between the eternity of Zen truth and the political and supposedly “ethical” continuity of a particular bloodline. No logic exists by which the unbroken imperial lineage—a survival from the customs of ancient peoples—can be justified from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma or Zen. Above all, the Imperial Way Zen that emerged after the Meiji Restoration represents the most extreme decadence of Zen. The only possible support for the forced identification of hereditary continuity with moral continuity seems to lie in the doctrine of karmic causation across the three times, as found in Hakuin’s “Song of Giving” (Segyōka 施行歌). Yet even this doctrine cannot establish such an identification. It can do no more than explain differences of social status and circumstances in the present life. Moreover, the doctrine itself can scarcely withstand modern criticism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the dignity of humanity, the poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) wrote: “There can be no god more sacred than yourself. And this is what the oldest and the newest myths alike ultimately mean.” (“Laws for Creation”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon, writing of human sovereignty, declared, “Every citizen is king.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-12|12]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet to identify Amaterasu Ōmikami with the fundamental subject of human existence, as Japanese Zen has done, is ultimately to negate State Shinto—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|332|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and to deny any necessary, intrinsic connection between Zen and the Japanese national polity, or between Zen and the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Does not the fact that Japanese Zen practitioners have failed to recognise and openly acknowledge this conclusion demonstrate that their Zen thinking has remained insufficiently thoroughgoing, and that they have not genuinely achieved the condition of being “independently liberated, dependent upon nothing” (dokudatsu mu’e 独脱無依; Record of Linji, Rinzairoku 臨済録)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Christian existentialist philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948), who advocated religious libertarian communism, was described by the philosopher Heinemann as a “mystical anarchist.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-13|13]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; The French philosopher Simone Weil (1909–1943), who took an interest in Eastern thought, especially Zen, and criticised Christian theology, was an anarchist who participated in the Spanish Civil War.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In my view, the social philosophy of Zen may be described as Prajñā–Śūnyatā Anarchist Communism—an anarchist communism of wisdom (hannya 般若) and emptiness (kū 空). (See my book Hannyakyō 般若経, published by San’ichi Shobō.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why is it that Western religious anarchists have resisted state power—Berdyaev, for example, became a communist under imperial Russia and was imprisoned—whereas not only do we find almost no comparable examples in Zen or Kegon Buddhism, but examples of precisely the opposite tendency are overwhelmingly numerous? Let us consider two or three circumstances that may help explain this situation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The first is the obscuring of the difference in level between the world of experiential reality and the world of ordinary empirical experience, between the world of selfless intuitive action and the actual world of the empirical individual ego. This produces a “mixture or confusion of two worlds of reality.” The realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge no sekai 事々無礙の世界) belongs to the reality disclosed in the experience of prajñā. Yet this realm readily overlaps and merges with the ordinary world of empirical facts, so that the tension arising from the discontinuity between the two is never firmly established. We may recall that Nishida, the author of An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no kenkyū 善の研究), acknowledged in replying to Takahashi Satomi’s criticism that he had failed to recognise a qualitative distinction between pure experience and impure experience—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|333|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—a point that has important implications for both Zen studies and Buddhist studies. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-14|14]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The circumstances described above are connected with the fact that Buddhist practitioners have traditionally placed the emphasis of their religious training upon the attainment of peace of mind. As Nishida wrote in his diary, “Do not run after the peripheral matters of scholarship and forget the foundation of peace of mind.” Consequently, the culmination of their practice tends toward an attitude of being at home wherever one finds oneself—expressed in the saying, “Wherever one lives becomes home.” To that extent, there is a psychological tendency to beautify and rationalise the circumstances of each particular moment. Moreover, the subject of prajñā intuition is characterised as something that reflects and receives, as suggested by expressions such as “ocean-seal samādhi” (kaiin zanmai 海印三昧), “precious-mirror samādhi” (hōkyō zanmai 宝鏡三昧), and the “place of absolute nothingness” (zettai mu no basho 絶対無の場所). This characteristic corresponds to the orientation toward peace of mind described above. Even before a sustained determination to transform the surrounding environment can emerge, the practitioner has already entered the contemplative enjoyment of things. The fact that the East, characterised by what has been called “Asiatic stagnation,” has excelled in the arts of cultivation, and that much of “Zen culture” has taken an artistic form, is connected with this tendency. It is interesting that archery and martial techniques, originally intended for combat against enemies, became in times of peace the disciplines of kyūdō 弓道 and budō 武道, directed toward confronting oneself, and were subsequently internalised, intellectualised, systematised, and transformed into forms of contemplation. Everything associated with the “Way” (dō 道) has a contemplative character. In other words, it finds a place of repose within the framework of established social conventions and institutions. Affluent Buddhist practitioners enjoying leisure in periods of social stability could readily immerse themselves in the contemplative world of Kegon. Anxious Buddhists living through periods of crisis likewise entered this world of contemplation in search of peace of mind. In such a world, empirical historical reality becomes veiled by the harmonious non-obstruction of all phenomena. It is beautified and, in proportion to this beautification, accepted and rationalised.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
All phenomena in the world are said to appear within ocean-seal samādhi, mutually interpenetrating in infinitely overlapping relationships. In my view, the Lotus Treasury World (renge zō sekai 蓮華蔵世界) described in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Kegongyō 華厳経) is both a realm of reality disclosed through the active intuition of prajñā and a visionary world constituted through creative imagination around that experience. Here, however, harmonious non-obstruction refers to the actual activities of practitioners living within the rigid framework of caste society, together with the mutually non-obstructing phenomena of their visionary world. It does not mean that the raw, living reality inhabited by the masses is itself a world of harmonious—&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E9&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Ocean-seal samādhi. Ocean-seal samādhi (kaiin zanmai 海印三昧) evokes a comprehensive religious vision in Kegon thought. Ichikawa cautions against treating the harmony experienced or imagined in such a state as already realised in historically unequal or conflictual societies.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|334|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—non-obstruction. Within ocean-seal samādhi, three layers of reality must surely appear: the mutually non-obstructing facts of the practitioner’s immediate activity, the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena within an intuitive vision, and the dark reality of conflict and contradiction. It would be a mistake to paint over this three-dimensional world with a single, flat colour of harmonious non-obstruction.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In contrast, we may recall the following words of Herbert Read (1893–1968): “Religion is closely connected with art (poetry). […] During the Spanish Civil War, observers were struck by the religious fervour of the anarchists. In that country of a latent renaissance, anarchism inspired not only heroes but saints—new kinds of people who devoted their lives, through sensuous imagination and practical action, to creating a new form of human society.”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-15|15]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The following criticism may be applied to the misguided realism that results from confusing worlds belonging to different levels of experience:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It is clear that Fazang’s Kegon philosophy—its doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena and of the absoluteness of phenomena mutually non-obstructing—expresses a truth that can be realised only through the fundamental intuition of ocean-seal samādhi, understood through the doctrine of the arising of phenomena from their true nature (shōki 性起). “When this becomes merely an intellectual doctrine, however, it denies the mediation of practice and turns into a facile, absolutist worldview. […] “The doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena certainly does not mean simply accepting the ‘things’ of existing reality as they are and asserting their harmony. Genuine non-obstruction among phenomena unfolds upon the foundation of religious intuition. […] “The Kegon system is a religious worldview manifested through ocean-seal samādhi. If this is forgotten, and the ‘things’ of empirical reality are accepted merely as they appear to the discriminating consciousness of ordinary people, and their harmony is then proclaimed, the result is an entirely different philosophy. “Phenomena are absolute because each constitutes part of the Lotus Treasury World. To ignore this and claim that every phenomenon possesses absolute significance amounts to affirming existing reality just as it stands. One misstep, and this becomes an unconditional affirmation of existing structures of domination and social organisation. “A philosophy of absolute affirmation can thereby become a philosophy in the service of rulers who sanction existing reality as it is.” (Kamata Shigeo 鎌田茂雄)&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-16|16]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|335|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This criticism may be said to identify correctly the errors and pathologies into which Kegon thought, and indeed Mahāyāna Buddhism more generally, have been liable to fall, and into which they have frequently fallen in practice—as, for example, in the cases of Sengzhao (384–414) and Dahui (1089–1163).&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-17|17]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The criticism emphasises the distinction between the realm of religious experience and that of ordinary empirical experience, insisting that the latter must be purified “through the practice of the bodhisattva path and vows grounded in compassion.” In this respect, it overcomes the vulgarism characteristic of Takakusu’s interpretation and, together with Suzuki’s view cited within it, rests upon an orthodox doctrinal foundation. This position might be described as a shift from the contemplative tendency found in Fazang toward the experiential orientation of Chengguan (737–839), accompanied by an emphasis on religious instruction and propagation grounded in that experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon world of the non-obstruction of phenomena is the joint product of experience and vision. It belongs to a dimension altogether different from the sphere of action in which the structural contradictions of actual class society are grasped, analysed, and practically overcome. Indeed, it is a world that can exist only within that particular dimension. It possesses neither the foundation nor the logic necessary to generate objective practice capable of overcoming the fundamental structural contradictions of the world in which we live. In this respect, there is no essential difference between Fazang and Chengguan. Even if this philosophy does not affirm mere facts or empirical reality as they stand, but instead rejects them as false and illusory, such rejection occurs entirely within subjective consciousness. It does not occur within the sphere of objective, transformative practice. Consequently, in actual historical circumstances, it amounts to a “doctrine of double truth”&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-18|18]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; that affirms the existing order. There is therefore nothing surprising about Buddhists who consciously distinguish the world of prajñā experience from ordinary empirical reality nevertheless acting, in practice, as defenders of the established social system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== V ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
When Kegon thought attempts to formulate a social ethics within the actual world without overcoming the traditional characteristics and limitations examined above—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|336|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—that is, when it constructs morality through the logic of mutual identity (sōsoku 相即) and the dependent-origination logic of mutual dependence and interrelationship (sōi sōkan 相依相関), expressed in propositions such as “The principal is principal in relation to the companion, and the companion is companion in relation to the principal,” or “Mind is mind in relation to matter, and matter is matter in relation to mind”—the result will be an ethics of concord, harmony, and paternalistic benevolence.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Without capital there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no labour. At the same time, without labour there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no capital. The joint activity of capital and labour is precisely what constitutes industry. […] If those who provide wages deserve respect, then those who provide labour deserve equal respect. Indeed, neither party is simply giving something to the other; rather, industry consists of capital and labour being brought together.” (Shibusawa Eiichi) &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-19|19]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of cooperation between capital and labour expressed by this industrial capitalist is presented by a Zen practitioner in the following manner:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If one understands that self and other are originally nondual, there should be no difficulty whatsoever. Labour is the capitalist’s capital, and capital is the labourer’s labour. How, then, could conflict possibly arise?” (Iida Tōin) &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-20|20]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of harmony can also become a morality of war. A Kegon scholar writes:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In times of peace, the understanding of dependent origination provides a foundation for harmonious relations, through the recognition of the profound karmic connections that bind people inseparably together. But in times of emergency, it also manifests itself as a spirit of fearless, unobstructed struggle, enabling Japanese citizens to fulfil their responsibilities in their respective positions.” (Kamekawa Kyōshin) &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-21|21]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When every single member of the nation, embraced within the august imperial authority, rises with this sense of the completeness of principal and companion, the hundred million people are no longer limited to merely a hundred million. Rather, the hundred million simultaneously manifest a power multiplied a hundred millionfold.” (Ibid.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to this Kegon scholar, it is only through the conception of the state arising from Japanese national consciousness that the relationship between the individual and the whole can truly be perceived in its proper form, through the practical apprehension of inexhaustible dependent origination expressed as “one is all, and all is one.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-22|22]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet this very logic has found concrete expression in postwar Japan in the workers’ handbook, or “Mirror,” of Ōmi Kenshi, and has continued to produce results as a morality of worker training developed through cooperation between industrial capital and Zen. The Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren 経団連)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|337|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—supported the establishment of a Zen training centre where a recent roundtable entitled “Zen and Business” discussed the adjustment of human relations through Zen, the rationalisation of business management, and measures concerning labour. Among the statements recorded in that discussion were the following:&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E10&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Corporate Zen and industrial relations. Ichikawa refers to Zen training supported by business interests and a roundtable on “Zen and Business,” criticising the use of self-cultivation and harmony to promote managerial efficiency while leaving labour–capital inequalities intact. His printed references 23 and 35 both identify issue 70 of the journal Zen 禅 (1961) but assign different months; this discrepancy has not yet been resolved.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Our most important policy, as our managing director has just explained, is first of all to bring about a complete change in the attitudes associated with student life. We want participants to examine themselves, their membership in the company, and the relationship between the individual within the company as a whole and the whole constituted through individuals. We want them to analyse themselves and then begin working with a renewed consciousness of themselves as members of the company. This is our most fundamental policy.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-23|23]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“We received some questionnaire responses saying that, although participants had expected the monks’ talks at the Zen temple to be thoroughly religious and solemn, they found them quite approachable—even including discussions of attitudes toward romantic love—and therefore very pleasant to listen to. […] If possible, we would appreciate talks that include a little of this sort of romantic interest, since they seem to be very well received.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What I wish to address here is Kamekawa’s interpretation of the “completeness of principal and companion” (shuhan gusoku 主伴具足), which is essentially the same as Takakusu’s interpretation. In this case, the relationship running from principal to companion is thoroughly one-directional and extremely concrete in its historical reality, since it provides a foundation for imperial absolutism under the Meiji Constitution. By contrast, the possibility of the companion becoming principal remains merely conceptual. In other words, this suggests that the logic of the completeness of principal and companion should not be applied to class society. In Kamekawa’s interpretation, principal and companion cannot genuinely be said to possess complete and perfect reciprocity. Even Fazang himself, who originally formulated this logic, probably did not entirely escape this danger. Kamata, in the essay discussed earlier, also takes up this problem and warns against confusing the reality of religious experience with empirical reality. Yet, as I have already pointed out, this criticism amounts to a “doctrine of double truth,” in which existing reality is denied at the level of consciousness but accepted in actual practice. An anarchist-communist society would surely provide the best expression of the complete illumination and mutual fulfilment of principal and companion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|338|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== VI ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a saying, “Kill the Buddha and kill the patriarchs” (Unmonroku 雲門録). Perhaps no tradition is as thoroughgoing as Zen in refusing to recognise externally imposed authority. The Tang-dynasty Zen master Linji Yixuan (Rinzai Gigen 臨済義玄, d. 867) emphasised the freedom of the “true person of no rank,” who “becomes master wherever one stands” and is “independently liberated, dependent on nothing.” It was in the spirit of such freedom that Danxia Tianran (Tanka Tennen 丹霞天然, 739–824) burned a Buddha image and Deshan Xuanjian (Tokusan Senkan 徳山宣鑑, 782–865) burned Buddhist scriptures. Zhaozhou Congshen (Jōshū Jūshin 趙州従諗, 778–897) declared, “I do not delight in hearing even the single word ‘Buddha.’” A king once visited Zhaozhou accompanied by his retainers, but Zhaozhou did not descend from his seat to welcome him. The following day, when the king sent an official to convey his thanks for the previous day’s reception, Zhaozhou descended from his seat and received the visitor’s greeting. When his disciples later asked why he had acted differently, Zhaozhou replied: “You would not understand. When a person of the highest rank comes, I receive him upon my meditation seat. When a person of middling rank comes, I descend from my seat to receive him. When a person of the lowest rank comes, I go outside the monastery gate to receive him. This is the custom of my house.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-24|24]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As suggested by the passage, “In the Western realm there is a land called Peace and Nourishment. […] There is no system of kingship there, nor any hierarchy of official ranks,” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-25|25]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; the future society envisioned by Buddhists may be understood as a world of anarchist communism. Kropotkin (1842–1921)&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E11&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Common ownership and Kropotkin. Kropotkin’s account of wealth as the accumulated product of countless people’s labour supports Ichikawa’s criticism of exclusive appropriation. Ichikawa connects this to Buddhist language about goods belonging to the wider community, but also acknowledges traditions recognising royal ownership. Buddhist ownership terminology in the Japanese text requires final source-level verification.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; argued that our cultural achievements and the material necessities of life are the fruits of the labour of countless people extending back into the distant past. Consequently, none of us has grounds for calling them “my own.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-26|26]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Buddhists likewise understood these things as products of the endlessly interwoven activities of sentient beings: they are originally “property of the four quarters” (shihōmotsu 四方物), belonging to all sentient beings, and do not admit the possessive designation “mine” (mama-kāra). &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-27|27]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; (Nevertheless, texts such as the Brahmā’s Net Bodhisattva Precepts Sūtra already contain the notion of “property of the king.”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problems Buddhism must confront today in order to develop a social ethics or an ethics for the world are approximately as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|339|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
First, there is the problem of bringing together the recovery of Buddhism’s supranational character and the recovery of nationalism. In the expression “protection of the nation” (chingo kokka 鎮護国家), “nation” originally referred to the royal household, the territory, and the people, but its principal concern was the emperor. (In China, too, the term “state” (kokka 国家) could signify the Son of Heaven&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-28|28]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; or the imperial court&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-29|29]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;.) Consider, for example, the “Ten Secret Rites for the Protection of the Nation” (Chingo kokka no jikka hihō 鎮護国家の十箇秘法) in Japanese Tendai Buddhism. The majority concern the emperor personally, including rites for imperial enthronement, prayers concerning the emperor’s life, and precepts conferred for safe childbirth within the imperial household. In any event, because Buddhism was associated with state power from the earliest period of its development, it tended to lack a critical analysis and examination of the essential nature of political power. There was, of course, an intention to educate sovereigns so that they might govern benevolently, and this intention sometimes achieved positive results. Nevertheless, considerable suspicion of kings also existed. We find statements such as, “A monk should approach a king as though approaching a servant-master relationship” (Saddharma-smṛtyupasthāna Sūtra, Shōbōnenkyō 正法念経), and “Kings constantly increase taxation and arbitrarily punish people who have committed no offence. […] Though they see people suffering poverty and distress, they never give rise to compassion. They indulge in women without fearing the evil destinies” (Tang translation of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, Kegongyō 華厳経).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As in early Buddhism, Buddhist scriptures often regarded kings as people who inflicted harm upon the population. Kings were therefore placed alongside thieves and robbers, and among the misfortunes suffered by ordinary people—calamities of flood and fire, robbery, and wicked persons—there was also the “calamity of the king.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-30|30]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must discover a logic capable of bringing together a recognition of the evils of the state with the recovery of a legitimate nationalism, understood, for example, in terms of national independence and cooperation among peoples. In connection with this problem, we must also investigate how to reconcile the contradiction between spiritual freedom, expressed in the Record of Linji as “remaining unstained by birth and death, free to come and go” (shōji ni somazu kyojū jiyū 生死に染まず去住自由), and political and social freedom. “Without religion, the state could not exist,” declared Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-31|31]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet religion can exist without the state—although whether Zen should properly be called a “religion” is itself open to question. We have already seen how modern Japanese Zen was distorted by the state power of the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|340|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In considering the relationship between Buddhism and the state, the next question is that of class. Marx wrote: “The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas in every age. The class that constitutes the dominant material power in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual power. The class that controls the means of material production also controls the means of intellectual production. Consequently, the ideas of those who lack access to the means of intellectual production are, in general, subordinated to that class.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-32|32]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; It hardly needs explaining that the ideology of modern Japanese Zen was no exception to this general principle. Even in the process of conversion from a Japanese Zen bound by nationality under imperial Japan to a cosmopolitan Zen without national affiliation in a “cultural Japan,” this principle may have been operating to some degree. Dr. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi 久松真一, a Zen thinker internationally renowned alongside Suzuki Daisetsu, has discussed the crisis confronting the present age and the problem of world ethics. In the murderous development of atomic physics, he sees a crisis of humanism itself. He points to the unprecedented disparity between the extraordinary advances of science and the failure of morality to keep pace, insisting upon the need to strengthen our ethical capacities in order to correct this imbalance. Moreover, he maintains that such ethical capacities must not be based upon the egoism of particular nations, blocs of nations, classes, or ideologies. He therefore urges the immediate establishment of a new world ethics. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-33|33]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; This is certainly a valuable suggestion. Yet, when we reconsider the matter, is the disparity between science and ethics really a crisis of humanism or an impasse in human civilisation? The overwhelming majority of the world’s peoples, together with the majority of conscientious scientists, have repeatedly protested and resisted the murderous application of atomic power. They are not in the least guilty of ideological bias. Indeed, it is precisely this vast popular struggle for peace that has prevented a revolutionary rupture between science and morality. Those who are biased, those who expose the crisis of humanism, are none other than the “merchants of death” of monopoly capital.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How, then, does the F.A.S. Zen movement centred on Dr. Hisamatsu deal with the standpoint of class in its vow to “create superhistorical history”? Are the wisdom and power involved in this historical creation like distilled water—&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E12&amp;quot;&amp;gt;F.A.S. Zen. Associated with Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, F.A.S. refers to Formless Self, All Humankind, and Suprahistorical History. It seeks to unite awakening with universal ethical action. Ichikawa welcomes its aspirations but questions whether a standpoint claiming to transcend class and national divisions adequately addresses the material interests and historical antagonisms shaping social life.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|341|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—colourless and transparent? How would its social ethics differ from the social ethics of Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.), which grounds itself in an Absolute?&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E13&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Moral Re-Armament. Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.) was an international moral and spiritual renewal movement. Ichikawa invokes it as a comparison when questioning whether a purportedly class-neutral universal ethics can engage specific structures of economic power. This is a comparative reference, distinct from his criticism of F.A.S. Zen.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; “I can promise to be fair, but I cannot promise to be impartial,” wrote Goethe. (Ichikawa’s note: In this connection, I would draw attention to the system being developed by the materialist Umemoto Katsumi, who, in contrast to Nishida philosophy’s “active intuition” (kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観), is working out a logic of “practical intuition” (jissenteki chokkan 実践的直観) grounded in class consciousness.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problem of class is connected with the problem of human self-alienation, particularly alienation in labour. Unless Buddhism confronts this problem directly, it will be unable to develop a contemporary social ethics. This necessarily requires Buddhists to incorporate the standpoint of wage labourers into their own thinking. In other words, they must consciously adopt the standpoint of workers—human beings treated as commodities.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Alienated labour alienates (1) nature from humanity, and (2) human beings from themselves, from their own active functions and life-activity. In doing so, it alienates humanity from its species-being. […] The immediate consequence of the alienation of human beings from the products of their labour, their life-activity, and their species-being is the alienation of human beings from one another—die Entfremdung des Menschen von dem Menschen.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-34|34]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Under capitalism, even human beings become commodities. The education of young men and women amounts to investing capital in their bodies, while young people must devote themselves to the problem of how to sell themselves in the “personality market.” This is an education and morality grounded in the commodity economy, expressed through the language of adjustment and human relations. Expressions such as “human resources,” “human dock” [medical checkups], and the “Zen boom” are profoundly revealing. Someone remarked: “At the entrance there was a sign saying, ‘Look beneath your feet.’ That is the first priority. I believe this is how sound enterprises will emerge. From the standpoint of the business community, this is a cheap investment. Something like this will come back with a ten-thousandfold return.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-35|35]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|342|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Prostitution is only a particular expression of the general prostitution of the worker—allgemeine Prostitution des Arbeiters. And since prostitution constitutes a relationship that includes not only the prostitute but also the other party, whose baseness is even greater, capitalists too belong to this category.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-36|36]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I distinguish this kind of human self-alienation&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E14&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Horizontal and vertical alienation. Ichikawa distinguishes social and economic “horizontal alienation” from existential or religious “vertical estrangement.” Drawing on Marx’s account of alienated labour, he insists that the Buddhist encounter with suffering must also address historically specific exploitation. The two dimensions are related but not reducible to one another.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;, which I call horizontal alienation, from existential and religious self-alienation, or vertical estrangement. Horizontal alienation will never be overcome by the class that enjoys it as something comfortable, but only by the class that has no choice but to experience it as suffering. (This follows the same logic and psychology as the Buddhist overcoming of vertical estrangement, which begins with the contemplation of suffering.) To adopt the standpoint of wage labourers treated as commodities, and to resolve to overcome human self-alienation in labour—which is simultaneously self-alienation in capital—is precisely to adopt a standpoint of class consciousness. A merely abstract affirmation of humanity, incapable of understanding class consciousness as anything other than class egoism, misses the fundamental problem. The claim that human self-alienation can genuinely be overcome only from the standpoint of a universal human ethics—without uniting the opposing standpoints of class and humanity—rests upon the illusion that those who comfortably enjoy alienation might suddenly awaken one morning and collectively recognise it as suffering. The genuinely practical path toward overcoming alienation must instead begin by abandoning this facile sentimentalism, adopting the standpoint of those who experience alienation as suffering, and apprehending historical reality as it actually exists. This means grasping historical reality from a standpoint that unites objectivity and partisanship.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“What is at issue here is a confession, and nothing more. For humanity to have its sins forgiven, it need only proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-37|37]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|343|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E15&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Marx’s commodity analysis and practical intuition. Ichikawa compares Marx’s method in Capital with Nishida’s “active intuition” (kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観) and suggests a historically grounded “practical intuition” (jissenteki chokkan 実践的直観). His comparison is methodological, not an equation of Nishida’s philosophy with Marx’s critique of political economy. He insists that changing social relations cannot be replaced by inwardly “emptying” an object.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;”—was this not what Marx accomplished through his analysis of the commodity in Capital? And might this not be the concrete content, within the field of economics, of Dōgen’s expression “to be verified by all things”? Beginning with labour-power as a commodity, one arrives, by abstracting from its capitalist determinations, at the commodity itself (the downward movement). Through scientific investigation of this commodity, one then clarifies how its inherent self-contradiction constitutes the elementary form of the class contradictions of capitalist society (the upward movement). Might not the disclosure of this circular process—understood, moreover, as an “open system” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-38|38]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;—through practical intuition constitute the social-scientific content of Nishida philosophy’s method of “becoming a thing in order to see, and becoming a thing in order to think”?’&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Today, we human beings—and Buddhist practitioners themselves—live within and are sustained by a commodity-economic society, a “world of prostitution.” This entire condition is what is meant by the “falsity of the secular world” (seken koke 世間虚仮), a world of falsehood and empty words.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Karl Löwith (1897–1973) gives an illuminating account of how even Kierkegaard, Marx’s philosophical antipode, demonstrated through the circumstances of his own life the validity of Marx’s insight into the relationship between capital and labour. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-39|39]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; On the other hand, when we attempt to realise objectively the mutual non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge 事々無礙) within an intersubjective society, we will surely have much to learn from Kropotkin’s persuasive criticisms concerning the limits of the philosophy of dependent origination. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-40|40]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What makes us conscious of the falsity of the secular world in this aspect, and inspires us to resolve to overcome it, is historical truth—the Dharma (dharma ダルマ)—proper to this sphere. For the moment, I leave aside the objectifying-logical and metaphysical dimensions of alienation. Nevertheless, we must not neglect a rigorous criticism of attempts to “empty” the objectivity of an object rather than transforming the object itself. Here, it seems to me, lies the starting point for a dialectical relationship between social ethics and social science among Buddhists.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Explanatory Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; responsive=&amp;quot;0&amp;quot; /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Original References ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Ichikawa’s printed references, pp. 344–345. Working transcription; bracketed uncertainty notices are editorial, not original. --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;1.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎の思想は、当初から体制擁護的な契機を含んでいた。拙稿「絶対無のつまづき――西田幾多郎の場合」、『思想』、一九五九年一月、本巻所収「西田幾多郎論」参照。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;2.&#039;&#039;&#039; 大宅壮一「西田幾多郎と敗北」、『文藝春秋』、一九五四年六月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;3.&#039;&#039;&#039; 政府の「大東亜宣言」の草案として、一部の者の要請によって書かれたものだが、東条首相の拒否によって採択されなかった。その全文は矢吹一夫「昭和人物秘録」の「西田幾多郎博士の大東亜戦争観」にのせられている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;4.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎『哲学の根本問題・続編』、一〇六―一〇七頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;5.&#039;&#039;&#039; 同書、一〇七頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;6.&#039;&#039;&#039; 日本諸学振興委員会、哲学講演会での講演（一九三七年）の記録。西田幾多郎「学問的方法」と共に、『文部省教学叢書』第三集（一九三八年）に収録。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-7&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;7.&#039;&#039;&#039; 大阪毎日新聞社編『日本仏教概論』、一九四二年。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-8&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;8.&#039;&#039;&#039; 東京帝大仏青編『仏教思想講座』巻三、一九三九年。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-9&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;9.&#039;&#039;&#039; 高楠順次郎、前掲論文。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-10&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;10.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『宗門無尽灯論』、流通第一〇。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-11&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;11.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅海一瀾』、岩波文庫版、三一、三四頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-12&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;12.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. J. Proudhon, Proudhon’s Solution of the Social Problem, p. 45.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-13&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;13.&#039;&#039;&#039; F. H. Heinemann, Existentialism and the Modern Predicament, p. 154.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-14&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;14.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎『思索と体験』、一一八頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-15&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;15.&#039;&#039;&#039; H. Read, The Philosophy of Anarchism, pp. 24–25.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-16&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;16.&#039;&#039;&#039; 鎌田茂雄「華厳哲学の根本的立場」、中村元編『華厳思想』所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-17&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;17.&#039;&#039;&#039; 拙著『般若経』、三一書房、六九頁、第六巻所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-18&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;18.&#039;&#039;&#039; 船山信一「明治哲学における護教主義現実主義の三つの論理」、『思想』、一九六一年一月。二重真理説はキリスト教神学の恩寵と理性、仏教の真諦と俗諦の説にみられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-19&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;19.&#039;&#039;&#039; 渋沢栄一「労働問題解決の根本義」、『社会政策時報』、一九二〇年九月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-20&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;20.&#039;&#039;&#039; 飯田欓隠『無門関鑽燧』、一九二四年十一月、一七九頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-21&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;21.&#039;&#039;&#039; 亀川教信（龍谷大学教授）『縁起の構造』、一九四四年八月、五八一、五八五頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-22&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;22.&#039;&#039;&#039; 同書、五九頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-23&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;23.&#039;&#039;&#039; 「禅と企業」、『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-24&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;24.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅苑蒙求』。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-25&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;25.&#039;&#039;&#039; 支遁「阿弥陀仏像讃並序」。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-26&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;26.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism. Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 57f.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-27&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;27.&#039;&#039;&#039; 拙著『般若経』第四章、三一書房。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-28&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;28.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『晋書』（陶侃伝）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-29&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;29.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『事物起源』、学校学事部、詞賦。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-30&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;30.&#039;&#039;&#039; 宮本正尊編『大乗仏教の成立史的研究』、三七六頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-31&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;31.&#039;&#039;&#039; M. Bakunin, Gott u. d. Staat. (Gesammelte Werke. Bd. I)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-32&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;32.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Marx, Die Deutsche Ideologie, S. 44 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus. Bd. 29)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-33&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;33.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『京都新聞』、一九六一・一・一四および『維摩七則』、一六三頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-34&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;34.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Marx, Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte, S. 103, 106 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus, Bd. 42)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-35&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;35.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-36&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;36.&#039;&#039;&#039; Marx, ibid. S. 128.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-37&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;37.&#039;&#039;&#039; 「ルーゲへの手紙」、一八四三年（『マルクス・エンゲルス選集』補巻四、一三五頁）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-38&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;38.&#039;&#039;&#039; 梯明秀『資本論への私の歩み』、一二七頁以下。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-39&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;39.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Löwith, Von Hegel zu Nietzsche. 邦訳、七〇頁以下。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-40&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;40.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism, pp. 48, 56, 59, 64. P. Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, chap. I.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
Translated from Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, anakizumu” 禅・華厳・アナキズム (1961), reprinted in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 3 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343; original source references occupy pp. 344–345. The original reference numbers are retained as superscript numerals, distinct from the translator’s explanatory notes. Suzuki Daisetsu’s two diagrams are reproduced from the scanned collected edition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is a working translation. Several quotations and Japanese readings require final collation; the original reference list is reproduced below as a working transcription with linked numbering. References 23 and 35 give inconsistent months for the same issue of Zen (1961).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotation: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1961). “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism” (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH61ZKA-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA&amp;diff=1245</id>
		<title>IH61ZKA</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA&amp;diff=1245"/>
		<updated>2026-10-13T13:49:26Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:市川白弦「禅・華厳・アナキズム」}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
市川白弦（1961年）。「禅・華厳・アナキズム」 [Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism]。『市川白弦著作集』第3巻（法蔵館、1993年）、319–345頁所収（本文319–343頁、注344–345頁）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;English translation:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH61ZKA-T|Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 目次 ==&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section1|一]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section2|二]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section3|三]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section4|四]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section5|五]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section6|六]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 本文 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|319}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 一 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
近代日本の哲学を代表する西田幾多郎（一八七〇―一九四五）のいわゆる「西田哲学」が確立したのは、かれの論文「場所」（一九二六年）においてであった。この「場所」の思想は、プラトンのティマイオスおよびアリストテレスのデ・アニマにおける Topos（場所）の概念を介して生まれた思想であるが、しかし本質的にはむしろ大乗仏教の「空」Sūnyatā ないし法界 Dharma-dhātu とくに「事々無礙法界」（個物と個物、事実と事実とがたがいに相即・相入する体験の世界）の思想、いいかえるならば般若の哲学ないし華厳哲学と根源的につながっていたのであり、「絶対無」の場所における個物の相互限定即一般者の自己限定という西田の根本思想は、西欧近代の個我の論理を媒介として、般若の「空」と華厳の「事々無礙」との根源的一の論理構造をしめすものであり、それは本質的には、東洋の無の論理をもって、徹底した自由と平等の形而上的根拠を確立するはずのものであった。それはすべての外的な権威 Autorität 権力 Macht を否定し、いわゆる「宗&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|320}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
教」の衣裳さえ脱した自由の哲学を創立する契機を含んでいた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この絶対無の場所の哲学ないし「事実の自己限定」の哲学は、しかしながら、帝国主義日本の戦時体制の展開につれて、西田哲学ないし京都学派の「自由主義」的ニュアンスに対する右翼および軍部の圧迫の強化につれて、しだいに「皇道」および「聖戦」に理念的基礎をあたえる論理を、くりひろげるにいたった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宅壮一はこのことについて、西田は「魂を売って肉体の保証を求めた」とさえ極言している。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-2|2]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;大田のものに、「世界新秩序の原理」（一九四三年）および「国体論」（一九四四年）がある。後者はのちに『哲学論文集』第四補遺として雑誌『哲学研究』にのせられ、『西田幾多郎全集』にも収められたが、前者は『西田幾多郎全集』にも収められていない。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-3|3]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら、場所の論理または事々無礙の哲学は、皇道の基礎づけとなるものではなく、それとは反対に、むしろアナキズムの根拠となるはずのものであった。拙稿「絶対無のつまずき―西田幾多郎の場合」（『思想』一九五九年一月、本巻所収）には、「むすび」のなかで、つぎのように書いている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
絶対無の場所、弁証法的一般者はその自覚的限定として世界形成の原理を形成する。この原理と皇道とは合一しえない絶対矛盾である。この二つは対象論理の場においてたがいに自らを主張し、たがいに排除しあう本質のものである。対象論理の領域をこえて皇道が真に主体化しようとすれば、主体化の過程において、それの本質である偶然的、特殊的、非合理的なものを無化することによって、皇道は自らを解消するほかはない。皇道は主体として徹する行程のなかで脱我せざるをえない。皇道は絶対無の場所、真の歴史的世界にかえることにおいて自己を失う。逆にいえば、絶対無の場所の論理、述語主義の論理は「主語的な皇道を根源的に否定する底のものである」。西田の「場所的論理的神学」は日本の建国神話と天壌無窮の祭政哲学を根拠づけるのではなく、かえってこれを奉ずる論理体系であったはずである。同様&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|321}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
にしてそれは、西田のばあいとは逆に、国民道徳をも根源的に「虚仮」と観ずる体系であったはずである。この体系は絶対に自由な個物と個物とを媒介する一般者、媒介するものなくして媒介する一般者として、もっとも深い意味における民主的な自由連合の場所の哲学であるはずである。それは皇道の脱皮を要求し、国家の消滅を予示し、もっとも深い意味における無権力の共同社会を基礎づけ約束し、形成する述語主義の歴史哲学であるべきであった。述語主義の論理は哲学者西田に出発して、臣民西田のなかで挫折した。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
西田によれば、現実の世界は個物（我・汝・彼）の世界でなければならない。個物はまず一般者（たとえば存在とか生物とか）の限定として考えられるであろう。一般的なるものに種差を加えて、最後に種に至り、さらにこれを越えて、極限点として個物という如きものを考えることができる。併しかかる考え方によって考えられた個物というものは、真の個物ではない。それは何処までも一般者の一部分という意味を脱することはできない。個物は自己自身を限定するものでなければならない&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-4|4]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;。自己自身を限定するもの、すなわちみずから自分を自覚し、形成し、えらびとるものであって、はじめて独立した個物ということができる。しかし個物が自分自身を限定するということは、他の個物との関係においてでなければならない。私は汝に対する私としてあるのであり、おなじく汝は私に対する汝である。「個物は個物に対すると考えられねばならない。個物は唯個物に対することによって、個物と考えられるのである。唯一つの個物というものは考えられない。互いに独立するものが、互いに相関係するということが、物と物とが相働くということである。（中略）互いに独立的なるものが相関係するというには、その間に媒介者というものが考えられねばならない」（傍点市川）。この媒介者が&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-5|5]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;、もしも個物と個物とを統一する、あるひとつの一般者であるとするならば、この一般者はすでにひとつの個物にほかならず、しかもこのものの存在によって、さきの個物の独立は失われ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|322}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
るほかはない。（たとえていえば、甲と乙とがつねに後見人の立会いのもとに交渉するばあいのように）。個物と個物との背後には、これを包括するなんらの一般者も存在しないのである。独立した個物と個物とを媒介するものは、なんらかの有的な一般者ではなく、無の場所的限定の意味をもつ、弁証法的一般者でなければならない。個物と個物とは、絶対無の場所において、真に独立独歩でありながら、たがいに交渉し共働するのである。私はどこまでも私であり、汝はどこまでも汝であって、しかも私は汝であり、汝は私である、という消息がそこにある。それぞれにかけがえのない個性をもつ自主自律の存在であって、しかもたがいに主となり客となって、自由に相働き、相提携する。歴史的現実の世界の真実のありかたは、このようなものでなければならない。西田はこのような実存の交わり、実在の連関の世界を、華厳哲学の言葉をかりて、「事々無礙の世界」とよんでいる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
独立した個性的実存の自主自由な交渉・共働を成りたたせる、絶対無の場所の論理――いうなればこれが西田の社会哲学ないし世界哲学の根本の論理であった。それゆえ、この論理からみちびかれるものは、自我と対象への固執をはなれた、真に自主自由な個物の共同社会であり、したがってそこには「力」による支配の論理が存在しないばかりか、倫理的な擬装をつけた力としての「権威」が介在する余地のない、自由連合の人類社会でなければならない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら場所の論理、禅・華厳における空・事々無礙の論理を背景とする、このような開放的な世界の論理は、西田のサムライ的生活感覚と官学的社会存在と帝国主義日本の情勢とによって、その可能性を拘束され奇形化されて、遂に「国体論」と「世界新秩序の原理」にまで、落ちぶれるにいたった。そしてこれは、当時の日本仏教が共通して辿ったコースであった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|323}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 二 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
近代日本の代表的な仏教学者、高楠順次郎（「大正新脩大蔵経」の責任監修者、東京都大名誉教授、第四回文化勲章受章、西田は第二回）は「仏教の全体性原理」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-6|6]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;において、大乗仏教の論理と倫理とはもともと全体主義であるといい、この全体主義の論理構造をしめすものが、華厳思想における「四法界」の理説であり、その究極のすがたが第四の「事々無礙法界」である、そしてわれわれの世紀は「世界戦争を一転機として、世界が全体主義に向って来た」と述べ、「今日では西洋人も全体主義を行いかかって居り、日本人はこれを昔から実際に行って居たのであります。我々は日本の大和全体主義を以て、世界に模範を示すことも出来る。仏教の全体性原理を以て、世界を指導することも出来る。（中略）現実の日本は皇道治化でなくてはならぬ。この原理である華厳の全体性原理を、実際に行わせらるるのは、誠に結構である。（中略）いくら仏教がよいといっても、それを日本の皇道治化と並んで、仏道治化と見るような型はあってはならぬ」といい、「吾々は今現に国民精神総動員の時局に接し、日本精神の全体的発揚を要する時代（中略）思うままに華厳の真意を味わって、一糸乱れず、一点の私のない奉公を、企図すべきである。総ての人が自己を忘れ、自己を捨てて、国事に臨むということになりたいものであります。聖者無己、無不己の実を表したいものであります」と結んでいる。華厳学者亀川教信はその著「縁起の構造」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-7|7]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;において、山上戒全は論稿「華厳」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-8|8]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;において、おなじ趣旨の華厳思想を展開し、禅学者中根環堂は「全体主義と禅」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-9|9]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;において、日本の国体は西洋の平面的な全体主義ではなく、一君万民としての、「情は父子の如く、義は君臣の分を守る」、上下一体の立体的一体主義であり、その根底には、「一即多・多即一」の華厳の哲理がある。この一体主義に徹する途は坐禅であり、「非思量底を思量する」坐禅の真髄をつかむことによって、八紘一宇の聖業を貫徹することができる、と説いた。昭&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|324}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
和十三年（一九三八）の京都帝大「月曜講義」における、西田の「日本文化の問題」、およびこれにつづく高山岩男の「文化類型学」もまた、華厳思想の「事実」の論理を援用して、「東亜新秩序」の建設に、寄与しようとするものであった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら、これらの試みは、すべて華厳哲学および禅思想の歪曲にほかならなかった。歪曲の事例を、もういちど高楠の場合に見よう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
中国における華厳宗第三祖法蔵（六四三―七一二）の『華厳経探玄記』は、体験の世界における事実と事実とが、無限に相即し相入するさまを、「十玄縁起」として、十門に類別して説いているが、その第一〇に、「主伴円明具徳門」というのがある。体験界の無限の事実は、たがいに主となり伴となって、重々無尽の象徴的世界を形成し、その中のひとつを主とすれば、他の一切はそれの伴となって、この一に従属し、他のひとつを主としてとりあげるならば、さきの一をふくめた他の一切が、いまの一の伴となって、これに包摂される、というのが、「主伴円明具徳」の理法である。高楠はこれを具体的にパラフレイズして、「主たるものも、伴たるものも、双方とも円満に明朗に、上下一心で以て働いて行く、親と子と対立するのでなく、親と子と力を合せて行くのが全体主義である。それが出来なくては全体主義でない。（中略）同じようなものが集まって、その中心が主たるものであるから、これを一君万民の実際に当てていってもよいのであります」といい、「我国は肇国の当初から全体主義である。（中略）明治維新に於て、本然の全体主義に還元した」「華厳の一真法界の光景を、吾々は、現実の日本国民、即ち全体性原理を現有している吾々国民は、実際にこれを現実化して居るのである。これは実に尊いことである」とも説いている。民主主義を「反国体的」とみる一君万民体制と、これを支える権威主義身分道徳のうえに、事々無礙、主伴具足、一即一切、一切即一の真実が実現している、と高楠は言うのである。典型的な、観念の御用哲学である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|325}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
日本仏教のこのようなありかたは、これに先だつ中国の国家仏教の事情はしばらくおいて、大化二年（六四六）「それ天地の間に君として、万民を宰することは、独り制むべからず、要ず臣の翼須つ……」、という「改新の詔」をもって出発した新政府が、やがて東大寺大仏殿の建立を発願し、ここに毘盧遮那仏（梵網経の本尊仏、通説には「華厳経」のそれという）を安置し、諸国に国分寺、国分尼寺を建立して、護国の諸経文を読誦させることを企画し、寺院、僧尼を国家権力の統制のもとにおこうとした時代に、すでに根をおろしたものであった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 三 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
日本敗戦の直後、鈴木大拙博士は「霊性的日本の建設」（一九四六年九月）のなかで、新しい日本は、華厳の法界縁起の理法のうえに、建設されねばならぬ、と述べている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「天皇を上に戴くと言うことは、力の意欲の象徴である。（中略）天皇は寧ろ内在性をもって、万民の間に重々無尽に繋がれて行くべきである。（中略）世界全面が国家群の法界曼荼羅であるように、日本の国内も亦、天皇と万民を一つのものにして、事々無礙とならなければならぬ。霊性的日本はここで始めて可能になる。これを図式にすると、今までの日本は図１の如きものであった。（上と下）の繋がりはあるようだが、それは途中でいくらでも切られる。上意なるものが下通するまでに、軍閥もあり、官僚もあり、財閥もある。どこが上意の出処か、下のものにはさっぱりわからぬ。これに加えるに、『万民』の間には、各自の繋がりが全くない。（中略）彼等各自は、自分で考え&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure1.png|thumb|360px|図1　鈴木大拙が示した従来の日本の上下関係（市川白弦、325頁所収）。]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|326}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ることを知らぬ。（中略）唯、“承詔必謹”をのみ是れ願った。（中略）一君万民主義は、一方においては力の意欲を象徴し、他方においては国民各自の自主性を滅却する。（一五八―一五九頁）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
天皇と万民とによって創建せられる法界曼荼羅は、つぎのようなものでなければならぬ、という。長文だが引用する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
天皇が高天原から降りて、この大地の上に、人間として青草人草の仲間入りをなされると同時に、青草人草の国民の方では、（中略）奴隷的自卑根性を放擲しなければならぬ。個己の自主性を樹立し、人格的価値の他に換うべきもののない、と云うことを、十分に認識し、自ら尊ぶは、また大いに他を尊ぶ所以であることを、覚悟しなければならぬ。個々円成であると同時に、事々無礙である。（中略）個々円成の故に事々無礙である、事々無礙の故に、個々円成である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
法界曼荼羅の日本的政体面における様相を、（中略）示してみる（図２）。ＡＢＣ等は万民であり億兆である。併し彼等は一々の個己である、自主的に行為し、思惟し、感覚するところのモナッドである。個々円成である。それぞれに独立し、自由である人格的存在である。それであるが故に、何れへと重々無尽的に連関する。このモナッドは、窓を十分に開け放って居るので、自分の光を他へも分ち、他のをも自分に受け入れる。円中の弦線及び直線は、各モナッド間の連絡、回互、円融と云うようなものを指示する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure2.png|thumb|360px|図2　鈴木大拙の法界曼荼羅。周辺のA–Hは民衆、中心のSは天皇を示す（市川白弦、326頁所収）。]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|327}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
中心のＳは、周辺のＡＢＣ等を全面的に外廓的に総括したものを、内面的に反映せしめたのである。ＡＢＣＤ等はそれぞれに孤立して、而も全体性を有つものであるから、ＡＢＣＤ等は孤線で繋ぎ合せて、一個の大円相を形成し、その大円相がそのままで、一々のモナッド、一々の「民草」に外ならず、と云う意味をもたせて、中央の小円相に集中して反映せしめてあるのである。大円相は国民全体を包むものであるが、包むと云うだけでは、これを指して示すべき具体性の事が見られぬので、中心部にＳをおいた。Ｓが即ち国体の中心である天皇である。（中略）Ｓを外廓の大円相から離して、上方においても可なるように思われるかも知れぬが、それは力の意欲、二元性の構想が入りこんで来る恐れが多分にある。封建的心理態の再現があるにきまっている。それのみならず、Ｓが円相内にあることによって、円相そのものの結合が、一層の強さを有つであろう。（中略）吾等は日本人として、東洋人として、自主的に、自由の構想で、建設すべき新たな国体なるものがなくてはならない。その建設の筋道は言うまでもなく、どこまでも霊性的でなくてはならぬ、霊性的自覚の上に築かれたものでなくてはならぬ。それで始めて世界性を持ち得る、世界の精神的文化の向上、及び生活実際面における諸般の施設に対して、何かの貢献を為し得べきものが、吾等の間から出て来るのである。（一六〇―一六三頁）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
鈴木博士のこの著作は、仏教者が日本の新しい政体を、熱意と誠実をもって構想した、戦後における随一の文献だといえるであろう。すでに明らかであるように、華厳の法界縁起説の日本的・現実的把握について、戦時中における高楠説と、戦後における鈴木説とのあいだには、原理的な距離と違いがある（「どこまでも霊性的自覚の上に築かれたものでなくてはならぬ」という、鈴木博士の指摘に注目すべきであろう）。このばあい、高楠説については、もしも高楠が戦後のこんどに生存していたならば、さきの解釈に修正の必要をみとめなかったかどうか、また鈴木説については、真実はこれを語ることが必要かつ困難であるときに語られてこそ、光&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|328}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
と力をもつのではないか、という疑いがもたれるのであるが、ここに見られるかぎりにおいて、われわれは鈴木説こそ華厳思想の真実を、現代日本に生かすものだと考えざるをえない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
高楠説と鈴木説とでは、天皇の位置が上記の前図と後図との違いになっているが、同時にこの位置の違いは、天皇の位置の原型としての毘盧遮那仏の位置の違いでもあろう。高楠説には、「華厳の方でいいますと、中心である大毘盧遮那仏も活躍する。その外輪を飾る外金剛の部属悉く活躍する。住伴総動員の大曼荼羅を現ずるのである。これが華厳の法界縁起の実現した現相である。（『真法界の顕現である』）（二五一―二六頁）という言葉がみられ、鈴木説には、「日本の国体の本来の姿が、此の如きものと考えられるとき、“君の恵”及び“御代の光”などで示唆せられる一連の思想は、従来それらに附着せられたものと違ってくるのである。“恵”は力と連想せられることがなくなって今度は回互性をもったものとなろう。“光”も只只上方からのみ照らし来るものではなくて、各自のもつ本来の光りの交互的耀らし合いと言うことになるであろう」（一六四頁）という主張が読まれるが、どちらの論説においても、毘盧遮那仏と天皇（鈴木説では人間天皇）との内面的・論理的連関という、もっとも核心的な一点が明らかでない。高楠説が、「皇道治化」をたてて「仏道治化」をみとめないという以上、いわゆる本地垂迹説にかかわるどのような論理をとるのか、それが明らかにされねばならない。鈴木説にいう「君の恵」は天皇の恵みであるが、天皇の恵みとは具体的に何をさすのか、「光り」もただ上方からのみ来るのではないといわれる場合、「上方から来る光り」とは具体的に何であるのか、鈴木説の法界曼荼羅にも「上方」があるのか、その場合の上方とは何であるのか、その上方は人間天皇として上方であるのか、これらの点が明らかでない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
鈴木説の法界は世界性をもつというのであるが、唯一特定の血統にぞくする一人の人間を、つねに世界の中心に位置せしめる論理と倫理が、はたして世界性をもつといえるであろうか。「血」という非合理的、偶&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|329}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
然的なものに、特定の宇宙倫理的意義をもたせることが、仏教のダルマ（法）の立場において、そしてまた世界倫理の立場においてみとめられるであろうか。「万世一系は、次のように解せられるとき、吾等の身命を賭すべきものとなるであろう。即ち皇統の永遠性は、日本国民の懐抱して居る理想の永遠性を象徴するもの、と見るときである」（一六五頁）。ここにいう「理想」とは、鈴木説のいわゆる「霊性的日本の建設」であろう。このばあい、帝国主義日本を否定して霊性的日本を建設するために、いったい誰が身命を賭したのか、という問題はしばらくおくとして、この理想の永遠性を象徴するために、なにゆえ特定の血統の「人間」を必要とするのか、その人間が自己の基本的人権において、この象徴たることを否定した場合はどうなるのか、またこのような象徴をもたぬ国民はどうすればよいのか。天皇の位置がたとえ鈴木説のようであったとしても、血の万世一系をみとめるかぎり、すなわちなんらの天皇制をみとめるかぎり、そしてこの体制の世界性を主張するかぎり、その論理は新しいかたちの「八紘一宇」説に展開する契機を含むのではないか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
華厳の法界縁起の論理を、高楠説から鈴木説の方向に、どこまでも徹底させるならば、人間天皇による「民主的」な天皇制さえもその論理的根拠を失い、したがって鈴木説の後図も、その意味構造が本質的に変わるのではなかろうか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら、このような疑問にもかかわらず、「道徳的自由人としての個己、霊性的存在としての人格、ただ漠然たる“全体主義”の名の下で、蟻群化し能わぬ独立自主性の個体の価値」（一四二頁）を強調する鈴木説が、力による支配の原則をみとめない鈴木説――「法界の外に立つ力は、あるべきではない。力がないと組織が持てないというのは、そのようなものを外に求めることの非理なるに気が付かないからである。法界はそれ自身で完全な組織体である。これを組織する力は、組織そのものの中に固より具わって居るのである。それを外に求むるから内にあるものが却って歪められて、あらぬ方向へ転出する」（中略）――霊性的&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|330}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
日本国家の建設は、力を主体としたものであってはならぬ。事々無礙法界を、そのままに、吾等の生活を実際に映したものでなければならぬ」（一五三―一五四頁）――このような社会像は「法界はそれ自身で完全な組織体である。これを組織する力は、組織そのものの中に固より具わって居る」という指摘に注目しよう。それはアナキズムにおける「自由連合」の思想を想起させる、これを政治的にみるならば、華厳の法界縁起世界の象徴としての、新しい人類社会における、アナキズムを示唆するものとみられるであろう。力の原則の否定と、私有の原則の否定を土台とする華厳の法界は Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B・A・C) の世界だといえるであろう（もっとも、鈴木博士は、私有制について言及されたことはないように思われる）。「秩序と無政府との統合」Unity of order and anarchy に社会の完成されたかたちをみたプルードン（一八〇九―一八六五）の構想は、このことに関するかぎり、そのまま華厳の蓮華蔵世界にあてはまるであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
国家神道と仏法とは、根源においてひとつであるというのが、日本禅の伝統的な見解であった。江戸時代の禅匠東嶺円慈（一七二一―一七九二）は、つぎのように説いている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「大凡神」とは心なり。心垢滅尽して、鏡の明了なるが如き、是れを神と謂う。是の故に神乗は鏡を以て表体と為す。心鏡本来清浄常住寂然、是れを国常立尊と謂う。心鏡本来円明、物として現ぜざること無き、是れを天照大神と謂う。（中略）まさに知るべし、神乗仏法、同一理体、但だ是れ見性の一法を出でず。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-10|10]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この事情は東嶺の師、白隠慧鶴（一六八五―一七六八）の場合も同じであったが、明治の禅匠今北洪川（一八一六―一八九二）も同じ見解をのべている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「吾が朝には皇極の道有り。是れ天祖神明の大道にして、王者の正教なり。其の授受の悠久や、神孫一統、他姓を交えず。（中略）是れ吾が王道の万国に特絶する所以なり。」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-11|11]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|331}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
吾が皇国男子大丈夫は、先ず火も焼くこと能わず、水も溺らすこと能わざる底の、和魂真柱を肚内に堅立し、以て一旦豁然として貫通すれば、則ち皇極の道を権衡するに於て、亦間然する無し。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
東嶺の見解は、国家神道の核心をなす、皇統の万世一系を、仏法の立場から根拠づける論理を欠いている。仏教の基本原理である「諸行無常」と、神道の核心である皇位の天壌無窮とを、どのようにして媒介するか、まったく不明である。洪川の場合も同様、いや『虎関師錬』（一二七八―一三四六）、白隠、『天桂伝尊』（一六四八―一七三五）を含めて、現代にいたる日本禅の宗匠において、神道の神がどうして人間の根源的主体と同一であるのか、血統がどうして神系と同一であるのか、血統の断絶（出家生活）を原則とする宗旨が、どうして血統の連続を禅法的に基礎づけ得るのか、このもっとも本質的な問題点が、まったくかえりみられていない。白隠も東嶺も、そしてすべての禅者が、その神道観において、視力の致命的な弱さをばくろしているといえよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅的真実の永遠性と、特定の血統の政治的「倫理的」一系性とは、なんの関係もないのであり、皇統の一系――それは原始民族の遺風である――を、仏法ないし禅の立場から基礎づける論理は、存在しない。わけても明治以後の皇道禅は、禅のデカダンスの最大なるものである。血の一系と徳の一系との同一を強弁する論理（？）は、白隠の「施行歌」にみられるような、三世因果の思想のほかにはないであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
が〈じ〉はこの思想をもっても、基礎づけられない、それは現世の身分境遇の差別を説明するものでしかないのだから、この思想はむしろや現代の批判にたえ得るものではない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
詩人ホイットマン（一八一九―一八九二）は、人間の尊厳について、「君自身より神聖な神はありようはない。そしてこれこそは、もっとも古い、もっとも新しい神話が、共に最後に意味するものなのだ」（“Laws for Creation”）という。プルードンは人間の主権について、「すべての市民は王である」 (Every citizen is king.) と書いているが&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-12|12]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;、日本禅のように、天照大神と人間の根源的主体とを、同一視することは、けっきょく国家神&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|332}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
道を否定することにほかならない。禅と日本国体、禅と天皇制との内面的・必然的連関をみとめないことにほかならない。これまで日本の禅者が、この帰結を自覚し表白していないということは、この禅者たちの禅的思惟が不徹底であり、真に「独脱無依」（『臨済録』）になっていないことを、しめすのではなかろうか。宗教的自由共産主義をとなえたキリスト教的実存哲学者ニコラス・ベルジャーエフ（一八七四―一九四八）は、哲学者ハイネマンによって、神秘的アナキスト mystical anarchist とよばれ&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-13|13]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;、東洋思想わけても禅に心をよせて、キリスト教神学を批判したフランスの女流哲学者シモーヌ・ヴェイユ（一九〇九―一九四三）は、スペイン内乱に参加したアナキストであったが、禅の社会思想は、わたくしのみるところでは Prajñā (般若) of Śūnyatā (空) Anarchist Communism であろう（拙著『般若経』、三一書房参照）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 四 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
西欧の宗教的アナキストたちが、国家権力に抵抗しているのに（ニコラス・ベルジャーエフは帝政ロシアにおいて、共産主義者となって、投獄された）、禅ないし華厳の仏教に、このような事例がみられないばかりでなく、かえって逆の事例が、圧倒的に多いのは、どうしたことであろう。この諸事情の二、三をあげて、検討してみよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
最初にあげられることは、体験の事実の世界と日常的経験の事実の世界、無我の行為的直観の世界と経験的個我の現実の世界との、次元のちがいの朦朧化による、「二つの事実界の混合ないし混同」ということである。事々無礙の世界は般若体験の事実界であるが、これがたんなる経験的事実界と、容易に重なりあい融けあって、両者の断絶による緊張関係が、確立しない事情にある。人は、「善の研究」の著者西田が、高橋里美の批評に答えて、「純粋経験と非純粋経験とのあいだに、質差をみとめなかったことを、思いおこすであ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|333}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ろう。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-14|14]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; この西田の見解は、禅学、仏教学にとっても、重要な意義をもっている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
右の事情は、仏教者の修為求道の重心が、「学問ノ末ニ走リテ、安心ノ本ヲ忘レ勿レ」（西田幾多郎『日記』）というように、「安心」の確立にあるがために、その到達点が「住めば都」といった、随処に安住する生きかたとなり、そのかぎりにおいて、その時々の環境が美化・合理化される心理的必然につながるとともに、般若直観の主体が「海印三昧」「宝鏡三昧」または「絶対無の場所」という言葉がしめすように、映すもの容れるものという性格においてあらわれる（これはさきの安心主義とも照応する）ために、環境に対する対象的変革的意志の執念が成立する以前に、観照の風流に乗ってしまうからでもある。「アジア的停滞」の東洋が、芸道の面においてすぐれているのも、「禅文化」の大半が芸道的であるのも、このことにつながる。敵とたたかうための弓術、武術が、平和の時代において、自己と対決する弓道、武道に転化し、内面化し、思想化し、体系化するとともに観照化したことは、興味ふかい。すべて「道」的なものは観照的なものである。いいかえるならば、「概成」の社会的約束ないし体制のワクのうちに安住するものである。有機的時代の有閑富裕な仏教者は、容易に華厳的観照の世界に遊んだであろうし、危機時代の不安な仏教者も、安心をもとめて観照の世界に入ったのである。この世界では、経験的な歴史的現実が、無礙円融のヴェールにおおわれて美化せられ、美化の度合に応じて、受容され合理化されるのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
世界のあらゆる事象は、海印三昧に映現して、重々無尽に円融する、と説かれている。思うに、「華厳経」にみられる蓮華蔵世界は、般若の行為的直観の事実界であるとともに、この事実を中心として構想された、創造的想像 creative imagination によるヴィジョンの世界である。このばあい無礙円融というのは、頑固なカースト社会体制のワクのなかでの、体験者の身辺的行為の事実、およびヴィジョンの世界の諸現象が円融無礙であることであって、人民大衆が生活しているなまなましい現実の世界が円融&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|334}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
無礙なのではない。海印三昧には、体験者の身辺的行為的な事々無礙の事実と、直観的ヴィジョンにおける円融の事実と、矛盾し抗争する暗い現実とが、三重の層をなして映現しているはずである。この立体的世界を、平板な円融無礙の一色に塗りつぶすことは誤りであろう。これと対照する意味において、ハーバート・リード（一八九三―一九六八）のつぎの言葉が思いおこされる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教は芸術（詩）と密接につながっている。（中略）スペイン内乱において、観察者は、アナキストの宗教的情熱に打たれた。アナキズムは、この潜在的ルネサンスの国において、英雄たちばかりか聖者たちを、すなわち、新しいかたちの人類社会の創造のために、感覚的想像と実践とにおいて生命をささげた、この新しい人々を鼓舞したのである。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-15|15]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
次元のちがった世界の混同からくる、あしき現実主義について、つぎの批評が成り立つであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
法蔵の華厳哲学の表明する、事々無礙なる現象円融論、現象絶対論は、「性起」説すなわち海印三昧なる根本直覚をへてこそ、はじめて体得される真理であることは、明らかであるが、それが単なる思想として表現される時は、実践の媒介を否定し、安易な絶対主義的な世界観となる。（中略）現象円融論は、単に現実の「事」をそのまま認め、その円融を主張するのでは決してない。ほんとうの意味で事々無礙は、宗教的直覚の上に展開するものだからである。（中略）華厳の体系は、海印三昧によって発現する宗教的世界観である。この点を忘却して、現実の「事」を凡夫の分別からそのままの「事」として認め、その円融を説くならば、全く異なった思想となる。現象を絶対とするのは、その現象が蓮華蔵世界の一つを作っているからである。これを無視して、現象がすべて絶対的な意味を持つと云うことは、現実をそのままに肯定することになる。一歩あやまれば、現実の支配構造、社会構造を、無条件で肯定することになる。絶対肯定の哲学は、現実をそのまま認用する支配者の御用哲学ともなる。（鎌田茂雄）&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-16|16]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|335}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この批評は、華厳思想ないし大乗仏教のおちいりがちな、そして事実しばしばおちいった錯誤と病弊――たとえば僧肇（三八四―四一四）、大慧（一〇八九―一一六三）の場合&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-17|17]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;――を、正しく指摘しているといえよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この批評は体験界と日常的経験界との区別を強調し、後者は「菩薩行の実践と慈悲に基づく誓願によって」浄化されねばならぬと主張する。それは高楠流の俗物主義を克服するものであり、この批評のうちに引かれた鈴木博士の見解とともに、正統説に立脚するものである。この見解は、いわば法蔵にみられる観照的傾向から、澄観（七三七―八三九）の体験主義への方向転換であり、この体験主義による教化伝道の主張であろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
華厳の事々無礙の世界は、体験とヴィジョンの共同制作の所産であって、現実の階級社会の構造的矛盾を把握し、分析し、これを実践的に揚棄しようとする行為の場とは、かかわりのない別次元の事柄であり、その次元でしか成り立たない世界である。この世界は、われわれの生活する世界の機構的根本矛盾を揚棄する、対象的実践を生む根拠・論理をもっていない。この点において、法蔵と澄観とのあいだに本質的な違いはない。それは単なる事実、単なる現実を肯定するのではなく、むしろこれを虚仮虚妄として否認するといっても、それは主観的意識の内部でのできごとであって、対象的変革的実践の場においてのできごとではなく、したがって事実においては、現状肯定の「二重真理説」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-18|18]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;であるほかはない。般若体験の世界と、単なる経験的現実の世界との峻別を自覚する仏教者が、事実において体制擁護的であることは、少しも不思議ではないのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 五 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
華厳思想が、さきにみたような伝統的な性格・制約を揚棄しないままで、現実世界のなかで社会倫理を形&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|336}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
成する場合には、すなわち「主は伴に対する主であり、伴は主に対する伴である」「心は物に対する心であり、物は心に対する物である」といった「相即」の論理、「相依相関」の縁起の論理によって、モラルを形成する場合には、そこに和合・調和・温情主義の倫理が生まれるであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
資本あっての事業、事業あっての労働であると同時に、労働あっての事業、事業あっての資本である。資本と労働との共同活動が即ち産業である。（中略）賃金を与える者貴くば、労働を与える者も同じく貴い。否、其の孰れも与えるのではない、資本と労働の持寄りに外ならない。（渋沢栄一）&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-19|19]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この産業資本家における労資協調のモラルは、禅者によってつぎのように示される。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「自他元来不二」なることを知らば、何の難義もない筈ぢゃ。労が家の資本ぢゃ。同時に資が家の労ぢゃ。争はどうしても起らぬ筈ぢゃ。（飯田欓隠）&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-20|20]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
和合のモラルは戦争のモラルともなる。華厳学者はつぎのように述べている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
平時にあっては、互いに離れ難きあつき因縁の繋りとして、睦みあうための基盤となれる縁起観は、非常の時であっては、また無礙の大敢闘精神の発露となって、日本国民としての責務を、その各々の持場に於て、果さしめてゆくのである。（亀川教信）&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-21|21]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
全国民の一人一人が、何れも御稜威のうちにあって、此の主伴具足感に奮い起つとき、一億の民は単なる一億に局限されずして、一億は同時に一億乗の力を発揮することとなる。（同）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この華厳学者によれば、「一即一切、一切即一」の無尽縁起の行為的把握に於て、個と全の関係が、真に如の形態に見得られるのは、わが日本国における国民的自覚の上に、浮び上って来る国家観に於てのみなることが知られる&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-22|22]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;」のであるが、この論理は戦後の日本において、かの近江絹糸の工員手帳（「鑑」）のなかに具体化し、また産業資本と禅との提携による工員錬成のモラルとして、その実績をあげつつある。「経団連」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|337}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
の支援によって発足した、さる禅道場における、最近の座談会「禅と企業」は、禅によるヒューマン・リレーションの調整と、企業経営の合理化および労務対策について語っているが、そのなかにつぎのような言葉がみられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一番大きな方針は、唯今私の方の常務が、申し上げましたように、ともかく一応学生生活の気分を一新する。そして自分というものと、会社の所属と、あるいは会社全体の中の個、個による全体ということを見ること、そして自分自身を一応分析して、会社の一員として一新して働いてもらうということを、一番根本方針にしておるわけです。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-23|23]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅寺でのお坊さんのお話は、非常に抹香臭いものだと考えておったところ、恋愛観も飛びだすということで、非常にくだけておって、ききよかった（中略）というアンケートもございました。なるべくならそういう風に、お色気をまじえたお話も、大変喜ぶようですので、お願いします。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ここで、言いたいのは、「主伴具足」にかんする亀川説（前記高楠説も同じ）についてである。この場合、主から伴への方向は、天皇絶対主義を根拠づけるものとして、どこまでも一方的であり、かつきわめて具体的現実的（帝国憲法的）であるが、伴が主としてとりあげられる方向は、観念的でしかない。このことは、いいかえるならば、主伴具足の論理を、階級社会に適用すべきではない、ということを示唆する。亀川説の場合には、主伴は真に円明具足とはいわれないのであり、この論理の創唱者法蔵自身ですらおそらくこの危険をまぬかれてはいなかったであろう。さきの鎌田氏は、同じ論文のなかで、この問題をとりあげ、「体験界の事実と経験界の事実との混同をいましめている」が、この批判が意識において否認して、現実において認容する、「二重真理説」にほかならぬことは、すでに指摘したとおりである。無政府共産社会こそ、主伴円明具徳のもっともよき象徴であるであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|338}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 六 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「仏を殺し祖を殺す」（『雲門録』）という言葉があるが、外的対象的な権威をみとめないことにおいて、禅のように徹底的であるものはないであろう。「無位の真人」の「随処に主となる」「独脱無依」の自由を強調したのは唐の禅匠臨済義玄（？―八六七）であったが、このような自由において、「丹霞天然」（七三九―八二四）は仏像を、「徳山宣鑑」（七八二―八六五）は経文を焼いたのである。「仏の一字、吾れ聞くを喜ばず」と趙州従諗（一七八―八九七）はいっている。この趙州のところへ、時の国王が部下をつれて訪れたことがあったが、趙州は座席（禅床）を降りて迎えることもなかった。その翌日、王が客将として昨日の答礼を述べさせると、彼は座席から降りて、客の挨拶をうけた。のちになって、門弟はあれはどうしたことかとたずねると、お前にはわからぬだろうが、「第一等の人来らば、禅床の上に接し、中等の人来らば、禅床を下って接し、末等の人来らば、三門の外に接す」これが自分の家風である、とかれは答えた。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-24|24]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「西方に国有り、安養と名づく。（中略）国に王制なく、階爵の序無し」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-25|25]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;という言葉がしめすように、仏教者が構想した未来社会は、無政府共産の世界であったと考えられる。クロポトキン（一八四二―一九二一）は、われわれの文化財、生活資料が、悠遠な過去からの、無数の人間の労働の果実であり、われわれはそれらに対して、「わがもの」my own と主張する根拠をもたないと述べている&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-26|26]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;が、仏教者もまた、これらのものが、衆生の重々無尽に交錯連関した活動の所産として、もともと全衆生に所属する「四方物」であり、「わがもの」mama-kāra という規定をゆるさない、と考えたのである。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-27|27]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;（ただし「梵網菩薩戒経」などにはすでに「国王もの」という思想がみられる。）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
仏教が現代において、その社会倫理ないし世界倫理を形成するために、とりくまねばならぬ問題は、およそつぎのとおりである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|339}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
まず仏教の超国家性の回復と、ナショナリズムの回復との総合の問題がある。いわゆる「鎮護国家」における国家は、王室、国土、人民の意味であったが、その主眼は天皇であった（中国においても、「国家年少胸懐を出でず」の国家は天子の意味であり&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-28|28]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;、「国家、神宗より専ら経術を以て士を取る」の国家は朝廷の意味であった&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-29|29]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;）。日本天台における「鎮護国家の十箇秘法」をみても、「天皇御即位灌頂」「皇帝御本命持念」「後宮安産御授戒」というように、天皇の一身にかんするものが、大半を占めている。いずれにせよ、仏教はその成立の当初から、国家権力と結びついてきたために――そこには、主権者を教化して善政をしかせよう、という意図があり、それが成果をおさめた場合もあるのだが――国家権力の本質を批判的に分析し検討する点に欠けるところがあった。しかし国王に対する警戒も強かったのであり、「比丘まさに王に近づくのは奴の如し」（『正法念経』）、「王は恒に賦税を多くし、横しまに過無き人を罰す」（中略）諸の貧苦の人を見ながら、會て憐愍の念無し。女人に耽り染って悪道を懼れず」（『唐訳華厳経』）といった言葉がみられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
仏典では、原始仏教に於けると同様に、国王は人民に害をなすものと考えられていた。だから、国王は《盗賊と並べられ、庶民の蒙る災難として「水火の難、盗賊の難、悪人の難」とともに、「国王の難」が挙げられている。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-30|30]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
国家悪の認識と、正しいナショナリズム（たとえば民族の独立と民族の提携）の回復との、総合の論理がみいだされねばならぬであろう。そしてこの問題との連関において、「生死に染まず去住自由」（『臨済録』）といった霊性的自由と、政治的、社会的自由との矛盾の統一の問題が探究される必要があるであろう。「宗教なくして、国家はありえない」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-31|31]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; とバクーニン（一八一四―一八七六）はいったが、しかし宗教は国家なくしてありうるのである（もっとも禅を「宗教」とよんでいいかどうかは問題である）。近代日本の禅が、天皇制国家権力によって、どのようにゆがめられたかについては、上来見てきたとおりである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|340}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
国家との連関において、つぎに考えられるのは、階級の問題である。マルクスは、「支配階級の思想はどの時代においても支配的な思想である。社会の支配的な物質的な力であるところの階級が、同時にその社会の精神的な力である。物質的生産の手段を左右する階級は、同時に精神的生産の手段を左右する。だから同時にまた、精神的生産の手段を欠いている人々の思想は、おおむねこの階級に隷従させられることになる」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-32|32]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; と書いているが、近代日本の禅イデオロギーもまた、この通則の例外でなかったことは、説明するまでもない。帝国主義日本における、国籍にしばられた日本禅から、「文化日本」における無国籍のコスモポリタン禅への、転向のプロセスのうちにも、この通則がなにほどか働いているのかもしれない。鈴木大拙博士とならんで世界的に著名な禅者久松真一博士は、「現在の直面する危機と世界倫理」にかんして、原子物理学の殺人的展開のうちに、ヒューマニズムそのものの危機を見、科学の異常な発達とモラルの立ち遅れとの未曾有の「跛行」を指摘して、「倫理力を増強して、この跛行を整形する」必要を力説し、しかもその倫理力が、特定の国家や国家ブロックや階級やイデオロギーのエゴイズムに立つものであってはならぬ、として新しい世界倫理を確立する急務を提唱していられる。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-33|33]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; まことに貴重な示唆である。しかしながら、ひるがえって考えるならば、科学と倫理との跛行は、はたしてヒューマニズムの危機とか、人類文化の行詰りとかいうものであろうか。世界の圧倒的多数の人民大衆は、良心的な多数の科学者とともに、原子力の殺人的利用に、繰り返し抗議し抵抗しているのである。かれらはいささかも偏向者ではない。そればかりか、この厖大な人民大衆の平和のためのたたかいこそが、科学とモラルの革命的分裂をくいとめているのである。偏向的であるのは、ヒューマニズムの危機をばくろしているのは、独占資本の「死の商人」たちにほかならない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
久松博士を中心とするＦ・Ａ・Ｓ禅がかかげるところの誓願「超歴史的歴史の創造」（to create Superhistorical history）&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-34|34]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; は、階級的視点をどのように処理しているのであろうか。その歴史創造の智と力とは、蒸溜水のご&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|341}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
とく無色透明であろうか。その社会倫理は、絶対者に基礎をおくＭ・Ｒ・Ａ（道徳再武装）の社会倫理と、どのようにちがうであろうか。「わたくしは公正であることは約束できるが、不偏不党であることは約束できない」（ゲーテ）（市川註・われわれはこのばあい、西田哲学の「行為的直観」との対比において、階級的自覚における「実践的直観」の論理を展開しつつある、唯物論者梅本克己氏の体系に注目したいと思う）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
階級の問題は、人間の自己疎外の問題、とくに労働における自己疎外の問題につながる。この問題と、まともにとりくむことなしには、仏教社会倫理の現代的形成はなしとげられないであろう。このことは、仏教者が賃金労働者の視点を、自己のうちに位置づけること、いいかえるならば、「商品」としての労働者（人間）の自覚的な視点を自分のうちに措定することを、必然的にするであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
疎外された労働は、人間から（一）自然を疎外し、（二）自己自身を、彼自身の活動的機能を、彼の生活行為を疎外することによって、それは人間から〈類〉を疎外する。（中略）人間が彼の労働の、彼の生活行為の生産物から、彼の類的存在から疎外される、ということからくる直接の帰結は、人間の人間からの疎外 die Entfremdung des Menschen von dem Menschen である。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-34|34]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
資本制社会においては、人間までが商品化される。青年男女の教育は、かれらのからだに「元手をいれる」ことにほかならず、青年たちは、「パースナリティの市場」において、「いかにして自分を売りつける」かの問題に腐心せざるをえない。アジャストメントというヒューマン・リレイションという、商品経済の土台のうえでの教育であり道徳である。「人的資源」といい「人間ドック」といい、ないしは「禅ブーム」という、まことに象徴的な言葉である。「玄関に、脚下照顧」とありましたが、脚下照顧が第一ですね。これからこそ健全な企業がでてくると思います。これは財界人の立場から言えば、安い投資ですよ。こんなものの「粒万倍」になって帰ってきますよ。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-35|35]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|342}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
売淫は、労働者の一般的売淫 allgemeine Prostitution des Arbeiters の、特殊な表現にすぎない。そして売淫は、淫売婦だけでなく、その相手――その卑劣さいっそう大きい――もはいる、一つの関係であるから、資本家たちもまたこの範疇にはいるのである。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-36|36]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような人間の自己疎外――わたくしはこれを人間の水平的な自己疎外 horizontal alienation として、実存的宗教的な自己疎外すなわち垂（鉛）直的な自己疎外 vertical estrangement と区別するのだが――は、これを快適なものとして享受する階級によっては、決して克服されず、これを苦痛としてうけとるほかない階級によってのみ、克服されるであろう（このことは、人間の垂直的な自己疎外の克服が、仏教のばあい、苦観にはじまるのと同じ論理・心理である）。商品としての賃金労働者の視点にたって、労働における人間の自己疎外（それは同時に、資本における人間の自己疎外でもある）を、克服しようと決意することは、われわれが階級的自覚にたつことにほかならない。階級的自覚を、階級的エゴイズムとしてしかとらえることのできない、平板な人類肯定する立場にはかなならない。「人類的世界倫理の立場においてこそ、人間の自己疎外は真に克服されるのだ」という見解、すなわち、階級的立場と人類的立場との対立の統一ではなく、たんなる人類的立場の視点は、人間の自己疎外を快適としてうけとっている階級が、ある朝、一斉にこれを苦痛として自覚するに至る、という幻想に立っている。しかし真に現実的な克服の道は、この甘いセンティメンタリズムをすてて、疎外を苦痛とするものの立場を主体として、現実をそのあるがままにとらえることから、始められるほかはない。それがすなわち歴史的現実を、客観性と党派性とを統一する立場において、とらえることである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ここでは一つの懺悔が問題なのであって、それ以上のことではない。人類がその罪業をゆるされるには、ただその罪業を実際にあるがままのものとして、公言すればたりるのだ。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-37|37]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|343}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「その罪業を実際にあるがままのものとして公言する」こと――これが『資本論』における商品の分析ではなかったか。これが道元の「万法に証せらるる」ということの、経済学の分野における内実ではなかろうか。労働力としての商品から、それの資本制的規定の、捨象された商品に到達し（下向運動）、これの科学的究明を媒介として、自己に直接的な自己矛盾が、資本制社会の階級的矛盾の細胞形態であることを、明らかにすること（上向運動）、この円環行程の、しかも「開かれた体系」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-38|38]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; を、実践的直観において明らかにすることこそ、西田哲学の「物となって見、物となって考える」という方法の、社会科学的内実ではなかろうか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
こんにちわれわれ人間が、そして仏教者そのものが、商品経済社会（「売淫的世界」）によって生かされ、生きていること、この事態の全体が、「世間虚仮」であり、「そらごとたわごと」である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
カール・レヴィット（一八九七―一九七三）は、「マルクスの対蹠人たるキルケゴールさえ、資本と労働の関係への、マルクスの洞察を、人間としての生活そのものをもって実証」した実情を、興味ふかく記述している。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-39|39]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; 他方われわれは、間主体的 inter-subjective 社会における事々無礙を、客観的に現実化しようとする場合に、逢着するであろう「縁起哲学の限界」について、クロポトキンの説得的な評論から、多くのことを学ぶであろう。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[[#ichikawa-ref-40|40]]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
世間の虚妄を――それの対象論理的・形而上的疎外をしばらくおく。ただし、対象そのものを変えるかわりに、対象の対象性を「空ずる」ことへの、きびしい批判をおこたってはならぬのだが――このようなアスペクトにおいて、われわれに自覚させ、このものの克服を決意させるものこそ、この分野における歴史の真実（ダルマ）であり、ここに仏教者における、社会倫理と社会科学との弁証の起点がある、とおもわれる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Original References ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- Ichikawa’s printed references, pp. 344–345. Working transcription; bracketed uncertainty notices are editorial, not original. --&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;1.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎の思想は、当初から体制擁護的な契機を含んでいた。拙稿「絶対無のつまづき――西田幾多郎の場合」、『思想』、一九五九年一月、本巻所収「西田幾多郎論」参照。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;2.&#039;&#039;&#039; 大宅壮一「西田幾多郎と敗北」、『文藝春秋』、一九五四年六月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;3.&#039;&#039;&#039; 政府の「大東亜宣言」の草案として、一部の者の要請によって書かれたものだが、東条首相の拒否によって採択されなかった。その全文は矢吹一夫「昭和人物秘録」の「西田幾多郎博士の大東亜戦争観」にのせられている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;4.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎『哲学の根本問題・続編』、一〇六―一〇七頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;5.&#039;&#039;&#039; 同書、一〇七頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;6.&#039;&#039;&#039; 日本諸学振興委員会、哲学講演会での講演（一九三七年）の記録。西田幾多郎「学問的方法」と共に、『文部省教学叢書』第三集（一九三八年）に収録。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-7&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;7.&#039;&#039;&#039; 大阪毎日新聞社編『日本仏教概論』、一九四二年。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-8&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;8.&#039;&#039;&#039; 東京帝大仏青編『仏教思想講座』巻三、一九三九年。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-9&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;9.&#039;&#039;&#039; 高楠順次郎、前掲論文。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-10&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;10.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『宗門無尽灯論』、流通第一〇。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-11&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;11.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅海一瀾』、岩波文庫版、三一、三四頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-12&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;12.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. J. Proudhon, Proudhon’s Solution of the Social Problem, p. 45.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-13&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;13.&#039;&#039;&#039; F. H. Heinemann, Existentialism and the Modern Predicament, p. 154.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-14&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;14.&#039;&#039;&#039; 西田幾多郎『思索と体験』、一一八頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-15&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;15.&#039;&#039;&#039; H. Read, The Philosophy of Anarchism, pp. 24–25.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-16&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;16.&#039;&#039;&#039; 鎌田茂雄「華厳哲学の根本的立場」、中村元編『華厳思想』所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-17&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;17.&#039;&#039;&#039; 拙著『般若経』、三一書房、六九頁、第六巻所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-18&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;18.&#039;&#039;&#039; 船山信一「明治哲学における護教主義現実主義の三つの論理」、『思想』、一九六一年一月。二重真理説はキリスト教神学の恩寵と理性、仏教の真諦と俗諦の説にみられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-19&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;19.&#039;&#039;&#039; 渋沢栄一「労働問題解決の根本義」、『社会政策時報』、一九二〇年九月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-20&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;20.&#039;&#039;&#039; 飯田欓隠『無門関鑽燧』、一九二四年十一月、一七九頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-21&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;21.&#039;&#039;&#039; 亀川教信（龍谷大学教授）『縁起の構造』、一九四四年八月、五八一、五八五頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-22&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;22.&#039;&#039;&#039; 同書、五九頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-23&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;23.&#039;&#039;&#039; 「禅と企業」、『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-24&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;24.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅苑蒙求』。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-25&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;25.&#039;&#039;&#039; 支遁「阿弥陀仏像讃並序」。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-26&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;26.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism. Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 57f.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-27&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;27.&#039;&#039;&#039; 拙著『般若経』第四章、三一書房。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-28&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;28.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『晋書』（陶侃伝）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-29&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;29.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『事物起源』、学校学事部、詞賦。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-30&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;30.&#039;&#039;&#039; 宮本正尊編『大乗仏教の成立史的研究』、三七六頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-31&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;31.&#039;&#039;&#039; M. Bakunin, Gott u. d. Staat. (Gesammelte Werke. Bd. I)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-32&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;32.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Marx, Die Deutsche Ideologie, S. 44 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus. Bd. 29)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-33&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;33.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『京都新聞』、一九六一・一・一四および『維摩七則』、一六三頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-34&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;34.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Marx, Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte, S. 103, 106 (Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus, Bd. 42)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-35&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;35.&#039;&#039;&#039; 『禅』七〇集、一九六一年三月。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-36&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;36.&#039;&#039;&#039; Marx, ibid. S. 128.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-37&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;37.&#039;&#039;&#039; 「ルーゲへの手紙」、一八四三年（『マルクス・エンゲルス選集』補巻四、一三五頁）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-38&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;38.&#039;&#039;&#039; 梯明秀『資本論への私の歩み』、一二七頁以下。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-39&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;39.&#039;&#039;&#039; K. Löwith, Von Hegel zu Nietzsche. 邦訳、七〇頁以下。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;ichikawa-ref-40&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;40.&#039;&#039;&#039; P. Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism, pp. 48, 56, 59, 64. P. Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, chap. I.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
「禅・華厳・アナキズム」（1961年）は、市川白弦の華厳思想と無政府主義の関係を論じた論考。本ページは『市川白弦著作集』第3巻（法蔵館、1993年）、319–343頁の本文をもとにした作業用の翻刻である。原著所収の注は344–345頁であり、下記に翻刻する。図１・図２は鈴木大拙の論述から市川が引用した図である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
本翻刻はなお原本との最終校合を要する。本文中の上付き数字は原著の参照番号を示す。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Transcription and editing: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1961). “Zen, Kegon, anakizumu 禅・華厳・アナキズム” [Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism]. Transcribed and edited by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH61ZKA&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Japanese originals]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=Template:Tpage&amp;diff=1244</id>
		<title>Template:Tpage</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=Template:Tpage&amp;diff=1244"/>
		<updated>2026-10-13T11:01:14Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;lt;includeonly&amp;gt;__NOEDITSECTION__&amp;lt;/includeonly&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div style=&amp;quot;float: right; position: relative; z-index: 10; font-weight: normal; font-size: 0.9em; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin-bottom: -1.75em; padding-top: 1.4em;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
{{#ifeq:{{{2|}}}|original&lt;br /&gt;
|[[{{{3|{{PAGENAME}}}}}#Page {{{1}}}|➣ Japanese Original of this Page.]]&lt;br /&gt;
|[[{{PAGENAME}}-T#Page {{{1}}}|➣ English Translation of this Page.]]&lt;br /&gt;
}}&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
==== Page {{{1}}} ====&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;noinclude&amp;gt;[[Category:Editorial Templates]]&amp;lt;/noinclude&amp;gt;&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA-T&amp;diff=1243</id>
		<title>IH61ZKA-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA-T&amp;diff=1243"/>
		<updated>2026-10-13T10:59:04Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism”}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム) is a 1961 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 3 of &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343, with references on pp. 344–345.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Japanese original:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH61ZKA|禅・華厳・アナキズム]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contents ==&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section1|I]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section2|II]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section3|III]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section4|IV]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section5|V]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section6|VI]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|319|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is known as the “Nishida philosophy” of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), the foremost representative of modern Japanese philosophy, was established in his 1926 essay “Place.” Although the idea of “place” (basho 場所) emerged through the concept of topos (place) found in Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotle’s De Anima, it was more fundamentally connected with the Mahāyāna Buddhist concepts of emptiness (kū 空; Sanskrit śūnyatā) and the dharma-realm (hokkai 法界; Sanskrit dharmadhātu), especially the realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge hokkai 事々無礙法界), a world of experience in which individual things and events mutually interpenetrate and mutually determine one another. In other words, Nishida’s thought was fundamentally connected with the philosophy of prajñā and Kegon philosophy. His central idea—that the mutual determination of individual things within the place of “absolute nothingness” is simultaneously the self-determination of the universal—expressed, through the mediation of the modern Western logic of the individual ego, the fundamental unity of the logical structures of prajñā emptiness and Kegon’s non-obstruction of phenomena. In essence, this philosophy should have established a metaphysical foundation for thoroughgoing freedom and equality through the Eastern logic of nothingness. It contained the possibility of establishing a philosophy of freedom that rejected all external authority (Autorität) and power (Macht), even casting off the clothing of so-called “religion.”&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Nishida’s philosophy of place. Nishida Kitarō’s 1926 essay “Place” (Basho 場所) develops the notion of a locus in which individual things are constituted through relationships and self-determination. Ichikawa argues that this philosophy’s rejection of a fixed, substantial universal ought to support freely associated individuals, rather than an emperor-centred political order.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;The four dharma-realms. In Huayan/Kegon thought these are the realm of phenomena (事法界), the realm of principle (理法界), the non-obstruction of principle and phenomena (理事無礙法界), and the non-obstruction of phenomena with one another (事事無礙法界). Ichikawa centres his political reading on the final realm, without assuming that interdependence automatically entails political equality.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|320|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet as imperial Japan’s wartime system expanded, and as pressure from the political Right and the military against the “liberal” tendencies of Nishida philosophy and the Kyoto School intensified, this philosophy of the place of absolute nothingness—or the philosophy of the “self-determination of facts”—gradually developed a logic that provided an ideological foundation for the Imperial Way and the “holy war.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ōya Sōichi went so far as to say that Nishida had “sold his soul to secure the safety of his body.” Among Nishida’s writings from this period were “The Principle of the New World Order” (1943) and “On the National Polity” (1944). The latter subsequently appeared as the fourth supplementary essay in his Philosophical Essays, was published in the journal Tetsugaku kenkyū 哲学研究, and was included in the Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō. The former, however, was not included in the collected works.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, the logic of place, or the philosophy of the non-obstruction of phenomena, should not have provided a foundation for the Imperial Way. On the contrary, it should have provided a foundation for anarchism. In my essay “The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō” (published in Shisō 思想, January 1959, and reprinted in the present volume), I wrote the following in its conclusion:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The place of absolute nothingness, the dialectical universal, forms the principle of world-formation through its self-conscious determination. This principle and the Imperial Way constitute an absolute contradiction that cannot be reconciled. Within the sphere of objectifying logic, the two assert themselves against and mutually exclude one another by their very nature. If the Imperial Way were genuinely to become subjective beyond the domain of objectifying logic, then, in the very process of becoming subjective, it would have no alternative but to dissolve itself by negating those accidental, particular, and irrational elements that constitute its essential nature. In the process of fully realising itself as subject, the Imperial Way must relinquish the ego. It loses itself by returning to the place of absolute nothingness, the true historical world. Conversely, the logic of the place of absolute nothingness—the logic of the predicate—is something that fundamentally negates the Imperial Way conceived as subject. Nishida’s “theology of the logic of place” should not have provided a foundation for Japan’s founding mythology and the politico-religious philosophy of the eternal imperial order. Rather, it should have furnished a logical system that brought these to an end. Likewise—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|321|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and, contrary to what happened in Nishida’s own case, it should have been a philosophical system that regarded even national morality as fundamentally illusory (koke 虚仮). As a philosophy of place, in which absolutely free individuals are mediated by a universal that mediates without any mediating entity, this system should have provided the foundation for a democratic association of free individuals in the deepest sense. It should have demanded that the Imperial Way shed its former character, anticipated the disappearance of the state, and provided the foundation and promise of a community without coercive power. The logic of the predicate began with Nishida the philosopher, only to founder in Nishida the imperial subject.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to Nishida, the actual world must be a world of individuals—I, you, and others. An individual might initially be understood as a determination of the universal, such as existence or living beings. By adding specific differences to what is universal, proceeding through successive classifications, and finally passing beyond them, one might conceive of the individual as a limiting point. Yet an individual conceived in this manner is not a genuine individual. Such an individual can never escape being merely a part of the universal. The individual must determine itself. Only something that determines itself—that is, something that becomes conscious of itself, forms itself, and chooses for itself—can truly be called an independent individual. Yet an individual can determine itself only in relation to other individuals. I exist as myself in relation to you, just as you exist as yourself in relation to me. “An individual must be conceived as standing in relation to another individual. It is only through standing in relation to another individual that an individual can be conceived as such. It is impossible to conceive of a single individual existing alone. For mutually independent things to stand in relation to one another is precisely what it means for things to act upon one another. […] For mutually independent things to enter into relations, some form of mediation must be conceived between them.” (Emphasis added by Ichikawa.) If this mediator were some universal that unified the individuals—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|322|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—then that universal would itself amount to another individual, and the independence of the original individuals would necessarily be lost. (It would be rather like two people who could meet only in the presence of a guardian.) Behind individual beings there is no overarching universal that encompasses them. What mediates independent individuals cannot be some positive, substantial universal. Rather, it must be a dialectical universal understood as the determination of the place of nothingness. Within the place of absolute nothingness, individuals engage with and cooperate with one another while remaining genuinely independent. I remain entirely myself, and you remain entirely yourself; yet at the same time I am you, and you are me. Each is an autonomous, self-governing existence possessing an irreplaceable individuality, yet each may freely become subject or object in relation to the other, working and cooperating together. This is how the world of historical reality must truly be constituted. Borrowing a term from Kegon philosophy, Nishida calls this world of existential encounter and interconnection the “realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena” (jiji muge no sekai 事々無礙の世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The logic of the place of absolute nothingness, which makes possible free and autonomous interaction and cooperation among independent, individual existences—this was, so to speak, the fundamental logic of Nishida’s social philosophy or philosophy of the world.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consequently, what should follow from this logic is a society of genuinely autonomous and free individuals, liberated from attachment to the ego and its objects. Such a society would not merely be free of domination through force; it would be a freely associated human community in which there was no place even for “authority” understood as power disguised in ethical clothing.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet this open conception of the world, grounded in the logic of place and the Zen–Kegon understanding of emptiness and the non-obstruction of phenomena, was constrained and distorted by Nishida’s samurai sensibilities, his position within the academic establishment, and the circumstances of imperialist Japan. Its possibilities were deformed until it descended into the Theory of the National Polity and The Principle of the New World Order. And this was the same course that Japanese Buddhism generally followed at the time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|323|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎, one of the leading Buddhist scholars of modern Japan—supervising editor of the Taishō Revised Tripiṭaka, professor emeritus at Tokyo Imperial University, and recipient of the fourth Order of Culture (Nishida received the second)—argued in “The Principle of Totality in Buddhism” that Mahāyāna Buddhist logic and ethics were, from the beginning, totalitarian. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[6]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; According to Takakusu, the logical structure of this totalitarianism is expressed in Kegon thought through the doctrine of the Four Dharma-Realms (shihokkai 四法界), culminating in the fourth, the Realm of the Non-Obstruction of Phenomena (jiji muge hokkai 事々無礙法界). He maintained that, with the World War as its turning point, the world had begun moving toward totalitarianism: “Today even Westerners are beginning to practise totalitarianism, whereas the Japanese have actually practised it since ancient times. Through Japan’s Yamato totalitarianism, we can provide a model for the world. Through Buddhism’s principle of totality, we can guide the world. […] Japan as it actually exists must be governed through the Imperial Way. It is truly gratifying that the Kegon principle of totality should be put into practice. […] However excellent Buddhism may be, there must be no attempt to regard it as a form of government through the Buddhist Way existing alongside Japan’s government through the Imperial Way.” Takakusu concluded: “We now find ourselves in the midst of the National Spiritual Mobilization campaign, at a time when the Japanese spirit must be manifested in its totality. […] We should fully appreciate the true meaning of Kegon and undertake service to the nation without the slightest disorder and without a trace of selfishness. All people should forget themselves, relinquish themselves, and devote themselves to national affairs. We should realise the truth that the sage has no self, yet there is nothing that is not the self.” The Kegon scholar Kamekawa Kyōshin 亀川教信, in his essay “The Structure of Dependent Origination” (Engi no kōzō 縁起の構造), &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[7]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; and Yamagami Kaizen 山上戒全, in his essay “Kegon” 華厳, &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[8]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; developed interpretations of Kegon thought along similar lines. The Zen scholar Nakane Kandō 中根環堂, in “Totalitarianism and Zen” (Zentaishugi to Zen 全体主義と禅), &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[9]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; argued that Japan’s national polity was not the flat, horizontal totalitarianism of the West. Rather, its principle of one emperor and all his subjects constituted a three-dimensional, organic unity, in which affection resembled the relationship between father and child, while duty preserved the proper distinctions between ruler and subject. Underlying this hierarchical unity, he maintained, was the Kegon philosophy of “one is many, and many are one” (ichi soku ta, ta soku ichi 一即多・多即一). The path to fully realising this unity was seated meditation. Through grasping the essence of zazen—“thinking from the standpoint of nonthinking”—one could accomplish the sacred imperial undertaking of bringing the world under one roof (hakkō ichiu 八紘一宇). The lectures on “The Problem of Japanese Culture” given by Nishida at Kyoto Imperial University’s Monday lecture series in 1938—&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Takakusu and wartime Buddhist thought. Takakusu Junjirō (1866–1945) was a prominent Buddhist scholar associated with the Taishō canon. Ichikawa cites his “Principle of Totality in Buddhism” (「仏教の全体性原理」; Ichikawa’s source reference 6) as evidence of the use of Kegon categories to defend wartime totalitarianism. The passage documents Takakusu’s interpretation, not an uncontested meaning of Kegon doctrine.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|324|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and Kōyama Iwao’s subsequent lectures on “Cultural Typology” likewise sought to contribute to the construction of a “New Order in East Asia” by invoking the Kegon logic of phenomena.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet all these attempts were nothing other than distortions of Kegon philosophy and Zen thought. Let us return once more to Takakusu for an example.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In his Commentary on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Kegongyō tangenki 華厳経探玄記), Fazang (Hōzō 法蔵, 643–712), the third patriarch of the Chinese Huayan school, classifies the infinite mutual identity and interpenetration of phenomena within the world of experience into ten categories, known as the “Ten Profound Forms of Dependent Origination” (jūgen engi 十玄縁起). The tenth is called the “Gate of the Complete Illumination and Possession of Virtues by Principal and Companion” (shuhan enmyō gutokumon 主伴円明具徳門). The countless phenomena of the experiential world alternately become principal and companion, forming an endlessly interconnected symbolic world. If one phenomenon is taken as principal, all the others become its companions and are subordinated to it. But if another is selected as principal, all the remaining phenomena—including the one formerly taken as principal—become its companions and are encompassed by it. This is the principle of the complete illumination and possession of virtues by principal and companion. Takakusu paraphrases the doctrine in concrete terms: “Both principal and companion should work together harmoniously and openly, those above and below acting with one heart. Totalitarianism means that parent and child do not oppose one another but join forces and work together. If this cannot be accomplished, it is not totalitarianism. […] When similar things come together, one becomes their centre and principal. We may therefore apply this to the actual relationship of one emperor and all his subjects.” He also declared: “Our country has been totalitarian since the very beginning of its founding. […] Through the Meiji Restoration, it returned to its original totalitarianism.” And further: “We Japanese, who already possess the principle of totality in our actual national existence, are bringing the vision of Kegon’s one true dharma-realm into reality. This is something truly precious.” Takakusu thus maintains that the truths of the non-obstruction of phenomena, the completeness of principal and companion, and the identity of one with all and all with one are already realised within the system of one emperor and all his subjects—a system that regards democracy as contrary to the national polity and rests upon an authoritarian, status-based morality. This is a typical example of philosophy placed at the service of the authorities.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Principal and companion. Fazang’s “principal and companion” (shuhan 主伴) allows different phenomena to become the focus of a relationship, with the others functioning as companions. Ichikawa argues that making one hereditary sovereign permanently principal defeats the reciprocity that the doctrine is meant to express.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|325|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The condition of Japanese Buddhism described above had already taken root in the period of the Taika reforms. Leaving aside for the moment the earlier circumstances of state Buddhism in China, the new government, established through the reforms of 646, eventually undertook the construction of the Great Buddha Hall at Tōdaiji. It enshrined Vairocana Buddha there and established provincial monasteries and nunneries throughout the country, where scriptures for the protection of the state were to be recited. In this way, temples, monks, and nuns came under the control of state authority.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Immediately after Japan’s defeat, Suzuki Daisetsu, in “The Construction of a Spiritual Japan” (September 1946), argued that a new Japan must be constructed upon the principle of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm (hokkai engi 法界縁起) found in Kegon philosophy.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To place the emperor above the people is a symbol of the will to power. […] Rather, the emperor should possess a quality of immanence, becoming interconnected with the people in endlessly overlapping relationships. […] Just as the entire world should constitute a dharma-realm mandala of nations, so within Japan itself, the emperor and the people must become a single whole in which phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. Only then will a spiritual Japan become possible.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If we express this schematically, Japan up to the present has resembled Figure 1. Although there appears to be a connection between those above and those below, it can be severed at any point along the way. Before the wishes of those above reach those below, they must pass through military cliques, bureaucrats, and financial interests. Those below have no clear idea where these directives originate. Moreover, the people themselves have no direct connections with one another. […] They do not know how to think for themselves—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure1.png|thumb|360px|Figure 1. Suzuki Daisetsu’s diagram of hierarchical relations in prewar Japan (reproduced by Ichikawa, p. 325).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|326|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—[…] All that was demanded of them was reverent obedience to imperial commands. […] The system of one emperor and all his subjects symbolises the will to power on the one hand and, on the other, extinguishes the autonomy of individual citizens.” (pp. 158–159)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki goes on to describe the dharma-realm mandala that ought to be constructed by the emperor and the people. Although the passage is lengthy, I shall quote it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the emperor descends from the Plain of High Heaven and joins ordinary human beings upon this earth, the people, for their part, must abandon their servile sense of inferiority. […] They must establish their own autonomy and recognise fully that nothing can replace the value of individual personality.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“They must understand that respecting oneself is also the basis for respecting others. Each individual is complete in themselves, and at the same time all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. […] Because each is complete, all are non-obstructing; because all are non-obstructing, each is complete.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The political form of Japan as a dharma-realm mandala may be represented schematically in Figure 2. A, B, C, and so forth represent the people, the countless inhabitants of the nation. Yet each is an individual, a monad capable of autonomous action, thought, and sensation.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Suzuki’s diagrams. Figures 1 and 2, reproduced from Suzuki Daisetsu’s postwar account, respectively depict an elevated apex with disconnected subjects and a circle of mutually related individuals. In Figure 2, S still represents the emperor. Ichikawa’s question is why even the revised, immanent arrangement requires a fixed hereditary centre.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Each is complete in themselves. Each is an independent and free personality. Precisely for this reason, each enters into inexhaustibly interconnected relationships with others. These monads have thrown their windows wide open, sharing their own light with others while receiving the light of others in return.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Monad with open windows. Suzuki reverses Leibniz’s well-known image of monads as having “no windows.” His metaphor of open windows expresses both distinct individuality and reciprocal exchange, but it does not itself settle the problem of the emperor’s status in the political whole.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The chords and straight lines within the circle represent communication, reciprocal interaction, and mutual interpenetration among the monads.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure2.png|thumb|360px|Figure 2. Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala: A–H represent individuals, while S at the centre represents the emperor (reproduced by Ichikawa, p. 326).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|327|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The S at the centre is an inward reflection of that which comprehensively encompasses the surrounding A, B, C, and so forth from without. A, B, C, D, and the others are each independent, yet each possesses totality. Accordingly, A, B, C, and D are joined by curved lines to form a great circle. This great circle, just as it is, represents each individual monad, each individual ‘blade of grass’ among the people. To express this meaning, it is concentrated and reflected in the small circle at the centre.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The great circle encompasses the people as a whole, but merely saying that it encompasses them does not provide anything concrete that can be pointed to. For this reason I have placed S at the centre. S is none other than the emperor, the centre of the national polity. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It might seem possible to remove S from the great circle surrounding it and place it above. But doing so would introduce a considerable danger that the will to power and a dualistic conception would reappear. The feudal mentality would inevitably be reproduced. Moreover, placing S within the circle should serve to strengthen the unity of the circle itself. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“As Japanese and as East Asians, we must establish a new national polity through our own autonomy, freedom, and constructive vision. Needless to say, its establishment must be spiritual through and through; it must be built upon spiritual awakening. Only then can it attain universality. Only then can something emerge from among us that will contribute to the advancement of world spiritual culture and to the various institutions of practical life.” (pp. 160–163)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This work by Suzuki may be regarded as the foremost postwar document in which a Buddhist thinker sought, with enthusiasm and sincerity, to envision a new political order for Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As is already clear, there is a fundamental distance and difference between Takakusu’s wartime interpretation and Suzuki’s postwar interpretation of the Kegon doctrine of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm, understood in relation to the realities of Japan. (We should pay particular attention to Suzuki’s insistence that the new order must be built upon spiritual awakening through and through.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s case, we may wonder whether, had he lived into the postwar period, he would have recognised the need to revise his earlier interpretation. In Suzuki’s case, we might ask whether truth acquires its illumination—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|328|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and power precisely when it is spoken at a time when speaking it is both necessary and difficult. Nevertheless, judging from what we have before us, we cannot avoid concluding that Suzuki’s interpretation is the one that truly brings the meaning of Kegon thought to life in contemporary Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s and Suzuki’s interpretations, the position of the emperor differs in the way represented by the two diagrams discussed above. At the same time, this difference in position may also reflect a difference in the position of Vairocana Buddha, the prototype of the emperor’s position.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s account, we find the following statement:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In Kegon terms, the great Vairocana Buddha at the centre is active. All the attendant beings of the outer Vajra circle are active as well. The great mandala of the total mobilisation of principal and companion is manifested. This is the phenomenal manifestation of the dependent origination of the Kegon dharma-realm—the manifestation of the true dharma-realm.” (pp. 251–252)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki, on the other hand, argues:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the original form of Japan’s national polity is understood in this way, the sequence of ideas suggested by expressions such as ‘the benevolence of the sovereign’ and ‘the light of the imperial reign’ acquires a different meaning from that traditionally attached to them. ‘Benevolence’ will no longer be associated with power, but will instead become something characterised by reciprocity. Nor will ‘light’ be something that shines only from above. Rather, it will signify the reciprocal illumination of the original light possessed by each individual.” (p. 164)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet neither account clarifies the most fundamental issue: the internal and logical relationship between Vairocana Buddha and the emperor (in Suzuki’s case, the emperor understood as a human being).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Since Takakusu asserts government through the Imperial Way while refusing to recognise government through the Buddhist Way, he must explain what logic he adopts in relation to the doctrine of original ground and manifest traces (honji suijaku 本地垂迹).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki speaks of the “benevolence of the sovereign,” meaning the emperor’s benevolence. But what, concretely, does that benevolence signify? Similarly, when he says that “light” does not come only from above, what exactly is the “light that comes from above”? Is there still an “above” within Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala? If so, what does that position represent? Is it a position above others occupied by the emperor as a human being? These questions remain unanswered.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki maintains that his dharma-realm possesses universality. But can a logic and an ethics that permanently place a single human being belonging to one particular hereditary lineage at the centre of the world genuinely claim universality?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Blood,” as something irrational and contingent,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|329|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—can it be assigned a particular cosmic and ethical significance from the standpoint of the Buddhist Dharma, or indeed from the standpoint of universal ethics?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki writes: “The unbroken imperial line will become something for which we should stake our lives when it is understood in the following way: the perpetuity of the imperial lineage symbolises the perpetuity of the ideals cherished by the Japanese people.” (p. 165)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The “ideals” mentioned here presumably refer to what Suzuki calls the “construction of a spiritual Japan.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Leaving aside for the moment the question of who actually risked their lives to reject imperialist Japan and construct a spiritual Japan, why should the perpetuity of these ideals require a particular human being belonging to a particular hereditary lineage? What would happen if that individual, exercising their fundamental human rights, refused to serve as such a symbol? And what should peoples without such a symbol do?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Even if the emperor occupied the position proposed by Suzuki, so long as the unbroken hereditary imperial line is recognised—that is, so long as some form of the emperor system is recognised—and so long as universality is claimed for this system, does its logic not contain the possibility of developing into a new version of the doctrine of “eight corners of the world under one roof” (hakkō ichiu 八紘一宇)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If the logic of Kegon’s dependent origination of the dharma-realm were pursued consistently, carrying Suzuki’s interpretation to its ultimate conclusion beyond Takakusu’s, would not even a “democratic” emperor system headed by a human emperor lose its logical foundation? And would not the very structure of meaning represented in Suzuki’s second diagram consequently undergo a fundamental transformation?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, despite these questions, Suzuki’s interpretation emphasises “the value of the individual as a morally free person, as a spiritual existence, and as an independently autonomous being who cannot be reduced to an antlike mass under the vague designation of ‘totalitarianism’” (p. 142).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki also rejects the principle of domination through force:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“There should be no power standing outside the dharma-realm. To suppose that an organisation cannot be sustained without such power is to fail to recognise the irrationality of seeking it outside itself. The dharma-realm is already a complete organisation in itself. The power that organises it is originally inherent within the organisation itself. When this power is sought outside, what exists within becomes distorted and is diverted in an unintended direction. […]”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|330|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—The construction of a spiritual Japanese state must not take power as its fundamental principle. It must be a faithful reflection in our actual lives of the realm in which all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing.” (pp. 153–154)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Let us pay particular attention to Suzuki’s observation that the dharma-realm is already a complete organisation and that the power necessary to organise it is inherent within the organisation itself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This recalls the anarchist idea of free association. Viewed politically, it may be understood as suggesting anarchism as the form of a new human society embodying the Kegon world of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon dharma-realm, grounded in the rejection of both the principle of coercive power and the principle of private ownership, may be described as a world of Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.)—although Suzuki, it seems to me, has never addressed the question of private ownership.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E7&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Buddhist Anarchist Communism. Ichikawa proposes Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.) as one possible political expression of Kegon interdependence, combining resistance to coercive external authority with opposition to private appropriation. Although Suzuki’s self-organising dharma-realm suggests anarchist free association, Ichikawa explicitly observes that Suzuki does not address private ownership. B.A.C. is therefore Ichikawa’s extension, not Suzuki’s own political programme.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon (1809–1865), who envisaged the perfected form of society as a “unity of order and anarchy,” proposed a conception that, at least in this respect, may be applied directly to Kegon’s Lotus Treasury World (renge zō sekai 蓮華蔵世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The traditional position of Japanese Zen was that State Shinto and the Buddha-Dharma were fundamentally one. The Edo-period Zen master Tōrei Enji 東嶺円慈 (1721–1792) explained it as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Fundamentally, ‘kami’ means mind. When the impurities of the mind have been completely extinguished and it becomes as clear as a mirror, this is called kami. Thus, the Way of the kami takes the mirror as the representation of its essential nature.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The mirror of the mind is originally pure, eternally abiding, and serenely still: this is called Kuni-no-Tokotachi-no-Mikoto 国常立尊. The mirror of the mind is originally perfectly luminous, and there is nothing that it does not reveal: this is called Amaterasu Ōmikami 天照大神. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“One should understand that the Way of the kami and the Buddha-Dharma share the same underlying principle. They are nothing other than the single Dharma of seeing one’s nature.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The same position was held by Tōrei’s teacher, Hakuin Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1685–1768). The Meiji-period Zen master Imakita Kōsen 今北洪川 (1816–1892) likewise expressed this understanding:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In our country there is the Way of imperial sovereignty. This is the great Way of the ancestral deity and the true teaching of rulers. Its transmission has continued from the distant past, with the imperial descendants forming a single unbroken lineage, into which no other family has entered. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“This is what makes our imperial Way uniquely distinguished among all the nations of the world.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|331|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—A true man of our imperial nation must first establish firmly within himself the pillar of the Japanese spirit, which neither fire can burn nor water drown. Once he has suddenly penetrated through to realisation, there will be nothing deficient in his ability to judge and uphold the Imperial Way.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Tōrei’s interpretation lacks any logic capable of grounding, from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma, the unbroken imperial lineage that constitutes the core of State Shinto. It remains entirely unclear how the fundamental Buddhist principle that “all conditioned things are impermanent” (shogyō mujō 諸行無常) could be reconciled with Shinto’s assertion that the imperial throne will endure as long as heaven and earth. The same applies to Imakita Kōsen. Indeed, among Japanese Zen masters from Kokan Shiren (1278–1346), Hakuin, and Tenkei Denson (1648–1735) down to the present, the most fundamental questions have been almost entirely neglected. How can the kami of Shinto be identical with the fundamental subject of human existence? How can a hereditary lineage be identical with a divine lineage? And how can a religious tradition that, through monastic renunciation, takes the discontinuation of hereditary descent as a principle provide a Zen Buddhist justification for the continuity of that very descent? Hakuin, Tōrei, and virtually every other Zen practitioner have revealed a fatal weakness of vision in their understanding of Shinto.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E8&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Zen and the imperial lineage. Ichikawa contrasts impermanence (shogyō mujō 諸行無常) with claims about the eternal imperial lineage. His objection is to making a particular hereditary institution a necessary expression of Zen insight.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is no relationship whatsoever between the eternity of Zen truth and the political and supposedly “ethical” continuity of a particular bloodline. No logic exists by which the unbroken imperial lineage—a survival from the customs of ancient peoples—can be justified from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma or Zen. Above all, the Imperial Way Zen that emerged after the Meiji Restoration represents the most extreme decadence of Zen. The only possible support for the forced identification of hereditary continuity with moral continuity seems to lie in the doctrine of karmic causation across the three times, as found in Hakuin’s “Song of Giving” (Segyōka 施行歌). Yet even this doctrine cannot establish such an identification. It can do no more than explain differences of social status and circumstances in the present life. Moreover, the doctrine itself can scarcely withstand modern criticism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the dignity of humanity, the poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) wrote: “There can be no god more sacred than yourself. And this is what the oldest and the newest myths alike ultimately mean.” (“Laws for Creation”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon, writing of human sovereignty, declared, “Every citizen is king.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet to identify Amaterasu Ōmikami with the fundamental subject of human existence, as Japanese Zen has done, is ultimately to negate State Shinto—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|332|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and to deny any necessary, intrinsic connection between Zen and the Japanese national polity, or between Zen and the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Does not the fact that Japanese Zen practitioners have failed to recognise and openly acknowledge this conclusion demonstrate that their Zen thinking has remained insufficiently thoroughgoing, and that they have not genuinely achieved the condition of being “independently liberated, dependent upon nothing” (dokudatsu mu’e 独脱無依; Record of Linji, Rinzairoku 臨済録)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Christian existentialist philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948), who advocated religious libertarian communism, was described by the philosopher Heinemann as a “mystical anarchist.” The French philosopher Simone Weil (1909–1943), who took an interest in Eastern thought, especially Zen, and criticised Christian theology, was an anarchist who participated in the Spanish Civil War.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In my view, the social philosophy of Zen may be described as Prajñā–Śūnyatā Anarchist Communism—an anarchist communism of wisdom (hannya 般若) and emptiness (kū 空). (See my book Hannyakyō 般若経, published by San’ichi Shobō.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why is it that Western religious anarchists have resisted state power—Berdyaev, for example, became a communist under imperial Russia and was imprisoned—whereas not only do we find almost no comparable examples in Zen or Kegon Buddhism, but examples of precisely the opposite tendency are overwhelmingly numerous? Let us consider two or three circumstances that may help explain this situation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The first is the obscuring of the difference in level between the world of experiential reality and the world of ordinary empirical experience, between the world of selfless intuitive action and the actual world of the empirical individual ego. This produces a “mixture or confusion of two worlds of reality.” The realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge no sekai 事々無礙の世界) belongs to the reality disclosed in the experience of prajñā. Yet this realm readily overlaps and merges with the ordinary world of empirical facts, so that the tension arising from the discontinuity between the two is never firmly established. We may recall that Nishida, the author of An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no kenkyū 善の研究), acknowledged in replying to Takahashi Satomi’s criticism that he had failed to recognise a qualitative distinction between pure experience and impure experience—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|333|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—a point that has important implications for both Zen studies and Buddhist studies. [Reference 14]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The circumstances described above are connected with the fact that Buddhist practitioners have traditionally placed the emphasis of their religious training upon the attainment of peace of mind. As Nishida wrote in his diary, “Do not run after the peripheral matters of scholarship and forget the foundation of peace of mind.” Consequently, the culmination of their practice tends toward an attitude of being at home wherever one finds oneself—expressed in the saying, “Wherever one lives becomes home.” To that extent, there is a psychological tendency to beautify and rationalise the circumstances of each particular moment. Moreover, the subject of prajñā intuition is characterised as something that reflects and receives, as suggested by expressions such as “ocean-seal samādhi” (kaiin zanmai 海印三昧), “precious-mirror samādhi” (hōkyō zanmai 宝鏡三昧), and the “place of absolute nothingness” (zettai mu no basho 絶対無の場所). This characteristic corresponds to the orientation toward peace of mind described above. Even before a sustained determination to transform the surrounding environment can emerge, the practitioner has already entered the contemplative enjoyment of things. The fact that the East, characterised by what has been called “Asiatic stagnation,” has excelled in the arts of cultivation, and that much of “Zen culture” has taken an artistic form, is connected with this tendency. It is interesting that archery and martial techniques, originally intended for combat against enemies, became in times of peace the disciplines of kyūdō 弓道 and budō 武道, directed toward confronting oneself, and were subsequently internalised, intellectualised, systematised, and transformed into forms of contemplation. Everything associated with the “Way” (dō 道) has a contemplative character. In other words, it finds a place of repose within the framework of established social conventions and institutions. Affluent Buddhist practitioners enjoying leisure in periods of social stability could readily immerse themselves in the contemplative world of Kegon. Anxious Buddhists living through periods of crisis likewise entered this world of contemplation in search of peace of mind. In such a world, empirical historical reality becomes veiled by the harmonious non-obstruction of all phenomena. It is beautified and, in proportion to this beautification, accepted and rationalised.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
All phenomena in the world are said to appear within ocean-seal samādhi, mutually interpenetrating in infinitely overlapping relationships. In my view, the Lotus Treasury World (renge zō sekai 蓮華蔵世界) described in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Kegongyō 華厳経) is both a realm of reality disclosed through the active intuition of prajñā and a visionary world constituted through creative imagination around that experience. Here, however, harmonious non-obstruction refers to the actual activities of practitioners living within the rigid framework of caste society, together with the mutually non-obstructing phenomena of their visionary world. It does not mean that the raw, living reality inhabited by the masses is itself a world of harmonious—&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E9&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Ocean-seal samādhi. Ocean-seal samādhi (kaiin zanmai 海印三昧) evokes a comprehensive religious vision in Kegon thought. Ichikawa cautions against treating the harmony experienced or imagined in such a state as already realised in historically unequal or conflictual societies.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|334|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—non-obstruction. Within ocean-seal samādhi, three layers of reality must surely appear: the mutually non-obstructing facts of the practitioner’s immediate activity, the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena within an intuitive vision, and the dark reality of conflict and contradiction. It would be a mistake to paint over this three-dimensional world with a single, flat colour of harmonious non-obstruction.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In contrast, we may recall the following words of Herbert Read (1893–1968): “Religion is closely connected with art (poetry). […] During the Spanish Civil War, observers were struck by the religious fervour of the anarchists. In that country of a latent renaissance, anarchism inspired not only heroes but saints—new kinds of people who devoted their lives, through sensuous imagination and practical action, to creating a new form of human society.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The following criticism may be applied to the misguided realism that results from confusing worlds belonging to different levels of experience:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It is clear that Fazang’s Kegon philosophy—its doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena and of the absoluteness of phenomena mutually non-obstructing—expresses a truth that can be realised only through the fundamental intuition of ocean-seal samādhi, understood through the doctrine of the arising of phenomena from their true nature (shōki 性起). “When this becomes merely an intellectual doctrine, however, it denies the mediation of practice and turns into a facile, absolutist worldview. […] “The doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena certainly does not mean simply accepting the ‘things’ of existing reality as they are and asserting their harmony. Genuine non-obstruction among phenomena unfolds upon the foundation of religious intuition. […] “The Kegon system is a religious worldview manifested through ocean-seal samādhi. If this is forgotten, and the ‘things’ of empirical reality are accepted merely as they appear to the discriminating consciousness of ordinary people, and their harmony is then proclaimed, the result is an entirely different philosophy. “Phenomena are absolute because each constitutes part of the Lotus Treasury World. To ignore this and claim that every phenomenon possesses absolute significance amounts to affirming existing reality just as it stands. One misstep, and this becomes an unconditional affirmation of existing structures of domination and social organisation. “A philosophy of absolute affirmation can thereby become a philosophy in the service of rulers who sanction existing reality as it is.” (Kamata Shigeo 鎌田茂雄)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|335|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This criticism may be said to identify correctly the errors and pathologies into which Kegon thought, and indeed Mahāyāna Buddhism more generally, have been liable to fall, and into which they have frequently fallen in practice—as, for example, in the cases of Sengzhao (384–414) and Dahui (1089–1163).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The criticism emphasises the distinction between the realm of religious experience and that of ordinary empirical experience, insisting that the latter must be purified “through the practice of the bodhisattva path and vows grounded in compassion.” In this respect, it overcomes the vulgarism characteristic of Takakusu’s interpretation and, together with Suzuki’s view cited within it, rests upon an orthodox doctrinal foundation. This position might be described as a shift from the contemplative tendency found in Fazang toward the experiential orientation of Chengguan (737–839), accompanied by an emphasis on religious instruction and propagation grounded in that experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon world of the non-obstruction of phenomena is the joint product of experience and vision. It belongs to a dimension altogether different from the sphere of action in which the structural contradictions of actual class society are grasped, analysed, and practically overcome. Indeed, it is a world that can exist only within that particular dimension. It possesses neither the foundation nor the logic necessary to generate objective practice capable of overcoming the fundamental structural contradictions of the world in which we live. In this respect, there is no essential difference between Fazang and Chengguan. Even if this philosophy does not affirm mere facts or empirical reality as they stand, but instead rejects them as false and illusory, such rejection occurs entirely within subjective consciousness. It does not occur within the sphere of objective, transformative practice. Consequently, in actual historical circumstances, it amounts to a “doctrine of double truth” that affirms the existing order. There is therefore nothing surprising about Buddhists who consciously distinguish the world of prajñā experience from ordinary empirical reality nevertheless acting, in practice, as defenders of the established social system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== V ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
When Kegon thought attempts to formulate a social ethics within the actual world without overcoming the traditional characteristics and limitations examined above—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|336|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—that is, when it constructs morality through the logic of mutual identity (sōsoku 相即) and the dependent-origination logic of mutual dependence and interrelationship (sōi sōkan 相依相関), expressed in propositions such as “The principal is principal in relation to the companion, and the companion is companion in relation to the principal,” or “Mind is mind in relation to matter, and matter is matter in relation to mind”—the result will be an ethics of concord, harmony, and paternalistic benevolence.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Without capital there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no labour. At the same time, without labour there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no capital. The joint activity of capital and labour is precisely what constitutes industry. […] If those who provide wages deserve respect, then those who provide labour deserve equal respect. Indeed, neither party is simply giving something to the other; rather, industry consists of capital and labour being brought together.” (Shibusawa Eiichi) &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[19]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of cooperation between capital and labour expressed by this industrial capitalist is presented by a Zen practitioner in the following manner:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If one understands that self and other are originally nondual, there should be no difficulty whatsoever. Labour is the capitalist’s capital, and capital is the labourer’s labour. How, then, could conflict possibly arise?” (Iida Tōin) &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[20]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of harmony can also become a morality of war. A Kegon scholar writes:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In times of peace, the understanding of dependent origination provides a foundation for harmonious relations, through the recognition of the profound karmic connections that bind people inseparably together. But in times of emergency, it also manifests itself as a spirit of fearless, unobstructed struggle, enabling Japanese citizens to fulfil their responsibilities in their respective positions.” (Kamekawa Kyōshin) &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[21]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When every single member of the nation, embraced within the august imperial authority, rises with this sense of the completeness of principal and companion, the hundred million people are no longer limited to merely a hundred million. Rather, the hundred million simultaneously manifest a power multiplied a hundred millionfold.” (Ibid.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to this Kegon scholar, it is only through the conception of the state arising from Japanese national consciousness that the relationship between the individual and the whole can truly be perceived in its proper form, through the practical apprehension of inexhaustible dependent origination expressed as “one is all, and all is one.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[22]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet this very logic has found concrete expression in postwar Japan in the workers’ handbook, or “Mirror,” of Ōmi Kenshi, and has continued to produce results as a morality of worker training developed through cooperation between industrial capital and Zen. The Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren 経団連)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|337|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—supported the establishment of a Zen training centre where a recent roundtable entitled “Zen and Business” discussed the adjustment of human relations through Zen, the rationalisation of business management, and measures concerning labour. Among the statements recorded in that discussion were the following:&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E10&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Corporate Zen and industrial relations. Ichikawa refers to Zen training supported by business interests and a roundtable on “Zen and Business,” criticising the use of self-cultivation and harmony to promote managerial efficiency while leaving labour–capital inequalities intact. His printed references 23 and 35 both identify issue 70 of the journal Zen 禅 (1961) but assign different months; this discrepancy has not yet been resolved.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Our most important policy, as our managing director has just explained, is first of all to bring about a complete change in the attitudes associated with student life. We want participants to examine themselves, their membership in the company, and the relationship between the individual within the company as a whole and the whole constituted through individuals. We want them to analyse themselves and then begin working with a renewed consciousness of themselves as members of the company. This is our most fundamental policy.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[23]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“We received some questionnaire responses saying that, although participants had expected the monks’ talks at the Zen temple to be thoroughly religious and solemn, they found them quite approachable—even including discussions of attitudes toward romantic love—and therefore very pleasant to listen to. […] If possible, we would appreciate talks that include a little of this sort of romantic interest, since they seem to be very well received.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What I wish to address here is Kamekawa’s interpretation of the “completeness of principal and companion” (shuhan gusoku 主伴具足), which is essentially the same as Takakusu’s interpretation. In this case, the relationship running from principal to companion is thoroughly one-directional and extremely concrete in its historical reality, since it provides a foundation for imperial absolutism under the Meiji Constitution. By contrast, the possibility of the companion becoming principal remains merely conceptual. In other words, this suggests that the logic of the completeness of principal and companion should not be applied to class society. In Kamekawa’s interpretation, principal and companion cannot genuinely be said to possess complete and perfect reciprocity. Even Fazang himself, who originally formulated this logic, probably did not entirely escape this danger. Kamata, in the essay discussed earlier, also takes up this problem and warns against confusing the reality of religious experience with empirical reality. Yet, as I have already pointed out, this criticism amounts to a “doctrine of double truth,” in which existing reality is denied at the level of consciousness but accepted in actual practice. An anarchist-communist society would surely provide the best expression of the complete illumination and mutual fulfilment of principal and companion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|338|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== VI ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a saying, “Kill the Buddha and kill the patriarchs” (Unmonroku 雲門録). Perhaps no tradition is as thoroughgoing as Zen in refusing to recognise externally imposed authority. The Tang-dynasty Zen master Linji Yixuan (Rinzai Gigen 臨済義玄, d. 867) emphasised the freedom of the “true person of no rank,” who “becomes master wherever one stands” and is “independently liberated, dependent on nothing.” It was in the spirit of such freedom that Danxia Tianran (Tanka Tennen 丹霞天然, 739–824) burned a Buddha image and Deshan Xuanjian (Tokusan Senkan 徳山宣鑑, 782–865) burned Buddhist scriptures. Zhaozhou Congshen (Jōshū Jūshin 趙州従諗, 778–897) declared, “I do not delight in hearing even the single word ‘Buddha.’” A king once visited Zhaozhou accompanied by his retainers, but Zhaozhou did not descend from his seat to welcome him. The following day, when the king sent an official to convey his thanks for the previous day’s reception, Zhaozhou descended from his seat and received the visitor’s greeting. When his disciples later asked why he had acted differently, Zhaozhou replied: “You would not understand. When a person of the highest rank comes, I receive him upon my meditation seat. When a person of middling rank comes, I descend from my seat to receive him. When a person of the lowest rank comes, I go outside the monastery gate to receive him. This is the custom of my house.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[24]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As suggested by the passage, “In the Western realm there is a land called Peace and Nourishment. […] There is no system of kingship there, nor any hierarchy of official ranks,” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[25]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; the future society envisioned by Buddhists may be understood as a world of anarchist communism. Kropotkin (1842–1921)&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E11&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Common ownership and Kropotkin. Kropotkin’s account of wealth as the accumulated product of countless people’s labour supports Ichikawa’s criticism of exclusive appropriation. Ichikawa connects this to Buddhist language about goods belonging to the wider community, but also acknowledges traditions recognising royal ownership. Buddhist ownership terminology in the Japanese text requires final source-level verification.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; argued that our cultural achievements and the material necessities of life are the fruits of the labour of countless people extending back into the distant past. Consequently, none of us has grounds for calling them “my own.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[26]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Buddhists likewise understood these things as products of the endlessly interwoven activities of sentient beings: they are originally “property of the four quarters” (shihōmotsu 四方物), belonging to all sentient beings, and do not admit the possessive designation “mine” (mama-kāra). &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[27]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; (Nevertheless, texts such as the Brahmā’s Net Bodhisattva Precepts Sūtra already contain the notion of “property of the king.”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problems Buddhism must confront today in order to develop a social ethics or an ethics for the world are approximately as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|339|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
First, there is the problem of bringing together the recovery of Buddhism’s supranational character and the recovery of nationalism. In the expression “protection of the nation” (chingo kokka 鎮護国家), “nation” originally referred to the royal household, the territory, and the people, but its principal concern was the emperor. (In China, too, the term “state” (kokka 国家) could signify the Son of Heaven or the imperial court.) Consider, for example, the “Ten Secret Rites for the Protection of the Nation” (Chingo kokka no jikka hihō 鎮護国家の十箇秘法) in Japanese Tendai Buddhism. The majority concern the emperor personally, including rites for imperial enthronement, prayers concerning the emperor’s life, and precepts conferred for safe childbirth within the imperial household. In any event, because Buddhism was associated with state power from the earliest period of its development, it tended to lack a critical analysis and examination of the essential nature of political power. There was, of course, an intention to educate sovereigns so that they might govern benevolently, and this intention sometimes achieved positive results. Nevertheless, considerable suspicion of kings also existed. We find statements such as, “A monk should approach a king as though approaching a servant-master relationship” (Saddharma-smṛtyupasthāna Sūtra, Shōbōnenkyō 正法念経), and “Kings constantly increase taxation and arbitrarily punish people who have committed no offence. […] Though they see people suffering poverty and distress, they never give rise to compassion. They indulge in women without fearing the evil destinies” (Tang translation of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, Kegongyō 華厳経).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As in early Buddhism, Buddhist scriptures often regarded kings as people who inflicted harm upon the population. Kings were therefore placed alongside thieves and robbers, and among the misfortunes suffered by ordinary people—calamities of flood and fire, robbery, and wicked persons—there was also the “calamity of the king.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[30]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must discover a logic capable of bringing together a recognition of the evils of the state with the recovery of a legitimate nationalism, understood, for example, in terms of national independence and cooperation among peoples. In connection with this problem, we must also investigate how to reconcile the contradiction between spiritual freedom, expressed in the Record of Linji as “remaining unstained by birth and death, free to come and go” (shōji ni somazu kyojū jiyū 生死に染まず去住自由), and political and social freedom. “Without religion, the state could not exist,” declared Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[31]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet religion can exist without the state—although whether Zen should properly be called a “religion” is itself open to question. We have already seen how modern Japanese Zen was distorted by the state power of the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|340|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In considering the relationship between Buddhism and the state, the next question is that of class. Marx wrote: “The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas in every age. The class that constitutes the dominant material power in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual power. The class that controls the means of material production also controls the means of intellectual production. Consequently, the ideas of those who lack access to the means of intellectual production are, in general, subordinated to that class.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[32]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; It hardly needs explaining that the ideology of modern Japanese Zen was no exception to this general principle. Even in the process of conversion from a Japanese Zen bound by nationality under imperial Japan to a cosmopolitan Zen without national affiliation in a “cultural Japan,” this principle may have been operating to some degree. Dr. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi 久松真一, a Zen thinker internationally renowned alongside Suzuki Daisetsu, has discussed the crisis confronting the present age and the problem of world ethics. In the murderous development of atomic physics, he sees a crisis of humanism itself. He points to the unprecedented disparity between the extraordinary advances of science and the failure of morality to keep pace, insisting upon the need to strengthen our ethical capacities in order to correct this imbalance. Moreover, he maintains that such ethical capacities must not be based upon the egoism of particular nations, blocs of nations, classes, or ideologies. He therefore urges the immediate establishment of a new world ethics. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[33]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; This is certainly a valuable suggestion. Yet, when we reconsider the matter, is the disparity between science and ethics really a crisis of humanism or an impasse in human civilisation? The overwhelming majority of the world’s peoples, together with the majority of conscientious scientists, have repeatedly protested and resisted the murderous application of atomic power. They are not in the least guilty of ideological bias. Indeed, it is precisely this vast popular struggle for peace that has prevented a revolutionary rupture between science and morality. Those who are biased, those who expose the crisis of humanism, are none other than the “merchants of death” of monopoly capital.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How, then, does the F.A.S. Zen movement centred on Dr. Hisamatsu deal with the standpoint of class in its vow to “create superhistorical history”? &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[34]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Are the wisdom and power involved in this historical creation like distilled water—&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E12&amp;quot;&amp;gt;F.A.S. Zen. Associated with Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, F.A.S. refers to Formless Self, All Humankind, and Suprahistorical History. It seeks to unite awakening with universal ethical action. Ichikawa welcomes its aspirations but questions whether a standpoint claiming to transcend class and national divisions adequately addresses the material interests and historical antagonisms shaping social life.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|341|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—colourless and transparent? How would its social ethics differ from the social ethics of Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.), which grounds itself in an Absolute?&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E13&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Moral Re-Armament. Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.) was an international moral and spiritual renewal movement. Ichikawa invokes it as a comparison when questioning whether a purportedly class-neutral universal ethics can engage specific structures of economic power. This is a comparative reference, distinct from his criticism of F.A.S. Zen.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; “I can promise to be fair, but I cannot promise to be impartial,” wrote Goethe. (Ichikawa’s note: In this connection, I would draw attention to the system being developed by the materialist Umemoto Katsumi, who, in contrast to Nishida philosophy’s “active intuition” (kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観), is working out a logic of “practical intuition” (jissenteki chokkan 実践的直観) grounded in class consciousness.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problem of class is connected with the problem of human self-alienation, particularly alienation in labour. Unless Buddhism confronts this problem directly, it will be unable to develop a contemporary social ethics. This necessarily requires Buddhists to incorporate the standpoint of wage labourers into their own thinking. In other words, they must consciously adopt the standpoint of workers—human beings treated as commodities.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Alienated labour alienates (1) nature from humanity, and (2) human beings from themselves, from their own active functions and life-activity. In doing so, it alienates humanity from its species-being. […] The immediate consequence of the alienation of human beings from the products of their labour, their life-activity, and their species-being is the alienation of human beings from one another—die Entfremdung des Menschen von dem Menschen.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[34]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Under capitalism, even human beings become commodities. The education of young men and women amounts to investing capital in their bodies, while young people must devote themselves to the problem of how to sell themselves in the “personality market.” This is an education and morality grounded in the commodity economy, expressed through the language of adjustment and human relations. Expressions such as “human resources,” “human dock” [medical checkups], and the “Zen boom” are profoundly revealing. Someone remarked: “At the entrance there was a sign saying, ‘Look beneath your feet.’ That is the first priority. I believe this is how sound enterprises will emerge. From the standpoint of the business community, this is a cheap investment. Something like this will come back with a ten-thousandfold return.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[35]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|342|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Prostitution is only a particular expression of the general prostitution of the worker—allgemeine Prostitution des Arbeiters. And since prostitution constitutes a relationship that includes not only the prostitute but also the other party, whose baseness is even greater, capitalists too belong to this category.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[36]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I distinguish this kind of human self-alienation&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E14&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Horizontal and vertical alienation. Ichikawa distinguishes social and economic “horizontal alienation” from existential or religious “vertical estrangement.” Drawing on Marx’s account of alienated labour, he insists that the Buddhist encounter with suffering must also address historically specific exploitation. The two dimensions are related but not reducible to one another.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;, which I call horizontal alienation, from existential and religious self-alienation, or vertical estrangement. Horizontal alienation will never be overcome by the class that enjoys it as something comfortable, but only by the class that has no choice but to experience it as suffering. (This follows the same logic and psychology as the Buddhist overcoming of vertical estrangement, which begins with the contemplation of suffering.) To adopt the standpoint of wage labourers treated as commodities, and to resolve to overcome human self-alienation in labour—which is simultaneously self-alienation in capital—is precisely to adopt a standpoint of class consciousness. A merely abstract affirmation of humanity, incapable of understanding class consciousness as anything other than class egoism, misses the fundamental problem. The claim that human self-alienation can genuinely be overcome only from the standpoint of a universal human ethics—without uniting the opposing standpoints of class and humanity—rests upon the illusion that those who comfortably enjoy alienation might suddenly awaken one morning and collectively recognise it as suffering. The genuinely practical path toward overcoming alienation must instead begin by abandoning this facile sentimentalism, adopting the standpoint of those who experience alienation as suffering, and apprehending historical reality as it actually exists. This means grasping historical reality from a standpoint that unites objectivity and partisanship.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“What is at issue here is a confession, and nothing more. For humanity to have its sins forgiven, it need only proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[37]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|343|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E15&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Marx’s commodity analysis and practical intuition. Ichikawa compares Marx’s method in Capital with Nishida’s “active intuition” (kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観) and suggests a historically grounded “practical intuition” (jissenteki chokkan 実践的直観). His comparison is methodological, not an equation of Nishida’s philosophy with Marx’s critique of political economy. He insists that changing social relations cannot be replaced by inwardly “emptying” an object.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;”—was this not what Marx accomplished through his analysis of the commodity in Capital? And might this not be the concrete content, within the field of economics, of Dōgen’s expression “to be verified by all things”? Beginning with labour-power as a commodity, one arrives, by abstracting from its capitalist determinations, at the commodity itself (the downward movement). Through scientific investigation of this commodity, one then clarifies how its inherent self-contradiction constitutes the elementary form of the class contradictions of capitalist society (the upward movement). Might not the disclosure of this circular process—understood, moreover, as an “open system” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[38]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;—through practical intuition constitute the social-scientific content of Nishida philosophy’s method of “becoming a thing in order to see, and becoming a thing in order to think”?’&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Today, we human beings—and Buddhist practitioners themselves—live within and are sustained by a commodity-economic society, a “world of prostitution.” This entire condition is what is meant by the “falsity of the secular world” (seken koke 世間虚仮), a world of falsehood and empty words.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Karl Löwith (1897–1973) gives an illuminating account of how even Kierkegaard, Marx’s philosophical antipode, demonstrated through the circumstances of his own life the validity of Marx’s insight into the relationship between capital and labour. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[39]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; On the other hand, when we attempt to realise objectively the mutual non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge 事々無礙) within an intersubjective society, we will surely have much to learn from Kropotkin’s persuasive criticisms concerning the limits of the philosophy of dependent origination. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[40]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What makes us conscious of the falsity of the secular world in this aspect, and inspires us to resolve to overcome it, is historical truth—the Dharma (dharma ダルマ)—proper to this sphere. For the moment, I leave aside the objectifying-logical and metaphysical dimensions of alienation. Nevertheless, we must not neglect a rigorous criticism of attempts to “empty” the objectivity of an object rather than transforming the object itself. Here, it seems to me, lies the starting point for a dialectical relationship between social ethics and social science among Buddhists.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Explanatory Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; responsive=&amp;quot;0&amp;quot; /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
Translated from Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, anakizumu” 禅・華厳・アナキズム (1961), reprinted in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 3 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343; original source references occupy pp. 344–345. The original reference numbers are retained as superscript numerals, distinct from the translator’s explanatory notes. Suzuki Daisetsu’s two diagrams are reproduced from the scanned collected edition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is a working translation. Several quotations and Japanese readings require final collation; the original reference list has not yet been converted into linked footnotes. References 23 and 35 give inconsistent months for the same issue of Zen (1961).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotation: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1961). “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism” (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH61ZKA-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA-T&amp;diff=1242</id>
		<title>IH61ZKA-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA-T&amp;diff=1242"/>
		<updated>2026-10-13T10:19:27Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: Created page with &amp;quot;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism”}} __NOTOC__  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; (&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&amp;#039;&amp;#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム) is a 1961 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 3 of &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&amp;#039;&amp;#039; 市川白弦著作集 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343, with references on pp. 344–345.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Japanese original:&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; IH61ZKA|禅・華厳...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism”}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム) is a 1961 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 3 of &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343, with references on pp. 344–345.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Japanese original:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH61ZKA|禅・華厳・アナキズム]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contents ==&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section1|I]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section2|II]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section3|III]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section4|IV]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section5|V]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section6|VI]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|319|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is known as the “Nishida philosophy” of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), the foremost representative of modern Japanese philosophy, was established in his 1926 essay “Place.” Although the idea of “place” (basho 場所) emerged through the concept of topos (place) found in Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotle’s De Anima, it was more fundamentally connected with the Mahāyāna Buddhist concepts of emptiness (kū 空; Sanskrit śūnyatā) and the dharma-realm (hokkai 法界; Sanskrit dharmadhātu), especially the realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge hokkai 事々無礙法界), a world of experience in which individual things and events mutually interpenetrate and mutually determine one another. In other words, Nishida’s thought was fundamentally connected with the philosophy of prajñā and Kegon philosophy. His central idea—that the mutual determination of individual things within the place of “absolute nothingness” is simultaneously the self-determination of the universal—expressed, through the mediation of the modern Western logic of the individual ego, the fundamental unity of the logical structures of prajñā emptiness and Kegon’s non-obstruction of phenomena. In essence, this philosophy should have established a metaphysical foundation for thoroughgoing freedom and equality through the Eastern logic of nothingness. It contained the possibility of establishing a philosophy of freedom that rejected all external authority (Autorität) and power (Macht), even casting off the clothing of so-called “religion.”&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Nishida’s philosophy of place. Nishida Kitarō’s 1926 essay “Place” (Basho 場所) develops the notion of a locus in which individual things are constituted through relationships and self-determination. Ichikawa argues that this philosophy’s rejection of a fixed, substantial universal ought to support freely associated individuals, rather than an emperor-centred political order.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;The four dharma-realms. In Huayan/Kegon thought these are the realm of phenomena (事法界), the realm of principle (理法界), the non-obstruction of principle and phenomena (理事無礙法界), and the non-obstruction of phenomena with one another (事事無礙法界). Ichikawa centres his political reading on the final realm, without assuming that interdependence automatically entails political equality.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|320|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet as imperial Japan’s wartime system expanded, and as pressure from the political Right and the military against the “liberal” tendencies of Nishida philosophy and the Kyoto School intensified, this philosophy of the place of absolute nothingness—or the philosophy of the “self-determination of facts”—gradually developed a logic that provided an ideological foundation for the Imperial Way and the “holy war.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ōya Sōichi went so far as to say that Nishida had “sold his soul to secure the safety of his body.” Among Nishida’s writings from this period were “The Principle of the New World Order” (1943) and “On the National Polity” (1944). The latter subsequently appeared as the fourth supplementary essay in his Philosophical Essays, was published in the journal Tetsugaku kenkyū 哲学研究, and was included in the Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō. The former, however, was not included in the collected works.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, the logic of place, or the philosophy of the non-obstruction of phenomena, should not have provided a foundation for the Imperial Way. On the contrary, it should have provided a foundation for anarchism. In my essay “The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō” (published in Shisō 思想, January 1959, and reprinted in the present volume), I wrote the following in its conclusion:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The place of absolute nothingness, the dialectical universal, forms the principle of world-formation through its self-conscious determination. This principle and the Imperial Way constitute an absolute contradiction that cannot be reconciled. Within the sphere of objectifying logic, the two assert themselves against and mutually exclude one another by their very nature. If the Imperial Way were genuinely to become subjective beyond the domain of objectifying logic, then, in the very process of becoming subjective, it would have no alternative but to dissolve itself by negating those accidental, particular, and irrational elements that constitute its essential nature. In the process of fully realising itself as subject, the Imperial Way must relinquish the ego. It loses itself by returning to the place of absolute nothingness, the true historical world. Conversely, the logic of the place of absolute nothingness—the logic of the predicate—is something that fundamentally negates the Imperial Way conceived as subject. Nishida’s “theology of the logic of place” should not have provided a foundation for Japan’s founding mythology and the politico-religious philosophy of the eternal imperial order. Rather, it should have furnished a logical system that brought these to an end. Likewise—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|321|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and, contrary to what happened in Nishida’s own case, it should have been a philosophical system that regarded even national morality as fundamentally illusory (koke 虚仮). As a philosophy of place, in which absolutely free individuals are mediated by a universal that mediates without any mediating entity, this system should have provided the foundation for a democratic association of free individuals in the deepest sense. It should have demanded that the Imperial Way shed its former character, anticipated the disappearance of the state, and provided the foundation and promise of a community without coercive power. The logic of the predicate began with Nishida the philosopher, only to founder in Nishida the imperial subject.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to Nishida, the actual world must be a world of individuals—I, you, and others. An individual might initially be understood as a determination of the universal, such as existence or living beings. By adding specific differences to what is universal, proceeding through successive classifications, and finally passing beyond them, one might conceive of the individual as a limiting point. Yet an individual conceived in this manner is not a genuine individual. Such an individual can never escape being merely a part of the universal. The individual must determine itself. Only something that determines itself—that is, something that becomes conscious of itself, forms itself, and chooses for itself—can truly be called an independent individual. Yet an individual can determine itself only in relation to other individuals. I exist as myself in relation to you, just as you exist as yourself in relation to me. “An individual must be conceived as standing in relation to another individual. It is only through standing in relation to another individual that an individual can be conceived as such. It is impossible to conceive of a single individual existing alone. For mutually independent things to stand in relation to one another is precisely what it means for things to act upon one another. […] For mutually independent things to enter into relations, some form of mediation must be conceived between them.” (Emphasis added by Ichikawa.) If this mediator were some universal that unified the individuals—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|322|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—then that universal would itself amount to another individual, and the independence of the original individuals would necessarily be lost. (It would be rather like two people who could meet only in the presence of a guardian.) Behind individual beings there is no overarching universal that encompasses them. What mediates independent individuals cannot be some positive, substantial universal. Rather, it must be a dialectical universal understood as the determination of the place of nothingness. Within the place of absolute nothingness, individuals engage with and cooperate with one another while remaining genuinely independent. I remain entirely myself, and you remain entirely yourself; yet at the same time I am you, and you are me. Each is an autonomous, self-governing existence possessing an irreplaceable individuality, yet each may freely become subject or object in relation to the other, working and cooperating together. This is how the world of historical reality must truly be constituted. Borrowing a term from Kegon philosophy, Nishida calls this world of existential encounter and interconnection the “realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena” (jiji muge no sekai 事々無礙の世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The logic of the place of absolute nothingness, which makes possible free and autonomous interaction and cooperation among independent, individual existences—this was, so to speak, the fundamental logic of Nishida’s social philosophy or philosophy of the world.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consequently, what should follow from this logic is a society of genuinely autonomous and free individuals, liberated from attachment to the ego and its objects. Such a society would not merely be free of domination through force; it would be a freely associated human community in which there was no place even for “authority” understood as power disguised in ethical clothing.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet this open conception of the world, grounded in the logic of place and the Zen–Kegon understanding of emptiness and the non-obstruction of phenomena, was constrained and distorted by Nishida’s samurai sensibilities, his position within the academic establishment, and the circumstances of imperialist Japan. Its possibilities were deformed until it descended into the Theory of the National Polity and The Principle of the New World Order. And this was the same course that Japanese Buddhism generally followed at the time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|323|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎, one of the leading Buddhist scholars of modern Japan—supervising editor of the Taishō Revised Tripiṭaka, professor emeritus at Tokyo Imperial University, and recipient of the fourth Order of Culture (Nishida received the second)—argued in “The Principle of Totality in Buddhism” that Mahāyāna Buddhist logic and ethics were, from the beginning, totalitarian. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[6]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; According to Takakusu, the logical structure of this totalitarianism is expressed in Kegon thought through the doctrine of the Four Dharma-Realms (shihokkai 四法界), culminating in the fourth, the Realm of the Non-Obstruction of Phenomena (jiji muge hokkai 事々無礙法界). He maintained that, with the World War as its turning point, the world had begun moving toward totalitarianism: “Today even Westerners are beginning to practise totalitarianism, whereas the Japanese have actually practised it since ancient times. Through Japan’s Yamato totalitarianism, we can provide a model for the world. Through Buddhism’s principle of totality, we can guide the world. […] Japan as it actually exists must be governed through the Imperial Way. It is truly gratifying that the Kegon principle of totality should be put into practice. […] However excellent Buddhism may be, there must be no attempt to regard it as a form of government through the Buddhist Way existing alongside Japan’s government through the Imperial Way.” Takakusu concluded: “We now find ourselves in the midst of the National Spiritual Mobilization campaign, at a time when the Japanese spirit must be manifested in its totality. […] We should fully appreciate the true meaning of Kegon and undertake service to the nation without the slightest disorder and without a trace of selfishness. All people should forget themselves, relinquish themselves, and devote themselves to national affairs. We should realise the truth that the sage has no self, yet there is nothing that is not the self.” The Kegon scholar Kamekawa Kyōshin 亀川教信, in his essay “The Structure of Dependent Origination” (Engi no kōzō 縁起の構造), &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[7]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; and Yamagami Kaizen 山上戒全, in his essay “Kegon” 華厳, &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[8]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; developed interpretations of Kegon thought along similar lines. The Zen scholar Nakane Kandō 中根環堂, in “Totalitarianism and Zen” (Zentaishugi to Zen 全体主義と禅), &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[9]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; argued that Japan’s national polity was not the flat, horizontal totalitarianism of the West. Rather, its principle of one emperor and all his subjects constituted a three-dimensional, organic unity, in which affection resembled the relationship between father and child, while duty preserved the proper distinctions between ruler and subject. Underlying this hierarchical unity, he maintained, was the Kegon philosophy of “one is many, and many are one” (ichi soku ta, ta soku ichi 一即多・多即一). The path to fully realising this unity was seated meditation. Through grasping the essence of zazen—“thinking from the standpoint of nonthinking”—one could accomplish the sacred imperial undertaking of bringing the world under one roof (hakkō ichiu 八紘一宇). The lectures on “The Problem of Japanese Culture” given by Nishida at Kyoto Imperial University’s Monday lecture series in 1938—&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Takakusu and wartime Buddhist thought. Takakusu Junjirō (1866–1945) was a prominent Buddhist scholar associated with the Taishō canon. Ichikawa cites his “Principle of Totality in Buddhism” (「仏教の全体性原理」; Ichikawa’s source reference 6) as evidence of the use of Kegon categories to defend wartime totalitarianism. The passage documents Takakusu’s interpretation, not an uncontested meaning of Kegon doctrine.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|324|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and Kōyama Iwao’s subsequent lectures on “Cultural Typology” likewise sought to contribute to the construction of a “New Order in East Asia” by invoking the Kegon logic of phenomena.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet all these attempts were nothing other than distortions of Kegon philosophy and Zen thought. Let us return once more to Takakusu for an example.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In his Commentary on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Kegongyō tangenki 華厳経探玄記), Fazang (Hōzō 法蔵, 643–712), the third patriarch of the Chinese Huayan school, classifies the infinite mutual identity and interpenetration of phenomena within the world of experience into ten categories, known as the “Ten Profound Forms of Dependent Origination” (jūgen engi 十玄縁起). The tenth is called the “Gate of the Complete Illumination and Possession of Virtues by Principal and Companion” (shuhan enmyō gutokumon 主伴円明具徳門). The countless phenomena of the experiential world alternately become principal and companion, forming an endlessly interconnected symbolic world. If one phenomenon is taken as principal, all the others become its companions and are subordinated to it. But if another is selected as principal, all the remaining phenomena—including the one formerly taken as principal—become its companions and are encompassed by it. This is the principle of the complete illumination and possession of virtues by principal and companion. Takakusu paraphrases the doctrine in concrete terms: “Both principal and companion should work together harmoniously and openly, those above and below acting with one heart. Totalitarianism means that parent and child do not oppose one another but join forces and work together. If this cannot be accomplished, it is not totalitarianism. […] When similar things come together, one becomes their centre and principal. We may therefore apply this to the actual relationship of one emperor and all his subjects.” He also declared: “Our country has been totalitarian since the very beginning of its founding. […] Through the Meiji Restoration, it returned to its original totalitarianism.” And further: “We Japanese, who already possess the principle of totality in our actual national existence, are bringing the vision of Kegon’s one true dharma-realm into reality. This is something truly precious.” Takakusu thus maintains that the truths of the non-obstruction of phenomena, the completeness of principal and companion, and the identity of one with all and all with one are already realised within the system of one emperor and all his subjects—a system that regards democracy as contrary to the national polity and rests upon an authoritarian, status-based morality. This is a typical example of philosophy placed at the service of the authorities.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Principal and companion. Fazang’s “principal and companion” (shuhan 主伴) allows different phenomena to become the focus of a relationship, with the others functioning as companions. Ichikawa argues that making one hereditary sovereign permanently principal defeats the reciprocity that the doctrine is meant to express.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|325|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The condition of Japanese Buddhism described above had already taken root in the period of the Taika reforms. Leaving aside for the moment the earlier circumstances of state Buddhism in China, the new government, established through the reforms of 646, eventually undertook the construction of the Great Buddha Hall at Tōdaiji. It enshrined Vairocana Buddha there and established provincial monasteries and nunneries throughout the country, where scriptures for the protection of the state were to be recited. In this way, temples, monks, and nuns came under the control of state authority.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Immediately after Japan’s defeat, Suzuki Daisetsu, in “The Construction of a Spiritual Japan” (September 1946), argued that a new Japan must be constructed upon the principle of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm (hokkai engi 法界縁起) found in Kegon philosophy.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To place the emperor above the people is a symbol of the will to power. […] Rather, the emperor should possess a quality of immanence, becoming interconnected with the people in endlessly overlapping relationships. […] Just as the entire world should constitute a dharma-realm mandala of nations, so within Japan itself, the emperor and the people must become a single whole in which phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. Only then will a spiritual Japan become possible.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If we express this schematically, Japan up to the present has resembled Figure 1. Although there appears to be a connection between those above and those below, it can be severed at any point along the way. Before the wishes of those above reach those below, they must pass through military cliques, bureaucrats, and financial interests. Those below have no clear idea where these directives originate. Moreover, the people themselves have no direct connections with one another. […] They do not know how to think for themselves—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Figure 1. Suzuki Daisetsu’s original diagram (printed p. 325).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure1_Source.png|thumb|Figure 1. Suzuki Daisetsu’s representation of Japan’s hierarchical order (reproduced in Ichikawa, p. 325).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|326|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—[…] All that was demanded of them was reverent obedience to imperial commands. […] The system of one emperor and all his subjects symbolises the will to power on the one hand and, on the other, extinguishes the autonomy of individual citizens.” (pp. 158–159)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki goes on to describe the dharma-realm mandala that ought to be constructed by the emperor and the people. Although the passage is lengthy, I shall quote it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the emperor descends from the Plain of High Heaven and joins ordinary human beings upon this earth, the people, for their part, must abandon their servile sense of inferiority. […] They must establish their own autonomy and recognise fully that nothing can replace the value of individual personality.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“They must understand that respecting oneself is also the basis for respecting others. Each individual is complete in themselves, and at the same time all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing. […] Because each is complete, all are non-obstructing; because all are non-obstructing, each is complete.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The political form of Japan as a dharma-realm mandala may be represented schematically in Figure 2. A, B, C, and so forth represent the people, the countless inhabitants of the nation. Yet each is an individual, a monad capable of autonomous action, thought, and sensation.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Suzuki’s diagrams. Figures 1 and 2, reproduced from Suzuki Daisetsu’s postwar account, respectively depict an elevated apex with disconnected subjects and a circle of mutually related individuals. In Figure 2, S still represents the emperor. Ichikawa’s question is why even the revised, immanent arrangement requires a fixed hereditary centre.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Each is complete in themselves. Each is an independent and free personality. Precisely for this reason, each enters into inexhaustibly interconnected relationships with others. These monads have thrown their windows wide open, sharing their own light with others while receiving the light of others in return.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Monad with open windows. Suzuki reverses Leibniz’s well-known image of monads as having “no windows.” His metaphor of open windows expresses both distinct individuality and reciprocal exchange, but it does not itself settle the problem of the emperor’s status in the political whole.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The chords and straight lines within the circle represent communication, reciprocal interaction, and mutual interpenetration among the monads.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Figure 2. Suzuki Daisetsu’s original diagram (printed p. 326).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure2_Source.png|thumb|Figure 2. Suzuki Daisetsu’s interconnected dharma-realm mandala (reproduced in Ichikawa, p. 326).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|327|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The S at the centre is an inward reflection of that which comprehensively encompasses the surrounding A, B, C, and so forth from without. A, B, C, D, and the others are each independent, yet each possesses totality. Accordingly, A, B, C, and D are joined by curved lines to form a great circle. This great circle, just as it is, represents each individual monad, each individual ‘blade of grass’ among the people. To express this meaning, it is concentrated and reflected in the small circle at the centre.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The great circle encompasses the people as a whole, but merely saying that it encompasses them does not provide anything concrete that can be pointed to. For this reason I have placed S at the centre. S is none other than the emperor, the centre of the national polity. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It might seem possible to remove S from the great circle surrounding it and place it above. But doing so would introduce a considerable danger that the will to power and a dualistic conception would reappear. The feudal mentality would inevitably be reproduced. Moreover, placing S within the circle should serve to strengthen the unity of the circle itself. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“As Japanese and as East Asians, we must establish a new national polity through our own autonomy, freedom, and constructive vision. Needless to say, its establishment must be spiritual through and through; it must be built upon spiritual awakening. Only then can it attain universality. Only then can something emerge from among us that will contribute to the advancement of world spiritual culture and to the various institutions of practical life.” (pp. 160–163)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This work by Suzuki may be regarded as the foremost postwar document in which a Buddhist thinker sought, with enthusiasm and sincerity, to envision a new political order for Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As is already clear, there is a fundamental distance and difference between Takakusu’s wartime interpretation and Suzuki’s postwar interpretation of the Kegon doctrine of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm, understood in relation to the realities of Japan. (We should pay particular attention to Suzuki’s insistence that the new order must be built upon spiritual awakening through and through.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s case, we may wonder whether, had he lived into the postwar period, he would have recognised the need to revise his earlier interpretation. In Suzuki’s case, we might ask whether truth acquires its illumination—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|328|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and power precisely when it is spoken at a time when speaking it is both necessary and difficult. Nevertheless, judging from what we have before us, we cannot avoid concluding that Suzuki’s interpretation is the one that truly brings the meaning of Kegon thought to life in contemporary Japan.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s and Suzuki’s interpretations, the position of the emperor differs in the way represented by the two diagrams discussed above. At the same time, this difference in position may also reflect a difference in the position of Vairocana Buddha, the prototype of the emperor’s position.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Takakusu’s account, we find the following statement:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In Kegon terms, the great Vairocana Buddha at the centre is active. All the attendant beings of the outer Vajra circle are active as well. The great mandala of the total mobilisation of principal and companion is manifested. This is the phenomenal manifestation of the dependent origination of the Kegon dharma-realm—the manifestation of the true dharma-realm.” (pp. 251–252)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki, on the other hand, argues:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the original form of Japan’s national polity is understood in this way, the sequence of ideas suggested by expressions such as ‘the benevolence of the sovereign’ and ‘the light of the imperial reign’ acquires a different meaning from that traditionally attached to them. ‘Benevolence’ will no longer be associated with power, but will instead become something characterised by reciprocity. Nor will ‘light’ be something that shines only from above. Rather, it will signify the reciprocal illumination of the original light possessed by each individual.” (p. 164)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet neither account clarifies the most fundamental issue: the internal and logical relationship between Vairocana Buddha and the emperor (in Suzuki’s case, the emperor understood as a human being).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Since Takakusu asserts government through the Imperial Way while refusing to recognise government through the Buddhist Way, he must explain what logic he adopts in relation to the doctrine of original ground and manifest traces (honji suijaku 本地垂迹).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki speaks of the “benevolence of the sovereign,” meaning the emperor’s benevolence. But what, concretely, does that benevolence signify? Similarly, when he says that “light” does not come only from above, what exactly is the “light that comes from above”? Is there still an “above” within Suzuki’s dharma-realm mandala? If so, what does that position represent? Is it a position above others occupied by the emperor as a human being? These questions remain unanswered.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki maintains that his dharma-realm possesses universality. But can a logic and an ethics that permanently place a single human being belonging to one particular hereditary lineage at the centre of the world genuinely claim universality?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Blood,” as something irrational and contingent,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|329|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—can it be assigned a particular cosmic and ethical significance from the standpoint of the Buddhist Dharma, or indeed from the standpoint of universal ethics?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki writes: “The unbroken imperial line will become something for which we should stake our lives when it is understood in the following way: the perpetuity of the imperial lineage symbolises the perpetuity of the ideals cherished by the Japanese people.” (p. 165)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The “ideals” mentioned here presumably refer to what Suzuki calls the “construction of a spiritual Japan.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Leaving aside for the moment the question of who actually risked their lives to reject imperialist Japan and construct a spiritual Japan, why should the perpetuity of these ideals require a particular human being belonging to a particular hereditary lineage? What would happen if that individual, exercising their fundamental human rights, refused to serve as such a symbol? And what should peoples without such a symbol do?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Even if the emperor occupied the position proposed by Suzuki, so long as the unbroken hereditary imperial line is recognised—that is, so long as some form of the emperor system is recognised—and so long as universality is claimed for this system, does its logic not contain the possibility of developing into a new version of the doctrine of “eight corners of the world under one roof” (hakkō ichiu 八紘一宇)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If the logic of Kegon’s dependent origination of the dharma-realm were pursued consistently, carrying Suzuki’s interpretation to its ultimate conclusion beyond Takakusu’s, would not even a “democratic” emperor system headed by a human emperor lose its logical foundation? And would not the very structure of meaning represented in Suzuki’s second diagram consequently undergo a fundamental transformation?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, despite these questions, Suzuki’s interpretation emphasises “the value of the individual as a morally free person, as a spiritual existence, and as an independently autonomous being who cannot be reduced to an antlike mass under the vague designation of ‘totalitarianism’” (p. 142).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suzuki also rejects the principle of domination through force:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“There should be no power standing outside the dharma-realm. To suppose that an organisation cannot be sustained without such power is to fail to recognise the irrationality of seeking it outside itself. The dharma-realm is already a complete organisation in itself. The power that organises it is originally inherent within the organisation itself. When this power is sought outside, what exists within becomes distorted and is diverted in an unintended direction. […]”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|330|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“—The construction of a spiritual Japanese state must not take power as its fundamental principle. It must be a faithful reflection in our actual lives of the realm in which all phenomena are mutually non-obstructing.” (pp. 153–154)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Let us pay particular attention to Suzuki’s observation that the dharma-realm is already a complete organisation and that the power necessary to organise it is inherent within the organisation itself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This recalls the anarchist idea of free association. Viewed politically, it may be understood as suggesting anarchism as the form of a new human society embodying the Kegon world of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon dharma-realm, grounded in the rejection of both the principle of coercive power and the principle of private ownership, may be described as a world of Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.)—although Suzuki, it seems to me, has never addressed the question of private ownership.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E7&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Buddhist Anarchist Communism. Ichikawa proposes Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B.A.C.) as one possible political expression of Kegon interdependence, combining resistance to coercive external authority with opposition to private appropriation. Although Suzuki’s self-organising dharma-realm suggests anarchist free association, Ichikawa explicitly observes that Suzuki does not address private ownership. B.A.C. is therefore Ichikawa’s extension, not Suzuki’s own political programme.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon (1809–1865), who envisaged the perfected form of society as a “unity of order and anarchy,” proposed a conception that, at least in this respect, may be applied directly to Kegon’s Lotus Treasury World (renge zō sekai 蓮華蔵世界).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The traditional position of Japanese Zen was that State Shinto and the Buddha-Dharma were fundamentally one. The Edo-period Zen master Tōrei Enji 東嶺円慈 (1721–1792) explained it as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Fundamentally, ‘kami’ means mind. When the impurities of the mind have been completely extinguished and it becomes as clear as a mirror, this is called kami. Thus, the Way of the kami takes the mirror as the representation of its essential nature.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The mirror of the mind is originally pure, eternally abiding, and serenely still: this is called Kuni-no-Tokotachi-no-Mikoto 国常立尊. The mirror of the mind is originally perfectly luminous, and there is nothing that it does not reveal: this is called Amaterasu Ōmikami 天照大神. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“One should understand that the Way of the kami and the Buddha-Dharma share the same underlying principle. They are nothing other than the single Dharma of seeing one’s nature.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The same position was held by Tōrei’s teacher, Hakuin Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1685–1768). The Meiji-period Zen master Imakita Kōsen 今北洪川 (1816–1892) likewise expressed this understanding:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In our country there is the Way of imperial sovereignty. This is the great Way of the ancestral deity and the true teaching of rulers. Its transmission has continued from the distant past, with the imperial descendants forming a single unbroken lineage, into which no other family has entered. […]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“This is what makes our imperial Way uniquely distinguished among all the nations of the world.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|331|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—A true man of our imperial nation must first establish firmly within himself the pillar of the Japanese spirit, which neither fire can burn nor water drown. Once he has suddenly penetrated through to realisation, there will be nothing deficient in his ability to judge and uphold the Imperial Way.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Tōrei’s interpretation lacks any logic capable of grounding, from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma, the unbroken imperial lineage that constitutes the core of State Shinto. It remains entirely unclear how the fundamental Buddhist principle that “all conditioned things are impermanent” (shogyō mujō 諸行無常) could be reconciled with Shinto’s assertion that the imperial throne will endure as long as heaven and earth. The same applies to Imakita Kōsen. Indeed, among Japanese Zen masters from Kokan Shiren (1278–1346), Hakuin, and Tenkei Denson (1648–1735) down to the present, the most fundamental questions have been almost entirely neglected. How can the kami of Shinto be identical with the fundamental subject of human existence? How can a hereditary lineage be identical with a divine lineage? And how can a religious tradition that, through monastic renunciation, takes the discontinuation of hereditary descent as a principle provide a Zen Buddhist justification for the continuity of that very descent? Hakuin, Tōrei, and virtually every other Zen practitioner have revealed a fatal weakness of vision in their understanding of Shinto.&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E8&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Zen and the imperial lineage. Ichikawa contrasts impermanence (shogyō mujō 諸行無常) with claims about the eternal imperial lineage. His objection is to making a particular hereditary institution a necessary expression of Zen insight.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is no relationship whatsoever between the eternity of Zen truth and the political and supposedly “ethical” continuity of a particular bloodline. No logic exists by which the unbroken imperial lineage—a survival from the customs of ancient peoples—can be justified from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma or Zen. Above all, the Imperial Way Zen that emerged after the Meiji Restoration represents the most extreme decadence of Zen. The only possible support for the forced identification of hereditary continuity with moral continuity seems to lie in the doctrine of karmic causation across the three times, as found in Hakuin’s “Song of Giving” (Segyōka 施行歌). Yet even this doctrine cannot establish such an identification. It can do no more than explain differences of social status and circumstances in the present life. Moreover, the doctrine itself can scarcely withstand modern criticism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the dignity of humanity, the poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) wrote: “There can be no god more sacred than yourself. And this is what the oldest and the newest myths alike ultimately mean.” (“Laws for Creation”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Proudhon, writing of human sovereignty, declared, “Every citizen is king.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet to identify Amaterasu Ōmikami with the fundamental subject of human existence, as Japanese Zen has done, is ultimately to negate State Shinto—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|332|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and to deny any necessary, intrinsic connection between Zen and the Japanese national polity, or between Zen and the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Does not the fact that Japanese Zen practitioners have failed to recognise and openly acknowledge this conclusion demonstrate that their Zen thinking has remained insufficiently thoroughgoing, and that they have not genuinely achieved the condition of being “independently liberated, dependent upon nothing” (dokudatsu mu’e 独脱無依; Record of Linji, Rinzairoku 臨済録)?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Christian existentialist philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948), who advocated religious libertarian communism, was described by the philosopher Heinemann as a “mystical anarchist.” The French philosopher Simone Weil (1909–1943), who took an interest in Eastern thought, especially Zen, and criticised Christian theology, was an anarchist who participated in the Spanish Civil War.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In my view, the social philosophy of Zen may be described as Prajñā–Śūnyatā Anarchist Communism—an anarchist communism of wisdom (hannya 般若) and emptiness (kū 空). (See my book Hannyakyō 般若経, published by San’ichi Shobō.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why is it that Western religious anarchists have resisted state power—Berdyaev, for example, became a communist under imperial Russia and was imprisoned—whereas not only do we find almost no comparable examples in Zen or Kegon Buddhism, but examples of precisely the opposite tendency are overwhelmingly numerous? Let us consider two or three circumstances that may help explain this situation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The first is the obscuring of the difference in level between the world of experiential reality and the world of ordinary empirical experience, between the world of selfless intuitive action and the actual world of the empirical individual ego. This produces a “mixture or confusion of two worlds of reality.” The realm of the non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge no sekai 事々無礙の世界) belongs to the reality disclosed in the experience of prajñā. Yet this realm readily overlaps and merges with the ordinary world of empirical facts, so that the tension arising from the discontinuity between the two is never firmly established. We may recall that Nishida, the author of An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no kenkyū 善の研究), acknowledged in replying to Takahashi Satomi’s criticism that he had failed to recognise a qualitative distinction between pure experience and impure experience—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|333|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—a point that has important implications for both Zen studies and Buddhist studies. [Reference 14]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The circumstances described above are connected with the fact that Buddhist practitioners have traditionally placed the emphasis of their religious training upon the attainment of peace of mind. As Nishida wrote in his diary, “Do not run after the peripheral matters of scholarship and forget the foundation of peace of mind.” Consequently, the culmination of their practice tends toward an attitude of being at home wherever one finds oneself—expressed in the saying, “Wherever one lives becomes home.” To that extent, there is a psychological tendency to beautify and rationalise the circumstances of each particular moment. Moreover, the subject of prajñā intuition is characterised as something that reflects and receives, as suggested by expressions such as “ocean-seal samādhi” (kaiin zanmai 海印三昧), “precious-mirror samādhi” (hōkyō zanmai 宝鏡三昧), and the “place of absolute nothingness” (zettai mu no basho 絶対無の場所). This characteristic corresponds to the orientation toward peace of mind described above. Even before a sustained determination to transform the surrounding environment can emerge, the practitioner has already entered the contemplative enjoyment of things. The fact that the East, characterised by what has been called “Asiatic stagnation,” has excelled in the arts of cultivation, and that much of “Zen culture” has taken an artistic form, is connected with this tendency. It is interesting that archery and martial techniques, originally intended for combat against enemies, became in times of peace the disciplines of kyūdō 弓道 and budō 武道, directed toward confronting oneself, and were subsequently internalised, intellectualised, systematised, and transformed into forms of contemplation. Everything associated with the “Way” (dō 道) has a contemplative character. In other words, it finds a place of repose within the framework of established social conventions and institutions. Affluent Buddhist practitioners enjoying leisure in periods of social stability could readily immerse themselves in the contemplative world of Kegon. Anxious Buddhists living through periods of crisis likewise entered this world of contemplation in search of peace of mind. In such a world, empirical historical reality becomes veiled by the harmonious non-obstruction of all phenomena. It is beautified and, in proportion to this beautification, accepted and rationalised.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
All phenomena in the world are said to appear within ocean-seal samādhi, mutually interpenetrating in infinitely overlapping relationships. In my view, the Lotus Treasury World (renge zō sekai 蓮華蔵世界) described in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Kegongyō 華厳経) is both a realm of reality disclosed through the active intuition of prajñā and a visionary world constituted through creative imagination around that experience. Here, however, harmonious non-obstruction refers to the actual activities of practitioners living within the rigid framework of caste society, together with the mutually non-obstructing phenomena of their visionary world. It does not mean that the raw, living reality inhabited by the masses is itself a world of harmonious—&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E9&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Ocean-seal samādhi. Ocean-seal samādhi (kaiin zanmai 海印三昧) evokes a comprehensive religious vision in Kegon thought. Ichikawa cautions against treating the harmony experienced or imagined in such a state as already realised in historically unequal or conflictual societies.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|334|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—non-obstruction. Within ocean-seal samādhi, three layers of reality must surely appear: the mutually non-obstructing facts of the practitioner’s immediate activity, the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena within an intuitive vision, and the dark reality of conflict and contradiction. It would be a mistake to paint over this three-dimensional world with a single, flat colour of harmonious non-obstruction.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In contrast, we may recall the following words of Herbert Read (1893–1968): “Religion is closely connected with art (poetry). […] During the Spanish Civil War, observers were struck by the religious fervour of the anarchists. In that country of a latent renaissance, anarchism inspired not only heroes but saints—new kinds of people who devoted their lives, through sensuous imagination and practical action, to creating a new form of human society.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The following criticism may be applied to the misguided realism that results from confusing worlds belonging to different levels of experience:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“It is clear that Fazang’s Kegon philosophy—its doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena and of the absoluteness of phenomena mutually non-obstructing—expresses a truth that can be realised only through the fundamental intuition of ocean-seal samādhi, understood through the doctrine of the arising of phenomena from their true nature (shōki 性起). “When this becomes merely an intellectual doctrine, however, it denies the mediation of practice and turns into a facile, absolutist worldview. […] “The doctrine of the harmonious interpenetration of phenomena certainly does not mean simply accepting the ‘things’ of existing reality as they are and asserting their harmony. Genuine non-obstruction among phenomena unfolds upon the foundation of religious intuition. […] “The Kegon system is a religious worldview manifested through ocean-seal samādhi. If this is forgotten, and the ‘things’ of empirical reality are accepted merely as they appear to the discriminating consciousness of ordinary people, and their harmony is then proclaimed, the result is an entirely different philosophy. “Phenomena are absolute because each constitutes part of the Lotus Treasury World. To ignore this and claim that every phenomenon possesses absolute significance amounts to affirming existing reality just as it stands. One misstep, and this becomes an unconditional affirmation of existing structures of domination and social organisation. “A philosophy of absolute affirmation can thereby become a philosophy in the service of rulers who sanction existing reality as it is.” (Kamata Shigeo 鎌田茂雄)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|335|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This criticism may be said to identify correctly the errors and pathologies into which Kegon thought, and indeed Mahāyāna Buddhism more generally, have been liable to fall, and into which they have frequently fallen in practice—as, for example, in the cases of Sengzhao (384–414) and Dahui (1089–1163).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The criticism emphasises the distinction between the realm of religious experience and that of ordinary empirical experience, insisting that the latter must be purified “through the practice of the bodhisattva path and vows grounded in compassion.” In this respect, it overcomes the vulgarism characteristic of Takakusu’s interpretation and, together with Suzuki’s view cited within it, rests upon an orthodox doctrinal foundation. This position might be described as a shift from the contemplative tendency found in Fazang toward the experiential orientation of Chengguan (737–839), accompanied by an emphasis on religious instruction and propagation grounded in that experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Kegon world of the non-obstruction of phenomena is the joint product of experience and vision. It belongs to a dimension altogether different from the sphere of action in which the structural contradictions of actual class society are grasped, analysed, and practically overcome. Indeed, it is a world that can exist only within that particular dimension. It possesses neither the foundation nor the logic necessary to generate objective practice capable of overcoming the fundamental structural contradictions of the world in which we live. In this respect, there is no essential difference between Fazang and Chengguan. Even if this philosophy does not affirm mere facts or empirical reality as they stand, but instead rejects them as false and illusory, such rejection occurs entirely within subjective consciousness. It does not occur within the sphere of objective, transformative practice. Consequently, in actual historical circumstances, it amounts to a “doctrine of double truth” that affirms the existing order. There is therefore nothing surprising about Buddhists who consciously distinguish the world of prajñā experience from ordinary empirical reality nevertheless acting, in practice, as defenders of the established social system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== V ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
When Kegon thought attempts to formulate a social ethics within the actual world without overcoming the traditional characteristics and limitations examined above—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|336|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—that is, when it constructs morality through the logic of mutual identity (sōsoku 相即) and the dependent-origination logic of mutual dependence and interrelationship (sōi sōkan 相依相関), expressed in propositions such as “The principal is principal in relation to the companion, and the companion is companion in relation to the principal,” or “Mind is mind in relation to matter, and matter is matter in relation to mind”—the result will be an ethics of concord, harmony, and paternalistic benevolence.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Without capital there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no labour. At the same time, without labour there can be no enterprise, and without enterprise there can be no capital. The joint activity of capital and labour is precisely what constitutes industry. […] If those who provide wages deserve respect, then those who provide labour deserve equal respect. Indeed, neither party is simply giving something to the other; rather, industry consists of capital and labour being brought together.” (Shibusawa Eiichi) &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[19]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of cooperation between capital and labour expressed by this industrial capitalist is presented by a Zen practitioner in the following manner:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If one understands that self and other are originally nondual, there should be no difficulty whatsoever. Labour is the capitalist’s capital, and capital is the labourer’s labour. How, then, could conflict possibly arise?” (Iida Tōin) &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[20]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The morality of harmony can also become a morality of war. A Kegon scholar writes:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In times of peace, the understanding of dependent origination provides a foundation for harmonious relations, through the recognition of the profound karmic connections that bind people inseparably together. But in times of emergency, it also manifests itself as a spirit of fearless, unobstructed struggle, enabling Japanese citizens to fulfil their responsibilities in their respective positions.” (Kamekawa Kyōshin) &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[21]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When every single member of the nation, embraced within the august imperial authority, rises with this sense of the completeness of principal and companion, the hundred million people are no longer limited to merely a hundred million. Rather, the hundred million simultaneously manifest a power multiplied a hundred millionfold.” (Ibid.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
According to this Kegon scholar, it is only through the conception of the state arising from Japanese national consciousness that the relationship between the individual and the whole can truly be perceived in its proper form, through the practical apprehension of inexhaustible dependent origination expressed as “one is all, and all is one.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[22]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet this very logic has found concrete expression in postwar Japan in the workers’ handbook, or “Mirror,” of Ōmi Kenshi, and has continued to produce results as a morality of worker training developed through cooperation between industrial capital and Zen. The Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren 経団連)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|337|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—supported the establishment of a Zen training centre where a recent roundtable entitled “Zen and Business” discussed the adjustment of human relations through Zen, the rationalisation of business management, and measures concerning labour. Among the statements recorded in that discussion were the following:&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E10&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Corporate Zen and industrial relations. Ichikawa refers to Zen training supported by business interests and a roundtable on “Zen and Business,” criticising the use of self-cultivation and harmony to promote managerial efficiency while leaving labour–capital inequalities intact. His printed references 23 and 35 both identify issue 70 of the journal Zen 禅 (1961) but assign different months; this discrepancy has not yet been resolved.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Our most important policy, as our managing director has just explained, is first of all to bring about a complete change in the attitudes associated with student life. We want participants to examine themselves, their membership in the company, and the relationship between the individual within the company as a whole and the whole constituted through individuals. We want them to analyse themselves and then begin working with a renewed consciousness of themselves as members of the company. This is our most fundamental policy.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[23]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“We received some questionnaire responses saying that, although participants had expected the monks’ talks at the Zen temple to be thoroughly religious and solemn, they found them quite approachable—even including discussions of attitudes toward romantic love—and therefore very pleasant to listen to. […] If possible, we would appreciate talks that include a little of this sort of romantic interest, since they seem to be very well received.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What I wish to address here is Kamekawa’s interpretation of the “completeness of principal and companion” (shuhan gusoku 主伴具足), which is essentially the same as Takakusu’s interpretation. In this case, the relationship running from principal to companion is thoroughly one-directional and extremely concrete in its historical reality, since it provides a foundation for imperial absolutism under the Meiji Constitution. By contrast, the possibility of the companion becoming principal remains merely conceptual. In other words, this suggests that the logic of the completeness of principal and companion should not be applied to class society. In Kamekawa’s interpretation, principal and companion cannot genuinely be said to possess complete and perfect reciprocity. Even Fazang himself, who originally formulated this logic, probably did not entirely escape this danger. Kamata, in the essay discussed earlier, also takes up this problem and warns against confusing the reality of religious experience with empirical reality. Yet, as I have already pointed out, this criticism amounts to a “doctrine of double truth,” in which existing reality is denied at the level of consciousness but accepted in actual practice. An anarchist-communist society would surely provide the best expression of the complete illumination and mutual fulfilment of principal and companion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|338|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== VI ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a saying, “Kill the Buddha and kill the patriarchs” (Unmonroku 雲門録). Perhaps no tradition is as thoroughgoing as Zen in refusing to recognise externally imposed authority. The Tang-dynasty Zen master Linji Yixuan (Rinzai Gigen 臨済義玄, d. 867) emphasised the freedom of the “true person of no rank,” who “becomes master wherever one stands” and is “independently liberated, dependent on nothing.” It was in the spirit of such freedom that Danxia Tianran (Tanka Tennen 丹霞天然, 739–824) burned a Buddha image and Deshan Xuanjian (Tokusan Senkan 徳山宣鑑, 782–865) burned Buddhist scriptures. Zhaozhou Congshen (Jōshū Jūshin 趙州従諗, 778–897) declared, “I do not delight in hearing even the single word ‘Buddha.’” A king once visited Zhaozhou accompanied by his retainers, but Zhaozhou did not descend from his seat to welcome him. The following day, when the king sent an official to convey his thanks for the previous day’s reception, Zhaozhou descended from his seat and received the visitor’s greeting. When his disciples later asked why he had acted differently, Zhaozhou replied: “You would not understand. When a person of the highest rank comes, I receive him upon my meditation seat. When a person of middling rank comes, I descend from my seat to receive him. When a person of the lowest rank comes, I go outside the monastery gate to receive him. This is the custom of my house.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[24]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As suggested by the passage, “In the Western realm there is a land called Peace and Nourishment. […] There is no system of kingship there, nor any hierarchy of official ranks,” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[25]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; the future society envisioned by Buddhists may be understood as a world of anarchist communism. Kropotkin (1842–1921)&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E11&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Common ownership and Kropotkin. Kropotkin’s account of wealth as the accumulated product of countless people’s labour supports Ichikawa’s criticism of exclusive appropriation. Ichikawa connects this to Buddhist language about goods belonging to the wider community, but also acknowledges traditions recognising royal ownership. Buddhist ownership terminology in the Japanese text requires final source-level verification.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; argued that our cultural achievements and the material necessities of life are the fruits of the labour of countless people extending back into the distant past. Consequently, none of us has grounds for calling them “my own.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[26]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Buddhists likewise understood these things as products of the endlessly interwoven activities of sentient beings: they are originally “property of the four quarters” (shihōmotsu 四方物), belonging to all sentient beings, and do not admit the possessive designation “mine” (mama-kāra). &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[27]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; (Nevertheless, texts such as the Brahmā’s Net Bodhisattva Precepts Sūtra already contain the notion of “property of the king.”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problems Buddhism must confront today in order to develop a social ethics or an ethics for the world are approximately as follows:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|339|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
First, there is the problem of bringing together the recovery of Buddhism’s supranational character and the recovery of nationalism. In the expression “protection of the nation” (chingo kokka 鎮護国家), “nation” originally referred to the royal household, the territory, and the people, but its principal concern was the emperor. (In China, too, the term “state” (kokka 国家) could signify the Son of Heaven or the imperial court.) Consider, for example, the “Ten Secret Rites for the Protection of the Nation” (Chingo kokka no jikka hihō 鎮護国家の十箇秘法) in Japanese Tendai Buddhism. The majority concern the emperor personally, including rites for imperial enthronement, prayers concerning the emperor’s life, and precepts conferred for safe childbirth within the imperial household. In any event, because Buddhism was associated with state power from the earliest period of its development, it tended to lack a critical analysis and examination of the essential nature of political power. There was, of course, an intention to educate sovereigns so that they might govern benevolently, and this intention sometimes achieved positive results. Nevertheless, considerable suspicion of kings also existed. We find statements such as, “A monk should approach a king as though approaching a servant-master relationship” (Saddharma-smṛtyupasthāna Sūtra, Shōbōnenkyō 正法念経), and “Kings constantly increase taxation and arbitrarily punish people who have committed no offence. […] Though they see people suffering poverty and distress, they never give rise to compassion. They indulge in women without fearing the evil destinies” (Tang translation of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, Kegongyō 華厳経).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As in early Buddhism, Buddhist scriptures often regarded kings as people who inflicted harm upon the population. Kings were therefore placed alongside thieves and robbers, and among the misfortunes suffered by ordinary people—calamities of flood and fire, robbery, and wicked persons—there was also the “calamity of the king.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[30]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must discover a logic capable of bringing together a recognition of the evils of the state with the recovery of a legitimate nationalism, understood, for example, in terms of national independence and cooperation among peoples. In connection with this problem, we must also investigate how to reconcile the contradiction between spiritual freedom, expressed in the Record of Linji as “remaining unstained by birth and death, free to come and go” (shōji ni somazu kyojū jiyū 生死に染まず去住自由), and political and social freedom. “Without religion, the state could not exist,” declared Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[31]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Yet religion can exist without the state—although whether Zen should properly be called a “religion” is itself open to question. We have already seen how modern Japanese Zen was distorted by the state power of the emperor system.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|340|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In considering the relationship between Buddhism and the state, the next question is that of class. Marx wrote: “The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas in every age. The class that constitutes the dominant material power in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual power. The class that controls the means of material production also controls the means of intellectual production. Consequently, the ideas of those who lack access to the means of intellectual production are, in general, subordinated to that class.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[32]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; It hardly needs explaining that the ideology of modern Japanese Zen was no exception to this general principle. Even in the process of conversion from a Japanese Zen bound by nationality under imperial Japan to a cosmopolitan Zen without national affiliation in a “cultural Japan,” this principle may have been operating to some degree. Dr. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi 久松真一, a Zen thinker internationally renowned alongside Suzuki Daisetsu, has discussed the crisis confronting the present age and the problem of world ethics. In the murderous development of atomic physics, he sees a crisis of humanism itself. He points to the unprecedented disparity between the extraordinary advances of science and the failure of morality to keep pace, insisting upon the need to strengthen our ethical capacities in order to correct this imbalance. Moreover, he maintains that such ethical capacities must not be based upon the egoism of particular nations, blocs of nations, classes, or ideologies. He therefore urges the immediate establishment of a new world ethics. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[33]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; This is certainly a valuable suggestion. Yet, when we reconsider the matter, is the disparity between science and ethics really a crisis of humanism or an impasse in human civilisation? The overwhelming majority of the world’s peoples, together with the majority of conscientious scientists, have repeatedly protested and resisted the murderous application of atomic power. They are not in the least guilty of ideological bias. Indeed, it is precisely this vast popular struggle for peace that has prevented a revolutionary rupture between science and morality. Those who are biased, those who expose the crisis of humanism, are none other than the “merchants of death” of monopoly capital.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How, then, does the F.A.S. Zen movement centred on Dr. Hisamatsu deal with the standpoint of class in its vow to “create superhistorical history”? &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[34]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Are the wisdom and power involved in this historical creation like distilled water—&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E12&amp;quot;&amp;gt;F.A.S. Zen. Associated with Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, F.A.S. refers to Formless Self, All Humankind, and Suprahistorical History. It seeks to unite awakening with universal ethical action. Ichikawa welcomes its aspirations but questions whether a standpoint claiming to transcend class and national divisions adequately addresses the material interests and historical antagonisms shaping social life.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|341|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—colourless and transparent? How would its social ethics differ from the social ethics of Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.), which grounds itself in an Absolute?&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E13&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Moral Re-Armament. Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.) was an international moral and spiritual renewal movement. Ichikawa invokes it as a comparison when questioning whether a purportedly class-neutral universal ethics can engage specific structures of economic power. This is a comparative reference, distinct from his criticism of F.A.S. Zen.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; “I can promise to be fair, but I cannot promise to be impartial,” wrote Goethe. (Ichikawa’s note: In this connection, I would draw attention to the system being developed by the materialist Umemoto Katsumi, who, in contrast to Nishida philosophy’s “active intuition” (kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観), is working out a logic of “practical intuition” (jissenteki chokkan 実践的直観) grounded in class consciousness.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The problem of class is connected with the problem of human self-alienation, particularly alienation in labour. Unless Buddhism confronts this problem directly, it will be unable to develop a contemporary social ethics. This necessarily requires Buddhists to incorporate the standpoint of wage labourers into their own thinking. In other words, they must consciously adopt the standpoint of workers—human beings treated as commodities.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Alienated labour alienates (1) nature from humanity, and (2) human beings from themselves, from their own active functions and life-activity. In doing so, it alienates humanity from its species-being. […] The immediate consequence of the alienation of human beings from the products of their labour, their life-activity, and their species-being is the alienation of human beings from one another—die Entfremdung des Menschen von dem Menschen.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[34]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Under capitalism, even human beings become commodities. The education of young men and women amounts to investing capital in their bodies, while young people must devote themselves to the problem of how to sell themselves in the “personality market.” This is an education and morality grounded in the commodity economy, expressed through the language of adjustment and human relations. Expressions such as “human resources,” “human dock” [medical checkups], and the “Zen boom” are profoundly revealing. Someone remarked: “At the entrance there was a sign saying, ‘Look beneath your feet.’ That is the first priority. I believe this is how sound enterprises will emerge. From the standpoint of the business community, this is a cheap investment. Something like this will come back with a ten-thousandfold return.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[35]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|342|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Prostitution is only a particular expression of the general prostitution of the worker—allgemeine Prostitution des Arbeiters. And since prostitution constitutes a relationship that includes not only the prostitute but also the other party, whose baseness is even greater, capitalists too belong to this category.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[36]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I distinguish this kind of human self-alienation&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E14&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Horizontal and vertical alienation. Ichikawa distinguishes social and economic “horizontal alienation” from existential or religious “vertical estrangement.” Drawing on Marx’s account of alienated labour, he insists that the Buddhist encounter with suffering must also address historically specific exploitation. The two dimensions are related but not reducible to one another.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;, which I call horizontal alienation, from existential and religious self-alienation, or vertical estrangement. Horizontal alienation will never be overcome by the class that enjoys it as something comfortable, but only by the class that has no choice but to experience it as suffering. (This follows the same logic and psychology as the Buddhist overcoming of vertical estrangement, which begins with the contemplation of suffering.) To adopt the standpoint of wage labourers treated as commodities, and to resolve to overcome human self-alienation in labour—which is simultaneously self-alienation in capital—is precisely to adopt a standpoint of class consciousness. A merely abstract affirmation of humanity, incapable of understanding class consciousness as anything other than class egoism, misses the fundamental problem. The claim that human self-alienation can genuinely be overcome only from the standpoint of a universal human ethics—without uniting the opposing standpoints of class and humanity—rests upon the illusion that those who comfortably enjoy alienation might suddenly awaken one morning and collectively recognise it as suffering. The genuinely practical path toward overcoming alienation must instead begin by abandoning this facile sentimentalism, adopting the standpoint of those who experience alienation as suffering, and apprehending historical reality as it actually exists. This means grasping historical reality from a standpoint that unites objectivity and partisanship.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“What is at issue here is a confession, and nothing more. For humanity to have its sins forgiven, it need only proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are.” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[37]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|343|original|IH61ZKA}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To proclaim those sins publicly, precisely as they actually are&amp;lt;ref group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; name=&amp;quot;E15&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Marx’s commodity analysis and practical intuition. Ichikawa compares Marx’s method in Capital with Nishida’s “active intuition” (kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観) and suggests a historically grounded “practical intuition” (jissenteki chokkan 実践的直観). His comparison is methodological, not an equation of Nishida’s philosophy with Marx’s critique of political economy. He insists that changing social relations cannot be replaced by inwardly “emptying” an object.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;”—was this not what Marx accomplished through his analysis of the commodity in Capital? And might this not be the concrete content, within the field of economics, of Dōgen’s expression “to be verified by all things”? Beginning with labour-power as a commodity, one arrives, by abstracting from its capitalist determinations, at the commodity itself (the downward movement). Through scientific investigation of this commodity, one then clarifies how its inherent self-contradiction constitutes the elementary form of the class contradictions of capitalist society (the upward movement). Might not the disclosure of this circular process—understood, moreover, as an “open system” &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[38]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;—through practical intuition constitute the social-scientific content of Nishida philosophy’s method of “becoming a thing in order to see, and becoming a thing in order to think”?’&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Today, we human beings—and Buddhist practitioners themselves—live within and are sustained by a commodity-economic society, a “world of prostitution.” This entire condition is what is meant by the “falsity of the secular world” (seken koke 世間虚仮), a world of falsehood and empty words.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Karl Löwith (1897–1973) gives an illuminating account of how even Kierkegaard, Marx’s philosophical antipode, demonstrated through the circumstances of his own life the validity of Marx’s insight into the relationship between capital and labour. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[39]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; On the other hand, when we attempt to realise objectively the mutual non-obstruction of phenomena (jiji muge 事々無礙) within an intersubjective society, we will surely have much to learn from Kropotkin’s persuasive criticisms concerning the limits of the philosophy of dependent origination. &amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[40]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What makes us conscious of the falsity of the secular world in this aspect, and inspires us to resolve to overcome it, is historical truth—the Dharma (dharma ダルマ)—proper to this sphere. For the moment, I leave aside the objectifying-logical and metaphysical dimensions of alienation. Nevertheless, we must not neglect a rigorous criticism of attempts to “empty” the objectivity of an object rather than transforming the object itself. Here, it seems to me, lies the starting point for a dialectical relationship between social ethics and social science among Buddhists.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Explanatory Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references group=&amp;quot;Editorial&amp;quot; /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
Translated from Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen, Kegon, anakizumu” 禅・華厳・アナキズム (1961), reprinted in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 3 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 319–343; original source references occupy pp. 344–345. The original reference numbers are retained as superscript numerals, distinct from the translator’s explanatory notes. Suzuki Daisetsu’s two diagrams are reproduced from the scanned collected edition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is a working translation. Several quotations and Japanese readings require final collation; the original reference list has not yet been converted into linked footnotes. References 23 and 35 give inconsistent months for the same issue of Zen (1961).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotation: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1961). “Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism” (&#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH61ZKA-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA&amp;diff=1241</id>
		<title>IH61ZKA</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH61ZKA&amp;diff=1241"/>
		<updated>2026-10-13T10:18:32Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: Created page with &amp;quot;{{DISPLAYTITLE:市川白弦「禅・華厳・アナキズム」}} __NOTOC__  市川白弦（1961年）。「禅・華厳・アナキズム」 [Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism]。『市川白弦著作集』第3巻（法蔵館、1993年）、319–345頁所収（本文319–343頁、注344–345頁）。  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;English translation:&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism  == 目次 == :一 :二 :三 :四 :五...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:市川白弦「禅・華厳・アナキズム」}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
市川白弦（1961年）。「禅・華厳・アナキズム」 [Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism]。『市川白弦著作集』第3巻（法蔵館、1993年）、319–345頁所収（本文319–343頁、注344–345頁）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;English translation:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH61ZKA-T|Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 目次 ==&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section1|一]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section2|二]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section3|三]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section4|四]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section5|五]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section6|六]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 本文 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|319}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section1&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 一 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
近代日本の哲学を代表する西田幾多郎（一八七〇―一九四五）のいわゆる「西田哲学」が確立したのは、かれの論文「場所」（一九二六年）においてであった。この「場所」の思想は、プラトンのティマイオスおよびアリストテレスのデ・アニマにおける Topos（場所）の概念を介して生まれた思想であるが、しかし本質的にはむしろ大乗仏教の「空」Sūnyatā ないし法界 Dharma-dhātu とくに「事々無礙法界」（個物と個物、事実と事実とがたがいに相即・相入する体験の世界）の思想、いいかえるならば般若の哲学ないし華厳哲学と根源的につながっていたのであり、「絶対無」の場所における個物の相互限定即一般者の自己限定という西田の根本思想は、西欧近代の個我の論理を媒介として、般若の「空」と華厳の「事々無礙」との根源的一の論理構造をしめすものであり、それは本質的には、東洋の無の論理をもって、徹底した自由と平等の形而上的根拠を確立するはずのものであった。それはすべての外的な権威 Autorität 権力 Macht を否定し、いわゆる「宗&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|320}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
教」の衣裳さえ脱した自由の哲学を創立する契機を含んでいた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この絶対無の場所の哲学ないし「事実の自己限定」の哲学は、しかしながら、帝国主義日本の戦時体制の展開につれて、西田哲学ないし京都学派の「自由主義」的ニュアンスに対する右翼および軍部の圧迫の強化につれて、しだいに「皇道」および「聖戦」に理念的基礎をあたえる論理を、くりひろげるにいたった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宅壮一はこのことについて、西田は「魂を売って肉体の保証を求めた」とさえ極言している。大田のものに、「世界新秩序の原理」（一九四三年）および「国体論」（一九四四年）がある。後者はのちに『哲学論文集』第四補遺として雑誌『哲学研究』にのせられ、『西田幾多郎全集』にも収められたが、前者は『西田幾多郎全集』にも収められていない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら、場所の論理または事々無礙の哲学は、皇道の基礎づけとなるものではなく、それとは反対に、むしろアナキズムの根拠となるはずのものであった。拙稿「絶対無のつまずき―西田幾多郎の場合」（『思想』一九五九年一月、本巻所収）には、「むすび」のなかで、つぎのように書いている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
絶対無の場所、弁証法的一般者はその自覚的限定として世界形成の原理を形成する。この原理と皇道とは合一しえない絶対矛盾である。この二つは対象論理の場においてたがいに自らを主張し、たがいに排除しあう本質のものである。対象論理の領域をこえて皇道が真に主体化しようとすれば、主体化の過程において、それの本質である偶然的、特殊的、非合理的なものを無化することによって、皇道は自らを解消するほかはない。皇道は主体として徹する行程のなかで脱我せざるをえない。皇道は絶対無の場所、真の歴史的世界にかえることにおいて自己を失う。逆にいえば、絶対無の場所の論理、述語主義の論理は「主語的な皇道を根源的に否定する底のものである」。西田の「場所的論理的神学」は日本の建国神話と天壌無窮の祭政哲学を根拠づけるのではなく、かえってこれを奉ずる論理体系であったはずである。同様&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|321}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
にしてそれは、西田のばあいとは逆に、国民道徳をも根源的に「虚仮」と観ずる体系であったはずである。この体系は絶対に自由な個物と個物とを媒介する一般者、媒介するものなくして媒介する一般者として、もっとも深い意味における民主的な自由連合の場所の哲学であるはずである。それは皇道の脱皮を要求し、国家の消滅を予示し、もっとも深い意味における無権力の共同社会を基礎づけ約束し、形成する述語主義の歴史哲学であるべきであった。述語主義の論理は哲学者西田に出発して、臣民西田のなかで挫折した。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
西田によれば、現実の世界は個物（我・汝・彼）の世界でなければならない。個物はまず一般者（たとえば存在とか生物とか）の限定として考えられるであろう。一般的なるものに種差を加えて、最後に種に至り、さらにこれを越えて、極限点として個物という如きものを考えることができる。併しかかる考え方によって考えられた個物というものは、真の個物ではない。それは何処までも一般者の一部分という意味を脱することはできない。個物は自己自身を限定するものでなければならない&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[4]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;。自己自身を限定するもの、すなわちみずから自分を自覚し、形成し、えらびとるものであって、はじめて独立した個物ということができる。しかし個物が自分自身を限定するということは、他の個物との関係においてでなければならない。私は汝に対する私としてあるのであり、おなじく汝は私に対する汝である。「個物は個物に対すると考えられねばならない。個物は唯個物に対することによって、個物と考えられるのである。唯一つの個物というものは考えられない。互いに独立するものが、互いに相関係するということが、物と物とが相働くということである。（中略）互いに独立的なるものが相関係するというには、その間に媒介者というものが考えられねばならない」（傍点市川）。この媒介者が、もしも個物と個物とを統一する、あるひとつの一般者であるとするならば、この一般者はすでにひとつの個物にほかならず、しかもこのものの存在によって、さきの個物の独立は失われ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|322}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
るほかはない。（たとえていえば、甲と乙とがつねに後見人の立会いのもとに交渉するばあいのように）。個物と個物との背後には、これを包括するなんらの一般者も存在しないのである。独立した個物と個物とを媒介するものは、なんらかの有的な一般者ではなく、無の場所的限定の意味をもつ、弁証法的一般者でなければならない。個物と個物とは、絶対無の場所において、真に独立独歩でありながら、たがいに交渉し共働するのである。私はどこまでも私であり、汝はどこまでも汝であって、しかも私は汝であり、汝は私である、という消息がそこにある。それぞれにかけがえのない個性をもつ自主自律の存在であって、しかもたがいに主となり客となって、自由に相働き、相提携する。歴史的現実の世界の真実のありかたは、このようなものでなければならない。西田はこのような実存の交わり、実在の連関の世界を、華厳哲学の言葉をかりて、「事々無礙の世界」とよんでいる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
独立した個性的実存の自主自由な交渉・共働を成りたたせる、絶対無の場所の論理――いうなればこれが西田の社会哲学ないし世界哲学の根本の論理であった。それゆえ、この論理からみちびかれるものは、自我と対象への固執をはなれた、真に自主自由な個物の共同社会であり、したがってそこには「力」による支配の論理が存在しないばかりか、倫理的な擬装をつけた力としての「権威」が介在する余地のない、自由連合の人類社会でなければならない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら場所の論理、禅・華厳における空・事々無礙の論理を背景とする、このような開放的な世界の論理は、西田のサムライ的生活感覚と官学的社会存在と帝国主義日本の情勢とによって、その可能性を拘束され奇形化されて、遂に「国体論」と「世界新秩序の原理」にまで、落ちぶれるにいたった。そしてこれは、当時の日本仏教が共通して辿ったコースであった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|323}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section2&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 二 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
近代日本の代表的な仏教学者、高楠順次郎（「大正新脩大蔵経」の責任監修者、東京都大名誉教授、第四回文化勲章受章、西田は第二回）は「仏教の全体性原理」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[6]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;において、大乗仏教の論理と倫理とはもともと全体主義であるといい、この全体主義の論理構造をしめすものが、華厳思想における「四法界」の理説であり、その究極のすがたが第四の「事々無礙法界」である、そしてわれわれの世紀は「世界戦争を一転機として、世界が全体主義に向って来た」と述べ、「今日では西洋人も全体主義を行いかかって居り、日本人はこれを昔から実際に行って居たのであります。我々は日本の大和全体主義を以て、世界に模範を示すことも出来る。仏教の全体性原理を以て、世界を指導することも出来る。（中略）現実の日本は皇道治化でなくてはならぬ。この原理である華厳の全体性原理を、実際に行わせらるるのは、誠に結構である。（中略）いくら仏教がよいといっても、それを日本の皇道治化と並んで、仏道治化と見るような型はあってはならぬ」といい、「吾々は今現に国民精神総動員の時局に接し、日本精神の全体的発揚を要する時代（中略）思うままに華厳の真意を味わって、一糸乱れず、一点の私のない奉公を、企図すべきである。総ての人が自己を忘れ、自己を捨てて、国事に臨むということになりたいものであります。聖者無己、無不己の実を表したいものであります」と結んでいる。華厳学者亀川教信はその著「縁起の構造」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[7]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;において、山上戒全は論稿「華厳」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[8]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;において、おなじ趣旨の華厳思想を展開し、禅学者中根環堂は「全体主義と禅」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[9]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;において、日本の国体は西洋の平面的な全体主義ではなく、一君万民としての、「情は父子の如く、義は君臣の分を守る」、上下一体の立体的一体主義であり、その根底には、「一即多・多即一」の華厳の哲理がある。この一体主義に徹する途は坐禅であり、「非思量底を思量する」坐禅の真髄をつかむことによって、八紘一宇の聖業を貫徹することができる、と説いた。昭&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|324}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
和十三年（一九三八）の京都帝大「月曜講義」における、西田の「日本文化の問題」、およびこれにつづく高山岩男の「文化類型学」もまた、華厳思想の「事実」の論理を援用して、「東亜新秩序」の建設に、寄与しようとするものであった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら、これらの試みは、すべて華厳哲学および禅思想の歪曲にほかならなかった。歪曲の事例を、もういちど高楠の場合に見よう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
中国における華厳宗第三祖法蔵（六四三―七一二）の『華厳経探玄記』は、体験の世界における事実と事実とが、無限に相即し相入するさまを、「十玄縁起」として、十門に類別して説いているが、その第一〇に、「主伴円明具徳門」というのがある。体験界の無限の事実は、たがいに主となり伴となって、重々無尽の象徴的世界を形成し、その中のひとつを主とすれば、他の一切はそれの伴となって、この一に従属し、他のひとつを主としてとりあげるならば、さきの一をふくめた他の一切が、いまの一の伴となって、これに包摂される、というのが、「主伴円明具徳」の理法である。高楠はこれを具体的にパラフレイズして、「主たるものも、伴たるものも、双方とも円満に明朗に、上下一心で以て働いて行く、親と子と対立するのでなく、親と子と力を合せて行くのが全体主義である。それが出来なくては全体主義でない。（中略）同じようなものが集まって、その中心が主たるものであるから、これを一君万民の実際に当てていってもよいのであります」といい、「我国は肇国の当初から全体主義である。（中略）明治維新に於て、本然の全体主義に還元した」「華厳の一真法界の光景を、吾々は、現実の日本国民、即ち全体性原理を現有している吾々国民は、実際にこれを現実化して居るのである。これは実に尊いことである」とも説いている。民主主義を「反国体的」とみる一君万民体制と、これを支える権威主義身分道徳のうえに、事々無礙、主伴具足、一即一切、一切即一の真実が実現している、と高楠は言うのである。典型的な、観念の御用哲学である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|325}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
日本仏教のこのようなありかたは、これに先だつ中国の国家仏教の事情はしばらくおいて、大化二年（六四六）「それ天地の間に君として、万民を宰することは、独り制むべからず、要ず臣の翼須つ……」、という「改新の詔」をもって出発した新政府が、やがて東大寺大仏殿の建立を発願し、ここに毘盧遮那仏（梵網経の本尊仏、通説には「華厳経」のそれという）を安置し、諸国に国分寺、国分尼寺を建立して、護国の諸経文を読誦させることを企画し、寺院、僧尼を国家権力の統制のもとにおこうとした時代に、すでに根をおろしたものであった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section3&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 三 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
日本敗戦の直後、鈴木大拙博士は「霊性的日本の建設」（一九四六年九月）のなかで、新しい日本は、華厳の法界縁起の理法のうえに、建設されねばならぬ、と述べている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「天皇を上に戴くと言うことは、力の意欲の象徴である。（中略）天皇は寧ろ内在性をもって、万民の間に重々無尽に繋がれて行くべきである。（中略）世界全面が国家群の法界曼荼羅であるように、日本の国内も亦、天皇と万民を一つのものにして、事々無礙とならなければならぬ。霊性的日本はここで始めて可能になる。これを図式にすると、今までの日本は図１の如きものであった。（上と下）の繋がりはあるようだが、それは途中でいくらでも切られる。上意なるものが下通するまでに、軍閥もあり、官僚もあり、財閥もある。どこが上意の出処か、下のものにはさっぱりわからぬ。これに加えるに、『万民』の間には、各自の繋がりが全くない。（中略）彼等各自は、自分で考え&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[Source figure on printed p. 325; reproduced below]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure1_Source.png|thumb|Figure 1. Suzuki Daisetsu’s representation of Japan’s hierarchical order (reproduced in Ichikawa, p. 325).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|326}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ることを知らぬ。（中略）唯、“承詔必謹”をのみ是れ願った。（中略）一君万民主義は、一方においては力の意欲を象徴し、他方においては国民各自の自主性を滅却する。（一五八―一五九頁）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
天皇と万民とによって創建せられる法界曼荼羅は、つぎのようなものでなければならぬ、という。長文だが引用する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
天皇が高天原から降りて、この大地の上に、人間として青草人草の仲間入りをなされると同時に、青草人草の国民の方では、（中略）奴隷的自卑根性を放擲しなければならぬ。個己の自主性を樹立し、人格的価値の他に換うべきもののない、と云うことを、十分に認識し、自ら尊ぶは、また大いに他を尊ぶ所以であることを、覚悟しなければならぬ。個々円成であると同時に、事々無礙である。（中略）個々円成の故に事々無礙である、事々無礙の故に、個々円成である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
法界曼荼羅の日本的政体面における様相を、（中略）示してみる（図２）。ＡＢＣ等は万民であり億兆である。併し彼等は一々の個己である、自主的に行為し、思惟し、感覚するところのモナッドである。個々円成である。それぞれに独立し、自由である人格的存在である。それであるが故に、何れへと重々無尽的に連関する。このモナッドは、窓を十分に開け放って居るので、自分の光を他へも分ち、他のをも自分に受け入れる。円中の弦線及び直線は、各モナッド間の連絡、回互、円融と云うようなものを指示する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[Source figure on printed p. 326; reproduced below]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[File:IH61ZKA_Figure2_Source.png|thumb|Figure 2. Suzuki Daisetsu’s interconnected dharma-realm mandala (reproduced in Ichikawa, p. 326).]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|327}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
中心のＳは、周辺のＡＢＣ等を全面的に外廓的に総括したものを、内面的に反映せしめたのである。ＡＢＣＤ等はそれぞれに孤立して、而も全体性を有つものであるから、ＡＢＣＤ等は孤線で繋ぎ合せて、一個の大円相を形成し、その大円相がそのままで、一々のモナッド、一々の「民草」に外ならず、と云う意味をもたせて、中央の小円相に集中して反映せしめてあるのである。大円相は国民全体を包むものであるが、包むと云うだけでは、これを指して示すべき具体性の事が見られぬので、中心部にＳをおいた。Ｓが即ち国体の中心である天皇である。（中略）Ｓを外廓の大円相から離して、上方においても可なるように思われるかも知れぬが、それは力の意欲、二元性の構想が入りこんで来る恐れが多分にある。封建的心理態の再現があるにきまっている。それのみならず、Ｓが円相内にあることによって、円相そのものの結合が、一層の強さを有つであろう。（中略）吾等は日本人として、東洋人として、自主的に、自由の構想で、建設すべき新たな国体なるものがなくてはならない。その建設の筋道は言うまでもなく、どこまでも霊性的でなくてはならぬ、霊性的自覚の上に築かれたものでなくてはならぬ。それで始めて世界性を持ち得る、世界の精神的文化の向上、及び生活実際面における諸般の施設に対して、何かの貢献を為し得べきものが、吾等の間から出て来るのである。（一六〇―一六三頁）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
鈴木博士のこの著作は、仏教者が日本の新しい政体を、熱意と誠実をもって構想した、戦後における随一の文献だといえるであろう。すでに明らかであるように、華厳の法界縁起説の日本的・現実的把握について、戦時中における高楠説と、戦後における鈴木説とのあいだには、原理的な距離と違いがある（「どこまでも霊性的自覚の上に築かれたものでなくてはならぬ」という、鈴木博士の指摘に注目すべきであろう）。このばあい、高楠説については、もしも高楠が戦後のこんどに生存していたならば、さきの解釈に修正の必要をみとめなかったかどうか、また鈴木説については、真実はこれを語ることが必要かつ困難であるときに語られてこそ、光&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|328}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
と力をもつのではないか、という疑いがもたれるのであるが、ここに見られるかぎりにおいて、われわれは鈴木説こそ華厳思想の真実を、現代日本に生かすものだと考えざるをえない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
高楠説と鈴木説とでは、天皇の位置が上記の前図と後図との違いになっているが、同時にこの位置の違いは、天皇の位置の原型としての毘盧遮那仏の位置の違いでもあろう。高楠説には、「華厳の方でいいますと、中心である大毘盧遮那仏も活躍する。その外輪を飾る外金剛の部属悉く活躍する。住伴総動員の大曼荼羅を現ずるのである。これが華厳の法界縁起の実現した現相である。（『真法界の顕現である』）（二五一―二六頁）という言葉がみられ、鈴木説には、「日本の国体の本来の姿が、此の如きものと考えられるとき、“君の恵”及び“御代の光”などで示唆せられる一連の思想は、従来それらに附着せられたものと違ってくるのである。“恵”は力と連想せられることがなくなって今度は回互性をもったものとなろう。“光”も只只上方からのみ照らし来るものではなくて、各自のもつ本来の光りの交互的耀らし合いと言うことになるであろう」（一六四頁）という主張が読まれるが、どちらの論説においても、毘盧遮那仏と天皇（鈴木説では人間天皇）との内面的・論理的連関という、もっとも核心的な一点が明らかでない。高楠説が、「皇道治化」をたてて「仏道治化」をみとめないという以上、いわゆる本地垂迹説にかかわるどのような論理をとるのか、それが明らかにされねばならない。鈴木説にいう「君の恵」は天皇の恵みであるが、天皇の恵みとは具体的に何をさすのか、「光り」もただ上方からのみ来るのではないといわれる場合、「上方から来る光り」とは具体的に何であるのか、鈴木説の法界曼荼羅にも「上方」があるのか、その場合の上方とは何であるのか、その上方は人間天皇として上方であるのか、これらの点が明らかでない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
鈴木説の法界は世界性をもつというのであるが、唯一特定の血統にぞくする一人の人間を、つねに世界の中心に位置せしめる論理と倫理が、はたして世界性をもつといえるであろうか。「血」という非合理的、偶&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|329}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
然的なものに、特定の宇宙倫理的意義をもたせることが、仏教のダルマ（法）の立場において、そしてまた世界倫理の立場においてみとめられるであろうか。「万世一系は、次のように解せられるとき、吾等の身命を賭すべきものとなるであろう。即ち皇統の永遠性は、日本国民の懐抱して居る理想の永遠性を象徴するもの、と見るときである」（一六五頁）。ここにいう「理想」とは、鈴木説のいわゆる「霊性的日本の建設」であろう。このばあい、帝国主義日本を否定して霊性的日本を建設するために、いったい誰が身命を賭したのか、という問題はしばらくおくとして、この理想の永遠性を象徴するために、なにゆえ特定の血統の「人間」を必要とするのか、その人間が自己の基本的人権において、この象徴たることを否定した場合はどうなるのか、またこのような象徴をもたぬ国民はどうすればよいのか。天皇の位置がたとえ鈴木説のようであったとしても、血の万世一系をみとめるかぎり、すなわちなんらの天皇制をみとめるかぎり、そしてこの体制の世界性を主張するかぎり、その論理は新しいかたちの「八紘一宇」説に展開する契機を含むのではないか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
華厳の法界縁起の論理を、高楠説から鈴木説の方向に、どこまでも徹底させるならば、人間天皇による「民主的」な天皇制さえもその論理的根拠を失い、したがって鈴木説の後図も、その意味構造が本質的に変わるのではなかろうか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら、このような疑問にもかかわらず、「道徳的自由人としての個己、霊性的存在としての人格、ただ漠然たる“全体主義”の名の下で、蟻群化し能わぬ独立自主性の個体の価値」（一四二頁）を強調する鈴木説が、力による支配の原則をみとめない鈴木説――「法界の外に立つ力は、あるべきではない。力がないと組織が持てないというのは、そのようなものを外に求めることの非理なるに気が付かないからである。法界はそれ自身で完全な組織体である。これを組織する力は、組織そのものの中に固より具わって居るのである。それを外に求むるから内にあるものが却って歪められて、あらぬ方向へ転出する」（中略）――霊性的&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|330}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
日本国家の建設は、力を主体としたものであってはならぬ。事々無礙法界を、そのままに、吾等の生活を実際に映したものでなければならぬ」（一五三―一五四頁）――このような社会像は「法界はそれ自身で完全な組織体である。これを組織する力は、組織そのものの中に固より具わって居る」という指摘に注目しよう。それはアナキズムにおける「自由連合」の思想を想起させる、これを政治的にみるならば、華厳の法界縁起世界の象徴としての、新しい人類社会における、アナキズムを示唆するものとみられるであろう。力の原則の否定と、私有の原則の否定を土台とする華厳の法界は Buddhist Anarchist Communism (B・A・C) の世界だといえるであろう（もっとも、鈴木博士は、私有制について言及されたことはないように思われる）。「秩序と無政府との統合」Unity of order and anarchy に社会の完成されたかたちをみたプルードン（一八〇九―一八六五）の構想は、このことに関するかぎり、そのまま華厳の蓮華蔵世界にあてはまるであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
国家神道と仏法とは、根源においてひとつであるというのが、日本禅の伝統的な見解であった。江戸時代の禅匠東嶺円慈（一七二一―一七九二）は、つぎのように説いている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「大凡神」とは心なり。心垢滅尽して、鏡の明了なるが如き、是れを神と謂う。是の故に神乗は鏡を以て表体と為す。心鏡本来清浄常住寂然、是れを国常立尊と謂う。心鏡本来円明、物として現ぜざること無き、是れを天照大神と謂う。（中略）まさに知るべし、神乗仏法、同一理体、但だ是れ見性の一法を出でず。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[10]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この事情は東嶺の師、白隠慧鶴（一六八五―一七六八）の場合も同じであったが、明治の禅匠今北洪川（一八一六―一八九二）も同じ見解をのべている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「吾が朝には皇極の道有り。是れ天祖神明の大道にして、王者の正教なり。其の授受の悠久や、神孫一統、他姓を交えず。（中略）是れ吾が王道の万国に特絶する所以なり。」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|331}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
吾が皇国男子大丈夫は、先ず火も焼くこと能わず、水も溺らすこと能わざる底の、和魂真柱を肚内に堅立し、以て一旦豁然として貫通すれば、則ち皇極の道を権衡するに於て、亦間然する無し。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
東嶺の見解は、国家神道の核心をなす、皇統の万世一系を、仏法の立場から根拠づける論理を欠いている。仏教の基本原理である「諸行無常」と、神道の核心である皇位の天壌無窮とを、どのようにして媒介するか、まったく不明である。洪川の場合も同様、いや『虎関師錬』（一二七八―一三四六）、白隠、『天桂伝尊』（一六四八―一七三五）を含めて、現代にいたる日本禅の宗匠において、神道の神がどうして人間の根源的主体と同一であるのか、血統がどうして神系と同一であるのか、血統の断絶（出家生活）を原則とする宗旨が、どうして血統の連続を禅法的に基礎づけ得るのか、このもっとも本質的な問題点が、まったくかえりみられていない。白隠も東嶺も、そしてすべての禅者が、その神道観において、視力の致命的な弱さをばくろしているといえよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅的真実の永遠性と、特定の血統の政治的「倫理的」一系性とは、なんの関係もないのであり、皇統の一系――それは原始民族の遺風である――を、仏法ないし禅の立場から基礎づける論理は、存在しない。わけても明治以後の皇道禅は、禅のデカダンスの最大なるものである。血の一系と徳の一系との同一を強弁する論理（？）は、白隠の「施行歌」にみられるような、三世因果の思想のほかにはないであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
が〈じ〉はこの思想をもっても、基礎づけられない、それは現世の身分境遇の差別を説明するものでしかないのだから、この思想はむしろや現代の批判にたえ得るものではない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
詩人ホイットマン（一八一九―一八九二）は、人間の尊厳について、「君自身より神聖な神はありようはない。そしてこれこそは、もっとも古い、もっとも新しい神話が、共に最後に意味するものなのだ」（“Laws for Creation”）という。プルードンは人間の主権について、「すべての市民は王である」 (Every citizen is king.) と書いているが〔注12〕、日本禅のように、天照大神と人間の根源的主体とを、同一視することは、けっきょく国家神&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|332}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
道を否定することにほかならない。禅と日本国体、禅と天皇制との内面的・必然的連関をみとめないことにほかならない。これまで日本の禅者が、この帰結を自覚し表白していないということは、この禅者たちの禅的思惟が不徹底であり、真に「独脱無依」（『臨済録』）になっていないことを、しめすのではなかろうか。宗教的自由共産主義をとなえたキリスト教的実存哲学者ニコラス・ベルジャーエフ（一八七四―一九四八）は、哲学者ハイネマンによって、神秘的アナキスト mystical anarchist とよばれ、東洋思想わけても禅に心をよせて、キリスト教神学を批判したフランスの女流哲学者シモーヌ・ヴェイユ（一九〇九―一九四三）は、スペイン内乱に参加したアナキストであったが、禅の社会思想は、わたくしのみるところでは Prajñā (般若) of Śūnyatā (空) Anarchist Communism であろう（拙著『般若経』、三一書房参照）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section4&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 四 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
西欧の宗教的アナキストたちが、国家権力に抵抗しているのに（ニコラス・ベルジャーエフは帝政ロシアにおいて、共産主義者となって、投獄された）、禅ないし華厳の仏教に、このような事例がみられないばかりでなく、かえって逆の事例が、圧倒的に多いのは、どうしたことであろう。この諸事情の二、三をあげて、検討してみよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
最初にあげられることは、体験の事実の世界と日常的経験の事実の世界、無我の行為的直観の世界と経験的個我の現実の世界との、次元のちがいの朦朧化による、「二つの事実界の混合ないし混同」ということである。事々無礙の世界は般若体験の事実界であるが、これがたんなる経験的事実界と、容易に重なりあい融けあって、両者の断絶による緊張関係が、確立しない事情にある。人は、「善の研究」の著者西田が、高橋里美の批評に答えて、「純粋経験と非純粋経験とのあいだに、質差をみとめなかったことを、思いおこすであ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|333}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ろう。〔注14〕 この西田の見解は、禅学、仏教学にとっても、重要な意義をもっている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
右の事情は、仏教者の修為求道の重心が、「学問ノ末ニ走リテ、安心ノ本ヲ忘レ勿レ」（西田幾多郎『日記』）というように、「安心」の確立にあるがために、その到達点が「住めば都」といった、随処に安住する生きかたとなり、そのかぎりにおいて、その時々の環境が美化・合理化される心理的必然につながるとともに、般若直観の主体が「海印三昧」「宝鏡三昧」または「絶対無の場所」という言葉がしめすように、映すもの容れるものという性格においてあらわれる（これはさきの安心主義とも照応する）ために、環境に対する対象的変革的意志の執念が成立する以前に、観照の風流に乗ってしまうからでもある。「アジア的停滞」の東洋が、芸道の面においてすぐれているのも、「禅文化」の大半が芸道的であるのも、このことにつながる。敵とたたかうための弓術、武術が、平和の時代において、自己と対決する弓道、武道に転化し、内面化し、思想化し、体系化するとともに観照化したことは、興味ふかい。すべて「道」的なものは観照的なものである。いいかえるならば、「概成」の社会的約束ないし体制のワクのうちに安住するものである。有機的時代の有閑富裕な仏教者は、容易に華厳的観照の世界に遊んだであろうし、危機時代の不安な仏教者も、安心をもとめて観照の世界に入ったのである。この世界では、経験的な歴史的現実が、無礙円融のヴェールにおおわれて美化せられ、美化の度合に応じて、受容され合理化されるのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
世界のあらゆる事象は、海印三昧に映現して、重々無尽に円融する、と説かれている。思うに、「華厳経」にみられる蓮華蔵世界は、般若の行為的直観の事実界であるとともに、この事実を中心として構想された、創造的想像 creative imagination によるヴィジョンの世界である。このばあい無礙円融というのは、頑固なカースト社会体制のワクのなかでの、体験者の身辺的行為の事実、およびヴィジョンの世界の諸現象が円融無礙であることであって、人民大衆が生活しているなまなましい現実の世界が円融&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|334}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
無礙なのではない。海印三昧には、体験者の身辺的行為的な事々無礙の事実と、直観的ヴィジョンにおける円融の事実と、矛盾し抗争する暗い現実とが、三重の層をなして映現しているはずである。この立体的世界を、平板な円融無礙の一色に塗りつぶすことは誤りであろう。これと対照する意味において、ハーバート・リード（一八九三―一九六八）のつぎの言葉が思いおこされる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教は芸術（詩）と密接につながっている。（中略）スペイン内乱において、観察者は、アナキストの宗教的情熱に打たれた。アナキズムは、この潜在的ルネサンスの国において、英雄たちばかりか聖者たちを、すなわち、新しいかたちの人類社会の創造のために、感覚的想像と実践とにおいて生命をささげた、この新しい人々を鼓舞したのである。〔注15〕&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
次元のちがった世界の混同からくる、あしき現実主義について、つぎの批評が成り立つであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
法蔵の華厳哲学の表明する、事々無礙なる現象円融論、現象絶対論は、「性起」説すなわち海印三昧なる根本直覚をへてこそ、はじめて体得される真理であることは、明らかであるが、それが単なる思想として表現される時は、実践の媒介を否定し、安易な絶対主義的な世界観となる。（中略）現象円融論は、単に現実の「事」をそのまま認め、その円融を主張するのでは決してない。ほんとうの意味で事々無礙は、宗教的直覚の上に展開するものだからである。（中略）華厳の体系は、海印三昧によって発現する宗教的世界観である。この点を忘却して、現実の「事」を凡夫の分別からそのままの「事」として認め、その円融を説くならば、全く異なった思想となる。現象を絶対とするのは、その現象が蓮華蔵世界の一つを作っているからである。これを無視して、現象がすべて絶対的な意味を持つと云うことは、現実をそのままに肯定することになる。一歩あやまれば、現実の支配構造、社会構造を、無条件で肯定することになる。絶対肯定の哲学は、現実をそのまま認用する支配者の御用哲学ともなる。（鎌田茂雄）〔注16〕&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|335}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この批評は、華厳思想ないし大乗仏教のおちいりがちな、そして事実しばしばおちいった錯誤と病弊――たとえば僧肇（三八四―四一四）、大慧（一〇八九―一一六三）の場合――を、正しく指摘しているといえよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この批評は体験界と日常的経験界との区別を強調し、後者は「菩薩行の実践と慈悲に基づく誓願によって」浄化されねばならぬと主張する。それは高楠流の俗物主義を克服するものであり、この批評のうちに引かれた鈴木博士の見解とともに、正統説に立脚するものである。この見解は、いわば法蔵にみられる観照的傾向から、澄観（七三七―八三九）の体験主義への方向転換であり、この体験主義による教化伝道の主張であろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
華厳の事々無礙の世界は、体験とヴィジョンの共同制作の所産であって、現実の階級社会の構造的矛盾を把握し、分析し、これを実践的に揚棄しようとする行為の場とは、かかわりのない別次元の事柄であり、その次元でしか成り立たない世界である。この世界は、われわれの生活する世界の機構的根本矛盾を揚棄する、対象的実践を生む根拠・論理をもっていない。この点において、法蔵と澄観とのあいだに本質的な違いはない。それは単なる事実、単なる現実を肯定するのではなく、むしろこれを虚仮虚妄として否認するといっても、それは主観的意識の内部でのできごとであって、対象的変革的実践の場においてのできごとではなく、したがって事実においては、現状肯定の「二重真理説」であるほかはない。般若体験の世界と、単なる経験的現実の世界との峻別を自覚する仏教者が、事実において体制擁護的であることは、少しも不思議ではないのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section5&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 五 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
華厳思想が、さきにみたような伝統的な性格・制約を揚棄しないままで、現実世界のなかで社会倫理を形&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|336}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
成する場合には、すなわち「主は伴に対する主であり、伴は主に対する伴である」「心は物に対する心であり、物は心に対する物である」といった「相即」の論理、「相依相関」の縁起の論理によって、モラルを形成する場合には、そこに和合・調和・温情主義の倫理が生まれるであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
資本あっての事業、事業あっての労働であると同時に、労働あっての事業、事業あっての資本である。資本と労働との共同活動が即ち産業である。（中略）賃金を与える者貴くば、労働を与える者も同じく貴い。否、其の孰れも与えるのではない、資本と労働の持寄りに外ならない。（渋沢栄一）&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[19]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この産業資本家における労資協調のモラルは、禅者によってつぎのように示される。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「自他元来不二」なることを知らば、何の難義もない筈ぢゃ。労が家の資本ぢゃ。同時に資が家の労ぢゃ。争はどうしても起らぬ筈ぢゃ。（飯田欓隠）&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[20]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
和合のモラルは戦争のモラルともなる。華厳学者はつぎのように述べている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
平時にあっては、互いに離れ難きあつき因縁の繋りとして、睦みあうための基盤となれる縁起観は、非常の時であっては、また無礙の大敢闘精神の発露となって、日本国民としての責務を、その各々の持場に於て、果さしめてゆくのである。（亀川教信）&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[21]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
全国民の一人一人が、何れも御稜威のうちにあって、此の主伴具足感に奮い起つとき、一億の民は単なる一億に局限されずして、一億は同時に一億乗の力を発揮することとなる。（同）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この華厳学者によれば、「一即一切、一切即一」の無尽縁起の行為的把握に於て、個と全の関係が、真に如の形態に見得られるのは、わが日本国における国民的自覚の上に、浮び上って来る国家観に於てのみなることが知られる&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[22]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;」のであるが、この論理は戦後の日本において、かの近江絹糸の工員手帳（「鑑」）のなかに具体化し、また産業資本と禅との提携による工員錬成のモラルとして、その実績をあげつつある。「経団連」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|337}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
の支援によって発足した、さる禅道場における、最近の座談会「禅と企業」は、禅によるヒューマン・リレーションの調整と、企業経営の合理化および労務対策について語っているが、そのなかにつぎのような言葉がみられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一番大きな方針は、唯今私の方の常務が、申し上げましたように、ともかく一応学生生活の気分を一新する。そして自分というものと、会社の所属と、あるいは会社全体の中の個、個による全体ということを見ること、そして自分自身を一応分析して、会社の一員として一新して働いてもらうということを、一番根本方針にしておるわけです。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[23]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅寺でのお坊さんのお話は、非常に抹香臭いものだと考えておったところ、恋愛観も飛びだすということで、非常にくだけておって、ききよかった（中略）というアンケートもございました。なるべくならそういう風に、お色気をまじえたお話も、大変喜ぶようですので、お願いします。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ここで、言いたいのは、「主伴具足」にかんする亀川説（前記高楠説も同じ）についてである。この場合、主から伴への方向は、天皇絶対主義を根拠づけるものとして、どこまでも一方的であり、かつきわめて具体的現実的（帝国憲法的）であるが、伴が主としてとりあげられる方向は、観念的でしかない。このことは、いいかえるならば、主伴具足の論理を、階級社会に適用すべきではない、ということを示唆する。亀川説の場合には、主伴は真に円明具足とはいわれないのであり、この論理の創唱者法蔵自身ですらおそらくこの危険をまぬかれてはいなかったであろう。さきの鎌田氏は、同じ論文のなかで、この問題をとりあげ、「体験界の事実と経験界の事実との混同をいましめている」が、この批判が意識において否認して、現実において認容する、「二重真理説」にほかならぬことは、すでに指摘したとおりである。無政府共産社会こそ、主伴円明具徳のもっともよき象徴であるであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|338}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;span id=&amp;quot;section6&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
=== 六 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「仏を殺し祖を殺す」（『雲門録』）という言葉があるが、外的対象的な権威をみとめないことにおいて、禅のように徹底的であるものはないであろう。「無位の真人」の「随処に主となる」「独脱無依」の自由を強調したのは唐の禅匠臨済義玄（？―八六七）であったが、このような自由において、「丹霞天然」（七三九―八二四）は仏像を、「徳山宣鑑」（七八二―八六五）は経文を焼いたのである。「仏の一字、吾れ聞くを喜ばず」と趙州従諗（一七八―八九七）はいっている。この趙州のところへ、時の国王が部下をつれて訪れたことがあったが、趙州は座席（禅床）を降りて迎えることもなかった。その翌日、王が客将として昨日の答礼を述べさせると、彼は座席から降りて、客の挨拶をうけた。のちになって、門弟はあれはどうしたことかとたずねると、お前にはわからぬだろうが、「第一等の人来らば、禅床の上に接し、中等の人来らば、禅床を下って接し、末等の人来らば、三門の外に接す」これが自分の家風である、とかれは答えた。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[24]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「西方に国有り、安養と名づく。（中略）国に王制なく、階爵の序無し」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[25]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;という言葉がしめすように、仏教者が構想した未来社会は、無政府共産の世界であったと考えられる。クロポトキン（一八四二―一九二一）は、われわれの文化財、生活資料が、悠遠な過去からの、無数の人間の労働の果実であり、われわれはそれらに対して、「わがもの」my own と主張する根拠をもたないと述べている&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[26]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;が、仏教者もまた、これらのものが、衆生の重々無尽に交錯連関した活動の所産として、もともと全衆生に所属する「四方物」であり、「わがもの」mama-kāra という規定をゆるさない、と考えたのである。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[27]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;（ただし「梵網菩薩戒経」などにはすでに「国王もの」という思想がみられる。）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
仏教が現代において、その社会倫理ないし世界倫理を形成するために、とりくまねばならぬ問題は、およそつぎのとおりである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|339}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
まず仏教の超国家性の回復と、ナショナリズムの回復との総合の問題がある。いわゆる「鎮護国家」における国家は、王室、国土、人民の意味であったが、その主眼は天皇であった（中国においても、「国家年少胸懐を出でず」の国家は天子の意味であり、「国家、神宗より専ら経術を以て士を取る」の国家は朝廷の意味であった）。日本天台における「鎮護国家の十箇秘法」をみても、「天皇御即位灌頂」「皇帝御本命持念」「後宮安産御授戒」というように、天皇の一身にかんするものが、大半を占めている。いずれにせよ、仏教はその成立の当初から、国家権力と結びついてきたために――そこには、主権者を教化して善政をしかせよう、という意図があり、それが成果をおさめた場合もあるのだが――国家権力の本質を批判的に分析し検討する点に欠けるところがあった。しかし国王に対する警戒も強かったのであり、「比丘まさに王に近づくのは奴の如し」（『正法念経』）、「王は恒に賦税を多くし、横しまに過無き人を罰す」（中略）諸の貧苦の人を見ながら、會て憐愍の念無し。女人に耽り染って悪道を懼れず」（『唐訳華厳経』）といった言葉がみられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
仏典では、原始仏教に於けると同様に、国王は人民に害をなすものと考えられていた。だから、国王は《盗賊と並べられ、庶民の蒙る災難として「水火の難、盗賊の難、悪人の難」とともに、「国王の難」が挙げられている。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[30]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
国家悪の認識と、正しいナショナリズム（たとえば民族の独立と民族の提携）の回復との、総合の論理がみいだされねばならぬであろう。そしてこの問題との連関において、「生死に染まず去住自由」（『臨済録』）といった霊性的自由と、政治的、社会的自由との矛盾の統一の問題が探究される必要があるであろう。「宗教なくして、国家はありえない」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[31]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; とバクーニン（一八一四―一八七六）はいったが、しかし宗教は国家なくしてありうるのである（もっとも禅を「宗教」とよんでいいかどうかは問題である）。近代日本の禅が、天皇制国家権力によって、どのようにゆがめられたかについては、上来見てきたとおりである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|340}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
国家との連関において、つぎに考えられるのは、階級の問題である。マルクスは、「支配階級の思想はどの時代においても支配的な思想である。社会の支配的な物質的な力であるところの階級が、同時にその社会の精神的な力である。物質的生産の手段を左右する階級は、同時に精神的生産の手段を左右する。だから同時にまた、精神的生産の手段を欠いている人々の思想は、おおむねこの階級に隷従させられることになる」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[32]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; と書いているが、近代日本の禅イデオロギーもまた、この通則の例外でなかったことは、説明するまでもない。帝国主義日本における、国籍にしばられた日本禅から、「文化日本」における無国籍のコスモポリタン禅への、転向のプロセスのうちにも、この通則がなにほどか働いているのかもしれない。鈴木大拙博士とならんで世界的に著名な禅者久松真一博士は、「現在の直面する危機と世界倫理」にかんして、原子物理学の殺人的展開のうちに、ヒューマニズムそのものの危機を見、科学の異常な発達とモラルの立ち遅れとの未曾有の「跛行」を指摘して、「倫理力を増強して、この跛行を整形する」必要を力説し、しかもその倫理力が、特定の国家や国家ブロックや階級やイデオロギーのエゴイズムに立つものであってはならぬ、として新しい世界倫理を確立する急務を提唱していられる。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[33]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; まことに貴重な示唆である。しかしながら、ひるがえって考えるならば、科学と倫理との跛行は、はたしてヒューマニズムの危機とか、人類文化の行詰りとかいうものであろうか。世界の圧倒的多数の人民大衆は、良心的な多数の科学者とともに、原子力の殺人的利用に、繰り返し抗議し抵抗しているのである。かれらはいささかも偏向者ではない。そればかりか、この厖大な人民大衆の平和のためのたたかいこそが、科学とモラルの革命的分裂をくいとめているのである。偏向的であるのは、ヒューマニズムの危機をばくろしているのは、独占資本の「死の商人」たちにほかならない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
久松博士を中心とするＦ・Ａ・Ｓ禅がかかげるところの誓願「超歴史的歴史の創造」（to create Superhistorical history）&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[34]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; は、階級的視点をどのように処理しているのであろうか。その歴史創造の智と力とは、蒸溜水のご&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|341}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
とく無色透明であろうか。その社会倫理は、絶対者に基礎をおくＭ・Ｒ・Ａ（道徳再武装）の社会倫理と、どのようにちがうであろうか。「わたくしは公正であることは約束できるが、不偏不党であることは約束できない」（ゲーテ）（市川註・われわれはこのばあい、西田哲学の「行為的直観」との対比において、階級的自覚における「実践的直観」の論理を展開しつつある、唯物論者梅本克己氏の体系に注目したいと思う）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
階級の問題は、人間の自己疎外の問題、とくに労働における自己疎外の問題につながる。この問題と、まともにとりくむことなしには、仏教社会倫理の現代的形成はなしとげられないであろう。このことは、仏教者が賃金労働者の視点を、自己のうちに位置づけること、いいかえるならば、「商品」としての労働者（人間）の自覚的な視点を自分のうちに措定することを、必然的にするであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
疎外された労働は、人間から（一）自然を疎外し、（二）自己自身を、彼自身の活動的機能を、彼の生活行為を疎外することによって、それは人間から〈類〉を疎外する。（中略）人間が彼の労働の、彼の生活行為の生産物から、彼の類的存在から疎外される、ということからくる直接の帰結は、人間の人間からの疎外 die Entfremdung des Menschen von dem Menschen である。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[34]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
資本制社会においては、人間までが商品化される。青年男女の教育は、かれらのからだに「元手をいれる」ことにほかならず、青年たちは、「パースナリティの市場」において、「いかにして自分を売りつける」かの問題に腐心せざるをえない。アジャストメントというヒューマン・リレイションという、商品経済の土台のうえでの教育であり道徳である。「人的資源」といい「人間ドック」といい、ないしは「禅ブーム」という、まことに象徴的な言葉である。「玄関に、脚下照顧」とありましたが、脚下照顧が第一ですね。これからこそ健全な企業がでてくると思います。これは財界人の立場から言えば、安い投資ですよ。こんなものの「粒万倍」になって帰ってきますよ。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[35]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|342}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
売淫は、労働者の一般的売淫 allgemeine Prostitution des Arbeiters の、特殊な表現にすぎない。そして売淫は、淫売婦だけでなく、その相手――その卑劣さいっそう大きい――もはいる、一つの関係であるから、資本家たちもまたこの範疇にはいるのである。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[36]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような人間の自己疎外――わたくしはこれを人間の水平的な自己疎外 horizontal alienation として、実存的宗教的な自己疎外すなわち垂（鉛）直的な自己疎外 vertical estrangement と区別するのだが――は、これを快適なものとして享受する階級によっては、決して克服されず、これを苦痛としてうけとるほかない階級によってのみ、克服されるであろう（このことは、人間の垂直的な自己疎外の克服が、仏教のばあい、苦観にはじまるのと同じ論理・心理である）。商品としての賃金労働者の視点にたって、労働における人間の自己疎外（それは同時に、資本における人間の自己疎外でもある）を、克服しようと決意することは、われわれが階級的自覚にたつことにほかならない。階級的自覚を、階級的エゴイズムとしてしかとらえることのできない、平板な人類肯定する立場にはかなならない。「人類的世界倫理の立場においてこそ、人間の自己疎外は真に克服されるのだ」という見解、すなわち、階級的立場と人類的立場との対立の統一ではなく、たんなる人類的立場の視点は、人間の自己疎外を快適としてうけとっている階級が、ある朝、一斉にこれを苦痛として自覚するに至る、という幻想に立っている。しかし真に現実的な克服の道は、この甘いセンティメンタリズムをすてて、疎外を苦痛とするものの立場を主体として、現実をそのあるがままにとらえることから、始められるほかはない。それがすなわち歴史的現実を、客観性と党派性とを統一する立場において、とらえることである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ここでは一つの懺悔が問題なのであって、それ以上のことではない。人類がその罪業をゆるされるには、ただその罪業を実際にあるがままのものとして、公言すればたりるのだ。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[37]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|343}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「その罪業を実際にあるがままのものとして公言する」こと――これが『資本論』における商品の分析ではなかったか。これが道元の「万法に証せらるる」ということの、経済学の分野における内実ではなかろうか。労働力としての商品から、それの資本制的規定の、捨象された商品に到達し（下向運動）、これの科学的究明を媒介として、自己に直接的な自己矛盾が、資本制社会の階級的矛盾の細胞形態であることを、明らかにすること（上向運動）、この円環行程の、しかも「開かれた体系」&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[38]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; を、実践的直観において明らかにすることこそ、西田哲学の「物となって見、物となって考える」という方法の、社会科学的内実ではなかろうか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
こんにちわれわれ人間が、そして仏教者そのものが、商品経済社会（「売淫的世界」）によって生かされ、生きていること、この事態の全体が、「世間虚仮」であり、「そらごとたわごと」である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
カール・レヴィット（一八九七―一九七三）は、「マルクスの対蹠人たるキルケゴールさえ、資本と労働の関係への、マルクスの洞察を、人間としての生活そのものをもって実証」した実情を、興味ふかく記述している。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[39]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; 他方われわれは、間主体的 inter-subjective 社会における事々無礙を、客観的に現実化しようとする場合に、逢着するであろう「縁起哲学の限界」について、クロポトキンの説得的な評論から、多くのことを学ぶであろう。&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;[40]&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
世間の虚妄を――それの対象論理的・形而上的疎外をしばらくおく。ただし、対象そのものを変えるかわりに、対象の対象性を「空ずる」ことへの、きびしい批判をおこたってはならぬのだが――このようなアスペクトにおいて、われわれに自覚させ、このものの克服を決意させるものこそ、この分野における歴史の真実（ダルマ）であり、ここに仏教者における、社会倫理と社会科学との弁証の起点がある、とおもわれる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
「禅・華厳・アナキズム」（1961年）は、市川白弦の華厳思想と無政府主義の関係を論じた論考。本ページは『市川白弦著作集』第3巻（法蔵館、1993年）、319–343頁の本文をもとにした作業用の翻刻である。原著所収の注は344–345頁。図１・図２は鈴木大拙の論述から市川が引用した図である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
本翻刻はなお原本との最終校合を要する。本文中の上付き数字は原著の参照番号を示す。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Transcription and editing: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1961). “Zen, Kegon, anakizumu 禅・華厳・アナキズム” [Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism]. Transcribed and edited by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH61ZKA&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Japanese originals]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=Ichikawa_Hakugen&amp;diff=1240</id>
		<title>Ichikawa Hakugen</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=Ichikawa_Hakugen&amp;diff=1240"/>
		<updated>2026-10-12T17:43:19Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{Provisional Entry}}&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (市川白弦, 1902–1986) was a Japanese Rinzai Zen (臨済宗) priest, philosopher, and activist who became the foremost internal critic of &amp;quot;Imperial-Way Zen&amp;quot; (皇道禅, kōdō Zen), the wartime alignment of Japanese Zen Buddhism with state militarism and emperor-centered ideology.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives, Christopher (2009). &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics&#039;&#039;. University of Hawai&#039;i Press, p. 1.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; A professor at Hanazono University (花園大学) in Kyoto for over two decades, he spent the postwar period compiling and prosecuting the war responsibility of Japanese Buddhist institutions, including his own compromises during the war. Drawing on his teacher Ogasawara Shūjitsu&#039;s (小笠原秀実) Buddhist anarchism, on Kropotkin, and on Nishida-school philosophy, Ichikawa developed a systematic synthesis he called &amp;quot;Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (仏教者・アナキスト・コミュニズム, B・A・C) or &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (空-無政府-共同体論, S・A・C), grounding anarchist politics and communist economics in the Prajñāpāramitā concept of emptiness (空, kū). He remains the central reference point for any account of Zen&#039;s twentieth-century political entanglements and of Japanese Buddhist attempts at self-criticism after 1945.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Biography ==&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa was born in 1902, the thirty-fifth year of the Meiji period, in Gifu Prefecture north of Nagoya, the son of the resident priest of a small temple, Kezōji, affiliated with the Myōshinji (妙心寺) branch of Rinzai Zen.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 14.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; His mother came from a declining landlord family in Owari (present-day Aichi Prefecture); he had one younger sister.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 14.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; As a child he witnessed the poverty of his father&#039;s tenant parishioners at first hand, and as a middle-school student he watched his father sever ties with a parishioner family who had accused him of profiting from reciting &amp;quot;the dregs of the sutras,&amp;quot; an episode that left him permanently uneasy about the economics of temple life.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura Osamu (森村修) (2019). 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論（Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism）」――小笠原秀実の仏教アナキズムと西谷啓治の自衛論批判をめぐって」 [Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot;: On Ogasawara Shūjitsu&#039;s Buddhist Anarchism and Ichikawa&#039;s Critique of Nishitani Keiji&#039;s Argument for Self-Defense]. 『異文化. 論文編』 20: 157–158.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; A minor bureaucratic error also shaped his youth: his given name, Toshimizu (利水), was mistranscribed as &amp;quot;Shūsui&amp;quot; (秋水) on his school certificate not long after the 1911 High Treason Incident (大逆事件, also called the Kōtoku Incident, 幸徳事件), and his resulting protracted dispute with school officials coincided with, and reinforced, his growing interest in the executed anarchist Kōtoku Shūsui (幸徳秋水).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 159.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
By his own account Ichikawa was constitutionally &amp;quot;a coward&amp;quot; (臆病者, okubyō-mono): he dreaded conscription, military discipline, and death itself, and came to experience the emperor, as commander-in-chief with the power to command death, as bound to soldiery and mortality in what he called a &amp;quot;trinity.&amp;quot;&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 15.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; He treated this &amp;quot;cowardice&amp;quot; not as an excuse but as the psycho-physiological root of a lifelong antiwar and anti-kokutai (国体) temperament, and later wrote that &amp;quot;a coward&#039;s realization of social solidarity&amp;quot; had been the energy source of his youth.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 19.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Alongside the poetry of Ishikawa Takuboku (石川啄木), the anarchist essays of Ōsugi Sakae (大杉栄), Hugo, Tolstoy, Bakunin, Marx and Engels, Jack London, and Kropotkin, the young Ichikawa also corresponded with the then-unknown writer Miyazawa Kenji (宮沢賢治).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 16.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Through these readings a &amp;quot;humanistic anger at the evils of society and the state&amp;quot; took hold in him, feeding an early ambition to fuse socialist thought with Buddhism.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 16.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In 1920 Ichikawa entered a Myōshinji-branch training monastery in Kyoto, and in 1923 he enrolled at the Rinzai-affiliated university that later became Hanazono University, where he met Nishida Kitarō&#039;s (西田幾多郎) senior disciple Hisamatsu Shin&#039;ichi (久松真一) and, more decisively, Ogasawara Shūjitsu (小笠原秀実, 1885–1958), a philosopher-poet and self-described anarchist who became his only acknowledged teacher.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 159.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; After graduating in 1926 he taught English at Hanazono Middle School while continuing independent study of Western philosophy, and by around 1930 he had begun to formulate what he later named &amp;quot;Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (仏教者・アナキスト・コミュニズム, B・A・C), the idea that a genuinely contemporary Buddhist social thought would have to be simultaneously anarchist and communist.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 160.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; The escalating repression of the early 1930s under the Peace Preservation Law (治安維持法), and in particular the 1933 death under torture of the novelist Kobayashi Takiji (小林多喜二), shook his confidence that such a program could be realized; by his own later admission, his youthful &amp;quot;conviction&amp;quot; in B・A・C began &amp;quot;wobbling from the ground up,&amp;quot; and he gradually rationalized political quietism on the grounds that, as a temple priest, he could not commit his parishioners to a movement they had not chosen.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 160–161.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa&#039;s wartime record was ambiguous rather than uniformly collaborationist. His first book, 『禅の基本的性格』 (Zen no Kihonteki Seikaku, The Fundamental Character of Zen, 1942), avoided nationalist celebration, unusually for Buddhist writing of the period.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 18.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Yet in the September 1942 installment of a series on &amp;quot;War, Science, and Zen&amp;quot; serialized in the journal 『大法輪』 (Daihōrin), he described the Pacific War as a holy war (聖戦, seisen) fought to secure lasting peace in Asia, a position scholar Ishii Kōsei (石井公成) has since called opportunistic and which Ichikawa himself, after 1945, judged to reflect a wartime failure of &amp;quot;tenacity and autonomy.&amp;quot;&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, pp. 18–19.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
After the war Ichikawa turned this same scrutiny outward and inward at once. He became a professor at Hanazono University in 1949 and began publishing pointed critiques of Zen quietism, most notably &amp;quot;On the Solitary Aloofness of Zen&amp;quot; (禅の孤高性について, 1950) and &amp;quot;Concerning Zen Praxis&amp;quot; (禅の実践について, 1951), which accused institutional Zen of a self-satisfied detachment from social and political responsibility.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 19.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; These essays provoked Myōshinji ecclesiastical officials to attempt his removal from the Hanazono faculty; he refused to resign and was retained after the university president brokered a face-saving internal inquiry, with the backing of faculty committed to academic freedom.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 19; Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 162–163.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; With Ogasawara he briefly co-founded the journal 『思想紀元』 (Shisō Kigen, The Era of Thought), which folded after three issues, and from October 1952 to September 1957 he served on the Kyoto City Board of Education (京都市教育委員会), where he defended Asahigaoka Middle School (旭丘中学校) in Kyoto against government charges of &amp;quot;biased education&amp;quot; and delivered a public lecture there marking the 1953 Korean War armistice.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 19; Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 161–163.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In 1952, after the postwar purge of Kyoto School philosopher Nishitani Keiji (西谷啓治) was lifted, Ichikawa engaged him in a public exchange over Japanese rearmament, criticizing Nishitani&#039;s endorsement of American-aligned unilateral peace and &amp;quot;self-defense&amp;quot; as neglectful of the economic and geopolitical interests actually driving remilitarization.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 188–196.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Ichikawa also joined the 1950 Stockholm Appeal campaign against nuclear weapons (原爆禁止ストックホルム・アピール) and, from 1965 until its 1973 disbanding, took part in demonstrations of the Kyoto chapter of Betheiren (べ平連), the citizens&#039; league opposing the Vietnam War, reportedly its oldest regular participant.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 20.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa retired from Hanazono University in 1972 and moved to Chiba to live near his son, Ichikawa Hiroshi (市川浩), himself a philosopher. He had his name struck from the Myōshinji monastic registry, returned to lay status, and devoted his remaining years to what he called &amp;quot;Liberation Zen Studies&amp;quot; (解放の禅学, kaihō no Zengaku), memorialized in a 1976 autobiographical essay of that title.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 20.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; He died of pneumonia in 1986; colleagues Furuta Shōkin (古田紹欽) and Hayashi Munehide proposed for him the posthumous Buddhist name &amp;quot;Zetsugaku Hakugen Zenjin&amp;quot; (絶学白弦禅人, Scholarship-Surpassing Zen Man Hakugen).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 22.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Ideas ==&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa&#039;s mature social thought crystallized in what he termed &amp;quot;Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (仏教者・アナキスト・コミュニズム, B・A・C), also rendered &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (空-無政府-共同体論, S・A・C) to foreground its metaphysical basis in the Prajñāpāramitā concept of emptiness (空, kū).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 160, 175.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; On his formulation, emptiness supplies the basic spirit and organizing principle of a good society: politically this yields anarchism, in the sense of a Buddhist rejection of any social order founded on domination; economically it yields communism, in the sense of the negation of exclusive private property; and religio-ethically it demands cultivating the subjective character needed to build and sustain such a community.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 160.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Ichikawa traced this synthesis directly to his teacher, Ogasawara Shūjitsu, whose poetic gloss on the Heart Sutra (&amp;quot;般若心経意&amp;quot;, Hannya Shingyō-i) and philosophy of &amp;quot;experiential apprehension&amp;quot; (體認論, taininron) read emptiness not as a negation but as unafraid, all-embracing joy, and who preferred to translate &amp;quot;anarchism&amp;quot; as &amp;quot;free association&amp;quot; (自由連合, jiyū rengō) rather than as &amp;quot;the absence of government&amp;quot; (無政府主義, museifu shugi).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 166–170.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Following Ogasawara, Ichikawa also insisted on distinguishing &amp;quot;anarchism&amp;quot; (アナキズム), an ideology, from &amp;quot;the anarchist&amp;quot; (アナキスト), a living person, so that a thinker&#039;s professed politics could not simply be equated with, or excused by, their personal conduct.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 176.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A second pillar of his thought was &amp;quot;origin humanism&amp;quot; (原点ヒューマニズム, genten hyūmanizumu), the claim that the individual stands at the tense intersection (&amp;quot;origin,&amp;quot; 原点, genten) of two distinct axes of freedom: a &amp;quot;vertical&amp;quot; axis (竪の自由) of transcendent, contemplative Zen freedom, epitomized by the Rinzai (Linji) injunction to &amp;quot;become master of oneself wherever one stands&amp;quot; (随所に主となる, zuisho ni shu to naru), and a &amp;quot;horizontal&amp;quot; axis (横の自由) of social freedom modeled on Marx&#039;s account of workers reclaiming subjectivity from commodification.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 22; Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 177–179.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Ichikawa argued that Zen enlightenment becomes ethically responsible only when these two freedoms are held in dynamic, if inherently difficult, unity, rather than allowing contemplative freedom to excuse political passivity, or social activism to dispense with inner freedom.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 177–179.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa&#039;s diagnostic project, pursued most fully in 『仏教者の戦争責任』 (Bukkyōsha no Sensō Sekinin, Buddhists&#039; Responsibility for the War, 1970), catalogued the specific doctrinal resources of Zen and Japanese Buddhism that had been mobilized to legitimate Imperial-Way Buddhism (皇道仏教, kōdō Bukkyō): karmic (業, gō) explanations of poverty and suffering as deserved; the formula &amp;quot;differences are none other than equality&amp;quot; (差別即平等, shabetsu-soku-byōdō), used to sanctify existing social hierarchy including the emperor&#039;s status; the ethic of indebtedness and gratitude (恩, on), directed above all toward the emperor; the valorization of social harmony (和, wa); a soteriology of accommodation to &amp;quot;things as they are&amp;quot; (あるがまま, arugamama); and, especially, a Zen &amp;quot;aloofness&amp;quot; (孤高性, kokōsei) that treated genuine enlightenment as standing above social and political judgment and thereby left institutions silent in the face of militarism.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, pp. 21–22, and &#039;&#039;passim&#039;&#039;.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Crucially, he refused to treat war responsibility (戦争責任, sensō sekinin) as a closed historical question to be settled by ritual apology, insisting on structural self-examination and applying the same standard to his own wartime writings, including the 1942 essay that had called the war &amp;quot;holy.&amp;quot;&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, pp. 20–21.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In &amp;quot;The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō&amp;quot; (絶対無のつまずき――西田幾多郎の場合, 1959) Ichikawa extended this critique to the Kyoto School&#039;s founder, arguing that Nishida&#039;s philosophy of &amp;quot;place&amp;quot; (場所, basho) and &amp;quot;absolute contradictory self-identity&amp;quot; (絶対矛盾の自己同一, zettai mujun no jiko dōitsu) was, in principle, capable of grounding a radically egalitarian, even anarchist, social philosophy purged of all external authority, but that under wartime pressure Nishida had instead let this logic underwrite the imperial kokutai; Ichikawa contrasted this outcome with what he considered Suzuki Daisetsu&#039;s (鈴木大拙) more genuinely anarchist-compatible postwar reading of Kegon (華厳) philosophy and its vision of a world of &amp;quot;mutual non-obstruction&amp;quot; (事々無礙法界, jiji-muge hokkai).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 196–199.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; The same conviction that Buddhist metaphysics carries no single, fixed political valence, but is always realized through the concrete choices of &amp;quot;living&amp;quot; Buddhists rather than abstract doctrine, underlies both his critique of the Kyoto School and his 1952 public dispute with Nishitani Keiji over rearmament, in which Ichikawa argued that Nishitani&#039;s case for Japanese &amp;quot;self-defense&amp;quot; ignored how remilitarization served international monopoly capital and Cold War strategy rather than a genuine security &amp;quot;vacuum,&amp;quot; and proposed instead a demilitarized, economically democratized solidarity of peoples across national borders.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 188–196.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Later commentators, including Morimura Osamu (森村修), have argued that this vision of borderless, horizontally federated solidarity among &amp;quot;cowards&amp;quot; anticipates aspects of postwar and contemporary anarchist theory, including Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt&#039;s concept of the multitude.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 191–193.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Writings ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A four-volume collected works, &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 [Collected Works of Ichikawa Hakugen], was published posthumously (Kyoto: Hōzōkan 法蔵館, 1993). The selection below follows the original publication dates and venues reported in that collection, except where otherwise indicated. For texts available on the Radical Buddhism Project (RBP), the Japanese and English titles link directly to the respective editions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Marukusushugi to Zen: oboegaki&#039;&#039; マルクス主義と禅――覚え書 [Notes on Marxism and Zen]. &#039;&#039;Chūō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 中央仏教 (June 1930). {{annotation|An early, tentative attempt to read Zen practice alongside Marxist categories, predating the fuller B・A・C synthesis of the 1950s.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Bukkyō yori mita Hēgeru no benshōhō&#039;&#039; 仏教より見たヘーゲルの弁証法 [Hegel&#039;s Dialectic from the Perspective of Buddhism]. &#039;&#039;Gendai Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 現代仏教 88 (1932). {{annotation|Critiques Hegelian dialectical logic from a Buddhist standpoint, laying groundwork for Ichikawa&#039;s later objections to reading Zen and Nishida philosophy through dialectical categories.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen no kihonteki seikaku&#039;&#039; 禅の基本的性格 [The Fundamental Character of Zen]. Tokyo: Dōbunkan 同文館, 1942. {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s first book; conspicuously avoids the nationalist rhetoric common in contemporaneous Buddhist writing, though it appeared alongside his more openly wartime-affirming journalism of the same year.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zengaku sasshin no ichi shihyō: Zen no seiji rinri sōken no tame ni&#039;&#039; 禅学刷新の一指標――禅の政治倫理創建のために [A Target for Reform in Zen Studies: Toward the Construction of Zen Political Ethics]. &#039;&#039;Zengaku kenkyū&#039;&#039; 禅学研究 39 (June 1946). {{annotation|An early postwar call to rebuild Zen scholarship around explicit political ethics.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* [[IH49KST|&#039;&#039;Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 共産主義思想の展開と仏教]] [[IH49KST-T|Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought]]. In &#039;&#039;Gendai Bukkyō mondai gokō&#039;&#039; 現代仏教問題五講, edited by Nakajima Bunkyō 中島文鏡. Tokyo: Yangu Iisuto Sha, 1949. {{annotation|Situates Buddhist thought in relation to the postwar spread of communist ideas in Japan.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen no kokōsei ni tsuite: Zen ni taisuru gigi&#039;&#039; 禅の孤高性について――禅に対する疑義 [On the Solitary Aloofness of Zen: Some Doubts about Zen], parts I–II. &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 思想 307, 308 (January–February 1950). {{annotation|The essay that provoked Myōshinji&#039;s attempt to remove Ichikawa from the Hanazono faculty; argues that Zen&#039;s self-image of detached, &amp;quot;high-minded&amp;quot; enlightenment functioned to excuse institutional silence during the war.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Hannya shingyō shinkō&#039;&#039; 般若心経新講 [New Lectures on the Heart Sutra]. Tokyo: Tōsei Shuppansha 東成出版社, 1951. {{annotation|A doctrinal commentary on the Heart Sutra that already frames prajñā-emptiness in terms of joy, liberation, and social solidarity rather than mere negation.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen no jissen ni tsuite: rekishi tenkanki ni okeru hihanteki shiron&#039;&#039; 禅の実践について――歴史転換期における批判的試論 [On Zen Praxis: A Critical Exploratory Essay at a Historical Turning Point]. &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 思想 326 (October 1951). {{annotation|A follow-up to the 1950 &amp;quot;solitary aloofness&amp;quot; essay, further developing the demand that Zen practice be answerable to historical and social conditions.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;“Owasareta genjitsu” no tetsugaku: Nishitani hakase no jieiron ni tsuite&#039;&#039; 「負わされた現実」の哲学――西谷博士の自衛論について [The Philosophy of &amp;quot;Imposed Actuality&amp;quot;: On Dr. Nishitani&#039;s Argument for Self-Defense]. &#039;&#039;Chūō Kōron&#039;&#039; 中央公論 (May 1952). {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s opening rebuttal in his public exchange with Nishitani Keiji over the postwar peace treaty and Japanese rearmament.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Nishitani kyōju no saibusōron&#039;&#039; 西谷教授の再武装論 [Professor Nishitani&#039;s Argument for Rearmament]. &#039;&#039;Ushio&#039;&#039; 潮 (August 1952). {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s closing statement in the Nishitani debate, reiterating that rearmament served Cold War and capital interests rather than genuine national security. Ives (2009) cites this same essay as appearing in &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 58, no. 8 (August 1952); the discrepancy over the venue remains unresolved.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* [[IH55ZC|&#039;&#039;Zen to kyōsanshugi&#039;&#039; 禅と共産主義]] [[IH55ZC-T|Zen and Communism]]. Date of first publication requires confirmation (provisionally ca. 1955). {{annotation|Explores Zen&#039;s relationship to communism and the possibilities and limits of bringing Buddhist awakening into dialogue with Marxist thought.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Hannya-kyō: Hannya shisō no gendai e no tenkai&#039;&#039; 般若経――般若思想の現代への展開 [The Wisdom Sutras: The Development of the Philosophy of Prajñā for the Contemporary Age]. Kyoto: San&#039;ichi Shobō 三一書房, 1956. {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s fullest mid-career statement of Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism, grounding it explicitly in Prajñāpāramitā philosophy.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* [[IH56ZTM|&#039;&#039;Zen to Marukishizumu&#039;&#039; 禅とマルキシズム]] [[IH56ZTM-T|Zen and Marxism]]. 1956; reprinted in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 2, &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; 禅と現代思想 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan 法蔵館, 1993), 293–312. {{annotation|Distinguishes Zen experience from Zen as ideology; criticises Zen&#039;s historical accommodation of social hierarchy and wartime power, and explores the relationship between spiritual practice and social transformation.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zettai mu no tsumazuki: Nishida Kitarō no baai&#039;&#039; 絶対無のつまずき――西田幾多郎の場合 [The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō]. &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 思想 (1959). {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s central critique of his teacher&#039;s teacher, Nishida Kitarō, arguing that Nishida&#039;s own logic could have grounded an anarchist ethics but was instead bent to serve the wartime &#039;&#039;kokutai&#039;&#039;.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Bukkyō to shakai seigi no mondai&#039;&#039; 仏教と社会正義の問題 [Buddhism and the Problem of Social Justice]. &#039;&#039;Sōzō&#039;&#039; 創造 94–104 (ten installments, 1959–1960). {{annotation|A serialized study connecting Buddhist ethics to concrete questions of social and economic justice.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム [Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism]. &#039;&#039;Jiyū Shisō&#039;&#039; 自由思想 5 (1961). {{annotation|Argues that Kegon philosophy&#039;s &amp;quot;realm of mutual non-obstruction&amp;quot; (&#039;&#039;jiji muge hokkai&#039;&#039; 事々無礙法界), read correctly, points toward an anarchist rather than authoritarian social vision, contrasting Suzuki Daisetsu&#039;s postwar Kegon interpretation with wartime state-affirming readings.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Nihon no seijiteki shūkyō: Tennō Shintō to Sōka Gakkai&#039;&#039; 日本の政治的宗教――天皇神道と創価学会 [Japan&#039;s Political Religions: Imperial Shinto and Sōka Gakkai]. &#039;&#039;Jiyū&#039;&#039; 自由 63–65 (1963). {{annotation|Extends the critique of Buddhist accommodation to state power into a comparative account of postwar Japan&#039;s new religious-political formations.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* “A Preliminary Conception of Zen Social Ethics,” parts I–II. &#039;&#039;Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū&#039;&#039; 印度学仏教学研究 11, no. 10 (January 1963): 20–31; 13, no. 2 (1965): 12–20. {{annotation|A rare English-language statement of Ichikawa&#039;s project, presenting the outlines of a systematic Zen social ethics for an international scholarly audience.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Fuhenteki kū&#039;&#039; 普遍的空 [Universal Emptiness]. &#039;&#039;Zengaku kenkyū&#039;&#039; 禅学研究 55 (July 1966). {{annotation|Develops the concept of emptiness (&#039;&#039;kū&#039;&#039; 空) as a universal, non-sectarian ethical resource rather than a purely Buddhist doctrinal category.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; 禅と現代思想 [Zen and Contemporary Thought]. Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten 徳間書店, 1967. {{annotation|Places classical Zen concepts into direct conversation with contemporary Marxist and existentialist thought.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Bukkyōsha no sensō sekinin&#039;&#039; 仏教者の戦争責任 [Buddhists&#039; Responsibility for the War]. Tokyo: Shunjūsha 春秋社, 1970. {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s landmark work, systematically documenting Buddhist institutional and doctrinal complicity in Japanese wartime imperialism; the primary source for his account of his own &amp;quot;coward&#039;s&amp;quot; psychology and its role in his wartime accommodation.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Nihon ni okeru Bukkyō shakaishugi no mondai&#039;&#039; 日本における仏教社会主義の問題 [The Problem of Buddhist Socialism in Japan]. In &#039;&#039;Bukkyōsha no sensō sekinin&#039;&#039; 仏教者の戦争責任, 150–176. Tokyo: Shunjūsha 春秋社, 1970; published in English as “The Problem of Buddhist Socialism in Japan,” &#039;&#039;Japanese Religions&#039;&#039; 6, no. 3 (August 1970): 15–37. {{annotation|The chapter in which Ichikawa explicitly proposes &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (S・A・C) as a more precise alternative to the label &amp;quot;Buddhist socialism.&amp;quot;}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Nihon fashizumu-ka no shūkyō&#039;&#039; 日本ファシズム下の宗教 [Religion under Japanese Fascism]. Tokyo: Enuesu Publishing, 1975. {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s last book, extending his war-responsibility critique from Zen specifically to Japanese religion under fascism more broadly, and containing his frank admission that he was unsure he would have the courage to resist a renewed war.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Kaihō no zengaku e: jiden-fū ni&#039;&#039; 解放の禅学へ――自伝風に [Toward a Liberating Zen Studies: An Autobiographical Approach]. &#039;&#039;Shisō no kagaku&#039;&#039; 思想の科学 68 (1976). {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s principal autobiographical essay, written the year he formally left the Myōshinji monastic registry, recounting his childhood, his &amp;quot;cowardice,&amp;quot; and the genesis of his social thought.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Secondary Literature in English ==&lt;br /&gt;
* Ives, Christopher (2009). &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics&#039;&#039;. University of Hawai&#039;i Press. {{annotation|The definitive English-language monograph on Ichikawa, combining a detailed intellectual biography with an independent argument locating Imperial-Way Zen within a longer history of &amp;quot;Buddhism for the protection of the realm.&amp;quot;}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Victoria, Brian Daizen (2006 [1997]). &#039;&#039;Zen at War&#039;&#039;, 2nd ed. Rowman &amp;amp; Littlefield. {{annotation|The book that first brought Ichikawa&#039;s documentation of Zen&#039;s wartime collaboration to a wide English readership, drawing extensively, and by its author&#039;s own acknowledgment, on Ichikawa&#039;s research.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Ives, Christopher (1995). &amp;quot;Ethical Pitfalls in Imperial Zen and Nishida Philosophy: Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s Critique&amp;quot;. In: Heisig, James W., &amp;amp; John C. Maraldo (Eds.), &#039;&#039;Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, &amp;amp; the Question of Nationalism&#039;&#039;: 16–39. University of Hawai&#039;i Press. {{annotation|An earlier journal-length statement of the argument later expanded into Ives&#039;s 2009 monograph, focused specifically on Ichikawa&#039;s critique of Nishida philosophy.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Secondary Literature in Japanese ==&lt;br /&gt;
* Morimura Osamu (森村修) (2019). 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論（Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism）」――小笠原秀実の仏教アナキズムと西谷啓治の自衛論批判をめぐって」 [Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot;: On Ogasawara Shūjitsu&#039;s Buddhist Anarchism and Ichikawa&#039;s Critique of Nishitani Keiji&#039;s Argument for Self-Defense]. 『異文化. 論文編』 20: 155–208. {{annotation|The most comprehensive Japanese-language study of Ichikawa&#039;s S・A・C/B・A・C thought, tracing its origin in Ogasawara Shūjitsu&#039;s Buddhist anarchism and situating it in relation to the 1952 Nishitani debate and contemporary &amp;quot;new anarchism.&amp;quot;}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Fujii Yūsuke (藤井祐介) (2014). 「市川白弦と小笠原秀実」 [Ichikawa Hakugen and Ogasawara Shūjitsu]. 『唯一者』 13: 15–20. {{annotation|Reconstructs the direct intellectual debt Ichikawa owed to his teacher, arguing for continuity between Ogasawara&#039;s &amp;quot;philosophy of experiential apprehension&amp;quot; and Ichikawa&#039;s mature ethics.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Ishii Kōsei (石井公成) (2004). 「宗教者の戦争責任――市川白弦その人の検証を通して」 [The War Responsibility of Religionists: Through an Examination of Ichikawa Hakugen Himself]. In: Ikegami Yoshimasa (池上良正), Oda Yoshiko (小田淑子), Shimazono Susumu (島薗進), Sueki Fumihiko (末木文美士), Seki Kazutoshi (関一敏), &amp;amp; Tsuruoka Yoshi (鶴岡賀雄) (Eds.), 『暴力――破壊と秩序』 [Violence: Destruction and Order], vol. 8 of 『岩波講座 宗教』: 223–249. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten (岩波書店). {{annotation|A critical reassessment of Ichikawa&#039;s own wartime record, arguing that his postwar self-criticism, while unusually rigorous, understated the extent and timing of his wartime ambiguity.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Tsurumi Shunsuke (鶴見俊輔) (1993). 「解説」 [Commentary]. In: Ichikawa Hakugen, 『市川白弦著作集』 [The Collected Works of Ichikawa Hakugen], vol. 3: 485–493. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. {{annotation|An afterword by a leading postwar intellectual historian and fellow Betheiren activist, situating Ichikawa&#039;s concept of habitual wartime complicity within broader Japanese debates on tenkō (転向) and social responsibility.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite This Article ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
First version, 29 July 2026. Main: Brons, Lajos. Other: (none).&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Brons, Lajos ({{REVISIONYEAR}}). &amp;quot;Ichikawa Hakugen&amp;quot;. &#039;&#039;Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/Ichikawa_Hakugen&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Biographies]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Japan]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=Ichikawa_Hakugen&amp;diff=1239</id>
		<title>Ichikawa Hakugen</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=Ichikawa_Hakugen&amp;diff=1239"/>
		<updated>2026-10-12T17:41:48Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{Provisional Entry}}&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (市川白弦, 1902–1986) was a Japanese Rinzai Zen (臨済宗) priest, philosopher, and activist who became the foremost internal critic of &amp;quot;Imperial-Way Zen&amp;quot; (皇道禅, kōdō Zen), the wartime alignment of Japanese Zen Buddhism with state militarism and emperor-centered ideology.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives, Christopher (2009). &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics&#039;&#039;. University of Hawai&#039;i Press, p. 1.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; A professor at Hanazono University (花園大学) in Kyoto for over two decades, he spent the postwar period compiling and prosecuting the war responsibility of Japanese Buddhist institutions, including his own compromises during the war. Drawing on his teacher Ogasawara Shūjitsu&#039;s (小笠原秀実) Buddhist anarchism, on Kropotkin, and on Nishida-school philosophy, Ichikawa developed a systematic synthesis he called &amp;quot;Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (仏教者・アナキスト・コミュニズム, B・A・C) or &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (空-無政府-共同体論, S・A・C), grounding anarchist politics and communist economics in the Prajñāpāramitā concept of emptiness (空, kū). He remains the central reference point for any account of Zen&#039;s twentieth-century political entanglements and of Japanese Buddhist attempts at self-criticism after 1945.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Biography ==&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa was born in 1902, the thirty-fifth year of the Meiji period, in Gifu Prefecture north of Nagoya, the son of the resident priest of a small temple, Kezōji, affiliated with the Myōshinji (妙心寺) branch of Rinzai Zen.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 14.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; His mother came from a declining landlord family in Owari (present-day Aichi Prefecture); he had one younger sister.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 14.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; As a child he witnessed the poverty of his father&#039;s tenant parishioners at first hand, and as a middle-school student he watched his father sever ties with a parishioner family who had accused him of profiting from reciting &amp;quot;the dregs of the sutras,&amp;quot; an episode that left him permanently uneasy about the economics of temple life.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura Osamu (森村修) (2019). 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論（Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism）」――小笠原秀実の仏教アナキズムと西谷啓治の自衛論批判をめぐって」 [Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot;: On Ogasawara Shūjitsu&#039;s Buddhist Anarchism and Ichikawa&#039;s Critique of Nishitani Keiji&#039;s Argument for Self-Defense]. 『異文化. 論文編』 20: 157–158.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; A minor bureaucratic error also shaped his youth: his given name, Toshimizu (利水), was mistranscribed as &amp;quot;Shūsui&amp;quot; (秋水) on his school certificate not long after the 1911 High Treason Incident (大逆事件, also called the Kōtoku Incident, 幸徳事件), and his resulting protracted dispute with school officials coincided with, and reinforced, his growing interest in the executed anarchist Kōtoku Shūsui (幸徳秋水).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 159.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
By his own account Ichikawa was constitutionally &amp;quot;a coward&amp;quot; (臆病者, okubyō-mono): he dreaded conscription, military discipline, and death itself, and came to experience the emperor, as commander-in-chief with the power to command death, as bound to soldiery and mortality in what he called a &amp;quot;trinity.&amp;quot;&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 15.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; He treated this &amp;quot;cowardice&amp;quot; not as an excuse but as the psycho-physiological root of a lifelong antiwar and anti-kokutai (国体) temperament, and later wrote that &amp;quot;a coward&#039;s realization of social solidarity&amp;quot; had been the energy source of his youth.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 19.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Alongside the poetry of Ishikawa Takuboku (石川啄木), the anarchist essays of Ōsugi Sakae (大杉栄), Hugo, Tolstoy, Bakunin, Marx and Engels, Jack London, and Kropotkin, the young Ichikawa also corresponded with the then-unknown writer Miyazawa Kenji (宮沢賢治).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 16.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Through these readings a &amp;quot;humanistic anger at the evils of society and the state&amp;quot; took hold in him, feeding an early ambition to fuse socialist thought with Buddhism.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 16.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In 1920 Ichikawa entered a Myōshinji-branch training monastery in Kyoto, and in 1923 he enrolled at the Rinzai-affiliated university that later became Hanazono University, where he met Nishida Kitarō&#039;s (西田幾多郎) senior disciple Hisamatsu Shin&#039;ichi (久松真一) and, more decisively, Ogasawara Shūjitsu (小笠原秀実, 1885–1958), a philosopher-poet and self-described anarchist who became his only acknowledged teacher.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 159.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; After graduating in 1926 he taught English at Hanazono Middle School while continuing independent study of Western philosophy, and by around 1930 he had begun to formulate what he later named &amp;quot;Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (仏教者・アナキスト・コミュニズム, B・A・C), the idea that a genuinely contemporary Buddhist social thought would have to be simultaneously anarchist and communist.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 160.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; The escalating repression of the early 1930s under the Peace Preservation Law (治安維持法), and in particular the 1933 death under torture of the novelist Kobayashi Takiji (小林多喜二), shook his confidence that such a program could be realized; by his own later admission, his youthful &amp;quot;conviction&amp;quot; in B・A・C began &amp;quot;wobbling from the ground up,&amp;quot; and he gradually rationalized political quietism on the grounds that, as a temple priest, he could not commit his parishioners to a movement they had not chosen.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 160–161.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa&#039;s wartime record was ambiguous rather than uniformly collaborationist. His first book, 『禅の基本的性格』 (Zen no Kihonteki Seikaku, The Fundamental Character of Zen, 1942), avoided nationalist celebration, unusually for Buddhist writing of the period.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 18.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Yet in the September 1942 installment of a series on &amp;quot;War, Science, and Zen&amp;quot; serialized in the journal 『大法輪』 (Daihōrin), he described the Pacific War as a holy war (聖戦, seisen) fought to secure lasting peace in Asia, a position scholar Ishii Kōsei (石井公成) has since called opportunistic and which Ichikawa himself, after 1945, judged to reflect a wartime failure of &amp;quot;tenacity and autonomy.&amp;quot;&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, pp. 18–19.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
After the war Ichikawa turned this same scrutiny outward and inward at once. He became a professor at Hanazono University in 1949 and began publishing pointed critiques of Zen quietism, most notably &amp;quot;On the Solitary Aloofness of Zen&amp;quot; (禅の孤高性について, 1950) and &amp;quot;Concerning Zen Praxis&amp;quot; (禅の実践について, 1951), which accused institutional Zen of a self-satisfied detachment from social and political responsibility.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 19.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; These essays provoked Myōshinji ecclesiastical officials to attempt his removal from the Hanazono faculty; he refused to resign and was retained after the university president brokered a face-saving internal inquiry, with the backing of faculty committed to academic freedom.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 19; Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 162–163.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; With Ogasawara he briefly co-founded the journal 『思想紀元』 (Shisō Kigen, The Era of Thought), which folded after three issues, and from October 1952 to September 1957 he served on the Kyoto City Board of Education (京都市教育委員会), where he defended Asahigaoka Middle School (旭丘中学校) in Kyoto against government charges of &amp;quot;biased education&amp;quot; and delivered a public lecture there marking the 1953 Korean War armistice.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 19; Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 161–163.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In 1952, after the postwar purge of Kyoto School philosopher Nishitani Keiji (西谷啓治) was lifted, Ichikawa engaged him in a public exchange over Japanese rearmament, criticizing Nishitani&#039;s endorsement of American-aligned unilateral peace and &amp;quot;self-defense&amp;quot; as neglectful of the economic and geopolitical interests actually driving remilitarization.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 188–196.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Ichikawa also joined the 1950 Stockholm Appeal campaign against nuclear weapons (原爆禁止ストックホルム・アピール) and, from 1965 until its 1973 disbanding, took part in demonstrations of the Kyoto chapter of Betheiren (べ平連), the citizens&#039; league opposing the Vietnam War, reportedly its oldest regular participant.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 20.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa retired from Hanazono University in 1972 and moved to Chiba to live near his son, Ichikawa Hiroshi (市川浩), himself a philosopher. He had his name struck from the Myōshinji monastic registry, returned to lay status, and devoted his remaining years to what he called &amp;quot;Liberation Zen Studies&amp;quot; (解放の禅学, kaihō no Zengaku), memorialized in a 1976 autobiographical essay of that title.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 20.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; He died of pneumonia in 1986; colleagues Furuta Shōkin (古田紹欽) and Hayashi Munehide proposed for him the posthumous Buddhist name &amp;quot;Zetsugaku Hakugen Zenjin&amp;quot; (絶学白弦禅人, Scholarship-Surpassing Zen Man Hakugen).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 22.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Ideas ==&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa&#039;s mature social thought crystallized in what he termed &amp;quot;Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (仏教者・アナキスト・コミュニズム, B・A・C), also rendered &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (空-無政府-共同体論, S・A・C) to foreground its metaphysical basis in the Prajñāpāramitā concept of emptiness (空, kū).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 160, 175.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; On his formulation, emptiness supplies the basic spirit and organizing principle of a good society: politically this yields anarchism, in the sense of a Buddhist rejection of any social order founded on domination; economically it yields communism, in the sense of the negation of exclusive private property; and religio-ethically it demands cultivating the subjective character needed to build and sustain such a community.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 160.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Ichikawa traced this synthesis directly to his teacher, Ogasawara Shūjitsu, whose poetic gloss on the Heart Sutra (&amp;quot;般若心経意&amp;quot;, Hannya Shingyō-i) and philosophy of &amp;quot;experiential apprehension&amp;quot; (體認論, taininron) read emptiness not as a negation but as unafraid, all-embracing joy, and who preferred to translate &amp;quot;anarchism&amp;quot; as &amp;quot;free association&amp;quot; (自由連合, jiyū rengō) rather than as &amp;quot;the absence of government&amp;quot; (無政府主義, museifu shugi).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 166–170.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Following Ogasawara, Ichikawa also insisted on distinguishing &amp;quot;anarchism&amp;quot; (アナキズム), an ideology, from &amp;quot;the anarchist&amp;quot; (アナキスト), a living person, so that a thinker&#039;s professed politics could not simply be equated with, or excused by, their personal conduct.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 176.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A second pillar of his thought was &amp;quot;origin humanism&amp;quot; (原点ヒューマニズム, genten hyūmanizumu), the claim that the individual stands at the tense intersection (&amp;quot;origin,&amp;quot; 原点, genten) of two distinct axes of freedom: a &amp;quot;vertical&amp;quot; axis (竪の自由) of transcendent, contemplative Zen freedom, epitomized by the Rinzai (Linji) injunction to &amp;quot;become master of oneself wherever one stands&amp;quot; (随所に主となる, zuisho ni shu to naru), and a &amp;quot;horizontal&amp;quot; axis (横の自由) of social freedom modeled on Marx&#039;s account of workers reclaiming subjectivity from commodification.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 22; Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 177–179.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Ichikawa argued that Zen enlightenment becomes ethically responsible only when these two freedoms are held in dynamic, if inherently difficult, unity, rather than allowing contemplative freedom to excuse political passivity, or social activism to dispense with inner freedom.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 177–179.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa&#039;s diagnostic project, pursued most fully in 『仏教者の戦争責任』 (Bukkyōsha no Sensō Sekinin, Buddhists&#039; Responsibility for the War, 1970), catalogued the specific doctrinal resources of Zen and Japanese Buddhism that had been mobilized to legitimate Imperial-Way Buddhism (皇道仏教, kōdō Bukkyō): karmic (業, gō) explanations of poverty and suffering as deserved; the formula &amp;quot;differences are none other than equality&amp;quot; (差別即平等, shabetsu-soku-byōdō), used to sanctify existing social hierarchy including the emperor&#039;s status; the ethic of indebtedness and gratitude (恩, on), directed above all toward the emperor; the valorization of social harmony (和, wa); a soteriology of accommodation to &amp;quot;things as they are&amp;quot; (あるがまま, arugamama); and, especially, a Zen &amp;quot;aloofness&amp;quot; (孤高性, kokōsei) that treated genuine enlightenment as standing above social and political judgment and thereby left institutions silent in the face of militarism.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, pp. 21–22, and &#039;&#039;passim&#039;&#039;.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Crucially, he refused to treat war responsibility (戦争責任, sensō sekinin) as a closed historical question to be settled by ritual apology, insisting on structural self-examination and applying the same standard to his own wartime writings, including the 1942 essay that had called the war &amp;quot;holy.&amp;quot;&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, pp. 20–21.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In &amp;quot;The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō&amp;quot; (絶対無のつまずき――西田幾多郎の場合, 1959) Ichikawa extended this critique to the Kyoto School&#039;s founder, arguing that Nishida&#039;s philosophy of &amp;quot;place&amp;quot; (場所, basho) and &amp;quot;absolute contradictory self-identity&amp;quot; (絶対矛盾の自己同一, zettai mujun no jiko dōitsu) was, in principle, capable of grounding a radically egalitarian, even anarchist, social philosophy purged of all external authority, but that under wartime pressure Nishida had instead let this logic underwrite the imperial kokutai; Ichikawa contrasted this outcome with what he considered Suzuki Daisetsu&#039;s (鈴木大拙) more genuinely anarchist-compatible postwar reading of Kegon (華厳) philosophy and its vision of a world of &amp;quot;mutual non-obstruction&amp;quot; (事々無礙法界, jiji-muge hokkai).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 196–199.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; The same conviction that Buddhist metaphysics carries no single, fixed political valence, but is always realized through the concrete choices of &amp;quot;living&amp;quot; Buddhists rather than abstract doctrine, underlies both his critique of the Kyoto School and his 1952 public dispute with Nishitani Keiji over rearmament, in which Ichikawa argued that Nishitani&#039;s case for Japanese &amp;quot;self-defense&amp;quot; ignored how remilitarization served international monopoly capital and Cold War strategy rather than a genuine security &amp;quot;vacuum,&amp;quot; and proposed instead a demilitarized, economically democratized solidarity of peoples across national borders.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 188–196.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Later commentators, including Morimura Osamu (森村修), have argued that this vision of borderless, horizontally federated solidarity among &amp;quot;cowards&amp;quot; anticipates aspects of postwar and contemporary anarchist theory, including Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt&#039;s concept of the multitude.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 191–193.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Writings ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A four-volume collected works, &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 [Collected Works of Ichikawa Hakugen], was published posthumously (Kyoto: Hōzōkan 法蔵館, 1993). The selection below follows the original publication dates and venues reported in that collection, except where otherwise indicated. For texts available on the Radical Buddhism Project (RBP), the Japanese and English titles link directly to the respective editions.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Marukusushugi to Zen: oboegaki&#039;&#039; マルクス主義と禅――覚え書 [Notes on Marxism and Zen]. &#039;&#039;Chūō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 中央仏教 (June 1930). {{annotation|An early, tentative attempt to read Zen practice alongside Marxist categories, predating the fuller B・A・C synthesis of the 1950s.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Bukkyō yori mita Hēgeru no benshōhō&#039;&#039; 仏教より見たヘーゲルの弁証法 [Hegel&#039;s Dialectic from the Perspective of Buddhism]. &#039;&#039;Gendai Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 現代仏教 88 (1932). {{annotation|Critiques Hegelian dialectical logic from a Buddhist standpoint, laying groundwork for Ichikawa&#039;s later objections to reading Zen and Nishida philosophy through dialectical categories.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen no kihonteki seikaku&#039;&#039; 禅の基本的性格 [The Fundamental Character of Zen]. Tokyo: Dōbunkan 同文館, 1942. {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s first book; conspicuously avoids the nationalist rhetoric common in contemporaneous Buddhist writing, though it appeared alongside his more openly wartime-affirming journalism of the same year.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zengaku sasshin no ichi shihyō: Zen no seiji rinri sōken no tame ni&#039;&#039; 禅学刷新の一指標――禅の政治倫理創建のために [A Target for Reform in Zen Studies: Toward the Construction of Zen Political Ethics]. &#039;&#039;Zengaku kenkyū&#039;&#039; 禅学研究 39 (June 1946). {{annotation|An early postwar call to rebuild Zen scholarship around explicit political ethics.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* [[IH49KST|&#039;&#039;Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 共産主義思想の展開と仏教]] [[IH49KST-T|Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought]]. In &#039;&#039;Gendai Bukkyō mondai gokō&#039;&#039; 現代仏教問題五講, edited by Nakajima Bunkyō 中島文鏡. Tokyo: Yangu Iisuto Sha, 1949. {{annotation|Situates Buddhist thought in relation to the postwar spread of communist ideas in Japan.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen no kokōsei ni tsuite: Zen ni taisuru gigi&#039;&#039; 禅の孤高性について――禅に対する疑義 [On the Solitary Aloofness of Zen: Some Doubts about Zen], parts I–II. &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 思想 307, 308 (January–February 1950). {{annotation|The essay that provoked Myōshinji&#039;s attempt to remove Ichikawa from the Hanazono faculty; argues that Zen&#039;s self-image of detached, &amp;quot;high-minded&amp;quot; enlightenment functioned to excuse institutional silence during the war.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Hannya shingyō shinkō&#039;&#039; 般若心経新講 [New Lectures on the Heart Sutra]. Tokyo: Tōsei Shuppansha 東成出版社, 1951. {{annotation|A doctrinal commentary on the Heart Sutra that already frames prajñā-emptiness in terms of joy, liberation, and social solidarity rather than mere negation.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen no jissen ni tsuite: rekishi tenkanki ni okeru hihanteki shiron&#039;&#039; 禅の実践について――歴史転換期における批判的試論 [On Zen Praxis: A Critical Exploratory Essay at a Historical Turning Point]. &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 思想 326 (October 1951). {{annotation|A follow-up to the 1950 &amp;quot;solitary aloofness&amp;quot; essay, further developing the demand that Zen practice be answerable to historical and social conditions.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;“Owasareta genjitsu” no tetsugaku: Nishitani hakase no jieiron ni tsuite&#039;&#039; 「負わされた現実」の哲学――西谷博士の自衛論について [The Philosophy of &amp;quot;Imposed Actuality&amp;quot;: On Dr. Nishitani&#039;s Argument for Self-Defense]. &#039;&#039;Chūō Kōron&#039;&#039; 中央公論 (May 1952). {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s opening rebuttal in his public exchange with Nishitani Keiji over the postwar peace treaty and Japanese rearmament.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Nishitani kyōju no saibusōron&#039;&#039; 西谷教授の再武装論 [Professor Nishitani&#039;s Argument for Rearmament]. &#039;&#039;Ushio&#039;&#039; 潮 (August 1952). {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s closing statement in the Nishitani debate, reiterating that rearmament served Cold War and capital interests rather than genuine national security. Ives (2009) cites this same essay as appearing in &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 58, no. 8 (August 1952); the discrepancy over the venue remains unresolved.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* [[IH55ZC|&#039;&#039;Zen to kyōsanshugi&#039;&#039; 禅と共産主義]] [[IH55ZC-T|Zen and Communism]]. Date of first publication requires confirmation (provisionally ca. 1955). {{annotation|Explores Zen&#039;s relationship to communism and the possibilities and limits of bringing Buddhist awakening into dialogue with Marxist thought.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Hannya-kyō: Hannya shisō no gendai e no tenkai&#039;&#039; 般若経――般若思想の現代への展開 [The Wisdom Sutras: The Development of the Philosophy of Prajñā for the Contemporary Age]. Kyoto: San&#039;ichi Shobō 三一書房, 1956. {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s fullest mid-career statement of Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism, grounding it explicitly in Prajñāpāramitā philosophy.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* [[IH56ZTM|&#039;&#039;Zen to Marukushizumu&#039;&#039; 禅とマルキシズム]] [[IH56ZTM-T|Zen and Marxism]]. 1956; reprinted in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 2, &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; 禅と現代思想 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan 法蔵館, 1993), 293–312. {{annotation|Distinguishes Zen experience from Zen as ideology; criticises Zen&#039;s historical accommodation of social hierarchy and wartime power, and explores the relationship between spiritual practice and social transformation.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zettai mu no tsumazuki: Nishida Kitarō no baai&#039;&#039; 絶対無のつまずき――西田幾多郎の場合 [The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō]. &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 思想 (1959). {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s central critique of his teacher&#039;s teacher, Nishida Kitarō, arguing that Nishida&#039;s own logic could have grounded an anarchist ethics but was instead bent to serve the wartime &#039;&#039;kokutai&#039;&#039;.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Bukkyō to shakai seigi no mondai&#039;&#039; 仏教と社会正義の問題 [Buddhism and the Problem of Social Justice]. &#039;&#039;Sōzō&#039;&#039; 創造 94–104 (ten installments, 1959–1960). {{annotation|A serialized study connecting Buddhist ethics to concrete questions of social and economic justice.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム [Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism]. &#039;&#039;Jiyū Shisō&#039;&#039; 自由思想 5 (1961). {{annotation|Argues that Kegon philosophy&#039;s &amp;quot;realm of mutual non-obstruction&amp;quot; (&#039;&#039;jiji muge hokkai&#039;&#039; 事々無礙法界), read correctly, points toward an anarchist rather than authoritarian social vision, contrasting Suzuki Daisetsu&#039;s postwar Kegon interpretation with wartime state-affirming readings.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Nihon no seijiteki shūkyō: Tennō Shintō to Sōka Gakkai&#039;&#039; 日本の政治的宗教――天皇神道と創価学会 [Japan&#039;s Political Religions: Imperial Shinto and Sōka Gakkai]. &#039;&#039;Jiyū&#039;&#039; 自由 63–65 (1963). {{annotation|Extends the critique of Buddhist accommodation to state power into a comparative account of postwar Japan&#039;s new religious-political formations.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* “A Preliminary Conception of Zen Social Ethics,” parts I–II. &#039;&#039;Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū&#039;&#039; 印度学仏教学研究 11, no. 10 (January 1963): 20–31; 13, no. 2 (1965): 12–20. {{annotation|A rare English-language statement of Ichikawa&#039;s project, presenting the outlines of a systematic Zen social ethics for an international scholarly audience.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Fuhenteki kū&#039;&#039; 普遍的空 [Universal Emptiness]. &#039;&#039;Zengaku kenkyū&#039;&#039; 禅学研究 55 (July 1966). {{annotation|Develops the concept of emptiness (&#039;&#039;kū&#039;&#039; 空) as a universal, non-sectarian ethical resource rather than a purely Buddhist doctrinal category.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; 禅と現代思想 [Zen and Contemporary Thought]. Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten 徳間書店, 1967. {{annotation|Places classical Zen concepts into direct conversation with contemporary Marxist and existentialist thought.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Bukkyōsha no sensō sekinin&#039;&#039; 仏教者の戦争責任 [Buddhists&#039; Responsibility for the War]. Tokyo: Shunjūsha 春秋社, 1970. {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s landmark work, systematically documenting Buddhist institutional and doctrinal complicity in Japanese wartime imperialism; the primary source for his account of his own &amp;quot;coward&#039;s&amp;quot; psychology and its role in his wartime accommodation.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Nihon ni okeru Bukkyō shakaishugi no mondai&#039;&#039; 日本における仏教社会主義の問題 [The Problem of Buddhist Socialism in Japan]. In &#039;&#039;Bukkyōsha no sensō sekinin&#039;&#039; 仏教者の戦争責任, 150–176. Tokyo: Shunjūsha 春秋社, 1970; published in English as “The Problem of Buddhist Socialism in Japan,” &#039;&#039;Japanese Religions&#039;&#039; 6, no. 3 (August 1970): 15–37. {{annotation|The chapter in which Ichikawa explicitly proposes &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (S・A・C) as a more precise alternative to the label &amp;quot;Buddhist socialism.&amp;quot;}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Nihon fashizumu-ka no shūkyō&#039;&#039; 日本ファシズム下の宗教 [Religion under Japanese Fascism]. Tokyo: Enuesu Publishing, 1975. {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s last book, extending his war-responsibility critique from Zen specifically to Japanese religion under fascism more broadly, and containing his frank admission that he was unsure he would have the courage to resist a renewed war.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Kaihō no zengaku e: jiden-fū ni&#039;&#039; 解放の禅学へ――自伝風に [Toward a Liberating Zen Studies: An Autobiographical Approach]. &#039;&#039;Shisō no kagaku&#039;&#039; 思想の科学 68 (1976). {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s principal autobiographical essay, written the year he formally left the Myōshinji monastic registry, recounting his childhood, his &amp;quot;cowardice,&amp;quot; and the genesis of his social thought.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Secondary Literature in English ==&lt;br /&gt;
* Ives, Christopher (2009). &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics&#039;&#039;. University of Hawai&#039;i Press. {{annotation|The definitive English-language monograph on Ichikawa, combining a detailed intellectual biography with an independent argument locating Imperial-Way Zen within a longer history of &amp;quot;Buddhism for the protection of the realm.&amp;quot;}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Victoria, Brian Daizen (2006 [1997]). &#039;&#039;Zen at War&#039;&#039;, 2nd ed. Rowman &amp;amp; Littlefield. {{annotation|The book that first brought Ichikawa&#039;s documentation of Zen&#039;s wartime collaboration to a wide English readership, drawing extensively, and by its author&#039;s own acknowledgment, on Ichikawa&#039;s research.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Ives, Christopher (1995). &amp;quot;Ethical Pitfalls in Imperial Zen and Nishida Philosophy: Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s Critique&amp;quot;. In: Heisig, James W., &amp;amp; John C. Maraldo (Eds.), &#039;&#039;Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, &amp;amp; the Question of Nationalism&#039;&#039;: 16–39. University of Hawai&#039;i Press. {{annotation|An earlier journal-length statement of the argument later expanded into Ives&#039;s 2009 monograph, focused specifically on Ichikawa&#039;s critique of Nishida philosophy.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Secondary Literature in Japanese ==&lt;br /&gt;
* Morimura Osamu (森村修) (2019). 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論（Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism）」――小笠原秀実の仏教アナキズムと西谷啓治の自衛論批判をめぐって」 [Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot;: On Ogasawara Shūjitsu&#039;s Buddhist Anarchism and Ichikawa&#039;s Critique of Nishitani Keiji&#039;s Argument for Self-Defense]. 『異文化. 論文編』 20: 155–208. {{annotation|The most comprehensive Japanese-language study of Ichikawa&#039;s S・A・C/B・A・C thought, tracing its origin in Ogasawara Shūjitsu&#039;s Buddhist anarchism and situating it in relation to the 1952 Nishitani debate and contemporary &amp;quot;new anarchism.&amp;quot;}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Fujii Yūsuke (藤井祐介) (2014). 「市川白弦と小笠原秀実」 [Ichikawa Hakugen and Ogasawara Shūjitsu]. 『唯一者』 13: 15–20. {{annotation|Reconstructs the direct intellectual debt Ichikawa owed to his teacher, arguing for continuity between Ogasawara&#039;s &amp;quot;philosophy of experiential apprehension&amp;quot; and Ichikawa&#039;s mature ethics.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Ishii Kōsei (石井公成) (2004). 「宗教者の戦争責任――市川白弦その人の検証を通して」 [The War Responsibility of Religionists: Through an Examination of Ichikawa Hakugen Himself]. In: Ikegami Yoshimasa (池上良正), Oda Yoshiko (小田淑子), Shimazono Susumu (島薗進), Sueki Fumihiko (末木文美士), Seki Kazutoshi (関一敏), &amp;amp; Tsuruoka Yoshi (鶴岡賀雄) (Eds.), 『暴力――破壊と秩序』 [Violence: Destruction and Order], vol. 8 of 『岩波講座 宗教』: 223–249. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten (岩波書店). {{annotation|A critical reassessment of Ichikawa&#039;s own wartime record, arguing that his postwar self-criticism, while unusually rigorous, understated the extent and timing of his wartime ambiguity.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Tsurumi Shunsuke (鶴見俊輔) (1993). 「解説」 [Commentary]. In: Ichikawa Hakugen, 『市川白弦著作集』 [The Collected Works of Ichikawa Hakugen], vol. 3: 485–493. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. {{annotation|An afterword by a leading postwar intellectual historian and fellow Betheiren activist, situating Ichikawa&#039;s concept of habitual wartime complicity within broader Japanese debates on tenkō (転向) and social responsibility.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite This Article ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
First version, 29 July 2026. Main: Brons, Lajos. Other: (none).&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Brons, Lajos ({{REVISIONYEAR}}). &amp;quot;Ichikawa Hakugen&amp;quot;. &#039;&#039;Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/Ichikawa_Hakugen&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Biographies]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Japan]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=Ichikawa_Hakugen&amp;diff=1238</id>
		<title>Ichikawa Hakugen</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=Ichikawa_Hakugen&amp;diff=1238"/>
		<updated>2026-10-12T17:39:32Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{Provisional Entry}}&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (市川白弦, 1902–1986) was a Japanese Rinzai Zen (臨済宗) priest, philosopher, and activist who became the foremost internal critic of &amp;quot;Imperial-Way Zen&amp;quot; (皇道禅, kōdō Zen), the wartime alignment of Japanese Zen Buddhism with state militarism and emperor-centered ideology.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives, Christopher (2009). &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics&#039;&#039;. University of Hawai&#039;i Press, p. 1.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; A professor at Hanazono University (花園大学) in Kyoto for over two decades, he spent the postwar period compiling and prosecuting the war responsibility of Japanese Buddhist institutions, including his own compromises during the war. Drawing on his teacher Ogasawara Shūjitsu&#039;s (小笠原秀実) Buddhist anarchism, on Kropotkin, and on Nishida-school philosophy, Ichikawa developed a systematic synthesis he called &amp;quot;Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (仏教者・アナキスト・コミュニズム, B・A・C) or &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (空-無政府-共同体論, S・A・C), grounding anarchist politics and communist economics in the Prajñāpāramitā concept of emptiness (空, kū). He remains the central reference point for any account of Zen&#039;s twentieth-century political entanglements and of Japanese Buddhist attempts at self-criticism after 1945.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Biography ==&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa was born in 1902, the thirty-fifth year of the Meiji period, in Gifu Prefecture north of Nagoya, the son of the resident priest of a small temple, Kezōji, affiliated with the Myōshinji (妙心寺) branch of Rinzai Zen.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 14.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; His mother came from a declining landlord family in Owari (present-day Aichi Prefecture); he had one younger sister.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 14.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; As a child he witnessed the poverty of his father&#039;s tenant parishioners at first hand, and as a middle-school student he watched his father sever ties with a parishioner family who had accused him of profiting from reciting &amp;quot;the dregs of the sutras,&amp;quot; an episode that left him permanently uneasy about the economics of temple life.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura Osamu (森村修) (2019). 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論（Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism）」――小笠原秀実の仏教アナキズムと西谷啓治の自衛論批判をめぐって」 [Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot;: On Ogasawara Shūjitsu&#039;s Buddhist Anarchism and Ichikawa&#039;s Critique of Nishitani Keiji&#039;s Argument for Self-Defense]. 『異文化. 論文編』 20: 157–158.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; A minor bureaucratic error also shaped his youth: his given name, Toshimizu (利水), was mistranscribed as &amp;quot;Shūsui&amp;quot; (秋水) on his school certificate not long after the 1911 High Treason Incident (大逆事件, also called the Kōtoku Incident, 幸徳事件), and his resulting protracted dispute with school officials coincided with, and reinforced, his growing interest in the executed anarchist Kōtoku Shūsui (幸徳秋水).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 159.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
By his own account Ichikawa was constitutionally &amp;quot;a coward&amp;quot; (臆病者, okubyō-mono): he dreaded conscription, military discipline, and death itself, and came to experience the emperor, as commander-in-chief with the power to command death, as bound to soldiery and mortality in what he called a &amp;quot;trinity.&amp;quot;&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 15.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; He treated this &amp;quot;cowardice&amp;quot; not as an excuse but as the psycho-physiological root of a lifelong antiwar and anti-kokutai (国体) temperament, and later wrote that &amp;quot;a coward&#039;s realization of social solidarity&amp;quot; had been the energy source of his youth.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 19.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Alongside the poetry of Ishikawa Takuboku (石川啄木), the anarchist essays of Ōsugi Sakae (大杉栄), Hugo, Tolstoy, Bakunin, Marx and Engels, Jack London, and Kropotkin, the young Ichikawa also corresponded with the then-unknown writer Miyazawa Kenji (宮沢賢治).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 16.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Through these readings a &amp;quot;humanistic anger at the evils of society and the state&amp;quot; took hold in him, feeding an early ambition to fuse socialist thought with Buddhism.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 16.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In 1920 Ichikawa entered a Myōshinji-branch training monastery in Kyoto, and in 1923 he enrolled at the Rinzai-affiliated university that later became Hanazono University, where he met Nishida Kitarō&#039;s (西田幾多郎) senior disciple Hisamatsu Shin&#039;ichi (久松真一) and, more decisively, Ogasawara Shūjitsu (小笠原秀実, 1885–1958), a philosopher-poet and self-described anarchist who became his only acknowledged teacher.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 159.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; After graduating in 1926 he taught English at Hanazono Middle School while continuing independent study of Western philosophy, and by around 1930 he had begun to formulate what he later named &amp;quot;Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (仏教者・アナキスト・コミュニズム, B・A・C), the idea that a genuinely contemporary Buddhist social thought would have to be simultaneously anarchist and communist.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 160.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; The escalating repression of the early 1930s under the Peace Preservation Law (治安維持法), and in particular the 1933 death under torture of the novelist Kobayashi Takiji (小林多喜二), shook his confidence that such a program could be realized; by his own later admission, his youthful &amp;quot;conviction&amp;quot; in B・A・C began &amp;quot;wobbling from the ground up,&amp;quot; and he gradually rationalized political quietism on the grounds that, as a temple priest, he could not commit his parishioners to a movement they had not chosen.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 160–161.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa&#039;s wartime record was ambiguous rather than uniformly collaborationist. His first book, 『禅の基本的性格』 (Zen no Kihonteki Seikaku, The Fundamental Character of Zen, 1942), avoided nationalist celebration, unusually for Buddhist writing of the period.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 18.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Yet in the September 1942 installment of a series on &amp;quot;War, Science, and Zen&amp;quot; serialized in the journal 『大法輪』 (Daihōrin), he described the Pacific War as a holy war (聖戦, seisen) fought to secure lasting peace in Asia, a position scholar Ishii Kōsei (石井公成) has since called opportunistic and which Ichikawa himself, after 1945, judged to reflect a wartime failure of &amp;quot;tenacity and autonomy.&amp;quot;&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, pp. 18–19.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
After the war Ichikawa turned this same scrutiny outward and inward at once. He became a professor at Hanazono University in 1949 and began publishing pointed critiques of Zen quietism, most notably &amp;quot;On the Solitary Aloofness of Zen&amp;quot; (禅の孤高性について, 1950) and &amp;quot;Concerning Zen Praxis&amp;quot; (禅の実践について, 1951), which accused institutional Zen of a self-satisfied detachment from social and political responsibility.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 19.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; These essays provoked Myōshinji ecclesiastical officials to attempt his removal from the Hanazono faculty; he refused to resign and was retained after the university president brokered a face-saving internal inquiry, with the backing of faculty committed to academic freedom.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 19; Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 162–163.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; With Ogasawara he briefly co-founded the journal 『思想紀元』 (Shisō Kigen, The Era of Thought), which folded after three issues, and from October 1952 to September 1957 he served on the Kyoto City Board of Education (京都市教育委員会), where he defended Asahigaoka Middle School (旭丘中学校) in Kyoto against government charges of &amp;quot;biased education&amp;quot; and delivered a public lecture there marking the 1953 Korean War armistice.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 19; Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 161–163.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In 1952, after the postwar purge of Kyoto School philosopher Nishitani Keiji (西谷啓治) was lifted, Ichikawa engaged him in a public exchange over Japanese rearmament, criticizing Nishitani&#039;s endorsement of American-aligned unilateral peace and &amp;quot;self-defense&amp;quot; as neglectful of the economic and geopolitical interests actually driving remilitarization.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 188–196.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Ichikawa also joined the 1950 Stockholm Appeal campaign against nuclear weapons (原爆禁止ストックホルム・アピール) and, from 1965 until its 1973 disbanding, took part in demonstrations of the Kyoto chapter of Betheiren (べ平連), the citizens&#039; league opposing the Vietnam War, reportedly its oldest regular participant.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 20.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa retired from Hanazono University in 1972 and moved to Chiba to live near his son, Ichikawa Hiroshi (市川浩), himself a philosopher. He had his name struck from the Myōshinji monastic registry, returned to lay status, and devoted his remaining years to what he called &amp;quot;Liberation Zen Studies&amp;quot; (解放の禅学, kaihō no Zengaku), memorialized in a 1976 autobiographical essay of that title.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 20.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; He died of pneumonia in 1986; colleagues Furuta Shōkin (古田紹欽) and Hayashi Munehide proposed for him the posthumous Buddhist name &amp;quot;Zetsugaku Hakugen Zenjin&amp;quot; (絶学白弦禅人, Scholarship-Surpassing Zen Man Hakugen).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 22.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Ideas ==&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa&#039;s mature social thought crystallized in what he termed &amp;quot;Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (仏教者・アナキスト・コミュニズム, B・A・C), also rendered &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (空-無政府-共同体論, S・A・C) to foreground its metaphysical basis in the Prajñāpāramitā concept of emptiness (空, kū).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 160, 175.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; On his formulation, emptiness supplies the basic spirit and organizing principle of a good society: politically this yields anarchism, in the sense of a Buddhist rejection of any social order founded on domination; economically it yields communism, in the sense of the negation of exclusive private property; and religio-ethically it demands cultivating the subjective character needed to build and sustain such a community.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 160.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Ichikawa traced this synthesis directly to his teacher, Ogasawara Shūjitsu, whose poetic gloss on the Heart Sutra (&amp;quot;般若心経意&amp;quot;, Hannya Shingyō-i) and philosophy of &amp;quot;experiential apprehension&amp;quot; (體認論, taininron) read emptiness not as a negation but as unafraid, all-embracing joy, and who preferred to translate &amp;quot;anarchism&amp;quot; as &amp;quot;free association&amp;quot; (自由連合, jiyū rengō) rather than as &amp;quot;the absence of government&amp;quot; (無政府主義, museifu shugi).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 166–170.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Following Ogasawara, Ichikawa also insisted on distinguishing &amp;quot;anarchism&amp;quot; (アナキズム), an ideology, from &amp;quot;the anarchist&amp;quot; (アナキスト), a living person, so that a thinker&#039;s professed politics could not simply be equated with, or excused by, their personal conduct.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, p. 176.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A second pillar of his thought was &amp;quot;origin humanism&amp;quot; (原点ヒューマニズム, genten hyūmanizumu), the claim that the individual stands at the tense intersection (&amp;quot;origin,&amp;quot; 原点, genten) of two distinct axes of freedom: a &amp;quot;vertical&amp;quot; axis (竪の自由) of transcendent, contemplative Zen freedom, epitomized by the Rinzai (Linji) injunction to &amp;quot;become master of oneself wherever one stands&amp;quot; (随所に主となる, zuisho ni shu to naru), and a &amp;quot;horizontal&amp;quot; axis (横の自由) of social freedom modeled on Marx&#039;s account of workers reclaiming subjectivity from commodification.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, p. 22; Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 177–179.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Ichikawa argued that Zen enlightenment becomes ethically responsible only when these two freedoms are held in dynamic, if inherently difficult, unity, rather than allowing contemplative freedom to excuse political passivity, or social activism to dispense with inner freedom.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 177–179.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa&#039;s diagnostic project, pursued most fully in 『仏教者の戦争責任』 (Bukkyōsha no Sensō Sekinin, Buddhists&#039; Responsibility for the War, 1970), catalogued the specific doctrinal resources of Zen and Japanese Buddhism that had been mobilized to legitimate Imperial-Way Buddhism (皇道仏教, kōdō Bukkyō): karmic (業, gō) explanations of poverty and suffering as deserved; the formula &amp;quot;differences are none other than equality&amp;quot; (差別即平等, shabetsu-soku-byōdō), used to sanctify existing social hierarchy including the emperor&#039;s status; the ethic of indebtedness and gratitude (恩, on), directed above all toward the emperor; the valorization of social harmony (和, wa); a soteriology of accommodation to &amp;quot;things as they are&amp;quot; (あるがまま, arugamama); and, especially, a Zen &amp;quot;aloofness&amp;quot; (孤高性, kokōsei) that treated genuine enlightenment as standing above social and political judgment and thereby left institutions silent in the face of militarism.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, pp. 21–22, and &#039;&#039;passim&#039;&#039;.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Crucially, he refused to treat war responsibility (戦争責任, sensō sekinin) as a closed historical question to be settled by ritual apology, insisting on structural self-examination and applying the same standard to his own wartime writings, including the 1942 essay that had called the war &amp;quot;holy.&amp;quot;&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ives (2009), &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen&#039;&#039;, pp. 20–21.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In &amp;quot;The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō&amp;quot; (絶対無のつまずき――西田幾多郎の場合, 1959) Ichikawa extended this critique to the Kyoto School&#039;s founder, arguing that Nishida&#039;s philosophy of &amp;quot;place&amp;quot; (場所, basho) and &amp;quot;absolute contradictory self-identity&amp;quot; (絶対矛盾の自己同一, zettai mujun no jiko dōitsu) was, in principle, capable of grounding a radically egalitarian, even anarchist, social philosophy purged of all external authority, but that under wartime pressure Nishida had instead let this logic underwrite the imperial kokutai; Ichikawa contrasted this outcome with what he considered Suzuki Daisetsu&#039;s (鈴木大拙) more genuinely anarchist-compatible postwar reading of Kegon (華厳) philosophy and its vision of a world of &amp;quot;mutual non-obstruction&amp;quot; (事々無礙法界, jiji-muge hokkai).&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 196–199.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; The same conviction that Buddhist metaphysics carries no single, fixed political valence, but is always realized through the concrete choices of &amp;quot;living&amp;quot; Buddhists rather than abstract doctrine, underlies both his critique of the Kyoto School and his 1952 public dispute with Nishitani Keiji over rearmament, in which Ichikawa argued that Nishitani&#039;s case for Japanese &amp;quot;self-defense&amp;quot; ignored how remilitarization served international monopoly capital and Cold War strategy rather than a genuine security &amp;quot;vacuum,&amp;quot; and proposed instead a demilitarized, economically democratized solidarity of peoples across national borders.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 188–196.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Later commentators, including Morimura Osamu (森村修), have argued that this vision of borderless, horizontally federated solidarity among &amp;quot;cowards&amp;quot; anticipates aspects of postwar and contemporary anarchist theory, including Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt&#039;s concept of the multitude.&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Morimura (2019), 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論」」, pp. 191–193.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Writings ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A four-volume collected works, &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 [Collected Works of Ichikawa Hakugen], was published posthumously (Kyoto: Hōzōkan 法蔵館, 1993). The selection below follows the original publication dates and venues reported in that collection, except where otherwise indicated. Texts available on the Radical Buddhism Project (RBP) are linked to both their Japanese transcriptions and English translations.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Marukusushugi to Zen: oboegaki&#039;&#039; マルクス主義と禅――覚え書 [Notes on Marxism and Zen]. &#039;&#039;Chūō Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 中央仏教 (June 1930). {{annotation|An early, tentative attempt to read Zen practice alongside Marxist categories, predating the fuller B・A・C synthesis of the 1950s.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Bukkyō yori mita Hēgeru no benshōhō&#039;&#039; 仏教より見たヘーゲルの弁証法 [Hegel&#039;s Dialectic from the Perspective of Buddhism]. &#039;&#039;Gendai Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 現代仏教 88 (1932). {{annotation|Critiques Hegelian dialectical logic from a Buddhist standpoint, laying groundwork for Ichikawa&#039;s later objections to reading Zen and Nishida philosophy through dialectical categories.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen no kihonteki seikaku&#039;&#039; 禅の基本的性格 [The Fundamental Character of Zen]. Tokyo: Dōbunkan 同文館, 1942. {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s first book; conspicuously avoids the nationalist rhetoric common in contemporaneous Buddhist writing, though it appeared alongside his more openly wartime-affirming journalism of the same year.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zengaku sasshin no ichi shihyō: Zen no seiji rinri sōken no tame ni&#039;&#039; 禅学刷新の一指標――禅の政治倫理創建のために [A Target for Reform in Zen Studies: Toward the Construction of Zen Political Ethics]. &#039;&#039;Zengaku kenkyū&#039;&#039; 禅学研究 39 (June 1946). {{annotation|An early postwar call to rebuild Zen scholarship around explicit political ethics.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* [[IH49KST|&#039;&#039;Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 共産主義思想の展開と仏教]] [Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought]. In &#039;&#039;Gendai Bukkyō mondai gokō&#039;&#039; 現代仏教問題五講, edited by Nakajima Bunkyō 中島文鏡. Tokyo: Yangu Iisuto Sha, 1949. &#039;&#039;&#039;RBP:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH49KST|Japanese transcription]] · [[IH49KST-T|English translation]]. {{annotation|Situates Buddhist thought in relation to the postwar spread of communist ideas in Japan.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen no kokōsei ni tsuite: Zen ni taisuru gigi&#039;&#039; 禅の孤高性について――禅に対する疑義 [On the Solitary Aloofness of Zen: Some Doubts about Zen], parts I–II. &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 思想 307, 308 (January–February 1950). {{annotation|The essay that provoked Myōshinji&#039;s attempt to remove Ichikawa from the Hanazono faculty; argues that Zen&#039;s self-image of detached, &amp;quot;high-minded&amp;quot; enlightenment functioned to excuse institutional silence during the war.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Hannya shingyō shinkō&#039;&#039; 般若心経新講 [New Lectures on the Heart Sutra]. Tokyo: Tōsei Shuppansha 東成出版社, 1951. {{annotation|A doctrinal commentary on the Heart Sutra that already frames prajñā-emptiness in terms of joy, liberation, and social solidarity rather than mere negation.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen no jissen ni tsuite: rekishi tenkanki ni okeru hihanteki shiron&#039;&#039; 禅の実践について――歴史転換期における批判的試論 [On Zen Praxis: A Critical Exploratory Essay at a Historical Turning Point]. &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 思想 326 (October 1951). {{annotation|A follow-up to the 1950 &amp;quot;solitary aloofness&amp;quot; essay, further developing the demand that Zen practice be answerable to historical and social conditions.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;“Owasareta genjitsu” no tetsugaku: Nishitani hakase no jieiron ni tsuite&#039;&#039; 「負わされた現実」の哲学――西谷博士の自衛論について [The Philosophy of &amp;quot;Imposed Actuality&amp;quot;: On Dr. Nishitani&#039;s Argument for Self-Defense]. &#039;&#039;Chūō Kōron&#039;&#039; 中央公論 (May 1952). {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s opening rebuttal in his public exchange with Nishitani Keiji over the postwar peace treaty and Japanese rearmament.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Nishitani kyōju no saibusōron&#039;&#039; 西谷教授の再武装論 [Professor Nishitani&#039;s Argument for Rearmament]. &#039;&#039;Ushio&#039;&#039; 潮 (August 1952). {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s closing statement in the Nishitani debate, reiterating that rearmament served Cold War and capital interests rather than genuine national security. Ives (2009) cites this same essay as appearing in &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 58, no. 8 (August 1952); the discrepancy over the venue remains unresolved.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* [[IH55ZC|&#039;&#039;Zen to kyōsanshugi&#039;&#039; 禅と共産主義]] [Zen and Communism]. Date of first publication requires confirmation (provisionally ca. 1955). &#039;&#039;&#039;RBP:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH55ZC|Japanese transcription]] · [[IH55ZC-T|English translation]]. {{annotation|Explores Zen&#039;s relationship to communism and the possibilities and limits of bringing Buddhist awakening into dialogue with Marxist thought.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Hannya-kyō: Hannya shisō no gendai e no tenkai&#039;&#039; 般若経――般若思想の現代への展開 [The Wisdom Sutras: The Development of the Philosophy of Prajñā for the Contemporary Age]. Kyoto: San&#039;ichi Shobō 三一書房, 1956. {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s fullest mid-career statement of Buddhist-Anarchist-Communism, grounding it explicitly in Prajñāpāramitā philosophy.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* [[IH56ZTM|&#039;&#039;Zen to Marukushizumu&#039;&#039; 禅とマルキシズム]] [Zen and Marxism]. 1956; reprinted in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 2, &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; 禅と現代思想 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan 法蔵館, 1993), 293–312. &#039;&#039;&#039;RBP:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH56ZTM|Japanese transcription]] · [[IH56ZTM-T|English translation]]. {{annotation|Distinguishes Zen experience from Zen as ideology; criticises Zen&#039;s historical accommodation of social hierarchy and wartime power, and explores the relationship between spiritual practice and social transformation.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zettai mu no tsumazuki: Nishida Kitarō no baai&#039;&#039; 絶対無のつまずき――西田幾多郎の場合 [The Stumbling of Absolute Nothingness: The Case of Nishida Kitarō]. &#039;&#039;Shisō&#039;&#039; 思想 (1959). {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s central critique of his teacher&#039;s teacher, Nishida Kitarō, arguing that Nishida&#039;s own logic could have grounded an anarchist ethics but was instead bent to serve the wartime &#039;&#039;kokutai&#039;&#039;.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Bukkyō to shakai seigi no mondai&#039;&#039; 仏教と社会正義の問題 [Buddhism and the Problem of Social Justice]. &#039;&#039;Sōzō&#039;&#039; 創造 94–104 (ten installments, 1959–1960). {{annotation|A serialized study connecting Buddhist ethics to concrete questions of social and economic justice.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen, Kegon, anakizumu&#039;&#039; 禅・華厳・アナキズム [Zen, Kegon, and Anarchism]. &#039;&#039;Jiyū Shisō&#039;&#039; 自由思想 5 (1961). {{annotation|Argues that Kegon philosophy&#039;s &amp;quot;realm of mutual non-obstruction&amp;quot; (&#039;&#039;jiji muge hokkai&#039;&#039; 事々無礙法界), read correctly, points toward an anarchist rather than authoritarian social vision, contrasting Suzuki Daisetsu&#039;s postwar Kegon interpretation with wartime state-affirming readings.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Nihon no seijiteki shūkyō: Tennō Shintō to Sōka Gakkai&#039;&#039; 日本の政治的宗教――天皇神道と創価学会 [Japan&#039;s Political Religions: Imperial Shinto and Sōka Gakkai]. &#039;&#039;Jiyū&#039;&#039; 自由 63–65 (1963). {{annotation|Extends the critique of Buddhist accommodation to state power into a comparative account of postwar Japan&#039;s new religious-political formations.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* “A Preliminary Conception of Zen Social Ethics,” parts I–II. &#039;&#039;Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū&#039;&#039; 印度学仏教学研究 11, no. 10 (January 1963): 20–31; 13, no. 2 (1965): 12–20. {{annotation|A rare English-language statement of Ichikawa&#039;s project, presenting the outlines of a systematic Zen social ethics for an international scholarly audience.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Fuhenteki kū&#039;&#039; 普遍的空 [Universal Emptiness]. &#039;&#039;Zengaku kenkyū&#039;&#039; 禅学研究 55 (July 1966). {{annotation|Develops the concept of emptiness (&#039;&#039;kū&#039;&#039; 空) as a universal, non-sectarian ethical resource rather than a purely Buddhist doctrinal category.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; 禅と現代思想 [Zen and Contemporary Thought]. Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten 徳間書店, 1967. {{annotation|Places classical Zen concepts into direct conversation with contemporary Marxist and existentialist thought.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Bukkyōsha no sensō sekinin&#039;&#039; 仏教者の戦争責任 [Buddhists&#039; Responsibility for the War]. Tokyo: Shunjūsha 春秋社, 1970. {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s landmark work, systematically documenting Buddhist institutional and doctrinal complicity in Japanese wartime imperialism; the primary source for his account of his own &amp;quot;coward&#039;s&amp;quot; psychology and its role in his wartime accommodation.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Nihon ni okeru Bukkyō shakaishugi no mondai&#039;&#039; 日本における仏教社会主義の問題 [The Problem of Buddhist Socialism in Japan]. In &#039;&#039;Bukkyōsha no sensō sekinin&#039;&#039; 仏教者の戦争責任, 150–176. Tokyo: Shunjūsha 春秋社, 1970; published in English as “The Problem of Buddhist Socialism in Japan,” &#039;&#039;Japanese Religions&#039;&#039; 6, no. 3 (August 1970): 15–37. {{annotation|The chapter in which Ichikawa explicitly proposes &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot; (S・A・C) as a more precise alternative to the label &amp;quot;Buddhist socialism.&amp;quot;}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Nihon fashizumu-ka no shūkyō&#039;&#039; 日本ファシズム下の宗教 [Religion under Japanese Fascism]. Tokyo: Enuesu Publishing, 1975. {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s last book, extending his war-responsibility critique from Zen specifically to Japanese religion under fascism more broadly, and containing his frank admission that he was unsure he would have the courage to resist a renewed war.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* &#039;&#039;Kaihō no zengaku e: jiden-fū ni&#039;&#039; 解放の禅学へ――自伝風に [Toward a Liberating Zen Studies: An Autobiographical Approach]. &#039;&#039;Shisō no kagaku&#039;&#039; 思想の科学 68 (1976). {{annotation|Ichikawa&#039;s principal autobiographical essay, written the year he formally left the Myōshinji monastic registry, recounting his childhood, his &amp;quot;cowardice,&amp;quot; and the genesis of his social thought.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Secondary Literature in English ==&lt;br /&gt;
* Ives, Christopher (2009). &#039;&#039;Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics&#039;&#039;. University of Hawai&#039;i Press. {{annotation|The definitive English-language monograph on Ichikawa, combining a detailed intellectual biography with an independent argument locating Imperial-Way Zen within a longer history of &amp;quot;Buddhism for the protection of the realm.&amp;quot;}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Victoria, Brian Daizen (2006 [1997]). &#039;&#039;Zen at War&#039;&#039;, 2nd ed. Rowman &amp;amp; Littlefield. {{annotation|The book that first brought Ichikawa&#039;s documentation of Zen&#039;s wartime collaboration to a wide English readership, drawing extensively, and by its author&#039;s own acknowledgment, on Ichikawa&#039;s research.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Ives, Christopher (1995). &amp;quot;Ethical Pitfalls in Imperial Zen and Nishida Philosophy: Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s Critique&amp;quot;. In: Heisig, James W., &amp;amp; John C. Maraldo (Eds.), &#039;&#039;Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, &amp;amp; the Question of Nationalism&#039;&#039;: 16–39. University of Hawai&#039;i Press. {{annotation|An earlier journal-length statement of the argument later expanded into Ives&#039;s 2009 monograph, focused specifically on Ichikawa&#039;s critique of Nishida philosophy.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Secondary Literature in Japanese ==&lt;br /&gt;
* Morimura Osamu (森村修) (2019). 「市川白弦の「空-無政府-共同体論（Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism）」――小笠原秀実の仏教アナキズムと西谷啓治の自衛論批判をめぐって」 [Ichikawa Hakugen&#039;s &amp;quot;Śūnya-Anarchist-Communism&amp;quot;: On Ogasawara Shūjitsu&#039;s Buddhist Anarchism and Ichikawa&#039;s Critique of Nishitani Keiji&#039;s Argument for Self-Defense]. 『異文化. 論文編』 20: 155–208. {{annotation|The most comprehensive Japanese-language study of Ichikawa&#039;s S・A・C/B・A・C thought, tracing its origin in Ogasawara Shūjitsu&#039;s Buddhist anarchism and situating it in relation to the 1952 Nishitani debate and contemporary &amp;quot;new anarchism.&amp;quot;}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Fujii Yūsuke (藤井祐介) (2014). 「市川白弦と小笠原秀実」 [Ichikawa Hakugen and Ogasawara Shūjitsu]. 『唯一者』 13: 15–20. {{annotation|Reconstructs the direct intellectual debt Ichikawa owed to his teacher, arguing for continuity between Ogasawara&#039;s &amp;quot;philosophy of experiential apprehension&amp;quot; and Ichikawa&#039;s mature ethics.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Ishii Kōsei (石井公成) (2004). 「宗教者の戦争責任――市川白弦その人の検証を通して」 [The War Responsibility of Religionists: Through an Examination of Ichikawa Hakugen Himself]. In: Ikegami Yoshimasa (池上良正), Oda Yoshiko (小田淑子), Shimazono Susumu (島薗進), Sueki Fumihiko (末木文美士), Seki Kazutoshi (関一敏), &amp;amp; Tsuruoka Yoshi (鶴岡賀雄) (Eds.), 『暴力――破壊と秩序』 [Violence: Destruction and Order], vol. 8 of 『岩波講座 宗教』: 223–249. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten (岩波書店). {{annotation|A critical reassessment of Ichikawa&#039;s own wartime record, arguing that his postwar self-criticism, while unusually rigorous, understated the extent and timing of his wartime ambiguity.}}&lt;br /&gt;
* Tsurumi Shunsuke (鶴見俊輔) (1993). 「解説」 [Commentary]. In: Ichikawa Hakugen, 『市川白弦著作集』 [The Collected Works of Ichikawa Hakugen], vol. 3: 485–493. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. {{annotation|An afterword by a leading postwar intellectual historian and fellow Betheiren activist, situating Ichikawa&#039;s concept of habitual wartime complicity within broader Japanese debates on tenkō (転向) and social responsibility.}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite This Article ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
First version, 29 July 2026. Main: Brons, Lajos. Other: (none).&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Brons, Lajos ({{REVISIONYEAR}}). &amp;quot;Ichikawa Hakugen&amp;quot;. &#039;&#039;Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/Ichikawa_Hakugen&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Biographies]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Japan]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM-T&amp;diff=1237</id>
		<title>IH56ZTM-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM-T&amp;diff=1237"/>
		<updated>2026-10-12T17:29:58Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen and Marxism” (1956)}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Zen and Marxism&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Zen to Marukushizumu&#039;&#039; 禅とマルキシズム) is a 1956 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 2 of &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 (1993), pp. 293–312.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Japanese original:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH56ZTM|禅とマルキシズム]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contents ==&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section1|I. Before Ideology]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section2|II. Zen as Ideology (Part One)]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section3|III. Zen as Ideology (Part Two)]]&lt;br /&gt;
:[[#section4|IV. Human Self-Alienation and Its Recovery]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|293}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== I. Before Ideology ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Feuerbach reduces the essence of religion to the essence of humanity. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each individual person. (Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A disciple named Huichao (Echō 慧超) once asked Qingliang Wenyi (Seiryō Bun&#039;eki 清涼文益), a Zen monk of the late Tang and Five Dynasties period: “I, Huichao, ask you: What is Buddha?” The master replied, “You are Huichao.” (&#039;&#039;Blue Cliff Record&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Hekiganroku&#039;&#039; 碧巌録, Case 7.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This exchange recalls Feuerbach (1804–1872), who reduced the essence of religion to humanity. Feuerbach believed that, through religion, human beings take a roundabout path back to their own essence. In this instance, however, Huichao had not placed Buddha outside himself in the form of what is commonly called self-alienation. There is a certain confidence in his declaration, “I, Huichao, ask you.” Nor was it upon being told, “You are Huichao,” that he became conscious of a path by which the essence of religion might be reduced to humanity. Such a question had never arisen in the first place. Nor did the master say anything like, “The essence of Buddha is your own essence”—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|294}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—there was nothing of that sort in his reply. One can find plenty of such statements in books. Huichao and Qingliang are not inhabiting a world of mere meanings. Hence the expression, “A phrase before words.” There is also the expression “pouring ink into a black lacquer bucket” (Shudenshō 種電鈔). Such a thing cannot be grasped by the tentacles of objectifying logic. Dōgen describes Qingliang’s response as direct and unhesitating. “You are Huichao”: heaven and earth are of a single piece. At the very point where meaning shines forth, this exchange calls for a direct apprehension of the whole activity of selflessness, beyond the foundations of meaning.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There was a monastery administrator named Ze under Qingliang. Since he had never participated in Zen practice with the master, Qingliang asked why. Ze replied that he had previously awakened under Master Qinglin. Invited to explain, he reported asking, “What is Buddha?” and receiving the answer, “The fire-boy comes seeking fire” (&#039;&#039;heitei dōji rai guhō&#039;&#039; 丙丁童子来求火). Qingliang told him that he was mistaken and asked him to explain further. Ze reasoned that the cyclical signs &#039;&#039;hei&#039;&#039; and &#039;&#039;tei&#039;&#039; belong to fire: for a child of fire to seek fire means that, though he is originally Buddha, he has been seeking Buddha outside himself. The seeker himself, he concluded, is Buddha. Qingliang again said that he was mistaken. Dissatisfied, Ze packed up and left. Qingliang told the disciples that it was a pity: if Ze returned he might be saved, but otherwise there was little hope. As Ze travelled, he reflected that so esteemed a master would not have deceived him lightly and resolved to return for instruction. Qingliang invited him to ask the question again. “What is Buddha?” Ze asked. Qingliang replied with the very same words: “The fire-boy comes seeking fire!” At those words, Ze attained great enlightenment. This is not merely a hermeneutic exchange in which faith is interpreted as human self-alienation, the love of God as the love of humanity’s own essence, or theology as anthropology.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|295}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ascending the teaching hall, the master said: “Upon this lump of red flesh there is a true person of no rank, who constantly enters and departs through the faces of all of you. Those who have not yet verified this, look! Look!” A monk came forward and asked, “What is this true person of no rank?” The master descended from his meditation seat, seized the monk, and demanded, “Speak! Speak!” The monk hesitated. The master pushed him away, saying, “What a dried stick of shit this true person of no rank is!” He then returned to his quarters. (&#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This might appear to regard human nature as something “inherent in each individual person,” but that is not actually the case. “Outside the mind there is no dharma, and within, too, nothing can be apprehended.” A humanism that simply affirms the human being as something inherent within the individual is not Zen. When asked about the true person&#039;s original face, the Tang monk Xiangyan Zhixian (Kyōgen Chikan 香厳智閑) replied, “The eyes inside a monkey.” This is a creation that takes place where the very ground upon which humanity, a central concept of modern thought, is established has been emptied. “On the peak that penetrates the mystery, there is no human being. Outside the mind there is no dharma; before one&#039;s eyes, green mountains fill the view.” If the “true person of no rank” were merely an abstraction inherent in the individual, that vigorous activity and freedom could never have emerged—the freedom that caused even Huangbo, Linji&#039;s master, to exclaim, “You madman! Have you come here to stroke the tiger&#039;s whiskers?” In the Zen life expressed through such phrases as “Be the master wherever you stand” and “Seek true understanding and go freely throughout the world,” there is little basis for Marx&#039;s characterisation of religion as an illusory sun revolving around human beings until they begin to revolve around themselves, as the halo surrounding a vale of tears, or as the sigh of the oppressed creature. Marx continues the statement quoted at the beginning of this essay by writing that, in its reality, the human essence is the ensemble of social relations. Marxism does not recognise, alongside the human essence conceived as an abstraction and the human essence understood in its social reality—or, more precisely, at a level that transcends both—the “person” (&#039;&#039;hito&#039;&#039; 人) that constitutes Zen&#039;s fundamental experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A monk named Ding arrived and asked about the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma. The master came down from his seat and struck him; when Ding bowed—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|296}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—he suddenly attained great enlightenment. (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is clear that an awakening of this kind is not an “ideology” understood as part of a superstructure conditioned by the material circumstances of social life—that is, by the economic structure of a particular historical period, which constitutes its actual foundation. Around the middle of the Tang dynasty, there lived the Zen master Yaoshan Weiyan (Yakusan Igen 薬山惟儼), near Lake Dongting. Since he rarely gave sermons, the monastery administrator urged him: “Everyone has long been hoping to hear your teaching. Please give a sermon.” The master replied, “In that case, ring the bell to summon everyone.” When the bell sounded and the assembly gathered, Yaoshan ascended the teaching seat. He remained silent for a while, then descended and returned to his quarters. Astonished, the administrator hurried after him. “Master, I thought you had agreed to my request. Why did you say nothing?” Yaoshan replied, “There are masters of the scriptures and masters of the treatises. Why should it be surprising that I have not preached the Dharma?” (&#039;&#039;Book of Serenity&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shōyōroku&#039;&#039; 従容録, Case 7.) Dōgen commented, “Before any of you reached the Dharma hall, you had already received thirty blows.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A monk asked the master in the teaching hall, “What is the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma?” The master raised his fly-whisk. The monk shouted; the master struck him. Another monk asked, “What is the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma?” Again the master raised his fly-whisk. The monk shouted; the master shouted in return. The monk hesitated; the master struck him. (&#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In such an encounter, every ideology resembles a snowflake falling into a white-hot furnace. “Recognise the person who plays with light and shadow.” That is to say, grasp the subject who forms ideology. As the ancients said, “The moment you describe it as resembling something, you miss the mark.” Simply look within yourself. What else could there be? Yet there is no end to what may be said. The subject that endlessly rejects ideology is also the subject that endlessly produces ideology.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|297}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== II. Zen as Ideology (Part One) ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The only way in which human beings can recover their humanity, their essential being, is through “the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and a resolute, rightful return—not to God, but to humanity themselves.” (Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen realises the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and this resolute, rightful return—not to God but to humanity itself—not in the form of the proletariat struggling to overcome human self-alienation, that is, poverty and enslavement, or in the form of proletarian humanism (although I think it would be one-sided to say that it cannot also take these forms), but in the form of &#039;&#039;kyakka shōko&#039;&#039; 脚下照顧, looking beneath one’s own feet—that is, transcending humanity at its very foundation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The master instructed the assembly: “I do not delight in hearing even the single word ‘Buddha.’” (Record of Zhaozhou, &#039;&#039;Jōshūroku&#039;&#039; 趙州録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If you seek Buddha, you will be seized by the Buddha-demon. […] Look instead to the person who exercises mastery over circumstances; this is the profound meaning of all buddhas.” (Record of Linji, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Feuerbach “begins from the fact of religious self-alienation, that is, the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular world.” (Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The human world was made neither by gods nor by demons. It was made by ordinary people living just down the street—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Recognise the person who plays with light and shadow. This is the source of all buddhas. Everywhere, practitioners of the Way, is the place to which you return.” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
For a Zen practitioner, heaven and the world beyond are like leaves used to quiet a crying child, or a mirage (&#039;&#039;kagerō&#039;&#039; カゲロウ). Instead, if one apprehends the “person” who chases the mirage, this actual world itself becomes the real world, worthy of living in.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|298}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—ordinary people. Even if the world they have made is hard to live in, there is no other country to which we can move. If there were, it would be a country of inhuman beings, and that country would surely be even harder to live in than the human world. (Natsume Sōseki, &#039;&#039;Kusamakura&#039;&#039; 草枕)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“You who come here from every direction are all intent on seeking Buddha, seeking the Dharma, seeking liberation, and seeking to escape the three realms. Fools! If you leave the three realms, where do you propose to go?” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Religion has been called an “inverted consciousness of the world” (Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction”). But where could such an “inversion” be found in the world expressed in Su Dongpo’s lines, “Having arrived and returned, there is nothing extraordinary: Mount Lu is mist and rain; the Zhejiang River is the tide”? Lenin wrote in a letter to Gorky that the helplessness of the exploited in their struggle against the exploiters inevitably leads to belief in a better life in the hereafter. Yet in a society likewise marked by class exploitation, Zen consciously rejected belief in another world. The duplication of the world through a religious reflection of reality, whereby “the real foundation rises above itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm,” not only failed to occur in this instance within the same medieval status society: it was actively rejected.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The religious reflection of the real world can disappear only when the practical relations of everyday life present themselves to people as transparent, rational relations with one another and with nature. The form of the social life-process—that is, the process of material production—casts off its mystical veil only when it becomes the product of freely associated human beings, subject to their conscious, planned control.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Capital&#039;&#039;, vol. 1, part 1, chapter 1, section 4)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet in a world where the practical relationships of everyday life have not come to disclose to everyone transparent, rational relations among human beings and with nature—in other words, in a medieval society that had not liberated all human beings from self-alienation or brought all the means of production into common ownership and planned use—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|299}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—this religious reflection was nevertheless extensively forestalled by Zen practitioners. At least in this respect, one may say that Zen did not possess the character of an opium of the people.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== III. Zen as Ideology (Part Two) ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen as ideology becomes a social problem not primarily in its metaphysical aspects but in its contact with the actual everyday lives of the people. The question is what attitude Zen practitioners, as embodiments of Zen—or Zen institutions—adopt in their words and actions, grounded in their views of the world and of life, concerning human relationships and the principles governing how one should conduct oneself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Distinguish the limits of your station and know your nature. […] The willow is green; the flower is red.” (Suzuki Shōsan, &#039;&#039;Mōanjō&#039;&#039; 盲安杖.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The subtlety of morality begins in that which has neither sound nor scent and culminates in the three hundred rules of propriety and the three thousand forms of decorum. At their culmination, these return to what has neither sound nor scent. […] This is called the mutual presence of light and darkness.” (Imakita Kōsen, &#039;&#039;Zenkai ichiran&#039;&#039; 禅海一瀾.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Even if you serve a bad master and have nowhere to escape, do not blame the master. Consider it the karmic cause of your own deeds in a previous existence. […] Many suffer morning and evening throughout their lives through illness, blindness, or destitution. Whose fault is such suffering? It is entirely one’s own. […] Let go of everything and enter the path of loyalty and filial piety.” (&#039;&#039;Mōanjō&#039;&#039; 盲安杖.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The Buddhist Way lies beneath each person’s feet. There is nothing for it but to forget oneself and become wholly one with the thing at hand. ‘In the land of Japan, where the way of lord and subject shines clearly, may it remain unmoved for ten thousand generations’: this is a poem by the Meiji emperor. Take it deeply to heart. There is no Zen apart from loyalty and filial piety.” (Iida Tōin, &#039;&#039;Kaian kokugo teishōroku&#039;&#039; 槐安国語提唱録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Insofar as supporting and reinforcing the ethical relationships of feudal status society arose voluntarily from a Zen foundation, Zen practitioners—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|300}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—would naturally encourage active conduct along these lines.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Absent-minded Zen is out of the question. One must sit in meditation with complete concentration, feeling as though Mount Fuji were rising straight into the sky above the Eastern Sea—or, to go further, as though the entire earth were one&#039;s meditation cushion and one stood alone between heaven and earth. One need only sit in this spirit. What is the purpose of seated meditation? It is to embody the unsurpassed Way, attain great and thorough enlightenment, cultivate the power of concentration, and acquire the freedom to act wherever one finds oneself. The unsurpassed Way is the great Way of Vimalakīrti; great enlightenment means awakening to that Way; and acquiring freedom of action wherever one finds oneself means that Japanese people should abide and act as Japanese people. (Harada Sogaku, &#039;&#039;Nihon seishin to Daijō Zen&#039;&#039; 日本精神と大乗禅.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If the goal of national education is to die for the sovereign and to devote oneself selflessly to his service, that goal cannot be fully realised unless every imperial subject, through study and training in their respective sphere of work, strives to embody this wondrous activity free from contrivance. (Itō Kōan, &#039;&#039;Takuan oshō to kyōiku&#039;&#039; 沢庵和尚と教育.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a saying that every tree is known by its fruit. The essence of Zen, which transcends conventional society and ideology, has borne precisely this kind of fruit through the ideology of ordinary mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Once religion has taken shape, it always contains traditional elements; and tradition, it goes without saying, constitutes a powerful conservative force within the realm of ideology. (Engels, &#039;&#039;Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a view that whatever is done in the Zen state of no-mind is always fresh and new in substance, even when it appears from the outside to repeat the same action. This is expressed in the saying, “Each time it is raised, it is new.” There is truth in this understanding. Yet herein lies the fundamental possibility that creative Zen may become habitual, conventional, and conservative. Even established customs, when one enters into them and acts accordingly, have their own distinctive appeal; this becomes an attraction in itself. The principle that tradition must be inherited through creativity was forgotten. Rather than carrying forward something living in a living form, people attempted to inherit it in a dead form. Within the realm of ideology, it is only natural that such conservatism should come to serve class domination, uncritically and of its own accord.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|301}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The ideas of the ruling class are, in every epoch, the ruling ideas. In other words, the class that constitutes the dominant material power in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual power. The class that controls the means of material production also controls the means of intellectual production; consequently, the ideas of those who lack access to the means of intellectual production are, in general, subordinated to that class. (Marx and Engels, &#039;&#039;The German Ideology&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps it would be reading too much into things to suggest that the imperialist project of world domination, whose supposed “ethical” summit was the ideal of &#039;&#039;hakkō ichiu&#039;&#039; 八紘一宇 (“eight corners of the world under one roof”), found its religious reflection in the determination to sit in meditation with complete concentration, using the entire earth as one&#039;s meditation cushion. In a political system that united religious rites and government, national defence and warfare could be clothed in religious forms. Under such circumstances, it was far from uncommon for people to experience religious guilt if they could not completely surrender their private interests and devote their lives to submission before the solemn authority of the state. There were those who devoted considerable thought to the emperor&#039;s “character of nothingness,” to the profound significance of the one-emperor-and-all-subjects system as an embodiment of “one is many,” and to the moral spirit of the “holy war.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is said that ours is a generation whose feelings were worn away by war until we became incapable of crying. Perhaps that is true. Yet when I think of the emperor and of the many people who died for him, I am ashamed to admit that my voice trembles involuntarily. When I drink with a veteran pilot who barely escaped death and now lives peacefully as a salaried employee, I sometimes find myself unable to sleep that night. The faces of dead comrades appear before my eyes, making sleep even more impossible. (Murakami Hyōe, “Senchūha wa kō kangaeru” 戦中派はこう考える.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To live is a joy and a hope. It is also suffering and disappointment. There are various ways of responding to suffering and disappointment, but what is sought as a lasting and fundamental response is a way of life that enables one to face even the worst circumstances of human existence with equanimity.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|302}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In such circumstances, there is one path that may be followed by those who do not believe in a transcendent absolute or a world beyond this one. It is a way of living in which one abandons the standpoint of clinging firmly to particular desires, hopes, or obligations and striving relentlessly to fulfil them. Instead, one accepts each situation as it presents itself and becomes completely one with it. Like colourless dew that appears green upon a willow and red upon a flower, or a mirror that reflects the morning in the morning and the night at night, one neither rejects what comes nor pursues what departs. Wherever one lives becomes home; in sadness, one makes sadness one&#039;s master, and in loneliness, loneliness becomes one&#039;s master. It is an attitude of living in a cosmic affirmation—a universal “Yes.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When one becomes wholly one with the thing itself and forgets oneself, one understands that everyone is of one piece with heaven and earth. What more could one desire? To desire is always to lack something and to be tormented. The popular verse ‘Looking upward, how many things lie beyond one’s reach’ recognises the error of the desire to look above one’s station. ‘Put on your straw hat and live according to your own heart’ recognises the abundance of one’s own lot and the possibility of dwelling in it peacefully.” (Iida Tōin, previously cited.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Actual society is a world of distinctions based on status and class. To entangle love and hatred in this world of distinctions, intensifying consciousness of the individual ego, can only increase dissatisfaction and agitation. Hence the proposal to accept distinctions as distinctions, without rejecting them or becoming engulfed in them. In this way, the troubled mind may subside and one may experience a different breeze even amid suffering. [The final figurative expression in the Japanese requires further verification.]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To ignore distinctions and make mountains and rivers, noble and lowly, all one would amount to a denial of cause and effect; the splendour of the world would disappear and it would become desolate. What is needed is the correct within the partial—that is, equality amid distinctions. If one falls into attachment to any single position, one fails. Originally, these are all waves upon water. […] Keep the mind like water and leave it to circumstances whether it takes a square or round form.” (Iida Tōin, previously cited; a clause in the source quotation remains uncertain.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In this way there emerged a philosophy of noncontention and accommodation, expressed in such sayings as “Give rise to the mind without abiding anywhere” (&#039;&#039;Diamond Sūtra&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Kongōkyō&#039;&#039; 金剛経); “When not a single thought arises, the myriad things are without fault” (&#039;&#039;Faith in Mind&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shinjinmei&#039;&#039; 信心銘); and “The highest goodness is like water; precisely because it does not contend, it is without fault” (&#039;&#039;Daodejing&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rōshi Dōtokukyō&#039;&#039; 老子道徳経).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|303}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen, having rejected the order of the world beyond, opened a path toward accepting directly the order of this world. Rather than earthly status determining the status of the soul in heaven, the order of nature, viewed from a religious and metaphysical perspective, came to sanctify the order of human society. Or, more precisely, the order of human society discovered its own religious and metaphysical reflection in the order of nature and thereby sanctified itself. In this way, a cosmology emerged that provided the underlying structure for what might be called Asian tolerance—or Asian peace of mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“First: Harmony is to be valued, and the absence of contentiousness is to be made fundamental. […] Third: When you receive an imperial command, obey it reverently. The ruler is heaven, and the ministers are earth. Heaven covers and earth supports. Thus the four seasons proceed in proper order, and the myriad energies circulate freely. If earth should attempt to cover heaven, destruction would necessarily follow. Therefore, what the ruler commands, the ministers obey; where those above lead, those below follow. Consequently, when receiving an imperial command, obey it reverently. Failure to do so will bring ruin upon oneself.” (&#039;&#039;Seventeen-Article Constitution&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Jūshichijō kenpō&#039;&#039; 十七条憲法.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The direction taken by young men departing for the battlefield, who struggled to resolve the problem of life and death through devotion to the emperor and the willingness to leave their bodies upon the grass or beneath the waters, followed an inclination established in the distant past.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is another way of approaching life: the life of detached insight. This involves adopting a standpoint concerned with the ultimate meaning or highest value of human existence, comprehensively contemplating and critically assessing the fundamental character and tendencies of historical reality, and living one&#039;s life in accordance with that understanding. Those called philosophers and sages are practitioners of such a life. To the extent that people attempt to examine life comprehensively and fundamentally, and to live according to that insight, they must inevitably adopt, to some degree, a position of detachment. Amid the feverish everyday existence driven relentlessly by time, it is the wisdom of the accomplished person that opens a refreshing perspective upon life. The wisdom of great affirmation, which deepens our appreciation of living and purifies suffering, and the wisdom of detached insight are two aspects of the profound worldview developed in the East.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet the path of detached insight almost invariably ends in observing the realities of the world from a position above them. Society—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|304}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—social and political evils, and the practical effort to correct them and realise a better world, are regarded with the same detachment. The result is a way of protecting one’s own life without dirtying one’s hands. This does not mean simply allowing society’s contradictions and irrationalities to stand as good. Rather, the goals and plans intended to remedy them are deemed inadequate, and even action aimed at change is seen as tainted by worldly attachment and therefore in need of fundamental purification. The masses’ gathering and use of wisdom and energy to build a free and peaceful world is certainly not nonsense, and it undoubtedly has worldly value. Yet such action is held unworthy of anyone genuinely devoted to the Way: it is judged a product of deluded attachment, an activity stained by defilements. What must be upheld is the thoroughness and purity of theory and practice. This immovable conviction is the detached perspective of the accomplished person. By combining a subjective rejection of social evil with an objective acceptance of it, one may serve the exploitative structures of political power while safeguarding the dignity and tranquillity of one’s own existence. Here is what Ichikawa calls &#039;&#039;kanzen shumi&#039;&#039; 完全趣味, invoking Lukács’s description of an abandonment of action that is “lofty in appearance but cowardly in reality.” [The rendering of 完全趣味 and the Lukács reference require source verification.]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We have examined philosophies of both active and passive cooperation with political power. These two positions, however, are not necessarily distinct. Depending on changes in social circumstances, one may readily give rise to the other.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Religious sentiment is itself a social product.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Theses on Feuerbach&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The worldview derived from the &#039;&#039;Book of Changes&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Ekikyō&#039;&#039; 易経), which for so long informed the consciousness and conduct of Zen practitioners, was a broadly moral cosmology that understood the order of nature and the order of human society through common principles. It was probably shaped, to a greater or lesser extent, by the so-called Asiatic stagnation grounded in the Asiatic mode of production. Leaving further consideration of this dimension for another occasion, let us examine the individual social relationships of Zen practitioners.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|305}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The position occupied by an individual Zen practitioner within the domestic and international structures of power of their age; their proximity and relationship to the centres of power; and the social circles they inhabit in connection with those circumstances—all these determine the form of their life. That form of life, in turn, constrains their sensibilities, morality, political orientation, and other characteristics. A distinctive feature of ideology is precisely that this structure of relationships, correspondences, and constraints is not fully and transparently recognised. Consequently, judgements and actions that appear entirely autonomous to Zen practitioners themselves are, in reality, generally conditioned by the network of social relationships in which they are situated. Differences of opinion that supposedly ought to be resolved through discussion frequently prove extraordinarily difficult to overcome because the parties involved belong to different networks or systems of social relations. These structural differences often condition the differences in their reasoning. Changing one&#039;s way of thinking may therefore require dismantling one&#039;s existing social relationships and reorganising them along different lines. Yet doing so may threaten to destroy one&#039;s established way of life. A partly unconscious anxiety about this possibility, together with the inertia of everyday existence, determines and hardens people&#039;s ways of perceiving, thinking, and acting.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV. Human Self-Alienation and Its Recovery ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In its reality, the human essence is the ensemble of social relations.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Theses on Feuerbach&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We live in a society of competitive private ownership which, having freed us as individuals from the restraints of feudal society, has cast us out into a world where we live protected and simultaneously bound by countless restrictions constructed to maintain and strengthen this social system. Under individual “freedom” and responsibility, we are thrown into competition for the limited means of happiness. It is as if, during a five-minute stop, we were trying to board an impossibly overcrowded train together with Rikidōzan’s fellow wrestlers—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|306}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and men with infantile paralysis, all jostling toward the same entrance, the same window. If the proper entrance is blocked, one must slip in through a window, or even climb onto the roof and cling to the doors. Were we to take care of our appearance, respect etiquette, and observe the virtue of modesty, the departure time would come and every train would leave us behind. Such is the transportation hell in which we seem to live. For another person to board is for me to be left behind; for me to board is for another to be left behind. While we consider how this contradiction might rationally be resolved, the departure bell rings; the plans of those waiting for us at our destination collapse. The misfortune does not end with us alone. Nearly everyone crowded here shares these circumstances.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Day after day, from morning until night, there is an endless succession of examinations and tests. It is not merely youth that is excluded; humanity itself may be driven out. For in order to pass these fierce examinations, one cannot afford to concern oneself with friendship. A classmate&#039;s failure may become the very source of one&#039;s own good fortune. One longs to gain an advantage over the others. Before an examination, students pretend not to know things they actually know and refuse to help their friends. If a classmate misses the train on examination day, or happens to fall ill, that may prove advantageous. One student confessed, “I wished my friends would die.” Is this not literally hell? It is terrifying. What would happen if a young person who had developed such a terrifying disposition entered the University of Tokyo, became an even more frightening demon during company entrance examinations, and then carried these habits into society, eventually coming to wish misfortune upon others? (Honda Akira, &#039;&#039;Gendai no seishun&#039;&#039; 現代の青春.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I once heard about the difficulties faced by a homeroom teacher responsible for advising students seeking employment. In the classroom, students had learned that the Constitution must be defended without compromise. Yet when taking an employment examination, they were advised not to say so too explicitly. Whatever political party they actually supported, if asked, they would be better off naming the conservative party. The teacher was troubled by having to offer such contradictory advice. The same can be said of my own—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|307}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—experience. In a society where a school principal could be dismissed for misreading the Imperial Rescript at a ceremony, and a teacher on night duty could commit suicide after a portrait of the emperor was destroyed in a fire, I did not utter a single word of protest. Not only that: although I knew the war was an unclean war, I cooperated with the so-called “holy war.” Far from observing the precept against false speech, I manipulated the language of distorted scholarship. I could not even dream of possessing the freedom expressed in the &#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;: “When you wish to go, go; when you wish to sit, sit” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録). Reports indicate, however, that similar forms of falsehood existed in the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe, particularly in connection with the cult of Stalin and the rewriting of history. The American writer Mark Twain remarked, with considerable irony, that God had bestowed upon his countrymen three incomparable gifts: freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and the good sense never to exercise either freedom. But the “God” who bestowed that good sense was presumably the machinery of state power. The police become the limits of what one is permitted to recognise.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Writing about theft, the author Ōta Yōko 大田洋子 recalled the wartime food shortages:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I was not particularly resourceful, and in Tokyo I went hungry every day, sometimes weeping at mealtimes. I would obtain small portions of food that other people had bought on the black market. Sometimes, taking advantage of the rain, I would crouch beside a path through a field, conceal my face behind an umbrella, and steal several bunches of spinach. Even then, it was said that people who stole crops from farmers&#039; fields could be subjected to corporal punishment. But I was living near the daikon fields of Nerima, and on rainy nights I would pull large radishes from the ground. By that time I had ceased to be a respectable human being. I was quite unconcerned at the thought of being detained, since life in a cell would probably be little different from life outside.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A young man suffering from illness gave stark expression to the pain and ugliness of living.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Family — Iwamoto Toshio 岩本敏夫&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If only this child were not here—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|308}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If only Father and Mother weren&#039;t here—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Father as father, Mother as mother, Child as child,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Each thinking this way,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Now&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Only suffocating hatred&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In this same house&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
They live together.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Such mutual hostility would probably lose most of the conditions necessary for its emergence if a comprehensive system of social security were established and the necessities of life were as abundant as air. This would be an instance of the Buddhist principle that, when the necessary conditions are absent, a phenomenon cannot arise (&#039;&#039;en ketsu fushō&#039;&#039; 縁欠不生). The scarcity of nature—and especially the scarcity produced by society—awakens and intensifies human self-centredness, exclusiveness, distrust, and competition. There is an expression about diverting water toward one&#039;s own rice field. In earlier times, farmers living on opposite banks of a river might face one another with suspicion and hostility during a drought. Yet once the rain came, they would abandon their confrontation and depart. Such scenes could formerly be observed in rural Japan. Hobbes, a proponent of the view that human nature is evil, argued that people need only examine themselves to recognise that human beings are not naturally sociable animals. At night, we lock our doors; even when at home, we lock our valuables in safes. Locking the door reveals what we think of our fellow citizens, while locking the safe reveals what we think of our own children and servants. But it is doubtful whether such conditions have existed in every age.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the Great Way prevailed, all under heaven was held in common. The worthy and capable were selected, trust was cultivated, and harmonious relations maintained. Thus people did not regard only their own parents as parents, nor only their own children as children. The elderly had support in their final years, adults had useful employment, children had the opportunity to grow, and widowers, widows, orphans, the childless, the disabled, and the sick all received care. […] Thus conspiracies did not arise, nor did theft—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|309}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—or disorder arose. People left their outer doors open instead of closing them. This was called the Great Community.” (&#039;&#039;Book of Rites&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Raiki&#039;&#039; 礼記, “Liyun,” chapter 9.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps this represents a recollection of primitive communism. Why does what Feuerbach calls “human self-alienation”—the projection of one&#039;s own essence outside oneself—arise in the first place? It seems that competitive society based on private ownership contains within its structure some of the conditions that explain this phenomenon. Human beings under modern capitalism resemble commuters trapped in an endless transportation nightmare, or farmers who have become accustomed to guarding their vegetables at night behind barbed-wire fences against thieves. Certainly, it remains necessary to urge people who have long lived under such conditions to trust one another, refrain from pushing others aside, and abandon attachment to the self. Yet to imagine that such exhortations alone can be effective is utopian.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We have already seen that Zen&#039;s fundamental experience transcends ideology, but that when it takes concrete form as ideology, it has tended (a) to affirm the existing circumstances in which individuals find themselves and (b) to encourage service to society&#039;s structures of power. Nevertheless, accepting one&#039;s present circumstances without resistance is not necessarily blameworthy. Such acceptance can be connected with some of the deepest and most beautiful wisdom of human existence. It is for this reason that Ozaki Hotsumi&#039;s Zen-inspired contemplation, expressed in the words “Love is like a falling star,” touches the human heart. “When calamity comes, it is best to encounter calamity. When the time to die arrives, it is best to die. This is the wonderful method of escaping calamity.” (Ryōkan 良寛.) In this spirit of detached acceptance, Ozaki created and experienced the depth and beauty of human life. The assertion that what is needed is not a philosophy of interpretation but a philosophy of transformation seems to me to be the statement of Marx the revolutionary rather than Marx the human being.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet human life is not an uninterrupted series of the worst conceivable circumstances, with not even a millimetre of room for change. Finding a way to live peacefully amid what truly cannot be altered remains important for the latitude and well-being of everyday life. But to—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|310}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—live solely by this attitude, and recommend it to everyone in every circumstance, even where conditions can be changed, is properly called a deviation. To go further and produce a Zen apologetic that actively serves a mystified system of exploitation is a dreadful deviation. I believe this results from grasping Zen’s fundamental subject, “nothingness,” solely in its passive and accommodating aspect: like air or water, it has no shape but takes every shape, no colour but assumes every colour. Thinking increasingly through such comparisons, one eventually lets the metaphors govern thought, leaving aside the creative and formative power of nothingness to refuse, criticise, and resist. Capitalist society, which takes material profit-seeking as the motive force of social organisation and turns everything—even human beings—into commodities and material or instrumental human resources, is fundamentally incompatible with the radically subjective spirit of Zen. Yet Zen practitioners failed to develop the scientific understanding needed for the fundamental transformation of this system and the construction of society. They consequently confused the distinctions and equalities found in natural phenomena, in the natural sciences, in hierarchical social arrangements, and in different personal circumstances and forms of peace of mind, under the standpoint of “nonduality” between matter and mind, nature and humanity. Falling into false equality and false discrimination, they ultimately produced an unprincipled, benighted Zen that served fascism and cooperated with war. As the &#039;&#039;Inscription on Faith in Mind&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Shinjinmei&#039;&#039; 信心銘) says, “If there is the slightest difference, heaven and earth are far apart.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen practice means rejecting every idol, including the cult of individual personality; abandoning regrets about the past and anxieties about the future; and devoting oneself wholeheartedly to shaping life in the present. That life must contribute, directly or indirectly, to the realisation of a genuinely human society in which “each lives for all, and all live for each.” Zen practice consists in penetrating the emptiness of attachment to self through the creation of such a life. In this sense, Zen&#039;s fundamental subject constitutes the underlying ground of human living—not only the everyday activities expressed in the saying “When you encounter tea, drink tea; when you encounter rice, eat rice”—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|311}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—but also the underlying ground of struggles against war and for independence and liberation. The Zen saying about cultivating one’s own field and preparing and eating one’s rice (&#039;&#039;Book of Serenity&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shōyōroku&#039;&#039; 従容録, Case 21) concerns a life directly joined to society’s material foundation. To devote oneself wholly to such productive life is also to form oneself through ideas aimed at transforming the ideological superstructure and the social order.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Zen monasteries, collective activity directed toward the environment and its transformation is called &#039;&#039;samu&#039;&#039; 作務, or work practice. What overcomes the unhappy combination of pure intentions with impoverished or even contradictory results is the practical attitude expressed in such work. This is not a poetic attitude but a prosaic one: a lucid, constructive spirit that breaks through subjective absorption and intoxication through rational, experimental engagement with its objects. When such a spirit acts upon society and political institutions as historically constituted environments, seeking to cultivate and reconstruct them, the world toward which it ultimately strives is, in accordance with Zen&#039;s fundamental qualities of selflessness, nonpossession, and autonomy, a borderless world society organised through free communism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Once the truth of the world beyond has vanished, it is history’s task to establish the truth of this world. After the sacred form of human self-alienation has been unmasked, the first task of philosophy in the service of history is to unmask self-alienation in its unholy forms. The criticism of heaven thereby becomes the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology the criticism of politics.” (Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction.”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In my view, to establish the truth of this world after the disappearance of the truth of the beyond is to overcome religious faith in another world and to realise a society of free communism, in which all people are emancipated from exploitation and oppression as well as from the ego of exclusive self-attachment. In the direct and indirect activities of everyday life, this requires that one fully participate in sitting when sitting, in walking when walking, and in each task when engaged in it, as Tōrei Enji 東嶺円慈 teaches in &#039;&#039;Shūmon mujintō ron&#039;&#039; 宗門無尽灯論—relinquishing regret and anxious anticipation and emptying attachment to self. The fact that even Stalin—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|312}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—could apparently not truly become “his own master” (Engels, &#039;&#039;Socialism: Utopian and Scientific&#039;&#039;) is neither so harmless nor so trivial that it can be dismissed as merely one of the “birthmarks” of the old social order. Put differently, we must find a way for Ozaki Hotsumi’s Zen equanimity to permeate the activity of establishing a Buddha land in the sense just described. What is called “practice amid activity” (&#039;&#039;dōchū no kufū&#039;&#039; 動中の工夫), superior to “practice amid stillness” (&#039;&#039;jōchū no kufū&#039;&#039; 静中の工夫)—seated meditation in a quiet place—must mean diligence in precisely this kind of life. It entails arousing the aspiration for enlightenment (&#039;&#039;bodaishin&#039;&#039; 菩提心) to establish a Buddha land and recognising that one must “shoulder sentient beings as a heavy burden,” while oneself being among those sentient beings. Since Zen has already rejected “the sacred form of human self-alienation,” what remains is to recognise and overcome its profane forms through an investigation of one’s own fundamental concern (&#039;&#039;koji kyūmei&#039;&#039; 己事究明) that empties egoism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To leave flowers to the wind and birds to their proper time is also the meritorious work of giving. […] To set out boats and provide bridges is likewise the perfection of giving. If one truly studies giving, both accepting the body and relinquishing the body are acts of giving. Cultivating fields and engaging in productive occupations are, from the outset, nothing other than giving.” (Dōgen, “Bodaisatta shishōbō” 菩提薩埵四摂法)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Zen master Yongming Qian (Eimei Sen 永明潜) addressed the assembly: “The Buddha-Dharma is plainly manifest. Why do you not understand it? If you wish to understand the Buddha-Dharma, ask Zhang San and Li Si. If you wish to understand worldly affairs, inquire in the monasteries of the ancient buddhas.” (*Zenmon kōan taisei* 禅門公案大成)The Zen master Yongming Qian addressed the assembly: “The Buddha-Dharma is plainly manifest. Why do you fail to understand it? If you want to understand the Buddha-Dharma, inquire of Zhang San and Li Si [ordinary people]. If you want to understand worldly affairs, inquire in the monasteries of the ancient buddhas.” (&#039;&#039;Zenmon kōan taisei&#039;&#039; 禅門公案大成.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What unity of practice and theory must we develop in order to establish a modern way of learning Zen from the working masses, and learning the principles of society from Zen communities? I welcome instruction from all quarters.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
This translation is based on Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦, “Zen to Marukushizumu” 禅とマルキシズム (1956), as reproduced in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 2, &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; 禅と現代思想 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), 293–312. The original publication venue has not been established in this edition. The Japanese transcription and this translation are working scholarly texts; historical quotations and some character-level readings remain subject to further collation. Original printed paragraph and page divisions have been retained where recoverable.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotation: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1956). “Zen and Marxism” (&#039;&#039;Zen to Marukushizumu&#039;&#039; 禅とマルキシズム). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH56ZTM-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM-T&amp;diff=1236</id>
		<title>IH56ZTM-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM-T&amp;diff=1236"/>
		<updated>2026-10-12T17:28:52Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen and Marxism” (1956)}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Zen and Marxism&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Zen to Marukushizumu&#039;&#039; 禅とマルキシズム) is a 1956 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 2 of &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 (1993), pp. 293–312.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Japanese original:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH56ZTM|禅とマルキシズム]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contents ==&lt;br /&gt;
* [[#section1|I. Before Ideology]]&lt;br /&gt;
* [[#section2|II. Zen as Ideology (Part One)]]&lt;br /&gt;
* [[#section3|III. Zen as Ideology (Part Two)]]&lt;br /&gt;
* [[#section4|IV. Human Self-Alienation and Its Recovery]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|293}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== I. Before Ideology ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Feuerbach reduces the essence of religion to the essence of humanity. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each individual person. (Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A disciple named Huichao (Echō 慧超) once asked Qingliang Wenyi (Seiryō Bun&#039;eki 清涼文益), a Zen monk of the late Tang and Five Dynasties period: “I, Huichao, ask you: What is Buddha?” The master replied, “You are Huichao.” (&#039;&#039;Blue Cliff Record&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Hekiganroku&#039;&#039; 碧巌録, Case 7.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This exchange recalls Feuerbach (1804–1872), who reduced the essence of religion to humanity. Feuerbach believed that, through religion, human beings take a roundabout path back to their own essence. In this instance, however, Huichao had not placed Buddha outside himself in the form of what is commonly called self-alienation. There is a certain confidence in his declaration, “I, Huichao, ask you.” Nor was it upon being told, “You are Huichao,” that he became conscious of a path by which the essence of religion might be reduced to humanity. Such a question had never arisen in the first place. Nor did the master say anything like, “The essence of Buddha is your own essence”—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|294}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—there was nothing of that sort in his reply. One can find plenty of such statements in books. Huichao and Qingliang are not inhabiting a world of mere meanings. Hence the expression, “A phrase before words.” There is also the expression “pouring ink into a black lacquer bucket” (Shudenshō 種電鈔). Such a thing cannot be grasped by the tentacles of objectifying logic. Dōgen describes Qingliang’s response as direct and unhesitating. “You are Huichao”: heaven and earth are of a single piece. At the very point where meaning shines forth, this exchange calls for a direct apprehension of the whole activity of selflessness, beyond the foundations of meaning.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There was a monastery administrator named Ze under Qingliang. Since he had never participated in Zen practice with the master, Qingliang asked why. Ze replied that he had previously awakened under Master Qinglin. Invited to explain, he reported asking, “What is Buddha?” and receiving the answer, “The fire-boy comes seeking fire” (&#039;&#039;heitei dōji rai guhō&#039;&#039; 丙丁童子来求火). Qingliang told him that he was mistaken and asked him to explain further. Ze reasoned that the cyclical signs &#039;&#039;hei&#039;&#039; and &#039;&#039;tei&#039;&#039; belong to fire: for a child of fire to seek fire means that, though he is originally Buddha, he has been seeking Buddha outside himself. The seeker himself, he concluded, is Buddha. Qingliang again said that he was mistaken. Dissatisfied, Ze packed up and left. Qingliang told the disciples that it was a pity: if Ze returned he might be saved, but otherwise there was little hope. As Ze travelled, he reflected that so esteemed a master would not have deceived him lightly and resolved to return for instruction. Qingliang invited him to ask the question again. “What is Buddha?” Ze asked. Qingliang replied with the very same words: “The fire-boy comes seeking fire!” At those words, Ze attained great enlightenment. This is not merely a hermeneutic exchange in which faith is interpreted as human self-alienation, the love of God as the love of humanity’s own essence, or theology as anthropology.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|295}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ascending the teaching hall, the master said: “Upon this lump of red flesh there is a true person of no rank, who constantly enters and departs through the faces of all of you. Those who have not yet verified this, look! Look!” A monk came forward and asked, “What is this true person of no rank?” The master descended from his meditation seat, seized the monk, and demanded, “Speak! Speak!” The monk hesitated. The master pushed him away, saying, “What a dried stick of shit this true person of no rank is!” He then returned to his quarters. (&#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This might appear to regard human nature as something “inherent in each individual person,” but that is not actually the case. “Outside the mind there is no dharma, and within, too, nothing can be apprehended.” A humanism that simply affirms the human being as something inherent within the individual is not Zen. When asked about the true person&#039;s original face, the Tang monk Xiangyan Zhixian (Kyōgen Chikan 香厳智閑) replied, “The eyes inside a monkey.” This is a creation that takes place where the very ground upon which humanity, a central concept of modern thought, is established has been emptied. “On the peak that penetrates the mystery, there is no human being. Outside the mind there is no dharma; before one&#039;s eyes, green mountains fill the view.” If the “true person of no rank” were merely an abstraction inherent in the individual, that vigorous activity and freedom could never have emerged—the freedom that caused even Huangbo, Linji&#039;s master, to exclaim, “You madman! Have you come here to stroke the tiger&#039;s whiskers?” In the Zen life expressed through such phrases as “Be the master wherever you stand” and “Seek true understanding and go freely throughout the world,” there is little basis for Marx&#039;s characterisation of religion as an illusory sun revolving around human beings until they begin to revolve around themselves, as the halo surrounding a vale of tears, or as the sigh of the oppressed creature. Marx continues the statement quoted at the beginning of this essay by writing that, in its reality, the human essence is the ensemble of social relations. Marxism does not recognise, alongside the human essence conceived as an abstraction and the human essence understood in its social reality—or, more precisely, at a level that transcends both—the “person” (&#039;&#039;hito&#039;&#039; 人) that constitutes Zen&#039;s fundamental experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A monk named Ding arrived and asked about the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma. The master came down from his seat and struck him; when Ding bowed—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|296}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—he suddenly attained great enlightenment. (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is clear that an awakening of this kind is not an “ideology” understood as part of a superstructure conditioned by the material circumstances of social life—that is, by the economic structure of a particular historical period, which constitutes its actual foundation. Around the middle of the Tang dynasty, there lived the Zen master Yaoshan Weiyan (Yakusan Igen 薬山惟儼), near Lake Dongting. Since he rarely gave sermons, the monastery administrator urged him: “Everyone has long been hoping to hear your teaching. Please give a sermon.” The master replied, “In that case, ring the bell to summon everyone.” When the bell sounded and the assembly gathered, Yaoshan ascended the teaching seat. He remained silent for a while, then descended and returned to his quarters. Astonished, the administrator hurried after him. “Master, I thought you had agreed to my request. Why did you say nothing?” Yaoshan replied, “There are masters of the scriptures and masters of the treatises. Why should it be surprising that I have not preached the Dharma?” (&#039;&#039;Book of Serenity&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shōyōroku&#039;&#039; 従容録, Case 7.) Dōgen commented, “Before any of you reached the Dharma hall, you had already received thirty blows.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A monk asked the master in the teaching hall, “What is the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma?” The master raised his fly-whisk. The monk shouted; the master struck him. Another monk asked, “What is the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma?” Again the master raised his fly-whisk. The monk shouted; the master shouted in return. The monk hesitated; the master struck him. (&#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In such an encounter, every ideology resembles a snowflake falling into a white-hot furnace. “Recognise the person who plays with light and shadow.” That is to say, grasp the subject who forms ideology. As the ancients said, “The moment you describe it as resembling something, you miss the mark.” Simply look within yourself. What else could there be? Yet there is no end to what may be said. The subject that endlessly rejects ideology is also the subject that endlessly produces ideology.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|297}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== II. Zen as Ideology (Part One) ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The only way in which human beings can recover their humanity, their essential being, is through “the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and a resolute, rightful return—not to God, but to humanity themselves.” (Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen realises the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and this resolute, rightful return—not to God but to humanity itself—not in the form of the proletariat struggling to overcome human self-alienation, that is, poverty and enslavement, or in the form of proletarian humanism (although I think it would be one-sided to say that it cannot also take these forms), but in the form of &#039;&#039;kyakka shōko&#039;&#039; 脚下照顧, looking beneath one’s own feet—that is, transcending humanity at its very foundation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The master instructed the assembly: “I do not delight in hearing even the single word ‘Buddha.’” (Record of Zhaozhou, &#039;&#039;Jōshūroku&#039;&#039; 趙州録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If you seek Buddha, you will be seized by the Buddha-demon. […] Look instead to the person who exercises mastery over circumstances; this is the profound meaning of all buddhas.” (Record of Linji, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Feuerbach “begins from the fact of religious self-alienation, that is, the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular world.” (Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The human world was made neither by gods nor by demons. It was made by ordinary people living just down the street—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Recognise the person who plays with light and shadow. This is the source of all buddhas. Everywhere, practitioners of the Way, is the place to which you return.” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
For a Zen practitioner, heaven and the world beyond are like leaves used to quiet a crying child, or a mirage (&#039;&#039;kagerō&#039;&#039; カゲロウ). Instead, if one apprehends the “person” who chases the mirage, this actual world itself becomes the real world, worthy of living in.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|298}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—ordinary people. Even if the world they have made is hard to live in, there is no other country to which we can move. If there were, it would be a country of inhuman beings, and that country would surely be even harder to live in than the human world. (Natsume Sōseki, &#039;&#039;Kusamakura&#039;&#039; 草枕)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“You who come here from every direction are all intent on seeking Buddha, seeking the Dharma, seeking liberation, and seeking to escape the three realms. Fools! If you leave the three realms, where do you propose to go?” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Religion has been called an “inverted consciousness of the world” (Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction”). But where could such an “inversion” be found in the world expressed in Su Dongpo’s lines, “Having arrived and returned, there is nothing extraordinary: Mount Lu is mist and rain; the Zhejiang River is the tide”? Lenin wrote in a letter to Gorky that the helplessness of the exploited in their struggle against the exploiters inevitably leads to belief in a better life in the hereafter. Yet in a society likewise marked by class exploitation, Zen consciously rejected belief in another world. The duplication of the world through a religious reflection of reality, whereby “the real foundation rises above itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm,” not only failed to occur in this instance within the same medieval status society: it was actively rejected.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The religious reflection of the real world can disappear only when the practical relations of everyday life present themselves to people as transparent, rational relations with one another and with nature. The form of the social life-process—that is, the process of material production—casts off its mystical veil only when it becomes the product of freely associated human beings, subject to their conscious, planned control.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Capital&#039;&#039;, vol. 1, part 1, chapter 1, section 4)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet in a world where the practical relationships of everyday life have not come to disclose to everyone transparent, rational relations among human beings and with nature—in other words, in a medieval society that had not liberated all human beings from self-alienation or brought all the means of production into common ownership and planned use—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|299}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—this religious reflection was nevertheless extensively forestalled by Zen practitioners. At least in this respect, one may say that Zen did not possess the character of an opium of the people.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== III. Zen as Ideology (Part Two) ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen as ideology becomes a social problem not primarily in its metaphysical aspects but in its contact with the actual everyday lives of the people. The question is what attitude Zen practitioners, as embodiments of Zen—or Zen institutions—adopt in their words and actions, grounded in their views of the world and of life, concerning human relationships and the principles governing how one should conduct oneself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Distinguish the limits of your station and know your nature. […] The willow is green; the flower is red.” (Suzuki Shōsan, &#039;&#039;Mōanjō&#039;&#039; 盲安杖.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The subtlety of morality begins in that which has neither sound nor scent and culminates in the three hundred rules of propriety and the three thousand forms of decorum. At their culmination, these return to what has neither sound nor scent. […] This is called the mutual presence of light and darkness.” (Imakita Kōsen, &#039;&#039;Zenkai ichiran&#039;&#039; 禅海一瀾.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Even if you serve a bad master and have nowhere to escape, do not blame the master. Consider it the karmic cause of your own deeds in a previous existence. […] Many suffer morning and evening throughout their lives through illness, blindness, or destitution. Whose fault is such suffering? It is entirely one’s own. […] Let go of everything and enter the path of loyalty and filial piety.” (&#039;&#039;Mōanjō&#039;&#039; 盲安杖.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The Buddhist Way lies beneath each person’s feet. There is nothing for it but to forget oneself and become wholly one with the thing at hand. ‘In the land of Japan, where the way of lord and subject shines clearly, may it remain unmoved for ten thousand generations’: this is a poem by the Meiji emperor. Take it deeply to heart. There is no Zen apart from loyalty and filial piety.” (Iida Tōin, &#039;&#039;Kaian kokugo teishōroku&#039;&#039; 槐安国語提唱録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Insofar as supporting and reinforcing the ethical relationships of feudal status society arose voluntarily from a Zen foundation, Zen practitioners—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|300}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—would naturally encourage active conduct along these lines.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Absent-minded Zen is out of the question. One must sit in meditation with complete concentration, feeling as though Mount Fuji were rising straight into the sky above the Eastern Sea—or, to go further, as though the entire earth were one&#039;s meditation cushion and one stood alone between heaven and earth. One need only sit in this spirit. What is the purpose of seated meditation? It is to embody the unsurpassed Way, attain great and thorough enlightenment, cultivate the power of concentration, and acquire the freedom to act wherever one finds oneself. The unsurpassed Way is the great Way of Vimalakīrti; great enlightenment means awakening to that Way; and acquiring freedom of action wherever one finds oneself means that Japanese people should abide and act as Japanese people. (Harada Sogaku, &#039;&#039;Nihon seishin to Daijō Zen&#039;&#039; 日本精神と大乗禅.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If the goal of national education is to die for the sovereign and to devote oneself selflessly to his service, that goal cannot be fully realised unless every imperial subject, through study and training in their respective sphere of work, strives to embody this wondrous activity free from contrivance. (Itō Kōan, &#039;&#039;Takuan oshō to kyōiku&#039;&#039; 沢庵和尚と教育.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a saying that every tree is known by its fruit. The essence of Zen, which transcends conventional society and ideology, has borne precisely this kind of fruit through the ideology of ordinary mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Once religion has taken shape, it always contains traditional elements; and tradition, it goes without saying, constitutes a powerful conservative force within the realm of ideology. (Engels, &#039;&#039;Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a view that whatever is done in the Zen state of no-mind is always fresh and new in substance, even when it appears from the outside to repeat the same action. This is expressed in the saying, “Each time it is raised, it is new.” There is truth in this understanding. Yet herein lies the fundamental possibility that creative Zen may become habitual, conventional, and conservative. Even established customs, when one enters into them and acts accordingly, have their own distinctive appeal; this becomes an attraction in itself. The principle that tradition must be inherited through creativity was forgotten. Rather than carrying forward something living in a living form, people attempted to inherit it in a dead form. Within the realm of ideology, it is only natural that such conservatism should come to serve class domination, uncritically and of its own accord.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|301}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The ideas of the ruling class are, in every epoch, the ruling ideas. In other words, the class that constitutes the dominant material power in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual power. The class that controls the means of material production also controls the means of intellectual production; consequently, the ideas of those who lack access to the means of intellectual production are, in general, subordinated to that class. (Marx and Engels, &#039;&#039;The German Ideology&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps it would be reading too much into things to suggest that the imperialist project of world domination, whose supposed “ethical” summit was the ideal of &#039;&#039;hakkō ichiu&#039;&#039; 八紘一宇 (“eight corners of the world under one roof”), found its religious reflection in the determination to sit in meditation with complete concentration, using the entire earth as one&#039;s meditation cushion. In a political system that united religious rites and government, national defence and warfare could be clothed in religious forms. Under such circumstances, it was far from uncommon for people to experience religious guilt if they could not completely surrender their private interests and devote their lives to submission before the solemn authority of the state. There were those who devoted considerable thought to the emperor&#039;s “character of nothingness,” to the profound significance of the one-emperor-and-all-subjects system as an embodiment of “one is many,” and to the moral spirit of the “holy war.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is said that ours is a generation whose feelings were worn away by war until we became incapable of crying. Perhaps that is true. Yet when I think of the emperor and of the many people who died for him, I am ashamed to admit that my voice trembles involuntarily. When I drink with a veteran pilot who barely escaped death and now lives peacefully as a salaried employee, I sometimes find myself unable to sleep that night. The faces of dead comrades appear before my eyes, making sleep even more impossible. (Murakami Hyōe, “Senchūha wa kō kangaeru” 戦中派はこう考える.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To live is a joy and a hope. It is also suffering and disappointment. There are various ways of responding to suffering and disappointment, but what is sought as a lasting and fundamental response is a way of life that enables one to face even the worst circumstances of human existence with equanimity.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|302}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In such circumstances, there is one path that may be followed by those who do not believe in a transcendent absolute or a world beyond this one. It is a way of living in which one abandons the standpoint of clinging firmly to particular desires, hopes, or obligations and striving relentlessly to fulfil them. Instead, one accepts each situation as it presents itself and becomes completely one with it. Like colourless dew that appears green upon a willow and red upon a flower, or a mirror that reflects the morning in the morning and the night at night, one neither rejects what comes nor pursues what departs. Wherever one lives becomes home; in sadness, one makes sadness one&#039;s master, and in loneliness, loneliness becomes one&#039;s master. It is an attitude of living in a cosmic affirmation—a universal “Yes.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When one becomes wholly one with the thing itself and forgets oneself, one understands that everyone is of one piece with heaven and earth. What more could one desire? To desire is always to lack something and to be tormented. The popular verse ‘Looking upward, how many things lie beyond one’s reach’ recognises the error of the desire to look above one’s station. ‘Put on your straw hat and live according to your own heart’ recognises the abundance of one’s own lot and the possibility of dwelling in it peacefully.” (Iida Tōin, previously cited.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Actual society is a world of distinctions based on status and class. To entangle love and hatred in this world of distinctions, intensifying consciousness of the individual ego, can only increase dissatisfaction and agitation. Hence the proposal to accept distinctions as distinctions, without rejecting them or becoming engulfed in them. In this way, the troubled mind may subside and one may experience a different breeze even amid suffering. [The final figurative expression in the Japanese requires further verification.]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To ignore distinctions and make mountains and rivers, noble and lowly, all one would amount to a denial of cause and effect; the splendour of the world would disappear and it would become desolate. What is needed is the correct within the partial—that is, equality amid distinctions. If one falls into attachment to any single position, one fails. Originally, these are all waves upon water. […] Keep the mind like water and leave it to circumstances whether it takes a square or round form.” (Iida Tōin, previously cited; a clause in the source quotation remains uncertain.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In this way there emerged a philosophy of noncontention and accommodation, expressed in such sayings as “Give rise to the mind without abiding anywhere” (&#039;&#039;Diamond Sūtra&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Kongōkyō&#039;&#039; 金剛経); “When not a single thought arises, the myriad things are without fault” (&#039;&#039;Faith in Mind&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shinjinmei&#039;&#039; 信心銘); and “The highest goodness is like water; precisely because it does not contend, it is without fault” (&#039;&#039;Daodejing&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rōshi Dōtokukyō&#039;&#039; 老子道徳経).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|303}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen, having rejected the order of the world beyond, opened a path toward accepting directly the order of this world. Rather than earthly status determining the status of the soul in heaven, the order of nature, viewed from a religious and metaphysical perspective, came to sanctify the order of human society. Or, more precisely, the order of human society discovered its own religious and metaphysical reflection in the order of nature and thereby sanctified itself. In this way, a cosmology emerged that provided the underlying structure for what might be called Asian tolerance—or Asian peace of mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“First: Harmony is to be valued, and the absence of contentiousness is to be made fundamental. […] Third: When you receive an imperial command, obey it reverently. The ruler is heaven, and the ministers are earth. Heaven covers and earth supports. Thus the four seasons proceed in proper order, and the myriad energies circulate freely. If earth should attempt to cover heaven, destruction would necessarily follow. Therefore, what the ruler commands, the ministers obey; where those above lead, those below follow. Consequently, when receiving an imperial command, obey it reverently. Failure to do so will bring ruin upon oneself.” (&#039;&#039;Seventeen-Article Constitution&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Jūshichijō kenpō&#039;&#039; 十七条憲法.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The direction taken by young men departing for the battlefield, who struggled to resolve the problem of life and death through devotion to the emperor and the willingness to leave their bodies upon the grass or beneath the waters, followed an inclination established in the distant past.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is another way of approaching life: the life of detached insight. This involves adopting a standpoint concerned with the ultimate meaning or highest value of human existence, comprehensively contemplating and critically assessing the fundamental character and tendencies of historical reality, and living one&#039;s life in accordance with that understanding. Those called philosophers and sages are practitioners of such a life. To the extent that people attempt to examine life comprehensively and fundamentally, and to live according to that insight, they must inevitably adopt, to some degree, a position of detachment. Amid the feverish everyday existence driven relentlessly by time, it is the wisdom of the accomplished person that opens a refreshing perspective upon life. The wisdom of great affirmation, which deepens our appreciation of living and purifies suffering, and the wisdom of detached insight are two aspects of the profound worldview developed in the East.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet the path of detached insight almost invariably ends in observing the realities of the world from a position above them. Society—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|304}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—social and political evils, and the practical effort to correct them and realise a better world, are regarded with the same detachment. The result is a way of protecting one’s own life without dirtying one’s hands. This does not mean simply allowing society’s contradictions and irrationalities to stand as good. Rather, the goals and plans intended to remedy them are deemed inadequate, and even action aimed at change is seen as tainted by worldly attachment and therefore in need of fundamental purification. The masses’ gathering and use of wisdom and energy to build a free and peaceful world is certainly not nonsense, and it undoubtedly has worldly value. Yet such action is held unworthy of anyone genuinely devoted to the Way: it is judged a product of deluded attachment, an activity stained by defilements. What must be upheld is the thoroughness and purity of theory and practice. This immovable conviction is the detached perspective of the accomplished person. By combining a subjective rejection of social evil with an objective acceptance of it, one may serve the exploitative structures of political power while safeguarding the dignity and tranquillity of one’s own existence. Here is what Ichikawa calls &#039;&#039;kanzen shumi&#039;&#039; 完全趣味, invoking Lukács’s description of an abandonment of action that is “lofty in appearance but cowardly in reality.” [The rendering of 完全趣味 and the Lukács reference require source verification.]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We have examined philosophies of both active and passive cooperation with political power. These two positions, however, are not necessarily distinct. Depending on changes in social circumstances, one may readily give rise to the other.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Religious sentiment is itself a social product.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Theses on Feuerbach&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The worldview derived from the &#039;&#039;Book of Changes&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Ekikyō&#039;&#039; 易経), which for so long informed the consciousness and conduct of Zen practitioners, was a broadly moral cosmology that understood the order of nature and the order of human society through common principles. It was probably shaped, to a greater or lesser extent, by the so-called Asiatic stagnation grounded in the Asiatic mode of production. Leaving further consideration of this dimension for another occasion, let us examine the individual social relationships of Zen practitioners.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|305}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The position occupied by an individual Zen practitioner within the domestic and international structures of power of their age; their proximity and relationship to the centres of power; and the social circles they inhabit in connection with those circumstances—all these determine the form of their life. That form of life, in turn, constrains their sensibilities, morality, political orientation, and other characteristics. A distinctive feature of ideology is precisely that this structure of relationships, correspondences, and constraints is not fully and transparently recognised. Consequently, judgements and actions that appear entirely autonomous to Zen practitioners themselves are, in reality, generally conditioned by the network of social relationships in which they are situated. Differences of opinion that supposedly ought to be resolved through discussion frequently prove extraordinarily difficult to overcome because the parties involved belong to different networks or systems of social relations. These structural differences often condition the differences in their reasoning. Changing one&#039;s way of thinking may therefore require dismantling one&#039;s existing social relationships and reorganising them along different lines. Yet doing so may threaten to destroy one&#039;s established way of life. A partly unconscious anxiety about this possibility, together with the inertia of everyday existence, determines and hardens people&#039;s ways of perceiving, thinking, and acting.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV. Human Self-Alienation and Its Recovery ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In its reality, the human essence is the ensemble of social relations.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Theses on Feuerbach&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We live in a society of competitive private ownership which, having freed us as individuals from the restraints of feudal society, has cast us out into a world where we live protected and simultaneously bound by countless restrictions constructed to maintain and strengthen this social system. Under individual “freedom” and responsibility, we are thrown into competition for the limited means of happiness. It is as if, during a five-minute stop, we were trying to board an impossibly overcrowded train together with Rikidōzan’s fellow wrestlers—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|306}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and men with infantile paralysis, all jostling toward the same entrance, the same window. If the proper entrance is blocked, one must slip in through a window, or even climb onto the roof and cling to the doors. Were we to take care of our appearance, respect etiquette, and observe the virtue of modesty, the departure time would come and every train would leave us behind. Such is the transportation hell in which we seem to live. For another person to board is for me to be left behind; for me to board is for another to be left behind. While we consider how this contradiction might rationally be resolved, the departure bell rings; the plans of those waiting for us at our destination collapse. The misfortune does not end with us alone. Nearly everyone crowded here shares these circumstances.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Day after day, from morning until night, there is an endless succession of examinations and tests. It is not merely youth that is excluded; humanity itself may be driven out. For in order to pass these fierce examinations, one cannot afford to concern oneself with friendship. A classmate&#039;s failure may become the very source of one&#039;s own good fortune. One longs to gain an advantage over the others. Before an examination, students pretend not to know things they actually know and refuse to help their friends. If a classmate misses the train on examination day, or happens to fall ill, that may prove advantageous. One student confessed, “I wished my friends would die.” Is this not literally hell? It is terrifying. What would happen if a young person who had developed such a terrifying disposition entered the University of Tokyo, became an even more frightening demon during company entrance examinations, and then carried these habits into society, eventually coming to wish misfortune upon others? (Honda Akira, &#039;&#039;Gendai no seishun&#039;&#039; 現代の青春.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I once heard about the difficulties faced by a homeroom teacher responsible for advising students seeking employment. In the classroom, students had learned that the Constitution must be defended without compromise. Yet when taking an employment examination, they were advised not to say so too explicitly. Whatever political party they actually supported, if asked, they would be better off naming the conservative party. The teacher was troubled by having to offer such contradictory advice. The same can be said of my own—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|307}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—experience. In a society where a school principal could be dismissed for misreading the Imperial Rescript at a ceremony, and a teacher on night duty could commit suicide after a portrait of the emperor was destroyed in a fire, I did not utter a single word of protest. Not only that: although I knew the war was an unclean war, I cooperated with the so-called “holy war.” Far from observing the precept against false speech, I manipulated the language of distorted scholarship. I could not even dream of possessing the freedom expressed in the &#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;: “When you wish to go, go; when you wish to sit, sit” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録). Reports indicate, however, that similar forms of falsehood existed in the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe, particularly in connection with the cult of Stalin and the rewriting of history. The American writer Mark Twain remarked, with considerable irony, that God had bestowed upon his countrymen three incomparable gifts: freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and the good sense never to exercise either freedom. But the “God” who bestowed that good sense was presumably the machinery of state power. The police become the limits of what one is permitted to recognise.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Writing about theft, the author Ōta Yōko 大田洋子 recalled the wartime food shortages:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I was not particularly resourceful, and in Tokyo I went hungry every day, sometimes weeping at mealtimes. I would obtain small portions of food that other people had bought on the black market. Sometimes, taking advantage of the rain, I would crouch beside a path through a field, conceal my face behind an umbrella, and steal several bunches of spinach. Even then, it was said that people who stole crops from farmers&#039; fields could be subjected to corporal punishment. But I was living near the daikon fields of Nerima, and on rainy nights I would pull large radishes from the ground. By that time I had ceased to be a respectable human being. I was quite unconcerned at the thought of being detained, since life in a cell would probably be little different from life outside.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A young man suffering from illness gave stark expression to the pain and ugliness of living.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Family — Iwamoto Toshio 岩本敏夫&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If only this child were not here—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|308}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If only Father and Mother weren&#039;t here—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Father as father, Mother as mother, Child as child,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Each thinking this way,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Now&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Only suffocating hatred&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In this same house&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
They live together.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Such mutual hostility would probably lose most of the conditions necessary for its emergence if a comprehensive system of social security were established and the necessities of life were as abundant as air. This would be an instance of the Buddhist principle that, when the necessary conditions are absent, a phenomenon cannot arise (&#039;&#039;en ketsu fushō&#039;&#039; 縁欠不生). The scarcity of nature—and especially the scarcity produced by society—awakens and intensifies human self-centredness, exclusiveness, distrust, and competition. There is an expression about diverting water toward one&#039;s own rice field. In earlier times, farmers living on opposite banks of a river might face one another with suspicion and hostility during a drought. Yet once the rain came, they would abandon their confrontation and depart. Such scenes could formerly be observed in rural Japan. Hobbes, a proponent of the view that human nature is evil, argued that people need only examine themselves to recognise that human beings are not naturally sociable animals. At night, we lock our doors; even when at home, we lock our valuables in safes. Locking the door reveals what we think of our fellow citizens, while locking the safe reveals what we think of our own children and servants. But it is doubtful whether such conditions have existed in every age.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the Great Way prevailed, all under heaven was held in common. The worthy and capable were selected, trust was cultivated, and harmonious relations maintained. Thus people did not regard only their own parents as parents, nor only their own children as children. The elderly had support in their final years, adults had useful employment, children had the opportunity to grow, and widowers, widows, orphans, the childless, the disabled, and the sick all received care. […] Thus conspiracies did not arise, nor did theft—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|309}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—or disorder arose. People left their outer doors open instead of closing them. This was called the Great Community.” (&#039;&#039;Book of Rites&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Raiki&#039;&#039; 礼記, “Liyun,” chapter 9.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps this represents a recollection of primitive communism. Why does what Feuerbach calls “human self-alienation”—the projection of one&#039;s own essence outside oneself—arise in the first place? It seems that competitive society based on private ownership contains within its structure some of the conditions that explain this phenomenon. Human beings under modern capitalism resemble commuters trapped in an endless transportation nightmare, or farmers who have become accustomed to guarding their vegetables at night behind barbed-wire fences against thieves. Certainly, it remains necessary to urge people who have long lived under such conditions to trust one another, refrain from pushing others aside, and abandon attachment to the self. Yet to imagine that such exhortations alone can be effective is utopian.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We have already seen that Zen&#039;s fundamental experience transcends ideology, but that when it takes concrete form as ideology, it has tended (a) to affirm the existing circumstances in which individuals find themselves and (b) to encourage service to society&#039;s structures of power. Nevertheless, accepting one&#039;s present circumstances without resistance is not necessarily blameworthy. Such acceptance can be connected with some of the deepest and most beautiful wisdom of human existence. It is for this reason that Ozaki Hotsumi&#039;s Zen-inspired contemplation, expressed in the words “Love is like a falling star,” touches the human heart. “When calamity comes, it is best to encounter calamity. When the time to die arrives, it is best to die. This is the wonderful method of escaping calamity.” (Ryōkan 良寛.) In this spirit of detached acceptance, Ozaki created and experienced the depth and beauty of human life. The assertion that what is needed is not a philosophy of interpretation but a philosophy of transformation seems to me to be the statement of Marx the revolutionary rather than Marx the human being.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet human life is not an uninterrupted series of the worst conceivable circumstances, with not even a millimetre of room for change. Finding a way to live peacefully amid what truly cannot be altered remains important for the latitude and well-being of everyday life. But to—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|310}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—live solely by this attitude, and recommend it to everyone in every circumstance, even where conditions can be changed, is properly called a deviation. To go further and produce a Zen apologetic that actively serves a mystified system of exploitation is a dreadful deviation. I believe this results from grasping Zen’s fundamental subject, “nothingness,” solely in its passive and accommodating aspect: like air or water, it has no shape but takes every shape, no colour but assumes every colour. Thinking increasingly through such comparisons, one eventually lets the metaphors govern thought, leaving aside the creative and formative power of nothingness to refuse, criticise, and resist. Capitalist society, which takes material profit-seeking as the motive force of social organisation and turns everything—even human beings—into commodities and material or instrumental human resources, is fundamentally incompatible with the radically subjective spirit of Zen. Yet Zen practitioners failed to develop the scientific understanding needed for the fundamental transformation of this system and the construction of society. They consequently confused the distinctions and equalities found in natural phenomena, in the natural sciences, in hierarchical social arrangements, and in different personal circumstances and forms of peace of mind, under the standpoint of “nonduality” between matter and mind, nature and humanity. Falling into false equality and false discrimination, they ultimately produced an unprincipled, benighted Zen that served fascism and cooperated with war. As the &#039;&#039;Inscription on Faith in Mind&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Shinjinmei&#039;&#039; 信心銘) says, “If there is the slightest difference, heaven and earth are far apart.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen practice means rejecting every idol, including the cult of individual personality; abandoning regrets about the past and anxieties about the future; and devoting oneself wholeheartedly to shaping life in the present. That life must contribute, directly or indirectly, to the realisation of a genuinely human society in which “each lives for all, and all live for each.” Zen practice consists in penetrating the emptiness of attachment to self through the creation of such a life. In this sense, Zen&#039;s fundamental subject constitutes the underlying ground of human living—not only the everyday activities expressed in the saying “When you encounter tea, drink tea; when you encounter rice, eat rice”—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|311}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—but also the underlying ground of struggles against war and for independence and liberation. The Zen saying about cultivating one’s own field and preparing and eating one’s rice (&#039;&#039;Book of Serenity&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shōyōroku&#039;&#039; 従容録, Case 21) concerns a life directly joined to society’s material foundation. To devote oneself wholly to such productive life is also to form oneself through ideas aimed at transforming the ideological superstructure and the social order.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Zen monasteries, collective activity directed toward the environment and its transformation is called &#039;&#039;samu&#039;&#039; 作務, or work practice. What overcomes the unhappy combination of pure intentions with impoverished or even contradictory results is the practical attitude expressed in such work. This is not a poetic attitude but a prosaic one: a lucid, constructive spirit that breaks through subjective absorption and intoxication through rational, experimental engagement with its objects. When such a spirit acts upon society and political institutions as historically constituted environments, seeking to cultivate and reconstruct them, the world toward which it ultimately strives is, in accordance with Zen&#039;s fundamental qualities of selflessness, nonpossession, and autonomy, a borderless world society organised through free communism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Once the truth of the world beyond has vanished, it is history’s task to establish the truth of this world. After the sacred form of human self-alienation has been unmasked, the first task of philosophy in the service of history is to unmask self-alienation in its unholy forms. The criticism of heaven thereby becomes the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology the criticism of politics.” (Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction.”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In my view, to establish the truth of this world after the disappearance of the truth of the beyond is to overcome religious faith in another world and to realise a society of free communism, in which all people are emancipated from exploitation and oppression as well as from the ego of exclusive self-attachment. In the direct and indirect activities of everyday life, this requires that one fully participate in sitting when sitting, in walking when walking, and in each task when engaged in it, as Tōrei Enji 東嶺円慈 teaches in &#039;&#039;Shūmon mujintō ron&#039;&#039; 宗門無尽灯論—relinquishing regret and anxious anticipation and emptying attachment to self. The fact that even Stalin—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|312}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—could apparently not truly become “his own master” (Engels, &#039;&#039;Socialism: Utopian and Scientific&#039;&#039;) is neither so harmless nor so trivial that it can be dismissed as merely one of the “birthmarks” of the old social order. Put differently, we must find a way for Ozaki Hotsumi’s Zen equanimity to permeate the activity of establishing a Buddha land in the sense just described. What is called “practice amid activity” (&#039;&#039;dōchū no kufū&#039;&#039; 動中の工夫), superior to “practice amid stillness” (&#039;&#039;jōchū no kufū&#039;&#039; 静中の工夫)—seated meditation in a quiet place—must mean diligence in precisely this kind of life. It entails arousing the aspiration for enlightenment (&#039;&#039;bodaishin&#039;&#039; 菩提心) to establish a Buddha land and recognising that one must “shoulder sentient beings as a heavy burden,” while oneself being among those sentient beings. Since Zen has already rejected “the sacred form of human self-alienation,” what remains is to recognise and overcome its profane forms through an investigation of one’s own fundamental concern (&#039;&#039;koji kyūmei&#039;&#039; 己事究明) that empties egoism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To leave flowers to the wind and birds to their proper time is also the meritorious work of giving. […] To set out boats and provide bridges is likewise the perfection of giving. If one truly studies giving, both accepting the body and relinquishing the body are acts of giving. Cultivating fields and engaging in productive occupations are, from the outset, nothing other than giving.” (Dōgen, “Bodaisatta shishōbō” 菩提薩埵四摂法)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Zen master Yongming Qian (Eimei Sen 永明潜) addressed the assembly: “The Buddha-Dharma is plainly manifest. Why do you not understand it? If you wish to understand the Buddha-Dharma, ask Zhang San and Li Si. If you wish to understand worldly affairs, inquire in the monasteries of the ancient buddhas.” (*Zenmon kōan taisei* 禅門公案大成)The Zen master Yongming Qian addressed the assembly: “The Buddha-Dharma is plainly manifest. Why do you fail to understand it? If you want to understand the Buddha-Dharma, inquire of Zhang San and Li Si [ordinary people]. If you want to understand worldly affairs, inquire in the monasteries of the ancient buddhas.” (&#039;&#039;Zenmon kōan taisei&#039;&#039; 禅門公案大成.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What unity of practice and theory must we develop in order to establish a modern way of learning Zen from the working masses, and learning the principles of society from Zen communities? I welcome instruction from all quarters.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
This translation is based on Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦, “Zen to Marukushizumu” 禅とマルキシズム (1956), as reproduced in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 2, &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; 禅と現代思想 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), 293–312. The original publication venue has not been established in this edition. The Japanese transcription and this translation are working scholarly texts; historical quotations and some character-level readings remain subject to further collation. Original printed paragraph and page divisions have been retained where recoverable.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotation: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1956). “Zen and Marxism” (&#039;&#039;Zen to Marukushizumu&#039;&#039; 禅とマルキシズム). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH56ZTM-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM-T&amp;diff=1235</id>
		<title>IH56ZTM-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM-T&amp;diff=1235"/>
		<updated>2026-10-12T17:27:27Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen and Marxism” (1956)}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Zen and Marxism&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Zen to Marukushizumu&#039;&#039; 禅とマルキシズム) is a 1956 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 2 of &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 (1993), pp. 293–312.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Japanese original:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH56ZTM|禅とマルキシズム]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contents ==&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#I. Before Ideology|I. Before Ideology]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#II. Zen as Ideology (Part One)|II. Zen as Ideology (Part One)]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#III. Zen as Ideology (Part Two)|III. Zen as Ideology (Part Two)]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#IV. Human Self-Alienation and Its Recovery|IV. Human Self-Alienation and Its Recovery]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|293}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== I. Before Ideology ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Feuerbach reduces the essence of religion to the essence of humanity. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each individual person. (Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A disciple named Huichao (Echō 慧超) once asked Qingliang Wenyi (Seiryō Bun&#039;eki 清涼文益), a Zen monk of the late Tang and Five Dynasties period: “I, Huichao, ask you: What is Buddha?” The master replied, “You are Huichao.” (&#039;&#039;Blue Cliff Record&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Hekiganroku&#039;&#039; 碧巌録, Case 7.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This exchange recalls Feuerbach (1804–1872), who reduced the essence of religion to humanity. Feuerbach believed that, through religion, human beings take a roundabout path back to their own essence. In this instance, however, Huichao had not placed Buddha outside himself in the form of what is commonly called self-alienation. There is a certain confidence in his declaration, “I, Huichao, ask you.” Nor was it upon being told, “You are Huichao,” that he became conscious of a path by which the essence of religion might be reduced to humanity. Such a question had never arisen in the first place. Nor did the master say anything like, “The essence of Buddha is your own essence”—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|294}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—there was nothing of that sort in his reply. One can find plenty of such statements in books. Huichao and Qingliang are not inhabiting a world of mere meanings. Hence the expression, “A phrase before words.” There is also the expression “pouring ink into a black lacquer bucket” (Shudenshō 種電鈔). Such a thing cannot be grasped by the tentacles of objectifying logic. Dōgen describes Qingliang’s response as direct and unhesitating. “You are Huichao”: heaven and earth are of a single piece. At the very point where meaning shines forth, this exchange calls for a direct apprehension of the whole activity of selflessness, beyond the foundations of meaning.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There was a monastery administrator named Ze under Qingliang. Since he had never participated in Zen practice with the master, Qingliang asked why. Ze replied that he had previously awakened under Master Qinglin. Invited to explain, he reported asking, “What is Buddha?” and receiving the answer, “The fire-boy comes seeking fire” (&#039;&#039;heitei dōji rai guhō&#039;&#039; 丙丁童子来求火). Qingliang told him that he was mistaken and asked him to explain further. Ze reasoned that the cyclical signs &#039;&#039;hei&#039;&#039; and &#039;&#039;tei&#039;&#039; belong to fire: for a child of fire to seek fire means that, though he is originally Buddha, he has been seeking Buddha outside himself. The seeker himself, he concluded, is Buddha. Qingliang again said that he was mistaken. Dissatisfied, Ze packed up and left. Qingliang told the disciples that it was a pity: if Ze returned he might be saved, but otherwise there was little hope. As Ze travelled, he reflected that so esteemed a master would not have deceived him lightly and resolved to return for instruction. Qingliang invited him to ask the question again. “What is Buddha?” Ze asked. Qingliang replied with the very same words: “The fire-boy comes seeking fire!” At those words, Ze attained great enlightenment. This is not merely a hermeneutic exchange in which faith is interpreted as human self-alienation, the love of God as the love of humanity’s own essence, or theology as anthropology.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|295}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ascending the teaching hall, the master said: “Upon this lump of red flesh there is a true person of no rank, who constantly enters and departs through the faces of all of you. Those who have not yet verified this, look! Look!” A monk came forward and asked, “What is this true person of no rank?” The master descended from his meditation seat, seized the monk, and demanded, “Speak! Speak!” The monk hesitated. The master pushed him away, saying, “What a dried stick of shit this true person of no rank is!” He then returned to his quarters. (&#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This might appear to regard human nature as something “inherent in each individual person,” but that is not actually the case. “Outside the mind there is no dharma, and within, too, nothing can be apprehended.” A humanism that simply affirms the human being as something inherent within the individual is not Zen. When asked about the true person&#039;s original face, the Tang monk Xiangyan Zhixian (Kyōgen Chikan 香厳智閑) replied, “The eyes inside a monkey.” This is a creation that takes place where the very ground upon which humanity, a central concept of modern thought, is established has been emptied. “On the peak that penetrates the mystery, there is no human being. Outside the mind there is no dharma; before one&#039;s eyes, green mountains fill the view.” If the “true person of no rank” were merely an abstraction inherent in the individual, that vigorous activity and freedom could never have emerged—the freedom that caused even Huangbo, Linji&#039;s master, to exclaim, “You madman! Have you come here to stroke the tiger&#039;s whiskers?” In the Zen life expressed through such phrases as “Be the master wherever you stand” and “Seek true understanding and go freely throughout the world,” there is little basis for Marx&#039;s characterisation of religion as an illusory sun revolving around human beings until they begin to revolve around themselves, as the halo surrounding a vale of tears, or as the sigh of the oppressed creature. Marx continues the statement quoted at the beginning of this essay by writing that, in its reality, the human essence is the ensemble of social relations. Marxism does not recognise, alongside the human essence conceived as an abstraction and the human essence understood in its social reality—or, more precisely, at a level that transcends both—the “person” (&#039;&#039;hito&#039;&#039; 人) that constitutes Zen&#039;s fundamental experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A monk named Ding arrived and asked about the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma. The master came down from his seat and struck him; when Ding bowed—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|296}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—he suddenly attained great enlightenment. (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is clear that an awakening of this kind is not an “ideology” understood as part of a superstructure conditioned by the material circumstances of social life—that is, by the economic structure of a particular historical period, which constitutes its actual foundation. Around the middle of the Tang dynasty, there lived the Zen master Yaoshan Weiyan (Yakusan Igen 薬山惟儼), near Lake Dongting. Since he rarely gave sermons, the monastery administrator urged him: “Everyone has long been hoping to hear your teaching. Please give a sermon.” The master replied, “In that case, ring the bell to summon everyone.” When the bell sounded and the assembly gathered, Yaoshan ascended the teaching seat. He remained silent for a while, then descended and returned to his quarters. Astonished, the administrator hurried after him. “Master, I thought you had agreed to my request. Why did you say nothing?” Yaoshan replied, “There are masters of the scriptures and masters of the treatises. Why should it be surprising that I have not preached the Dharma?” (&#039;&#039;Book of Serenity&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shōyōroku&#039;&#039; 従容録, Case 7.) Dōgen commented, “Before any of you reached the Dharma hall, you had already received thirty blows.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A monk asked the master in the teaching hall, “What is the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma?” The master raised his fly-whisk. The monk shouted; the master struck him. Another monk asked, “What is the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma?” Again the master raised his fly-whisk. The monk shouted; the master shouted in return. The monk hesitated; the master struck him. (&#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In such an encounter, every ideology resembles a snowflake falling into a white-hot furnace. “Recognise the person who plays with light and shadow.” That is to say, grasp the subject who forms ideology. As the ancients said, “The moment you describe it as resembling something, you miss the mark.” Simply look within yourself. What else could there be? Yet there is no end to what may be said. The subject that endlessly rejects ideology is also the subject that endlessly produces ideology.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|297}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== II. Zen as Ideology (Part One) ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The only way in which human beings can recover their humanity, their essential being, is through “the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and a resolute, rightful return—not to God, but to humanity themselves.” (Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen realises the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and this resolute, rightful return—not to God but to humanity itself—not in the form of the proletariat struggling to overcome human self-alienation, that is, poverty and enslavement, or in the form of proletarian humanism (although I think it would be one-sided to say that it cannot also take these forms), but in the form of &#039;&#039;kyakka shōko&#039;&#039; 脚下照顧, looking beneath one’s own feet—that is, transcending humanity at its very foundation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The master instructed the assembly: “I do not delight in hearing even the single word ‘Buddha.’” (Record of Zhaozhou, &#039;&#039;Jōshūroku&#039;&#039; 趙州録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If you seek Buddha, you will be seized by the Buddha-demon. […] Look instead to the person who exercises mastery over circumstances; this is the profound meaning of all buddhas.” (Record of Linji, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Feuerbach “begins from the fact of religious self-alienation, that is, the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular world.” (Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The human world was made neither by gods nor by demons. It was made by ordinary people living just down the street—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Recognise the person who plays with light and shadow. This is the source of all buddhas. Everywhere, practitioners of the Way, is the place to which you return.” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
For a Zen practitioner, heaven and the world beyond are like leaves used to quiet a crying child, or a mirage (&#039;&#039;kagerō&#039;&#039; カゲロウ). Instead, if one apprehends the “person” who chases the mirage, this actual world itself becomes the real world, worthy of living in.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|298}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—ordinary people. Even if the world they have made is hard to live in, there is no other country to which we can move. If there were, it would be a country of inhuman beings, and that country would surely be even harder to live in than the human world. (Natsume Sōseki, &#039;&#039;Kusamakura&#039;&#039; 草枕)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“You who come here from every direction are all intent on seeking Buddha, seeking the Dharma, seeking liberation, and seeking to escape the three realms. Fools! If you leave the three realms, where do you propose to go?” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Religion has been called an “inverted consciousness of the world” (Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction”). But where could such an “inversion” be found in the world expressed in Su Dongpo’s lines, “Having arrived and returned, there is nothing extraordinary: Mount Lu is mist and rain; the Zhejiang River is the tide”? Lenin wrote in a letter to Gorky that the helplessness of the exploited in their struggle against the exploiters inevitably leads to belief in a better life in the hereafter. Yet in a society likewise marked by class exploitation, Zen consciously rejected belief in another world. The duplication of the world through a religious reflection of reality, whereby “the real foundation rises above itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm,” not only failed to occur in this instance within the same medieval status society: it was actively rejected.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The religious reflection of the real world can disappear only when the practical relations of everyday life present themselves to people as transparent, rational relations with one another and with nature. The form of the social life-process—that is, the process of material production—casts off its mystical veil only when it becomes the product of freely associated human beings, subject to their conscious, planned control.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Capital&#039;&#039;, vol. 1, part 1, chapter 1, section 4)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet in a world where the practical relationships of everyday life have not come to disclose to everyone transparent, rational relations among human beings and with nature—in other words, in a medieval society that had not liberated all human beings from self-alienation or brought all the means of production into common ownership and planned use—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|299}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—this religious reflection was nevertheless extensively forestalled by Zen practitioners. At least in this respect, one may say that Zen did not possess the character of an opium of the people.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== III. Zen as Ideology (Part Two) ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen as ideology becomes a social problem not primarily in its metaphysical aspects but in its contact with the actual everyday lives of the people. The question is what attitude Zen practitioners, as embodiments of Zen—or Zen institutions—adopt in their words and actions, grounded in their views of the world and of life, concerning human relationships and the principles governing how one should conduct oneself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Distinguish the limits of your station and know your nature. […] The willow is green; the flower is red.” (Suzuki Shōsan, &#039;&#039;Mōanjō&#039;&#039; 盲安杖.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The subtlety of morality begins in that which has neither sound nor scent and culminates in the three hundred rules of propriety and the three thousand forms of decorum. At their culmination, these return to what has neither sound nor scent. […] This is called the mutual presence of light and darkness.” (Imakita Kōsen, &#039;&#039;Zenkai ichiran&#039;&#039; 禅海一瀾.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Even if you serve a bad master and have nowhere to escape, do not blame the master. Consider it the karmic cause of your own deeds in a previous existence. […] Many suffer morning and evening throughout their lives through illness, blindness, or destitution. Whose fault is such suffering? It is entirely one’s own. […] Let go of everything and enter the path of loyalty and filial piety.” (&#039;&#039;Mōanjō&#039;&#039; 盲安杖.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The Buddhist Way lies beneath each person’s feet. There is nothing for it but to forget oneself and become wholly one with the thing at hand. ‘In the land of Japan, where the way of lord and subject shines clearly, may it remain unmoved for ten thousand generations’: this is a poem by the Meiji emperor. Take it deeply to heart. There is no Zen apart from loyalty and filial piety.” (Iida Tōin, &#039;&#039;Kaian kokugo teishōroku&#039;&#039; 槐安国語提唱録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Insofar as supporting and reinforcing the ethical relationships of feudal status society arose voluntarily from a Zen foundation, Zen practitioners—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|300}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—would naturally encourage active conduct along these lines.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Absent-minded Zen is out of the question. One must sit in meditation with complete concentration, feeling as though Mount Fuji were rising straight into the sky above the Eastern Sea—or, to go further, as though the entire earth were one&#039;s meditation cushion and one stood alone between heaven and earth. One need only sit in this spirit. What is the purpose of seated meditation? It is to embody the unsurpassed Way, attain great and thorough enlightenment, cultivate the power of concentration, and acquire the freedom to act wherever one finds oneself. The unsurpassed Way is the great Way of Vimalakīrti; great enlightenment means awakening to that Way; and acquiring freedom of action wherever one finds oneself means that Japanese people should abide and act as Japanese people. (Harada Sogaku, &#039;&#039;Nihon seishin to Daijō Zen&#039;&#039; 日本精神と大乗禅.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If the goal of national education is to die for the sovereign and to devote oneself selflessly to his service, that goal cannot be fully realised unless every imperial subject, through study and training in their respective sphere of work, strives to embody this wondrous activity free from contrivance. (Itō Kōan, &#039;&#039;Takuan oshō to kyōiku&#039;&#039; 沢庵和尚と教育.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a saying that every tree is known by its fruit. The essence of Zen, which transcends conventional society and ideology, has borne precisely this kind of fruit through the ideology of ordinary mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Once religion has taken shape, it always contains traditional elements; and tradition, it goes without saying, constitutes a powerful conservative force within the realm of ideology. (Engels, &#039;&#039;Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a view that whatever is done in the Zen state of no-mind is always fresh and new in substance, even when it appears from the outside to repeat the same action. This is expressed in the saying, “Each time it is raised, it is new.” There is truth in this understanding. Yet herein lies the fundamental possibility that creative Zen may become habitual, conventional, and conservative. Even established customs, when one enters into them and acts accordingly, have their own distinctive appeal; this becomes an attraction in itself. The principle that tradition must be inherited through creativity was forgotten. Rather than carrying forward something living in a living form, people attempted to inherit it in a dead form. Within the realm of ideology, it is only natural that such conservatism should come to serve class domination, uncritically and of its own accord.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|301}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The ideas of the ruling class are, in every epoch, the ruling ideas. In other words, the class that constitutes the dominant material power in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual power. The class that controls the means of material production also controls the means of intellectual production; consequently, the ideas of those who lack access to the means of intellectual production are, in general, subordinated to that class. (Marx and Engels, &#039;&#039;The German Ideology&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps it would be reading too much into things to suggest that the imperialist project of world domination, whose supposed “ethical” summit was the ideal of &#039;&#039;hakkō ichiu&#039;&#039; 八紘一宇 (“eight corners of the world under one roof”), found its religious reflection in the determination to sit in meditation with complete concentration, using the entire earth as one&#039;s meditation cushion. In a political system that united religious rites and government, national defence and warfare could be clothed in religious forms. Under such circumstances, it was far from uncommon for people to experience religious guilt if they could not completely surrender their private interests and devote their lives to submission before the solemn authority of the state. There were those who devoted considerable thought to the emperor&#039;s “character of nothingness,” to the profound significance of the one-emperor-and-all-subjects system as an embodiment of “one is many,” and to the moral spirit of the “holy war.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is said that ours is a generation whose feelings were worn away by war until we became incapable of crying. Perhaps that is true. Yet when I think of the emperor and of the many people who died for him, I am ashamed to admit that my voice trembles involuntarily. When I drink with a veteran pilot who barely escaped death and now lives peacefully as a salaried employee, I sometimes find myself unable to sleep that night. The faces of dead comrades appear before my eyes, making sleep even more impossible. (Murakami Hyōe, “Senchūha wa kō kangaeru” 戦中派はこう考える.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To live is a joy and a hope. It is also suffering and disappointment. There are various ways of responding to suffering and disappointment, but what is sought as a lasting and fundamental response is a way of life that enables one to face even the worst circumstances of human existence with equanimity.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|302}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In such circumstances, there is one path that may be followed by those who do not believe in a transcendent absolute or a world beyond this one. It is a way of living in which one abandons the standpoint of clinging firmly to particular desires, hopes, or obligations and striving relentlessly to fulfil them. Instead, one accepts each situation as it presents itself and becomes completely one with it. Like colourless dew that appears green upon a willow and red upon a flower, or a mirror that reflects the morning in the morning and the night at night, one neither rejects what comes nor pursues what departs. Wherever one lives becomes home; in sadness, one makes sadness one&#039;s master, and in loneliness, loneliness becomes one&#039;s master. It is an attitude of living in a cosmic affirmation—a universal “Yes.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When one becomes wholly one with the thing itself and forgets oneself, one understands that everyone is of one piece with heaven and earth. What more could one desire? To desire is always to lack something and to be tormented. The popular verse ‘Looking upward, how many things lie beyond one’s reach’ recognises the error of the desire to look above one’s station. ‘Put on your straw hat and live according to your own heart’ recognises the abundance of one’s own lot and the possibility of dwelling in it peacefully.” (Iida Tōin, previously cited.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Actual society is a world of distinctions based on status and class. To entangle love and hatred in this world of distinctions, intensifying consciousness of the individual ego, can only increase dissatisfaction and agitation. Hence the proposal to accept distinctions as distinctions, without rejecting them or becoming engulfed in them. In this way, the troubled mind may subside and one may experience a different breeze even amid suffering. [The final figurative expression in the Japanese requires further verification.]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To ignore distinctions and make mountains and rivers, noble and lowly, all one would amount to a denial of cause and effect; the splendour of the world would disappear and it would become desolate. What is needed is the correct within the partial—that is, equality amid distinctions. If one falls into attachment to any single position, one fails. Originally, these are all waves upon water. […] Keep the mind like water and leave it to circumstances whether it takes a square or round form.” (Iida Tōin, previously cited; a clause in the source quotation remains uncertain.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In this way there emerged a philosophy of noncontention and accommodation, expressed in such sayings as “Give rise to the mind without abiding anywhere” (&#039;&#039;Diamond Sūtra&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Kongōkyō&#039;&#039; 金剛経); “When not a single thought arises, the myriad things are without fault” (&#039;&#039;Faith in Mind&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shinjinmei&#039;&#039; 信心銘); and “The highest goodness is like water; precisely because it does not contend, it is without fault” (&#039;&#039;Daodejing&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rōshi Dōtokukyō&#039;&#039; 老子道徳経).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|303}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen, having rejected the order of the world beyond, opened a path toward accepting directly the order of this world. Rather than earthly status determining the status of the soul in heaven, the order of nature, viewed from a religious and metaphysical perspective, came to sanctify the order of human society. Or, more precisely, the order of human society discovered its own religious and metaphysical reflection in the order of nature and thereby sanctified itself. In this way, a cosmology emerged that provided the underlying structure for what might be called Asian tolerance—or Asian peace of mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“First: Harmony is to be valued, and the absence of contentiousness is to be made fundamental. […] Third: When you receive an imperial command, obey it reverently. The ruler is heaven, and the ministers are earth. Heaven covers and earth supports. Thus the four seasons proceed in proper order, and the myriad energies circulate freely. If earth should attempt to cover heaven, destruction would necessarily follow. Therefore, what the ruler commands, the ministers obey; where those above lead, those below follow. Consequently, when receiving an imperial command, obey it reverently. Failure to do so will bring ruin upon oneself.” (&#039;&#039;Seventeen-Article Constitution&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Jūshichijō kenpō&#039;&#039; 十七条憲法.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The direction taken by young men departing for the battlefield, who struggled to resolve the problem of life and death through devotion to the emperor and the willingness to leave their bodies upon the grass or beneath the waters, followed an inclination established in the distant past.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is another way of approaching life: the life of detached insight. This involves adopting a standpoint concerned with the ultimate meaning or highest value of human existence, comprehensively contemplating and critically assessing the fundamental character and tendencies of historical reality, and living one&#039;s life in accordance with that understanding. Those called philosophers and sages are practitioners of such a life. To the extent that people attempt to examine life comprehensively and fundamentally, and to live according to that insight, they must inevitably adopt, to some degree, a position of detachment. Amid the feverish everyday existence driven relentlessly by time, it is the wisdom of the accomplished person that opens a refreshing perspective upon life. The wisdom of great affirmation, which deepens our appreciation of living and purifies suffering, and the wisdom of detached insight are two aspects of the profound worldview developed in the East.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet the path of detached insight almost invariably ends in observing the realities of the world from a position above them. Society—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|304}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—social and political evils, and the practical effort to correct them and realise a better world, are regarded with the same detachment. The result is a way of protecting one’s own life without dirtying one’s hands. This does not mean simply allowing society’s contradictions and irrationalities to stand as good. Rather, the goals and plans intended to remedy them are deemed inadequate, and even action aimed at change is seen as tainted by worldly attachment and therefore in need of fundamental purification. The masses’ gathering and use of wisdom and energy to build a free and peaceful world is certainly not nonsense, and it undoubtedly has worldly value. Yet such action is held unworthy of anyone genuinely devoted to the Way: it is judged a product of deluded attachment, an activity stained by defilements. What must be upheld is the thoroughness and purity of theory and practice. This immovable conviction is the detached perspective of the accomplished person. By combining a subjective rejection of social evil with an objective acceptance of it, one may serve the exploitative structures of political power while safeguarding the dignity and tranquillity of one’s own existence. Here is what Ichikawa calls &#039;&#039;kanzen shumi&#039;&#039; 完全趣味, invoking Lukács’s description of an abandonment of action that is “lofty in appearance but cowardly in reality.” [The rendering of 完全趣味 and the Lukács reference require source verification.]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We have examined philosophies of both active and passive cooperation with political power. These two positions, however, are not necessarily distinct. Depending on changes in social circumstances, one may readily give rise to the other.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Religious sentiment is itself a social product.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Theses on Feuerbach&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The worldview derived from the &#039;&#039;Book of Changes&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Ekikyō&#039;&#039; 易経), which for so long informed the consciousness and conduct of Zen practitioners, was a broadly moral cosmology that understood the order of nature and the order of human society through common principles. It was probably shaped, to a greater or lesser extent, by the so-called Asiatic stagnation grounded in the Asiatic mode of production. Leaving further consideration of this dimension for another occasion, let us examine the individual social relationships of Zen practitioners.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|305}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The position occupied by an individual Zen practitioner within the domestic and international structures of power of their age; their proximity and relationship to the centres of power; and the social circles they inhabit in connection with those circumstances—all these determine the form of their life. That form of life, in turn, constrains their sensibilities, morality, political orientation, and other characteristics. A distinctive feature of ideology is precisely that this structure of relationships, correspondences, and constraints is not fully and transparently recognised. Consequently, judgements and actions that appear entirely autonomous to Zen practitioners themselves are, in reality, generally conditioned by the network of social relationships in which they are situated. Differences of opinion that supposedly ought to be resolved through discussion frequently prove extraordinarily difficult to overcome because the parties involved belong to different networks or systems of social relations. These structural differences often condition the differences in their reasoning. Changing one&#039;s way of thinking may therefore require dismantling one&#039;s existing social relationships and reorganising them along different lines. Yet doing so may threaten to destroy one&#039;s established way of life. A partly unconscious anxiety about this possibility, together with the inertia of everyday existence, determines and hardens people&#039;s ways of perceiving, thinking, and acting.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV. Human Self-Alienation and Its Recovery ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In its reality, the human essence is the ensemble of social relations.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Theses on Feuerbach&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We live in a society of competitive private ownership which, having freed us as individuals from the restraints of feudal society, has cast us out into a world where we live protected and simultaneously bound by countless restrictions constructed to maintain and strengthen this social system. Under individual “freedom” and responsibility, we are thrown into competition for the limited means of happiness. It is as if, during a five-minute stop, we were trying to board an impossibly overcrowded train together with Rikidōzan’s fellow wrestlers—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|306}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and men with infantile paralysis, all jostling toward the same entrance, the same window. If the proper entrance is blocked, one must slip in through a window, or even climb onto the roof and cling to the doors. Were we to take care of our appearance, respect etiquette, and observe the virtue of modesty, the departure time would come and every train would leave us behind. Such is the transportation hell in which we seem to live. For another person to board is for me to be left behind; for me to board is for another to be left behind. While we consider how this contradiction might rationally be resolved, the departure bell rings; the plans of those waiting for us at our destination collapse. The misfortune does not end with us alone. Nearly everyone crowded here shares these circumstances.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Day after day, from morning until night, there is an endless succession of examinations and tests. It is not merely youth that is excluded; humanity itself may be driven out. For in order to pass these fierce examinations, one cannot afford to concern oneself with friendship. A classmate&#039;s failure may become the very source of one&#039;s own good fortune. One longs to gain an advantage over the others. Before an examination, students pretend not to know things they actually know and refuse to help their friends. If a classmate misses the train on examination day, or happens to fall ill, that may prove advantageous. One student confessed, “I wished my friends would die.” Is this not literally hell? It is terrifying. What would happen if a young person who had developed such a terrifying disposition entered the University of Tokyo, became an even more frightening demon during company entrance examinations, and then carried these habits into society, eventually coming to wish misfortune upon others? (Honda Akira, &#039;&#039;Gendai no seishun&#039;&#039; 現代の青春.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I once heard about the difficulties faced by a homeroom teacher responsible for advising students seeking employment. In the classroom, students had learned that the Constitution must be defended without compromise. Yet when taking an employment examination, they were advised not to say so too explicitly. Whatever political party they actually supported, if asked, they would be better off naming the conservative party. The teacher was troubled by having to offer such contradictory advice. The same can be said of my own—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|307}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—experience. In a society where a school principal could be dismissed for misreading the Imperial Rescript at a ceremony, and a teacher on night duty could commit suicide after a portrait of the emperor was destroyed in a fire, I did not utter a single word of protest. Not only that: although I knew the war was an unclean war, I cooperated with the so-called “holy war.” Far from observing the precept against false speech, I manipulated the language of distorted scholarship. I could not even dream of possessing the freedom expressed in the &#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;: “When you wish to go, go; when you wish to sit, sit” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録). Reports indicate, however, that similar forms of falsehood existed in the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe, particularly in connection with the cult of Stalin and the rewriting of history. The American writer Mark Twain remarked, with considerable irony, that God had bestowed upon his countrymen three incomparable gifts: freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and the good sense never to exercise either freedom. But the “God” who bestowed that good sense was presumably the machinery of state power. The police become the limits of what one is permitted to recognise.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Writing about theft, the author Ōta Yōko 大田洋子 recalled the wartime food shortages:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I was not particularly resourceful, and in Tokyo I went hungry every day, sometimes weeping at mealtimes. I would obtain small portions of food that other people had bought on the black market. Sometimes, taking advantage of the rain, I would crouch beside a path through a field, conceal my face behind an umbrella, and steal several bunches of spinach. Even then, it was said that people who stole crops from farmers&#039; fields could be subjected to corporal punishment. But I was living near the daikon fields of Nerima, and on rainy nights I would pull large radishes from the ground. By that time I had ceased to be a respectable human being. I was quite unconcerned at the thought of being detained, since life in a cell would probably be little different from life outside.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A young man suffering from illness gave stark expression to the pain and ugliness of living.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Family — Iwamoto Toshio 岩本敏夫&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If only this child were not here—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|308}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If only Father and Mother weren&#039;t here—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Father as father, Mother as mother, Child as child,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Each thinking this way,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Now&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Only suffocating hatred&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In this same house&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
They live together.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Such mutual hostility would probably lose most of the conditions necessary for its emergence if a comprehensive system of social security were established and the necessities of life were as abundant as air. This would be an instance of the Buddhist principle that, when the necessary conditions are absent, a phenomenon cannot arise (&#039;&#039;en ketsu fushō&#039;&#039; 縁欠不生). The scarcity of nature—and especially the scarcity produced by society—awakens and intensifies human self-centredness, exclusiveness, distrust, and competition. There is an expression about diverting water toward one&#039;s own rice field. In earlier times, farmers living on opposite banks of a river might face one another with suspicion and hostility during a drought. Yet once the rain came, they would abandon their confrontation and depart. Such scenes could formerly be observed in rural Japan. Hobbes, a proponent of the view that human nature is evil, argued that people need only examine themselves to recognise that human beings are not naturally sociable animals. At night, we lock our doors; even when at home, we lock our valuables in safes. Locking the door reveals what we think of our fellow citizens, while locking the safe reveals what we think of our own children and servants. But it is doubtful whether such conditions have existed in every age.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the Great Way prevailed, all under heaven was held in common. The worthy and capable were selected, trust was cultivated, and harmonious relations maintained. Thus people did not regard only their own parents as parents, nor only their own children as children. The elderly had support in their final years, adults had useful employment, children had the opportunity to grow, and widowers, widows, orphans, the childless, the disabled, and the sick all received care. […] Thus conspiracies did not arise, nor did theft—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|309}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—or disorder arose. People left their outer doors open instead of closing them. This was called the Great Community.” (&#039;&#039;Book of Rites&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Raiki&#039;&#039; 礼記, “Liyun,” chapter 9.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps this represents a recollection of primitive communism. Why does what Feuerbach calls “human self-alienation”—the projection of one&#039;s own essence outside oneself—arise in the first place? It seems that competitive society based on private ownership contains within its structure some of the conditions that explain this phenomenon. Human beings under modern capitalism resemble commuters trapped in an endless transportation nightmare, or farmers who have become accustomed to guarding their vegetables at night behind barbed-wire fences against thieves. Certainly, it remains necessary to urge people who have long lived under such conditions to trust one another, refrain from pushing others aside, and abandon attachment to the self. Yet to imagine that such exhortations alone can be effective is utopian.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We have already seen that Zen&#039;s fundamental experience transcends ideology, but that when it takes concrete form as ideology, it has tended (a) to affirm the existing circumstances in which individuals find themselves and (b) to encourage service to society&#039;s structures of power. Nevertheless, accepting one&#039;s present circumstances without resistance is not necessarily blameworthy. Such acceptance can be connected with some of the deepest and most beautiful wisdom of human existence. It is for this reason that Ozaki Hotsumi&#039;s Zen-inspired contemplation, expressed in the words “Love is like a falling star,” touches the human heart. “When calamity comes, it is best to encounter calamity. When the time to die arrives, it is best to die. This is the wonderful method of escaping calamity.” (Ryōkan 良寛.) In this spirit of detached acceptance, Ozaki created and experienced the depth and beauty of human life. The assertion that what is needed is not a philosophy of interpretation but a philosophy of transformation seems to me to be the statement of Marx the revolutionary rather than Marx the human being.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet human life is not an uninterrupted series of the worst conceivable circumstances, with not even a millimetre of room for change. Finding a way to live peacefully amid what truly cannot be altered remains important for the latitude and well-being of everyday life. But to—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|310}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—live solely by this attitude, and recommend it to everyone in every circumstance, even where conditions can be changed, is properly called a deviation. To go further and produce a Zen apologetic that actively serves a mystified system of exploitation is a dreadful deviation. I believe this results from grasping Zen’s fundamental subject, “nothingness,” solely in its passive and accommodating aspect: like air or water, it has no shape but takes every shape, no colour but assumes every colour. Thinking increasingly through such comparisons, one eventually lets the metaphors govern thought, leaving aside the creative and formative power of nothingness to refuse, criticise, and resist. Capitalist society, which takes material profit-seeking as the motive force of social organisation and turns everything—even human beings—into commodities and material or instrumental human resources, is fundamentally incompatible with the radically subjective spirit of Zen. Yet Zen practitioners failed to develop the scientific understanding needed for the fundamental transformation of this system and the construction of society. They consequently confused the distinctions and equalities found in natural phenomena, in the natural sciences, in hierarchical social arrangements, and in different personal circumstances and forms of peace of mind, under the standpoint of “nonduality” between matter and mind, nature and humanity. Falling into false equality and false discrimination, they ultimately produced an unprincipled, benighted Zen that served fascism and cooperated with war. As the &#039;&#039;Inscription on Faith in Mind&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Shinjinmei&#039;&#039; 信心銘) says, “If there is the slightest difference, heaven and earth are far apart.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen practice means rejecting every idol, including the cult of individual personality; abandoning regrets about the past and anxieties about the future; and devoting oneself wholeheartedly to shaping life in the present. That life must contribute, directly or indirectly, to the realisation of a genuinely human society in which “each lives for all, and all live for each.” Zen practice consists in penetrating the emptiness of attachment to self through the creation of such a life. In this sense, Zen&#039;s fundamental subject constitutes the underlying ground of human living—not only the everyday activities expressed in the saying “When you encounter tea, drink tea; when you encounter rice, eat rice”—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|311}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—but also the underlying ground of struggles against war and for independence and liberation. The Zen saying about cultivating one’s own field and preparing and eating one’s rice (&#039;&#039;Book of Serenity&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shōyōroku&#039;&#039; 従容録, Case 21) concerns a life directly joined to society’s material foundation. To devote oneself wholly to such productive life is also to form oneself through ideas aimed at transforming the ideological superstructure and the social order.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Zen monasteries, collective activity directed toward the environment and its transformation is called &#039;&#039;samu&#039;&#039; 作務, or work practice. What overcomes the unhappy combination of pure intentions with impoverished or even contradictory results is the practical attitude expressed in such work. This is not a poetic attitude but a prosaic one: a lucid, constructive spirit that breaks through subjective absorption and intoxication through rational, experimental engagement with its objects. When such a spirit acts upon society and political institutions as historically constituted environments, seeking to cultivate and reconstruct them, the world toward which it ultimately strives is, in accordance with Zen&#039;s fundamental qualities of selflessness, nonpossession, and autonomy, a borderless world society organised through free communism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Once the truth of the world beyond has vanished, it is history’s task to establish the truth of this world. After the sacred form of human self-alienation has been unmasked, the first task of philosophy in the service of history is to unmask self-alienation in its unholy forms. The criticism of heaven thereby becomes the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology the criticism of politics.” (Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction.”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In my view, to establish the truth of this world after the disappearance of the truth of the beyond is to overcome religious faith in another world and to realise a society of free communism, in which all people are emancipated from exploitation and oppression as well as from the ego of exclusive self-attachment. In the direct and indirect activities of everyday life, this requires that one fully participate in sitting when sitting, in walking when walking, and in each task when engaged in it, as Tōrei Enji 東嶺円慈 teaches in &#039;&#039;Shūmon mujintō ron&#039;&#039; 宗門無尽灯論—relinquishing regret and anxious anticipation and emptying attachment to self. The fact that even Stalin—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{opage|312}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—could apparently not truly become “his own master” (Engels, &#039;&#039;Socialism: Utopian and Scientific&#039;&#039;) is neither so harmless nor so trivial that it can be dismissed as merely one of the “birthmarks” of the old social order. Put differently, we must find a way for Ozaki Hotsumi’s Zen equanimity to permeate the activity of establishing a Buddha land in the sense just described. What is called “practice amid activity” (&#039;&#039;dōchū no kufū&#039;&#039; 動中の工夫), superior to “practice amid stillness” (&#039;&#039;jōchū no kufū&#039;&#039; 静中の工夫)—seated meditation in a quiet place—must mean diligence in precisely this kind of life. It entails arousing the aspiration for enlightenment (&#039;&#039;bodaishin&#039;&#039; 菩提心) to establish a Buddha land and recognising that one must “shoulder sentient beings as a heavy burden,” while oneself being among those sentient beings. Since Zen has already rejected “the sacred form of human self-alienation,” what remains is to recognise and overcome its profane forms through an investigation of one’s own fundamental concern (&#039;&#039;koji kyūmei&#039;&#039; 己事究明) that empties egoism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To leave flowers to the wind and birds to their proper time is also the meritorious work of giving. […] To set out boats and provide bridges is likewise the perfection of giving. If one truly studies giving, both accepting the body and relinquishing the body are acts of giving. Cultivating fields and engaging in productive occupations are, from the outset, nothing other than giving.” (Dōgen, “Bodaisatta shishōbō” 菩提薩埵四摂法)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Zen master Yongming Qian (Eimei Sen 永明潜) addressed the assembly: “The Buddha-Dharma is plainly manifest. Why do you not understand it? If you wish to understand the Buddha-Dharma, ask Zhang San and Li Si. If you wish to understand worldly affairs, inquire in the monasteries of the ancient buddhas.” (*Zenmon kōan taisei* 禅門公案大成)The Zen master Yongming Qian addressed the assembly: “The Buddha-Dharma is plainly manifest. Why do you fail to understand it? If you want to understand the Buddha-Dharma, inquire of Zhang San and Li Si [ordinary people]. If you want to understand worldly affairs, inquire in the monasteries of the ancient buddhas.” (&#039;&#039;Zenmon kōan taisei&#039;&#039; 禅門公案大成.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What unity of practice and theory must we develop in order to establish a modern way of learning Zen from the working masses, and learning the principles of society from Zen communities? I welcome instruction from all quarters.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
This translation is based on Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦, “Zen to Marukushizumu” 禅とマルキシズム (1956), as reproduced in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 2, &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; 禅と現代思想 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), 293–312. The original publication venue has not been established in this edition. The Japanese transcription and this translation are working scholarly texts; historical quotations and some character-level readings remain subject to further collation. Original printed paragraph and page divisions have been retained where recoverable.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotation: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1956). “Zen and Marxism” (&#039;&#039;Zen to Marukushizumu&#039;&#039; 禅とマルキシズム). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH56ZTM-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM&amp;diff=1234</id>
		<title>IH56ZTM</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM&amp;diff=1234"/>
		<updated>2026-10-12T17:22:37Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
市川白弦（1956年）。「禅とマルキシズム」 [Zen and Marxism]。『市川白弦著作集』第2巻（法蔵館、1993年）、293–312頁所収。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;English translation:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH56ZTM-T|Zen and Marxism]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 目次 ==&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#section1|一　イデオロギー以前]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#section2|二　イデオロギーとしての禅（上）]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#section3|三　イデオロギーとしての禅（下）]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#section4|四　人間の自己疎外とその恢復]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 本文 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|293}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 一　イデオロギー以前 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
フォイエルバッハは宗教の本質を人間の本質に解消する。しかしながら人間の本質は、なんら個々の個人に内在するところの抽象体ではない。（マルクス「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
唐末五代の禅僧清涼文益に門弟慧超がいった。「慧超があなたにただします。仏とは何でありますか」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
師「お前は慧超だ」（『碧巌録』、第七則）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅の本質を人間に解消したフォイエルバッハ（一八〇四―一八七二）を思わせる対話である。ひとは宗教において廻り道して人間の本質にかえるのだ、とフォイエルバッハは考えているが、慧超はこの場合、仏を自分のそとに、いわゆる自己疎外のかたちでまとめたのではない。「慧超があなたにただします」という自信のある態度がここにある。「汝は是れ慧超」といわれて、宗教の本質を人間に解消するみちを自覚したのではない。さようなことははじめから問題になっていないのだ。師もまた「仏の本質は君の本質である」など&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|294}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
といったのではない。そのようなことなら本をよめばたくさんある。慧超と清涼とはたんなる意味の世界にいるのではない。それゆえ「言前の一句」という。「黒漆桶裏に墨汁を盛る」（『種電鈔』）という。対象論理の触手でつかまれるようなものではない。「清涼の答処、正面驀直」（『拈評三百則』）と道元は評している。天地一枚の汝は是れ慧超。意味が光り発するその場において、意味を底に超えた無我の全体作用をじかにとらえることを、この対話は要求している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
清涼のもとに監院（役名）の則という者があった。一度も参禅しないので、いったいどうしたのか、と師がたずねた。則「わたくしはまえに青林和尚のところでさとっているのです」。師「では、そのさとったところをいってみるがよい」。則「わたくしが仏とは何でありますかとたずねると、丙丁童子来って火を求む、と示されたのです」。師「お前はまちがっているようだ。もっといってみるがいい」。則「丙丁はヒノエ・ヒノトですから火にぞくします。火の子供が火を求める、つまりわたくしがほんらい仏であるのに、これをそとにむかって求めていたのだ、求める者じたいが仏である、ということをさとったのです」。師「やっぱりお前はまちがっていたのだ」。則は不満であった。こんな師匠ではつまらぬと考え、身仕度をしてそこを去った。弟子たちに師匠がいった「おしいことだ。もしあれが帰ってきたなら救われるが、帰らなかったら見込みはあるまい」。旅をしながら、則は反省していた。あの和尚は世にもまれな高僧だといわれている、しかもみだりにおれをだましたのではあるまい、けっきょく、おれの方がどうまちがったのだ、もういちど教えを乞うことにしよう。ついにもとの道をひきかえして清涼に参じた。師「じゃあ、お前さん、わしに問うがよい、答えてあげよう」。則「仏とは何でありますか」。師「丙丁童子来って火を求む！」。則、言下に大悟した。信仰は人間の自己疎外であるとか、人は神を愛することにおいて人間の本質を愛するのだとか、神学の秘密は人間学であるとかいったような、たんなる解釈学のやりとりがここにあるのではない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|295}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
上堂に云わく、赤肉団上に一無位の真人あり。常に汝等諸人の面門より出入す。いまだ証拠（さとる）せざらん者は、看よ、看よ。時に僧あり、出でて問う。如何なるかこれ無位の真人。師、禅牀を下って把住（とらえる）して云く、道え、道え。その僧擬議（まごつく）す。師、托開（つきはなす）して云く、無位の真人、何の乾屎橛（不潔な物）ぞ、といって、すなわち方丈に帰る。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
これは人間の本質を「個々の個人に内在する」ものとみているようであるが、じつはそうではない。「心外に法無し、内もまた不可得なり」（『臨済録』）。個人に内在する人間をそのまま肯定するヒューマニズムは、禅ではない。真人の面目を問われて、唐僧香厳智閑は「猢猻裏の眼睛」と答えた。近代思想の中心概念、ヒューマニティが成立する足場を空じたところでの創造である。「通玄峰上、是れ人間にあらず。心外無法、満目青山」（『天台徳韶』）。そして「無位の真人がもしも個人に内在する抽象体であるならば、あのはつらつとしたはたらき、師の黄檗をして「この気狂いめ、ここへやって来て虎のヒゲをなでおったわい！」と舌をまかせた自由がうまれるわけがない。「随処に主となり」「真正の見解を求取して天下に向って横行す」という禅的生活に、「宗教はただ人間が自己みずからを中心にして働くようになるまでの間だけ、人間の周囲をめぐる幻想的太陽にすぎない」「宗教は涙の谷の後光であり」「抑圧された生物の嘆息である」（マルクス「ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説」）と評価されるような手がかりはないといえよう。マルクスはこの稿の初めにかかげた言葉につづいて「その現実においては、人間の本質は社会的諸関係の総体である」と書いている。マルキシズムは抽象体としての人間の本質と現実としての人間の本質のほかに、もしくはそれらを底に超えて、禅の基礎経験である「人」をみていないのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
定、上座あり、到り参ず。問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師、縄牀を下って擒住（とらえる）して一掌を与えてすなわち托開す。定、佇立す。傍らの僧いわく、定上座、なんぞ礼拝せざる。定、礼拝する&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|296}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
にあたって、忽然として大悟す。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような悟りが、社会の物質的生活の諸条件、すなわちそれぞれの時代の経済的構造を現実の基礎として、それによって規定せられる上部構造としての「イデオロギー」でないことはあきらかである。唐のなかごろ、洞庭湖のほとりに薬山の惟儼禅師があった。ながいあいだ何も説法しないので、院主がうながしていった、「皆の者が久しく和尚の説示をのぞんでおります。どうか一度説法なさって下さい」。師「それならば出頭の鐘を打て」。鐘が鳴って一同出頭におよぶと、薬山は高座に上って、しばらくだまっていたが、そのまま座を下って方丈に帰ってしまった。院主はあっけにとられて、さっそく和尚を追いかけていった。「和尚はさきほど私の願いをいれて下さったではありませんか。どうして何もおっしゃらないのですか」。薬山は答えていった、「経には専門の経師があり、論には論師がある。わしが説法しなくても不思議はないじゃないか」（『従容録』、第七則）。「諸人いまだ法堂に到らざるに、すでに三十棒を喫し了れり」と道元はしめしている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
上堂、僧問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師払子を竪起す。僧便ち喝す。師便ち打つ。又僧問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師亦払子を竪起す。僧便ち喝す。師亦喝す。僧擬議す。師便ち打つ。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この場合、すべてのイデオロギーは、白熱の熔鉱に落ちる淡雪にもひとしい。「光影を弄する底の人を識取せよ」（『臨済録』）。イデオロギーを形成する主体をつかめという。「古人いわく、説いて一物に似れば、即ち中らず」と。汝ただ自家に看よ。さらに何かあらん。説もまた尽くることなし」（『臨済録』）。イデオロギーをかぎりなく拒否する主体は、イデオロギーをかぎりなく形成する主体でもある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|297}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 二　イデオロギーとしての禅（上） ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人間がその人間性、その本体をとりもどすことができるただ一つの方法は、「一切の宗教的表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく、人間自身への、決然として正当な復帰によることである。（エンゲルス『イギリスにおける労働者の状態』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一切の宗教的表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく人間自身への決然として正当な復帰ということを、人間の自己疎外すなわち貧乏とドレイ化を克服しようとするプロレタリアートというかたち、プロレタリア・ヒューマニズムというかたちにおいてでなく――と言い切るのは一面的だと私は考えるのだが――「脚下照顧すなわち人間性を底に超える」というかたちにおいて実現するものが禅である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
師、衆に示して云く、仏の一字、われ聞くことを喜ばず。（『趙州録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
汝もし仏を求めば、仏魔に摂せられん。（中略）却って境に乗ずる底の人を見るに、これ諸仏の玄旨なり。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
フォイエルバッハは宗教的自己疎外、即ち一の宗教的なものと一の現世的なものとへの世界の二重化の事実から出発する。（『フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
天国や彼岸の世界は、禅者にとって、泣く子をだまらかす木の葉ッパでありカゲロウであった。かえってカゲロウを追いかける「人」をつかむならば、現実の世界がそのまま生きるに値する実在の世界だというのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
光影を弄する底の人を識取せよ。これ諸仏の本源。一切処これ道流（修道者）帰舎の処なり。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人の世を作ったものは神でもなければ鬼でもない。矢張り向ふ三軒両隣りにちらつくする唯の人であ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|298}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
る。唯の人が作った人の世が住みにくいからとて、越す国はあるまい。あれば人でなしの国へ行く許りだ。人でなしの国は人の世よりも猶住みにくかろう。（夏目漱石『草枕』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
汝諸方より来る者、皆これ有心にして仏を求め法を求め解脱を求め三界を出離せんことを求む。痴人、汝、三界を出でていずれの処に去らんと要す。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「宗教は顚倒した世界意識である」（『ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説』）といわれるが、「到り得て帰り来れば別事無し、廬山は煙雨、浙江は潮」（蘇東坡）という世界のどこに「顚倒」がみられるであろう。レーニンはゴーリキーへの手紙のなかで、「搾取者に対する闘争における被搾取者の無力が、不可避的に彼岸におけるよりよき生活への信仰をみちびきだす」といっているが、おなじ階級的搾取の社会において、禅は意識的に彼岸への信仰を否定したのである。現実的世界の宗教的反映による世界の二重化、「現実的基礎が自分自身から浮き上って、一つの独立の王国として雲界に定着する」という事態が、この場合、おなじ中世紀身分社会においておこらなかったばかりでなく、積極的に拒否されたのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実的世界の宗教的反映は、総じて実践的な日常生活の諸関係が、人々に対して、かれら相互間および対自然のすき透るような、理性的な・諸関連を日常的に表示するに至るや、はじめて消滅する。社会的生活過程すなわち物質的生産過程の姿態は、それが自由に社会を構成している人々の産物として、かれらの意識的な計画的統制のもとに立つに至るや、はじめてその神秘的な覆い衣をぬぎすてる。（『資本論』第一部、第一篇、第一章、第四節）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実の世界の宗教的反映は、実践的な日常生活の諸関係が人々にたいして、かれら相互間および対自然のすきとおるような理性的な諸関係を誰の目にもあきらかにするまでになっていない世界において、いいかえれば、社会がすべての人間を自己疎外から解放し、すべての生産手段を所有し、計画的に行使するに至&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|299}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
っていない中世社会において、すべての禅者たちによって、広範囲にわたって阻止されたのである。すくなくともこのかぎりにおいて、民衆の阿片としての性格はここにはなかったといっていい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 三　イデオロギーとしての禅（下） ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
イデオロギーとしての禅が社会的に問題となるのは、それの形而上的な部面ではなくて、むしろ国民大衆の日常の現実の生活との交渉のなかで、禅の体現者としての禅者（もしくは禅宗の教団）がその世界観、人生観にもとづく言葉と行動において、人倫の問題、処世の心がまえについて、どのような態度をとるかという点にある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
分限を見わけてその性を知れ。（中略）柳は緑、花は紅。（鈴木正三『盲安杖』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
道徳の微妙は無声無臭に始まりて礼儀三百威儀三千に終る。礼儀三百威儀三千に窮りて無声無臭に帰る。（中略）これを明暗双々底という。（今北洪川『禅海一瀾』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
たとひ悪しき主人に仕へてのがるるところなくとも、更に主人の科にあらず。先世の我が業因と観ぜば、却ってはらにあらずや。或は一生病人となる盲目非人となりて朝夕苦しむ人多し。かやうのものは誰が咎なりと云ふや、ひとへにわが咎なり。かへすがへすもあやまることなく、万事を放下して忠孝の道に入るべし。（『盲安杖』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
仏道は人々脚跟下ぢゃ。自己を忘れて其物に成り切る外はない。君と臣の道あきらけき日の本の国は動かじ万代までも。明治天皇の御製ぢゃ。肝に銘じておくがよい。忠孝の外に禅はない。（飯田欓隠『槐安国語提唱録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
封建的身分社会の人倫を支持し強化することが、禅的基礎づけをもつ自発的なものである以上、禅者がこ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|300}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
の線にそって積極的な行動を鼓舞するのは当然である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ボンヤリ禅は禁物だ、緊張し切って坐るのである。富士山が東海の天に突っ立ったような気持になって、更に云えば地球を座蒲団として天地の間に吾輩一人のみだ、という気持になって只坐ればよいのだ。坐禅は何のためにするのか。無上道を体現するにあり、大悟大徹するにあり、定力を練って随処に自在力を得るにある。無上道とは維摩の大道にあり、大悟大徹とは維摩の大道を悟るのであり、随処に自在力を得るとは、日本人は日本人に安住し活動することである。（原田祖岳『日本精神と大乗禅』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
国民教育の目標が大君のためシノウ、タメシテ滅私奉公するにあるとすれば、各臣民が各々の職域の学修、修行において、かくの如き無作の妙用を体得するに向って進むのでなければ、その実を充分にあげることはできない。（伊藤康安『沢庵和尚と教育』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
すべての木はその果実によって知られる、という言葉があるが、脱俗的なそしてイデオロギーをこえた禅の本質は、平常心のイデオロギーにおいて、このような果実をむすんだ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教は一旦形成されると、つねに伝統的な素材を包含しており、そしていうまでもなく、伝統的なものはイデオロギーの領域において、ひとつの大きな保守的な力である。（エンゲルス『フォイエルバッハ論』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅的な無心の境地においてなされることは、外からみて同じことを繰り返しているようであっても、実質においてはつねに生新であるという見解、「一回挙すれば一回新なり」という見解は、それはそれで正しいのだが、しかもここに創造的な禅が惰性的、因襲的、保守的となる根本契機がある。因習も因習のなかへはいって行動してみると、それ相応の味わいがあるということがひとつの魅力となった。伝統が創造においてうけつがれることが忘れられ、生きたものを生きた形でうけつぐかわりに、死んだ形でうけつごうとしたのである。このような保守性がイデオロギーの領域において、無批判にかつ自発的に階級支配に奉仕するのは&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|301}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
自然のいきおいである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
支配階級の思想は、いずれの時代においても支配的な思想である。いいかえるならば、社会の支配的な物質的力であるところの階級が、同時にその社会の支配的な精神的力である。物質的生産のための諸手段を支配する階級は、それによって同時に精神的生産のための諸手段を支配し、かくしてそれによって同時におしなべて精神的生産のための諸手段を欠いた人々の思想は、この階級に隷従させられることになる。（マルクス・エンゲルス「ドイツ・イデオロギー」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
うがちすぎた見かたをするならば、「八紘一宇」の理念に「倫理的」頂点をもつ帝国主義の世界政策が、その宗教的反映を「緊張し切って地球を座蒲団として坐る」という気がまえのうちに見出した、といえるかもしれない。祭政一致の国家体制において、国防・戦争が宗教的衣裳をつける場合、森厳性をもつ国家権力に、私心をすて生命をかけて帰順する態度になりきれないことに、宗教的な罪の意識をもつという事実も、過去においてまれではなかった。天皇の「無的性格」について、一君万民制の「一即多」としての深玄性について、「聖戦」の道徳的精神について、心をくだいた人々もあった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
私たちは戦争に感情を擦り減らして泣かなくなった世代だと言われるそうである。それは或いは事実かもしれない。しかし天皇と、そのために死んだ多くの人たちのことを考える時、私は不甲斐ないことだが思わず声が顫えてくる。九死に一生を得て、今は平和なサラリーマンである歴戦のパイロットなどと一緒に飲んで、その晩寝つけなかったりすると、私は死んだ戦友たちの顔が目の前にちらついて、いっそう眠れなくなる。（村上兵衛「戦中派はこう考える」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
生きることは喜びであり希望である。また苦しみであり失望である。苦悩と失望に対処する方法はさまざまであるが、永続的根本的なものとして、人生最悪の事態にやすんじて対処する生きかたがもとめられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|302}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この場合、超越的な絶対者もしくは彼岸の世界を信じないものが、たどろうとするひとつの道がある。それは、特定の意欲、希望、当為をかたくまもって、このものの実現のためにあくまでもきそいたたかうという身がまえ心がまえを、その足場から空じさって、当面するその場その場の事態をそのままにうけいれ、これと一枚になる生きかたである。柳におけば緑となり花におけば紅となる無色の露のように、朝には朝をうつし夜には夜をうつす鏡のように、来るものをこばまず去るものを追わず、住めば都、悲しさにいて悲しさをあるじとし寂しさにいて寂しさをあるじとする、宇宙的な「然り」において生きる態度である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
其物に成り切り自己を忘ずる時、誰も皆天地一枚の者ぢゃと云ふことが分ってくる。この上望みやうがないではないか。望めばいつも不足である、煩悶である。俗歌の、上見れば及ばぬ事の多かりき、は望上心の非を悟ったのぢゃ。笠著てくらせ己が心に、は分上に豊かなることを知って安住ができたのぢゃ。（飯田欓隠、前掲書）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実の社会は身分・階級による差別の世界である。このような差別の世界に憎愛の心をからませ個我の意識をはりつめるならば、不満と焦躁はつのるばかりであろう。そこで、差別を差別のままにうけいれて、こばむことなくおぼれることがなければ、あくぐ心はおのずから消え、つきつめた思いは蒸発して、いたみなやむなかにも風に別調のなかに吹かるということになる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
差別を無視して山も川も貴も賤も一つにすると、それこそ撥無因果ぢゃ、世の荘厳は去って殺風景ぢゃ。偏中正（差別の中の平等）が入用の処ぢゃ。兎角一法に偏堕したらみな落第ぢゃ。元来水の上の波ぢゃ。やから偏堕されぬ答ぢゃ。心をば水の如くに持ち成して、方と円とを物に任せん。（飯田欓隠、前掲書）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「住する処なくして其の心を生ず」（『金剛経』）、「一心生ぜざれば万法咎なし」（『信心銘』）、「上善は水のごとし、それただ争わず、故に咎なし」（『老子道徳経』）といった不争、順応の哲学がこのようにして生まれた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|303}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
彼岸の秩序をみとめなかった禅は、此岸の秩序をじかにみとめる道をひらいた。地上における身分上の地位が、天上における霊魂の地位を規定するのでなく、宗教的＝形而上的視点からみられた自然界の秩序が、人間社会の秩序を聖化することになった。あるいはむしろ人間社会の秩序がその宗教的＝形而上的反映を自然界の秩序に見出すことによって、逆にみずからを聖化し、このようにしてアジア的寛容＝アジア的安心の道を骨格づける宇宙論が形成された。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一に曰く、和を以て貴しとなす。忤ふことなきを宗となす。（中略）三に曰く、詔を承けては必ず謹しめ。君は則ち天也、臣は則ち地也。天は覆い地は載す。四時順行し万気通ずることを得。地、天を覆わんと欲すれば、則ち壊るることを致すのみ。是を以て君の言うところ臣承け、上の行うところ下靡く。故に詔を承けては必ず謹しめ。謹しまざれば自ら敗れん。（『十七条憲法』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
出陣する青年たちが生死の問題を天皇に帰一する草莽す屍、水漬く屍のみちにおいて解決しようと苦闘した方向は、遠い過去からの傾斜をもっていた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人生に処するいまひとつの方法に、達観の生活がある。人間生活の究極の意義もしくは最高の価値という視点に立って、歴史的現実の基本的な性格と動向とを全体にわたって諦観・批判するとともに、この諦観において人生を生きる態度である。哲人とか聖賢とかよばれる人々はこのような生活の実践者であり、ひとが人生を総合的・根本的に観察し、この洞察にしたがって生きようとするかぎり、多かれ少なかれ達観的な立場に立たざるを得ないであろう。時間に追われる熱病的な日常に、人生の展望をさわやかにきりひらくものは達人の智慧である。生きることの感銘をみがき苦痛を浄化するあの大肯定の智慧と、この達観の智慧とは、東洋が生んだ深い世界観の両面である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら達観の道は、ほとんどつねに世界の現実にたいする高みの見物におわるものである。社会&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|304}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
悪、政治悪と、それをあらためてよりよい世界を実現しようとする実践とをふたつながら達観して、手をよごさないでおく生活をまもることになる。社会の矛盾、不合理をそのままよしとしてゆるすのではないが、しかしこれをあらためようとする目標と設計とが不徹底であるばかりでなく、あらためようとする行動そのものが依然として世俗的人間の執着に染められたものであり、したがってそれ自体がまず根本的に浄化されなくてはならぬと見るのである。自由にして平和な世界への階級をきずくために、大衆が智慧とエネルギーとを結集し行使することは、もとよりナンセンスではなく、世俗的な意味においてたしかに価値のあることであるが、しかしそれはかりそめにも道に志すものが参加するにあたいすることがらではない。おしなべてそれは人間的妄執のはからいであり、有漏雑染の業にほかならない。まもらねばならず、つらぬかねばならぬ一線は、理論と実践の徹底と純潔である。このような信念のうえにゆるぎなく坐するものが達人の達観である。主体的自覚における社会悪の否認と、客観的事実におけるそれの是認とを、かたくむすぶ生活態度によって、権力の搾取機構に奉仕し、その生活の品位と平安とをまもることができる。完全趣味――「うわべは崇高でも実は卑怯な、行動の放棄」（ルカーチ）――とよばれるものがここにある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
政治的権力にたいする積極的な協力の哲学と消極的な協力の哲学とをみてきたのであるが、この二つは必ずしも別のものではなく、社会的状況の変化に応じて自由にその心を生ずるのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教的情操はひとつの社会的産物である。（「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ながいあいだ禅者の意識・行動をうらづけてきた「易経」的世界観、自然の秩序と人間の秩序とを共通の原理においてとらえる汎道徳的コスモロジーは、いわゆるアジア的生産様式を土台とするアジア的停滞によって、多かれ少なかれ規定され性格づけられていたであろう。この部面の考察はべつにゆずって、禅者の個人的な社会関係について考えよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|305}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ひとりの禅者がその時代の国内的および国際的な権力機構のなかへ、どのような位置づけにおいてくみこまれているか、権力中枢とどのような距離と脈絡を保っているか、そしてこの事態との関連においてどのような交友圏をもっているかということが、かれの生活形態を規定し、その生活形態はその生活のセンス、モラル、政治性等々を制約している。そしてこの連関、照応、制約の構造がくまなく透明に自覚せられていないことが、イデオロギーの特色である。したがって禅者自身の意識においてはまったく自主的である判断・行動が、現実においてはこの社会的連関の仕組によって規定されているのがつねである。「話せばわかる」はずの見解のちがいが、多くの場合その解消がひどく困難であるのは、両者の入りこんでいる社会関係のラインないしシステムがくいちがっており、そのくいちがいが論理のくいちがいを制約していることがまれではないからである。考えかたをあらためるためには、時としては自分がとりむすんでいるこれまでの社会関係を解体して、べつの系列にくみ直さねばならず、同時にそのことは自分の生活を破壊しかねないのである。このことにたいする半ば無意識の不安と生活の惰性とが、ものの見かた考えかた、行動のしかたを規定しかつそれをかたくなにするのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 四　人間の自己疎外とその恢復 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人間の本質は、その現実においては、社会的諸関係の総体である。（「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれは封建社会の拘束からわれわれを個人として解放し放擲している競闘的私有制社会のなかに、この社会体制の存続強化のためにくみたてられた、かずかずの制約にまもられかつしばられて生きている。個人の「自由」と責任において、限られた幸福への手段をめざして、競闘しなければならぬ世界になげだされている。たとえていえば、五分間の停車時間のうちに、超満員の列車にのりこもうとして、力道山の仲間と&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|306}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
小児麻痺の男たちが、一つの入口、一つの窓口をめがけてひしめきあうといった状況のなかで、われわれは生きている。正規の入口がつまっているなら、窓口からもぐりこまねばならず、時と場合によっては屋根によじのぼり扉にへばりつかなくてはならぬ。風采をととのえエチケットをおもんじ謙譲の徳をまもっていたなら、発車の時刻がきて、どの列車にもとりのこされるほかはない、といった交通地獄のなかにいるようなものである。他人がのりこむことは自分がとりのこされることであり、自分がのりこむことは他人がとりのこされることである。この矛盾の合理的な解決はいかにして可能であるか、などと考えているうちに発車のベルが鳴ってしまう。そして自分の目的地にいる、関係の人々のプログラムもこわれてしまう。自分だけの不幸におわるのではない。同じ事情は、ここにひしめきあっているほとんどすべての人々に共通している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
あけてもくれても試験やテストの連続である。青春がしめ出されるだけではない。人間までもしめ出されかねない。なぜならばはげしい試験にパスするためには、友情などといっていられない。級友のつまずきはすなわちわが身の幸運となりかねないからだ。ぬけがけをしたい。試験前には知っていることも知らないといって、友人には教えない。級友が試験の日に電車に乗りおくれるか、病気になるかすればいい。ある学生は「友だちが死ねばいいと思った」と告白した。文字通り地獄ではないか。おそろしいことだ。こういうおそろしい心になった青年が東大に入り、入社試験の時にさらに一層おそろしい鬼になり、そして社会に出てからそれが習性になって、他人の不幸を祈るようになるとしたら、どうであろう。（本多顕彰『現代の青春』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
就職を指導する担任教師の悩みをきいたことがある。教室では憲法はあくまで守らねばならぬことを学習したが、入社試験の場合にはそれをハッキリ答えないがよい、自分がどの政党を支持するにしても、尋ねられたら保守党の名をあげたがよかろう、などと助言をしなければならぬという矛盾である。同じことは私自&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|307}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
身についてもいうことができる。式場において勅語を読みちがえた校長がクビになり、ご真影を焼失した宿直の教師が自殺するといった社会にたいして、私は一言の抗議もしなかったばかりでなく、不潔な戦争と知りながら「聖戦」に協力したのであり、不妄語戒をまもるどころか曲学のことばをあやつり、「行かんと要すれば即ち行き、坐せんと要すれば即ち坐す」（『臨済録』）といった自由はゆめにもえられなかったのである。――ソ連邦ならびに東欧諸国にもおなじ虚妄があったことを、スターリン崇拝、歴史の編集などに関して情報がつたえている。アメリカの作家マーク・トウェーンは半ば皮肉に「神はわが国民にこの上もない三つの贈物をあたえ給うた。それは思想の自由、言論の自由、そしてこの自由を決して使わないという良識である」といったが、この良識をあたえた「神」は、国家権力の機構であろう。警察が認識の限界となるのだ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
盗みについて、作家大田洋子氏は戦時の食糧難のころを回想している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
要領のよくない私は、東京で毎日空腹をみたされなくて、食事のとき涙をだしたりしていました。人が闇で買ったものをまた少しずつわけてもらったりしていたけれど、あるときは雨を幸いに畑の小径にしゃがんで傘で顔をかくし、ほうれん草をいく束かぬすんだりしたのです。その時分すでに農家の畑のものをぬすむと体刑にされるということでしたが、ちょうど練馬の大根畑の傍に住んでいましたから、雨の夜陰に大きな大根をひきぬいてきたりしたのです。そのころからまともな人間でなくなり、留置場へ入れられたところで、外の暮しとたいして変りはないのだろうと思って平気でありました。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
病にあるひとりの青年は生きることのつらさ、みにくさを浮きぼりにしていった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
家族　　岩本敏夫&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
コノ子サエイナケレバ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|308}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
父ト母サエイナケレバ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
父ハ父デ　母ハ母デ　子ハ子デ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ソウオモイツメテ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
イマハ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
息ヅマル憎シミダケガ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
オナジ一ツノ家ニ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
クラシテイル&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような反目は、もしも完全な社会保障制度が確立し、生活に必要な物資が空気のように豊富であるとしたら、その成立する条件の大半を失うであろう。仏教にいう「縁欠不生」となるであろう。自然のリンショクとそしてとくに社会のリンショクが人間の自己中心、排他、不信、競闘をよびさましかきたてている。わが田へ水をひくという言葉があるが、ひとつの川をさしはさんで不信と敵意をもって対峙していたひでりの時期の農民たちが、一度雨が降れば対峙をといてたち去ることは、むかし田舎にみられる現象であった。性悪説の論者ホッブスは、人間が非社会的動物であることは自分を反省してみればわかる。われわれは夜眠るときには扉に錠をおろし、自分の家にいる時でさえ金庫にカギをかける。扉にカギをかけるのは市民仲間にたいして、金庫にカギをかけるのは自分の子供や召使いにたいして、自分がどのような意見をもっているかを証拠だてるものだといったが、かようなことがらがいつの時代にも存在するかどうかは疑問である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
大道の行われしや、天下を公となし、聖と能とを選び、信を講じ、睦を脩む。故に人独りその親を親とせず、独り其子を子とせず、老終る所あり、壮用うる所あり、幼長ずる所あり、矜寡（妻をなくした老人）孤独（父をなくした幼児）廃疾者、みな養う所あらしむ。（中略）この故に謀は閉じておこらず、盗&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|309}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
窃乱賊はすなわちおこらず、故に外戸（戸をあけたまま）にして閉じず。これを大同という。（『礼記』、礼運第九）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
おそらくこれは原始共産体への回想であろう。フォイエルバッハのいう「人間の自己疎外」、自分の本質を自分の外に投げだすということがどうしておこるのか。そのわけがらのいくつかを明らかにするものを、競闘的私有制社会が構造的にもっていると考えられる。永遠の交通地獄におちこんだ通勤者、もしくは有刺鉄線をはりめぐらした中で、野菜どろぼうの夜番をする習性をかためてしまった農民のような状況に、現代資本制社会の人間はおかれている。私有制度のむかしからこの状況におかれてきた人間にむかって、人を信ぜよ、人をおしのけるな、我執をすてよと説きすすめることはもちろん必要であるが、ただそれだけで効果をあげられると考えるのは空想的である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれはさきに、禅の基礎体験がイデオロギーを超えること、それがイデオロギーとして具体化する場合には、（イ）自分がおかれている現在の状況を肯定すること、および、（ロ）社会の権力機構への奉仕を説きすすめる傾向をしめしたことを知った。ところで、自分がおかれている現在の状況をすなおにうけいれることは、必ずしも非難すべきことがらではない。それは人生のもっとも深く美しい叡智につながっている。「愛情はふる星のごとく」の尾崎秀実の禅的諦観がひとの心をうつのはそのためである。「災難に逢ふ時節には災難に逢ふがよく候。死ぬる時節には死ぬがよく候。これはこれ災難をのがるる妙法にて候」（良寛）。尾崎はこのような諦観において、人生の深さ美しさを創造し享受した。必要なものは解釈の哲学ではなくて変革の哲学だというのは、人間マルクスの言葉であるよりも、革命家マルクスの言葉であると考えたい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら人間の生活は、改作の余地が一ミリもない最悪の事態の連続ではない。最悪の事態にやすんじて生きる道をきりひらくことは、日々の生活のゆとりと健康のためにも、重要な問題である。しかしあら&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|310}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ゆる場合にこの態度だけで生きること、この態度だけをすべての人間のあらゆる状況について説きすすめることは、「偏向だ」といっていい。まして神話的搾取体制に進んで奉仕する禅論をうちだすにいたっては、すさまじい偏向である。思うにこれは、禅の根本主体である「無」を、形なくしてあらゆる形となり、色なくしてすべての色になる空気か水のような受動、包容の一面においてとらえ――譬喩をもって考えているうちに、いつのまにか譬喩が考えを支配するようになる――それの創造的造形力としての拒絶、批判、抵抗の方面を捨象した結果である。物質的な利潤の追求を社会構成の動力とし、あらゆるものを、人間そのものをさえも商品化し、物的・手段的な人的資源とする資本制社会と、根源的に主体的な禅精神とは、もともと相容れないものである。したがってこの体制の根本的変革のための科学的認識を、仏土建設のために禅者は学びとらねばならぬはずである。ところが過度の達観主義が、客体的な物の構造、法則を認識しようとする意志を蒸発させたのである。そのために物と心、自然と人間とをつねに「一如・不二」の視点からとらえる習性をかため、自然現象における差別と平等、自然科学的現象における差別と平等、形而上学的意味における差別と平等、社会体制の中での人間の階層的な差別と平等、境遇の差別と安心の一貫性としての平等、これらのものをたがいに混同して悪平等、悪差別の誤認におちいり、ついにはファシズムに奉仕し、戦争にも協力する無節操な暗禅となり、「毫釐も差あれば天地はるかに隔たる」（『信心銘』）ことになった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
個人崇拝はもとよりのこと、あらゆる偶像を拒否し、過去への愚痴と未来への取越苦労をぬぎすてて、現在の生活形成――直接にまたは間接に、真実の人類社会「一人は万人のために、万人は一人のために」生きる世界の実現に寄与する生活形成――に純一無雑となり、この生活創造において我執の空に徹することが、禅の実践である。禅の根本主体はこの意味における人間生活の底辺――いわば生活全体にしみとおる底辺――である。茶に遇うては茶を喫し飯に遇うては飯を喫するというような、日常的身辺的な生活の底辺であ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|311}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
るばかりでなく、反戦、独立、解放のたたかいの底辺でもある。「争でか知らん、我が這裏の田を種え飯をまろめて喫せんには」（『従容録』、第二一則）といった、社会の下部構造に直結する生活における物質的生産の主体としてこの生活を純一にするとともに、上部構造のイデオロギー、社会体制を改作する思想として自己を形成する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
環境にはたらきかけて、これを改作する感性的・対象的な実践としての大衆的行動を、禅林では「作務」とよんでいる。行為における心情の純粋と結果の貧困ないし背反との不幸な統一を克服するものは、作務における工作態度である。それは詩的な態度ではなくて散文的な態度であり、対象に対する合理的実験的活動によって、主観主義の沈潜と陶酔をつきやぶる、醒めた造型的な精神である。このような精神が社会的歴史的環境としての社会・政治体制にはたらきかけて、開拓し構築しようとする世界は、その究極においては、禅の根本主体の無我、無所有、自律の基本性格にしたがって、自由共産制の国境なき世界社会である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
それ故に真理の彼岸が消滅したのちには、此岸の真理をうちたてることが歴史の任務である。人間の自己疎外の神聖な姿が面被をはがれてしまった後には、その神聖でない姿における自己疎外の面被をはぐことが、まず歴史に仕える哲学の任務である。天国の批判はこのようにして地上の批判に、宗教の批判は法律の批判に、神学の批判は政治の批判に変ってくる。（マルクス「ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
真理の彼岸が消滅したあとに、此岸の真理をうちたてるということは、私の見るところでは、彼岸についての宗教的信仰を克服して、すべての人間が搾取と抑圧から解放されるとともに、排他的な我執の自我からも解放された自由共産制社会を実現するための、直接間接の日常生活の坐作進退において、「坐の時は坐の時に参じ、行の時は行の時に参じ、語の時は語の時に参じ、一切作務の時は一切作務の時に参ず」（東嶺円慈『宗門無尽灯論』）というように、愚痴と取越苦労をはなれ、我執を空じてゆくことである。――スターリンで&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|312}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
さえも真に「自分の主人」（エンゲルス『空想から科学へ』）になることができなかったと察せられることは、旧社会体制の「母斑」にすぎないとしてすまされるほどに、無害・些細な問題ではない。――いうなれば、尾崎秀実の禅的安心がいまのべた意味における仏土創建の行動をつらぬく道をきわめることである。いわゆる「静中の工夫」（静寂な場所で坐禅すること）にまさる「動中の工夫」といわれるものは、このような生活の精進であろう。仏土建立の菩提心をおこし、「衆生を荷負して重担となす」（自分も衆生のひとり）ということであろう。「人間の自己疎外の神聖な姿」は禅の場合すでに拒否されているのだから、残された仕事は、神聖でない姿の自己疎外を認識し克服する実践を、エゴイズムを空ずる「己事究明」の場において行ずることである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
はなを風にまかせ、鳥をときにまかするも、布施の功業なるべし。（中略）船をおき橋をわたすも、布施の檀度なり。もしよく布施を学するときは、受身捨身ともにこれ布施なり。治田産業もとより布施にあらざるなし。（道元「菩提薩埵四摂法」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
永明潜禅師、衆に示して云く、仏法顕然たり。なんによりてか会し去らざる。仏法を会せんと要せば張三李四に問取せよ。世法を会せんと要せば古仏叢林に参取せよ。（『禅門公案大成』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅を学ぶには勤労大衆にたずね、社会の法を学ぶには禅林にたずねる、ということの現代的方法をうちたてるためには、どのような実践と理論の統一をきりひらいたらよいであろう。広く教えを乞うものである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」（1956年）。本翻刻の底本は『市川白弦著作集』第2巻『禅と現代思想』（京都：法蔵館、1993年）、293–312頁である。本文中の頁表示はこの底本の印刷頁に従う。1956年の初出媒体および初出頁は未確認である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
本テキストは底本に基づく学術的な翻刻であり、歴史的引用や一部の字句については、今後も原典との照合・修訂を行う可能性がある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Transcription and editing: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1956). “Zen and Marxism” (&#039;&#039;Zen to Marukushizumu&#039;&#039; 禅とマルキシズム). Transcribed and edited by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH56ZTM&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;Source edition:&#039;&#039; 市川白弦『市川白弦著作集』第2巻『禅と現代思想』（京都：法蔵館、1993年）、293–312頁。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Japanese originals]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM&amp;diff=1233</id>
		<title>IH56ZTM</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM&amp;diff=1233"/>
		<updated>2026-10-12T17:18:38Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;禅とマルキシズム&#039;&#039;&#039;（1956年）は、市川白弦の論考。本稿は『市川白弦著作集』第2巻（1993年）、293–312頁所収の本文に基づく作業用翻刻である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;English translation:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH56ZTM-T|Zen and Marxism]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 目次 ==&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#一 イデオロギー以前|一　イデオロギー以前]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#二 イデオロギーとしての禅（上）|二　イデオロギーとしての禅（上）]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#三 イデオロギーとしての禅（下）|三　イデオロギーとしての禅（下）]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#四 人間の自己疎外とその恢復|四　人間の自己疎外とその恢復]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 本文 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|293}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 一　イデオロギー以前 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
フォイエルバッハは宗教の本質を人間の本質に解消する。しかしながら人間の本質は、なんら個々の個人に内在するところの抽象体ではない。（マルクス「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
唐末五代の禅僧清涼文益に門弟慧超がいった。「慧超があなたにただします。仏とは何でありますか」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
師「お前は慧超だ」（『碧巌録』、第七則）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅の本質を人間に解消したフォイエルバッハ（一八〇四―一八七二）を思わせる対話である。ひとは宗教において廻り道して人間の本質にかえるのだ、とフォイエルバッハは考えているが、慧超はこの場合、仏を自分のそとに、いわゆる自己疎外のかたちでまとめたのではない。「慧超があなたにただします」という自信のある態度がここにある。「汝は是れ慧超」といわれて、宗教の本質を人間に解消するみちを自覚したのではない。さようなことははじめから問題になっていないのだ。師もまた「仏の本質は君の本質である」など&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|294}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
といったのではない。そのようなことなら本をよめばたくさんある。慧超と清涼とはたんなる意味の世界にいるのではない。それゆえ「言前の一句」という。「黒漆桶裏に墨汁を盛る」（『種電鈔』）という。対象論理の触手でつかまれるようなものではない。「清涼の答処、正面驀直」（『拈評三百則』）と道元は評している。天地一枚の汝は是れ慧超。意味が光り発するその場において、意味を底に超えた無我の全体作用をじかにとらえることを、この対話は要求している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
清涼のもとに監院（役名）の則という者があった。一度も参禅しないので、いったいどうしたのか、と師がたずねた。則「わたくしはまえに青林和尚のところでさとっているのです」。師「では、そのさとったところをいってみるがよい」。則「わたくしが仏とは何でありますかとたずねると、丙丁童子来って火を求む、と示されたのです」。師「お前はまちがっているようだ。もっといってみるがいい」。則「丙丁はヒノエ・ヒノトですから火にぞくします。火の子供が火を求める、つまりわたくしがほんらい仏であるのに、これをそとにむかって求めていたのだ、求める者じたいが仏である、ということをさとったのです」。師「やっぱりお前はまちがっていたのだ」。則は不満であった。こんな師匠ではつまらぬと考え、身仕度をしてそこを去った。弟子たちに師匠がいった「おしいことだ。もしあれが帰ってきたなら救われるが、帰らなかったら見込みはあるまい」。旅をしながら、則は反省していた。あの和尚は世にもまれな高僧だといわれている、しかもみだりにおれをだましたのではあるまい、けっきょく、おれの方がどうまちがったのだ、もういちど教えを乞うことにしよう。ついにもとの道をひきかえして清涼に参じた。師「じゃあ、お前さん、わしに問うがよい、答えてあげよう」。則「仏とは何でありますか」。師「丙丁童子来って火を求む！」。則、言下に大悟した。信仰は人間の自己疎外であるとか、人は神を愛することにおいて人間の本質を愛するのだとか、神学の秘密は人間学であるとかいったような、たんなる解釈学のやりとりがここにあるのではない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|295}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
上堂に云わく、赤肉団上に一無位の真人あり。常に汝等諸人の面門より出入す。いまだ証拠（さとる）せざらん者は、看よ、看よ。時に僧あり、出でて問う。如何なるかこれ無位の真人。師、禅牀を下って把住（とらえる）して云く、道え、道え。その僧擬議（まごつく）す。師、托開（つきはなす）して云く、無位の真人、何の乾屎橛（不潔な物）ぞ、といって、すなわち方丈に帰る。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
これは人間の本質を「個々の個人に内在する」ものとみているようであるが、じつはそうではない。「心外に法無し、内もまた不可得なり」（『臨済録』）。個人に内在する人間をそのまま肯定するヒューマニズムは、禅ではない。真人の面目を問われて、唐僧香厳智閑は「猢猻裏の眼睛」と答えた。近代思想の中心概念、ヒューマニティが成立する足場を空じたところでの創造である。「通玄峰上、是れ人間にあらず。心外無法、満目青山」（『天台徳韶』）。そして「無位の真人がもしも個人に内在する抽象体であるならば、あのはつらつとしたはたらき、師の黄檗をして「この気狂いめ、ここへやって来て虎のヒゲをなでおったわい！」と舌をまかせた自由がうまれるわけがない。「随処に主となり」「真正の見解を求取して天下に向って横行す」という禅的生活に、「宗教はただ人間が自己みずからを中心にして働くようになるまでの間だけ、人間の周囲をめぐる幻想的太陽にすぎない」「宗教は涙の谷の後光であり」「抑圧された生物の嘆息である」（マルクス「ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説」）と評価されるような手がかりはないといえよう。マルクスはこの稿の初めにかかげた言葉につづいて「その現実においては、人間の本質は社会的諸関係の総体である」と書いている。マルキシズムは抽象体としての人間の本質と現実としての人間の本質のほかに、もしくはそれらを底に超えて、禅の基礎経験である「人」をみていないのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
定、上座あり、到り参ず。問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師、縄牀を下って擒住（とらえる）して一掌を与えてすなわち托開す。定、佇立す。傍らの僧いわく、定上座、なんぞ礼拝せざる。定、礼拝する&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|296}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
にあたって、忽然として大悟す。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような悟りが、社会の物質的生活の諸条件、すなわちそれぞれの時代の経済的構造を現実の基礎として、それによって規定せられる上部構造としての「イデオロギー」でないことはあきらかである。唐のなかごろ、洞庭湖のほとりに薬山の惟儼禅師があった。ながいあいだ何も説法しないので、院主がうながしていった、「皆の者が久しく和尚の説示をのぞんでおります。どうか一度説法なさって下さい」。師「それならば出頭の鐘を打て」。鐘が鳴って一同出頭におよぶと、薬山は高座に上って、しばらくだまっていたが、そのまま座を下って方丈に帰ってしまった。院主はあっけにとられて、さっそく和尚を追いかけていった。「和尚はさきほど私の願いをいれて下さったではありませんか。どうして何もおっしゃらないのですか」。薬山は答えていった、「経には専門の経師があり、論には論師がある。わしが説法しなくても不思議はないじゃないか」（『従容録』、第七則）。「諸人いまだ法堂に到らざるに、すでに三十棒を喫し了れり」と道元はしめしている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
上堂、僧問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師払子を竪起す。僧便ち喝す。師便ち打つ。又僧問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師亦払子を竪起す。僧便ち喝す。師亦喝す。僧擬議す。師便ち打つ。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この場合、すべてのイデオロギーは、白熱の熔鉱に落ちる淡雪にもひとしい。「光影を弄する底の人を識取せよ」（『臨済録』）。イデオロギーを形成する主体をつかめという。「古人いわく、説いて一物に似れば、即ち中らず」と。汝ただ自家に看よ。さらに何かあらん。説もまた尽くることなし」（『臨済録』）。イデオロギーをかぎりなく拒否する主体は、イデオロギーをかぎりなく形成する主体でもある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|297}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 二　イデオロギーとしての禅（上） ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人間がその人間性、その本体をとりもどすことができるただ一つの方法は、「一切の宗教的表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく、人間自身への、決然として正当な復帰によることである。（エンゲルス『イギリスにおける労働者の状態』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一切の宗教的表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく人間自身への決然として正当な復帰ということを、人間の自己疎外すなわち貧乏とドレイ化を克服しようとするプロレタリアートというかたち、プロレタリア・ヒューマニズムというかたちにおいてでなく――と言い切るのは一面的だと私は考えるのだが――「脚下照顧すなわち人間性を底に超える」というかたちにおいて実現するものが禅である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
師、衆に示して云く、仏の一字、われ聞くことを喜ばず。（『趙州録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
汝もし仏を求めば、仏魔に摂せられん。（中略）却って境に乗ずる底の人を見るに、これ諸仏の玄旨なり。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
フォイエルバッハは宗教的自己疎外、即ち一の宗教的なものと一の現世的なものとへの世界の二重化の事実から出発する。（『フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
天国や彼岸の世界は、禅者にとって、泣く子をだまらかす木の葉ッパでありカゲロウであった。かえってカゲロウを追いかける「人」をつかむならば、現実の世界がそのまま生きるに値する実在の世界だというのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
光影を弄する底の人を識取せよ。これ諸仏の本源。一切処これ道流（修道者）帰舎の処なり。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人の世を作ったものは神でもなければ鬼でもない。矢張り向ふ三軒両隣りにちらつくする唯の人であ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|298}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
る。唯の人が作った人の世が住みにくいからとて、越す国はあるまい。あれば人でなしの国へ行く許りだ。人でなしの国は人の世よりも猶住みにくかろう。（夏目漱石『草枕』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
汝諸方より来る者、皆これ有心にして仏を求め法を求め解脱を求め三界を出離せんことを求む。痴人、汝、三界を出でていずれの処に去らんと要す。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「宗教は顚倒した世界意識である」（『ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説』）といわれるが、「到り得て帰り来れば別事無し、廬山は煙雨、浙江は潮」（蘇東坡）という世界のどこに「顚倒」がみられるであろう。レーニンはゴーリキーへの手紙のなかで、「搾取者に対する闘争における被搾取者の無力が、不可避的に彼岸におけるよりよき生活への信仰をみちびきだす」といっているが、おなじ階級的搾取の社会において、禅は意識的に彼岸への信仰を否定したのである。現実的世界の宗教的反映による世界の二重化、「現実的基礎が自分自身から浮き上って、一つの独立の王国として雲界に定着する」という事態が、この場合、おなじ中世紀身分社会においておこらなかったばかりでなく、積極的に拒否されたのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実的世界の宗教的反映は、総じて実践的な日常生活の諸関係が、人々に対して、かれら相互間および対自然のすき透るような、理性的な・諸関連を日常的に表示するに至るや、はじめて消滅する。社会的生活過程すなわち物質的生産過程の姿態は、それが自由に社会を構成している人々の産物として、かれらの意識的な計画的統制のもとに立つに至るや、はじめてその神秘的な覆い衣をぬぎすてる。（『資本論』第一部、第一篇、第一章、第四節）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実の世界の宗教的反映は、実践的な日常生活の諸関係が人々にたいして、かれら相互間および対自然のすきとおるような理性的な諸関係を誰の目にもあきらかにするまでになっていない世界において、いいかえれば、社会がすべての人間を自己疎外から解放し、すべての生産手段を所有し、計画的に行使するに至&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|299}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
っていない中世社会において、すべての禅者たちによって、広範囲にわたって阻止されたのである。すくなくともこのかぎりにおいて、民衆の阿片としての性格はここにはなかったといっていい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 三　イデオロギーとしての禅（下） ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
イデオロギーとしての禅が社会的に問題となるのは、それの形而上的な部面ではなくて、むしろ国民大衆の日常の現実の生活との交渉のなかで、禅の体現者としての禅者（もしくは禅宗の教団）がその世界観、人生観にもとづく言葉と行動において、人倫の問題、処世の心がまえについて、どのような態度をとるかという点にある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
分限を見わけてその性を知れ。（中略）柳は緑、花は紅。（鈴木正三『盲安杖』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
道徳の微妙は無声無臭に始まりて礼儀三百威儀三千に終る。礼儀三百威儀三千に窮りて無声無臭に帰る。（中略）これを明暗双々底という。（今北洪川『禅海一瀾』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
たとひ悪しき主人に仕へてのがるるところなくとも、更に主人の科にあらず。先世の我が業因と観ぜば、却ってはらにあらずや。或は一生病人となる盲目非人となりて朝夕苦しむ人多し。かやうのものは誰が咎なりと云ふや、ひとへにわが咎なり。かへすがへすもあやまることなく、万事を放下して忠孝の道に入るべし。（『盲安杖』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
仏道は人々脚跟下ぢゃ。自己を忘れて其物に成り切る外はない。君と臣の道あきらけき日の本の国は動かじ万代までも。明治天皇の御製ぢゃ。肝に銘じておくがよい。忠孝の外に禅はない。（飯田欓隠『槐安国語提唱録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
封建的身分社会の人倫を支持し強化することが、禅的基礎づけをもつ自発的なものである以上、禅者がこ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|300}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
の線にそって積極的な行動を鼓舞するのは当然である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ボンヤリ禅は禁物だ、緊張し切って坐るのである。富士山が東海の天に突っ立ったような気持になって、更に云えば地球を座蒲団として天地の間に吾輩一人のみだ、という気持になって只坐ればよいのだ。坐禅は何のためにするのか。無上道を体現するにあり、大悟大徹するにあり、定力を練って随処に自在力を得るにある。無上道とは維摩の大道にあり、大悟大徹とは維摩の大道を悟るのであり、随処に自在力を得るとは、日本人は日本人に安住し活動することである。（原田祖岳『日本精神と大乗禅』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
国民教育の目標が大君のためシノウ、タメシテ滅私奉公するにあるとすれば、各臣民が各々の職域の学修、修行において、かくの如き無作の妙用を体得するに向って進むのでなければ、その実を充分にあげることはできない。（伊藤康安『沢庵和尚と教育』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
すべての木はその果実によって知られる、という言葉があるが、脱俗的なそしてイデオロギーをこえた禅の本質は、平常心のイデオロギーにおいて、このような果実をむすんだ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教は一旦形成されると、つねに伝統的な素材を包含しており、そしていうまでもなく、伝統的なものはイデオロギーの領域において、ひとつの大きな保守的な力である。（エンゲルス『フォイエルバッハ論』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅的な無心の境地においてなされることは、外からみて同じことを繰り返しているようであっても、実質においてはつねに生新であるという見解、「一回挙すれば一回新なり」という見解は、それはそれで正しいのだが、しかもここに創造的な禅が惰性的、因襲的、保守的となる根本契機がある。因習も因習のなかへはいって行動してみると、それ相応の味わいがあるということがひとつの魅力となった。伝統が創造においてうけつがれることが忘れられ、生きたものを生きた形でうけつぐかわりに、死んだ形でうけつごうとしたのである。このような保守性がイデオロギーの領域において、無批判にかつ自発的に階級支配に奉仕するのは&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|301}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
自然のいきおいである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
支配階級の思想は、いずれの時代においても支配的な思想である。いいかえるならば、社会の支配的な物質的力であるところの階級が、同時にその社会の支配的な精神的力である。物質的生産のための諸手段を支配する階級は、それによって同時に精神的生産のための諸手段を支配し、かくしてそれによって同時におしなべて精神的生産のための諸手段を欠いた人々の思想は、この階級に隷従させられることになる。（マルクス・エンゲルス「ドイツ・イデオロギー」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
うがちすぎた見かたをするならば、「八紘一宇」の理念に「倫理的」頂点をもつ帝国主義の世界政策が、その宗教的反映を「緊張し切って地球を座蒲団として坐る」という気がまえのうちに見出した、といえるかもしれない。祭政一致の国家体制において、国防・戦争が宗教的衣裳をつける場合、森厳性をもつ国家権力に、私心をすて生命をかけて帰順する態度になりきれないことに、宗教的な罪の意識をもつという事実も、過去においてまれではなかった。天皇の「無的性格」について、一君万民制の「一即多」としての深玄性について、「聖戦」の道徳的精神について、心をくだいた人々もあった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
私たちは戦争に感情を擦り減らして泣かなくなった世代だと言われるそうである。それは或いは事実かもしれない。しかし天皇と、そのために死んだ多くの人たちのことを考える時、私は不甲斐ないことだが思わず声が顫えてくる。九死に一生を得て、今は平和なサラリーマンである歴戦のパイロットなどと一緒に飲んで、その晩寝つけなかったりすると、私は死んだ戦友たちの顔が目の前にちらついて、いっそう眠れなくなる。（村上兵衛「戦中派はこう考える」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
生きることは喜びであり希望である。また苦しみであり失望である。苦悩と失望に対処する方法はさまざまであるが、永続的根本的なものとして、人生最悪の事態にやすんじて対処する生きかたがもとめられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|302}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この場合、超越的な絶対者もしくは彼岸の世界を信じないものが、たどろうとするひとつの道がある。それは、特定の意欲、希望、当為をかたくまもって、このものの実現のためにあくまでもきそいたたかうという身がまえ心がまえを、その足場から空じさって、当面するその場その場の事態をそのままにうけいれ、これと一枚になる生きかたである。柳におけば緑となり花におけば紅となる無色の露のように、朝には朝をうつし夜には夜をうつす鏡のように、来るものをこばまず去るものを追わず、住めば都、悲しさにいて悲しさをあるじとし寂しさにいて寂しさをあるじとする、宇宙的な「然り」において生きる態度である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
其物に成り切り自己を忘ずる時、誰も皆天地一枚の者ぢゃと云ふことが分ってくる。この上望みやうがないではないか。望めばいつも不足である、煩悶である。俗歌の、上見れば及ばぬ事の多かりき、は望上心の非を悟ったのぢゃ。笠著てくらせ己が心に、は分上に豊かなることを知って安住ができたのぢゃ。（飯田欓隠、前掲書）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実の社会は身分・階級による差別の世界である。このような差別の世界に憎愛の心をからませ個我の意識をはりつめるならば、不満と焦躁はつのるばかりであろう。そこで、差別を差別のままにうけいれて、こばむことなくおぼれることがなければ、あくぐ心はおのずから消え、つきつめた思いは蒸発して、いたみなやむなかにも風に別調のなかに吹かるということになる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
差別を無視して山も川も貴も賤も一つにすると、それこそ撥無因果ぢゃ、世の荘厳は去って殺風景ぢゃ。偏中正（差別の中の平等）が入用の処ぢゃ。兎角一法に偏堕したらみな落第ぢゃ。元来水の上の波ぢゃ。やから偏堕されぬ答ぢゃ。心をば水の如くに持ち成して、方と円とを物に任せん。（飯田欓隠、前掲書）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「住する処なくして其の心を生ず」（『金剛経』）、「一心生ぜざれば万法咎なし」（『信心銘』）、「上善は水のごとし、それただ争わず、故に咎なし」（『老子道徳経』）といった不争、順応の哲学がこのようにして生まれた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|303}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
彼岸の秩序をみとめなかった禅は、此岸の秩序をじかにみとめる道をひらいた。地上における身分上の地位が、天上における霊魂の地位を規定するのでなく、宗教的＝形而上的視点からみられた自然界の秩序が、人間社会の秩序を聖化することになった。あるいはむしろ人間社会の秩序がその宗教的＝形而上的反映を自然界の秩序に見出すことによって、逆にみずからを聖化し、このようにしてアジア的寛容＝アジア的安心の道を骨格づける宇宙論が形成された。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一に曰く、和を以て貴しとなす。忤ふことなきを宗となす。（中略）三に曰く、詔を承けては必ず謹しめ。君は則ち天也、臣は則ち地也。天は覆い地は載す。四時順行し万気通ずることを得。地、天を覆わんと欲すれば、則ち壊るることを致すのみ。是を以て君の言うところ臣承け、上の行うところ下靡く。故に詔を承けては必ず謹しめ。謹しまざれば自ら敗れん。（『十七条憲法』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
出陣する青年たちが生死の問題を天皇に帰一する草莽す屍、水漬く屍のみちにおいて解決しようと苦闘した方向は、遠い過去からの傾斜をもっていた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人生に処するいまひとつの方法に、達観の生活がある。人間生活の究極の意義もしくは最高の価値という視点に立って、歴史的現実の基本的な性格と動向とを全体にわたって諦観・批判するとともに、この諦観において人生を生きる態度である。哲人とか聖賢とかよばれる人々はこのような生活の実践者であり、ひとが人生を総合的・根本的に観察し、この洞察にしたがって生きようとするかぎり、多かれ少なかれ達観的な立場に立たざるを得ないであろう。時間に追われる熱病的な日常に、人生の展望をさわやかにきりひらくものは達人の智慧である。生きることの感銘をみがき苦痛を浄化するあの大肯定の智慧と、この達観の智慧とは、東洋が生んだ深い世界観の両面である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら達観の道は、ほとんどつねに世界の現実にたいする高みの見物におわるものである。社会&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|304}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
悪、政治悪と、それをあらためてよりよい世界を実現しようとする実践とをふたつながら達観して、手をよごさないでおく生活をまもることになる。社会の矛盾、不合理をそのままよしとしてゆるすのではないが、しかしこれをあらためようとする目標と設計とが不徹底であるばかりでなく、あらためようとする行動そのものが依然として世俗的人間の執着に染められたものであり、したがってそれ自体がまず根本的に浄化されなくてはならぬと見るのである。自由にして平和な世界への階級をきずくために、大衆が智慧とエネルギーとを結集し行使することは、もとよりナンセンスではなく、世俗的な意味においてたしかに価値のあることであるが、しかしそれはかりそめにも道に志すものが参加するにあたいすることがらではない。おしなべてそれは人間的妄執のはからいであり、有漏雑染の業にほかならない。まもらねばならず、つらぬかねばならぬ一線は、理論と実践の徹底と純潔である。このような信念のうえにゆるぎなく坐するものが達人の達観である。主体的自覚における社会悪の否認と、客観的事実におけるそれの是認とを、かたくむすぶ生活態度によって、権力の搾取機構に奉仕し、その生活の品位と平安とをまもることができる。完全趣味――「うわべは崇高でも実は卑怯な、行動の放棄」（ルカーチ）――とよばれるものがここにある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
政治的権力にたいする積極的な協力の哲学と消極的な協力の哲学とをみてきたのであるが、この二つは必ずしも別のものではなく、社会的状況の変化に応じて自由にその心を生ずるのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教的情操はひとつの社会的産物である。（「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ながいあいだ禅者の意識・行動をうらづけてきた「易経」的世界観、自然の秩序と人間の秩序とを共通の原理においてとらえる汎道徳的コスモロジーは、いわゆるアジア的生産様式を土台とするアジア的停滞によって、多かれ少なかれ規定され性格づけられていたであろう。この部面の考察はべつにゆずって、禅者の個人的な社会関係について考えよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|305}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ひとりの禅者がその時代の国内的および国際的な権力機構のなかへ、どのような位置づけにおいてくみこまれているか、権力中枢とどのような距離と脈絡を保っているか、そしてこの事態との関連においてどのような交友圏をもっているかということが、かれの生活形態を規定し、その生活形態はその生活のセンス、モラル、政治性等々を制約している。そしてこの連関、照応、制約の構造がくまなく透明に自覚せられていないことが、イデオロギーの特色である。したがって禅者自身の意識においてはまったく自主的である判断・行動が、現実においてはこの社会的連関の仕組によって規定されているのがつねである。「話せばわかる」はずの見解のちがいが、多くの場合その解消がひどく困難であるのは、両者の入りこんでいる社会関係のラインないしシステムがくいちがっており、そのくいちがいが論理のくいちがいを制約していることがまれではないからである。考えかたをあらためるためには、時としては自分がとりむすんでいるこれまでの社会関係を解体して、べつの系列にくみ直さねばならず、同時にそのことは自分の生活を破壊しかねないのである。このことにたいする半ば無意識の不安と生活の惰性とが、ものの見かた考えかた、行動のしかたを規定しかつそれをかたくなにするのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 四　人間の自己疎外とその恢復 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人間の本質は、その現実においては、社会的諸関係の総体である。（「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれは封建社会の拘束からわれわれを個人として解放し放擲している競闘的私有制社会のなかに、この社会体制の存続強化のためにくみたてられた、かずかずの制約にまもられかつしばられて生きている。個人の「自由」と責任において、限られた幸福への手段をめざして、競闘しなければならぬ世界になげだされている。たとえていえば、五分間の停車時間のうちに、超満員の列車にのりこもうとして、力道山の仲間と&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|306}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
小児麻痺の男たちが、一つの入口、一つの窓口をめがけてひしめきあうといった状況のなかで、われわれは生きている。正規の入口がつまっているなら、窓口からもぐりこまねばならず、時と場合によっては屋根によじのぼり扉にへばりつかなくてはならぬ。風采をととのえエチケットをおもんじ謙譲の徳をまもっていたなら、発車の時刻がきて、どの列車にもとりのこされるほかはない、といった交通地獄のなかにいるようなものである。他人がのりこむことは自分がとりのこされることであり、自分がのりこむことは他人がとりのこされることである。この矛盾の合理的な解決はいかにして可能であるか、などと考えているうちに発車のベルが鳴ってしまう。そして自分の目的地にいる、関係の人々のプログラムもこわれてしまう。自分だけの不幸におわるのではない。同じ事情は、ここにひしめきあっているほとんどすべての人々に共通している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
あけてもくれても試験やテストの連続である。青春がしめ出されるだけではない。人間までもしめ出されかねない。なぜならばはげしい試験にパスするためには、友情などといっていられない。級友のつまずきはすなわちわが身の幸運となりかねないからだ。ぬけがけをしたい。試験前には知っていることも知らないといって、友人には教えない。級友が試験の日に電車に乗りおくれるか、病気になるかすればいい。ある学生は「友だちが死ねばいいと思った」と告白した。文字通り地獄ではないか。おそろしいことだ。こういうおそろしい心になった青年が東大に入り、入社試験の時にさらに一層おそろしい鬼になり、そして社会に出てからそれが習性になって、他人の不幸を祈るようになるとしたら、どうであろう。（本多顕彰『現代の青春』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
就職を指導する担任教師の悩みをきいたことがある。教室では憲法はあくまで守らねばならぬことを学習したが、入社試験の場合にはそれをハッキリ答えないがよい、自分がどの政党を支持するにしても、尋ねられたら保守党の名をあげたがよかろう、などと助言をしなければならぬという矛盾である。同じことは私自&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|307}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
身についてもいうことができる。式場において勅語を読みちがえた校長がクビになり、ご真影を焼失した宿直の教師が自殺するといった社会にたいして、私は一言の抗議もしなかったばかりでなく、不潔な戦争と知りながら「聖戦」に協力したのであり、不妄語戒をまもるどころか曲学のことばをあやつり、「行かんと要すれば即ち行き、坐せんと要すれば即ち坐す」（『臨済録』）といった自由はゆめにもえられなかったのである。――ソ連邦ならびに東欧諸国にもおなじ虚妄があったことを、スターリン崇拝、歴史の編集などに関して情報がつたえている。アメリカの作家マーク・トウェーンは半ば皮肉に「神はわが国民にこの上もない三つの贈物をあたえ給うた。それは思想の自由、言論の自由、そしてこの自由を決して使わないという良識である」といったが、この良識をあたえた「神」は、国家権力の機構であろう。警察が認識の限界となるのだ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
盗みについて、作家大田洋子氏は戦時の食糧難のころを回想している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
要領のよくない私は、東京で毎日空腹をみたされなくて、食事のとき涙をだしたりしていました。人が闇で買ったものをまた少しずつわけてもらったりしていたけれど、あるときは雨を幸いに畑の小径にしゃがんで傘で顔をかくし、ほうれん草をいく束かぬすんだりしたのです。その時分すでに農家の畑のものをぬすむと体刑にされるということでしたが、ちょうど練馬の大根畑の傍に住んでいましたから、雨の夜陰に大きな大根をひきぬいてきたりしたのです。そのころからまともな人間でなくなり、留置場へ入れられたところで、外の暮しとたいして変りはないのだろうと思って平気でありました。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
病にあるひとりの青年は生きることのつらさ、みにくさを浮きぼりにしていった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
家族　　岩本敏夫&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
コノ子サエイナケレバ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|308}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
父ト母サエイナケレバ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
父ハ父デ　母ハ母デ　子ハ子デ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ソウオモイツメテ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
イマハ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
息ヅマル憎シミダケガ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
オナジ一ツノ家ニ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
クラシテイル&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような反目は、もしも完全な社会保障制度が確立し、生活に必要な物資が空気のように豊富であるとしたら、その成立する条件の大半を失うであろう。仏教にいう「縁欠不生」となるであろう。自然のリンショクとそしてとくに社会のリンショクが人間の自己中心、排他、不信、競闘をよびさましかきたてている。わが田へ水をひくという言葉があるが、ひとつの川をさしはさんで不信と敵意をもって対峙していたひでりの時期の農民たちが、一度雨が降れば対峙をといてたち去ることは、むかし田舎にみられる現象であった。性悪説の論者ホッブスは、人間が非社会的動物であることは自分を反省してみればわかる。われわれは夜眠るときには扉に錠をおろし、自分の家にいる時でさえ金庫にカギをかける。扉にカギをかけるのは市民仲間にたいして、金庫にカギをかけるのは自分の子供や召使いにたいして、自分がどのような意見をもっているかを証拠だてるものだといったが、かようなことがらがいつの時代にも存在するかどうかは疑問である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
大道の行われしや、天下を公となし、聖と能とを選び、信を講じ、睦を脩む。故に人独りその親を親とせず、独り其子を子とせず、老終る所あり、壮用うる所あり、幼長ずる所あり、矜寡（妻をなくした老人）孤独（父をなくした幼児）廃疾者、みな養う所あらしむ。（中略）この故に謀は閉じておこらず、盗&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|309}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
窃乱賊はすなわちおこらず、故に外戸（戸をあけたまま）にして閉じず。これを大同という。（『礼記』、礼運第九）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
おそらくこれは原始共産体への回想であろう。フォイエルバッハのいう「人間の自己疎外」、自分の本質を自分の外に投げだすということがどうしておこるのか。そのわけがらのいくつかを明らかにするものを、競闘的私有制社会が構造的にもっていると考えられる。永遠の交通地獄におちこんだ通勤者、もしくは有刺鉄線をはりめぐらした中で、野菜どろぼうの夜番をする習性をかためてしまった農民のような状況に、現代資本制社会の人間はおかれている。私有制度のむかしからこの状況におかれてきた人間にむかって、人を信ぜよ、人をおしのけるな、我執をすてよと説きすすめることはもちろん必要であるが、ただそれだけで効果をあげられると考えるのは空想的である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれはさきに、禅の基礎体験がイデオロギーを超えること、それがイデオロギーとして具体化する場合には、（イ）自分がおかれている現在の状況を肯定すること、および、（ロ）社会の権力機構への奉仕を説きすすめる傾向をしめしたことを知った。ところで、自分がおかれている現在の状況をすなおにうけいれることは、必ずしも非難すべきことがらではない。それは人生のもっとも深く美しい叡智につながっている。「愛情はふる星のごとく」の尾崎秀実の禅的諦観がひとの心をうつのはそのためである。「災難に逢ふ時節には災難に逢ふがよく候。死ぬる時節には死ぬがよく候。これはこれ災難をのがるる妙法にて候」（良寛）。尾崎はこのような諦観において、人生の深さ美しさを創造し享受した。必要なものは解釈の哲学ではなくて変革の哲学だというのは、人間マルクスの言葉であるよりも、革命家マルクスの言葉であると考えたい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら人間の生活は、改作の余地が一ミリもない最悪の事態の連続ではない。最悪の事態にやすんじて生きる道をきりひらくことは、日々の生活のゆとりと健康のためにも、重要な問題である。しかしあら&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|310}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ゆる場合にこの態度だけで生きること、この態度だけをすべての人間のあらゆる状況について説きすすめることは、「偏向だ」といっていい。まして神話的搾取体制に進んで奉仕する禅論をうちだすにいたっては、すさまじい偏向である。思うにこれは、禅の根本主体である「無」を、形なくしてあらゆる形となり、色なくしてすべての色になる空気か水のような受動、包容の一面においてとらえ――譬喩をもって考えているうちに、いつのまにか譬喩が考えを支配するようになる――それの創造的造形力としての拒絶、批判、抵抗の方面を捨象した結果である。物質的な利潤の追求を社会構成の動力とし、あらゆるものを、人間そのものをさえも商品化し、物的・手段的な人的資源とする資本制社会と、根源的に主体的な禅精神とは、もともと相容れないものである。したがってこの体制の根本的変革のための科学的認識を、仏土建設のために禅者は学びとらねばならぬはずである。ところが過度の達観主義が、客体的な物の構造、法則を認識しようとする意志を蒸発させたのである。そのために物と心、自然と人間とをつねに「一如・不二」の視点からとらえる習性をかため、自然現象における差別と平等、自然科学的現象における差別と平等、形而上学的意味における差別と平等、社会体制の中での人間の階層的な差別と平等、境遇の差別と安心の一貫性としての平等、これらのものをたがいに混同して悪平等、悪差別の誤認におちいり、ついにはファシズムに奉仕し、戦争にも協力する無節操な暗禅となり、「毫釐も差あれば天地はるかに隔たる」（『信心銘』）ことになった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
個人崇拝はもとよりのこと、あらゆる偶像を拒否し、過去への愚痴と未来への取越苦労をぬぎすてて、現在の生活形成――直接にまたは間接に、真実の人類社会「一人は万人のために、万人は一人のために」生きる世界の実現に寄与する生活形成――に純一無雑となり、この生活創造において我執の空に徹することが、禅の実践である。禅の根本主体はこの意味における人間生活の底辺――いわば生活全体にしみとおる底辺――である。茶に遇うては茶を喫し飯に遇うては飯を喫するというような、日常的身辺的な生活の底辺であ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|311}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
るばかりでなく、反戦、独立、解放のたたかいの底辺でもある。「争でか知らん、我が這裏の田を種え飯をまろめて喫せんには」（『従容録』、第二一則）といった、社会の下部構造に直結する生活における物質的生産の主体としてこの生活を純一にするとともに、上部構造のイデオロギー、社会体制を改作する思想として自己を形成する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
環境にはたらきかけて、これを改作する感性的・対象的な実践としての大衆的行動を、禅林では「作務」とよんでいる。行為における心情の純粋と結果の貧困ないし背反との不幸な統一を克服するものは、作務における工作態度である。それは詩的な態度ではなくて散文的な態度であり、対象に対する合理的実験的活動によって、主観主義の沈潜と陶酔をつきやぶる、醒めた造型的な精神である。このような精神が社会的歴史的環境としての社会・政治体制にはたらきかけて、開拓し構築しようとする世界は、その究極においては、禅の根本主体の無我、無所有、自律の基本性格にしたがって、自由共産制の国境なき世界社会である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
それ故に真理の彼岸が消滅したのちには、此岸の真理をうちたてることが歴史の任務である。人間の自己疎外の神聖な姿が面被をはがれてしまった後には、その神聖でない姿における自己疎外の面被をはぐことが、まず歴史に仕える哲学の任務である。天国の批判はこのようにして地上の批判に、宗教の批判は法律の批判に、神学の批判は政治の批判に変ってくる。（マルクス「ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
真理の彼岸が消滅したあとに、此岸の真理をうちたてるということは、私の見るところでは、彼岸についての宗教的信仰を克服して、すべての人間が搾取と抑圧から解放されるとともに、排他的な我執の自我からも解放された自由共産制社会を実現するための、直接間接の日常生活の坐作進退において、「坐の時は坐の時に参じ、行の時は行の時に参じ、語の時は語の時に参じ、一切作務の時は一切作務の時に参ず」（東嶺円慈『宗門無尽灯論』）というように、愚痴と取越苦労をはなれ、我執を空じてゆくことである。――スターリンで&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|312}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
さえも真に「自分の主人」（エンゲルス『空想から科学へ』）になることができなかったと察せられることは、旧社会体制の「母斑」にすぎないとしてすまされるほどに、無害・些細な問題ではない。――いうなれば、尾崎秀実の禅的安心がいまのべた意味における仏土創建の行動をつらぬく道をきわめることである。いわゆる「静中の工夫」（静寂な場所で坐禅すること）にまさる「動中の工夫」といわれるものは、このような生活の精進であろう。仏土建立の菩提心をおこし、「衆生を荷負して重担となす」（自分も衆生のひとり）ということであろう。「人間の自己疎外の神聖な姿」は禅の場合すでに拒否されているのだから、残された仕事は、神聖でない姿の自己疎外を認識し克服する実践を、エゴイズムを空ずる「己事究明」の場において行ずることである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
はなを風にまかせ、鳥をときにまかするも、布施の功業なるべし。（中略）船をおき橋をわたすも、布施の檀度なり。もしよく布施を学するときは、受身捨身ともにこれ布施なり。治田産業もとより布施にあらざるなし。（道元「菩提薩埵四摂法」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
永明潜禅師、衆に示して云く、仏法顕然たり。なんによりてか会し去らざる。仏法を会せんと要せば張三李四に問取せよ。世法を会せんと要せば古仏叢林に参取せよ。（『禅門公案大成』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅を学ぶには勤労大衆にたずね、社会の法を学ぶには禅林にたずねる、ということの現代的方法をうちたてるためには、どのような実践と理論の統一をきりひらいたらよいであろう。広く教えを乞うものである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
底本：市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」（1956年）、『市川白弦著作集』第2巻『禅と現代思想』（法蔵館、1993年）、293–312頁。初出誌・初出書の詳細は本版では未確認。本翻刻は作業用の学術テキストであり、歴史的引用および一部の文字の校合にはなお確認を要する箇所がある。頁表示は底本の印刷頁に従う。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 引用方法 ==&lt;br /&gt;
市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」（1956年）、『市川白弦著作集』第2巻『禅と現代思想』（法蔵館、1993年）、293–312頁。&#039;&#039;Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;, [[IH56ZTM]]。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Japanese originals]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM&amp;diff=1232</id>
		<title>IH56ZTM</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM&amp;diff=1232"/>
		<updated>2026-10-12T17:17:10Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」 (1956)}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;禅とマルキシズム&#039;&#039;&#039;（1956年）は、市川白弦の論考。本稿は『市川白弦著作集』第2巻（1993年）、293–312頁所収の本文に基づく作業用翻刻である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;English translation:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH56ZTM-T|Zen and Marxism]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 目次 ==&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#一 イデオロギー以前|一　イデオロギー以前]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#二 イデオロギーとしての禅（上）|二　イデオロギーとしての禅（上）]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#三 イデオロギーとしての禅（下）|三　イデオロギーとしての禅（下）]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#四 人間の自己疎外とその恢復|四　人間の自己疎外とその恢復]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 本文 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|293}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 一　イデオロギー以前 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
フォイエルバッハは宗教の本質を人間の本質に解消する。しかしながら人間の本質は、なんら個々の個人に内在するところの抽象体ではない。（マルクス「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
唐末五代の禅僧清涼文益に門弟慧超がいった。「慧超があなたにただします。仏とは何でありますか」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
師「お前は慧超だ」（『碧巌録』、第七則）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅の本質を人間に解消したフォイエルバッハ（一八〇四―一八七二）を思わせる対話である。ひとは宗教において廻り道して人間の本質にかえるのだ、とフォイエルバッハは考えているが、慧超はこの場合、仏を自分のそとに、いわゆる自己疎外のかたちでまとめたのではない。「慧超があなたにただします」という自信のある態度がここにある。「汝は是れ慧超」といわれて、宗教の本質を人間に解消するみちを自覚したのではない。さようなことははじめから問題になっていないのだ。師もまた「仏の本質は君の本質である」など&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|294}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
といったのではない。そのようなことなら本をよめばたくさんある。慧超と清涼とはたんなる意味の世界にいるのではない。それゆえ「言前の一句」という。「黒漆桶裏に墨汁を盛る」（『種電鈔』）という。対象論理の触手でつかまれるようなものではない。「清涼の答処、正面驀直」（『拈評三百則』）と道元は評している。天地一枚の汝は是れ慧超。意味が光り発するその場において、意味を底に超えた無我の全体作用をじかにとらえることを、この対話は要求している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
清涼のもとに監院（役名）の則という者があった。一度も参禅しないので、いったいどうしたのか、と師がたずねた。則「わたくしはまえに青林和尚のところでさとっているのです」。師「では、そのさとったところをいってみるがよい」。則「わたくしが仏とは何でありますかとたずねると、丙丁童子来って火を求む、と示されたのです」。師「お前はまちがっているようだ。もっといってみるがいい」。則「丙丁はヒノエ・ヒノトですから火にぞくします。火の子供が火を求める、つまりわたくしがほんらい仏であるのに、これをそとにむかって求めていたのだ、求める者じたいが仏である、ということをさとったのです」。師「やっぱりお前はまちがっていたのだ」。則は不満であった。こんな師匠ではつまらぬと考え、身仕度をしてそこを去った。弟子たちに師匠がいった「おしいことだ。もしあれが帰ってきたなら救われるが、帰らなかったら見込みはあるまい」。旅をしながら、則は反省していた。あの和尚は世にもまれな高僧だといわれている、しかもみだりにおれをだましたのではあるまい、けっきょく、おれの方がどうまちがったのだ、もういちど教えを乞うことにしよう。ついにもとの道をひきかえして清涼に参じた。師「じゃあ、お前さん、わしに問うがよい、答えてあげよう」。則「仏とは何でありますか」。師「丙丁童子来って火を求む！」。則、言下に大悟した。信仰は人間の自己疎外であるとか、人は神を愛することにおいて人間の本質を愛するのだとか、神学の秘密は人間学であるとかいったような、たんなる解釈学のやりとりがここにあるのではない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|295}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
上堂に云わく、赤肉団上に一無位の真人あり。常に汝等諸人の面門より出入す。いまだ証拠（さとる）せざらん者は、看よ、看よ。時に僧あり、出でて問う。如何なるかこれ無位の真人。師、禅牀を下って把住（とらえる）して云く、道え、道え。その僧擬議（まごつく）す。師、托開（つきはなす）して云く、無位の真人、何の乾屎橛（不潔な物）ぞ、といって、すなわち方丈に帰る。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
これは人間の本質を「個々の個人に内在する」ものとみているようであるが、じつはそうではない。「心外に法無し、内もまた不可得なり」（『臨済録』）。個人に内在する人間をそのまま肯定するヒューマニズムは、禅ではない。真人の面目を問われて、唐僧香厳智閑は「猢猻裏の眼睛」と答えた。近代思想の中心概念、ヒューマニティが成立する足場を空じたところでの創造である。「通玄峰上、是れ人間にあらず。心外無法、満目青山」（『天台徳韶』）。そして「無位の真人がもしも個人に内在する抽象体であるならば、あのはつらつとしたはたらき、師の黄檗をして「この気狂いめ、ここへやって来て虎のヒゲをなでおったわい！」と舌をまかせた自由がうまれるわけがない。「随処に主となり」「真正の見解を求取して天下に向って横行す」という禅的生活に、「宗教はただ人間が自己みずからを中心にして働くようになるまでの間だけ、人間の周囲をめぐる幻想的太陽にすぎない」「宗教は涙の谷の後光であり」「抑圧された生物の嘆息である」（マルクス「ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説」）と評価されるような手がかりはないといえよう。マルクスはこの稿の初めにかかげた言葉につづいて「その現実においては、人間の本質は社会的諸関係の総体である」と書いている。マルキシズムは抽象体としての人間の本質と現実としての人間の本質のほかに、もしくはそれらを底に超えて、禅の基礎経験である「人」をみていないのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
定、上座あり、到り参ず。問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師、縄牀を下って擒住（とらえる）して一掌を与えてすなわち托開す。定、佇立す。傍らの僧いわく、定上座、なんぞ礼拝せざる。定、礼拝する&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|296}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
にあたって、忽然として大悟す。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような悟りが、社会の物質的生活の諸条件、すなわちそれぞれの時代の経済的構造を現実の基礎として、それによって規定せられる上部構造としての「イデオロギー」でないことはあきらかである。唐のなかごろ、洞庭湖のほとりに薬山の惟儼禅師があった。ながいあいだ何も説法しないので、院主がうながしていった、「皆の者が久しく和尚の説示をのぞんでおります。どうか一度説法なさって下さい」。師「それならば出頭の鐘を打て」。鐘が鳴って一同出頭におよぶと、薬山は高座に上って、しばらくだまっていたが、そのまま座を下って方丈に帰ってしまった。院主はあっけにとられて、さっそく和尚を追いかけていった。「和尚はさきほど私の願いをいれて下さったではありませんか。どうして何もおっしゃらないのですか」。薬山は答えていった、「経には専門の経師があり、論には論師がある。わしが説法しなくても不思議はないじゃないか」（『従容録』、第七則）。「諸人いまだ法堂に到らざるに、すでに三十棒を喫し了れり」と道元はしめしている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
上堂、僧問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師払子を竪起す。僧便ち喝す。師便ち打つ。又僧問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師亦払子を竪起す。僧便ち喝す。師亦喝す。僧擬議す。師便ち打つ。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この場合、すべてのイデオロギーは、白熱の熔鉱に落ちる淡雪にもひとしい。「光影を弄する底の人を識取せよ」（『臨済録』）。イデオロギーを形成する主体をつかめという。「古人いわく、説いて一物に似れば、即ち中らず」と。汝ただ自家に看よ。さらに何かあらん。説もまた尽くることなし」（『臨済録』）。イデオロギーをかぎりなく拒否する主体は、イデオロギーをかぎりなく形成する主体でもある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|297}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 二　イデオロギーとしての禅（上） ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人間がその人間性、その本体をとりもどすことができるただ一つの方法は、「一切の宗教的表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく、人間自身への、決然として正当な復帰によることである。（エンゲルス『イギリスにおける労働者の状態』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一切の宗教的表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく人間自身への決然として正当な復帰ということを、人間の自己疎外すなわち貧乏とドレイ化を克服しようとするプロレタリアートというかたち、プロレタリア・ヒューマニズムというかたちにおいてでなく――と言い切るのは一面的だと私は考えるのだが――「脚下照顧すなわち人間性を底に超える」というかたちにおいて実現するものが禅である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
師、衆に示して云く、仏の一字、われ聞くことを喜ばず。（『趙州録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
汝もし仏を求めば、仏魔に摂せられん。（中略）却って境に乗ずる底の人を見るに、これ諸仏の玄旨なり。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
フォイエルバッハは宗教的自己疎外、即ち一の宗教的なものと一の現世的なものとへの世界の二重化の事実から出発する。（『フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
天国や彼岸の世界は、禅者にとって、泣く子をだまらかす木の葉ッパでありカゲロウであった。かえってカゲロウを追いかける「人」をつかむならば、現実の世界がそのまま生きるに値する実在の世界だというのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
光影を弄する底の人を識取せよ。これ諸仏の本源。一切処これ道流（修道者）帰舎の処なり。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人の世を作ったものは神でもなければ鬼でもない。矢張り向ふ三軒両隣りにちらつくする唯の人であ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|298}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
る。唯の人が作った人の世が住みにくいからとて、越す国はあるまい。あれば人でなしの国へ行く許りだ。人でなしの国は人の世よりも猶住みにくかろう。（夏目漱石『草枕』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
汝諸方より来る者、皆これ有心にして仏を求め法を求め解脱を求め三界を出離せんことを求む。痴人、汝、三界を出でていずれの処に去らんと要す。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「宗教は顚倒した世界意識である」（『ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説』）といわれるが、「到り得て帰り来れば別事無し、廬山は煙雨、浙江は潮」（蘇東坡）という世界のどこに「顚倒」がみられるであろう。レーニンはゴーリキーへの手紙のなかで、「搾取者に対する闘争における被搾取者の無力が、不可避的に彼岸におけるよりよき生活への信仰をみちびきだす」といっているが、おなじ階級的搾取の社会において、禅は意識的に彼岸への信仰を否定したのである。現実的世界の宗教的反映による世界の二重化、「現実的基礎が自分自身から浮き上って、一つの独立の王国として雲界に定着する」という事態が、この場合、おなじ中世紀身分社会においておこらなかったばかりでなく、積極的に拒否されたのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実的世界の宗教的反映は、総じて実践的な日常生活の諸関係が、人々に対して、かれら相互間および対自然のすき透るような、理性的な・諸関連を日常的に表示するに至るや、はじめて消滅する。社会的生活過程すなわち物質的生産過程の姿態は、それが自由に社会を構成している人々の産物として、かれらの意識的な計画的統制のもとに立つに至るや、はじめてその神秘的な覆い衣をぬぎすてる。（『資本論』第一部、第一篇、第一章、第四節）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実の世界の宗教的反映は、実践的な日常生活の諸関係が人々にたいして、かれら相互間および対自然のすきとおるような理性的な諸関係を誰の目にもあきらかにするまでになっていない世界において、いいかえれば、社会がすべての人間を自己疎外から解放し、すべての生産手段を所有し、計画的に行使するに至&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|299}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
っていない中世社会において、すべての禅者たちによって、広範囲にわたって阻止されたのである。すくなくともこのかぎりにおいて、民衆の阿片としての性格はここにはなかったといっていい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 三　イデオロギーとしての禅（下） ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
イデオロギーとしての禅が社会的に問題となるのは、それの形而上的な部面ではなくて、むしろ国民大衆の日常の現実の生活との交渉のなかで、禅の体現者としての禅者（もしくは禅宗の教団）がその世界観、人生観にもとづく言葉と行動において、人倫の問題、処世の心がまえについて、どのような態度をとるかという点にある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
分限を見わけてその性を知れ。（中略）柳は緑、花は紅。（鈴木正三『盲安杖』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
道徳の微妙は無声無臭に始まりて礼儀三百威儀三千に終る。礼儀三百威儀三千に窮りて無声無臭に帰る。（中略）これを明暗双々底という。（今北洪川『禅海一瀾』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
たとひ悪しき主人に仕へてのがるるところなくとも、更に主人の科にあらず。先世の我が業因と観ぜば、却ってはらにあらずや。或は一生病人となる盲目非人となりて朝夕苦しむ人多し。かやうのものは誰が咎なりと云ふや、ひとへにわが咎なり。かへすがへすもあやまることなく、万事を放下して忠孝の道に入るべし。（『盲安杖』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
仏道は人々脚跟下ぢゃ。自己を忘れて其物に成り切る外はない。君と臣の道あきらけき日の本の国は動かじ万代までも。明治天皇の御製ぢゃ。肝に銘じておくがよい。忠孝の外に禅はない。（飯田欓隠『槐安国語提唱録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
封建的身分社会の人倫を支持し強化することが、禅的基礎づけをもつ自発的なものである以上、禅者がこ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|300}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
の線にそって積極的な行動を鼓舞するのは当然である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ボンヤリ禅は禁物だ、緊張し切って坐るのである。富士山が東海の天に突っ立ったような気持になって、更に云えば地球を座蒲団として天地の間に吾輩一人のみだ、という気持になって只坐ればよいのだ。坐禅は何のためにするのか。無上道を体現するにあり、大悟大徹するにあり、定力を練って随処に自在力を得るにある。無上道とは維摩の大道にあり、大悟大徹とは維摩の大道を悟るのであり、随処に自在力を得るとは、日本人は日本人に安住し活動することである。（原田祖岳『日本精神と大乗禅』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
国民教育の目標が大君のためシノウ、タメシテ滅私奉公するにあるとすれば、各臣民が各々の職域の学修、修行において、かくの如き無作の妙用を体得するに向って進むのでなければ、その実を充分にあげることはできない。（伊藤康安『沢庵和尚と教育』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
すべての木はその果実によって知られる、という言葉があるが、脱俗的なそしてイデオロギーをこえた禅の本質は、平常心のイデオロギーにおいて、このような果実をむすんだ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教は一旦形成されると、つねに伝統的な素材を包含しており、そしていうまでもなく、伝統的なものはイデオロギーの領域において、ひとつの大きな保守的な力である。（エンゲルス『フォイエルバッハ論』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅的な無心の境地においてなされることは、外からみて同じことを繰り返しているようであっても、実質においてはつねに生新であるという見解、「一回挙すれば一回新なり」という見解は、それはそれで正しいのだが、しかもここに創造的な禅が惰性的、因襲的、保守的となる根本契機がある。因習も因習のなかへはいって行動してみると、それ相応の味わいがあるということがひとつの魅力となった。伝統が創造においてうけつがれることが忘れられ、生きたものを生きた形でうけつぐかわりに、死んだ形でうけつごうとしたのである。このような保守性がイデオロギーの領域において、無批判にかつ自発的に階級支配に奉仕するのは&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|301}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
自然のいきおいである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
支配階級の思想は、いずれの時代においても支配的な思想である。いいかえるならば、社会の支配的な物質的力であるところの階級が、同時にその社会の支配的な精神的力である。物質的生産のための諸手段を支配する階級は、それによって同時に精神的生産のための諸手段を支配し、かくしてそれによって同時におしなべて精神的生産のための諸手段を欠いた人々の思想は、この階級に隷従させられることになる。（マルクス・エンゲルス「ドイツ・イデオロギー」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
うがちすぎた見かたをするならば、「八紘一宇」の理念に「倫理的」頂点をもつ帝国主義の世界政策が、その宗教的反映を「緊張し切って地球を座蒲団として坐る」という気がまえのうちに見出した、といえるかもしれない。祭政一致の国家体制において、国防・戦争が宗教的衣裳をつける場合、森厳性をもつ国家権力に、私心をすて生命をかけて帰順する態度になりきれないことに、宗教的な罪の意識をもつという事実も、過去においてまれではなかった。天皇の「無的性格」について、一君万民制の「一即多」としての深玄性について、「聖戦」の道徳的精神について、心をくだいた人々もあった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
私たちは戦争に感情を擦り減らして泣かなくなった世代だと言われるそうである。それは或いは事実かもしれない。しかし天皇と、そのために死んだ多くの人たちのことを考える時、私は不甲斐ないことだが思わず声が顫えてくる。九死に一生を得て、今は平和なサラリーマンである歴戦のパイロットなどと一緒に飲んで、その晩寝つけなかったりすると、私は死んだ戦友たちの顔が目の前にちらついて、いっそう眠れなくなる。（村上兵衛「戦中派はこう考える」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
生きることは喜びであり希望である。また苦しみであり失望である。苦悩と失望に対処する方法はさまざまであるが、永続的根本的なものとして、人生最悪の事態にやすんじて対処する生きかたがもとめられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|302}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この場合、超越的な絶対者もしくは彼岸の世界を信じないものが、たどろうとするひとつの道がある。それは、特定の意欲、希望、当為をかたくまもって、このものの実現のためにあくまでもきそいたたかうという身がまえ心がまえを、その足場から空じさって、当面するその場その場の事態をそのままにうけいれ、これと一枚になる生きかたである。柳におけば緑となり花におけば紅となる無色の露のように、朝には朝をうつし夜には夜をうつす鏡のように、来るものをこばまず去るものを追わず、住めば都、悲しさにいて悲しさをあるじとし寂しさにいて寂しさをあるじとする、宇宙的な「然り」において生きる態度である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
其物に成り切り自己を忘ずる時、誰も皆天地一枚の者ぢゃと云ふことが分ってくる。この上望みやうがないではないか。望めばいつも不足である、煩悶である。俗歌の、上見れば及ばぬ事の多かりき、は望上心の非を悟ったのぢゃ。笠著てくらせ己が心に、は分上に豊かなることを知って安住ができたのぢゃ。（飯田欓隠、前掲書）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実の社会は身分・階級による差別の世界である。このような差別の世界に憎愛の心をからませ個我の意識をはりつめるならば、不満と焦躁はつのるばかりであろう。そこで、差別を差別のままにうけいれて、こばむことなくおぼれることがなければ、あくぐ心はおのずから消え、つきつめた思いは蒸発して、いたみなやむなかにも風に別調のなかに吹かるということになる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
差別を無視して山も川も貴も賤も一つにすると、それこそ撥無因果ぢゃ、世の荘厳は去って殺風景ぢゃ。偏中正（差別の中の平等）が入用の処ぢゃ。兎角一法に偏堕したらみな落第ぢゃ。元来水の上の波ぢゃ。やから偏堕されぬ答ぢゃ。心をば水の如くに持ち成して、方と円とを物に任せん。（飯田欓隠、前掲書）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「住する処なくして其の心を生ず」（『金剛経』）、「一心生ぜざれば万法咎なし」（『信心銘』）、「上善は水のごとし、それただ争わず、故に咎なし」（『老子道徳経』）といった不争、順応の哲学がこのようにして生まれた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|303}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
彼岸の秩序をみとめなかった禅は、此岸の秩序をじかにみとめる道をひらいた。地上における身分上の地位が、天上における霊魂の地位を規定するのでなく、宗教的＝形而上的視点からみられた自然界の秩序が、人間社会の秩序を聖化することになった。あるいはむしろ人間社会の秩序がその宗教的＝形而上的反映を自然界の秩序に見出すことによって、逆にみずからを聖化し、このようにしてアジア的寛容＝アジア的安心の道を骨格づける宇宙論が形成された。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一に曰く、和を以て貴しとなす。忤ふことなきを宗となす。（中略）三に曰く、詔を承けては必ず謹しめ。君は則ち天也、臣は則ち地也。天は覆い地は載す。四時順行し万気通ずることを得。地、天を覆わんと欲すれば、則ち壊るることを致すのみ。是を以て君の言うところ臣承け、上の行うところ下靡く。故に詔を承けては必ず謹しめ。謹しまざれば自ら敗れん。（『十七条憲法』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
出陣する青年たちが生死の問題を天皇に帰一する草莽す屍、水漬く屍のみちにおいて解決しようと苦闘した方向は、遠い過去からの傾斜をもっていた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人生に処するいまひとつの方法に、達観の生活がある。人間生活の究極の意義もしくは最高の価値という視点に立って、歴史的現実の基本的な性格と動向とを全体にわたって諦観・批判するとともに、この諦観において人生を生きる態度である。哲人とか聖賢とかよばれる人々はこのような生活の実践者であり、ひとが人生を総合的・根本的に観察し、この洞察にしたがって生きようとするかぎり、多かれ少なかれ達観的な立場に立たざるを得ないであろう。時間に追われる熱病的な日常に、人生の展望をさわやかにきりひらくものは達人の智慧である。生きることの感銘をみがき苦痛を浄化するあの大肯定の智慧と、この達観の智慧とは、東洋が生んだ深い世界観の両面である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら達観の道は、ほとんどつねに世界の現実にたいする高みの見物におわるものである。社会&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|304}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
悪、政治悪と、それをあらためてよりよい世界を実現しようとする実践とをふたつながら達観して、手をよごさないでおく生活をまもることになる。社会の矛盾、不合理をそのままよしとしてゆるすのではないが、しかしこれをあらためようとする目標と設計とが不徹底であるばかりでなく、あらためようとする行動そのものが依然として世俗的人間の執着に染められたものであり、したがってそれ自体がまず根本的に浄化されなくてはならぬと見るのである。自由にして平和な世界への階級をきずくために、大衆が智慧とエネルギーとを結集し行使することは、もとよりナンセンスではなく、世俗的な意味においてたしかに価値のあることであるが、しかしそれはかりそめにも道に志すものが参加するにあたいすることがらではない。おしなべてそれは人間的妄執のはからいであり、有漏雑染の業にほかならない。まもらねばならず、つらぬかねばならぬ一線は、理論と実践の徹底と純潔である。このような信念のうえにゆるぎなく坐するものが達人の達観である。主体的自覚における社会悪の否認と、客観的事実におけるそれの是認とを、かたくむすぶ生活態度によって、権力の搾取機構に奉仕し、その生活の品位と平安とをまもることができる。完全趣味――「うわべは崇高でも実は卑怯な、行動の放棄」（ルカーチ）――とよばれるものがここにある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
政治的権力にたいする積極的な協力の哲学と消極的な協力の哲学とをみてきたのであるが、この二つは必ずしも別のものではなく、社会的状況の変化に応じて自由にその心を生ずるのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教的情操はひとつの社会的産物である。（「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ながいあいだ禅者の意識・行動をうらづけてきた「易経」的世界観、自然の秩序と人間の秩序とを共通の原理においてとらえる汎道徳的コスモロジーは、いわゆるアジア的生産様式を土台とするアジア的停滞によって、多かれ少なかれ規定され性格づけられていたであろう。この部面の考察はべつにゆずって、禅者の個人的な社会関係について考えよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|305}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ひとりの禅者がその時代の国内的および国際的な権力機構のなかへ、どのような位置づけにおいてくみこまれているか、権力中枢とどのような距離と脈絡を保っているか、そしてこの事態との関連においてどのような交友圏をもっているかということが、かれの生活形態を規定し、その生活形態はその生活のセンス、モラル、政治性等々を制約している。そしてこの連関、照応、制約の構造がくまなく透明に自覚せられていないことが、イデオロギーの特色である。したがって禅者自身の意識においてはまったく自主的である判断・行動が、現実においてはこの社会的連関の仕組によって規定されているのがつねである。「話せばわかる」はずの見解のちがいが、多くの場合その解消がひどく困難であるのは、両者の入りこんでいる社会関係のラインないしシステムがくいちがっており、そのくいちがいが論理のくいちがいを制約していることがまれではないからである。考えかたをあらためるためには、時としては自分がとりむすんでいるこれまでの社会関係を解体して、べつの系列にくみ直さねばならず、同時にそのことは自分の生活を破壊しかねないのである。このことにたいする半ば無意識の不安と生活の惰性とが、ものの見かた考えかた、行動のしかたを規定しかつそれをかたくなにするのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 四　人間の自己疎外とその恢復 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人間の本質は、その現実においては、社会的諸関係の総体である。（「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれは封建社会の拘束からわれわれを個人として解放し放擲している競闘的私有制社会のなかに、この社会体制の存続強化のためにくみたてられた、かずかずの制約にまもられかつしばられて生きている。個人の「自由」と責任において、限られた幸福への手段をめざして、競闘しなければならぬ世界になげだされている。たとえていえば、五分間の停車時間のうちに、超満員の列車にのりこもうとして、力道山の仲間と&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|306}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
小児麻痺の男たちが、一つの入口、一つの窓口をめがけてひしめきあうといった状況のなかで、われわれは生きている。正規の入口がつまっているなら、窓口からもぐりこまねばならず、時と場合によっては屋根によじのぼり扉にへばりつかなくてはならぬ。風采をととのえエチケットをおもんじ謙譲の徳をまもっていたなら、発車の時刻がきて、どの列車にもとりのこされるほかはない、といった交通地獄のなかにいるようなものである。他人がのりこむことは自分がとりのこされることであり、自分がのりこむことは他人がとりのこされることである。この矛盾の合理的な解決はいかにして可能であるか、などと考えているうちに発車のベルが鳴ってしまう。そして自分の目的地にいる、関係の人々のプログラムもこわれてしまう。自分だけの不幸におわるのではない。同じ事情は、ここにひしめきあっているほとんどすべての人々に共通している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
あけてもくれても試験やテストの連続である。青春がしめ出されるだけではない。人間までもしめ出されかねない。なぜならばはげしい試験にパスするためには、友情などといっていられない。級友のつまずきはすなわちわが身の幸運となりかねないからだ。ぬけがけをしたい。試験前には知っていることも知らないといって、友人には教えない。級友が試験の日に電車に乗りおくれるか、病気になるかすればいい。ある学生は「友だちが死ねばいいと思った」と告白した。文字通り地獄ではないか。おそろしいことだ。こういうおそろしい心になった青年が東大に入り、入社試験の時にさらに一層おそろしい鬼になり、そして社会に出てからそれが習性になって、他人の不幸を祈るようになるとしたら、どうであろう。（本多顕彰『現代の青春』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
就職を指導する担任教師の悩みをきいたことがある。教室では憲法はあくまで守らねばならぬことを学習したが、入社試験の場合にはそれをハッキリ答えないがよい、自分がどの政党を支持するにしても、尋ねられたら保守党の名をあげたがよかろう、などと助言をしなければならぬという矛盾である。同じことは私自&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|307}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
身についてもいうことができる。式場において勅語を読みちがえた校長がクビになり、ご真影を焼失した宿直の教師が自殺するといった社会にたいして、私は一言の抗議もしなかったばかりでなく、不潔な戦争と知りながら「聖戦」に協力したのであり、不妄語戒をまもるどころか曲学のことばをあやつり、「行かんと要すれば即ち行き、坐せんと要すれば即ち坐す」（『臨済録』）といった自由はゆめにもえられなかったのである。――ソ連邦ならびに東欧諸国にもおなじ虚妄があったことを、スターリン崇拝、歴史の編集などに関して情報がつたえている。アメリカの作家マーク・トウェーンは半ば皮肉に「神はわが国民にこの上もない三つの贈物をあたえ給うた。それは思想の自由、言論の自由、そしてこの自由を決して使わないという良識である」といったが、この良識をあたえた「神」は、国家権力の機構であろう。警察が認識の限界となるのだ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
盗みについて、作家大田洋子氏は戦時の食糧難のころを回想している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
要領のよくない私は、東京で毎日空腹をみたされなくて、食事のとき涙をだしたりしていました。人が闇で買ったものをまた少しずつわけてもらったりしていたけれど、あるときは雨を幸いに畑の小径にしゃがんで傘で顔をかくし、ほうれん草をいく束かぬすんだりしたのです。その時分すでに農家の畑のものをぬすむと体刑にされるということでしたが、ちょうど練馬の大根畑の傍に住んでいましたから、雨の夜陰に大きな大根をひきぬいてきたりしたのです。そのころからまともな人間でなくなり、留置場へ入れられたところで、外の暮しとたいして変りはないのだろうと思って平気でありました。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
病にあるひとりの青年は生きることのつらさ、みにくさを浮きぼりにしていった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
家族　　岩本敏夫&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
コノ子サエイナケレバ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|308}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
父ト母サエイナケレバ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
父ハ父デ　母ハ母デ　子ハ子デ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ソウオモイツメテ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
イマハ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
息ヅマル憎シミダケガ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
オナジ一ツノ家ニ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
クラシテイル&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような反目は、もしも完全な社会保障制度が確立し、生活に必要な物資が空気のように豊富であるとしたら、その成立する条件の大半を失うであろう。仏教にいう「縁欠不生」となるであろう。自然のリンショクとそしてとくに社会のリンショクが人間の自己中心、排他、不信、競闘をよびさましかきたてている。わが田へ水をひくという言葉があるが、ひとつの川をさしはさんで不信と敵意をもって対峙していたひでりの時期の農民たちが、一度雨が降れば対峙をといてたち去ることは、むかし田舎にみられる現象であった。性悪説の論者ホッブスは、人間が非社会的動物であることは自分を反省してみればわかる。われわれは夜眠るときには扉に錠をおろし、自分の家にいる時でさえ金庫にカギをかける。扉にカギをかけるのは市民仲間にたいして、金庫にカギをかけるのは自分の子供や召使いにたいして、自分がどのような意見をもっているかを証拠だてるものだといったが、かようなことがらがいつの時代にも存在するかどうかは疑問である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
大道の行われしや、天下を公となし、聖と能とを選び、信を講じ、睦を脩む。故に人独りその親を親とせず、独り其子を子とせず、老終る所あり、壮用うる所あり、幼長ずる所あり、矜寡（妻をなくした老人）孤独（父をなくした幼児）廃疾者、みな養う所あらしむ。（中略）この故に謀は閉じておこらず、盗&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|309}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
窃乱賊はすなわちおこらず、故に外戸（戸をあけたまま）にして閉じず。これを大同という。（『礼記』、礼運第九）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
おそらくこれは原始共産体への回想であろう。フォイエルバッハのいう「人間の自己疎外」、自分の本質を自分の外に投げだすということがどうしておこるのか。そのわけがらのいくつかを明らかにするものを、競闘的私有制社会が構造的にもっていると考えられる。永遠の交通地獄におちこんだ通勤者、もしくは有刺鉄線をはりめぐらした中で、野菜どろぼうの夜番をする習性をかためてしまった農民のような状況に、現代資本制社会の人間はおかれている。私有制度のむかしからこの状況におかれてきた人間にむかって、人を信ぜよ、人をおしのけるな、我執をすてよと説きすすめることはもちろん必要であるが、ただそれだけで効果をあげられると考えるのは空想的である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれはさきに、禅の基礎体験がイデオロギーを超えること、それがイデオロギーとして具体化する場合には、（イ）自分がおかれている現在の状況を肯定すること、および、（ロ）社会の権力機構への奉仕を説きすすめる傾向をしめしたことを知った。ところで、自分がおかれている現在の状況をすなおにうけいれることは、必ずしも非難すべきことがらではない。それは人生のもっとも深く美しい叡智につながっている。「愛情はふる星のごとく」の尾崎秀実の禅的諦観がひとの心をうつのはそのためである。「災難に逢ふ時節には災難に逢ふがよく候。死ぬる時節には死ぬがよく候。これはこれ災難をのがるる妙法にて候」（良寛）。尾崎はこのような諦観において、人生の深さ美しさを創造し享受した。必要なものは解釈の哲学ではなくて変革の哲学だというのは、人間マルクスの言葉であるよりも、革命家マルクスの言葉であると考えたい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら人間の生活は、改作の余地が一ミリもない最悪の事態の連続ではない。最悪の事態にやすんじて生きる道をきりひらくことは、日々の生活のゆとりと健康のためにも、重要な問題である。しかしあら&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|310}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ゆる場合にこの態度だけで生きること、この態度だけをすべての人間のあらゆる状況について説きすすめることは、「偏向だ」といっていい。まして神話的搾取体制に進んで奉仕する禅論をうちだすにいたっては、すさまじい偏向である。思うにこれは、禅の根本主体である「無」を、形なくしてあらゆる形となり、色なくしてすべての色になる空気か水のような受動、包容の一面においてとらえ――譬喩をもって考えているうちに、いつのまにか譬喩が考えを支配するようになる――それの創造的造形力としての拒絶、批判、抵抗の方面を捨象した結果である。物質的な利潤の追求を社会構成の動力とし、あらゆるものを、人間そのものをさえも商品化し、物的・手段的な人的資源とする資本制社会と、根源的に主体的な禅精神とは、もともと相容れないものである。したがってこの体制の根本的変革のための科学的認識を、仏土建設のために禅者は学びとらねばならぬはずである。ところが過度の達観主義が、客体的な物の構造、法則を認識しようとする意志を蒸発させたのである。そのために物と心、自然と人間とをつねに「一如・不二」の視点からとらえる習性をかため、自然現象における差別と平等、自然科学的現象における差別と平等、形而上学的意味における差別と平等、社会体制の中での人間の階層的な差別と平等、境遇の差別と安心の一貫性としての平等、これらのものをたがいに混同して悪平等、悪差別の誤認におちいり、ついにはファシズムに奉仕し、戦争にも協力する無節操な暗禅となり、「毫釐も差あれば天地はるかに隔たる」（『信心銘』）ことになった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
個人崇拝はもとよりのこと、あらゆる偶像を拒否し、過去への愚痴と未来への取越苦労をぬぎすてて、現在の生活形成――直接にまたは間接に、真実の人類社会「一人は万人のために、万人は一人のために」生きる世界の実現に寄与する生活形成――に純一無雑となり、この生活創造において我執の空に徹することが、禅の実践である。禅の根本主体はこの意味における人間生活の底辺――いわば生活全体にしみとおる底辺――である。茶に遇うては茶を喫し飯に遇うては飯を喫するというような、日常的身辺的な生活の底辺であ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|311}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
るばかりでなく、反戦、独立、解放のたたかいの底辺でもある。「争でか知らん、我が這裏の田を種え飯をまろめて喫せんには」（『従容録』、第二一則）といった、社会の下部構造に直結する生活における物質的生産の主体としてこの生活を純一にするとともに、上部構造のイデオロギー、社会体制を改作する思想として自己を形成する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
環境にはたらきかけて、これを改作する感性的・対象的な実践としての大衆的行動を、禅林では「作務」とよんでいる。行為における心情の純粋と結果の貧困ないし背反との不幸な統一を克服するものは、作務における工作態度である。それは詩的な態度ではなくて散文的な態度であり、対象に対する合理的実験的活動によって、主観主義の沈潜と陶酔をつきやぶる、醒めた造型的な精神である。このような精神が社会的歴史的環境としての社会・政治体制にはたらきかけて、開拓し構築しようとする世界は、その究極においては、禅の根本主体の無我、無所有、自律の基本性格にしたがって、自由共産制の国境なき世界社会である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
それ故に真理の彼岸が消滅したのちには、此岸の真理をうちたてることが歴史の任務である。人間の自己疎外の神聖な姿が面被をはがれてしまった後には、その神聖でない姿における自己疎外の面被をはぐことが、まず歴史に仕える哲学の任務である。天国の批判はこのようにして地上の批判に、宗教の批判は法律の批判に、神学の批判は政治の批判に変ってくる。（マルクス「ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
真理の彼岸が消滅したあとに、此岸の真理をうちたてるということは、私の見るところでは、彼岸についての宗教的信仰を克服して、すべての人間が搾取と抑圧から解放されるとともに、排他的な我執の自我からも解放された自由共産制社会を実現するための、直接間接の日常生活の坐作進退において、「坐の時は坐の時に参じ、行の時は行の時に参じ、語の時は語の時に参じ、一切作務の時は一切作務の時に参ず」（東嶺円慈『宗門無尽灯論』）というように、愚痴と取越苦労をはなれ、我執を空じてゆくことである。――スターリンで&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|312}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
さえも真に「自分の主人」（エンゲルス『空想から科学へ』）になることができなかったと察せられることは、旧社会体制の「母斑」にすぎないとしてすまされるほどに、無害・些細な問題ではない。――いうなれば、尾崎秀実の禅的安心がいまのべた意味における仏土創建の行動をつらぬく道をきわめることである。いわゆる「静中の工夫」（静寂な場所で坐禅すること）にまさる「動中の工夫」といわれるものは、このような生活の精進であろう。仏土建立の菩提心をおこし、「衆生を荷負して重担となす」（自分も衆生のひとり）ということであろう。「人間の自己疎外の神聖な姿」は禅の場合すでに拒否されているのだから、残された仕事は、神聖でない姿の自己疎外を認識し克服する実践を、エゴイズムを空ずる「己事究明」の場において行ずることである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
はなを風にまかせ、鳥をときにまかするも、布施の功業なるべし。（中略）船をおき橋をわたすも、布施の檀度なり。もしよく布施を学するときは、受身捨身ともにこれ布施なり。治田産業もとより布施にあらざるなし。（道元「菩提薩埵四摂法」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
永明潜禅師、衆に示して云く、仏法顕然たり。なんによりてか会し去らざる。仏法を会せんと要せば張三李四に問取せよ。世法を会せんと要せば古仏叢林に参取せよ。（『禅門公案大成』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅を学ぶには勤労大衆にたずね、社会の法を学ぶには禅林にたずねる、ということの現代的方法をうちたてるためには、どのような実践と理論の統一をきりひらいたらよいであろう。広く教えを乞うものである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
底本：市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」（1956年）、『市川白弦著作集』第2巻『禅と現代思想』（法蔵館、1993年）、293–312頁。初出誌・初出書の詳細は本版では未確認。本翻刻は作業用の学術テキストであり、歴史的引用および一部の文字の校合にはなお確認を要する箇所がある。頁表示は底本の印刷頁に従う。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 引用方法 ==&lt;br /&gt;
市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」（1956年）、『市川白弦著作集』第2巻『禅と現代思想』（法蔵館、1993年）、293–312頁。&#039;&#039;Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;, [[IH56ZTM]]。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Japanese originals]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM-T&amp;diff=1230</id>
		<title>IH56ZTM-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM-T&amp;diff=1230"/>
		<updated>2026-10-09T15:34:26Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen and Marxism”}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Zen and Marxism&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Zen to Marukushizumu&#039;&#039; 禅とマルキシズム) is a 1956 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 2 of &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 (1993), pp. 293–312.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Japanese original:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH56ZTM|禅とマルキシズム]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contents ==&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#I. Before Ideology|I. Before Ideology]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#II. Zen as Ideology (Part One)|II. Zen as Ideology (Part One)]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#III. Zen as Ideology (Part Two)|III. Zen as Ideology (Part Two)]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#IV. Human Self-Alienation and Its Recovery|IV. Human Self-Alienation and Its Recovery]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|293|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== I. Before Ideology ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Feuerbach reduces the essence of religion to the essence of humanity. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each individual person. (Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A disciple named Huichao (Echō 慧超) once asked Qingliang Wenyi (Seiryō Bun&#039;eki 清涼文益), a Zen monk of the late Tang and Five Dynasties period: “I, Huichao, ask you: What is Buddha?” The master replied, “You are Huichao.” (&#039;&#039;Blue Cliff Record&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Hekiganroku&#039;&#039; 碧巌録, Case 7.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This exchange recalls Feuerbach (1804–1872), who reduced the essence of religion to humanity. Feuerbach believed that, through religion, human beings take a roundabout path back to their own essence. In this instance, however, Huichao had not placed Buddha outside himself in the form of what is commonly called self-alienation. There is a certain confidence in his declaration, “I, Huichao, ask you.” Nor was it upon being told, “You are Huichao,” that he became conscious of a path by which the essence of religion might be reduced to humanity. Such a question had never arisen in the first place. Nor did the master say anything like, “The essence of Buddha is your own essence”—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|294|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—there was nothing of that sort in his reply. One can find plenty of such statements in books. Huichao and Qingliang are not inhabiting a world of mere meanings. Hence the expression, “A phrase before words.” There is also the expression “pouring ink into a black lacquer bucket” (Shudenshō 種電鈔). Such a thing cannot be grasped by the tentacles of objectifying logic. Dōgen describes Qingliang’s response as direct and unhesitating. “You are Huichao”: heaven and earth are of a single piece. At the very point where meaning shines forth, this exchange calls for a direct apprehension of the whole activity of selflessness, beyond the foundations of meaning.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There was a monastery administrator named Ze under Qingliang. Since he had never participated in Zen practice with the master, Qingliang asked why. Ze replied that he had previously awakened under Master Qinglin. Invited to explain, he reported asking, “What is Buddha?” and receiving the answer, “The fire-boy comes seeking fire” (&#039;&#039;heitei dōji rai guhō&#039;&#039; 丙丁童子来求火). Qingliang told him that he was mistaken and asked him to explain further. Ze reasoned that the cyclical signs &#039;&#039;hei&#039;&#039; and &#039;&#039;tei&#039;&#039; belong to fire: for a child of fire to seek fire means that, though he is originally Buddha, he has been seeking Buddha outside himself. The seeker himself, he concluded, is Buddha. Qingliang again said that he was mistaken. Dissatisfied, Ze packed up and left. Qingliang told the disciples that it was a pity: if Ze returned he might be saved, but otherwise there was little hope. As Ze travelled, he reflected that so esteemed a master would not have deceived him lightly and resolved to return for instruction. Qingliang invited him to ask the question again. “What is Buddha?” Ze asked. Qingliang replied with the very same words: “The fire-boy comes seeking fire!” At those words, Ze attained great enlightenment. This is not merely a hermeneutic exchange in which faith is interpreted as human self-alienation, the love of God as the love of humanity’s own essence, or theology as anthropology.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|295|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ascending the teaching hall, the master said: “Upon this lump of red flesh there is a true person of no rank, who constantly enters and departs through the faces of all of you. Those who have not yet verified this, look! Look!” A monk came forward and asked, “What is this true person of no rank?” The master descended from his meditation seat, seized the monk, and demanded, “Speak! Speak!” The monk hesitated. The master pushed him away, saying, “What a dried stick of shit this true person of no rank is!” He then returned to his quarters. (&#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This might appear to regard human nature as something “inherent in each individual person,” but that is not actually the case. “Outside the mind there is no dharma, and within, too, nothing can be apprehended.” A humanism that simply affirms the human being as something inherent within the individual is not Zen. When asked about the true person&#039;s original face, the Tang monk Xiangyan Zhixian (Kyōgen Chikan 香厳智閑) replied, “The eyes inside a monkey.” This is a creation that takes place where the very ground upon which humanity, a central concept of modern thought, is established has been emptied. “On the peak that penetrates the mystery, there is no human being. Outside the mind there is no dharma; before one&#039;s eyes, green mountains fill the view.” If the “true person of no rank” were merely an abstraction inherent in the individual, that vigorous activity and freedom could never have emerged—the freedom that caused even Huangbo, Linji&#039;s master, to exclaim, “You madman! Have you come here to stroke the tiger&#039;s whiskers?” In the Zen life expressed through such phrases as “Be the master wherever you stand” and “Seek true understanding and go freely throughout the world,” there is little basis for Marx&#039;s characterisation of religion as an illusory sun revolving around human beings until they begin to revolve around themselves, as the halo surrounding a vale of tears, or as the sigh of the oppressed creature. Marx continues the statement quoted at the beginning of this essay by writing that, in its reality, the human essence is the ensemble of social relations. Marxism does not recognise, alongside the human essence conceived as an abstraction and the human essence understood in its social reality—or, more precisely, at a level that transcends both—the “person” (&#039;&#039;hito&#039;&#039; 人) that constitutes Zen&#039;s fundamental experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A monk named Ding arrived and asked about the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma. The master came down from his seat and struck him; when Ding bowed—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|296|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—he suddenly attained great enlightenment. (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is clear that an awakening of this kind is not an “ideology” understood as part of a superstructure conditioned by the material circumstances of social life—that is, by the economic structure of a particular historical period, which constitutes its actual foundation. Around the middle of the Tang dynasty, there lived the Zen master Yaoshan Weiyan (Yakusan Igen 薬山惟儼), near Lake Dongting. Since he rarely gave sermons, the monastery administrator urged him: “Everyone has long been hoping to hear your teaching. Please give a sermon.” The master replied, “In that case, ring the bell to summon everyone.” When the bell sounded and the assembly gathered, Yaoshan ascended the teaching seat. He remained silent for a while, then descended and returned to his quarters. Astonished, the administrator hurried after him. “Master, I thought you had agreed to my request. Why did you say nothing?” Yaoshan replied, “There are masters of the scriptures and masters of the treatises. Why should it be surprising that I have not preached the Dharma?” (&#039;&#039;Book of Serenity&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shōyōroku&#039;&#039; 従容録, Case 7.) Dōgen commented, “Before any of you reached the Dharma hall, you had already received thirty blows.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A monk asked the master in the teaching hall, “What is the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma?” The master raised his fly-whisk. The monk shouted; the master struck him. Another monk asked, “What is the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma?” Again the master raised his fly-whisk. The monk shouted; the master shouted in return. The monk hesitated; the master struck him. (&#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In such an encounter, every ideology resembles a snowflake falling into a white-hot furnace. “Recognise the person who plays with light and shadow.” That is to say, grasp the subject who forms ideology. As the ancients said, “The moment you describe it as resembling something, you miss the mark.” Simply look within yourself. What else could there be? Yet there is no end to what may be said. The subject that endlessly rejects ideology is also the subject that endlessly produces ideology.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|297|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== II. Zen as Ideology (Part One) ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The only way in which human beings can recover their humanity, their essential being, is through “the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and a resolute, rightful return—not to God, but to humanity themselves.” (Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen realises the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and this resolute, rightful return—not to God but to humanity itself—not in the form of the proletariat struggling to overcome human self-alienation, that is, poverty and enslavement, or in the form of proletarian humanism (although I think it would be one-sided to say that it cannot also take these forms), but in the form of &#039;&#039;kyakka shōko&#039;&#039; 脚下照顧, looking beneath one’s own feet—that is, transcending humanity at its very foundation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The master instructed the assembly: “I do not delight in hearing even the single word ‘Buddha.’” (Record of Zhaozhou, &#039;&#039;Jōshūroku&#039;&#039; 趙州録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If you seek Buddha, you will be seized by the Buddha-demon. […] Look instead to the person who exercises mastery over circumstances; this is the profound meaning of all buddhas.” (Record of Linji, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Feuerbach “begins from the fact of religious self-alienation, that is, the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular world.” (Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The human world was made neither by gods nor by demons. It was made by ordinary people living just down the street—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Recognise the person who plays with light and shadow. This is the source of all buddhas. Everywhere, practitioners of the Way, is the place to which you return.” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
For a Zen practitioner, heaven and the world beyond are like leaves used to quiet a crying child, or a mirage (&#039;&#039;kagerō&#039;&#039; カゲロウ). Instead, if one apprehends the “person” who chases the mirage, this actual world itself becomes the real world, worthy of living in.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|298|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—ordinary people. Even if the world they have made is hard to live in, there is no other country to which we can move. If there were, it would be a country of inhuman beings, and that country would surely be even harder to live in than the human world. (Natsume Sōseki, &#039;&#039;Kusamakura&#039;&#039; 草枕)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“You who come here from every direction are all intent on seeking Buddha, seeking the Dharma, seeking liberation, and seeking to escape the three realms. Fools! If you leave the three realms, where do you propose to go?” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Religion has been called an “inverted consciousness of the world” (Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction”). But where could such an “inversion” be found in the world expressed in Su Dongpo’s lines, “Having arrived and returned, there is nothing extraordinary: Mount Lu is mist and rain; the Zhejiang River is the tide”? Lenin wrote in a letter to Gorky that the helplessness of the exploited in their struggle against the exploiters inevitably leads to belief in a better life in the hereafter. Yet in a society likewise marked by class exploitation, Zen consciously rejected belief in another world. The duplication of the world through a religious reflection of reality, whereby “the real foundation rises above itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm,” not only failed to occur in this instance within the same medieval status society: it was actively rejected.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The religious reflection of the real world can disappear only when the practical relations of everyday life present themselves to people as transparent, rational relations with one another and with nature. The form of the social life-process—that is, the process of material production—casts off its mystical veil only when it becomes the product of freely associated human beings, subject to their conscious, planned control.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Capital&#039;&#039;, vol. 1, part 1, chapter 1, section 4)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet in a world where the practical relationships of everyday life have not come to disclose to everyone transparent, rational relations among human beings and with nature—in other words, in a medieval society that had not liberated all human beings from self-alienation or brought all the means of production into common ownership and planned use—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|299|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—this religious reflection was nevertheless extensively forestalled by Zen practitioners. At least in this respect, one may say that Zen did not possess the character of an opium of the people.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== III. Zen as Ideology (Part Two) ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen as ideology becomes a social problem not primarily in its metaphysical aspects but in its contact with the actual everyday lives of the people. The question is what attitude Zen practitioners, as embodiments of Zen—or Zen institutions—adopt in their words and actions, grounded in their views of the world and of life, concerning human relationships and the principles governing how one should conduct oneself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Distinguish the limits of your station and know your nature. […] The willow is green; the flower is red.” (Suzuki Shōsan, &#039;&#039;Mōanjō&#039;&#039; 盲安杖.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The subtlety of morality begins in that which has neither sound nor scent and culminates in the three hundred rules of propriety and the three thousand forms of decorum. At their culmination, these return to what has neither sound nor scent. […] This is called the mutual presence of light and darkness.” (Imakita Kōsen, &#039;&#039;Zenkai ichiran&#039;&#039; 禅海一瀾.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Even if you serve a bad master and have nowhere to escape, do not blame the master. Consider it the karmic cause of your own deeds in a previous existence. […] Many suffer morning and evening throughout their lives through illness, blindness, or destitution. Whose fault is such suffering? It is entirely one’s own. […] Let go of everything and enter the path of loyalty and filial piety.” (&#039;&#039;Mōanjō&#039;&#039; 盲安杖.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The Buddhist Way lies beneath each person’s feet. There is nothing for it but to forget oneself and become wholly one with the thing at hand. ‘In the land of Japan, where the way of lord and subject shines clearly, may it remain unmoved for ten thousand generations’: this is a poem by the Meiji emperor. Take it deeply to heart. There is no Zen apart from loyalty and filial piety.” (Iida Tōin, &#039;&#039;Kaian kokugo teishōroku&#039;&#039; 槐安国語提唱録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Insofar as supporting and reinforcing the ethical relationships of feudal status society arose voluntarily from a Zen foundation, Zen practitioners—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|300|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—would naturally encourage active conduct along these lines.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Absent-minded Zen is out of the question. One must sit in meditation with complete concentration, feeling as though Mount Fuji were rising straight into the sky above the Eastern Sea—or, to go further, as though the entire earth were one&#039;s meditation cushion and one stood alone between heaven and earth. One need only sit in this spirit. What is the purpose of seated meditation? It is to embody the unsurpassed Way, attain great and thorough enlightenment, cultivate the power of concentration, and acquire the freedom to act wherever one finds oneself. The unsurpassed Way is the great Way of Vimalakīrti; great enlightenment means awakening to that Way; and acquiring freedom of action wherever one finds oneself means that Japanese people should abide and act as Japanese people. (Harada Sogaku, &#039;&#039;Nihon seishin to Daijō Zen&#039;&#039; 日本精神と大乗禅.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If the goal of national education is to die for the sovereign and to devote oneself selflessly to his service, that goal cannot be fully realised unless every imperial subject, through study and training in their respective sphere of work, strives to embody this wondrous activity free from contrivance. (Itō Kōan, &#039;&#039;Takuan oshō to kyōiku&#039;&#039; 沢庵和尚と教育.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a saying that every tree is known by its fruit. The essence of Zen, which transcends conventional society and ideology, has borne precisely this kind of fruit through the ideology of ordinary mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Once religion has taken shape, it always contains traditional elements; and tradition, it goes without saying, constitutes a powerful conservative force within the realm of ideology. (Engels, &#039;&#039;Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a view that whatever is done in the Zen state of no-mind is always fresh and new in substance, even when it appears from the outside to repeat the same action. This is expressed in the saying, “Each time it is raised, it is new.” There is truth in this understanding. Yet herein lies the fundamental possibility that creative Zen may become habitual, conventional, and conservative. Even established customs, when one enters into them and acts accordingly, have their own distinctive appeal; this becomes an attraction in itself. The principle that tradition must be inherited through creativity was forgotten. Rather than carrying forward something living in a living form, people attempted to inherit it in a dead form. Within the realm of ideology, it is only natural that such conservatism should come to serve class domination, uncritically and of its own accord.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|301|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The ideas of the ruling class are, in every epoch, the ruling ideas. In other words, the class that constitutes the dominant material power in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual power. The class that controls the means of material production also controls the means of intellectual production; consequently, the ideas of those who lack access to the means of intellectual production are, in general, subordinated to that class. (Marx and Engels, &#039;&#039;The German Ideology&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps it would be reading too much into things to suggest that the imperialist project of world domination, whose supposed “ethical” summit was the ideal of &#039;&#039;hakkō ichiu&#039;&#039; 八紘一宇 (“eight corners of the world under one roof”), found its religious reflection in the determination to sit in meditation with complete concentration, using the entire earth as one&#039;s meditation cushion. In a political system that united religious rites and government, national defence and warfare could be clothed in religious forms. Under such circumstances, it was far from uncommon for people to experience religious guilt if they could not completely surrender their private interests and devote their lives to submission before the solemn authority of the state. There were those who devoted considerable thought to the emperor&#039;s “character of nothingness,” to the profound significance of the one-emperor-and-all-subjects system as an embodiment of “one is many,” and to the moral spirit of the “holy war.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is said that ours is a generation whose feelings were worn away by war until we became incapable of crying. Perhaps that is true. Yet when I think of the emperor and of the many people who died for him, I am ashamed to admit that my voice trembles involuntarily. When I drink with a veteran pilot who barely escaped death and now lives peacefully as a salaried employee, I sometimes find myself unable to sleep that night. The faces of dead comrades appear before my eyes, making sleep even more impossible. (Murakami Hyōe, “Senchūha wa kō kangaeru” 戦中派はこう考える.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To live is a joy and a hope. It is also suffering and disappointment. There are various ways of responding to suffering and disappointment, but what is sought as a lasting and fundamental response is a way of life that enables one to face even the worst circumstances of human existence with equanimity.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|302|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In such circumstances, there is one path that may be followed by those who do not believe in a transcendent absolute or a world beyond this one. It is a way of living in which one abandons the standpoint of clinging firmly to particular desires, hopes, or obligations and striving relentlessly to fulfil them. Instead, one accepts each situation as it presents itself and becomes completely one with it. Like colourless dew that appears green upon a willow and red upon a flower, or a mirror that reflects the morning in the morning and the night at night, one neither rejects what comes nor pursues what departs. Wherever one lives becomes home; in sadness, one makes sadness one&#039;s master, and in loneliness, loneliness becomes one&#039;s master. It is an attitude of living in a cosmic affirmation—a universal “Yes.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When one becomes wholly one with the thing itself and forgets oneself, one understands that everyone is of one piece with heaven and earth. What more could one desire? To desire is always to lack something and to be tormented. The popular verse ‘Looking upward, how many things lie beyond one’s reach’ recognises the error of the desire to look above one’s station. ‘Put on your straw hat and live according to your own heart’ recognises the abundance of one’s own lot and the possibility of dwelling in it peacefully.” (Iida Tōin, previously cited.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Actual society is a world of distinctions based on status and class. To entangle love and hatred in this world of distinctions, intensifying consciousness of the individual ego, can only increase dissatisfaction and agitation. Hence the proposal to accept distinctions as distinctions, without rejecting them or becoming engulfed in them. In this way, the troubled mind may subside and one may experience a different breeze even amid suffering. [The final figurative expression in the Japanese requires further verification.]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To ignore distinctions and make mountains and rivers, noble and lowly, all one would amount to a denial of cause and effect; the splendour of the world would disappear and it would become desolate. What is needed is the correct within the partial—that is, equality amid distinctions. If one falls into attachment to any single position, one fails. Originally, these are all waves upon water. […] Keep the mind like water and leave it to circumstances whether it takes a square or round form.” (Iida Tōin, previously cited; a clause in the source quotation remains uncertain.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In this way there emerged a philosophy of noncontention and accommodation, expressed in such sayings as “Give rise to the mind without abiding anywhere” (&#039;&#039;Diamond Sūtra&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Kongōkyō&#039;&#039; 金剛経); “When not a single thought arises, the myriad things are without fault” (&#039;&#039;Faith in Mind&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shinjinmei&#039;&#039; 信心銘); and “The highest goodness is like water; precisely because it does not contend, it is without fault” (&#039;&#039;Daodejing&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rōshi Dōtokukyō&#039;&#039; 老子道徳経).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|303|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen, having rejected the order of the world beyond, opened a path toward accepting directly the order of this world. Rather than earthly status determining the status of the soul in heaven, the order of nature, viewed from a religious and metaphysical perspective, came to sanctify the order of human society. Or, more precisely, the order of human society discovered its own religious and metaphysical reflection in the order of nature and thereby sanctified itself. In this way, a cosmology emerged that provided the underlying structure for what might be called Asian tolerance—or Asian peace of mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“First: Harmony is to be valued, and the absence of contentiousness is to be made fundamental. […] Third: When you receive an imperial command, obey it reverently. The ruler is heaven, and the ministers are earth. Heaven covers and earth supports. Thus the four seasons proceed in proper order, and the myriad energies circulate freely. If earth should attempt to cover heaven, destruction would necessarily follow. Therefore, what the ruler commands, the ministers obey; where those above lead, those below follow. Consequently, when receiving an imperial command, obey it reverently. Failure to do so will bring ruin upon oneself.” (&#039;&#039;Seventeen-Article Constitution&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Jūshichijō kenpō&#039;&#039; 十七条憲法.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The direction taken by young men departing for the battlefield, who struggled to resolve the problem of life and death through devotion to the emperor and the willingness to leave their bodies upon the grass or beneath the waters, followed an inclination established in the distant past.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is another way of approaching life: the life of detached insight. This involves adopting a standpoint concerned with the ultimate meaning or highest value of human existence, comprehensively contemplating and critically assessing the fundamental character and tendencies of historical reality, and living one&#039;s life in accordance with that understanding. Those called philosophers and sages are practitioners of such a life. To the extent that people attempt to examine life comprehensively and fundamentally, and to live according to that insight, they must inevitably adopt, to some degree, a position of detachment. Amid the feverish everyday existence driven relentlessly by time, it is the wisdom of the accomplished person that opens a refreshing perspective upon life. The wisdom of great affirmation, which deepens our appreciation of living and purifies suffering, and the wisdom of detached insight are two aspects of the profound worldview developed in the East.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet the path of detached insight almost invariably ends in observing the realities of the world from a position above them. Society—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|304|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—social and political evils, and the practical effort to correct them and realise a better world, are regarded with the same detachment. The result is a way of protecting one’s own life without dirtying one’s hands. This does not mean simply allowing society’s contradictions and irrationalities to stand as good. Rather, the goals and plans intended to remedy them are deemed inadequate, and even action aimed at change is seen as tainted by worldly attachment and therefore in need of fundamental purification. The masses’ gathering and use of wisdom and energy to build a free and peaceful world is certainly not nonsense, and it undoubtedly has worldly value. Yet such action is held unworthy of anyone genuinely devoted to the Way: it is judged a product of deluded attachment, an activity stained by defilements. What must be upheld is the thoroughness and purity of theory and practice. This immovable conviction is the detached perspective of the accomplished person. By combining a subjective rejection of social evil with an objective acceptance of it, one may serve the exploitative structures of political power while safeguarding the dignity and tranquillity of one’s own existence. Here is what Ichikawa calls &#039;&#039;kanzen shumi&#039;&#039; 完全趣味, invoking Lukács’s description of an abandonment of action that is “lofty in appearance but cowardly in reality.” [The rendering of 完全趣味 and the Lukács reference require source verification.]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We have examined philosophies of both active and passive cooperation with political power. These two positions, however, are not necessarily distinct. Depending on changes in social circumstances, one may readily give rise to the other.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Religious sentiment is itself a social product.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Theses on Feuerbach&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The worldview derived from the &#039;&#039;Book of Changes&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Ekikyō&#039;&#039; 易経), which for so long informed the consciousness and conduct of Zen practitioners, was a broadly moral cosmology that understood the order of nature and the order of human society through common principles. It was probably shaped, to a greater or lesser extent, by the so-called Asiatic stagnation grounded in the Asiatic mode of production. Leaving further consideration of this dimension for another occasion, let us examine the individual social relationships of Zen practitioners.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|305|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The position occupied by an individual Zen practitioner within the domestic and international structures of power of their age; their proximity and relationship to the centres of power; and the social circles they inhabit in connection with those circumstances—all these determine the form of their life. That form of life, in turn, constrains their sensibilities, morality, political orientation, and other characteristics. A distinctive feature of ideology is precisely that this structure of relationships, correspondences, and constraints is not fully and transparently recognised. Consequently, judgements and actions that appear entirely autonomous to Zen practitioners themselves are, in reality, generally conditioned by the network of social relationships in which they are situated. Differences of opinion that supposedly ought to be resolved through discussion frequently prove extraordinarily difficult to overcome because the parties involved belong to different networks or systems of social relations. These structural differences often condition the differences in their reasoning. Changing one&#039;s way of thinking may therefore require dismantling one&#039;s existing social relationships and reorganising them along different lines. Yet doing so may threaten to destroy one&#039;s established way of life. A partly unconscious anxiety about this possibility, together with the inertia of everyday existence, determines and hardens people&#039;s ways of perceiving, thinking, and acting.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV. Human Self-Alienation and Its Recovery ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In its reality, the human essence is the ensemble of social relations.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Theses on Feuerbach&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We live in a society of competitive private ownership which, having freed us as individuals from the restraints of feudal society, has cast us out into a world where we live protected and simultaneously bound by countless restrictions constructed to maintain and strengthen this social system. Under individual “freedom” and responsibility, we are thrown into competition for the limited means of happiness. It is as if, during a five-minute stop, we were trying to board an impossibly overcrowded train together with Rikidōzan’s fellow wrestlers—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|306|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and men with infantile paralysis, all jostling toward the same entrance, the same window. If the proper entrance is blocked, one must slip in through a window, or even climb onto the roof and cling to the doors. Were we to take care of our appearance, respect etiquette, and observe the virtue of modesty, the departure time would come and every train would leave us behind. Such is the transportation hell in which we seem to live. For another person to board is for me to be left behind; for me to board is for another to be left behind. While we consider how this contradiction might rationally be resolved, the departure bell rings; the plans of those waiting for us at our destination collapse. The misfortune does not end with us alone. Nearly everyone crowded here shares these circumstances.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Day after day, from morning until night, there is an endless succession of examinations and tests. It is not merely youth that is excluded; humanity itself may be driven out. For in order to pass these fierce examinations, one cannot afford to concern oneself with friendship. A classmate&#039;s failure may become the very source of one&#039;s own good fortune. One longs to gain an advantage over the others. Before an examination, students pretend not to know things they actually know and refuse to help their friends. If a classmate misses the train on examination day, or happens to fall ill, that may prove advantageous. One student confessed, “I wished my friends would die.” Is this not literally hell? It is terrifying. What would happen if a young person who had developed such a terrifying disposition entered the University of Tokyo, became an even more frightening demon during company entrance examinations, and then carried these habits into society, eventually coming to wish misfortune upon others? (Honda Akira, &#039;&#039;Gendai no seishun&#039;&#039; 現代の青春.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I once heard about the difficulties faced by a homeroom teacher responsible for advising students seeking employment. In the classroom, students had learned that the Constitution must be defended without compromise. Yet when taking an employment examination, they were advised not to say so too explicitly. Whatever political party they actually supported, if asked, they would be better off naming the conservative party. The teacher was troubled by having to offer such contradictory advice. The same can be said of my own—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|307|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—experience. In a society where a school principal could be dismissed for misreading the Imperial Rescript at a ceremony, and a teacher on night duty could commit suicide after a portrait of the emperor was destroyed in a fire, I did not utter a single word of protest. Not only that: although I knew the war was an unclean war, I cooperated with the so-called “holy war.” Far from observing the precept against false speech, I manipulated the language of distorted scholarship. I could not even dream of possessing the freedom expressed in the &#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;: “When you wish to go, go; when you wish to sit, sit” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録). Reports indicate, however, that similar forms of falsehood existed in the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe, particularly in connection with the cult of Stalin and the rewriting of history. The American writer Mark Twain remarked, with considerable irony, that God had bestowed upon his countrymen three incomparable gifts: freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and the good sense never to exercise either freedom. But the “God” who bestowed that good sense was presumably the machinery of state power. The police become the limits of what one is permitted to recognise.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Writing about theft, the author Ōta Yōko 大田洋子 recalled the wartime food shortages:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I was not particularly resourceful, and in Tokyo I went hungry every day, sometimes weeping at mealtimes. I would obtain small portions of food that other people had bought on the black market. Sometimes, taking advantage of the rain, I would crouch beside a path through a field, conceal my face behind an umbrella, and steal several bunches of spinach. Even then, it was said that people who stole crops from farmers&#039; fields could be subjected to corporal punishment. But I was living near the daikon fields of Nerima, and on rainy nights I would pull large radishes from the ground. By that time I had ceased to be a respectable human being. I was quite unconcerned at the thought of being detained, since life in a cell would probably be little different from life outside.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A young man suffering from illness gave stark expression to the pain and ugliness of living.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Family — Iwamoto Toshio 岩本敏夫&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If only this child were not here—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|308|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If only Father and Mother weren&#039;t here—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Father as father, Mother as mother, Child as child,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Each thinking this way,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Now&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Only suffocating hatred&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In this same house&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
They live together.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Such mutual hostility would probably lose most of the conditions necessary for its emergence if a comprehensive system of social security were established and the necessities of life were as abundant as air. This would be an instance of the Buddhist principle that, when the necessary conditions are absent, a phenomenon cannot arise (&#039;&#039;en ketsu fushō&#039;&#039; 縁欠不生). The scarcity of nature—and especially the scarcity produced by society—awakens and intensifies human self-centredness, exclusiveness, distrust, and competition. There is an expression about diverting water toward one&#039;s own rice field. In earlier times, farmers living on opposite banks of a river might face one another with suspicion and hostility during a drought. Yet once the rain came, they would abandon their confrontation and depart. Such scenes could formerly be observed in rural Japan. Hobbes, a proponent of the view that human nature is evil, argued that people need only examine themselves to recognise that human beings are not naturally sociable animals. At night, we lock our doors; even when at home, we lock our valuables in safes. Locking the door reveals what we think of our fellow citizens, while locking the safe reveals what we think of our own children and servants. But it is doubtful whether such conditions have existed in every age.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the Great Way prevailed, all under heaven was held in common. The worthy and capable were selected, trust was cultivated, and harmonious relations maintained. Thus people did not regard only their own parents as parents, nor only their own children as children. The elderly had support in their final years, adults had useful employment, children had the opportunity to grow, and widowers, widows, orphans, the childless, the disabled, and the sick all received care. […] Thus conspiracies did not arise, nor did theft—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|309|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—or disorder arose. People left their outer doors open instead of closing them. This was called the Great Community.” (&#039;&#039;Book of Rites&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Raiki&#039;&#039; 礼記, “Liyun,” chapter 9.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps this represents a recollection of primitive communism. Why does what Feuerbach calls “human self-alienation”—the projection of one&#039;s own essence outside oneself—arise in the first place? It seems that competitive society based on private ownership contains within its structure some of the conditions that explain this phenomenon. Human beings under modern capitalism resemble commuters trapped in an endless transportation nightmare, or farmers who have become accustomed to guarding their vegetables at night behind barbed-wire fences against thieves. Certainly, it remains necessary to urge people who have long lived under such conditions to trust one another, refrain from pushing others aside, and abandon attachment to the self. Yet to imagine that such exhortations alone can be effective is utopian.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We have already seen that Zen&#039;s fundamental experience transcends ideology, but that when it takes concrete form as ideology, it has tended (a) to affirm the existing circumstances in which individuals find themselves and (b) to encourage service to society&#039;s structures of power. Nevertheless, accepting one&#039;s present circumstances without resistance is not necessarily blameworthy. Such acceptance can be connected with some of the deepest and most beautiful wisdom of human existence. It is for this reason that Ozaki Hotsumi&#039;s Zen-inspired contemplation, expressed in the words “Love is like a falling star,” touches the human heart. “When calamity comes, it is best to encounter calamity. When the time to die arrives, it is best to die. This is the wonderful method of escaping calamity.” (Ryōkan 良寛.) In this spirit of detached acceptance, Ozaki created and experienced the depth and beauty of human life. The assertion that what is needed is not a philosophy of interpretation but a philosophy of transformation seems to me to be the statement of Marx the revolutionary rather than Marx the human being.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet human life is not an uninterrupted series of the worst conceivable circumstances, with not even a millimetre of room for change. Finding a way to live peacefully amid what truly cannot be altered remains important for the latitude and well-being of everyday life. But to—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|310|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—live solely by this attitude, and recommend it to everyone in every circumstance, even where conditions can be changed, is properly called a deviation. To go further and produce a Zen apologetic that actively serves a mystified system of exploitation is a dreadful deviation. I believe this results from grasping Zen’s fundamental subject, “nothingness,” solely in its passive and accommodating aspect: like air or water, it has no shape but takes every shape, no colour but assumes every colour. Thinking increasingly through such comparisons, one eventually lets the metaphors govern thought, leaving aside the creative and formative power of nothingness to refuse, criticise, and resist. Capitalist society, which takes material profit-seeking as the motive force of social organisation and turns everything—even human beings—into commodities and material or instrumental human resources, is fundamentally incompatible with the radically subjective spirit of Zen. Yet Zen practitioners failed to develop the scientific understanding needed for the fundamental transformation of this system and the construction of society. They consequently confused the distinctions and equalities found in natural phenomena, in the natural sciences, in hierarchical social arrangements, and in different personal circumstances and forms of peace of mind, under the standpoint of “nonduality” between matter and mind, nature and humanity. Falling into false equality and false discrimination, they ultimately produced an unprincipled, benighted Zen that served fascism and cooperated with war. As the &#039;&#039;Inscription on Faith in Mind&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Shinjinmei&#039;&#039; 信心銘) says, “If there is the slightest difference, heaven and earth are far apart.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen practice means rejecting every idol, including the cult of individual personality; abandoning regrets about the past and anxieties about the future; and devoting oneself wholeheartedly to shaping life in the present. That life must contribute, directly or indirectly, to the realisation of a genuinely human society in which “each lives for all, and all live for each.” Zen practice consists in penetrating the emptiness of attachment to self through the creation of such a life. In this sense, Zen&#039;s fundamental subject constitutes the underlying ground of human living—not only the everyday activities expressed in the saying “When you encounter tea, drink tea; when you encounter rice, eat rice”—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|311|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—but also the underlying ground of struggles against war and for independence and liberation. The Zen saying about cultivating one’s own field and preparing and eating one’s rice (&#039;&#039;Book of Serenity&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shōyōroku&#039;&#039; 従容録, Case 21) concerns a life directly joined to society’s material foundation. To devote oneself wholly to such productive life is also to form oneself through ideas aimed at transforming the ideological superstructure and the social order.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Zen monasteries, collective activity directed toward the environment and its transformation is called &#039;&#039;samu&#039;&#039; 作務, or work practice. What overcomes the unhappy combination of pure intentions with impoverished or even contradictory results is the practical attitude expressed in such work. This is not a poetic attitude but a prosaic one: a lucid, constructive spirit that breaks through subjective absorption and intoxication through rational, experimental engagement with its objects. When such a spirit acts upon society and political institutions as historically constituted environments, seeking to cultivate and reconstruct them, the world toward which it ultimately strives is, in accordance with Zen&#039;s fundamental qualities of selflessness, nonpossession, and autonomy, a borderless world society organised through free communism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Once the truth of the world beyond has vanished, it is history’s task to establish the truth of this world. After the sacred form of human self-alienation has been unmasked, the first task of philosophy in the service of history is to unmask self-alienation in its unholy forms. The criticism of heaven thereby becomes the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology the criticism of politics.” (Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction.”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In my view, to establish the truth of this world after the disappearance of the truth of the beyond is to overcome religious faith in another world and to realise a society of free communism, in which all people are emancipated from exploitation and oppression as well as from the ego of exclusive self-attachment. In the direct and indirect activities of everyday life, this requires that one fully participate in sitting when sitting, in walking when walking, and in each task when engaged in it, as Tōrei Enji 東嶺円慈 teaches in &#039;&#039;Shūmon mujintō ron&#039;&#039; 宗門無尽灯論—relinquishing regret and anxious anticipation and emptying attachment to self. The fact that even Stalin—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|312|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—could apparently not truly become “his own master” (Engels, &#039;&#039;Socialism: Utopian and Scientific&#039;&#039;) is neither so harmless nor so trivial that it can be dismissed as merely one of the “birthmarks” of the old social order. Put differently, we must find a way for Ozaki Hotsumi’s Zen equanimity to permeate the activity of establishing a Buddha land in the sense just described. What is called “practice amid activity” (&#039;&#039;dōchū no kufū&#039;&#039; 動中の工夫), superior to “practice amid stillness” (&#039;&#039;jōchū no kufū&#039;&#039; 静中の工夫)—seated meditation in a quiet place—must mean diligence in precisely this kind of life. It entails arousing the aspiration for enlightenment (&#039;&#039;bodaishin&#039;&#039; 菩提心) to establish a Buddha land and recognising that one must “shoulder sentient beings as a heavy burden,” while oneself being among those sentient beings. Since Zen has already rejected “the sacred form of human self-alienation,” what remains is to recognise and overcome its profane forms through an investigation of one’s own fundamental concern (&#039;&#039;koji kyūmei&#039;&#039; 己事究明) that empties egoism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To leave flowers to the wind and birds to their proper time is also the meritorious work of giving. […] To set out boats and provide bridges is likewise the perfection of giving. If one truly studies giving, both accepting the body and relinquishing the body are acts of giving. Cultivating fields and engaging in productive occupations are, from the outset, nothing other than giving.” (Dōgen, “Bodaisatta shishōbō” 菩提薩埵四摂法)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Zen master Yongming Qian (Eimei Sen 永明潜) addressed the assembly: “The Buddha-Dharma is plainly manifest. Why do you not understand it? If you wish to understand the Buddha-Dharma, ask Zhang San and Li Si. If you wish to understand worldly affairs, inquire in the monasteries of the ancient buddhas.” (*Zenmon kōan taisei* 禅門公案大成)The Zen master Yongming Qian addressed the assembly: “The Buddha-Dharma is plainly manifest. Why do you fail to understand it? If you want to understand the Buddha-Dharma, inquire of Zhang San and Li Si [ordinary people]. If you want to understand worldly affairs, inquire in the monasteries of the ancient buddhas.” (&#039;&#039;Zenmon kōan taisei&#039;&#039; 禅門公案大成.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What unity of practice and theory must we develop in order to establish a modern way of learning Zen from the working masses, and learning the principles of society from Zen communities? I welcome instruction from all quarters.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
This translation is based on Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦, “Zen to Marukushizumu” 禅とマルキシズム (1956), as reproduced in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 2, &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; 禅と現代思想 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), 293–312. The original publication venue has not been established in this edition. The Japanese transcription and this translation are working scholarly texts; historical quotations and some character-level readings remain subject to further collation. Original printed paragraph and page divisions have been retained where recoverable.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotation: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1956). “Zen and Marxism” (&#039;&#039;Zen to Marukushizumu&#039;&#039; 禅とマルキシズム). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH56ZTM-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM-T&amp;diff=1229</id>
		<title>IH56ZTM-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM-T&amp;diff=1229"/>
		<updated>2026-10-09T15:31:03Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen and Marxism”}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Zen and Marxism&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Zen to Marukushizumu&#039;&#039; 禅とマルキシズム) is a 1956 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 2 of &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 (1993), pp. 293–312.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Japanese original:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH56ZTM|禅とマルキシズム]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contents ==&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#I. Before Ideology|I. Before Ideology]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#II. Zen as Ideology (Part One)|II. Zen as Ideology (Part One)]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#III. Zen as Ideology (Part Two)|III. Zen as Ideology (Part Two)]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#IV. Human Self-Alienation and Its Recovery|IV. Human Self-Alienation and Its Recovery]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|293|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== I. Before Ideology ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Feuerbach reduces the essence of religion to the essence of humanity. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each individual person. (Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A disciple named Huichao (Echō 慧超) once asked Qingliang Wenyi (Seiryō Bun&#039;eki 清涼文益), a Zen monk of the late Tang and Five Dynasties period: “I, Huichao, ask you: What is Buddha?” The master replied, “You are Huichao.” (&#039;&#039;Blue Cliff Record&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Hekiganroku&#039;&#039; 碧巌録, Case 7.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This exchange recalls Feuerbach (1804–1872), who reduced the essence of religion to humanity. Feuerbach believed that, through religion, human beings take a roundabout path back to their own essence. In this instance, however, Huichao had not placed Buddha outside himself in the form of what is commonly called self-alienation. There is a certain confidence in his declaration, “I, Huichao, ask you.” Nor was it upon being told, “You are Huichao,” that he became conscious of a path by which the essence of religion might be reduced to humanity. Such a question had never arisen in the first place. Nor did the master say anything like, “The essence of Buddha is your own essence”—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|294|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—there was nothing of that sort in his reply. One can find plenty of such statements in books. Huichao and Qingliang are not inhabiting a world of mere meanings. Hence the expression, “A phrase before words.” There is also the expression “pouring ink into a black lacquer bucket” (Shudenshō 種電鈔). Such a thing cannot be grasped by the tentacles of objectifying logic. Dōgen describes Qingliang’s response as direct and unhesitating. “You are Huichao”: heaven and earth are of a single piece. At the very point where meaning shines forth, this exchange calls for a direct apprehension of the whole activity of selflessness, beyond the foundations of meaning.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There was a monastery administrator named Ze under Qingliang. Since he had never participated in Zen practice with the master, Qingliang asked why. Ze replied that he had previously awakened under Master Qinglin. Invited to explain, he reported asking, “What is Buddha?” and receiving the answer, “The fire-boy comes seeking fire” (&#039;&#039;heitei dōji rai guhō&#039;&#039; 丙丁童子来求火). Qingliang told him that he was mistaken and asked him to explain further. Ze reasoned that the cyclical signs &#039;&#039;hei&#039;&#039; and &#039;&#039;tei&#039;&#039; belong to fire: for a child of fire to seek fire means that, though he is originally Buddha, he has been seeking Buddha outside himself. The seeker himself, he concluded, is Buddha. Qingliang again said that he was mistaken. Dissatisfied, Ze packed up and left. Qingliang told the disciples that it was a pity: if Ze returned he might be saved, but otherwise there was little hope. As Ze travelled, he reflected that so esteemed a master would not have deceived him lightly and resolved to return for instruction. Qingliang invited him to ask the question again. “What is Buddha?” Ze asked. Qingliang replied with the very same words: “The fire-boy comes seeking fire!” At those words, Ze attained great enlightenment. This is not merely a hermeneutic exchange in which faith is interpreted as human self-alienation, the love of God as the love of humanity’s own essence, or theology as anthropology.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|295|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ascending the teaching hall, the master said: “Upon this lump of red flesh there is a true person of no rank, who constantly enters and departs through the faces of all of you. Those who have not yet verified this, look! Look!” A monk came forward and asked, “What is this true person of no rank?” The master descended from his meditation seat, seized the monk, and demanded, “Speak! Speak!” The monk hesitated. The master pushed him away, saying, “What a dried stick of shit this true person of no rank is!” He then returned to his quarters. (&#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This might appear to regard human nature as something “inherent in each individual person,” but that is not actually the case. “Outside the mind there is no dharma, and within, too, nothing can be apprehended.” A humanism that simply affirms the human being as something inherent within the individual is not Zen. When asked about the true person&#039;s original face, the Tang monk Xiangyan Zhixian (Kyōgen Chikan 香厳智閑) replied, “The eyes inside a monkey.” This is a creation that takes place where the very ground upon which humanity, a central concept of modern thought, is established has been emptied. “On the peak that penetrates the mystery, there is no human being. Outside the mind there is no dharma; before one&#039;s eyes, green mountains fill the view.” If the “true person of no rank” were merely an abstraction inherent in the individual, that vigorous activity and freedom could never have emerged—the freedom that caused even Huangbo, Linji&#039;s master, to exclaim, “You madman! Have you come here to stroke the tiger&#039;s whiskers?” In the Zen life expressed through such phrases as “Be the master wherever you stand” and “Seek true understanding and go freely throughout the world,” there is little basis for Marx&#039;s characterisation of religion as an illusory sun revolving around human beings until they begin to revolve around themselves, as the halo surrounding a vale of tears, or as the sigh of the oppressed creature. Marx continues the statement quoted at the beginning of this essay by writing that, in its reality, the human essence is the ensemble of social relations. Marxism does not recognise, alongside the human essence conceived as an abstraction and the human essence understood in its social reality—or, more precisely, at a level that transcends both—the “person” (&#039;&#039;hito&#039;&#039; 人) that constitutes Zen&#039;s fundamental experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A monk named Ding arrived and asked about the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma. The master came down from his seat and struck him; when Ding bowed—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|296|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—he suddenly attained great enlightenment. (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is clear that an awakening of this kind is not an “ideology” understood as part of a superstructure conditioned by the material circumstances of social life—that is, by the economic structure of a particular historical period, which constitutes its actual foundation. Around the middle of the Tang dynasty, there lived the Zen master Yaoshan Weiyan (Yakusan Igen 薬山惟儼), near Lake Dongting. Since he rarely gave sermons, the monastery administrator urged him: “Everyone has long been hoping to hear your teaching. Please give a sermon.” The master replied, “In that case, ring the bell to summon everyone.” When the bell sounded and the assembly gathered, Yaoshan ascended the teaching seat. He remained silent for a while, then descended and returned to his quarters. Astonished, the administrator hurried after him. “Master, I thought you had agreed to my request. Why did you say nothing?” Yaoshan replied, “There are masters of the scriptures and masters of the treatises. Why should it be surprising that I have not preached the Dharma?” (&#039;&#039;Book of Serenity&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shōyōroku&#039;&#039; 従容録, Case 7.) Dōgen commented, “Before any of you reached the Dharma hall, you had already received thirty blows.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A monk asked the master in the teaching hall, “What is the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma?” The master raised his fly-whisk. The monk shouted; the master struck him. Another monk asked, “What is the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma?” Again the master raised his fly-whisk. The monk shouted; the master shouted in return. The monk hesitated; the master struck him. (&#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In such an encounter, every ideology resembles a snowflake falling into a white-hot furnace. “Recognise the person who plays with light and shadow.” That is to say, grasp the subject who forms ideology. As the ancients said, “The moment you describe it as resembling something, you miss the mark.” Simply look within yourself. What else could there be? Yet there is no end to what may be said. The subject that endlessly rejects ideology is also the subject that endlessly produces ideology.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|297|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== II. Zen as Ideology (Part One) ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The only way in which human beings can recover their humanity, their essential being, is through “the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and a resolute, rightful return—not to God, but to humanity themselves.” (Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen realises the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and this resolute, rightful return—not to God but to humanity itself—not in the form of the proletariat struggling to overcome human self-alienation, that is, poverty and enslavement, or in the form of proletarian humanism (although I think it would be one-sided to say that it cannot also take these forms), but in the form of &#039;&#039;kyakka shōko&#039;&#039; 脚下照顧, looking beneath one’s own feet—that is, transcending humanity at its very foundation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The master instructed the assembly: “I do not delight in hearing even the single word ‘Buddha.’” (Record of Zhaozhou, &#039;&#039;Jōshūroku&#039;&#039; 趙州録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If you seek Buddha, you will be seized by the Buddha-demon. […] Look instead to the person who exercises mastery over circumstances; this is the profound meaning of all buddhas.” (Record of Linji, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Feuerbach “begins from the fact of religious self-alienation, that is, the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular world.” (Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The human world was made neither by gods nor by demons. It was made by ordinary people living just down the street—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Recognise the person who plays with light and shadow. This is the source of all buddhas. Everywhere, practitioners of the Way, is the place to which you return.” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
For a Zen practitioner, heaven and the world beyond are like leaves used to quiet a crying child, or a mirage (&#039;&#039;kagerō&#039;&#039; カゲロウ). Instead, if one apprehends the “person” who chases the mirage, this actual world itself becomes the real world, worthy of living in.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|298|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—ordinary people. Even if the world they have made is hard to live in, there is no other country to which we can move. If there were, it would be a country of inhuman beings, and that country would surely be even harder to live in than the human world. (Natsume Sōseki, &#039;&#039;Kusamakura&#039;&#039; 草枕)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“You who come here from every direction are all intent on seeking Buddha, seeking the Dharma, seeking liberation, and seeking to escape the three realms. Fools! If you leave the three realms, where do you propose to go?” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Religion has been called an “inverted consciousness of the world” (Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction”). But where could such an “inversion” be found in the world expressed in Su Dongpo’s lines, “Having arrived and returned, there is nothing extraordinary: Mount Lu is mist and rain; the Zhejiang River is the tide”? Lenin wrote in a letter to Gorky that the helplessness of the exploited in their struggle against the exploiters inevitably leads to belief in a better life in the hereafter. Yet in a society likewise marked by class exploitation, Zen consciously rejected belief in another world. The duplication of the world through a religious reflection of reality, whereby “the real foundation rises above itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm,” not only failed to occur in this instance within the same medieval status society: it was actively rejected.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The religious reflection of the real world can disappear only when the practical relations of everyday life present themselves to people as transparent, rational relations with one another and with nature. The form of the social life-process—that is, the process of material production—casts off its mystical veil only when it becomes the product of freely associated human beings, subject to their conscious, planned control.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Capital&#039;&#039;, vol. 1, part 1, chapter 1, section 4)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet in a world where the practical relationships of everyday life have not come to disclose to everyone transparent, rational relations among human beings and with nature—in other words, in a medieval society that had not liberated all human beings from self-alienation or brought all the means of production into common ownership and planned use—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|299|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—this religious reflection was nevertheless extensively forestalled by Zen practitioners. At least in this respect, one may say that Zen did not possess the character of an opium of the people.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== III. Zen as Ideology (Part Two) ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen as ideology becomes a social problem not primarily in its metaphysical aspects but in its contact with the actual everyday lives of the people. The question is what attitude Zen practitioners, as embodiments of Zen—or Zen institutions—adopt in their words and actions, grounded in their views of the world and of life, concerning human relationships and the principles governing how one should conduct oneself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Distinguish the limits of your station and know your nature. […] The willow is green; the flower is red.” (Suzuki Shōsan, &#039;&#039;Mōanjō&#039;&#039; 盲安杖.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The subtlety of morality begins in that which has neither sound nor scent and culminates in the three hundred rules of propriety and the three thousand forms of decorum. At their culmination, these return to what has neither sound nor scent. […] This is called the mutual presence of light and darkness.” (Imakita Kōsen, &#039;&#039;Zenkai ichiran&#039;&#039; 禅海一瀾.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Even if you serve a bad master and have nowhere to escape, do not blame the master. Consider it the karmic cause of your own deeds in a previous existence. […] Many suffer morning and evening throughout their lives through illness, blindness, or destitution. Whose fault is such suffering? It is entirely one’s own. […] Let go of everything and enter the path of loyalty and filial piety.” (&#039;&#039;Mōanjō&#039;&#039; 盲安杖.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The Buddhist Way lies beneath each person’s feet. There is nothing for it but to forget oneself and become wholly one with the thing at hand. ‘In the land of Japan, where the way of lord and subject shines clearly, may it remain unmoved for ten thousand generations’: this is a poem by the Meiji emperor. Take it deeply to heart. There is no Zen apart from loyalty and filial piety.” (Iida Tōin, &#039;&#039;Kaian kokugo teishōroku&#039;&#039; 槐安国語提唱録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Insofar as supporting and reinforcing the ethical relationships of feudal status society arose voluntarily from a Zen foundation, Zen practitioners—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|300|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—would naturally encourage active conduct along these lines.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Absent-minded Zen is out of the question. One must sit in meditation with complete concentration, feeling as though Mount Fuji were rising straight into the sky above the Eastern Sea—or, to go further, as though the entire earth were one&#039;s meditation cushion and one stood alone between heaven and earth. One need only sit in this spirit. What is the purpose of seated meditation? It is to embody the unsurpassed Way, attain great and thorough enlightenment, cultivate the power of concentration, and acquire the freedom to act wherever one finds oneself. The unsurpassed Way is the great Way of Vimalakīrti; great enlightenment means awakening to that Way; and acquiring freedom of action wherever one finds oneself means that Japanese people should abide and act as Japanese people. (Harada Sogaku, &#039;&#039;Nihon seishin to Daijō Zen&#039;&#039; 日本精神と大乗禅.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If the goal of national education is to die for the sovereign and to devote oneself selflessly to his service, that goal cannot be fully realised unless every imperial subject, through study and training in their respective sphere of work, strives to embody this wondrous activity free from contrivance. (Itō Kōan, &#039;&#039;Takuan oshō to kyōiku&#039;&#039; 沢庵和尚と教育.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a saying that every tree is known by its fruit. The essence of Zen, which transcends conventional society and ideology, has borne precisely this kind of fruit through the ideology of ordinary mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Once religion has taken shape, it always contains traditional elements; and tradition, it goes without saying, constitutes a powerful conservative force within the realm of ideology. (Engels, &#039;&#039;Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a view that whatever is done in the Zen state of no-mind is always fresh and new in substance, even when it appears from the outside to repeat the same action. This is expressed in the saying, “Each time it is raised, it is new.” There is truth in this understanding. Yet herein lies the fundamental possibility that creative Zen may become habitual, conventional, and conservative. Even established customs, when one enters into them and acts accordingly, have their own distinctive appeal; this becomes an attraction in itself. The principle that tradition must be inherited through creativity was forgotten. Rather than carrying forward something living in a living form, people attempted to inherit it in a dead form. Within the realm of ideology, it is only natural that such conservatism should come to serve class domination, uncritically and of its own accord.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|301|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The ideas of the ruling class are, in every epoch, the ruling ideas. In other words, the class that constitutes the dominant material power in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual power. The class that controls the means of material production also controls the means of intellectual production; consequently, the ideas of those who lack access to the means of intellectual production are, in general, subordinated to that class. (Marx and Engels, &#039;&#039;The German Ideology&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps it would be reading too much into things to suggest that the imperialist project of world domination, whose supposed “ethical” summit was the ideal of &#039;&#039;hakkō ichiu&#039;&#039; 八紘一宇 (“eight corners of the world under one roof”), found its religious reflection in the determination to sit in meditation with complete concentration, using the entire earth as one&#039;s meditation cushion. In a political system that united religious rites and government, national defence and warfare could be clothed in religious forms. Under such circumstances, it was far from uncommon for people to experience religious guilt if they could not completely surrender their private interests and devote their lives to submission before the solemn authority of the state. There were those who devoted considerable thought to the emperor&#039;s “character of nothingness,” to the profound significance of the one-emperor-and-all-subjects system as an embodiment of “one is many,” and to the moral spirit of the “holy war.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is said that ours is a generation whose feelings were worn away by war until we became incapable of crying. Perhaps that is true. Yet when I think of the emperor and of the many people who died for him, I am ashamed to admit that my voice trembles involuntarily. When I drink with a veteran pilot who barely escaped death and now lives peacefully as a salaried employee, I sometimes find myself unable to sleep that night. The faces of dead comrades appear before my eyes, making sleep even more impossible. (Murakami Hyōe, “Senchūha wa kō kangaeru” 戦中派はこう考える.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To live is a joy and a hope. It is also suffering and disappointment. There are various ways of responding to suffering and disappointment, but what is sought as a lasting and fundamental response is a way of life that enables one to face even the worst circumstances of human existence with equanimity.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|302|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In such circumstances, there is one path that may be followed by those who do not believe in a transcendent absolute or a world beyond this one. It is a way of living in which one abandons the standpoint of clinging firmly to particular desires, hopes, or obligations and striving relentlessly to fulfil them. Instead, one accepts each situation as it presents itself and becomes completely one with it. Like colourless dew that appears green upon a willow and red upon a flower, or a mirror that reflects the morning in the morning and the night at night, one neither rejects what comes nor pursues what departs. Wherever one lives becomes home; in sadness, one makes sadness one&#039;s master, and in loneliness, loneliness becomes one&#039;s master. It is an attitude of living in a cosmic affirmation—a universal “Yes.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When one becomes wholly one with the thing itself and forgets oneself, one understands that everyone is of one piece with heaven and earth. What more could one desire? To desire is always to lack something and to be tormented. The popular verse ‘Looking upward, how many things lie beyond one’s reach’ recognises the error of the desire to look above one’s station. ‘Put on your straw hat and live according to your own heart’ recognises the abundance of one’s own lot and the possibility of dwelling in it peacefully.” (Iida Tōin, previously cited.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Actual society is a world of distinctions based on status and class. To entangle love and hatred in this world of distinctions, intensifying consciousness of the individual ego, can only increase dissatisfaction and agitation. Hence the proposal to accept distinctions as distinctions, without rejecting them or becoming engulfed in them. In this way, the troubled mind may subside and one may experience a different breeze even amid suffering. [The final figurative expression in the Japanese requires further verification.]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To ignore distinctions and make mountains and rivers, noble and lowly, all one would amount to a denial of cause and effect; the splendour of the world would disappear and it would become desolate. What is needed is the correct within the partial—that is, equality amid distinctions. If one falls into attachment to any single position, one fails. Originally, these are all waves upon water. […] Keep the mind like water and leave it to circumstances whether it takes a square or round form.” (Iida Tōin, previously cited; a clause in the source quotation remains uncertain.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In this way there emerged a philosophy of noncontention and accommodation, expressed in such sayings as “Give rise to the mind without abiding anywhere” (&#039;&#039;Diamond Sūtra&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Kongōkyō&#039;&#039; 金剛経); “When not a single thought arises, the myriad things are without fault” (&#039;&#039;Faith in Mind&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shinjinmei&#039;&#039; 信心銘); and “The highest goodness is like water; precisely because it does not contend, it is without fault” (&#039;&#039;Daodejing&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rōshi Dōtokukyō&#039;&#039; 老子道徳経).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|303|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen, having rejected the order of the world beyond, opened a path toward accepting directly the order of this world. Rather than earthly status determining the status of the soul in heaven, the order of nature, viewed from a religious and metaphysical perspective, came to sanctify the order of human society. Or, more precisely, the order of human society discovered its own religious and metaphysical reflection in the order of nature and thereby sanctified itself. In this way, a cosmology emerged that provided the underlying structure for what might be called Asian tolerance—or Asian peace of mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“First: Harmony is to be valued, and the absence of contentiousness is to be made fundamental. […] Third: When you receive an imperial command, obey it reverently. The ruler is heaven, and the ministers are earth. Heaven covers and earth supports. Thus the four seasons proceed in proper order, and the myriad energies circulate freely. If earth should attempt to cover heaven, destruction would necessarily follow. Therefore, what the ruler commands, the ministers obey; where those above lead, those below follow. Consequently, when receiving an imperial command, obey it reverently. Failure to do so will bring ruin upon oneself.” (&#039;&#039;Seventeen-Article Constitution&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Jūshichijō kenpō&#039;&#039; 十七条憲法.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The direction taken by young men departing for the battlefield, who struggled to resolve the problem of life and death through devotion to the emperor and the willingness to leave their bodies upon the grass or beneath the waters, followed an inclination established in the distant past.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is another way of approaching life: the life of detached insight. This involves adopting a standpoint concerned with the ultimate meaning or highest value of human existence, comprehensively contemplating and critically assessing the fundamental character and tendencies of historical reality, and living one&#039;s life in accordance with that understanding. Those called philosophers and sages are practitioners of such a life. To the extent that people attempt to examine life comprehensively and fundamentally, and to live according to that insight, they must inevitably adopt, to some degree, a position of detachment. Amid the feverish everyday existence driven relentlessly by time, it is the wisdom of the accomplished person that opens a refreshing perspective upon life. The wisdom of great affirmation, which deepens our appreciation of living and purifies suffering, and the wisdom of detached insight are two aspects of the profound worldview developed in the East.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet the path of detached insight almost invariably ends in observing the realities of the world from a position above them. Society—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|304|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—social and political evils, and the practical effort to correct them and realise a better world, are regarded with the same detachment. The result is a way of protecting one’s own life without dirtying one’s hands. This does not mean simply allowing society’s contradictions and irrationalities to stand as good. Rather, the goals and plans intended to remedy them are deemed inadequate, and even action aimed at change is seen as tainted by worldly attachment and therefore in need of fundamental purification. The masses’ gathering and use of wisdom and energy to build a free and peaceful world is certainly not nonsense, and it undoubtedly has worldly value. Yet such action is held unworthy of anyone genuinely devoted to the Way: it is judged a product of deluded attachment, an activity stained by defilements. What must be upheld is the thoroughness and purity of theory and practice. This immovable conviction is the detached perspective of the accomplished person. By combining a subjective rejection of social evil with an objective acceptance of it, one may serve the exploitative structures of political power while safeguarding the dignity and tranquillity of one’s own existence. Here is what Ichikawa calls &#039;&#039;kanzen shumi&#039;&#039; 完全趣味, invoking Lukács’s description of an abandonment of action that is “lofty in appearance but cowardly in reality.” [The rendering of 完全趣味 and the Lukács reference require source verification.]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We have examined philosophies of both active and passive cooperation with political power. These two positions, however, are not necessarily distinct. Depending on changes in social circumstances, one may readily give rise to the other.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Religious sentiment is itself a social product.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Theses on Feuerbach&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The worldview derived from the &#039;&#039;Book of Changes&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Ekikyō&#039;&#039; 易経), which for so long informed the consciousness and conduct of Zen practitioners, was a broadly moral cosmology that understood the order of nature and the order of human society through common principles. It was probably shaped, to a greater or lesser extent, by the so-called Asiatic stagnation grounded in the Asiatic mode of production. Leaving further consideration of this dimension for another occasion, let us examine the individual social relationships of Zen practitioners.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|305|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The position occupied by an individual Zen practitioner within the domestic and international structures of power of their age; their proximity and relationship to the centres of power; and the social circles they inhabit in connection with those circumstances—all these determine the form of their life. That form of life, in turn, constrains their sensibilities, morality, political orientation, and other characteristics. A distinctive feature of ideology is precisely that this structure of relationships, correspondences, and constraints is not fully and transparently recognised. Consequently, judgements and actions that appear entirely autonomous to Zen practitioners themselves are, in reality, generally conditioned by the network of social relationships in which they are situated. Differences of opinion that supposedly ought to be resolved through discussion frequently prove extraordinarily difficult to overcome because the parties involved belong to different networks or systems of social relations. These structural differences often condition the differences in their reasoning. Changing one&#039;s way of thinking may therefore require dismantling one&#039;s existing social relationships and reorganising them along different lines. Yet doing so may threaten to destroy one&#039;s established way of life. A partly unconscious anxiety about this possibility, together with the inertia of everyday existence, determines and hardens people&#039;s ways of perceiving, thinking, and acting.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV. Human Self-Alienation and Its Recovery ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In its reality, the human essence is the ensemble of social relations.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Theses on Feuerbach&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We live in a society of competitive private ownership which, having freed us as individuals from the restraints of feudal society, has cast us out into a world where we live protected and simultaneously bound by countless restrictions constructed to maintain and strengthen this social system. Under individual “freedom” and responsibility, we are thrown into competition for the limited means of happiness. It is as if, during a five-minute stop, we were trying to board an impossibly overcrowded train together with Rikidōzan’s fellow wrestlers—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|306|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and men with infantile paralysis, all jostling toward the same entrance, the same window. If the proper entrance is blocked, one must slip in through a window, or even climb onto the roof and cling to the doors. Were we to take care of our appearance, respect etiquette, and observe the virtue of modesty, the departure time would come and every train would leave us behind. Such is the transportation hell in which we seem to live. For another person to board is for me to be left behind; for me to board is for another to be left behind. While we consider how this contradiction might rationally be resolved, the departure bell rings; the plans of those waiting for us at our destination collapse. The misfortune does not end with us alone. Nearly everyone crowded here shares these circumstances.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Day after day, from morning until night, there is an endless succession of examinations and tests. It is not merely youth that is excluded; humanity itself may be driven out. For in order to pass these fierce examinations, one cannot afford to concern oneself with friendship. A classmate&#039;s failure may become the very source of one&#039;s own good fortune. One longs to gain an advantage over the others. Before an examination, students pretend not to know things they actually know and refuse to help their friends. If a classmate misses the train on examination day, or happens to fall ill, that may prove advantageous. One student confessed, “I wished my friends would die.” Is this not literally hell? It is terrifying. What would happen if a young person who had developed such a terrifying disposition entered the University of Tokyo, became an even more frightening demon during company entrance examinations, and then carried these habits into society, eventually coming to wish misfortune upon others? (Honda Akira, &#039;&#039;Gendai no seishun&#039;&#039; 現代の青春.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I once heard about the difficulties faced by a homeroom teacher responsible for advising students seeking employment. In the classroom, students had learned that the Constitution must be defended without compromise. Yet when taking an employment examination, they were advised not to say so too explicitly. Whatever political party they actually supported, if asked, they would be better off naming the conservative party. The teacher was troubled by having to offer such contradictory advice. The same can be said of my own—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|307|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—experience. In a society where a school principal could be dismissed for misreading the Imperial Rescript at a ceremony, and a teacher on night duty could commit suicide after a portrait of the emperor was destroyed in a fire, I did not utter a single word of protest. Not only that: although I knew the war was an unclean war, I cooperated with the so-called “holy war.” Far from observing the precept against false speech, I manipulated the language of distorted scholarship. I could not even dream of possessing the freedom expressed in the &#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;: “When you wish to go, go; when you wish to sit, sit” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録). Reports indicate, however, that similar forms of falsehood existed in the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe, particularly in connection with the cult of Stalin and the rewriting of history. The American writer Mark Twain remarked, with considerable irony, that God had bestowed upon his countrymen three incomparable gifts: freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and the good sense never to exercise either freedom. But the “God” who bestowed that good sense was presumably the machinery of state power. The police become the limits of what one is permitted to recognise.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Writing about theft, the author Ōta Yōko 大田洋子 recalled the wartime food shortages:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I was not particularly resourceful, and in Tokyo I went hungry every day, sometimes weeping at mealtimes. I would obtain small portions of food that other people had bought on the black market. Sometimes, taking advantage of the rain, I would crouch beside a path through a field, conceal my face behind an umbrella, and steal several bunches of spinach. Even then, it was said that people who stole crops from farmers&#039; fields could be subjected to corporal punishment. But I was living near the daikon fields of Nerima, and on rainy nights I would pull large radishes from the ground. By that time I had ceased to be a respectable human being. I was quite unconcerned at the thought of being detained, since life in a cell would probably be little different from life outside.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A young man suffering from illness gave stark expression to the pain and ugliness of living.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Family — Iwamoto Toshio 岩本敏夫&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If only this child were not here—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|308|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If only Father and Mother weren&#039;t here—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Father as father, Mother as mother, Child as child,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Each thinking this way,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Now&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Only suffocating hatred&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In this same house&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
They live together.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Such mutual hostility would probably lose most of the conditions necessary for its emergence if a comprehensive system of social security were established and the necessities of life were as abundant as air. This would be an instance of the Buddhist principle that, when the necessary conditions are absent, a phenomenon cannot arise (&#039;&#039;en ketsu fushō&#039;&#039; 縁欠不生). The scarcity of nature—and especially the scarcity produced by society—awakens and intensifies human self-centredness, exclusiveness, distrust, and competition. There is an expression about diverting water toward one&#039;s own rice field. In earlier times, farmers living on opposite banks of a river might face one another with suspicion and hostility during a drought. Yet once the rain came, they would abandon their confrontation and depart. Such scenes could formerly be observed in rural Japan. Hobbes, a proponent of the view that human nature is evil, argued that people need only examine themselves to recognise that human beings are not naturally sociable animals. At night, we lock our doors; even when at home, we lock our valuables in safes. Locking the door reveals what we think of our fellow citizens, while locking the safe reveals what we think of our own children and servants. But it is doubtful whether such conditions have existed in every age.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the Great Way prevailed, all under heaven was held in common. The worthy and capable were selected, trust was cultivated, and harmonious relations maintained. Thus people did not regard only their own parents as parents, nor only their own children as children. The elderly had support in their final years, adults had useful employment, children had the opportunity to grow, and widowers, widows, orphans, the childless, the disabled, and the sick all received care. […] Thus conspiracies did not arise, nor did theft—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|309|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—or disorder arose. People left their outer doors open instead of closing them. This was called the Great Community.” (&#039;&#039;Book of Rites&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Raiki&#039;&#039; 礼記, “Liyun,” chapter 9.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps this represents a recollection of primitive communism. Why does what Feuerbach calls “human self-alienation”—the projection of one&#039;s own essence outside oneself—arise in the first place? It seems that competitive society based on private ownership contains within its structure some of the conditions that explain this phenomenon. Human beings under modern capitalism resemble commuters trapped in an endless transportation nightmare, or farmers who have become accustomed to guarding their vegetables at night behind barbed-wire fences against thieves. Certainly, it remains necessary to urge people who have long lived under such conditions to trust one another, refrain from pushing others aside, and abandon attachment to the self. Yet to imagine that such exhortations alone can be effective is utopian.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We have already seen that Zen&#039;s fundamental experience transcends ideology, but that when it takes concrete form as ideology, it has tended (a) to affirm the existing circumstances in which individuals find themselves and (b) to encourage service to society&#039;s structures of power. Nevertheless, accepting one&#039;s present circumstances without resistance is not necessarily blameworthy. Such acceptance can be connected with some of the deepest and most beautiful wisdom of human existence. It is for this reason that Ozaki Hotsumi&#039;s Zen-inspired contemplation, expressed in the words “Love is like a falling star,” touches the human heart. “When calamity comes, it is best to encounter calamity. When the time to die arrives, it is best to die. This is the wonderful method of escaping calamity.” (Ryōkan 良寛.) In this spirit of detached acceptance, Ozaki created and experienced the depth and beauty of human life. The assertion that what is needed is not a philosophy of interpretation but a philosophy of transformation seems to me to be the statement of Marx the revolutionary rather than Marx the human being.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet human life is not an uninterrupted series of the worst conceivable circumstances, with not even a millimetre of room for change. Finding a way to live peacefully amid what truly cannot be altered remains important for the latitude and well-being of everyday life. But to—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|310|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—live solely by this attitude, and recommend it to everyone in every circumstance, even where conditions can be changed, is properly called a deviation. To go further and produce a Zen apologetic that actively serves a mystified system of exploitation is a dreadful deviation. I believe this results from grasping Zen’s fundamental subject, “nothingness,” solely in its passive and accommodating aspect: like air or water, it has no shape but takes every shape, no colour but assumes every colour. Thinking increasingly through such comparisons, one eventually lets the metaphors govern thought, leaving aside the creative and formative power of nothingness to refuse, criticise, and resist. Capitalist society, which takes material profit-seeking as the motive force of social organisation and turns everything—even human beings—into commodities and material or instrumental human resources, is fundamentally incompatible with the radically subjective spirit of Zen. Yet Zen practitioners failed to develop the scientific understanding needed for the fundamental transformation of this system and the construction of society. They consequently confused the distinctions and equalities found in natural phenomena, in the natural sciences, in hierarchical social arrangements, and in different personal circumstances and forms of peace of mind, under the standpoint of “nonduality” between matter and mind, nature and humanity. Falling into false equality and false discrimination, they ultimately produced an unprincipled, benighted Zen that served fascism and cooperated with war. As the &#039;&#039;Inscription on Faith in Mind&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Shinjinmei&#039;&#039; 信心銘) says, “If there is the slightest difference, heaven and earth are far apart.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen practice means rejecting every idol, including the cult of individual personality; abandoning regrets about the past and anxieties about the future; and devoting oneself wholeheartedly to shaping life in the present. That life must contribute, directly or indirectly, to the realisation of a genuinely human society in which “each lives for all, and all live for each.” Zen practice consists in penetrating the emptiness of attachment to self through the creation of such a life. In this sense, Zen&#039;s fundamental subject constitutes the underlying ground of human living—not only the everyday activities expressed in the saying “When you encounter tea, drink tea; when you encounter rice, eat rice”—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|311|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—but also the underlying ground of struggles against war and for independence and liberation. The Zen saying about cultivating one’s own field and preparing and eating one’s rice (&#039;&#039;Book of Serenity&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shōyōroku&#039;&#039; 従容録, Case 21) concerns a life directly joined to society’s material foundation. To devote oneself wholly to such productive life is also to form oneself through ideas aimed at transforming the ideological superstructure and the social order.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Zen monasteries, collective activity directed toward the environment and its transformation is called &#039;&#039;samu&#039;&#039; 作務, or work practice. What overcomes the unhappy combination of pure intentions with impoverished or even contradictory results is the practical attitude expressed in such work. This is not a poetic attitude but a prosaic one: a lucid, constructive spirit that breaks through subjective absorption and intoxication through rational, experimental engagement with its objects. When such a spirit acts upon society and political institutions as historically constituted environments, seeking to cultivate and reconstruct them, the world toward which it ultimately strives is, in accordance with Zen&#039;s fundamental qualities of selflessness, nonpossession, and autonomy, a borderless world society organised through free communism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Once the truth of the world beyond has vanished, it is history’s task to establish the truth of this world. After the sacred form of human self-alienation has been unmasked, the first task of philosophy in the service of history is to unmask self-alienation in its unholy forms. The criticism of heaven thereby becomes the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology the criticism of politics.” (Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction.”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In my view, to establish the truth of this world after the disappearance of the truth of the beyond is to overcome religious faith in another world and to realise a society of free communism, in which all people are emancipated from exploitation and oppression as well as from the ego of exclusive self-attachment. In the direct and indirect activities of everyday life, this requires that one fully participate in sitting when sitting, in walking when walking, and in each task when engaged in it, as Tōrei Enji 東嶺円慈 teaches in &#039;&#039;Shūmon mujintō ron&#039;&#039; 宗門無尽灯論—relinquishing regret and anxious anticipation and emptying attachment to self. The fact that even Stalin—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|312|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—could apparently not truly become “his own master” (Engels, &#039;&#039;Socialism: Utopian and Scientific&#039;&#039;) is neither so harmless nor so trivial that it can be dismissed as merely one of the “birthmarks” of the old social order. Put differently, we must find a way for Ozaki Hotsumi’s Zen equanimity to permeate the activity of establishing a Buddha land in the sense just described. What is called “practice amid activity” (&#039;&#039;dōchū no kufū&#039;&#039; 動中の工夫), superior to “practice amid stillness” (&#039;&#039;jōchū no kufū&#039;&#039; 静中の工夫)—seated meditation in a quiet place—must mean diligence in precisely this kind of life. It entails arousing the aspiration for enlightenment (&#039;&#039;bodaishin&#039;&#039; 菩提心) to establish a Buddha land and recognising that one must “shoulder sentient beings as a heavy burden,” while oneself being among those sentient beings. Since Zen has already rejected “the sacred form of human self-alienation,” what remains is to recognise and overcome its profane forms through an investigation of one’s own fundamental concern (&#039;&#039;koji kyūmei&#039;&#039; 己事究明) that empties egoism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To leave flowers to the wind and birds to their proper time is also the meritorious work of giving. […] To set out boats and provide bridges is likewise the perfection of giving. If one truly studies giving, both accepting the body and relinquishing the body are acts of giving. Cultivating fields and engaging in productive occupations are, from the outset, nothing other than giving.” (Dōgen, “Bodaisatta shishōbō” 菩提薩埵四摂法)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Zen master Yongming Qian (Eimei Sen 永明潜) addressed the assembly: “The Buddha-Dharma is plainly manifest. Why do you not understand it? If you wish to understand the Buddha-Dharma, ask Zhang San and Li Si. If you wish to understand worldly affairs, inquire in the monasteries of the ancient buddhas.” (*Zenmon kōan taisei* 禅門公案大成)The Zen master Yongming Qian addressed the assembly: “The Buddha-Dharma is plainly manifest. Why do you fail to understand it? If you want to understand the Buddha-Dharma, inquire of Zhang San and Li Si [ordinary people]. If you want to understand worldly affairs, inquire in the monasteries of the ancient buddhas.” (&#039;&#039;Zenmon kōan taisei&#039;&#039; 禅門公案大成.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What unity of practice and theory must we develop in order to establish a modern way of learning Zen from the working masses, and learning the principles of society from Zen communities? I welcome instruction from all quarters.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
This translation is based on Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦, “Zen to Marukushizumu” 禅とマルキシズム (1956), as reproduced in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 2, &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; 禅と現代思想 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), 293–312. The original publication venue has not been established in this edition. The Japanese transcription and this translation are working scholarly texts; historical quotations and some character-level readings remain subject to further collation. Original printed paragraph and page divisions have been retained where recoverable.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Citation ==&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen. “Zen and Marxism” (1956). Translated from “Zen to Marukushizumu” 禅とマルキシズム, &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039;, vol. 2 (1993), 293–312. &#039;&#039;Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;, [[IH56ZTM-T]].&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM-T&amp;diff=1228</id>
		<title>IH56ZTM-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM-T&amp;diff=1228"/>
		<updated>2026-10-09T15:29:46Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: Created page with &amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Zen and Marxism&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; (&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Zen to Marukushizumu&amp;#039;&amp;#039; 禅とマルキシズム) is a 1956 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 2 of &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&amp;#039;&amp;#039; 市川白弦著作集 (1993), pp. 293–312.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Japanese original:&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; 禅とマルキシズム  == Contents == # I. Before Ideology # II. Zen as Ideology (Part One) # ...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;Zen and Marxism&#039;&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Zen to Marukushizumu&#039;&#039; 禅とマルキシズム) is a 1956 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦. This working English translation follows the text reproduced in volume 2 of &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 (1993), pp. 293–312.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Japanese original:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH56ZTM|禅とマルキシズム]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Contents ==&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#I. Before Ideology|I. Before Ideology]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#II. Zen as Ideology (Part One)|II. Zen as Ideology (Part One)]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#III. Zen as Ideology (Part Two)|III. Zen as Ideology (Part Two)]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#IV. Human Self-Alienation and Its Recovery|IV. Human Self-Alienation and Its Recovery]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|293|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== I. Before Ideology ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Feuerbach reduces the essence of religion to the essence of humanity. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each individual person. (Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A disciple named Huichao (Echō 慧超) once asked Qingliang Wenyi (Seiryō Bun&#039;eki 清涼文益), a Zen monk of the late Tang and Five Dynasties period: “I, Huichao, ask you: What is Buddha?” The master replied, “You are Huichao.” (&#039;&#039;Blue Cliff Record&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Hekiganroku&#039;&#039; 碧巌録, Case 7.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This exchange recalls Feuerbach (1804–1872), who reduced the essence of religion to humanity. Feuerbach believed that, through religion, human beings take a roundabout path back to their own essence. In this instance, however, Huichao had not placed Buddha outside himself in the form of what is commonly called self-alienation. There is a certain confidence in his declaration, “I, Huichao, ask you.” Nor was it upon being told, “You are Huichao,” that he became conscious of a path by which the essence of religion might be reduced to humanity. Such a question had never arisen in the first place. Nor did the master say anything like, “The essence of Buddha is your own essence”—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|294|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—there was nothing of that sort in his reply. One can find plenty of such statements in books. Huichao and Qingliang are not inhabiting a world of mere meanings. Hence the expression, “A phrase before words.” There is also the expression “pouring ink into a black lacquer bucket” (Shudenshō 種電鈔). Such a thing cannot be grasped by the tentacles of objectifying logic. Dōgen describes Qingliang’s response as direct and unhesitating. “You are Huichao”: heaven and earth are of a single piece. At the very point where meaning shines forth, this exchange calls for a direct apprehension of the whole activity of selflessness, beyond the foundations of meaning.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There was a monastery administrator named Ze under Qingliang. Since he had never participated in Zen practice with the master, Qingliang asked why. Ze replied that he had previously awakened under Master Qinglin. Invited to explain, he reported asking, “What is Buddha?” and receiving the answer, “The fire-boy comes seeking fire” (&#039;&#039;heitei dōji rai guhō&#039;&#039; 丙丁童子来求火). Qingliang told him that he was mistaken and asked him to explain further. Ze reasoned that the cyclical signs &#039;&#039;hei&#039;&#039; and &#039;&#039;tei&#039;&#039; belong to fire: for a child of fire to seek fire means that, though he is originally Buddha, he has been seeking Buddha outside himself. The seeker himself, he concluded, is Buddha. Qingliang again said that he was mistaken. Dissatisfied, Ze packed up and left. Qingliang told the disciples that it was a pity: if Ze returned he might be saved, but otherwise there was little hope. As Ze travelled, he reflected that so esteemed a master would not have deceived him lightly and resolved to return for instruction. Qingliang invited him to ask the question again. “What is Buddha?” Ze asked. Qingliang replied with the very same words: “The fire-boy comes seeking fire!” At those words, Ze attained great enlightenment. This is not merely a hermeneutic exchange in which faith is interpreted as human self-alienation, the love of God as the love of humanity’s own essence, or theology as anthropology.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|295|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ascending the teaching hall, the master said: “Upon this lump of red flesh there is a true person of no rank, who constantly enters and departs through the faces of all of you. Those who have not yet verified this, look! Look!” A monk came forward and asked, “What is this true person of no rank?” The master descended from his meditation seat, seized the monk, and demanded, “Speak! Speak!” The monk hesitated. The master pushed him away, saying, “What a dried stick of shit this true person of no rank is!” He then returned to his quarters. (&#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This might appear to regard human nature as something “inherent in each individual person,” but that is not actually the case. “Outside the mind there is no dharma, and within, too, nothing can be apprehended.” A humanism that simply affirms the human being as something inherent within the individual is not Zen. When asked about the true person&#039;s original face, the Tang monk Xiangyan Zhixian (Kyōgen Chikan 香厳智閑) replied, “The eyes inside a monkey.” This is a creation that takes place where the very ground upon which humanity, a central concept of modern thought, is established has been emptied. “On the peak that penetrates the mystery, there is no human being. Outside the mind there is no dharma; before one&#039;s eyes, green mountains fill the view.” If the “true person of no rank” were merely an abstraction inherent in the individual, that vigorous activity and freedom could never have emerged—the freedom that caused even Huangbo, Linji&#039;s master, to exclaim, “You madman! Have you come here to stroke the tiger&#039;s whiskers?” In the Zen life expressed through such phrases as “Be the master wherever you stand” and “Seek true understanding and go freely throughout the world,” there is little basis for Marx&#039;s characterisation of religion as an illusory sun revolving around human beings until they begin to revolve around themselves, as the halo surrounding a vale of tears, or as the sigh of the oppressed creature. Marx continues the statement quoted at the beginning of this essay by writing that, in its reality, the human essence is the ensemble of social relations. Marxism does not recognise, alongside the human essence conceived as an abstraction and the human essence understood in its social reality—or, more precisely, at a level that transcends both—the “person” (&#039;&#039;hito&#039;&#039; 人) that constitutes Zen&#039;s fundamental experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A monk named Ding arrived and asked about the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma. The master came down from his seat and struck him; when Ding bowed—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|296|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—he suddenly attained great enlightenment. (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is clear that an awakening of this kind is not an “ideology” understood as part of a superstructure conditioned by the material circumstances of social life—that is, by the economic structure of a particular historical period, which constitutes its actual foundation. Around the middle of the Tang dynasty, there lived the Zen master Yaoshan Weiyan (Yakusan Igen 薬山惟儼), near Lake Dongting. Since he rarely gave sermons, the monastery administrator urged him: “Everyone has long been hoping to hear your teaching. Please give a sermon.” The master replied, “In that case, ring the bell to summon everyone.” When the bell sounded and the assembly gathered, Yaoshan ascended the teaching seat. He remained silent for a while, then descended and returned to his quarters. Astonished, the administrator hurried after him. “Master, I thought you had agreed to my request. Why did you say nothing?” Yaoshan replied, “There are masters of the scriptures and masters of the treatises. Why should it be surprising that I have not preached the Dharma?” (&#039;&#039;Book of Serenity&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shōyōroku&#039;&#039; 従容録, Case 7.) Dōgen commented, “Before any of you reached the Dharma hall, you had already received thirty blows.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A monk asked the master in the teaching hall, “What is the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma?” The master raised his fly-whisk. The monk shouted; the master struck him. Another monk asked, “What is the essential meaning of the Buddha-Dharma?” Again the master raised his fly-whisk. The monk shouted; the master shouted in return. The monk hesitated; the master struck him. (&#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In such an encounter, every ideology resembles a snowflake falling into a white-hot furnace. “Recognise the person who plays with light and shadow.” That is to say, grasp the subject who forms ideology. As the ancients said, “The moment you describe it as resembling something, you miss the mark.” Simply look within yourself. What else could there be? Yet there is no end to what may be said. The subject that endlessly rejects ideology is also the subject that endlessly produces ideology.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|297|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== II. Zen as Ideology (Part One) ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The only way in which human beings can recover their humanity, their essential being, is through “the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and a resolute, rightful return—not to God, but to humanity themselves.” (Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen realises the fundamental overcoming of all religious representations and this resolute, rightful return—not to God but to humanity itself—not in the form of the proletariat struggling to overcome human self-alienation, that is, poverty and enslavement, or in the form of proletarian humanism (although I think it would be one-sided to say that it cannot also take these forms), but in the form of &#039;&#039;kyakka shōko&#039;&#039; 脚下照顧, looking beneath one’s own feet—that is, transcending humanity at its very foundation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The master instructed the assembly: “I do not delight in hearing even the single word ‘Buddha.’” (Record of Zhaozhou, &#039;&#039;Jōshūroku&#039;&#039; 趙州録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“If you seek Buddha, you will be seized by the Buddha-demon. […] Look instead to the person who exercises mastery over circumstances; this is the profound meaning of all buddhas.” (Record of Linji, &#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Feuerbach “begins from the fact of religious self-alienation, that is, the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular world.” (Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The human world was made neither by gods nor by demons. It was made by ordinary people living just down the street—”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Recognise the person who plays with light and shadow. This is the source of all buddhas. Everywhere, practitioners of the Way, is the place to which you return.” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
For a Zen practitioner, heaven and the world beyond are like leaves used to quiet a crying child, or a mirage (&#039;&#039;kagerō&#039;&#039; カゲロウ). Instead, if one apprehends the “person” who chases the mirage, this actual world itself becomes the real world, worthy of living in.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|298|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—ordinary people. Even if the world they have made is hard to live in, there is no other country to which we can move. If there were, it would be a country of inhuman beings, and that country would surely be even harder to live in than the human world. (Natsume Sōseki, &#039;&#039;Kusamakura&#039;&#039; 草枕)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“You who come here from every direction are all intent on seeking Buddha, seeking the Dharma, seeking liberation, and seeking to escape the three realms. Fools! If you leave the three realms, where do you propose to go?” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Religion has been called an “inverted consciousness of the world” (Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction”). But where could such an “inversion” be found in the world expressed in Su Dongpo’s lines, “Having arrived and returned, there is nothing extraordinary: Mount Lu is mist and rain; the Zhejiang River is the tide”? Lenin wrote in a letter to Gorky that the helplessness of the exploited in their struggle against the exploiters inevitably leads to belief in a better life in the hereafter. Yet in a society likewise marked by class exploitation, Zen consciously rejected belief in another world. The duplication of the world through a religious reflection of reality, whereby “the real foundation rises above itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm,” not only failed to occur in this instance within the same medieval status society: it was actively rejected.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The religious reflection of the real world can disappear only when the practical relations of everyday life present themselves to people as transparent, rational relations with one another and with nature. The form of the social life-process—that is, the process of material production—casts off its mystical veil only when it becomes the product of freely associated human beings, subject to their conscious, planned control.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Capital&#039;&#039;, vol. 1, part 1, chapter 1, section 4)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet in a world where the practical relationships of everyday life have not come to disclose to everyone transparent, rational relations among human beings and with nature—in other words, in a medieval society that had not liberated all human beings from self-alienation or brought all the means of production into common ownership and planned use—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|299|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—this religious reflection was nevertheless extensively forestalled by Zen practitioners. At least in this respect, one may say that Zen did not possess the character of an opium of the people.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== III. Zen as Ideology (Part Two) ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen as ideology becomes a social problem not primarily in its metaphysical aspects but in its contact with the actual everyday lives of the people. The question is what attitude Zen practitioners, as embodiments of Zen—or Zen institutions—adopt in their words and actions, grounded in their views of the world and of life, concerning human relationships and the principles governing how one should conduct oneself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Distinguish the limits of your station and know your nature. […] The willow is green; the flower is red.” (Suzuki Shōsan, &#039;&#039;Mōanjō&#039;&#039; 盲安杖.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The subtlety of morality begins in that which has neither sound nor scent and culminates in the three hundred rules of propriety and the three thousand forms of decorum. At their culmination, these return to what has neither sound nor scent. […] This is called the mutual presence of light and darkness.” (Imakita Kōsen, &#039;&#039;Zenkai ichiran&#039;&#039; 禅海一瀾.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Even if you serve a bad master and have nowhere to escape, do not blame the master. Consider it the karmic cause of your own deeds in a previous existence. […] Many suffer morning and evening throughout their lives through illness, blindness, or destitution. Whose fault is such suffering? It is entirely one’s own. […] Let go of everything and enter the path of loyalty and filial piety.” (&#039;&#039;Mōanjō&#039;&#039; 盲安杖.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“The Buddhist Way lies beneath each person’s feet. There is nothing for it but to forget oneself and become wholly one with the thing at hand. ‘In the land of Japan, where the way of lord and subject shines clearly, may it remain unmoved for ten thousand generations’: this is a poem by the Meiji emperor. Take it deeply to heart. There is no Zen apart from loyalty and filial piety.” (Iida Tōin, &#039;&#039;Kaian kokugo teishōroku&#039;&#039; 槐安国語提唱録.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Insofar as supporting and reinforcing the ethical relationships of feudal status society arose voluntarily from a Zen foundation, Zen practitioners—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|300|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—would naturally encourage active conduct along these lines.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Absent-minded Zen is out of the question. One must sit in meditation with complete concentration, feeling as though Mount Fuji were rising straight into the sky above the Eastern Sea—or, to go further, as though the entire earth were one&#039;s meditation cushion and one stood alone between heaven and earth. One need only sit in this spirit. What is the purpose of seated meditation? It is to embody the unsurpassed Way, attain great and thorough enlightenment, cultivate the power of concentration, and acquire the freedom to act wherever one finds oneself. The unsurpassed Way is the great Way of Vimalakīrti; great enlightenment means awakening to that Way; and acquiring freedom of action wherever one finds oneself means that Japanese people should abide and act as Japanese people. (Harada Sogaku, &#039;&#039;Nihon seishin to Daijō Zen&#039;&#039; 日本精神と大乗禅.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If the goal of national education is to die for the sovereign and to devote oneself selflessly to his service, that goal cannot be fully realised unless every imperial subject, through study and training in their respective sphere of work, strives to embody this wondrous activity free from contrivance. (Itō Kōan, &#039;&#039;Takuan oshō to kyōiku&#039;&#039; 沢庵和尚と教育.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a saying that every tree is known by its fruit. The essence of Zen, which transcends conventional society and ideology, has borne precisely this kind of fruit through the ideology of ordinary mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Once religion has taken shape, it always contains traditional elements; and tradition, it goes without saying, constitutes a powerful conservative force within the realm of ideology. (Engels, &#039;&#039;Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is a view that whatever is done in the Zen state of no-mind is always fresh and new in substance, even when it appears from the outside to repeat the same action. This is expressed in the saying, “Each time it is raised, it is new.” There is truth in this understanding. Yet herein lies the fundamental possibility that creative Zen may become habitual, conventional, and conservative. Even established customs, when one enters into them and acts accordingly, have their own distinctive appeal; this becomes an attraction in itself. The principle that tradition must be inherited through creativity was forgotten. Rather than carrying forward something living in a living form, people attempted to inherit it in a dead form. Within the realm of ideology, it is only natural that such conservatism should come to serve class domination, uncritically and of its own accord.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|301|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The ideas of the ruling class are, in every epoch, the ruling ideas. In other words, the class that constitutes the dominant material power in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual power. The class that controls the means of material production also controls the means of intellectual production; consequently, the ideas of those who lack access to the means of intellectual production are, in general, subordinated to that class. (Marx and Engels, &#039;&#039;The German Ideology&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps it would be reading too much into things to suggest that the imperialist project of world domination, whose supposed “ethical” summit was the ideal of &#039;&#039;hakkō ichiu&#039;&#039; 八紘一宇 (“eight corners of the world under one roof”), found its religious reflection in the determination to sit in meditation with complete concentration, using the entire earth as one&#039;s meditation cushion. In a political system that united religious rites and government, national defence and warfare could be clothed in religious forms. Under such circumstances, it was far from uncommon for people to experience religious guilt if they could not completely surrender their private interests and devote their lives to submission before the solemn authority of the state. There were those who devoted considerable thought to the emperor&#039;s “character of nothingness,” to the profound significance of the one-emperor-and-all-subjects system as an embodiment of “one is many,” and to the moral spirit of the “holy war.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is said that ours is a generation whose feelings were worn away by war until we became incapable of crying. Perhaps that is true. Yet when I think of the emperor and of the many people who died for him, I am ashamed to admit that my voice trembles involuntarily. When I drink with a veteran pilot who barely escaped death and now lives peacefully as a salaried employee, I sometimes find myself unable to sleep that night. The faces of dead comrades appear before my eyes, making sleep even more impossible. (Murakami Hyōe, “Senchūha wa kō kangaeru” 戦中派はこう考える.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To live is a joy and a hope. It is also suffering and disappointment. There are various ways of responding to suffering and disappointment, but what is sought as a lasting and fundamental response is a way of life that enables one to face even the worst circumstances of human existence with equanimity.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|302|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In such circumstances, there is one path that may be followed by those who do not believe in a transcendent absolute or a world beyond this one. It is a way of living in which one abandons the standpoint of clinging firmly to particular desires, hopes, or obligations and striving relentlessly to fulfil them. Instead, one accepts each situation as it presents itself and becomes completely one with it. Like colourless dew that appears green upon a willow and red upon a flower, or a mirror that reflects the morning in the morning and the night at night, one neither rejects what comes nor pursues what departs. Wherever one lives becomes home; in sadness, one makes sadness one&#039;s master, and in loneliness, loneliness becomes one&#039;s master. It is an attitude of living in a cosmic affirmation—a universal “Yes.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When one becomes wholly one with the thing itself and forgets oneself, one understands that everyone is of one piece with heaven and earth. What more could one desire? To desire is always to lack something and to be tormented. The popular verse ‘Looking upward, how many things lie beyond one’s reach’ recognises the error of the desire to look above one’s station. ‘Put on your straw hat and live according to your own heart’ recognises the abundance of one’s own lot and the possibility of dwelling in it peacefully.” (Iida Tōin, previously cited.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Actual society is a world of distinctions based on status and class. To entangle love and hatred in this world of distinctions, intensifying consciousness of the individual ego, can only increase dissatisfaction and agitation. Hence the proposal to accept distinctions as distinctions, without rejecting them or becoming engulfed in them. In this way, the troubled mind may subside and one may experience a different breeze even amid suffering. [The final figurative expression in the Japanese requires further verification.]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To ignore distinctions and make mountains and rivers, noble and lowly, all one would amount to a denial of cause and effect; the splendour of the world would disappear and it would become desolate. What is needed is the correct within the partial—that is, equality amid distinctions. If one falls into attachment to any single position, one fails. Originally, these are all waves upon water. […] Keep the mind like water and leave it to circumstances whether it takes a square or round form.” (Iida Tōin, previously cited; a clause in the source quotation remains uncertain.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In this way there emerged a philosophy of noncontention and accommodation, expressed in such sayings as “Give rise to the mind without abiding anywhere” (&#039;&#039;Diamond Sūtra&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Kongōkyō&#039;&#039; 金剛経); “When not a single thought arises, the myriad things are without fault” (&#039;&#039;Faith in Mind&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shinjinmei&#039;&#039; 信心銘); and “The highest goodness is like water; precisely because it does not contend, it is without fault” (&#039;&#039;Daodejing&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Rōshi Dōtokukyō&#039;&#039; 老子道徳経).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|303|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen, having rejected the order of the world beyond, opened a path toward accepting directly the order of this world. Rather than earthly status determining the status of the soul in heaven, the order of nature, viewed from a religious and metaphysical perspective, came to sanctify the order of human society. Or, more precisely, the order of human society discovered its own religious and metaphysical reflection in the order of nature and thereby sanctified itself. In this way, a cosmology emerged that provided the underlying structure for what might be called Asian tolerance—or Asian peace of mind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“First: Harmony is to be valued, and the absence of contentiousness is to be made fundamental. […] Third: When you receive an imperial command, obey it reverently. The ruler is heaven, and the ministers are earth. Heaven covers and earth supports. Thus the four seasons proceed in proper order, and the myriad energies circulate freely. If earth should attempt to cover heaven, destruction would necessarily follow. Therefore, what the ruler commands, the ministers obey; where those above lead, those below follow. Consequently, when receiving an imperial command, obey it reverently. Failure to do so will bring ruin upon oneself.” (&#039;&#039;Seventeen-Article Constitution&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Jūshichijō kenpō&#039;&#039; 十七条憲法.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The direction taken by young men departing for the battlefield, who struggled to resolve the problem of life and death through devotion to the emperor and the willingness to leave their bodies upon the grass or beneath the waters, followed an inclination established in the distant past.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is another way of approaching life: the life of detached insight. This involves adopting a standpoint concerned with the ultimate meaning or highest value of human existence, comprehensively contemplating and critically assessing the fundamental character and tendencies of historical reality, and living one&#039;s life in accordance with that understanding. Those called philosophers and sages are practitioners of such a life. To the extent that people attempt to examine life comprehensively and fundamentally, and to live according to that insight, they must inevitably adopt, to some degree, a position of detachment. Amid the feverish everyday existence driven relentlessly by time, it is the wisdom of the accomplished person that opens a refreshing perspective upon life. The wisdom of great affirmation, which deepens our appreciation of living and purifies suffering, and the wisdom of detached insight are two aspects of the profound worldview developed in the East.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet the path of detached insight almost invariably ends in observing the realities of the world from a position above them. Society—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|304|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—social and political evils, and the practical effort to correct them and realise a better world, are regarded with the same detachment. The result is a way of protecting one’s own life without dirtying one’s hands. This does not mean simply allowing society’s contradictions and irrationalities to stand as good. Rather, the goals and plans intended to remedy them are deemed inadequate, and even action aimed at change is seen as tainted by worldly attachment and therefore in need of fundamental purification. The masses’ gathering and use of wisdom and energy to build a free and peaceful world is certainly not nonsense, and it undoubtedly has worldly value. Yet such action is held unworthy of anyone genuinely devoted to the Way: it is judged a product of deluded attachment, an activity stained by defilements. What must be upheld is the thoroughness and purity of theory and practice. This immovable conviction is the detached perspective of the accomplished person. By combining a subjective rejection of social evil with an objective acceptance of it, one may serve the exploitative structures of political power while safeguarding the dignity and tranquillity of one’s own existence. Here is what Ichikawa calls &#039;&#039;kanzen shumi&#039;&#039; 完全趣味, invoking Lukács’s description of an abandonment of action that is “lofty in appearance but cowardly in reality.” [The rendering of 完全趣味 and the Lukács reference require source verification.]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We have examined philosophies of both active and passive cooperation with political power. These two positions, however, are not necessarily distinct. Depending on changes in social circumstances, one may readily give rise to the other.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Religious sentiment is itself a social product.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Theses on Feuerbach&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The worldview derived from the &#039;&#039;Book of Changes&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Ekikyō&#039;&#039; 易経), which for so long informed the consciousness and conduct of Zen practitioners, was a broadly moral cosmology that understood the order of nature and the order of human society through common principles. It was probably shaped, to a greater or lesser extent, by the so-called Asiatic stagnation grounded in the Asiatic mode of production. Leaving further consideration of this dimension for another occasion, let us examine the individual social relationships of Zen practitioners.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|305|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The position occupied by an individual Zen practitioner within the domestic and international structures of power of their age; their proximity and relationship to the centres of power; and the social circles they inhabit in connection with those circumstances—all these determine the form of their life. That form of life, in turn, constrains their sensibilities, morality, political orientation, and other characteristics. A distinctive feature of ideology is precisely that this structure of relationships, correspondences, and constraints is not fully and transparently recognised. Consequently, judgements and actions that appear entirely autonomous to Zen practitioners themselves are, in reality, generally conditioned by the network of social relationships in which they are situated. Differences of opinion that supposedly ought to be resolved through discussion frequently prove extraordinarily difficult to overcome because the parties involved belong to different networks or systems of social relations. These structural differences often condition the differences in their reasoning. Changing one&#039;s way of thinking may therefore require dismantling one&#039;s existing social relationships and reorganising them along different lines. Yet doing so may threaten to destroy one&#039;s established way of life. A partly unconscious anxiety about this possibility, together with the inertia of everyday existence, determines and hardens people&#039;s ways of perceiving, thinking, and acting.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV. Human Self-Alienation and Its Recovery ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“In its reality, the human essence is the ensemble of social relations.” (Marx, &#039;&#039;Theses on Feuerbach&#039;&#039;.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We live in a society of competitive private ownership which, having freed us as individuals from the restraints of feudal society, has cast us out into a world where we live protected and simultaneously bound by countless restrictions constructed to maintain and strengthen this social system. Under individual “freedom” and responsibility, we are thrown into competition for the limited means of happiness. It is as if, during a five-minute stop, we were trying to board an impossibly overcrowded train together with Rikidōzan’s fellow wrestlers—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|306|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and men with infantile paralysis, all jostling toward the same entrance, the same window. If the proper entrance is blocked, one must slip in through a window, or even climb onto the roof and cling to the doors. Were we to take care of our appearance, respect etiquette, and observe the virtue of modesty, the departure time would come and every train would leave us behind. Such is the transportation hell in which we seem to live. For another person to board is for me to be left behind; for me to board is for another to be left behind. While we consider how this contradiction might rationally be resolved, the departure bell rings; the plans of those waiting for us at our destination collapse. The misfortune does not end with us alone. Nearly everyone crowded here shares these circumstances.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Day after day, from morning until night, there is an endless succession of examinations and tests. It is not merely youth that is excluded; humanity itself may be driven out. For in order to pass these fierce examinations, one cannot afford to concern oneself with friendship. A classmate&#039;s failure may become the very source of one&#039;s own good fortune. One longs to gain an advantage over the others. Before an examination, students pretend not to know things they actually know and refuse to help their friends. If a classmate misses the train on examination day, or happens to fall ill, that may prove advantageous. One student confessed, “I wished my friends would die.” Is this not literally hell? It is terrifying. What would happen if a young person who had developed such a terrifying disposition entered the University of Tokyo, became an even more frightening demon during company entrance examinations, and then carried these habits into society, eventually coming to wish misfortune upon others? (Honda Akira, &#039;&#039;Gendai no seishun&#039;&#039; 現代の青春.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I once heard about the difficulties faced by a homeroom teacher responsible for advising students seeking employment. In the classroom, students had learned that the Constitution must be defended without compromise. Yet when taking an employment examination, they were advised not to say so too explicitly. Whatever political party they actually supported, if asked, they would be better off naming the conservative party. The teacher was troubled by having to offer such contradictory advice. The same can be said of my own—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|307|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—experience. In a society where a school principal could be dismissed for misreading the Imperial Rescript at a ceremony, and a teacher on night duty could commit suicide after a portrait of the emperor was destroyed in a fire, I did not utter a single word of protest. Not only that: although I knew the war was an unclean war, I cooperated with the so-called “holy war.” Far from observing the precept against false speech, I manipulated the language of distorted scholarship. I could not even dream of possessing the freedom expressed in the &#039;&#039;Record of Linji&#039;&#039;: “When you wish to go, go; when you wish to sit, sit” (&#039;&#039;Rinzairoku&#039;&#039; 臨済録). Reports indicate, however, that similar forms of falsehood existed in the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe, particularly in connection with the cult of Stalin and the rewriting of history. The American writer Mark Twain remarked, with considerable irony, that God had bestowed upon his countrymen three incomparable gifts: freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and the good sense never to exercise either freedom. But the “God” who bestowed that good sense was presumably the machinery of state power. The police become the limits of what one is permitted to recognise.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Writing about theft, the author Ōta Yōko 大田洋子 recalled the wartime food shortages:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I was not particularly resourceful, and in Tokyo I went hungry every day, sometimes weeping at mealtimes. I would obtain small portions of food that other people had bought on the black market. Sometimes, taking advantage of the rain, I would crouch beside a path through a field, conceal my face behind an umbrella, and steal several bunches of spinach. Even then, it was said that people who stole crops from farmers&#039; fields could be subjected to corporal punishment. But I was living near the daikon fields of Nerima, and on rainy nights I would pull large radishes from the ground. By that time I had ceased to be a respectable human being. I was quite unconcerned at the thought of being detained, since life in a cell would probably be little different from life outside.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A young man suffering from illness gave stark expression to the pain and ugliness of living.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Family — Iwamoto Toshio 岩本敏夫&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If only this child were not here—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|308|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If only Father and Mother weren&#039;t here—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Father as father, Mother as mother, Child as child,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Each thinking this way,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Now&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Only suffocating hatred&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In this same house&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
They live together.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Such mutual hostility would probably lose most of the conditions necessary for its emergence if a comprehensive system of social security were established and the necessities of life were as abundant as air. This would be an instance of the Buddhist principle that, when the necessary conditions are absent, a phenomenon cannot arise (&#039;&#039;en ketsu fushō&#039;&#039; 縁欠不生). The scarcity of nature—and especially the scarcity produced by society—awakens and intensifies human self-centredness, exclusiveness, distrust, and competition. There is an expression about diverting water toward one&#039;s own rice field. In earlier times, farmers living on opposite banks of a river might face one another with suspicion and hostility during a drought. Yet once the rain came, they would abandon their confrontation and depart. Such scenes could formerly be observed in rural Japan. Hobbes, a proponent of the view that human nature is evil, argued that people need only examine themselves to recognise that human beings are not naturally sociable animals. At night, we lock our doors; even when at home, we lock our valuables in safes. Locking the door reveals what we think of our fellow citizens, while locking the safe reveals what we think of our own children and servants. But it is doubtful whether such conditions have existed in every age.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“When the Great Way prevailed, all under heaven was held in common. The worthy and capable were selected, trust was cultivated, and harmonious relations maintained. Thus people did not regard only their own parents as parents, nor only their own children as children. The elderly had support in their final years, adults had useful employment, children had the opportunity to grow, and widowers, widows, orphans, the childless, the disabled, and the sick all received care. […] Thus conspiracies did not arise, nor did theft—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|309|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—or disorder arose. People left their outer doors open instead of closing them. This was called the Great Community.” (&#039;&#039;Book of Rites&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Raiki&#039;&#039; 礼記, “Liyun,” chapter 9.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps this represents a recollection of primitive communism. Why does what Feuerbach calls “human self-alienation”—the projection of one&#039;s own essence outside oneself—arise in the first place? It seems that competitive society based on private ownership contains within its structure some of the conditions that explain this phenomenon. Human beings under modern capitalism resemble commuters trapped in an endless transportation nightmare, or farmers who have become accustomed to guarding their vegetables at night behind barbed-wire fences against thieves. Certainly, it remains necessary to urge people who have long lived under such conditions to trust one another, refrain from pushing others aside, and abandon attachment to the self. Yet to imagine that such exhortations alone can be effective is utopian.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We have already seen that Zen&#039;s fundamental experience transcends ideology, but that when it takes concrete form as ideology, it has tended (a) to affirm the existing circumstances in which individuals find themselves and (b) to encourage service to society&#039;s structures of power. Nevertheless, accepting one&#039;s present circumstances without resistance is not necessarily blameworthy. Such acceptance can be connected with some of the deepest and most beautiful wisdom of human existence. It is for this reason that Ozaki Hotsumi&#039;s Zen-inspired contemplation, expressed in the words “Love is like a falling star,” touches the human heart. “When calamity comes, it is best to encounter calamity. When the time to die arrives, it is best to die. This is the wonderful method of escaping calamity.” (Ryōkan 良寛.) In this spirit of detached acceptance, Ozaki created and experienced the depth and beauty of human life. The assertion that what is needed is not a philosophy of interpretation but a philosophy of transformation seems to me to be the statement of Marx the revolutionary rather than Marx the human being.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet human life is not an uninterrupted series of the worst conceivable circumstances, with not even a millimetre of room for change. Finding a way to live peacefully amid what truly cannot be altered remains important for the latitude and well-being of everyday life. But to—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|310|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—live solely by this attitude, and recommend it to everyone in every circumstance, even where conditions can be changed, is properly called a deviation. To go further and produce a Zen apologetic that actively serves a mystified system of exploitation is a dreadful deviation. I believe this results from grasping Zen’s fundamental subject, “nothingness,” solely in its passive and accommodating aspect: like air or water, it has no shape but takes every shape, no colour but assumes every colour. Thinking increasingly through such comparisons, one eventually lets the metaphors govern thought, leaving aside the creative and formative power of nothingness to refuse, criticise, and resist. Capitalist society, which takes material profit-seeking as the motive force of social organisation and turns everything—even human beings—into commodities and material or instrumental human resources, is fundamentally incompatible with the radically subjective spirit of Zen. Yet Zen practitioners failed to develop the scientific understanding needed for the fundamental transformation of this system and the construction of society. They consequently confused the distinctions and equalities found in natural phenomena, in the natural sciences, in hierarchical social arrangements, and in different personal circumstances and forms of peace of mind, under the standpoint of “nonduality” between matter and mind, nature and humanity. Falling into false equality and false discrimination, they ultimately produced an unprincipled, benighted Zen that served fascism and cooperated with war. As the &#039;&#039;Inscription on Faith in Mind&#039;&#039; (&#039;&#039;Shinjinmei&#039;&#039; 信心銘) says, “If there is the slightest difference, heaven and earth are far apart.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen practice means rejecting every idol, including the cult of individual personality; abandoning regrets about the past and anxieties about the future; and devoting oneself wholeheartedly to shaping life in the present. That life must contribute, directly or indirectly, to the realisation of a genuinely human society in which “each lives for all, and all live for each.” Zen practice consists in penetrating the emptiness of attachment to self through the creation of such a life. In this sense, Zen&#039;s fundamental subject constitutes the underlying ground of human living—not only the everyday activities expressed in the saying “When you encounter tea, drink tea; when you encounter rice, eat rice”—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|311|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—but also the underlying ground of struggles against war and for independence and liberation. The Zen saying about cultivating one’s own field and preparing and eating one’s rice (&#039;&#039;Book of Serenity&#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;Shōyōroku&#039;&#039; 従容録, Case 21) concerns a life directly joined to society’s material foundation. To devote oneself wholly to such productive life is also to form oneself through ideas aimed at transforming the ideological superstructure and the social order.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Zen monasteries, collective activity directed toward the environment and its transformation is called &#039;&#039;samu&#039;&#039; 作務, or work practice. What overcomes the unhappy combination of pure intentions with impoverished or even contradictory results is the practical attitude expressed in such work. This is not a poetic attitude but a prosaic one: a lucid, constructive spirit that breaks through subjective absorption and intoxication through rational, experimental engagement with its objects. When such a spirit acts upon society and political institutions as historically constituted environments, seeking to cultivate and reconstruct them, the world toward which it ultimately strives is, in accordance with Zen&#039;s fundamental qualities of selflessness, nonpossession, and autonomy, a borderless world society organised through free communism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Once the truth of the world beyond has vanished, it is history’s task to establish the truth of this world. After the sacred form of human self-alienation has been unmasked, the first task of philosophy in the service of history is to unmask self-alienation in its unholy forms. The criticism of heaven thereby becomes the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology the criticism of politics.” (Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction.”)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In my view, to establish the truth of this world after the disappearance of the truth of the beyond is to overcome religious faith in another world and to realise a society of free communism, in which all people are emancipated from exploitation and oppression as well as from the ego of exclusive self-attachment. In the direct and indirect activities of everyday life, this requires that one fully participate in sitting when sitting, in walking when walking, and in each task when engaged in it, as Tōrei Enji 東嶺円慈 teaches in &#039;&#039;Shūmon mujintō ron&#039;&#039; 宗門無尽灯論—relinquishing regret and anxious anticipation and emptying attachment to self. The fact that even Stalin—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|312|original|IH56ZTM}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—could apparently not truly become “his own master” (Engels, &#039;&#039;Socialism: Utopian and Scientific&#039;&#039;) is neither so harmless nor so trivial that it can be dismissed as merely one of the “birthmarks” of the old social order. Put differently, we must find a way for Ozaki Hotsumi’s Zen equanimity to permeate the activity of establishing a Buddha land in the sense just described. What is called “practice amid activity” (&#039;&#039;dōchū no kufū&#039;&#039; 動中の工夫), superior to “practice amid stillness” (&#039;&#039;jōchū no kufū&#039;&#039; 静中の工夫)—seated meditation in a quiet place—must mean diligence in precisely this kind of life. It entails arousing the aspiration for enlightenment (&#039;&#039;bodaishin&#039;&#039; 菩提心) to establish a Buddha land and recognising that one must “shoulder sentient beings as a heavy burden,” while oneself being among those sentient beings. Since Zen has already rejected “the sacred form of human self-alienation,” what remains is to recognise and overcome its profane forms through an investigation of one’s own fundamental concern (&#039;&#039;koji kyūmei&#039;&#039; 己事究明) that empties egoism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“To leave flowers to the wind and birds to their proper time is also the meritorious work of giving. […] To set out boats and provide bridges is likewise the perfection of giving. If one truly studies giving, both accepting the body and relinquishing the body are acts of giving. Cultivating fields and engaging in productive occupations are, from the outset, nothing other than giving.” (Dōgen, “Bodaisatta shishōbō” 菩提薩埵四摂法)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Zen master Yongming Qian (Eimei Sen 永明潜) addressed the assembly: “The Buddha-Dharma is plainly manifest. Why do you not understand it? If you wish to understand the Buddha-Dharma, ask Zhang San and Li Si. If you wish to understand worldly affairs, inquire in the monasteries of the ancient buddhas.” (*Zenmon kōan taisei* 禅門公案大成)The Zen master Yongming Qian addressed the assembly: “The Buddha-Dharma is plainly manifest. Why do you fail to understand it? If you want to understand the Buddha-Dharma, inquire of Zhang San and Li Si [ordinary people]. If you want to understand worldly affairs, inquire in the monasteries of the ancient buddhas.” (&#039;&#039;Zenmon kōan taisei&#039;&#039; 禅門公案大成.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What unity of practice and theory must we develop in order to establish a modern way of learning Zen from the working masses, and learning the principles of society from Zen communities? I welcome instruction from all quarters.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
This translation is based on Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦, “Zen to Marukushizumu” 禅とマルキシズム (1956), as reproduced in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集, vol. 2, &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; 禅と現代思想 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), 293–312. The original publication venue has not been established in this edition. The Japanese transcription and this translation are working scholarly texts; historical quotations and some character-level readings remain subject to further collation. Original printed paragraph and page divisions have been retained where recoverable.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Citation ==&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen. “Zen and Marxism” (1956). Translated from “Zen to Marukushizumu” 禅とマルキシズム, &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039;, vol. 2 (1993), 293–312. &#039;&#039;Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;, [[IH56ZTM-T]].&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM&amp;diff=1227</id>
		<title>IH56ZTM</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM&amp;diff=1227"/>
		<updated>2026-10-09T15:29:08Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」}}&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;禅とマルキシズム&#039;&#039;&#039;（1956年）は、市川白弦の論考。本稿は『市川白弦著作集』第2巻（1993年）、293–312頁所収の本文に基づく作業用翻刻である。&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;English translation:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH56ZTM-T|Zen and Marxism]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 目次 ==&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#一 イデオロギー以前|一　イデオロギー以前]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#二 イデオロギーとしての禅（上）|二　イデオロギーとしての禅（上）]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#三 イデオロギーとしての禅（下）|三　イデオロギーとしての禅（下）]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#四 人間の自己疎外とその恢復|四　人間の自己疎外とその恢復]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 本文 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|293}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 一　イデオロギー以前 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
フォイエルバッハは宗教の本質を人間の本質に解消する。しかしながら人間の本質は、なんら個々の個人に内在するところの抽象体ではない。（マルクス「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
唐末五代の禅僧清涼文益に門弟慧超がいった。「慧超があなたにただします。仏とは何でありますか」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
師「お前は慧超だ」（『碧巌録』、第七則）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅の本質を人間に解消したフォイエルバッハ（一八〇四―一八七二）を思わせる対話である。ひとは宗教において廻り道して人間の本質にかえるのだ、とフォイエルバッハは考えているが、慧超はこの場合、仏を自分のそとに、いわゆる自己疎外のかたちでまとめたのではない。「慧超があなたにただします」という自信のある態度がここにある。「汝は是れ慧超」といわれて、宗教の本質を人間に解消するみちを自覚したのではない。さようなことははじめから問題になっていないのだ。師もまた「仏の本質は君の本質である」など&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|294}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
といったのではない。そのようなことなら本をよめばたくさんある。慧超と清涼とはたんなる意味の世界にいるのではない。それゆえ「言前の一句」という。「黒漆桶裏に墨汁を盛る」（『種電鈔』）という。対象論理の触手でつかまれるようなものではない。「清涼の答処、正面驀直」（『拈評三百則』）と道元は評している。天地一枚の汝は是れ慧超。意味が光り発するその場において、意味を底に超えた無我の全体作用をじかにとらえることを、この対話は要求している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
清涼のもとに監院（役名）の則という者があった。一度も参禅しないので、いったいどうしたのか、と師がたずねた。則「わたくしはまえに青林和尚のところでさとっているのです」。師「では、そのさとったところをいってみるがよい」。則「わたくしが仏とは何でありますかとたずねると、丙丁童子来って火を求む、と示されたのです」。師「お前はまちがっているようだ。もっといってみるがいい」。則「丙丁はヒノエ・ヒノトですから火にぞくします。火の子供が火を求める、つまりわたくしがほんらい仏であるのに、これをそとにむかって求めていたのだ、求める者じたいが仏である、ということをさとったのです」。師「やっぱりお前はまちがっていたのだ」。則は不満であった。こんな師匠ではつまらぬと考え、身仕度をしてそこを去った。弟子たちに師匠がいった「おしいことだ。もしあれが帰ってきたなら救われるが、帰らなかったら見込みはあるまい」。旅をしながら、則は反省していた。あの和尚は世にもまれな高僧だといわれている、しかもみだりにおれをだましたのではあるまい、けっきょく、おれの方がどうまちがったのだ、もういちど教えを乞うことにしよう。ついにもとの道をひきかえして清涼に参じた。師「じゃあ、お前さん、わしに問うがよい、答えてあげよう」。則「仏とは何でありますか」。師「丙丁童子来って火を求む！」。則、言下に大悟した。信仰は人間の自己疎外であるとか、人は神を愛することにおいて人間の本質を愛するのだとか、神学の秘密は人間学であるとかいったような、たんなる解釈学のやりとりがここにあるのではない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|295}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
上堂に云わく、赤肉団上に一無位の真人あり。常に汝等諸人の面門より出入す。いまだ証拠（さとる）せざらん者は、看よ、看よ。時に僧あり、出でて問う。如何なるかこれ無位の真人。師、禅牀を下って把住（とらえる）して云く、道え、道え。その僧擬議（まごつく）す。師、托開（つきはなす）して云く、無位の真人、何の乾屎橛（不潔な物）ぞ、といって、すなわち方丈に帰る。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
これは人間の本質を「個々の個人に内在する」ものとみているようであるが、じつはそうではない。「心外に法無し、内もまた不可得なり」（『臨済録』）。個人に内在する人間をそのまま肯定するヒューマニズムは、禅ではない。真人の面目を問われて、唐僧香厳智閑は「猢猻裏の眼睛」と答えた。近代思想の中心概念、ヒューマニティが成立する足場を空じたところでの創造である。「通玄峰上、是れ人間にあらず。心外無法、満目青山」（『天台徳韶』）。そして「無位の真人がもしも個人に内在する抽象体であるならば、あのはつらつとしたはたらき、師の黄檗をして「この気狂いめ、ここへやって来て虎のヒゲをなでおったわい！」と舌をまかせた自由がうまれるわけがない。「随処に主となり」「真正の見解を求取して天下に向って横行す」という禅的生活に、「宗教はただ人間が自己みずからを中心にして働くようになるまでの間だけ、人間の周囲をめぐる幻想的太陽にすぎない」「宗教は涙の谷の後光であり」「抑圧された生物の嘆息である」（マルクス「ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説」）と評価されるような手がかりはないといえよう。マルクスはこの稿の初めにかかげた言葉につづいて「その現実においては、人間の本質は社会的諸関係の総体である」と書いている。マルキシズムは抽象体としての人間の本質と現実としての人間の本質のほかに、もしくはそれらを底に超えて、禅の基礎経験である「人」をみていないのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
定、上座あり、到り参ず。問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師、縄牀を下って擒住（とらえる）して一掌を与えてすなわち托開す。定、佇立す。傍らの僧いわく、定上座、なんぞ礼拝せざる。定、礼拝する&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|296}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
にあたって、忽然として大悟す。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような悟りが、社会の物質的生活の諸条件、すなわちそれぞれの時代の経済的構造を現実の基礎として、それによって規定せられる上部構造としての「イデオロギー」でないことはあきらかである。唐のなかごろ、洞庭湖のほとりに薬山の惟儼禅師があった。ながいあいだ何も説法しないので、院主がうながしていった、「皆の者が久しく和尚の説示をのぞんでおります。どうか一度説法なさって下さい」。師「それならば出頭の鐘を打て」。鐘が鳴って一同出頭におよぶと、薬山は高座に上って、しばらくだまっていたが、そのまま座を下って方丈に帰ってしまった。院主はあっけにとられて、さっそく和尚を追いかけていった。「和尚はさきほど私の願いをいれて下さったではありませんか。どうして何もおっしゃらないのですか」。薬山は答えていった、「経には専門の経師があり、論には論師がある。わしが説法しなくても不思議はないじゃないか」（『従容録』、第七則）。「諸人いまだ法堂に到らざるに、すでに三十棒を喫し了れり」と道元はしめしている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
上堂、僧問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師払子を竪起す。僧便ち喝す。師便ち打つ。又僧問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師亦払子を竪起す。僧便ち喝す。師亦喝す。僧擬議す。師便ち打つ。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この場合、すべてのイデオロギーは、白熱の熔鉱に落ちる淡雪にもひとしい。「光影を弄する底の人を識取せよ」（『臨済録』）。イデオロギーを形成する主体をつかめという。「古人いわく、説いて一物に似れば、即ち中らず」と。汝ただ自家に看よ。さらに何かあらん。説もまた尽くることなし」（『臨済録』）。イデオロギーをかぎりなく拒否する主体は、イデオロギーをかぎりなく形成する主体でもある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|297}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 二　イデオロギーとしての禅（上） ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人間がその人間性、その本体をとりもどすことができるただ一つの方法は、「一切の宗教的表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく、人間自身への、決然として正当な復帰によることである。（エンゲルス『イギリスにおける労働者の状態』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一切の宗教的表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく人間自身への決然として正当な復帰ということを、人間の自己疎外すなわち貧乏とドレイ化を克服しようとするプロレタリアートというかたち、プロレタリア・ヒューマニズムというかたちにおいてでなく――と言い切るのは一面的だと私は考えるのだが――「脚下照顧すなわち人間性を底に超える」というかたちにおいて実現するものが禅である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
師、衆に示して云く、仏の一字、われ聞くことを喜ばず。（『趙州録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
汝もし仏を求めば、仏魔に摂せられん。（中略）却って境に乗ずる底の人を見るに、これ諸仏の玄旨なり。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
フォイエルバッハは宗教的自己疎外、即ち一の宗教的なものと一の現世的なものとへの世界の二重化の事実から出発する。（『フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
天国や彼岸の世界は、禅者にとって、泣く子をだまらかす木の葉ッパでありカゲロウであった。かえってカゲロウを追いかける「人」をつかむならば、現実の世界がそのまま生きるに値する実在の世界だというのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
光影を弄する底の人を識取せよ。これ諸仏の本源。一切処これ道流（修道者）帰舎の処なり。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人の世を作ったものは神でもなければ鬼でもない。矢張り向ふ三軒両隣りにちらつくする唯の人であ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|298}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
る。唯の人が作った人の世が住みにくいからとて、越す国はあるまい。あれば人でなしの国へ行く許りだ。人でなしの国は人の世よりも猶住みにくかろう。（夏目漱石『草枕』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
汝諸方より来る者、皆これ有心にして仏を求め法を求め解脱を求め三界を出離せんことを求む。痴人、汝、三界を出でていずれの処に去らんと要す。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「宗教は顚倒した世界意識である」（『ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説』）といわれるが、「到り得て帰り来れば別事無し、廬山は煙雨、浙江は潮」（蘇東坡）という世界のどこに「顚倒」がみられるであろう。レーニンはゴーリキーへの手紙のなかで、「搾取者に対する闘争における被搾取者の無力が、不可避的に彼岸におけるよりよき生活への信仰をみちびきだす」といっているが、おなじ階級的搾取の社会において、禅は意識的に彼岸への信仰を否定したのである。現実的世界の宗教的反映による世界の二重化、「現実的基礎が自分自身から浮き上って、一つの独立の王国として雲界に定着する」という事態が、この場合、おなじ中世紀身分社会においておこらなかったばかりでなく、積極的に拒否されたのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実的世界の宗教的反映は、総じて実践的な日常生活の諸関係が、人々に対して、かれら相互間および対自然のすき透るような、理性的な・諸関連を日常的に表示するに至るや、はじめて消滅する。社会的生活過程すなわち物質的生産過程の姿態は、それが自由に社会を構成している人々の産物として、かれらの意識的な計画的統制のもとに立つに至るや、はじめてその神秘的な覆い衣をぬぎすてる。（『資本論』第一部、第一篇、第一章、第四節）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実の世界の宗教的反映は、実践的な日常生活の諸関係が人々にたいして、かれら相互間および対自然のすきとおるような理性的な諸関係を誰の目にもあきらかにするまでになっていない世界において、いいかえれば、社会がすべての人間を自己疎外から解放し、すべての生産手段を所有し、計画的に行使するに至&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|299}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
っていない中世社会において、すべての禅者たちによって、広範囲にわたって阻止されたのである。すくなくともこのかぎりにおいて、民衆の阿片としての性格はここにはなかったといっていい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 三　イデオロギーとしての禅（下） ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
イデオロギーとしての禅が社会的に問題となるのは、それの形而上的な部面ではなくて、むしろ国民大衆の日常の現実の生活との交渉のなかで、禅の体現者としての禅者（もしくは禅宗の教団）がその世界観、人生観にもとづく言葉と行動において、人倫の問題、処世の心がまえについて、どのような態度をとるかという点にある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
分限を見わけてその性を知れ。（中略）柳は緑、花は紅。（鈴木正三『盲安杖』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
道徳の微妙は無声無臭に始まりて礼儀三百威儀三千に終る。礼儀三百威儀三千に窮りて無声無臭に帰る。（中略）これを明暗双々底という。（今北洪川『禅海一瀾』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
たとひ悪しき主人に仕へてのがるるところなくとも、更に主人の科にあらず。先世の我が業因と観ぜば、却ってはらにあらずや。或は一生病人となる盲目非人となりて朝夕苦しむ人多し。かやうのものは誰が咎なりと云ふや、ひとへにわが咎なり。かへすがへすもあやまることなく、万事を放下して忠孝の道に入るべし。（『盲安杖』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
仏道は人々脚跟下ぢゃ。自己を忘れて其物に成り切る外はない。君と臣の道あきらけき日の本の国は動かじ万代までも。明治天皇の御製ぢゃ。肝に銘じておくがよい。忠孝の外に禅はない。（飯田欓隠『槐安国語提唱録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
封建的身分社会の人倫を支持し強化することが、禅的基礎づけをもつ自発的なものである以上、禅者がこ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|300}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
の線にそって積極的な行動を鼓舞するのは当然である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ボンヤリ禅は禁物だ、緊張し切って坐るのである。富士山が東海の天に突っ立ったような気持になって、更に云えば地球を座蒲団として天地の間に吾輩一人のみだ、という気持になって只坐ればよいのだ。坐禅は何のためにするのか。無上道を体現するにあり、大悟大徹するにあり、定力を練って随処に自在力を得るにある。無上道とは維摩の大道にあり、大悟大徹とは維摩の大道を悟るのであり、随処に自在力を得るとは、日本人は日本人に安住し活動することである。（原田祖岳『日本精神と大乗禅』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
国民教育の目標が大君のためシノウ、タメシテ滅私奉公するにあるとすれば、各臣民が各々の職域の学修、修行において、かくの如き無作の妙用を体得するに向って進むのでなければ、その実を充分にあげることはできない。（伊藤康安『沢庵和尚と教育』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
すべての木はその果実によって知られる、という言葉があるが、脱俗的なそしてイデオロギーをこえた禅の本質は、平常心のイデオロギーにおいて、このような果実をむすんだ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教は一旦形成されると、つねに伝統的な素材を包含しており、そしていうまでもなく、伝統的なものはイデオロギーの領域において、ひとつの大きな保守的な力である。（エンゲルス『フォイエルバッハ論』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅的な無心の境地においてなされることは、外からみて同じことを繰り返しているようであっても、実質においてはつねに生新であるという見解、「一回挙すれば一回新なり」という見解は、それはそれで正しいのだが、しかもここに創造的な禅が惰性的、因襲的、保守的となる根本契機がある。因習も因習のなかへはいって行動してみると、それ相応の味わいがあるということがひとつの魅力となった。伝統が創造においてうけつがれることが忘れられ、生きたものを生きた形でうけつぐかわりに、死んだ形でうけつごうとしたのである。このような保守性がイデオロギーの領域において、無批判にかつ自発的に階級支配に奉仕するのは&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|301}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
自然のいきおいである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
支配階級の思想は、いずれの時代においても支配的な思想である。いいかえるならば、社会の支配的な物質的力であるところの階級が、同時にその社会の支配的な精神的力である。物質的生産のための諸手段を支配する階級は、それによって同時に精神的生産のための諸手段を支配し、かくしてそれによって同時におしなべて精神的生産のための諸手段を欠いた人々の思想は、この階級に隷従させられることになる。（マルクス・エンゲルス「ドイツ・イデオロギー」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
うがちすぎた見かたをするならば、「八紘一宇」の理念に「倫理的」頂点をもつ帝国主義の世界政策が、その宗教的反映を「緊張し切って地球を座蒲団として坐る」という気がまえのうちに見出した、といえるかもしれない。祭政一致の国家体制において、国防・戦争が宗教的衣裳をつける場合、森厳性をもつ国家権力に、私心をすて生命をかけて帰順する態度になりきれないことに、宗教的な罪の意識をもつという事実も、過去においてまれではなかった。天皇の「無的性格」について、一君万民制の「一即多」としての深玄性について、「聖戦」の道徳的精神について、心をくだいた人々もあった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
私たちは戦争に感情を擦り減らして泣かなくなった世代だと言われるそうである。それは或いは事実かもしれない。しかし天皇と、そのために死んだ多くの人たちのことを考える時、私は不甲斐ないことだが思わず声が顫えてくる。九死に一生を得て、今は平和なサラリーマンである歴戦のパイロットなどと一緒に飲んで、その晩寝つけなかったりすると、私は死んだ戦友たちの顔が目の前にちらついて、いっそう眠れなくなる。（村上兵衛「戦中派はこう考える」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
生きることは喜びであり希望である。また苦しみであり失望である。苦悩と失望に対処する方法はさまざまであるが、永続的根本的なものとして、人生最悪の事態にやすんじて対処する生きかたがもとめられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|302}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この場合、超越的な絶対者もしくは彼岸の世界を信じないものが、たどろうとするひとつの道がある。それは、特定の意欲、希望、当為をかたくまもって、このものの実現のためにあくまでもきそいたたかうという身がまえ心がまえを、その足場から空じさって、当面するその場その場の事態をそのままにうけいれ、これと一枚になる生きかたである。柳におけば緑となり花におけば紅となる無色の露のように、朝には朝をうつし夜には夜をうつす鏡のように、来るものをこばまず去るものを追わず、住めば都、悲しさにいて悲しさをあるじとし寂しさにいて寂しさをあるじとする、宇宙的な「然り」において生きる態度である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
其物に成り切り自己を忘ずる時、誰も皆天地一枚の者ぢゃと云ふことが分ってくる。この上望みやうがないではないか。望めばいつも不足である、煩悶である。俗歌の、上見れば及ばぬ事の多かりき、は望上心の非を悟ったのぢゃ。笠著てくらせ己が心に、は分上に豊かなることを知って安住ができたのぢゃ。（飯田欓隠、前掲書）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実の社会は身分・階級による差別の世界である。このような差別の世界に憎愛の心をからませ個我の意識をはりつめるならば、不満と焦躁はつのるばかりであろう。そこで、差別を差別のままにうけいれて、こばむことなくおぼれることがなければ、あくぐ心はおのずから消え、つきつめた思いは蒸発して、いたみなやむなかにも風に別調のなかに吹かるということになる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
差別を無視して山も川も貴も賤も一つにすると、それこそ撥無因果ぢゃ、世の荘厳は去って殺風景ぢゃ。偏中正（差別の中の平等）が入用の処ぢゃ。兎角一法に偏堕したらみな落第ぢゃ。元来水の上の波ぢゃ。やから偏堕されぬ答ぢゃ。心をば水の如くに持ち成して、方と円とを物に任せん。（飯田欓隠、前掲書）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「住する処なくして其の心を生ず」（『金剛経』）、「一心生ぜざれば万法咎なし」（『信心銘』）、「上善は水のごとし、それただ争わず、故に咎なし」（『老子道徳経』）といった不争、順応の哲学がこのようにして生まれた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|303}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
彼岸の秩序をみとめなかった禅は、此岸の秩序をじかにみとめる道をひらいた。地上における身分上の地位が、天上における霊魂の地位を規定するのでなく、宗教的＝形而上的視点からみられた自然界の秩序が、人間社会の秩序を聖化することになった。あるいはむしろ人間社会の秩序がその宗教的＝形而上的反映を自然界の秩序に見出すことによって、逆にみずからを聖化し、このようにしてアジア的寛容＝アジア的安心の道を骨格づける宇宙論が形成された。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一に曰く、和を以て貴しとなす。忤ふことなきを宗となす。（中略）三に曰く、詔を承けては必ず謹しめ。君は則ち天也、臣は則ち地也。天は覆い地は載す。四時順行し万気通ずることを得。地、天を覆わんと欲すれば、則ち壊るることを致すのみ。是を以て君の言うところ臣承け、上の行うところ下靡く。故に詔を承けては必ず謹しめ。謹しまざれば自ら敗れん。（『十七条憲法』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
出陣する青年たちが生死の問題を天皇に帰一する草莽す屍、水漬く屍のみちにおいて解決しようと苦闘した方向は、遠い過去からの傾斜をもっていた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人生に処するいまひとつの方法に、達観の生活がある。人間生活の究極の意義もしくは最高の価値という視点に立って、歴史的現実の基本的な性格と動向とを全体にわたって諦観・批判するとともに、この諦観において人生を生きる態度である。哲人とか聖賢とかよばれる人々はこのような生活の実践者であり、ひとが人生を総合的・根本的に観察し、この洞察にしたがって生きようとするかぎり、多かれ少なかれ達観的な立場に立たざるを得ないであろう。時間に追われる熱病的な日常に、人生の展望をさわやかにきりひらくものは達人の智慧である。生きることの感銘をみがき苦痛を浄化するあの大肯定の智慧と、この達観の智慧とは、東洋が生んだ深い世界観の両面である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら達観の道は、ほとんどつねに世界の現実にたいする高みの見物におわるものである。社会&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|304}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
悪、政治悪と、それをあらためてよりよい世界を実現しようとする実践とをふたつながら達観して、手をよごさないでおく生活をまもることになる。社会の矛盾、不合理をそのままよしとしてゆるすのではないが、しかしこれをあらためようとする目標と設計とが不徹底であるばかりでなく、あらためようとする行動そのものが依然として世俗的人間の執着に染められたものであり、したがってそれ自体がまず根本的に浄化されなくてはならぬと見るのである。自由にして平和な世界への階級をきずくために、大衆が智慧とエネルギーとを結集し行使することは、もとよりナンセンスではなく、世俗的な意味においてたしかに価値のあることであるが、しかしそれはかりそめにも道に志すものが参加するにあたいすることがらではない。おしなべてそれは人間的妄執のはからいであり、有漏雑染の業にほかならない。まもらねばならず、つらぬかねばならぬ一線は、理論と実践の徹底と純潔である。このような信念のうえにゆるぎなく坐するものが達人の達観である。主体的自覚における社会悪の否認と、客観的事実におけるそれの是認とを、かたくむすぶ生活態度によって、権力の搾取機構に奉仕し、その生活の品位と平安とをまもることができる。完全趣味――「うわべは崇高でも実は卑怯な、行動の放棄」（ルカーチ）――とよばれるものがここにある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
政治的権力にたいする積極的な協力の哲学と消極的な協力の哲学とをみてきたのであるが、この二つは必ずしも別のものではなく、社会的状況の変化に応じて自由にその心を生ずるのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教的情操はひとつの社会的産物である。（「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ながいあいだ禅者の意識・行動をうらづけてきた「易経」的世界観、自然の秩序と人間の秩序とを共通の原理においてとらえる汎道徳的コスモロジーは、いわゆるアジア的生産様式を土台とするアジア的停滞によって、多かれ少なかれ規定され性格づけられていたであろう。この部面の考察はべつにゆずって、禅者の個人的な社会関係について考えよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|305}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ひとりの禅者がその時代の国内的および国際的な権力機構のなかへ、どのような位置づけにおいてくみこまれているか、権力中枢とどのような距離と脈絡を保っているか、そしてこの事態との関連においてどのような交友圏をもっているかということが、かれの生活形態を規定し、その生活形態はその生活のセンス、モラル、政治性等々を制約している。そしてこの連関、照応、制約の構造がくまなく透明に自覚せられていないことが、イデオロギーの特色である。したがって禅者自身の意識においてはまったく自主的である判断・行動が、現実においてはこの社会的連関の仕組によって規定されているのがつねである。「話せばわかる」はずの見解のちがいが、多くの場合その解消がひどく困難であるのは、両者の入りこんでいる社会関係のラインないしシステムがくいちがっており、そのくいちがいが論理のくいちがいを制約していることがまれではないからである。考えかたをあらためるためには、時としては自分がとりむすんでいるこれまでの社会関係を解体して、べつの系列にくみ直さねばならず、同時にそのことは自分の生活を破壊しかねないのである。このことにたいする半ば無意識の不安と生活の惰性とが、ものの見かた考えかた、行動のしかたを規定しかつそれをかたくなにするのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 四　人間の自己疎外とその恢復 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人間の本質は、その現実においては、社会的諸関係の総体である。（「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれは封建社会の拘束からわれわれを個人として解放し放擲している競闘的私有制社会のなかに、この社会体制の存続強化のためにくみたてられた、かずかずの制約にまもられかつしばられて生きている。個人の「自由」と責任において、限られた幸福への手段をめざして、競闘しなければならぬ世界になげだされている。たとえていえば、五分間の停車時間のうちに、超満員の列車にのりこもうとして、力道山の仲間と&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|306}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
小児麻痺の男たちが、一つの入口、一つの窓口をめがけてひしめきあうといった状況のなかで、われわれは生きている。正規の入口がつまっているなら、窓口からもぐりこまねばならず、時と場合によっては屋根によじのぼり扉にへばりつかなくてはならぬ。風采をととのえエチケットをおもんじ謙譲の徳をまもっていたなら、発車の時刻がきて、どの列車にもとりのこされるほかはない、といった交通地獄のなかにいるようなものである。他人がのりこむことは自分がとりのこされることであり、自分がのりこむことは他人がとりのこされることである。この矛盾の合理的な解決はいかにして可能であるか、などと考えているうちに発車のベルが鳴ってしまう。そして自分の目的地にいる、関係の人々のプログラムもこわれてしまう。自分だけの不幸におわるのではない。同じ事情は、ここにひしめきあっているほとんどすべての人々に共通している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
あけてもくれても試験やテストの連続である。青春がしめ出されるだけではない。人間までもしめ出されかねない。なぜならばはげしい試験にパスするためには、友情などといっていられない。級友のつまずきはすなわちわが身の幸運となりかねないからだ。ぬけがけをしたい。試験前には知っていることも知らないといって、友人には教えない。級友が試験の日に電車に乗りおくれるか、病気になるかすればいい。ある学生は「友だちが死ねばいいと思った」と告白した。文字通り地獄ではないか。おそろしいことだ。こういうおそろしい心になった青年が東大に入り、入社試験の時にさらに一層おそろしい鬼になり、そして社会に出てからそれが習性になって、他人の不幸を祈るようになるとしたら、どうであろう。（本多顕彰『現代の青春』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
就職を指導する担任教師の悩みをきいたことがある。教室では憲法はあくまで守らねばならぬことを学習したが、入社試験の場合にはそれをハッキリ答えないがよい、自分がどの政党を支持するにしても、尋ねられたら保守党の名をあげたがよかろう、などと助言をしなければならぬという矛盾である。同じことは私自&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|307}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
身についてもいうことができる。式場において勅語を読みちがえた校長がクビになり、ご真影を焼失した宿直の教師が自殺するといった社会にたいして、私は一言の抗議もしなかったばかりでなく、不潔な戦争と知りながら「聖戦」に協力したのであり、不妄語戒をまもるどころか曲学のことばをあやつり、「行かんと要すれば即ち行き、坐せんと要すれば即ち坐す」（『臨済録』）といった自由はゆめにもえられなかったのである。――ソ連邦ならびに東欧諸国にもおなじ虚妄があったことを、スターリン崇拝、歴史の編集などに関して情報がつたえている。アメリカの作家マーク・トウェーンは半ば皮肉に「神はわが国民にこの上もない三つの贈物をあたえ給うた。それは思想の自由、言論の自由、そしてこの自由を決して使わないという良識である」といったが、この良識をあたえた「神」は、国家権力の機構であろう。警察が認識の限界となるのだ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
盗みについて、作家大田洋子氏は戦時の食糧難のころを回想している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
要領のよくない私は、東京で毎日空腹をみたされなくて、食事のとき涙をだしたりしていました。人が闇で買ったものをまた少しずつわけてもらったりしていたけれど、あるときは雨を幸いに畑の小径にしゃがんで傘で顔をかくし、ほうれん草をいく束かぬすんだりしたのです。その時分すでに農家の畑のものをぬすむと体刑にされるということでしたが、ちょうど練馬の大根畑の傍に住んでいましたから、雨の夜陰に大きな大根をひきぬいてきたりしたのです。そのころからまともな人間でなくなり、留置場へ入れられたところで、外の暮しとたいして変りはないのだろうと思って平気でありました。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
病にあるひとりの青年は生きることのつらさ、みにくさを浮きぼりにしていった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
家族　　岩本敏夫&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
コノ子サエイナケレバ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|308}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
父ト母サエイナケレバ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
父ハ父デ　母ハ母デ　子ハ子デ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ソウオモイツメテ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
イマハ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
息ヅマル憎シミダケガ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
オナジ一ツノ家ニ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
クラシテイル&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような反目は、もしも完全な社会保障制度が確立し、生活に必要な物資が空気のように豊富であるとしたら、その成立する条件の大半を失うであろう。仏教にいう「縁欠不生」となるであろう。自然のリンショクとそしてとくに社会のリンショクが人間の自己中心、排他、不信、競闘をよびさましかきたてている。わが田へ水をひくという言葉があるが、ひとつの川をさしはさんで不信と敵意をもって対峙していたひでりの時期の農民たちが、一度雨が降れば対峙をといてたち去ることは、むかし田舎にみられる現象であった。性悪説の論者ホッブスは、人間が非社会的動物であることは自分を反省してみればわかる。われわれは夜眠るときには扉に錠をおろし、自分の家にいる時でさえ金庫にカギをかける。扉にカギをかけるのは市民仲間にたいして、金庫にカギをかけるのは自分の子供や召使いにたいして、自分がどのような意見をもっているかを証拠だてるものだといったが、かようなことがらがいつの時代にも存在するかどうかは疑問である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
大道の行われしや、天下を公となし、聖と能とを選び、信を講じ、睦を脩む。故に人独りその親を親とせず、独り其子を子とせず、老終る所あり、壮用うる所あり、幼長ずる所あり、矜寡（妻をなくした老人）孤独（父をなくした幼児）廃疾者、みな養う所あらしむ。（中略）この故に謀は閉じておこらず、盗&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|309}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
窃乱賊はすなわちおこらず、故に外戸（戸をあけたまま）にして閉じず。これを大同という。（『礼記』、礼運第九）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
おそらくこれは原始共産体への回想であろう。フォイエルバッハのいう「人間の自己疎外」、自分の本質を自分の外に投げだすということがどうしておこるのか。そのわけがらのいくつかを明らかにするものを、競闘的私有制社会が構造的にもっていると考えられる。永遠の交通地獄におちこんだ通勤者、もしくは有刺鉄線をはりめぐらした中で、野菜どろぼうの夜番をする習性をかためてしまった農民のような状況に、現代資本制社会の人間はおかれている。私有制度のむかしからこの状況におかれてきた人間にむかって、人を信ぜよ、人をおしのけるな、我執をすてよと説きすすめることはもちろん必要であるが、ただそれだけで効果をあげられると考えるのは空想的である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれはさきに、禅の基礎体験がイデオロギーを超えること、それがイデオロギーとして具体化する場合には、（イ）自分がおかれている現在の状況を肯定すること、および、（ロ）社会の権力機構への奉仕を説きすすめる傾向をしめしたことを知った。ところで、自分がおかれている現在の状況をすなおにうけいれることは、必ずしも非難すべきことがらではない。それは人生のもっとも深く美しい叡智につながっている。「愛情はふる星のごとく」の尾崎秀実の禅的諦観がひとの心をうつのはそのためである。「災難に逢ふ時節には災難に逢ふがよく候。死ぬる時節には死ぬがよく候。これはこれ災難をのがるる妙法にて候」（良寛）。尾崎はこのような諦観において、人生の深さ美しさを創造し享受した。必要なものは解釈の哲学ではなくて変革の哲学だというのは、人間マルクスの言葉であるよりも、革命家マルクスの言葉であると考えたい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら人間の生活は、改作の余地が一ミリもない最悪の事態の連続ではない。最悪の事態にやすんじて生きる道をきりひらくことは、日々の生活のゆとりと健康のためにも、重要な問題である。しかしあら&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|310}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ゆる場合にこの態度だけで生きること、この態度だけをすべての人間のあらゆる状況について説きすすめることは、「偏向だ」といっていい。まして神話的搾取体制に進んで奉仕する禅論をうちだすにいたっては、すさまじい偏向である。思うにこれは、禅の根本主体である「無」を、形なくしてあらゆる形となり、色なくしてすべての色になる空気か水のような受動、包容の一面においてとらえ――譬喩をもって考えているうちに、いつのまにか譬喩が考えを支配するようになる――それの創造的造形力としての拒絶、批判、抵抗の方面を捨象した結果である。物質的な利潤の追求を社会構成の動力とし、あらゆるものを、人間そのものをさえも商品化し、物的・手段的な人的資源とする資本制社会と、根源的に主体的な禅精神とは、もともと相容れないものである。したがってこの体制の根本的変革のための科学的認識を、仏土建設のために禅者は学びとらねばならぬはずである。ところが過度の達観主義が、客体的な物の構造、法則を認識しようとする意志を蒸発させたのである。そのために物と心、自然と人間とをつねに「一如・不二」の視点からとらえる習性をかため、自然現象における差別と平等、自然科学的現象における差別と平等、形而上学的意味における差別と平等、社会体制の中での人間の階層的な差別と平等、境遇の差別と安心の一貫性としての平等、これらのものをたがいに混同して悪平等、悪差別の誤認におちいり、ついにはファシズムに奉仕し、戦争にも協力する無節操な暗禅となり、「毫釐も差あれば天地はるかに隔たる」（『信心銘』）ことになった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
個人崇拝はもとよりのこと、あらゆる偶像を拒否し、過去への愚痴と未来への取越苦労をぬぎすてて、現在の生活形成――直接にまたは間接に、真実の人類社会「一人は万人のために、万人は一人のために」生きる世界の実現に寄与する生活形成――に純一無雑となり、この生活創造において我執の空に徹することが、禅の実践である。禅の根本主体はこの意味における人間生活の底辺――いわば生活全体にしみとおる底辺――である。茶に遇うては茶を喫し飯に遇うては飯を喫するというような、日常的身辺的な生活の底辺であ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|311}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
るばかりでなく、反戦、独立、解放のたたかいの底辺でもある。「争でか知らん、我が這裏の田を種え飯をまろめて喫せんには」（『従容録』、第二一則）といった、社会の下部構造に直結する生活における物質的生産の主体としてこの生活を純一にするとともに、上部構造のイデオロギー、社会体制を改作する思想として自己を形成する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
環境にはたらきかけて、これを改作する感性的・対象的な実践としての大衆的行動を、禅林では「作務」とよんでいる。行為における心情の純粋と結果の貧困ないし背反との不幸な統一を克服するものは、作務における工作態度である。それは詩的な態度ではなくて散文的な態度であり、対象に対する合理的実験的活動によって、主観主義の沈潜と陶酔をつきやぶる、醒めた造型的な精神である。このような精神が社会的歴史的環境としての社会・政治体制にはたらきかけて、開拓し構築しようとする世界は、その究極においては、禅の根本主体の無我、無所有、自律の基本性格にしたがって、自由共産制の国境なき世界社会である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
それ故に真理の彼岸が消滅したのちには、此岸の真理をうちたてることが歴史の任務である。人間の自己疎外の神聖な姿が面被をはがれてしまった後には、その神聖でない姿における自己疎外の面被をはぐことが、まず歴史に仕える哲学の任務である。天国の批判はこのようにして地上の批判に、宗教の批判は法律の批判に、神学の批判は政治の批判に変ってくる。（マルクス「ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
真理の彼岸が消滅したあとに、此岸の真理をうちたてるということは、私の見るところでは、彼岸についての宗教的信仰を克服して、すべての人間が搾取と抑圧から解放されるとともに、排他的な我執の自我からも解放された自由共産制社会を実現するための、直接間接の日常生活の坐作進退において、「坐の時は坐の時に参じ、行の時は行の時に参じ、語の時は語の時に参じ、一切作務の時は一切作務の時に参ず」（東嶺円慈『宗門無尽灯論』）というように、愚痴と取越苦労をはなれ、我執を空じてゆくことである。――スターリンで&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|312}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
さえも真に「自分の主人」（エンゲルス『空想から科学へ』）になることができなかったと察せられることは、旧社会体制の「母斑」にすぎないとしてすまされるほどに、無害・些細な問題ではない。――いうなれば、尾崎秀実の禅的安心がいまのべた意味における仏土創建の行動をつらぬく道をきわめることである。いわゆる「静中の工夫」（静寂な場所で坐禅すること）にまさる「動中の工夫」といわれるものは、このような生活の精進であろう。仏土建立の菩提心をおこし、「衆生を荷負して重担となす」（自分も衆生のひとり）ということであろう。「人間の自己疎外の神聖な姿」は禅の場合すでに拒否されているのだから、残された仕事は、神聖でない姿の自己疎外を認識し克服する実践を、エゴイズムを空ずる「己事究明」の場において行ずることである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
はなを風にまかせ、鳥をときにまかするも、布施の功業なるべし。（中略）船をおき橋をわたすも、布施の檀度なり。もしよく布施を学するときは、受身捨身ともにこれ布施なり。治田産業もとより布施にあらざるなし。（道元「菩提薩埵四摂法」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
永明潜禅師、衆に示して云く、仏法顕然たり。なんによりてか会し去らざる。仏法を会せんと要せば張三李四に問取せよ。世法を会せんと要せば古仏叢林に参取せよ。（『禅門公案大成』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅を学ぶには勤労大衆にたずね、社会の法を学ぶには禅林にたずねる、ということの現代的方法をうちたてるためには、どのような実践と理論の統一をきりひらいたらよいであろう。広く教えを乞うものである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
底本：市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」（1956年）、『市川白弦著作集』第2巻『禅と現代思想』（法蔵館、1993年）、293–312頁。初出誌・初出書の詳細は本版では未確認。本翻刻は作業用の学術テキストであり、歴史的引用および一部の文字の校合にはなお確認を要する箇所がある。頁表示は底本の印刷頁に従う。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Citation ==&lt;br /&gt;
市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」（1956年）、『市川白弦著作集』第2巻『禅と現代思想』（法蔵館、1993年）、293–312頁。&#039;&#039;Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;, [[IH56ZTM]]。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Japanese originals]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM&amp;diff=1226</id>
		<title>IH56ZTM</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM&amp;diff=1226"/>
		<updated>2026-10-09T15:28:05Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」 (1956)}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;禅とマルキシズム&#039;&#039;&#039;（1956年）は、市川白弦の論考。本稿は『市川白弦著作集』第2巻（1993年）、293–312頁所収の本文に基づく作業用翻刻である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;English translation:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH56ZTM-T|Zen and Marxism]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 目次 ==&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#一 イデオロギー以前|一　イデオロギー以前]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#二 イデオロギーとしての禅（上）|二　イデオロギーとしての禅（上）]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#三 イデオロギーとしての禅（下）|三　イデオロギーとしての禅（下）]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#四 人間の自己疎外とその恢復|四　人間の自己疎外とその恢復]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 本文 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|293}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 一　イデオロギー以前 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
フォイエルバッハは宗教の本質を人間の本質に解消する。しかしながら人間の本質は、なんら個々の個人に内在するところの抽象体ではない。（マルクス「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
唐末五代の禅僧清涼文益に門弟慧超がいった。「慧超があなたにただします。仏とは何でありますか」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
師「お前は慧超だ」（『碧巌録』、第七則）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅の本質を人間に解消したフォイエルバッハ（一八〇四―一八七二）を思わせる対話である。ひとは宗教において廻り道して人間の本質にかえるのだ、とフォイエルバッハは考えているが、慧超はこの場合、仏を自分のそとに、いわゆる自己疎外のかたちでまとめたのではない。「慧超があなたにただします」という自信のある態度がここにある。「汝は是れ慧超」といわれて、宗教の本質を人間に解消するみちを自覚したのではない。さようなことははじめから問題になっていないのだ。師もまた「仏の本質は君の本質である」など&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|294}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
といったのではない。そのようなことなら本をよめばたくさんある。慧超と清涼とはたんなる意味の世界にいるのではない。それゆえ「言前の一句」という。「黒漆桶裏に墨汁を盛る」（『種電鈔』）という。対象論理の触手でつかまれるようなものではない。「清涼の答処、正面驀直」（『拈評三百則』）と道元は評している。天地一枚の汝は是れ慧超。意味が光り発するその場において、意味を底に超えた無我の全体作用をじかにとらえることを、この対話は要求している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
清涼のもとに監院（役名）の則という者があった。一度も参禅しないので、いったいどうしたのか、と師がたずねた。則「わたくしはまえに青林和尚のところでさとっているのです」。師「では、そのさとったところをいってみるがよい」。則「わたくしが仏とは何でありますかとたずねると、丙丁童子来って火を求む、と示されたのです」。師「お前はまちがっているようだ。もっといってみるがいい」。則「丙丁はヒノエ・ヒノトですから火にぞくします。火の子供が火を求める、つまりわたくしがほんらい仏であるのに、これをそとにむかって求めていたのだ、求める者じたいが仏である、ということをさとったのです」。師「やっぱりお前はまちがっていたのだ」。則は不満であった。こんな師匠ではつまらぬと考え、身仕度をしてそこを去った。弟子たちに師匠がいった「おしいことだ。もしあれが帰ってきたなら救われるが、帰らなかったら見込みはあるまい」。旅をしながら、則は反省していた。あの和尚は世にもまれな高僧だといわれている、しかもみだりにおれをだましたのではあるまい、けっきょく、おれの方がどうまちがったのだ、もういちど教えを乞うことにしよう。ついにもとの道をひきかえして清涼に参じた。師「じゃあ、お前さん、わしに問うがよい、答えてあげよう」。則「仏とは何でありますか」。師「丙丁童子来って火を求む！」。則、言下に大悟した。信仰は人間の自己疎外であるとか、人は神を愛することにおいて人間の本質を愛するのだとか、神学の秘密は人間学であるとかいったような、たんなる解釈学のやりとりがここにあるのではない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|295}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
上堂に云わく、赤肉団上に一無位の真人あり。常に汝等諸人の面門より出入す。いまだ証拠（さとる）せざらん者は、看よ、看よ。時に僧あり、出でて問う。如何なるかこれ無位の真人。師、禅牀を下って把住（とらえる）して云く、道え、道え。その僧擬議（まごつく）す。師、托開（つきはなす）して云く、無位の真人、何の乾屎橛（不潔な物）ぞ、といって、すなわち方丈に帰る。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
これは人間の本質を「個々の個人に内在する」ものとみているようであるが、じつはそうではない。「心外に法無し、内もまた不可得なり」（『臨済録』）。個人に内在する人間をそのまま肯定するヒューマニズムは、禅ではない。真人の面目を問われて、唐僧香厳智閑は「猢猻裏の眼睛」と答えた。近代思想の中心概念、ヒューマニティが成立する足場を空じたところでの創造である。「通玄峰上、是れ人間にあらず。心外無法、満目青山」（『天台徳韶』）。そして「無位の真人がもしも個人に内在する抽象体であるならば、あのはつらつとしたはたらき、師の黄檗をして「この気狂いめ、ここへやって来て虎のヒゲをなでおったわい！」と舌をまかせた自由がうまれるわけがない。「随処に主となり」「真正の見解を求取して天下に向って横行す」という禅的生活に、「宗教はただ人間が自己みずからを中心にして働くようになるまでの間だけ、人間の周囲をめぐる幻想的太陽にすぎない」「宗教は涙の谷の後光であり」「抑圧された生物の嘆息である」（マルクス「ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説」）と評価されるような手がかりはないといえよう。マルクスはこの稿の初めにかかげた言葉につづいて「その現実においては、人間の本質は社会的諸関係の総体である」と書いている。マルキシズムは抽象体としての人間の本質と現実としての人間の本質のほかに、もしくはそれらを底に超えて、禅の基礎経験である「人」をみていないのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
定、上座あり、到り参ず。問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師、縄牀を下って擒住（とらえる）して一掌を与えてすなわち托開す。定、佇立す。傍らの僧いわく、定上座、なんぞ礼拝せざる。定、礼拝する&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|296}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
にあたって、忽然として大悟す。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような悟りが、社会の物質的生活の諸条件、すなわちそれぞれの時代の経済的構造を現実の基礎として、それによって規定せられる上部構造としての「イデオロギー」でないことはあきらかである。唐のなかごろ、洞庭湖のほとりに薬山の惟儼禅師があった。ながいあいだ何も説法しないので、院主がうながしていった、「皆の者が久しく和尚の説示をのぞんでおります。どうか一度説法なさって下さい」。師「それならば出頭の鐘を打て」。鐘が鳴って一同出頭におよぶと、薬山は高座に上って、しばらくだまっていたが、そのまま座を下って方丈に帰ってしまった。院主はあっけにとられて、さっそく和尚を追いかけていった。「和尚はさきほど私の願いをいれて下さったではありませんか。どうして何もおっしゃらないのですか」。薬山は答えていった、「経には専門の経師があり、論には論師がある。わしが説法しなくても不思議はないじゃないか」（『従容録』、第七則）。「諸人いまだ法堂に到らざるに、すでに三十棒を喫し了れり」と道元はしめしている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
上堂、僧問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師払子を竪起す。僧便ち喝す。師便ち打つ。又僧問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師亦払子を竪起す。僧便ち喝す。師亦喝す。僧擬議す。師便ち打つ。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この場合、すべてのイデオロギーは、白熱の熔鉱に落ちる淡雪にもひとしい。「光影を弄する底の人を識取せよ」（『臨済録』）。イデオロギーを形成する主体をつかめという。「古人いわく、説いて一物に似れば、即ち中らず」と。汝ただ自家に看よ。さらに何かあらん。説もまた尽くることなし」（『臨済録』）。イデオロギーをかぎりなく拒否する主体は、イデオロギーをかぎりなく形成する主体でもある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|297}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 二　イデオロギーとしての禅（上） ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人間がその人間性、その本体をとりもどすことができるただ一つの方法は、「一切の宗教的表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく、人間自身への、決然として正当な復帰によることである。（エンゲルス『イギリスにおける労働者の状態』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一切の宗教的表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく人間自身への決然として正当な復帰ということを、人間の自己疎外すなわち貧乏とドレイ化を克服しようとするプロレタリアートというかたち、プロレタリア・ヒューマニズムというかたちにおいてでなく――と言い切るのは一面的だと私は考えるのだが――「脚下照顧すなわち人間性を底に超える」というかたちにおいて実現するものが禅である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
師、衆に示して云く、仏の一字、われ聞くことを喜ばず。（『趙州録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
汝もし仏を求めば、仏魔に摂せられん。（中略）却って境に乗ずる底の人を見るに、これ諸仏の玄旨なり。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
フォイエルバッハは宗教的自己疎外、即ち一の宗教的なものと一の現世的なものとへの世界の二重化の事実から出発する。（『フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
天国や彼岸の世界は、禅者にとって、泣く子をだまらかす木の葉ッパでありカゲロウであった。かえってカゲロウを追いかける「人」をつかむならば、現実の世界がそのまま生きるに値する実在の世界だというのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
光影を弄する底の人を識取せよ。これ諸仏の本源。一切処これ道流（修道者）帰舎の処なり。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人の世を作ったものは神でもなければ鬼でもない。矢張り向ふ三軒両隣りにちらつくする唯の人であ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|298}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
る。唯の人が作った人の世が住みにくいからとて、越す国はあるまい。あれば人でなしの国へ行く許りだ。人でなしの国は人の世よりも猶住みにくかろう。（夏目漱石『草枕』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
汝諸方より来る者、皆これ有心にして仏を求め法を求め解脱を求め三界を出離せんことを求む。痴人、汝、三界を出でていずれの処に去らんと要す。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「宗教は顚倒した世界意識である」（『ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説』）といわれるが、「到り得て帰り来れば別事無し、廬山は煙雨、浙江は潮」（蘇東坡）という世界のどこに「顚倒」がみられるであろう。レーニンはゴーリキーへの手紙のなかで、「搾取者に対する闘争における被搾取者の無力が、不可避的に彼岸におけるよりよき生活への信仰をみちびきだす」といっているが、おなじ階級的搾取の社会において、禅は意識的に彼岸への信仰を否定したのである。現実的世界の宗教的反映による世界の二重化、「現実的基礎が自分自身から浮き上って、一つの独立の王国として雲界に定着する」という事態が、この場合、おなじ中世紀身分社会においておこらなかったばかりでなく、積極的に拒否されたのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実的世界の宗教的反映は、総じて実践的な日常生活の諸関係が、人々に対して、かれら相互間および対自然のすき透るような、理性的な・諸関連を日常的に表示するに至るや、はじめて消滅する。社会的生活過程すなわち物質的生産過程の姿態は、それが自由に社会を構成している人々の産物として、かれらの意識的な計画的統制のもとに立つに至るや、はじめてその神秘的な覆い衣をぬぎすてる。（『資本論』第一部、第一篇、第一章、第四節）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実の世界の宗教的反映は、実践的な日常生活の諸関係が人々にたいして、かれら相互間および対自然のすきとおるような理性的な諸関係を誰の目にもあきらかにするまでになっていない世界において、いいかえれば、社会がすべての人間を自己疎外から解放し、すべての生産手段を所有し、計画的に行使するに至&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|299}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
っていない中世社会において、すべての禅者たちによって、広範囲にわたって阻止されたのである。すくなくともこのかぎりにおいて、民衆の阿片としての性格はここにはなかったといっていい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 三　イデオロギーとしての禅（下） ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
イデオロギーとしての禅が社会的に問題となるのは、それの形而上的な部面ではなくて、むしろ国民大衆の日常の現実の生活との交渉のなかで、禅の体現者としての禅者（もしくは禅宗の教団）がその世界観、人生観にもとづく言葉と行動において、人倫の問題、処世の心がまえについて、どのような態度をとるかという点にある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
分限を見わけてその性を知れ。（中略）柳は緑、花は紅。（鈴木正三『盲安杖』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
道徳の微妙は無声無臭に始まりて礼儀三百威儀三千に終る。礼儀三百威儀三千に窮りて無声無臭に帰る。（中略）これを明暗双々底という。（今北洪川『禅海一瀾』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
たとひ悪しき主人に仕へてのがるるところなくとも、更に主人の科にあらず。先世の我が業因と観ぜば、却ってはらにあらずや。或は一生病人となる盲目非人となりて朝夕苦しむ人多し。かやうのものは誰が咎なりと云ふや、ひとへにわが咎なり。かへすがへすもあやまることなく、万事を放下して忠孝の道に入るべし。（『盲安杖』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
仏道は人々脚跟下ぢゃ。自己を忘れて其物に成り切る外はない。君と臣の道あきらけき日の本の国は動かじ万代までも。明治天皇の御製ぢゃ。肝に銘じておくがよい。忠孝の外に禅はない。（飯田欓隠『槐安国語提唱録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
封建的身分社会の人倫を支持し強化することが、禅的基礎づけをもつ自発的なものである以上、禅者がこ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|300}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
の線にそって積極的な行動を鼓舞するのは当然である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ボンヤリ禅は禁物だ、緊張し切って坐るのである。富士山が東海の天に突っ立ったような気持になって、更に云えば地球を座蒲団として天地の間に吾輩一人のみだ、という気持になって只坐ればよいのだ。坐禅は何のためにするのか。無上道を体現するにあり、大悟大徹するにあり、定力を練って随処に自在力を得るにある。無上道とは維摩の大道にあり、大悟大徹とは維摩の大道を悟るのであり、随処に自在力を得るとは、日本人は日本人に安住し活動することである。（原田祖岳『日本精神と大乗禅』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
国民教育の目標が大君のためシノウ、タメシテ滅私奉公するにあるとすれば、各臣民が各々の職域の学修、修行において、かくの如き無作の妙用を体得するに向って進むのでなければ、その実を充分にあげることはできない。（伊藤康安『沢庵和尚と教育』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
すべての木はその果実によって知られる、という言葉があるが、脱俗的なそしてイデオロギーをこえた禅の本質は、平常心のイデオロギーにおいて、このような果実をむすんだ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教は一旦形成されると、つねに伝統的な素材を包含しており、そしていうまでもなく、伝統的なものはイデオロギーの領域において、ひとつの大きな保守的な力である。（エンゲルス『フォイエルバッハ論』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅的な無心の境地においてなされることは、外からみて同じことを繰り返しているようであっても、実質においてはつねに生新であるという見解、「一回挙すれば一回新なり」という見解は、それはそれで正しいのだが、しかもここに創造的な禅が惰性的、因襲的、保守的となる根本契機がある。因習も因習のなかへはいって行動してみると、それ相応の味わいがあるということがひとつの魅力となった。伝統が創造においてうけつがれることが忘れられ、生きたものを生きた形でうけつぐかわりに、死んだ形でうけつごうとしたのである。このような保守性がイデオロギーの領域において、無批判にかつ自発的に階級支配に奉仕するのは&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|301}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
自然のいきおいである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
支配階級の思想は、いずれの時代においても支配的な思想である。いいかえるならば、社会の支配的な物質的力であるところの階級が、同時にその社会の支配的な精神的力である。物質的生産のための諸手段を支配する階級は、それによって同時に精神的生産のための諸手段を支配し、かくしてそれによって同時におしなべて精神的生産のための諸手段を欠いた人々の思想は、この階級に隷従させられることになる。（マルクス・エンゲルス「ドイツ・イデオロギー」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
うがちすぎた見かたをするならば、「八紘一宇」の理念に「倫理的」頂点をもつ帝国主義の世界政策が、その宗教的反映を「緊張し切って地球を座蒲団として坐る」という気がまえのうちに見出した、といえるかもしれない。祭政一致の国家体制において、国防・戦争が宗教的衣裳をつける場合、森厳性をもつ国家権力に、私心をすて生命をかけて帰順する態度になりきれないことに、宗教的な罪の意識をもつという事実も、過去においてまれではなかった。天皇の「無的性格」について、一君万民制の「一即多」としての深玄性について、「聖戦」の道徳的精神について、心をくだいた人々もあった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
私たちは戦争に感情を擦り減らして泣かなくなった世代だと言われるそうである。それは或いは事実かもしれない。しかし天皇と、そのために死んだ多くの人たちのことを考える時、私は不甲斐ないことだが思わず声が顫えてくる。九死に一生を得て、今は平和なサラリーマンである歴戦のパイロットなどと一緒に飲んで、その晩寝つけなかったりすると、私は死んだ戦友たちの顔が目の前にちらついて、いっそう眠れなくなる。（村上兵衛「戦中派はこう考える」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
生きることは喜びであり希望である。また苦しみであり失望である。苦悩と失望に対処する方法はさまざまであるが、永続的根本的なものとして、人生最悪の事態にやすんじて対処する生きかたがもとめられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|302}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この場合、超越的な絶対者もしくは彼岸の世界を信じないものが、たどろうとするひとつの道がある。それは、特定の意欲、希望、当為をかたくまもって、このものの実現のためにあくまでもきそいたたかうという身がまえ心がまえを、その足場から空じさって、当面するその場その場の事態をそのままにうけいれ、これと一枚になる生きかたである。柳におけば緑となり花におけば紅となる無色の露のように、朝には朝をうつし夜には夜をうつす鏡のように、来るものをこばまず去るものを追わず、住めば都、悲しさにいて悲しさをあるじとし寂しさにいて寂しさをあるじとする、宇宙的な「然り」において生きる態度である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
其物に成り切り自己を忘ずる時、誰も皆天地一枚の者ぢゃと云ふことが分ってくる。この上望みやうがないではないか。望めばいつも不足である、煩悶である。俗歌の、上見れば及ばぬ事の多かりき、は望上心の非を悟ったのぢゃ。笠著てくらせ己が心に、は分上に豊かなることを知って安住ができたのぢゃ。（飯田欓隠、前掲書）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実の社会は身分・階級による差別の世界である。このような差別の世界に憎愛の心をからませ個我の意識をはりつめるならば、不満と焦躁はつのるばかりであろう。そこで、差別を差別のままにうけいれて、こばむことなくおぼれることがなければ、あくぐ心はおのずから消え、つきつめた思いは蒸発して、いたみなやむなかにも風に別調のなかに吹かるということになる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
差別を無視して山も川も貴も賤も一つにすると、それこそ撥無因果ぢゃ、世の荘厳は去って殺風景ぢゃ。偏中正（差別の中の平等）が入用の処ぢゃ。兎角一法に偏堕したらみな落第ぢゃ。元来水の上の波ぢゃ。やから偏堕されぬ答ぢゃ。心をば水の如くに持ち成して、方と円とを物に任せん。（飯田欓隠、前掲書）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「住する処なくして其の心を生ず」（『金剛経』）、「一心生ぜざれば万法咎なし」（『信心銘』）、「上善は水のごとし、それただ争わず、故に咎なし」（『老子道徳経』）といった不争、順応の哲学がこのようにして生まれた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|303}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
彼岸の秩序をみとめなかった禅は、此岸の秩序をじかにみとめる道をひらいた。地上における身分上の地位が、天上における霊魂の地位を規定するのでなく、宗教的＝形而上的視点からみられた自然界の秩序が、人間社会の秩序を聖化することになった。あるいはむしろ人間社会の秩序がその宗教的＝形而上的反映を自然界の秩序に見出すことによって、逆にみずからを聖化し、このようにしてアジア的寛容＝アジア的安心の道を骨格づける宇宙論が形成された。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一に曰く、和を以て貴しとなす。忤ふことなきを宗となす。（中略）三に曰く、詔を承けては必ず謹しめ。君は則ち天也、臣は則ち地也。天は覆い地は載す。四時順行し万気通ずることを得。地、天を覆わんと欲すれば、則ち壊るることを致すのみ。是を以て君の言うところ臣承け、上の行うところ下靡く。故に詔を承けては必ず謹しめ。謹しまざれば自ら敗れん。（『十七条憲法』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
出陣する青年たちが生死の問題を天皇に帰一する草莽す屍、水漬く屍のみちにおいて解決しようと苦闘した方向は、遠い過去からの傾斜をもっていた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人生に処するいまひとつの方法に、達観の生活がある。人間生活の究極の意義もしくは最高の価値という視点に立って、歴史的現実の基本的な性格と動向とを全体にわたって諦観・批判するとともに、この諦観において人生を生きる態度である。哲人とか聖賢とかよばれる人々はこのような生活の実践者であり、ひとが人生を総合的・根本的に観察し、この洞察にしたがって生きようとするかぎり、多かれ少なかれ達観的な立場に立たざるを得ないであろう。時間に追われる熱病的な日常に、人生の展望をさわやかにきりひらくものは達人の智慧である。生きることの感銘をみがき苦痛を浄化するあの大肯定の智慧と、この達観の智慧とは、東洋が生んだ深い世界観の両面である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら達観の道は、ほとんどつねに世界の現実にたいする高みの見物におわるものである。社会&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|304}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
悪、政治悪と、それをあらためてよりよい世界を実現しようとする実践とをふたつながら達観して、手をよごさないでおく生活をまもることになる。社会の矛盾、不合理をそのままよしとしてゆるすのではないが、しかしこれをあらためようとする目標と設計とが不徹底であるばかりでなく、あらためようとする行動そのものが依然として世俗的人間の執着に染められたものであり、したがってそれ自体がまず根本的に浄化されなくてはならぬと見るのである。自由にして平和な世界への階級をきずくために、大衆が智慧とエネルギーとを結集し行使することは、もとよりナンセンスではなく、世俗的な意味においてたしかに価値のあることであるが、しかしそれはかりそめにも道に志すものが参加するにあたいすることがらではない。おしなべてそれは人間的妄執のはからいであり、有漏雑染の業にほかならない。まもらねばならず、つらぬかねばならぬ一線は、理論と実践の徹底と純潔である。このような信念のうえにゆるぎなく坐するものが達人の達観である。主体的自覚における社会悪の否認と、客観的事実におけるそれの是認とを、かたくむすぶ生活態度によって、権力の搾取機構に奉仕し、その生活の品位と平安とをまもることができる。完全趣味――「うわべは崇高でも実は卑怯な、行動の放棄」（ルカーチ）――とよばれるものがここにある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
政治的権力にたいする積極的な協力の哲学と消極的な協力の哲学とをみてきたのであるが、この二つは必ずしも別のものではなく、社会的状況の変化に応じて自由にその心を生ずるのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教的情操はひとつの社会的産物である。（「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ながいあいだ禅者の意識・行動をうらづけてきた「易経」的世界観、自然の秩序と人間の秩序とを共通の原理においてとらえる汎道徳的コスモロジーは、いわゆるアジア的生産様式を土台とするアジア的停滞によって、多かれ少なかれ規定され性格づけられていたであろう。この部面の考察はべつにゆずって、禅者の個人的な社会関係について考えよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|305}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ひとりの禅者がその時代の国内的および国際的な権力機構のなかへ、どのような位置づけにおいてくみこまれているか、権力中枢とどのような距離と脈絡を保っているか、そしてこの事態との関連においてどのような交友圏をもっているかということが、かれの生活形態を規定し、その生活形態はその生活のセンス、モラル、政治性等々を制約している。そしてこの連関、照応、制約の構造がくまなく透明に自覚せられていないことが、イデオロギーの特色である。したがって禅者自身の意識においてはまったく自主的である判断・行動が、現実においてはこの社会的連関の仕組によって規定されているのがつねである。「話せばわかる」はずの見解のちがいが、多くの場合その解消がひどく困難であるのは、両者の入りこんでいる社会関係のラインないしシステムがくいちがっており、そのくいちがいが論理のくいちがいを制約していることがまれではないからである。考えかたをあらためるためには、時としては自分がとりむすんでいるこれまでの社会関係を解体して、べつの系列にくみ直さねばならず、同時にそのことは自分の生活を破壊しかねないのである。このことにたいする半ば無意識の不安と生活の惰性とが、ものの見かた考えかた、行動のしかたを規定しかつそれをかたくなにするのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 四　人間の自己疎外とその恢復 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人間の本質は、その現実においては、社会的諸関係の総体である。（「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれは封建社会の拘束からわれわれを個人として解放し放擲している競闘的私有制社会のなかに、この社会体制の存続強化のためにくみたてられた、かずかずの制約にまもられかつしばられて生きている。個人の「自由」と責任において、限られた幸福への手段をめざして、競闘しなければならぬ世界になげだされている。たとえていえば、五分間の停車時間のうちに、超満員の列車にのりこもうとして、力道山の仲間と&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|306}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
小児麻痺の男たちが、一つの入口、一つの窓口をめがけてひしめきあうといった状況のなかで、われわれは生きている。正規の入口がつまっているなら、窓口からもぐりこまねばならず、時と場合によっては屋根によじのぼり扉にへばりつかなくてはならぬ。風采をととのえエチケットをおもんじ謙譲の徳をまもっていたなら、発車の時刻がきて、どの列車にもとりのこされるほかはない、といった交通地獄のなかにいるようなものである。他人がのりこむことは自分がとりのこされることであり、自分がのりこむことは他人がとりのこされることである。この矛盾の合理的な解決はいかにして可能であるか、などと考えているうちに発車のベルが鳴ってしまう。そして自分の目的地にいる、関係の人々のプログラムもこわれてしまう。自分だけの不幸におわるのではない。同じ事情は、ここにひしめきあっているほとんどすべての人々に共通している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
あけてもくれても試験やテストの連続である。青春がしめ出されるだけではない。人間までもしめ出されかねない。なぜならばはげしい試験にパスするためには、友情などといっていられない。級友のつまずきはすなわちわが身の幸運となりかねないからだ。ぬけがけをしたい。試験前には知っていることも知らないといって、友人には教えない。級友が試験の日に電車に乗りおくれるか、病気になるかすればいい。ある学生は「友だちが死ねばいいと思った」と告白した。文字通り地獄ではないか。おそろしいことだ。こういうおそろしい心になった青年が東大に入り、入社試験の時にさらに一層おそろしい鬼になり、そして社会に出てからそれが習性になって、他人の不幸を祈るようになるとしたら、どうであろう。（本多顕彰『現代の青春』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
就職を指導する担任教師の悩みをきいたことがある。教室では憲法はあくまで守らねばならぬことを学習したが、入社試験の場合にはそれをハッキリ答えないがよい、自分がどの政党を支持するにしても、尋ねられたら保守党の名をあげたがよかろう、などと助言をしなければならぬという矛盾である。同じことは私自&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|307}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
身についてもいうことができる。式場において勅語を読みちがえた校長がクビになり、ご真影を焼失した宿直の教師が自殺するといった社会にたいして、私は一言の抗議もしなかったばかりでなく、不潔な戦争と知りながら「聖戦」に協力したのであり、不妄語戒をまもるどころか曲学のことばをあやつり、「行かんと要すれば即ち行き、坐せんと要すれば即ち坐す」（『臨済録』）といった自由はゆめにもえられなかったのである。――ソ連邦ならびに東欧諸国にもおなじ虚妄があったことを、スターリン崇拝、歴史の編集などに関して情報がつたえている。アメリカの作家マーク・トウェーンは半ば皮肉に「神はわが国民にこの上もない三つの贈物をあたえ給うた。それは思想の自由、言論の自由、そしてこの自由を決して使わないという良識である」といったが、この良識をあたえた「神」は、国家権力の機構であろう。警察が認識の限界となるのだ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
盗みについて、作家大田洋子氏は戦時の食糧難のころを回想している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
要領のよくない私は、東京で毎日空腹をみたされなくて、食事のとき涙をだしたりしていました。人が闇で買ったものをまた少しずつわけてもらったりしていたけれど、あるときは雨を幸いに畑の小径にしゃがんで傘で顔をかくし、ほうれん草をいく束かぬすんだりしたのです。その時分すでに農家の畑のものをぬすむと体刑にされるということでしたが、ちょうど練馬の大根畑の傍に住んでいましたから、雨の夜陰に大きな大根をひきぬいてきたりしたのです。そのころからまともな人間でなくなり、留置場へ入れられたところで、外の暮しとたいして変りはないのだろうと思って平気でありました。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
病にあるひとりの青年は生きることのつらさ、みにくさを浮きぼりにしていった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
家族　　岩本敏夫&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
コノ子サエイナケレバ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|308}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
父ト母サエイナケレバ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
父ハ父デ　母ハ母デ　子ハ子デ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ソウオモイツメテ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
イマハ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
息ヅマル憎シミダケガ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
オナジ一ツノ家ニ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
クラシテイル&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような反目は、もしも完全な社会保障制度が確立し、生活に必要な物資が空気のように豊富であるとしたら、その成立する条件の大半を失うであろう。仏教にいう「縁欠不生」となるであろう。自然のリンショクとそしてとくに社会のリンショクが人間の自己中心、排他、不信、競闘をよびさましかきたてている。わが田へ水をひくという言葉があるが、ひとつの川をさしはさんで不信と敵意をもって対峙していたひでりの時期の農民たちが、一度雨が降れば対峙をといてたち去ることは、むかし田舎にみられる現象であった。性悪説の論者ホッブスは、人間が非社会的動物であることは自分を反省してみればわかる。われわれは夜眠るときには扉に錠をおろし、自分の家にいる時でさえ金庫にカギをかける。扉にカギをかけるのは市民仲間にたいして、金庫にカギをかけるのは自分の子供や召使いにたいして、自分がどのような意見をもっているかを証拠だてるものだといったが、かようなことがらがいつの時代にも存在するかどうかは疑問である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
大道の行われしや、天下を公となし、聖と能とを選び、信を講じ、睦を脩む。故に人独りその親を親とせず、独り其子を子とせず、老終る所あり、壮用うる所あり、幼長ずる所あり、矜寡（妻をなくした老人）孤独（父をなくした幼児）廃疾者、みな養う所あらしむ。（中略）この故に謀は閉じておこらず、盗&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|309}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
窃乱賊はすなわちおこらず、故に外戸（戸をあけたまま）にして閉じず。これを大同という。（『礼記』、礼運第九）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
おそらくこれは原始共産体への回想であろう。フォイエルバッハのいう「人間の自己疎外」、自分の本質を自分の外に投げだすということがどうしておこるのか。そのわけがらのいくつかを明らかにするものを、競闘的私有制社会が構造的にもっていると考えられる。永遠の交通地獄におちこんだ通勤者、もしくは有刺鉄線をはりめぐらした中で、野菜どろぼうの夜番をする習性をかためてしまった農民のような状況に、現代資本制社会の人間はおかれている。私有制度のむかしからこの状況におかれてきた人間にむかって、人を信ぜよ、人をおしのけるな、我執をすてよと説きすすめることはもちろん必要であるが、ただそれだけで効果をあげられると考えるのは空想的である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれはさきに、禅の基礎体験がイデオロギーを超えること、それがイデオロギーとして具体化する場合には、（イ）自分がおかれている現在の状況を肯定すること、および、（ロ）社会の権力機構への奉仕を説きすすめる傾向をしめしたことを知った。ところで、自分がおかれている現在の状況をすなおにうけいれることは、必ずしも非難すべきことがらではない。それは人生のもっとも深く美しい叡智につながっている。「愛情はふる星のごとく」の尾崎秀実の禅的諦観がひとの心をうつのはそのためである。「災難に逢ふ時節には災難に逢ふがよく候。死ぬる時節には死ぬがよく候。これはこれ災難をのがるる妙法にて候」（良寛）。尾崎はこのような諦観において、人生の深さ美しさを創造し享受した。必要なものは解釈の哲学ではなくて変革の哲学だというのは、人間マルクスの言葉であるよりも、革命家マルクスの言葉であると考えたい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら人間の生活は、改作の余地が一ミリもない最悪の事態の連続ではない。最悪の事態にやすんじて生きる道をきりひらくことは、日々の生活のゆとりと健康のためにも、重要な問題である。しかしあら&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|310}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ゆる場合にこの態度だけで生きること、この態度だけをすべての人間のあらゆる状況について説きすすめることは、「偏向だ」といっていい。まして神話的搾取体制に進んで奉仕する禅論をうちだすにいたっては、すさまじい偏向である。思うにこれは、禅の根本主体である「無」を、形なくしてあらゆる形となり、色なくしてすべての色になる空気か水のような受動、包容の一面においてとらえ――譬喩をもって考えているうちに、いつのまにか譬喩が考えを支配するようになる――それの創造的造形力としての拒絶、批判、抵抗の方面を捨象した結果である。物質的な利潤の追求を社会構成の動力とし、あらゆるものを、人間そのものをさえも商品化し、物的・手段的な人的資源とする資本制社会と、根源的に主体的な禅精神とは、もともと相容れないものである。したがってこの体制の根本的変革のための科学的認識を、仏土建設のために禅者は学びとらねばならぬはずである。ところが過度の達観主義が、客体的な物の構造、法則を認識しようとする意志を蒸発させたのである。そのために物と心、自然と人間とをつねに「一如・不二」の視点からとらえる習性をかため、自然現象における差別と平等、自然科学的現象における差別と平等、形而上学的意味における差別と平等、社会体制の中での人間の階層的な差別と平等、境遇の差別と安心の一貫性としての平等、これらのものをたがいに混同して悪平等、悪差別の誤認におちいり、ついにはファシズムに奉仕し、戦争にも協力する無節操な暗禅となり、「毫釐も差あれば天地はるかに隔たる」（『信心銘』）ことになった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
個人崇拝はもとよりのこと、あらゆる偶像を拒否し、過去への愚痴と未来への取越苦労をぬぎすてて、現在の生活形成――直接にまたは間接に、真実の人類社会「一人は万人のために、万人は一人のために」生きる世界の実現に寄与する生活形成――に純一無雑となり、この生活創造において我執の空に徹することが、禅の実践である。禅の根本主体はこの意味における人間生活の底辺――いわば生活全体にしみとおる底辺――である。茶に遇うては茶を喫し飯に遇うては飯を喫するというような、日常的身辺的な生活の底辺であ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|311}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
るばかりでなく、反戦、独立、解放のたたかいの底辺でもある。「争でか知らん、我が這裏の田を種え飯をまろめて喫せんには」（『従容録』、第二一則）といった、社会の下部構造に直結する生活における物質的生産の主体としてこの生活を純一にするとともに、上部構造のイデオロギー、社会体制を改作する思想として自己を形成する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
環境にはたらきかけて、これを改作する感性的・対象的な実践としての大衆的行動を、禅林では「作務」とよんでいる。行為における心情の純粋と結果の貧困ないし背反との不幸な統一を克服するものは、作務における工作態度である。それは詩的な態度ではなくて散文的な態度であり、対象に対する合理的実験的活動によって、主観主義の沈潜と陶酔をつきやぶる、醒めた造型的な精神である。このような精神が社会的歴史的環境としての社会・政治体制にはたらきかけて、開拓し構築しようとする世界は、その究極においては、禅の根本主体の無我、無所有、自律の基本性格にしたがって、自由共産制の国境なき世界社会である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
それ故に真理の彼岸が消滅したのちには、此岸の真理をうちたてることが歴史の任務である。人間の自己疎外の神聖な姿が面被をはがれてしまった後には、その神聖でない姿における自己疎外の面被をはぐことが、まず歴史に仕える哲学の任務である。天国の批判はこのようにして地上の批判に、宗教の批判は法律の批判に、神学の批判は政治の批判に変ってくる。（マルクス「ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
真理の彼岸が消滅したあとに、此岸の真理をうちたてるということは、私の見るところでは、彼岸についての宗教的信仰を克服して、すべての人間が搾取と抑圧から解放されるとともに、排他的な我執の自我からも解放された自由共産制社会を実現するための、直接間接の日常生活の坐作進退において、「坐の時は坐の時に参じ、行の時は行の時に参じ、語の時は語の時に参じ、一切作務の時は一切作務の時に参ず」（東嶺円慈『宗門無尽灯論』）というように、愚痴と取越苦労をはなれ、我執を空じてゆくことである。――スターリンで&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|312}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
さえも真に「自分の主人」（エンゲルス『空想から科学へ』）になることができなかったと察せられることは、旧社会体制の「母斑」にすぎないとしてすまされるほどに、無害・些細な問題ではない。――いうなれば、尾崎秀実の禅的安心がいまのべた意味における仏土創建の行動をつらぬく道をきわめることである。いわゆる「静中の工夫」（静寂な場所で坐禅すること）にまさる「動中の工夫」といわれるものは、このような生活の精進であろう。仏土建立の菩提心をおこし、「衆生を荷負して重担となす」（自分も衆生のひとり）ということであろう。「人間の自己疎外の神聖な姿」は禅の場合すでに拒否されているのだから、残された仕事は、神聖でない姿の自己疎外を認識し克服する実践を、エゴイズムを空ずる「己事究明」の場において行ずることである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
はなを風にまかせ、鳥をときにまかするも、布施の功業なるべし。（中略）船をおき橋をわたすも、布施の檀度なり。もしよく布施を学するときは、受身捨身ともにこれ布施なり。治田産業もとより布施にあらざるなし。（道元「菩提薩埵四摂法」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
永明潜禅師、衆に示して云く、仏法顕然たり。なんによりてか会し去らざる。仏法を会せんと要せば張三李四に問取せよ。世法を会せんと要せば古仏叢林に参取せよ。（『禅門公案大成』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅を学ぶには勤労大衆にたずね、社会の法を学ぶには禅林にたずねる、ということの現代的方法をうちたてるためには、どのような実践と理論の統一をきりひらいたらよいであろう。広く教えを乞うものである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
底本：市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」（1956年）、『市川白弦著作集』第2巻『禅と現代思想』（法蔵館、1993年）、293–312頁。初出誌・初出書の詳細は本版では未確認。本翻刻は作業用の学術テキストであり、歴史的引用および一部の文字の校合にはなお確認を要する箇所がある。頁表示は底本の印刷頁に従う。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Citation ==&lt;br /&gt;
市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」（1956年）、『市川白弦著作集』第2巻『禅と現代思想』（法蔵館、1993年）、293–312頁。&#039;&#039;Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;, [[IH56ZTM]]。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Japanese originals]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM&amp;diff=1225</id>
		<title>IH56ZTM</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM&amp;diff=1225"/>
		<updated>2026-10-09T15:24:04Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:内山愚童、「禅とマルキシズム」}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;禅とマルキシズム&#039;&#039;&#039;（1956年）は、市川白弦の論考。本稿は『市川白弦著作集』第2巻（1993年）、293–312頁所収の本文に基づく作業用翻刻である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;English translation:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH56ZTM-T|Zen and Marxism]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 目次 ==&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#一 イデオロギー以前|一　イデオロギー以前]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#二 イデオロギーとしての禅（上）|二　イデオロギーとしての禅（上）]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#三 イデオロギーとしての禅（下）|三　イデオロギーとしての禅（下）]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#四 人間の自己疎外とその恢復|四　人間の自己疎外とその恢復]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 本文 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|293}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 一　イデオロギー以前 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
フォイエルバッハは宗教の本質を人間の本質に解消する。しかしながら人間の本質は、なんら個々の個人に内在するところの抽象体ではない。（マルクス「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
唐末五代の禅僧清涼文益に門弟慧超がいった。「慧超があなたにただします。仏とは何でありますか」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
師「お前は慧超だ」（『碧巌録』、第七則）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅の本質を人間に解消したフォイエルバッハ（一八〇四―一八七二）を思わせる対話である。ひとは宗教において廻り道して人間の本質にかえるのだ、とフォイエルバッハは考えているが、慧超はこの場合、仏を自分のそとに、いわゆる自己疎外のかたちでまとめたのではない。「慧超があなたにただします」という自信のある態度がここにある。「汝は是れ慧超」といわれて、宗教の本質を人間に解消するみちを自覚したのではない。さようなことははじめから問題になっていないのだ。師もまた「仏の本質は君の本質である」など&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|294}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
といったのではない。そのようなことなら本をよめばたくさんある。慧超と清涼とはたんなる意味の世界にいるのではない。それゆえ「言前の一句」という。「黒漆桶裏に墨汁を盛る」（『種電鈔』）という。対象論理の触手でつかまれるようなものではない。「清涼の答処、正面驀直」（『拈評三百則』）と道元は評している。天地一枚の汝は是れ慧超。意味が光り発するその場において、意味を底に超えた無我の全体作用をじかにとらえることを、この対話は要求している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
清涼のもとに監院（役名）の則という者があった。一度も参禅しないので、いったいどうしたのか、と師がたずねた。則「わたくしはまえに青林和尚のところでさとっているのです」。師「では、そのさとったところをいってみるがよい」。則「わたくしが仏とは何でありますかとたずねると、丙丁童子来って火を求む、と示されたのです」。師「お前はまちがっているようだ。もっといってみるがいい」。則「丙丁はヒノエ・ヒノトですから火にぞくします。火の子供が火を求める、つまりわたくしがほんらい仏であるのに、これをそとにむかって求めていたのだ、求める者じたいが仏である、ということをさとったのです」。師「やっぱりお前はまちがっていたのだ」。則は不満であった。こんな師匠ではつまらぬと考え、身仕度をしてそこを去った。弟子たちに師匠がいった「おしいことだ。もしあれが帰ってきたなら救われるが、帰らなかったら見込みはあるまい」。旅をしながら、則は反省していた。あの和尚は世にもまれな高僧だといわれている、しかもみだりにおれをだましたのではあるまい、けっきょく、おれの方がどうまちがったのだ、もういちど教えを乞うことにしよう。ついにもとの道をひきかえして清涼に参じた。師「じゃあ、お前さん、わしに問うがよい、答えてあげよう」。則「仏とは何でありますか」。師「丙丁童子来って火を求む！」。則、言下に大悟した。信仰は人間の自己疎外であるとか、人は神を愛することにおいて人間の本質を愛するのだとか、神学の秘密は人間学であるとかいったような、たんなる解釈学のやりとりがここにあるのではない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|295}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
上堂に云わく、赤肉団上に一無位の真人あり。常に汝等諸人の面門より出入す。いまだ証拠（さとる）せざらん者は、看よ、看よ。時に僧あり、出でて問う。如何なるかこれ無位の真人。師、禅牀を下って把住（とらえる）して云く、道え、道え。その僧擬議（まごつく）す。師、托開（つきはなす）して云く、無位の真人、何の乾屎橛（不潔な物）ぞ、といって、すなわち方丈に帰る。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
これは人間の本質を「個々の個人に内在する」ものとみているようであるが、じつはそうではない。「心外に法無し、内もまた不可得なり」（『臨済録』）。個人に内在する人間をそのまま肯定するヒューマニズムは、禅ではない。真人の面目を問われて、唐僧香厳智閑は「猢猻裏の眼睛」と答えた。近代思想の中心概念、ヒューマニティが成立する足場を空じたところでの創造である。「通玄峰上、是れ人間にあらず。心外無法、満目青山」（『天台徳韶』）。そして「無位の真人がもしも個人に内在する抽象体であるならば、あのはつらつとしたはたらき、師の黄檗をして「この気狂いめ、ここへやって来て虎のヒゲをなでおったわい！」と舌をまかせた自由がうまれるわけがない。「随処に主となり」「真正の見解を求取して天下に向って横行す」という禅的生活に、「宗教はただ人間が自己みずからを中心にして働くようになるまでの間だけ、人間の周囲をめぐる幻想的太陽にすぎない」「宗教は涙の谷の後光であり」「抑圧された生物の嘆息である」（マルクス「ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説」）と評価されるような手がかりはないといえよう。マルクスはこの稿の初めにかかげた言葉につづいて「その現実においては、人間の本質は社会的諸関係の総体である」と書いている。マルキシズムは抽象体としての人間の本質と現実としての人間の本質のほかに、もしくはそれらを底に超えて、禅の基礎経験である「人」をみていないのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
定、上座あり、到り参ず。問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師、縄牀を下って擒住（とらえる）して一掌を与えてすなわち托開す。定、佇立す。傍らの僧いわく、定上座、なんぞ礼拝せざる。定、礼拝する&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|296}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
にあたって、忽然として大悟す。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような悟りが、社会の物質的生活の諸条件、すなわちそれぞれの時代の経済的構造を現実の基礎として、それによって規定せられる上部構造としての「イデオロギー」でないことはあきらかである。唐のなかごろ、洞庭湖のほとりに薬山の惟儼禅師があった。ながいあいだ何も説法しないので、院主がうながしていった、「皆の者が久しく和尚の説示をのぞんでおります。どうか一度説法なさって下さい」。師「それならば出頭の鐘を打て」。鐘が鳴って一同出頭におよぶと、薬山は高座に上って、しばらくだまっていたが、そのまま座を下って方丈に帰ってしまった。院主はあっけにとられて、さっそく和尚を追いかけていった。「和尚はさきほど私の願いをいれて下さったではありませんか。どうして何もおっしゃらないのですか」。薬山は答えていった、「経には専門の経師があり、論には論師がある。わしが説法しなくても不思議はないじゃないか」（『従容録』、第七則）。「諸人いまだ法堂に到らざるに、すでに三十棒を喫し了れり」と道元はしめしている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
上堂、僧問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師払子を竪起す。僧便ち喝す。師便ち打つ。又僧問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師亦払子を竪起す。僧便ち喝す。師亦喝す。僧擬議す。師便ち打つ。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この場合、すべてのイデオロギーは、白熱の熔鉱に落ちる淡雪にもひとしい。「光影を弄する底の人を識取せよ」（『臨済録』）。イデオロギーを形成する主体をつかめという。「古人いわく、説いて一物に似れば、即ち中らず」と。汝ただ自家に看よ。さらに何かあらん。説もまた尽くることなし」（『臨済録』）。イデオロギーをかぎりなく拒否する主体は、イデオロギーをかぎりなく形成する主体でもある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|297}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 二　イデオロギーとしての禅（上） ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人間がその人間性、その本体をとりもどすことができるただ一つの方法は、「一切の宗教的表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく、人間自身への、決然として正当な復帰によることである。（エンゲルス『イギリスにおける労働者の状態』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一切の宗教的表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく人間自身への決然として正当な復帰ということを、人間の自己疎外すなわち貧乏とドレイ化を克服しようとするプロレタリアートというかたち、プロレタリア・ヒューマニズムというかたちにおいてでなく――と言い切るのは一面的だと私は考えるのだが――「脚下照顧すなわち人間性を底に超える」というかたちにおいて実現するものが禅である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
師、衆に示して云く、仏の一字、われ聞くことを喜ばず。（『趙州録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
汝もし仏を求めば、仏魔に摂せられん。（中略）却って境に乗ずる底の人を見るに、これ諸仏の玄旨なり。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
フォイエルバッハは宗教的自己疎外、即ち一の宗教的なものと一の現世的なものとへの世界の二重化の事実から出発する。（『フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
天国や彼岸の世界は、禅者にとって、泣く子をだまらかす木の葉ッパでありカゲロウであった。かえってカゲロウを追いかける「人」をつかむならば、現実の世界がそのまま生きるに値する実在の世界だというのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
光影を弄する底の人を識取せよ。これ諸仏の本源。一切処これ道流（修道者）帰舎の処なり。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人の世を作ったものは神でもなければ鬼でもない。矢張り向ふ三軒両隣りにちらつくする唯の人であ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|298}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
る。唯の人が作った人の世が住みにくいからとて、越す国はあるまい。あれば人でなしの国へ行く許りだ。人でなしの国は人の世よりも猶住みにくかろう。（夏目漱石『草枕』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
汝諸方より来る者、皆これ有心にして仏を求め法を求め解脱を求め三界を出離せんことを求む。痴人、汝、三界を出でていずれの処に去らんと要す。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「宗教は顚倒した世界意識である」（『ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説』）といわれるが、「到り得て帰り来れば別事無し、廬山は煙雨、浙江は潮」（蘇東坡）という世界のどこに「顚倒」がみられるであろう。レーニンはゴーリキーへの手紙のなかで、「搾取者に対する闘争における被搾取者の無力が、不可避的に彼岸におけるよりよき生活への信仰をみちびきだす」といっているが、おなじ階級的搾取の社会において、禅は意識的に彼岸への信仰を否定したのである。現実的世界の宗教的反映による世界の二重化、「現実的基礎が自分自身から浮き上って、一つの独立の王国として雲界に定着する」という事態が、この場合、おなじ中世紀身分社会においておこらなかったばかりでなく、積極的に拒否されたのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実的世界の宗教的反映は、総じて実践的な日常生活の諸関係が、人々に対して、かれら相互間および対自然のすき透るような、理性的な・諸関連を日常的に表示するに至るや、はじめて消滅する。社会的生活過程すなわち物質的生産過程の姿態は、それが自由に社会を構成している人々の産物として、かれらの意識的な計画的統制のもとに立つに至るや、はじめてその神秘的な覆い衣をぬぎすてる。（『資本論』第一部、第一篇、第一章、第四節）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実の世界の宗教的反映は、実践的な日常生活の諸関係が人々にたいして、かれら相互間および対自然のすきとおるような理性的な諸関係を誰の目にもあきらかにするまでになっていない世界において、いいかえれば、社会がすべての人間を自己疎外から解放し、すべての生産手段を所有し、計画的に行使するに至&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|299}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
っていない中世社会において、すべての禅者たちによって、広範囲にわたって阻止されたのである。すくなくともこのかぎりにおいて、民衆の阿片としての性格はここにはなかったといっていい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 三　イデオロギーとしての禅（下） ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
イデオロギーとしての禅が社会的に問題となるのは、それの形而上的な部面ではなくて、むしろ国民大衆の日常の現実の生活との交渉のなかで、禅の体現者としての禅者（もしくは禅宗の教団）がその世界観、人生観にもとづく言葉と行動において、人倫の問題、処世の心がまえについて、どのような態度をとるかという点にある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
分限を見わけてその性を知れ。（中略）柳は緑、花は紅。（鈴木正三『盲安杖』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
道徳の微妙は無声無臭に始まりて礼儀三百威儀三千に終る。礼儀三百威儀三千に窮りて無声無臭に帰る。（中略）これを明暗双々底という。（今北洪川『禅海一瀾』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
たとひ悪しき主人に仕へてのがるるところなくとも、更に主人の科にあらず。先世の我が業因と観ぜば、却ってはらにあらずや。或は一生病人となる盲目非人となりて朝夕苦しむ人多し。かやうのものは誰が咎なりと云ふや、ひとへにわが咎なり。かへすがへすもあやまることなく、万事を放下して忠孝の道に入るべし。（『盲安杖』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
仏道は人々脚跟下ぢゃ。自己を忘れて其物に成り切る外はない。君と臣の道あきらけき日の本の国は動かじ万代までも。明治天皇の御製ぢゃ。肝に銘じておくがよい。忠孝の外に禅はない。（飯田欓隠『槐安国語提唱録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
封建的身分社会の人倫を支持し強化することが、禅的基礎づけをもつ自発的なものである以上、禅者がこ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|300}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
の線にそって積極的な行動を鼓舞するのは当然である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ボンヤリ禅は禁物だ、緊張し切って坐るのである。富士山が東海の天に突っ立ったような気持になって、更に云えば地球を座蒲団として天地の間に吾輩一人のみだ、という気持になって只坐ればよいのだ。坐禅は何のためにするのか。無上道を体現するにあり、大悟大徹するにあり、定力を練って随処に自在力を得るにある。無上道とは維摩の大道にあり、大悟大徹とは維摩の大道を悟るのであり、随処に自在力を得るとは、日本人は日本人に安住し活動することである。（原田祖岳『日本精神と大乗禅』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
国民教育の目標が大君のためシノウ、タメシテ滅私奉公するにあるとすれば、各臣民が各々の職域の学修、修行において、かくの如き無作の妙用を体得するに向って進むのでなければ、その実を充分にあげることはできない。（伊藤康安『沢庵和尚と教育』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
すべての木はその果実によって知られる、という言葉があるが、脱俗的なそしてイデオロギーをこえた禅の本質は、平常心のイデオロギーにおいて、このような果実をむすんだ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教は一旦形成されると、つねに伝統的な素材を包含しており、そしていうまでもなく、伝統的なものはイデオロギーの領域において、ひとつの大きな保守的な力である。（エンゲルス『フォイエルバッハ論』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅的な無心の境地においてなされることは、外からみて同じことを繰り返しているようであっても、実質においてはつねに生新であるという見解、「一回挙すれば一回新なり」という見解は、それはそれで正しいのだが、しかもここに創造的な禅が惰性的、因襲的、保守的となる根本契機がある。因習も因習のなかへはいって行動してみると、それ相応の味わいがあるということがひとつの魅力となった。伝統が創造においてうけつがれることが忘れられ、生きたものを生きた形でうけつぐかわりに、死んだ形でうけつごうとしたのである。このような保守性がイデオロギーの領域において、無批判にかつ自発的に階級支配に奉仕するのは&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|301}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
自然のいきおいである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
支配階級の思想は、いずれの時代においても支配的な思想である。いいかえるならば、社会の支配的な物質的力であるところの階級が、同時にその社会の支配的な精神的力である。物質的生産のための諸手段を支配する階級は、それによって同時に精神的生産のための諸手段を支配し、かくしてそれによって同時におしなべて精神的生産のための諸手段を欠いた人々の思想は、この階級に隷従させられることになる。（マルクス・エンゲルス「ドイツ・イデオロギー」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
うがちすぎた見かたをするならば、「八紘一宇」の理念に「倫理的」頂点をもつ帝国主義の世界政策が、その宗教的反映を「緊張し切って地球を座蒲団として坐る」という気がまえのうちに見出した、といえるかもしれない。祭政一致の国家体制において、国防・戦争が宗教的衣裳をつける場合、森厳性をもつ国家権力に、私心をすて生命をかけて帰順する態度になりきれないことに、宗教的な罪の意識をもつという事実も、過去においてまれではなかった。天皇の「無的性格」について、一君万民制の「一即多」としての深玄性について、「聖戦」の道徳的精神について、心をくだいた人々もあった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
私たちは戦争に感情を擦り減らして泣かなくなった世代だと言われるそうである。それは或いは事実かもしれない。しかし天皇と、そのために死んだ多くの人たちのことを考える時、私は不甲斐ないことだが思わず声が顫えてくる。九死に一生を得て、今は平和なサラリーマンである歴戦のパイロットなどと一緒に飲んで、その晩寝つけなかったりすると、私は死んだ戦友たちの顔が目の前にちらついて、いっそう眠れなくなる。（村上兵衛「戦中派はこう考える」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
生きることは喜びであり希望である。また苦しみであり失望である。苦悩と失望に対処する方法はさまざまであるが、永続的根本的なものとして、人生最悪の事態にやすんじて対処する生きかたがもとめられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|302}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この場合、超越的な絶対者もしくは彼岸の世界を信じないものが、たどろうとするひとつの道がある。それは、特定の意欲、希望、当為をかたくまもって、このものの実現のためにあくまでもきそいたたかうという身がまえ心がまえを、その足場から空じさって、当面するその場その場の事態をそのままにうけいれ、これと一枚になる生きかたである。柳におけば緑となり花におけば紅となる無色の露のように、朝には朝をうつし夜には夜をうつす鏡のように、来るものをこばまず去るものを追わず、住めば都、悲しさにいて悲しさをあるじとし寂しさにいて寂しさをあるじとする、宇宙的な「然り」において生きる態度である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
其物に成り切り自己を忘ずる時、誰も皆天地一枚の者ぢゃと云ふことが分ってくる。この上望みやうがないではないか。望めばいつも不足である、煩悶である。俗歌の、上見れば及ばぬ事の多かりき、は望上心の非を悟ったのぢゃ。笠著てくらせ己が心に、は分上に豊かなることを知って安住ができたのぢゃ。（飯田欓隠、前掲書）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実の社会は身分・階級による差別の世界である。このような差別の世界に憎愛の心をからませ個我の意識をはりつめるならば、不満と焦躁はつのるばかりであろう。そこで、差別を差別のままにうけいれて、こばむことなくおぼれることがなければ、あくぐ心はおのずから消え、つきつめた思いは蒸発して、いたみなやむなかにも風に別調のなかに吹かるということになる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
差別を無視して山も川も貴も賤も一つにすると、それこそ撥無因果ぢゃ、世の荘厳は去って殺風景ぢゃ。偏中正（差別の中の平等）が入用の処ぢゃ。兎角一法に偏堕したらみな落第ぢゃ。元来水の上の波ぢゃ。やから偏堕されぬ答ぢゃ。心をば水の如くに持ち成して、方と円とを物に任せん。（飯田欓隠、前掲書）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「住する処なくして其の心を生ず」（『金剛経』）、「一心生ぜざれば万法咎なし」（『信心銘』）、「上善は水のごとし、それただ争わず、故に咎なし」（『老子道徳経』）といった不争、順応の哲学がこのようにして生まれた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|303}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
彼岸の秩序をみとめなかった禅は、此岸の秩序をじかにみとめる道をひらいた。地上における身分上の地位が、天上における霊魂の地位を規定するのでなく、宗教的＝形而上的視点からみられた自然界の秩序が、人間社会の秩序を聖化することになった。あるいはむしろ人間社会の秩序がその宗教的＝形而上的反映を自然界の秩序に見出すことによって、逆にみずからを聖化し、このようにしてアジア的寛容＝アジア的安心の道を骨格づける宇宙論が形成された。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一に曰く、和を以て貴しとなす。忤ふことなきを宗となす。（中略）三に曰く、詔を承けては必ず謹しめ。君は則ち天也、臣は則ち地也。天は覆い地は載す。四時順行し万気通ずることを得。地、天を覆わんと欲すれば、則ち壊るることを致すのみ。是を以て君の言うところ臣承け、上の行うところ下靡く。故に詔を承けては必ず謹しめ。謹しまざれば自ら敗れん。（『十七条憲法』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
出陣する青年たちが生死の問題を天皇に帰一する草莽す屍、水漬く屍のみちにおいて解決しようと苦闘した方向は、遠い過去からの傾斜をもっていた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人生に処するいまひとつの方法に、達観の生活がある。人間生活の究極の意義もしくは最高の価値という視点に立って、歴史的現実の基本的な性格と動向とを全体にわたって諦観・批判するとともに、この諦観において人生を生きる態度である。哲人とか聖賢とかよばれる人々はこのような生活の実践者であり、ひとが人生を総合的・根本的に観察し、この洞察にしたがって生きようとするかぎり、多かれ少なかれ達観的な立場に立たざるを得ないであろう。時間に追われる熱病的な日常に、人生の展望をさわやかにきりひらくものは達人の智慧である。生きることの感銘をみがき苦痛を浄化するあの大肯定の智慧と、この達観の智慧とは、東洋が生んだ深い世界観の両面である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら達観の道は、ほとんどつねに世界の現実にたいする高みの見物におわるものである。社会&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|304}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
悪、政治悪と、それをあらためてよりよい世界を実現しようとする実践とをふたつながら達観して、手をよごさないでおく生活をまもることになる。社会の矛盾、不合理をそのままよしとしてゆるすのではないが、しかしこれをあらためようとする目標と設計とが不徹底であるばかりでなく、あらためようとする行動そのものが依然として世俗的人間の執着に染められたものであり、したがってそれ自体がまず根本的に浄化されなくてはならぬと見るのである。自由にして平和な世界への階級をきずくために、大衆が智慧とエネルギーとを結集し行使することは、もとよりナンセンスではなく、世俗的な意味においてたしかに価値のあることであるが、しかしそれはかりそめにも道に志すものが参加するにあたいすることがらではない。おしなべてそれは人間的妄執のはからいであり、有漏雑染の業にほかならない。まもらねばならず、つらぬかねばならぬ一線は、理論と実践の徹底と純潔である。このような信念のうえにゆるぎなく坐するものが達人の達観である。主体的自覚における社会悪の否認と、客観的事実におけるそれの是認とを、かたくむすぶ生活態度によって、権力の搾取機構に奉仕し、その生活の品位と平安とをまもることができる。完全趣味――「うわべは崇高でも実は卑怯な、行動の放棄」（ルカーチ）――とよばれるものがここにある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
政治的権力にたいする積極的な協力の哲学と消極的な協力の哲学とをみてきたのであるが、この二つは必ずしも別のものではなく、社会的状況の変化に応じて自由にその心を生ずるのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教的情操はひとつの社会的産物である。（「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ながいあいだ禅者の意識・行動をうらづけてきた「易経」的世界観、自然の秩序と人間の秩序とを共通の原理においてとらえる汎道徳的コスモロジーは、いわゆるアジア的生産様式を土台とするアジア的停滞によって、多かれ少なかれ規定され性格づけられていたであろう。この部面の考察はべつにゆずって、禅者の個人的な社会関係について考えよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|305}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ひとりの禅者がその時代の国内的および国際的な権力機構のなかへ、どのような位置づけにおいてくみこまれているか、権力中枢とどのような距離と脈絡を保っているか、そしてこの事態との関連においてどのような交友圏をもっているかということが、かれの生活形態を規定し、その生活形態はその生活のセンス、モラル、政治性等々を制約している。そしてこの連関、照応、制約の構造がくまなく透明に自覚せられていないことが、イデオロギーの特色である。したがって禅者自身の意識においてはまったく自主的である判断・行動が、現実においてはこの社会的連関の仕組によって規定されているのがつねである。「話せばわかる」はずの見解のちがいが、多くの場合その解消がひどく困難であるのは、両者の入りこんでいる社会関係のラインないしシステムがくいちがっており、そのくいちがいが論理のくいちがいを制約していることがまれではないからである。考えかたをあらためるためには、時としては自分がとりむすんでいるこれまでの社会関係を解体して、べつの系列にくみ直さねばならず、同時にそのことは自分の生活を破壊しかねないのである。このことにたいする半ば無意識の不安と生活の惰性とが、ものの見かた考えかた、行動のしかたを規定しかつそれをかたくなにするのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 四　人間の自己疎外とその恢復 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人間の本質は、その現実においては、社会的諸関係の総体である。（「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれは封建社会の拘束からわれわれを個人として解放し放擲している競闘的私有制社会のなかに、この社会体制の存続強化のためにくみたてられた、かずかずの制約にまもられかつしばられて生きている。個人の「自由」と責任において、限られた幸福への手段をめざして、競闘しなければならぬ世界になげだされている。たとえていえば、五分間の停車時間のうちに、超満員の列車にのりこもうとして、力道山の仲間と&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|306}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
小児麻痺の男たちが、一つの入口、一つの窓口をめがけてひしめきあうといった状況のなかで、われわれは生きている。正規の入口がつまっているなら、窓口からもぐりこまねばならず、時と場合によっては屋根によじのぼり扉にへばりつかなくてはならぬ。風采をととのえエチケットをおもんじ謙譲の徳をまもっていたなら、発車の時刻がきて、どの列車にもとりのこされるほかはない、といった交通地獄のなかにいるようなものである。他人がのりこむことは自分がとりのこされることであり、自分がのりこむことは他人がとりのこされることである。この矛盾の合理的な解決はいかにして可能であるか、などと考えているうちに発車のベルが鳴ってしまう。そして自分の目的地にいる、関係の人々のプログラムもこわれてしまう。自分だけの不幸におわるのではない。同じ事情は、ここにひしめきあっているほとんどすべての人々に共通している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
あけてもくれても試験やテストの連続である。青春がしめ出されるだけではない。人間までもしめ出されかねない。なぜならばはげしい試験にパスするためには、友情などといっていられない。級友のつまずきはすなわちわが身の幸運となりかねないからだ。ぬけがけをしたい。試験前には知っていることも知らないといって、友人には教えない。級友が試験の日に電車に乗りおくれるか、病気になるかすればいい。ある学生は「友だちが死ねばいいと思った」と告白した。文字通り地獄ではないか。おそろしいことだ。こういうおそろしい心になった青年が東大に入り、入社試験の時にさらに一層おそろしい鬼になり、そして社会に出てからそれが習性になって、他人の不幸を祈るようになるとしたら、どうであろう。（本多顕彰『現代の青春』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
就職を指導する担任教師の悩みをきいたことがある。教室では憲法はあくまで守らねばならぬことを学習したが、入社試験の場合にはそれをハッキリ答えないがよい、自分がどの政党を支持するにしても、尋ねられたら保守党の名をあげたがよかろう、などと助言をしなければならぬという矛盾である。同じことは私自&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|307}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
身についてもいうことができる。式場において勅語を読みちがえた校長がクビになり、ご真影を焼失した宿直の教師が自殺するといった社会にたいして、私は一言の抗議もしなかったばかりでなく、不潔な戦争と知りながら「聖戦」に協力したのであり、不妄語戒をまもるどころか曲学のことばをあやつり、「行かんと要すれば即ち行き、坐せんと要すれば即ち坐す」（『臨済録』）といった自由はゆめにもえられなかったのである。――ソ連邦ならびに東欧諸国にもおなじ虚妄があったことを、スターリン崇拝、歴史の編集などに関して情報がつたえている。アメリカの作家マーク・トウェーンは半ば皮肉に「神はわが国民にこの上もない三つの贈物をあたえ給うた。それは思想の自由、言論の自由、そしてこの自由を決して使わないという良識である」といったが、この良識をあたえた「神」は、国家権力の機構であろう。警察が認識の限界となるのだ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
盗みについて、作家大田洋子氏は戦時の食糧難のころを回想している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
要領のよくない私は、東京で毎日空腹をみたされなくて、食事のとき涙をだしたりしていました。人が闇で買ったものをまた少しずつわけてもらったりしていたけれど、あるときは雨を幸いに畑の小径にしゃがんで傘で顔をかくし、ほうれん草をいく束かぬすんだりしたのです。その時分すでに農家の畑のものをぬすむと体刑にされるということでしたが、ちょうど練馬の大根畑の傍に住んでいましたから、雨の夜陰に大きな大根をひきぬいてきたりしたのです。そのころからまともな人間でなくなり、留置場へ入れられたところで、外の暮しとたいして変りはないのだろうと思って平気でありました。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
病にあるひとりの青年は生きることのつらさ、みにくさを浮きぼりにしていった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
家族　　岩本敏夫&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
コノ子サエイナケレバ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|308}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
父ト母サエイナケレバ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
父ハ父デ　母ハ母デ　子ハ子デ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ソウオモイツメテ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
イマハ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
息ヅマル憎シミダケガ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
オナジ一ツノ家ニ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
クラシテイル&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような反目は、もしも完全な社会保障制度が確立し、生活に必要な物資が空気のように豊富であるとしたら、その成立する条件の大半を失うであろう。仏教にいう「縁欠不生」となるであろう。自然のリンショクとそしてとくに社会のリンショクが人間の自己中心、排他、不信、競闘をよびさましかきたてている。わが田へ水をひくという言葉があるが、ひとつの川をさしはさんで不信と敵意をもって対峙していたひでりの時期の農民たちが、一度雨が降れば対峙をといてたち去ることは、むかし田舎にみられる現象であった。性悪説の論者ホッブスは、人間が非社会的動物であることは自分を反省してみればわかる。われわれは夜眠るときには扉に錠をおろし、自分の家にいる時でさえ金庫にカギをかける。扉にカギをかけるのは市民仲間にたいして、金庫にカギをかけるのは自分の子供や召使いにたいして、自分がどのような意見をもっているかを証拠だてるものだといったが、かようなことがらがいつの時代にも存在するかどうかは疑問である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
大道の行われしや、天下を公となし、聖と能とを選び、信を講じ、睦を脩む。故に人独りその親を親とせず、独り其子を子とせず、老終る所あり、壮用うる所あり、幼長ずる所あり、矜寡（妻をなくした老人）孤独（父をなくした幼児）廃疾者、みな養う所あらしむ。（中略）この故に謀は閉じておこらず、盗&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|309}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
窃乱賊はすなわちおこらず、故に外戸（戸をあけたまま）にして閉じず。これを大同という。（『礼記』、礼運第九）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
おそらくこれは原始共産体への回想であろう。フォイエルバッハのいう「人間の自己疎外」、自分の本質を自分の外に投げだすということがどうしておこるのか。そのわけがらのいくつかを明らかにするものを、競闘的私有制社会が構造的にもっていると考えられる。永遠の交通地獄におちこんだ通勤者、もしくは有刺鉄線をはりめぐらした中で、野菜どろぼうの夜番をする習性をかためてしまった農民のような状況に、現代資本制社会の人間はおかれている。私有制度のむかしからこの状況におかれてきた人間にむかって、人を信ぜよ、人をおしのけるな、我執をすてよと説きすすめることはもちろん必要であるが、ただそれだけで効果をあげられると考えるのは空想的である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれはさきに、禅の基礎体験がイデオロギーを超えること、それがイデオロギーとして具体化する場合には、（イ）自分がおかれている現在の状況を肯定すること、および、（ロ）社会の権力機構への奉仕を説きすすめる傾向をしめしたことを知った。ところで、自分がおかれている現在の状況をすなおにうけいれることは、必ずしも非難すべきことがらではない。それは人生のもっとも深く美しい叡智につながっている。「愛情はふる星のごとく」の尾崎秀実の禅的諦観がひとの心をうつのはそのためである。「災難に逢ふ時節には災難に逢ふがよく候。死ぬる時節には死ぬがよく候。これはこれ災難をのがるる妙法にて候」（良寛）。尾崎はこのような諦観において、人生の深さ美しさを創造し享受した。必要なものは解釈の哲学ではなくて変革の哲学だというのは、人間マルクスの言葉であるよりも、革命家マルクスの言葉であると考えたい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら人間の生活は、改作の余地が一ミリもない最悪の事態の連続ではない。最悪の事態にやすんじて生きる道をきりひらくことは、日々の生活のゆとりと健康のためにも、重要な問題である。しかしあら&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|310}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ゆる場合にこの態度だけで生きること、この態度だけをすべての人間のあらゆる状況について説きすすめることは、「偏向だ」といっていい。まして神話的搾取体制に進んで奉仕する禅論をうちだすにいたっては、すさまじい偏向である。思うにこれは、禅の根本主体である「無」を、形なくしてあらゆる形となり、色なくしてすべての色になる空気か水のような受動、包容の一面においてとらえ――譬喩をもって考えているうちに、いつのまにか譬喩が考えを支配するようになる――それの創造的造形力としての拒絶、批判、抵抗の方面を捨象した結果である。物質的な利潤の追求を社会構成の動力とし、あらゆるものを、人間そのものをさえも商品化し、物的・手段的な人的資源とする資本制社会と、根源的に主体的な禅精神とは、もともと相容れないものである。したがってこの体制の根本的変革のための科学的認識を、仏土建設のために禅者は学びとらねばならぬはずである。ところが過度の達観主義が、客体的な物の構造、法則を認識しようとする意志を蒸発させたのである。そのために物と心、自然と人間とをつねに「一如・不二」の視点からとらえる習性をかため、自然現象における差別と平等、自然科学的現象における差別と平等、形而上学的意味における差別と平等、社会体制の中での人間の階層的な差別と平等、境遇の差別と安心の一貫性としての平等、これらのものをたがいに混同して悪平等、悪差別の誤認におちいり、ついにはファシズムに奉仕し、戦争にも協力する無節操な暗禅となり、「毫釐も差あれば天地はるかに隔たる」（『信心銘』）ことになった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
個人崇拝はもとよりのこと、あらゆる偶像を拒否し、過去への愚痴と未来への取越苦労をぬぎすてて、現在の生活形成――直接にまたは間接に、真実の人類社会「一人は万人のために、万人は一人のために」生きる世界の実現に寄与する生活形成――に純一無雑となり、この生活創造において我執の空に徹することが、禅の実践である。禅の根本主体はこの意味における人間生活の底辺――いわば生活全体にしみとおる底辺――である。茶に遇うては茶を喫し飯に遇うては飯を喫するというような、日常的身辺的な生活の底辺であ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|311}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
るばかりでなく、反戦、独立、解放のたたかいの底辺でもある。「争でか知らん、我が這裏の田を種え飯をまろめて喫せんには」（『従容録』、第二一則）といった、社会の下部構造に直結する生活における物質的生産の主体としてこの生活を純一にするとともに、上部構造のイデオロギー、社会体制を改作する思想として自己を形成する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
環境にはたらきかけて、これを改作する感性的・対象的な実践としての大衆的行動を、禅林では「作務」とよんでいる。行為における心情の純粋と結果の貧困ないし背反との不幸な統一を克服するものは、作務における工作態度である。それは詩的な態度ではなくて散文的な態度であり、対象に対する合理的実験的活動によって、主観主義の沈潜と陶酔をつきやぶる、醒めた造型的な精神である。このような精神が社会的歴史的環境としての社会・政治体制にはたらきかけて、開拓し構築しようとする世界は、その究極においては、禅の根本主体の無我、無所有、自律の基本性格にしたがって、自由共産制の国境なき世界社会である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
それ故に真理の彼岸が消滅したのちには、此岸の真理をうちたてることが歴史の任務である。人間の自己疎外の神聖な姿が面被をはがれてしまった後には、その神聖でない姿における自己疎外の面被をはぐことが、まず歴史に仕える哲学の任務である。天国の批判はこのようにして地上の批判に、宗教の批判は法律の批判に、神学の批判は政治の批判に変ってくる。（マルクス「ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
真理の彼岸が消滅したあとに、此岸の真理をうちたてるということは、私の見るところでは、彼岸についての宗教的信仰を克服して、すべての人間が搾取と抑圧から解放されるとともに、排他的な我執の自我からも解放された自由共産制社会を実現するための、直接間接の日常生活の坐作進退において、「坐の時は坐の時に参じ、行の時は行の時に参じ、語の時は語の時に参じ、一切作務の時は一切作務の時に参ず」（東嶺円慈『宗門無尽灯論』）というように、愚痴と取越苦労をはなれ、我執を空じてゆくことである。――スターリンで&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|312}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
さえも真に「自分の主人」（エンゲルス『空想から科学へ』）になることができなかったと察せられることは、旧社会体制の「母斑」にすぎないとしてすまされるほどに、無害・些細な問題ではない。――いうなれば、尾崎秀実の禅的安心がいまのべた意味における仏土創建の行動をつらぬく道をきわめることである。いわゆる「静中の工夫」（静寂な場所で坐禅すること）にまさる「動中の工夫」といわれるものは、このような生活の精進であろう。仏土建立の菩提心をおこし、「衆生を荷負して重担となす」（自分も衆生のひとり）ということであろう。「人間の自己疎外の神聖な姿」は禅の場合すでに拒否されているのだから、残された仕事は、神聖でない姿の自己疎外を認識し克服する実践を、エゴイズムを空ずる「己事究明」の場において行ずることである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
はなを風にまかせ、鳥をときにまかするも、布施の功業なるべし。（中略）船をおき橋をわたすも、布施の檀度なり。もしよく布施を学するときは、受身捨身ともにこれ布施なり。治田産業もとより布施にあらざるなし。（道元「菩提薩埵四摂法」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
永明潜禅師、衆に示して云く、仏法顕然たり。なんによりてか会し去らざる。仏法を会せんと要せば張三李四に問取せよ。世法を会せんと要せば古仏叢林に参取せよ。（『禅門公案大成』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅を学ぶには勤労大衆にたずね、社会の法を学ぶには禅林にたずねる、ということの現代的方法をうちたてるためには、どのような実践と理論の統一をきりひらいたらよいであろう。広く教えを乞うものである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
底本：市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」（1956年）、『市川白弦著作集』第2巻『禅と現代思想』（法蔵館、1993年）、293–312頁。初出誌・初出書の詳細は本版では未確認。本翻刻は作業用の学術テキストであり、歴史的引用および一部の文字の校合にはなお確認を要する箇所がある。頁表示は底本の印刷頁に従う。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Citation ==&lt;br /&gt;
市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」（1956年）、『市川白弦著作集』第2巻『禅と現代思想』（法蔵館、1993年）、293–312頁。&#039;&#039;Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;, [[IH56ZTM]]。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Japanese originals]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM&amp;diff=1224</id>
		<title>IH56ZTM</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH56ZTM&amp;diff=1224"/>
		<updated>2026-10-09T15:22:43Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: Created page with &amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;禅とマルキシズム&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;（1956年）は、市川白弦の論考。本稿は『市川白弦著作集』第2巻（1993年）、293–312頁所収の本文に基づく作業用翻刻である。  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;English translation:&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Zen and Marxism  == 目次 == # 一　イデオロギー以前 # 二　イデオロギーとしての禅（上） # #三 イデオロギーとし...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&#039;&#039;&#039;禅とマルキシズム&#039;&#039;&#039;（1956年）は、市川白弦の論考。本稿は『市川白弦著作集』第2巻（1993年）、293–312頁所収の本文に基づく作業用翻刻である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;English translation:&#039;&#039;&#039; [[IH56ZTM-T|Zen and Marxism]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 目次 ==&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#一 イデオロギー以前|一　イデオロギー以前]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#二 イデオロギーとしての禅（上）|二　イデオロギーとしての禅（上）]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#三 イデオロギーとしての禅（下）|三　イデオロギーとしての禅（下）]]&lt;br /&gt;
# [[#四 人間の自己疎外とその恢復|四　人間の自己疎外とその恢復]]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== 本文 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|293}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 一　イデオロギー以前 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
フォイエルバッハは宗教の本質を人間の本質に解消する。しかしながら人間の本質は、なんら個々の個人に内在するところの抽象体ではない。（マルクス「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
唐末五代の禅僧清涼文益に門弟慧超がいった。「慧超があなたにただします。仏とは何でありますか」&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
師「お前は慧超だ」（『碧巌録』、第七則）。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅の本質を人間に解消したフォイエルバッハ（一八〇四―一八七二）を思わせる対話である。ひとは宗教において廻り道して人間の本質にかえるのだ、とフォイエルバッハは考えているが、慧超はこの場合、仏を自分のそとに、いわゆる自己疎外のかたちでまとめたのではない。「慧超があなたにただします」という自信のある態度がここにある。「汝は是れ慧超」といわれて、宗教の本質を人間に解消するみちを自覚したのではない。さようなことははじめから問題になっていないのだ。師もまた「仏の本質は君の本質である」など&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|294}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
といったのではない。そのようなことなら本をよめばたくさんある。慧超と清涼とはたんなる意味の世界にいるのではない。それゆえ「言前の一句」という。「黒漆桶裏に墨汁を盛る」（『種電鈔』）という。対象論理の触手でつかまれるようなものではない。「清涼の答処、正面驀直」（『拈評三百則』）と道元は評している。天地一枚の汝は是れ慧超。意味が光り発するその場において、意味を底に超えた無我の全体作用をじかにとらえることを、この対話は要求している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
清涼のもとに監院（役名）の則という者があった。一度も参禅しないので、いったいどうしたのか、と師がたずねた。則「わたくしはまえに青林和尚のところでさとっているのです」。師「では、そのさとったところをいってみるがよい」。則「わたくしが仏とは何でありますかとたずねると、丙丁童子来って火を求む、と示されたのです」。師「お前はまちがっているようだ。もっといってみるがいい」。則「丙丁はヒノエ・ヒノトですから火にぞくします。火の子供が火を求める、つまりわたくしがほんらい仏であるのに、これをそとにむかって求めていたのだ、求める者じたいが仏である、ということをさとったのです」。師「やっぱりお前はまちがっていたのだ」。則は不満であった。こんな師匠ではつまらぬと考え、身仕度をしてそこを去った。弟子たちに師匠がいった「おしいことだ。もしあれが帰ってきたなら救われるが、帰らなかったら見込みはあるまい」。旅をしながら、則は反省していた。あの和尚は世にもまれな高僧だといわれている、しかもみだりにおれをだましたのではあるまい、けっきょく、おれの方がどうまちがったのだ、もういちど教えを乞うことにしよう。ついにもとの道をひきかえして清涼に参じた。師「じゃあ、お前さん、わしに問うがよい、答えてあげよう」。則「仏とは何でありますか」。師「丙丁童子来って火を求む！」。則、言下に大悟した。信仰は人間の自己疎外であるとか、人は神を愛することにおいて人間の本質を愛するのだとか、神学の秘密は人間学であるとかいったような、たんなる解釈学のやりとりがここにあるのではない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|295}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
上堂に云わく、赤肉団上に一無位の真人あり。常に汝等諸人の面門より出入す。いまだ証拠（さとる）せざらん者は、看よ、看よ。時に僧あり、出でて問う。如何なるかこれ無位の真人。師、禅牀を下って把住（とらえる）して云く、道え、道え。その僧擬議（まごつく）す。師、托開（つきはなす）して云く、無位の真人、何の乾屎橛（不潔な物）ぞ、といって、すなわち方丈に帰る。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
これは人間の本質を「個々の個人に内在する」ものとみているようであるが、じつはそうではない。「心外に法無し、内もまた不可得なり」（『臨済録』）。個人に内在する人間をそのまま肯定するヒューマニズムは、禅ではない。真人の面目を問われて、唐僧香厳智閑は「猢猻裏の眼睛」と答えた。近代思想の中心概念、ヒューマニティが成立する足場を空じたところでの創造である。「通玄峰上、是れ人間にあらず。心外無法、満目青山」（『天台徳韶』）。そして「無位の真人がもしも個人に内在する抽象体であるならば、あのはつらつとしたはたらき、師の黄檗をして「この気狂いめ、ここへやって来て虎のヒゲをなでおったわい！」と舌をまかせた自由がうまれるわけがない。「随処に主となり」「真正の見解を求取して天下に向って横行す」という禅的生活に、「宗教はただ人間が自己みずからを中心にして働くようになるまでの間だけ、人間の周囲をめぐる幻想的太陽にすぎない」「宗教は涙の谷の後光であり」「抑圧された生物の嘆息である」（マルクス「ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説」）と評価されるような手がかりはないといえよう。マルクスはこの稿の初めにかかげた言葉につづいて「その現実においては、人間の本質は社会的諸関係の総体である」と書いている。マルキシズムは抽象体としての人間の本質と現実としての人間の本質のほかに、もしくはそれらを底に超えて、禅の基礎経験である「人」をみていないのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
定、上座あり、到り参ず。問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師、縄牀を下って擒住（とらえる）して一掌を与えてすなわち托開す。定、佇立す。傍らの僧いわく、定上座、なんぞ礼拝せざる。定、礼拝する&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|296}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
にあたって、忽然として大悟す。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような悟りが、社会の物質的生活の諸条件、すなわちそれぞれの時代の経済的構造を現実の基礎として、それによって規定せられる上部構造としての「イデオロギー」でないことはあきらかである。唐のなかごろ、洞庭湖のほとりに薬山の惟儼禅師があった。ながいあいだ何も説法しないので、院主がうながしていった、「皆の者が久しく和尚の説示をのぞんでおります。どうか一度説法なさって下さい」。師「それならば出頭の鐘を打て」。鐘が鳴って一同出頭におよぶと、薬山は高座に上って、しばらくだまっていたが、そのまま座を下って方丈に帰ってしまった。院主はあっけにとられて、さっそく和尚を追いかけていった。「和尚はさきほど私の願いをいれて下さったではありませんか。どうして何もおっしゃらないのですか」。薬山は答えていった、「経には専門の経師があり、論には論師がある。わしが説法しなくても不思議はないじゃないか」（『従容録』、第七則）。「諸人いまだ法堂に到らざるに、すでに三十棒を喫し了れり」と道元はしめしている。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
上堂、僧問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師払子を竪起す。僧便ち喝す。師便ち打つ。又僧問う、如何なるか是れ仏法の大意。師亦払子を竪起す。僧便ち喝す。師亦喝す。僧擬議す。師便ち打つ。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この場合、すべてのイデオロギーは、白熱の熔鉱に落ちる淡雪にもひとしい。「光影を弄する底の人を識取せよ」（『臨済録』）。イデオロギーを形成する主体をつかめという。「古人いわく、説いて一物に似れば、即ち中らず」と。汝ただ自家に看よ。さらに何かあらん。説もまた尽くることなし」（『臨済録』）。イデオロギーをかぎりなく拒否する主体は、イデオロギーをかぎりなく形成する主体でもある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|297}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 二　イデオロギーとしての禅（上） ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人間がその人間性、その本体をとりもどすことができるただ一つの方法は、「一切の宗教的表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく、人間自身への、決然として正当な復帰によることである。（エンゲルス『イギリスにおける労働者の状態』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一切の宗教的表象の根本的克服と、神へでなく人間自身への決然として正当な復帰ということを、人間の自己疎外すなわち貧乏とドレイ化を克服しようとするプロレタリアートというかたち、プロレタリア・ヒューマニズムというかたちにおいてでなく――と言い切るのは一面的だと私は考えるのだが――「脚下照顧すなわち人間性を底に超える」というかたちにおいて実現するものが禅である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
師、衆に示して云く、仏の一字、われ聞くことを喜ばず。（『趙州録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
汝もし仏を求めば、仏魔に摂せられん。（中略）却って境に乗ずる底の人を見るに、これ諸仏の玄旨なり。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
フォイエルバッハは宗教的自己疎外、即ち一の宗教的なものと一の現世的なものとへの世界の二重化の事実から出発する。（『フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
天国や彼岸の世界は、禅者にとって、泣く子をだまらかす木の葉ッパでありカゲロウであった。かえってカゲロウを追いかける「人」をつかむならば、現実の世界がそのまま生きるに値する実在の世界だというのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
光影を弄する底の人を識取せよ。これ諸仏の本源。一切処これ道流（修道者）帰舎の処なり。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人の世を作ったものは神でもなければ鬼でもない。矢張り向ふ三軒両隣りにちらつくする唯の人であ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|298}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
る。唯の人が作った人の世が住みにくいからとて、越す国はあるまい。あれば人でなしの国へ行く許りだ。人でなしの国は人の世よりも猶住みにくかろう。（夏目漱石『草枕』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
汝諸方より来る者、皆これ有心にして仏を求め法を求め解脱を求め三界を出離せんことを求む。痴人、汝、三界を出でていずれの処に去らんと要す。（『臨済録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「宗教は顚倒した世界意識である」（『ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説』）といわれるが、「到り得て帰り来れば別事無し、廬山は煙雨、浙江は潮」（蘇東坡）という世界のどこに「顚倒」がみられるであろう。レーニンはゴーリキーへの手紙のなかで、「搾取者に対する闘争における被搾取者の無力が、不可避的に彼岸におけるよりよき生活への信仰をみちびきだす」といっているが、おなじ階級的搾取の社会において、禅は意識的に彼岸への信仰を否定したのである。現実的世界の宗教的反映による世界の二重化、「現実的基礎が自分自身から浮き上って、一つの独立の王国として雲界に定着する」という事態が、この場合、おなじ中世紀身分社会においておこらなかったばかりでなく、積極的に拒否されたのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実的世界の宗教的反映は、総じて実践的な日常生活の諸関係が、人々に対して、かれら相互間および対自然のすき透るような、理性的な・諸関連を日常的に表示するに至るや、はじめて消滅する。社会的生活過程すなわち物質的生産過程の姿態は、それが自由に社会を構成している人々の産物として、かれらの意識的な計画的統制のもとに立つに至るや、はじめてその神秘的な覆い衣をぬぎすてる。（『資本論』第一部、第一篇、第一章、第四節）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実の世界の宗教的反映は、実践的な日常生活の諸関係が人々にたいして、かれら相互間および対自然のすきとおるような理性的な諸関係を誰の目にもあきらかにするまでになっていない世界において、いいかえれば、社会がすべての人間を自己疎外から解放し、すべての生産手段を所有し、計画的に行使するに至&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|299}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
っていない中世社会において、すべての禅者たちによって、広範囲にわたって阻止されたのである。すくなくともこのかぎりにおいて、民衆の阿片としての性格はここにはなかったといっていい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 三　イデオロギーとしての禅（下） ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
イデオロギーとしての禅が社会的に問題となるのは、それの形而上的な部面ではなくて、むしろ国民大衆の日常の現実の生活との交渉のなかで、禅の体現者としての禅者（もしくは禅宗の教団）がその世界観、人生観にもとづく言葉と行動において、人倫の問題、処世の心がまえについて、どのような態度をとるかという点にある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
分限を見わけてその性を知れ。（中略）柳は緑、花は紅。（鈴木正三『盲安杖』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
道徳の微妙は無声無臭に始まりて礼儀三百威儀三千に終る。礼儀三百威儀三千に窮りて無声無臭に帰る。（中略）これを明暗双々底という。（今北洪川『禅海一瀾』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
たとひ悪しき主人に仕へてのがるるところなくとも、更に主人の科にあらず。先世の我が業因と観ぜば、却ってはらにあらずや。或は一生病人となる盲目非人となりて朝夕苦しむ人多し。かやうのものは誰が咎なりと云ふや、ひとへにわが咎なり。かへすがへすもあやまることなく、万事を放下して忠孝の道に入るべし。（『盲安杖』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
仏道は人々脚跟下ぢゃ。自己を忘れて其物に成り切る外はない。君と臣の道あきらけき日の本の国は動かじ万代までも。明治天皇の御製ぢゃ。肝に銘じておくがよい。忠孝の外に禅はない。（飯田欓隠『槐安国語提唱録』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
封建的身分社会の人倫を支持し強化することが、禅的基礎づけをもつ自発的なものである以上、禅者がこ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|300}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
の線にそって積極的な行動を鼓舞するのは当然である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ボンヤリ禅は禁物だ、緊張し切って坐るのである。富士山が東海の天に突っ立ったような気持になって、更に云えば地球を座蒲団として天地の間に吾輩一人のみだ、という気持になって只坐ればよいのだ。坐禅は何のためにするのか。無上道を体現するにあり、大悟大徹するにあり、定力を練って随処に自在力を得るにある。無上道とは維摩の大道にあり、大悟大徹とは維摩の大道を悟るのであり、随処に自在力を得るとは、日本人は日本人に安住し活動することである。（原田祖岳『日本精神と大乗禅』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
国民教育の目標が大君のためシノウ、タメシテ滅私奉公するにあるとすれば、各臣民が各々の職域の学修、修行において、かくの如き無作の妙用を体得するに向って進むのでなければ、その実を充分にあげることはできない。（伊藤康安『沢庵和尚と教育』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
すべての木はその果実によって知られる、という言葉があるが、脱俗的なそしてイデオロギーをこえた禅の本質は、平常心のイデオロギーにおいて、このような果実をむすんだ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教は一旦形成されると、つねに伝統的な素材を包含しており、そしていうまでもなく、伝統的なものはイデオロギーの領域において、ひとつの大きな保守的な力である。（エンゲルス『フォイエルバッハ論』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅的な無心の境地においてなされることは、外からみて同じことを繰り返しているようであっても、実質においてはつねに生新であるという見解、「一回挙すれば一回新なり」という見解は、それはそれで正しいのだが、しかもここに創造的な禅が惰性的、因襲的、保守的となる根本契機がある。因習も因習のなかへはいって行動してみると、それ相応の味わいがあるということがひとつの魅力となった。伝統が創造においてうけつがれることが忘れられ、生きたものを生きた形でうけつぐかわりに、死んだ形でうけつごうとしたのである。このような保守性がイデオロギーの領域において、無批判にかつ自発的に階級支配に奉仕するのは&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|301}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
自然のいきおいである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
支配階級の思想は、いずれの時代においても支配的な思想である。いいかえるならば、社会の支配的な物質的力であるところの階級が、同時にその社会の支配的な精神的力である。物質的生産のための諸手段を支配する階級は、それによって同時に精神的生産のための諸手段を支配し、かくしてそれによって同時におしなべて精神的生産のための諸手段を欠いた人々の思想は、この階級に隷従させられることになる。（マルクス・エンゲルス「ドイツ・イデオロギー」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
うがちすぎた見かたをするならば、「八紘一宇」の理念に「倫理的」頂点をもつ帝国主義の世界政策が、その宗教的反映を「緊張し切って地球を座蒲団として坐る」という気がまえのうちに見出した、といえるかもしれない。祭政一致の国家体制において、国防・戦争が宗教的衣裳をつける場合、森厳性をもつ国家権力に、私心をすて生命をかけて帰順する態度になりきれないことに、宗教的な罪の意識をもつという事実も、過去においてまれではなかった。天皇の「無的性格」について、一君万民制の「一即多」としての深玄性について、「聖戦」の道徳的精神について、心をくだいた人々もあった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
私たちは戦争に感情を擦り減らして泣かなくなった世代だと言われるそうである。それは或いは事実かもしれない。しかし天皇と、そのために死んだ多くの人たちのことを考える時、私は不甲斐ないことだが思わず声が顫えてくる。九死に一生を得て、今は平和なサラリーマンである歴戦のパイロットなどと一緒に飲んで、その晩寝つけなかったりすると、私は死んだ戦友たちの顔が目の前にちらついて、いっそう眠れなくなる。（村上兵衛「戦中派はこう考える」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
生きることは喜びであり希望である。また苦しみであり失望である。苦悩と失望に対処する方法はさまざまであるが、永続的根本的なものとして、人生最悪の事態にやすんじて対処する生きかたがもとめられる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|302}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
この場合、超越的な絶対者もしくは彼岸の世界を信じないものが、たどろうとするひとつの道がある。それは、特定の意欲、希望、当為をかたくまもって、このものの実現のためにあくまでもきそいたたかうという身がまえ心がまえを、その足場から空じさって、当面するその場その場の事態をそのままにうけいれ、これと一枚になる生きかたである。柳におけば緑となり花におけば紅となる無色の露のように、朝には朝をうつし夜には夜をうつす鏡のように、来るものをこばまず去るものを追わず、住めば都、悲しさにいて悲しさをあるじとし寂しさにいて寂しさをあるじとする、宇宙的な「然り」において生きる態度である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
其物に成り切り自己を忘ずる時、誰も皆天地一枚の者ぢゃと云ふことが分ってくる。この上望みやうがないではないか。望めばいつも不足である、煩悶である。俗歌の、上見れば及ばぬ事の多かりき、は望上心の非を悟ったのぢゃ。笠著てくらせ己が心に、は分上に豊かなることを知って安住ができたのぢゃ。（飯田欓隠、前掲書）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現実の社会は身分・階級による差別の世界である。このような差別の世界に憎愛の心をからませ個我の意識をはりつめるならば、不満と焦躁はつのるばかりであろう。そこで、差別を差別のままにうけいれて、こばむことなくおぼれることがなければ、あくぐ心はおのずから消え、つきつめた思いは蒸発して、いたみなやむなかにも風に別調のなかに吹かるということになる。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
差別を無視して山も川も貴も賤も一つにすると、それこそ撥無因果ぢゃ、世の荘厳は去って殺風景ぢゃ。偏中正（差別の中の平等）が入用の処ぢゃ。兎角一法に偏堕したらみな落第ぢゃ。元来水の上の波ぢゃ。やから偏堕されぬ答ぢゃ。心をば水の如くに持ち成して、方と円とを物に任せん。（飯田欓隠、前掲書）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「住する処なくして其の心を生ず」（『金剛経』）、「一心生ぜざれば万法咎なし」（『信心銘』）、「上善は水のごとし、それただ争わず、故に咎なし」（『老子道徳経』）といった不争、順応の哲学がこのようにして生まれた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|303}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
彼岸の秩序をみとめなかった禅は、此岸の秩序をじかにみとめる道をひらいた。地上における身分上の地位が、天上における霊魂の地位を規定するのでなく、宗教的＝形而上的視点からみられた自然界の秩序が、人間社会の秩序を聖化することになった。あるいはむしろ人間社会の秩序がその宗教的＝形而上的反映を自然界の秩序に見出すことによって、逆にみずからを聖化し、このようにしてアジア的寛容＝アジア的安心の道を骨格づける宇宙論が形成された。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
一に曰く、和を以て貴しとなす。忤ふことなきを宗となす。（中略）三に曰く、詔を承けては必ず謹しめ。君は則ち天也、臣は則ち地也。天は覆い地は載す。四時順行し万気通ずることを得。地、天を覆わんと欲すれば、則ち壊るることを致すのみ。是を以て君の言うところ臣承け、上の行うところ下靡く。故に詔を承けては必ず謹しめ。謹しまざれば自ら敗れん。（『十七条憲法』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
出陣する青年たちが生死の問題を天皇に帰一する草莽す屍、水漬く屍のみちにおいて解決しようと苦闘した方向は、遠い過去からの傾斜をもっていた。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人生に処するいまひとつの方法に、達観の生活がある。人間生活の究極の意義もしくは最高の価値という視点に立って、歴史的現実の基本的な性格と動向とを全体にわたって諦観・批判するとともに、この諦観において人生を生きる態度である。哲人とか聖賢とかよばれる人々はこのような生活の実践者であり、ひとが人生を総合的・根本的に観察し、この洞察にしたがって生きようとするかぎり、多かれ少なかれ達観的な立場に立たざるを得ないであろう。時間に追われる熱病的な日常に、人生の展望をさわやかにきりひらくものは達人の智慧である。生きることの感銘をみがき苦痛を浄化するあの大肯定の智慧と、この達観の智慧とは、東洋が生んだ深い世界観の両面である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら達観の道は、ほとんどつねに世界の現実にたいする高みの見物におわるものである。社会&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|304}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
悪、政治悪と、それをあらためてよりよい世界を実現しようとする実践とをふたつながら達観して、手をよごさないでおく生活をまもることになる。社会の矛盾、不合理をそのままよしとしてゆるすのではないが、しかしこれをあらためようとする目標と設計とが不徹底であるばかりでなく、あらためようとする行動そのものが依然として世俗的人間の執着に染められたものであり、したがってそれ自体がまず根本的に浄化されなくてはならぬと見るのである。自由にして平和な世界への階級をきずくために、大衆が智慧とエネルギーとを結集し行使することは、もとよりナンセンスではなく、世俗的な意味においてたしかに価値のあることであるが、しかしそれはかりそめにも道に志すものが参加するにあたいすることがらではない。おしなべてそれは人間的妄執のはからいであり、有漏雑染の業にほかならない。まもらねばならず、つらぬかねばならぬ一線は、理論と実践の徹底と純潔である。このような信念のうえにゆるぎなく坐するものが達人の達観である。主体的自覚における社会悪の否認と、客観的事実におけるそれの是認とを、かたくむすぶ生活態度によって、権力の搾取機構に奉仕し、その生活の品位と平安とをまもることができる。完全趣味――「うわべは崇高でも実は卑怯な、行動の放棄」（ルカーチ）――とよばれるものがここにある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
政治的権力にたいする積極的な協力の哲学と消極的な協力の哲学とをみてきたのであるが、この二つは必ずしも別のものではなく、社会的状況の変化に応じて自由にその心を生ずるのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
宗教的情操はひとつの社会的産物である。（「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ながいあいだ禅者の意識・行動をうらづけてきた「易経」的世界観、自然の秩序と人間の秩序とを共通の原理においてとらえる汎道徳的コスモロジーは、いわゆるアジア的生産様式を土台とするアジア的停滞によって、多かれ少なかれ規定され性格づけられていたであろう。この部面の考察はべつにゆずって、禅者の個人的な社会関係について考えよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|305}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ひとりの禅者がその時代の国内的および国際的な権力機構のなかへ、どのような位置づけにおいてくみこまれているか、権力中枢とどのような距離と脈絡を保っているか、そしてこの事態との関連においてどのような交友圏をもっているかということが、かれの生活形態を規定し、その生活形態はその生活のセンス、モラル、政治性等々を制約している。そしてこの連関、照応、制約の構造がくまなく透明に自覚せられていないことが、イデオロギーの特色である。したがって禅者自身の意識においてはまったく自主的である判断・行動が、現実においてはこの社会的連関の仕組によって規定されているのがつねである。「話せばわかる」はずの見解のちがいが、多くの場合その解消がひどく困難であるのは、両者の入りこんでいる社会関係のラインないしシステムがくいちがっており、そのくいちがいが論理のくいちがいを制約していることがまれではないからである。考えかたをあらためるためには、時としては自分がとりむすんでいるこれまでの社会関係を解体して、べつの系列にくみ直さねばならず、同時にそのことは自分の生活を破壊しかねないのである。このことにたいする半ば無意識の不安と生活の惰性とが、ものの見かた考えかた、行動のしかたを規定しかつそれをかたくなにするのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 四　人間の自己疎外とその恢復 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
人間の本質は、その現実においては、社会的諸関係の総体である。（「フォイエルバッハに関するテーゼ」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれは封建社会の拘束からわれわれを個人として解放し放擲している競闘的私有制社会のなかに、この社会体制の存続強化のためにくみたてられた、かずかずの制約にまもられかつしばられて生きている。個人の「自由」と責任において、限られた幸福への手段をめざして、競闘しなければならぬ世界になげだされている。たとえていえば、五分間の停車時間のうちに、超満員の列車にのりこもうとして、力道山の仲間と&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|306}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
小児麻痺の男たちが、一つの入口、一つの窓口をめがけてひしめきあうといった状況のなかで、われわれは生きている。正規の入口がつまっているなら、窓口からもぐりこまねばならず、時と場合によっては屋根によじのぼり扉にへばりつかなくてはならぬ。風采をととのえエチケットをおもんじ謙譲の徳をまもっていたなら、発車の時刻がきて、どの列車にもとりのこされるほかはない、といった交通地獄のなかにいるようなものである。他人がのりこむことは自分がとりのこされることであり、自分がのりこむことは他人がとりのこされることである。この矛盾の合理的な解決はいかにして可能であるか、などと考えているうちに発車のベルが鳴ってしまう。そして自分の目的地にいる、関係の人々のプログラムもこわれてしまう。自分だけの不幸におわるのではない。同じ事情は、ここにひしめきあっているほとんどすべての人々に共通している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
あけてもくれても試験やテストの連続である。青春がしめ出されるだけではない。人間までもしめ出されかねない。なぜならばはげしい試験にパスするためには、友情などといっていられない。級友のつまずきはすなわちわが身の幸運となりかねないからだ。ぬけがけをしたい。試験前には知っていることも知らないといって、友人には教えない。級友が試験の日に電車に乗りおくれるか、病気になるかすればいい。ある学生は「友だちが死ねばいいと思った」と告白した。文字通り地獄ではないか。おそろしいことだ。こういうおそろしい心になった青年が東大に入り、入社試験の時にさらに一層おそろしい鬼になり、そして社会に出てからそれが習性になって、他人の不幸を祈るようになるとしたら、どうであろう。（本多顕彰『現代の青春』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
就職を指導する担任教師の悩みをきいたことがある。教室では憲法はあくまで守らねばならぬことを学習したが、入社試験の場合にはそれをハッキリ答えないがよい、自分がどの政党を支持するにしても、尋ねられたら保守党の名をあげたがよかろう、などと助言をしなければならぬという矛盾である。同じことは私自&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|307}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
身についてもいうことができる。式場において勅語を読みちがえた校長がクビになり、ご真影を焼失した宿直の教師が自殺するといった社会にたいして、私は一言の抗議もしなかったばかりでなく、不潔な戦争と知りながら「聖戦」に協力したのであり、不妄語戒をまもるどころか曲学のことばをあやつり、「行かんと要すれば即ち行き、坐せんと要すれば即ち坐す」（『臨済録』）といった自由はゆめにもえられなかったのである。――ソ連邦ならびに東欧諸国にもおなじ虚妄があったことを、スターリン崇拝、歴史の編集などに関して情報がつたえている。アメリカの作家マーク・トウェーンは半ば皮肉に「神はわが国民にこの上もない三つの贈物をあたえ給うた。それは思想の自由、言論の自由、そしてこの自由を決して使わないという良識である」といったが、この良識をあたえた「神」は、国家権力の機構であろう。警察が認識の限界となるのだ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
盗みについて、作家大田洋子氏は戦時の食糧難のころを回想している。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
要領のよくない私は、東京で毎日空腹をみたされなくて、食事のとき涙をだしたりしていました。人が闇で買ったものをまた少しずつわけてもらったりしていたけれど、あるときは雨を幸いに畑の小径にしゃがんで傘で顔をかくし、ほうれん草をいく束かぬすんだりしたのです。その時分すでに農家の畑のものをぬすむと体刑にされるということでしたが、ちょうど練馬の大根畑の傍に住んでいましたから、雨の夜陰に大きな大根をひきぬいてきたりしたのです。そのころからまともな人間でなくなり、留置場へ入れられたところで、外の暮しとたいして変りはないのだろうと思って平気でありました。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
病にあるひとりの青年は生きることのつらさ、みにくさを浮きぼりにしていった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
家族　　岩本敏夫&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
コノ子サエイナケレバ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|308}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
父ト母サエイナケレバ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
父ハ父デ　母ハ母デ　子ハ子デ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ソウオモイツメテ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
イマハ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
息ヅマル憎シミダケガ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
オナジ一ツノ家ニ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
クラシテイル&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような反目は、もしも完全な社会保障制度が確立し、生活に必要な物資が空気のように豊富であるとしたら、その成立する条件の大半を失うであろう。仏教にいう「縁欠不生」となるであろう。自然のリンショクとそしてとくに社会のリンショクが人間の自己中心、排他、不信、競闘をよびさましかきたてている。わが田へ水をひくという言葉があるが、ひとつの川をさしはさんで不信と敵意をもって対峙していたひでりの時期の農民たちが、一度雨が降れば対峙をといてたち去ることは、むかし田舎にみられる現象であった。性悪説の論者ホッブスは、人間が非社会的動物であることは自分を反省してみればわかる。われわれは夜眠るときには扉に錠をおろし、自分の家にいる時でさえ金庫にカギをかける。扉にカギをかけるのは市民仲間にたいして、金庫にカギをかけるのは自分の子供や召使いにたいして、自分がどのような意見をもっているかを証拠だてるものだといったが、かようなことがらがいつの時代にも存在するかどうかは疑問である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
大道の行われしや、天下を公となし、聖と能とを選び、信を講じ、睦を脩む。故に人独りその親を親とせず、独り其子を子とせず、老終る所あり、壮用うる所あり、幼長ずる所あり、矜寡（妻をなくした老人）孤独（父をなくした幼児）廃疾者、みな養う所あらしむ。（中略）この故に謀は閉じておこらず、盗&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|309}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
窃乱賊はすなわちおこらず、故に外戸（戸をあけたまま）にして閉じず。これを大同という。（『礼記』、礼運第九）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
おそらくこれは原始共産体への回想であろう。フォイエルバッハのいう「人間の自己疎外」、自分の本質を自分の外に投げだすということがどうしておこるのか。そのわけがらのいくつかを明らかにするものを、競闘的私有制社会が構造的にもっていると考えられる。永遠の交通地獄におちこんだ通勤者、もしくは有刺鉄線をはりめぐらした中で、野菜どろぼうの夜番をする習性をかためてしまった農民のような状況に、現代資本制社会の人間はおかれている。私有制度のむかしからこの状況におかれてきた人間にむかって、人を信ぜよ、人をおしのけるな、我執をすてよと説きすすめることはもちろん必要であるが、ただそれだけで効果をあげられると考えるのは空想的である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれはさきに、禅の基礎体験がイデオロギーを超えること、それがイデオロギーとして具体化する場合には、（イ）自分がおかれている現在の状況を肯定すること、および、（ロ）社会の権力機構への奉仕を説きすすめる傾向をしめしたことを知った。ところで、自分がおかれている現在の状況をすなおにうけいれることは、必ずしも非難すべきことがらではない。それは人生のもっとも深く美しい叡智につながっている。「愛情はふる星のごとく」の尾崎秀実の禅的諦観がひとの心をうつのはそのためである。「災難に逢ふ時節には災難に逢ふがよく候。死ぬる時節には死ぬがよく候。これはこれ災難をのがるる妙法にて候」（良寛）。尾崎はこのような諦観において、人生の深さ美しさを創造し享受した。必要なものは解釈の哲学ではなくて変革の哲学だというのは、人間マルクスの言葉であるよりも、革命家マルクスの言葉であると考えたい。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながら人間の生活は、改作の余地が一ミリもない最悪の事態の連続ではない。最悪の事態にやすんじて生きる道をきりひらくことは、日々の生活のゆとりと健康のためにも、重要な問題である。しかしあら&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|310}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ゆる場合にこの態度だけで生きること、この態度だけをすべての人間のあらゆる状況について説きすすめることは、「偏向だ」といっていい。まして神話的搾取体制に進んで奉仕する禅論をうちだすにいたっては、すさまじい偏向である。思うにこれは、禅の根本主体である「無」を、形なくしてあらゆる形となり、色なくしてすべての色になる空気か水のような受動、包容の一面においてとらえ――譬喩をもって考えているうちに、いつのまにか譬喩が考えを支配するようになる――それの創造的造形力としての拒絶、批判、抵抗の方面を捨象した結果である。物質的な利潤の追求を社会構成の動力とし、あらゆるものを、人間そのものをさえも商品化し、物的・手段的な人的資源とする資本制社会と、根源的に主体的な禅精神とは、もともと相容れないものである。したがってこの体制の根本的変革のための科学的認識を、仏土建設のために禅者は学びとらねばならぬはずである。ところが過度の達観主義が、客体的な物の構造、法則を認識しようとする意志を蒸発させたのである。そのために物と心、自然と人間とをつねに「一如・不二」の視点からとらえる習性をかため、自然現象における差別と平等、自然科学的現象における差別と平等、形而上学的意味における差別と平等、社会体制の中での人間の階層的な差別と平等、境遇の差別と安心の一貫性としての平等、これらのものをたがいに混同して悪平等、悪差別の誤認におちいり、ついにはファシズムに奉仕し、戦争にも協力する無節操な暗禅となり、「毫釐も差あれば天地はるかに隔たる」（『信心銘』）ことになった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
個人崇拝はもとよりのこと、あらゆる偶像を拒否し、過去への愚痴と未来への取越苦労をぬぎすてて、現在の生活形成――直接にまたは間接に、真実の人類社会「一人は万人のために、万人は一人のために」生きる世界の実現に寄与する生活形成――に純一無雑となり、この生活創造において我執の空に徹することが、禅の実践である。禅の根本主体はこの意味における人間生活の底辺――いわば生活全体にしみとおる底辺――である。茶に遇うては茶を喫し飯に遇うては飯を喫するというような、日常的身辺的な生活の底辺であ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|311}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
るばかりでなく、反戦、独立、解放のたたかいの底辺でもある。「争でか知らん、我が這裏の田を種え飯をまろめて喫せんには」（『従容録』、第二一則）といった、社会の下部構造に直結する生活における物質的生産の主体としてこの生活を純一にするとともに、上部構造のイデオロギー、社会体制を改作する思想として自己を形成する。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
環境にはたらきかけて、これを改作する感性的・対象的な実践としての大衆的行動を、禅林では「作務」とよんでいる。行為における心情の純粋と結果の貧困ないし背反との不幸な統一を克服するものは、作務における工作態度である。それは詩的な態度ではなくて散文的な態度であり、対象に対する合理的実験的活動によって、主観主義の沈潜と陶酔をつきやぶる、醒めた造型的な精神である。このような精神が社会的歴史的環境としての社会・政治体制にはたらきかけて、開拓し構築しようとする世界は、その究極においては、禅の根本主体の無我、無所有、自律の基本性格にしたがって、自由共産制の国境なき世界社会である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
それ故に真理の彼岸が消滅したのちには、此岸の真理をうちたてることが歴史の任務である。人間の自己疎外の神聖な姿が面被をはがれてしまった後には、その神聖でない姿における自己疎外の面被をはぐことが、まず歴史に仕える哲学の任務である。天国の批判はこのようにして地上の批判に、宗教の批判は法律の批判に、神学の批判は政治の批判に変ってくる。（マルクス「ヘーゲル法哲学批判序説」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
真理の彼岸が消滅したあとに、此岸の真理をうちたてるということは、私の見るところでは、彼岸についての宗教的信仰を克服して、すべての人間が搾取と抑圧から解放されるとともに、排他的な我執の自我からも解放された自由共産制社会を実現するための、直接間接の日常生活の坐作進退において、「坐の時は坐の時に参じ、行の時は行の時に参じ、語の時は語の時に参じ、一切作務の時は一切作務の時に参ず」（東嶺円慈『宗門無尽灯論』）というように、愚痴と取越苦労をはなれ、我執を空じてゆくことである。――スターリンで&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|312}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
さえも真に「自分の主人」（エンゲルス『空想から科学へ』）になることができなかったと察せられることは、旧社会体制の「母斑」にすぎないとしてすまされるほどに、無害・些細な問題ではない。――いうなれば、尾崎秀実の禅的安心がいまのべた意味における仏土創建の行動をつらぬく道をきわめることである。いわゆる「静中の工夫」（静寂な場所で坐禅すること）にまさる「動中の工夫」といわれるものは、このような生活の精進であろう。仏土建立の菩提心をおこし、「衆生を荷負して重担となす」（自分も衆生のひとり）ということであろう。「人間の自己疎外の神聖な姿」は禅の場合すでに拒否されているのだから、残された仕事は、神聖でない姿の自己疎外を認識し克服する実践を、エゴイズムを空ずる「己事究明」の場において行ずることである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
はなを風にまかせ、鳥をときにまかするも、布施の功業なるべし。（中略）船をおき橋をわたすも、布施の檀度なり。もしよく布施を学するときは、受身捨身ともにこれ布施なり。治田産業もとより布施にあらざるなし。（道元「菩提薩埵四摂法」）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
永明潜禅師、衆に示して云く、仏法顕然たり。なんによりてか会し去らざる。仏法を会せんと要せば張三李四に問取せよ。世法を会せんと要せば古仏叢林に参取せよ。（『禅門公案大成』）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅を学ぶには勤労大衆にたずね、社会の法を学ぶには禅林にたずねる、ということの現代的方法をうちたてるためには、どのような実践と理論の統一をきりひらいたらよいであろう。広く教えを乞うものである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
底本：市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」（1956年）、『市川白弦著作集』第2巻『禅と現代思想』（法蔵館、1993年）、293–312頁。初出誌・初出書の詳細は本版では未確認。本翻刻は作業用の学術テキストであり、歴史的引用および一部の文字の校合にはなお確認を要する箇所がある。頁表示は底本の印刷頁に従う。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Citation ==&lt;br /&gt;
市川白弦「禅とマルキシズム」（1956年）、『市川白弦著作集』第2巻『禅と現代思想』（法蔵館、1993年）、293–312頁。&#039;&#039;Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;, [[IH56ZTM]]。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Japanese originals]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH49KST-T&amp;diff=1214</id>
		<title>IH49KST-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH49KST-T&amp;diff=1214"/>
		<updated>2026-10-08T19:00:11Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought”}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Ichikawa Hakugen]] 市川白弦 (1949). “Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought” (&#039;&#039;Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 共産主義思想の展開と仏教). ([[IH49KST|Japanese original here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{| class=&amp;quot;toc&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin:0.3em 0 0.1em 0; padding:0.5em 0.8em;&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
|-&lt;br /&gt;
| &#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&lt;br /&gt;
|-&lt;br /&gt;
|&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Translation|Translation]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 [[#I|I]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.2 [[#II|II]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.3 [[#III|III]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4 [[#IV|IV]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4.1 [[#(1)_On_Buddhist_Institutions|(1) On Buddhist Institutions]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4.2 [[#(2)_On_Buddhist_Studies|(2) On Buddhist Studies]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4.3 [[#(3)_On_Marxism|(3) On Marxism]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Notes|Notes]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
4. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&lt;br /&gt;
|}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|259|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The development of communist thought and Buddhism—this is the subject I have been assigned, but it is one that leaves me somewhat perplexed. For such is the condition of our country today that grieving for the poor and the unemployed, or feeling troubled by the danger of war, is regarded as something shameful, while investigating these problems thoroughly is treated almost as though it were a crime. Consequently, I suspect that what people within Buddhist institutions expect from the subject assigned to me is an account of the shortcomings of communism and how Buddhism might best counterattack them. And if I were to respond to these expectations by promptly producing yet another “Anti-Communist&#039;s Handbook,” I might easily win praise. But my conscience would reproach me. I have therefore resolved, even at the risk of disappointing some of my readers, to consider the prerequisites for Buddhists to confront communism—by which I shall mean Marxism, although there are many varieties of what is called communism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|260|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Let us consider these prerequisites.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Communism takes as its mission the practical task of liberating the proletariat, or of liberating humanity from the world of commodities&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ichikawa characterises communism as a practical endeavour aimed at freeing human beings from a social world organised by commodity relations.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;. It is therefore a body of thought that takes concrete shape through its own practice. For this reason, the central question concerning communism is not whether it is perfect as a “finished system of thought,” but whether it actually brings about the liberation of the proletariat. Consequently, anyone wishing to criticise communism cannot simply sit idly by, waiting for some flawless philosophy of liberation to appear, and then point out communism&#039;s deficiencies from that standpoint. Unless such a critic takes the initiative in developing a philosophy of popular liberation and puts it into practice in some form, their criticism will not only lack genuine persuasive force but may actually serve a reactionary purpose.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The greatest challenges of our time are poverty and war. Moreover, these are twins born of the same womb&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ichikawa explicitly identifies capitalism as the common source of domestic poverty and international war.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;: the capitalist social system. Communism confronts us with a groundbreaking solution to these two world-historical problems—poverty domestically and war internationally—and demands that we take a position. Before criticising communism, therefore, we must examine ourselves. To what extent do we genuinely recognise the necessity of eliminating the fundamental causes of poverty and war from contemporary society? And what kinds of theory and practice are we currently developing on the basis of that recognition?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If, upon examining ourselves, we find that this awareness is deeply felt and accompanied by practice, we may be said to have fulfilled at least the first condition for becoming critics. Conversely, if someone lacks any heartfelt sympathy for the unemployment and poverty suffered by the masses and merely speculates vaguely about how “we, from the Buddhist standpoint, ought to criticise communism,” that must be called an arrogance unworthy of a Buddhist.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|261|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Compared with the passionate—and at times even fanatical—efforts of communists to win comrades to their cause, in what ways are we ourselves demonstrating an equally intense commitment? Does the Buddhist Youth Association possess enough passion to rival the Communist Youth League? If not, what is the fundamental reason for this deficiency? Are we seriously reflecting on these questions? If we merely sit idly by, hoping to acquire a convenient understanding of such questions as “What Buddhist truths cannot be denied by communism?” or “What are the shortcomings of communism from the Buddhist standpoint?” so that we can quote the answers in tomorrow&#039;s sermon, what can we possibly say to such a narrow-minded outlook?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Anyone who wishes to criticise communism ought to possess a theory and practice more effective than those of communism in addressing poverty and war—the problems that constitute the central concern of communist theory and practice. At the very least, such a person must be actively working to establish an alternative. This was the first prerequisite for anyone wishing to criticise communism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
But if this seems an excessively demanding requirement, let us retreat somewhat and reformulate it. Suppose that Buddhists have little concern for the poverty of their fellow human beings or the danger of war, regarding such matters as peripheral details of human life, or even as events belonging to a world in which “all things are falsehood.” If, nevertheless—or precisely for that reason—they wish to criticise communism, they must undertake a further examination of themselves. Have they truly never desired to maintain or improve the living standards of their own families? And have they embarked upon the spiritual education of the masses with a determination and enthusiasm comparable to those of communists?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|262|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If, upon examining themselves, they can honestly declare that they are wholeheartedly pursuing such practice, we may provisionally recognise their qualifications as critics.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
But if even this requirement is considered too demanding, let us retreat once more and put the matter differently.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suppose there are Buddhists who are neither particularly concerned about poverty and war nor especially inspired by religious conviction. If such people nevertheless wish to criticise communism, they must first reflect upon the following questions: Have they made an effort to obtain fair and accurate information about communism? And how much do they actually understand of the writings of Marx and Lenin? These are the minimum qualifications that anyone wishing to criticise communism must possess.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Imagine, then, a Buddhist who, first, has little concern for poverty or war; second, is hardly wholehearted in the practice of religious detachment; and third, knows virtually nothing about communism. Suppose, nevertheless, that such a person possesses great “confidence” in their ability to criticise communism, and responds to Marxism&#039;s criticism of religion by declaring, “They simply do not understand what religion is.” How should we diagnose the “confidence” of such a Buddhist?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Recently, I heard an interesting story. Some young people approached a Zen temple and requested that the resident priest take the trouble to visit them, saying that they would very much like to hear his learned views. Seeing an opportunity to educate the younger generation, the priest readily agreed. After delivering his talk, however, he was bombarded with questions. Pressed relentlessly, he eventually found himself unable to respond. His initial confidence completely evaporated, and he returned home thoroughly humiliated. Later, he confided to an acquaintance: “Never again will I respond to a request from someone who wants to ‘hear my learned views’!” As it turned out, the young people who had invited him were members of the local Communist Party cell.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|263|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Among Communist Party members there are certainly some whose character and education leave much to be desired. But there are also people of considerable ability. What would happen if such people organised themselves and went from temple to temple in rural communities, asking the resident priests to share their learned views?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“How should we live?” “What should we do?” These are the questions confronting the serious young people of our time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And these questions cannot be separated from the intellectual problems of the present. Are contemporary Buddhists genuinely qualified to serve as guides in confronting such pressing human questions? True religion is not a religion of mere verbal exposition; it is a religion of practice. But does this mean that one need only go silently about the ordinary activities of wearing one&#039;s robes and eating one&#039;s meals? When someone asks to hear one&#039;s learned views, is behaving as though one were unable to speak really what is meant by the “practice” of a religion of practice?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is said that genuine religious instruction consists in teaching through one&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Ishin seppō&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 以身説法 refers to teaching the Dharma through one’s embodied conduct. Ichikawa insists that such conduct must be informed by historically responsive thought.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&#039;s own person (&#039;&#039;ishin seppō&#039;&#039; 以身説法). Yet the “person” or “body” referred to here must be a human body, not the body of a mere animal. The essential difference between the body of a cat and that of a human being does not lie in the number of legs or the arrangement of their hair. Plato is said to have defined the human being as a “two-legged animal with flat nails,” but the fundamental difference between human beings and other animals is not to be found in such characteristics. Rather, it lies in whether there is an inner awareness in the ultimate sense—or, to put it another way, whether there is thought (&#039;&#039;shisō&#039;&#039; 思想). “Man is a thinking reed,” said Pascal. To possess intellectual self-awareness within oneself and to act in accordance with that awareness: this is what constitutes the “body” in the true sense of the word. Because the body is the embodiment of intellectual self-awareness, it is capable in itself of performing the work of teaching the Dharma. Moreover, only when this self-awareness is genuinely contemporary does the body truly live. A person today whose intellectual sensibilities remain those of the Meiji period is nothing more than a “living corpse,” and cannot be considered qualified to teach through their own person.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|264|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Thought always has a tendency to become fixed and stagnant. As Goethe puts it in Faust, thought seeks to hold fast through enduring reflection to what otherwise floats amid shifting appearances. Yet this very tendency toward stability also makes thought susceptible to rigidity.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The underlying structures of history, meanwhile, are constantly changing and developing. A gap therefore opens between the logic of the intellect and the logic of history. This divergence becomes especially conspicuous during great historical transformations, when a separation emerges between personal character and intellectual outlook. And we are living precisely in such a time. The ideas and pronouncements of so-called “persons of character” may become anachronistic because they fail to grasp the direction of world history. Consequently, however sincere or enthusiastic such people may be, their efforts fail to achieve their intended effects. They no longer manage to strike the appropriate mark.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This separation of character and thought, and the resulting deterioration of character, is not simply a consequence of the tendency of ideas themselves to become fixed. It also derives from intellectual inertia or laziness and, at a still deeper level, from self-interested calculations bound up with the individual&#039;s social position. This is precisely one of the things we call karma (&#039;&#039;gō&#039;&#039; 業). When confronted with revolutionary ideas, its rigidity manifests itself in violent passions. The distinctive feature of such passions is an inability to listen to an opponent&#039;s arguments, accompanied by an inability to engage in flexible self-criticism. Those possessed by such passions fail to recognise that their own violence provokes resistance. Instead, they perceive the resistance of others as violence directed against themselves. This is precisely the inversion of judgment that characterised medieval religious persecution. Religious tribunals regarded their cruel repression and persecution of heretics as expressions of fidelity to God, without recognising them as violence. Violations of the fundamental human rights of others were not regarded as violent, while resistance to those violations was condemned as violence. One of the most familiar examples of this inversion is the fact that anti-communists are extraordinarily sensitive to any infringement of their own interests and become fervent advocates of equality whenever they themselves experience discriminatory treatment. This condition corresponds to a disturbance that psychopathology calls “egomania.” It is said that a characteristic feature of this condition is the failure to recognise that one is afflicted by it. The great majority of people, including Buddhists—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|265|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—are unaware that they suffer from precisely such a disturbance. Similarly, those caught up in this inversion of judgment regard their distorted perceptions as evidence of the soundness of their thinking. They declare that communism represents “bad egalitarianism.” By this they mean a system in which everyone, apart from a privileged few, is required to wear the same national uniform, eat the same soybean meal, and be regimented under the slogan “One Hundred Million Hearts as One.”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The slogan 「一億一心」 evokes the rhetoric of total mobilisation in wartime Japan.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; Yet the common goal of the various forms of communist thought is the construction of a differentiated society in which people work according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. This is elementary knowledge of socialist thought. Nevertheless, many critics lack even this introductory understanding. They regard Buddhist teachings from three thousand years ago as inviolable truths, while accusing Marxists of blindly worshipping Marx. They also mistakenly identify Soviet Russia with a fully realised communist society. Given these assumptions, their criticisms are hardly surprising.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Such critics must first acquire some elementary historical understanding. Even Copernicus was probably a believer in the geocentric theory during his youth. Similarly, Tokuda Kyūichi was not born proclaiming the principles of dialectical materialism, nor did Nosaka Sanzō emerge from his mother&#039;s womb shouting slogans about class struggle. This point is extremely important, for much of the confusion surrounding communism arises from ignorance of such intellectual transformations. Most of the questions and criticisms that contemporary Buddhists direct against communism arise from the same assumptions that communists themselves held before becoming communists. Communists would surely be bewildered to be told, “You were already a Marxist in your mother&#039;s womb.” To imagine that communists will recognise their errors and convert to Buddhism simply because someone tells them that materialism is mistaken and that mind and matter must be understood as one is a serious misunderstanding. History shows, and contemporary reality confirms, that Buddhism has sometimes reinforced class society but has never overcome it. The philosophy of communism is a philosophy of the transformation of class society, not of its contemplation. It is theory for the sake of practice, not&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|266|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
for the sake of contemplation. It is not a philosophy content to rest in lofty detachment, invoking expressions such as “Looking down from a high mountain into the valley, gourds and eggplants are in full bloom,” or “The dharma abides in its dharma-position, and the characteristics of the world are eternally abiding.” Still less is it a philosophy that teaches the poor to endure their lot through the doctrine of karmic causation across three lifetimes, while encouraging the wealthy to practise charity. What the proletariat demands is substantive respect for fundamental human rights, not crumbs thrown from the tables of the propertied classes. The task is not charity or almsgiving, but transforming the social structures that make such “good deeds” and “heartwarming stories” necessary. In other words, it is to eliminate the kind of society that requires charitable giving of the sort practised by institutions such as the Hiden&#039;in and Seyakuin, or Buddhist social welfare activities. There is an old saying: “When the Great Way declines&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;An allusion to chapter 18 of the &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Daodejing&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 道徳経.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;, benevolence and righteousness appear.” To borrow this expression from Laozi, our task is to establish a world of the Great Way in which benevolence and righteousness are no longer necessary. Christ taught, “Sell what you possess and give it to the poor.” Whatever the appropriateness of this teaching in Christ&#039;s own time, to make charitable giving the foundation of religious ethics today is effectively to affirm the existence of the class society that necessitates such charity, and thereby to defend its continued existence. This is what it means to say that kindness can become unkindness. What is subjectively an act of compassion may objectively be an act of cruelty; what is subjectively diligent effort may objectively be nothing more than indolence. It is not enough merely to have nothing to be ashamed of before heaven and earth. The shortcomings of an ethics based on motives are already common knowledge in moral philosophy, yet Buddhist ethics up to now has been permeated by precisely these shortcomings. The idea expressed in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The reference is to the &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Vimalakīrti Sūtra&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 維摩経 and its association of the purity of mind with the purity of the Buddha-land.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;—“As the mind becomes pure, so too does the Buddha-land become pure”—is a form of social ethics found throughout Buddhism. At the same time, however, it exemplifies the abstract character of individualistic utopianism&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ichikawa’s Japanese expression is &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;kojinteki yūtopianizumu&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 個人的ユートピアニズム, criticising an account of social reform centred on the purification of isolated individuals.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;. Such an idealistic, inward-looking orientation places greater emphasis on changing one&#039;s state of mind than on transforming the structures of society. Consequently, it inevitably leads to preaching at the masses. Instead of critically examining concrete social institutions in terms of their structures, characteristics, and governing principles, it indiscriminately dismisses everything as “falsehood and illusion”—including the poor and oppressed, and even the social practices directed toward their fundamental liberation. In this way, rather than encouraging the masses—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|267|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—to cooperate in eliminating social evils, it directs them to devote themselves to overcoming “ignorance” and purifying the “desiring individual.” It then proclaims that this constitutes the truly thoroughgoing “ethics of the proletariat,” and perpetuates the age-old, futile dream that a beautiful ideal society will emerge when individuals purified by such an ethics come together one by one. Herein lies the reason that idealism can be identified with reactionary politics. In its consequences, such an outlook ends up affirming the social mechanisms of exploitation that constitute the fundamental causes of contemporary social evils and tragedies. The defence that “I never intended anything of the sort” is valid only within a moral universe in which an ethics of intention is regarded as the sole truth. One must demonstrate one&#039;s principles through practice and substantiate them through the results of that practice.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If Buddhists intend to confront communism, then, let us recall once more what they must first examine within themselves and put into practice.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) Do I wish to be happy rather than unhappy? Would I feel comfortable if I were subjected to discriminatory treatment?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) Do I feel compassion for the suffering of others? Do I sympathise with those who are treated unjustly? Just as I feel sympathy for individual people suffering from poverty, am I capable of sharing in the suffering of the proletariat as a whole?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) To what extent do I feel resistance to the danger that my country might once again become embroiled in war?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) Do I possess the enthusiasm and consistency necessary to put into practice what I feel and think?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) If, in reflecting upon these four questions, I discover that I seek not only my own happiness but also the happiness of others—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|268|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—if I feel indignation not only at discriminatory treatment directed against myself but also at the social disadvantages suffered by others; if I recognise a community of shared suffering not merely with individual poor people but with the proletariat as a whole; if I strongly resist the approaching danger of war; and if I possess the determination to put what I feel and think into practice—then the following questions must become my own concerns as a Buddhist. How did contemporary capitalist society come into being? What principles and structures sustain it? What are the fundamental causes of exploitation, poverty, unemployment, and war, and how can these causes be eliminated? Buddhists must first make these questions their own, investigate the principles and methods by which they can actually be resolved, and clarify how these principles and methods differ from, or are connected with, those of Marxism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet suppose that some “Buddhists” make no effort whatsoever to engage in such reflection or action. However widespread poverty and unemployment may become, however many young people wander homeless or children remain out of school, and however imminent the danger of war, they regard these things as merely the way of the world, as conditions that have always existed. They believe that all is well so long as they and their families can somehow live comfortably, and that it is unwise to concern themselves with other households when they have enough to eat at home. Suppose, moreover, that these same Buddhists preach compassion while pointing accusing fingers at those who are struggling to relieve their fellow human beings of the burdens of poverty and war, shouting: “He&#039;s a Red!” “He&#039;s a scoundrel!” “Drive him out!” How should we greet such practitioners of “compassion,” such apostles of the “rejection of violence”? Should we address them as genuine Buddhists and defenders of the Dharma? What, after all, does it mean to be shameless? Is it enough to secure comfort and honour for oneself, and simply get through one&#039;s own life? Is it acceptable to have no interest in truth or scholarship, believing that one need only adjust to circumstances whenever the times change? Is this really—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|269|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—what we should call a sound and honourable attitude for a Buddhist?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, apart from this great majority of Buddhists, we know that there are a serious few who, together with the earnest young people of our time, are grappling with the question, “What are we to do?” It is to these few that we extend our deepest respect, and it is their cooperation and support that we seek. I would like to set down my thoughts concerning Buddhism and communism in the form of preliminary notes and invite their criticism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (1) On Buddhist Institutions ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It seems unlikely that Buddhist institutions can reform and rejuvenate themselves from within. There is therefore nothing further to say about them.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (2) On Buddhist Studies ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is required is to dismantle the existing system of Buddhist studies and begin again from scratch. We must abandon the mistaken approach to learning that regards only those portions of the curriculum devoted to the doctrines of one&#039;s own sect and of other Buddhist schools as genuinely Buddhist studies, while treating sociology, economics, philosophy, and other disciplines as secular forms of knowledge unrelated to Buddhism. Instead, we must establish the fundamental, systematic principles and methods of an approach in which studying any discipline is understood as studying the “Way.” If we provisionally borrow the terminology of traditional Buddhism, the principle that unifies these approaches at their root is the awakening to the “intrinsically pure mind”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Jishō shōjōshin&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 自性清浄心 denotes intrinsic purity of mind. Ichikawa subsequently describes it as &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;kiso keiken&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 基礎経験 (“fundamental experience”); his proposal should not be mistaken for a completed theory of social change.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; (jishō shōjōshin 自性清浄心). Even if we dismantle all the doctrinal disputes and conflicts that have accumulated within Buddhist scholarship, I believe that this principle must still be recognised as fundamental. After all, what we are seeking is “truth.” There is no necessity that this truth be specifically “Buddhist.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|270|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And it is precisely this attitude of inquiry that may be regarded, in the deepest sense, as a humanistic approach. Through such inquiry, we must establish a logic and an ethics capable of integrating the paths of social revolution and spiritual revolution. We should not concentrate on conventional schemes for Buddhist reform—such as modern interpretations of Buddhism, modern forms of Buddhist propagation, or the socialisation and popularisation of Buddhism—which are little more than temporary expedients. So long as we confine ourselves to such measures, we will accomplish no more than pouring old wine into new wineskins, without advancing a single step beyond the opportunism of the past three thousand years. Unless Buddhist scholars cease treating Buddhist studies as their exclusive domain and, for a time, entrust it to the hands of non-specialists, nothing new will emerge. Alternatively, Buddhist scholars themselves must abandon their accustomed field and travel through the worlds of other disciplines. Buddhist studies has reached just such an impasse.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (3) On Marxism ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What originally prompted Marx to undertake his analysis of capitalist society and commodities? What was the fundamental motive underlying all his other motives? We must clarify this original impulse, consciously recognise it, and assign it a systematic place within our thought. Only then can we establish an ethics of human liberation. There are various reasons why Marxists&#039; behaviour is so often regarded with aversion, why repeated discussions of “subjectivity” seem somehow to lose their way, why demands for a “Communist Party worthy of affection” are continually renewed, why those who have contributed to the revolution are repeatedly subjected to bloody purges, and why excessive dictatorship occurs. These phenomena undoubtedly have many causes, both internal and external. Yet I believe their fundamental cause lies in the crude and immature character of proletarian humanism&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ichikawa distinguishes his proposed proletarian humanism from accounts grounded exclusively in class identity or subjective purification.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;. This is not the so-called “ethics of the proletariat” advocated by Professor Yanagida, whose principal aim is the overcoming of human ignorance. Marxists constantly speak of the “recovery of alienated humanity,” yet regard reflection on human nature itself as idealistic and bourgeois. Herein lie Marxism&#039;s stubborn narrowness and the rigidity of its materialism. The path by which communism may recover a rich sense of humanity and liberate itself from needless sacrifice—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|271|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and authoritarianism lies in recognising human nature as fundamental to its system of thought and freeing itself from the “sophistical totality” of dialectics. Ogasawara Hidemi&#039;s Essentials of Social Thought offers much from which we may learn concerning the criticism of dialectics.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
But why must we place human nature, or the original condition of human existence, at the beginning or foundation of our philosophical system? To discover one of the fundamental reasons, let us begin with the following proposition:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Certainly, the ‘ideal’ that drives materialists toward practical action does not yet exist anywhere. Nevertheless, it emerges from contradictions that actually exist, either as the direction in which those contradictions are to be overcome or as the form they will assume once overcome. The source of the passion directed toward that ideal is the suffering experienced within present contradictions and the desire to escape from them.” (Umemoto Katsumi, “The Materialist Standpoint and the Idealist Standpoint,” Shisaku, no. 7.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How, then, do the “suffering experienced within present contradictions” and the “desire to escape from them” arise in human beings? What makes them possible in the first place? What gives rise to “suffering within contradiction” is, in fact, contradiction itself. In this context, contradiction means nothing other than a breakdown in the harmonious correspondence between the subject and its environment. Why does this breakdown occur? Various explanations may subsequently be offered, but as a matter of immediate awareness, it can only be described as occurring “suddenly.” With this sudden breakdown, two tendencies emerge. On the one hand, the desire for self-preservation appears; on the other, an awareness of mutual aid&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The Japanese is &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;sōgo fujo&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 相互扶助. No direct intellectual borrowing from Kropotkin should be inferred without independent evidence.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; arises from sympathy with others of one&#039;s own kind. The former is not necessarily unhealthy in itself. Indeed, it is one of the driving forces through which living beings have preserved their species, and it provides the very basis for activities of mutual aid. Yet when its exclusive, self-centred aspect is brought into the foreground, we arrive at what is called the theory of the inherent evil of human nature. Conversely, when we emphasise the latter tendency, we arrive at the theory of the inherent goodness of human nature. Before the breakdown, good and evil have not yet become differentiated; there is&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|272|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
an aesthetic world, an unblemished clarity in which pleasure and suffering have not yet become intertwined, a world in which human nature can exist as it truly ought to be. Let us provisionally call this the “intrinsically pure mind” (&#039;&#039;jishō shōjōshin&#039;&#039; 自性清浄心).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Here, “mind” does not mean simply mind in the ordinary sense, but something closer to fundamental experience. This is by no means something that manifests itself only in a small number of spiritually exceptional individuals. Marxists, of course, are no exception. As the foundation of all experience, it makes no distinction between ordinary people and sages, and lies on this side of both idealism and materialism. It is through the loss of the pure harmony consonant with this original nature that suffering becomes conscious. Through the awareness of suffering, contradiction is recognised, and there arises a desire to escape from it—a longing to restore the harmony that has been lost. By acknowledging the existence of this fundamental experience and taking it as the foundation of our argument, our thought may acquire a systematic basis. It is from this fundamental experience—the intrinsically pure mind—that fellow-feeling with the poor and oppressed arises, that the fundamental motivation for transforming social institutions takes shape, and that the scientific understanding necessary for such transformation develops. It is upon this foundation, too, that we discover the primordial unity of intellectual reasoning and emotional understanding, of the head and the heart. By grounding ourselves in this principle, we may develop a genuinely sound humanism—a humanism that establishes the fundamental principles of social transformation, or what we might today call proletarian humanism. If we take this original condition of human existence as the starting point of our philosophical system, the remaining question is whether that system can properly be called “materialism.” To suggest that this foundation is itself merely a product of material atoms or nothing more than the activity of proteins is to confuse different standpoints. The question of how the principles of social transformation emerge from what is called the intrinsically pure mind must be examined more fully on another occasion.&lt;br /&gt;
== Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought” (&#039;&#039;Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 共産主義思想の展開と仏教) is a 1949 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦 (1902–1986). It examines the obligations of Buddhists who criticise communism, the social causes of poverty and war, institutional and educational reform, and the possibility of integrating social and spiritual transformation. The essay culminates in a proposal to ground proletarian humanism in the notion of intrinsically pure mind (&#039;&#039;jishō shōjōshin&#039;&#039; 自性清浄心), described as fundamental experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This translation follows Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦, “&#039;&#039;Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō&#039;&#039;” 共産主義思想の展開と仏教, in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 [Collected Writings of Ichikawa Hakugen], vol. 2, &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; 禅と現代思想 [Zen and Contemporary Thought] (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 259–272. The [[IH49KST|Japanese transcription]] uses the same collected edition. Page markers identify printed pages in that edition; English divisions at sentence breaks are approximate.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The essay appeared in &#039;&#039;Gendai Bukkyō mondai gokō&#039;&#039; 現代佛教問題五講 [Five Lectures on Contemporary Buddhist Problems], edited by Nakajima Bunkyō 中島文鏡 (Tokyo: Young East Sha, 1949). Its page range in that volume and any earlier appearance have not yet been verified.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields (2026). This is a working scholarly translation. Certain quotations, historical references, and residual textual questions await final independent verification.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotations: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
Base text: Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū, vol. 2 (1993), pp. 259–272.&lt;br /&gt;
Original collection: Gendai Bukkyō mondai gokō (1949).&lt;br /&gt;
Textual verification ongoing.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1949). “Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought” (&#039;&#039;Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 共産主義思想の展開と仏教). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH49KST-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English Translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH49KST-T&amp;diff=1213</id>
		<title>IH49KST-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH49KST-T&amp;diff=1213"/>
		<updated>2026-10-08T18:57:24Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought”}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Ichikawa Hakugen]] 市川白弦 (1949). “Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought” (&#039;&#039;Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 共産主義思想の展開と仏教). ([[IH49KST|Japanese original here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{| class=&amp;quot;toc&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin:0.3em 0 0.1em 0; padding:0.5em 0.8em;&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
|-&lt;br /&gt;
| &#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&lt;br /&gt;
|-&lt;br /&gt;
|&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Translation|Translation]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 [[#I|I]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.2 [[#II|II]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.3 [[#III|III]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4 [[#IV|IV]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4.1 [[#(1)_On_Buddhist_Institutions|(1) On Buddhist Institutions]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4.2 [[#(2)_On_Buddhist_Studies|(2) On Buddhist Studies]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4.3 [[#(3)_On_Marxism|(3) On Marxism]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Notes|Notes]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
4. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&lt;br /&gt;
|}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|259|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The development of communist thought and Buddhism—this is the subject I have been assigned, but it is one that leaves me somewhat perplexed. For such is the condition of our country today that grieving for the poor and the unemployed, or feeling troubled by the danger of war, is regarded as something shameful, while investigating these problems thoroughly is treated almost as though it were a crime.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consequently, I suspect that what people within Buddhist institutions expect from the subject assigned to me is an account of the shortcomings of communism and how Buddhism might best counterattack them. And if I were to respond to these expectations by promptly producing yet another “Anti-Communist&#039;s Handbook,” I might easily win praise. But my conscience would reproach me.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I have therefore resolved, even at the risk of disappointing some of my readers, to consider the prerequisites for Buddhists to confront communism—by which I shall mean Marxism, although there are many varieties of what is called communism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|260|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Let us consider these prerequisites.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Communism takes as its mission the practical task of liberating the proletariat, or of liberating humanity from the world of commodities&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ichikawa characterises communism as a practical endeavour aimed at freeing human beings from a social world organised by commodity relations.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;. It is therefore a body of thought that takes concrete shape through its own practice. For this reason, the central question concerning communism is not whether it is perfect as a “finished system of thought,” but whether it actually brings about the liberation of the proletariat.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consequently, anyone wishing to criticise communism cannot simply sit idly by, waiting for some flawless philosophy of liberation to appear, and then point out communism&#039;s deficiencies from that standpoint. Unless such a critic takes the initiative in developing a philosophy of popular liberation and puts it into practice in some form, their criticism will not only lack genuine persuasive force but may actually serve a reactionary purpose.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The greatest challenges of our time are poverty and war. Moreover, these are twins born of the same womb&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ichikawa explicitly identifies capitalism as the common source of domestic poverty and international war.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;: the capitalist social system. Communism confronts us with a groundbreaking solution to these two world-historical problems—poverty domestically and war internationally—and demands that we take a position.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Before criticising communism, therefore, we must examine ourselves. To what extent do we genuinely recognise the necessity of eliminating the fundamental causes of poverty and war from contemporary society? And what kinds of theory and practice are we currently developing on the basis of that recognition?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If, upon examining ourselves, we find that this awareness is deeply felt and accompanied by practice, we may be said to have fulfilled at least the first condition for becoming critics. Conversely, if someone lacks any heartfelt sympathy for the unemployment and poverty suffered by the masses and merely speculates vaguely about how “we, from the Buddhist standpoint, ought to criticise communism,” that must be called an arrogance unworthy of a Buddhist.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|261|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Compared with the passionate—and at times even fanatical—efforts of communists to win comrades to their cause, in what ways are we ourselves demonstrating an equally intense commitment? Does the Buddhist Youth Association possess enough passion to rival the Communist Youth League? If not, what is the fundamental reason for this deficiency?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Are we seriously reflecting on these questions? If we merely sit idly by, hoping to acquire a convenient understanding of such questions as “What Buddhist truths cannot be denied by communism?” or “What are the shortcomings of communism from the Buddhist standpoint?” so that we can quote the answers in tomorrow&#039;s sermon, what can we possibly say to such a narrow-minded outlook?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Anyone who wishes to criticise communism ought to possess a theory and practice more effective than those of communism in addressing poverty and war—the problems that constitute the central concern of communist theory and practice. At the very least, such a person must be actively working to establish an alternative. This was the first prerequisite for anyone wishing to criticise communism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
But if this seems an excessively demanding requirement, let us retreat somewhat and reformulate it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suppose that Buddhists have little concern for the poverty of their fellow human beings or the danger of war, regarding such matters as peripheral details of human life, or even as events belonging to a world in which “all things are falsehood.” If, nevertheless—or precisely for that reason—they wish to criticise communism, they must undertake a further examination of themselves.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Have they truly never desired to maintain or improve the living standards of their own families? And have they embarked upon the spiritual education of the masses with a determination and enthusiasm comparable to those of communists?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|262|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If, upon examining themselves, they can honestly declare that they are wholeheartedly pursuing such practice, we may provisionally recognise their qualifications as critics.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
But if even this requirement is considered too demanding, let us retreat once more and put the matter differently.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suppose there are Buddhists who are neither particularly concerned about poverty and war nor especially inspired by religious conviction. If such people nevertheless wish to criticise communism, they must first reflect upon the following questions: Have they made an effort to obtain fair and accurate information about communism? And how much do they actually understand of the writings of Marx and Lenin? These are the minimum qualifications that anyone wishing to criticise communism must possess.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Imagine, then, a Buddhist who, first, has little concern for poverty or war; second, is hardly wholehearted in the practice of religious detachment; and third, knows virtually nothing about communism. Suppose, nevertheless, that such a person possesses great “confidence” in their ability to criticise communism, and responds to Marxism&#039;s criticism of religion by declaring, “They simply do not understand what religion is.” How should we diagnose the “confidence” of such a Buddhist?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Recently, I heard an interesting story. Some young people approached a Zen temple and requested that the resident priest take the trouble to visit them, saying that they would very much like to hear his learned views. Seeing an opportunity to educate the younger generation, the priest readily agreed.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
After delivering his talk, however, he was bombarded with questions. Pressed relentlessly, he eventually found himself unable to respond. His initial confidence completely evaporated, and he returned home thoroughly humiliated.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Later, he confided to an acquaintance: “Never again will I respond to a request from someone who wants to ‘hear my learned views’!”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As it turned out, the young people who had invited him were members of the local Communist Party cell.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|263|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Among Communist Party members there are certainly some whose character and education leave much to be desired. But there are also people of considerable ability. What would happen if such people organised themselves and went from temple to temple in rural communities, asking the resident priests to share their learned views?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“How should we live?” “What should we do?” These are the questions confronting the serious young people of our time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And these questions cannot be separated from the intellectual problems of the present. Are contemporary Buddhists genuinely qualified to serve as guides in confronting such pressing human questions?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
True religion is not a religion of mere verbal exposition; it is a religion of practice. But does this mean that one need only go silently about the ordinary activities of wearing one&#039;s robes and eating one&#039;s meals? When someone asks to hear one&#039;s learned views, is behaving as though one were unable to speak really what is meant by the “practice” of a religion of practice?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is said that genuine religious instruction consists in teaching through one&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Ishin seppō&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 以身説法 refers to teaching the Dharma through one’s embodied conduct. Ichikawa insists that such conduct must be informed by historically responsive thought.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&#039;s own person (&#039;&#039;ishin seppō&#039;&#039; 以身説法). Yet the “person” or “body” referred to here must be a human body, not the body of a mere animal.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The essential difference between the body of a cat and that of a human being does not lie in the number of legs or the arrangement of their hair. Plato is said to have defined the human being as a “two-legged animal with flat nails,” but the fundamental difference between human beings and other animals is not to be found in such characteristics.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Rather, it lies in whether there is an inner awareness in the ultimate sense—or, to put it another way, whether there is thought (&#039;&#039;shisō&#039;&#039; 思想).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Man is a thinking reed,” said Pascal.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To possess intellectual self-awareness within oneself and to act in accordance with that awareness: this is what constitutes the “body” in the true sense of the word.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Because the body is the embodiment of intellectual self-awareness, it is capable in itself of performing the work of teaching the Dharma.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Moreover, only when this self-awareness is genuinely contemporary does the body truly live. A person today whose intellectual sensibilities remain those of the Meiji period is nothing more than a “living corpse,” and cannot be considered qualified to teach through their own person.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|264|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Thought always has a tendency to become fixed and stagnant. As Goethe puts it in Faust, thought seeks to hold fast through enduring reflection to what otherwise floats amid shifting appearances. Yet this very tendency toward stability also makes thought susceptible to rigidity.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The underlying structures of history, meanwhile, are constantly changing and developing. A gap therefore opens between the logic of the intellect and the logic of history. This divergence becomes especially conspicuous during great historical transformations, when a separation emerges between personal character and intellectual outlook. And we are living precisely in such a time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The ideas and pronouncements of so-called “persons of character” may become anachronistic because they fail to grasp the direction of world history. Consequently, however sincere or enthusiastic such people may be, their efforts fail to achieve their intended effects. They no longer manage to strike the appropriate mark.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This separation of character and thought, and the resulting deterioration of character, is not simply a consequence of the tendency of ideas themselves to become fixed. It also derives from intellectual inertia or laziness and, at a still deeper level, from self-interested calculations bound up with the individual&#039;s social position.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is precisely one of the things we call karma (&#039;&#039;gō&#039;&#039; 業). When confronted with revolutionary ideas, its rigidity manifests itself in violent passions. The distinctive feature of such passions is an inability to listen to an opponent&#039;s arguments, accompanied by an inability to engage in flexible self-criticism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Those possessed by such passions fail to recognise that their own violence provokes resistance. Instead, they perceive the resistance of others as violence directed against themselves.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is precisely the inversion of judgment that characterised medieval religious persecution. Religious tribunals regarded their cruel repression and persecution of heretics as expressions of fidelity to God, without recognising them as violence. Violations of the fundamental human rights of others were not regarded as violent, while resistance to those violations was condemned as violence.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
One of the most familiar examples of this inversion is the fact that anti-communists are extraordinarily sensitive to any infringement of their own interests and become fervent advocates of equality whenever they themselves experience discriminatory treatment.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This condition corresponds to a disturbance that psychopathology calls “egomania.” It is said that a characteristic feature of this condition is the failure to recognise that one is afflicted by it. The great majority of people, including Buddhists—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|265|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—are unaware that they suffer from precisely such a disturbance. Similarly, those caught up in this inversion of judgment regard their distorted perceptions as evidence of the soundness of their thinking.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
They declare that communism represents “bad egalitarianism.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
By this they mean a system in which everyone, apart from a privileged few, is required to wear the same national uniform, eat the same soybean meal, and be regimented under the slogan “One Hundred Million Hearts as One.”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The slogan 「一億一心」 evokes the rhetoric of total mobilisation in wartime Japan.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet the common goal of the various forms of communist thought is the construction of a differentiated society in which people work according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. This is elementary knowledge of socialist thought.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, many critics lack even this introductory understanding. They regard Buddhist teachings from three thousand years ago as inviolable truths, while accusing Marxists of blindly worshipping Marx. They also mistakenly identify Soviet Russia with a fully realised communist society. Given these assumptions, their criticisms are hardly surprising.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Such critics must first acquire some elementary historical understanding.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Even Copernicus was probably a believer in the geocentric theory during his youth. Similarly, Tokuda Kyūichi was not born proclaiming the principles of dialectical materialism, nor did Nosaka Sanzō emerge from his mother&#039;s womb shouting slogans about class struggle.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This point is extremely important, for much of the confusion surrounding communism arises from ignorance of such intellectual transformations. Most of the questions and criticisms that contemporary Buddhists direct against communism arise from the same assumptions that communists themselves held before becoming communists.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Communists would surely be bewildered to be told, “You were already a Marxist in your mother&#039;s womb.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To imagine that communists will recognise their errors and convert to Buddhism simply because someone tells them that materialism is mistaken and that mind and matter must be understood as one is a serious misunderstanding.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
History shows, and contemporary reality confirms, that Buddhism has sometimes reinforced class society but has never overcome it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The philosophy of communism is a philosophy of the transformation of class society, not of its contemplation. It is theory for the sake of practice, not&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|266|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
for the sake of contemplation. It is not a philosophy content to rest in lofty detachment, invoking expressions such as “Looking down from a high mountain into the valley, gourds and eggplants are in full bloom,” or “The dharma abides in its dharma-position, and the characteristics of the world are eternally abiding.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Still less is it a philosophy that teaches the poor to endure their lot through the doctrine of karmic causation across three lifetimes, while encouraging the wealthy to practise charity. What the proletariat demands is substantive respect for fundamental human rights, not crumbs thrown from the tables of the propertied classes.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The task is not charity or almsgiving, but transforming the social structures that make such “good deeds” and “heartwarming stories” necessary. In other words, it is to eliminate the kind of society that requires charitable giving of the sort practised by institutions such as the Hiden&#039;in and Seyakuin, or Buddhist social welfare activities.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is an old saying: “When the Great Way declines&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;An allusion to chapter 18 of the &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Daodejing&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 道徳経.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;, benevolence and righteousness appear.” To borrow this expression from Laozi, our task is to establish a world of the Great Way in which benevolence and righteousness are no longer necessary.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Christ taught, “Sell what you possess and give it to the poor.” Whatever the appropriateness of this teaching in Christ&#039;s own time, to make charitable giving the foundation of religious ethics today is effectively to affirm the existence of the class society that necessitates such charity, and thereby to defend its continued existence.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is what it means to say that kindness can become unkindness. What is subjectively an act of compassion may objectively be an act of cruelty; what is subjectively diligent effort may objectively be nothing more than indolence.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is not enough merely to have nothing to be ashamed of before heaven and earth. The shortcomings of an ethics based on motives are already common knowledge in moral philosophy, yet Buddhist ethics up to now has been permeated by precisely these shortcomings.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The idea expressed in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The reference is to the &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Vimalakīrti Sūtra&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 維摩経 and its association of the purity of mind with the purity of the Buddha-land.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;—“As the mind becomes pure, so too does the Buddha-land become pure”—is a form of social ethics found throughout Buddhism. At the same time, however, it exemplifies the abstract character of individualistic utopianism&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ichikawa’s Japanese expression is &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;kojinteki yūtopianizumu&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 個人的ユートピアニズム, criticising an account of social reform centred on the purification of isolated individuals.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Such an idealistic, inward-looking orientation places greater emphasis on changing one&#039;s state of mind than on transforming the structures of society. Consequently, it inevitably leads to preaching at the masses.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Instead of critically examining concrete social institutions in terms of their structures, characteristics, and governing principles, it indiscriminately dismisses everything as “falsehood and illusion”—including the poor and oppressed, and even the social practices directed toward their fundamental liberation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In this way, rather than encouraging the masses—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|267|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—to cooperate in eliminating social evils, it directs them to devote themselves to overcoming “ignorance” and purifying the “desiring individual.” It then proclaims that this constitutes the truly thoroughgoing “ethics of the proletariat,” and perpetuates the age-old, futile dream that a beautiful ideal society will emerge when individuals purified by such an ethics come together one by one.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Herein lies the reason that idealism can be identified with reactionary politics. In its consequences, such an outlook ends up affirming the social mechanisms of exploitation that constitute the fundamental causes of contemporary social evils and tragedies.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The defence that “I never intended anything of the sort” is valid only within a moral universe in which an ethics of intention is regarded as the sole truth.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
One must demonstrate one&#039;s principles through practice and substantiate them through the results of that practice.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If Buddhists intend to confront communism, then, let us recall once more what they must first examine within themselves and put into practice.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) Do I wish to be happy rather than unhappy? Would I feel comfortable if I were subjected to discriminatory treatment?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) Do I feel compassion for the suffering of others? Do I sympathise with those who are treated unjustly? Just as I feel sympathy for individual people suffering from poverty, am I capable of sharing in the suffering of the proletariat as a whole?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) To what extent do I feel resistance to the danger that my country might once again become embroiled in war?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) Do I possess the enthusiasm and consistency necessary to put into practice what I feel and think?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) If, in reflecting upon these four questions, I discover that I seek not only my own happiness but also the happiness of others—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|268|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—if I feel indignation not only at discriminatory treatment directed against myself but also at the social disadvantages suffered by others; if I recognise a community of shared suffering not merely with individual poor people but with the proletariat as a whole; if I strongly resist the approaching danger of war; and if I possess the determination to put what I feel and think into practice—then the following questions must become my own concerns as a Buddhist.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How did contemporary capitalist society come into being? What principles and structures sustain it? What are the fundamental causes of exploitation, poverty, unemployment, and war, and how can these causes be eliminated?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Buddhists must first make these questions their own, investigate the principles and methods by which they can actually be resolved, and clarify how these principles and methods differ from, or are connected with, those of Marxism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet suppose that some “Buddhists” make no effort whatsoever to engage in such reflection or action. However widespread poverty and unemployment may become, however many young people wander homeless or children remain out of school, and however imminent the danger of war, they regard these things as merely the way of the world, as conditions that have always existed.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
They believe that all is well so long as they and their families can somehow live comfortably, and that it is unwise to concern themselves with other households when they have enough to eat at home.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suppose, moreover, that these same Buddhists preach compassion while pointing accusing fingers at those who are struggling to relieve their fellow human beings of the burdens of poverty and war, shouting: “He&#039;s a Red!” “He&#039;s a scoundrel!” “Drive him out!”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How should we greet such practitioners of “compassion,” such apostles of the “rejection of violence”? Should we address them as genuine Buddhists and defenders of the Dharma?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What, after all, does it mean to be shameless?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Is it enough to secure comfort and honour for oneself, and simply get through one&#039;s own life? Is it acceptable to have no interest in truth or scholarship, believing that one need only adjust to circumstances whenever the times change?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Is this really—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|269|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—what we should call a sound and honourable attitude for a Buddhist?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, apart from this great majority of Buddhists, we know that there are a serious few who, together with the earnest young people of our time, are grappling with the question, “What are we to do?”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is to these few that we extend our deepest respect, and it is their cooperation and support that we seek. I would like to set down my thoughts concerning Buddhism and communism in the form of preliminary notes and invite their criticism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (1) On Buddhist Institutions ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It seems unlikely that Buddhist institutions can reform and rejuvenate themselves from within. There is therefore nothing further to say about them.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (2) On Buddhist Studies ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is required is to dismantle the existing system of Buddhist studies and begin again from scratch.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must abandon the mistaken approach to learning that regards only those portions of the curriculum devoted to the doctrines of one&#039;s own sect and of other Buddhist schools as genuinely Buddhist studies, while treating sociology, economics, philosophy, and other disciplines as secular forms of knowledge unrelated to Buddhism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Instead, we must establish the fundamental, systematic principles and methods of an approach in which studying any discipline is understood as studying the “Way.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If we provisionally borrow the terminology of traditional Buddhism, the principle that unifies these approaches at their root is the awakening to the “intrinsically pure mind”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Jishō shōjōshin&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 自性清浄心 denotes intrinsic purity of mind. Ichikawa subsequently describes it as &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;kiso keiken&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 基礎経験 (“fundamental experience”); his proposal should not be mistaken for a completed theory of social change.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; (jishō shōjōshin 自性清浄心).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Even if we dismantle all the doctrinal disputes and conflicts that have accumulated within Buddhist scholarship, I believe that this principle must still be recognised as fundamental.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
After all, what we are seeking is “truth.” There is no necessity that this truth be specifically “Buddhist.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|270|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And it is precisely this attitude of inquiry that may be regarded, in the deepest sense, as a humanistic approach. Through such inquiry, we must establish a logic and an ethics capable of integrating the paths of social revolution and spiritual revolution.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We should not concentrate on conventional schemes for Buddhist reform—such as modern interpretations of Buddhism, modern forms of Buddhist propagation, or the socialisation and popularisation of Buddhism—which are little more than temporary expedients. So long as we confine ourselves to such measures, we will accomplish no more than pouring old wine into new wineskins, without advancing a single step beyond the opportunism of the past three thousand years.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Unless Buddhist scholars cease treating Buddhist studies as their exclusive domain and, for a time, entrust it to the hands of non-specialists, nothing new will emerge. Alternatively, Buddhist scholars themselves must abandon their accustomed field and travel through the worlds of other disciplines. Buddhist studies has reached just such an impasse.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (3) On Marxism ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What originally prompted Marx to undertake his analysis of capitalist society and commodities? What was the fundamental motive underlying all his other motives?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must clarify this original impulse, consciously recognise it, and assign it a systematic place within our thought. Only then can we establish an ethics of human liberation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There are various reasons why Marxists&#039; behaviour is so often regarded with aversion, why repeated discussions of “subjectivity” seem somehow to lose their way, why demands for a “Communist Party worthy of affection” are continually renewed, why those who have contributed to the revolution are repeatedly subjected to bloody purges, and why excessive dictatorship occurs.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
These phenomena undoubtedly have many causes, both internal and external. Yet I believe their fundamental cause lies in the crude and immature character of proletarian humanism&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ichikawa distinguishes his proposed proletarian humanism from accounts grounded exclusively in class identity or subjective purification.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;. This is not the so-called “ethics of the proletariat” advocated by Professor Yanagida, whose principal aim is the overcoming of human ignorance.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Marxists constantly speak of the “recovery of alienated humanity,” yet regard reflection on human nature itself as idealistic and bourgeois. Herein lie Marxism&#039;s stubborn narrowness and the rigidity of its materialism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The path by which communism may recover a rich sense of humanity and liberate itself from needless sacrifice—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|271|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and authoritarianism lies in recognising human nature as fundamental to its system of thought and freeing itself from the “sophistical totality” of dialectics. Ogasawara Hidemi&#039;s Essentials of Social Thought offers much from which we may learn concerning the criticism of dialectics.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
But why must we place human nature, or the original condition of human existence, at the beginning or foundation of our philosophical system? To discover one of the fundamental reasons, let us begin with the following proposition:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Certainly, the ‘ideal’ that drives materialists toward practical action does not yet exist anywhere. Nevertheless, it emerges from contradictions that actually exist, either as the direction in which those contradictions are to be overcome or as the form they will assume once overcome. The source of the passion directed toward that ideal is the suffering experienced within present contradictions and the desire to escape from them.” (Umemoto Katsumi, “The Materialist Standpoint and the Idealist Standpoint,” Shisaku, no. 7.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How, then, do the “suffering experienced within present contradictions” and the “desire to escape from them” arise in human beings? What makes them possible in the first place?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What gives rise to “suffering within contradiction” is, in fact, contradiction itself. In this context, contradiction means nothing other than a breakdown in the harmonious correspondence between the subject and its environment.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why does this breakdown occur? Various explanations may subsequently be offered, but as a matter of immediate awareness, it can only be described as occurring “suddenly.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
With this sudden breakdown, two tendencies emerge. On the one hand, the desire for self-preservation appears; on the other, an awareness of mutual aid&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The Japanese is &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;sōgo fujo&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 相互扶助. No direct intellectual borrowing from Kropotkin should be inferred without independent evidence.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; arises from sympathy with others of one&#039;s own kind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The former is not necessarily unhealthy in itself. Indeed, it is one of the driving forces through which living beings have preserved their species, and it provides the very basis for activities of mutual aid.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet when its exclusive, self-centred aspect is brought into the foreground, we arrive at what is called the theory of the inherent evil of human nature. Conversely, when we emphasise the latter tendency, we arrive at the theory of the inherent goodness of human nature.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Before the breakdown, good and evil have not yet become differentiated; there is&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|272|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
an aesthetic world, an unblemished clarity in which pleasure and suffering have not yet become intertwined, a world in which human nature can exist as it truly ought to be. Let us provisionally call this the “intrinsically pure mind” (&#039;&#039;jishō shōjōshin&#039;&#039; 自性清浄心).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Here, “mind” does not mean simply mind in the ordinary sense, but something closer to fundamental experience. This is by no means something that manifests itself only in a small number of spiritually exceptional individuals. Marxists, of course, are no exception. As the foundation of all experience, it makes no distinction between ordinary people and sages, and lies on this side of both idealism and materialism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is through the loss of the pure harmony consonant with this original nature that suffering becomes conscious. Through the awareness of suffering, contradiction is recognised, and there arises a desire to escape from it—a longing to restore the harmony that has been lost.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
By acknowledging the existence of this fundamental experience and taking it as the foundation of our argument, our thought may acquire a systematic basis.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is from this fundamental experience—the intrinsically pure mind—that fellow-feeling with the poor and oppressed arises, that the fundamental motivation for transforming social institutions takes shape, and that the scientific understanding necessary for such transformation develops.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is upon this foundation, too, that we discover the primordial unity of intellectual reasoning and emotional understanding, of the head and the heart.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
By grounding ourselves in this principle, we may develop a genuinely sound humanism—a humanism that establishes the fundamental principles of social transformation, or what we might today call proletarian humanism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If we take this original condition of human existence as the starting point of our philosophical system, the remaining question is whether that system can properly be called “materialism.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To suggest that this foundation is itself merely a product of material atoms or nothing more than the activity of proteins is to confuse different standpoints.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The question of how the principles of social transformation emerge from what is called the intrinsically pure mind must be examined more fully on another occasion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought” (&#039;&#039;Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 共産主義思想の展開と仏教) is a 1949 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦 (1902–1986). It examines the obligations of Buddhists who criticise communism, the social causes of poverty and war, institutional and educational reform, and the possibility of integrating social and spiritual transformation. The essay culminates in a proposal to ground proletarian humanism in the notion of intrinsically pure mind (&#039;&#039;jishō shōjōshin&#039;&#039; 自性清浄心), described as fundamental experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This translation follows Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦, “&#039;&#039;Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō&#039;&#039;” 共産主義思想の展開と仏教, in &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; 市川白弦著作集 [Collected Writings of Ichikawa Hakugen], vol. 2, &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; 禅と現代思想 [Zen and Contemporary Thought] (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 259–272. The [[IH49KST|Japanese transcription]] uses the same collected edition. Page markers identify printed pages in that edition; English divisions at sentence breaks are approximate.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The essay appeared in &#039;&#039;Gendai Bukkyō mondai gokō&#039;&#039; 現代佛教問題五講 [Five Lectures on Contemporary Buddhist Problems], edited by Nakajima Bunkyō 中島文鏡 (Tokyo: Young East Sha, 1949). Its page range in that volume and any earlier appearance have not yet been verified.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields (2026). This is a working scholarly translation. Certain quotations, historical references, and residual textual questions await final independent verification.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotations: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
Base text: Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū, vol. 2 (1993), pp. 259–272.&lt;br /&gt;
Original collection: Gendai Bukkyō mondai gokō (1949).&lt;br /&gt;
Textual verification ongoing.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1949). “Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought” (&#039;&#039;Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 共産主義思想の展開と仏教). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH49KST-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English Translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH49KST-T&amp;diff=1212</id>
		<title>IH49KST-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH49KST-T&amp;diff=1212"/>
		<updated>2026-10-08T18:54:04Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: Created page with &amp;quot;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought”}}  Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦 (1949). “Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought” (&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō&amp;#039;&amp;#039; 共産主義思想の展開と仏教). (Japanese original here.)  __NOTOC__  {| class=&amp;quot;toc&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin:0.3em 0 0.1em 0; padding:0.5em 0.8em;&amp;quot; |- | &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Contents&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; |- | 1. Translation&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; &amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought”}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Ichikawa Hakugen]] 市川白弦 (1949). “Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought” (&#039;&#039;Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 共産主義思想の展開と仏教). ([[IH49KST|Japanese original here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{| class=&amp;quot;toc&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin:0.3em 0 0.1em 0; padding:0.5em 0.8em;&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
|-&lt;br /&gt;
| &#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&lt;br /&gt;
|-&lt;br /&gt;
|&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Translation|Translation]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 [[#I|I]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.2 [[#II|II]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.3 [[#III|III]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4 [[#IV|IV]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4.1 [[#(1)_On_Buddhist_Institutions|(1) On Buddhist Institutions]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4.2 [[#(2)_On_Buddhist_Studies|(2) On Buddhist Studies]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4.3 [[#(3)_On_Marxism|(3) On Marxism]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Notes|Notes]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
4. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&lt;br /&gt;
|}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|259|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The development of communist thought and Buddhism—this is the subject I have been assigned, but it is one that leaves me somewhat perplexed. For such is the condition of our country today that grieving for the poor and the unemployed, or feeling troubled by the danger of war, is regarded as something shameful, while investigating these problems thoroughly is treated almost as though it were a crime.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consequently, I suspect that what people within Buddhist institutions expect from the subject assigned to me is an account of the shortcomings of communism and how Buddhism might best counterattack them. And if I were to respond to these expectations by promptly producing yet another “Anti-Communist&#039;s Handbook,” I might easily win praise. But my conscience would reproach me.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I have therefore resolved, even at the risk of disappointing some of my readers, to consider the prerequisites for Buddhists to confront communism—by which I shall mean Marxism, although there are many varieties of what is called communism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|260|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Let us consider these prerequisites.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Communism takes as its mission the practical task of liberating the proletariat, or of liberating humanity from the world of commodities&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ichikawa characterises communism as a practical endeavour aimed at freeing human beings from a social world organised by commodity relations.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;. It is therefore a body of thought that takes concrete shape through its own practice. For this reason, the central question concerning communism is not whether it is perfect as a “finished system of thought,” but whether it actually brings about the liberation of the proletariat.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Consequently, anyone wishing to criticise communism cannot simply sit idly by, waiting for some flawless philosophy of liberation to appear, and then point out communism&#039;s deficiencies from that standpoint. Unless such a critic takes the initiative in developing a philosophy of popular liberation and puts it into practice in some form, their criticism will not only lack genuine persuasive force but may actually serve a reactionary purpose.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The greatest challenges of our time are poverty and war. Moreover, these are twins born of the same womb&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ichikawa explicitly identifies capitalism as the common source of domestic poverty and international war.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;: the capitalist social system. Communism confronts us with a groundbreaking solution to these two world-historical problems—poverty domestically and war internationally—and demands that we take a position.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Before criticising communism, therefore, we must examine ourselves. To what extent do we genuinely recognise the necessity of eliminating the fundamental causes of poverty and war from contemporary society? And what kinds of theory and practice are we currently developing on the basis of that recognition?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If, upon examining ourselves, we find that this awareness is deeply felt and accompanied by practice, we may be said to have fulfilled at least the first condition for becoming critics. Conversely, if someone lacks any heartfelt sympathy for the unemployment and poverty suffered by the masses and merely speculates vaguely about how “we, from the Buddhist standpoint, ought to criticise communism,” that must be called an arrogance unworthy of a Buddhist.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|261|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Compared with the passionate—and at times even fanatical—efforts of communists to win comrades to their cause, in what ways are we ourselves demonstrating an equally intense commitment? Does the Buddhist Youth Association possess enough passion to rival the Communist Youth League? If not, what is the fundamental reason for this deficiency?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Are we seriously reflecting on these questions? If we merely sit idly by, hoping to acquire a convenient understanding of such questions as “What Buddhist truths cannot be denied by communism?” or “What are the shortcomings of communism from the Buddhist standpoint?” so that we can quote the answers in tomorrow&#039;s sermon, what can we possibly say to such a narrow-minded outlook?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Anyone who wishes to criticise communism ought to possess a theory and practice more effective than those of communism in addressing poverty and war—the problems that constitute the central concern of communist theory and practice. At the very least, such a person must be actively working to establish an alternative. This was the first prerequisite for anyone wishing to criticise communism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
But if this seems an excessively demanding requirement, let us retreat somewhat and reformulate it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suppose that Buddhists have little concern for the poverty of their fellow human beings or the danger of war, regarding such matters as peripheral details of human life, or even as events belonging to a world in which “all things are falsehood.” If, nevertheless—or precisely for that reason—they wish to criticise communism, they must undertake a further examination of themselves.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Have they truly never desired to maintain or improve the living standards of their own families? And have they embarked upon the spiritual education of the masses with a determination and enthusiasm comparable to those of communists?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|262|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If, upon examining themselves, they can honestly declare that they are wholeheartedly pursuing such practice, we may provisionally recognise their qualifications as critics.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
But if even this requirement is considered too demanding, let us retreat once more and put the matter differently.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suppose there are Buddhists who are neither particularly concerned about poverty and war nor especially inspired by religious conviction. If such people nevertheless wish to criticise communism, they must first reflect upon the following questions: Have they made an effort to obtain fair and accurate information about communism? And how much do they actually understand of the writings of Marx and Lenin? These are the minimum qualifications that anyone wishing to criticise communism must possess.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Imagine, then, a Buddhist who, first, has little concern for poverty or war; second, is hardly wholehearted in the practice of religious detachment; and third, knows virtually nothing about communism. Suppose, nevertheless, that such a person possesses great “confidence” in their ability to criticise communism, and responds to Marxism&#039;s criticism of religion by declaring, “They simply do not understand what religion is.” How should we diagnose the “confidence” of such a Buddhist?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Recently, I heard an interesting story. Some young people approached a Zen temple and requested that the resident priest take the trouble to visit them, saying that they would very much like to hear his learned views. Seeing an opportunity to educate the younger generation, the priest readily agreed.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
After delivering his talk, however, he was bombarded with questions. Pressed relentlessly, he eventually found himself unable to respond. His initial confidence completely evaporated, and he returned home thoroughly humiliated.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Later, he confided to an acquaintance: “Never again will I respond to a request from someone who wants to ‘hear my learned views’!”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As it turned out, the young people who had invited him were members of the local Communist Party cell.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|263|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Among Communist Party members there are certainly some whose character and education leave much to be desired. But there are also people of considerable ability. What would happen if such people organised themselves and went from temple to temple in rural communities, asking the resident priests to share their learned views?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“How should we live?” “What should we do?” These are the questions confronting the serious young people of our time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And these questions cannot be separated from the intellectual problems of the present. Are contemporary Buddhists genuinely qualified to serve as guides in confronting such pressing human questions?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
True religion is not a religion of mere verbal exposition; it is a religion of practice. But does this mean that one need only go silently about the ordinary activities of wearing one&#039;s robes and eating one&#039;s meals? When someone asks to hear one&#039;s learned views, is behaving as though one were unable to speak really what is meant by the “practice” of a religion of practice?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is said that genuine religious instruction consists in teaching through one&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Ishin seppō&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 以身説法 refers to teaching the Dharma through one’s embodied conduct. Ichikawa insists that such conduct must be informed by historically responsive thought.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&#039;s own person (ishin seppō 以身説法). Yet the “person” or “body” referred to here must be a human body, not the body of a mere animal.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The essential difference between the body of a cat and that of a human being does not lie in the number of legs or the arrangement of their hair. Plato is said to have defined the human being as a “two-legged animal with flat nails,” but the fundamental difference between human beings and other animals is not to be found in such characteristics.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Rather, it lies in whether there is an inner awareness in the ultimate sense—or, to put it another way, whether there is thought (shisō 思想).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Man is a thinking reed,” said Pascal.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To possess intellectual self-awareness within oneself and to act in accordance with that awareness: this is what constitutes the “body” in the true sense of the word.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Because the body is the embodiment of intellectual self-awareness, it is capable in itself of performing the work of teaching the Dharma.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Moreover, only when this self-awareness is genuinely contemporary does the body truly live. A person today whose intellectual sensibilities remain those of the Meiji period is nothing more than a “living corpse,” and cannot be considered qualified to teach through their own person.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|264|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Thought always has a tendency to become fixed and stagnant. As Goethe puts it in Faust, thought seeks to hold fast through enduring reflection to what otherwise floats amid shifting appearances. Yet this very tendency toward stability also makes thought susceptible to rigidity.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The underlying structures of history, meanwhile, are constantly changing and developing. A gap therefore opens between the logic of the intellect and the logic of history. This divergence becomes especially conspicuous during great historical transformations, when a separation emerges between personal character and intellectual outlook. And we are living precisely in such a time.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The ideas and pronouncements of so-called “persons of character” may become anachronistic because they fail to grasp the direction of world history. Consequently, however sincere or enthusiastic such people may be, their efforts fail to achieve their intended effects. They no longer manage to strike the appropriate mark.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This separation of character and thought, and the resulting deterioration of character, is not simply a consequence of the tendency of ideas themselves to become fixed. It also derives from intellectual inertia or laziness and, at a still deeper level, from self-interested calculations bound up with the individual&#039;s social position.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is precisely one of the things we call karma (gō 業). When confronted with revolutionary ideas, its rigidity manifests itself in violent passions. The distinctive feature of such passions is an inability to listen to an opponent&#039;s arguments, accompanied by an inability to engage in flexible self-criticism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Those possessed by such passions fail to recognise that their own violence provokes resistance. Instead, they perceive the resistance of others as violence directed against themselves.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is precisely the inversion of judgment that characterised medieval religious persecution. Religious tribunals regarded their cruel repression and persecution of heretics as expressions of fidelity to God, without recognising them as violence. Violations of the fundamental human rights of others were not regarded as violent, while resistance to those violations was condemned as violence.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
One of the most familiar examples of this inversion is the fact that anti-communists are extraordinarily sensitive to any infringement of their own interests and become fervent advocates of equality whenever they themselves experience discriminatory treatment.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This condition corresponds to a disturbance that psychopathology calls “egomania.” It is said that a characteristic feature of this condition is the failure to recognise that one is afflicted by it. The great majority of people, including Buddhists—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|265|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—are unaware that they suffer from precisely such a disturbance. Similarly, those caught up in this inversion of judgment regard their distorted perceptions as evidence of the soundness of their thinking.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
They declare that communism represents “bad egalitarianism.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
By this they mean a system in which everyone, apart from a privileged few, is required to wear the same national uniform, eat the same soybean meal, and be regimented under the slogan “One Hundred Million Hearts as One.”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The slogan 「一億一心」 evokes the rhetoric of total mobilisation in wartime Japan.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet the common goal of the various forms of communist thought is the construction of a differentiated society in which people work according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. This is elementary knowledge of socialist thought.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, many critics lack even this introductory understanding. They regard Buddhist teachings from three thousand years ago as inviolable truths, while accusing Marxists of blindly worshipping Marx. They also mistakenly identify Soviet Russia with a fully realised communist society. Given these assumptions, their criticisms are hardly surprising.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Such critics must first acquire some elementary historical understanding.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Even Copernicus was probably a believer in the geocentric theory during his youth. Similarly, Tokuda Kyūichi was not born proclaiming the principles of dialectical materialism, nor did Nosaka Sanzō emerge from his mother&#039;s womb shouting slogans about class struggle.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This point is extremely important, for much of the confusion surrounding communism arises from ignorance of such intellectual transformations. Most of the questions and criticisms that contemporary Buddhists direct against communism arise from the same assumptions that communists themselves held before becoming communists.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Communists would surely be bewildered to be told, “You were already a Marxist in your mother&#039;s womb.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To imagine that communists will recognise their errors and convert to Buddhism simply because someone tells them that materialism is mistaken and that mind and matter must be understood as one is a serious misunderstanding.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
History shows, and contemporary reality confirms, that Buddhism has sometimes reinforced class society but has never overcome it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The philosophy of communism is a philosophy of the transformation of class society, not of its contemplation. It is theory for the sake of practice, not&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|266|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
for the sake of contemplation. It is not a philosophy content to rest in lofty detachment, invoking expressions such as “Looking down from a high mountain into the valley, gourds and eggplants are in full bloom,” or “The dharma abides in its dharma-position, and the characteristics of the world are eternally abiding.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Still less is it a philosophy that teaches the poor to endure their lot through the doctrine of karmic causation across three lifetimes, while encouraging the wealthy to practise charity. What the proletariat demands is substantive respect for fundamental human rights, not crumbs thrown from the tables of the propertied classes.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The task is not charity or almsgiving, but transforming the social structures that make such “good deeds” and “heartwarming stories” necessary. In other words, it is to eliminate the kind of society that requires charitable giving of the sort practised by institutions such as the Hiden&#039;in and Seyakuin, or Buddhist social welfare activities.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There is an old saying: “When the Great Way declines&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;An allusion to chapter 18 of the &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Daodejing&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 道徳経.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;, benevolence and righteousness appear.” To borrow this expression from Laozi, our task is to establish a world of the Great Way in which benevolence and righteousness are no longer necessary.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Christ taught, “Sell what you possess and give it to the poor.” Whatever the appropriateness of this teaching in Christ&#039;s own time, to make charitable giving the foundation of religious ethics today is effectively to affirm the existence of the class society that necessitates such charity, and thereby to defend its continued existence.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is what it means to say that kindness can become unkindness. What is subjectively an act of compassion may objectively be an act of cruelty; what is subjectively diligent effort may objectively be nothing more than indolence.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is not enough merely to have nothing to be ashamed of before heaven and earth. The shortcomings of an ethics based on motives are already common knowledge in moral philosophy, yet Buddhist ethics up to now has been permeated by precisely these shortcomings.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The idea expressed in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The reference is to the &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Vimalakīrti Sūtra&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 維摩経 and its association of the purity of mind with the purity of the Buddha-land.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;—“As the mind becomes pure, so too does the Buddha-land become pure”—is a form of social ethics found throughout Buddhism. At the same time, however, it exemplifies the abstract character of individualistic utopianism&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ichikawa’s Japanese expression is 個人的ユートピアニズム (&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;kojinteki yūtopianizumu&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;), criticising an account of social reform centred on the purification of isolated individuals.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Such an idealistic, inward-looking orientation places greater emphasis on changing one&#039;s state of mind than on transforming the structures of society. Consequently, it inevitably leads to preaching at the masses.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Instead of critically examining concrete social institutions in terms of their structures, characteristics, and governing principles, it indiscriminately dismisses everything as “falsehood and illusion”—including the poor and oppressed, and even the social practices directed toward their fundamental liberation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In this way, rather than encouraging the masses—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|267|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—to cooperate in eliminating social evils, it directs them to devote themselves to overcoming “ignorance” and purifying the “desiring individual.” It then proclaims that this constitutes the truly thoroughgoing “ethics of the proletariat,” and perpetuates the age-old, futile dream that a beautiful ideal society will emerge when individuals purified by such an ethics come together one by one.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Herein lies the reason that idealism can be identified with reactionary politics. In its consequences, such an outlook ends up affirming the social mechanisms of exploitation that constitute the fundamental causes of contemporary social evils and tragedies.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The defence that “I never intended anything of the sort” is valid only within a moral universe in which an ethics of intention is regarded as the sole truth.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
One must demonstrate one&#039;s principles through practice and substantiate them through the results of that practice.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If Buddhists intend to confront communism, then, let us recall once more what they must first examine within themselves and put into practice.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) Do I wish to be happy rather than unhappy? Would I feel comfortable if I were subjected to discriminatory treatment?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) Do I feel compassion for the suffering of others? Do I sympathise with those who are treated unjustly? Just as I feel sympathy for individual people suffering from poverty, am I capable of sharing in the suffering of the proletariat as a whole?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) To what extent do I feel resistance to the danger that my country might once again become embroiled in war?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) Do I possess the enthusiasm and consistency necessary to put into practice what I feel and think?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) If, in reflecting upon these four questions, I discover that I seek not only my own happiness but also the happiness of others—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|268|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—if I feel indignation not only at discriminatory treatment directed against myself but also at the social disadvantages suffered by others; if I recognise a community of shared suffering not merely with individual poor people but with the proletariat as a whole; if I strongly resist the approaching danger of war; and if I possess the determination to put what I feel and think into practice—then the following questions must become my own concerns as a Buddhist.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How did contemporary capitalist society come into being? What principles and structures sustain it? What are the fundamental causes of exploitation, poverty, unemployment, and war, and how can these causes be eliminated?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Buddhists must first make these questions their own, investigate the principles and methods by which they can actually be resolved, and clarify how these principles and methods differ from, or are connected with, those of Marxism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet suppose that some “Buddhists” make no effort whatsoever to engage in such reflection or action. However widespread poverty and unemployment may become, however many young people wander homeless or children remain out of school, and however imminent the danger of war, they regard these things as merely the way of the world, as conditions that have always existed.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
They believe that all is well so long as they and their families can somehow live comfortably, and that it is unwise to concern themselves with other households when they have enough to eat at home.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Suppose, moreover, that these same Buddhists preach compassion while pointing accusing fingers at those who are struggling to relieve their fellow human beings of the burdens of poverty and war, shouting: “He&#039;s a Red!” “He&#039;s a scoundrel!” “Drive him out!”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How should we greet such practitioners of “compassion,” such apostles of the “rejection of violence”? Should we address them as genuine Buddhists and defenders of the Dharma?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What, after all, does it mean to be shameless?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Is it enough to secure comfort and honour for oneself, and simply get through one&#039;s own life? Is it acceptable to have no interest in truth or scholarship, believing that one need only adjust to circumstances whenever the times change?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Is this really—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|269|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—what we should call a sound and honourable attitude for a Buddhist?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Nevertheless, apart from this great majority of Buddhists, we know that there are a serious few who, together with the earnest young people of our time, are grappling with the question, “What are we to do?”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is to these few that we extend our deepest respect, and it is their cooperation and support that we seek. I would like to set down my thoughts concerning Buddhism and communism in the form of preliminary notes and invite their criticism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (1) On Buddhist Institutions ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It seems unlikely that Buddhist institutions can reform and rejuvenate themselves from within. There is therefore nothing further to say about them.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (2) On Buddhist Studies ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is required is to dismantle the existing system of Buddhist studies and begin again from scratch.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must abandon the mistaken approach to learning that regards only those portions of the curriculum devoted to the doctrines of one&#039;s own sect and of other Buddhist schools as genuinely Buddhist studies, while treating sociology, economics, philosophy, and other disciplines as secular forms of knowledge unrelated to Buddhism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Instead, we must establish the fundamental, systematic principles and methods of an approach in which studying any discipline is understood as studying the “Way.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If we provisionally borrow the terminology of traditional Buddhism, the principle that unifies these approaches at their root is the awakening to the “intrinsically pure mind”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Jishō shōjōshin&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 自性清浄心 denotes intrinsic purity of mind. Ichikawa subsequently describes it as &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;kiso keiken&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; 基礎経験 (“fundamental experience”); his proposal should not be mistaken for a completed theory of social change.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; (jishō shōjōshin 自性清浄心).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Even if we dismantle all the doctrinal disputes and conflicts that have accumulated within Buddhist scholarship, I believe that this principle must still be recognised as fundamental.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
After all, what we are seeking is “truth.” There is no necessity that this truth be specifically “Buddhist.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|270|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And it is precisely this attitude of inquiry that may be regarded, in the deepest sense, as a humanistic approach. Through such inquiry, we must establish a logic and an ethics capable of integrating the paths of social revolution and spiritual revolution.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We should not concentrate on conventional schemes for Buddhist reform—such as modern interpretations of Buddhism, modern forms of Buddhist propagation, or the socialisation and popularisation of Buddhism—which are little more than temporary expedients. So long as we confine ourselves to such measures, we will accomplish no more than pouring old wine into new wineskins, without advancing a single step beyond the opportunism of the past three thousand years.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Unless Buddhist scholars cease treating Buddhist studies as their exclusive domain and, for a time, entrust it to the hands of non-specialists, nothing new will emerge. Alternatively, Buddhist scholars themselves must abandon their accustomed field and travel through the worlds of other disciplines. Buddhist studies has reached just such an impasse.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (3) On Marxism ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What originally prompted Marx to undertake his analysis of capitalist society and commodities? What was the fundamental motive underlying all his other motives?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We must clarify this original impulse, consciously recognise it, and assign it a systematic place within our thought. Only then can we establish an ethics of human liberation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
There are various reasons why Marxists&#039; behaviour is so often regarded with aversion, why repeated discussions of “subjectivity” seem somehow to lose their way, why demands for a “Communist Party worthy of affection” are continually renewed, why those who have contributed to the revolution are repeatedly subjected to bloody purges, and why excessive dictatorship occurs.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
These phenomena undoubtedly have many causes, both internal and external. Yet I believe their fundamental cause lies in the crude and immature character of proletarian humanism&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;Ichikawa distinguishes his proposed proletarian humanism from accounts grounded exclusively in class identity or subjective purification.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;. This is not the so-called “ethics of the proletariat” advocated by Professor Yanagida, whose principal aim is the overcoming of human ignorance.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Marxists constantly speak of the “recovery of alienated humanity,” yet regard reflection on human nature itself as idealistic and bourgeois. Herein lie Marxism&#039;s stubborn narrowness and the rigidity of its materialism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The path by which communism may recover a rich sense of humanity and liberate itself from needless sacrifice—&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|271|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
—and authoritarianism lies in recognising human nature as fundamental to its system of thought and freeing itself from the “sophistical totality” of dialectics. Ogasawara Hidemi&#039;s Essentials of Social Thought offers much from which we may learn concerning the criticism of dialectics.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
But why must we place human nature, or the original condition of human existence, at the beginning or foundation of our philosophical system? To discover one of the fundamental reasons, let us begin with the following proposition:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Certainly, the ‘ideal’ that drives materialists toward practical action does not yet exist anywhere. Nevertheless, it emerges from contradictions that actually exist, either as the direction in which those contradictions are to be overcome or as the form they will assume once overcome. The source of the passion directed toward that ideal is the suffering experienced within present contradictions and the desire to escape from them.” (Umemoto Katsumi, “The Materialist Standpoint and the Idealist Standpoint,” Shisaku, no. 7.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
How, then, do the “suffering experienced within present contradictions” and the “desire to escape from them” arise in human beings? What makes them possible in the first place?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What gives rise to “suffering within contradiction” is, in fact, contradiction itself. In this context, contradiction means nothing other than a breakdown in the harmonious correspondence between the subject and its environment.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why does this breakdown occur? Various explanations may subsequently be offered, but as a matter of immediate awareness, it can only be described as occurring “suddenly.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
With this sudden breakdown, two tendencies emerge. On the one hand, the desire for self-preservation appears; on the other, an awareness of mutual aid&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The Japanese is 相互扶助 (&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;sōgo fujo&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;). No direct intellectual borrowing from Kropotkin should be inferred without independent evidence.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; arises from sympathy with others of one&#039;s own kind.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The former is not necessarily unhealthy in itself. Indeed, it is one of the driving forces through which living beings have preserved their species, and it provides the very basis for activities of mutual aid.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet when its exclusive, self-centred aspect is brought into the foreground, we arrive at what is called the theory of the inherent evil of human nature. Conversely, when we emphasise the latter tendency, we arrive at the theory of the inherent goodness of human nature.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Before the breakdown, good and evil have not yet become differentiated; there is&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|272|original|IH49KST}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
an aesthetic world, an unblemished clarity in which pleasure and suffering have not yet become intertwined, a world in which human nature can exist as it truly ought to be. Let us provisionally call this the “intrinsically pure mind” (jishō shōjōshin 自性清浄心).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Here, “mind” does not mean simply mind in the ordinary sense, but something closer to fundamental experience. This is by no means something that manifests itself only in a small number of spiritually exceptional individuals. Marxists, of course, are no exception. As the foundation of all experience, it makes no distinction between ordinary people and sages, and lies on this side of both idealism and materialism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is through the loss of the pure harmony consonant with this original nature that suffering becomes conscious. Through the awareness of suffering, contradiction is recognised, and there arises a desire to escape from it—a longing to restore the harmony that has been lost.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
By acknowledging the existence of this fundamental experience and taking it as the foundation of our argument, our thought may acquire a systematic basis.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is from this fundamental experience—the intrinsically pure mind—that fellow-feeling with the poor and oppressed arises, that the fundamental motivation for transforming social institutions takes shape, and that the scientific understanding necessary for such transformation develops.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is upon this foundation, too, that we discover the primordial unity of intellectual reasoning and emotional understanding, of the head and the heart.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
By grounding ourselves in this principle, we may develop a genuinely sound humanism—a humanism that establishes the fundamental principles of social transformation, or what we might today call proletarian humanism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If we take this original condition of human existence as the starting point of our philosophical system, the remaining question is whether that system can properly be called “materialism.”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To suggest that this foundation is itself merely a product of material atoms or nothing more than the activity of proteins is to confuse different standpoints.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The question of how the principles of social transformation emerge from what is called the intrinsically pure mind must be examined more fully on another occasion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought” (&#039;&#039;Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 共産主義思想の展開と仏教) is a 1949 essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦 (1902–1986). It examines the obligations of Buddhists who criticise communism, the social causes of poverty and war, institutional and educational reform, and the possibility of integrating social and spiritual transformation. The essay culminates in a proposal to ground proletarian humanism in the notion of intrinsically pure mind (&#039;&#039;jishō shōjōshin&#039;&#039; 自性清浄心), described as fundamental experience.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This translation follows Ichikawa Hakugen, 「共産主義思想の展開と仏教」, in 『市川白弦著作集』 (&#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; [Collected Writings of Ichikawa Hakugen]), vol. 2, 『禅と現代思想』 (&#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; [Zen and Contemporary Thought]) (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 259–272. The [[IH49KST|Japanese transcription]] uses the same collected edition. Page markers identify printed pages in that edition; English divisions at sentence breaks are approximate.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The essay appeared in 『現代佛教問題五講』 (&#039;&#039;Gendai Bukkyō mondai gokō&#039;&#039; [Five Lectures on Contemporary Buddhist Problems]), edited by Nakajima Bunkyō 中島文鏡 (Tokyo: Young East Sha, 1949). Its page range in that volume and any earlier appearance have not yet been verified.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields (2026). This is a working scholarly translation. Certain quotations, historical references, and residual textual questions await final independent verification.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotations: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
Base text: Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū, vol. 2 (1993), pp. 259–272.&lt;br /&gt;
Original collection: Gendai Bukkyō mondai gokō (1949).&lt;br /&gt;
Textual verification ongoing.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1949). “Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought” (&#039;&#039;Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō&#039;&#039; 共産主義思想の展開と仏教). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH49KST-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English Translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH49KST&amp;diff=1211</id>
		<title>IH49KST</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH49KST&amp;diff=1211"/>
		<updated>2026-10-08T18:51:37Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: Created page with &amp;quot;{{DISPLAYTITLE:市川白弦、「共産主義思想の展開と仏教」}}  市川白弦 (1949). 「共産主義思想の展開と仏教」 [Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought]. (English translation here.)  __NOTOC__  {| class=&amp;quot;toc&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin:0.3em 0 0.1em 0; padding:0.5em 0.8em;&amp;quot; |- | &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Contents&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; |- | 1. Text&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; &amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 一&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; &amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.2 二&amp;lt;br...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:市川白弦、「共産主義思想の展開と仏教」}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Ichikawa Hakugen|市川白弦]] (1949). 「共産主義思想の展開と仏教」 [Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought]. ([[IH49KST-T|English translation here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{| class=&amp;quot;toc&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin:0.3em 0 0.1em 0; padding:0.5em 0.8em;&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
|-&lt;br /&gt;
| &#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&lt;br /&gt;
|-&lt;br /&gt;
|&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Text|Text]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 [[#一|一]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.2 [[#二|二]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.3 [[#三|三]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4 [[#四|四]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4.1 [[#(1)_仏教教団について|(1) 仏教教団について]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4.2 [[#(2)_仏教学について|(2) 仏教学について]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4.3 [[#(3)_マルキシズムについて|(3) マルキシズムについて]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&lt;br /&gt;
|}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|259}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 一 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
共産主義思想の展開と仏教、これが筆者にわりあてられた分野であるが、これは多少当惑させられる課題である。なぜというに貧しいひとびと、職をうしなったひとびとをかなしみ、戦争の危険に心をいためることは何か破廉恥なことであり、これらの問題をつきつめて研究することはひとの犯罪であるかのように考えられているこの際の国の実情だからである。したがってこれにかかげられた題目にたいして教団のひとびとが期待するところは、おそらく共産主義の欠陥は何んであるか、仏教からそれをどのように反撃したらよいかという点だと考えられるからである。そしてもし筆者がこうした要望にこたえて即座にまたあの「反共者必携」をものすることをくわだてるならば、容易に称讃をかち得ることができるかもしれないが、それでは内心にとがめられるからである。そこで筆者は多少読者の期待にそむくことを覚悟しながら、仏教者が共産主義――共産主義とよばれるものは数多いがここではマルキシズムに限定しよう――に対決するための前&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|260}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
提条件について考えてみよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
共産主義はプロレタリアートの解放もしくは商品的世界からの人間の解放という実践を使命とし、したがってその実践を通して具体的にみずからを形成する思想である。それゆえ共産主義の最大の重点は、それが「できあがった思想」として完璧であるかどうかということではなくて、それによってプロレタリアートが事実上解放せられるかどうかという点にある。したがってもしひとが共産主義を批評しようとするならば、手をこまねいてどこかで完全無欠な解放思想ができあがるのを待つといった態度において共産主義の欠陥を云々するというのではなく、みずから進んで人民解放のための思想をうち立てそれによってなんらかの実践にふみだしているのでなければ、真実の説得力をもつことができないばかりでなく、むしろ反動的な役割をはたすことになるであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
現代にとってもっとも大きな課題は貧困と戦争の問題である。しかもこの二つは資本主義社会体制という共通の母胎から生まれる双生児である。共産主義はこの二つの世界史的課題――国内において貧困、国際において戦争――にたいする画期的な解決策をもって、われわれに態度決定をせまっている。そこで共産主義を批評しようとするならば、それにさきだって反省しなければならぬことがある。それは、自分は現代社会から貧困と戦争の根本原因をとりのぞくことの必要をどの程度切実に自覚しているのか、その自覚にもとづいて現在どのような理論と実践とを展開しているのか、ということである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
みずから省みてこの自覚が切実であり、それにともなって実践がなされているならば、少なくとも批判者としての第一条件をそなえているということができる。これに反して、もしもひとが人民大衆の失業と貧困にたいする切実な共感をもつことなく、ただ漫然と「われわれは仏教者の立場から共産主義をいかに批判すべきか」などと考えたりするならば、それこそ仏教者にふさわしからぬ傲慢であるといわねばならぬ。共産主&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|261}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
義者たちのあの熱烈な、ときには狂信的でさえもある同志獲得のための実践にくらべて、それに劣らぬ熱意を自分はいまどのような形において展開しているのか、仏教青年会は青年共産同盟に対抗しうるほどの情熱を内にたたえているかどうか、もしそれに欠けるとするならばその根本原因はどこにあるのか、ということについて真剣な反省がなされているであろうか。手をこまねいて、共産主義が否定し得ない仏教の真理は何であるか、仏教からながめた共産主義の欠陥は何々であるか、といった諸問題を手みじかに会得して、明日の説教に引用しようというのであるならば、そのような了見にたいして、われわれは何をかたることができるであろうか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 二 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
共産主義を批評しようとするものは、共産主義がその理論と実践のもっとも大きな関心の対象とするところの貧困と戦争の問題にかんして、共産主義にかわる効果的な理論と実践とをもつべきであり、あるいは少なくともそれを確立するための行動をおしすすめていかなければならぬということが、批評者としての第一条件であった。しかしそれはあまりに注文高い条件であるといわれるならば、しりぞいてつぎのようにいいかえよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
かりに仏教者が同胞の貧困や戦争の危険についてはさほど関心をもたず、それらのことは人生の枝葉末節であり、むしろ「よろずそらごと」の世界のできごとであると考えているとしよう。それにもかかわらず、いなそれゆえに共産主義を批評しようというのであるならば、つぎの反省がなされなくてはならぬ。すなわち、自分ははたしてわが一族の生活水準の保持もしくは向上をねがったことはないのか、そしてまた共産主義者たちのそれに匹敵する覚悟と熱意とをもって大衆の霊性的教化にのりだしているかどうか、ということ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|262}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
である。みずから省みてこの実践に邁進していることを公言することができるならば、そこに批判者としての資格を一応みとめてもよいであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながらこれだけの条件もなおきびしすぎるというのであれば、もういちどしりぞいてつぎのようにいおう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
貧困や戦争の問題にもさほど関心をもたず、宗教的信念に燃えているのでもない仏教者があるとしよう。このひとびとが共産主義を批評しようというのであるならば、まずつぎのことを反省しなければならぬ。自分は共産主義にかんする公正な報道を得るようにつとめているかどうか、つぎにマルクスなりレーニンの著述についてどれほどの理解をもっているかということである。そしてこれが共産主義批判者としてそなえていなくてはならぬ最低限の資格である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ここにひとりの仏教者があるとしよう。かれは第一に貧困や戦争の問題についてさほど関心をもたず、第二に脱俗的実践においてもさほど純一ではなく、第三に共産主義の理解においてもほとんど無知にひとしいとしよう。しかもこのような仏教者が共産主義批判者としての「自信」をもっていたとするならば、そしてかれがマルキシズムの宗教批判にたいして、「かれらは宗教の何たるかを解しないからである」と公言したとするならば、われわれはこの仏教者の「自信」をどのように診断すべきであろうか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
最近こんな話をきいた。ある禅寺へ青年がやってきて、「一度御足労をねがって、ぜひ御高説を拝聴したい」とのことであった。そこで青年教化の機会はこの時というわけで住職が出向いたのであるが、講話のあとで質問責めにあい、さんざん問いつめられて応答ができなくなり、はじめの元気はどこへやら、まったく面目をつぶしてかえってきた。その和尚さん、知人に述懐していわく、「今後はぜったいに『御高説拝聴』に応ずるものではない」と。「御高説拝聴」を申し出た青年たちは、その町の共産党細胞の連中であった。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|263}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
共産党員のなかには、人物の点からも教養の点からも随分いかがわしいものもあるが、しかしなかには相当の人材がいるのである。そうしたひとびとが計画して、地方の寺々へ「御高説拝聴」を申し出たとしたならば、住職たちはどうするであろうか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「われらいかに生くべきか」「われら何をなすべきか」これがこんにちのまじめな青年たちの課題である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
そしてこの課題はこんにちの思想問題から切りはなしては存在しないのである。こんにちの仏教者はたしてこの切実な人間問題にたいする指導者としての資格をもっているであろうか。真実の宗教は口説の宗教ではない、実践の宗教である、ただ黙々として著衣喫飯を行じておればよいというのであろうか。そして「御高説拝聴」の申し出にたいして、聾啞者のごとく振る舞っていることが、実践の宗教の「実践」なのであろうか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
真実の教化は以身説法であるといわれる。しかしながら、ここで「身」というのは人間的な身であって禽獣的な身ではない。猫のからだと人間のからだとの本質的なちがいは、足の数や毛並にあるのではない。プラトンは人間を定義して「扁平な爪をもった二本脚の動物」といったとかつたえられるが、人間のからだとけだもののからだとの相違は、本質的にはそういうところにあるのではない。内側に勝義における自覚があるかないか、べつの言葉でいえば「思想」があるかないかである。「ひとは考える葦である」とパスカルはいった。内に思想的自覚をもち、この自覚において行動するもの、これが本当の意味における「身体」なのである。身体が思想的自覚の形象化であるがゆえに、それ自身「説法」のはたらきをもちうるのである。そして思想的自覚がつねに現代的なものであるときにだけ、その身体は真に生きているのである。こんにち明治時代の思想的感覚しかもたないような身体は「生ける屍」にすぎず、以身説法の資格をもたないはずである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|264}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
思想はつねに固定し停滞する傾向をもっている。「ゆらぐ現象として漂っているものを、持久する思惟でつなぎとめて行く」（ゲーテ「ファウスト」）ものが思想であり、この定着性が硬化する傾きをもつからである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ところが歴史の基礎構造はたえず変動し展開している。そこで頭脳の論理と歴史の論理とのあいだにずれが出てくる。このずれは歴史の大いなる転換期にはいよいよ目立ってくる。諸方に人格と思想との分裂が発生するのはこの時である。そしてこんにちがまさにその時代にあたっている。いわゆる「人格者」の考えるところ説くところが、世界史の動向にくらく時代錯誤となり、したがって当事者の誠意と熱意とにかかわらずその効果があがらず、「発して節に中る」ところがない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「人格と思想との分裂」その意味における人格の頽廃は、たんに思想そのものの固定性に起因するばかりではない。それは当事者の知的惰性ないし怠慢に、そして一層根本的にはかれの社会的存在にからまる打算的意識に由来するからである。これがまさに「業」と呼ばれるもののひとつであり、それの硬直性は革新的な思想との対決において暴力的な情熱をあらわす。この情熱の特色は相手の主張を聴こうとするゆとりをもたぬこと、したがって自己反省のしなやかさをもたぬこと、それゆえにこちらの暴力性が相手の反発を挑発していることを自覚しないで、相手の反発を暴力として意識するという錯覚にある。それはちょうど中世の宗教裁判が、異安心にたいするあの残忍な弾圧と迫害とを神への忠誠と考えて、すこしも暴力と考えなかったのとおなじである。相手の基本的人権にたいする侵害は暴力ではなく、そのような侵害にたいする相手の反発は暴力だと考えられるのである。宗教裁判の倒錯がまさにそれであった。このような倒錯のいちばんありふれた例証は、すべての反共産主義者たちが自分の利益の侵害にたいしてはなはだ過敏であり、自分にたいする差別待遇にかんするかぎりにおいては過激な平等論者である、という事実である。精神病理学において「自我狂」と呼ばれる錯乱に該当する。仏教者をふくめて国民の大半&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|265}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
がこのような錯乱症の患者であることを知らぬ点にあるといわれるが、おなじようにこれらの錯乱者はこの倒錯こそ思想の健全を証明するものだと考えている。そしてこのひとびとは言う、共産主義は「悪平等」であると。「悪平等」というのは一部の特権者をのぞいてすべてのものにおなじ国民服を着せ、おなじ豆粕をたべさせ、「一億一心」に切りそろえるといったような統制を意味する。さまざまな共産主義思想の共通目標が、「能力に応じて働き、必要に応じて取る」差別的な社会の建設であることは、社会主義思想のイロハである。このような入門的常識さえも持ちあわせないのが多くの批判者の実情であり、したがってみずからは三千年前の仏説を金科玉条と考えながら、マルキシストをマルクスの盲信者と批評したり、ソビエト・ロシアを共産主義の社会と考えたりするのは、何の不思議でもないであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
これらの批判者はまずつぎの常識をそなえなくてはならぬ。すなわち、コペルニクスといえどもおそらく青年時代は天動説の信奉者であったということ、それとおなじく徳田球一は生まれた途端に「唯物弁証法は……」といったわけではなく、野坂参三もまた「階級闘争は……」とさけびながら母の胎内から出たのではない、ということである。このことはきわめて重要であり、ほとんどすべての混乱がこのことにかんする無知に起因している。こんにちの仏教者たちが共産主義にたいしてもちだす疑問や批評は、その大半が共産主義者が共産主義に転ずる以前にいだいていた思想とおなじ起源のものである。「お前は母の胎内においてすでにマルキシストであった」などと批評されては、共産主義者も面喰うほかはあるまい。唯物論はまちがっている、物心一如でなくてはならぬと指摘すれば、共産主義者も自己のあやまりに気づいて仏教信者になるなどと考えたならばたいへんな勘違いである。仏教によって階級社会が補強されたことはあっても克服されたことがなかったことは歴史がしめすとおりであり、現実が証明するところである。共産主義の哲学は階級社会変革の哲学であって、階級社会観照の哲学ではない。それは実践のための理論であって、観照&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|266}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
のための理論ではない。「高い山から谷底見れば、瓜や茄子の花ざかり」とか「法、法位に住して世間の相、常住」といったような高踏的達観に安住する哲学ではない。まして三世因果説によって貧しきものに忍従をおしえ富めるものに慈善をすすめる哲学ではない。無産者が要求するものは基本的人権の実質的な尊重であって、有産者の食卓から投げあたえられるパン屑ではないからである。慈善や布施ではなくて、そのような「善行」「美談」を必要とする社会の仕組をあらためることだからである。（悲田院、施薬院的な布施行、仏教的社会事業を必要とするような社会を無くすることだからである。）「大道すたれて仁義あり」ということばがあるが、この老子的な語法をかりるならば、仁義を不要とするような大道の世界をうち建てることだからである。「汝のもてる物を売りて、これを貧しき者にほどこせ」とキリストは教えたが、キリストの時代ならばともかく、こんにちこのような布施行を宗教倫理の根幹とするならば、それはこのような布施行を必要とする階級社会の存在を肯定し、事実においてこの社会の存続を擁護することにほかならない。「親切が不親切になる」というのはこのことである。主観的には慈愛であるものが客観的には冷酷であり、主観的には精進であるものが客観的には怠慢にほかならない。俯仰天地に愧じなければそれでいいのではない、動機説の欠陥についてはすでに倫理学の常識であるが、これまでの仏教倫理はすべて動機説の欠陥をふくんでいる。「維摩経」のいわゆる「其の心浄きにしたがって仏土浄し」という思想は、ほとんど仏教全般に通ずる社会倫理であるが、同時にそれは個人的ユートピアニズムの観念性を典型的に示している。このように観念的心境的であるということは、社会の仕組みを変えることよりも心の持ちかたを変えることに重点をおくことであり、したがって人民大衆に「説教」することにはかならず、そこで具体的現実的な社会機構をその構造と性格と法則において批判するかわりに、貧しきもの虐げられたるものおよびそれらを根本的に解放しようとする社会的実践をも含めて、ただ無差別に「よろずそらごと」と批判することであり、かくして人民大衆&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|267}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
をして社会悪をとりのぞくために協力させるかわりに「無明的なるもの」「欲望的人間」の浄化に専念させ、これこそ真に徹底した「プロレタリアートの倫理」であると宣言し、この倫理によって浄化された個人が一人一人集まって美しき理想社会がつくられるのだという太古からのはかなき夢をつづることである。観念的であることが反動的であることと同一視されるゆえんがここにある。それは結果においてこんにちの社会悪と社会悲劇の根本原因である社会の搾取機構を是認することになるからである。「自分は決してそういうつもりはない」という弁明は、もっぱら動機説が唯一の真理である世界においてのみ通用する倫理であることを知らねばならぬ。汝の実践をもって示し、実践の結果において証明せよ、である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 三 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
そこで仏教者が共産主義に対決しようとするならば、まず反省し実践しなければならぬことを、もういちど想起しよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(1) 自分は不幸であるよりも幸福でありたいとねがっているかどうか。自分が差別的な待遇をうけた場合こころよく感ずるかどうか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(2) 他人の不幸にたいして思いやりがあるかどうか。他人が不当な取り扱いをうけている場合に同情する心があるかどうか。個々の貧困者に同情するように無産者全体にたいして苦痛をわかつ心持があるかどうか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(3) 自分の国がふたたび戦争の渦中にまきこまれる危険にたいして、どの程度の反発心をもっているか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(4) 感じたこと考えたことを実践する熱意と一貫性があるかどうか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
(5) 以上四項目の反省において、もしも自分が自分ひとりの幸福ばかりでなく他人の幸福をもねがうもので&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|268}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
あり、自分にたいする差別的待遇のみならず、他人がうけている社会的不遇にたいしてもいきどおりを感じ、個々の貧困者のみならず無産階級全般と苦痛の共同体的自覚をもち、さしせまる戦争の危険にたいして強い反発をいだき、そしてこの感じたこと考えたことを実行にうつす熱意があるとすれば、こんにちの資本主義社会がどのようにして形成せられたか、これを支持する原理と構造はどのようなものであるか、搾取、貧困、失業、戦争の根本原因は何であるか、それはどうして排除し得るのか、という問題を何よりもまず仏教者みずからの課題とし、この課題の現実的な解決の原理と方法を探究し、そしてその原理と方法がマルキシズムの原理方法とどのような違いと繋がりをもつかということを明らかにしなければならぬ。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかるにこのような反省と努力をすこしもこころみることなく、社会にどれほどおびただしい貧困と失業があっても、どれだけ多くの浮浪する青少年、就学しない子供たちがあっても、そして戦争の危険がますます切迫しても、それらは昔からどこにでもある世のならいとして何の関心も持たず、ただ自分の一家さえどうにか安穏に暮らせたならば結構なことであり、自家の飯を食って他家の事にかかわりあうのは賢明でないと考えている「仏教者」があるとしたならば、そしてこのような仏教者たちが口では慈悲を説きながら、貧困と戦争の重圧を同胞からとりのけようと努力するひとびとをゆびさして、「かれは赤だ」「破廉恥漢である」「かれを追放せよ」とさけんだとしたならば、われわれはそのような「慈愛」の行者、「暴力排撃」の使徒にたいして、何と挨拶したものであろうか。あなたがたこそ真実の仏教者であり護法の士である、と挨拶すべきであろうか。破廉恥とはどういうことであろうか。自分さえ安楽で栄誉にありつけたならそれでよろしい、自分のすきなようにやってゆけたならそれでよろしい、真理とか学問とかそのようなものに用事はない、時勢が変わったらその時に善処すれば事足りるという態度こそ、仏教者として&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|269}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
健全な愧ずかしからぬ態度であるというのであろうか。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 四 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しかしながらこのような大多数の仏教者とは別に、現代の真摯な青年たちとともに、「われら何をなすべきか」という問題に取り組んでいる真剣な少数の仏教者があることをわれわれは知っている。われわれがかぎりない敬意をおくり、その協力と支援をもとめようとするのは、この少数のひとびとにたいしてである。筆者はこのひとびとにたいして、仏教と共産主義とにかんする私見を覚え書風にかきとどめて批評をうけたいとおもうのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (1) 仏教教団について ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
仏教教団が内部からみずからを改革し若返るという可能性はないと思われる。したがってこれについていうことはない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (2) 仏教学について ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
これまでの仏教学を解体し御破算にすることである。時間表のなかの宗乗学、余乗学の部分だけが仏教学を学ぶ時間であって、社会学や経済学や哲学などは仏教とはちがった世俗の学問であるというような間違った学びかたを清算し、どの学を学ぶことも「道」を学ぶことであるというような学びかたの根本的体系的な原理と方法とを確立することが必要である。この原理方法を根源的に統一するものは、かりにこれまでの仏教の語法をかりるならば、「自性清浄心」の自覚である。一切の教学的葛藤を解体しても、これだけは原理的なものとしてみとめざるをえないと考えられる。もとよりわれわれは「真理」を探求しているのであって、その真理がぜひとも「仏教的な」ものでなくてはならぬというのではない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|270}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
そしてこのような探究の態度こそ、深い意味におけるヒューマニズムの探究態度であると考えられる。この探究を通じて、社会革命の道と精神革命の道とが総合せられるような論理と倫理とがうち立てられなければならぬ。ありきたりの仏教改革的な考えかた、すなわち仏教の現代的解釈とか、仏教の現代的布教とか、仏教の社会化ないし大衆化といったような一時しのぎの対策に重点を置くべきではない。そのような対策に終始するかぎり、せいぜい古き酒を新しき皮袋に盛るにすぎず、三千年来の便乗主義を一歩も出ないことになるであろう。仏教学者が仏教学を取り扱うことをやめ、仏教学をいちど素人の手に移さなくては、新しいものは生まれてこない。そうでなければ仏教学者が仏教学をすてて他の学問の世界を遍歴してこなければならぬ。仏教学のゆきづまりはそこまできているのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
==== (3) マルキシズムについて ====&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
マルクスが資本主義社会の分析、商品の分析をこころざすにいたったそもそもの原因は何であるか。動機中の最初の根本動機は何であるかをあきらかにし、このものを自覚的にとりあげ体系的に位置づけることによって、人民解放の倫理を確立しなくてはならぬ。マルキシストの振る舞いがとかく毛嫌いせられたり、「主体性」の論議がいくたび繰り返されてもどこか行方不明なところがあったり、「愛される共産党」への要求が繰り返されたり、革命の功労者が相ついで血の粛清をうけたり、過剰の独裁がおこなわれたりするのは、内外さまざまな原因によるものであろうが、その根本原因はプロレタリア・ヒューマニズム――それは無明的人間の克服を主眼とする柳田博士のいわゆる「プロレタリアの倫理」ではない。――の粗雑未熟にあると考えられる。たえず「疎外された人間性の恢復」について語りながら、人間の本性について思索することを観念的ブルジョア的だと考えるところに、マルキシズムのかたくなな偏狭があり、唯物論者の硬直性がある。共産主義がゆたかなヒューマニティをとりもどし、無益な犠牲&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|271}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
と強権性からみずからを解放する道は、人間の本性の自覚をその思想体系の基礎に位置づけ、弁証法の詭弁的全体性をはなれるところにある。弁証法の批判については、小笠原秀実氏「社会思想要論」（京都、学林社）から学ぶところが多いであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
われわれはしかしながら人間の本性もしくは人間の本来的なありかたといったものを、なにゆえ体系の原始ないし基礎に位置づけねばならぬであろうか。その基本的な理由のひとつを見出すために、とりあえずつぎの主張を手がかりとしよう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
なるほど唯物論者を駆って実践におもむかしめる「理想」は未だどこにもない。だが……それは現に存在する矛盾の中から、それを止揚すべき方向として、或いは、それが止揚されたときの形態として、割り出されてくる。それへの志向の情熱の源泉は、現在の矛盾の中での苦悩であり、それからの脱却の意欲である。（梅本克己「唯物論的立場と観念論的立場」、「思索」七）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ここにしめされている「現在の矛盾の中での苦悩」と「それからの脱却の意欲」とは、どうして人間にあらわれたのか、それらの可能根拠はいったい何であろうか。「矛盾の中での苦悩」を生みだすものは、じつはこの「矛盾」であり、矛盾とはこのばあい主体と環境との適合調和の破綻にほかならない。どうして破綻したのか、その原因についてはあとから種々の認識が成り立つであろうが、当座の自覚としては「忽然」というほかはない。忽然の破綻において、一方には自己保存の欲求があらわれ、他方には同類共感による相互扶助の意識が発生する。前のものはそれ自身かならずしも不健全ではなく、むしろこのものがあらゆる生物をしてその種を存続させたひとつの原動力であり、相互扶助の活動の基本を提供するゆえんのものであるが、それの排他的自己中心性の一面をクローズ・アップすることによって、いわゆる性悪説がなりたつのであり、これにたいして後のものをとりあげることによって性善説が成立する。破綻以前は善悪いまだ分かれ&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|272}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ぬ美的世界であり、苦楽相交わることのない天衣無縫の爽明であり、人間の本性が本性のままにあるべき世界である。これをかりに「自性清浄心」という。「心」というのはたんなる心ではなく、基礎経験というほどの意味である。これはけっして少数の卓越した霊性的存在者にのみあらわれるといったものではなく、もとよりマルキシストといえども例外ではなく、あらゆる経験の基礎として凡聖不分であり、観念論と唯物論の此岸である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
このような本性に随順した純一調和の喪失において苦痛が自覚せられ、苦痛の意識において矛盾が認知せられ、それからの脱却の意欲――うしなわれた調和を恢復しようとする欲求があらわれるのである。このような基礎経験の実在を承認し、これを立論の基底とすることによって、われわれの思想は体系上の基礎をもつにいたるであろう。かの貧しきひとびと、虐げられたるひとびとへの等質共感が生まれ、社会機構変革の根本動機が成立し、そのための科学的認識が形成せられるのもこの基礎経験（自性清浄心）からである。知性の論理と心情の論理、頭脳と心臓との根源的な統一が見出されるのもこの基盤においてである。このものを基盤とすることによって真に健全なヒューマニズム、社会変革の基礎原理を提示するヒューマニズム、こんにちのことばでいえばプロレタリア・ヒューマニズムが形成せられるであろう。このような人間の本来的なありかたを立論の足場とするならば、われわれの体系が「唯物論」の名にふさわしいかどうか、これがのこされた問題である。そのような足場もまた物質原子の所産であり、蛋白質の活動にほかならぬというならば、それは立場を混同するものである。いわゆる自性清浄心からどうして社会変革の原理が形成せられるかといった問題については、機会をあらためて論究せられるであろう。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「共産主義思想の展開と仏教」 (Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō [Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought]) is an essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦 (1902–1986) concerning Buddhist criticism of communism, the social causes of poverty and war, religious ethics, and the reconstruction of Buddhist studies. The essay calls for a dialogue between social and spiritual revolution and considers 自性清浄心 (jishō shōjōshin, intrinsically pure mind) as a foundation for human solidarity and social transformation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This transcription follows Ichikawa Hakugen, 「共産主義思想の展開と仏教」, in 『市川白弦著作集』 (Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū [Collected Writings of Ichikawa Hakugen]), vol. 2, 『禅と現代思想』 (Zen to gendai shisō [Zen and Contemporary Thought]) (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 259–272. Page markers refer to this printed edition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The essay was included in 『現代佛教問題五講』 (Gendai Bukkyō mondai gokō [Five Lectures on Contemporary Buddhist Problems]), edited by Nakajima Bunkyō 中島文鏡 (Tokyo: Young East Sha, 1949). Its pagination in that publication and any earlier publication history have not yet been verified.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The present text is a working scholarly transcription checked against scans of the 1993 edition. A small number of readings, punctuation marks, and embedded quotations remain subject to final verification. Handwritten marginal annotations in the scanned copy have not been incorporated. Transcription and editorial review by James Mark Shields (2026).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Transcription and editorial review: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
Base text: Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū, vol. 2 (1993), pp. 259–272.&lt;br /&gt;
Textual verification ongoing.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (1949). “Kyōsanshugi shisō no tenkai to Bukkyō” 共産主義思想の展開と仏教 [Buddhism and the Development of Communist Thought]. Transcribed and edited by James Mark Shields. The Radical Buddhism Project. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH49KST&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Original Texts in Japanese]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH55ZKS-T&amp;diff=1210</id>
		<title>IH55ZKS-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH55ZKS-T&amp;diff=1210"/>
		<updated>2026-10-08T16:37:49Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen and Communism”}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Ichikawa Hakugen]] 市川白弦 (ca. 1955, provisional). “Zen and Communism” (&#039;&#039;Zen to kyōsanshugi&#039;&#039; 禅と共産主義). ([[IH55ZC|Japanese original here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{| class=&amp;quot;toc&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin:0.3em 0 0.1em 0; padding:0.5em 0.8em;&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
|-&lt;br /&gt;
| &#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&lt;br /&gt;
|-&lt;br /&gt;
|&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Translation|Translation]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 [[#I|I]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.2 [[#II|II]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.3 [[#III|III]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4 [[#IV|IV]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Notes|Notes]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
4. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&lt;br /&gt;
|}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|273|original|IH55ZC}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The subject I have been given is so broad that I would like to offer my thoughts on just one aspect of it. In the February issue of this journal (&#039;&#039;Daijō Zen&#039;&#039;), Professor Itō Kōan contributed an essay entitled “Seven Abuses within the Zen Tradition.” His identification of these abuses is remarkably apt and provides valuable material for reflection on the part of those of us who practise Zen Buddhism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Today is not a time for self-defence but for self-criticism and self-renewal. It is a time to reflect on which of the two—self-defence or self-criticism—constitutes genuine fidelity to oneself. The same holds true for the question of Zen and communism. If Zen practitioners merely enumerate the shortcomings of communism and insist that Zen is fundamentally different from such acts of social revolution, communists will surely respond: “Are you, then, satisfied with your present condition? Look beneath your own feet!”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The expression &#039;&#039;ashimoto o mirareyo&#039;&#039; 脚もとを見られよ (“look at your feet”) evokes a Zen admonition to examine one&#039;s own conduct. Ichikawa places this admonition in the mouths of communists.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; And if Zen practitioners declare that they reject violence in every form, communists will ask in return: “What, then, is meant by the unity of sword and Zen?”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Kenzen ichinyo&#039;&#039; 剣禅一如 (“the unity of sword and Zen”) is associated with the relationship between Zen discipline and swordsmanship. Ichikawa invokes it to challenge an unqualified claim that Zen has nothing to do with violence.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|274|original|IH55ZC}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Those within Buddhist institutions wish somehow to overcome communism, but the means of doing so are exceedingly simple. They consist of nothing other than eliminating the deficiencies within Buddhist institutions and the contradictions within society that communists themselves have identified. If these were removed, there would be no room for communism to take hold, however much it might attempt to spread. To overlook this and agonise over such questions as how to overcome communist thought is to turn something that should not even be a problem into a problem. It is hardly a sign of sound judgment.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen practitioners may well devote themselves to the eradication of communism, provided they are free to do so. But the question then becomes whether they are fighting with equal fervour to eradicate reactionary capitalist thought. Against which is the sharp edge of Zen criticism directed: communism or capitalism? This is something Zen practitioners must carefully examine for themselves. If the path by which Zen responds to reality is indeed the “Middle Way,”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Chūdō&#039;&#039; 中道 is the Buddhist Middle Way. Here Ichikawa demands that an appeal to the Middle Way entail criticism of the capitalist social system as well as communism.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; then surely it must criticise the capitalist social system with equal conviction and strive to overcome it as well.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Alternatively, if one maintains that “everything is falsehood and idle talk” and that “the worldly realm is false,”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seken koke&#039;&#039; 世間虚仮 is a Buddhist expression traditionally associated with the unreliability or falsity of worldly existence. Ichikawa challenges its use as a justification for political indifference.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; one must ask whether one is devoting as much enthusiasm to spreading such an attitude of detachment from worldly affairs as communists devote to their cause. Moreover, at a time when unemployment, poverty, moral decay, and suicide are increasing daily, and when a nation&#039;s educational and cultural institutions are becoming increasingly colonised, we must ask whether encouraging this kind of detached indifference among the masses is truly a sound attitude.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To remain indifferent to society and politics is to leave reactionary politics&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|275|original|IH55ZC}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
free to run rampant. We must recognise that, in the guise of “indifference” or “transcendence,” such an attitude actually amounts to cooperation with reactionary politics. Far from standing outside the political world, it constitutes an even deeper involvement in it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Now, one of the shortcomings of Marxism is that Marx completely discarded the conception of humanity he had inherited from Feuerbach, dismissing it as something abstract. Herein lies one source of the rigidity and ossification that characterise Marxist theory and practice.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This rigid conception of humanity rejects any underlying “human nature” as a mere abstraction and instead regards people as either bourgeois or proletarian. Of course, I am not suggesting that such an understanding of human beings is entirely mistaken. Nevertheless, this rigid conception of humanity carries, on the one hand, the danger of developing into totalitarianism and, on the other, leaves Marxism without a sufficiently persuasive humanist logic to win over conscientious elements of the upper and middle strata of society.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I believe that the system of thought associated with the “intrinsically pure mind” (&#039;&#039;jishō shōjōshin&#039;&#039; 自性清浄心)&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Jishō shōjōshin&#039;&#039; 自性清浄心 (“intrinsically pure mind”) names a Buddhist idea that the mind is, in some fundamental sense, originally pure. Ichikawa proposes that a philosophical framework built around this idea could give both class-based understandings of human beings and theories of social transformation their proper place. He postpones the explanation of how such a framework would work; the passage should not be read as a fully developed account of his position.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; can give both a class-based understanding of humanity and a theory of social transformation their proper place. I must, however, leave a fuller discussion of this question for another occasion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Naturally, I am not claiming that Zen exists only where someone takes to the streets with a megaphone, nor am I myself engaged in such activities. But can the Zen tradition really remain as it has been until now? If something must be done, what precisely should it be? This is what I wish to investigate. If anyone knows the answer, I would be grateful to hear it. After all, I myself know any number of ways to justify myself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Zen and Communism” (&#039;&#039;Zen to kyōsanshugi&#039;&#039; 禅と共産主義) is a short essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦 (1902–1986). Ichikawa argues that Buddhist institutions should address the social contradictions identified by communists, criticises religious disengagement from political life, and suggests that the Buddhist notion of intrinsically pure mind might contribute to an account of human beings and social change that avoids some of the limitations he finds in Marxism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The translation follows Ichikawa Hakugen, 「禅と共産主義」, in 『市川白弦著作集』 (&#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; [Collected Writings of Ichikawa Hakugen]), vol. 2, 『禅と現代思想』 (&#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; [Zen and Contemporary Thought]) (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 273–275. The corresponding Japanese transcription is [[IH55ZC|available here]]. Page markers refer to the 1993 collected edition; the division in the English sentence at the beginning of p. 275 approximates the Japanese page transition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The original publication year and venue have not been verified. The date ca. 1955 in this page heading and its file identifier is a provisional working estimate, not an established date. The text mentions a February issue of 『大乗禅』 (&#039;&#039;Daijō Zen&#039;&#039;) but does not by itself establish the date of this essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields (2026). The translation remains a working edition pending final comparison with the Japanese source.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotations: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
Source: Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū, vol. 2 (1993), pp. 273–275.&lt;br /&gt;
Original publication: unverified; ca. 1955 is provisional.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (ca. 1955 [provisional]). “Zen and Communism” (&#039;&#039;Zen to kyōsanshugi&#039;&#039; 禅と共産主義). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH55ZC-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English Translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=Template:Tpage&amp;diff=1209</id>
		<title>Template:Tpage</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=Template:Tpage&amp;diff=1209"/>
		<updated>2026-10-08T16:35:25Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;lt;includeonly&amp;gt;__NOEDITSECTION__&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div style=&amp;quot;float: right; position: relative; z-index: 10; font-weight: normal; font-size: 0.9em; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin-bottom: -1.75em; padding-top: 1.4em;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
{{#ifeq:{{{2|}}}|original&lt;br /&gt;
| [[{{{3|{{PAGENAME}}}}}#Page_{{{1}}}|➣ View Original]]&lt;br /&gt;
| [[{{PAGENAME}}-T#Page_{{{1}}}|➣ View Translation]]&lt;br /&gt;
}}&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
==== Page {{{1}}} ====&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;/includeonly&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;noinclude&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Editorial Templates]]&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;/noinclude&amp;gt;&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH55ZKS-T&amp;diff=1208</id>
		<title>IH55ZKS-T</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH55ZKS-T&amp;diff=1208"/>
		<updated>2026-10-08T12:43:00Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: Created page with &amp;quot;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen and Communism”}}  Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦 (ca. 1955, provisional). “Zen and Communism” (&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Zen to kyōsanshugi&amp;#039;&amp;#039; 禅と共産主義). (Japanese original here.)  __NOTOC__  {| class=&amp;quot;toc&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin:0.3em 0 0.1em 0; padding:0.5em 0.8em;&amp;quot; |- | &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Contents&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; |- | 1. Translation&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; &amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 I&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; &amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.2 II&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; &amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ichikawa Hakugen, “Zen and Communism”}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Ichikawa Hakugen]] 市川白弦 (ca. 1955, provisional). “Zen and Communism” (&#039;&#039;Zen to kyōsanshugi&#039;&#039; 禅と共産主義). ([[IH55ZC|Japanese original here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{| class=&amp;quot;toc&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;margin:0.3em 0 0.1em 0; padding:0.5em 0.8em;&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
|-&lt;br /&gt;
| &#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&lt;br /&gt;
|-&lt;br /&gt;
|&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Translation|Translation]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 [[#I|I]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.2 [[#II|II]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.3 [[#III|III]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4 [[#IV|IV]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Notes|Notes]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
4. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&lt;br /&gt;
|}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Translation ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|273}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== I ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The subject I have been given is so broad that I would like to offer my thoughts on just one aspect of it. In the February issue of this journal (&#039;&#039;Daijō Zen&#039;&#039;), Professor Itō Kōan contributed an essay entitled “Seven Abuses within the Zen Tradition.” His identification of these abuses is remarkably apt and provides valuable material for reflection on the part of those of us who practise Zen Buddhism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Today is not a time for self-defence but for self-criticism and self-renewal. It is a time to reflect on which of the two—self-defence or self-criticism—constitutes genuine fidelity to oneself. The same holds true for the question of Zen and communism. If Zen practitioners merely enumerate the shortcomings of communism and insist that Zen is fundamentally different from such acts of social revolution, communists will surely respond: “Are you, then, satisfied with your present condition? Look beneath your own feet!”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;The expression &#039;&#039;ashimoto o mirareyo&#039;&#039; 脚もとを見られよ (“look at your feet”) evokes a Zen admonition to examine one&#039;s own conduct. Ichikawa places this admonition in the mouths of communists.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; And if Zen practitioners declare that they reject violence in every form, communists will ask in return: “What, then, is meant by the unity of sword and Zen?”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Kenzen ichinyo&#039;&#039; 剣禅一如 (“the unity of sword and Zen”) is associated with the relationship between Zen discipline and swordsmanship. Ichikawa invokes it to challenge an unqualified claim that Zen has nothing to do with violence.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|274}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== II ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Those within Buddhist institutions wish somehow to overcome communism, but the means of doing so are exceedingly simple. They consist of nothing other than eliminating the deficiencies within Buddhist institutions and the contradictions within society that communists themselves have identified. If these were removed, there would be no room for communism to take hold, however much it might attempt to spread. To overlook this and agonise over such questions as how to overcome communist thought is to turn something that should not even be a problem into a problem. It is hardly a sign of sound judgment.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Zen practitioners may well devote themselves to the eradication of communism, provided they are free to do so. But the question then becomes whether they are fighting with equal fervour to eradicate reactionary capitalist thought. Against which is the sharp edge of Zen criticism directed: communism or capitalism? This is something Zen practitioners must carefully examine for themselves. If the path by which Zen responds to reality is indeed the “Middle Way,”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Chūdō&#039;&#039; 中道 is the Buddhist Middle Way. Here Ichikawa demands that an appeal to the Middle Way entail criticism of the capitalist social system as well as communism.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; then surely it must criticise the capitalist social system with equal conviction and strive to overcome it as well.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== III ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Alternatively, if one maintains that “everything is falsehood and idle talk” and that “the worldly realm is false,”&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Seken koke&#039;&#039; 世間虚仮 is a Buddhist expression traditionally associated with the unreliability or falsity of worldly existence. Ichikawa challenges its use as a justification for political indifference.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; one must ask whether one is devoting as much enthusiasm to spreading such an attitude of detachment from worldly affairs as communists devote to their cause. Moreover, at a time when unemployment, poverty, moral decay, and suicide are increasing daily, and when a nation&#039;s educational and cultural institutions are becoming increasingly colonised, we must ask whether encouraging this kind of detached indifference among the masses is truly a sound attitude.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To remain indifferent to society and politics is to leave reactionary politics&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|275}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
free to run rampant. We must recognise that, in the guise of “indifference” or “transcendence,” such an attitude actually amounts to cooperation with reactionary politics. Far from standing outside the political world, it constitutes an even deeper involvement in it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== IV ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Now, one of the shortcomings of Marxism is that Marx completely discarded the conception of humanity he had inherited from Feuerbach, dismissing it as something abstract. Herein lies one source of the rigidity and ossification that characterise Marxist theory and practice.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This rigid conception of humanity rejects any underlying “human nature” as a mere abstraction and instead regards people as either bourgeois or proletarian. Of course, I am not suggesting that such an understanding of human beings is entirely mistaken. Nevertheless, this rigid conception of humanity carries, on the one hand, the danger of developing into totalitarianism and, on the other, leaves Marxism without a sufficiently persuasive humanist logic to win over conscientious elements of the upper and middle strata of society.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I believe that the system of thought associated with the “intrinsically pure mind” (&#039;&#039;jishō shōjōshin&#039;&#039; 自性清浄心)&amp;lt;ref&amp;gt;&#039;&#039;Jishō shōjōshin&#039;&#039; 自性清浄心 (“intrinsically pure mind”) names a Buddhist idea that the mind is, in some fundamental sense, originally pure. Ichikawa proposes that a philosophical framework built around this idea could give both class-based understandings of human beings and theories of social transformation their proper place. He postpones the explanation of how such a framework would work; the passage should not be read as a fully developed account of his position.&amp;lt;/ref&amp;gt; can give both a class-based understanding of humanity and a theory of social transformation their proper place. I must, however, leave a fuller discussion of this question for another occasion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Naturally, I am not claiming that Zen exists only where someone takes to the streets with a megaphone, nor am I myself engaged in such activities. But can the Zen tradition really remain as it has been until now? If something must be done, what precisely should it be? This is what I wish to investigate. If anyone knows the answer, I would be grateful to hear it. After all, I myself know any number of ways to justify myself.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Notes ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;references /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
“Zen and Communism” (&#039;&#039;Zen to kyōsanshugi&#039;&#039; 禅と共産主義) is a short essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦 (1902–1986). Ichikawa argues that Buddhist institutions should address the social contradictions identified by communists, criticises religious disengagement from political life, and suggests that the Buddhist notion of intrinsically pure mind might contribute to an account of human beings and social change that avoids some of the limitations he finds in Marxism.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The translation follows Ichikawa Hakugen, 「禅と共産主義」, in 『市川白弦著作集』 (&#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; [Collected Writings of Ichikawa Hakugen]), vol. 2, 『禅と現代思想』 (&#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; [Zen and Contemporary Thought]) (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 273–275. The corresponding Japanese transcription is [[IH55ZC|available here]]. Page markers refer to the 1993 collected edition; the division in the English sentence at the beginning of p. 275 approximates the Japanese page transition.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The original publication year and venue have not been verified. The date ca. 1955 in this page heading and its file identifier is a provisional working estimate, not an established date. The text mentions a February issue of 『大乗禅』 (&#039;&#039;Daijō Zen&#039;&#039;) but does not by itself establish the date of this essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields (2026). The translation remains a working edition pending final comparison with the Japanese source.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Translation and annotations: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
Source: Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū, vol. 2 (1993), pp. 273–275.&lt;br /&gt;
Original publication: unverified; ca. 1955 is provisional.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (ca. 1955 [provisional]). “Zen and Communism” (&#039;&#039;Zen to kyōsanshugi&#039;&#039; 禅と共産主義). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH55ZC-T&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:English Translations]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
	<entry>
		<id>https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH55ZKS&amp;diff=1207</id>
		<title>IH55ZKS</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/index.php?title=IH55ZKS&amp;diff=1207"/>
		<updated>2026-10-08T12:42:14Z</updated>

		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;James: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;{{DISPLAYTITLE:市川白弦、「禅と共産主義」}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Ichikawa Hakugen|市川白弦]] (1955年頃、暫定). 「禅と共産主義」 [Zen and Communism]. ([[IH55ZC-T|English translation here]].)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
__NOTOC__&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;div style=&amp;quot;margin:0.2em 0 0.7em 0; line-height:1.5;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&#039;&#039;&#039;Contents&#039;&#039;&#039;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
1. [[#Text|Text]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.1 [[#一|Section I]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.2 [[#二|Section II]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.3 [[#三|Section III]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;1.4 [[#四|Section IV]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
2. [[#Source_Note|Source Note]]&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
3. [[#How_to_Cite_this_Text|How to Cite this Text]]&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|273}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 一 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
あたえられた題目はあまり大きいので、そのなかの一部面について私見をのべてみたい。本誌（「大乗禅」）二月号に伊藤康安教授が「禅門七弊論」をよせておられるが、まことに適切な流弊の指摘であり、われわれ禅仏教徒にとって有益な反省の資料である。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
今日は自己弁護の時節でなくて自己批判の時節であり、自己刷新の時節である。自己弁護と自己批判とどちらが真実に自己に忠実であるかを反省すべき時節である。禅と共産主義の問題にしてもそうである。もしも禅者が共産主義の欠点を列挙し、禅はそのような社会革命の行動とは面目を異にすると主張するだけであるならば、おそらく共産主義者は問いただすであろう、「それならばあなたがたの現状はそれでよいのか、脚もとを見られよ」と。われわれはいかなるかたちにおいても暴力をみとめないと禅者がいうならば、共産主義者は再び問い返すであろう、「剣禅一如とはどういうことであるのか」と。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|274}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 二 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
教団の人々は共産主義を何とかして克服したいと望むが、共産主義克服の方法はいたって簡単である。それはほかでもない、共産主義者が指摘するような教団の欠陥、社会の矛盾を無くすることである。そうすれば共産主義がはびころうとしてもその余地がないわけである。このことに気がつかないで、共産主義思想克服の方法いかになどとまるで問題にならないことを問題として苦しむのは正気の沙汰ではない。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
禅者が共産主義撲滅のために苦心することも、自由があってのことであればそれもよいであろう、しかしそこで問題になるのは、この禅者がそれとおなじ熱意をもって資本主義的反動思想の撲滅のためにも戦っているかどうかということである。禅者の批判の鋒先は共産主義と資本主義とどちらに向けられているのか、これをとくと自己反省してみることである。もしも禅者の現実に対処する道が「中道」であるならば、資本主義社会体制にたいしても同じ熱意をもってこれを批判しこれを克服すべく努めなくてはならぬはずである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 三 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
あるいはまた「よろずそらごとたわごと」であり「世間虚仮」であるとするならば、そのような脱俗的達観を普及するために、はたして自分は共産主義者に匹敵する熱意を傾けているかどうか、ということを反省してみる必要がある。そして失業、貧困、頽廃、自殺が日々倍加し、一国の文教が植民地化しつつあるとき、人民大衆に向かってこのような脱俗的無関心を鼓吹することが、真に健全な態度であるかどうかを反省してみる必要がある。社会のこと、政治のことに無関心になるということは、反動政治がのさばるがままに&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
{{tpage|275}}&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
しておくということであり、「無関心」とか「超越」とかいうかたちにおいて反動政治に協力しこの上もなく政治の世界へ深入りすることにほかならない、ということを反省してみる必要がある。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
=== 四 ===&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
さて、マルクシズムのひとつの欠陥はマルクスが通ってきたフォイエルバッハの人間観を抽象的なものとしてまったくすててしまったことである。マルクシズムの理論と実践につきまとう硬直性、硬化性のひとつの原因がここにある。硬直した人間観、すなわち根源的な「人間性」をすべて抽象物として排除し、人間はブルジョアかプロレタリアかどちらかであるといった考えかた――もちろんこのような人間把握が全面的にまちがっているというのではない――この硬直的な人間観のゆえに一方ではこれが全体主義的なるものへの危険をはらみ、他方では社会の上層および中間層の良心的分子を納得させるに足るヒューマニズムの論理に欠けるところが生ずるのである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
筆者は「自性清浄心」の体系が階級的人間観にも社会変革の論理にもその正常な位置をあたえることができると考えるものであるが、これについては他日を期したい。筆者はもちろんメガホンをもって街頭に出るところにのみ禅があるなどと主張しているのではなく、またさようなことを実行しているのでもない。禅宗ははたしてこれまでのままでよいのか。何とかしなければならぬとすれば、具体的にどうしたらよいのか。それを究めたいのである。それを知っておられる方があれば教えていただきたいのである。筆者も自己弁護の道ならばいくらでも心得ているつもりである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Source Note ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
「禅と共産主義」 (&#039;&#039;Zen to kyōsanshugi&#039;&#039; [Zen and Communism]) is a short essay by Ichikawa Hakugen 市川白弦 (1902–1986). Ichikawa challenges Buddhist institutions to confront social contradictions identified by communists, criticizes political indifference masquerading as religious transcendence, and suggests that the Buddhist doctrine of intrinsically pure mind (&#039;&#039;jishō shōjōshin&#039;&#039; 自性清浄心) may help correct limitations of Marxist conceptions of humanity.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This transcription is based on Ichikawa Hakugen, 「禅と共産主義」, in 『市川白弦著作集』 (&#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039; [Collected Writings of Ichikawa Hakugen]), vol. 2, 『禅と現代思想』 (&#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039; [Zen and Contemporary Thought]) (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993), pp. 273–275.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The essay&#039;s original publication date and venue remain unverified. The provisional date of approximately 1955 is a contextual estimate, not a bibliographically established date. Its opening paragraph refers to a February issue of 『大乗禅』 (&#039;&#039;Daijō Zen&#039;&#039;), but the precise relationship requires verification. Page markers refer to the 1993 collected edition. The transcription was prepared from scans of that edition; remaining textual uncertainties, if identified, will be corrected in subsequent editorial review.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== How to Cite this Text ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;lt;!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG&lt;br /&gt;
Transcription and editorial review: Shields, James Mark.&lt;br /&gt;
Transcription base: Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū, vol. 2 (1993), pp. 273–275.&lt;br /&gt;
Original date and publication venue: unverified; c. 1955 is provisional.&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ichikawa Hakugen (ca. 1955 [provisional]). “Zen to kyōsanshugi” 禅と共産主義 [Zen and Communism]. In &#039;&#039;Ichikawa Hakugen chosakushū&#039;&#039;, vol. 2, &#039;&#039;Zen to gendai shisō&#039;&#039;, 273–275. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1993. Transcribed and edited by James Mark Shields. &#039;&#039;The Radical Buddhism Project&#039;&#039;. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/IH55ZC&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Ichikawa Hakugen]]&lt;br /&gt;
[[Category:Original Texts in Japanese]]&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>James</name></author>
	</entry>
</feed>