Editing SG31SBU-T

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Seno’o Girō, "The Course of the Revitalized Buddhism Movement: Return Together beneath the Buddha’s Great Banner!"}}
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'''Original publication:''

妹尾義郎「新興佛教運動の進路――一斉に佛陀の大傘下に帰れ――」『新興佛教の旗の下に』創刊号、1931年（昭和6年）4月.

Seno’o Girō. “Shinkō Bukkyō undō no shinro: Issei ni butsuda no dai-sanka ni kaere” 新興佛教運動の進路――一斉に佛陀の大傘下に帰れ――; The Course of the Revitalized Buddhism Movement: Return Together beneath the Buddha’s Great Banner! ''Shinkō Bukkyō no hata no moto ni'' (新興佛教の旗の下に), inaugural issue (April 1931).

'''Source text:''

妹尾義郎「新興佛教運動の進路――一斉に佛陀の大傘下に帰れ――」稲垣真美編『妹尾義郎宗教論集』東京：大蔵出版、1975年、255–259頁.

Seno’o Girō. “Shinkō Bukkyō undō no shinro: Issei ni Butsuda no dai-sanka ni kaere.” In ''Seno’o Girō shūkyō ronshū'' 妹尾義郎宗教論集, ed. Inagaki Masami, 255–259. Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan, 1975.

== Translation ==
'''[p. 255]'''

I wrote this short piece at the beginning of this year, when I had resolved to launch the Revitalized Buddhism movement, in response to a request from the Society for the Promotion of Buddhist Thought<ref>The Society for the Promotion of Buddhist Thought (Bukkyō Shisō Fukyūkai 佛教思想普及会) was an interwar lay association devoted to promoting modern, nonsectarian Buddhist thought. In early 1931, it solicited Seno’o’s views on the topic “Young Buddhists and the Established Buddhist Sects” (Seinen Bukkyōsha to Kisei Kyōdan (青年仏教者と既成教団), “Young Buddhists and the Established Buddhist Sects.” Seno’o regarded the resulting essay as the “first declaration” of his new movement and reprinted it at the beginning of the inaugural April 1931 issue of Under the Banner of Revitalized Buddhism (Shinkō Bukkyō no hata no moto ni 新興仏教の旗の下に).</ref> to state my views on the topic “Young Buddhists and the Established Buddhist Sects.” Space limitations forced me to be brief, but since this was, after all, my memorable first declaration of the new movement, I have decided to reproduce it here unchanged at the beginning of our ''Buddhist Banner''.

=== 1 ===

It hardly needs saying that the established Buddhist sects today are utterly empty, moribund institutions, completely disconnected from the lives of the masses. Indeed, they are not merely moribund institutions. Is it not an undeniable fact before our very eyes that they have actually become links in the chain of the exploiting classes, playing a one-hundred-percent opiate role and thereby compounding their guilt?<ref>Seno’o’s characterization of established religion as “opiate-like” (阿片的) deliberately invokes the socialist critique of religion as a means of reconciling the oppressed to existing social conditions. The expression recalls Marx’s famous characterization of religion as “the opium of the people,” though Seno’o’s immediate target is not religion or Buddhism as such, but institutional Buddhism functioning in support of class domination.</ref>

We remember reading in the ''Miyako Shimbun'' that an abbot of Zōjōji once proposed, as a fundamental solution to the increasingly acute conflict between labor and capital, that “workers should be made to understand the principle of karmic retribution and thereby attain peace of mind.”<ref>Zōjōji 増上寺 in Shiba, Tokyo, is a major Jōdo-shū (Pure Land) temple and historically served as a funerary temple of the Tokugawa shogunal family. According to a report in the Miyako Shimbun, one of its abbots advocated teaching workers the principle of “karmic retribution” (inga ōhō 因果応報) as a means of resolving worsening labor-capital conflict. Seno’o condemns such appeals to karma as a distortion of Buddhist teaching that encourages workers to understand poverty and inequality as consequences of individual karma rather than as social conditions subject to collective transformation.</ref> More recently, we heard of a certain religious figure in Osaka who donned beautiful priestly robes and spent a day making the rounds of a slum, admonishing the many poor people there who could scarcely obtain a piece of bread: “Free yourselves from material desire, and there you will find peace of mind.” Were we to go on, there would be no end to the examples confirming the mistaken diagnosis and topsy-turvy thinking of contemporary Buddhists.

But consider this: what was our teacher, the Buddha, actually like? How vastly different from the attitude of the established Buddhist sects was his call to break down class distinctions and establish equality among the four castes!<ref>Shisei 四姓 (“four castes/classes”) is the conventional East Asian Buddhist rendering of the four varṇa: brahmin, kṣatriya, vaiśya, and śūdra. Modern Japanese Buddhists frequently invoked the Buddha’s rejection of hereditary status distinctions as evidence of Buddhism’s fundamentally egalitarian character. Seno’o radicalizes this familiar claim by juxtaposing Buddhist equality with modern class hierarchy.</ref> Or consider the life of equality and self-governance in which all shared alike from a single alms bowl. What does such a life suggest to people today?

Consider, then, what inevitable fate awaits, now and into the future, the established Buddhist sects that have so completely betrayed and run counter to the true spirit of the Buddha. And consider how young Buddhists, whose defining characteristic should be their yearning for truth and love,…


'''[p. 256]'''

…ought to act toward such established sects. Yes, these are matters that should by now lie beyond debate. '''There is only one answer: “Their destruction as quickly as possible, and a movement toward that end.” Is this not the mission entrusted to serious young Buddhists who seek once again to bring Buddhism to life in the modern age?'''

=== 2 ===

At this point, I propose two courses of action to all serious young Buddhists.

The first is to reject all established Buddhist sects, return directly to the Buddha, and establish a new Revitalized Buddhist Youth League in the Buddha’s name alone. The second is, in accordance with the Buddha’s love and insight, to reject the present capitalist economic system and advance toward a movement to construct a new society of communal ownership and shared prosperity.<ref>Kyōsan kyōei 共産共栄 literally combines “common/shared production or property” (kyōsan 共産) with “shared prosperity” (kyōei 共栄). Although kyōsan 共産 already carried an unmistakable association with communism, Seno’o’s compound is not the standard term kyōsan shugi 共産主義 (“communism”). The formulation allows him to articulate a Buddhist social ideal of common ownership and mutual flourishing while simultaneously placing the movement within contemporary socialist discourse.</ref>

=== 3 ===

It goes without saying that the Pure Land of Tranquil Light sought by people today is not something to be found after death, but here in this actual life.<ref>Jakkōdo 寂光土, more fully jōjakkōdo 常寂光土 (“Land of Eternally Tranquil Light”), is the highest Buddha-land in Tiantai/Tendai cosmology and became especially important in the Nichiren tradition. Seno’o characteristically relocates the Buddha-land from a transcendent or postmortem realm to the material conditions of present human life.</ref> And peace in our present lives is impossible if economic life is ignored. Nor does it need further explanation that the oppression and anxiety of our present society, now visibly at an impasse, are clearly rooted in the capitalist economic system.

Just look at the results of idealistic campaigns for moral edification that ignore this problem. Day after day: tightening public discipline; day after day: “guiding” thought; day after day: total mobilization for moral instruction. How enormous the efforts the ruling classes have poured into such campaigns over the past several years! Some years ago they were even graced with the so-called Imperial Rescript on the Promotion of the National Spirit, and with educators in the vanguard they launched a furious campaign resembling a coordinated barrage.<ref>The Imperial Rescript on the Promotion of the National Spirit (Kokumin Seishin Sakkō ni Kansuru Chōsho 国民精神作興ニ関スル詔書) was issued on November 10, 1923, in the aftermath of the Great Kantō Earthquake. Calling for frugality, moral discipline, and loyalty to the imperial state amid mounting social unrest, it became an important reference point for official campaigns of moral edification (kyōka undō 教化運動) during the 1920s. Seno’o invokes the Rescript as an example of state-sponsored “spiritual” reform that sought to address social disorder through moral discipline rather than structural economic change.</ref> But look at the results! Is it not a fact that decadence—“''ero, guro, nansensu''” [erotic, grotesque, nonsense]—and the leftist thought they so fear have instead spread with the force of a tsunami?<ref>Ero, guro, nansensu (“erotic, grotesque, nonsense”) was a popular early-Shōwa expression for forms of mass culture associated with sexuality, sensationalism, absurdity, and urban decadence. Conservative critics frequently treated such phenomena as symptoms of moral and social disorder.</ref>

At this, religious figures seized their opportunity and began shouting triumphantly that the fundamental reason these efforts had failed was an education that ignored religion. And so the call for religion has come to be loudly proclaimed throughout official and private circles alike. But look again! What must not be overlooked is the inner reality of the religious world itself. A vulgarity surpassing even the vulgar! Given the reality of these utterly corrupt established Buddhist sects, what shamelessness!

And yet they would presume to peddle the authority and supposed efficacy of religious movements just as they are.


'''[p. 257]'''

What, after all, does temple Buddhism bow its head before? The Buddha? No, no! In truth, does it not bow before its wealthy parishioners?

Money! Money—yes, money! While fully aware that they themselves cannot live or preach without bowing down before money and material things—that is, before a capitalism centered on profit and the omnipotence of material wealth—they nevertheless seek to force upon others a “spiritual life” that despises material things, together with some dubious state of religious bliss. If this is not brazen hypocrisy, where today could one possibly find a more perfect specimen of it?

That said, of course, we do not intend simply to condemn religious figures for their dependence on material things. Precisely here we must acknowledge one inescapable fact of human life. That is not the point of our criticism. What we condemn is their unjust attitude: despite this reality, they ignore and despise the suffering of the masses who struggle for material necessities; they seek, through purely idealistic preaching, to lead the masses away from material concerns; they compel them to endure their immediate deprivation; and all the while they smugly expound an opiate-like, establishment religion convenient for the small ruling class that suffers no material want.

It was twenty-seven years after the Buddha’s awakening. One day, one of his leading disciples tried to raise the spirits of a young man suffering from hunger by preaching to him about the greatness of spiritual strength. Seeing this, the Buddha admonished the disciple and had him quickly bring the young man a bowl of food.<ref>Seno’o alludes to a story preserved in the Dhammapada-aṭṭhakathā (commentary on Dhammapada 203; cf. the Chinese Chuyao jing 出曜経, Taishō vol. 4, no. 212). Twenty-seven years after his awakening, the Buddha encounters a hungry farmer who has spent the day searching for a lost ox and refuses to preach to him until he has been fed. The episode is associated with the verse Jighacchā paramā rogā (“Hunger is the greatest illness”; Dhammapada 203). Seno’o adapts the story—his version makes the hungry man a “young man” and has a senior disciple exhort him on the power of the spirit—to ground his materialist argument in Buddhist tradition: immediate physical needs cannot simply be subordinated to moral or spiritual exhortation.</ref>

The Buddha’s teaching was never meant to remain a merely idealistic movement. Food for the hungry, clothing for the cold: beginning from the recognition of life’s impermanence, did he not perceive the eternal precisely within a life of mutual love and trust, of coexistence and shared prosperity? “Truth is concrete.”<ref>The dictum “truth is concrete” echoes a formulation prominent in Marxist and Leninist dialectical thought. Its appearance here encapsulates Seno’o’s insistence that Buddhist truth must be realized in material and social practice rather than abstract doctrine.</ref> The spirit of the Buddha could never have resided in some empty palace of abstractions.

When we turn, then, to the present capitalist economic system, do we not find an utterly antisocial system that forces our fellow human beings into a struggle for private gain and consequently subjects the lives of the masses to constant insecurity? In the end, it is a system that betrays and runs counter to the spirit of the Buddha. Its transformation is therefore an urgent problem before our very eyes—one in which sincere seekers of the Way must take the lead.

=== 4 ===

But can we really expect the established Buddhist sects to summon the courage and determination necessary to rise up for this great movement? I believe that would be as impossible a demand as insisting that a moneylender donate his entire fortune to charity…


'''[p. 258]'''

…for a wisteria vine that has grown by entwining itself around a pine cannot leave the pine and stand independently.

New wine cannot be poured into old wineskins.<ref>An allusion to the Synoptic Gospels (Matt. 9:17; Mark 2:22; Luke 5:37–38). Seno’o repurposes the Christian image to argue that a revitalized Buddhism cannot be contained within inherited sectarian institutions.</ref> Unless all the filthy water and mud are first emptied from a putrid old pond, no fresh spring can well up. Indeed, the established Buddhist sects have become like stagnant, putrid water and mud, far too corrupted for a little filtration to satisfy the thirst and deprivation of the masses today. This is precisely why all the established Buddhist sects must be rejected. We must instead return directly to the original wellspring of the Buddha, draw once more upon the ever-flowing fountain of love and truth, and work toward the realization of a society founded upon mutual love among our fellow human beings, communal ownership, and shared prosperity.

The times move ceaselessly forward and culture gradually changes: such is the true character of the cosmos and human life. Buddhism is no exception. Only by continually transforming itself in accordance with the times can it possess eternal value. Consider even the scriptures upon which the present established sects base themselves—the ''Mahāvairocana Sūtra'', the ''Śūraṃgama Sūtra'', the ''Amitābha Sūtra'', the ''Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras'', the ''Lotus Sūtra'', and the other Mahāyāna scriptures. All were scriptures created in response to their respective ages over the course of human cultural development. Their purpose was to revive, within the lives of the masses of their own times, a Buddhism of the past that had already become rigid. It is surely no longer disputable that they were products of Buddhist revival movements. Likewise, the new Buddhist movements that appeared in Japan during the Kamakura period were, in the final analysis, Buddhist revival movements of precisely the same kind.

Today, six hundred and fifty years have already passed since Nichiren, the last of Japan’s Buddhist revivalists. During that time, scholarship has rewritten the history of Śākyamuni, moving him from three thousand years ago to twenty-five hundred years ago. It has corrected the tradition that he renounced household life at nineteen and attained awakening at thirty, replacing it with renunciation at twenty-nine and awakening at thirty-five. The theory that the Mahāyāna scriptures were not directly preached by the Buddha has, through abundant evidence, become an established scholarly position.<ref>The “Mahāyāna Is Not the Buddha’s Teaching” theory (daijō hibussetsuron 大乗非仏説論) holds that the Mahāyāna sutras were composed after the historical Buddha and thus are not direct records of his preaching. Anticipated in the Edo period by Tominaga Nakamoto 富永仲基 (1715–1746) in Shutsujō Kōgo (出定後語, 1745), the position became a major controversy in modern Japanese Buddhist studies through Murakami Senshō 村上専精 (1851–1929), especially his Daijō bussetsuron hihan 大乗仏説論批判, 1901. By Seno’o’s time, the historical development of Mahāyāna literature was widely accepted in academic Buddhist studies. Seno’o turns this historical-critical insight against sectarian orthodoxy: if Buddhist scriptures themselves arose through historical processes of adaptation, fidelity to Buddhism requires renewed adaptation to the conditions of the present.</ref>

Faith must not be blind faith. Living in such an age, we should learn from the spirit in which the founders of the various sects established their teachings. To imagine that loyalty to those founders requires us forever to preserve forms unsuited to the times is, I believe, actually to betray their fervent aspiration to respond to the needs of their own age. Ultimately, it disrupts the Buddha’s original purpose in appearing in this world and constitutes nothing less than an offense that causes Buddhism to lose its value in the world for generations.

Indeed, the entire Buddhist canon constitutes a vast cultural system differentiated from the Buddha’s love and insight—insight into emptiness.<ref>Seno’o here glosses ninshiki 認識 (“cognition,” “recognition,” or “understanding”) with kūkan 空観, the Buddhist “contemplation/insight into emptiness.” His pairing of ai 愛 (“love”) and ninshiki 認識 is characteristic: Buddhist awakening entails both an affective commitment to others and a correct apprehension of reality.</ref> For those who return to the Buddha’s love and insight, there is no longer any reason to cling to the forms of the various sects, whose differences are minor beside their fundamental similarities, or endlessly perpetuate sectarian prejudices of exclusion and self-exaltation.

Young Buddhists! What do the Buddha—and the modern age—expect…


'''[p. 259]'''

…of us?

'''Young Buddhists! Resolutely cast off the shackles of tradition. Return to the Buddha. Return together beneath the Buddha’s great banner! Join hands and spur one another onward; guided by burning love and clear-eyed insight, advance toward the transformation of capitalist society, the fundamental cause of the anxieties of our age! This is the Buddhist revival movement—in name and in reality—required for the salvation of our age, and it must be the one mission entrusted to us.'''

(Shōwa 6 [1931], inaugural April issue of ''Under the Banner of Revitalized Buddhism'')

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