Introduction

Jamie H UBBARD

within the normally staid world of Japanese Buddhist studies have been reaching the West for a number of years, largely centering on the claims of the wellknown scholars Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto Shir with regard to what Buddhism is and what it most denitely is not. To wit, the teachings of Buddha-nature, original enlightenment and the Kyoto school of philosophy are not Buddhist; the non-duality taught in the Vimalakrti Stra is unacceptable, as well as the ideas of tathat or suchness, most of Chan and Zen Buddhism, and more. What, then, is Buddhism? Criticism alone is Buddhism. So states Hakamaya, in characteristically confrontational style, in his book Critical Buddhism. He goes on from there to oppose his notion of Critical Buddhism to Topical Buddhism, a term coined to refer to an aesthetic mysticism unconcerned with critical differentiation between truth and falsity and not in need of rational demonstration, a kind of thinking that he feels actually dominates the Buddhist tradition. More properly, Hakamaya, Matsumoto, and others who agree with them feel that the denigration of language and rational thought implicit in much of the Buddhist doctrinal tradition leads to an erasure of the critical discrimination of truth that is at the heart of Buddhist realization as well as social justice. Where kyamuni realized the true nature of existence, vanquished suffering, and then taught that truth and the path to its realization for the benet of all, Hakamaya and Matsumoto contend that much of the Buddhist tradition has subsequently been busy denying the very possibility of talking about truth. But it is not only the Buddhist tradition that they critiquethe tao of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu; the topos of Nishida Kitar; the academic pretense to
UMORS OF MAJOR CONTROVERSIES

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objective and value-free scholarship; and a sloppy, reactionary, postmodern afrmation of everything as equally valid are also singled out as examples of topical philosophy that are completely contrary to the critical spirit of Buddhism yet often conated with it by the weak-minded. Harshly critical of a great deal in the received traditions of Buddhist thought, Hakamaya and Matsumoto have set out to problematize what is taken for granted by numerous Buddhists in Japan as well as the West, and thereby combat what they take to be an intellectual disease and to clarify their notion of a Buddhism that is fully engaged in the critical appraisal of truth-claims and their doctrinal representation. Entirely consonant with the demand for a Buddhism that is engaged in critical thinking is the social criticism of much of Hakamaya and Matsumotos work. Clearly moving from the descriptive to the prescriptive, they are not at all reticent about using their notion of Buddhist truth as a yardstick by which to critique the ideological origins of cultural constructs that masquerade as Buddhism in Japan. Indigenous Japanese ideas and their Buddhist conations have been singled out as contributing to social injustice, gender inequality, racism, institutional discrimination, imperialism, political repression, and environmental destruction. In particular the doctrines of original enlightenment (hongaku) and harmony (wa), the Kyoto school of philosophy, and the current fascination with theories of Japanese uniqueness are attacked as examples of such ideologies of discrimination and social injustice that pose as the highest reaches of Buddhist philosophy. In the spirit of criticism advocated by Hakamaya and Matsumoto, each of the essays in this book examines their ideas and the ideas that they criticize. The impetus for this compilation was a panel presented at the national meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Washington, D.C. in November of 1993 titled Critical Buddhism (Hihan Bukky): Issues and Responses to a New Methodological Movement. The panel, organized by Steven Heine, elicited considerable reaction and interest at the conference, and so plans were laid to attempt a fuller presentation of their ideas and the controversies surrounding their work. Our aim, then, is to introduce (and critique) the ideas of Critical Buddhism in relation to the targets of its critique, and to situate such an approach within current discussions of postmodern academic scholarship, the separation of the disinterested scholar and committed religious practitioner, and the place of social activism within the academy.
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In putting the collection together, we have tried to strike a balance between presenting the work of Hakamaya, Matsumoto, and their cohorts (the vast majority of which has never been translated before) and providing the sort of lively discussion of their work that it tends to provoke. The selection of what to translate was a formidable task, as their output is prodigious, grows daily, and is relevant to a wide and varied range of topics. We have therefore chosen not to focus on a single topic and to include articles beyond the typical textual analysis of Japanese Buddhology, articles that demonstrate the terrain that the debate coversdetailed philological studies, social commentary, sectarian debates, cultural criticism, response and counterresponse to critiques, and essays on contemporary Japanese intellectual debates, philosophical critique, and scholarly method. When we ask why such a polemic discourse is signicant outside of the sectarian context, the rst reason is simply that studying what Buddhists think is what Buddhist scholars have always done. Let there be no mistake: although Hakamaya and Matsumoto are arguing as Buddhists, they are rst-rate Buddhologists in the traditional sense as well. Indeed, the numerous books and articles by Hakamaya and Matsumoto on Critical Buddhist themes are only a fraction of their oeuvre, and it is a signicant testament indeed when somebody of Paul Grifthss learning says that [Hakamaya] has taught me more about Buddhism than anyone else. [He is a] man who knows vastly more about almost everything than I. Still, given that arguments about the meaning and validity of the doctrine of tathgata-garbha and related doctrines are as old as the ideas themselves, we can also ask if there is anything else in their arguments that warrants our attention anew. Although I believe that in a sense that question is best answered within the pages of the ne critiques presented here and by the passions that their writings have aroused throughout the world, there are yet a number of issues that I would point to in an attempt to provide a greater context for their critiques.

THE CONTEXT OF CRITICAL BUDDHISM

Although the issues dealt with in Critical Buddhism are by no means limited in relevancy to the Japanese context, we need rst to consider the polemic of Critical Buddhism in the context of the oft-cited ethical and institutional crisis in contemporary Japanese Buddhism. In this sense the need to respond in a dynamic fashion to religious needs in contemporary
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Japan is witnessed in such disparate phenomena as the phenomenal growth of new religious movements and the critical spirit of reform movements such as the Dbkai Und within the Jdo Shinsh. In this sense, then, perhaps the most obvious factor in stimulating the critical look at Buddhist ideas within the St Zen school was the shock of the so-called Machida Incident that stems from the 1979 World Conference on Religion and Peace. Machida Muneo, then president of the Buddhist Federation of Japan and secretary general of the St Zen sect, denied that any form of social discrimination existed in Japan. He subsequently recanted (in 1984) and the St sect admitted its long history of perpetuating social discrimination and established numerous committees to study and rectify the situation. Still, many of those involved began to look at the issue more deeply, wondering if there was any systemic reason why such practices could continue unquestioned for so much of St history.1 Although to some these sorts of things might seem like a tempest in a Zen teabowl, it was not so then, nor is it now, either within the St sect or among the outcast groups in Japan. Hence Hakamayas paper, Thoughts on the Ideological Background of Social Discrimination (included in this volume), was written within a committee appointed to study the problem, was presented not to an academic conference but at the Buraku Liberation Center in Osaka, and was subsequently appended to the ofcial report submitted to the Director of Religious Affairs for the St sect. Although the initial storm caused by the Machida Incident has somewhat abated, the Central Division for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights of the St sect has continued to publish and distribute numerous books and other materials on the topic. The bitterness is still widely felt both within and without the St sect. Other issues examined by this committee have included the role of Komazawa University faculty during the war and the defrocking of the St monk Uchiyama Gud, who was executed in 1911 for his role in the High Treason Incident but posthumously reinstated by the sect in 1993. Hakamaya, in turn, has resigned his prestigious position in the Komazawa University Faculty of Buddhism, as well as his clerical position within the St sect. But the Machida Incident within the St sect is not the only context for Critical Buddhism; we must look also to the larger Japanese political and cultural world as the second important context of this debate. A decade has passed since many of their papers were rst published
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(19851986), but we need to keep in mind that it was around that time that Nakasone Yasuhiro was elected prime minister after a landslide Liberal Democratic Party victory at the polls, that Ronald Reagan was enjoying his second term as president of the United States, and that lines between left and right were being drawn in religious and cultural worlds no less than within political camps. The question of ofcial government visits to Yasukuni Shrine was just as alarming in Japan as was the spectre of the radical Christian right dominating White House policy in the United States. In this climate the increasing level of Japanist (Nihonjinron) rhetoric and the cozy relationship between those who deployed such ideas and the government was a source of alarm for many for whom a return to totalitarianism was and is not an unimaginable prospect. Although in the West we do not hear much about the various debates surrounding the way that Japanese religion is presented in high school textbookswhether the Emperors funeral will be Buddhist or Shinto, or whether Japan should shoulder more of its defense burdenthese are issues of grave concern for the Japanese and their Asian neighbors. Reference to these social issues of the moment constantly surface in the writings of Hakamaya and Matsumoto, indicating that the social engagement of Critical Buddhism must be seen in part, I think, as akin to the sorts of skirmishes waged in the culture wars throughout the West. Thirdly, we need to keep in mind that Japanese Buddhist scholars have always had a somewhat more public voice than their Western, or at least American, counterparts. Japan, of course, is a Buddhist nation and a voracious reading public creates a huge demand for information about all aspects of Buddhist culture. Most well-known Buddhist scholars have written books for the general public at one time or another, and their articles regularly appear in the numerous weekly magazines and newspapers. At the same time, most Buddhist scholars have yet another role as head of a Buddhist temple, a role often ancient and important, giving them sectarian, institutional, political, community, and pastoral roles and voices. Hakamaya and Matsumoto are not by any means the rst to have confounded the distinctions among these roles. Indeed, much of their criticism of individual scholars can well be seen as an attempt to force a recognition of the commitments hidden behind supposedly objective scholarship as well as an attempt to hold scholars accountable for the content of their public statements, sermons, and popular writings. In a recent conversation they remarked to me that, while the disastrous results of the
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past collusion between Buddhist scholars and the political establishment may be a matter of historical interest, they believe this call for accountability to be even more important now, given the Japanese fascination with the occult and new age religions that emphasize the irrational and mystical experience religions like Aum Shinriky.

CRITICAL BUDDHISM AND THE WESTERN CONTEXT

If the call for a critically engaged Buddhist scholarship is rooted in a Japanese religious, political, and cultural context, it also resonates with trends in Western academe as well. To begin with, we may mention the postmodern denial of the static, ahistorical certainties of positivist historiography and the related trend towards rejecting purely objective scholarship as either possible or desirable. No longer limited to the trendier branches of anthropology, womens studies, or comparative literature, the deconstruction of the vested interests of objective scholarship has become part of the natural sciences and even Buddhist studies is no longer immune.2 Related to this is a tendency in much of todays academic scholarship to be increasingly activist. That is to say, once one accedes to the notion that scholars in-scribe even as they de-scribe, the move to normative valuation seems the next natural step, perhaps even a morally obligatory step, so that entire elds such as cultural criticism and postcolonial studies seem to be activist almost by nature. In this sense, despite Hakamayas complaint against what he takes to be the immoral and mushy relativism of postmodernism, his own rejection of the objectivist or positivist approach and focus on the narrative of history seems not unlike the Western focus on the narrative (or metanarrative or master narrative) aspect of academic discourse, just as his call for critical judgment seems not unlike the activist thrust of so much in todays academic world. Hence, rather than see Critical Buddhism as an echo of an earlier search for original Buddhism, it seems to me more accurate to see it as a complete rejection of that approach, an approach that attempted to make Buddhism a thing of scientic modernity by severing it from its religiousthat is, subjective and judgmentalpast. That Critical Buddhism does not refer to such a search for the historical Buddha is most obvious in Matsumotos assertion that the critical attitude must be willing to criticize even the teachings of the Buddha if they contradict the teachings of depenxii

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dent origination or no-self. Critical Buddhism denotes a philosophically critical pursuit of truth, not a historical or textual search for origins. Still, this critical agenda is pursued within a context of Buddhist truth, and it is as Buddhists that both Hakamaya and Matsumoto are arguing. Although this apologetic or theological stance is perhaps the most controversial aspect of the debates they have engendered, it, too, has strong resonances with currents within Buddhist studies in the West. Following Max Webers call for a scientic study of religion, religious studies in the West has labored long to be free of its theological origins and establish itself as a respectable discipline within secular universities. Buddhist studies is no exception, and to date has largely followed its European origins in the philological study of texts. Yet just as Hakamaya and Matsumoto reject Webers idea of objective and value-free scholarship, many Buddhist scholars in the West are arguing more and more openly that there should indeed be a place within academic discourse for the committed Buddhist to argue his or her ideas about Buddhist truth some would say that many have already been doing just that, albeit without acknowledging those commitments.3 To be sure, most Western scholars of Buddhism do not have quite the same dual role as their Japanese counterparts noted above. Still, a growing majority nonetheless count themselves as practicing Buddhists and participate in Western Buddhist communities in various capacities. Donald Lopez, noting the presence of formerly ordained monks within the universities, has even gone so far as to suggest that in the absence of the traditional ordained sangha, the role of the Buddhist monk as teacher is often, ironically, left to the academic.4 And Robert Thurman, recalling both the origins of Western universities and the positive role that education plays in our lives, has often referred to academics as Protestant monks. As Peter Gregory argues in his essay in this collection, the different situations that engender these different roles within the academy should give one pause to consider the modes in which knowledge is produced within different cultures. Hakamaya and Matsumotos writings surely give impetus to just such considerations.

INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTIONS

The book itself is divided into three sections. Part One, The What and Why of Critical Buddhism, attempts to give both substance and context
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to the notion of Critical Buddhism itself. Paul Swansons essay, Why They Say Zen Is Not Buddhism, provides a detailed overview of the writings of Hakamaya, Matsumoto, and others on this subject as well as presenting some of the reactions that their work has aroused within the academic and sectarian worlds. He concludes that Critical Buddhism involves at least three levels of criticism: Buddhological, sectarian, and social. In Critical Buddhism and Returning to the Sources, Dan Lusthaus takes a broader historical view, considering Critical Buddhism an inevitable response to a variety of historical developments, and seeing it as an extension (or recurrence) of the ancient lineage of debates surrounding tathgata-garbha. An essay by Hakamaya follows on Critical Philosophy versus Topical Philosophy, in which he interprets this polarity in terms of the confrontation in Western philosophy between the critical method of Ren Descartes and the rhetorical emphasis of Giambattista Vico, denouncing the recent Japanese fascination with the latter as an intellectual disease. Noting that the prime danger of this malady is its adopting the voice of authority in order to sell its own rhetoric, Hakamaya concludes by questioning his own use of the authoritative voice in his polemics. My own contribution, Topophobia, attempts to clarify Hakamayas critique of topical philosophy. I look at this idea in its original use within the Aristotelian logical canon, within the thought of Giambattista Vico, the eighteenth century champion of topical philosophy whose ideas Hakamaya assails, and in East Asian traditions such as Taoism and the Japanese philosophy of harmony, which Hakamaya attacks as an ideology of conformity or compliance. In the next chapter, Scholarship as Criticism, Hakamaya takes up the question of scholarly objectivity exemplied in Max Webers inuential essay Scholarship as Vocation. In diametrical opposition to Weberand, as noted above, in much better company with the more activist tendencies of the contemporary Western academyHakamaya nds the notion of the objective scholar to be another example of the authoritarian approach of topical philosophy in which neutral facts are supposedly discovered and displayed value-free, while in reality the very act of their (re)presentation smuggles in subjective opinions. Hakamaya parades a number of such examples before the reader. Echoing postmodern literary and critical trends, he rejects this appeal to an objectivist approach to the past, in favor, for example, of the narrative of history: It
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makes sense that those who exalt topos also exalt objective facts, whereas those who value criticism value language. The latter have no choice but to elaborate language as criticism while the former have merely to discover the facts as topos. If this means that even in the classroom the scholar must abandon the pretense of objectivity and risk being branded a demagogue, Hakamaya argues that this is the morally preferable path. In The Limits of Criticism, Paul Grifths seeks to contextualize Hakamayas notion of criticism in the philosophically more familiar terms of internalist and externalist epistemologies, arguing that the former, close to what Hakamaya is critiquing as topical philosophies, are to be rejected for the many problems that they pose. To illustrate his argument, Grifths looks at the debate between Hakamaya and Schmithausen regarding the signicance of nature in Buddhism in order to pose further questions about how far criticism can clarify what it means to be Buddhist. The nal, short essay in this section contains Matsumotos response at the panel on Critical Buddhism at the AAR in 1993. Part Two, In Search of True Buddhism, opens with Matsumotos The Doctrine of Tathgata-garbha Is Not Buddhist, one of the inaugural volleys in the Critical Buddhism debate. This paper, originally read at the 1986 meeting of the Japanese Association of Indian and Buddhist Studies, sets out Matsumotos denition of dhtu-vda as a form of generative monism that contradicts the teaching of prattyasamutpda and no-self and hence is to be rejected as not truly Buddhist. This is followed by Sallie Kings article, The Doctrine of Buddha-Nature Is Impeccably Buddhist, in which she argues that tathgata-garbha and Buddha-nature should be seen as soteriological devices rather than substantival ontologies, and hence are, as her title indicates, impeccably Buddhist. King also nds that there is no inevitable relationship between these doctrines and social discrimination; rather, they can and in fact have been used to justify and inspire social engagement. One of the areas in which Matsumoto and Hakamaya pursue their arguments is the traditional mode of Buddhist scholarship, namely philological exegesis. Yamabe Nobuyoshis contribution and the ensuing exchange with Matsumoto The Idea of Dhtu-vda in Yogacara and Tathgata-garbha Texts, is an example of this method. In this essay Yamabe argues that the model of generative monism giving rise to discriminatory pluralism that Matsumoto stipulates to be the dening characteristic of dhtu-vda thought cannot, in fact, be found in the Yogacara
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sastras cited by Matsumoto. Although one would do well to read more of Matsumotos original essays on these matters, his response and the nal rejoinder by Yamabe (A Critical Exchange) well illustrate the complexities of the arguments and the sophistication with which they are pursued. Both authors expressed the wish to pursue the debate and clarify their positions further, a wish that editorial constraints could not accommodate. Although Critical Buddhism is most often associated with the polemic writing of Hakamaya and Matsumoto, they are of course not the only scholars engaged in critical Buddhist scholarship. The eminent scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, Yamaguchi Zuih, is often mentioned by both Hakamaya and Matsumoto as their mentor and inspiration in this regard. His contribution, The Core Elements of Indian Buddhism Introduced into Tibet, is one of the early inspirations for Hakamaya and Matsumoto and looks at Buddhism in light of the famous bSam yas debate. This is perhaps the best known debate between advocates of a nonconceptual original purity and its sudden apprehension, represented by the Chan master Mo-ho-yen, on the one hand, and the Indian tradition of the gradual cultivation of the six perfections advocated by Kamalala, on the other. Critiquing the notion that the wisdom of bodhi is equivalent to the mystical intuition of liberation or satori, Yamaguchi notes that the purpose of Buddhism is not liberation (mukta, vimoka) but the realization of wisdom (bodhi) for the practice of great compassion (mahkaru). He thus sides with Kamalala to conclude that Buddhism is constituted by the practice of perfect giving and that this consists in the practice of the six perfections. This sort of critique of Chan and Zen subitism is not new, of course, and as scholars in the St Zen tradition and teaching at St Zen universities, it is natural that both Hakamaya and Matsumoto should be personally involved in clarifying what Zen is all about. Matsumotos 1993 book, Critical Studies in Zen Thought, presents a sustained criticism of much of what is held sacred in that tradition, particularly the very notion of dhyana or zen itself. As summed up in the excerpt included here, The Meaning of Zen, Matsumoto claims that if zen (the practice of dhyana) means the cessation of conceptual thought, then Zen thought is a denial of Buddhism itself. In a similar fashion, in his Dgen and Buddhism (1992) Hakamaya has presented an extensive critique of the St traditions understanding of their own founder, arguing that Dgens criticism of the doctrine of original enlightenment is foundational for
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understanding his thought, and that this critique is best evidenced not in the standard 75-fascicle version of the Shbgenz but rather in the 12fascicle version, completed later in his life and intended to supersede the earlier 75-fascicle version. Steven Heine examines this argument in his contribution, Critical Buddhism and Dgens Shbgenz: The Debate over the 75-Fascicle and 12-FascicleTexts. Highlighting the way in which sectarian and scholarly hermeneutics are inevitably intertwined with contemporary social concerns, Heine also examines the difculty of categorizing a method that makes simultaneous use of historical, philological, philosophical, and ethical approaches while confounding the boundary between academic and apologetic discourse. The nal four chapters in Part Two assess the merits of Critical Buddhism from a variety of perspectives. Peter Gregorys essay, Is Critical Buddhism Really Critical?, takes the thought of Tsung-mi as a case study in order to ask whether the pursuit of true Buddhism is not in turn positing some sort of dhtu-vda-like essence of Buddhism, hence mirroring the object of its own criticism. Preferring to see Buddhism as a product of a complex set of interdependent and ever-changing conditions (prattyasamutpda), he looks at Tsung-mis thought not to determine whether or not it is truly Buddhist but in order to discover the causes and conditions that brought it into existence. In a manner similar to Sallie Kings argument that Buddha-nature can be understood as a catalyst for positive social change, Gregory argues that for Tsung-mi the doctrine of original enlightenment was tied not to a linguistic transcendentalism but rather to an afrmation of language in response to the more radical critiques of the praj-pramit tradition. As noted above, one of the most interesting aspects of Hakamayas and Matsumotos critiques is their resonance with so many of todays intellectual and moral issues beyond the narrow connes of Buddhist scholarship, and it is perhaps for this reason that they have aroused such strong reactions among scholars throughout the world. This resonance is admirably demonstrated in Lin Chen-kuos essay, Metaphysics, Suffering, and Liberation: The Debate between Two Buddhisms, in which he uses the thought of Heidegger, Adorno, Derrida, and Habermas, as well as the example of earlier Critical Buddhists in modern China, to elucidate a conict between the programs of modernity and postmodernity and to suggest a way out of the contradiction between Topical and Critical Buddhism. In Thoughts on Dhtu-vda and Recent Trends in Buddhist
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Studies, Takasaki Jikid, perhaps the preeminent scholar of the tathgata-garbha tradition and a teacher of both Matsumoto and Hakamaya, gives a thoughtful overview of dhtu in the Buddhist tradition and also considers the role of their method in the current state of Buddhist studies. Sueki Fumihiko of the University of Tokyo is one of the scholars who has responded to Hakamaya and Matsumotos criticisms over the years. His essay, A Reexamination of Critical Buddhism, presents a useful review of the many issues involved and his own contributions to the debate, concluding with ruminations on the role of Buddhist scholarship in cultural criticism. One of the salient features of Hakamaya and Matsumotos criticisms is that they are tied to a social critique. Part Three, Social Criticism, presents four essays that address these issues directly. Hakamayas Thoughts on the Ideological Background of Social Discrimination, originally delivered at the Buraku Liberation Center in the context of the uproar over the longstanding practice of institutional discrimination within the St sect, presents his critique of St preachers who used the doctrines of original enlightenment and karma in order to justify social inequities. If the afrmation of causality and karma is perhaps the main thrust of Critical Buddhism, does this mean that social injustice can or must be understood as the inevitable outcome of ones evil actions in the past? Hakamaya concludes that an individuals personal understanding or experience of karma is not at all the same thing as the authoritarian use of karma as an ideology of acquiescence to the thusness of social inequity. Matsumotos essay on Buddhism and the Kami: Against Japanism presents his critique of modern and contemporary proponents of Japanese racial uniqueness, including such luminaries as Kawabata Yasunari and Umehara Takeshi, linking their glorication of Japanese culture to the militarism of the Kokutai no hongi. He also looks at the Yogacara-like themes of Mishima Yukios nal writings, nding that his attempt to break free of his rational world of literary intellectualism into a world of pure action inevitably led to his death, because pure Japanism is necessarily a philosophy of death. The role of intellectuals in promoting Japanese ethnocentrism and cultural chauvinism has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, and, as noted above, Hakamaya in particular has identied the doctrine of original enlightenment (hongaku shis) as providing the ideological background for this ethos. In Tendai Hongaku Doctrine and Japans Ethnoxviii

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centric Turn, Ruben Habito draws our attention to a number of medieval documents. Echoing Tamura Yoshirs ndings of the pervasive inuence of hongaku shis and Kuroda Toshios discussion of how this idea functioned to support medieval power structures, Habito nds that its absolute afrmation of the phenomenal world led to a reverse Copernican turn that saw Japan not as a land peripheral to India in the history of Buddhism but rather as the center of the universe, not mired in a time of degeneracy (mapp) but rather enjoying prosperity and able to look forward to the continued blessing of the gods and the eternal reign of the descendants of Amaterasu. Matsumotos closing essay on The Lotus Sutra and Japanese Culture continues the discussion of Japanese cultural chauvinism, challenging the idea that the message of the Lotus Sutra is one of harmonious inclusivism, and arguing that it has to be seen rather as teaching the exclusive path of the Mahayana and thus as opposed to the ideology of harmony so often attributed to the Lotus Sutra. Matsumoto also looks at the issue of stupa veneration in the context of the Lotus, concluding that stupa veneration is simply the worship of relics of the Buddha which symbolize and project the idea of an eternal atman, which he nds contrary to both Buddhist teachings of causality and no-self and the message of the Lotus Sutra. As a closing reection on how dhtu-vda approaches to the Lotus Sutra have inuenced interpretations of Japanese culture, he rejects the idea that the uniqueness of Japanese culture lies in some mystical harmony with nature: The Japanese people are not perpetually in an ecstatic state induced by staring at owers and trees. We are not vegetable-like human beings. What makes us distinctively human is the same thing that makes Westerners human: we can think.

In the preparation of a manuscript of this length and scope, the number of people who have provided indispensable aid is large. To begin with I would like to extend my thanks to each of the individual authors, whose interest in the topic was great enough to carry them through the process of taking on yet one more commitment in spite of already overcrowded schedules; I would particularly like to thank Steven Heine for putting together the original AAR panel and helping me think through the logistics of the volume in the early planning stages. Paul Swanson, my coeditor,
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arranged for me to spend a month at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, where we assembled the collection into its present form. For the long hours he added to an already demanding schedule, and especially for his warm friendship, I am deeply grateful. It feels as though nearly two decades of discussions and shared paths have come to a certain kind of fruition in this collaboration. I cannot be effusive enough in expressing appreciation to the many colleagues and friends at the Institute who gave unsparingly of their time and expertise as we worked over innumerable details of style, presentation, and technical production. Without the assistance of the ofce staff, our work would have been much more difcult than it was. The editorial assistance of Robert Kisala saved us any number of working nights, and knowing that Edmund Skrzypczak would go through the nal copy with his keen eye and legendary zest for detail allowed me to rest at ease more often than otherwise. More than anybody else, though, recognition must be given to the director of the Institute, James Heisig, whose boundless energy, intense pace, unfailing humor, and intellectual gifts are well known to all who have had the good fortune to work with him. Whether chasing down an obscure Chinese or Latin quote whose source the author forgot; whipping up a new macro that auto-translates among the fourteen different word processors that individual contributors used; creating a new font for the one instance of Karoh script that came up; enlightening off moments with stimulating discussions of Jung, Tanabe Hajime, or Ivan Illich; or simply regaling you with his endless supply of tales, he succeeds in creating a communal atmosphere of intellectual excitement and productivity unlike any that I have ever encountered. On top of all this his ability to rework stilted translations and pedantic English into owing prose is a marvel to witness and it is much to be credited for making the ideas herein accessible and even enjoyable to read. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the Association for Asian Studies, whose local travel grant allowed me to spend time with Hakamaya and Matsumoto during the nal editing stage and to nancially survive a month in Japan. Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude to Hakamaya and Matsumoto themselves; it was their probing critiques and brave stand that inspired us to undertake this task in the rst place. I rst met Hakamaya in 1981, when he came to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a two-year stay. In addition to numerous delightful late-night discussions with Hakamaya as well as lakeside picnics with
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his wife and young children, I was privileged to partake in a seminar that he organized on the Mahynasagraha, together with Paul Swanson, John Keenan, Paul Grifths, and others who were at the time studying under the direction of Minoru Kiyota. Although I had to leave to pursue my dissertation research in Japan after only several months of the seminar, the group continued and eventually published The Realm of Awakening: Chapter Ten of Asangas Mahynasagraha (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); needless to say, given the material and the participants, the discussions around the seminar table were as lively as they were detailed, and the question of meaning ever resurfaced from the depths of textual detail. Looking back with the wisdom of hindsight, I now see many things from that time that seem to have led directly to this collection of essays, not least of which is my long friendship with coeditor Paul Swanson and so many of the other contributors to the volume. Beyond this, however, the study of Buddha-nature and tathgatagarbha was a regular part of the coursework at the University of WisconsinMadison, in part stimulated by the frequent visits of Takasaki Jikid and others directly concerned with the topic. Equally important, though, was Kiyotas deep conviction that these topics provided not only an important window upon the development of Buddhist thought but also spoke to a vision of human dignity beyond the limited and ugly expressions of human ignorance that he himself had so often faced. Kiyota thus often taught and wrote on the subject, his colleague Geshe Sopa offered lectures on the Ratnagotravibhga, numerous dissertations came to be written on one or another aspect of the subject, and the topic naturally became the organizing theme for Buddha Nature: A Festschrift in Honor of Minoru Kiyota (Grifths and Keenan, eds.). At the same time, however, Kiyota always encouraged a critical and questioning attitude towards both the Buddhist tradition and social institutions, with the result that the question of the philosophical, moral, and soteriological meaning of the doctrine of tathgata-garbha was frequently debated. Indeed, one question that a student could always safely prepare in advance of the Ph.D. examinations was whether or not the doctrine of tathgata-garbha represented a form of monism. Another frequent topic of discussion from that time that I now see in the background of the Critical Buddhism debate was that of the sinication of Indian Buddhism, and under the inuence of another Komazawa professor, Hirai Shunei, many students came to question Richard Robinsons assessment of Chi-tsangs ideas as
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a mere restatement of Indian Madhyamika thought, preferring to see them instead as rather thoroughly colored by indigenous ways of thinkingexactly the sort of thinking that Matsumoto and Hakamaya contend is contrary to genuine Buddhism. Shortly after leaving Madison to pursue my dissertation research at Komazawa University, I met Matsumoto Shir. Upon hearing that I was from Madison, Matsumoto immediately engaged me in discussion about the program there, particularly Diana Pauls work on the rmldevi Sutra, as he had just nished writing an article on the ekayna doctrine of that text. Some years later, when I heard him present his paper on The Doctrine of Tathgata-garbha Is Not Buddhist at the annual meeting of the Japanese Association for Indian and Buddhist Studies in Tokyo, I was able to see how this early essay already provided a hint of the direction in which his research was leading. Matsumoto recently remarked to me that he hopes Western readers will not misunderstand his and Hakamayas emphasis on the intellect to mean that they believe only in the rational and intellectual, or that they are so naive as to think that all things can be understood intellectually. The real impetus for his work stems rather from an optimism that things can get better, for individuals as well as societies. But this optimism is premised on our ability to think critically, express ourselves in language, change our ways, and thereby make progress. When a signicant trajectory of the Buddhist tradition denies the usefulness of language and the rational process, and hence the very possibility of change or transformation, their optimism rises to the challenge. Hakamaya once noted that it is only those who believe in language that can change their minds. I am not sure if this volume of essays will change any minds, but today, a full fteen years after these initial encounters, I nd it exciting to be able to share with others some of the intellectual stimulation, keen social concern, and warm friendship that I have been privileged to experience in the company of these extraordinary thinkers.

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