"Then, some fifteen hundred or more years after the passing of the Buddha, in the country of China, which lies east of India, the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai appeared in the world during the years of the Ch’en and Sui dynasties. He declared that among the sacred teachings put forth by the Thus Come One were the Mahayana and the Hinayana, the exoteric and the esoteric, the provisional and the true. Mahākāshyapa and Ānanda had concentrated on spreading the Hinayana teachings, he explained. Ashvaghosha, Nāgārjuna, Asanga, and Vasubandhu had spread the provisional Mahayana teachings. But with regard to the true Mahayana teaching of the Lotus Sutra, they had merely touched on it briefly but concealed its meaning, or had described the surface meaning of the sutra but failed to discuss the whole range of the Buddha’s teachings expounded throughout his lifetime. Or they had described the theoretical teaching but not the essential teaching, or they had understood the theoretical and essential teachings but not the teaching for observing the mind.
When the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai expounded these views, the millions of followers of the ten schools of Buddhism, three in southern China and seven in northern China, all with one accord gave a great laugh of derision.
“Here in these latter days, a truly amazing priest has made his appearance among us!” they exclaimed. “Though there have at times been persons who adhered to biased views and opposed us, never has there been anyone who maintained that all the 260 or more Tripitaka masters and teachers of Buddhism, who have lived since the introduction of Buddhism in the tenth year of the Yung-p’ing era (c.e. 67) of the Later Han, the year with the cyclical sign hinoto-u, down to these present years of the Ch’en and Sui, were ignorant. And on top of that, he says that they are slanderers of the Law who are destined to fall into the evil paths. Such is the kind of person that has appeared!
“He is so insane that he even maintains that the Tripitaka MasterKumārajīva, the man who introduced the Lotus Sutra to China, was an ignorant fool. Whatever he may say about the men of China, imagine his saying that the great scholars of India such as Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu and the several hundred others, all of them bodhisattvas of the four ranks, did not teach the true doctrine. Anyone who killed this man would be doing no more than killing a hawk. In fact, he would be more praiseworthy than someone who kills a demon!”
This was the way they railed at the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai. And later, in the time of the Great Teacher Miao-lo, when the Dharma Characteristics and True Word doctrines were introduced from India, and the Flower Garland school was first established in China, Miao-lo spoke out against these teachings and was met with a similar uproar.
In Japan, the Great Teacher Dengyō made his appearance eighteen hundred years after the Buddha had passed away. After examining the commentaries of T’ien-t’ai, he began to criticize the six schools that had flourished in Japan in the 260 or more years since the time of Emperor Kimmei. People in turn slandered him, saying that the Brahmanists who lived in the time of the Buddha or the Taoists of China must have been reborn in Japan.
Dengyō also proposed to set up an ordination platform for administering the great precepts of perfect and immediate enlightenment, such as had never existed in India, China, or Japan in the eighteen hundred years since the Buddha’s passing. Indeed he went farther than this, declaring that the ordination platform at Kannon-ji temple in the western region [of Tsukushi], the ordination platform at Ono-dera temple in the eastern province of Shimotsuke, and the ordination platform at Tōdai-ji temple in the central province of Yamato all stank with the foul odor of the Hinayana precepts and were as worthless as broken tile and rubble. And the priests who upheld such precepts, he said, were no better than foxes and monkeys.
In reply, his critics exclaimed: “Ah, how amazing! This thing that looks like a priest must in fact be a great swarm of locusts that has appeared in Japan and is about to gobble up the tender shoots of Buddhism in one swoop. Or perhaps Chou of the Yin dynasty or Chieh of the Hsia has been reborn in Japan in the shape of this priest. Perchance Emperor Wu of the Northern Chou and Emperor Wu-tsung of the T’ang have reappeared in the world. At any moment now, Buddhism may be wiped out and the nation overthrown.”
As for the ordinary people, they clapped their hands in alarm and waggled their tongues, saying, “Whenever the priests of these two types of Buddhism, Mahayana and Hinayana, appear together, they fight like the lord Shakra and the asuras, or like Hsiang Yü and Kao-tsu disputing possession of the kingdom.”
Dengyō’s opponents continued to revile him, saying: “In the time of the Buddha, there were two ordination platforms, one belonging to the Buddha and the other to Devadatta, and a number of people were killed in the dispute over them. This man may well defy the other schools, but he declares that he must set up an ordination platform for administering the precepts of perfect and immediate enlightenmentsuch as even his master, the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai, was unable to establish. How strange! And how frightening, how frightening!”
But Dengyō had his passages of scripture to support him, and as you know, the Mahayana ordination platform was eventually set up and has been in existence for some time now on Mount Hiei.
Thus, although their enlightenment may have been the same, from the point of view of the teaching that they propagated, Ashvaghosha and Nāgārjuna were superior to Mahākāshyapa and Ānanda, T’ien-t’ai was superior to Ashvaghosha and Nāgārjuna, and Dengyō surpassed T’ien-t’ai. In these latter times, people’s wisdom becomes shallow, while the Buddhist teaching becomes more profound. To give an analogy, a mild illness can be cured with ordinary medicine, but a severe illness requires an elixir, a man who is weak must have strong allies to help him."
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