Kakunyo-bo Chosai

Kakunyo-bo Chosai
The Kuhon-ji School
The Vow of Various Practices

Kakunyo-bo Chosai (1184-1266) at the age of nine went up to the capital and entered the private boarding school of the Sugawara family to study the Chinese classics. In 1202 he was ordained into the monkhood by Honen. After Honen's death, he studied the teachings under prominent scholars of the time, such as Shunjo of Senyu-ji Temple, Dogen the founder of the Soto Zen school, and Jushin-bo who lived at Tzumo-ji Temple. He spread his teaching in his home province of Iyo in present day Shikoku and then at Kuhon-ji Temple in the suburbs of Kyoto. He was a very learned monk and his work A Catalogue of the Jodo Scriptures (Jodo homon genryu sho) was thought much of by scholars of the time. He also wrote the Kangyosho komyosho (published in the Edo period) and the Sobetsu nigansho.1

Chosai was the founder of the Kuhon-ji school of the Pure Land teachings. Basing himself on the Sutra of Immeasurable Life, he maintained that one can attain Birth in the Pure Land through a variety of practices other than the nembutsu. He taught that while the religious practice Amida required in the eighteenth of his forty-eight vows was the nembutsu, Amida encouraged other practices in his twentieth vow. So Chosai felt that salvation is attainable by the practice of either and called this the teaching of the “vow of various practices” (shogyo hongan). This view appears to be similar with that of Bencho. However, the difference between them was that Bencho interpreted the twentieth vow to mean that Amida out of pure compassion would still save those who committed themselves to other practices than the nembutsu, even though he did not designate them as separate practices to be followed. Whereas Chosai maintained that Amida definitely prescribed those practices as being of equal power with the nembutsu, assuring the same rank in the Pure Land to those faithfully performing them as Amida gave nembutsu practitioners. Chosai also emphasized that all classes of followers might at the time of death experience spontaneous visualizations (nembutsu samadhi) of the beauties of the Pure Land as they entered it. This teaching was severely criticized by the other schools of Honen's disciples as a deviation from Honen's teachings. However, as it was widely accepted by the established schools such as Tendai and Shingon, Chosai’s disciples increased considerably, one of whom was Gyonen a famous scholar of Todai-ji Temple.

Notes:
1. in the appendices of Kuhonjiryo Chosai kyogi no kenkyu by Ishibashi Kaido (Kyoto: Omiya Shoten, 1939), 256-272.

Reference:
The text has been edited and adapted from the Pictorial Biography of Honen Shonin (Honen Shonin gyojoezu), also known as the Forty-eight Fascicle Biography (Shijuhachikan-den) with reference to the translation made by Harper Havelock Coates and Ryugaku Ishizuka entitled Honen the Buddhist Saint: His Life and Teaching. Kyoto: Chion-in, 1925.