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Religion (1981) 11,207-226

A CHRISTIAN AND A JAPANESE- BUDDHIST WORK-ETHIC COMPARED

Winston L.King

Quite some years ago (in volume X X I I , 1-2 of Monumenta Nipponica) appeared an article by Nakamura Hajime entitled 'Susuki Shfsan, 1579-1655, and the Spirit of Capitalism in Japanese Buddhism.' In it occurs the following interesting passage:

Now it could be argued that English Puritanism which derives from Calvinism manifests the most thorough basis for the modern West's attitude toward business. And according to Richard Baxter, who is one ofthe most representative figures of this faith, what is valuable for increasing the glory of God is not inaction or hedonism but rather action. Consequently, waste of time is, in principle, the greatest sin, and inactive meditation (at least when it is practised at the expense of business work) is valueless and, at times, to be completely rejected. In recent Japanese religion an exactly corresponding contention is made by Sh6san.

A second on the same subject in another place runs,

The most striking feature ofthe thought of Suzuki Shrsan is his contention that the way of Buddhahood consists simply in devoting oneself assiduously to the secular business ofone's life?

To my knowledge this particular comparative valuation, though pregnant with possibilities for cross-cultural and religious analysis, has never been followed up by any writer in English, not even in Robert Bellah's Tokugawa Religion. Having myself recently become interested in Suzuki Shfsan, I wish here to undertake a further exploration of the implications of the above statements. I have changed Professor Nakamura 's 'English Puritanism' to 'New England Puritanism' which may alter the basis of comparison in a few particulars; but in essentials it remains identical. And it has the added interest of being an actual experiment which was begun in America during the latter third of Suzuki Shrsan 's own lifetlme---though in a context both geographically and culturally a world apart from his world.

One further thing may be said by way ofintroduction. In one sense neither Tokugawa Era Japanese nor colonial New England Puritans needed any exhortation of a religious sort to make them work hard. In both cases there was

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208 Winston L. King

a near absolute physical-social necessity. In Japan of ShSsan's time it was a period of rebuilding Japan after some 300-500 years of intermittent civil and military strife. Given the limited physical resources of Japan, depleted by war, labour of the hardest sort was a stark necessity, particularly for the lower classes of farmer and artisan. And besides, the Tokugawa grand plan called for a self-sufficient, strictly ordered and closely regulated society, in which each person would be in his assigned place doing his assigned work. The work burden was especially heavy for the rice-producing peasant, whose efforts were the basis of the total structure. 2 In New England of this time everyone was, of necessity, a sort of 'peasant ' , that is a materially productive labourer. The small colony of Puritans had come to a wilderness world of not too hospitable climate or inhabitants, and of unworked resources. Bare survival was possible only by the maximum and devoted effort ofevery individual.

But there was in both cases a fundamentally important religious motivation, part and parcel of the respective social patterns envisaged, and our interest here is in the dynamics of that motivation. That one set of motivations (the Puritan) functioned for a time in an actual situation and the other (ShSsan's) remained largely an ideal, vitiates neither the interest nor cross-cultural relevance of the comparison.

[. THE BASIC THEORETICAL RELIGIOUS MOTIVATIONS FOR WORK A. The New England Puritan Theology. I t should be observed at the outset that though there was indeed the survival-urgency for hard labour among the New England Puritans, this laborious manner of life had been deliberately chosen by the Puritans for religious reasons. They were in New England, as they saw it, not by any outward or social necessity, but by their own free and inflexible will to fulfil the Divine Purpose in the world, in so far as they were to be its instruments. Their beliefs about themselves and their divinely ordained mission in the New World may be formulated as follows:

(1) Almighty God created the world and now sustains its every process; (2) though the original purity and inherent goodness ofthe world have been

corrupted and defaced by the machinations of Satan and the sins ofman, God fully intends to redeem his world again to its primordial goodness;

(3) in this redemptive work he calls upon men to be his instruments to foil Satan and at the same time to work out their own salvation--though as the free gift of God, salvation is not entirely within their control;

(4) the Puritans have come to New England as God's front-line troops in this great warfare against evil; they are the spearhead of His age-long purpose for the world--to establish a New Order in a New World which will be a shining example and ground ofhope for the whole world;

(5) God's special relation to the New England Puritans, his newly Chosen People, is contained in his covenant with them, a covenant fully agreed to by

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the c o m m u n i t y ' s founders (the Mayf lower pact) : that the communi ty will fai thful ly fulfil its mora l and religious obl igat ions, and that God in turn, as p romised in the scr ip tures and confirmed in history, will be their God and will be a p ro tec t ive 'wal l of f i re round abou t them. '3

Before we ana lyse in more deta i l the power and direct ion ofsuch a manda te as it affected the Pur i t an work-ethic, a few con tempora ry expressions of the above themes a re in order . In Perry Mil le r ' s s u m m a r y of T h o m a s Hooker ' s last s e rmon in Eng l and before he left for the New Wor ld we read:

At this very moment the hand of God was stretched forth and the choicest of his saints led out of the land of Egypt to the new land of Canaan, the one place indubitably provided in which the Reformation might not fall short, where the 'world might see a Spedmen ofwhat shall be over all the Earth in the Glorious Times which are Expected.' What was wanting in Europe should be supplied in America; God's servants having made clear the laws of the Covenant, and the pious care of the magistrates being enlisted for their enforcement, 'this wisdome will by the blessing of God be established; that that which other Nations have not attained to this day, may by the blessing of God be reached by us . . . . ' The Lord was granting them the greatest opportunity afforded to any people since the birth of Christ, the chance to 'enjoy Churches and Congregational Assemblies by his Covenant, to worship him in all his holy Ordinances,' such a privilege indeed as 'for 1260 years the Christian world knew not the meaning o f . . . but this the Lord vouchsafed to us this day.'

Aga in :

'We, the people of New England,' wrote Peter Bulkeley, 'are as a City set upon a hill, in the open view ofall the earth, the eyes ofthe world are upon us, because we professe ourselves to be a people in Covenant with G o d . . . ' John Cotton called Davenport to New England (for) 'in order that the whole world might be instructed and a particular phase ofhlstory be accomplished, the towns of Massachusetts and Connecticut had to be settled'. 4

I n s even teen th -cen tu ry New England , wi th such a bel ief in their high destiny, it goes a lmos t wi thou t say ing that ofcourse every able-bodied man would have an occupa t ion , t e rmed a 'wa r r an t ab l e cal l ing ' by Pur i tan writers:

Faith drawes the heart of the Christian to live in some warrantable calling and imployment; as soone as ever a man begins to looke toward God, and the wayes of his grace, he will not rest, till he find some warrantable Calling and imployment, s

T h e s a m e wr i t e r goes on to say that even though a man may be able to suppor t his needs wi thou t ever w o r k i n g - - b e c a u s e o f s o m e other source o f income- - - ' i f thou has t no cal l ing tending to publ ique good, thou ar t an uncleane beas t ' i For ' G o d sent you not into the world as into a Playhouse, but a Work-house ' . The use o f the te rm 'ca l l ing ' for one ' s work was of course significant, as was the sugges t ion tha t work be for ' the publ ique good ' . T h e la t ter term refers to

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eve ryman ' s du ty to maintain the Holy Commonweal th or 'Holy Experiment ' as the Puri tans called it; and the first term suggests that all work properly done is sacred work. This was indeed the explicit Puritan contention. J o h n Cotton wrote:

We live by faith in our vocations: in that faith, (that) in sen.ing God.one serves men, and in serving men one sexwes God.

And with such a faith in the holiness o f 'war ran tab le ' work, it matters not what specific work it be:

[That faith] encourageth a man in his calling to the homeliest, the difficuhest, and most dangerous things his calling can lead and expose himselfto; if faith apprehend this or that to be the way of my calling, it encourages me to it, though it be never so homely, and difficult, and dangerous. 6

N o r indeed, as noted by Professor Nakamura , should religious practices or concerns interfere with that work while it is going on. Everything should be in its proper place and t ime- -worsh ip on the Sabbath, uninterrupted work on the week days. A man who reported that he was assailed by religious perplexi- ties while at work, resulting in a loss of efficiency, was thus counselled by T h o m a s Shepard:

When there is a season of God's appointing for civil things or business, it is not the season now to be molested or perplexed in it, by the injection and evocation of those thoughts which we think to proceed from the Spirit of G o d . . . for as it is a sin to nourish worldly thoughts when God sets you a work of spiritual, heavenly employ- ments, so it is, in some respects, as great a sin to suffer yourselfto be distracted by spiritual thoughts, when God sets you on work in civil (yet lawful) employment. 7

And wha t were the expectations of the Puritan as to the result of diligent labour? Consider ing themselves to be Covenant-people and therefore heirs of all the Old Tes t amen t promises to Israel, Puritan theologians could write:

Marke the agreement between us and the Lord: he propounds the Law and saith, That ifwe will keep the Law, he will bless us abundantly in all things, house, and land. s

Indeed God was almost as much bound by the Covenant as his people:

The end of the Covenant of Grace is to give security to the transactions between God and man, for by binding God to the terms, it binds Him to save those who make good the terms. Were it not for the Covenant we could never have any certain hope. 9

N o w if there was anything, practically speaking, of which the seventeenth-


cen tury Puri tans were certain, it was that they had fulfilled their part o f the Divine Covenan t and that God in turn was doing his part. Writes Miller:

Thus it was no accident [to the Puritans] that New England grew fat and comfortable, beyond even the most extravagant dreams of the founders . . . To English immigrants of the 1600s the land appeared rich and flowing, while the sacred cod soon proved an inexhaustible mine ofwealth.John Ball had written in England that through His covenant God promised not only to write His laws on our hearts, 'but also to conferre temporal blessings, as they shall be serviceable to vs in our Journey towards Heaven' and John Cotton preached in Boston, 'Christ having made a Covenant with us, he gives the Inheritance of the world to such as beleeve in him. '1~

Indeed, not only was it quite permissible to prosper, but the Puritan could even proper ly pray for material blessing:

[It was] lawful for the saints to endeavor 'prudently' to advance their estates, not because good husbandry would always get a larger return than bad management, but because 'this Prosperity is one of the promises ofthe Covenant and we may pray for it.' Riches being a reward of godliness, they 'are consistent with Godliness; and the more a Man Hath, the more Advantage he hath to do Good with it, if God give him an Heart to do it. 'ix

Thus , proudly conscious o f their faithfulness to the Covenant, the Puritans saw the logical and to-be-expected consequence of their strenuous godliness in their burgeoning wealth. Their Holy Experiment was proving itself right and good.

Yet in the midst of this deserved and promised prosperity there lurked a profound and insidious da nge r - - t ha t o f loving God 's gifts instead of God. Indeed J o h n Win th rop at the very beginning of the Experimen t had warned of this:

I f wee shall neglect the observation of these Articles (of Covenant) . . . and dissembling with our God, shall fall to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnall intencions, seekeing grcate thinges for our selues and our posterity, the Lord will surely breake out in wrath against us. 1"

But the peril was more insidious even than mere carnal worldliness, which could be easily recognized. T he problem at core was this: How can a man work diligently in the world with all his might and main, and yet keep pure from loving that for which he works so hard and which is his promised r ight?John Cot ton recognized the danger and sought to deal with it:

There is another combination of vertues strangely mixed in every lively holy Christian, And that is, Diligence in worldly business, and yet deadness to the world � 9 For a man to [take]) all opportunities to be doing something, early and late, and loseth no opportunity, to go any way and bestir himselfe for profit, this will he

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doe most diligently in his calling: And yet bee a man dead-hearted to the world.. . though hee labour most diligently in his calling, yet his heart is not set upon these things, he can tell what to doe with his estate when he hath got it. 13

This then is the ideal Puritan: He is endlessly and tirelessly diligent in his secular work, making a profit whenever honestly possible. He is as earnest about this work as about his regular worship of God on the Sabbath. Indeed worship and work are not really separated, but mutually supplementary parts of one holy wholeness of life. The Puritan is p!eased but not proud when his efforts succeed; he provides adequately but not lavishly for himself and his dependents. And even while he strives with all his might for worldly success, he is aware that this world is not his true home, that his life in it may end at any moment, and that only in Heaven (or perhaps in Kingdom-come-on-earth) will he find his eternal rest. Perry Miller sums up the quality of Puritan life in these beautifully apt words:

Puritanism sees illusion in the visible universe; it requires men as long as they are in the flesh, to act as though the illusion were real: it punishes them if they take illusion for reality. 14

B. SuzukiShgsan's MetaphysicalBasis. Suzuki Sh6sa n (i579-1655), a Tokugawa samurai who in his forties became a S6t6 Zen monk, was contemporary with the Puritans and did most of his writing during the early days of the Holy Experiment. His tract, Bammin Tokuy~ (Meritorious Way of Life for All ,lien), is the best expression of his work-ethic and was considered by him as his most important writing. Tha t it embodied many elements thai are strikingly similar to the Puritan work-ethic in its spirit and final result, is the more interesting in view of the disparity of the two cultures of Puritan New England and Tokugawa Japan. It should be emphasized at the beginning that though Suzuki Sh6san (to be abridged here to Sh6san) was highly independent and individualistic in his own teaching methods, his fundamental positions were thoroughly Buddhist and Japanese. He was eclectic and innovative in some particular emphases but even so, indeed therein, quintessentially Japanese- Buddhist, making him a good subject for cross-cultural comparison.

The most obvious component of the metaphysical structure on which his work-ethic was based was the Holy Triad of the One Great Buddha, Heaven, and the kami. As to the Buddha, Shrsan uses the Pure Land Meditation Sutra for his delineation, thus seemingly identifying him with tile primordial Amida Buddha:

His stature is 60,000 times 10 millions ofnayutas ofyojanas and the hairs in the middle of his forehead are as large as five Mt. Sumerus.

Tile combination of Yin and Yang forces that create the heavens and the earth


is ' the efficacious action of the One Buddha'. is This was written to deflate, by comparison, the Christian Deus to relative insignificance. And then following the approved Japanese syncretistic practice Sh6san equated the kami with the Buddha, as 'Amida 's manifestations':

The kami bestow benefits [upon men] in the present, thus calming their minds. He [Buddha] afterward rouses up faith [in the Dharma] and by this skillful device (hrben) leads them into the Way ofthe Buddha. 16

Heaven is the general natural-moral order of the universe. It works harmoniously with the Buddha and the kami, though in an unspecified relationship. But in any case, with respect to human affairs, the three are always in accord--perhaps in an underlying sense a unity--in their actions.

The following passage, one of encouragement to the hard-worked farmer- peasants of that time, embodies ShSsan's conception of the Heaven-Buddha- kami harmonious interaction:

Farm work itself is Buddha-action. Only when your purposes are evil is it mean and shameful. When your faith-mind is strong and secure, (your work) is the work ofa Bodhisattva... For you to have been born a farmer is to have received from Heaven an official appointment to be one who nurtures the world. Therefore earnestly and with reverence entrust this body ofyours to the Way of Heaven. Do not concern yourself even momentarily with your body's Welfare. Perform your work as a public service in the Righteous Way of Heaven. Producing the five cereal grains, worship the Buddha and the kami. Making a great vow to sustain the life of all men and to give alms even to the insects and other such creatures, recite 'Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu' with every stroke of the hoe. Concen- trate on every single stroke of the sickle with no other thoughts.

To work thus, says ShSsan, confers both material and spiritual benefits:

When you do your farm work in this way, in your rice paddies and fields, the five cereal grains will become pure and as medicine for the destruction ofthe passions of those who eat them. Will not Heaven give its protection to such a man? 17

In other passages as well, the joint favour and blessing of Buddha, Heaven and the kami are promised to other righteous and industrious workers, be they samurai, farmer, artisan, or merchant. The samurai's work is instant and faithful service of his lord; artisans are to make good wares and artists to give themselves selflessly to their profession; and merchants are to unfailingly provide needed goods to their customers and are entitled to their profits, indeed encouraged to make profits but not yield to sharp practices and greed in pursuing exorbitant monetary yields. By such service the self may be curbed and finally destroyed, i.e. it becomes a way leading to eventual enlightenment. But just as the Buddha, Heaven and the kami bless such men as these, so they will curse those who follow evil, self-indulgent careers. Never do the three act

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at odds with each o ther - -a typical Japanese-Buddhist harmonization of universal entities.

It may be observed in this connection that, as with the Puritan, there is here some sense of being a chosen people, or at least special people. It may be doubted that it was quite as intensely special as with the small band of Puritans who termed themselves God's elect, called out from among lesser Christians to carry on the Holy Experiment. None the less four centuries before, Nichiren had perceived in Japan's twice-repeated repulse of the Mongol invaders (due in part to adverse winds) the kami's protection of their special proteges. And it must be remembered that inherent to Japanese culture from the very beginning has been the sense of a peculiar character and unit)' of land and people, both of them begotten and sustained by the kami. Hence when Christian missionaries spoke scornfully ofkami worship as a sinful and childish idolatry, Shgsan protested vigorously:

Japan is the land ofkami. It would be an evil thing if we, who have been born in this kami-country should not reverence them. TM

Now were this all that was involved in Sh6san's base for a work-ethic, the situation would be relatively simple and, mutatis mutandis, quite comparable to the Puritan situation in terms ofgeneral motivations and attitude. For here too are rewards and punishments, both material and spiritual, for obedience and disobedience, respectively, to divine powers. So too there is here as with the Puritan, the sense of one's daily work, whatever it may be, as the peformance of one's moral duty to the community as well as to the dMne powers. And yet again Sh6san taught, as did John Cotton almost at the same time, that honest work ofwhatever sort was inherently noble---for him the mandate of Heaven, for Cotton the calling of God. Lastly, and likewise for both Sh6san and Puritan, one's field of 'secular ' work was also the arena in which the individual must work out his own eternal salvation.

But this is not all that was involved in Sh6san's case; there are other cultural and religious factors that complicate the comparison. These differences result from what may be called the Taoist-Zen Buddhist-Shint6 complex of ulti- mates and attitudes, amorphous in character but foundational to the work- ethic formulated by Sh6san. These factors are often negative in their formu- lation (when they are formulated), seldom articulated by Shfsan himselt, but functionally pervasive ofall his thought.

At the moment the dominant Buddhist element only is germane to the discussion. Now this element is not merely the background presence of the One Great Buddha as a kind ofsuper-deity, but the foundational presence of the Buddhist interpretation of the world and human life. That view holds present existence to be empty of genuine reality, to be impermanent in all its manifestations, and to be instinct with suffering. Sh6san emphasized each of


these three characteristics ofsarhsfira repeatedly. The classic Buddhist figures of falling leaves, flower petals scattered by the wind, and life as mere bubble and shadow stuffcame often to his tongue. He often referred to the prevalence of sickness, the inevitable onset of old age, and to his favourite theme of the imminence ofdeath. Tile body, he said, is but a thing that itches, is cold/hot, continually paining, and essentially a mass offoul corruption.

The classic Buddhist remedy for this universal condition of mankind is, of course, the attainment o fan attitude ofcomplete detachment, with the far-off final goal of Buddhahood or Nirvana. All this Sh5san accepted and strongly advocated. Yet he did not draw the seemingly logical conclusion, either for himselfor for others, that 'detachment' means withdrawal from activity in the world. In the beginning of his own monkish career, when he was about 42 years old, he did draw such a conclusion. Whenever he saw a grove oftrees he thought longingly of the hermit's life---this indeed even before he became a monk. x9 And after tonsure he did live briefly as an ascetic recluse. But, having nearly killed himselfin the process, he abandoned the hermit's life for that of an activist monk, and never regretted it, thereby gaining a knowledge of his own faults not available to a hermit. 2~ Indeed he often counselled would-be monks from the samurai class to remain samurai, so much so that his own disciples asked him why he then had himself become a monk. (He replied evasively that it was his karma to do so.) 2x And the main theme of his preaching to laymen was that when their work was undertaken with the proper attitude, it became Buddha-work, i.e. spiritual discipline leading to enlightenment, of whatever sort it might be---actor, samurai, farmer, hunter- fisher, merchant.

This view is, of course, quite comparable to that of the Puri tan-- to use the world as not using it, to achieve a holy secularity. And it must be remembered that the Puritan as well as the Buddhist held the world to be fundamentally transient. But the Buddhist view is the more radical, for in it there is no saving grace of Divine creativity and redemption that brightens sarfisfiric prospects. Hence the question arises: How does Sh5san mount his vigorous, this-worldly work-ethic, which will induce a Buddhist to work harder and more devotedly than any one else, on a philosophy ofworld-emptiness?

To answer this question the Taoist and Shint5 elements of ShSsan's Buddhism must be brought into focus. For though he emphasized the emptiness, impermanence, and pain of human existence much in the manner of primitive Buddhism, his view of sariasara was subtly different. The Taoist component of his thought and feeling, embodied for the most part in Zen, provided a sense ofintimate harmony, even oneness, with the universe, both in its fleetingness and in its eternity, both in its emptiness and its fullness, both ontologically and existentially. Thus the somewhat traditional Buddhist dis- dain for the visible, experienceable world was transformed into something

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approaching reverence for it, even in and because of its unreality and impermanence. (This love of tile beautiful, finding it more beautiful because it is fleeting, runs deep in Japanese culture.) For Zen, ofcourse, form is the form of no-form, and no-form is the true essence of form; emptinessjs the substance of phenomenal fullness, and phenomenal fullness is the manifestation of emptiness.

To this must be added the indigenous Shint6-Japanese sense of all material objects as spiritual in essence, originally expressed in the ubiquity of the kami in all elements of the visible world. Hence there is no real distinction between spirit and matter, body and mind, the holy and the profane, the ordinary and the sacred for Shint6; this native holism blended neatly with tl~e Zen-Taoist view just noted, to make the ordinarly worldly-material things used in daily work," and that work itself, into integrally spiritual essences. Therefore the worker, whatever his work, should purify, simplify, concentrate, and har- monize his subjective inwardness with the objective materials he is dealing with, thereby achieving holiness in all his actions.

This philosophy is automatic and instinctive with Sh6san rather than explicit. But its centrality to his thought is clearly evident in some of the statements he makes about ordinary work as Buddha-work. First are his views on the relation of the sacred and secular in general, in la_is words the relation of the Buddha Dharma and world dharma:

The Buddha Dharma and the world dharma are not two; for it is said in the words of the Buddha that when one enters [genuinely and fully] into the world, nothing that can be called the 'transcendent world' remains [over and above this one]. For both the Buddha Dharma and the world dharma are nothing other than con- forming to truth, acting morally, and putting the way of uprightness into practice. 22

If the world,just as it is, is not put to use by the Buddha Dharma, then it is not the Buddha Dharma. 23

The Buddha Dharma is making good use of one's mind just as it now is; it is a matter ofexerting the mind in present use3 4

This assertion of the identity of the Buddha Dharma and the world dharma comes from the Kegon (Avatfimsaka) Sutras, and has been voiced from time to time in various sects of Japanese Buddhism. There is also here the one-world, one-level reality often asserted in some of the esoteric (mikky6) schools of thohght, and ofcourse by Zen. Sh6san's views then are completely, integrally Japanese Buddhist, but at the same time bear the mark of his own special emphasis: For the first time in Japanese Buddhism this sacralization of the secular was given concrete, detailed, profession-by-profession specification. In this Sh6san is unique. Yet identification of the religions and the secular (the


oneness of the Buddha Dharma and the world dharma) is not a mere declara- tion of the sacredness of the secular per se, as a second type ofquotation will make evident:

Any and ever)' occupation is Buddha-practice. All men's actions should be for the sake ofattaining enlightenment; then your work will be nothing other than Buddha- ~,vork. 25

If there are no discriminative thoughts when one is engaged with the world dharma, then the world itselfis the Buddha Dharma. z6

This is to say that any and ever)" practice can be made into the practice of the Buddha Dharma, if the Buddha Dharma is kept in mind all the time (as when the nembutsu is said with each hoe-stroke), and when that work is deliberately used to make progress towards enlightenment, as stated in the first saying. Merely intensive, devoted work may have some of the same characteristics psychologically as 'Buddha-work ' but it is not such per se. And in the second quotation we have a description of the subjective state of one who has thus successfully sacralized his secular work. When ever}' action is made a training- device for and demonstration of Buddhahood, then the social order (dharma) has become the Buddha Dharma for such a man. Sh6san can express this state in Pure Land terms as well as Zen:

Even though the words in one's mouth have to do with worldly matters and relate to the evils of this world, ifonly your mind itselfbecomes Namu-amida-butsu, then whatever is said is the Name. 27

This, however, is the abolition of the line ofdemarcation between sacred and secular by the raising ofthe ordinary to holiness, not by submerging the holy in the ordinary without remainder.

Though something of this sort can be said of the Puritans as well, there are impor tant distinctions. The Puritan thought of the world with which he worked as essentially good, and transformable (as we shall see in the next section) into a glorious reality never envisaged in Buddhism. Yet the Puritan never identified himself emotionally quite so closely with his 'good' world as Sh6san urges his readers to identify themselves with the transient, pain-filled world of the Buddhist. Perhaps the Puritan's 'good' world has been so tainted by human sin and Satan that the Puritan feared its power to corrupt him, and held it at a rm's length; whereas the MahayanaJapanese Buddhist knew the world to be fleeting and empty, but did not find it radically evil, and more readily identified with it in his own fleeting emptiness. And this difference in feeling also no doubt expresses the distinction between Christian wilful sin and Buddhist congenital ignorance. So too, for the Puritan, work itself was not directly or easily identifiable with the attainment of personal salvation: at best successful work was but the means necessary for serving God in this world and

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a strictly secondary evidence of his possible election to salvation by the Divine will. But that final salvation remained the sheerly gracious gift of the inscrut. able Divine Majesty. For Sh6san, however, 'grace' did not bulk large, aside from the general 'grace ' of the Buddha Dharma's presence in the world. The salvation (enlightenment) of the individual must be gained by the samurai- like dauntless fight o f the believer, life after life, towards his goal: he can expect no divine favours. His only means of salvation are his own indomitable will and the conditions o f the present mundane world in which he works daily. In a third type of exposition ofsacralized secularism, Shfsan seeks to counter the argument, so often heard from Confucians in the Tokugawa era, that Buddhists ' detachment from the world in their concern and hope for the next life, lessened their concern for this life and made Buddhism useless in any practical way to the maintenance ofongoing societies. Quite the contrary, said Sh6san. Indeed it is only Buddhism that is perfectly suited to maintain the life of this world, just because it teaches life's impermanence and counsels detachment from it:

Without the Buddha Dharma it is impossible to act freely in the world. 2s

Should one who says that everything in the world is fleeting and vain, become the enemy of the world while he casts it aside? (Answer:) When it is taught that this world should be cast aside and the next life desired, this is in order that this world should be made better and that this very earth become the Pure Land. In thefinal ana~sis it is the man who really considers this world important who indeed forsakes it. 29

This is a subtle and interesting argument. It suggests that the clutching ofthe world to one's bosom because it is the only one he will ever have--hence its supreme wisdom is to eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die---is actually a devaluation and desecration of the world.-Those who think about the present world only in terms of advantageous use and self-gratification debase it and ultimately will destroy it. But those who sense its true fragility, and at the same time its preciousness as the only bearer of salvation into a reality which is transcendent of it, are they who truly cherish it and devoutly use it for the good of all. And quite practically Sh6san maintained that the selfless Buddhist could better serve master and country than the self-serving, self-oriented Confucian. In any case the moral for Sh6san was that 'those who support and establish the world are the very ones who give up the world'. 3~

The logical, even inevitable, result ofwork done in a truly Buddhist frame of mind, according to Sh6san, is that it will be done both better and more devotedly. The Buddhist hopes for no purely personal advantage from his labours, only the far-off sublime hope of eventual Buddhahood. Moved by such hopes he gives himself selflessly, i.e. fully, without reserve, to the task which his karma has destined him to do. The doing of the work itself is the supreme means ofdestroying the false selfwhich attaches itself greedily to this

Christian andJapanese-Buddhist Work-Ethic 219

passing world and prevents his achievement of Buddhahood. Where the selfishly attached man will become weary in his effort, especially when it seems not to yield its desired results, and will do only so much as is to his own advantage, the selfless yet compassionate Buddhist (who also sees his work as a service to other sentient beings, as much in need of enlightenment as he) will work on endlessly and tirelessly. Thus, contends ShBsan, those who truly know both the worth ofworldly work (as a vehicle ofenlightenment) and its unworth (for the yielding of permanent and satisfying rewards) are the best citizens, who maintain the health of that society in which they labour by their dis- interested concern for it.

II. BETWEEN NOW AND FINAL SALVATION, WHA T IS OF WORTH? Two general types of purposes legitimating and governing the respective work-ethic of the Puritan and of ShSsan have thus far been considered: the immediate-practical and the ultimate-salvational. The first comprises honest, devoted service to one's society, and vigorous, industrious effort. In this the two ethics are much alike. The second has to do with the ultimate purpose of such work, the attainment of Heaven and Nirvana, respectively. But while there is a morphological similarlity between the two quests, a release from earth's impermanence and suffering, the qualities of Heaven-seeking and Nirvana-seeking embody the most basic differences between the Christian and Buddhist weltanschauungs. Particularly is this the case in the concrete historical attutides, perspectives, and goals ofthe two traditions.

A. Sh6san's Japanese-Buddhist Historical and Social Perspective. The basic and classic Indian-Buddhist view of the historical-societal situation ofmankind is contained in the term sa~s~ra--perpetual repetition of birth and death, a 'sea ofchange' . As noted already, its three inherent characteristics are impermanence, insubstantiality, and painfulness. There are, to be sure, individual and historical ups and downs, relatively happier and more fortunate-pros- perous periods interspersed with the painful and disastrous. The coming age of Maitreya Buddha will be one such blessed time, almost a golden age. But it will be only a temporary upswing. Sarhs~ra will soon again assert its inherently uneven character. Meantime the individual will be endlessly reborn into his sarhs~ric prison-house.

O f course in Sh6san's Mahayana Japanese-Zen Buddhism this view had been moderated in several respects. Following Nag~rjuna's lead it proclaimed the identity of sarhs~ra and Nirvana. The compassionate Bodhisattva, enlightened but voluntarily returning birth after birth to help save others, had replaced the 'world denying' arhat. The enlightened saint of Zen, according to the famous bull-training pictures, consorts with wine-bibbers and butchers.

220 Winston L. King

Tile ordinary mind is the Buddha mind, and the Buddha-nature is inherent in every man.

Given such a heritage, how is the socio-historical task of the disinterestedly hard-working Buddhist of Sh6san's ideal to be defined? In general, as inferred from his remarks, the function of a Buddhist society is to provide the best possible milieu for the attainment of Buddhahood and release from samsa.ra. For Mahayana, post-N~g~rjuna Buddhist though ShSsan may have been, he still conceived Buddhahood to be final release from rebirth, though many more rebirths of striving for that goal remained. Safiasfira might have been Nirvana in some sense for him--i t could be filled with a somewhat Nirvanic sort of effort and awareness--but Sh6san sought the undiluted variety ofpure, ultimate Nirvana it appears.

So, to rephrase the question: Between now and Nirvanlc attainment, what can and ought to be done to improve safias~ra? Something can be accomplished by vigorous toil at one's destined task, by making it into a spiritual training device. But even here there were major limitations to safias~ra's improvability. There is one's past karma, for instance, a fact about which ShSsan had much to say. Ka r ma determines one's 10t in life, both as to social status and as to health/disease, good/bad fortune, and happiness o r unhappiness. Sh6san recommended that one should think of all his present sufferings and the injustices he may receive as the payment of his own past karmie debts. This would take some of the fire out ofhis suffering but ofconrse will neither avert suffering entirely nor glve any hope of the fundamental betterment of one's lot by protest or rebellion. Still further, in ShSsan's view, karmic limitation applied to progress towards enlightenment: By virtue ofpast karma one must work at the attainment of enlightenment within predetermined and narrow limits. He told a young monk who was dying that even were he to live another 30 or 40 years of great spiritual effort, there would be no great leap upward. (Sh6san said his own experience of 30 years ofsuch effort bore this out.) The best one could hope for was to reinforce his will-to-enlightenment, but en- l ightenment itself would come only after many more rebirths (in safiasfira). 31

Another limiting factor in the improvement of the Japanese sector of sams~ra was mapp6---that age of the decline and corruption of Buddhism which had by then come fully upon the world. While Sh6san does not seem unduly overborne by this, as might many aJ6do Buddhist of his time, it was nevertheless an important negative factor for him. Especially was he aware of the very concrete evidence of mapp6 in the devastation, social and religious, wrought by the last 300-500 years of civil disturbances and wars in Japan. Particularly to this he attributed the doctrinal impurities, the spiritual slack- ness, the sectarian strife, the worldliness of monks and priests, and the low level o f inner religious experience. This specific historical situation, viewed in the general Buddhist context ofseeing safias~ra as essentially incurable save by


escape from it, reduced Sh6san's expectations of improvement in Japanese society to very modest proportions.

But within these limits there were some elements ofhope. One such element was the improvement of the general state of political and social affairs under Tokugawa governance. There was the neat ordering ofsociety into a four-class system; there was the cessation of political turbulence and civil war. One specific improvement mentioned by ShSsan was the reduction of the murder rate from its pre-Tokugawa rate of 3000 per annum to 1000. (Were a fully Buddhist death-sentence policy followed, the number would drop to five or six hundred.) 32

Again, ShSsan must have been favourably impressed by the vigour with which the shogunate put down the 'Christian' rebellion of 1638 in Shimabara. As his tract Ha kirishitan (Refutation of Christianity) makes clear, he viewed Christianity as a dangerous and implacable foe of both the Buddha and kami, as well as of Japan itself. Indeed this tract was written during the three years (1642-4) he spent evangelizing for Buddhism in the Shimabara area, where his younger brother was the shogunate's administrator, charged with 'pacifiying' the area. ShSsan urged the building of some thirty-two Buddhist temples, with the ShSgun's image placed in at least one of them, and his own tract in all of them. 33

Still further: Sh5san hoped--but in vain--for a more vigorous pro-Buddhist policy from the government, something better than its requirement of the registration of all citizens in their local Buddhist temple. He must have been unhappy at the elevation of Confucian over Buddhist advisers in state councils, though he never directly said so. What he hoped for was a reforming decree from the Sh5gun himself, calling for a country-wide, all-sect conference of Buddhist leaders, which would be ordered, by appropriate measures, to free Japanese Buddhism ofsectarian rivalries, doctrinal disputes, and competition for political influence, and turn all effort to the main religious business in ha nd - - t he enlightenment of all beings. This, of course, was in line with both the fact of the shogunate's total control ofthe religious establishment and with Sh5san's quotation of a Buddha-word to the effect that the Dharma could be established on earth only when political rulers should adopt its principles in their governance, i.e. make it the state religion. 34 When Iemitsu, the third ShSgun, in his long rule (1622-51) did nothing concrete to strengthen Buddhism, beyond mercilessly rooting out the remnants of Christianity, ShSsan pinned all his hopes for Buddlfist reform on Ietsuna, the boy-Sh5gun who succeeded his father at the age of twelve in 1651, just four years before ShSsan's death. And ShSsan died in the (futile) hope that when Ietsuna should reach his majority, the Buddhist-reformation decree would be issued, as

In summary, ShSsan's hope for the Buddhist future of Japan was a strictly limited one at best. He never mentioned the coming of the age of Maitreya as a

222 Winston L. King

viable hope; still less did he think of creating such an ideal society as should endure till then and be transformed into a Holy Buddhist Kingdom upon his adven t - - to say nothing of an eternal Buddha-Kingdom on earth. The height ofhls hope ;~vas the achievement of a stable socio-political order and a government that would support and reform Buddhism, in order to make it easier for the Japanese to seek Buddhahood.

B. The Puritan Commonwealth and the Kingdom of God. With the New England Puritans we have a radically different set of motivations and expectations, which rooted in the fundamentally different Christian world-view.

To be sure, part of the difference was due to other than religious factors. Sh6san lived in an old, traditionalist, and tightly structured society, whose stability, continuity, and distinctiveness, the Tokugawa rulers were fanati- cally determined to preserve, for ever if possible. Hence, even without the innate social passivity engendered by tile Buddhist understanding of earthly (sariasaric) existence, the only really viable social option was to work hard at maintaining and possibly improving the status quo.

The Puritans were, on the contrary, in asparsely-inhabited, brand-new world where almost any sort of social organization might be attempted. But even so, the inner factors were the decisive ones. As already noted, the Puritans were in their New World by choice (and by God's predestination of them to glorious things). Viewing themselves as the divinely appointed agents of the reform of Christianity and the salvation ofthe whole ofmankind, they were full of reforming zeal and high idealism, and hope for their future in America. Though going back in time for their model for the new society to the pristine purity of the early church under Christ, they were also going forward in time in their expectations of at long last re-establishing that ideal society in a new setting. Hence, in a small, unified, and committed group, with few political or social constraints except of their own imposing, innovation and experimentation were the order ofthe day. It was indeed a Holy Experiment on which they were embarked. But there was an even more important and fundamental characteristic which differentiated the Puritans from Japanese Buddhists: They drew their inspiration from a theistic-creationist religious tradition, not from a beginningless-endless-purposeless process in which salvation was defined as an escape-from. Though Heaven was also an escape from this world's uncertainties and imperfection, yet this world had been created by God and initially pronounced to be 'good'. And fundamentally, or at least potentially good, it remained, though marred by sin. And the high faith of the Puritan was that, as taught in his scriptures, God would in the end redeem his creation to its pristine goodness, and perhaps even make it more glorious by its transformation into his Kingdom on earth. And as we have seen, the Puritans believed themselves to be the vanguard, indeed almost the sole agents, of that

Christian and Japanese-Buddhist tVork-Ethic 223

redemptive process. The hope of the ages was embodied in their Holy Experi- ment; its success, under God, would result in that Kingdom's coming to earth, perhaps even in their own lifetime!

The 'Kingdom of Heaven' has, of course, had a wide variety of interpreta- tions during the course of Christian history. They have ranged all the w~iy from a purely inner-individual experience to the literal, physical descent ofthe New Jerusalem out of the heavens upon the earth, as portrayed in the book of Revelation. The Puritans espoused a view of the Kingdom somewhere between these extremes, though tending towards the latter. They conceived of the Kingdom as God's crowning blessing upon, and perfection Of, a course of world improvement to be wrought by man under God's guidance. They believed that if they, God's co,;'enanted people, were faithful to that covenant, the Kingdom might well be realized in their own lifetime in New England. Thomas Hooker, shortly before his death in 1647,

�9 could not help speculating.., whether truth had not now fulfilled her appointed months oftravail, 'the instant opportunity drawing on apace,' whether the last day of judgment were not at hand, for with the erection of the New England way it seemed that truth had made the last disclosure conceivable within the frame of time. New England was the neplus ultra. Any further discover' would surpass the possibilities ofearth and commence the reign ofeternity. '36

Though John Cotton did not put it so precisely in terms of the imminent Last Judgment , and the consequent Kingdom, his beliefs about the near-perfection of the New England religious establishment matched those of Hooker:

Though he modestly declined the imputation of perfection he was still certain that the New England Way was the nearest thing possible to what would be set up 'ifthe Lord Jesus were here himselfe in person. '37

And in another connection he wrote that

The Order of the Churches and the Commonwealth was so settled, by common Consent; that it brought to his mind, the New Heaven and the New Earth wherein dwells Righteousness. 3s

In such a case as Kingdom Come in New England, God's presence and power would directly illumine the whole world for ever--more brightly no doubt in Boston than anywhere else; and the then-living saints would pass directly into that Eternal Kingdom in which death would be swallowed up in the complete victory of God's righteousness.

Two major differences between this Puritan vision of the future and that of Sh6san are immediately apparent, especially as they affected present activi- ties. First, the Puritan expected far more from his society, than Sh6san did from his. ShSsan did not expect to remake his society, he could only hope to

224 Winston L. King

slightly modify it; but the Puritan worked with the sense ofcreating de novo in what he did. Sh6san, in keeping with his Buddhist convictions, might hope for a more religiously supportive shogunate, but never expected to fundamentally or permanently improve his society, or any other sarhs~.ric entity. On the other hand the Puritan's deepest conviction was that God had commanded him to create the perfect earthly society in New Englandqwith direct Divine blessing adding the final heavenly perfection, of course. But that consummating blessing would simply confirm and irrevocably establish what the Puritan saints had already constructed! Hence the Puritan saw in his present society something ofintrinsic goodness and worth, the very building blocks of the New Jerusalem. What he was here and now creating would be integral to the New Order, of identical quality. In his earnest careful building of Church and Commonwealth he was not dealing with sarhs~tric foam and shadow, but with the substance ofeternity itselfl

Second, and resultingly, the quality of work and community spirit in Puritan New England was different from that envisaged in Sh6san'sJapanese- Buddhist dream for the future. In a situation where only minimal improve- ments or change could be hoped for, experimentation, let alone Buddhist- inspired revolution, was unthinkable. At most there could be something of a transformation from within by the holy ardour with which a man did his karma-determined work and filled his place in society. But endemic to the Puritan situation was the ever-present endeavour to further improve society with the prospect ofgaining final Divine approval and Kingdom status. Thus the 'Kingdom of Heaven' presented a shining ideal of social perfection by which to both inspire and improve the present society. When, even in the midst of later failures there was an ebbing of the assurance that the Kingdom was momentarily imminent in its fullness, the Kingdom mentality persisted in diverse and even secularized forms, such as the American Dream. And the dream of a goal, far offno doubt but ultimately approachable by a combination of human effort, the growth of human knowledge, and that onflowing Tide in the affairs ofmen, persisted both as a critique ofpresent attainment, and as a stimulant of devoted effort and new social experimentation.

I I I. C O N C L U S I O N When we come, however, to ask in conclusion about the religious quality and intensity of the two work-ethics, a curious ambivalence results.

The two outward products, in terms of hard work and devoted workers, seem equal and quite similar. But the respective inwardnesses remain elusively yet distinctly different. Presumably the Puritan one-life-only, heaven-or-hell, now-or-never, perfection-awaits, God-commands type of motivation should have produced a much more intensive, internalized work motivation than the Japanese-Buddhist many-lived, escape-from-existence, never-improvable-


world inspiration proffered by Sh6san. Yet there remained a kind ofexteriority about the Puritan motivation: It was future-oriented, not presently satisfying; the work was holy work because God's world was essentially good, to be sure, but more importantly for its capacity to achieve future Kingdomhood. Hence, because it had been corrupted by sin and Satan, it was not truly good in and for itself, but only as it could be transformed. (It is doubtful that the Puritan allowed himself to take much joy or delight in his daily work, or found it rewarding in itself.) And lastly, the Puritan work-ethic was heavily dependent for its integrity and intensity upon its religious and doctrinal moorings, its view of God and his world plan. When it degenerated into mere capitalistic acquisitiveness, its religious component was no longer an integral part, only a tacked-on reference and pseudo justification.

By contrast Sh6san's work ethic was interiorized and almost self-sufficient. In the context of Japanese culture (a Shint6, Taoist, Buddhist compound) the 'secular' and the 'sacred', the immanent and the transcendent, were difficult to distinguish from each other. The Taoist-Shint6 component, as before noted, contributed a sense of intimacy, even oneness with the world of flux as portrayed in Buddhism and found in daily experience. This made possible a kind of practical monism, a worker's mystic identification with the work in hand, somewhat regardless of the external form of his environing society and in the absence of grandiose historical speculation. Sh6san's work-ethic embodied an intrinsic-to-effort, self-rewarding, self-contained immersion in the immediate situation which could provide a satisfaction and intensity of effort rivalling, i fnot surpassing, that of the Puritan, though quite different in inner quality.

And ironically, though it was never directly or widely put into practice as Sh6san hoped that it might be, his work-ethlc perhaps contributed to a spirit in Japanese society which he would have deeply deplored and regarded as the complete opposite of what he sought to implant, namely, a purely secular- mystic devotion to work for its own sake and a hard-nosed commercialism that had no rootage in, or reference to, Buddhism whatever. It perhaps contributed to its obverse pe~'ersion into a one-dimensional world (after the model of Zen one-reality view) but a world reduced to a one-dimensional mystical- materialism and psychologism, rather than a material and secular world elevated to the level of the means ofachieving spiritual wholeness.

N O T E S

1 p. 13. A Histoly of the Development of Japanese Thought, Vol. I I. Tokyo: Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, 1967, p. 59.

2 An interesting confirmation of this is that fiefs and financial-social rank were calculated on the basis of the koku of rice produced by the land assigned to an individual dabn.)'g.

226 Winston L. King

3 The Puritans, Perry Miller and T. H. Johnson, Revised edition, New York: Harper and Row, 1963, p. 245.

4 The New England Mind: The 17th Century, Perry Miller. Cambridge: Harvard Uni- versity Press, 1954, pp. 469, 470.

5 Ibid.,p. 44. 6 The Puritans, p. 322. 7 The New England Mind, p. 44. 8 Ibid., p. 388. 9 Ibid.,p. 389.

10 Ibid., p. 481. 11 Ibid.,p. 481. 12 Ibid., p. 477. 13 Ibid.,p. 43. 14 Ibid., p. 42. 15 All translations from Sh6san sources are from Suzuki Sh~san d6nin zenshff, (Complete

Collected works of Suzuki Sh6san, Wayfarer), ed. Suzuki Tesshin. Tokyo: Sankibo Busshorin, 1962. Translations by Winston L. and Jocelyn B. King. H. refers to HakirishRan (Refutation of Christianity); N. to Nembutsu z6shi ( Nembutsu Notebook); B. to Bammin toku.)'~ (Meritorious IVay of Life for all Men): R. to Roank)'~ (Donkey saddle- bridge), parts I, II, III . This reference to H., p. 135.

16 N.,p. 112. 17 B.,p. 64. 18 H.,p. 132. 19 R.,I .40. 20 R., I I I . 37. 21 R., III . 19. 22 B.,p. 34. 23 R. , I I .88. 24 R., I. 77. 25 B.,p. 70. 26 N.,p. 121. 27 N., pp. 120-1. 28 R. , I I . 86. 29 N.,p. 125. 30 N., pp. 125--6. 31 R., III . 21. Cf. R., III . 107. 32 R.,I . 172. 33 Sekihei d~nin g)'~g6 ki (Narrative of the Life-practice of the Sekihei IVapfarer) by Sh6sin's

disciple Echfi. Zenshg, p. 8. 34 B., p. 61; R., II. 88. 35 R. I I I . 65. 36 The New England Mind, p. 471. 37 Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, Perry Miller. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

1933, as re-edited by Harper and Row (New York), 1970, p. 160. 38 The New England Mind, p. 470.

WINSTON L. KING is Emeritus Professor of History of Religions at Vanderbilt University. Among his publications are Introduction to Religion, In the Hope of Nibbana, and Theravada Meditation. He is currently working on a volume on Suzuki Sh6san. 518 Caldy Place, Madison, Wisconsin 53711, USA