[A book review I wrote for a class on East Asian religions, spring 2010.]
Machida, Soho. Renegade Monk: Hōnen and Japanese Pure Land Buddhism. Trans. Ioannis Mentzas. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles (1999).
Soho Machida’s Renegade Monk is something of an anomaly in Buddhist studies, since, as Machida is careful to point out, not much scholarly attention has been paid to Hōnen or the discreet sect of Buddhism he helped formulate. Therefore, Machida is breaking new ground in his careful reconstruction of the contemporary cultural strands that were crucial in Hōnen’s intellectual development. Additionally, Machida makes another, even more vital accomplishment, for he admirably argues for the intellectual and cultural importance of studying Japanese Pure Land Buddhism and Hōnen. Renegade Monk is not a perfect book; however, despite a few notable shortcomings, Renegade Monk may be the best concise introduction to Hōnen’s exclusive-nembutsu Buddhism and the culture and world behind its development.
Machida’s main ideas sometimes appear vague or difficult to pinpoint because not much academic research has been done in this area of Buddhism. Upon closer examination, however, it is apparent that Machida put much thought into the overall structure of the book. After a brief introduction outlining Hōnen’s major principles and contributions to Japanese culture, Machida begins with an exploration of the world that inspired Hōnen’s retreat into Buddhism. Machida writes, “Exclusive-nembutsu developed out of a feeling of crisis lived by the masses who were surrounded, confronted, and threatened by the abyss of death. In other words, exclusive-nembutsu was not some doctrinal progress in Pure Land thought” (p. 48). This thesis is certainly debatable, but Machida effectively supports it by drawing upon extensive examples from history and Buddhist eschatology in Hōnen’s time.
After spending roughly a third of his book describing the cultural context behind Hōnen’s “conversion” to exclusive-nembutsu, Machida then begins a close examination of Hōnen’s spiritual and philosophical outlook; his best contribution to academia is found within these pages. This section of the book revolves around two major, interlocking themes—the inevitability of death and the supremacy of imagination to overcome death. Instead of propagating the fear of death (the same fear the then-predominant Buddhist schools exploited), Hōnen taught his followers that death was not something to fear; rather, “Hōnen wielded his imagination as a hammer against the mechanism of death that constituted his times” (p. 158).
Machida’s work is impressive and important, but it is, unfortunately, not without flaws. One minor but recurrent wrinkle comes from Machida’s insistence in drawing connections to Western culture. While these parallels might make the book more accessible to a lay reader, it is inconsistent with the larger part of his rhetoric, for Machida seems to presuppose a certain amount of erudition of his audience on the subject. Some of these parallels are warranted, particularly in describing Hōnen’s exclusive-nembutsu as a kind of liberation theology, a comparison Machida so persuasively proposes that it actually seems necessary (pp. 4-7). However, comparisons to Western inventions such as Dante’s Divine Comedy (pp. 55-56), Karl Marx’s economic philosophy (pp. 29-30), and even Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (p. 44) are more problematic, and they cumulatively serve to dilute Machida’s thesis by not allowing his arguments to speak for themselves.
Another oversight Machida makes is that he fails to place Hōnen’s exclusive-nembutsu orthodoxy adequately within a wider context. Machida certainly does justice to Japanese influences, but Machida leaves the reader wondering about how much influence proto-Pure Land practices that had developed in China had on forming Hōnen’s philosophical outlook. On the other hand, this can be countered because Machida clearly states that he has not set out to write the definitive history of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism; instead, he has endeavored to write a simple history of Hōnen and the way Japanese Buddhism is inextricably linked to Hōnen’s legacy (pp. 21-22). Even so, that Machida spends more time connecting Hōnen to Karl Marx than engaging other East Asian material is rather shocking, and it becomes a difficult hurdle for Machida to overcome.
In general, though, Machida’s argument is successful. His grasp on the subject matter is practically unparalleled in Western scholarship, and his book opens new doors for Buddhist cultural studies. Hopefully, Machida’s work is a precursor to a burgeoning movement within scholarship to fully engage Hōnen and one of the most important and influential sects of Buddhism. Assuredly, this is not the final word on Hōnen and his nembutsu; a greater book, one that resolves Renegade Monk’s faults and further advances this field of study, is waiting to be written.
