• Humans ( Ningen )

• Between Humans & God ( Ashura )

• Animals ( Chikush )

• Hungry Ghost ( Gaki )

• Creature of Hell ( Jigoku )

      This idea is about human's Trsna (desire, thirst, or cravings) and Upadana (attachment) to the world. Sufferings are caused by Trsna and Upadana. In order to escape sufferings, people have to find a way out of the rokudoh by leaving all these desires behind and then become a Buddha, who's Trsna-free.

The 4 ways to break the chain of desire:

Infiltration - Someone who has enlightenment, but would like to postpone the time of becoming Buddha, because he (sorry, this philosophy is just for men by then) wants to save other people. Some examples are Kannon (Bodhisattva of Compassion) and Jizoh (Bodhisattva of Children)

Transcendence - Entrusting and relying on Buddha Amida's salvation by Nembutsu ( recitation of Buddha's name until Buddha Amida come to save you and take you to the Jdo , the pure western land)

Enlightenment - A self-aware of self-conscious way of enlightenment. Copenetration is the realization of the relations between all things in the universe, and the correlations between good and evil, and the realization that life is beyond opposites or differentiation

Ludization - Play paradox, i.e. the desire to become a Buddha is actually a form of trsna, so cannot be it, but only to master the rokudoh philosophy.

      In Nara period, there was the concept of Hinayana (small vehicle), which means following precepts, the rules of moral conduct.

      In Heian period, the concept of Mahayana (great vehicle) was more popular. This concept allows people to become a Buddha even they are not monks.

Shin-Kokinsh (1205) - poems about the notion of realization of Buddhism. There are some examples here:

      Utsutsu ( ) - half awake, half dreaming, a description used to depict the ambiguity of the world that we are living in. Nothing really is what they appear to be, so don't be fooled.

Kokoro ( ) - heart, mind

Ko ( ) - sky, also with implication of emptiness sometimes in a poem

N ( ) theater:

      The ideas of Buddhism as Cosmology (Rokudoh) and Buddhism as Dialectic (practice equals realization) are always competing, and the Dialectic concept wins out.

      Shiki Soku (equal) Ze Kuh, Kuh Soku Ze Shiki ( ) - here gives the message of the absence of opposite or differentiation, a very popular notion of Buddhism.

      In the Kamakura period, people going to watch N is to try to realize that we as human often judge, while we should not be judging. By realizing this concept, people begin to gain enlightenment. This is the strategy used by the ruler of the time.

      Video shown in class - Hagoromo (Robe of Feathers)

      Kygen ( ) - a joke intermission between two N plays to release tension created by the long boring plays, so that people have more patient to finish the whole play. Ge Koku J meaning the lower people making fun of the upper people (the lords) was often the topic of jokes in Kyogen.

      It was the Ashikaga Yoshimitsu ( , 1358-1408) of the Ashikaga shogun family, from the Muramachi ( 1333-1587) period, who sponsored the development and maintenance of N play during the Kamakura period. The writers of N plays were usually outcasts (people rejected by the society) and temple people; the audiences of N plays were usually the military people. Ashikaga Yoshimitsu was also the one who built the Kinkakuji ( ) in Kyto.

      Zeami was an outcast who mastered the language of poetry and created Noh for the shogun family in the Kamakura period as a culture that possessed an equivalent value of miyabi culture for the aristocrat family in Heian period.

Here for lecture note of Week 5.

Here for lecture note of Week 7.

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