聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

願文

5 min read

Text ID
KR6t0059
Date
785–785
Dynasty
日本

Yuànwén 願文

Statement of Vows by 最澄 (撰)

About the work

A single-sheet personal vow-statement by Saichō 最澄 (Dengyō Daishi 傳教大師, 767–822) — the founder of the Japanese Tendai school — composed in 785 CE shortly after his ordination and his retreat onto Mount Hiei 比叡山. The Ganmon is the foundational document of the Japanese Tendai school and one of the most personally affecting confessional pieces in early medieval Japanese Buddhism. It sets out the five great vows under which Saichō would conduct his religious life, and provides the doctrinal-rhetorical model for all subsequent Hiei-zan kishōmon (oath documents) and gōgan-mon (vow statements).

Abstract

Date. The work bears no internal date, but Saichō’s biography fixes the composition securely. Saichō was ordained at Tōdai-ji 東大寺 in the eighth month of Enryaku 4 = 785 CE (he was 19), and immediately afterward took up his retreat on Mt. Hiei, where the Ganmon was composed; the conventional date in the Tendai tradition (Mochizuki Bukkyō daijiten, Eizan daishi den) is Enryaku 4 = 785 CE. Saichō was, accordingly, 19 years old.

The Ganmon opens with a vivid description of the world-as-suffering: “Distant and remote, the threefold world is unmixed suffering, never at peace. Restless and tumultuous, the four-fold birth is nothing but distress, never at ease. The Muni’s [Śākyamuni’s] sun has long since set; the moon of the Compassionate Honored One [Maitreya] has not yet shone. Drawing near is the danger of the three great calamities; we sink deep into the five turbidities. Furthermore, breath-life is hard to keep; the dew-form is easy to extinguish.” Saichō then makes the famous self-deprecating self-identification: “I, Saichō (底下最澄), most foolish among fools, most demented among the demented, a defiled and tonsured being (塵禿有情) — above I have transgressed against the Buddhas, in the middle I have rebelled against the imperial law, below I have failed in filial propriety. Following my deluded and demented heart, I now make Three and Two Vows. With non-attainment as my method, with the supreme principle as my goal, I make the great-vajra, indestructible, irreversible vow of mind.”

The famous Five Vows are then enumerated: (1) “until I have attained the stage of similarity in the six sense-faculties, I will not go out among the worldly — its [first];” (2) “until I have attained the mind that illumines the principle, I will not display worldly talents — its [second];” (3) “until I have completed pure-precept reception, I will not accept the offerings of donors at Dharma-gatherings — its [third];” (4) “until I have attained prajñā*-mind, I will not become involved with worldly affairs except at the similarity stage* — its [fourth];” (5) “throughout the three time-periods, the merit I cultivate I will not take for myself, but universally turn over to all sentient beings, that all may attain supreme bodhi — its [fifth].”

Saichō then closes with the resolute resolution: “If by virtue of this vow-strength I reach the stage of similarity in the six sense-faculties, even if I attain the five supernormal powers, I will absolutely not take self-liberation, will not verify the proper-position, will not attach to any-thing. May I always be drawn forth by the aprajñapti, aprasaṅga four great vows of this lifetime; may I circulate through the dharmadhātu, enter the six destinies, purify the Buddha-lands, perfect sentient beings; to the end of the future, may I always perform the Buddha-work.”

The text is brief — a single sheet — but is the doctrinal manifesto of Saichō’s mission and the textual seed from which the institutional Hiei-zan tradition grew.

Translations and research

  • Paul Groner, Saichō: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School (Berkeley: Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1984; rev. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2000), pp. 27–34, gives the standard English translation of the Ganmon and analyzes its biographical context.
  • William E. Deal and Brian Ruppert, A Cultural History of Japanese Buddhism (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015), pp. 90–93.
  • Akamatsu Toshihide 赤松俊秀, Dengyō Daishi shū 傳教大師集 (Iwanami, Nihon koten bungaku taikei), critical edition of the principal Saichō works.

Other points of interest

The Ganmon is widely cited in the Hiei-zan tradition as the doctrinal foundation of Tendai institutional ethics: the principle that one should not “go out among the worldly” until attaining the liùgēn xiāngsì wèi 六根相似位 (the six-faculties-similarity stage) — drawn from the Lotus Sūtra — is the philosophical foundation of the twelve-year mountain-confinement (十二年籠山) program that Saichō established for Hiei-zan students and that became, after his death, the canonical Tendai novitiate. The five vows themselves are inscribed on the walls of the Konpon Chūdō 根本中堂 at Enryaku-ji to this day.

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