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報恩抄

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Text ID
KR6t0402
Date
1276–1276
Dynasty
日本

Bàoēn chāo 報恩抄

The Anthology of Repaying [Indebtedness] by 日蓮 Nichiren (撰)

About the work

A two-fascicle major doctrinal treatise by Nichiren 日蓮 日蓮 (1222–1282), composed at Minobu in Kenji 2 / 1276 / 7th month / 21st day, when Nichiren was 54, in memorial of his teacher Dōzenbō 道善房 of Kiyosumi-dera who had died the year before. The Hō-on-shō is one of the Five Major Writings of Nichiren Buddhism and the most personally autobiographical of the major works — Nichiren reflects on the debt of gratitude he owes to Dōzenbō, to his parents, to the sovereign, and to the Three Treasures, and uses the meditation on indebtedness as a vehicle for retrospective doctrinal exposition of his entire life’s project.

Abstract

The treatise is organized around the four debts of gratitude (四恩 shi-on): to parents, to all sentient beings, to the sovereign, and to the Three Treasures. Nichiren works through each in turn, arguing that the Lotus Sūtra alone provides the means of adequately repaying each — that is, of truly benefiting one’s parents, all sentient beings, the sovereign, and the Three Treasures. The doctrinal substance is the soteriological universality of the Lotus: it alone, in the mappō age, can secure not only one’s own enlightenment but the enlightenment of those to whom one is indebted.

The autobiographical dimension is substantial: Nichiren reviews his ordination at Kiyosumi (1233), his studies on Mt. Hiei (1242–1253) under Shunhan and others, his return to Awa in 1253, and the first sermon announcing the Nam-myōhō-renge-kyō daimoku on the 28th of the 4th month of Kenchō 5 / 1253. He also reviews the Risshō ankoku-ron submission of 1260, the Tatsunokuchi incident of 1271, the Sado exile, and the Minobu retreat — providing one of the principal first-person sources for the reconstruction of his life.

Doctrinal climax. The last section sets out the three great secret laws (三大祕法 sandai hihō): (1) the honzon of the Lotus Sūtra (the honmon no honzon 本門の本尊); (2) the kaidan of the Lotus Sūtra (the honmon no kaidan 本門の戒壇); (3) the daimoku of the Lotus Sūtra (Nam-myōhō-renge-kyō). These constitute the doctrinal triple of all subsequent Nichiren Buddhism. The doctrine receives its independent treatment in the Sandai hihōshō KR6t0406.

Date. Internally Kenji 2 / 1276 / 7th month / 21st day at Minobu.

Structural Division

The CANWWW entry (div29.xml, T84N2691) records the work as a 2-fascicle treatise by Nichiren with no internal toc sub-list and no related-text cross-references tabulated.

Translations and research

English translations:

  • Burton Watson (trans.), in Selected Writings of Nichiren (Columbia UP, 1990).
  • SGI (eds.), The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin (1999), vol. 1, pp. 690–736.

Major studies: Jacqueline I. Stone, Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism (Hawai’i, 1999); Anesaki Masaharu, Nichiren the Buddhist Prophet (Harvard UP, 1916); Tamura Yoshirō, Nichiren Shōnin (Kōdansha, 1973).

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