Rúshuō xiūxíng chāo 如説修行抄
Anthology on Practicing as the [Sūtra] Says by 日蓮 Nichiren (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle Nichiren doctrinal letter by Nichiren 日蓮 日蓮 (1222–1282), composed at Ichinosawa on Sado island in Bun’ei 10 / 1273 / 5th month, when Nichiren was 51, in the period immediately following the Kanjin honzon-shō KR6t0403. The Nyo-setsu shu-gyō-shō — “Practicing as the Sūtra Says” — develops the practice doctrine of Nichiren Buddhism: the practitioner must literally enact what the Lotus Sūtra prescribes, including the aggressive propagation of the daimoku and the vigorous refutation of the false teachings of other schools.
Abstract
The phrase nyo-setsu shu-gyō (如說修行) — “practicing as the [sūtra] says” — derives from a Lotus Sūtra passage in which the bodhisattvas are commanded to practice exactly as the Buddha has spoken. Nichiren reads this as a direct instruction to himself and his disciples: the proper Nichiren-school practice is active, missionary, and polemical — it includes both the chanting of the daimoku and the vigorous propagation of it to others as well as the active refutation of competing schools.
The work is doctrinally important as the principal statement of Nichiren’s shaku-buku (折伏, “break-and-subdue”) evangelistic method — the aggressive missionary practice that has been one of the most controversial aspects of Nichiren Buddhism throughout its history. The doctrinal argument is that, in the mappō age, quiet practice (in Nichiren’s terminology shō-ju 攝受, “embrace-and-accept”) is insufficient; only the aggressive shaku-buku practice can effectively propagate the Lotus and counter the false teachings that hold sway.
The shaku-buku doctrine has been variously interpreted in Nichiren-school history — softened in some branches (the Nichiren-shū mainstream of the Edo-Meiji period), radicalized in others (the Nichiren Shōshū / Sōka Gakkai lineage of the modern period, which made shaku-buku the principal missionary method of the 1950s–60s Sōka Gakkai expansion).
Date. Internally Bun’ei 10 / 1273 / 5th month, at Ichinosawa, Sado.
Structural Division
The CANWWW entry (div29.xml, T84N2697) records the work as a single-fascicle treatise by Nichiren with no internal toc sub-list and no related-text cross-references tabulated.
Translations and research
English translations:
- SGI (eds.), The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin (1999), vol. 1.
- Burton Watson (trans.), in Selected Writings of Nichiren (Columbia UP, 1990).
Major studies: Jacqueline I. Stone, Original Enlightenment (Hawai’i, 1999); on shaku-buku: Daniel Métraux, The History and Theology of Soka Gakkai (Edwin Mellen, 1988); Tamura Yoshirō, Nichiren Shōnin (Kōdansha, 1973); Anesaki Masaharu, Nichiren the Buddhist Prophet (Harvard UP, 1916).
Links
- CBETA online
- Author: 日蓮 (Nichiren)
- Other Nichiren writings: KR6t0399–KR6t0409