Cuevas, Bryan J. The Hidden History of the Tibetan Book of the
Dead.New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Evans-Wentz, W. Y., and Kazi Dawa Samdup, ed. and trans.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead(1927). Reprint, New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000.
Fremantle, Francesca, and Chögyam Trungpa, trans. The Ti-
betan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation through Hear-
ing in the Bardo.Boston: Shambhala, 1975.
Lauf, Detlef Ingo. Secret Doctrines of the Tibetan Books of the
Dead,tr. Graham Parkes. Boston: Shambhala, 1977.
Thurman, Robert, trans. The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Libera-
tion through Understanding in the Between.New York: Ban-
tam, 1994.
BRYANJ. CUEVAS
TIME. SeeCosmology; Decline of the Dharma; Mil-
lenarianism and Millenarian Movements
TODAIJI. SeeHoryuji and Todaiji
TOMINAGA NAKAMOTO
Tominaga Nakamoto (1715–1746) has often been in-
cluded among a diverse group of rationalist or
enlightenment (keimo) thinkers who emerged in
eighteenth-century Japan. Counted among their num-
bers are medical doctors, scientists, economists, and
others, all of whom shared a critical stance toward tra-
ditional religious authority and who believed that re-
liable knowledge could come only from the rigorous
application of reason.
Born into the merchant class in Osaka, Tominaga
was educated in a Confucian school, the Kaitokudoor
Pavilion of Virtues, that his father and four other mer-
chants had established. Tominaga was a brilliant stu-
dent and by the age of fifteen he had completed his
first study, Setsuhei(Failings of the Classical Philoso-
phers), for which he was expelled from the school. The
text is no longer extant, but passing references to it in
later works suggest that it was a critical treatment of
Confucianism. After his expulsion, he studied with
other Confucian teachers, but he may also have read
Buddhist texts at Manpukuji, a Zen monastery in
Kyoto, where some believe he worked as a proofreader.
The monastery was publishing a new edition of the
Buddhist CANONat the time.
Tominaga died at the early age of thirty-one, but his
breadth of knowledge of Confucianism, Buddhism,
and Shintoenabled him to write two works that, after
his death, had a revolutionary impact on Japanese re-
ligious history. In the short essay “Okina no fumi”
(“The Writings of an Old Man,” 1738) and in the much
longer Shutsujogogo(Talks after Emerging from Medi-
tation,1745), he advanced the view that Japan’s tradi-
tional religions were so historically and culturally
conditioned that their claims to teach ultimate truth
were untenable. In Shutsujogogohe focused his analy-
sis on Buddhism in particular, contending that the
texts of MAHAYANABuddhism, the dominant branch
in Japan, were so different in language and content
from the other sutras that they could not be the direct
teachings of the Buddha. Tominaga was the first per-
son to systematically make this case in Japan. Viewed
as a threat to the entire tradition, his position
prompted numerous counterarguments from the Bud-
dhist community. By the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, however, most Japanese Buddhist
scholars accepted Tominaga’s assertion about the later
origins of Mahayana sutras and embraced the critical
historical approach to the study of texts that he had
advanced.See also:Buddhist Studies; Confucianism and Bud-
dhism; JapanBibliography
Kato, Shuichi. “Okina no fumi: The Writings of an Old Man.”
Monumenta Nipponica22, nos. 1–2 (1967): 194–210.
Kato, Shuichi. “Tominaga Nakamoto, 1715–1746: A Tokugawa
Iconoclast.” Monumenta Nipponica22, nos. 1–2 (1967):
177–193.
Najita, Tetsuo. Visions of Virtue in Tokugawa Japan: The Kaito-
kudo, Merchant Academy of Osaka.Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1987.
Pye, Michael. Emerging from Meditation: Tominaga Nakamoto.
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990.PAULB. WATTTONSURE. SeeHairTRIPITAKA. SeeAbhidharma; Canon; Commentar-
ial Literature; Scripture; VinayaTIME