without creative figures. Within Rinzai, one line absorbed all other schools,
and by the Ming dynasty, Soto as well. In the Ming all Chinese Buddhist sects
fused around a combination of Zen practice and the simplified nembutsu
chanting of the Pure Land movements. Here too the organizational base had
shifted; Zen’s elite base declined, and organizationally everything was carried
by popular Amidaism.
This does not seem much of a magnet for a movement of independent
Japanese Zen, breaking away to revive the pure meditation practice at just the
time when Amidaism was claiming exclusive possession of religious turf. What
the Zen leaders were seeking was not inspiration but organizational legitima-
tion. The earliest figures of the Zen independence movement were explicitly
concerned to establish their own lineages, and they did so by means of con-
nections with China. As usual, this happened simultaneously among rival
innovators (see Figure 7.2). Dainichi Nonin (fl. 1189) achieved enlightenment
on his own and founded a monastery; but he was not recognized as a Zen
master until he had sent pupils to China to bring back a certificate of enlight-
enment, making him a dharma heir, fifty-first in the line from Shakyamuni
Buddha.^7 Nonin’s better-known rival Eisai studied in China in 1187–1191 to
acquire a certificate of enlightenment and Zen lineage credentials. The move-
ment seemed to be feeling its way gradually toward Zen radicalism. Eisai’s
reputation as Zen founder was created largely in retrospect, as the lineage that
came after him pushed toward a radically purified Zen which set it in sharp
contrast to all other schools.^8
This is a particularly clear instance where we see that the network is more
important than the individual. Reputations are built up over a period of
generations. Especially where innovative ideas and practices come from a
long-term change in the organizational base, the full ideological ramifications
of what has transpired do not emerge for many decades; after that, the change
is likely to be attributed disproportionately to some early names, who become
emblems for what the entire lineage has accomplished. We have seen the same
thing in China, where the Ch’an movement made sacred emblems out of
Bodhidharma, and secondarily out of the patriarch of the southern school,
Hui-neng, associated with the famous break; whereas the true innovativeness
of the Zen style was the work of Shih-t’ou, Ma-tsu, and others in the following
generations. In Japan, the transformation of the entire religious attention space
by the 1220s, above all with the spectacular breakaway of the Pure Land sects,
drove home the reality that a new organizational path was available. Japanese
Zen was the conservative branch of innovation, a movement of radical purifiers
and ultra-traditionalists, sucked into radicalism by unfolding circumstances.
The new slot in the attention space was quickly exploited by several lineages
of contenders. Eisai’s pupils and grandpupils, taking up the prestige of the
Innovation through Conservatism: Japan • 333