The Inflation of Zen Enlightenment and the
Scholasticization of Koan
The material expansion of the Zen lineages brought problems of organizational
control and status legitimation. Enlightenment was not only a personal relig-
ious experience; it was also a socially recognized rite of passage. When accom-
panied by a certificate of enlightenment from an authenticated master, it
entitled one to become head of one’s own monastery, even founder of a lineage.
Organizational expansion thus went along with the increasing commonness of
enlightenment, and sowed the seeds of organizational fragmentation.
Soto managed the expansion more smoothly, downplaying enlightenment,
and instituting from the early 1300s a periodic rotation of abbots in office.
Each master would appoint five main disciples, who shared in authority,
allowing for expansion while linking new foundations to the center (Du-
moulin, 1990: 197, 206–210). In Rinzai, the elite Five Mountains at Kyoto
and Kamakura, with their huge properties, kept a semblance of ranking at the
top; but a proliferation of masters in outlying areas became known as the Zen
“forest” (rinka), repudiating authority and giving out enlightenment certificates
without requiring the recipient to renounce affiliation to his current lineage.
By the late 1400s, an inflation of enlightenment certificates set in; pupils
traveled from master to master collecting as many as possible. One reaction
was iconoclasm. The most famous Zen figure of that generation, Ikkyu Sojun,
allegedly burned his enlightenment certificate (Dumoulin, 1990: 194).^12 Ikkyu,
an illegitimate son of the emperor, was very much part of the aesthetic elite.
For him, Zen meant a spontaneous, wandering life, devoted to artistic pursuits
which made him the most famous calligrapher of the Muromachi period, and
a founder of the ink-stroke painting style.
The underlying problem of maintaining religious tradition was that Bud-
dhism had set off an economic transformation of Japanese society. Buddhist
organizations from 1200 through the 1500s proliferated physically and struc-
turally throughout Japan. The dynamic market economy dates from these
centuries; the monasteries and the popular Buddhist movements unleashed the
commodity and financial networks which made Japan by the outset of the
Tokugawa unification a society of large population and economic prosperity
on a level at least with any other part of the world. Zen, as a conservative
elite, was less involved in entrepreneurial activities than the Pure Land move-
ments, but it too benefited materially from the expansion of wealth in which
monasteries acted as the leading edge of economic growth. As the temples
became rich, a superordinate market arose in sale of offices; by the 1380s
abbots and senior monks (especially of the far-flung Rinzai Five Mountains
organizations) were paying fees for their appointments. Since they often held
office for less than a year, and dispersed gifts and held lavish ceremonies at
Innovation through Conservatism: Japan • 341