Origin The three-age scheme took shape in China and was worked out there from the sixth century. Chinese calculations placed the onset of the last age variously, and the Japanese reckoning commonly dated it to 1052.
East Asian Buddhist writers divided the time after the Buddha into three ages: one in which teaching, practice and attainment are all present, one in which attainment fails, and a final one in which only the teaching survives as words. Chinese calculations placed the last age variously; the Japanese reckoning commonly dated its start to 1052. Where the scheme is taken as description it is a warning. Where it is taken as the actual situation it changes what is reasonable to attempt. Honen and Shinran drew the strong conclusion: in an age in which the disciplines fail, relying on one's own effort is not merely difficult but a form of self-deception, and only the Buddha's vow remains. Nichiren drew a different strong conclusion from the same premise, that the practice suited to the age is the title of the Lotus Sutra alone. Dogen rejected the reasoning outright, holding that the dharma is not weakened by the calendar and that sitting is as available now as it ever was.
Facts
Origins
Held ByEast Asian Buddhism, and above all the Japanese Pure Land and Nichiren schools, for whom it changed what practice was reasonable to attempt. 1 Origin PeriodThe three-age scheme took shape in China and was worked out there from the sixth century. Chinese calculations placed the onset of the last age variously, and the Japanese reckoning commonly dated it to 1052. 1 Origin of the NameChinese mofa, Japanese mappo, the last or decayed dharma, the third of three named ages into which East Asian writers divided the time following the Buddha. 1 Disputed
Point in DisputeWhether the scheme describes the actual situation, so that reliance on one's own effort becomes self-deception, or is a warning against complacency that leaves practice unchanged. Honen and Shinran took the first reading, and Dogen rejected the reasoning outright on the ground that the dharma is not weakened by the calendar. 1 Status
Status Within the TraditionStandard teaching, not formally defined 2Tradition: Pure Land Status Within the TraditionRejected, or not held, within this tradition 1Tradition: Zen Doctrinal CategoryCosmology and World-Structure 1 Structure
StructureThree ages: one in which teaching, practice and attainment are all present, one in which attainment fails, and a last in which only the teaching survives as words. 1 Learn More
A Calculation That Became a Conviction in the Year 1052
The three age scheme was a calculation before it was a conviction, and the calculation itself was never settled. Chinese Buddhist writers proposed different lengths for the first two ages, the age of the true dharma and the age of the semblance dharma, producing different dates for when the final age, mappo, would begin, and the Japanese reckoning that fixed the year 1052 as the starting point was one calculation among several rather than a figure the tradition had always agreed on. What made 1052 consequential was less its arithmetic than its timing: it fell within living memory of real social and political disorder in Heian Japan, so a scheme that had circulated for centuries as doctrine suddenly matched what people were prepared to believe about their own era.
Honen drew the sharpest institutional consequence from it. If self powered practice cannot succeed in the final age, then a Buddhism organized around monastic discipline, doctrinal study and gradual cultivation is not merely difficult in the present era, it is built for an age that has already ended, and Honen accordingly broke from established Tendai practice to found a new movement centered on exclusive reliance on the nembutsu, the invocation of Amida's name, treating every other traditional practice as no longer suited to what the calendar itself, on his reading, had already decided.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Shinran's whole position rests on the latter age: in an age in which the disciplines no longer work, self-power is not merely difficult but a form of self-deception, and only the Buddha's vow remains.
Nichiren dated the latter age from 1052 in the Japanese reckoning and argued that the practice appointed for it is the title of the Lotus Sutra alone.
Nichiren Shoshu holds the present to be the latter age and the title of the Lotus Sutra to be the practice appointed for it.
The reckoning of the latter age is what makes the Pure Land path necessary rather than merely available: in an age in which the disciplines fail, the Buddha's vow is the remaining route.
Soka Gakkai teaching follows Nichiren in holding the present to be the latter age, in which the title of the Lotus Sutra is the practice suited to the time.
Tendai transmitted the reckoning of the latter age into Japan, and it is from Tendai that Honen, Shinran, Dogen and Nichiren each inherited the problem their own answers were framed to solve.
The reckoning of the latter age was elaborated in Chinese Buddhism and carried in the Tiantai curriculum, from which the Japanese schools inherited it.
Critiqued By
Rinzai, Denominations Rinzai teaching does not accept that the age forecloses awakening, and Hakuin's eighteenth-century revival was argued expressly against the view that the old path had become impossible.
Soto, Denominations Dogen rejected the reckoning of a latter age as an excuse, holding that the dharma is not weakened by the calendar and that sitting is as available now as it ever was.
Opposed By
Zen, Denominations Zen does not accept that the present age puts awakening out of reach. The Zen founders in Japan worked in the same period as the Pure Land and Nichiren founders and drew the opposite conclusion from the same premise, holding that practice remains effective and that awakening is available now.
Sources
1. Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline
Jan Nattier, Asian Humanities Press, 1991
2. Jodo Shinshu: Shin Buddhism in Medieval Japan
James C. Dobbins, Indiana University Press, 1989
Soka Gakkai's Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan
Levi McLaughlin, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2019
Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations
Paul Williams, Routledge, 1989
The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism
Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., Princeton University Press, 2014View the Source The Writings of Nichiren (Gosho)
Zen Buddhism: A History, Volume 2: Japan
Heinrich Dumoulin, World Wisdom, 2005
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