Shōmyō & Gongyo - Contracted Pronunciation Beyond Nam vs. Namu

I am now venturing into the Nam vs Namu debate and feel that something has been missed for a very long time that has been staring us in the face everytime we look at our Gongyo book.  Verbal contractions of Japanese phonetics go beyond whether or not we are pronouncing Namu as 'Nam' as is done in the Nichiren Shohu and Soka Gakkai tradition.  It should also include how we pronounce the words in the Gongyo book.

Having read through the Gongyo book downloaded from the Nichiren Shu Bay Area website (link here) there are clearly a few small differences in how the Kanji in the Nichiren-shu Gongyo book are pronounced compared to the Nichiren Shoshu / Soka Gakkai Gongyo books.  In different cases, each lineage abbreviates the pronunciation of some of the kanji where the other do not and vice versa.

Two examples from the Hoben chapter:

Go jū jō-butsu i-rai (Nichiren Shoshu / SGI)

Go jū jō but^chi rai (Nichiren Shu)

Nyo ze hon-mak^ku-kyō tō (Nichiren Shoshu / SGI)

Nyo ze hon-matsu ku-kyō tō (Nichiren Shu)

From the Juryo chapter:

Ji ga toku bu^rai (Nichiren Shoshu / SGI)

Ji ga toku butsu rai (Nichiren Shu)

... there are other examples all throughout the Gongyo books of these two particular pronunciation lineages.  And I am not speaking of other lineages as well from which I have not reference material.

It then begs the question - if the pronunciation of the Daimoku is so critical (according to the arguments that it is important to pronounce it as "Namu" as opposed to just "Nam") why hasn't anyone so much as batted an eyelash about the proper pronunciation of the Gongyo book as well?

I delved into this topic and here is what I found.

How Gongyo is Pronounced and Why

Japan adopted Chinese characters (kanji in Japanese, meaning the writing of the Han Chinese) into their native language over the course of several centuries and over the course of three distinct "waves":

• Go-on Era - 3rd to 5th Century - Initial Introduction of Chinese characters via the Korean Peninsula first via imported artifacts like coins and seals and then later more officially adopted for government purposes.  The Chinese translations of the Buddhist sutras were imported en masse into Japan in this era.  The Japanese adopted and adapted the pronunciation of these glyphs using Japanese phonetics pronouncing the Wu Chinese dialect (from the southwestern Chinese kingdom of Wu) and the Eastern Jin/Northern and Southern dynasties period). Go-on means "Wu sound".
• Kan-on Era - 6th to 8th Century - Following direct diplomatic contacts with the Sui and Tang Dynasties in 607 CE, Japan imported Chinese culture wholesale.  During the Nara period (710-794) all formal writing was conducted in Literary Chinese and the education system established Chinese characters proficiency as a key skill for officials.  The Japanese adopted another "layer" of pronunciation of these same kanji from the Chinese dialects spoken in the Tang capital of Chang'an.  Kan-on means "Han sound".
• Tō-on Era - 7th to 10th Century - Adaptation and Kana Development - Japanese scholars began adapting the Chinese glyphs into the native Japanese language.  This included starting with man'yōgana (using whole kanji to represent native Japanese-language words phonetically rather than for their symbolic meanings) in the 7th Century and evolved into the simplified kana syllabaries (hiragana and katagana "letters") by the Heian period (794 to 1185), creating the mixed writing system used today. Tō-on means "Tang sound".

In short there are three ways to pronounce a kanji character.  The Go-on "readings" are used for Buddhist texts (as the Chinese translations of the sutras were introduced into Japan in the Go-on period), the Kan-on "readings" are more common in legal documents (as this was the era that Chinese was officially brought into government and became the prestige language of the ruling class), and the Tō-on "readings" are the last major standardization of Chinese character readings into the modern Japanese language today.

So for our understanding, the Buddhist sutras are chanted following the pronunciation scheme developed in the Go-on Era... when the sutras were first introduced into Japan.  These pronunciations are mostly unintelligible for modern Japanese speakers much in the same way as an English speaker may not fully grasp the understanding of Greek, or Latin, or ancient Britonic root words of modern English.

Shōmyō - Pronunciation traditions in Japanese Buddhism

On top of the Go-on pronunciation, Buddhist monks developed yet another layer of pronunciation (or rather a modification of pronunciation) of the Go-on readings of the kanji in the Chinese sutras.  This is called Shōmyō 声明 and the term derived from the Chinese "Bonbai" 梵唄 meaning "Voice of Brahmā" which referred to a Buddhist vocal music introduced to Japan from China during the Heian period (794-1331).

Here is a brief definition of Shōmyō from Brave Search:

"In the Japanese Buddhist context, shōmyō (声明) is the classical liturgical chant tradition used to recite sacred texts, sutras, and mantras during rituals and ceremonies. The term literally translates to "voice clear" or "voice and name," reflecting its purpose of vocalizing sacred names to honor the Buddha and guide meditation."

Basically, Shōmyō pronunciation involves changing the Go-on readings of the sutras... in such a way that allows the words to be chanted or sung in a way that avoids "tongue twisters" so that the words can more easily "flow" in a verbal or sung recitation.

Thus, the truncation of "Namu" to "Nam" may be a simple case of Shōmyō, just as "Nyo ze hon-matsu ku-kyō tō" is abbreviated or contracted to "Nyo ze hon-mak^ku-kyō tō" in some Nichiren recitation traditions.

By my account, Shōmyō has been used for centuries and is a valid tradition all its own, however my own online searches reveal that there is no one single way to pronounce words per Shōmyō - there is no clear set of rules on how to adapt the Go-on readings of the sutra texts for chanting and singing as a liturgical / devotional practice.

Many temples have developed some unique traditions of pronunciation all there own and I am seeing this just between Nichiren Shu and the Nichiren Shoshu / Soka Gakkai liturgical pronunciations.  This is probably the case with ALL different Nichiren schools, as well as other Japanese Buddhist sects and lineages in Japan.

Every Character is a Living Buddha

Nichiren refers to each character in the Lotus Sutra as "living Buddhas" (Reply to the Lay Priest Soya).

He does so again in Letter to Hōren, "All the characters in which the Lotus Sutra is written represent living Buddhas." (#62, WND-I, p 517), and further on in that same Gosho quotes T'ien-t'ai who said, "'The Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law, before which I bow my head, in its single case, with its eight scrolls, twenty-eight chapters, and 69,384 characters, is in each and every one of its characters the true Buddha who preaches the Law [Dharma] for the benefit of living beings.'  In light of all this, we can say that each morning [when he recites the verse section of the 'Life Span' chapter] the priest Hōren is sending forth golden-hued characters from his mouth. These characters are 510 in number, and each character changes into a sun, and each sun changes into a Thus Come One Shakyamuni." (#62, WND-I, P 517-518)

In the Openning of the Eyes (Kaimoku Sho) Nichiren states, "The Lotus Sutra is a single work consisting for eight volumes, twenty-eight chapters, and 69,384 characters.  Each and every character is endowed with the character myō, each being a Buddha who has the thirty-two features and eighty characteristics." (#30, WND-I, p 250)

In Letter to Hōren again, "...if one listens to even one character or one phrase of the Lotus Sutra, one cannot fail to attain Buddhahood." (#62, WND-I, p 513)

Every character represents the enlightened thoughts of an enlightened being and so it follows (in my opinion) that we should pronounce the words as clearly as possible, without truncating, abbreviating, or contracting their pronunciation which is why I find Shōmyō troubling.

To the modern Japanese ears (again in my opinion), priests / monks / lay practitioners holding to a chanting tradition that recites the Chinese characters following an ancient pronunciation (the Go-on reading of kanji) that bears little intelligibility to modern Japanese is already creating a linguistic aesthetic of mystery and magic.  Add to that the layer of Shōmyō where those words are then contracted for the purposes of making the incantation of the "spell" flow more smoothly takes something away - the actual words of the Buddha.

I feel that what has happened over the centuries is that Gongyo, and any and all recitation of ANY sutra in the many different Buddhist sects in Japan has become the toy of monastics, to make it their own, to make mysterious and distant to the lay practitioner by twisting the pronunciation because of "reasons", turning something that should be accessible and honored in the original into something that requires priests / monastics to maintain for some supposed logic that only they can know.

I am a bit irreverent as you can tell but it comes from a place of honoring the Buddhas words to follow the Dharma and not the Persons.

I don't care how ancient the Shōmyō tradition is, I just don't think it is right to mis-pronounce the Lotus Sutra.  Add to this that now there are millions of people around the world chanting, none of whom speak Japanese, and none of whom inherently perceive the "mystery" being the "reason" to twist the pronunciation of the Buddha's words for the convenience of letting the incantation "flow" more easily.

Heck, since I find pronunciation of the Buddhas words so important, I dare say that we should really all be chanting in Sanskrit but to my knowledge there is no complete extant copy of the Lotus Sutra in Sanskrit, making Kumarajiva's Chinese translation that we all use today the definitive version.  And considering that there are millions of people who already chant and recite the Lotus Sutra with the Japanese Go-on on'yomi pronunciation of the Wu Chinese of Kumarajiva's translation, it would probably be a bit of a mess to turn that large ship into a new direction of Sanskrit recitation.

And this all comes back to the Namu vs. Nam debate.  I agree we should pronounce Daimoku as Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō.  But then it follows that we should ALSO evaluate how we pronounce Gongyo.

For that reason I am working on a project review the Gongyo book's on'yomi pronunciation and will post a final version to this blog soon.