ABSTRACT

The problem of a Buddhist interpretation of history and self-understanding of Buddhist tradition has a number of levels. First is the issue of syncretism and borrowing, discussed above. Despite claims that Japanese Buddhists have always accepted other religious teachings, absorbing them into a seamless web, one can in fact find much criticism of the foreign or extra-Buddhist elements that seeped into, and possibly deformed, Buddhism in China and Japan. Rather than being opposed to the 'truths' passed on by tradition, the existential-critical process may be better conceived in terms of Foucault's notion of genealogy or even, as Muramoto Shoji prefers, in terms of apologia and anamnesis: An apology is not always a sign of stagnation or rigidity. Sometimes it may prove to be a highly self-critical and promising act which revives the tradition and helps man's commitment. Apology is anamnesis, the recollection of what a tradition may have forgotten in the long course of its history.