Harmony in View
Kōdō Sawaki — Zen Talks
Then secondly comes harmony in view. “View” means one’s understanding, one’s insight. This understanding must be the same among all. If it differs, trouble begins.
In the Diamond Sutra it says: “This Dharma is equal, without high or low.”
This Dharma is equal — there is no superiority or inferiority in it. One must thoroughly penetrate this place where there is no high and no low. In Buddhism, we must come straight and wholly to the one Dharma of Śākyamuni Buddha.
People often ask, “What is your sect?”
“This sect,” “that sect” — this school differs from that one. Yet after listening, someone from the Pure Land school may say, “Why, what you are saying is the same as my sect.” Someone from the Tendai school may say so; someone from the Nichiren school may say so. If it were different in essence, then it would no longer be Buddhism. It would become Christianity, Tenrikyō,1 or Islam instead.
Historically, to be sure, there first arose the division into the Sthaviras and the Mahāsaṃghikas; then came the split into five schools, then eighteen, then the so-called two root schools and twenty branches. There are countless distinctions. Yet all of that was but the living, creative unfolding of one single thing. The view is only one. But since life requires originality, the ancestral teachers gave it creative expression. That is why, in each age, there are changes and developments.
Because it is one single thing, it takes on similar forms. But when the age changes, that will not do. What was good in a former age may not be good in the next. What suited China may not suit Japan.
Since there are so many such circumstances, the ancestral teachers gave them creative expression. The forms thus created brought about what appears as the division into sects. But sectarian division does not mean that something different was born. From the beginning, the view is only one. If that view were to become unnecessary or scattered into private opinions, it would cease to be the Buddhadharma. For this reason, harmony in view is indispensable.
As it says in the Faith-Mind Inscription:
“Do not use effort to seek the Truth;
only cease from views.”
It is precisely this stilled view that is true harmony in view. The view itself must be harmonized. Each person putting forth private opinions and butting heads in argument — that is not harmony in view.
Tenrikyō is a Japanese new religious movement founded in the 19th century by Nakayama Miki. It teaches devotion to Tenri-Ō-no-Mikoto as the divine Parent of humanity and emphasizes joyful living through gratitude, charity, and purification of the mind. Though it emerged in a cultural environment shaped by Buddhism and Shintō, it is a distinct religious tradition and not a Buddhist school.