-Buddhist Self Ordination by Alexander DuncanBuddhist self-ordination or Bodhisattva ordination is a Mahayana practice that originated with the Indian Queen Srimala. The Srimala Sutra was composed during the third century CE. The formula of self-ordination was subsequently elaborated in the Buddha Net Sutra. The practice was commonplace in early China and later in Japan, especially in the sixth through eighth, twelfth through fourteenth, and seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.
Referred to as “Bodhisattva monks,” they are described as self-certified or self-ordained and self-enlightened or “enlightened without a teacher.” Many of the Bodhisattva monks were forest renunicates and eclectics, not specifically associated with any temple or school. Self-ordained Bodhisattva monks founded all the Tendai, Ritsu, Todaji, Zen, and Mukyoho Buddhist schools. The formula of self-ordination is also practiced in Tibet, where it is associated with the Mahasiddha and Ngakpa traditions (third through 13th centuries). Self-ordination is even practiced amongst the Theravadin forest renunciates as well.
The fundamental premise of self-ordination is the doctrine of the Tathagatagarbha that all individuals possess within themselves the potent Buddha-potentiality. This is based on the utterance of the Buddha, “I never had any teacher or divinity to teach me or tell me how to gain enlightenment. What I achieved I did by my own effort, energy, knowledge and purity.” Therefore, every individual possesses the capacity to become a Buddha within himself or herself. without a teacher. No one can deny this, since the
Buddha himself was self-ordained.
And then there is this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushi-dokugoMushi-dokugo (無師独悟), sometimes called jigo-jishō (自悟自証, self-enlightened and self-certified), is a Japanese term used in Zen Buddhism which expresses the phenomenon known as "awakening alone, without a master"
What are the ramifications of the de-emphasizing of the Vinaya in China and especially Japan? Some have considered that phenomena such as the Zen-inspired "Samurai Bushido Warrior Code" and the "Sohei" warrior-monks could only have flourished in a place like Japan where precepts were so radically laweyered-around, twisted with Tendai doctrines like "Precept-essence", and even (as we see above) more or less baldly ignored. The concept of Zenkai Ichinyo ("The Oneness of Zen and the Precepts") states that the precepts are automatically realized through meditational practice...a dubious prospect at best.
And least it seems I'm ditching unfairly on Zen here, let's round out the picture with 16th-century Pure Land fanatics like the armed shock troops of the Ikko-Shu, the formidable Tendai private armies at Enryakuji, and grotesque incidents like beautiful Kiyomezudera of the "Northern Yogacara sect" being sacked by their armed rivals from the "Southern Yogacara sect" (who also took a little side-trip to burn the ancient mountain Shinto-Buddhist multiplex of Kinpukuji to the ground, ostensibly because it was syphoning off pilgrim revenue.)
Can all this religious violence be explained by a fast-and-loose attitude to the vinaya and, consequently, Buddhist Ethics in general? Or is the picture more complex?
