Understanding Shinran offers a sensitive and balanced examination of the life and teachings of the founder of Pure Land Buddhism. The author shows how the ongoing drama of salvation through the grace of Amida -- a mutual engagement of form and the formless, of ignorant humans and the awakened Buddha -- can be read as a message of hope by Buddhists and Christians alike.
Shinran (1173-1262) is the founder of the Jodo Shinshu Pure Land Buddhist tradition in Japan during the Kamakura period. This movement, once set in motion, eventually became the largest Buddhist sect in Japan and spread to the West at the end of the nineteenth century. Renowned scholar of Shin Buddhism, Alfred Bloom, presents the life and spiritual legacy of Shinran Shonin, the influential religious reformer and founder of Pure Land Buddhism, the most popular school of Buddhism in Japan today. Bloom presents a wide selection of Shinran's essential writings on the key Shin Buddhist idea of true entrusting (shinjin) to the Other-Power of Amida Buddha through His Vow to save all sentient beings. The Essential Teachings of Shinran, also, includes a foreword by Shin Buddhist scholar, Rueben Habito, a detailed glossary of foreign terms, and a select bibliography for further reading.
This annotated translation by Daisetz Suzuki (1870-1966) comprises the first four of six chapters of the Kyogyoshinsho, the definitive doctrinal work of Shinran (1173-1262). Shinran founded the Jodo Shin sect of Pure Land Buddhism, now the largest religious organization in Japan. Writing in Classical Chinese, Shinran began this, his magnum opus, while in exile and spent the better part of thirty years after his return to Kyoto revising the text. Although unfinished, Suzuki's translation conveys the text's core religious message, showing how Shinran offered a new understanding of faith through studying teachings before engaging in praxis, rather than the more common and far more limited view of faith in Buddhism as relevant to one just beginning their pursuit of Buddhist truth. Although Suzuki is best known for his scholarship on Zen Buddhism, he took a lifelong interest in Pure Land Buddhism. Suzuki's own religious perspective is evident in his translation of gyo as ''True Living'' rather than the expected ''Practice,'' and of sho as ''True Realizing of the Pure Land'' rather than the expected ''Enlightenment'' or ''Confirmation.'' This book contains the second edition of Suzuki's translation. It includes a number of corrections to the original 1973 edition, long out of print, as well as Suzuki's unfinished preface in its original form for the first time.
Explores the potential significance of Japanese Pure Land Buddhist Thought in the contemporary world, and provides a new model of interreligious dialogue as Buddhist thinkers engage with Christian theologians concerned with the present-day significance of their own tradition.
The Japanese Pure Land master Shinran (1173–1262) was a product of his age. His angst in the period of the decay of the Dharma, his subsequent search for spiritual liberation, and his ultimate discovery of the path of the nembutsu could not have occurred isolated from the social temper of his time, any more than his religious thought could have developed beyond the fabric of traditional Japanese Buddhist teachings and practices. This study concentrates on the relationship between Shinran's experiences in the first half of his life and his historical and social environment. Both the boldness and subtlety of his ideas begin to emerge in this examination, moving beyond the hagiographical limitations often characteristic of research into the Shin tradition. Numerous Shinran studies have been bound by the limitations of either purely historical or religious-philosophical analysis. But these two approaches have rarely been combined, and since Shinran's early life and his cultural environment together constitute not only the basis but also the matrix of his mature thought and practice, such a combination reveals both the power of his ideas and the cultural factors that stimulated their development.
Languages change over time. No matter how hard we try to control and regulate them, they exist in a state of endless metamorphosis. This does not mean, though, that we should simply stand by and watch as language devolves into nonsense. What should we do, then? Recognizing the inevitability of change is a given, of course. But we must also navigate the delicate line between the pull of popular trends and the urge to cling blindly to the ways of the past. The ideal balance, Professor Nakanishi argues in this book, lies in being "one step behind the times," which is the best approach for wielding.
The field of Buddhist studies is an international and interdisciplinary one. By its nature, the study of Buddhism must take into account phenomena that cross national and cultural boundaries, as well as the more artificial boundaries of modern academic fields. This volume presents 18 studies, the subjects of which range over India, China, Tibet and Japan, and deal with an ever broader range of subjects. It includes many essays on Buddhist philosophy, a number of which deal with the Madhyamaka tradition of Nagarjuna and his successors, while others examine the Yogacara tradition of Asanga, Vasubandhu, and their successors. These essays investigate areas of doctrinal interest such as the so-called Two-Truth theory, and the doctrine of the equivalence of nirvana and samsara, as well as such topics as the nature and practice of compassion, and Indian Buddhist cosmology. Still other studies examine topics such as the meditation practices of the Japanese Pure Land founder Honen, some of the earliest Chinese Buddhist art objects yet known and their importance for the transmission of Buddhism to China, later Indian logic, epistemology and the theory of meaning, what we know about the ear
Three mountains and the seven rivers is a collection of 56 essays to felicitate the sixtieth birthday of Doctor Musashi Techikawa, Professor at Aichi gakuin University in Nagoya. This volume consist of thirteen Sections; (1) Ancient Geography, (2) Buddhism, (3) Madhyamika, (4) Iconography, (5) Jainism, (6) Logic, (7) Poetics, (9) Social Practice, (10) Tibetan Themes, (11) Vedanta and Mimamsa, (12) Samkhya and Yoga and (13) Tantrism. these saetions throw new light on enduring themes in Indian studies as well as raises fresh issues.
The Prince and the Monk addresses the historical development of the political and religious myths surrounding Shōtoku Taishi and their influence on Shinran, the founder of the Jōdo-Shinshū school of Pure Land Buddhism. Shōtoku Taishi (574–622) was a prince who led the campaign to unify Japan, wrote the imperial constitution, and promoted Buddhism as a religion of peace and prosperity. Shinran's Buddhism developed centuries later during the Kamakura period, which began in the late twelfth century. Kenneth Doo Young Lee discusses Shinran's liturgical text, his dream of Shōtoku's manifestation as Kannon (the world-saving Bodhisattva of Compassion), and other relevant events during his life. In addition, this book shows that Shinran's Buddhism was consistent with honji suijaku culture—the synthesis of the Shinto and Buddhist pantheons—prevalent during the Kamakura period.
"Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki is considered a key figure in the introduction of Buddhism to the non-Asian world. Many in the West encountered Buddhism for the very first time through his writings and teaching, and for nearly a century his work and legacy havecontributed to the ongoing religious and cultural interchange between Japan and the rest of the world, particularly the United States and Europe. As an early and influential representative of Zen Buddhism outside of Japan, Suzuki shaped the global conversation about the nature of religious practice for much of the twentieth century. This is the first of a multivolume series gathering the full range of Suzuki's writings. Volume 1 (Zen) presents a collection of Suzuki's classic essays as well as lesser-known but equally influential articles on Zen Buddhist thought and practice. Chinese and Japanese characters, which were originally removed from most post-World War II editions of Suzuki's essays, have been reinstated, and the romanization of Buddhist names and technical terms has been updated uniformly throughout the volume. This collection also contains an in-depth introduction to Suzuki's approach to Zen that places his influence in the context of modern developments in religious thought, practice, and scholarship, making this a useful edition for contemporary scholars and students of Buddhism"--Provided by publisher.
