A growing collection of materials that challenge and question certain aspects of Jodo Shinshu tradition and are presented here not necessarily because we agree with or endorse them but for the sake of keeping the critical spirit of our faith movement vigorous and alive.
Akunin Shoki (The Evil Person as the Object of Salvation)
According to contemporary research this teaching (Tannisho I.3) was an oral one given by Honen to Shinran. As such the tradition (in the Shin dobokai movement and in most books on Shin) of citing this as the main difference between the two men appears to be wrong:
The fact that Hōnen taught Shinran the akunin shoki doctrine is therefore gradually becoming better known.
Amida’s Compassion
Critiques of Aspects of Jodo Shinshu, and/or its Direction
- The Problem of the True and the False in Contemporary Shin Buddhist Studies: True Shin Buddhism and False Shin Buddhism (.pdf) - Takamaro Shigaraki
- Jodo Shinshu in the 21st Century: A Return to the Starting Point of Religion (.pdf) - Akira Omine
- The Core of Shinshu (.pdf) - Sōga Ryojin
- What Accounts for the Success of Soka Gakkai? Lessons for the Renewal of Shin Buddhism in North America - Roger Corless
‘Engaged Buddhism’ & Shin
- Amida’s Dharma in the Modern World - John Paraskevopoulos
Ethics
Fundamentalism
Japanese Buddhism, What state is it in?
It’s common for Western converts to Shin to repeat hearsay about the supposedly parlous state of the tradition in Japan. Whilst there is a certain amount of truth in the view that elements of Japanese Buddhism are in decline; this is by no means the whole picture. Read more: Japan Days (2) - Daily Life in a Small Jodo Shinshu temple, Dharma Friends Return …
Meditation in Jodo Shinshu
A subject of much debate in the Buddhist Churches of America:
Rennyo Shonin’s Legacy
Rennyo, the ‘restorer’ of the Shinshu tradition, gets a lot of stick for a wide variety of reasons. Reviewing the following resources will hopefully add a bit more perspective and breadth to the debates, and help you make up your own mind:
- Discussion on Jodo Shinshu Today Forum
- Rennyo: The Second Founder of Shin Buddhism (Nanzan Studies in Asian Religions) (Paperback) by Minor Rogers
- Bearer of the Light: The Life and Thought of Rennyo - Jitsuen Kakehashi
- Rennyo and the Roots of Modern Japanese Buddhism - Mark Laurence Blum, Shinʼya Yasutomi
- Rennyo the Restorer by Kaneko Daiei
- Some of Rennyo’s letters (Gobunsho/Ofumi)
- Rennyo Shonin Goichidai Kikigaki (Part)
- Rennyo and the Renaissance of Shin Buddhism & part 2- Alfred Bloom
- Parallel Recognitions of Honen and Rennyo in the Development of the Pure Land Movement in Japan - Alfred Bloom
- Rennyo: His Historical Significance and Contemporary Relevance (.pdf) - Alfred Bloom
- Rennyo’s Theory on Amida Buddha’s Name and its Relationship to Shinran’s Thought (.pdf) & part 2 - Kojou Fugen
- The extraordinary speed with which Rennyo’s Honganji revival spread is apparently seen by non-sectarian scholars as at least partly related to the pre-existence of a stable network of temples established by his great-uncles. See for example Carol Richmond Tsang’s Marriage, Adoption, and Honganji (Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 32/ : 53–83)
- Discussion of Jitsuen Kakehashi’s ‘Bearer of the Light: The Life and Thought of Rennyo’ (Pure Land Publications)
Sango Wakuran Controversy, What was the …?
- A major doctrinal argument among the scholars of Nishi Honganji at the end of the 1700s. Read more …
Schools of Shin Buddhist Thought
Shinran Shonin - Questioning our assumptions
Compared to Rennyo, academic and sectarian perspectives on Shinran have tended more towards a consensus. However the result is that people often see Shinran as somehow ‘outside of history’. As the implications of the two following books suggest, however, Shinran was a man of his time. For all his ‘everyman nature’, which is very important, we must remember that his spiritual and social world was profoundly different from our own.
- Letters of the Nun Eshinni: Images of Pure Land Buddhism in Medieval Japan (Paperback) - James C. Dobbins
Amongst other things, this book points out the significant difference between how people in Shinran’s day and our own tend to perceive the boundary between the spiritual and secular/mundane.
- The Prince and Monk: Shotoku Worship in Shinran’s Buddhism (Paperback) - Kenneth Doo Young Lee
This book, though it overstates its case, points out Shinran’s relationship to the cult of Prince Shotoku and argues that in his devotion to this he was seeking to locate his teachings within an existing, highly institutionalised strand of religious tradition. In other words Lee suggests that Shinran was not as radical or anti-authoritarian as some have suggested. However see the contrasting assessment of the more well-known scholars Michio Tokunaga and Alfred Bloom (.pdf).
State / Society, Jodo Shinshu and …
The scholar Minor Rogers states in his work on Rennyo:
The Shinshu as a Japanese Buddhist tradition appears to have inherited from Shinran’s teaching few resources, conceptual or other, to question, much less to resist, the demands of the state. The absolute authority of the emperor’s command in prewar Japan may be seen as an extreme instance within this pattern. [Yet] Shinran’s symbols for the transcendent—Amida, Primal Vow, faith, and nembutsu—are, in theory, differentiated from the mundane and thus hold a capacity for criticism of all temporal authority, including that of the state. Instead, these religious symbols were subsumed by symbols for the national polity and imperial system.
The essay Toward a Pro-Active Engaged Shin Buddhism: A Reconsideration of the Teaching of the Two Truths (shinzoku-nitai) (.pdf), by Michio Tokunaga and Alfred Bloom, offers a careful consideration of this claim including; (1) an assessment of its fairness, (2) a detailed analysis of the development of the Two Truths doctrine, and (3) a consideration of new conceptions of spiritual-secular relations in modern Shinshu.
Sūtras
Women in Shin
Kyōshin
Jishin
November 30, 2007 at 11:33 am
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